Sales Game Changers | Tips from Successful Sales Leaders

This is episode 373. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LORI'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "To figure out the content to create, keep a list of the questions that people ask you. If you're hesitant or not sure what to write about, the next question that either a client or prospective client asks you, it's a great starting point for you to take that and turn it into a piece of content that you share it on LinkedIn, or write a blog post or something along those lines. It's a great starting point. Another tip I would say is just go in your sent email. You've likely answered some of these questions in an email already. You've already got half of that post written then for you [laughs].

This is episode 372. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TONYA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Get curious. Step outside of your assumptions and what you believe to be true. Ask some really great questions of your customers, of your team, of your spouse [laughs]. Just get curious and open your mind and learn what other people have to contribute, because it's there."

This is episode 371. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MARK'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Write down every single one of your accounts, everything that's taking your attention, everything that's important. I say write them down, don't put them in a spreadsheet, don't look in your CRM. Write them all down, rate them 1 through 10. If you've got some 10s, that's awesome, put them off to the side. Now look at anything that's a 1 through 5, get it off your plate. Now look at the 7s, 8s and 9s. Your accounts are the same way when they talk about investment. They say don't fall in love with a stock. Buy and sell when it's the time to buy and sell. Same thing with your accounts, you have accounts that you love the people, you have accounts that you just know are going to crack. If you can't make it a 10, you put that off to the side and look at it later. Now look at your list of 10s and take some time with it and get creative, get innovative, figure out ways that you haven't been able to look at it before and go there. Now look at those 10s. When you're done with that 10 list, now you can go back to the other list and see what you can elevate."

This is episode 370. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. GREG'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "You're the culmination of all the decisions that you've made. Using a baseball analogy, if you struck out, maybe you decided you didn't practice enough. If you weren't in the right place to catch that flyball, maybe you didn't think about how to plan before that play happened to think about what could happen. If you don't like something, just change it. Just go and do it. In saying that, it's recognition that the most precious asset that we all have is time. You can't waste it, you've got to do all the hard things. Go put all of those things on your calendar now!"

This is episode 369. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TIFFANY'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Have the confidence to put yourself out there. If you aren't in the game, you can't get selected. You can't sit on the sidelines, and this is not just for women in sales. These are things I tell my closest friends or people that come to me for advice. Remember, you have all of your successes backing you up. You wouldn't have come this far if you weren't that person. Put yourself out there for opportunities. Even if you're not selected, you're going to learn a lot. You're going to get the feedback and the next time around, you're going to be better positioned. It all starts with you putting yourself out there."

This is episode 368. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TIM'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I'm going to give you an acronym: MMA. Everyone thinks MMA, mission, metrics and action. Always know, what is the mission I'm trying to support? What are the metrics that get me there? And what are the next action steps that I have to take?

This is episode 367. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ERICH'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Go through your current client list and see if there's anything else on the pipeline with them. Ask them, who else, where else, what else? That's the easiest opportunity to uncover deals today, is to go through the people who know, trust and love you today. If they can't do business with you today, they know someone who does. That would be the first thing I would have you do today." EILEEN'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "You don't have to be the smartest person in the room, you need to be able to bring the right people to bear."

This is episode 366. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JENNIFER'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Get deep with your customers. Understand their strategy, their priorities and figure out how to bring them value. Especially with our government customers. Figure out how you can bring the innovation that they need because we all benefit from that. We're all taxpayers and we want to make sure we get the value for that money. We want to help them be successful and help them in their digital transformation journey."

This is episode 365. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. This show was sponsored by Cox Business. ALICE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "We are making sales harder than it needs to be. Things have changed and will continue to change. We can't keep doing things that fail because it's making us feel bad, and it's part of the languish. We're making our own mood worse because we're piling failure on top of failure on top of failure. The optimal mindset for sales is what do my buyers need from me right now to engage them? How can I be interesting to them? How can I get them interested? How can I intrigue them? That's what we have to do right now."

This is episode 364. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. DOUG'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "People ask me this all the time, how often should I follow up? The answer is until they tell you to stop. As long as you're following up with relevant, interesting things for them, they're not going to view that as a day that oh, my gosh, this person is harassing me or something like that. So if, for example, we were talking about a couple of things. Hey, Fred, I was thinking about you today. I was thinking about that comment you said about Vern, and I just saw this quote that Vern put out. I thought you might like it. That's something relevant that you and I could share."

This is episode 363. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. GIL'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Do the time and task analysis. Log what you're doing every 15 minutes of the day for five days. Then after those five days have expired, tabulate your time into two categories: sales time, non-sales time. What can we do to compress or remove non-sales activities from your calendar, and enhance your available sales time? If you do nothing else, you'll improve your revenue."

This is episode 362. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. BRIAN'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "For a technology like AI, salespeople need to find the "angel in the sale." The angel is the person that wears the halo and represents the halo effect of the technology in the environment. If you could find that angel and say, "I'm working with so-and-so over here on their specific problem, but I want you to also be aware that we're looking forward to the results in how much happier your people are when they start using our technology and how it impacts their morale." Finding the angel and thinking about that halo impact, can really help to differentiate the way we're thinking about working with that customer, not just selling to them." VANEET'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Now more than ever, we have tremendous channels available to us to connect and get our messages out. We tend, as sellers, to take that for granted. We have a unique perspective to offer, we see problems in and out at various companies, different industries, various verticals. Leverage that, build a brand for yourself as an expert on LinkedIn and Twitter. Start to post content. Make it so that your prospect has heard of you. They're going to want some degree to impart that knowledge because AI is such an interesting and net new space to some degree in terms of how it's being applied."

This is episode 361. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ERIN'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Reach out to someone you haven't talked to recently. Right now. However you prefer to connect. Whether that's a friend from college that you haven't talked to in a while, or a colleague that you used to work with and you don't anymore. I know I did this before, but something happened during the pandemic where I found those conversations to be so meaningful to me. Find someone outside of your normal tribe to bounce ideas off of and just listen to them. See what kind of struggle they're having and finding out that oh, my gosh, it's so similar to mine, even though our paths have not crossed in so long." KRISTEN'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Do something for yourself personally, or professionally. Whether it's joining the cohort, such at the IES Women in Sales Leadership Forum or just joining a different group. I think it's really easy. Sometimes it's good to step outside of the traditional things that you do. Take a class, join a group, join the cohort to invest back in yourself. It's something that I need to remind myself and it can really be life changing."

This is episode 360. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Gamea Changers Podcast website. JANET'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "When you're selling, 72% of the people will Google you before they have a conversation with you, both Twitter and LinkedIn pay money to come up to the top of Google. So if you post 3-5 times a week on LinkedIn, all you have to do is share an article and then just use the same post on Twitter just shortened, you will show up on the first page in Google and Twitter. If you have a really common name like John Smith, you're going to want to use a middle initial or use some kind of a John Killer-Seller Smith or whatever you want to use for that moniker, but you will come up first. You can't buy that, it would cost you too much money, LinkedIn and Twitter bought that for you. As a seller, understand that that's the behavior that buyers are having now and use it to your advantage. Get found and you will get sales."

This is episode 359. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KD'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "This might be too blunt, but truthfully, I feel most reps don't actually take their careers as serious as they could and should. Most salespeople - and this applies to vets and new reps, put more time and dedication to their high school sport, band or hobby than they have their sales career, period. Point blank, I'm going to call it out. Whatever it is that they're selling, they're selling to HR, they're selling to finance, they don't immerse themselves into where their prospects live. What are the forums the prospects are in? What are the magazines the prospect subscribes to? What are the Google Alerts that would make the prospect's world better? Who are the thought leaders of the prospects? They don't take it seriously. That is where I think most sales reps go wrong. They don't treat it like the career and the gift that it is. Sales is such a gift, I truly believe it's one of the best careers you can have. What other career out there could someone like myself have and to make the money that I make and have the impact that I have other than sales?"

This is episode 358. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ANGELA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Salespeople solve problems for people. If you don't believe in it, and it doesn't fit with your values and what you believe in, your success is going to be hard found. When I find myself being defensive or denying the importance of something, I know something's up. If I start getting defensive, something's wrong that I probably caused. Maybe I need to up my game and get back out there and push a little harder. The defensiveness is my key, that's when I stop and ask myself what's going on. I think you can use that with a team too. If you've got a teammate that you ask about how did the call go, and they get all defensive, when it went bad, they start blaming everybody else. Hey, who owned the call? Let's start figuring out what's going on. That was one of the tricks that I'd kind of come up with, and it's held true for a few years now."

This is episode 357. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MARGIE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Just write down a list right now the names of 10 people that you would love to have a conversation with. Maybe it's a direct sales conversation, maybe it's a relationship you'd like to nurture, maybe you've been wavering on, "I don't know if I should." Just write down your idea list of 10 people that you would really love a conversation with. Then make a point over the next 10 days to reach out to every one of them. The sooner the better, at least one in the next 24 hours and just make that commitment. At the end of the day it's a little bit of a numbers game here, you've got to be in it to win it and you've got to risk the rejection. Put that out there. Obviously 100 would be even better, but I'm just trying to go with something that's doable."

This is episode 356. Read the complete transcription on The Sales Game Changers Podcast website. RODERICK'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "First, get away from being viewed as the fixers of broken things. Sales Enablement is not the junk drawer where you've got a thimble and a spoon, a paper clip and a dirty sock. You have to put together a charter that outlines and defines specifically what your organization is responsible for and what it's not responsible for, and that doesn't mean this is NOT what we do. What it means is this is not the highest level of value that we will bring to the organization. You've got to have that charter, otherwise, you become the fixers of broken things and that junk drawer. Lastly, you cannot HOPE that this is going to work, you can't hope that Sales sees the value. You can't hope that you're going to get the results that you're going to need. You can't hope that you're going to be able to right size your organization and you can't hope that you're going to be viewed as an integral partner internally. Because as my hashtag goes, #HopeIsNotAStrategy.

This is episode 355. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. CAROLINE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I really think it gets down to the person on the other end of the phone always wants to be heard. We as salespeople come armed with a deck and want to bulldoze over them. Take the time just to listen to the other person, let them feel heard, let them feel like you understand where they're coming from. Don't be afraid to be that thought leader and push them into a new direction, push them to what other companies are doing that you deem as the best that are out there. That is the best steward you can be for the company of changing mindset and how you all can support them." NICOLE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Ask your leader and your customer what your reputation is, how are you perceived? That can be a simple one, but it's a hard one. Be ready for the response and have an open heart when you ask it. Go to your leader right now and ask what your reputation is in the company. Go to your top customers right now and ask what your reputation is. Or say, "Why are you still doing business with me?" I think that is probably some of the most valuable information you'll ever get. Feedback is a gift, and if we create that as part of our culture, make it open, make it as a very positive thing in your culture and your team, I think you can really get yourself to the next level."

This is episode 354. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. VIV'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "When you share video posts on LinkedIn, you get engagement there. You get people commenting, and that gives you an opportunity to start a conversation. Video can absolutely help to drive leads back to your website, back to your calendar link. Basically, whatever you want to share with people. And it's a great way to tap into new audiences, especially on LinkedIn. Because think about it, you share a post, it happens to get a lot of visibility. Someone, maybe a POC, a Point of Contact at one of your named accounts sees that video and starts multi-threading it through their buying community. To where you're suddenly in front of, not really, but your video is in front of seven out of the nine members of the buying committee. And that has built that KLT (know, like, trust)."

This is episode 353. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. ALICE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "My #1 tip to salespeople is you are the master of your success, you cannot rely on your sales manager, you have to rely on yourself. What does that mean? It means read everything you can, listen to podcasts like this one, like your listeners are already doing. It might mean get an accountability partner, it might be hire your own coach, that's what you have to do in order to get comfortable with anything, no matter whether you're one month into your sales profession or 33 years into it."

This is episode 352. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KRISTINA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Subscribe to the Washington Business Journal or the one in your market. To me, this is my business bible. I read it every week and there's just so much information in here. You can write personal letters to people. When I say letters, I mean letters and not emails because emails these days are just stuck in spam blockers. Send personal letters, reach out to these people on LinkedIn. In the back of the magazine, there's a place called People on the Move. Those are people that are very successful that just got promoted. Send them a $50 gift card and your business card. Do you know how many people get back to me and say, "Thanks for the gift card and thanks for reaching out." Don't forget the Washington Business Journal Book of Lists. Every lead you could possibly imagine is in here, and that's how we were able to diversify our markets." VINCE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Do not be afraid of using the phone to reach out and call people. Whether they're customers, connections, friends, or people you haven't talked to in a long time, set time aside every day. Follow up on LinkedIn. Send handwritten notes, express your empathy and the fact that you genuinely care and all these things will repay themselves. You'll not only feel better but you'll make these people feel better too that somebody cared enough to reach out to them."

This is episode 351. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. RACHEL'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "10 things I want you to remember that you can do today that you can also be looking for in other people. I think it will help you remember that you can do so many more things than maybe you're giving yourself credit for and will set you apart from the competition. Being on time. Work ethic. Effort. Your body language. Your energy. Attitude. Passion. Being coachable. Doing extra. Being prepared TWIGS' TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I think as a woman in sales where I have started to feel most comfortable as my professional self is when I stop trying to be anyone else. I think we can embrace life, and I think this pandemic's really forced us to, there's crying babies and barking dogs and we're all people outside of what we wear a blazer to do. Don't be afraid to be silly. This reminds me that I was on a call with a prospect and we had a meeting. She had a screaming crying toddler at home, it happens. We're trying to talk and it's just not working, and we're talking about rescheduling and I put on the Zoom filter that had the silly bunny ears. So I'm now giving a sales pitch with silly bunny ears moving my head back and forth and raising my hands. But at the end of the day, we got the call done and eventually got the sale. For me, it just reinforced that okay, we can have fun, we can do this, I can be myself and still be professional and still be successful.

This is episode 350. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. FRANK'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "The requirements for financial literacy in sales are increasing dramatically. You better be up to speed with those finance issues because those are the questions you're increasingly getting. What you need is what I call managerial finance which is making sure you understand how balance sheets and income statements really work. I also think it is going to be increasingly important to separate signal from noise with data. Right now, what is going on in many sales organizations is this huge proliferation of data that the rep gets lost in, and that the managers tend to focus on what I call interesting but marginal factoids. And increasingly the job of the sales manager is to understand what is that handful of things."

This is episode 349. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. CARSON'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I think the only real difference between how I approach social selling and others is that not only do I focus on quality, quantity and consistency, but it's a people and process game. Sales is relationships and probability. If I reach out to more people than anybody else and I do it with the right messaging, I have a higher probability of getting those meetings. And if I can't get the CEO or the CFO meeting right out of the gate, I'll swarm, I'll reach out to every influencer in that relationship and eventually, I'll get to the person that I want. And I use social selling to accomplish that."

Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TAMARA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Don't be afraid to ask someone to mentor or sponsor you. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there, don't be afraid to let people know that you need help. A lot of times people are just afraid to ask so just be organized, document and think about what you need and then ask. Have a specific reason you are looking for them to help because you might be going to the wrong person or they might not have the perfect skill set that you're looking for. You could also consider multiple people."

This is episode 347. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. WES' TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "This is kind of hard, but if you do it, it'll make all the difference. I tell everybody to detach, detach from the outcome. Make sure you're taking the right steps, chunk your time down to 15-minute increments, make sure every 15 minutes you're doin g the right thing. I tell everyone, look at what you do two or three times a day or four or five times a week and have a process for it. If you can, automate it. Figure out what you do repeatedly, and at minimum and then automate it."

This is episode 346. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. RIMA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Always know that the most important thing is to serve your customers. If you have a plan, with that in mind, if everything you do from your research to your plan to your conversations, everything you do with your customers has the goal of helping your customers be successful, you will do well and your customers will be successful and your business will be successful. The action is keep that in mind as you do your research, your homework, your meetings and you go about your business." CHRISTINE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I'd like to encourage leaders to follow a model, coach and care framework. Model the behavior, employees are looking at you for a pulse check to also see if they have license to actually try things. It's okay to fail, do they have a license to be their authentic selves at work? How can you demonstrate that? Are you setting up a plan where employees can move as quickly as they need to move? Empower them, that's the model piece. Coaching is obviously bring your resources, showing them how things have been done but also being open-minded because there's a lot of great opportunities to learn from anyone in the organization regardless of level. Then that caring piece, we've touched on that quite a few points throughout today's discussion on being empathetic and understanding the individual. What's their motivation? What are their learning opportunities and how can you support them?"

This is episode 345. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. DENISE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "One of the traits that we're honing in on from a sales perspective is really ensuring that people that join the team on the sale side understand resilience. That's an overused word right now but it is the, "Can you deal with hardship and just keep going?" Persistence has largely led us through the year. We got through the year on our backs as a company with persistence and resilience, so ensuring that people that join the company – because I don't think it's over, there are more challenges ahead – always be growing, persistence and resilience." JENNIFER'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "As leaders, it's critical that we make space for people to feel comfortable. And if you're not at a company where your leader is doing that, then it is on you. You must take control of your own career and you must take control of your personal confidence and your ability. Really understand your worth and your value. Life is very short. If you're not happy, you can start looking around. The job market is a wonderful place right now in technology and across other industries, so it's about knowing your worth. Know your worth, don't hesitate to reach out to people who you think might be beyond you – no one is beyond you – and really take stock of where you are, what you're doing. If you're not happy, if you don't believe that a company culture matches your values, you need to find a company that does. It's that black and white."

This is episode 344. Read today's transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. HOWARD'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Are we in the midst of an empathy crisis in our "selfie-culture?" When I think about empathy, I think about helping people and helping people is so critical to the sales process because at the end of the day, our job as salespeople is really to help people make a buying decision. For me, the idea of empathy and sales, they're not two separate things, they're one thing. I love helping salespeople, I love helping revenue teams be the best they can be. Empathy is the ability to understand somebody else's emotions, their feelings and their situation and it's critical. It's critical in my relationship with my wife, with my children, with my coworkers and with my customers and it is critical because we all want to be heard, we all want to be understood and we want to be seen. It's critical to human nature, it's critical to trust, it's critical to relationships."

This is episode 343. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. BART'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "It's a sentence and it's a recommendation. The sentence is it's easy to be, but it's better to become. Becoming is going to take doing and my suggestion for any sales professional out there is do what most people don't do, follow up when they don't follow up, do a video when someone sends an email, make the extra effort. Identify the things that you know in your mind that you should do to be more successful, focus in on those should do's, move them to the done category. Do what most people don't and you're going to be even more wildly successful." RICH'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "It's interesting how little we actually talk about what we do and where we go on our trips because Disneyland is Disneyland. We always try to bring it around to the experiences. We let our website talk about the features. They've done their research, they've seen what we do. We want to get to the experiences kids will have when they go on the trips."

This is episode 342. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. SAM'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I cannot tell you how many people tell me, "I don't have any stories." We ALL have stories. Stories are simply the intriguing things that happen to us or around us. If something gets your eyebrows up, "I never thought of it that way", "That really moved me", "That's a fresh approach", write it down and then turn it into your little three-act play and distill it into 60 seconds and figure out how to use it in your sales process. The next time someone asks you to explain why you're worth hiring, why this is worth buying or saying yes to you, don't explain, give a real-life example, a 60-second story. That's when we connect and that's the purpose of all communication."

This is episode 341. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TIBOR'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "One of the habits that people should change is how they think of themselves and how they present themselves to their customers. One of the most difficult things I face is convincing salespeople that they're not salespeople, they're subject matter experts. As a subject matter expert, you can actually lead the conversation in a meaningful way that actually helps that customer take insight from you. Customers are not going to take insight from a brochure carrier, but they will take insights from a subject matter expert. One of the first habits that you should work on is upgrading who you are and what you represent to your customers. Someone who's really a subject matter expert wants to understand where that customer is trying to go, what are the objectives that are driving this decision? What are the business motivators that are driving this? Not just what problems/solutions you have. Most reps are stuck in the present whereas progressive salespeople, subject matter salespeople, can talk in the present but also understand where the company's trying to go because they're focused on impacts and outcomes, not talking about strictly their product."

This is episode 340. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KEVIN'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Sales leaders - encourage your teams to get out, to get out of their house, to get out of their apartment, to get out of their bedrooms whether it's once a day or twice a day. The weather's better, go for a walk, go to Starbucks in the morning, get that routine going. Sales is really tough, it's a grind and if you're sleeping and working in the same room you need to get out. Get some fresh air, smell the roses, meditate, whatever it takes to get out of that routine of being stuck in your cubicle of a bedroom and embrace it. My fear, candidly, is some of the people that are young in sales are going to get burned out and they're going to give up on a profession that is awesome, you can make more money in sales than any other profession in the world. I would hate for someone to give up only because they got a little burned out because of the pandemic. Encourage your teams to get out a couple times a day."

This is episode 339. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website here. This Fresh Voices podcast was sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Gina Stracuzzi. It featured Tricia Fitzmaurice, Director, National Security Programs, Federal Law Enforcement & Justice at Red Hat Software and Mahsa Soltani, Regional Director of Growth Sales - North America at Akamai Technologies. TRICIA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "The advice I always give to women is to support each other, especially in the IT and technical fields, where there aren't that many of us. Support each other, help each other, promote other women, bring other women to the conversations, help them get their value out into your organization. Somebody else's success does not mean that you are devalued. Look at other people's successes as your success as well, as an opportunity for you to succeed maybe later in something else. Promote those successes among people." MAHSA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Be your own biggest supporter instead of critic. Tell yourself "you're doing a phenomenal job. You're doing a great job at work. You're doing a great job outside of work." I feel like as women, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and a lot of times we're our hardest and toughest critics. You're doing great and you're doing the best that you can and it's incredible in every phase of your life. Believe that and be your own biggest supporter and tell your inner critic to 'shh' which can really help a lot of times."

This is episode 338. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LARRY'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "If you ask these three questions it will change the conversation and it will build rock-solid relationships with your clients. First, why did you initially choose to do business with me? Stop and listen. Second, "What value have I been bringing to your organization? And stop and listen. And third, "How can I be of service to you right now?" and listen. Think about how those questions can forever change the conversations you have with your clients, build deeper, stronger relationships."

This is episode 337. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. This episode was sponsored by Cox Business. GARY'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Visualize your customer with a big sign on their chest that says, "Make me feel important." If you can do that, then you're going to make them feel important and that's where you'll win If you can visualize someone that has a big sign on their chest that says, "Make me feel important today", how can you go wrong?"

This is episode 336. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. KRISTIE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Manage your expectations. The reason why sales leaders are disappointed a lot of times is because you haven't told your team what you need or want from them, so start practicing today. What do I want from you that I'm not getting? Practice having that conversation. I was talking to somebody else the other day and somebody said, "Holding people accountable sounds really hard and awkward" and I said, "Not holding people accountable is worse."

This is episode 335. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. HANG'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "When making a decision, make sure that you have a CLEAR path. C for clarity, L for learn whether it's from experience and whether it's from experiments. E for edge, so make sure you embrace that which is uniquely you because that's your competitive edge. A for access, create your own access. If you don't have it, create and curate it very well. Surround yourself with people who will uplift you, not with people who will diminish you. Finally, R, with Responsibility. Once you get there, share it. We have to get past tokenism, it's okay to bring in a token because I'm much happier that I was hired because I was token, because once I get my seat at the table, I will earn it. It's much better than when I didn't get hired because I was a token or a minority and we have to get past tokenism because all the studies show that it takes 2 to 3 people in the room for us to no longer have a minority."

This is episode 334. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. This podcast was sponsored by Cox Business. Learn more here. JAMIE'S ADVICE TO SALES PROFESSIONALS: "I want to know how we're going to engage. The idea of procurement working along with operations is required for successful revenue. What you have to do is you have to make the CIO secure. You have to make them feel like you're offering something that they just don't have right now." STEVE'S ADVICE TO SALES PROFESSIONALS: "I'm going to reveal one of the best-kept actions that any salesperson can take. Go out of your way to build a relationship with executive assistants. Tell them what it is you are trying to accomplish and your objectives and then actively enlist their support because in most cases, they can get things done. In some cases, more effectively than I could as a CIO. They know everybody inside the agency and you can turn an EA who is otherwise a gate keeper and will never give you access to a CIO into your best ally."

This is episode 333. Find the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TINA'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I was asking, "How do I become the best leader I can be?" And as the pandemic was growing, I certainly couldn't be the best leader I could be as I was limping along emotionally and physically. This pandemic gave me an opportunity to work on those things. We have to take the veil off of mental health, it's time. Treatment for mental health should be just as acceptable as treatment for a physical thing. My journey into darkness and out did not affect at all my work product. Trust me on this, if you need to take a month or two to focus on your health whether it be physical or mental, you won't even have a blip in your work."

This is episode 332. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. CARYN'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "The Kopp-Gap Method of Sales Messaging which, when it's done properly, can render your competition irrelevant. It's three sentences in a framework and when you're able to articulate your gap messaging, you are able to get in doors that your competition cannot get in. You're able to win business that your competition can't win because you're saying something that's valuable to the prospect. It's fill in the blank. "Anyone can," and you fill in the blank, "But not everyone can," and you fill in the blank. "For example," fill in the blank." Start with that and see how it does for you. If it's done properly, it will render your competition irrelevant."

This is episode 331. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. TRISTEN'S TIP ABOUT WHY TO CHOOSE SALES INTO THE PUBLIC SECTOR MARKETS: "There are two reasons why I enjoy selling into the Public Sector market. The mission is attractive to me and I find it favorable, whether you're selling into federal civilian where their outreach is the citizenry or the Defense Department where it's protecting the homeland. Second, it's the people. The great thing about federal employees is they are in the federal marketplace for a long tenure and you can establish those relationships over time, and they actually do become friends and not just prospects or customers."

This is episode 330. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. NANCY'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "For me, leadership is taking the time to purposefully build a diverse team. Internalize that you're going to get better by being around people who are different than you. Making that extra effort makes a team that much stronger, and I wish I did see more of that across the IT industry. If everybody could have that attitude, the differences are going to make me better and make us better as a team. I think about it from a perspective of how we're going to get better, how we're going to bring in different ideas and make us all grow. Diversity is growing from people who are very different than I am." This is a replay of the WOMEN IN SALES Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Gina Stracuzzi on February 8, 2021. It featured Nancy Bohannan, Red Hat State & Local and Education (SLED) VP of Sales.]

This is episode 329. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. CRAIG'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "To get unstuck, first clearly define the destination. I like a roadmap because again, I think we get stuck along the road and that's why you see these curves so we've got to define the destination. These curves actually are wisdom gaps so along the way. So to be best-in-class in strategic selling, the wisdom buckets are things like, "Do I really have a defined process and metrics?," "Do I really have a culture of accountability around these topics in terms of incentives and goal setting?," "Do I really communicate a unique selling proposition in an effective way?"

This is episode 328. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. LISA'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "It's really important that each sales person differentiate themselves. Think about what your brand is and focus on that. If you're early in your career you develop it, if you're later in your career it might have evolved but knowing what you stand for, what makes you different in a sale cycle, not just your product and your company but what you can deliver - it might be incredible customer service, it might be incredible industry capability, whatever that is - work on it. Focus on it and be able to articulate it. Ultimately, regardless of whether you're working out of your home or you're in your office, that's what's going to come through and you will achieve your results."

This is episode 327. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MICHELLE'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "There are so few women that are on boards today, be it non-profit or for-profit company boards so there are great opportunities for women in sales to make a difference right now. Cloud Girls certainly has been an amazing endeavor for me. Since it's a nonprofit, we're able to give back by impacting the next generation of women in technology. We mentor those young gals with not only education but also scholarships and things of that nature. It's important right now to get involved in something that resonates on your heart, makes you feel good and also is great resume builder."

This is episode 326. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MICHELLE'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "There are 5 factors that consistently drive the biggest changes in selling behavior and become most important in helping sellers determine the right sales approach. If you look at these 5 factors, there are different elements within these factors: (1) the customer's awareness of the problem, (2) the competitive landscape, (3) the specific dynamics of the customer buying team, (4) the buying process itself and (5) solution definition. These were the 5 factors that over time have become the most important in determining buying situations. There are also four patterns of selling behavior: (1) consultative, (2) disruptive, (3) competitive, (4) financial. These four patterns are alive and well and consistently exhibited by high performers. The key is to marry the buying situation factors with these different selling patterns."

This is episode 325. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. Join the Institute for Excellence in Sales. Go here for more information. MATT'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Look in the mirror and tell yourself, "I'm worthy, I can do this, I'm absolutely capable of creating value for others and being different. I'm worthy." JASON'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: Control the controllable. Understand what is in your control and what isn't and focus on that and your mindset. It'll absolutely have a profound effect on your life."

This is episode 324. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. It featured Courtney Bromley, General Manager, Government and Education Industry, US Federal and Public Sector Market at IBM. COURTNEY'S TIP FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Don't be entitled. For instance, promotions don't come with time, they come with effectiveness and production. Don't be entitled to think that just because you've been in a job a certain number of days, weeks or years you automatically get a promotion. Don't be entitled with your colleagues. There's plenty of times where we work in these big teams and lots of people are contributing. If you're not one of the contributors, then don't be surprised that at the end you're not getting credit for the big win. Think about how to remove entitlement from all aspects of your life!"