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TSE 1241: Best Sellers In History Series 5 – “Mahatma Gandhi”

Depending on who you ask, hearing the name Mahatma Gandhi may bring up the titles of leader, spiritual guide, a person of nonviolence, The Father of India, and many more. You may think about the man who defied the British Empire. How did one man make it possible? How was he able to get millions of people to follow his ideals and eventually shape the rest of Western culture?

For this episode, we will look at Mahatma Gandhi and explore the traits that made him an influential person.

Sales Spotlight – Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, in Pordabander, India. He studied law in London but moved to South Africa in 1893 where he spent 20 years opposing discriminatory legislation against Indians. Gandhi was from a successful family, his father a successful merchant. Gandhi’s experience in working for a law firm in South Africa led him to focus his efforts on helping those who are disenfranchised by society.

One particular day, Gandhi was riding on a train in first-class. Being a man of means, he’d the money to pay for the ticket. However, another passenger in the first-class didn’t like that an Indian was riding there as well. The conductor tried to encourage Gandhi to move to the lower class but he had paid for the ticket and had broken no laws. He defended himself and was thrown off the train.

Gandhi went back to India and supported the home rule movement, where Indians could rule themselves, independent from the British Empire. The British had come into India and raked the country’s resources for 200 years. The British originally talked about how they were going to help the people and the economy and would create jobs, but it didn’t happen in India’s favor. Most of the money went back to England and English people started to look down on the poorer Indian people. The English people were able to take the whole of India because India wasn’t united.

Indian Revolution against Britain

The largest rebellion against the British took place in 1857 and it lasted for 18 months. The British called it the Indian Mutiny and it started to spread even though the British downplayed the rebellion and by calling it a mutiny. Both sides had a difficult time but the British eventually won. Many of the Indians were conditioned to think they couldn’t fight against the British despite their huge number. Instead of fighting for their own battle, the Indian army became the backbone of the British empire.

The British Viceroy, Lord Curzon said that as long as they ruled India, they would be the greatest power in the world. The Indians, however, wanted their freedom and their own democracy.

The lack of unity

Imagine the same situation in the B2B world. Suppose a new client has a huge problem? They have tried to fix it in the past but they weren’t able to win against it. As a result, they started to just live with the problem. Within the company, there could be groups of people who have great ideas on how to solve the problem but there’s nobody who is unifying them. Every department keeps doing the best they can and everyone just lives with the pain. They need a powerful leader who can recognize there’s a problem, bring all the groups together, and create a solution as a team.

Mahatma Gandhi showed that kind of leadership.

Going to the masses

Unlike other politicians and wealthy people, Mahatma Gandhi spent time with the masses. This was very similar to what Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, and the other personalities in this history series did. They wanted to make a lasting impression so they spent most of their time with the masses. If you want to make a massive impact, you need to go to the people.

The same is true for Mahatma Gandhi. He went among the people and built relationships with them. He tried to understand what was going on in their everyday lives. This allowed him to see the challenges they were facing as the oppressed people of society. He was able to articulate their problems and speak for the people. He became the unifying voice.

Sales reps understand the clients’ pain

Much like with Mahatma Gandhi, sales reps need to understand their clients’ pain and see where they’re coming from. You shouldn’t just be a salesperson who comes in trying to get the money and resources. You are a person who should be able to identify with the pain of your clients. Being able to relate to people at that level will earn you their trust. People will respect you and have confidence in you. They don’t give you money for anything. They give you money because they believe you can solve their problems. Build rapport and talk to your customers regularly.

How can you do that?

Send them birthday cards and email
Send them articles and information you find online
Keep in touch with them
Touch base with your current customers

As a sales rep, it is important to build rapport, understand where they’re coming from, learn about their challenges, and be involved with their lives.

Give them a solution

The second thing that Gandhi did was that he gave people a solution. He wasn’t focused on raising an army of who would fight the enemy on the battlefield. He didn’t have an army but he was able to suppress and bring down a British Empire without having to set foot on the battlefield. Gandhi gave them an unconventional solution to a conventional problem. If he had tried to fight the British in a physical battle, he would have faced an uphill battle.

The British didn’t know that. As a salesperson, adopt a mindset different from other salespeople in your field. Instead of trying to fight a losing battle, look for another strategy. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

For instance, Gandhi boycotted the British mill and textile industry and that hurt the British economically. Because Gandhi had built a good relationship with the people, they listened to Gandhi.

Gandhi presented an unconventional solution. One of Gandhi’s significant protests wat the Salt March. The salt tax affected mostly poor people. Even though India had salt as a resource, they weren’t able to use it and instead, had to buy salt from England. Seeing the problem, Gandhi started a protest that gained momentum as it went on.

Solve your clients’ problems

As a B2B sales rep, think of the ways you can solve your clients’ problems and look at it from an unconventional standpoint. Do some research and look for unique ways to solve their problems. Always bring something to the table your competitors haven’t done before or don’t already do. Be a new resource, think outside the box, and paint outside the lines.

If there is a bid and you’re up against competitors who are trying to solve the same exact problem, try to look at it differently so you can provide a different and better solution. Even head to head with all things remaining constant, you can still find ways to stand out.

Every problem needs a great solution. That’s where salespeople come in. #SalesSolutions

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Translate their pain into words and feelings

The third trait of Gandi is the ability to translate peoples’ problems into words and feelings. He was able to paint a vision for them of what life would be like in an independent India.

Say a company offers sales training. Instead of saying what the training is all about, we paint a picture of what the company and profits can look like after the training. Sales reps need to dig deeper to be able to come up with specific solutions. If you want to become the top seller of your organization then you have to figure out your clients’ problems and simplify the way you present your solutions.

Death of a great man

Mahatma Gandhi was eventually assassinated and at his burial, over 1 million people came to mourn. He was known as the person who inspired nonviolent solutions. People followed Mahatma Gandhi because he helped with a sincere heart and a mind for the people. His protests weren’t just political stunts. He loved his people, he loved his faith, and he loved his country.

Best Sellers In History Series 5 – “Mahatma Gandhi” episode resources

As a recap, Mahatma Gandhi showed three traits:

Going to the masses
Give them a solution
Translate their pain into words and feelings

Do you have sales questions? Suggestions? You can also talk to Donald about it via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077.

We have a new semester beginning in January and we would love to have you and your team join us. Follow this link to apply to the program.

We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes so tune in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings to every episode you listen to.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

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TSE 1223: The Accidental Seller Series 8-“Norma Bell”

This is the last episode for the Accidental Seller Series. Because it’s the last, it needed a very special guest, Norma Davis Bell, Donald, The Sales Evangelist’s mom. Check out our previous Accidental Seller Series episodes.

Norma Bell wanted to become a policewoman growing up because of the idea of protecting and helping people. As she grew older, however, her path took her in another direction.

After Norma decided she wasn’t going to train to be a policewoman, she discovered she had the skill to make dresses. Norma’s older sister, Ivy, wanted to support her and connected her with a friend with the idea that Norma could be her apprentice. As it turned out, however, the friend wanted an assistant more than she wanted to teach so the opportunity was short-lived. Ivy, who owned a small store and bar at the time, new Norma was great with people and invited her to work with her.

Ivy had a great head for business, was able to network well, could make things happen and managed the administrative details of their work. What she was lacking, however, was the customer service skills. Her little sister, Norma, had a natural gift when it came to working with customers, entertaining people with jokes, and bringing joy to their places of business. This was especially evident when Norma worked in the store. As a cashier, even if she had the longest line, people would stand in line longer, just to wait for her. She knew the names of each of her customers and Norma made each of them feel special. With the sisters working together, the businesses thrived.

Working as a salesperson in the shop

Norma felt good while working in the shop because it gave her the opportunity to earn money. She felt happy knowing she brought in more customers to the store and to the bar. She talked and laughed with them and she became their reason for coming back. People gravitated towards the shop and the bar because of Norma’s outgoing personality.

Seeing all the success, Norma’s husband eventually convinced her to quit working with Ivy to start her own business. She hadn’t wanted to leave but did so with her husband’s encouragement.

Running and managing the store on her own was a challenge because all the pressure was on Norma. She no longer had Ivy handling the administrative aspects of the job and the money was leaving as quickly as it was coming in.

Norma decided to close it down when the money ran out. She went to live back with Ivy.

After some time, the family moved to the United States and Norma went into customer service. She struggled for almost 4 years before things began to smooth out for her family. Despite the hardships, Norma decided to take on the challenges and opportunities the United States had to offer in order to give her kids a better life. Today, Norma enjoys the fruits of her labor through the success of her grown children, like Donald. Even when he was young, she had dreams of Donald becoming a radio announcer. Today, she gets to be interviewed by her son! It’s a joy for Norma to listen to Donald, The Sales Evangelist, as he makes a global impact through his podcast.

Norma’s best advice: Keep on going. Keep on praying.

You can have a great mind for business but you have to balance that knowledge with great customer service. One needs the other. #SalesProcess

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“The Accidental Seller Series 8 – “Norma Bell” episode resources

You can connect with Norma and her life story on Facebook.

You can also catch up with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

This podcast is also brought to you in part by Reveal the Revenue Intelligence podcast. It’s about utilizing data to make business decisions instead of just guessing your way through major sales decisions. Visit gong.io for their podcast.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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TSE 1217: The Accidental Seller – Joseph Storer

November 27, 2019
/ Accidental Seller Jospeh Storer Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Joseph Storer is one of them.

Growing up, Joseph Storer wasn’t sure of what his career would look like. He was a lazy student in high school but he had a passion for playing baseball. Joseph thought he’d end up working with cars as an electrician, just like his father.

In his freshman year in college, he discovered his interest in business and working with people. His first experience in business was right after he went on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Getting into Sales

Going into the mission field was a difficult decision because he had a student permit that was valid for six years. He was sent to Brazil, learned a foreign language, and lived in a big city. Joseph discovered a whole other world filled with great people and exciting experiences. The mission taught him to have structure and order in his life.

Coming home, Joseph went back to college for accounting and finance. During the summer, he was able to get a union card and went to work building two dams in Idaho. The pay was very good so he decided to put a halt to his college and continued to work on the dam.

He was then given another assignment as an aid to an engineer for a new project. While working in Rexburg, Idaho, he met a lady who became his wife. Joseph got married and didn’t go back to school. They moved to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia where Joseph started his waterbed business. Sadly, the business went down six months after launch and that became the catalyst for starting his professional sales career.

His friend saw his potential in the world of B2B selling. This, along with having a neighbor who was in manufacturing sales, made him interested in selling for manufacturers. This was his catalyst for getting into sales.

Challenges in being a true sales professional

The biggest challenge when getting into sales was the wage. He was working in construction and was earning well and transitioned to sales where he was earning $1,200 a month, as well as a commission-based income. He wondered if he could make ends meet but at that time, there was no choice.

Maria, his wife, was very supportive and she believed that sales was something that Joseph could do. His boss trained him and taught him basic selling skills. Joseph was given a list of all the hospitals and clinics in the area and was told to set a goal to make at least three face-to-face calls every day.

He took the lessons to heart and ended up making more than three face-to-face calls a day. Even when he was done for the day, he tried to do one more. At the end of his first year in sales, he was in the top 10% of salespeople in the company. He started his sales career being “consciously unconscious” but through time, he learned to sell and became very efficient in sharing the product line and distinguishing his company from the competition.

Effectiveness in sales

A lot of his success was due to putting in the face time with people and being available to meet their needs. Joseph took great care of this aspect of sales.

For example, he worked with a hospital in Washington that needed a suction system. The people there said they had very poor suction. Joseph assured them with his products, their suction would get better. They purchased the device but then, Joseph went arrived with a bucket of peroxide, rubber gloves, and did the installation. The next morning, everyone in the operating room was amazed by the volume of blood the suction was able to get. The results weren’t just due to the product but also because of Joseph’s extra steps to make the product work better.

At 67 years old, he is now in the latter years of his sales career but still, Joseph feels like he is just starting again. He is in a new company and there is technology he doesn’t understand. Joseph is learning and back to the same reliable process, he used in 1977 – getting on the phone, making calls every day, talking to people, getting in front of them, and learning the ropes.

Continue learning

In Sales, the more you learn the process, the more effective you become.

The very principles that started his career back then are the same that are driving him today.

Joseph loves the medical industry because he knows that he is helping to save lives. He’s making a difference. This is especially evident when he visits third-world countries. It’s not just about6 the money. At the end of the day, he is helping people and for Joseph, that’s what matters.

Joseph loved learning and learned many languages. This helped him talk to more people and advance his career.

His boss once saw him speaking Portuguese. It opened up the opportunity for him to lead a Latin American division of his company called Spacelabs based in Dallas, Texas. Joseph did well. He was also called to go to Macau to take care of a $7 million deal. He arrived with his translator but during the presentations, he realized most of the people in the room were Portuguese. The translator sat down and Joseph did all the talking. It didn’t take long until he closed the $7 million deal.

Joseph is always ready and when an opportunity presents itself, he adjusts accordingly.

When you’re prepared, you can always turn an accident into a success. #SalesTips

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As a salesperson, it is important to love what you do so you won’t have to work a day in your life.

“The Accidental Seller” episode resources

Joseph Storer has a training class called The 1,2,3s of Selling. It’s based on the principle of doing three things and then doing it over again. It is a helpful guide for people who are getting into sales.

He also has a program called the Power of One which talks about how much success you can have when you make one more call.

You can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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TSE 1215: Three Ways To Make You More Successful Selling Over The Phone

November 22, 2019
/ Phone Prospecting Phone Sales Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Have you ever tried selling without being in front of someone? Three tactics to successfully sell over the phone include building relationships, choosing the right words, and knowing the right speed.

Joe Ingram is a sales genius who uses an intellectual approach to sales. Joe realized that phone conversations play an integral part in the process and many people are missing this key point by looking at the training cycle and sales industry.

The average individual in the U.S. touches their cellphones 2,500 times a day. It’s very observable when you walk into Starbucks. Nobody would even notice you walked in because they’re looking at their phones. We are continuously on the phone.

While using emailhttps://thesalesevangelist.com/episode866/ is a good way to communicate, the product is only perceived as great up to a certain price. Sending out a well-written email is a good marketing strategy but there’s a big difference in sending emails and talking to somebody over the phone to get the call to action to take place. If the price goes over a hundred dollars, then you need to make a phone call. The way you present yourself and your company, during the phone conversation, will determine if the potential client is going to purchase the product.

Communicating over the phone

Communication has several elements. As a speaker, you need to be able to perform all of them to accurately get your message across.

55% of communication comes from body language. The person you’re talking to is watching the way you move during the conversation. For example, when we were at school, we observed how our teachers moved, paid attention to the things they pointed out, and more. All these signals conveyed to us what they felt, what they meant, and what they were trying to teach us.

38% of communication comes from tone and inflection. You can say the same thing but use different tones to convey a whole different meaning. Tone and inflection tell your client what to pay attention to.

7% of communication is based on the actual words we use in a face-to-face conversation. In a phone conversation, you lose 55% of your ability to communicate because your client can’t see your body language. Because there are many disconnects over the phone, salespeople tend to veer away from calls as a channel to making a sale. Without body language in phone conversations, you’re left with 80% tone and inflection and 20% words. Based on that percentage, it would be easy for a phone conversation to go badly if the right tone and choice of words aren’t being expressed well.

As a salesperson, you can’t sound like a customer service provider.

Many cell phone providers don’t sound excited over the phone because they’re not trying to make a sale. They are talking to you because you need something from them, and regardless of their performance, they know you will not drop the conversation.

You will tolerate a mediocre to poor performance to accomplish your goals. There’s no selling involved. However, it’s different when you tell them you’re canceling your subscription. You immediately get transferred to someone on their sales team and suddenly, the conversation takes a turn. Their goal is to make you feel better and they want you to feel good enough to stay.

Joe sees this in a lot of companies. They teach their sales department to treat everyone like customers, even though people who are still prospects need to be approached differently.

Building relationships through your phone

Building a working sales relationship takes time. The easiest way to start is by phone as it allows you to hear and understand each other. Joe has worked with companies who are able to make sales using phone calls.

When Joe was working as a manager in Chrysler Dodge Jeep, he had an employee named Jay. He spoke four languages and it was difficult to understand what he was saying. Jay was able to sell 20-25 cars each month while maintaining great customer satisfaction and profitability, all because of his body language. He made sure that potential clients felt safe during the sale. His clients watched his mouth when he spoke because it helped them to understand him better. Joe knew his customers needed this visual cue so he didn’t talk over the phone but preferred to conduct a sales transaction in person. because then the customers won’t be able to look and see what he’s trying to say.

Joe teaches people how to use better words when talking to prospects.

Choosing the right words

Our subconscious mind cannot process the negative part of what we’re saying. When we’re told, “Don’t think of a kitten,” our mind zeroes in on the kitten, the opposite of what we’re told. The same thing is true when we tell our clients, “No problem.” Their subconscious mind picks up on “problem” and you want to avoid that.

A simple strategy is to replace “No problem” with more positive language. For example, “my pleasure,” “certainly,” and others. Create a positive mental picture in their heads. Couple your words with great tone and inflection to deliver a good message.

Introducing a challenge or problem during a sale will naturally give you resistance. #SalesPositivity

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When a company calls and inquires about your business, don’t think of it as someone trying to buy a product. Instead, think of it as someone who is calling with a list of companies in mind and they’re trying to see if yours is the best. If they talk to you and you aren’t using the right words or tone – don’t expect your company to be considered.

If I can’t get your prospects to have a face-to-face conversation, your next best option is a phone conversation that allows you to build rapport

Texts and emails are the segues to get you to an actual phone conversation. If you can sell and close a deal over the phone, then great. If you can’t, your goal is to set a face-to-face appointment.

Choosing the right speed

You need to consider your speed when talking over the phone as well. Speak based on how the person on the other line is speaking. Be slow in speaking when you’re talking to somebody who speaks slowly. Adapt to the person you’re talking so you can deliver your message in a way they can understand. Listen to their words and use them when you respond. If they are looking for significant discounts, then use the exact terms when it’s your time to talk.

This is how you show empathy in your conversation. You abandon the phrases or words you’d like to say for those the other person wants to hear. As a salesperson, the way to successfully sell over the phone is to be who your client needs you to be.

You’ll find many of the same skills you use in a closing face-to-face can be used on the phone.

“Three Ways To Make You More Successful Selling Over The Phone” episode resources

Reach out to Joe Ingram via his phone number (+562 548 526). You can also check his website, ingraminteractive.com.

You can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for any sales concerns.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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Prospecting, Terry Hansen, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 1213: How to Build A Six Figure Income Even If You’re Not Great At Closing!

November 18, 2019
/ Closing Prospecting Sales Training Terry Hansen
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Ever wonder how you can build a six-figure income even if you’re not great at closing? Closing is one of the most important parts of sales. It is crucial and every word you utter during closing matters.

Terry Hansen hails from Idaho Falls, Idaho. His plan is simple but he still has impressive sales success stories. He’s worked with many organizations and sales reps around the country and helped them boost their sales. Throughout his sales journey, Terry has observed three bottleneck scenarios in which entrepreneurs and sales professionals can get stuck.

The first is that many struggles to increase their sales and income because they are not getting in front of the right kinds of companies and individuals. They are going at it like opening a phone book and just calling from the top of the list, hoping that someone will buy from them. Once on the phone, they don’t spend time introducing themselves, starting a conversation and making appointments.

The second scenario a bottleneck can occur is the lack of a framework to qualify customers and salespeople end up closing with people they shouldn’t. This comes from a scarcity mindset. There will always be goals and sales quotas, that have to be hit. Because of this, many people in sales end up trying to sell to without taking the time to determine whether they’re selling to their target customer. Sometimes, salespeople can close a client and later have regrets because they didn’t share their work values.

The third bottleneck in failing to close well comes from not having the right skills.

It is each of these three scenarios that can become the speed bumps that keep entrepreneurs from growing their sales.

The value of prospecting

Many sales books stress the importance of having closing techniques. You have to be a champion in overcoming objections and resolving concerns to become successful in growing your sales. Another secret to success is becoming an account manager. You need to have stellar customer service, be able to ask for referrals, take good care of your base, and keep your competitors from your clients.

Terry read a variety of books and did everything they suggested but he still wasn’t hitting his quotas and achieving the level of success he wanted. He then had lunch with a great mentor and was venting about his frustrations. Terry let him know that despite doing the right things, he was still living paycheck to paycheck. His mentor shared an illustration about two salespeople, one great at appointment setting but lousy with closing and the other, great at closing but bad with appointment setting. The first salesperson could schedule 40 appointments per month but only closed 10% of those appointments, which resulted in only four sales per month. The second salesperson lands four appointments per month. He is an amazing closer and but can only close deal 50% of the time, making two sales per month.

Terry understood that he would make more money and build a six-figure income even if you’re not great at closing by being good at setting appointments and increasing opportunities. Closing is equally important but the analogy taught him he needed to redouble his efforts in making appointments and meeting with people.

The challenges in prospecting

Prospecting is uncomfortable, scary, and awkward. Stereotypes of salespeople being manipulative, talking a lot, listening too little, and using high-pressure tactics have to be overcome. Most salespeople don’t want to be perceived as manipulative and try to make relationships a priority. However, there can be a period of adjustment as they work to avoid reflecting on the negative stereotype.

Salespeople are having a difficult time getting past the gatekeeper and making contact with the decision-maker. Too often they leave multiple voicemails and emails with the hopes of getting a reply but typically, that doesn’t happen. The challenge is to be compelling in those initial interactions.

Terry tries to be generic in his voicemails to avoid stereotypes. The first three seconds you’re identified as a salesperson are the most challenging. The person who is being contacted can lose interest regardless of what is being sold. It’s best to veer away from bad introductions and barking up the wrong tree. Salespeople shouldn’t just go through the phone book without a clear idea of who they want to contact. There’s no need to spend too much time trying to facilitate an introduction with people who don’t fit the ultimate goals. Doing so will delay getting in front of the clients who actually need the service or product being offered.

Building your client

Salespeople should look at their top 10 best clients, profile them and get an overall sense of the companies they represent. From this information, they can build a dream list of similar companies. Use these strategies and tactics to make contact with the decision-makers: create a profile, build and stay focused on a specific list of desired traits, and use the right kinds of tactics.

Many salespeople hate prospecting because they find it awkward. There’s already a resistance when they call companies and there’s a feeling of relief, not the disappointment when they get a voicemail to leave a message. The voicemail is now an escape. With the gatekeepers, like receptionists, salespeople have to get assertive to get to the decision-makers. The goal is to get past the voicemail and get to a person. This is an opportunity to be persistent

Instead of just saying, “Yes, please,” to leaving a message, salespeople should be a little more curious and assertive. Probing questions such as, “Is he in the office or out of the office?”, “Is he at a meeting?”, or “If you slip a note to him to let him know I’m on the line, would that be appropriate?” can move a salesperson closer to their target client.

Be persistent and follow-through

It’s also a good idea to ask the secretary if it would be okay to wait on the phone until the meeting is done, especially if they’re already wrapping up.

If the decision-maker is out of the office or on vacation, press further and ask if it’s possible to get their personal number. If it’s given, follow up is imperative.. 50% of the time, secretaries will say not but the other 50% will give the number or transfer the call directly.

Think positively and don’t assume the other person is unwilling to talk. If your persistence doesn’t work, however, then ask for someone else in the organization. The director of marketing, the human resource officer, the CEO, anyone with buying power in a decision committee can be great alternatives. These days, CEOs and presidents no longer make a decision by themselves. A vote or by committee makes the purchasing decision today. Find two or three of these people in the organization and talk to them. These tactics are not difficult but they do require you to be more assertive and persistent, not aggressive and arrogant.

At the end of the day, the way to build a six-figure income even if you’re not great at closing is to improve your skills in appointment setting. #SalesProspecting

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The secret to prospecting and having conversations with decision-makers is to be more persistent, assertive, polite, and professional.

“How to Build A Six-Figure Income Even If You’re Not Great At Closing!” episode resources

Terry Hansen and his team are hosting a special online sales training workshop this week where they’ll be teaching the three secrets that salespeople can use to boost their sales revenue. They’ll be talking about how to build a six-figure income even if you’re not great at closing. You can go to salespitchmastery.com/register to attend for free by using the special link or you can attend it for $49.

For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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Seize attention, Likky Lavji, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 1212: Networking Effectively and Creating a Sphere of Influence

The idea of networking effectively and creating a sphere of influence is nothing new in sales. It’s a facet of sales that everybody understands and executes. Networking is one sure way of meeting new people, building relationships, and it eventually opens doors for opportunities.

Likky Lavji has been meeting people and building relationships for 30 years. He built and grew his IT company based on his referral network. By the time he sold his company, he had ample knowledge about how to do the business. Now, he’s sharing his knowledge with others.

The old methods of doing business

Face-to-face meetings and getting to know people before starting the business are old methods of doing business. Today, people depend on social media to grow their business. We are bombarded with social diversions making us adept in communicating using social media platforms. The downside to that is it’s becoming more difficult for many to have conversations face-to-face.

As salespeople, we need to combine old and new methods to make it work. It’s great to go back to the basics. Look at your existing base of connections and get to know them. Identify your best clients from your database, the ones who not only bring in revenue but referrals as well. Once you’ve identified your clients, you can start building your sphere of influence.

Creating your sphere of influence is easy to do. You need to know your people and reach out to the people they know as well. In a networking event, look for the person who has people around them. Find an opportunity to start a conversation and be authentic. Don’t force anything. It has to be organic.

Likky once stuttered and it held him back. With the help of Bob Burg, the author of The Go-Giver Way, he was able to move past his stuttering.

Building relationships

It’s normal to have some level of fear when talking to strangers in a networking event, or anywhere else. However, that fear can be overcome. You need to veer away from the misconceptions of others. Put those aside and just be who you are. People fear networking because of the notion they have to sell. Change that mindset and think of networking as meeting people and making friends.

Build connections allow people to get to know you and like you. As these relationships are built, they will get to trust you and your business, which can lead to referrals. #SalesSkills

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Don’t go into sales mode right away.

Likky uses the acronym F.O.R.M. to start conversations:

F – Family. Everybody wants to talk about their family. Some people even have their family photos in their wallets. You can talk about their dogs too.

O – Occupation. You can ask about their occupation. For example, ask them how they got into their business.

R – Recreation. Find your common ground and talk about their hobbies and interests.

M – Message. These are the things you stand for.

Listen to what they say

Build meaningful conversation and listen to their response. Ask more questions about their interests. It doesn’t matter if they don’t ask you questions because this isn’t about you. Make sure they do all the talking. Bob uses 10 field questions when meeting new people such as, “What do you enjoy most about your profession?” and “Describe the strangest thing you’ve experienced in your business.”

People get excited when talking about these things. It’s your job to hear and understand what they’re saying. Show empathy and put yourself in their shoes. Understand what they’re going through. Listen well, take notes and follow-up.

In Bob’s book, he suggested listening with the back of your neck. This means listening to what they’re saying and putting everything aside. All the words would go through your mouth, your face, through your ears, and to the back of your neck. There’s nothing else present except for those words coming into you.

Giving out business cards isn’t the best way to execute networking effectively and creating a sphere of influence. Whenever Likky sees he may need to give away his business card, he tries to avoid it.

Connect them to others

In networking effectively and creating a sphere of influence, another way to do this is by giving referrals to someone else When you meet people in a networking event, ask them who their ideal customers are and you will see there are others in the room who have the same audience that they have. Refer them to those people and help them make a connection. They will learn to trust you because you helped grow their business. Don’t worry if the referral sources aren’t 100% successful. All you need to do is make the introduction and let them have the conversation.

If they want to do something for you in return, then talk to them about the kind of customers you are looking for. Consider having a meeting with them first so they know who you are and what you want. You’ll also get to know who they are, their centers of influence.

If you meet somebody and you promise them something, always make sure to follow through within 24 hours, either by email or follow-up, because they may forget you beyond that time frame.

A handwritten letter or card is also a great idea in networking effectively and creating a sphere of influence.

Start building relationships and connections before you start selling. The more relationships you build, the more people know what you do, and the easier it will be to get referrals and make business happen.

When it comes to building your sales income and boosting your sales, developing the skills of appointment setting. It pays more than the skill of closing sales. The secret to mastering the art of appointment setting is persistence, being assertive, and being polite and professional.

“Networking Effectively and Creating a Sphere of Influence” episode resources

Connect with Likky Lavji and visit his site. He has a free workshop coming up and you can check it on www.salespitchmastery.com/register. For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami. It’s an event put on by a group of friends and it’s designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. We hope to see you there! You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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The Sales Evangelist, Wendell Jordan, Accidental Seller

TSE 1211: The Accidental Seller Series – Wendell Jordan

November 13, 2019
/ Accidental Seller Mindset Motivation Wendell Jordan
/ By The Sales Evangelist

This is the 4th episode for the Accidental Seller series.

Wendell Jordan is the owner of Jordan Consults and a local SEO specialist. His company works with small businesses to increase their digital footprint.

Growing up, Jordan and his friends wanted to become professional basketball players. However, playing for the NBA became an afterthought when he reached high school. He actively studied music during his first few years in college. By then, he was in and out of recording studios in New York City.

Perceptions of sales

Wendell thought of salespeople as sleazy individuals. He first came across sales when he was young. A vacuum salesman was doing door-to-door sales and he wouldn’t leave until his mother threatened to call the police. The salesman was trying to force his mother to buy a product they didn’t need. That experience had a negative impact on Wendel and affected how he viewed sales.

Wendell’s mother worked for the city of New York and his father was a postal worker. His parents’ jobs, along with how he viewed salespeople made him think that sales was not for him.

He accidentally came into sales when he was checking out Craigslist ads. The ad was looking for someone to work in customer service and didn’t mention sales. When he went in for the position, it was commission-only, door-to-door sales process. Wendell’s wife played a huge part in his decision to take the position. She had faith that he could do it and encouraged him to try. He’s been in sales ever since.

Overcoming the fear

Like any new salesperson, Wendell had fears. He worried he’d become the sleazy salesperson who had to be removed from someone’s home, just like the man from his childhood. In his first days on the job, he shadowed a sales rep and was told just to take notes. For two days, he tried to learn what he could from shadowing. On the third day, he was thrown into the fire and had to have his first door-to-door experience on his own.

Making a sale on the first day can be difficult but Wendell was able to do it. His first deal felt magical and it inspired and motivated him to keep going. He thought, if he could do it the first day, he can also do it the second day so he kept going.

However, the lack of sales training affected his morale and the number of sales made. Shadowing others for a day or two wasn’t enough for him selling door-to-door effectively. He just didn’t have the skill set to close and the result was a lot of deals weren’t pushed through.

Quitting sales

Wendell’s sales journey wasn’t easy. He experienced being removed from payroll and spent a good part of the year in limbo, not knowing if he’d be able to make a sale again. The instability of the job almost made him quit. An old business partner convinced him to try again, but this time, he’d be selling websites. Wendell had trepidation considering that his previous sales experience wasn’t stellar. Still, he tried again and started cold-calling businesses.

Wendell went from a door-to-door sales process to talking to potential clients and educating them about their services.

Sales has been one of the greatest opportunities Wendell has ever had in his life and he would choose it again. It allows him to work from home and learn about different cultures. The door-to-door sales experience exposed him to different lifestyles and it trained him in different ways to socialize with others.

If you’re new in sales, keep at it. Don’t get caught up in what people perceive sales to be. #SalesMotivation

Shift your focus.

See yourself three years down the road. You’ll think about the number of Nos you got but you’ll remember the the Yeses were far greater. Focus on the bright side.

“The Accidental Seller Series – Wendell Jordan” episode resources

Reach out to Wendell Jordan via his phone number, 314-325-829. You can also visit his website and check out the contact form there.

For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audio books on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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Song – A Slow Moving Thought

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The Sales Evangelist, Seize attention, Ron Tite

TSE 1210: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy World

November 11, 2019
/ Building Trust Communicatuion Ron Tite Value
/ By The Sales Evangelist

As salespeople, we look for ways to seize attention and build trust. While prospecting and building trust among clients is critical, it’s also one of the most difficult tasks in sales.

Ron Tite is the founder and keynote speaker of the Toronto-based agency, Church+State as well as the author of Think Do Say: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy, Busy World. Being an executive creative director at a large multinational ad agency, Ron has extensive knowledge about traditional agency marketing, advertising, and design. In addition to that, he’s also an experienced comedian, using that in his own entrepreneurial journey. Ron is also an investor who appreciates the need for sales to do business.

The desperate need for attention

Salespeople are looking at the ecosystem correctly but are using the wrong tactics to make a breakthrough. They’ve been chasing metrics that don’t deliver to build long term businesses.

There are so many thought leaders, evangelists, and LinkedIn lead generators who are going about it in the wrong way. Seeing this drove Ron to eventually build his own agency.

With a growing number of salespeople, the sheer number of sales reps and clients are overwhelmed by pitches.

Time Square is a great metaphor. Everybody is in Time Square. Big corporations and companies use traditional means, such as using billboards, to get attention. Meanwhile, there are smaller sellers on the streets that are doing things differently. They are more aggressive, targeted, and their pitch can be customized. These are the people who sell practically everything in Times Square, from ripped off t-shirts to street meat. Every one of them trying to get attention.

However, the challenge doesn’t stop there, it continues. Now you’ve got their attention, how do you earn their trust?

Salespeople thrive in a busy environment by bringing respectability and credibility. They have to be aggressive and nimble in their sales approach. #SalesManagement

Click To Tweet

Other salespeople are still using the automated messages they used in the 60s when talking to potential clients. They could have customized their message and tailored it but they didn’t. They need to revamp their style with three phrases in mind: based on what you think, based on what you do, and based on what you say.

Set yourself apart

As a salesperson, the ‘based on what you think’ approach considers the things you firmly believe regardless of what you’re selling. This is important because you aren’t selling a unique product. There are others selling the same product so what you think is what makes you unique. Ask yourself,

Do you believe that:

relationships are the key to success?
you should deliver the most value?
your role as a salesperson is to connect people with the right opportunities?

‘Based on what you do’ are the things you do to reinforce your beliefs. The last part, ‘based on what you say.’

Salespeople can be hesitant about sharing their products/services with others because they don’t want to come off as “pitch slapping.” It’s important to deliver the right message through their actions and behaviors by talking about what they do in an authentic way and transparent way.

Don’t create smoke and mirrors and say nice things just to make a sale. People are sensitive to that approach and they can see it a mile away. Use the following questions as a guide to starting your conversation.

Who do you do it for?
What do they want you to do?
Who do you do it with?

For so long, salespeople have used many strategies to seize attention and build trust but still find it difficult to have a breakthrough. They need to customize their sales pitch and talk to clients according to their needs. There is no need to cheat the system. Rather, they have to speak to potential clients in the right way.

Invest in being good

Comedians come and go and they try a variety of tactics to make people laugh. However, nobody has sustained a career in comedy by doing anything other than being really funny. It is the same thing in sales. You can try other platforms in the course of your sales career but it won’t work unless you show your humanity and have the best interest of your clients and prospects at heart. Jumping from one platform to another may give you some benefit and short-term metrics but it won’t sustain your business in the long run.

Ron’s first project when he launched his agency was with a client he already knew. The marketing director discovered Ron was running his own agency and she gave him his first project. The trust didn’t come from Ron chasing tactics. It was due to Ron’s honesty in the business.

Red Bull is a great company that bases its marketing on the three things mentioned earlier. The company firmly believes that life with an adrenaline rush is a better way to live. They reinforce that belief by encouraging activities where their audience can have an adventure. Their advertising reinforces this message by showing people grow wings after drinking their product.

Red Bull reached out to one of Ron’s friends Matt, a chef, to star in their videos. The company said they shared Matt’s values and attitude and they wanted him on board. Despite Matt’s respect for the brand, he couldn’t push it through because he didn’t drink Red Bull. The company respected his response because they align with people based on values. They know that many respond and convert because of that approach. The number of converts exceeds those who don’t respond favorably so that’s what they focus on. Still, they just don’t walk away from people who don’t buy their products.

Looking for ways to seize attention and build trust may be difficult but resist the desire to scheme in order to turn the system in your favor. Do the hard work, roll up your sleeves, and find out as much as you can about the prospects you have. Above all, be a real human being using real conversations. It doesn’t matter if they don’t convert because that’s not your goal. You are there to add value and help solve their problems. When you focus on that, enough of your prospects will convert in time.

Hiring the right people

A section Impossible, a book by Mark Roberto, highlights coachability as the number one value managers need to look for when hiring. Salespeople need a desire to learn and have the ability to change and adapt. It’s also important to delegate clear responsibilities to the sales team. Each sales rep can specialize in the activity in which they excel. Don’t rush the hiring process or skip steps. Hire who can do the prospecting, not just close. Don’t hire somebody and expect them to save the business or figure things out on their own.

“How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy World” episode resources

Get in touch with Ron Tite via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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Negotiating, The Sales Evangelist, Adam Ayers

TSE 1209: How to Negotiate a Mutual Win

Salespeople are always looking for a win and when closing with clients, landing a great deal while being able to negotiate a mutual win is the ideal goal.

Adam Ayers studied mechanical engineering and built a software technology startup after graduating. He is now the Chief Technology Officer and founder of the company, Number5, which specializes as an outsource CTO for celebrities, eCommerce companies, and internet brands. Fifty percent of their operations involve running technology, and acquiring customers, for commerce businesses and executing the data science. The other fifty percent is on custom technology where they build platforms, APIs, and high-performance software on the internet.

Negotiate a mutual win

When Adam was a child he asked his father what inventors do and the response resonated with him. He was told the best inventors don’t just invent things, they are capable of selling what they’ve invented. That thought motivated him to make things himself, build a team, and sell the things he created himself. As an engineer, Adam has learned to think in frameworks and processes, finding that telling stories are effective ways to negotiate a mutual win and make a sale.

The biggest problem most salespeople face is the tendency to talk more and listen less. People want to be listened to, to be asked questions, and to be understood. This is a factor that other sales reps forget. No matter what you are selling, you must put the clients’ interests first. Listen to them, ask questions, and understand where they’re coming from. You learn to see their problem and present customers with a solution when you sincerely tune-in to what they are saying. This is how they make the buying decision, to trust the solution you present to them.

The ideal ratio is 80-20, where 80% is spent listening to the clients’ story and asking them questions while 20% is spent sharing a story about how you’re going to help solve their problems.

The book entitled, You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar emphasizes the Sandler sales submarine, with the initial point being we need to bond and build rapport with our customers. Showing compassion and kindness and asking people who they are and what they need is the first step to negotiate a mutual win.

The importance of self-awareness

Self-awareness is knowing who you are, what you’re good at, or not, and being honest about it. #SalesTruth

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It’s a trait that many salespeople need to master to negotiate a mutual win. Being who you are is important because that’s how you connect with people. While compromising is a good thing, you also want to be authentic. Your flaws as a salesperson will make you more human and more relatable to others. A corporate approach in sales is uncomfortable because ultimately everyone is just looking for a smart friend with whom they can make a connection when they’re being sold to.

Adam sells software development, customer acquisition, and data science. These are products the average person doesn’t understand but they know they need it to grow their business. He understands he needs to nurture confidence in his potential clients, that they want to feel good about hiring him. Adam highlights his previous experience, his background, who he’s already worked with, their integrity and what he’s already delivered.

Adam’s team doesn’t sell. Instead, they connect with people – they talk, dine, and get drinks.

While the sales process and negotiations are pretty straightforward, the reality is that it works for his team. When Adam knows that his services aren’t going to fit what the client needs, he is upfront and honest about it. Adam knows his customers need someone who can execute the tasks and if needed, communicate to the stockholders and investors what’s going on.

Unconventional approach works

This approach of combining tech expertise with a personal touch is the core of, Number5, a company name inspired by the1986 movie, Short Circuit. Sometimes, people are hired based on relationships and not on their knowledge about technology.

Their process on how to negotiate a mutual win is shaped around helping clients understand their needs and what their role is to make meet the company’s goals. Adam shows them how his team uses technology to deliver the solution efficiently and effectively.

One company Adam was an engineer for, had the Five Four Club, a men’s clothing line subscription, that quickly rose to popularity. The company needed the technology to keep up with its growth. Adam not only offered the tech to support the growth but as a leader, helped offer resources to build up the existing team. Adam didn’t have to explain how the tech worked but still offered suggestions on how employees could support it within their roles.

Clients say that Adam’s approach is abrasive and shocking until they get to know him. Once they see his process and his ability working for them, they’re on board.

Many salespeople aren’t just selling, they’re also doers. Sales grow with a better job of doing and executing.

Moving forward

Adam is always looking for different tools that will help from a market broad perspective and a sales perspective. For example, CrystalKnows is a plugin that helps you analyze the personality type of anyone’s LinkedIn profile. The results will give you an idea of how to communicate with that person. This is an amazing way technology can start connecting people more effectively and efficiently.

Technology is also helpful for companies that are looking to expand and hire people. The Sales Acceleration Formula, by Mark Roberge, shares it’s not just the experience that’s important, it’s the coachability of the salesperson and their ability to adapt.

“How to Negotiate a Mutual Win” episode resources

Connect with Adam Ayers directly by scheduling a meeting with him through email or look him up on LinkedIn.

For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can also call us at (561) 570-5077.

The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami. Group of friends put together this event designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. We hope to see you there! You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

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Ashlee Reusch, Donald C Kelly, Honesty in Sales

TSE 1208: The Accidental Seller- “Ashlee Reusch”

November 6, 2019
/ Accidental Seller Ashlee Reusch Commission Sales
/ By The Sales Evangelist

This is the third episode for the Accidental Seller series brought to you by The Sales Evangelist.

Ashlee Reusch is a business development representative at Cognos HR. Ashlee was always on the lookout for change growing up and thus wasn’t chasing a specific career. She graduated high school a year early and proceeded to go to the local community college to get her radiology technical certification.

Ashlee realized that science wasn’t her passion. The classes didn’t excite her and being a creative person at heart, she felt like the course didn’t foster that part of her. She didn’t want to sign up for endless classes to get certifications to advance her career in the medical field in the future. She was at a loss for what to do next and that’s how she fell into sales.

Falling into sales

She was finishing her associate’s degree at a community college and was deciding whether to proceed to her bachelor’s degree at a university. But Ashlee lost her passion in science and didn’t want to invest in her education being unsure of what she really loved. He friends who studied at universities and paid tens of thousands of dollars but in the end, went back to square one because they were no longer interested in the career path they chose. She didn’t want to be in the same boat.

Ashlee talked to her dad about her predicament. He has been with the local Chevy dealer selling cars. He then suggested that she get a job and try out sales for a full year. She thought of it as an intersection where she wanted to experience the world and figure out what she wanted at the same time. That’s when she became an accidental seller.

The first few days were nerve-wracking, especially being there were only 2 women in the sales department. Everyone else was men with the average age of late thirties. Ashlee was 19 years old then. The experience was both exciting and nerve-wracking, especially since there was no sales training available. She shadowed other salesmen for a week and then she was put on the floor after that to sell some cars.

Since her dad had been in sales his whole life and both her parents were entrepreneurs owning a small art business in the late 90s and early 2000s, sales and business was nothing new for Ashlee. She also saw how her parents worked long hours. There was a lot of instability in sales and that made her think that sales was not her cup of tea. She wanted something stable with normal work hours. Sales was never part of her plan even until her college years.

The accidental seller sells for the first time

Ashlee was an introvert growing up and she likes to hang out in the background a little bit. This part of her made sales a scary avenue. It was difficult for her to talk to strangers face to face and sell them cars. Her limited training lasted only a week. She was the typical salesman but she made it her goal to be honest with her clients.

Whenever she doesn’t know anything, she tells them that she doesn’t have the answer at the moment but she’ll find it out for them. She found out that people respect honesty and humility.

She was working on a hundred percent dealership commission roll, so not selling a car means not getting a paycheck. It was a motivating factor to learn the ropes quickly. She spent almost four months before she felt like had things under control.

She moved from one salesperson’s cubicle to another to learn how to strike a deal in her downtime. She’d listen and take notes on how to handle common objections. She followed her dad’s suggestion.

A salesperson absorbs the things around him, takes what works for his style, and turns it into his own thing. #SalesPerson

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A moment of doubt

Being an accidental seller means that sales isn’t your first choice and when faced with difficulties, an accident seller would tend to fold. Ashlee has her moments of doubt and thinks about quitting. When it does cross her mind, she convinces herself otherwise by thinking of all the skills and opportunities of the people she met in the sales industry so far.

It’s easy to get caught up in the negativity but it’s important to not get swayed by all of it. Her dad told her the way to get out of a rut is to sell. Whenever she feels down, she tries again.

Her first sale wasn’t that exciting. She sold to a newly married couple who were buying their first car together. It was special for them and they used a true car certificate. All she had to do was a test drive with them and make sure that they liked the car. The experience wasn’t overwhelming but the income that came with it was fun and exciting.

Moving forward, she went from selling cars to membership training for a large gym chain and made her way into the Chicago tech world. She is now working for a small outsource HR company where she helps businesses accomplish their goals every day. There’s a lot of networking and meeting other people involved. She learns about clients’ businesses and their growth goals and she helps them reach their goals.

Ashlee would do sales in a heartbeat even if she had other choices and sees no possibilities of changing anything in her sales journey. Sales gave her tons of independence and confidence. It bought her a house and gave her a great career.

Sales is difficult and it’s a roller coaster ride but when you’re in it for the long haul, you’ll be surprised with the many things you learn, the people you meet, and the opportunities you meet along the way.

“The Accidental Seller” episode resources

Get in touch with Ashlee Reush via LinkedIn and her personal email.

With any sales concerns and questions about sales, you can reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let me know how it works for you.

The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami, an event put on by a group of friends and it’s designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Come and join us. You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website.

We want you to join us for our next episodes so tune in to our podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings to every episode you listen to.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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Game On

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Produced By: BRASKO

Larry The Unicorn

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Christopher Walken

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Bad Boys

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Frenchy

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Frenchy

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Gia Le, The Sales Evangelists, Business referrals

TSE 1207: How to 10X Your Income With Repeat and Referred Business

November 4, 2019
/ Gia Le Referrals Sales Training Women in Sales
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Businesses, regardless of size, will always find ways to grow. One sure tactic to 10x your income is to use repeat and referred business.

Gia Le is from Australia with a mixed heritage of Chinese and Vietnamese. She started her career in finance and insurance with an automotive dealership. That’s where she got her start in sales. In the beginning, she went from almost being fired three months into her job to being the top-performing consultant in Australia’s largest automotive holding company. Later on, Gia realized she wanted to have more flexibility in her life. She looked for ways she could use her skills and pursued another career that would give her more freedom and flexibility.

She tried real estate for a year and noticed that digital marketing, an emerging platform, was being underutilized in Australia. Four years ago, the use of social media was just starting to blossom. She saw that as an opportunity and decided to build a digital agency where she made just $500 in her first month. Today, her agency is growing across Australia and Asia.

Selling using out-dated methods

When Gia started with the dealership, her company offered several training programs. She learned the techniques and rehearsed the scripts but nothing was working. The old methods of selling didn’t work for sophisticated customers who saw sales tactics as insincere. She was in the new world using out-dated methods of selling. She struggled for three months until the right mentor appeared. He pulled her aside and told her not to focus on the sale. Instead, he instructed her to focus on the people and realize they’re more than just selling finance and insurance.

Salespeople want to solve a problem and deliver a service.

Sales is about selling an opportunity, and above all else, relationship. #SalesFacts

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When Gia started connecting and focusing on her clients’ pain, empathizing with them, and gaining their trust using the art of storytelling, she started closing nearly 70% of her clients. The dealership was fast-paced and it was important the salespeople could close a transaction in less than a day.

In Australia, financing and insurance make more money than the actual vehicle, comprising 60- 70% of the dealership’s profits. Gia learned to never give out her business cards because she knew that was a customer’s consolation prize, that they were leaving her with hope and hope she didn’t pay the bills. She had to close before the client left.

Growing the business through repeat and referred business

People think referrals happen by luck. Getting referrals is actually all about having the right strategy, being disciplined, having a strong thought process, and making sure that the system is bigger than yourself. Gia took advantage of her downtime as a salesperson when Facebook and Google were still growing in popularity. While everyone else was busy trying to find new clients on Facebook, Gia was busy prospecting her old clients. She understood that 90% of her next sale was going to happen before they even walked into the door. When her clients came back, they had made a conscious decision to return to Gia. They remembered who Gia was, what she did and the way she’d treated them.

Not many salespeople kept in touch with their clients the way Gia did. It takes a lot of discipline and tenacity to follow-up, especially when you’re busy. Gia made it a point to have at least six touchpoints when working with a new client. For example, sending a gift, making sure a thank you note got sent within thirty days, hand-writing birthday cards and calling on an anniversary. With consistency and automated systems in place, relationships were built. It was because of her dedication that clients were consistently referring to family members and friends.

Build a connection

Staying connected is the key. The relationship began when clients signed the contract. Gia would assist them when they wanted to make a claim due to an accident, enabling her to assist clients with a replacement vehicle. She could also help with the contract and make more money for the dealership. Everyone benefited because she stayed connected and earned the client’s trust.

Gia’s current team also emphasizes having a relationship with their clients. They go beyond what they offer and know they aren’t just selling products and services but also trust and a promise. They even help clients who have poor credit ratings.

There are many ideas to grow your sales but discipline and consistency are key when using repeat and referred business. If you decide to make 10 phone calls a day to original clients, do it and watch your business grow.

“How to 10X Your Income With Repeat and Referred Business” episode resources

Visit Gia Le’s digital agency website to see helpful sales strategies, tips, and tricks. Also, check out her own company site.

For other sales concerns, you can also reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let him know how they work for you.

You can also read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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Vlad Calus, Content Marketing, Lead Generation

TSE 1206: The Main Things Generating The Most Leads Right Now!

November 1, 2019
/ Collaboration Content Marketing Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

As salespeople, we often ask ourselves about the main things generating the most leads right now because we always want to be in on everything that works. Consumers’ purchasing decisions are affected by their experiences and we want to know what affects them in order to appeal to those emotions and convince them to buy our products or services. Sales professionals that we are, we love leads and we like getting new prospects.

Vlad Calus is the founder at Planable, a content collaboration plan for freelancers and marketing teams. It is the most visual platform that helps you preview your social media content before publishing it. Planable helps you check and review your content before publishing it. It makes collaboration and asking for feedback from your teammates easier as well as asking for clients’ feedback before finalizing the content and scheduling the posts through social media.

Generating the most leads right now

There are three things that helped Vlad to get leads. The first one was writing a book. He wrote a book called Marketing Themes of the Future which gained them over 2,000 leads in just a couple of weeks. They also published the Content Academy and it generated them more than 500 people in just a couple of hours.

Publishing is one way to generate leads and that’s what Vlad and his team did. They also did a content calibration report where they reported on the state of content marketing and how content marketing teams are working. For them, their team wasn’t able to generate many people by just a sudden initiative. They did the planning on how to create their content and spent a lot of time on it. The content are called special initiatives. They worked on it for about 12 months and all of the people involved were on the same page. They then had press releases for client launches and they constantly repurposed their content.

Content calibration

Vlad’s team looked for the problem in their industry and wanted to address it. Research shows that there have been no content calibration reports done for the last nine years. They wanted to understand the state of the market but there are only old data available. In marketing, data are key players to a business’s success. They then understood the need to generate a lot of data and started the project with their customers, connections on the net, and the people they met. They generated leads by using the data of the report they collated.

One of the data they have is on how to repurpose content for their followers. There’s also the part where you need multiple stakeholders as part of your content strategy. They also discovered in their research that broken collaboration is wasted time and communicating with your stakeholders vie spreadsheets and emails is one of the most broken workflows there is. They use all these data and share their marketing reports to their clients and potential clients to motivate them to jump on a call with them and start using their Planable.

It’s applicable to other industries as well regardless of the size of the company. You can make reports using the data from the audience that you are working on and start by sending your audience Facebook polls or sending them a simple type form they can fill out. You can collate the data and use it for your marketing strategies.

Publishing a book to get more leads works especially if you promote it yourself. Put your email signature in the book and see the number of people who click on it every single day.

From readers to lead generators

People who have read Vlad’s book started recommending it to other people they know. The book presented the benefits of collaborating on the content and using many different platforms to create a more collaborative market. The ebook also presented solutions that you can use for your content marketing collaboration as a marketing team.

Every email we get, we put them into an email marketing flow and we ask them to jump on a call with us for them to find out more about Planable. We send people case studies on how Planable has been helping companies.

The other thing that helped them in generating the most leads right now is their Content Academy. They interviewed over 30 experts in content marketing from different industries. These people are the front line in creating content, from the ideation, editing, writing, publishing, and generating leads. The Content Academy includes seven-step videos with topics like ideation strategy, content editing, content publishing, promoting, and so on.

Vlad’s team presents it to potential clients and we give them sneak peeks of the things they can learn in the Content Academy.

He makes snippets and minute-long videos showing how it would help businesses and publishes the videos on his LinkedIn and other social media.

In content marketing, don’t be afraid to try creating content and putting yourself on camera. Get yourself out there and just start creating content. Listen to the feedback of the community and write again until you are able to make quality content.

Success doesn’t come from just sitting around. It comes when you truly start to give creating and writing a try. #ContentMarketing

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“The Main Things Generating The Most Leads Right Now! ” episode resources

Reach out to Vlad Calus via his LinkedIn.

Go ahead and hit me up for concerns and questions about sales. You can also reach out to me via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Use these practical sales tips and let me know how it works for you.

The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami. It’s an event put on by a group of friends and it’s designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Come and join us. You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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Aaron Ross, The Sales Evangelist, Entrepreneur

TSE 1204: “Impossible to Inevitable”

October 28, 2019
/ Aaron Ross Digital Marketing Lead Generation leads Niche markets
/ By The Sales Evangelist

How can salespeople turn the impossible to inevitable?

Aaron Ross is the author of the book Predictable Revenue and a proud father to nine children. The book Predictable Revenue is called the sales bible of Silicon Valley. It changed how the fastest-growing sales teams are designed. The book talked about outbound prospecting which can be a very predictable way to drive appointments and if you have predictable appointments, you can create predictable revenue. It also talks about sales specialization instead of letting the sales reps do the prospecting. Managers must break the sales team into specialized groups to assess where they excel.

Impossible to inevitable

His new book called From the Impossible to Inevitable is the growth bible. It’s more for C-levels: the managers, executives, and the leaders who understand the few key reasons why a company gets stuck and won’t grow. The book answers three questions:

Why aren’t you growing as fast as you can?
How can you grow faster?
How do you keep it up?

This book touches on sales models and expands to lead generation. From Impossible to Inevitable will teach you the ways of the fastest-growing companies in the world such as SalesForce and Twilio. The first section of the book is called Nail a Niche as it addresses the hard truth that most companies are not ready to grow and that’s the reason why they don’t grow as much as they want.

You can’t paddle downstream if you’re not even in the stream.

Nailing the niche

When beginning a business, there’s the tendency of selling everything to everyone. But that doesn’t work. What it does to you is that you either have no customer or you have a bunch of customers who are a little bit of this and a little bit of that. An entrepreneur may sit back and ask which of the customers are easiest to close, or who is the audience that really needs me? It is important to define who needs you.

Aaron was part of Salesforce, where he built an internal sales program. He left the team in 2006 and did what he wanted to do, like going into adventures and other things. Aaron also worked in a venture firm, then on a thing called Unique Genius, then on CEO Flow.

He needed to focus on a niche and figure out where his expertise lies so that he could deliver the most value for his customers. He then thought of outbound prospecting. I wasn’t the general sales consulting.

For us salespeople, this can take a lot of testing, talking, and experimentation with companies to get the right package and the right pricing programs before you nail your niche and start to grow faster. Sometimes it can take a long time because we have all these unrealistic expectations on how fast it should happen.

Do it as Twilio does it

Twilio is a platform company that provides a bunch of technologies. Twilio is used by many companies that build software or iPhone apps to power their message alerts and phone calls. For example, Uber uses Twilio to make an Uber phone call and text because it’s difficult and time-consuming to build it themselves.

Simply put, Twilio is a platform that companies can use to do many things. The challenge when you are marketing something like Twilio is that it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact help it can offer to a company or a client.

A salesperson must paint a specific picture for people to get it. Twilio researched to get into the minds of their customers, to understand and build empathy with their customers.

The common corporate value which is to walk in the shoes of your customer is something that Twilio really lives by. The company put much effort into walking in their customers’ shoes to know what they want and what they are looking for.

Salespeople need to remember this value at all times, whether you’re writing an email or making a call. You need to know what they need to get your message across. Another secret of Twilio’s success is to let all their employees have a taste of what it’s like being the customer.

Specific targeting

Turning the impossible to inevitable is also a result of specific targeting. You need to be more specific in choosing your audience. It’s important to talk to fewer people that are relevant to your products or services.

Having fewer people to talk to doesn’t decrease your number of opportunities. Your goal is to become the big fish in the small pond and specific targeting is the perfect way to do that. It’s harder to change your products and services but you can do the easier part: you change your targeting instead.

Types of leads

Lead generation is the main driver for your growing business. There are three kinds of lead generation: seeds, nets, and spears. The seeds are relationship-driven leads, these include referrals, word of mouth, and friends/families. Since these are relationship-based leads, they are faster to close and with a higher rate. The downside is that it’s more difficult to generate. Word of mouth is hard to grow.

The second type is the nets. These are marketing. You are casting a wide net which means you’re broadcasting one too many. These leads include a podcast, billboards, or online marketing. You get more leads in terms of quantity than in quality.

The last type is spears which are prospecting. It’s when you have typically a targeted list. It’s smaller in number but you get better opportunities out of it.

Businesses almost always start with the word of mouth but as you start to grow, you will want to venture into content marketing and prospecting. As a company, you need to know the kind of leads that bring in clients. Figure where you excel and put more effort into that first before you move on into other types of leads.

Pick the one that’s right for you at first and do more of it. Do not do all the three leads at once unless you’re a huge company with millions of funding. It might take years for you to figure out what works best, it might take years for your sales design team to come up with a plan that works, but it’s all worth it in the end.

One section in the book Impossible to Inevitable is a lesson from Mark Roberge, the CRO of HubSpot. He has hired hundreds of people and the number one thing they look for when hiring is coachability. It’s an individual’s ability and desire to learn and their ability to connect, change, and adapt.

Companies who are expanding and hiring people should look at the coachability of a person. Aside from that, as a company, you also need to know the kind of roles you need.

Small steps

If you are a startup business, start with the basics. The CEO starts selling, then he hires a junior person to do prospecting and appointment setting. After a few months, you can promote that person to closing or you hire a closer. You look at your company and you see that there are now two people selling, the CEO and the newly hired close. You also have the junior person to do the lead generation.

Think of smaller steps instead of going too quickly and hiring the wrong individuals in the process.

The social media is always surrounded by stories of fast success but the reality in sales and in business is that it takes years before you get to the top.

Everyone is struggling especially entrepreneurs because it’s your job to struggle and solve problems. So the next time you are discouraged, just remember that many others are in the same boat. #Entrepreneur

“Impossible to Inevitable” episode resources

Connect with Aaron Ross on LinkedIn and check out his website Predictable Revenue.

You can also reach out to Donald for your sales concerns and interesting stories via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

The episode is also brought to you by Sales Live Miami. It’s an event put on by a group of friends and it’s designed to help sellers and sales leaders improve their sales game. It’s going to be this November 4-5, 2019 in Miami, Florida. Come and join us. You can find more about this event on The Sales Evangelist website.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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Sales From the Street, Motivation, Sales Activity

TSE 1199: Sales From the Street: “I Almost Quit”

We all face challenges and sometimes, the sense of defeat is so strong that the phrase, “I almost quit,” is so relatable.

Luigi Prestinenzi struggled in his sales journey as well. His mom was great in sales and worked for Mary Kay, a global cosmetics empire. His mother won awards and was an icon within the company.

All the success, however, came to a halt when she suffered complete burnout. Luigi was seven then and he didn’t understand what was truly happening except that he saw his mom hustling and reaching her goals.

Fast forward to 23 years later, Luigi also fell on the same path. Everything was working well for him but all of a sudden, deals fell apart and they just kept falling through. It was the first time that he found himself in a challenging situation.

His manager talked to him one Christmas and he couldn’t focus on anything, not the festivities, his family, or the food. He questioned his life and his decisions and he started drafting his resume and looking for jobs. Despite that, he still went back to sales because it was his only option.

Like other salespeople who got disappointed and might have said the words, “I almost quit,” Luigi also quit – almost.

Changing the actions and mindset

Luigi made a decision to triple his sales activity to make up for the last quarter. He realized that the best way to work through it is to change his actions and his mindset.

He listened to Paul J. Meyer, the founder of the Success Motivation Institute. It was a 50-minute combination of different talks and he listened to it every day in his car. All the talks he listened to prompted him to start his pipes running again. Six months later, he closed the biggest deal in his company’s history. He also won the global sales leader award across 60 countries for that organization.

Keep Going

Luigi’s father was a migrant and he’d always tell him, ‘first in, last out.’ People would argue about that saying that it doesn’t foster a smart working mentality. He did not question his work ethic, but he questioned his mindset on things. He needed to change it because he’d still face the same problems at some point.

There are a lot of salespeople these days who jump from one job to another every 12-18 months. They’re good in the interview process but the moment they hit a bump, they go to the next role. He didn’t want to be that person so he kept going.

The imposter syndrome kicks in at your lowest points but that feeling shouldn’t let you down. Even when you close a deal, you somehow still feel like you just got lucky.

No matter how successful you get in the sales industry, no matter how well you execute the sales process and help the buyer through the buying process, you can never control the buyers’ decision. #SalesTalk

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You can only control your mindset and the way you approach the situation.

Break it down to image and pipeline.

Image: How are you showing up? How are you getting up? How are you preparing yourself? What is your mindset to achieve success?
Pipeline: Do the activity and get the hard work done. Don’t cut corners in what you do.

Get these two done and the magic will happen. Do not focus too much on the scoreboard without getting the right mindset. If you’re not getting the target and you’re struggling, just go back to the foundation of success.

“I almost quit,” is fine but never say, “I quit.”

Sales From the Street: “I Almost Quit” episode resources

Reach out to Luigi Prestinenzi on his LinkedIn account and check out his podcast, Sales IQ. He also talks about sales and does interviews with sales leaders.

Do you have sales concerns and questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a program designed to help sales reps get from where you are now to where you can be in the future. This course is an aid for salespeople to become better in asking the right questions, presenting solutions, and closing deals.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

If you like this episode, do give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. We produce high-quality podcasts weekly so make sure to subscribe to get more of these sales talks that matter! Share this with your friends and teach them how to subscribe as well.

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Thomas Steenburgh, New Products, Donald C. Kelly

TSE 1197: Effectively Sell New Products To Current Customers

October 11, 2019
/ Client Management Company Culture Thomas Steenburgh
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Salespeople often ask how to effectively sell new products to current customers. Some clients are satisfied with the current service they’re getting and they’re not keen on investing in another one. There is a way through this sales ordeal.

Thomas Steenburgh teaches business marketing and sales at the Darden School of Business. He’s also an administrator and has stayed with the school for seven years.

His team did a five-year research project on how to effectively sell new products to customers and what’s so hard about it.

Looking at the problem when selling new products

Thomas’ team looked at various factors:

The different ways people sell
The types of people who excel in the process
The organization’s structure
The culture that the companies/organization create

The combination of these processes which is finding the right process, finding the right people, finding the right organization, and finding the right culture is the key to making this happen.

Challenges with new products

If given a choice, most sales reps would love to sell new products because it gives them an advantage at the clients’ accounts. The question, however, is if they’d continue to put the same amount of effort from beginning to end.

Selling new products takes a lot of energy and more time. Thomas and his team found out that selling a new product takes about 30-40% more time as opposed to selling an extension of a line. On top of that, sales reps need to meet with a lot more people in the buying process and develop a different network site to be able to sell.

It is very resource-intensive.

On the customers’ side, when you’re selling a new product, everybody wants to talk to you because people naturally want to know what’s going on in the marketplace.

Sales reps become hyped due to the attention but not for long.

When the reality sinks in, they’ll realize that there’s a change in the buying organization. It’s actually late in the sales cycle. This is problematic from the seller’s perspective. What felt like traction would suddenly feel like getting stuck in the mud. Sales reps aren’t making any progress beyond the hype, they become discouraged, and eventually stop devoting effort in selling the product.

When you face resistance, your numbers don’t go down quarter to quarter. What happens is that it becomes harder to figure out how to make that sale and investment. But if you persist, the effort will pay off in the long run. t can be difficult to make that commitment to selling new products when you have numbers to think of but in time, you will get there.

New products take a while to sell

Thomas’ research on several companies that did well shows that new products take a while to figure out how to sell. There are a couple of different types of mindsets for reps. One is the performance mindset sales reps who think of the quarterly numbers and the one who gets the joy out of learning and solve problems.

Research shows that the trajectory of sales from these two mindsets is very different. Performance reps don’t invest in learning the product right after launch. The sales go down initially because they failed to learn how to sell the product. For learning-based reps, there’s a big drop early on because they spend that time learning the product instead of selling and marketing the product.

In the long run, the sales of the performance reps recover but they go up only so much. For the learning-based reps, their sales go up at a rapid pace but it’s very late after the launch.

Learn how to effectively sell new products to current customers by finding the balance.

Finding the balance between selling and learning

What this reminds us is the need to find a balance between these two sales reps. Find sales reps who go out and learn how to sell the product at the same time. Sales leaders need to give their sales reps ample time to learn the product, figure out how to work their clients and their pain points, and know the objections that may occur later in the sales cycle. After that, bring them back to the firm and redesign the sales process to sell the new product.

Most marketing teams throw the product over the wall then disappear. Sales reps are left to figure things out themselves. Somewhere in the sales organization, sales reps are bound to dedicate some time to learn how to sell and anticipate objections later on. Not all sales reps are willing to devote their time to learning, so sales leaders should find the right person who is willing to learn and put in the time.

Most sales training for new product launch often focuses on features and benefits, not on the marketing trends. The training doesn’t include changes in the buying process.

Clients’ perception matters

One example is a company moving from old-line media to digital media. Their sales force was asked to sell new digital ads in this new space. They had the knowledge they needed but they were worried about how to interact with the clients because they hadn’t interacted with them before.

The manager saw this problem and he approached the team differently. He had a two-pronged approach. He invested time in learning and figuring the market trends and where the marketing was going. He tried to look for ways these trends could help his sales reps sell the new product to their clients. Aside from that, he coached his team to figure out exactly what their job was. He asked each of them to write down their roles in the business.

This taught Thomas how much emotional component there is in sales. Even when sales reps are thick-skinned, they’re still worried about how clients see them.

They want to look good and they want to be an expert in front of their clients.

Going back to the example, the sales reps of the company weren’t confident with just the knowledge of the product. They were only able to go out when they had the right type of market knowledge.

What matters:

Figuring out what’s different about the sales process
Knowing what your roles are in the sales process
Knowing how to make a difference in your clients’ business
Encouraging people that they have all the resources they need

When sales leaders and sales reps consider the factors above is when things can start to take off.

It’s not always the one on top

Another research result shared by Thomas is that it’s not always the best overall performing rep that becomes the leader in selling the new product. Sometimes it’s someone else from the team. If somebody figures out how to sell the product fast, you need to share the knowledge and the best practices at some point to the rest of the sales team.

Sales culture is important to be able to effectively sell new products to current customers. Companies need to take a long-term perspective on the sale. Give your sales rep some space to figure out how to sell the new product and let them invest in learning.

The best performing reps focus deep on the sales process and ask questions about how the new product is beneficial to the clients.

Best performing reps focus deep on the sales process while average reps focus on the immediate thing. #SalesFacts

Focus on learning first then move on to performance.

“How To Effectively Sell New Products To Current Customers” episode resources

Stay in touch with Thomas Steenburgh. You can find all of his information on his academic page. Do you have sales concerns and questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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TSE 1198: Closing Questions

Salespeople are good at closing deals but before that, we are great in making closing questions. Master the closing deals that ensure a done deal client.

Benton Crane isn’t from the advertising and marketing background. He is from data analytics and started his career in Washington D.C. as a statistician at the Census Bureau and analyst in the National Intelligence Agency. He then partnered with the brothers Neil, Jeff, and Daniel for a campaign. The combination of their creative skillset and his analytical skills created a system that makes advertising campaigns effective.

The power of videos in the business

The most powerful form of communication happens in face to face conversations between two individuals. These face to face interactions are how you make out the nuances of a conversation. This will allow you to listen to the tone, see the gestures and body language all happening at a subconscious level.

Video is the medium that’s closer to that face-to-face action. When you talk to someone on the phone, you miss the body language and all the subconscious communication that’s happening. But with video, you’re able to capture a large portion of what happens in face-to-face interaction.

Aside from that, videos are scalable. The people you can’t meet through phone calls can be met via videos. You can take your most effective salesperson and sales pitch and scale that up to reach millions of people using videos.

Effective pitch through videos

People have thought that the world of sales and marketing are two separate camps. In the advertising space, it’s often about infomercials or traditional branding styles like what you see in Nike and Apple. But it doesn’t work that way. You can blend those two worlds together.

For so long, there’s been a competition between the two camps. The salespeople would trash the marketers and the other way around when in fact, they can incorporate together to create a great pitch.

Incorporate a story in your sales pitch and put in brand humor, voice, and character to make it more memorable. #SalesTips

At the end of the day, no matter how effective the sales pitch, it’s not going to build the long-term brand. Squatty Potty, for example, has the humor and the character and that what makes it memorable. If you break down that video for a sales structure, you’ll see that it follows the perfect sales structure.

The sales structure

The Squatty Potty has elements that are as follows:

It has the hook
It captures attention
It shows empathy
It understands the problem
It presents a solution,
It has a call to action for viewers to buy the product.

When it still doesn’t work, then build that credibility. Make that call to action as soon as possible. There will always be a percentage in the audience who are ready and there’s also a percentage who are not quite ready. So, address their concerns and build that credibility. Give them another call to action after you’ve done that.

Anyone can create videos. Creating videos takes hard work but everyone can learn how to do it. The principles that Benton’s team use in making a $5,000 video are still true in making a $500,000 video. It’s not much on the scope and budget, it’s more of doing the right thing at the right time.

The Squatty Potty story

Benton’s team just did a successful video for Poo-Pourri and when the CEO of Squatty Potty saw that video, he just knew that they needed to have theirs created as well. They came to Benton’s team and his team was initially cold since they just did one for the same product. But then they thought of ways on how to make it less disgusting to talk about and make it more proper and put together.

They landed on the unicorn idea and it all happened from there. They made it safe, colorful, and less awkward to talk about. They had to reach a broader audience so they needed to do something a little more unexpected.

Squatty Potty worked with Shark Tank and Bed Bath and Beyond prior to working with them. They were making $4 million a year and jumped to $25 million after they worked with Benton’s team. It was around that ballpark.

Bobby Edwards, CEO of Squatty Potty, had the guts to put a pooping unicorn as the face of its brand. But the risk was worth it and took them to where they are today.

If what you’re selling provides a real solution to the problem, then the video can work. It can be a sales tool and it can also be just a part of the sales process. Either way, it’s a powerful tool to use.

Investing in the video can go both ways, losing your production investment or gaining millions of dollars in return. Incorporate your closing questions in your videos and make the best out of it.

“Closing questions” episode resources

Connect with Benton Crane on his LinkedIn or via his site, harmonbrothers.com. For more sales concerns, connect with Donald via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks at Audible as well and explore this huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.

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Cold Calling, Omnichannel Outreach, Fred Diamond, Donald C. Kely

TSE 1171: Helping Your Sales Team Perform Their Best

I sat down with Fred Diamond at Podcast Movement 2019 to discuss the keys to helping your sales team perform their best. Fred is the host of Sales Game Changers Podcast and today he turned the microphone on me and allowed me to share the things I’ve learned during my career in sales.

The Sales Evangelist

This podcast resulted from my own struggle as a B2B seller. Because of my own struggles, I wanted to help new and struggling sellers improve their sales game. I wanted to educate people who were in the same shoes and help elevate their performance.

As The Sales Evangelist podcast grew, people in our community of sellers reached out to me for sales coaching. I started with one-on-one coaching for reps, and then those reps took their training back to their companies, and I started hearing from entrepreneurs and other business owners who needed to replicate themselves so they could scale their companies.

I launched into the consulting side and helped businesses set up their sales teams. Eventually, that led to speaking opportunities and other things, so in 2015 I left my full-time job to do The Sales Evangelist full time.

The podcast didn’t make money on its own, but it did generate leads and coaching opportunities and speaking and consulting gigs. Now, though, it generates its own income.

Sales career

I got into sales before college, partly because my entire family was involved in sales. As a Jamaican boy, I grew up in a setting where everyone sold something. I didn’t see it as sales, necessarily. I simply saw it as the family business.

I’m naturally outgoing, so people told me I’d be perfect in a sales career. That continued through college where I struggled to find a sales program.

Eventually, I got a couple of sales jobs in timeshares and door-to-door that involved B2C selling. I made about $20,000 in three months selling door-to-door over the summer during my first year.

When I transitioned to the professional world of selling, though, I struggled.

Lessons learned

One of the things I learned selling door-to-door was the value of working smart. I saw people who worked hard but who weren’t effective, so they got burned out because they continued doing things that were ineffective. Those who hustled, on the other hand, worked efficiently and they practiced their messaging and they stopped doing things that didn’t work.

I learned that I had to be willing to move on when a sale didn’t work out.

Eventually, I moved into a BDR role in a B2B company, and I brought that need to work efficiently and plan my activities because it was a full-commission job.

Time is money, and I needed to pay rent.

During my time at the IT training company, Steve Hatch took me under his wing. He was the CEO of the company, and he taught me both the sales and the business sides of his company. In several cases, he did that by throwing me into the deep end.

We were trying to work a deal with a local NPR station and he helped me learn to lead the deal and negotiate the deal. He helped me see who I could eventually become.

Sales challenges

Current sales reps face a number of challenges that are unique to the kind of setting they operate in. Most of the ones I meet with struggle with prospecting, and with prospecting effectively.

Many learn that cold calling is dead, for example, but they work for companies that were built by cold calling. Their leaders want them to engage in cold-calling but others tell them it’s ineffective, so they feel pulled in different directions.

At the same time, many sellers struggle with the idea of social selling in which they engage with people on social media. They often don’t have the confidence to do it effectively, so they wait for inbound leads to come, and though they do often come, it simply isn’t enough.

I constantly give training on how to use LinkedIn and how to take advantage of cadences and flow processes for outreach.

Prospecting

Multichannel outreach, sometimes called omnichannel, matters the most in prospecting. When I work with sales reps, I encourage them to begin their interactions on social media. Make a genuine connection with people as a starting point.

Understand that genuine connection doesn’t mean you simply “like” something that they posted or shared. Instead, engage with that person. If someone comments on something you share, take that conversation to the inbox next and tell him how much you appreciate his comment. Then, once you’ve built that connection, you can move the conversation to a phone call.

Now you’ve created a warm, engaging connection.

Then, for enterprise sales, you can even take advantage of snail mail to send them something to grab their attention. We created a Willy Wonka style ticket and invited them to join us for our demo. We sent sodas and snacks and a Starbucks gift card. We spent about $12 for each of three boxes and landed about $100,000 worth of deals.

Sales tips

I read a lot of books in an effort to improve my game, and one of my recent favorites is Mike Weinberg’s Sales Management. Simplified. because he focuses on fundamentals. For me, mastering those fundamentals is the key to moving to the next level. Aside from prospecting, asking appropriate questions makes a big difference as well.

For sellers who know nothing about their buyers, pipelines won’t matter at all. We’re skipping the discovery process and we’re missing a chance to ask meaningful questions and demonstrate our expertise.

Related to that topic, time management presents a big struggle for sellers right now. I attribute my continued success to planning. In fact, I’ve created a selling planner because I couldn’t find one that I liked.

I read a book by Kevin Kruse called the 15 Secrets Successful People Know and another called The 12 Week Year related to time management. A lot of sales reps throw as many things as they can on a calendar in hopes that they can maximize their time.

Instead, I break my day down based on categories to measure my effectiveness. I separate sales activities, marketing activities, and operations. I tracked those activities for a week to see where the commonalities are and which tasks I’m repeatedly doing. Then, I eliminated tasks that my team could do for me so I could focus on sales-related tasks.

Preparation

Do a three-minute prep prior to each sales call. If you have a focused list of clients, consider hiring someone to do research on each of those clients. Find out the following:

How does this company make money?
What challenges do they have that they aren’t even necessarily aware of?
What common challenges are they facing?
How does this person I’m going to call help the company make money?

If you can help your customer achieve his goals, you’ll be so much further down the path. The process isn’t about you.

Discover what your customers are trying to accomplish for their customers. #Sales

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Someone is going to solve your customer’s problem. Why don’t you figure it out first and be the first to provide the solution?

“Helping Your Sales Team Perform” episode resources

Connect with Donald on LinkedIn. Also check out the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!

You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things.

I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using – Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.

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Donald C Kelly, The Sales Evangelist, Sales Leader

TSE 1155: When Should I Promote Someone?

August 8, 2019
/ Leadership Sales Leader Solving Problems
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Your company continues to grow and you need leaders to guide your team, so you’re considering the question, “When should I promote someone?”

Because of your company’s growth, you need leaders and you need managers. So who should you promote? What do you look for in the people who will lead your teams? What characteristics or habits should they possess?

Developing leaders

Even if your business isn’t growing at breakneck speed, you may need to focus on developing people who can lead when the time comes. The last thing you want to do is keep people in the same position for long periods of time without any opportunity for growth. They’ll get tired and burn out, and then they’ll look elsewhere for growth opportunities. Make sure you’re always looking for ways to create and develop leaders internally.

The qualities necessary for leaders in your industry may differ from those of other segments, but for sellers in general, the following guidelines offer a good start for identifying potential leaders.

Seller doesn’t equal leader

Your employee might be a spectacular seller, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to leadership. Furthermore, if you have a particularly gifted seller on your team, you may not want to remove him from that sales role.

It’s tempting to believe that your best closer can become a sales leader and train all your other sellers to close as effectively as he does. And it might be true that he can. But it might also be true that he loves selling and he doesn’t want to spend his time conducting one-on-ones or creating reports.

If your team members aren’t interested in leading, don’t force them. Let your sellers do what they do best for your company.

Look for these traits as you ponder when to promote someone.

1. Sellers who want to lead

When you begin your search, look for sellers who actually want to lead. If one of your team members talks frequently about leading or climbing the corporate ladder, consider giving him the opportunity to do it. If he is ambitious and goal-oriented, he might be just the leader you’re looking for.

I recently met with a BDR that a client of mine hired, and the guy was passionate about his work. He strives to go above and beyond the call of duty, and he wants to work his way into a leadership role. He wants to contribute to the organization, but he isn’t power-hungry. He understands that great leaders don’t threaten the people above them because they aren’t competing to take their jobs.

Prepare your replacements as you consider other opportunities you’ll compete for.

In every leadership role, consider who could replace you in your position, and then ask yourself how you can develop that person. #SalesLeaders

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2. Sellers with a proven track record

Desire isn’t enough to be a successful seller. You must also have good results behind your name.

You’ll note that I said above that you should not necessarily remove your top seller to turn him into a sales leader. The exception is when that seller is the best candidate for the job and when she wants to do the job.

Recognize, too, that a top performer won’t necessarily be the only team member with amazing results. Consider the top five sellers on your team and then decide whether any of them possess leadership potential.

Consider whether they have any desire to train other sellers, and take note of a “lone wolf” mentality that suggests they don’t want to share with others. Make it your goal to develop a nurturing leadership approach in which team members help one another.

3. Sellers who don’t volunteer to lead

Keep in mind that some sellers may not volunteer to lead, but that shouldn’t necessarily exclude them from consideration. If they have the framework, the talents, and the characteristics of a great leader, challenge them to step out of their comfort zone.

In the book Sales Management. Simplified, Mike Weinberg recalls a CEO who believed it was his responsibility to stretch people like a rubber band: to the edge of their capabilities without breaking them.

They may not recognize their own capabilities, but your job is to help them see what they are capable of.

4. Sellers who are problem-solvers

Too often, sellers fall into the trap of complaining about their work situations. Instead of looking for ways to improve things, they look for mistakes. That negative outlook shows in their results.

Look for sellers who are problem-solvers as you seek people to promote. Typically, they’ll be your best sellers because they make it a practice to solve problems for customers. If you find a seller like this among your team members and promote him, he’ll set an example of problem-solving for the rest of the team.

You’ll have less to worry about because they’ll solve the problems before they get to you. Surround yourself with leaders who can think for you and take care of things so you can focus on other issues.

5. Sellers who are willing to work

Your leaders must be willing to work hard. This doesn’t mean that they work 18-hour days, because it’s very possible to do great work in less time. Instead, you want leaders who can plan and accomplish things.

Watch for the people on your team who show up for work early or who listen to podcasts to learn more. Be aware of the people on your team who dedicate time and effort to develop themselves.

This isn’t about developing a culture of staying late every day, but rather a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done. For me, I’m a family guy, and Mondays and Fridays are my family days during the week. If I need to stay late, I’ll make it happen around those commitments.

6. Sellers who are developing themselves

As a bonus, look for people on your team who are investing in themselves. Find those people who are reading books or seeking events to further their training or signing up for webinars that will help them improve their skill set.

If your team members are seeking to improve without you telling them to, you’re well on your way to finding an amazing leader.

Help your team members get to the next level and transition into roles that challenge them.

“When Should I Promote Someone?” episode resources

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Donald Kelly, Gmail, The Sales Evangelist, Email

TSE 1142: 5 Reasons Gmail Is The Best Email Tool For Sellers

July 22, 2019
/ Donald Kelly Email Sales Training The Sales Evangelist
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Many of us start our day with emails, so knowing that The Sales Evangelist team has outlined 5 reasons why Gmail is the best email tool for sellers.

Multiple functions

Google’s Gmail Suite is an incredible tool for companies due to its many functions. For The Sales Evangelist, we use domains. I personally have Donald as my domain and this is connected to my Gmail business suite. Every email that I receive goes through my domain and into my Gmail inbox.

Aside from that, it is also easy to set up. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that you can check for instructions. You can also hit Google and read about how to sign up for the suite.

Integration

A lot of platforms have integration but for me, Gmail beats them all. While Outlook has 365, it seems clunky and the apps are difficult to integrate. The same couldn’t be said with the Google-owned Gmail. Google is the top-dog in the industry and has a massive number of users. With that many people using Gmail accounts, it became necessary for developers to find ways to integrate their apps and tools into Gmail.

I use Calendly, a tool that integrates seamlessly into Gmail. Other apps like Hubspot and LinkedIn Sales Navigator connect to Gmail as well. These tools and plugins make full use of Gmail’s integration capabilities.

Templates

Google has what they call canned responses and these are found in the settings of Gmail. Look for the settings, and click on advanced. This option explains what canned responses are and provides instructions on how you can create templates for common messages that you send. You then click enable and save the changes.

For a sales rep who’s always out there sending intro emails, follow-up emails, and other responses, this canned response is a good thing. Although you need to personalize it, you will not need to write the whole thing over and over again when you’re using the template. You can just tweak it.

You can make templates for commonly asked questions that you get. Even better, you can just type out the common responses to these questions and make it into a canned email. Now, that’s your template. You can learn more about this in Episode 11 of The Sales Evangelist. You can also connect with us on YouTube for more videos.

Mail scheduler

The third reason Gmail is the best for sales reps is its ability to schedule emails. The great thing about this is it’s free. I used Boomerang and Hubspot in the past but now, I just go to my Gmail account and click compose at the bottom.

You’ll see that arrow next to the send button; you click on that and you can then easily schedule your mail. This feature is helpful for busy people and busy prospects as well.

Sometimes we are inundated with so much on a day-to-day basis that we take the work home. The same can be said with business owners, VPs, executives, or mid-level managers. They are so busy and they can’t respond to mail throughout the day. This is where scheduled mail comes in.

You can send an email to busy prospects on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you’ll be amazed when you get their response. #Email

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Email callbacks

Outlook and other providers offer email callback as well, and it’s very useful in case you make mistakes in sending out your mail.

Say that when you used your canned response you weren’t able to personalize it enough and ended up putting the wrong person’s name. This isn’t a good thing, so you need to unsend it. You can do so with Gmail.

Go to the top right corner, click settings, click on general, and look for the undo send. You can send cancellations up to different time periods. You can keep the email longer to give you more time to recognize your mistakes, edit them out, save, and send.

Shortcuts

Here’s the fifth reason: shortcuts. It’s also an easy one and you can find it on the cog and click advance. You can create your custom keyboard shortcuts once it’s enabled and saved. Google has default shortcuts you can use or you can utilize the shortcut feature and make your own.

As a busy sales rep, you can just hit C and you’d be able to compose an email or reply to an email, or hit A and reply to a particular mail. There are several other shortcuts that you can use to save your precious time. You can check out Episode 1137 of The Sales Evangelist for more information about this feature.

I like Gmail because of its integration, the ability to create templates, the scheduled responses, the email callbacks, and the shortcuts.

“5 Reasons Gmail Is The Best Email Tool For Sellers” episode resources

Time is money and we want to work as efficiently as possible. We keep including TSE Certified Sales Training Program every chance that we get because we want to help you. So, check the program out and explore the possibilities.

This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program, designed to help sales reps and sales team on how to improve their skills in finding the right customers, the activities and strategies that work, and how to ask the right questions to build a strong value and close business deals.

To see how helpful it can be, simply go to thesalesvengelist.com/freecourse to get the first two modules for free. Take a bite and have a feel of the course.

You’d want to be a savvy salesperson and Audible can help you do that. Enjoy the free 30-day trial and explore the thousands of books they have today.

I hope this episode has been fun and helpful to you. Please review and leave us a five-star rating on Apple podcast. You can also hit subscribe and share our show to your friends and colleagues. If you can, please provide your review and rating on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and in other platforms where you consume this podcast.

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Sales Pitch, Sales Pitch, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 1072: Why Your Perfect Pitch Is Not Working!

April 15, 2019
/ Emotion Logic
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Many sellers discover that their perfect pitch is not working because, as they work to build value, they are appealing to logic rather than emotion.

We’re devoting the whole month to a discussion about building value, and some of today’s information comes from the book The Transparency Sale written by Todd Caponey. Todd will visit with us on the podcast in the near future, but today we’ll talk about the decision-making process and the role our brains play.

Brain power

Every day, we engage in activities every day that are so routine that we don’t even think about them. When we drive to work, we put a seatbelt on without even thinking about it. When we back the car up, we put our arms over the seat beside us and then look backward.

You’re able to listen to this podcast while you’re driving because you don’t even have to think about driving.

Todd talks about three levels of the brain, which you may have heard of before. The reptilian part, the limbic part, and the neocortex.

The reptilian portion is the core or center, and it’s the oldest part of the brain. It prompts us to do things without thinking. It drives our instincts. It’s the part that prompts us to react to pain without thinking, and it’s part of our survival.

The limbic portion is more intricate and it helps deals with feelings and emotions. It helps us make decisions and motivates our behaviors.

The neo- or frontal cortex is the newest part of our brain and it’s associated with information and logic. It’s the largest part of the brain and it ties with math and reasoning and justification.

We make decisions emotionally and justify them logically, and it’s our brain that makes it possible. #brainpower

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Sales standpoint

We typically show up to our prospect meetings with PowerPoint presentations, charts, spreadsheets, and graphs of all the amazing things our product or service can do. We show up prepared to sell to the customer’s neocortex — the logical part.

Remember, though, that the logic part of our brain isn’t where decisions are made. Decisions form in the middle portion of the brain, where our feelings and emotions reside.

You must help people make a decision emotionally, and then justify it logically. You can build value as a sales rep by using stories to tap into the emotion or pain that the prospect is experiencing.

Unless there is some kind of pain, your customer won’t make a decision.

Status quo

The reptilian part of our brain wants us to stay where we are. If nothing is harming us, why would we move? Leave things as they are.

Until someone points out the reason we need to make a change and appeals to our emotion, we’ll never see a need to move. If a seller use emotion to prompt the customer to move and then help him justify the move logically, he’ll be much more likely to make a change.

Tie the emotion and the logic together to help your prospects understand the need to make a change.

Making it work

I recently met a guy who sells water filtration systems in Florida. He begins by asking people whether people drink water, and many people say no because it tastes bad and it’s unclean and unhealthy.

He points out that taking a shower in the same water can be just as unhealthy because your skin is your body’s largest organ, which presents a pain point for his prospects.

The seller never mentions price or facts about his product. He focuses on the emotion of wanting to be healthy.

Do it with stories or by asking the buyer questions that tap into emotion.

Defining sales

I define sales as helping people persuade themselves to make a change. If we try to persuade them, their guard immediately goes up.

Great sellers leave the buyer in charge of the decision. If your demos are flopping or your presentations aren’t working, you’re probably focusing too much on logic. Don’t sell to the logical part of the brain. Sell to the emotional part.

“Perfect Pitch Is Not Working” episode resources

Grab a copy of the book The Transparency Sale written by Todd Caponey for more information about the role our brains play in the buying process.

This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance.

TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump.

If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

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Tiffany Southerland, Customer Service, Sales Training, Coaching

TSE 1025: TSE Certified Sales Training Program: “Give Them Your All”

One of the best ways to show your appreciation for your customers and provide value to them is to give them your all.

Tiffany Southerland is a career confidence coach who works with both young, and experienced, professionals who are ready to make their career mark on the world and who want to increase their fulfillment in the work they do each day.

She helps individuals evolve, thrive, and perform to the best of their ability.

A business cannot exist without clients, so it is crucial to have a solid relationship with your buyers. Tiffany serves individuals one-on-one in a group setting and believes that, if they are not happy – if they have not improved or realized results – she has not done her job. It is, therefore, very important for the success of her business that she continually better herself in order to do better for her clients.

The goal is not to simply make more money but rather to help the clients. A salesperson who pushes her own agenda over the needs of her clients is likely to lose those clients.

The natural by-product of happy clients, however, is increased sales.

Tiffany recalls failing to launch a group program twice because she had locked herself into reaching a specific number.

She was focused on that target instead of the service she wanted to deliver. Once she removed the target and focused on the experiences, services, and opportunities she wanted to provide for her clients instead, she began to see results.

Her level of stress was replaced with positive energy. People began to react differently to her as a result and her new goal was reached.

Our unique gifts

Tiffany knew that she wanted to build her business for the sake of changing people’s lives and she wanted to leave a legacy. She had to realize and believe that she was capable of doing so. She needed to believe that she was uniquely gifted to provide her services in the way her clients wished to receive it.

Tiffany was serious about reaching her goal. She knew she was capable of making an impact in a way that only she was qualified to do.

Tiffany believes we are all uniquely gifted because our lives are all different. We came into our particular roles in a way that no one else did, even if we are doing the “same job.”

Once you internalize that concept and apply the difference to the way you do business, you begin to walk authentically and in your own unique voice. Regardless of the metrics or the sales targets, if you can show up authentically, it becomes easier to do anything. You are no longer working to fit somebody else’s mode.

You will be perceived differently.

People can tell when you are trying to be something you are not.

Instead of thinking about making a sale, think about serving a need. #ServeYourCustomers

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If your product or service can meet the need, the entire perspective and experience for both the buyer and the seller shifts. Rather than ‘just selling,’ you are literally meeting a need.

Comparison is the thief of joy

It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others in the same field and to doubt your ability to provide any unique service. Realize that you don’t have to reach a million people. Rather, you need to show up and impact just those people who need to hear your voice.

We live in a world now where some people have thousands of followers. But if you have 10 people behind you – who really believe in you – that is a foundation upon which you can build everything else.

Tiffany does not claim to be a celebrity by any stretch but she has a podcast audience that shares and believes in her. She, in turn, benefits when they share and connect her to others.

It is impossible to be grateful and to take advantage of what you have if you are too busy comparing your achievements to others.

Don’t worry about what other people have. Be appreciative of what you have. Have the right perspective and learn how to make the best from what you have been given.

When Tiffany embraced this change, she was able to launch her business successfully. She was free to focus on her clients as opposed to focusing on herself and the bottom line.

A call to serve

Tiffany strongly believes that, regardless of industry, we are called to serve first. Focusing on metrics, for example, serves no purpose other than to appeal to our vanity.

As soon as Tiffany changed her focus to the creation of a great product that would change the career trajectory of other women, she was able to truly connect with her clients.

It was no longer the work she did for herself; it was the work they would do together that made the business successful.

The feedback from her clients has been wonderful. They feel heard. They feel that they are getting so much more out of their experience with Tiffany than they expected.

For Tiffany, that is the only result she really needs. Her clients register to improve their interviewing skills, or resumes, but they leave knowing how to clearly articulate what it is they are really good at doing and what they want in their careers.

They are able to figure out, and seek out, the right opportunities with increased confidence. Tiffany says the change has been phenomenal and the impact extends well beyond career confidence.

The work self and the personal self will eventually collide so they have to be congruent. Don’t go to work as an employee. Go to work as the individual that you are. It will give you the clarity to determine what opportunities are for you, and which ones are not.

Have faith not only in the qualifications on your resume but in your ability to deliver. You have to believe in yourself.

Focus on service. Take the pressure off yourself by focusing on the people around you instead. Focus on the company you work for, your colleagues, and your clients. When the focus is on them, the pressure you used to place on yourself no longer exists.

“Give Them Your All” episode resources

Tiffany’s next ‘Elevate your Career Academy’ will launch in March. It is an 8-week faith-based, group career coaching program for women. Learn more about it and register at www.Howdoesshedoitpodcast.com or www.fourcornerscoach.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by our TSE Certified Sales Training Program, which teaches you to improve your sales skills, find more customers, build stronger value, and close more deals.

The next semester begins in March.

You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode, and share with your friends!

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Trust, Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist Podcast

TSE 937: The Questions You Ask Are NOT Building Trust

October 8, 2018
/ Asking Thought Provoking Questions Trust
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Sometimes as sales professionals, we unintentionally erode the trust we have with our clients. The way we pose a question or the way we treat our clients can prevent us from closing a deal. Sometimes the questions you ask are not building trust.

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we continue our month-long discussion about closing, and how the questions you ask are not building trust. Many of us make common mistakes that keep us from closing.

Trust

Trust is truly valuable. If you don’t have trust as a sales professional, your clients will never buy from you.

People do business with people they know, like, and trust. You’ve probably also heard that it’s not what you know, but who you know.

The truth is that closing begins early in the sales process.

We have to realize that the questions we ask our prospects will determine whether they trust us moving forward. When we don’t ask them well, they’ll cause our prospects to see us as superior or misleading.

They’ll perceive that we have an agenda and that you’re using your questions to frame your plan. If, for example, we ask questions that we already know the answer to, it erodes your trust because it’s not genuine.

Manipulation

Asking a question isn’t bad unless you’re asking a question in an attempt to get your prospect to give you a specific answer.

Imagine your prospect runs a print shop and has a printer that is down.

“What do you think will happen if you don’t get it fixed?”

Clearly, the salesperson knows the answer to this question. If the printer doesn’t work then the company won’t make money.

Asking that question will likely make everyone involved feel stupid because both parties already know the answer to it. Instead, I’ll ask something more specific that helps me learn more about your situation.

“Clearly it’s not good for business that your printer is down, but how much would you say you guys do on a day-to-day basis?”

Fears

If you’re talking to a prospect about changing from a current supplier and the prospect insists on staying with the current provider, you can safely bet that fear is the driver.

They’re probably afraid of your price. It’s possible that they’re afraid of changing to a new company. They may fear setting up a new process or going through the process of canceling services.

Instead of asking if they think it’s a good idea to stay with the current provider, ask if you can share your own observations. Your prospect usually won’t say no, and if you’ve built a good rapport, they’ll usually be willing to hear what you have to say.

When the prospect sees that you have no hidden agenda and that you’re being authentic, it builds trust.

Authority

We had a client in a similar circumstance who didn’t want to switch from his current vendor because he had been with the vendor for 10 years. Although there were problems with the vendor, it was easier to stay than it was to change.

The decision to stay cost them a lot of money, and eventually the prospect changed to our company. Because he knew that we cared about his business and we were trying to guide him, he trusted us.

They need you to help them make a good decision, and when you ask for permission to share your knowledge, they’ll give it to you.

Questions

We can become top-performing sellers if we use questions and psychology to make our buyers feel comfortable. We can help them recognize their true challenges and guide them toward the decisions that is best for them.

The Sales Evangelist is building a new course this month and we’d love to have you take part in it. Email me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com for more information.

“Questions You Ask Are NOT Building Trust” episode resources

Check out the video of Jean being set up by his girlfriend.

You can read the article by Dr. Rom Brafman here.

Even if you don’t buy my course, if you don’t engage with our business, we’re glad you’re here listening to the podcast. You’re taking advice and you’re applying it to your own situations. That’s what we care about the most.

This episode is brought to you in part byMaximizer CRM, personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve your business and increase profits. To get a demonstration of maximizer, go to the sales evangelists.com/maximizer.

Click on the link to get a free demo of what Maximizer CRM can do for you. It integrates your marketing campaign as well as your CRM.

This episode is also brought to you in part by prospect.io, a powerful sales automation platform that allows you to build highly personalized, cold email campaigns. To learn more, go to prospect.io/tse. It will help you with your outbound to expand your outreach. Your prospecting will never ever be the same.

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Prospecting, Podcast, Video, New Sales Leads

TSE 919: Sales From The Street:”Starving Artist”

The notion of the starving artist has been around for many years, but many entrepreneurs spend a lot of years “starving” as well. For sales professionals, when we don’t have processes in place to keep our funnels full, we can find ourselves “starving” as well.

On today’s episode of Sales From the Street, Arty Goldstein and John Antonacci from Video Jungle Podcast are interviewing me about this very topic, and what we can do to make sure we aren’t starving artists in the sales world.

The podcast will sound a little different because John and Arty are interviewing me on their show. I’ll share my ideas about processes and systems that can keep you from starving in the sales industry.

Trial and error

Much of my early strategy as a sales rep was trial and error. I messed up a lot, and I’m guessing many of the listeners will relate to that from their own experiences.

Many freelancers assume there’s a big magic formula to success, but I’ve discovered that the simplest bet is to be a personable person.

After that, differentiate yourself. In order to be successful, do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. If everyone else is going one way, figure out if you can go the other way and accomplish the same thing differently.

My idea of hustle is to do whatever it takes to make things happen. Think outside the box: what can I do to be different and out-hustle, outwit, go around, or go over to connect with people?

Creating value

Sales has changed a lot since its early days of cold-calling and bartering. At the same time, though, it’s still largely the same.

It’s an exchange of value. What can I give you in exchange for the thing you give me? It translates across all platforms and all mediums.

In the context of video production, you’re creating value. At The Sales Evangelist, I want to help new and struggling sellers find more ideal customers, build stronger value, and close more deals.

I struggled with those things when I was new to sales, but I figured out that if sellers can understand those three areas, they’ll never be hungry.

No salesperson should ever be broke, so if you’re broke, something is wrong. If your organization’s sales process is broken, it will churn and burn people.

Launching the podcast

My buddy Jared Easley, co-founder of Podcast Movement, hosted me on his podcast and he told me I should be doing my own podcast.

I decided to try it and see where it would go. My dream was to influence people the way Pat Flynn does and to impact people’s life.

Apple Podcast has made it so easy that initially, I didn’t advertise much. I asked all my cousins, family members, friends, and anyone who had the ability to get to a computer to go and rate my podcast.

That launched me into the New and Noteworthy category in 2013, which got me some more visibility.

When I landed Jeffrey Gitomer as my first guest, that pushed me into a world where people were looking for sales. At the time there were only like four sales podcasts that were really doing anything well at that time.

To be honest, I’m different than other people out there. Many of them at the time I launched were white guys, and I was a young black guy.

The result is that mine is the number one podcast in Jamaica.

Sales history

I’ve been actually selling since I was about six, although I clearly don’t count that in my professional selling history.

In Jamaica, there aren’t 7-11’s on every corner, so people set up little tiendas in their houses and they sell things. My family had a little shop and I sold stuff there.

I wasn’t afraid of talking about and dealing with money because I’ve been doing it since I was very young.

Fast forward to college where I figured out that I really like to be in front of an audience and to teach. After college, I started selling professionally and I figured out that I wasn’t good at b2b selling.

I got training and saw a major improvement, and discovered that I could share that with other people who were in the same boat. When I did, I saw an increase in my sales and I started actually making money.

I launched the podcast in an effort to help other rookies learn about sales and to speak about effective selling.

The Sandler Sales Training Organization taught me a technique that I’ve carried with me to this day, and it’s this triangle principle.

Attitude, techniques, and behavior. Your attitude is what you bring to the game and your techniques are things like how do you ask questions. Your activities are the actions you carry out every day like phone calls, prospecting, emailing and dialing.

That fundamental principle helped me realize the importance of procedure. If you’re winging it, you’ll have a hard time being consistently effective.

If you never practice or follow a pattern, you’ll never be as successful as you could be.

Video as marketing

Video is one of the most important things at our disposal. You can say so much more in a video than you can say anywhere else.

The second largest search engine in the entire world is YouTube.

Video allows you to follow, see, and learn. You can educate people using video.

People also like a personable approach, as evidenced by the demand for reality TV. People want to see something that’s real instead of something that’s highly produced. When there’s a dog barking in the background, that’s real.

Marcus Sheridan told a story of marketing people who were sending him physical resumes to apply for jobs. He challenged them to send video instead to share their capabilities and work history.

Salespeople have awesome leverage in the form of video and we shouldn’t cling to past ideas simply because we’ve always done it that way.

Differentiate yourself simply by using video. A lot of people won’t do it because it’s work.

Also, tell a story. That part will never get old.

Sharing secrets

Some people are going to be do-it-yourselfers. You can’t change that.

When you create value by telling them what to do and teaching them how to do it, they’re going to trust you. They’ll understand that you know what you’re doing, and they may eventually come to a place where they’d rather have you do it for them.

You might give away enough information to help them solve a single problem, but when they encounter something bigger, they’re going to come back to you.

You have to plan. People often overlook planning.

You also have to outperform your yesterday. No matter how good you are today, if you can beat what you did yesterday, you’re always going to thrive.

Keep learning. Read. Listen to The Sales Evangelist. Never stop learning.

“Starving Artist” episode resources

Do you want more tips and tricks from the video? Videostrategy.org is the place to go for thoughts on production best practices, creative brainstorming, strategy and distribution tips, client relations, and much more. Go to video strategy.org.

Check out the Video Jungle podcast, your source for marketing and selling your brand using video. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy. Video Jungle offers top-notch, state-of-the-art advice about video, which is a great way to offer relevant content on LinkedIn.

Email me for more information about our newly launched Sales Podcast Network, designed to provide specialized sales content for sellers of all levels and all industries. You can also email us about our new business development services.

Maximizer CRM is a personalized CRM that gives you the confidence to improve your business and increase profits. Get rid of the boring CRMs and customize to your team’s selling abilities.

Click on the link to get a free demo of what Maximizer CRM can do for you. It integrates your marketing campaign as well as your CRM.

If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode.

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Sales Podcast, Donald Kelly, The Best Sales Podcast

TSE 900: Where We Came From And Where We Are Going!

August 16, 2018
/ Podcast Sales Training Speaking Engagements Success Story
/ By The Sales Evangelist

We have produced 900 podcast episodes!

Today on The Sales Evangelist we’ll celebrate our 900th episode and share the impact the podcast has had on our business, as well as some highs and lows. We’ll discuss where we came from and where we are going.

It’s humbling to think about. Twenty episodes a month designed to provide quality content that can help you and your sales team perform better in your sales.

We’re so thankful to each of you for emailing us, messaging us, and sharing how the podcast is helping you.

In preparation for this episode, I went into our Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find out what people would like to hear about.

How does the podcast impact your business?

The podcast made the business.

My suggestion is to encourage each of you to consider operating a podcast.

There are 550,000 podcasts. Podcasts exist in every niche you can think of. There are also people who want to digest the content you’ve produced. And there’s still plenty of room.

Only 44 percent of people have listened to a podcast. Forty-nine percent of listening happens at home. Twenty-two percent of podcasts are consumed while driving. Sixty-nine percent of podcasts are consumed on smartphones, and 31 percent occurs on desktop computers.

You can listen while you do other things like mow the lawn, walk the dog, or drive a car.

Podcasts span all generations.

I stumbled onto podcasting when my friend Jared Easley invited me onto his podcast. There were a few sales podcasters out there at the time, and I wasn’t entirely sure I could stand up to their audiences.

The podcast led to coaching, which led to speaking. I was trying to find my niche, and I decided to focus on sales. I added sales consulting next, which includes sales team training, and then online courses and workshops. Finally, I added The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League, an online group coaching program.

The podcast provides leads and conversations that connect us to other people.

What do we not already know?

We’ve recently started pushing Instagram a lot. We’re going to start sharing more content on Instagram TV at least once or twice a week. We’ll share videos, sales strategies, and other content that helps you learn who I am and improve your sales skills.

We also plan to introduce a YouTube channel, which should emerge during Q4.

The other thing is that we have a Sales Podcast Network which includes three podcasts, and a fourth on the way.

The first is this podcast, and the second is a podcast called Sold, which is a narrative interview with executives who talk about experiences they’ve had with salespeople.

They talk about the things they like and the things they don’t like, and they give us ideas about emailing, prospecting, building value, and connecting.

Sold will follow a seasonal schedule with breaks between the seasons.

The third podcast is Video Jungle. It’s an affiliate podcast that gives you an understanding of the video industry and helps you understand how you can make your brand stand out using video.

The fourth podcast is still in the works, and we’ll share more details about that later.

We are growing this podcasting space, and the whole network will relate to sales.

Can you share success stories?

When I was a software sales rep, I met a guy during my lunch break to interview him. The guy was mentioned in Forbes magazine for the 30 Under 30 feature.

When I met with him, I discovered an opportunity for the company I was working with to help the company he was working with.

His company needed a secure place to store documents.

Although it didn’t turn into a sale, the podcast gave me a foot in the door of that company and it made it easy to connect with the decision-makers.

Another success story happened early on when I was trying to develop coaching. I created the sales page and a guy reached out to me from Tokyo. He was working with manufacturers because something changed and he needed to do sales despite the fact that he’s a tech guy.

The prospect Googled sales coaching and found my page, which led to a relationship as a coaching client. He did a world tour, and I was coaching him throughout his travels.

He’s out of the sales role and still in communication with us today, but we were able to help him get through the process.

When I discovered we had downloads all over the world, I started the semester approach to TSE Hustler’s League. As a result, I had people join from Europe and other places around the world.

It was cool enough to have people in this country join us, but it was especially cool to know that people were staying up late in different time zones to be part of the group.

It was humbling to know that our podcast was impacting people and their businesses all over the world. We were helping them with sales in different markets and different cultures.

I have multiple stories like that about our ability to impact people all over the world just because people listened to the podcast. It has been powerful to track their individual progress and see how they are improving.

Finally, I wanted to find speaking opportunities and I was contemplating leaving my regular job. About that time, the company I worked for changed their model so that it benefitted the company but not the sellers.

Basically, they were going to pay my commission over the course of several years instead of paying a lump sum, which benefitted the company but not me.

I realized that the house always wins, and I decided I needed to become the house.

After I left the company, I got my first paid speaking gig, and the fee was equivalent to the amount I lost when my company changed its model.

That convinced me that this was validated and I was headed in the right direction.

Was there a time you considered ending the podcast?

The podcast wasn’t working properly at one point, and it completely crashed.

I didn’t know what to do, and I was afraid no one would be listening to the podcast after this. I didn’t see how we could thrive after that.

A few weeks passed and I wondered if it was worth all the effort. I got comfortable not doing the podcast. I was anxious, and a month passed before the site was restored.

The thing that caused me to resume the podcast was the number of people who rely on the podcast and who have benefitted from it.

During that time, listeners contacted me to ask when it would resume. I still needed to provide for my family, so I needed to do something to revive the podcast.

That made me dig my heels in and focus on overcoming the challenges. We all have obstacles, but if we stop every time things get difficult, we’ll never accomplish anything.

I stayed up one night for 24 hours to get it up and running, and we were back better than ever.

As a natural byproduct of delegating some of the tasks, I was able to focus on things that mattered. As a result, the business continued to grow.

When I tell you to get rid of menial tasks, I tell you that because it has worked for me. As we’re growing and developing, I continually find more tasks that team members can help me with.

I don’t need to do it all, and it benefits my team when I ask them to help me with those tasks.

What do you want to hear on episode 1,000?

We’re 100 episodes away from number 1,000 and we’d love to hear what you’d like us to address on number 1,000.

It would be cool to interview some of you who have been around for a long time and hear how you’ve seen the podcast grow. I’d love to hear your feelings about the show and any ideas you might have.

Why do you do what you do?

The whole team at The Sales Evangelist wants to help you find more ideal customers, to help you build stronger value when you meet with those customers, and to give you the guidance and coaching you need to close more deals.

My challenge is to go out every day and do big things.

“Where We Are Going!” episode resources

TSE Hustler’s League is a 10-week group coaching program that costs $150 a month. The program is designed to help sellers of all levels and all industries increase their sales performance. We have a new semester starting this fall, and we’d love to have you join us.

Check out The Sales Evangelizers on Facebook, where a community of people shares their struggles and their experiences with selling.

Check out the Video Jungle podcast, your source for marketing and selling your brand using video. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy.

Leave us a review wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode.

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Christie Walters, The Why and The Buy Podcast, Sales Caoching

TSE 898: What Role Does A Sales Coach Play In A Growing Organization?

August 14, 2018
/ Personalize Sales Coaching Sales Culture
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Christie Walters believes that sales is an act of service. She defines coaching as the secret sauce for all top performers. Coaches take on different forms, and Christie believes that the best coaches operate from the performer’s perspective rather than their own.

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Christie Walters, co-host of the podcast The Why and The Buy, explains how coaching can help you find better ways to accomplish things and help you overcome barriers to success. She answers the question, “What role does a sales coach play in a growing organization?”

She calls coaching powerful and transformative, and she relates that she worked with her own coach for 10 years before becoming one herself.

Career shaping

Good sales coaches help you identify your own goals and your own internal struggles.

The outside perspective a coach offers can help you fine-tune your life and your work. Coaches help us recognize our blind spots and the self-limiting beliefs that are holding us back.

Coaches don’t necessarily indicate that there’s a problem. Very often, companies bring them in to initiate big change.

Coaches help you design the future of your life instead of allowing your future to happen to you.

Growing organizations

Organizations typically engage coaches when they are trying to move to the next level.

For sales leaders, in particular, it’s easy to get so busy managing out and up that you forget to manage down. If you’re managing down, you’re often not coaching along the way.

What percentage of your time is spent nurturing your people?

It’s really more than sales processes, which are important to success. It’s also more than sales training, which will largely look the same for every person in your organization. Sales coaching relates to the individual person because each of us has unique struggles.

Coaching, together with training and leadership, can exponentially change the trajectory of your team.

Personalized coaching

It’s difficult for sales managers and leaders to step into the personal level with their employees, but it’s a powerful tool for success.

There must be a personal element for each person’s processes, and the path to success won’t look the same for everyone. Simply mimicking others’ success won’t work because each salesperson has a unique personality.

Although there is value in parroting what you see and hear others doing, that cannot be your long-term plan. If you’re new to the industry, it’s ok to copy what others are doing, but develop your own techniques and your own authentic approach.

If you aren’t selling from an authentic place, you might have small successes, but you won’t be ultimately successful.

If you believe Always Be Closing is the best advice you’ve ever heard, you’re going to end up hating sales. Selling is the best job you can ever have if you approach it as a service to others. #SellingIsService

Click To Tweet

Initial coaching

Christie said that although she is often hired by companies, she serves individuals. She strives to help people discover themselves and their own tendencies so they can tie those things to their own work performance.

It’s about getting the individual deeply connected to the work he’s doing and about helping him understand his work as a service. He’s serving the people he’s selling to, and he’s supporting other things he loves by working.

What drives you on a day-to-day basis?

The first meeting will help you figure out what drives you, what blocks you, and what your blind spots are. Christie views coaches as accountability partners for their clients, and she notes that too many salespeople aren’t their own champions.

She also stresses the power of a single negative thought and the power it has to spiral to more negativity. When salespeople learn to channel that frenetic energy into something that serves them instead of draining them, they’ll change their sales performance.

Common struggles

Every salesperson will eventually struggle, and every company will eventually face transition.

Struggle and transition often lead to confusion and noise inside an organization, but coaches help you silence the noise and identify the things that truly matter. #SalesCoaching

Click To Tweet

Coaches come in all shapes and sizes, but there are three elements to success for every organization.

Build a solid culture which starts at the top.
Create training programs that allow people to carry your culture into the marketplace.
Coach your salespeople to avoid drift inside your organization.

Be a champion for your salespeople and consider hiring a sales coach to transform your team.

“What Role Does A Sales Coach Play?” episode resources

Connect with Christie Walters on LinkedIn, or on her website, ChristieWalters.com. Find her podcast The Why And The Buy, and listen to an earlier conversation between Donald Kelley and Christie Walters on episode 87 of her podcast. You can also call or text her at (770) 687-6678.

Today’s episode was also brought to you by Video Jungle podcast, your source for marketing and making your brand pop using video. If you want to stand out, use video. Video is everywhere, and it can help you improve your presence. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy.

If you think you might benefit from more stories like these, check out The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League, an online group coaching program that brings sellers of all levels and all industries together to share insights. We’re beginning a new semester this fall, and we’d be honored for you to join us.

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Donald Kelly, Value, Ideal Customers, What do you sell?

TSE 887: What Do You Do…For Me?

I noticed something interesting at a conference I attended recently. The conference was amazing, but I noticed something noteworthy about many of the exhibitors: they didn’t know how to tell me the problems they solve. They tossed around words like noteworthy, synergy, cohesive, and proprietary, but they couldn’t answer the most important question: “What do you do… for me?”

On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, we’ll discuss the consequences of confusing the customer, and why it’s important to answer that single question: “What do you do… for me?”

Solving problems for prospects

When people ask what you do, they are trying to understand what you can do for them. What problems do you solve?

If you tell prospects you operate a consulting firm, what does that mean? It’s bland. Generic. There’s nothing that helps me understand how I can benefit from your services.

We are a consulting firm for real estate brokers. Our clients typically have at least 10 agents, and they are struggling to generate new leads for their realtors. They aren’t closing enough deals, so we step in to provide a blueprint to find more leads and close more deals.

Don’t make your prospects do mental gymnastics to understand the services you offer. Don’t burden them with jargon.

Donald Miller, author of the book StoryBrand, cautions against confusing your prospects because they’ll most likely look elsewhere for help.

Practicing your message

Many of us rely on the same information for every pitch we give.

Not only are we not personalizing the message, in many cases, we’re consistently repeating a message that isn’t effective.

Just as sports teams must practice in order to know what role each player will assume, your team must practice its efforts in order to maximize the effectiveness. You must practice your message until you can deliver it in a way that helps prospects understand your mission.

Your sales team must have a strategy and an effective message that will help your prospects understand what you can do for them.

“What Do You Do… For Me?” episode resources

The book Stop Selling & Start Leading: How to Make Extraordinary Sales Happen from our sponsors at Wiley provides a fantastic blueprint of all the things buyers say they expect and want from sellers.

Grab your free excerpt of the book here, and view the SlideShare that explains many of the leadership principles you need to stop being subservient to your customers. If you prefer, download the SlideShare so you can refer back to it.

Check out the Video Jungle podcast, which teaches you how to utilize video to stand out from your competition. Plan, create and share your way to better content and strategy. You are a brand, and video can help you set yourself apart.

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TSE 837: The Social Selling Experiment Part 2

Here at The Sales Evangelist, we’re in the middle of a social selling experiment to determine how effective social selling is when it’s part of your everyday sales cadence.

I’ve selected a total of 80 companies that I’ve never had relationships with. I’ll use a traditional cadence of mail, email, and phone calls to build relationships with 40 of them. For the other 40, I’ll also incorporate social selling with the traditional cadence to measure whether it improves my results.

Traditional cadence

I chose to work in an industry I’ve never worked with before so I wouldn’t taint the results of the social selling experiment.

In the case of both groups, I started by building a list of prospects to work from.

For the traditional list, I started with Salesgenie, a lead-generation tool. It provides targeted sales leads by industry, with numerous mechanisms to help you filter your list.

I found the code for the industry I wanted to target, and used that to generate initial results. From there, I had the option to create lists of businesses or individuals. I also had the option to specify geographic information, company size, revenue, and other criteria.

The list I created was about 70 percent accurate.

My very first step was to send something in the mail to each of my prospects in an effort to capture their attention and provide awareness about me.

Social selling experiment

For the social side of the experiment, I first researched platforms to find out which ones were the most powerful, and LinkedIn was the clear winner.

Iinitiated a search on a basic LinkedIn account (not premium) without the help of any additional plugins.

I searched for the job title I wanted to target, and I searched for the industry. My goal was to find facilities whose COO or director I could connect with.

Once I had some results, I narrowed them by region, limiting them to primarily the southeast and Alaska.

In the case of this group, I sent them something in the mail, and I reached out to them on LinkedIn. If I discover that one of my prospects is connected to an existing LinkedIn contact, I’m taking advantage of that to build relationships.

Just as with the traditional sales cadence, my first goal with the social selling experiment is simply to create awareness of my presence. #CreateAwareness

Click To Tweet

As I progress through my cadence, I’ll continue to provide details about my message and my strategies.

We’re conducting this experiment so you don’t have to. We’re sharing this information to help you be successful, find more ideal customers, build more value, close more deals, and do big things every day.

Episode resources

The Sales Evangelist offers a business development service that develops cold leads for your business. We’ll generate a list and hand it off to your team who can work to close deals. Email me for more information.

I used the free version of Leadgibbon, a plugin that extracts public information for the people you’re trying to reach. It can also pull email addresses, phone numbers, and basic information about a company. That information can then be exported into a Google spreadsheet and used with your sales cadence.

We didn’t use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator for purposes of the experiment, but it’s a great tool to help sales professionals tap into the platform’s network.

There’s a reason I continue suggesting the book, Stop Selling & Start Leading: How to Make Extraordinary Sales Happen from our sponsors at Wiley.

I continue because buyers hate it when sellers disappear as soon as the deal is done. You don’t have to be directly involved. You can simply lead the process by making sure that the customer is getting everything he needs.

This book is a fantastic blueprint of all the things buyers say they expect from sellers and want from sellers. Get your excerpt here.

Leave us a review wherever you consume this content. Share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. Also, if you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode.

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Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist Podcast, 800th Episode

TSE 800: Some of The Best Tips From Over 800 Episodes Published

March 29, 2018
/ Jared Easley Jeffrey Gitomer Jill Konrath Jon Buchan Patricia Fripp Ralph Quintero Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today’s podcast celebrates the very best sales tips we’ve learned in the previous 799 episodes of The Sales Evangelist podcast.

I’ve pulled together the best sales tips I’ve heard on the show, as well as some details about how I got started in sales and why it matters so much to me. We also discuss where we’re headed next and the new things you can expect from us in the coming months.

From our first 799 podcasts:

Overcome self-doubt.

In episode 001, Jared Easley, host of Starve the Doubts podcast, and Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Red Book of Selling, discussed self-doubt, and the ways to overcome the self-doubt that plagues people in all industries: sales, business, even life.

Gitomer shared the impact of growing up in a family where people made their own money. Because he grew up around it, he assumed he would do the same.

The people around him were successful, so he assumed he would be successful as well. He never doubted himself, even when he went broke.

From that, Gitomer explained the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are achieving great things. Spend time around top performers and see what you can learn.

Take action.

Serial entrepreneur Ralph Quintero challenged us to do the things we know we need to do as sales professionals that will bring us success and happiness.

We should begin by looking at numbers, because they don’t lie. If we make 10 phone calls but convert only 2 of them, those numbers don’t lie.

Perhaps we’re allowing our fear of rejection to keep us in the office instead of getting in front of prospects. Maybe we’re staying out of the office to avoid working the phone.

If you are’t constantly hustling, you may be the reason you aren’t achieving the success you desire.

Understand buyers.

Many of us mistakenly believe that buyers make decisions based upon products, services, brand, pricing, or other variables.

Jill Konrath challenges that notion with research that indicates buyers make decisions based upon their experience with their sales person.

Enter your tweetsBuyers know they have choices, and sellers who show them something different or who help them achieve their objectives will earn credibility with the buyers. #solveproblems

Click To Tweet

The more information you have about your buyers, his priorities and plans, his obstacles and challenges, his processes, and his finances, the better equipped you’ll be to bring insights and information that can help him meet his objectives.

Be human.

Jon Buchan shares his genius copywriting experiences with salespeople who are engaging in cold contacts.

He takes advantage of the fact that his prospects don’t know his name and he uses it to inject humor and honesty into his cold emails.

My name is Jon. You don’t know me because I got your name from a list, but at least that means you’re list-worthy, right?

Because his emails begin with such brutal, unexpected honesty, he has credibility in the eye of the prospect. Additionally, he has made them smile and he has piqued their curiosity.

Be human. You’ll stand out from the others.

Prioritize presentation.

Patricia Fripp came to the U.S. with $500 and made a name for herself as a woman specializing in men’s hairstyling.

She started her own business when she was 30, and she invested time and resources in several speaking courses at the urging of her mentors.

When she was 39, she sold her hairstyling business and started a business as a keynote speaker, which led her to work with sales professionals who seek to improve their sales presentations.

Her clients realized that they were in danger of losing large deals, not because of price or offering, but because of presentations. As a result, Fripp teaches sales reps to sound more professional, more personable, more persuasive, and to connect better with clients.

Join our community.

Each of us has our own niche in sales, and we often get into our silos and focus on our own industry. Other professionals are selling successfully in other industries like cars or advertising.

If those people are doing something that might benefit you, wouldn’t you want to try it?

The The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League is an online group coaching program that brings together sellers from all over the world to share training, exchange sales tips and grows in their careers.

Moving forward, time limitations will restrict the number of one-on-one coaching commitments we can accept because we always want to focus on quality. F

We’ll be adding a second podcast in April and we’ll work with companies later this year to generate leads, create opt-ins, and develop business.

We hope you’ll join our Facebook group The Sales Evangelizers.

We also hope you’ll share this podcast with others who can benefit from it, and that you’ll leave us a review wherever you consume this content. If you haven’t already, subscribe to this podcast so you’ll benefit from all the things we have learned and will continue to learn.

Episode Resources

Audio provided by Free SFX.

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Prospecting, Facebook LIVE, The Sales Evangelist Podcast, The Sales Evangelizers

TSE 773: TSE Weekly FB LIVE- Hiring, Prospecting and Gatekeepers

February 20, 2018
/ Hiring Prospecting
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today, I’m going to share thoughts and insights that you can help propel your sales to the right direction. We’re taking in questions from Facebook and share the answers here with you.

What to Look for in Salespersons:

Experience
Good attitude
Willing to learn continuously – Make sure their experience is not hindering them to learn more and progress.

How to Work with a Gatekeeper:

Look for ways you can work with the gatekeeper.
Take advantage of social media to reach out to your gatekeepers and prospects.
Send them physically in the mail.
Make calls early in the morning.
Start building habits and do 10×10 (make 10 calls before 10 AM)

Territory Mangement Strategies:

Focus you energy on where your prospects are and where you can have the biggest impact.
If you’re brand new in your area, look for those your competitors are also focusing on.
Always work on how you can grab your customer’s attention.

Episode Resources:

The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

Get a free audiobook download and a 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/tse with over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android,

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Lyndsay Phillips, Smooth Sailing, The Sales Evangelist, Content Marketing

TSE 761 – Should I Hire a Content Marketer or a Virtual Assistant?

February 2, 2018
/ Content Marketing
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Don’t know what kind of content marketing to use? Podcast? Blog? Social media? It’s overwhelming, isn’t it? But don’t let these overwhelm you that you end up not doing anything at all. Well, you’ve got to start somewhere.

Oftentimes too, a lot of business owners have a problem being consistent with their content marketing and social media.

How do you start?

Today’s guest is Lyndsay Phillips and she’s passionate about content marketing. She’s going to share with us some valuable, great insights into how to get started with your content marketing to help your business skyrocket this year!

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Lyndsay:

Hiring Virtual Assistants

Start focusing on your revenue-generating tasks and serving your clients.
It’s therefore important to get that support and get a team going so that you can continue to grow so your marketing doesn’t fall to the wayside and you’re not bringing in new leads.
Get a team so you can get things done faster.

Ways to Find People in Your Support Team:

Upwork
Freelance
It all boils down to what you need to outsource.

1. Know what you need help with.

Think of the things you don’t like doing. Then hire part of that out. Figure out what pieces of the puzzle that you can offload or lighten your load.

Think about your time. If your hourly worth is $200 an hour, then you entering data entry doesn’t make sense when you can outsource that at a much cheaper level.

2. Seek a person or company that excels in that area.

For instance, hire an expert when it comes to the dollars and bookkeeping and strategies when it comes to finances.

When it comes to marketing, there are so many moving pieces as well as video editing.

Hire people that excel in that area so that you don’t have to train anyone. You can rely on their expertise. You can have peace of mind knowing it’s being done and that it’s being done well and that they will look out for you and your company’s wellbeing.

Payment Structures for VAs:

Retainer packages: covering a certain number of hours and tasks per month

Hourly rates: they track their time and bill you at the end of the month

The biggest struggle with content marketing: EXPECTATIONS

Strategies for Finding a Great VA:

Again, know what you need.
Another is the match: Make sure their skill sets are a match for you. Interview them and ask for references.
Make sure that you also “gel” on a personal level. Work with people you have the connection with. You need to understand them on a personal level to make sure you’re in sync.
Be very clear on your expectations. State what you need to get done, when, and how. Be clear on both sides. Ask what they need from you to be successful to accomplish this goal.
VA’s or experts need to have a clear understanding of your business’s goals are – the overall big picture.
Have someone who is proactive. They may even be able to suggest things that can improve your business or process.

Is a Podcast Beneficial for Everyone?

No. You have to think about who your target market is. If your biggest clients don’t know what a podcast is or are not into it, then why invest your money and time in doing a podcast?
You can always test it of course. But it doesn’t work then it’s okay to bail.
Look at your competitors. Look at the influencers in your industry and look at what they’re doing. This would give you an idea of what strategies you can apply to your business.

What About Blogs?

People get stuck on what to write about. They don’t realize how much information they have in their head.
Talk about what the top 5 pain points are of your ideal client.
Then think about a topic that will help them ease that pain a little bit. From there, you can get topics.
You can also talk into your phone and then there’s an app that can convert that into text. Just tweak it and voila! You’ve got content.
Hire copywriters. Tell them what they can write about. Once you get the content back, add your some of your stuff to it or your own verbiage. You have now made it your own but at least you writer has given you a starting point. This has saved you a ton of time.

Sales Funnels versus Email Marketing

Sales funnels are more complex since you need to have a product ladder in order to take a person from A to B.

Sample funnel:

Lead magnet
Tripwire item – around $12-$20
Info product a couple hundred bucks
Membership site for $400
Event for $1,000
Mastermind program, costing thousands of dollars per year

Your sales funnel has to match your product ladder. All your funnels and email campaigns have to work together so you’re nurturing, you’re staying top of mind, you’re building a relationship with people, you’re holding them by the hand and giving them that natural progression to where they’re supposed to go next.

Stay in touch of your clients to stay top of mind to make sure they’re aware of what you offer.

Lyndsay’s Major Takeaway:

Get out of that feeling of overwhelm. Plan out what your strategy is for the year. Make sure that you have support, a team behind you, and some help to do these things for you. And start one thing at a time. Start with blogs, get consistent with that. Do some social media. Stay in touch with your emails. Then build out from there. But you have to start somewhere.

Episode Resources:

Get in touch with Lyndsay to know more about the cool things they offer on www.smoothbusinessgrowth.com. Stuck on where to start? Check out the awesome free guide and social media road map on their homepage.

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

Get a free audiobook download and a 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/tse with over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

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TSE 758: The Rationally Irrational Consumer

January 30, 2018
/ Client Management
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Sometimes, we don’t think and we just do things. Irrational? Hmmm… yes. But it’s somewhat rational. So how do you exactly deal with a rationally irrational consumer?

Today’s guest is Steve McKee. He is the president of Wallwork and Company. He is also the author of the book When Growth Stalls and Power Branding. He has been a columnist for Businessweek over a decade and currently writes a column for SmartBrief on leadership.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Steve:

What is a rationally irrational consumer?

Nobody in any purchasing situation acts completely rationally. But when you start to fill in the layers, that irrationality can be somewhat rational.

Biggest Mistake in Prospecting

Giving into the fallacy of rationality

The Device to Begin Understanding a Rationally Irrational Customer: CERTS (Context, Expectations, Risks, Tradeoffs, Shortcuts)

Every purchase has a context. Think about what context your prospect is operating in. And often, context determines expectations.
Prospects are continually trying to mitigate risk. So think about their risk and how to mitigate them.
In that context of risk, prospects are always making tradeoffs.
Ultimately, when you build trust with the prospect, you become a shortcut for them.

Research Strategies:

Insight: What is going to drive or significantly affect their decision?
Relationship: Look for opportunities to make relationship with the prospect since people do business with people they like and trust. Your prospects are humans so leverage that connection.

The Mindset Shift

When a company has a need for a product or service, they’re feeling pain. And they’re looking for a solution. So when you appear on their doorway, they desperately want you to be the answer. Think of it that way!

Work for the Prospect Before They Hire You

Start working for the prospect before they hire you. Start serving them and meeting their needs. Start genuinely and sincerely working for them before the hire you. And oftentimes, they end up hiring you. But if not, you’re still building relationships and trust. Start to give away what you have and it will come back to you.

The Purchase Process Can Change

A purchase process can actually change the purchase process.

Think of wise ways to violate things.

Steve’s Major Takeaway:

Remember, your prospects are humans and they want to like you.

Episode Resources:

Learn more about Steve and the stuff he’s doing on www.whengrowthstalls.com

Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller

The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington

Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist, TSE, Sales Managers

TSE 757: 5 Mistakes Sales Managers Make and How to Fix Them

January 29, 2018
/ sales Management
/ By The Sales Evangelist

A sales manager role can cost a lot, so today I’m sharing five areas where sales managers typically have struggles as well as some insights you can apply to your own practice.

1. Not having a clear expectation

When your sales team is just going in circles, without a clear direction as to where they’re going or what they need to achieve, this leads to a higher turnover rate. Also, not getting clarity from the management leads to lack of performance.

Solution: Have a clear objective. Have a clear understanding of who you go after. Check out Donald Miller’s book,Building A Story Brand

2. Focusing on the vanity numbers

Vanity numbers are the bigger numbers that look good but there’s really nothing inside. For instance, this could be the number of calls you make.

Solution: Focus on the results from that call. Look at the number of appointments made rather than just the number of calls. Focus on outcomes, not vanity numbers.

3. Micromanagement

Solution: Teach correct principles and you let people govern themselves. Find time to sit down with your sales reps.

4. No coaching

Solution: Sit down with the sales rep and help them identify the key indicators and see where they’re performing. Guide them and figure ways they can try to improve. Set one-on-one coaching once a week to new reps. But top sellers need coaching too.

5. Training

Product training is great but it’s not the only thing sellers need. You’ve got to teach them how to sell.

Solution: Bring someone in who can give a talk to them. For instance, I have 6-week training approach where I meet with the sales team. Then I help them develop processes to help guide them. Or get them to join the TSE Hustler’s League.

Bonus Area: Time Management – Follow the 12 Week Year

This is based on the book, The 12 Week Year, where you have to focus only on just 12 weeks at a time. Set that goal and see how it can significantly improve your career and life in general.

Episode Resources:

Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller

The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Morgan and Michael Lennington

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

Get a free audiobook download and a 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/tse with over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

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Friendship, Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 751: Seek Friendships NOT Favors

Feel like you’ve been hustling and hustling but still you’re not getting the results you want?

This could all be a matter of changing your mindset to seeking friendships, instead of favors.

Dustin Sandoval is a sales leader and author. He shares some insights into how millennials can perform well and be successful in their role. Dustin co-authored the book, Millennial Mindset.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dustin:

Strategies you can do to become a noticer:

1. Listen to what other people are saying.

Understand what they’re interested in.

2. Draw from your expertise and give them anything that can help them get to where the need to go.

3. Help every single person you interact with.

4. Recognize what people are trying to look for.

It’s Not All Business All the Time

Trust is a big part.
It all comes down to the trust factor. And it’s hard to do that if you’re always trying to sell your product.

The Power of Storytelling

Make it a little more memorable for the prospect so there’s something that resonates with them.
Lean on something that people can relate to your product or service.
See what they have in common with you so there’s something you can use to connect with each other.

Dustin’s Major Takeaway:

Solutions, Not Excuses

Fear of Cold Calling? You don’t have to call. You can send them an email or stop by their office. Whatever that looks like, spot a way to create a solution. Stop making excuses.

Find a way to create solutions, not create excuses

Episode Resources:

Connect with Dustin Sandoval on LinkedIn – Dustin C. Sandoval and Instagram @Millennial_Mindset.

Millennial Mindset

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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Great Sales Representative, Donald Kelly, Christopher Croner

TSE 746: Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again

January 12, 2018
/ Hiring
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Ever experienced hiring a bad salesperson? Or have you ever interviewed someone who turned out they were just faking the interview to land the job?

Well, you need to be better in your hiring process when you’re applying and interviewing for companies. As well, hiring managers need to a better job as selecting better sales people too.

Today’s guest, Dr. Chris Croner, talks about his book, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Chris:

The Formula for Drive: Non-teachable Characteristics of High Performers

1.Need for achievement

The person wants to do well just for the sake of doing well. And the person who has a high need for this naturally wants to set the bar high, jump over that, and set the bar even higher the next time. They’re focused on producing excellence just for the sake of excellence.

2.Competitiveness

A competitive person wants to be the best among their peers and they want to win their customer over to their point of view. Psychologically, to them the sales is a contest.

3.Optimism

This is the person’s sense of certainty that they will succeed as well as their resiliency to hang in there when they face the inevitable rejection they have to deal with.

Process to Improve the Hiring Process:

Resume review
Online assessment – The Drive Test through “forced choice” questions
Behavioral interview questions – the interviewee is asked about previous examples of behaviors they’ve engaged in that are predictive of the types of characteristics they’re looking for.
Core skills (Confidence, Persuasion, Relationship Skills, Organizational Skills) – these are teachable

Tips During Interview:

Have your game plan ready.

Have your questions written out. Have your interview guide written out.

Mistakes when hiring people:

Not having a structured format to the interview process.

Hiring people who are just like you.

Common blind spots:

Find out whether or not the past success was related to brand recognition or was it really because of their own effort? This is a very important distinction many companies will miss.

Sample Interview Questions:

Need for achievement:

What is your greatest goal ever accomplished professionally and how do you intend to top it?
What are the sacrifices you had to make to be successful?

Competitiveness:

What does competition look like for you?
Where do you rank compared to your peers?

Optimism

Tell me about the time you remained persistent even though everyone else around you gave up. Tell me about it another time.

Who can benefit from The Drive Test

For “hunter” sales positions
This test uses a question format designed to eliminate faking, which is one of the greatest problems with sales assessments.
The test not only goes for the “drive” but also for the core skills.
You also get a developmental report which includes . pages of things you can do to mentor or motivate that person given their unique psychological profile.
This is helpful not only for onboarding but also for ongoing development.

What great salespersons do on a day to day basis:

Constant ongoing development

Chris’ Major Takeaway:

When hiring for a hunter, look for that non-teachable drive piece!

Episode Resources:

Get a free trial of The Drive Test

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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TSE Hustler's League, Sales Questions, Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 745: TSE Hustler’s League -“Start…Stop”

One of the reasons people have a difficult time asking questions is they don’t feel confident they’re able to do it.

They feel they’d come off as too disrespectful or they’re not worthy enough.

They feel like they’re on a lower level to the prospect so they don’t have the right to ask them questions.

So what kind of questions should you ask your prospects?

Business-related questions:
Examples:

What’s your business goal?
What are your plans to achieve that?

Challenging questions

This kind of questions will help the prospect think. It also shows you’re well-prepared, you’re listening, and you’re mindful of their needs. You’re showing them that you’re not just shooting in the dark. The better you understand them, the better your presentation is going to be and the better chances of closing the deal.

The Start-Stop

Start to answer a question they have but then stop to get clarification from the buyer or reposition the sales process.

For example, if they ask how much your product costs at the beginning of your presentation, this could mean they’re just fishing.

What you can do is begin to answer by saying, “Great question, but first…” Naturally stop and try to clarify by asking, say how many customers they have or why is xyz so important to them.

Now, you have become the consultant. You take control of the situation.

Episode Resources:

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

Tired of PowerPoint decks? Use Prezi Business and your presentations will never be the same.

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Sales Leader, Donald Kelly, Brandon Bruce

TSE 743: What’s NOT Working in Sales Today

January 9, 2018
/ Sales Strategies
/ By The Sales Evangelist

How can you be more efficient with emailing? How can you get more insights from the prospect?

Today’s guest is Brandon Bruce who has come from humble beginnings to now co-founding and growing Cirrus Insight with $12 million in revenue and #44 on The INC 500 List. They were the first Gmail salesforce connector in the market when they launched it in 2011.

In this episode, we talk about what’s not working in sales today and the things you should do.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Brandon:

What has changed in the sales landscape:

Positive: Tremendous amount of energy, enthusiasm, and everybody’s hustling

Negative: A big push from people coming in who focused on just getting the deal done.

The downsides of having “push” mentality:

Retention issues since there wasn’t any sustainable relationship built

Find that balance between being easy and being pushy.

The Concept of the Raving Fan

Raving fans are unpredictable in a great way. When you make these customers happy, they’re so happy that they might go out and do some crazy things for you that you won’t have any idea about. Who knows what could happen?

Tactics to Reach Out to Prospects: Meeting Them Halfway

Meet your buyers halfway. Make it really easy for the buyer to contact you. But how are you going to have those conversations?

1. Put your calendar on your website so they can schedule a time with you at their convenience. Make it a buyer-driven demo

2. Attach.io – they do attachment tracking and document management

3. Post the pitch slide deck on social media, your email signature, or on your website so people can view whenever they want to see them.

How You Can Improve Your Email Outreach:

1. Make your emails short.

Have them 2-3 lines long with simple sentences and paragraphs. It has to be super easy for people to read it at a glance.

2. Add links.

Put a link or two, and let them be at the same place so people can easily click on them. This could be in the form of a simple CTA and another link after your P.S.

3. Have an interesting subject.

4. Don’t lose faith!

5. Ask for feedback from other people in the game.

6. Send your emails early, preferably at the same time you check your emails too (which is usually upon waking up)

7. Make sure they work on mobile and they’re easy links.

8. Make sure the preview that pops up in their phone is interesting enough that they’ll open it.

Brandon’s Major Takeaway:

Keep up the excitement. Sales is always a hustle. Make sure you’re meeting customers halfway. Make deals that are easy for them to say yes to. Be clear in your message that you’re easy to do business with.

Episode Resources:

Cirrus Insight

Connect with Brandon at brandon@cirrusinsight.com or catch him on LinkedIn.

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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TSE 742: Three Sales Principles I Learned While Visiting Jamaica

January 8, 2018
/ Sales Strategies
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today, I’m sharing with your some sales principles that learned while I was on a vacation to my homeland, Jamaica.

You see, the average salary in Jamaica ranges from $149,000 to as low as $16,667 (Jamaican dollars). Now, imagine living off out of that much. Say, US$500 a month?

It’s not easy but they make it work anyway. So how are they able to do it?

Jamaica has been known for the quality of education they provide to students. But the major challenge is being able to translate people’s education into opportunities in the real world.

Principle #1: When life gives you lemon, sell it and buy food.

Jamaicans are very creative and crafty. Whatever they’re going through, even challenges, they make sure they have a good time.

Music is everywhere in Jamaica. Everyone is out playing music. You’ve got to take whatever life gives you, be happy, and use it.

People in Jamaica don’t complain or whine too much about their situation.

If you have a tough situation in your life, figure out to make it work. That’s the idea!

As a sales professional, you may be dealing with difficulties right now, but take what you have and make it work – at least for now. The key is having this kind of mentality.

Jamaicans are sellers. Everywhere they went, they’re trying to sell. They find a way to create something even from nothing.

Principle #2: Outwork everyone including yourself.

As a sales professional, the most important thing you need to outrun is your yesterday. Your yesterday is not who you are, but who you were. Today, is going to be who you are. What kind of person do you want to be? Sure, you’ve probably closed $5,000 worth of sales yesterday. But today’s another day. You need to close $6,000 to outbeat that person – and that is yourself.

Stop comparing yourself to other people. Compare to your yesterday, however, and outbeat that.

Principle #3: Be happy. Be content with who you are and with life even if it’s not in your favor.

$500 here in the U.S. will only take you so far, even in Jamaica. But people there are happy. They take care of themselves and their loved ones. There are many things for you to look forward in life. There are things more important than money. No one should take your happiness away from you. Your loved ones are always something you can go back to, your grounding source. So be grateful for what you have.

Episode Resources:

Check out Episode 737 for more sales tips and strategies!

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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TSE 723: How HubSpot Scaled From 150 to 1500 People and Significantly Increased Sales in the Process

December 12, 2017
/ Business Growth
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Sales professionals, sales leaders, sales owners – you can get a lot from this episode today. How can you scale your organization? And what better organization there is to look at than HubSpot.

Today’s guest is Sam Mallikarjunan. He’s a marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs. He’s going to share with us how Hubspot grew from 150 to 1,500 people in seven different countries. Sam also teaches Digital Marketing at the Harvard University of Continuing Education.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Sam:

Mistakes Most Organizations Make When Scaling

1. Losing cash faster than you’re able to acquire new cash

Cashflow is more important than your mother. So you have to be able to manage your cashflow.

2. You can’t spend money to get customers unless you’re good at keeping them.

If you’re really good at keeping your customers, you can pay your reps really well. You can give them lots of collateral to help them close the deal. Then you spend a lot of money on marketing and training.

The Consultative-Based Sales Process

When Jeff Bezos added negative reviews to the Amazon website, his goal is to make money not to sell things, but to make money when they help people make purchased decisions.

Don’t get people to make a decision that you want them to make, but coach them into a decision that’s going to be best for them.

You’d be amazed how powerful it is to not sell to somebody. A lot of times, they’ll figure it out themselves. And either buy from you or come back to you in the future to buy from you.

Strategies for Motivating Your Team:

Get past the “Always be closing!” mentality
Check out the “candle” mentality
Don’t make things complicated or your team is more likely to get burned out

Sam’s Major Takeaway:

The hardest thing to do is to convince people to try it. People aren’t usually driven to change unless there’s an impetus to change.Slow down your sales cycle and ask more questions. Give more answers and focus on helping. Slow that down and you’ll achieve long term business growth.

Episode Resources:

Reach out to Sam via www.samfromthevan.com or www.mallikarjunan.com. Or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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Harvard University of Continuing Education

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Donald, The Grinch, Sales Accountability

TSE 722: The Grinch Who Stole My Sales

December 11, 2017
/ Selling Success
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Oftentimes, sellers blame their sales performance on the Grinch, well, on pretty much everything else but themselves. You see, it’s probably not the Grinch Or the Grinch probably is you. And the quicker you’re able to acknowledge this, the better chance of improving for the new year.

So stop whining and make it happen!

It’s probably human nature. We find something else to blame on when we’re not doing well. I’m sharing the top reasons of salespeople that they do poorly on their sales performance:

1. My prices are too high.

2. I have no proper literature.

3. My territory is bad. It’s horrible.

4. I don’t have enough time.

We can have difficult times but we can overcome them. Here are strategies to help address each issue.

Price Is Too High

You might be selling to the wrong customers. Price is almost irrelevant if the value is strong enough.
Look at a different group of people who are more qualified. They are usually the ones that are more willing to pay.
It’s all about being able to build enough value. This comes down to you. Identify things affecting your customers. Then build value on that.
Marketing can produce leads but you can’t solely depend on them for leads. You still have to go out and hunt for yourself.

No Literature

If you have Canva, you have literature. You don’t even have to have literature sometimes. More likely, your prospects are not going to read what you send them. In fact, only a small percentage of people do that. So don’t fall into this trap.

Can material help? Of course, yes. But that’s no excuse for you to say you’re not closing deals. If you really need a literature so bad, use this free, powerful tool called Canva. Or send a link to your webpage.

Poor Territory

Territory management is key. Don’t let your territory be an excuse for not selling. You can still find some areas where you can find success.

No Time

We all have the same amount of time in a day. It all depends on how you can manage that time. Focus on things that are more crucial. Prioritize the things you need to do and don’t waste your time on unnecessary things.

Episode Resources:

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David Kerr. Sales Enablement, The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly

TSE 721: How Octiv Can Help Sellers Save Time and Increase Profits

December 8, 2017
/ Sales Enablement
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Looking for ways to enable your sales team and boost your productivity? Think Octiv.

Today, I’m bringing in David Kerr, the CEO of Octiv. He was a former Groupon executive. He shares with us valuable insights into how you can revolutionize your sales, and what their company offers so you can increase your profits in less time.

Octiv automates and digitizes sales documents for sales professionals or marketing professionals to help them make sending documents much easier as well as speed up the sales process.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with David:

How Octiv Works

Create a proposal using PowerPoint, Word, or PDF and put it as an attachment.
Send it to Octiv.
It integrates with a variety of your back-end systems.
It assembles your document seamlessly so it’s available online.
When the prospect opens it, you get a notification.
You begin to engage and collaborate with your prospect.
Workflow is automated so it goes to the appropriate folks that need to sign the document.

Can Small Businesses Use it Too?

Yes!

Reasons People Don’t Use Productivity Tools:

Fatigue from using sales applications – The average sales rep interacts with about 8 and 1/2 different technologies in order to get their sales done.

The concept around change management – Technology is not the end all and be all solution.

How Octiv Is Tailored Towards Marketing:

You can integrate with different marketing solutions including Marketo,Eloqua, etc.
Marketing can automate the creation and personalize their documents.
You can automate your presentations as well and update them.

David’s Major Takeaway:

Think about the change management piece. How are you enabling your sales team with training, technology, behaviors, and tools? Ensure you’ve got accountability across your sales team.

Episode Resources:

Connect with David Kerr on Octiv and follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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Dustin Dauenhauer, The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly, Prospecting

TSE 719: Sales From The Street -“Don’t Say No for The Prospect”

December 6, 2017
/ Prospecting
/ By The Sales Evangelist
/ 1 COMMENT

Think closely. Do you ever find yourself saying no to yourself before the prospect even said no to you. Don’t say no for the prospect. Don’t decide for the prospect.

Today’s guest is Dustin Dauenhauer. He is a member of The Sales Evangelizers Facebook community and he’s going to share with us some struggles he faced related to sales and what he did to overcome them.

Dustin is an account executive for Southwest Now Magazine and the Co-Founder of Defining Moments, Inc. They help aspiring authors, musicians, and artists reach their dreams and get their project out there.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Dustin:

Dustin’s Struggle: FEAR

He was afraid to go in to make the sale. He would even be afraid to go in and make the sale. He’d walk up to the door, turn around, and walk away.

Strategies to Overcome Fear:

1. Be intentional with what you think about on a daily basis.

Stop that mindset of deciding for your customers. Confront your thoughts intentionally and deal with it. Remind yourself of your “why.”

2. Make a goal.

Make a goal to confront your fear. Realize the value your product/solution brings. Don’t go in for the sale right away. Build a relationship first. If you’re used to visiting 20 locations, double it up to 40. Then follow up emails or calls. The more you do it, the less fearful you become.

3. Take action.

If they say no to you, tell them, “When you’re ready, we will be here.”

Dustin’s Major Takeaway:

Success is on the other side of fear. Your goal is not only to sell them but to befriend them and genuinely care about what they’re doing. Be intentional about thinking what you’re thinking about.

Episode Resources:

Know more about Dustin on DefiningMomentsTV.com and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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New Seller, Luck, Donald Kelly, Best Sales Podcast

TSE 717: I DON’T Believe in Beginners Luck and Here Is The Reason Why

It’s your first day of work or you’re new to sales or your business and you’re getting some opportunities. You’re calling the prospects. You’re getting your way in.

Even if you don’t know anything much about the industry or the product you’re seeing success.

Is it beginner’s luck? I believe it’s more than that.

Luck is merely the place where opportunity meets hard work.

What makes new reps so different?

They’re eager. They don’t have preconceived knowledge. Whereas seasoned sellers feel so confident they don’t push themselves too much.

I listened to this podcast called How I Built This by NPR. In the show, they interviewed a girl who had no knowledge of the industry but she was able to build a thriving organization. Or the guys of Airbnb had no prior knowledge of hospitality. A lot of people don’t know what to do in the beginning.

New Sellers versus Seasoned Sellers

What they had was not beginner’s luck, but hustle. When you’re new, you hustle and hustle because you’ve got nothing to lose.

And when you’re seasoned, you’re afraid you’re going to lose something. But how can you even lose something you’ve never had?

The beginners don’t have boundaries. They do stuff and see results. And as time goes by, the start to become afraid. They start to learn about the lingo and the processes. Someone tells them not to do it because it doesn’t work.

If you want to be a top performer, continue the hustle all throughout the process. Work late, work early. Do what you need to do.

The Power of Habit

Sometimes we get stuck in our old habits and this can keep us from opportunities. And what if you changed that? Break past that. The fears you have may not even exist. So stop falling back in your comfort zone.

Are there certain habits you need to break? What habits do you think you need to go further and beyond them?

Are you making 20 calls per day? You probably can do better than that. Don’t expect the same results from doing the same thing over and over again.

Don’t be afraid. Try new things!

Episode Resources:

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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Donald Kelly, TSE Hustler's League, Emails,

TSE 715: TSE Hustler’s League – Send Powerful Emails

November 30, 2017
/ Email Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today’s snippet from one of our sessions over at the TSE Hustler’s League is about the principles behind emailing fundamentals.

Reasons for sending emails:

Letting them know you exist
Gathering information
Setting appointment
Closing the deal

Strategies for grabbing your prospect’s interest:

Send an awareness email. Also, saying “Hi, name!” can come off as too salesy.
Make it short. Don’t make it look like a spam email.

5 Areas to Look in an Email:

1. Subject line – It has to be compelling.

2. Opening line – This should tie into your subject line. Try to share an unconsidered need here.

3. Body

4. Closing – This should be an invitation to do something for the next step.

5. Email Signature

Sending a congratulation email:

You’re not selling anything since you’re only trying to make your prospect aware.

Reasons people send a followup email:

Instead of sending a follow up email and saying just following up, give them what they want.
You want to gather more information from the prospect.
You’re trying to catch up. This could be a past customer so you want to try to re-engage and capture their attention again.
You want to thank them for something.

Strategies for sending followup emails:

1. Never say you’re “just following up.”

Of course, they already know you’re following up. Do something different. Do something different. Check out UberEATS and you can have food delivered to your client and pay for it from afar.

2. Share their content on Twitter or other social media platforms.

People feel good when you try to share their content.

3. Don’t send crappy emails.

Make your subject line catchy as well as all areas of your email.

4. Offer something else to catch their attention.

5. In every stage of your sales process, create a piece of content.

You can use this as a followup. But when you do this, make sure you’ve tied this into your past conversation.

6. Your goal here to just start the conversation again.

Tools that let you know your email has been opened:

Boomerang

Hubspot

SalesHandy

Strategies for follow up emails:

1. Offer an invitation.

Figure out something you can invite your prospects to do. For ex. get your prospects to talk about themselves and invite them to write for your blog.

2. Engage them in your conversation.

For ex. tell them if you can give a referral to them.

3. Don’t be scared to network.

Spend at least an hour a day on LinkedIn just to network. Then send an email to reconnect. Instead of doing it one platform, you get on a second platform like email, voicemail, etc. If you saw on LinkedIn it’s their birthday, send them something from UberEATS or send them a snail mail.

4. Reply about something they produced.

Episode Resources:

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TSE 712: Say Thank You Throughout The Year

November 27, 2017
/ Give Value
/ By The Sales Evangelist

There’s nothing like expressing gratitude towards other people. A simple thank you is fine, but wouldn’t it be nice if you show your clients how much you really value them?

We all want to feel appreciated. But instead of doing the generic things, make it personal.

I highly recommend you do the Platinum Rule.

The Platinum Rule

The Golden Rule states that you treat others the way you want to be treated.

But the Platinum Rule trumps this in have to treat others they way they want to be treated.

Find out what they appreciate the most.

Strategies for Expressing Gratitude:

1. Send a gift.

If they like ball games, take them to a basketball game or football game in your area. Or if they love a certain resto, send them a little gift card.

Do this throughout the year. Showing gratitude doesn’t only need to happen at the end of the year. Show them you care and do it throughout the year. Just show them you care.

2. Send a note.

Make sure it’s customized. Send them a Thank You mail. No one keeps generic thank you cards. But that would stand out in their mind. It’s worth it to do something like that.

3. Publicly affirm your clients.

Do a post about them on LinkedIn.Endorse them. Share something about their business. Everyone loves flattery. Sharing that show them you appreciate them. Share some referrals.

4. Show swag.

Send them your company shirts or mugs. Send them something with your brand on it. They can be you’re walking billboard.

5. Create custom spotlight.

If you have a blog, bring the spotlight to your clients and highlight them. If you have a newsletter, you can spotlight one of your top clients once a month. Or interview them and create a blog post about them.

6. Refer customers to them.

This is totally appreciate. Again, it’s moreso the relationship that’s important here.

7. Host a special event to acknowledge your customers.

Event them to an event you’re doing. Or have a client appreciation event at a trade show. Invite them to come to that dinner.

8. Send unexpected discount to them.

9. Reach out to your clients.

If you travel to an area and there are clients living in that area, go ahead and reach out to them. Take them lunch or simply stop by their office.

Episode Resources:

Check out the TSE Hustler’s League.

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TSE 711: Common Mistakes Businesses Make When It Comes To Sales

Today’s guest is Chris Hallberg, author of the book The Business Sergeant’s Field Manual: Military Grade Business Execution Without the Yelling Push-Ups.

Chris has worked with hundreds of companies, advising them and giving them practical principles to help them scale and see tremendous success.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Chris:

Common mistakes businesses make when they try to scale:

Taking your top sales rep and making them your sales manager

The skills you need to be a great sales manager are different than you need to be a great sales producer.

You have to have somebody leading the team that understands the process.

Conflating marketing and sales

Senior sales leaders these days don’t really understand marketing. It’s now an integrated approach.

If given the right tools, a salesperson can be involved in the marketing process. Each salesperson can have their own little sales company and their own little sales brand and generate additional interest just by participating in the process.

The Ideal Sales Leader:

Somebody who has hit the numbers and always get the number you’re asking from your average salespeople
Somebody who can do the job but also enjoys training other people
Think of sales management as a third of it spent on recruiting and hiring the best available talent.
They need to support the top sellers.
The other third of the time is spent re-training people that can’t make it.
Sales management involves managing that flow of human energy and talent on the way in, retaining it, trying to save or retraining, and off-loading.

Tools Chris Use on His Clients:

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

The Accountability Charts

Identify the teams you need to have. Then have a specialized training and the specialized accountabilities that go with that.

Important Principles Entrepreneurs Should Keep in Mind:

1. Go where your customers are.

You can’t expect clients to come to you. Go to where the customers are. Meet them where they are. Make it easy.

2. Have the right mindset.

Show your customers that what you do is going to make their life better.

Chris’ Major Takeaway:

Make sure you’re around people that get you, develop you, and take you to the next level. You have to have the right conditions for you to grow. Be careful where you put your time.

Episode Resources:

The Business Sergeant’s Field Manual: Military Grade Business Execution Without the Yelling Push-Ups by Chris Hallberg

The Business Sergeant

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

Traction by Gino Wickman

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David Sill, Donald Kelly, Cold Calling, Growth Stratergy

TSE 708: Why and How High Growth Companies are Still Cold Calling as Their Number One Growth Strategy

November 21, 2017
/ Cold Calling
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Do you know why cold calling still works?

That’s because not everyone can do it and you doing it gives you that competitive advantage. All the more reason you should do it because high growth companies has cold calling as their number one growth strategy.

Today’s guest is David Sill, the SVP of Sales for DiscoverOrg.com and he’s going to share with us some tactics and strategies on cold calling.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with David:

Why sellers say cold calling is dead:

People can’t do it because it’s hard.
People are unwilling to do it.

The Power of Outbound Calls:

Big companies have to make outbound calls.
Make sure you have the infrastructure, resources, and leadership to go forth and fire on that engine as needed.
Develop that outbound muscle as a really smart strategy for high growth.
Their study suggests that 40% of the action comes from outbound generated leads.
Ultimately, you want to have that healthy balance between inbound and outbound leads.

Best practices to compile a group of ideal customers for your outbound funnel:

1. Need for high quality data

Data is what fuels the system. And it needs to live where your team lives (i.e. Marketo, Hubspot, Salesforce, and sales acceleration technologies) because that’s where they’re spending their time.

Data needs to be refreshed but also it should be integrated and used to live where the team lives.

2. At DiscoverOrg, data is human-curated.

The company has a growing research analyst team with about 300 full-time employees. Their job is to sit down and do a variety of techniques, phone interviews, and reach out to verify and re-verify data. Hence, they guarantee reliability and accuracy you can’t find from other third-party data sources.

What makes an effective outbound approach:

1. Commit to the right resources.

There has to be a clear delineation of roles on the team with the right tools and technology. There needs to be the right data. There has to be the right training on the front end as well as coaching throughout.

2. Be constantly testing.

At DiscoverOrg, they use a dialing tool called FrontSpin and an email campaign tool called Outreach. And they use Salesforce.com for their CRM. And they’re constantly A/B testing.

Breaking the Stereotype of Cold Calling:

Only in live conversation does the collaboration take place.

As opposed to other outreach like email campaigns and voiccemails, they’re part of the strategy. A lot of people rely on them too heavily. But with one-way outreach, there’s a time lag. Not to mention, you’re a pre-conceived bot.

David’s Major Takeaway:

Do the hard thing. Companies that grow are doing things that others are unwilling to do. Everybody could do them but lots of folks aren’t doing them. Therefore, if you want competitive advantage, you have to execute in areas where others can’t or won’t. And cold calling is one of those areas.

Episode Resources:

Learn more about David and their company on DiscoverOrg.com or shoot him an email at david.sill@discoverorg.com.

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Donald Kelly, TSE Hustler's League, Sales,

TSE 705: TSE Hustler’s League-“Don’t Focus on the Sale”

November 16, 2017
/ Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today’s episode is another snippet taken from one of our sessions over at the TSE Hustler’s League. If you haven’t yet, you’ve got to check out our awesome team of like-minded people.

This semester, we’re covering two tracks – one is focused on business development and the other one is on building value and increasing your close rate.

Everything we do in sales must have a purpose.

Empathy is key.

We look at our clients like bank accounts.

Don’t just try to get a yes from them.

Don’t just focus on getting the sale because there is so much more beyond that.

Make sure you have that strong sense of empathy. Understand your customer. Empathy is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective.

Your prospects are humans. Think about things from their standpoint.

Don’t focus on the end-result. Focus on mile-markers or key points in that process.

Things that need to happen in the sales process before the sales:

1. Learn about the prospect before sending them an email.

Get them to open the email.
Get them to respond to the email.
And when they respond, you want them to say yes.

2. Gain the prospect’s interests or help them become aware of you before even getting to a sale.

Episode Resources:

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Mark Fortune, The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly, Sales

TSE 698: Power of Local Leads & How To Get More

November 7, 2017
/ leads
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Sometimes we go far and wide finding prospects when we have folks right in our own backyard. There is power in getting local leads. Today, you’re going to learn how to find them and get them.

Our guest today is Mark Fortune and he’s going to teach us how to gain local leads. Mark owns a small business marketing agency based in Arkansas. They work with small and local businesses. They put in marketing systems, strategies, and campaigns to help them grow the business. He does this through the Duct Tape Marketing System. Mark is the author of Local Lead Generation Book for Small Businesses.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Mark:

Why Target Local Businesses

They don’t have the time, money, or bandwidth to compete with the bacon guys. But they can pinpoint far more accurately. You can actually compete with the big guys.
Most business owners tend to jump from one tactic to another in just a wee. They just see what sticks but they don’t really get the results they’re after.

Biggest Mistakes People Make When Getting Local Leads

1. Trying everything at once.

Don’t just try all social media platforms or you will just end up losing focus.

2. Not knowing who they’re talking to

Small businesses get so excited about trying to generate leads that anybody with a pulse becomes their targeting strategy.

Figure out your best customers.

What you need to do is sit down for a minute and think about who your best customers are.

Most businesses come from word of mouth and referral as a start. So think about who those clients are and what’s common among them. Use that the proxy to your targeting as you go out and generate more leads. Use your best customers as your example.

Consumers are in control these days.

Consumers can find out pretty anything about what they want right at the tips of their fingertips. But they’re still human. So don’t try to rush them into a relationship when they didn’t have the chance to evaluate or educate themselves about you.

Steps to get started with targeting local businesses:

1. Spend time upfront getting to know your customer.

Build that relationship. Understand what makes their business tick, what their vision is, and what they’re trying to achieve.

2. Apply what Facebook offers as a tactic to the needs of the prospects.

This needs to start with the client. Understand what they’re going out with, what they’re trying to do, and what they’re trying to get done. Then figure out the best way to help them get there.

Online or Offline?

Understand first where your customer base is today. Are there win back opportunities with, say, return customers or last customers? Are there referral opportunities?
Stop treating referrals as happy accidents.
Be consistent.

Why another book on local businesses:

Mark co-wrote the book with other consultants with similar businesses.
It’s a practical guide to helping people generate more local leads.
Don’t read the book chapter by chapter and but jump from one topic to another as you try to figure out from one chapter to another.

Strategies for getting referrals:

1. Be referrable.

Make sure you do what you do well. Deliver on your promises. And you’ve got to get good reputation.

2. Have a plan and a process for asking for referrals.

Educate your referral partners on what you’re going to do with that referral when that comes in. Understand that people get nervous as they’re putting their personal credibility on the line if they refer you to somebody. You’re trying to give comfort to your referral partner that they feel credible and positive about referring you out.

3. Be consistent.

Reach out to folks every week, whether it’s two people or two hundred. But never stop mining for those referrals. They’re going to be the cheapest cost to acquire leads you get.

Content Marketing

Whether it’s a blogpost or an infographic or whatever, continue to publish new content and post it on different channels. This lets your target market know that you’re out there and that you can solve the problems they’re after.

Branding and Presence

Be sure to update your posts. Maintain that online presence to make sure your customers sees you the way you want to be seen.

People Like Connecting With You

Small businesses have to have a personality and it has to come through in your marketing. Take a video tour of your business. Run some contests. Support local community causes.

Strategies for local businesses:

1. Put the customer first.

Focus on solving problems. Localize your approach. Local may not mean geographically. It may mean before going to a sales call, you’re going to understand everything you can about the company and the people you’re going to be dealing with. Do your homework.

2. Listen as much as you talk.

Go to a sales call with the intent of listening. Seek to understand before you’re understood. Figure out what you can do to help the companies. But sometimes, you might not be able to. It’s better to quit early and move on rather than waste everybody’s time.

Mark’s Major Takeaway:

Make marketing a system and it’s the only way to success over the long run. Focus on it and be disciplined. On the sales side of things, just listen. Listen to your customers and what they’re saying because there are nuggets in there. You will find pain points and points of value that you turn into your advantage.

Episode Resources:

Connect with Mark on www.fortunemarketinginc.com and check out his book Local Lead Generation Book for Small Businesses.

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Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist, Prospecting

TSE 697: 5 Lies I Told Myself Not To Prospect and How I Overcame Them

November 7, 2017
/ Prospecting
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Prospecting is the lifeblood of your sales pipeline. Without adding new people to your funnel, the deals you have are going to dry up. Today’s episode is focused on prospecting. And I wanted to share with you something that has held me back over the years.

5 lies I told myself to not prospect and how I was able to overcome them:

1. We don’t have time.

I was so busy doing other tasks like working on proposals or going through past leads or make sure I caught up with all the emails. I was doing different things for my boss and so many other stuff and I didn’t have the time.

But that was the lie I told myself. Of course, I had time! I just lied to myself. And so do you. Keven Kruse has an effective book on how we can better plan called 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management.

Set time for prospecting and block it out. Say, for two hours. Do it from 8-10 am. Block it off and do it then.

2. We don’t want to disturb the prospect.

If you can tell them a way that they can, say, save another $500 in his business per month, then they’re probably going to take your call. So don’t think you’re disturbing them. Sure, you may disrupt there.

But know that you have that solution or value to help their business. To be able to present that in a valuable way.

Make sure your messaging grabs their attention.

3. I don’t know how to do it so I can’t do it.

Learn your way around. And this podcast is a good start. Search videos on YouTube for prospecting. You’re going to mess up the first time. But learn and move on. Read books. Listen to podcasts. Interview people from your industry. Apply them.

4. I’m going to follow up on past customers.

Of course, you should. But that’s not the only place you can go to find new people. You need to get new lifeblood in the organization. Yes, get your old customers, but don’t neglect finding new people. So set that time in the morning focusing on finding new people.

5. I have to send an email first before I call them.

You can call people without sending them emails. Get out of that trash-talking in your mind and just go ahead and call.

Episode Resources:

15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse

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Gong.io, Chris Orlob, Donald Kelly, The Sales Evangelist

TSE 696: Top B2B Sales Trends for 2017

November 3, 2017
/ Sales Training
/ By The Sales Evangelist

Today, we have Chris Orlob on the show. He works for Gong.io that provides data that help sellers become better at sales. In this episode, he’s dishing out top B2B sales trends they’ve seen in 2017 (some of which are going to roll over to 2018).

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Chris:

What Gong.io Does:

It’s the #1 conversation intelligence platform for sales teams. What they do:

Records sales calls
Transcribes them from speech to text
Analyzes them with machine learning

Benefits sales teams get from Gong.io:

People can figure out what’s working and what’s not
You can use data to drive sales effectiveness across the entire team
You can ramp new hires faster.

Whether or not you purchase a technology like this, become familiar with it because it’s probably the most impactful technology on the organization next to the CRM.

Top Trends in 2017:

Sales Quotas

Since 2011, sales quota attainment has steadily been dropping year to year. It’s continuing to decline over time.

Annual quotas are being increased on average 7.5% a year.

So one one hand, there’s declining quota attainment and on the other hand, there’s this increased total quotas.

A correlation:

During the same time period, the VP of Sales average tenure has declined from 26 months in 2011 to 19 months in 2016.

The reason for these trends:

There is a big and wide sales performance gap between the top 10%-20% of the performance on your sales team and the middle of the pack (80%-90% average performers who make up the rest of your entire salesforce)

The reason for the gap is in how they conduct their sales conversations. There is almost always a stark difference in how the A players conduct their sales conversations compared to their mediocre peers.

Sales leaders are blind to sales conversations.

Benefits of Understanding Sales Conversations:

Allows you to design a sales training program based on reality versus just generic.

Allows you to follow through to make sure sales training is being implemented in a live setting.

Talk to Listen Ratio

The talk to listen ration that leads to the most closed deals is different for each type of call:

Discovery – The highest converting talk to listen ratio is 46:54 (the rep talks 46% of the time and listens for 54%of the time)
Demo – The highest converting talk to listen ratio is 65:35 (rep talks 65% of the time and listens for 35%of the time)

Strategies for coaching:

1. Basing it on facts

2. Role playing

“Humans are learning machines. If they say sales is not a learnable skill is to go against human nature.” – Chris Orlob

Chris’ Major Takeaway:

For Sales Leaders:

Prioritize shifting your bell curve or closing the sales effectiveness gap and the middle of the pack as your number one priority.

For Sales Reps:

Read a lot of books. Implement everything you learn relentlessly and figure out what’s working and what’s not. If you have call recordings at your company, listen to your own recordings. Analyze what worked and what didn’t.

Episode Resources:

If you want to know more about sales effectiveness, check out Gong.io.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Think Fast Think Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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