MT/Sprout: Why beliefs in sales matter and honesty is key

This article first appeared on MT/Sprout, a Dutch business and management platform. By Ewald Smits, director of MT/Sprout.

Every interaction with a customer is sales, Klaas Kroezen believes. Anyone pursuing customer success uses the whole company to help customers buy. "In b2b, everything is sales."

Kroezen was co-founder of WUA, an international company that researches and optimises the usability of the online customer journey for its clients. He did it together with his brother. Kroezen on sales, his brother on the content. Over all those years he was responsible for a good thirty million in deals.

Last year he decided to follow his passion and continue in sales. He sold his share of WUA and founded CXIA Group, a company specialising in business coaching with a focus on growth, inspiration and customer experience. Klaas Kroezen helps companies develop their strategy, reach their goals and create a great customer experience.

Practical sales training

Kroezen believes that a great customer experience is the key to success for any company. He developed a practical sales training to take everyone in a company who has customer contact to a higher level in sales. Through online training and live sessions.

According to Kroezen, every customer contact begins at the top of the funnel: someone does not know you yet, or perhaps knows you a little, and gets in touch with you. After several interactions someone becomes a customer and that first euro arrives. "For me that is not the end of the funnel, but the beginning," says Kroezen. "Because how do you turn that one euro into three euros?"

Honest and relaxed sales

The secret is: doing honest and relaxed sales. Kroezen: "Let go of the result and focus on the process. Make sure you deliver as much value as possible to your customers, more than all of your competitors. If you stay genuinely honest and do not let yourself be driven by performance pressure, you achieve the most for your customer and for yourself." This approach to sales forms the core of everything CXIA stands for.

Kroezen: "You keep asking yourself: what more can we deliver to the customer, and how can we grow the customer step by step?" So you come in with something small, and because you are in, you are a supplier. And from there you keep growing bigger and bigger.

Customer satisfaction is crucial in this. Because when your customer becomes a fan, they tell everyone who will listen. "And that is how you almost automatically refill the top of the funnel. And those are by far the best leads you can have."

The essence

To keep getting those best leads, Kroezen developed the Sales Excellence Model. Anyone who uses that model well starts to enjoy sales, says Kroezen, because you are honest and relaxed and you are genuinely helping your customers.

Honesty is essentially about the difference between selling and helping someone buy. "A customer feels your intention and honesty immediately. If a good intention is missing and you are not being honest, the deal is doomed to fail. So always be yourself, because only when you stand fully in your strength are you the best in the trade."

Beliefs are crucial

To be successful with honest and relaxed sales, Klaas has developed beliefs that you learn to apply in his training. If you copy these thoughts well, says Kroezen, you see results even faster.

Kroezen: "An example: in contact anything is possible and without contact nothing is possible. So always make sure you literally stay in contact with your customer. Another belief: calling is always faster. How often do you spend hours on an email and then think: I would be better off just calling."

"But the most important one for me is to always go for the best advice. So never give just one option, but put forward three. The first option is simply what the customer wants. The second is a good deal more attractive and also better, but more expensive. And the third option is the very best you can deliver."

Kroezen: "Anyone can learn honest and relaxed sales. That is why I created a practical sales training for it. The results so far are astonishing. Even consultants with an aversion to sales now happily hold sales conversations. Because they are no longer selling, but genuinely helping their customers. You can see this in the results. It is my mission to help as many people as possible with sales and business. That is where my heart lies, and I know the customer benefits too. Every customer would want their salesperson to have done this sales training."

Do you want to reach the top in sales? Then read more about the Sales Excellence Training.