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Speaker: Hello everyone. Welcome back to yet another episode of The Commercial Leader podcast. My name is Bram Lagrou. Let's talk sales methods. There's a lot of frameworks, a lot of sales processes and systems that we all have come across in our days. And back in the days when I grew up as a sales rep and a sales manager, I would hear about people like Tom Hopkins and Brian Tracy, and I've actually even had the privilege of working with Brian Tracy himself for about six and a half years.
We're now obviously into 2026, and the question now is: what are some of those methods right now that are current, that are widespread, and that give sales reps and BDMs, practical steps to follow in order to win more business and make more money?
But here's a [00:01:00] caveat.
When I assess all of these sales frameworks that I've been exposed to, they have one Achilles heel in common, and that is that they always come in from the premise that there is one way in order to do things well. There is one structure, there is one, process with a multitude of steps to follow in order to go from no sale to a successful sale, and that becomes really difficult.
In the B2C space, as in business to consumer space, I've worked with a multitude of businesses, and what I've seen, for example, some of them are doing extremely well for the industry. Example, solar sales. Imagine now that, couples and families are requiring solar panels and batteries to power their home and basically do it off the sun.
And [00:02:00] what I've seen these organizations do really well is they designed or engineered a sales process to turn a lead that they would've gotten off social media and paid for and to turn them very quickly into a sale and dollars in the bank. And typically, some of the best that I've seen were hovering around the 45% closing rate.
So for every 10 leads that were coming off Facebook or Meta overall, four or five of them would translate into a client, which means all of them were shopping for the product, all of them were in the market to buy, and yet only four to five out of 10 would purchase. Now, to me, that says that somewhere along the communication things were lost in translation.
The process were not always suitable for the buyer, which is why more than [00:03:00] half would not buy with that sales process. To me, that is lost opportunity. That is wastage built into the sales method. And whether it is their sales process or any other, they always come from the premise that there is one way on how to do things.
Now, again, back to this example, the whole reasoning, the logic behind the sales process was we're paying for these leads It's a guaranteed spend, so we gotta make sure that we translate it quickly into dollars in the bank, and there's only a certain window to maximize those sales, so we gotta find basically incentives to make people buy on the spot or very quickly thereafter.
And so whether it's home improvements overall, again in the B2C space, they all come in from this very, "Let's do it quick because otherwise [00:04:00] we will lose the sale." This is the philosophy, the assumption that always is coming back in the background.
Now, do I necessarily say that that's a bad thing? No. What I do say is that there is a preconceived idea that is baked into the sales process that allows them to get certain sales, but it's also predictable which ones they will lose altogether predictably Because behavioral science is very clear on who will be more motivated to buy now and who will be more motivated to buy later. There's the same reasons that makes one person buy are not the same reasons that makes somebody else's buy.
And if we now step back again, and not necessarily talk about solar sales or home improvement sales, but just basically any sales method, including when we're selling B2B, where the sales cycles tend to be more lengthy, especially if the [00:05:00] dollar amounts are higher, like ERP systems and CRM systems and change management and enterprise architecture and all these sorts of big-ticket items.
Of course, things will be different, but the same premise for those sales methods are also underpinned by the same notion. So whether you think of SPIN selling or value-based selling or consultative selling or straight-line selling or the Challenger sale, all of these frameworks that sooner or later, especially if you're in sales, and you're a commercial leader and you're working with the sales teams, you will have heard of these frameworks.
They all, once again, come in with these are the steps. This is what you do with every single buyer and stakeholder. But here's the challenge. We all know, especially the more dollars are involved and the more complex the sale is in nature, the [00:06:00] more stakeholders we will have, and they all buy for different reasons.
So while we might think that consultative selling is the way, or we're challenging people on how to do it, or we wanna spin it around, different buyers will need different reasons and sometimes different steps.
Example, back to the solar, industry that we spoke about earlier I can guarantee to create a sales system that caters for two types of buyers.
And by having the two in place, not just the one system, I can cater for the quick sales now and the slower sales later. Why? Because I know which buyers will prefer to buy now with the right reasons to motivate them to buy now, which is, discounts, government funding, and all th- sorts of things that help me to now kind of, use FOMO to make me buy now.
But then there's also other people that are more thinking about the [00:07:00] quality. They're afraid of making mistakes. They don't wanna be pressured or talked into things right now, and they wanna step back and think about it more and do their due diligence more, and potentially have a few more quotes.
This requires a very different approach, which still can convert them. But most organizations, they don't think like this.
They just have decided to opt in with one framework, and here's now where an other preconceived idea also sneaks in. Whoever was the person that decided on the framework allowed their own preferences to determine how to actually structure the sales process.
if I'm someone who likes to have very robust, candid conversations because I'm a C-suite executive, a commercial leader who is paid to get outcomes that are hard of nature, more revenue, more profit, more average spend per customer, and things like this, [00:08:00] well, if I'm thinking like a D on the disc I'm very much gonna be preferring frameworks that support my thinking.
In Australia, for example, and many other Western countries like us, there's only about 18% of the total population of people that are D people, which means that sales method is only gonna work with about 18% of the total buyers.
Now, interesting point that I'll make here now, because if you go to the B2B space now, the business-to-business selling for ERP systems, CRM systems, change management projects, and the likes, we also know that most organizations score an appalling, in my view, because I know that we can do better, an appalling 18, 19, 20, 21, 22% worth of conversions.
So imagine we still pay [00:09:00] for, to generate the leads, not just from social media now, but for all the networking we do, the branding we do, and all these other marketing and business development activities that we undergo. I mean, sending somebody in a car with a laptop and a phone and spending for fuel and travel and accommodation and meals and so on and so forth, and build those relationships over months if not years before they actually convert into dollars in the bank, this is hard costs that you don't wanna waste.
So then to see only about 20%, maybe 25% convert, to me is so much opportunity left untapped. 75% basically wasted. What happened to them? Does it mean that those people weren't in a market to buy a similar product or service? Well, chances are they were, but they weren't met in a way that made them feel comfortable to go ahead with [00:10:00] your value proposition.
Or the way it was explained didn't trigger the right "Yes, I want this" in their head. That's it. Either they didn't feel the right way, or they didn't understand the value proposition because it wasn't conveyed in the right way. And any of these sales systems that I've come across so far, they all have these same preconceived ideas baked in.
One is: There's only one way to do things well to maximize conversion, and so let's do the same thing with everyone. That's one. And then the second one is whoever decided on the framework to use allows their own preconceived ideas and the way that they like to buy sneaking into the selection of the method.
So D's choose the challenger sale method, for example, or highly analytical people will wanna go into something which is more solution-based selling and consultative selling, And so that's why the big four firms will develop [00:11:00] things like the pursuit framework, which is more consultative and advisory-led sales methods.
I've worked with the big four in that space, so I'm very intimately, familiar with how they sell, but also where they might leave money on the table. And so I personally don't content myself with 20 to 25% in the B2B space in terms of conversions. I also don't think that 45% is as good as it's gonna get in retail sales or B2C selling.
We have seen clients of ours do 65%, 70%, 75% and even 95%, even with closed tenders. Why? Because behavioral science that is catering to the style of the buyers, not just the buyer Meaning multiple stakeholders, where we cater the sales process to each one is proven to be [00:12:00] successful across the board. There's higher conversions, there's more opt-in, there's more engagement, and there's less reasons why not to go ahead with this value proposition.
And we also aren't selling on discounting. So we can be sometimes the highest priced and still win the work because the process and the way things were conveyed, how things were articulated, how value was communicated, was done with the buyer in mind, not just the company that it came from.
I think sometimes we're a little bit too focused on what we do, the business, the values, you know, how long we've been in the market, how many years of experience we have, and we keep, let's say, blowing our own trumpet.
Let's stop doing this, please, for now. Let's think what is it that these people need that we're trying to help here, and let's help them win. Let's convey our [00:13:00] value in a way that makes sense to them and inspires them to go ahead with it. And make sure that that process is engaging, because if we know that somebody's gonna be a slower paced decision makers, don't try to pressure them into quick decisions on the fly, because they're gonna naturally resist that process and push back.
They will then suddenly smile in your face and nod and give you all the good buying signals that you're on the right track, but you and I know that that's the poker face of what we call a high S buyer. And in a country like Australia, that's 36% of people. That's a large chunk of the general population.
And so if we're not engaging them in a way that makes them feel comfortable, we are naturally going to leave money on the table Anyway, this is me just going to share what I see that organizations can do better in terms of sales. [00:14:00] Sales done not really with the focus on the company, the products, and the service, but where we really start with the clients and then work our way back on what the process will look like and how fast or slow we go, and how we communicate the value in a way that suits the stakeholders.
We also know at Lagrou Partners that there's never one buyer only. There's influencers to the sale. There's, people that might hold it up and potentially sabotage it in the background. And the idea is to have all of these people, their needs and wants met before we ask for the sale. Because that way, especially in high-ticket B2B, sales, that's how we actually going to move the needle quicker.
this is Bram Lagrou again at the Commercial Leader podcast. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the topic, and any experiences that you're happy to share, let us know. Also, if you'd like to [00:15:00] explore how our difference in terms of sales methods could act- actually also benefit your business, please do reach out.
We're always happy to have a chat. For now, I say bye and look forward to seeing you again next time. Thank you
