The Sales Conversation Podcast

“Beg mail is infamous for its ability to hinder the sales process by irritating buyers. You can learn how to drop beg mail for its more powerful sibling, value mail!” Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Anthony Coundouris about what you can do to add value to your emails and maximize your success with buyers. Anthony is an independent marketing officer and the author of run_frictionless, a book that explores the importance of building sales systems to achieve predictable sales results. With his global experience in marketing, Anthony has learned the importance of turning beg mail into value mail. Today, we discuss the reasons why beg mail is often ineffective and how you can add value to your email strategies for more effective sales. Beg Mail vs. Value Mail: Thinking Differently About Communication Over the last few decades, email has become one of the central ways that businesses communicate with their customers. Technology, however, has its downsides. Nearly all of us have experienced spam in our email and on our phones, whether in the form of unsolicited calls, constant email reminders about a product, or even emails about products you don't need. While most of these messages are automated, some fall under the rubric of “beg mail.” Beg mail refers to the often-repeated call or email to a potential buyer to get a decision on a sale. Typically, beg mail involves asking a buyer for a decision on a sale, either by repeatedly sending messages asking for another meeting or directly asking if they have made a decision. This format does not add value to your buyers and feels more like a sales “prayer” than a cogent sales strategy. More importantly, Anthony Coundouris argues, buyers usually perceive beg mail as pushy, pressure-oriented, or annoying. A follow-up message often won't annoy buyers, but repeatedly contacting your buyers with similar messages will lead you to beg mail territory. Sales companies resort to beg mail when they run out of energy for communication that adds value (i.e., something new) to a conversation. Anthony Coundouris, for example, found that most of the companies he researched in the United Kingdom switched to beg mail after their initial value mail. These later messages became distracting for the same reason as email spam. But is there a better way to interact with buyers? Anthony Coundouris thinks so. He argues that salespeople should emphasize the alternative:  value mail. What is value mail, and why does it matter? In contrast to beg mail, value mail does not focus on the “chase” but adds something new to the conversation. This might include useful resources and information, tools, and other materials that your potential buyer may find useful. Value mail emphasizes building relationships with buyers rather than simply selling a product. After all, your buyers know you want to sell them something; focusing on communication that helps buyers think about the services you offer and how those services meet their needs will be more productive for both you and your buyers. Value mail is an essential part of any sales strategy with several crucial benefits: It builds stronger relationships with buyers It increases the likelihood that buyers will respond It avoids burning out your buyers It teaches you to find new approaches for sharing your product or service with others It maintains your relevance with buyers Remember that buyers have a limited amount of time and interest. Beg mail can often appear copied and pasted, which gives the buyer the impression that you don't value their time nearly as much as your own. Your time is irrelevant in any sales conversation. Value mail, however, can demonstrate your interest in the needs of your buyers and in applying your solution to help them meet their goals. Ultimately, value mail requires changing the way you think about sales conversations. How do you change the way you think about buyer interactions?? Anthony Coundouris suggests that all salespeople need to make two mindset changes to move away from beg mail to adding value to their engagements with buyers: Get out of the mindset of the quotaPaying too much attention to meeting sales quotas or merely earning the sale can lead you to send communications that lack value. While salespeople have to make sales, they also need to establish trusted relationships with their potential buyers. Get out of the mindset of desperationThe mentality of the quota can sometimes lead to desperation, especially if you are struggling to make a sale. However, instead of falling back on beg mail and other forms of repetitive sales tasks, you should step back and assess your strategies. What are you doing right? What are you doing wrong? Additionally, it is essential to recognize when you need to do more research on your current, potential, and future buyers. Think about the various uses of your product or service. How can you introduce those variants to different buyers? From there, you can consider the ways that you want to create value in your conversations. These might include pointing to new tools or resources you want to offer your buyers or new ideas and product uses you want your buyers to think about. What can you do to add value to your sales communications? There are dozens of different strategies you can use to add variety and value to your sales conversations. That said, Anthony Coundouris suggests beginning with the following elements: Consider interactions you desirePut yourself in their shoes. When someone tries to sell you something, what do you wish they would do to keep your interest? Additionally, you should always think about the types of interactions you want to have with your customers and incorporate them into your communication strategy. Develop a systemInstead of focusing on a single interaction, a sales system will force you to design the entire sales experience. As a rule, sales systems should help guide the experience with your product or service. Consider the various details about your product or service you want your buyers to experience and weave your communication around those experiences. In other words, a sales system will have a variety of pathways you can follow to guide buyers to the details you think will most matter to them. Favorite FeaturesOne easy way to add value is to include a list of five favorite features about your product. The list should provide direct and specific detail about the features without being overly longwinded. If your buyers want to know more, they can ask you directly; alternatively, you can include links to relevant webpages or feature demos in emails. Reliving the demonstrationIf you have a demo of your product or service, consider sending it as part of a future value mail or as a new message to other people in the buyer's organization. The latter can start a conversation about your product or service, which can build buzz for your company. Anthony Coundouris also emphasizes the importance of what he calls “thickening the middle game.” Most salespeople pre-qualify their buyers before an initial communication to make sure they are focusing on the right people and businesses. These initial interactions should consider the changes and developments within an organization so you can better tailor your solution to help a buyer meet their goals.  However, the middle part of the sales game presents new challenges for salespeople. For one, the middle game usually occurs after your buyer is already primed with information about your solution; in some cases, the middle game occurs after your first sales meetings. As a result, many salespeople fall back on beg mail instead of rethinking the interactions they want to have with buyers. To avoid this, you should create different types of interactions that you can use at different points in your communication pathway. Lastly, consider crowdsourcing with other people in your industry. Engage in conversations with other salespeople, especially within your sales team, and find new approaches you can bring to your sales playbook. Remember that organizations that do not rely on beg mail are more likely to last. After all, if you add value in your conversations with buyers, they are more likely to move forward with a sale! If you want to learn more about how to move away from beg mail to value mail, check out some of the resources listed below and consider grabbing a free copy of Anthony Coundouris' ebook, run_frictionless! Key Takeaways: Beg Mail vs. Value Mail – One major problem with beg mail is that it so often has the opposite of the intended effect. Buyers often see beg mail as pushy, annoying, or overly focused on the sales chase. These perceptions make buyers less likely to continue a sales conversation. In contrast, value mail ignores the chase and adds useful resources to the conversation. Focusing on value mail can build professional relationships and the brand of your company. Thickening the Middle – Building a strategy for moving a sales conversation from the beginning stages to a sale is no easy task. However, you shouldn't neglect the middle of the sales game, which many people often do. Instead, send different, valuable interactions to the buyer. Always consider what you can do to create value in your next interaction and what kinds of valuable interactions you want to have. Then design your future email exchanges accordingly. Variation Matters – You can maintain your relevance by creating a range of email responses for different buyer needs. This might include letting a client re-experience the demonstration of the product, sharing a list of favorite features, or sending recommendations or materials that enrich a buyer's experience with the sales process. In doing so, you'll create a conversation about your product or service and help them make a buying decision based on the value they can see through you. Resources: Anthony's Links: Follow Anthony on LinkedIn Check out his website for run_frictionless Grab a free e-book of Anthony's book, run_frictionless Read Anthony's blog post:  “Stop Writing Beg Mail and Begin Writing Value Mail” For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests. Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

“Every salesperson can benefit from making their outreach efforts more focused and efficient. Whether that entails building client lists or focusing on automation, today's episode will give you the information you need to improve your sales outreach.” Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Ryan O'Donnell about the value of building a focused client outreach system. Ryan is the co-founder of Replyify and SellHack, two services designed to help sellers automate their outreach process. Since 2006, Ryan has worked in software solutions for salespeople with a focus on optimizing sales processes and improving efficiency. Optimizing Your Outreach Approach for Better Sales Nearly all of us have wondered what we can do to make our outreach process more successful. After all, outreach is fundamental to a salesperson's professional life, yet turning outreach into sales can sometimes feel like a confusing puzzle. Many salespeople run into inefficiencies in their sales outreach methods at the “top of the funnel of sales.” Essentially, salespeople sometimes begin the outreach process with an overly broad view of the clients they intend to target. As a result of this broad perspective, salespeople hinder their ability to reproduce sales success by putting themselves in the position of needing many different strategies for too many client types. What can you do to make your outreach process more effective? For Ryan O'Donnell, the critical flaw of the broad “funnel” can be corrected by focusing your outreach on clients who are similar to the clients you already have. What are some of the critical ingredients of outreach? Successful client outreach requires the following three components: The Right Focus The chance of a future sale from your outreach efforts will depend on how well you know your customer base. Ryan O'Donnell argues that salespeople must identify the metadata behind their existing clients to effectively focus their outreach efforts on similar clients. The Right Messaging Learning to customize your sales messages to match the different roles in a company or target the right people is an essential skill. Messaging relies on understanding your existing or potential client's psychological motivators, which can vary from person to person. The Right Systems Many salespeople spend too much time on functions that could be automated. Without an efficient system, you will spend time on things like reply emails when you should spend more time preparing for meetings, developing relationships with your existing clients, and so on. Let's take a look at each of these components in more depth! What can you do to establish the right focus for your outreach efforts? Ryan O'Donnell says there are two significant steps for focusing your outreach. Build an Existing Clients List First, you should create a spreadsheet containing information about 10 to 20 of your existing clients. To acquire that information, you can use websites such as LinkedIn. The spreadsheet should include the following details: First and last name Title Company Company Size Industry Location Keywords Groups they are part of Once you have put together a list of these details, you can use the functions of the spreadsheet to filter your existing clients and look for patterns. These patterns will help you find the types of clients you need to approach as part of your outreach strategy. To put it another way, you can use the spreadsheet to identify the segment of people who make up a considerable percentage of your overall revenue. Build a Potential Clients List Once you have identified the types of clients to focus on, you should search LinkedIn for people and companies that fit that focus. Create a list of potential clients based on your findings and use the same spreadsheet format as your existing clients list. Once you have done so, you can begin to find patterns among potential clients, which can open new ways to find new clients. There are two approaches to building a potential client list: 1. Account-Based Sales Approach Using a list of companies that you target and sell to in order to find the best buyers at those companies for your outreach efforts. 2. Person-Based ApproachFinding details that describe a person so you can identify the right types of buyers for your sales strategy. In both cases, a LinkedIn search and spreadsheet format will help you find more people and companies to approach. More importantly, establishing a clear focus will increase your sales success because your sales and outreach strategy will be based on an existing track record with a particular clientele. When analyzing your potential clients, consider these questions: What product or service are they selling? On what types of clients do they focus? Does their advertising give you a sense of how they are targeting their clients? Answering these questions can lead to a better understanding of who your clients are, what will matter to them in a sales situation, and how you can adjust your outreach method to connect with their motivations and needs. How do you create the right messaging? The key to crafting the right messaging is to customize your message for the different roles that exist within a company. You should target each person on your client list differently because they each have different needs and expectations. To put it another way, each has different psychological motivators. They might be: Motivated by data Motivated by social interaction Motivated by price According to Ryan O'Donnell, introductory messages should avoid long formats and beg mail and focus on creating value at every touchpoint. Short, easy-to-digest messages present a clear call to action and can link to longer content the client can read if properly enticed. You can create value in your introductory and reply messages by Summarizing and restating Offering a different point of view Offering something new for a client to think about in terms of their business needs or personal motivations One way to do this is to put yourself in your buyer's shoes while thinking about the last time you received a cold email. How did you react to the content? Did the length impact how you received the information? Another thing you can do is approach your existing clients to gain direct feedback. Determine why they bought from you in the first place and why they continue to work with you or your company. Acquiring feedback on these topics will help you identify the strategies you need to provide targeted messaging meant for people and companies with different psychological motivators and personalities. Using these data points to construct new messages will also increase your response rate to cold emails. How can you start developing a system? Effectively, you need to automate what can be automated to reduce the amount of time you spend on things that are time-consuming and less unnecessary. According to Ryan O'Donnell, the absence of automation in your sales system can waste 2-5 hours a week on unnecessary tasks. Automating more of your sales system leads to higher efficiency and can include automating cold and reply emails, sales prospecting, and client list building, among others. There are numerous tools you can use to automate your sales system. SellHack, for example, can help you build client lists, find leads, and send cold emails. Additionally, Replyify can help you create email campaigns and devise an efficient email system. If you want to learn more about how to develop your sales system, consider contacting Ryan O'Donnell about the services that he has to offer (see below). Key Takeaways: Focus your outreach efforts by using a spreadsheet to build a list of existing and potential clients. A client list can help you identify patterns in the interests and needs of your current clients, which you can use to find potential clients to approach. Such a focus will make your outreach efforts more effective. Understand that a variety of factors motivates your clients. Your introductory messages have to take into account these differences to have the desired impact on potential clients. One way to work on creating the right messaging is to put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. Learn to automate your process to reduce the amount of time you spend on emails, sales prospecting, and other functions that are less necessary. Automation can cut back the hours you waste every week so you can use those hours for more productive activities such as preparing meetings.   Resources: Ryan's Links: Connect Ryan O'Donnell on LinkedIn Visit Ryan's company at Replyify.com Learn more from Ryan at his blog Check out Ryan's free 7-day Email Crash Course For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests. Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing  

“When it comes to learning as a salesperson, one essential function is opening up to coaching and feedback. This episode looks at why professional feedback matters and what you can do to become open to self-improvement.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Danny Brown about how seeking coaching and feedback can lead to more effective sales and stronger professional relationships. Danny is the Head of Business Development and Alliances at SherWeb, a cloud management service that focuses on helping businesses increase efficiency and improve user experience. Additionally, Danny is an experienced speaker and sales coach who focuses on developing companies and organizations through a culture of continuous improvement. Becoming Better Salespeople Through the Power of Coaching The ever-evolving world of sales demands an ever-evolving salesperson. Drawing on his experience in athletics, Danny Brown argues that all salespeople need to learn to appreciate coaching as a tool for maximizing their success. Coaching refers to the immediate professional feedback provided by peers, managers, and actual sales coaches. The goal of coaches is simple:  they want you to improve. Coaching and feedback are essential to sales success. Those who seek coaching advice are three times more likely to achieve their sales quotas. Overall, seeking out coaching can help reduce your close rate (i.e., the time it takes to close a sale) and maximize your success rate. How should you prepare for receiving coaching? According to Danny Brown, there are three key ingredients that every salesperson must have for successful coaching: The desire to improve The willingness to receive continuous feedback The ability to hone your craft through practice The success of coaching always comes down to you. Just like athletes who are driven by the constant desire to improve themselves, salespeople must have that same drive. Ask yourself:  Are you ready to accept feedback from others? If not, how can you change your mindset to be more open? If you don't have the desire to improve, you are less likely to take the steps necessary to make adjustments to your sales strategies. In addition to a desire to improve, salespeople must adjust their mindset to be open to continuous feedback and improvement. One successful sale or one successful adjustment is not a good reason to stop improving. Instead, you should treat successes as doors to additional improvements. After all, sales can vary from client to client, and the same strategy may not work the same way in each situation. Lastly, practice is essential for honing your craft. Without it, you may fall back on faulty practices, regularly change sales strategies, or stagnate as a salesperson. Danny Brown suggests that salespeople need to turn back to the cadence of sales and to “practice perfect” to fine-tune their sales strategies. More importantly, “practice perfect” requires a mindset of readiness-to-learn to make practice effective and useful. One way to make practice more meaningful is to self-analyze both yourself and a successful sales story. For yourself, you should ask: Who are you as a salesperson? What do you do as a professional? What does your company do? What are the implications of feedback for you as a seller? What things do you need to think about when approaching each sale? What pitfalls do you need to watch out for both in approaching a sales conversation and in soliciting feedback from a coach? When analyzing successful sales stories, consider these questions: What makes the success story a “success”? What worked? How do you repeat that sales story over and over again so it becomes a kind of sales muscle memory? Answering these questions for yourself will serve as a strong starting point before you approach a colleague or manager for coaching advice. When should you seek feedback? Most salespeople receive feedback through annual or quarterly performance reviews. While these are useful, Danny Brown suggests that feedback is more effective when a salesperson solicits it at the start of the quarter. There are two reasons for this: It helps set realistic goals and expectations for the remainder of the quarter. It minimizes the stress you may feel at the end of the quarter when things have not gone well. Essentially, seeking feedback from peers or managers at the start of the quarter means you are more likely to receive continuous feedback that can lead to continuous adjustments. These “micro” adjustments can lead to more sales and significantly less stress, in part because you are more likely to bring your best game throughout the whole quarter. What can you do to solicit useful coaching? The first place to start when soliciting coaching and feedback is with your colleagues. Danny Brown suggests approaching colleagues who are successful in specific areas and seeking advice to help you improve in those same areas. Sales teams should be collaborative, and working together can build a culture of shared experience and teamwork that will increase sales and create a positive working environment. While soliciting feedback from your peers is essential, you should also consider feedback from your sales manager. Managers are in a unique position to provide useful input because they see sales from a business perspective. Unfortunately, many managers are used to impersonal metrics for coaching their employees and may not have the personal experience for more proactive, personalized coaching. Salesforce notes that “only 50% of organizations invest in ongoing training and development of their sales managers.” As a result, getting the desired type of feedback may be difficult because it may not be intuitive to your manager. Danny Brown, however, thinks that salespeople should help their sales managers learn to coach effectively. Doing so not only gives a sales manager a sense of importance and value in the “team” side of sales but also helps focus your manager on details that a metric-based view does not provide. To do so, consider asking some of these questions: Did you introduce the story correctly? Did you ask for the sale at the right point? What could you do to better connect with customers? What could you do to prepare customers for a sale? Did you create urgency for the customer? Did you listen well or speak well to the customer? Did you create a dialogue? Did you ask open-ended questions to get the customer excited? Remember that coaching is not a ride-along. You need to provide colleagues or managers with the things you consider weaknesses about yourself. In doing so, you will give coaches specific targets to meet and increase the usefulness of the feedback you receive. Remember:  Never stop learning. Always grow. Always improve. These principles are essential to becoming a better salesperson and for creating “perfect” sales stories. Key Takeaways: Having the desire to improve yourself is essential to successful coaching. Without the desire to improve, salespeople likely won't seek continuous feedback or make the kinds of adjustments necessary for fruitful sales conversations. Seek feedback at the start of a quarter to minimize stress and to increase your ability to make “micro” adjustments throughout the quarter. Doing so can increase sales success and help you lead with your best foot forward. Learn how to help sales managers provide proactive feedback by asking key focus questions. Since sales managers often see sales from a business perspective, they are not always prepared to provide the personal feedback that can help a salesperson make adjustments. Asking the right questions can help managers see their value in a professional relationship and can lead to more personalized coaching. Resources: Danny's Links: SherWeb Follow Danny on LinkedIn Additional Resources: Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World by John Chambers and Diane Brady “Day in the Life: LeBron James” via Owaves For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests. Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing  

“Contrary to popular belief, being a good salesperson isn't just about the customer. It's also about having a better understanding of yourself.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Casey Murray about the role of self-awareness in improving your connection to buyers. Casey is the President of The Virtual CRO and a sales coach who works directly with business-to-business (B2B) companies and their sales teams to improve their sales strategies. His services have helped baseball teams, cloud database and data security providers, insurance companies, and digital health services build better connections with their buyers. In addition to his direct consultation work, he runs a two-hour training seminar called the Win More Sales Program for B2B Inside Sales, in which he teaches attendees how to use their self-awareness to win more sales.   Understanding Ourselves to Connect with Buyers Every once in a while, a salesperson will struggle to have a meaningful engagement with a buyer. After all, no two people are alike, and it can be difficult to “get outside” of yourself to find a different way to approach an unfamiliar sales situation. Our gut instincts can serve us well when working with buyers similar to ourselves, but those communication channels can break down when we encounter people who have a different perspective or who perceive us, the salesperson, in ways we didn't anticipate. These situations can impact our sales performance. They can also rock our confidence in our abilities as salespeople.   How do you address these shortfalls and learn to unlock our best performances? According to Casey Murray, one of the keys to improving sales performance is gaining self-awareness, both about ourselves and our buyers. This means answering several important – and difficult – questions:  Where do you excel or struggle most? What do your instincts tell you about what is and is not succeeding? How do you perceive yourself, and how do others perceive you? How do these perceptions affect your ability to make meaningful connections to potential buyers? Ultimately, learning to interpret how you are perceived in a sales situation can go a long way to helping you adjust your sales strategy in the moment and with specific types of buyers. The selling communication process should involve a near-50/50 exchange, and the way you behave and interact with others can impact how you or your ideas are received. These questions and adjustments are part of a process of self-awareness and part of learning to understand buyers to create more meaningful sales connections.   How do you develop a better understanding of your buyers? There are two primary ways to better understand your buyers: Professional Behavioral Assessments Acquiring a professional assessment, such as those offered by Cassey Murray at The Virtual CRO or directly through TTI Success Insights, will provide you with a detailed write-up that you can compare to a database of personality and performance data points. This will help you identify your top behaviors and provide powerful insight into how buyers may react to you in a sales conversation. Self-Audit Take some time to analyze your sales interactions. Look at both the sales that went well and the sales that floundered. What felt good about the sale that went well (the pace, the flow of the conversation, etc.)? What felt off about the sale that went poorly (one-sided conversation, little feedback from the buyer, etc.)? Try to step back and consider both what you bring to the table and how your natural tendencies might drive your sales conversations in a particular direction. Both methods will provide you with a language for interpreting buyer behaviors and how best to react to them to maximize success while avoiding disconnects in your sales conversations.   What are some common issues in sales conversations? Many issues in sales conversations come down to personality differences. We can break these down into two categories:  behaviors and motivations. Your personality directly influences how you behave in professional settings, and how you behave in a sales conversation can drastically change how that conversation progresses. Are you a dominant-style seller? If so, you likely prefer to exert your influence and take control of the direction of a sales conversation. However, using such an approach to make a sale with a slow and meticulous buyer may result in a lost sale or, worse, a burnt bridge. Slow buyers desire an information-heavy, methodical approach without gut-based calls. Motivation also plays a role in sales issues. Salespeople should consider what motivates a buyer to take action on behalf of the seller. These are sometimes called movement triggers. For example, some people are learners, who learn for learning's sake, while others are pragmatists, who prefer getting to the point. In a sales conversation between a learner and a pragmatist, their individual motivations are at odds. They are effectively a mismatch. In both situations, there is a substantial disconnect between the buyer and seller. Without adjusting the approach, both scenarios may result in a lost sale or the feeling of wasted time. According to Casey Murray, avoiding or mitigating these collapses in sales communication begins with self-awareness. Once you recognize the differences that exist between you and your buyer, you can make adjustments to your behavior to maximize the potential for a future sale. For more examples of common disconnects and issues in sales conversations, listen to the podcast above.   What can you do next? Ultimately, the process of developing self-awareness begins with a self-audit. Ask yourself the difficult questions provided above and think deeply about your positive and negative sales conversations. Identify your weaknesses and strengths and encourage your colleagues to do the same. If you are able, acquire a professional assessment or encourage your employer to do so for your entire sales team. And keep at it. Self-awareness is a tough nut to crack, and it takes time and patience.   Key Takeaways: Self-awareness is crucial to create meaningful engagements with buyers and involves understanding both ourselves as salespeople and our buyers. It also helps us avoid or mitigate disconnects in sales conversations.  Interpreting the behavior and motivations of yourself and your buyers can help you make adjustments to your sales strategies before a sales conversation and in real time. Both can lead to more productive interactions. Self-audits and professional behavioral analytics are two methods that can help you analyze your sales interactions and improve your ability to have meaningful sales conversations. The former is a necessary foundation for developing seller self-awareness. The latter provides substantial data points that can be used to improve person-to-person sales conversations and improve the effectiveness of a sales team by identifying strengths and weaknesses and creating a safe space for addressing them. In addition to his contributions to the podcast, Casey Murray has offered to provide a free assessment to SIX lucky listeners. If you're interested, listen to the episode to find out how you can sign up!   Resources: The Johari Window via Communication Theory Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger (Published by Little, Brown Spark)  The Virtual CRO (Casey's Web site) The Virtual CRO's Win More Sales Program for B2B Inside Sales Connect with Casey on LinkedIn and Twitter   For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.   Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSoundShow Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

“Every salesperson worries about their strategies becoming stale, especially when approaching buyers for the first time. If you wonder how you can approach cold calls and meetings with a fresh mindset, then this episode is for you.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Sam Richter about the importance of research for improving the quality of your sales calls and meetings. Sam is the founder and CEO of SBR Worldwide / Know More and author of Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling. In addition to his extensive sales experience and numerous awards, he has also built a reputation as a pioneer of modern-day sales intelligence and has developed digital resources and search engines to streamline sales meeting preparation.   Sales Intelligence as a Gateway to Better Sales Meetings As our society becomes more focused on digital technologies, salespeople must learn to adapt not only to the changes in the market but also to the changes in the expectations of prospective buyers. In particular, good salespeople must pay attention to the sales strategies that work and don't work in the modern sales environment. Many sales are conducted using the method of the “cold call,” an unsolicited sale conducted on the phone or in person. Today, the tactics of the classic cold call have fallen out of favor, mainly because they are viewed as formulaic and predictable, making them an annoyance for many potential clients. Most prospective buyers are used to the questions we have been asking for years, and they can often sense the fishing expedition that cold calls create. As a result, many prospective buyers are more likely to show you the door than they are to purchase your product or service. Sam Richter argues that we can take the “cold” out of the cold call by learning how to acquire “sales intelligence.” Today, we'll take a look at the what, why, and how of sales intelligence.   What is sales intelligence? Sales intelligence involves using the Internet and other digital tools to learn information about the people you hope to sell to, which you can then use in a sales meeting to create stronger connections with buyers. Good sales intelligence begins with several key questions: What is going on in the world of the company? If you have a personal meeting, you should ask the same question about the people you will meet. What is essential to the company or the people you will meet that might make them interested in your solution in the immediate moment? How do you make your sales pitch relevant to the company and the people involved in a meeting? Alternatively, what will motivate the buyer to say “yes”? Effectively, sales intelligence is a different kind of pre-meeting preparation that turns the conversation from you to the buyer. Unlike the traditional cold call method, sales intelligence asks you to consider the type of connections you wish to create with your buyers and to redirect your research to find those points of connection. In doing so, you gain focus for a sales conversation and learn to ask meaningful and useful questions before, during, and after a call or meeting.   Why does sales intelligence matter, and how can it improve your sales? Before the Internet, many buyers would give a salesperson an hour or two in order to learn more about the product and the people selling it. Today, buyers have what Sam Richter calls “buyer's intelligence.” They look up the sellers they plan to interact with and prepare themselves for meetings with specific goals in mind. Sellers, however, don't often do this. Instead, they come ready to talk about themselves even though the buyer is more interested in discussing who they are, what they need, and so on. However, a buyer is less likely to take you seriously if you come to the table with the same strategies as every other salesperson with which they have interacted. Effectively, failing to do your homework gives a buyer the firm impression that you are lazy and disinterested. After all, the one thing most people are ultimately passionate about is themselves. Buyers are no different, and the key to reaching them is learning how to show real interest in them. Another way to think about sales intelligence is by looking at the difference between what Sam Richter calls “low price game” and “high price game”: In a “low price game,” a seller treats a cold call or a meeting as a means to make a sale. Making a sale is every seller's ultimate goal, but if you overly focus on making the sale, you will likely ignore the value of what you are offering. In a “high price game,” a seller treats a cold call or a meeting as a means to provide value. Effectively, salespeople who care about and show genuine interest in what a prospective buyer is doing are engaged in “high price game.” Both of these forms suggest that sales are fundamentally about mindset. If your mindset centers on what you will get out of a sales conversation, you'll not only have less success but you'll also find sales less enjoyable. However, if your mindset focuses on trying to help a prospective buyer achieve their goals, you'll find sales more meaningful and more fun. For this reason, Sam Richter thinks sales can be “the most noble profession.”   How do you motivate yourself to do the work of sales intelligence? There are two significant reasons why you should take sales intelligence seriously: Increasing your bottom lineTo put it more bluntly:  acquiring sales intelligence can increase your chances of making a sale! Personal motivationsIf you're the type of person who knows what to expect in a sales conversation – cold call or otherwise – then you have an incentive to acquire information about a potential client that will lead to more direct sales meetings. You should also think about the reasons you want to succeed as a salesperson beyond the immediate gratification of making a sale. Naturally, these two points rely heavily on your ultimate goals. It is good practice to establish those goals both on a professional and personal level so you can be strategic about your sales methods and outreach.   What can you do to build sales intelligence? There are a variety of things you can do to acquire sales intelligence, though we only have room to cover a few of them here. Sam Richter has four tips for acquiring sales intelligence: Use Google News or YouGotTheNews.com to find information about a company. If your search does not turn up information on a company, try looking at their industry. You can also use the Sales Intel Engine to simplify and focus your searches. Use the same resources for the people involved in your meeting to find common points of interest or unique professional details that might be relevant to a meeting. You can also look at their LinkedIn profiles to find some of this information. Make sure that your first words during the meeting are about them and their world. Use the 3/5 (3 minutes to find five pieces of information) or the 5/3 (5 minutes to find three pieces of information) model to streamline your search process. Following these essential tips will lead to you asking better questions and making stronger connections with your prospective buyers. For additional resources, see the links in the Resources section below. All of this begins with you. Focus your sales mindset on “high price game” when conducting your outreach, and look towards relevance, value, and points of connection in your research about an industry, a company, or an individual. You will become a more effective and conscientious salesperson and maintain a continued passion for sales.   Key Takeaways: Sales intelligence is a type of pre-meeting preparation that involves using digital tools such as the Internet to learn more about the people we plan to interact with in cold calls or sales meetings. Focus on finding 3-5 pieces of relevant information about a company or its employees to create stronger connections to prospective buyers. Good salespeople know that showing genuine interest in your prospective buyers creates more meaningful sales situations and makes sales more fun. Buyers are adept at detecting a fishing expedition, so the more you can do to differentiate yourself from the crowd will improve your chances of getting the “Yes” for a meeting or a sale. There are good incentives for acquiring sales intelligence, including increasing your sales and helping you fulfill your personal motivations as a salesperson. Both are important as motivators for switching sales strategies to include better sales intelligence.   Resources: Sam's Links:  Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling Sam's Know More University Sam's free tools to help you improve your background research Sam's Bio Connect with Sam on LinkedIn Sam's Sales Intelligence Search Engine (I'm personally a paying subscriber!) Additional Reading:   To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink   For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.   Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

“Stories are a fundamental part of who we are, but sometimes salespeople are reluctant to include them in their sales strategies. In this episode, we explore why personal stories are essential to your sales approach.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Mike Adams about how to use your personal story to create meaningful connections with buyers and open the door to a sales friendship. Mike is the author of Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell and the co-founder and CEO of The Story Leader, a sales consultancy which focuses on teaching sellers how to use stories to improve sales. With nearly 20 years in the industry, he has gained exceptional direct experience with the value of storytelling as a sales art, which he brings to today's show.   The Importance of your Personal Story for Engaging Buyers Storytelling is a fundamental part of our humanity. Stories are part of our everyday lives, from books and movies that influence our world to the tales we share among friends and family. Something so essential to our lives can also play a role in the way we approach sales. Indeed, as Mike Adams suggests, most salespeople remember the stories we've been told or have experienced over other minute details. In other words, stories are just as important in your personal life as they are in your sales. Unfortunately, many salespeople are resistant to changing their approaches. After all, they must deal with rejection as a possibility in sales, and the fear of rejection can make the idea of change seem untenable. However, if the first job of a salesperson is to connect with a potential client, then storytelling is a must-have tool for your sales toolbox. Stories help build friendships with clients, establish credibility and authority, and help drive sales conversations by showing how and why your company operates. They are also common features in the business world. Good salespeople regularly use personal stories, and many salespeople become CEOs or company founders. In fact, roughly 25% of CEOs began in sales. What can you do to incorporate personal stories into your sales conversations? First, let's take a quick look at the primary stories in sales.   What are the common story types in sales? According to Mike Adams, there are seven story types that every salesperson should know: Personal Stories explore how you got to where you are in sales, what you do, and why you're there that day. Key Staff Stories introduce a customer to another person in your organization to build that person's credibility before their sales meeting. Company Stories explore how your company was created and why it didn't fail. Insight Stories tap into an aspect of the customer or company that they didn't know. Success Stories explore a successful client's journey, with attention to how things were before they hired you, the challenges they faced, the action plan you devised, and the subsequent results. Value Stories discuss how one of your organization's leaders responded to a challenge or pressure while adhering to the values of the company. Teaching Stories address a seller's struggle to close a deal by providing them with a story about a similar situation and how it was resolved. We don't have the space to cover each of these in depth. Instead, we will focus on the importance of the personal story. However, if you'd like more information on each of these stories, we recommend you read Mike's book, Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell. There is also a free sales course on The Story Leader, which serves as a companion to the book.   What is a personal story in sales, and why do they matter? Personal stories focus on your journey as a salesperson. They can establish how you became a salesperson, the route you took to get to the present, why you do what you do, and so on. They are also a way to tell a client that you are experienced without becoming a walking advertisement for yourself. Stories of this type often rely on anecdotes and a willingness to discuss the human qualities of the sales world. To put it another way, personal stories center vulnerability and honesty in a sales conversation. The goal of personal stories is to encourage an exchange of stories between sellers and customers. These exchanges can give you essential insight into how your clients think about their business or themselves. More importantly, the vulnerability of personal story exchanges builds trust and, ideally, friendship. Since customers and sellers tend not to trust one another, it is often difficult to create those meaningful connections. Personal stories change the relationship you have with a customer, which can help you break through the mistrust and formal nature of a sales conversation. Additionally, personal stories can result in three positive outcomes: The development of authentic connections that are human-to-human rather than brochure-to-brochure Reciprocation on the part of the customer The increased likelihood that clients will provide truthful responses to your questions All of these benefits can increase your sales. More importantly, these benefits build long-term relationships with your clients that are more productive for both sides. The stories and friendships you make during your career will also have lasting value.   What are some of the components of personal stories? Mike Adams suggests that most personal stories should meet the following criteria: 3 minutes or less of content Longer stories tend to include unnecessary details or wander. A 3-minute limitation forces you to create a tight, quick-moving narrative. Focused on 3-4 turning point events Turning point events help explain how you became a salesperson, what led you to become the person you are now, and what you do. They also help establish your credibility as a salesperson by demonstrating experience and history. When deciding on events, focus on the defining moments in your sales career. Personal stories must feature a sequence of related events A standard personal story presents turning point events in a linear and explicitly connected order. In other words, your story must go from A to B, from B to C, and so on. Always include dates and places Including dates and places allows the listener to place themselves in your story. Effectively, you give the listener details that will help them imagine where you were, what you saw, etc. You want your listener to experience you and to know what it is like to be you for a few minutes. Don't focus only on success Personal stories are meant to be personal. Nobody is perfect. Including events of failure gives the listener an incentive to reciprocate your vulnerability, which can create stronger personal connections with customers. Remember that engaging stories are not a simple list of events. There must be a natural flow from one thing to the next. Consider mapping your story and writing down the explicit connections between each moment. Doing so will help you visualize your personal story and streamline the narrative.   What holds sellers back from incorporating personal stories into their sales strategies? Fear. Sellers often fear that customers don't want to hear their stories, perhaps because they are a waste of time or customers want to get down to business. However, Mike Adams argues that sellers should put themselves in the shoes of their customers. From a customer's perspective, you're just a person who intends to talk about your products. They don't know you or know why they should trust you with their business. However, sellers must start the personal conversations that can cut through a customer's latent distrust. Personal stories can break the ice and make a real difference in your sales conversations. All we can suggest is that you try! If you're interested in hearing Mike's in-depth analysis of Bruce's personal story, make  sure to listen to the podcast!   Key Takeaways: Storytelling is a powerful human quality. Stories are part of our everyday lives and impact our world. In sales, they are essential for building stronger and long-lasting relationships with your clients, which provide numerous benefits for you on a personal and professional level. Personal stories can help salespeople break through the initial trust barrier with customers. These types of stories introduce vulnerability into the conversation, which can often build trust and friendship with your customers. Ideally, your customers will respond with their own stories, leading to long-term relationships that are beneficial for all involved. We all must learn to beat back the fear of rejection and vulnerability that comes with using personal stories in our sales conversations. One way to do this is to place yourself in the shoes of your customers and consider how they view a sales conversation. You'll see the value of using personal stories to break the ice!   Resources: Mike's Links: Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell Mike's sales firm, TheStoryLeader.com Mike's online training programs Mike's YouTube Channel on Storytelling Follow Mike on twitter @MikeAdamsSales Connect with Mike on Linkedin Additional Resources: Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests. Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

“Sometimes a sales conversation can feel like we're speaking different languages. If you've ever had that experience, you may benefit from this week's podcast on the importance of business knowledge to every sale.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Darrell Amy about the importance of learning to manage and focus your time to become a more productive and valuable seller. Darrell is the founder and chief innovation officer of Convergo Marketing and a co-host on the Selling From the Heart Podcast. With his extensive experience, he provides business-to-business (B2B) companies with sales and marketing solutions with particular attention to increasing long-term value for his clients. Creating Productive Sales Conversations with the Language of Business Losing a potential sale is a difficult thing to experience, especially if you don't understand why it happened. Every salesperson worries about improving their productivity and earning a customer's emphatic “yes.” While lost sales are an unavoidable part of the sales life, there are situations in which knowledge and experience can make a difference. For Darrell Amy, one major limitation in sales productivity is a lack of business knowledge. In other words, you need to recognize the importance of business value – immediate and long-term – in all sales conversations. According to Darrell Amy, developing your business acumen by learning the language of business is essential for maximizing the success of your sales conversations. While good intentions have value to you, they generally lack sales value to the customer. To motivate customers to say “yes,” you need to present a clear understanding of the return on investment (ROI). Businesses, after all, have a limited amount of their most prized resources:  time and money. More importantly, businesses typically focus their time and money on their strategic priorities, which extend beyond the return on investment (ROI). It doesn't matter if you're solving a problem or have great ideas. The priorities of a business require that they are careful with the attention they give and the resources they expend. Unfortunately, business acumen is often missing from the sales equation. For this reason, Darrell Amy suggests that we view sales skills and business acumen as the two pillars of sales. Why does business acumen matter in sales conversations? Most salespeople have a robust sales toolbox full of the right questions and actions to drive sales conversations. However, one of the biggest challenges for even seasoned salespeople is learning how to drive business conversations. Some of us jump too quickly into sales conversation mode and skip the business side of the equation. We are also likely to miss two critical factors: Understanding the key drivers for a business, including their business goals and challenges Failing to bring these key drivers into a conversation to show a prospective buyer that we understand where they are coming from  Understanding what motivates a business allows the seller to elucidate how a solution or product fits into the world of the buyer and connects to the top-level goals and challenges of the company. Making these connections maximizes the potential for closing a sale. One way to understand the priorities of a business is to consider the different levels of value. These include: Return on Investment (ROI)What are the immediate, hard costs to the buyer? What are the immediate, expected returns for the buyer? Business ImprovementHow will your product or service improve the business in the long-term (i.e., enhancing workflow or customer retention)? How might these improvements help the business save on the hard costs? Risk ReductionWhat are the risks the business faces as a consequence of its products or services (i.e., lawsuits, data breaches, etc.)? What can you do to minimize or remove those risks? These values are dependent upon the business and its goals. While many of these values are not quantifiable, addressing them can turn a traditional sale into a deeper sale. Businesses are always thinking about business improvement or risk reduction, and the return on investment (ROI) can sometimes become a secondary interest. As such, demonstrating the value of your service or product to the long-term goals of the business offers the buyer more than just the return on investment (ROI). Instead, it offers exponential benefits. Bringing the language of business into your sales conversations, thus, builds upon the two important dynamics of successful sales:  trust and value. How can you use the language of business in your sales conversations? According to Darrell Amy, there are several immediate steps you can take to generate business-savvy sales conversations: Come to a prospective sale having done your homework on the business. Show genuine interest in learning about their business and prepare relevant questions to facilitate that learning. Begin sales conversations by establishing the company's top strategic goals. Connect the flow of the conversation to those goals so the buyer does not lose sight of the impact your service or product will have on their bottom line. Close a sale the same way you started it:  by bringing the conversation back to the business goals you identified at the start. Doing so reinforces the value of what you are offering. Using these methods will create stronger connections between your sales goals and the business goals of the prospective buyer. As a result, you reinforce the value of what you are offering, mainly because you have looked beyond the immediate return to the long-term benefits for the company. How can you develop your business knowledge? While you don't need to earn a business degree to become versed in business language and practices, there are a few things you can do to expand your knowledge base:   Read business books and magazines   Take a look at the top business on Amazon and give some of them a read. Do the same with current business magazines. Both will keep you up-to-date with the field of business and the various perspectives involved.   Listen to online lectures   Many universities offer lectures from various business courses in podcast form. Open Culture has a partial list of some of these courses.   Take an online course   Websites such as EdX and Coursera offer online courses in a variety of business topics. Many of these courses are taught by top faculty at major universities and are either free or relatively affordable. In other words, consume a steady diet of business education in addition to your sales education. After all, good sales professionals realize that learning is fundamental to sales success. Remember that becoming a better seller is a progressive process. It takes time, effort, and perseverance. Adding business knowledge to your repertoire is just a part of the necessary process of adaptation. Take advantage of it.   Key Takeaways: Language of Business - Educate yourself on the language of business by reading, taking classes, and listening to business owners. Rather than relying on well-versed sales strategies, learn to develop your business knowledge so you can clearly and directly invest your goals in the priorities of the client's business. Genuine Curiosity - Begin a sales conversation by investing in the client's business by showing genuine curiosity in what they do and in their top strategic goals. By doing so, you create a stronger connection to the company and its goals, which builds trust and solidifies the value you bring to the table. Beyond Immediate ROI - Think beyond the immediate return on investment (ROI) to the other factors that may improve the client's business. This might include emphasizing the ways your solutions will help the business grow or reduce risk. In other words, think about long-term value in addition to guaranteed returns.   Resources: Selling From the Heart by Larry Levine How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Darrell's links: Contact Darrell Amy on LinkedIn Article: “What is Business Acumen” Article: “The Critical Missing Ingredient in B2B Sales: Business Acumen” Blog Post: “Four Ways Sales People Who Sell On Price Shoot Themselves In The Foot… and Destroy Industries” Subscribe to Darrell's popular Selling from the Heart Podcast   For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.  Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.   Credits Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing  

“Some of us have wondered how to become more efficient as salespeople while completing the many day-to-day tasks necessary that lead up to great sales conversations. If that describes you, then this episode is definitely worth your time.”   Episode Overview In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to David Guarino about the importance of learning to manage and focus your time to become a more productive and valuable seller. David is a Veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and has over 25 years of sales experience in the electronics and manufacturing industries. In addition to serving as the Director of Business Development at Piston Automotive, he is also the owner of Driven Recruiting, an employment service that replaces the traditional hiring process with an assessment-based talent matching system.   Optimizing Your Most Important Resource:  Time We all know that time is finite, and yet so many of us struggle to use it effectively. For salespeople, failing to use time effectively can reduce productivity, increase stress, and limit our ability to have meaningful engagements with customers. Yet in our fast-paced, technology-infused present, it is easy to get distracted or lose focus. That's why it is so important to learn how to focus and maximize our time to provide value as a seller.   Why is it important to optimize your time as a seller? Remember that everything in business changes. This includes sellers, clients, and companies. With change comes new technologies and systems, new client goals and needs, and new sales strategies and business practices. Let's not forget that the things we sell change, too, which necessitates that we all become effective adapters to our respective “worlds.” Adaptation, however, requires energy and time, and the more the industry changes, the more components are added to the average workflow.   For David Guarino, change came not only to his chosen industry – automotive and manufacturing sales – but also to his perspective. He once saw the sales industry as focused on what sellers can do for the company, which he argues led to less trust and transparency for the seller and the consumer. Over his 25 years of experience, that changed, and he now sees sales requiring a focus on the value of time and how best to manage it.   For sellers, time optimization must look at the relationship between the seller, the client, and the company. Two major questions serve as a starting point for interpreting these relationships:   How do we create value for our customers and our companies? How do we manage time to maximize that value?   Creating value through time management requires us to identify the goals and interests that each entity brings to the table. We can then align our personal goals with those of the company, which is crucial for determining where we are most productive and how best to maximize productivity through a focused workflow. These goals can also direct you to the things that are most important for your sales conversations. Ultimately, the goal of optimizing your time is identifying what matters so you can learn to distinguish between the things that deserve more of your time and the things that serve as distractions from your goals, your customer's goals, and your company's goals.   What can you do to manage your time? According to David Guarino, there are three primary goals you can meet to manage your time more effectively:     Identify the areas and times in which you are most effective As we explored in our discussion with Casey Murray, one of the most important processes for salespeople is to self-assess. For managing your time, there are some key questions to consider:  How do you learn (process)? When do you learn (time of day)? Where do you learn (place)? Matching your productivity times and places to your personal and professional goals (seller, client, and company) will provide a starting point for establishing a focus for your time.     Avoid task-oriented workflows and distractions Email notifications, everyday passive sales, and program management are important, but they are always present and can serve as a distraction. You don't need to be responsive to these things at all times. After all, it's not a race. Instead, focus on the most value for your time by turning off notifications when you don't need them, filtering your email messages to place the most important items first in your workflow, and use priority scheduling to avoid creating long lists of tasks that often never end.     Develop a routine Once you have identified your productive times, places, and actions, you can build a daily routine that prioritizes the important things from seemingly urgent things. Routines should place your most critical components during times when you are most productive. Other things such as answering non-critical emails can be built into the routine at less optimal periods to give you a natural workflow.   One method for meeting all of these goals is to build a calendar model for your schedule. Unlike the task-based model, calendars emphasize the important pieces and remove the temptation to treat everything as urgent, which can be stressful and unproductive. Calendars offer structure to your workflow and let you focus on what you do best.   Lastly, we must all take care of ourselves. Pay attention to your sleep patterns and mental health. Losing too much sleep can dramatically impact your productivity. Additionally, elements such as diet and stress can impact your mood, behavior, and thought patterns, which, in turn, can also reduce productivity and work satisfaction. While some of these things are difficult to manage in our lives, it is essential to build a life routine that is reasonable for you. More information on the impact of sleep on our lives is linked in the resources section below.   What can you do to manage your customer's time? Many salespeople are familiar with meetings, whether with clients or colleagues. While David Guarino believes that meetings should be avoided except when they are essential, he also suggests that we establish clear agendas for meetings with clearly stated objectives. Agenda-based meetings often reduce the frequency of distractions and unfocused discussions that lead to less meaningful and valuable sales interactions. Additionally, agendas establish respect between you and the client and appear professional by design.   To make agendas more effective, you can also ask for client input. Remember that a client's commitment to a meeting is incredibly important to them precisely because they are giving you their time. By asking for input, you help the client set their own goals and priorities; they can also suggest changes that may make the meeting more productive for both sides.   Agendas can also reduce our tendency to rush just to complete a task. Rushed communication is always less valuable than meaningful and purposeful communication. To avoid the rush instinct, consider these questions before you respond to an email or direct sales conversation:   Are you responding just to respond? Are you listening to understand and provide value? Why are they asking for information?   These questions get at the nuances of a sales conversation, which help us identify what a client is actually looking for.   Where does this ultimately lead us? According to David Guarino, sales are always personal, and we should strive to emphasize the personal connections in our sales conversations. It comes down to a simple question:  why should anyone care?   In our technology-heavy world, it can be difficult to see the difference between the important things and the things that distract us by appearing urgent. Yet, we must always consider whether our technologies and systems serve our agenda as sellers rather than the agenda of distraction. For this reason, ask yourself a few questions:   Are you using the tools properly? Are they enabling you to be more productive or effective? Are they cumbersome and distracting?   Every seller will have a slightly different response, but your answers may let you see a simple example of the distractions that take away from your productivity as a seller.   Key Takeaways: Value of Time - Recognize that time is valuable to everyone in a sales situation. You, your clients, and your company know that time is important; nobody likes wasting time or feeling like they don't have control over how their time is used. Once you identify how to value your own time, you will be better equipped to adjust your routine and schedule and focus on the things that matter most.   Routine - Build a routine that focuses your energy on the important things. It is easy to become distracted by email or other common interactions that seep into our work lives. While you can't ignore all of these things, you can establish times for certain activities so you can focus on what matters most to your sales strategies. This is part of building a routine that maximizes productivity.   Agendas - Use agendas to make meetings with clients or colleagues more meaningful. Agendas can serve as a guide for a meeting, which increases the potential for productive engagements. When establishing agendas for meetings, make sure to identify the goals of everyone involved and adjust your agenda accordingly.   Resources: Driven Recruiting Connect with David on LinkedIn and Twitter Mentioned in the episode:  Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki  Sales Truth by Mike Weinberg  Verne Harnish Links:  Mastering the Rockefeller Habits  Scaling Up  Gazelles (Service)  Follow Verne on LinkedIn and Twitter  Find Your Why and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek  When by Daniel H. Pink  What Great Salespeople Do by Mike Bosworth and Ben Zoldan  Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell by Mike Adams  F.U. Money and Unlock It by Dan Lok  OutBound Sales Conference Other Fantastic Resources on this topic: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker  “Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life ‘In An Underslept State'” by Terry Gross (NPR) The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarino More Sales Less Time by Jill Konrath (Author of Snap Selling)    For More Great Content Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.   Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.   Credits  Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound         Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

  Episode Overview This episode, “How to lead in the buyer journey with Next Steps,” featured Darrin Fleming, David Svigel, Principals at ROI-Selling and me – Bruce Scheer. The three of us have been helping sellers for years in having more concerted next step conversations that are useful in leading and supporting the buyer through the buying process. Specifically, we have partnered together to help clients with creating assessments and value-selling tools that are useful in helping buyers see and communicate the case for change and create urgency around change initiative.   When Things Go Wrong (with no concerted Next Steps) There's a typical scenario that we see all the time. A seller is talking to a buyer. They have a wonderful introductory meeting, and it seems like there's some excitement in the air, and then the seller says, “So, what do you think our next step should be?” And then the buyer typically says, “Well, send me some information. I'm going to host some internal meetings and kind of shop this idea around, and we'll get back to you.” And so, the seller agrees and spends a bunch of extra time gathering up and sending over information. And then, as one of our friends likes to say, the seller hears a thousand watts of silence! Nothing is happening on the buyer side. The seller chases a few times to ensure the information was received. No responses. Weeks go by. Finally, the seller gets lucky and catches the buyer by phone. And what do they hear? “Oh, sorry, man. Yeah, I have been really busy. We haven't looked at the stuff you sent and haven't had any meetings around it. Hmm. I'm kind of busy now. Can we talk another time?” And, then things just start to slide further South from there. This isn't unusual, and we believe not having concerted next steps to lead the buyer is a strong contributor to the stat we've been hearing - 58% of deals ending in ‘no deal.'   When Things Go Right (with concerted Next Steps) I had worked on in a joint initiative between Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, where they had eight solutions that they had identified between them. They wanted a go-to-market program with a concerted selling approach. One of the solution areas was business intelligence, and if a customer engaged with them on it – it would result in a multi-million-dollar deal. We built introductory conversation materials for reps to use in securing a meeting. In the initial discussion, the seller would offer a concerted next step called the Executive Briefing. If the client was willing to sponsor the Executive Briefing, including making sure the right people attended, the Executive Briefing would be confirmed. HP and Microsoft would bring in their “Top Gun” experts to talk to those executives about what business intelligence would mean for their organization. At the conclusion of the Executive Briefing, additional next steps would be laid out for consideration and agreement. It normally included an assessment and business case-building process, and a strategic workshop to shape the initiative, roadmap and action plan for success. What we found was over a 50% deal connect rate when we when we went down this concerted next-steps path. All the folks involved in shaping this program won a marketing program of the year award.   Best Practices in Leading the Buying Journey with Next Steps It is important to put the seller in a position of leading the buyer towards next steps as opposed to the buyer leading the seller - which very often goes poorly because buyers are busy with their day jobs! The seller needs to be helping their buyers create the plan for the future, putting themselves in an advisory role to help define for the buyer what looks better in the future and how to get there. One of Bruce's clients has a buyer journey map they show at every client touchpoint. They will highlight the journey and steps their customers typically take to embark on an initiative and leverage their software and services. They will get agreement around the series of steps, including an assessment and value analysis useful for helping their buyer create an internal case for change. After that's established, they will move to a strategic planning workshop where they can further shape an initiative and make sure executives are fully aligned and bought in.   This is a very different orientation from the norm. Most organizations align their sellers around a sales process that's self-serving. The better approach is more buyer-centric – thinking about what the buyer needs at each next stage of their buying journey, and how can you move the customer through that buying stage with concerted next steps.   Simple ‘Next Steps' Planning Framework As you move through the buyer journey a few times, you start to be aware of natural junctures of what that buyer journey looks like, including some buyer-centric milestones along the way. There may be a stage where they want executives to be educated on the case and value of change. And maybe there's another step around strategy - what's the strategy to embark on this change initiative? Maybe there's another step about the initiative itself - who's going to be involved in this initiative? What's the roadmap look like in this initiative and, and what's timing around this initiative? Ask yourself these questions: Outcomes - What are the outcomes that you're looking for at each one of these buying milestones? A few examples of outcomes would be key executives are educated on the opportunity and case for change, executives have agreed to a strategy and executives have agreed to provision resources for an initiative to be born. Activities - What are the activities that need to happen on the seller side and on the buyer side to make sure you're reaching the desired outcomes? Examples include assessments, value analyses, strategic workshops and initiative action planning meetings. Tools – What are the tools needed to support the key activities and desired outcomes at each stage, including Assessment Tools, ROI Calculators, Strategic Workshop Structure and Content, and marketing materials useful in selling each activity and tool as it's introduced into the buying process. In advance of a client meeting or call, it's a best practice to do some mini-planning about what you want to discuss with the client and what are your desired outcomes and next steps you will introduce in the meeting.   Getting Your Next Steps in Place To get your next steps in place, you ask your peers and folks in marketing – what tools do they have that you can leverage? You might be pleasantly surprised that something either exists or perhaps marketing commissioned having something developed that didn't see the light of day. Leverage what you can. Don't stop there though if concerted next step activities and tools don't exist. You might have to cook something up yourself to fill the gap, and get support overtime in having more professional and branded support and tools.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect Darrin Fleming on LinkedIn Connect with David Svigel on LinkedIn View some ROI Selling Resources Surf the ROI-Selling Blog Join the Value Selling LinkedIn Group See some top-class ROI selling tools See a success story of a concerted next step for Brocade   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound  

Episode Overview In this episode, Tom Williams, co-founder, and CEO of DealPoint and I talk about taking a buyer-centric approach in influencing the buying process.     Energy Being Wasted Energy is wasted not just on the seller side of the sales process but also on the buyer side. When you look at the US and global economy, the amount of time that's wasted on bad deals is just criminal. As for selling organizations, if we can improve how we sell and how we interact with our counterparts in the buying side of the equation, the entire world economy could become more efficient just by doing sales better. Ultimately a good salesperson is a trusted advisor to the customer. And the more we can bring buyers and sellers closer together, the better off everybody is because salespeople tend to be very knowledgeable. They know how to make the buyers life easier or better. If we can help sellers express that relationship a little bit better, then everybody is better off.   What does being Seller-Centric Look Like in the Sales Process? In a typical sales process, the seller starts with prospecting, qualifies a buyer, and then as fast as they can they move to a demo. Then there's going to be some negotiation, and then they go for the close. The problem lies in this is all focused on the seller's needs. And you'll notice that in all of those steps just described; there was no talking about education or talking about the buyer's actual problem. Sellers can very quickly get distracted from how they can help their buyer with too much thinking and focus on what do they need to sell. When the focus isn't on the buyer and their needs, there's a likelihood of several months going by and ending in a bad or no deal. This is a scenario of a seller showing up and throwing up, and racing to the demo to show how cool the stuff is. The buyer hasn't had a chance to express what's in it for them. A lot of times the buyer doesn't complain. A lot of people talk about deals ending in “no decision.” This is the case where a buyer makes a decision, and and the decision is they don't want to talk to you. You can't blame the customer. They're busy. You didn't give them enough value or didn't offer them something that made it worth their time to engage with you. You'll be forewarned of this eventuality when you are presenting your sides, and the smartphone comes out.   How can a Seller be Buyer-Centric in the Buying Process? In a good buyer-centric process, there are three components. You want to have a strong understanding of who the buyer is. There's your champion, but there are also going to be multiple decision makers in a typical enterprise deal. You have to be aware not only of what those parties names are but also what their interests and priorities are. You need to be able to present your solution to their problem in their flavor. You are presenting yourself as if you are an advisor to their organization, and you are being brought in and being paid by the organization to help them fix this problem. The CFO is going to have a different set of concerns than the IT manager, so you need to make sure that you understand what those concerns are. To get a meeting with key decision makers and stakeholders in the buying process, you can suggest to your champion the sorts of questions each one of them is likely to ask, and how it would be smart to get a meeting with them to answer those and any other concerns they might have. You can stress you will be able to speak to their concerns as you have great experience in answering those concerns for other buyers in other companies.   When the Real Selling Begins Once you get everyone in the buying party aligned and saying “yes,” many sellers think to themselves “mission accomplished.” Sadly, that's often not the case. There's now a massive aspect of the buying process that still needs to transpire, and this often is when the real selling begins. The hard part is that the champion may not know exactly how the buying process works inside their organization. This is where it's critical to have a mutual action plan in place. For example, perhaps your solution has something to do with their production line. And they need their production line working by a critical date. Once that's established, you can work back in terms of the key buying steps in the buying process that will need to transpire to hit that critical milestone. For example, you can start to schedule a financial review, and deeper technical review, and a legal review as from experience you know clients generally do these things before the contract is signed. You can then work with the champion to figure out the names of people who will be part of those reviews and how to get on their schedule for review and signoff.   Introduce a Mutual Action Plan Note you are a lot more likely to have the deal go forward because there's a clear plan of action. The buyer also feels good feeling that they're in safe hands because you've done this before and you're helping them guide this goal through their organization. Second, you have much higher accuracy of forecast because now you have these milestones that are set out, ideally with due dates. And if they slip, you know that you're not going to hit your close date so you can tell your manager you are not going to hit as forecast because you are missing these milestones which could be months in advance. You have much better notice. You can now use these milestones as a reason to call and lean on the customer because you can say we committed that to go live at a certain date they said they needed to hit, they are putting themselves at risk by slipping on the internal buying process. Note that you are positioning yourself as on their side and you are trying to help them attain what's important to them. This gets powerful when you can show them a hard dollar number for the cost of potential delay. A mutual action plan can be as simple as a Google Doc that you share back and forth with that customer so that you have these agreed milestones or have a mutual action plan.   Making Your Champion Look Awesome You want to make your champion look awesome. One idea is to have a generic presentation that your Champion can turn around and use for their internal selling – in their brand. They can start presenting it, and they look like a smart person. It's also important to provide them with an executive summary that their boss's boss's boss can digest very quickly. It's very tempting to share a 30 page PowerPoint that has every single part of your value prop in beautiful full-color graphics. But senior decision makers don't have time or tolerance for that. They want a succinct summary, and then they can dig into detail if they want to.   Think about the Buying Experience It's always important to make sure that you are giving a great buying experience. Look at the sales process from your buyer's eyes. What are they receiving? Is it just a whole bunch of emails? Is it a bunch of Google Docs that you're sharing? Make sure that you make it easy for them - not only to understand your value proposition, but also for them to share it internally. Just be cognizant of the fact that the prospect is not as good at this as you are, and give them the tools so that they can be successful inside their organization.   Summary Takeaways Tom certainly knows this stuff and is dedicating his life energy to improving the interconnect between buyers and sellers and high consideration deals. Making the buying process more efficient and effective facilitates beneficial change. That's a wonderful ambition. This happens by making the overall buying process more buyer-friendly and helping your champion buy. You need to have a role or persona-based value proposition to each key party in the buying process. Once they say “yes” is when the real selling begins. So many deals fall into “no deal” after then yes has been given. Here's where you need to help the buyer help themselves in removing friction from getting to yes and a signed contract. For complex sales, once the business side is satisfied, and they say yes you have to get through further technical, legal and financial hurdles. Tom's advice on how to be useful to your champion in these matters is extremely useful.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect with Tom Williams on LinkedIn Visit Tom's company DealPoint.io Gain insights from Tom at his Blog Listen to Stu Heinecke's Podcast episode with Tom, How the Deal Room Converts the Sale   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

  Episode Overview This episode features Bernie Borges, Chief Marketing Officer at Vengreso. Vengreso's focus is on helping organizations with their digital sales transformation. Bernie has been on this focus for longer than most and comes to the table as a top-class marketer who continues to be very relevant for sales. He carried a bag in his personal sales career for ten years, and then switched over to the marketing side – so he's walked many miles in both shoes and is gifted in bringing both together to influence revenue growth. We will be talking about Content for Sales, and how to take advantage of and leverage content in your sales cycles. He will be answering the what, the when and the how of introducing content to your buyers to influence their engagement with you.   What is Going on in the World of Sales? We are living in an age where the buyers go through the buying journey anywhere from 50% to 80% on their own. They're conducting research online and talking to their peers. And we know there's data that shows that 94% of b2b buyers consume between five and eight pieces of content from the vendor that they ultimately select.   What is Content for Sales? If you are in sales, you don't want to be solely dependent on content that's coming just from your marketing department to influence the prospects you are talking to. You want to have some influence too. You want content that you can share with your buyers. Content for Sales is content that enables salespeople to influence in a positive, constructive and useful way – helping their buyers by sharing content with them - proactively. The goal is to share content that is useful, relevant and helpful to them. You are providing resources to them so that those buyers want to have a conversation with you.   What are Pitfalls with Content for Sales? The biggest trap sellers find themselves in is “random acts of content.” A lot of companies have a sales enablement function. This function exists so that the salespeople can focus on contacting and building relationships with prospects and can avoid the heavy lift of identifying the content that they need. The trap sellers find themselves falling into is working hard to find the content they need. And unfortunately, because it is hard work, it takes some effort and kudos to some salespeople who do it. A lot of other salespeople don't, and they really should be enabled by the marketing department with the right content.   Thinking about Your LinkedIn Profile 62% of decision makers review a sales persons LinkedIn profile and look for evidence that that salesperson can be helpful to them. You want to avoid having a profile that brags about how you make quota and go to President clubs, and how you're a great contract negotiator - because that's not what your buyer wants to read. You want to have the kind of a profile that communicates your credibility, authority, and expertise within your industry. You don't have to be a 30-year salesperson by any means. You just need to communicate that you understand and know the challenges in the industry and the pain points of your buyer, and how you help your buyer. You want to avoid the pitfall of being someone that the buyer visits online and goes “Nope” and moves on. You want to be a thumbs up person – the person they want to engage with. One thing that has not changed since the beginning of time is that sales is about relationships. It's just so easy for the buyer to be invisible and not respond, and it's harder than ever to make those connections to build a relationship.   Being Consistent and Having a Cadence For digital selling, you have to have a cadence. And a cadence means that you are doing things consistently and it's pre-determined. That doesn't mean every Tuesday at 9:30 am. It just means that daily, you've got a preset, predetermined set of activities that you're doing so that you are consistent. So that's another pitfall to avoid if you just say, yeah, I'm going to do this, and you think about it once a week, or every other week, and you just kind of, like parachute in and, and send someone a piece of content that again, is that random act of content. You're going to get limited results. You've got to have a cadence. If it sounds like this takes some work and some effort – it does. 94% of buyers are going to consume five to eight pieces of content from the vendor they ultimately select. Are you going to have the habit and cadence of engaging with your buyers with content that you know that they need to help them on their journey? We don't have a sales process anymore - the sales process is dead. It's the buyer's journey, and we have to engage the buyer on their journey and influence them by being a resource to them. We're not selling to them; we are helping them on their journey. Hopefully, at the end of their journey, they're doing business with you because you rose to the top in being helpful to them.   Content Relevant for Multiple Buyers Let's say you're a b2b sales professional, and you sell a major system. There are ten people on the buying committee. Let's say it's a $300,000 average contract value, and it's a six to twelve-month sales cycle. Your solution has multiple aspects of information about it. So along the way, you need to be feeding content to the different people on the buying committee that's relevant to their role. For example, there's going to be some roles at the executive level, and content for them is all around total cost of ownership, return on investment, the value to the customer experience, etc. Then there's going to be people in the buying committee whose jobs are on the line to implement your solution. They need to understand what's it take to implement. They want to know what's involved, who's involved and what are the resources that are needed? They want to know what are the risks, what's the upside and other details. The point is you need to understand the different personas that are involved in the buying journey, and what their interests are.   Types of Content for Sales Content types for sales are no different than all other content types - whether it's a case study, blog article, third-party research data, etc. As long as the content type matches and aligns with the persona and the journey, that's the most important thing to that individual - addressing the question that that potential buyer is probably trying to ask at that point in time.   The Role of Marketing in Content for Sales Sellers can influence their marketing people on how to take an action toward content for sales. Marketing needs to understand 94% of buyers are going to are going to consume the five pieces of content from the winning vendor that they select. Marketers need to ensure enough content exists to feed those prospective buyers and enable sales people to be influential in the delivery of that content. Sales should be thinking about collaborating with marketing. It's an age-old topic - marketing and sales collaboration. But we're now in the age of digital and account-based marketing. We have more potential for alignment because the lines have blurred between sales and marketing. The modern marketer who is truly aligned with the sales team and the head of sales says to the head of sales, “your number is my number, and I want to work with you on the path to that number.” The marketer then needs to support the sellers with great messaging and content they can use in their one-to-one conversations.   Summary Takeaways Here are a few summary takeaways for this episode: The modern B2B buyer is spending a good deal of time surfing and being influenced outside of direct selling conversations with the vendor. They also consume 5-8 pieces of content from the vendor they ultimately select. So, the net of it is the modern buyer is seeking content, and the onus is on you to make sure they get relevant content to influence their decision and ultimately buy from you! You can appreciate Bernie's advice and warning - to stay away from “random acts of content.” We also talked about cleaning up and sharpening your LinkedIn profile and recrafting your profile from a customer point of view. This means shifting the content focus – from all about you types of content to more about the industry and customer problems you help customers solve. Furthermore, you should showcase the resources and value you bring in helping customers solve for their challenges. Ultimately, we want potential buyers to want to have a relationship with us, and it's important to help them connect the dots on how we will be relevant to them.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect with Bernie Borges on LinkedIn Learn about Digital Sales Transformation at Bernie's company Vengreso Download the Content for Sales Infographic Bernie mentioned Visit Bernie's Resource Center to learn more about Content for Sales Watch some videos on Vengreso's YouTube Channel Listen to the Selling with Social Sales Podcast   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

  Episode Overview In this episode, Chris Orlob, Senior Director of Product Marketing Gong.io and I talk about what's working and not working and CEO level sales conversations. Chris shares some surprising insights about how things change based on how high up in the organization you are having selling conversations – and how things should change to be more in-tune with senior business decision makers.   The Study Says … for Executives … No More than 4 Questions! In the summer of 2017, Gong.io created a discovery call benchmark report. They analyzed a bunch of discovery calls to figure out what was working. They found that 11 to 14 questions was the “sweet spot” for a discovery call. Then in 2018, they released a new study that was pretty contradictory to original benchmark report. It showed that there was a very sharp decline in the likelihood to win a deal if you ask more than 4 questions. The difference between these two research studies was the first one, the one with the suggestion of 11 to 14 questions, didn't differentiate who the buyer was or what level they were in the organization. And the data for the second study was exclusively C suite executives. Bottomline, there was a sharp decrease in success rates after asking just a few questions at this senior executive level.     What's Different About Asking Executives Questions? Sellers often go into discovery meetings asking information-gathering questions that enable the seller. If you're going to ask questions to a senior buyer, they should be questions that benefit the buyer, not you. These are questions that maybe make them think differently about an opportunity that's sitting under their nose, or it's reframing a problem that they've been dealing with. Instead of going through this, like generic line of discovery call questions where you're trying to qualify them, they don't really have patience for that. They don't like taking sales calls anyway, and when they do, they're doing it on a whim and a hope that the seller is going to provide value during that customer conversation. Most of the time, the seller does not. There are a few interpretations of this data. The takeaway is to not ask four questions and that's going to solve all your problems. The first suggestion to get across is the questions you ask have to change - they have to be thought provoking. They can't be self serving. And then the second part is the bulk of your meeting with a senior executive has to be built around delivering insights to them, not just asking a bunch of questions.   Provoking Senior Executives Back in 2009, when we were in a downturn, Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin, and Geoffrey Moore wrote an HBR article entitled, “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers.” This was seminal work that probably started the wave thinking around what we call “insight selling” today. I was working with Infosys on their cloud strategy go to market strategy and messaging, and their cloud leader, Vishnu, would mention to executives, “I've looked at IDC, Forrester, Gartner and others, and pretty much everybody is talking about the cloud and workloads in the cloud. And there's a prediction that in three years, about 70% of enterprise workloads will be cloud-based. So, Mr. or Mrs. CIO, where do you think you're going to be in three years? Do you think you will be on benchmark, below benchmark or even ahead of the pack?” And then he would watch a look of consternation form on their face. Then they would discuss their cloud strategy and how Infosys could be helpful. The best practice in asking provocative questions is to tee the question up with an interesting industry insight or fact or stat, and then move into the question. Then you are leading with insight. You're asking an open-ended questions. You will know you were successful when the executives cancel their meetings for the rest of the day so that they can think about this and maybe go for a walk around the block.   Elevating Sales Messaging – from Tactical to Strategic It comes down to messaging in an educational way. It's elevating your message to be more strategic rather than tactical. A lot of sales messaging is very tactical. Either it's product-driven, or it's just talking about maybe a valid problem or opportunity - but not something a C level executive would deem as strategic. For example, Gong.io used to talk about sales coaching quite a bit and still do in some contexts. But when you tell a story about sales coaching, without doing the right things to make it sound more strategic, you get punted down lower in the organization - you get punted down and delegated to the person you sound like. And for us, that's typically like mid-level sales enablement person. If we tell that story and don't get me wrong, we love selling to sales enablement and helping them buy from us. But we would rather stick with the C suite executive.   Ways to Make Your Sales Messaging more Strategic There are two ways that come to mind that you can make your messaging more strategic. The first way is tying your solution to a more strategic problem that the executive care about. That's the obvious one. It's very straightforward. For example, at Gong.io we talk about a major industry shift - product differentiation is dead. The way to beat your competitors has more to do with your sales conversations now and now that's tying it to a more strategic issue. If you can find an obvious bigger, more strategic problem to tie your value proposition to, that's your first obvious way to elevate the strategic importance of your messaging. But not everybody has that luxury. The second way to make your sales messaging more strategic is to take whatever your messaging against today that is labeled as a tactical problem and wrap it in a larger story. So for Gong.io that would be coaching and tell a story that elevates the strategic importance of that problem. This is called agenda setting. Here's the example storyline we've used for setting the agenda. We have found that there is a shift in the industry. The sales environment today is completely different than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, you could hire a sales guy or a sales gal. And their expectations were to just show up and sell and make money. But we have this shift in the last 10 years called the millennial workforce. And these types of sales reps have much bigger expectations from their employers. They don't just want to show up and sell. They want to be the best sales guy or gal, they expect their employer to invest in their training and their development and to help them along the way. And if you don't do something to do that, all they have to do is respond to the latest LinkedIn InMail they've received from a recruiter that week and they will go elsewhere. And then we introduce the concept of coaching and how it fits into that. And now coaching is not framed in this tactical sense of, we can increase your win rates by one or 2%. It's framed in the sense of, hey, you're dealing with millennials. Now you're going to have to provide good coaching, just to build your organization, prevent attrition, and maintain like a world class company.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect with Chris Orlob on LinkedIn Learn about Conversational Intelligence at Chris' company io HBR article “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers.” For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit. Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview For this episode, I'm speaking with Andy Paul. We had the opportunity to meet in person at the sales enablement conference in Denver, thanks to Nancy Nardin, Founder of Smart Selling Tools, who made the introduction.  Andy has several books out and has launched a new learning community for sellers and leaders called The Sales House. In this episode, Andy breaks down some essential learnings around his BALD framework.   Humans are Underrated We are in the era of AI, ML, and DL – and we are going to see a lot more automation in the economy. The people who can build relationships with other people and who can truly connect and collaborate with others - their value is going to increase. If you are not curious about what's going on, if you make yourself uninteresting, because you're not interested in other people and what's going on then, yeah, you're gonna be at a disadvantage. Those people who are learners and who want to stay on top of things and who are fascinated by automation – they are going to use it. It's not going to supplant us, and we are going to use it to be better humans! So, you just have to be curious about the other person. And that's going to lead you down a path. And if you need an app that says, hey, when you start this conversation, ask a question about them. That's fine. Use it if that's needed.   What is B.A.L.D.? The “B” stands for “be human.” The “A” stands for “ask great questions.” The “L” stands for “listen slowly.” And the “D” stands for “deliver value.” This model applies to any relationship in your life. I call it a “relationship operating system.” It doesn't matter whether it's in business or life.   Be Human If you want to connect with someone else, this is what you do. Be human. Don't just be present - be focused. Put your phone away; look somebody in the eye. Make sure they understand that you're there. You're in the moment.   Ask Questions Be curious. Ask great questions. By being interested in someone else's situation, you're making yourself interesting. And that's how the connection is formed. The science on this is pretty settled at this point. You do make people open up as people love to talk about what's important to them what they're passionate about. This includes small talk. Some might say busy executives don't have time for small talk. The science is incontrovertibly clear - small talk is key to making a connection with another person. “Where are you from?” is a great question. Just don't be scripted. Be authentic. You show up with scripted questions – you are likely to get scripted answers!   Listen Slowly Before you respond to questions. You have to listen as you think the person is - hear the words the person is really saying. This is where empathy starts coming in. This is where you've got to be in the moment. You need to slow yourself down. Just pause for a second. Listen, slowly pause and draw them out. Listen without judgment. One study highlights you have roughly 24 biases you have to filter out to accurately hear what the person is saying. These cognitive biases exist and impact how we hear people. There's a great book people can read called “Blindspot” (book link in show notes). The purpose of the book is to help us be conscious of these filters that we see and listen through impacting the way we receive people and project information.   Deliver Value Time is a limited and precious resource for people. They expect to receive a return on their investment of time. We all do. So, if a buyer gives us some of their time, and we give them nothing of value in return - we don't get more time. It's that simple. So, delivering value requires some forethought and some planning. This is the part about sales is hard for people to grasp. Selling is not purely instinctual. It's a deliberate act at every step of the way. We have to plan. In-person meetings, phone calls, emails, whatever - you have to deliver something of value in these interactions. You have to be aware before having  the interaction - what that value is that you're going to be delivering, and what they're going to do as a result of having received it. Value is a deliberate act. Instead of doing a “check-in call” for example, maybe send an email stating “Mr. prospect, I was thinking about you this morning, as I read this article about your business and how companies like yours are using technology similar to what we have been talking about. There are two key points in here I really think we should discuss. Are you available on Tuesday at 9am?”   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect Andy Paul on LinkedIn Visit Andy's new learning community, The Sales House Book Andy mentions, “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People”   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview In this episode, Cheryl Christiansen speaks with us about the importance of understanding your customer's customer. Cheryl started her consulting practice Data2Develop after spending several years in sales-facing leadership positions with blue-chip brands including Oracle. We are both active members of the sales enablement society, and share some perspective on the importance of really understanding your customer and their business dynamics, starting with their customers.   True Intimacy is Knowing Your Customer's Customers' Pain True customer intimacy is when you know your customer's customer's pain. A lot of times we'll focus on our customer, but if you start to delve into why are they in business you'll learn more about how they are solving someone else's problem and how they provide a solution to help them meet a need. So, you need to dig into their customer's customers' pains. What challenges are your customer's customers' facing? What does it cost them. What's the opportunity being missed. And who else is trying to solve your customer's customers' problems, and how is your customer positioned in the market against their competitive sphere?   Example from the Aerospace Industry – the Miracle on the Hudson Cheryl worked for a company called IHS, and at the time it stood for Information Handling Services and then they went public, and it became IHS Market. One of her major accounts was Honeywell which was a collection of several Honeywell accounts. Each account was focused on a specific solution that Honeywell provided. So one was auxiliary power units. They were used and bought by Boeing. So the Honeywell customer was Boeing, and they were building jets. So an auxiliary power unit (AP) is a critical piece of equipment because when the engines fail, the auxiliary power unit is what brings you in safely. For example, US Airways and the situation that led to the Miracle on the Hudson had an AP you from Honeywell. Honeywell's customer was Boeing. And who was Boeing's customer? Well, in this case, it was US Airways and who was their customer? Well, it was the public. And what they cared about was safe and reliable equipment. So when the airline hit a bird, and they had to make an emergency landing, they immediately turned on the auxiliary power unit, and thank goodness that worked and those people were saved as well as a very smart pilot.   Implications for Honeywell So if you're a sales rep for Honeywell, you have got to follow the trends. What is happening with your aerospace customer's customers'. It was learned that Boeing was considering a joint venture with a company in France to make their own auxiliary power units. That would disrupt United Technologies and Honeywell. And if Honeywell can portray the value proposition of the safest AP, then Honeywell can take that to Boeing and hopefully be preemptive and keep the Boeing account.   Taking a Strategic Look at Your Market and Selling Strategically Selling this way is very strategic. It requires taking a strategic look at the market including the market dynamics and the business dynamics of not just who you're selling to, but their customer's customers. You will come to love the industry and the players in the industry, allowing you to double down and understand the market space and being relevant to your customers in that market space. To do this, you've got to be curious. You will read corporate reports, so you know who your major opportunities are in your territories. If you haven't read their annual reports, then shame on you. And as you read their annual report, and you see the different boards that they might sit on and the organizations and then you start to look at who's who within the organization and their backgrounds you start to notice some trends, and then you start to follow the thought leaders in those industries.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect Cheryl McCurdy Christiansen on LinkedIn Visit Cheryl's Web site at com   For More Great Content   I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview I met Mark S.A. Smith on LinkedIn. He's an avid writer with 14 books under his belt, and has years of experience working with executives. He's a master at selling complex things as fast as they possibly can be sold. In this episode, Mark talks to us about an unusual topic - how to connect with your customers' career goals. Why do we want to do this? Well as Mark breaks this down for us, the bottom line is it's the fastest path to selling success and having customers make what Mark likes to call high consideration decisions to purchase your solution.   A Misleading Question - How Can You Beat the Competition Mark mentioned he often has people ask him, “How can I beat my competition?” And that's the wrong question. The real question is, “how can I help my customer beat their competition?” When you help them do this there isn't competition. The focus is how can you make my customer look so good that it's impossible for them to buy from anybody else who's focused on their product versus on the success of their customer.   It's About Your Buyers' Careers In getting a customer to say “yes,” they will also being saying “yes” to how the decision to work with you and go with your solution will affect their career. In the world of corporations, there's only one way you can make serious money. And that is through getting a promotion. And the only way you get promotion is by illustrating consistently that you have good judgment. That means that if you make a few bad decisions that have an impact on the business, you become toxic. You cannot be promoted. So, to net this out, your customer must consistently show good judgement to ascend up the path towards the executive ranks of their firm. So as you are selling to them, just know they are asking themselves “is this going to be good for my career? Or is this going to damage my career?” This is the subtext of every decision-making criterion that everybody makes in the world of corporations. And if you've ever lost a deal, even when you had the best overall solution, the buyer probably didn't see you and your solution as in the best interests of their career. This is most often what you don't hear. Instead, you might hear your price is too high, or the executive committee went a different way. And they'll use a word that when you hear it you'll go, “oh, that's what that means.” They'll say it was a political decision. That's the indication that you didn't support their career. They chose a lesser product because it was better for their career, it was less risky for them. And in the world of technology, the number one vendor in the industry is rarely the best technology but the best at supporting the career of their customers.   Does the Best Product Win? No, but if it Impacts Your Buyers' Careers… You probably remember the old campaign and commercials for IBM with the theme, “no one ever got fired for buying IBM.” In the case of Microsoft, it wasn't the best operating system, but it was often the most politically correct operating system. With EMC in the world of storage, it wasn't the best storage technology. But politically, it was the best storage company. And with IBM, rarely did IBM have leading edge technology but they did lots and lots of research. They were not always the fastest, but politically they were the correct solution. And so if you just kind of open your eyes to this concept of people are making decisions based on what's best for their career, you'll realize that you're surrounded by examples of why that's the case. It's not the product, but the product's capacity to improve their career position.   Focus on the Outcome, and Connection to Career Progression So, to shift things up, you need to stop talking about the product, and start talking about the outcome that this person has been tasked by their scorekeeper to deliver. Think about their objective, and their objective is set by their scorekeeper. The scorekeeper can be a boss. It could be a spouse. It could be a parent. But there's somebody keeping score. And that's who we also have to satisfy … that scorekeeper. Next, what's going to allow them to win in their job? What will allow them to feel comfortable, confident and certain. Also ask what creates value for them and what might be different in their criteria that's different from their scorekeeper's. Then align your value, once you understand their objectives, priorities and criteria, and then have a conversation about what you are offering that maps to their motivational set, as illustrated by these elements.   Resources and Links for this Episode Connect with Mark S A Smith on LinkedIn Mark's Book “From MSP to BSP” on Amazon Or Download MSP to BSP as a Free PDF at this site Mark's Weekly Executive Communication at Marksezine.com For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit. Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview This episode features yours truly, Bruce Scheer, being interviewed by A. Lee Judge and Dontaye Carter from Atlanta. They have a great show called the Business of Content Podcast. In this episode we will talk about the major pitfall sellers and marketers fall into - how they are leading with their "stuff" and their "all about me" content as opposed to leading with a "theme" – a point of view that addresses their target customers' big problem and offers a big idea theme that resonates!   The Big Idea Theme Precedes Sales and Marketing Content A main point that's made in this episode is before you jam on a ton of content for marketing and account-based selling activities, you should back up and think of a big idea theme – a central idea that will help you break through the noise surrounding your prospects. You can carry the central idea throughout the conversations and various digital touchpoints across the buyer's journey. Then you can generate marketing content and train reps on how to speak to the big idea theme. In this way, your prospects aren't getting disjointed and non-aligned messaging and content as they engage with your firm. This is very different from how most sellers show up and sell today – pushing product-centric messaging and content that's devoid of content around the customer problems and challenges. They are missing a big idea theme that resonates with the prospect.   What Specifically is a Big Idea Theme? To compare the difference between selling a theme or stuff, let's look at a fun B2C example. It has to do with an Uber ride I took out in Boulder Colorado earlier this year. One morning, I get up and I'm heading out to see a client in Boulder. My Uber driver shows up at my hotel, and I walk out to a minivan. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is interesting. It's not the BMW or a black SUV. It's a minivan, not my normal first choice! I had a suitcase with me with a bunch of facilitation gear within. He opens up the back, and of course, there's a stroller and some kid stuff in there that we have to move around so we can get my stuff in there. And then I get in the back of the minivan and we take off. We start a conversation, with me curiously asking him what going on in his life. He looks like he's in his late 30s, well groomed, and having many mouths to feed. He tells me he's just dropped his kids off at school and is now giving some rides in between his other daily activities. I asked him about his background and current focus, and if he's just driving Uber for now. He mentioned he's in transition and has an entrepreneurial bent. He was most recently a marketing manager and a Minister and was currently a Founder in a new food court concept in Boulder. He further explained his food court concept – a wonderful food court with 57 food trucks on rotation with a fire pit, live band stage, yard games, and a few beer stations. He strongly encouraged me to come to check it out. He then asked me what I do, and I mentioned I focus in the area of sales and marketing and am focused on helping sellers have conversations with their buyers that inspire change. I then spoke about the idea I was shaping around selling a theme or stuff, and as a former marketer I asked him what that meant to him. He was silent for a while and then responded that he thought he was selling a theme and could share it with me. I immediately responded “I don't think so!” and mentioned he had just sold me a bunch of stuff - 57 food trucks on rotation, a fire pit, beer stations, live band stage, etc. He laughed a bit and said what he's really designing and trying to sell people on is the theme of a backyard party - a place where people can go with their good friends or a place where they can make new friends. He further offered how this party had great food with 57 food trucks on rotation, a huge metal fireplace throwing out huge flames, a stage with a live band, and plenty of yard games for more fun and activity as part of the backyard party. Now he had me with his big idea theme, and I committed to dropping by at the end of the day to check it out. I showed up that evening after my client gig at about 6pm. The place was full and continued to become packed with no place to sit by the time I left at 8:30pm – and this was on a weeknight! Obviously this was a great concept! Who's Leading with a Big Idea Theme in B2B? Very few in the B2B world get this right. They focus on selling the features, functions and benefits of their stuff as opposed to a big idea theme - a “backyard party” if you will. In this episode, we review a few B2B companies that understand the need for a theme and illustrate what good big idea themes look like with IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, and McKesson. We then offer some thinking on how to tease out a big idea theme for your organization.   Episode Timestamps   [1:53] Bruce Intro and Why a Theme is Important Chief Conversation Officer for SalesConversation.com: A firm that helps people with their selling conversations. Message strategy, digitial tools and sales enablement. “Big idea” theme. When you have sellers in the field, they need to have a good understanding of the company's theme. The marketing site needs to convey the theme. Stories need to portray the theme. There are more times than not a major lack of alignment in the central story/idea: How people carry the story/idea throughout the buyer's journey.   [3:44] The Disconnect Between Marketing, Sales, and Content Distribution Most sellers and marketers structure their website around who they are, what they do, how they do things, what makes them different– all about them type of content. Are you selling stuff or a theme? Uber driver story and the notion of the Backyard Party. [10:30] How Have You Consulted Clients on Using Themes? What is the central idea/theme? After establishing this, you can then start to build stories and content. Story of Alcatel-Lucent: Simplify the message and portfolio. Summed it up in a theme for their target audience. Major point - don't confuse your customer.   [15:23] What is a Theme? The subject matter of a conversation or discussion. The subject matter. The focal element. A unifying idea that's a recurrent element in literary or artistic work. What is lacking is the subject.   [16:13] How Would You Apply This Model to Content? All the content is the “wood” behind the “tip of the arrow”. People are punching out content without a purposeful theme.   [18:21] Who Needs to “Get It” in Order to Get an Organization in line Selling with a Theme? Normally start with the leadership team. Helping business leaders get their story straight.   [20:46] IBM Story Was in a state of transition with the question of ‘what is the next big idea theme'? Big idea theme: Different from a purpose statement. The theme of “Out-think”. Difference between a theme and a story. Organizations typically have a couple choices: They can try to transform and grow organically. or The organization can out-think the particular issue   [27:04] Things That an Organization Can Do to Start Mapping Out Their Theme Market scan: Who's in the competitive domain? What's the market chatter/noise? What are the themes and ideas that are already out there? Identify your organization's uniqueness and value that you are trying to create and convey? What are you building towards? What's the Big Idea theme?   Additional Resources Bruce Scheer on LinkedIn Blog Post on Theme or Stuff by Bruce Scheer Article: Big Ideas that can Help Your Sales Performance by Bruce Scheer A. Lee Judge on LinkedIn ContentMonsta The Business of Content Podcast Dontaye Carter on LinkedIn Carter Media Group For More Great Content   I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview In this episode, Gerhard talks about how to listen more and sell more. It's a fun episode that offers guidance on how to show up with a listening mindset and be present for the customer and ready to discuss the customer problem.   Episode Timestamps [0:28] Gerhard Introduction Salespeople talk too much: Anxiety as a cause. The first rule for having a good conversation is to prepare yourself: Come in with a clean slate. Mindset of being there for the other person. Use the formula that Dr. Lyman K. Steil developed for listening. Many reps will come in and fake listening and wait for the other person to say a trigger word that will then get them into their storyline. Salespeople go in and hear the customer say something about having a thought and wanting to explore a different solution, and then instantly launch into a pitch into the solution without really knowing what the problem is.   [3:36] Story About Preacher in Midwestern Town Do not immediately dump your entire pitch on your customer when they first walk in.   [5:43] Listening Model – How Do You Get Yourself Into the Listening Mindset? You are talking to a human being, not a human doing. Be present for that human being. Practice mindfulness technique: Breathe in – I am aware of my body. Breathe out – I am letting go of all my tensions. SIER Formula: Step 1– Sensing. Step 2– Interpret those senses. Step 3– Evaluate what you have heard. Step 4– Respond. By following this formula you go through 3 steps before responding to your client. Gives you a better chance of hitting your target. Stop and ask questions if the other person is giving you a warning signal.   [10:41] Flow of Conversation The state of flow is a magical state leads to the creation of something new: Can forget where you are. Can lose sense of time. Everything is pushed back to the periphery. You can go into the conversation with the customer intending to co-create something new and with the intention of being in the flow with them.   [12:28] Constructivism in Education Point of view around the student/teacher relationship. Dialogue and assimilation. Both start to co-create this new way of being. We, as salespeople, need to be “merchants of hope”. If you find yourself being critical about the customer, it's probably because you are being critical of yourself.   [18:23] Storyteller vs. Storyseller Storyteller is when you do it for your own amusement. Storyseller is strategic. Have a number of stories that you can weave into your customer conversation at the most appropriate time. Selling is a process of co-creation: You create the questions, and the customer creates the responses. If you are too far ahead of the customer, then you lose the customer. If you are too far behind the customer, then the customer is going to lose you. You want to be in step with the customer and be in the flow.   Additional Resources Gerhard Gschwandtner on LinkedIn SIER Hierarchy of Active Listening Dr. Albert Mehrabian Communication Studies Dr. Mihaly and what flow means in the brain     For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

  Episode Overview This episode features David Svigel, the co-founder of ROI-Selling.com. He's been a close friend and business partner of mine for over a decade. We've tag teamed on several successful client engagements where the b2b client wanted to up their game in value selling - and that meant being able to communicate and quantify the business value proposition to targeted prospects. In this episode, David and I will talk about some of the trends we've seen in buyer behavior, and how this has added gravity to being able to sell both personal value for each buyer and overall company value for larger b2b solutions. He will also offer several practical tips for upping your value-selling game.   Episode Timestamps [1:44] How David Became Focused on Helping Sellers Sell Complex Solutions Early in his career, David noticed that there was a disconnect between the buyers and sellers of complex solutions. Sellers did not really quantify the benefits to their buyers. That disconnect became an insight for David to help even out those sales conversations and bring them together with ROI selling: Led David to co-found www.ROI-Selling.com   [2:51] What's Changed in the Nature of Buying? Closer budget scrutiny. More decision makers involved in every b2b buying decision. Upward movement in the buying decision: More senior/executive-level approval is required before a purchase decision is made. These 3 factors have converged to restrict any individual buyers purchasing authority, and for the sales representative, it has caused longer sales cycles.   [6:03] How Does Value Selling Play Into Addressing These Changes? Getting buyers motivated requires showing them your solution is going to save them either money and/or increase revenue. What buyers don't care about anymore is: Marketing speak such as “high quality” or “long lasting” When reps start talking about the latest feature of a solution. The fundamental question that buyers want answered is can your solution help them do more with less. The next question buyers will want to ask is, how much can it help? Quantifying your solution's value creates a sense of urgency with the buyer, and sets the stage for approvals from the buying committee When you're dealing with buying committees as a sales rep, what's beneficial is showing each committee member how the solution will benefit them. Quantify it for each person. Makes it easier for the group to come to a consensus together.   [11:10] Ways Sellers Can Get Started in Value Selling An ROI tool. Look for available resources: Find case studies with good value points. Talk to your marketing department: Find research reports as material. Frame the value discussion around your customer's unique situation. Undergo a depth of analysis of your customer's unique problem(s).   [17:15] Why Sell Based on Business Value? So sales reps can close more deals, better defend their price - by showing what the value of their solution is. Begin to collaborate with your buyer and build the business case: Will make maintaining your budget that much easier. If you build the business case and the buyer buys into it, they will be more engaged.   Additional Resources Connect with David on LinkedIn Grab some ROI Selling Resources Surf the ROI-Selling Blog Join the Value Selling LinkedIn Group See some top-class ROI selling tools   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview This episode features Jeremy Diamond, founder of the blog Startup Deck Review, which is dedicated to studying startup pitch decks. He has a rich media background and is an MBA graduate from the University of Washington Foster School of Business. In this episode we will be covering 3 key factors in a winning pitch, how to communicate your “Grit”, and advice for sellers in how to improve their selling conversations.   Episode Timestamps [1:27] How Jeremy Got Focused on Helping Startups Master Their Pitch Originally worked in TV production for Discovery and Animal Planet. Decided to move to Seattle, get an MBA at the UW, and wanted to work for a tech company. Worked for a startup that wanted someone who could think through things from a business perspective. How he got into helping companies fundraise.   [3:55] 3 Key Factors in Driving a Winning Pitch Their strong understanding of the customer problem that the founder has a mission to solve. Their passion to solve the problem. Jeremy talks about their “marrying the problem” Their grit. What any investor would be looking at in a founder of a startup: What problem solving “grit” they have to bring to the market. Investors want to know what they are investing in.   [9:58] “Grit” – the 3rd Factor Grit is a subjective thing. When investors are entering into a long relationship with people, they want to know that those people are going to be worthy of the money that they're investing. More unique to Venture Capital.   [11:09] Story on How a Founder Communicated “Grit” Airbnb pitch deck Founders sold commemorative cereal boxes during the 2008 election Saw a desire path: Recognized that certain data was not being understood by existing hospitality/lodging. As an investor you're asking these types of questions: What was their character during that challenging time? What sorts of actions did they take? Were they creative in how they marketed and solved the problem? Were they creative in how they operated their business?   [12:17] Communicating to your customer that you have the “Grit” Making sure that the customers investment in you (your company/your solution) will be money well-spent. Paul Smith: Story Telling for Sales Different stories you can tell as a seller.   [13:33] Advice for Sellers Social Proof. Bring in traction: Investors will argue. Illustrate why your solution is better than the competition and how you're going to compete. Get and incorporate feedback into your pitch: People like to help as long as they like to give constructive criticism and as long as you like to receive constructive criticism. “Cold” Communication.   Additional Resources Start Up Deck Review Blog Jeremy's Email Linkedin Airbnb Founder Grit Story at 20:47   If you have a pitch deck that you would like to suggest Jeremy to review, feel free to reach out!   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

  Episode Overview In this episode, we are speaking with Andrew McMasters. Originally from Philadelphia, he's an actor who's been working in Seattle for over 30 years. He started Jet City Improv back in 1992 and left that company back in October 2017 after 25 years. For the last 10 years, he's been working with organizations– helping them improve communications, team cooperation, and innovation. He also works with sales teams on listening, accepting and building on offers to provide customers with solutions for the needs they have.   In this episode, Andrew and I talk about the power of Improv in improving buyer and seller interactions. Specifically, Andrew highlights how to be a better listener, how to accept what the customer is offering, and then how to build upon their offerings. He then talks about how to bring your full self to a selling conversation.   Episode Timestamps [1:27] Andrew's story on how he became focused on improv Started with practicing improv as a theatre actor: Taught classes to people in other lines of work who wanted to be more comfortable on stage.   [3:37] Why should sellers use improv as a way to connect with their buyers? Listening: How we listen. The ways we listen. What we are listening for. Listen before you solve: Establishing that there is a connection first instead of jumping to a solution. Listening for building relationships. Listening for understanding. Listening for context. Letting the other person know that they've been heard.   [4:51] How does listening change based on what you're listening for? Encapsulate what someone has said and then feed it back. Saying that “This is what I heard...is this correct?”: Letting the person know that they've been heard. Understanding the other person: Makes them know that they're included and a part of the process. Building the connection first.   [7:35] Improv disciplines for sellers Accepting what someone else has said and then building on it. “Yes...and” Not being afraid to get off message. Game “3-legged dog”: Improv exercise. No matter what the question is, you can answer it in a way that you need to. What are we offering: What is the item, the piece, the process: Have them break it down into 3-5 words.   [11:20] “Yes...and” further explained Stray from “Yes...but”: The minute someone has heard the “but” they negate everything said before it. Using the word “and” instead of “but”: Reframing that word for yourself can continue to keep energy moving forward which means you can accomplish more.   [13:18] Example of Andrew successfully using improv Andrew was doing a series of workshops for outreach Did one on status: How you present yourself in a sales meeting Uses a deck of cards as metaphor for how you can represent yourself: An ace in your pocket. Using the card in your pocket as an external device.   [16:20] Listening and objections The improv mindset: Ways that you can “yes, and” an objection. Everything that someone gives you is an offer. How you accept the offer as an individual.   [17:24] Where can sellers go to learn more about improv? Always different places in the city that teach different classes on improv: Practices listening and more focused on getting on stage. Andrew holds workshops that he does with other organizations: More focused on what each individual is trying to accomplish. Andrew holds his own Ted Talks: Focuses on 3 topics: Accepting and building. Everything is an offer.   Additional Resources Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn Andrew's Web site ImprovMindset Ted Talk featuring Andrew where he talks about story and "yes, and" Alan Alda's Book, "If I Understood You Would I Have This Look on My Face?" Jet City Improv drop-in Dojo sessions   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

  Episode Overview In this episode, we talk with Ed Bilat about how we can up our sales conversations by telling stories– what some refer to as "Story Selling". We are all humans at the end of the day, meaning that we live our lives through stories– stories we tell others, stories others tell us, and the stories we tell ourselves. The exciting thing about stories is they play a profound influence on our ability to persuade others. Ed is the leader of storytellingsales.com with the aim of helping sales teams and business owners grow their business, and essentially make sales more human and more fun through the power of storytelling. His business works with small businesses all the way up to large multinational enterprises.   Episode Timestamps [1:34] How did you become focused on storytelling? Car died in a Tim Horton parking lot: Had to wait for mechanic outside. Had to make cold calls from outside the restaurant so that clients would not hear the background noise - as the weather was below zero, these were literally “cold calls!” A telecommunications company that Ed was trying to reach by phone asked to hear about his personal story even though they were not originally interested in his product. After meeting in person, that connection led to many other connections that became Ed's clients. People want to hear your story. Stories are human. It's the path to real-connection.   [6:34] Why is story selling so important? What is our greatest enemy? Attention span Our human attention span is short. As long as a story is engaging, people will continue to listen. Triggers the release of oxytocin Does your story help your prospect think about their process? Did it help them to view their problem in a new light? Will they share with their peers?   [10:27] What types of stories do we want to be telling? You don't need to create– you need to document the events in your life and tell those stories. All of us have personal stories. Best type of story is your customer story. What happened with your client? What happened with your customer? How were you able to help them?   [14:58] What is your “STAR” framework/model when constructing your story? Structure is better than coming up with a story on the fly. STAR model: Situation Trouble Action Result   [18:23] Practical tips for how to start storytelling? Ideal length of story should be about 5-10 minutes. Remember stories for quick retrieval: Different keywords Your story needs to be vivid and captivating. Be ready for sales objections: Build your stories around them. Make yourself a bank/library full of stories that you can pull from when you find it useful. Feel, felt, found.   Additional Resources  storytellingsales.com Ed's LinkedIn info Storytelling Sales Playbook   For More Great Content If you are finding this content valuable, visit us at salesconversation.com. I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound  

Episode Overview This episode features Chris Ortolano, a sales workflow consultant based in Portland, Oregon. He provides an outside perspective to help organizations address their weaker elements to accelerate their revenue cycle. He is a leader of his firm, Outbound Edge, and will speak about the power of video in sales outreach and how to drive buyer engagement.   Episode Timestamps   [1:30] How Chris became focused on helping sellers use video to connect with potential buyers Manages an online community of sales and marketing professionals called salesstack.io: Met people who work at Vidyard who introduced him to a software tool called GoVideo. Focuses on producing crisp, compelling, and clear messages to engage with buyers.   [2:26] Why should sellers be using video as an outreach tool? The way that we engage with buyers is changing: We now have the ability to tell a story through a visual medium. Creates a more compelling and lasting message. [3:25] What are the barriers that get in the way of individual sellers taking advantage of the medium of video? Time: You need to practice. Set aside 30 minutes to learn and practice your script for clear delivery in the message that you are communicating with your viewers. Psychological confidence: 2 kinds of videos in sales: Video conferencing. Selfie. Voiceovers. Chris uses a voiceover narrative approach: His videos are not about him, making the focus on helping his prospect solve their problem.   Finding your voice: Takes practice. Think like your buyer: The decisions that they make, how they measure their decisions, and what their goals are. Layer your message into their experience. Provides a more relevant and engaging way to suggest that you want to meet with them and pursue a more in-depth conversation. Take advantage of the visual guide on salesstack.io where you can walk through 7 steps so that you can practice before you record and send your video.   [6:21] Success stories of Chris and using video Uses video selling with social selling: Connects with peers on Linkedin. Makes videos for the CEOs of the connections that he makes on Linkedin. Video can increase the acceleration with which you can set meetings.   [7:23] How can sellers prepare to do video outreach? What should their content structure look like? Uses 3 step approach to an account plan: Set the meeting. Move the needle. Get everyone on the bus. [12:17] How to leverage video for outreach Manage your time. Do your research. Use phrase when reaching out “I noticed that…” Always add value with your video that exposes something about the market that your prospect might not understand.   [14:35] After you send the prospecting video, if the recipient does not respond, do you send another video? Resend that same video.   [15:26] Technology blockers that might prevent prospects from viewing your video? Use a video solution that allows you to embed that video as a thumbnail into the body of an email. Vidyard GoVideo   [16:50] How to personalize your video for different prospects Called a “Selfie”: Personalized for each prospect. Take a multi-tab screencast approach. If you put time and energy into thinking about your buyer you'll get a better deal, as well as learn to be a better sales consultant as well.   [17:48] Multitab screencast approach Reference your buyer: Start with their account. Reflect on what you see in their business model. Suggest a problem that they have that you can solve. Switch between their account/your account: Move from the current state to their future state. [18:30] Resources Sales assets online: Stories in Focus Library Interview video blog 3 guides at SalesStack.io: For people getting started. Learn how to do the selling model. Do it on a consistent basis. Turn around and teach someone how to do it. When you teach something, you are raising your level of skill because you can summarize, engage, and look for things. Changes the way you view your own process.   Additional Resources Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Follow Chris on Twitter Visit Chris' Web site - Outbound Edge Call Camp - Unlocking the Power of Video in Sales Outreach Get more selling done! Engage with Video Selling: Part 1 Stories in Focus Contest How to use video in your sales cadence   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound    

Episode Overview Our guest, Stu Heinecke, is a master of getting a meeting with anyone. Stu is a Wall Street Journal Cartoonist, a hall of fame nominated marketer, and author of the book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. I know it can be frustrating trying to get meetings with key decision makers and buyers. Stu will share with us ways to focus on the right areas to up our percentage on the people we reach out to and people who respond. This episode will cover how Stu got into this area of focus, his notions on how to think about customer targeting, how to get prepared to talk to those you want to target, and ideas for how to reach out and get a high response rate.   Episode Timestamps [1:40] Background on Stu and his focus on storytelling Was interested in creating direct mail campaigns, which led to his first two assignments, creating test campaigns for Rolling Stone and Bon Appetit. The success with both of his campaigns led to him creating his own “Contact Campaign” that consisted of a customized cartoon print and a letter that he would send out to each of his chosen recipients. Received 100% response rate with his campaign!   [4:50] Strategies on how to reach your target audience as a seller You want to reach the CEO of the problem that you want to solve, as well as their supporters and influencers. There are ways to identify the people that connect and work around the person that you want to target. Think about a “digital surround” strategy LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Seamless.ai are priceless resources as networking tools.   [8:31] What does it mean to be a VIP? And how can someone be credible and known as a VIP? 99% is mindset and the confidence in knowing that you are good at what you do and that you “belong here” talking to the person that you are talking to. Using unsolicited proposals to make connections. Being worthy of the executives time. Do your homework before meeting them. Bring something to the table that is of great value. Publish content: Become a thought leader. Reach out and network with other CEO's that know each other. Excellence has to be the theme in whatever you produce.   [12:34] How can a seller stand apart from others? Be brief and get right to your point quickly. If you are connecting on LinkedIn, then make an effort to take the conversation off of LinkedIn to create a human connection rather than strictly sticking to the internet. Research your targets: Know what they do and what their business is. Be persistent: Using digital marketing and retargeting. Use alternative media - Mail and FedEx.   [16:35] Advice on non-digital ways to reach out to your target Stu makes customized cartoons on what he calls a “big board”, that he sends to his recipients. On one side of the board there's a customized cartoon and on the other side, there's a message from Stu to the recipient. Using visual metaphors. You don't need to spend a lot of money to break through to someone.   [21:50] Resources for people wanting to start their own contact sales campaigns Buy the book How to Get a Meeting with Anyone by Stu. Listen to Stu's podcast, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. Connect with Stu on LinkedIn. Additional Resources How to Get a Meeting with Anyone book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxZXK2xRCNs https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Meeting-Anyone-Marketing/dp/1501260928   Stu's Website: http://www.stuheinecke.com/ Please visit Stu's website and join him on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuheinecke/   For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound    

Episode Overview In this episode, you'll hear us talk about how to connect with potential buyers online, how to build trust over time by contributing content and closing new business with the buyers you've been building relationships with. I met our guest, A Lee Judge, on LinkedIn, where I sent a connection request knowing he'd be someone I would want to follow. He has a beautiful podcast - the Business of Content Podcast with his co-host Dontaye Carter. I love Lee's quote, “it's better to ask a favor from a friend versus a sale from a stranger."   [1:35] How did you get into the game of business content? Originally came from media production: Started out in music and video production Degree in Multimedia Production & Broadcasting Traveled the world as a performing DJ Required personal branding to get gigs and gain attention Had a job in marketing   [4:20] Can you explain your quote, “It's better to ask a favor from a friend instead of a sale from a stranger”? How do you make connections with buyers? Once you begin to make a connection with someone, it's harder for them to not respond to you. Networking connections and establishing relationships through LinkedIn Tchotchkes story There is always a human element, no matter the type of content you create [12:50] What is the importance of mixing it up when networking on social media? If you share someone else's content, you also have to give an opinion. Connect with people that are relevant and are of value to you: Value their opinion and input. Mix it up with your own content as well as your own opinions. Contribute and engage in your other connections posts.   [18:55] What is your advisement for people who want to share their media? Take your talents and point them towards media that produces the best type of content that works for you. Try out different things to find your talents: If you think you can, then try it. People focus on the value: Shows through your delivery through the media content that you produce.   [24:11] How do you respond to negative criticism(the haters)? You're nobody until somebody hates you. There will always be haters. Turn your haters into your motivators.   [26:55] Advice and resources? Company motto– “Be Content.” Pay attention to yourself Capture brilliance Produce and create good content Additional Resources You can connect with A. Lee Judge here: A. Lee Judge (LinkedIn) ContentMonsta (Lee's Site) The Business of Content Podcast   For More Great Content If you are finding this content valuable, visit us at thesalesconversationpodcast.com. I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will be very much appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound    

Episode Overview There has been a primary theme in storytelling over the past few years in sales. Stories are the #1 way to connect with a buyer and help them see their situation in a new way. In this episode we will push into how to tell better stories with Theresa Francomacaro– a chief storyteller for a construction company and a facilitator/learning professional who consults for individuals and businesses. We will talk about understanding story structure, as well as the neurological aspects of how stories impact prospects. The way you tell your story will fundamentally shift the emotion and mood of your audience.   Episode Timestamps [2:15] Background on Theresa and her focus on storytelling Teresa started back with storytelling in sales, where she helped people tell their brand story and their marketing story. She discovered the best way to stand out and differentiate yourself from others is through authentic storytelling.   [3:16] Why should sellers focus on storytelling? It gives the opportunity to create a long-term relationship with your audience by focusing on their interests and the human connection that you are making with them. Stories are what connects us: Five primary neurological responses that are inherent in any great story. A lot of people do not know how to be an authentic storyteller.   [5:07] How do you structure your story? ICCC (pronounced “ice”). I – inciting incidents. Every story needs to know what happened, where were you, and what were you doing. C – conflict. What is going on? What changed? C – climax of the story. C – closure. Story spine: It doesn't matter where you start your story. Story structure can vary. It depends on your audience.   [10:01] What is the relevance of storytelling in the digital world? Sift through the information that is being communicated through digital means. Show how you've helped and enriched peoples lives with your product. Put out the stories that will land in the realm of the interests of your audience.   [11:03] How do you avoid death by story? To tell an authentic story, you need to make it personal and you need to keep it relevant. An authentic story should be no more than 2 minutes long.   [12:50] What are the five primary neurological responses that tap into the emotions of your target audience? Any great story will include at least one of these responses:   [19:12] How do you know which neurological responses to use when telling your story? Tap into your prospects and do your research on your target audience: What do your prospects need to feel?   [22:26] Who needs to get involved in storytelling? Finding out who are the right people that you should be telling your stories to.   [25:30] What do people need to learn to up their game in storytelling? Make it Stick, a book by Peter C. Brown. Practice your storytelling!   Additional Resources   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresafrancomacaro/   Video Links: The Power of Storytelling to Change the World: Dave Leiber The Storytelling Animal: Jonathan Gottschall How to Speak So People Want to Listen: Julian Treasure Simon Sinek: First Why and Then Trust The 7 Secrets of the greatest speakers in history: Richard Greene Danajaja Hettiarachchi World Champion of Public Speaking 2014 6 Public Speaking Tips To Hook Any Audience: by Charisma on Command recapping Mohammed Qahtani's speech “The Power of Words” The Magical Science of Storytelling   For More Great Content If you are finding this content valuable, I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Your feedback is much appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound    

Episode Overview Sellers struggle with selling business value. They are taught to sell products, but not how to sell based on business value. In this episode, my former college roommate, business partner, and lifelong friend, Darrin Fleming, speaks about why we should be selling based on business value. Darrin is the founder and CEO of ROI-Selling.com and a business leader with experience in marketing and sales across different sizes of businesses, from small companies to huge multinational corporations. He helps his clients build their strategic marketing capability, and is a specialist in honing his clients' business value propositions and assisting sellers to sell based on business value.   Episode Timestamps [1:55] How did you get involved in helping sellers with value selling? Began as an economic evaluator for an engineering plant: Evaluated projects and investments Left manufacturing/engineering and moved into consulting: He is now helping marketers and sellers with their value-based conversations. He's also helping sellers help buyers with deciding on whether the product is a good investment. Tom Siebel: He challenged his product leads to make sure they had a tangible ROI as part of their product value proposition.   [4:07] Why is having a business value discussion a critical ingredient to the sales conversation? Customers at some point need to do their own cost-justification when investing in an expensive product. It is essential to go beyond the product that you are selling, and it is necessary to talk about the problem that you are solving. It is even more critical to have a business case to garner buyer approval. Being able to quantify value and having a hard ROI– the business case can be the #1 catalyst. An ROI is a qualification tool that can help you focus your efforts on customers where you are going to deliver the most value.   [8:14] What are the different inhibitors that get in the way of sellers having a business value conversation? Darrin spoke about a joke he uses when training sales reps mentioning he tells them the goal of the training program is to turn them into “accountants,” and that includes removing their personality. Again, it's just a joke. There's a fear of working with quantifiable numbers. Thinking about the way a company works as not a financial discussion: How does a company make money? What are their drivers of financial success within their organization?   [14:03] What are the practical steps for helping sellers gain the ability to carry a business value conversation? A lot of sales discussion is modeled around solving a problem from the customers perspective Need to ask the questions: How big is the problem? How much is it costing? What can we eliminate? Is it a cost problem? Time problem? Quality problem? To do this, you need to understand your customers business and how they make money. Approach with an income statement perspective.   [20:28] What should the audience do to learn more about value-based selling? Darrin's blog focuses on different aspects of value-based selling. Darrin's Linkedin group helps to engage in conversation with topics on value-based selling.   Additional Resources To learn more about upping your game in selling based on business value, please visit Darrin's website and join him on Linkedin.   Darrin's Website: http://www.roi-selling.com/resources   Blog: http://www.roi-selling.com/blog   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrinfleming/ https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1805780   For More Great Content If you are finding this content valuable, visit us at thesalesconversationpodcast.com. I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will be very much appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.   Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound