Why Belief Matters in Sales – David Stent on The Sales Scoop

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:03

Alastair, Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to The Sales Scoop. This is a weekly live show for the founders and senior leaders of tech businesses who want to improve how they sell. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for today. I'm a computer scientist, an ex Software Engineer with two decades experience in sales and marketing, and I'm joined today by David Stent, good friend of mine and the corporate partnerships manager in turn to us. Hello, David. Hello. How are you doing? How are you alright? I'm very good. Thanks, my friend. I'm very good, Dave, very good to see you, my friend. Thank you. Yeah, you and I know each other from where we live quite close. We've got very similar kinds of corporate backgrounds. We've been friends for a couple of years. I'm delighted that you've been able to make some time and join me on the show

David Stent 0:50

today. Thanks for inviting me. I really appreciate it. No

Alastair Cole 0:53

My pleasure, and one of the things that you and I share is discussions recently around the focus of belief in sales and why, why it matters so much, and diving into it. I mean, it's a fascinating topic. I can't wait to get into the kind of deep, nitty gritty. But before we get into your sales coup on that, could you tell us a little bit about you and your journey for our audience, please?

David Stent 1:19

Yeah, sure. So just get the camera right, yeah. So I'm David stent, so I am one of the corporate partnerships managers who turn to us, which is a financial hardship charity that operates across the UK. I've only been with us for six weeks. And I suppose it's responsible, responsible of me to say that what he said on this live podcast or live webcam or is my views not turning to us, and it's my experience prior to time to turn to us. I work briefly in sales for two asset finance companies. Prior to that, I worked as a business analyst for one of the same companies in it, and then going a long way back, starting in 2008 at the peak of the financial crisis, Lehman Brothers had just been emptied of all its staff, and I started at Accenture, where I worked for I think it was around six, no five years. So, yeah, that's, that's a brief itinerary, though, of my, my CV,

Alastair Cole 2:30

yeah, and you know it, it would be fair to say that you spent, you know, a fair chunk of time in sales and business development and income generation, over, over. You know, the majority, if not all, of your career, which is fascinating. So I can't wait to see how it goes. So, yeah, I mean, turn to us. They've been around for a very long time, 1897 right?

David Stent 2:56

Yeah, that's right. Elizabeth Finn Holmes, and it was started by an Irish Catholic lady called Elizabeth and her daughter. And they've, yeah, like I say, one of the longest charities in the UK, especially related to financial hardship. And I suppose their bread and butter was, and still is, care homes. I think there's eight, and eight to nine care homes that are connected with turn to us, but yeah, they're a national charity working towards alleviating financial hardship and poverty in the UK.

Alastair Cole 3:33

Yeah, and it's not just words. I mean, I saw that the Royal London had announced in March of this year, 2 million pounds commitment to this ongoing partnership in order to, you know, support conversations and promote sector wide change around, you know, hardships, but through research and advocacy and your interim head of policy there, Lucy banister wrote in the big issue About two guidelines encouraging government to talk less disparagingly about those in in financial hardship, so so it really kind of boots on the ground looking for change, changing words so that people

David Stent 4:12

are associated with basically claiming benefits that people are entitled to. And I think Lucy and the rest of the team are working hard to kind of remove or reduce some of that stigma. I personally have been working closely with, kind of establishing corporate partnerships with some big sporting organizations which would go some way to reducing that stigma. And I hope that we can kind of get over those last few hurdles with them. And I think it's so important. I think each year or by 2024, over 22 billion pounds in the UK, which was allocated for welfare for people to claim, wasn't claimed. And that's a combination of factors. That's that people are basically not aware of what their entire life is. Entitled to the process for it being very difficult, very complex, people not being technology literate to do that. But also there's a massive, massive factor that stigma plays in there that people don't want to say that they take handouts as people do say, I remember my dad. My dad always said that he'd never taken benefits or welfare in his life, and between jobs, he went window cleaning. And that's all well and good, but I think those kinds of things don't feed into the narrative very well when people are desperate and people from them and think negatively of them. So I think it's really important to work with everyone in turn towards and wider than that, to reduce the stigma associated with benefits and welfare.

Alastair Cole 5:44

Yeah. I mean, I was staggered to read that in a recent survey, 50% of people said that if they needed to, you know, take a benefit, yeah, which is a natural part of running society, right? Yeah, as humans, that they would feel because of the language stuff, that 50% would, at least 50% would, would feel shame. Yeah, right, because of this, because of that thing, half of the population in that survey, you know, and that's, that's obviously, you know, that doesn't help, right? Doesn't help. So, so you talked to you took us all the way back through your career there, right, starting to send you back then Dave, back then is this where he saw himself now?

David Stent 6:25

Gosh, no. I mean, the earliest ever kind of thoughts towards a career was following watching Top Gun at my friend's farm when I was in primary school, and I thought, well, that's me. I'm going to be a F 15 pilot, even though the RAF don't actually have any F fifteen. That was where I was going. I went to a careers office for the RAF in Doncaster, where I grew up, and I was asthmatic, so that was that straight out the window. So I kind of, I was always a little unsure of what I was going to do. I knew what I enjoyed and I think that was one of the issues I had in the school that I went to, that if you had ambitions of going to university and you were capable, then that was just a trick, and that was whatever you wanted to do. You were supported in that. And unfortunately for me, I chose to go and study economics up at Newcastle. But really, in hindsight, I wish I'd have done something more creative around Journalism and Creative Writing, and that was kind of what I went on to do. And started, started at Newcastle University, and did economics. And it was very, very difficult, because back then, to do a bachelor of arts degree in economics at Newcastle University, you didn't need a level of maths. And I remember my first lecture with a great professor called Professor Mike Jones Liu, sadly passed a couple of years ago, and he said it was economics 101, master economics 101, and he said, right, we're going to pick up where you left off at a maths level. And I remember looking across to my friend Adam that I just met the previous week, and he just looked at me and he said, You haven't got a level in maths, have you? And I said, Absolutely not. He said it wasn't a prerequisite. It is now, and rightly so. But yeah, so I kind of struggled through university in terms of my degree, and managed to make a fist of it and get a scrape or two, one, which I did, and then I didn't really know what I wanted to do. All I knew I wanted to do was go traveling with my friends after university, and that's

Alastair Cole 8:30

what we did. So you know that, what was your early kind of, your early perception or your early choice? How did you, you, see yourself once you, you know, once you've got, once you've decided you're going to get into the workforce, right? Yeah, you, you, you were straight into Accenture for those five years. It was,

David Stent 8:52

yeah. So I suppose it's, it's, it's difficult to talk about my career without bringing in some personal aspects of it. So whilst I was saving to go traveling with some friends, I worked, worked in a bar in Saltair in West Yorkshire, just outside of Bradford. I lived with my uncle, and I also worked in a call center for Woolwich in mortgages, and I spoke to financial advisors and customers, and I sat next to a lovely girl called Carly, and we got on really well. She'd studied at Newcastle. We didn't know each other from then, and I suppose halfway through saving up for traveling, I decided that I did. I did need to get a job when I returned. So I spoke to Carly very often, like we'd sit next to each other chatting between calls. And she mentioned a brother had just recently got a job at this company called Accenture, and I never heard of it. High Performance delivered. I thought, oh, that sounds like a bit of me. And she was like, yeah, he started on 32k he gets a 10k signing on. Owners, and it gets this much holiday day, and I was like, well, that's me sold. I was like, How do I get one of these jobs? So I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to go into, simply because it was around the number that I was going to earn. And that's really what drove me towards Accenture, and that's, that's what, what kind of motivated me to put an application together, and I had Gavin to speak to, who was kind enough to let me know about his interview process. So I obviously got a head head start on that. And then went down to London a couple of times, had the interviews at the assessment center, and then got offered the role. So I was going away traveling in October. I think it was October the sixth, 2008 I would start at Accenture, yeah.

Alastair Cole 10:46

And did they send you a did they did it, kind of, send you away, you know, you sign on, you get the bonus, and they send you away, because when you get back, you are going to have a party in Bali. Because when you get back,

David Stent 10:58

it's, it's more. It was more, a bit of both. It was more to have a party while I was away, and then have a party once I started. Because part of it was we did some training in London, and then we went from London over to Chicago, or outside Chicago to a place called St Charles. And this was ideal for me, because it was a load of new people to speak to. Everything was paid for with money in my back pocket, a job. This was absolutely fantastic. And it was people from Brazil, the Sao Paulo office, or the New York office. And it was just a great time to meet people of a very similar age, from different backgrounds. And it was, it was amazing. And I think even then, what I didn't realize about myself was it was the people that I really enjoyed the role, like meeting different people and doing that. And I did enjoy that consultancy when it started, it was traveling around. It was meeting new clients, meeting new colleagues. And, yeah, it was, it was great up to a point for me, but I think at that time, it's, it's probably fair to mention that I mentally, my mental health wasn't the best, and I'd been away, and prior to starting at Accenture, I'd had a bout of depression, quite severe. That meant that I'd cut short my traveling and flew back from New Zealand just to basically seek some medical help, because it was, it was really, really poor. I wasn't sleeping, and my friends just didn't recognize me, and I couldn't communicate. So I came home, and then I started on some antidepressants. I got well, and my mental health improved. And then I started at Accenture. And then from then on, from then on, before four or five years, I didn't look back. I just worked hard, enjoyed myself. And then I suppose looking back, it was quite hedonistic, and it is no reflection of people at Accenture. This is just me personally, but I had a great time, and I met some fantastic people, but it was quite a precarious time in my life. Because what actually was happening is I was living through a period of mania, and that kind of mania went on for a few years and kind of culminated in when I left Accenture, which maybe we'll leave out of this. That's maybe another podcast,

Alastair Cole 13:04

yeah, so, so in those Accenture days, right when you joined and it was exciting about the money, yeah, what were you? What were you selling? Then, how were you? How invested, how much belief did you have? Selling the dream. Alastair, selling the dream. What were you selling? And were you on board? Right? The percentage that you were selling, how on board were you, like, 10 out of 10? Or, you know, I think, well,

David Stent 13:26

I was never 10 out of 10, if I'm perfectly honest. And I don't think, I think those that were 10 out of 10 are still at Accenture. Now, I often look them up and think, God, they're still there. Like, yeah, but no. And I think you had to, you had to believe in yourself. You had to be very confident. I mean, a lot of it was, it was quite funny, because I went in and worked with HMRC up in Newcastle on a program based around National Insurance numbers and work items, which is basically how they're processing the tax system. But then at the same time, I also went and worked with Lloyd banking group and retail finance. And it's a very different, very different feeling. But it was much the same in that. I mean, you worked hard, you worked really hard on, I mean, that was always, it was always who was working the hardest, kind of totally and, and I didn't mind that whatsoever. And it was, it was very competitive, and, and it can be quite it's very, very corporate, I suppose. And I think it wasn't until I kind of stepped away from that that I realized that that maybe wasn't a good fit for me. But I did enjoy it whilst I was there and, and I think it was quite obvious though that it wouldn't be me for all of my career,

Alastair Cole 14:42

sure, and while you were there, were, were they people? Were you encouraged to, you know, just drink the Kool Aid and believe 100% in the Accenture products or, or, were you encouraged by people there and leadership there to, kind of, like, think differently? Challenge, the products and services you were selling, or was it, was it one? Was it their way or the highway?

David Stent 15:05

No, I think, I think really looking back and looking at the people I work with, and some friends that I still have, that I work with at Accenture, the very consulting evolves. Everything evolves. It changes every, every two years, as a refresh, a revamp, there's, there's, there's new areas that come up because AI is now, it's now important, and it wasn't even a consideration before. So there's always that drive towards New Thought and new thinking and new ideas and essentially new selling. Like, how are we going to sell this? Yeah, why do we know more than the client? And what can we sell to the client? That was always, that was always first and foremost, and it's got to be, I suppose, at a consultancy.

Alastair Cole 15:41

Yeah. I mean, if you, if you, if you could give a piece of sales advice to David Stan, honest. Day one, at Accenture, yeah. What would that be?

David Stent 15:52

Who sells advice? Day one, um,

David Stent 16:03

don't or Do, do, well, probably be yourself a bit more, like bring your personality into it. I remember going to bottle in Liverpool, so we had a web there that was like a satellite office at the triad in bootle, where Jamie carriages from, for any of you football fans. And then he pulled up one day outside a great sandwich shop called spoiled for choice, as we called it, spoilies, and came in and ordered his sandwich, which I thought was quite nice and humble, but I think when we started there, there was, there's a lot of middle aged women that work there, and there's work there since the a lot of them were in the late teens or early 20s, and I remember, I really enjoyed it. I got along with them really well, and so did the rest of the team. But they were like, oh, here we go. Just another robot in a suit, kind of turning up, because that's how they saw us, really like we would see, I mean, I was quite I was a bit different, because, at least I was Northern, but most of it would be a load of Southerners turning up to Liverpool in a suit young and then orchestrating the room and telling them what to do, and it's a hard thing when you're so young to kind of execute well, I did work with lads that were incredibly, Incredibly affable and easy to get along with, and really collaborative, and that really helped us build some great relationships with the women now and when we left, we in our in our flats in Liverpool City Center. We actually stayed on our last weekend, me and three of the lads, and we put on a party for the ladies at HMRC and a couple of guys that we'd work with, and it was an absolute scream. And I think really bringing yourself to work, not just being the NASDAQ footsie version of yourself, really helps with selling. And I think at the end, at the end of all these companies and corporations and organizations that we work with, there's some very, very down to earth people, and they're the people you've got to win over, that's the people that you've got to be effective with. You've got to understand their position. You've got to understand their kind of what things they're finding difficult in their role, what ideas they've got. I think that was a massive thing that we realized is like, listening to their suggestions. The people that have done this for years and years, and I suppose that in a nutshell, will be what I take back to 2008 and probably drink, drink a bit less as well,

Alastair Cole 18:33

work a few, a few fewer hours. Okay, so, I mean, it's that, you know, at that stage of our careers, you're kind of, you have that dream, you're chasing the income. It was the same for me. It was like, you know, a good salary and that's almost the reason for going to work. But then things change right as we start to look back, and you look a few years in your career, you start to analyze and think about it, and things obviously inform. So, how do you know, after you'd left, right, when you, when you, when you were left and you'd gone, the adventure, the Accenture journey, was over. You know, what did you do, what did you do? Were you conscious about what you fancied next, or how that might change. No,

David Stent 19:20

no. Again, it was very much back to pre University. Deciding what I wanted to do was again unsure. And my mental health, as I mentioned earlier, took a turn in 2000 end of 2012 early 2013 so the mania that had been building up over that time since taking the medication in 2008 it left me in a situation where I was really unwell, so unwell that I ended up in a psychiatric unit and was then diagnosed with bipolar, and I lost a lot of good friends and I wasn't at work. Obviously, at this time Accenture was really supportive. They were fantastic. Looking back, they gave me. The space. I mean, I went once I came out of that kind of manic psychotic episode. I didn't check my phone for months, and when I did pick it up and speak to them, they were fantastic. And then all of a sudden, I decided, when I came out of a depression, after the kind of the psychosis, the mania and really dismantle parts of my life, personally and friendships and family, that I would just I just wanted to get away, and I wanted to move to London, and London, and I wanted to get back into consulting, so I just took the next role that I could get based on my experience. And that role at the time was with another company in London. I didn't want to travel around as much. That was quite onerous, and it was quite demanding on your personal life, because you'd kind of come home on a Friday, and then what? By the time you've done your washing, if you come home on a Friday, you pack your bag again at lunchtime on a Sunday. So you don't really have a weekend, and often then you're working on the train on the way up, all the way down, or wherever you're going on the flight. And I just didn't want to do that anymore. So I start. I looked at a London based consultancy in and around London, and I worked there for a couple of years. But really it was, it was, it was a little soulless, and I found myself working across the city and Canary Wharf, and it wasn't a fit for me. It just wasn't, and I wasn't in a good place. And in this period of my life, I'd kind of, I kind of lost a lot, and personally, I wasn't in a good way, and I was just putting one foot in front of the other every day. And then eventually, I decided at the end of that two years I was really unhappy that I'd moved to move back to Doncaster, because my my older brother had just had his youngest boy, and I just thought, you know what, like I'm going to go spend some time around my family while my nieces and nephews are young, simply because this is no alternative. What I've got at the moment, I was in a house share in Wimbledon. All my friends were settling down, getting married, having kids. I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and I just thought, I'll go back to Doncaster and look for some work there. So that's where the kind of career change came. And I came to work with Close Brothers. So Close Brothers are a merchant bank operating out of the UK. They were, I believe, in the footsie 250 the last time I checked, and there was an opportunity to work with their motor finance business in Doncaster, which was a subsidiary of offices in Wimbledon and crown place in London. So I took that, and I moved back. And it was a lot slower, and it was a change of pace, and it was doing something I've not done before. So I was working as a business analyst in it, but the transferable skills from working in consultancy meant that I could do that role, and I was quite confident in it. So I kind of started there in 2016 and had just met Laura, my partner before moving back at a friend's wedding, and that was a kind of seed that had been planted, and that will come back to that. But I worked then in Doncaster for a couple of years, and then I couldn't persuade Laura to leave Brixton electric avenue to come to Doncaster. Who would believe it? Um, so. So in the end, I decided to move back to London once again. So I went back to London and transferred internally to asset finance and worked for Close Brothers asset finance out of Wimbledon. And again, did that for a couple of years, two, three years. And to be honest with you, I could do the role. One thing I did love about the role was stakeholder management. I really, really liked that. I mean, the more technical side of things maybe wouldn't have been my most positive, and I'm sure that would be reflected if you spoke to some of my old team, but on the personal side of things, and that's where the kind of sales comes into it. I was always quite good at influencing and building relationships with people, and I really enjoyed that part of the job.

Alastair Cole 24:08

Sweet, tell me about how that is? Where would you say, out of all the places you've worked, are you have you had the most belief in the in the products and services that you're that you were, you were working to sell, probably

David Stent 24:27

I ran my own confectionery business when I was 15 in the playground, able to make as much money as possible on the markup from the local shop. But then I got a girlfriend and handed that over to my friend James, who ran it into the ground . I'd say where I am now. I'd say I've never worked anywhere where I felt more a part of the organization, more a part of everyone's pulling in the same direction. Like, I've never worked anywhere like, turn towards like. Haven't it's just the most it is the best decision I've made professionally is getting away from the corporate world and going to charity. Well, just because it really reflects, and I said this a couple of times to some friends, are like, Oh, well, what do you mean? You work with great people? I was like, I've always worked with great people. I have like, and the people I've worked with are always fantastic, great people, but this time, everyone's got really similar values, and they really work hard to drive those values home. And everyone's in it together. And I never got that sense of it in big, big organizations that I'd worked in, and I never got it in little organizations I've worked in. I mean, I worked, I worked as God. I've had some cracking jobs. I was thinking about this before , together, I think I was looking at, I did silver service once in a summer in Newcastle. I also worked as a distributor of beer at Chesterley Street cricket. And I just think when I looked at Accenture and these banks that I worked at, and it was also that I got to see into other organizations. It wasn't just working with Accenture and Capco, like I got to see HSBC, I got to see DWP, Lloyds Banking Group, Halifax, you know, all these organizations, and it was always the same everywhere that it was. In your individual team, you seem to be pulling in the same direction, but the overall organization, whereas I feel now in turn to us, I really believe in what we do, and it's not for profit and it's not to make rich people richer. That's just not what we're doing. That, for me, means so much, because when it came to the end of my time in my last two places where I worked. I was spending most of my time, or spare time, working on charity initiatives or working on well being initiatives for mental health. And I was doing a lot of fundraising. I was doing a lot of volunteering. And when my son arrived in January, I just thought, you know what? How can I make this what I get paid to do? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, I could I'm doing this anyway. Why not make this my main source of income? And this is what I kind of do Monday to Friday, and I'm so glad I did

Alastair Cole 27:14

well, you're doing what you love, and that is how, that's how you get belief in the highest level of beliefs and services, to what extent do you think it's turned to us and what they offer and what they do, where or or is it where you are in your life and your career? Or is it a combo? How would you trade that off? Yeah,

David Stent 27:37

I think it's a combination. And I think there is, I'm under no illusions that if you put an application in front of me at 2122 while I'm in that call center up in Leeds, and it's turned to us, and you can go and do this, I wouldn't even give it a second glance. I'd just move on, because I wasn't in that place then. And it's taken me, I think it's taken me a lot of growing up. And recently, I was at a pro Palestine March outside the GMC for Barclays, and I got chatting to a retired GP, and he was from Leeds, and he studied in Newcastle, and he said, What do you do? And I kind of talked him through it, and we had a lot of time on our hands, and we talked through it, and he said, Well, you know what? He said, You're 40, and it sounds like you've really found where you want to be. And you know what? I envy those people that know that in 1819, but you know what? There's people out there at 60 that still don't ever get there. So you've I think once you do find something you believe in, if it's in your professional life or personal life, I think the satisfaction from it and the well being is so, so good.

Alastair Cole 28:45

Yeah, that's it. It's, it's, you know, to believe in what you're selling. You've got to know what floats your boat, right? And get into that. You've got to know yourself. And that is hard, but actually taking time out and actively thinking, or actively spending time working on yourself like you did, which is, yeah, you know, what did, what do? What did I do? What? What do I want now versus what I wanted to do in the past? I love the fact that you effectively turned your kind of hobby into your job, like that. Yeah, fantastic. So, yeah, that is that I really appreciate your time where we're banging out of time now. David like, thank you so much for your time and your feedback. I mean, it sounds like it's a UK business challenge that you'll make the ground an investigation

David Stent 29:34

for inviting me. I appreciate my pleasure.

Alastair Cole 29:37

I'll be keeping my eye out for Cara around spoilies Next time, if anybody enjoys the conversation the topic we've dived in today, you can get more episodes at the sales scoop.com this is our 46 live show, and a week today, Kieran and I are going to be presenting B to B. Outreach that cuts through. That'd be Kieran Gil and I. So that's us for the day. Thanks very much for your time, Dave and your insights on what, how, why beliefs are important, and what people can do to improve their belief in what they're selling. Thanks for your time. Cheers, guys. Cheers, I'll Bye, bye. You.