The Sales Evangelist

So often, as sales reps, we neglect to realize that the customer journey starts with the prospect experience. Sean McDade, PhD, is the founder and CEO of PeopleMetrics; a software and services company that helps organizations measure and create a better customer experience by listening to their customers and prospects. Sean is also the author of “Listen or Die: 40 Lessons that turn Customer Feedback into Gold,” a book about how to listen to your customers, clients and prospects in order to create a better experience for them. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Any time that a company interacts with a customer or prospect, they are providing a customer experience. It could be a digital experience on a website, an in-person experience through a meeting with a sales rep, or customer experiences via contact centers or online chats. A great company is one that consciously manages those interactions to create positive experiences for their customers. As a sales rep, the experience you give to your prospects is very important. The prospect’s interaction with a sales rep sets the tone for the experience he can expect as a customer. This is especially true if you are selling B2B products, software, professional services, or any high-end consumer products that a prospect is likely to spend significant dollars on to purchase. A sales rep can increase the value in the sales process by answering questions in detail, by solving problems, and by reducing pain for the prospect. The metric used to measure customer experience is substantially higher for sales reps who add value over those who do not. When a prospect feels that he was lied to, or misled, at the beginning, it is difficult to recover. The great sales reps are the ones who set the tone for a great customer or client experience over the long-term. As for the sales reps who are not setting a positive tone – Sean believes they are creating the very real possibility that the client will churn in the future instead. MARKETING VS SALES Marketing sets the brand promise. They set the expectations but it is up to the sales reps to bring it to life. The prospects will remember their conversations with sales reps long after they’ve forgotten the marketing campaign. The sales rep has more credibility and is more effective, as a result, in setting a positive – or negative – tone with the prospect. POSITIVE PROSPECT EXPERIENCE PeopleMetrics measures various attributes by sending a survey to each prospect to determine the experiences that the reps create. In this way, Sean has found the prospects always feel that value has been added to their experience whenever a sales rep is able to provide these five things: Be prepared. A great sales rep is one who is super-prepared. They know the prospect inside and out; the reps don’t ask questions that are easily found online, for example. Be comfortable answering questions. A great sales rep understands their prospect’s situation and can suggest solutions. Be a good listener. A great sales rep listens more than he talks and will really understand the needs of the prospect as a result. Be knowledgeable about your product. Be able to answer questions beyond what is already available online. Be proactive. Be timely and follow-up. When you add value to the experience, the prospect will not only be a client that buys more, he will be a client that provides referrals. #Referrals CLICK TO TWEET Referrals are key, especially in the B2B market. At that level, buyers actually seek out referrals from other buyers before making big decisions. THE CONSULTATIVE SALE REP As sales reps, we sometimes feel as though we are simply taking orders when, in truth, we should aim to be more of a consultant for the buyer. The company we work for should be one that values the consultative element: providing training, experience, and hands-on opportunities for the sales reps to really learn the product well. As an example, Sean has a great rep at his company who is generally tasked with opening doors by understanding the prospect’s needs, identifying problems, and introducing solutions. On his own time, the rep learned the product inside and out to the point where he can now read the reports the analysts write for similar-type prospects. He knows the industry, the language, and the company so well that he is extremely credible as a result. The value that the company placed on his training continues to pay off. Unfortunately, a lot of smaller companies are unable to provide training, so it is up to the rep to become consultative through proactive measures. Learn as much as you can about the product and the industry and talk to account managers who are servicing similar products, etc. LEARNING YOUR CUSTOMER As sales reps, we don’t need our buyers to know all about our business. Rather, we need to learn as much as possible about theirs. We need to be able to help them see their blind spots and identify their weaknesses so that we can create a great prospect experience by providing

When you’re working to stand out from the pack, there are 3 simple things you can do to offer exceptional customer experiences. In this day and age, it is easier now that ever before to stand out by offering a great experience because so many others, quite frankly, are not. We can get almost anything we want quickly and easily. That focus on speed, however, eventually causes the quality of the customer experience to decline. Think about it. So many organizations focus on speed in order to beat their competition or to attain the numbers, that they neglect to put their customers first. While it is certainly possible to have both, it takes effort. The bar has been set low today. When we focus on the speed at which we deliver our product or service, or focus only on finding and getting new customers, we neglect the people we already have. THE BUCKET ANALOGY We neglect the people we already have that are easier to sell to … the ones who can give us referrals … the ones we can upsell ….We neglect them and waste our time running back and forth, here and there, instead. It is the bucket analogy all over again. We work hard to fill our buckets by bringing people in only to have them fall straight out the holes in the bottom. We need to be sure to plug those holes so that our hard work doesn’t drain away. One of the things we can do to show love and care and respect to our current customers is to woo them, right from the start, with a great experience. What happens too often is that we knock on doors, blast emails, and get their attention with great marketing messages. We sell them on a dream or a vision, and we deliver our product quickly. But we neglect to consider our client’s experience. EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES YOUR CLIENT’S NAME Dale Carnegie once said that “a person’s name is to him/her, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” It’s true. We can be in a large crowd but if someone calls our name, we immediately turn around. We want to know who knows us. Using your client’s name in conversations creates a more personalized experience. It is as simple as “What can I help you with today, Amanda?” I know for sure, that if you are going to call my company or connect with me, I will respond much better if you use my name. Be sure to address your client the way he prefers to be addressed. For example, does he sign his emails as ‘Dave’ or ‘David’? If you aren’t sure, just ask. The simple task of asking about something that is important to him shows that you care. HOW YOUR CLIENTS MAKE MONEY If you plan to teach them how to save money, or how to bring in more money, you best know how they already do it. This is why it is important to study how various industries work and operate. If your client is a nursing home, for example, a simple google search can help you understand if the client makes more money via patient stays or from insurance payments or Medicare payments. Having a basic understanding makes the conversation so much easier. When the client knows that you understand the challenges he faces, he’s more likely to listen to your solutions. PERSONALIZED INTERACTIONS Send a thank you note at the very end of your conversation, even if it is the first meeting. “Dave, it was amazing to connect with you last week” or “I look forward to talking to you again soon, Amanda.” It doesn’t have to be elaborate or lengthy. In fact, what you say in the note isn’t as important as the fact that you took the time to send one. It is great to send an email as well, but a thank you note demonstrates a higher level of care. It gives an added touch. Additionally, the thank you note will be delivered 3 or 4 days after your conversation. It serves as a nice reminder of the conversation, and it helps you stand out. You can also personalize your presentations. Use your client’s logo and tagline in every presentation you make for them. It is another added touch that shows you care and that you are willing to take the extra step. It will help you stand out significantly over your competition. If you can combine these 3 simple things that offer exceptional customer experience with the delivery of amazing speed, you are going to be totally fine. I’m sure of it. “EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES” EPISODE RESOURCES 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 March. 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. 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 el

Sellers must understand what drives their customers and their core needs in order to help them be more effective, and conducting high-quality customer interviews is an important piece in that process. Hannah Shamji is a conversion copywriter who has a degree in Psychology and training in counseling. She likes to merge her understanding of human behavior through customer research with producing an effective customer interview. It brings about accurate feedback and insight and provides a valuable asset to your business. CHALLENGES OF CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS Focus groups are a popular way of conducting interviews, but Hannah has found them to be time-consuming and not very effective in getting pure, unbiased answers. When we ask the wrong questions, we often get empty answers. There are time constraints in creating the right questions to ask. There is a difference in just writing a question and coming up with a question that sparks the emotions of the customer to draw out the purity of their response. WHY DO CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS You want to speak to the emotional drivers of your audience. This helps bridge the gap between what you might think will sell your product or service to actually selling it. Doing these customer interviews correctly will help you answer the questions of what you should sell, how you should position it, what people care about, and what features or aspects you should focus on. In the past, I’ve done things just because they seemed like a good idea rather than being sensitive to whether it was something people wanted. An example of this was for a college class, my classmates and I had the opportunity to create an on-campus business. What created excitement for us ended up being a complete failure, and ours was one of the first companies in the school’s history to lose that amount of money. We were more concerned with our own interests rather than what the rest of the student body was concerned with. This is why it is so imperative to find out the products and services that appeal to your audience. STARTING THE CUSTOMER INTERVIEW Find your target audience and connect. This audience could be an existing customer you’ll propose something different to or a prospect you aren’t sure will be a good fit. Figure out the target market and pursue it. When Donald first started out in the business industry, he worked for several small companies that did not have a target audience and they just wanted him to go out and sell. The mentality of not having a specific audience to market to is not a good sales strategy. Once you establish who you want to market to, the kinds of questions you ask are imperative. Avoid asking “why” questions. Research shows that when people are asked “why,” they feel like they have to justify or validate their answer, which can lead to defensive answers that may or may not be accurate. Instead, ask the customer questions directly relating to the product or service. FOLLOW LEADS Ask questions to understand the customer better. Find out what drives them, what situations they have encountered in the past, and how they resolve problems when they arise. This can shed light on how the customer can benefit by investing in what you have to offer. Define an anchor. What do you want to accomplish or gain from this conversation? Follow the leads. Ask things that correspond to what the customer is discussing and try to bring about different responses to the same topic. Don’t be afraid to go deeper with responses. Listen for hints about what motivates your customer: why is he interested? Why was he willing to make the investment in your product or service? What sets you apart from competitors? To those managers working to position their companies using messaging, Hannah offers the following: Avoid pitching your product or service. This keeps the customer feelings unbiased and honest. Use these conversations as pure research to better your business. Unbiased customer answers can lead to a successful, productive and efficiently-run business. HIGH-QUALITY CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS EPISODE RESOURCES You can reach Hannah Shamji through her website at www.hannahshamji.com. She provides a guide with do’s and don’ts for customer interviews on her website. 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. 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 March. This episode is 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 will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald

One of the best ways to show your appreciation for your customers and provide value to them is to give them your all. Tiffany Southerland is a career confidence coach who works with both young, and experienced, professionals who are ready to make their career mark on the world and who want to increase their fulfillment in the work they do each day. She helps individuals evolve, thrive, and perform to the best of their ability. A business cannot exist without clients, so it is crucial to have a solid relationship with your buyers. Tiffany serves individuals one-on-one in a group setting and believes that, if they are not happy - if they have not improved or realized results - she has not done her job. It is, therefore, very important for the success of her business that she continually better herself in order to do better for her clients. The goal is not to simply make more money but rather to help the clients. A salesperson who pushes her own agenda over the needs of her clients is likely to lose those clients. The natural by-product of happy clients, however, is increased sales. Tiffany recalls failing to launch a group program twice because she had locked herself into reaching a specific number. She was focused on that target instead of the service she wanted to deliver. Once she removed the target and focused on the experiences, services, and opportunities she wanted to provide for her clients instead, she began to see results. Her level of stress was replaced with positive energy. People began to react differently to her as a result and her new goal was reached. Our unique gifts Tiffany knew that she wanted to build her business for the sake of changing people's lives and she wanted to leave a legacy. She had to realize and believe that she was capable of doing so. She needed to believe that she was uniquely gifted to provide her services in the way her clients wished to receive it. Tiffany was serious about reaching her goal. She knew she was capable of making an impact in a way that only she was qualified to do. Tiffany believes we are all uniquely gifted because our lives are all different. We came into our particular roles in a way that no one else did, even if we are doing the “same job.” Once you internalize that concept and apply the difference to the way you do business, you begin to walk authentically and in your own unique voice. Regardless of the metrics or the sales targets, if you can show up authentically, it becomes easier to do anything. You are no longer working to fit somebody else’s mode. You will be perceived differently. People can tell when you are trying to be something you are not. Instead of thinking about making a sale, think about serving a need. If your product or service can meet the need, the entire perspective and experience for both the buyer and the seller shifts. Rather than ‘just selling,’ you are literally meeting a need. Comparison is the thief of joy It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others in the same field and to doubt your ability to provide any unique service. Realize that you don’t have to reach a million people. Rather, you need to show up and impact just those people who need to hear your voice. We live in a world now where some people have thousands of followers. But if you have 10 people behind you - who really believe in you - that is a foundation upon which you can build everything else. Tiffany does not claim to be a celebrity by any stretch but she has a podcast audience that shares and believes in her. She, in turn, benefits when they share and connect her to others. It is impossible to be grateful and to take advantage of what you have if you are too busy comparing your achievements to others. Don’t worry about what other people have. Be appreciative of what you have. Have the right perspective and learn how to make the best from what you have been given. When Tiffany embraced this change, she was able to launch her business successfully. She was free to focus on her clients as opposed to focusing on herself and the bottom line. A call to serve Tiffany strongly believes that, regardless of industry, we are called to serve first. Focusing on metrics, for example, serves no purpose other than to appeal to our vanity. As soon as Tiffany changed her focus to the creation of a great product that would change the career trajectory of other women, she was able to truly connect with her clients. It was no longer the work she did for herself; it was the work they would do together that made the business successful. The feedback from her clients has been wonderful. They feel heard. They feel that they are getting so much more out of their experience with Tiffany than they expected. For Tiffany, that is the only result she really needs. Her clients register to improve their interviewing skills, or resumes, but they leave knowing how to clearly articulate what it is they are really good at doing and what they want in their careers. They ar

Selling a product or service that expands across multiple industries is possible when we realize that selling to everyone takes a team effort. Phil Sweeney worked in sales while in college because he enjoyed talking with people and problem-solving. Now, just two years after graduating, Phil is still working for Negotiatus, a fast-growing tech start-up business he first joined while in school. There were only a handful of employees when Phil first signed on. Now they are at 60 employees and Phil is loving every minute of it. SELLING TO EVERYONE It was exciting, as a salesperson, to have totally green fields ahead in terms of being able to work with, and sell to, any company. Phil had to quickly learn how not overextend himself. He had to learn how to hone in on the ideal customer profile. He had to understand who had the biggest need for the platforms he offers. When Phil first joined the sales team in its infancy, the company really could sell to everyone. It was a huge undertaking. They were also faced with the challenge of being a new company with little success to promote. They were shooting from all cylinders to determine where the biggest impact was in terms of the types of companies that they were attracting. From there, they were able to focus more and more on those types of clients. Phil dedicated blocks of time to the task. For 2-3 hours each day, he would not take any calls, schedule meetings, or go anywhere. Ideally, using blocks of time outside of selling hours, Phil would focus solely on who he was going to call the next day. He used many of the brilliant resources now available such as Sales Navigator, to find the people he needed to find and to learn more about them prior to the call. SHARING THE IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE Now that he is part of a larger sales team, he is having conversations not only within sales but also with success teams and operating teams to understand, in their opinion, which clients have been the most successful and easiest to work with. When selling to everyone is possible, it is easy to find yourself going nowhere fast. It is hard to know the correct verbiage for each industry. Selling in the medical industry, for example, is much different than selling in the automotive industry. It can be hard to land a good appointment until you narrow your focus to the industries that work best for your company. DIVIDE AND CONQUER Success begins when the teams can focus and then specialize across multiple industries. Phil believes it is important to identify as an expert in whichever field or department you are selling to. It is massively beneficial when you can speak the same language as the people you are selling to and when you can understand their struggles. Only then can you hone in on the pain points in order to solve those problems. Phil is closing sales now within 1-2 weeks of his first meetings because he has established himself as the expert in the field with the ideal solution/product. The need for his product is real and he is positioned to offer the main solution to satisfy that need. First and foremost, Phil recommends setting goals and dedicating time to the task. Most salespeople work in teams, so use that to your advantage. In Phil’s team, they announce the number of new contacts, for example, that they hope to reach in the next two hours; it is written on a whiteboard for all to see – and then they get to it. At the end of the time period, they check in on each other. Did they get it done? Or do they need to work longer? They hold each other accountable. Get familiar with the industry. Share tips and resources. Google Alerts, for example, is an excellent tool to stay on top of specific topics in a particular industry which can help you at every stage of your pipeline. Put in the time at the top of the funnel and it will pay off when it comes time to close the deal. In this manner, Phil’s sales team is leading the pack with a 115-150% quota attainment on a month-to-month basis. As a company, they have seen month-to-month revenue growth between 15-30%. STAY HUNGRY, STAY HUMBLE Everything is measured by the week or the month; even the hourly way of team progress is measured. It all resets to zero at the end of each period, so don’t hang your hat on a certain closed deal or a really good day of selling; stay humble. You’ve got to start each day mentally fresh and hungry again. “SELLING TO EVERYONE” EPISODE RESOURCES Reach out to Phil via email at [email protected], or give him a call at 631-901-2685. He is also active on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn as PhillipSweeney. Additionally, Phil is part of The Sales Evangelist Facebook group and would love to connect with you there. 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. This episode is brought to you in part by our TSE Certified Sales Training Program which teaches you to improve your sales skills, fin

When you bring value to customers and care for your clients, you’ve taken an important first step toward generating business referrals… without asking. Stacey Brown Randall considers herself a contrarian in the sales world, because she believes that if you’re asking for referrals, you’re doing it wrong. She helps small business owners and solopreneurs generate referrals and she dispels myths about referrals. She didn’t set out to focus on referrals, but after her first business failed, she discovered that business owners have to figure out how to touch business development every day. You also have to figure out the ways in which you’re willing to do it. TONS OF OPTIONS Sellers have countless options for bringing in clients and prospects to their pipelines, but they have to be options that the sellers are willing to do day-in, day-out. When her own business failed, she asked herself what went wrong. Although there was more than one mistake along the way, she realized that she never figured out how to fill her pipeline consistently. She never found an activity she was willing to do on a regular basis. She researched and found that referrals offer an amazing way to bring in clients, and they’re often quicker to close. They also trust you before they ever meet you, and they are less price sensitive. Everything about referrals is just better. REFERRAL PIECE Stacey was determined to figure out the referral piece when she launched her second business, but all the information she could find said you had to ask for referrals. To her, asking for a referral felt like a second-cousin to a cold call. She didn’t want to do it. In order to help her second business be successful, she decided to figure out how to generate referrals without asking. Once she did that, she moved into teaching other people how to succeed in the same way. REFERRAL MISTAKES Referrals are not about you. If you ask for them, or make them part of your marketing plan and develop promotions around them, you’re making the referrals about you. Stacey discovered that the sales process has three buckets: prospecting activities, marketing activities, and referral activities. What we do to generate referrals looks different than what we do compared to prospecting and marketing. When I’m in prospecting mode, I’m looking for someone who will say yes within 30 days. With marketing, it’s a little more long-term but there is always an ultimate mindset. Referrals, however, require different activities and a different mindset. The biggest mistake people make is treating their referral process like part of the prospecting effort. Or, they think about it like marketing and make it promotional and gimmicky. GREAT WORK If you’re going to hand off the client at some point, you have to make sure it’s a great process and great client experience. Nobody refers to crappy work and no one refers a choppy customer experience. That’s a foundational piece, and none of these suggestions will work if you aren’t referrable. You must do the things that make people want to refer you. The most important person in a referral process isn’t you and it isn’t your prospect; it’s your referral source. You must understand who is referring you. ACTION STEPS Begin by pulling out your list of clients, at least from the last two years, and figure out how those clients learned about you. (Pull data from as many years as you’re willing to do the work for.) You may have this information in your CRM, or you may have to do some digging. Determine who those people are that already referred you in the past, and begin there. You’ll likely realize that you don’t have that many, and you’ll probably discover that you haven’t been intentional about building relationships with those people. Figure out what you’re doing to take care of your referral sources. Because sellers often get paid on commission, it’s tempting to move quickly from one client to the next. Sometimes sellers don’t recognize that it’s a lot of work to constantly seek the next big win. Instead, sellers can spend their time doing activities they enjoy doing for people who know that they truly care. Then, the sellers can watch clients drop in their laps. If you do the right kind of work at the right time for the right people in the right way, they will fill up your pipelines for you. #Pipeline CLICK TO TWEET It saves a tremendous amount of time and money. YOUR JOB No one wakes up in the morning thinking about ways to make your job easier. They aren’t thinking about how they can refer you. Your job is to make sure that you’re doing outreach to referral sources and that you’re being memorable and meaningful. You want to use the right referral seed planting language so that you move into their subconscious. When you take care of people, they naturally want to take care of you back. We want to be the person who is constantly giving to them so they think about us in a different way. When an opportunity arises, we want them thinking about us. It’s

The Red-headed Step Brother of Sales … Client Success; we don’t pay attention to it. But, we should. There were times, growing up in Jamaica when we would have issues with getting water into our house. The pressure wouldn’t be strong enough or a pipe would burst, and we would have to take buckets down to the community water source and haul them back home. Imagine me, Little Donald, carrying a bucket of water a quarter mile each way …and I’m sure I filled that bucket to the very top. Naturally, some will spill out as you walk along, but imagine my surprise to see the bucket only half-full when I got home … A small crack in the bucket caused me to lose most of it. What incentive would I have to go back for more? I needed to fix that bucket. Client success is the same way. Nobody pays attention to it but it is critical to the organization’s success. CLIENT SUCCESS Client success is the function of a company responsible for maintaining the relationship between the client and you, the vendor. The goal of client success is very simple: to make sure your clients are as successful as possible. This, in turn, improves your relationship with the client and the lifetime value of that client. It helps the organization in many ways. As with my bucket example, client success is the source that helps to make sure the holes in the bucket are sealed. We don’t lose water – we don’t lose customers. [02:17] Compare the lifetime value of your client to my bucket of water. The last thing you want to do is lose your customers after working so hard to get them. It would be such a waste to work for a year and a half to land an amazing client only for them to move on after only a year. Multiply that scenario across multiple clients and you’ll find yourself in a whole heap of trouble: you need to fix that bucket. You need to address client success. [03:26] I read a statistic in an article published by the Precision Marketing Group which states that86% of buyers will pay more for a product if they receive a better customer experience. This may not occur immediately but imagine a client does come on board who has an opportunity to purchase more of the licenses, or services, that you offer. Let’s use furniture sales as an example. You sold a nice desk and chair to your client. In the future, what prevents him from going elsewhere if he needs another chair? [04:11] MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS What if your client success team was able to actively work that account and learn the goals of the client? If you knew the client was planning to expand in six months, for example, would it not make sense for you to create an opportunity to help them reach that goal? In some companies, sales takes care of this but it spreads the sales force thin. They are asked to find new people, build value, close deals, AND actively farm the account, fix problems, and keep the client happy. You need new business to come in but you also need to maintain relationships with your current clients so they will return to you over and over again. It is virtually impossible to do it all. Something has to give and, in all likelihood, new business will stop coming in. [04:58] Again, 86% of buyers would pay more for a product or service if they receive a better customer experience. Let’s say your product is at premium value and a buyer could go somewhere else next time to get it for less. If the buyer perceives a value in the sales experience he has with you, however, he will stay with you. [05:48] CLIENT SUPPORT Client support, on the other hand, is basically a range of client services to assist clients in making cost effective and correct use of a product. This includes assisting in planning, training, troubleshooting, maintaining, updating, etc. Using the office furniture example again, the client support team helps install and assemble the desk. The client success team does not. In smaller organizations, however, sellers often do it all. Solving problems while also maintaining accounts can certainly be overwhelming. You can see how this could affect new net revenue. [06:32] The emphasis on new business causes client support and client success to be pushed to the side: they become the red-headed step children of sales. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Another statistic from the Precision Marketing Group states that the companies who prioritize customer experience generate 60% higher profits. Instead of hiring three new salespeople, would it not make more sense to hire two sales individuals and one client success individual instead? Hire a client success person to ensure that everyone brought on board by the sales team stays on board. Instead of losing new clients each year, keep them for five or six years – even longer. Give them an amazing experience. Help them. Guide them and fix any problems they might have so they don’t feel neglected. [07:29] It has been said that the client success team is just an appendage of customer support and it is not as important as sales. But we all know t

What is the value of giving prospects hands-on control during presentations and leave behinds? Zvi Guterman, founder and CEO of CloudShare, is here today to tell us. CloudShare is a cloud company providing IT labs as a service mainly for IT training, IT sales enablement, and sandboxing, all in the cloud. Like most entrepreneurs, Zvi got the idea for CloudShare when faced with a problem that needed a solution. In previous positions, there was always a point in the sales process when Zvi needed to build a demo or training talk. When he realized how much time and work he was spending to build that infrastructure, as opposed to actually doing the demo and closing the deal, he knew there had to be a better way. He looked but couldn’t find a service to create labs for him, so he decided to create that service. Ten years and $30 million later, Zvi has seen a lot. HANDS-ON CONTROL DURING PRESENTATIONS Zvi learned from working with his customers and users that, once a prospect is given a hands-on experience, the level of commitment from those prospects increases. It is no longer some vague idea that you are selling but rather a tangible product. When the clients understand how the software works, for example, it is easier for them to imagine using it. They are more committed and less worried because their questions are answered. It also allows sales to collaborate with the prospects on how best to utilize the product. Hands-on experiences remove obstacles and shorten the sales cycle. #SalesCycle CLICK TO TWEET A hands-on experience allows sales to move control of the demonstration to the prospect. It increases the prospect’s understanding of the product and allows them the opportunity to ask questions they may not even know they had. Onboarding then becomes super enjoyable. Begin by answering simple questions and explaining terminology. Then, proceed together to determine other areas to test, what type of specific functionality to add, or which performance issues need to be addressed. It also enables sales to personalize a timeline and success criteria for each prospect. OTHER BENEFITS OF THE HANDS-ON APPROACH Client engagement increases retention. The hands-on process increases usage and reduces the risk of the prospects buying but never deploying the product simply because they don’t have the time to install or set it up. Cases will still arise where the product is not a good match for your prospect. But looking at the big picture, you want to see the No’s. Hands-on presentations shorten the time spent on irrelevant leads because the prospects will see right away whether the product is a match for their needs. Most times, salespeople focus on leads or clients that are not going to progress. Engaging the customer with hands-on opportunities saves times and energy for everyone. Zvi insists that the demonstration parameters be the same parameters the prospects can expect when the product is deployed to their data centers. They do not optimize or otherwise tweak the demonstration. This provides true value to the customers. It also allows everyone the opportunity to enjoy the move toward deployment. The transition is smoother and the actual deployment is faster. THE DUALITY OF THE HANDS-ON PROCESS The prospects are happy with the duality of the hands-on process. On one hand, they have control of the environment. No one will interfere or touch their data. At the same time, sales is available to answer any questions and to collaborate. An in-house test lab is probably the most common scenario in many organizations but scheduling use of the lab is both cumbersome and expensive. CloudShare simplifies and reduces that cost by reducing the amount of lab time. Hands-on demonstrations are more efficient, more powerful, and less expensive. Providing hands-on demonstrations and a trial in the cloud also allows for more and more advanced scenarios. Zvi sees people utilizing all the available tools together and becoming more efficient. People are now using the data available in CloudShare to calculate the probability of engagement. They can also determine where to concentrate their efforts and to learn about new directions to take. It allows people to collaborate and get the best results. For example, if a sales rep on the east coast notices better results from a demo being used on the west coast, he can quickly learn more about it and how best to apply it. With CloudShare, team members can share improvements implement them on a global scale. Organizations become more efficient as a result. “GIVING PROSPECTS HANDS-ON CONTROL DURING PRESENTATIONS AND LEAVE-BEHINDS” EPISODE RESOURCES The best way to reach Zvi is via email at [email protected]. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget

If we allow it to, fear can hold us back and dominate our lives, but if we focus instead on understanding and managing fear, we can identify the source of our fear and we can improve our own performance. Kristy Ellington shares today why she believes that being fearless is a myth, and how she overcame years-old fears to unlock improved performance in her own job. Fearless Being fearless is a myth because the truth is that everyone experiences fear. Fear doesn't simply infect one section of our lives, but rather every part. We get caught up in our thoughts and emotions, and fear keeps us from doing the things we want or need to do to get to the next level. Fear causes us to focus inward instead of focusing on the client, which is really detrimental in sales. As sellers, we want to focus on our clients and how we can connect with them, but fear keeps us focused on how they perceive us, and whether they are judging us, and how we look to them. Fight or flight Fear triggers our natural fight-or-flight instinct, which diverts resources from our brains into our arms, legs, heart, and lungs. It slows down our thinking so that we can't fully analyze situations and we can't think critically. We have no available judgment and we can't find creative solutions because we're afraid. Fear hinders us in a variety of ways, but realistically it's all in our heads and it's all connected back to some unidentified source of fear that we have to address. Take action For sellers, the need to overcome fear is real, and they don't have a lot of time to do it. They have quotas to meet and they have to pick up the phone. Understand your trigger. If you're afraid of picking up the phone, unpack that fear. It's often the fear of judgment or the fear of rejection or not being professional or expert enough. You fear going off-script and looking or sounding stupid. Use this five-step process before any big presentation or conversation: Notice. Recognize the problem. Admit when you're afraid. Aware. Be aware of where the problem is: tightness in your throat or butterflies in your stomach. Make. Make the connection. Where did you first feel this problem? What's the source? A bad public speaking experience? Evaluate. Is this real right now? You have no reason to believe that anyone will make fun of you, so your own thoughts are causing the fear. It isn't real. Shift. Once you understand that your fear isn't real, you can shift your focus back to your client. Worst-case scenario If you have any kind of fear, it's always valid to determine the worst-case scenario. If you fear elevators because you fear getting stuck and being claustrophobic, ask yourself if it's real. Is it true that you really won't be able to breathe in the elevator? Is it true that the elevator is going to fall while you're in it? That's likely something you saw in a scary movie once. Fear is false evidence appearing real. Imposter Syndrome Imposter Syndrome is huge for many people, and it prevents you from asking questions for fear that you'll look stupid. It can prevent you from understanding the buying decision or the challenges that your customers are facing. People also fear saying "no" to clients who aren't the best fit for fear of what might happen. They fear failure and what failure might lead to. Maybe you don't get the promotion or you don't make enough commission to pay your bills. As a result, you end up with the worst clients on earth because you bent over backward for clients that really weren't worth the effort. Eliminating fear It's probably not really realistic to think that someday you'll be fearless. No matter what level you are in life, you'll experience fear. The fears for a sales development rep will be different for that of a CRO. You'll always experience fear somehow. If you don't experience fear somehow, you're probably not moving forward. You should be feeling fear. It's a biological response. You can't crush it or eliminate it. You must learn to manage it. When you do, you can move forward and take inspired action that's thoughtful and clear instead of action that's chaotic and desperate. Fear is really just there to protect us and keep us safe. Your brain is working to protect you from bad things that happened in the past. Our fears now are social in nature, but they manifest in the same way that physical threats did generations ago. We don't have to spend so much time being afraid of fear. Leadership fears Leaders are just as afraid of looking stupid as the rest of us, just on a different level. They inadvertently create a culture of fear because they are operating from fear. The stressors are different because they have more responsibility. As you address fears, it becomes easier to manage them. "That which we consistently do becomes easier, not because the nature of the thing changes but our ability changes." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Fear into confidence It's possible to turn fear into confidence. You have to be comfortable with emotion because i

Salespeople need mental toughness to weather all the ups and downs of the industry, as well as the pressures and difficulties when things aren’t going well. Sometimes clients choose another seller. Sometimes a customer ends the relationship. In other cases, we do everything we’re supposed to do, and the deal still won’t close. Today Ian Wendt talks with us about one of the most difficult moments in his career and how he got through it and continued his journey. TEACHING INSTEAD OF SELLING Sales is full of challenges, and it requires a certain amount of self-motivation. For Ian, though, the greatest challenge was when he decided that he didn’t want to knock on doors. He realized that while he was really good at selling, he was even more valuable as a teacher. He needed to find a way to make himself valuable enough that he could teach other people how to sell and how to be mentally tough, which was what he was really passionate about. It’s sometimes tough for people to build a sales career that doesn’t involve knocking on doors. Finding a way to make the transition felt daunting to him. He was haunted by the fear of what would happen if he couldn’t make it work. Ian shared a quote from the book Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins that goes like this: “Most people don’t even start if they don’t have a guarantee.” That was Ian’s mindset at the time of the transition. PULLING THE TRIGGER Ian decided to sell for one more summer, and his regional manager used him to do some training. When Ian went to certain offices, those groups started seeing huge spikes in their performance. He was helping them close significant deals and move the needle. He started tracking his results so he could demonstrate his value. Ian asked for the opportunity to run a training program, but his leadership told him there was no such position available in the company. If, however, Ian could prove the value in his training, the company would consider creating one. Ian is a big believer that you don’t negotiate until you bring value, so that’s what he set out to do. He was determined to produce something he could negotiate with. TRACKING RESULTS Ian started tracking the offices, reps, and leaders that he was training. He tracked their metrics and their increases and the improvements in their completion rates for about three months. He visited about 11 offices and trained more than 60 reps. Once he had a binder full of information, the leaders called him in to ask what he was doing. They were seeing improvements and they wanted to hear how he was doing it. He got the leadership on board and he created a pitch for his proposed training. They jumped on board with his idea and moved toward getting started. UNSEEN STRUGGLES One of the biggest struggles for Ian was that he wasn’t directly selling anymore. He was investing his time and efforts into these offices and these other sellers, so he wasn’t selling a ton of accounts. He got a few sales, but he went from making a lot of money to making very little. Ian overdrafted his account at least four times, which was unheard of for him. He was battling the stress of the downward mindset. As a result, he now teaches that stress is the number one factor in negativity and negativity is the one thing that will destroy a sales career. Those reps that operate in fear can be completely debilitated. WHAT IF? What if I’m moving the needle but this doesn’t pay out? Or what if I have nothing to show for all my work? Worse yet, What if I don’t make enough to live off of? Ian lived with exactly that fear during the summer he spent training other sellers. He was plagued by the internal debate over whether to return to the regular sales or to keep trying to develop his training idea. RESULTS Ian put himself in a position to do work that he loves. Now he’s over all of the training and content creation for his entire company, and he gets paid really well for it. He’s grateful every day that he was able to create his own future. He recently spoke at a conference where he reminded the audience that sales will always be hard. But, he said, if you can master it, you can really control the outcome of your life. If you can sell yourself or sell a product, it will allow you to create the life you want, and maybe the life you never imagined. #Selling CLICK TO TWEET You can find a way to do work that you love and position yourself to look forward to the work week. He loves the opportunity to share what he has learned with other people, and he loves being surrounded by people who are constantly trying to develop themselves. “FEAR AND MENTAL TOUGHNESS” EPISODE RESOURCES Ian is in the process of developing a consulting and coaching program. In the meantime, he’s doing some side work with individual organizations and people. Connect with Ian via direct message on Facebook @ian.wendt, LinkedIn @ianwendt, and Instagram @iwendtster. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales

Many of us in sales have jumped into companies without a training process or guidance; we find ourselves winging it and wondering, “Where’s my mentor?” Aaron Walker started in the business when he was 18 years old. At the age of 27, he sold to a Fortune 500 company and retired. Eighteen months later, his wife told him he was becoming fat and lazy; so he went back to work, purchased the company he first started and grew it four times in 10 years. It was all fun until the unimaginable happened in August 2001. Aaron accidentally killed a pedestrian with his car. It changed his life. He sold the business and spent the next five years learning how to deal with the tragedy. CHANGING HIS LEGACY In the process, he realized that his financial success lacked significance. He didn’t want his legacy to be “‘enough money to retire at the age of 27.” Nobody cares. He wanted to make a change. He decided to spend his life encouraging and edifying others. Aaron changed the way he did business. He started looking outward more than inward and he gathered mentors to help him. His life began to take a very different path. With the help of several mentors he has worked with for more than two decades in a Mastermind group, Aaron launched his own coaching company, View From the Top. He now leads 14 mastermind groups in eight different countries to help people live a life of success and significance. ISOLATION IS THE ENEMY TO EXCELLENCE Aaron defines a mentor as somebody who will walk alongside you for an extended period of time, as opposed to a coach who helps you get through a certain point in life. Aaron has been with some of the same mentors for more than 40 years. They help him realize where he needs to go in life. Mentors are people who have been there/done that and whose core values coincide with your own. They are the people who want what is best for you rather than what is best for themselves. For sales, in particular, mentors are crucial. Aaron believes that it is very difficult to grow and expand alone because we each have only one filter – one life experience that guides how we view things. THE VALUE OF MENTORS Other people see us differently than we see ourselves. As such, mentors can help realize your superpowers. They also help you understand your weaknesses and to see your blind spots. Having a mentor to point out what we would otherwise miss ourselves can be the very thing that puts us over the top. We have many obstacles and upper limit challenges that we need to push through. Trusted and unbiased advisors can point us in the right direction. Aaron recalls a guy in one of his mastermind groups that was putting together a course that was, in reality, absolutely terrible. Everything about it was terrible, but the group helped him tweak it and shape it into something amazing. It’s the same way in our lives. Aaron admits he lacks tact but never realized that many people viewed him as arrogant and condescending until his wife pointed it out to him. It was one of his blind spots. We need people around us who can help us out. We all know the overly confident, borderline cocky salespeople. Getting them to accept advice, to realize their blind spots and to be humble is tricky. Confidence is needed in sales but people don’t buy arrogance and cockiness. There has to be a measure of humility. A mentor can help you get there. Surround yourselves in business, in marriage, in every area of your life with mentors that you trust to help you get where you want to go. WHERE’S MY MENTOR? To find a mentor, look for someone who has been married for a long time if you have questions about marriage. Find someone who has been in business for along time if you have questions about that. Look for someone who has nothing to lose, or gain, by talking to you. Family members are often biased in that regard because they want you to have what you want to have. You want someone who will give it to you straight. You have to be willing to subject yourself to scrutiny. You have to be willing to accept the truth in order to hear the truth. That is why masterminds are so profoundly helpful – you have 8-10 people with completely different life experiences at your disposal. They can take your great idea, look at it, and point out the things about it that you might not have thought of. When you work with the same people over months or years, a pattern develops and they see it. Aaron has worked with the same counselor for decades. They talk when things are going well and when they aren’t. Over that amount of time, the counselor realized that Aaron did something completely radical about once every 36 months. This type of behavior classifies Aaron as a ‘creator developer’, rather than a ‘maintainer manager.’ A creator developer is someone who gets bored easily and who doesn’t like everything to be the same all the time. It explains why Aaron has had 12 businesses. He likes to develop and create. Because Aaron had a mentor who was able to point it out, Aaron

If you've been guilty of bulldozing your prospects or being rude or uncaring, today must be the day you change your mindset: Don't treat prospects like a number. Although numbers are important to those of us who work in sales, we can't let them become our primary focus. They can help us measure our success and determine our strengths and weaknesses, but we can't reduce our prospects to a number. Find the balance Some organizations focus so little on numbers that they don't have any way to replicate their successes. They have no idea how many calls it takes to get to the right customer. They have no idea of their conversion rate. On the other hand, some organizations are so focused on the numbers that it becomes the primary focus of their work. As a result, they often sacrifice quality in the name of numbers. Do not lose track of the people in the process. My wife got a call from a traditional seller in a traditional selling situation last week: he knew nothing about the company except the name and the phone number. He didn't know who he needed to speak to, and it was obvious he was calling from a call center. The caller wasn't prepared and he didn't have a cadence to his call. Dialing for dollars Some companies have a single speed. They spend each day dialing for dollars and relying on phone calls to advance their numbers. They fail to realize that today's buyers are busy. They fail to approach selling from the buyer's standpoint. It never occurs to them that they could have brought value in an email. Or that they could have used multiple emails to share client testimonials or valuable tips or irresistible messages. They overlook LinkedIn as a place to connect with prospects and they miss the opportunity to provide value. They forget that they could mail something to the prospect or research who they should contact within a company. They overlook the strength of using multiple points of entry rather than just blasting the prospect with phone calls. Control your emotion When my wife told the caller that we weren't interested in doing business with him, he got upset. He's no doubt frustrated because he's doing the same activity every single day and not having much success, but it doesn't give him a pass to get upset. Sometimes you've brought value and done everything possible for your buyer, and they still aren't ready to buy. It's ok to say, "Hey, I get this all the time. Sometimes people aren't ready. Out of curiosity, is it because you guys already have someone in place or just that you're not looking to buy right now?" Once they give me an answer, I ask if it's ok for me to send podcasts or videos in the future. If they say yes, then I've left the door open. Instead of sacrificing my connection by getting angry, I keep opportunities open. Develop processes I'm a big proponent of making sure you have processes in place as you reach out to prospects. If you're treating them like a number and calling without doing any research, please stop. You're treating them like a number and they're going to respond accordingly. Offer personal touches. Take 2 to 5 minutes to go on LinkedIn and find out what the company does. Don't eat up too much of your time, just find out the key players and the company mission so you can have an intelligent conversation. Do work If you're trying to reach people the same way everyone else is, you're probably not going to have a lot of success. You're going to have to do a little bit of work to grab our attention in a busy setting. I recently got a video from someone as a form of outreach, and I complimented the person on the video. Then, I invited the person to be a guest on the podcast, and the show is going live soon. It's more work for you, but your job as the seller is to make the buyer's job easier. Don't add unnecessary complication. [Tweet "Treat people like people. Try something unique. People aren't robots and they aren't just numbers. #EffectiveSelling"] "Don't Treat Prospects Like a Number" episode resources This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never, ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler's League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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. 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 yo

We’ve all experienced that sinking feeling in sales as we near the end of another month … so how do you deal with the pressure of hitting your quarterly number? It’s not easy, especially without the proper guidance. Brian Manning, SVP & Head of Growth at PatientPing, works to help startups grow their ideas and he is here today to share insight on how to deal with the pressure of hitting your quarterly numbers. PatientPing is a care coordination platform that helps healthcare providers collaborate with one another on shared platforms. Brian has been with PatientPing for three years now. He oversees their sales, marketing, government affairs, and partnerships. From a sales leader standpoint, Brian thinks of quarterly numbers in terms of the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) for each layer of the business: the overall company ARR, the sales team ARR and the individual sales rep ARR. WILL, SHOULD, COULD Sales reps often feel the pressure to perform and, as a leader, Brian likes to have his reps 3x their pipeline as they enter the quarter. As the quarter goes on, however, and things become more sophisticated, Brian moves on to the ‘Will, Should, Could’ method. This method involves marking each deal throughout the quarter as Will Close, Should Close and Could Close. Wills usually equal about 95%, while Should is at 70% and Could is closer to 50%. The Sales Operation Team does this for each week for each rep to provide a projection for the quarter. In this way, at any given week, the reps have a pretty good sense of where they stand in relation to their targets. Brian has found that the projections are smart and reliable. THE DETECTIVE MINDSET When sales reps feel pressure to hit their quarterly numbers, it is usually a result of a failure somewhere in the sales funnel. There might not be enough leads, the presentations may not convert into proposals, or the deals may be stuck in contract too long. It is usually one specific thing that slows them down. It almost takes a detective mindset to figure it out sometimes, but it can be done. A key factor in reducing the pressure of hitting your quarterly numbers begins with the numbers that are expected of the sales rep. The rep needs to be comfortable with those numbers. If they do not see a path toward achieving the goal set in front of them, they need to alert their manager right away – before the quarter even starts. It should not be viewed as a sign of weakness, nor should a rep fail to come forward because of pride. As a manager, Brian knows it is important to listen to his team. The territory could be bad, the ramp might be too quick, or the training may need to be improved. He does, however, require an intelligent and well-thought-out conversation rather than simple excuses. You never want to send a rep out to achieve a quota he doesn’t feel he can meet. It’s not healthy for anyone. With their detective hats on, the manager and the rep can then work together to specifically analyze the territory, the opportunity, and the various stages that the deals are in. It has the benefit of making the sales rep more effective which, in turn, increases the likelihood of hitting the numbers in subsequent quarters. EMPATHY Understanding and having empathy for the seller is important. They may be going through something personal or may just need help with the fundamentals. #Energy Management CLICK TO TWEET When the pressure is high or the number is high, it is especially important to take care of your health. Brian believes that nothing is insurmountable when you are feeling healthy and well. A seller under too much pressure – one with any type of resentment towards the product or the company – will not be a seller who gives his best. It will translate into his performance and affect the clients and the sales. When a salesperson puts his energy into dealing with the things that he can’t control – an imperfect product or lack of marketing team support, for example – the salesperson will always lose. In Brian’s experience, the number one difference between a great seller and a not-so-great seller is that the energy of the great seller goes to the areas where he has control. Don’t waste energy on things that will not help you reach your numbers, or succeed. Your energy, as a salesperson, needs to go into selling under the conditions you are in. This does not mean, however, that you should hesitate to flag issues. If there is something wrong with the product or the process, it should certainly be brought to the attention of management. There will always be that one guy who wants to complain regardless of the situation. But those reps that can focus and channel their energy into doing what is best for their client are the reps that will succeed. TRANSPARENCY There is a seesaw to transparency. When a rep is doing really well and is on track to reach his quota, his manager will see it and will know the rep is doing fine. There is no reason to stress. But if the rep isn’t doing well or th

One of my favorite topics to talk about is lack of confidence and the challenges and fear that come along with it; and, more specifically, how we can overcome it. Paul Carswell was the salaried manager of a Sherwin-Williams storefront for many years before transitioning in 2018 to become an independent Medicare Insurance Specialist. He works with clients ages 65+ to help them and to bring value to their community. Surviving on a 100% commission-based income took some getting used to. Instead of clients walking into the store, Paul had to learn how to make calls and set appointments. In order to educate potential clients on the complexities of the Medicare system, Paul also hosts educational events in the community. He uses podcasts like this one to reach out to as many people as possible. Such events help people to realize that his primary goal is to help the community rather than to simply earn a paycheck. LACK OF CONFIDENCE Moving from a salaried position to a commission-based position certainly caused some fear and trepidation. The transition of receiving a paycheck every two weeks, regardless of performance, to selling private insurance came with a steep learning curve. Paul knew he had to get out in front of people. Nobody was simply “walking into the store anymore.” Previously, his whole day had been planned out for him. Now he had an empty schedule that only he could fill. It seemed nice and relaxing for the first two weeks but then reality set in. With no paycheck coming in and no prospects on the calendar, Paul admits to feeling defeated. A lack of confidence was setting in. REGAINING CONFIDENCE Paul had to put his pride aside and get busy. Drawing from his experience as a basketball player, he knew he had to take shots if he was ever going to score. He started contacting old friends and networking – anything to populate his schedule. It didn’t matter if it was Medicare-related or not. Paul found that the more he put on his calendar, the more he was able to begin to weed out the events that would not benefit his business. Eventually, after about eight weeks of making calls and networking – still without a paycheck – he finally had a full schedule of Medicare-related events to look forward to. As a result of the changes he implemented, Paul improved his relationships with his friends by talking with them more. On the business side of things, he has increased his bookings from zero to 50 and is earning a decent income because of the work he put into it. It didn’t all come at once, however, as it did before at Sherwin-Williams. In his current role, sales is a lengthy process instead of a quick sale with an immediate exchange of goods. Learning to understand the long-term payout was his biggest struggle. As such, Paul advises everyone to stay focused on long-term goals. Keep putting up the shots. You don’t have to make every shot but you have to keep aiming. #KeepWorking CLICK TO TWEET The more people you get yourself in front of, the more you will realize how many people truly care about you and want your business to succeed. “LACK OF CONFIDENCE” EPISODE RESOURCES You can contact Paul on his cellphone at 703-342-9087 or via email at [email protected]. Paul is on Instagram @paulcarswell. He can also be found on Twitter and Facebook. His website will be up and running soon! This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never, ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler’s League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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. 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, and share with your friends! Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

As salespeople, we’ve all faced new rejection. It feels like a punch in the gut every time. It can sometimes make you question if you should even stay in the business. Kevin Yee knows what I’m talking about. Rejection is especially hard to handle when you are new to it as Kevin was. Kevin left the pharmacy industry and now runs a high ticket closing agency of about ten team members working with B2B and B2C clients. It was risky move but after attending a sales training course, Kevin was highly motivated. He was excited to start making calls but terrified at the same time. He knew he lacked experience and that affected his confidence. Kevin wanted clients but he wasn’t sure if he was really going to be able to help them. Intellectually, he knew he could work hard and figure things out but he remained insecure. THE WRONG FOCUS He was so focused on those insecurities, that within moments, his first client had control of the call. Looking back, Kevin realizes he was trying to be someone that he wasn’t. He is naturally inclined to be helpful but he was trying to be authoritative in his delivery. He knew all the right things to say but he lacked conviction and it came across in his voice. It didn’t help that the client was also not interested in the services of a high- ticket closer. Kevin had worked so hard to put everything in his training so the rejection really hit him hard. His confidence in sales was shaken. He didn’t want to go back to pharmacy, however, so he decided to try again. TRYING AGAIN At the time, he was a one-man sales team. He had a marketing background so he set up a sales funnel for himself where he was the closer at the end. With help from his YouTube channel, the leads started to come in. It was a good problem to have. Kevin signed on a few friends to help out. Having confidence in the team’s ability to get results made it easier to reach out to more and more clients. Certainly, the best time to close a sale is right after closing a previous sale because that is when confidence is high. It has been six months since the sales funnel took off. The team has been getting better and better and Kevin has focused on getting more and more clients. He learned how to really connect with people and to be a good friend to his clients. Kevin takes the time to really learn about their businesses so that he can tackle any problems his clients may have. He knows that the most important part of any new business is marketing and sales. WORKING WITH OTHERS He and his team are currently in the process of onboarding a B2B client with six-figure packages as they continue to reach out to new clients. They strive to authentically reach out to people to help solve the closing and sales problems of their business. He believes there is a lot of opportunity on the table and is excited for the future. Kevin knows he could not have done it alone. He encourages you to reach out to others, especially if you are struggling. He believes that you have to have a giving mentality to succeed; nobody wants to work with a selfish person. Sometimes we just get so focused on our own lane that we fail to realize there are cars next to us. Kevin hopes his story will inspire others who may be ‘in the slumps’ to keep putting themselves out there, and to rely on others for help as you continue to do the same for others. “NEW REJECTION” EPISODE RESOURCES Check out Kevin’s YouTube channel at Kevin Yee PharmD, or contact him at refugeehustle.com. 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. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Prospect.io is offering three months at half-price. Previously known as TSE Hustler’s League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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 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. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode

ow do you deal with uncertainty as a salesperson? It’s definitely a tough thing that can wipe some people out. Tom Libelt has been a salesman for almost 20 years; inside sales, outside sales, retail, large corporations – you name it. He has a couple of his own companies as well and is currently focused on the marketing of online courses. Tom credits just getting up every morning and going to work as the secret to his success. And, he never leaves anything half-finished. You don’t have to accomplish ten million things in one day – aim for two or three. It is amazing how much you can achieve in a year if you just check two or three items off each day. You could record an album, get a degree, open a store … In this way, Tom has been able to 5x his company in just three months. PLAN AHEAD He says the trick is to plan ahead the night before so as not to lose your focus, momentum, and energy trying to figure it all out the next morning. When Tom is in the middle of a really fun project, he sometimes will let it set overnight just so he can enjoy it again for another day. Leaving something overnight, however, also just bugs him the whole night; he can’t stop thinking about it. He wakes up looking forward to finishing it. In his experience, completing a great project first thing in the morning establishes the work flow for the rest of the day. You will already be in the mindset to get things done. DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY Dealing with uncertainty is especially difficult as a salesperson. We hear ‘No’ more than anyone else in any profession. It can be a real roller coaster ride: Got a sale! … No sale…. Almost got a sale …hot lead! … nothing. It is especially hard when there is a target to hit. The ride can last two or three weeks before it lands on a sale. It’s a grind sometimes and it can chip away at your confidence – and increase your uncertainty – if you don’t have the experience to handle it. As a salesperson, Tom defines uncertainty as a feeling that nothing is working. It is that moment when the negative thoughts start to take over and you begin to worry. It is when the confidence and experience you need to know you will be okay are not there. Those moments are fueled by fear and the worst decisions are often made as a result. Imagine trying to close a deal and being terrified of what might happen if you fail. The client can sense that fear and you will not close that deal despite all your abilities. The wrong value and emotions are transferred to the client. Clients don’t buy when they are scared. You wouldn’t want a hesitant doctor – you want a confident doctor. It is the same with sales. PROJECT CONFIDENCE We have to project competence, confidence, and professionalism. Tom isn’t concerned whether or not his clients like him but he does want them to trust and respect him. Tom is of the belief that although having a strong opinion may not always earn you friends, it will earn you respect. Clients don’t want someone who is trying to cater to everyone; they want someone who is confident and able to fix their problem. Tom and his no-nonsense approach have closed many sales. He doesn’t tell his clients what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear. Respect comes from being honest. Trust comes from delivering. #Deliver CLICK TO TWEET Sometimes the respect comes automatically because you are working for a well-established brand name but only you, as a salesperson, can earn trust and confidence. If you are dealing with uncertainty, if you had a poor showing in 2018 for example, Tom believes that 99% of the time it stems from a lack of prospecting. You have to prospect to fill the sales funnel. Sitting around waiting for the phone to ring is a recipe for uncertainty. THE FUNDAMENTALS If you follow the fundamentals, you can succeed. You have to make a start and you have to put in the work. Just because someone hung up on you one time doesn’t mean it will happen every time. Don’t let uncertainty keep you from continuing to try. I especially like working with novices because they aren’t afraid. It is the flip side of experience – they haven’t failed enough times to be afraid to try again. Tom also believes that, as a whole, we have become soft. Instead of cold calling or going door-to-door, we now have technology that allows us to stay at our desk. We no longer have to deal with brutal weather or slamming doors. Stop asking for permission. Instead of asking your manager how to best handle a call, or what you should do next, Tom says to just do it! The worst thing that could happen is that the client will say ‘No.’ If that happens, and it will sometimes, just move on and try again. You never know what will happen unless you do it, unless you keep trying. You can’t score unless you step up to the plate and swing the bat. Sales needs momentum. Tom realizes that, in the past, he wasn’t always the most successful salesperson. He knows there were times when he slacked off on prospecting, especially after a hav

If you find yourself hesitant to tell people that you work in sales because you think anyone can do it, today we’re discussing the fact that You are Important as Well!! The year was 2011. I was a recent college graduate working for the first company in my professional career. I was attending a fine dining networking event when I ran into an old friend. The old friend, it turns out, had decided to take on Wall Street after graduation and was now the head of finance for a multinational company in Miami. It sounded like he was doing great. “Hey! Donald! It’s great to see you! What are you doing these days?!” I clammed up because I didn’t want to tell him that I was in sales for a medical company. I was ashamed of saying I was a sales rep because, early on, it felt to me like anyone could do sales. [0:00] Change your mindset It took me a while to realize that not just anyone can do well in sales. And I want to help you change your mindset, too. I want you to understand that you are important as well! Many professional careers - medical, law, finance - require college degrees. They are critical jobs with important tasks. Sales, however, doesn’t carry the glamour it once did. Many of us don’t even wear a suit to work anymore. Rather, it is believed that anyone who can “sell” can get a job in sales. We sit behind a computer and make phone calls … we are pushy people, bottom feeders, and we lack the ability to do anything else. [03:19] That is how I used to feel. Now I know better. Money In sales, we have an unlimited level of income. After executives, sellers earn the highest incomes. As a salesperson, it is your job to bring money into the organization. Money is the lifeblood of any company, even for non-profits. Finance, HR, tech, even the CEO - none of them can do their job without money. The company cannot grow without money. Every department needs money but only sales can deliver it. [04:38] Certain jobs, like sales, are an asset to any company. Other positions - ones that earn a paycheck every week without bringing money into the firm - are liabilities. [06:21] Salespeople are so important to the bottom line. The information we have is needed in board meetings because everyone wants to know what the sales pipeline looks like. They need to know. [06:52] Education Sales can be an easier field to get started in because it doesn't require a lot of technical training. [Tweet "It is also true that your capacity to perform well as a salesperson will increase significantly with education. #SalesEducation"] It is why I do this podcast. It is why I offer training and how I am able to help companies, and their sales teams, do better. Understanding individuals, understanding the industry, and understanding the sales process is all part of training. It increases our education. Schools are now spending time and effort to offer sales training as a degree because they recognize the power of the sales role. They recognize how critical sales is to any organization. The prestigious capabilities of sales is returning and it is exciting. [07:33] Believe in yourself I am ashamed sometimes for ever doubting myself but I learned from it. I learned and I improved and I was able to perform better as a result. Now I understand what I am truly capable of bringing to an organization and I understand how valuable I am. Have the strong and firm knowledge and belief that you are important. Listening to this podcast, for example, shows that you have taken an interest in learning something new. Improving yourself improves the entire profession. [09:19] I was fortunate enough the other day to be thanked by a regular listener who credits this podcast with helping him succeed. He took some of the things he has learned from our guests and from the books we’ve recommended and is currently enjoying a sales incentive trip for doing so well in 2018. [10:00] Recognize that you are important. You are a professional sales rep with a skill that many people do not have. Work for a company that validates your contributions and offers a product or service that you feel strongly about. Keep learning and keep growing. Earn that unlimited income. I want you to be successful and to find more ideal customers. Build stronger value, close more deals. Do more each and every day. [10:56] “You are Important as Well!!” episode resources 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. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Prospect.io is offering three months at half-price. Previously known as TSE Hustler's League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk to Alex Quin about how to step up our game, get back up when we get knocked down, and what to do when everyone tells you no. Alex is an investor who focuses on projects that he is passionate about, whether they be in entertainment, media, or fashion. His current projects include a globally-distributed clothing company based in Miami and several content creation projects bound for Netflix and Amazon. As a public figure, Alex has had the opportunity to work with many brands that use his image and likeness for promotions and commercials. As an entrepreneur with several successful projects that garnered a lot of media attention, Alex became an influencer despite initially wanting to remain behind the scenes. [01:28] HARD WORK AND CONSISTENCY Some view his achievements as an overnight success. Alex doesn’t agree. He knows it took many years of hard work and consistency. Yet people tend to focus on the finished product. Consider social media for example. We want to portray ourselves positively and in the best light, which can come across to others as a perfect life. But social media is just the highlight reel. It doesn’t show the downfalls, the difficult times, or the moments of self-doubt. When all the hard work is glossed over, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that you are the only one not succeeding. In reality, everyone makes mistakes. But those mistakes can become opportunities to learn. [03:16] Alex cites money, or rather the lack of it, as his biggest challenge. He started an advertising company using money he earned working in the fast food industry. No job was too small. If he needed to clean bathrooms in order to afford computers or camera equipment or to pay the rent on a small office, he did it. It was a difficult journey and he worked with a lot of people who let him down. [04:46] HOW TO HANDLE ‘NO’ As sellers, many of us enter the industry assuming everyone will be nice, or at least polite. So rejection really hurts. It takes a while to understand that they aren’t necessarily being mean to us but that maybe we are just not offering a good fit for what they need. So how do we handle ‘no?’ We need to be realistic. We can get so involved in our project that we lose the outsider’s perspective and fail to see our own shortcomings. Maybe the prospects are saying ‘no’ because there is a flaw in our presentation. Maybe we aren’t doing something right. We need to re-evaluate ourselves and keep an open mind. Is the feedback coming from a negative perspective or from a constructive criticism perspective? If you are continually hearing ‘no’ – what is the common denominator? Find out why you were rejected. It is the least you can do for yourself. Find out what part of your pitch caught their attention and what part turned them off. [05:38] Study your project. What do you need to do – what might you need to change – to get a ‘yes’? The founder of Starbucks had hundreds of rejections, as did Walt Disney. They both learned so much throughout the process that when the ‘yes’ finally came – they were ready. A ‘no’ is an opportunity to learn because it points you in the direction of improvement. [07:33] MENTAL HEALTH Learning to handle rejection is also extremely important from a mental health perspective. Depression is real. It is often overlooked but it happens. As entrepreneurs, we deal with a lot of negatives and the only way to keep a positive outlook is to turn those negatives into positives. Maybe things are falling apart so that you can build them back up in a better way. Maybe the structure was wrong or the foundation was crumbling; this is your chance to fix it. Entrepreneurs are not successful simply because their one crazy idea took off. They are successful because they worked consistently at that idea. [08:56] It can be confusing when you see all the young kids on social media making so much money. You have to realize that most entrepreneurs aren’t successful until their mid-30’s or mid-40’s. You are not in competition with other people. As an entrepreneur, you are in competition with yourself. Your success depends upon your abilities: your ability to be organized, to be focused, and to care for your mental state. It is your achievement when it works and it is your fault when it doesn’t. Think of it as a race. Don’t focus on the competition, or the people behind you, or next to you. Focus on what you can do this time to make it better than last time. Focus only on the finish line and go for your personal best. [10:04] Think about your outreach. Can you improve your email? Is your offering good? Maybe it is all great but the timing just doesn’t work for your client. LEAVE AN OPEN DOOR Alex recalls working on a huge proposal for a global brand a few years ago. He spent three months researching and building strategy but didn’t get the deal through no fault of his own. He and his team had done everything they could have possibly done. The client loved it

Sales professionals who lose track of the fundamental tasks involved in selling don't perform as well, so we've created the TSE Certified Sales Training Program to help sellers stay focused on what's important. Sales includes many tedious tasks that, done together, help sellers be successful. The TSE Certified Sales Training Program focuses on fundamentals because we want to help you be proficient at selling. Golf game Golf demands precision. Small adjustments to your club or your stance can completely change your swing and where the ball lands. It's a tedious game, and the professionals who play it every day practice the same shots over and over to become proficient at it. If they don't practice it repeatedly, they won't perform well on the course. [03:19] TSE's Certified Sales Training Program intends to do the same thing for sellers. Our goal is to help sellers focus on the small, fundamental tasks on their way to becoming proficient. I spoke to a VP of a major organization about fundamentals and why we miss them sometimes; things like prospecting, asking the right questions, building rapport, listening, building value, and closing. When we don't do the fundamentals, we don't succeed. Experienced sellers I've come across many people who are experienced sellers that suddenly clam up and struggle to do things like prospecting. Fear paralyzes them and their pipelines dry up as a result. [04:02] I typically discover that they never truly understood the fundamentals, so when they started to struggle, it wrecked their confidence. The TSE Certified Sales Training Program is different than anything we've offered in the past. It's 12-weeks long, and it's broken up by month. Each month, we tackle the core struggles sellers face. The first month addresses prospecting. The second deals with building value. The third area is conversion or closing. Each month includes four modules and each module includes 30 minutes worth of video. After you watch the videos, you can engage with the coaching groups to address what you learned. At the end of the week, you apply the principles you learned, and test the results. We include role-playing and shared experiences. At the end of the entire course, you're certified. Now you can go and share what you've learned with others in your organization. We're launching a Beta test of the program and we're inviting about 20-25 people to participate with us. They'll help us work out the kinks before we publicly launch the program. Role play If you're looking to improve your own fundamentals, role play is an important tool. Even if you've been selling for a long time, role-playing helps you improve your interactions with customers. A recent guest on the podcast shared that his company shares information among all the team members, tests new ideas, and then evaluates to see how successful it was. When they stumble upon a successful idea, they apply the new concept to their own process. They role play and practice it because they realize that you can always improve and you can always learn. [07:50] Study Listening to this podcast is a great way to continue to learn about sales. In addition, you should engage in personal sales study of your own. In the case of TSE, we can't always discuss concepts in depth because we have a limited amount of time. Consider listening to audiobooks as a way to expand your knowledge base. If you don't already have Audible, take advantage of the 30-day free offer available to the TSE audience to listen to books while you do other things. If you prefer, you can use Overdrive in conjunction with the public library to get access to free audiobooks. Either way, invest 30 minutes each day to increase your knowledge and capabilities on your way to being a more effective seller. [09:05] Practice Practice what you learn. Try all the things you role played and read about and then be intentional to implement new ideas into your process. Practice them to see what kind of results you get. We're excited to share the new program with you, and we'd love to talk to you if you or your team are interested in joining us. "TSE Certified Sales Training Program" episode resources Check out Audible and Overdrive to help you maximize your growth by learning more about sales. 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. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler's League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is bro

Pauline “Muffin” Grayson is a graphic designer who believes we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our passion, and she has a single message for us: Don’t ration your passion. Pauline has a degree in fine arts. After school, she stumbled into freelancing and surface pattern design; the design for gift wrap and greeting cards. You may know her from her designs on petitelemon.com and Shutterfly.com. PURSUE YOUR PASSION Pauline describes passion as doing something you absolutely love without letting anything else get in the way. For Pauline, that is design. She says she is just not happy unless she is doing it. It is who she is as an individual. Yet sometimes, societal expectations seem to limit us from pursuing our passions. I remember telling people that I was in sales and getting the distinct impression from them that they assumed it was only because I couldn’t find anything better to do. I wasn’t living up to their expectations despite that I was doing what I truly loved to do. Pauline can relate. As a stay-at-home mom, many people wrongly assume she chose to do so because she couldn’t do anything else. Pauline is passionate about being a mom, but she is also passionate about design. So she found a way to do both. It makes her a better mom and a better designer as a result. Many people abandon their passion because they fail to set goals. As a young girl on a dairy farm in Idaho, Pauline learned that hard work pays dividends. She says she is not the best designer out there but believes that her hard work and her goal to continually improve is what sets her apart. DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY Fear is often not even based in fact. We worry about what might happen and create a false reality as a result. It is helpful to have someone to discuss your goals and aspirations with; someone who can keep you grounded and on course. Set goals high but also set reasonable timelines to reach them. Pauline recalls a time when she met the owner of Betty’s Beds, someone she really wanted to work with. Fast forward a year after their initial encounter and Pauline never heard back from the owner. But rather than letting it go, or being afraid to reach out, Pauline sent them an email. They have been working together now for some time and Pauline has seen her designs on blogs, magazines, and HGTV. DON’T GIVE UP Pauline could have concluded from the year-long gap in communication that the owner simply didn’t want to work with her. Instead, she chose to understand and empathize that they are busy with their work and their families, or that maybe the timing wasn’t right, etc. Pauline chose to share and offer value and it paid off. There is room for everyone to be successful. Find people who do what you do and ask them for advice. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. #AskQuestions CLICK TO TWEET From doing this podcast, for example, I’ve been introduced to many more people and opportunities than I ever would have if I hadn’t put myself out there. You have to get out and share. Do what you love and put it out there for people to see. FINDING YOUR PASSION Pauline always had an interest in art but as a young girl on a dairy farm, all she really knew was that she liked to draw. It wasn’t until high school, with the encouragement from her art teacher, that she started taking art classes. Soon afterward, she attended a business conference where she heard a graphic designer speak. The spark was lit. She knew that was what she wanted to do. She remembers being awful in so many of her classes. It just didn’t click until her very last class in college but she worked at it and eventually figured it out. She began working as a freelancer, designing gift bags for Target, after being laid off from her first office job when the company was bought out. With the confidence she gained from seeing her products on display in a huge retail setting, Pauline started a blog to post more items that she had designed. It was there that she got the call from Petite Lemon and Shutterfly. Put yourself out there. Don’t worry about whether it will be liked by everyone or not. Do what you love. “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” To Pauline, that is the best piece of advice because that ‘other thing’ that you choose to do may just be your passion. Find a way to do what you love. Be happy! “DON’T RATION YOUR PASSION” EPISODE RESOURCES You can reach Pauline “Muffin” Grayson at muffingraysondesign on Instagram or through her website at www.muffingrayson.com. You can also find her on Pinterest and LinkedIn. This episode is 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. They are offering a 14-day free trial, and half off your subscription when you use the code Donald at checkout. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales auto

Today we’re talking about how to Plan, Prepare and Refuse to Give Up with podcast host, branding expert, and author Henry Kaminski, Jr. Henry is the founder of Unique Designz, a full-service design, branding and digital marketing agency dedicated to helping authority brands; coaches, consultants, influencers, speakers and authors to scale their expertise and personal brands into profitable business models. Henry started twelve years ago as a freelance graphic designer, eventually growing his business into a mature, boutique brand development agency. His average client is typically worth $50-100K over a calendar year. But Henry remembers not so long ago when he was working for Fiverr. As sales reps, we know how it feels to want to get to the top as quickly as possible. We think it will be easy but then it is not long before we hit the hiccups. PLAN AND PREPARE Henry says it all comes down to preparation. He credits himself with once being the worst salesman on the planet. These days, Henry follows a very specific, tried and true script that he practices on a weekly basis. He does not deviate from that script and, as such, he is closing more and more sales. People perceive our value based on the questions we ask so planning ahead of time what to say is key. As Henry says “asking stupid questions only gets you stupid answers.” You will be perceived as an amateur. As a brand strategist and brand developer, Henry wants to position his clients to become subject matter experts. He wants people to be on the edge of their seats whenever one of his clients is speaking. It is all about positioning and that comes with preparation. Do your research on your client. Know as much about them before you make the call. This is a lesson Henry learned the hard way. You have to know the answers to the questions but you will want to challenge the person that you are speaking to. There is no value in telling the client what they already know. Let your client know that you may ask them some tough questions – questions they maybe haven’t about thought before. Be sure they understand that your intent is not to pry but to get to the root of the issues in order to be the most helpful. BE INTENTIONAL Henry became intentional with his desire to start his own business after Hurricane Sandy blew through New Jersey and wiped out two of his biggest clients. Henry tried to continue living the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed but with a revenue loss of a quarter of a million dollars, it just wasn’t possible. At the same time, Fiverr entered the design world and disrupted the entire industry. Henry couldn’t beat them so he joined them. But it wasn’t a sustainable position. He remembers a $120 paycheck for over 90 hours of work and he remembers earning $5 for six hours of revisions on a business card. And he remembers telling his wife that they needed to make a change. She got out the laptop and said, “Let’s get to work.” Henry started working with a mentor, Russell Brunson. He couldn’t afford to pay for the coaching program but he couldn’t afford not to, either. So he maxed out his credit card and got on the phone with Russell. At the end of the one-hour call, they were both crying hysterically as Henry was hired on the spot to help with Russell’s first book launch. That gave Henry the confidence boost he needed. It was the biggest sale he ever made and it led to another job with Russell a few months later. More importantly, Henry received the most important tidbit of insight from Russell. Despite all his fancy websites and great designs, Henry himself was nowhere to be found on any of it. His big personality was hiding behind the logo. That has all changed now and Henry doesn’t regret it for a minute. He has found his lane. Content creation and working one-on-one with the clients is where he wants to stay. GET SEEN As a podcast host, myself, I can relate. People came to my webpage and listened to my podcast, but if they wanted to see me, they couldn’t. It was all stock photographs. I had to put myself out there. I had to make myself available for my audience. We shouldn’t diminish ourselves. We need to put ourselves first and refuse to give up. I used to be intimidated and afraid that maybe I didn’t look good on camera or that seeing my brand was better than seeing the real me. Rather, your personal brand is just an offset of your business. If you are shy and timid, it will show in your messaging. Don’t be afraid of yourself. Even the bigger brands, according to Henry, are coming out of their shells. The only difference between you and everybody else is you! You have to invest in your personal brand. It’s critical. REFUSE TO GIVE UP Henry credits his unwillingness to give up to his parents who tried for 16 years to become pregnant with Henry. His Mom would call him her ‘miracle baby.’ Henry believes that hearing that story while growing up – that his parents refused to give up for over 16 years – is what fuels his drive now. There a

Is it possible to have a “perfect day” in sales? Phone calls from prospects just as soon as you walk into the office … demonstrations are set … proposal reviews are awesome; everything is smooth sailing. What would it take to have that perfect day in sales? Do we have control over any of the elements? I think so. In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, I will share something valuable that I learned over the weekend that can help us all accomplish the perfect day in sales. [0:00] Perfection doesn’t happen by accident There was an awesome older lady in our congregation who recently passed away. During the eulogy, her daughter shared a story about her mom who was, apparently, quite a perfectionist. She always looked great. Everything was always on point. One day when the daughter was leaving for school, the mother noticed that the daughter had only ironed the front side of her skirt. As the daughter explains, she didn’t see any reason to iron the back of the skirt because she was going to be sitting down at school, nobody was going to see it. It just didn’t matter. Her mother disagreed and told her, “Perfection doesn’t happen by accident.” [02:46] She was right. If you want something to work out well, it isn't going to happen by accident. The perfect job, the perfect marriage - the perfect day in sales - do not happen by accident. You have to do something to make it work. None of us will be perfect but we can get close. We can get results if we put in the work. Michael Phelps, for example, imagined in his mind the perfect swim meet before every competition. He knew what it would feel like to win - to have the perfect race. He practiced for perfection and it is no accident that he became the best swimmer in the world. [03:33] Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Usain Bolt, Mother Teresa ... They are all arguably the best in their chosen fields because they put in the work. Aim for the perfect day Imagine the most amazing appointments and demonstrations on the schedule. Proposal reviews, closing calls, deals closing left and right … It can happen. It won’t be perfect, maybe a few will need to reschedule, but it will be pretty darn close. [04:56] Certainly you’ve noticed the sellers in your organization who always seem to have the perfect day; everything always seems to work out for them. How do they do it? They are prepared. They know that the perfect day in sales will not happen by accident. Do all you can now to have appointments for next month. Maybe that means going early to the office to respond to the leads that came in overnight and get ahead of the competition. Make the calls. Make the follow-ups. Do the work so the results will come. The perfect day in sales will come. Perfection requires sacrifice It takes time and it takes sacrifice. You have to be willing to sacrifice the ‘now’ to earn enjoyment later. [05:25] I could spend my entire lunch break chit chatting with my buddies in the break room every day, or I could give up one or two of those days and focus on returning emails, or reaching out to folks on LinkedIn instead. [06:40] We just published our 1,000th episode. That is five years worth of content and we’ve been fortunate to be covered by Huffington Post, Hubspot and Entrepreneurial Magazine. Some people might think that we just got lucky. But in truth, it happened because we put in the work. When this first started, I also worked a full-time day job. I used my lunch break to schedule podcast interviews. Then, I would find park my car near a spot with good WiFi and record interviews with my guests over Skype. I could have easily decided that it was too time-consuming or too much work. I could have chosen to hang with my buddies over lunch. Instead I made the necessary sacrifices and it paid off. [07:04] Sacrifice, not luck As a salesman, I became of the top performers in my company. Again, not because I was lucky or because management liked me more. It was because I went to work early, I studied the sales content, I understood the sales process. I learned from the different departments and I made sure I knew what was happening in the industry. To educate myself, I studied past deals and read case studies. I knew what the directors wanted and I knew what my competition was doing. I called more people and set more appointments. [08:26]/ Again, perfection doesn’t come by accident. My company and my podcast aren’t perfect but we are striving for it every day. We put in the work towards reaching the perfect result, the perfect company, the perfect podcast. Put in the hustle. This is not a New Year’s Resolution type thing that lasts a few months. It has to be a desire. You have to want to achieve the perfect day in sales. If you don’t know where to start, look for the people in your group that are succeeding and ask them for advice. If you can’t find anyone like that, come to me. I am always more than happy to share what I’ve done, what I see clients do, how I h

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we discuss the immediate steps you can take to begin growing your influence. Whether you are in sales or not, everyone, at one time or another, needs to increase their influence. I’m reminded of a coworker of mine who really knew how to connect with people. Tom had that ability to influence others. He just understood people and prospects and he knew how to speak to them. He could point out potential problems before they became problems. As such, when he spoke, his clients listened. He was respected. My guest today, Stacey Hanke, is here to talk about how we, like Tom, can grow our influence. [00:01] Stacey is the author of two books, a Certified Speaking Professional, and CEO of StaceyHanke, Inc. Stacey and her team work with directors, to C-Suite, and with sales professionals to make them more aware of the level of influence they really have versus they level of influence they believe they have. They accomplish this with keynotes, with mentoring, and through workshops. They increase awareness by giving practical how-to advice so their clients know how to use both verbal and non-verbal methods of influence every day of the week. [03:25] INFLUENCE: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN’T Stacey has worked with a lot of individuals and organizations over the past 16 years. And though she sees it happen quite often, Stacey believes that influence is not something that you should turn on and off. For example, you’ve got a high stakes phone conversation, meeting or sales pitch and you decide to ‘turn it on.’ There’s nothing authentic about that. There’s no integrity to it. [04:46] Influence is when your verbal and non-verbal communication remain consistent at all times and in all situations. It is congruent with your priorities and purposes. Influence is having the ability to move people to take action long after the interaction has occurred. It takes discipline and hard work. It is hard because we often get caught up with worrying about how we are perceived. Will they like me? Am I going to say the right thing? Switch your thinking. What is important to my client? What is their experience with the topic? Why is this conversation happening? To really drive home the value of your product or your service – whatever you’re trying to influence the person to act on – it first has to resonate with the client. [05:36] So, be genuine. Stacey recently helped a client to realize that he was putting more time into marketing materials and PowerPoint slides than into the actual delivery of the product. It is not the experience his clients were looking for. [06:46] FEEDBACK: WHY YOU NEED IT. As a sales rep, one of the first steps to increase your influence is to ask for real feedback. You have to plan for it and ask for it. Ask someone who you can count on to tell you the truth to listen to you as you practice. Ask them to listen, pay attention and give you feedback. When you can prepare in this way, the person providing the feedback is more likely to be direct and constructive with their comments. We don’t need to be told how great we are. We have to figure out our weaknesses in order to grow. It takes discipline to handle feedback and even more discipline to act on it. Don’t sabotage yourself by asking a subordinate or someone who is likely to tell you what you want to hear, instead of what you need to hear. Put your pride aside. Strive for honest answers. [07:39] Stacey has encountered many in her workshops who are hesitant to pursue feedback. She attributes this to the stigma that surrounds feedback as meaning you’ve done something wrong. Feedback instead means that you are already doing well. You wouldn’t be in the position you are in if you didn’t know what you were doing. Feedback provides opportunity to become even better. It encourages constant growth. [09:41] LEADERSHIP In a study conducted by Joseph Folkman of over 51,000 leaders, it was realized that leaders who frequently ask for feedback rank in the top 86% for leadership effectiveness. On the other hand, leaders who rank in the bottom 15% for leadership effectiveness are in the bottom 10% when it comes to asking for feedback. [10:20] So how does this translate to working with a prospect? Stacey reaches out to her clients every three or six months to find out what has been working for them during that time. She frequently asks her clients why they continue to work with her team. What keeps them coming back? Then she flips the coin. What can her team do to make things easier? How can they provide more value on a long-term basis? This allows the client to tell you how best to upsell them by letting you know what other services they might want or need. Your clients can disappear at any point but if you deliver the value that you promise and you truly care about your clients, then the ability to upsell based on their feedback provides a service to them. [11:31] Being influential is not the same as being manipulative. The more you pra

Sometimes small problems grow into much bigger problems, and without emotional intelligence to help you address misunderstandings, these problems can affect your relationships with prospects and clients. Have you ever met up with a friend who suddenly became upset but, to you, the thing they were upset about wasn’t a huge problem? When you react, it becomes something bigger, and before you know it - you are arguing with each other without really knowing what you are even arguing about?! You can have similar situations with a prospect. The client loses interest, or maybe, becomes so upset they no longer want to do business with you ever again. [0:00] What happened? Why does it go wrong? The answer: Emotional intelligence. These situations affect both sellers and buyers, so our TSE Certified Sales Training Program will help you identify these problems before they escalate. The TSE Certified Sales Training Program is designed to help sellers at every level, from new sellers to seasoned professionals. The course has three main sections of four modules each. Tackle each section on your own or participate in a group. [01:58] Surface-level problems I was running a meeting last week when one of the committee members had an issue outside the topic we were discussing. The challenge she proposed began to derail the entire meeting. What was I to do? I realized that it was a surface-level problem rather than a true issue. We decided, therefore, to have a one-on-one discussion to address it instead. Turns out, there was so much more she wanted to talk about than what was originally mentioned during the meeting. If I had entertained the issue during the meeting, it would have derailed the entire event for the entire group. [02:43] No money was involved, but imagine a similar scenario when working with a client. A client or prospect presents you with a surface-level problem. Then, because of a lack of emotional intelligence, people focus on that problem instead of the underlying issue. [03:37] Emotional intelligence Suppose your client says they will not renew their contract. They might be upset because the project was late. Perhaps they are downsizing. Or maybe they no longer have the budget for it. Those are not the true issues. [Tweet "When we lack emotional intelligence, we focus on the distractions instead of the core issue. #EmotionalIntelligence"] Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be aware of, to control, and to express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.[04:22] Empathy In Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, empathy is defined as seeking first to understand, then to be understood. Back to the client who is no longer interested, we have to dig deeper to find out the true reason for their decision. Someone with a high level of emotional intelligence is able to see things from the prospect’s perspective. Rather than take the lack of interest as something personal, they are able to investigate and realize the core issue instead. It's tempting to think about how the decision affects me: What did I do wrong? How will this affect my commission? Instead, as the seller, we need to think about the buyer. What will happen to the buyer? Why did he change his mind? Is this the real issue? What caused him to feel upset or frustrated? What changed? It could be that the buyer didn’t get their second round of funding and now has to do some trimming. The service you provide is still important to them but it is not mission critical to the function of their organization. That is something, as a seller, that you would want to know. [06:11] When you put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and seek to understand, you may find other ways to be of assistance. Is there something else you can do? Is there another value that you can bring? Maybe you can introduce them to someone else in the industry. Bring value When you focus on being helpful instead of on selling your product or service, you have attained a high level of emotional intelligence. Recognize that it is not about you, or your bottom line. It is about serving your client. [07:02] People sometimes lash out or seem angry. Perhaps they had a bad morning or an argument with their spouse. Maybe that team member who annoys you so badly is having trouble paying his bills. Your job is to not react to surface level issues. Your job is to understand the true source of the problem so that you help to find a solution. Your job is to bring value to the situation. Don’t simply react to the emotions. Be a problem solver instead. [08:32] Emotional intelligence is something you can build on. It will help you tremendously in the early stages of the sales process. Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. Connect on a human level and realize that your client is not just the CEO or the marketing director. He is a human being with goals. When you recognize that, you will create a foundation of trust. Then, if something d

There’s a single characteristic that distinguishes effective sellers from the others, and it’s grit. It separates those who work hard and effectively from those who don’t. It distinguishes those who go above and beyond the call of duty from those who do not. GRIT Those of us in sales need to have grit. Grit is courage. It is resolve. It is a strength of character. To have grit is to have rock solid mental toughness. If you can be rock solid, right now – at the beginning of the year – you will be so much more effective and efficient. [01:39] Consider the new hire whose resume looked fantastic, but who shows up with no drive or passion for the work. Sometimes we pass by individuals with higher levels of grit simply because their GPA wasn’t as high or their resume was lacking. [02:34] I have a problem with that. I know some very smart people who lack the level of grit needed to take advantage of their intelligence. They end up in mediocre jobs. It seems like a waste of talent. On the other hand, we see folks without the necessary level of education who have passion and grit. They have the ability to do more and work harder than the average person. DESIRE How? Where does their level of passion and perseverance come from? [03:16] I believe it has everything to do with their level of desire. There was a low point in my life when I was faced with homelessness but I had the drive to make sure that my family was taken care of. There are certainly people who are smarter than I am or who have more experience than I do, but I had the grit to create this podcast series. I was determined to make it happen and I hustled. [04:06] I had the desire and the perseverance. There were difficult times, of course. I didn’t always know if it was going to work. But we pushed through. Can grit be taught? Can mediocre individuals on your team get it? Yes. BE POSITIVE “I can’t do it.” “I can’t make that call.” “It’s not going to work.” If you can’t, then you won’t. But if you say you can – then it is more likely that you will. Things move for people who have the desire to make things move. Perseverance means you will do whatever it takes to make something happen because you want it to happen. You have to push through the tough spots. Use the right words. Instead of “maybe I’ll get a sale,” or “I hope I get a sale,” try “I will get a sale today!” Obviously, realistic goals are important: Is it possible? Can I do it? I’m sure you can make a million dollars in sales in a day – but is it likely? Maybe not. But it is certainly likely that you will find the right client today or close a deal today. [06:22] VISUALIZE SUCCESS Think about what you need to do to make it happen. If you tell yourself that it isn’t possible from the very start, it’ll never happen. When you feed yourself failure, your whole subconscious and whole body react. You will only get back what you put in. [07:02] Think about how to reach your goal. What will you do? What will you say? And what are the steps necessary to succeed? Set the entire process up in your mind; from what you will say, to what the email will say, to when you are going to call. Tell yourself that the clients will be interested, they will want to set up an appointment, and you are going to get the demonstration. Visualize it all. If you can’t see it, you can’t achieve it. [08:24] ACT You need to practice. Perfection doesn’t come by accident. It has to be deliberate. Be specific. [09:01] You will get the appointment or that meeting with the CEO when you decide the steps to take and then practice those steps. Before you get on the phone, for example, think about what you need to talk about and what questions you need to ask. Know why they would want to talk to you! What challenge can you solve for them? [09:52] In this way, if you get thrown an objection, you will automatically know how to handle it. You’ve already visualized the entire conversation. You can’t wing it. Winging it only gets you winging-it results. [10:32] People with grit have a vision. They know what they want and they are determined to get it. They practice achieving it and set a plan to do it. Then they do it, and do it, and do it again until it happens. SUCCEED Will you have perseverance this year? Will you push through the tough times, or will you just give up? I encourage you to look past any shortcomings you’ve had. Make 2019 the year that we accomplish greatness. The theme for the year is Empire Building, whether that be your sales empire, business empire, or family empire. Let’s build it! You are the only person who can stop you. [11:19] “GRIT” EPISODE RESOURCES Check out Grit by Angela Duckworth. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the s

In our work with sales reps, sales teams, and sales managers, we encounter many people who believe that sales coaching doesn’t work, but many of them fail to realize that there are 5 common mistakes sales managers make when coaching. Steve Richard, founder of ExecVision, shares how to avoid those mistakes, and he suggests you start by recognizing that there’s a difference between coaching and training. COACHING Training is teaching someone to do something new that the person doesn’t know how to do. Coaching is helping someone do something that they do know to the point of mastery. If we expect a rep to embrace a certain behavior, we have to train him. If we don’t, that failure is on us. [04:37] Then, after we’ve trained him, we have to overcome the “forgetting curve” which is a function of our brain’s tendency to purge information. Coaching is the act of training iteratively, focusing on the person, and repeating that behavior until it becomes second nature, like tying a shoe. Consider whether your organization is struggling with any of these mistakes. 1. FAILING TO DEFINE WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE. We must give our teams a definition of what a call should look like. Include the key things you want them to say, the behaviors you want them to exhibit, and give them a target. Give your team members total clarity on what you want them to do. [06:11] Develop consistency among your team members so you can hit bigger numbers. Also, build a team of people who will identify these steps. Include managers, senior executives, and representatives from operations, enablement, and sales. A varied team can ensure that these decisions aren’t being made by people who haven’t made calls in a while. Check out the book Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance for clarification about metrics. Learn the difference between activity metrics that you can control — things like making phone calls and sending LinkedIn connection requests — and objectives like having conversations with people which you have less control over. Aside from simply giving your team members goals, give them a roadmap to achieve them. [08:32] How many activities should they achieve in a week to achieve their goals? Many organizations have salespeople who are “unconsciously competent,” which means they don’t know why they are successful. Though it’s not bad, it’s impossible to scale. You can’t pair a new employee with someone who is “unconsciously competent” and expect her to learn the right way to do things. 2. NEGLECTING TO TRAIN BECAUSE OF TIME. Most every sales leader intends to coach his team. [10:26] Managers typically know they have to be more consistent as a team, and they know that the way to do that is through coaching. But they also universally say that time is the thing that prohibits them from doing it. They have the greatest of intentions, but something always gets in the way. 3. MISUNDERSTANDING HOW TO TRAIN CORRECTLY. It’s shocking to think of the amount of money that is spent on sales rep training. Sales managers, however, typically receive very little training. Many of them have never been taught to coach the right way. Think, for example, of a sales manager who observes a call and then immediately launches into constructive feedback. Basically, he tells you all the things you did wrong. When the sales rep hears it, his system sends a hit of the stress hormone cortisol, which triggers the “fight or flight” response. [11:46] The sales rep either defends himself by digging in his heels or he puts up a wall and stops listening. In either case, it’s not good. People don’t change their behavior when cortisol is present. They change when dopamine is present. Sales managers must coach in a way that motivates sellers to learn and change. #SalesTraining CLICK TO TWEET Instead, try the model that Jim Kennan recommends: observe, describe, prescribe. Leave the judgment on the shelf. Listen to the call. Recount what the rep did during the call. Then ask a question that prompts the seller to figure out what he could have done differently to improve the call. People value more what they can conclude for themselves than what they’re told. 4. LACKING OBSERVABLE MOMENTS. If sales reps can’t listen to recordings of their calls, they’ll have no way to improve their performance. [18:45] They will only have vague ideas of what they think they did during the call. During the 80s, the Japanese beat us in the auto industry because they were continually improving their operational efficiency. Adopt the continuous improvement mindset that served the Japanese so well. 5. MAKING TRAINING AD HOC. Your organization’s training must be habitual. It must be part of the rhythm of the company. Make your training such a part of the process that it becomes the gospel. It can be as simple as listening to 5 minutes of a call with a rep and asking for reflections. It will do good things for your company. Instead of feeling like sales man

Many leaders avoid adequately training their team members because of a single looming question: What if I train them and they leave? They structure their businesses so that multiple people work on a single project while other projects sit undone. It costs them money and productivity. If you're one of those managers, I'll offer you a different consideration: what if you don't train them and they stay? We're devoting the month of January to the topic of mental toughness, and today's topic is directed at business and sales leaders as well as sellers. Leaders When team members aren't trained well, they won't be effective at their jobs. When team members aren't effective at their jobs, the manager will have to help them do their jobs in addition to doing his own. Leaders who fear employee departure often choose not to provide the necessary training, but the reality is that many of those untrained employees end up staying in their jobs. [3:37] What if they stay with you and they don't know what they are doing? Financial considerations Imagine your employee makes $40,000 a year. Are you willing to pay him $40,000 despite the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing, and then require someone who is making $60,000 a year to help him do his job? Maybe you'll eventually fire the person because he isn't performing. [04:23] When you let someone go, you may end up paying unemployment benefits, and then you'll incur the cost of hiring someone new. Whether you use an agency or review the resumes yourself, you'll have to invest time trying to find someone who already has training. Cyclical Even if your new hire does have sales training, she won't know your process. She won't be able to perfectly understand your organization, so she won't immediately be effective. If you choose not to provide training, you'll be back in the same cycle three months after you hire her. [05:04] You will have spent countless amounts of money to avoid spending money on training. You'll suffer from lost opportunity and lost revenue. Long-term benefits Imagine you have three employees. After you train them, one of them leaves your organization. First of all, consider why the person is leaving. Is it possible that you're not paying enough? Does your organization lack direction for its employees? Don't miss a chance to evaluate why people are leaving. [06:36] Even if you have a great situation, people may still leave. They may have to move out of state for family reasons or something else. People don't stay in one place forever. If one leaves, you still have two great employees who are giving you money back. If you don't train them, you'll likely lose thousands in sales because they aren't good at their jobs. Do the math When I was a young seller, I worked for a company that spent probably $7,000 training me to be an effective seller, and I'm thankful for it. After my training, I landed a $30,000 deal as one of my first big successes. [07:52] You don't have to be a scientist to understand that $30,000 is a good return on $7,000. If you invest in your people, they'll love you, they'll stay with your company, and they'll earn you more money. For sellers When you're considering your next organization, find out what kind of sales training they provide. Even if you're a seller with a 10-year track record, it's ok to consider training programs at prospective companies. [08:58] If they don't offer coaching or continuing education, that might be a red flag. If they aren't willing to invest in you, consider other organizations that will. Do it yourself Sales leaders might consider providing the training themselves as a way to save money, and it might be true that they're able to do it. For me, though I'm able to change my own oil and cut my own hair, I don't do it. [10:21] Just because we're capable of something doesn't mean we're the best person for the job. Consider the opportunity costs and the cost for you to stop your own work in order to train other people. If sales is the most important unit in your organization, if it's the lifeblood of the company, why not continue to educate your team. Give them podcasts to listen to or books to read. Don't hurt your company by trying to save a dime. "What If I Train Them And They Leave?" episode resources This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler's League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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,

We all have some kind of fear, but when we discover what causes fear and how to overcome it, we can discover new opportunities and success. Fear can prevent us from experiencing amazing things in life, or pursuing new business opportunities. We suffer through anxiety and difficulty when dealing with these fears. But no more! James Moffat, CEO and Founder of Visibility Impact guides new entrepreneurs and people wanting to start businesses by providing them with the tools and information they need to grow their business with proper exposure. He accomplishes this through a number of programs to drive results. His clients achieve bigger goals in a shorter amount of time and gain visibility. [02:00] Self-limiting I used to have a fear of talking to important people. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of their time or attention. It was a fear I quickly had to learn how to overcome in order to succeed in sales. When I finally understood that I was speaking with other human beings, people who were maybe just as nervous about talking to me as I was about talking to them, it made all the difference. I was the only limiting factor to my success. [10:37] James and I will talk about fear. What is it? How can we overcome it? What can we do on a daily basis to conquer fear instead of allowing it to conquer us? The Effects of Fear Many of us in sales have fears that hold us back and cause inaction. James defines fear as a worry about the unknown. It has a physiological effect not only on your mind but on your body as well... cold sweats, stress, etc. [05:10] Common fears among salespeople include worrying about what to say during a cold call, worrying about having enough product knowledge, and worrying about how prospects may react. Many of us also fear giving our first presentation to a real audience. Is my content relevant? Will people even listen to me? [05:48] Overcoming fear Overcoming these fears - or at least accepting them and learning how to cope with them - is necessary for success. You don’t have to suddenly like what it was you once feared; you may always dislike cold calling for example, but you must learn how to deal with it. We often find ourselves assuming the worst before we even begin. We have negative thoughts instead of positive ones. Controlling Fear Using cold calls again as an example, James still doesn’t particularly enjoy making them but he found a way to make himself feel more comfortable about it. He took the time to learn more about the person prior to the making the call. James spent time on their website, learned about their business, and visited their LinkedIn profile. James would also coordinate the time of the call via email. This allowed for a more relaxed introduction and eradicated the fear James had about interrupting a prospect with an unexpected phone call. [08:37] Using these techniques, James was able to turn a cold call into a warm call. Reducing negative outcomes Once the negative possible outcomes are reduced - once the number of unknowns is reduced by planning ahead - the level of fear is reduced. We may not conquer the fear, but we will have it under control. James recalls a situation, outside of sales, when he was atop a tall building with a friend and found himself convinced that he had a very real fear of heights. His friend disagreed because James has no such fear when traveling by airplane. It is not a fear of heights but a fear of falling. When James feels safe, he is not afraid. This lesson applies to sales. When we change the paradigm and view our fear from a different perspective, we gain control over it. [11:48] Moving Beyond your Comfort Zone James introduced a new concept to his Facebook group in order to help people overcome their fears. He didn’t want people to join without being known, so he required a short introduction from all new members via a 40-second video. The videos are posted to the group for comment which in turn stimulates discussion and comments. It creates immediate visibility among the group members. The video requirement was beyond the comfort zone of many participants, but to James, that is the whole point. We have to embrace change and technology. Do it once and it becomes easier each time thereafter. [16:27] You can not find success by remaining in your comfort zone. Learning to move beyond is when remarkable change can begin to occur. Training wheels Think back to when you first learned to ride a bike. You were certainly afraid to fall and probably did fall several times. But the more you tried and the more you trusted the person who was teaching you, the better you became. You overcame the fear. Use the resources around you. Ask the senior sales reps how they overcame the fear of cold calling or the fear of rejection. How do they introduce themselves? What steps do they take to make themselves comfortable? Think of them as the training wheels on your bicycle. [20:32] “What Causes Fear and How to Overcome It” Episode Resources Please check out Visibi

It's The Sales Evangelist 1000th episode and Stephen A. Hart from the Trailblazers.FM Podcast is conducting the interview while Donald Kelly answers the questions. This podcast started five years ago after Donald attended sales training to try to improve his performance. He started seeing some gains, and he figured the very least he could do was tell other people what was working for him. He realized along the way that he would get to interview great guests like Jeffrey Gitomer who would share a wealth of information and he was hooked. Donald wanted to share sales content that would help himself and others at the same time. Blessings and opportunities The greatest benefit to a podcast like this is the relationships you build. There's a camaraderie and people want to help each other. [05:50] Perhaps it's because the medium is so new, but a lot of podcasters are connecting with each other to share experiences. People have become like family, and many business opportunities have emerged from it. There's a whole crew of people in the background who help create the content, and it's blessing people along the way. After Donald jumped ship from his full-time job in 2015, this lifestyle business allowed him to travel and speak in different parts of the country, and it all stemmed from the training and consulting that has developed. 10,000 hours The podcast is officially five years old, which amounts to about 10,000 work hours. According to Malcolm Gladwell's theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, Donald is officially an expert podcaster now. The story started when Donald was working at a software company in Boca. His plan was that at the three-year mark, he wanted to go back to grad school for an MBA. [10:11] The other alternative was that he would launch a startup. TSE started as a hobby because Donald had done B2C in high school and college. Now, he transitioned to B2B, but he didn't know how to talk to people or set up business opportunities. His company provided training and he discovered a love of teaching and an excitement about the content he had learned. He paired his love of teaching and his desire to be the center of attention, and it was a perfect marriage. Edutainment allowed him to educate and entertain at the same time. Birth of a podcast Jared Easley introduced Donald to the world of podcasting despite the fact that Donald knew nothing about it. He started by listening to Seth Godin's Startup School, a podcast that featured Seth guiding 30 entrepreneurs through the process of launching a dream business. [11:46] He was still debating startup or college, and he realized that a startup didn't have to mean developing a product. Donald didn't see how the podcast was going to make money, but he launched it as a hobby. The platform existed six months before the podcast did, but Donald recalls that he had to get over the worry and just pull the trigger. He had to stop worrying about how it would sound and what people would say about it. He eventually decided that he had something valuable and he needed to share it. When he got out of his own way, the money started coming in. When Donald started producing content that benefited the people around him, people started to raise their hands and seek his help. [Tweet "Done is better than perfect. #TakeAction"] Lessons learned Donald calls episode 1 cringe-worthy. He says he was nervous and afraid throughout it. He was self-conscious about his voice, and he didn't own his personality. [15:29] Donald also wishes he had done video much sooner. He was afraid of the comments people would make and that fear kept him from producing video. Donald also wishes he had known that people don't know what you have to offer until they know what you have to offer. He was afraid of sounding pushy, so he was apprehensive about sharing what he knew. Take more action. Get out of your comfort zone. Get out of your own way. Despite the late start to the video world, TSE is getting into video now, so it's better late than never. Rejection Donald points to the burned-ship theory that dates to sailors who were either going to burn the ships and win the battle or die on the seashore. There was no escape. If you've burned the ship, there's no alternative, so you have to make it work. Those men are the master of their own destiny. Although Donald could still be employable in the sales realm if necessary, he doesn't want to use that as a parachute. [19:27] The "no's" can't hinder him. He either has to conquer or die. He realizes that the "no's" aren't personally directed at him. Your "why" Donald's desire to provide for his family drives his passion and his motivation. He wants to make things happen so that his family never has to be in the predicament of being homeless again. [21:50] Those dark moments such as the first lull in listenership can plague podcasters. Although numbers are great for measuring, Donald got too focused on the numbers. He started to compare too much and

Your morning routine has the power to start the day off right, which makes it crucial for you to make sure yours is effective. Whether you’re listening to music, educating yourself with podcasts, exercising, or engaging in spiritual activity, you’ll find that you accomplish more when you engage in a regular routine. BRAINPOWER Scientific research suggests that our brains work best in late morning. If we lay in bed scrolling through social media, we’re missing crucial time in our day. [04:29] We should take advantage of that time to engage in productive activity. Even if you don’t consider yourself a morning person, make sure that when you do get out of bed, you win the morning. #DailyRoutine CLICK TO TWEET TAKE CHARGE Instead of starting your day focused on the negatives in the day, take charge of your perspective. Because you know what will happen in the first hour of the day, you’re in charge of your day. [05:23] By acting instead of being acted upon, you’re taking charge. If you get an email from your boss who suddenly wants a report by noon, you may find yourself stressed and short-tempered. On the other hand, when you’re in control, you’ll respond better and be less likely to get stressed out. You won’t do anything in your day until you’re ready to do it. OWN YOUR MORNING There’s no limit to the ways you can take control of your morning. Besides reading, journaling, and exercising, you can also work on a side hustle. When I was still working for a software company, I did my podcasting in the morning. [06:23] It was something I enjoyed, so I didn’t mind doing the work. Now that podcasting is my work, I use my mornings to write my book. I’ve discovered that by taking control of my morning, I find clarity on things I’ve been thinking about and answers to problems I’ve been trying to solve. ACCOUNTABILITY Test the idea for a week. Begin by adding tasks to your calendar. [08:43] If you’re planning to exercise or read, write those activities on your daily calendar. Then, find an accountability partner who will follow up with you. Ask your mentors and others to follow up with you. At the end of the week, you can measure your results to see how effective they are. If a week isn’t long enough, test it for a month. “START THE DAY OFF RIGHT” EPISODE RESOURCES This episode is brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve your business and increase profits. To get a demonstration of maximizer, go to the sales evangelists.com/maximizer. Click on the link to get a free demo of what Maximizer CRM can do for you. It integrates your marketing campaign as well as your CRM, and it works whether you’re a small organization or a large one. This episode is 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. They are offering a 14-day free trial, and half off your subscription when you use the code Donald at checkout. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler’s League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. 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, and share with your friends! Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Failures can be crippling if we allow them to be, but when we have the proper guidance, we can learn how to turn failure into success. Airica Kraehmer of Gracious Care Recovery shares her own story here and reminds us that we can turn our weaknesses into our strengths. MENTAL TOUGHNESS Airica’s story doesn’t directly involve sales, but it does involve difficulty and mental toughness. She started working as a model in the fashion industry and she had a dream to succeed there. She realized that the fashion industry demands that you be your own product and that you bring your A-game all the time. She called it cut-throat. As a result, there’s room for exploitation. Airica found herself the victim of human trafficking because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wrote down her story, and when she finished her book, she looked for outlets that would help her share it. She figured telling her story would help her move beyond the struggle. She became an international best-selling author, and it taught her that she could rise above the low points in life. SEEKING A CHALLENGE After she moved to Florida, Airica realized that the state was number two in the country in terms of human trafficking, tied with Houston. After the upcoming Super Bowl, Florida is projected to move into the number one spot due to the large influx of people. Hearing stories of other victims made her realize that she was part of something bigger. She realized that the process would repeat if she didn’t do something to help. She reminded herself that there were as many good people in the world as there were bad people. REJECTION Nobody wanted to talk about trafficking, so she kept encountering closed doors. She compares it to cold calling for sellers. [07:23] Though people cared about it, they didn’t feel like they could speak out about it. She kept knocking on doors, and eventually, she found Gracious Care Recovery. There were survivors there who recognized the need for people to speak out. Her message to sellers, then, is to keep knocking on doors. Despite the fact that she was addressing an impossibly hard topic, she found people who would engage. Get in the other person’s mindset. We each have different experiences, and we’re each traveling a different journey. That means we each have different ideas. That can be a powerful tool as long as we remember that the effort isn’t all about us. It’s about who we can help and who we can serve. Keep in mind that the prospect isn’t rejecting you. It simply isn’t the right time for your prospect. PERSISTENCE If you’re a sales manager who is motivating a team to overcome rejection, teach your team members to practice persistence. Be persistent, but be kind. Be willing to invest the time to build trust. Sales is a numbers game to some degree, and you have to keep reaching out in order to achieve results. Especially now that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year, you have to keep knocking in order to hit your targets. OVERCOMING FAILURE Airica compares her personal experience to bankruptcy. It was the ultimate low. She had nothing left. And she knew it would take years to recover. She learned that you have to leave behind the things that don’t serve you well and that you shouldn’t focus too much on the why. It’s ok, for example, to ask why something happened, but refuse to stay focused on it. Instead, look to the future and ask yourself what you can do to address what happened. Ask yourself the following questions: Who am I serving? What is my purpose? What’s my goal? Once you’ve identified those things, align your morals and values with your goals. Tackle one goal at a time. Small goals will accumulate quickly and result in large accomplishments. “HOW TO TURN FAILURE INTO SUCCESS” EPISODE RESOURCES You can connect with Airica at [email protected] and grab a copy of her book, Models Stop Traffic: How to Dodge Enslavement in Pursuit of Your Dream to Become the Next Top Model. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler’s League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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. 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 sha

Where there is no vision the people perish, and that’s especially true in sales. Because we aren’t constructing physical structures like houses or sidewalks, the game of sales is largely mental, and it requires a visionary mindset. The book Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, now available as a free download, addresses the importance of vision and what can happen when you don’t have an eye on the future. VISION FOR SALESPEOPLE Vision demands that we look beyond the work that we’re doing today. It demands that we look into the future, perhaps to the end of the quarter or the end of the year. In some cases, we’ll look to the end of five or 10 years. Without vision, you won’t progress and you won’t grow. We may imagine the worst-case scenario, and then we find ourselves in a loop, playing it over and over in our heads. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps shared his strategy of playing a “tape” of a perfect race in his head. His coach encouraged him to imagine how it would feel to win, the accomplishment he’d experience, and then think about that over and over. POSITIVE LOOP Michael had a positive loop playing in his head, so even when he found himself making bad decisions, he was able to get back on track quickly. He had a tenacious drive to succeed. I worked with a guy once who always saw life through a negative lens. He could turn the very best outcomes into negative scenarios. If he won the lottery, he’d likely complain about driving to Tallahassee to claim his prize, or about the fact that he had to pay taxes on his winnings. You may work with people like this. Avoid getting pulled into their negative mindset. When you spend large amounts of time around these people, you may allow their negativity to creep into your thinking. CHANGE YOUR FOCUS Emerson said that whatever we persist in doing becomes easier. I refer to this quote all the time because it’s true that our mindset affects our outcome. If you are focused on negativity, you’ll more readily see negative outcomes. If you focus on the fact that you’re going to set an appointment, you’re going to capitalize on an opportunity. You’re going to reach your commission and create power to accomplish those things. When I spent too much time around my negative coworker, I spent less time on the phone and less time doing email outreach. When I changed my focus to positive things, prospects were more willing to listen to me because I was the catalyst. I still had negative experiences, of course, but there were fewer of them. GET RID OF NEGATIVE When I was a young seller, I didn’t speak up to my negative coworker because I didn’t want to cause a rift between us. If I could go back, I would push back against the negative thinking. I would share positive thoughts and read encouraging books. I would either seek to change my coworker’s attitude or repel him because he knew I wasn’t going to listen. Be honest about the fact that you’re trying to focus on positive things. IMAGINE THE WINS When you achieve your daily goals, what will it feel like? What will you say to convince those people to close? Practice seeing how that will look. Take charge of your life. Read encouraging books. Refuse to let other people affect your personal vision. You’re listening to this podcast, and that’s a great start. COMMAND YOUR DESTINY Take charge of your future. For the team at The Sales Evangelist, 2018 was our best year ever. My 2019 vision is to double the numbers we had in 2018 and c continue to increase our customers and grow our podcast. I had a vision last year of writing for Hubspot and we’re doing that. I envisioned being mentioned by Inc. magazine, and TSE was just mentioned as one of the top podcasts to fuel company growth. My vision helped me connect with the right people so that I found positive opportunities. Create positive vision for yourself. “NO VISION” EPISODE RESOURCES This episode is brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve your business and increase profits. To get a demonstration of maximizer, go to the sales evangelists.com/maximizer. Click on the link to get a free demo of what Maximizer CRM can do for you. It integrates your marketing campaign as well as your CRM, and it works whether you’re a small organization or a large one. This episode is 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. They are offering a 14-day free trial, and half off your subscription when you use the code Donald at checkout. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TS

Behind the scenes at The Sales Evangelist, we're working to increase organic engagement and interact with our audience, and we've discovered a powerful way to develop new leads through Instagram. According to Jaeden Schafer, Instagram typically accounts for about 10 percent more organic engagement than Facebook, so it's a great place to gain a new audience and develop new leads. Who can benefit? [Tweet "Every business, whether it's B2B or B2C, can benefit from Instagram as long as they know how to use it. #Prospecting"] When Instagram initially launched, its goal was to share nice looking pictures. If you're following that original idea, your company will likely benefit from it. [02:16] But what if you're a refrigeration repair company? How do you post compelling pictures of refrigerators? Posting photos of refrigerators all day won't really prompt much growth. So if, for example, you own a refrigeration company in Miami, post pictures of the area you serve with information about the services you provide. Target people who are the customer persona you're trying to attract. It basically just needs to be pretty. Mistakes on Instagram Many people will offer the same tips for setting up an Instagram account: Choose good photos Find out what your customers want Then they expect people to just show up. If the engagement doesn't happen, they just let the page die, which is the worst possible thing you can do on social media. Since social media is about social proof, outdated accounts are worthless. [05:13] When people want to buy something online, they often check online to make sure that the social media accounts are updated. If they aren't, they might assume you'll be unresponsive. Plan to post at least once a week if you want to appear actively engaged. If you're trying to grow, you should post every day. If you find yourself thinking that you don't have the team or the resources to post every single day, remember that there are tools available to help you. Later.com is a scheduling tool that will let you schedule 30 posts for free. You can schedule a new post every day that will keep you active and growing. Instagram tactics Though Instagram is a great place to find new leads, sellers will also want to move those leads from interested to purchasing. Avoid letting your account just sit. Instead, use your account to find new leads. You can do that with targeted Instagram ads or automation. Better yet, use your account to like and comment on people's posts that are in your target audience. [07:53] Consider the food truck business that launched an Instagram page and then shared images of the food it would serve. On launch day, the owners went to its main competitors' page and they liked and followed 1,000 of their followers. They repeated that activity every two days for a different food truck. It grabbed attention because those people would see the business name on their phone as someone who liked their photos and followed their accounts. It's a phenomenal strategy, especially for companies that are just starting. Transition For B2B companies, it's important to understand how the transition will look after you follow new prospects on Instagram. How do you move them to your website or prompt them to download something? When a user sees that you liked some of his photos and followed him, then he'll likely click on your account name to check out your Instagram account. Your account bio will act a little like a splash page or a sales pitch. [10:34] Make sure your bio includes your website, and make sure it really clearly outlines what you do and what your call-to-action is. Direct them to your website or your podcast. Image quality For sales reps who might be wondering what kind of content to post, let's use an example of The Sales Evangelist to talk about what that might look like. For a service-based business, people tend to limit their thinking about the kind of images to post. Choose high-quality images that look really good. [11:53] If you don't have a high-quality camera, it's ok. Start with websites that offer free, copyright-free images, like unsplash.com. Type in your keyword and find hundreds of high-quality photos related to your niche. High-quality photos will make your account look very professional. Include your own "flavor" that meshes with the way you pitch, but make sure that the people who follow your account feel like they are getting some kind of value out of it. Some organizations use inspirational quotes or even tips such as how to care for your a/c unit. Choose information that will give something back to your audience. [13:45] You can use entire blog posts as an Instagram caption. In short, be there, post information your customers want, and do it consistently. Videos Videos have a much higher likelihood of going viral. Jaeden reports that an account he manages might get 400-700 likes, while a video on the same account might get 1,000-14,000 views. [15:31] As a result, videos are a really good

Strategic planning isn’t only for entrepreneurs: Shane Spiers says sales reps must know where they are headed and what the team’s common purpose is. Strategic planning helps sales reps work better as part of a team and achieve more. Originally from New Zealand, Shane now calls the UK home. It is where his career has grown to what it is today. His record is dominated by leading and scaling 7, 8 and 9-figure rapid growth companies, mostly in real estate, construction, and service-based businesses. Shane created Summit Leader to help 7-figure entrepreneurs scale with an 8-figure growth model. His focus is helping businesses scale from entrepreneurial to managed growth. [00:29] Approximately 96% of businesses earn less than $1 million in revenue. Of the 4% that make it past a million, only 10% make it to $10 million. With only .4% of businesses reaching the $10 million mark, Shane hopes to have an impact by producing more 8-figure businesses. [01:20] A COMMON GOAL As a business moves from entrepreneurial to managed growth, the management, leadership, and logistical challenges become quite different. The startup ways of working can hinder a business rather than advance it. Shane has been down the path many times before. He understands the importance of including sales reps in the process of strategic planning to grow a company. Whether you are a business owner, team leader, or part of a team, it is important to understand what the company stands for and what it believes in. It is important to know the common goal and your purpose in achieving it. A team without priorities, or with different views, cannot work well together. [02:23] STRATEGIC THINKING AND EXECUTION Before you can plan where you will be in the long term, you must make decisions about who you are and what you stand for. Decide how you will differentiate yourself from the competition. In the sales world, particularly, be very clear about who comprises your target market. Know who your ideal customers are, where they are, and what is important to them. It starts with upfront thinking. Know where you want to go and make a plan to get there. Establish your guiding principles first. Build your core. When businesses fail to clearly define their values, it trickles down into the sales force. [03:35] Think about your core as the provider of stability, power, and control that will support growth. Without a strong core, you risk instability from cultural challenges, loss of focus, disengagement, and a lack of heart. An organization or team that is weak will struggle. The core values are what you will do – and won’t do – to get what you want. They are the timeless, fundamental principles that define a company’s culture. It is the first step in strategic planning because it sets your purpose. It is the root of your business. Once you are clear about the Why of your company, you can work on the How. Where do you want to be in two, three or even ten years? What you do want to achieve? [05:50] A PART OF THE WHOLE No matter how large or small your role, you are contributing to the larger story. Consider the time when President Kennedy visited NASA and struck up a conversation with one of the janitors. When asked what he was doing, the janitor replied that he was helping to put a man on the moon. And he certainly was. When your entire team embraces the attitude and belief system of the organization, incredible things can happen. #belief CLICK TO TWEET [08:26] Strategy follows when you direct your attention and decisions to how you will differentiate yourself from the competition. Shane believes that decisions about how to best plan and strategize come easier to companies that establish their core principles first. It is easier to make a decision when you know what you stand for. [09:41] One common problem among fast-growing organizations is that they simply have too many priorities. In an attempt to cover all their bases, they lose focus. A long list of objectives combined with a scarcity of time, energy, and resources results in mediocre accomplishments. There is a failure to accomplish what matters most. If everything is important then nothing is. Growth and scaling are about taking one significant step at a time, checking the data and adjusting accordingly. [10:40] ESTABLISH A RHYTHM Once your core is established and you are clear about your long-term focus, it is time to prioritize. Break the ten-year plan out into a three-year plan, into a one-year plan, a 90-day plan, etc. Create routine, focus, and discipline. Don’t become overwhelmed by the monumental task of the long-term goal. Set bite-sized goals instead. Focus on the 3-5 things that will move you forward as a team. Get into the habit of celebrating success every 90 days. To build and maintain momentum, plan for more meetings or a daily check-in. Discuss administrative and tactical issues, provide updates, and take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. Review progress on a weekly basis. Use the collecti

Eric Graf, CEO of Flockgen, explains how mid-market businesses can trade relationships with one another to expand service offerings and lower customer acquisition. As sales reps, we need to make appointments and we need to make sales but often times, we don’t know how to find the best people. Typically, we develop a prospect list and a sales pitch and bring on a marketing team. It becomes the core business. Eric cites this as a common problem that negatively affects business with regard to customer acquisition. At Flockgen, clients are able to increase their bottom line because the cost of customer acquisition is spread among the partners. Expanding beyond the core Mid-market companies can expand the conversation with their customers beyond just the core aspects. When they do, they will realize that the prospect of monetizing exists in multiple areas which are often overlooked. At Flockgen, the cost of customer acquisition is spread across multiple services far beyond what mid-market companies might do in the core. As an example: There are already a number of partners with great businesses that sell telecom products. Some have had the same product for the past ten years, but their sales reps can’t talk to the customers beyond the core even if they wanted to. They don’t have anything else to present to those customers. [00:53] Flockgen offers an alternative solution. They can drive revenue with those relationships around completely different products and services. Ones that have nothing to do with telecom. They leverage those relationships to introduce new products and services in a way that doesn’t require a lot of cost because they already have hundreds of partners that offer many different things. [02:46] Such a partnership allows you to do more in one place instead of finding a partner with many companies on your own. By focusing on the ways mid-market companies work together to become stronger and build revenue, everybody wins. Creating a well-oiled referral process Referrals are a natural part of sales. They drive revenue and create business. Flockgen partners with people they know and trust. Using the telecom example again, suppose you have a salesperson selling phone systems all day long. As a partner with Flockgen, the salesperson could also talk with customers about sustainability, controlling costs, or operations. He has a credible way to have that conversation because Eric and his team have provided him with content and talking points. He doesn't have to be an expert in the field. Instead, he just has to be able to access the interest in the client. [04:16] The Flockgen Difference The Flockgen concept developed organically. Eric spent the last ten years working in the energy industry where he saw a lot of disruption. There were many new companies with new services and new products, and declining costs all around. Previously, Eric was in the telecom world, which he views as a more mature industry in terms of sales and marketing. Everyone knows each other and works with a collaborative spirit despite competition. Actual channels exist that allow people to team up and co-market. Eric hoped to build similar channels in the energy industry by borrowing the ideas that worked for telecom. Educating their partners is a key. How does referral marketing work? What are the pros and cons? [05:32] Rightsizing the program and menu for each of their individual partners is what sets Eric and his team apart. No two businesses are the same, even if they do the same thing. What works for one might not work for the other, or for their sales team. Matching capabilities Flockgen matches capabilities in an intelligent way with their partner sales team so that everyone feels comfortable and credible when having conversations. It allows them to drive relationships further. [06:31] Establishing bilateral relationships with their partners is crucial to the success of every party. Each can refer business to the other by promoting services up and down their respective networks. One partner could be driving revenue one day and receiving referrals the next day from others in the network who are doing the same thing. Getting started is easy. It is just a matter of understanding what you do, what a new customer base would mean to you, and what services you offer. Flockgen makes sure everyone in your organization is on the same page. [Tweet "You can’t grow a company alone. Sharing a pool of clients is essential. It saves money and time to partner and share opportunities. #ClientAcquisition"] If you are a large company, then you already have the business development teams and the corporate development teams in place to establish relationships. But it can be difficult to keep those relationships fresh. [09:29] Eric’s approach is for everyone to meet in the middle to allow collaboration and to set clear terms with one another. He believes that despite doing well at the start, many businesses that focus on partnering and collaboratin

Josh Cunningham, founder and CEO of rokrbox, fast-tracked his entrepreneurial career by helping to solve a recurring problem for real estate clients and learning an important lesson along the way: Don’t trick them. Josh first stumbled upon the ISA, or Inside Sales Agent, role in real estate while attending seminars with Vyral Marketing founder and CEO Frank Klesitz. Vyral Marketing works with top agents to create content and to get referrals and repeat business. THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT Many top professional teams buy real estates leads online, but their agents don’t always do a good job of following up on them. Like any good entrepreneur, when Josh heard a lot of people complaining about a common frustration, he decided to solve the problem. [00:39] He started rokrbox. A rocker box is a gold mining tool used in the 19th century to separate the sand and gravel from the gold. Likewise, rokrbox takes your real estate leads and separates the tire-kickers and time wasters from the motivated buyers and sellers. [01:26] TAPPING INTO THE STUDENT MARKET Rokrbox is strategically located directly across from the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas. Many sharp and enthusiastic young professionals go there looking to grow their skills. Josh provides them with the opportunity to develop real-world sales skills, CRM skills, and pipeline management skills. All of his student-employees typically graduate with multiple job offers from some type of sales professional career. [02:21] Since starting in 2013, rokrbox has worked over a million internet leads, hired over 250 ISAs, and trained them to move forward in their careers. Looking back, Josh believes that scalability was his biggest sales-related struggle. He knew he could do the job but wasn’t sure if he could train others to do it. When he first started hiring college students, he realized a lot of the same struggles that most people run into when building any sales team. SET CLEAR EXPECTATIONS His first mistake was in not clearly setting expectations for the new hires. The job posting on the Texas A&M website was too vague. It wasn’t clear that a new hire could expect to make a ton of phone calls a day, could expect to be rejected all day, etc. It was just too ambiguous. As a result, a new hire might go through the entire interview process and personality assessment only to quit almost immediately after starting the job. One young man, in particular, spent over 15 minutes learning the types of calls to make, the technology/scripts/dialogue used and the likelihood of repeated rejection. He excused himself to use the restroom and never came back. [04:28] Josh blames himself. He had failed to set expectations and to make clear to potential hires what they were getting into. He felt as if he had tricked people into taking the job which is not how to start a sales organization on the right foot. OBSERVATION As a result, rokrbox implemented observation into the business. Now, they invite promising applicants back to pair up with a senior rep as part of the interview process. They spend a full hour learning what to expect on a shift – from the technology to the daily team huddle, to the reports and the metrics. They are encouraged to ask questions. It is their chance to interview the business. At the conclusion of their observation session, applicants are asked to send an email to explain how they would fit into the rokrbox culture. It has been amazing to see the persuasive essays they receive. [05:43] ESSAYS Josh enjoys hearing people explain why they want to be a part of the organization more than having them sneak away on a bathroom break, never to return. He highly recommends showing potential hires exactly what they can expect. Show them what it is like to be on the phone or knocking on doors. Be totally straightforward from the very beginning. The people who realize the opportunity in what you offer are the people you want to hire. #NewHire CLICK TO TWEET Josh believes that when building a culture worthy of your organization, it is likely that you will strongly attract the right people and strongly repel the wrong ones. And certainly, not everyone who attends an observation responds. The work and the pace intimidate some people. [07:30] But he wouldn’t change a thing. Rockrbox invests a lot of one-on-one training in every new employee before they are ready to do the job. Twenty hours on the new hire combined with 20 hours of the trainer’s time: Forty hours is a huge investment if someone might either bomb or quit. TRANSPARENCY It is definitely better to be transparent and upfront. Anything less is simply a waste of everyone’s time. Have a collection of people that are all driven and motivated, in a cohesive unit, and headed in the same direction. A team that supports and enjoys each other becomes a better team because of it. It’s the most harmonious thing you can do with any business. Know the culture you want to create and then protect it. Invite ot

Tracking your performance and setting measurable goals will help you perform better as a sales rep. We can optimize our performance if we calculate our daily output to help us fine-tune our work. Sales professionals are competitive creatures by nature, whether we're competing against others or against ourselves. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates. Potential I participated in a leadership retreat in college and the speaker asked me to participate in a demonstration by jumping as far as I could. She then measured the distance and asked me to jump again to see if I could beat my original effort. Turns out I did, because I had a measurable goal. If I hadn't measured my first attempt, I wouldn't have known whether my second attempt was better. As a sales professional, you'll benefit if you measure your activity on a daily basis. [03:42] Optimization You're probably already planning some of your work: prospecting, phone calls, LinkedIn contacts, and those efforts are all great. But in order to optimize, now you must measure those efforts. If you're making phone calls, what are you measuring? Are you measuring the number of calls? Are you measuring the number of appointments you're setting based upon phone calls? Start writing down and measuring your key indicators. [04:14] If you're measuring LinkedIn activity, what are you measuring? Are you measuring the number of connections you can make? Are you measuring the people who replay to your conversations? Develop key indicators or key performance metrics that you can measure on a daily basis. Trends When you measure those numbers, you'll begin to notice trends. You might notice that you set more appointments on Wednesday and Thursday than on Monday and Friday. You may discover that you successfully connect with more people on LinkedIn on Tuesdays. [04:51] This effort may sound like a lot of work, and some of you may think you can't possibly find the time. Realize that top performers in every industry are measuring and optimizing their efforts. That's how they improve. Coaching That's also where coaching comes into play. Now imagine you're measuring these numbers and your performances while you're being coached. You're going to quickly discover that you're improving quickly. The problem is that we often get comfortable with our performance level. We settle for an acceptable amount of production and we accept it as our best. You may recognize this mindset as, "This is how I've prospected for years, so I'm going to stick with this format." [05:57] Challenge that thinking. Perhaps you'll work with a manager or a sales leader or even the CEO. Accountability will make you even more effective. Strategy When I'm collaborating or sharing with someone else, I may discover different strategies that are working for other sellers. The danger is in thinking that you can't learn from others or believing that you already have all the answers. You won't increase or improve or progress. When I started writing down day-to-day performance, I wasn't competing against my team. I was competing against my previous performance. I started closing more deals because I listened to my podcast guests and got beyond my weaknesses. Then, I read books and got better insights. Really, though, I improved simply because I was conscious of my efforts. [08:36] This year was our best ever, and we haven't even fully optimized our tracking and measuring. Tracking your performance makes a huge difference. Planning Send me an email if you'd like to see what I'm doing and how I'm scheduling my day. I use a planner and a Gmail calendar. I list tasks and color code them to differentiate different activities. If you're wondering, I use green for money-generating activities. I use a different color for admin tasks so I can visually see how my day looks. At the end of the day I ask myself four questions: Did I meet my goals today? What could I have done differently? What was my biggest win today? How will tomorrow look? I'm no genius, but it's working for me, and I want to challenge you to do it as well. "Tracking Your Performance" episode resources This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. It allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. Previously known as TSE Hustler's League, our TSE Certified Sales Program offers modules that you can engage on your own schedule as well as opportunities to engage with other sellers in other industries. This episode is 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

In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk about how to take advantage of the power of chat when growing your business. Many organizations have struggled to capitalize on the power of chat, but Amir and Tom share the struggles they’ve had using chat and how we can overcome them. Tom Jenkins and Amir Reiter help companies scale their workforce without having to get offices, pay insurance and taxes, or worry about hiring and training. Instead, they offer technology and strategy. At CloudTask, they provide sales development reps, they manage account executives convenient and they manage the customer success/account reps responsible for renewals and upselling to existing customers. They comprise one office. If someone wants to hire five sales reps, five account executives or five support reps, they will all be in office and managed so that the customer gets what they want – representation and results. By specializing in sales, customer success and customer support, CloudTask is the best of the breed. [00:51] THE POWER OF CHAT One of the biggest issues is a lack of clearly defined ownership. If you look at our partners at Drift.com for instance, their ability to work as a bot or as a human can confuse whether chat is owned by marketing or by sales. Marketing is typically used to drive traffic to forms, to blogs and to sign-ups. As such, marketing tends to prefer automation. Sales, however, relies on people first, so deciding who owns chat is often a hurdle. Failure to assign ownership then creates a failure to act or a failure to implement correctly. [02:19] We manage a lot of cloud chat programs and have noticed that many people view chat as just another tool for the reps to use in addition to calling, emailing, LinkedIn, etc. Rather, with a high volume of web traffic, chat is a key tool in the generation of qualified leads. In fact, because chat allows you to respond quickly with the right answers and in the right way, it can be your number one lead generation tool. [03:17] QUALIFY LEADS People today want answers now. They expect to be able to go onto a website and to be able to chat. It has worked well in the B2C world but is really moving quickly into the B2B world as well. We are finding that an MQL (marketing qualified lead) or SQL (sales qualified lead) that chats with a member of the sales team is 2-3 times more likely to close versus one that goes through the process of filling out a form. It makes sense. A form is stationary and available to anybody. With chat, you are able to quickly let people qualify themselves with a friendly discussion. For example, suppose someone wants to hire a sales rep. Within a few moments, we can discuss salaries and budgets and determine right away if it is something to pursue, or not. [04:54] CHAT CONVERSATION Chat does not replace cold calling or emailing but it does allow the person who visits your website to have a conversation with you and determine for themselves if they want to move forward. The desire to engage is up to the visitor. As the sales rep, you increase the level of engagement with your replies. Consider “I’m here to help sales leaders every day, how can I help you?” instead of “How are you?” People want to work with companies that can fix their problems. Target the message to visitors as much as you can in order to increase engagement with them. You will receive visitors who want to know more about the topic rather than starting from scratch. You don’t want to write too much in a chat forum, of course. Start by keeping the conversation focused on the problems you are trying to solve for your prospects. [06:48] The initial engagement is absolutely key but response time is just as essential. Buyers are conducting research and they want answers. Failure to respond within one minute, despite having the best response in the world, exponentially decreases the likelihood of obtaining a qualified lead. #saleschat CLICK TO TWEET It is imperative to be super sharp and to answer quickly. [08:10] PIQUE CURIOSITY When you give visitors the information they want to the questions they ask, they begin to ask the more sales-related questions themselves. Knowing how to give people the right amount of information so as to pique their curiosity without being overly aggressive is a skill. For example, the best way to answer many of the questions about a technology product is with a demo. An aggressive tactic might be “this is the best product and it will solve all your problems.” “We want you to get your eyes on this to see what you think about it” is a better approach, however. It allows the buyer to have ownership in the decision. Chat also identifies return visitors so that you don’t have to start all over from the beginning each time. [09:42] SALES OR MARKETING When Sales and Marketing are aligned as a team with the common goal of getting customers, ownership is less important. When Sales and Marketing are not aligned, better results occur when chat ownership is wi

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk with Kris Nelson, head of sales for CoSchedule.com, about how businesses can move from "click, try, buy" to having a full-fledged sales team. CoSchedule is a SaaS-based marketing platform that helps marketers to stay organized through a combination of content calendar, a product, project management solutions and execution via social campaigns and email campaigns. CoSchedule took the time to focus on true growth and the company has seen tremendous results. Prior to reaching that point, however, the business, which began as a "click, try and buy," didn’t even have a sales team. When "click, try, and buy" works Initially, they released the product as a straightforward "click, try and buy," product because it made sense at the time. They also designed it for small teams and individuals. The level of product and the price point didn’t really dictate a need for a dedicated sales team. [01:26] As the product progressed and became more complicated, however, it became apparent that they needed a sales team to help the clients really understand how CoSchedule could benefit them. It was simply a natural progression to establish a sales force as the product grew and the price point increased, especially with some of the advanced plans. They moved away from the "click, try and buy," and toward a professional marketing team and into a standard sales cycle. [03:17] Bringing whiskey to a Kool-Aid party I’ve always thought it was a waste of time and resources to have the sales reps focus on low-end sales, think $15 a month kind of stuff because customers don’t need help making a decision at the price point. Higher end products are different. Companies who ask customers to pay more become more concerned with the quality of the product, and that's when you need a sales team. It is truly an overkill to engage someone in a formalized, professional sales cycle at some of the lower price points. At the higher price points, it makes total sense. You have to be sure you are asking the right questions of the organization to make sure your product is a fit. The sale is nice but long-term happy customers are the true goal. [04:25] Move toward a sales force Kris credits CEO and co-founder of CoSchedule, Garrett Moon, as the person who helped take the company where it is today. It began with a series of phone calls to prospects to see if the market was viable and to see if it made sense to move the price point. Once that was established as true, Moon hired more people, including Kris, and the sales process was on its way. [05:58] Kris says that CoSchedule is still an extremely heavy inbound model. They still decide the best fit for each client, whether that be the "click, try and buy," model for the lower level plans, or working with a sales rep for the higher level plans. Kris really had to learn and understand the buying process of the companies that use CoSchedule to determine how many real touch points would be needed from a sales standpoint to be effective. Three-call process CoSchedule has a three-call process in place now. The first, known as the discovery call, allows the sales team to learn more about the client’s business, teach them about CoSchedule and then try to determine at a really high level if there is a potential business fit. If everything matches from a budget standpoint and a use case standpoint, they move forward with the second call. The second call is a full-scale demonstration of the product. It provides a great chance for the client to invite all their team members who might use the tool. Kris and his team go through the product with a fine-toothed comb and answer any questions. During this timeframe, they give the potential clients access to a free trial of CoSchedule; a chance to kick the tires. If the team is still checking the right boxes by the end they move into the pricing discussion. [07:28] CoSchedule provides a great tool for marketing organizations and other small organizations to all get on the same page. Their customers often refer to CoSchedule as the single source of truth for all their marketing efforts. Whether it's a social media campaign, or a large trade show event, or a podcast, CoSchedule acts as the organization hub for everything. [08:55] Although they designed CoSchedule with a marketing focus, Kris believes it is also beneficial from an internal project management standpoint. It puts a formal process in place. All the checklist items and all the behind-the-scenes items that go into a large-scale effort are put into a central location with CoSchedule. It unites everyone involved with the effort on the same page. Everyone can see what works well, what needs more work, and where the team must focus to get the product out the door. [09:53] Building a sales team Growing a sales team, of course, presents a challenge because there are as many different ways that salespeople sell and lots of ways that people sell effectively. Kris works to u

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're talking to Kathleen Hessert and Krista Jasso about the newest generation and how to adjust your sales process when selling Gen Z. Kathleen launched a project called We R Gen Z because she saw a lack of information about the newest generation because the marketplace was completely focused on millennials. Her organization conducts original research with a bank of 1,000 teens on a monthly basis to understand Gen Z. Krista -- a member of Gen Z herself -- works as the social media coordinator and intern coordinator for We R Gen Z and she believes that her generation will take the world by storm. Massive spending Gen Z spends $44 billion a year in the U.S. and influences $600 billion when it comes to household spending. It's vital for the marketplace to understand that Gen Z will make up 40 percent of the U.S. population and 37 percent of the global population by the year 2020. [3;47] Organizations that exclude them will be behind in their sales efforts, and they may never catch up. Mistakes selling Gen Z Sellers often talk down to Gen Z and the generation sees it. Gen Z has what Krista calls a "strong BS filter," and they see right through lack of authenticity. The generation values authentic, genuine behavior. Gen Z is turned off by fake, flashy marketing, instead choosing brands that are transparent about what they value and believe. [6:50] Gen Z cares about who is behind the product as well as the product or service itself. They care about what top executives are saying about topics such as politics and the environment. They include countless outside factors in their decision-making and if a brand doesn't match what they are looking for, they won't support it. Gen Z trends We R Gen Z hosts a trends panel that evaluates what's hot and what's not for the generation. Organizations should understand that Gen Z are the next creators and innovators. Those companies need the young people of Gen Z more than the young people need their products or services. They will buy or shun organizations based on their values and their passion. When Nike included Colin Kaepernick in its commercials, one member of We R Gen Z put all his Adidas clothes away and wore only Nike for two weeks to honor the decision made by the company. [10:19] The founder of Tom's Shoes gave $5 million to anti-gun-violence in response to a school shooting in California, marking the largest corporate donation ever to this particular issue. The decision resonated with Gen Z. Business is more than money, especially for Gen Z. Older marketers can miss this if they try throwing more money at the marketing effort. Instead, marketers should look at the lifetime value of a Gen Z customer, which is a lot higher than the lifetime value of an older customer who has been with the company for a number of years. [12:13] Digital natives Managers must remember that Gen Z asks why. Previous generations were taught not to question authority, but Gen Z asks why, not to be disrespectful, but to understand the reasoning behind decisions. The generation is curious and they want to understand motivations. Gen Z is also the first generation to be true digital natives. They grew up in a world where the Internet was prolific. When they seek information, their first source is Google and their second is Instagram. [14:29] They tend to seek a wide range of different perspectives on a topic. If someone tells them one thing, Gen Z tends to seek other voices before making decisions because they are used to this expansive focus. Gen Z and video Gen Z responds better to video than past generations. Primarily, the generation watches YouTube and Netflix more than they watch regular television. Many of them learn new things like how to play instruments simply by watching YouTube videos. [16:39] Companies can't take traditional routes when selling Gen Z. We R Gen Z's research shows that 48 percent of respondents said that social media influences their purchases most. Big sales are next because the generation is more frugal than its predecessors and they are watching their dollars more carefully. Companies have to be on social media, present it in an awesome way, and be there for the right reasons at the right time. They've seen all kinds of incredible creativity and they expect it cool and different and new each time they interact with a brand. [20:45] Reaching Gen Z Brands must actually engage with this generation on social media. Consumers are looking to see that brands are liking comments and responding to comments. They must show that they are authentic and real. They must also understand that 64 percent of Gen Z will buy things via smartphones. Most of Gen Z will look to reviews before buying and that they will sometimes buy a product because their friends vouch for it. That suggestion will carry more weight than any marketing campaign. [24:41] Other findings are that 65 percent won't use voice tech such as Siri and Alexa to buy, thoug

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we discuss time management and how daily planning can help you be more effective in your role as a seller. It seems like there is never enough time in the day to get things done. We need an extra day in the week or at least an extra hour a day. I was always so busy that it felt like I didn’t even have time to sit down to read a book. Even knowing how important personal development was, I always managed to put it off. Then, I took a vacation. It is amazing how much you can do when you are in the air for five hours with limited distraction. So what changed? What happened? The amount of time I had certainly didn’t change. My focus did. The concept of daily planning How many times have you been told to try daily planning? Now, how many times have you actually done it? [02:04] If you are the modern seller that I know you are, you are distracted. Reading proposals, talking to customers, going to meetings, checking email ... These are all distractions. Every time an email pings your phone, you are pulled in a different direction. Everyone - from internal teams to clients to prospects to friends - is vying for your time and attention. As a result, important things fall through the cracks. You finish at the end of each day and find yourself wondering if you accomplished anything at all. It all goes back to the very powerful principle of being acted upon as opposed to acting. [02:59] Essentialism Thinking back to a previous episode when we spoke to Greg McKeown about his book Essentialism, I’m reminded that we can’t have priorities. The plural of the word ‘priority’ shouldn’t even exist. There can only be one priority. Essentialism means to focus on the essentials. As a seller, your most important task is to bring in new customers and close deals. So, what activities will lead you to that result? Until you understand what you need to do as a seller, you will not be able to stay focused. You will always be acted upon. Sure, there will always be important distractions but oftentimes they are not the activities that you need to do to accomplish your goal. [04:46] To help you stay focused and have the time to do the things that matter the most, I want you to think about these three questions: Will the activity move me toward my essential goal of helping people make a decision and close a deal? Do I have to do it? Is this a task that no one else can do? Does it have to be done right now? If the activity doesn’t tie into your goal or responsibility, don’t do it. Set your focus Let’s suppose you’ve set a goal to prospect for 30 minutes a day. It is certainly a step towards achieving your goal, so it needs to be done. But do you have to do it yourself? Or could you pass some of it off to an internal sales team? Or to someone on Fiverr.com? Suppose you get a call from your boss and she needs a report. Does she need it right now? Is there someone on your team that can take care of it for you? If you are the only one who can do it, can you move it to the end of the day so as not to take away from your prime working time? When you focus on the essential things, the distractions fall away. The things that used to pull you away move out of focus. [05:41] I recommend taking an hour each week to plan for the upcoming week. Be sure you are fully vetted and ready so that you can avoid those distractions. What are the important tasks ahead? Schedule everything out. Set time for social media, time for prospecting, time for appointments ... You can even set time to receive emails using Boomerang, or Google, so that you aren’t pinged throughout the entire day. [08:46] You are acting rather than being acted upon. Once you have the weekly focus set, spend a few minutes at the end of each day to make any necessary adjustments. You will already know what you will do the next day as soon as you arrive at the office. This makes life so much more productive! Plan your day Taking the time to plan your day will save you time. Forget about your friends' Instagram posts. Focus instead on the things that will help you grow your business, grow your pipeline and have a killer year. [11:45] Make the effort. If it sounds like too much work, then by all means - go back to winging it. But if you do, promise me that you will compare your results to the person who is not winging it. How much more productive are they? Are they hitting their goals? Are they working with less stress, fewer headaches, and less frustration? Probably. I share this with you because I’ve been there. I know it works and I’ve seen the huge difference it can make. Try it. Give it a month. I don’t think you will regret it. "Daily Planning" episode resources If you have additional questions or want more insight, email me at [email protected]. I may not answer it right away (because I'm scheduling my time) but I'll get back to you as soon as possible. This episode is brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension fo

Today we talk to Meridith Powell about driving sales in the 4th quarter and how organizations can drive success from the selling side as well as the leadership side. Meridith was voted one of the top 15 business growth experts to watch, largely because she is passionate about helping clients learn strategies to succeed in any economy. 4th quarter complications Meridith calls the 4th quarter of the year her favorite because typically organizations have relaxed a bit and let their guards down. That presents an opportunity for other organizations to put on what she calls a full-court press while everyone else has relaxed. Everyone takes their foot off the gas at the end of the year. They've been working hard all year, and they have achieved decent numbers, so they aren't worried about driving sales in the 4th quarter. They are tired, and when Thanksgiving rolls around, it's followed soon after by Christmas. The cold weather makes it an easy time to be a bit lazier. She calls it the perfect storm of sales laziness. You must keep selling during the 4th quarter to keep that quarter strong. Additionally, though, sales has a lag time. The sales you make in the 4th quarter will determine how well your 1st quarter goes. If you don't invest energy into 4th quarter sales, you'll establish a self-fulfilling prophecy for the 1st quarter and you'll be behind all year long. Begin in October It's never too late to salvage the 4th quarter. [Tweet "Embrace the 4th quarter as an opportunity. Shift your paradigm and recognize that this isn't the time to stop selling; it's the time to start selling. #4thquartersales"] Proceed carefully, though. There's a lot happening in the 4th quarter and your clients and prospects have to-do lists of their own. Establish a plan, and identify a sales leader who will focus on driving sales in the 4th quarter. Even if you don't have one, determine who you need to connect with during the 4th quarter. List your top clients, your best prospects, and those who could be doing more business with you. Once you have that list, design the touches. Focus on thanking them for an amazing year and let them know you'll get in touch with them at the first of the year to establish a plan for the next year. Plan for sales in January If you want your January to be productive, you must lay the groundwork in December by booking appointments. By connecting with people at the end of the year and again in January, you keep yourself visible with your most important customers. As a bonus, you're likely to find organizations that need to dump money before the end of the year to avoid paying taxes. For those customers who haven't yet committed, you've taken one more step to move forward at a time when everyone else is resting. 4th quarter trouble If you haven't hit your numbers by the start of the 4th quarter, you're likely in trouble. Desperation sets in and you make decisions you wouldn't otherwise make. Meridith said that when she consults teams, she often finds that 4th quarter is their greatest struggle. She insists that buyers can smell desperation and they aren't interested in working with desperate sellers. When your 4th quarter strategy focuses on thanking them for their business and coordinating for the 1st quarter of the following year, you lose the smell of desperation and you end up making deals. You're also setting yourself up strong for the new year so that next year's 4th quarter won't end badly. Give up the day If you're listening to this episode and you haven't hit your numbers for the year, let it go. Think of it as cheating on a diet and realize that you'll do better next time. If you push hard to make your numbers now, you may get there, but you'll likely drive your customers away. Instead, focus on staying visible and starting 2019 really strong. You'll maintain your credibility and you'll keep your focus on the buyer instead of focusing on yourself. You can't play basketball by focusing entirely on the scoreboard. You have to look at the ball. You must keep your focus on the prospect. Take responsibility The reality for sales leaders is the same for sellers. If your team hasn't hit its goal by the 4th quarter, you don't want to give up the lifetime cycle of a client in an effort to make last-minute sales. Take responsibility for the fact that your team didn't hit the goals. As a leader, you have total responsibility for those goals. You must give them the strategy, the plan, and the accountability to achieve their numbers in the next year. Begin with an autopsy of the things that prevented you from hitting your numbers. Resolve to learn from your mistakes, and do it as a team. Determine the things you did really well, and try to identify where you lost deals. Meridith calls it seeds, weeds, and needs. Seeds are those things we need to keep doing in order to drive growth. Weeds are the things that weigh us down and get in our way. Needs are the things we need to be doing that we aren't currently doin

oday on The Sales Evangelist, we're going to talk about the fear of prospecting, how your coworkers often contribute to it, and how you can overcome your fear of rejection. Fear of rejection often keeps salespeople from going after potential deals, but it doesn't have to be this way. Intimidation If you're a new rep and your teammates warn you to stay away from a certain account, it can cause you to fear to reach out at all. In our case, a seller named Rick found himself in this exact situation. He believed so strongly in what he had to offer that he actually went to visit the client. [3:07] He spoke to the prospect's receptionist and he left information with her that she could pass on to the VP of the company. Several days passed and he didn't hear from the receptionist or the VP. Fortunately, his confidence outweighed his fear of rejection. He called the prospect at 7:30 a.m. and was able to talk to the exec because the receptionist wasn't there yet. Eventually, he closed the deal that his coworkers said couldn't be closed. His co-workers could have solved the problem as well, but they allowed the warnings and stories to intimidate. They never reached out to him. TSE Certified Sales Training In our TSE Certified Sales Training program, the first lesson we teach is how to prospect like an evangelist. The first thing we discuss is how to overcome the fear of rejection. [4:58] Fear results when we believe that someone is going to cause us harm or pain. But how does that belief come into existence? Because we were taught or coached to be fearful of the word no. When we were kids, we didn't fear being told no. But as we got older, we became conditioned to the idea that no is bad. Knowing the problems Rick did believe that he could be rejected, but he had a greater belief that he could solve a problem for the prospect. In many cases, because we don't understand what the prospect's challenges are, we have little confidence in our ability to solve problems for him. [6:57] To overcome fear, you must develop confidence in what you have to offer. The more times you successfully solve problems for comp0anies, the more confident you'll become. [Tweet "That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not because the nature of the thing changes, but our ability to do it changes. #BuildConfidence"] If you make enough calls, speak with enough prospects, and solve enough problems, you can become more confident. Getting better If you could listen to your very first cold call, you'd probably cringe because it sounds so awful. But imagine if you gave up after that very first cold call. Imagine if you gave up the first time someone yelled at you. [8:14] You'd never be where you are right now. Instead, because you kept doing it, you became confident. If you listen to the very first episodes of this podcast, you might think I should have gotten more training before I started. Now, 985 episodes later, we're still creating episodes. Imagine all the money we've generated, the business opportunities we've created, and the salespeople we've helped over the years. You must have a belief that is stronger than fear. [9:30] Gain that by doing things over and over again. Also, gather as much intel as you possibly can about your prospect's problem. "Fear of Prospecting" episode resources If this episode was helpful to you, share it with someone else who can benefit from it. Help them overcome their fear of rejection. The TSE Certified Sales Training program targets new and struggling salespeople working for small to midsize companies. The sales training course will help you plan your day, understand prospecting, build value, and convert more customers. You can work through the course alone or as part of a group of 25 people. Click here to learn more or to register for the next course. This episode is 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. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach and it allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. We'll use prospect.io in the upcoming semester of TSE Hustler's League to focus on prospecting. We'll give you insights and tools that will help you gain new customers. In addition, we'll provide training and strategies that you can implement today to ensure constant flow in your pipeline. Check out our new semester of The Sales Evangelist Hustler's League. We're taking applications for the semester beginning in January, and we can only take a limited number of people. 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 wherev

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk to Matt Hernandez about the changes in the marketplace, and how the ability to find local partners has helped him drive more revenue for the businesses he serves. In his work with small-to-medium businesses, Matt has worked to figure out new ways to deal with leads because people have become more resistant to cold calling. He believes that, although cold-calling can work, it must exist in the right circumstances. The key is better lead intelligence. Hire the right people Matt doesn't struggle with recruiting or interviewing salespeople. The key, he says, is to be very upfront about the challenges of the role and hire the right type of people. Hire open-minded people who aren't super particular about their activities and who often aren't as needy. [7:15] They'll be more coachable. Also be very honest about the type of role you're hiring for, the challenges it will present, but also the benefits of the role as well. Moving away from cold leads In the past, sellers would have a name and a phone number and they could attack each cold lead with different opens or different hooks. Now, he says, people are numb to that approach. Instead, his company looked to generate inbound leads and lukewarm leads. Matt's company uses a program called "Local Partners" that pays contractors to feed them warm or hot leads from local areas. He pointed out that using pure commission models doesn't change your cost structure. [9:14] He does acknowledge that you must make sure the payment is in line with the revenue goals. You must make sure your customer acquisition costs aren't too high. Big revenue increases Matt's company has seen strong results from the move away from cold calling. He estimates that the effort now accounts for 5 to 15 percent of their deals. He predicts that this kind of effort would likely work in a variety of industries. Companies just have to be creative to figure out how to scale in a cost-effective way. Buying leads can be very expensive, but a pay-for-results model can work if the infrastructure is set up properly. [11:10] Partnerships model Begin by listing as on Craigslist in the cities you're interested in. State what you're offering and decide ahead of time how much you can afford to pay. Decide how much you'd be willing to pay someone if they were to generate meetings or contracts. For longer sales cycles, you might have to pay per demo. [12:09] In shorter sales cycles, you pay based upon generating contracts. In your ad, provide a range of income that interested parties could generate per month. Then you could interview over the phone or in person or over video. The effort is super cheap, super easy and really scrappy. Be willing to pivot Be creative. Sales requires consistency and training and the right effort for the right amount of time. Without it, you'll never see meaningful results or data you can measure. [14:54] Seek objective advice and make sure you're giving your new ideas time to work. If things aren't going the way you want despite your effort, don't be afraid to pivot and try new approaches. Be willing to try something different. The marketplace changes rapidly, and technology does, too. You have to be willing to adapt. Fivestars Local businesses are the best candidates to benefit from Fivestars because they are traditionally underserved in their marketing efforts. They often face huge competition from groups of businesses that pool their resources. [15:59] Think of a small coffee shop competing against Starbucks, who has millions of dollars to spend on advertising. Fivestars has created a software that costs pennies on the dollar because the cost is spread across 10,000 merchants. It's an incredible solution for anyone who owns a local business with a physical location. "Find Local Partners" episode resources Connect with Matt via email at [email protected]. If you need a way to get more customers in the door, Fivestars works with more than 40 million consumers who use the platform. This episode is brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, a personalized and robust CRM with the capability to organize your company and effectively line up not only your sales but your client’s success. Go to TheSalesEvangelist.com/maximizer for a free demonstration. We are also brought to you by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. It has changed the way we prospect. Take advantage of the risk-free trial they offer specifically for the TSE community. First three months at half-price? You can’t beat that! To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. 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 enjoy fine podcasts. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends! Audio provided by Free SFX and Benso

n today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, I talk to Todd Earwood about the adage that we need not reinvent the wheel, but Todd is doing just that. Todd famously cold-called the CEO of a billion dollar company for 43 straight days until he finally got the interview, and then the job. He began his career in software. It wasn’t until he was making the rounds to thank investors for the success of his latest software endeavor that he realized that marketing was his real niche. As Todd explains it, one of the investors simply asked Todd what his future plans were, which seemed like such a silly question at the question. Software was all he had ever done. But the investor went on to say that marketing and sales were really the special skills he saw in Todd. Todd reluctantly agreed and MoneyPath began. [00:54] Clear the path to purchases through quality marketing AtMoneyPath, Todd and his group of marketers ‘clear the path to purchases.’ It is their tagline because they are dedicated to helping sales. In the marketing world of pretty pictures and shiny objects, the reality is that without the lifeblood of qualified leads coming into the sales team, good things are not going to happen. Budgets will be cut and people will lose their jobs. But if you can master the marketing side of things, then the company grows. Everybody is happy and everybody wins. In the software environment, Todd was willing to experiment and fail. He looked beyond the traditional social channels, the paid media and the heavy use of emails. To begin, Todd and his team did an email research project where they opted into the funnels of the top 300 SAS software companies to see what those companies would do with a cold lead. The number one email topic returned to Todd’s team was about content. The second topic was webinars and that is when things really began to change. Now instead of writing six blog posts a week, Todd and his team create one great webinar every 15 days. Before long, they had created a massive educational series with more and more content. Reinventing the webinar to keep listeners engaged The old model is clearly broken because nobody really gets excited about ‘this week’s webinar’. People sign up but they don’t attend. Todd and his team wanted to change that. [03:38] There is a poor functionality with the current webinar system. It fails to keep the listeners engaged. Even when the topic sounds interesting, we never get around to actually listening to it, or to listening to it wholeheartedly. Todd realized that the engagement model needed to change. It needed to become interesting and engaging. There is just too much information and too many ways to deliver it. As a marketer, you are vying for the attention of the clients so you have to do something different. As Todd explains, unless you hire Kevin Hart or Adele, it is too hard for one person to carry 30-60-90 minutes of content. So at Webinar Works, they always have at least two speakers: a host and a thought leader. Bringing in leads The host facilitates all the basics and keeps it moving. The host will almost immediately facilitate a poll to grab people’s attention and get them actively participating with the webinar. Todd has seen up to 60% of the attendees join in because their webinars break the expectation of ‘another crappy webinar’ from the very start. The thought leader for each webinar is the expert on the subject. They aren’t there to read their own bio or tell the listeners how great they are. The thought leaders are there to educate and to share their wisdom. [06:44] The ultimate purpose of the webinar, aside from providing information to the listeners, is to obtain information from those listeners at the end in the form of a segmentation poll which generates qualified, high intent leads. This could be something as simple as asking the listeners to select the one issue addressed in the webinar that best fits their organization. With that information, the sales rep now has a tracking mechanism that tells him which listeners actually listened to the entire webinar, as well as which listeners requested assistance. That is way better than cold calling 2,000 people. [10:21] Leads delivered by the webinar The Webinar was interesting but I want to do more research. This is not a hot lead. It is a cool lead that needs some nurturing before it goes to the sales team. I really enjoyed the webinar but I need to refer any decision to my colleague. With this response, the sales rep knows the problem is there and the interest is there but that more research is needed to move into the right part of the organization. I want to learn more! This is the hot lead button that should be flagged as a real person with interest. [11:11] Beginning of the sales process The live webinar event may be over but the sales work is not done. As a marketer, Todd can help you divide that 42-minute webinar into three or five smaller clips so when a listener has a problem or a question, you will be ab

Today on The Sales Evangelist we’ll talk about planning and setting effective goals. It’s that time of year again where we find ourselves contemplating our achievements over the past 12 months. Some of us reached our sales goals and some of us did not, but we can all benefit from reflecting on what worked well, and what did not work at all. HAVE A PLAN There’s a difference between setting goals by ‘throwing a dart at the goal wall’ versus setting goals based on the experiences that we are guided towards by the people we meet. It is the difference between having hope and having a plan. [03:27] A ‘throw a dart’ goal is as simple as choosing a random number – say $80,000 for example – and then setting that as your commission goal. But why that number? Are you simply hoping to make $80K, or do you have an actual plan in place to achieve it? I hope I lose 10lbs next year, I hope I win the lottery, I hope we get out of work early… Those are all just hopes because there is no plan in place to accomplish any of it. You have no control over the outcome. Goals, however, are fact-based. Let’s consider again the idea of earning $80K in commissions. If you made $40K last year and you know you want to push yourself more next year, does doubling your income seem realistic? Or is a goal of $60-65K more reasonable? [04:16] UNREALISTIC GOALS The problem with repeatedly setting goals that are not based on fact is the likelihood of failing to meet them. It becomes a vicious cycle. We fall short of our goal, we feel deflated as a result, and we stop trying. This contradicts Grant Cardone’s 10x Concept but hear me out. Let’s say I went to my manager and told him that I am going to try to get a million dollars in revenue for the year. We put that idea in motion and plan around it despite that, in reality, my highest revenue ever was $50K. It’s just not going to happen because it is an unrealistic goal from the start. [05:10] So what steps can you take to ensure that your goal is both realistic but also pushes you to achieve more? I have five that I want you to consider. [06:50] REASONABLE AND ACHIEVABLE GOALS Learn from the experience of others. Talk with your teammates that have done well or talk with your manager. Find out what goals they set when they were new to the business. What steps did they take? What is a reasonable goal in their opinion? Put your goal in writing. Once you have decided on a reasonable goal, write it down and put it where you can see it. Studies have proven that goals that are written down are more likely to be achieved because there is a confidence that comes from taking that first step. Focus on fewer goals. This may sound counterproductive but do you really have the time and energy to reach your sales goals, be the top seller, get 10 new clients every week, go to the gym every day, travel the world and achieve those lofty 10x goals? Wouldn’t it make more sense to break it down into fewer achievable goals instead? Your goal needs to be measurable and specific. Suppose, after talking with your teammates, you’ve set a realistic goal of $50K. The next step in achieving that goal is to decide how, specifically, you will achieve it. Break it down. How many new clients, for example, would you need to achieve the $50K? If gaining eight new clients is possible based on previous experience, then a goal of 10 new clients is not so far-fetched. [09:06] [12:21] Divide the goal into manageable pieces. The beauty of the book The Twelve Week Year is that it breaks the entire year down into 12-week increments so that you can take your goal and divide it into quarterly goals. How many appointments, how many new clients, how many presentations etc. do you need, on a quarterly basis, to stay on track? Put those calculations into your calendar and work toward them on a regular basis. It really helped me to achieve my goals because it is so manageable. I can focus on what I need to do each day or each week to achieve my end goal instead of just hoping that it magically comes together at that end. A quarterly focus on a realistic goal enables you to turn the process into a habit. Once you have the system down, you can replicate it over and over again. You are going to see measurable and amazing results. [09:57] We’ve had our best year yet at The Sales Evangelist and I want to make sure you can do the same. I’ve been in your shoes and I really enjoy helping new sellers however I can. We are already planning for next year by taking a look at what we’ve accomplished this year and what we hope to accomplish moving forward. I hope that today’s podcast will help you do the same. “GOALS” EPISODE RESOURCES Get a free download of the Twelve Week Year, as well as a 30-day free trial of the audible version, at audible trial.com/TSE. Check out our Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers. It is for sellers all over the world to share insights, ideas, ask questions, and so forth. If you are not pleased with your CRM or think it could be f

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’re going to hear from David DeRam, CEO and co-founder of Greenlight Guru, about the “it” factor, and how it can change the culture in any organization. CULTURE At Greenlight Guru, David and his team spend a lot of time focusing on culture. He calls the company culture unique, but he says that culture doesn’t fall down on you like rain. You don’t experience culture; you participate in it. Leaders can think about culture and work to create culture, but leaders can’t execute culture. It’s like a plant that will grow the way that it grows, and if everyone isn’t on board with the culture, the culture won’t grow the way leaders want it to. [4:51] As a result, David’s team looks to everyone on the team to get involved and participate in the culture. Culture drives results. It impacts every single nook and cranny of your business. #WorkCulture CLICK TO TWEET People will work how they feel, and if they feel great, they’ll bring an entirely different energy to their efforts. PROFESSION David’s team intentionally calls work your profession. He points to the fact that the leaders in every industry, (think Tiger Woods, Warren Buffet, Jimi Hendrix) have devoted themselves to their work. Their work is their profession. [6:35] Listeners of this podcast have devoted their lives to sales and it’s their profession. Your profession isn’t just what you do; it’s what you believe. David’s team has worked to bring all of those aspects into the culture. Companies tend to focus on results, and by focusing on results you can miss the one thing you desire the most, which is the people, culture, and execution. “IT” FACTOR David became immediately aware of the “it” factor when he subbed as a coach for a little league baseball team. As soon as he encountered the players on the team, he could tell who the natural athletes were. They moved naturally. They were confident. The true players were like fish in water. David took the lessons he learned from that sports experience and moved them into his business. He prioritizes where people aim in order to find leaders. Setting the bar high for yourself can create a lot of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty. People with the “it” factor know how to set the bar high because they understand that the vision they create is more exciting than the fear they experience as a result of setting it there. [9:46] You can feel the “it” factor when you meet people. They have reached high levels in everything they’ve done and they have a lot of swagger. They’ve survived a lot of hardship. ALLIGATOR BLOOD One of the company’s core values is something it calls “alligator blood,” which refers to those people who are resistant to the endless psychological blows, and competitive enough to keep pounding away on others when they are ahead. Not everyone is wired that way. You can coach it and build it, but when you find the “it” factor, you’re in the right place. The people who love the struggle and who set the bar really high for themselves exude an energy that spreads to the people around them. [12:21] TEACHING CULTURE David’s team focuses on the medical device industry. It’s a tough industry with a complicated product and a complicated regulatory environment, and the rules are constantly changing. Instead of spending time talking about how hard the work is, the company focuses on true quality and being great. They take a one-game-at-a-time mentality, knowing that you can’t win the Super Bowl in week 1. [17:09] Because the team understands that there’s a long way to go, it’s able to focus on execution. David’s hiring process strives to bring people to the team who naturally fit that culture. Some personalities might work really well in other industries, but not in David’s industry. It’s not in the company’s DNA to have a bad actor in the company. The best way to destroy a company is from the inside. The same is true of building it. David’s team measures its success partly by whether the entire team is living the core values. CULTURE SHIFT If you discover that your culture isn’t exactly where you’d like it to be, begin inside the organization. [19:50] People who have had to perform in the past and really put themselves out there for the good of the team (like authors, musicians, and athletes) often make great recruits. If a person doesn’t fit your core values, no matter how talented he is, you will have to unravel a huge mess if you hire him. RAISING THE LEVEL OF PLAY People with the “it” factor have a combination of God-given ability, work ethic, fun, and what David calls bounce. [20:57] They win battles, they win games, they overcome odds, they win championships, and along the way, they raise the energy and the level of play for the people around them. The team gets better, and the players respond and get better. When that happens, you’ve got something really special. “IT FACTOR” EPISODE RESOURCES David’s team is always hiring people who want to play at the highest level.

I received an email the other day from a sales rep that I found so annoying that I am dedicating this entire episode to the ways you can avoid making the same mistakes with your emails. This episode will give you ideas to make sure your emails grab your prospect’s attention so that he will reply instead of deleting your email. ANNOYING EMAILS The annoying email I received began, “Hello there.” Who is ‘there’? Do they not even know my name? I’ve done 1000+ episodes. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and my name is easy to find. The lack of effort on the part of the sender was evident from the very start. It is almost an insult. And it didn’t improve from there as the body of the email in no way addressed my type of business or my needs. It was simply an email blast. It was, quite frankly, a waste of everyone’s time. The days of sending out crappy emails are long gone. You want your emails to encourage a reply, to start the kind of engaging conversation that will lead to a sale now, or in the future. It needs to open the door for continued discussions. [01:49] ENGAGING EMAILS Using the email I received as an example, how easy would it have been for the sales rep to look me up on LinkedIn, or on my website? Or why not call and try to find out the best point of contact for the email? Furthermore, nothing about the email had anything to do with sales. At all. It was a vague and generic email that didn’t even refer to me as a person. There was no personal connection, so why would I want to continue that conversation? Here’s what I recommend instead: Make sure the subject line is catchy. It is the first thing they will read and frankly, it might be the last thing they bother to read, so make it good. “Donald, I saw this on your website and thought it might help” is a fine example. They know my name, they know I have a website, they looked at my website … I am going to open that email. [05:11] Next, begin your email by immediately referencing the thought contained in the subject line. Don’t tell them your name, or your company name because they don’t need it right now. It can all be found later in the signature block at the end. Don’t even worry about saying hello – just dive into the issue. BE DIRECT “Donald, I noticed on your sales page that it wasn’t loading properly at the end. This could be caused by X or Y. I would love to talk with you about how we’ve helped other podcasters fix it….” That difference makes all the difference! It is simple and easy to read. It provides insight and ideas, informs me of a potential problem and offers a clear step to solve it. Instead of the overused and generic “We can help you save money/get more leads,” the email is specific and offers value to the targeted business. [06:41] Another example of a good email: “I notice you have regular postings for new sales reps and we recently conducted a study with software companies like yours and found three critical reasons that prevent sales reps from succeeding… bullet point 1, 2, 3… Would you care to take a look at the full report?” [07:40] The goal of that email is to grab the reader’s attention, to focus on their problem of high turnover and to speak specifically to that need. Now compare that email to one that simply reads “Hey, are you hiring? Check out our new program.” One email is clearly tailored to the reader and provides relative and pertinent information, while the other certainly does not. FOCUS ON IDEAL CLIENTS To be able to personalize your emails, I recommend the age-old principle of creating a list of 50 or 100 dream clients to focus on for a week or two at a time depending on your cadence process. That focus will allow you the time to do a little research, to learn about their specific industry and to understand typical problems they might have. [09:13] You might try to connect with them on LinkedIn, engage with them there and later send an email that ties directly to that LinkedIn conversation. “It was great connecting with you on LinkedIn…” You are now someone the reader is already acquainted with so you’ll increase the likelihood of a favorable response to your email. THE TSE CERTIFIED SALES TRAINING PROGRAM These are all core fundamental principles of effective emails that we cover in greater detail in the three main courses of our new TSE Certified Sales Training Program. [10:24] The first course, Prospect Like an Evangelist, teaches sales reps how to find, attract and engage the ideal customer for their company. We talk about how to use the phone and emails. We also address how to create a flow process and how to utilize social media and mailings to grab their attention. The second semester focuses on Creating Irresistible Value – the middle of the sales process. How can we master the fundamentals of discovering what matters most to our buyers and how can we turn their interest into an appointment? We will discuss ways to have deeper discussions with our clients so they can make effective and informed decisions. The thir

Sales constantly evolves. As technology and tools change, we have new processes and strategies available to us. On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we hear from Alex Glenn about the new world for CRM and mirroring pipeline and how it can help us be more effective in our sales processes. Alex runs automateddata.af, a place where customers can grab working automations for their businesses. The platform crowdsources solutions and wraps them up into a usable format for those in sales, marketing, and customer success. DEVELOPING CRM CRM has seen a bit of a shift over the last few years. Instead of being software that costs thousands of dollars and requires a great deal of training, your CRM must be more agile now. [3:51] CRM must work with your existing tools as well as the dashboards you regularly use for work. It must be easily accessible and easily connectable. Most founders are also coming around to the idea that CRM should serve as all-in-one solutions. It’s very convenient for people to access the information they need without having to lead the dashboard they already work in. BEST SOFTWARE POSSIBLE The first issue must be finding the best possible software for each process. [7:46] You want to conduct outreach — either cold emailing, cold calling or LinkedIn prospecting. Then you want to manage that person or that prospect using CRM. You’ll need post-conversion like signup, demos, and other options, and you’ll need nurturing touchpoints like email, and phone calls. Then you’ll need post-sale drips and one-to-one messaging. The problem is that all of that can’t exist in one tool, but several tools are trying to accomplish all or 75 percent of it. The “all-in-ones” represent themselves that way because they cover most of these activities, though many of the components will be somewhat bare bones. [9:20] There are issues with each of them that limit your capabilities. AUTOMATION Customers need to have timely messages that are appropriate for their specific situations. All-in-ones won’t ever be the best solution because they won’t be able to give you everything you need at every step. Google Apps is global now, and many people in the tech and startup scenes are using it because there’s so much collaboration possible. [11:55] But if your cold outreach system isn’t talking to your CRM and talking to your website, then you can cause a lot of confusion because you might be messaging someone in LinkedIn while you’re sending emails at the same time. It can make your efforts seem disorganized. You need a tool that syncs your pipeline stages. (Click here to access the video of Alex navigating some of these tools.) [17:47] BENEFITS This capability allows small organizations to do really effective cold outreach. You may have gotten slapped for cold outreach before because you were sending too many emails or you got blacklisted. That doesn’t mean cold outreach doesn’t work. That may result because you weren’t using the right platform or because your setup was wrong. The second possibility is that you weren’t doing it well. Perhaps you weren’t nurturing them effectively. [33:18] If your pipeline stages aren’t in sync through the different outreach systems or the different tools that you’re using, you could create a poor customer experience. Whether you use a system like this or an all-in-one system together with a cold outreach system, make sure your pipeline stages are clearly outlined. Know what’s going on at each stage. Make sure each tool is being updated based upon where the customer is and how he interacted with your tools. “NEW WORLD FOR CRM AND MIRRORING PIPELINE” EPISODE RESOURCES You can connect with Alex at automated.af and email him at [email protected]. Automated hopes to build out so that it will offer something for everyone. Check out the tools Alex mentioned in the episode: persistiq.com for sales engagement with a clean interface user.com for automation software to track customer engagement useorca.com to find and engage new customers. You can also view the screenshare here. This episode is brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach and it allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. We’ll use prospect.io in the upcoming semester of TSE Hustler’s League to focus on prospecting. We’ll give you insights and tools that will help you gain new customers. In addition, we’ll provide training and strategies that you can implement today to ensure constant flow in your pipeline. Check out our new semester of The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League. We’re taking applications for the semester beginning in January, and we can only take a limited number of people. This episode is also brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’ll talk to serial entrepreneur Justin Hartzman about how we can grow a business and why we should do it with the possibility of an acquisition in mind. Justin is the CEO and co-founder of Needls.com, the Internet’s first RoboAgency. It is the easiest and most effective way for small businesses to advertise online and bring in more sales. By answering just six questions, Needls.com knows who you are, who you want to sell to, and what you want to sell. It can create 50-500 ads in real time, deliver them to the network, and show them to your ideal customer. THE BOTTOM LINE OF ANY BUSINESS Some of us seek the independence that comes from being our own boss while others desire flexibility and creative freedom or want to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment. [1:59] The bottom line of starting any business though, as Justin explains, is to earn the financial freedom to live our lives the way we want. A successful business puts more money in our pockets and allows us the time to enjoy it. Trying to start a new business, however, is tricky. While there are more people now looking for opportunities to fund, there are also more people competing for those funds. The common approach is to build the product first. Then you find the money to produce the product next and then sell the product. Justin recommends the complete opposite approach. IF YOU SELL IT, THEY WILL COME. Sales are always first. Find out if people want your product and if they do – sell it to them. With the sales lined up and letters of intent in your hand, it becomes much easier to find people to fund your product. [3:19] For example, Justin’s fiance’ told him that a friend on Facebook was looking for someone to build an iOS app. When that need for an app turned into an immediate $60,000 contract, the light bulb turned on and Needls.com was born. People always have questions and they will always ask other for answers. Justin and his team created a software program to scan their Facebook feeds for specific words that could lead to other sales. [4:32] They soon realized a 300% increase in their business. Those sales gave them the funds they needed to takeNeedls.com where it is today. PLANNING FOR ACQUISITION Ignore those instances when a fledgling business did well and was acquired without planning for it because those are few and far between. Instead, Justin firmly believes that you need to be organized and to plan for an eventual acquisition from Day One. [8:02] Have your data in order from the start because trying to organize it later is not only time-consuming but expensive. Instead, be sure you are incorporated correctly and have a handle on your finances. Build the processes you need and scale your business at the proper cadence. Make sure your books and contracts are in order, your IP is buttoned up and all the proper NDAs are in place. Simply put: Expect to be successful and plan accordingly. ATTRACT ACQUISITION OFFERS Justin’s success has come from partnering with other businesses who can help him as he helps them. [9:01] It all comes back to sales. Sell yourself first. Make yourself useful. Find partners who will benefit from what you have to offer and take advantage of the networking opportunities, learning experiences, and industry insight they provide in return. Then when an acquisition situation arises, you are in place and you are ready. “GROW A BUSINESS RIPE FOR ACQUISITION” EPISODE RESOURCES Justin truly believes that making oneself useful to others is the key to success and, as such, he is always happy to chat or answer your questions. He can be reached at [email protected] you can find him on LinkedIn. He is also offering 35% off his entire platform for a year via needls.com/salesevan and his team is on standby to answer questions and to help you make the most of it. Check out our previous episode about why buying your competition might be a good option for your company. This episode is brought to you in part by Maximizer CRM, personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve your business and increase profits. To get a demonstration of maximizer, go to the salesevangelists.com/maximizer. Click on the link to get a free demo of what Maximizer CRM can do for you. Maximizer is intuitive, simple, and personable. Maximizer integrates your marketing campaign as well as your CRM. It works whether you’re a small organization or a large one. It works throughout the whole organization and it’s customizable to the way you sell. This episode is also brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach and it allows you to set it and forget it. Your prospecting will never ever be the same. TSE HUSTLER’S LEAGUE We’ll use prospect.io in the upcoming semester of TSE Hustler’s League to focus on prospecting. We’