Heroes in Business - Mark Boundy High Profit Consultant Boundy Consulting, author Radical Value

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

What one thing you can do to improve sales today... Mark Boundy High profit Consultant, founder of Boundy Consulting and author Radical Value  is interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and host of the Eliances Heroes Show. Broadcast on am and fm network channels, internet radio and online syndication. www.eliances.com www.boundyconsulting.com 

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. All right, so welcome back. And by the way, again, check out our past interviews when I had the founder of CNBC on. So make sure you go to Alliances, that's E-L-I-A-N C-E-S.com. Why? Because it is the only place where entrepreneurs align. All right. Our next guest, he can help you get more. More what? More sales, more money, right? He is the founder and CEO of Boundy Consulting, and we're going to talk about his book too here in a minute. With that, welcome to the show, Mark Boundy.

Thank you, David. Thank you, all Alliancers. I'm really happy to be here today. I'm excited to interview you because you've got a wealth of knowledge more than ever, especially too, when it comes to sales. So let's get into it in regards to what is the magic of this sales? And why is it that a lot of people, not all, but a lot of people, you know, are somewhat hesitant when it comes to using or selling something? There's a couple of reasons people are hesitant. One, they have this idea that sales is some sort of a skeevy, manipulative profession. And actually, I started out in product management, general management, marketing management, and my whole career was a cage match of me

kicking and screaming, resisting being a salesperson until I did it and succeeded wildly. And the other part is that people think there are tricks and tips and and a special language and closing and types of questions. And it is that's clouding the real issue. And that's why I wrote my book. that's clouding the real issue. And that's why I wrote my book. In fact, your book is Unleashing the Power Within Customer Centricity. And they can purchase it, what, on Amazon?

Is that right? Amazon, the big A. Look under Radical Value, Mark Boundy. Radical Value, Elevate Your Company and Career. So make sure you go to Amazon and look that up. Radical value, elevate your company and career. All right. Tell us some of the snippets of the book. Well, the world does not need another sales book, but what it does need is to help people understand that at the core of what makes sales work, it's understanding your customer, understanding what they're trying to accomplish, and turning whatever it is you're selling, your product, your service, into that, into what your customer wants to provide.

Because you can. And that is the core of sales. It's understanding your value because value is about what the customer's outcome is. A question from one of our listeners is, what's easier to sell, product or service? You know, I think they both have their challenges. Products are tangible. They're easy to describe. But the challenge is that we start describing features and benefits when a customer is buying outcomes. And so the challenge of a product is to not think of your product anymore, to try to put yourself in the customer's mind and see the customer's world. A service, because it's a little bit more intangible, it's a little bit easier to

do that, but it can be a little bit more difficult to make the connection between a service and a customer's outcome. How do you teach or educate people being an expert that you are in regards to the final part of when they want to go ahead and close the sale, right? So they've gone and they've gotten the training to be able to pitch, to be able to tell how wonderful it is and the things along with it. But it seems like at that final step, when we're trying to ask for the contract to be signed or the check, we choke. You know, that is a real interesting thing,

because I'm not a big believer in the ask for the sale or the close or all those different kinds of closes, like a lot of the more manipulative sales training methodologies and sales trainings use. The idea is the customer is buying and you're helping the customer buy. And so that asking for the sale is really asking the customer if they're done buying, if they're done making their decisions. And when you start doing it that way and thinking that, geez, man, there's Mr. Customer, there's nothing else you really need to be thinking of. You're done thinking, right? Are we ready to move forward? Then it becomes natural. When I go to big B2B companies that have bought million and billion dollar things,

and you ask them to walk through their buying decision, the point of signing a deal, the point of agreement, they won't mention that. It is so inconsequential to a customer that they don't even mention it when they're walking through all the important milestones of their buying process. And so we get afraid of something that a customer thinks is inconsequential, when really, it's a matter of it should always be building to that anyway. And that should just be kind of one relatively inconsequential step towards from you're trying to get them to figure out what outcomes they want to, okay, now we're moving ahead together and developing those outcomes. Let's help you get those. And that's what we do here, helping people to come to their outcomes

by interviewing incredible heroes like yourself, because you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the E-Alliances Hero Show. So make sure you go to E-Alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com because you may also have a life opportunity to see and meet Mark Boundy in person. Why? Because he is part of the E-Alliances community. In fact, Mark, you've been part of it for many years in that. Talk to us about maybe your experience having been involved. In fact, recently had presented at the Alliance's grand table along with many others. Talk to us about the experience within being part of the community. Well, that's just it. It's a community of people who really want to help each other, really want to support each other. It's not

a network of cross-referrals. It's a community of people who really want to help each other. That's the ethos that I want to help my clients take into how they sell. And so it's really a natural fit for me. Now, your book, again, Radical Value, Elevate Your Company and Career. Make sure you go to Amazon. You all know the address for Amazon. And, of course, we'll have this interview on alliances.com, so you can go there to get in touch with Mark. But, again, make sure that you go to Amazon. If you want to reach Mark direct, you can go to boundeconsulting.com, boundeconsulting.com. BoundyConsulting.com. Mark, what's one of the most requested services or specific thing that you find that people are needing and wanting your help on?

A lot of people really need help translating from the features and benefits they got in their product training. And you learn a lot about your product and service service and you learn about the features and benefits. But salespeople are awful the world over at converting features and benefits into the customer outcome. Customer outcome is the source of value. It's what moves 90 percent of the customer decision. And that is what salespeople do worst. decision. And that is what salespeople do worst. And so I really concentrate my work with my clients on understanding the customer's outcome and what outcomes my product, my service helps achieve. How did you come up with, I love this title though, it just stands in my mind and stuff,

radical value. Yeah. You know, when you think about it, this is just getting back to basics. There's nothing radical about understanding the customer outcome, but it's a radical departure. I was one of 275 consultants at the world's largest sales training company, oldest, largest B2B sales training company. We would get together and 275 of us over 10 years, each of which had reviewed over a thousand, one to five or 10,000 individual opportunities. So there's hundreds of thousands of opportunities spoken for. And everybody said, salespeople are the worst at understanding customer outcomes. And since leaving that company, I found out that it's not just that company's clients,

it's everybody. Sales people just are worst at the most important part of selling. So I just concentrate on helping people get really good at that. I don't need to have you buy my sales training. I want to deepen your sales training in that one specific area

because that's what's going to really move the needle. Another question we had submitted from one of our viewers is in regards to, and this I've also found very interesting. If someone is an extrovert and trying to do sales, will they be able to accomplish as much as someone who is a extrovert, introvert, extrovert? If they're an introvert, can they accomplish something as much who is a extrovert, introvert, extrovert? If they're an introvert, can they accomplish something as much as what an extrovert is? In a lot of ways, and depending on the kind of sales, an introvert can actually be better because that introvert is not trying to impress. They're trying to understand and listen and be

empathetic. So the key is not introvert, extrovert. It's empathetic. It's customer focus. And frequently that introversion allows that empathy and that customer focus to step to the front more. Another question we had is given everything that's going on right now in the world and more being done online and video calls and stuff like that are there some secrets maybe that you could share because it's not in person and now forever i'm sure things will be on video throughout the world what type of tips secrets can someone do to help mirror what could have been done in person to help educate and sell. Yeah. Now there's a lot of presentation and a lot of, you know, just the mechanics of talking virtually that are really important. But what we've found is that salespeople who used to be

those relationships, I'm going to make deals with my customers and I'm going to make sales based on relationship and whiskey and tickets and taking them out to golf and whatnot. That's gone. You no longer have that card to play. And so understanding your customer and being of value and being a consultative partner to your customer, only 2% of customers say their salesperson is a trusted advisor. Turn that 2% into 3%. Be one of the people that turns that 2% into 3%. Be the trusted advisor. That's what gets you there. And you can show your interest in the customer's business very easily through a virtual medium.

Excellent. Well, that's right. Be the trusted advisor. That's right. Well, Mark, you help your clients make more sales and be successful within business. That's a hero. Make sure you go to Amazon to get his book, Radical Value, Elevate Your Company and Career. And again, this has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show. Thanks, David.