The Sales Evangelist

Account-based selling isn't like your typical sales procedure. While both take skill and finesse, Account-based selling requires mastery over both your company and your clients. For the past year and a half, Thomas has worked for Amazon Web Services, making nine-figure deals. And on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, he and Donald discuss what you need to know about selling to enterprise organizations. (Fun fact: On today's undisclosed episode of recording, it's our guest Thomas Niewiara's birthday!) Amazon is (to say the least) not a small organization, and they do both account-based and traditional sales approaches. Working with Amazon Web Services' global accounts team, Thomas manages large AWS customers. Before, he did many sales and sales engineering roles from Google Cloud to a cybersecurity startup. The difference between traditional and account-based selling: the conventional model is a top-down funnel centered around creating and nurturing brand awareness. In account-based sales, you start by identifying critical strategic accounts to focus on and then building lead generation around them. How to start account-based selling: Develop executive-level relationships because prospecting with a bottom-up approach might not work when 1000s of people work within one company segment.  Because most of these larger accounts are public, analyze available financial statements (such as 10k's) to frame your specific solutions.  Thomas spends much more time than average on research. He spends 40% of his time researching for his accounts, with the remaining 60% going towards pitching, presenting, and other facets of his work. Why does he spend so much time researching? You need to understand the problem before you prescribe the solution. As an account rep with these clients, you are the expert. You're expected to know all the key players within that account and how they work with each other. He has google alerts for both of his accounts, and he uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator for company alerts. He moves nine-figure deals. With that amount of money, you need to bring knowledge and professionalism to the table. Thomas' final takeaways and sales advice: It's essential to develop a relationship with the customer, but for account-based selling, it becomes even more important to network internally.  Know all the tools available to you to do your job as best you can. For listeners working in bigger companies, check if coworkers have past connections and ins into the company. You'd be surprised how much overlap there is. Quick Tik Tok Talk: Follow Tom on Tik Tok at techsalestom (and follow our own Donald Kelly at donaldckelly.) It turns out the app is far more than just dancing! Follow Tom for conversations about tech sales and how it goes beyond the standard software sale. If Tik Tok isn't your thing, you can connect with him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

ABM (or account-based marketing) is the latest buzzword in the sales world, but how can we integrate this strategy within an existing marketing strategy? More importantly, should you? On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the Director of Global Account-Based Marketing at ON24, Lisset Sanchez-Schwartz, to learn her approach to implementing account-based marketing campaigns successfully. Determine what ABM really means and which type you should utilize.  ABM is a cross of a full range of communications, from events to content delivery. It's segmenting customer bases into unique groups where you can apply different and specific messages. In some cases, that could even mean a 1:1 strategy. It's not a tactic or campaign type, but it's an orchestration amongst many team members to holistically approach an account. There are three ABM approaches: one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many. Of course, the personalized you get, the more expensive it is to implement.  Determine if an ABM strategy will be effective. Admittedly, this should probably be a discussion before you determine the type of ABM. But remember, not every account needs an ABM strategy attached. ABM needs to be a partnership with sales. (Many places even call it ABX, because it applies to so much more than just marketing.) Lisset's pro tip: Don't try to boil the ocean. It takes money, time, and effort over a long period to see results.  Develop the infrastructure to support your ABM approach If you don't have the infrastructure to do retargeting at scale, select a handful of accounts and research. Apply an ABM strategy where it makes sense.  To determine if an account might benefit from an ABM strategy, evaluate and research. If you have a limited budget, use information from your sales team to build the most robust plan possible. If you have a larger budget, utilize third-party data to gain more information about a potential company. This is a great way to learn if a company is interested in you (or a competitor.) The more time you spend on the model, the better the backend will be How do you aggregate this information if you don't have the software to find all these data points? Hopefully, you have a CRM. The first-party data you've built up will pay dividends. Start with what you have today. Even if your data isn't the cleanest, start a 1:1 with a company you're more confident about. Lisset's final takeaway? Have the conversation and have patience. A long-term strategy might not seem successful initially, but it will pay dividends down the line with consistency. Visit ON24.com for more company information and connect with Lisset on LinkedIn to learn more. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

How can you interact with potential buyers (especially enterprise clients) that encourage a dialogue? After all, landing the sale isn't the only part of the equation; you first have to get their attention! In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Dr. Stephen Timme and Melody Astley to discuss their recent book Insight-Led Selling, which details how to learn how buyers think. But first, why did they write a book? Ultimately, Stephen and Melody wanted to create a resource their clients and community could utilize. It's harder than ever to sell to enterprise sellers (yes, people say that every year. But it's true!) And COVID-aside, the subscription-based economy is growing. There are more stakeholders than ever before in traditional buying processes. At the same time, implementation costs for platforms are lower, making it easier to switch between service providers. They interviewed many executives to see how they felt about sales.  From AT&T, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, and even Honey-Baked Hams, Stephen and Melody interviewed executives to learn firsthand how they felt about salespeople. (If you were curious, Honey-Baked Hams didn't even give them coupons. We're just as disappointed as you are.) They asked one simple question: what could sellers do better? Below were the three overwhelming responses: First, tell me something I don't know. Second, how does what you're selling align with my goals and strategies. Third, make my life easy (and don't give me a 30-page proposal.) Personalization is more than inserting the name of each person in an email blast.  It's developing a point of view that is interesting to the person you're talking to. Hold on, let's say that again for those who missed it: spend a moment to develop a point of view interesting to the person you're talking to. As a sales leader, we expect output from our BDRs. But we can't do this and expect results from a spray-and-pray method. The game has changed. How can you implement these sales techniques? For publicly-traded companies, you have access to specific financial figures; use that to align your selling proposition with their capabilities.  Explain the “how” you can help them before you can get into the “how much.”  For sales leaders, equip your salespeople with the specialized knowledge they might need.  You can self-learn if you feel unsupported by your organization, or (and an even better strategy), ask your organization for support. Their final takeaway? Understanding the language of how a customer speaks (and relating that to financial objectives) is a skill that will last the rest of your career.  Insight-Led Selling is available for purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. To contact Melody and Stephen, reach out at info@finlistics.com or connect on their business's LinkedIn page. (Or connect directly with Stephen and Melody.) This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Gatekeepers: the infamous villains of the sales world. Regardless of industry, most high-level executives employ some type of executive assistant or secretary to serve as a gatekeeper. A necessary part of the professional world, these assistants act as a filter that forces salespeople to maintain high standards and thoughtful targeting to pass. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald interviews Natasha Bowles, founder of Natasha Bowles Professional Staffing Agency, to learn more about how salespeople should interact with gatekeepers for more successful results.  The main priority of an executive assistant: securing the executive's time.  If Natasha didn't protect her executive's time, salespeople (among others) would occupy all their time. That doesn't mean salespeople are bad. But it does mean she ensures the salespeople she lets pass are prepared and offer a product or service genuinely beneficial to her executive's company. Executives receive 250-1000 emails every day. She is a necessary filter that helps executives find time to do their jobs.  Therefore, as salespeople, you must convince both the executive and the gatekeeper that you're worthy of their time. Get past the virtual inbox - Natasha's tips for email outreach: Natasha automatically discards anything that looks like an email blast- emails containing no information about the company and just discuss the sender's product. To get to the executive, show initiative, research the target company and show how you can help solve a problem. It's not just personalizing the email; it's demonstrating understanding of the target and what you can offer them. It's basic human decency, but still applicable: be respectful. Gatekeepers will notes a dismissive or demanding salesperson. And, if they need that product or service, the gatekeeper will look elsewhere. In 2018, Natasha was tasked with finding an alarm system, water cooler, and other aspects for a new building. The man she was looking to buy from refused to talk to her, insisting on interacting with her executive at every stage of the buying journey. Natasha ultimately ended the partnership with his company because he refused to work with her, and she found a different supplier. Salespeople have a long-standing perception that they need to speak with the decision-maker. But the decision-maker doesn't necessarily mean the top-level executive. It's whoever is in charge of the decision (I know, it's shocking.) Develop (and maintain) a relationship with the gatekeeper to be effective. Find a balance between demonstrating product knowledge without going over people's heads. Don't explain hyper-specific nuances, but emphasize what sets your product apart from the competition. Maintaining a relationship is just as important as the initial sale. Remember, executives meet with 5-15 people each day. And executive assistants interact with dozens more. If you don't interact with the gatekeeper until it's time to upsell a year later, that gatekeeper will not remember you.  Maintain the relationship, stay in touch, and develop a personal connection to ensure the gatekeeper reaches out when the time comes. Connect with her on LinkedIn (at natashabeingww) to learn more about her experiences.  This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Like with any job, your sales performance will be far better with the proper mindset. A focused attitude, combined with a strong feeling of self-worth and knowing who you are as a human being, affects all areas of your life. On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Robert Workman to learn how to empower ourselves to have a mindset conducive to sales success. You need to have confidence in both your work and yourself.   Have confidence that you'll show up as yourself, regardless of what meeting, event, or circumstance you find yourself in.  Many salespeople lack a strong sense of confidence but finding that confidence empowers you to do whatever you need to do to succeed. How you can be more focused as a sales professional:  Once you're confident in yourself, you can accomplish what you know is suitable for your career rather than what other people might tell you is correct. Robert's book Selling - The Most Dangerous Game encourages you to look at the leadership and style of work in your workplace to determine if it is the right environment for you. Have the confidence to acknowledge if this workplace will be conducive to your success rather than forcing something that doesn't work. To ensure success, take ownership of your time. Eliminating distractions is paramount to the success of a salesperson.  When dealing with adversity, you have to have a total belief in yourself. You have to believe you can walk into a business meeting and accomplish what you need to do. To get in touch with Robert, visit his website, hiredgun.us, for his email, contact information, and links to his books. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Whether or not you and your business utilize account-based selling, you won't obtain the sales figures you want without the right messaging and communication. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by sales consultant and strategic advisor Scott Leese to learn how salespeople can ensure they're using messaging that delivers results. How can a salesperson ensure solid messaging? Have the client explain and describe what problems and challenges they have. During the first interaction with a potential client, some businesses will try to talk about themselves. Don't do that. Selling is more than convincing the prospect to buy your product. The first step is simply to pique their interest. The traditional mass-email strategy is no longer effective. People are inundated with vague email pitches.  While this was once a good strategy, the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, and the number of importance is no longer volume; it's conversions. We have to be thoughtful, customer-focused, and targeted. How to create thoughtful messaging: Find out more about your target. Research the individual and the company, find one or two key points and then reach out. Most importantly: Understand you won't hit a home run every time. Don't spend hours researching one prospect. Instead, find something to have a simple but thoughtful conversation. If you put yourself out there in a casual, thoughtful, authentic way, that puts people at ease. And that ease allows them to pass that onto somebody else. Scott's main takeaway is: Be sincere, be human, and be thoughtful. Don't overthink or try to get an A+; college is over. To get in touch with Scott, connect with him on LinkedIn, and check him out on Thursday Night Sales, the longest-running virtual sales happy hour. You can also tune in to his podcast, The Surf & Sales Podcast. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Every salesperson has been in this situation at some point: marketing delivers a handful of leads, only for nobody to respond after you initiate contact. While frustrating, that's an unfortunate downfall of the lead-based selling model, and a great reason why pivoting to an account-based sales model could be beneficial for you. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald explains what account-based selling is and how you can implement it into your approach.  Account-based selling is an excellent approach for many businesses. Rather than utilize a traditional lead-based model, an account-based approach focuses on the ideal client account of your company and how you can attract similar clients to them. An account-based strategy will keep your marketing and sales departments unified and focused on the same target, generating more touchpoints and communications with the ideal client most likely to purchase. How to start using an account-based approach: First, make a list of the people most likely to buy from you. This list should be a series of criteria that only a select group will fit. Second, discover companies that fit these descriptions. Finally, multithread. Don't reach out to just one person at the company; find three to five people you might want to interact with. What is the benefit of account-based selling? Marketing and sales will continue their typical outreach: the white papers, the events, and the webinars.  Only now, it'll come with a focus and a mission that is aligned with the ideal account most beneficial to the salespeople. Account-based targeting allows you to create content specifically for your ideal client. While the reach might be smaller, the likelihood of moving those ideal clients through the funnel is much more significant. It takes time and work to develop the playbook to make this process run seamlessly. But once the plan is in place, you'll find opportunities for more growth and more sales. Join our Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to share your sales story and join a community of people dedicated to growing their profession. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Embracing the technological capabilities of the modern-day isn't just a good idea; it's a necessity. On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Peter Kazanjy, the founder of Atrium and Modern Sales Pros (the nation's largest sales, operations and leadership peer-education community.) As an author on early-stage sales excellent (Founding Sales), Peter is a sales expert who knows why you need to become a data-driven sales seller. What does it mean to be a data-driven seller? It's very similar to the innovation we've seen in athletics and high-end professions: someone utilizes every available advantage.  Especially with people working from home, there's an opportunity to use new information to improve rep and team performance. If you don't utilize these new technological innovations to make data-informed decisions, you're going to be in a bad spot. How do you sell embracing technology to managers? There are two historical reasons sales managers are typically blocked from a data-driven perspective: their ability and enablement, or the available tooling. Simple deal inspection is a standard management style, but it's no longer the most effective. Enabling managers to manage metrics and goals is necessary to close the number of deals needed to stay viable.  Transitioning to a data-driven framework, especially as a manager, only benefits the team and brings in more money, making it a practical adjustment when given the proper resources. How can I go about starting if I don't have management support? Start paying attention to the important precursors. There's a conversion rate for the total number of accounts you interact with and the number of opportunities you create. Similarly, there will be a correlation between outreach efforts and movement through a conversion funnel. It's like doing your daily pushups - consistency is key. Even if you don't have the support of those around you, tracking simple metrics yourself will significantly help your own sales goals. What metrics should we tackle first? The further upstream you can get, the better. Ensure you are meeting not just the quantity threshold you need, but one of quantity. Don't email a few people; spread your portfolio. Who are you engaging with? Are you doing a good job, indicated by the response rate and opportunities created? Peter's major takeaway: Understand the importance of data-driven sales management. Whether that's investing in highly specialized software or just keeping track on a whiteboard in your living room, using data to make decisions will provide critical opportunities for growth in your organization. To get in touch with Peter, connect with him on LinkedIn. His company Atrium is offering special deals on various resources (and even coffee mugs) for listeners of The Sales Evangelist, which you can access at atriumhq.com/tse. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

To own or not to own, that is the question. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Mike Farrell, who specializes in outsourcing SDR work so their clients can focus on other tasks. Should you and your company use an external SDR team, or should you invest in and develop a team yourself? Find out in today's episode. With 18 years in the SDR world, Mike knows when to outsource versus invest in a team yourself. The answer? It all depends on where your company is in its maturation process. Startups and recently created companies likely don't have the tools, people, or finances in place to develop their own team successfully (and should therefore outsource.) On the other hand, after receiving two or three rounds of investment, it might be wise to create your own team with a more in-depth understanding of what your company offers. What even is “outsourcing”? Mike's company has two different outsourcing methods: they use their own software, systems and people to perform the tasks themselves. This means the SDR team can be rapidly deployed, but a third-party organization still owns it. This is a common model for startups. The other model is a pay-per-appointment method, reserved more for companies that have enterprise companies as clients. How to determine if you should outsource your team's SDR work: Work backward: First, decide on your final sales goals and objectives.  Look at how many deals you made in a time frame and the win rate of the prospects you contacted. Total the number of prospects you interacted with across all mediums, and determine if you have the number of staff required to reach your goals based on your win rate. If the answer is no, you need to hire an external vendor to augment that (or staff up your internal SDR organization.) To get in contact with Mike, visit his company website at Greenleads.com or email him at mike.farrell@greenleads.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

It's time to celebrate The Sales Evangelist's 1500th episode! To celebrate this milestone, today's episode is a little different. Rather than bringing in a guest, Donald looks back at past episodes to discuss five sales principles that have been important to him as a salesman, businessman, and just throughout his life. Just getting started Listening to the first TSE episode is...rough. But there's an important takeaway: don't judge your “episode one” to someone else's episode 1500.  As a new seller, don't compare yourself to a veteran seller with years of experience. Nobody is great at something initially. So, just start, and don't compare yourself to the quality of others. The principles of selling are the same. This podcast has interviewed all types of people, from authors and sellers to industry experts.  According to Jeb in a previous episode, the selling process has not evolved because salespeople still go through similar processes, connect with people, and solve problems. What has changed are the tools and information available and the buyers' expectations. Winning the morning Episode seven of the podcast was about something critical: time management.  According to the guest from that episode, Justin Su'a, winning the morning means starting strong. The problem isn't that there aren't enough hours in the day; the problem is that we don't take advantage of the time available. Winning the day doesn't mean you have to wake up at three or four in the morning (necessarily); just put the most pressing tasks and high-priority items first. Learning to be agile According to the one and only Jill Conrad, salespeople need to find a way to stay agile. Agile selling is getting up to speed on sales practices as soon as possible.  Learning these new practices makes salespeople more relevant and helpful to their prospects. To become a more agile seller, set aside a portion of your day to read, study, and understand new sales techniques and practices. Your net worth will directly tie into your network. People connect LinkedIn connections like Pokemon. (Which we can guarantee you isn't the best practice.) Don't just add people and never respond. Instead, make genuine connections with people! Create a stronger relationship that will provide help and support later down the line. A great intro to reach out to someone on LinkedIn? Share your favorite episode of The Sales Evangelist or Donald's article in Success Magazine! (It might be a shameless plug on our end, but can you blame us?) This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

A common problem for salespeople is interacting solely with just one stakeholder. But in reality, involving multiple people is the perfect strategy to help deals go through (and make more people excited about them.) In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Amy Hrehovcik to discuss her strategy to apply multi-threading throughout your sales process. Amy's sales experience is extensive. After selling for nearly a decade, Amy finished at Thomson Reuters before transitioning to marketing consulting (eventually working in a startup as the Chief of Customer Value.) She later pivoted to sales enablement, realizing she had a passion for teaching sellers and empowering sales leaders. Amy now hosts the podcast Revenue Real Hotline, where she discusses uncomfortable conversations in sales. Why did she start the podcast? She wrote an article (Mental Health, The Greatest Competitive Advantage That You'll Ever Know), and it was viewed by the great Andy Paul. He invited her onto his show, and participating in that made her realize the importance of podcasting in sales. (Check out Donald's guest appearance on her show.) Today's topic: Multi-threading Multi-threading describes liaising with multiple stakeholders and executive sponsors throughout an organization.  The average number of buyers involved in the buying motion was 6.7. Since that time, it has increased. Because her main selling vertical was big law, Amy realized the importance of proactively engaging with multiple stakeholders early on to minimize the objections buyers would have when moving the deal forward. Why should you consider this selling approach? Not to sound cliche (but we will anyway), it's the same reason you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Amy began to hold off on doing deep-dive demos until at least three executive sponsors were in the room because it diversified the risk for the individuals involved.  They were no longer the sole advocate for a product (assuming they like it), thus limiting the amount of blame and buyer's remorse people might feel after implementation. Because the buying process is getting longer, executives will invariably drop out of the acquisition process. But when you have two or three other executives who want to see the deal move forward, it is much more likely to move through. How can you begin to develop this approach? Communicate with the original executive sponsor that you want to help them make the right decision, and you can do that by demonstrating the business case on your behalf.  Ask permission to have conversations with others or other departments to learn how others reach a particular goal. The Heath Brothers wrote in one of their books (Made to Stick) the idea of bright spots. Because of the relationships she developed throughout this discovery phase, she could return to her original executive sponsor and deliver a detailed report that helped both of their causes. One major takeaway from multithreading? Just do it. It's like anything else- you might not be good at it at first. But with practice, you'll begin to see success. To contact Amy, connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about her process with multithreading. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

It's the golden rule of life: treat others the way you want to be treated. As sales professionals, you do this by playing the long game, building relationships rather than focusing on the sale. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald interviews David Henzel to learn David's approach and strategy to being customer-centric in modern selling.  What does it mean to be customer-centric? In essence, a customer-centric salesperson sets customers up for success.  It's helping your customers succeed (or positioning them to be successful) instead of worrying purely about making a sale. Selling out of fear only provides mediocre results. If you sell to make a commission, the customer's problem might not be solved, and they might not want to be your advocate as readily. A happy customer tells their friend, but an unhappy customer tells the world. To close customer success gaps, you can either write copy on your website to inform potential buyers (as a facet of content marketing) or partner with a sales coach to teach proper outbound messaging. To understand your client's needs, you must play the long game.  Don't give the customer what you think they want; find out what they need and give them that. You'll naturally get referrals if you sell what the customer needs instead of what you want them to need. People won't typically brag about a platform or service they use, but they will brag about material things.  Try giving gifts to your clients to generate more referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. The key, however, is to give stuff people will use. Otherwise, it'll end up in someone's closet (or trash can.) If your rapport with the customer is strong enough, simply ask! David's major piece of advice: act out of love, not fear. It'll change not just your professional relationships but your personal ones as well. For more great content from David, check out his podcast  How We Solve. You can also learn more about his portfolio companies on his personal website https://www.davidhenzel.com/, and connect with him on LinkedIn to stay updated on everything he's doing! (And be sure to mention you came from The Sales Evangelist.) This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

The future of sales is evolving, with the main components of modern selling being drastically different from the pillars of sales twenty years ago. Namely, sales is no longer just managing people; it's managing software and technology. Today Donald is joined by Derrick Williams to learn how to manage technology while still providing the same level of interpersonal communication. Technology has become infinitely more important in the sales arena. Yet despite its importance, there is still a massive concentration on the people management side instead of the technical side. The modern sales leader needs technical aptitude to lead an effective team. Maximizing the effectiveness of sales engagement platforms, sequence building, and even data insights help sales professionals be more effective in their outreach efforts. It's not just using the platforms provided to you, but how can you structure and optimize all aspects of it (like importing contacts and information) Sales leadership sold in a completely different manner than salespeople today. Because of their experience, there might be a laggard mentality towards technology adoption, even in tech companies (yes, we see the irony.) Understanding the technology and how it works together can seem daunting, but you'll find much more success by leveraging it than you otherwise would. Technology has more applications than anyone initially thinks.  For example, do you want to know which SDRs are talking too much when interacting with customers? There's a technological way to determine that.  Sure, you could do most things without technology. But technology will create an unbiased report that is far faster and more accurate than doing it on your own. (As well as saving time and resources.) If you don't have the time or money to acquire technology platforms, leverage third-party implementation consultants (which exist in virtually every industry.) How do you determine where to implement technology in your business? Put your process to paper. Use whatever tools you have to create a simple play-by-play of what SDRs go through each day. What software are they using? What's involved in their process? Have salespeople give honest feedback and determine where in the process there are the most issues. Derrick's final fast fact? Casual Friday does not mean casual effort. To contact Derrick, follow him on Instagram or LinkedIn, and visit his company website. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

From small entrepreneurial startups to major corporations, customer loyalty and customer service are vital for business. After all, without customers, would you be able to stay in business? In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Brad Cleveland, author, speaker, and something, to learn Brad's five steps leaders should take to build customer loyalty. Establish a vision. Think REI: we inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship. It's clear, concise, and anyone hearing it will know exactly what the company is about. Visions aren't exclusive to companies; they should be for individuals too. So why do you do what you do?  Tap into innovation. As you interact with your contacts, prospects, and customers, think about what you can learn from the exchange. The more you pay attention to the root causes driving interactions with your customers, the better you'll be able to serve them. Cast a wide net of listening. Brainstorm every possible way a customer might try to interact with you. Between email, social media, physical, website forms, there's a myriad of potential sources you have to be prepared to listen to. The quietest voices can be the most powerful, but you've got to be willing to hear them. Build your approach around ten customer expectations. Customer expectations aren't changing; be responsive, be available, simple things that just make common sense. Find ways to provide the service your customer wants. Build processes around recurring problem areas. Even after implementing the four previous steps, you might still encounter recurring frustrations, and that's normal.  If this happens, identify those problem areas and work to solve those issues. Then, develop processes that avoid or fix the areas moving forward. Brad's major takeaway? Be uniquely you. There might be things you can learn from other people or organizations, but trying to emulate them will prevent you from developing the authentic relationships you want. Visit him at bradcleveland.com to view his courses, get in contact with him, and find out more about his journey. Read his book Leading the Customer Experience and visit the International Customer Management Institute to find a community of professionals dedicated to providing the perfect customer experience. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

With every other major field in the business world, professionals undergo years of training and education to learn the standard practices, techniques, and skills to make them successful. But with sales, it's the exact opposite. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Paul Fifield, CEO, and co-founder of Sales Impact Academy, to learn why the education system has overlooked sales (and what we can do to fix it.) It's okay to feel like you don't know what you're doing. Imposter syndrome is common in sales professionals because nobody is told what they should be doing. There is no structured learning or education in sales, which Paul deems “the greatest educational tragedy.” What if we applied a similar educational journey to finance? To reinforce the point, think about another important B2B profession: finance. What if the way you got into finance was to go get a degree in math and then just walk up and start working? It's absurd, yet that's exactly what happens in sales.  The core role of higher education is to equip people with the skills to contribute meaningfully to the economy. The pace of change for sales is too quick for it to be integrated easily into traditional education because traditional universities just can't keep up with these shifts. The result? Everybody feels like an imposter, and nobody follows the best practices. And the wheel is being reinvented each and every day. Some quick facts: A search on LinkedIn reveals 60 million people are in sales.  There's not even one book on revenue operations, yet over three million people hold revenue operations titles on LinkedIn. The GDP of B2B companies is roughly 43 trillion dollars, and that staggering amount of money is resting on the sales staffed by people who've never been educated on their positions. How can we make an impact and these changes to teach sales principles? Educate yourself. Learn the sales standards and educate around those standards.  That's the platform Paul's company solves by teaching these standards and best practices. Paul's major takeaway? Get a subscription for the sales academy (yes, it's a shameless plug. But it really will help!) To connect with Paul, connect with him on LinkedIn or reach out to him at paul@thesalesimpact.io or +44 075-988-3543. Visit The Sales Impact Academy to find courses and learnings that will help you in your sales career. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Because of the hustle and bustle salespeople experience each day, it can be challenging to be our most focused and productive selves. So what steps can we take to be more productive throughout the day? Today, Donald is joined by Janice B. Gordon to learn her tips for staying focused and energized throughout the day. Always listen to your body: Janice does yoga and meditation, which she's been doing for nearly forty years. .If you enjoy what you do, that makes all the difference. She chooses to focus on energy management because many people, especially after the pandemic, feel low energy and motivation. People think pulling a 10, 12 or 15 hour day is productive. But you are far less effective pulling these days than focusing your time and energy for shorter lengths of time. Symptoms arise if you don't address your personal energy needs. You just feel negative. And instead of having a bad moment, you turn that moment into a bad day.  When you feel you're having a bad day, you are less productive and less likely to make the most of the time you have available. The four dimensions of energy: Physical energy - All the nutrients going into your body. Exercise and recovery time can bring up your physical energy. Emotional energy is the interconnectedness between people and is the energy that suffered because of the pandemic. There is less interaction with others, be it in the office, at a restaurant, or even around the neighborhood. Mental energy is associated with thinking and problem-solving. As sales professionals, we use this form of energy all the time. For this energy type, practicing drastically helps cultivate this energy. However, ensure you take mental breaks. Spiritual energy - This is your purpose and mission. Spiritual energy influences your character, your personality, and your choices. This is the overarching concept that connects your different energies. If your spiritual energy is low, your motivation will suffer. To solve this, take a mindful walk. Notice and observe what's around you and empty your brain. Then, when you go back to the office, you'll be incredibly focused and productive. Listen to your body and give it what it needs.  Always have water at your desk, and drink it constantly. To get more content from Janice, check out her podcast, the Scale Your Sales Podcast (and check out episode 95 to listen to Donald's guest appearance!) You can also connect with Janice on LinkedIn. Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Where is the future of selling? The future of selling is here. For anyone thinking of joining the professional sales world, or who knows someone who wants to join sales, or knows someone who knows someone (I'm sure you get the idea), this is the series for you. In today's episode, Donald gives three things every seller needs to know about the future of selling. Your plays are outdated. When you think of sports like football, you think of the playbook that dictates the different actions the team might take. Unfortunately, sales has become way too similar to that. Many organizations try to streamline the sales process and provide plays for salespeople to follow. While great in theory, it doesn't work when every salesperson runs the same plays. To make it worse? Not only are salespeople doing it, but the prospects are as well! Bring something unique to the table by using a revenue-centric approach. How does the company you want to work with making money? Go rogue. Business development representatives need to think differently because prospects want you to come to the table with business problems. Don't just try to offer sales or marketing help when interacting with a prospect. Instead, ask the right questions, find their specific problem, and address those issues. Sales and marketing need to come together.  An article from Forbes states that sales and marketing can “no longer work in tandem.” Being aligned is no longer sufficient; the departments need to be integrated. Place the customer journey first, and develop a curated buying experience for the consumer instead of building different components for the same building. What or where do you think the future of sales is going to be? Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey and share your thoughts and response. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Sometimes all it takes to differentiate from the competition successfully is to think past the first solution. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the co-founder of Leaddelta, Ved Rasic, to learn how he launched a successful company after thinking past the first solution.  Understand the main assumptions of a crowded market: If you're in a crowded market, that means there's a demand. The leading mistake salespeople make: they scan what others do and try to repeat it. Your goal should be to move past that first option (option A) and create option B. Understand how people arrive at the stage where they need your product. To do this successfully, know the pain points and goals of your customers. Once you understand the why, how do you differentiate based on those pain points? For the small businesses that utilize full-cycle sale reps, you have several interactions with your customers. It's cliche, but listen to those interactions. Don't just listen for phrases you want to hear, but understand their problems and goals to determine how to help them best. Be curious. Let prospects talk more because that often leads to higher closing rates. Leaddelta can be incredibly helpful in differentiation. The platform is essentially a table or CRM-style view of your first-degree LinkedIn connections.  This setup makes LinkedIn a better platform because it provides a spam-free, ad-free environment to add notes, tags and save time. Leaddelta has over 1400 users, and 50% are paid. And that's what you can get from thinking about the option B perspective. The typical salesperson collects LinkedIn connections like Pokemon cards. Instead, use those connections to create powerful relationships. Think about what customers talk about that makes them want a product or service.  Use storytelling to help you become a better sales rep. Follow Ved on LinkedIn and Twitter, and visit his company website at leaddelta.com for more information. Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

A fundamental aspect of sales is communication (that much is obvious.) But no matter how good at communicating you are, if you're speaking a different language than the prospect, your chance of landing the sale is slim. As we continue our series stressing the importance of differentiation, Donald is joined by the co-founder of FiveRings Marketing, Shaheem Alam, to learn how to speak like the prospect to make a lasting (and positive) impression.  What does that mean to speak your customer language?   It's basic psychology: people buy from people they like, and people like people similar to themselves. There are tons of resources on mirroring body language, tonality, and matching behavior. But one of those key points is just speaking their language. Think of it like a teacher; everyone has different learning styles. By speaking your customer's language, you're helping them understand and educate themselves in the best way possible.   Shaheem learned this strategy by going straight to the source: his customers. When a customer is buying a product, they're buying it to do a job for them. For example, you might buy pizza at Domino's or a fancy pizza place. But both restaurants serve different jobs.  Domino's is for fast pizza to feed your kids for dinner. The fancier place might be for a date or the experience rather than just the food. So when Shaheem interacted with his past customers, he asked what jobs were they ultimately trying to accomplish. The answer, obviously, is to get more sales. But why? To attract investors and raise funds? To demonstrate product-market fit?  The job is seldom just to generate more sales.  Figure out why your client wants to do that to understand your value and contributions. When speaking to a customer, Shaheem doesn't tell them he'll get leads or meetings or sales - he tells them he helps with customer discovery and product-market fit. Don't sell yourself the way everyone else is; sell yourself in a way that demonstrates unique value and an ability to discover a prospect's underlying needs. If a company tries to put you in a typical mold, say no and emphasize the unique value you bring to the table. Shaheem's major takeaway? Do everything you can to understand your customers. Learn how they behave, think, and speak, because that's who buys and pays for your product. Visit his company website to get in contact with Shaheem or connect with him on LinkedIn. You can also visit his company's LinkedIn page for more information. Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Email, cold calls, and LinkedIn messages are all great avenues to connect with your prospect.  But perhaps the most underutilized component of the sales process is (spoiler alert) the proposal itself. Whether you're a newly established business or one of international renown, an enticing proposal dramatically helps your business efforts. And today, Donald is joined by co-founder and CEO of Proposify, Kyle Racki, to learn how sales leaders and teams can understand the power of the proposal. Your proposal is a unique space to differentiate yourself from the competition. When a prospect asks for more information, typically a salesperson sends a google doc with raw numbers, small print, and terms and conditions. In other words, you're missing a critical marketing touchpoint where you can tell your story. The result? Your proposal will be dumped in the (virtual or physical) trash. Create a proposal that isn't just a series of words. You're pitching to a person, not a machine. There's a thought process behind it that can lead to a better and more personal proposal. Proposals that include images close at a higher rate. Nobody will read a 10-20 page document, but people will skim a proposal for the highlights. Framing your text with images will make it far easier to read. Including images and video makes for a more engaging and interactive experience that communicates the experience of actually working with the company. Other overlooked proposal elements:  Sometimes people will accept the first proposal they get, regardless of pricing or offerings. And even if there are discrepancies, there is a positive correlation between the speed of proposal delivery and closing rates. If you make a prospect wait two weeks for a proposal, they'll have already solved the problem or found a different solution. 16% of proposals are won within 5 minutes of it being sent, and 42% within 24 hours. If your prospect opens it twice, they're interested. But if they open it four or more times, the chance to close goes down. The great thing about the proposal file is that you can see proposal open rates and how many times people click through it. Proposal reviews, whether over-the-phone or in-person, with the prospect, lead to better closing rates because you can clarify points and directly address potential objections. Kyle's major takeaway? If you put more effort into sending a fast proposal (and still put effort into it) you'll edge out most of the competition. Check out proposify.com to check out the platform and their blog, which contains helpful sales and proposal information. You can also connect with Kyle directly on LinkedIn. Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

When it comes to sales, standing out from the competition often comes down to how successfully you differentiate yourself from competitors. But how can we do that? Today on The Sales Evangelist,  Donald is joined by Mark Harari, author, podcaster, and VP of Remodelers Advantage, to discuss how you can position yourself to stand out in a crowded market.  The one thing you should do to differentiate yourself: The one thing Mark recommends (and he discusses further in his book) is to identify what makes you unique. You're facing other people, products, and platforms just as good as you who do the same thing. So what sets you apart? What sets you apart and differentiates you can be what leads to a prospect selecting you over someone else. Differentiation is critical. If you don't have that differentiating factor, the selection comes down to price, which isn't good for anybody. Instead, make yourself the obvious choice. A common barrier to differentiation is targeting an entire area of people rather than focusing on a specific section of people you can connect and interact with. To find your ideal target group (if you're an existing company), go back to your past client list and identify the best types of people you worked with.  For new businesses, there might be trial and error. But try to identify who you think would be the ideal fit for your company and adjust as you continue to grow and develop. The six parts of a successful positioning statement: Identify your target Identify their unmet need (which your service or product solves) Frame your competitors Find your point of difference: What makes you unique  Reasons to believe: Statements that empower and prove the point of difference. Brand personality Discovering that unmet need: There are two components to an unmet need: functional and emotional. People rarely have a personal functional need. That means capitalizing on your unique value to address the emotional need is where you can stand out.  Mark's major takeaway? Identifying your unique selling proposition can be challenging. To find yours, try thinking backward. What goes wrong when a company works with a bad seller or product? How could you prevent those bad things from happening? That could help you identify where you differentiate in the process. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn, and check out his book at bethelobster.com or find it on Amazon. Then, join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow alongside! This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

As we kick off our latest series on the importance of differentiation from competition in the sales process, Donald is joined by Tim Pollard to learn more about message building. As the CEO of Oratium, he's learned the importance of messaging that delivers results and makes an impact on its audience.   The most common messaging problems: There is no differentiation. Differentiation has to be embedded somewhere. Otherwise, you will not be memorable. Three toxic mistakes characterize the way we structure messaging: We pack too much into messaging. Forty-slide decks are overwhelming, and nobody pays attention to them. Most modern sales messaging is too confusing or has an unclear value proposition. Almost all messaging is self-oriented. It's about the salesperson or their company instead of relating it to the client. This leads to two problems: The initial sales meeting isn't compelling.  Most messaging fails the retellability test.   The goal shouldn't be first meeting success; it should be second meeting success. You should tell your story in that first sales meeting. But It's even more about that person's ability to retell your story and solution in their private meeting with a decision-maker later on (AKA the second meeting.)  Sales messaging has an important goal: retellability. You can't speak just to the interest of the person in the meeting, you have to talk to the interests of that next meeting. This is even more difficult when virtual. It's more complicated than remembering to wear pants; it's moving a social practice to an asocial environment.   Think about the clarity and specificity of your message. If you have too much information, you have even less chance of keeping attention. The loss of feedback and social cues when virtual can be a barrier to success. It's a paradox of communication - we do things we hate to experience ourselves. We go back and do the things that don't work - it's out of habit and it's easy to continue to do it. And nobody has ever given a workable model.   The true key to breaking bad habits is to teach a workable and different solution. You've got to know your story. If you're reading from a deck, you won't succeed. To learn how to develop better communication habits, check out Tim's books The Compelling Communicator and Mastering the Moment. Oratium has a ten-lesson e-learning for designing and executing a sales conversation, designed specifically for a virtual environment, on their website. Tim's major takeaway? Many people try to whittle down their messaging by cutting a deck from 50 to 25 slides. Just stop using the deck altogether! Instead, fundamentally restructure your communication to no longer use a failed model. Create an aligned messaging structure based on what works. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.   Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with!   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Today's episode kicks off the latest Sales Evangelist series: differentiating from your competitors! As we move into this series, it's time you learn three easy ways you can stand out from the competition. (Best of all, the majority of sales reps aren't doing these things.)  But why is differentiating critical? You have so many other salespeople to compete against.  When one person stands out from the other, they're more likely to land the sale (even if your products do the exact same thing.) Be curious. Most salespeople go into a conversation and ask boilerplate questions. The problem? Everyone asks those questions, so you aren't getting any more information than your competition.  Sales reps should come to the table with information that leads to better questions, which means finding the right intel. Not only what the prospect and their company are doing, but why they're doing it.  Stay one step ahead. Determine how you can be one step ahead of the competition.  Have an agenda when you go into the meeting. Send a recap email once you're finished. If a prospect sees those things, they'll see the effort and understand that you want to make positive changes for their organization. Especially when you have a meeting with a business executive, they might have 15 meetings a day. Sending an agenda shows these business professionals that you mean business. Be creative. Think outside the box! Find ways you can do something other people simply don't do. Find some way to personalize a message. Handwrite a note. Send a small gift. Just try to make yourself stand out, and the prospect will notice. And of course, a bonus tip: make them look good: Make the prospect look good, either internally or externally.  Maybe you write a nice post on LinkedIn talking about them, adding a quote they said to show you were paying attention.  Mention an article they published or were posted in, and share that with your audience. They'll certainly appreciate the sentiment! Join Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with! This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Today's plan is simple: Donald is sharing his number one productivity strategy for sales. What is it? Find out on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist.    Focus on one thing at a time. (Earth-shattering, I know.) This idea might not be crazy, but the results that come of it sure can be. Only 2.5% of people are able to multitask successfully. (That's a very slim number of people.) That means you probably can't respond to clients, check your email, and prospect on LinkedIn while maintaining the standards you would for just one thing. But even if you can, no matter how productive you are, it isn't as efficient as focusing on one singular task at hand.   How does this affect our productivity? You get an email. You leave your current task to check your email. That email leads you to check your availability for a get-together. You check Facebook for information about the get-together. You start to watch videos while on Facebook. Before you know it, an hour has gone by, and you still haven't finished the task at hand. Sound familiar?  Donald's advice? Close the tabs and remove the distractions that aren't conducive to the task at hand. Even you're one of the 2.5% who can actually multitask, do what you can to ensure you're giving your best to the task at hand, and only do one thing if you find yourself slacking or not performing your best. Create the proposal or update the CRM. But close ESPN, Facebook, and those 15 different google docs.  Remember, the more productive you are throughout your day, the more tasks you're able to check off.   Do you have a productivity hack? Share it in Donald's Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers! (But don't do it while working on something. We'll be here when you're done.)   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

When you have sales meetings with your prospects, the last you need is a boring presentation turning people away from your awesome content. You want them to get excited! And on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Alex Dripchak, relationship manager at Mercer, to give us his inside tips to learn how to lead, run, and organize effective meetings.   Why is Alex so passionate about demystifying sales? Alex founded and runs Commence, a college to career development skill program. He's also recently published a book on destigmatizing sales for younger people, which breaks down the positive traits and skills salespeople have. With 57 U.S. colleges having an official sales major, the word “sales” is slowly become less of a dirty word. However, there is an entrenched viewpoint people need to overcome.   How can you lead effective meetings in your sales life? There are components of meetings, whether virtual or in-person, that just suck. Namely, when people push their own agendas down your throat. So, how instead can you turn that into an effective meeting? Structure your meetings around reaching individual goals that lead to the end result. Keep yourself dynamic and versatile in responding to the needs of individual clients. Ask better questions that lead to higher engagement to encourage the prospect's voice. To save time, create a framework to use for every first call, contract negotiation, or meeting with a specific purpose. Then, tailor that framework for individual clients, so you don't recreate the wheel each time.   The Three Strategies: Shut up and listen Develop effective questions Rehearse and practice   Of course, what would TSE be without a bonus strategy? Understand the subtlety between question and engagement prompts.  The default is inertia, or lack of movement. Get your prospects to engage with you. For example, Alex responds, “did I answer your question in full” after answering a prospect's question. Not only does this put the onus on himself, but it also encourages prospects to further indicate if they need more explanation.  Integrate engagement prompts throughout a presentation or meeting to keep people focused. Don't set aside 20 minutes for a Q&A that may or may not be needed. Stop treating people as roles, prospects, and managers. Think of them as people. They aren't just invested in the company, they're invested in themselves.    Alex's major takeaway: Especially in complex sales, make sure you spend time proportionally to its importance. If you aren't bordering on something tedious and tiresome for an important task, you haven't gone far enough.   To get in contact with Alex, you can find him at his website (which includes links and information to his new book), his coaching website for current college students and recent graduates, or connect with him on LinkedIn.   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Developing a sales pitch can be time-consuming and challenging, especially when creating an entirely new presentation or document each time. But there's undoubtedly an easier process, right? That's exactly what today's guest did. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Jason Lapp, the president and COO of Beautiful.ai, to explain how you can cut your pitch development time in half. But first, what is a pitch? Pitches can look wildly different for each person and company. Some might be an in-person meeting, some just a document, and others somewhere in between. In today's world of remote selling, you have to be highly engaging, have great content, and be precise.   The biggest change? You can no longer expect a decision at that moment. You have to focus on the follow-up, sending the right information, in addition to the pitch itself. A big challenge with creating a deck is finding a balance between premade content and content for your specific pitch.  Branding should always be consistent, but the method you convey aspects of your pitch could vary. There are 30 million presentations created per day, and over 1 billion people with presentation software installed on their desktops. The challenge? Those common presentation platforms were created 30 years ago. Platforms like Canva and Beautiful.ai don't force people to start from scratch; they provide a starting point to get things done faster. Beautiful.ai focuses on design automation. You create content based on what you want to say while the platform designs for you.  Marketing departments can (and should) build out templates to provide starting points for the salesperson. This way, salespeople have pre-approved content they can then tweak for their specific client. Creating a pitch: Once you know what you want to present, storyboard concepts before production. Storyboarding cuts down time by filling in the dots instead of plotting out where the dots need to go. Use some sort of collaborative platform, especially in today's virtual marketplace. Salespeople need to focus on sales. They shouldn't waste time on marketing elements when they could have pre-approved templates with design elements pre-approved. Somebody out there is asking, “why not use google slides?” Google slides is excellent. Any platform that allows for collaboration is certainly a step in the right direction. The challenge with slides, keynote, or PowerPoint is that they are primarily design softwares. You can use old decks, but you then make each design edit yourself, whereas Beautiful.ai makes design decisions for you.  We do things as sales professionals that were established over the decades. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's right. We no longer have to be designers.  Jason's major takeaway? Don't reinvent the wheel. If you're creating a pitch, you should have content and templates to start from. Don't spend time designing, spend time on selling. To contact Jason, visit his company website Beautiful.ai, and the software is free to trial and use. And, anybody that mentions they came from The Sales Evangelist gets 25% off! (How can you resist that?) This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Time management is often considered one of the essential skills to master in the professional world. As one of the resources we never seem to have enough of, time certainly is a resource to use to the best of our abilities. But today's guest, Antonio Thornton, argues that time management doesn't exist. How does it not? Check out today's episode of The Sales Evangelist to find out! Why does time management not exist?  How many hours in the day do you have? 24. Just like everyone else. You can't manage time, but you can manage yourself according to time. Managing yourself within time comes down to three main criteria: monitoring, monetizing, and maximizing your time. Monitoring your time: Most people have no idea what they're doing. Most people confuse busy with productive - they do not equate. Productive does not equate to profitable.  The productivity paradox: People tend to focus on tasks that make them feel productive, even if they aren't profitable. Cleaning out your inbox or desk and shuffling papers might keep you busy, but those tasks aren't productive. Monetizing your time: There is no difference between each other's times. Most of us spend time on activities that don't generate revenue - responding to email, completing training, and updating websites. While these things might be necessary, they aren't RGAs: revenue-generating activities. It doesn't matter how much work you put into these activities; you won't make any money no matter how much time you contribute. Learning and training are productive tasks, and research is a productive activity that can inform you before a sales call, but those tasks in of themselves aren't profitable. If you only do those tasks, you will not make a single dollar. Whether you're a salesperson or entrepreneur, there's only one thing that makes money in sales: getting an offer in front of people. Maximizing your time: The difference between a salesperson who generates $60,000 versus $6 million is all in what they do each day. Ask yourself how you can leverage what you're doing to create an exponential result. Find the tasks and projects you can accomplish that lead to a higher amount of RGA. Antonio's final takeaway? Time is our most valuable commodity. To have a great life, moderate, monetize, and maximize your time. To get in touch with him, visit his company website or send an email to time@timebank.gps.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

In many organizations, to get to the decision-maker, you have to get past a gatekeeper. So how do you get to them? Getting past that gatekeeper is a common challenge among salespeople. But we wanted to change that. So we brought in EksAyn “Eks” Anderson, the man who's got the key to the metaphorical gate. And on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, he shares his strategies to get to your decision-makers. Eks is more than just a salesperson.  In addition to speaking, training, and coaching for different organizations, Eks is also the author of The Key to the Gate. His book is an excellent resource for anyone who encounters difficulty reaching their desired decision-maker. Why people have a hard time getting to the decision-makers: Decision-makers don't have time to talk to every single salesperson or person who wants a meeting. They employ gatekeepers (like a secretary, receptionist, or employee) to weed out people who might be wasting their time.  Strategies to get past the gatekeeper: Know that no organization is the same. What might work at one place might fail elsewhere. Apply the principle of positive reinforcement. When somebody does something helpful for you, reward them immediately.  Start higher than you think you need because influence flows downhill. If you're in doubt about where to start in the organization, call the higher person than you think you need. Often, they'll know who to speak to be in a position for success.  Is cold calling dead? It's so easy to send mass emails or LinkedIn messages. And from a decision-maker's perspective, they might want a service but have no time to wade through the immense amount of communication they receive each day.  To find more success, differentiate yourself from your competitors. Something as small as complimenting the secretary or researching some quick facts on your phone could make all the difference.  When the person you talk with provides names of others within the organization, note those names and their positions within the company.  If you understand the team and their positions within the organization, you'll give a sense of deep familiarity with the company.  Eks' final takeaway? Find out the principles of human relations to sales and then base your techniques around principles that work. If you understand certain principles, you'll develop a thousand techniques to apply that principle. Techniques work because they're backed by real principles. Connect with Eks through his website on www.xfactoredge.com or call him directly at 801-669-2425. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Working in sales would be infinitely more manageable if you could get the gatekeeper to work for you instead of against you. But how do you start that process? In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Taskdrive's general manager Daniel Viduya to discuss making the gatekeeper an advocate through lead research.     Sales isn't Lord of the Rings. While there can be a Gandalf “You shall not pass” situation when talking to a gatekeeper, there are ways to make them your advocate. Daniel's advice: Don't bro me until you know me; meaning you have no business talking about people in the company until you understand the company itself When convincing a gatekeeper to let you pass, personal information or questions about the decision-maker will not help you. Instead of talking about personal information, talk about the account itself and the problems they experience as a whole. See what difference you can make.   Demonstrate that you want to help and can provide solutions for that company's specific problem. It's about knowing the business and how you can help the business. The gatekeeper wants to see how you can help the business because the gatekeeper is working for the company, not necessarily for the decision-maker. The goal is to measure how quickly you could even get through the first stage of your cold call. And if you can't do that, then there's something that has to be fixed. And more often than not, people will tend to hang up on you if they don't understand your cold call's true intent and purpose.   How can you find information to start the right dialogue with the gatekeeper?  If you have a resource that can find this information for you consistently and constantly, day by day, then your SDR can simply rely on one thing that this resource can give.  It's about efficiency. And while multitasking is good, there are times when the prospect simply wants, needs, and deserves your full attention. There are several ways to save time while finding the information necessary to demonstrate knowledge to the gatekeeper. You could use an outsource provider, find someone inside your company, or even hire a freelancer. Your solution depends on your needs and your situation. The specific information you should find always depends on the target company itself. It could be recent team growth, acquisitions, new funding, or even a merger.   Daniel's final takeaway? Bring out what's best to help your SDRs be efficient. Limit admin tasks and have them focus on what they do best. To get in touch with Daniel, connect with him on LinkedIn or visit Testdrive.com to access Daniel's playbooks for better business.    This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Scoring a meeting with the decision-maker can be challenging, but creating allies within the target company can be your strategy for making progress. Sometimes all it takes to get past the gatekeeper is to build a solid relationship with them. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're going to do just that with the help of today's guest Kevin Cummings.   Kevin has worked in many different sales spaces, from industrial to medical to tech. .Throughout all his sales interactions, Kevin feels most confident when revisiting offices.  But even if it's the second, third, or fourth visit, he'll sometimes end up talking to people who act like it's his first (even if he's spoken to them several times.) To avoid that, Kevin makes an active effort to loop those people into the conversation. Make them feel as important as possible because while they aren't the “decision-maker,” they can make your job tremendously more difficult.   Make connections with the gatekeeper: Ask them what the best method is is to talk with them. Then, stop talking and let them identify how they want to interact with you. Many salespeople know the gatekeeper is essential, yet we treat them as if they aren't. You can't always determine who has the influence, so be nice to everyone. Beyonce says “hello” and “thank you” to everyone she meets. Be like Beyonce. When you're genuine with someone, they can feel it. But, conversely, being fake won't generate the results you want.   Don't be afraid to interact with the gatekeeper. Especially in the tech and medical fields, the actual decision-maker might not have the time or bandwidth to go out to lunch or have drinks with the salesperson. So why not do it with the gatekeeper? When Kevin does this, it's usually only about 15 minutes of business talk. The rest is just building a relationship and connection with the gatekeeper.  While that person can't make the decision, they'll remember you and want to get you in contact with the person that can. Your ultimate goal? Make everyone in the office your champion and advocate.   Help them, don't help yourself. Since Covid, many people in companies across the country have had to and continue to wear many hats. Don't try to sell immediately, and instead ask how you can take things off their plate. Be human, and do the thing that a good human would do. Don't put your title first. You might be a salesperson, but humanity comes before titles.   Kevin's major takeaway? Understand that your customers' objective in their job is not to buy your product or service. Everything you do should be about them, not about you.    National Sales Network, a nonprofit organization for black people in sales and marketing, has 17 chapters across the country. Visit the website to find networking events, skill workshops, and hiring opportunities on their website.    To get in touch with Kevin, connect with him on LinkedIn.   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

For many salespeople, the journey to the decision maker is difficult enough that they don't even know what to say once they get there! Do you have the strategy to move towards your desired outcome and close a deal? On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by speaker, author, and coach Oscar Chavez to learn what to do once you're over the guardwall. Why is this method important? Salespeople spend time with less influential people because they are easier to interact with, yet that salesperson ends up spinning wheels with they don't make decisions. Another common problem: when they get to the executive, they hyper-focus on the pitch. The solution to these problems? Think over the guardwall. You spend time preparing what to say, but in actuality, you need to be in a position to listen. Listen as an executive explains their pain points, objectives, and KPIs. Once you understand those critical points, you then can go to non-decision makers and explain results that will directly benefit them and their organization.  This familiarity will send you to the front of the queue over other projects. Three Strategies to Get Past the Gatekeeper: Fear: People are so scared of judgement and rejection they don't focus on targeting executives. It's much easier to have a conversation with people downstream. Mindset: Meetings have never been easier to schedule due to the rise of virtual meetings, yet many salespeople will claim the opposite. A change in mentality could be all you need to add value. Leave the “what if” mindset behind. Focus: Oftentimes salespeople will mass contact non-decision makers rather than take the time to target the executives and people able to make decisions. People are more guarded and less willing to spend. But the salesperson's level of fear, mindset, and focus can dramatically improve your chances. Oscar's final takeaway? Our beliefs determines our reality. If you aren't getting the right sales performance, it's because of the belief you have. To change your reality, change your beliefs. Get in touch with him on his website oscar-chavez.com, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Every salesperson is familiar with the frustration that comes with being blocked by a gatekeeper, which could be a physical person or even just a system or automation that prevents you from interacting with the decision-maker of your target organization. Imagine if you had five strategies (and maybe even a bonus strategy) to get past those gatekeepers and land sales. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is going to do just that.  Connect on LinkedIn  LinkedIn gives you a direct line to a purchaser and an opportunity to build a relationship with that person before you ever meet them face-to-face.  Don't just spam someone with offers and messages and instead build a relationship. Congratulate the prospect on a promotion, a recent accolade, or whatever has recently happened.  Bring Intelligence Let's say two people reach out to a prospect. One person gives a standard auto-message that could be sent to anyone, and the other person comes prepared with critical data relevant to the industry or organization. Who would you rather have a conversation with?   Use direct mail Think about ways you can stand out to a prospect. Even if it's just a $5 gift card to Starbucks, that person will be more willing to talk with you. Consider even providing a small gift for the gatekeeper to thank them for letting you through to the decision-maker; that might be all the difference between a sale and an unanswered email. Utilize referrals If you and the gatekeeper or prospect have a mutual connection, especially if that person is the one introducing you, you'll quickly get in touch with the people you want. Connect with other people within the company More and more enterprise deals are requiring more people to be in the purchasing conversation. If that's the case, connecting with other influencers within that team will give you a better chance for success. Tools like LucidChart help diagram and build out your organizational process to make the process easier. Bonus Strategy:  Start a podcast No podcast? Write a blog. Ask gatekeepers for the prospect to share ideas and thoughts on a topic or subject for a content piece.  In this case, you're bringing something to the table and offering the prospect a chance to collaborate on a piece of content that will help them, making it easier to get through the gatekeeper. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

The tactics, strategies, and practices of sales are constantly changing, and understanding how and where to adopt those changes into your sales strategy is critical to see success. So, on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by LinkedIn Senior Content Manager Sean Callahan to go over the seven sales trends identified in the 2021 LinkedIn Sales Report. Trend One: Virtual Selling is good for sellers and even better for buyers Buyers find it easier to buy remotely because they don't have to worry about finding meeting times or organizing physical logistics; it can all happen from the comfort of home. Trend Two: Remote Working is now a part of everyday life. While some companies are going back to the physical office, sales organizations and managers must adjust to remote working - it is now a fact of life. Trend Three: Sales organizations prevent sellers from putting buyers first. While 65% of sellers say they put their buyers first, only 23% of buyers say sellers put them first. There are a certain number of things that you can do to be buyer-first, like offering free content, training, and being transparent about pricing and other product details.  Only around 40% of organizations support these practices. And some of the suggested reasons organizations aren't allowing these practices are limited budgets, not having the proper skills, and a focus on short-term results rather than long-term sustainability. Trend Four: Six sales behaviors kill deals Delivering misleading information about a product (pricing or otherwise) Not understanding the company and its needs Not understand their own product or service Not understanding their competitor's products and services Affiliated with an untrustworthy brand  Repeated cold calling or emailing Trend Five: Sales technology is a key pathway to building trust Only 40% of buyers describe sales as trustworthy, yet 89% consider their specific salespeople as a trusted advisors The takeaway? The sales industry is seen as untrustworthy, but the individuals who work with buyers are seen differently. Trend Six: Data is more crucial than ever While partly because of Covid, salespeople might find it more challenging to get in front of people and ask questions. Instead, you have to use aggregated data to learn what you need. Trend Seven: Both buyers and sellers are ramping up their use of LinkedIn 74% of sellers are committed to expanding their LinkedIn network 51% of sellers plan to write more articles 40% share much more third-party content 36% share more of their own company's content How can people find and download the full report? By visiting lnkd.in/stateofsales2021. To get in contact with Sean, connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at scallahan@linkedin.com.   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

At the end of the day, sales leaders should be able to do what they have their team to do. Because sometimes you're telling them to do one thing when you do something entirely different. Today on The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Ruben Alvarez to discuss why team leaders should lead by example, not just through talking. Ruben learned to lead by example while leading a team. If you want somebody to do what you want them to, you're going to see resistance unless they see you do it as well.  Sales leaders might be setting unrealistic expectations for their team and not know it because they're no longer selling. Some people have been selling for 30 years, but with only one year of experience. Because they're drawing their management from only one year of actual selling, they might not be leading as effectively as they could be if they were up-to-date on the best sales practices. If you're not willing to get on the phone with your team and teach them how to close, you'll never see sales come in. The process isn't always how you want it to be, but how it needs to be. What should team leaders do to practice leading by example?  Hone your skills. Just like in any other industry, you encourage and motivate through showing. If you do something effectively and can either demonstrate or communicate how you did it effectively, people will want to follow you. Many sales leaders are afraid to demonstrate because it makes them seem vulnerable,  which leads to the team not viewing you as a leader. But leaders inspire hope. You can be vulnerable and have people chew you out, but closing the deal is all that matters and all that the sales team wants to see. Finally, don't compromise the values you know your team has. You know what each person is capable of, and you know what's best for them. Company owners have an idea of what sales should look like. But their experiences might not align with what the sales team needs to do to be successful. If that is the case, stick up for what you know will work, or you might lose the respect of your team. Ruben's final takeaway: If you're afraid to pick up the phone, just admit it and pick up the phone. See what happens. Regardless of what ends up happening, you'll feel better about it. Connect with Ruben Alvarez on LinkedIn or check out his website rubenalvarez.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.  

Can sales make the world a better place? The principles we learn in sales can be used almost anywhere. And yes, that includes making the world around us a better place. Today's guest, Scott Roy, joins us in the studio to share how he uses his sales skills to do good and help those around him. Scott has worked in the sales industry for over twenty years. He and his business partner Roy Whitten created Whitten and Roy Partnership, a sales consultancy called when teams aren't reaching their sales goals. Their main selling point (pun intended)? The DQ selling methodology. With the DQ methodology, Roy and Whitten can sell life-changing and life-saving goods and services to developing countries.  How do they apply selling principles to do good? About 20 years ago, there was a sudden interest in applying business principles to address areas that typically used aid and philanthropy. When done well and ethically, the sales conversation convinces people unfamiliar with concepts to buy into these materials and supplies that will give them a better way of life. Scott's primary example is selling water filtration systems. In areas where people use the same water source for drinking, bathing, and using the restroom, the people there are afflicted with diarrhea and other diseases. Scott's team works to convince these people why they should use a water filtration system by explaining both the cost benefit and health benefit the people will receive. Using DQ to make a change: DQ is short for business intelligence, the fundamental component for Scott's selling process. If you're going to change behavior, you have to penetrate deeper than simply finding a problem and then selling directly to that problem. DQ selling starts with the problem and stays on the issue so the prospect can realize it is a problem worth solving. Scott's major takeaway:  Determine your purpose as a salesperson. If it's just to pitch, persuade, and convince, that's not necessarily wrong. But it would be so much better if you figure out how to use your skills to serve others and find passion in the people you're serving. To get in contact with Scott and learn more about his work, visit his company website. Check out Scott and Roy's books Decision Intelligence Selling and Sell Well, Do Good. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Salespeople have heard the mantra thousands of times: talk less, listen more. But why? And more importantly, how? In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by leadership advisor Victoria Song to learn how salespeople (and anyone else) can balance listening and talking. Why do people talk so much? While there are many reasons, Victoria suggests that people who felt unheard as a child might overshare in an attempt to bridge understanding. In general, when we want things to go our way, we think that if we can get the other person to see it our way, they'll agree. That leads to talking too much. In actuality, people mirror one another. So, listening rather than talking will lead someone to reciprocate and hear you. Victoria's top components for a golden ratio: The talking-to-listening ratio is not a one-size-fits-all. But in general, a 50/50 split is a great place to start. However, the more escalated a conversation is, the more Victoria recommends you back off and give the other person more time to speak. It also comes down to personality - if you tend to speak first and jump into conversations, listen 70-80% of the time and vice versa. What to do in a disagreement: Rather than sit on opposite sides of a board room table, sit on the same side. Look at the problem from the same perspective, and by working on the same side, you'll feel more like a team. Think about the story attached to identity. When in disagreement, we sometimes realize we aren't talking about the topic anymore. We're making up a story around our identity, making it personal. The more we can be transparent with ourselves and the other party, the more likely we are to get to a place where we can hear each other better. Contraction vs. Expansion Victoria's new book Bending Reality defines two clear states a person can be in: contraction or expansion. Contraction is the state where your nervous system is activated (think fight-or-flight response.) On the other hand, expansion is a relaxed state conducive to creativity and problem-solving.  When in a work environment, putting yourself in an environment that encourages expansion will lead to success. How to be in a state of expansion: One way to improve our access to expansion is to notice when our nervous system is activated.  Notice your fuel for motivation, and use that to keep yourself in the proper headspace (both mentally and physically.) Part of accessing expansion is to start to get clear on what are your clean, sustainable fuels. Discover your purpose, uncover your values, and figure out what brings you joy. The more we can cultivate doing things we enjoy, the more we train our nervous system to be conditioned to a state of expansion. Applying this framework to sales: Ask yourself if you are in a state of contracting or expanding, especially when talking to prospects. Are you confident enough to ask effective questions? You want to get out of your head. It's not just about mental preparation; it's cultivating the physical state. If you felt unprepared for a meeting, one way to cultivate the state of expansion would be to establish a sense of trust. This can come from practice and repetition.  Victoria's parting advice: Listening happens with your whole body.  When we tune in and listen to our entire body, we understand insights and cues that we wouldn't be picking up otherwise. To get in contact with Victoria, check out her website, www.victoriasong.me.  Victoria's book Bending Reality is available for preorder! Preorder now to get free bonus access to powerful coaching techniques Victoria uses for her clients. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.  

Sales is all about solving problems. But are you going about solving problems the right way? In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by guest Bryan Kelly to discuss how we can ask more beautiful questions, using the book A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger as a framework.   Phase One: Why? When we ask ‘why,' it requires you to adjust the way you look at the world. There are three different ways to get into this mentality. First, step back and disengage. Taking a break will break up your routine and help inspiration strike. Next, challenge your assumptions. Whether they're your assumptions or the assumptions of others, asking questions about your current process will help you find new avenues to explore. Finally, question the questions. Reframe a question to challenge the expected answer.  Remember the five why's. (Literally ask the question “why” five times in a row to get to the root understanding of the situation.)   Phase Two: Wondering “What If?” Get everybody (including yourself) to avoid thinking about specifics. Similar to phase one, there are a few practices you can implement: Combinatorial thinking is one method where you look at combining existing practices and how that combination can lead to new possibilities. Next, you can live with the question. We often try to answer questions in the moment, but that's not usually necessary. Instead, take time to relax and distance yourself from a problem to view the situation with a fresh perspective.  Finally, think of wrong ideas. It might seem counterproductive, but this process can help lead to the concept you need.   Phase Three: Determining How We want to jump to the “how” of a solution, but there's a reason it's the last stage. If you start there, you're missing the critical time to go deeper into the question itself. Converge the ideas you've explored into one idea worth pursuing and share it for feedback. Give form to the ideas you've worked through. Before you go and ask others for feedback, bring the idea to life.  In other industries, it might look like a prototype. In the sales space, write a summary, proposal, chart, or whatever would help people give the best feedback. Rapidly test and learn. If you have several potential solutions, run a quick test to see how the change affects your problem.    Bryan's final takeaway: Instead of jumping to the “how,” first think about the “why.” To get in touch with Bryan, visit his website getstrokeofgenius.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.   This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.   But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.   This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.   We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by founder and CEO of Whale Boss, Ryan Staley. As a sales consultant who helps sales executives double their income, he's learned from and watched many different organizations, thus knowing how you can hire top sellers with little experience at your company.  Why did Ryan start a consultancy firm? Ryan noticed there are many things he took for granted working for a large organization that small business owners, startups, and SaaS companies weren't doing. That was part of the reason he founded his consultancy firm, because he wanted to coach CEOs on those things. Small businesses, startups, and SaaS companies do an amazing job building products or services, but they don't talk to thier customers after they sell them the deal. Maintaining a structured value process will exponentially increase referrals and revenue. Ryan's corporate job showed him the power of a good team: Working over sixty hours a week got Ryan to a point where all his relationships started to melt down. The constant travel and excessive hours meant he didn't have time for family, friends, or himself. What did he do about it? He rebuilt himself and his mentality about work, and his job performance soared to new heights. He was given the opportunity to build a team to support his work. However, that meant he had to figure out what looked for in a new person. He determined 5 components he looked for in a new hire: Did they have a hunger to be a top performer? What was the biggest takeaway from that job and why did they leave? He would ask for people to articulate their contributions and results - if they couldn't, their claims are BS What do they do to develop outside of work? What's the most important thing they spend time on outside of work? People might default to family, but finding people with a passion and interest and what lights them up shows how coachable they are. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Donald is remote on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, as he's speaking at the sales conference Outbound. Be on the lookout for next year's conference! Today's episode of TSE is simple: we're going retro. A brief TSE history. Donald quit his job in July of 2015, and The Sales Evangelist became his full-time gig. Originally the show was only two episodes per week, but it soon expanded to three per week. (because we just love delivering sales content to all of our amazing listeners.) After participating in Podcast Movement for a couple of years, TSE started to create episodes five days a week. But we realized our listeners are busy, and five episodes a week might be too much content, so we doubled back to three episodes per week. TSE is going retro. Donald thought our downloads would go down when the episode frequency dropped. But surprisingly, it didn't. In fact, it did better in some instances.  We want to deliver better content. More research. More awesome guests. And that takes time. To create the best content possible, The Sales Evangelist is dropping back to two episodes per week. You'll see the same length of content but with more storytelling. We're going back to our roots, so we're delivering two high-quality episodes per week. Our YouTube videos are also going to be more condensed than ever. If you're anything like us, the thought of a YouTube video longer than five minutes is a bit daunting. So we're going to trim our videos to give you the highlights of the episode. Do you want more TSE content? Join our Sales Evangelizers groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

It doesn't matter if you're leading a team of one or one hundred, becoming a better sales leader can always lead to positive change within your organization. And on today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Tim Kintz to discuss four areas to promote strengths and identify weaknesses as a sales leader: lead, manage, train, and coach. Lead Managers are often the least trained employees. And especially for those internally promoted, they might not know how to navigate that change with respect to their fellow employees. As a sales leader, you need to help your employees develop long-term goals. Once those goals are in place, you can work together to set specific and actionable milestones to reach them. Manage You lead people; you manage things. Are you organized as a sales leader? Do you schedule out your day to accomplish what you need? Not only do you need to manage your time and activities, but you need to manage the statistics and tendencies of your people. Consider managing the detail-focused aspect of leading; it's a numbers-driven component that can ensure you and your people reach your goals. Train Success is all about having a straightforward, repeatable process. Do your employees know what they need to do to be successful 100% of the time? This process doesn't mean they'll achieve perfection every time, but they'll at least know what steps can get them to that goal. Training isn't just telling, it's selling. Show them how the training you want them to do positively affects their performance. Tim encourages his employees to take ownership of their training. If they have a hand in developing the decision or route of action, they'll be more likely to stick with it. Mental ownership comes before physical or financial ownership. Coach Just because you know something doesn't mean you can do it; practice and repetition are the mothers of learning. Amateurs practice until they get it right, but pros practice until they can't get it wrong. Coaching isn't just about providing knowledge to your people; it's about taking time to practice with your people to help them get better. Tim's final takeaway? You have to earn the right to be a leader. Think of your people as emotional banks. Make consistent deposits through recognition and approval so you can make withdrawals without overdrawing that account. Check out Tim's book Fearless on Amazon or kintzgroup.com. If you want to get ahold of Tim, connect with him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

The digital shift of the workplace has manifested the need for digital company culture. Digital culture is necessary to improve internal relationships at your company, but it's integral in expanding your social reach as a company and developing a following that gives you business. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're joined by Tacie Avedikian, VP of Digital Development at Little Bird Marketing, to learn how companies can embrace digital culture to develop a social influence. But first, what does Tacie mean by social influence? The original meaning has shifted a bit in terms of how people use social media.  Leveraging influencers from B2C platforms like Instagram or Facebook and transferring those things into more B2B platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter is critical.  The challenges of hiring new team members:  In the current age, being seen online is critical in bringing in suitable candidates. Because of this digital world, company-wide social influence is vital to attract candidates and clients. You attract candidates through sharing valuable content and having employees who advocate for your company. Despite the importance of online culture, you rarely see someone from HR actively promoting on LinkedIn and advocating for their company. When you want to look for somebody, the first thing we do is look online, read reviews, and understand company values. Companies need to ensure their company and themselves are seen and available for this process. What's the first thing if we wanted to the action plan, and who should lead this? Most importantly, ensure it's not just one person or department pushing. It's a team effort to create a digital culture. Learn to be authentic when sharing about the company and yourself. When you create a relationship with someone and see that you're enjoying the company you work for, people get engaged and want to know more. How can I help my team to be creative and post authentic things? Many people are at home, working with their kids right next to them. This is a shared experience that creates empathy and a connection people can bond over. Develop training, make expectations to your team of what authenticity looks like, and provide opportunities for additional training each quarter or throughout the year. Companies should regularly touch base with their team on their digital culture, whether through Slack or a team chat, to engage and develop relationships. Tacie's final advice: Realize that things are not going back to the way they were. A digitally transformed culture is going to change the influence of your audience completely. Tacie's major takeaway? Unseen is unsold. (We had to repeat it, just one more time.) To get in contact with Tacie, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at tacey@littlebirdmarketing.com. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder wrote by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Many tech companies view the idea of SDRs as advantageous because they deal with the tough or mundane elements of the sales process like cold calling, making lists, and following up with inbound leads. But SDRs, with the proper training and support, can be much more. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're joined by David Dulany, founder and CEO of the research and advisory firm Tenbound, to learn how you can develop your sales bench. The elements of a good sales bench: Your SDR team is a group of people who, when needed, have learned the skills necessary to jump into a full sales position when one becomes available.  To understand which skills are most valuable, analyze your recruitment process and list out traits that make someone successful at your company. Are they tenacious, proactive, or require specific technical skills? Create a plan to incorporate training elements for each of those skills for your SDR team and develop ways for new hires to understand what they need to be successful right from the get-go. The biggest mistake we see with SDR teams is not establishing a solid company culture. The old hiring method was simply to churn and burn. But in today's market, where employees need tools and equipment to be successful, it's an incredibly inefficient and expensive process. In the modern world, culture is everything. A successful SDR team leader establishes that. To develop the ideal team culture, write down what you want to culture to look like. Once you have a semblance for your vision, integrate elements relating to it into your SDR training process. Sales is becoming an increasingly team-driven activity; the days of the lone wolf are long over. Provide a path to promotion. Certifications are a great way to break down the goals you want employees to achieve before a promotion. A ladder setup provides concrete goals for SDRs to work towards and promotion opportunities. David's major tips: For SDRs, take the position seriously; it's a critical piece of the puzzle. For people leading SDR teams, integrate structure, value, and opportunities within the SDR experience. Doing so will help people take the position more seriously and want to grow within the organization. To learn more about David's approach to SDR development, check out his book The Sales Development Framework. Otherwise, visit his company website to find resources to help develop your sales bench. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

A challenging aspect of a salesperson's job is business development. One way you can simplify the business development process, however, is through outsourcing. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're joined by Tom Ancona, founder and chief strategist at ROCKyourcompany.com, to discuss how outsourcing can lead to new business development. The first step to outsourcing: visualize. Think about your goals. If you had a team of people to execute everything you want to do, what is that vision?  Work backward from that vision to determine who will get you to that point. When outsourcing, the words “you get what you give” could not be more accurate. The results and work you get are directly related to the instruction and information you provide. Develop your vision: Pretend you're talking to a recently hired assistant - be descriptive in what you want. The more details you provide, the better the project will be.  If the project requires platforms like Sales Navigator, have at least a baseline understand of the software or platform. Hiring the right candidate can be a challenge. Selecting the right candidate might not be easy, especially at the beginning. It takes experience to find the right kind of people.  The solution? Do your homework. Read their feedback from folks they've worked with. Read both the most recent and most relevant reviews to see into their current headspace and how they've finished similar projects. Meet with them and ask tough questions about your expectations. If they give intuitive answers and understand what you're asking, you've found a good candidate.  Understand how freelance platforms operate: When you purchase projects on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr, some have an escrow account. You allocate the money before each project, but you have to approve the project before the money is transferred. This gives you a level of safety in that a freelancer has to complete the project. Don't hand over passwords to your most valuable assets until you've worked with somebody for a while.  Tom's major takeaway and special offer: If you're not doing it now, look at outsourcing as a potential way to break out in your marketplace, as you've never done before.  If you're looking to improve your sales game with free downloadable templates, visit tomancona.com/tse for a free template download for you. To schedule a meeting with Tom, visit Meetwithtom.live to view his calendar. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Working as a sales manager can be tough. Why make it more challenging than it has to be? And without the proper guidance and support, it can be especially difficult to find the right people for your organization. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we're joined by Frank Cespedes, senior lecturer at Harvard business school, to learn his strategy for finding and retaining top-level salespeople. There are inherent challenges to hiring within sales.  Not enough people in and outside the sales function that there are challenges in hiring sales that don't exist elsewhere. People major in engineering, accounting, and finance. There are less than 200 sales courses in the United States universities, let alone majors and programs. As a result, most learning in sales is whatever the company does. Companies on average spent 20% more per capita than they do training other positions. Most learning in sales is on-the-job learning that isn't a challenge in other business areas. Because so much time is spent training, accelerating the productivity ramp up for new hires is crucial for hiring managers. How can you make the hiring process more manageable? Minimize the biggest hiring mistake: relying solely on one or two unstructured interviews. Research consistently shows the correlation between the ratings people get in interviews and their subsequent on-the-job performance tend to vary by .1 to .4. The perfect candidate's chances to perform to their expected standard is about as guaranteed as a coin flip. To solve the problem, supplement interviews by including people who aren't sales, like customer support and product design. Experience is often an important hiring criterion. But in business, there is only experience selling your product. Experience in other organizations might not indicate or guarantee success at others. The most important thing when hiring is knowing what you're looking for. Don't think platitudes; think the most important tasks this new person will accomplish. So what do you do? Start with the fundamentals. Performing fundamentals better than anyone else will lead to success - the who, why, and how of your customer informs you who you're hiring for. What will the salesperson need to be good to be successful? Conversely, what might they need to be just good enough at?  To determine these behaviors, consider implementing assessments or even internship positions to judge that behavior.  The pandemic showed companies overpay for many tasks in the current sales model;  you want to focus talent on the steps that most impact the sale rather than things like lead generation and demos. Frank's major piece of advice to someone managing the hiring process? Know what you're looking for, start with the buying process, and don't require platitudes of experience. Recognize that the hiring process doesn't end with the hire. The sooner you get someone to ramp up their productivity within the organization, the better everyone is. Read Frank's new book Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing. Want to get in touch with Frank? Visit him on his website or connect with him on LinkedIn. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real. But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com. This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We'd love for you to join us for our next episodes, tune in on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also leave comments, suggestions, and ratings for each episode you listen to!  Read more about sales or listen to audiobooks on Audible and explore their huge online library. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day trial. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder wrote by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.