About me - honestly.

October 2023

Two weeks ago I joined an internal program, partly focused on Personal Branding that was ran by our Head of Sales Enablement, the amazing Gemma Hurley here at The Access Group. One of the first tasks that were put in front of us was to

"write down 3 characteristics that define you and that you would like others to connect you with"

The first two words I wrote down almost instinctively were "No BS"

For some reason I could not stop thinking about "No BS" for the following week – in context of myself, my profession and my industry.

Have you ever noticed how many sales people call themselves "Consultant" or "Advisor" when in fact they neither consult nor advice (other than to advice someone to buy from them). I even heard this from numerous "Sales Coaches" as a recommendation:

"Never let a prospect feel like you are selling to them. Be their trusted advisor, be their friend."

I call bullshit.

• I am proud to work in sales - and I invested a lot of time and effort to become good at it.
• I don't think my potential customers are stupid. They know what a sales manager does - they most likely have a couple of them in their own organization.
• I don't want to trick anyone into buying something from us. And more importantly - I don't need to trick anyone into buying something from us, because I am proud of the product we developed and the service we provide.

So today I recorded very short introduction video about myself, my identity and my approach as a Sales Manager for Digital Learning.

You can watch it here.

One of the things that originally excited me so much about Bookboon Learning and The Access Group was their approach to Sales.

It essentially has two pillars:

1. We try to identify those businesses who could actually benefit from our product and service. Not all businesses can and that's ok - plenty of fish in the sea.
2. We try to put those businesses who could (potentially) benefit from us in a position where they can make an informed decision (based on data, analytics, a business case, feedback etc.) weather or not they want to invest their money into us.

And that is it. To do both of these things - this is the job of a Sales Manager.

Now if you are working in L&D (or HR in general) and want to explore if we can actually help you with what we do - awesome let's get in touch and have a real conversation.

I can't tell if our product and serivce is something you would actually benefit from or not, but I can promise you that you will get an honest and No-BS interaction.

P.S. If you are interested in what Bookboon actually does - I will record a video the next couple of days and put this on my LinkedIn Profil.