The Sales Evangelist

It can be frustrating for prospects to ask to speak to your current customers, and it can leave you wondering, "Should I Give Client References?" It can be tricky to balance this need, because you don't want your current customers, the ones you've developed into raving fans, to be constantly bombarded by prospects. Root cause Throughout the process, your prospects are trying to determine whether you're a good fit and whether you can truly help solve their problem. I recommend that you develop a wide base of people that can give you good support. But let's address the root cause of how your prospects got to this point. In my experience, it's because they don't have confidence in you as an organization, so they are seeking third-party validation. They don't want to make a bad decision. Put yourself in your buyer's shoes. His job or his reputation may be on the line. His company may not have a lot of money, so they can't waste it on buying the wrong product or service. Diffuse risk This issue usually traces back to a fear of risk, so you must diffuse this fear. [Tweet "If you're getting the request for references early on in your sales process, somehow you're failing to address their fears. #Objections"] It's not bad to give customer references, but client testimonials might work better. You can collect them in video form or as case studies. In last week's episode, we discussed the importance of leave-behinds, and testimonials might be a great option for you, especially if you're in a high-risk industry. Leave behind video testimonials of your current customers addressing some of the common questions or the challenging objections you routinely hear. You can leave them information about your past customers' pain and how you've addressed it. You can also indicate that you'll discuss these topics more on your next interaction. Your prospects simply don't want to be guinea pigs. Value You know your product or service is fantastic, but your prospects don't know that yet. Give value in order to help them understand. Use videos, case studies, and client testimonials on your website to communicate value. You can also create YouTube videos to help your client when he does the research you know he's planning to do. They'll establish a level of comfort with your product or service. If I'm your customer, I've got my own business to run. I'm too busy to answer all your customers' questions and to do all your selling for you. Referral phone calls interrupt my day. Compromise Perhaps the best option, then, is to offer to provide testimonials and case studies first to see if they can address the most frequent questions. Then, if the customer still has a level of uncertainty, you can consider providing referrals. You can even explain that you're trying to be considerate of your current customers just as you would do for this prospect someday when they've become your customer, too. Make sure you minimize the prospects' risk. Give them an opportunity to alleviate. Use leave-behind to help you accomplish that. Tell stories of clients that had similar challenges. "Should I Give Client References?" episode resources You can connect with Ebony at her website, www.ebenumequationcoaching.com, or on LinkedIn @EbonySmithCoach. You can connect with Abdullah at [email protected]. Connect with me at [email protected]. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episod

Your brand tells your story when you're not in the room, and today Lindsay Pedersen shares tips for forging an ironclad brand with sales reps, entrepreneurs, and other business professionals. Lindsay is a brand strategist who helps professionals identify the single idea that their business stands for. She's passionate about working with leaders to harness the power of brand every day. Branding Brand is what you stand for in the mind of your audience. If your audience is a group of customers, it's the thing you mean to your customers. If it's future employers, it's what you mean to them. It's a crystallized meaning of what you uniquely bring to your audience. [Tweet "When you stand for one idea, it's easier for your audience to grasp it than if you stand for multiple ideas. It's easier for a person to let one idea in. #branding"] When you spray a bunch of ideas out, it's harder for your audience to understand. It's in our interest for our audience to be able to understand because they'll be more like to remember us, like us, and talk about us. It's up to us to make it easy by distilling it for them. Empathy We want to empathize and understand what it's like to be our customer. You and your company are not the center of the universe for that customer. They have many other things going on besides your value proposition. When you crystallize it into something specific, it uses their worldview rather than their worldview. It makes it easier for them to buy what you're selling. Sometimes as businesses, we forget that we're not selling to a machine or an inanimate object. We're selling to humans with joys, sorrows, scarcities, worries, and pride. When they feel seen they are more likely to bond with you and want to do business with you. Deconstructing brand One of Lindsay's motives for writing her book was people's widely varying definitions of brand. For some people, it's the name of the business. For others, it's the logo. Others assume it's related to marketing budget or television advertising. She concluded that the concept was becoming problematic, and she wanted to demystify it. There's some merit to all of those ideas, but she needed to bust the myths about what brand isn't. Otherwise, we'll keep having puzzling conversations where people aren't speaking the same language. 9 Criteria of ironclad brand Not all brand is created equally. You have a brand whether you deliberately created it or allowed it to be passively created. If you aren't actively choosing the meaning, you won't have the brand position you want to have. A brand needs to be big enough to matter to your customer. A brand must be narrow enough that you own it. Your brand must be asymmetrical so it uses your lopsided advantage to position you with your customer. Your brand must be empathetic enough to address a deeply relevant human need. It must be optimally distinct so it strikes a balance between being a familiar promise while also being novel. It's a balance between functional and emotional so that it's rationally meaningful to your customer but also emotionally resonant. Your brand must be a sharp-edged promise that is simple and singular. It must have teeth and be demonstrably true. Your brand must deliver on time, consistently, every time. Vision When you think of sharp objects as they relate to your vision, those things are easier to see. Your eyes have to do less work. Ease is good because when you ask less of your audience they are more likely to learn and remember. An example of this is the fact that people around the world associate the Volvo brand with safety. Same thing with Prius, because people think of fuel-efficient cars. Buick doesn't have this sharp edge in its branding. If you're the CEO of Buick, how do you feel when your audience doesn't know what your brand means? Who even is the audience? The Buick salespeople have to do much more work than the Volvo or Prius salespeople. Wide net We assume that if we can keep the door open without narrowing our message to a target customer that we'll appeal to everyone. The reality is that it's an illusion of an opportunity. The more an entity puts a stake in the ground, the more authentic they are perceived to be. Customers won't trust companies who won't take a stand on anything. People respect you more when you demonstrate what you're optimizing for. The other thing is that developing a specific message might turn away the people you shouldn't be serving anyway, but that's ok because it's time and money you could devote to the people who are your target customers. Mystique Remove the mystique of branding. You don't have to have a good handle on branding in order to intentionally craft your own brand. Choose with crystal clarity who your target customer is, but don't just rely on demographic observations. What are they like? What keeps them up at night? What do they value in life? This doesn't mean you don't sell to other people. It just means that you optimize with humility on your

Growing a small business requires you to think like an entrepreneur, and we can avoid reinventing the wheel if we engage with experienced entrepreneurs to learn more about hyper-growing small businesses. The Florida State Minority Supply Development Council connects us with successful entrepreneurs from a variety of industries, and many of them are using the council to grow their businesses. Every business, regardless of size, struggles with some kind of difficulty. Today, we'll hear from Ebony and Abdullah about how they've overcome the big challenges of entrepreneurship. Accidental entrepreneur Ebony started her career in oil and gas until she found herself facing an ultimatum from her management team. She was being moved to an office that she didn't want to occupy. She took it as a sign to take time for herself. And because of a non-compete clause built into her contract, she took a year off from work and went to coaching school to improve herself and become a better leader. She quickly realized that the idea of coaching had some legs when a friend of hers called her in need of a coach. Although she only had a weekend of training under her belt, the friend recognized that Ebony had more coaching experience than she did. She helped her friend return to the workforce after maternity leave and then moved forward from there. The transition was difficult but she made the decision to invest in herself. She had great savings and knew how to be frugal. She also sold her house in a hot market, which gave her a cushion and time to learn her new profession. Next level She found herself at a business development conference trying to figure out how to get to the next level. Ebony knew that she wouldn't make the same money she had made in her trading career until she became a great coach. She focused on becoming a good practitioner rather than scaling the business. She said she needed to know what she didn't know. She wanted to become the coach that she needed when she was in corporate America. She and other women at the conference decided to create a mastermind, and through that relationship, she discovered the value of certifications for coaches. Ebony also discovered that there were corporations out there that wanted to spend more than a billion dollars annually with small business. Since then, she acquired all the necessary certifications for coaching and she said that people recognize her at events now. The key is to tell people what you do. And then tell them again and again. Eventually, they'll hire you for a small contract and then they'll get bigger. Community Ebony points to her mastermind as one of the drivers of her growth and success. She also said that her four years with the NMSDC have helped her learn things she didn't know she didn't know. [Tweet "Business owners are resourced beyond their imaginations, and it's up to them to have a seat at the table with other people who want to share knowledge. #BuildCommunity"] Change of trade Abdullah Tharoo operates in the credit card payment processing technology industry and he helps companies protect against the credit card breaches that often occur. People often assume that companies like his gained their success overnight. He said he doesn't have a scientific answer to explain his growth, but rather he keeps things simple. About four years ago, he discovered a need to move into a different trade that would allow him to spend more time with his kids and his wife. He stepped back from the family business operating high-end jewelry stores. He had previously thought that he wanted to really find a way to make a difference in people's lives and save them money and help them grow. Abdullah recognized that technology was where everything was headed. Great support He knew he wanted to be involved in technology, so he did research and he engaged mentors. His family's support played a huge role in his move forward, as did the mentors. You need intelligent people outside your situation who can guide you to where you want to go. He said that although he has been attending the NMSDC since he launched his business, there are some deals he hasn't been able to close. Despite that, many of those companies have referred him to other people. Your network decides your net worth. You must have a strong network because the people you walk with are the ones you're going to become. NMSDC Abdullah said he continually returns to the NMSDC to do community service because he meets people there. He meets people who may not be able to directly give him business but who can guide him to the companies that need his service. Warm introductions are so much better than cold calls. He said he doesn't make cold calls anymore because he doesn't have to. He consciously makes the decision to give something back to the community that gives so much to him. He said people go out of their way to help each other. A lot of people don't want to join the NMSDC because they think they can't reach these big

Business owners and sales reps who try to sell to everyone will struggle to succeed until they decide to focus their efforts on the ideal customer. Today, Dr. Frances Richards, whose company helps people reclaim their wealth by transforming their health, talks about the journey of finding her ideal customer. Sales From The Street allows us to connect with a sales professional and hear about the biggest professional struggles that person faced. Dr. Frances is the host of a podcast called Black Entrepreneur Experience, where she interviews CEOs, innovative thinkers, thought leaders, and black entrepreneurs across the globe. Finding a tribe Her biggest struggle was finding her ideal customer, and connecting with the people that her message would resonate with. When you're building an internet business, there are so many different ways to connect with people that it can sometimes be overwhelming for businesses that are trying to find their tribe. She points to the fact that there are plenty of people telling you what you should do to connect with your ideal client, so it's tough to know what to do. She said that people told her, "It's all in the email list," or "It's all in social media," or "It's all in Facebook advertising," or "It's all in the messaging." Changing landscape The hardest part, she said, is trying to determine what's really relevant. And with the internet constantly changing things, the way you build a company in 2019 is different than the steps you might have taken in 2014. The steps to find your ideal customer have changed. And when you talk about sales, certain steps are appropriate whether you're online or offline. Building rapport, and building quality relationships, matters in every situation. Authenticity Dr. Frances said that in order to find her ideal customer, she had to block out all the noise and focus on authenticity. She started by deprogramming herself from the idea of working for someone else. She said she had to adjust to the idea of working for herself and to lose all of the things she was accustomed to, like listening to the bosses tell her what she needed to do. Because she had done many different kinds of sales, she was able to change her mindset from employee mode to employer mode. Then she had to be true to who she really wanted to serve. When she was an employee, she had to serve anyone. Once she started to define who to serve, then she started to attract her ideal customer as opposed to just doing cold calling. To-do lists She had an extensive to-do list of doing 10 posts a day, doing a Facebook live, doing a Periscope, posting on LinkedIn, and all of those other things. She was busy working on the business instead of in the business, which actually brings in income. Once she prioritized how she would get sales and how she would bring value, she got out of the mode of being desperate. She was listening to her clients' pain points and she set out to serve them. She went into the mode of serving and helping her clients, her fan base, her tribe. Dr. Frances has turned down consulting contracts because she wanted to make it a win-win for all parties involved. She operates from a position of making sure both parties are a good fit. Qualified clients The shift to serving her clients resulted in more qualified clients. Previously she connected with clients who really couldn't afford her service so it would have been a disservice to try to work together. She started asking her prospects what they hoped to accomplish and if someone said, "I want to lose 50 pounds in 5 days," she wouldn't even try to convince the person to work with her since the goals were unrealistic. She has found that when she gets qualified, bonafide clients, the two enjoy working together. The clients are getting results and she is building testimonies. [Tweet "Avoid the temptation to work with everyone because everyone is not your ideal client. #IdealCustomer"] Ideal client Just serve the people who really need what you have to offer. Be who you authentically are. There will be plenty of voices telling you what you should do. Instead of following them, dig deep into yourself and discover what you're really passionate about. What makes you sing? What makes you get out of bed every morning? That's half the battle because your attitude dictates your altitude. If you love what you do, you'll do what you love. Dr. Frances uses the acronym DANCE to remind her to be authentic: Determine Action Now Creates Energy. Dancers dance because they want to, not because someone forces them to. Instead of doing things you don't like, do the things you authentically enjoy. Find your passion. "Ideal Customer" episode resources You can connect with Frances at drfrancesrichards.com and you can find her on Facebook and Instagram as Dr. Frances Richards. You can also find her podcast at Black Entrepreneur Experience. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing

I often learn from entrepreneurs and I discovered a lot about storytelling and leadership recently during the Florida State Minority Development Council's expo. On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we'll hear from two of the entrepreneurs I met there. The best leaders learn from past leaders, whether the leadership was good or bad. CJ Latimore and Gustavo Hermida work in two different industries, but the things they share here apply no matter what industry you're selling in. Urban development CJ Latimore is a public art specialist who characterizes his work as "telling stories through architecture and urban development. He says it's about hanging on to cultural icons even after certain buildings have been torn down. He boils it down to adding a soul to buildings. It's one thing to have a building that's structurally sound but CJ believes it's vital to track the communities and demographics that existed in the building before it was torn down. Very often, when a building is torn down to make way for something new, the previous demographic is forgotten. So is their story. Storytelling CJ says it's possible to tell a story without saying a single word, and he points to art as the mechanism. [Tweet "The art of your legacy is bringing people together. #StoryArt"] We must bring people together more efficiently and create a sense of timelessness along the way. Begin by getting people to hear your story. Sales reps often try to add value to the company without even knowing anything about you or developing rapport with you. Business etiquette Consider this situation from a business etiquette perspective. If you don't know me and you don't know what my story is about, how can you act to help me? How can you add value? CJ's mission is to build images to help people get what they want in a prestigious way. When he shares that with people, they often ask to hear more. And when you can get people to say they want to hear more, they're ready for your story. Survival thinking He said his biggest challenge was lack of awareness. Because the human brain is hard-wired to think about food, shelter, and clothing, stories that don't incorporate those ideas can get lost. The answer, he said, is to be creative. Tell a story that will make people focus on something else even briefly. In this case, many people don't readily know what they can do with art. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to them. They don't go to shows or museums. The trick is to incorporate your uniqueness and associate it with food, shelter, and clothing. Survival and storytelling Everyone has pain and the quickest way to get someone to listen to you is to provide a solution to help their pain go away. You'll have their immediate attention because no one wants to be in pain. If you can share a way to save money, save time, or educate your prospect about saving money or time, that's what everyone wants. People want more time with their family and more time for vacation. Your job is to stop people in their tracks with the solutions you offer. People will remember you more if you're unique and if there's something about you that's meaningful. If it's true that the brain has as many as 300 impulses per minute, you have to find a way to engage three or four of those with your story. Other people telling your story When you can get other people to tell your story for you, that's an indication that you have a great story and that you've told your story well. People love to spread a good story. Since the beginning of time, people have shared the greatest historical events through story. Start with your story and turn it into a community story. Own your story. Compile multiple stories that work and make them your own. Make them exceptional. Give people the results that they need. Company values Gustavo Hermida said that his biggest struggle has always been aligning his company with the right people who will carry the company's values forward. His goal is to find people with integrity who make a promise and then deliver on it. It's important because people often distrust salespeople automatically. But people are people, and buying people are people. He has built a career on putting himself in other people's shoes to understand what will help the other person feel comfortable making a decision or able to move a partnership forward. Finding the right people He expanded his search to include looking elsewhere for the right people. Although previous experience was a welcome factor, it wasn't the main qualifier he was looking for. He discovered that he preferred hiring the right person and then forming that person. [Tweet "You hire people with character, not characters. #HireWell"] Company growth Gustavo started the company with zero base and limited financial resources. Over the last two years, the company has made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America. He caters to small startup companies because when it comes to multifunction equipment, sometimes leas

If you find that your deals are falling through the cracks or you're losing your prospects to your competition, perhaps the problem is that you're not leaving anything behind. You might be thinking of brochures and other leave-behinds, but that's not what we're talking about here. Instead, we're talking about the things you should be leaving behind any why these things are so critical to moving your deal forward. Research phase Unless you're dealing with a referral, when you're dealing with a prospect, that person is probably considering other people as well. Even if the prospect reached out to you and seems completely interested, that person is ultimately looking for the best deal. You must stay top of mind. Ensure that you stay relevant and always present without being annoying. You must give the prospect something valuable. Content Consider leaving content behind that ties directly to what you've already discussed. Or leave content that helps the prospect prepare for the next scheduled meeting. Once you've done this a time or two, you'll understand why it's so important. Imagine IT companies in this situation that are evaluating service companies. You won't be the only company they are considering, but you want them to forget those other companies and focus on yours. One option is to determine which other companies the prospect is considering. Create landmines Create landmines for the competitor. For instance, when I sold document management services, I had a competitor whose services were only good for one department. The competitor served that department very well, but the other departments hated their services. I planted the idea in our prospects' minds that a tool that only benefits one department isn't really a valuable tool for the entire company. My leave-behind was the idea that the competitor would only benefit a small portion of the company. If it wasn't a good fit, certain departments wouldn't use it, which would result in wasted money because no one used the software. I suggested to the prospect that a solution that benefits everyone would be a better fit. Format In the past, that kind of content might have appeared in the form of a white paper. Now, however, your prospects are busy and many things are grabbing at their attention. Instead, consider a LinkedIn post or article, or a podcast, or a video addressing the issue. Identify the top things that make your company a favorable choice. Highlight the challenges that your company can solve better than the competition. Educate your buyer before you return for the next meeting or demonstration. That way, when the prospect meets with the competition, they'll know what issues to ask questions about. If you're not leaving anything behind, the prospect may simply respond to the flashy, cool presentation. Notifications Make this tool even more powerful by using tools that notify you when the prospect opens the message or clicks on the video. Consider, for example, that you send a video for your prospect to watch prior to the next meeting. Maybe it answers questions that frequently occur during the second meeting. If you send it with BombBomb, you'll know when the prospect watched it, and whether they watched the entire video. It helps you know when and how the prospect is engaging with your content. Do something different Everyone is leaving a business card, so you must do something that helps you stand out from the crowd. Make your company the obvious choice. Position yourself as the trusted advisor and the one who is helping the prospect understand all the important considerations before making a decision. If you're not leaving anything behind, your promising deal may disappear. "You’re Not Leaving Anything Behind" episode resources If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by Mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and im

Sometimes we lose out on promising deals because our prospects are giving us indications that all is not well but we're failing to listen to what the prospect isn't saying. Oscar Trimboli is a deep listening expert who is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the world, and he starts by helping us understand what we should be listening for when we interact with our prospects. Taught to speak We all learned to speak, to do math, and to study literature, but none of us can remember our listening teacher. As sales reps, we spend a minimum of 55 percent of our day listening, but only about 2 percent of us have been taught how to listen. [Tweet "The productivity hack for the sales rep of the 21st century is learning how to listen. #ListenToLearn"] Remember these two bits of statistics as you listen to the information in today's podcast. The 125/400 rule. I can speak 125 words per minute, but you can listen at 400 words per minute. You're programmed to be distracted and filling in 300 words. You're contemplating what to have for dinner or what to do over the weekend when you realize you have to get back into the conversations. The 125/900 rule. Your prospect can speak at 125 words per minute but you can think at 900 words per minute. The likelihood that the first thing your prospect says is actually the thing he means is about 1 in 9 or 11 percent. If you had 11 percent chance of a successful surgery, you probably wouldn't proceed without a second opinion. Most likely, your prospect is well-rehearsed and is speaking like a well-oiled machine. The most powerful thing we can do is explore the other 800 words per minute that are stuck in their heads. Unblocking pipeline When we grab on to those unspoken words, we can unblock pipeline and begin to understand our prospects. We must be mindful to ask our prospects what they are thinking and to listen for the things the prospects aren't saying. Oscar spends his days teaching people to be obsessed about the cost of not listening. We often don't do this because we assume our competition is those people we normally compete against. Many of us are listening for code words that a prospect might say that would link to a product or benefit. The really skillful sales reps focus on the customer's customer's problem. Instead of thinking about the person in front of you, think about the customer that this person must go speak to. The pipeline becomes shorter and more qualified, and you avoid unexpected surprises. Change the question We should consider the power of asking the question, "How does a business case like this get approved in your organization?" We're good at asking who approves deals without asking how they get approved. Once we ask how it gets approved we will understand who else we're being compared against. Many large organizations have a project management office that filters the funding for all new projects. If you don't know when that group meets or who participates or what other projects you're being evaluated against, you may find your deal slipping away. Understand the 125/900 rule. Help the prospect sell the business case rather than what you're actually selling. Help your prospect orient on the customer rather than on your offering. If you do these things, your pipeline will look very different. Help your team Build some muscle around listening for what isn't said. Find the organization's website and determine what matters to them. Use the words the company uses in your selling process. Don't use your language rather than their language. If the CFO can't read and understand the first page of your proposal, you've failed. Help your reps become fixated on their customers' customers' problems. It's the difference between good and great. Teach in a way that can't be misunderstood and figure out how your clients make money. Listen in color Many of us listen in black and white. Oscar is trying to teach the world to listen in color. How do we notice the energy of the person across from us? Oscar also asks his client, "If this organization was a movie or an actor or a book, which one would it be?" Many people listening might call it Titanic. The question gives them a permission slip to tell the truth in a different way. Use a metaphor to figure out what the prospect is thinking in a different way. You can carry the metaphor forward and discover who the villain of the movie is. If we talk in this colorful metaphorical language we can quickly get much more from our prospects. Listen to what your prospect isn't saying. Get to the truth Your prospects will tell you as many lies as you think they will. They aren't doing it intentionally. It's just that your questioning isn't helping them get to the truth. You can help them bring their truth to life using these techniques. Make it as conversational as possible. If the person you're talking to is a jock, ask which sporting team the organization would be. If he's a nerd, ask him what character on The Big Bang Th

Jordan Ray has endured more challenge in her 21 years than most people experience in a lifetime, so when she goes into a large hospital to share the product she has developed, many people believe that she is too young and they fail to understand that she is making a difference and helping others. It's a common challenge that many people face, and I faced it in the early days of The Sales Evangelist when I was 30 years old and advising people who were twice my age. Generations When Jordan's health failed at 17, she discovered a need for patients with chronic health conditions to accurately track their pain and symptoms. The log helps patients track their own experiences as a way to improve their treatment plans. Jordan isn't offended when people discount her because she's young. As a softball coach for 15- to 18-year-old girls, she recognizes that she's only three years older than her players, and she remembers what it's like to be immature. She said she doesn't get frustrated by the fact that people assume she'll waste their time because she's too young. In fact, she attributes some of it to the fact that people make assumptions about her generation. First impression Though you only get one chance at a first impression, it's possible to change the impression people have. Jordan points to the story and relationships as the keys to overcoming people's assumptions about her. She's very big on building relationships because she understands that people who aren't sold on her product won't buy it no matter how hard she pushes. If they aren't interested in her product after she shares her story and the value she offers, pushing won't change that. [Tweet "Focus on building relationships instead of selling because even if people don't buy, they might refer you to someone who will buy. #BuildingRelationships"] She considers herself good with people and she said that's key to owning a sales company. Building relationships Jordan goes to a breakfast networking event every Tuesday where she's the youngest person by about 25 years. She estimates that she has shared a sit-down with all 50 members of the group despite being too young. Many of them like her story because she only shares a 30-second brief. She tells them enough of her story to leave them intrigued so that they want to have a follow-on meeting with her. She begins the relationship by looking for ways to refer business to her prospects. Her goal is to serve them by helping them. Biggest challenge She admits that sometimes she feels like she doesn't have enough to offer in terms of referrals because she has only been doing this for seven months. Compared to people who have been working for 40 years, her connections don't feel very significant. Jordan said that her years playing sports taught her to have very high expectations for herself so she struggles when she can't match the referrals that others can. While other people are helping her and giving referrals, she finds herself wishing she could do more to return the favor. Business friends Jordan laughs about the fact that her personal friends are in their 20s and her business friends are in their 50s. She said she loves keeping up with those people. Though the sales are obviously nice, she understands that the relationships are going to last beyond one sale or one year. If she makes one sale, that can't compare to a relationship with someone at a nonprofit who knows countless people and who will support her even as she supports them. Persistence She calls herself big on persistence. She got lots of no's before she launched the company. Many people were convinced she should stay in school. She recommends staying persistent and refusing to give up on your vision. You'll get a hundred no's, but you'll get that one yes. "Too Young" episode resources You can connect with Jordan at www.limitlessmedicallogs.com. You can also email her at [email protected] and share your story with her or you can find her on social media @JordanRay. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. I hope you enjoyed the show toda

Sellers have built up tension and fears which prevent us from reaching our true potential, but if we create a replacement picture of what success will look like, we'll move toward positive change. Mark Panciera is a third-generation funeral director, so he says he has a caregiver's heart, but he has grown into being a sales maven. He's a partner of the Pacific Institute, a performance consulting firm with an international footprint, where he helps leaders tap into their potential to drive greater personal and professional performance. Meaningful change All meaningful, lasting change starts within ourselves and then works its way out. That equates to mindset or habits, attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. It's focusing on the beliefs that are propelling us to our greater good or our higher purpose. It's about the pictures that we hold in our mind. Sometimes as sales reps we get focused only on closing the deal. Even before that, we may routinely tell ourselves garbage that keeps us from reaching our potential. What grows naturally Think about what grows naturally in a garden: weeds. Likewise, we have a natural inclination. We've got this chatterbox in our minds that acts as a little committee telling us what we can and can't accomplish. Don't try new things. Don't leave your comfort zone. You'll be ridiculed if you fail. Mark was full of trepidation when he moved from the caregiving role to transacting business with leaders around the globe. He realized that his self-talk was holding him back. Mark couldn't imagine that he could teach them anything that they didn't already know. He had to feel the fear and then move anyway. Mark needed to run toward the roar. It's more easily said than done, but he realized that he had a choice to become more transactionally oriented or to stay where he was. He could either do it or not. Adult choices have adult consequences. You will have consequences to your choice to make a solicitation or do an outreach or dial just one more time despite a bunch of "no" answers. Higher purpose Mark knows that ultimately his higher purpose is served because he will be a caregiver to a larger audience when he transacts business. He chooses to say yes to that purpose because beyond the fear or resistance or limiting beliefs or self-talk is the replacement picture that emerges when he serves his higher purpose. [Tweet "We move toward and become like the things we think about. So replace the negative self-talk with positivity and focus on what it's going to look like, smell like, or taste like when you succeed. #Success"] When you're helping people and giving them the tools to think and perform differently, create a "want to" mentality instead of a "have to" mentality. When people are forced to do something, they subconsciously push back on those efforts. It's even true when you're forcing yourself to do something. So don't push yourself. Create a "want to" mentality. Have some fun doing it. Most importantly, move toward that replacement picture of what success is going to look like. Burning the boats If Mark hadn't moved toward a replacement picture, he wouldn't have a new career. He stretched himself out of a major comfort zone. His replacement picture was stronger in this new realm. He had to rebrand himself to do outreach because in funeral services people come to you. Performance consulting was a different story. He had to create a "want to" mentality for himself so he could create a different mindset. Mark had to recast his habits and attitudes toward selling. He had to feel the fear of something he had never done before and run toward the roar. Imposter syndrome Mark wrestled with imposter syndrome because he moved from caring for the dead to breathing life into leaders around the globe. He felt like a poser. He worked feverishly once he painted the replacement picture to garner the knowledge necessary to built a skill set of competency in this realm. Mark surrounded himself with the right consultants, coaches, and leaders and poured himself into reading, listening, and going to conferences. Because we think in pictures, he had to see himself in a new picture and then move toward it. Armor Make sure you've got your armor around you and don't take it personally when you hear a "no." Even if the people around you like family or friends don't understand what you're doing, be convicted based upon your own mindset. You're going to deal with cognitive dissonance which will cause you to feel like you're out of order. But just as your muscles will feel fatigued and tired when you exercise, you're going to feel fatigued if you move to a higher level of performance. Moving through fear Imagine going to a networking event. Some folks have resistance in their minds to interacting with strangers and possibly being rejected. We worry about forgetting people's names or not being invited in. We might be a little clunky with our conversations. If you think about the negative things, that's where you'l

Even if we have the right process or the best mindset, every seller is going to encounter difficulties, so we must figure out how we'll stick to our mission and achieve greatness in the face of adversity. Weldon Long has plenty of personal experience dealing with adversity in the form of 13 years in the penitentiary, homelessness, and dropping out of high school. He had what he calls a dysfunctional life, but he learned the ability to thrive in the face of difficulty. Difficulties are coming The truth is that difficulties are coming. It's easy in personal life or in sales life to feel overwhelmed and tempted to wave the white flag of surrender. Weldon was in federal prison when his dad died. He got a note to call home from one of the prison guards. He remembers realizing that his dad died with him in prison again. He had a three-year-old son that he fathered while he was out on parole. He realized that he wasn't being a very good father or son. He made the decision to change the course of his life but he had no idea where to start. He still had seven years left in prison, so he started reading. Copy successful people His master plan was to figure out what successful people were doing and copy that. Seven years later, he walked out of prison and lived in a homeless shelter at 39 years old. He learned how to sell reading books and he started knocking on doors looking for a sales job. It took about six months to find a job because he was a convicted felon living in a homeless shelter. He got a job selling air conditioners and had a great first year. The next year, he used his earnings to open his own air conditioning company. Though he knew nothing about air conditioning, he knew how to sell air conditioners. He hired the operations people and grew the company to $20 million in five years. In 2009, his company was selected as one of America's fastest growing privately held companies. His life has been a study in overcoming adversity, and the lessons are useful for anyone because everyone will eventually face challenges. Learning to face them is the key to achieving greatness in the face of adversity. Sales process Weldon points to the sales process as the secret to building a successful business. The prospects are 100 percent in control of the result. They get to decide whether they will write us a check or not. The sellers are 100 percent in control of the process. Far too many sales professionals focus on the outcome rather than focusing on what they actually control, which is the process. Weldon quickly learned all the difficulties of selling and he said he was amazed by the number of honest people who would promise to call him to follow up but who never did. Buyers will say one thing and do something else, perhaps largely because they fear getting ripped off or misled. They put a lot of protective mechanisms in place. Sales hallway In his book Consistency Selling, Weldon introduces a concept he calls the sales hallway. He and the prospect are at the beginning of the hallway together. At the other end of the hallway is the door he's hoping to get the prospect through. As they walk together, the prospects have a lot of questions about products, services, and guarantees. Most importantly, prospects have questions about price. When they have all the information, they tend to want to postpone the decision. They try to leave little trap doors or escape routes along the hallway. "I'll think about it." "I'll call you next Tuesday." "You're too expensive." When Weldon learned to address those obstacles before they came up, it was the turning point in his sales career. Influence and persuasion Weldon read an article by Robert Cialdini, author of the book Influence. It was all about the consistency principle, which says that public declarations dictate future actions. The idea is that if you can get someone to make a public declaration, he becomes more likely to take actions that are consistent with that statement. He determined which objections he was facing most often, and he structured his conversation so that the prospect didn't struggle with those fears. When he did that, he found way less resistance at the end of the sales process. When he started selling, it was "kitchen-table selling." It was residential air conditioning to families who were mad that they were having to spend the money. He was on their turf and they had other bids that were half his price. Weldon learned to prosper in that situation. Price objection How do I deal with price objection? The problem is that most people don't bring up price until the prospect does at the end of the process. Once the prospect brings it up, he's in a super defensive posture. They know you're going to try to sell them on why you're worth the extra price. The heartbeat of his whole process is addressing those concerns. When he helped Farmer's Insurance address the price objection, he recommended looking on the Internet for considerations when purchasing insurance. He

Sellers who discover how to be successful without a marketing department, in a crowded marketplace, and when the customer isn't even looking will be successful in almost any circumstances. I got a question from a listener named Jon Billings who wanted to know how he could teach people who "don't know what they don't know." For instance, if the customer isn't looking because he doesn't know he has a problem, how do I communicate that? Especially in the case of sellers who don't have access to a marketing department, how is that even possible? Educate Your goal is to educate your prospects so that they will look to you instead of your competition when they need help solving a problem. Educating is the new sales. Regardless of the industry, you're in, your marketplace is likely crowded. How do you stand out from the competition? How do you help customers recognize you as a differentiator? You have to challenge the status quo, especially when many of your prospects already have solutions or they don't realize the existence of a problem. Build Community [Tweet "You must create content consistently and then share it so that you build a community. That way, when someone is ready, they'll come to you first. #ContentCreation"] Become a content producer. Even if you have a marketing department, you should have your own individual brand. Take that brand with you wherever you go. Even if you change industries, your brand goes with you. Answer questions Write down the top 10 questions that customers ask you or that prospects bring up in conversation. Whether they center around cost or service, answer those questions in the form of sharable content. You can write a blog or produce a podcast. Even better, you can create a LinkedIn article or video. Focus on the problem while you're answering the question. For example, what other issues could your prospect focus on if he outsourced his IT services to your company? What opportunity costs exist? Differentiate My friend Kyle invited me to do a LinkedIn Live with him recently and we recorded an episode with him for our show as well. Kyle told us about how he started sharing videos on YouTube answering questions, and though the videos weren't very fancy in his estimation, someone reached out to him from Coca Cola with an opportunity for him. He's in the tech industry, and though there are countless other tech firms out there that are sending out RFPs. Kyle decided to be different, and it grabbed people's attention. Tap into brains You won't want to pitch your prospects right away. Instead, connect with them and ask for their assistance. Maybe you're looking to write a LinkedIn article about things that the directors of large companies dislike and you'd like input from people who are filling those roles. Get one tip from 10 people, and then when you post the article, tag all of the people who contributed. They'll see your post, they'll likely see your profile, and they'll likely see your website. Now, when you ask for a chance to introduce yourself in the future, they'll be more likely to at least give you a chance since you connected on LinkedIn. Potential ideas Even if you don't have the benefit of written case studies, you may have some client testimonials or some stories you can tell. Talk about the problems your clients once had and highlight how you helped them solve those problems. Now that you've written an article about the 10 things that directors of large companies dislike, you could also pitch podcast hosts with the idea. You'll be educating more people and becoming a thought leader. But you must create content around the things that people want to hear. If you're doing the same things every week and you're seeing a diminishing return, put a little more effort in. You'll be on your way to building interest in something when the customer isn’t looking. "When The Customer Isn’t Looking" episode resources Connect with me at [email protected]. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You c

[smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/thesalesevangelist/TSE_1091.mp3" background="blurred_logo" ] When you're looking to grow your business or your brand, it's important that you recognize the three things small businesses get wrong when marketing. We're at the Florida State Minority Development Council expo visiting with my friend Stephen A. Hart. He's a brand alignment strategist who helps entrepreneurs grow an amazing brand that is authentic, relatable, and profitable. Mistake #1: Overlooking messaging Many people hear the word branding and they think of logos or designs. But pretty websites don't sell things. Words do. People get unnecessarily caught up on design but what they need to focus on is clear messaging. You have to clarify your message so that customers will listen. Be deliberate about articulating what you do. In order to do that, you must understand who you're serving. Too many people think they are serving everyone with their product or service but that isn't the case. If I'm speaking to grandma and I'm speaking to my niece, we're not having the same conversation. The language is different. If you understand that you're speaking to a particular group of people, there is a language that connects to that person. When you understand their pain points and their demographics, you can communicate your message about how your product or service solves a problem. Dialing in Stephen recalled a realtor who focused on selling to millennials and young couples. That's who she was serving, but her message didn't reach those people. She was trying to serve everyone. Dial your message in. Understand who you're truly serving. When you do, your message doesn't have to be pitchy about your product or service. Your content can create a connection between you and your community. Then your community will share it with others in the space. Messaging isn't a static process. It's dynamic. You'll constantly be optimizing your message. Your brain We lack trust in those we connect and do business with. Understand that your brain is trying to survive and thrive. Within that, there are three things it's trying to accomplish. You want to make money or save money. You want to gain status. You want to associate with a tribe. Your brain is also trying to conserve calories. So if your website or your collateral is too busy, your audience will tune it out. For example, how many emails do you receive in a day? Most of them get deleted because the messaging didn't appeal to you. It isn't a design or branding that gets your attention. It's the message. Mistake #2: Neglecting web presence Your website is your digital home, and first impressions last. It allows you to redirect traffic to your products or services or other online avenues. Studies show that 57 percent of people are afraid to recommend a business because of its website. Decisions are emotional so if your website doesn't inspire confidence, you won't be able to convert the people who show up there. You must take care of your website, and specifically your home page. Get a good solid web design. Mistake #3: Lacking content You must have a presence on social media specifically for businesses. You also have to be on LinkedIn. Sharing content on LinkedIn generates so much more organic traffic than other platforms. It's a business-related social channel. As a result, the income and quality of the people you're engaging with there. There are more than 9 billion impressions on LinkedIn every week, which amounts to 468 billion impressions annually. Of those, only about 3 million users are actually sharing content, which means there's a lot of room available. And it's all free. Don't worry as much about buying ads on Facebook. Worry about who your audience is. Realize, too, that about 98 percent of your leads will come from LinkedIn. Video and long-form content are your friends on LinkedIn. Write longer posts. The sweet spot is 1,900. Also, write how-to and list posts to bring awareness to your brand. Be creative If no one is looking at your business, you'll never thrive. You must create content of value and place it where the customers are. Put it in front of their eyeballs where they can't dismiss it. Have a solid brand presence online. Avoid the three things small businesses get wrong when marketing. Branding course Stephen created an online course called Brand You Academy that allows him to serve people and help with branding. It's a 6-week online course that walks people through Stephen's 15-years experience in branding. When people Google you in 2019, whatever appears in your result will either leave people more or less inclined to do business with you. People who sign up for the course are getting lifetime access to the course. You can also connect with Stephen on his website and everywhere on social at Stephen A. Hart. Isolation [Tweet "You cannot grow in business in isolation. You must network and connect with other like-minded professionals. #Network"] T

Hearing from other sellers can help us improve our own techniques, and today Troy Rackley shares his own killer message and how he communicates that he's selling more than water. Troy grabbed my friend Steven Hart's attention and Steven told me I had to interview him. Big shoutout to the Florida State Minority Supplier Development Council for connecting us with entrepreneurs like Troy. Water problems Troy's company, The Next Level of Performance, operates everywhere water flows: residential, commercial, or agricultural. He always begins by asking people what problem they are having with their water. They usually say it tastes bad or smells like chlorine. Troy customizes his solution for the problem the prospect is having. He then asks, "Do you drink out of the tap?" to which most of his customers say no. Troy challenges that answer by pointing out that because our skin is the largest organ of our bodies, taking a 15-minute shower is the equivalent of drinking 8 glasses of water out of the tap. The water is absorbed into your skin. So whatever you're avoiding out of your tap is being absorbed into your body anyway. Educating customers Troy educates his customers through a questioning process. It pulls the customer in and they naturally want to close the story loop. They want to know how they can fix this problem. Troy starts by administering a third-party test to the customer's water. He insists on a third-party test for integrity purposes. He figures if he's the one providing the solution, he can't also be the one telling you what the problem is. When water companies claim to have tested water for their clients, it's akin to the fox guarding the henhouse. They can literally tell you anything. Troy offers an independent, third-party assessment of what's wrong with the customer's water. Custom filtration Troy educates his customers about the undesirable things in their water and then describes the custom filtration system that will address those problems. Troy calls it water math. The municipalities add all kinds of chemicals into the water to kill bacteria. Troy's company works to subtract those things so it doesn't get to the customer. Troy personalizes the message. Unlike big box companies who want to push a single idea or product, Troy offers unique solutions to his customers. He's selling more than water. Not only does it help the customers, it helps his business. He hasn't done any marketing in his business since he started. All of his growth has resulted from word-of-mouth growth. His attention to detail has built a great reputation for him. Selling more than water Troy's focus isn't simply on customer service; he strives for customer success. If he can make his customers more successful in their health and finances because they aren't having to buy bottled water, the service becomes secondary. By making sure that the customer is educated moving forward, he distinguishes between customer service and customer success. Troy eliminates the number of problems that families have to worry about. If, for example, a customer falls under a boil water advisory, the system eliminates the need to actually boil the water. The company designs the system to create minimal disruption because he says you never know what will happen with municipalities. His ultimate goal is to make sure that your family never has a disruption to its water supply. Company growth Troy's company operates in about 15 states as well as Canada, Amsterdam, Sweden, and Australia, because water is a global issue. Water touches everything in life. The company installed its system in a fish farm it owns and they reduced the harvest time by three to five months. The water is so clean that the food is more bioavailable for the fish. Troy is doing something the industry hasn't even seen. It's an example of disruptive technology. They moved into residential work because the consumer must be educated. Municipalities will say that your water is clean when it leaves their plants. As a result, it's the customer's responsibility to address any water problems that exist. Troy wants to help the customer make an educated decision. Clear or clean Troy is fond of the phrase, "Just because it's clear doesn't mean it's clean." There are things in water that you can't see that can hurt you. Often, the things you can't see are the greatest threat. Cruise ships are notoriously dealing with norovirus, which originates from the water. Troy said they have answers to every water issue because they study it and design amazing solutions. He points to the fact that only one man made minerals, and those are the natural minerals they leave in the water. He's selling more than water. [Tweet "Understand what you're buying. Be educated in your decision. #EducatedBuyers"] Sell on value, not expense. "Selling More Than Water" episode resources Connect with Troy at nlpaqua.com. There's a contact form you can use to initiate the water testing process on your way to restoring your w

I get a lot of requests to appear on The Sales Evangelist, but Jason Bay set himself apart from the crowd by sending a video email and changing the email game. Jason started his sales career while he was in college, and he and his wife now run a company called Blissful Prospecting, where they remove the stress of prospecting by doing it for their clients. He quickly discovered that the smaller midsize business was overlooked in the existing offerings, and he wanted to provide a less robust service that still produced the same type of results. Mom and pop Jason discovered there weren't a whole lot of companies that were willing to work with smaller organizations. Those companies that don't really have any SDRs and maybe they don't even know the lingo. Jason wanted to help those business owners who are already multitasking with some of their business development. They don't have time to list build and personalize emails. We've discovered the same dynamic at The Sales Evangelist. Many of the companies that need help are smaller companies whose sales reps have no training and no real process. The company expects the rep to thrive but they have no basis for it. It becomes a vicious cycle of reps who wash out or leave to go to another company. The business hires another rep with no real training or process, and the cycle begins again. Video prospecting Jason's company prospects for itself, too, so the company does what it sells. Part of prospecting and selling is explaining to people what you do. People assume when he refers to video that it's YouTube and other content creation. Video prospecting is similar to writing an email. It's common knowledge now that your emails must be personalized beyond a first name. You must actually include something in the email that's personal to the reader. Many people take this approach: Hey Donald, I listened to one of your recent podcasts about this topic and I discovered... (fill in the blank.) While it's personalized, it's a little redundant. We have to work to empathize with the prospect, and they may prove to be a little more difficult for men. Video allows you to put a face to an email. It allows the recipient to see a human being instead of reading an email, so you're changing the email game. You can still send an email or a LinkedIn message. You can't fake video. Everything in prospecting demands that you do it the right way if you want to succeed. Think about the type and quality of clients you want to attract. Changing the email game If you're engaging in the "murder by numbers approach" of sending 1,000 emails in order to land 5 appointments, think about the quality of customer you're attracting. It won't be really good. If you want to work with a specific group of customers, you must show them that you're their peer. You aren't a guy sending tons of spam and praying that it succeeds. Video takes a little more work, but if it produces more responses, it's worth the investment of time. I'd rather my sales team spend a few minutes researching and sending out 10 to 15 videos if I'll get responses from eight of them. They'll be much richer opportunities. Your numbers may not be as high with video, but the return will be better. It's the account-based approach. Instead of getting a big list of people, do research to come up with a list of companies that will be a good fit. Think of it as going to the gym. If you go to the gym with a plan for the session, you'll be much more efficient than if you go in and just wing it. Without a plan, you'll take twice as long and be half as effective. Do all the prospecting preparation on the front end so that you aren't spending your time with prospects who aren't a good fit. Focus your prospecting attention on companies you can actually help and serve. Video tips Many people avoid video because they worry about how they'll appear. You must work around that fear because there isn't a single scenario where video isn't a good option. Make sure to look directly into the camera so the person on the other end feels as though he is actually talking to a person instead of a screen. Use quality equipment. Most laptops and phones now have quality cameras. Video where you have good light. Smile. Don't be so serious. Create the sense that working with you is enjoyable. If you're at a small company, you're likely the person that the prospect will be working with. You're a reflection of the business. Limit your video to 30 seconds or less. Prepare bullet points of what you'd like to say. Don't be too scripted but plan for what you'd like to say. Your pitch shouldn't be more than 1-2 sentences. Connecting with video Video is easier to consume and it stands out in a crowded email inbox. [Tweet "Don't prospect to make a sale. Prospect to start a conversation. #Prospecting"] You're not going to sell a prospect over the phone or through email or LinkedIn. Your job is to simply sell them on the appointment. Your call to action isn't, "We can help you." It'

You may believe that social selling won't work for your company or industry, but if you take advantage of the 4 pillars to leveraging LinkedIn for business development, you'll be surprised at how it can help you expand your reach. Brynne Tillman is the CEO and "LinkedIn Whisperer" of Social Sales Link and the author of The LinkedInSales Playbook and she has spent more than a decade coaching people to unlock the power of the platform. LinkedIn profile LinkedIn has its own social selling index so if you visit getmyssiscore.com you get your personal score, out of 100, that will rate your social selling acumen. Your LinkedIn profile is where that lies. Sellers make the mistake of using their LinkedIn profile as a resume when, in fact, it should be a resource. Corporate Visions reports that 74 percent of buyers choose the sales rep that provided value and insight early in the buyer journey. Your profile is their first impression of us, so do it right. Value Prospects don't care about your mission, your passion, or your years in business when they first visit your profile. That may matter down the road, but initially, they care about value. They care about how relevant you are. Write your summary almost like a blog post. What kind of value can you bring from the first time they read about you? Identify the challenges that your buyers are facing. Provide three to five insights that will make an immediate impact. Strive to make a "vendor agnostic" impact, meaning that you share insights they can use even if they never buy from you. Sellers often create this as a pitch and we tell them how to buy from us. What we should do instead is attract them to us. We want them to ask themselves how they can work with us. This level of value will increase your credibility and move you much more quickly through the sales cycle. Challenges If you sell office furniture, determine who your buyer is and what her biggest challenge is right now. Maybe many companies are expanding and the big challenge is the inability to trade in old furniture to get new stuff. Determine what helps you stand out and then educate your buyer. Teach your customer how to buy office furniture in a way that leans toward you as the solution, but provide insights that can help them make better decisions for the company as a whole. Take advantage of the 4 pillars to leveraging LinkedIn for business development in order to move your prospects toward doing business with you. Pillar 1: Establish your professional brand Your professional brand is your profile. By positioning your profile to provide insight and value to your buyers, you are gaining credibility and creating curiosity. You're getting them excited to take your phone call. If they can learn something just by visiting your profile, they imagine that a conversation with you will be even more valuable. Position yourself as the subject matter expert and thought leader. Pillar 2: Find the right people How are you leveraging LinkedIn to find your buyers and your influencers? If it's true that there are 6.8 people who are involved in every large buying decision, how are we identifying all the right people within an organization? Instead of limiting our efforts to just the champion, who else do we want to touch? How are we finding these people and engaging them? The prospecting piece and the relationship building piece are the same. It's a combination of providing great value and leveraging our network to get introductions to our targeted prospects and buyers. Develop search strings which are literally the title of your buyers in whatever geographic location or industry you choose. Pillar 3: Engage with insights How are we sharing content, commenting, and engaging with content? How are we using hashtags to find the right content? Are we feeding our network with really valuable information that moves them closer to our solution? It's more than just liking or sharing. LinkedIn wants to see you engaging and sharing and commenting. Avoid "random acts of social." Anything we do without intention or purpose is rarely going to see success. Certainly, it won't succeed on a consistent basis. Pillar 4: Build relationships Connecting and forgetting is the equivalent of collecting business cards in a stack on the corner of your desk. How valuable is it? That's not a network. There's more value in truly connecting with a few people at a networking event and having meaningful conversations than there is in collecting a business card from everyone present. Bring that same thoughtfulness online. [Tweet "There's no reason to network differently online than you do in person. #SocialSelling"] Start a conversation. Learn about people. Ask questions. Get to know people a little bit. When you do, LinkedIn will be your most valuable networking tool. Strategy Establish what your goals are for social selling. How will you measure success? If your goal is to have one new client a month, you need four proposals a month. In order to have

Sellers who interact with and provide value to prospects using social media must understand the characteristics that turn this into the kind of social selling your customers want. We're tackling this topic all month, and even if you aren't a big social media person, we're providing an actionable plan to help you get in front of your prospects. It isn't enough to "set it and forget it" or generate large amounts of content in hopes that people will click through to find you. It's thoughtful preparation that gives buyers what they want and need right now. Trying to close I discovered the idea of using social media to sell when I was in college. I was seeking an internship with people who were in Chicago and our college professor told us that we needed a LinkedIn profile. He told us that we had to maintain that profile because that's where business professionals interacted. I thought it was a great idea because I was suddenly connected to millions of other professionals. I also thought it was great that I could pitch to all of those people. My professor knew a woman in Chicago so he introduced us with the intention that I would seek insights from her. In my mind, though, she was going to provide me with an internship or connect me with someone who had one. Instead of approaching it as an information-gathering phase, I was trying to close the deal. I think many of us make that mistake with social media. Instant access Sellers are often like kids in a candy store because social media gives them instant access to millions of potential customers. Why in the heck wouldn't we go ahead and pitch them all? Let's tell every single person what we're doing. And then social media turns into a pitch-fest. Because we can copy and share messages with groups of people quickly, we have access to millions of new prospects at our fingertips. Very quickly, though, prospects recognize that every seller is engaging in the same kind of social selling. Prospects are overwhelmed with the same messages from multiple sellers, so we have quickly realized that we can't continue using the same methods. Liking content In response, we settled on thoughtful interactions with people. We settled on the idea of liking everything they posted on social media and commenting on their content, sometimes arbitrarily. We didn't necessarily have a growth plan or a strategy. We just assumed that if we liked a bunch of their stuff now, when we eventually sent them a message, they would instantly want to work with us. The idea might have worked well initially, but again, sellers adopted the same strategy across the board and failed to stand out from one another. Curating content Next, we moved to curating content. That meant sharing content that others were sharing, so if I found a good blog post about technology, I would share it with my prospects who were interested in that industry. Our strategy was to be top-of-mind because of our content. We engaged with different platforms and pumped content everywhere, which ultimately became a bunch of junk floating around on the Internet. Again, every competitor was doing the same. The platforms realized that the content was taking their users away to other sites and they took steps to prevent people from being diverted away. Algorithms Social media platforms don't want you to send their users to other sites. As a result, you must adjust your social selling efforts so that you're linking to content on that same platform. LinkedIn wants its users to see the ads that its customers are paying to promote. If its users leave LinkedIn, they won't see the ads. The algorithm will penalize you for sharing content outside of LinkedIn. Sellers responded with LinkedIn articles, long-form posts, and videos. We moved to original content in our next iteration of social selling, and within the next year, we'll likely move to something different. Human interaction Despite all this change, there is one takeaway. Be a person. Be human and care about other people. The definition we shared from Hubspot is this: Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople will provide value by answering the prospect's questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy. Do things in moderation. Use direct messages. Set a goal to connect with five new prospects each day on LinkedIn. Try something like this: Donald, It's always great to learn from sales leaders in the industry. Permission to connect? Once we're connected, they'll see the content I've curated over time. Aligned content An article on PostFunnel reported that marketers who align their content with specific points in the buyer's journey yielded 73 percent higher conversion rates. Think about that. If you're able to produce content based on where your buyers are in that particular phase, it will be relevant to them. Your buyers want posts that showcase your new products or services and they want to learn so

Social selling is the new sales because it utilizes all the techniques and tools that we've always enjoyed as sellers in order to help us build better relationships. Although nothing will ever replace the face-to-face relationships that sellers have with their clients, social selling is a valuable tool. Today Carson Heady shares what he has learned over a 17-year sales career about prospecting and relationship building and how social selling helps with it. Social selling Social media can help you find the right person to talk to that can help you connect with the right people, get a meeting, and stay top of mind. It's a great compliment to the business relationships we should already be forming. Social selling isn't a replacement for the things we're already doing. It's the application of the tools that enable us to get insights or see what customers and their organizations are thinking, doing, and talking about. When I first started using social selling, I was guilty of blasting a bunch of messages on LinkedIn and pitching people there. I quickly realized that wasn't social selling. Social selling equates to brokering relationships but you're doing it online. It isn't sending mass emails to people sharing everything that you have to offer. Results Salespeople are interested in results, and Carson said that after studying reports about social selling, he has determined that it amounts to standing apart, being unique, and finding a way to differentiate. Social selling is a very targeted and specific effort to cast a wide wide net to reach maybe 30 people in a single organization in hopes that you'll land a single meeting. That effort resulted in one of the larger deals in Microsoft. Relationships Carson suggests following business journals and using Sales Navigator to help in your efforts. Following the trades to stay aware of new C-levels that join the organization. Last year, Carson was the first to the table when a new C-level joined a company he was connected to and now Microsoft is helping to drive change within that organization because of the relationship. The relationships drive the deals forward, and those relationships wouldn't exist without the strategic utilization of social selling. Innovate We're all just trying to do something different. We're trying to get a response or a meeting by setting ourselves apart from the others who came before us and failed. We aren't just sitting on the phone reaching out to people. We have so much technology at our disposal that we have to be careful to be focused and tailor our efforts. If we don't, we'll likely suffer from diminishing returns. Our past approach of "spray and pray" doesn't work anymore. You have to embrace the probability of success. In the past, people were willing to send out hundreds of notes with the understanding that they wouldn't get a whole lot of reception. Consistent If you want to connect with a C-level at an organization, you don't just go after them. You've got to start a few levels below where you'd like to end up. Once you're able to talk to someone who is receptive, you can use that momentum internally to get in front of the right audience. But you must be consistent in your approach. Prospecting never ends. You must revisit those prospects. Not surprisingly, many clients don't reply immediately like you'd like them to. Be persistent and reach out to the same folks, but change your messaging. Offer a compelling reason for your prospects to respond. Be aware, too, that you may catch someone on an off day. The prospect may be sick or he may have missed the email. He may be busy. Be adaptable with your process. There are a lot of things that we believe are good philosophies as sellers, but when we try them for a bit they don't work the way they want to. So we discard them. We tweak things a bit and we adapt. Concise Sometimes we send long elaborate emails in hopes that we'll get a reply. Truthfully, sometimes we get the best responses from emails with only one sentence. People are busy and they don't have time to read a 3-paragraph message. If you're specific and you offer a single task, they can more likely respond. Emails are not intended to close the sale. It helps you grab attention. Don't try to sell an enterprise solution within a few sentences of an email. Trying to sell in an email amounts to skipping steps in the sales process. You're jumping straight into the second or third date without wining and dining the prospect. Connection When you're seeking to connect with multiple people in an organization, your approach will depend on what you're looking to accomplish. It will also depend on your unique connection to that person. If you're searching for a job, don't reach out with questions about a job or an opportunity within the organization. Instead, try this: "I saw that we have mutual synergies and I'm looking to parlay my experience into your industry. I'd love to sit down for 10 minutes to pick your brain and get some adv

There’s a huge prospecting opportunity right under your nose, and it’s a LinkedIn gold rush that can help you generate more leads and connect with more people. Even if you have been on LinkedIn since 2016 like I have, it’s possible that you aren’t even scratching the surface of what it’s capable of doing. LinkedIn isn’t paying me to say any of this. I’m telling you because I know how much you can do with LinkedIn and I want you to do big things. STATISTICS My friend Stephen Hart, host of the Trailblazers.FM podcast, shared some statistics with me that made my eyeballs pop. When he appeared on The Sales Evangelist, he shared with us the importance of creating content that connects with your audience. He also emphasized the need to incorporate social selling into your existing efforts. LinkedIn is designed to be more than a host for your resume. It’s created to be a community where people interact. CONTENT The article 48 Eye-Opening LinkedIn Statistics for B2B Marketers in 2019 reports that there are 9 billion content impressions in the LinkedIn feed every week. Every single week, the content on LinkedIn is seen 9 billion times, which leads to about 36 billion impressions per month and 468 billion per year. If you consistently take advantage of LinkedIn by producing content, you can take advantage of these statistics. You can even repurpose things you’ve previously created into LinkedIn content. The article also reports that only 3 million people share content weekly. There are 500 million total LinkedIn users, and maybe half of those are active. Only 3 million of them share content weekly. That’s about 1 percent of the monthly users sharing content. Three million users are getting 9 billion impressions per week on LinkedIn. Try finding that kind of ratio on Instagram or Facebook. PUBLISHING As you contemplate what to create, think about this. LinkedIn doesn’t want you to publish an article that has a link going back to your website. Like any social platform, LinkedIn wants your eyeballs to stay on the platform so you’ll see more ads and they’ll get more money from advertisers. Post your stuff natively on LinkedIn. Publish a LinkedIn article, and make sure to include a picture. Then share it. Long-form content gets more shares on LinkedIn. Dennis Brown mentioned this when he was on the podcast based upon research that showed that 1,900-word articles get the most shares. Aim to publish between 1,900 and 2,100 words in order to get more traction. CONSISTENCY You must consistently produce content if you’re going to be seen as the subject-matter expert in your field. #contentmarketing CLICK TO TWEET If you’re thinking that you can’t write 1,900 words, I understand. Neither can I. Instead, dictate your thoughts and hire a virtual assistant or someone from Fiverr to do the work for you. Or, use Temi to transcribe your audio into a written transcript that you can tweak and publish. Don’t include links away from LinkedIn. Instead, trust that your website appears on your profile and as you appear in their feed, you’ll become the subject-matter expert. VIDEO LinkedIn also has video capability now and I did my first LinkedIn Live last week with my friend Kyle who is involved in the Beta testing. Because it’s new, the engagement was amazing. Many people will talk themselves out of using this tool because they don’t like the way they look on camera or they believe they won’t know what to say. But someone else in that 3 million will take advantage of it and they’ll see results. Start. Right. Now. You can record video directly to LinkedIn using the camera in the app. Our friend Tiffany Southerland who recently appeared on the podcast shared that she creates video content every week without doing any fancy editing using LinkedIn. Nine billion impressions and 3 million people. It’s a gold rush. “LINKEDIN GOLD RUSH” EPISODE RESOURCES Check out the article 48 Eye-Opening LinkedIn Statistics for B2B Marketers in 2019. If you haven’t connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I’m sharing there. You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we’d love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please

When we convince ourselves that we have nothing more to learn, we fail to ask enough questions and we sometimes even commit sales malpractice. Brian Robinson has been in sales for more than 20 years, but he said that he only thought he knew how to sell while he was in corporate America. He calls his plunge into entrepreneurialism the hardest thing he has ever done, and while it was successful, he said his eyes were opened when he entered the world of "you don't sell, you don't eat." Brian is the author of the book The Selling Formula, which codifies the steps he used to succeed in that venture. Intentional questions Many salespeople do the old "show up and throw up." We're so anxious to get to the presentation that we neglect to ask the very best questions we can ask to uncover the needs. We're seeking sincere engagement from our prospect, so this is the most critical component. Brian noticed that the best physicians diagnose illness with a list of carefully-crafted questions. That information became especially important when he worked for Johnson and Johnson selling internal devices for laparoscopy. Though the device was clinically superior to anything on the market, he wasn't getting any responses for trial evaluations. He knew the device was superior, so he combed through the features and benefits and put together a list of questions related to them. He structured them in a specific order and the wording of each was intentional as well. Asking questions He tested the questions, and within about 30 days his trial evaluations doubled because of that list of questions. When word got out that he had produced those kinds of results, people started asking for his list of questions. He passed it along and found that when people followed the questions exactly, they got the exact same results: they doubled their results. Brian grew fascinated with the whole idea of going deep on questions. He even developed a personal mantra that questions are the key to life. Although it took several iterations for Brian to get the list and order of questions exactly right, he stuck with it and he achieved success. There's still an opportunity to make it even better, but it's working very consistently now. Malpractice Brian defines sales malpractice as providing a diagnosis before you really understand the underlying issues. You won't be able to give your prospect the best possible answer, and until you've uncovered a need, you won't be able to proceed to the sales conversation. You have to earn the right to have that conversation. If you rush too quickly into the presentation, your sales presentation won't be nearly what it could have been. The key to all of it is how you create your questions. Get started Begin by making a spreadsheet with three columns. The first is your features, the second is the benefits related to the feature, and in the third column write down every question you can think of related to those features. Then take an 80/20 approach. Of the questions you've written, which 20% of questions will elicit 80% of the most critical benefits of your product? Start with general fact-finding questions and move into those 80/20 in the most appropriate order to identify the needs. Imagine you're selling premade home-cooked meals. What are two benefits to that service? One is that you're saving about 60 minutes per meal on grocery shopping, food prep, and cooking time. The other is simplicity. Now generate questions from those benefits. On a weekly basis, how many dinners do you cook for your family? How much time does it typically take you to make dinner? If all you had to do was move something from the freezer to the oven, how would that affect the frequency of your family meals? Now order the questions from general fact-finding to more specific. Then place the most compelling ones at the top 20 percent of the questions you ask. Emotional level Get down to an emotional level. We, unfortunately, avoid this, often because we aren't comfortable going that deep into our conversations. We also tend to approach these conversations with a transactional mindset instead of realizing these are human beings with deep emotional and physical needs. Go the levels that can motivate us to change. We're trying to make a difference as salespeople. Approach each situation with the mindset that you want to go deeper and ask heart-level questions. Strive to be seen as a trusted advisor instead of as a sales rep. You'll have a connection at the human level. Selling the concept If someone is willing to grab this idea and test it in their own sales conversations, the proof is in the doing. People have been shocked at the effectiveness of this practice because, shockingly, people don't think this way. Brian said he camped out on the questions because that's where the gold is. Sometimes management and metrics prompt us to rush the sales process. That causes us to focus on the wrong things. As a result, we end up working twice as hard with less

Sometimes as sales reps we don’t bring enough value to the table and there are 3 crucial signs you need to add more value so you won’t be judged only on price. Dion Travagliante runs Madison One Consulting, a consulting practice where he solves problems for SAS businesses. He said he loves the fact that sellers have latitude in their careers and he loves the chase of finding the potential customer and then uncovering the issue and working to solve it. People have a preconceived notion that sales is just talking with no science, rhyme, or reason behind it, but he calls it a challenging world that you can train yourself to succeed in. COMMODITY Sellers often struggle to stand out against other competitors and they struggle against being viewed as simply a commodity. The key is to become the winner of the account. Dion defines value as improvement in a client or prospect’s individual situation. That centers on solving problems. Any company that is selling something originated around the idea of solving someone else’s problem. That means as a sales rep, you’re a steward of your company’s solution in the marketplace. That should free you to talk to anyone about the challenges they are facing. Flip the script. There will always be people who perceive salespeople as slick operators who try to jam products down people’s throats. No one wants to have that persona. Instead, approach every customer as someone with a pain point whose problem you’d like to solve. If you do, you’ll be better than 95 percent of the sellers out there because you’ll be thinking about someone else. Talk about benefits and not features. If you can solve the customer’s problem, move forward and have a conversation. If you can’t, you’re saving both of you time by moving on. #ValueProposition CLICK TO TWEET Watch for these 3 crucial signs you need to add more value. 1. NEGOTIATING PRICE When you’re talking with a prospect and they start negotiating price during the sales cycle. Do not go down the rabbit hole of arguing price. The worst position you can be in as a sales rep is negotiating against yourself. If the prospect wants to lower the price, it becomes a game of limbo: how low can you go? Instead of just acquiescing, you want to push back on that. They are telling you that they don’t see the inherent value in the price you’ve determined for your product. You can never negotiate against your own price, but you can flip the script. If, for example, a single client averages $60,000 and your product costs $20,000, the purchase pays for itself three times over. If your product can speed up the process, the relevant issue is how much money they’ll derive from using your solution. If the person you’re dealing with is an intermediary and they insist on dropping the price, what they are saying is that they don’t feel confident taking this solution at this price point to the decision makers. The quicker path is to lower the price. Instead, arm them with more things so they look like the hero when they show up to present it. 2. SEEKING REFERRALS When your prospect asks you for a referral, what he’s really saying is that he’s interested in what you’re selling and he wants to continue down the path, but he wants external validation. Mike Brooks, who calls himself Mr. Inside Sales, wrote a book called The Ultimate Book of Phone Scripts where he shares 500 scripts that you can use to address objections. He suggests acknowledging that you’d be happy to connect the customer with a host of satisfied customers but then asking what sticking points still exist. They want someone else to verify that they should buy this because we’re all somewhat tribal in nature. Get out in front of it. Your own self-limiting beliefs can prompt you to negotiate with a client instead of seeking to provide enough value to get them across the finish line. Practice saying that phrase so that it becomes second-nature. Because 90 percent of decisions are made with the subconscious mind, you should train your mind to respond this way automatically. Courage isn’t the absence of anxiety or fear; it’s acting in spite of it. The people who improve are those that put themselves in uncomfortable scenarios. Human beings learn by pain. 3. STATUS QUO When you’ve done the discovery call and you’re in the demo and the prospect says, “You know, I think we’re going to stay with our current solution,” that’s an indicator that you haven’t provided enough value. The prospect is telling you that it seems like a lot of work to transition to your option, so they are going to stay where they are. They are telling you that you haven’t exhibited enough value to drive them to switch. Sales decisions are made emotionally and then justified logically. Todd Caponi, in his book The Transparency Sale, talks about the psychology of sales and the fact that if your customer’s logic is preventing them from closing the deal, you need to stoke some emotional flames. You must provide enough value to make switching wort

When your prospects find 100 new email messages waiting for them on Monday morning, if your emails give no value, your prospects will never open them. If there's nothing in the subject line or the first sentence of the message to grab their attention, your prospects will probably never even open the message. Sellers must give thought to what their first sentence is saying to uncover how their emails are performing. Preview Consider your own email inbox. You're busy. You don't have time to read every single email that arrives in your inbox. If you've got 100 new messages waiting, you're not going to read them all. You'll travel the path of least resistance by eliminating as many as possible. Email content The subject line is crucial, so your goal is to minimize it as much as possible. Get to the point quickly with as few words as possible. Make sure the first sentence of your email relates to the subject line and make sure it has nothing to do with you. Avoid statements like "I have something I want to share with you," or "My company helps clients who..." Avoid including sentences that, when you think about them, simply aren't helpful. "I hope this message finds you doing well." "I hope your quarter is going great." These are both fillers and they won't compel anyone to open the email. If you're using the same content and the same statements as other sellers, your emails give no value, and no one will open them. Truth One of the worst mistakes you can make is using a subject line that has nothing to do with the email content itself. If you bait your reader in with one idea and then switch ideas within the email, you'll probably get black-listed. At best, you'll get sent to the spam folder so you're toast forever. Do something totally different. Personalize your message and don't include a huge pitch in your first email. Think about it from your buyer's standpoint. He has countless sellers reaching out to sell him something, and many of them are sharing similar messages. What if your first sentence offered something to help him? Consider this example from Todd. He got an email from a seller who recognized that he was a CEO who had to create and give presentations. The seller provided a PowerPoint template he could use to present metrics and then another template he could use to create a sales handbook. The sender gave no information about himself or his company. The only reference was information in the signature block that Todd could access if he was interested. Value Buyers aren't stupid. If you send a helpful, beneficial email, I'll like go to your site. Even if I don't need your product right now, I'll know where to go in the future. Give something of value. Provide some education. Think of it from the buyer's standpoint. Give him something that will help him be more effective and efficient in his role. When you give value, provide something that will address a problem that your ideal customer struggles with. It doesn't even have to be something you're an expert in, and in fact, that sometimes makes it more genuine. Imagine I sell HR software to HR directors. If you send a document titled 5 Things HR Directors Should Consider When Selecting A Software, he'll smell the bias from 10 miles away. If I provide something beneficial that isn't in my wheelhouse, they'll recognize that I'm not trying to sell something. The goal is to build interaction by getting him to respond and open a dialog. Dialog If the thing you're sharing will benefit him even if he doesn't buy your product, go ahead and share that with your prospect. Just don't make it gimmicky. Give something that has value and then connect other places like on LinkedIn or over the phone. Many of us are stuck in the mindset that a single email will open the door to a deal. Focus on the content you're sharing. Focus on the type of content and how it applies to him as an individual. Then focus on how you can make his life easier. Create emails that prospects will want to open so you can build meaningful conversations and then ask effective questions. #ColdOutreach "Your Emails Give No Value" episode resources Grab a copy of the book The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results by Todd Caponi. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also

When you interact with your prospects, your goal should be to provide such great value that you leave people better off whether they buy from you or not. We've been talking about value all month, and today hypnotist Jason Linett talks about how people can change their thinking to grow their business. Growth isn't just about your platform but it's largely about how you tell the story to your audience. We often miss the power of a story and its impact on our potential customers. Help prospects win In almost every category, there are others out there who do the same work you do. Storytelling is the one thing that truly sets you apart from the competition so that you're no longer just a commodity. Your customers can go find another business coach or web designer, and even another hypnotist. Jason points out that he didn't get married by approaching a pretty girl at school and announcing that they were going to have children together. Instead, they built a relationship through the natural progression that occurs when people get to know each other. Look at the relationship building aspect of it. You know that you want to help people, so look for something that will help the customer. Find things you can set in motion that will help your prospects win. Suddenly, there's a collection of people out there who didn't need your entire service but they are in the raving fan category. Some of those that you helped will move forward in the funnel in order to see how you can help them even more. Ditching fear Most people don't seize this concept because they fear giving away too much. They believe that if they give away too much, people won't buy from them. Jason said that he has given away more than most people in his industry. He has also earned more than most of the people in his industry. He believes the two naturally go together. Think of it as a difference of show versus tell. I can tell you what methods may be helpful and you can research them and dig into them in order to determine whether they might truly work, or I can get together with you and actually help you do it. [Tweet "Be willing to give away your best content to your customers sometimes. Give away an abridged version that helps them along on the journey and prompts them to consider what more you might have to offer. #BuildValue"] Many people want to try an at-home version before they commit to the live "being in the room" version. Convince people to care How do we get people to care before we ever really ask them to listen? We need to think differently. It's about listening to the audience and responding to their requests. Jason calls hit pitch "The Hollywood Effect." It's based on the tendency of movies to launch you directly into some piece of the action, get you swept up into it, and then rewind to tell you the back-story. He launches into a story about murder, and about a new mother who moved into a hotel after seeing a bug in her home. By the end of her first meeting with him, she killed a housefly with her bare hand. Draw in the entire room. Get them to put down their food and listen to what you have to say. Value-first mindset Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. If everyone else is doing things one way, let that be your cue to do it differently. As you decide how to move forward, pick the option you are most comfortable with. That's your first entry point and you should flesh that out completely and make it exactly what you want it to be. Once that piece has become a machine that's running itself, you can branch off to some other thing. Finding the time Jason suggests that there's no such thing as "finding the time." It's a game we invented to trick ourselves into not doing things we're absolutely capable of. Instead, we should use the mechanism of making time. Consider putting everything on a scheduling platform. Make use of color-coding. Choose one color for the events that cannot be changed. The number one tip is to listen. So often we catch ourselves trying to mind-read our audience instead of starting with the ask and discovering the customer's greatest need. Sometimes what they want is different than what they need. You're selling what they want, so you'll deliver what they want, but along the way, you can overdeliver by providing what they need. "Leave people better off whether they buy from you or not" episode resources You can connect with Jason at jasonlinett.com or on social media as Jason Linett. You can also grab a copy of his book, Work Smart Business: Lessons Learned From Hypnotizing 250,000 People and Building a Million-Dollar Brand. Head to worksmartbusiness.com for a freebie called the Positive Influence Power Pack that will teach you specific strategies to influence yourself and others. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in A

[smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/thesalesevangelist/TSE_1080.mp3" background="blurred_logo" ] Building value is a critical part of any sales process, and the discovery meeting is an important step in that process. How much should you prepare for the discovery meeting beforehand? What should you know? What should you do? The insights I'll share come from the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, designed to help sales reps perform to the best of their ability, find more ideal customers, build strong value, and close more deals. What is discovery? The discovery meeting is an opportunity to learn about the challenge your prospect is facing. It's a chance to go a little more in-depth. It's not necessarily a chance to get all the information about the company or about its history. That's boring for the client who doesn't want to have to educate you. The client is likely meeting with other sellers and they aren't interested in working to educate all of them. Do your research beforehand so your discovery meeting can focus solely on understanding the prospect's true problem and understanding how you can bring value and help them learn more about what you have to offer. Research You can easily find information about the company and its history on the Internet or the company's website. If you show up to discovery seeking this kind of information the prospects will likely think less of you. I've said it before, but you also have the option to call into the company and ask the receptionist for more information. The organization may be able to share an information page or other company literature. The PR department may be able to provide the information you're seeking as well. This information is vital to the discovery meeting because it will help you have a meaningful discussion when you meet with the prospect. Understand the industry Make sure you also understand recent developments related to the industry and the company's role within the industry. If the company is in the housing industry and I discover that the housing industry is booming in states like Arizona, California, and Florida, then that will impact my presentation. If I'm selling marketing services to companies in the housing market it will be important to know that the market is growing. I'll also need to know the top challenges that companies within the housing market are facing. Then, determine how those trends will correlate to your product or service. Case studies If you have a previous or existing client that is similar to your prospect, consider sharing that information. Has one of your clients faced the challenges of growing in a high-growth market? Have you helped a client tackle some of the issues inherent in that situation? Is there a business case study I can share that helps my prospects understand the challenge they are facing? I did an episode some time back about case studies and the folks over at Gong outlined four main steps that should exist within every business case study. Identify the problem. What is preventing the client from growing? What challenges are hindering the company from accomplishing its goals? Develop a measurement. How can you measure the challenges the company is facing? How can you quantify the issue the company is facing? Determine the consequences of the company losing those deals or opportunities. Did they have to let people go or close their doors? Make a dramatic point without going over-the-top. What transformation did your product or service cause in this company? [Tweet "Case studies help companies see what you have done in the past and what you can do for prospective customers. #CaseStudies"] Prepare questions What things did the company try previously that didn't work? The more questions you ask the more you'll learn about them. Go deep. Ask them to tell you more. You may discover that they are currently working with a company that isn't providing the kind of results they need. Why don't they like the current company? Incorporate those facts into your own presentation so you can address their challenges. Find out who will be making the decision and how they will decide. Find out what their budget will be and when they are hoping to make the change. Is there an unconsidered need they aren't aware of? TSE Certified Sales Training Program This stuff works. We teach it in TSE Certified Sales Training Program and we're seeing fantastic results. If you or your team want to check out the program, we'll let you try the first module risk-free. If you love it, we'd love to have you join the TSE Certified Sales Training Program to improve your selling skills. I share this because I want to help you find more ideal customers, have more meaningful conversations, build stronger value, close more deals, and I want to challenge you each and every day to do big things. “Discovery Meetings” episode resources Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought t

Many sellers understand the challenge of using emails to reach out to prospects, but Chad Sanderson tells us that using brief, compelling stories in sales emails can leave a memorable impression on a prospect who is inundated with noise. Chad has worked as a marketer, seller, sales leader, and entrepreneur, so he understands the perspective of everyone listening to this podcast. Email issues Chad points out that most emails suck. We're all connected to our devices and we're constantly inundated with impressions through Facebook messages, videos, emails, LinkedIn requests, and even WhatsApp or Snapchat messages. That doesn't even include impressions you get while watching television. The only way to effectively break through the noise is to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Everything is moving at a ridiculously fast pace, so if you never slow down enough to truly consider the other person, you'll probably fail to truly connect. You must connect with people in a way that's valuable from their perspective. [Tweet "People still buy from people, so if they don't know and trust you, you must build rapport before you earn the right to talk about yourself. #BuildRapport"] Onslaught As if the crowded inboxes aren't enough, it's also true that many of the emails people send are just drudgery. Chad points to one company that has been pursuing him for several months, and as he mapped the cadence of the messages, he noted that the messages never included anything from his perspective until about email 14. The messages were always about the company. He said it happens all the time because sellers don't realize that approach doesn't work. And though he tries to be kind because he works in this world too, he sometimes has to unsubscribe because the messages aren't valuable. To make the idea simpler to understand, think about this in the context of your friends. Everybody has at least one friend that will not stop talking about themselves. Even in a social setting, people will eventually move away from that person. It's true in sales, too. People business We seem to assume that the rules are different in sales. We forget that we're in the people business and that relationships matter in sales just as they do outside of work. Sales has always been a discipline. It has always been tough. It has gotten tougher because now everyone can get to everyone else and everyone believes they have something important to say. Slow down and take a deep breath. Think about your general target audience. Instead of thinking about Donald or Chad, think about reaching out to podcast hosts who focus on B2B revenue generation. Then you'll have a little bit of context. You still won't know those people, but you'll have a good place to start. But you have to be able to reach out to prospects at scale. Personalization Chad read a report last week about a company that ran a test of 7,000 emails, personalizing half of the emails to the challenges the person would face based upon their role. Think industry/company personalization rather than individual personalization. They found that the open rates were four to five points higher on cold emails that were crafted to highlight challenges the receiver was facing. Some people argue that isn't personalization, but what we really need to do is understand the conext these people are working in and then show them something that will tap into their curiosity circuit. The next level of personalization involves those who responded to the first round of communication.Instead of researching 100 people I only have to research the 10 who indicated interest in my product or service. Stick to the rule of thumb that you'll do 15 minutes of research on an industry, 10 minutes of research on a company, and 5 minutes of research on an individual. If you can stick to that and not be distracted by dog videos or Tiger winning the Masters, you'll be able to effectively personalize your messaging. Make them curious so that they'll be waiting for the next email. Telling stories Chad related the story of a friend who went into a Men's Warehouse to get a tux. Then he used the experience to reach out to the CEO of the company to highlight how his company could help fill in some of the organization's gaps. Using his own individual experience, he crafted an email that was still only six or seven sentences long so that it fit on a mobile screen. In a B2C environment, share how that brand made you feel or how an individual made you feel. In a B2B environment, tell a story about how you've helped someone whose situation was similar to the person you're targeting. Explain how you were able to help him turn his situation around and tell him about the results you were able to produce. Tell him about the person who is like him. Although you don't know him yet, you know someone who is like him, so tell him that story. If you want to understand story structure better, grab a copy of Creativity, Inc, a book about how Pixar creates st

A sudden influx of new leads seems like a dream come true, but you often have to determine which type of customers are the best in order to assess whether it's really a good thing. If you haven't yet grabbed a copy of The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honest and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results by Todd Caponi, get it before he joins us on the podcast in the near future. In the book, he discusses the three types of buyers. The active buyer The active buyer is looking for a solution. He understands the problem and he wants to solve it. These are your inbound leads. They understand their problem well enough to initiate research to try to find a solution to the problem. They may seek a quote for your product or service, and they are proof that your marketing is working. These buyers are finding your website. These buyers are also more than likely going to commoditize you. They are likely considering three to five different vendors and because they don't have all the details about your company, they are going to try to differentiate you based on price as well as features. Although they know they have issues that they must solve, they don't care about the intricacies of your company. They simply need to solve a problem and get the best deal possible. The passive buyer The passive buyers recognize that a problem likely exists but they aren't prioritizing it. In his book, Todd compares it to the small problems at your house that need to be addressed eventually but that aren't a priority right now. Maybe the handle on your door is broken or the blinds need to be repaired. It isn't the end of the world if you fail to complete them. Passive buyers will eventually get around to solving the problem. The status quo buyers These status quo buyers are happy with things as they are. They aren't thinking about the future; they've learned to operate just fine the way things are. Imagine the guy who has a flip phone and doesn't see the need for a smartphone. He doesn't want to change, perhaps because he doesn't recognize that better options exist. Or maybe he's worried that the smartphone will be too complicated and he won't be able to learn it well. Change feels too complex, so he decides to stay with the status quo. But what if someone could educate him and teach him to use the cell phone? Challenging buyers In my own experience, many of my most challenging leads were the active buyers. You might be thinking that these are the kinds of buyers we'd most like to have, and that would be the case if they were always perfectly ready to buy. If my company was always the front-runner, that would be a great situation for us. But we're not always the front-runner, and sometimes we're simply an after-thought. The buyer is likely considering several companies before making a decision because that's how the buying department has structured its purchases. The question becomes can we persuade them to buy once we're having a conversation? Best customers From my coaching and training experience, and based upon Todd's recommendations, we've discovered that the status quo buyers are often the best ones. [Tweet "The customers who don't know that better options exist are ripe for you to educate them. #EducateCustomers"] Your job is to teach them and help them to recognize unconsidered need. Consider the book The Challenger Sale. When we can open the prospect's mind to something he doesn't know about, we can create the possibility of change. If you can reveal the problem, you can be the front-runner. Also check out the book Three Value Conversations to help you understand the education process that sellers must adopt. Managing customers You'll ultimately discover that you have all three kinds of customers in your pipeline and you must learn to manage them. The perfect buyers that are the perfect size who reach out to you? Those are the unicorns. You must prepare for all three kinds of buyers. You may even find that you're better equipped to interact with one kind of customer over another. I'd love to hear your insights about each of these kinds of customers and which you like best. "Which Type Of Customers Are The Best" episode resources Grab a copy of The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honest and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results. Also grab a copy of the book The Challenger Sale and the book Three Value Conversations You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or o

Sellers can guide prospective customers through the purchasing journey by holding prescriptive conversations with buyers. Tom Pisello launched into the topic of prescriptives because he was a product manager who was launching products in the marketplace, with a sales force that had never engaged these particular customers. In an attempt to help buyers make decisions, he created prescriptive tools that would help customers analyze their existing situation and compare it to the new product. Buyer frustration The B2B purchase decision is more challenging than ever for buyers because there are six to 10 decision makers in every decision. Buyers spend incredible amounts of time on their own gathering, processing, and deconflicting information. And 94 percent of buyers have participated in a buying cycle that just evaporated. Buyers are frustrated. About 84 percent report that the buyers' journey is taking longer than they expected. There's a big opportunity for sellers as well as a challenge for them to overcome: to help buyers through a journey that has become much tougher and longer than ever before. The problem is that most sellers show up to meetings talking about themselves: about the company, the product, the services, themselves, and the customers they are working with. Then when the competition shows up for their meeting, they do the same thing. They all sound exactly the same, so the buying process becomes a shootout. Flip it around Instead of talking about the typical things, talk about the challenges the prospect might be having. Then, use that to do some teaching about the challenges you're seeing at other companies. Then, pivot to a Socratic approach. Ask probing, diagnosing questions to identify whether your prospects see themselves in the other customers you described. Do a little bit of cooperative discovery. If you sell office furniture, start by sharing current research about what makes a good office setup. Is open office the way to go? What about standup desks? Instead of pitching yourself or your product, share information about productive office environments. Talk about the challenges of collaboration and flexible work environments. Mention health and engagement. Talk provocatively about these challenges and how they affect your prospect. The book The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson tackles this approach well. Share examples This leads naturally into you sharing stories and examples about how you've helped other customers with their office furniture needs and about how successful they've been as a result. From there you'll use the Socratic method to dig deep. Be careful how much of a challenge you present early on because it's possible that you haven't earned the right to do that. Start with something provocative, but then pivot away from the research to your questions. The goal is to move into a collaboration with the customer. Guide the customer Buyers prefer this process because you're solving a problem and uncovering problems they didn't even realize they had. But even for issues they knew they had, you're putting some numbers to them. You're clarifying how their employees will be impacted by the purchase of office furniture. That's why pivoting from research to personal is important. You're putting it into a perspective your customer can understand and telling the customer exactly what the problem is costing and how you can help solve it. You're helping them to prioritize all of these challenges and becoming a prescriptive consultant to them. As a seller, it's your moral obligation to act as a guide to the customer. Because the buyer's journey has gotten complicated, you need to provide a map of sorts so the customer knows what to expect. Then be prepared to proactively provide information to the buyer along the way. If you know the company will ask for a business case, proactively provide it. Don't wait for the customer to ask. [Tweet "Be an evolved seller who is ready for requests that occur during the buyer's journey. Inspire the customer to buy and then provide the right content at the right time. #EvolvedSeller"] Proactive sellers The buyer's journey is hard. As you're proactively providing content, you can also use smart sales enablement systems to track whether the content is being consumed. If they aren't consuming the information, they may not be as far along in the process as you think they are. You've got to anticipate every step so that you'll have the visibility to know whether you're progressing or not. Bring up your buyer's objections before they become objections. Realize that your prospects spend two-thirds of their time gathering, processing, and deep conflicting. Streamline that for them when you can. Inspiring content Marketing plays a vital role in putting together inspirational content. We must identify the content that will inspire our customers. We're not talking about content that is only about the products or services. It must be shorter, bas

The trend in sales now is to provide value to your customers, but there must be some kind of exchange in the transaction, so you may find yourself asking, "When should I talk about price?" How do you bring it up? What exactly will you say when it's time to talk about it? Today we're going to share ideas that will help you provide tremendous value and ensure an effective, value-rich conversation for both parties. This is a segment from our TSE Certified Sales Training Program and we're going to share a snippet from one of our training programs and then offer some ideas based upon what you hear. It will let you learn something about selling and offer you an experiment that you can test for yourself. You'll hear the challenges that other sales reps are facing and share with you what has worked for the group members. Taboo We've been taught that it's taboo to talk about money, so many of us shy away from it. New sellers face the biggest challenge, usually because of limiting beliefs. In the past when I was selling software training classes, I didn't understand that it was worth $10,000 for customers to earn their certification over a weekend. I didn't think anyone would be willing to pay it. I didn't understand that for their $10,000 expenditure, they were going to see a $20,000 to $30,000 increase in their earnings over the course of a year. All I knew was that $10,000 was a lot of money. My self-limiting beliefs made me apprehensive, and this is a common problem for new sellers. You must believe in the product or service you're offering and the value it provides to your prospects. When you do that, you'll develop more confidence in your messages, and it won't matter what the course costs. Bring up the money Once you've identified a product you believe in, when do you bring up the money? That depends largely on the product or service that you're selling. If it's software that costs $30 a month and they won't commit, they probably weren't the right fit anyway. Let them go. If you're selling a software solution that you have to customize for the organization, you're going to need more time. You'll have to gather more information in order to give them effective pricing. If the customer can see the prices on your website, they can weed themselves out at the beginning. People who really want to learn more and have more value-rich conversations will engage. In the later conversations, we can discuss what they'll get for their investment. Addressing price We'll tap into emotion by addressing how our product or service will help them. What will happen if the client doesn't get coaching? Why do I need coaching right now? What results will I see if I get coaching? Because people make emotional decisions and then justify those decisions logically, if we build value well, the $1,500 price tag for coaching won't seem like a big deal. The return on their investment, the ability to provide well for their family, and the possibility that they will advance in their careers will justify the cost. In the case of a more complex solution, when the customer asks about price, be honest when you tell them that you can't predict exact numbers right now. If you can't yet determine all the variables and if you can't determine the exact infrastructure, explain that to the customer. Then invest the time to understand the setup and the infrastructure. Find out what challenges the prospect is facing. Be intentional It's possible that the customer is simply fishing, or in other cases that he is simply looking for a ballpark figure. In the latter case, perhaps try giving him a range for other similar clients. Don't give the customer your lowest number if you provide a range. If the cheapest you've done is $5,000 and the most expensive is $20,000, don't offer the $5,000 number. Go a little higher. Instead, offer a higher number, like $8,000 or $10,000. Once they have a number in their minds, you'll determine whether they are truly serious about moving forward. Content In this situation, effective blog posts that describe the return on investment will help your customers gather information. Especially if yours is a complex solution, you'll help them understand the components involved and what they should be looking for in a vendor. In the case of sales training, perhaps you'd have different blog posts that describe the different levels of training and the different types of service that you offer. The prospect can determine what courses are available and what his options are for in-person training, group training, or workshops. Consider, too, outlining entry-level solutions, mid-tier solutions, and a higher tier. Each solution, based upon the complexity, can solve specific problems. Research The prospect can do some research ahead of time and find answers to some of their basic questions. Because this will be an enterprise solution, he'll have to come to the table prepared to invest money. At this point, it's appropriate to talk about budget be

Human behavior plays a huge role in sales and understanding what makes people tick is one of the most important concepts sellers in all industries should seek to learn. Joe Sweeney has worn a variety of different hats over the course of his career, but he loves human behavior and he says it's the key to success in sales. Buyers You must understand why someone would buy your product. Joe's philosophy, as described in his book Networking Is A Contact Sport, is that networking, business, and sales are about giving and serving rather than getting something. People ask about the number one mistake that salespeople make, and it's believing that the process is about us. We think it's about our product. It's not. Joe gives talks all the time and he starts by saying, "You don't sell anything. What we do is help people get what they want." Instead, sellers tend to take the opposite approach and we talk about ourselves and our product. But your buyer doesn't care about that. All he cares about is whether your product can solve his needs and relieve some of his pain points. Criticism Joe said he spent a portion of his life criticizing other people because he represented a lot of high-net-worth people who did stupid things. When, for example, he encountered a woman outside a hospital dying from emphysema and smoking a cigarette, he made the connection. The pleasure she got from nicotine was greater than the pain she experienced from emphysema. The takeaway is to get good at understanding what makes people tick without criticizing them. All human behavior makes sense, even when we don't. Don't be critical of their actions. Understand people's needs and wants. Keep everything simple. 3 Common Needs Although we could all likely point to hundreds of needs, we really have three basic, common needs. We need to belong to something bigger than ourselves. We need to love and to be loved. Finally, we all want to know that our life has meaning and that we've made a difference. The greatest sales companies in the world have understood that. Perhaps our greatest need is the first one: the need to belong to something bigger. It's counter-intuitive today because with all the social media we falsely believe we're all connected but the truth is that we're less connected than we've ever been. Stated another way, we're more isolated now than ever. Need to belong The company that really understands this concept is Harley Davidson. Its number one competitor is BMW which far surpasses Harley, but Harley outsells everyone. The Harley Ownership Group, or HOG, makes its owners part of something bigger. It's about belonging. Remember the old TV show Cheers? Its tagline captures this desire. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. In this technology world, we pretend that we're connected to a massive network but we aren't. Need to be loved Coca Cola marketed to this need with the ad about teaching the world to sing. It was kind of a kumbaya moment with people holding hands singing together. They portrayed the feeling that if you drink Coca Cola, you'd feel all this love. Coca Cola understood the Maya Angelou quote: People will forget what you say. People will forget what you do. People will never forget the way you make them feel. Joe asks his groups, "What are you doing to answer the needs of these people? The belonging needs and the love needs." Need to make a difference We all want to know that our lives have meaning, and Mastercard captured that with the ad campaign that assigned prices to different products. Fishing poles, $29. Worms, $3.25. An afternoon fishing with your teenagers, Priceless. Most of us approach the sales process with the sense that we have to tell people about our benefits. Instead, we should take two steps back and work to understand what makes people tick. Understand needs Work to understand your buyers' needs. The greatest companies do it and I recommend that your listeners do the same. If you're going to be really good in sales, you should wow people. If you sell office furniture, what would differentiate you from the competition? Find something personal, and then do something memorable. Little things in sales mean everything. #BeMemorable Imagine that you have a customer who likes Egyptian art. At the close of your interaction with the customer, hand him a piece of Egyptian art that you printed out. It cost you nothing, but none of the other competitors will have done that. Making money Joe suggests that sales isn't about making money. Although that's a by-product of sales, it's really about creating an environment where we can service people. You can do the same thing in education and in government. Morph your sales job into a servant leadership role. Joe's sister-in-law told him that she always assumed that business was a bunch of greedy people trying to make money. There was a negative energy around sales. Joe reframed it as a positive thing and created a forum where people can serve each other and

Sales scripts put sellers inside a box and lock them into selling a certain way, but when you throw away your sales script and do more creative, engaging selling, you'll increase your conversion. Ned Leutz runs two teams for ZoomInfo, a business data and technology company that helps salespeople get in touch faster and drive more meetings and more sales. He'll talk today about throwing away the script in your sales efforts to increase your flexibility and your success. Fast answers People are accustomed to getting fast answers without ever having to engage with a person. By the time the prospect makes contact, the salesperson with a script may prove to be less flexible than the Internet. When that's the case, there's really no need for a salesperson. Ned believes that giving a salesperson a script is the "kiss of death" and that scripts don't drive conversion or sales. Salespeople who are limited by scripts will often fail to connect with the prospect's problem. If the goal is to find mutual challenges that you can solve together, the script will be extremely inefficient. Instead of operating from a script, Ned suggests providing a map to sales reps. He believes in setting an agenda with the main goal of finding a point of mutual connection. Solving problems Ned's team starts with the question, "Why did you decide to take my call?" He says that most people don't take a call with a salesperson unless they have a suspicion that the salesperson can solve a need. About 90 percent of the time, the prospect faces a challenge that he needs help with. The other 10 percent might be a case of someone taking your call because you're just a nice person. In those cases, you'll have to work to qualify the prospect before moving forward. The question seeks to discover what caught the prospect's attention and prompted him to accept the phone call. It eliminates half of the guessing. Start with the end Begin from a point of mutual agreement. Either there's a problem that you can solve or there isn't. Once you've set that agenda, you've established an expectation for the conversation. You've earned the right to discover whether or not there's a problem you can solve. You can ask the key questions of your customer to identify the challenge. The alternative is to play a sales version of whack-a-mole in which you're constantly asking, "Is this it?" "Is this it?" You'll bore the client who will much prefer to research on his own since he'll likely perceive that you aren't listening or guiding him. Nobody is taking your B2B sales call without looking at your website first and deciding whether there is something there that catches their attention. You can assume that the prospect has done some research before accepting your call. Cold calling Ned wants sellers to throw away the script in cold calling because there's enough information readily available to sellers that they should have a pretty good story for why they are calling each prospect. When you call a prospect, it's a suspicion rather than a script. you've got a reason for calling. Your customer will have the sense that he isn't just a number on the list. Ned points out that data companies can't fix a broken sales process or a bad product. A data company can give your sellers the information they need at their fingertips to have a 90% story as to why they might be able to help a particular company. Verifiable outcomes Ned asks his managers to focus on verifiable outcomes. They'll know that a rep had a really good discovery call if they understand that the client feels some sort of pain, they understand that the client is in a current state that he'd like to get out of, and he can answer the question, "What would you be able to do tomorrow that you can't do today if you could solve this problem?" One of the worst sales questions we ask is, "If you solved this problem, how much money would you make?" Most people have no idea. Instead, ask, "If you solve this problem, how would you quantify the impact of that on your organization? Who else would be affected?" It's not important that the prospect be able to quantify it immediately. It's important that the prospect understand the impact your solution will make. That thinking will help them decide whether it's worth making an investment. Business case Ned believes that if you can get cooperative collaboration on building a business case, you know that you have a good chance of closing the deal. He points to ineffective activity as the reason many sales teams struggle. Scripts often result in ineffective cold calling, and data can hurt as well. If you spend your day calling switchboard numbers all day but you can't get a single gate-keeper on the phone, you'll have a hard time moving forward. Ned's company engages in proof of concept in which they inject direct phone numbers into an organization's system and then ask the reps to engage in the same activity they always do. They know the conversations will convert at a much higher

Many sellers discover that their perfect pitch is not working because, as they work to build value, they are appealing to logic rather than emotion. We're devoting the whole month to a discussion about building value, and some of today's information comes from the book The Transparency Sale written by Todd Caponey. Todd will visit with us on the podcast in the near future, but today we'll talk about the decision-making process and the role our brains play. Brain power Every day, we engage in activities every day that are so routine that we don't even think about them. When we drive to work, we put a seatbelt on without even thinking about it. When we back the car up, we put our arms over the seat beside us and then look backward. You're able to listen to this podcast while you're driving because you don't even have to think about driving. Todd talks about three levels of the brain, which you may have heard of before. The reptilian part, the limbic part, and the neocortex. The reptilian portion is the core or center, and it's the oldest part of the brain. It prompts us to do things without thinking. It drives our instincts. It's the part that prompts us to react to pain without thinking, and it's part of our survival. The limbic portion is more intricate and it helps deals with feelings and emotions. It helps us make decisions and motivates our behaviors. The neo- or frontal cortex is the newest part of our brain and it's associated with information and logic. It's the largest part of the brain and it ties with math and reasoning and justification. [Tweet "We make decisions emotionally and justify them logically, and it's our brain that makes it possible. #brainpower"] Sales standpoint We typically show up to our prospect meetings with PowerPoint presentations, charts, spreadsheets, and graphs of all the amazing things our product or service can do. We show up prepared to sell to the customer's neocortex -- the logical part. Remember, though, that the logic part of our brain isn't where decisions are made. Decisions form in the middle portion of the brain, where our feelings and emotions reside. You must help people make a decision emotionally, and then justify it logically. You can build value as a sales rep by using stories to tap into the emotion or pain that the prospect is experiencing. Unless there is some kind of pain, your customer won't make a decision. Status quo The reptilian part of our brain wants us to stay where we are. If nothing is harming us, why would we move? Leave things as they are. Until someone points out the reason we need to make a change and appeals to our emotion, we'll never see a need to move. If a seller use emotion to prompt the customer to move and then help him justify the move logically, he'll be much more likely to make a change. Tie the emotion and the logic together to help your prospects understand the need to make a change. Making it work I recently met a guy who sells water filtration systems in Florida. He begins by asking people whether people drink water, and many people say no because it tastes bad and it's unclean and unhealthy. He points out that taking a shower in the same water can be just as unhealthy because your skin is your body's largest organ, which presents a pain point for his prospects. The seller never mentions price or facts about his product. He focuses on the emotion of wanting to be healthy. Do it with stories or by asking the buyer questions that tap into emotion. Defining sales I define sales as helping people persuade themselves to make a change. If we try to persuade them, their guard immediately goes up. Great sellers leave the buyer in charge of the decision. If your demos are flopping or your presentations aren't working, you're probably focusing too much on logic. Don't sell to the logical part of the brain. Sell to the emotional part. "Perfect Pitch Is Not Working" episode resources Grab a copy of the book The Transparency Sale written by Todd Caponey for more information about the role our brains play in the buying process. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to

Smart sellers can make social media work for them by building a personal brand, giving value, connecting with others, and growing their business. Andy Storch is a consultant and coach who is always learning new things about sales and who loves the freedom that selling provides. Though he says he still has a lot to learn, he has an advantage over many others because he's always trying new things. Because he has the confidence to experiment and discover what works and what doesn't, he has a leg up on a lot of other people. Personal branding Whether you're selling services or products, there are very few things that absolutely distinguish your offerings from other people's. In fact, customers can always find an alternative. In B2B especially, they are buying you. They want to do business with you. Relationships are so important for sellers which is why it's more important than ever to develop a personal brand. You must let people know who you are and create authority. To that end, Andy uses social media to let people know who he is, to create authority, to share knowledge, and to build authority. Attracting people As sellers, we initially think we want to get on a call with everybody, but there are a lot of people we just won't gel with. Social media attracts people who want to work with us and deflects others. In an era where everyone is creating content of some kind, we have to put our own content out there in order to build our authority. Given the amount of content that already exists, it's tempting to wonder why yours matters. Even if you're regurgitating information you learned from someone else, put your own spin on it. For some, it's blogging. Others use podcasting or YouTube. It depends on your style and where your clients are. Andy points to podcaster Chris Ducker and his business Youpreneur. In his book Rise of the Youpreneur, Chris says that if you build a personal brand, it's the last brand business you'll ever need to build because you can take it with you and evolve it into any kind of business. Five years from now, you may do completely different work, but if you've built a brand and a following, people will go with you. Building a brand Your personal brand is what you're known for. Having your own website and your own colors is the advanced part of it. Are you known for being knowledgeable, trustworthy, and someone that people want to learn from? Andy posts on social media with the goal of helping his friends discover the things that have previously worked for him. They tell him that he inspires them, and he has created a personal brand as someone who is an achiever, who helps and inspires other people. You want to be known as someone knowledgeable and trustworthy at the end of the day. People who need it Think of your content as giving information to a friend. You are putting it out there for those people who need it and want it at that time, not for people who don't. Don't worry about the judgment from people that your content isn't for. Most people are rooting for you. Even if the content isn't for them, they'll just scroll on by. Action steps Andy's primary business is B2B so he spends most of his time on LinkedIn. When he moved to this business 18 months ago he committed to posting every weekday. Over time he has gained some traction there, though it's a tough platform to engage on. Until you have a really good following of people, it's tough to get likes and comments. Start by finding an engagement group where people are in a group together commenting on each other's stuff. Be careful with this, though, because if you join multiple groups it can be tough to keep up. If you find one, it will help you build your following and gain exposure. It doesn't directly turn into sales, but it keeps him top of mind for people. You don't know who's on there and who's seeing your content. Don't put content out just for the sake of doing so, but find ways to be valuable to the people who follow you. Don't assume you'll start generating sales right away. You're serving people, you're building a brand, and long-term it will work out for you. Logistics The best practice is to schedule content, but Andy calls himself a live-in-the-moment kind of guy who decides each day what to post. He alternates between providing content that targets his ideal clients and general content that would be helpful for larger numbers of people. His target clients are less than 10 percent of his overall network, so sometimes he wants to speak directly to them, but sometimes he wants to engage a larger group. Share experiences Think back to your own experiences and knowledge. Can you turn those into posts or stories that you can tell Would you rather write or speak? You've got to put it out there are hit publish. You won't get much response in the beginning but you've got to keep doing it. When you have a fear of judgment or criticism, it grows as you let it fester. The more you take action, just like with cold calling, you buil

Even if you’ve been selling for years, it’s possible that you’ve overlooked some ideas that will help you perform better, like working to shorten the sales process with video. Today we’ll discuss some ideas that will help you shorten your sales cycle and some ways to use video to accomplish it. I’ll also share a real-life example from one of my clients to demonstrate how effective it can be. POWER OF VIDEO Video is so simple and so powerful that it’s hard to imagine that some people aren’t taking advantage of it. We’ve talked about it on The Sales Evangelist for months because it’s a powerful tool that’s available to every seller. I recently read a study that showed that 7 out of 10 B2B buyers watch a video somewhere in their buying process. So 70 percent of buyers are watching videos that are usually generated by the marketing department. But why aren’t we in sales using it as well? It’s simpler for the buyer to consume, and it isn’t difficult for us to make them. PREVALENCE OF VIDEO Videos are everywhere and we engage with them daily on Netflix, YouTube, and other places. Stories are part of our lives. We can use them in our prospecting, in our closings, and to build value throughout the entire sales process. Use video to follow up with a client or share a testimonial. Create a video overview of your product. CREATIVE USES Chaz works in the 3D printing industry, which for some of us is still rather unfamiliar. Because his product is cutting-edge, it can be difficult for him to explain what he’s doing to his customers. The emails can get long and confusing. His customers have lots of technical questions. Chaz realized that it would be very time-consuming to answer all of those questions each time they arise. When he tried to get his customers to hop on a call so he could answer the questions, they often went dark on him. He decided to use video to answer questions for his customers. It shortens the process because it’s quicker than email, and it helps him build trust with his customers. Chaz said that he can shorten the sales process with video by up to a week. If you could shave time off of each of your deals, how much more could you process? How many more clients could you obtain? Could you close more deals or earn more commission? PROBLEM-SOLVING Imagine your current customers running into trouble with the product you sold them. Instead of asking them to ship it back to you so you can troubleshoot the problem, why not use video to help them identify the glitch. You can walk them through the process and provide guidance that will help them improve the outcome the next time. Chaz uses the video to carry the customer through the process and it freed up more time in his day because he was able to help his customer quickly and efficiently so he could move on to other things. VIDEO TOOLS We’ve told you about a number of different video tools like BombBomb, Loom, Wistia, and Soapbox. There’s another called Vineyard, and probably many more that I haven’t named. Video humanizes you for your customer, and research has proven that people do business with those that they know, like, and trust. When your customer can see and hear you, you’ll be able to build trust much more quickly in addition to helping your customer. You can use video in your prospecting by following up with your prospects. Try using it in your outreach process to see what kind of results you get. We’re testing it ourselves and seeing amazing results. “SHORTEN THE SALES PROCESS WITH VIDEO” EPISODE RESOURCES Chaz is part of our TSE Certified Sales Training Program beta group, which wraps up in a couple of weeks. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, and you can watch the videos I mentioned earlier in the podcast here and here. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on

Many sellers elongate the sales process without even realizing it, and Steven Griffith is here to talk about how to take control of your time and to explain that your time management ideas are wrong. Steven is a performance coach and the author of the book, The Time Cleanse: A Proven System to Eliminate Wasted Time, Realize Your Full Potential, and Reinvest In What Matters Most. He explains how to close the performance gap and get hours back in your day. Performance research Steven discovered about five years ago that all of his performance clients were pointing to the same roadblock to their success: they didn't have enough time. He even discovered that he was feeling the same way. Technology has created more distractions and it prompts us to multi-task all the time. Our lives are moving at an incredible pace and we're all over-stimulated by toxins that steal and hijack our time. Old time management strategies worked when the phone was connected to the wall by a cord. We live by the notion that time is scarce so we're working to cram as much into each hour as we can. "If time allows" Most people have an adverse relationship to time, so Steven teaches his clients to establish a positive relationship with time so that time becomes abundant. It's a matter of viewing time as an ally rather than a foe, and working with it instead of fighting against it. Consider the phrase "if time allows." Steven routinely asks people whose time they are referring to when they use this phrase. We've conditioned ourselves to believe that time has the power to allow us to accomplish things. We buy into the idea that time is an outside thing that we're working against when, in fact, we are time. Compressing the sales cycle Steven talks about compressing a sales cycle to fit one year's worth of sales into one month. He tells the story of a real estate professional who sells luxury real estate in L.A. He had health issues in the third quarter and he was really underwater. They worked together to do a time cleanse that would help him compress his time. Steven said we all have a built-in belief system about how long a sale takes. We're conditioned by our industries to believe in ideas like slow seasons and high seasons. Our mental framework keeps us in that mindset, so we get stuck. We might go up or down by 10 percent but we'll always come back to our conditioned thermostat. Steven asked the agent if it was possible to complete a year's worth of sales in 10 months' time. Without worrying about how to do it, he simply wanted to know if it could be done. Could it be done in 8 months? Or 6? Steven worked to break apart his self-limiting beliefs about how long the sales cycle takes. By the time they got down to 8 weeks, he admitted that he didn't know how he would do it. They started building a new framework in which it was possible to do a year's worth of sales production in 8 weeks. Mandatory activities They started by identifying the activities that the agent absolutely had to do. Steven calls these ROT activities or high return-on-time activities. His biggest business-generating sales activities were his 10x10, (10 contacts by 10 a.m.) and researching the market for pre-qualified buyers. His time cleanse involved identifying different categories like technology, people, places, and others and categorizing their time. Once they had written everything down, they considered whether each activity was contributing to or contaminating his time. They identified his time there as a contaminant because his visits often turned into two-hour stays. Instead, they sent his assistant to get his coffee each day. By the end of the activity, they reclaimed 25 hours a week, 8 of which was the coffee shop. The time cleanse gives you the opportunity to evaluate whether you're doing the right things at the right times. He redistributed his time and assigned his non-revenue-generating activities to his assistant as well. Timefulness Next, Steven showed his client how to set his day up to perform. He calls the concept timefulness, which is an advancement of mindfulness. It's being present in the moment so that we stop multitasking. We maintain a single focus which can 2 or 3x our results on its own. The client put everything on his calendar, and he created a reset strategy. He set an alarm on his phone to go off every hour, and when it did, he would check to make sure that he was being mindful. If he wasn't following the plan at that point, the alarm was his cue to return to it. Sales increased After about two or three weeks, he couldn't believe how quickly the sales started coming. Like many people, he said, "I can't believe this is happening so fast." Steven cautions people to avoid that mindset because that doubt will keep things from happening quickly. The client got laser-focused on his activities that generated revenue and he developed a relationship with time that supported those activities. He didn't feel like he was fighting the clock anymore. Be

Selling is honorable, and we should be proud of the work we do because nothing happens until somebody sells something. Today Harry Mazier talks to us about the importance of selling and how every organization must practice the fundamentals of selling in order to do it well. It begins by understanding the importance of being a sales professional. Relationships The short attention span of today's buyers means that there will always be room for relationships in selling. [Tweet "There's an adage that says that when all things are equal, people want to buy from their friends. And when all things aren't equal, people still want to buy from their friends. So make friends. #RelationshipSelling"] It's perhaps the best sales lesson you'll ever hear. Necessity It sounds basic to say that nothing happens until someone sells something, but it's true that if we don't sell, we won't eat. Sales is the lubricant of our economy. It doesn't matter how good your manufacturing is, how precise your accounting is, how deep your R&D is, everything begins when someone convinces a prospect to say, "Yes, I'll take some." When the deal closes, the gears begin moving and everything takes off from that point of agreement. Failure Fear of failure prevents people from selling. You might drive past a prospect's business 12 times and always find a reason not to stop: no parking places, it's too early, or it's too late. To get past that reluctance, you must suck it up and knock on the doors. Then, once you get in front of that customer, you must know what you're talking about. Emerson said that nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. You must be enthusiastic and excited. If you're not excited about what you're doing, do something else. Be smart. Don't tell them how much you know. Tell them how much they need to know to get where you want them to get. Selling is convincing someone else to agree with your opinion. But don't overstay your welcome by speaking too much. There's a story that Samson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, but twice that many sales are killed every day with the same implement. Resource Your role is to provide the necessary information and be convincing. The best salespeople don't sell, they help people buy. Selling is instructional and informational. Be a friend and a resource to your customer. Sales is an honorable profession that has taken a lot of hits -- many of them self-inflicted. Salespeople are a resource to our economy and they really are helpful to customers. People choose sales for a variety of reasons like interactions with people and independence. Of course, income opportunities are part of it as well. Negative view For a long time, sales was perceived as little more than one person taking unfair advantage of another. Salespeople have lived through that era and have established themselves as a resource rather than an impediment. Avoid being self-deprecating. Don't refer to yourself as "just a salesman." Sell with integrity every day so you can improve and help your customers. Don't put artificial limits on your own success or settle for good enough instead of good. Stories Relevant stories can help sellers sell. Rudyard Kipling said that if history was taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. People love stories, so rather than giving facts, features, and benefits, incorporate a story into your sales presentation. Do it consistently and do it as well as you can. Read and listen and stay attuned to the people around you. Harry recorded countless anecdotes in preparation for writing his book, Story Selling: Sage Advice and Common Sense About Sales and Success. If you don't use a story to provide proof, selling will be more difficult. But the story won't stand on its own. You must give your very best effort. Stories aren't the answer alone. You must support it with your work and effort. Do the best you can every day. Remember the 10 powerful 2-letter words: "If it is to be, it is up to me." You can find excuses and blame, but ultimately it depends on you. Sellers Don't think you're not in sales. Everyone is in sales from the moment they get out of bed in the morning. You are persuading or influences, negotiating or communicating. Don't run from it. Embrace it and learn to be better. Grow by failing. It's not how often you get knocked down; it's how many times you get back up. Get back up and learn what's effective and learn to communicate. Be true to yourself and embrace the opportunities you have as a salesperson. "Selling From The Heart" episode resources You can connect with Harry at [email protected] or at (404) 853-1063. Grab a copy of his book, Story Selling: Sage Advice and Common Sense About Sales and Success This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in

If you're giving your customers things that you value instead of focusing on things that your customer needs or wants, you should be aware of the 5 things you get wrong when it comes to building value. We're dedicating the month of April to a discussion of building value, and we're starting with the fundamentals of building value. 1. We fail to solve the problem. People will only change if they see a distinct need for it, and sometimes our customers don't even recognize that they have a problem. Or, in other instances, they may have found a solution or a band-aid to the problem that seems to be working. People don't fix things that seem to be working. Your job as a seller is to ask the right questions to help them consider or see the importance of addressing their challenge. Once you're able to help them identify the problem, we must provide a clear solution to help them address it. Donald Miller has a wonderful three-step process that lays out exactly how you can move through the process. If the buyer doesn't have confidence in your ability to guide him through the solution, you're likely going to lose the deal like I did when it happened to me. 2. We focus on what we like. I've taught this principle over and over again as the platinum rule: treat others the way they would like to be treated. It's a step up from treating people the way that you'd like to be treated. Don't focus on features or benefits that you like. Focus on things that the buyers like. Buyers may choose to work with you for a variety of reasons, but not all of your product's features will be important to the buyer. Not all of your service's benefits will matter to him. Once you've identified the problem that the buyer needs to address, and you've given the buyer a clear plan, avoid the urge to give the buyer things he doesn't need. Give him the things that are important and necessary for him and nothing more. You may have 100 features, but the buyer likely has one problem that is costing him a lot of money. He needs the feature that will solve that problem. Yes, he'll get much more than that with your product or service, but focus on his main problem to start. Over time you can educate him about additional features. 3. We don't listen to the customer. This ties closely to number 1 because we often continue talking even after the buyer has agreed to buy. Our conversations and discovery meetings are intended to help us discover things about our prospects. It's not intended to be a lecture. Sometimes sellers believe that if we're talking, we're winning, and that simply isn't true. Think of it like dating: you want the other person to perceive that you're interested. Studies indicated that you shouldn't talk more than 30 percent of the time, and that will only happen if you come prepared with meaningful questions. That will help the buyer express himself and his challenges. Once you've listened, you can pitch to the one thing he needs the most. 4. We think we must have the lowest price. This issue emerges frequently with sellers who think that value means having the lowest price, but it simply isn't true. I've lost deals before to companies that were bigger and more expensive than my own product or service. When I looked back, they didn't care that we were cheaper. They were concerned that I didn't focus on their problem and show them a clear path to solve it. They didn't have the conviction that I was the one who could best help them. If you've done a fantastic job of identifying their problem and you've helped them find a solution, they'll see the value in what you're offering. If, for example, their problem is costing them $50,000 a year but your solution will cost them $5,000 a year, that's a good saving for them. [Tweet "Lowering your price doesn't necessarily build value. Solving a problem builds value. #BuildValue"] Show me that you understand my problem and that you have a solution. Then show me that you've solved this kind of problem before. That will give me, as a buyer, confidence in you as a seller. 5. We believe that more is better. We often mistakenly believe that offering our customer more is better because it's a way to increase value. You might be giving away so many add-ons that your company loses money. In the future, your customer will likely expect the same kind of discounts and bonuses. If the customer stays with you for only a year, you will have lost the client before you could recoup your losses. Resist the urge to give away everything for free. Enjoy the silence in your conversation. Don't jump out and start talking too quickly. They may not be looking for more value but rather just contemplating the purchase. Keep things simple for your buyers and remember that less is often more. We know a lot more than our buyers about our product, and they don't need to know everything that we do. Avoid these mistakes and you'll have much better success building value. "Building Value" episode resources You've heard us talk about

Sellers have a bad reputation as people who are artificial and only concerned about themselves, but in order to succeed, you must focus on selling from the heart. Larry Levine has spent 30-something years in the trenches of B2B work, and he recognized some glaring weaknesses in sales teams he worked with. He values authenticity and he points to it as a big disconnect for many sellers. But it isn't just sellers. Think about how many times you've run into a friend you haven't seen in a while, and you toss out the phrase, "we should do lunch." It doesn't usually mean anything other than "I'll see you when I see you." Sellers must pay attention to their words. Use your words The words genuine, authentic, value, and trusted advisor prompt the follow-on question: "What does that mean?" Start by leading an authentic lifestyle. Think about this: When you say you're a salesperson or an SDR, you're already behind the 8-ball already in the minds of your clients and prospects. For every great sales professional, there are 10 that give the sales world a bad name. When you deal with the people in your personal life, are you genuine and true to who you really are? Most likely you are. So why can't we play that same role when we're dealing with our clients and prospects. [Tweet "Address the misalignment that exists between who you are at work and who you are after 5 p.m. Be genuine and authentic with the people in your business just like you are in your personal life. #AuthenticSelling"] Building relationships Many sellers maintain a certain amount of distance in their relationships with their clients. In his book, Slow Down, Sell Faster, Kevin Davis asked how it's possible to sell something to someone if you don't spend time figuring out who they are? What makes that person tick? What do they care about? Sellers try to move their prospects through the sales funnel as quickly as possible instead of investing the time to understand. Listen with intent and help them do their jobs. You'll be surprised to find that things actually speed up. Vulnerability If you don't build a relationship throughout multiple steps and influencers, it will be difficult to sell anything. People will buy from people they know, like, and trust. People are beginning to understand that it's ok to bring your heart to the sales world. It's ok to be genuine and real. But in order to do that, you have to be vulnerable, which goes against what we believe about sellers. If you asked your prospects what they truly desire in a seller, what do you think they'll say? Maybe someone who is honest and who can solve their problems. At some point, you'll hear them say "I want them to be sincere and show up after the sale." Conversations Have a conversation like you would with your friends. Memorizing scripts may make you sound too robotic. It isn't that scripts are bad, but we must make the verbiage in the script our own. If you can't align to it, you'll struggle with it. Imagine if you understood the person you were reaching out to. What are the issues and challenges they are facing. If you're calling a VP of sales to set up a demo for software, find out the issues that VPs of sales struggle with. Offer three issues that are most common for sales teams. Ask your prospects which of those three topics he can most closely align with. The truth is that even tenured sales reps are going about this the wrong way. Instead of the phone call being focused on setting a meeting, focus the call on starting a conversation. Sales leaders Time and patience matter. Your organization wasn't built in a day. You took a series of small successful steps to get where you are. The same is true for your sales process, but no one has time or patience for it. No one wants to slow down. Larry recalls deciding one day to focus on quality over quantity. He focused on opening at least two new conversations with two people he didn't know every single day. His phone skills improved and his mindset did, too. Sellers who are allowed to focus on quality over quantity may find that they enjoy their roles a bit more because they are connecting with people. Foundations Larry's first mentor freed him from the pressure of memorizing his prospecting script word-for-word, and instead encouraged him to understand the foundation of the script. Once you've done that, make it your own. Get back to humanizing what we've previously dehumanized in the sales world. There's a time and place for technology, but human-to-human matters. Technology can't replace every human aspect. Larry warns against being an "empty suit with commission breath." Once leadership realizes that there's a human on the other end of the sale rather than just a bunch of dollars and they set out to solve problems, watch what happens to the level of your relationships and referrals and profits. Avoiding sameness In a crowded field, in order to rise above the sea of sameness and be seen in a different light and stand out from the sales wolfpac

Sellers are understandably focused on the closing of any deal but it’s important that we keep things in perspective and don’t make the closing an event. The truth is that every transaction has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but we often get so focused on the closing that we unnecessarily freak ourselves out. This conversation comes from our TSE Certified Sales Training Program, our sales coaching program that helps sellers maximize their effectiveness. SALES PROCESS The sales process naturally builds toward a close where the client signs the deal and then everyone celebrates. Our challenge as sellers is to avoid the temptation to make the closing the entire focus of the sale. Focus throughout the sale on building value. Initiate conversations that address your prospects’ challenges and difficulties. Realize that you’ll never get to the closing if you don’t effectively address the buyers’ objections. Help the buyer feel confident in this deal by sharing stories that provide value and dispel your customers’ objections. Instead of waiting for your customer to offer his objections, bring them up on your own terms as a way of building trust. Red flags won’t go away simply because you ignore them. They don’t typically diffuse themselves, and your decision to wait until the end of the process to address them could cost you your deal. GROWING PROBLEMS Like many other relationships in life, struggles between buyer and seller don’t naturally disappear over time. In fact, problems often get bigger and worse as we fail to address them. A single demo for your client won’t magically offset all his concerns, so don’t wait until then to address his objections. If he has concerns about your product or service, it won’t likely matter how good your demo is: you won’t overcome his hesitation until you address the problems. Start early in the process. Diffuse problems as they arise. Every sales relationship offers a certain amount of risk, and your job is to minimize that for your prospects. #SalesObjections CLICK TO TWEET ADDRESSING FEARS Whether you’re selling water, computers, or houses, your buyer doesn’t want to part with his hard-earned cash until you’ve addressed his fears. He may want a new house. He may even need a new house. But he has fears of his own: What if he can’t afford this house? What if an unforeseen issue comes up? How much will hurricane insurance cost? Help him minimize those risks and fears throughout the process. That way, when he gets to the end of the transaction, those fears won’t be an issue. PROSPECTING Hubspot reported recently that as many as 40 percent of salespeople don’t like prospecting and about 30 percent struggle with closings. As a result, we tend to make closings a big deal in our own heads because we’ve worked so hard to find a prospect and get to this point. Instead of viewing it as a huge event, we should think of it as a natural byproduct of the sales process, and we should move the buyer smoothly through to conversion. Conversion begins the moment I start building value for my prospect. If I focus on blind-side challenges and identifying key problems, I can address objections early and minimize the risk that my deal will fall apart. My goal is to eliminate any reasonable doubt about whether I’m the right vendor for the prospect. PITCHING YOURSELF If you’re able to identify the companies your prospect is currently working with, you’ll be better able to pitch your own strengths against theirs. You can identify the competition’s weaknesses and use those to make your case. Share stories about past clients who have left that company to work with you and explain why they made that choice. Build one-on-one conversations into your process as often as possible so you can clarify any questions as they develop. Once you understand the big issues that will likely sabotage your deal, you can help everyone get to the same page. Follow your demonstrations with an email outreach offering to address any new questions the prospect has. Avoid pushing objections to the end of the process. Make objections and questions a constant part of your dialogue so that you minimize any risk toward the end of the deal. Strive to create a smooth experience for your customer. “DON’T MAKE THE CLOSING AN EVENT” EPISODE RESOURCES You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we’d love to have you join us. Call (561)578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome brows

One of the most important questions you’ll answer is “Why should I do business with you?” and it’s vital that you get it right when you do. When the question comes, you’ll be tempted to point out how long your company has existed, how great your product is, and how great your customer service is, but those answers won’t likely work. Sales From the Street tackles actual problems that sellers are facing and allows a sales rep just like you to provide an answer that worked for him. LOADED QUESTION People frequently get on Reddit seeking advice about how to answer this question. I love checking in there because it gives me a great opportunity to connect with sellers and share my own insights and expertise. They frequently listen to the podcast after our interaction and it presents a great opportunity to grow my business. If you haven’t checked Reddit for a page related to your own industry, you definitely should. “Why should I do business with you” is a loaded question, and I’m going to answer it in two different ways. When I was a young seller, I was quick to point out the features of my product and to preach about why we were the best company, but it never addressed the client’s true issue. INITIAL CONVERSATION Your answer to the question will largely depend on whether this is the first time you’ve spoken to this person. Do you have a relationship already, or this your very first contact? If you’re speaking to the customer for the very first time, he may be testing you to see how you’ll respond. You could play a seller’s version of whack-a-mole and blindly try to guess the right answer, but as a sales professional, that’s not how you want to operate. Instead, take control of the situation. Your first priority should be to find out why she is asking this question in the first place. You can respond with a listicle or with a question of your own. Or, consider this: “You know, David, when people ask that question it’s usually one of three things. To see if we have the proper expertise Testing whether I’m quick on my feet. To determine whether we can solve their problem. Which one of those are we dealing with David?” His answer to your question will help you understand how to proceed. TAKE CONTROL Make it your mission to understand your prospect’s situation and determine whether you’re a good fit. #SalesMatch CLICK TO TWEET Ask questions about the sales process that will help you determine what the customer is seeking. Take charge of the sales process by controlling the conversation. If the prospect is wasting your time and has no intention of hiring you, you’ll determine that more quickly rather than wasting time on a deal that will never close. If the prospect is interested, he’ll answer the question and you can continue from there. Pose a question in response to his question. Ask him why he’s inclined to ask that. If he indicates that his company has encountered other sellers who couldn’t solve its problems, then you’ll know how to respond. ADDRESS THE CONCERNS “I don’t ever want to do business with you if I can’t solve your problem. We want to make sure we’re a fit. I don’t want to waste your time or mine.” “If you are open to it, I’d love to see what you’re doing now to see if we can help you just like we’ve helped many other companies in the past.” You can even mention at some point that you’d love to be honest enough to acknowledge if the two of you aren’t a good fit. That will keep you on the same page. Your customer expects you to rattle off a list of features and benefits. They expect you to be a submissive seller. They may not realize that as a professional seller, you’ve helped a lot of people, and you’re an expert at doing so. You’re going to stay calm and confident. SURPRISE THE CUSTOMER If, on the other hand, this is a customer that you’ve worked with for some time, he may be truly trying to determine whether he should work with you. Your goal is to communicate to him that you’re the best at solving his particular problem. You’ve done it for thousands of other clients, you’ve run the protocols, and you know you’re the best. You can turn the tables on the customer at that point. “Why should you not do business with me?” Be confident. Make sure you understand why the customer is asking the question. “WHY SHOULD WE DO BUSINESS WITH YOU?” EPISODE RESOURCES This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in

The marketplace is crowded, so if you understand how to instantly increase the perceived value of your offer, you'll be better able to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Bob Britton got his start in business as an auto mechanic and he had an opportunity to buy an existing business. He figured owning a business couldn't be that hard, so he jumped in, assuming he could do a better job than the people he had been working for. He endured a season of failure but eventually started to improve as he learned the sales game. He realized that auto repair involves selling something that no one wants to buy, that no one is prepared to buy, and that no one ever has the money to buy. He grew the business from a one-man show to a multi-million dollar business and then went on to other things. Communicating value If you can't clearly communicate your value and what sets you apart from everyone else, you're competing constantly on price. It's the only way people know how to measure. But if you're a value proposition, people will focus less on price and more on what they're getting. It's up to business owners to figure out what those value propositions are. Begin by understanding what value really is. What you think is valuable is probably 27th on your prospect's list of what's valuable. [Tweet "The thing we get wrong over and over again is that we don't take time to think our way through all the different things that our customers could consider valuable. #SellingValue"] Consider even the smallest thing that might be considered valuable. Look beyond the obvious things like saving time or money because everyone claims to offer those. Starting point Understand that perception is everything. When you're creating your value proposition, if your prospect believes it's important, it is. Perception is everything. That determines how we start. Begin by looking at the business drivers which are often saving money and making money. But drill down deeper. Why would a customer use your offer? What does the customer really care about? Think of things like operating cost, downtime, uptime, labor cost, customer retention, market share, productivity, profitability, time to market, lifetime customer value, and any number of other concerns. Asking good questions Too many salespeople "wing it" when it comes to this process. They don't think about the questions they ask and they rely on general ones instead of working to be specific. People will give us a limited amount of time and effort. Ask specific questions that move people in a distinct direction. Many sellers will ask about concerns, but that's too general. Limit the question instead. What is your number one concern? Being specific will give you a lot better information from the customer because they'll talk about the thing that is top of mind. Then, flip that around. Ask your prospect the one thing that he hates about your industry. It takes some guts to ask this, but the information you get back will be the most valuable feedback you've ever gotten. Bob asked people the number one thing they hated about auto repair on his way to building a million-dollar company. He used all that feedback to differentiate himself from his competition. Digging deep Your clients can give you information that will help you tweak your business and increase your revenue. You won't have to push harder. Your clients will give you a to-do list that will help you improve. Be willing to ask what your current clients dislike about working with your business. It will feel intimidating but they won't crucify you. They'll help you identify the things that are keeping them from buying more. You may not need to dump more money into your business. You may not need to increase your leads but rather to just improve your close rate. Next steps Once you've identified the business drivers, identify some sort of movement. People won't change unless your offering is significantly better than the status quo. People don't buy offers; they buy new things. What's your movement? Increase, improve, accelerate, reduce, enhance, balance, free up, eliminate, minimize, revitalize, shrink, maximize. What kind of movement can you offer your clients? Then add metrics to your value proposal to make it stronger and more believable. Avoid using round numbers which sound less credible. When Bob was running the auto repair business, while everyone else was charging $87 an hour, he charged $98.68 an hour. When people asked how he came up with that number, he said that he figured out with his accountant the exact minimum he could charge to deliver the best service. It's a psychological effort that will surprise your customers and shift their thinking. It will position you as different than everyone else. Do your homework. Don't wing it because it won't give you the results you desire. Prepare People may throw little tests out at you to see how you'll respond. If you aren't prepared, you'll end up losing credibility because you don't

Sales leaders who neglect their own workload in an effort to help their sellers solve problems will find themselves falling behind, so it’s vital that sales leaders stop falling for the reactive trap. You hired your sellers to handle their assigned responsibilities and to solve problems. When your sellers distract you with problems, you’ll have less time to focus on sales plans or strategies. You won’t have time to conduct meetings or create reports because you’re trying to keep deals from falling apart. DISTRACTED LEADERS In his book, The Sales Manager’s Guide To Greatness, Kevin Davis talks about all the ways that sellers can distract their sales managers from their own workload. The problem with this kind of distraction is that the sales leader’s responsibilities are to grow the department or the business. The business will suffer if sales leaders aren’t freed to do their own work. Additionally, you’re teaching your sellers bad habits and cheating them of the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems. This is why many leaders feel stretched too thin. LIMITED GROWTH Sellers who never learn to solve their own problems will limit their teams’ productivity. Your team will never have extraordinary growth because you’ll always be limited by your own ability to solve everyone else’s problems. The sellers will never learn to solve problems, and they won’t learn to focus on solving problems for their customers. Instead, they’ll focus on features and benefits. Additionally, they won’t be able to function as well in your absence, which means they will struggle any time you aren’t available. So what will happen if you decide to take vacation? IMPROVING SELLERS Sellers will only improve if they learn to solve their own problems and handle their own accounts. As each rep learns to handle his assigned responsibilities, you’ll be freed to focus on other things that will improve the team as a whole. You may be tempted to think that you’re helping your sellers accomplish more, but the truth is that they’ll never learn to manage their own schedules and their own time if you consistently help them manage it. Kevin points out that your involvement won’t likely encourage them to use their time for other tasks. Realistically, your sellers will simply be freed to do things like check social media or email. Forty percent of sellers don’t like prospecting, so they won’t likely do it if they don’t have to. They are likely bringing you problems they don’t want to handle themselves. TEACH PROBLEM-SOLVING Kevin suggests asking two questions of your sellers: What have you done to solve the problem so far? What do you think ought to be done? Your sellers likely have basic problem-solving skills; otherwise, you wouldn’t have hired them. If this isn’t the case, you might have to start by making sure you have the right people on the bus. Perhaps we’ll discover that the rep didn’t really qualify the prospect in the first place. Maybe the rep isn’t talking to the decision-maker. Assuming those things aren’t true and that the buyer suddenly backed out of the deal, you must discover what caused the problem. ROOT CAUSE Coach the rep to ask questions that get to the root cause of the change. Teach your rep to use the 5 whys to figure out why the prospect changed her mind. It’s tempting for sales leaders to try to “save the day” and be the hero. Instead, you need to teach your seller to act as a guide to the prospect and teach your seller how to frame the customer as the hero of the situation. Consider identifying team leads who can help your sellers when they encounter problems. Maybe a senior sales rep can help answer questions or coach your sellers in weekly sales meetings. Schedule coaching sessions where you can teach your team members how to use these techniques to identify why their deals are disintegrating. Help them identify the common objections so they’ll be prepared when they encounter them. Sales leaders must help their sales teams to work independently to maximize the efficiency of the team and the company as a whole. #SalesCoaching CLICK TO TWEET BUILD REPLACEMENTS No doubt you hope to be promoted someday and you’ll need someone to take over your role so you can advance. Allow them to be part of the dialogue when you’re addressing issues in your area. Provide reassurance that it’s ok to try things and make mistakes. If you have a hard time saying “no” to your sellers, make yourself unavailable to them. Insist that they begin working on the problems themselves. If they make a mistake, you can still step in if you must, but give them a chance to try solving the problems. Take the time to coach your sellers. Make sure you give commands, give guidance, and give them room to run on their own. Whether you’re a sales rep, a sales leader, or a business owner, use these concepts to improve your efficiency and your output. “STOP FALLING FOR THE REACTIVE TRAP” EPISODE RESOURCES Grab a copy of Kevin Davis’ book, The Sales Manager’s Gui

Regardless of your industry or your product, relationships are the currency of your business, and though you can love people without leading them, you can’t lead people without loving them. Ty Bennett is an entrepreneur who fell in love with the speaking and training development aspect of building a sales team and it led him to write books on the topic and start a training company called Leadership Inc. Ty points out that we’re in the people business and we’re interacting with, networking with, leading and influencing people every day. The care, investment, and love you have for people will communicate that you have their best interest in mind. Those relationships engender trust, foster accountability, and build a level of commitment that you want in your team. And love drives it. MISSING LOVE Many business books never discuss love, perhaps because it isn’t considered a business-centric word. Ty addresses this issue in his new book called Partnership is the New Leadership. He interviewed a guy on his podcast named Tim Sanders who wrote the book Love is the Killer App but this hasn’t always been a business word. Traditionally it has referred to personal relationships but when it drives your actions and when you’re coming from a place of service and contribution, that’s where love exists. Leadership is much more effective there. SOFT LEADERS Some people believe that leaders can’t be perceived as soft, so they shy away from the idea of loving the members of the team. If you’re too soft, after all, you’ll be walked on. If you were to line up 10 people and evaluate the production level of those people, you’ll find a relationship to how they feel about their manager. Statistically, most people will tell you that they hate their bosses, and also that people join companies and they leave bosses. People also show up differently when they are in the right frame of mind; when they feel supported; when they feel heard; and when they have opportunities to win. When people feel like part of a team, the commitment level changes drastically. #TeamCommitment TRAINING TO LEAD If you’re seeking to develop this kind of leadership without being perceived as soft, focus on being interested rather than interesting. Rather than figuring out how to stand out and making it all about you, focus on the other person. Great leaders are those who truly care about other people and become adept at asking questions. They have a genuine curiosity about people. They want to know what drives them and what’s important to them. As you get to know your people on a deeper level, it speaks volumes to your team members. Now take things a step further and focus on hearing them. Don’t forget the idea that people support what they help create. Give your team a voice. Welcome their feedback. Those efforts demonstrate that you care about what they have to say and you’re listening rather than simply issuing marching orders. You’re demonstrating that you’re confident enough in who you are to allow them to be part of the process. We no longer live in the era of top-down leadership where I tell you what we’re going to do and you implement it. Social media has changed us psychologically and it has given each of us a voice. INVEST IN PEOPLE Go above and beyond for your people. Do things that are not in your job description. Give more time, more energy, and more of yourself into your relationships. Reach out in ways that are meaningful to each person. No doubt each of us can think of someone who has invested in us this way. As leaders, those investments change our relationships. When you invest in people they become family. Ask yourself whether people would ever say that about you. This level of investment can be difficult because we’re busy. We have so much on our plates that it’s hard to think outside our own agenda. It can also be tempting to focus on the things we have to do and ignore the things that we could do but aren’t required to do. At the same time, we have to shift our mindset. Maybe we need to listen to a podcast or hear a story from a different leader. Maybe we need to find a leader who can open our eyes to different approaches. Perhaps read a book. FOLLOWING THE MANAGER Although every industry is different, Ty interacted with sellers recently who told him that their loyalty was to their manager, not to the company. The product matters a lot less to them than the manager does. If you’re seeking to become this kind of manager, start by carving out one-on-one time for your people as often as possible. Come in five minutes early and ask one of your people to come in five minutes early. Make time for it. Find time to connect with your people with no agenda. It’s just to show that you care. Ty also recommends reading The Go Giver, one of a series of books about adopting a giving mentality on the way to greater success. Relationships change when people invest in them. When a leader invests, it will impact the relationship in a huge way. “YOU CAN’T LEAD

Stories pack a lot of power for sellers when used in the proper sales framework, and the good news is that stories are everywhere. Today we’re sharing an excerpt from TSE Certified Sales Training Program that addresses how you can effectively use stories in your own sales. UTILIZING STORIES Stories have existed since the dawn of time. Early cave drawings told stories of cavemen hunting, and those stories have been passed down. It’s true of cultures and of the Bible. Stories paint a picture for us. Stories exist in movies, songs, social media, and books. It all points to the fact that we love stories. Society loves stories because that’s how we make sense of the world. Imagine you’re meeting with a prospect for the first time. Instead of talking about your widget and your certification, which could be boring, share a compelling reason for your prospect to do business with you. Instead, share a problem and a solution to help me understand. STORY STRUCTURE Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning explains the problem so that the prospect can understand it and it introduces characters. The second part is the build or the escalation of the problem, where it seems that all is lost. The third part is the breakthrough. It’s the payoff or the climax. It’s where everyone lives happily ever after. USING STORIES EFFECTIVELY It’s important to understand when to use stories. Use them to reinforce a point or to help them understand the importance of your product or service. In the case of CRM, imagine a client who has been using Excel for years and he doesn’t understand the importance of upgrading to a better CRM. You can begin by explaining that you understand why he is hesitant to invest in something that he might not actually need. Then tell a story of another client who successfully used Excel as her CRM for years. The problem emerged when she hired a sales rep who wasn’t as familiar with the process as she was. The sales rep failed to log some of his contacts, and they didn’t follow up on the lead. The potential client chose another provider because the company didn’t remember to follow up. In this case, it cost them $5,000. If this happens multiple times a month, how much will it cost you? We gave this client an opportunity to test our CRM for 30 days, and the company doubled its earnings as a result. The ability to log calls automatically and schedule appointments easily changed the company’s output. CONTEXT Instead of bogging the prospect down with nuts and bolts, provide context for the power of your product or service. #StorySelling CLICK TO TWEET Consider using a free trial, too, to make the transaction less overwhelming. Don’t make yourself the hero of the story. Craft the story so that your prospect is the hero because he tried the new CRM and it made a huge difference for his organization. Apply these ideas and let me know how they worked. If you already knew them, stay with it. “STORIES ARE EVERYWHERE” EPISODE RESOURCES This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

For business owners looking to scale their efforts, there are important factors involved in building a remote sales team, and implementing them can mean the difference between success and failure. Liam Martin runs three companies related to managing remote workers: TimeDoctor.com, Staff.com, and his passion project, which is a conference on building and scaling remote teams. His organization helps companies monitor their remote employees’ productivity and efficiency. He points to the fact that, early in his career, he waited too late to build a sales team, which is the meat-and-potatoes of his business. CREATE SOLUTIONS Founders of a company have an understanding of the product or service that most sales reps won’t have. Founders may recognize as many as 10 different problems that you could tailor your product around or have meaningful conversations around. Sales reps won’t necessarily recognize that many problems, so they may not have access to as many meaningful conversations. The key, then, is hiring a proper sales manager. Sometimes the founder’s ego causes him to believe that he can effectively run a sales team, and he doesn’t recognize his shortcomings. You must take a hard look at yourself and determine whether you’re truly a good sales leader. When Liam recognized that he wasn’t a good sales manager, he fired himself and hired a proper sales manager. Be honest enough to determine what you can best do for your organization and then do that. HIRING PROCESS Liam’s company has three different stages of hiring remotely. He suggests that many remote teams aren’t as effective as the leadership believes they are. Liam points to the bullpen or the area where junior employees are grouped together in a single workspace. The idea is that the employees will train and work together and benefit from one another’s experiences. Remote employees don’t have a bullpen so it’s impossible to pick up nonverbal selling techniques that some employees are successfully using. Everyone is disconnected, so very often these sales teams won’t hit quota despite their training. As a result, they leave the company. To solve the problem, Liam’s company works with remote salespeople for about a month. During that time, he has to either close an inbound deal or generate some kind of outbound activity. Based on that success, the company decides whether to invest more into the employee. He says that although it’s an expensive system, building a remote sales team is ROI positive. SELF-MOTIVATED ACTIVITY Successful remote employees must be self-motivated. Once the company hires a new remote employee and decides to invest in him, the company flies him to the sales manager in Canada where he will train in the office for three months. The employee will either hit quota by the end of three months and will have a job, or he will not hit quota by the end of that time, and he will go home without a job. From that point, the system rewards good salespeople financially. Successful sellers will earn more with this company than they will at other companies. At the same time, the pay structure is such that unsuccessful sellers won’t be able to survive. The first three months, then, are critical to the seller’s success. Creating the bullpen experience has helped the company’s remote sellers be more successful. Additionally, the company allows any employee to jump in on any Zoom call to ask for help or guidance. The key to building a remote sales team is to find a way to share best practices of elite sellers. Have a plan. It isn’t enough to hire good salespeople. #RemoteSalesTeam CLICK TO TWEET MASSIVE INVESTMENT Liam points to a need to identify those sellers who can talk the talk but can’t walk the walk. Because the company is making a massive investment into its new hires, it must be able to quickly determine which employees are likely to be successful and which ones are not. On average, his company has found that it can take anywhere from three to six months to determine whether an employee will be successful. Its goal is to shorten that period when possible. The company would prefer a clear “yes” or “no” to a “maybe.” The more time it spends dealing with an employee who is a “maybe,” the more money it invests without fully knowing whether it will get anything in return. “BUILDING A REMOTE SALES TEAM” EPISODE RESOURCE If you want to learn more about building or scaling a remote team, visit runningremote.com. It’s a conference being held in Bali, and if you’ve never been to Bali, it’s another great reason to go. If you’d like to get in touch with Liam, he’s excited about his interactions on YouTube right now, and you can find him at youtube.com/runningremote. After consuming the content, feel free to ask questions in the comments and he’ll be happy to respond. You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you

Many sellers struggle to connect with their customers, but on today’s episode, Jacquelyn Nicholson addresses how to genuinely build rapport with any prospect. Jacquelyn is an enterprise seller and one of the inaugural members at Alpha Sense where she acts as an evangelist for the company and its work. WORLD OF SALES Jacquelyn landed in sales after a strange recession in Chicago prevented her from finding a job as an engineer for a defense contractor. She moved to New York and took a job as a sales engineer. Sometime after, she found herself heading a project for Johnson & Johnson and reporting directly to the vice president of the division. He told her to put together the very best team possible and trusted her to get the job done. During the course of the project, she made two unexpected realizations. She discovered that she didn’t like buying from salespeople because she thought they were horrible. Secondly, she discovered that she really missed sales. She didn’t like salespeople because they talked nonstop about how great their technology was. She found herself wondering, “Do you even know what I do? Do you even care?” “At the same moment, I was drawn back to the world of sales and also slightly repulsed by what I saw in the sellers I knew.” She decided then to return to sales, and she vowed that she would never be that kind of seller. SOLVING PROBLEMS Jacquelyn discovered that people buy things from people who can help them solve their problems. If I have a problem and you can solve it, I’m going to buy your stuff. But I also have to be able to trust the person I’m buying from. People buy from people they trust or they like, and they can spot fake people. Sucking up isn’t the same, and customers quickly learn to spot genuine people. She determined that the key was getting to know the people she was selling to. Learning about their problems and the things they care about. That only happens after you build rapport. The problem, she discovered, was figuring out how to do that at scale. The good news was, she discovered, that it doesn’t take additional time to be authentic. Researching to understand your client’s problems takes time, but kindness doesn’t. If you’re already having a conversation with someone, it doesn’t take any additional effort to have genuine curiosity about them and their role in the company. #SalesRapport CLICK TO TWEET SEGUE INTO SALES Jacquelyn realized that she wasn’t going to land in a quota-carrying role until she got some experience in front of customers. She ventured into the consulting world and she gained experience solving client problems and earning their trust. She loved the idea of solving problems instead of simply pushing products. Jacquelyn also realized that her time managing a project for Johnson & Johnson taught her that executives aren’t any different than anyone else. Many sellers struggle to have the confidence to approach them, but she said she was fortunate to learn early on how to interact with them. She counsels sellers now to be respectful of their time. Executives are short on time and short on people who want to be helpful to them for who they are rather than for what they can do. Don’t put them on a pedestal. Don’t become a “yes man” for executives. They are often surrounded by “yes men” who don’t want to rock the boat, but what they often need is real insight. Initiate a conversation around something relevant that matters to the executives. BAD RAP Sellers have gotten a bad rap from some of the bad behaviors of our predecessors, but the world has changed an awful lot. Consumers now have the ability to do extensive research before they ever reach out to a seller. Sellers must honor the time they have put into the process. At the same time, you deserve to be treated as more than just a vendor. If your customers don’t treat you with a certain amount of respect, you always have the option to walk away. Sometimes you have to fire prospects. TAKING RISK There isn’t a lot to be afraid of anymore. Jacquelyn faced a rare and aggressive form of leukemia and survived it, so she calls herself “fearless on another level” now. She defines success as being the best person she can possibly be. She wants to be the woman her husband would marry again; the seller her boss would hire again; the mom her kids are proud to introduce to their friends. If you constantly define your success in terms of other people and what they think of you, you’re doing it the wrong way. HELP Jacquelyn believes that help is always available. Sometimes you’re the one giving the help and sometimes you’re the one seeking it. Don’t be afraid to keep your eyes and ears open for the help that’s available. We have a tendency to believe that we have little to offer, but the truth is that you intrinsically have value because you’re you. Be aware of those who can help you, and those that need your help each day. Sales is a noble profession because we’re selling something that will help someone else. “HOW T

Sometimes business leaders find themselves wanting to make sure that their team members get everything exactly right, but unless you’re willing to let them mess up, they’ll likely never learn. Perfect situations don’t exist. Imperfection is a factor in life, but it’s also where our growth happens. MAINTAINING CONTROL Control often gives us the sense that we can force everything to work. As a result, we avoid letting our team members try things their own way because we fool ourselves into believing that our way is always the best. In my own story, I landed an appointment with a huge organization, and I invited the CEO of my small company to go along. I wanted his support, but I also wanted to show my boss that I was working hard. I wanted him to see the opportunity I had landed. Most importantly, I wanted him to support me through the unknown parts of the appointment. If I found myself struggling in the conversation, I knew he could help me out. Turns out he took over the whole show. Instead of acting as a ride-along on my appointment, I was the tag-along. I had been talking to the client for months, so he felt a little bit ambushed. I had promised him one thing and then given him something completely different. Instead of a meeting with a sales rep, he found himself sitting in a meeting with an executive that he wasn’t really prepared for. MY PLAN I imagined myself leading off the meeting and asking for his input along the way. I didn’t imagine it becoming his return to the glory days. Because I wasn’t operating from a playbook, there was no real structure. The deal did close, but it was challenging. If you find yourself asking why it’s a big deal, the problem was that it eroded my confidence as a seller. Sometimes, because CEOs and entrepreneurs started out selling their own product or service, they have a tough time letting that go. They see a problem and they address it themselves because it’s how they operated before they hired sellers. My CEO misunderstood my request for help and he took over the meeting instead. In a previous episode, Kevin Davis talked to us about the challenges that sales managers often face, and the book he wrote, The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness, that addresses many of those issues. LEARNING PROCESS When I finally had the opportunity to go on meetings myself, I fell into a habit of mimicking what I had seen my CEO do. I shared the same stories, even though they weren’t my own stories, but I hadn’t gained an understanding of the problem I was trying to address. Because there wasn’t any substance to my conversations, my opportunities started falling away. I wasn’t having a problem keeping things in my pipeline, but I was struggling to get them to close. The old adage of the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon applies here: the struggle makes the butterfly stronger. If you were to cut open the cocoon so he could easily slip out, he would never develop strong wings that would help him fly. You’ll never set the vision for your company moving forward if you’re busy doing the work that you hired your sales team to do. A BETTER OPTION We should have developed a gameplan before going into the meeting. By deciding who would say what and how we would build rapport, we could have avoided the awkward meeting with the client. My CEO could have reviewed the questions I was planning to ask to ensure that I was properly prepared. Then, he could have assured me that if I got into trouble, he’d be there to help. That scenario would have allowed me to at least try running the meeting. The sooner you prepare your sales team to operate on their own, the more room you’ll have to grow your company. Coaching is the correct answer. As you grow a more experienced sales team, you can add to is, and you can create repeatable success. You will have to let them mess up. That doesn’t mean you ignore any train wrecks that are happening, but you can help them understand where they went wrong so they won’t make the mistake again. Specify roles and responsibilities before the meetings so your team will learn to fly on their own. HELICOPTER MANAGER Sometimes, in the role of coach, it’s tempting to give your team members the correct answers so they’ll learn more quickly. Don’t do it. Helicopter managers tend to erode the team’s confidence and they actually lengthen the learning process by creating people who rely heavily on their help. When they discover the answers on their own, the learning will be more meaningful. Send us your stories about helicopter managers so we can all learn from the experience. “LET THEM MESS UP” EPISODE RESOURCES You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a

Many small business owners and sales reps face challenges with closing, and there are five closing mistakes that will prolong your selling cycle. I met Chala Dincoy at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council ROAR Conference, and today she’ll talk to us about the mistakes that can delay or prolong your selling cycle. Chala is an elevator pitch coach who helps people get into the room. Then, once they’ve landed a sales meeting, she helps them close it faster. The greatest challenge, she said, is getting the appointment because people don’t stand out. About 86 percent of buyers think you’re the same as your competition. Now she teaches reps how to get through the noise and stand out. Interestingly, she pointed out that many companies don’t use titles like “sales rep” on their business cards anymore because it puts people off to see that someone is in sales. THOUGHT LEADERSHIP If you aren’t targeting a specific industry or interest group, you’re always in the wrong room because you’re too generic. Your message is too generic. #SpecificMessaging CLICK TO TWEET That’s the first closing mistake. The second is you haven’t specifically addressed the customers’ pain points. So now you’re in the wrong room and the wrong people are in the room with you. You end up talking to lower level managers who pass you off over and over. As a result, you’re never able to get to the influencers that you need to reach. The real trick, then, is to change your marketing so that you’re in front of decision makers all the time. Since Chala’s sweet spot is diversity businesses, she works to get in front of conferences where those people are gathered. She has their business cards and they are talking to her at conferences. This is the kind of marketing you should do, via speaking, networking, blogging, and any other kind of thought leadership. BRANDING Your branding is one of the tools that gets you into the room. Sheryl Sandberg is a celebrity in the business world, and you can do the same thing in the world of your target. Chala recalls being at a recent conference where five people hugged her as she got off of an elevator. Though she didn’t know them, she says it’s a sign that you’re becoming known in your industry. Once they know who you are, it’s really easy to land an appointment. It’s easy to invite them to an executive round table and for them to say yes. Realize, too, that though everyone might be able to benefit from what you’re selling, not everyone needs it. We all sit in chairs, for example, but I may not need the kind of chair you’re selling. PAIN Seventy percent of humans purchase based upon pain, so if they have a problem, they buy. The flip side is that only 30 percent of people will buy if you’re selling based on improving something. Chala is fond of the saying, “No pain, no sale.” The third mistake is trying to sell something without addressing pain. Stories have to be about the pain. When you’re in a presentation, offer case studies of pain. Your elevator pitch has to be based on pain. And all of it has to be the same pain. We must niche down and focus. Stop talking about yourself. No one cares how many offices you have or how many awards you’ve won. Your prospects only care about the pain. THE PURSE You must have both the budget and the authority in the room with you. Failure to do so is mistake number four. We often call it the purse and the pain. If the pain doesn’t have the purse, no decision can be made, and vice versa. As an extension of that, lower level managers may talk about a different kind of pain that company leadership will. If you base your entire presentation around one person’s pain, especially if that person isn’t the decision maker, your presentation will miss its mark. You must have both people in the room. Finally, avoid leaving without a next appointment. You must establish a next step with your prospects. If they tell you they can’t commit to a date because there are other stakeholders involved and they don’t know all the schedules, then set a date to get a date. In other words, schedule a day that you’ll call to set up the next appointment. If they aren’t willing to give you a date, it’s a really strong indicator that they aren’t going to buy. Stop talking about yourself and connect with their pain points. “CLOSING MISTAKES” EPISODE RESOURCES You can connect with Chala at LinkedIn or at repositioner.com and you can take a quiz to determine how good your elevator pitch is. We are currently in the Beta portion of our new TSE Certified Sales Training Program. The first section is about prospecting, the second is all about building value, and the third is about closing. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. If 2018 wasn’t the best year for you, check out TSE Certified Sales Training Program. We can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your comp

As you move closer to the end of a deal, you'll likely encounter more objections, and identifying key stakeholders is the secret to overcoming those challenges. As you move into deeper conversation with the prospect, you may not realize that there are other people involved in the process, even if you aren't directly interacting with them. Your job as seller is to find out who they are. Today we'll help you understand who those key stakeholders are, how you should work with them, and how you can prepare for the process. Initial interest Imagine you have an initial conversation with someone who is interested in your lawn care business. You generated some interest and they expressed a desire to know more. You'll naturally address how you've helped other people in the past and take other steps to build value. At this point, you'll want to find out who else will be involved in this conversation. Typically, though, sellers neglect to ask that question. Ideally, you should find out whether the prospect has made a decision like this before. If so, has it been a long time? You do this kind of work on a day-to-day basis, but the prospect doesn't. He needs guidance, and you can help him move forward. Identifying stakeholders Avoid making him feel as though he isn't competent to make the decision. Instead of asking him who should be involved in the next call, ask it this way: "At this point in the conversation, my clients typically invite other people into the conversation." Instead of asking whether he'd like to invite others in, I would simply ask him who he would like to invite into the conversation. He might identify the CFO or the decision maker. Next, I would point out that, in order to make sure the next meeting is as valuable as possible, I'd like to know whether I can connect with some of those stakeholders to find out what they'd like to hear. If he has an objection, reframe the request so that he's the one making the contact with his stakeholders on your behalf. Keep him involved in the process so he feels comfortable. Cast of characters The first stakeholder is your decision maker. He tends to be the person that sellers most often keep their eyes on because he's the one that will do the final sign-off. But he may not get involved until later in the process. The decision maker may expect the influencer and the champion to do all of the hard work. Second is your influencer or the person who has the ear of your decision maker. She may be the right-hand person of your decision maker, or she may just be someone who has a connection with him. In some companies, this may be an administrative assistant, and sales reps must be mindful not to overlook these people. These executive assistants often wield much influence with the leadership. My wife worked in a similar position once, and her recommendation often depended on how the sellers treated her when they called into the office. End users are the people who will use the product or service you're offering, and they're the ones you'll likely interact with the most. We must make sure that they understand us and that we understand them. The buyer will sign the check to close the deal. If he doesn't like the deal, he will likely have key influence in it. The champion is the person who likes you and who brought you into the fold. She invited your team to consider the possibility of hiring you. The champion We recently did an entire episode about the importance of the champion. The discussion centered around the fact that sellers often focus so intently on the decision maker that they neglect the champion. In actuality, though, the champion is the one that you'll interact with the most, and he'll be the one that has the most interaction with his team. He's the one that wrangles the group through the decision-making process. He's the quarterback, but he must have your support in order to succeed. If he doesn't have it, he may lose the desire to champion your cause. [Tweet "Focus on your champion at least as much as you focus on your decision maker. Perhaps even more. #SalesChampion"] The knights The dark night doesn't necessarily have interest in your product or service. He's usually the member of the organization who is a little bit apprehensive, and it's in your best interest to discover who he is and why he is a dark knight. The champion, of course, is your white knight. He will tell the company why it should hire you. He believes so strongly in what you have to offer that he'll work to sell you internally. The white knight will likely recognize the dark knight, so you can ask him who it is and what his concerns are. Gather as much intel as you can about the dark knight so you'll know how to address his potential objections. Handling the dark knight Make sure you have a conversation with the dark knight prior to the meeting. Present information to Doug that addresses those concerns and ask him during that conversation whether there is anything specific he'd like to see

As you're working to expand your reach and grow your network, recognize the importance of building diversity into your network so you'll be better positioned to succeed in your industry. I met Sharon Manker at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council ROAR Conference, which connects minority-owned and women-owned businesses with Fortune 100 companies. Sharon has worked in supply chain for two decades, in both the for-profit and the nonprofit sectors, in utility and now in healthcare. In her words, she negotiates for a living. She also works to engage diverse suppliers in a woman-owned, veteran-owned, minority-owned system. Small business challenges Many small business owners lack the vehicle to connect with the right decision makers. They don't know how to meet the people who actually influence the contracts. When they discover their limitation, they often observe that they just didn't realize how it impacted their work. As a supply chain person, Sharon works to connect qualified suppliers to the businesses who need them. She also works to connect those same businesses with her business stakeholders. To that end, she attends events and even hosts events that allow people to connect and build relationships. The trick is to recognize that as you're working to connect with the decision makers, there are people along the way who can help you do exactly that. Diversifying suppliers When you aren't able to attend these events, Sharon points to other opportunities to connect with people: chambers of commerce and councils, just to name two. You'll be positioned to find corporate partners there. You'll encounter people who are actively engaged and ready to increase their supplier diversity. Even if you attend these events and find out about developments that are 24 months away, future gains will happen. Put in the work now and build relationships now. Benefits of partnership Many corporations prioritize working with small businesses because they have committed to certain diversity goals, such as spending a certain amount of their operating expenses with diverse suppliers. In some states, in fact, this diversity is mandated. This demands a pool of Minority Business Enterprises, Veteran Business Enterprises, and LGBTQ enterprises that can help meet the needs of those businesses. It can't be a last-minute effort, either. You don't want to wait until you're in an emergency situation to begin vetting partners. Those organizations must proactively work to find the best option in every category to provide the product or service they need. Some corporations connect with small businesses simply because they value giving back to entrepreneurs and small businesses. If you're an entrepreneur or a seller listening to this, find groups like this to connect with, because if you can land a large contract, you can eat pretty well for a while. If you balance your regular prospecting with your networking events while you work to connect with large corporations, you'll more easily keep a steady flow of connections. #CorporatePartners Strategic plan Create a strategic plan for your business. In your case, your plan for success is that failure is not an option. Instead, when you fail, you learn a lesson, and you repeat that until you get to a successful outcome. You can't give up. You must stay positive. There won't always be immediate opportunities, but building a network of resources or opportunities provides some security. Then, if you don't have a resource or an opportunity for those organizations, you could always help connect them with another partner that you've met and added to your network. We've talked recently about the need to focus on a champion rather than only focusing on the decision maker. Your network will help you accomplish that. You may bypass a champion on your way to connecting with a CEO, but the champion can be a much quicker connection. You can build a relationship with him more quickly, and then he can help you get to the CEO. Intentional communications When you're building relationships, be mindful of your communications. Some people are very aggressive in their approach, but they often overlook all the other restraints that these decision makers are facing. They want to do a deal now, but they aren't mindful of the other projects these professionals are working on. There are hierarchies of communication in every organization. There are also barriers to entry. Your champions can't advocate for you if you're perceived as aggressive or pushy. The vetting process may take weeks, and you must be willing to exercise patience. You don't know about all the things that the organization is working on. Be strategic. Recognize the structure in each organization. People will notice the way you communicate. Be prepared When your network does call on you for your product or service, make sure you are ready and able to give your brief, to-the-point presentation. Make sure you're being active so you'll stay positioned

Sales constantly evolve and sellers who want to be successful must effectively map and create multithreaded relationships in order to close more deals. Peter Chun talks today about the importance of multithreaded relationships and the challenge for reps who must establish them. Peter fell in love with the convergence of sales and data and has found a personal passion for it. He loves strategizing about how to close deals and about how to help your company scale and grow. Evolving sales The biggest obstacle for B2B sellers right now is the evolving face of sales. Buyers are more sophisticated, and they have more information at their fingertips. They do a lot of research before they even engage with a salesperson. Additionally, the number of stakeholders within B2B deals is increasing, with research indicating that complex deals often include 6 to 10 stakeholders. The big challenge, then, is finding and creating multithreaded relationships because too often they are single threaded. Many reps, either because of laziness or lack of awareness, fail to establish more than one relationship within a deal. They rely on a single relationship to get the deal done. Multithreaded relationships Being multithreaded doesn't simply refer to your customers. It's important that sellers create multithreaded relationships within their own companies as well. Who else, besides your prospect, needs to be part of the conversation you're having? Who else on your team has relationships that can be leveraged to build a solid foundation? One of Peter's reps teaches his reps to always do discovery because it keeps them aware of the details of the deal and helps them to stay relevant. If you're multithreaded, you have other contacts that can help you move a deal forward. Unnecessary risk Even when you believe that you have the juice to close a deal, you leave yourself open to risk if you fail to be multithreaded. You may, in fact, be connected to the right person, but that doesn't mean there aren't others who can help move the deal forward as well. Many reps simply haven't been coached to do this well. Sales leaders must coach them well and teach them how to have a multithreaded perspective. In the case of a complex account, there may be hundreds of employees. There may be years of history between you and your prospect making it difficult to know where to even start. Peter says that visually mapping the process will help you keep track of your efforts. Who are you talking to? Where does each employee sit? Who does each employee report to? What are the relationships within that organization? Becoming multithreaded In order to establish a multithreaded perspective, begin by figuring out all the people you already know. Start with who you've met or spoken to in the organization. Step two is to identify all your targets or the people you'd like to talk to. Third, add the executive team. Include the CEO and any executive leadership that you think is relevant to the conversation. You can then figure out who reports to whom and who is pursuing specific initiatives. The goal is to drive consensus across the organization, so I must identify the leaders who can move this initiative forward. [Tweet "Multithreaded relationships demand that you're constantly adding to your map, even if you'll never actually speak to some of those people. #Multithreaded"] Recognizing your prospects' initiatives demonstrates an interest and it suggests that you're more than an order-taker; you're paying attention to the details. Common mistakes Some managers get so focused on their numbers that they fail to develop a real strategy. As soon as organizations allow their sellers to be a little more strategic, they'll find that their activities are much more scalable. Account mapping has been around for a long time, but now we have the technology to use a more systemized approach to it and tie it into our CRM. Young sales leaders simply haven't been exposed to enough deals to think that way. But great sales leaders think that way naturally. Help your less tenured sellers learn to think that way. It's easy to get overwhelmed with this idea but begin with your top account. Implement the three steps with that account, will help you begin really moving your deals. Build the discipline within yourself and your team to be multithreaded. Even if you're certain it will close, you can still consider who else you have access to. When you're multithreaded, you have more options when your contacts go dark. Remember to focus on internal and external connections. "Create Multithreaded Relationships" episode resources You can connect with Peter on LinkedIn and you can sign up for LucidChart and check out their sales templates. This episode is brought to you in part by our TSE Certified Sales Training Program, which teaches you to improve your sales skills, find more customers, build stronger value, and close more deals. The next semester begins in April. If you're not familiar with the

No matter what business you're in or what product you're selling, downturns happen, so today we're talking about how to prepare your sales pipeline for an economic downturn. We're here at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council's ROAR Conference, which is connecting minority-owned and women-owned businesses with Fortune 100 companies. Joel Burstein says that companies should be most aware of an economic downturn when the economy is good. The downturns in '01 and '08 were preceded by markets that were really, but they grew so quickly that they weren't sustainable. When things seem too good to be true, they usually are. Consider the internet At one point, everything was successful. It didn't matter what the product was. The reality of the world at that time was that 22-year-olds owned five properties. If you drive your car as fast as you can for as long as you can, your car will eventually break. The economy is the same. The time to prepare for the economic downturn is when the economy is good. You do that by diversifying your clientele and diversifying your business. Clients who are looking are still engaged. You don't necessarily have to take your foot off the gas; you just have to think outside the box. Talk to clients Ask your clients how their world is going. They will have indicators, so if you ask them what signs they are seeing, they may be able to share signs with you. Realize, too, that not everyone's downturn is equal. Some people's downturn started in '07 while others started in '08. What happened is that we missed it. Your perspective depends on where your market falls. Some people are struggling today. It isn't that they're struggling tremendously, but their business is down. Perhaps it only lasts one quarter, or maybe it stretches into two or three quarters. Once that happens, it begins to have an impact. Have engaging conversations with your existing clients about what's happening in their markets. Because their markets are different than yours, you'll gain insight into the overall economy. Two-fold benefit Imagine an entrepreneur with a digital marketing company who has decent-sized clients. If she stays in touch with them she can accomplish two things: She can do some reconnaissance work. She can deepen her relationships. At some point, you sell without selling. You have to be in the relationship mindset rather than the selling mindset. You'll develop a deep understanding of what your client is facing and struggling with. Your client will remember you as the one who cared about how they were handling the downturn. Preparing for downturn Certain industries will survive recession better than others. Energy is a great example. Oil is another industry that survives recession well, as evidenced by the Texas economy while the rest of the country was in a downturn. People still need oil, and we forget that it's used to make milk cartons. It's also used for the oil and gears of manufacturing machinery. Healthcare is another example. Hospitals have tremendous numbers of vendors because they are like self-sufficient cities. Unemployment could negatively impact healthcare, but the government tends to step in so that people don't go without care. Ask yourself which adjustments you'll make in order to survive the recession when it happens. Identify ways to gain traction in those industries that can survive recession. Add those behaviors to your daily, weekly, and monthly behaviors. Larger companies The EMSDC offers a great opportunity to expand a middle-sized business to a larger business. Because larger businesses have more funds, they survive a bit better than small ones. If all of your businesses are about the same size, some of those will fluctuate. Some of them will go out of business. It's the nature of the industry. There's a reason we talk about companies being too big to fail. When you engage in the right behaviors, you introduce that diversity into your business. It's a matter of making an effort to prospect in a certain area or to call on certain people or ask certain people for referrals. Many entrepreneurs get stuck waiting for business to come in. If I can get out there and start having conversations with people I'm targeting, I can control my destiny a little better by choosing who I will target. Networking When the economy shifts, you need to have a great network of people you can reach out to for different things at different times. If I don't know people, I can't do that. Networking is a big thing. Speaking engagements are, too. In our case, we can't always orchestrate large training opportunities but we can convince people to sign up for workshops or boot camps. It allows us to build our brand, stay connected to our customers, and it offers additional streams of income. Joel said he leverages his LinkedIn so that his existing contacts can introduce him to people he doesn't know. People typically don't leverage it properly, but what if you knew all the same people your clients