In this episode, Mark and Robin Ayoub discuss essential strategies for successful sales, focusing on the importance of asking the right questions and building trust. Robin emphasizes the need for salespeople to inquire about budgets, decision-makers, and demonstrate genuine interest in potential clients. They touch upon the significance of creating an account map, using a verbal toolbox for effective communication, and tailoring approaches based on the personalities and roles of individuals involved. The conversation also delves into the Miller-Heinman process, highlighting the role of trust-building and the importance of maintaining a unified approach across the sales team.

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Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGn816JHLN0&t=23s

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This is the transcript for this episode:

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Mark Shriner [00:00]

‍Welcome to the Grow Fast Podcast, where we talk to leading sales, marketing, and biz dev professionals about how to accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow your business fast. Let's go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Grow Fast Podcast. My name is Mark Shriner, and I'll be your host for this episode of The Grow Fast Podcast. The Grow Fast Podcast is brought to you by MemoQ RFP, the easiest, fastest, and lowest cost way to process RFPs or provide security questionnaires and other important business documents. Today we're going to be talking to Robin Ayoub, who is the VP and GM of Lionbridge, Canada. He's also the president of the Canadian Language Industry Association. Robin is not only a great salesperson, he's a great sales leader. And he's one of the few people that I know, that thinks very deeply about all aspects of selling. Today, we're going to be talking to Robin about the importance of a sales process, what it is, how it applies, etc. But before we do that, let's say hi to Robin, Robin, how are you today?

Robin Ayoub [00:59]

‍Good. How are you? Mark? Good to see you again. Hopefully, already for you where you are?

Mark Shriner [01:05]

‍No, it's 8am. And we're at a like a cabin Airbnb. It's about 100 years old, up on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. My family's all asleep with sugarplums dancing in their head. And I'm doing a podcast. What else?

Robin Ayoub [01:18]

‍Did you guys have a good Christmas?

Mark Shriner [01:21]

‍Oh, yeah. You know, like, my kids are all grown right now. And so it's not necessarily about the presents and everything like that, even though we do exchanges. A few small gifts. It's just really about being together. I mean, I'm sure the holidays are the same for you, just just being together with your with your family and friends. Right.

Robin Ayoub [01:38]

‍Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, good to see you again.

Mark Shriner [01:41]

‍Likewise. Thank you. We've been on each other's podcasts, different podcasts, and so on. And it's funny because we haven't run out of topics to talk about. That's just sometimes you Mark.

Robin Ayoub [01:50]

‍Yeah, no, it does.

Mark Shriner [01:52]

‍And, as I said in the intro, you know, I respect your sales leadership, your personal ability, but also the fact that you think about this, because a lot of people, they just salespeople just go out and grab business and bring it back. And we all know that. It's not that simple. Because you're dealing with people and people are complex. Organizations are complex. But we're going to talk about sales comp, excuse me sales processes. And first off, let me ask you, what's the what's the what is a sales process versus not having a process what you know, what's the difference in you in your mind,

Robin Ayoub [02:29]

‍so not having a process that meaning, that means to me shooting from the hip, throwing mud on the wall, and hoping what sticks kind of thing. And having a sales process, at least some sort of a process. In your mind before you approach your target audience, whoever they are, it makes the job a lot easier for a salesperson, and it allows you to move the sales, the sales process one step at a time forward, and in a way that it's methodical, you know, and you can, because of the sales process that you're going to employ, you are going to have some predictable results. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and you know, you're selling you're selling but at least you have some predictable results, you increase your chances of a positive outcome, in my opinion, if you have a sales process in place. Now the sales process that you can employ, it will vary from what is the opportunity you're chasing? Who are the audience you going after? Is it a single threaded opportunity meaning a single decision maker, multiple decision makers influencers? Who are these individuals that could impact your sales process on the journey of closing the sale right? So the journey to close the sale it is a journey of course in our localization industry in the day to day that we're living now in the industry where we are everybody wants to get to that you know quick customer quickly close it move on to the next one. And in this is in my opinion, my humble opinion and I don't know everything obviously and I would not pretend to know everything. It comes from you know, having been in the industry for 20 years it comes from the misconception of the industry around what constitutes a sale it is not build it and they come not because you know how to do translation customers gonna flock to you. They won't unless you tell them who you are, and present to them a valid case of why they should choose to do business with you. And we'll go through the sales process while you do that. They're not going to choose you of course there's millions of transmission companies transmission individuals out there that perform the job. There ought to be a way for you to come in to your customers and present a business case why they should choose you.

Mark Shriner [04:45]

‍So I mean, you said several important things right there in one of them is having a process kind of alleviates some of the anxiety or the guesswork that comes with selling because I you know we know that sale This can be very difficult and very challenging from both from actually achieving the results, but also the mental aspect of God. What are they going to say? What's the next step? What should I do? Then there's all this guesswork. Right? And, and what if they say no. And it can be, it can be if you allow it, it can be very demotivating, or kind of depressing, you know, when you if you get declined, or you know, people turned down on several opportunities, but if you have a process, it helps you work through that. It takes out the guesswork, as you said, the other thing you said is that, depending on who you're selling to what that organization looks like, you may use different processes, okay? And I also like the fact that you don't just go in there and say, hey, sign right now, you've got to do your work first, right? You got to build that business case, I would say you also have to develop trust, because you know, if you're selling translation or any other service, they're not going to buy from you unless they trust. But let me ask you then. And I want to drill down on on all those areas. There are so many different processes out there. There's, you know, the Sandler snap challenger sales. I think that the you know that you've said before that you tend to prefer Miller Heiman, can you kind of describe what that is and how it how it applies to those, those different things that you talked about in terms of taking the guesswork out, and then engaging with the your customer in a meaningful way. Right. So

Robin Ayoub [06:28]

‍I'm just going to in order for me to apply the process for this particular discussion, I guess what I'm trying I'm going to try to do here is I'm going to try to envision a complex opportunity that we're facing, in a complex opportunity environment where you have multiple influencers, multiple decision makers. So let's go through some of those decision makers and who are who they are, who can possibly down the road could impact or derail or help you close the sale. So there's two things in an influence can do can either derail your opportunity or can help you close it. So let's talk about the financial decision makers. So the financial decision makers could be a CFO could be a procurement manager, anybody who has a hold of a check that they're going to be paying at the end of the day, that's the final decision maker on the financial side. So once we've satisfied and identified who are the financial decision makers related to this particular opportunity, or could impact this opportunity, I'm going to move on to the next decision maker and the next decision maker could be a technical buying decision maker. And that technical buying decision maker could be the could be the on the IT side on the information technology side, or could be the technical aspect of delivering the service. And the technical aspects of delivering the service could involve multiple, multiple facets. And this is where it gets really interesting. Because again, this is not just not a quick journey to closing the sale. So as I go through these individuals and identify these individuals, each one of those individual needs to be taught to develop a trust with, bring them to your side. And it's going to take some networking to get there. So if I'm talking technical, that means I'm going to have to satisfy the person who's going to be using the service directly using this service. That could be somebody who is translating on a day to day basis. The other technical buying decision could be the actual IT infrastructure does your software or does your tools as your services fit within the technical environment of that particular customer that you're going to go after? And the third technical buying decision could be a a security buying decision now was every everything aspect of it? Like it's got to do with a lot of IT security discussion? Does that fit that environment that you're going to be selling to? And how do you prove that this is a fit for them? And once we've satisfied the technical buying decision, now we're gonna get into the legal buying decision. So the legal buying decision is also very important. Am I talking to? Does my you know, when I'm talking about my contract, or I'm talking to my the T's and C's that I want, versus the T's and C's that the customer wants? Who do I talk to? Who do I satisfy? Who do I need to work with either on my side as an organization who I'm selling their product or on the customer side? Who is the individual who is more likely to take a look at our T C's, T's and C's and say, Okay, guys, you either come down to low bid, or we go up a little bit and we come to a compromise somewhere, but that needs to be absolutely satisfied. Now, this is the most important The fourth one is the very most important because we sell in a diversified way. There's not a single decision maker that can say I'm going to accept this particular transaction vendor or not. This is goes now we call it the user buying decision. And that's where and the user influence is very, it's like it's like running a political game. campaign and you're trying to get the votes. So if you have 100 users in a company and 100 users, some of them are currently let's say they're using some other some other vendor, and you're trying to displace a vendor. So some of them are happy with the current vendor, some of them are not happy with the current vendor. And it becomes a a vote of confidence, if you will. But you need to figure out who are these users and not necessarily go after 100 users in this case? No. But you got to go after some of those, what we call the Fox, and the fox, meaning that you're that individual that's going to guide you maybe a user, in this case, he's going to say, well, I liked you, I develop a trust with you. I like what you're offering. I like what you're saying. And now I'm going to walk you through the maze, the internal maze of how, who, and where you need to have a conversation to specifically go after some of those opportunities and close them now, when we go after all these four types of types of influencers, you cannot neglect any one of them. If you neglect one of them. And one of them is not satisfied, you cannot play the role of saying, Oh, I offered a good price. That mean, you know, the technical buying decision has to be on board automatically. Why? Why? Because I offered a good price. Well, that's not how it works. So yeah, I mean, good price is a good price. That's it, it stops right there.

Mark Shriner [11:23]

‍So you got the buy and possibly have the financial decision maker. But the technical guy goes, Hey, you got security issues with your platform? Or you don't handle the right file types? Or, or, and, or, or right,

Robin Ayoub [11:37]

‍yeah. So all these influencers, and I call them at this point influencers because they all collectively funnel together, let's say imagine them all in one boardroom at one point after you submitted your proposal. And they're negotiating, or they're talking about your proposal. And they all have to give pros and cons about what you're offering. If you don't do the pre work before. And they know they don't know you, they don't trust you. All they're evaluating is a piece of work or piece of piece of paper, really, they're not they don't know you from Adam. And you tried to just win based on either specific things like either you lower your price, or something else, I don't know. But building that human connection people buy from people at the end of the day, right? With all these elements that I talked about. And if you do it beforehand, and it's not a quick win. This is where you know, somebody hires a trustee hire transmission sales, or localization salesperson, you know, expect them to do you know, $2 million in a quarter, it's complete impossibility, to be honest with you, I don't know what dream land they're in. And the other thing too, if it is not seen, it's an impossibility. It's sales. It's a time factor. As you and I talked one time, right before, if you give me time, everything is possible. If we're running up against the clock, and you saying every quarter, you need to submit some sort of an unrealistic number. Without building any relationship without knowing who these people are. It's completely impossible, completely impossible. So where we're talking about here is focus on the Miller Heiman opportunities where you need to follow or chase a complex methods.

Mark Shriner [14:51]

‍So you're kind of getting into like the macro process of how you manage your your book of business, your portfolio or your career, right but you can't just go after through these big whales, and because you know, it's going to take a year or two, maybe to close those big whales, in the short term, shorter term, you need some of the smaller opportunities, you need to work those. And I would argue there's a couple of reasons you need to work those one is, you need to plant as many seeds as possible, because you never know which ones are going to grow. But also, the more seeds you're planning and the more interactions you're having, the better you get at understanding customer needs, and also presenting your solutions. Because if you just deal with one or two big opportunities, and you're waiting for a year, you're not going to get good. And you're going to have anxiety because you're you're you're working from a position of scarcity. And you're like God, I only have one meeting this week, what am I going to do? And I, I'd be terrified, right. But when I'm doing three or four meetings a day, I'm just like, This is awesome. It's so fun. But I want to come back to that back to the the Miller Heiman the all the different specific buyer personas. I love that. Because I've seen it time and time again, you know, where we get brought in by the user influencer, who actually they're looking for a better solution, they'll reach out. And they're super, super excited. And during that discovery call, if you don't find out who these other people are, you're like, Yeah, we got this deal. And then all of a sudden, you get the legal or the technical blocker, which I find to be the ones that they almost prefer to say, no, they're not really interested in the platform, they're just interested in does this, is this kind of somehow make my job difficult? Does it put us at risk at all? Right? And if you don't address that they have veto power, right? And so you could just be going like, Hey, man, the users love us. And you get this technical blocker, or, you know, and so you got to figure it out. Let me ask you, when you're doing, I guess you would call it a discovery call. You tell me what you call it. But how do you uncover who these people are? And then how do you reach out to them? Because talking to the user influencer, you're going to use one set of language or, you know, you're going to talk about the features and the benefits and things like that. But when you make that initial contact with the technical, or the legal people, or even the financial people, what how do you frame the conversation? So

Robin Ayoub [18:53]

‍It's about discovery, right? So remember, I mentioned somebody like, how do you how does one individual go to a company that never been in contact before? And how do they find a way around that company, right. So and pick a company, any company fortune, 500, etc, US or Canada, it doesn't matter. You have to find a window to get in, and that person or that individual that got you in, that could help you become that they can, they can help you do a bit more discovery. But and that individual I mentioned to earlier in my earlier response as the fox, that individual is going to guide you through the maze, right. So however, in a general discovery call, there's always room for questions and, you know, getting to know one another, and as a salesperson and as a customer, potential customer. And those questions are always can be asked like, the typical question that nobody asked I find is, do you have budget for this? And you know, it's as silly as this, you know, the money. At the end of the day, the transaction needs to close and somebody needs to pay for it? Do you have the money to pay for it? And so when you say, well, who's you know, do you have budget for this? And if the answer is yes, I'd say well, who holds the budget for this? Like, is it your budget or somebody else's budget that approves it assigns it, etc? And at the end of the day, like the more digging you do around that topic, and we're you know, people are afraid of asking the question, because they're afraid of the answer sometimes. And maybe the negative Astrodome.

Mark Shriner [19:58]

‍So true.Please go ahead.

Robin Ayoub [20:02]

‍Maybe some people get turned off by, you know, people saying, oh, you know, I asked the question, maybe it's not my place to ask the question. No, it is your place is your salesperson, you have to get

Mark Shriner [20:12]

‍Some people don't ask a girl or a guy out for a date, because they don't want they're afraid they're gonna get set, you know, shut down, but go ahead.

Robin Ayoub [20:18]

‍Annd then, you know, on, you know, as you do these discoveries, and they do what you call what we call the account map. So you got to draw the map, and you got to put names in boxes, and that name and boxes that will be your cheat sheet, if you will, as a salesperson. I'm going after a fortune 500 company, I know who I'm going to be talking to. Now I've got boxes and these boxes on the diagram. And so literally diagram there's a form you fill it out and and you put these names in it, and then you start to figure out like Okay, so who am I missing now? What box is still empty that I need to fill out and you start asking the questions. If you're not inquisitive, if you're not asking the right questions to the right people, and you're not finding the information, a lot of these information today could be researched etc. But but it's part of the conversation that you would have with individual and demonstrate two things. It's not us being vulnerable as sales individual. And we ask the question and demonstrate to the audience that your interest that you're interested in getting to know them. You

Mark Shriner [21:09]

Know, back to the point that you made about sometimes people are afraid to ask the questions. And I agree with you. Sometimes it's because they're afraid of getting the wrong answer, or they're afraid of getting shut down somehow. Yeah. I also feel that people sometimes they're not sure how to phrase the question. They feel it's awkward. And that's where I have something called a verbal toolbox, which is, for every situation, you should have a go to phrase one or two phrases that you can just throw out there. If somebody asks you a question that you don't know, you say, that's a really good question. I haven't heard that before. Let me check with the team and get back to you. No big deal, right? You got to just you gotta you gotta roll with it, right. But I was on a sales call with one gentleman, who was tend to be he was a technical support person. And he had taken a sales training class during the call, and so I'm leading the call, but somehow, and he was talking about the technical solution. But at the end of the call, he goes, Oh, yeah, I have one more question. He goes, are what did he say? He said, Are you the decision maker? And I was like, oh, you know, so I probably I coached him after that. I said, I probably wouldn't say it that way. Because you, you think about how you just spend an hour talking to that person? And then you ask them, Are they decision maker? It probably doesn't leave such a good feeling. Maybe you could say something like, can you let us know? Like, who else will be involved in this decision? Right? That's right. And so but if you but if you just kind of shoot from the hip and throw that out there, it can be awkward. So I'm a big proponent of figuring out those key phrases in advance putting them in your toolbox and pull them out when needed. So let's say you've got now you figured out who the technical and the legal people are, how do you approach them? What do you say? So

Robin Ayoub [22:57]

‍This is where we need to figure out how much networking is being done and how important this account is to you, there's a lot of hard work needs to be done at this stage. So we need to identify these individuals introduce ourselves to Alright, so and one of the things that could be done and you know, we've I've done it before, is that I'm working with so and so like this is an either via conversation or via an introduction, email, or of any sort, or however you want to reach out to this individual, a conversation is much better. And but why would they take a call from you? Or why would they accept a meeting from you not knowing who you are? Thus the answer? And the answer for that is, look, I'm working with your colleague in department, ABC, they're considering our solution. And I understand you are part of the decision making process when it comes to specific area BT legal finance, etc. At or technical. And I want to introduce myself, and I want to tell you a little bit of what we're doing. And hopefully, that helps in the decision making. I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying earlier, internal people from the customer side, generally, the dispatch on the technical side of things generally do, you know, they don't want to do anything? Because they don't want to change easier? Yes, right.

Mark Shriner [24:18]

‍Yeah, it's a risk, it's.

Robin Ayoub [24:22]

‍So the idea is to gain again, you we always talk about in this industry about trust, and trust, on a variety of annual gets like a prism almost right. So it comes from a variety of individuals who are going to be coming in touch with a customer and I, and as you imagine yourself, like, you're not one individual working with a customer, but you're part of a team working with an intimate with a customer, there's many other people behind you or beside, you are going to be the touch points, working with this particular customer. Everybody needs to be on board with that strategy, to be able to continuously build a relationship with this customer to close. Because if I come in as a salesperson and my tech person, or my engineer or whoever else, they're going to be in touch with these customers. And then we're not on the same boat, we have to be unified as to the goal, as a customer, as we approach these customers, even the the lawyer who are on our side who's going to be working with their lawyer on their side, there's got to be some sort of an understanding that we're trying to win this customer. We're not trying to upset them. And we got to come to a compromise somewhere. So because one of the items, you know, not unrelated, but I throw it in there is some people asked me like, What is the you know, how do you grow a company? I said, Well, that's the owner or the entrepreneur asking the question. The answer to that is, before you answer the question, you may want to make sure go talk to your operations team. Do they want to grow the company? Do they want are they excited about growing the company if they're not two things, either you excite them somehow or you change them if your objective is to grow them Any, because if we're not all on board, the customer consents the trust issue that you've talked about it. It's very fundamental. You cannot walk to somebody off the street and say, Hey, trust me. I mean, I've received bad movies about this one, but you got to develop it over time.

Mark Shriner [26:11]

‍Yeah. So what you're saying is you could have internal blockers, so you can go in business or, or you can attempt to win business and you need their support. And they'd be like, I don't know, you know, and so, do we have the capacity? Does this violate some of our standard T and C? You know, how are we going to deal with this, and you need to get them on board as well. And so let's, let's, let's put that over into the parking lot at I'll come back to that a second. I also want to come back to the whole thing about, you know, growing a book of business with planning a lot of seeds, small and large opportunities. Come back to the to the Miller Heiman kind of conversation in trust. How do Okay, is that part of the Miller Heiman process in terms of is there an established way to build trust? And how do you what methods do you find that are effective to accelerate the trust building process? Because trust takes time? Yeah,

Robin Ayoub [27:09]

‍Of course. So what are the key standard practices when using the approach of Miller Heiman? Which I don't know if people remember this or whoever took Miller Heiman can attest to that there's a blue and pink sheets. And those forms you have to fill out. And today people are like, so busy and they're running 1000 meetings per week? I don't know. They probably skipped that part. But at least you do it mentally or you do it via email, or you're scribbling somewhere. And the objective of that is to document where are we now? And where are we going to be going after? What are we going to try to achieve after the call. So every call from the introduction forward? It is moving the yardstick one yard at a time forward. So meaning, meaning that as a doctor, as I'm going to talk to Mark today, what do I What do I like to achieve from what do I hope to achieve from this call today. So I'm trying to hope for instance, I'm working with you today. And I'm hoping to achieve maybe a follow up call, maybe a call with one of your colleagues of interest. That will be the goal, like, of course, the ultimate goal is to close the $2 million account. But Rome was not built in one day, you have to you have to lay the foundation, you have to build it a brick at a time.

Mark Shriner [28:19]

‍Absolutely. And so, you know, and again, we come back to the trust thing, it takes time, I found that, for example, you know, with the different personas, there's, there's similar but sometimes different ways to accelerate trust. So for example, with the technical and legal, maybe they're looking at things like, you know, do you have ISO certifications? Are you SOC two compliant, or you know, things like that something kind of where they can, or you could say, you know, we're working with these other customers with with the fox, for example, maybe it's just about that user experience and your responsiveness to anticipating what they what they need. With financial again, they might have their own different kind of perspective in terms of hey, can I trust you or not? Like, you know, how long have you been in business? How large is your business, etc?

Robin Ayoub [29:07]

‍That's right. So every individual has got their own way. And today, you know, I've done a podcast a few weeks ago on the topic of using AI and sales tools to help you with that. So one of them is discovering which persona Are you dealing with? And and so one of the things I we demoed on the last podcast with Bethany, is the application called the HumanIK. Before you get into the call with anybody, it gives you a bit of an analysis on the individual and tells you are they you know, are they going to be hard to convince? It gives you a little bit of a persona description? You know, are they detail oriented? Are they going to be requiring a lot of proof when you talk to them about something, Show me the evidence. So once you've mapped out who you walk in, into, you're not going to be walking into a conversation anymore. And be shocked or be surprised to the reaction you're gonna get because you're gonna be prepared. If I'm going to be talking to individual who's an introvert, I know they are going to be conversationalist like you and I we're having right now and life is going to be great. If I'm going to be talking to an extra Sorry, sorry, an extrovert versus introvert. If I'm going to be talking to an introvert and extrovert, it's okay. But if I'm talking to an introvert, I have to figure out a way to pull the data out of them. I have to figure out a way to pull them into the conversation. If somebody who's hard to convince like, you know somebody in legal they're going to be more of a documented individuals. So show me your T's and C's show me where you know, the latest, show me your SLA, what do you you know, what's your guarantees? What's your, all that stuff needs to be documented? It cannot be just verbal and you You better walk in with, with that kind of information to a meeting, a lot of times meet people go to a meeting nowadays and they're not prepared. And they're not prepared for the conversation. Even you know, if you go on not necessarily on a complex meeting, if you go into a small meeting somebody requiring something transaction or something small, but still, you need to put your paperwork together. If you're not, if you're not walking in with some paperwork, and the customer says, Yeah, I like what I'm hearing, then you take two weeks to send the paperwork.

Mark Shriner [30:53]

‍It's not gonna work. This is our simple agreement, just you can just initial here. And, you know, we'll see you later. Exactly. So, just before that you were talking about, by the way, I mean, I am agreeing with everything you said, have said so far. And so if I, if I don't state that please don't take it that I don't, because it's just like, I think we're totally on the same page here. But you were talking about that, you know, you want to keep the momentum going forward. And every single activity should get you closer to that sales. And, and that's something that I treat as gospel, when I'm going out with a, you know, a sales colleague, and I say, what's the purpose of this meeting? And they say, Oh, well, we're just gonna meet with them and get to know them. I'm like, no, no, no. I want to know what we're gonna get out of this meeting. Because if you go into a meeting and not knowing what you want, you're probably not going to get it, right. Sure. So I want I want us to progress to that next step. And then you can start to map out how we can do that. But let's say, let's say when you go into a meeting, you got a face to face meeting, which I always say get the meeting, I mean, because you're not getting you know, you got to get the meeting, you get the meeting. And what do you do to set up the meeting, you know, because I'm gonna leave it there. Because some people they're like, they go in, and they just kind of have a conversation, I'm sure that you have a plan. But let's get through that.

Robin Ayoub [32:03]

‍So when I set up a meeting generally depends on the individual, if it's brand new individual that I'm dealing with, and I haven't dealt with before, you got to use a professional way of setting up those meetings, you know, structure them, lay out what the agenda for the meeting, for instance, shared ahead of time, the talking point, if it's no agenda, like you don't have anything, you know, to detail, maybe high level, whatever the agenda items are, make sure you share them ahead of time. So they can be prepared and up prepared. And you'll be used, those agenda items will be used as a I want to say as a guideline for the conversation, because when you're in the middle of a conversation, sometimes things tend to slip because you get into a different a deep into one topic, but you haven't covered all the other topics and the clock is running. And so you got to keep an eye on the clock, because that individuals time is precious, it's valuable, they allocated 45 minutes or 30 minutes for you. You're trying to address as many points as you can within the 30 minutes. And I want to get by the end of that conversation to some action items. I want to get like, what is the net? What are the next items that I need to put in place here to follow up, whatever the follow ups are sending a contract or scheduling a meeting, having another conversation with another person from the same account, but whatever it is the action item, I want to develop some action items that we both agree on. customer and vendor needs to agree on what the next action items are. And then people you know a lot, not a lot of people do it. And I think it's a common practice. It was common practice, I don't know if people still do that I still do it is sending a summary of the meeting, after you're done with the meeting. And in whatever you've done, whatever you've agreed to do, they specifically are scheduling a meeting, don't wait a week to schedule a meeting, if you if you agree to schedule a meeting scheduled meeting within the next like on your way out, like I used to send follow up meetings. And I still do from my phone. You know, after I captured everything, as soon as I hit the parking lot, you already have a you already have your follow up meeting email.

Mark Shriner [33:58]

‍I love that. And so there's a couple of things there. If you make a commitment, and you say, so what I'll do is I'll summarize this meeting one, you've taken some pressure off of them, but you've made a commitment to them. And if you say I'll send you a summary by the end of business tomorrow, but you send it to them early. So I always like to make a commitment. I'll get you that information by so and so or I will check this for you. And I make the commitment, and I make it time bound. And then I always get the commitment back early with more than they expected because that's that's accelerating trust. What's one of the trust building techniques is make a commitment and keep it so I make the commitment. I try to leave every meeting with some commitment made so I can demonstrate the truth. The other thing I think what's important is when you go into a meeting, I love the fact that you said you know send an agenda because if you don't send an agenda or an outline, or at least at the beginning of the meeting, say so, you know here's what I was thinking we could talk about today. Is there anything that you'd want to add on to that and at the end The meeting, I'm hoping that we can, you know, conclude with this. So you've put it out there, right? If you don't do that either in written form, or you risk the customer taking into going off over here, and then the hour goes by very quickly, and you've made no progress at all right? And you walk out of there going like. So. Now you're in the meeting, talk about the importance of asking questions.

Robin Ayoub [35:25]

‍So we all expert on what we do. And we love to talk, we love to talk with salespeople, right? We love to talk about. We love to talk about products, we love to talk about services, we love to talk about what's good about us as individuals, and as the companies that we represent. The biggest thing is in sales, which I've learned over the years, and it took many, many years to learn it because it's never perfect. You always it's like, it's like training your muscles, right? So you got to keep training, is the listening part. And open ended question. I never ever I always like this is in the back of my mind, it's been in the back of my mind, like for 3040 years, I will never ask a closed ended question. Unless if I'm stuck somewhere, it always has to be an open ended question as to why what in how? And never ask a yes or no question because you're gonna get to know generally.

Mark Shriner [36:19]

‍Give me Give me some examples of your favorite open ended questions.

Robin Ayoub [36:23]

‍So can you describe to me the current process of how you deliver translation and why.

Mark Shriner [36:31]

‍Awesome. Yep. And, and, ya know, I love that one of the things I asked is, you know, could you describe the perfect solution? You know, what would the ideal solution look like for you? If we work together six months from now, a year from now, and we meet to evaluate the relationship? What would need to happen for you to say this was a home run, you know, just get them talking? And they're gonna give you the key to the sale right there. Right, you know, by this question that you asked in terms of understanding what their current processes are, because then you can understand that optimize. But

Robin Ayoub [37:04]

‍But one of the things that was, you know, it's always missed in, in in the entire, not just necessarily localization or but entire sales process, as general, as a sales professional, is coming across a centac. You genuinely care about why you're asking the question. You're not just asking the question, because somebody told you, your boss, or mark or somebody told you, hey, you should be asking the question.

Mark Shriner [37:27]

‍Know what to read, if you don't want to read a scripted question.

Robin Ayoub [37:31]

‍This is where people fault like they fall all the time is because they are coming across to the audience as Yeah, somebody put it in an email for them. You know, in the next meeting, you should be asking the question, if it doesn't come out naturally, please don't ask the question. Well,

Mark Shriner [37:47]

‍I'm sure you get sold too, because in your position as GM and VP Lionbridge, you have vendors that approach you right there selling technology solutions like that. And what I found is, I will take one or two of those calls a month, because maybe I can use the tool, the platform, but also I like to learn about the newest technology, tools and technology. And I like to watch how people sell. And what I found is more often than not, they'll say, can we have a half hour of your time, and we can introduce the platform. And I want that's what I want is I want them to introduce the platform. But they'll spend 20 minutes asking too many qualification things qualifications that have scripted, just just to your point, right? Doesn't feel sincere at all. And I feel like man, you're just wasting my time, you could have sent me those questions in advance because these are strictly qualification ones, right? We're in the meeting. I think once you have the meeting, the qualification should be done. Right. Now. It's getting to know each other in terms of like, what are you here's, here's how the solution works. But maybe you can. Are you seeing something similar? Yeah,

Robin Ayoub [38:51]

‍I get you like a lot of people they call me and they're trying to sell some solutions. And they're trying to ask me questions, and they come across mark, as you're asking the question not to get to know me, you're asking the question, to serve an internal purpose and internal process that you have. And here's, here's an example, in the box good. They're trying to box you into something they're trying to put you into a box, either the size of the customer you are by the number of employees you have or the dollar you spend, etc. And then they could put you into a different process. Because as you know, most companies have various processes to various size customers. If you're a small customer, you're in the small customer hub. If you're a medium sized customer, you may be getting like an account manager that gives you a call once a year. And if you're a big customer, you may get like an account manager or business development manager, and they will talk to you more often. I do believe like this is where things like fall apart for me personally, because as an individual, I want first to be appreciated as an individual. And if you're not talking to me as a as an individual that you're interested in doing business with me. I don't know if I want to continue that conversation if I'm continuing amortization, just because I'm being polite, but it will not take another call.

Mark Shriner [40:03]

‍Yeah. And especially if you, you got the call with me because I wanted to see a demo. And then instead of doing the demo, you spend all that time doing the qualification stuff, it can be annoying. But back to your point, if you ask sincere if you come across sincere and you ask questions, because you really want to understand about the customer, I think it's important. I think the other thing is, depending on the questions you ask, you can come across as one somebody that enhances the trust. But the part of the reason it does that, because you're out if you ask intelligent questions that help the customer understand what some of their own challenges would be. And sometimes you might ask something like, you know, have you thought about this? Or how do you handle that? And they're like, Wow, that's a good question. We that's, can you, you know, and they might even ask you, what are some of your other customers doing? And now you've built some trust, because you have demonstrated your expertise? That's right.

Robin Ayoub [41:02]

‍Absolutely. Any. I want to give one more tip here to people who's listening to this is that the next the next evolution, more than to the next evolution of how you ask the question is by baking the question into a conversation. People respond better to conversations. If you bake the information gathering into a conversation, then you don't come across as an interrogator. You come across as what both to individuals are having a conversation getting to know each other. First, you have to figure out those that individual that target individual do they agree to meet with you to get to know you get to know your company, the getting to know part? Once you've passed that bridge? And we'll open the we're into inside the conversation of getting to know one another? Let's have that as a conversation versus, you know, somebody told me, you know, sales one on one, ask 1234 questions, this will destroy the conversation completely.

Mark Shriner [42:00]

‍Totally agree. And especially going back to your earlier point, if it's closed, closed ended questions, because then you feel like you're being interrogated by the police. So earlier, before we before, hit the record button, I think you mentioned that, you know, you use Miller Heiman inappropriate opportunities. But like, for example, when you deal with the government, you do something completely different. Can you talk a little bit about that. So

Robin Ayoub [42:22]

‍when you are working in not necessarily just the government, but anywhere where there is a closed loop sales process, basically, you're not allowed to, to do ACTIVE SELLING, you still do a relationship building, etc, you can still get to know the people. But you cannot, you're not going to expect the government to come in and start using the government as an example. But could be banks or whatever, to come in and award a contract to you without going through a formal procurement process where you know, the wild world area gets invited to it, everybody in the world gets invited to it. Specifically, in certain scenarios with government, that's a that's a given, although you, you know, you can go in network building relationships get to know you can have a conversation with them, but they're not coming directly to you. And they're saying, Hey, Mark, you know, here's a contract, give us your product that has to go through a formal process. Now you do the work the way we're in every, every environment is the same. So if you work with multiple companies, sorry, multinational companies, or fortune 500 companies, they have their own procurement process as well. But in some cases, you're able to work at a division level or directory level, and close certain deals without going through, you know, the complicated process, there's still process to go to, but you'd be one on one process versus a, you know, this is a wild, we're a company wide area that we need to outsource in a in a in a formal procurement process kind of thing. So. And in the ladder, for instance, just to give an example, with the with many rules in place right now, for US and Canada. In some cases, if you take somebody for lunch, for instance, they're not allowed to pay you, they're not allowed to let you pay for their lunch, for instance, right? So they tried to keep that whole influencing thing, they don't mind they, you know, you want to go for lunch and get to know people, but they're trying to figure out and I think this started with the survey, and actually, I'm not sure if that's what started it, but I think I'm not an expert on that area. But I think that's where it started that influencing too much. We're in a public domain. They're trying to remove that. So now

Mark Shriner [44:37]

‍That's that's a huge challenge. Because again, part of the sales is relationship building, and hey, you know, Hey, Robin, hey, with that, why don't we go grab lunch? And we, we spend a fair amount of time you know, building rapport, maybe talk a little bit about business, but it's nice to kind of get out of the office and then you have that, that that relationship, doesn't mean you're gonna get the sale, but at least it's a start, right? Yep. And when you take that away, it makes things more challenging. You know? So I'm wondering how do you deal with that.

Robin Ayoub [45:05]

‍So it's more of a, just a public networking. And, and this is where you know, a salesperson is required a lot of times in our industry, because we're not a big industry, we don't have, in some companies or medium sized company, they don't have one individuals focus on government and another individual was focused on other other things, but maybe one individual is focusing on multisector. In a multi sector environment, we have to be able to work with each sector based on its requirement in the government sector, in the public sector, in a regulated sector, you have to use networking as your tool. And any chance you got like for networking, you have to take it be at a conference, be it a an event where government is present, or whoever your target audience are not necessarily just coming in our present, you have to be in there, rubbing elbows with them, talking to them, getting to know them, etc. So your name is not stranger to into them anymore, right. And then when the formal procurement process is launched, and they see your name, you're not some sort of a strange guy they don't know anything about it'll become familiar to them. And although you know, you, you gotta win on your merits. And nobody is asking here, I don't think in a normal sales process, you're not asking people to buy something, that it's not validated or substandard, or you're trying to do some sort of like, you know, government at the end of the day, or customer in general, at the end of the day, they need to pick the best and they have a process to pick, they're not necessarily the cheapest, nobody's talking about the cheapest anymore, although in some cases, we still see, you know, entities, whoever they are private or public sector buying the cheapest, but they're more focused now on the human aspect of it, you know, I'm seeing a lot more discussions around, you know, who is your team? You know, where are they located? Are we gonna be able to access to them? Are we gonna be able to talk to them? Are you just going to sell me and then give me an email number or an email address and, and somebody will get the after sale is becoming more important now in the discussion. After this. I totally

Mark Shriner [47:12]

‍Agree with you. You know, you talked about the the the professional networking and the importance of that, and in just becoming known to potential buyers. And I know that you do a podcast, localization fireside chat. And I'm wondering, is that part of the rationale for it? And you know, in Why do you do the podcast? Because I have really no idea. Why do you do your podcast, which is, which I love by the way,

Robin Ayoub [47:38]

‍I hope I hope people like it. I don't know. I mean, I feel like we're making some progress. I don't know. But in 2024, we already have like several exciting ones lined up for recording, I just published one this morning was Jeff Allen from SAP is pretty interesting. I didn't know he sings. So now I found out the new thing. So it's Pretty good luck. Good roll. I never heard of that song before I gotta hear.

Mark Shriner [48:03]

‍That's look for people that we don't know, that's the localization or luck industry. But that's really lucky.

Robin Ayoub [48:10]

‍So from my, from my, from my perspective on why I do podcast is started with me is like, I've seen a podcast I've you know, various one of them. And I've seen them the way they're structured. And, and I do feel like I remember like in that's always been for me, like how I started with the industry 20 years ago, right. And I started going to the industry 20 years ago, industry events like Loke world, I think it was the first time it was hosted in I think that was the only time it was hosted here in Montreal, and I attended it. And I came from a tech background from a telecom background in the technology side thing, and I thought, up till today, I still feel like this industry has a lot of potential, but there's got a lot of things missing in it. And that, you know, that conversation that is open conversation, nobody in this industry, I don't know what it is, they're scared of each other or something, I have no idea. Nobody, nobody in this industry can sit down and talk to their competitor, I think like, who are they? Like, why are you so worried about that, you know, you should be able to go to other industry associations or industries in general. And you know, people are collaborating the writing white papers together. They're doing things together to advance the industry forward. It seems that everybody in our industry have built a little cocoon for themselves, and shelter themselves in it. And that's it. I'm happy with the world the way it is. There is a danger in that because if we don't open the conversation, if we don't get to know one another, if we don't expand the conversation. There may be worlds around you that you don't know about. They're either past you, and now you're in the dust of the industry. Not talking about you personally or just everybody in the industry. Think Goodness, goodness. So there is this is why I started the conversation in the podcast now. Is it helping me personally? Of course it is. Is it helping me professionally? Of course it does. Now there is a commitment for that, like, I didn't know how to do video editing now I do. And there is a, you know, reaching out to people booking them, there's a logistics and I do that myself like nobody else is doing it. And of course, people ask me the question million times comes up, you know, his Lionbridge involved in that. No, they're not. I interviewed the CEO, like I'm talking to you right now. Like I interviewed everybody else. When I read John. This like, it's a self starting, I started as my individual initiative, my personal initiative. And I think it's helping in expanding the conversation. We just passed 100,000 views on YouTube. And collectively, I mean, we have like about 50 videos now on YouTube. Congratulations,

Mark Shriner [50:47]

‍Man. That's awesome. Thanks.

Robin Ayoub [50:49]

‍I mean, for localization, like I tell people for localization, you know, for other industries, this is peanuts. But for localization, it's a good thing. Because,

Mark Shriner [50:57]

‍I mean, like, you were saying that our industry events, I mean, you know, the biggest events are like local world and Gala, and local world, you might have six 700 people, which is nothing if you go compared to like, if you go to a Microsoft event in Las Vegas, and there were 40,000 people there, right. And company, all different types of Microsoft partners, in kind of supplemental technology providers there. And it's, it's interesting, because the collaboration, I think, sometimes people will try to keep their cards close, closely held in our industry. I would say for example, the ALC is a little bit different, because it's small, medium sized family run translation agencies, and they talk about a lot of common challenges that they companies have their size face, like secession planning, for example, or how do you how do you scale to the next level? That's kind of, in my experience, unique though, I love what you're doing on your podcast. Because you're, you're doing something similar to McHugh talks, maybe maybe a little bit more in depth. And we have different styles. But but you know, you're talking to these people, and they they open up. And that's learning opportunities. I mean, I learned I took a bunch of notes when you were talking to Benny or for example, you notice, it's like, wow, this is this is great stuff here. And I've met Benny several times, but until you know, I listened to him on your podcast, I had never kind of had those conversations with him next time I see him. I'm gonna pull them aside and say, hey, you know, you were talking about this? Let's talk more about it. Yeah, you're doing, you're doing a great job. I do also want to talk about for people who don't realize it, it's a lot of work. To, when you start with a podcast, there's there's all this foundational work that you have to get in terms of where you're going to host it, the artwork, the descriptions, and you know, so on and so forth, getting it out on different platforms. One of the biggest challenges when you first start is getting guests because they're like, how many episodes? Have you done one, two? Because this isn't even real. So so we're that because this is the second episode of the grow fast podcast, brought to you by MemoQ RFP. It's only the second episode, I greatly appreciate you coming on here. Because you know, that it's not easy. The other reason I appreciate come on here is because every time I talk to you, I learned from you and I love learning. I love talking, you ask my wife, I just never shut up. I also I also like learning and I took a page of notes here. Oh, wow. It's in this 53 minute conversation. So I think I should start referring to you as Professor Robin from

Robin Ayoub [53:36]

‍No, look, I appreciate the talks as well. I've known we've known each other for many years, but we recently started talking more regularly. I mean, we've known each other for almost 20 years now since the CLS days. And I always love talking to you and not necessarily you know to do you a favor anything like this. I truly genuinely love talking to you like I really enjoy having a conversation with you. And if you're close to me, I bet you will be one of those guys I'll be hanging out with having a beer if you drink beer or something.

Mark Shriner [54:05]

‍Definitely and yeah, the feeling and respect is totally mutual. And a Robin I really appreciate your your time and income and on the grow fast podcast. I wish you a remainder of these amazing holidays and a great 2020 forehead.

Robin Ayoub [54:19]

‍Absolutely Happy New Year to everybody and thank you Mark for allowing me to be part of this conversation.

Mark Shriner [54:24]

‍Cheers. Cheers.

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Apple Podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grow-fast-podcast/id1721972847

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