Tim Keys — Entrepreneur, Trainer, Coach, Sales Genius

And once more it is what's involved. It's so good to have you along with us. Another guest for you. This time he's a returning guest. And why is he a returning guest? Well, because he always adds value and there's certain people I love getting on the show. Who am I talking about? It is the founder and CEO of the Sales Institute, Tim Keyes. Hello, Tim, how are you doing? - Hi, very nice to be back again. I always enjoy talking to you. - It's great to have you back on the show again. And the reason I wanted to have you back on the show as we sort of sink our teeth into the year that is 2021. Last year, there was a lot of change, a lot of disruption, COVID, and there was the lockdown and everything. And everybody thought 2021 was going to be different. So far, not much different. And if you listen to some of the people in the know, not a lot is going to change for us in terms of certain of the lockdowns and the gatherings, et cetera, et cetera, for the rest of 2021. So I figured, well, that must mean people are having challenges in the area of sales and selling. And I thought, who is my go-to guy when it comes to sales training and it is the Sales Institute and you. So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

For somebody who may not have heard you on the show before though, Tim, just give us a bit of a background on who Tim Keyes is. - So I'm a sales trainer and coach. I've been doing this for quite a while now, getting a bit old. I was looking the other day, I started this business in 2000. So I've been doing it for a while, but I essentially do three things. The first one is sales enablement, which is setting up a sales environment. I have a terrible saying that some sales people don't like, but I firmly believe that sales success is about setting up the right system, then taking a salesperson, winding them up, pointing them in the right direction and saying off you go. So you need to give them the right level of support and resources and that kind of thing. And I think we leave too many salespeople in the lurch there. So that's the first part is building that enablement, the messaging and support. And then of course I love training. I had to adjust to this new way of training, doing it more virtually. I must admit I'm enjoying it more and more as I'm doing it. And then the third element is performance coaching. So where people are looking for some help on specifics and individual confidence or specific skills, I then do coaching.

- Fantastic. Now, I mean, this and we've worked together in the past as well. And we'd started off last year with great ambitions and high hopes of some of the stuff we were gonna be able to present. That all came to a grinding halt. And we sat for a bit and everybody was like, uh-oh, now what now? But businesses need salespeople and they need to make sales in order to grow and to continue trading. So all of this went away. And then suddenly along came the likes of, which is what we're actually chatting on now, Zoom. And well, let's just say in the beginning, it was a bit of a fiasco and you had all sorts of interesting things. I think just the other day, somebody quite well known was, they put a cat face filter on their Zoom. So where do we stand now? Is it a different kind of selling? - It is. The issue is that it's not enough just to learn how to use technology. So, you know, and why I'm laughing is December 2019, you and I were together doing a strategy session and we had 2020 absolutely planned on what we were gonna do and how we were gonna do it and where we were going to focus. And literally that all got turned on its head. And so the companies that were able to pivot very quickly, who are able to adjust, they're the ones who have improved and still continue to make money.

My problem is there's still a lot of people who are trying to do business as usual. So you look at the current service right now. You know, you have these big companies that have half the whole environments without looking at technology and kind of expecting us to accept this, that, you know, we are gonna have to wait longer and longer for responses and things. So my concern is that people have been selling for a long time. They believe that it's business as usual. The only difference is now we'll do it via Zoom instead of face-to-face until I can get to face-to-face. Now, I don't think that's helpful because I think virtual selling is one of the biggest trends that's happening right now. In fact, it started before COVID. You know, in the US, inside selling, which is very clever people selling, sitting at their desk, actually was growing by something like 50% a year in the US in 2019. And COVID's just accelerated that. And then from a sales, you know, from a sales perspective, the guys who were relationship selling, they getting retrenched. So your ability to communicate through technology and do it well and understand how this works has become absolutely essential. But you can't just tack it onto current sales methods.

Your methods have to change. - This is one of the things I was gonna ask you and one of the reasons I wanted you on the show is, you know, it's all very well. People go, and I mean, we can take just about any field of selling, whether it's high ticket items, luxury vehicles, whatever the case may be, and then go, "All right, well then now we'll just do it online." And I also thought initially I would take my radio program online. It's not that easy. There's a whole lot of changes that you have to make. Talk me through this new method of selling that you've developed. You've coined a phrase, I think. Talk to me about that. - Yeah, so some people call it remote selling. I prefer to call it virtual selling. Two years ago, I started talking about this concept of inside selling. It's all very much the same thing, but I wanna make sure that people understand the logic of this. So the research does not play out the theory that you cannot develop the same level of relationship on a virtual environment than you can face-to-face. If you have the right equipment and you know what you're doing, you can actually build very good relationships virtually. So that's the first thing is that the skill needs to be, I need to apply the same principle.

So if I come and see you, I'm watching your body language, I'm listening for clues, I've got energy in my conversation, I'm doing all those things 'cause we face-to-face. When I get to selling through something like Zoom that we're doing now, then I become boring and one tone and no energy and no connection and I lose half the skills that I would have applied before. So the first thing to understand is that it's quite possible to do most of the things you would do face-to-face through virtual technology. So that's very important to understand. It's not a second place. The second thing that I just wanna stress is all of this revolves around the experience you give your customers. So along with sales, you have to have a rich digital experience and if you don't mind, I just wanna explain why. So when we talk about virtual setting, you don't have the time to use the gift of the gab anymore because most meetings are 30 minutes. So now the internet experience, the social media experience, a conversation we've had regularly in the last little while, the use of personal video, these are all skills that we need to develop and we need to be able to create really good digital experiences because your customer wants to research you online as much as having conversations with you.

In fact, they'd prefer not to talk to you. They'd prefer to research you online first. - Yes, the gift of the gab thing is gonna be a problem but we did notice this change, as you said, coming. Where people were doing more online research and they wanted to find out. So it's a whole lot of the sales process. I think at one stage, we'd said what? 70, 80% of the sales process was already completed before we even entered the picture as a salesperson. - Well, this is where it's become a bit scary. So when we used to do this training two years ago, three years ago, we used to talk about customers were coming to you at around about 56% of the sales cycle.

So it means that they were coming to you and they already decided what they wanted and now they wanted a quote from you. Now that's got even worse is that the number is that they will give you 13% of the full sales buying process. In other words, you get 13% time with them. The rest of it, they're doing their own analysis, their own research and they're coming to their own conclusions because I don't know about you. I'm just so tired of people finding them and trying to force me to buy something I don't want. You know, people are just so tired of that old school sales. So that's why I'm saying we have to be able to take customers on a journey where in their own time, they can engage with what we offer. So it's not about supplying too much info. It's the opposite of that. It's creating a journey where you help the customer make sense of where they are struggling and how you can help them solve their problems. And unless you can take them on that journey with all of these digital tools, effectively you're gonna really struggle to close sales and people are not gonna see the urgency and they're gonna push out the purchase because money is tighter now. And obviously they're going to count the pennies.

- Wonderful stuff. I wanna dive more into this and look at, you know, where this applies, whether it applies to all salesperson, small business, whatever the case may be. We'll do that when we come back. This is what's involved. My special guest is Tim Keyes, the CEO, founder of the Sales Institute. More from Tim when we come back. And we're back with Tim Keyes of the Sales Institute. Tim, before the break, I was saying to you, I asked the question, you know, when you talk about this, the immediate thing that springs to my mind is, ah, okay, this is all good and well. This is the kind of thing that the big corporates need to be doing. But where does the smaller business fit in? A business like myself, you know, it's like a one-man show, two-man show, 10-man show. Do we also need to be focusing on this remote selling concept? - So there is a slight difference. If you're a larger organization, you have the benefit of a marketing company, or you have a marketing division. And in my mind, a lot of the work needs to be done at that level. When you're a smaller business, you don't really have that benefit. However, what you do have going for you is the reputation of the founder. So when you're a smaller business, it actually is a benefit because people are drawn to people who they either respect or, you know, are well-known or have some kind of domain knowledge.

So we really like specialists in the field. When you're a smaller business, you know, this journey I'm talking about is very much sharing content, but valuable content. And as a founder, you know your business really well. You know why you started the business. You know the value you deliver and the questions you should be answering. So if you use very, very affordable technology, it is very possible to create something, which in some cases is even more powerful than what a much bigger organization can deliver because you can pivot so quickly. And the content you can build, there's just so much good technology right now that's very affordable. You can build some really, really sexy stuff. And I blame TikTok here. People don't need the Hollywood stuff because that takes too long to generate. You know, one of the simplest things you can do is use personal video, is literally record yourself talking to somebody on your phone and then making that available. And people accept that because it's helpful. So I think it's a benefit being slightly smaller right now. - Now you talk about this and one of the things because this has become my pet peeve over the last while, is people are transitioning in a big way onto online.

And this is where we get all these people interacting and a lot of people have taken some of the stuff that you've said in terms of content and they create this content. But there has to be, in my opinion, a certain level of professionalism. You mentioned doing stuff on a cell phone. I've seen stuff that's almost broadcast worthy done on a cell phone. And I've also seen the biggest load of rubbish. I was watching a webinar the other day with this guy is one of the top guys in his field talking from his home. And he had on a headset with a little headset microphone. And every time he moved his head, his voice disappeared. His wife came barging into the office at one stage and the dogs were making. And he was like, "Oh, okay." And they made a joke of it and I'm like, "Maybe I'm just a purist, but that irritated me." Somebody that puts out a video that might have great content but you can't see them because it's all dark and dingy and the sound quality, I just go straight past that. How important is it to do the best that you can do? - Okay, so yeah, it's a very important point to find that balance. So two points about this. Number one, people will measure you by what you put out. So certainly it's not an excuse to put out really, really dodgy production.

What I'm saying is there are a lot of tools right now that make production so much easier that you're not having to spend a lot of money on. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I also think the difference between formal marketing and engagement with customers. I think that that goes on a kind of a scale that people do have expectations. If you're going to run a series or you're gonna run podcasts or whatever like yours, there has to be a level of professionalism. But it is possible with the technology. The second thing I want to stress is it's not content for content's sake. So let me take you through a journey. You reckon that you need training. You don't quite know what sales training you need. You just know you need something. What's the first thing you're going to do? And I'll answer it for you. You're going to go onto the internet. So you're going to do a search sales training in Johannesburg or South Africa. You're going to see a couple of links there and you're going to click on it. As of before, you've seen me and maybe there are other exposures, but generally you're gonna go to my website. Now that experience and that journey has to answer my questions. So it's not a case of just, you know, blog off to blog off to blog.

Effectively, if you're a salesperson who wants to know about this form of virtual selling, I've got to give you valuable content that takes you on the journey that answers all your questions about how you leverage virtual selling, what you need to do, how you do it, how I can help you. And I just need to use multiple channels to do that and different methods and media. So that's what I mean by make my life simple that by the time you find me, you already know what you need. You already have a clear idea of how I can offer it. You've watched a video of me talking about the course. You know, so that's the one element. The second element is social media. So as you know, I'm absolutely LinkedIn obsessed. That's another way that I connect with people, share good content, share videos. And I'll give you an example. LinkedIn has proved that you are 60% more likely to get an engagement on LinkedIn if you record a video than if you type something. They've actually tested that. So that's what I mean by, you know, use what you have, be professional, yes, but embrace being comfortable seeing yourself in a video because that's engaging and then tell good stories. You know, tell people how you can help them.

- I love that because one of the things that I am, I'm a huge fan of is this whole concept of storytelling and how you do it. And I come from a sort of neuro-linguistic psychology background and that's what I've studied and all of those things. So it's how to be engaging while you are talking, how to use your voice and all of those things. But you're right. You don't need to say that. I mean, you and I, and you know this for effect. You put a microphone in front of me and I can talk to the entire world. And I'm not even in the slightest bit worried about it. Switch a camera on in front of me and I turn into a gibbering idiot. Now, when you think about this rationally, 'cause I keep saying, "Oh, I don't want to go in. "Oh, I look like a bullfrog. "I had to go and do a thing for a money week. "When was it last week I went there?" And I was an absolute wreck. I was a total wreck. And then you think, but you're prepared to walk into that same office or that same training space or that same client and sit and talk to them. And essentially what they're doing is they're looking at you. The only difference now is that it's a camera that's looking at you as opposed to a live body. But other than that, nothing really changes.

- I agree with that. And the part that we always have is, what will people think of me? And I know sometimes we judge other people, but if you think of how some people have done this well and they've just been them, they've been authentic.

They've managed to create incredible followings. Example, Mark Lautern. We used to go to his shows at the Baxter and he would have to deliver something for about three weeks with about two, 300 people in the auditorium to make the same money he made with his last online show that he did. And he's learned how to do it better and better. He was so engaging in this last one. It was so entertaining. And I loved sitting here paying 70 bucks instead of 200 and being able to engage with the show. He was very good. So I think with practice, you do get better. But as with anything, and I learned this from you doing this voice stuff, you have to take the first step. - Yeah, absolutely. Well, just while we're talking examples then, and then we're gonna be back in just a bit, but before we take the break, one of a great examples, somebody that I've really gotten to know and follow and I'm a little bit of a group now is Dr. Graham Coddrington from Tomorrow Today. He's always putting out these little videos and it's content, but it's useful content. And I love watching what he has to say. So very, very important. Tim, when we come back, let's talk a bit more about the training course that you offer about this virtual selling.

And maybe see if we can give some people some more tips and pointers. This is what's involved. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with my special guest, Tim Keyes of the Sales Institute. So if somebody's listening now, Tim, and they're going, we hear what you're saying, we know that we need this, but we don't know how to assimilate all of this information. You've written a course about this, haven't you? - Yeah, so let's make this practical because I would like to, you know, people to be able to use this logic. So what the concept of virtual selling is, is it starts with your message. So before you do anything else, you need to know how to tell your story. And so the very first part of the module is what we call the hero story. And, you know, this goes back to the NLP you mentioned, is that stories literally have a significant influence on our lives. We love stories. It goes back to when we were kids and mommy put us on the lap and read us a story. So you need to be able to communicate the story of your business and the story of how you help people. So we spend a lot of time making sure the story works well. Now, if you're business to business, my next step is LinkedIn because LinkedIn has got all of my customers available to me.

And in my view, cold calling is invasive and people are not that happy anymore to be receiving too many cold calls. So when you phone them, they should be expecting your call. So I start with LinkedIn where I first create an amazing profile, one that does what I've just described. So people say, oh, I can't invest in all the technology on fancy websites. LinkedIn does that for you. You know, your profile, the pictures you have, the videos you can share. It's all done on LinkedIn anyway. So you don't even need to spend all that money on a high level website where you could share the same amount of information, create the same journeys on LinkedIn. So now I connect with you. You have a look at my profile. You find my stuff interesting. I'm constantly posting on LinkedIn. And then the big thing is I have a chat to you on LinkedIn. So instead of phoning you, I talked to you on LinkedIn. And all I do is I say, how's your business going? How are things in 2021? And I have a small chat to you. And then second step, I give you great value. So I send you something while I offer to help you build your profile. And then once I've delivered real value, I say, why don't we chat? And then I book a Teams meeting with you.

In my case, 'cause I use Teams, once we have the Teams meeting, I continue the journey. And the Teams meeting then goes on to our share other info, which is again, all of the very helpful other stuff. And the problem is you can't rely on your voice. So there's supporting material. You know, this is my one criticism of salespeople is there are no what we used to call leave behinds. You know, there's nothing that people can engage with once you've left. So once I've had the meeting and I understand your requirements life, sometimes I will try and go and see you. But in most cases, I'm booking business just using this process. You know, I see you're a Key Account Manager, let's chat. But some great resources on Key Account Management can come in over a 20 minute chat about it. We go online, tell them about the course they book. So the point is everything has to be done well. So this puts pressure on your, the way you present your solution. You've got to do that well. Man, people met up how they present stuff on Teams or Zoom. So, you know, how you share the screen, how you present a product, you know, how you do a demo. These are all serious skills. And then also, how do you send your proposal?

A great way to do it. I've got a customer who does it all through video. Their entire proposal is a video with one page posting. And then how do you close using technology? So there are times where you'll have to phone and traditional sales approaches. But just by understanding technology, understanding your message, give great resources, then, you know, move from LinkedIn to chatting to people, moving that online as in, or offline. And what I mean by that is give me your phone number or email address so that we can continue the conversation. So it's kind of LinkedIn virtual meeting. I don't like phoning people. I want to see them. So I've invested quite heavily in a really good webcam and a microphone so that I can have a good conversation with you online. Just one piece of advice here, by the way, for free, please be careful when you're having a web conference, not to stand too close to the camera. You know you're invading people's space. They should be just seeing your hidden shoulders, not up your nostrils. So these are all skills, and I'm telling you it's hugely impactful. And because you are now having meetings during the day, I'm having five or six meetings where before I could have two or three.

And customers are enjoying it because they don't have to come downstairs and find me. They don't have to talk stuff for an hour. The meetings get done in 25 minutes and we move on to the next meeting. So I'm getting so much more done. I'm actually finding that I'm engaging more with my customers that when I meet with them live, it's like we're old friends. So, you know, I've gone through it quite quickly, but I'm very happy to kind of share the outline of the process with you if you'd like to have a look at it. - Okay, this is sounding very, very interesting 'cause you've now touched on things that I didn't think about, like getting closer to the camera, et cetera, et cetera. But also what I like is the fact that you do need to invest some money if you're going to be doing this online thing. But then economies of scale say to me, but hang on, you've just mentioned it now. Whereas I used to be able to see two or three people a day, now I can check to six. In terms of then the training that you offer, are you then, are you finding that you're getting more people attending the training because it's virtual? - Well, I mean, you know me, heh. We've been friends since school days. You know, you put me in a class from I'm happy.

You know, I'm an ex-teacher, so nothing to me beats live training. What I found though, and I was actually forced to do this, two weeks before lockdown, I was in Durban talking to Defy. And we had this entire rollout plan. I was going to travel around the country doing training. And two weeks before we said, listen guys, there's a lockdown coming, what do we do? And I said, well, we have got people now who have free time. What do you suggest? So I said, well, let's do it on Microsoft Teams. Now, what I did realize is no way, you're going to concentrate for two days, listening to my voice, plus the interaction elements are different. You know, you can't do the kind of exercises you would do that we do instructive. So what I did was I changed the courses to an hour and a half a week presentation and then self-study and group discussion and then come back with the assignments and then deliver the next presentation. And what I found was when people did the longer term course where they had to do homework and they had to record themselves having conversations or send me their scripts, I suddenly picked up where the gaps were, which I could never ever do when I was doing it instructive. You just didn't have the time.

And even though we offered our help to people, they very seldom did they ask, you actually ask for help. So now because these are assignments, I'm immediately picking up the gaps. And I've realized just how many gaps there are where we think people are getting it. What I found is they're understanding it, but they're not applying it. And so now doing it over five or six weeks, one and a half hours a week, I'm now booking more people on those courses. And even groups, I did training the other day for 22 people around Africa. You think how much that would have cost to get them into one room. So economy of sales, it actually saves a lot of money. I'm finding it far more effective. And the most important thing is people own their results. So the sales people can't just listen to me all day. Now they actually have to do the work if they want the certificate. And I'm giving feedback to the business. And I'm helped on coaching as I'm going along. So I found it 100% more effective. And now I've pivoted pretty much predominantly what I call virtual instructor lead. - Okay, fantastic. Listen, as always, we're running out of time. When we come back, I'll be wrapping up with Tim, finding out about the courses that are available and maybe if there's some resources or something like that.

This is what's involved. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with my guest, Tim Keyes from the Sales Institute. So Tim, currently, if somebody is listening now and maybe they're a small business or right the way up to a corporate, what training are you offering currently that they could maybe take part in? - Okay, so how it works is my training's role-based. So it depends on what you do. So if you're new business development, I have a program. If you are in a contact center, I have a program. If you are professional selling, which is a small business, looking at doing this, same thing. I have this, the one I'm particularly excited about, which I've delivered a few times now is this virtual selling. And then if you are an account manager and you are a key account manager. So I run these programs and because it's one and a half hour a week, I'm actually running multiple programs. So this is great. So at the moment, I'm literally running five programs simultaneously, which is very exciting. So whatever your role is, including sales management, there's probably a program that you can come onto either with your company or we schedule these once a month at the moment, or once every five weeks at the moment.

So as the course finishes, we start a new one. So it depends on your role. - Which is fantastic. I mean, I'm thinking automatically, no matter what your role is, that virtual selling program might be a brilliant one to go into. Does it also mean though, that because of this economies of scale and not having to travel, et cetera, et cetera, the courses are more affordable? - Yes, so I've definitely done that. Because I'm not having to travel, we're not paying travel costs. And because of the essential electronic documents, it definitely is more affordable than typically what you would expect. It also enables me to run bigger groups. So I limit them to 15 generally, but because you're doing all the homework, it works. So yeah, it is more affordable now. - Wonderful stuff. Now the $20 million question, if somebody wants to get hold of you, what is the single best point of contact for you? - So the best way is to send me an email, some K at salesinstitute.co.za. Otherwise my website is salesinstitute.co.za. And I just want to mention, if you really liked the LinkedIn concept, the guidance on the LinkedIn, or you would like guidance on the video, I've written two very good guides on both of those, which I'm happy to share with you.

And I'm also quite happy to give you feedback on your profile. So I won't write your LinkedIn profile, but I'll give you feedback on it. So if you send me an email to the K at Sales Institute, happy to do that. - And this you prepared, those two guides, are you prepared to do that free grotus and for nothing? - Yes, absolutely. So the guides are ones that I share freely. And then the coaching, I always say the first session's free. So that's always been a policy of mine. So I'm happy to coach the LinkedIn profile. - Fantastic. Okay, so Tim Kay at SalesInstitute.co.za. That's where you can get hold of him. Tim, before we wrap up, I think this virtual selling thing is absolutely brilliant. But knowing you and knowing the way your brain works, what's next for Tim? What have you got in the pipeline? - I'm spending most of my time just improving on how to deliver this virtually. So as I'm doing it, I'm learning how to do it better. So the next things that I'm starting to work on is recording a lot more modules, much smaller modules and sound bites that people can use on a daily basis. That's what I'm doing right now. And then the other part is just improving the methodology of how to teach online so I can make it more and more effective.

- All right, well, that seems like something that'll keep you busy for the next little while. We can chat for hours. I'm sure we'll have you on the show again. Before we let you go, what piece of advice would you give people that are currently doing this or wanting to do this online virtual selling thing? What piece of advice would you give them? - The biggest piece of advice is take a deep breath and dive in. You won't get perfection the first time, but you get better and better at it. And then my second piece of advice, please do planning. Don't do it ad hoc, pull the strategy, build a plan. - Fantastic stuff. Once again, that email address, timk@salesinstitute.co.za. Tim, thanks for taking the time out and having a chat to us as always. We wish you all the very best going forward. - Right, it's a pleasure, always good to be on your show. - There we go, that was my special guest. Timothy Keers from the Sales Institute wraps it up for this edition of "What's Involved?" teaching every one of you. Look after yourselves, stay safe, and thank you for listening.