"Czechs and Slovaks do not know how to do business, negotiate, communicate. Learn to do that and you will gain a huge competitive advantage. Because market leaders don't have the best product, they have the best sales. And that can be learned."
Peter Strcula | CEO @ BLUVARD, s.r.o.
magine sitting in a boardroom full of people who are supposed to decide on your solution. But each of them has come with different expectations. HR is interested in the impact on employees, the technical manager wants implementation details, and the CFO just wants the numbers. How do you handle a situation where you have to impress everyone at once without them running to their cell phones within the first minute?
That's exactly what we talked about with Peter Strcula, a Slovak colleague and expert in business strategy and negotiation. Peter reveals why preparing for such a situation is crucial, how to present concretely and what to do to make sure each of your listeners finds what interests them. And it doesn't just stop at theory. Peter has also added concrete techniques and rhetorical techniques to help you become a master of presentations.
What's in store for you in this episode?
🔸 How to find out what individual listeners really want to hear?
🔸 Why is it essential to avoid abstract corporate phrases?
🔸 How to use stories and visualizations to create a clear in the minds of listeners?
🔸 How to handle a situation where the audience loses attention?
🔸 How to master simple rhetorical structures that will hold the attention of even the most critical listener?
In addition, we talked about why Czech and Slovak marketers often fail to communicate the value of their solution. Peter will guide you through how to explain even a complex product simply yet convincingly so that everyone can understand it. Even those without technical knowledge.
This episode is packed with practical tips, real-world examples and concrete steps you can try right away. Whether you're selling innovative software, industrial machinery, or anything , these strategies will help you better handle even the most challenging presentations.
WHOEVER MAKES THE FIRST OFFER WINS - THE RULE OF A SUCCESSFUL TRADER (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. If you what I'm doing for you, if you like Zážeh or my blog articles, if you haven't already, consider signing up for my newsletter list. More than 1,100 owners and directors of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies subscribe to it at this time. You won't miss any more of what I do for you, and you'll allow me to invite even more great guests like Peta. Hey Peta, welcome to part two.
Peter Strcula
Hi, thank you for the invitation.
How to present to several people with different interests?
Martin Hurych
We won't introduce you anymore, for those of you who jumped on this episode late, we'll refer you to episode one. We part ways as we present and have a bunch of disparate judges in front of us. We ended up having maybe a HR in front of us and then I rudely ripped you off to give it some momentum. So who do we have next and what about how to properly present our offer to this disparate body?
Peter Strcula
If we want to sell and we are in a meeting room where there are two, three, four, five, six people who are deciding and I am going to present a solution, I must not go in blind. That means I need to know from everybody what they care about and I need to have that in that presentation. That work starts before I even get there. The other important thing is that each one may have a different level of knowledge. That is, the experts who go to sell or present are so good at that expertise that it's natural for them to assume that others know what they mean. Once they're on mobile, they've lost attention, and it's hard to get Oudie back once they've lost attention. What three associations come to mind when I say the word banana?
Martin Hurych
A banana, then a banana at sea, and now I thought of the banana taped with 3M tape as the artwork.
Peter Strcula
For me, it's Tom and Jerry because Tom was sliding on it, then the gym because that's where I get my protein shake with a banana and yellow paint. That said, when we say something as simple as a banana, everyone thinks of something else. Now tell me what they imagine when I say synergy, process improvement, speeding up, cost savings, automation, digitalization, productivity. Everyone has a completely different fairy tale in their head.
The mistake is that we are too abstract. In terms of rhetoric, the bigger your audience,
you have to be more abstract, because you cannot say that I, as a minister, if you elect me, will introduce a 500-crown fee for booking an appointment. I need to say, the health system needs reform, we need to improve the health system, we need to improve health care. It is general, because I am speaking to the great mass, so says the Pope. You don't speak like the Pope, you don't speak to a large audience. When you speak to a small audience, one, two, three, five people, you have to be very specific. I also speak a little bit abstractly, because most of the people are listening, but when I am there I need to speak very concrete, not principles, not technical things.
The 10 year rule, if you can't explain it to a ten year old, you don't understand it. Explain it to everyone as if they were 10 years old, no complicated technical stuff and especially don't assume 's clear to them, they don't have that level of knowledge. Any moron can say a complicated thing in a complicated way, but to say a complicated thing simply, that's the art of rhetoric. If the people don't understand something, they don't ask, and if they don't understand it, how are they supposed to buy it?
Martin Hurych
As I see uncertainty growing in the market and you can't explain it properly, what you actually bring to them in that uncertainty, in my bubble, business cycles are rapidly lengthening, easily doubling.
Peter Strcula
Exactly, because if they don't understand it, if they're not sure why they should sign it and especially for big money. One tip on that rhetoric is that the person has to be able to imagine it. You need to draw pictures in that person's head. Have you ever read a really good book, then watched a movie and didn't like the movie?
Martin Hurych
Yes.
Peter Strcula
Why this so?
Martin Hurych
Because you made that movie in your head first.
Peter Strcula
Exactly. That is, you imagined the characters differently than the director imagined them. If I come in front of an audience who have an idea and I show them a different idea, I don't sell. I need to know their idea first, and in the second step, when I'm showing them something, I need to show it in a way that they can imagine it, and they can't imagine abstract phrases and corporate phrases. Tell me, how do you envision synergy, how do you envision tax optimization? Those are very difficult concepts, so I need to show them what that would look like in concrete terms.
I'll give you an example, Salesforce presented to clients that we're not a CRM, we're a complex technology that connects, you can't . Instead, it needs to be said differently. you come in the morning
to the office, open your laptop, click on the Salesforce button, and there you see your 7 salespeople. For each of them, you'll see what percentage they'll meet the plan by the end of the month at this pace, how many meetings they had yesterday, and for each of them, you'll see exactly how they finished.
In 5 minutes you have a perfect overview of your team. How will it improve your results when you have a tool like this? This is what you can imagine, but how can you imagine a digital tool to increase productivity of salespeople? I train different companies and sometimes I don't understand what they are actually selling when they try to explain it to me and I really struggle to understand that.
The experts can't explain it in terms that everyone can understand. Beware. A well-named problem is half the solution, so this is the problem that Slovaks and Czechs can't sell, experts can't sell most of the time, and experts can't explain a complex thing simply. This is the thing that can be learned. We have 15 different structures in rhetoric. When you speak for more than 40 seconds, you're already presenting, even if you're in a meeting, even if you're 1:1. There is one structure I can recommend here, and it's fairly simple. Tell me a simple word.
Martin Hurych
A flower.
The power of structure past - present - future
Peter Strcula
When I was a kid and I was 10 years old, I would come home every day and there was always a fresh flower on the table. My mom would pick them or buy them so we would have a nicer kitchen and every time I came home I could smell it and I was very happy and when I had dinner I would look at it and I had a very nice feeling. Nowadays we don't have flowers in my flat, I live in the capital and we don't know where to pick them and going to the shop every day and buying an expensive flower is nonsense. That's why I want to move to my family house in 5 years, to have a garden there, to grow our own flowers, so that when my children come home from school they always see one flower on the table and experience the same emotion as I do in the destve. What structure did I use?
Martin Hurych
I probably can't name it, but I see the story there and I'm actually totally there with you at your and I totally see it.
Peter Strcula
This structure was past, present, future. That means that when you need and don't have much preparation, this is the structure you can always use. In the past we did it this way, today it is done this way, and in the future we want to do it this way. For example, even with a client, in the past, attendance was done manually, you sent it to the staff, they approved it. Today there are cards or sticky notes for that, it has increased productivity. What we will be doing from next year is mobile based attendance. You go in the building, you leave the building because you give the card to somebody, but you don't give the cell phone. This is what the people will no longer be chewing off. Past, present, future is a great rhetorical technique, where I can be in the past for 2 minutes, in the present for 2 , in the future for 2 minutes, and I can hold attention for 6 minutes instead of 40 seconds. You need to use a structure for example, you need to be specific, you need to be able to visualize it and this is how to totally simplify the product because not everybody is as technical as you are.
Structure problem - solution - desire
Martin Hurych
You said there were 15, we used two, let's get one more out there before we move .
Peter Strcula
A simple technique is a problem, a solution, a desire. In the past there were such advertisements that this is the problem, the cleaning powder is not working, this is the solution, our powder. The drawback is that it is logic, logical problem, logical solution, so I am adding desire there. This is the problem, this is the way to solve it and now imagine how it will help in your life when this happens, how it will help recruitment, how it will help sales, how it will help brand. I'm going to logically name the problem, give a logical solution, and then emotionally create the desire for that better life that it will bring you.
Where is the difference between trading and negotiating?
Martin Hurych
Everybody's sitting on their asses about it, except for the shopper in the corner, who we were also talking about, saying, that's all well and good, but... That's the end of the sale, as I was taught in corporate training, and the negotiation begins. Would you see it the same way?
Peter Strcula
That is how it has been dealt with in the past, I see it a little differently. In my experience, a large number of traders cannot clearly define what is selling and what is negotiating, where the line is, so I will tell you now. That line is, I sell when the other person doesn't know if they want to buy yet. Once he wants to buy, then we go to negotiate what can be put in the contract, to simplify it. The negotiation is what goes into the contract, what goes into the order, what the price is going to be, what the volume is going to be, what the penalties are going to be, what the rewards are going to be. When the buyer says but, that's not negotiation, that's an objection, and I need to handle that objection. Negotiation usually starts when the other side asks what it costs.
I'll make simple, not when he asks at the beginning, that's a bummer, but when you have a business conversation and he says what does it cost. That means it makes sense to him, he wants it and now he's going to negotiate the price.I'm in a bargaining position at the moment.
Two mistakes happen. The first mistake, when I'm in that negotiation, I go back to selling. I don't need to sell anymore, he already wants it, he already wants to negotiate, that's the first mistake. The second mistake is that salespeople associate selling with negotiating, they start negotiating they've even sold. I'll tell you a real example, in my business about 20% of the clients don't find out the price until we send them the invoice.
That is, they call us, they book a training session, we deal with the date, we make the deal, we come in, we train, we send the invoice, so we don't even deal with the price at all. That's a paradox, I didn'it myself, if we don't have it in the company, but the whole point is that you need to sell first and then deal with the price.
It's hard to do that with buyers, but most of the time, even in a company, it's about the buyer not sitting down with you that company doesn't want to buy or if they're not seriously interested or if you're not in some sort of tender. Tenders are a particular group because a lot of times in tenders you're approached, but when you're proactively selling, the ideal is to sell before the tender comes in.
What is the biggest mistake in the negotiations?
Martin Hurych
Personally, I tell clients that if they're already there at that meeting, they already want to buy because they have so many options today of where they could be that it's actually a positive message. So let's move into the negotiation, we've already gone through the objections, we've gone through the deal, we've gone through the presentation. What do you think is the most common mistake in negotiations?
Peter Strcula
PodFor me, one of the biggest mistakes is the fear of losing business. The trader is afraid that if he gives a high price he will lose it, the trader is afraid that if he doesn't give a deal he will lose the business and the other party, if he is experienced, will sense it. This is the same as when a sheep meets the wolf. In one Chinese zoo they had a bear and a sheep in the same enclosure, saying how beautifully they can live together. The reporter asks them, can they really be at ease like this every day, all day long? He says sometimes they get a little caught up, but then it's cool. How do you deal with that? We change the sheep. When you're dealing with a really tough or well-trained negotiator, he senses that fear, he sees it and he starts pushing, so watch out for that fear. That's the most common mistake.
Martin Hurych
I would go back to the first episode for a few seconds. You said stats when you sell, even though you don't move the price at all. That means that the price negotiation, at least in theory, doesn't have to happen. Can you repeat those percentages?
Peter Strcula
Statistically, only 7% of customers will go elsewhere because of price, but 42% of customers will leave because they don't feel important enough. Price is often not the most important parameter and the fact that someone Negotiating on price doesn't mean that if you don't run, you're out, or if you run low, you're out. That's natural. I'm going to go trade, I'm going to open the negotiation, that's natural.
Martin Hurych
You also said, if I correctly, that about 2/3 of the cases would have ended in closure even if there was no price negotiation. Is that right?
Peter Strcula
Yes, this means that almost 70% of all business would have been closed without the benefit of the loan. I'll even say that I was once on an excellent negotiation training with a global unit about 15 years ago and we had a negotiation where our side wanted to buy at 100-150 CZK per unit. We went to negotiate and we as buyers wanted to buy ideally at 100 and maximum 150 per piece. We came to the negotiation and the other side misread the brief and made us an offer to sell it to us for 33 Kč. That's great for us, isn't it? What our group leader said, that's veÚa, we certainly can't negotiate that.
Just because someone is pushing you on price doesn't mean you have to cut back on price and if you have to cut back on price doesn't mean you have to cut back too, watch out for that. In selling there is sales, in negotiating there is profit. It' a travesty when salespeople take weeks, months or years to get a client, put in dozens of hours, and then in a few minutes of negotiation drop 2/3 of their margin and profits because they're afraid they won't make it. That's a huge problem.
How to defend your price in negotiations?
Martin Hurych
We should repeat that on camera, turnover by trade and profit by negotiation. It's obvious that specially in my bubble they meet overwhelmingly man to man and it's often an ego fight. What to offer or how to proceed when you know the statistic that 2/3 can get by without a cut? When you're up against someone reasonable, capable, who cares about their business and not themselves and that Excel, what do you offer them in your experience instead of price to defend your profit?
Peter Strcula
Let me put it this way, what is the main mistake you must not make. To simplify it again, when two parties are negotiating, most of the unpleasantness comes not from one side wanting too much, but from the fact that the asshole on the other side just doesn't want to give it to you because he pushed your red button. It's those 42% that I am not important enough. The first thing you need to do is never push the red button on the other side or that partner. We all have a red button and it triggers something different for everyone and it's often some complete bullshit. For example, my red button gets pushed when someone in the service calls me a young gentleman. First of all, in negotiating we must not make communication mistakes that offend the other side.
We need to create a relationship with her, we need to create positive emotions with herbecause if I piss him off, it doesn't matter what I do next.
The second thing is that I don't sell anymore when I negotiate. In negotiating, I usually make demands or I make exchanges or I make proposals. If I simplify it again, any specific tip, make offers and counteroffers, suggestions and counter-suggestions. A common mistake is that somebody comes to you, gives you a suggestion and you respond to that suggestion. You say, you can't do that, that's veUa, you're joking, no . People are very reactive. There was even the dilemma of giving the first proposal or waiting for the counter proposal. Those were the two camps. I like it best when I make the motion first. When I give a motion, the vast majority of UUs will react to it instead of them being able to clearly form theirs. When I make a motion, we talk about my motion and that's great for me. When you get a suggestion, don't respond to the suggestion, give a counter suggestion.
That is my recommendation, what moves the negotiations forward are proposals, counter-proposals or demands. Don't address what he wants, why he wants it, don't defend as to why you want it, this is what moves the negotiation forward.
Martin Hurych
When I start negotiating, I can see that they are genuinely . In a lot of the dealers I see around me, it's that red button, now that's a bummer. Do you get that when you hear a proposal or give your counterproposal that it's better for you than the former? You said at the beginning that you prefer to give your suggestion first. I'm assuming you have a presentation, there are first conditions, and you come out first with an alternative proposal. That's not a presentation.
Peter Strcula
The presentation is why we have to do it together.
Martin Hurych
But it's already obvious there's the price, the terms and conditions, that sort of thing. Now you see something happening and you're the first to come out with a second alternative proposal.
Peter Strcula
What I'll do is sell it through a presentation first, but I don't go right into the price. I'll ask right away, what do you say, we'll tweak the proposal so they're happy with it. That's exactly what we want.Most of the time the negotiation starts when they ask for a price. I already know we're going to negotiate, it's already sold, now we're going to negotiate. If I go too early into the negotiation, I don't negotiate enough. That's why I need to negotiate only when they really want it and then I go to negotiate and in that negotiation I give the first proposal. Whoever gives the first proposal gets the upper hand, or if they beat me to it, cool, I'll give a counter proposal.
I almost always make a proposal first when I know the business, I know the segment, I know the circumstances. The only time I ask for the other side's idea is when I have no idea, when I'm in a completely foreign market, in a completely unknown business. That's when I ask for a proposal and then negotiate it so I don't blow it. My client once did that, he came to the company and said, we'll do all this for you for 8,500 euros. The vast majority of companies say, it's veUa and they said, great, we have 20 grand to do this, we'll still save that. It's a shame.
How to get back in the game when "it's too expensive"?
Martin Hurych
You're saying exactly that a lot of companies will say, I can't do it, and that's where it ends because we can't negotiate and we don't want to negotiate. If somebody says, that's too much, how do you go back? That's a typical example of what happens in my bubble. You project your ego in there, you feel you have the best deal, you overdesign it too luxuriously, you sell the A6, but the other side would be fine with a Dacia. You don't know you've got it wrong at the start, they'll tell you it's too much. How do you get back in the game?
Peter Strcula
Here's the mistake in sales. That , when you're weak in sales, it's very hard to negotiate with someone who hasn't bought it yet.
Martin Hurych
You can't, because if he doesn't want it, there's nothing to negotiate. I'm more concerned with getting back in.
Peter Strcula
I need to go back to the analysis, because let me put it this way, if I sell him an A6 and he wants a Fabia, I made a mistake in the sale. I need to go back into the analysis and see where I made a mistake and therefore I need to reduce the number of units. I need to go down with the parameters and when he says, I like this, we want you, but we need a price of -30%, watch out, I don't want to take a cut of the margin, I want to take a cut of the volume or the parameters. I will ask which of these features we can up, which one we definitely have to give up. That way I will show him that he when he pushes on price, I will just reduce volume or quality or range or some features. He suddenly finds that he doesn't actually want the half version, he wants the full version and he just might be willing to pay for it.
I will say an important here, we have three different schools of negotiation and each school of negotiation has a slightly different approach. With the first school, which I think people are most familiar with, it's win- win negotiation, cooperative negotiation or corporate negotiation, where I ask more questions. There reaction in this type of negotiation is, what part of my proposal do you not like? I go back to the inquiry and I question it and I try to understand it. That's if both sides really want to come to an agreement, you have a good relationship there, you can increase the pie there.
On the other hand, FBI or hostage negotiation is a very effective method and very popular nowadays, and it recommends, for example, not to ask questions and to communicate as little as possible. There it rather goes by some alternatives, by giving different alternative suggestions and counter-suggestions. It is said that when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. I know one type of negotiation, I go at all of them equally. It is also good to know several schools of negotiation. Now it's about me deciding what style I'm going to play, who I'm going to play with how, and that gives me a lot of variability in those reactions.
To simplify it, the first school is a win-win negotiation, a purely cooperative one. The second school is actually Harvard negotiation, which is already a compromise, because Harvard no longer uses win-win. They call it expanding the pie, which means that we don't divide the pie in the , but we think about how to make it a much bigger pie. The third school is just hostage negotiation, or FBI negotiation. I grew up going to the first one first, then I went to the second one, then the third one, and now I pick and choose from each of those negotiations.
Why shouldn't you be afraid to negotiate?
Martin Hurych
What did we forget in the negotiation or the whole staircase, expert, sale, objections, negotiation, so that we could possibly move on to the last part?
Peter Strcula
Don't be afraid to negotiate. I don't know the exact statistic, but whenever you open a negotiation, you have about a 70% chance of getting something because the other side will want to give you something. Don't be afraid to negotiate and don't be afraid to renegotiate. For example, in the past, automotive suppliers have negotiated price once a year, a few years back, now twice a week. More often today, conditions are negotiated and renegotiated. If you are unhappy with something, love it, change it, leave it.
Either love it or change it or walk away from it and there's no point in doing it for a client you're on bad terms with, you don't feel comfortable with it. Either go out there and renegotiate or quit and another client. This is often the problem, people negotiate badly and then they're unhappy, they don't give 100%, they don't want to do it and so on, it's not good at all.
Martin Hurych
That much more frequent negotiation and the fact that we are learning it and the that it comes from corporations is why everything is currently overrated in the Czech Republic.
Peter Strcula
Alternatively, even more to the corporate win-win negotiation is the question where you can ask, for example, what are you proposing? What part of my proposal don't you like? How would you do it? So what are you proposing, how would you like to have it? Regardless of what you think, every day you sell, every day you negotiate. Every day you're selling your kids that broccoli, every day you're selling colleagues those ideas and suggestions and stuff like that, every day you're negotiating with somebody about something and yet these are things that you can EASILY learn.
If you're going to be selling something to someone your whole life and negotiating with someone about something, it's really worth investing that attention, that energy. In life, you don't get what you , you get what you negotiate for and you either sell yourself or somebody else sells you. Beware, this is something that is fundamentally beneath me, every business is always going to need a turnaround and it's always going to need good profitability, it's always going to need a good margin.
What is the most important part of the company?
Martin Hurych
This is all needed, I often see that you want your people to do this, but you don't actually give them any system. That's the fourth leg of the stool for you to build your coaching and training on. So what does a system mean to you?
Peter Strcula
Now, I might make someone angry, it has been said that the greatest value in the company is the people. I have a slightly different opinion, from my point of view the biggest value in a company is the system and the second place is the people who can create, upgrade or implement and maintain the system. My sister has now bought McDonald's for a million euros, 25 million CZK, because the is there, the manuals are there.
There's a system that if you follow, you'll be back to profitability in 7 years. That's why franchises are sold, because a franchise gives you a system that if you follow, you'll be in profit. A lot of times even manufacturing or technical companies, even though they have a system of manufacturing, they don't have a system of sales, they don't have a system of negotiation, they don't have a system of management. Then they say, there are no people, we can't find smart salesmen.
What is a smart trader? A smart salesperson is one who will bring his own sales system to be successful, that's not good at all. You need to create that system and the company needs to create that
a system that people with the lowest possible qualifications are able to operate. You don't need smart traders at all, you need a smart system.
Martin Hurych
It's that you take a trader that's currently available to you in the Czech Republic, throw him into the market and say, build everything the way you want. A year, two years later, it's grumbling on both sides where one side says, you're an asshole, you didn't give me anything and the owner usually says, you cost me 2 million and you didn't bring anything.
Peter Strcula
I would even say a bit confrontationally now that the leader has no right to be angry with his Oudis. He has a right to be angry at his leadership and the system he has set up for them. The company is supposed to be run by the system, the leader is supposed to energize the Oudis and help them to follow the system, but you cannot ask your Oudis to create their own system that they will follow, that is not possible.
How should a good trading system be built?
Martin Hurych
We may come back to leadership sometime in episode three, which we'll do some other time, because it's obvious you have a lot to say. So how should a good business be built for you
system? We've talked about 7 different types of sales, let's get to the technical, consultative type of sales.
Peter Strcula
The worst thing you can do is sell information to your team by word of mouth. Our brains distort, we forget, and that person will be afraid to ask you, how is that thing you've told me seven times? 's not going to work. The best thing is to have a manual. The ideal system is that when a new salesman comes to you, you give him a manual and he doesn't have to anything, a good manual is like a good joke, you don't have to explain it.
The person knows exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it and goes by it and it's not a bureaucracy for the traders, it's a terrible simplification. He doesn't have to think about it, he doesn't have to create it, he doesn't have to decide, he goes and sells it. Companies don't normally have this and, for example, when we write manuals like this in companies, the manuals are 10 to 100 pages long and go to different depths. I'll tell you how we lose clients, we make them a manual, once we make them a manual, they don't need us anymore.
Martin Hurych
It's clear, on the other hand I totally hear the traders, I prefer freestyle, I'm experienced and senior enough to handle it, I don't need any manuals here.
Peter Strcula
That is the second thing, that we need to convince those traders that it is good for them, because is really good for them. Most of the best jazz musicians are Uudies who have studied music and know the music damn well, and it's only when they know all the rules that they can improvise and make exceptions and break the rules. An amateur, a beginner, can't do that. If you like freestyle, great, this is a system that gives you some structure and if you have some improvements, say it, we'll upgrade it. When the best Michelin chef gives you a recipe for a cake, any upgrade will be for the worse and if you have a really good upgrade, say so and we'll change the recipe. It's a kind of guideline that shouldn't be done against the merchants, of course you should consult with them, get some of their know-how, but it should be followed in some way.
What we do is that we either write a manual, we make it into a video course, we make it into an audiobook, but the know-how has to be recorded somewhere, because those people forget. The best system is everybody knows what to do every hour of the week, every day of the week. When I was running a call center where we had 70 Oudis, we introduced call scripts and we tripled the success rate from week to week back to 15%. Half the Oudis went exactly by the call script and the other half, the seniors, they tweaked some things in there but they still followed those principles and that structure. There can be wiggle room, but first you need to have the boundaries of the field and some rules.
Martin Hurych
What should be in such a manual?
Peter Strcula
Two things, , the whole sales process, from reaching the customer, the active one, through the passive demand, to how to take care of that customer, how to increase their sales, how to retain them. The second thing is sales and negotiation techniques. Those are some scripts, some techniques, some structure. The person doesn't need theory, he needs to know exactly when he goes to the second meeting, how to conduct it, what to be at the end, how to handle objections, what questions to ask. It needs to be very specifically written down.
Martin Hurych
That means you have a business process in some stages. Let's say you've got 10 phases, you've got scenarios underneath that, and you've very likely described what the outcome of that phase is and what happens in that phase. Is that right?
Peter Strcula
Yeah. There are companies that can do it themselves, that's totally okay, and companies where we do it, for example, every company has a completely different manual. In one firm, for example, the manual has 51 call scripts, 51 different variations under different actions, targets and so on. In another manual there is no call script because there are other things that are important. The whole thing is that this is what makes you the value of that firm, this is the know-how of how to trade and how to do it. I'll tell you what the indicator is that you don't have it right.
If your traders have a better month, worse month, they have stronger months, weaker months and I'm not talking about seasonality. The other thing, when you have big differences in the performance of traders, that I have a super trader, a medium one and then weak ones, that's not good. It means that everybody is going through their own system and that doesn't speak to how smart they are or how active they are, but how good their own system is, that's not good.
Martin Hurych
What you're saying implies that you can't put the manual together without them, because you don't know the objections of the clients that they're telling them. That said, you can help with the process of creating that manual, however, the content is always up to that firm. Isn't that right?
Peter Strcula
The important thing is that every company can do it themselves. Where we do it is when that firm really wants to get it right. It's about us leading that process. First we mine how they want to have it, how the best do it, we design the whole process, and then we write it down. That's when that manual is in and we just upgrade it once every six , once a year. Companies also do it by making some Manual internal, that's , you don't need to have it perfect, you need to have it done in the first step.
It's certainly the best thing you can do in that sales department to put it on paper. I'll tell you why companies don't do it, decision paralysis. When you've got it in head, it's cool, but when you've got to put it on paper, that's a BIG commitment and naming it on that paper, it's not nearly as easy. You're actually going with your skin on the because you're showing everybody your thoughts and not everybody is comfortable with that.
Martin Hurych
What have we forgotten about the system?
Peter Strcula
CRM system. I am surprised how many small and medium-sized companies, even for example technical, technological or manufacturing companies, do not use a CRM system. What we were doing with one client we represent commercially is that he was generating leads through social media, he was sending them to us and everyone was emailing, calling or writing to us through social media. We then just closed it for a success fee.
The interesting thing was that they always sent us someone, every day, someoneSome leads, we would call it and either they wanted it or they didn't. Then we put a CRM system in place and we found that today we generate most of our sales not from those who say yes at the beginning, but from those who say no, now, call back in six months. With some clients we have that for a year and a we do that, we have 27 enrollments in there and eventually they said yes and from that we get most of the revenue. Those are the passive inquiries, I'm not even talking about the active ones that have that process in there longer. There's no chance to have that in your head.
Martin Hurych
I honestly don't understand the opinions that if you are small you just need Excel, when the Pipedrive license costs you 10, 20 euros a month, a completely ridiculous figure.
Peter Strcula
I'll give you a brutal tip now, Trello is free. It's better if you excel and don't have to pay anything.
Martin Hurych
Standard kanban is sufficient to start with. If the final 3-10 sentences of those two parts were to remain, what kind of Peter Strcula would that be?
Peter Strcula
The Slovaks and Czechs, most of them, don't know how to sell well and they don't know how to negotiate well and they don't know how to communicate clearly. When you learn that, you don't have to learn it in the U.S., you get a huge competitive advantage over them because the market leaders don't have the best product, they have the best sales and you can learn that.
Martin Hurych
Thank you so much for what you shared here, it was packed with information, practical information, thank you so much for that. I wish you well and that you train tens of thousands more people personally this year.
Peter Strcula
Thank you and if I may add, if it makes to you, I'd be happy to connect on social media. I was the second most influential creator on LinkedIn last year, so I'm putting the educational content on there as well, so LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, let's definitely connect and stay in touch. Thank you for inviting me, it was great.
Martin Hurych
I hope we have pushed you forward in trading, objecting, presenting, and today in this piece, negotiating, by a considerable amount. I know it sounds controversial, but you really need it. If you have one, two, three ideas stuck in your head or somewhere in your notebook, Pete and I have done our job extremely well. If that's the case, be sure to like, subscribe, or as I said at the of this piece, sign up for my newsletter, which is already subscribed to by more than 1,100 owners and CEOs of engineering, technology, and manufacturing companies. Then you won't miss anything I do for you.
Be sure to check out the bonus I'm going to break out of Pete, it'll be some highlights from these two episodes, so you'll have it to post on your bulletin board and follow along. All I can do keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.