Peter Strcula, Founder of BluVard: “What you can’t measure, you can’t manage”

You can tell that Peter Strcula, Founder of BluVard, has roots in sales. That’s where he started his career, but he now leads sales bootcamps and seminars to help managers and large corporations get the most out of their teams. And whilst no interview can be a shortcut to success, we think it’s well worth listening to what Peter has to say.

For instance, BluVard has implemented several strategies to not merely turn sales into leads but to make sure that existing customers aren’t ignored. Much of this is due to internal processes – Peter talks of “call scripts” that have “fundamentally increased our conversions and success rates to the point that we can no longer imagine running the business without them” – but the company isn’t afraid of taking advantage of AI.

Using AI software, he explains, “we’ve brought salespeople with average or below-average performance up to the level of our best salespeople”. But this isn’t by magic, but by training. “In fact, the best traders populated the chatbot with their most common questions, objections, requests and challenges, as well as their responses to them.”

Our huge thanks to Peter for taking the time to share his thoughts and his advice.

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Can you give an example of a complex problem in sales that you – or your company – have been involved in tackling with technology?

We identified a backlog of backlogged clients – those who have not yet purchased [but] have asked us to follow up in a few months or have not responded at all. We have not been able to follow up with these “not yet” clients or those who stopped responding.

We increased the efficiency, success and profitability of the sales department with a process tied directly to the CRM system. Although we had been using CRM for 13 years, it was only now that we started to follow up on these leads as well. We are able to close many of them after a few months when we catch them in a situation where their needs have changed,  their workload has decreased, and they have time for training. In some months, these tracked clients have made higher sales than new leads.

The CRM system also motivates and monitors our salespeople who have been avoiding this activity. We have ensured higher consistency.

Companies tend to constantly innovate their sales process but forget to innovate the CRM system that supports, requires and evaluates sales. We also started using the CRM to write down preparation for a negotiation, write down private topics to build customer relationships or measure conversion steps for different sales channels.

What is one sales tool you or your team can’t live without? And why is it so important?

Sales manual and call scripts. The company should have a “how to” manual for each part of the sales process. It is important to have specific scripts for all jobs that interact with the customer.

Our manuals include the structure and content of all types of calls, face-to-face meetings, emails and phone calls. With these scripts, our people understand what they should do. The scripts serve as a basis for regular training.

This is because people can quickly forget or may be at different levels of experience and skill. With manuals, we can get the same predictable performance out of people and standardise our communication with clients. We aim to make these manuals simple and easy to understand, making them accessible to even complete juniors, and allowing a junior in-house trainer to practice with people and give them feedback.

The manuals preserve the know-how, but we regularly update and expand them to build a replicable system for our other branches. We have also folded the written manuals into short internal videos so that existing and new colleagues can watch them repeatedly as many times as needed.

The internal manuals and call scripts have fundamentally increased our conversions and success rates to the point that we can no longer imagine running the business without them.

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How has technology helped Marketing and Sales work better together? Or, if you feel differently about it, has it increased the gap between those two departments?

Technology has helped to finally objectify the frequent conflict between Marketing and Sales.

For example, Marketing was generating leads and Sales was closing them. However, if there were no results, the sales team made excuses for the poor quality of the leads. Marketing, in turn, made excuses for the salespeople’s inability to close leads and convert them into sales. Marketing also pushed companies to reduce the cost of acquiring a new lead. Firms had different budgets for different channels for acquiring new leads but often did not measure conversions. 

Sometimes a more expensive lead can be more profitable due to a higher sales conversion, or a higher CLTV [customer lifetime value] minus the cost to the sales and marketing department to acquire it.

Technology has helped objectify the performance of the marketing and sales department. By introducing accurate metrics, we can now accurately calculate the cost of acquiring a new customer for each sale or lead generation channel and its profitability. For each, we can predict conversion, lifetime value and cost per acquisition for that customer or lead.

This allows us to regulate both the number of leads needed for a given day or week and the staffing and time capacity of the sales department – whether salespeople or call centre agents. Also, measuring CLTV has helped us determine the ideal and maximum cost of acquiring new customers at each step of the process for the marketing and sales department.

What are some examples of AI being used in sales that stand out to you?

We’ve implemented in-house AI software for our salespeople and call centre people who communicate with customers via phone, chat or email.

By doing this, we have been able to reduce the performance gap between sales. Thanks to our chatbot, we’ve brought salespeople with average or below-average performance up to the level of our best salespeople, so they’re now performing at a similar level.

In fact, the best traders populated the chatbot with their most common questions, objections, requests and challenges, as well as their responses to them. We’ve also uploaded there our internal manuals and procedures.

Today, all of our sellers use this software. AI advises them in the role of a consultant, thanks to the expertise of top colleagues and internal manuals. Moreover, this system is always learning and we update its data.

We also use the chatbot for training and simulations for new traders, where they encounter questions, objections, or confrontations with a colleague. They learn how to respond and then receive feedback and a score on how they handled the situation.

However, AI is not yet directly involved in selling or acquiring new customers. Instead, it helps with salespeople coaching, onboarding, and advising them in real-time on how best to respond to questions and issues during phone calls, video calls, or emails with customers.

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When thinking of international expansions, how can technology help? What role can it play in developing and executing a strategy for commercial activities in a multinational context?

What you can’t measure, you can’t manage. When we expanded into foreign markets, we ran into the same problem. In each foreign market, we had different performance, cost performance and profitability. What worked for us in one market didn’t work in another. Two key factors helped us:

Data: We started measuring everything. We measured and evaluated every part of the sales and lead generation process. We identified what to change and adjust in each market to get the most out of it and maximise profitability.

In some places we had higher costs for online sales through PPC campaigns, but at the same time a higher percentage of up-sell and cross-sell services, which offset the higher costs. Somewhere the lower cost of entry products and subsequent up-sells and cross-sells worked for us, somewhere they didn’t work and we needed to give higher entry prices. We also experienced different buying behaviours in different markets and the impact of weather, weekends, and holidays on sales and profitability.

Now we can anticipate that buying behaviour and set up much more effective campaigns to do that.

The second key factor was process automation and digitalisation. While we haven’t managed to completely digitise and automate everything,  it has still increased our productivity. For example, we use chatbots on social sites, but currently, we have real people sitting behind them and manually typing away, according to scripts and manuals. We are implementing these changes gradually.

What advice do you have for those wanting to start a career in sales?

Today, you don’t have to improvise and unnecessarily learn from your own mistakes. Acquire know-how as soon as possible to be as efficient as possible. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

This is not the time to figure everything out on your own and spend years learning from your own mistakes. Trial-and-error is the longest and most expensive way to go. Selling is a skill that you can learn better in a year through books, training, workshops, seminars and mentoring than you can in ten years of practice, improvisation and learning from your own mistakes.

No elite athlete has reached the top level by trial and error alone. Today’s top athletes are trained by professional coaches who are available to them throughout their careers to maximise their potential. Investing in building skills in sales and negotiation has a high return on education. Reach for the best trainers and coaches when educating your sales team. Choose people with a proven track record, not theorists. Then, set up a system in your company that ensures the sustainability and practice of those skills.

Today, it’s not enough to sell well. You and your team need to sell better than your competitors and negotiate better than your business partners. After all, you create sales when you sell and profit when you negotiate. Even a competitor with an inferior product or service can outperform you in expansion and market share if they have a better-trained sales team.