How Johannes-Daniel Veldsman Sells: His Secret, Interestingly, is Not To

Most people pursue their life’s work. But for?Johannes-Daniel (JD) Veldsman, it pursued him.

“I don't think I found sales, I think sales found me,” Marsh’s Head of Pacific Growth and Digital said. “I've never looked at myself as a salesperson, per say. I'm a connector. I'm a storyteller. And I've learned how to do that across businesses.”

Spend even a small amount of time with him and it makes sense. As affable a man as you could meet, he makes you feel instantly comfortable.

That innate good nature has served him well. With his stated sales philosophy of – interestingly enough – not selling, he’s built a successful career around connecting with people and helping them solve their problems.

How does he do it, exactly? We recently interviewed him for our latest edition of?How I Sell?to find out:

1.?What do you love most about selling?

What I like most about selling is that I get my energy from people. So, the fact that I can connect with people for a living is fantastic.

The other part is I've got a very broad spectrum of interests. And selling gives me the opportunity to go into the weirdest and the wildest areas, because we have such a diverse set of clients across Marsh.

For example, I’ll go from meeting with the largest online retailer in the world talking about some of the problems they've got to the next meeting, where we’re talking with a client that’s trying to get a rocket to Mars.

That gets me excited. It's never the same.

2.?What’s your sales philosophy?

My sales philosophy is not to sell.

At Marsh, we've got an engagement strategy. We don’t sell, we have engagement strategies around building relationships and understanding people’s needs and then connecting what we do to their needs. That's it.

So, if you can build relationships and listen to people, that's our philosophy. It's not a sales philosophy. It's about understanding and listening.

3.?What are the top sales trends you’re tracking?

There are two areas.

First and foremost are the trends going on with our customers, which changes for each industry. It's really important for us to understand what the macroeconomic factors are out there; what are the seismic shifts.

So, I don't necessarily look at it from our perspective. I look at what is most important in our clients’ lives and what's keeping them up at night, and how we can help them with those things.

From a sales discipline perspective, one area is we know connecting is what leads to success. And we use Sales Navigator for a lot of what we do at this stage, to be able to understand if our people are out there connecting on LinkedIn and understanding how they are connecting. Are they active? Are they building their brand? We look at their?Social Selling Index?to track if they’re on the right course.

4.?What’s your favorite discovery question?

I always try and find a connection with the individual outside of work. Something personal to that individual to use as an icebreaker.

I put a lot of research into first meetings and trying to find connections. That could be something that you pick up in the media around their interests or it could be something you find on their LinkedIn –?but it's showing that you value the individual in front of you by really trying to find that connection.

That’s normally where I go with my starting discovery question, which is not necessarily a discovery question from a sales perspective. But it does discovery for me in terms of the individual —?because we need to be able to work together. We need to be able to build that relationship and whatever sales that will happen will happen if we can form a connection.

5.?What do you look for when hiring a salesperson?

I think interpersonal skills for us is massively important because we're in the relationship game. We want you to be able to have a discussion with somebody and be a good listener. Because a lot of people, when they talk about sales, it's a very hard, cold approach and that’s 100% not what we do.

Coachability is also important because a lot of individuals that come on board, they've got that hunger, they have a broad sense of what's happening out there in the world. But from a sales perspective, they probably never closed a deal in their lives. So being able to coach them to not just give good lunches but to be able to then find the connection between what the clients’ needs are and what our capabilities are and then present the two together is key.

So being coachable is very important. And you can pick up very quickly if an individual is coachable or not.

6.?Is there a habit outside of work that helps you sell better?

I’d say the habit of being curious.

Meaning, being curious about what's happening in the world, what's happening in our economy, and what's happening with our clients’ industries. Because it's all interconnected.

Being curious and digesting a whole lot of information is probably the habit that helps me most.

7.?How do you use LinkedIn when selling?

That's a big question because we use it for quite a lot.

One way is we make sure that our people represent themselves well on it. We look at their?Social Selling Index, we look at the activities happening. So, we encourage our people to use it and build out their brand on LinkedIn.

On an individual basis, it’s really important for us to understand specific industries and see who is in those industries, which is all on LinkedIn. So, we use it to find out what’s going on and to cut through and identify who we should be talking to.

Additionally, we use it to stay on top of people’s movements. So, when champions join or leave an account, we understand the impact that has on us, and figure out how to adjust accordingly.

Those are just some of the examples. There are many others as well, but those are some of the most important.

8.?What was your biggest failure in sales and how did that experience transform you?

The biggest failure we make is when we oversell.

That is just a disaster waiting to happen. And it’s always a result of us looking at what we can do, versus what the client really needs. Over and over again, even if we sell the deal, it never works out and we always regret it.?

So that's probably my biggest learning is it’s not about us. Even if we have the capabilities, if it isn’t solving a core problem for the customer, it’s not going to end well. It always needs to be about how we can help them – it’s all about them.

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