141: Having a Rejection Plan: Everything In Sales Happens For A Reason with Investment Monitor's Charlotte Lloyd

0:00 Charlotte Lloyd: Your podcast introduced me to not only great sales techniques, but also gave me insights into, you know, what it consists of to be a top salesperson. It's not how do these people get to the top? Failure is a big part of success. And, you know, through listening to your podcast, I've connected to so many different sales leaders through the sales community. You know, up to say a year ago, I wasn't really doing anything like this, not connecting with, with other sales leaders, And, you know, you led me to several of the great salespeople who I would never have known about had I not started listening to your podcast.

0:39 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Vidyard, Revenue Grid, and Gong. To learn more about them and all of our sponsors who actively support the Sales Success Community, click over to top1.fm/sponsors to learn more.

0:55 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve.

1:05 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Charlotte Lloyd. Charlotte is in the top 1% of revenue producers globally for Investment Monitor, which is part of GlobalData, as a global director of partnerships. Welcome to the show, Charlotte.

1:25 Charlotte Lloyd: Thanks for having me, Scott. I'm so thrilled to be here. 2 years ago, I never imagined that I'd be here on this podcast.

1:34 Scott Ingram: Well, I think we already opened with some comments that you made just in our chat leading up to this. And again, my favorite thing is being able to feature folks who have taken on the lessons from all of these interviews, applied them, and gotten to the top. So let's kick things off like we always do. I know you know how this works with some immediate value and talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales?

2:02 Charlotte Lloyd: Fantastic. So the first, adaptability and agility. I spent 13 years in the same company using some of the same sales tactics, not changing the way I did things, not looking at the way I did things. Know that you have to adapt. Sales is a constantly changing game, and you need to be able to tap into new things that you can try. Don't be scared to try anything new. Another thing that is really important, especially in the space that I work, because a lot of my prospects and clients are governments, is persistence and patience. So, and I would put consistency with that as well. You need to know that it can take a long time to get to where you need to be. It can take a long time to get a bigger sale if you're selling enterprise deals. We all know that it doesn't happen overnight. Patience I deal with a lot of clients who have not just procurement policies, but also really tough bureaucracy, governments. My clients are often spending taxpayers' money. So, you know, when you're pushing through a deal, know that it could take a lot of time and don't give up. The third, I would say, is energy and mindset. So sales is a role where you're constantly being rejected. You need to be able to get comfortable with the no. You need to have the right mindset. So work on yourself. Don't just work on your sales, but work on yourself outside of sales. And what I mean by that is making sure that you're doing things, that you're with the right people, that you're spending your time wisely and proactively to make sure that you're in the right positive frame of mind, because that's what you need to be to be a top salesperson.

3:53 Scott Ingram: That is so well said, all of that. And I think we'll be able to really peel that onion back a little bit and get into a lot of the specifics around each of those different areas. But before we get there, I would love to kind of contextualize this a little bit. What exactly is your role? What are you selling? Who are you selling to? What is that?

4:12 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, no, absolutely. So I am a sales director. I'm global head of partnerships. I've been in sales for almost 20 years, and I am helping locations to tell their story digitally better. So some of my locations are Montreal, Houston, Madrid, pretty much any city or region. Could be small, could be medium, could be a mega city. And I am getting them acquainted with using marketing tactics to be able to meet with companies and have conversations with companies like a Tesla, a Coke, or a Pepsi that are looking to potentially create jobs put their next Tesla factory in, let's say, Austin, and help to grow their communities. So what I'm doing is helping cities, but helping them to have an impact, a positive impact in people's lives.

5:08 Scott Ingram: That is such a unique thing to be selling. How did you get into that?

5:12 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, great question. So I actually have been in this economic development space for 13 years prior to this role. So 15 years in total. And it was actually quite random because I I had been selling traditional advertising in the maritime industry. I wanted to work with a very well-known brand, so I got a role at Financial Times back in 2007, and my role was selling to locations. So, but helping them improve their branding, improve their visibility amongst companies that could select their location to put their next big project, their next big Tesla, then, or their next DHL facility. So I went to a lot of events. I did a lot of face-to-face selling. I actually started out selling originally when I finished university, or as you Americans call it, college. And I was in cold call selling, so telesales. And I got into Financial Times because, as I said, I wanted to work for a well-known brand, an established brand, but also get out there and, you know, sell to different locations, have the opportunity to travel. I managed to go to 50 or so countries to trade shows in events, face-to-face meetings. And yeah, it was an exciting 13 years, got to pitch politicians, ministers, and everything that, you know, you'd want from a sort of B2B sales role.

6:43 Scott Ingram: That's amazing. Well, you have done really well in a relatively short period of time in this current role. Can you just talk about that and quantify your results for us?

6:53 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, so I started back in July 2020. So the pandemic had obviously just hit. And selling a marketing technology solution. So something that, although I had the same clients, pretty much the same clients, I stepped into a global role with Investment Monitor. So we put together a whole new website, whole new brand, whole new product. So selling to a lot of, you know, different clients as well. So some of the same that we brought across from our previous role, group of 10 of us moved across from Financial Times. And I completely had to change my entire sales technique. So, you know, moving from traditional sales to digital sales, looking at my entire sales process, what I needed to do at every single step of the process, and devising a sort of challenger-style pitch as well to get prospects to think differently about their business. So a lot of the locations that I sell to, it's… they're very traditional. They like face-to-face meetings. And with the pandemic, we couldn't do this. So they weren't able to get out to trade shows. Everything had been canceled. And part of the solution that I'm actually selling to them is using technology to be able to reach, you know, some of their prospects, their clients, when, you know, face-to-face wasn't available. We couldn't do face-to-face meetings. So it was preparing them for the future and really understanding, you know, some of the problems that they were facing. And that helped me to sort of strategize, devise a challenger pitch, and approach them from that problem-solving perspective rather than, you know, for 13 years I spent time, you know, approaching them and selling to them from a needs-based sort of perspective. So I think changing my whole approach to sales is what really helped me, you know, to push myself forward. The way that I approach my day is completely different to how I used to work. So I time block. A lot of great salespeople have been on here doing the same, setting aside a certain number of hours to be able to prospect, to not get distracted, switching off all notifications on my phone, cold calling. So doing a little bit of everything within the sales process. I think the danger that some salespeople sort of get into and that stops them from being successful and getting to number one is they tend to focus on doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So I started off in cold calling. It's something that I absolutely love. I'll time block an hour or 2 hours each day, depending on, you know, if I'm calling Europe in the morning and then if I'm doing the US, I would block in the afternoon. So being very, very proactive and also, you know, making sure that, you know, you use your time wisely. The second thing that I do and that I started doing, believe it or not, I didn't do this in my previous role, was tracking my my results. So at the end of each day, tracking how many emails I send, how many cold calls, how many LinkedIn connections or LinkedIn voice notes and video too. So tracking this at the end of each day, each week, each quarter, and being able to build up that picture, sort of analyzing your own performance. So your company might have a system like Outreach or SalesLoft, which tracks your performance. But you are responsible for owning your own success. So I would spend a bit of time at the end of each day and then at the end of each week and each month, making sure that I knew exactly how many calls I needed to make to get a discovery call and then to book a demo and then to book the 3rd stage of the call, which is presenting the proposal. So really looking at how those different techniques work and Again, not being afraid to use new techniques. So LinkedIn voice notes, something that I started around 18 months ago. I have one particular sale that I got which started with a LinkedIn voice note. This is something that I would never have even considered back, you know, pre-pandemic before I started this new role. Using other techniques like video, show your client, show your prospects that you're prepared to do something different to stand out. And the last thing that's contributed to my success is simplifying the process of selling a B2B SaaS-type product. So looking again at, you know, not just the new types of outreach, but how can you humanize your outreach? How can you be more personal? Often when I'm talking to some of my clients and prospects, it's making the corporate stuff, making the B2B side more fun. So, you want to be injecting things like humor into your sales and really just making it, you know, a really exciting experience for them when they're going through the buying process.

12:05 Scott Ingram: Well, please tell me that you're using Vidyard to send some of those video messages.

12:09 Charlotte Lloyd: Absolutely. I learned about Vidyard from your podcast. So, I've been using Vidyard now for around 18 months and I'm loving it.

12:20 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. Well, you just made my job easier. If you listen to the show, you probably know that I go back through and I drop in the sponsor mentions, but you just made that really easy. So to go check out Vidyard, just go to top1.fm/vidyard. So Charlotte, one of the things you talked about that I think is so fascinating is as you came into this role at the start of a pandemic, you really had to completely transform yourself and your approach after having done it one way for a really long time. And at the same time, you were basically selling to cities who were needed to do the same thing.

12:52 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, absolutely. So my core prospects and client base are business developers, they're marketers, and, you know, they are trying to improve their sales process. They're trying to also improve their marketing. And this is something that really fascinates me, and it's something that I'm doing with my own personal branding on LinkedIn. I'm sharing my experience as a salesperson, hoping that I can give other salespeople insights into What works, what doesn't work, and sharing the experience of my journey as well. So yeah, I mean, I'm very, very passionate about my clients being able to sell their locations better and giving them those tactics so that they can, you know, go on to win a Coke or a Pepsi or some of these other, you know, huge companies that, you know, they might not have been able to reach had they not thought about their own sales process and their own marketing. Process.

13:50 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Now, you talked a lot about some of the inputs and the work that you're doing on the front end. What about the outputs? What kind of outcomes have you seen and results have you been able to deliver?

14:01 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, so I grew the Investment Monitor brand from sort of, let's say, zero to hero. So we've got up to $1 million in revenue. This didn't exist before. So we're quite a disruptor, I would say, in the martech space and also for economic development. Typically, you know, if I'm looking at my LinkedIn voice notes, for example, if I sent within a 2-week period in one month, 128 voice notes, I got 40 responses. Typically, I would say around about 60% of those are, wow, I didn't know you could send a LinkedIn voice note. Thanks for thinking of me. Thanks for sending me that voice note. Typically, my sort of cold calls will get anything depends on the day, but 25 to 40% response rate. Most of them I would say are more of a no, but it's incredible. I can make, let's say, 20 dials. I'm probably going to get, you know, 1 or 2 of those calls that will lead to another meeting. So obviously the objective of the cold call is to book the next meeting and not to sell your product. Second sort of discovery, so demos, I would probably say that on average I'm averaging around about a 50% success rate. So if we're looking at, say, you know, from the first meeting to the second meeting, the demo, 50 to 60%. And then for the third, it drops to around about 40%. So why is that? Obviously, when I'm going through the demo and I see it as a second sort of chance as a discovery, it's a continuation of the discovery call. I would look to disqualify to qualify. So this is something that I've had to really get used to. And I think Earlier on in my sales career, it was something that I avoided. I didn't want to hear the no. I think every salesperson should be looking for the no, looking for the no as soon as they can to be able to fail fast. And then of course, like every no that you get brings you closer to a yes. So one of the key things, and I think the core elements to my success is really looking for that no as early as you can, as well as being able to quantify your results.

16:10 Scott Ingram: Oh, such good stuff. And you did a great job of really articulating kind of getting to that no early and not wasting your time on deals. But you said something else I want to double down on, which is you talked about the demo is a continuation of discovery. Talk about that more.

16:25 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, so often my discovery calls, I'll block 30 minutes. I like to keep it short in the beginning. I like to be able to ask a, you know, a certain number of questions And it's also maintaining that excitement and intrigue about how your product can solve your prospect's problem. So getting onto a demo, I would book, let's say, 30 to 45 minutes. And then going through that call, first off, I would start on the demo and say, look, the end of this call is going to go one of two ways. You might not like this, and that's okay. You can tell me. So I want to make the client feel comfortable that they can say no. I've sold to a lot of different… obviously being in a global role, I see a lot of, you know, cultural differences between different prospects. So in Europe, a lot of locations, Latin America even as well, the likes of Brazil, they don't like to say no. They're not comfortable saying no. They will politely say, yes, I want to see more. Yes, I like this. And they might not be being sincere with you. So I really want them to feel comfortable to be able to say no, that they might not like this product. It might not be right for them at the end of the demo. Or I say the second scenario is that you really might like this. And typically you'd want to go over pricing. You might want to see how we can relate this to the business sectors that you're trying to target. If you want to bring tech companies to Austin, I'm on a demo with the city of Austin where you're from, Scott, then you know, you might want to see how it works and we can go on to, you know, a 3rd call. And, you know, I want them to feel comfortable to tell me what they genuinely think. So I would go through as few slides as possible because it's not about doing a really good sort of dog and pony show, but asking on every single slide, how does this relate back to your business? And are you experiencing these kinds of problems? So I really want to bring out some good questions. And hopefully, you know, the client, the prospect is going to feel that they can talk a little bit more and that some of the problems that I'm showing them first off relate to what they're experiencing. So for me, a demo is sort of the second discovery. It's a really good opportunity to be able to delve more into the problems that your prospect's having and how you might be able to solve them or your product might be able to solve them.

18:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So good. I feel like a demo done right really should just be another conversation. And in fact, I wrote a piece for what will be the next Sales Success Stories book that is getting awfully close to release called DemoScovry, right? And this approach that I used to basically build in part of my discovery into the demo, right? Because people want to see it, right? Like, what do you do? They want to get to that relatively quickly, but at the same time, you need a lot of information. And if you set that up upright, right, to create… again, it's just a conversation. There's some give and take, right? We're learning from each other.

19:28 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah. And I think definitely, you know, it's important. Some clients might not feel comfortable. You need to make them feel comfortable to be able, as I was saying, to say no, to see if the product's right for them. And I think especially for some of my clients… I say this is a cultural thing as well… with some European clients that I have, they're not used to really opening up and talking about some of the challenges that they have. So demo discovery, great, you know, help them talk about some of the challenges they have and how, you know, your product can relate back to that and solve that problem.

20:02 Scott Ingram: Does Austin really need more help bringing more tech companies to town? Because the growth here is absolutely insane.

20:10 Charlotte Lloyd: I know it's on fire. Austin, you're on fire. I think it's probably a good idea for Austin to think, well, Houston is doing something differently. They're telling their story. So maybe Austin has a different story to tell. Perhaps there's some other type companies, not so much tech, but, you know, that could consider Austin. But, you know, think of Austin as the place to be for tech companies.

20:33 Scott Ingram: So good. So good. Yeah, I have been here… gosh, I think I'm coming up on 18 years. And if I'm doing the math right, I'm watching the population double for maybe almost the third time. I mean, the growth here is Insane.

20:47 Charlotte Lloyd: It's insane.

20:48 Scott Ingram: Insane. It's been so fun. It's been a blast.

20:50 Charlotte Lloyd: Great.

20:51 Scott Ingram: So enough about Austin, but y'all have to come here in October and come join us at the Sales Success Summit. But Charlotte, we talked a lot about kind of your kind of mid-career journey, right? And the work that you did at Financial Times. How did you get into sales in the first place?

21:07 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, I love this. I'm actually so one of the few people that consciously made a decision to go into sales. So just to give you some background, I chose to study languages. I studied French and Portuguese at university. Didn't have so much of a business background. Left university at 22. I wanted to be a translator for a few months, but realized very soon that I didn't enjoy it at all. I also lived in Brazil as part of my gap year. So I taught English while I was finishing my degree and I Didn't really like that, although teaching has a bit of a selling function to it as well. And then I got back and thought, well, I really want to go into sales because I was an overachiever at school and also at university, quite academic. Sales would feed my desire to be able to get results and constantly earn more. So the reward, the commission capabilities, the sky's the limit. Was what really drew me to selling. I think in the beginning it was less about helping people, but more about just wanting to win and wanting to be successful. So I started in telesales doing 100 to 150 dials a day. Some of my role was speaking French, so it was writing a pitch and I wrote a pitch back then in English and in French and sort of used that and I got to the top of the leaderboard. So I stayed in my first role for 2 years. I was selling business information. So like lots of reports online, print reports, and it was very much needs and benefit-based selling. But I think it was the thrill of not knowing if you would get hung up on, knowing that, you know, after a certain amount of effort you would get the sale. Being the top of the leaderboard, getting a couple of awards for energy, for accountability, I really felt that it was totally for me. Then I changed company. I wanted to do what was called field sales. So I moved into a publishing company, sold advertising in maritime magazines, got to travel to some different countries to attend events, to do client networking. And then I found myself in 2007 wanting to work with a big media brand that's well known. So Financial Times is like the Wall Street Journal for any sort of Americans that are into the Wall Street Journal. And I started selling advertising, event sponsorship, again, to cities like Miami, Indianapolis, Jamaica, Madrid, London, New York, traveled a lot as I pitched politicians, met some high-profile people, and just kept on with that for a very long time, 13 years. So that's my journey in terms of how I got into sales from the very beginning.

24:06 Scott Ingram: I love it. If you could start over, Knowing everything that you know now, is there anything that you would do differently?

24:12 Charlotte Lloyd: That's a great question. And I have a lot of points here that I think hopefully that if people listening to this are starting out in sales, that they will consider. So my first point would be really research well the company you want to work for before you get there. So I got my first sales role via recruitment agency. Recruitment agencies still exist. But I think It's better to now go to that company, go to the people within that company, look at their culture. How fast is the company growing? What are the growth opportunities for you? What's the company's ethos? What are their values? How does that align with you and your ethos and your values? What's the product you're gonna sell? How is it gonna make a difference, not just for the business, but for the people in the business? What kind of impact is it gonna have? So that would be my first thing to consider. The second thing would be to own your personal development, both professionally and, as I said, personally. So take time to always be learning. Think about what you need to do to grow. Read relevant sales books, listen to podcasts like Sales Success. Don't rely on the company that you're joining to do all this for you. You need to take charge of yourself. You need to invest in yourself. You need to value how you spend your time. So get into personal branding. I'm a big fan of personally branding yourself. I grew my LinkedIn, I doubled my followers within a year. And, you know, I like to be able to tell my story on LinkedIn, build that trust, and don't be afraid to be a content creator. So use LinkedIn, use Twitter, use Instagram as well to be able to do that, to build your digital brand and build your own credibility. Other points that I would say to someone starting out is learn to fail fast and learn to fail fast as quickly as you can. So be good at analyzing what went wrong. What could you do better? You know, practice this and then move on quickly. Take time to learn why you failed. You know, practice coming out of your comfort zone. So many people I see get bogged down by not coming out of their comfort zone and doing the same thing and expecting the same result. I also think it's very important to control what you can control and let go of what you can't control. So, you know, when you start in your career, chart your success, know what your metrics are, write down your accomplishments, keep a record of everything. You can put in, we know as top salespeople, we can control our inputs, but we can't control the output. So know that you've done your very best job. And if you don't get that sale, or, you know, if you don't get that job that you're looking for, know exactly why that happened. Another thing, I think, if you're starting, you know, a career in sales, really put yourself or learn to put yourself in the customer's shoes. So if you're selling to CMOs, marketing managers, whatever the role, try and spend a day or a week learning what they do. Be a marketer yourself. Identify, you know, different buying personas. If you're going to sell a martech product, who is going to be buying that? What challenges are they having? And write this down. So I think it's very important to be able to empathize with people. We can automate so many things, as we know, in sales process. And, you know, we still… robots still can't empathize. They can't become humans. So really learn, you know, if you're going to be selling martech, then take a digital marketing course. Really try and get under the skin of how that persona that you're selling to, or personas, what makes them tick, what challenges are they facing, and really feel that. That's going to help empower you when, you know, you want to be able to sell your product or your service to them. And I think another message is think about how to be different. How are you going to stand out if you're starting out in sales? You know, what are the average salespeople doing? Do something different and keep learning. So, you know, you want to be able to Cause a pattern interrupt. You want someone to sit up and take notice if you send them a cold email or a cold call. Again, it ties back to personalization and empathy. So those would be my core things for somebody that would be starting out in sales. How would I have done it differently?

28:59 Scott Ingram: So much great stuff. Another thing you can keep an eye out for is how an organization is enabling and empowering their sellers. Look for tools like Outreach, Gong, and Vidyard. Another one to keep an eye out for is Revenue Grid. Revenue Grid is a revenue intelligence solution that automatically captures data from all the digital places that you're interacting in. It then gives you a more intelligent view of what's happening in your pipeline and even provides guidance based on all that data to help you stay on top of your game. Check them out, top1.fm/revenuegrid. And now back to my conversation with Charlotte. One of the things you talked about is kind of the pattern interrupts. What do you find? I think you probably gave one in your LinkedIn voice notes, right? A lot of people just haven't even ever received one of those. What else are you doing that's like that, that you find, hey, this really breaks through and gets attention?

29:51 Charlotte Lloyd: I think it's being able to send, first off, a short email. So 125 words or less, but leveraging LinkedIn, looking at what's going on in that person or the prospect's life. What stories are they sharing on their social media? One that might resonate with people is I was trying to reach Tennessee. So the head of economic development for Tennessee, and she put a post on her LinkedIn, which was all about kindness. So she left a note on this person's car that she had knocked and the person called her and said, Look, you know, you don't have to fix my car. Don't worry about it. It's something that, you know, it's just an act of kindness. So I think things like that. I sent her an email and I referred to this act of kindness about the car and getting a bump on the car and the person, you know, not saying, look, don't worry about it. I'm going to pay for it. You don't need to pay for it. That sort of really resonated with her. I've been trying to reach this person for quite a long time with different tactics. I wasn't breaking through the noise. So actually focusing on something that was important to her and personal to her helped me create that pattern interrupt. And we had a conversation, we had a discovery call, but it took me a long time to get to that.

31:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you said something else earlier that really stuck out for me, which was you said very early in your career, it was just about winning. And then later it became kind of about the customer. Can you talk about that?

31:31 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, so I think when you're in sales, you have to know, you know, the customer is right. The customer, even when they might not seem right, the customer is right. It's all about them. It's being able to know that your solution can solve a problem for them. And I think traditionally, when I started out in sales, it was all focused on analyzing and finding a need and then matching that need to the benefits of your product. And I think what a lot of salespeople need to realize is it's not about them and their product, and it's not so much about getting the sale and having… what is it… the sales breath, the commission breath, but it's about how can this product help solve a problem that my prospect is having, and it's helping them to have a better tomorrow. And I think that, that is the core reason. I think that a lot of salespeople, you know, they might be getting into sales and not really thinking about what problems they're solving for their prospects.

32:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so well said. Charlotte, I call the show Sales Success Stories. And I feel like it's important, we should probably tell a story about a sale. What's your favorite sales story?

32:47 Charlotte Lloyd: I actually got several, to be honest. Some good, some bad. So only 18 months ago, I got hung up on, on a demo, which I think is something that perhaps 90% of salespeople can say that's never happened to them. One of the reasons I think that I learned a lot from it, it was painful. I didn't set an agenda before the call, so I was new to using Zoom, to presenting my product, giving a demo. Online. I hadn't done this, you know, I've only been doing this for 2 years. And first off, there were 5 stakeholders on that call. I didn't know what each of them wanted to get out of the call before it started. So, you know, not contacting them, not doing the multithreading to find out perhaps what did they want to see once we got on the demo. And then we got sort of 10 minutes through. So we started the call again. I didn't ask them what they wanted to accomplish. On this call before it started. And we get to sort of the 3rd slide and I'm asking them questions. And one guy just screamed at me and said, look, can you please get to the point? So I got to the point. And then as I was sort of talking through how my solution would help them, they hung up. They said, sorry, this is not what we want. This is too advanced for us and hung up.

34:10 Scott Ingram: That is definitely not a normal outcome.

34:12 Charlotte Lloyd: No, absolutely not. So it was hard because I put a lot of effort into sort of getting to this stage. I'd sent them a lot of different types of outreach, and I had a discovery call with one of the people that was on that call, and all of a sudden 5 people were coming to the next call. So it was about being prepared and being able to anticipate what it is that they might want to see. Some of your clients or prospects want to get straight to the point. So, you know, you've got to have a process, but know that there's going to be a percentage of prospects that aren't going to follow that. And you obviously have to prepare as much as you can before you have a demo or discovery call. Make sure that you know what each of the stakeholders' expectations are.

35:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Do you have a more uplifting story? Do you have a great win? Yeah.

35:15 Charlotte Lloyd: So I managed to close my biggest deal last year. Started with a LinkedIn voice note, and it went from there. It was a relatively quick one. In the world of economic development and selling to governments, things tend to go very slowly. So I sent a LinkedIn voice note and talked about some of the priorities and challenges that this, you know, typical buying personas were having. It was around 40 seconds long. I said, I'm sending you this voice note because I want to do something different. And I know that you get a lot of email and, you know, emails sort of, it's kind of boring these days. So he messaged me back. He didn't send me a voice note back. A lot of people don't, but said, oh wow, I really liked that. Voice note, I think we should have a conversation. And it went from there. So it was a 3-month deal cycle, which is relatively short for a big… I think the deal was around just under $100,000. So relatively short cycle, 3 months. We had a discovery call, then we had the demo, and he brought some of his other stakeholders on. And I did reach out to them before the call and ask them what they were expecting see, and then went straight on to, you know, showing them some different recommendations and how we could work with them. And I got a yes. So for me, if I hadn't have used that technique, the LinkedIn voice note, and been open to exploring new techniques to be able to reach some of my prospects, this deal would never have happened.

36:52 Scott Ingram: Well, there you go. There you go. Charlotte, what are you most proud of?

36:55 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, great question. In terms of from a sales perspective or from a personal perspective? Yes, personal.

37:04 Scott Ingram: Either way, however you want to take it.

37:06 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah. So first off, I think my family. I'm a mom to 6-year-old twins, boy-girl twins, and I had children a little bit later in life. So for me, I also want to shout out to my husband who has been amazing and has sort of almost stepped back in his career to allow me to get where I am today. Part of my drive and motivation comes from being able to provide for my family, for giving my children the best education. We live in Spain. I'm English, my husband's Spanish. They speak 2 languages, you know, they have an international upbringing. And the drive to help people, but also to sell better and to win is what really drives me forward. I learned last year, end of last year, that my daughter is autistic, so she needs a lot of support with her learning. She has speech therapy, she has ABA therapy, and really being the best, you know, working very hard but also very smart means that I can help provide for her and give her what she needs to be able to be the best. So another thing that drives me is sheer desire to succeed and win. So I'm a very competitive person. I am competing with myself most of the time. I think a lot of salespeople will say the same thing. Even though we compete with each other. I used to play a lot of tennis tournaments when I was a kid. I played at county level, so I like sport. I like the feeling of winning. I like the feeling of being challenged. Another motivation for me is wanting financial freedom. So I want to be able to work hard and work smart now so that I can enjoy my life later. You know, I don't want to be working in my 70s or 80s. I want to be able to benefit from being successful in my career and buying my financial freedom.

39:01 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Great. You know, I probably don't ask this enough because there's certainly a good percentage of listeners who we're parents. Yeah. What have you found? I mean, that's always a challenge, right? Just kind of juggling the kids and twins, that sounds like twice the challenge. What have you found that just works for you? What are your tricks and tactics on that front?

39:21 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, so try and have as much help as you can. So living where we live, we're able to access childcare, you know, it's relatively affordable. So making sure that, you know, you have help. And it's also being part of a team. So me and my husband, you know, we share the responsibilities. I have to say, he's probably taking on a little bit more than me at the moment, taking the kids to school, picking them up. He's really helped to drive my success. So, and I would also say, you know, taking time out with them, being able to take a break from work. I have quite a long day and I always make sure that I set aside time before they… when they're having their dinner, we have dinner together, they go to bed, they have a story time with me, and I'm not on my phone or near my laptop. So unless I'm taking a video of them, But I switch off from any distraction and make sure that I'm 100% fully present with them when I'm with them.

40:21 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Great stuff. What do you find to be the biggest challenge in sales? Not with your kids.

40:27 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, it's a great question. I think the biggest challenge in sales is that it's constantly changing. And, you know, prospects, they need to be guided through the buying process. There's no robot that is going to do that. There's lots of sales tech tools which help Salespeople to you know focus on more revenue generating activities, and I think they're great. And I'm relatively new to them because I spent a large part of my sales career not having access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You know something that's fairly basic. So I think you know having access to these tools, anything that helps us sell better is really important. I think also in sales it's. It's mentally challenging yourself, but keeping yourself fit and well, both physically and mentally. And I like now that salespeople are able to talk about their mental health. I suffered grief from quite a young age. So when I was in my teens, my mom passed away. She had a brain tumor, very unexpected. My mom was super healthy, didn't drink, didn't smoke. It was bad luck. She had some kind of gene mutation. And at the time I was going through some really important exams at school. I'm an only child. There was my dad. I didn't really get on with my dad at the time. And, you know, it was a very, very mentally challenging time. So much so that, you know, I was doing my exams to get into university. And I just pushed myself through, didn't really deal with the grief, managed to sort of shut myself out from the pain, got to the end of my university just before I started my career in sales and had what we call a delayed bereavement reaction. Lots of, you know, sort of meltdown emotionally, completely shut down. I think, you know, that experience, I take a lot of positive experience from it now because feeling that grief at a young age and having that experience, and for 10 years, roughly a period of 10 years from then, I had lots of ups and downs, experienced depression. And I think this is why it's so important to look after your mental health and know that you know, if you get into sales, you will have ups and downs and you need to be able to understand the ups and the downs. So I would say to anyone in sales that every salesperson should do therapy, even if things are going really well in your life. You need to understand what's going well, why it's going well, because when a down moment comes, you will also need to understand How are you feeling? How do you respond to that? How do you work through it? And I think not enough people take their mental health seriously, and it's really important. And I think actually going through that challenging experience as a teenager helped me to enter a world of sales, because for me, you know, being hung up on a demo or being told to never call me back again or something terrible on a cold call, really isn't anything that terrible. You know, getting a no in sales is not that terrible. And it's allowed me… I think the experiences that I had and the challenges, you know, with mental health have allowed me to really sort of emotionally detach myself from the outcome. So, you know, you can put all the energy and effort into your sales, and sometimes you're not going to win. And sometimes you really need to be able to detach yourself from the outcome.

44:24 Scott Ingram: Charlotte, thank you for sharing that story. I mean, I do think this is such an important topic. It's why we continue to partner with UnCrushed because it, I guess if you are an entrepreneur, maybe that is the only thing that is a little bit more emotional and riding the roller coaster. And you're exactly right. I mean, it's such a wild ride and you really have to acknowledge that. You know, prepare for that and find community and resources and therapy and whatever kind of works for you to make sure that you get through that. Okay.

44:56 Charlotte Lloyd: Absolutely. And you mentioned Uncrushed, Tim Clark, Lindsay Boggs. So I listened to them, I think Tim on Make It Happen Mondays and Lindsay on Sahir on Sales Success, and their stories really inspired me to talk about mine. So I have just contributed sort of a journey into my experience with grief and how it's helped me get to where I am today.

45:16 Scott Ingram: So great and such a great organization. So I'm so proud to be partnered with them and all the great work that they do, because again, this is, this is a massively important topic. And I really feel like until just a few years ago, we didn't talk about it at all.

45:33 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

45:36 Scott Ingram: Believe it or not, I'm going to drop in a sponsor mention right here because I just thought of a really, really interesting use case for Gong. Charlotte said earlier that even when you're doing well, you need to understand why it's going well. Imagine if you could go back and listen to your best calls. You could listen to yourself when you were at your best, perhaps at some point in the future when you're not doing well and feeling your best, to inspire yourself and remind yourself that you really are great. You could literally do that with Gong. Think about it. top1.fm/gong. And speaking of UnCrushed, thanks to all of our sponsors like Gong, you can still get access to all of the videos and presentation decks from last year's Sales Success Summit by completing the form at the top of top1summit.com. If this is your first time doing that, we'll make a $5 contribution to UnCrushed. Tell a friend. And now back to Charlotte.

46:34 Charlotte Lloyd: And I think, again, talking about culture, I'm a big fan of different cultures. Definitely in the US, you are more open to therapy. I think I'm British, in the UK, things are opening up now and people are more open to it. But up until a few years ago, people weren't, people wouldn't talk about their… over 20 years ago when I lost my mom, it was very difficult. People were trying to be very understanding, but it was awkward to talk about these experiences. And, you know, even when I'm with my children now, if they do something amazing, I say, wow, you made me feel really happy. You made me feel really proud doing that. It's acknowledging that positive experience. If they do something naughty, if they make me upset, then I'll say, well, you did this and, you know, you're fighting with your sister, you're fighting with your brother, and it's making me feel upset. You're making me feel upset, disappointed. It's being able to tell them how you feel and how their behavior makes you feel.

47:41 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Great stuff. Well, Charlotte, we talked about a little bit of your time blocking and some of the ways that you're structuring your day, but I want to go so much deeper. And you know, one of my favorite questions to ask is just, I would love to get the walkthrough of your day. So when does the alarm clock go off? Give us kind of the details around the way that you structure everything until your head hits the pillow.

48:02 Charlotte Lloyd: Sure, absolutely. So first off, I am not a morning person, and this might shock a lot of people listening to this. I don't think it's central to your success to be a morning person. I know a lot of salespeople are morning people. I would get up… so alarm goes off, you're going to be horrified, Scott… but between 7:30 and 8:30 depending on the day, because some days I might be speaking with Californian clients or, you know, so my days can be quite long typically. So I've read Atomic Habits by James Clear. So I'll have on the Sunday evening, I'll have all my outfits for the week, all my gym gear for the week, workout gear. So I don't have to think about those decisions, you know, every day. So between 7:30 and 8:30, I get off, either shower or Then get ready straight away. First thing I have is a glass of lukewarm water. The Japanese say that lukewarm water is really good for the body, so it's got that from… I went to Japan just before the pandemic. Love the food, love the culture. Then I have a cup of coffee. So I usually have one coffee with sugar. That's how I start the day. I don't have breakfast. Some people might be wanting to tell me that, no, you need to have breakfast, and I get straight into it. So I would look at my email. I do check my phone, and before I start work, if there's anything that's super pressing, I'll reply, but I typically won't reply to emails. So usually between 8, 8:30, 9, I will time block until around about 12:30, 1 o'clock. So within that time, I'll be completely prospecting. So anything that's revenue generating, could be an hour of cold calling. What I'm trying to do between that time is… oh, and I also forgot to say that before I come up to my office in… so I'm on the top floor of my house, away from all the noise, away from all distraction. So I'll have my coffee, I'll bring my water up, I'll make a pot of tea, which is very British, with tea leaves, bring that up here, and then I will drink that as I'm working. So between those times, I'll be purely doing revenue-generating activities unless I have a discovery or a demo or call booked with a client. And what I'm trying to do is… I know Brandon Fluharty talks about the Pomodoro technique. So work for an hour and a half, take a break, get away from the screen. Typically, I'll do this for 5 to 10 minutes, so not very long, and then get back to it. And sort of chart my progress. Okay, so I may have made like 40 dials within an hour and a half. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to look at emailing? Or so I would do a different activity. Then 1 o'clock, sometimes… so I don't go to the gym in the morning. It doesn't work for me to go to the gym very, very early. I might go for a walk for an hour between 1 and 2 because usually I have quite a long afternoon. So between 2:30 to 7 o'clock, I'm usually on calls with the US. So it could be back to back, 30 minutes, an hour. So I like to get out and get away from the office when I can. It doesn't happen every day. So it might be going for a walk or going to the gym and then come back in the afternoon. And usually I have meetings pretty much back to back, but if I don't have those meetings back to back, I might block an hour between 3 and 4 Eastern. So 3 and 4 my time is 9 to 10 Eastern time. Or, you know, another day I might look at say 4 to 5 Central time is 9 to 10 Central time. So I'm time blocking to do some cold calling to the US. And yeah, typically I would then get back to my emails and inbox towards the end of the day. So I make a lot of notes when I'm on all of my calls. I like to write things down. And then I will type up those notes, which can take quite a long time. And then, you know, I'll respond to any emails that I've got or any emails that I need to send to clients at the end of the day. Then typically some days I finish 6, other days it's 7. So I'm with my kids from that time onwards until bedtime and they usually go to bed. I mean, it's quite… it's a late culture here. So 8, 8:30. And then from 8, 8:30 to round about 11 PM, if I haven't been to do any kind of workout or exercise, I might do that. This might horrify some people as well, but between 8 and 9, especially in the summer, because here in… I'm based in Madrid, we have very long days. So, you know, it can be light up to 11 PM. And then I spend an hour each evening going through what I want to achieve the next day. So what are my priorities for the next day? Set them out. How am I going to deal with any challenging situation? Who am I going to prospect to? So I'll be looking at identifying my different buyer personas, perhaps in the same organization, and, you know, looking at new clients to reach out to. So all of that, you know, getting it ready, setting up in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Because I want to start the next day knowing who I'm going to prospect to. I don't want to be spending time looking for prospects. So I'll do that. And usually when I'm doing it, I'm listening to a podcast, or if not, then go to bed around about 11, 11:30 PM, which is probably late for a lot of people. And I'll try to read 20 minutes, sometimes 10, but could be 20. The current book that I'm actually reading. So spend time doing that. And that's generally how I structure my day. Perfect.

54:07 Scott Ingram: Before we dig into my follow-up questions, can we talk about how horrified I am?

54:12 Charlotte Lloyd: Yes, please do.

54:15 Scott Ingram: I'm not horrified at all. I mean, here's the thing. I think that certainly there are a lot of us who get up at stupefying early times in the morning. I mean, here we are having a conversation on a Sunday, and I woke up at, I don't know, 5 AM and started working for a couple of hours before we got on the phone. But, you know, there are a lot of folks who've been on this podcast that keep similar schedules to you. There's no right or wrong, like, there's only your way. And imagine how not successful you would be if you actually tried to get up at 4:30 or 5 every Yeah, absolutely.

54:54 Charlotte Lloyd: It wouldn't work for me. And last week I was on a call at 9 PM my time and I was speaking with Christchurch in New Zealand and it was 9 AM the following day their time. So had I have gotten up at 4:30 or like you, Scott, 5 AM that day, I would have been toasted by 9 PM and I wouldn't have been my best self. So yeah, I think you have to adapt to, you know, I'm working a lot with different time zones. So it doesn't make sense for me to get up super early unless, you know, I was just perhaps say working with the Asian market because they're ahead of my time.

55:29 Scott Ingram: So yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something that I hope people hear in these conversations is there is no right way. There is no one way. There is no wrong way. There's really only your way and really leaning into that and figuring out, okay, what is that? How do I make the most of that? So for me, yeah, that's getting up stupid early in the morning. For you, that's being really productive in the evening when I'm useless.

55:53 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, you know, I've been that way since I was at school. You know, I always felt like I could achieve more and think more creatively later in the day rather than earlier.

56:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I was a horrible student in high school. Fortunately, I was really smart. Yeah, I was a good test taker, but homework was not really a thing I was interested in. And what I would do is I would get to school about an hour early And especially when I was my junior, senior year, when I would drive to school, I would sit in my car for about an hour before school and whatever got done in the car before, that was all that was getting done. And if I didn't finish something, oh well, that wasn't getting turned in. So that was the only way I got any amount of homework done was being early. So again, like this has been part of who I am essentially my entire life. And as you were talking about putting your kids to bed late, Maybe my parents did this to me because when I was really young, my bedtime was 7 AM. I'm sorry, not 7 AM, 7 PM. Oh my God.

56:49 Charlotte Lloyd: That's not bad. Yeah, that would be the same as in the UK.

56:53 Scott Ingram: Is that the approach?

56:54 Charlotte Lloyd: That's the approach because we're based in Spain. We're on the wrong time zone here. We should be an hour behind, but it's something the government here never changed. So it's very, very light, very, very late. So hence, it's difficult to get kids to bed sooner because it's so light outside.

57:11 Scott Ingram: So you're living in the perfect place.

57:13 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, absolutely.

57:16 Scott Ingram: Well, Charlotte, let's talk about your information diet. We talked a little bit about when you're listening to the podcasts and when you're reading the books. What are you listening to and what are you reading?

57:27 Charlotte Lloyd: Absolutely. I'm so excited to talk about this too, as well, because it's helped put me on the path to success. So I would listen to obviously sales Success. Usually it's on a Monday, isn't it, that it comes out? So never miss an episode of yours, Scott. That's the first thing that I listen to, usually in the evening when I'm finished my day. 30 Minutes to President's Club. I think they've nailed it on the takeaway tips for salespeople. Usually listen to that when I'm in the gym because it's as long as my workout. So it's great. Another one, Make It Happen Mondays. John Barrows and the JB team, just love them elevating the sales profession, but also talking about, you know, they're making it exciting and fun. To be in sales again, and they look at the mental health aspect a lot as well. So they're my top 3 podcasts. Other podcasts, I always like to try new things. I'm not a sort of less is more person. I know a lot of people on here say less is more. I started listening to the 0 to 5 Million podcast about growing and scaling a business. It was the first podcast that I did before this one. So as a guest speaker on there, The One-Up Formula by Morgan Ingram. So again, looking into sort of what makes successful business owner, what's the mindset side. Somebody that I love who I've just in the last few months got into is Josh Braun, and he's… I know he's been on here… Inside Selling. Love his tips on LinkedIn, looking at the psychology behind sales and, you know, really thinking about what you're saying and what impact you say, what that has on the other person. I see Jeff Bajorek's got a new podcast out, and I've listened to a few of those, and they are great, 3 to 5 minutes long. So, you know, every podcast that I'm listening to now is a different length, and they all teach me and show me something different about sales. The other 3 greats that I like: Brandon Fluharty, Ian Koniak, and Jamal Reimer. Jamal, if you're listening, I'm still waiting for the Mega Deal Secrets to arrive. I don't know if it's stuck in customs in Spain, but I can't wait to get my hands on your book. In terms of bringing us nicely on to books, there's There's so many great books. Last year I read 12, so one a month. This year I'm aiming to read 2 a month. So the current read that I've got at the moment is Think Like an Entrepreneur and Act Like a CEO. Sales books that I love, obviously Challenge a Sale really opened my eyes into the different persona types of selling. Want to read Challenge a Customer, read Atomic Habits. I've just finished now Tech-Powered Sales. I know that's something you love, Scott, because you're doing a lot on the tech side to help empower salespeople. So really great book. Another book that helped me… so selling a new brand new product when I started out 2 years ago… Eat Their Lunch by Anthony Iannarino really helped me to strategize and build a challenger pitch that would take on the competition. So love that book. Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount. Combo Prospecting. So making sure that, you know, when you're doing your outreach, you're not just sending an email or just doing a cold call, you're actually touching the client, you know, the several touch points. So, you know, send a voice note, send an email, cold call them all on the same day. Non-sales books that I really like, How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera. So how you can heal from your past and recognize patterns of behavior Learn to love yourself and learn to understand yourself. A really great book. And I recommend that everybody reads that, even if they're not in sales. And a great one, which I saw was on your list, Scott, and I've actually read it before I saw it on the list, is Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. So really great book on how he says that, you know, never be a victim. He had a horrible upbringing, terrible father, really tough circumstances. And he proves that, you know, you can come from these dreadful circumstances, you can come from a challenging experience and turn it into something positive. So never be a victim. He put himself through some amazingly challenging, tough experiences, set himself goals, honored his commitments, and got to where he is today. So I really recommend certainly those 2 non-sales books. On my list to read Deep Work, which I know you've read, Scott. Jamal's Mega Deal Secrets. Sell Without Selling Out by Andy Paul. And a couple of others, The Challenger Customer, because I was saying earlier, it's really important to put yourself in your customer's shoes and how we change.

1:02:03 Scott Ingram: Amazing, amazing list. Now, I still need to get to Andy's book. But yeah, we will do all the hard work and we will have that entire list for you. So if you click over to top top1.fm/141 or top1.fm/charlotte-loyd, you will find links to all the books, all the podcasts, all the greatness. Lots of good stuff in there. You mentioned the tech. I do love the toys. What does your personal tech stack look like? What are you using?

1:02:32 Charlotte Lloyd: Okay, so from a non-work perspective, I've got my Apple Watch. I'm very regimented. I have to do my 10,000 steps at least every day. Important to exercise, important to keep pushing yourself. I use Evernote, which I heard about from you, Scott. So I do all my quadrant journaling there. And I got the idea for quadrant journaling from Amy Volas, who appeared on here several episodes ago. So really great. I'm starting to use Timeular. So one of the things I do manually is when I'm making a list of what I need to do, on a Post-it note, I put how long I'm going to spend doing that. So if it's doing outreach or cold calling, could be an hour and a half. If I'm writing emails, I'll put down the time next to… so I'm going to spend 30 minutes writing an email. Before I started using Timeular, I would put on… so on my Apple Watch, I put the chronometer on and time myself doing the tasks. So next to… so say if I intended to spend 30 minutes minutes writing emails, I would time myself and then say next to the time that I allotted, put the time, actual time it took me, which could be maybe 40 minutes, so it could be less. Timeular allows you to… you create the tasks, so you create them all on an app and then it times for you. So when you start, let's say you can time block an hour for cold calling or writing emails, you put it into Timeular and Timeular does that tracking for you. Really interesting. It helps you focus, but it also helps you see, you know, what the expectation is versus reality on how long you're spending on each task. So I can't recommend it enough, and I think everyone should at least try this to really see where you're spending your time. Other tools that I'm using, so Salesforce. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of Salesforce. But try to put the time aside to do it at the end of the day. LinkedIn Sales Navigator, only been using it for 2 years, spent a long time in my previous sales roles not using it at all. Fantastic. Can't praise it enough. I also use Lusha. So again, great for getting all the contact details, email, phone numbers so you can get right into cold calling, build a list from Lusha of who you want to call. Love it. Dooly, I like the sound of it. I'm just starting to try. I'm sort of the guinea pig within the company and trying lots of new tech tools. So really interested to see how that would help me from a note-taking perspective, because I don't record all my calls with clients. I like to write everything down to not miss anything. So interested to see how Dooly might be able to put those notes for me into Salesforce. Gong, our company has I haven't been assigned it yet, so it's something I'm going to be getting within the next few weeks. Love the idea of analyzing your calls and seeing, you know, how you can develop your questioning further. And I'm fascinated, intrigued by a lot of other tools that are out there. So currently my company doesn't have a SalesLoft, it doesn't have an Outreach, so I'm tracking all my performance, everything that I do on spreadsheets, which is annoying. Even my LinkedIn posts. So another tool that you may or may not have come across, Scott, is something called Shield. I am just starting now with a trial. Shield records all the posts that you put in your social media. So for example, LinkedIn, it can show you, just give you the stats on, you know, how successful your post is. Currently, I'm doing all of this in Excel for my LinkedIn posts as well. So looking forward to being able to use Shield.

1:06:21 Scott Ingram: Awesome, awesome, awesome. The time tracking piece, any insights or epiphanies that have come through just looking at that and seeing the realities?

1:06:29 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, I think a lot of times I find myself saying that I'm gonna… I actually end up sometimes taking longer than what I expected on doing tasks. I think that it's kind of… it's opened my eyes. And I also feel that it's helped me be a little bit more disciplined as well. So some of the tasks that you hate doing, like the admin tasks that are part of being a salesperson, putting things into Salesforce, I will put down like 5 or 10 minutes and it takes me 20, 25. So it's helping me manage my expectations a little better. And also, you know, if I can try and do some of the mundane tasks quicker, That's what I want to be so I can spend more time doing, you know, the revenue generating tasks, which is where I want to be.

1:07:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. I wonder, I mean, you've read lots of great books, listened to lots of great podcasts. Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:07:24 Charlotte Lloyd: So yeah, I would say that I'm more of an ambivert now than extrovert. I ran a poll on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago, you know, what type of person not just to salespeople, but all kinds of people that follow me on LinkedIn. Are you more of an ambivert, an extrovert, or an introvert? And I think that introverts are still very underrated in sales. I know that, you know, it's so important to have good listening skills. Introverts are far better at this. I'm not a good listener by nature. I tend to be more of a talker. So I find as I get older now, I'm not so much the extrovert, but tending more towards the ambivert where I need, you know, I need time to be alone. I need time to be quiet. I practice my listening skills, putting myself on mute when a prospect's speaking and practicing that deep listening where, you know, you uncover more information, more nuggets that you want to find out about your prospect and the state of their business and what their problems and challenges are in terms of Am I a relationship seller, challenger seller? Am I a lone wolf? I'm a problem solver. I'm probably more of a relationship stroke challenger style. Spent lots of years building relationships, very traditional selling. And I think it's still important, but I also think, and as of, you know, most people who've read The Challenger Sale, that is the most successful style. Based on research. I think the more you can sort of teach, tailor, take control, and show a prospect, challenge them to think differently. So you need to look at your product, what it is that you're selling, a service. How does that challenge the prospect? How does it get them to do something different and get a better outcome? So being a challenger seller is something that I'm really, really more focused on now rather than being a relationship sort of style problem solver as well. I would say I'm not so much a problem solver. Haven't been. I loved your episode with Chris McNeill because he is very much a problem solver. So I try to be a little bit more sort of that way inclined, getting under the skin of the prospect's problems and how again, my solution would tailor to that.

1:09:55 Scott Ingram: Excellent. Excellent. Now, I wonder if there's something you believe that the typical sales professional would think is crazy, that you need to be a morning person to be successful in sales. There we go.

1:10:09 Charlotte Lloyd: That's one thing I think, you know, you go with, if you're more of a night owl person like me, and, you know, you get your creative ideas at 1 or 2 in the morning, that's totally fine. I also want to say you're only as good as your last sale. This is something that, you know, I learned very, very early on. I think most salespeople, we aren't complacent, but I think, you know, you're only as good as your last sale means, you know, you can be… we say in the UK, the cock of the walk. The cock is the rooster, by the way. One day and the next you're a feather duster. So you really have to know that just because you had an amazing year and got to be the top 1%, that could all change very quickly.

1:10:56 Scott Ingram: Indeed, indeed. I'm imagining feather dusters now. This is funny. What about the flip side? Is there something that the typical sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

1:11:08 Charlotte Lloyd: Going on what we were saying before, that you have to be a certain type of seller and stay that way to succeed. You can change and you can constantly adapt and be agile and look at sort of different seller types and learn something from, you know, a different way of selling. I think a lot of salespeople believe they have to be a certain way, a certain type of seller to be able to succeed. Another thing that they believe that I think is crazy, that you shouldn't take any time off. It's really important with a high-pressurized role to take the time off to completely disconnect from… have a digital disconnection as well, because we see a lot of digital burnout. I think, was it Jeff Bajorek who went in a caravan and basically shut down everything, didn't take any phone with him? Or was it him?

1:12:00 Scott Ingram: Maybe. I'm not remembering that story.

1:12:02 Charlotte Lloyd: Okay. Yeah, he had some kind of digital disconnection. Yeah, yeah. So I think that was… he put something on LinkedIn and I saw that. So I think, yeah, a lot of salespeople believe that they shouldn't take a break, that they don't need to stop.

1:12:15 Scott Ingram: So absolutely, absolutely. So Charlotte, I think we covered this quite a bit early on in our conversation. But I always like to ask if there's advice that you have for folks that are just getting started in their sales career today. Is there anything else that we didn't cover kind of at top when we were talking about you know, what you would do differently if you could start over?

1:12:35 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, got quite a few things to say here. So I would say first off, if you're starting out in sales, practice getting comfortable with no and rejection on a daily basis. Document this, set up a rejection plan. I don't know, there's a really good book that I read last year called Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang. This is a Chinese guy, family moved to the US. He does an experiment with rejection. So he basically wants to… for 100 days he went on an experiment. He starts making these crazy requests. So basically goes into Krispy Kreme, you know, buys donuts and he asks for them in the shape of Olympic rings, and he gets his request granted. He asks a flight attendant to speak on loudspeaker. He asks a car salesman to give him lessons in selling. He asks for some really small things to some really big things. He had an app that he was developing on gamification, and it got turned down by a major investor. So this sparked his sort of quest. He wanted to go on a rejection journey. I think everyone should try this if they're starting out in sales. So realize that, you know, even the craziest wish can be granted if you ask for it in the right way. He learned a lot of lessons from it's the way that you ask for things as well. You can turn an initial no into something positive. Rejection is also very easy to blame on yourself. So you really want to analyze the rejection and know that a lot of times it's not you. I think rejection also sets you up closer for a yes. So again, the more comfortable you get with a no, it's prepping you. You know how to get to the yes. It's also a sign, I think, that you're ahead of the pack. So in this book, it talks about Galileo's idea that the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. People thought he was mad when he first came out with that. Apple's first tablet computer in 1993 got rejected. Look at where Apple are at now. And Twitter's 140-character limit was passed off as completely ridiculous. And look at Twitter now. So, you know, rejection can be a sign that, you know, you have an idea and it's a great idea, or you have a great product and you will get a yes eventually. It might be… sometimes my prospects say that our product is too advanced where they need to be. So I would really say to someone, look into rejection. Take yourself on a rejection journey. I also think that fear… if you're starting out in sales, you need to tackle fear. Step into your fear, learn what makes you fearful and how do you overcome it. Are you scared of skydiving? Are you scared of roller coasters? Do it. Are you scared of bungee jumping? Do it. For my birthday last year, my husband bought me an experience in a wind tunnel. So I actually don't Yeah, I don't like the idea of skydiving or roller coasters because I'm not in control. So the wind tunnel was pretty much like as if you were skydiving. You had to go in with an instructor and put yourself in a skydive position, so your arms out front, your legs bent, and you're sort of on your stomach. So we did that at first, we had a couple of goes at doing that, and then the instructor would then take us from like 500 to 1,000 feet high and then drop down with us in this wind tunnel. And I thought, I'm never going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm only going to do the put myself in the position and then get out of the wind tunnel. I'm not going to go 5,000 feet and drop. I did it and it was great. It was a little bit… you felt your stomach drop, the pit of your stomach, the sort of butterfly feeling, but it was momentary. And it was something that, you know, it lasted for a few seconds, something that I've never done before. Nothing bad happened. I actually felt fantastic after it. I felt really, really exhilarated. So I would say to anyone, embrace your fear. Do something that makes you go on a podcast. I never thought that I'd end up on a podcast and never dreamed that I'd be here 2 years after I've listened to your first episode. Another thing I would say to people starting out sales career is think about psychology. Read some books on psychology. Follow Josh Braun as well because he has some fantastic, easy-to-digest insights on, you know, he talks about he got a dog recently to come out of his comfort zone. I'm getting a cat in a couple of months and I'm not a cat lover. But I really want to learn what it means to be a cat lover. I want to tackle that sort of, you know, I don't like something, but I'm going to do this well and I'm going to learn to like something that perhaps, you know, I don't like or I'm not comfortable with. I would say as well, perhaps I mentioned this before, but if you're starting out in sales, become good at leveraging your personal brand, be good at social selling, tell your story. Engage with salespeople, engage with marketing people if you're working in selling marketing, and tell your story as a seller. Talk about your good experiences, but also talk about your not so good experiences and what the reality is, you know, in what you want to do. So I would say be very active with your personal brand and be more active on social media and the more that you can help other people, you know, knowledge is power and sharing is caring.

1:18:26 Scott Ingram: Charlotte, you are a fountain of knowledge and ideas. I wonder if we could also point your fountain at advice that you would have for somebody that is a little further into their career, but maybe they're either, they're stuck, they're challenged, or they're doing okay, but they just, they haven't broken through to the point that I get to interview them.

1:18:44 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah. So, and this was me in my previous role. I would never have made it here in my previous role. Start by making sure that you're tracking and analyzing your success. Again, owning your metrics. Might not have the tech tools, but everybody has access to an Excel spreadsheet. So make sure that you know how many dials, how many emails, what's your conversion rate. Know all this and know it in real time. So not last month or 2 months ago? What is it today? There's no excuses. I would say go back to basics if you're struggling. Again, work hour by hour. Congratulate yourself for the small steps. If you're going to make 50 or 100 dials in an hour, focus on that and then move on to the next task. But break everything up so that you know how much time you're going to spend on it. And then at the end of each day, look at what you did and congratulate yourself for the small steps. There's something that I've read recently called the Sugar Grain Theory. So setting yourself goals, each grain of sugar is a goal. So the Sugar Grain Task is you start small. So it could be about, you know, spending an hour making the right dials. It could be that you attend an event, you meet people at an event, you might follow up, send them a video message. Each one of those is a sugar grain. So set yourself a set number of sugar grains that you're going to get each day, each week, each month, and it's focusing on those small steps. Positive self-talk as well. I would encourage any salesperson, whether they're struggling or not, to start journaling and every day holding yourself accountable for what you do. So the Quadrant Journal helped me immensely. Look at your top priorities for the day. At the end of the day, show gratitude for something that's happened. It could be something at home, it could be something personal, it could be something professional. Something good happens every day. Write it down, focus on the good stuff that happened, eliminate any negative self-talk. Other things I would say, have a good career mentor. So somebody in sales, and my previous CRO is my mentor, shout out to Saj if she's listening. Let this person hold you accountable on where you need to be, on what you should be doing, and to help you to grow. And I would also say have a mentor that's a non-salesperson as well. So be able to look at sales from a different angle through a person who might be in a completely different role, could be in a marketing role. And the last thing I have to say here is invest in yourself. It's so important that if you think you're doing badly at sales, invest in a sales coach, hire a specific person to help you. Don't wait for your company to do this. There's no excuses. And if you can't invest in a sales coach, then there is so much out there in terms of, as we know, podcasts, books, and people on LinkedIn who you can follow who can help you be better.

1:22:16 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Amazing. I'm so glad I asked the question. So So you have listened to a lot of these. What's the question I don't ask that you wish I would?

1:22:27 Charlotte Lloyd: Oh, well, there's one you haven't asked me, which is what's my favorite failure? But I know you ask some people that, so I'm quite happy to talk about that in a moment. I would say the question that perhaps… you're covering a lot of really good ground. I think perhaps delve into more more about, and I know other people have mentioned this, how to avoid digital burnout. Maybe look a little bit into what some of their, more of their failures have been and what they've learned from that. Probably those 2 things, I would say.

1:23:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, man, I hope that the digital burnout thing is magnified by the pandemic. And hopefully that continues to subside and we can start moving about the world again. What have you done? What's worked for you on that front?

1:23:15 Charlotte Lloyd: For digital burnout? I think I worked from home 10 years before anybody else really did. So I moved out here to Madrid in my previous role, and I was working, you know, it's quite a unique situation. I actually was embarrassed at that point to tell people that I worked from home, but the way to avoid digital burnout is to completely… so do your working day, switch off from everything, computer, phone, in the evenings, and spend several evenings just being you and being around people that are important to you. And if it's reading a book, but… or going for a walk, going to the gym, try and avoid being in front of a screen is the first thing that I would say. Make sure that you use your vacation. I'll say vacation or holidays. I know in the US that you get less days, but it's important to… I was speaking with a prospect only a couple of weeks ago and I said, I went on holiday for 2 weeks. He was in Denver and he said to me, wow, that's quite a long time to go away. And I said, well, that's completely normal in Europe. You know, we get 25 to 30 days a year to take off. So that's a month. So I think in order to do well, you have to also take time off and completely disconnect. So that would be my sort of main point here to other sellers is take the time off, use the days that you have to take that time off and completely disconnect.

1:25:00 Scott Ingram: Excellent. Excellent. Well, my failure here is I didn't incorporate the favorite failure thing into kind of the core of my process. So I think it was Katie Jane Bailey who originally brought that idea to the show. So I would love to hear yours. What's your favorite failure, Charlotte?

1:25:18 Charlotte Lloyd: Oh, it goes back to 2007. So I was moving to Spain. And I saw a position come up at Google on LinkedIn. It was an AE role at Google in Madrid, and it was for a company that they just bought called DoubleClick, selling ad server space. So it was quite a technical role. I put in so much preparation, worked really hard, had an interview here, flew out to Madrid because was based in London at the time, went to Google's offices in London. Fantastic offices as well that they were back then, and free food, free drink. Had 10 interviews in total, had around about 5 of them back to back on video. So in 2007, people didn't really use video. I got to the penultimate interview. It was… so they interviewed me in several languages, interviewed me in English and Spanish, and then The penultimate one was part English, part French, and I was asked about sort of a question around the distribution channel for my prospects. And again, more about the prospects I'd be selling to, what companies they were from. And the guy spoke very fast and I just panicked. I somehow stumbled and couldn't think. Clearly what my answers were going to be. And I came out of that interview and then went to the very last interview. This was the 10th interview that went a lot better. But I remember thinking, I've allowed myself to be emotionally affected. I could feel my emotional reaction when that interview, the penultimate interview, was going wrong. So Obviously, turns out I didn't get the role. I was absolutely devastated because I'd attached a lot of emotional importance and self-worth to getting this job. I felt like a failure purely because I put in so much research and really thought that I prepared very, very well for the role. And I had. But there's sometimes going to be questions that, you know, you might not know how to answer. And I think I, rather than sort of re-clarify what I was being asked or approaching it in a calm sort of manner, I emotionally reacted and panicked. So I also think that it was a sign that perhaps the role wasn't meant for me. And going back to the book I talked about, Rejection Proof, the Jia Jiang who's setting out his experiment talks about the fact that his wife went for a role at Google and got rejected. And I thought, ah, this is exactly the same thing that happened to me. And then she applied for another role at Google, so completely separate to the first one, and she got offered the job. So, and another thing as well, for when I was applying for the role, they asked for a transcript of my results from university. It was really full on. But I think the lesson learned is, you know, that role might not be for you, it made me feel like a failure, but it made me really think about the fact that, you know, you could go for a different role within the same company and it doesn't mean that you're going to fail. And it actually put me on a trajectory of… I carried on working for the company that I was working for to move to Madrid and to move to a new country. And I actually went on to a different… I ended up coming here being self-employed, making commission only. I was on commission only. So every month I knew I had to sell something to be able to invoice, to be able to earn my income. So the failure with Google set me up for a completely new challenge that I totally wasn't expecting at all.

1:29:25 Scott Ingram: I'm loving this theme and these stories, right? This whole idea of… you've got a book that I need to read, the book that you mentioned about the rejection, this whole idea of a rejection plan. Yeah, I'm a huge, huge believer in things happen for a reason, right? There was something I applied for. You'll be hearing more about whatever this thing is I'm alluding to right now very soon. But there was a thing that I applied for last year and was rejected. And I've since reapplied, it got accepted. And that was what needed to happen. Had that gotten approved the first time around, I didn't know what I needed to know. There were some really important important things that had I launched that, that I know now that I just, I wouldn't have been able to do nearly what I think I'm gonna be able to do with it now. Right. So it's one of those, the failure, the rejection, it's also important and it's just part of the process, right? Really just understanding like, oh, okay, well, what was I supposed to learn from that? What do I need to take away? And that's one of the things you said really early on that really stood out for me is it's not just the failing fast. We can all be good at that. It's the learning.

1:30:32 Charlotte Lloyd: Exactly. It's the learning fast as well. Yeah, absolutely. Totally agree.

1:30:38 Scott Ingram: So Charlotte, we have covered so much ground. This has been so much fun. I wonder if there's something that we didn't get to that you were hoping that we would, or I just, I didn't ask this one question.

1:30:49 Charlotte Lloyd: Yeah, there is one question that you've not asked, and it's what would I recommend the listener do for 7 days or 2 weeks to challenge them?

1:30:56 Scott Ingram: Well, that's the next question. I wonder if there's anything before that? That's always the last question.

1:31:01 Charlotte Lloyd: What would I want to know about top sellers maybe in other organizations?

1:31:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:31:06 Charlotte Lloyd: I want to know what they do outside of their selling time. So how do they unwind? How are they staying competitive? How are they challenging themselves personally? What are those other sort of personal things that they do that are the secrets to their success?

1:31:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I mean, again, we've talked about a lot of these, but is there one thing for you that really stands out in that realm?

1:31:31 Charlotte Lloyd: I think taking time off. I think a lot of people, and again, depends on, I guess, where you're based and the industry you work in, but taking time off to unwind, being able to be completely honest with yourself and heal from what may have happened in your past. A lot of salespeople have had issues, if not with depression, than with addictions. So really using your personal time to be the best person that you can be and heal from any experience that you've had to allow you to get to the top.

1:32:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, greatness, greatness. And let's just make explicitly sure that we'll put a link to uncrushed.org in the show notes. Tons of great resources there. And of course, you can also go and look All the links to all the stuff again, top1.fm/141 or Charlotte-Lloyd will get you straight there. All right, Charlotte, we've come to that last question. So lots of things we've talked about. How do we make this as actionable as possible? So what are you going to challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week or two to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:32:40 Charlotte Lloyd: First off, I'm going to say step into your fear. Do something Maybe you go in a wind tunnel, maybe you do a bungee jump, maybe you go on a roller coaster. For some people, that might even be flying on a plane. Do something that you're totally scared of and overcome that fear. Learn to embrace your fear. So that would be my first challenge. My second challenge is, and this takes a little bit longer than 7 days to 2 weeks, is to try to learn another language if you don't already speak one. So I say this because it's really important to see things from a different perspective. I speak 3 languages, and I think it's a great way to see the world through the eyes of another culture. Your brain's a muscle, so you must always be flexing it. I know when Dustin was on your show, he loves Germany and he talked about speaking German. So learning another language will help improve your memory. Enhance your problem solving. There's an app out there which a friend of mine works for called Busuu, where you can get to grips with quicker with learning a language. So it makes it a lot easier for you as well. And the next challenge, the last challenge I would say to people is be intentional with who you spend your time with. So think about when you might meet a friend or could even be you know, a prospect, think about how you're going to add value to that person and how they're going to help bring value to you. How are you going to help each other? How are you going to use the time effectively that you spend together? Are you going to challenge each other to be better at something? Stay away from toxic people and learn to say no more. You don't have to be agreeing to do things meet people, learn to say no more.

1:34:40 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Charlotte, this has been really incredible. You're incredible. Thank you for taking the time to share this, to pay it forward. I appreciate you.

1:34:48 Charlotte Lloyd: Thank you, Scott. Can't thank you enough for everything that I've learned from your podcast and for where it's got me today. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast.

1:35:00 Scott Ingram: To be sure you never miss an episode, and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.