Spotlight on Julie Futcher

Julie is the lady when it comes to all things sales: training, consulting, management, recruitment and lead generation. She runs The Sales Ace. In this interview she talks about her business journey and how she came to be where she is today.

How did you end up where you are today? What's your background?

I had been 20 years within recruitment. When I came out of it, I was burnt out to be completely honest. After doing a brief stint with somebody I knew in a sales rep type role, I had the idea for sales training – that when The Sales Manager was created, which a lot of people will know me for.

We built it to a great business. Unfortunately, due to good old fashioned COVID, I had to shut it down. It was a real shame because we built it to a level with employees doing training, consultancy recruitment and telemarketing. However, never wanting to be daunted by a challenge, I was like a phoenix - I rose from the ashes! It's been an interesting journey in my life.

The thing I suppose that I bring to the table, which a lot of sales trainers don't, is I'm still a jobbing saleswoman. I'm still at the front line selling. I still do a telemarketing campaign for clients. I'm cold calling for clients once a week, and I know what it's like. I really know the pains of salespeople, and obviously know how to work with them to get over the challenges that they have and how we can get the best from them.

Do you feel that you are in a better place now?

Yes! It was an interesting time. What did I learn from it? I learned a hell of a lot about myself and what I wanted from my life going forward. I'm so sad that I'm not working with the people that were with me then because they were a great team. It ripped me apart to end that. The journey that I went on, gave me an opportunity to sit down and look at what I wanted going forward for the rest of my working life. The words “work-life balance” came into that.

You learn a lot about running businesses, you learn a lot about managing businesses. We scaled up very quickly. I'd learned a lot about how growth happens. I learned how to downscale a business very quickly and when I did this, it was a weight off my shoulders.

My goals are very, very different. When I set up The Sales Manager, I wanted world domination! And we'd have bloody done it as well if it hadn't been for COVID. Now I want to obviously make a difference with clients still. But now, I work four days a week, and I'm a big believer that in order to be effective in business you've got to have that rest, you've got to have that break. You've got to have that time to recharge the batteries. I've done the running at 50 million miles an hour on that hamster wheel. One of the things I did learn, when you fall off your hamster wheel, it's not good. You have to take that time out. And hence the reason I structured my world very differently now.

What would you say is your why? What's your reason for fighting the good fight on a daily basis? One of the reasons that drove me into working for myself was I was absolutely fed up of being a cash cow for somebody else. In my sales career, I was successful. I made a lot of money for me, but I also made a lot more money for other people. Now I work for myself, which is great. Why do I do what I do? What gives me the biggest kick now is when I see people that I’ve trained have an epiphany during the training – it’s like that little light bulb goes on. and they take away what you've taught them. They put it into their businesses, and they apply that. When they do, I see them go from strength to strength. I've been doing a big project with a company, multi-million pound turnover business, that supplies into the food manufacturing business. We did a big sales process review and sales change around. I had a lovely conversation with their MD because they won a massive piece of business. Everything was working really well. They're over budget. I said you must be very proud to him. And he said yes, I am but you also must be very proud of what you've achieved for us. Which I thought was lovely. And that is why I do what I do!

You run a sales club for smaller business - what is it? How does it work?

I created The Sales Club to help people who were doing the sales themselves within a business. I noticed that these people are time poor. Sometimes budgets don't allow them to spend a lot of money to go on to do sales training. They don't have a lot of time because they're trying to deliver their services and products as well. These people are the ones that need the sales training the most. So we invented The Sales Club for them.

What people joining the sales club get is free sales training. We also have quarterly review sessions where we plan your business on a quarterly basis. We look at expanding people's knowledge within sales through guest speakers. You’ve also got the input from other members of the group as well if you need a sounding board. It’s not a great big commitment for people, it's one hour every other Monday. You also get access to me to pick my brains if you need to. There's a lot that is on offer for people, and the feedback I get is that it really helps them overcome their fear of sales and they're seeing an uplift in sales, which is the best thing.

Outside of that new business journey, what would you say has been your biggest challenge?

Being back on my own. I face the same challenges as a lot of small business owners - the balance between bringing in new business and delivering to your clients. I'm sure every business owner feels the same. You can wrap yourself up in your business and be delivering your product or service, lift your head above the parapet, and all of a sudden, you can't see any business coming over the horizon.

You need to overcome this problem. I have put some plans in place that helped me with that. I have some great referral partners. They have helped me a lot and will continue to help me. I, in turn, will help them with their business. I'm dabbling with things like Google ads. I had to look at areas where I can generate business without me being present.

When I first started out in business, I would say in networking meetings “I'm a sales trainer”. People would say I don't like cold calling and then run away from me! When I set up the business, I set it up to prove that you can build a business without having to do cold calling. Don’t get me wrong cold calling works. I do it for clients, we are successful with it. However, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to - you just have to work smarter and look at ways that doesn't involve that. That is why I've done what I've done with the areas of the business to help me channel through new leads, etc.

From your experience, if there was one top tip that you can give somebody, as a small business owner, what would that be?

Create a sales plan and review it regularly. It’s very simplistic: I will sit down before the end of the year and plan for my next year and look at what revenue I want to bring in. That breaks down into how many workshops, how many members of The Sales Club, how many days training that I want to do and so on. So going into a new financial year, I've got a clear view of what I want to achieve. And then on a week-by-week basis, I look at how I'm getting on with that - what marketing activity do I need to do to generate the sales I want to achieve.

I review that on a six-monthly basis. I review where my business has come from. I know for a fact that networking brings me a lot of business, so I will continue with that. I know that other referral partners generate a lot of business. LinkedIn does too. I make sure that the activities I am engaging in are current or up to date.

It's about reviewing it regularly whether you do it weekly, or bi-weekly or monthly. It’s what keeps you on track. Too many business owners just run from one month to another to another to another. That's what can cause the roller coaster of revenue. They’re up one minute down the next. A plan helps you keep control of all of that.

Watch the interview

This is an extract of a video interview – to watch the full session, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLgrZfYbWg0