Selling in a Time of Corona – S1E8 – The Sales Leaders | Rachel Sakurai

Simon Sinek - intro:  Leadership is not a rank. Leadership is not a position. Leadership is a decision. Leadership is a choice. It has nothing to do with your position in your organization. If you decide to look after the person to the left of you and look after the person to the right of you, you have become a leader.

Elliot Epstein - intro: So, someone ate a bat apparently and the world turned upside down. Hi, I'm Elliot Epstein. And I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life coaching, consulting, training, and speaking about all facets of sales development, pitching, presentations, negotiation, the C-suite sales calls and all of the various components in the sales cycle in between. And now we find ourselves in a world that's very foreign. Welcome to Selling in a Time of Corona.

Elliot Epstein:             The first voice you heard was Simon Sinek. His content on human connection and leadership is always worth a listen. In this podcast, I’m delighted to introduce you to the second person in our episodes on Sales Leadership, the people who are responsible for leading their teams through COVID-19 and beyond. I first coached Rachel Sakurai when she was a budding relationship manager for Computershare many years ago. Her creativity, determination, smarts, and desire to just have a go has helped her forge brilliant career.

And she's now GM of Sales nationally for this great Australian success story that now dominates the market globally. Rachel has also been a great mentor to other women in business, has led international charity initiatives and has also served on the board of A-League side Brisbane Roar. As a junior soccer coach myself, the strategies of pitching and soccer are extremely alike. Recruit the best players you have, train them well, don't kick your own goals and you can't score unless you dare to take the shot. Rachel wins because she dares to go where others won’t when it comes to the pitch. And she always sees the value in the relationship from the client's perspective, not just her own. Here is my chat with Computershare’s Rachel Sakurai in Selling in a Time of Corona.

Hello, Rachel, it's great to have you on Selling in a Time off Corona. How are things in sunny Queensland?

Rachel Sakurai:          Thank you very much, Elliot. And it's great to be part of it. Queensland is still sunny. Unfortunately, we've had the sunniest weather despite being locked up in isolation.

Elliot Epstein:             Yes, not much fun. At least here in Victoria, we've got some average days. So being locked up is not so bad. So given you’re involved in a lot of existing major accounts and looking after business development for Computershare and the great client engagement work that you've done over the years, what are you seeing now within your team firstly, that is different in terms of behaviour compared to a couple of months ago, other than the fact that they physically can't go and meet people. What are you seeing in terms of sales behaviours, same, different or otherwise?

Rachel Sakurai:          Yes, it's a really, really interesting and very, very challenging time for the world of sales, but also just the society and communities in general, Elliot. I think we're seeing a little bit of a change in behaviour on a daily basis with all kinds of financial pressure that our clients and prospects are going through. So, you're seeing a different side of people as they fight for their own financial survival and, and the survival of businesses that they worked so hard to build. And I think now we're at that point where it's starting to become the new normal and everybody's rolling up their sleeves to support each other. And it's the first time in my sales career, I've actually seen a bit of unification between the buyer and the seller working together to solve problems. And I think the good thing through the whole Corona pandemic is the ability to bridge gaps and think about tomorrow and shape a future in a very transparent way, as opposed to a  buyer trying to hold his cards to his chest. I'm seeing a lot more open dialogue, which is really fantastic.

Elliot Epstein:             It is. And it's something that we've desired for a long time. Can you give me an example of where you see a more collaborative approach as opposed to supplier/client relationships, where you've actually sat at the table, open up your cards together and said, right, how do we solve this problem together?

Rachel Sakurai:          I think it's really, really important to first remember that every customer still has needs, they've always had needs and will always have needs. But with COVID, we've seen their emotions play a little bit more of a driving factor when setting their priorities and looking at the way they do business. And, and so most people in the business world, they’ve never experienced a pandemic before. So it's given people the opportunity to sit down and say, you know, I'm scared. I don't know what to do. How can I turn this problem and this challenge into an opportunity? And I think where you're seeing successful business development managers, and sales reps, really shine is where they've managed to show patience, where they’ve managed to show empathy and show some creativity. So, something that you Elliot, taught me a long, long ago in my career was the skills around, I think that the term they used to use back then was active listening.

And I think in these times, it's really, really important that active listening is at the forefront of all communication, because we're not sitting there in front of someone and building the rapport. We don't have the ability to really read body language and feel comfortable and connected in a face to face environment. You know, we really, really need to work so much harder at becoming more effective at keeping our audience attentive and understanding their needs. So that whole skill that you've talked about around attentive listening is really, really crucial. As once your buyer can start feeling a sense of trust and understanding that you genuinely sympathize for their situation and understand where they are, you're going to open up the door for a lot more transparency and cooperation.

Elliot Epstein:             That's true. And look, you can't fake caring. You can't do it generally, and at a time like this. I know you've been exposed in the past to some of the old sales methodologies and things that have been out there for a while about how you steer people down a certain path and use various techniques to put your value proposition forward. And I've been railing against that for two decades. And it's just so crucial now that you either care about the client or you don't. And if you don't, quite frankly, I'm at the stage now in my career of coaching business development, if you don't care now, get out and do something else. Because the clients are too afraid, too emotionally attached to this above, as you said, and they're too invested in what they want to get out of this to have some kind of   smarty pants, sales technique thrown at them. Those days were gone before, and it's even more critical now.

I know that you've been a great listener for a while, and I know that you genuinely care, and you foster that in your own teams as well. And I'd be interested to know,  now that you're on video conferencing and you're not catching up with the team face to face and flying around the universe like you normally do, what are you doing to keep the team engaged and focused on clients and business development?

Rachel Sakurai:          It's a really, really good question. And I don’t think I’ve quite mastered it yet, but it’s really, really challenging to virtually connect and to read the members of your team and members of the market community. So it's really important. I think the number one rule is, and it’s cliché and as silly as it sounds, Elliot, it's really important that when you get out of bed in the morning, you still get dressed for success. It's nothing like putting your sales uniform on and making sure that you're mentally moving into that space, just like a doctor gets up before an operation and puts his lab coat on. You don't want to be performing your operation and your golden robe or your pyjamas. So, the first thing is you’ve got to get out of bed and have that mindset ready for connectivity and engagement. And we've been doing a lot of things with technology, virtual meetings, a lot of webinars, and I'm all for the virtual meeting over audio any day of the week.

And we’ve done some active pitching and presentations through all kinds of technology capabilities recently, which is new to us and very exciting. But we're trying to have a Friday virtual drink session with the sales team and the client relations team to bring everyone together and share stories. turned it into a little bit of fun as well. And we've all become a little bit closer even though we’re not together. You can see that we've really bonded as a team. The other thing that I've suggested we all do and it's worked really well for me, because as you'll appreciate, most people with a sales background will be extroverts and we're not too good at that whole feeling of isolation or being by ourselves and even we get to give our own company as well.

Rachel Sakurai:          So it's really important, I think to have a virtual work buddy that you can hang out with during the day and during the week. So I've got myself, my own little virtual work buddy, who I call several times throughout the day and it just helps you maintain that communication and it helps you feel connected, but it also helps you stay polished and in tune with technology so that you can still socialize and feel like you're out there actively participating. So that's something that my team has adopted, and it's kept us sane. But it's also helped us pick up the phone and try more challenging, different styles of communication and engagement with the wider community. And it's been a great success. We had our first virtual directors' round table on Friday, last week. And despite a few teething problems, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

We had a wide demographic of attendees. We had 10 guests on the call that all have board positions, different backgrounds and different levels of capabilities when it came to competencies around using laptops and technologies. And a bit of a funny story out of that Elliot, you know, we spent the first five minutes of everyone going, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you see me, can you see me, how do I move my mouse to turn this on mute?” And once we got through all the tech problems, it was evident that a couple of people didn't quite get the hang of muting. And throughout the call, we had one gentleman, soliciting his wife and telling her that the dog was next to him eating a roll of toilet paper. And we had all kinds of interesting conversations that left pretty much everybody, a little bit more connected and it reminds everyone not to take themselves so seriously. So it's a lot of fun.

Elliot Epstein:             It's true. Yes, I'm hearing stories of nudity. I'm hearing stories of family disputes in the background, of the dog eating something it shouldn't, all sorts of fun stuff. But the beauty of what you just talked about is that we've got to get over any squeamishness about VC and what you're doing is you're using it to keep your own team on track and keep them engaged, and not just for clients as well.

I do want to ask you about clients though. So obviously I'm an advocate for continuing to pitch throughout these times, even though we can't meet people. And I know you've been involved in a couple. So apart from the collaborative approach that you talked about earlier, how are clients approaching you and how are they receiving pitches, especially when you're not an incumbent and it's a potentially new gig? How are they coping with this new pitch without face to face contact?

Rachel Sakurai:          Going back to your initial point about how you genuinely need to care for your customer, that's the first point. So just being able to have your sales rep pick up the phone and touch base from the place of care to start that dialogue and check in, “How are you going during this difficult time?” and genuinely caring about the answer is really the starting point. And we are saying that people, regardless of their role and regardless of their outcome, they’re all craving interaction and they’re all craving connectivity. So, the fact that we are able to demonstrate that it's business as usual, and that we're here to promote certainty and we're here to continue business as usual and have that stability has been really reassuring. And I think from where I sit, we've got a lot of respect from the market where they've realized like, “Hey they aren't stopping selling. And it demonstrates and our systems and our resources and our people have robust and equipped, but more so I think people have really felt the whole sense of “They care enough about me during this time. I must be really, really important”, which they are. I also think it's really, really challenged the way we look at clients because there's a big difference between networking and selling. And there's a big difference to a buyer and a contact. And it's really, really forced us, Elliot, to be more strategic about understanding the major difference in someone who was a buyer and someone who you're trying to sell to. So now, in my opinion, it's the perfect time for us just to strategically sit back and locate those buyers. What is a buyer? A buyer is someone who's actively looking for, or in a real need of a product, service offering or anything of that kind.

So, to be able to identify that need, we need to go back to that point that you've driven home to me year after year after year. And that's that active listening. What can we provide them to improve their business, to improve their quality of life or to solve a major problem they're currently faced with? And if you nail that, it doesn't matter whether you're delivering the message by phone, by email, by text message, by webinar, you've got a very active audience. And I know it sounds very simple, but the approach that we're taking is less to do with product it's less to do with service. It's more to do with who we are dealing with. And that actually requires a lot of focus where you're putting your focus on others and not yourself and not your business. So, it's really looking into the customers or the potential customers, current situation and not yours.

Elliot Epstein:             That's right. And what I like about that is the key point there. And I spoke about this in another podcast where it's time to be clinical about where you spend your time and who you're trying to help. It's almost like a triage situation. So health workers, who we all appreciate right now doing a unbelievable job and they learn to go and help those that need it the most. And, and I think there's a role to be played from sales leaders, especially in this region. They're used to being nice to everybody, trying to keep people happy, trying to keep client relationships smooth, and sometimes being on the wrong end of a negotiation to keep a client happy. I think it's time to be far more clinical as you've alluded to and say, “How can we help you? Are you a buyer or a contact?”

Elliot Epstein:             If you're a buyer, you know, we're here to help you. If you're a contact we'll help you, we'll keep you nice and warm, but we're not going to put all our resources in. And I think that's a really important message for anyone in sales. That is looking at their diary and saying, where am I going to maximize the result that I bring to the table?

That's really great. Rachel, I really appreciate your time in getting out of sunny Queensland, even though you're probably just staring out the window, looking at the sun, not doing anything. I really appreciate your time. I'm sure our listeners will. And thanks again for being part of Selling in a Time of Corona. And I'll catch up with you when I'm allowed to fly up there again.

Rachel Sakurai:          My absolute pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Elliot. And I look forward to celebrating some success with you soon.

Elliot Epstein:             Thanks, Rachel.

I'm sure you can understand why I've loved coaching Rachel in her career. She's a great talent and a great person. I've also had a work buddy for some time. She's a Groodle. That's golden retriever poodle. I put the headset on her to test every podcast on our walks together. And her opinions of my performance are always very encouraging. Usually requiring me to clean up, as soon as I start speaking.

Stay safe, stay positive. Remember your ears are safe. Rachel and I took Trump's advice and injected bleach during this entire podcast.

Take care of yourselves, until next time.