Interview on MEDIUM
How to turn a Good Sales Team into a GREAT One! – Part 1

A strong, high-performance sales team is critical to a successful business. But what makes a sales team successful? What strategies can leaders use to create a highly successful sales team? To address these questions, in this interview series, we are talking to CROs, marketing leaders, and sales leaders about “How To Turn a Good Sales Team into a Great One. “As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Patrick van der Burght.

Meet Patrick van der Burght: Expert in Ethical Persuasion

Patrick van der Burght of Ethical Persuasion Training and Consulting (www.ethicalpersuasion.com.au) is an Australian-based business partner of the much-respected Dr Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book “Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion,” which is considered by many top CEOs to be the best business book of all time. Patrick is a Founding Member of the Cialdini Institute and a Cialdini Institute Licensed Trainer. He has been teaching and consulting on the topics of ethical persuasion and human decision-making since 2000 and authored the book “How to Hear YES More Often” in 2024.

How Ethical Persuasion Became Patrick’s Mission

Thank you for doing this with us! Before we begin, our readers would like to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this career path?

Thank you for having asked me to do this, and welcome to everyone reading this. As always, my goal will be to share insights, based on science, that you and readers can use immediately to enhance your communication and sales. As to how this started for me, it is a story of being frustrated with results and bumping into the right information at the right time. I believe this interview may serve as a catalyst for many others in a similar way.

The Struggles That Sparked a Search for Better Results

At the turn of the century, I was a sales representative selling scuba diving equipment to retailers across three states in Australia. I worked really hard, looked after my retailers well, but I was disappointed with the lack of growth in my sales figures, which was linked to my income. I wanted to do better, but I didn’t want to lie, cheat, or deceive either.

At that time, I happened to be introduced to a business coach (John McDonalds) who was a business partner of Jay Abrahams. He was helping my boss grow his business. The strategy was to transform the sales representatives like me into business coaches to some extent and assist our retailers in growing their businesses. By extension, we would then also grow with them.

John was local to me in Melbourne, and he appreciated how I wouldn’t dismiss a strategy just because I didn’t see results straight away. I’d come to ask him for advice. This led to him lending me expensive educational programs on cassette tape (remember those?), and amongst them I found 2 hours of Dr Cialdini explaining his principles of persuasion. I loved how it was backed by research, ethical and powerful. A challenge I was facing shortly after proved the perfect setting to use this, and the results were amazing. I’ve had a passion for this way of communicating ever since.

Turning Setbacks into Market Leadership

Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that has occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or takeaway you took from that story?

Well, expanding on that challenge I mentioned before, let me explain how I went from being laughed at by retailers at the mere mention of a brand I started to represent, to becoming the market leader in 18 months.

As a sales representative, I had picked up an additional brand of diving equipment, which I proudly approached my retailers with, who knew me quite well. It was a dry diving suit. A suit that seals on the wrists and neck and keeps your body dry while you’re free to wear whatever level of insulation underneath. The brand was called HotnDry, and this suit, the Explorer, was truly the best dry diving suit I had ever used. I had extensive experience with this type of suit, ranging from recreational use to military use in the Dutch Army.

Overcoming Brand Rejection with Persuasion Science

What I didn’t know was that the year before HotnDry had made a mistake. The inner membranes had then been made from a cheaper material, and all suits had started to leak and had to be replaced. A disaster, unknown to me, but not to my retailers. They laughed at me when I mentioned that I wanted to pitch and sell these suits to them.

Freshly armed with the Principles of Persuasion, I got to work. Carefully analysing how and where I could use the principles to my advantage, and that of my retailers, because these suits were truly exceptional and being Australian-made had a great price point as well.

I’ll share more of ‘how’ these principles work later, but to make a long story short, I ethically used what I could to communicate more persuasively. Strategies to build, strengthen and repair relationships. Strategies to reduce uncertainty and to motivate to action. Not just with my retailers, but also with their clients. Within two winter seasons, my retailers sold significantly more of our suits than any other, and my relationship with them was stronger than ever before.

End of part 1 – Read on on the MEDIUM website.
The full story of Patrick’s approach to the HotnDry persuasion challenge can be found in the book he published: How to Hear YES More Often. Visit Book website.