The Salesman.com Podcast

Do you agree that life is short? Getting Walter, my dog was the turning point for me that confirmed the shortness of life. He’s two years old and still a puppy. Yet, he’s probably lived 20% of his life already. I’ve only got 8-10 more Christmases with him and then he’ll be gone. And I’m sure you’ll agree that 8 of most things isn’t a lot. 8 films can be finished in a weekend. 8 chocolates can be nailed in a couple of mouthfuls. So, life is short, but what does this have to do with sales? My message to you is that life is so short that if you’re not selling your products or your ideas… or you’re not selling yourself to do the things that you’ve always wanted to do… then you’re going to end up disappointed with your shot at life. This is why life is too short not to master sales.

Here’s a bold statement—more has changed in sales over the last 20 years than has changed in the 1000 years before it. Crazy right? But it’s true! And it’s especially true when you look at the buyer’s journey. So what’s the big deal? What’s so different today than just a few decades—heck, even a few years—ago? And what are the 3 takeaways you need to build into your sales process if you even hope to survive the shifting buyer's journey? How the Buyer’s Journey Has Changed Let’s look at how the buyer’s journey has changed. Now, as any sales rep worth their salt knows, understanding your unique buyer’s journey is key to selling successfully. As Wistia’s VP of Sales & Customer Success Peter Von Burchard told me in our interview… “Customer success is really understanding the journey that the customer is on, and the problem that you're solving as a solution and finding a way to align yourself as a company with getting those customers to achieve that end. And I think it's really about aligning the business and the solution with the goals of the customer and helping execute on that.” – Interview with Peter Von Burchard, VP of Sales & Customer Success at Wistia [01:10] Now in the old days, the buyer’s journey started with materials educating the prospect about the problem. But soon after, it’d then be taken over by the sales rep. They’d build rapport, explain the various solutions, differentiate their product from the competitors, and close the sale. But in the past twenty years or so, that’s changed quite a bit. Today, sales reps are way less involved along the way. A study from McKinsey found that up to 80% of B2B decision-makers prefer digital self-service models to “traditional” in-person models. Buyers now expect to be able to access loads of educational themselves, without the help of a rep. On top of that… Sales cycles are getting longer Deals are increasingly complex And more decision-makers are now involved Those are some pretty big changes, I know. So the question is, how do you navigate them? Well first off, you need to know… 1. How to Deal with a Longer Sales Cycle How to deal with a longer sales cycle. A report from Demand Gen found that nearly 60% of buyers say the decision-making process is becoming longer year over year. Plus, Gartner found on average it takes input from 6 to 10 decision-makers to settle on a solution. And that means more emails, product demos, sales calls, and nurturing cycles than ever. Now there are ways to speed up that process. Like spending extra time qualifying your prospects, making sure you’re selling to an authority figure, and relying more heavily on referrals. But in general, you’ve simply got to get used to dealing with a longer sales cycle. What You Can Do About It So, what can you do about it? Well first and foremost, you can work on your sales cadences. If your buyers need more time to make their decision, that’s okay. You just need to make sure you’re keeping them engaged and answering all their questions along the way. That means developing sales cadences that continue to share industry insights, facilitate free and open communication, and ensure that when they are ready to talk, you’re the first person they think of. So start putting in a bit of extra time to lengthen your cadences this month. 2. The Shifting Importance of Content Now takeaway number two is about the shifting importance of strategic content. In the world of B2B sales, the salesperson with the best content is king. Research from FocusVision found that B2B buyers now consume at least 13 pieces of content before making a buying decision. That’s why it’s so important for you as a sales rep to make the shift to creating valuable, customer-focused content for every stage of the buyer’s cycle. Doing so positions you as a thought leader. AND it acts as the entry point to your selling funnel. Selling expert Victor Antonio said the same thing when I interviewed him: “The majority of executives don't want to talk to a salesperson, they simply don't. They want to do the whole customer journey by themselves. And then, when I'm ready, I'll reach out to you. Well, how do I reach out? Well, this is the guy that’s got content, he seems to know what he's talking about. I'm going to go call Will, see what's happening over there.” [12:40] What You Can Do About It Alright, so good content rocks. But how do you make it? My advice is to put in the time for deep dives. Those pithy little 400 word blog posts aren’t doing a damn thing for positioning you as a thought leader. Instead, you’ve got to really dig into the problem. What’s causing your prospect’s pain points? What are the mechanics of that problem? What are the 200 different solutions out there? This is the type of stuff that your buyer wants to immerse themselves in. On top of that, use past customer data like surveys, testimonials, and interviews to better understand what topics and pain points to cover. The more your content resonates, the more it’ll seem like

Ask a brand-new sales rep what the most important skill is and you know what he’ll say? “Closing.” That’s what we always hear, right? But ask a 20-year vet who’s seen a thing or two and they’ll tell you it isn’t the closing. It’s the prospecting. As Founder of Tenbound David Delany told me – “If you’re able to do your own prospecting, you'll never starve.” But I’d even take it one step further—nail down how to prospect like a pro, and you’ll live like a king. Now prospecting is one of the most valuable skills you can learn in your entire sales career. As Cardone Enterprises VP of Sales Jarrod Glandt shared – “I would rather have a salesperson that could get in the door and create an opportunity in the first place, than somebody who sucks on the front side of it but is average at the end.” Which is why we created the Sales Prospect List Building Framework. This framework is just four steps. And if you want to take a deeper dive into the strategies and techniques we’re talking about here, I suggest you head over to the link in the video notes below to read the full guide. Alright with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s jump into the framework. 1. Refine Your ICP Now step one is refining your ICP or ideal customer persona. These are essentially your perfect buyers. And they’re the prospects you want to be focusing on the most. Here are some qualities to look for when trying to identify your ICP: Are easiest to close Have the pain point you’re solving Understand your product’s value Offer the fewest objections Are urgently ready to buy All of these attributes up to 1) a shorter sales cycle, 2) higher profit margins, and 3) an easier, less stressful sales process for—that’s right—you. Now, identifying your ICP takes a bit of work. But you can start by looking at past customers with the shortest contact-to-sale cycle. From there, you can bring in more data points by considering how large the sale is, whether they’ve become repeat buyers, and if they provided a glowing testimonial or referral. For an even more in-depth dive into defining your ICP, be sure to check out our Value Proposition Design Framework. It’s got an entire step dedicated specifically to finding your perfect buyer. Okay so once you’ve got about 20 to 40 past customers, it’s time to figure out what they have in common. To do that, you’re going to list out seven components for each: Job Title Industry Location Company Size Current Goals Main Pain Points Previous Solution A lot of this info you can get with a bit of online research. But some—like previous solutions, main pain points, and current goals—may require an actual phone call. Once you have that info for everyone, you’ll need to cross reference and look for similarities between your perfect buyers. What criteria do they have in common? What are some general trends you see among the majority of them? Details don’t have to align perfectly here. But the closer the match, the easier step two will be. 2. Create Your Test Audience With your ICP outline detailed, now it’s time to create your test audience. Essentially, you want to build a small list of prospects that match your ICP and then validate that list by entering them into your sales cadence. Depending on the success rate of your outreach, you can then scale up your audience or go back to the drawing board and refine your ICP to get better results. So the question is, how do you build that list? And the answer is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a fantastic sales tool I can personally vouch for. I use it myself. This tool lets you plug in details on prospects and then it populates a whole list of potential customers based on that list. It’s like a super advanced prospecting search tool. AND it’s on the biggest professional network in the world, so you’ll never run out of leads. All you have to do is plug in the ICP outline you just created into the search parameters. And then hit ENTER. That’s all there is to it. For new and unvalidated ICPs, start with building an audience of around 40 prospects. For validated ICPs, you can start off strong with 150. ProTip: Start Off Small But protip here—remember to start small with your audience. The entire goal of this exercise is to test quickly, document the results, and refine your ICP or cadence accordingly. The bigger the audience, the longer the whole process will take. Don’t worry, once you hit a solid success rate you can take off. But not yet. 3. “Test” Your Test Audience Alright now step three is all about “testing” your test audience. Here’s where you run your list through your cadences and check out the results. Nothing too special here, just start from the top and work your way down. But you do want to be sure you’re at least working off of a proven framework. Our Cold Outreach Sales Cadence Framework is a great foundation to start from if you don’t have a cadence built out already. Best of all, it’s even got three templates you can basically copy and s

Hitting quota, buying that dream Porsche, taking the family to Disney Land. These are all noble financial goals for salespeople but they’re all dumb. In this video I’m going to explain the only financial goal that you should have and if you’re watching this video right now, you’re probably further away from it than you think. The only thing you should be aiming for in your sales career is financial freedom. Otherwise known as early retirement. Why Would I Want To Retire Early? Why?: Because working in sales will kill your soul. It’s emotionally draining. But… It’s the fastest way to make insane amounts of money legally and ethically. It’s the safest way to make money (no risk of starting a business or investing capital). You’re in control of your own success. Assumption?: This works on the assumption that you actually want to retire early. If most people believed it was possible, most people would aim for it. Most people believe the lie that you have to work until you’re 65 before it’s possible to retire. This isn’t true. Conclusion?: Sales is a great medium term (5-10 years) career to acquire significant wealth to retire early on. It’s probably not the most fulfilling longer term (11-30 years) career. It’s a trade off: Work hard now so that your future self can live the life that you dream of living now. How Do I Retire Early? First off let's define what early retirement is so that we know what we’re aiming for. Defined: When your assets generate more income each month than you spend. Two ways to get there: Reduce costs (need less money from assets to live on) Increase income (can buy more assets to increase income) So with the definition and the basic steps to retire early, lets get practical. Steps To Retirement From a Sales Role Calculate your number What is your ideal monthly retirement income? What level of risk are you willing to tolerate with your assets? How likely are you to continue generating income in your retirement? How much/many assets do you need to throw off your ideal monthly income? Calculate the retirement date Very specifically, when do you want to hand in your notice in your sales job? Reverse engineer your required income Take the total asset price, divide by the number of years and then months. The tough questions Are you capable of generating an amount of value in your market that will warrant the market giving you enough commission to acquire the retirement assets? Does the sales role you have right now have the scope to pay out that level of commissions? Do you have the balls to stick to the plan and make this happen over the medium term (5-10 years)?

Few things are as foundationally important to sales success as your value proposition statement. In just one sentence, it captures who your buyers are, what problems they’re facing, how your product solves that problem, and so so much more. And when constructed properly, it should drive nearly every action and strategy of a business. But when your value proposition is off, well that can spell huge problems for attracting the right buyers for what you’re selling. Now before we get into the Value Proposition Design Framework, I want to point out that we’re going to be doing a brief overview. For those who want to dive deeper into each of these steps, I suggest heading over to Salesman.org. There you can find an article that talks about each step in-depth. Alright with that said, let’s dig in. 1. Identify Your Value (The Value Diagram) So step one of designing your value proposition is to identify your value. In the framework, we call this filling out The Value Diagram. And it’s got three sections: Your Products Perk Producers Strain Reducers Your job is to fill out these three sections. You can start by listing out all the products or services you offer. Try to be thorough here. Because the next steps are to fill out the perk producers and strain reducers of each. What are the benefits your products add to your buyers’ lives? Do they outperform your competitor? Do they lead to a positive social consequence like boosting their reputation? Do they create cost savings? Write those down in the perk producers section. And how do these products eliminate hardships your buyers go through? Do they fix frustrating solutions? Eliminate risk? Limit or get rid of common mistakes buyers make? List them out in the strain reducers section. 2. Find Your Ideal Buyer (The Buyer Breakdown) Finding your ideal buyer, a.k.a. the Buyer Breakdown. Just like in the previous section, this section consists of three steps: Your Buyer’s Jobs Perks Strains And yep, that means we’re listing out each. First, what are the jobs your buyers perform? The functional jobs (like work duties), social jobs (like proving they’re competent and worthy of respect) and emotional jobs (like feeling accomplished). Next we’re listing out the perks—the benefits your buyers want to see in your product. There are four types of perks to consider here: required perks, expected perks, desired perks, and unexpected perks. Be sure to head over to Salesman.org to read the article if you want to learn more about each. And last, what are the strains your buyer’s facing? These are the pain points of your existing customer profile. What annoys them before, during, and after they’re trying to get a job done? What are the risks that keep them from working as efficiently as they could? 3. Find the Fit Now that you’ve got both your Value Diagram and your Buyer Breakdown filled out, we’re going to do some cross-referencing between each. All you have to do here is determine which jobs, strains, and perks in the Buyer Breakdown the strain reducers and perk producers on the Value Diagram address. Go through each job, strain, and perk one by one, placing a checkmark next to the ones that fit. At the end, simply remove the ones that don’t have a checkmark. After that, all that’s left is crafting your value proposition statement based on which elements are highest on the list of importance. 4. Create Your Value Proposition Statement So, how do you create your value proposition statement? Simple, you plug in the info you’ve just written down into this template: So remember all the jobs, perks, and strains you matched before? Simply fill them into this template. So for me at Salesman.org, it might look like this: Our Selling Made Simple Academy (product) helps sales teams (buyer) who want to achieve higher close rates (buyer job) by teaching effective sales strategies (verb, perks) and simplifying the sales process (verb, strains) unlike traditional sales training programs (competition value prop). See how that works? Now the trick here is to be flexible. Because after you’ve plugged all your info in, you still need to… 5. Verify Your Value Proposition To settle on a compelling value proposition, you’ll need to test whether it resonates with your buyers. And that means you need to: Generate a hypothesis about your ideal buyer and what they value Create a value proposition based on that hypothesis Design experiments to verify the effectiveness of your value proposition Run and collect results from your experiments Reevaluate and tweak the components of your value proposition based on the results Repeat the cycle There are plenty of ways you can test your value proposition, including: Ad and link tracking Split testing emails Split testing landing pages Buyer interviews Buyer behavior data analysis Crowdfunding In the end, just be sure you’re continually re-evaluation and iterating on what you learned along the way. Remember, this is a process, not a one-time effort!  

Look, everyone’s felt unmotivated at work at one time or another. But salespeople in particular struggle with a lack of motivation the most. And if you’re not motivated to sell, you’re not motivated to earn. So how do to stay on the course to success, even on those “blah” days? You sell by the numbers. You can start by creating your very own One-Page Plan. And today, I’ll show you how. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… “By a massive long shot, salespeople's biggest pain point is motivation.” – Will Barron’s Interview with HubSpot’s Kim Walsh timestamp [30:00] Which is why today we’re covering the best motivation system I’ve found to keep me going—selling by the numbers—breaking down your yearly goals into smaller monthly, weekly, and daily goals. How It Boosts Motivation How does selling by the numbers boost motivation in the first place? Well, there are actually four reasons why this approach to sales works so well. 1. One Path to Success First, it’s a single path to success. Compared to the “winging it” approach, selling by the numbers gives you clear, weekly (and even daily) goals so you can quickly know when you’re winning and when you’re falling behind. Achieve those goals, and you’re making progress. Simple as that. 2. Easy to Communicate Two, it’s easy to communicate to your management. When you’ve clearly defined your goals, it’s easier to get your supervisors behind a plan. And with their support, your 10X more likely to stay on track. 3. Forces You to Decide What You Want Third, selling by the numbers forces you to decide what you want. This framework moves backward, so you’re defining what your goals are right at the start. And as long as you’re following the plan each day, you can rest assured you’re continually working towards those goals that actually matter. 4. Walk Away Power And four, selling by the numbers lets you walk away from bad leads if you want. With this framework, you can easily refer to your plan, see if you need that buyer to hit your numbers, and if not, walk away from all the trouble. And that is something every sales rep would love to do. The Selling By the Numbers Framework Alright so the question is, how does the Selling By the Numbers Framework work? Essentially, this five-step framework starts from the end and moves backward to define how to reach your goals. 1. Define Your Wants Defining your wants. What do you want your life to look like in 5, 10, 20 years? What do you need to achieve that? Now don’t go straight for the income figure. Because money in and of itself isn’t a want. It’s a means to an end. And we’re going to be dealing with it specifically in the next step. Instead, a want is something like being able to send your kid to college. It’s that shiny new Corvette. It’s that safety net to keep your family safe during an emergency. Get it? So step one, determine your want. And then… 2. Set Your Income Goal Step two, set your income goal to achieve that want. How much extra dough do you need to earn to be able to afford that want? Now for tangible goods you can buy right now like that new car, that’s easy. You know the price. But for wants that you don’t need fulfilled right away, you’ll have to work out a savings plan. For example, say you want to be able to send your kid to college in 15 years. Tuition is around $225,000 so that breaks down to an extra $15K saved per year. Make sense? 3. Determine Your Starting Point Determining your starting point. This one’s simple, where are you now compared to your income goal? All you have to do here is take what you’ve earned already and subtract it from the final goal. Then you need to take into account the givens for this year. Do you have recurring revenue from certain accounts? Are you losing any long-time customers? What kinds of sure-things are out there this year? Take it all in when determining where you’re at now. The more accurate you are at this stage, the easier it’ll be to achieve your income goals on schedule. 4. Establish Your Waypoints Step four is where the magic starts to happen. Because this is when you start creating quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily goals. Let’s say we’re aiming for the extra $15K per year to afford our kid’s college. What we’ll do here is go backwards from that. If the average commission of a closed deal is $1,000, that means you need to close an additional 15 deals each year. Now it’s time to look at your close rates on each step leading up to a sale. How many proposals turn into a sale? How many demos into proposals? And so on and so on. So breaking that all down, your data may look something like this: Sales target = $15,000 Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000 Closed deals = 15 Proposals given = 30 Demos scheduled = 60 Discovery calls scheduled = 120 Decision makers spoken to = 480 Calls made = 2400 So if you make an extra 2400 calls this year, you’re on your way to earning that extra $15K. Now with that info in hand, it’s time to break these numbers down

Over the past six years, The Selling Made Simple Academy has EXPLODED. 2000+ academy students, $992M earned by our members, more than 20 proven frameworks—and we’re not showing any signs of slowing down either. And it’s all thanks to how we make selling simple. Today we’re breaking down our unique sales methodology step by step. And with it, you can start simplifying your sales process and leveling up your career today. So let’s start things off by answering one simple question… Why Use Frameworks at All? Why use frameworks at all? Well first and foremost, one of the biggest problems I’ve seen with my students over the last few years is that they’re confused. They’ve got a million different methodologies pulling them in a million different directions. And instead of taking steps forward, they’re just going around in circles. The problem? They’re overcomplicating things. .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “So much of what we do in management, in sales, in life, is making things more complicated than they need to be.” Greg McKeown Salesman Podcast What’s great about using step-by-step frameworks is all the guesswork and confusion get taken out of the equation completely. Instead of wondering what to do now, your next step is specifically outlined. And that means you can keep pushing forward. The Simple Selling Method Alright now let’s talk about The Simple Selling Method. This method is built on 20+ proven frameworks. Frameworks that’ve helped more than two-thousand of our students earn nearly $1 billion in revenue. And frameworks that’ve given reps just like you the skills they need to level up their career. Now we’re going to do a quick overview on what these frameworks cover. But if you really want to dive deep, head over to Salesman.org for a closer look. Okay so the first set of frameworks involve… A) Understanding the Market Understanding the market. If you don’t know who you’re selling to and why people buy, you’re going to waste tons of time selling to the wrong customers at the wrong time. If you want to master understanding the market, you need to know how to… 1. Sell By the Numbers One, sell by the numbers. Sales is a numbers game any way you cut it. And the better you are at leveraging those numbers, the more consistently you’ll be able to hit your goals time and time again. 2. Value Proposition Two, proper value proposition design. Your value proposition dictates your messaging your clients, your process, and just about everything else you do as a sales rep. So how do you create one that resonates? 3. Buyer’s Journey Three, the buyer’s journey. This framework helps students understand how their buyers move through the five stages of awareness and shows how to map your product’s unique buyer’s journey. 4. Building a Prospect List And the fourth skill of understanding your market is building a prospect list. How can you keep bringing new, qualified buyers into your sales cycle? What does it take to break into new markets and tap into new lead sources? There’s tons of valuable info we cover here. Now, the second skillset is… B) Getting in Front of Buyers Getting in front of buyers. Now depending on your marketing department, you might already be getting a good amount of inbound leads. But if you want real control over your success and earning potential, you need to be able to generate outbound leads as well. And that takes… 1. Sales Cadences One, knowing how to build sales cadences. And that means understanding the essential elements of a cadence and what cadence templates to use in every situation. 2. Cold Email Two, you have to be an effective cold emailer. How do separate your messaging from the thousands of other emails your buyers receive every day? And don’t worry, there’s a framework for that. 3. Cold Calling Skill number three here is cold calling. Let’s face it, cold calling isn’t every rep’s favorite part of the job. But guess what? It’s downright necessary if you want to be a high-earner. That’s why we developed our five-step cold calling framework for proven cold calling success. 4. Social Selling And last but not least is social selling. This framework shows you how to develop a flywheel lead generation system that practically sells while you sleep. And maybe even lets you *gasp* take a vacation once in a while? Whoa. C) Explaining the Value Alright now skillset number three is a big one. Because it’s all about explaining the value. This one’s made up of six different

Pop quiz hotshot—what’s your best channel for bringing in quality leads? Is it cold calling? Or email? Maybe LinkedIn? [Buzzer sound] Bzzzzzt. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. These are all okay sources. But they’re far from the best. It turns out it’s your own buyers that are the most superior source of leads. Because they open up the door to the holy grail of all lead types—the referral. The question is, do you know how to earn those referrals without alienating your clients? Why Referrals Rock What’s so great about referrals anyway? Well simply put, referrals are just plain better than any other type of lead. Here’s why. A) They’re The Easiest Leads You’ll Ever Uncover First up, they’re the easiest leads you’ll ever uncover. According to a report from Social Media Today, more than half of marketers (54%) say referral marketing generates more cost-efficient leads compared to other marketing channels. .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “The most important way of generating future business, if you're thinking about the longevity of your career, is the advocacy and evangelism of your customers.” Christian Kinnear Salesman Podcast B) The Best Way to Gain Instant Influence Referral leads bypass all that time-consuming rapport-building right off the bat. And that means they’re more likely to convert. Marketo found that referred leads have a better conversion rate than any other channel—at 10.99% from lead to opportunity, 3.74X the average rate. Compare that to sales prospecting (0.90%, 0.31X), inbound (3.82%, 1.30X), paid marketing (2.98%, 1.01X), and email (0.55%, 0.19X). C) Easier Closing Referred leads are easier to close. 70% of sales leaders and 69% of frontline sales reps report that referrals close substantially faster than traditional leads according to Influitive and Heinz Marketing. Nice. D) Bigger Purchases Plus, referrals spend more. The Wharton School of Business found the lifetime value of referral customers is 16% higher than your average customer. E) Flywheel Referrals Referral leads bring in even more referrals. With each referral you bring in, you’re not just earning a single new customer. You’re also expanding your network of potential referrals and boosting the odds that you’ll bring even more of these high quality leads. Because according to Invesp, referred customers have a 37% higher retention rate and are 4X more likely to refer more customers to your brand than non-referrals. Alright alright, enough with the stats. Let’s get to the meat of it all… The More Referrals Framework The More Referrals Framework. How do you ask for referrals in the first place? .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “You don't necessarily ask for referrals, you have to earn referrals.” C. Lee Smith Salesman Podcast And that means you have to deliver real, tangible value for your customers. But if you have delivered, all you need to do to earn a referral is follow this four-step framework… 1. Confirm Your Value One, Confirm Your Value. Basically, this is where you prove to your buyer that you’ve earned some serious results for them. And to do that, just follow this mini-framework we’ve put together… Document the following: Problems the buyer had when they started working with you. Results you promised to deliver. Whether you delivered those results. Things you’ve done above what was promised. What you want to improve next quarter. Set up a call with your buyer and run through your documentation. Be sure to email the documentation ahead of time (to give them time to look it over). Go through each step on the call. Confirm value. At the end of the call ask, “So it’s fair to say that we’ve delivered/over-delivered on what was promised?” Optional: Follow up with, “For my records, if I send you a quick email, can you reply and confirm that again so that I can share it with my boss?” 2. Ask “Who Else?” Ask “Who Else?” Who else is in their network that you can help? No need to overcomplicate

[spp-player] All professionals use frameworks. A framework is a step-by-step process to achieve a predetermined goal. Well-defined frameworks separate professionals who win, from hacks that can only dream of success. A surgeon doesn’t guess their way through an operation. They follow a framework to remove the tumor. An engineer doesn’t use a hunch to decide how deep the foundations need to be. They follow a framework to calculate the correct depth. For salespeople, frameworks are the key to reliably beating quota and making serious money. There are selling frameworks to convert competitor accounts and selling frameworks to connect with potential buyers. Frameworks to become more assertive and frameworks to generate more referrals. There are 27 fundamental selling frameworks in total. But if frameworks make winning that simple, why doesn’t everyone use them? The biggest hurdle to using frameworks in sales is intuition. Selling culture has embraced the intuitive seller. We don’t talk bout the salesman who worked 9-5, followed the frameworks and reached 140% of his sales target. We do bang on about the seller who followed their passion, went above and beyond for their buyer or who used some new psychological trick to close a deal. Salespeople stress when their manager asks them about their pipeline progress. But they bustle with excitement when they share a gut feeling about a deal. If selling frameworks make you nervous, it’s probably because they threaten your reliance on intuition. It’s time to get over it. If you want to beat quota and make some serious money, start using frameworks. It’s time to become a professional. Ready to get started? I’ve outlined all 27 of the fundamental selling frameworks a free training video and workbook. You can find it for a limited time at Salesman.org/Training.

[spp-player] Make more calls. Send more emails. Knock on more doors. Use more technology. More! It doesn’t work. The problem for most salespeople isn’t that they need more. The problem is that they don’t know how to sell. At a certain point, giving a racing driver more power, more grip, more downforce doesn’t make the car go faster. Skill becomes the limiting factor. Would I beat Lewis Hamilton in a race if my car had 20% more horsepower? Heck no. Would I be able to keep up with Lewis if I had an instructor next to me and another additional 50% horsepower? Nope. If your buyer doesn’t care about your story and the value that you deliver to the market, then it doesn’t matter how many times you reach out. More isn’t the solution to your problem. Getting better at selling is the answer. “So, Will you big smart arse, how do I get better at selling them?” There are four steps – Personality – Become the person who is comfortable talking about money, being rejected, and doing the work. Process – Understand the step-by-step frameworks that take a person from prospect to buyer. Platform – Become known in your industry as an expert and shortcut the sales cycle by going straight to adding value. Performance – Turbocharge your efforts by becoming motivated, productive, and influential. More interruption is lazy. It’s lazy because if you really did know how to sell, you’d impact your prospects rather than send them more crap.

When potential buyers start walking away from a deal, most reps do one of two things. 1) They re-emphasize the value of their product. Or 2) they offer a discount. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But there’s a third option here too. And that’s down-selling. Down-selling is one of the most underutilized tools in a sales rep’s toolbox. And when you know how to do it right, it can mean a serious boost to your monthly earnings. How to down-sell the right way so you can salvage more deals, boost your numbers, and bring in a fatter commission check. Sound good? Then let’s go. What Is Down-Selling? What is down-selling anyway? Well let’s start with a definition we can all agree on. Down selling is the art of strategically closing prospects when they are on the way out of the door. When you down-sell, you close sales that otherwise would have gone to your competition. And when you down-sell, you’re getting deals done even if they are less profitable than what you would have liked. It’s not ideal, sure. But it’s better than the alternative—no sale at all. .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “If you don’t have a thought of what you’re going to do if you don’t get a deal, then you’re in trouble.” Gavin Pressman Salesman Podcast Now if you aren’t down-selling your prospects, you’re wasting all that time and energy you spent on winning the sale. Think of it like this – not down-selling is like buying a show-bound pedigree puppy. You’re spending a fortune feeding, grooming, and training the dog. Driving them to a dog show, all happy and content that you’re going to win some awards… and then leaving them in the car as you watch in the stands. You’re throwing it all away! Clearly this would be bad for the dog, and you’ve wasted a lot of time and energy as well. So make sure you’re down-selling the buyers who might get away. Now let me give you a couple of examples of down-selling – Examples of Down-Selling Let’s say that you are selling SAAS (or software as a service) to the engineering industry. You might have multiple tiers of service that you can offer. Say a buyer engages with you. So you then go through the entire sales process with them, and you know that they should be on your premium tier service. However, at the last minute, something changes within the prospect's organization, and now their budgets have been slashed in half. At this point, you have invested considerable time into the deal. So with all that spent time and effort, it’s definitely worth down selling them on a different tier service so that you can still recuperate some of those costs. Another example of down selling would be reducing your minimum contract length on a monthly service product and giving the buyer a little bit more freedom to leave if the service does not sue them. Of course, you don’t want to start the sales process by offering discounts, pitching cheaper services, or making contract concessions. But if that’s what it takes to stop a deal going to your competitors, then sometimes biting the bullet can definitely be worth it. So other than getting the deal done, what are the benefits of down-selling the buyer? Benefits of Down-Selling The biggest benefit to down-selling a buyer is that you build trust. When you show that you’re willing to work with an organization to implement your service at a price they can afford, you build trust in the organization. And that means once the deal’s closed, you can then upsell to help recoup costs. Often called the “land and expand” approach to selling, this is often the best way to close very large service accounts. When I was selling medical devices, I would often down-sell a customer in the first instance so that I could get a deal completed very quickly. Then I would sell larger deals into the account over time because they already had our company approved as a supplier within the procurement department, and they already trusted us to deliver on our promises. The other major benefit to down-selling a buyer is that you manage to claw some revenue in that otherwise would’ve disappeared into the market. Although it might be disappointing for you to get the deal you want originally, down selling can often help cushion the blow and keep your commissions coming in strong. And last but not least, it maintains customer retention. You don’t just have to use down-selling when working with new prospects. You can even use it on existing customers. If during an annual call, for exam

[spp-player] Everybody loves a remarkable story. The difference between an average story and a remarkable one is the amount of imagination that is captured. Remarkable stories take your buyers somewhere new. Remarkable stories aren’t always factual, but they are always consistent. Buyers have a tough time working out if the hero was called Barry or Brian but they’re very good at sniffing out inconsistencies in how the story starts and ends. Remarkable stories build trust. In a world where nobody trusts anyone anymore stories are an increasingly powerful weapon of mass attention. We don’t trust the news. We don’t trust vaccine manufacturers. We don’t trust salespeople… unless they tell a remarkable story. Remarkable stories don’t require high production values, slide decks or a conference room. Either the buyer is eager to listen, or they’re not. Remarkable stories are never aimed at an entire market. What is remarkable to you isn’t remarkable to me. When you dumb down a story to make it fit for many, it becomes average to all. The most remarkable stories match the world view of a tiny audience and then the tiny audience amplifies it on your behalf. Finally. remarkable stories don’t teach buyers anything new. Instead, the very best stories agree with what the buyer already believes and makes them feel smart. The more secure you can make the buyer feel with your stories, the more likely they will be to buy your product.

In a perfect world, we would all make decisions based on logic alone. But the science tells us that the majority of our choices are influenced by biases—automatic modes of thinking we don’t even realize are controlling us. Better understanding these 8 cognitive biases lets sales reps like you get in the heads of your buyers, subtly influence leads, and secure your sales success. 1. Anchoring Bias The first cognitive bias is called the anchoring bias. When making decisions, humans rely more heavily on the first lot of information they receive over any subsequent lots of information that come their way. The issue is, the first lot of information isn't always the most reliable. For example, say I'm selling a product and I tell you it's worth $20,000 a month. Then two days later I come to you with a credible story that I can now offer it to you for the low, low price of $10,000 a month. Seems like a complete bargain, right? This is because your judgment on what pricing is fair is based on the initial information that you received. This is an example of how “anchoring” is used as a tool of influence. Many organizations sell their products by anchoring a fictitious price that the product never actually sells for. Then they pitch the lower price afterward to secure a deal. This can also be used more subtly too. For example, if I ask you whether the tallest building on the planet was more or less than a thousand feet high, I've already anchored this number in your brain which can skew your response. So if you were thinking of a number between 800-1300 ft, then my question that mentioned 1,000 feet specifically skewed your answer. As it turns out, the world’s tallest building is in Dubai and is 2700 feet tall! See how that works? 2. Availability Bias The availability bias is when people overestimate the importance of the information they've already accepted. And that causes them to ignore other information that might contradict what they think they already know. A good example here is that a lot of people in the Western world consider terrorism a very real threat to their safety. Why? Because terrorism is screamed in our faces every single day through newspapers, TV shows, and of course Youtube videos. So most people assume because of the availability bias that you have a real chance of being killed by terrorists, and something needs to be done about it… The reality is, you're more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head or being struck by lightning than being attacked by a terrorist. Yet most people don't worry about these things. If you live in America, you're 130x times more likely to be killed by a police officer, the people who are there to keep you safe from terrorists, than die from a terrorist attack. How crazy is that? This cognitive bias works because most people do not make decisions based on facts; they make them based on stories as stories sink into our brains easier. This is an essential cognitive bias to remember when you're selling. The lesson here is you should blend facts about features and benefits with customer success stories. That’ll leave an impression on your potential customer's mind that will be hard for a competitor to change. 3. Bandwagon Bias See, people tend to believe what other people think. People like to be a part of the crowd rather than nervously looking on as they make a decision that doesn’t fall in line with everyone else. And in sales, you can really use that to your advantage. If you position yourself as either the industry-standard product or the hot new start-up service or service that everyone is flocking towards, you're instantly given an incredible amount of credibility. If everyone is using your product, it must be the best right? That’s how the potential customer will see it anyway. All because of the bandwagon bias. The bandwagon effect is especially devastating when you look at the financial markets. The world economy can technically be in a recession for months or even years before anyone pays attention to it. But when people start selling their shares, it encourages other people to sell theirs too. And that causes a scare and eventually a full-blown market crash. People aren't selling their stocks because they've analyzed the company and its performance. They’re doing it because everyone else is doing it. And that’s the bandwagon bias at play. 4. Decision Bias People tend to defend themselves once they've committed to a decision. This defensive stance is essential for sales professionals to understand. Because if you annoy a potential customer and they say they won’t do business with you, they’re usually going to stick to their guns. And that means you should just move on. Or better yet, don’t annoy them in the first place! Another example of this is what people call “fanboyism”. You can see this with nerds that love Apple products such as the iPhone or MacBook. Feature-wise, these devices aren’t very different from the compe

We all know mastering your cold calling game is essential for sales success. But what a lot of reps don’t come prepared for is voicemail. And that’s a real problem since 4 out of 5 cold calls end in a no pickup. So, how can you up your voicemail game and maximize the value of every one of your calls? Simple—just use these three word-for-word voicemail templates. So, ready to beef up your voicemails with these templates? Great, then let’s jump in. 1. The Foundation The Foundation Template. This is the template that each of the other voicemail templates are built on top of. And it goes like this: Hello, this is [your name] from, [company name]. I’m calling because, [reason for calling]. This benefits you for, [benefits]. I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly. Have a great day. Goodbye. It’s simple. And it’s effective. Now let’s take a look at what using this template looks like in the real world. Real World Example So this is a word-for-word example of what I say when selling our Selling Made Simple Academy to the VP of Sales: Hi this is Will Barron, calling from Salesman.org. I’m calling because we’ve just improved your competitor’s revenue by 24% with 4 weeks of training and we can do the same for you. I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly. So let’s break down this template so we can understand what we’re really trying to do here. First off, you can see that I’m not doing anything weird or manipulative. The old-school way of selling would be something like this: “I’m calling as I have something incredibly exciting to share and I need you to call back right now before you lose access to it…” I’ve even heard old-school sales trainers tell reps to start sharing a benefit and then purposefully hang up halfway through the sentence so it sounds like they’ve been cut off. Both of these tactics are gross and obviously manipulative. Imagine using a tactic like this with a surgeon, which is who I used to sell to when I worked in medical device sales. They’d think you were an idiot at worst and at best, it would severely devalue you as an industry expert in their eyes. Why It’s Effective Let’s look at this template again and see why it works: Hello, this is [your name] from, [company name]. I’m calling because, [reason for calling]. This benefits you for, [benefits]. I will follow up with an email right now and I look forward to speaking with you shortly. Have a great day. Goodbye. The main thing that we are trying to communicate is that we are an expert calling upon someone that we can help. We’re also getting them used to our voice and preempting the fact that we are going to continuously follow up with them until they give us a response. That is all we are really asking for from a voicemail. Unless you’re halfway through the deal and you have something specific to talk about, most of the time your prospects won’t reply directly to your voicemail. And that’s why we always follow up with an email that builds on the trust and rapport our voicemail just created. Now what’s great about this template is that you can tweak it for a variety of situations. And that brings us to template number two… 2. The Referral As you might’ve guessed, this is the template you can use to increase response rates by pointing to a referral. So for example, every time I provided a high level of service to my surgical customers, I would ask them if they thought any of their colleagues could also benefit from the same value. Often, they would provide a referral which I would then use voicemail, calls and email to follow up on. So let’s look at how we can use this basic voicemail template specifically for referrals. Hi, [prospect name], my name is, [your name], and I’m calling from, [company]. [Referrers name], suggested I should book a meeting with you and gave me your details because we have, [benefits to original prospect], for them and they think we can do the same for you. I will send you an email right now with a little detail on how, [referrers name], thinks we can help you and it will be great to speak with you this week. Why It Works So in this voicemail we’ve leveraged a number of the principles of influence. Let’s break them down. The voicemail includes: Social proof from including our referrer’s name and recommendation. We’ve been polite and likable, setting the foundation for rapport building. And we’ve also started to build a little bit of authority because we have solved the problem that our prospect is facing for somebody else. That’s not bad for a quick voicemail, right? So now let’s look at a voicemail template for when you have “no show events”. 3. The Follow Up Prospects don’t always show up to product demos, scheduled meetings, and other sales events. This is all a part of doing business and truth be told, it’s nothing to be worried about. But we do need to relentlessly follow up on no-shows so we can either get a “no” from

The internet is an opportunity and an issue for sellers. A few clicks and you have infinite data. More is being added to the infinite every second. But you can’t consume, research or act on infinite. If there were infinite rules to a sport, we wouldn’t watch it. If there were infinite Disney characters, they’d have no brand value. Humans are not wired for infinite. And here steps in our sales automated outreach tools… “Artificial intelligence will scour the infinite sales data you have and give you exactly what you need…” Maybe someday. Right now AI can’t even keep obvious spam out of my inbox. Until recently, having more data helped salespeople. Suddenly, more data adds confusion and procrastination to their days. You know who has the exact information you need? Your buyer. It’s much more effective to call your buyer and ask them a question than it is to stick another software tool in your “sales stack”. Computers are great at gathering general data. Humans are better at uncovering the important bits. Computers will tell you the numbers, metrics and charts. Humans are better at finding why people do things. Computers are better at algorithmic math. Humans are better at motivating other humans. Computers will mine your online activities and spit out a persona that marketing loves. Humans will influence another human and close the damn sale. So if you’re struggling to get in front of or influence people in the market right now, stop starring at endless dashboards and pick up the phone and ask a couple of people who bought from your recently – Why did you buy from us? How did you find out about us? What could we have done to speed up the sales process? And then do more of that. Make selling simple. Click here to see if Salesman.com Academy can help you simplify your sales process.

Sales reps are busy (you know this). Lead generation, following up with prospects, updating contact info, setting up meetings, researching buyers, closing deals—it all takes time to do. A lot of time. It's no wonder, then, that sales reps are happily incorporating sales automation tools into their processes more and more. These tools drive efficiency, free up time, and even boost conversion rates. According to Instapage, 80% of marketing automation users see increased leads, and 77% see increased conversions. However, using an automation tool effectively means developing a strategic and data-driven sales cadence. But what is a sales cadence? How does it help? And what elements should every sales cadence contain? That's exactly what this guide examines. We're also going to look at some proven sales cadence frameworks and examples you can model your framework after. What Is a Outbound Sales Cadence? An outbound sales cadence (or prospecting cadence) is a sequence of communications or “touches” that salespeople can follow to develop relationships with buyers. They usually consist of various outreach methods (email, phone, social media, etc.) and span several days, weeks, or even months. Your sales cadence is a critical part of the modern B2B sales process. Think of a sales cadence like a cold outreach roadmap. A strategic sales cadence tells you when to reach out to leads and how to communicate with them. With it, there's no more asking, “Should I follow up today or tomorrow?” And there's no more wondering which communication method to use. Like so many other aspects of sales, there's no single cadence that's a fit for every business or industry. Bigger deals with a longer sales cycle, for instance, might call for a more stretched-out sales cadence. Conversely, products with a lower price point may benefit from a more rapid sales cadence. That's why it's so essential to develop and tweak a sales cadence that's right for you and your current outbound sales strategy. Why Should You Use One? Some sales reps are under the impression that a effective sales cadence is only suitable for large teams. And for smaller businesses, salespeople should simply “feel” their way through connecting with a buyer. This couldn't be further from the truth. Instead, implementing and following an official, clearly defined sales cadence brings a variety of benefits for sales teams, both big and small. Benefits for a sales rep like – Simplify – The most significant benefit of following a sales cadence is that you never lose track of where you're at in the sales process. Most successful deals require eight touches, according to HubSpot. And when you're playing it by ear with your follow-up messages, it's easy to forget when you last reached out or what your previous email covered. There's no question of what to say next or when to say it with a sales cadence. It's a more straightforward, more efficient way of selling. Scale Without Spam – The “wing it” approach may work when you only have a handful of clients. But as business expands and you're juggling a growing list of potential buyers, wires get crossed and opportunities for rapport building go overlooked. With a well-defined sales cadence, you can handle more clients, close more deals, and not have to worry about overwhelming buyers with too much communication. Track & Refine – The first step to building a foolproof sales process is tracking what works and what doesn't. With a sales cadence, you can observe and analyze which stages you're losing ground with buyers. And you can refine your process when you recognize new steps that are working well. Essential Elements of a Successful Sales Cadence As you can see, adopting and following a sales cadence is a great way to streamline your buyer outreach and lock in more wins. But what are the elements that make up a triumphant sales cadence? A) Activities Every sales cadence framework is made from a combination of outreach activities. These outreach activities are the individual social interactions you can have with a potential buyer. And as with the overall structure, the type of activity that resonates with your buyer most will vary. Generally, there are seven different types of activities you can engage in. Video – Video messages sent to the buyer through email or via social media. Social – Text-based messages or other type of engagement through social media platforms. Email – Text-based messages sent to the buyer through email. Meeting – In-person meeting with the prospect. Call – Both phone calls and video calls are included here. Voicemail – Voice messages left for your prospects after a no pick-up. Text – SMS messages delivered to your buyer's cell phone. Remember to vary up your outreach activities. Not everyone will respond to an activity the same way. For example, an older executive from a more traditional company may gravitate to doing business over phone calls. A younger bu

Day to day, do you spend more time telling or doing? What do I mean by that? – Do you solve problems for your prospects and earn the meeting or do you tell them you have a wonderful solution? Do you pick up the phone cold call prospects or tell your colleagues about the newest cold calling hack that you’ve uncovered? Do you ask for the business assertively or do you tell your sales manager that you think the deal is probably going to come in soon?   There are countless ways to tell. You can shout, talk, scream, leave passive aggressive post-it notes on the office microwave informing Barbra to clean her shit up. Doing stuff is different. To have an impact on our environment, we need to do. Telling rather than doing is the safe thing to do in the corporate environment. You can get feedback, someone can stop you before you make a mistake, people will chat back and forth about the best way to do stuff. But if you actually cared about the outcome of the situation, you wouldn’t tell, you would do. If my house is on fire, I’m running in to get my dog out. I’m not standing around telling people about my plans. If I really think Salesman.com Academy can help a salesperson reach their potential and become finically free in just a couple of years, I’ll follow-up until they get signed up. So today, when you go to tell a prospect, a colleague or your sales manager about your plans. Stop. Shut up and take the first step of action towards completing them. I guarantee that you’ll make more progress than by chatting crap.

Pop quiz hotshot—what’s the #1 sales objection you’re likely to run into? Got it yet? The answer is overwhelmingly… price. But 90% of the time, the problem isn’t about budget or expenses. It’s about value. The better you are at selling your value, the less price is going to matter. And this 4-step framework shows you how to do just that. Now, one of the most important lessons you’ll learn in your sales career is that value isn’t the same as price. And oftentimes, an objection on price really comes down to value, not the cost. In my interview with Saas marketing expert Ajit Ghuman, he said the same thing… .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “Many times the issue of price is not the issue of price, it's an issue of we didn't communicate the value properly.” Ajit Ghuman Salesman Podcast What Is Value? What is “value” in the context of a B2B sale? Value is the difference between the intrinsic cost of a product and the price the buyer pays. So a car for example has intrinsic cost in the fact that it’s made of lots of expensive materials. But the value is that it can take you places. You don’t have to take the bus, you can fit more activities in your day, and it can exhilarate you if you like driving fast like me. So it’s much easier for a buyer to say yes to an offer with lots of value, because it makes the offer price look small in comparison. This gets exciting for salespeople because… Total Value = Product value + Your value So you actually have a leverage point here to close more deals, and you don’t have to rely on anyone else to increase the value in the equation. So how can you as an individual salesperson add more value to the offer and make it a no-brainer for the buyer? The 4 Steps to Building Real Value That’s where today’s framework comes in. In four steps, you can increase both the product value and your own value to the buyer. And that way you don’t have to compete on price at all. 1. Identify Real Problems Often buyers will come to you with what they believe is their issue. But in reality, they’re just seeing the superficial problem—the symptom rather than the disease. With your experience, you’re perfectly situated to help the buyer diagnose what’s really wrong. Think of it like a buyer going to a mechanic and saying that their steering wheel is causing them issues. They turn the steering wheel but the car doesn’t change direction. But you as an expert in your field can see plain as day that the car doesn’t have any wheels. No wonder that turning the steering wheel isn’t working. In the same way, you can add massive value to your potential buyers by diagnosing the problem that’s causing the issues they see. 2. Be a Guide Next up, you know the pitfalls of your industry and products. It’s likely you’ve taken buyers through the buying process hundreds of times. The buyer on the other hand may be making a purchase in your industry for the very first time. Therefore there’s tremendous value for the buyer if you can honestly help them navigate the landmines and potential issues they may face along the way. For example, when I was selling medical devices I’d regularly add value to the surgeons that’d head up the buying project by making introductions to key procurement and management staff that they didn’t realize they needed to onboard before getting the deal signed. By making their life easier, I was able to increase the total value of working together. See how that works? 3. Industry Insights Next up is industry insights. I have a couple of consulting clients that don’t want me to teach them how to sell. They’re already doing a great job at getting deals done. Instead, they jump on the phone with me every month to get insights on what is working across the broader B2B sales industry. They’re looking for cutting-edge, innovative ideas, not a training plan. Now you might not realize it but you’re probably full of industry insights that could be really valuable to your buyers too. Just think how much time you spend in and around your own specific part of your industry. It’s likely 100x more experience than your buyers have with it. So you’ve likely lots of valuable insights to share and boost your value. 4. Facilitating the Buying Process Finally, unless you’re selling to a professional procurement team, it’s likely your buyer isn’t used to buying things in the B2B environment. Buying new products, services, or technology probably makes up a tiny amount of what they do each year in the

[spp-player] Stop rushing to come second. In sales second place doesn’t count. Only one salesperson wins the deal. The flip-side? When you’re the best selling becomes easy. People will fly across the world to visit the best restaurant. People will wait in line for hours to get a piece of paper squiggled from the best athlete. When you’re ill, you don’t ask for the second-best doctor. You’ll shout, demand and pay way over the market rate to speak to the best. We all have limited time and so we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top. If you’re not the best salesperson, you don’t exist. Our culture celebrates the best. It’s typical that the top salesperson in your industry makes 10 times more than the second best. Probably 100 times more than the 10th best seller. It’s a steep curve. There’s only room at the very top for a few people. That scarcity makes being number one worth something. Do you want to earn more money? Get more respect? Want to stop cold calling and have buyers throwing themselves at you instead? Then become number one. At this point you might be screaming in your head “of course I want to be the best”. But do you really? Where is the evidence? What have you gone through that your competition hasn't? What expertise have you developed that they don't have? What audience have you slaved away to create that they don’t have access to because they’ve been watching game of thrones instead? It’s easy being number one. It’s arduous work to get there. If you want to dominate the mind of your buyer, become number one. Not the number one generic salesperson in the world. There’s too much competition. Become the number one salesperson for your specific product, in your specific industry, in your specific location, for your specific ideal buyer. That’s doable, right? Being average is for losers. Being number one makes selling simple.

A big shoutout to the HubSpot Podcast Network for supporting this episode. Stay inspired with more podcasts that help grow your business at HubSpot.com/podcastnetwork. Today's principle is that average action will always get you average results. Most salespeople barely hit their quota and that used to be me as well. It wasn't until I started becoming more unreasonable with my expectations that my income started to explode. The cold hard truth is that what you did to have success during the good times is not going to be enough to make it through a recession. Therefore, you need to become unreasonable. Unreasonable with your levels of action. Unreasonable with your assertiveness. Unreasonable in taking new approaches that you hadn't considered previously to find and close new business. Practically this means 5 things – 1– Longer hours You may have to work longer hours at least at first to start testing what works and what doesn't in this new selling environment. How you generated leads during easy times is unlikely to be effective when you try implementing it during a recession. You’re going to find that prospects want to speak to salespeople even less than before. I'm not saying that you should reduce the amount of sleep that you get each night so that you can squeeze a few more hours of prospecting each day. What I am saying is, that you will need to uncover new ways of achieving your previous level of results. 2– Then become lazy Counter the first point, as soon as you uncover a better way of finding and closing new business you need to become lazy. Uncover the 20% of efforts that is getting you 80% of your results and focus in on that. Ditch the crap that isn’t crushing it. Then a few weeks later, find the 20% of effort that is getting you 80% of the results within your new process. And continue this until every moment that you are working in the new selling environment, you're generating meetings and progressing sales to a close. The recession that we’re in is not like COVID. During COVID the advice from sales experts was to stay in touch with prospects, even if they weren't buying from you in that moment and to start to build stronger relationships with them so that when the money starts following, your deals will come back to life. COVID however was a completely different environment to a real recession because it was artificial. Governments were stopping people going to the office, the public could not spend their cash the ways that they would usually do so. So the market was artificially held back for 12 months. This time around we have an organic and completely natural downturn in the economy. Companies still have cash; you must work out the most efficient way to get in between the problem they have and the solution they need so that you can accept payment for solving their pain point. 3– Lose the losers This next point can be a tough to implement but has a dramatic effect during a reccession. We've all heard the saying that you are “the average of the five people that you spend the most time with”. There is also science to back this up. Most people earn between plus or minus 20% of what their parents earn for example. What does this tell us? This tells us that we need to stop spending time around people, influencers, and media that are not helping us progress towards our sales goals. That includes any colleagues who are panicking about their performance right now. It's very unlikely that spending time with individuals who are panicking is going to improve your chances of smashing quota. So don't do it. The same goes with cutting out the news and social media. Ignore all of it, get your head down, complete the sales activities that lead to success in this new economy, and you'll be just fine. 4– Minimalism Step four follows a similar pathway to step three. We need to become minimalists. I'm not saying that you should sell your house and move into a small white room with a mattress on the floor with no cutlery. Instead think about this definition of minimalism – “remove anything that doesn't help you become the person that you want to be”. Tying this directly into your sales role, you should remove any activity or interaction that doesn't progress you towards becoming a person who smashes their sales quota regardless of the economic climate. Does that expensive watch move you towards becoming the person you need to become to hit quota? Or would you be better off spending that cash getting training and unlimited coaching from a organisation like us over salesman.com? 5– Become assertive The final step is to become more assertive. You going to have to ask for the business more often to close it during a recession. You going to have to implement longer and more assertive sales cadences to book the same number of meetings during a recession. You must be clearer with your outreach in general if anyone's ever going to listen to you during a recession. So that is it, 5 steps to breaking the idea the a

Ahhhhh the sales call. This is where the magic happens in any buyer’s journey. When it goes right, a sales call qualifies your buyer, drives enthusiasm, and sets the final deal in motion. But done wrong, it can eliminate trust, tarnish your brand, and send leads headed for the hills – permanently. There’s a lot riding on a sales call. And if you don’t come to the table with a strategic Pre-Call Plan, you’re setting yourself up for failure. When we’re working with the sales professionals in our community at the Selling Made Simple Academy, the salespeople who love their calls tend to do more pre-call preparation than the folks who don’t enjoy them. The good news is that this pre-call preparation can be done in just a couple of minutes too. So if you want to find yourself much more relaxed, focused and effective in your next sales call, then let’s start building your Sales Pre-Call Plan. 1. Review Step one is conducting a brief yet thorough buyer review. Before picking up the phone, give yourself a few minutes to open your CRM and LinkedIn to read up on the person you’re going to be speaking to. Now you don’t have to go too crazy with the details here. Just get enough information to inform the rest of your research and planning. Try to answer these questions before you move on through the rest of your pre-call planning: When was the last time you spoke with this person? What has changed in their world this month? Are they qualified to do business with you? 2. Catch Up Next you should have a couple of questions in your mind to bring everyone who’s involved in the conversation up to speed so you’re all at the same point in the sales process. Have these questions lined up before dialing so you’re ready first thing. Your catch-up questions could be: You’re still in the market to change X in your business, right? We’ve just made X change with our product. Do you think it could solve your Y problem? Is it fair to say that X is…? I jot these catch-up questions down before each call so I have a firm starting point for every conversation. 3. Goals You’re not going to close a sale on every call you have with a buyer. But it is important to always have a goal for the call that pushes the buyer forward toward a close. That way, you’ll always have an endpoint in mind. And you’ll naturally nudge prospects down that path, even if you aren’t doing it consciously. Now additionally, I like to get the buyer to agree on the goal of the call before I make it. I usually do this at the end of the email setting up the call or at the end of the earlier phone conversation. This is super simple to do too. All it takes to close the agreement on the next call’s goal is to say: “On our next call, does it make sense to do X?” If they say “yes” then you’ve got a clear goal for your next call. If they say “no” then you ask: “What agenda for next week's call would make sense?” And you can work out the new agenda from there. Again, it’s a simple step but it’s incredibly important. 4. Objections Now step four is all about doing your objections homework. One of the traits of high-performing salespeople that we’ve uncovered with our research at Salesman.org is that high performers are optimists. It’s not rocket science. If you never think anyone will close, you won’t make an effort to close them. This leads to a vicious cycle of a lack of personal belief and zero deals getting done. So most high-performing salespeople are optimistic about the outcomes of their selling conversations. With that said, it’s worthwhile to spend a minute to ponder what objections might come up on your upcoming call. Now if you’ve been selling your solution for a while now, you may know the best responses to these objections already. If you’re new to the industry, it may take some studying. I personally don’t write these objections out and make up a rebuttal for each and every one of them, for every single phone call. But I do predict what might come up ahead of time to give my subconscious brain a little time to process some possible rebuttals. If you’re new to sales, you should keep an “objection journal”. An objection journal is a notepad where you write down any new objections that come up in conversations. Objection journals let you see what objections come up regularly so that you can then spend a little time coming up with a rebuttal for the most common issues you face. 5. Support Materials Finally, in your pre-call planning you should pull together any information or materials that could make your call run more smoothly. Nothing makes you look more amateur than having to fill 3 minutes of awkward silence on the phone as you try and find that piece of paper that you need from your messy work bag. Case studies, product catalogs, testimonials, use cases, whatever. Anything you need to help you sell, get it together before jumping on the call. So pull together everything you might need for your call beforehand. And bonus points if you’re using either an overpriced “

A big shoutout to the HubSpot Podcast Network for supporting this episode. Stay inspired with more podcasts that help grow your business at HubSpot.com/podcastnetwork. Welcome to the “performance improvement plan”. This is a new series of short-form podcast episodes that I promise to put together and will continue to publish as we move into and hopefully out of the impending recession. For anyone who is fortunate to have not come across the term performance improvement plan in their career, a performance improvement plan is what your sales manager leadership put you on when your performance isn't up to scratch. I’ve been on two of them, but I came out of the other side a stronger, more effective salesperson. Sometimes they’re exactly what you need to get your head out of your ass and to start making real progress. In my experience performance improvement plans are typically enacted when your management wants to start collecting evidence that you are not performing to the standards of the organisation so that they can then eventually let you go without any repercussions of firing you. This performance improvement plan series that I’m going to publish each however is different. I'm here to give you the daily motivation and tactical advice you need to improve your performance to the point at which your success becomes undeniable within your organisation. The goal being that the amount of revenue that you're going to generate in both hard times and easy times will make you unsackable. The first lesson that I have for you today is a tough one. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but if you an choke it down, your life will be better for it. The lesson – “you are exactly where you deserve to be” Let me say that again you are exactly where you deserve to be. This is a harsh reality of not just B2B sales but of life as well. If you are behind on your quota right now, you have only yourself to blame. It's been widely publicised in the media that a recession is coming. You are bright enough to understand, that during recessions most organisations reduce their spending on products and services that are not essential, and they become a lot more picky as to the products and services that they do spend money on. And so, knowing this, if you haven't been working your ass off for the past six months to build a solid sales pipeline, you are exactly where you deserve to be. If you haven’t at least six months’ worth of living costs saved up in a liquid bank account, and you've been spending money on crap that you don't really need, again knowing that there is an impending recession that will affect everybody sales careers, you are exactly where you deserve to be. If during the good times of the past ten years of rapid economic growth, you’ve been spending your evenings watching Netflix, becoming overweight, and going out of your way to avoid learning how to improve your sales skills, knowing that at some point we’ll enter a rapidly changing selling environment, you are exactly where you deserve to be. Now, this isn't all doom and gloom. If you are one of the thousands of Selling Made Simple Academy students that have signed up in the past couple of years, you've improved your sales skills, you've built a strong pipeline and you've become known as a recognised expert in your industry, you are exactly where you deserve to be. You will now dominate the marketplace for the next 6 to 12 months. You will become a hero within your sales team because you will be one of the few individuals that has already done the hard work and so has resilience in your sales pipeline. Now, the good news is that there is still time the change. You don't need to join Selling Made Simple Academy, I'm not here to shove our training and coaching program down your throat. But you do need to put in more hours, work smarter, and be more strategic right now, if the place that you believe you deserve to be six months from now, is a place of financial abundance, security, and admiration of your selling peers. So ask yourself the questions as you’re working through your selling activities today – Is what I'm doing right now going to lead me to massive success six months from now? Can the task I'm doing right now be eliminated, delegated, or automated? If the percentage of my pipeline that usually closes got slashed, how many more prospects would I have put in the top of my pipeline so that I still smashed my sales quota 12 months from now? How can I convert the value proposition of my product into a must have during the recession rather than a nice to have? So that's it for today's performance improvement plan. I hope you enjoy this new series. My promise to you is that I will give you everything that you need from a motivation and strategy standpoint, over these daily podcast episodes, over the next few years as we ride through this recession to make serious money. All you have to do is implement the strategies undo the work.

Killing it in sales is all about one thing—alignment. Is what you’re selling the solution to your prospect’s problem? Does it alleviate their pain points? The tricky thing though is that 95% of the time, prospects only tell you about their surface-level pains. But to close a deal successfully, you need to be able to solve the problem that’s causing those pains. You’ve got to treat the disease, not the symptoms. And today we’re looking at 5 word-for-word questions to help. Surface Level Pains During the first few talks with potential buyers, you’ll only scratch the surface of their pain points. Your prospects don’t have the expertise to really get to the bottom of the issues. And so you’re left with the superficial problems, not the ones that are the real cause of their pains. Now that’s actually good news for salespeople like us. Because if buyers did have that knowledge, products, or expertise needed to dive deeper into their pains, they could solve them without your help. So this leaves a gap between a buyer knowing they have a problem and not knowing how to fix it. And that’s where we come in. We close that gap. But to do that, we need to move past the superficial pain points and get to the heart of a buyer’s problem. And we can do that using five questions in particular. Now before we get into those questions, there are four main categories that surface-level buyer pains fall into. Let’s look at some examples of what your potential buyers might say for each category. #1. Financial Pains Financial pains. You can spot these with statements like… “Revenue is up, but profits are down” “I don’t have enough visibility of the numbers to make sound financial decisions” “We’re only profitable enough to keep the doors open” #2. People Pains People pains, shown by statements like… “Our team’s morale is low” “Our managers don’t drive innovation” “Our best employees keep leaving to our competitors” #3. Productivity Pains Productivity pains… “We keep missing our client deadlines” “We have quality issues that are leading to higher refunds” “We spend too much time in meetings” #4. Process Pains And process pains, which show up with statements like… “Our hiring process is a mess“ “We have no system in place to monitor our sales pipeline” “The customer service department is inundated and can’t keep up” Alright, so now you know the four categories of pain points. And you’ve heard some examples of how they might share them. So let’s now look at some questions we can ask to dig deeper into the buyer's pain. We want to dig deeper into the buyer’s pain so that we can align our service to their deepest, most impactful pain points. Because when we align our service to a really deep pain, it becomes a “must have” rather than “something to consider next quarter”. 1. “What’s holding you back?” The first question that we can ask to dig deeper into the pain of our buyers is this: “What’s the main thing holding your company (or division) back from growing right now?” This question is great at eliciting a very specific response. One that lands your prospects pains into one of the four categories we covered before. Financial Pain People Pain Productivity Pain Processing Pain This question is the starting point to go a level deeper than the more general categories of pain that we’ve already discussed. And once you’ve done that, you can move on to the next question… 2. “How do you plan to solve this?” “How do you plan to solve this pain point?” An uneducated buyer will tell you that they are unsure how to solve their pain point. This is an incredible opportunity for you to educate the buyer on how your service can solve the problem and relieve their pain. A more educated buyer who is further through the sales process might have a few ideas on how they can solve the pain. But clearly there’s still something holding them back from taking action. So the next step is to uncover what that thing is that’s keeping them from solving the problem themselves. Now on to question number three… 3. “What’s your deadline?” We uncover lots of information when we ask the buyer the next question: “What is your deadline to solve this problem?” If the buyer tells us that there is no deadline, then the problem is not very painful for the buyer. And that means they’re not going to be very motivated to solve it, meaning you’ll have to work harder to earn their business. The takeaway here? Avoid doing business with these individuals. They’re not worth the effort. Alternatively, if the buyer does have a set deadline to solve this pain point by, you now have a very qualified buyer that is worth engaging with further. Now we need to keep probing and see if there is the budget and authority to solve the pain. 4. “What does your boss think?” Now question number four is where we uncover the true level of pain the buyer is in. After you’ve gone through the previous steps and questions, it’s time to ask: “What does your boss think about all this?” One of the most common

The value proposition is a foundational component for any successful sales department. It tells salespeople like you which demographics to target. It clues you into your buyer's biggest hopes and fears. And it guides your strategy for closing deals and earning that oh-so-sweet “yes.” But what happens if your value proposition is wrong? What if the ideal buyer that marketing has told you to focus on isn't a fit for your product? What if all those unclosed leads who said your product “just isn't right” for them… were actually right? This guide takes you through how to develop, refine, and verify your value proposition. Along the way, you'll learn our proven four-step value proposition design framework. And with it, you can determine your product or service value (The Value Diagram), find your ideal buyer (The Buyer Breakdown), and develop the value proposition you need to close more sales. *How to Use This Guide – Despite how much business is done these days digitally, some things are still done better with your bare hands. That's why we recommend printing out both The Value Diagram and The Buyer Breakdown and filling them in with sticky notes. There is going to be quite a bit of shifting ideas up and down in terms of priority. And if you're trying to type ideas in or even writing them directly onto the sections, you'll be doing a lot of Ctrl+Xing and erasing along the way. Also, be sure to progress linearly throughout and not skip ahead for the best results with creating your unique value proposition. What Is a Value Proposition & Value Proposition Design? Before we get started on the value proposition design framework, let's first define what a value proposition is. Simply put, a value proposition is a promise to your buyer about what you have to offer. It should be free of jargon and painstakingly clear. It should communicate the benefits of choosing you over the competition. And it should identify who your ideal buyer is. Value proposition design, then, is the methodology used to create your value proposition. Plenty of respected business thinkers have covered value proposition design—namely, Alexander Osterwalder, who penned a book of the same name. In the Value Proposition Canvas, Osterwalder outlines how to develop a effective value proposition that gets to the heart of your product's value and shows how it solves your buyer's problem. Our four-step value proposition design framework is built on the principles outlined in Osterwalder's book. But instead of focusing on developing a new product based on a buyer's needs, our framework is for salespeople with an existing product that want to find their ideal target customer. Why Is a Value Proposition So Important? A value proposition (when constructed correctly) should drive nearly every action of a business. It could very become your competitive advantage in the marketplace. Your value prop should: Inform your product development Guide your marketing Instruct your sales team Govern your growth strategy Think of a value proposition as the seed from which the rest of the business grows. A bad seed, no matter how great the conditions around it, still won't sprout. And a healthy one can withstand even the worst environments. What's more, the process of strategic value proposition design lets you test and validate market needs. According to CB Insights, a whopping 35% of new businesses fail due to there being no market need for their products. This is a problem of “fit” (more on that later) between what the product offers and what the ideal buyer wants. With so much resting on a well-made value proposition, it's no wonder nearly 7 out of 10 B2B businesses have theirs clearly defined, according to Quick Sprout. Over half (52%) of those companies have different value propositions for other products or services. Use the following four-step value proposition design framework to identify your product value, determine your ideal buyer, and develop your value proposition statement.     Step 1: Identify Your Value (The Value Diagram) While Osterwalder's Value Proposition Design focuses on creating a new customer from buyer characteristics, your product as a B2B salesman is already defined. As such, we need to work backward by starting with the product. This framework step asks you to determine what your products bring to the table by filling out The Value Diagram. You'll be defining: Your Products Perk Producers Strain Reducer You'll likely already be well versed in what your products bring to the table. You probably already have oodles of product specs, use cases, and benefits lists ready for buyers at a moment's notice. Even still, you must go through the steps of filling out these sections from the ground up. If your “ideal buyer” is saying they don't need your product, the problem could be as deep-rooted as improperly defined product value. A) Your Products This section is a list of all the products or ser

Eventually in your sales career, you’re going to hit a maximum effectiveness at winning business. “You can’t squeeze blood from a stone,” as the old saying goes. But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck where you’re at. If you want to drive more deals now, you’ve got to increase your throughput of sales leads. And that takes boosting your sales productivity using these 7 techniques. 1. Reverse Engineering Reverse engineering your goals, mainly your financial goals. What are you shooting for? Is it your dream house? Sending your kids to college? A ridiculously fancy new watch? What is it that you want? Take your goals, jot them down, and then it’s time to work backward. Start with how much extra income you need to afford those goals in a specific amount of time. So say you want to bring in enough to put a 20% down payment on a $500,000 house in 3 years. What you’ll do is break down the extra amount you’ll need to earn $100k each year, or $33,000. Then break that down into quarterly, monthly, and weekly commission goals. But the work isn’t done yet. Now you have to take your sales success rate and work backward to determine how much outreach you need to do every week. So if you have a close rate of 5% and each deal nets you an extra $1000, you’ll have to find 660 prospects a year to achieve your financial goals. And that boils down to 13 prospects a week, totally manageable. And best of all, you’ll always know when you’re on track to that brand new house and when you need to make up for lost time. 2. Measuring Progress Now number two is measuring progress. If you aren’t keeping track of everything, you’ll have no idea if you’re 1) being productive and 2) becoming more productive. You’ll be going on feel alone and have no real data to show for it. So what should you do? Measure your stats relentlessly. At a bare minimum, and I’m emphasizing the minimum here, you need to be keeping track of the following on a weekly basis. Prospects added to your list Emails and sales cadences started Meetings booked Demos completed Sales closed Your average deal length With these numbers at your fingertips, you can keep track of larger trends, see how you’re improving, and even spot shifts in the industry before they become a problem. It’s simple to do. And it’s a game-changer. 3. Time Blocking Number three, time blocking religiously. This one takes some practice. But the productivity payoff is substantial. For every one of your important tasks, you need to assign them a time block on your calendar. Prospecting, two hours a day, 8 to 10. Lead follow-up, one hour a day, 1 to 2. Demos, 3:30 to 5. Whatever it is, make a specific start and end time. And focus on it and it alone during that time window. Now the tricky part is not wavering. Answering emails during the prospecting window, making calls during follow-ups, any sort of multitasking or shifting that time window will make the entire system fall apart. Instead, be single-minded. Be focused. And only work on that task and that task alone. It’ll take some adjustment. But you’re going to be 10X more productive once you do. 4. Leveraging Parkinson’s Law Number four is leveraging Parkinson’s Law. Have you ever heard the saying that a goldfish grows as big as its tank allows it to? Well the same is true for the time you spend on tasks. If you give yourself three hours to finish something, say a new email sequence, it’s going to take you three hours to do, even if it only should have taken two. Humans are great at following the path of least resistance. And if you’re spending more time than you should on something, it’s probably because the deadline is off. That’s Parkinson’s Law – “the time required to perform a task tends to extend to all the time available to perform it.” So to fight that, you need to reduce the time you give to projects. Ask for forgiveness rather than permission and cut back the task to make it simpler. Usually this’ll be for the better and you’ll be thanked for the greater efficiency. You may even want to consider not doing the task at all and seeing if anyone complains. You’d be surprised at how much of what we spend time on is just plain busy work. 5. Saying “No” Number five is a powerful one—learn how to say no. No gives clear boundaries and stops clients, colleagues, and unreasonable bosses from walking all over you. And I guarantee saying it just a few times a day will free up literally hours and hours of time each week. Your time is valuable. And you need to treat it as such. 6. Prioritizing Revenue Generators Six, prioritize the real revenue generators in your business. Your business won’t die if your accounts are a little late. It won’t die if you check your emails in an hour rather than immediately. And it won’t die if you spend a little less time polishing the website. But you know what will cause it to die? Neglecting to create a sustainable pipeline. Never moving prospects through it. Not closing on a time-sensitive deal and losing a sure thing. There

When it comes to qualifying sales leads, more doesn't always mean better. Notably, if the sales leads are not qualified. You could spend hours each day and still only manage to close a measly 1-3 leads out of a hundred. So, how does a B2B lead qualification process work? What systems can you employ to increase the effectiveness of your qualification process? And, most importantly, how is the perfect qualifying process different from the one you currently use? The important thing is knowing that the sales lead qualification process is all about knowing which questions to ask and whom to ask them. What Does Qualifying A Sales Lead Mean? Qualifying sales leads means the same thing in every context: determining if the subject meets predetermined criteria or ‘qualifies' for it. For example, to qualify a lead is to determine how likely the lead will develop into a sale. The whole point of sales lead qualification is to reduce the time a sales representative spends talking to potential customers who will not turn into buyers. Otherwise known as ‘chasing leads.' Sales qualification helps weed out the tire kickers by using a framework that allows the sales rep to process a lead and determine its sales potential. Narrowing down what B2B sales lead qualification frameworks you want to leverage each day when qualifying prospects is the biggest hurdle to success here. For example, if you are selling insurance products, a qualified lead would be someone who owns the item you're selling insurance for. You'd be surprised to learn about the amount of time sales reps spend chasing leads that are not even related to the products or services they are selling. Success in sales often comes down to spending more time with buyers who are a good fit and ready to buy. The ratio of the number of sales a rep closes from all the leads they have is called the close ratio. So when you are looking at improving the number of sales you make from your leads, you have to improve your close ratio. This is different from the conversion ratio, which measures how many leads you secure from the number of people exposed to your marketing efforts. Why Would You Want To Qualify Your Leads? The most straightforward answer is to save yourself time and effort. Less time spent on disqualified leads means more time spent on qualified ones. That means more conversions or sales. Successful sales people spent more time with decision makers, who use lead scoring and have a defined sales process. Sales Lead Qualification 101: The Basics The success of your attempts at qualifying sales leads depends on how effectively you can measure your leads' responses against your qualification criteria. We will discuss different qualification frameworks later but let's look at what they all share. Qualifying Questions All lead qualification systems use carefully designed qualifying questions to understand how well a lead matches your qualification criteria. Common qualifying questions include: Q1. What kind of budget do you have to solve this problem? Q2. Which feature are you most interested in? Q3. What kind of timeline do you have to get this implemented? Q4. What is the primary business problem you hope to solve with this product? Q5. What measures have you taken in the past to attempt to solve this issue? How effective were they at eliminating the problem? I have highlighted the most critical part of each question. Your qualifying questions have to sound as natural as possible to elicit helpful information from the lead. After all, why would anyone share their business problems if the questions like you're trying to manipulate them? Main Types of Sales Leads Depending on where the sales lead is within the funnel, the leads are given different names. A. Marketing Qualified Lead When your marketing department grabs an email address or phone number, they call them Marketing Qualified Lead or an MQL. An MQL has been exposed to your marketing initiatives and has shown interest in either purchasing your product or service or acquiring more information about it. An MQL is generally someone who has only make initial contact with your business and so often they are not quality leads at this point. B. Sales Qualified Lead Next, when sales teams speak to a MQL and ask them qualifying questions, they are then relabeled as Sales Qualified Leads or an SQL. These leads are likely to become customers because they have met your desired lead qualification criteria and they've had their long term pain points identified. C. Disqualified Lead The last type of sales lead is called a Disqualified Lead which is equally important as the previous two. Disqualified sales leads are the one type of lead that you want to eliminate from your sales pipeline. A disqualified sales lead is different from an Unqualified Lead. An unqualified lead is a prospect that has not shown enough interest at the marketing stage to be sent to the sales team. Another thing all prospecting frameworks share

Getting ghosted is every sales professional's nightmare. You think everything is going right—the prospect is the right fit for your target audience, your product is within their budget, and they are genuinely interested in buying it—until it's not. No response. Missed calls. Just pin-drop silence. You can't understand what the hell went wrong. Don't worry, though. You have to up your follow-up game. To help you out in these tricky situations, we'll show you how to write a follow-up email after no response and get the deal back to track. So let's get started! Why Should You Send a Follow-up Email After No Response? The whole point of sending up a follow-up email is to increase your chances of getting a response from your prospect. According to research, you can boost your reply rates by 65.8% when you send a single follow-up. What's more, the first follow-up email has a 40% increase in reply rate compared to the first sales email. This means your prospect is 40% more likely to reply to your email. What's more, no response doesn't mean any interest. Tons of factors affect a prospect's decision to not respond to your email: You may have caught them at the wrong time They may not have seen your email They may have seen your email but forgot to reply Your email may be deeply buried in their inbox They may not be interested now but can be later if you stay in contact. Even after getting zero response, sending up follow-up emails may give you the leverage you need to close a deal. The moral of the story is to never skip on following up—you might just lose a closed-won deal. When Should You Follow Up After Getting No Response? Sending follow-up emails is an art. In addition to the contents of your follow-up email, you also want to get the follow-up timing right. A week is too long, and sending a follow-up on the same day is—for the lack of a better word—desperate. That's why we recommend waiting three days before following up after no response. You can send 2-3 emails in your follow-up email sequence to urge the prospect to get back to you. And while you should leave the prospect after sending a few follow-ups, don't send them a breakup email. Instead, leave the conversation open and return to it sometime in the future. How To Send a Follow-up Email After No Response No response means you've already sent your first follow-up email after talking to the prospect. So here, we'll give you suggestions on how to write an email after your first follow-up. A) Send a Fresh Follow-up Email If following up after no response involves you cutting and pasting—or forwarding—the original email, we've got to stop you right there. First and foremost, your prospect will feel you're trying to guilt them for not responding. Secondly, it's also possible for your second follow-up email to get filtered by spam or even get blocked by the prospect. That's why every follow-up email should be a blank slate. Instead, try new and witty subject lines, opening lines, and calls to action. And not only your second follow-up email, but all subsequent follow-up emails should be fresh. Think about it: why limit yourself to one email thread that already has several old messages weighing it down? B) Maintain a Friendly and Cordial Tone Following up after no response can feel personal. But sales professionals need to have thicker skin. Don't waste precious email real estate by using passive-aggressive lines like “I know you're busy, I'm busy too, “or “Was waiting for a reply to my previous email but to no avail.” It'll do more harm than good. Your prospect might feel offended, and if they do respond out of guilt, their answer won't be one you want to hear. Keeping your tone positive is your best bet. Use phrases like “Wanted to touch base on our last conversation “or “Do you have any questions about our last conversation?”. The idea here is to acknowledge your prospect might be busy and give them a gentle nudge to take the conversation forward. C) …But Be Persistent While you want to stay polite, you also want to be persistent. Be politely persistent. Of course, some people will say “no “along the way, but there are also those who will say “yes. ” Following up will help you get ahead, but you have to be consistent about the whole process and create a repeatable, scalable process. So focus on providing continuous value and send multiple (and well spaced-out) follow-up emails within the span of the next few weeks to see results. D) Provide the Prospect Clear Value To get a response, you have to have a crystal-clear “ask.” So, before hitting ‘Send,' see whether the email answers the following questions: Is the follow-up email relevant to the recipient? If yes, why? Does the prospect know why you're contacting them? People usually skim through emails quickly, especially those sent by strangers. So if your follow-up email doesn't have a clear value proposition, the

You're familiar with the dreaded drill: find potential clients, connect with them, present your solution, but somehow don't end up closing it. Maybe your prospect cannot afford what you have to offer or ditched you for a competitor. Perhaps they decided to hold off deciding until the next quarter. Why is this happening? Where are you going wrong? What can you do to close the deal? To close deals successfully, you need to understand the other person's goals, make a compelling offer, and overcome objections. Then, once you determine a mutually beneficial proposal, you have to figure out the right time to ask and use the best technique to close the deal. Close the Deal Meaning Closing a deal is a term sales professionals use to describe a situation where they bring negotiations to an end by reaching an agreement with their prospect. It's the very moment when a prospect decides to make the purchase. Closing deals is a very nerve-wracking process for sales reps since they are left exposed to the chance of rejection from the prospect. Selling Made Simple Two-Step Technique For Closing A Deal At Salesman.org, we use a two-step process to help sales reps close a deal. Don't worry; it's straightforward and highly effective! Step 1 — Ask: “Does It Make Sense To… “ This will help you determine whether the customer needs more help to understand how your solution can benefit them. For instance, you can ask, “We've been through our automation capabilities. Does it make sense to sign you up into our system so we can start working together? ” That's it. Next, you wait for the prospect's answer. If the prospect says yes, congratulations! You can send over the necessary paperwork to get them on board. If they say “No,” don't lose hope. Move on to Step 2. Step 2 — Ask: “What Needs To Happen To Move Things Forward” As a sales professional, you'll always find yourself hearing, “No. “It can happen again when you ask the question in Step 1. So the next step in the process is to figure out how to take things forward despite the initial rejection. Ask the second question: “What needs to happen to move things forward? “This will encourage the buyer to tell you why they haven't agreed and what you can do next to get the deal done. No brainstorming or contemplating alternative scenarios is needed on your part! The prospect may want a formal proposal outlining everything you discussed with them orally. Or a copy of the contract to send it off to the legal team before giving the final sign-off. Whatever the reason, you'll hear it directly from the horse's (the prospect's) mouth. Additionally, you should be closing deals throughout the sales process, and not just at the end of it. For instance, you can apply this methodology at the end of every sales call. “Does it make sense to discuss if you are a good fit together? “ “Does it make sense to check whether you have the budget before we need to move things forward? “ “Does it make sense to hold a formal meeting to discuss how the product can benefit your organization?” … you get the drift. Following this simple process will push the sales forward, helping you get that verbal agreement from the prospect that they genuinely want to progress with the deal. More Tips To Help You Seal the Deal Here are a few extra tips to help you understand how to close the deal over the phone or close the deal when selling. Let's take a look. A) Research Your Prospect Thoroughly .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “I believe that you have to open a relationship before you can ever close a sale.” Deb Calvert Salesman Podcast The first step in sealing the deal is to do your research. You have to be well-versed in your company's offerings and know-how to demonstrate the value the product or service can provide your prospect. Doing this will help you decide which of your offerings are most suitable for your prospect, eliminating the chance of you pitching the wrong product and losing the prospect altogether. Another good tip is to expand conversations beyond your point of contact. Try to speak to others in the company, especially crucial decision-makers and other departments. This will help you learn different perspectives, and more importantly, define the organization's pain points. Then, use these insights to tailor your pitch and present your products or services in the bes

Want to know what separates your everyday sales rep from the high-earning pros? Focus. And not focus of mind. But focus of strategy. The real pros know smashing through quotas is all about working key accounts—clients with exceptional revenue potential. So, how do you identify and work key accounts so you can start bringing in fatter commissions? Let’s find out. So I get it, you’ve got a sales target to hit, and the sooner you hit it the better. Otherwise, you’re prolonging the pain, the stress, and the lack of a bonus. With that said then, why do most sales professionals spend their days chasing their tails? They fire off hundreds of spammy emails and make dozens of random calls with no real system in place. And there’s zero consistency. .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “Activity drives success but ultimately consistency is the big thing. Unless you're consistent, you're only ever going to get very mediocre results.” Richard Smith Salesman Podcast If you’re not consistently making moves to land big moneymaker accounts, you’re losing out. Because the small deals get you close to hitting the target. But the big ones blow that target to bits. If you want to crush your quota, you need to be closing what we call “key accounts”. What Are Key Accounts? So first let’s define what a key account approach to sales is – Key Account Selling: A selling approach which offers strategic value to specific accounts, while distinguishing you from your competition. So that begs the question, “what are strategic accounts?” Let’s use an analogy of the people in your life. You probably have hundreds of acquaintances you’re happy to speak to every now and again. Perhaps you’re happy to help them out too if it’s a job that takes five minutes or less. But there are likely only a handful of people you’re willing to drop whatever you’re doing for to spend time with or help out. These are the strategic people in your life. You get more out of interacting with them than others. And sales is the same way. So think of your accounts being in a pyramid shape. Your key accounts are way on top and they’re the smallest. Your good customers are in the middle below them, and below that is the general riff-raff that you have to engage with. Now what’s funny here is that if you run the numbers, I’m sure you’d find that this pyramid shape has an inverse relationship to the revenue these customers bring in each year. The general riff-raff brings in the least amount of money. The good customers bring in a moderate amount. And the key accounts bring in most of all. In fact, key accounts will usually bring in more revenue than all other accounts combined. And that means if you can close just a few more key accounts per year, you can massively scale your income potential. Key Account Criteria So that begs the question, “how do I uncover key accounts in the sea of crappy lead data that I have access to?” The answer is simple – use the key account matrix. We go a lot further into this in our Selling Made Simple Academy, but here’s a high-level view. If we draw a chart with two axis – X Potential future revenue Y Current relationship with the account And then split this into four segments, we can label the segments as – Selective investment accounts – You have low or poor relationships, but there is high potential for new business. Strategic Investment account – You have good relationships with these clients, and there is potential for new business. Proactive maintenance accounts – You have great relationships, but there is a low chance of growth. Avoid these bastards at all costs accounts – You have low relationships and a low chance of new business. So to find potential key accounts, you then need to look through your lead data and find accounts that fulfill two criteria—they have the potential to generate lots of revenue, and you also have good relationships with them. They’re the two key fundamentals to quickly developing key accounts – Good potential future revenue and good relationships within the account. Building Your Account List Now, how do you build up your key account list? Well all you have to do is follow a clear 4-step process… Step 1 – Identify Potential Accounts Identify potential accounts. If you’ve got a CRM system, you may be able to apply this selection criteria to your entire customer base. That being said, you may want to stick to just 10 potential accounts. That way you can focus your efforts, at least at

How often have you heard this – “Look, we really love your product, but it’s outside of our price range. Can you offer any discount?” Offering discounts can be a great way to speed up a slow-moving deal. But if you’re adjusting price before negotiations begin, you’re doing a serious disservice, both to yourself and to your product. Instead of caving right away, there are four tried-and-true responses you can give to turn the conversation around in your favor. What’s Wrong with Discounting Immediately What’s wrong with discounting immediately. Like I said, discounting isn’t always a bad thing. It can speed up deals and give you leverage for reducing the service you’re offering. But there are three very real problems to offering a discount before negotiation has taken place. #1. Devalue First, your buyer subconsciously devalues your service. After all, if you’re really going to deliver the ROI your pitching, why do you have to immediately discount the price? #2. Forfeit’s Power Second, the instant you propose a discount, you lose some of your negotiation power. You lose this negotiation power as you’ve taken the price, your biggest variable for negotiation, off the table. #3. Shifts the Focus And third, discounting shifts the focus. In the buyer’s mind, you’ve shifted the conversation from the value that is being exchanged to the emotional topic of money. Rather than the buyer thinking about the impact that your service is going to have on their business, they’re now thinking about what is going to cost them in the opportunities they will lose from this lack of cash flow. So with those three things in mind, it’s important that negotiations on price and discounting happen towards the end of the sales process rather than at the beginning of it. That being said, if a buyer does request a discount too early in the process, there are a few things you can do. And that brings us to the four word-for-word responses that’ll deflect, turn the tables, and even give you the selling advantage. 1. The Value Probe The first and easiest way to deal with a buyer bringing up the idea of a discount is to say this word-for-word: “We can definitely have a conversation about the numbers. But first let’s make sure that we’re on the same page about our service being a good fit for your needs…” So, what does this response do? It Reframes the Conversation You buy yourself time to reframe the conversation. Right now the buyer is focused on price alone. But at this point in the sales process, you need to be demonstrating value. What do you offer that your competition doesn’t? And most importantly, how does it solve your buyer’s problem? This is the perfect time to focus on that instead of the expense. It Let’s You BUILD on Your Value It also gives you more time to build value before the numbers do eventually get discussed. What additional benefits do you offer that you haven’t talked about yet? What value can you bring to the table that the buyer isn’t already aware of? 2. The Obstacle Identifier The second way to deal with your buyers asking for discounts is to answer your buyer’s question with a question. When your buyer asks if you’re able to discount you can ask: “That is a fair question. Do you see price being a major obstacle in this conversation?” This immediately makes the buyer reconsider if they really want to discount or if they want to get the deal done. It also pushes the pressure back on the buyer to justify why there should be a discount in the first place. Bonus tip here. Notice show I said “that’s a fair question” before I responded with my question? The point of this extra step is to acknowledge to the buyer that I have heard them, but I need more information to answer their first question. This little extra ping stops the question coming across as manipulative and lets the buyer feel in control. Which of course is a great way to keep the relationship on solid footing. 3. “Why?” Are you feeling brave? Well when the buyer asks you about discounts, you can politely respond with the question: “Why?” Now admittedly, this does take some guts. Your buyer definitely won’t be expecting it. And taken the wrong way, it could spark some defensiveness. That’s why you’ve got to be polite when you say it and genuinely look for an answer from the buyer. A slight look of confusion helps sell this too. The point is you need to look sincere. Like nobody else has ever asked you this before, rather than aggressively asking them “WHY?!”. Responding with this question of “why?” when a buyer asks for a discount, stops the buyer from negotiating on price just for the sake of negotiating. In my experience buyers often respond to this “why” question by saying “I was just wondering…” which you can then shrug off and carry on with the sales conversation. 4. The Tit-for-Tat The Tit-for-Tat. This is in my opinion the cleverest approach. Because with the right wording, both you and the buyer will leave the conversation with added value. Here’s how y

A successful sales rep is a curious sales rep. And when you ask potential buyers the right questions during discovery, you’ll get some powerful takeaways to better qualify leads, drive enthusiasm, and boost your chances of closing. In today’s post, I’m breaking down five of the most powerful sales questions to ask potential buyers. And best of all, these questions let you avoid sounding salesy while demonstrating yourself as the sales expert you really are. Best Sales Questions These days, successful sales isn’t just about being chatty. Sure, the gift of gab helps. But when it comes down to it, charm alone isn’t enough to seal the deal. Instead, you need to be able to explore issues, dive into problems, and offer exceptional solutions for your buyers. You need to offer value, not just a pitch. And asking questions is the best way to investigate whether your buyer’s problem is one that you can solve. But there’s a catch here—asking the wrong questions can set you up for failure. I’m talking about close-ended and manipulative inquiries like “Tell me, would you be interested in doubling your revenue this quarter?” or “What will it take to earn your business?” These types of questions are downright shit at getting real, valuable info you can use. And beyond that, they make you sound like a slimy sales rep that no one would trust. So rather than falling back on those sales cliches, start asking these five powerful sales questions instead. Doing so will let you qualify leads and give you the info you need to skyrocket your sales success. So, question one… 1: “Does It Make Sense to…?” This is one of my personal favorites because it virtually eliminates the need to “close” on deals. You know, when you’ve spent days or even weeks on a potential buyer and then nerve-wrackingly have to ask them for their business. Closing that way sucks. And it puts a lot on the line, too. If they walk away, you’re out tons of lost time. But when you ask this clever sales question along the way—I mean when… “Does it make sense to set up a call?” Setting up discovery calls… “Does it make sense to schedule a time so you can see it in action?” Moving on to demos… “Does it make sense to bring in our product team to dive deeper into the specs?” Discussing product specs, all of it… When you do that, you’re getting continuous buy-in from the prospect. Plus, buyers will have the opportunity to tell you exactly what’s holding them back from taking the next step, giving you the chance to address any of their nagging objections. Best of all, you get to avoid all that nail-biting of the “will they, won’t they” right before you ask for your business. 2: “Why Can’t You Solve This Problem Yourself?” Why can’t you solve this problem yourself? This one in particular is great for qualifying leads. On the one hand, this question helps you uncover more about the problem and the obstacles you might face as you try to solve it. And maybe a prospect that seemed like a good fit turns out not to be a match as a result. But beyond that, this question also lets you evaluate their need. Do they even need you? In most industries, the clients you want to work with won’t be able to do the same job your product or service is doing. Otherwise, you’ll likely run into plenty of issues down the line, like questioning your judgment or asking for the job to be redone entirely. If they can solve the problem themselves, they’re not going to value what you do as much as they should. And it’s better just to move on. 3: “When Do You Need This Solved By? This powerful sales question gets to the heart of one of the most important issues—timeline. Are they hoping to solve the problem in a few weeks, but your product requires a two-month implementation? Are they planning ahead for a few years from now, and only wasting your time today? Answering these and more timeline questions is an important step for qualifying your leads. And it’s a solid filter that weeds out those that aren’t a fit. 4: “How Would Things Be Different If We Solved This For You?” Think of this question as an investment in the future satisfaction of your product. Let me explain what I mean here. For most of you out there, your product or service is going to take some effort on the part of the buyer. Maybe they’ll have to fight for budget. Or spend time on training. Or maybe even hire a new team entirely to use your product to its full potential. It’s vital that this effort is well worth the benefit your product provides. If it isn’t, your buyer will feel resentful, won’t provide referrals or great reviews, and likely won’t be coming back for return business. Asking this question puts this required effort into perspective for the buyer. If it doesn’t match up and they leave, you’ve just saved yourself loads of hassle later. And if it does, you’re building enthusiasm in a prospect that’s a picture-perfect match. Easy peasy. Okay, and the final powerful sales question I have for you today is… 5: “How Are Projects L

It is common for sales managers to say that sales is a numbers game. If this is what you have been told you may be wondering what this statement means. The simple explanation of what this statement means is that more activity leads to more sales. But this still leaves you with questions like: What type of activity? How much activity? Is it possible to improve the outcomes from the action? If you Google the phrase “Sales is a numbers game.” you'll find many articles claiming this statement is false or a myth. But in reality, it is true. It's just that working in B2B sales has changed over the years. Where more activity to close more sales might have been practical in the past, there is more to the story in today's sales environment. But, before we dive deeper into what that means today, let's start with the basics of sales success. The basics of how sales is a numbers game works Of course, if you are going to play the numbers game in sales, you have to know the numbers. Crazy, right? Yet many salespeople don't track any metrics at all. This means that you need to track your activity every day. For example, if you are making prospecting calls to cold leads, keep track of: How many calls you make? How many decision makers you speak to? How many discovery calls you schedule? How many of those meetings result in a demo? How many of those demos result in a proposal? How many of those proposals end in a closed, won sale? What is the average dollar value of the deals you close? Once you have tracked these metrics for a while, you'll have enough data to figure out how many calls you need to make to hit your sales targets. In a perfect world, where you hit your sales target, your data might look like this: Sales target = $10,000 Calls made = 1600 Decision makers spoken to = 320 Discovery calls scheduled = 80 Demos scheduled = 40 Proposals given = 20 Closed deals = 10 Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000 In this case, you would need to make 1600 calls to close 10 deals worth $1,000 each to hit your sales target of $10,000. Your numbers are probably very different than this. So, how can this numbers game help you? The point of this example is to show how to determine how much activity you need to do to hit your sales target. Start with your monthly, quarterly, or annual sales target. Then, divide it by the average dollar value of a closed deal to determine how many deals you need to close to hit that target. Once you know how many deals you need to close, work backward to figure out how many calls you need to make to close that many sales. You can then take that number and divide it into weekly and daily activities. Okay, that is the basics of how the numbers game of sales works. But today, there is so much more to this game. .circle-img { border-radius: 50%; -moz-border-radius: 50%; -webkit-border-radius: 50%; -o-border-radius: 50%; } #quote-container-bottom { width:100%; overflow: hidden; margin-top:20px; } #quote-one-bottom { width:10%; float:left; padding:5px; } #quote-two-bottom { width:90%; float:right; padding:3px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 767px) { #quote-one-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding: 0px 0; } #quote-two-bottom { display: block; float: none; width: 100%; padding-bottom:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; } } Expert Note: “As salespeople we are schooled to think about sales is a numbers game. The more you fill the pipeline with, the greater the chances that you sign something. And in transactional sales, I agree. But in mega deals, it's the other way around.” Bora Brannstrom Salesman Podcast Identify areas for improvement The primary example of sales is a numbers game, if your sales target increased or you wanted to exceed your target, you'd need to increase your amount of activity. But why not work smarter instead of harder? Making improvements in your skills and sales technique will result in better selling strategies. A small amount of sales training advice in the right places can lead to massive upticks in appointments booked and results. By tracking your activity data as described above, you can start improving your skills to close more business from the same number of calls, for example. But be methodical in your approach to measure your progress to recognize what is causing changes to your performance. How does this work? Testing, testing, testing There are many aspects of your sales process where you can use A/B testing to optimize what you are doing to boost your results without increasing the amount of activity needed. For example, a/B testing is a proven method often used by marketing professionals to raise email, landing page, and marketing message response rates. You can test aspects of emails, sales calls and scripts to improve your results. These facets include: Email subject lines Voice message scripts Introductory sentences on prospecting calls Scripts for getting past gatekeepers Responses to objections Closing questions Di

Cold email is one of the best tools in your sales rep toolbox. But there’s just one problem—if your emails aren’t getting opened in the first place, then all of your efforts (the clever copy, the personalization, the research) will all be for nothing. THAT’S the importance of a great subject line So, what’s the absolute BEST cold email subject line you could ever use? That’s what we’re talking about in this video. The Ultimate Subject Line What does the best-performing subject line look like? Let’s not beat around the bush, huh? It looks a little something like this… “[NAME] – [REFERRAL NAME] said I should get in touch” Bam. That’s it. That’s the absolute best subject line you could ever, ever use for your cold email. It works so well because you’re leveraging someone else’s trust rather than putting in all the effort to build your own. Which is basically impossible to do in a subject line alone anyway. It’s simple. It’s effective. And you could go out and use it for yourself right now and watch your response rates skyrocket. BUT… If this was the magic bullet of cold email, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? See, there’s just one little problem here… referrals are notoriously hard to get. Most buyers don’t give them out freely. And asking for one is a tricky situation that most sales reps just don’t know how to navigate. So rather than spend this video talking about the subject line, breaking it down into why it works, and turning a simple thing into something more complex than it needs to be, we’re going to look at the hardest part of this cold email secret weapon… How to Get a Referral How to get a referral in the first place. Now if you’ve watched this channel’s videos before, you know that we at the Selling Made Simple Academy have a framework for everything under the sun. And surprise surprise, how to ask for a referral is no different. Our 4-step More Referrals Framework takes you through what you need to do and say to bring in tons of referrals from your current client base. And it looks a little something like this… 1. Confirming Value Step one, confirming value with the client. This is where you’re setting the groundwork needed to get a solid referral without any false promising or feet dragging. What you’re going to do here is get your client to clearly recognize the benefits your solution has provided. This is tipping the value scale in your favor. If your ROI is great, then they’ll be more likely to reciprocate with a quick favor. The principle is simple. And it’s the foundation for a successful introduction you can use to bring in a quality lead. Now, an email at this step is okay, but you’re going to get the best results from a quick call. That way you can focus their attention, ensure they’re seeing the full scope of your value, and better direct the rest of the conversation. Once you have shared the numbers (and be sure to use real numbers, not just general benefits) it’s time to ask, “Do you feel like this is working as well as you planned?” If your ROI is solid, they’ll have every reason to say yes. And then you can move on to step #2… 2. Asking “Who Else?” Asking “who else?” When they turn around and tell you how happy they are, ask them, “Is there anyone else that you feel we could help within your professional network?” You’re going to ask the question. And then, importantly, you’re going to shut up. Make the ask. And don’t say another word. Let the buyer think about it on their own and don’t help them out. It might be awkward for a moment or two. And that’s okay. But you’ve made a promise with your product. And you’ve delivered. Now it’s time they did a favor for you in return. Don’t give up after a single name either. Follow up with “OK great, is there anyone else?” and keep on going until they’re spent. 3. Making a Specific Ask Making a specific ask. Getting the contact info is one thing. But it’s also the bare minimum you can do. Instead, you’re going to add in one small detail that will really make your open rates fly. Here’s what NOT to say after they tell you a referral… “Great, can you give me their email address?” And here’s what you SHOULD say instead… “Great, if I email them and CC you in, is it OK for me to mention that we’ve worked together?” This right here is a game-changer. Not only are you getting a referral, which is already leagues ahead of any other subject line you could ever use. You’re also attaching your common contact’s address to that email! And when your prospect sees a name they recognize, your email is going to pop off their screen and practically force them to click “Open”. If you can get your client to agree, it’s a sure thing. 4. The “1-1-1” Rule Sometimes you can’t get all the details sorted out with your client in a single meeting. So what kind of follow-up schedule can you follow to make getting that “oh-so-valuable” referral from your current buyer? Simple. 1-1-1 — follow up after 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month later until everything is set up. At that point,

One of the absolute best ways to scale your sales earnings is by speeding up your sales cycle. You know this. But how often do you still get hit with “maybes” and “I’ll think about its” when you’re trying to close? The problem—they don’t feel the urgency. And sorry to say, that’s on you. Here’s how to fix your problem with urgency (and the lack of it). “Stalled” Prospects “Stalled” prospects. One of the key differences between high-performing sales professionals that crush targets and those that don’t, is the number of “stalled” potential deals in their sales pipelines. A potential customer is classed as stalled if you’ve tried to close them and they haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. They’re up in the air. Stalled deals will kill your chances of hitting your sales target and the 4 tips I’m about to share with you will help you give them some momentum through increasing the level of urgency. Many low-performing sales professionals waste time trying to sell these stalled individuals. The fact is, once the momentum of the initial discovery calls and solution presentations has waned, every week that goes by is a lower chance of that potential customer ever buying from you. So how does your pipeline look? Do you have a bunch of stalled accounts in there? If so then this video is for you. 4 Strategies for Driving Urgency So with that said, let’s take a look at 4 tips to create urgency in sales so that your prospects don't get stuck in your pipeline and you can get more deals closed, quicker. 1. Understanding Understanding. Tip one is this – Really understand your potential customer's pain point. If your potential customers aren’t in extreme pain, there will never be any urgency to get the deal closed. Now typically there are three types of pain points that you should be looking out for when you’re going through your discovery and questioning process. They are: Productivity Pain Points Process Pain Points Financial Pain Points These are the REAL pain points that you can use to drive urgency and get the deal done faster. Let me use a quick analogy to explain what a REAL pain point is. Your lead doesn’t buy a shovel because they need a shovel. They don’t even buy a shovel because they need a hole, which is the classic, cliché sales analogy. Instead, their problem is deeper. Much deeper. They’re reworking their landscape to impress the hoity-toity neighbors. They’re finally installing that pole to fly their grandfather’s flag. Maybe they’ve even got a dead body in their closet that’s starting to smell and their wife is getting suspicious! This is the real pain and obviously there is massive urgency here. If you tried to sell a shovel, they wouldn’t care about the features and benefits. If you tried to sell them hole digging service, well they might be slightly more interested. But if you explained that you could get rid of a body… they wouldn’t even ask what the price was and they’d jump at the chance to work with you. So you need to work out what the body is that your potential customers are trying to bury, so that you can sell them the tool or solution to help with the REAL issue. Once you start doing this, the level of urgency in your conversations be much higher. 2. Naivety Now the second strategy revolves around naivety. Tip two – Don’t let the potential customer think they can do it on their own. Another issue that sales professionals run into during the sales process is that they make it seem all too easy to remove the pain for the potential customer. A lot of reps are guilty of shelling out too much free consulting advice throughout the sales process. And that can give the potential customer confidence that now they know all the secrets. They’re capable of solving the problem themselves. This leads to stalled deals and a severe lack of urgency as now you don’t even seem necessary to solve the problem! Not good. So by all means, give advice, share insights, build your reputation as an industry expert throughout the sales process. But keep your advice to more general industry trends only. Don’t solve the entire issue for the potential customer right before you get paid. 3. Speed Now tip number three is a simple one. But it’s powerful too. Tip three – Follow-up quicker. One of the reasons deals stall and urgency drops out of the sale process is because salespeople are too slow with their follow-ups. If you have a sales call on a Tuesday, don’t give the potential customer a week to pull together the information you require to help them. Instead, arrange the follow-up call for this coming Thursday instead. Most salespeople are passive in their follow-up schedule because they are happy that the potential customer wants to speak to them at all! High-performing sales professionals on the other hand are always oversubscribed with potential meeting options and so they need to get deals moving quickly to make sure they have enough time to get through them all, and so their follow-up dates are set in quick succession. Even

Believe it or not, there wasn’t a whole lot of data out there on sales techniques in the past. A lot of the industry was based on “feel”, “intuition”, and “charisma”. That is until one revolutionary book came along and turned the business of selling on its head in 1988. And the research-driven techniques this book uncovered are just as effective today as they were 30+ years ago. Today we’re talking about one of the most influential books in sales history, SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham. The History of Sales As the scholars among you may already know, the first sales model that was widely used across markets we developed in the 1920s. It focused on traditional selling tactics like using open and closed questions, presenting features/benefits, objection handling, and closing. This alone was often enough to win over most prospects. But as sales grew in price and complexity over the years and particularly in the late eighties, this model alone wasn’t enough to get the job done. And that’s where Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling came in. This extensively tested new model was built to address the changing sales landscape. It uses a questioning method that follows the acronym SPIN: S for Situation P for Problem I for Implications And N for Need Payoff We’ll get into the specifics of it all in a sec. But first let’s look at… Why SPIN Works Why SPIN Selling works. When it comes to the larger complex sales of B2B businesses today, there are four main differences that sales reps like you need to compensate for. 1. A Longer Sales Cycle While small sales can be handled in a single call, modern sales require many calls, often with different stakeholders over the course of several months. 2. A Larger Commitment Small sales don’t require a lot of commitment due to the lower price tag. But more complex deals typically require a larger financial commitment, meaning the rep needs to demonstrate MORE VALUE to make it worth the investment. 3. Ongoing Relationships Due to the longer sales cycle, more complex deals will naturally create deeper relationships between the buyer and seller. As a result, that relationship (whether good or bad) tends to have more of an effect on the deal itself. 4. Higher Risk There’s a higher risk with larger deals. If the solution isn’t a fit, there’s more money at stake here. But don’t forget, there’s also a loss of time, respect, and even future advancement on the line. How to Use SPIN Selling How can you use SPIN Selling to maximize success with your prospects? Like so much of sales, success depends on asking the right questions. And SPIN is all about what types of questions you should be asking. S – Situation Questions Situation questions. These are the fact-finding and background questions. Questions like, “What do you see as your company’s biggest opportunities for growth in the coming quarter?” This is where you start the conversation out. They’ll help you build context around the buyer so you can naturally transition into the next stage. Now before we move on, it’s important that you use these types of questions sparingly as they may eat up a lot of the customer’s time and patience. Once you’ve built up some context, time to move on to… P – Problem Questions Problem questions. These are questions that explore problems or issues your product can solve. Questions like “Are you concerned about your aging equipment’s ability to meet your clients’ quality standards?” These questions uncover implied needs. These are the smaller, more generalized customer frustrations. Frustrations like “Our press quality is lacking,” or “our system creates too much waste.” Your job is to then build those needs into larger, more urgent issues—the explicit needs. I – Implication Questions Implication questions. These are the questions that underscore the implications or consequences of an implied need. Doing that opens the door to more urgency and the customer understanding the value of your solution. Some examples of implication questions might be “how will this affect your fourth-quarter results” or “what will this mean for your biggest customer?” The goal here is to get the customer to state their explicit needs. Needs like “We have to cut our procurement costs” or “we need a more efficient system.” N – Need Payoff Questions These questions lead the customer to link the benefits of your product to their problem. For example, you might ask, “How useful would it be if we could increase your output by 10%?” or “How would being able to reduce errors help you?” When you can ask the right questions to lead the buyer to make that connection, you’re going to be in great shape to close the deal. SPIN In Action SPIN in action so we can better understand how all these questions flow together. Here’s what a typical SPIN Selling question cycle might look like. The seller asks Situation Questions to gather context around the buyer. That then leads to… Problem questions that help the buyer uncover implied needs. The seller then develops

Keenan is the CEO and President of a sales consulting firm, A Sales Guy Inc., and was named one of the top 30 social sellers in the world by Forbes. In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Keenan is explaining what “GAP Selling” is and why relationships, objections, and closing in sales are dead. You'll learn: .adwrapper { overflow:hidden; transition: background 0.3s, border 0.3s, border-radius 0.3s, box-shadow 0.3s; padding:20px; margin-bottom: 0px;background-color: #FEE6E6;border-radius:20px; margin-bottom:20px; } .adwrapper div { padding: 8px; } #adone { float:left; margin-right:5px; width:430px; } #adtwo { overflow:hidden; } @media screen and (max-width: 400px) { #adone { float: none; margin-right:0; width:auto; border:0; width:100%; } } Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Keenan Best-selling Author and Gap Selling Specialist Resources: BOOK: Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price ASalesGuy.com Keenan on LinkedIn @Keenan Post: Dealing With The Sales Objection: “I Need To Think About It…” Book: Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century that Nobody’s Teaching You Transcript Will Barron: Coming up on today's episode of The Salesman Podcast.   Keenan: So the only place it matters is value, and the thing that helps drive value is credibility. The credibility you establish as someone who can genuinely help them get done what they need to get done, and bring tremendous value in solving problems. They buy from those people. At the core of that is trust because if you don't trust somebody, they can't be credible.   Will Barron: Hello sales nation and Will Barron and host of The Salesman Podcast. The world's most listened to B2B sales show. If you haven't already, make sure to click subscribe. With that, let's meet today's guest.   Keenan: Hey, what's up, peeps, my name's Keenan. I am the author of Gap Selling and CEO and founder of The Sales Guy. You can find [email protected] and/or on Amazon.   Will Barron: On this episode of the show with the legend that is Keenan. We're diving into gap selling, how we can uncover what the gap is, the insights behind that, how we communicate it? How it makes closing essentially obsolete? How it makes winning new business, once you get all this down at the front of the sales process, a whole lot easier. Let's jump right in.   The Sales Myths That Were True 10 or 20 years Ago That are No Longer True · [01:13]   Will Barron: What myths are currently being banded around the sales training space, the sales industry, as a whole? Whether it's from trainers, whether it's from leadership, whoever it is, what myths have been banded around that perhaps were true 10, 20 years ago, but aren't necessarily true right now?   Keenan: One is that you need to be liked. That's the big one, that you need to be liked to sell. Another one is that good closers are good salespeople. That's a crazy, ridiculous myth. Another one is that price matters and that people buy on price. That is not true.   Keenan: So those are your three big ones that really … I mean, the other one is that your elevator pitch matters. The idea that you need an elevator pitch and that matters. Those are some of the bigger ones that people throw about and still try to teach.   Will Barron: So why is it? Because all these are seemingly counter-intuitive. I know Objective Management Group have data on the fact that salespeople who don't feel … I might kind of screw this up from their terminology, but sales people that don't feel like they need to be liked by their customers, outperform salespeople who want to be liked by the customers, for example.   Trust Versus Likability in B2B Sales · [02:28]   Will Barron: So there's clear data on this, but it's still seemingly counter-intuitive of, we think that people will, and this is perpetrated, of people buy from those that they know, like, and trust. How much of that equation is perhaps then trust? As opposed to actually liking the individual?   “If I have a four-quadrant matrix that spells the whole thing out. Like is on one axis and value is on another axis. The only axis where people buy every time is on value. So if they like you and there's value, then they're going to buy. I mean, I like you and there's value in what I'm buying, so I'm going to buy. But if you go to the, I like you, but there's no value, they don't buy.” – Keenan · [02:46]   Keenan: It's all trust. I mean, at the end of the day, people don't even buy for trust. I have a four quadrant matrix that spells the whole thing out. Like is on one axis and value

As a sales professional, you'll often find yourself working on more than one deal at once. You'll hold conversations with different people with different needs and viewpoints. You want to close each of these effectively to ensure you keep smashing your sales quotas. Staying on top of all this can leave you overwhelmed, confused, and sometimes lost. Luckily, effective deal management can help simplify and organize the various aspects of your sales deals and improve your performance, efficiency, and conversions. How Can Deal Management Help You Become a Better Sales Professional? Effective deal management can drastically improve your sales performance. Here are the three most significant benefits of deal management. Greater Preparedness Having a deal process provides you with all the necessary information and tools to help you make informed, versatile decisions. Suppose your manager is unavailable for a client call due to a bad connection. If your organization has a well-defined deal management system, you can: Speak on behalf of your superior Make the best decisions using the information available to you Keep the deal moving forward You'll be better prepared to pivot and respond to situations and can create a more resilient and sustainable organization that recovers faster from setbacks. Better Consistency Your ultimate goal is to close as many deals as you can. But to achieve this, you have to eliminate any human error or personal preference-caused inefficiencies. Having a clearly defined deal management process makes this possible. With refined deal parameters in place, you can engage proactively with prospects as per the set standard. What's more, having a repeated process will also strengthen your selling skills, helping you deliver consistent and improved client experience throughout the sales cycle. Shorter Sales Cycle Time can be a sales rep's best friend or the worst enemy. Whether it's your friend or enemy depends on your management style. We've found that the longer the sales cycle, the less likely is the prospect to convert. Why? Many things can go wrong if the deal gets dragged. For instance, the prospect may lose interest or have another urgent matter to attend to; a pandemic might hit… anything can happen. With a carefully established deal flow management system, you can speed up your sales process while maintaining an excellent prospect-rep relationship and providing a solution-based engagement. What Are the 5 Stages of Deal Management? Deal management is an entire process designed to inform you what to expect when selling and ensure optimal deal management. It can be broken down into five stages to streamline your processes, letting you make the most of available sales opportunities. Stage 1: Process Planning You need to create an effective deal management that can be implemented company-wide. At the same time, your strategy must align with your organization's objectives, needs, and resources. That's why your deal management strategy should be flexible and streamlined to account for all kinds of client agreements effectively. Consider the following factors to develop an effective deal management strategy: What kind of deals is your company working with? Who is responsible for the different stages of the sales process? What issues have taken place in the past that resulted in a failed deal? What resources do you need to implement your strategy effectively? Answering these questions will help you set the ball rolling for the next stage. Stage 2: Process Implementation Once you've outlined your deal management process, it's time to implement it. We highly recommend using a deal management software tool like Monday.com or HubSpot Deal Tracking Software. You can import your data and onboard your suppliers into a centralized platform, allowing you to set up and execute all your deals with ease. Onboarding is a critical aspect of the implementation stage. Every person involved in the deal should know about your goals and how to use ideal management software. Otherwise, you'll find yourself resolving tons of errors and issues introduced into the deal management process. Ensure you and your team are aware of the new process and follow all procedures to the T to make deal management more reliable and efficient. Stage 3: Pre-Deal At this stage, you've established the foundation of your deal management process. Next, you'll implement it when creating new deals with your prospects. If you want the prospect to invest in your product or service, you should focus on the solution and not the product. It's why effective negotiation and overcoming client objections is such a big part of the pre-deal stage. Ensure you have access to all data that helps you understand the prospect's requirements and then tailor your sales pitch accordingly. Stage 4: Handover (Optional) If your organization has a system where the people negotiating the deal are different from people managing it, you have to hand the prospect over

Do you feel that? You can practically smell it in the air. *Sniff* *sniff*—a recession is coming. Are YOU prepared? If you want to come out of this economic dip intact, you need to start preparing. Like NOW. And one of the best ways to do that is by setting MORE meetings and begin the work of overloading your pipeline. Today we’re covering that dreaded word on everyone’s mind, “recession.” Not whether it’s going to happen or what the fallout will be. But what you can do to protect yourself or heck, even come out ahead, by booking more meetings TODAY. Now, experts agree that there’s a recession looming not too far off on the horizon. How big it will be or how long it will last is anyone’s guess. But what we do know is how it will affect buyers as a whole. What a Recession Means First and foremost… 1. Less Spending Your clients and potential buyers are spending less money. When money becomes tight (and it will), your buyers are going to be way less likely to shell out for a product they aren’t desperate for. And that means you need to get better at driving urgency, selling value, and showing buyers why you’re a solid investment. 2. Scared For Their Job Number two, buyers are scared about the future of their job. Zooming in from a company level, your buyers are going to have their own fears. How secure is their job? Is their department first on the chopping block? And how will making a buying mistake affect their chances of sticking around? 3. Prioritizing the Status Quo Buyers are also shifting their priorities. In a growth market, companies are looking for opportunities. Chances to get bigger, to get better. They want to expand. But in the face of a recession, a lot of businesses are looking for ways to secure the status quo. How will they simply keep afloat so they can wait out the storm? 4. Scared of Change And number four, they’re scared of change. Change carries risk. And as a result, buyers are going to be waaaaay less likely to spend their already tight budget on big-shift products. Change is already scary enough. But in a recession, it’s a nightmare. Alright, so with all that in mind, the question becomes… How to Book More Meetings (3 Steps) What can you do to capitalize on these shifts to book more meetings? There are three things in particular you as a sales professional can do to keep your pipeline packed. 1. Up Your Qualification Game Up your qualification game. When the market is booming, you may have the time and resources to focus on anyone who shows even an ounce of interest. But when times are tight, every second counts. And that means you need to spend your day working with only the best leads. Now you’re going to be running into three types of leads here. People with money to spend now. People who will have money once things lighten up and get better. And people who don’t have money now and aren’t sure how they’ll be later either. Your goal is to prioritize people with the money to spend now. Put 80% to 90% of your efforts into them. Because they’re the only ones who you’ll have even a chance with. The buyers who are waiting for the economy to shift should be priority number two. Don’t leave them out entirely. Because once things do turn around, the relationship you’ve built right now can lead to some seriously massive quarters in the future. And finally, the “can’t do now, not sure about later” leads. Light touches here. Keep them in your loop for now. But don’t spend too much time with them. Instead, just follow up after everything changes. And invest the bulk of your time in the first two lead types instead. The better you are at qualifying, the better you’ll fare right now. 2. Adjusting Your Value Proposition Technique number two is adjusting your value proposition. In regular times, you’re probably used to hitting some core points when talking about your solution’s benefits. “It can increase revenue, help your company expand, grow your market” – that type of stuff. Go-tos, right? Well, things have changed. And in a recession, belts are tightening and growing takes a back seat to maintaining. So what does that mean for you? To maximize your booking rate, you need to shift your value proposition to how you can help get more from less. Instead of focusing on ROI and investing in growth, talk about how you can boost efficiency. How your product lets them cut costs, reduce time spend, and make the budget they have now go further. And as a cherry on the top, show your buyers how your solution doesn’t just streamline the business as a whole. It also means it’ll make their job more secure. 3. Demonstrate the “Costs” Status quo reigns supreme during a recession, that much is clear. But your buyers shouldn’t just be focused on not growing. They should also be looking for ways to prevent problems. Not acting in and of itself is a problem, particularly during a recession. Companies will go under. And the ones that survive SHOULD actively be looking for ways to increase their competitiveness. So wh

Anthony Iannarino is an international speaker, author, and experienced sales leader. In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Anthony shares how we can take business from our competitors and essentially “eat their lunch”. You'll learn: .adwrapper { overflow:hidden; transition: background 0.3s, border 0.3s, border-radius 0.3s, box-shadow 0.3s; padding:20px; margin-bottom: 0px;background-color: #FEE6E6;border-radius:20px; margin-bottom:20px; } .adwrapper div { padding: 8px; } #adone { float:left; margin-right:5px; width:430px; } #adtwo { overflow:hidden; } @media screen and (max-width: 400px) { #adone { float: none; margin-right:0; width:auto; border:0; width:100%; } } Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Anthony Iannarino International Speaker and Experienced Sales Leader Resources: Book: Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition TheSalesBlog.com @Iannarino Book: The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the Ten Commitments That Drive Sales Book: Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels ZoomInfo.com Transcript Will Barron: Coming up on today's episode of the salesman podcast.   Anthony Iannarino: This is the thing about human relationships. Fast is slow and slow is fast. So the faster you try to go, the slower you go and the easier you try to make things for yourself, the more difficult it is for you. And when you do the hard things, the easier it is for you to generate the results you want. It just works that way. I didn't design the universe. I had no say… I mean, God didn't consult with me to make this law. It was the law when I showed up here. That that tends to be the way things work.   Will Barron: Hello, sales nation. I'm Will Barron host of the salesman podcast. The world's most istened to B2B sales show. If you haven't already make sure to click subscribe and let's meet today's guest.   Anthony Iannarino: I'm Anthony Iannarino. I'm a speaker, I'm a writer, I'm a teacher. And you can find me thesalesblog.com.   Should Salespeople Be Aiming To Be the Best Professionals They Possibly Can Be, or Do They Just Need To Be 1% Better Than the Next Best Competition? · [01:18]   Will Barron: On this episode, Anthony, will dive in into how you can go into a competitor account, how you can take their lunch, how you can steal the business away from them, the step by step process to do this. And it's incredible that we haven't really covered this on the podcast before. This is probably the, not necessarily quickest, but the most efficient and best way to really crush your target, not just now, but over the years and decades to come. And so with all that said, I'm hyped up, you should be. This is a real important show for us. Let's dive right in. To set the story, to set the scene for the audience should be to be sales professionals, should they be aiming at all times to be the best professional they could possibly be, learn everything they could possibly learn and give as much value as they possibly can. Or do they in reality only really need to give and be that 1% better than the next best competition.   Anthony Iannarino: I love that question because I see this thing go by on Facebook and it's like a regular post that just always comes by in my feet for some reason. It says, I don't want to be better than anyone else. I just want to be better than I was yesterday. And I love that platitude. But what I would want for you is to be better than you were yesterday and better than your toughest competitor today. Because if you live in the red ocean and your a competitor, then you have to be better. And the way that you frame that up is sort of a mutually exclusive sort of choice.   “A lot of people are so focused on their competition that they forget that it's a contest to create value, and that there's absolutely nothing you can do about your competitors. So if you can't do anything about them, then what should you be working on? That leaves you. So you better start working on that because that's all you've got.” – Anthony Iannarino · [02:20]   Anthony Iannarino: Like, do I need to be the best version of me or do I need to be better than them? Both. It's an and. You need to constantly work on this, but you do hint to something where a lot of people are so focused on their competition, that they forget that it's a contest to create value. And that there's absolutely nothing you can do about your competitors. So if you can't do anything about them, then what should you be working on? That leaves you. So you better start working on that because that's all you've got.   How Much of the Marketplace is Already Taken Up By the Competition Versus New Buyers Who’ve Never Used Our Type of Product or Service

Here’s an eye-opener for ya—92% of sales reps quit after hearing “no” four times. But it turns out 80% of prospects say “no” four times before saying “yes”! The lesson here? Sales objections happen. But success boils down to how you respond to them. That’s why in this video we’re covering how to respond to the 5 most common sales objections you’re bound to hear. Alright but before we jump into that, just a word on sales objections. Sales objections are not bad. Not by any means. Instead, what you’re getting from your buyer here is an open window. An open window into what makes them tick, what they’re concerned about, and most importantly, what’s holding them back from saying yes. So if you can turn that sticking point of an objection into a “Yes”, that question mark into an exclamation point, you’re going to have a more enthusiastic buyer on the other end of things. You just have to know how to address these objections properly. And that’s what we’re covering right now. So let’s dive in. The Two Pathways The two ways you can respond to an objection. No matter what the objection is, there are two pathways you can take when a buyer brings up an objection. A) The Circle Back Method The Circle Back Method. See, most objections come from a lack of understanding. And when the prospect learns more about your offering, like later on the call, then the original objection is no longer an issue. These aren’t “stupid” objections. They’ll just get answered over the natural course of the presentation. So in these situations, just respond with “Okay, we’ll come back to that in a minute.” Simple as that! Then there’s pathway number two… B) Solve the Issue Solve the issue. If it’s a real objection, solve the issue. And then, and this is important, follow up to make sure it’s solved. In some cases, these objections might come out as a knee-jerk response. For instance, if you have a buyer that says, “I don’t think we have the budget for this,” and you haven’t even hit pricing yet, push the issue rather than let it go. Ask them, “Do you know what the price is?” In many cases, you’ll find that a little bit of pushing reveals that they don’t actually understand the product like they think. In cases like this, some simple information can solve the problem in a second. If they don’t actually know what the pricing is, tell them. If they don’t think it’s right for their industry, point to their competitors that are using your product. Another simple solution. Now, where it gets complicated is when they have all the information they need and still have objections. And that’s when it’s time to bring out the big guns. So, let’s look at the 5 most common sales objections and how to respond to them. 5 Most Common Sales Objections 1) “This Is Too Expensive” First up, this is too expensive. According to a survey from Sales Insights Lab, budget is the number one reason a strong sales opportunity falls apart. And it makes sense! Business is money. And if you hear this sales objection, it’s because they don’t see ROI from working with you. But instead of closing up shop right then and there, ask… “If I could show you a strong ROI that you could expect from working with us, would it make sense to continue the conversation?” In 99% of cases, the answer is going to be yes. All you have to do then is point to past success stories with a great ROI. If the ROI makes sense to them, Bam! Sold. If not, they weren’t going to be happy with your product anyway. Best to move on. 2) “Now Isn’t a Good Time” Now isn’t a good time. Here the buyer either doesn’t see the value that you offer OR they’re not qualified to do business with you. Now you could handle this like any other sales rep and just leave your contact info. But if you did that, you’d NEVER hear from them again. Instead, you need to close on the next conversation. And you can do that by following up with… “You seem like a great fit for what we do. When would it make sense to chat?” Now you’ve got a date you can call back on without running into any friction from the buyer. Alright third objection… 3) “I Already Have Another Supplier” I already have another supplier. So selling to a brand new customer in your market is one thing. You’ve got to convince them of your value, push their pain point buttons, and get them to fight for the budget. But for buyers that already have a similar solution, you’ve got to focus on how your value proposition stacks up against who they’re already using. In some situations, these customers can be even easier to win over than brand new ones. You just need to find out how their current solution isn’t making the cut. Simple solution here. Ask… “Are you thrilled with how X are performing for you right now?” This will open up the door to where they’re falling flat and let you see if you’re in a position to help. 4) “Just Email Me Some Information” Just email me some information. The ultimate blow-off. It typically happens at the very beginning of a call. And here,

Look, “selling” gets a bad rap these days. But after reading this monumental book, I realized that EVERYONE sells, especially in the modern workplace. To sell is to be human. And when you do it with the right approach, it’ll make you proud to be in sales, just like I am. Today we’re talking about the book that made me proud to work in sales, To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink. We’ll be covering two foundational concepts covered by his work. Selling: We All Do It We aaallll are sellers. From the retail professional over at GAP to Fortune 500 secretaries, mom-n-pop accountants, and traveling HR consultants. No matter who you are or what you do, odds are you’ve had to sell someone on an idea before. Pitched an idea in a meeting? That’s selling. Asked for a raise? That’s selling. Convinced your co-worker to speed up signing the checks so you could get them out in today’s mail? S.E.L.L.I.N.G. Pink took this idea and used it to form what he calls Contemporary Selling. This kind of selling is about moving others to exchange resources that include but do not revolve around money. Contemporary selling isn’t about PRODUCT. It’s about SERVICE. Okay, so what does this all mean for you, a sales professional? The New Paradigm: What That Means for Professional Sales It means there’s a new sales paradigm. Rather than “selling” in the traditional sense, your job is to render a service to your prospects and clients. And your job is to do it with the end goal of improving their lives. Now there are two specific steps you can take to sell better in this new paradigm.   1. Making It Personal I’ve seen lots of reps try to keep their relationships all-business and ultra “professional.” To a fault even. While there’s a time and place for that, leaning too heavily into it creates distance rather than forging a connection with the customer. Instead, try coming from a place of passion. You LIKE what you’re selling. You believe in it. And you want others to get the same value from it that you do. When you approach your relationships this way, you come off as credible, not profit-driven. And that builds trust. Example Here’s an example of making it personal for you. Say you sell a certain type of large-scale project management software for Fortune 500 companies. And guess what? You hate what you sell. It’s inefficient. It’s overpriced. And frankly, it just doesn’t do a great job of solving your buyers’ real problems. Since you know making a sale won’t actually help the prospects you’re selling to, you have to find value in other aspects of the deal. You’re making money. You’re boosting your numbers. You’re shooting for a promotion and this will seal the deal. Ultimately the potential buyer becomes a means to an end. And that leads to devaluing them and their needs… not good for sales. But on the other hand, say you love what you’re selling. You know it works. You’ve seen how it makes your other clients’ lives easier. And you think your potential buyer will get a lot out of it too. When you approach a sale with that mindset, your genuineness shines through. You’re there to provide a service. And your buyers can tell. So they trust you, what you have to say, and the value of your product.   2. Make It Purposeful It’s easy to get caught up and bogged down in the specifics of your solution. The nitty-gritty features, the in-the-weeds technical details, the straightforward use cases. And if you spend too much time here, you may not realize that what you’re selling is actually connected to a broader purpose. As it turns out, studies show the desire to serve is innate. It’s built right into us. And you’re most successful when you believe you’re serving not just you, not just the client. But also a larger person than both of you. When you connect your solution to that larger purpose, you’re more passionate. You’re more service-oriented. And more driven than ever. So to be more purposeful, focus on how your service can improve society as a whole and frame it that way to potential buyers. Example Say you sell accounting software specifically for mom-and-pop sized businesses. Your product is powerful enough to keep these businesses’ costs down by keeping things compliant. But it’s also easy enough to use that they won’t have to hire an accountant. Your product also works really well, your clients love it. That alone is a great driving force you can get behind. But take things a step further. You’re helping these businesses stay afloat. But you’re also contributing to a world where small but valuable businesses can compete with the big box stores. You’re making it easier for new ideas to thrive and not be immediately squashed by monopolies. And you’re also helping contribute to the values of the free market—competition, ingenuity, and the freedom for anyone to participate. And you thought you were just selling accounting software! When you make your work purposeful, you make it important. That shines through with your buyers. And when you d