Speaker 1:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

Richard Lane:

Simon and I were joined by Dirk Gauwberg from AXA Partners for this episode of The Insiders. Listen on to hear how Dirk and his small team have reinvented the way AXA’s global sales teams interact with their customers through a shift to a modern selling or buyer first approach. We also got Dirk’s experience on fostering growth strategies and how understanding the skills of your people first enables meaningful education to occur and leads to stellar results. As always, I hope to enjoy the discussion.

Simon Hazeldine:

Hello, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast giving you the inside track on all things B2B sales and marketing. I’m your host, Simon Hazeldine. I’m an author, sales expert, and keynote speaker on all things sales and negotiation. I’m joined by my co-host, the CCO and Co-Founder of durhamlane, Richard Lane. Richard, great to be back with you for a yet another insider’s episode. Could you tell us a little bit more about durhamlane before you introduce our guest for this episode?

Richard Lane:

Hi, Simon. Thank you very much. Yep, great to be back for another Insider’s episode. Just quickly on durhamlane, we’re an integrated sales and marketing agency. What does that mean? Well, we help our customers to create always on channels of meaningful, well-qualified sales opportunities that business development teams love to close. We are trying to fill that gap between marketing sales, bit of the middleware, and focusing our time on demand and lead generation. Thrilled to be joined by Dirk Gauwberg, Global Operational Marketing Director for AXA Partners. Dirk, welcome.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Thank you very much.

Richard Lane:

You’re welcome. I’m going to hand us back to Simon who’s going to get us started and really looking forward to today’s discussion.

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. Dirk, a question we normally ask our guests so our listeners can get to know you a little bit, could you please give us a little bit of background and how you came to be in the role that you’re in currently?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Well, thank you very much for inviting me. Well, yes, it’s a sort of natural evolution basically. I studied marketing and I was always a strong believer basically that sales and marketing should work closely together to achieve extensive growth. At the start of my career, I opted whether or not go for a marketing job in an agency, but I opted for a business development role in sales, and just to get experience in how buyers relate to sales reps, basically, and to learn what brings comfort to that buyer during the decision-making process. Later in my career, basically, with this experience, I would say I always opted for positions that combine sales and marketing or strategic business development.

In all of them I tried basically to align marketing strategies with basically the sales targets. You could see that made a difference basically in growth. When three years ago, I was also developing a global B2B sales enablement department, or we call it here global operational marketing department. Well, this felt like a great opportunity, of course, to roll out on a global level, I would say, my belief in how to accelerate that growth. I’m here now. I’m glad to be here, in fact. Yes.

Simon Hazeldine:

Oh, just globally then. Keeping you nice and busy, Dirk.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Exactly. There are many differences. That’s one thing for sure.

Simon Hazeldine:

100%. Our Insiders podcast listeners, they’re always going to be interested in: how do I grow revenue? In fact, probably even more so, how do I grow revenue quickly? Spoken like a true salesperson here. How do you approach both organic and external growth as an organization?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yeah. For me, both tracks are interesting to grow revenue in a fast way, I would say. I was rather lucky, I must say, to be able to develop strategies at diverse employers on how to enable growth. Depending on what the general business strategy was or is, I opted for external growth, or in other words, M&A, or the organic growth. What I did, I always proposed M&A for fast growth. Basically, when a company needs to enter a mature or an international new market and where need is to have a certain volume, I would say, that will allow the company to take a certain brand position and will be able to reinvest basically its profits in further growth or innovation. If a company has a good position in the market, has a certain scale, and a competitive and desirable offer, then the combined strengths, I would say, between sales and marketing can do the growth job if a well or true, I must say sales enablement program is in place. This is important, I think. Yeah.

One could think actually that to get success in those very different streams or tracks of growth are extremely different, but the process to get around the table with a preferred target, I will say, in M&A process or for pure prospection is very similar in my opinion. For me, it all starts with meaningful content and stories that trigger that interest and in M&A, surely, because you have to sort get a foot in the door to talk about investing together or really fully taking it over. You have to get a story that triggers that interest with the founder. You have to know that lots of founders are very close to their company, of course, and they are successful thanks to their employees. If you put into your marketing approach, I would say, and your story around that, that you will bring value for the founder and also for the employees once acquired, that will help in fact the interest, enhance. Of course, marketing is again an important tool to make that happen.

Of course, afterwards, you have to go and see the persons. I would say, in B2B sales nowadays, it is the same. If you look to the B2B buyer journey, we see a sort of, in my opinion, a consumerization of B2B sales, meaning that buyers are looking for meaningful content when they’re making their decision in the diverse steps. We see that some of them even don’t want to see anymore sales reps and they rather like to go to a self-service. I suppose sales reps won’t like to hear that, but it is true that most of them see sales reps much further in their decision-making process. That’s sort of a pre-shopping becomes more important. That means that, in B2B sales, B2B marketing should be more around us, I would say. I also think that there is a big need that marketing comes closer to the buyer. For me, yeah, basically getting the growth accelerating goes in the way of content marketing at the same time combined, again, with good sales reps.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I mean, gosh, Dirk. It must be seven years ago or something, CEB research was average B2B by a 57% of the way through. Goodness knows what it is now, right?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Exactly.

Simon Hazeldine:

I think that all important whatever’s happening in the 57, 60, whatever it is now, is I think where the content in the pre-shopping is taking place, isn’t it?

Dirk Gauwberg:

It’s exactly. Exactly. It makes a big difference now and it’s more and more important, I think, than ever before. You’re totally right indeed.

Simon Hazeldine:

Because I think we have very informed buyers, but you can potentially get quite misinformed and confused buyers as well, because it’s not always easy, is it? To do the research. I think the skill of the salesperson probably to pick them up at the right time and to find out where they are is going to be critical.

Dirk Gauwberg:

That is a challenge, of course, but I do see that often the salesperson can’t simply take almost a recorded pitch because they are so well-informed. The buyers, it’s easier. You go on Google and you see a lot. But it’s true, some of them can be confused and then you have to rectify. You have to have a little bit of a coaching around that to ask the right questions.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I think that’s absolutely critical. You mentioned in our pre-interview that you conducted a big survey using actually McKinsey.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yes.

Simon Hazeldine:

Which I think everybody will be very familiar with, to identify what your local sales teams needed. I’d be fascinated to know what insights you gained from that kind of bottom-up approach.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yeah. That was an interesting bottom-up survey, in fact, with again, the purpose of course to gain buy-in for any needed sales and marketing transformation, I would say, that the central teams will propose to the local entities. Now, a lot of interesting topics were gathered on how the sales reps were using that time, for example, and also what elements they really taught needed to be tackled to help them to achieve rather ambitious revenue targets, I would say. I would say besides the need for simplifying internal processes and many other things, it became clear that our sales reps were not fully equipped to engage with new B2B buyers and their purchase approach, I must say.

Key elements that were mentioned were, for example, it was difficult to contact prospects and to get finally an appointment. They also mentioned the lack of adequate content, not sales pitches, but rather the intelligence content, for example. In fact, they expressed a need, in my opinion, for more content marketing that could support them in the diverse stages of the sales funnel and also the need to be more digitally savvy to engage with prospects to open doors. Yeah. That was a really interesting study. Out of there, we launched a global sales enablement program basically. Yes.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. It’s fascinating. Yeah. I’m very interested in that sort of content, the intelligence content versus the sales pitch. Richard, your perspective on that, is that in line with what you see with your work at durhamlane?

Richard Lane:

100%. We pivoted a number of years ago, and I’m sure I’ve shared the story on the podcast before, but essentially, with the same amount of effort and enthusiasm and persistence going in, we were just creating less opportunities. It was getting harder to connect with people, so we built out our marketing services shared team. The job of that team is to put the brand of our customer in front of the right people at the right time. We look at three different buyer stages because people are looking at different times. I also think you’ve got to go and find them. You can’t expect them to come to you. One of my mantras is “build it and they won’t come,” With my corporate E-learning history that came from.

But yeah, you need to really create messaging that speaks to the people in the stage they’re at. Whether they’re just out looking because they think they might want to solve something, or because they know they need to solve something, or because they’re looking for a partner to solve the thing itself. Totally different messaging. We hone that, and craft that, and AB test that, and of course, convert it through our MQL to SQL conversion.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I’m just interested. We won’t do this now, but for another day, the death of the sales pitch. You wonder whether it’s coming, right?

Richard Lane:

It is interesting, isn’t it? Because I think in the world of B2B, well, two things. One, have you ever met an Amazon salesperson in your B2C life? No, because it’s such a frictionless experience and B2B behavior tends to follow B2C behavior, so we are going more into the digital world. But at the same time, reflecting on our business, we spend a lot of time helping people to select the right solution and to solve a problem that they’ve come around, even they hadn’t thought about or we’ve helped them to articulate. The role of the consultative sales professional is definitely here for a while yet, I would argue. Phone bashing has probably gone there.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yeah.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I mean, I was kind of think I was more referring to the archetypal pitch, which I think has probably definitely died of death some time ago because I think buyers are much more sophisticated.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yeah, yeah. That’s correct.

Simon Hazeldine:

Dirk, you’ve set up a global marketing operation absolutely from scratch. You must have to learn an awful lot. What were the objectives that you wanted to achieve from it? I’d love to know your experiences in setting something like that up, but our listeners may not have to do it on that scale, but I think it will be fascinating to hear your perspective.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Yes, indeed. Three years ago, I started setting up a global operational marketing department, which had a name, to initiate a new go-to market approach. You have to know that insurances have been a very traditional business where classic wining-and-dining, I would say, sales approach worked well and this much longer than in other sectors. But we could feel that a shift was needed because the classical insurance resellers are not anymore only the brokers. A multitude of sectors now integrating their value proposition an insurance element. A new way of selling was really needed. Based on that, my team rolled out a sales enablement program to adapt to the buyer’s current behavior, I would say, and their needs. Basically, this is based on, I call it modern selling or you can also call it buyer first selling. All this, of course, to achieve basically a bigger sales pipeline, more leads, and also to have a quicker and faster conversion rate than before.

Now ensure perhaps what is that approach for modern selling? It combines in fact the marketing and sales activities related, as we just talked about, the buyers purchase journey. It works as a sort of a cycle for me. It all starts with meaningful content that is distributed via social media, can be done by the salesperson, or in general via the site to target audiences. Leads are picked up and social conversations by the sales reps can start with the aim, of course, to provide, let’s say during these conversations, engaging content that will open the doors towards a remote selling meeting, or a face-to-face consultative selling, or even a co-creation, let’s say, workshop. Now during that process, we gather, of course, and also the sales reps get us quite interesting, I would say, information and insights that you wouldn’t have so easily otherwise on the company.

That helps them, of course then, to make that bespoke offer once they’re a little bit further in, let’s say, the process, which makes them stand out basically. For me, the cycle is not round there because once the prospect becomes, let’s say, a real client, well, we can do testimonials. That, again, we can put on social media attracting, again, let’s say, sort of other prospects. We keep on going with the lead generation and that is why they’re interesting I find in a sense. Yeah. You asked me a little bit what the experiences in setting that up. Well, as we all know, transformation is of course never easy. In the beginning, we needed to prove ourselves as a new department. Thanks to this McKinsey study, we started by fixing the basics that really could give some more comfort to the sales reps.

One thing we did, for example, was setting up a content factory platform. Basically, a platform where people could find all the content that they could need, which before was, I would say, dispersed, a little bit messy. Now, it was one place. At the same time, of course, we made a lot of new content which they could use then into, let’s say, their own sort of process. We saw basically that it was used really strongly, so that was really a relief and we were very happy about that. In the transformation, that was a big hook in, I would say, into the whole company. Based on that, we started then with our next step, which was we wanted to make our sales rep more, I would say, digital savvy. Here, again, we did a lot, of course, coaching and webinars and I would say the country managers and also the sales directors of the countries saw during those webinars that the sales rep that were more, I would say, successful, used more the social, let’s say, networking.

We were here a little bit help I think, thanks to COVID, because of course the classic wining-and-dining network wasn’t anymore there, so they needed to go basically to the digital one. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, that helped. But the sales directors really saw quickly, “Hey, we can get our targets quicker by going into that direction.” In a very practical way, what we also did is we gave them also, let’s say, a lot of content that they could use then on the digital selling, I would say, instead of that they had to invent themself. That made a transformation easier, I would say. But of course, you know how people are, it’s always a bit of a battle.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. Change, as you say, transformation and change, never an easy thing. I’m glad to know there were some benefits from COVID though. Of course, there’s all sorts of challenges, so it’s nice to know there was some benefit. Did you use external partners to help with this initiative? If so, what do you do to make sure you get the best from them? I think Richard is obviously, durhamlane, an external partner for many organizations. I’m sure Richard will be listening really closely to this one, Dirk.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Oh, yes. Sure, we did. Basically we are a very small team and we are a little bit, as I call it, T-shaped. We are a small team with a broad knowledge, I would say. That’s the horizontal line. But we need experts, marketing experts, as basically the vertical line to get things started or to get knowledge. You see? And to go faster. I think nowadays, if you look to the changing world, it’s certainly not a luxury to have good experts, let’s say, that you can call it in at the moment you need them to be more agile. I’m a very big believer, let’s say, in this sort of a strategic partnering because we work with lots of experts, but we bring them together and we let them use the expertise of the different experts. That makes it very dynamic, in my opinion, and it’s very useful. In that way, we move on faster. Yeah, I’m a very big fan for external providers.

Simon Hazeldine:

Richard, from a durhamlane perspective, what’s your advice for organizations on how to get the very best from an organization like yours?

Richard Lane:

I thought you were going to ask me to do a sales pitch there… I’ve talked about this before, so apologies to our regular listeners, but at durhamlane, we talk about our three Ps: process, people, and probably most importantly, partnership. It has to be a two-way street. You have to engage a partner as if they are a member of your team because that’s how they should be treated and how they should treat you as well. I think when you’ve got that sort of clarity, then you can do amazing things by bringing external support and scale sometimes. It could be about scale, it could be about expertise, but if you really open up and give to partnership, then I think that makes a big difference. I always say to potential customers, “Imagine that you had a really proactive sales team sitting next to you, how would you work with them?” The only difference being they’re not next to you. There are people, not your people, but if you follow that mindset, then you should get a successful program delivered.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. You can extract the maximum value from your external partner, which as an external partner myself, is what you want to do, don’t you?

Richard Lane:

Yep.

Simon Hazeldine:

Maximize the value you can offer. In terms of, I suppose, loosely sales technology, Dirk, you recently ran a Sales Navigator Programme for your sales team. Now I’m a big fan of Sales Navigator, but in my experience with quite a lot of my clients, it’s never really being used to its fullest extent and it is really, really valuable resource. What approach are you taking to get the maximum benefit from Sales Nav?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yes, we rolled out on global level, for approximate, 130 sales reps the Sales Navigator Programme. When we launched it, we defined a number of KPIs that were related to our digital, I would say, selling maturity. Example, very simple, but it’s a profile basically of the sales rep. That’s one thing. It looks very simple, but that’s important. But the number of C-level contacts you have, the number of InMails sent, et cetera. Basically, to get maximum out of the Sales Navigator, we have set up a global community consisting of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, accelerator ambassadors as we call them, which have a task to follow up, on the local level, the KPIs and to nurture and coach the sales rep. It’s a lot of following up that needs to be done because it’s true what you say otherwise people leave it a little bit on the site and they’re not feeling, “I have to do it.”

They have to see the advantage of it of course, and therefore we launched of course a lot of training sessions on the topic and lots of, let’s say, inspiration sessions from sales reps who were successful with it. That triggered basically the other ones to go also. We gave some things away once people had a good target, et cetera. Yeah. You have to push it, but if by showcasing that it is working, yeah, it does help. We saw that the sales directors of the regions immediately also saw again, and they pushed and engaged then with the sales rep. They were also ambassadors, to move that forward, you see. Now this is of course a rollout, but besides that, we also gave a lot of practical support by creating those specific LinkedIn social media content, whereby we suggest it’s a number of posting messages, and even more important, it’s follow-up messages.

Of course, these could be tweaked, but we had sort of campaign material that could be done and could be used in the different regions at the stage that they were in their commercial activity of course. To facilitate an easy distribution of those LinkedIn social media postings, we are using the LinkedIn My Company content pages, which makes the sales reps an easy way to forward it and they don’t lose too much time. At the same time also, they could pick up some messages. That helped in fact to engage and to make them move into it. We see actually quite nice results. The KPIs that we had set in the beginning are really reached. We have some points sometimes, for example, sending InMail. For some people, it’s still stressful to overcome. But yeah, constantly, I think coaching and pushing and success stories, it does help in my opinion and it makes it move forward.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I mean certainly when I’m doing some sort of social selling workshops, one of the big things is crafting the message so they can feel genuine and not artificial. I certainly had one person who said, “You’re not going to ask us to connect and then send them a message asking them to buy something, are you?” He said, “Because that’s what I get all the time.” I said, “That’s not social selling. That’s just really bad selling done on LinkedIn.” Definitely not doing that.

Richard Lane:

Socially bad selling. Yeah.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. Yeah. We were all-

Dirk Gauwberg:

That’s pretty much harassment, I would say.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, we’re probably all very familiar with… We’ve all probably been on the receiving end of it.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Correct.

Simon Hazeldine:

A little earlier, you mentioned that you run co-creation, these service design workshops with your customers with a co-creation approach. I’d be interested in how you structure and run those. Secondly, what benefits do you, and also obviously the customers, get from these?

Dirk Gauwberg:

All right. Yeah. Yes, as part of this modern selling approach and within our consultative way of face-to-face selling, I would say, we started to organize those service design workshops to co-create with our B2B prospects or clients’ unique solutions that would make them stand out. That’s important. It’s about this uniqueness basically. We do this mainly with larger organizations because there is a certain investment needed at both sides to organize these workshops, to make those workshops happen, which we baptized [French 00:24:12], it sounds a little bit more posh I think in French. We organize an intake session basically to understand the prospects’ business strategy, their vision on the market, their challenges, and we organize a round table or we send out the survey to a larger group. We need to have good input and not hidden elements in fact. Out of this, we distill then a number of topics to brainstorm on.

Based on the preferred brainstorm topic, we bring them together, let’s say, the right people from AXA Partners and also from our prospect or client. Mainly we bring together heads of product development, intelligence, innovation sales, customer experience people, but also marketing, but also operations. We aim to have always one person, which is on a C-level, just to get the engagement and the full insight basically. During the preparation phase, then we gathered the needed intelligence around the topic. Sometimes we do little market survey, just a quick one, just to get a little bit of a basis to have a good conversation. During the session itself, well, this is a purely, let’s say, service design approach where we put basically the end customer of our clients, of our prospect in the center and we talk about the topic and the activity around that topic, and look at the pains and the gains of the product and how we get relief by bringing the right solutions.

It is interesting to see that it is not so easy basically to put ourselves in the shoes of the end customer. Also, for our prospects, sometimes it’s a different way of looking to things. But at the end, what you have is you get great ideas, solutions that could bring more value to this end customer of our prospect or client. Out of there, of course, at the end of the session, we sort of decide and we exchange on what is now a quick win and what is a more blue ocean, we call it, topic that needs a little bit more discussion, because of course, we’re all under pressure to gain more growth so the quick wins are easier to set up. After that, basically we can see with a prospect or client if they want to proceed, and we can set up MVP or ‘Minimal Viable Product’ sessions. Basically at the end, we can bring an offer, you see.

That’s a bit the whole flow, I would say. What is now the advantage as you asked for the prospect or client and for us? Well, I would say for the client or prospect, basically you get a unique solution which is very much based for your end customer portfolio, which is great because otherwise… It’s a bit tailored made product development at the same time. If you look at it more on our site, what is the advantage there, well, we don’t have to sell anymore because basically it’s co-created. The solution comes from out of the mouth, I would say, from our prospect and clients. That helps, of course then, to be above the competition, and to be tailored, and to become more a strategic partner from your prospect or client. Yeah, I think it’s a great way forward in sales, I think, and it brings that consultative element to a higher level, I would say. Yes.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I think with a unique client-centric offer, it’s quite hard for them to do an RFP, isn’t it?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yes, it is.

Simon Hazeldine:

Even if they do, it’s going to be very heavily influenced by you.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yes, and that’s a great thing. We have already seen that afterwards. They do an RFP, but of course, it’s written in such a form. With the solutions that we can bring that it gives us a big advantage, a step forward. Yes, indeed.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always encouraging clients, account managers, key account managers to move left in the customers’ buying process. You’re actually starting the whole buying process off, aren’t you? Which is fascinating.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Yes.

Simon Hazeldine:

The earlier you start, the greater your influence and typically the greater your success. Yeah. A huge amount of work though as well.

Dirk Gauwberg:

It is. It is.

Simon Hazeldine:

Of course, you must take some very, very strong facilitation as well to run those sessions.

Richard Lane:

That’s also good qualification, isn’t it, Simon? Dirk, free not to answer this if it’s not appropriate, but did you typically charge for that type of session?

Dirk Gauwberg:

No, we don’t charge for that at all. We see it as a cost in sales at the same time, otherwise it also costs some money. But it is true, it asks for a lot of effort and sometimes we also use then, because if you have several at the same time, we ask external companies to help us to lead the sessions, for example, which is great to have so you can go faster again. Yes. But we don’t charge, not yet.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. I think it was Seth Godin who said, “Don’t try and sell your products to your customers, create products for them,” which is ideally what you’re doing, isn’t it? Which is fantastic. Richard, you are normally scribbling away all the main points as we go through our interviews. What are standing out as the key messages from what we’ve heard from Dirk?

Richard Lane:

What a picture you presented for our listeners there. That’s great. Yeah. Dirk, just right at the top, I love the fact that you were aligned from the get go. You took a BD role to understand how people buy, but you really wanted to be a marketeer. That’s really interesting. I love that. We’ve talked to a lot of guests who’ve got a certainly very successful marketeers that started in sales and business development, and I think being able to understand the two sides of the coin is key. We then took a bit of a path through growth and we’re talking about M&A versus organic growth, and that led us to content marketing plus great sales reps. No point having one without the other. I think the McKinsey survey is really interesting as well, because I think that process using an external partner allowed you to shine a light on perhaps what was good, but also what needed to be developed.

You probably got more buy-in because it had some third-party due diligence as it were. We talked about the death of the salesperson or not. Come back to that one, Simon, I think only. Yeah. I think the other piece and what’s been really interesting throughout this discussion, and we have another two guests from a similar industry, but it’s very traditional black book type sales method. Dirk, with a team of four and 130 global sales reps, I think you said, it sounds like you’re really down the path of moving that organization into a modern selling approach. I’d like to congratulate you on that. I’m sure there’s lots of work still to do and always will be. But actually using the right technology tools, having a small team, but using external partners, looking for the quick wins, but also managing to do the blue ocean thinking, I think is really, really interesting to see how you’ve helped to shift the sales motion for AXA Partners. Yeah. Really, really enjoyed the discussion, so thank you.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Thank you very much.

Simon Hazeldine:

I think the phrase “buyer-first selling” wonderfully encapsulates I think a lot of your philosophy and approach. A lot of people talk it, but it’s great to hear from someone who’s actually been putting that into action and making it come alive. Really appreciate you sharing your time and wisdom with us and with our listeners. The final question, Dirk, which sometimes is one of the more challenging questions is-

Dirk Gauwberg:

All right, all right.

Simon Hazeldine:

… we’re building The Insider’s Spotify playlist and we ask all of our guests to choose a song which we will add to the playlist. Feel free to be as creative as you like. It is a very diverse collection. I’m not even sure collection’s the right word, random list of amazingly different songs. What would be your chosen song or tune to add to the playlist, Dirk, please?

Dirk Gauwberg:

Oh, well. I love a lot of songs and I won’t say Abba because that’s probably already on your list, but one that I really like actually is Perfect Day from Lou Reed.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yes. Yeah.

Dirk Gauwberg:

I think it’s probably also on your list already. I don’t know but-

Simon Hazeldine:

No, no, no.

Dirk Gauwberg:

… it’s such a great relaxing. Are we all looking for that perfect day? I would say so. Yeah, if you played out, I think that would be nice.

Richard Lane:

What a choice. What a choice.

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah. We definitely have not got that on the playlist so far.

Dirk Gauwberg:

All right. Okay.

Richard Lane:

It will be a nice transition from some Simon’s more punkier moments as well, I think. There’s a nice thread there from some Simon’s and other… I mean, Neil from ABB was in your zone, wasn’t he, Simon? And then-

Simon Hazeldine:

He was. I think he went for New Order.

Dirk Gauwberg:

Oh, the good old times.

Richard Lane:

Into Lou Reed, I think that’ll be a nice transition there, Dirk. Thank you.

Simon Hazeldine:

I don’t think we have any ABBA on either, but that we should do.

Dirk Gauwberg:

All right.

Simon Hazeldine:

You can’t beat a bit of ABBA, right?

Dirk Gauwberg:

No, no. No.

Simon Hazeldine:

Well, Dirk, thank you. Thank you so much really. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Insiders by durhamlane. Thank you to my co-host, Richard, and also obviously to all of our listeners for listening in. Hope you found this episode valuable, which I’m sure you did. Please subscribe to The Insiders podcast on your preferred podcasting site and you’ll be notified of new episodes as they’re released, which they are on a regular basis, and visit durhamlane.com to learn more about selling at a higher level. In the meantime, we’d just like to wish you all a good luck with all of your sales and marketing efforts, folks. Thanks for listening in.

Speaker 1:

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