Stories Sell: A Masterclass on Building Trust One Tale at a Time

Full Transcript

Celine Duros: I’ve been living 10 years in Ghana. A yes is not always a yes. There is a reality around fear of confrontation, disappointment, or even what could be seen as a lack of politeness, right? And you call Nigeria and it’s like, is this a sales call? Yeah, actually it is. Okay, you have two minutes. And it’s really like, that’s straight to the point. I actually love this. I love doing business with Nigerians because a yes is a yes, or a no is a no

Darius Teter: Welcome to Grit & Growth from Stanford Graduate School of Business, the podcast where Africa and Asia’s intrepid entrepreneurs share their trials and triumphs, with insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to tackle challenges and grow your business. I’m your host, Darius Teter, the executive director of Stanford Seed. I want you to think about the last time you tried to sell something, whether it was an idea, a product, or even yourself in a job interview. How did it go? Did you feel confident or was it more of a struggle? Sales can feel chaotic. So today we’re clearing the clutter to explore what really drives successful sales in any context, whether you’re pitching to a CEO, managing a sales team, or trying to get your first big break.

Celine Duros: My name is Celine Duros. I’m a sales director and also a sales and business development consultant.

Darius Teter: Celine Duros knows sales in emerging markets like few others, from securing deals with global brands like Rolls Royce to advising start-ups in Ghana. Celine’s 15-year career spans industries and continents.

So I want to start out with just a little game that we call “lightning round, true or false?” And these are meant to be provocative, and they’re meant to set up the rest of the conversation. I’m going to read a statement about sales and you’re going to tell me whether it’s true, false, or it depends. And if you want to add a few sentences about why, that’s great. We’ll get into a lot of these topics later. So the first statement: Sales is all about persuasion. The best salespeople can convince a customer to buy things they don’t really need.

Celine Duros: It depends. In a B2C context, if you’re really good at finding the psychological want, you may be able to sell something that people don’t need. So it depends. And a B2B context? Very rare.

Darius Teter: Right. Because you want repeat sales, you don’t want upset, unhappy customers, right?

Celine Duros: Correct.

Darius Teter: Okay. Sales is primarily a solo activity.

Celine Duros: False. I mean, if your operations are not going well, your distribution, your marketing, your payment, you can have a sale that is just going to be damaged. So it’s, like, to look at the sales organization, you need to look at everything to make sure that it’s absolutely not a silo.

Darius Teter: Okay, we’re going to get into sales organization. That’s perfect. You need to be an extrovert to succeed in sales.

Celine Duros: False. I’ve seen introverts that were just the best listeners and they got so much sales in. So absolutely false.

Darius Teter: Okay, we’re definitely going to get into that one too. Offering discounts is the most effective way to close the deal.

Celine Duros: It depends. It depends what you have. If you have competition that is very equal in terms of value, then you might actually use the discount bit. If you are in a time crunch, like your Q4, and you want to get things in and it might be also an effective solution, but it should not be your go-to.

Darius Teter: It’s best not to mention or compare your product to your competitors.

Celine Duros: It depends too. If your competitors are better and cheaper, probably not. But if you actually are much stronger, I think it’s actually a good sign to be able to know about your competitors and never, never — I mean, that’s one of the things that I usually recommend — is never complain or never actually talk bad about your competitor. That’s not the goal. You want to go back to the value and you’d never know — your competitor can become a company you acquire the next day or your partner in another context.

Darius Teter: Yeah, longer term relationships. Okay, here’s another one. Cold calling is dead in the age of digital marketing,

Celine Duros: It is not! I would say false. It is not. There’s a lot of noise and if you have a really good SDR that is persuasive and that is clever in the sequencing, it doesn’t mean that you need to be harassing and calling people. But sometimes one call can make a big difference when you have been connecting with people on LinkedIn or email or on their social media and then you just build that relationship. Say that smart thing, get those 30 seconds where you’re going to impress them. I don’t think it’s dead.

Darius Teter: Okay. What does SDR mean?

Celine Duros: Sales development representative, a very key function. They’re the ones who actually build the pipes, get the prospect in, the right people, and book the meeting for the sales team, sales manager, account executive, however your team is organized.

Darius Teter: Okay. The more leads you generate, the more sales you’ll make.

Celine Duros: It depends. If you have bad quality, you will not get the deals in. If you have really good quality, yes, it’s a numbers game. Absolutely.

Darius Teter: Okay. And the last one: People buy products based on logic, not emotion.

Celine Duros: I mean, 90 percent of our decision making includes emotion. So I would say false.

Darius Teter: Okay. So Celine, what was your first sales job? What brought you into sales?

Celine Duros: Wow, that’s back in … I think my first sales job was, and I don’t know if that was really legal, but I was 16 at the time, and I was working on markets, and I was selling, I had two main — it was actually really, really fun. I was selling two-euros jewelry on markets during the holidays. And then …

Darius Teter: You mean an outdoor — on a table or something? Like at a holiday market?

Celine Duros: Exactly. A holiday market in France where I’m from. And then after I was selling clothes for men, that’s where I started my sales experience.

Darius Teter: And you enjoyed it and you thought, this is what I’d like to do?

Celine Duros: Not at all. I didn’t even know I was selling at the time. I was just putting butter in the spinach, like we say in France, adding a bit of cash to be able to do activities with my friends. I mean, I was only 16 and sales was definitely not sexy, so it was not a go-to career. So no, no. I found out about sales being an actual opportunity after I finished my business school and I was looking for … I was not looking for a sales position, I was looking for an organization that was very much driven by culture and that’s where I came across Meltwater, and that’s where I started my sales career. And that’s where I realized it was really fun and exhilarating, and I learned a ridiculous amount of knowledge that I’ve been using in management since.

Darius Teter: Stories are powerful tools at every stage. Celine highlights the importance of building a story library, key narratives that build trust and tackle objections throughout the sales process.

Celine Duros: Telling a story of who I am as an individual and why I work for this company. Telling a founder story, a vision story, who-my-customers-are story, this is going to be building the trust. There’s also the story, like, I know what you’re thinking, anticipating potential objections around value, around price, whatever topic. I mean, I have a story library of about 32 stories that you can use at every stage of the sales process. So story library, it’s a list of stories that are going to be important for your business. You’re going to have the vision, you’re going to have the value story, you’re going to have the tech behind. Because I’ve worked with a lot — and I still work with a lot — of tech companies, you’re going to have like, let me explain you what I do in a very simple way. You can just use stories to simplify so that you don’t overload the brain with logic and numbers, and you allow the decision maker to just relax. And in that case, it’s much easier to make a decision.

Darius Teter: This is fascinating to me and presumably your sales team needs to be trained on and contribute to the story library and know which story to use and which situation. Because it’s not just about where you are in the sales process, but it’s also about who’s on the other side of the table.

Celine Duros: Absolutely, and that’s why the listening skills are very important. It’s not just, I mean, I always tell my team, don’t be a product pusher, be a solution finder. And that’s the same — you can abuse storytelling if you just throw stories all the time and you don’t throw the right story at the right time.

Darius Teter: I guess in storytelling, you’ve related it to knowing your customer and not pushing a product, but pushing a solution. Is that what people mean when they talk about consultative selling?

Celine Duros: You came to my shop, obviously you want my product, do you want this? Do you want this? Being able to actually ask questions around what brings you here. Are you looking for something specifically? Are you just browsing? Being able to ask questions and to see if there is a problem or an opportunity. Because that’s the other side. And sometimes you will just say, I don’t think I’m the right fit for you, and that’s okay. You don’t waste time as a seller, and if you’re like, I wish I could help you, but this integration, it’s not worth our investment for our business. For instance, I’ve said that recently to one of my potential customers, and we didn’t waste each other’s time, but by asking the right question, I was able to actually understand that we were not the right fit or by creating urgency that could be the other way around.

Darius Teter: As A CEO is building a sales culture, building a sales team, what are some of the common mistakes they make?

Celine Duros: One of the common mistakes that I’ve seen is really being the sales organization. I think it’s a good one. And not transferring, not having an actual way of selling, not providing the tools and just like, oh, you come to meetings with me and then you learn from there. No, I mean if you have somebody extremely smart that is joining your team and that is documenting, that could work. If that person’s job is actually let me document everything you do, how you do it, how you talk about the company, the stories that you’re going to be saying, what you share at which time, how you negotiate the payment terms, whatever are going to be important when it comes to selling and actually building value and closing, that’s one thing. There’s usually no documentation and that’s usually what I see in a lot of organizations that I work with when we start doing the audit is like, yeah, no, I would have to go and look through my emails.

Everything is around my email. That would be one. The other one is also relying too much on personal connection and believing that because you started that business with your network … I’m working at the moment with an agronomist and he has obviously no sales background, but due to the level of knowledge that he has, he’s been able to convince quite a number of people and also he’s exporting avocados, so that also helps when it comes to building that trust. And now he’s been plateauing for quite some time and it was really interesting. We needed to take a step back and completely revamped the online brand. They were inexistent, the website was outdated, the LinkedIn was not existent, he didn’t have a LinkedIn profile, so we had to actually do a lot of work before he could even do outreach to a new organization to grow his pipeline.

Darius Teter: So there’s two interesting things there. So lesson one is document your sales processes, and lesson two is don’t be over-reliant on your existing contacts and network, and getting beyond your existing contact and networks means actually having a public-facing something that represents your value proposition, LinkedIn profile, whatever it is, people need to know who you are and you need to be able to refer strangers to something that lets them know more about your business and your product. I would be terrible at sales because I think every time I lost a sale I would feel personally hurt. I would take it personally. And so help me understand, maybe it’s just a certain personality type, they’re okay hearing “no” eight times because the ninth time is “yes,” and that’s where they get all their energy. But how do you build resilience in a sales team in a tough market?

Celine Duros: That’s quite interesting. When I started at Meltwater, we had a product that was not translated in French. Everything we had was English and actually we were kind of a baby from the German market, so all the managers were German, so well, I guess from a culture perspective, you were not too allowed to give up. I was trained by German, Dutch, and Irish, so the French emotional side just needed to go away. So that’s the first thing. And the second, I mean, it was the team. The team was just everybody was there when you had a no, you were not taking a no alone, you were taking a no for the team and basically the same way that when you were celebrating the celebration was big. We had the bell in the office that you would smash when you get a deal in, and then we had really, really cool celebrations, like skydiving, wine tasting, mixology.

I don’t have a formal way where it’s usually a — or maybe I do, but it’s probably unconscious. But I usually do that exercise to review and to see, what did I miss and if I had to look at this process and look at it close, what would I have done differently? Sometimes you don’t know. That’s the reality. Or an alternative is also, and this I’ve done with some of my sales managers, it’s to actually have a discussion with the clients straight away and say, I know that this bid didn’t go through or we were very close from working together and I heard that you decided to go with a competitor. I just would love to understand why, just so that we can get better. And then I understand if it’s the product, if it’s the pricing and product, or if it’s the sales team, that actually they didn’t inspire the trust or they oversold or they overpromised or they didn’t follow up, and that could be another angle. It is a delicate thing and it’s just about how you frame it. You frame it from a research perspective, like, “We’ve been analyzing people that we went pretty far in the process and our goal is to make sure that we improve our solution to make our customers happy. So I’d love to get your feedback and it’s just no pressure, it’s just I’m doing research, I’m not here to sell you again after you already said no.”

Darius Teter: Sales strategies can vary dramatically between B2C and B2B, from quick, emotion-driven decisions to complex multi-stakeholder processes. Each requires its own tailored approach. So I was interested to hear how Celine has navigated these two very different worlds.

Celine Duros: I invested in a Korean skin care company that was distributing in West Africa, that is distributing in West Africa, and also in an art gallery. And for this it’s absolutely B2C. It’s emotion driven and it’s like, am I going to put $300 in this Korean skin care because everybody’s saying that Korean skin care is the best? I mean the type of sellers that I had, they had to be representing the brand very sharp in terms of how they would talk about the product. They would have very little time, but the face-to-face representation was very, very key. And also it’s a very premium product, so they need to make sure that they leave some space for the customer that they don’t — Especially in Africa, I’ve seen this quite a lot when somebody’s following you because they want to help you and you feel like you’re stealing something. So it was to make sure that we were educating and training the team on product, on behavior, on questions.

There was obviously a whole training on its own when I’m training B2B and tech particularly because that’s what I’ve been doing for more than 15 years. It’s a very different conversation. Usually the sales processes are much longer. The questioning is you’re going to have time to ask a few more questions and you need to be very sharp because usually it’s a solution selling. So you need to be able to get that problem and create a solution out of it and have a really good understanding of complex decision making where you’re going to have six, seven, eight people that need to actually give an approval before a contract can be signed. I mean obviously the B2C — that sales can be on the spot, it can be just a phone call or money that is going to be moved from bank account to …

Darius Teter: In sales, culture definitely matters, especially across diverse markets.

Celine Duros: I’ve been living 10 years in Ghana, A yes is not always a yes. There is a reality around fear of confrontation, disappointment or even what could be seen as a lack of politeness.

You call Nigeria and it’s like, is this a sales call? Yeah, actually it is. Okay, you have two minutes. And it’s really like, that’s straight to the point. And I mean, I actually love this. I love doing business with Nigerians because a yes is a yes, or no is a no. With Ghanaians, one of my first mentors, she used to work for Ogilvy, an advertising company. It was one of my first clients there, and I saw her at the beginning and then I saw her a year later. We were seeing each other, but she’s like, okay, so how is it going? And I was like, I don’t know when a yes says yes and a no and a no. I was like, yeah, no, you need a bullshit reader. And a lot of cultures …

Darius Teter: Wait, a bullshit radar.

Celine Duros: Yeah, reader, reader,

Darius Teter: Reader, okay, yeah, good.

Celine Duros: And you need to sharpen it. And so what was fascinating for me because I started to trust less and less when people were saying, “this is amazing. I love your solution. I’m going to talk to my boss and then maybe this quarter we’re going to be able to do something,” to even more looking at what they’re doing. Are they really going to talk to the boss? Am I going to have this conversation? Is she going to answer to my email? Is she going to say yes to the informal coffee that I want to set up? Is she going to respond to the messages, the follow-up, what we’re going to call when you massage your clients in between interactions rather than like, oh no, she said she loved it, so I’m just going to trust the words that even reinforced even more. I’m fascinated by the Ghanaian culture.

I would not have spent so much time there, but it was this understanding of “it’s hard for me to tell you no, because I don’t want to be rude.” At the same time, I’m like, but it’s business. If I don’t bring you value, just tell me. So that’s a very big difference. And for instance, I’ve been operating across, I’ve done business in 25 markets, so I, I’m not up to the 54, but I can say that for instance, much more straightforward when it comes to the Kenyan market. Much more straightforward when it comes to the Nigerian market. Much more straightforward when it comes to South African market. And something that I would say is true across the board is that, don’t rush the relationship building. That’s something that is really important across the continent.

Darius Teter: Don’t rush the relationship building. I think that’s worth repeating. Across many markets, especially in Africa, trust and rapport aren’t just nice-to-haves. They are essential foundations for any successful deal. It’s not about jumping straight to business, it’s about taking the time to understand, connect and build mutual respect before diving into the finer details and long before signing on the dotted line. Do you need a salesperson on your team who sort of gets those differences and you’d have your Ghana salesperson and your Nigeria salesperson would be different people or just somebody who’s got a lot of a high emotional intelligence and knows how to do what I call code switching?

Celine Duros: I love the word code switching. I mean, you don’t need a national to be able to succeed in the country. I’ve seen, I mean if we look at West Africa or Anglophone, I’ve seen Ghanaians, Nigerians that were succeeding in numerous markets because they had high intelligence and because they could switch and go back to the cultural best practice based on who they’re talking to. And then you also have international organizations where this really doesn’t really matter. If you look at the big, big organizations, I mean I work with big FMCG or big management consulting company or big financial services company. You will have the impact of the national culture is going to be lowered because the …

Darius Teter: The corporate culture is stronger?

Celine Duros: Exactly.

Darius Teter: So what’s the greatest mistake you made in a sales effort?

Celine Duros: Yeah, because mistakes, I made quite a few.

Darius Teter: But what’s the one that — you know how sometimes, I don’t know if you do this, but sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep and I’ll remember something I did 30 years ago and I’m still embarrassed about it, I’m like, oh God, I can’t believe, I can’t believe I did that or said that.

Celine Duros: I think that it’s a tough one, but I lost a very big deal. It was $1.7 million and it was huge. And basically I was just trusting my contact way too much. And I knew he was not the decision maker, but the relationship was good. I was like, no, we’re not going to damage that. That’s just too good to be damaged and there’s too much at stake if I actually, I’m not actually appreciated by this person, the entire deal is at stake. And I was just too far from the decision maker, so I trusted the words, but there were just too many actions that were missing. And when I look at it and I just look at the whole process and I’m like, how did I miss that? How did I miss that? It was not one red flag, it was probably five red flags, and I unconsciously ignored them or even purposely because I didn’t want to damage the relationship, but I lost the deal.

Darius Teter: Were you shocked when you found out that they were not going to go with your service?

Celine Duros: Yeah.

Darius Teter: You were shocked. Absolutely. It was completely taken by surprise.

Celine Duros: Completely taken by surprise. It was like, “don’t worry, the contract is coming tomorrow,” to like, “oh, actually it’s not going to happen.”

Darius Teter: That hurts. And was that trusted contact probably having multiple meetings with other vendors as well and you just didn’t know or they were being super cagey?

Celine Duros: Yeah, it was a bit more political than this.

It was just that if I had been in touch with the actual decision maker, I would’ve seen that there was some skepticism and the value was not as clear. It was just everything was clear. If my contact was the sign-off, it would’ve gone through. But just trusting that that person is going to be your ambassador, and that was just my mistake and I trusted the word and there were just too many actions. There were just too many actions that were missing. So since it’s, like, you can trust the word, but really if you want to forecast, look at the actions where you’re going to be able to actually see through …

Darius Teter: Trust is essential in sales. But as Celine’s story reminds us, it also has its limits. For example, relying too heavily on one contact without verifying actions or connecting directly with decision makers. That can lead to costly mistakes. But sales challenges don’t just exist at the individual level. They’re often rooted in broader organizational decisions. For early-stage companies, sales can feel daunting, even unappealing, for founders who are more focused on products or fundraising. But that mindset creates its own challenges, ones that can jeopardize growth. So how does founder involvement in sales evolve as a company grows and what’s the right balance?

Celine Duros: One common mistake that I’ve seen is that CEOs or co-founders that are not comfortable with sales because it’s just too scary or not sexy enough or not interesting enough compared to products or fundraising, they delegate to team members maybe that are not co-founders sometimes. And it’s just there’s so much at stake, like sales keeps the lights on, but it’s also what gets the company to grow. So lack of involvement of co-founders in sales is one that I would say.

Darius Teter: Is that more about early-stage companies than late-stage companies because one of the things we’ve, in previous episodes of this podcast, we’ve talked to, in fact we did an episode on sales with Yann [Le Beux], who runs a company in Senegal, and his issue was that he didn’t build a sales team, it was all about him. So say a bit more about what’s the appropriate level of CEO involvement and how that might change as the company grows.

Celine Duros: I think that’s a great point. It’s either the sales organization is the co-founder and there is no knowledge transferring, there’s no way of selling, and there’s no sales organization. It’s like everybody’s gravitating around that person. That’s one. Or there is a complete lack of involvement and full delegation and no control on the sales. So that’s one or the other. But I think it’s an excellent point, the one that Yann raised. I’ve seen that a lot.

Darius Teter: Handing off sales responsibilities from founders to a team is a pivotal moment for any business. Are there mistakes in this delegation or transition from CEO-led sales to sales team?

Celine Duros: That’s a tough one actually because I’ve seen this. Well, I’ve been working with a company that does advertising, it’s not Viamo. It was a couple of years ago and they had been growing beautifully thanks to the founders, and the founders have been growing the business in Asia and in the US and they are from Africa, so they wanted to make sure that there was a really good footprint in Africa. And when they didn’t have time to do sales again, which it’s normal, they wanted to delegate and they’re like, you know what? We’re going to get somebody senior, somebody who has 15, 20 years of experience. And they realized it was a mistake for two reasons. First, that person was not adapting to the culture very well, so it was a real problem for the entire organization. And the second thing is there was no willingness to — I mean it’s probably related to culture too — but this, “I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, 30 years, I know what I’m doing,” and this start-up mentality was kind of missing. So it’s linked to the culture but also in the way of selling and adapting and being agile, and they lost maybe a year and a half of paying somebody a really high income when they could have had probably two, three people doing an excellent job a bit more junior.

So sometimes relying on seniority and saying, I just want to delegate the whole thing and not being involved, that was my initial point of completely delegating and thinking obviously I need somebody senior. It might be actually damaging your culture and also eating your revenue eventually.

Darius Teter: Recall that in our true/false game, I asked Celine if it was necessary to be an extrovert to succeed in sales, and she confidently said “no,” emphasizing that it’s actually not that important. While some might assume extroversion is key for building relationships or closing deals, Celine highlighted that actually emotional intelligence plays a much bigger role.

Celine Duros: This is something I’ve seen across a variety of very, very good sellers. The emotional intelligence is something you need to not take those “no’s” personally, not be affected. Because if every time you get a no, you’re down for two days, then you’re not going to make it, and that’s really connected to your emotional intelligence.

Darius Teter: What are the other rewards for your sales team that are non-financial? Are there any that matter?

Celine Duros: Training, like actual education, which could be, it’s like a non-direct monetary, but it’s something that people really care about. Shares in the company and being able to actually get some money when the shares are being vested after a certain amount of years in the company. That’s another one. You can also look at, I mean in a post-COVID era, it might not be as true, but the hybrid and how many days you’re going to be able to work from home and the flexibility and not because you have to go and pick your kids at 3 [o’clock], and that’s something that is very important to you and giving you that flexibility. I don’t care if between 3 and 4 you’re not at your desk as long as the job is done and you do what you’re supposed to do. So autonomy is also something that can be traded in the negotiation when you’re looking at compensation. So those are non-monetary. I mean, in sales context, I’ve seen that something that impacted my motivation that was not commission and bonus, it was to also be highlighted. So being

Darius Teter: Recognition.

Celine Duros: Recognition, thank you. Like going to the Dubai office for three days and looking at how things are being done and sitting with mentors or people that have a few years’ experience and that have a position that you aspire to so that you can be following them for a few days like that. Obviously it’s going to cost the company, but the amount that they’re investing compared to the return on investment is much lower. You have high potential programs where people can — and I’m sure you probably have some of those that are coming to Stanford for extra training. So yeah, that’s some very powerful.

Darius Teter: So recognition is not just about ringing the big bell when the sale is made. It’s actually about investing in your best sales team.

Celine Duros: Recruiting the workforce is a big one, and I don’t think we talk about that, but the turnover and finding the right people, that’s a big headache. That’s something that — for the same avocado exporting companies that have been working with, they looked for a salesperson for I think six, seven months, and we had to revamp the recruitment. We had to revamp the application. At the beginning, it started by getting somebody who could do marketing and sales. We thought that it was a bit too ambitious. And then after it was the cultural aspect because obviously when you do export, that means that you’re going to be speaking with Europe and speaking with Middle East and speaking with Asia. So you need also that cultural component. So finding the right salespeople is really hard, and I mean this is something I hear from every single founder. So usually what I recommend is go and poach because that’s your best option of getting the people you want.

So finding the resource and the right people, the trust and having to — and that’s why storytelling is so powerful because really anticipating those trust issues and explaining how, I understand how you’re feeling. I’ve been there too and I understand the context and you’re just wondering what I’m doing here. Those are stories that are going to be very important to build a trust, and then patience — really taking your time because that’s just — the notion of time is absolutely different than what I’ve experienced in Europe and in the US, where I’ve worked too. So where the pace is much faster, and so you, you’d be surprised if you give up on needs and basically they could actually come back and two, three years later, they didn’t forget you. So being patient and building even a stronger resilience. And then after, there’s just the reality of the infrastructures. Having your Zoom calls that are cutting all the time. Or when I was working in France, I would go to the Netherlands for peanuts. I could do a trip in a week. Here, I do a Ghana, Nigeria, it’s going to cost me more than going to France. So from a business perspective, it’s like having those face-to-face and intra–Africa travels to be able to meet your customers. It’s actually a big cost for the company, so it’s an investment.

Darius Teter: I guess the counter and the flip side of that is online selling, Zoom, and I don’t mean online retail like Amazon, but I mean selling as a salesperson online is a really, really important skill. Then beyond the challenges, there’s also immense potential — potential to reimagine what sales can be and how we prepare people for success in this field.

Celine Duros: Personally, I’m excited by impact and the impact that the company I work for has. That’s one thing. I’m also excited by excellence and I’m excited by innovation, so that’s really what drives me on a daily basis to sell. That’s one way. I understood the question in two ways. And then what I’m excited about for the future of sales in the continent is just like there is such a big opportunity to improve customer service, customer success, like having training and having academies where you can actually train people to be on top of the field because it’s such a function that is missing and that is not properly trained. So I mean, I never had a sales class when I was in business class. I learn everything on the spot. So since the condition and the reality of the continent are even more difficult, I think there’s a big, big opportunity to go in the direction and have dedicated sales training in academies.

Darius Teter: Sales isn’t just about closing deals. It’s about creating impact, driving innovation and building for the future. It’s about aligning strategies with the realities of your market and finding those unique opportunities to grow in real and meaningful ways. As you reflect on your own sales strategy in your sales organization, are there areas where you might recalibrate or even redesign for greater success? I want to thank Celine for sharing her valuable insights and experiences. I don’t know if it’s because she’s French or because she’s been in the sales trenches, but I love her directness. Sales can often be about showmanship, but Celine brings a grounded human approach that reminds us what truly matters in building trust and delivering value. If you’re selling people what they don’t really need, you’re not going to last, with a few exceptions, but if you solve actual problems, that’s the key to long-term growth in loyal, repeat customers. This will be the last episode before we take a break for the winter holidays. So from all of us here at Grit & Growth, we wish you happy holidays. Erika Amoako-Agyei and VeAnne Virgin researched and developed content for this episode. Kendra Gladych is our production coordinator, and our executive producer is Tiffany Steeves, with writing and production from Nathan Tower and sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell at Lower Street Media. Until next time, I’m Darius Teter and this has been Grit & Growth. Thank you for listening.