Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Wesleyne Whittaker, Sales Strategist with Transformed Sales

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

“Dynamic professional Wesleyne Whittaker, with over 20 years of experience working with global corporations, combines scientific knowledge with behavioral-based strategies to empower sales teams to excel.”Wesleyne Whittaker is an accomplished sales strategist, leadership coach, and thought leader with over 15 years of experience in sales and sales leadership roles. With a passion for personal branding and breaking barriers to success, Wesleyne has delivered winning sales strategies for B2B organizations. Known for expertise in sales coaching techniques and building sales enablement cultures, Wesleyne empowers high-performing teams and resolves customer challenges through problem-centric training. With a focus on leadership development, equity, diversity, and inclusion in sales, and strategic marketing, Wesleyne offers valuable insights for achieving sustainable growth. As a sought-after speaker and consultant, Wesleyne excels in navigating complex sales processes and delivering exceptional value to clients.Learn more:https://www.transformedsales.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-wesleyne-whittaker-sales-strategist-with-transformed-sales

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the Authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Wesleyan Whitaker, who's the founder and sales strategist with transformed sales. Wesleyan, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me. And I'm looking forward to learning from you because I know that no matter what we do business personally, professionally, we're selling something.

You know, we're selling, hey, do we want to go to this place this weekend for fun? Hey, can you buy my widget? So in transforming sales, I want to learn what you have discovered in your career and how you serve your clients. But get started first with what's your story and your background. And how did you get into founding transformed sales? Awesome. So I am a recovering chemist. I started my career in the petrochemical industry, and I got to a point, and I was like, I want more human interaction. So I tell people when I got into sales, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I loved everything about it. And because of my love and my desire, I made a really fast assent from individual contributor to international salesperson. And as, sorry, international sales manager. And as an international sales manager, I fell flat on my face in the first six months. People were leaving. We weren't hitting our numbers. And I was like, what's going on? And so at that point, I realized the onus was on me to really develop my leadership skills.

And in doing so, in those first six months, people were leaving. We weren't hitting our numbers. And the trailing 12 months, we, every single person on my team hit their numbers every single month. And people were knocking on my door to join my organization. So, and I decided about five years ago that I wanted to, to help other companies really develop these systems and processes and culture so they could do the same. You know, it's like you were probably in a scramble mode looking at the past numbers going, this has to change. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? So what was it at that point in time that was the first thing, the low hanging fruit that you said, okay, I've got to change these things and make the pivot to, you know, make some good numbers? What was the first thing that you looked at to implement there? Really the very first thing that I implemented was I had to realize that, yes, I was a really, really good salesperson that I knew and understood my market and I did all

these amazing things. However, everyone wasn't just like me. I didn't have a team of many Westleans. And so I really had to take a look in the mirror and say, hey, if I want to create a team of people from diverse backgrounds and experiences and really appreciate them for who they are, I have. have to, one, develop myself as a leader and two, see each person as an individual. You know, that's really insightful and you hear that a lot in, and I think that it's easy to say, but the thought that's crossing in my mind when I hear that is, okay, you did that, so you check that box, then what do you do with that? So once you see the people on your team and it's like, okay, this person is motivated by

and this person is this kind of person, they respond best to, how do you keep all that, track all of that. And then what do you do with it to make sure that you're motivating each person the right way based on how they're wired? It really boils down to creating an individualized coaching plan for each and every person on the team. And so a lot of times people hear that and they're like, I don't have time for that. I have 20 people. How do you expect me to do that? And so again, the onus is on you as a business owner or a leader to realize that you cannot effectively manage more than six direct reports. If you have more than six direct reports, then it's time to have a management tree. So that's the first thing. And so

those people who you are managing and impacting and influencing, again, you're motivated by this. You have this learning style and it's our job as leaders to meet people where they are. I love to talk. I can talk all day, all the time for anyone. But I have people on my team that need to read information. So I have to realize that, yeah, I might like to talk, but they need to see written material in order for it to get into their brain. And so that's how I communicate with people the way that they need to be communicated with. And it's the same thing about motivation.

If you have a salesperson on your team, every salesperson isn't motivated by money. What are they motivated by and use that as a way to help them achieve their goals? You know, when you were saying, you know, you need to know everyone, your team and take the time to manage and the first thought of my mind was who's got the time for that. And then you said, that's what people, you know, come back on. And then I thought, well, if you don't do that, then who has the time to find the next great salesperson after that person leaves? Because if they're not being coached and managed and encouraged and motivated, then they potentially, like what you were experiencing in your early days, they move on. And now it's like, wow, this person was kind of good.

They knew the ropes. They knew how and their numbers were decent. Now I've got, you know, a hold of fill. And I've got to go out and find someone else and get them trained. and acclimated and hope to get up just to that same level they were, if not beyond that. And then that takes quite a long time. Yeah. And so another challenge that leaders have is they have all of this great knowledge in their head.

And so when you have all this great knowledge and information in your head, you're not really able to scale your organization or scale your team. So you really have to start pulling those processes, pulling those procedures, those things out of your head and documenting them. And so as a leader or even as an individual contributor, you should always have your next line of leader. Who is going to replace you? Like, you always need to be training your replacement.

And that person needs to be training their replacement, right? So we want to have an organization where we are transferring knowledge freely and how do we transfer that knowledge? I literally just had a session with a client today. And she was like, but I have all these things and I don't have time to delegate. get. I don't have time to teach and train. I'm like, well, the next time you do X, Y, Z, record your screen and walk me through exactly what you do. I click this button. I open this. I do this. I do that and build your library because the only way you can build an organization that is not a hundred

percent relying on you is getting these things out of your head and not having the person that has to be going, that somebody always has to go to you for advice to ask your opinion. in those things. You know, I think that's so huge. I struggled with that the same way. I was just talking to someone last week, and they were a CEO of a company, and they were just like at Witsen going, I am just so pulled in a thousand different directions. And I said, well, here's what you need to do.

You need to clone yourself by, and I described that same thing. And I explained the screen capture, and it almost is a hot for people to go, okay, wait a minute, even if it's in sales, like, hey, how do you prepare a really good proposal. Well, first we, and then you just turn on your screen capture with the microphone and go, okay, first we're going to open up our place in the internet. Then we're, you know, whatever your company processes, and we're going to click this. And then you're talking through your mindset and you're thinking and the way you're structuring this so that the next person that comes in, you're just going part of the onboarding is, okay, watch this for how we, whatever the case is.

Because it is inevitable that people will leave. Now, they hopefully won't leave, because you're not coaching and motivating them. Hopefully they leave because you coached motivated them so well that now they're ready for prime time and they're moving on. And while that hurts, at least that's a feather to your cap that you're, you know, kind of moving people along to a better place. And then you do the same thing again. Absolutely. It is the let's teach people how to fish. If we are always fishing for them, one of the challenges that people have when you're, whether you're a small business or large businesses, people don't feel empowered.

When you teach them more, when you give them more responsibility, when you show them that you trust them and believe in their ability to think, to do, to strategize, those are the people who will get a job offer for 20% more. And they'll be like, no, I like this culture. I've learned so much. I've grown so much. And they know that they still have more room to grow. Yeah, that's a huge, huge point. And, you know, I think when I think of sales training, I think one of the first things that I, from the. old days of being in sales in the banking industry is, you know, let's role play and here's some

sales scripts. You use the concept of sales playbooks. Talk a little bit about how you structure those so that they're a little bit more, you know, current and real time rather than let's sit down and read through a script that you memorize that sounds can. Yeah. So the crux of everything that we do within the organization is we focused on behaviors to drive change. So yes, at the end of the road. We may have something tactical like here's a script, but many times people don't want to role play or they're scared to do something. So what we do is we first break down. What are those preconceived notions? What are some of the challenges that you're having that are impacting you so that you don't even want to practice? Or what are some of those things that we need to work through.

So in the playbook, we actually walk through what the behavior change is, what the mindset needs to be, how the environment you need to be in, how you can practice. Like we literally give people those granular details. So it's not just this big, okay, so here's a script. You say this, this person says that. Then you close the business, right? We have to really understand the way adult learners learn. And adult learners learn by really having things broken down for them into micro learnings,

into microscopic pieces so that they can say, okay, I learned how to do this one thing. Now let me go try it. Okay, that works. Now let me do the next thing. And if we have building blocks like that, that is what really helps us have sales training. That's not just this one-time event, but it's an ongoing evergreen type of program. Yeah, I mean, I've said something similar for decades because I just despise sales scripts because they feel, even if you don't read it and sound canned, they just feel like you're following a process and you can't flow.

You should know your business so well and your target audience and their concerns. and their concerns and problems and struggle so well that you just have a conversation. And like you said, when you have these little micro little burst of learning, then with some of those your curveball, you don't freeze up and go, I don't know. You literally go, oh, well, that's a good point. Well, you know, like I said in the first part, we've got, and that comes with practice and training, but it also comes with a properly laid out sales management, which is what you are talking about doing because sales is an art form.

Absolutely. And with a challenge that many sales managers have is that they were the top salesperson, kind of like me. And somebody said, you will be really good at managing people. I want you to teach everyone to be just like you. And so what happens is you create two problems. You remove your top salesperson from the field. And then you have a mediocre manager that really doesn't enjoy what they're doing. So making sure, that when we are moving people into management, when we are moving them into those roles, we do the same thing that I mentioned before, which is we need to let them see what a day in the life is like. So if you're a business owner and you're currently managing the sales team and you have somebody you want to promote, you need to show them this is what it's like.

It's not all glamour and glit. Sometimes you're going to have to sit here and run pipeline reports. Sometimes you're going to have to have difficult conversations with people. Bring that person along that you are mentoring or protegeing to let them see what this is like. So they can say no, I rather see customers 100 days a year than sit in the office for 100 days a year, right? So really giving them the real life.

And then when they step into that role, they also need playbooks. They also need to understand how to do these things, how to get through difficult situations, or they're always going to be leaning on their leader or even worse, they'll just sit in the island by themselves and be like, I don't know what to do. And I'm scared to ask for help because then I'm going to look stupid. Yep. And another thing that I was thinking of too when you were describing that is when other salespeople on the team see that there's other people right on their same level, having the same struggles, learning at the same pace, then that is motivating because then they don't look like a dummy asking these questions or struggling with that. They're like, ooh, yeah, we're all kind of doing that. Let's work on it together. Let's encourage each other. Absolutely. And when you boil it down and you're doing internal training for your organization, it's really important to put people that are on the same skill level together for the reason that you just mentioned. If you have a top, really top performer that always gets things very quickly with somebody who's struggling, what's going to happen in that training cohort or that training class, that really top performers are always going to answer the questions. They're always going to know what to do. And the bottom performer never has a chance to practice. They never have a chance to raise their hand because of, they feel less than. And so you're doing a disservice because the top person, they're always

answering all the questions and you can't challenge them because you're teaching to the middle of the pack, just like we do in elementary school, right? Teach to the middle of the pack. So really break people up based on their skill levels and their strengths. You know, you mentioned top performer and it makes me think of something that I've seen in the industry. So what do you do about this? Here's this top performer and we want all the other people to do just, as good as they are. So let's bring them in, put them up on a, you know, hot seat pedestal, a roundtable and go, tell us why you're so successful.

And they go, I don't know. I just do what I do. And sometimes these top performers, they just go and flow and they're doing really, really good. But even they can't put their finger on it. So what do you do? How do you extract out why top performers are top performers so that they know what to do better more consistently, but then also so that it is a good example for other people? I get very, very granular.

And it's good that you actually ask this question because later today I'm interviewing some top for words within an organization because what I like to do is reverse engineer. Exactly what you said is I like to reverse engineer so I can flow that out to the organization. But I ask very granular questions. So a question that I may ask is, okay, so once you have the door opened and you sit down in front of the prospect, what's the first question that you ask? Okay. Why do you ask that question? Yeah. What were we thinking when you asked that? Were you trying to accomplish? Yeah. What really extracted from them? Because you're right. They don't know. It's just the flow. And so I try to get as granular as I possibly can with understanding

why, not what they do, but why they do what they do. And then when I understand the why, then I'm able to put it together and say, okay, so this is how I can deliver this to everyone else on the team. And you might even find things that they're doing before they even show up to that appointment, things like, oh, well, the day before I send the prospect this by email or I leave my voicemail, or I, before I pull in to their office, I'm in the parking lot and I'm doing this in the car, listening to my affirmations or, you know, a really powerful music track. So many times it is not just the words I say and the questions I ask, that's important. But it's a lot of times is the prep. It's like Robert Chaldeenie wrote in the book, Influence. He wrote that 30 years ago, but he wrote a book recently, like the prequel to that

called Presuasion. And it's what you do before, you know, they even interact with you that persuades and influences people. So I think that's a great point. You break it down step by step. Yes, the granularity is where the industry falls flat. They give big ideas or they get way too tactical into the weeds and they want everybody to do the same thing.

and really when you understand the why behind what people are doing, then you couple that with the what they were doing, you say, hey, so here are some best practices. Now, I want you to listen. I want you to take this and I want you to tell me how you can apply this to your territory, to your customers, to what you enjoy doing and allowing people to take those ideas, but really personalize them and break them down for themselves. You know, on your website, you've got a tab for solutions.

and I'm looking at the list of the solutions. And one of them, if I were to take a red pen and circle it, just stands out like this doesn't seem to fit. So I want to get your comment on that. Don't worry, it's not a trick question. But I see that you have solutions for the sales manager. Yep, makes sense. For the sales team.

Yep, makes sense. For the salesmanager, for the salesperson. Yep, make sense. For the CEO? Yes. So tell us about that. What in the world are you helping the CEO understand regarding sales? He should be the one or she should be the one that is up there at the top, just watching the sales numbers ring in, the bell ring.

What are you training them on? Yeah. So what happens most of the times CEOs, and it really is dependent on the size organization, right? A $5 million CEO has different challenges than a $200 million CEO. But the thing that is very much the same is that they have an idea of what sales should look like and what sales should be. and they tell their leadership, go do this, go implement this. And then when they're getting the feedback loop, they're like, why are we not hitting our numbers? Why are you guys not doing this?

Why is this low? Why is that low? So what I do is I help them come back down to reality. And I help them understand that, yes, you have all of these big ideas. Yes, you have all of these strategies and things that you want to do. But if you don't teach people, again, how to fish. If you don't teach them, if you don't give them what they need to be successful, you're never going to achieve your goals. So when I have for the CEO, my goal is for them to understand that training and development is an investment.

And it is going to help you achieve the goals that you want to achieve faster, quicker and better. It's not a cost center. It's not an expense. It's an investment. Yeah. So it's more of a mindset shift so that they then are approaching and reacting to sales the correct way. You know, because again, it tends to be like, oh, we're coming into hard times. Let's cut marketing and cut sales efforts.

No, that's the time to double down on that and gain market share. So, yeah, it's that mindset, chef. Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you, we could probably, I can tell that you're just now catching your second wind. We could talk for another three days, which I love talking about sales and business. But we should probably wrap up with, you know, what is the best way someone can learn more about your approach and then reach out and connect. with you, Wesleyan? Yes, the best way I would say is on LinkedIn. I'm just Wesleyan on LinkedIn, and I have a link for lots of resources as well as a way to grab an unstuck session with me,

which is a 20-minute laser focus session where we dig through any sales or leadership challenges that you're having. Excellent. And we'll make sure to have the link to your website in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure chatting with you, too. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.influential entrepreneursradio.com.