You need to sell the change in a person's life, not your product

Anton Perkin is CEO and founder of FusionWorks, which has been providing outsourcing and out staffing services in more than 20 countries for over 13 years. Anton is a great lover of mountains (Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Kazbek, the five-thousands of the Himalayas, Olympus, he has seen half of the highest points of the world), he is also fond of ultramarathons (he ran from Chisinau to Iasi in 24 hours).

Anton, I am glad you accepted my invitation for an interview. The topic of negotiations and sales is very interesting to me, especially in IT. What is important to consider when selling IT services?

In IT sales, if we are talking about B2B, we need to speak the language of factual, measurable information. You need to realize that we are talking to people who want facts, not some wow stories.

Can you give me an example?

There's a good book, you've probably read it, by Ilyakhov, "Write-Scrush". It tells you, among other things, how to compose pitches correctly. And if you can substitute the name of any company under all this text, it is a very bad text. This is especially important in IT.

So, if I say that we are a dynamic company that has been on the market for many years providing skilled services, that is complete nonsense. I should say that we are a company that has been operating for 13 years with clients in 20 countries. We are certified to ISO standards. And this is how I tell a person the facts that can help them make a buying decision.

Will you share your sales success flacks?

We try not to sell services and services. We help other people buy what they need. For example, the classic question, "Sell me a pen." The first thing I ask is, "Do you need a pen?". If the person says no, okay, we're already structuring the communication differently. I may ask a lot of leading questions, but still I'm not trying to sell the person a pen. He may need it later. Right now we're just going to build some kind of relationship with him. So these classical methods probably still work in certain areas. Especially in Moldova for selling flats, for example, when I don't care who I sell to.

That is, in order to sell you need to understand the needs of the client, to find out if he needs it. And build a relationship with them.

Yes, it's important to like the other side. Not artificially, of course, but we have to be similar. When we talk to someone, we have to align our picture of the world, that we think alike. Again, if a person likes FC Barcelona, I won't say that I've been their fan since childhood.

A business conversation is still human-to-human sales, we are still talking to a person. Yes, a person may be at the mercy of their own corporate cultures and restrictions, but nevertheless we are building a relationship with a person.

So our manifesto is: we build a no-bullshit company. That is, we don't build relationships on untruths. We have to like each other, and our product has to suit the person we are selling to. If we have these two important components, then, in principle, there is no reason not to buy a product or service from us.

In general, it is right to sell changes in a person's life or some improvements in the future, their experience, not their product. As they say, "sell the sizzle, not the steak". In general, sell the sizzle, the feeling of the steak, not the steak itself.

When I was selling my car, I told that a person feels it when he or she gets into it. You get into the car, the seat moves up for you, you feel warm or cool, and so on. I was not talking about the technical characteristics of the car, but how a person's life will change when he buys it, because it excites us.

Good example. Let's go over what you can't do in sales

We don't use any forbidden techniques because they are usually very easy to count. NLP was once fashionable, I remember, NLP. For example, when we say hello, you should put your hand on top to signify your power over your opponent. Trump had that, by the way. Or in negotiations, to put a person on a lower chair to make him feel worse there. We do not use such methods.

If we are talking about controversial situations or objections, you can never make emotions prevail in a sale, in negotiations. Especially if it is an existing client. The most effective way is to take a pause. I have used this many times quite effectively. When I said that we would continue negotiations later, so as not to worsen our relationship.

But even if it so happens that a client has gone emotional - it is good practice to thank them for it. In such cases, we say that we understand that you are worried about our overall result. Even a dissatisfied client, he is just a client who is worried about the result, and I also want the result to be good. We're not talking about one-off sales where you sell and forget. If I have sold a service to a client, I want to work with him further.

It is also unacceptable to push your own terms that are not favorable to the client. Because in the end, he will try to end the relationship as quickly as possible. In our specifics, long-termism is important. 

I agree, it's about long-term relationships and it's important to maintain them for as long as possible. Since you have a lot of experience in IT services, I'm sure you have mechanisms for finding new clients. I remember talking to Gena (Gennady Ganebny, co-founder of FusionWorks), and he said that cold selling doesn't work in your case. 

You know who usually says the cold approach works? The people who sell the cold approach and the people who have had it work a couple of times. A large portion of people who have a company will tell you how it doesn't work. But there is a smaller portion who have it working systematically - I learn from them too.

I often get messages from strangers on LinkedIn offering their services. But, to be honest, I don't even read these messages.

Let's put it this way, from the point of view of the recipient of such messages, I agree with you. I also absolutely do not like any e-mails offering to buy a product or service. Especially when they write emotionally "I was so impressed with what you do at XXX company". In reality, they had absolutely no fun whatsoever with what you do, but they write that "we're so excited". That doesn't work for me, I don't want to do that. I'm more interested in building relationships rather than texting people cold.

I don't write to cold LinkedIn myself, but there's an exception with a conference Moldova Developers Conferencewhich will take place on 1-2 November. I personally write to managers and decision makers of Moldovan companies and tell them why I would like to co-operate with them. I have a certain approach to them. Some I know better, some I know worse, some I don't know at all, but I write. Because for me it is a project of the soul, and I want to address them directly. 

Okay, I see. What else could be useful?

I have a time slot every week to write posts on Linkedin. I write them myself, even if I make mistakes, but I don't generate them with AI. I think it's important to be authentic in what we do. I'm gradually building a network in this way. And when we get a client, someone will say it's luck. It is indeed luck, but it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't put in some effort. Luck dances with those on the dance floor. 

What are you doing to increase the likelihood of luck appearing?

That's how I do it - writing posts on Linkedin, participating in various events, talking to people, asking them questions to find out more about them. The most important thing is to build a network and not try to sell your services at the first interaction. I don't like to sell right away at all. When they start telling me about their products and selling them to me at the first meeting, I lose interest. 

Yep, so it's important to build your brand expertise.

Yeah. There's a simple example. Let's say, for example, if I want to order a ring from a jeweler. And suddenly I see in Instagram a jeweler who is well-promoted and constantly talks about his work, not just sitting somewhere in his room and working. Most likely, I will want to go to him. And he does not directly write to me, "Anton, buy a ring from me". 

Yes, I agree. I notice that even without knowing a person personally, watching them on Instagram gives me the feeling that I know them and the level of trust is high.

Here. And even if it ends up that he doesn't do anything himself, but he has people who do, you're still going to end up going to him. If something goes wrong, you're going to talk to him too. There's a nuance to this, by the way - people only want to talk to you. That's a plus, but it can be time-consuming.

That's a yes 🙂 However, with this approach, the sales cycle can be quite long. 

We have sales that are 10 years long. For example, in 2011, I was at Startup weekend as a mentor and met a guy there. He was 16 years old. It's been 10 years. He moved to Germany, became a service station for a company. And when they needed development, he wrote to me. Now we work with that company and another one from the same group. And they recommended us even further. Here, so the cycle can be like this. It's completely unpredictable. You can say some kind of average here, but it's going to be completely useless. There are sales where a person has approached you, they really need it, and you're working two weeks later. There is someone you talked to, he needed something, and then he no longer needs it. But two years passed, and he came back to you. 

Okay, and another question: do you need to sell yourself or is it better to go to professional sellers?

Depends on the companies. There are companies where the founders sell first, then hire a department. We've had several stages. We are still in the process of building a sales team. Sales comes in many forms. Let's say when you have a product with an average cheque, you just hire yourself a sales team where you have a precisely built script. And we make dozens, hundreds of sales a day there. When we are talking about a large cheque of millions of euros, they often do not fall under any standard script.

What experience do you have working with sales teams?

We've made several attempts. We assembled the sales team, disbanded it, then assembled it again. I don't think we have found our ideal model yet.

What was the difficulty? Why did you decide to say goodbye to the team?

There were all kinds of reasons. And the guys were good, I don't want to say that people are bad. Here, most likely, we need to recognize one fact - almost no one in Moldova knows how to sell outsourcing and out staffing services, no matter how many times I asked. As a rule, these people are abroad. We have people and third party companies that sell our services and it works. They work on a percentage of sales, meaning they don't have to pay salaries. And it works. In Moldova, unfortunately, I haven't found it yet. But I like to say, there is no person in Moldova who knows how to sell outsourcing, out staffing services, just to come and say, I am there and we have an agreement.

Here, man who reads these words, you don't exist. Come and prove me otherwise, and we'll become billionaires together! 

That's why you decided to launch a sales course 🙂 🙂 .

Well, look, the course we did on negotiation and sales was primarily about negotiation and secondarily about sales. It was not about IT, because that is too specific. So the emphasis there was on the theory, practice and psychology of negotiations. 

But yes, I had a few semi-hidden motives for doing it. Like my favorite startup anecdote - "Opened a startup public house, no investment, working alone". Here. I'm certainly not alone here at FusionWorks Academy, but the first thing I did was run my two courses. The two courses on leadership and management and negotiation and sales I did first internally. I had to roll out the whole script on myself from creating the course, running it, and completing it before inviting someone else onto the platform. The second thing is that I really want a culture of negotiation and sales to develop in our company. And in this way I am also trying to attract the right people to help me with sales. 

And, by the way, also because it is easier for me to negotiate with those who know how to do it well. Because it may turn out that we can co-operate very well, but because the other party does not know how to negotiate properly, we will not reach an agreement, and the result will suffer. 

Can you recommend some books on negotiation and sales?

Sure. The base on negotiation, it should be read first, "Negotiating Without Defeat. The Harvard Method." I also recommend Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence" and Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", "The Seven Principles". Nassim Taleb's books such as "The Black Swan", "Antifragility" I don't recommend to everyone as the style can seem a bit florid. .   

Anton, thank you for a very interesting talk and case studies. I wish you good luck in building an effective sales process!