Podcasts about agile selling

Watch this Episode on YouTube In honour of Jill's Birthday last week, enjoy this valuable interview with her from earlier this year. I am delighted to share my conversation with none other than the sales guru, trailblazer for women in sales, author of best selling books such as Snap Selling, Agile Selling, More Sales Less Time, Get Back to work Faster, Selling to Big Companies   @Jillkonrath.Every time Jill encountered a set back, a road block a shift in the industry, she paused and figured a way out. Then she wrote a book about it to provide a proven system for sellers to navigate their way out.As we enter 2024, the constant is change.Are we entering the new year with excitement or are we feeling discouraged?Tune in to my conversation with Jill where she shares timeless fundamentals for selling.Regardless of the situation we are facing, she has faced it and overcome it.She also shares the importance of mindset, attitude and our ability to reframe the situation.As a woman in sales, it was an absolute highlight for me to have a conversation with someone I have looked up to my entire career.Jill, Thank you for everything you have done for the sales community. Your knowledge, experience and generosity has had a profound impact on so many.#b2bsales #salesmindset #salesfundamentalsFor more content like this, join hundreds of other subscribers to The K2 Sales Academy. Our subscription based on line sales training platform. $495/year unlocks the Fundamentals of Sales program with built in knowledge checks, resource folder with scripts, templates and checklists as well as regular webinars. 1:1 and group coaching packages available as well. To access our free one week Trial visit The K2 Sales Academy

Happy New Year!To kick off 2024, I am delighted to share my conversation with none other than the sales guru, trailblazer for women in sales, author of best selling books such as Snap Selling, Agile Selling, More Sales Less Time, Get Back to work Faster, Selling to Big Companies   @Jillkonrath.Every time Jill encountered a set back, a road block a shift in the industry, she paused and figured a way out. Then she wrote a book about it to provide a proven system for sellers to navigate their way out.As we enter 2024, the constant is change.Are we entering the new year with excitement or are we feeling discouraged?Tune in to my conversation with Jill where she shares timeless fundamentals for selling.Regardless of the situation we are facing, she has faced it and overcome it.She also shares the importance of mindset, attitude and our ability to reframe the situation.As a woman in sales, it was an absolute highlight for me to have a conversation with someone I have looked up to my entire career.Jill, Thank you for everything you have done for the sales community. Your knowledge, experience and generosity has had a profound impact on so many.#b2bsales #salesmindset #salesfundamentalsFor more content like this, join hundreds of other subscribers to The K2 Sales Academy. Our subscription based on line sales training platform. $495/year unlocks the Fundamentals of Sales program with built in knowledge checks, resource folder with scripts, templates and checklists as well as regular webinars. 1:1 and group coaching packages available as well. To access our free one week Trial visit The K2 Sales Academy

Willkommen zur 2. Staffel der Coffee Breaks mit unserer Co-host Lena Wittneben! In Folge #7 erfahren wir von Anne Bubner, Seminaris Hotel: - wie "new work" in der Hotellerie funktionieren kann - wie Transformation von innen wirkt - wie sich Weg des Wandels und die Seminaris Produkte gegenseitig befruchten ---------------------------------- Lena Wittneben, systemische Coach, Gedächtnistrainierin, Autorin & Moderatorin trifft sich alle 14 Tage mit den unterschiedlichsten Experten:innen und Kennern für eine Kaffeepause, um sich über die neue Arbeitswelt und Transformation inspirieren zu lassen! ---------------------------------- Über Anne Bubner, Seminaris Hotel: Anne Bubner ist Head of Commerce & Collaboration bei Seminaris Hotels. Die diplomierte Wirtschaftswissenschaftlerin arbeitet seit über drei Jahren im Unternehmen und ist der Kopf hinter dem Aufbau und Ausbau von E-Commerce, Digital Communication sowie Agile Selling. Zu ihrem Verantwortungsbereich zählen neben Onlinemarketing, Kommunikation, seit kurzem Vertrieb auch Kollaboration mit Netzwerkpartnern der Neuen Arbeitswelt. Sie formt das Transformationsgerüst, in dem sich die Seminaris Hotels seit 3 Jahren aus der Mitte heraus befinden, auf digitaler Ebene, schafft mit ihrem Team Value Based Services in diesem Kontext und ist für New Work Themen der Kommunikator nach innen und außen. https://www.seminaris.de/ Links: Noch mehr über Transformation und die neue Arbeitswelt erfahren? Die “New Work Future” ist wahrscheinlich Deutschlands älteste Konferenz für neues Arbeiten und die lernende Organisation: Hamburg, 21.+22. Juni 2023 newworkfuture.de “Ministry of Transformation”, die Organisationsberatung der Ministry Group: transformation.ministry.de Produktion: Catharina Barth www.catharinabarth.de Credits: Danke an Linooze für die Intro-Musik: www.instagram.com/linooze.music Danke an André Fritz / MAD42 für Beratung, Support und Motion Design: youtube.com/@mad42

In this episode, Sean sits down with Anthony Coppedge, Principal Agile Digital Sales Global Transformation Lead at IBM. He has lead the vision to execution for how business agility is infused in digital sales. His main focus is coaching leaders, managers, and teams on how to deliver outcomes over outputs. He lead the transformative work of agile selling to create value for prospects and clients alike. He has a deep background of over 25 years in sales, marketing, and operations. They dive into what processes help enterprise companies gain clarity for better customer experiences (CX). They go deeper into his experiences and how feedback loops are important when reverse engineering the CX journey. Anthony gives some great insights how great CX is defined and how to find and measure it. He even gives more insight how he build great customer experience journeys by aligning company employees on specific focuses. His tone gives off a studious, yet extremely informative knowledge about CX and go to market (GTM) makes your brain expand like Neil deGrasse Tyson does with science. Anthony gets deep on how intrinsic motivation has led him on his career but also his love for understanding other humans. More About Anthony. https://linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge

When prospects stop responding, what do sales reps do? Send even more sales messages. It's this ‘spray and pray' approach that is sabotaging the sales success across almost every industry.  But, how can you effectively reach your potential customers in a way that's scalable without becoming part of the growing “sales noise”? That's the question that agile selling tackles and the hot topic of this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast. We welcome one of the biggest champions of agile selling to learn from him what it is, how it works, and why it is the future of how modern sellers should be selling. Stephen Messer is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and the co-founder of Collective[i]. Prior to Collective[i], he served as LinkShare's CEO and chairman of the board, helping to create the sector of online marketing commonly referred to as affiliate marketing. Under his leadership, LinkShare expanded its network of websites to become one of the largest of its kind with its global reach extending from the United States to Japan, Canada and Europe. Now, with Collective[i], Stephen has helped to create one of the world's largest networks capturing data around B2B sales activities. Using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, Collective[i] merges client CRM and other relevant sources of data into our network to generate intelligence used by the world's leading sales organization to generate revenue, streamline/automate non-revenue producing activities, and enable enterprises to be customer centric and data driven. Their patent-pending technology and applications designed for sales managers, operators and professionals are essential to the modern sales force.  That's why this is one episode of the Modern Selling Podcast you do not want to miss. Download the full conversation and hear firsthand how agile selling can transform your sales process and win rates. How has the modern buyer changed? Before we jump into our discussion of agile selling and the power behind this method, I wanted to get clear from Stephen on how he's seen buyer behavior change through the years.  From his perspective, there are three core shifts that have taken place: More buyers are involved now in the process. With so many companies shifting to a virtual, work from home model – this inevitably introduced more stakeholders into the buying decision. It's not as easy to get up and walk to your supervisor's office to get approval. Now, emails, Zoom meetings, and a litany of other communication channels have to be involved in a remote environment before a decision is made. Buyers are doing more research. Before buyers would reach out to sellers to gain more information. Now, buyers are doing their own research and being more and more selective with who they reach out to. Buyers are skeptical of working with sellers. How buyers engage with sellers has dramatically changed. Fewer and fewer buyers are giving their real information, for fear of being spammed with endless sales messages. This makes it even harder for sales reps to reach buyers. As so many sales leaders have seen, our modern buyers are going into “hiding” so to speak to get away from the somewhat intrusive sales cadences. But, if sales cadences are largely being ignored and buyers are going underground – what can sales reps do to truly get buyers to be open for a sales call? That's the very question that agile selling is able to answer. Listen to the full conversation to get access to these sales gems from, Stephen Messer, one of the top data-driven sales gurus in the world. What's the importance of personalization? Personalization in modern selling is everything! I have a folder in my email that I titled, “Emails that suck” and I can't tell you how many I get on a daily basis. And, they all have one glaring thing in common – they're never personalized. In essence, I and so many other prospects have just become a “Dear First Name”. These emails aren't written to speak to my exact pain points, they're not conveying value that's relevant to me, and they're clearly written in a way that makes me feel just like any other buyer I was curious to hear Stephen's take on personalization and its impact on engagement rates based on the sales data he sees everyday. Stephen shares, “The question with personalization really is: can we improve productivity in how we reach buyers while at the same time giving them higher value interactions? This is where analyzing the data is so important. Personalization doesn't have to just be in the messaging. It can be in knowing the best time to send the email, or the right platform to reach out to, or knowing who to send the email to in the organization. Personalization comes back to one thing: research. We have to take the time to research who we're trying to sell to, if we're ever going to be effective.” Jump into this episode, and listen to the end, to hear what Stephen says is the best way to personalize your sales messages to stand out. What is agile sales? Agile sales is being offered as an alternative to the traditional approach of people, process, and technology.  According to Stephen, agile sales is all about moving away from making sales decisions based on opinions and “intuition” and, instead, using data to drive substantive changes to the sales process. It's through agile selling that the modern seller will be better positioned to know how, what, and when to reach out to modern buyers and actually get a response. Stephen shares a powerful point in this episode that reminds us all that we can't look at our prospects in a vacuum. We must consider the entire landscape of the world around them to understand their buying behavior and it is agile selling that makes this possible. If you've been looking for a new approach to sales to help increase your win rates and better engage with your prospects, then this is THE episode to listen to. This episode of the Modern Selling Podcast is brought to you by Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry transforms sales teams using their world-class Miller Heiman, methodology, employee assessments, benchmarking and talent advisor capabilities to increase win rates and quota attainment. Korn Ferry offers Korn Ferry Sell, a sales effectiveness app available in App Exchange and app source that helps your sales team develop and replicate powerful sales strategies that help sellers win more deals and crush their quotas. Learn more at kornferry.com.

Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. AMY’S INSIGHTS FOR EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “See your career as a jungle gym versus a ladder straight up. Especially for women in sales and women in really any role, our careers take winding paths. There is almost never a straight up type of career path so it’s taking on a different mindset and then set an action that says, “I’m going to see my career as this very holistic thing, it’s not just this small slice point in time here.” You are trying out different things on the jungle gym. You might be going sideways, you might be going up, you might actually be going down, it’s a different visual and a different approach that says, “I’m going to take on different things in my career to build skills and not necessarily just be focused on what’s the next rung up on the ladder.”

You will love this conversation. We talked about what sales leaders need to do now. Jill gave survival strategies and we talk about how diversity in sales sucks. It is an honour to have Jill Konrath on Scale Your Sales podcast. She is the International speaker and author of 4 bestselling sales books—Selling to Big Companies, SNAP Selling, Agile Selling and More Sales Less Time. With over 1/3 million followers. LinkedIn named Jill as their #1 B2B Sales Expert in 2019. And Salesforce recently selected her as one of Top 7 Sales Influencers of the 21st Century.  The legacy that Jill has created is outstanding because people are continually naming her as their Shero. She says 20 years ago she looked around and saw that all the sales experts out there were bald white men. As a woman in sales, Jill was tired of seeing this and realised she was the most bothered by it and so stepped up and has continued to champion women in sales. In these challenging times to come out strong, Jill advises number one, to learn how to control your fear, the minute you go into fear mode, which can happen because nobody's buying anything. You can't get out and see people the way that you used to or have meetings, and everything's different. Fear can overtake, it stops your brain from working, giving you fewer options, in terms of what can be done. She says to grab a hold of our fear and take a look at what is it that we could do to calm ourselves down. Second, you need to open yourselves up to learning new skills. Some people have been doing the same old, for a long time, and it's worked for a while. But what happens when you run into a recessionary period being average is no longer enough. Everybody has to figure out a way to step up their game and turn yourself into a learner and somebody who is focused on improving all aspects of your sales process. Take a look at it from the front end and say, "where am I not doing well? Where am I running into resistance?" She says get comfortable with the virtual world and become cognizant of people's reaction to everything that you're doing. Only one out of seven salespeople take a serious look at what happens in their sales calls and evaluate post calls for: What they do well, What worked, What was highly-effective, Where they ran into problems and What they could change. and that those people who Research shows that those willing to be brutally honest with themselves are the ones who discovered better ways and succeed because they are continually evaluating and testing to improve. Jill recalls when she first moved into a sales leadership role at Xerox at the time. She remembers as a salesperson's that thinking, 'how can I make fewer calls and be more effective?' You significantly enhance your chances of success. You learn who they are and what their issues and concerns are, you become very focused on what are they currently doing today - without your solution, your service or your products or technology. Well, they are getting their work done, said Jill, but with some cost and inefficiencies and maybe some opportunities that they're missing. The more familiar you become with your customers, the greater your success rate is because you will speak their language, you will focus on what matters to them. You will be able to ask questions that are highly relevant and of interest to them. The goal is to increase your effectiveness, which means you are always learners. As a sales leader, you have people; your sales team will be afraid. They're scared they're not going to make their quota. They're afraid that if they don't make their numbers, that they will be terminated, that they won't have enough money to feed their themselves or pay for their rent. It's a scary time. Top sales leaders right now must focus on their culture, their people and be more in touch with their people regularly, talking a human talk. As opposed to saying, how many calls did you make last week, let's talk about your numbers and where you are at? Focus on the person 'so tell me about how are you doing right now? Be interested as a human being because you want them to be successful and ask, 'how can I help you?' The best sales leaders are very focused on helping their people improve what they're doing and very conscious of the culture, concerned and catching up as a human being and focusing on we're here to help you. The whole team is here to help you; let's work together. Jill says this is now part of being successful and that they're in a different job right now, that require other skills. When Jill worked with reps, you could see the ones who were aggressive. And the result of this was the prospect would put up barriers. If you're leaning forward and intense with your people, you are scaring them away. So what a sales leader must do is lean back and focus on the human being in front of them, to see what could make them better. The fact that we can't meet us human beings makes all of us out there alone in these challenging times. It's more important now than ever before because everybody spread out around the world, and we are not getting what we need from a human perspective. Some top leaders who are really doing well in sales leadership always focused on their people. The top leaders had loyalty and connection with their people, who know that they were being supported throughout tough times as well as good times. Talking about diversity in sales, Jill acknowledged that there are some industries that are doing well with diversity, but for the most part, "they pretty much suck. Let me be real honest with that." They say we can't find female candidates. Well, are you looking? And you think people wanna be like the slimy people that are trying to shove things down peoples throat and manipulate them. And have you read your job descriptions, looking for ah hunter, go-getter. Jill says everything is all screwed up, and this does not appeal to women. Women are highly effective in sales.  Gartner research states that women perform at higher levels than their male counterparts; they stay in a job longer, is a huge factor. You have two people you can hire about the same in terms of capacity. But the women tend to perform at higher levels, they stay longer, so you don't have to recruit as often and train and on-board and hope that they work out. There is a huge business case for women in sales. Then the research also shows that from a business perspective, having a diverse group of people allows for faster decisions and better decisions. So why don't people do that? Because people hire people who look and sound like them, Jill says, something has to be done about it. She recalls that she was a diversity hire and not brought on board because of her great potential. Jill was a high school teacher when she decided to go into sales. Xerox had a mandate from the federal government of the United States that they had to have a workforce that represented their communities. Each city had its own diversity numbers that they had to hire. Xerox, didn't think women could sell technical things like copiers. They just didn't think that we were capable of doing that, said Jill. But within a couple of years of hiring women, they learned how to look for characteristics that were totally different from man. The guys answered they were motivated by money But women said, they want to do a good job, or focus on my customers, or that they wanted to make a difference. Within a few years at Xerox, eight out of the top 10 reps were minority and female. Diversity is a smart business decision. Jill and I agree that it would be really good if companies would set quotas and committed to diversity. We talked about overcoming isolation, and Jill recommended to get on a phone call, not a zoom and stay in touch with human beings. Jill has personally called friends from high school that I haven't talked to in years just to get out of the business world. Having a wonderful conversation makes you feel connected to the world. Jill also suggests getting out for a walk. Our bodies need the outdoors; we connect better. Put in your headphones and call your friends and have a good meaningful conversation. The isolation is overwhelming to so many people. If Jill was on a desert island on her own, she said she would take her cell phone because she could learn things find new ways to be engaged, read books, learn new ways to build fires, be more effective and just keep sharp. That little thing gives her connection to everything she needs including 101 ways to make coconut for dinner tonight:-) Thank you, Jill Konrath https://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-books https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkonrath

Originally aired 4-14-11: Jill Konrath is also a frequent speaker at sales conferences and kick-off meetings. Sharing her fresh sales strategies, she helps salespeople to speed up new customer acquisition and win bigger contracts. Her clients include IBM, GE, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Staples and numerous mid-market firms. Jill is the author of three bestselling, award-winning books. Her newest book, Agile Selling shows salespeople how to succeed in a constantly changing sales world. SNAP Selling focuses on what it takes to win sales with today's crazy-busy buyers. And Selling to Big Companies provides step-by-step guidance on setting up meetings with corporate decision makers.  

Paul Petersen interviews Jill Konrath, author of the book, "More Sales in Less Time." Jill Konrath’s career is defined by her relentless search for fresh strategies that actually work in today’s sales world. Konrath and host Paul Petersen discuss how digital dementia is affecting both the seller and the buyer. The talk about: ----more---- Digital dementia which attacks a sales person’s productivity The problem with digital distractions in the sales process How quality of thinking is hurting both the salesperson and the buyer Tactics for salespeople who are invited late into the buying process How to search for gaps in the buyer’s knowledge The Guest Jill Konrath of Sales Accelerated Jill Konrath is also a frequent speaker at sales conferences and kick-off meetings. Sharing her fresh sales strategies, she helps salespeople to speed up new customer acquisition and win bigger contracts. Her clients include IBM, GE, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Staples and numerous mid-market firms. Author See Jill Konrath’s best-selling ( really, best-selling) books here. Jill’s newsletters are read by 125,000+ sellers worldwide. Her popular blog has been syndicated on numerous business and sales websites. Jill is the author of three bestselling, award-winning books. Her newest book, Agile Selling shows salespeople how to succeed in a constantly changing sales world. SNAP Selling focuses on what it takes to win sales with today’s crazy-busy buyers. And Selling to Big Companies provides step-by-step guidance on setting up meetings with corporate decision makers. Thought Leader As a business-to-business sales expert, Jill’s ideas and insights are ubiquitous in multiple forums, both on and offline. ____________________________________ GoldMine CRM Radio is sponsored by GoldMine CRM.  The host is Paul Petersen the Vice President and General Manager for GoldMine. Discover why GoldMine is a great place to start.   ___________________________________________ CRM Radio is hosted by Paul Petersen of Goldmine CRM by Ivanti which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.  GoldMine is the sponsor of CRM Radio.    

With over 370K LinkedIn followers, Jill Konrath was recently named one of the top 7 sales influencers of the 21st century. She's an international speaker and a bestselling author of four books SNAP Selling, Agile Selling and Selling to Big Companies and More Sales Less Time. Jill's advice has been featured by ABC & Fox News, Fortune, Forbes, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and more.   On this episode with Jill Konrath: dealing with the feeling the impact of being so busy you can't come up with a great idea, the power of tracking your sleep, digital sinkholes and Jill the Timemaster.   Where you can find Jill: jillkonrath.com LinkedIn Sale Resources   What did you think of this episode? I want to know. Go to MarkStruczewski.com/jill and leave a comment.   To leave feedback about the podcast or give suggestions for ideas for future episodes (including guests you'd like to hear me interview), go to MarkStruczewski.com/mypodcast or email feedback@markstruczewski.com. If you are looking to take your productivity to the next level or if you are interested in bringing me in to speak at your event, visit MarkStruczewski.com. Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to my weekly Next Level Productivity Digest. If you love the show, share it with a friend on Apple Podcasts.

  Paul Petersen interviews Jill Konrath, author of More Sales in Less Time. Jill Konrath’s career is defined by her relentless search for fresh strategies that actually work in today’s sales world. Jill’s newsletters are read by 125,000+ sellers worldwide. Her popular blog has been syndicated on numerous business and sales websites. ----more---- Speaker Jill Konrath is also a frequent speaker at sales conferences and kick-off meetings. Sharing her fresh sales strategies, she helps salespeople to speed up new customer acquisition and win bigger contracts. Her clients include IBM, GE, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Staples and numerous mid-market firms. Author Jill is the author of three bestselling, award-winning books. Her newest book, Agile Selling shows salespeople how to succeed in a constantly changing sales world. SNAP Selling focuses on what it takes to win sales with today’s crazy-busy buyers. And Selling to Big Companies provides step-by-step guidance on setting up meetings with corporate decision makers. Thought Leader As a business-to-business sales expert, Jill’s ideas and insights are ubiquitous in multiple forums, both on and offline.

How to give away expertise for free and make good money doing it Talking Points Selling more in less time without pushing How having a mission can help you strategically The roles that writing a book can play in a business How to give away expertise for free and make good money The importance of a good mailing list One way to constantly be in creation mode Quotable Quotes "I didn't sit down one day and decide I wanted to be well-known."—JK "How can I help these people and not go broke?"—JK "People in the consulting business fundamentally think about sales in the wrong way."—JK "Sales is a skill. If you don't learn it, you can't create a sustainable career."—JK "Sales is not pushy. It's consultative."—JK "Your clients don't want what you have to offer. They want outcomes."—JK "I'm well aware that my books are the lifeblood of my business, but that's not why I write them."—JK "About 15 years ago, I asked myself 'How can I give my expertise away for free and make good money doing it?'"—JK "I have passed up a significant number of revenue generating opportunities."—JK "It's all about creating a conversation with someone you want to reach."—JK Guest Bio After an award-winning sales career in the technology and services sector, Jill is now an internationally recognized speaker and sales strategist. She’s a bestselling author of four books—Selling to Big Companies, SNAP Selling, Agile Selling, and More Sales Less Time. Recently, LinkedIn named Jill as their #1 Business-to-Business Sales Expert citing her 1/3 million followers. Salesforce selected her as one of Top 7 Sales Influencers of the 21st century. Plus, she’s featured in the just-released “Story of Sales” documentary. As a consultant, Jill has worked with companies like IBM, GE, and Staples as well as many mid-market firms. Her expertise has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, ABC and Fox News. To sum up her career, Jill is constantly searching for fresh strategies to enable sales success n an ever-changing business environment. Related Links Jill's Website Jill's LinkedIn Selling to Big Companies Transcript Jonathan S: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the Business of Authority. I'm Jonathan Stark. Rochelle M: 00:04 And I'm Rochelle Moulton. Jonathan S: 00:05 Today, we're joined by Jill Konrath. After an award-winning sales career in the technology and services sector, Jill is now an internationally-recognized speaker and sales strategist. She's the best-selling author of four business books, most recently More Sales, Less Time. LinkedIn has named her their number one B2B expert, and Salesforce selected her as one of the top seven sales influencers of the 21st century. As a consultant, Jill's worked with companies like IBM, GE, and Staples, as well as many mid-market firms. Her expertise has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Inc, Entrepreneur. The list goes on. We're super happy to have Jill with us today. Jill, welcome to the show. Jill K: 00:46 Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Rochelle M: 00:49 Jill, I just have to comment on your big idea on your website, which kind of sums up everything Jonathan just said about you. Sales Accelerated. Yeah! Love it! Jill K: 01:00 I do, too. In the niche that I'm in, it's about how do we make more sales and do it in less time. How can we make it faster? To me, it's not just faster, it's really about how do we have a better conversation that's more focused on the customer. That's what makes it faster, not just push. Rochelle M: 01:21 Love it! Before we get into all this, maybe for some of the members of our audience who might be experiencing you for the first time, will you tell us a little bit more about who you are, how you work, what you do? Jill K: 01:35 Who I am. I am a sales consultant. I have been in the sales field pretty much my entire career. I never wanted to be in sales. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but they told me when I brought my business plan into SCORE, Service Corps of Retired Executives, that it was a really good idea, and then they said, "How are you going to sell this?" I looked at them. I thought, "I thought you said it was a good idea." They said, "It is, Jill, but somebody has to sell it," so I said, "All right. I'll go into sales for one year. I'll learn everything there is to know and then I will get out of it." Anyway, I never left. Jill K: 02:14 I found it to be fascinating and totally different than I thought it was. I assumed most salespeople were slimy, manipulative con artists like you see on TV or the movies. I found out that, in the business-to-business field, salespeople are intelligent, creative, concerned about their customers, focused on their customers, trying to help them make good business decisions that enhance the quality of their work, and it was fun. I sold directly for a few years, like eight years, and then I actually started my own company, working as a consultant and did that for a long time, specializing in a very specific area of new products. Jill K: 03:01 Then, my business crashed. I got totally wiped out because my two biggest clients came under pressure from Wall Street at the same time, and it took me a few years to get going again. I had to reinvent myself, and in the new iteration, I became me that people see on my website, which is not what I was doing before. Rochelle M: 03:20 One of the things that's so fascinating to me, Jill, is that it feels like from the outside looking in that you've made some interesting pivots in your career. What made you start your own business? Leaving Xerox had to be a big deal. Jill K: 03:36 I actually went into technology sales after Xerox. What caused me to start my own business was really, I have an extraordinarily low boredom threshold, and I'm a really rapid learner. I would throw myself into every new sales position, quickly learn it and, as soon as I learned it, I was no longer interested in it, which is not a good career choice then if you're constantly leaving as soon as you get good at something. Jill K: 04:08 What I discovered was that I had the ability from a consulting perspective to go into massively complex situations, challenging business environments, and assimilate a whole lot of information about the buyer, the product, the sales process, the marketplace. I was so good at rapid learning, I could assimilate that all quickly and put it into a structure that would help my clients be more effective faster. I became a consultant, really to satisfy my need for continual interesting and challenging projects to work on. Rochelle M: 04:48 I get you. I was thinking as you started to say that, "Well, gee! That's the definition of consultant." We keep creating our new assignments. Jill K: 04:58 Yes, it's all about creating your new assignment. To me, to find a niche and to go off to the niche and to build it out and to get good at it and then to continually have new projects feeding me all the time, it was like, oh, I was in heaven as a consultant! Rochelle M: 05:14 That sounds familiar. There's a description you have on your website, and I'm not sure why I hadn't seen it before, where you describe yourself as going from a quiet, unknown consultant, which I think some of our listeners might relate to, to this recognized international authority. Jill K: 05:36 Yeah, I know. Rochelle M: 05:38 I'd love to hear more about how you did that. Jill K: 05:43 Let me just say, it was step by step and it wasn't part of the game plan. It was never my intention to be where I'm at today. I didn't sit down one day and say, "I want to be well known, and I want to have four best-selling books." I thought I wanted to write a book, and all I had to say in the whole wide world could be encapsulated in 60,000 words. Then, I wouldn't have another thing to say in my whole life. What happened to me is, I sort of got caught in a couple mission type of things in my mind that I was on a mission to do things. Jill K: 06:18 There was, at one point when I very vividly remember one year where all these conferences had all these bald white guys speaking. It was like all these male sales reps that are older and bald. I was like, "Where are the women? Where are the women? There's 20-30% of the sales force is women. They need women sales models." This is my, my quiet person out in White Bear Lake was doing good work. I said, "Ann wrote a book. Why doesn't she become more visible. Susan wrote a book. Why isn't she more visible." They didn't want to be more visible. They just wanted to write a book and disappear and do their work again. Jill K: 06:57 I finally went, "Oh, crap! It looks like if the women need a visible person to look up to, that it's going to have to be me because it seems to be that I'm the only one on this bandwagon. It's like, where are the women? Where are the women?" That became a responsibility of mine. I actually felt a very strong responsibility to be a role model for other women in sales because I had so desperately wanted to see women when I was growing up in my career, so that was one thing that happened. Jill K: 07:31 I sort of got hooked into another idea, too. I did a pro bono project. It was to help a magazine that served the small and medium business community, and I discovered through that what was happening with entrepreneurs and other consultants and people in small businesses and how they were trying to grow. It seemed like there was always a bottleneck that they were running into that they didn't know how to sell. I mean, they reach a point where their business can only grow so far, and they're just working so darn hard for the amount of money that they're getting that they go back to the corporate environment. Jill K: 08:06 I just thought, "That's terrible! This is a sales issue. How can I solve this? These people don't have a pot to pee in. They can't afford me. I'm used to the corporate rates, and they can't afford me, so what can I do to serve these people and not go bankrupt," which was a driving force of mine. This was back 10, 15 years ago. For months, I spent 80 hours researching things, and I couldn't find an answer. I kept saying, "How can I? How can I? How can I help these people and not go broke? How can I help these people and make some money." Jill K: 08:41 One morning, I literally woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning, and a voice in my head spoke to me and said, "Thou shalt create a website called Selling to Big Companies, and your tagline will be Helping Small Companies Win Big Contracts." I saw the whole thing. It was just like it came to me in just a bundle. I created just in time content for people, and I just created this really nice website, put the website up and I'm so excited about it! I put the website up, and it's got this great content for consultants and people like me who I know how to help. The day the website went up, I went, "Oh, my God! I have just created a wonderful website and not a person in the whole world knows it exists except me." Jill K: 09:28 I devoted six months entirely to creating the website and writing content and putting stuff up. I mean, literally shut down my business to do the website. At that point, I went, "Well, I better figure out how to become known because this is a website to help these people and they don't know, so I have to become more visible." That was the other impetus to become visible out there in the world. One thing led to another and, I guess, once I dumped everything out of my brain in my first book, a few later, new ideas started creeping in. Jill K: 09:59 Because I saw another problem that wasn't being solved out there, I had to tackle that problem because it was challenging to me, and I like messes. It's messy, so I had to tackle that problem. Once I figured out what would work, then I thought, "Well, I have to write a second book," so I wrote SNAP Selling, which is all about how do you sell to busy buyers who are too busy to talk to you on the phone or talk to you about going ahead with the project, and then they never get back to you because everything else is going on in their company. Then, I thought I'd said everything I needed to say. Jill K: 10:35 After I wrote SNAP Selling, that book, people said to me, "Jill, this is really good. It's really helping me get in to see these people. It's helping me keeping the conversation going, and now we're closing deals, more projects." Then, they'd go, "But," and it was like this 'but' was a huge 'but'. It was, "But, I'm crazy busy, too. What do you have for me?" I looked at them in horror, and I'd say, " Oh, I haven't a clue! I'm going nuts just like you are!" Jill K: 11:05 You know, you keep hearing that long enough, and then that might create a brain starts working in the background, so I think, "I know one thing that can help with this. I know one thing. I know how to do rapid learning. I know how to get into a sales job and get up to speed fast because that was what I did with all my consulting work, quick emersion, pick out the salient points, and how to align them so you can figure out what to do," so I wrote a book on that called Agile Selling, which is how to get up to speed fast in a new sales position. I thought I was done, that I'd said everything I needed to say. Then, I was still crazy busy myself and miserable. Jill K: 11:44 Finally, one day I woke up and said, "Well, this is no way to live." Maybe I should study that and how I can change my life so I'm not going nuts all the time. I studied that and, of course, every time I figured something out, I'd feel this compelling need to share it with the world, so that's what I did. Rochelle M: 12:05 Are you working on number five? Jill K: 12:07 I am not right now, no. Rochelle M: 12:10 I can't wait to hear what it's going to wind up being. Jill K: 12:13 I have no idea. I have to wait for the problem to emerge. I don't have a problem screaming at me right now. The biggest problem and challenge I have right now is I'm selling my house and downsizing, and I have three weeks to get out. Rochelle M: 12:28 Cool. Jill K: 12:33 That's all I'm thinking about right now. Rochelle M: 12:34 That's huge. Thank you for making the time to talk to us in between. Jonathan S: 12:39 Your story, sort of the way you punctuated there at the end with you're waiting for the problem to reveal itself, that really speaks to sort of dogfooding your own material. I'm a huge fan of the Selling to Big Companies book. I recommend it to students all the time, and it's all about that. It's starting with what's the benefit, what's the value proposition, what is the ... Don't talk about your competitors and how you're different from your competitors. Talk about the status quo and how you're different from that. Give it to them in tangible terms that define business outcomes if you're selling to businesses. Jonathan S: 13:21 It's one of those sort of slap yourself in the forehead types of things when you read it. It's like, "Well, obviously!" I believe that it stems from that, like what's the problem? Hopefully, it's an expensive problem. People have this big expensive problem, the kind of thing they're losing sleep over, and then when you stumble ... Obviously, your radar is finely attuned looking for that kind of thing, so I think a lot of people just sort of zoom right by them and don't pick up the signal. Rochelle M: 13:57 I'm not sure. Yes, my radar's really tuned because I've been in the sales field a long time but, what I think is really going on for a lot of people who are in the consulting business is they think about sales the wrong way. I mean, they fundamentally think about sales the wrong way, which is the used car. I got to talk about myself and tell them about how unique I am and my wonderful services, and then they feel like frauds because they don't feel unique, and they don't think that their services are really all that different, and they hate blathering on and on about how wonderful they are, so they don't feel good about that. Then, they don't want to sell. They'd just as soon just keep doing projects, but the reality of it is, if you don't learn, and sales is a skill, if you don't learn and tackle it as a skill, you cannot create a sustainable career. You have to look at it directly and say, "It's a skill. I can learn it. Other idiots are learning it, too, and they're no better than me. They just figured out how to get work and, if I can focus on that, I'll do fine." Rochelle M: 14:58 You have to realize that it's not pushy. The best salespeople are consultants. I mean, they're consultative in their nature, and they've learned how to take a consultative process that they use with their clients and move it into a sales methodology about understanding the business issue. Anybody's who's doing consulting is working on an issue. That's why they're there, so the challenge is to stop talking about, "Oh, we have this really unique methodology that we just love" or, "We're so creative." Rochelle M: 15:28 It's really talking about the issue and what they can't do, what they want to do, and what they're going to have trouble doing because of how they're currently set up as an organization, the methodologies that they use, everything that you could look at that could be a problem. If somebody would realize that selling is really consulting and get off that, "I hate selling! I hate selling" bandwagon and just say, "Look, I am really good at this, and I want to be able to do this with my life. I want to have a sustainable income. I need to learn the skill, and I need to approach it as a disciplina- ..." Jill K: 16:00 I need to learn the skill and I need to approach it as a discipline that just is part of running a business. Rochelle M: 16:06 Yeah, I think a lot of consultants get kinda tossed around with this idea of their process, because as a soloist you typically have to have some expertise and you have to have a process on some level that you follow, and so the typical consultant things, "Well, I've gotta tell the client about my process and there's 17 steps and it looks like this." Jill K: 16:24 Oh God, let's complicate things, 17 steps and a busy buyer will go, "OH my God, 17 steps." You know, and then they'll be intimidated and bored. Rochelle M: 16:36 Exactly. It's focusing on outcomes and Jonathan and I both, you know we preach that to the heavens. It really is as simple as that, when you think every consultant and I grew up in a big consulting firm, so I learned the selling piece, consultative selling in relationships early, and once it becomes a natural part of who you are, you can't turn it off. Jill K: 17:03 You can't, right. Rochelle M: 17:04 And that's a good thing. Jill K: 17:05 Yes, it is a good thing, because being consultative it's a wonderful skill to be able to ask questions and figure out where the issues are and then to be able to step back and think, "How can I help it?" You know, that's what sales is too, and if you can take and just reapply those same skills that you have that make you a good consultant, you can get business, but you gotta get over yourself, you know and that you hate it. Rochelle M: 17:30 Yes, and the 17 step process. Jill K: 17:33 Oh, God no, nobody wants your 17 steps. All you need to talk about is how do you get started. Let me suggest this as the starting point, you know, we have other things we can go on, but here's basic starting point what we have to do to get going on this project. Rochelle M: 17:46 I hear you. So what I'm wondering is, could we talk about your business model for a minute, Jill? Jill K: 17:52 Yes, we could. I mean I have an evolving business model, cause my business has changed dramatically over the years. Rochelle M: 18:00 Oh, I'd be amazed if it hadn't. I mean, one of the things we talk a lot about on this show is different, creating digital products and books and obviously books are a key part of your business strategy, I mean you've got four best selling books in 12 years, so we all know that's a huge investment in time. I'm wondering if you can walk us through the role that books play in your business model. So just as an example, some people think of books as really a standalone revenue stream and they look at books as, you know I need to make money from this book and this is my plan and it's a revenue stream, and others say, "Listen, the book is really more about feeding my speaking business or my consulting business, it's a calling card. And I don't worry so much about the revenue from the books, what I look at is how it supports the other things that I do." Jill K: 18:56 Yes, so that's what you wanna know about my books, how I look at my books mostly? Rochelle M: 19:00 How do you think about them, I'm curious? Jill K: 19:04 Okay, how I think about it is different from both ways that you described it. Rochelle M: 19:08 Good. Jonathan S: 19:08 Perfect. Jill K: 19:09 So we have plan C over here and plan C is, I like puzzles and problems, and I like to figure them out. And every time I figure them out I have a compulsive need to share the answers with people, so I write books. Because what good does it do if I know the answers and have ideas that can make a difference to a whole lot of people, so to me it's a mission driven thing to write the books, I'm compelled to write the books. However, let me say the big however. However, I am very well aware that they are the lifeblood of my business. But I don't write them for the money and I don't write them exactly for getting the business, I write them because they need to be written. Jill K: 19:55 Because I have tackled an issue that people are facing and that I know that they're facing and that they can help people. So that's why I write them, but because I'm a salesperson at heart, you know, I truly do understand that there will be great payback, but it's not my driving force. I mean, I've written some books that ... I mean I actually wrote a book in 2008 for people on how to use selling skills to get jobs when the stock market crashed, or not stock market, but the whole economy crashed, I put a book out there for free. Why? Because people needed to know that you couldn't just go onto Monster.com, you know and put your resume out. They needed to know that they could target companies they wanted to work for and go after them and create job opportunities on their own. Jill K: 20:40 So I wrote a book and just gave it away. Jonathan S: 20:43 Yeah and that's sort of a good segue into the absolute wealth of information and variety of formats that you have organized on your website. I mean it's almost overwhelming, you have it organized very nicely so it's not overwhelming but it's just a massive amount of information. Jill K: 21:02 Yes, okay so here's some of the things that you need to know. I have said before that I'm on a mission type thing, and I feel compelled to do this, you know write the selling to big companies book, put stuff out there. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I can't remember exactly in the time frame, I said to myself, "How can I give my expertise away for free and make good money doing it?" Which is an interesting question to pose. Cause it's doesn't sound like there's an answer. How can I give stuff away for free and make good money doing that? Jill K: 21:40 And at that point I didn't know the answer, but one of the things I've always done is I've posed the question to myself, you know, like I said, how can I help these small businesses who don't know how to sell and don't have any money, how can I serve them? And you know, my brain works on it for three to four months and suddenly one day the answer miraculously appears. So anyway, I did I posed the question, How can I give away my expertise for free and make good money doing it? And a few months later a company contacted me about writing an e-book and they said, "We will market it to the VP of sales." Which is my target demographic and I knew that their technology, you know, it was good for them to bless my work and for me to create an e-book for them. Jill K: 22:29 SO I wrote an e-book for them, put it out there and three months later D and B called, Dun and Bradstreet called and said, "We saw this book that you wrote for this company and we would really like you to write an e-book for us and we'll share it with our readers." And you know, for Dun and Bradstreet to say that it was pretty cool, right? I mean, again, they had a division that was going after VP's of sales, my target readers. And so we talked and kinda focused on what the e-book would be like and I'm talking an e-book probably of two to three thousand words, just for context for people. And they would do the design of the e-book and I would simply do the words. Jill K: 23:05 So we got done talking, had honed in on the topic and then the lady from D and B said to me, "How much do you charge for this?" And now I thought I was doing an e-book from a pure marketing perspective and when she said that I stopped and I said to myself, "Oh my God, people pay for this kinda stuff." And so I said, "3,000 dollars." And she said, "Oh, we can afford that." Okay, that's interesting. Jill K: 23:41 So I wrote a nice e-book sharing my expertise, Dun and Bradstreet gave it away for free and I made 3,000 dollars. And it was a one week project, not bad. Cause that's also becoming a marketing piece for me out there, do you know what I'm saying? Jonathan S: 23:57 Sure. Jill K: 23:58 Now I'm giving away my expertise for free to people who need it and I'm getting paid for it. So then the first company that asked me to write the e-book called back said, "That e-book was the best thing we've ever had, we've had more downloads from a lead generation standpoint, it has been tremendous, we would like you to write another one." And I said, "I would love to do that, but you know I'm really busy right now, and I'm gonna have to charge you to do it, cause it would take away from my work time." And they said, "Oh, how much?" And I said, "4,000 dollars." And they said, "Yeah, we can afford that." Jill K: 24:36 So I took another week and wrote another e-book, you know didn't write the whole time but just kinda thought about it, gave it some structure and then filled in the meat. Again, two to three thousand words, and then I realized that my expertise was a revenue source, and it didn't hit me til that point. So what most consultants don't understand is that there are companies, first of all they serve a certain demographic, like I serve and am an expert for sales people and somebody else might be an expert in pricing, somebody else might be an HR consultant on laws of some sort. There are people out there who sell things to the people we're trying to do work with, you know, like there's a whole bunch of technology people that sell things to my clients, you know, the kinda people I work with, the kinda people I write for. Jill K: 25:27 And so I literally created a business model where I did a couple things, number one I created content and I still do, I create content for companies who are trying to reach salespeople, and I get paid really good money to create e-books. My daughter when she was out of college, in her 20's went to work for a company that was an agency and she actually wrote articles and blog posts for Linkedin and e-books for Linkedin and her agency was paid 20,000 dollars to write an e-book, so now I raised my fee. Rochelle M: 26:02 Yeah. Jill K: 26:04 And get paid 20,000 dollars to write an e-book. Because kids that were right out of college were writing these e-books from agencies and they were getting expert opinions and putting it together where I who am the expert can sit down, you know and write e-books and then they have the authority of my expertise as opposed to just Linkedin e-books. So they can market it better. So lead generation is crucial for a lot of companies today, they're desperately searching for content, content can be delivered in multiple formats, I have written e-books, now I'm doing interviews with people as part of my content, I've done video segments from a content perspective. I've done podcasts, you know, I do webinars, I get paid to do webinars, which they use, "Oh we're having a webinar with Jill Konrath and you know sign up, it's free." Jill K: 26:53 But it's free for the people who sign up, but it's not free, I'm not giving away my time, I'm being paid to do it cause I'm an expert in this field. And so I have an entire business model that is set on giving away stuff for free and making good money doing it. Rochelle M: 27:08 Wow. I love that explanation, Jonathan I'm picturing our listeners going, "really? I can do that?" Jill K: 27:16 Oh my God, you guys there's so much money in lead generation, people are paying 10 or 20 thousand dollars to have an e-book and you don't even have to be an expert, you know like a well known expert, you could easily charge like I said, I started at 4,000 dollars to have an e-book that was marketed to my target market. So other companies are blessing me by saying, "here's an expert" they're putting me in front of my targeted client who's getting free advice and I'm making good money. And word comes from that, that's what you've gotta realize, it does come back to me in a different way. Jill K: 27:52 The other thing I've found and a lot of people don't realize this too is the importance of having a good database as a consultant, a database, a newsletter list. Because and here's what I can tell you I discovered, again I reach a certain demographic and a few years back after I asked that question, "How can I give away my expertise for free and make good money doing that?" You know, I write this newsletter and somebody approached me and said we have a client who would like to know if you would write about this e-book in your newsletter, or if you'd promote this e-book in your newsletter. And I said, "I don't promote other people's stuff in my newsletter, you know, I just write my stuff." Jill K: 28:35 And they said, "Could we pay you to do that?" And I said, "Why don't you send me the e-book and I'll take a look at it?" And they sent me this e-book that was written and it was perfect for my audience, I mean they would love it, it was well written, it wasn't promotional at all, it was really excellent content and they paid me 4,000 dollars to do that, you know it's like, oh my God, all I had to do was send a newsletter to my database, all I had to do, "Here's a really good e-book on this. When you read it you'll discover ..." And I had three bullet points and then at the bottom I'd write complements of my vendor, and I'd have a link, you know. Jill K: 29:15 And I'd be paid to do that. So once I discovered that my database was an asset, I started building my database so I could charge more. I know, but it allows me to give away good stuff for free and to get paid doing it, which allows me to stop and create more new content. It's the creation stuff that's fun for me, so how can I constantly be in a creation mode and give my stuff away for free so I can create new stuff. Rochelle M: 29:43 Well and this sense of mission that you have just kind of bleeds into everything which I love, I feel like that's your fuel. Jill K: 29:51 Yeah, it is my fuel, I mean you know money used to be my fuel and since I discovered, I mean when I got hooked on helping small businesses, which ultimately I did this selling to big companies stuff, suddenly everything changed and my business kind of exploded on me when I was really trying to be more generous with the world, does that make sense? And so something and it really did explode on me and everything changed and I became the internationally recognized person, but that was never ever my goal. But I became that. Rochelle M: 30:27 Wow. Jonathan S: 30:29 How do speaking engagements figure into the mix? Jill K: 30:32 Well I don't do consulting anymore, okay, I literally had to make a choice a few years ago, probably seven years ago now. Much as I love doing consulting work, what I discovered was that doing consulting work was ... my whole brain got wrapped up in my client, you know what I mean? You get so immersed in the work and every creative thought I had was, "Oh God how am I gonna solve that? Or what am I gonna do? How do I fix that?" And it took up all my creative energy and I had made a decision then that I could either serve one client really well or I could serve a variety of people out there. And so I made a choice to serve a variety of people and to serve the world as opposed to my one client, which meant I had to walk away from consulting entirely and move into speaking, which is not something I'd done too much of, you know. Jill K: 31:27 So then I had to become a speaker, which is something I never wanted to do, but I became one because I wanted to share what I learned. I feel like I'm a real oddball here talking, but it's like if you're sort of on this mission and you've learned this stuff about you know how to sell to these companies, or how to be more successful or how to, you know how to get your life back in order, those are important things. I want people to know then so they don't have to go through the same learning curve that I had to go through. Jill K: 32:01 So how does speaking fit in? Speaking fits Jill K: 32:00 ... curve that I had to go through. How does speaking feed in? Speaking feeds in because I get paid well to do it and it gives me a chance to be in front of more people, and to have a broader impact. But it pays really, really well. Rochelle M: 32:16 You've got an international footprint, yes? Jill K: 32:18 Yes. Last month I was in Milan, Italy. Wrapped a nice vacation around it so it was a lot of fun. Jonathan S: 32:27 Nice. Rochelle M: 32:28 That sounds perfect. Jill K: 32:29 It was perfect. Jonathan S: 32:36 It feels like each of these different sorts of packaging of your expertise, each of these different offerings if you will even if they're free, blogposts and e-books and worksheets and videos and speeches and books. They all ... sort of like what people refer to as a flywheel effect where you've got this very, very clear focus at the hub, in the center. And everything just revolves around it. It's adding a little bit. And once it's going, adding more energy to that motion just keeps it in motion, keeps it accelerating. Jill K: 33:15 Yeah. It does. Jonathan S: 33:16 I'm curious if there were any spikes or anything in particular that you noticed really noticed upped the ante for you? Was very successful for you and got you to a new level? I don't know, one of the books perhaps being super successful. Or was it ... Was there anything in particular that you could share with the listeners that you look back and say, "That ..." Maybe you didn't know it at the time but, "Man. That was smart. That really worked out for me." Jill K: 33:45 Oh man. A lot of things have worked out for me. Jonathan S: 33:53 It seems that way. And that was a perfectly good answer. I'm kind of hoping you say, "No," because- Jill K: 33:58 There's no magic here. Jonathan S: 33:59 Right. Jill K: 33:59 I mean like I said, this wasn't my goal. My goal was to do the work and to get paid a living wage. Have a good enough income that I felt decent about the work that I was doing. Jill K: 34:09 I have passed up a significant number of revenue opportunities that have come my way. And I have chosen not to do certain things because of lifestyle choices. You know, I do speak but man, I'm not promoting myself as somebody who's on the road 250 days a year. That's like crazy for me. I don't want to do that. Speaking 20 times a year is sufficient. You can tell I'm not totally driven by money but I'm making really good money, you know? I have been approached numerous times to do online training courses and I have not done them. I've not done them. Jonathan S: 34:46 What's the thinking there? Jill K: 34:48 Well because I have seen a lot of people do them and I am very aware that it's not about the training program. A lot of people have created really good training programs. They've invested a ton of money in these things. And then in order to be profitable, they have to go into marketing mode and they have to have a large enough footprint out there from a database perspective or they have to be constantly marketing. And I don't want to do that. I want to give away my stuff for free and make good money doing it. Jill K: 35:21 It's more fun for me to give it away. So I found another way so I don't have to keep selling programs. I just keep giving away stuff. And I go to companies and say, "I have an idea for something on how I can help you," and I pitch my ideas to companies about how I can create content. How I can create content that they can leverage. And what people don't realize is the lead generation machines of companies are desperate for content. If you have a niche and an expertise in a certain area, there are somebody who's trying to reach the person that you work with. I don't care if it's auditors or warehouse foremen. Somebody's trying to reach them. Jill K: 36:08 And who are these companies who are selling to these people and how can you create some good content that they can give away for free to attract these people into their database because they need to talk to them. They want something that is good. We're experts and we don't value our content. But they're paying kids out of college big bucks to write articles or to write e-books or to do things that we, who are experts, could do and do it so much better than. Jill K: 36:39 I mean to me that's an opportunity that virtually every consultant is totally blind to. I went to speak at National Speakers Association at one of their events a few years back. And I was explaining this to people. And again, most people look at me like, "I couldn't do that. That's really weird." But one guy came up to me afterwards. He said, "I am an expert in aging population and how to take care of aging parents." That's his expertise. And he said, "I have a 30000 word document right now that I was thinking of putting out as a book." He said, "What you've done is you've given me an idea." And he went to New York Life Insurance company with his idea because they had a product on elderly care product. And he sold them, his first time out contacting New York Life, going after the lead generation or demand generation department in their marketing arena and talk with them about creating an e-book on how to take care of your elderly parents or how do you decide on which senior place is the best for your elderly parents. And $30000 you know? On his first time out. And he already had the content. Rochelle M: 37:51 Not bad. Jill K: 37:52 You don't make that much from writing a book usually, you know what I mean? Jonathan S: 37:56 Not your first one. Jill K: 37:56 Not your first one. No. Rochelle M: 37:56 Exactly. Jonathan S: 37:59 I'm having my own light bulb moment here because I've actually been hired to do things like you're describing. And it never occurred to me that they were anything other than random one off edge cases where I've written a bunch of books. The target market is always software developers, specifically web developers, and have been hired by big companies to essentially do exactly to the letter what you're describing here. Jill K: 37:59 And? Jonathan S: 38:26 And it was great. It's great money. It's exactly what you're saying. It's great money. It's great exposure. You get to share ideas for free. You get the third party endorsement of whoever, Nokia or Cisco or whoever else, Intel. Jill K: 38:44 Yeah. Right. Jonathan S: 38:46 But the shoe that never dropped for me, was that you could actually go after that kind of work specifically. It just seemed to me so random and so ... I mean now that you're saying it, it's obvious that it's not. But it never even occurred to me to think like, "Oh. That could be my whole business." It surely could have. Jill K: 39:08 I mean the two things about leveraging my database and sharing information about good webinars that are coming up or good e-books that other companies have written and the combination of doing my own content creation for companies was 50% of my revenue last year. And it was fun work. Jonathan S: 39:25 Right. It is fun. Jill K: 39:26 And you know some of the projects, some of the e-books that I wrote in the last couple years and talking with people, I interview some of their best clients. And I write up like ... One e-book I did was for a company called Velocify that does software for inside sales, inside sales people that call on the phone. And they had me interview five VPs of Sales that are running high performance teams, sales teams. Jill K: 39:55 And I wrote an e-book. It was fast, it was fun to do because I got to talk to all these five people and get inside their brain. And these are, again, people like my customers, you know. I got to interview them and then I got to write up seven things I learned from them in an e-book. The 7 Characteristics of Top Performing Sales Leaders. You know it was like, "Oh that was fun. It gave me more recent connectivity with my base. I got to ask insightful questions. They were delighted to be included in the project. It's like, "Man. This is cool work." Rochelle M: 40:30 Win, win, win. Jill K: 40:31 Win, win, win. Win, win, win. Yeah. Jonathan S: 40:33 So if someone was going to ... I know specific individuals who are more ... I think they would refer to themselves as copywriters or data analysts and they don't see themselves as maybe as big of an expert at their area of expertise than I would consider them to be. Who I imagine will listen to this and not perhaps be skeptical or clueless about what next steps to take if maybe they are interested in experimenting with these ideas. As a sales expert, what would somebody in a situation like that do as a first step? Jill K: 41:12 First. So if you wanted to do this to make money doing? Like what I was just describing? Jonathan S: 41:19 Right. You know you said that companies are desperate for lead generation. Jill K: 41:23 They really are. Jonathan S: 41:23 College kids to do it. I know for sure that there are tons of listeners of this show and also another show that I do that are just ... They say all the time, "People don't value what I do. What I do is a commodity." They're trying to sell themselves by the hour on Upwork. They're competing with people in the Philippines who are charging $3 an hour. They feel like giving up frankly. And this is a very, very interesting approach that has never occurred to me consciously before but I wouldn't know where to recommend that they start. Jill K: 42:01 Right. Most people don't because they don't understand sales. They don't understand lead generation either. They just don't think that people are doing that. But if they understood, first of all, that companies are desperately trying to get people in to their database so that they can initiate conversations with them about potentially buying a product or service. Jill K: 42:25 The first place you have to start is saying, "Well who are the people that I'm continually working with? Is it Purchasing? Is it Marketing? CMOs? Where am I working?" And you have to say then, "Who is trying to sell these people things?" And honestly, if you're working in Marketing and selling with CMOs, you could talk to the CMO and say, "You know, what kind of things do you make decisions about?" And they might say, "Well, we make decisions about technology. There's a lot of marketing technology right now. Or we make decisions about this or that." Jill K: 43:01 Whatever they tell you, then you have to find out what companies are in that business. But if you're selling to the CMO, which technologies are trying to reach the CMO? Or if you're selling to an attorney or law firm, which companies are trying to reach law firms to sell them what? What products and services? And you have to just start thinking about it and start researching the companies. And there's no shortcut to do that. Jill K: 43:26 But once you start researching the companies and you say, "Oh this company sounds like ... It's kind of aligned with what I do. And we're kind of talking the same thing. I'm just helping on the edges of it." Then you have to look and you have to go to LinkedIn and you have to look and google things like demand generation or lead generation and find out who's in their Marketing department. And take a look if they have any -- I go to their website and I'd take a look -- are they offering any e-books? Do they have webinars? Do they have infographics. I've been paid a lot of money for one page cheat sheets too. Little one page cheat sheets. Blah, blah, blah. I can't talk. A little one page cheat sheet that I've written. I got $3000 for writing something that I already knew and that didn't take very long. Jill K: 44:21 But just going to the website and seeing are they doing lead generation on their website. And you can tell they're doing it if you have to fill out your name for something and give them an email address. Then you know they're doing lead generation, right? Jonathan S: 44:35 Sure. It's obvious. Jill K: 44:36 It's obvious. So once you know, yes they are leveraging lead generation and you don't want to talk somebody into it because they don't get it. You want to always work somebody who gets it. And see what they have. And see if you can think of an idea to add something else. Jill K: 44:55 Like the one I was talking about before with Velocify. I went to them with an idea because I checked out their website and they didn't have anything on onboarding sales people. Nothing. Nothing. And so I suggested that they might want to consider that and let's talk. You can send out an email to the head of lead gen. By the way not just one because if you look at any of my books, you'll find out it takes eight to ten touches, contacts in order for this person to get back to you. But you initiate contact and you suggest an idea, then you state that you've been on their website, it looks like their doing lead generation. You have some ideas on how to create an e-book or do a webinar, whatever it is that you want to create yourself. And just suggest that you set up a time to talk. It's not pitching them on your writing skills. It's suggesting that you have an idea that might help them generate more leads. Jonathan S: 45:54 And generating more leads, as we all know, is a very desirable business outcome for certain people. Jill K: 45:59 Oh my God. Yes. It's what they want. And if it's in your area of expertise, you know this stuff and you can write an e-book and being paid $10000 or whatever to sit down and write an e-book in one week, that's 2000 to 3000 words. Jonathan S: 46:14 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Jill K: 46:15 That's not a lot of writing. My first two books are 60000 words and my second two are about 40000 to 45000, so. Jonathan S: 46:26 Yeah it's super doable. It's just great. This is great. Rochelle M: 46:29 I just want to point out to our audience that the key is knowing who you're serving. Knowing who your sweet spot is. Being crystal clear is going to help you. You can't start this without knowing that. Jill K: 46:42 You can't. Jonathan S: 46:48 Yeah, it's critical. The whole idea falls apart if you don't have that. Jill K: 46:48 It sort of goes back to ... You talked about selling to big companies at the onset. I mean selling to big companies is about really knowing who your target market is. Who am I going after? Who is this company? Who is the specific buyer? What value do I bring? It's about focusing and creating a conversation with somebody you want to reach. It all goes full circle. Jonathan S: 47:12 Well that's a perfect segue into a wrap-up. Rochelle M: 47:16 That's where I was going. [inaudible 00:47:18] better myself. Perfect. Jonathan S: 47:20 Well thanks so much for joining us Jill. This has been solid gold, just really, really great. Where should people go to find out more about you and your books and all the other wonderful things that you have available? Jill K: 47:31 JillKonrath.com. That's it. JillKonrath.com. Jonathan S: 47:35 Perfect. Jill K: 47:35 Konrath with a K. Jonathan S: 47:37 Yes. We will absolutely link all of this up in the show notes. Jill with a J. Konrath with a K. Jill K: 47:44 Yeah. Jonathan S: 47:47 Alright great. Well thanks again for joining us. Rochelle M: 47:49 Thank you so much. Jonathan S: 47:51 That'll do it for the Business of Authority. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll talk to you again next week. Bye. Rochelle M: 47:57 Bye bye.

The featured guest on episode 13 is Robert Weiss. Robert is the President of MultiVision Digital, a digital marketing company. MultiVision specializes in developing and executing video content marketing strategies to increase sales, lead generation, and client loyalty. With years of expertise and a senior staff of talented individuals, MultiVision Digital’s video content marketing services […] The post Let’s Talk Sales! Agile Selling with Robert Weiss – Episode 13 appeared first on Criteria For Success.

**  Originally released on December 15th, 2017  **   Joining me on this episode of Accelerate! is my friend Jill Konrath. Jill is a speaker, sales expert, and author of multiple bestselling books, including Selling to Big Companies, Snap Selling, Agile Selling, and her latest book, More Sales, Less Time. Among the many topics that Jill and I discuss are how she came to focus on selling more in less time, what she learned from her research about concentration, focus and how to eliminate distraction that waste selling time, how to make the most of the limited hours available each, and how you can take the More Sales, Less Time Challenge.

**  Originally released on December 15th, 2017  **   Joining me on this episode of Accelerate! is my friend Jill Konrath. Jill is a speaker, sales expert, and author of multiple bestselling books, including Selling to Big Companies, Snap Selling, Agile Selling, and her latest book, More Sales, Less Time. Among the many topics that Jill and I discuss are how she came to focus on selling more in less time, what she learned from her research about concentration, focus and how to eliminate distraction that waste selling time, how to make the most of the limited hours available each, and how you can take the More Sales, Less Time Challenge.     KEY TAKEAWAYS [2:19] After Jill wrote SNAP Selling, about selling to frazzled customers, readers asked her how to simplify their own lives. She had no idea how to help them, so she researched it. [6:37] Research shows multitasking is an illusion. Learn what happens when you try to jump between two tasks and refocus your attention. [8:20] How often the average sales person checks their cell phone each day. And how each interruption reduces productivity. [8:40] To write More Sales, Less Time, Jill used herself as a test subject for the before and after metrics for each new strategy she tried. [10:44] Jill shares how using your willpower impacts your ability to make decisions. [14:20] Jill’s Time Master Manifesto sets rules to manage time, starting with getting seven-and-a-half hours of sleep nightly. [17:28] How you should start each business day before turning on your computer and checking your email. [20:12] Two books to assist salespeople in learning how to prioritize are Essentialism, and The One Thing. [24:03] Challenge the status quo at all times, looking for a better way to achieve the end result. [25:00] Jill shares the value of scheduling your activities into blocks of time. You are most productive while focusing on one activity.   MORE ABOUT JILL KONRATH What’s your most powerful sales attribute?The quality of my questions. They’re penetrating; they’re insightful; they make people think; and I get a lot of good information that I can then translate into what I share later. Who is your sales role model?Neil Rackham, when I started, but today it’s new territory, and I scan a lot of people, and pick and choose what I need. What’s one book that every salesperson should read?There are so many. It depends on what you’re selling, and what you need at a particular time. What music is on your playlist right now? Podcasts only, but when I write, the Focus@Will app.   CONTACT JILL KONRATH Jill invites you to take the More Sales, Less Time Challenge! To start, text to 44144, the message, Sales Website: Jill Konrath

This week Cut The Crap Podcast features the book, 'Agile Selling' by Jill Konrath. Sales guru Jill Konrath offers both new and experienced salespeople a plan for rapidly absorbing new information and mastering new skills by becoming agile sellers. Readers will learn the mindsets, learning strategies and habits that they can use in crazy-busy times to start strong and stay nimble. I took 4 Golden Nuggets away from this book! ---------- Go to CutTheCrapPodcast.com and signup to receive a summary from each episode that will highlight all of the golden nuggets shared in the podcast. ----------- Follow Ryan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and SnapChat.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week’s Software Process and Measurement Cast is a magazine feature with three columns. This week we have columns from Kim Pries, The Software Sensei, and Jo Ann Sweeney’s Explaining Change.  In this installment Kim discusses the ins and outs of selling defect control.  In Explaining Change, Jo Ann tackles the concept of planning for communication (protip: it is better than winging it). The SPaMCAST essay this week tackles the topic of what is and isn’t Agile.  Does just saying you are Agile make you Agile?  We think not! Call to action! Can you tell a friend about the podcast? If your friends don’t know how to subscribe or listen to a podcast, show them how you listen and subscribe them!  Remember to send us the name of you person you subscribed (and a picture) and I will give both you and the horde you have converted to listeners a call out on the show.  Re-Read Saturday News The Re-Read Saturday focus on Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox’s The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement began on February 21nd. The Goal has been hugely influential because it introduced the Theory of Constraints, which is central to lean thinking. The book is written as a business novel. Visit the Software Process and Measurement Blog and catch up on the re-read. Note: If you don’t have a copy of the book, buy one.  If you use the link below it will support the Software Process and Measurement blog and podcast. Dead Tree Version or Kindle Version  I am beginning to think of which book will be next. Do you have any ideas? Upcoming Events CMMI Institute Conference EMEA 2015March 26 -27 London, UKI will be presenting “Agile Risk Management.” http://cmmi.unicom.co.uk/ QAI Quest 2015April 20 -21 Atlanta, GA, USAScale Agile Testing Using the TMMihttp://www.qaiquest.org/2015/ DCG will also have a booth! CANCELED -International Conference on Software Quality and Test Management Washington D.C. May 31 - June 5, 2015 Next SPaMCast The next Software Process and Measurement Cast will feature our interview with Agile coach Mario Lucero.  Mario and I discussed the nuts and bolts of coaching Agile teams, what is and isn’t Agile and the impact of coaching on success.  Shameless Ad for my book! Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: “This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, neither for you or your team.” Support SPaMCAST by buying the book here. Available in English and Chinese.

This week on the Social Business Engine podcast, I welcome Jill Konrath, author of three best selling books on sales topics. On this episode we discuss Agile Selling. Jill reveals how the modern sales model has been influenced by the paradigm shift in social, and we also discussed the skills needed to succeed in the modern selling paragigm. Visit our show notes page for a summary and links to resources we discussed.  http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/podcasts/agile-selling

Jill Konrath is the bestselling author of SNAP Selling, Selling to Big Companies – and recently released, Agile Selling. Jill’s expertise has been featured by ABC News, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Inc, and many others. She’s full of great advice and fresh strategies for winning NEW customers in today’s evolving sales environment.

Jill Konrath is the bestselling author of Selling to Big Companies and now, AGILE SELLING. She s full of great advice and fresh strategies on winning new customers in today s evolving sales environment. Her expertise has by featured by ABC News, Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, Inc. and more. Over 125,000 sellers read her award-winning blog. The world of sales has changed profoundly. Jill will tell you how to be Agile in this new sales environment. Create a connection so people want to talk with you. ~ Jill Konrath, on How She Really Does It LISTEN HERE In this interview we discuss: Mindset of a successful seller Mentor/role models of influence Inspiration Transform failures into learning experiences Courage Steps to prepare to succeed in this new world of sales. How to deal with overwhelm so you can do a great job. Takeaways It’s (selling) is a learned skill. ~ Jill Konrath, on How She Really Does It Mentioned in this Podcast website book: AGILE Selling smiling, The post Jill Konrath: Agile Selling appeared first on howshereallydoesit.com.

Selling had become more competitive than ever. Pressures from buyers, your boss and the competitors keep you on your toes. Best-selling author Jill Konrath shares with BizTalk Host Jim Lobaito insights from her new book “Agile Selling” on how salespeople can stay on top of their game.

I am Kathy Klotz-Guest, founder of Keeping it Human, coming to you live from San Jose, CA, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Keeping it Human helps marketing executives and their teams tell their best and most important company, product and customer stories to the world. We are a jargon-monoxide-poisoning free zone. Our show is created especially for marketing execs and their teams. Leave a comment on the blog! Selling to Uber-Busy Prospects in a Noisy World Prospects are super-busy today. There is just way too much coming at them every day and your solutions just aren't a priority in their lives. How do cut through noise to really help prospects understand their big human needs and still create value for them? How do you become an agile seller today? Join us Thurs, May 22nd, for a great prodcast with Jill Konrath. She'll tell you how to succeed at sales today! About Jill She's an internationally recognized sales strategist and the bestselling author of SNAP Selling. It soared to the #1 sales book on Amazon within hours of its release. Her previous book, Selling to Big Companies, has been an Amazon Top 20 Sales Book since 2006. Fortune magazine selected it as one of 8 "must reads" for salespeople. Her new one – called Agile Selling – which will be out at the end of May. Jill began her sales career at Xerox. Since then, she's worked with companies like IBM, GE & Microsoft.  She's been featured on ABC News, Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, New York Times and many more publications. She's on the front edge of what it takes to be successful today — with fresh strategies to help you stay at the top of your game.

When it comes to prospecting and selling, most of us want the easy way out. The gimmick that will put our prospecting on autopilot. But at the end of the day, if the trick, gimmick or technique is not based on strong fundamentals, it will have a VERY short shelf life. One of the many things I love about my colleague Jill Konrath is that all her advice is based on strong fundamentals. She understands human nature. She understands what decision makers want—what keeps them up at night. And how to continue the conversation already going on in their heads. In this episode, she explains: Why selling has changed drastically in the past 10 years Why you need to adopt a different approach to your own marketing and selling And how simple shifts in the way you approach prospects can have a dramatic impact on your income.

Digital and Social Media Strategist & Speaker Michele Price brings you weekly access to the top minds in Business Success Mindset and Digital tools, techniques and strategies. Breakthrough Business Strategies Radio delivers high impact & pioneering knowledge for entrepreneurs, startups, sales/marketing/IT professionals every Monday with Houston's #1 Social Media Strategist, Michele Price, CMO for TechStreet Houston. Dino Dogan, co-founder of Triberr shares new thinking on using you blog for your business. Jill Konrath, sales strategiest and author of Agile Selling will be sharing with us the power of unlocking the buying process today.  Follow us with hashtag #BBSradio for the up to the minute news. Ask your questions via twitter using #BBSradio.

David Meerman Scott is an internationally acclaimed strategist whose books and blog are must-reads for professionals seeking to generate attention in ways that grow their business. David speaks on Real-Time Marketing & PR Strategy, Agile Selling, Spreading Ideas, Generating Attention, Growing Business, New Communications Strategies, Entrepreneurism, and Social Media. He’s spoken to business audiences on every continent, including recently in Antarctica. He is an advisor to several marketing and sales SaaS companies including Hubspot.

David Meerman Scott is an internationally acclaimed strategist whose books and blog are must-reads for professionals seeking to generate attention in ways that grow their business. David speaks on Real-Time Marketing & PR Strategy, Agile Selling, Spreading Ideas, Generating Attention, Growing Business, New Communications Strategies, Entrepreneurism, and Social Media. He’s spoken to business audiences on every continent, including recently in Antarctica. He is an advisor to several marketing and sales SaaS companies including Hubspot.