Jean-François Bodart
Summary
- Last song on repeat.
- Introducing Jean-François, founder of bizdev.
- The first question, last song on repeat.
- Where would you go working for a year?
- Where he would go working for a year.
- How often he works from bed.
- How did you become a business development expert?
- Career journey and path to business development expert.
- Studying law
- How did you get started in the industry?
- Working for temp agency and interim agency.
- Working for a temp agency in Brussels.
- Becoming a freelancer and becoming an entrepreneur.
- Becoming a freelancer to avoid being branded as a job hopper.
- Selling 20 years ago.
- The rebel in every one of us.
- The most authentic way of doing sales.
- It doesn’t cost you energy.
- Being authentic and personal is important.
- LinkedIn is no longer the only option.
- The sales framework for freelancers.
- LinkedIn as a sales framework for freelancers.
- Inspired by the Freelancers in Belgium community.
- Prospection workshops and the new name.
- Why prospection was originally called prospection workshop.
- How to get clients as a freelancer
- Why I created the sales framework for freelancers.
- Why he created the sales framework for freelancers.
- Freelancers are everything, including sales.
- What sets this course apart from other courses?
- Basic sales and marketing skills for freelancers in Belgium.
- The reality of the Belgian market.
- The two things to keep in mind when working on sales.
- The long-term battle.
Qing
Jean-François Bodart is the founder of Biz Dev, making sales accessible, achievable and actionable for those who have no time to sell, or simply hate selling. He created the sales framework for freelancers, helping self employed professionals to get more clients and stop trading time for money. He’s here today to share his advice on sales, business development and growth so that you can take better control of yours. Welcome to the show Jean-François.
Jean-François
Thanks for having me
Qing
excited to learn from you.
Jean-François
Yes, I’m I’m really excited to be here. I have to say,
Qing
I have prepared three short questions for our listeners to get to know you a little bit better. I strongly encourage you to blurt out the very first answer you have in mind. Okay, yes. That’s great. So the first question is last song you had on repeat?
Jean-François
Last song I had on repeat? Yes, it was “Killing in the name of” from Rage Against the Machine.
Qing
You? Rage against machine?
Jean-François
Yes. And the story behind it is, it’s it’s an interesting story. So a few months ago, I started playing darts. With some friends of mine, we decided to organise like, really small tournaments at a club or no, just just for us only were 15 friends. And we decided to do like the real guys with like, a walk on song. And I had to look for a walk on song for myself. And I really liked the intro of that song. So this is that by coincidence, something that I listened to on repeat quite some time while preparing my walk on song.
Qing
Next question, where would you go working for a year,
Jean-François
I would like to go to Italy, because it’s still in the same time zone. So the practical side, I will still be able to work with the same kind of client same times. But I’m a really big fan of Italy as a country,
Qing
north or south or on those islands.
It doesn’t matter. I like both sides. It’s that that that mixture of different things that you can have in Italy. Plus, I’m a really big fan of the Italian cuisine. So it’s really my my favourites kind of meals that I have not the typical pizza pasta stuff, which of course are also very good. But the natural way of eating in this country is really interesting to me. And especially for my wife, who is very fan of the Roman history and my daughter as well. That would be an extra reason to choose for Italy.
Yeah, I’m a fan of architecture. So I totally understand what you say. Next question. How often do you work from bed
except for reading my mails on my smartphone? Before going to sleep? That’s really never, I’m, I can work at different places. It doesn’t need to be my desk. I can work in my kitchen, I can work in a co working space. I can work in a cafe. But working in my bed… It I’m not going to say never did it. Obviously I did it sometime. But it’s not my favourite place because I cannot sit really well. On my bed. It’s it’s more like this.
Qing
Oh, okay. So it’s more about the comfort?
Jean-François
Because we have like this cross training at home and bedroom. So yes, basically, we have we don’t have that big house. So we have to be very flexible. So I and next to our bedroom is the entrance of my office. So if I’m upstairs already, and I really need to work, I just go to the to the room just beside our bedroom, and that’s my office space. So, so to me bedroom is the cross trainer, or really is a it’s a multipurpose space, indeed. We won’t go to all the details.
Qing
Before I hit the ground running with some tips and tricks from you. Can you give us a quick rundown of your career journey? And what led you to this expertise? I know you have over 20 years of experience as a business development expert, right? Yes,
Jean-François
exactly. So I ended up doing sales by accident. Because I must crude school drop off as you say I started to do During university, but it wasn’t a good fit with me, I was way too practical to go to university. And I’m one thing of that generation where the parents said you have to try to do university. But after two years, my parents had something like, Okay, now it’s not gonna work, just go to work. And so I ended up in working in an office. How long did you study at university? I was studying for two years, no correction, I went to university for two whole years, I do it, I look for a law degree in, in Brussels. If you can call that study, I’m not sure. I partied a lot. I had a lot of good times, I had that interest in the matter of law. But it was way too theoretical, and I’m more like a doer than then then someone who likes to think and study and stuff like that. So it wasn’t a good fit. And if I look back to it now, I would have have chosen for university, I preferably have to go for “hoge” school, as we say, in Dutch. Have like more marketing, economic kind of study, because now 20 plus years laters. This is the field where I’m active in. And my parents decided to stop paying for not studying basically,
Qing
was it your own choice to study law?
Jean-François
Yes, that was my own choice. It was my own choice. I really had an interest in law of still now. I’m kind of interested in in all what’s what’s what’s legal related. Now, I have to say that I have more interest in business legal things than just legal as a whole. But okay now I’m I’m 40 Plus, and I was 18 back then. So my changes and my experiences changes as well. But it was my choice to do to do law school. But it didn’t work out. I started to do so some some temporary jobs. I ended up working for a temp agency and interim agency, as we call it. And it was an insights job, it was behind the desk. But it wasn’t really my cup of tea. I liked doing it. But I missed some kind of contacts. And then my very first boss signed me, someone who’s really good with clients. And just at the phone in the beginning, that you said, Okay, Jean-François. First of all, you have to go outside and meet the clients. And I think after one year, being at the office, I ended up doing like an outside sales job, which is basically always around developing new businesses, engaging relationships, maintaining those relationships with the clients. So I have to say it’s now I I’ve been working for 22 years now. So it’s been 21 years that I’ve been doing outside sales, and business development roles. So this is how it started. So by accidents, people that get to know me now are kind of always telling the same thing that “you’re made to work in sales”, because you’re very dynamic and expressive and stuff like that. But for me, it wasn’t really a choice. It just evolved towards a sales role. The fact that I’m a native bilingual speaker helped a lot in Belgium, especially in Belgium, I lived and worked in Brussels so so the fact that I spoke perfectly both French and Dutch helped a lot. My English was always kind of a good level. So when we had like these international clients, they all came to me as well. So it was a good fit. And I really enjoyed those those contacts. And then I worked for for six years in the temping agency, I had all the different kinds of roles from junior sales and senior sales and all the other kind of roles that you have with the sales name in it. And then I wanted to do something else. I went to do some real estate, business real estate, so offices and big warehouses and stuff like that. But then I realised after 10 years in total, being an employee, I noticed that I was I didn’t find the fits in doing the same job for too long. Okay, and I didn’t want to be branded as a Job Hopper. So I decided to become a freelancer. By necessity. Sometimes I say I wanted to switch jobs or projects every six to nine months, because I like trying new stuff. But I didn’t want to get like this this stamp of “you are a job hopper” and you cannot stay at the same company for too long. So I became freelancer and And I kind of immediately decided that that would be my expertise, like this business development setup for companies. And I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. So, yes,
Qing
let’s let’s go back to 20 years ago, because I believe how you sold back then, must be very different from how it is today, right? So maybe you can share with us one of the most embarrassing experiences you’ve had, where you just started selling, because I believe back then, there were a lot of cold calling door to door visits.
Jean-François
So it’s obviously changed a lot. I have to say that I did all these cold calling and like this cold techniques as a whole cold calling, cold mailing and even doing door to door even though I was in the b2b. I did also door to door selling. But I never liked it a lot. Why? Because Can I say that I was kind of a rebel. By that I mean that I never understood why having a quantitative view on what you do in sales is more important than having a qualitative approach. To me, it was not about how much visits and how much goals and whatever, basically, at the end of the road, it’s how much revenue that you’ve created for your employer or the clients that you’re working for. And I had that already 20 years. So it was a bit against my way of work that I did it.
Qing
But I guess there’s, there’s a rebel in every one of us, it’s just, you decide to, to let it out.
Jean-François
Yes, and I and the fact that that I always get I always had this, this huge opportunity of my employers and clients to have, after quite some time, they noticed that my way of doing things also got them results. So they, they let it be like we’re going to leaving him alone, because what he’s doing, it’s maybe like, especially back then it was seen as a special way of doing things. investing a lot of time in getting to know the customers and spending hours to just entertaining conversation with clients and potential clients. It was not the way to go 20 years ago, now it is, but I had my results. So most of my clients and employers were like, Okay, let let it be and, and I’ve kept doing my things for years. And now I try to teach others that to also start from the first find your way of doing sales, and you’ll see it will work you will have to give it some time, you have sometimes to tweak it a bit. Basically the best way of doing sales is doing sales in a way that fits you as a person and it wasn’t really a method back then it was just a feeling that it’s a good feeling or bad feeling. But now Yes, I studied a bit around the concept of selling and modern sales like word social selling and stuff like that, because this is to me the most authentic way of doing sales basically just be yourself and then show interest and the rest will follow
Qing
and that’s the most sustainable way to.
Jean-François
Definitely. And the most sustainable. Why? Because it’s it’s it’s you. As long as you’re there that way of selling will keep on working and it doesn’t take too much effort. It doesn’t cost you energy you have not yes you have sometimes this frustration because you cannot close all the deals that’s that’s just impossible. But by just continue doing yourself and stay authentic. We also always hear people talking about being authentic and personal branding and stuff like that. All the things that we didn’t have like 20 years ago yes, we had internet I’m not that old, but it was not used on the same way we used it to to to visit some website, these basic old very static websites. And we had email but not like these email programmes of these software automation programme that social selling it didn’t exist. LinkedIn didn’t even exist when I started my sales career and not Now we’re talking 2022 It would be impossible to imagine doing sales without LinkedIn.
Qing
When was LinkedIn founded actually? Do you know?
Jean-François
If I’m not mistaken, it would be around 2004 – 2005. So yes, it’s in the early 2000s. Obviously, this probably had the BETA version some years before that. But for the main public, I think it would be early 2000s where it was. But back then LinkedIn was just the odd alternative of Facebook to have like your online resume. That was just an About Me and the Experience page. And that was it. And now, I am glad to see the change now that people see LinkedIn as a tool to get in touch with people and conversation and sales, obviously. And not only as the recruiters if you want to contact me, this is my resume, because it’s way more than that.
Qing
Now let’s focus on the sales framework for freelancers. I know that you put a lot of thought and effort into developing the system, if I may call it a system. Yes, yes. So how did it come into play? What inspired you in the first place to create this framework?
Jean-François
It started some kind of three years ago, I discovered the community Freelancers in Belgium being a freelancer myself. And I start just started by answering sales related questions by the community, like, how can I do this and how to have to react in that in this situation. And then Jenny, who founded the community, asked me if I was interested to have like this sales workshop for freelancers. And although the Freelancers weren’t my target audience back then, I really wanted to give something back to the community because they helped me with the questions I had about other topics. So I was like, Okay, it’s time for me to give back. It didn’t take me a lot of time because to me, it was really like no brainers logical stuff to me. But then, after this first workshop, we got a lot of positive feedback on it, it was people contacting Jenny contacting me sending me DMs to say occasional fossa, I tried the stuff that you explained, that really helped me and I get the result, I was kind of stuck with
Qing
the workshop that I attended last year, or start a bit
Jean-François
Oh, it’s was the workshop, the very first workshop, it was, if I’m not mistaken, the beginning of 2021. And it was called prospection workshop of something like that. And it was a bad name, because obviously prospection has this negative connotation as I have to do cold calling and cold emailing and stuff like that. So now, with the feedback
Qing
that you get from this, it was a
Jean-François
feedback, because in my in my world, in my sales world, doing prospection just means that you are focusing on one specific part of the sales cycle, which is the beginning of the of the sales cycle, you get in touch with new customers. So to me, prospection was just like you say, negotiations, it was a part of the cycle. That’s the starting point. Yes. But for a lot of people, and especially when you check in Google for that Google is a great tool to check if the audience is also using the same kind of keywords and prospection prospecting on all the alternative wasn’t a term that was used a lot for freelances, because, yes, because to them, it doesn’t matter how the cycle goes, it doesn’t matter how the cycle is called. The one thing that matters and one questions they really have is how to get clients. If it’s called prospection, okay, but they don’t care about how it’s called. They care only about the result. How can I get clients this is why we decided to rename it’s to to get clients as a freelancer, and how to get clients as a freelancer. That’s why the two sales framework has been chosen as a name. So after a few of those workshops and master classes, and one of them was indeed the one that you’ve attended, I decided to make it a course an online course. Why? Because I wanted to help as much as freelancers as possible with their sales skills. struggles to set the right foundations in their sales strategy. But I noticed that doing one on one with all the Freelancers, it would take me way too much time. And I also noticed that not every Freelancer is willing or able to pay one on one sessions, you have to be honest at some point that that that’s just a reality. But I do want it to help them. So this is why I’ve created the sales framework for Freelancer which is a pre recorded online training of almost four hours with all the tools and tricks and tips that I have gathered throughout all the years of working as a sales myself but with freelancers for the last three years. This is why I decided to create a framework dedicated to the real life of freelancers. Why, because as a freelancer, you’re a business owner, you have to do sales, that’s, that’s not a question, you have to do sales,
Qing
and most of us hate it
Jean-François
Most of us hate it so and you don’t have like these basic skills to do it. It’s easy to learn. But you have to invest time in learning those skills and each, like these new competencies that that you really have to have. But at the same time, being a freelancer, being a business owner also means that you’re not only doing sales, you have to do your whole administration yourself, you have to deliver the things that you’ve sold to your clients,
Qing
We wear a lot of hats as a freelancer, you have to be, CFO, CTO
Jean-François
everything, we are everything. And that’s why to me having a neat system and a clear way of work is important more important for freelancers than classic businesses. Because even if we only have two, three hours a week, to work on our sales, let them be as efficient and productive as possible. And this is what the thing that I wanted to have in the framework. So to me, it’s like the basic sales skills that you need to do to to to step up your game when it comes to to being active in sales as a freelancer,
Qing
and what do you think sets this framework of yours or this course apart from other courses that teach you basic sales and marketing skills?
Jean-François
But I struggled with that question as well, because a lot of people told me yes, Jean-François, So it’s true that we need to learn those skills, but you can find anything on on YouTube. And in some way they are right. The problem with those how-to tutorials on on YouTube, is that as as a non-sales expert, you don’t know if it’s a good or a bad course. And you don’t know in what order, you have to follow those different courses. Because you have sales, we have marketing. We have prospecting, negotiation and stuff like that. And to me, it’s what was important to; One: dedicated the whole course on the reality of the freelancer. So again, you don’t have 40 hours a week to work on sales, you have a few hours a week, at best to work on, on on sales. So this is what I kept in mind tailormade to a relative the freelance. Secondly, it’s in the right and in my opinion, the right chronological order in what to do first and what to do second. And last but not least, it also take into account the reality of the Belgian market because being a freelancer in England is not the same as being a freelancer in China, I suppose. And it’s not the same as being a freelancer in Belgium. You have those different perspectives, you have those different realities and, and the fact that I combined those three elements, so it’s really made for the freelancer, based in Belgium, who wants to know how to do sales the right way, in Belgium.
Qing
And do you think we can see results in a relatively short period of time?
Jean-François
Yes,
Qing
because sometimes it’s very frustrating that you start making efforts to achieve a goal. But you know, first of all, you’re not good at it. And secondly, after, you know, several months, or even years of trying, you’re not even halfway to where you want to be. And then you just eventually stop doing it.
Jean-François
Exactly. And I’m convinced that you have to whether it’s with or without the framework, because that’s not the thing, but when you’re working on your sales, you always have two things to keep in mind that you have on one hand, the quick fixes, like I’m stuck Oh, wait a potential client who doesn’t want to accept my rates. And you can be helped by having like quick fixes and how to use objections for how to handle objections and how to use right arguments to say, No, I’m not 50 euro per hour, but I’m worth 100 euro per hour and how to work on that those are the quick fixes, how to change my LinkedIn profile is to me a quick fix, like give me one hour or take one hour of your time to fix sort of speak your LinkedIn profile, and you will see a difference. But then the second thing to keep in mind when working on your sales and that’s more of like working on the system in your sales is the sustainable way of getting on a regular basis. The right leads the right clients and and
Qing
it’s a long term battle,
Jean-François
it’s a long term battle if you want to be is to still be in business in let’s say five years, you have to work on on a reliable system because without reliable system, you will continuously go up and have good months and bad months and stuff like that. So, so, this is the things that you have to keep in mind or working on sales working on marketing is the same doing the finance is the same you have like these quick fixes, how to fix that specific issue and try not to make the same mistake again. But also the long term. If I want to invest in in a house in 10 years, one of the things that I need to put in place now to be able to achieve that goal in 10 years. Sales is just the same. I need to solve immediate problems, but I will have to put in system in place that will work for me for the coming years.
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