Beyond the Hard Sell: The New Era of B2B Sales with Alex Sardinha

Jon Coogan (00:11)
Welcome to Mindset Mavericks. I'm Jon Coogan. I'm the host and I'm joined today by Alex Sardinha He's a former door-to-door salesman turned multi-award winning business to business lead generation expert. And he's also the founder of Inonda, which is an agency helping businesses grow. And what I want talk to Alex about today is his journey from that door-to-door salesman to being a business to business sales expert. So welcome very much. Thank you for joining me.

Alex (00:42)
Thank you, Jon. It's pleasure to be here.

Jon Coogan (00:45)
So, where I wanted to kick off, really like hearing people's stories and hearing people's backgrounds. And I want to find out a little bit about you and what made you change from being a door-to-door salesman to where you are today. So, can you me a little bit about your history?

Alex (00:46)
So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, Jon. Yeah, so I went to university twice, I dropped out twice. So it wasn't for me. I wanted to make money ASAP. So I thought, I was reading the book, Richard had a poor dad. I don't know if you ever read it. Yeah, so it's a well known book. And one of the points it makes is about starting your own business, which is what I wanted to do for a very long time. I thought about it in college. And he...

Jon Coogan (01:13)
Yeah.

Alex (01:25)
in the book mentions that if you want to start a business, you need to get good at sales. And if you need to get good at sales, there's no better place to do it in door to door. So it's funny because I apply to a lot of roles, just sales roles in general. And they came back to me one one in particular and it was this place called innovation.

And I went into the interview the first day and when you go to door to door, it's a hundred percent commission. So they kind of try to sell you into it because it's a tough gig and you're working crazy hours and you're working six days a week. What they didn't realize is that was already sold. It was like a hitting two birds with one stone. They promised to teach me sales and you could open up an office at the end of it. So I didn't need any more convincing. I jumped into that.

Jon Coogan (01:51)
Yep.

Alex (02:08)
Did that for a year and built up a team of seven. And it was great. It was tough and very hard, but it gave me experience that I wouldn't have had anywhere else. I don't think an 18 year old kid would be in charge of a seven man team elsewhere and learn what I did on the, on the, on the job, especially when it came to being resilient, because I think that's what makes or breaks a lot of salespeople is just, you know, you're getting constant rejection and

Jon Coogan (02:30)
Yeah.

Alex (02:35)
when it comes to door to door, you're getting people slamming doors in your face, shouting, you're getting them to fight. It's crazy. Especially I was kind of knocking doors in Peckham and in all these areas where, yeah, I was going into estate blocks in a three-piece suit. And yeah, I was lucky to survive actually. But I got through that. And by the end of it, mean, Christmas time rolled around. I lost some of the team because it was just cold. It was raining.

Jon Coogan (02:41)
Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Alex (03:05)
when you do a full day's graft and it was like 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. you'd get home and you'd made no money. So it was very difficult. So at some point I just decided, you know what, let me move on from here. It was good whilst it lasted. And I went into cold calling. So this is quite interesting because we were just talking about the pandemic, Jon. And one of the things that I think a lot of companies or people in general,

Jon Coogan (03:10)
Yep.

Yeah.

Alex (03:29)
During that period of time, struggled with was the transition of how to do sales. When you were used to going to events, going to exhibitions, shaking people's hands. And then now you're on a screen and a zoom video and you had all sorts of instances. I had clients who were like, their camera was aimed up their nostrils. It was just ridiculous. But you kind of take a step back. And when I was doing cold calling, I had that similar experience, which is

Jon Coogan (03:52)
Yeah.

Alex (03:59)
damn, I'm just on the phone to these people. I can't see their face, can't see their reaction, I can't gauge whether they're listening to me. So I had to kind of relearn cells and did that again for a year before I moved into events and exhibitions. And that was again, a bit of both. was doing the calls. This was before LinkedIn. You had to pick up the phone, speak to gatekeepers, try and get through to them to pass you onto the decision maker. So that was a skill set in itself.

But I also got to travel the world. I got to go to places I wouldn't have gone otherwise. I went to Moscow, I went to Ukraine, I went to Panama. Talking about shipping, you was mentioning the work you did that got affected by the pandemic. I was doing a lot of logistics in that space in the shipping industry. yeah, you learn a lot from it. And now I've got to experience how SMEs and enterprise companies were marketing themselves. How do they go into market?

Jon Coogan (04:35)
Wow.

Alex (04:56)
And it was primarily through the old boy system, which was cold call in. If you weren't cold calling, you're going to exhibition and events. And that was it. And LinkedIn was there. I knew digital was there. didn't know LinkedIn was there specifically. I'm not gonna act like I was the genius that figured this out. I was lucky enough to bump into a mentor of mine who was already a multimillionaire. So this was a year into starting in Honda. But the premise just to...

Jon Coogan (05:09)
Mm.

Alex (05:26)
kind of ended there was to start an agency that was digital, because I saw that was the way that the land was moving. I got to a point in the exhibition and event space that I just felt like, okay, I need no barriers. I was in a big organization. When you're in big organization, sometimes there's no room to grow. And I don't think I was right for it. don't think it was there for me. I think it was more myself and I just needed something of my own because...

I just, I feel like the passion that I needed to really be the best I could be. And the only way I was going to find that was through launching something myself. So that's what brought me to Inanda. I mean, I started it and eight years on, it's still running and still learning a lot.

Jon Coogan (06:11)
Yeah, it's fantastic to hear about some of your previous experiences. And I want to ask just a little bit what that actual cold calling going around door to door was like, because you've mentioned a few things and, and slightly dodgy moments that have happened, but what's that actually like mentally to be knocking on doors constantly?

Alex (06:23)
Thank you.

Yeah, it was interesting because I come from being a bit like in secondary, I was kind of shy in primary school, was very shy. So I liked it because it was challenging my comfort zones. I remember my first door, I didn't want them to answer. I knocked on there and I was like, please answer, please answer, please answer. And they answered and I gave a pitch that I was trained to pitch and it was very, it was very quiet.

and you have your senior leader at the door and he's kind of saying, speak louder, speak louder. And that went on for about a week, but you get into the habit of it. And I think one of the benefits or the strengths I have is just the ability to make a game of things. So I didn't take it so personally when someone slammed the door in my face. Maybe it came from the secondary school I to, because I went to rough secondary school. So had to be a bit...

Jon Coogan (07:24)
Yeah.

Alex (07:26)
You had to embrace challenge, otherwise it would defeat you, right? You can't take everything too seriously. So it was tough because sometimes you're knocking doors, it's raining. I've had a van splash me head to toe, so I'm drenched and you're knocking doors, you're not making any money for the day. So you can end the day feeling like, wow, this was tough.

Jon Coogan (07:31)
Hmm.

Alex (07:53)
and you do have those moments where you're like, is this worth it? But I think at the time I had a bit of brainwash mentality where I was like, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make this work, I'm gonna make this work, I'm gonna make it work. So that helped me, I think, weather the storm. And funnily enough, I got paid more in other roles, but I think I've never been so passionate in a role since starting my own business than that role because...

Jon Coogan (08:11)
Mm.

Alex (08:21)
of a few things. One was that they would train you every day. So that you just fostered this sense of learning and this sense of command camaraderie, because everyone was in it together. So I took a lot from it. were masters of motivation. And you can't

not have a good mindset and last in that longer than two weeks. Like you have to have the ability to be able to take a rejection on the chin and move on and not take it personally. So that was, yeah, it was definitely a tough, tough gig, but yeah, looking back on my insight, was worth it.

Jon Coogan (08:54)
Yes, if you... And if you were going to say you take one lesson away from doing that job or one key take away, what would be your one key takeaway from doing that door-to-door knocking?

Alex (09:05)
that's a good question. I think it was just that it was just the being able to, especially in entrepreneurship, if you've got a business or even if you're in a role, everyone's experienced this, which is that things don't always pan out how you want. The life is not like this. It's never like this. And it's those downturns. And I think in that environment, it was magnified. You're getting loads of downs because you're getting rejected constantly and it's face to face and

because of that it's just so much more intense. that just being able to weather the storm and take a step back when things look all doom and gloom and just realise, you know what, it's not that bad and it will get better. So you're only one door away, you know.

Jon Coogan (09:53)
Yeah, and when you...

And you mentioned as well, had a team, think it was seven people by the end of it. So when you are in that environment, how do you motivate a team when you know how bad it is yourself?

Alex (10:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, the funny thing is, I grew the team mainly by just wrangling in my friends. So I was like the recruiter for them as well, because they were supposed to be passing me people to train, but I just ended up building my own team of my friends. So luckily, I, we could have a joke and a laugh about things, but they were definitely like, it was interesting to see some friends that I thought would be very resilient, and easily embrace it. And they found it more difficult than others that I thought, hey, this guy doesn't take no crap. So

Jon Coogan (10:12)
Yeah.

Mm.

Alex (10:37)
for him to get the door slammed in his face, he's gonna not last another day. So it's interesting to actually be surprised by that. The way I think we stayed motivated was just to recap the day to talk through what went wrong, what went right.

and just having that as an exercise to do every day. Sometimes you just need to vent your frustrations out and that allows you to release your steam. And also just to be able to also highlight some wins, even if you didn't make a sales day, what were you proud about? And I think that also is something that a lot of people don't do. They just look at that one outcome.

and they don't reward the actions. The actions are far more important than the outcome. The outcome is out of your control in a lot of instances. The only thing you can control is the actions. So if you've done the actions well, then that's a good story. That's a win in my books. Over and above, you might get lucky and get a great outcome because you knocked two doors and those two people sign up straight away. You've done your job for the day. You've got your KPI, you hit your target. But that didn't really in reality reflect what the win is. The win is on.

the actions that you took. in some instances, going the whole day and having loads of conversations and going no matter what till the very last door is and maybe just making a cell on that last door, not even then, but you kept through it. I think that was what we rewarded more was the perseverance more than the outcome. And that takes some of the pressure off of the outcome because if you're just valuing yourself on a specific outcome, then anytime you don't achieve the outcome.

Jon Coogan (12:00)
Yeah.

Alex (12:15)
you're going to feel shit. So don't do that. Feel good about yourself more often. And the way you do that is by focusing on the things you can control. So that's how we stay motivated is just looking at those two dynamics and making sure we focused our attention on the important things.

Jon Coogan (12:31)
Yeah, I think that's a great, great piece of advice that you've learned very early on. And it is difficult to do partly around being rejected, knowing that's not the end of it. And just treating everything as bit of an experiment. So it's not a success or failure. It's you just test things out and see what works and then just build on that. And I think that's a really great mindset to have. so going into your second role, then you talked about doing cold calls. So it's kind of similar to the first one, but was that now to businesses?

Alex (12:50)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was business to business. So that was my first taste of speaking to gatekeepers. And yeah, just being in a cold call centre, was 40 of us. It was the role where I made all my friends, like I made a lot of friends, like it was, I never had a place where, you know, this is 15 years later, and we still got a group chat together, because it was just such a fun environment. There's a lot of jokers. And that's where I learned

the power of like, I looked at the top performers and there's some standout key attributes they had. And that's what I started to absorb because I was bad at first. I didn't know how to make the sell. And I was just headbutting through as many conversations as I could. And there was these guys that were making half the calls and hitting double the numbers of...

because we were selling law publication books. So it was an exciting thing. It's like, spend 200 pounds on this book about law as a small business. And even for myself, again, it was something that I couldn't even comprehend. I was like, if I was a business owner, I be spending two to 500 pounds on law books. What am gonna do? I'm never gonna read them. So it was a tough one. But again, did that for a year and it was a very enjoyable experience.

Jon Coogan (13:56)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, and in terms of the differences you saw between selling director consumers to businesses, what were some of big things that you saw which was different in how you had to approach it?

Alex (14:32)
the sophistication of the person on the other end. It was, there was more questions being asked. You had to be a bit more, you had to ask more questions. Whereas when I was door to door, B2C is more emotional, Ed. You can, if you've got the charm, you can open a door, smile, shake a hand, tell a funny joke, and you can win them over and...

That was it. When you're on the phone and you're speaking to B2B, you're having to ask questions that will allow them to understand for themselves where the value is, as well as be able to tell a good story. So I think when you can do that well, you are far more successful in the B2B space. And that's something I didn't learn just then because that...

I still wasn't as refined as I should have been. was still making sales. Back then I was like 21 or 20 and I still didn't understand the concepts of selling. So I was just being successful but not knowing why in a lot of cases. And I wasn't the top performer there but I was able to hit target enough to just be able to not get fired kind of thing.

Jon Coogan (15:47)
Yeah, I know one of the things that you do speak about is the kind of classical hard sell, quite aggressive sales tactics. And is that something that you, that was kind of pushed onto you in those early days or?

Alex (16:02)
Yeah, Smiling and dialing, hitting the numbers. Yeah, that was it by any means necessary kind of approach. And it tells you some good things because I think there's a fine balance where people are sometimes too soft and they don't know, they feel like it's, they don't want to offend anyone's feelings, hurt anyone's feelings, and they don't ask for their cell. And they're so scared of it that

there's no direction to what's being done to the process. But yeah, in those days, it was much more on the other side of things where you're of coming in by from me, and you're trying to make sell on the call. And it was funny because, but in both instances, both in the door to door and in the cold calling.

for law publications, I had instances where people just handed me their credit card details. Someone gave me their credit card at a door and just went post it through the letterbox after you've done, sign me up. And then another person on the wall, couple people on the phones are just like, yeah, I want this. And I was like, okay, cool, I'll take your card then. that was my claim to fame in this cold calling company was that I was one of the only ones that was getting.

credit cards and I did it twice, which yeah, most people didn't do it once. So it was quite interesting that, but yeah, like as I've gone on, definitely you don't want to be taking that approach. And I think that again, comes down to, it's not even a good feeling. It was a very stressful environment. Like if I was a lot older in age, Jon, would have been feeling a bit more, I think just stressed out by the whole situation, but I was young.

Jon Coogan (17:22)
Wow.

Alex (17:46)
I was just having fun with it. was carefree, didn't have bills to pay, didn't have kids to look after, didn't have a house, didn't, you know, so it's a lot easier to just go with the flow then. But yeah, again, you want it to be an enjoyable experience for both parties and that doesn't come from that kind of environment.

Jon Coogan (18:06)
So I'm going to get you to dive into demand generation in a second, but I want to find out and get you to explain what exactly that means to you. But where is it that made you think we need to change the way we're selling, we need to move away from traditional selling to demand generation?

Alex (18:15)
and

I think that the nowadays, especially after COVID, buyers are sophisticated. Back in the day, they didn't know, like when I started in Honda, it was LinkedIn as my core offering after a year, once I bumped into one of my mentors and he showed me the way, the light. But it was...

Even back then, it was a conceptual sell. was, it was people thought of LinkedIn as a recruitment platform. They didn't understand it. And now people use it as business development and it's not something new or exciting. The same with buyers nowadays, they prefer to read a lot of their information online. And if you are approaching them, it needs to be as a valued advisor. So it's not about this hard sell anymore. They already

able to do a lot the research outside of you. So what your job now is, is to be able to provide valuable information and then layer valuable insights on top of that information based on their situation. That's where you become very valued. And that's where the conversations really become more about coming together and looking at it from the same perspective, rather than like face to face, hey, we need to make this still happen kind of approach.

Jon Coogan (19:44)
So would you say that that's where the kind of issues are with traditional sales tactics are now is that it's actually just missing the mark. It's not what people need. there's so much, there really is so much information out there that you need to have a bit more on top of just the sales pitch.

Alex (20:02)
It's crowded now. So back then, again, LinkedIn, I was sending out a thousand, two thousand connection requests a month to four thousand maybe even. And because no one was using it, I could go, hey, do you want to have a meeting about this? And it would work. It was printing means it was no problem. But then everyone starts doing it the same with your email inbox. You get tons of emails and most of it, you don't even click open on it. You just scroll through and you go, which one's important? And because of that,

it becomes very hard to stand out. So there's this increase because everyone knows about automation and we're consistently getting bombarded by this, that it becomes ineffective. So you need to be able to stand out of the noise in some shape or form, right?

How you do this is by being able to present something value upfront that is little risk, little effort to the person that you're reaching out to and solves a big problem. If you can do that, then you stand out above all the noise because you're not asking for anything no longer, you're gifted. And if you have someone knock at your door, they just hand you a box of chocolates. If I had a box of chocolates doing door to door that I could hand out to every single person before I pitched them.

I would have got no doors slammed in my face because it's disarmed to you, isn't it? It's like, okay, you gave me a beautiful box of chocolates, gift wrapped. So that's kind of how you have to think of the margin, which is that now your job is to produce some really good content and help solve problems that is entertaining, that is educational, and that people will value so that when you do reach out to them, they go, hey, this is awesome. I like this guy.

Jon Coogan (21:19)
Yeah.

Alex (21:42)
And then from there, they actually understand more about how you can help them. And that's a much more enjoyable experience for both parties. And off the back of that, you can build relationships. And that's what I think is a key factor. So just on that, I did this whole mistake. I built a team of like 10 sales reps and we just, we were like in a bit of a chaotic period. went, okay, we're going to change the business round. We're going to address higher SDRs for everyone.

and they were just, I thought that was the solution. I thought, yeah, you just place callers on this, it's gonna work. And you place callers on the campaigns and they would struggle to book meetings because they were just trying to book meetings. Again, same kind of noise was just being, hey, do you want this? Hey, do you want that? Who do you want this? And there's nothing came of it apart from one guy who's now my, basically heads up all the campaigns.

Jon Coogan (22:19)
you

Alex (22:34)
And he was just bringing meetings and he was making no calls. And I was like, what the hell are doing? And he's going, I'm just sending out the guide. I'm sending out this case study. I'm staying on top of them and I'm giving them this. I'm giving them this resource. I'm giving them that. And then they just, you know, then I'm asking for a meeting and they're coming back and they're saying, yeah. And I was like, damn, there's a guy next to you doing like 2000 calls and he's not getting what you're getting.

Jon Coogan (22:36)
Mm.

Alex (22:58)
you're smashing it out of the park with a lot less effort and you look like you're having a lot more fun with it. So that inspired us to start looking at demand gen and how to expand on that success. And that's where we started to come across the kind of tactics that were most successful, such as LinkedIn lives were working really well. We were trying to get in front of, you know, Fortune 500 CEOs and C-level executives. We had someone calling the phone.

They got two meetings if they were lucky a month. We got them, we got 300 people into a LinkedIn Live. And it was like, my God, we did that with far less effort. And off the back of that, they educate themselves. You come back to them, ask them how their event goes. It's a lot softer and it's a lot more informative and it's a lot more valuable for both parties. So yeah, that's kind of the direction we took and how we got there, if that answers your question.

Jon Coogan (23:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, it really does. And I think it is, as you've alluded to, it really builds up trust with people, builds that relationship before you start doing any sales pitches and try and try and get into sell things. And I was going to try and build on that really. You've mentioned about some of the tactics you've used and the set within your businesses or see things that you've done with your customers.

Alex (23:58)
Mm.

Yeah, with both our business, kind of, we own medicine. So a lot of what we use for our clients is like, so for example, we've niched down into EdTech, right? We were working with every company was working with the UN Habitat. We was working with Randstad. We used to do loads of big name brands, loads of SME businesses. And we was going through this cycle of motions where we was an expert to no one.

and we couldn't provide as much value to one specific niche, right? And they always say niche down and it sounds a lot easier when you say it, but in reality, you're like, I'm gonna miss this business. I'm gonna miss this. What about that? I'm gonna miss this opportunity. So you have to get through that mental game to be able to then actually say no to a lot, to be able to say yes to a few, but that becomes actually where you drive the results. And yeah, for us, that affinity we had with EdTech and

a lot of the same mission objectives in terms of making the world a better place, in terms of making decisions faster so we can live a better life longer and change the world forever. That was like for me, kind of, especially having kids and looking at, wow, what is in on that? What is this going to be? Is this just a money play? And even when I started to grow the team, I was finding more enjoyment from actually the people than I was from the money. I was like, yeah, this is where I'm finding pure joy because money comes and goes. about...

If again, outcomes actions, outcomes, am I just in it for the money? Or is it the actions that I'm taking that I'm actually finding the fulfillment in? And I realized that quite early on into NONDO. And that's yeah, that's we pivoted into edtech. Now we're working with specifically edtech. We've got a couple of companies around that, but we're helping them to just take advantage of what we understand, which is that, yeah, these LinkedIn live events, creating groups, creating communities, creating...

podcasts, creating interviews, creating white papers that allow you to go to market and actually help others first. And then from that comes your way of being helped yourself, right? It's kind of that whole you give to get kind of play. So.

Jon Coogan (26:30)
And with niching down, I know that's something that a lot of people struggle with and I've certainly been there where you worry about what you're going to miss out on as opposed to the benefits it's going to bring. At what point did you have that realisation for your own business?

Alex (26:38)
after this.

Yeah, I think we, we decided this is like four years ago. And I was like, and we niche down into one, but I feel like the team wasn't fully behind it. So we kind of did it with one foot in one foot out. And then we're like, let's see, it's not really working. But then I was just after growing that sales team, I was like, something has to change, man. We're just doing everything for everyone. And yeah, like I'm

So you kind of take these risks in business where you go, okay, I'm gonna put my foot down, this is where we're going. This is what we're doing. And I'm ready to risk the business on this, this gut feeling I have. So it just came about just from going around that circle of learning over and over, the spiral and just going, okay, okay, okay, okay. Now.

Yeah, we're kind of two foot in and it's working a treat. It's so much more enjoyable and we're finding so much more opportunity from it. And the clients are so much happier and there's so much more to be able to offer. Now we've got like a network of investors that are specific to EdTech. So then there's the, you kind of go deep, isn't it? Because you've got so much more that you can give them.

Jon Coogan (27:58)
Hmm.

Alex (28:02)
not just from a campaign perspective or consultancy perspective, but actually from a network perspective, because you start making the network that is important for them. across strategy network and systems, you've got it all rather than when you're a generalist, you can't really leverage those mechanisms as much. So yeah.

Jon Coogan (28:22)
Yeah, I understand it can be quite difficult implementing change in a business anyway, and you've hinted at some of the staff wasn't fully behind it. Initially, how do you actually get people on board and how do you show them the value and bring them along on the journey rather than being opposed to it?

Alex (28:42)
I just think like we're a small team. respect everyone to the utmost and I think that comes back and it's just...

It's, think you, I'm very good with vision. I'm very good with ideations and talking big picture stuff. That can be a gift and a curse because you come up with loads of ideas. You can go in lot of directions and then your team gets frustrated with you, which is what I'm fully aware of at times, right? And luckily I've got some equalizers in the business that tell me, hey, you know what? No. So they, think the first time,

Jon Coogan (29:16)
Yep.

Alex (29:24)
it was kind of, there wasn't as much of a driver behind it as the second time. So it was like, okay, I'm thinking about doing this because I think it will go well. Whereas the second time was more like, hey, look at what keeps occurring with us. Why are we not taking this measure to do so? And I think when you can not just

go big picture vision side, but you actually go look at like the proof and the evidence behind it. So we either make this decision or we continue repeating this. I think it's time for us to actually make that jump. And, you know, we started off small, we started off by changing the majority of campaigns to that one sector. And then now we're fully in and it was the same with content. We kind of like was dipping our toe into that.

Jon Coogan (30:19)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (30:21)
side but still keeping it broad and then we went we're not speaking to the one person we're not solving that one problem we're offering that one solution so it's made our lives a lot more difficult and then slowly we've gradually found ourselves it's taken some time but all good things

Jon Coogan (30:41)
Yeah, it sounds like it is really just having those discussions and as you mentioned, just making sure the why is explained and that you are taking the views on board. if you're given that evidence to show why it's working and over time, you can see that it's working. I suppose a lot easier for people to get behind you and start changing their views really to see once those benefits are appearing.

Alex (31:06)
Yeah, for sure. think you have to, it's relationships, right? You know that everyone's going to have a different opinion and you have to be respectful and you have to come together.

Sometimes it's not always your way of the highway is you look at, okay, if there's no belief in this, maybe there's something that I'm not seeing. So yeah, I think you do just need to really talk it out and keep having those conversations and keep re re reworking that hypothesis. Is that the right way? Are we doing this the right way? Is this okay? And then

I think from that you move more as a unit because you are all talking to each other and communicating and making sure everyone's on board.

Jon Coogan (31:53)
And just sticking with the theme of communications, we've touched on already, we're doing this podcast remotely, it's over a screen. If you've got any tips for trying to build that relationship and trust of customers when it is so much a digital age.

Alex (32:10)
Yeah,

So earned trust, think one thing that I do exceptionally well, and this is where I think that I'm successful in like, you know, I've definitely been the main driving force with sales, with the actual closing of business. And I've done it my whole life, right? I think that a lot of people discount the human factor. I will repeat it over and over again, but a lot of people are too stiff. They look at too many...

The secret phrase is this, this is how you communicate successfully, is this one line. But in reality, it's you to build that trust, I find this at the front end, whenever you go into a call with someone, you don't need to immediately speak business. Doesn't matter how important they are, or how senior they are. A lot of people, that's one of the biggest challenges is they feel that, this guy's a big fish.

He's, know, he's part of a multi multi million pound organization. They're a human. It's the same person as someone they've just been able to zig where the other person's that they're still breathing the same oxygen. And I think taking the time to just really share that human experience is why AI won't be able to replace everything because they don't have the unique human experiences that we have to human. The human connection cannot be

Jon Coogan (33:16)
Yeah.

Alex (33:37)
unhuman, it has to be human. So taking that time to just talk and shoot the breeze. sometimes that's five minutes. Sometimes that's 15 minutes. The same goes with your team. So whether it's a customer, or whether it's a teammate, it's like, sometimes people go through stuff. Sometimes people want events, sometimes people want to joke, laugh, cry.

Jon Coogan (33:50)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (34:02)
wherever it is, you should be there and that should be at the forefront. I've learned that from a lot of good leaders. I've seen them as hard as they seem on the peripheral. Sometimes you, but when you actually get to know them, they're like one of the most gentle and kindest people that you ever meet. They've got a lot of empathy and they show it a lot. And that's why the team respect them. And that's why customers respect you. That's why clients or potential clients will respect you because you are.

taking that time to build that connection because people buy from people and there's three types of buyers. People will buy on price which are the people that you don't want in a lot of cases. The people who buy on value which is great because you've got value to give them and then there's people who buy on relationships and those are the ones that usually are with you through thick and thin and those are some of the best people to kind of work on board.

Jon Coogan (34:57)
Yeah, I love how you brought up just exactly the same as with customers building that relationship with your teams. And it is so important, sharing that vulnerability and just understanding who you're working with, which is so important. It's quite often actually missed. And I think particularly with leaders, they're quite scared to be vulnerable sometimes and, see it as, I'm the boss. I need to be making the decisions. I need to be steadfast. And it's definitely not the case. And that's not the way you get best out of people.

Alex (35:16)
Thank

Yeah, for sure, Jon. I can agree more.

Jon Coogan (35:26)
So in terms of business to business sales, we've spoken about how much it's changed even since you started doing sales. Was it eight, 10 years ago?

business sales.

Alex (35:37)
Wow, I've been using cells since I was 18, I'm 36 now, it's a lot. Time flies.

Jon Coogan (35:47)
Yeah, a long time, it's changed quite a lot in the last, let's see, 18 odd years. What do you see as the future of business to business sales now? What kind of trends do you think are going to be coming in?

Alex (36:00)
I think there's going to be the rise of the, I think it's the Renaissance period now that we go through. It's like when the Medici family took over and there was wealth of, well, there's a wave of wealth that came into the art space and it allowed people to be very creative and you got some of the best artists that came out of the period. So with AI, I think that...

what it creates is this opportunity for people who are really creatively minded. And it creates, it unlocks, it removes the barriers of maybe, of resource of having specific knowledge on a certain thing. And you've got this sales artist that is coming out. It's not just about going spray and pray approach and using AI to like personalize everything. And it does all the work for you. I actually think it's more about overlaying that with your current skill set.

and creating better environments and experiences and insights for the people that you reach out to leverage in AI. So you've got this assistant next to you that can spin out all of the crazy ideas you've got, and all of that experience you've got, and they're going to do it in a second. And that allows you to go out to that person that you was otherwise going to go out to do, but you couldn't spend the five hours that they can now spend for you in creating your masterpiece to present to them so that when they see it, get wowed. I think the

whole sales experience is gonna get far more enjoyable and far more exciting for both parties. You're gonna be able to remove barriers that you'd be like, yeah, I'd love to reach out to this person with this crave. I think people are gonna start creating videos like, you can spawn up like sales videos. One idea I had and I'm starting to test it, but I thought, do you know what? There's all these enterprise level clients and...

They get a yearly report that no one probably reads. Their team probably struggled to read it, but they need to read it because it's quite important because it's for the business and it's done by the CEO, but they don't read it. How I thought what would be a good approach is Google's released this podcast ability so can upload documents into the, and it creates a podcast series. So what I did was go, okay, we're going out to this division. So let's say IT director and I went, chat GPD.

they all the most important points for the IT team to be aware of in the yearly report. And then I'm putting into, and then I'm saying, spring quit in with like whatever the client does, and then upload it as a podcast and send it out and say, look, I know it's take, it takes like, it's going to take you like an hour or two to read through this heavy information. A lot of it's not going to be relevant. So I thought it'd be great just putting together a quick podcast. You can view in the car for 10 minutes.

you your team could be up to speed with everything in the yearly report. You can wow everyone on your team with your knowledge and yeah, and know a bit about how we can help out with that journey too. And that's kind of like, that's quite exciting. You don't get that every day and it's quite useful. It's helpful, isn't it? Cause then I'll know about it. So yeah, those are the things that happen.

Jon Coogan (39:07)
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, like I say, it's to, yeah, to really just like say, enhance the experience, whether it's for customers, for companies, and it's similar with just wording how people prefer to learn, whether it's auditory, if they're visual learners, it's just being able to present the same information in a way that's tailored to specific individuals. And I think that's a great, great way of utilizing it. So with AI, as we're on the subject, are there ways that you're currently utilizing that within?

your company.

Alex (39:38)
Yeah, in every single way. Do you know one of my favourite things to do? I mean, there's a whole load of ways we're using it, but one where I like to think about the people that are listening and what can I do what's most accessible? So ChatGPD just released the advanced voice feature, which you can just chat and have conversations. If you are, I would recommend it.

Especially if you're starting out in business or you're further on in your journey, I think this can happen at any stage. You just talk through your ideas with it and just have it on loudspeaker and say, hey, this is what I'm launching. You're mentioning the product. Are we allowed to mention it? Yeah.

Jon Coogan (40:21)
it can be mentioned yet so registered it's happening so see you.

Alex (40:25)
Yeah, I think it's an awesome product, Jon. So I think that the pet collar and tracker system is going to be something that I would be talking to chat GPT about and just going through the motions, understanding what are the different pain points that people are going to be experiencing? What are their challenges with keeping track of their dogs or what are their fears that keeping them up at night? What are their desires? How can they be improved? Like, is there any other features or functionality like a step counter?

For example, on the dot, because you wanna know how many steps does it take in a day and all these clever little things that you can talk through and just have a one-to-one experience. It's literally like speaking to someone. It's so sci-fi-esque that I don't know if everyone knows this yet because my mind has been blown so many times just by having a conversation with it and talking through business problems or use cases or ideas I've got for campaigns. And I think that...

is one of the best things you can do if you haven't done it already for AI. But in terms of how we're outside of that, we use it for research and lists, getting really hyper accurate lists. We use it for creating campaign ideas, for creating content. You can spin up like when I transcribe my sales calls.

I go, can you come up with some content ideas? It comes up with some content ideas for our content because that's our avatar. It can create proposals. It's really, yeah, I use it across the whole sales chain. It's like, it's hard to even define what we use it for. It's so integrated. Now it's like Google. It's like, what do you use Google for? I use it for everything, right? It's kind of like that.

Jon Coogan (42:04)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the idea you just mentioned about having a conversation with it is amazing, partly because sometimes you just need to get out of your head, get speaking, but you don't yet have the confidence to talk it through with somebody. And I think that happens to lot of people. They've got a lot of ideas in their head, a lot of businesses they want to start or, or concepts and haven't yet spoken to somebody about it. But yeah, I think that's a fantastic idea. And it was a little bit of a reveal there, Alex. I've not actually spoken about it yet on, on the podcast or anywhere else, but.

I have got a new business which is going to be launching currently building backend systems. So Paw Track will be launching soon to keep eyes out for that one.

Alex (42:50)
Yeah, so I'm telling you, man, I need to invest in that. That's great idea. Yeah, think so. Yeah, that's fun. So I'm looking forward to have to keep updated on that.

Jon Coogan (42:56)
Hmm.

Yeah, definitely. And in terms of what legacy you will leave behind, you've obviously got your agency, but what legacy do you want to leave in a business to business sales industry? What's your hopes and dreams for Inonda?

Alex (43:19)
So we plant trees at the moment every month and my ambition, because I came from East London, I grew up in Doulston. This is, if you don't know it, it's a place that at the time was very rough. I remember sitting down in the living room when I was 13 watching TV, it was the news, said worst place to live in London, Doulston. And I was like,

And I was getting robbed, you know, it was, I was going to school, we got put into special measures. It was, it was, was a crazy life to look back on. But at the time, it wasn't crazy. It was normal. And only when I went to college, did I realize, not everyone lives the same.

life. There's actually different versions of life. I was in a bubble at first, and it was a great experience for me because I realized actually it doesn't have to be like this. You've got the world is your oyster. There's so many different cultures. There's so many different ways to view things and you don't have to be peer pressured into all these things. So long story short, I would love my ambition is to create this

this this initiative because we're in the edtech space because we're planting trees where we bring kids from inner city spaces and we're planting trees together with leaders with mentors so that they can have their their world enlightened or enhanced by different versions of it like another thing when i went out to the countryside and when i

was in nature, it also brought about a sense of calm that I hadn't experienced in the concrete jungle. So that's the legacy that I'm striving towards is making a big impact with kids being able to help the world be a place essentially, no matter how small of it. But as long as I'm building the right relationships, providing value and...

striving towards just bigger ambitions we've given back in bigger ways so that if more people are exposed to that, think that there will be a ripple effect of people having better experiences, having these mentors that help them be their best self. And again, the edtech space is like that's at their forefront. It's like helping people make better decisions quicker. you knew what you knew in business now, Jon,

but it was 20 years ago, man, the lifestyle on the yachts and everything else, would be, you know, just not that, I mean, that's superficial stuff, but in general, you learn even like, as you grow older, the habits that you keep and going for walks are good. You didn't necessarily focus on that back in the day, but now everyone's understanding this to create a detail. just hopefully,

Jon Coogan (45:53)
Yeah.

be flying. Yeah.

Alex (46:19)
Just being a bit more of positive influence in the world is that if I can leave that behind, then Nanda can be an example of that, then I'm satisfied.

Jon Coogan (46:29)
Yeah, that'd be great legacy and I love what you're doing with planting the trees as well. I think that's a great, great endeavour to have. What I'd like to do is just give you an opportunity, to give, I'd call it an elevator pitch about what Inonda does. So if you're going to summarise the services you offer, how would you sum that up?

Alex (46:51)
So what we do is we help edtech companies build their brand, build pipeline and close new clients and scale past where they are at the moment. we're, we're very

specific with who we take on with more like a portfolio. look at specific companies we know we can help. There's only so many we can handle. We're not looking to work with any more than 10 at one time. And with that, we help these companies, we've got a few under our banner. And we help them hands on with getting to that next stage in their business. And that's not just from how they

grow from a direct to direct basis, but also the network that they can be in front of. So yeah, that's hopefully a bit of an elevate pitch.

Jon Coogan (47:52)
Yeah, no, perfect. Yeah, that's great. Thank you very much. And final, final opportunity for you to not necessarily speak, but to give you a final thought really, if there's something that or one thing that you'd like people to take away from this conversation, what would it be?

Alex (48:10)
Just go get it, execute. Don't think too much, make it happen. If you are interested in getting into, you know, if you've got a business and it's targeting B2B, even if it's not in some shapes or forms, but you are looking at how can you leverage LinkedIn. So there's something that I can give to you because we are in.

I kind of have been talking about that a lot, but we do have on our website and on the dotco.uk forward slash challenge, we've got how to generate your first 100 warm leads. And that goes through the exact same steps that we would take, I would take personally to grow and generate 100 leads for your business. And yes, five days.

It gives you our top performing assets. So all of the things such as how to optimize your profile, how to create messaging that resonates, how to build your ideal customer persona, how to create a quick win campaign to get leads in as soon as possible. And how to create an asset that attracts the attention of your audience to generate as much leads as possible. that's stuff that I've spent, you know, this is eight years refining and I've just distilled it and give it away for free.

So I think that's what I like to leave everyone with. If they are looking for ways to grow, then that's definitely not too bad a step to take.

Jon Coogan (49:32)
Yeah, I'll definitely be taking advantage of that. So like I I've got a new business, which is going to be selling to businesses. So I'm a hundred percent going to be downloading that myself. So look forward to seeing it. What I like to do just towards the end of the podcast is do some quick fire questions. Let's find out a little bit about yourself and just a little bit about your mindset. So first one, what's one thing that you do in the morning to set you up for the day?

Alex (49:42)
Awesome.

Go to hell.

Drink your coffee. If I've got time for it, gratitude, general, I like to write three things that I'm grateful for.

Jon Coogan (49:59)
Yep.

Yeah.

So that's still practice you've kept since those first door-to-door sales.

Alex (50:14)
No, I've done it in business. It's something I've learned over the last year. That and a to-do list on a piece of paper don't be too over complicated with it. If you do those things in the morning, it allows you to the end of the day, if you've got 101 things to do, you can just feel like you've accomplished something for the day. Because if you don't have that, then you can feel like the whole day you've done nothing and you've been running around like a henless chicken.

Jon Coogan (50:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And how has practicing that gratitude changed your mindset, think?

Alex (50:44)
I think you can't feel any other emotion. If you are feeling anxiety, stress, worry, or any of those other fear-based emotions, when you practice gratitude, at least for that small moment in time, it takes you to the present and makes you think about all the best things that, and most surprisingly, some of the most smallest things that you're grateful for, which sometimes helps you to counteract that.

I should be living on a yacht smoking a cigar kind of lifestyle. And you think actually, I enjoy just seeing a sunset. It's free. Well, I like seeing my family's well, I like small things.

Jon Coogan (51:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, and just those little things like you say, with a coffee in the morning, sitting down, having five minutes and actually just appreciating the fact you're sat there drinking coffee in the morning and slowly waking up, just those little things, which really does make a difference to your day to day happiness.

Alex (51:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just take a moment to enjoy the little things.

Jon Coogan (51:45)
you

So next one is what's one book, one podcast or one person that's changed and shaped your way of thinking?

Alex (51:59)
What comes to mind straight away when you mentioned book was the ultimate sales machine by Chet Holmes. It's actually quite an old book, that really helps me understand a lot about things. It was this guy who took over, believe Oracle, when it was not doing too well and his task was to go after like...

the top fortune 500 companies and he just got everyone to stop selling and he went, look, if we educate people well enough, they'll know that the best decision is to buy us. And he just got everyone to educate and do webinars and stuff like that. And it worked really well for the business to turn it around. Then if like when I was struggling, so this is when Ananda was.

not making any money. was like, what's happening here? There's a book called How to Raise Yourself from Failure to Success in Telen. I can't remember who it's by, but that book was...

presented to me by someone who wasn't in cells and I felt disrespected by it and I had to check my ego and go, do you know what? I'm not making cells right now, so I better read that book. And I read the book and it changed my cells approach. It didn't even do anything. It just went through the foundational principles and it just brought me back to like, if you do this, you do this, you do this, and you keep doing it, you're gonna be all right. So it kind of recalibrated me to that. In terms of...

Jon Coogan (53:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (53:27)
A person to watch, Alex or Mozi, I think if you're in business and you want someone to watch and just, he's just full of information. He's like a He's like AI that's just been geared towards business and marketing itself. So yeah, he's a good one to watch.

Jon Coogan (53:43)
Mm.

Perfect, thank you very much. And I think the last one for you is how do you make decisions under pressure?

Alex (53:48)
Thank you so much.

Ooh, that's a good one. I was thinking about this the other day. I think I'm just someone who makes a decision without too much thought behind it. And I don't think that's always good thing. Like I will under pressure, I'll make a decision, which is a good thing in some instances, but sometimes you have to think it through. So I think that the best way, so it's not how I do it, but how I'm looking to do it in the future and how I've done it this week, which is review the good and the bad of free decisions or whatever the decision is.

Review the good and bad and if you can, sleep over it a night before making the decision. So that is how I would do it, because I've been too gung-ho with decision making. So it leads you to make one decision, then another decision, then another decision, rather than just taking a step back and what's the options? What's the good? What's the bad? Okay, this looks like the best one. And I think you're more cemented in your decision.

because I think that a lot of the time, the definiteness of how stern you are in your decision is also just as important as the decision itself. And if you don't do that groundwork, you might end up flip-flopping, especially if it's under pressure. So just make a list.

Jon Coogan (55:15)
Yeah, but now that's good. And it's good to hear you acknowledge and have that self awareness that you might not always be the best at making decisions because you do make them quite, quite snappy, but at the same time, sometimes you do just have to make a decision because if you procrastinate, nothing gets done. So yeah, I can see, both sides of the coin for that one.

Alex (55:32)
Yeah, that's the worst. I think that that is like the worst thing you can do is just procrastinate, never make a decision. And you end up just regretting it later on. So you just need to make the list. I think that's the best way is you can just list.

I think writing things down gives clarity to what you're, you think you've got clarity in your thoughts, but until you write them down, you realise actually it's more of a whirlpool or a cloud of thoughts. And until you write them down, you realise, I'm not as clear on what I'm thinking. And then it forces you to be clear. And I think that helps to alleviate some of the pressure and you can go, take three deep breaths as well. That would be another tip I would give.

Jon Coogan (55:51)
and

And final parting one, and this is, be somebody from your personal life, somebody from business, wherever it may be. But if you could add one person to Mindset Mavericks Hall of Fame, who would it be and why?

Alex (56:28)
If I could add one person. that's a good question. I'm gonna have to say my business partner Andy because he's just a relentless go-getter. Someone that has got a mind of steel, very good at...

defining good habits and sticking to them and being stoic with them and I think that's a character trait that would help a lot of people out there to have so I'll put him on the Hall of Fame.

Jon Coogan (57:03)
Perfect. Well, thank you very much for joining me today, Alex. Absolutely love to have a conversation with you and you've given us some great tips to take away. And I'll put your link to your website in the comments as well. So anyone who wants to see that, you'll be able to read it in the summary of the episode. But thanks very much for coming on.

Alex (57:21)
Thank you, Jon. was a pleasure, absolute pleasure. It was amazing, smashing. I look forward to seeing you again and keeping you updated with the Pest up. Thank you. Cool

Jon Coogan (57:29)
Certainly will, thanks.