Sales Talk for CEOs

CEOs, do you want to unlock the secret to sky-high sales?Your loyal customers might just have the answers you seek.Barry Trailer from Sales Mastery Advisors highlights a goldmine of opportunity: diving deep into repeat and referral sales. Believe it or not, expanding within your existing customer base can yield better returns than braving new territories.Furthermore, while data is crucial, it's quality over quantity. CEOs should focus on insightful data interpretation, emphasizing process-oriented coaching, adept tech use, and consistent training.Barry's revealing Sales Performance Scorecard survey shows just 53% of reps hitting or surpassing their quotas, signifying a pressing need to revamp strategies.Interestingly, the survey suggests a direct link: the stronger the processes and relationships, the better the sales performance. With peak levels, 61% of reps excel in their roles.To truly drive sales momentum, CEOs must revitalize internal processes, and make sure the focus is on nurturing customer relationships and optimizing data utilization. By focusing on these cornerstones, soaring sales are no longer just a dream.Want to dive deeper? All the riveting details await in this informative episode.Chapters00:02 Introduction to the podcast and topic of sales strategies01:07 Discussion on the easiest ways to get more business04:20 The challenges of new reps in new territories07:12 The importance of doing the hard work in sales12:16 The importance of actionable information from data12:51 Levels of relationship and understanding in data analysis14:19 Introduction of the sales performance scorecard assessment.16:22 Low revenue plan attainment and reps meeting quota.18:23 Slow progress in implementing artificial intelligence for sales.20:08 The importance of levels of relationship and process implementation.27:42 Random process can be successful but lacks predictability.29:18 Buyers are better at buying than sellers are at selling.30:16 Many sales teams do not fully utilize the tools provided.31:46 Lack of user adoption and misuse of tools leads to inefficiency.36:11 Managers need coaching on how to coach effectively.38:48 Coaching is often misunderstood and not properly implemented.43:23 Process-oriented coaching and technology can improve sales outcomes.44:28 CRM should be used as a system of record and engagement.About GuestBarry Trailer is prominently associated with SalesMastery, holding a leadership position as a past president of both Miller Heiman and Goldmine. Miller Heiman is recognized as a world-class sales training firm, while Goldmine is renowned for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. Barry Trailer's professional experiences extend to the digital platform LinkedIn, where he maintains a professional profile, emphasizing his significance in the global business network. Furthermore, Barry's insights on the pivotal role of a company's coaching approach in influencing win rates have been highlighted, suggesting his expertise in sales management and strategiesSocial Links You can learn more about and connect with Barry Trailer in the links below.Connect with Barry on LinkedIn:(99+) Barry Trailer | LinkedInCheck out Sales Mastery website:SalesMasteryYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn:(99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice’s website:Alice Heiman - Alice Heiman

In the age where traditional sales tactics seem obsolete, CEOs and founders are shifting to innovative strategies. Lloyed Lobo, co-founder of Boast, accentuates the importance of community-led growth. His journey, from an engineer to a salesperson, and ultimately, to the co-founder of a company aiding businesses in accessing R&D funding, underlines the value of community.Lloyed divides community-led growth into four stages: audience, community, movement, and cult. He believes that it starts with a passive audience, and, with engagement, it transforms into an active community. When this community works collectively towards a cause, it becomes a movement, and finally, with deep-rooted beliefs, it can shape into a cult (in a good way).By curating events, insightful blog posts, and actively engaging with his audience, Lloyed created a trusted hub for entrepreneurs. He also emphasizes founder-led sales in a startup's initial stages, suggesting that personal touchpoints build credibility and rapport.Furthermore, Lloyed points out that community-driven platforms don't just boost sales but propel innovation by fostering a collaborative space for knowledge sharing. As the world progresses, businesses that prioritize and integrate community-building will emerge as leading brands.Chapters00:39 Introduction of special guest Lloyed Lobo, co-founder of Boast.03:55 Boast integrates with technical and financial systems to streamline funding.08:05 Lloyed Lobo's journey from engineering to sales to co-founding Boast.12:10 The challenges of cold calling and finding the right audience14:39 Framework for targeting the right audience: passion, niche, propensity to pay, ease of access15:56 Identifying white spaces in the market: lack of support and tactical content20:16 Hosting meetups and the importance of consistency22:29 Understanding the ideal customer profile and their aspirations25:46 Using events and community to engage and build loyalty28:57 Founder-led sales and the importance of product-market fit33:05 Hiring for trajectory and the importance of grit and determination35:24 Founder reinventing their job and excitement of trying new things39:18 The role of community in building enduring brands.41:12 Lloyed Lobo's journey from humble beginnings to success.45:18 The importance of loving your customer and adding value.45:43 Lloyed Lobo's book "From Grassroots to Greatness".About GuestLloyed Lobo, an entrepreneur, podcast host and community builder, experienced the Gulf War as a young refugee in Kuwait, witnessing the strength of community in evacuating the population to safety. As the co-founder of fintech platform Boast.Al, he leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company to $10 million in annual recurring revenue while also co-founding Traction, a community empowering more than 100k innovators through connections, content, and capital.Lloyed is also the author of ‘**From Grassroots To Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth’ **(foreword by Jason Lemkin), which covers tactical advice from community-led businesses both big and small, such as Apple, Harley Davidson, Nike, Crossfit, HubSpot, and many more to help readers attract passionate and devoted fans of their own. The book topped Amazon’s new release charts in various categories, including Startups and Business Technology, within mere hours of its pre-sale launch.About CompanyBoast.ai is a leading financial technology firm that simplifies the process for companies to access government incentives, including R&D tax credits and innovation grants. Leveraging a blend of expertise and automation, Boast.ai streamlines the claims process, maximizes claims amounts, and reduces the risk of audits. With their integrated platform, businesses ca

Wouldn’t you love to get into the mind of your sellers and understand exactly what they are thinking? Wouldn’t you love to know what they are struggling with most?If you could read their minds, or if you asked, what would your sales leaders say it is and what would your sellers say?  Spencer Wixom from The Brooks Group says that his research shows the answer you likely will get if you ask is prospecting and discovery calls. Why, because it’s hard. Harder these days than ever and leaders are still teaching and depending on old methods that don’t work.  Spencer’s insights shed light on the challenges of prospecting and discovery, where traditional modes of communication still reign supreme. In the price-sensitive market landscape, he champions the mantra of selling value over price, urging sellers to convey their solution's tangible ROI.But what truly stands out? Spencer’s attention to the emotional and motivational pulse of sales teams. Recognizing the evolving motivations of the younger generation and the nuances of hiring and retention, he underscores the importance of CEOs understanding and catering to individual seller drives.Join Alice as she unpacks Spencer's strategies, exploring the future of sales and the critical role CEOs play in shaping it.Chapters02:02 Importance of having a simple, fundamental sales process05:33 Study shows that prospecting and discovery are the biggest struggles11:25 Introducing a formal referral selling program can increase results13:06 Connecting people with similar issues strengthens trust in relationships19:53 Salespeople need to understand customer value, not just product features.24:33 Recognizing trigger events to understand the value of products/services.25:54 Burnout and lack of motivation among sales development reps27:58 Generational differences in motivation32:05 Balancing work-life priorities and productivity36:09 Customer indecision and closing challenges38:40 The importance of the sales process and relationship building39:14 The pressure on salespeople to close deals42:04 The importance of team selling and gaining commitment48:42 The importance of empathy and understanding buyers' struggles51:42 Importance of understanding natural capabilities and skills for job success55:26 Shift in demographics and work dynamics with millennials and Gen Z  About GuestSpencer Wixom is the President & CEO of The Brooks Group. His primary responsibility is leading the organization to deliver transformational performance improvement in their client’s sales teams. This is done by harnessing the collective effort and expertise of The Brooks Group Executive team and empowering market-leading talent up and down the organization.  Spencer joined The Brooks Group after many years leading global teams as an executive in the sales transformation space, including marketing, sales enablement, research and analytics, and client success. About HostThe Brooks Group is an award-winning organization specializing in sales training and classes. With a focus on offering top-tier sales training solutions, the Brooks Group aims to empower sales teams to reach their full potential and drive significant business results. Their training programs are designed to be impactful, customized, and aligned with the unique needs and goals of each client they serve. Although detailed services were not provided, the multiple awards and client testimonials indicate a strong reputation and effectiveness in delivering their sales training services. Social Links  You can learn more about and connect with Spencer Wixom in the links below.Connect with Spencer on LinkedIn:(14) Spencer Wixom | LinkedI

Product. Sales. Marketing. Customer Success. If you want to grow your business, your entire go-to-market team has to be in perfect alignment. Providing a seamless experience makes such a huge difference to customers, but it’s often hard to achieve. Luckily, you’ll get plenty of ideas and inspiration in this Encore Episode on the Sales Talk for CEOs podcast.My guest for this interview is Pouyan Salehi, CEO of Scratchpad, a workspace designed specifically for sales and revenue teams. Scratchpad has a unique bottom-up sales model where—on the one hand—the end-users of the software (sales reps) are not the buyers, but—on the other hand—the end-user experience is instrumental in getting sales conversations with decision-makers at large companies. A fully aligned go-to-market team is crucial to success, and, in this interview, Pouyan shares how he achieves it.As Pouyan explains, aligning your go-to-market team has nothing to do with tools and processes. Instead, you have to start with mindset, prioritizing ‘delight’ and ‘experience.’ “We’re a software company, and we build a product, and people buy the product. But that’s just one component,” says Pouyan. “What we’re essentially doing for every user interaction that we have is we’re giving them an experience. We’re delivering an experience, and that experience should be one of delight.”This mindset drives sales and customer experience at Scratchpad and has brought the entire go-to-market team together into one cohesive unit. Scratchpad has established a base of raving fans that any CEO would envy! Listen in to hear how Pouyan has done it, so you can apply the strategies to your business too.Highlights[2:25] Designing a space for sales team efficiency[7:24] Understanding diversity in sales reps[9:26] Balancing structure and individual flexibility[13:45] Selling your idea and testing your value proposition[20:25] Designing a complex go-to-market motion[29:40] Building a fully aligned go-to-market team[35:19] Creating raving fansAbout Our GuestPouyan Salehi is co-founder and CEO of Scratchpad, the pioneer of the Revenue Team Workspace. Prior to Scratchpad, Pouyan was co-founder and CEO of PersistIQ, the complete outbound platform engineered from the ground up for sales. A successful serial entrepreneur, Pouyan also co-founded Lera Labs (CycleIO) and has dedicated the last decade to improving the sales process for B2B enterprise sales reps and teams.Show LinksConnect with Pouyan Salehi in the links below:Website: https://scratchpad.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyansalehiYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below:Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

From FBI prodigy to HR tech disruptor, meet Joanna Riley, the extraordinary CEO revolutionizing talent acquisition.Joanna's secret agent aspirations led her down a unique path, guided by her parents' unwavering support. Her undergraduate years were a whirlwind of cutting-edge courses in the psychology and geometry of crime, fueling her passion for espionage.Joining the FBI right out of college, Joanna's first taste of the professional world may surprise you - she conquered sales at just four years old, going door to door as the "snail annihilator" with her best friend.After 3 successful startups Joanna is now transforming the way companies find and harness their most valuable asset - people. As the visionary leader of Censia, she focuses on diversity, a deep understanding of customer connection and is shaking up the traditional notion of sales. She is on a mission to revolutionize talent acquisition with the power of AI. Hear Joanna’s journey and discover how she’s reshaping the hiring landscape and paving the way for a new era of success on this incredible interview! Chapters03:53 Importance of using data to make hiring decisions and retain employees.05:22 Joanna's background in the FBI and how it translates to entrepreneurship.08:26 Transition from the FBI to starting the first company in sales.10:05 Success and sale of the first company at a young age.13:20 CEO pain point: finding the right people for their company.13:56 HR tech focuses on helping companies with talent acquisition.14:55 Talent market shifted from active to passive job seekers.15:49 Current talent search methods are outdated and ineffective.16:46 Underrepresented communities are disadvantaged in keyword-based searches.17:16 AI can provide a more intelligent understanding of candidates' capabilities.18:03 Shifting the focus from keywords to desired achievements.19:04 Started selling after building a structured talent database.21:45 Customer advisory board helped identify pain points and validate solutions.25:50 Importance of CEOs staying in touch with customers.26:37 Initial challenges in selling and finding product-market fit.30:39 Transitioning to hiring salespeople.32:02 Scaling and growing the go-to-market team.33:07 Advice for CEOs: prioritize sales and customer conversations.About GuestJoanna Riley is an experienced entrepreneur and investor, renowned for championing diversity in the tech sector and for driving the development of ethical AI in HR Tech. As the CEO and Founder of Censia, she spearheads a cutting-edge Talent Intelligence Platform that is revolutionizing the way enterprises identify, recruit, and retain transformative talent. Joanna's passion for leadership extends beyond her role at Censia. She is a prolific early-stage investor and a distinguished member of the Board of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) as part of the Global Membership Council. She also devotes her time to mentoring up-and-coming entrepreneurs in the tech space.Her achievements are rooted in a diverse and robust background. Early in her career, Joanna was an integral part of the International Training Unit for the FBI. In addition, she distinguished herself as a national rower and earned her BA degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Today, she continues to hone her business acumen as part of the President's Program at Harvard Business School.Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Joanna Riley in the links below.Connect with Joanna on LinkedIn:(35) Joanna (Jo) Riley | LinkedInCheck out Censia's website:Transformative Talent Intelligence - CensiaYou can learn more about and connect with

Hiring high-performing teams is no easy feat for CEOs, but when it comes to sales teams, the stakes are exponentially higher. Achieving your organization's business objectives hinges on building and scaling a successful sales force that drives predictable revenue growth.But what do you do when sales are stagnant and results fall short of expectations? It's time to examine how we, as CEOs, have supported the growth of our sales teams.In a value-packed conversation with Lori Richardson, a renowned sales strategy expert and founder of Score More Sales, we dive into the crucial factors that contribute to building peak performing sales teams.Lori emphasized the utmost importance of hiring the right people, empowering effective sales leaders, and providing ongoing coaching and support.Discover how you can revolutionize your sales teams and supercharge your business success with these insights from a true sales guru.Chapters04:30 Challenges with traditional sales training and accountability08:37 Importance of hiring the right salespeople and coaching them09:45 Discussion on the need for training on hiring and assessing candidates11:27 Importance of setting up a customized assessment for each sales role13:29 Critique of using personality assessments for hiring salespeople17:09 Importance of setting clear criteria and avoiding excessive requirements24:09 Discussion on the concept of "culture add" in hiring29:58 Importance of expanding networks and connections for diversity hiring32:08 Tips for making job postings more appealing to diverse candidates35:30 Importance of sticking to the hiring process and not deviating40:00 Importance of assessing existing sales teams and leaders45:24 Importance of developing a strong sales team for company valuationAbout GuestLori Richardson is the CEO, Speaker, and Founder of Score More Sales, a consultancy she established in 2002 to assist companies in boosting their revenues through strategic sales endeavors. Her expertise stems from over two decades of experience in B2B sales and leadership roles. With a commendable career in tech sales under her belt, Lori envisioned Score More Sales to be a beacon for leaders of mid-sized businesses, guiding them in hiring competent sellers and appraising their incumbent sales teams. As of 2022, the company marked its 20th year, symbolizing two decades of dedicated service in the realm of sales consultancy. Apart from her role as the head of Score More Sales, Lori has made significant contributions to the sales domain as an author. She penned "She Sells," a book that serves as a manual for company and sales leaders to effectively discover, enlist, and retain sales talent.Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Lori Richardson in the links below.Connect with Lori on LinkedIn:(99+) Lori Richardson | LinkedInCheck out Score More Sales website:ScoreMoreSales - More of What Works, NowYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn:(99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice’s website:Alice Heiman - Alice Heiman

Connection is everything. When your marketing message resonates with your customers, selling becomes easier, retention becomes easier, and your customers become powerful evangelists who market and sell for you. To achieve this, you have to find the right words that make your customers lean in. You have to create marketing that is music to your buyer’s ears.In this episode of the Sales Talk for CEOs podcast, my guest Kate Bradley Chernis shares advice on how to do just that. A former live radio DJ, Kate is now the CEO of Lately, a software that uses artificial intelligence to learn the voice of brands and create writing models based on the words, key phrases, and sentence structure that will get the highest engagement. Kate has used Lately technology to get a 98 percent sales conversion rate with the company’s organic messages, and she is sharing tips for creating marketing that connects to customers in this podcast episode.As Kate explains, the problem with a lot of marketing is that marketers are trying to find ‘the right words that sell.’ “The objective isn’t actually a sale,” says Kate. “The objective is first to engage. Get to the next step. Get the reaction. Get them to lean in. Get that long play going.”In this interview, Kate discusses the importance of making a connection as you start conversations with potential customers via marketing. Using the neuroscience of music, she explains how marketing messages should be crafted to offer familiar ‘touch points’ that cue nostalgia, memory, and emotion. This, in turn, builds trust, which is the basis for customer acquisition and loyalty. Sound interesting? Then listen in to learn how you too can create marketing that is music to your buyer’s ears. Highlights2:37 The rollercoaster of the CEO8:27 Getting specific about your ideal customer17:58 Why the objective of your marketing isn’t a sale21:17 Believing in yourself (and not the naysayers)28:26 Creating two-way street marketing30:33 Making music to your buyer’s ears39:00 Creating a seller-free experience QuoteThe objective isn’t actually a sale. The objective is first to engage. Get to the next step. Get the reaction. Get them to lean in. Get that long play going.” Connect with Kate Bradley Chernis in the links below:Website: https://www.lately.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katebradley/ You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below:Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

From youngest CEO on the Nasdaq to an industry he never dreamed he’d be in. You’ll want to dive into this exclusive interview with CEO Michael Katz, founder of mParticle, with a mission to unify and organize customer data, unlocking its untapped potential.mParticle  was born from Michael’s triumph at Interclick, where data-driven approaches led to business success. Recognizing the growing significance of mobile and the complexity of customer data, he seized the opportunity to create a platform that could rise to these challenges.Because Michael didn’t know sales his strategy took a unique approach and one that I often recommend for the early days. He was very choosy about who he invited to the table to invest. It wasn’t just money he was looking for, he found people who cared about his success as much as he did. By leveraging his network of investors, his lead generation was all through introductions. That became a force multiplier for him. Starting with founder-led sales and being very successful because of the introductions from his investors, he soon saw the need for more salespeople but not really knowing sales he shares how he hired his first great seller. Michael soon hired a sales leader and looking back, what he realizes is that he waited too long to bring in sales enablement. Another game changer for his sales growth was collaborating with partners as they played a pivotal role in building trust and influencing decision-makers.Michael Katz is the thoughtful, purpose driven, gritty type of CEO I’d want to work for. He shares a wealth of knowledge so I’ll stop here and let you listen to learn the rest. Chapters00:53 Michael Katz discusses how mParticle manages customer data to increase sales.03:22 Michael Katz shares his background and the founding of mParticle.05:40 mParticle was founded to solve the technical challenges of mobile app data.09:00 Michael Katz utilized his network to make introductions and generate leads.11:49 Hiring multiple salespeople with different backgrounds to benchmark their performance.18:28 Fine-tuning the sales organization and aligning the different functions.26:45 Building a sales organization with regional coverage and vertical specialization.32:52 Sales is a system that requires constant fine-tuning and alignment.41:26 The sales organization includes account executives, sales management, solutions engineering, and sales enablement.About GuestMichael Katz is the CEO and Co-Founder of mParticle, a leading technology company specializing in data infrastructure for the mobile and web industries. With a proven track record of innovation and leadership, Michael has played a pivotal role in guiding mParticle to become a prominent player in the data management landscape.As the CEO, Michael Katz oversees the strategic direction of the company, fosters key partnerships, and spearheads efforts to deliver cutting-edge solutions to clients worldwide. With a passion for harnessing the power of data, he has helped mParticle establish itself as a vital platform for businesses seeking to optimize their data collection, integration, and activation processes.Drawing upon his extensive experience in the technology sector, Michael's visionary leadership has been instrumental in driving mParticle's growth and success. Under his guidance, the company has achieved significant milestones and earned a reputation for its exceptional data solutions and commitment to customer success.Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Michael Katz in the links below.Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelskatz/Check out mParticle's website: https://www.mParticle.com/You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on

The CEO's role in sales is vital to the growth and success of any company. But many are unclear on what that role should be. In this episode, Alice outlines clearly 3 roles the CEO needs to consider.The CEOs role with existing customers and prospects The CEOs role as an evangelist The CEOs role on social media Alice starts by talking about the role with existing customers. Typically, the CEO only gets involved when there is a problem. By focusing on building strong relationships with the customer’s CEO or other high-level leaders and being proactive you have a greater opportunity to ensure things go well. She suggests writing notes of thanks, holding events, and making videos. She notes that you can’t do this for all customers and that the sales leader and team should prepare a list showing where your efforts will have the most benefit. She talks about the importance of the CEOs role with prospects. It’s much less likely to see a CEO getting involved with prospects but Alice reminds us that no one can bring confidence to a deal the way a CEO can. There will be times when the CEO should be positioned with the most senior-level people to provide their vision and insight as it relates to what the customer is trying to accomplish. Next, she mentions the role of evangelist, it is one Alice knows some CEOs are reluctant to take. By sharing your thought leadership, industry insights and talking about your great company you can create a draw that will make you the chief lead generator. She recommends appearing on podcasts, speaking at conferences, appearing on a panel, moderating a panel, or holding a webinar. The third role is the CEOs role on social media. She insists that utilizing social media, particularly LinkedIn, allows you to expand your reach and connect with stakeholders in your industry in a way that drives demand. Being present on social media will help you build your brand and your company's brand.As CEO, Alice recognizes the amount and variety of work you have to do and recommends outsourcing or delegating the things that others could do better to free you up to take the role in sales you need to take and work more on things that energize rather than drain you and are truly in your genius zone.Chapters00:59 Importance of CEO's role in sales03:03 CEO's role with existing customers04:15 CEO's role with prospects08:50 CEO's role as an evangelist10:39 Ways to evangelize, podcasts, conferences, webinars, videos14:49 Importance of CEO's presence on LinkedIn17:36 Outsourcing social media management20:01 Connecting and interacting with customers and prospects on LinkedIn23:05 Conclusion and gratitude for two years of podcastingAbout your hostAs Chief Sales Energizer, Alice is internationally known for her expertise in elevating sales to increase valuation for companies with a B2B sale that have exceptional growth potential. Spending her time strategizing with CEOs, company leaders and their sales leadership to build the strategies that find new business and grow existing accounts is her passion.  Her clients love her spirit and the way she energizes their sales organization. Alice also serves on the board of several growing companies to energize and elevate their sales. When she is not guiding CEOs to elevate their sales, she can be found hanging out with her family, walking, snow skiing, sailing in Lake Tahoe, volunteering in the community, or reading a book in her backyard. You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedInCheck out Alice’s website

Are you a CEO perplexed by your company's stagnant sales? The solution may lie within your own actions.According to the insightful Larry Mandelberg, renowned author of "Businesses Don't Fail, They Commit Suicide," CEOs often become detached from the sales process and unknowingly hinder their team.The consequences of this disconnect are substantial, forcing CEOs to look at things differently and shift their attention from driving revenue to providing unparalleled value to their customers.Larry's extensive experience has revealed that by making this shift, CEOs can cultivate satisfied customers who will, in turn, refer others and propel business growth.However, this change in focus necessitates a shift in mindset and a willingness to prioritize customer needs above short-term gains.Additionally, Larry emphasized the importance of having a clear purpose and its profound impact on revenue. Understanding the value the organization delivers, who it is delivered to, and how it is delivered is paramount in establishing a thriving enterprise.Chapters02:25 CEOs may be undermining sales by not focusing on delivering value07:01 The role of the CEO in sales culture09:45 CEOs stepping on toes in sales process13:08 Guidelines for bringing the CEO into sales calls24:23 CEOs should always ask questions and play stupid28:17 The need for Sales, Accounting, and Finance to sit down and reimagine the way payments are made31:21 The CEO's responsibility in making sure different areas of the organization are communicating and looking for ways to make each other's jobs easier35:30 Practical advice for CEOs, including interdepartmental conversations and scheduling them based on the sales cycle43:31 Inviting customers to visit the office to gain empathy for the work done48:14 The importance of clarity in speaking to a specific market and revisiting the mission statement frequentlyAbout GuestLarry Mandelberg is a consultant, speaker and author with “more than 150 years of combined business experience.” A natural problem solver, Larry represents the 5th generation of his family’s business. He started working at a young age where he learned from his father before and after school. Larry is an effective catalyst for change who has solved intractable problems and achieved new levels of efficiency and success for businesses in multiple industries. A prolific writer, Larry has published more than 80 columns. His first book, Businesses Don’t Fail, They Commit Suicide is scheduled for release in early 2018. A sought-after speaker, he has delivered more than 60 business-changing keynotes and workshops.Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Larry Mandelberg in the links below.Connect with Larry on LinkedIn: (47) Larry Mandelberg | LinkedInCheck out Larry's website: Mandelberg.biz | Harness, Focus, GrowCheck out Larry's book:https://www.amazon.com/Businesses-Dont-Fail-Commit-Suicide/dp/1662438214You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below:Connect with Alice on LinkedIn: (47) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice’s website: https://aliceheiman.com/

Being a first-time female entrepreneur in a male dominated space is no easy feat, and Tracy Young's journey starting a tech company in the construction industry is truly inspiring. She co-founded PlanGrid after recognizing the inefficiencies of paper blueprints and digitized them with tablet-friendly software that streamlined construction processes. Tracy's innovative solution caught fire and drove massive organic growth for PlanGrid. As the company expanded and shifted to enterprise sales, Tracy's team developed strategic and empathetic approaches to address diverse customer needs. She also built a strong sales team, learning from experienced reps and empowering her employees. Ultimately, Autodesk acquired PlanGrid, validating both Tracy's and PlanGrid's value. Building on her success, Tracy launched TigerEye to help sales teams optimize their strategies and unlock their full potential. Tracy's story showcases the incredible achievements of women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries, and how game changing innovation can happen anywhere in your organization. Chapters02:44 Tracy Young explains the problem PlanGrid solved in the construction industry   06:14 Tracy Young and her co-founders quit their jobs to work on PlanGrid full-time   08:21 PlanGrid starts selling to friends and receives positive feedback   10:41 PlanGrid's user base grows through word-of-mouth and virality   16:31 PlanGrid transitions to selling to enterprise customers   19:58 Challenges of selling to enterprise customers and expanding product offerings   22:18 Tracy Young discusses the importance of understanding the needs of different decision-makers   33:00 Autodesk acquires PlanGrid   38:06 Tracy Young and her husband co-found TigerEye   45:23 Tracy Young shares where to find TigerEye and connect with her  About GuestTracy Young is the co-founder of TigerEye, a software company that helps sales leaders track and predict the future performance of their sales teams. She was also the co-founder and CEO of PlanGrid, a construction software company that was acquired by Autodesk. Tracy has been recognized as one of Forbes' Top 50 Women in Tech and a Top 50 SaaS CEO by the SaaS Report.About CompanyTigerEye is a software company that helps sales leaders track and predict the future performance of their sales teams. Social Links You can learn more about and connect with Tracy Young in the links below.Connect with Tracy on LinkedIn: (99+) Tracy Young | LinkedInCheck out TigerEye's website: TigerEye — AboutYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Connect with Alice on LinkedIn: (99+) Alice Heiman | LinkedInCheck out Alice’s website: Alice Heiman - Alice Heiman

If CEO, Julian Lumpkin, learned one thing from his sales career it was to follow what the most successful sellers were doing and do that. It paid off.Before starting SuccessKit, he learned to use case studies to sell and realized that his company didn’t have a way to produce these. All of the successful salespeople had collected these stories, memorized them and used them over and over.&nbsp;Knowing that all salespeople need case studies throughout the sales cycle, SuccessKit was born.&nbsp;Julian quickly realized that knowing how to sell did not equip him to run a company and successfully scale sales at the same time, so he needed an easy way to get his first customers and he used his network, did an outstanding job and built his sales on referrals.&nbsp;Recently, he realized that the referrals he was getting weren’t going to power his growth to meet his goals so he added another way for customers to find him and started a series of highly successful online events where he trains salespeople on how to use case studies.&nbsp;Julian is still working on the barriers to increasing sales, so listen to what he has done, including launching a new product line, one that his customers really needed.&nbsp;Chapters02:54 Importance of customer success04:23 Authentic language from clients10:50 Developing case studies and using inexpensive paid advertising to get leads15:37 Importance of having a formal referral strategy in place16:07 The importance of collecting and organizing case studies19:56 Organizing case studies by significant challenges and important problems20:59 Building and owning a library of case studies23:23 Best practices for using case studies in the sales process24:28 Importance of understanding prospect's unique concerns and priorities33:18 Hiring salespeople without a good process for inbound and outbound leads38:48 Tips for getting started on creating case studiesAbout GuestJulian has been in the sales world for over 14 years. He started his career in tech sales, moved to management, and then founded SuccessKit in 2016. He serves as the point person for new clients, ensuring that each project is initiated, executed smoothly, and delivered on time. With a strong passion for entrepreneurship, Julian has established himself as a key figure in the business world. His leadership and expertise have led to the founding of SuccessKit, where he plays a crucial role in bringing on new clients, ensuring their success, and overseeing project management.Julian's entrepreneurial journey is fueled by his commitment to delivering exceptional results and his ability to foster strong client relationships. Through SuccessKit, he has created a platform that provides clients with the tools and support they need to thrive in their respective industries. Julian's dedication to client success has earned him a reputation for excellence, and he continues to make a significant impact in the business community.About CompanySuccess Kit is a B2B company that creates case studies and customer success stories in written and video formats to help salespeople provide relevant examples of customer success during the sales process. The company encourages its clients to read and categorize their case studies appropriately based on verticals, personas, and the most significant challenges solved. According to SuccessKit, the best case studies start with a problem and build a story arc using Joseph Campbell's story arc to create a good story that people can lean into and recognize themselves.Social Links&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Julian Lumpkin in the links below.Connect with Julian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-lumpkin-b845aa15/Check out SuccussKit’s website:&nbsp;</

Can you imagine saying goodbye to confusing spreadsheets and emails that track partner relationships and sales?Imagine the possibility of your team instantly identifying sales opportunities in your partners' networks?&nbsp;Cassandra Gholston, CEO of PartnerTap,&nbsp; joined me on the podcast to share her journey building a data sharing application that&nbsp;allows companies to leverage the strengths of their partners and expand their reach into new markets. She also shares how she overcame startup challenges in implementation and marketing and&nbsp;built a thriving revenue team.Cassandra recounted those early days saying, "We started to understand the difference between mercenary sales and missionary sales. And this was missionary sales."Chapters05:36 Referral selling is important.22:29 CEOs can train sales teams to properly prepare and bring them in at the right time for customers or prospects.23:03 CEOs should be involved in sales to show they care about their customers.24:44 Cassandra started Fempire to bring powerful women together and promote women leaders.28:06 Outdated sales strategies like cold calling and spamming on LinkedIn are not effective.31:29 CEOs can feel like they're on an island by themselves, but the podcast and networking can help.33:47 Co-selling is a big deal, and every company is looking to do it.34:44 Customer success is important for high user adoption and making customers successful.35:46 Ongoing customer success is necessary for customer renewals and growth.39:48 Tenured customer success teams are important for success in a down market.About Guest&nbsp;Cassandra is a customer and partner-obsessed CEO who has been driving revenue with and for partners her whole career.As an enterprise software sales rep, she knew her secret to success was working with partners. Helping partners get into new accounts, leveraging her relationships to accelerate partner deals, and sharing insights helped her build a web of trusted partnerships around her accounts. This approach propelled her to the #1 enterprise sales rep spot three years in a row.At the height of her enterprise sales career, and with two young kids at home, Cassandra had an epiphany for a new software product that would help every B2B sales rep save time, sell more, and crush their quota with partners. She quit her job, co-founded PartnerTap, and built the industry’s first ecosystem sales platform. Today PartnerTap is the leading partner ecosystem platform empowering channel, partner and sales teams at HPE, Lumen, Genesys, ADP and SAP Concur to share data and co-sell with partners.About CompanyPartner Tap is a data sharing application that allows secure sharing of CRM data between companies, automating account mapping and pipeline sharing. The platform helps companies identify new logos to target and where they have existing customers or inroads. The company works with all large CRMs and even some smaller ones, and has been successful, working with some of the largest companies such as HP, ADP, and SAP.Social Linkshttps://partnertap.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandragholston/Fempire | We’re on a mission to activate and grow women’s power at every level of society. (fempireecosystem.com)You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

What if you could keep your customers for years and continue to grow with them? What if everyone in your company was responsible for customer retention? What if everyone in your company sold?When a culture of caring permeates your company everyone takes responsibility for the customer’s success and helps to solve for customers so they buy - sales.&nbsp;If the answer to every question about building a successful sales team came back to the process of delivering successful outcomes for customers, how would that change your company?.&nbsp;Adam Miller recounts his 30 year journey at Elevate building an organization where every team member takes responsibility for the success of the customer and everyone sells.&nbsp;Chapters:00:00 Sales is Solving Problems&nbsp;08:06 Scaling Sales&nbsp;14:160 Sales Skills are Teachable&nbsp;15:11 Hybrid Selling and Hiring Remote Sellers&nbsp;19:38 Retaining Talent&nbsp;22:54 Hunters, Account Managers and Customer Success&nbsp;27:31 Measuring Customer Success and Corporate Courage&nbsp;32:40 Selling is a Team Sport&nbsp;34:56 Adapting to Self Service Buyer BehaviourAbout Our Guest:The ELEVATE Group - Chief Executive Officer&nbsp;ELEVATE Capital - Private Equity Investor&nbsp;Bahamas Air Sea Rescue - Northern Bahamas - President&nbsp;An innovator and a visionary, Adam has offered cutting edge scalable solutions for the world’s most prestigious forward-thinking companies for over 25 years. Earning a reputation with an insatiable appetite for building things, he is the Founder and Chief Executive of The ELEVATE Group, the strategic &amp; tactical partner to ambitious leaders looking to drive business success.&nbsp;As a private equity investor and adventurer at heart, Adam consistently pushes boundaries and seeks opportunity to meet the needs of rapidly changing industries. Sales. Marketing. Data. Breakthrough Business Strategies. He never strays away from a challenge. Analytical in his approach to breaking down complex processes, Adam is a leader who believes in constant self-improvement, giving back, and helping those around him succeed. Outside of his passion for delivering tangible results, this Airplane &amp; Helicopter Pilot/Sailor leads the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue’s growth and has an active role as SARDO (Search &amp; Rescue Duty Officer) as well Airwing Rescue Captain.&nbsp;Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/millerjadam/https://thinkelevate.com​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. Will your sales organization utilize it or will they be left behind?AI is having a big impact on B2B sales by empowering salespeople to focus on what they do best: building meaningful relationships with their prospects.&nbsp;But wait, don't worry about AI replacing human sales reps!&nbsp;Usman Sheikh, Founder and CEO of xiQ, a Silicon Valley-based AI-powered SaaS platform explains how AI can be a game-changer for sales leaders who embrace it as a tool to gain a competitive advantage.In this podcast, we dive into the cutting-edge applications of generative AI in B2B sales, including how to create hyper-personalized emails and communication that resonate with your target audience.If you want to stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving landscape, you won't want to miss this must-watch interview.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to AI and ChatGPT&nbsp;06:05 Combining ChatGPT With Up To Date Data Sources&nbsp;10:26 How Sellers Can Use ChatGPT&nbsp;18:42 The Role of AI in the Shift From Lead Quantity to Quality&nbsp;24:08 Techniques To Make Your Sellers More Productive28:58 Understanding How To Write Effect Prompts&nbsp;35:48 What CEOs Need To Know &amp; Do About AI44: 50 Using AI Along The Entire Lifecycle Of The Customer47:40 How To Live With AI&nbsp;About Our Guest:Usman Sheikh is the Founder and CEO of Silicon Valley-based xiQ, Inc. a next-generation, AI-powered, SaaS platform for B2B sales and marketing. Prior to founding xiQ Inc, Usman served as Vice President with SAP, SE, where he held leadership positions in Product Management, Sales Enablement, and Digital Commerce globally. He left SAP to pursue his passion for developing next-generation technologies using AI at the intersection of B2B Sales and Marketing.About xiQ:xiQ Inc. is a Personality-driven Sales and Marketing Platform™ that combines neuroscience, psychology, and AI to understand the buyers’ mindset. xiQ reinvigorates b2b sales and marketing by doubling down on industry-leading personality and behavioral science to provide broader, deeper, and more actionable insights.&nbsp;Companies using xiQ are able to increase their sales win rates by 4x, increase client engagement by 10x and realize ROI within weeks.xiQ Inc. won the award for ‘Best Use of Martech for Demand Generation’ in 2022, was recognized as a Leader in ‘G2 Enterprise ABM Category’, and was named a ‘Cool Vendor for Marketing Technology’ by Gartner.&nbsp;Social links:LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usmanmsheikh/Website: https://www.xiqinc.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/xiqincYou can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn&nbsp;

This episode dives into how large organizations scale their sales teams. But do these approaches work for smaller organizations? Absolutely! Radhika Shukla has worked in a sales leadership role at some of the largest tech giants including Microsoft and IBM. She takes us through the entire gamut of building high performance sales teams.From an ‘Always be learning’ mindset to customer focus, hiring, execution and motivation she lays out the entire playbook. Every sentence could be its own chapter.Chapters:00:00 Radhika’s Background - Always Be Learning 06:53 Sales Growth Strategies 10:33 Five Pronged Approach to Customer Focus 13:14 Three Part Execution Plan 19:29 Five Rules For Hiring the Right Sales People 27:19 Hiring Mishaps 34:09 Intentional Diversity 40:00 Advice for CEOsAbout Our Guest:Radhika is a Senior Sales Executive/Leader with 21 years of extensive experience in strategic sales leadership and business management serving customers across diverse industries in Auto, Manufacturing, Retail/CPG, Financial Services, SLG and Healthcare. Having worked at tech giants like, IBM and Microsoft, she has extensive experience in mentoring and leading high performing teams across North America and Asia providing strategic guidance/coaching to craft cost-effective solutions addressing critical business needs and accelerating customer digital transformations. She has an MBA in Strategy from the prestigious University of Michigan-Ross School and is a renowned Community leader serving on the Boards of 4 nonprofits: MAI Family Services, Michigan Crisis Services, Pioneer Medical Research, and Interfaith Leadership Council of Metro Detroit. She was recently named No 1 In the Top 10 Women in Manufacturing by the UK publication Manufacturing Global. A strong believer in being a "learn-it-all", she has 14 technical cloud and industry certifications under her belt with a deep appreciation for leading teams in solving a customer's technical challenge through the lens of the economy and business benefits. She is a 4-time National Pageant winner and has been crowned:Mrs. India 2018Mrs. Entrepreneur International 2019Mrs. Michigan North America 2020Top 5 Mrs. North America 2020Mrs. Congeniality North America and People's Choice North America 2020Mrs. Michigan USA 2021Mrs. USA 2nd Runner Up 2021Besides being a well-respected Industry thought leader, keynote speaker, career coach, she is passionate about giving back and is an active ambassador/advocate for DEI, women empowerment, and STEM education. A dynamic, results-driven, passionate Sales Leader with a proven track record of successfully driving up cloud solution sales, substantial ROI and profitability, delivering remarkable results for Fortune 500 companies and creating growth strategies eliciting best from contributors, she has been featured on several podcasts for her leadership principles/mantra: “Inspire, Empower, Appreciate”Accomplishments: Recognized No 1 in Top 10 Women in Manufacturing; Microsoft Hero Empathy in Action award recipient; Microsoft US National Gold Standard Excellence for Customer Obsession; Microsoft Worldwide Community Award FY22; FY22 Microsoft Top Sales Manager (sole US recipient to receive Technology Solutions Excellence Diamond Award); IBM's Manager's Choice and Voice of the Customer AwardsMrs USA 2nd Runner Up, Mrs Michigan USA 2021, Mrs Michigan North America 2020, Top 5 Mrs North America 2020, Mrs India Michigan 2018.Social Media link:LinkedIn: Radhika Shukla | LinkedIn ​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comCon&lt;

Leading indicators, lagging indicators, qualitative data, and quantitative data might sound like boring topics for your sales meetings. Quite the contrary, Michael Ingram of SalesOps.io explains the role that each one plays in achieving predictable revenue growth.Sales revenue is a lagging indicator of success. By the time you know it, it’s too late. You need data daily and weekly that tells you what to do before it’s too late. Leading indicators give you a chance to fix problems before you miss the quarter.Chapters:00:00 What Is SalesOps?&nbsp;08:27 Moving On From Anecdotal To Leading Indicator Data&nbsp;14:04 Qualitative Customer Data Capture at the Front Line&nbsp;20:20 Activity-Driven Approach to Sales Metrics Worked 10 Years Ago&nbsp;24:26 It's All About the Conversation&nbsp;30:15 Scaling SalesOps GracefullyAbout Our Guest:Michael is the Founder and CEO of SalesOps.io (rev ops talent marketplace), as well as the Co-Founder of Productal (product talent marketplace). He has helped build marketing, sales, and customer success operations for hundreds of organizations over the last 10 years, with a focus on high-growth B2B technology companies. He previously led sales operations, business development, and sales development teams at Axial, an online network connecting the lower middle market of private equity. Prior to Axial, Michael led enterprise sales operations and strategy at Zocdoc, helping structure the systems and processes to scale the sales and success organization to over 250 team members. Before recognizing his passion for startups, he spent 4 years in management consulting for biotech and pharma companies with ZS Associates. Michael graduated from the University of Alabama (Roll Tide) with a Masters in Applied Economics and a BS in Operations Management.Company Overview&nbsp;SalesOps.io is a revenue operations talent marketplace. We have a network of over 500 rev ops experts that we place into fractional and full-time engagements with tech companies and other organizations that have a gap in operational resources. Our work largely falls into the buckets of commercial process, tools, and analytics across the customer journey. Productal is a similar talent marketplace focused on the Product side of the house - staffing product managers, designers, advisors, and analysts into orgs that need product-related experts.Social links:Michael Ingram’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsalesops/SalesOps LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesops.io/Productal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/productal/about/​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

It's not surprising that Bronwyn Spira, after trying many different sales strategies, landed back on the founder-led model. In mission-driven companies, founders often deliver the most compelling pitch.She then set about recruiting a sales and marketing team to support the sales process across the entire customer journey.Stick with us to the end where Bronwyn leaves us with her three growth tips for every CEO.Chapters:00:00 A platform for patients and practitioners04:20 Getting Sales Started08:32 Back to Co-founder Led Sales12:25 The Importance of Strong Marketing16:56 Finding the Right Sellers - Hungry and Driven24:15 Building Relationships and Trust Over Time30:42 Customer Success at Scale33:40 The Future of Force&nbsp;38:25 Executive Sponsors&nbsp;42:53 Three Tips for CEOsAbout Our Guest:Bronwyn Spira is a physical therapist and the founder and chief executive officer of Force Therapeutics, a provider-prescribed digital care management platform that empowers patients throughout an episode of care. Bronwyn is passionate about improving patient engagement and satisfaction with rehab and recovery by delivering high-quality, clinically validated remote care to patients, regardless of access challenges.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/company/force-therapeutics/https://twitter.com/FORCETherExhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bronwyn-spira-40578815/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn&nbsp;

LeanData’s sales organization’s head count might seem too costly to some.&nbsp;It was derived out of a constant quest to map internal resources to support customer success - not revenue, yet it is highly profitable.&nbsp;&nbsp;One example, split the customer success manager role into two positions. One checking in to monitor the account health and ensure renewal. The other, a coach to provide ongoing best practice advice to customers.Join us to learn the customer-centric sales enablement process that makes LeanData recession-proof.Chapters:00:00 LeanData - Revenue Orchestration&nbsp;04:08 Pitching the Problem Not the Solution&nbsp;06:17 Scaling the Sales Team&nbsp;08:10 Hiring a VP Sales&nbsp;11:51 Letting Sellers Sell: 1 to 1 ratio of SDR to AE&nbsp;16:41 Adding Enablement &amp; Customer Virality&nbsp;18:57 Revisiting The Customer Journey - Adding Coaches&nbsp;23:09 Certified Users Have Higher Renewal Rate&nbsp;27:40 What’s Next for LeanDataAbout Our Guest:Evan Liang is the Co-founder and CEO of LeanData. Prior to launching LeanData in 2012, Evan worked in product, strategy, and business development roles at Microsoft, Ebay, Caring.com and Smart Modular Technologies as well as associate positions with venture capital firms Shasta Ventures and Battery Ventures.About LeanData:LeanData is an essential element of the modern revenue tech stack. The LeanData Revenue Orchestration Platform simplifies buyer journeys while accelerating time to revenue through no-code, drag-and-drop lead routing, lead-to-account matching, automated meeting scheduling, engagement analytics, and strategic integrations.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/company/leandata/https://twitter.com/LeanDatahttps://www.facebook.com/LeanDatahttps://www.youtube.com/@leandatainc​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Is your sales team struggling to have conversations with the right buyers?&nbsp;Better prospecting is the most direct path to increase sales conversations. Wendy Weiss takes us through the four steps to improve your sales team's ability to schedule sales calls.Her four steps are 1. The right list, 2. Great skills, 3. Strong process and 3. The right software.&nbsp;What can your team add to improve their prospecting?Chapters:00:00 Chapter 1: How do we get more conversations with buyers&nbsp;01:50 Chapter 2: 4 things to move the needle&nbsp;06:31 Chapter 3: The List&nbsp;11:27 Chapter 4: The Skills - Prospecting versus Selling&nbsp;17:19 Chapter 5: Skills - Researching the Buyer Need&nbsp;22:15 Chapter 6: Skills - Leaving Voicemail&nbsp;30:19 Chapter 7: Skills - Diagnosing Buyer Responses&nbsp;37:16 Chapter 8: The Process&nbsp;40:16 Chapter 9: The Software - Making Prospecting EasierAbout Our Guest:Wendy Weiss is the founder of the Salesology® Prospecting Method that generates predictable sales revenue results. Wendy has helped 775 businesses increase qualified appointments and sales faster, more easily, and more profitably. She is the author of The Sales Winner’s Handbook Essential Strategies to Skyrocket Sales Performance and Cold Calling for Women Opening Doors &amp; Closing Sales. A former ballet dancer, Wendy believes everything she knows in life and business she learned in ballet class. From warmups to rehearsals, she shows her clients how to perform at their best and close all the sales they need.Company InfoSalesology® is a sales training and coaching consultancy, with expertise and solutions for developing new businesses. As a pioneer and leader in the crowded new business development space, Salesology® sets the standard for sales training. Owned and operated by Wendy Weiss, she and her team help sales leaders and individual contributors speed up their sales cycle, reach more prospects directly, and generate more sales revenue. Clients like Avon Products, ADP, New York Life, and thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the country have used and benefited from these time-tested techniques to amazing results.Social links:Twitter - https://twitter.com/wendyweissLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyweiss/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/gosalesology/Facebook -

How do you balance growth with quality service delivery?&nbsp;With no background in sales, Kevin Warner, Co-founder, and CEO, originally decided to hire someone who knew sales and put his focus on delivery. He realized quickly it wasn’t working and took the lead sales role.&nbsp;Once sales picked up, he built a sales team and grew exponentially but he watched&nbsp; the quality of service delivery suffer, and client churn increased.&nbsp;What was the right size for the company where they could serve the clients with excellence, reduce churn and increase profitability?&nbsp;They had some tough decisions to make. They reduced the team and focused on the success of the customer. He went back to a founder-led sales approach with a sales team to back him.&nbsp;Under his renewed guidance healthy growth returned. Now at 10 years in, they have achieved low churn, high profitability and now have the valuation that creates the exit options every founder dreams of.&nbsp;You’re going to want to hear his story.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to Leadium&nbsp;05:47 How to talk to humans&nbsp;09:31 Start with proper segmentation&nbsp;11:25 The McDonald’s Conveyor Belt of Outbound Sales&nbsp;12:54 Founder led Sales&nbsp;16:32 Sales is Not a Magic Bullet&nbsp;19:51 Back to Founder Led Sale&nbsp;24:07 Removing the Roadblocks&nbsp;27:35 The Role of the CEO&nbsp;29:54 Reducing Churn&nbsp;32:34 The End of SDRsAbout Our Guest:Kevin Warner, the Founder, and CEO of Leadium an award-winning B2B lead generation agency.Kevin is a core visionary behind the rapid growth of the outsourced sales development industry. He has proven that top-of-funnel sales can be scaled through an agency model, by creating over $1 billion in revenue pipeline across 1200 organizations, playing a part in 76 acquisitions, and seeing clients receive $6.5 billion in funding and 5 IPOs. He has experience managing a global team of 600 sales reps, data researchers, content creators, and sales strategists.​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Most CEOs have a hard time running one successful company. Veronica Buitron runs two!Her secrets boil down to simple, hard won lessons. First, you need a process for everything to be successful and to scale. Second, you need to trust and empower your teams.Every CEO can learn from her episode.Chapters:00:00 &nbsp;- Introduction2:26 - Tango Code: Redefining Software Development 003:53 - Automating Process for Scalability&nbsp;10:02 - Engineering and Sales Are Both Just Solving Problems14:50 - Building Visions Together&nbsp;16:30 - Shared Success&nbsp;18:36 - Understanding the Sales Process at An Early Stage21:02 - Building a Sales Team Starts With A Defined Process28:11 - The CEO Sales Role32:39 - How Veronica Runs Two Companies35:12 - Implementing Agile Across the Entire Company36:20 - Trust and EmpowermentAbout Our Guest:Veronica Buitron is the Co-Founder and CEO of TangoCode a software development company and Chassis, the leading platform enabling digital marketers to automate &amp; accelerate search and social campaigns. As a female entrepreneur, Veronica considers it essential to not only create a diverse and progressive culture within her own company but also to promote it within the tech community. These values have enabled Chassis to create the industry’s most innovative digital marketing solution automating and accelerating ROI for its clients.Chassis enables businesses to use first-party data to create a more effective marketing offering, achieving results 4X faster than using Google or Facebook. The platform promotes automation as a catalyst for marketers to be more productive and efficient in serving their clients and achieving scale.Veronica is an avid reader and enjoys speaking on diversity, innovation, and their interrelated relationship. She is a passionate business leader, a lifelong learner, a mentor to other women in technology, and a devoted role model for her three children.Social links:Veronica's LinkedInVeronica's Twitter&nbsp;​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Ariel came from engineering, he had been a product leader for quite a few years and then made the transition into sales.&nbsp;Initially when he moved into sales, he was running product marketing. And he thought sales was so easy, you just get all of the factsheets and&nbsp; battle cards and the information on the features and capabilities and share that with the prospects that they will buy it. Of course, he learned quickly he was wrong. Running a sales team taught him that sales was so much more and luckily he learned before he started his company.&nbsp;That mindset shift is what prepared him to at first do the sales himself and then build a sales organization at Second Nature AI.&nbsp;He learned two very important things as he moved from founder led sales to hiring a team. First, in an early stage company you have to hire a different type of seller. They have to have passion for the product and they have to know how to do full cycle selling without all the resources of a big company.&nbsp;&nbsp;He told me, you have to hire full cycle sellers - salespeople who don’t need the support of a large marketing and sales team.&nbsp; They need to be able to adapt on the fly.&nbsp;So that is what he did and then he learned the second thing, you have to have inbound leads. Even with the right salespeople, if there are no leads sales don’t happen.&nbsp;Listen to hear the lessons that helped him grow sales.&nbsp;Chapters:00:00 - Artificial Intelligence That Trains Your Salesforce?&nbsp;07:48 - The Genesis of Jenny AI&nbsp;10:53 - The First Customers Input&nbsp;15:19 - Scaling Sales and the Team&nbsp;26:32 - Using Second Nature to Train and Assess Sellers&nbsp;28:15 - Marketing Ahead of Sales Hires to Increase Inbound&nbsp;32:55 - The Sales Feedback Loop&nbsp;36:15 - The Next ChapterAbout Our Guest:Ariel Hitron is the CEO and co-founder of Second Nature. He has held various executive positions including VP of New Markets and VP of Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura. He ran global sales teams with dozens of reps, built playbooks and training sessions, and earlier in his career, developed and brought to market multiple software products, generating tens of millions of recurring revenue and used by millions of consumers.As the CEO of Second Nature, Ariel is able to merge his passion for sales, tech, and product development, by applying AI to enable large B2B sales organizations to scale up and get systematic about their sales coaching.About Second Nature:Second Nature helps salespeople have better conversations.Using AI-driven role play, sales professionals can practice in a safe space, and improve their performance and confidence by gaining real-time, personalized feedback.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielhitron/https://www.linkedin.com/company/second-nature-ai/&nbsp;​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: <a hre

Samantha McKenna, a former employee of On24, was recruited by LinkedIn for her mastery of building a powerful brand on the platform. She started posting on LinkedIn in 2011, leading to recognition and a promotion. After two years, she broke her 13th record and decided to pursue her passion for making a positive impact. She left LinkedIn to start her own company, #SamSales, initially intending to work part-time, but quickly realized that wasn't feasible.She is one of the rare founders who was in sales prior to starting her company but she never planned to go into sales, she thought she was going to be in finance. Starting her own business, well that might have been inevitable because both of her parents are entrepreneurs.&nbsp;For many who start a company sales come slowly but for Samantha sales were easy because she had already built an audience on LinkedIn. She had been providing useful content for years so once she posted that she&nbsp; was now in business, the sales flooded in. (Don’t we all wish for that.)Samantha's all-women team of 11, , now does a full range of sales related advisory and services. To grow into that, she learned to delegate and rely on proactive referrals and relationship-building for long-term success. Even though she has a great sales team, Samantha is still involved in selling and managing sales.Her team does sales the easy way, they rely on proactive referrals from existing customers and partners. She taught her team to track job changes on LinkedIn and stay in touch. This usually leads to more business. They focus on building relationships for the long term.Chapters:00:00 - Intro&nbsp;02:54 - Quality Over Quantity&nbsp;05:15 - Samantha’s Start In Sales&nbsp;10:10 - LinkedIn 1%er&nbsp;16:51 - My Large Networks Gave #samsales A Running Start&nbsp;20:43 - The ever evolving CEO sales role&nbsp;24:01 - Referral selling&nbsp;25:55 - Working in your genius zone&nbsp;30:59 - What’s next?About Our Guest:Samantha McKenna, CEO of #samsales Consulting, is an award-winning sales leader, brand ambassador for LinkedIn, angel investor, board member, and highly sought-after speaker. She has broken nearly 15 sales records, believes great sales are rooted in exceptional manners, and consistently looks for opportunities to continue growing the company’s philanthropic efforts. Since 2008, Sam has worked for some of the most notable names in the Bay Area, including ON24 and LinkedIn. While with these organizations, Sam spent her time as an individual contributor in Enterprise sales before moving to scaling teams and revenue as an executive Leader.With more than 30,000 LinkedIn followers, Sam has inspired sales professionals with her tangible sales tips and actionable advice used daily by executives and teams alike. Sam has been named a Top 50 Women in Revenue and Top 20 Women in Sales Leadership, appears as one of the faces of LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s marketing campaigns, and has been named a Top Ten LinkedIn Sales Star several times over. She has a deep commitment to helping women succeed - particularly those who are military spouses - as well as individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Sam is dedicated to shining a light on her trademark Show Me You Know Me and #givefirst mantras - and together with her team, raised over $50,000 for charity in 2021 alone with the innovative #samsales ‘Show Me You Know Me’ Charity Event. In its first 24 months, #samsales Consulting has scaled to multi-million dollar revenue and added 17 talented team members. The #samsales team serves over 100 clients, achieved312% of their first annual revenue goal, and surpassed all reason with 233% YoY growth in its second year!Connect with Samantha McKenna on LinkedInFollow <a href="https://twitter.com/smckenna719?lang=en

Sean Doyle applies behavioral science to marketing and the sales funnel. His model is called Centricity and he shares important lessons about alignment between sales, marketing and customer success to move deals through the funnel.&nbsp;Sean says, “Deals stall in the middle of the funnel because we aren’t giving the buyer what they need to make a decision.If you are still feeding them information about your product features and benefits, they are 80% likely to decide to stick with the old, lower risk, status quo.”On the other hand, we know that if you help them make sense of the information, you are heading in the right direction together. Sometimes this takes sales, customer success and marketing together and at different points in the customer journey.&nbsp;This lively interview will help every CEO with strategies to help their team move more deals through the middle of the funnel to close.Chapters00:00 Strategic Versus Creative Marketing06:17 Behavioral Science: The Centricity Model13:22 Your Buyer’s Problem18:36 Marketing and Customer Success at the Closing Table24:08 Making it Easier for Customers to Buy31:00 6 Step Pipeline: Tracking Steps Versus Activity38:00 Emotional and Rational Content: Marketing and Sales balance43:40 Selling is Helping&nbsp;About Our Guest:Sean M. Doyle is principal at FitzMartin Inc, a leading consultancy focused on optimizing sales and marketing investments of emerging middle- market, B2B businesses. FitzMartin’s clients earn on average an ROI of $287 per $1 invested. Through a 30+ year career with over 5,500 client engagements, Sean saw the need for a repeatable, systematic, objective go-to-market model. The model, Centricity, informs sales, marketing, technology and creative decisions. His niche is helping executives identify opportunities to achieve their strategic, personal and financial objectives.&nbsp;Connect with Sean on LinkedInFollow Sean on TwitterResource Links:Changing for Good&nbsp;&nbsp;​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn&nbsp;&nbsp;

Almost every company I know is struggling to bring new business in at the pace required.&nbsp;Why?&nbsp;Well, that is an interesting question but I think by now most of us know that our methods are outdated and simply don’t work. The better questions are how do we keep new business flowing in?&nbsp;What should be done instead of what we continue to do that doesn’t work?&nbsp;I’ve always had a fascination with weeds. They are amazing. Strong, resilient, persistent and they can literally take over an area. My friend Stu Heinecke and I share that same fascination only I know he is more fascinated than me because he wrote a whole book on them called How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed.&nbsp;Weeds have an unfair advantage and Stu wants all company leaders to understand what that is and how it can be applied to their business so that they can dominate the market.&nbsp;There are many strategies to gain that unfair advantage and Stu is here today to help you pick the best ones for your business.&nbsp;Find out why having the mindset of a weed will give your company an unfair advantage and possibly even market domination.&nbsp;Highlights:04:14 Having a network is very important. Being able to get introductions is very important. I mean, that works. That's a shortcut.04:37 [If you can’t get an introduction] You need to do something audacious, not just audacious, but also you need to do something that's relevant… something that has the person saying, Oh my gosh, who is this? I love the way you think.07:01 books are still a valid way to stand out, even if you haven't written one, send some of your favorite books…I’m helping you to learn…09:58 Alice Heineman says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their pipeline.[the caption on a cartoon that Stu sent to Alice ahead of the interview]12:36 one of your [Alice Heiman] great unfair advantages is that you show up usually as a speaker at events16:14 what is it about weeds that causes them to spread and grow and dominate and makes them such tough competitors? Do they have a unified model? And it turns out they do, they leverage a fierce mindset.17:11 if a business doesn't have unfair advantages, it won't exist for long.19:20 you want your competitors looking at your unfair advantage and saying how the heck are we going to beat that?22:23 Why would we talk about a mindset when we're talking about plants? They don't have brains.23:07 You can't grow your business like a weed if you don't have the right mindset. If we're still having our salespeople sell the way they sold ten years ago, it's not going to work.24:01 I should add a couple more attributes to mindset. Emotions get in the way. Your actions should lead your emotions, not the other way around. Don’t ask ‘Do I feel like going to the gym?’ Go to the gym and then see how you feel. Do everything at scale through collaboration.28:47 Here's the really cool thing about weeds. They thrive in disrupted ground. We are coming into a recession, another word for disruption, and it’s an opportunity to thrive if you have the right mindset.31:08 One way to thrive is to eliminate any 1 to 1 leverage. If you are part of the deliverable stream, you need to fix that because you become a bottleneck to your growth. Moving toward multi-channel collaborations is another way to thrive.About Our Guest:Stu Heinecke is a bestselling business author, marketer and WSJ cartoonist. His first book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, was named one of the top 64 sales books of all time. His latest, How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed, lays out a complete model for explosive business growth, based on the strategies, attributes and tools weeds us

It’s been 14 years since Bob Vaez started EventMobi and he’s had considerable growth without investment from Venture Capital or Private Equity. How did he do it? It wasn’t always easy.EventMobi’s early sales model was classic founder led with Bob doing it all from mining his network for leads to closing deals.&nbsp;His decision to bootstrap versus take external investment meant that hiring an experienced sales leader was out of the question. Instead he hired young, hungry graduates who could listen and tell stories.His strategy worked. Growth was great, annual sales revenue soared.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then the pandemic hit and revenue plummeted to near zero.Within a few months, Bob pivoted the in-person event platform into a virtual one.Sales rebounded and are stronger than ever with a return to in-person.Bob’s 14 year journey is a great how-to for any CEO looking to bootstrap their startup.Highlights:05:20 I had this passion for events and they would give you this tote bag full of paper and this show guide that's 300 pages. I'm like, why is this not on my phone?06:38 We were building a product that no one had ever heard of, software for events.06:57 I realized the other part of the product we have to build is a platform for planners and event organizers because their data was all over the place.&nbsp;08:10 I think honestly at the beginning for a lot of startup founders, sales is not the main concern. But in reality, you want to make sure you have product market fit and selling is the best way to determine that.13:10 EventMobi is a bootstrap company and so very different from a VC backed company.13:43 From zero to the first $500K was very experimental. I didn't know if the company was going to exist in the next few months. &nbsp;After that, I couldn't do everything myself, so I had to hire someone to do online demos using WebEx14:49 We weren't really hiring traditional salespeople. We were hiring people that were empathetic. They were really good listeners and they were really good storytellers.15:12 I ran it like that until we had about 12 people on the sales team. I was still managing marketing and support with a few junior managers, and we hit 5 million. That’s when I realized it was too much for me so we promoted our first sales manager from within the sales team. That took us to $10M.17:35 I think a lot of early CEOs hire what I call full-stack salespeople - they take it from lead to renewal. This has to be divided into different roles as you grow. How you define those roles and the timing is critically important.22:46 When the pandemic hit, we went from $10M to 0 overnight because all of the confidence got canceled. We retooled our platform to support virtual and suddenly our leads grew by a factor of five.28:45 We had a two pronged strategy in terms of building the sales team. One was to promote from within. And the other was to hire staff from the industry.31:40] Customer demands are changing. They are expecting a different type of response and they have different pain points. We need to train and enable the sales team to be able to help them in a way that they can benefit from rather than let me show you 12 tools we have.32:05] Information overload is real. There's so much noise and there're so many competitors. The customers can't even remember who said what.About Our Guest:Bob has over 10 years of experience in software, semiconductor and mobile industry in various capacities from engineering to business development. He has worked for a number of small and large companies in Toronto, Canada and Silicon Valley, California such as BTE, ATI, AMD and Nvidia.Currently Bob is the CEO of EventMobi.com.EventMobi is an interactive mobil

Wrapping up my 3rd season and I still can’t believe I started and built a successful podcast.&nbsp;The thing I love most is the conversations with the CEOs. They are so willing to share their story in the spirit of helping others.&nbsp;Whether they are near the beginning or the end of their journey it’s always interesting to learn why they started and how they grew sales.&nbsp;In this Season Finale we revisit some of the main themes that are essential for every CEO to take into 2023 and beyond.Number one on the list - if you are using the sales strategies and methods that got you where you are I can guarantee they won’t get you where you want to be.&nbsp;Just doing more of the same doesn’t cut it. Strategies and tactics that worked just before the pandemic don’t work anymore. You need to stop and map your buyer's journey and adjust your strategy and tactics to meet that.Cold outreach yields abysmal results. No one answers the phone and no one wants your sequence of emails especially when they are all about you.&nbsp;Buyers who are looking for you expect to have access to your product information before engaging with your sales team. You need to understand what your customer wants, how they want to buy and meet them where they are.&nbsp;If buyers won’t take cold calls and they are deleting your email how do you generate leads? How do you ensure that your sales people are having plenty of conversations with people who can buy from them?The changing role of the CEO in the sales process was another recurring theme. Many of our guests are moving back to a founder led sales approach and have found huge success in being the chief lead generator. Imagine using your own network and the network of your whole senior team to make introductions for your salespeople so they don't have to go in cold. What is your role in sales currently?Tune in to this and every episode to find the answers.&nbsp;Highlights:01:15 A different structure for how to pursue revenue growth.02:03 How the customer wants to buy from you.03:03 So as a CEO, what are some of the things you can do to make it easier to be your customer?&nbsp;04:26 Making content readily available to the people that want to buy from you.05:43 What is the CEO’s role in the sales process?07:17 Creating a conversation.08:16 A mindset shift.10:05 Increasing the effectiveness of your salesperson.&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Heidi Messer started Collective[i] with one goal: to bring more certainty and less volatility to sales and improve the livelihoods of every single employee.According to Heidi, sellers operate at 30% productivity rates. There is no other function in a company that is as unproductive as sales. Higher productivity equals more certainty, so why not improve it. If sales improves every other department has more opportunity.&nbsp;In order to bring more certainty and less volatility , Collective[i] focuses on two main innovations:Automate everything possible in the sales process in order to reduce seller admin work and improve CRM accuracy;Train teams on the agile sales process in order to scale revenue.This is one of the most comprehensive interviews on the modern sales process I’ve ever recorded.&nbsp;&nbsp;Highlights:01:19 All of the time that is spent trying to fix the problems in CRM, we fix so that sellers can sell, managers can coach, and everybody else has absolute transparency into what's happening.&nbsp;02:23 Nobody trusts the pipeline reviews. So let's just start with a clean capture of data into the CRM and have it done automatically. Nobody has to worry about trusting it.02:36 You know that sellers operate at 30% productivity rates. There is no other function in a company that is as unproductive as sales.03:16 Instead of trying to figure out what happened, we want people to focus on adapting to what's likely to happen.04:25 What was interesting about the mid 2000s is we actually saw marketing transform from being a gut based endeavor to one that was highly scientific, very adaptive and focused on optimization.06:54 We're going to own siloed data, not just within companies, but between companies. Everybody told us it wouldn't work. I'm convinced that if you haven't heard that, you don't have a good idea.07:33 Sales is the lifeblood of companies. Our entire economy depends on sales. If you can bring more certainty to sales and less volatility, you impact the livelihoods of every single person employed by a company.08:17 There's no entrepreneur I've met who isn't a great salesperson.10:21 When you start out with a new product you have to find out what's important to their (you customer’s) business? How am I going to persuade them to try this new thing? And then somehow I think what happens when you grow is you get out of that habit of thinking that way,11:12 There's a significant portion of companies that still believe sales itself is a process, meaning sales is an assembly line. It’s not, it’s more like a sport that needs a playbook and lots of practice.13:51 So imagine now you have to hire salespeople who sell to people who sell.15:53 You have to hire salespeople who are able to be trusted advisers. Do they have fundamental sales skills? Do they have enough knowledge that they can provide people with advice on how to move forward and not just explain something?16:58 I think there's a massive defining line that happened after COVID, and I don't think we're going back.17:49 There's a particular kind of sales leader who can sell innovation and there's a kind of sales leader who wants to sell the status quo.22:33 If you're a good founder, you pick advisors who are smarter than you. I want to hire an expert in something that I may not be an expert in.25:39 We have to do a better job of training our sales teams.27:13 We drink our own champagne.27:57 We switched to Agile.29:11 Agile sales describes an organization that's working perfectly in sync to adapt to changes that are happening real time in marketplaces.31:46 We automated everything that they were doing that was low value. So there's not a seller that spends more than 10 minutes a week in CRM.&nbsp;32:37 We don't do annual sales conferences, we do quarter

Sean Burke shares his knowledge of building high performance sales teams gained through nine startups, seven exits and billions of dollars in value creation.The first rule, you can only attract the best if you can show a definitive path to hitting quota. If you can’t show the math, why would they join your team?Next, you are building a team not a collective of individual contributors. Part of this is defining your role and the role of every part of the company in contributing to the sales team's success.And finally, you need to build metrics around each salesperson to compare and help share best practices across the team. Why is one person’s close rate higher or time to close lower?Sean goes on to talk about mentoring and the difficulty of getting people to take the essential first steps. If you follow his advice, you will never have to worry about getting a job or earning a living.And these highlights only scratch the surface of the wisdom Sean shares with us.Highlights:20:52 If you can't share with them the math of how people get to their numbers, why would they ever join your team?23:26 Every single salesperson on my team has those numbers in a customized dashboard.23:37 The sales velocity formula basically tells you, "Am I going to hit my number or not?"24:38 "Joe, here's what your close ratio is. Bill's close ratio is 10% higher. What are you guys doing differently? By the way, why is Jane's time to close 60 days shorter than yours? Why is our time to close existing business longer than new business? It should be shorter."25:31 What does the data know that our sales leaders don't know, and what do our sales leaders know that the data doesn't know, and we can combine those two together to get a much more accurate forecast.26:42 I will coach anybody on my sales team, but very few people will do the things that I ask them in coaching.28:53 I can guarantee you this, anybody who takes the effort to follow my plan will never have to worry about money the rest of their life,29:06 I do deal strategy work and I will sell, my CEO will sell, everybody sells in our organization so the sales team knows that they have an absolute support mechanism.35:44 From the CEO down to the individual customer success representative we define how we're going to work with each customer.About Our Guest:Sean has devoted his career to practicing, testing, learning, measuring, failing, and triumphing in the pursuit of sales &amp; leadership excellence. The knowledge he shares is from doing the work every day. So unlike consultants, influencers, and experts – Sean still has a number to hit and over 2,000 people across the globe who expect him to make the right leadership decisions as well as help them achieve their own life’s mission.Connect with Sean here:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanhburke/Website - seanburke.bizTwitter - https://twitter.com/seanburke

After eight years of trial and error, Daveed feels he has finally figured out the sales model for, Valens Global.&nbsp;He heard about the rainmaker sales model from a very successful law firm. The senior partner initiated discussions with clients that demonstrate the firm's expertise and ability to solve a particular problem.&nbsp;For Daveed it meant taking the lead with the customer to define the problem and the framework to solve it. His teams, often working in parallel, taking charge of delivering the solution.&nbsp;We love to solve problems and when we are focused on doing that the sale comes naturally.&nbsp;Highlights:02:01 Valens Global solves problems that involve the intersection of evolving technologies, changing global society, often changing ecology or environment, and manifest in ways that are different as patterns than they were in the past. Disinformation, for example, is one such problem set problems involving climate change, problems involving terrorists, and evolving technologies.03:53 We use simulations and games. What is different about our games is first we've invested significantly in storytelling and world building techniques. So there's a cinematic or novel quality to our games.05:30 For our university clients, we get a lot of students coming back and saying that this was the most profound educational experience that they'd had during their university career.06:36 Last year we did a racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism workshop. It was a series of workshops that used a Valens simulation tabletop exercise to anchor the conversations.08:32 Given the life and death nature of the topics that we deal with, practicing self care for your team is very important.09:09 I started Valens Global because I was tired of correctly predicting outcomes that were against the consensus opinion. Valens allowed me to productize my subject matter expertise and rise above group think consensus.21:39 Our sales model has shifted from a sales team model to a rainmaker model that I learned from a famous law firm.33:19 It’s really important to listen and learn about a customer's problem. And in many cases, we deal with big problems and we can’t afford to fail. Solving these problems is my sales model.About Our Guest:Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is an entrepreneur, practitioner, and scholar with specialized knowledge of violent non-state actors and terrorist groups. He is the founder and CEO of the private firm Valens Global, which has twice been named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s E360 list of the top small businesses in the United States.&nbsp;He is also on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and Duke University. Among the many projects that Daveed has undertaken for Valens Global, he led the company’s efforts to support the drafting, threat assessment, and crafting of priority actions for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence, which received widespread acclaim.&nbsp;The New York Times, for example, editorialized that the strategy represented “a shift that is both urgently needed and long overdue.” He holds a Ph.D. in world politics from the Catholic University of America and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.About Guest Company:A few sentences about Valens Global: Valens Global was founded in 2014 on the belief that the private sector is vital to addresing key twenty-first century challenges, including advancing the national security interests of America and its allies and to saving lives by protecting the public from terrorist attacks and other threats. Valens's high-quality analysis is paired with numerous interlocking capabilities, including in physical security, training, threat assessments, detection of insider threats, and m

Years of trust can evaporate in a matter of moments if you forget this simple rule. Dmitri Leichik learned the hard way that customers are not buying your product, they are buying your commitment to their success. The moment they perceive a transactional motive, you’ve lost.Utilizing a founder led sales model, Twistellar has grown globally and still relies on Dmitri’s long term relationship strategy that in many cases takes years to mature from conversation to trust to a project.If you sell B2B, you have to assume that a potential customer already has a trusted supplier. They may say no to you on a Monday and yes on a Friday because something changed in that relationship.&nbsp;Timing and luck are everything and that’s why you have to be tireless in maintaining relationships over long periods of time.Highlights3:24 You need to clearly understand how people interact, how people communicate, how your sales people actually work every day to make their customers happy. Only then can you automate the process.5:14 A professional consultant must focus on the customer’s business processes, not the solution features.&nbsp; Sometimes our role is to convince the customer not to spend money on a solution because the business is not ready.8:27 In sales, the first step needs to be defining “What difference can you bring to the table?”9:49 To be successful, three factors need to come together at the same time: You need luck to be in the right place at the right time, you need to be very active to be in as many places as possible, you have to be working hard to make every customer successful.11:49 I still do most of the selling myself since I am the best person to match business needs to technical solutions. I am a technical advisor and am never trying to sell a specific solution.13:47 In B2B, a potential customer already has a supplier to solve their problems. You have to get to them at the exact moment where they have some reason to consider a new partner.14:45 We work 12-14 hours a day so that we can always be available to give friendly advice. That’s how we ‘sell’.18:48 To win business, you have to demonstrate that you bear the responsibility for the project’s success.20:49 It can take years to build a relationship before the first project. On the other hand, one wrong action can spoil that relationship in one day.23:01 You must consider all of the people in an organization who benefit from your work. They are part of your word of mouth referral network especially when they move to a new company.26:50 The sales process ends when the work is done and the customer is happy.28:10 Mistakes can be made and it's critically important to take responsibility for them. We recently underestimated a project by 400 hours and we accepted the loss.About Our GuestDmitri Leichik is CEO and co-founder of Twistellar,&nbsp; #1 Salesforce Consulting Partner in Denmark. Dmitri brings more than a 20-year background of being a co-owner and CEO of a group of trading and production companies, providing hands-on management experience.For now, Dmitri is a business expert who's responsible for corporate strategy, finances, business development, customer relations, and general operational efficiency in Twistellar. He managed to gather a team of 100+ motivated professionals in just 5 years.Dmitri is a master of business &amp; service processes automation and optimization. He ensures that the customer is always the key figure at Twistellar.Connect with DmitriLinkedinTwitter&nbsp;About Guest CompanyTwistellar is a #1 Salesforce Consulting Partner in Denmark, working with customers in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Aus

Anthony Iannarino has some bad news for sales leaders who are depending on 20 year old sales models. They just don’t work anymore.&nbsp;“Tell me about your problems and let me tell you about my solution” won’t even get you a second meeting.”Alvin Toffler, who wrote The Future Shock, said that the future is going to be dominated by people who can learn, unlearn and then learn again. The hard part is unlearning.Sales teams must be retrained to create value not sell benefits. Anthony calls this becoming a One Up. The core value creation is ‘'I know more about this decision than anything else.” Let me start a conversation with you about that.Unlearning old sales habits is only the beginning. Anthony takes us through his three, non-negotiable, steps to hold salespeople accountable. Number one, a set amount of time per week prospecting. Number two, reporting on the actual conversations that are ongoing. As a sales leader, your job is to establish the criteria for what represents a quality conversation. And finally what is the next conversation that we should be having and our strategy to get there.Listen to the entire episode to learn how to build your modern B2B sales strategy and team.Highlights:2:21 I'm not disrupting the industry. All I'm doing is documenting the strategies and tactics that work because the buyer has a different problem than they've ever had before. They're more confused, they're more uncertain. They have a difficult time getting consensus.3:07 The most common problems that sales teams have: I don't have enough opportunities. Opportunities aren't moving fast enough through our pipeline for us to reach our goals. I don’t understand why salesperson A is doing well while salesperson B isn’t.4:47 If you're training your team in a legacy approach where it's looks like solution selling and we start with let me tell you how great our company is and look at all these logos…8:21 …one client said to me, we did $10 million. Our goal next year is $12 million. And I said, that is probably the worst goal I've ever heard…9:26 The part of the vision that I care about is what do you want your team to be?10:03 The best salespeople create more value in a conversation than others.10:52 There's a chapter in the book about alignment. It’s when the CEO has a vision that is tangible, proven, and clearly understood by customer success, marketing, and sales.12:39 I would describe churn as the devil.14:16 We can get the first meeting, but we can't convert it to a second meeting. What that means is you didn't create enough value.14:54 Let me give you another lens, my lens is not filled with false assumptions. I'm showing you what reality looks like and what you need to do.15:30 We transform your team to a modern approach that means they're going to be what I call One Up. And One Up means I know more than you and I have greater experience than you do about this decision, not about everything.Helping them understand what's going on, what it means for them, and what they need to do. So that means you're going to have a different sales force on the other end that can create greater value.17:13 So it's not about what you sell. It's about how you sell. And if you get the ‘how’ we sell right, then you have a better shot of reaching your full potential.18:29 Alvin Toffler, in The Future Shock, said that the future is going to be dominated by people who can learn, unlearn and then learn again. So that's where we are right now. So the hard part is the unlearning.19:09 the most important thing for you to work on is increasing the effectiveness of your salesperson in the conversation with their client.20:39 That's where growth comes from. It's the conversations that we're having.23:34 I have two chapters on accountability…It's a very, very different kind of accountability.

Jake Dunlap takes us from founding Skaled Consulting to his first successful sales hire. And yes, it did take 10 years to get it right.It’s great to be a founder led sales company but founder led services delivery is a problem. This was the first major hurdle that Jake encountered in his fledgling sales consulting business and a barrier to scaling.&nbsp;It took years to structure a scalable services delivery model. The first big lesson, young, affordable, full-time staff didn’t have the requisite skills to replace Jake and properly service the accounts. It turns out, contract, part time senior team members could deliver.As he grew globally, it was time to expand the sales team. His next big challenge was finding salespeople who could sell even 80% as well as he could. His hires kept failing until he realized it was because the sales process was in his head and needed to be on paper.&nbsp;His second big a ha moment was realizing that selling a product is different from selling a service. Jake only recently cracked this problem and hired an experienced services salesperson.The biggest takeaway that every B2B company needs to understand, customers want everything on their terms and this includes learning about your product. Sales teams can no longer be gatekeepers of the buyer's journey.Highlights:1:57 We are a revenue strategy, operations and enablement company and really what that means, we've got 40 plus people globally and what we do is we help organizations optimize the sales process.&nbsp;3:13 If you've got a marketing organization that's compensated on one thing and a sales organization that's compensated and there's no overlap, you're not going to have marketing and sales alignment.6:27 When I started my business, I started cold outreach from Crunchbase. I found people that just raised a seed series A, series B and started reaching out cold to CEOs. Hey, you know, chances are you're probably thinking about these challenges. I've faced them multiple times. Let me know if you need help. And sure enough, within the first 45 days, I had a few customers. I’ve just been figuring it out since then.9:59 I thought everybody had to be full time because if they were contractors, they wouldn't care. And boy, was I wrong.11:57 Over the years we hired a few different sales people and it never worked out. Obviously as a CEO, everything's my fault. I didn't really know the DNA of the person that I needed. Selling a service is much different than selling a product.15:05 I can count on two hands how many founders I've seen that didn't have to figure out the Go-To-Market themselves before hiring the first salespeople.17:18 It's your job to fix these problems no matter what department. You can't outsource fixing your problems.20:36 And so another mistake that I made when I was scaling early is I kept hiring junior people and putting them in roles that they were not set up to be successful in.&nbsp;22:03 Get it right and then get it off your plate.23:27 Some of our first big deals were through partnerships where the other partner didn’t provide the services that we did.26:21 Handing a job off to someone without the training or process is abdicating not delegating.30:40 I didn't ever really define what made a good partner for us. I took probably hundreds of calls with people who were never going to be a fit.35:46 ​​Revenue Operations is really a good synopsis of what we do. It's looking at the end-to-end customer journey and experience.40:03 We live in a world of now on my terms. I want to consume information when I want to. The problem is B2B sales is in the Stone Age right now. We've created a process where the salesperson is a gatekeeper for information instead of giving it to consumers on their terms.About Our Guest:Jake Dunlap consistently designs rep

Matt Fok came up with his idea for eZ-Xpo, before the pandemic. He thought, what if you could continue the dialogue started at conferences virtually? Since his company was already selling an eLearning platform, he simply went to his existing customers to validate the idea.&nbsp;And then the pandemic hit.&nbsp;His founder-led sales approach paid off as he uncovered more and better ways to address the market need. By providing content and ongoing interactions between companies and their prospects, the platform could be used to build communities. eZ-Xpo provides the middle of the funnel nurture interactions virtually.&nbsp;Rather than hire a sales force, Matt has employed two sales strategies. He has hired and trained a team of 20 Digital Collaborator Champions to guide customers through the setup and management process. Each champion specializes in a niche such as fintech or blockchain.And instead of trying to clone himself, he runs boot camps to teach customers what he has learned about creating successful implementations.An unexpected consequence of his approach is improved SEO as a byproduct of the enhanced content and interaction on his customer’s websites.“The lack of in person events taught us that we needed a way to maintain interactions started at in person events!”Join us to learn more about how quickly Matt scaled eZ-Xpo with his sales model.&nbsp;Highlights:2:13 We help companies get more organic traffic and leads by leveraging hybrid events, both in-person and virtual and on demand not just for lead generation, but actually for ongoing engagement.3:26 One of the big challenges or huge untapped opportunities for companies is to leverage the same platform to do in-person events or hybrid events.5:31 We started thinking that there is a better way to get virtual traffic. We actually started the virtual trade show before the pandemic.6:33 Sales is about educating your clients about new ways to do business.6:59 You bring the leads at a trade show but then you have to nurture. Instead of spamming them with promotional material, have a virtual summit with subject matter experts to show the benefits of your approach to solving their problem.8:27 Bring people back for more content boosts your SEO ranking for free.9:10 After our initial sales focus of promoting SEO benefits to existing customers we reached out to channel partners. The platform itself is really good at creating a partner ecosystem network.12:19 Our first target audiences were communities like associations that have captive audiences like the Chamber of Commerce. They don't have a solution to connect all the local chapters.14:22 We do some outbound marketing through social media and, SEO, but of our lead generation comes through channel partners.&nbsp;15:26 Instead of growing a sales force, we rely on 20 Digital Collaborative Champions. They specialize in verticals such as fintech or blockchain and work directly with channel partners to design the community programs.19:00 Instead of looking for new customers, focus on expanding your offer to existing customers.21:30 Instead of cloning myself to get out of the founder-led sales role, we created digital bootcamps to pass all of my knowledge to potential customers.22:38 Any B2B company with a channel partner ecosystem can take advantage of this platform to enhance the front end experience versus focusing just on backend API integrations.27:48 Companies and communities are looking for thought leadership in order to think outside the box.29:47 A company that brings a community along with their solution will have a major competitive advantage over their competitors.32:21 Hybrid events or in-person events is like e-commerce. Remember 20 years ago asking should we just have a brick and mortar company or just e-commerce? The short answer

My next guest on Sales Talk For CEOs is Brent Adamson and he’s got some revolutionary ideas about B2B enterprise selling.&nbsp;Brent explains decision maker confidence is the main barrier for B2B teams to close deals. The three factors eroding confidence are complexity, information overload and value opacity or consensus on the value of the desired outcome.So stop selling product benefits. You need to propose a framework that starts with consensus on the value that the solution will deliver and builds a picture of the steps, and barriers to delivering that value.&nbsp;By the same measure, help the customer make the best decision and if that’s not your product, get to that answer as quickly as possible.Stick around to learn what your sales teams need to do to overcome this crisis of confidence.&nbsp;Highlights:5:48 The number one thing we need to solve in B2B commerce is customers' lack of confidence in their ability to make complex decisions on behalf of their company.6:12 There are three forces eroding buyer decision making confidence: complexity, information overload and value opacity (outcome clarity)8:16 The value discussion has to start significantly farther upstream than your capability or benefits.10:24 (the old way of selling) was based on this idea of frame breaking. You map a customer's mental model of how their business works, and you find places to displace or disrupt that model to break that frame and show them a better, different way to think about their business.11:12 I think there's an opportunity for us today to move from frame breaking to frame making.11:59 Travel agents went out of business because I could do it all online. And all of a sudden, I tried to do it online and was overwhelmed. And I realized, you know what I need? I need a travel agent.13:15 Now they're stuck and really frustrated. What if you were the company that helped them anticipate that obstacle, helped them avoid it to begin with? What if you took them by the hand and guided them through a decision making process, gave them a heads up? By the way, the phrase I use all the time, “in working with other customers like you, one of the things we've found is…”15:17 Let's see if we can, in our case through software, put a framework around, okay, what are you trying to do? Why is that valuable? By the way, do your three colleagues agree with you that that's what they're trying to do?20:49 …notice everything we're talking about here isn't about selling and buying, it's about humanity.32:35 A faster close comes from confident customers. There's our bumper sticker.34:04 Because if we're going to lose, we want to lose early so we can move on to better opportunities.&nbsp;About Our Guest:Brent Adamson is a world-renown researcher, author, presenter, trainer, and advisor to B2B commercial executives around the world.&nbsp;Known as having the “biggest crystal ball in B2B sales,” Brent is the co-author of the best-selling, industry changing The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer.&nbsp; He is also a frequent contributor to well-known business publications, including the Harvard Business Review, featuring his recent articles, “Sensemaking for Sales” and “Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete.”&nbsp;Across the last 19 years, Brent has been privileged to work with some of the greatest thought leaders in B2B and B2C sales and marketing, building and leading exclusive communities of highly progressive commercial executives.&nbsp; Known as a world-class facilitator and speaker, Brent has presented to tens of thousands of commercial leaders both in-person and virtually all over the world, rangi

My guest today on this episode of Sales Talk For CEOs is Karen Frame whose company Makeena, is on a mission to help people live healthier lives on a cleaner planet.&nbsp;&nbsp;She talks about the advantages of having a founder-led sales organization.&nbsp;The obvious advantage is being close to your customers and making sure that your product is solving a real problem for them.&nbsp;The not so obvious advantage is using scarce capital to hire a brand and consumer success team for her two-sided marketplace instead of hiring a sales team.One of her earliest lessons about selling came from a successful Silicon Valley startup CEO who taught her it's never too early to sell. Whether that be customers, investors or future employees. She continues to follow this sage advice.Highlights:1:45 We connect you with brands that are better for your health and better for the planet no matter where you shop5:24 I'm going to take the mall kiosk concept into the 21st century. Everybody's got a handheld kiosk in the palm of their hand. And now I can really help people buy better anywhere they want to shop.8:06 I was giving up a lot in my career to really focus on building something where I felt like I was helping people lead healthier lives on a cleaner planet.&nbsp;10:25 I learned from a Silicon Valley CEO named Praveen that you don't really have to have everything all together before you start selling. And as a founder, you're always selling. You're selling to investors, team members, in my case, consumers, brands, and partners in the industry.14:32 But the mission is around helping brands really understand how to move their product off the shelf. Where are they doing well? What is their competition doing?15:53 So when I started Makeena, I knew that I wanted to be a Certified B Corp because when I launched Natural Interactions, this interactive touchscreen kiosk system in the 1990s, I had sat on a steering committee for business for social responsibility. And I knew that business could be a force for good.19:13 And when brands saw this (a Certified B Corp), they're like, “Oh." And immediately they trusted us more.&nbsp;34:11 Keeping customers delighted as we continue to grow the company is really just about listening. And this is one of the reasons why I think it's really important for a founder to continue to sell no matter what. You have to listen to the feedback you're getting from your customer.&nbsp;37:06&nbsp; Being the founder with a small scrappy team, my first real hires are brand delight people that are continually talking to the customer because I can't do that all the time.About Our Guest:Karen, Makeena’s CEO &amp; Founder, is passionate about being an entrepreneur and making the world a better place.&nbsp; She firmly believes that building a technology company in the natural products space will encourage people to shop healthier and lead to a cleaner planet because Makeena will make it easy for them to make smarter choices.&nbsp;&nbsp;Karen became an entrepreneur in the early 1990s when she moved to Boulder, Colorado, and built and operated two interactive touchscreen kiosk companies, one for the real estate industry (InterActive Properties) and one for the natural products industry (Natural Interactions).&nbsp; After that, Karen was general counsel for a number of emerging growth and publicly-held software and data analytics companies.&nbsp;&nbsp;Karen earned her degree in accounting and business from Indiana University and a CPA and law degree from the University of Illinois.&nbsp; She also attended Oxford University, focusing on international business transactions, and taught Principles of Business for Entrepreneurs in the Cross Campus Entrepreneurship Certificate Program at the University of Colorado.About Makeena:Makeena is a rewards ap

Arman Eshraghi can teach us something about building sales teams from scratch. He is, after all, on his fourth startup Qrvey. So, what has he learned from one startup to the next? What has he changed and what stayed the same?&nbsp;One constant that remains true for Arman, if you, as CEO and Founder can’t sell your product, bringing in a sales team won’t solve the problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once you do bring in a sales team, Arman believes&nbsp; sales teams only succeed if they can see that the product is helping customers. This is the only way to build their confidence. Do you agree?Another major shift, in perspective for Arman over the 4 startups is the way to measure success.&nbsp; Sales numbers are not it. Successful customers is the ultimate measure.&nbsp; Making Qrvey indispensable to every customer is the finish line.&nbsp;Highlights:1:29 Qrvey is an embedded analytic technology that SaaS companies can infuse within their own product rather than spending years and millions of dollars building it themselves.3:50 The world is about data and what you can do with that data. If you have a coffee shop, and you want to make more sales you could improve your coffee, or you can improve your data and do better marketing. Better marketing will improve revenue more than improved coffee.4:24 Amazon is Amazon because they have data and the more data they have, the faster they grow.6:28 The software world is getting to the point that you just put pieces together unlike 30 years ago when you built everything from scratch.8:32 If you, as a founder, cannot sell, bringing in a sales person won’t solve the problem.10:16 I would like to admit that good sales people do a much better job than me. When it comes to sales, I cannot really keep up with them. (Because as CEO, he set them up for success)12:46 In my previous company, I came to market when the web was brand new. We came to market in a completely different way.About Our Guest:Arman Eshraghi is a serial entrepreneur presently serving as Founder and CEO at Qrvey. Arman's professional career includes founding four B2B software companies while also serving as an advisor to startups and entrepreneurs. He is a member of Mindshare and the Forbes Technology Council and also a board member of INCspire.When he's not working on his own startup or advising other startups, he can be found sharing his thoughts on leadership, entrepreneurship and technology on Linkedin, Medium and Forbes.com.Arman currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his family of three. For fun, Arman maintains an unusually large board game collection and sometimes designs his own strategy games, drawing inspiration from everything, especially from the nature around us.About Qrvey:"Qrvey delivers embedded analytics specifically designed for SaaS companies, empowering them to offer rich self-service reporting and dashboarding capabilities to their business users easily and quickly."Show Links:Arman Eshraghi:Twitter: https://twitter.com/arman123LinkedIn:

The world of selling has irrevocably changed. Buyers no longer want to be sold to and especially not as a result of a cold call. They want to get to know a company by getting to know and trust the people who work there. Starting digital conversations is the first step to build this trust. As CEO, it’s imperative that you lead by example.In this episode Alice talks with Tim Hughes who explains how to change your sales approach from “interrupting to pitch” to “gaining trust”. Simply put, you and your team use social media to start conversations that both expand your network and build trust for a future opportunity to sell. He explains the three how-to steps: Creating the right social profile, expanding your network, producing content that engages.&nbsp;Many salespeople don’t know how to use social media to connect and build a trusted network so they simply have a meager profile and don’t do anything else. In fact they may even be afraid because their previous company may have fired employees who posted on social. If you expect your sales or better yet, your Go To Market team to build networks and share content on social then as CEO model the behavior and create the proper framework for success including training, guidelines and content strategies.Tim goes on to explain the opportunities for B2B CEOs to dominate their vertical as thought leaders by producing content designed to educate target customers.&nbsp;Unless you are one of a handful of CEOs like Bernard Looney of BP, who already have it down, it’s time to watch, learn and do social selling.Highlights:3:02 In the past our sales and marketing used interruptive methods, cold calling, email, billboards. We interrupt you to pitch. And now, the buyer just won't put up with that.3:24 …buyers are digital. What can we actually do to be where the buyers are?&nbsp;4:23 Gartner research is telling us that more and more people are saying 'I'd like a seller free buying experience. I'd like to be able to learn&nbsp; on my own.'5:11 What we're doing on social is trying to create a conversation. There's three things that you need on social media. One is you need to have a great profile. A great profile as in what we call "Buyer centric." So when a buyer looks at you, they go, "That person looks interesting, that person could help me."9:14 So the second thing you need is a wide and varied network. And that's about you building out contacts in the people you want to influence, so the accounts you want to sell to, yes, but better yet, people who could introduce you.11:08 And the third thing that we need is content. And the reason why we need content is buyers are online looking for information and advice.&nbsp;16:31 If you are not connected in your digital network to enough people, it's going to be really hard to get introductions, or if you connected and then spammed me, I'll never give you an introduction , because I know you're going to do that to the next person.&nbsp;20:03 CEOs, senior leaders, lead by example. If you want your teams to be digital, you have got to be digital.21:01 Look at people like Julie Sweet, who's the CEO of Accenture, or Bernard Looney, who's the CEO of BP. Bernard has done an amazing job at repositioning BP in the world via social media.&nbsp;24:41 I ask CEOs who is the leading technical and commercial influencer in your market or vertical?" And the answer to that usually will be, "I don't know. There isn't one." Well, why not? Why isn't it you?29:40 It's about digital dominance. Owning the narrative out there on social media.37:18 I don't think we realize how much it's changed, but COVID has changed the world, it's changed society. And so it changed the way of business. It sped up our need to be digital.About Our Guest:Tim Hughes is universally recognized as the world leading pioneer and exponent

My next guest is Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, Inc. who is a case study in drinking your own champagne. He is here to talk about using his own platform to build his business and the breakthroughs that he discovered to make the platform more effective for him and of course the customers that use it.Chris Beall takes us through his journey building the ConnectAndSell business model starting with his “Wartime” stance to pioneering better pipelines and finally inventing the next generation of technology that cannibalizes his first generation.&nbsp;His biggest breakthrough was going from demo to test drive where customers get to experience the thrill of having actual sales success in a day-long, on premise, session. Every CEO can learn how to increase sales team performance by listening to this interview with Chris.&nbsp;Highlights:2:10 So everyone out there who's saying cold calling is dead, cold calling is not dead2:27 You don't want to pay your reps to be phone jockeys14:13 "Look, there's two kind of CEOs. There's peacetime CEOs and wartime CEOs, and you better know which one you are."14:49 We got going pretty fast and started making lots of sales. Then we focused on making a sales machine and finally made the breakthrough “The Test Drive”18:44 I don't believe that it's possible to figure out what to do until you're doing something and feeling the pain of it not working.20:41 To me, something that's not done in anger is not done at all. So that's our test drive. We do 500 of them a year.23:57 So what the question on the table really is, what's it going to be like to work together to solve thisproblem?&nbsp;25:02 Your competition right now, today, tomorrow, the next day, and forever is to do nothing!27:01 Well, we need to experience what our customers are experiencing. So let's organize like they're organizing even though we don't like it.28:05 There is no such thing as a person who talks, listens, reads, writes, and does data who isn't a CEO or a future CEO.31:14 Rescheduling (missed sales calls) is your number one source of new business.33:36 The idea of the lone wolf salesperson who's not part of the machine is just not part of our company.34:41 We establish status alignment with somebody that we're their peer, and then we need to let them feel comfortable that we're an expert, and then we need to give them a piece of advice about what the next thing is to do.38:27 So once a test drive has happened, the conversion rate is about 37%.&nbsp;40:31… the enterprise is not that person you're talking to, it's this big dynamic beast that's going to reorg once a year.&nbsp;41:19 Everything's renewals, everything's upsell, everything's the future.So how do you start in a way that establishes, for sure, that value is being deliveredAbout Our GuestFor thepast 30 years, Chris Beall has participated in softwarestart-ups as a founder or at a very early stage of development. His belief is that the most powerful part of any software system is the human being that we inappropriately call a “user,” and that thevalue key in software is to let the computer do what it does well —go fast without getting bored —in order to free up human potential. Toward that end, Chris has been involved with Requisite Technology, GXS, Epiance, Qlip Media, Aptara, Cadis, Sun Microsystems, and Unisyn. He is currently CEO of ConnectAndSell, Inc., based in Silicon Valley, and hosts a podcast at MarketDominanceGuys.com.Show LinksGerhard Gschwandtner and the Sales 3.0 Conference&nbsp;Connect with Chris Beall in the links below:Website: https://connectandsell.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-beall-7859a4/Twitter: <a href="https:

So many founders make it their goal to get out of the sales role as they scale. “I can hardly wait until we can afford a VP sales to take over” is a common founder refrain.&nbsp;While his role has evolved, getting out of sales entirely is the last thing that Usman Sheikh plans to do. In this episode we will learn what defines a founder-led sales organization and how you might change your mind about getting out of sales.It all starts with redefining the sales mindset. B2B sales are not transactional. They come with building a relationship and the core currency of a relationship is the right information.&nbsp;That’s how he got xiQ - Personality-Driven Sales &amp; Marketing™️, started in the first place. He reached out to his SAP network to share his vision of providing more helpful data to sales organizations than they could possibly collect on their own.&nbsp;This turned into more and deeper conversations with people in his network who eventually became his first 5 customers. Rather than change this approach, he expanded it by reaching out to more and more people in his network which created opportunities for his sales team.&nbsp;Highlights:4:54 Fortunately for me, when I was at SAP, I was able to form a great network ofhighly valuable and engaged and influential people7:15 I started explaining my vision, which was to be able to tap into this enormous amount of data that's out there that's relevant to sales but humanly it's not possible to analyze and bring in, it started ringing bells.9:04 So it was very clear to me that listening to what the customers had to say, addressing their key pain points, and being able to bring novelty innovation to how traditional problems were solved was super, super important.12:47 … being able to hire the right mindset. Sales is not about selling anymore, it's about educating. It's about having a conversation.15:42 We have to make it easier to buy from us, and knowing our buyers better helps us do that.&nbsp;18:18 We take salespeople and we make them into tool jockeys, and that just takes time away from selling.20:03 Salespeople are only spending about 20% of their time with actual customers. 80% of their job is doing so many other things.21:45 We, by the way, drink our own champagne. Everybody uses xiQ. And one of the core purposes of xiQ is to help you spend less time on doing research, more time on selling.25:30 We're still doing a lot of networking and finding individuals that can help us meet a heart lead leader.31:16 We are increasingly leaning towards partnerships and channels.&nbsp;Quote:&nbsp;“You’ve got to know the problem you are going in to solve. The client doesn’t have time to explain it to you.”&nbsp;Connect with Usman Sheikh in the links below:Website: https://xiqinc.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usmanmsheikh/Twitter: https://twitter.com/usmanmsheikh&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Is your sales team using a value proposition that is irrelevant to your buyers leaving them to connect the dots?Take a look at the value proposition that your Go To Market Teams are using to make sure they are relevant. As CEO, you are the only one who can orchestrate this. It matters, research shows that relevant value propositions could increase your deal closure rate by 50%.In today's hyper competitive markets, it's hard for salespeople to get their message heard by the right buyers. Without a rock solid, relevant value proposition, attracting and closing new customers is just plain hard.&nbsp;Most value propositions are "inside-out" - more focused on product and service features than they are on the buyers' needs. Ask your team for the messages they use and see what you think.&nbsp;In her new book, Value Propositions that SELL: Turning Your Message into a Magnet that Attracts Buyers, Lisa Dennis explains how to move from an “inside-out’ proposition to an approach that speaks the language that activates your buyers. I recommend you give this book to the leaders of your Go to Market team.&nbsp;In this episode we talk with Lisa Dennis whose company, Knowledgence Associates, is a marketing &amp; sales consultancy specializing in buyer-focused value propositions. Lisa explores the most common problem - value statements that lack relevance to the customer because they are too focused on product or service features. Buyers are left to connect the dots between these features and their actual pain point. Lisa’s research has demonstrated a 50% decrease in the likelihood of closing a sale when a value proposition lacks relevance. Listen so you can learn what your team should be doing to make it easier for your customers to buy from you.&nbsp;&nbsp;Highlights:3:02 If your value propositions lack relevance to the buyer&nbsp;You are 35% less likely to get shortlisted&nbsp;You are 47% less likely to get a sale&nbsp;4:02 We need to be talking about the buyer’s market, priorities and issues.&nbsp;5:55 Are your writing one size fits all value proposition or do you segment by buyer persona?&nbsp;9:12 It all starts with marketing teams that thoroughly understand the ideal customer&nbsp;12:20 The first line or two of your value proposition should&nbsp; be about what is driving your customer to make a decision&nbsp;16:00 With value propositions, less is more versus bloated generic ones&nbsp;16:51 The last chunk of a value statement, and the hardest, what are your differentiators?&nbsp;18:00 You need two differentiators - one identifies what is different about working with your company and how the customer will feel after working with you.&nbsp;18:45 A value proposition must be true - A customer is saying it, a partner is saying it, an outside third party organization is saying it.&nbsp;20:48 When I ask sales teams to write their value proposition it’s frightening how often none of them are the same - this is why it's so important to present yours to the entire team.&nbsp;23:15 Once you have your value proposition, you need email copy, blog templates, social copy, voicemail, email signatures…&nbsp;24:49 It’s like you’re breadcrumbing them down the path with storytelling&nbsp;29:15 How am I going to install this message organizationally? Just putting it in some content isn't enough.&nbsp;Quote:“Get your target right, once you do research it so you know it well. Gather the important data and information because if you don’t, how are you going to write engaging messages that matter?”&nbsp;Resource Links:https://www.amazon.ca/Value-

Most startup founders wear many hats in the early days. And one of those hats is often head of sales usually because they are the most knowledgeable about the product and the problems it solves in the market. But it's impossible to grow beyond the startup phase if you are spending 15 days a month on the road selling. Replacing himself as a salesperson took 3 years, but replacing himself as head of sales took Doug Frazier much longer. It wasn’t until he discovered a genius channel strategy that he made the transition out of sales management.In this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs, Doug Frazier talks about his 30-year journey at EnviroGuard and the key milestones that defined his path to success. From teaming up with his wife in order to make EnviroGuard a female-led company to hacking together a CRM solution years before Salesforce was invented. But the breakthrough that got him out of sales management and into the C Suite, a certification program for channel partners. The program provided the necessary training, but more importantly, it became a symbol of expertise and competence that differentiated his channel partners in the eyes of the customer.&nbsp;Highlights1:25 - The big idea6:20 - CRM before Salesforce12:52 - Certification as a channel strategy24:03 - The future of EnviroGuard&nbsp;About Guest &amp; CompanyDoug Frazier is the co-founder and CEO of EnviroGuard, a company that revolutionized battery safety products that are utilized in mission-critical applications such as backup power sites, data centers, utilities, and telecommunication transmission facilities across North America.&nbsp;Quote“The single best strategy for scaling was to create a certification program similar to the Automotive Service Excellence program that auto mechanics have to pass. Ours is a factory installer training program with yearly courses, badges, and online videos. We have 1,200 certified installers across North America. The end customers really appreciate the fact that our installers are certified.”&nbsp;Connect with Doug Frazier in the links below:Website: https://www.enviroguard.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-frazier-214668a/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Do you have a channel strategy in place? You may have channel partners as part of your Go To Market Strategy, but do you have a strategy that includes how you will support your partners’ success?&nbsp;I’ve worked with many companies who sell through the channel and complain that their channel partners aren’t selling enough.&nbsp;In order for channel sales to be successful, your team has to understand how the potential partners are going to make money with the product or service you want them to sell. It’s not up to the partners to figure it out, it’s up to you.My guest today is Bruce Stuart, a partner at CHANNELCORP and a 30+ year veteran helping companies develop profitable channel strategies.&nbsp;In this episode, Bruce will take us through each step in the process of setting up a channel strategy. You will learn tactics on how to identify potential partners. He explains how to build a financial model that will attract the right partners, including understanding their investment and time to pay back. Another key takeaway is the program package. Think franchise, and you are on the right track to understanding the investment that you need to make in preparing the materials and process for a successful channel strategy.About Our GuestBruce R. Stuart, CMC, founding partner of Channelcorp Management Consultants Inc. (Channelcorp) where he provides growth-focused executive education and channel consulting to senior executives in the IT industry. He has authored more published articles on the topics of channel partner profitability, channel development, channel management, and strategic partnerships and alliances then anyone in the industry.&nbsp;About ChannelcorpChannelcorp is the leading, and most experienced, independent IT channel consultancy in the world specializing in vendor and partner business model transformation. Channelcorp has completed Management Consulting and Executive Education assignments in 25 countries around the world. The firm’s clients include many of the top hardware/software/telecommunications companies selling into most of the product and service categories in the worldwide IT market.&nbsp;Show LinksResource Link:https://channelcorp-management-consultants-inc.myshopify.com/products/channels-handbook-third-edition?variant=35201383891095&nbsp;Connect with Bruce Stuart in the links below:Website: http://www.channelcorp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-r-stuart-22b911122/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/Alice’s Website: https://aliceheiman.com/

Like most CEOs, you've probably had some bad experiences trying to hire sales leaders in your company. The root of the problem? Many CEOs think they can hire someone to take over the sales team so they can step away and focus on other things to grow the company. It's just not that way! The CEO can't step away from sales but instead must have a plan for supporting sales leaders every step of the way. That's what Rasmus Goksor learned as he founded and sold his company Cobalt (a portfolio monitoring solution). And that's what led him to launch his new company, Ressemble, a platform designed for supporting sales leaders.In this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs, Rasmus talks about his experiences at Cobalt which led him to create Ressemble. He discusses the things that didn't go well (like hiring three different VPs of sales that all didn't work out) and the things that worked perfectly (like using content creation to build a community to sell to). He explains how the technology he created helps in supporting sales leaders and shares advice on what CEOs should do to support their leaders as well, such as determining how and why you're winning customers and stepping in at the beginning of the sales cycle. Before you hire that next sales VP, who may flop, tune in to discover ideas on supporting sales leaders and enabling them for success.&nbsp;Highlights3:24 Challenges in one business led to the creation of another8:55 Supporting sales leaders by asking, "How are we winning, and why are we winning?"10:55 Rasmus Goksor's founder story16:20 Supporting sales leaders through changes in the market and how customers buy24:05 Build a community (and sales will follow)35:12 The CEO's role at the beginning of the sales cycle&nbsp;Quote"As CEO, I can never really take my eye off the ball when it comes to sales. I always need to understand where the market is. Why are people buying? Who is buying? How are they buying? Otherwise, I can't be supportive strategically or tactically with my sales team."&nbsp;Connect with Rasmus Goksor in the links below:Website: https://www.ressemble.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasmusgoksor/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn:&nbsp;https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman

Show NotesToday we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Sales Talk for CEOs podcast! Throughout the past year, I've featured two types of episodes on the show. In the “CEO Journey” series, I interview CEOs to learn about how they grow sales. Next, in the Experts Series, I interview experts I know will have advice to help you grow sales. So today, we kick off a new segment: the Insights Series! These will be episodes with just you and me where I share insights on various topics that will help you elevate sales. The first topic, making sales easier.The key to making sales easier is alignment. As CEO, you are the only one who can make the changes needed to align your teams to make sales easier.&nbsp; It starts with aligning your sales process with your buyer's journey. That’s hard to do if you don’t have alignment between your sales and marketing teams (and the rest of your organization) to take a customer-focused approach. Listen in as I share advice on where to focus your attention and what CEOs can do to make sales easier.&nbsp;Highlights1:06 A year in review2:52 Introducing the Insights Series3:19 Making sales easier3:51 The importance of alignment6:01 The CEO's role as orchestrator7:41 Make it easier for customers to buyQuote"What CEOs need to know is that sales shouldn't be so hard. If it's hard it’s because there is no alignment between the way the buyer wants to buy and the way you sell.”&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Lisa Magnuson is a mastermind sales strategist and author of The TOP Sales Leader Playbook and The TOP Seller Advantage. Today she joins me on a special episode of the Sales Talk for CEOs Experts Series. The topic of our conversation? Closing bigger deals. If you're looking to scale sales by going after much larger deals, this is the perfect podcast for you.Many companies I work with are growing sales to increase their valuation. At some point, they'll exit, make an acquisition or bring on investors. So, scaling sales is a priority, and they want to make it happen quickly.During our conversation, Lisa discusses the CEO's role in closing bigger deals, the importance of celebrating wins, how to adequately prep for sales calls (and why CEOs should make this a requirement!) and how to build the right team structure.&nbsp;Landing big contracts takes planning and time, but when you land a deal 5x of the your largest deal yet, you'll understand that the effort was well worth it. Use the ideas offered in this podcast to close your next big deal!&nbsp;Highlights0:29 Lisa Magnuson introduction3:41 Closing bigger deals starts with mindset7:36 The CEO's role in closing big deals15:38 Why call planning is a must for big deals23:22 Building a team structure to land bigger deals33:19 Are you ready to land bigger deals?&nbsp;Quote“CEOs who want their salespeople to win more big deals have to develop a culture to support that. That culture starts with the CEO and has to include everyone in the company. The right culture will attract those bigger deals.”&nbsp;Connect with Lisa Magnuson in the links below:Website: https://toplinesales.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toplinesales/The TOP Sales Leader PlaybookThe TOP Seller Advantage&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Are you trying to find sellers who check all the boxes of success in sales? Do you believe that you must keep hiring more salespeople to grow sales? That's what Juliana Stancampiano thought before she tried a radically different approach that has yielded amazing results. Juliana is the CEO of Oxygen, a company that works in the learning strategy space. She joins me today on Sales Talk for CEO in an episode that will challenge your assumptions and have you thinking differently about how to build a sales organization.Juliana's strategy for building a sales organization involves scaffolding around her strongest workers. By evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, she finds new team members who fill in the gaps so that each person can work in their zone of genius. The truth is, there are a lot of parts of the sales process that excellent sellers are not good at. Why force them to work in their zone of incompetence where they'll end up unengaged and burnt out? Letting salespeople do the things they excel at and taking the rest off their plate is how Juliana has found success. She's explaining her strategy so you can replicate it in this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Highlights07:40 Buying a business during the Great Recession13:05 Finding a salesperson who sells just like you22:06 Building the scaffolding that supports sales (versus hiring more sellers)22:34 Enabling your sales team29:55 Generating more customer-ready conversations35:41 Keeping your sellers in their zone of genius43:54 Thinking differently about how to build your sales organization&nbsp;Quote"I would take less on the skills side and more on that innate belief side any day because skills are much easier to teach than authentic enthusiasm."&nbsp;Connect with Juliana Stancampiano in the links below:Website: https://www.oxygenexp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstancampiano/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Are you a product CEO or a sales CEO? The answer may not be what you think. Case in point: Catherine Dahl, the CEO of Beanworks, an AP automation platform recently acquired by Quadient. Catherine spent two years building her company as a sales CEO when a sudden realization struck that she was trying to be something she wasn't. By owning her role as a product CEO, everything changed. With the right sales leader in place and the sales machine turned on, Beanworks went from half a million Canadian in revenue in 2017 to 8 million Canadian in 2021. Listen to her story in this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs.During our discussion, Catherine takes us back to the early days when Beanworks was starting. She discusses building the platform, getting customers, and the bumps along the way. After partnering with Sage, Catherine demonstrated her knowledge of the pain points and product through speaking and educating customers. But it wasn't until she read Steve Jobs's biography did it 'click' that she was a product CEO trying to be a sales CEO. Her journey led her to find the perfect sales leader, who built a powerful sales team and got the sales machine running. Find out how it all happened by listening to this episode.&nbsp;Highlights0:50 Rejuvenating a hundred-year-old business4:39 Getting ready to go global7:26 Before Beanworks began…12:21 Trying not to sell19:57 The quest for more customers23:33 Getting the channel sales flowing26:52 Product CEO or sales CEO?34:18 The biggest lesson learned along the way&nbsp;Quote&nbsp;"Steve Jobs was not a sales CEO, and all this time, I thought he was because of the way he's portrayed in movies. He was a product CEO, and his passion was product. And he hired the right people to do the sales side."&nbsp;Connect with Catherine Dahl in the links below:Website: https://www.beanworks.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinedahl/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below:Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/

Going from incremental growth to exponential growth requires radical changes in your business—from your mindset and focus to your team and how your company operates. If you're a CEO who feels 'stuck' in incremental growth but wants more, you'll want to listen to this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs Expert Series with&nbsp; Richard Medcalf. Richard is the CEO of Xquadrant, a company that works with high-achieving founders, CEOs, and executives to reinvent their success formula and push their companies to the next level. He knows what it takes to achieve exponential growth and shares his expert advice today. Believe me when I say that all CEOs who want to scale their growth need to understand the ideas discussed in this episode.Our conversation focuses on what CEOs need to do to get to the next level where they can work ON their business instead of just IN their business. We discuss 4 limiting factors that could be holding you back from exponential growth and the crucial role of mindset. We also explore how delegation frees up your time and what you can do to get the right team in place. In the end, the challenge for most CEOs is to envision a very different future (one of exponential growth) versus living in the past (of incremental growth). Richard shares tips on this and what you need to have in place for exponential growth to happen. So, do you want to achieve exponential growth in your company? Then listen in and heed the advice offered in this episode.&nbsp;Highlights:3:05 4 limiting factors that hold you back from exponential growth6:35 The role of mindset in growth12:34 Learning how to delegate—examples and exercises17:45 Getting the right team in place22:23 Envisioning the future vs. living in the past29:29 3 elements needed for exponential growth to happen36:40 Resources for CEOs&nbsp;Quote:“As CEO, if you don't focus on the needle-moving parts of the business, the long-term vision, the strategy, the go-to-market strategy, if you're not making sure that you are really leveling those things up, who is?”&nbsp;&nbsp;Connect with Richard Medcalf in the links below:Website: https://xquadrant.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmedcalf/&nbsp;You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/