The Sales Evangelist

The Accidental Seller Series 1 - "Ludovic Vuillier" Hubspot’s stats showed that 46% of salespeople did not intend to go into sales. That means a massive 4.14 million individuals are now accidental sellers. Perhaps they were working different jobs and suddenly they decided to go into sales or the circumstances prompted them to go into sales. This series will be about the people who have become accidental sellers by hook or by choice. Ludovic Vuillier is an entrepreneur who runs the Good Life Manifesto. It is a tool to help you live a good life. It is a guide that’s related to health, business, finance, and relationship. Ludovic started his career in sales 20 years ago. He sold for myriads of companies and consulting organizations. He also helped these organizations to find success in their sales. But before he went into sales, he wanted to become a doctor because of his interest in the human body. The downside to that is one has to spend over 12 years in school before becoming a doctor, which is something he cannot do. That made him ditch the college path. The deciding path His father died when he was young and he inherited some money but didn’t have a clue what to do with it. The amount wasn’t big but it was enough to offer comfort. He spent a year and a half traveling. He saw places and learned about many cultures. The experience taught him to be comfortable outside his comfort zone. After that, he fell into sales. He started selling mobile phones door to door. His lack of social skills became an advantage because he was able to absorb and pick up the things that work and that don’t. Ludovic also ventured into telemarketing and sold cosmetics over the phone. It takes many things to become a salesperson. One has to have a strong will and desire, persistence, and a greater purpose. Ludovic started to take on different types of sales jobs including doing sales over the phone, face-to-face sales, one-on-one, one-to-many, and others. He learned how he can influence peoples’ thoughts, emotions, and actions to be effective in the sales industry. The challenge that was the sale It wasn’t just the money and the people that prompted him to go into sales, it was the challenge in sales. He was hooked with the idea that people have patterns and salespeople can study what makes them tick and influence that. Unlike other new sales reps who are afraid of rejection, Ludovic was just fearless and kept pushing head-on. One of the challenges in the sale is the need of doing it repeatedly, like a cycle. He gets bored easily and the thought of doing the same thing over and over again for a long period of time was a huge challenge. He was able to fight against the boredom by just keeping on. He made the decision of not quitting. He was one of the sales reps who didn’t make sales consistently but his perseverance reaped good results as he started to make a sale after another. Closing a deal Closing a deal is exciting, elating, and motivating. He closed his first deal and kept closing deals. His career began to expand and his sales experience continued to grow. Ludovic started to use his talent to help call center companies. This, again, came by accident. His friend opened up a sales office and he tapped him for help to train his friend’s salespeople. The gig wasn’t going to last for more than a few months and Ludovic knew that. He went there and helped. Within three months, he was able to help the team grow their average revenue to five times more, totaling to $500,000 a month. After leaving his friend’s company, with his friend’s encouragement, he decided to make it a business. He then cold-called a few telemarketing companies and set up appointments. He observed sales offices and based his price on the noise he hears in the company. A telemarketing company that makes a lot of noise earns well while a company that doesn’t make a lot of noise means something bad is going on. When it’s quiet, it means he is needed. Looking back In Tim Ferris’ podcast, he always has this question to ask his guest: “If you could give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?” Ludovic said that he would do nothing. Where he is right now was because of the decisions he made along the way. Being the accidental seller that he was, he was able to use all the things he’s learned and picked up while being a seller. Learn as much as you can. Life doesn’t happen based on what things are supposed to be. As salespeople, we are to learn from the people before us. If you do this long enough, success will happen. #SalesMotivation “The Accidental Seller Series 1 - "Ludovic Vuillier" episode resources Find Ludovic Vuillier in any social media. He’s also got two websites, one is a personal travel blog and the other one is the goodlifemanifesto.com. Take some of the principles shared here and remember to not give up. Instead, make things happen. Reach out to Donald for any sales concerns on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We want you to join

What Is Social Dynamic Selling & Why Does This Work So Well? Many sellers appreciate how social dynamic selling works well. It’s effective and has connected more than 2 million consumers to their clients. Rylee Meek grew up in a small town in South Dakota but is now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lived in a town with very few opportunities but at the age of 15, he already had that drive to start earning money. He got a job at a pizza joint and made a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. He dove into the entrepreneurial world at that young age. His family made a significant amount of money from network marketing and that impacted his path. He met many like-minded people who directed him to the right books to read. It was his initial step of taking that entrepreneurship role. He then started working with a network marketing company instead of proceeding to college. At 19 years of age, he was able to get his BMW but then he realized that his income came solely from the effort and from working up to 17 hours a day. So he started to do things differently. He worked for Prudential but then he wanted to work and sell to more people and not just family members and friends. He proceeded to take another job selling home remodeling. Rylee clearly remembered what the manager told him on that interview, that the job is 85% negative but he needs to focus on the 15% that’s positive to make it through. Until now, Rylee still believes in focusing on the 15% because that’s what matters. Getting 85 Nos to get 15 Yeses was all it took. Network marketing journey Rylee invested in several network marketing ventures and met many challenges along the way. At one time he became homeless after putting much of his money into a business in Mexico. Their company was shut down by the government and he needed to come back to the states. He spent some time thinking of the things he could do next. He was invited to a pitch presentation and that helped his wheels spinning. His first presentation was done a few months after and he made $2.1 million in sales. They then started recruiting, hiring, and training. When everything worked out well, Rylee stepped back from presenting and started doing coaching, training, and teaching their sales reps. Reaching the masses Rylee was earning well and could take his products to the masses but he didn’t have any passion for his products. While there are many businesses who have so much passion for their products but do not have the vehicle to take their products to the masses. He thought hard and brainstormed on all of the things that they’ve been doing right with their company from the coaching to selling their products and services. Rylee wrote everything down and that gave birth to what is now the social dynamic selling system. Social dynamic selling works well The core of social dynamic selling is dinner seminars. Invite people and give them a nice steak dinner. You then establish the presenter as the authoritative figure in that industry to gain the trust of the guests. After giving the pitch, you can ask them for an appointment and meet with them the following day to close the deal. It is important to create a message. It is an atmosphere where you’re sending an invitation directly to your potential clients to come over to listen to your presentation and craft that into multiple different verticals. It takes a little bit of money to make this happen and your product has to have a decent enough margin for this to work. Rylee’s team uses direct mail. Many may say that this method is archaic but they had a higher return on investment using direct mail. It beat all the other kinds of marketing including Facebook, Google, and SEO. The response they get from direct mail is crucial in any campaign. Regardless of the method that you’re using, you need to know and track your numbers to be able to see if you’re allocating your funds properly. Direct mails The competition in using direct mail has dwindled today because of the massive amount of junk mail that people get. Companies tend to forget that they are many ways for you to not make your mails appear like junk such as addressing people by their first and last name. Social dynamic selling works well if sales reps learn their numbers and not just the art of selling. As a salesperson, you need to know how effective you are and you will see this with your appointment rate, closing rate, and stick rate. There are so many components involved in any successful campaign and the first step is knowing your ideal clients. Use the tools available today to figure out your true customers. After that, you can demographically and geographically identify the best area to target those people. Choose the venue according to the result of that targeting. The next step is to craft the message and to create an invitation that’s compelling enough for the potential clients to take action. Everything must be consistent from the crafting of the message down to the day of the eve

How To Elevate Your Sales Game As a salesperson, you might have asked yourself the ways to elevate your sales game. Dug McGuirk is a national trainer with Tony Robbins. He is a peak performance strategist to help people get a clearer picture of where they are right now in their sales organization including the results they’re experiencing as an individual salesperson or as a team leader. He and Tony help individuals see their role in the organization. Salespeople can’t change the market, the economy, the way the organization works, and the standard of practice. Tony and Dug want salespeople to see the clear picture and help them realize their true potential. Elevate your sales game Salespeople are always looking for ways to elevate their sales. The first step to do that is to analyze the things that might be holding back the sales. Sales reps must look at the pattern when they’re stuck. Do not have the tendency of beating yourself up and taking the fall when things go wrong or when you’re stuck. Assess the activities that have been holding you back as a salesperson and be aware of them. Look at the pattern of thought, the pattern of activity, and the pattern of focus. These may be small things that you’ve stopped doing like making your bed in the morning, praying, meditating, exercising, and whatnot. Most of us are running away from the pain but in order to succeed, we need to go through the pain. The best time to get a sale is right after you just made a sale. Listen to the power of momentum. You sell one and own it. Do not doubt your ability to sell, just get on with the selling and be carried by the momentum. Believe in yourself That belief in yourself is so vital in sales. It doesn’t matter that you’re shut down several times or that your presentation is put to a stop. You just have to keep going. Sell yourself first and have that confidence before you go off selling to other people. Salespeople have a moral obligation to help others even when they’ve said no for the first few times. You need to get over that objection in order to deliver the message. A great salesperson needs to get into that state of gratitude before going into the next steps in sales. You need to be truly present and get clear visualizations of your goals. You also need to believe in your product and the services you sell. In sales, your network is your net worth. Nothing replaces a full-on immersion and meeting people. The prospects are everywhere so you need to be always selling and offering. Look for strategic partners and find the opportunities and the people who are willing to invest their finances and their energy. Salespeople have skills and it's up to having the right training to be able to unleash those skills. Challenges in sales We live in a fast-paced society and everyone wants to speed up the process. Many are caught up in technique hopping when things go wrong. There are three pillars of extraordinary results to address this issue. The first is the strategies and the second is the action plan such as making phone calls, using technology and digging into LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social platforms. All these strategies are not going to work if they’re not implemented and acted upon. What most people do is they take action but they do it half-heartedly. This compromises the third pillar which is the mindset. They spend thousands on a strategy and then they move on to the next strategy. They move from one strategy to another and then if it still doesn’t work, they blame the system. Don’t do it with the belief that the strategy isn’t going to work in the first place. When you do your pitch, don’t do it half-heartedly. When you mail prospects, don’t send a blanketed e-mail because they’ll know that you didn’t put any effort into it. Make a personal email that shows them you care. Be willing to get vulnerable Salespeople who are crushing it on their sales are the ones who are willing to be vulnerable. They are the ones who are willing to be authentic and putting themselves at risk on a personal level. This is how they connect with potential clients. As a salesperson, you need to understand the value that you offer and come from a place of service rather than expecting. People will only do business with you and trust you when they see that you’re being authentic and honest. #SalesHacks You learn things as a sales rep when you push through the pain. Look at challenges in new perspectives and work your way around them. Master your ability to perceive what’s going on and change your relationship with the situation at hand. Push yourself ahead with every No you get. When you’re facing a slump and you’re wondering how to elevate your sales game, you need to evaluate your mindset and be present. Realize how valuable you are and use that to connect with clients on a deeper level. There will be more on this at the “Unleash the Power Within” event that’s going to happen at the American Airlines Arena on November 7-10. Day 1: Turn f

Sales From the Street: “I Almost Quit” We all face challenges and sometimes, the sense of defeat is so strong that the phrase, “I almost quit,” is so relatable. Luigi Prestinenzi struggled in his sales journey as well. His mom was great in sales and worked for Mary Kay, a global cosmetics empire. His mother won awards and was an icon within the company. All the success, however, came to halt when she suffered complete burnout. Luigi was seven then and he didn’t understand what was truly happening except that he saw his mom hustling and reaching her goals. Fast forward to 23 years later, Luigi also fell on the same path. Everything was working well for him but all of a sudden, deals fell apart and they just kept falling through. It was the first time that he found himself in a challenging situation. His manager talked to him one Christmas and he couldn’t focus on anything, not the festivities, his family, or the food. He questioned his life and his decisions and he started drafting his resume and looking for jobs. Despite that, he still went back to sales because it was his only option. Like other salespeople who got disappointed and might have said the words, “I almost quit,” Luigi also quit - almost. Changing the actions and mindset Luigi made a decision to triple his sales activity to make up for the last quarter. He realized that the best way to work through it is to change his actions and his mindset. He listened to Paul J. Meyer, the founder of the Success Motivation Institute. It was a 50-minute combination of different talks and he listened to it every day in his car. All the talks he listened to prompted him to start his pipes running again. Six months later, he closed the biggest deal in his company’s history. He also won the global sales leader award across 60 countries for that organization. Keep Going Luigi’s father was a migrant and he’d always tell him, ‘first in, last out.’ People would argue about that saying that it doesn’t foster a smart working mentality. He did not question his work ethic, but he questioned his mindset on things. He needed to change it because he’d still face the same problems at some point. There are a lot of salespeople these days who jump from one job to another every 12-18 months. They’re good in the interview process but the moment they hit a bump, they go to the next role. He didn’t want to be that person so he kept going. The imposter syndrome kicks in at your lowest points but that feeling shouldn’t let you down. Even when you close a deal, you somehow still feel like you just got lucky. No matter how successful you get in the sales industry, no matter how well you execute the sales process and help the buyer through the buying process, you can never control the buyers’ decision. #SalesTalk You can only control your mindset and the way you approach the situation. Break it down to image and pipeline. Image: How are you showing up? How are you getting up? How are you preparing yourself? What is your mindset to achieve success? Pipeline: Do the activity and get the hard work done. Don’t cut corners in what you do. Get these two done and the magic will happen. Do not focus too much on the scoreboard without getting the right mindset. If you’re not getting the target and you’re struggling, just go back to the foundation of success. “I almost quit,” is fine but never say, “I quit.” Sales From the Street: “I Almost Quit” episode resources Reach out to Luigi Prestinenzi on his LinkedIn account and check out his podcast, Sales IQ. He also talks about sales and does interviews with sales leaders. Do you have sales concerns and questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales reps get from where you are now to where you can be in the future. This course is an aid for salespeople to become better in asking the right questions, presenting solutions, and closing deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077. Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. If you like this episode, do give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce high-quality podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Many of us are hesitant to use video because of our own fears but it’s absolutely possible to use videos to increase sales. Brenton Crane isn’t from the advertising and marketing background. He is from data analytics and started his career in Washington D.C. as a statistician at the Census Bureau and analyst in the National Intelligence Agency. He then partnered with the brothers Neil, Jeff, and Daniel for a campaign. The combination of their creative skillset and his analytical skills created a system that makes advertising campaigns effective. The power of videos in the business The most powerful form of communication happens in face to face conversations between two individuals. These face to face interactions are how you make out the nuances of a conversation. This will allow you to listen to the tone, see the gestures and body language all happening at a subconscious level. Video is the medium that’s closer to that face-to-face action. When you talk to someone on the phone, you miss the body language and all the subconscious communication that’s happening. But with video, you’re able to capture a large portion of what happens in face-to-face interaction. Aside from that, videos are scalable. The people you can’t meet through phone calls can be met via videos. You can take your most effective salesperson and sales pitch and scale that up to reach millions of people using videos. Effective pitch through videos People have thought that the world of sales and marketing are two separate camps. In the advertising space, it’s often about infomercials or traditional branding styles like what you see in Nike and Apple. But it doesn’t work that way. You can blend those two worlds together. For so long, there’s been a competition between the two camps. The salespeople would trash the marketers and the other way around when in fact, they can incorporate together to create a great pitch. Incorporate a story in your sales pitch and put in brand humor, voice, and character to make it more memorable. #SalesTips At the end of the day, no matter how effective the sales pitch, it’s not going to build the long-term brand. Squatty Potty, for example, has the humor and the character and that what makes it memorable. If you break down that video for a sales structure, you’ll see that it follows the perfect sales structure. The sales structure The Squatty Potty has the elements are as follows: It has the hook It captures attention It shows empathy It understands the problem It presents a solution, It has a call to action for viewers to buy the product. When it still doesn’t work, then build that credibility. Make that call to action as soon as possible. There will always be a percentage in the audience who are ready and there’s also a percentage who are not quite ready. So, address their concerns and build that credibility. Give them another call to action after you’ve done that. Anyone can create videos. Creating videos takes hard work but everyone can learn how to do it. The principles that Benton’s team use in making a $5,000 video are still true in making a $500,000 video. It’s not much on the scope and budget, it’s more of doing the right thing at the right time. The Squatty Potty story Benton’s team just did a successful video for Poo-Pourri and when the CEO of Squatty Potty saw that video, he just knew that they needed to have theirs created as well. They came to Benton’s team and his team was initially cold since they just did one for the same product. But then they thought of ways on how to make it less disgusting to talk about and make it more proper and put together. They landed on the unicorn idea and it all happened from there. They made it safe, colorful, and less awkward to talk about. They had to reach a broader audience so they needed to do something a little more unexpected. Squatty Potty worked with Shark Tank and Bed Bath and Beyond prior to working with them. They were making $4 million a year and jumped to $25 million after they worked with Benton’s team. It was around that ballpark. Bobby Edwards, CEO of Squatty Potty, had the guts to put a pooping unicorn as the face of its brand. But the risk was worth it and took them to where they are today. If what you’re selling provides a real solution to the problem, then the video can work. It can be a sales tool and it can also be just a part of the sales process. Either way, it’s a powerful tool to use. Investing in video can go both ways, losing your production investment or gaining millions of dollars in return. Take advantage of the face-to-face component and use videos to increase sales. “How To Use Videos To Increase Sales” episode resources Connect with Benton Crane on his LinkedIn or via his site, harmonbrothers.com. For more sales concerns, connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales reps get from where you are

How To Effectively Sell New Products To Current Customers Salespeople often ask how to effectively sell new products to current customers. Some clients are satisfied with the current service they’re getting and they’re not keen on investing in another one. There is a way through this sales ordeal. Thomas Steenburgh teaches business marketing and sales at the Darden School of Business. He’s also an administrator and has stayed with the school for seven years. His team did a five-year research project on how to effectively sell new products to customers and what’s so hard about it. Looking at the problem Thomas’ team looked at various factors: The different ways people sell The types of people who excel in the process The organization’s structure The culture that the companies/organization create The combination of these processes which is finding the right process, finding the right people, finding the right organization, and finding the right culture is the key to making this happen. The challenge If given a choice, most sales reps would love to sell new products because it gives them an advantage at the clients’ accounts. The question, however, is if they’d continue to put the same amount of effort from beginning to end. Selling new products takes a lot of energy and more time. Thomas and his team found out that selling a new product takes about 30-40% more time as opposed to selling an extension of a line. On top of that, sales reps need to meet with a lot more people in the buying process and develop a different network site to be able to sell. It is very resource-intensive. On the customers’ side, when you’re selling a new product, everybody wants to talk to you because people naturally want to know what’s going on in the marketplace. Sales reps become hyped due to the attention but not for long. When the reality sinks in, they’ll realize that there’s a change in the buying organization. It’s actually late in the sales cycle. This is problematic from the seller's perspective. What felt like traction would suddenly feel like getting stuck in the mud. Sales reps aren’t making any progress beyond the hype, they become discouraged, and eventually stop devoting effort in selling the product. When you face resistance, your numbers don’t go down quarter to quarter. What happens is that it becomes harder to figure out how to make that sale and investment. But if you persist, the effort will pay off in the long run. t can be difficult to make that commitment to selling new products when you have numbers to think of but in time, you will get there. New products take a while to sell Thomas’ research on several companies that did well shows that new products take a while to figure out how to sell. There are a couple of different types of mindsets for reps. One is the performance mindset sales reps who think of the quarterly numbers and the one who gets the joy out of learning and solve problems. Research shows that the trajectory of sales from these two mindsets is very different. Performance reps don’t invest in learning the product right after launch. The sales go down initially because they failed to learn how to sell the product. For learning-based reps, there’s a big drop early on because they spend that time learning the product instead of selling and marketing the product. In the long run, the sales of the performance reps recover but they go up only so much. For the learning-based reps, their sales go up at a rapid pace but it’s very late after the launch. Learn how to effectively sell new products to current customers by finding the balance. Finding the balance What this reminds us is the need to find a balance between these two sales reps. Find sales reps who go out and learn how to sell the product at the same time. Sales leaders need to give their sales reps ample time to learn the product, figure out how to work their clients and their pain points, and know the objections that may occur later in the sales cycle. After that, bring them back to the firm and redesign the sales process to sell the new product. Most marketing teams throw the product over the wall then disappear. Sales reps are left to figure things out themselves. Somewhere in the sales organization, sales reps are bound to dedicate some time to learn how to sell and anticipate objections later on. Not all sales reps are willing to devote their time to learning, so sales leaders should find the right person who is willing to learn and put in the time. Most sales training for new product launch often focuses on features and benefits, not on the marketing trends. The training doesn’t include changes in the buying process. Clients’ perception matters One example is a company moving from old-line media to digital media. Their sales force was asked to sell new digital ads in this new space. They had the knowledge they needed but they were worried about how to interact with the clients because they hadn’t interacted with them before. The manager

Sales From The Street - "Are You Firing Me?" One of the scariest questions to ask in this field is, “are you firing me?” You might have asked this yourself, out loud or in silence, but regardless of how, it’s nerve-wracking just the same. Andy Racic has been in professional sales for nine years and most of those years were spent serving HR professionals. These days, Andy is with a software company called Tango Health. They offer B2B software and outsourcing solutions to help professionals across the country. The beginning While Andy was living in Houston, he was working for an agency recruitment firm called Michael Page. The agency recruitment space is 100% sales: that is 90% sales and 10% consulting. They were in the business of the oil and gas market and despite the difficult times in the business, their agency was able to establish a good relationship with their clients. Out of the blue, one of their clients asked him to help find a recruiter. That was an alarming thing to hear because to him it sounded very much like looking for their replacement. It was a source of concern because the market was going downhill so their company was looking for ways to keep their clients and continue serving them. Andy ran that client inquiry to his manager and they dug into it. They discovered that the company was having a big project that would involve a lot of hiring for them. The company was looking at 30-50% growth and they were looking for more people. Andy and his manager went back to the drawing board and built an entire recruitment process outsourcing model for that company. They then made the call and presented the model for them and convinced them to trust them a little bit more instead of hiring another recruitment agency that they hadn’t worked with before. Putting the best foot forward There were doubts about whether what they did would work. The market was changing and the client could have gone in a different direction instead of working with them. Still, Andy and his team did what they could. Andy’s team did a thorough briefing on the situation with their client’s internal stakeholders and presented a team that would help in the recruitment process. He gave them the background of each individual along with their track record and the reasons why they’re a good fit. They won their trust and worked with the company, so to speak. Andy’s agency found a lot of people for them and delivered good results for them. When a problem arises, salespeople can always go back to the traditional process of evaluating the problem and going deeper to understand that challenge. When you know and understand what you are facing, you can create a solution. #SalesTips A good salesperson needs an open mind whenever he hears information because the snippets of information may make or break your business or the deal. Be on the lookout for what’s going on and dig in until the third level questions to ensure that there are no assumptions on your side. Make sure that you make the best out of any situation. When you’re talking to a client, listen intently to pick up something especially when things go south. Stay present when the client is speaking rather than making them repeat what they said because that’s how you win a deal. "Are You Firing Me?" episode resources Get in touch with Andy Racic via his LinkedIn profile. Make sure to customize your messages for a more positive response from Andy. You can also connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales reps get from where you are now to where you can be in the future. This course is an aid for salespeople to become better in asking the right questions, presenting solutions, and closing deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077. Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. If you like this episode, do give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce high-quality podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Creating Great Customer Experiences To Close More Deals Creating great customer experiences to close more deals is often a neglected sales strategy by many. That shouldn’t be the case. Dan Cockerell grew up in the hospitality industry. He went to Boston University and worked at Disney World for a summer. He officially joined the Walt Disney Company as a parking attendant in 1991 after finishing college. After 26 years and 19 jobs at Walt Disney, he decided to leave to start his own consulting company. Most of the employees in Disney who are working as executives in the operation started in the frontline roles to understand the customer experiences at the ground level. The beginning of Disneyland Walt Disney was ahead of his time. He was an animator and he wanted to create a 3D world where people could escape reality and step into movies. He wanted to create happiness together as a family. This was his original thought for building Disneyland in 1955. He kept the business clean, he was nice to people, and he valued them. People kept coming back because of the Midwestern values set by the company. Dan understood then that people are looking for experiences. Even millennials these days are looking for experiences rather than buying objects that lose their value over time. Experience, on the other hand, gains value over time. Disney had a great business model: to make emotional connections with people and have a great product and service to offer them simultaneously. The immense popularity of Disney parks stems from its ability to create experiences. Creating great customer experiences to close more deals Disney did a lot of research and measurements to help the company improve. They have round table discussions, group discussions, and surveys. They pulled out a group one year and made a survey on what makes them different and why people keep coming back to Disney World. The Disney team had their expected answers, including the fireworks, the hotels, the attractions, the food, the characters, and others. There are four things, however, that Disney and salespeople have in common. Disney makes people feel special They translated that to the cast members and they had a common purpose which is to create happiness for guests. Their team always looks for ways to make their guests feel special every day. It’s challenging when you have 50 million guests coming to the park every year. The same is true in sales: salespeople need to make their potential clients and existing clients feel special. Often times, it’s the simple things like sending them notes on their birthdays or when there’s something big to celebrate in their company. You have to invest in time with them. Disney treats people as individuals Connect with people individually and make exceptions depending on one’s situation. As salespeople, you also need to treat people as individuals. Don’t quote them because the policy won’t work for some of them. Figure out a way to make exceptions according to their needs to make them feel like individuals. Creating great customer experiences to close more deals doesn’t have to be expensive. It takes attention to detail in order to connect with people. You just have to hire people who are keen on taking interest in people. A team needs a good leader or role model. Show your people that you are approachable and you want to help them with their sales problems as much as possible. Talk to them and be with them. Seeing their role model in action motivates them to do better in creating great customer experience to close more deals. Get down with the best practices you can as an organization no matter how small these gestures are to make your potential and existing clients feel special. Think of the ways you can give your clients great experiences. Disney respects everyone Respect is basic. People who come to Walt Disney are treated equally regardless of where they are staying. Guests who pay $99 a night and guests who pay $1,200 a night are given the same amount of respect. Disney isn’t looking at the color of the skin, the language people speak, and where they came from. Everyone must feel welcome without prejudice. Salespeople must show respect to all clients regardless of color, language, or policy they are going to get. Even when, as a leader, you aren’t particularly fond of the organization you are in, you still have to take personal pride in your profession. When you treat your team professionally, they’ll also respond professionally. When the clients’ experience fails, it isn’t the fault of the sales rep but that of the leader. You might have hired them in an environment they shouldn’t be in, you might not have trained them, you might have failed to give them feedback, and/or acknowledged them enough. Leaders create the environment for their people then their people go and operate in that environment. #SalesQuote Be knowledgeable Salespeople need to know the product inside out and really believe in it. It’s a lot easier

Use Contact Marketing to Breakthrough to Anyone Prospecting is always a challenge for sellers, but it’s possible to contact marketing to break through to anyone. Stu Heinecke is a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, a marketer, and an author. Stu has been nominated for the marketing hall of fame twice and has authored the popular book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. There are many ways salespeople can contact their clients and make a breakthrough, Stu’s book helps you navigate the whole process of reaching out to various clients. Stu is now writing his second book about how business cards can help salespeople reach out to prospective clients and what makes these business cards so special. In the business industry, he helps his clients’ sales teams break through their top prospects. Contact marketing to breakthrough to anyone Stu is a fan of great business cards. Unfortunately in this digital day, clients aren’t keen on business cards anymore. The tables have shifted and they’re no longer given much emphasis as compared to then. This is saddening when in the sales world, a business card is the first conquest point to form a meeting. People just type out names and numbers directly to their phone and check them out later on. The thing about this is that most of the time, clients won’t even remember the name of the sales rep they talked to. Thus, we go back to the basics, only this time, we upgrade it into something more. From cards to devices Say goodbye to business cards and hello to engagement devices. The regular business cards aren’t impressing people anymore, especially those with long titles. So, instead of giving them a card, you give them an engagement device. An example of this is Kevin Mitnick’s card. It’s a piece of thin metal that has been cut out. When you try to pull out the little pieces, it gives you a lock picking set. You can see the details etched into the metal. The card isn’t just a card, it’s also a metaphor of what he does for companies. He makes virtual locks and offers it to companies to keep hackers away from breaking into their system. There are no logos, words, and descriptions in the card. The card speaks for what the company does. The goal is to make business cards serve as visual metaphors of what you do best. It still fits in their pocket but they use it differently and not only for when they give you a call. How does contact marketing work? These new business cards all tie up to the contact marketing model. Businesses should be able to set a baseline for a response. The goal is to have a 100% breakthrough to everybody that we make a bargain. You do that by giving them an impressive card that points to your landing page. Seeing how wisely done your card is, they’ll be more curious about what your landing page has in store. This might be the start of conversion. Stu’s book has a great compilation of stories about how they can begin their campaigns using contact marketing. His books are filled with ideas that you can borrow and apply to your own journey towards contact marketing to breakthrough to anyone. Reach people using relevant, timely, and high-value campaigns. #SalesHacks Do not be intimidated by the positions of the people you want to reach. You need to believe that you belong in that space because of the value that you bring. Contact marketing is sales and marketing working together. It’s a micro-focused campaign where you can spend some money, but the expenditure will be nowhere near the marketing costs. “Use Contact Marketing to Break Through to Anyone” episode resources Connect with Stu Heinecke on his LinkedIn account. You can also check out his books on Amazon. If you have sales questions, concerns, and great stories to share, don’t hesitate to connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales rep get from where you are now to where you can be in the future. Every seller should be making six- figures and this can be achieved with our rigorous training schedule and group coaching. Join us for a new semester beginning each quarter. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077. Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. If you like this episode, do give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce high-quality podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

What Are The 6 Critical Steps To Developing a Successful Sales Strategy? Sales strategies aren’t born from thin air; rather, there are six critical steps to developing a successful sales strategy. Lance Tyson is an author and speaker who runs his own training company. Tyson group has been ranked by Selling Powers as one of the Top 20 sales organizations in the world. It has been operating for 15 years and invested in Dale Carnegie Training in 2010. They work in the sports entertainment industry and one of their biggest customers is the football team, the Raiders. They coordinate with the sales team to sell premium tickets, sponsorships, suites, and others. They also work with Michael Jordan’s company and several tech companies where they coach, train, and consult with their sales teams. Lance isn’t just teaching; he is also out there grinding and doing all the sales work that his salespeople are doing. Six steps to developing a successful sales strategy Attitude, perseverance, and grit aren’t part of the steps. These things must always be present but let’s think of outcome first. In some cultures, the word relations isn’t great and it’s often overused. We prefer the term rapport. This is one of the three outcomes you need to go after. Partner rapport with credibility. While rapport gives you influence, credibility gives you people' trust. The third is one is showing a level of understanding. These three are the beginning of the steps to developing a successful sales strategy which is the following: Connect Evaluate Diagnose Prescribe Dialogue Close Connect We talk about connecting with others all the time but the conversation of connecting is different today. You may be trying to deal with a level of preoccupation by the buyer. You have to connect with people via text, email, or voicemail. You then talk to people and build rapport. The fragmented conversations can be broken down and taken to connect step to overcome preoccupation. This will lead to building rapport, credibility, and a level of understanding. Evaluate When you go to your doctor’s appointment, one of the first things they do is to evaluate you. The same is true in sales. We evaluate our prospects to determine whether they’re interested or not. Other businesses call this assessment while some refer to it as an opportunity. Whatever you call it, it’s the step where salespeople deal with the inherent objection of disinterest. Diagnose and Prescribe This is where salespeople make an educated guess. Ask yourself what they need most and do not forget about creating a level of comfort. A lot of salespeople walk in the door and make assumptions based on their grand experience, they then ask a few questions. You need to talk to the clients through their feelings and their thoughts. You need to look at their past, their present, and the future to make a good diagnosis. After the evaluation and diagnosis, you make a prescription. Dialogue and Close After getting your prescription, your next step would probably be talking with your doctor and asking questions so as to get a clear understanding of your health problem. In the same manner, after giving your prescription as a salesperson, your next step is to have a dialogue to overcome any form of objection. Ultimately, having every question answered, your next step is to close. Researcher or salesperson The biggest challenge right now is the confusion that most salespeople are stuck in which happens in the connect step. Inside sales reps are responsible for prospecting. You can’t trust everything that’s written on LinkedIn and you can’t just get somebody without fact-checking what their bio says. This creates a problem for sales reps because they often feel like they don’t have enough information to move forward. Thus, the confusion of whether to spend more time on researching about the prospects or looking for prospects to pitch. It gets harder because it takes at least six touches to get in contact with a target and another six to get an appointment. Salespeople are now trying to cheat the process and just connect because they’re exhausted. Many sales reps these days just sell their whole service in one move. They’d say it’s free and without obligation. This is a mistake that many salespeople make. Instead of getting on the phone and pouring it out in one go, sales reps must be patient and sell one piece at a time. In sales, don’t expect to get one yes; rather, aim to get a series of yeses. #SalesGoal If you can’t sell time, you can’t sell your products or services and that’s what people in sales lack: time. Getting better in evaluation We do a lot of sales assessment and we do predictive index studies on people to see where they’re weak and to know where to start on their training. We’ve seen that salespeople are often not good facilitators. What most salespeople do is spray and pray. They start asking questions right away without getting into the introduction stage of presenting what’s going to happen

Changes to The Sales Evangelist Podcast The time has come to bring some changes to The Sales Evangelist podcast. The TSE podcast has been around for six years and over time, we’ve been mentioned in a number of magazines including Yahoo Finance, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Forbes, HubSpot, and others. This all goes back to you for sharing the content with your friends and for helping us grow over the years. The podcast continues to evolve to adapt to the needs of the industry. Starting this October, there will be a couple of changes to The Sales Evangelist Podcast. Humble beginnings The podcast has been around for a long time and it’s because of your support. We kept on going and pushing forward because we have the passion and drive for it. We started with two episodes a week: one 10-minute tip and one with a sales expert who’d give us advice. We then jumped to doing podcasts three days a week and later on, to five days a week. The team grew and the quality of content improved. We started without getting paid but in time, opportunities and sponsorships came along. The six years presented great chances to learn from the best in the podcast industry and I’ve had the privilege of emceeing the Podcast Movement, the world’s largest podcast gathering. I met many podcast leaders who are very successful in the podcast space. The interaction taught me to keep improving the quality of the content to differentiate from the stiff competition in the industry. Changes to The Sales Evangelist Podcast The stats and community have spoken. The majority of listeners listen to two or three episodes a week, saying that they don’t have time and there are too many to keep up with all the episodes produced. We have decided our episodes from five a week to three a week. Of the three episodes, two of them will be 30 minutes long and will include guests. The Wednesday episodes will be 10 minutes long and will be a little different. Send in your questions, concerns, and challenges, and we will address them on the podcast. #SalesQuestions It is also a miniseries with a combo of interview, journalism, and storytelling. This will start in October and the first series is about the Accidental Seller and why 41%-43% of salespeople fell into sales. The next series will be about some of the most successful bestsellers in history and what made them so compelling. The episodes will go live on Monday and Friday mornings at 2:30 AM EST. Our friends from Australia can listen to the podcast after they get off of work. Our listeners in Europe can get access to it a little bit earlier. As for our great listeners from California, you can have your early morning grind while listening to our podcast. The podcast will also have a new look starting this October. We’re putting more focus on the storytelling aspect and research for our podcast. You can listen to the episodes on Pandora, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, and iHeart. The websites will also have some changes. It will be easier to receive a notification whenever a new episode loads. You can also opt-in to get emails and recaps of your favorite episodes. In time, we’ll also dive into YouTube. We are planning on repurposing our content to put it on YouTube. “Changes to The Sales Evangelist Podcast” episode resources You’ll start seeing these changes starting this week. You’ve all helped us grow and we want to know your thoughts. Don’t hesitate to connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Wanting to learn and hear more about sales? This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales rep get from where you are now to where you can be in the future. Every seller should be making six- figures and this can be achieved with our rigorous training schedule and group coaching. Join us for a new semester beginning each quarter. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077. Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial. One of the great books right now is Sales Management Simplified by Mike Wineberg, do give that a go. If you like this episode, do give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Even if you consider yourself a fiercely independent seller, you’ll sometimes need help from others because you can’t do it all on your own. Adam Carswell works for Concordia Realty Corporation, a private equity firm that invests in shopping centers. His company works with smaller mom-and-pop investors who can’t make million-dollar contributions and pools their capital with other investors. No siloes Adam worked as a residential realtor in 2017 when he decided he wanted to break free. He didn’t want to join a team and work within a system. He wanted to pursue his own course. He achieved significant success in his first year and expected the second year would be the same. Unfortunately, it was the opposite. Numerous deals fell through and he wasn’t sure what to do next. He was in a serious relationship so he hid his financial struggles, but that decision eventually blew up in his face. He looks back now and realizes that if he had swallowed his pride and accepted support from the people around him, he would have been in a better position. Though he doesn’t always get it exactly right now, he tries to apply the lessons to everything he does now. Lost earnings The fact that Adam had enjoyed great success prior to that point drove him to avoid accepting help from other people. He learned to routinely evaluate whether he was being prideful on any given day. Adam estimates that he earned about 50 percent less money the second year than he did the first year. Given that he hadn’t changed his spending habits over that time, it felt like a huge shortfall. Roadmap to success Every industry has a roadmap to success unless, of course, you’re paving a new path. Adam points to the fact that he came up with some creative, successful prospecting ideas, and he closed a few deals as a result. He dropped off Oreos once a month to one prospect. He hosted open houses on Sundays. He took advice and applied some of it, but he didn’t enjoy the resources of a larger team. His sister works as a realtor now for a company that has a big database, CRM, drip email campaigns, and other tools that he didn’t know how to set up. As a result, she has enjoyed early success. Find and develop experience using a sales process that works. Then you can tweak it to fit your individual style. #SalesProcess Blinded by optimism Adam points to his optimistic outlook as a reason he didn’t recognize the problems as quickly. He was blindsided by the shortfall because he operated with a continued belief that things would work out. Now, in addition to his experience, he points to his faith as a support mechanism. He leans on his belief in God to help him know what to do. He recognizes now that even when he was young his parents taught him that he’s never really doing things on his own. Someone you trust Adam advises sellers to get in with someone you trust and a system that works. Learn the system, even if it’s only for a brief period. Until you get comfortable making a jump or putting your own spin on it, stick to the script. Adam’s brother works in sales for a company with outstanding sales training, and he got lots of pushback when he tried to tweak the script during training. He learned that, at least at the beginning, you have to stick to the script, because they use it for a reason. It’s structured a certain way because that’s the process that works. The company has data and stats to prove its effectiveness. There’s no need for you to reinvent a process for a company that has already enjoyed success. Begin by understanding why they do it the way they do. Add value first. When you’re new, be willing to listen and do what you’re asked to do. Once you earn your stripes and understand the process, then you can do your thing more successfully. Outsource If you can find someone who can do a task 80 percent as well as you can, and you have the capability to outsource it, do it. You’ll free up time for yourself and give yourself room to grow. You’ll also make room for the other person to grow. Adam, for example, has a drip campaign that his virtual assistant operates, and she arguably does it better than he does. It allows him to maximize himself. Even at TSE, once I relinquished certain tasks to other people who were arguably better at those tasks, it freed me up to do the tasks that I’m really good at. I earned more money by spending a little money to outsource. A rising tide raises all ships, so it benefitted others as well. If there’s a new task you want to explore or a new project you want to do, reverse-engineer it. Figure out ways to accomplish the task with help from other people. You’ll elevate the people around you and increase your own value. You must have a team. You can’t do it all on your own. “You Can’t Do It All On Your Own” episode resources You can connect with Adam at www.carswell.io and then click on Adam Carswell. He’s on a variety of other platforms as well. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of se

A good salesperson knows how to nurture “No” into “Yes”. Hearing No in the sales world is common regardless of what you sell or to whom you’re selling to. When you hear a no, you can’t just back down and give up. You need to get back on track and fix it. Craig Klein is based in Houston and he works in the energy business. He used to make deals with large oil companies and the deals would take a year or more to close. With that period of time and the level of complexity of every sale, he sought help from others. He began Sales Nexus to address that inefficiency. Today, his company helps other businesses to grow and aims to help everyone in the community give their fair share of making their community a better place to live. No is difficult to hear Craig was trained by Dave Blanchard for awhile. Dave does executive training and he talks a lot about our need to be right. Humans as we are, once the idea is planted in our head and we start dreaming about it, the idea becomes real. If that idea is taken away, we end up getting hurt. It is the same with sales. We meet our clients with big plans for closing the deal but when we turn up, we are told no and that hurts. There’s a lot of burnout in the sales position because sales reps tend to make many phone calls and end up getting No. The thing about it is that when we hear No, we tend to take a step back and sometimes, we don’t ever make a step forward again. Nurture “No” into “Yes” Salespeople need to learn to be a bit aware of themselves and to focus on the customers' needs, not on what they need. It’s also important to realize that sometimes, the prospects say “No” not because they don’t want to do business with you. They may be tied to a contract to your competitor or now may not be a good time. The primary way to nurture “No” into “Yes” is to have a sales strategy that makes you stay engaged with the prospects and build relationships over time. #Relationships It’s not efficient to just focus on who you can close this month, it’s also about focusing on the people you can close deals with in due time. Stay in touch For every No you get, you make sure to take their name, their email address, their phone number, and keep it somewhere safe. You always have to write down everything you have learned from this customer including their budget cycle and their needs. Then, you create a system that allows you to keep connecting with time and getting them engaged. Check them out every once in a while and ask them how they’re doing. Let them know that you’re there. Meanwhile, you can find somebody else who is ready right now. Just keep nurturing and keep moving forward. Change your mindset that you will close every deal you have because that won’t happen. Instead, think of every appointment as a way of establishing a relationship based on trust. Resonate to them that you came not just to close but to understand what their needs are. Salespeople are like doctors. Physicians don’t sell their service in a way that’s too in your face. They diagnose their patients and examine what is something wrong with them. They then show you the patients how they can help with the problem. The same is true for salespeople. We examine their problem and we show them how we can help. You don’t sell the product the moment you meet them. You warm them up and figure out what they need first before presenting your options. The automated email drip campaign Craig’s Sales Nexus Platform uses an automated email drip campaign in order to stay in touch with their potential customers. They take every lead and put it into their system and into an automated email drip campaign. The potential clients don’t just get generic emails, they get personalized email depending on what they need. When the time is right for them, they’d click on the link to their site and they’ll be notified by it. This is their time to give them a call and ask them if anything has changed. One of Craig’s clients used the auto-drip campaign and things have been better for them now. They used to have sales reps call chiropractors all day long but these professionals are busy and they don’t look at their phones most times of the day. Then they started putting the chiropractors’ name on the system, they searched for their needs, and on the things they focus on. They are then placed on their appropriate auto-drip where they get emails that are relevant to their needs. When they interact with the emails, the company is being notified and they get to start pitching again. The auto-drip system allows them to build relationships with prospects without compromising their sales rep’s manpower. There other ways to do it. Some are using the typical marketing system and sends out weekly or monthly emails to their list. Others also hire someone whose job is to focus on making mails and sending them out. “How to Nurture "No" Into "Yes" episode resources Reach out to Craig Klein by visiting his website. Check out the site to get downloadable PDFs on

Pulling Profits Out of a Hat Pulling profits out of a hat is something that salespeople are raving about. But how do you go about it? Brad Sugar has been in the teaching business for 26 years and now has coaching offices in over 80 countries. He’s also a published author with 17 books in his name. He appreciates being able to help others grow their business and keeps expanding his business to be able to help more people improve their sales. One of his recent books is Pulling Profits Out of a Hat: Adding Zeros to Your Company Isn't Magic 1st Edition. This book teaches companies how to get multiple growths instead of percentage growth. As salespeople, challenge yourself to multiply your growth. If your company grew by 15% last year, make it an aim to grow it 15 times more this year. The starting point is to believe that your business can multiply and have the right attitude in getting it there. Pulling profits out of a hat Every business person is a business owner. Whatever your role is, whether it be a salesperson or a sales leader, you have your own section of the business. Set your goals and be specific about them. What are the goals you want to achieve two times, five times, and so on? There are five core disciples mentioned in the book - strategy, business development, people, execution, and mission. You need to start with the strategy. Strategy Strategy can be broken down into four main points: Leverage Scalability Opportunity Marketability We define leverage as doing the work once and getting paid for a long-term basis. Bill Gates, for example, understood leverage. He made software once and he sold it forever. These days, Microsoft doesn’t sell software anymore. They make you pay for it every single month. Steve Jobs understood leverage after he got fired from Apple. He bought Pixar and found ways to sell a movie repeatedly in various formats. They sell their products and they set their businesses up in a way that customers buy it over and over again all the while making a lesser effort in selling it. Salespeople find this challenging because they’re not wired to do this. They are trained to do sales one at a time as opposed to the marketers who do multiple sales at a time. The selling one at a time mentality kills the business. A salesperson should remember all his strategies, from the short-term to the medium-term, and the long-term. Don’t go directly to the long-term strategy where you build your reputation with social media and create content. Start from the short term goal of picking up the phone and making a call. Scalability Brad defines scalability as the next sale should cost less and is easier to sell. Salespeople need to keep building, to look at what the product or services they’re selling, and how they’re selling it. Work the scales into your program and go backward. Think of ways of how you can continually make money month after month. Set goals that are based on the market and the opportunity size and not based on your own needs, desires, and previous results. #SalesSuccess Marketability Look for products and services that are easier to sell and check their marketability. Zappos has a good market. It sells shoes and many people want shoes. They want shoes now, they want shoes next month, and they want new shoes just to look good. The market is rich and they have a product that’s easy to sell. Sales, marketing, and customer service all have to go hand-in-hand. This is easy if you don’t want to grow your business but if you want to grow your business exponentially, you need to have a great sales system, a great marketing system, and a great customer service system. Break down the marketing to the most granular loads and work backward from there because that’s how you get good results. You don’t leave the basic steps of doing the call even when you’ve already made it to the building connection phase. Continue getting at least 20 connects a day or whatever number you’re supposed to reach as a sales rep. There is no limit on how many you must do but there is a limit on how little you must do. Testimonials and rankings are two of the most important things in marketing today. Find ways to make people give you testimonials and ask them to rank you. Value Another thing that would help you be better in pulling profits out of a hat is to add value. Keep learning because you can only ever own as much as you’ve learned to make. It’s also important to make sure that your sale is made before you turn up. In real estate for example, when somebody calls asking for an appraisal, do not just send them an e-mail. Make it more personal and let them know why you’re the company for the job. Send them a box filled with the magazine where testimonials of your customers are found. Deliver it to them as fast as you can. When the prospect gets the box, they’ll think you’re a genius and they’ll want to work with you because you aren’t just an email. You are as visible as the testimonials in the magazines show. This

For organizations looking to expand their footprint and extend their reach, these 3 tips to improve closing will help them achieve those goals. Johnny Lee operates a sales and marketing firm called C Level Partners that helps organizations expand their footprint, gain new clients, and move in the direction of their goals. He believes that sales is everything. His experience from the management side, from the individual side, and from the sales rep side gives him a unique multi-level vantage point. Listen to understand The biggest challenge Johnny Lee consistently sees is that sellers listen to reply rather than listening to understand. He recently carried out a DILO, or a “day in the life of” exercise with a lean, mature team that all suffered from the same problem. They all listened while waiting for the opportunity to explain why their company was so great. Sellers master the art of articulating their value, but before we win in the marketplace we have to master the art of listening. We’ve all heard it before, perhaps in the saying, “Telling is not selling.” But if we truly applied this truth to our everyday behaviors both in and out of business, we would know exactly how to articulate our value proposition to become the solution that the prospect needs. Exhibit empathy In many cases, the discovery call that precedes the demo doesn’t actually help the seller understand the challenges the seller is facing. In order to understand the problems they are trying to solve, you must listen and develop empathy for the pain they are feeling. Empathy helps us understand why people do certain things and how they end up where they are. When you care about helping people, you’ll be able to support them while they tackle the challenges they face. When we ask questions that lead them down the path of discovery, our prospects will outline exactly what they need and how you can help. Empathy acknowledges how the existing challenges affect the company’s bottom line and understands how important it is to consider shareholder value in the face of problems. Empathy cannot be rushed. When you communicate that you’re with them in the challenge, you’ll become a trusted advisor. You cannot begin the work of solving a problem until you understand several things. You must understand the challenge and how the prospect got where he is today. You must understand whether he seems himself getting out of the situation. You must understand how impactful it is for the business if he doesn’t get out of the situation. Once you build empathy and understand those three things, you can begin the next step of prescribing. Prescribe with confidence There’s a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and you must prescribe solutions with confidence. An arrogant person might immediately say, for example, “I have exactly what you’re looking for.” Arrogant people don’t listen. When you do step 2 right and you have empathy and understanding, you’ll find yourself in the position of a therapist of sorts. Like a therapist, you have to be welcoming, calm, and professional. Therapists don’t say, “Wow, you’re messed up.” They also don’t say things like, “I’m exactly what you need to solve your problem.” Instead, they operate with confidence, saying things like, “I’m so glad you took the first step. I’ve dealt with similar challenges before and I know we can get where you want to be.” Therapists become trusted advisors. They communicate that they are looking out for the patient’s best interests. Confident sellers must do the same. Pay attention to tonality Tonality is critical to communicating the right level of confidence. Be enthusiastic. Be happy and excited that you’re speaking with a credible person. Recognize the two different kinds of buyers: technical and economic. Technical buyers are people who can use your service but can’t make the decision to buy your service or product. Economic buyers make the ultimate decision. There are two different ways of closing those two kinds of buyers. Because you can only engage a technical buyer for a certain period of time, you’ll eventually have to divert to the economic buyer. Know how to ask questions like this: “I know you’ve been looking to address this challenge for quite some time. Is it common in your organization to bring the CFO in at this point to make the final decision?” You must sniff technical buyers out early in the sales process. Never ever give a proposal to someone who can’t buy. Using phrases like “this is what we have been doing,” and “working with companies like yours,” communicates confidence. Eliminate phrases that include “I think,” or “it should.” #Tonality Confidence Passion is extremely contagious. You have to know when to elevate a pitch or speak faster or slower. Johnny Lee is a firm believer that tonality creates the environment. Because prospects who are on the phone can’t see you, they are still picturing something. They are picturing whether you’re tall or short, aggressive or not

How Do I Deal With Unresponsive Inbound Leads? There are tricks on how to deal with unresponsive inbound leads. Dealing with people who come to your website and who give their phone numbers and emails but don’t want to talk to you doesn’t have to be difficult. It is true that many who visit your site want the freebies and they ghost you for reasons you can’t comprehend. The sales reps are frustrated because the appointment is not getting through, nor are the emails, or the calls. This happens because we’ve conditioned the buyers this way. We’ve taught them the concept of opt-in. They give us their emails for emailed permission-based marketing and we call them or mail them to get an appointment. Other companies are doing this as well and buyers know the pattern and are now looking for ways around it. They often give a bogus email address or an old one that they no longer check making it next to impossible to get in touch with them in the first place. Deal with unresponsive inbound leads There are two ways to deal with unresponsive inbound sales. The first one is connected to marketing. Examine what you’re offering to the prospects and extend your offer beyond your freebies. They may not be ready to purchase yet and they just want to review your offer so give them something else they can munch. Include another link to something else within your gift. Try to put an invite to your webinar. They can click inside the opt-in to see what the webinar is all about. Engage them further and nurture them into actual leads. Give them something a little bigger, perhaps a one-on-one free consultation session or your phone number. Turn the opt-in into a strategy session to be able to talk to your prospects. For qualified leads, engage them further by giving them more information. They will qualify themselves and they will give you their phone number and have a conversation with you. Once they go to your webinar, they become converted leads which allows you to give them a pitch or offer your product for 15% off. Give the prospects what they want in order to get what you want. #SalesTips Give them the piece of content and education on the webinar to get the conversion going. As a salesperson, deal with unresponsive inbound leads by giving them what they want first. You can also use a thank you page as a dual opt-in or a webinar sign-up page to further turn your unresponsive inbound prospects to interested prospects who want to learn more about the business. Stop the old school strategy Deal with unresponsive inbound leads by letting go of your old school strategies. Stop sending a generic email which contains the usual information about the company, the features and benefits of the product, or the invite for a phone call or appointment schedule. Emails such as these are long and asking them for a phone call at the end of it is a huge jump. Shorten your email and change your subject line. Go for simpler yet impactful opening such as, “Did you get the download for this or that?” The recipient will see your name, your signature, and all the other necessary information and he is bound to answer a resounding Yes. They need to recognize you as an individual. This is when you ask! Ask your question when they’ve already responded to your previous mail. If they reply with a Yes, ask them for a phone call to answer any questions they might have. If the prospect shows interest and gives his phone number then quickly respond by giving a phone call. The key is to follow up right away. Have a 2-step strategy for prospects who are not ready to buy right away. Make it your goal to make them reply to you before you ask them to have the sales talk with you. Remember that buyers these days are cognizant of opt-ins so warm up to them by using this 2-step strategy. If you’re doing insight sales and you’re responsible for all inbound sales, you might want to ask them what prompted them to download the content. Do what you can to engage them in a conversation. “How Do I Deal With Unresponsive Inbound Leads?” episode resources Build stronger value and have more meaningful conversations with your prospects. Close more deals and challenge yourself to go out and do big things every single day. For sales concerns, you can connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful guide for sales reps and sales leaders to improve their pitches and presentations. It has 12 modules and you can get the first two modules for free! If you like this episode, don’t be shy and give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit

Write Your Company’s Obituary: Identify or Rediscover Your Company’s Purpose Having to write your company’s obituary sounds a bit morbid but there’s a good reason why doing this is important. One result is that doing so will help you identify and rediscover your company’s purpose. Josh Levine is a culture company strategist and works with technology, social enterprise organizations, and firms to help them improve their work. His goal is to make the employees love what they’re doing by building strong relationships, higher trust, and deeper engagement. Josh published a book called Great Mondays: How to Design a Company Culture That Employees Love. It talks about all his learnings for the past 10 years in advancing the idea of company culture as a strategic advantage. It defined what culture is and gives people the tools that they need to improve the culture. Write your company’s obituary This was a tool that Josh’s mentor used and many clients would react negatively upon hearing it. There is more to sales than just putting the product out there and selling it. It’s more than just the numbers. Doing business isn’t only about the money; it’s also about understanding what you are trying to do with your company and with your life. This is also about knowing your own purpose and helping the organization discover its ‘why?’ Imagine that your business closes its doors after 30 years. Don’t think of the reason why it shut down. Your goal is to write down two or three short paragraphs about why your company will be remembered and will be most missed. This will give you the opportunity to see what you achieved that made the difference. Josh’s team works with a board executive team and leadership peers together. They make teams write because what matters isn’t just the end result. They also consider the kind of language, the words, and the phrases used together. Obituary exercise Don’t stop short of the fantastic. When you start writing your company obituary, you need to go beyond how far you think you can make it. Be bold about the things that you think your company can achieve. #Salessuccess The point of the exercise is to come up with your achievements and look for the possible ways that you’re going to achieve those. Josh had a client who said that they would solve poverty. It’s a far-fetched goal and impossible to do but it didn’t keep them from aiming to do so. When the discussion happened, the team thought of how to make it work and figured out that their technology connects communities together. The community that works together will solve poverty. With that, their previously written achievement of solving poverty now sounds plausible. Define your purpose Next, you have to define your purpose. The company’s values are the hows and the company’s purposes are the whys. Businesses and companies need to figure out the why behind what they’re doing. You won’t be able to find your purpose if you’re thinking about this quarter’s return or this quarter’s sales numbers. As a sales leader, you can help define the purpose by shaping the culture of your company according to the company’s vision. You can help strengthen the team and find the values and purpose of the company over time. Components of a company's culture There are six components mentioned in the book Great Mondays. The first three are as follows: Purpose Values Behaviors The first two define the company’s purpose and values. The third component is behaviors. Behavior is the center point of culture and is what you are trying to adjust to help people make better business decisions. The next three are the following: Recognition Rituals Cues Recognition and rewards have been used in businesses. These are effective strategies in aligning behaviors to build and strengthen the synapses of culture. Your goal is to spread your culture and share the behaviors. Keep reminding your peers why they’re in the business and getting the people back to the top of the pyramid. Love what you and find something that you believe in to make everything worthwhile. “Write Your Company’s Obituary” episode resources Great Mondays: How to Design a Company Culture That Employees Love is available on Amazon. The purpose of the Write your company’s obituary exercise is laid out in the book. You can download the supporting materials for free at [email protected]. You can also sign up for newsletters, one minute Monday, and case studies. We will e-mail you all the necessary information for building cultures that matter. Connect with Josh Levine via Twitter and LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful guide for sales reps and sales leaders to improve their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses and you can get the first two modules for free! If you like this episode, don’t be shy and give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce podcasts weekly so make sure to subscrib

When I asked The Sales Evangelist community what they wanted to know about sales, one of the questions that emerged was, “Why do salespeople talk so much?” It annoys a lot of people, primarily because if you talk too much, you’re probably listening too little. Persuading people Somewhere in the growth of the sales industry, sellers convinced themselves that talking would persuade buyers to make purchases. We believed that if we talked more, they’d hear us more and they’d more likely believe us. As a result, they’d say “yes” more. Unfortunately, that just isn’t true. The greatest salespeople listen more than they talk. #ListenMore You’ve likely heard the adage that you have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you talk. If you pay attention, you’ll likely discover that the best salespeople are those who use their speaking opportunities to ask questions. They seek to understand their buyer’s perspective and to stimulate conversation that helps them gather important information. Stimulate the buyer Let’s go back to the scenario we discussed earlier in the week. If someone owns a car that costs them a lot of money every month for repairs, you could ask that person questions to help him realize that he has a problem. If you walk him through the math and help him understand how much that amounts to every year, he may find that he could be driving a much newer car for the same price. Good sales reps will ask questions that will help him realize the problem on his own. Why are you spending that much money on your car? If I could show you how to spend one-fourth of that amount and get a reliable vehicle and still have money to save, would you be open to learning more? He’ll likely be willing to at least learn more. Features and benefits Without even discussing features and benefits, you’ve inspired him to consider his situation. You said nothing about the radio, or the seats, or the transmission, or the exterior of the car. You helped him persuade himself to explore the possibilities. Many sellers dislike the awkward moments in meetings when things get quiet. Each side wonders what the other is thinking and, as humans, it just feels wrong for us to sit in silence. We assume the buyer is thinking something negative. A Harvard study found that when people talk about themselves, it triggers the same pleasure sensations as food or money. The study also found that volunteers who were offered a chance to earn money by answering questions about other people passed up potential earnings in exchange for a chance to talk about themselves. We’re more comfortable talking about ourselves because we’re confident about it. The conclusion is that sellers who want to fill an awkward silence will likely talk about themselves. Meeting prep Sellers who prepare for meetings would more likely understand the situation and the buyer and his company. As a result, they'll be more confident in their understanding of the customer’s challenge. They’ll ask appropriate questions that help the buyers travel down the path to making a decision. Write some thought-provoking questions prior to the meeting. Challenge your prospects’ way of thinking. If you feel awkward about a specific question, you should probably ask it anyway. If your prospect seems to be avoiding a topic, see if you can find a way to bring it up anyway. The conversation will either progress toward conversion or your prospect will decide he isn’t ready for change. Study the customer and his company. Learn about the potential problems they are facing and figure out a way to solve them. “Why Do Salespeople Talk So Much?” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! You can also connect with me at [email protected] or try our first module of TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also share this with your friends and colleagues. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales From The Street: "The Heart Flow Sales Process" Sales is a process and every salesperson has to master the heart flow sales process before expecting results. Janet Clark’s company, The Freedom Shift, is a sales matchmaker. Janet matches high-ticket salespeople with coaches and consultants who want to expand their sales team. She is also helping the coaches with their lead generation and figuring out their qualified leads because this part of marketing can be difficult. Before she built her company, Janet started in corporate sales selling B2B. She built sales organizations for big telecommunications and internet-based companies. It was only five years ago that she started selling high-ticket transformation programs for top-level coaches and consultants. B2B selling and transformational selling In B2B selling, a salesperson is selling somebody in a corporation and spending somebody else’s money. Their decision is still laced with emotion but it’s more of making the right decisions so as not to lose their jobs. In transformational selling, a coach or consultant is selling to a company owner who makes a decision to invest in himself to reach a new level of personal growth. A coach or consultant talks to a person who spends his own money. There are a lot of emotions involved in making the decisions of doing high-ticket investments yourself . The key to connect with people is to reach them from the heart, hence the heart flow sales process. Every letter in the word Heart Flow stands for one of the steps in the sales process. Factors to consider Two things need to happen before someone invests in a high-ticket program. Number one, the prospect has to know that the program works. They need to feel a level of trust in the person delivering the program. The second factor is for the prospect to consider whether the program will work for him. Marketing and the qualifying piece answer that question. Talking to the prospect about the program and how good it is alone wouldn’t result in a closed deal unless the conversation goes deeper and they figure out where their fear is coming from. The Heart flow process is not hardcore selling and it’s not manipulative. Most people need a push and not manipulation. Sometimes, they need to borrow the confidence of the salesperson in order to make big decisions. There is a fine line between being confident and pushing somebody a little beyond their comfort zone and doing something manipulative. People who make investments need to see results and they won’t get the results they want when you bring them in the program in a coercive way. Heart Heart Flow is divided into three sections and as mentioned earlier, every letter stands for a step in the process. Hello Explain Ask Recap Teach Hello is the greeting. It’s when you sit with your clients and figure out who they are. This is where you build rapport. Next, is to explain how the call is going to go. Set the stage right away and do an agenda before the call. It is important to take the prospects through the process in order to steer them in the right direction. Ask, because fact-finding and interviewing are two important parts of the sales process. Learn to ask the right questions and the typical objections in the program you are selling. When you realize that the person is not a qualified prospect, you go to the next section. Recap the things that they’ve said to ensure that they know you’re listening and absorbing the information they gave you. Teach is the transition point where you start giving them some information. It’s important to teach them something that they’re not aware of and give them that eureka moment. Teaching them little things that they don’t know or might have known in a way that is an Aha! Moment. Flow The next section is Flow. Feeling Layout the offer Own the silence Wrap it up Feeling is asking them how they feel about what you’ve said. This step makes them reflect on the things you’ve said and respond accordingly. This brings you to the next section, layout the offer. This is where you explain to them that what you just taught them (in the Teach step) is incorporated in this program. Layout to them the elements and the components that make the program work. It’s more of the benefits and results of the program rather than the times of the day you’re going to do the coaching calls. Own the silence and don’t make the mistake of owning the talk after you’ve laid the offer. It’s important to mute yourself and let them come up with what they’re thinking. The last step is to wrap it up. Answer their questions and move forward into getting them into the program. There is science to the sales process and a way that it needs to flow. There’s also an art to sales so that every person brings their own artistic way of doing the process. The heart flow sales process allows you to be creative but still keep the process flowing so that you can stay on track. Refrain from reading a sales script and do it in a natural form

Modernizing the software demonstration can help prospects better understand your product value and keep your digital buyers connected to your product throughout the buying process. Greg Dickinson is the CEO and founder of Omedym, which is “my demo” spelled backward. He’s trying to help businesses utilize today’s latest and greatest technologies to augment and improve the digital demo process. Product experience Most sellers can point to a personal experience in which a bad product experience eliminated a vendor from consideration in the buying process. You won’t necessarily win the deal on the first demo, but you can unequivocally lose it. #SalesDemo People tend to have different processes and sometimes the more junior players are the ones that are giving the top-of-the-funnel demos. If you ask your team members to each give a demo, you might find yourself wondering if each person is selling the same product. The demos can be that different. Digital buyers Buyers are more digital than they were five years ago, which is the biggest challenge in the software demo industry. The average software buyer spends 5 percent of the buying process with the sales team. So if you think about the “request a demo” button on your website, it’s your first interaction with a potential buyer. For most companies, that button generates a pop-up form, and the bounce rate in the industry is 85 percent. People at the top of the funnel want to learn a little more about your product. Maybe they read some content about your product and they want to see a video. When a form pops up, your digital buyer leaves your website. Sellers, ask yourself as a buyer whether you tend to fill out forms in this situation. If the answer is no, why do you expect your own buyers to do so? Instead, websites tend to hold demos hostage by scheduling them or exchanging them for an email. Your prospects want to engage and understand your product. Modernizing the software demonstration can help your prospects get the information they need to make a decision. Inside sales The going research suggests that buyers want to see the product you’re offering within the first two minutes of an interaction. Your solution sounds great, and it solves a problem they are struggling with, so they want to see the product. Typically, the inside salesperson will insist on asking a bunch of questions and booking a discovery call and then a demo. By the end of that 3-week period, you’ve lost the buyers’ attention. In response, some companies have allowed the inside sales rep to give the demo, but that usually doesn’t work. The inside sales rep wasn’t trained to do demos, and she may not have the skillset to do them. Demos are more than a “show up and throw up” proposition. They are hard. Your customer wants to feel like he’s in control of the sales process. He wants to see what he’s buying. Video demos Greg said that even the companies who are posting one- or two-minute videos to demonstrate their products aren’t getting a good response because they are effectively spraying-and-praying. They generate four or five snippets that they hope will address their buyers’ questions. Greg’s technology allows you to create your best demonstrations, and then interact with the software to get a personalized demonstration. If you want to know whether the software can do parallel workflow, the software will bring you to the right asset and the right section to find that answer. Instead of searching through 10 or 15 separate posts, the user can find the content he needs. The average watch time for a business tech buyer is just over two-and-a-half minutes, so allow them to ask a question and see a relevant demo. Build a picture Think of your typical buyer’s team. It isn’t just one person. It’s usually multiple people with different points of view and different ideas of what’s important in the software. If you can allow your customers to ask questions and then have the streaming of the video and the demo to that person at that moment, it’s much more impactful. Perhaps more importantly, Greg’s software records all the activity so that the marketing and sales teams know the buyer’s intent. What was Donald’s interest? What did he watch? How long did he watch? What questions and follow-up questions did he ask? Once you gather this information, you begin to build a picture of Donald. The self-guided demo allows the seller to understand what Donald’s interests are so he knows what to talk to Donald about. New world Your customer wants to talk specifically about how you can help ease his pain. Whether you call it the consumerization of the business buyer or the Amazon effect, people are used to buying things a certain way. That attitude doesn’t change when we’re at work. Buyers want a certain part of the sales cycle to be self-guided. Then, when they are ready to engage with sales, they want to begin with the topic that interests them rather than starting all over again. Digital footprint Buyers can get

How to Not Ruin Relationships When Selling to Friends Have you ever wondered how to not ruin relationships when selling to friends? This can be difficult because you would still want to keep the relationship even when they’ve said no. This isn’t a unique struggle, it’s common to most salespeople. Perhaps the products could be beneficial to your friend or family so you want them to try it. You have a moral obligation to at least explain some ways to fix their problem without turning it into something bigger. Solve the true problem Assess whether what you have is truly a solution to their problem. You can’t sell a car to your friends when they already have one that is running in perfect condition. Even when you’ve told them about the new features of the car you’re selling, they’re not going to get one because they have a good car that runs just fine. What you presented to them isn’t a solution because there wasn’t a problem in the first place. It is important for you to seek out whether there is a problem and figure out what it is before you present your product. Be genuine Do not present a solution that would benefit you; rather, give them a solution that would benefit them. Perhaps their car needs fixing and they are spending way too much for the repair. This is a great time for you to share the features of the car you’re selling. If they don’t have the income to purchase it, then help them get the income by looking for a credit union. That genuine heart helps build trust and your friends will potentially lead you to other people with similar problems. The people you’ve helped will come back to you and buy from you again later on. Do not pitch something to your family or friends because your sales manager told you to do so. Don’t approach them with the mindset that they’ll buy your product because they feel guilty. Consider your approach Always set the rules before you play the game. Consider your approach and be straightforward. Because they are the people you are close with, you have the benefit of honesty from them. Before you make your pitch, remind them that if they are not interested, there’s no need to beat around the bush and that the relationship stays the same regardless of their choice. Once they understand that, then you can move on with your pitch. Put emphasis on the fact that you are willing to help with their problems. If their car isn’t working well and they are spending too much for repair every week, tell them that they can go to another car salesperson. You are merely giving them options on how they can address their problems. Don’t approach them like you would any other clients. Instead, approach them in a loving way. People recognize trust and love and if you use that approach to your friends and families then you’ve unlocked one great strategy on how to not ruin relationships when selling to friends. No isn’t always a No Many salespeople keep selling even when the person has said no. This happens a lot because in sales, it is about the numbers and others take it to another level. As a salesperson, you need to have a threshold. Most sales reps, however, see a list of names to reach out without knowing who these people are or their concerns. They see names and they see numbers automatically. They don’t look at the names as individuals who might be facing some personal issues at the moment. Studies have shown that 92% of salespeople give up after getting a NO without realizing that 60% of consumers say no four times before saying yes. Some say no because they are busy or they aren’t a fit for what the salesperson is offering. If someone is in the right market and they fall under the criteria of your ideal customer profile, then they do have a problem that you can solve. You have a moral obligation to at least explain it to them, and not just once. Change your approach from someone who just wants to set an appointment and talk about the product to someone who wants to help them and educate them to overcome a challenge they are facing. Build relationships Build relationships by being everywhere and being constant. #Socialselling The Sales Evangelist, for example, is virtually everywhere and we’ve been sharing a stream of content on a regular basis. We are found in every platform where our ideal customers may be. We are on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. People may have not expressed their interest now but they are individuals that we can follow up and put into other sequences for us to reach out. If they aren’t ready to buy this month, then connect with them and ask them if they are willing to receive educational information. If no, then let them go and if yes, then look for ways that you can continue educating them. Don’t pitch them the product when they’re not yet ready to get it but maintain a relationship and to do a follow-up after enough time. Remember to stay in touch. Nurture that relationship until such time that it picks up. A portion of that 60% who said no

3 Things Leaders Do To Hurt Sales Rep Relationships Sometimes, there are 3 things leaders do to hurt sales rep relationships and most times, they do it unintentionally. This is especially hard because sales leaders and sales reps spend a lot of time together. A bad leader can negatively affect how a sales rep makes his sell. While a good leader helps how sales reps can improve their sales. Marc Levine founded his ImprovMySales business four years ago. The company is dedicated to creating wonderful and profitable places to work. Before this business venture, Marc was part of a sales team as a national account executive and technology and professional services. For the last 16 years, he has been developing leaders and teams, teaching people communication skills, selling services to certain companies including Citibank, Prudential, and Best Buy. 3 Things leaders do to hurt sales relationships There are probably more, but let’s focus on just the three things for now. A leader does not create a psychologically safe environment The leader forgets about humanity The leader is emotionally unintelligent August has been a leadership month and people have been talking about the important things to become a good sales leader. This involves setting a vision and becoming a good coach. It’s about creating a culture where sales reps can thrive and succeed. When a leader fails to create that safe environment, the sales relationship takes a hit. By definition, psychological safety was a term coined by the social psychologist, Amy Edmonson. Google did a two-year study and analyzed the qualities of its most effective teams. The results of the study have shown that teams promoting psychological safety produced better revenues and their team members stayed in the work longer than others. Psychological safety is a team norm that says it’s safe to take risks, to be vulnerable, to ask for help, and to disagree with the rest of the team. When you do, you won’t be ostracized for disagreeing but instead, you’ll be honored and validated. An environment where sales leaders can thrive As a parent, when your kid doesn’t understand something, you want your kid to feel safe to come to you and ask for help without getting embarrassed. The same is true in sales. As a leader, you need to develop a team where your members can be honest and can come forward when they don’t understand something. You want your team members to come to you about their problems early on in the sales cycle rather than at the end of it where the deal is falling apart. This is the essence of psychological safety. It’s an environment where people can ask for help, be vulnerable, take risks, and be supported Create a psychologically safe environment This doesn’t happen overnight. It happens when your sales reps come to you asking for help and instead of reacting, you validate and support them. Do it a couple of times for the team members to realize that you want to help them. Sales leaders also need to stop blaming the team members. Blame and accountability are two different things. Blaming makes the blamed feel bad and threatened. It’s when sales leaders bombard the reps with questions like: Why didn’t you hit the quota last month? Why did you lose that sale? Why aren’t you doing this? These questions foster negativity. Accountability helps you raise the team’s standard without making the reps feel bad. It’s more like saying, “Hey you didn’t hit your quota last month and I know you're disappointed. Let’s talk about what happened that may have contributed to this and let’s figure out the solutions.” Build an environment where your members can be comfortable in having a dialogue. As a sales leader, you also need to admit your own mistakes. Research shows that when you admit your mistakes, the people around you will come close and will open up about theirs as well. There’s power in vulnerability and when you use that power, you will see your sales team come closer and open up to you. Leaders forget about humanity The next in the list of the 3 things leaders do to hurt sales relationships is forgetting about humanity. Salespeople are like stand-up comedians. We go out there showing confidence knowing that we’re going to be rejected. We are a fragile group. When sales leaders remember the humanity of the people on their team, the members tend to go above and beyond. The members put in incremental efforts. Sales leaders also need to stop making the team members like little versions of themselves. Every member is unique with their own set of skills and strengths. Forcing things that you do well onto them will make them feel resentful. Instead, honor their strength. Validate the things that they do well to make them feel excited and engaged. Make them feel heard and understood. Remember that you are working with human beings who have hopes and fears. and get scared. Honor that part of them. Build strong relationships with your sales team Sales leaders need to build strong relati

With all the focus on social selling, it can be difficult to determine whether you can consider referrals and connections that result in LinkedIn leads as inbound leads. If a prospect connects with your content which leads to a conversation and then an appointment, can that be considered an inbound lead? LinkedIn connections You’re likely among those sellers who understand that your LinkedIn profile is your personal profile. You cherish it and treat it with respect. You post thoughtful content and share impactful videos and write articles and long-form blogs. You’re creating content that your audience can engage with. If those prospects end up in your direct message as a result and that leads to a conversation, that’s an inbound lead. Though it might not qualify as inbound in the traditional sense, you’re engaging in the same activities. No matter who creates the content, it’s an inbound lead. You could even give it a unique KPI name like “social media lead” or SML. Converting leads If I connect with 15 or 20 business owners today and 10 of them reconnect with me, the result is 10 new social media leads. I can nurture them by creating videos, posts, or articles and tying the content to my new prospects. Ideally, those people will engage in a conversation. I recently connected with a woman on LinkedIn who later posted a good piece of content. She mentioned me and others she had recently connected with using a “shout out.” Turns out all the people she mentioned continued to engage with her on LinkedIn. I’ll watch her content now since I had a positive interaction, and I might eventually decide to engage with her company. She’s nurturing us as prospects. Engaging content Having a LinkedIn profile isn’t enough anymore. You must share engaging content. #LinkedIn Then, once you do, be intentional about connecting with those who interact with your content. Work to connect with your second- and third-degree connections. Try this simple paragraph: Thanks so much for commenting on my post today, James. Permission to connect here on LinkedIn? Usually, when you connect immediately, they’ll appreciate your outreach. You can start a conversation that may lead to further interactions. Now you’re getting more contacts off your ideal customer or prospect. Blur the lines Imagine you have a targeted list of prospects that you’re trying to reach. You’re making phone calls to named accounts and you’re connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. If you separate your prospects into different categories, you can optimize them. I recently connected with someone on LinkedIn who became a social media contact and then a social media lead. When the prospect asked about sales training for a team, it led to an initial appointment. That connection would haven’t happened without engaging content on social media and our interactions there. “LinkedIn Leads As Inbound Leads” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! You can also connect with me at [email protected] or try our first module of TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also share this with your friends and colleagues. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Business Proposal Trends in 2019 What are some of the business proposal trends in 2019 that you’ve used and that have worked for your industry? Trends change so often that we have to keep track of all the changes to be in the loop because what’s new today, may be old news tomorrow. Adam Hempenstall has been in the web design business for almost 20 years. He started doing basic websites and brochure sites before the company transitioned into a custom software company. They started building CRMs for different companies and have now invested full time into improving their proposal tool known as Better Proposals. Business proposal trends The most important thing is that you're not just seeing a transition from the old school PDF method but the clients’ reluctance to change. There is, however, a massive shift towards people opening proposals using their phones. Proposals need to be web-based these days. It has to do with what everything else is doing. They’re not just documents anymore, they’re experiences. Clients should be able to read the proposals by the time that you’ve sent them. Aside from that, proposals should be sent quickly. Based on the observed data, there’s a higher rate of conversion for proposals that are sent within 24 hours compared to proposals sent in 3-4 days. The other important thing is trying to understand your client most. From the data and stats Adam’s company is running, they’ve observed the following business proposal trends in 2019 that work: Convenience over quality Being quick in sending proposals Caring about your client Convenience over quality People favor convenience over quality. This is apparent in the number of people watching videos on YouTube instead of going to the shows. Live shows mean better quality but people would opt to watch it on YouTube because it means that they can watch it immediately. People want things the way they want them. For example, you’ve sent a proposal and the client is reading it in his train ride because that’s the time that he allocated for it. The client is not going to sit there and zoom in through the 15-page PDF proposal you’ve sent. That is not convenient for him. He’s probably going to skim, get bored, and close it down. He’ll make the decision over the price and all that effort of making the proposal is going down the drain because you’ve sent it in a format that isn't convenient for him. To beat your competitors, you want to stand out when you’re sending proposals. You don’t want to send the same ones that others are sending. This is especially true if you’re selling software, marketing, or anything with digital elements. You want to show your prospects that you are at the forefront of technology. If you tell your prospective clients that you can make their website better and more responsive, you won’t send them a proposal in PDF form. Instead, you send them a web-based proposal and put a tracker in it. This will allow you to see the activities that your prospective client is doing. You’d see that your client has opened the proposal and that he'd spent a good amount of time reading it. You can give him a call half an hour later to just check in on how it was. You’re in a good place to speak about it because it’s still fresh on his mind. You can’t do that with PDFs but you can do it if you use web-based proposals. Adam and his team made a high-end proposal for a furniture company. The proposal was great but they didn’t have another meeting with them. After six months, the company randomly opened the proposal and Adam got a notification that they checked the proposal. Adam shoots them a quick message just asking how things are going and if they were able to find a solution to the problem that they were trying to solve last year. The company replied saying that they weren’t able to appreciate the value of the proposal then but are now willing to talk about it. This is what tracking can do; this is what a notification can do. It’s equally important to repeatedly follow up after a proposal, but not up to the point that you’re putting it on them. Just being there and being consistent is enough. Sending proposals quickly We’ve all had a time where we’ve completed a proposal quickly and had a good overturn deal. There have also been times that we’ve procrastinated and done other stuff instead of doing the proposal and when you’ve finally done it, your client has already gone with the other guy. Adam’s company looked at the actual data of real proposals that people send through their software platform a few years back. Using the raw numbers, they tried to figure out different factors that affect proposal conversion. You can see the study on betterproposal.io/reports in both 2018 and 2019. They found out that sending the proposal within 24 hours after the initial meeting converts 25% more than if you send it in 2-3 days. Remembering details In Adam’s company, they meet their clients on a neutral ground. They have their meetings in top-end hotel lob

B2B sales optimization requires a longterm commitment to create quality content that will grow your audience and increase your success. Bill Bice, CEO of boomtime, said he was born to be an entrepreneur, launching his first business when he was 14. He loves to talk about sales and marketing because it makes the biggest difference in business. Data and marketing As business owners, we all know that we have to spend money on marketing, but it’s tough to do if you’re not seeing the ROI. For Bill, marketing is about data, which allows you to understand what’s working. The difficulty occurs when you have too much data because it can be difficult to gather valuable insights that help you improve marketing. Smaller companies often have more freedom to bring their sales and marketing together. In larger companies, the two disciplines are separate, and they are often at odds. Marketing isn’t doing the support work the sales team needs and each blames the other for lack of performance. In smaller companies, the CEO or entrepreneur can decide to tie the two together. Bill calls himself a big fan of the challenger sales approach, which resulted from research done in Fortune 500 companies. The concept of using key insights to drive a sales approach creates sales optimization in smaller companies. It’s a perfect example of tying together marketing and sales so that marketing generates insights that truly help sellers. It creates better opportunities which result in better success. Optimize sales To begin with, businesses must be better at capturing leads following up on those leads staying top-of-mind with that larger audience that we’re building In any complex, high-value sale, a content-driven approach to marketing is the perfect way to optimize the sales process. Then, if you’ve done the hard work of taking care of your customers, they’ll tell others about your business which creates referrals. Now the goal is to amplify that effect. How do we make word-of-mouth work even better? Capturing leads Micro-commitments are the most effective part of capturing leads. Your website was once a replacement for the Yellow Pages, and a way to get people to pick up the phone. Now, the most important piece of information for a prospective client is an email address. If you ask for the prospect’s name, you’ll reduce conversion by 20%. If you ask for the phone number, you’ll reduce conversion by 60%. Every additional field you add reduces conversion by another 8%. Ask for the one thing you really want from the prospect, which is an email address. You have to be willing to do something that is really hard in order to get those referrals and capture those leads. You have to give your best stuff away for free. Give away your deepest and best expertise in exchange for the really valuable thing, which is the email address. #CaptureProspects The traditional battle between sales and marketing centers around what makes a qualified lead. All we really want is to get people to follow us on LinkedIn and to get the prospects’ email addresses. If we grow our audience in those two places and we’re constantly sending people back to our website with high-value insight, that creates success. What’s actually hard to do is the day-to-day work in the trenches, because it’s the consistency that makes this work. Marketing mistakes Many marketers commit the number one mistake of talking about themselves. Nobody cares. Are you talking about the problems your target audience struggles with, and are you helping them solve those problems? Of the content you provide to your prospects, 90% should be entirely focused on the problems your audience is having and the insights you bring that they can’t get from anywhere else. The good news is that if you have a niche in the marketing your company serves, then hundreds of those companies will share the same problems. CEOs struggle to find those insights because they are running their own businesses. Your marketing department must take advantage of that. You must train your sales team to use a key-insight driven approach. Secondly, you must commit to this kind of approach in your sales and marketing. You should plan for at least a year. It won’t be a miracle fix. Test and iterate All forms of content work. Whether you use video, white papers, or checklists, you must test each idea to determine what’s best for that particular segment of the target audience. Even with the explosion of LinkedIn, most B2B sales organizations aren’t leveraging it the way they could. The whole point is to grow a new audience and LinkedIn is the easiest way to get your word out to a larger audience of exactly the right prospects. Avoid being salesy. Be there to help your network. Use your key insights to drive interest in what you’re doing. Share insights with consistent posting. Get the executive team involved in building the audience. Then, turn those connections into opportunities for the sales team. Bill’s team sends 40-50 connection reque

Our Inbound Leads Are Causing More Work Than Good Sales Often, you hear salespeople say, “Our inbound leads are causing more work than good sales.” It’s always on the question of who should follow up on inbound leads and how to go about it effectively. Many small organizations are having a hard time utilizing their inbound strategies effectively. We don’t have all the variables and all the situations within an organization. Still, we can assume that there are three people on a sales team. The sales team Assume that a sales team is composed of three people: the marketing person who does almost everything, the junior assistant who helps with content creation, and the outsourced person who does the marketing strategies. Among the three, who should follow-up the lead? Not all leads are created equal. This means that before deciding who will follow up the lead, the lead should be evaluated first. You don’t want your salesperson pitching to a lead that in the end would go to another competitor. Do a pre-qualification Do a pre-qualification in your organization to know if the people you are going to have the conversation with are ready to consider the deal. Set a benchmark and rules for what you consider a marketing quantifiable lead. Consider the following questions: What is considered a sales qualified lead? What is the KPI of your organization? How many new inbound leads do you want to get per quarter/per month? How much money do you want to generate from those leads? The answers to those questions will lead you to your ideal customer. It would also help you identify the triggers that qualify them to be a marketing quantifiable lead and a sales qualified lead. The work is far more efficient because when a lead comes in, your salespeople can vet them and follow the pre-qualification factors you’ve set to see if the lead can generate new business for the organization. This is also helpful in maintaining your current customers. There’s no time wasted in sifting through leads and trying to figure out which one works and which one doesn’t. Create a system Create a system to efficiently manage the workload. The marketing team can do the pre-qualification to increase the odds of the lead being converted into something real. Whenever a lead comes in, let marketing take a look at it and check the website and the title of the person. Then let the intern or junior marketing rep take over the other tasks like looking into LinkedIn, HubSpot, Marketo, or other platforms you have to find the data that you can transfer into your CRM. You can then sign that into the sales team for it to become a sales qualified lead. The system prevents wasting time on people who aren’t real prospects. Marketing can help fix the problem of having to go back to the beginning of the funnel and pre-qualify the leads again because they’re not yet ready then. Fix your content Develop a good strategy Make a drip campaign for people who are not yet ready Separate the marketing qualified lead and your sales qualified lead Website leads matter The sales team sometimes takes for granted the leads that they didn’t hunt for. A good example is leads coming in from the websites. Salespeople have this notion that they can get more of those so they ignore them. It’s the mentality that since they didn’t work for it, it doesn’t mean much. You must recognize that the organization spent thousands of dollars to get that lead. The organization paid for the marketing and the sales rep to produce content on your site. You have writers and you have graphics on your site. You have all the different infrastructure to make sure that your website functions. It is disheartening when a sales rep doesn’t take that into consideration when a lead comes in via the website. Whenever an inbound lead comes in, it is best to use your flow process to follow-up particular prospects. It should be written and put in your company’s playbook so that everyone can read it and use it with every inbound lead that comes in. Follow-up right away A stat from insidesales.com said that a lead that’s contacted within five minutes is 100 times more likely to convert than leads that are followed-up 90 minutes later. When a lead comes in, follow up right away. You're more likely to convert than if you wait. #SalesHacks Strike while the iron is hot. Do a quick research and evaluate whether the person is real, see if it’s a true marketing qualified lead, and toss it over as a sales qualified lead if it ticks all the boxes. The sales team can take a quick visit to the person’s website, check their LinkedIn profile, and the pages they’ve visited on your site. Tools like HubSpot and Active Campaign allow you to see where they’ve signed up and the number of times they’ve looked at the pages. You can then use these data to have a meaningful conversation with the prospect leads. Focus on the people that matter Include in your flow process the phone call and email for the first time then do the same things a d

From account selection to sales plays, Jamie Shanks helps sales professionals understand and adopt best practices for the modern, social sellers. Jamie is the CEO of Sales For Life, which is the de-facto standard in modernizing account-based sales motion. The company specializes in social or digital selling. It evaluates how you sell today and infuses modern digital sales activities into your process. Account-based selling Account-based selling refers to focusing on a set number of accounts, whether it’s organized by territory or strategic value. Instead of relying on inbound leads or channel leads, you must go outbound. Jamie named his book Spear Selling based on a sales analogy of fishing: inbound efforts are a little like fishing with a net because you can’t choose the fish that land in your net. When you fish with a spear, you swim in the deep water and choose the whales you’re going to hunt. Typically, companies focus on account-based motion because they need to increase their average annual contract value (ACV) or lifetime value (LTV). Adopting an account-based approach Companies often get the very first step wrong, which is account selection. Many companies use what Jamie calls wallet-share based thinking. When he was working with a company in the health and wellness space, an account exec pointed to Peloton as a company he was focused on connecting with. When questioned, the AE mentioned that one of the company leaders was a bike enthusiast who thought it might be a good fit. The truth is that the health company has no more strategic connection to Peloton than its competitors do. In fact, if they went through the data of relationships, they might discover that the competitors have greater social proximity to the account. That means you may devote 8 months trying to win this account to find that there’s a hurdle you didn’t account for. Getting the account selection process right is half the equation. Companies that ask their sales professionals to build a list of accounts will likely find that they stack ranked companies based on revenue, number of employees, and market share potential. They didn’t think about the fact that people buy from people and relationships matter. Sales is a game of relationships. If you could reverse-engineer your existing advocates and customers and identify which accounts have the highest social proximity, you’ll have an advantage that your competitors can’t take from you. Account-based models A centralized model looks at the equation and asks how certain sales resources like inside sales, BDRs, SDRs, and LDRs can mine the total addressable market. It maps green-flag accounts based on relationships, opportunities, and strengths. They could be referrals, partners to your existing customers, or others you’re connected to. Red-flag accounts are those where your competitors have relationships, strengths, and opportunities. The decentralized model seeks to identify those accounts that a company already has connections to. The idea is that the company can activate those accounts faster than the competitors can. Companies might go with the centralized model because it uses the $20-an-hour inside sellers to do the work instead of the more-expensive AEs. They might choose the decentralized model because they want everyone in the field to be able to unearth the total addressable market of their area. Each person is the CEO of his own territory. Account selection is a skill that everyone needs to master. Modern digital sellers The modern digital seller selects accounts based on relationships or social proximity and then plans those accounts using four pillars. Triggers Referrals Insights Competitive Intelligence These sellers build a war room or a simple one-page document that outlines the compelling stories that they can share with their audiences. When they target the accounts, they’ll use digital technology like video or LinkedIn to share insights and monitor buying engagement. Use account segmentation to think about how much time you’ll spend on every account. Apply Pareto’s Law realizing that you’ll spend 80 percent of your time on 20 percent of your accounts which will yield 80 percent of your return. You won’t spend the same amount of time on every account. These sales concepts have existed forever, but you’ll accelerate your momentum because digital technology allows you to identify who cares, who you should focus on, and how you can move the deal through the cycle more quickly. Digital sales Social selling includes elements like LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook, but those aren’t the only elements. Modern digital sellers use any available technology to aid in the sales process. Companies that engage in digital account-based selling might go through the following steps: Map the total addressable market. Map the accounts that exist within each vertical. Which accounts do we not have but have open opportunities? Which accounts have we never spoken to? Of those companies we’ve n

Whether you’re learning it for your own work as a BDR or you’re preparing to help another seller, there are five important keys to help you succeed as a BDR. If you’re looking to move to the next level as a seller, The Sales Evangelist Certified Sales Training Program group coaching program allows you to train at your own pace, either alone or as part of a group. The next semester begins this month. Drink your own Kool-Aid Make sure you understand the product or service you’re selling. In fact, I recommend that you actually use it yourself. If it’s an enterprise software SAP or something large like that, you won’t likely buy it for yourself, but you should understand how the system truly operates. Know how it will help the customers you’re pursuing. If you’re a BDR, you’re probably not chasing every single customer. You’ll probably have a territory or a certain kind of client. Look at industry reports to understand your customers and how your solution will help. Ask previous clients why they like your solution so much. It will also help you speak their language and be more confident in your conversations. Know the problem that you’re able to solve for your buyer. Be intentional BDRs must make sure to follow their company’s process, and then they have to go a step further. They must know their ratios. How many conversations does it take to get to a demonstration? How many demonstrations do you typically do before you land a sale? Keep track of these numbers. Email me and I’ll share my own prospect tracker with you. When you have these numbers, sales becomes more of a science. Each day, you can specify how many new opportunities you want so you can get to a demonstration. You won’t be as successful if you aren’t intentional. Listen Become an expert at listening. Listen to the things your prospects say as well as the things they don’t say. Read case studies, find out what some of your current customers are doing, and understand their problems. If you listen closely, you’ll begin to notice when they aren’t telling you the real issues. Be a silent expert. Ask tough questions Sellers sometimes want to appear knowledgeable, so they talk a lot. Instead, focus on the caliber of questions that you’re asking. Make a list of these questions you can ask your prospect. Also, prepare a list of follow-up questions. If, for example, your prospect says that he already has a solution in place, you must be prepared to respond to that. Maybe something like this: “I’m not here to break up great relationships. I do, however, know that contracts end and that people typically will look for new vendors. Would you be open to see if we could benefit your organization?” Lead with the intro, “Out of curiosity” to soften the edge on a question like, “Why are you waiting until next year to change?” Make sure you find great opportunities for your team. Personalize your approach Take advantage of video to personalize your approach. Depending on the type of business you’re in, use a tool like BombBomb to make a simple video to the prospect and include this in your flow process. If you’re sending emails and reaching out on LinkedIn, your personalized videos will help you stand out among the other BDRs. Personalized videos will help you connect with the right clients and produce better results. Outwork yourself Arrive at the office every day determined to outperform the day before. #SalesGoals Compete against yourself. If you did 15 appointments last week, set a goal for 17 this week. Push yourself. Don’t compete against your teammate’s goals. Constantly seek to improve. Success will naturally come if you constantly out-hustle your previous performance. “How To Succeed As A BDR” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register! You can also connect with me at [email protected] or try our first module of TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also share this with your friends and colleagues. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sellers get knocked down plenty of times, but sometimes failure is the greatest sales lesson. Brad McDonald works with Sandler Systems which has 250 franchises around the world that help businesses grow by improving their sales processes. Failure Brad’s 28-year career in the U.S. Navy taught him that failure could mean the difference between life and death. When he transitioned from the Navy to the sales world, he realized that many of his attempts were going to end in failure. He had to change the paradigm. The things he perceived were failures — having people hang up on him or cancel an appointment — weren’t really failures. Along the way, he learned to embrace failure. Gumballs You must make a lot of sales calls in order to get to yes. On the other hand, if we see the sales calls that ended in “no” as a failure, that will feel bad. Brad uses a gumball analogy to explain it. If you want a green gumball from a gumball machine, and there are multiple colors inside, there’s a good chance you won’t get a green one. When you put the quarter inside, there’s a good chance you’ll get a different color. Imagine you’re making prospecting phone calls, or cold calls; the most dreaded form of prospecting. If you make 10, 20, or 30 calls, you’ll eventually get someone who wants to talk, just like you’ll eventually get a green gumball. You’ll also likely get an orange gumball which might represent a buyer who wants to talk more to see if there’s interest. If you view every orange gumball as a failure, you won’t be very likely to keep going while you wait for the green ones. If, on the other hand, you understand that you have to get the orange gumball out of the way in order to get to the green one, you can embrace it. Process of failure Brad came from a culture where sailors did what he told them to do and they didn’t say no. He was surprised to find in the sales world that prospects aren’t always honest and they don’t always respect his time. And they certainly don’t feel compelled to follow his orders. Initially, all those things felt like failures. Failure mimics the stages of grief which are disbelief, fear, despair, anger, and acceptance. Brad refers to the “ok, not ok principle.” He came to believe that he needed to be ok being not ok. He needed to not seek to meet his emotional needs in a sales call. Many sellers get emotionally involved in their sales calls and that’s one of the five big conceptual roadblocks in sales. Head trash gets in the way. We get excited when we’re about to make a sale and we stop doing the things we need to do. Sales activities Brad learned along the way that his focus on outcomes and results was wrong. He was excited when he made sales and dejected when he wasn’t. He discovered over time that focusing on things he could control, like activities, made more sense. He started doing the things he knew would make him more successful and he tracked those things. Brad focused on his tonality, his demeanor, his body language and other things that were well within his control. Conceptual issues Brad believes that all sales problems come in one or two categories. Tactical. What do I say, When do I say it? How do I say it? Conceptual. Relating to the beliefs we have between our ears. Most tactical problems have a conceptual basis. In Brad’s case, he came out of the Navy where he didn’t fear much of anything into a setting where he was afraid to make a cold call. The fear was a result of the beliefs he held about sales. The conceptual issues are these: The need for approval. The problem occurs when you want to be liked more than you want to make sales. The BUY cycle. How do you buy things? How do I treat salespeople when someone is trying to sell something to me? We tend to sell the same way we buy. If you tend to comparison shop, you’ll be more forgiving of buyers who do the same. Negative scripts. Many of these originate in childhood. Examples are the idea that you shouldn’t openly talk about money. Also, very few of us were raised by parents who hoped we would grow up to be successful sellers. Emotional involvement in the sales process. It’s ok to have a love for your prospects, but you must also have the mindset that you don’t need anyone. Instead, find something that’s mutually beneficial. Money concept. Your very first memory of money seems to have a relationship to how you feel about money now. When Brad made his first big commission check, he felt guilty for earning so much money. He had a money concept issue. Changing beliefs Changing your own beliefs will take time. It’s a process. In order to improve in sales, you’ll have to work on yourself and your own feelings about sales as much as you work on your sales tactics and other tools. #SalesPsychology For his own therapy, he sat down each Sunday and wrote about his sales experiences. Those articles helped him process the emotional aspects and taught him to have honest conversations with his prospects. Salespeople can benefit from journalin

There are three great closing questions that salespeople often ask because everyone in the sales arena wants to make sure that we’re closing effectively. The answers to the three great closing questions will help salespeople close like a pro. Albert Alexander has been a partner in a construction equipment sales company that makes parts for excavators and bulldozers for 11 years now. Albert does all the marketing, inside sales, and digital marketing for the company. Closing questions Often, sales reps are good at finding prospects and having a talk with them. Things change, however, when they’re turning them into leads. There are challenges in closing. Sales reps have this predisposed idea about how they purchase that gets in the way when they try to close a deal. Albert’s company grows 70% every year and that’s because they stick people to a process. For other sales reps, they stop in the middle of the process and it stops the action of the process moving forward. It could be because of the fear of rejection or any other reason, but the end result is the same. It halts the closing process. Imposing your buying style There are many decision types and processes that they take. For this reason, sales reps should know their customers through their pains and needs and be completely open to the different decision styles they have. Sales reps should remove their own fears and worries of rejection from the sales process and focus on their customers instead. If they do that, they can be empathetic to the needs of the clients. Say, for example, the client’s million-dollar equipment is not working and it needs a $50,000 part that the company sells. For the sales rep, the amount is huge and so he’d say, “I understand you need to think about it,” but that’s not the case for the client. The client is willing to spend $50,000 for his million-dollar equipment to work, but because the sales rep put his purchasing decision in the process, the entire closing will take a hit. Sales reps need to change their perspective or their purchasing styles and decisions when closing a deal. Sales reps need to learn to think like the clients they’re talking to instead of imposing their fears, views, concerns, or buying styles to their clients. Make a good logical decision for and with somebody, even when they’re concerned. Remind them of the things that are logical and that matter. The first step to close a deal is to put yourself in that person’s shoes better and eliminate the fears and worries. Closing styles We all have closing styles and the first one is the assumptive close. It's extremely easy and it’s when sales reps choose and assume the next information that you have to collect and continue down the process. It’s almost like assuming that everything’s good and done after they’ve spoken with the client. This works for Albert’s company. They’ve implemented the assumptive process and it improved their closing deals to 25%. So, their sales reps ask the following questions: Hey, where did you want me to deliver that? When did you want that delivered? How did you want to pay for that? Is it going to be a Mastercard or wire transfer? Most sales reps think that closing is an event and it shouldn’t be. They think that they have to ask questions and shake hands. That’s not how it works. If they investigate, build rapport, and lay out the solution that’s logical and emotionally fulfilling, sales reps can assume the next information and assume. Closing is not an event, it should be a natural thing. Sales reps should do all the work upfront and the closing is part of that. Dig into the objection In the case of objections during a close, it’s often not the truth and just a reaction. Sales reps should dig deeper to overcome the objection. In Albert’s industry, there are five reasons that clients use to decline. Time Money Price Value Quality Our sales reps dig deeper by feeding either of the top reasons why clients object to a deal. They wait for their response and try not to be pushy. They just make a conversation and wait because people have different buying styles. Some people like to think about it before saying yes, and some others just agree immediately. After the assumption, sales reps should dig deeper into their objection to see the real issue and not just the surface-level problem. In that way, you can give a solution to the real objection. A good sales rep is the one who can talk well and has the tenacity to understand and get down to the reasons to investigate. Being able to compensate with somebody doesn’t lead to a sale, you need to have a purpose and process. Utilize technology Sales reps can connect with a customer in a building effect of value. While sales reps are closing, they can talk to their clients in the process. In Albert’s company, their sales reps would send their clients’ invoices while talking to them on the phone. They also email and text pictures of what they’re going to get. They do these things while they’re clo

Should I Start Off With Inside Sales or Outside Sales? Are you new to sales and asking yourself the universal sales question, “Should I start off with inside sales or outside sales?” Many share the same thought and I have five things to help you figure out a better way to go. Inside sales vs outside sales Every company is different, however, inside roles typically have the SDR (sales development rep) or the BDR (business development rep). Depending on the company, these may be different roles done by different individuals. The business development reps may be the ones finding new prospects for the business. For some companies, the sales development reps are focused on the inbounds. When the sales come in through marketing or via the website, the sales development reps will get more information making them the first line of contact with the SDRs.They talk to potential clients, qualify them, and set them up for appointments. An inside sales rep who’s also doing outbound tasks has a lot of work. The upside to outbound sales is getting a bigger commission than the person who’s doing solely inbound tasks. The business development reps need to qualify people, follow up, and make sure that they know their company’s products and services to have meaningful conversations with potential customers. For other companies, this doesn’t matter. If you’re on inbound sales then your job is to generate opportunity whether it’d be through cold calling or setting up appointments for outside sales reps. If you’re on outbound sales then your job includes taking the first appointment, having a deeper discussion with the prospect, and building value with the prospects. You need to dive in and understand their needs to be able to go to the most important parts of the sales process which are the pitch, presentation, and closing the deal. Inside sales first If you’re new to sales, the best path you can go is inbound sales. Here are the reasons you need to consider why. The decision of whether to go to inbound or outbound sales depends on the complexity of the product or service you’re selling. Consider a B2B sales scenario in which you’re selling a product with a certain level of complexity (computer software or something from the medical industry). Coming right out of college, you may not be used to such a level of complexity. Doing outside sales and having to develop the ability to sell the product and talk about it convincingly is not the easiest route. This scenario will be different if you’re selling a simple product. You can easily up your game, learn everything about the product, and sell it in no time. So, the first thing you should do is to evaluate the complexity of the sale that you’re doing. If the product is something that you’re not familiar with, learn as much as you can about the product first before you consider doing outside sales. Industry The second thing to consider is that each industry has different ways of doing things. Take for example a government-based industry. The deal size for government-based industries can go from $30-$150,000 and the sales cycle can run from 6-18 months. If you’re not knowledgeable about how that works, then you’re not going to last. You need to know what the industry is and make sure that you understand how it works. Going to the inside gives you the opportunity to learn things and understand the lingo and the processes of the industry. One thing I’ve learned from doing inside sales for the government is that every city government typically has a buying cycle anywhere around the October timeframe or sometime during the summer. Typically, a sales rep’s job from January to June is doing demonstrations. You can’t expect to close deals on those months. The government-industry has long sales cycles and new sales reps need to understand that before jumping into the game. Sales cycle Outside sales are good if you can close your product within 30 days but if it takes longer than that, then you need to rethink your decision. Sales are like hunting or going on an adventure into a new world. It’s better to have a guide to be able to make the right decisions. In the same sense, inside sales provides a team that will guide you along the way. You’ll know the proper ways of doing things and get more help from the mothership. This is something you won’t have if you do outside sales working as a lone ranger in a remote territory without a support system. Doing inside sales for a long sales cycle is best to get all the proper help before going off on your own. Business acumen Being new to sales or coming straight out of college means not having a strong understanding of the business. You’ll end up being one of those traditional sales reps that everyone’s making fun of, not the sales reps who is making value. You become the order taker and you’ll have a difficult time closing deals. You won’t be authoritative because you won’t feel confident. When you’re in inside sales, your job isn’t to close deals. Y

Helping Your Sales Team Perform Their Best I sat down with Fred Diamond at Podcast Movement 2019 to discuss the keys to helping your sales team perform their best. Fred is the host of Sales Game Changers Podcast and today he turned the microphone on me and allowed me to share the things I've learned during my career in sales. The Sales Evangelist This podcast resulted from my own struggle as a B2B seller. Because of my own struggles, I wanted to help new and struggling sellers improve their sales game. I wanted to educate people who were in the same shoes and help elevate their performance. As The Sales Evangelist podcast grew, people in our community of sellers reached out to me for sales coaching. I started with one-on-one coaching for reps, and then those reps took their training back to their companies, and I started hearing from entrepreneurs and other business owners who needed to replicate themselves so they could scale their companies. I launched into the consulting side and helped businesses set up their sales teams. Eventually, that led to speaking opportunities and other things, so in 2015 I left my full-time job to do The Sales Evangelist full time. The podcast didn’t make money on its own, but it did generate leads and coaching opportunities and speaking and consulting gigs. Now, though, it generates its own income. Sales career I got into sales before college, partly because my entire family was involved in sales. As a Jamaican boy, I grew up in a setting where everyone sold something. I didn’t see it as sales, necessarily. I simply saw it as the family business. I’m naturally outgoing, so people told me I’d be perfect in a sales career. That continued through college where I struggled to find a sales program. Eventually, I got a couple of sales jobs in timeshares and door-to-door that involved B2C selling. I made about $20,000 in three months selling door-to-door over the summer during my first year. When I transitioned to the professional world of selling, though, I struggled. Lessons learned One of the things I learned selling door-to-door was the value of working smart. I saw people who worked hard but who weren’t effective, so they got burned out because they continued doing things that were ineffective. Those who hustled, on the other hand, worked efficiently and they practiced their messaging and they stopped doing things that didn’t work. I learned that I had to be willing to move on when a sale didn’t work out. Eventually, I moved into a BDR role in a B2B company, and I brought that need to work efficiently and plan my activities because it was a full-commission job. Time is money, and I needed to pay rent. During my time at the IT training company, Steve Hatch took me under his wing. He was the CEO of the company, and he taught me both the sales and the business sides of his company. In several cases, he did that by throwing me into the deep end. We were trying to work a deal with a local NPR station and he helped me learn to lead the deal and negotiate the deal. He helped me see who I could eventually become. Sales challenges Current sales reps face a number of challenges that are unique to the kind of setting they operate in. Most of the ones I meet with struggle with prospecting, and with prospecting effectively. Many learn that cold calling is dead, for example, but they work for companies that were built by cold calling. Their leaders want them to engage in cold-calling but others tell them it’s ineffective, so they feel pulled in different directions. At the same time, many sellers struggle with the idea of social selling in which they engage with people on social media. They often don’t have the confidence to do it effectively, so they wait for inbound leads to come, and though they do often come, it simply isn’t enough. I constantly give training on how to use LinkedIn and how to take advantage of cadences and flow processes for outreach. Prospecting Multichannel outreach, sometimes called omnichannel, matters the most in prospecting. When I work with sales reps, I encourage them to begin their interactions on social media. Make a genuine connection with people as a starting point. Understand that genuine connection doesn’t mean you simply “like” something that they posted or shared. Instead, engage with that person. If someone comments on something you share, take that conversation to the inbox next and tell him how much you appreciate his comment. Then, once you’ve built that connection, you can move the conversation to a phone call. Now you’ve created a warm, engaging connection. Then, for enterprise sales, you can even take advantage of snail mail to send them something to grab their attention. We created a Willy Wonka style ticket and invited them to join us for our demo. We sent sodas and snacks and a Starbucks gift card. We spent about $12 for each of three boxes and landed about $100,000 worth of deals. Sales tips I read a lot of books in an effort to improve my game,

Sales from the Street: Teach Them How To Educate Derek Badala frequently travels with sales reps to teach them how to educate the customer in an effort to solve problems. As the director of sales at Synthax, he is always on the road traveling with sales reps and training them to become another version of himself — a skilled sales leader, influencer, and consultant. Technology and education Being in the audiovisual industry, it could be said that technology and education are their biggest challenges. Making a sale is difficult, especially with new products. You must understand everything about the product and its application. Everybody is trying to get a sale and trying to close deals fast without asking all the necessary questions. With the competition in the market, there’s not enough time to learn about the new product and how it can be applied to the prospects’ problems. Derek focuses on educating the sales reps and covering all the ways that the products can be used, and less on the features and benefits. He’s working to find ways that his products can make clients' lives easier. Sales reps must not skip this educating stage and must learn the product and its application to the lives of the client. Too much excitement over a deal that hasn’t happened yet may cause the deal to fall apart. Skipping steps Derek had a client who was excited about getting a product from Digigram that would provide background music to stores. Neither the client nor the sales reps understood all the things about the product and its services. They got ahead of themselves and weren’t able to prepare the details that the client needed. Instead, the company should have better studied the client’s needs to know exactly how the products fit. When reps skip steps, it can cause deals to fall apart, which can negatively affect your pipeline. Their company also sells widgets that clients can buy in retail stores. It’s difficult to educate salespeople in retail stores about the product because they have their personal favorites and they immediately suggest those products. It’s a challenge to tell them about your product and make them answer the customers’ questions. When customers aren’t given enough information about a product, they often buy something that they’re not happy with. They are boxed into thinking about this particular product that salespeople in the retail store like. This is always a challenge. Trade shows Derek’s company does a lot of trade shows where he teaches classes on audio networking, and how to do audio over IP net. He also teaches classes on how to choose the right audio interface for musicians so that they won’t be sold products they don’t need. The company’s goal is to educate the market and the customers through webcasts, webinars, and a whole lot more. Lunch and Learn The company also does a lot of lunch and learn while traveling. While the internet is an efficient tool in disseminating information, there’s still nothing more effective than getting in front of people and teaching them. Buying them lunch and then educating them about your products in a graceful way is very effective. Derek travels with many sales reps and while traveling, he continues to teach them how to educate others as well. They attend sessions and they learn from him by example. Instead of telling them a litany of features and benefits of certain products, Derek tells them a story. Don’t tell stories about what the product can do. Tell the story of how effective the product has been. #SolveProblems It is important to have success stories to tell about the products. Share little nuggets about the product to catch the clients’ attention. Competition The industry is growing and with it, competition grows as well. With every product line added, there’s new revenue being added into the business. Even when a company experiences growth, it’s still hard to miss that others are growing as well. There are competitors out there who are as good as, if not better than you. Regardless of the competition, we’re now seeing more resellers who are interested in knowing more about the products they sell. Derek’s company has grown since he joined in 2017 and he has seen a lot of improvements. They’re now seeing great improvements in the Ferrofish brand as it’s now being used for Broadway shows, the Superbowl, and for broadcast. It’s always a battle to be on the top line funnel. You always plant sales and cultivate the leads to turn them into closed deals. Be the best listener In sales, it is important to be the best listener. One of the biggest mistakes in sales is owning the talk. You want to know more about the customers to be able to present solutions to their problems. You need to listen to them and see how you can help. After listening, you need to ask questions and listen to their responses. These steps are more important than presenting your clients with the features and benefits of the product. “Teach Them How To Educate” episode resources Stay conn

Sales From The Street - "Think Like A Large Company CEO" Vicki Antonio is a business consultant and a life coach who helps small business owners think like a large company CEO. This is a result of her journey of knowing what her purpose in life is. She started working when she was 13 years old and she found herself having a pattern of working with startups. Her experience made her realize that startups have a pattern of growing pains. She used that when she got into real estate because she wanted to be that mom who goes to PTA meetings and football games for her kids. The knowledge gave her a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen as a whole. With the fallout of the market, she learned some hard lessons. She then went into upper management in real estate and after that, she became a business developer for a global real estate franchise. She oversaw about 30 of their shops and her role was to get them developed, get them brand-compliant, and partner with brokers and owners to keep the business profitable. She was a coach for the company’s business needs, whatever those needs might be, on a day-to-day basis. Blind spots Most business owners scale their businesses to a certain place and then they’d have a business blindspot. Very few people see the blindspot and see the capacity that they can get to at the beginning. It’s similar to taking a vacation where you know where you’re going but you can’t see it from the place that you start. The closer you get to it, however, the clearer it gets. If you’re not familiar with the geographical location of the area, then you might have some detours that cause apprehensions. It may cause you to stop and get lost a little bit. This is where Vicky comes in. She is the guide and she helps the companies see their direction in a clearer perspective. Top problems Fear is the first problem that small businesses face. Sometimes, they become fearful and they build only up to where they know, and then they get stagnant. The fear comes in because they’ve got to relinquish what they know. It’s very much like taking your child to daycare for the first time. There’s apprehension and doubt about whether they can take care of your kid. The same is true for your business because you have an emotional attachment to it. You develop apprehension about handing it over. But it is important to allow someone else to come in, and then to trust that they will do their job. Trust and fear come hand-in-hand. The fear of somebody else taking the business to the next level or the fear of engaging with another system are reasons why small businesses fail to progress. Clarity is also difficult for business owners, especially the entrepreneurs who are self-employed salespeople. These people do a lot to get to a certain place. There’s a lot of things that go into play to get them to the end. Often, they don’t have clarity about what those things are because they either don’t have enough components to see the end or they have too many components that they no longer see the end. When you’re in that slump, you need an analysis of the things you do to see the cause of the stagnation. Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan had coaches to give them the bird’s eye view, the area where they themselves could not see. The coaches help them and critique them. They also help them analyze what they are doing and how they can change it to make their play better. The same is true in sales. Salespeople are good at what they do but there are still things that they just can’t see. Sometimes, salespeople get in their own way and do things because it felt right for years. Like Woods, even when his form is okay, his coach can be there with him and tell him things like, ‘ If you just turn the club a little bit then you’d see a better performance.’ As salespeople, you need a coach to analyze your system and your tools to make sure that you’re using them correctly. It is equally important that you trust their input and that the information you’re getting is helpful. It is important for salespeople and business owners to trust the process. Fear Fear is false evidence appearing real. A lot of times, we think too much because we don’t have clarity about the direction that we take. We are also concerned about whether we’re doing things the proper way. This makes us fear the unknown, so we stay where we are instead of moving. It’s not saying that you’re doing something wrong. It’s more like you’ve known how difficult the climb has been and you want to take things to the next level, or to the next pinnacle. Overcoming fear differs from one person to another because everybody’s risk factor is different. For the risk-takers, there’s a great reward but there’s a big gap there. It’s different for people who are not risk-takers because they calculate their risk to the point of comfortability and the rest is pain. Trust Your business is like your baby and you’ve put all your effort into it and invested much into it.

Every sales transaction differs from the others, but when you're selling in Europe vs. selling in the USA, it's important to understand the differences in culture. Christine Schlonski works with entrepreneurs who have a negative view of sales. She helps them redefine their view of it so they can sell with ease, grace, and confidence and also ask their price. In short, she helps them makes sales, which is simply an interaction between people, fun. Fear of selling Christine points to the depiction of sales in movies, coupled with bad sales experiences that we’ve all had. Subconsciously, we don’t want to be like these people. Women especially struggle to ask for what they truly want because it feels salesy or pushy. They often assume because they’re good people that buyers will line up to buy. It’s possible to ask for the sale in a natural way but movies never depict sellers in a positive light. It’s likely that a movie about a seller who sells from the heart and brings value would be boring. But sales truly could be like that. Set the expectation and then make the offer. Then consider what’s a go and what’s a no-go. How can we work together? Sales differences Sales in the U.S. move quickly, while people in Europe like time. Realize, too, that Europe isn’t a single country, and sales differ across those countries. In France, for example, sales involves numerous decision-makers, and French people love meetings. Where Americans look to make things happen, you cannot simply show up with an offer and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Germans exist between those two extremes because they want to be a bit more efficient. Still, though, they cannot be pushed or pressured into decisions. Relationships are still the key to all sales. The decision-maker needs to feel comfortable in the relationship and feel as though he is making a good decision. Typically, larger companies have more complicated decision making processes. They often have male leaders and sometimes one of them will block the process because of politics or a need to be right. Selling in Europe will never be a one-call close. Unique preferences Christine had experiences in the past where her work with a global company selling high-ticket events over the phone was negatively affected by her American colleagues who were perceived as being pushy. The prospects assumed that her sales process would operate the same way, so they weren’t interested. For companies who operate in different countries, training sellers to understand the cultural differences can present a challenge. Begin with the simple understanding that no two people are alike. Even without the cultural differences, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution because we’re all human with unique preferences. Consider yourself as an example. How would you want to be treated during a call? What’s important to you? Then, be open to cultural differences and be aware of misunderstandings, but understand that it isn’t a case of the prospect not liking you. In Christine’s case, she learned to operate as though any “no” in the process was always her fault because she hadn’t managed some part of the process correctly. She understands, too, that if she calls into the U.S. she needs to operate with the correct urgency, because it’s what they expect. Small talk Sellers in the U.S. are pretty good with small talk, but in the U.K., for example, talk about the weather can be important. Some people perceive that as a waste of time, but you must adjust to the person you’re speaking to. Adjusting the conversation to your audience doesn’t demand that you be fake. Pick something that’s meaningful to you that will bring the other person into the conversation as well. Suspend your own thinking toward the customers’ needs. Accommodate them. In the U.S., for example, people don’t give a true answer to the question, “How are you?” Instead, they’ll say, “I’m fine.” In other countries, they’ll be more likely to answer honestly. Approach with the desire to serve their needs. Expectations In my own negotiations with a prospect for TSE Certified Sales Training Course, I discovered during the negotiation process that many buyers from eastern Europe want to ensure that they are getting the best deal. A friend who is also from eastern Europe told me that they’ll often expect to be able to negotiate down a bit. So even if you have a fair price, they may expect you to adjust it. In this case, I made the adjustment because it was a win-win opportunity. Depending on the products you sell, the price level, and who your negotiating partners are, maybe you set something in place that you can add to the program rather than adjusting your price down. Add value without dropping the price. It gives them a feeling of a win. Businesses are always trying to get the best deal, regardless of culture. Authenticity Be true to yourself and be authentic. If you have a great product, begin with a connection. Small talk can feel superficial, so you must communi

My Sales Reps Say They Are Too Busy...I Think This Is Crap! Sales reps and sales leaders face a lot of challenges, and some sales reps say they are too busy. Sometimes the problems are nothing major, but on some other times, the problem causes a ripple in the revenue. One situation that causes such negative impact in sales is when salespeople claim that their pipeline is down due to busyness. This is when sales reps spend much of their time helping current customers find opportunities and they no longer have the time to bring new business or clients. This is a common situation among sales leaders and sales reps. It is a legitimate question because sometimes, sales reps come up with excuses and they don’t recognize that. Sales reps often have too much on their plate and they get so busy which then prevents them from getting out and doing sales activity. Size of your organization What is the size of your organization? This is an important question because if you’re working in an organization with sales in a small company, the sales rep is doing the prospecting and finding leads. After that, the sales rep tries to convert the leads into appointments that lead up to initial conversations. They build value, negotiate, and maintain the account. The sales reps are there in the entire process, but doing all that can cause problems. If you’re in an enterprise organization, the sales reps’ main responsibility is closing deals. If you have different departments and individuals doing BDR work, researching, getting leads, doing client success, and managing accounts then there shouldn’t be any problem. For small organizations, the sales reps are doing everything and the sales reps legitimately may be too busy. Empathy As sales manager, your first course of action is to show empathy. We can’t expect our sales reps to go out and show empathy to the prospects without giving them our empathy first. We need to truly understand where they’re coming from. For example, if a prospect says that the software isn’t working, you don’t argue with him. We can’t exactly tell the prospects to go figure the software out. The same is true for our sales reps. We can’t tell them to figure things out and make it happen. Give them the benefit of the doubt, hear them out first, and figure out why they feel overwhelmed. Sales managers are busy people and you might feel that you don’t have enough time to manage everything, but you have to do it. You have to go to the second step after empathizing. Diagnose The next step is diagnosing. Start this by creating a time audit sheet. It can be on a word document or whatever means possible. Have your sales reps list all the tasks they do in a day, including answering questions, answering prospects, reaching out on LinkedIn, and many others. They have to write everything down and the length of time they spent doing each task. Finally, they need to label whether it’s a sales task or an admin task. If it’s something that directly connects to bringing new business in the organization, then label it as a sales task. Reaching out for a client in LinkedIn is a sales activity but going through contracts in the database isn’t. In that case, have somebody else in the organization go through the contracts. Free up sales reps from doing admin tasks and let them do activities that directly tie to getting new prospects. #Revenue Another example is cleaning up the CRM. This isn’t a sales activity, especially if it’s not in the prime time. Maybe you can do this at home or delegate it to somebody else instead of letting the sales reps do it. On a scale of 1-3 After putting labels to the tasks, categorize them on a scale of 1 - 3. 1 - it’s directly tied to bringing new business 2 - average 3 - it’s not so directly tied to bringing new business Doing this will make you see that the majority of the sales reps’ time is spent on admin related activities. In smaller organizations, sales reps must do all kinds of tasks but you can avoid this. Getting a sales resource individual to help the sales rep find prospects is a great idea. The sales research rep connects with the operations department and makes sure that jobs are fulfilled. If the sales rep was to find a prospect and need a particular product or service to seal the deal, the sales research rep would do that task instead. The sales rep would have enough time to go and look for other prospects and clients. Sales research reps are very much like project managers. They see to it that everything gets done and that the proper products and samples needed by the sales reps are provided and presented to the client. This saves a lot of time and promotes efficiency in the organization. The sales research reps are assistant to the sales reps and do the admin tasks for the sales reps. This way, the sales reps become more productive with their time. You can do this to your company, too. Find some individuals who can help you alleviate the struggles of the sellers and let the sellers

Many sellers overlook fundamental selling principles, but salespeople must learn the importance of a strategic network for business and career success in order to become proficient in our jobs. Judy Robinett is an advisor to Springboard, an incubator that helps women founders, with great statistics of 19 IPOs and 165 strategic sells. Judy loves educating people and meeting entrepreneurs and helping them with connections. She wrote the book, How to Be a Power Connector, a bestseller in 2014, and she recently published another book called Crack the Funding Code: How Investors Think and What They Need to Hear to Fund Your Startup. It’s a book that tells us how investors think and what they need to hear to fund your startup. The beginning Judy worked as a social worker but she didn’t stop there. She explored her options and opportunities after making some bad decisions like starting her own franchise restaurant. In time, her business failed and she had to sell it. She worked with a then-unknown company called Skullcandy® when they were broke and had a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. She helped the company build its credibility and bring its revenue up again. That fueled her interest in startups and she became an investor herself. Fast forward to now, she’s a managing director at Golden Seeds. Crack the funding code Many great entrepreneurs in the U.S. don’t understand the facts. For one, there’s no lack of money. In fact, there’s $318 trillion of private global wealth. These entrepreneurs don’t understand the players: there’s private equity that are all investing into startups as well as the sovereign wealth funds that manage 10% of the global GDP. The book Crack the Funding Code is an easy-to-follow roadmap on how to find and pitch investors. The book’s appendix has term sheets, actual pitch decks, and other relevant research information. It is a book that will educate entrepreneurs because these people can change the world. Lessons in mistakes Entrepreneurs take calculated risks. Along the way, missteps create lessons waiting to be learned. Judy’s bankruptcy lawyer said of her failed franchise restaurant, “They can break you but they can’t eat you.” Judy learned to kick fear to the curb and understand that there’s no lack of resources in the world because resources are connected to human beings. It is true that sales are critical in finding and catching investors. It’s also important in catching the customers. Entrepreneurs must learn to navigate in their mistakes. They need to figure out how to get investors to figure out how to find customers. If you can’t figure out how to find a venture capitalist, you can’t figure out how to find a customer. #investors Funding mindset Howard Stevenson, known as the Lion of Entrepreneurism at Harvard, wrote a book on how to be an angel investor. His book talked about how you can set yourself apart from everybody else. In order to be perceived as a high-potential startup: Be clear on your exit strategy and the comparables because investors want to get their money back. Mitigate risks as viewed by the investors. It is good for startups to put high-powered people in their advisory board to help build their credibility, especially if the CEO hasn’t done a startup before. In the VC investing world, people talk about adult supervision. This is critical because you want to have reliable people in your team with deep industry expertise who can open doors to money, media, and other resources that you might need. Getting investors is more than just being good and being able to produce something. One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs do in their pitches is the way they focus on technology and explain the details at length. Investors, however, care less about that. Harvard researchers found that the average amount of time people spend looking at a particular slide is 11 seconds. Financial slides, however, get 23 seconds worth of attention. Investors look for a team that can execute to a big enough market, the total addressable market (TAM). Three C’s Arthur Rock was the first venture capitalist who started the industry in Silicon Valley. He said that if somebody comes to him with a B product but with an A team or an A product but with a B team, he’d always go for the A-team. This means that investors invest in the team that can execute. So, the first C is you need to be coachable. We all have that blindspot of not knowing what we don’t know. It’s important to come across as coachable rather than arrogant. If somebody asks you about something that you don’t know, then be upfront and tell that person that you’ll get back to him. Then ask for help to show that you are coachable. The second one is having a level of confidence. You are selling your concept, your company, and how you’re going to grow it to the investors so a level of confidence is important. The third one is character. Howard Stevenson said in his book that when he hears an exaggeration or half-truth, he r

Some people aren’t into the idea of rejection but actually, there are positive reasons why getting a no is not such a bad thing. Francisco Terreros is a co-founder of Felkrem, a full-service sports marketing agency focused on two core services. First, they represent professional footballers/soccer players in their careers both on and off the field, and secondly, they sell brands and reach the players’ demographics through sports and marketing. They are FIFA agents and marketers who do sales every day. The sell to parents and kids they want to sign to their firm as well as to teams and sponsors. They are selling their experience as sports marketers to brands who want to capitalize on their understanding of how to navigate and reach their target demographics. Their company is surviving, thriving, and growing rapidly despite the competition in the industry. Felkrem is dealing with the athletes' professions and their dreams. Getting no as a sales rep Sales reps have been in this situation once or twice in their careers as salespeople. It’s difficult to hear the rejection, and much more difficult to accept it. But why do we get a no and why is getting a no not such a bad thing? A seller’s job depends on his ability to get a yes, so naturally, a no for an answer is a hard pill to swallow. Lions are the kings of the jungle. It’s their natural instinct to turn their chase into actual food. They have their hunting strategies matrixed down that when the prey gets away, they don’t just give up. They walk and find another kill. They also don't necessarily go for the biggest and the fastest one. They change their game occasionally and go for something else. As sellers, we need to think like lions. It is our instinct to turn the potential sales opportunities into yeses. Our game must also be matrixed so that when we hear no, we don’t walk away dejected. Instead, we walk away with a new plan in our head. We should learn to walk away and get the next one. We need to understand that no is part of the process and it’s going to help us figure out what we must tweak to get the yes. Overcoming this is a hard job because our lives depend on the yes. ‘ The sales process is a numbers game and our closing rate of yes comes before several nos. Your sales career will change once you realize that and calculate how many nos you need to get a yes. Simply put, a no means one step closer to the yes. Back to the beginning We must all begin learning the basics before we become successful in our craft. Cisco got an internship with the sponsorship department in a major league soccer team in his area. He was assigned to support the sponsorship team. He took pictures of activations, set up banners in the stadium, and met with clients at the game to let them into the gate. He was a secretary but he needed to be more. He started coming in two hours before his shift and observed. With his notepad in hand, he listened to the sponsorship guide sell and he took notes to understand the process. Weeks later, he asked for more and he was given a list of people. He started calling and calling and got zero yeses. Years later he realized that all those nos taught him something since they got him closer to the job. The nos helped him understand himself and his techniques and what he needed to do to change the no into a yes. Cisco wouldn’t have been able to understand that it’s all a system and a process if he didn’t start with the basics. The hungry lion The analogy of the lion is perfect for this subject matter. After missing their prey for a couple of times, a hungry lion is more zealous than ever to catch another one. A hungry lion is persistent and patient in an intelligent way, not in a desperate way. We need to help our team understand that. Teach your team to think like hunters and that the no is a way for them to become hungrier. Not desperate; just hungry. Desperation can be felt a mile away, so don’t be that desperate seller who tries to oversell. Be hungry and be patient. A seller’s desperation is a puff of wind that clients don’t want to inhale. It’s also good to take a mental note that clients can hear your desperate sound even in a phone conversation. When your voice drops and your tone shifts, your client will start to zone out. Pay constant attention to how you sound and how you deliver your pitch. Turn that no to a yes Cisco had a seller call him in the past for a pitch and his voice and tone were giveaways to his desperation. Cisco helped him understand the process of no and he asked the seller to count the nos he got before he had a yes. A week later, the seller talked to Cisco again but now with a triumphant voice. He said that he got 33 nos before he had a yes. Those 33 nos are no longer awful experiences because those are the setbacks that got him to a yes. Knowing the nos is the beginning. Doing something to lower the no-to-yes ratio is the next step. You do that by identifying where the gaps are in your pitch or in the presentation a

I saw a question on Reddit recently from a seller who wondered whether or not to create content on LinkedIn. The seller worried that writing about topics like quota, rejection, or prospecting might sound too salesy and might hurt his pipeline. The truth is that many sellers have fear around the concept of creating content because we worry about how the audience will accept our ideas. Middle school prom Not only should we post our own content on LinkedIn; we should also engage with other people’s content. Unfortunately, many of us treat LinkedIn like a middle school prom. We stand around the edge of the room watching each other, too afraid to dance. We might speak to a friend or two, but we’re afraid to look stupid, so we don’t dance. Instead, we let everybody else enjoy themselves. We don’t want to look stupid on the dance floor, so perhaps we look stupid on the sidelines instead. We’re afraid of the critics who might make fun of our efforts Many sellers treat LinkedIn like a middle school dance. We don’t participate because we’re afraid of looking silly. #SalesContent True engagement Engagement doesn’t involve moving around the room and saying hi to people at the dance. On LinkedIn, clicking “like” for a few posts doesn’t qualify as engagement. It won’t sustain relationships. It’s basically an indication of approval. Engagement requires you to bring other people into the conversation. If, for example, you’re in the water industry, and you see an article about the danger of water purification tablets, you can tag another colleague who wrote about the same topic. The author of the piece will take note of your efforts to bring someone else to his page, and your colleague will take note as well. Talk to people and work to create lasting relationships. ‘Salesy’ content The question on Reddit came from a seller who worried that his prospects might tire of always seeing sales-related content. But consider your own news feed. Are you annoyed by the fact that you frequently see the same faces over and over again? Or do you simply choose to read things that are relevant and skip over the ones that are not? On the other hand, when one of those people shares something that helps you or connects you with someone else, that brand sticks in your mind. When you need help with something, you’ll remember the guys who showed up in your feed. When you post content and engage with other content, you stay top-of-mind with your audience. Audience Make sure that you’re posting the right kind of content for your audience. Gear it toward your prospect. If you’re targeting salespeople, it’s ok to post sales content. But if you’re targeting decision-makers at Fortune 500 companies, don’t post about yourself. Post what the leaders in that industry want to know or read. Gear your content toward the people you want to attract. Don’t be paralyzed by the fear that your content won’t sound perfect. Understand who you’re targeting and who you want to attract. LinkedIn impressions To understand how value-rich LinkedIn is, listen to TSE 1085 on our podcast. In it, my friend Steven Hart shared some LinkedIn stats with us based on the 48 Eyeopening LinkedIn Statistics for 2019. LinkedIn provides 36 billion impressions per month. That’s 468 billion impressions per year, or 9 billion impressions per week. Users see content 9 billion times per week. Now factor in that there are 500 million people on LinkedIn, and only a fraction of them are active there. Of those, only 3 million people share content weekly. So those 3 million people who share content weekly are getting 9 billion impressions. The rest of us are afraid to share content, so we’re sitting on the sidelines. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Grab attention Grab your reader’s attention, but be intentional about the stuff that you share. Post things that your prospect wants to read. You can certainly share industry-related content from magazines, but your content doesn’t always have to tie back. Consider these options for content: Answer frequently-asked-questions about your industry Share content that your industry would want to know about. Share videos you create from your smartphone in which you answer questions. Post complementary content that is indirectly related to your industry. Repurpose your company’s own blog content. Seek to be helpful. Challenge Also, consider asking your own audience questions about what they are doing and what they’d like to see. If you tag people in a post and ask them about the CRM they use, you’ll initiate engagement. As more people comment, it will gain more visibility. If someone from outside your own connections engages with it, reach out to that person and request a connection. Your challenge for the upcoming week is to share one piece of content every day. Monday: share an industry-related piece that includes something interesting. Tuesday: answer a frequently-asked-question. Wednesday: answer a common question using video. Thursday: post com

How Leaders Sabotage the Sale Process Sales leaders sometimes make mistakes that compromise deals, so understanding how leaders sabotage the sale process can help us avoid the same mistake. Erin Pheil is the founder of Mind Fix Group, a company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, high-achievers, and high-performers eliminate their biggest mental roadblocks that hold them back and keep them from achieving what they're capable of. Head trash Some sales leaders have very specific definitions of what a sales leader is. For Erin, anybody who is in charge of guiding the people in making the right decisions and who is doing sales for a company is considered a sales leader. Many sellers read books and work with experts to improve their skills in sales. They keep learning, and then they show up on calls. They often show up to these calls prepared, but also with head trash. They’re showing bits and pieces of their old mental programming and outdated beliefs that aren’t helpful in closing deals. They go to the calls and they try to combine new knowledge and strategies that their coaches have taught them with their old beliefs. When things go wrong, they don’t blame themselves. They blame the technique and the process, or even the people they hired. They don’t look at their head trash and suspect that they might be the ones sabotaging the process. Blaming the process, techniques, and tactics instead of examining how they’re screwing things up sabotages the sales process. Accepting blame It takes courage to accept blame because it’s human nature to blame somebody else. It takes courage to stop, pause, and hold a mirror to yourself and ask how you’re contributing to the challenges that you’re experiencing. It’s much easier to project outward and place the blame. Head trash commonly appears as the need for approval or the need to be liked. Sellers will show up to a sales call and, instead of focusing on guiding the prospect towards the right decision, they operate from an underlying need to be liked. This goes beyond having a bond and rapport. It's more of wanting to be approved. A person with that need often sabotages calls just to be liked. They get nervous, they make concessions, and they apologize, which shifts the whole frame of conversation. Being liked becomes the more important outcome. Self-doubt Self-doubt can undermine your authenticity and sabotage your sales process because it causes you to question your own effectiveness. Trust your skills and abilities. #SalesSabotage Money block and old programming from a salesperson's childhood also have a negative impact on sales calls. For example, a client raised to believe that she isn’t supposed to talk about money in the household where degree and certificates are the next big things had a huge block in her sales process. Since this particular client had no degree, she ended up questioning her ability and wouldn’t bring up the pricing until the last minute, or until the prospect asked for the price. This client had old head trash on the concept of pricing and money so that often the price in her head was different from the price that came out of her mouth. Even with constant reminders here and there, she just couldn’t do it. It just wouldn't come out of her mouth the right way. This is what head trash is. You show up with a plan and all the right information, but your old pieces of programming, beliefs, and thoughts sabotage and compromise your ability to make a productive call. Figure your patterns The first thing to do is to figure your patterns. Knowing your patterns brings awareness to your calls. You must pinpoint where in the process you’re having your patterns of resistance and frustrations. Create a list of the areas where you keep repeating some patterns that you know do not serve you. It might be telling the same jokes, doing what you’re not supposed to do, or not talking about the money even though you have to. The buyer might think that you’re hiding something or you have some trick up your sleeves. Before you know it, you have already sabotaged your opportunity. The same is true if you keep talking to your client without giving him the time to speak. It scares the prospect off as well. Consider a salesperson who can’t even have an intro opportunity because she can’t stop talking. Her problem clearly exists at the beginning of the process. This is a perfect example of a pattern of people who can’t stop talking. They don’t listen because it has been ingrained in their minds that they should keep talking so that someone will buy from them. They feel the need to show off and prove their expertise in order to be respected. Changing patterns After listing the patterns that you observe, ask yourself, “What would I have to believe to be true in order to keep acting this way?” What we believe determines how we act. If you believe that talking about money is wrong, then you’ll probably act in ways in accordance with that belief. A lot of these beliefs are

Sales leaders must help their teams perform at peak levels, so they must start by understanding how to effectively coach struggling sellers. I’ve seen this kind of coaching done badly in the past, and I’ve walked my own team members through these struggles. I’ve developed tips of my own and I’ve learned from Mike Weinberg’s book Sales Management Simplified. Questions to ask All sales reps and sales leaders endure dark moments where nothing seems to work out. Despite the fact that we’ve been selling for years, we endure periods where we simply can’t close. Very often, when that happens, there are several key things we must address. These situations don’t develop overnight, and they usually result from slippage in certain areas. Begin by answering the following questions as honestly as you can. You’ll never find improvement if you’re dishonest about your situation. Does the struggling seller have a desire to succeed and thrive in sales? If he doesn’t have the drive to succeed, no amount of training or coaching will help. Why is this particular seller on my sales team? Did you inherit this seller? Did you hire him? How did the seller get into this situation? What signs did you see along the way? What has been done to fix the problem? What steps has the seller taken? What steps have you taken? One-on-one meetings If you aren’t already holding them, schedule one-on-one meetings with your sellers. I’m a big believer in this method because these leadership meetings offer opportunities to connect with our team members. One-on-one meetings with sellers provide time to fine-tune and fix micro-problems before they become huge cracks that jeopardize the stability of our organizations. These can be monthly, or weekly, but quarterly isn’t frequent enough. As you work with a struggling rep, you can determine the things that stopped happening. Did he stop planning his prospecting? Is he failing to manage his time? Does he fail to establish a plan for his activities? If you aren’t engaging in one-on-one coaching, you won’t know what’s happening with your team. When you recognize the problems, you can implement solutions and guide your team members to the right solutions. These meetings should be knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye if possible. Conducting one-on-one meetings communicates to your reps that you care about their success. When you take time out of your schedule to share suggestions and guidance with your team members, it’s meaningful to your team. If something is important to your sales reps, it must be important to you. One-on-one meetings help you determine what’s important to your team members. If the rep is really struggling, you can increase the frequency of your coaching sessions. Changing mindset When I was a sales rep selling software, I changed my mindset so that I considered myself the entrepreneur over my territory. Mike Weinberg suggests that you do the same by establishing a business plan for your territory or area. Whether you’re a BDR or an inside sales rep, begin by determining a goal for yourself. For struggling sales reps, help them to create their own goals and then to establish a plan to follow. Including them in the plan gives them accountability. Begin with small goals over the next three months of the quarter. Consider what your financial goal will be. Then determine exactly how they’ll accomplish that. Identify the existing customers that you’ll engage. Establish a time frame in which your rep will accomplish that goal. Remember to include consequences. Ask your reps what a fair turnaround would be. Then ask your reps what should happen if they don’t meet their stated goals. Very often your reps will establish tougher consequences for themselves than you might have set. Desire to improve When you have a sales rep with an obvious desire to improve, bend over backward for that person. Move mountains for her. If she is taking advantage of coaching and she establishes an awesome business plan, reward her efforts. Find other resources that will help her succeed. Get her books or send her links to relevant podcasts. Meet with her when you can, and email her when you can’t meet. Check in through the day and throughout the week. When your sales reps thrive, your business will improve and your company will grow. It’s far cheaper to help your sales reps improve than to begin the hiring process over again because you need successful sellers. #SalesTraining On the other hand, if your sellers don’t have a strong desire to succeed, and they won’t dedicate the effort to improve, then it may be time to remove them from your team. In my own case, I had sales leaders who believed in me and who recognized my drive to improve. They coached me through my struggles and helped me get where I am today. Re-evaluate Once you’ve worked through the plan over the course of 30-90 days, if your rep still isn’t improving, you must identify why. If you’ve done the one-on-one coaching and you’ve helped her create a sales plan, you m

Meetings serve an important purpose in business so we must learn how to run better meetings to avoid the feeling that we are wasting our time. Reshan Richards is a career educator who launched an app — targeted for use in schools — that ultimately became a software business. He has seen a significant intersection between things that are effective in both business practices and the classroom. Together with Steve Valentine, also a career educator, he is collaborating to articulate and pinpoint the specific moves that can be borrowed from the teaching profession and implemented in business. Steve has studied leadership and its application in order to work with young people and help them understand basic leadership. Meeting mistakes The problems that plague corporate meetings often mirror those of ineffective classrooms. Primarily, the transmission of information isn’t right for the audience who is meant to understand it. People often go back to their defaults or their own experiences to measure what is right. If, for example, you get called into a meeting where one person is doing all the talking or all the work, it isn’t a good use of anyone’s time. It wasn’t likely called for the service of the people who are meant to share the information. In education, a difference exists between the transmission of information and the building of knowledge. Reshan and Steve believe that the best kinds of meetings are those that leave people feeling like they couldn’t possibly have had the same great experience without the meeting. In other words, there’s no substitute for the meeting, and people are glad they went. Unfortunately, that’s a rare occurrence in both business and education. If you think about the amount of time and effort it takes to secure a face-to-face meeting with a customer or client, it’s important to be respectful of that person’s time, energy and attention. Never leave him doubting why he was called into that room. #BetterMeetings Bad meetings Reshan’s company, Explain Everything, worked with a Fortune 100 company to help them run better training for new-to-title employees. As he evaluated their structure, he realized that 90 percent of the time during a week-long seminar was spent sitting watching PowerPoint presentations. The other 10 percent of the time was application of what they learned. The following week, those employees were sent into the field. The meetings were efficient and easy to plan, but retention was low, so he worked with them to rethink their time together. He encouraged the company to think about how it might best utilize the experts in the meetings as well as how the information should be delivered. They also found that they were teaching concepts on Monday that the employees wouldn’t get to apply until Thursday. The distance between the lesson and the application meant that the employees had to learn the information twice. For Steve, the very best meetings are those that are allowed to be messy and those that permit people to drop their status. He measures the quality of a meeting by the extent to which people are treated as learners and the extent to which they actually learn something they didn’t know when they walked in. That information doesn’t have to appear as a revelation. Rather it can simply be the chance to build knowledge together in the temporal context they share. Internal meetings Planning a great meeting looks exactly the same as planning a great lesson or learning experience. Reshan and Steve think in terms of three motions, or phases. Before the meeting During the meeting After the meeting These stages parallel the stages of sales, where sellers engage in pre-call, during, and then follow-up. As the meeting facilitator, you should have a really good awareness of the prior knowledge participants have prior to the meeting. Meeting prep Often times meetings get scheduled by those who have the authority to do so, but the attendees don’t know the agenda until they arrive. Those that get the agenda ahead of time either get it too far in advance or too close to the meeting time. Meeting prep also varies greatly among the attendees at meetings. Some people dutifully prepare for the meeting while others never even look at the agenda. The facilitator often has to go to the lowest common denominator because a percentage of people didn’t prepare. In the end, that holds the entire organization back because it means that instead of starting at level 7 in the dialog, you’re starting at zero because there is no ritual around basic procedures. Ask yourself whether it’s necessary to actually have everyone in the same room at the same time in order to achieve your outcome. Brain breaks If you’re interested in making sure that learning happens in your meetings, build in brain breaks where you provide time for people to synthesize the information you provide. Things often move quickly in meetings, and if you build simple pauses like questions or discussions into the meeting itself, yo

Sales is a year-round activity with no off-season and no breaks, so it’s important for sellers to understand how to deal with stress, fatigue, burnout, and a lack of creativity. Dana Cavalea is the former Director of Strength & Conditioning and Performance for the New York Yankees. Coach Dana, who helps companies optimize performance and productivity, wrote a book called Habits of a Champion: Nobody Becomes a Champion By Accident. He became a coach after realizing the tremendous difference that coaches made in his own athletic career, and how they helped him overcome bumps in the road. Opportunity knocks Dana, who originally hails from New York, chose to attend school in Tampa because he knew it was near where the Yankees conducted their spring training. When he got the opportunity to join the team as the guy who handed out towels and cleaned the weight room, he jumped on it. Within a few years, he earned a paying job as the director of strength and conditioning and performance, and the team won a championship during that time. He discovered, through that experience, that many executives, CEOs, and sales teams wanted to know how athletes prepare to compete at the highest levels. How do they deal with injuries and fatigue and the obstacles they face during a season? How do they keep showing up every day in the face of fatigue and burnout? Individual protocol People assume that high-level musicians and athletes feel good every time they perform, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re tired a lot, but they don’t tell themselves that. They understand that fatigue is part of life and that you’re going to have days where you don’t feel great. The goal, Dana said, is to have fewer of those days and more of the days where you do feel great. To do that, Dana coaches people to focus on a couple of simple things that affect performance. Hydration Sleep These factors can inhibit the way you function overall. To address them, you must have an individual routine specific to your needs that helps you perform at your best every single day. Some players like music that pumps them up, and other players like music that calms them down. Each person must have a routine and protocol that is based around their needs. But how do you get there? You get there by testing things. If you sleep for six hours but wake feeling tired, that may mean that you need more sleep, or that you need to understand your 90-minute sleep cycles better. We must perform each day and test different things like the food we eat to determine what makes us feel better. How do I feel? Begin by asking yourself the question, “How do I feel?” Phrased that way, the question takes you out of yourself and gives you a moment in the midst of all that you have going on to consider how you feel. People listen to a million different podcasts and listen to two or three books at a time, and we’re so busy that we don’t take time to think about how we’re feeling. We’re working to create a self-awareness that is super important to determining the strategies that will help you overcome your struggles. Sometimes we underestimate the impact of stress on our bodies. Sports are very competitive, as is business. Sales is extremely competitive. You must prepare and train to compete. Energy wins. You might be a more talented salesperson than I am, but if I have more energy, I’ll continue to show up every day while you take a day off. #SalesSuccess The key is to keep your energy up by hydrating, sleeping, fueling, and training. Then, fill your mind with good stuff to crowd out the doubt and fear. Sports have a defined starting and ending point, but sales continues all year, quarter after quarter. There’s no break because each year leads into another. Expectations If we do well this year, what will the people around us expect from us moving forward? They’ll expect us to do better. So now we’re constantly trying to push our threshold. Although what we did last year was good, it’s not good enough for this year. Expectations shift. Some people, though, get comfortable playing things safe, and doing “just enough.” They don’t want to do more than they’re already doing because they know it will simply shift the expectation higher. People fear success almost as much as they fear failure. Sometimes, they sabotage themselves in order to avoid the pressure of accomplishment. Leaders can help their sales teams overcome these struggles by being honest. If a salesperson has hit his numbers for the month and he has a pending deal that he could close this month but he’s holding it for the next month, his leader must remove the need for the seller to impress him. Creating clarity Dana heard an interview with Mariano Rivera in which Rivera said his career changed when Yankees manager Joe Torre called him into the office and explained that Mo would always be his guy. As long as Torre was with the Yankees, he wanted Mo by his side. That freed Mo to relax and do what he was best at. He was f

While proper mindset is important, the actions high-growth coaches use to motivate their teams allow those teams to succeed in sales. Sarah Wirth works for EcSell Institute and studies sales leadership. Along with her team, they look at the coaches in the organizations they work with knowing that great coaches help teams to achieve better results. Sarah travels the globe studying different teams and applying the best practices they can teach to sales leaders. Their research-based teachings on best practices are grounded in fact rather than opinion. Misconceptions about coaching One of the common misconceptions about coaching relates to the timing of team meetings or sales coaching. Most sales leaders do team meetings weekly thinking that getting everyone together via phone makes the team effective. Based on the study, however, the best sales leaders have their meetings once a month rather than once a week. The monthly meeting is much more interactive and educational than the weekly kind of communication. Sales reps want an interactive educational team meeting where they can hear what the other departments are doing. They also want to hear and learn the best practices used by others in the company. They don’t want to sit and hear all the updates of what’s going on, because those things can be sent and read via mail. Instead, sales reps want a certain level of engagement and content to share during meetings. This content is difficult to achieve when you meet every single week. A longer time frame gives birth to more stories and more experiences to share, which results in meaningful and substantive conversations where everyone on the team learns things. Learning from experience Sellers like to learn the best practices, so they listen to podcasts. They want to learn from people from different fields who bring radical and neat insights that they’re not aware of. The interviews and surveys of salespeople reveal that they don’t want to hear the biggest deals. Instead, they want to hear how to get big deals. They want answers to the objections they encounter and tips to make presentations that help them win deals. They want to hear and learn the stories of how others became successful. It’s more of knowing what they did and how they did it. Salespeople want to be the best version of themselves. They aren’t into sales because of charity. They are in sales because they want to help their families and their clients. Most sales leaders are promoted to their position because they were good salespeople. They go from the bottom to the top without getting any formal training, education, and information on how to become good sales leaders. They learn from experience, and that’s why they become successful. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to transfer all these learnings to their peers so their team can be successful and achieve better sales. Motivate the team There are three actions high-growth sales coaches use to motivate their team: Team meetings done in the right frequency and format One-on-one meetings with each of the team members Feedback on what they’re doing well and what they can improve These three are effective ways to help salespeople grow and improve their skills. One-on-one meetings One-on-one weekly meetings with each team member are as effective as doing one-on-one meetings every other week. Aside from the frequency, it is also important to follow a consistent structure. The best sales leaders start their meetings with personal updates in the life of the salesperson they are talking to. They talk about how their family is doing, and if they’re working from home, sales leaders ask for updates on their projects. Sales leaders spend a few minutes connecting with their team members as people. They show that they care not only as a sales producer but also as a person. The coaching and mentoring from one-on-one meetings change a salesperson’s motivation and attitude towards his work. It ignites a fire in him that helps the team meet its sales goals. Even books can’t do this because no matter how good the contents of the books are, the pages can’t hear their ideas or challenge them with questions. There is no substitute for talking through what’s going on in their sales territory or getting their input on the strategies that they’re pursuing. Asking imploring questions during one-on-one meetings breeds in-depth conversations that are helpful for both parties to grow. Do one-on-one meetings with your salespeople either weekly or bi-weekly depending on what works best for your team. Give feedback Give your team members feedback on their selling skills regularly. After successfully closing an important deal with your salespeople, debrief them, and discuss what you saw in their selling skills. Talk about what aspect they did well in the presentation and point out the things they can improve. There is no better time to improve your team’s skills than seeing its members in action. When you see them do what they do best

Sales from the Street - The Unicorn Seller Jen is the unicorn seller and everyone is enchanted by her rainbow-colored sales skills. She has lots of techniques and strategies which help her close deals. You want Jen, but she’s from the competing company and just in time, you heard that Jen wants to jump ship. This is your dream come true! You think of Jen and you automatically think of all the clients she’s bringing along. It’s a whole list of clients and deals closed left and right. Your company will be making money and you’re going to hire more people due to expansion. Jen is the answer! As a top-performing sales rep, I was once Jen, too. I’ve had my fair share of being lured by other companies. I know how it feels to be offered something and to be on the receiving end of the decision whether to hire the top-performing sales rep or not. Before making that decision, here are some things that you need to consider. Why are they leaving? We make decisions out of desperation sometimes, especially if money is included in the picture. When your sales aren’t doing too well and you need the pipeline, you want people who can bring the money in. Even if you’re snagging them from the competitor. You present them with a good 401k plan, you say all the nice things to convince them to jump to your company, and you tell them how fantastic your company’s culture is. You need to assess the situation seriously before making a hiring decision. These are some of the questions that you can ask yourself: Why are they leaving the company? Are they a problem in disguise? Are you willing to take that risk? Why would they come to your company when they’re already making tons of money in their current company? The answers to these questions will help you understand their reasons and see if they’re a fit for your company’s values. What did they do for the competitor? In Mark Weinberg’s book, The Sales Management Simplified, he pointed out the need for sales leaders to consider what the salesperson did for the previous company. You need to consider whether they sold at their last company. It is important to know the system of how their previous company worked. Find out whether they were tasked to find their opportunities or the opportunities were given to them. You need to be specific about the things they do well. When hiring a top seller to your organization, be clear about whether his skills are a match to the skills that your company is looking for. You might end up bringing a burden to your company instead of an asset. #TopSeller What if the person you hire hates prospecting? After three months of work, you see no progress because that salesperson never had to prospect before and now she is having a difficult time. This situation is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit. It will never work. Be upfront Many sales leaders and managers are lured into this kind of situation because they focus on the number of opportunities they will generate or the business they can get from their competitors once they’ve hired the top-earning sales rep. But this isn’t always the case. You must remember that contracts are of two kinds: the long-term and short-term contracts. Jen, the unicorn seller, might be able to sweet-talk some of her clients into coming with her to the new company, but clients with long-term contracts will be staying in the previous company until their contract ends. When it does, you’ll need to coax them into coming to sign with your company. It’s a long process and it takes patience. If that’s the case, you need to be upfront and figure out how much business Jen can bring over. Ask her how much business she is bringing along. Talk about the numbers and figure out how you can convince the clients to jump from their current company to yours. Think of the agreement structure and find the solution. Figure out if there’s a non-compete. All of these things must be considered before you bring Jen along. Take Tom, for example. I worked with Tom before and wherever he went, his clients tagged along with him. But that isn’t always the case for some clients who are in long-term agreements. People love Tom and he would often bring a couple of businesses with him to the current company. He is a great salesperson, but even at his best, he still can’t bring all of his clients along with him. Culture The fourth thing to consider is the culture of the company. Will the salesperson fit with the culture of your company? Will your sales team like the new person you’re bringing along? Is there bad blood between them in the past, perhaps like client stealing? It is challenging to fit in and adjust to the ways your company works right away. The new salesperson you’re hiring must be willing to follow the culture. Have the adult talk and orient the salesperson to the ways of your company and how things work. Give her some time to adjust and if it still doesn’t work, then be ready to cut losses and move on. Do not toss money on somethin

The Pipeline Hoax The American dream or the pipeline hoax? The American dream is about owning a home or a piece of property that belongs to you. But homes are expensive and not everyone can afford the American dream. In the year 2000, people who shouldn’t have qualified for home-ownership started owning homes and this occurrence caused a worldwide crisis. The housing crisis connects to sales in two ways: greed and improper qualification. Bankers wanted to get more mortgages so they could sell these mortgages to the secondary market. The problem with this is that people who were getting houses were not qualified for the mortgages they got. The bankers did whatever it took to get people through the door. When prices went up, these homeowners fell short and eventually lost their homes. Sales pressure As sales leaders, you face this situation often. You need to bring in the dollars, and you’re judged based on how much money you can help the company make. Sales reps are expected to have as many deals as possible in the pipeline. This is where the hoax comes in. Salespeople sometimes mask leads in later stages of the pipeline as opportunities. These deals don’t close because the people were never truly qualified. They don’t have the money or the time frame. Sellers are marking leads who are investigating, doing research, and window shopping as though they are opportunities. The sales reps may have 50 of these deals but only 10 truly qualified people. The sales reps keep adding these people to the pipeline because they’re told to add opportunities. The quality decreases because they’re adding leads instead of real opportunities. Similar to the housing crisis, the sales reps report these numbers to you. As the sales leader, you present it to the VPs and they make decisions based on the potential revenue sources. When the time comes for the revenue to start coming in, you look bad, the VPs look bad, and the company looks bad. As a result, someone is getting fired. This situation causes a crisis within the organization. Sales leaders take the fall because they’ve been deceived by the sales reps who try to sell leads as opportunities. Consistent education As sales leaders, it’s your responsibility to make sure that the pipeline hoax doesn’t happen again. Yelling at your sales reps won’t solve the problem. What you need is consistent education. One-on-one coaching time One-on-one coaching time with your sales reps is critical. Make sure to establish a distinct definition of a lead versus an opportunity. Don’t assume that sales reps know this because it’s in the sales handbook or in the orientation. Play it safe by reiterating it to the sales reps so that the quality of your leads won’t deteriorate. Watch the internal culture. Numbers are good but they must be the right numbers. Teach them that a proper lead is someone who shows interest, has the budget, and has a specific timeframe. Sales reps must be able to gauge this information in their business conversations. Give the sales reps a rundown of the important steps in the process. Print them and put them on their desks to keep the culture focused on quality. Sales leaders can talk about all these things with their sales reps in one-on-one meetings. Discuss these subjects with them, see how they take on deals, and don’t be afraid to identify and fix the problems. Role-playing Role-playing is another excellent method for educating your sales reps. Have your sales reps do a role-play of how they talk to their clients Have your senior sellers who excel in their jobs demonstrate how they qualify their leads properly Point out how and what should happen or how they go about getting the proper information. Doing all these things protects you from falling into the hoax. Re-education is the answer to an organization’s problem. When the sales reps aren’t asking the right questions and when they don’t understand what leads and opportunities are, they’ll bring in numbers that look crazy at the end of the quarter. Stop assuming that your team knows everything. Re-educate your sales team to the basics of the selling process. #BacktoBasic Foster the proper culture in the organization so your sales reps will bring in the right numbers and close more deals. “The Pipeline Hoax” episode resources Take care of your sales team and help them improve. Learn more about that with The Sales Evangelist Certifies Sales Training Program. It’s a helpful tool for salespeople and sales leaders to help them improve their skills and abilities in finding the right customers, asking the right questions, and closing a great deal. There are 12 modules in all but you can get the first two modules for free. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers w

Some people believe that quitting is bad, but Dr. Stanley Robertson believes that the winners-never-quit fallacy is preventing your success. Dr. Stan — CFO for a non-profit in Chicago — takes issue with the idea that quitting is always bad and he wants to share ideas about how to become a successful quitter. Quitting Quitting is simply giving up on something. You can quit going to the gym or quit a bad relationship or quit eating certain foods. You can quit just about anything. It’s easy to see from these examples that quitting isn’t always bad, but he takes it a step further. He believes that the winners-never-quit fallacy prevents people, and sellers, from finding success. Sometimes we have to quit things, and sometimes it’s even desirable to quit things. In fact, we should be quitting things all the time. Dr. Stan got the idea from his son, who is a Marine Corps officer. As he approached the end of his tour of duty, he called his dad one day to say he was considering quitting. He wasn’t sure he wanted to continue being a Marine Corps officer. Dr. Stan’s advice at the time was to keep going. He pointed to the benefits, the prestige, and the opportunities it would provide. His son, who was 23 at the time, would be able to retire at 43. These were the things he thought were good. Eventually, he rethought his response, and he told his son that he should quit if that’s what he really wanted. Quit shaming Based upon that experience, he came up with the concept of “quit shaming,” or embarrassing people because they quit things. We tend to look down on people who divorce from a bad marriage, or who quit a job that isn’t working out, or who quit an investment. We sometimes even hide the fact that we quit because we fear the pushback. When Dr. Stan was young, a guy offered to sell him a VHS — which was new technology at the time — for $200, where it typically sold for $600. Stan bought the VHS only to find that the box was full of bricks rather than a VHS. He was devastated to lose all his money. In order to replace the income, Stan stole things. He eventually went into the Marine Corps himself, where his petit theft ended in a court-martial, with Stan losing his stripes. He knew he had to quit making those same choices. In the end, he gave up stealing and earned his law degree. Every human being goes through a growth process that demands that they give up things along the way. In fact, seasons of life sometimes lead us to quit things. Take, for example, Arnold Swarzenegger, who gave up body-building for acting, and then gave up acting for politics. Our life cycle often causes us to give up things, but some people can’t disengage from the things they are doing because they are emotionally tied to them. Course correction The point isn’t to quit altogether because something isn’t working out. Instead, make a course correction. Do the next right thing. In order to be successful in life, you have to create new things and new goals to replace the things you gave up. The biggest challenge for people who need to disengage from things is emotional trauma. If you’re going to quit, acknowledge the negative emotions. Recognize that some people will try to embarrass you, so you must develop a plan forward. The negativity will be less impactful if you have a new plan in place. We have a problem disengaging from things. Researchers conducted a study called the Jigsaw Puzzle Study in which they studied two groups who were tasked with completing a jigsaw puzzle. One group completed the puzzle, while the group was intentionally interrupted. Researchers discovered that the group who completed the puzzle was happy, while the other group spent twice as much time thinking about the puzzle. The human brain is hard-wired for completion. When we give up something, our brains are hard-wired to complete that circle. Times you shouldn’t quit Don’t quit because things are hard. If you struggle to sell your product, don’t quit. Continue working, and push through those struggles to become a better seller. Don’t quit because you haven’t succeeded yet. The get-rich-quick concept isn’t realistic, and your success could happen next month. Don’t quit because you covet your neighbor’s success. Never compare yourself to someone else’s performance. It’s ok to gain inspiration from your neighbor, but don’t quit because of it. How to quit Interestingly, most people don’t struggle to continue on a given path because that concept has been drilled into our psyche. Ninety-nine out of 100 people will advise you to keep going. Dr. Stan’s work focuses on those people who want or need to give up something but they struggle to disengage. He teaches them how to make that break. One of his clients struggled with her weight and her husband belittled her for it. She didn’t want to give up the relationship, partly because they had a business together. She feared that people would question her decision to quit, but eventually, she got a divorce. Once she gave up the b

Your company continues to grow and you need leaders to guide your team, so you’re considering the question, “When should I promote someone?” Because of your company’s growth, you need leaders and you need managers. So who should you promote? What do you look for in the people who will lead your teams? What characteristics or habits should they possess? Developing leaders Even if your business isn’t growing at breakneck speed, you may need to focus on developing people who can lead when the time comes. The last thing you want to do is keep people in the same position for long periods of time without any opportunity for growth. They’ll get tired and burn out, and then they’ll look elsewhere for growth opportunities. Make sure you’re always looking for ways to create and develop leaders internally. The qualities necessary for leaders in your industry may differ from those of other segments, but for sellers in general, the following guidelines offer a good start for identifying potential leaders. Seller doesn’t equal leader Your employee might be a spectacular seller, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to leadership. Furthermore, if you have a particularly gifted seller on your team, you may not want to remove him from that sales role. It’s tempting to believe that your best closer can become a sales leader and train all your other sellers to close as effectively as he does. And it might be true that he can. But it might also be true that he loves selling and he doesn’t want to spend his time conducting one-on-ones or creating reports. If your team members aren’t interested in leading, don’t force them. Let your sellers do what they do best for your company. Look for these traits as you ponder when to promote someone. Sellers who want to lead When you begin your search, look for sellers who actually want to lead. If one of your team members talks frequently about leading or climbing the corporate ladder, consider giving him the opportunity to do it. If he is ambitious and goal-oriented, he might be just the leader you’re looking for. I recently met with a BDR that a client of mine hired, and the guy was passionate about his work. He strives to go above and beyond the call of duty, and he wants to work his way into a leadership role. He wants to contribute to the organization, but he isn’t power-hungry. He understands that great leaders don’t threaten the people above them because they aren’t competing to take their jobs. Prepare your replacements as you consider other opportunities you’ll compete for. In every leadership role, consider who could replace you in your position, and then ask yourself how you can develop that person. #SalesLeaders Sellers with a proven track record Desire isn’t enough to be a successful seller. You must also have good results behind your name. You’ll note that I said above that you should not necessarily remove your top seller to turn him into a sales leader. The exception is when that seller is the best candidate for the job and when she wants to do the job. Recognize, too, that a top performer won’t necessarily be the only team member with amazing results. Consider the top five sellers on your team and then decide whether any of them possess leadership potential. Consider whether they have any desire to train other sellers, and take note of a “lone wolf” mentality that suggests they don’t want to share with others. Make it your goal to develop a nurturing leadership approach in which team members help one another. Sellers who don’t volunteer to lead Keep in mind that some sellers may not volunteer to lead, but that shouldn’t necessarily exclude them from consideration. If they have the framework, the talents, and the characteristics of a great leader, challenge them to step out of their comfort zone. In the book Sales Management. Simplified, Mike Weinberg recalls a CEO who believed it was his responsibility to stretch people like a rubber band: to the edge of their capabilities without breaking them. They may not recognize their own capabilities, but your job is to help them see what they are capable of. Sellers who are problem-solvers Too often, sellers fall into the trap of complaining about their work situations. Instead of looking for ways to improve things, they look for mistakes. That negative outlook shows in their results. Look for sellers who are problem-solvers as you seek people to promote. Typically, they’ll be your best sellers because they make it a practice to solve problems for customers. If you find a seller like this among your team members and promote him, he’ll set an example of problem-solving for the rest of the team. You’ll have less to worry about because they’ll solve the problems before they get to you. Surround yourself with leaders who can think for you and take care of things so you can focus on other issues. Sellers who are willing to work Your leaders must be willing to work hard. This doesn’t mean that they work 18-hour days, because it’s very p

Sellers often face obstacles in their sales process, and the need to remove them is sometimes referred to as the need to “Shoot the donkey.” Will Batista has worked on several presidential campaigns and other political campaigns throughout the country. He recently led a state ballot initiative to change Nevada’s constitution and now he is now working in the energy sector, particularly in the communications and investor relations of the company. Jonathan Diaz works in the university setting where he serves as an adviser and he also teaches classes. Shoot the donkey This phrase originates from an article that Will discovered while he was looking at political media companies. Shooting the donkey means removing obstacles in your course. In the movie Patton, based on true events, the characters were heading up a mountain but there was a donkey in the way. Failure to get the donkey out of the way would put them in a dire situation resulting in casualties, so they sent out some of the guys to move the donkey. Nothing worked so the general said, ‘Shoot the donkey!’ Sometimes we have to remove obstacles in our way by whatever means necessary, especially in the sales industry, where you eat or you don’t eat based on the sales you make. #ShootTheDonkey Remove the obstacles When we were in college, our obstacles were our beliefs. We didn’t believe in ourselves as much as we should have. There are times that we don’t give ourselves credit when we should. This is true in sales as well. You might not trust your sales ability and you keep telling yourself that you’re no good at it. This idea is difficult to overcome but it’s imperative that you get through it because it’s the only way for you to become successful. For example, back in college when we were selling water, the first obstacle that we had was that we spent a lot of money to get a booth and to get all the water. In order to do that business at a bigger scale, we needed more people, so we went to Idaho Falls and that’s when we did a better job. The third time, we ran out of water and we could have given up, but we didn’t. Will went to Sam’s club and got ice and made it happen. We succeeded on a small scale. We didn’t make hundreds and thousands of dollars but it was proof that when you put a desire into action, you can make it happen. Fear of obstacles Sometimes we fear obstacles and see them as a negative thing because they do have a negative impact at that moment. There is, however, an opportunity for growth and change in every obstacle, and the ability to tackle problems in a different way. It is a great time for a change and to challenge your ability to think differently. The water selling was very basic but year after year, we saw that we’re not doing so great and that became an opportunity to improve the process. Obstacles are typically not good things, but they are opportunities for us to grow and to think critically so that when we are faced with another problem in the future, we will be able to overcome the challenge. In politics A lot of times when you are trying to get something done, there are always goals that you need to meet. Will was thrown into the fire in his first year working as field staff in Reno because he had no experience recruiting volunteers or meeting metrics. He had to learn the ropes quickly and the obstacles he faced were the goals that were being imposed on him. He had to find ways to meet the goals regardless of whether he had volunteers or not. Will needed to get into these gated communities but he couldn’t get in. Sometimes, they’d follow another car and find a way to get to the individuals and voters to get their contact information. He had to do whatever was necessary to meet their goals. They had goals in mind and they focused their actions to meet the goals. Obstacles will always be there but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. Another challenge was getting people into the office to make the calls for the campaign so sometimes, Will had two phones going at the same time. He’d be leaving a message on one phone and talking on the other. Hustling is when you do what you need to do to hit your goals. For students John advises students of three main things as they seek the best fit: Identify their interests Identify their skills and abilities Determine their values, or the things that are important to them For students, the biggest obstacle is the parental control or familial influence. Students now are pressured with the idea that they need to choose a major that will provide them with stability in the future. Many are being pushed into taking courses that they aren’t interested in, courses that they aren’t good at, and courses that are not even aligned to their values. John tells his students that for them to shoot the donkey, they need to remove the barrier and talk to their parents. They need to choose the major of their choice because, at the end of the day, it’s them who will go through all the studying and not their pare

Creating an authentic personal brand is important because everything that we develop in business is based on creating a personal brand. As sales reps, polishing your personal brand must be a priority to stand out to everyone no matter where you go or where you are. Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster are co-founders of intrinsic branding practice Root + River. They have combined their experience and expertise in branding and passion for personal growth to guide individuals in combining authentic original brands that attract new opportunities and levels of possibilities. The intrinsic practice Both Emily and Justin believe that every great brand is a spiritual experience. As coaches, they guide individuals regardless of the roles they play in the organization. Their goal is to make them understand that deep foundational soul of their brand and put that into practical use every day. Branding is a practice, which means you need to do it every single day whether you are aware of it or not. Intrinsic practice will help you be aware of the things that you do and get organized around them so that those things will have far greater impact for a longer time. What is branding? In simple terms, a brand is how other people experience what you believe. The brand is how people experience you in everyday situations and conversations. If you understand what that experience is giving to people, you can tap into that in a more conscious manner to help build your brand in a way that has greater impact. Frank Rogers is a good example. He is a great salesperson who developed a thought leadership brand. He doesn’t wait for the market to tell him what to say. Instead, he leads from the front. Chip Scholz from North Carolina is another example. He is an executive coach with a very memorable brand who uses a direct and Socratic approach in his coaching. Regardless of the audience you are talking to and the role you have, whether you’re a coach or a sales leader, you must follow the same principles because you are responsible for two brands. First, you’re responsible for your personal brand, and second, you’re responsible for the brand that you are representing. There are three specific qualities in intrinsic branding: inner traits that show up in the outer world. Be original. Don’t be a karaoke singer or cover band. Be an original thinker, an original producer. Articulate well. Learn how to tell your story eloquently, consistently, and compellingly. Do this without hesitation and insecurities. Share your story from the heart with conviction. Be vulnerable. Do not give a packaged version of yourself. It is best to carry the lightest armor you can because when you do, you emanate something. All three traits help to make a brand a positive contagion. Originality Anyone in any position has an opportunity to take an inventory of what their true expertise is and what they are better at doing than anybody else. If you are good in sales, ask yourself how it manifests, what it looks like for you, and in what aspect of the selling process you are crushing it. These are difficult questions to answer because most times, what comes easily to us doesn’t get much value. But if you are able to tune into the things that you are good at and able to share those with people, you’ll have the opportunity to be an original thinker and brand yourself as a thought leader in whatever sliver of space that is. Make sure that you share the tips that you have and give feedback to people who are open to it. You begin to build your brand by being a thought leader when you differentiate yourself in those conversations. Fear Many feel apprehensive in speaking and expressing their original self because of two reasons: the fear of becoming an over-promoter and the social emphasis on humility. There is a fear of overdoing things and the feeling of bombarding people with content they don’t really need. But sharing is a moral obligation if the content is good and you are producing something that is helpful for the community. The second one is humility. While humility is a beautiful trait, it is unfortunately a terrible brand strategy because you have to suspend the idea that you’re not special. Conditioning From a very early age, we are conditioned to put the emphasis on other people and not on ourselves. People who talk about themselves are looked down upon. But the truth is you have a voice and you have a message. You have something that transcends the product or service that you are selling, and you have a piece of yourself to offer to the world. You can’t do these things if you choose the road of humility. As a sales rep, it is your role to share your gifts with the world, and the way people can access your gifts is through your products and services. Consistent authenticity Authenticity comes from knowing who you are and what you can do. It stems from acceptance and conviction. When you discover who you are, the next thing you need to master is how to achieve consiste