What I wish I'd Known About Sales With Charlotte Lloyd

Hi everyone and welcome to What I Wish I'd Known About Sales, the show where we learn all about the highs, lows, and lessons from the front lines of selling. I'm Martin from Lead Forensics, and today's guest is Charlotte Lloyd, founder of the Client Acquisition Club and creator of the Elegant Sales System. She helps businesses consistently win premium clients using bio-led selling, high-trust closing, and smart use of AI, all within 90 days. Charlotte has She's been named one of the top 100 in sales, and her insights on social selling, client acquisition, and building a standout personal brand on LinkedIn have made her one of the most influential voices in modern B2B sales. Welcome to the show. Thank you for the introduction. Very nice introduction as well. It's great to be here. Good stuff. So just getting straight into the questions, what's one sales belief you held early in your career that you've you've now completely let go of? Oh, that sales is sleazy, right? Yeah. And I think a lot of people who don't have a sales background also think this as well, because when I was taught back in 2001 was when I entered B2B sales, and I was doing a lot of cold calling. There wasn't really any email selling. There definitely was no LinkedIn selling back then either. It was, you know, there was this image of pressure and closing. We were taught to convince and to go after every single deal. And, you know, you look at The Wolf of Wall Street, sales had a bad name for many years. And sales isn't sleazy, despite what people did then and the ways that they sold. It's one of the greatest things that you can learn, okay? Anybody can learn it, and you're about to change somebody's life potentially. Even if you're selling B2B, you're still changing that person's life or that team's life in a way that is, you know, they can do that. They're going from a current state where they're, you know, there's a pain point into a future state where they're getting the desired outcome that they want, or they're avoiding a very kind of painful staying the same. So yeah, that's, that's one belief that I would, you know, if I could go back to my earlier days, even I believe that selling was sleazy just because, you know, the way we were taught back then. Yeah, I think it's probably the focus more on helping the prospect rather than helping yourself, right? It seems like. Um, so, um, you've spoken about, um, elegant selling. What does that look like in practice, and how does it differ from kind of traditional sales approaches? Yeah, so elegant selling is we're not pushing too hard. We're making it about the buyer, right? The buyer-led selling is you get them to identify why they might have a problem or a specific priority and why they need to solve it. And the best sales are when you ask the best questions. So taking this more elegant approach, it's, you know, there's no bro selling and, you know, reaching out and selling in the first message. It's really helping the buyer to realize themselves that yes, they have an issue, a problem. What's the root cause of that problem? Why is it a problem? Is this something that they accept that they need to fix? And can they convince me, the seller, that it needs fixing? That's what I call elegant selling, right? And where can people find out more about that? So you can find out on LinkedIn. I share a newsletter each— on LinkedIn each week. I have a newsletter off LinkedIn, but I talk a lot about this because I actually sell to— there's several things that I do. My clients are founders, people that might be coaches, consultants. They are running their own business and they don't have sales experience, or they've outsourced their selling too soon and it's backfired. So they need to be able to build pipeline and they need to be able to work, you know, using sales techniques. I also work with teams in corporate who are perhaps, you know, they've, they've, their sales team aren't doing the right things, enough of the right things, and yeah, they need to take a different approach. So that includes social selling with LinkedIn. It also includes how are they, you know, managing the top of funnel off LinkedIn. And what I teach is They need to partly build authority because authority-driven selling is, is, is, you know, when you're showing up on LinkedIn, you're visible without needing to have a personal brand. It's, are you, are you attracting enough of the right people? Most people want the premium buyers. Are you attracting enough of those people? And then are you getting into conversations where you're literally allowing them to see that yes, they need help, so you're not the one convincing, it's them convincing you? Right. Um, you're on record as saying that, um, sales, um, don't fail at the close, they sort of fail earlier. So what are some early signals that a deal is just completely going sideways? Well, there's the, there's the, you know, deals are lost and won on discovery. I completely agree with that. The very first call is what's going to close the deal. And, you know, if you're selling B2B enterprise, kind of large $30K+ deals, everything that you do on that first call, are you going deep on one or two problems? What's the pain and impact of those problems? Are you asking the right questions? Because deals fail later when we haven't qualified perhaps correctly on that first call, or we didn't qualify in the DMs before we got on the call. So if you're an SDR, um, yeah, it's, are we, are we booking meetings just to book meetings and hit targets and for the meeting targets each week? Often that would tell me that we haven't perhaps sometimes really qualified who we're speaking with. Is there a genuine interest, and are they genuinely wanting to solve the problem that they have? So we'd only want to be getting on calls with those kind of people. If you're a founder listening to this, for example, you— yeah, you want to be qualifying in the first, in the first message. If that's in the DMs, or if it's on LinkedIn, are you sending pre-call questions so that you can get more context around what you've discussed in the DMs. Are they agreeing that yes, they need help? Uh, always a good way to front-load the call so that when you get on that call, it's, you're much more informed and you can ask better questions. If you're booking from a cold call, then it's, it's not going to be perhaps as qualified in that same way. But when we're going from cold call to discovery, Yeah, we want it— where I see when talking about reps, when they fail, is they haven't asked the right questions. They've perhaps asked too many questions and gone too surface on different problems and then jumped into, oh, here's how we can help. Do you want to learn more? We can go on another— we can go on a demo. So really, you want to be able to qualify to disqualify because that's going to show up later when you get to the demo or you get to proposal, it's like, then you're gonna, you're not closing at that point because of the things that you did earlier in the deal cycle. So on the discovery call. Another reason why deals don't fail at the close is, are we just involving the champion? Are we involving, are we doing the multi-thread thing where, you know, we're getting the stakeholders who care about this involved? Are the right people involved in the deal at the right time? So, for biggers, you need to get group consensus that this problem needs solving, that it's a priority. Are you selling to power? Are you using mutual action plans to be able to get shared ownership on their side? All of these things need to be put in place. Or are you just getting happy ears? Happy ears is when they say, you know, you're— again, and this ties to qualification— if you're hearing them say, yes, yes, Is it really a yes? Because our buyers are very trained and skilled at responding to certain questions in a certain way. So I always say, look for the no, disqualify, qualify to disqualify, to disqualify. Because if we're hearing yes, is it really, really a yes? Buyers don't like to lie to us, right? Especially not to our face, not on a Zoom call, not even in emails. We need to be able to give them the permission to say no, right? To say, actually, no, this isn't as big a problem as I thought. Because what we don't want to do is put that deal into Salesforce or whatever CRM that you're using, and it's like, oh, the boss believes it's a done deal, it's in the forecast, right? And then suddenly, oh, it's lost to timing, or it's lost to, um, bodger, or it's lost to there's no need. So really, are we doing all the groundwork leading up to the close Because, you know, when they say no on the close, the deal has failed earlier in the cycle. And if we're talking about reps, yeah, I see a lot of reps where this happens, right? They haven't defeated the status quo. You know, they haven't done a good discovery. They haven't asked the right questions. They haven't looked for the no. So, yeah, it's much when they get to that end part of the deal, it's, it's a no, but they don't really know why it's a no, like where it went wrong before. Yeah, I think for a lot of reps, um, it's kind of maybe they see it as a numbers game. And actually, what would you say are the kind of the big trust killers that you see in sales messaging, you know? Yeah, LinkedIn. Um, they see it as a numbers— when I feel that I'm part of a sequence, when I feel that this is just me sending out a bunch of emails and hoping, you know, if I throw enough mud at the wall, it will actually stick. If I feel that I'm part of a sequence and there really isn't any effort put into— and I'm not saying reps don't put in effort because they do, and they're always, you know, there's so much that's being asked of them all the time, so I get that, I've been there, I know it's hard. When I feel like I'm in a sequence or something is automated and they're just going through the motions that's when I'm less likely to— that's where my trust goes, right? The thing is, have we done enough? Are we having more of a nuanced conversation, not just a, oh, I'll just send you this? Most teams find that they're 20% behind on, um, their quota because it— I don't know, that kind of messaging just— I know that I'm, I'm being pitched, and when I know that I'm being pitched, I'm far less likely to respond. So the questions I always ask, and I teach my you know, when I train teams, when I train founders, is have I earned the right to a response before I send that DM or email or even pick up the phone? Would I respond if I was receiving this message? So these are the two questions that you ask before you send those messages. Really, it comes down to that. Have I, you know, have I perhaps done something different, sent a voice note or a video? Because It's very easy to just get locked into this, I've got to do my tasks and I've got a sequence. I'm not saying don't automate, I'm not saying, you know, don't automate part of your sequence, but really, if we really want the deal, it's less about a volume game and it's more about a value game. So I'd rather that reps reach out to less people but did a deeper, more personalized, more relevant outreach than reaching out to hundreds where that other, the prospect on the other end, the buyer's gonna be like, I know that I'm part of a sales pitch, so I'm not gonna respond. Also, you're kind of burning through your goodwill as well, aren't you, if you take that approach? Yeah. And you can, and then you get exhausted because you think, well, you know, I've sent 200 emails and I've got like maybe 5 to 10 replies and I could get more. And it's like, I know sales is all about testing, you know, what message worked 2 months ago might not work now. Thoughts, for example, or 'Just wanted to,' you know, these kind of phrases are all really, really, you know, triggering the spam filter in the prospect's brain. So it is about trial and error, but it's much better to really go very deep on— especially if you're selling a huge, you know, a big size deal, enterprise type deal, you really want to— it's more about deep nurture than, yeah, let's spam for the sake of it. Let's just send the same generic message. Yep. You've written a lot about buyers needing to feel in control. What are some subtle ways that sellers accidentally take that control away from the buyer? Yeah, so one thing I'll say here is the buyer needs to feel in control, but, and again, there's different— it's different for— I talk about B2B and B2C selling because I train founders more on, you know, they might be selling to one decision maker who's spending out of their own pocket, right? $5K, $10K deals. If we're talking about sales reps selling B2B deals, or even founders selling B2B deals, then you need to maintain control, right? You can control the controllables, but where you are going to slip up is if you push and force a yes decision, right? We want to be able to get the truth. The more we kind of push and convince, the less— then we've lost— basically, the buyer doesn't feel like they're in control. So we need to be in control, but in a way that challenges the buyer, the prospect, to think differently about what they need to do and challenge them to consider, you know, to, to, for the decision to be a yes, right? So I see it very much as, again, with B2B deals and where there's several decision makers in a cycle. Yeah, you want to be asking the right questions and getting the right people involved. You don't want to be forcing them into giving a decision, right? When it's— if we're pushy and apply pressure— I'm not saying that we don't need to challenge, because we do, but there's a difference between pushing and forcing a decision and challenging a business to make the right decision. Okay, and kind of how, how, how do you do that? How do you guide the decision without being kind of pushy. Yeah, so a good thing is asking good questions. So if we— are we asking the right questions when we're on the call? Uh, are we making sure that we're handling objections in a way that gets to the truth? So once— because an objection, when we get an objection, it can mean anything. It's too expensive, um, I'm going on holiday next week, or, you know, I can't— I'm, I'm doing something for the next month, can't implement this then, or These are not real objections. So getting to the real meaning, the truth, is gonna help us to challenge a decision. And so you've obviously read Challenge a Sale, and I'm guessing most people listening to this have as well. We wanna challenge them to make the right decision and to think about their business differently. And that comes from asking really great questions. It comes from preempting objections before they happen. And it comes from selling the problem rather than selling the solution. What's the cost of inaction, for example, of them staying the same where they are now? Absolutely. So just changing tack now, I'm gonna talk about— hopefully you're going to talk a bit about LinkedIn. You obviously have built a really credible brand on LinkedIn, really just super visible. What's been your biggest lesson about turning LinkedIn content into clients? Oh yes, biggest lesson. So the first is you do not need to build a personal brand to be successful on LinkedIn, right? And we say that again, you do not need to build a personal brand. Yes, you need to be visible if you're a rep or if you're a founder, you need visibility. If you are not posting, consider posting 3 times a week. Remember that you're wanting to attract the right people. You don't need to have a lot of followers. I grew my followers organically over 4 years. So yes, I have a big following. People are going, you got a big following. I don't need to have that big following to be successful at my business. So the thing is, we just need a few of the right buyers, prospects, to see us in the right way to close deals. And that comes down to good positioning. And when I look at a lot of reps' profiles, it's like SDR, AE, at— it doesn't say who they help and what the outcome is of, you know, when— of the people that they help, right? So, big problem. An optimized profile is a, is a really easy tweak to make. Massive. How is it positioned? If you're selling a premium deal, an enterprise-sized deal, is your profile positioned in the right way that's going to showcase that you and your brand are an authority? Because there's so much work that starts there. And again, it's not, it's not a massive thing to be— it's a small thing, but it's really important. So positioning— you don't need a lot of followers, you just need to be seen in the right way with the right messaging to get— you know, if you don't need hundreds and thousands of followers or hundreds and thousands of impressions to be able to get clients. Consistency matters way more than anything else. The more consistent you are, the more you show up— yeah, it— you know, you can post 5 times— 5 times a week is good. If you're not posting at all, I'd say post 2 or 3 times a week just so that you get into the into the flavor of it. The spotlight effect is real. You'll think that other people are thinking about you. Oh my God, if I post this, what will my boss think? What will my team think? You've got to get over that. It will suck at first, and it feels really weird, but people are not thinking about you. They're only perhaps thinking about you when they're engaging with your post, and that's it. You've got to really get that out of your head. Because so many people falter at that, "Oh, what are people gonna think of me?" It's like, people don't care. They only care about themselves. The other thing is, are you writing your content for buyers or supporters? Because there is a difference. If you write for supporters or your peers, and a lot of sales reps do this, and again, if they wanna build, you know, they have the freedom to not talk about their service so much, the brand that they're working for, If they want to build a side hustle and be a sales coach, you know, the thing that I did was I talked about selling, but I sold an ABM marketing solution. So I talked less about marketing in my post because I thought, well, sales is the thing that I'm known for. I feel comfortable writing posts about selling. Did it bring me clients when I was working in corporate B2B when I started my LinkedIn journey? Yes, it did. But the thing I'll say now is that if you are not planning on doing something like that, Who are you writing for? Are you writing for buyers or supporters? Because there is a difference. And when you write for your peers, they're not going to see you— buyers will not see you in the way that they need to see you. So are you talking about the problems that buyers have? Why their problems? You know, pain, agitate, solution— a PAS post, typical but very effective. Are you showing them? Are you showcasing your service? I'm not saying you have to talk about your service every single week, but You know, if we see a lot of— we're seeing a lot of billboard posts on LinkedIn right now, and, and kind of, you know, that anybody can write them. Anybody can write them. There's nothing personal about the actual person. So you think, so many people are doing this, who do I believe? Who, who's the person to work— that I want to work with? Showcasing— anybody can do those posts. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them. I've done a few of them myself, but think about, you know, the structure of why am I putting out these posts each week? What, what action do I want my buyers to take? How do I want them to see me? Doing vulnerable posts is not probably going to get you your buyers, right? Depends on who they are, and it depends on what you're selling. But 9 times out of 10, we saw the crying CEO, things like that. Yeah, engagement. And people think, wow, this is great. This person is— look at the 2,000 likes. So many people obsess over these quantity of likes and quantity of impressions. You know, the most viral post is not going to get you clients, right? It really isn't because it just goes out to— the algorithm pushes it out to many, many people. It's usually a very emotive post like the crying CEO. And the reason That worked from a, a like kind of impression ratio because it was— everybody could relate to it in a way, or they were like, oh, they had a reaction, it got a big reaction. Does it bring it? How does that make your business? How do people see your business when they see that? Are they going to buy? Probably not. No. So really get clear on, do I want to— you know, I posted a lot of educational content in the beginning. I don't do that now. Because that tends to attract peers and support. I want— people will— that builds my credibility. People see me in that way. But that kind of strategy now isn't the strategy that's going to close a lot of business, right? So when I see all these billboard posts, I might see the person's headline, you know, underneath the post that has their name, doesn't it? And it has a bit of their headline. I still don't know what some of them do. I think maybe they're a leadership coach, maybe they're an exec coach, or I have to sometimes go and look at the profile. So don't be afraid to bring in some of your personality because that's what showcases— I'm not saying talk about your personal life. If you're going to talk about your journey, people buy people. So yes, they want to hear about the pains that they have. You want to position yourself as, hey, here's the pain you're experiencing, here's the solution, here's where you want to get, and here's what's keeping you up at night. Those kind of posts work well. Because they get inside the head of your buyer. And you know, when I get on calls, so many people say to me now, you're inside my head, like, you totally get where I am. And that positions you as the authority and the expert that they need to see you as and will help you close better deals because they see you and the brand in that way. Um, another thing, don't be afraid to be— to share your opinion. Right? Like I said, I don't— you don't need to talk about your personal life. You really don't need to go that deep. It's what makes you different. Because a billboard post could be anybody's opinion, right? It's opinion that probably someone else has posted before. But what's your take on it? Why does that matter? People are buying you. If you're funny or sarcastic, um, if you're more serious, and people like to have a story. They want to see how that might relate to what it is that you're doing in your business. So, an example, when I share more personal posts, it might be that, you know, I started my side hustle age 43. I'm now 48, and I built my business, you know, and you never— the message here is you're never too late to succeed because I did it post-40. You know, if you're— if Gen Zs are listening to this, Gen Zs have an advantage because, you know, they don't tend— they've never worked in an office setting. They've worked remotely, hybrid. There's lessons in that as you're in your company now, or whoever you're working with. There's things that you're learning and building, and that's what builds trust. How does that tie back to the problem that you're— that the business that you're working in solves if you're a sales rep? So Share some of your journey. Share what you love about the company that you work in, if you love it, of course. And you obviously should be in the company and stay in a company that you love and not one that you hate. The company should give you the freedom to talk about those kind of topics, because ultimately, when that SDR gets on a call, or whoever, sales rep gets on a call with the buyer, they've probably seen the content, right? They may not have liked— so much of my business comes from people that lurk. So the people that engage with my posts are very often not my buyers, but they're there watching. And when I get on calls with them, they say, yeah, you're inside my head, I've seen some of your posts, I've been following you for a while. And suddenly they step forward or they show some kind of intent, right? They've either viewed my profile, they've followed or connected to me. Yeah, they may engage with a post, but typically they're there and they're not coming forward and saying, hey, I want to work with you all the time. Yes, inbounds are great, inbounds exist. We always want inbounds. However, there's subtle, what I call the intent type of inbounds. They're not obvious inbounds, but they come because you've been showing up consistently and you've been really identifying with where your audience are at and what help they need. And yeah, I had a lady come to me last week. She said, oh, I'm just about to start my business. And I'm a bit older and I saw your post about you being, you know, 43 and then 48 and it just really resonated with me because I'm really at that point now and I need, I need to make, get to make a go of this. So yeah, we became, she became a client because of, you know, and it was that one post, but she didn't, I initiated the conversation with her, not the other way around. It was like, oh, thanks for engaging with my post. So, you know, and then I talked about the comment and we had a bit of a chat. And then we had some, um, back and forth. Obviously, I then was the doctor diagnosing what problem she had, why it was a problem, what was the root— what's the root cause, where did she want to get to, what does success look like. And then I asked for the meeting. So by the time we got on a call, I had a very good overview of where she was, what the obstacle was, was keeping her there, and where she wanted to get to. And then said, look, you know, I know I can help you with this. Why don't we hop on a call and explore what it would look like if we work together? Very long answer, but you can see, yeah, in summary, you don't need a lot of followers. You just need a few to see you in the right way. So your positioning is everything. How your profile is, consider that because that's very easy to fix. And then are you writing for supporters or buyers? Because there is a difference. And are you sharing some of your personal opinion? Why do you think something's— why is AI important, like, or why is it not important? People, you know, the right people will be attracted to what you have to say. Yeah, absolutely. Such a good answer. And one of the things that popped into my head when you're talking about the posts that people do, just generally speaking, on LinkedIn, I think you know, when you say anyone could write them, I feel like quite often it's AI basically that's just writing because people are okay, need to churn out some posts. Here's a load of posts. There's a lot of AI slop. Exactly. Using AI to help you write posts is perfectly fine because we're not all gifted copywriters. But really, there's a really good way to help your writing. And not just go, I'll just put something into ChatGPT and see what it comes out with. It's gonna come out with, you know, there's so many AI phrases now that when we use them, we, when we see them, we know that they're AI. Write down, a good thing to do is, you know, you, you get to the end of the week, think about the conversations you had with prospects. What were the things that they were saying? I would just literally, I like Whisperflow as a tool. I voice type my comments with Whisperflow. There's another tool called Letterly., which allows you to voice. So you literally would, would you, you go into the app and you can write a voice note and it will put everything into text. Think about the last 5 conversations you had, all the things that happened in this, in this, say, previous— we're not— it's Monday, we're recording this. So think about the previous week. There's literally out of 5 conversations or 5 things that happened, you could turn them each into posts. And the most important thing is jotting something down before you write it. Just try and write it out yourself, and then you can get AI to help you to structure it in a different— and obviously I train, there's a lot of GPTs that I give my clients because it then helps them, you know, they might want to structure the post in a certain way. But I always say that your lived— now LinkedIn, the algorithm keeps changing, right? It's changing again in 2026. There's less impressions because there's more people posting. People are waking up to LinkedIn. It's still, you know, the best, the best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now. You know, in 2023, you could put out a carousel, maybe 3 or 4 carousels a week, and I would get something like 250,000 impressions, which of course didn't matter because I was in an earlier phase of my business and all those impressions didn't turn into clients, right? So the thing is, is that there are less impressions now compared to what everybody's experiencing this, you know, there's a 60% drop in impressions. So the thing is here is, you know, LinkedIn, the algorithm will— it's more and more geared to putting you in front of the right people, the right prospects. But you've got to make a start, and you've got to think, what out of all the things that happened last week at work, or, you know, my personal life, what things would my audience, my buyers, need to see that would help them? And the more you sound like a human the better. So I would say like voice type even into, uh, to ChatGPT, because you're saying it then as if you would tell a friend. So imagine you're going down the pub if you're in the UK. If you're not in the UK, you might go to a bar. But what would you be telling your friend if you had to sum up 5 things that happened each week, 5 different topics? You wouldn't be— you'd want to do that first before you then hit AI to help you with it. Yeah, definitely. Um, so I'm kind of hearing maybe that you need to take more of a kind of a niche approach, so go much more deep and less broad in terms of the subjects you're talking about, or— Oh, I think this is, this is a really good question because so many people go, do I need to have a specific niche? And, um, here's me as an example. I am not niche on my audience, I'm niche on the problem. So you can be either, and it really depends on what it is that your service is, or what service you're selling. If you're, you know, if you're running a business, what is that niche on the— let's talk about niche on the audience. So if you're working in BIM manufacturing, that's pretty niche, right? That is very niche, in fact. So you're appealing to a certain type of engineer that works in BIM manufacturing. Yeah, your niche on the audience, your messages is, is very niche. But there's people like me, and there's, there's— and again, in, in— let's talk about business first. You might sell us a financial services software, uh, so in SaaS there's lots of different industries, and you might have maybe, let's say you're selling to the finance director, the financial planning manager, um, you're selling to the CFO. So there's 3 different people, you can write content that addresses a problem for each of those 3 different personas. But yeah, you're, you're niche because you're, you're in the financial planning space. So you're niche on a topic, you're niche on a— you're not specifically niche on one type of person because a CFO's problems are different to a, a person who's head of FP&A, right? So you can create content that speaks to those 3 different people. But you're not specifically niche on one person. Like in BIM manufacturing, it's that really specific engineer who works with that. I, for example, am not niche on my audience, but I'm niche on the problem that is top of funnel, booking meetings, and actual sales skills and strategies. It's quite broad because I don't just focus on— so I focus on lead gen and actual sales closing negotiation, the other side of it. That's quite broad. I would be niche if I just focused on lead gen and nothing else in terms of what, what I focus on in terms of the problem. If now my audience is quite broad, I help people who are going from side hustle to corporate, who are considering starting their business, who are further along in their business, maybe 1 to 5 years, and they want to grow and scale, and perhaps they haven't prioritized selling, you know, if they're a founder and they've been working with several renewals, like upsells and things. So it's— I cater to a very broad audience. I don't just cater to people who want to build a side hustle and leave corporate. I could, but there's more people that I like to help. People who are closing larger size deals as well, people who are selling coaching. So they might have like a $5K or a $10K deal, maybe they've got 2 offers. I'm not niche on who I work with. I also do team training, so I work with corporates, and I might reach out to the head of marketing, sales, the CEO. So most of my content— my content primarily focuses on founders, consultants, coaches, people who are running their business, because that's where most of my business comes from when I look at all my revenue streams. So I used to focus solely on teams in the SaaS sector, SMBs, companies that were making between $5 and $100 million. That you can, if you're doing that and only that, you need to reflect that in your profile, right? Because it's more specific. So the answer to that question is you don't have to niche, but if you already are in a niche on the audience, great. You can niche on the problem as well, but you've got to know if you're selling coaching to founders and then you're doing B2B deals and team training, and this could be not just if you're in sales, it could be if you're coaching leadership or working in operations, your content needs to address usually one group of people. So consider that. Who is the person? What, what part of your service is bringing in the most money and is your kind of big whale, you need to address those decision makers more. I don't really post about teams and what their issues are with social selling, with LinkedIn, and that means I have to do slightly more colder outreach than normal. Yep. Um, just moving on to some quickfire questions, and actually this is, um, good timing. Uh, first, first question: Cold calls or cold emails? Oh, cold calls, definitely, because the fastest way to book a meeting, you can have a meeting within like under 5 minutes. Yeah. Right? Cold calls, absolutely. That is a common answer I'm finding. Most people, yeah, I think if you say cold emails, you're scared of cold calling, or maybe it's, yeah, but there's cold emails are important too. Yeah. Most overrated sales phrase? I hope you're well. Although I don't think anybody says that anymore now because it's just been banned, hasn't it? I just wanted to— I'm circling back. Pick your brain. Oh God, nobody says that. That's horrendous. What's one question every salesperson should ask more often? One question they should ask more often is if they're kind of Yeah, why not leave this for another 6 months? Like, what, what, what? Like, you could leave this for another 6 months, like, kind of push them away to pull them in. Very good. Um, best reaction you've ever had to a cold call? Oh, the guy was just like, yeah, hey, this is a cold call, this is great, shoot me your shot. Right, very American. Yeah, you're gonna let me shoot my shots. I quite like that. That was— I probably wouldn't say that now though. I don't cold call now so much, so yeah. Um, sales motivation, discipline or emotion? Oh, discipline, 100%, because you know, your emotions fluctuate, but you, you, your discipline creates the habit and the habit creates the goal. So the more disciplined you are with your prospecting, the less likely— if I, if I'm literally thinking, what am I going to do for the next 10 minutes? Let's say I get off this call now, I've got 9 minutes to my next meeting. What do I do? I go and find somebody to converse with where I can book a meeting. I'm going to prospect. I'm going to use that 9 minutes and think, ah, I'm going to find someone else that I can help. Okay, we're down to 8 minutes now. I'm feeling guilty. People need to talk to, um, what's one thing salespeople worry about too much? The outcome. Great answer. Attaching to the outcome, and it is a skill And I know because I've, you know, in the past life I've attached so much to the outcome, and it's so— you just think, oh, if I don't get this deal, it means I'm worthless. So better self-talk, better programming, better kind of sit writing down your power phrases. The more you attach to the outcome, you will just erode your self-confidence, your self-belief. You will only think that you're good when you're closing deals, and that's going to affect your ability to close deals because you're constantly, I need to close this deal. Let's— we all— everyone that's been in sales is in sales because they like the dopamine hit. When we do get a deal, we get a dopamine hit, we feel great, we feel validated. But if you're attaching to the outcome, you are seeking some form of validation. There's some kind of lack mentality. There's the scarcity mindset. That's what you need to fix, because you must always come from a place of abundance, a place of transmitting this: I don't need this deal because there'll be another one and another one and another one. And that's the most important thing for you. It will affect, you know, when you, when you come from that place of abundance, it will affect how you show up and how you talk to people, and ultimately your energy. Because it's the energy that people are buying, you know. A lot of it is the energy that you bring to the call. It's— they are buying you. They're buying that, yes, they're buying that we need to solve this problem now rather than in 6 months' time because it's going to cost us more. But ultimately it's the energy, and they feel that you understand and that you care. And if you're attaching to the outcome, you're not going to tap into that higher energy where the high performance is. And one thing I will say for sales reps listening is make sure that you can't always be on, right? A top performer is a top performer because they have off days. Like, I don't mean off days as in, um, they take time off is what I mean. That they're, they're maximizing their, you know, they're connecting with their friends, they're doing things like sport. It's what they do in the off time that really dictates how well they perform in the on time. Wow, there we go. That's a really interesting answer. And, um, thanks very much, um, for joining us today, Charlotte. Oh no, absolute pleasure. For everyone listening, go and follow Charlotte on LinkedIn if you haven't already. Um, and that's Charlotte Lloyd in sales. But you, if you put, yeah, you, I should pop up as the first person, maybe. I don't know. I would imagine so. I would imagine so. Um, and that's it for today's episode of, um, What I Wish I'd Known About Sales. Don't forget to share this with the rep on your team who really needs to hear it. Thanks for joining us today.