Dan Streeter and Tim Brown, co-authors of Old School with New Tools: The Extra 5% That Takes You to the Top of Your Sales Game and Keeps You There.
Dan is a former teacher and principal and a former VP of Sales & Marketing. Tim, on the other hand, has an extensive sales background. He started a radio broadcasting company and grew it to 17 stations in Colorado. Coming out of the ranks, Tim has served as a CEO for 11 years, building sales teams and growing companies from being startup to multi-million dollar level.
Today, they share with us some strategies from the book to help create learning experiences that can change the lives of thousands of people (including yours).
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dan & Tim:
Why another sales book:
To come up with 250 specific things people can do to get the extra 5%
Using old school strategies as the operating system and overlaying it with the newest tools
The CUT model: Communication + Urgency = Trust
- People buy from people they like and trust.
- Imagine having the ability to build or destroy your company in 140 characters or less
- Accelerate a sense of urgency where you get a customer’s business card within seconds
The power of TRUST:
- People buy from people they like and trust. You either build or lose trust at all times.
- How you show up in the world will consciously or subconsciously be building or losing trust with your prospects and customers
How to gain a winner’s mindset:
- Go into everything realizing you’re going to use it for your upliftment, learning, and betterment.
- Be prepared. Take the time to do the prep work and getting the reps in.
- Consciously anticipate your customers’s needs and understand their business
- Ask lots of strong questions getting to the “what” and not just the “why”
- Understand learning as a behavior change
- Creating experiences high in emotion
Focusing on your advantages first, the competition second:
- You get more of what you focus on.
- You can’t control your competition but you can control what you can do.
- You only have so much energy during the day, how do you want to spend it?
- Focus on ONE BIG GOAL – one big item you want to accomplish, focusing on your client’s needs, and what you can improve on versus competition
- Offense versus defense; love-based operating system versus fear-based operating system
Saying no and not overloading your daily schedule:
- Go into the week really understanding what you can control and not.
- Delegate and prioritize what’s on your list. When is good enough, good enough?
- Vigilance about what you put on your calendar. You only have 2,000 hours to sell. So be careful about what meetings you take.
- Have a plan at the beginning of the week and every single day.
- Add an “-ing” at the end of each meeting. Add a purpose behind the time spent all throughout the day.
- Action! It allows that plan to come to fruition
- Opportunities lie in the crazy, spontaneous things that happen in the day.
Time as the great equalizer
- How you choose to spend your time correlates to how you want to live the life you want.
- Be intentional.
Be nimble, be quick.
- Urgency is critical. The average person takes 42 hours to get back to someone that calls in. The longer you respond, the less interested a client can become
- Urgency as a way to build trust. The speed at which information is returned to your customer builds trust.
- Responding instead of reacting from a mindfulness perspective
Dan’s Major Takeaway:
You need both – the old school relationship building and tactics along with the new tools and technology to achieve success. You can’t do either or.
Tim’s Major Takeaway:
The essential relationship principles have not changed. Do not fear technology. Most of it is free and really easy to use. Just get into the habit of using it. What has changed is how we go about creating, maintaining, and growing relationships. Embrace these tools.
Episode Resources:
Old School with New Tools podcast
Connect with them on Twitter @fivepercentmore
Old School with New Tools: The Extra 5% That Takes You to the Top of Your Sales Game and Keeps You There
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