A Serious Conversation About Selling With My COO, Lauren Stinner
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This episode is an honest conversation about sales with Lauren Stinner. We talk about how Lauren started taking sales calls for BrandWell Designs and two big hurdles that she’s had to overcome with selling. We dive into how to sell with confidence, and also how to protect that confidence and move forward even after you receive a negative review.
Lauren Stinner is BrandWell’s COO and has taken on the task of sales calls since last year. Lauren chats about how she converted her first sales call she took, even with no formal training, and also how the additional training she received after that has helped her continue to sell with confidence. Lauren enjoys connecting with people on the sales calls and has even connected with a handful of fellow Swifties. Naturally, Taylor Swift does come up in conversation throughout this episode.
A Taylor Swift Era’s Tour Recap [2:53]
Lauren shares her experience going to Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour in May with Libby, the Senior Designer at BrandWell.
Stepping into the role of COO and what that has looked like [4:32]
It’s been a learning experience, but in the best way. Lauren’s day can range from designing in the morning, to taking sales calls in the afternoon, to sending proposals in the evening. While training with Victoria, leading up to her maternity leave, Lauren was never asked to take on sales. Victoria was set on continuing to do the sales calls, but shortly after her second baby arrived, her decision on that changed. Lauren was asked if she would be willing to take on a sales call, with no prior experience, but Victoria had complete confidence in her.
The first sales call [7:43]
In all honesty, Lauren was a nervous wreck for that first sales call, although she tried to not let it show. Not having any experience with sales calls prior to this, Lauren took a unique approach leading up to it. Lauren reviewed BrandWell’s website and pulled eye catching headlines that she could use to her advantage on the call. There was no clear outline for how the call should go, but she used the headlines to her advantage and walked the prospect through the entire process and ended up closing the sale.
Formal Training with Gwen [9:45]
The first thing they honed in on was finding Lauren’s motivator. Like most people, her’s was money. Money can serve as a motivator in different ways, but finding the driving force and using it to your advantage plays a pivotal role in sales. The second piece of wisdom Lauren shares from Gwen is to not let the other person sniff out a lack of confidence. Initially, Lauren’s perspective of sales came from a lack of experience with it and nervousness, but after working with Gwen, her perspective shifted to approaching sales as the experienced designer for BrandWell. She knows the processes like the back of her hand, and has delivered the exact experience that people expect when signing on, therefore she can speak to that with full confidence.
Tough hurdles to get over with sales [12:57]
Lauren struggled at first with not being able to make an emotional connection with people while talking to them over the phone. She soon shifted the sales calls from being over the phone to being video calls. Having the face to face conversation allowed her to be naturally inquisitive and give the prospective client a reason to want to work with BrandWell. Another hurdle Lauren had to get over was letting the prospective client lead the call instead of taking the lead herself. When you let the client talk most of the call, it leaves you less than memorable after you hang up. Lauren now takes charge and instead of assuming that the client has gone over BrandWell’s website, she walks them through it regardless. You want someone to hang up on the sales call kind of feeling like it's just too much work for them to take on themselves. What problem of theirs can we solve and what makes us so different.
BrandWell’s first negative review and how we handled it [16:43]
Both BrandWell Designs and The Branding Business School are hyper focused on creating a positive experience for their customers. We work really hard to make our clients feel heard, understood, and spoiled. After almost 5 years and 80+ five star reviews on Google, BrandWell got our first 2 star review. This client felt that our process of branding and web design focused too much on the deadlines. Which we do have strict deadlines structured throughout the project. It’s easy to allow this negative review to affect your confidence when it comes to selling but here’s what we did instead.
Both Victoria and Lauren sat down and went through the review, line by line, word for word. When doing this the question was asked, “is there validity here?”. After going through the review with each other, they had a meeting with the rest of the team to ensure that everyone was setting a clear expectation right from the start. Additionally, some changes were made in the verbiage regarding their deadlines to provide explanation as to why the deadlines are so important, but also to make it not seem like just deadlines, due dates, or homework. We also realized that there are some things that were not going to change just because we had a bad review, but we will make sure that we are extra clear when onboarding clients to make sure no one feels like that again. Lastly, we recognized that this will not be our last bad review. But we remain confident that people are far better off with our service than without it.
Tips for those who struggle to sell due to a bad review [26:30]
Learn from the feedback or the criticism. Make adjustments as needed. Hone in on your strengths and make promises based on what you do well and what you know you can deliver on. Emphasize that communication goes both ways and set those expectations from the get go.
Helping you build confidence as you sell [29:25]
Even Beyonce poops. As ridiculous as it sounds, having the mindset that we are all just people going about our lives is so helpful. Remembering that the person on the other side of the conversation is just as human as you are is a major mindset shift.
Ask why. Be naturally inquisitive. Instead of diving right into the services you offer, start by asking how they got into the business that they are in or why they enjoy doing it. This can lead to a very organic segway to why you want to invest in XYZ service. Then only move forward with selling if you truly feel that they would be better off with your service or product than without it.
Making it personal. One of the best things you can do is relate to someone. It’s such a small world and you can almost always find a way to connect to people.
Final wisdom from Lauren [35:54]
You do not need to have years of sales experience to be able to jump right in. People just want to be seen and heard and if you’re 100% confident that you can solve whatever problem they have then you’re the perfect candidate to be on a sales call.
Key Quotes
“One of the best things you can do is relate to someone. It’s such a small world and you can almost always find a way to connect to people.”
Lauren Stinner
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