Podcast appearances and mentions of kurt shaver

Salespeople haven't gotten many if any face-to-face meetings in the last year. They don't get to take their clients to ballgames to build rapport. The result of COVID quarantines and working from home accelerated the trend toward digitalization 5–6 years ahead of where we'd be without the unexpected catalyst.  Video has been huge—both synchronous and asynchronous—for the last 18 months. But what is a “sleeper” tactic that Kurt Shaver believes will be strategically implemented as part of the sales process? How does he believe you should leverage LinkedIn? Learn more in this episode of Sales Reinvented!  Outline of This Episode [1:01] The difference between digital selling and social selling [2:27] Why is digital selling important? How can you improve it? [4:05] The blueprint for the perfect digital selling strategy [5:32] The attributes that make a salesperson excel in digital sales [6:50] Tools, techniques, and strategies to use [8:50] Kurt's top 3 digital selling dos and don'ts [12:16] Your LinkedIn profile is a resource—not a resume Kurt's blueprint for the perfect digital selling strategy What is Kurt's ideal sales strategy?  You have to figure out what your goals are and how you'll measure them. Once you identify your goals, figure out who you're trying to reach, what the buying personas are, and what content does the company has to address the different buying personas in different parts of the sales cycle. Content is a huge play.  On the selling side, you need the right tools in place. LinkedIn or Sales Navigator? Will you use video messaging tools or content sharing tools?  You need the right training, coaching, reinforcement, ongoing metrics, and make sure it's woven into sales so everything sticks.  What are the attributes that Kurt believes make a salesperson excel in digital sales? Keep listening to find out! Tools, techniques, and strategies to use The first activity that Kurt categorizes as outbound prospecting is looking at LinkedIn as a database. Who can you target? What's your outreach? Can you get an introduction? Can you approach them with a certain buyer persona? He advises that you take advantage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Zant, Outreach, Sales Lock, VanillaSoft, etc.  As an individual seller building a network, you have to share relevant content on social networks about your company, industry, and yourself. You must build a reputation as a subject matter expert and go-to resource. People will come to you as a credible resource. Video is a huge area where you can use tools like OneMob, Hippo Video, Vidyard, etc.  Kurt's top 3 digital selling dos and don'ts What strategies should you adopt? What should you avoid?  Learn how to master the social network that the majority of your prospects use. In the B2B world, it's likely LinkedIn. People in Sports and Entertainment may skew toward Twitter. If they're in advertising they may use Instagram. Be present on that network. Embrace and get comfortable with being on video. All the apps are adding video—and it isn't just social networks.  If you want to get ahead of the curve, experiment with texting prospects. This strategy is the hardest to succeed with. In North America, sending a text will get you the highest response rate of any communication medium. But the bad news is that you have to be in someone's inner circle of trust and you can't violate that. Don't treat LinkedIn as a resume (unless you're trying to get a job). It needs to be more like a website and a resource. Don't pounce on people when you send someone an invitation. The first words out of your mouth shouldn't be selling. You court before you ask someone to marry you. If you're trying to build rapport and you get a video conference, turn on the camera so they learn to know, like, and trust you.  Your LinkedIn profile is a resource—not a resume Kurt runs a program called “Selling with LinkedIn” where they help sales teams transform their LinkedIn profiles. They always start with the headline. You want it to be a customer-oriented benefit statement. It can't just be “account executive” or “sales engineer.” You want to say “I help manufacturing engineers streamline processes to drive productivity.”  They helped a client in a recruiting and staffing business do that. Before the training, his headline was “account executive.” In the workshop, he changed it to “I help fast-growth technology companies source and retain top programming talent.” What was the result? A VP of HR at a fast-growth technology company who couldn't source and retain talent saw that headline.  She reached out to him and he got into the sales cycle with her. Two months later, he closed a six-figure recruiting retainer deal with this company. It all started because he invested 5 minutes to reengineer his headline. He called out the types of customers he works with and the outcomes he hopes to achieve for them. Resources & People Mentioned Sales Navigator Xant Outreach VanillaSoft OneMob Hippo Video Vidyard Connect with Kurt Shaver Vengreso Connect on LinkedIn Follow on Twitter Connect With Paul Watts  LinkedIn Twitter  Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

Kurt Shaver is with Vengreso, who helps sales teams become adept at using sales tools from THIS century (Kurt's expression). They are masters at LinkedIn and now, one-to-one video messaging. The blessing of these tools is also that they are simple and powerful. The curse of these tools is that they are so simple and powerful that it's easy to misuse them: approaching people and immediately selling. We had a great conversation about selling in the modern world. Thanks Kurt! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On May 6, 2017, Robert Paylor broke his neck. On national television. During the Rugby collegiate championship game. Doctors said he would never walk again and would actually be lucky if he could regain any movement below his neck. Yet, almost four years later, Robert is telling an amazing story of recovery, hope, and forgiveness. I’m super excited about having Robert Paylor as my guest in this episode of The Modern Selling podcast. Robert is an international public speaker and, in his own words, a “quadriplegic on a journey to walk again and inspire others.” Don’t miss this episode to hear Rob’s story, some amazing life lessons, as well as valuable keys to sales success for leaders and sellers alike. 1. Mindset Rob was a rising star in UC Berkeley's Rugby team, with a bright future in front of him. But it all changed in an instant. The medical prognosis was that he would be paralyzed for the rest of his life. Rob, however, refused to accept that. Rob’s attitude and mindset after his injury helped him get through the pain and the grueling recovery process. “Don’t take negativity in,” Rob says. “Don’t listen to hopelessness. You have control of your mindset.” One of his secrets is to go on a mental diet. Just as with a food diet where you avoid foods that are bad for your body, a mental diet will avoid bad information into your brain. “Audit your thoughts,” he says. “Decide what is good for you and look for inspiring stories.” I love how Rob’s advice can be applied to the mindset of a seller. Salespeople hear “no” all the time. Rejection is a constant in their work. So, as a sales leader, how do you help your team deal with rejection? Through a mental diet where sellers are inspired by the wins of others and negativity is filtered out. 2. Perspective Another one of Rob’s secrets to stay positive is perspective.  “Perspective is a powerful tool. You can compare yourself to others up or down, to what you’ve accomplished or to what you have failed at.” Rob recommends that when you are going through a struggle, you ask yourself, “compared to what?” That will allow you to put your problems into perspective and feel empathy for others. Rob keeps a gratitude journal where he writes down three things he is grateful for every day.  Perspective in selling takes many forms.  “When pursuing a sale, always keep the buyer's situation in perspective,” says Kurt Shaver, Vengreso’s CSO and Co-Founder. “They may not be on the same timeline as you. They may even be having personal challenges outside of work. Slow or no response from a prospect doesn't always mean there's no interest. Sometimes it just means other priorities are more important right now. Don't risk future business by pushing too hard.” 3. Give It Everything You’ve Got Compared to Rob’s physical trauma, many of our problems in the sales profession pale in comparison. Still, selling can be hard, especially during these times when remote selling is the new normal and we can’t keep doing business as usual. Rob’s advice is to give everything we’ve got, no matter the circumstances. “We have one life,” he says. “Don’t live it as a quitter. Fight and get everything you want.” 4. Find Vision and Purpose His recovery process involves doing physical therapy for three hours every day. But remember that for him, even doing simple things is hard work. The way he motivates himself to keep going is by turning it around and finding purpose in his recovery journey.  “I don’t do it for myself, but to inspire others. Find the ‘why’ to keep going forward. You must have a vision.” 'Vision yourself where you want to be in 6 months' time, 1 year time, and 5 years' time in your sales career,” says Diego Garcia, Market Development Manager at Vengreso. “Once you find your purpose and 'the why' of your goals, you can then reverse engineer your plan into daily, weekly, and monthly habits to get where you want to be!” 5. Accountability  Accountability has also been an important part of Rob’s journey. He works with a mentor (one of the coaches at UC Berkeley) who helps him set goals and is there to support him. This is an important lesson for us as sales leaders. Our words and coaching are not for our sake, but to help our sellers succeed.  Inspiring, moving, and brilliant. Those are just three of the words used to describe this episode with Rob Paylor, that actually moved me to tears. Listen to the whole episode to learn about the power of forgiveness, gratitude, and resiliency.

Kurt Shaver the Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer of Vengreso tells you how to upgrade your remote and video selling skills using tools like LinkedIn and Video messaging. You can check him out at https://Vengreso.com/

With digital selling taking over traditional sales methodologies, there has never been a more exciting time to be in sales. Leveraging technology, social selling and sales prospecting tools has ushered in a new era for anyone pursuing a career in sales.  For the first time ever, buyers and sellers are completely aligned. Buyer behavior and selling motion are completely in sync and it is through correct B2B prospecting that we can succeed in this always-evolving field.  However, with so many sales prospecting tools out there, how do you know which ones are worth your time and money?  To help you out, I’ve put together a compendium of my favorite B2B sales prospecting tools: a list of both free and paid tools that will surely turn heads and help you get the best out of your sales team. But before we start, let’s define what sales prospecting is. What is Sales Prospecting? Sales prospecting is the art of searching for customers, buyers, and potential long term clients to help you grow your team’s sales pipeline. It is the art of finding those who most resemble your target buyer and initiate conversations or engage with them. When scouting for a sales prospect it is important to identify those who are the best fit for your offerings. Traditional sales methodologies were heavily focused on closing deals and not much on identifying whether or not, both the buyer and the organization, were a good fit between them in the long run. That’s why we created the PVC Method, a sales methodology that focuses on prospecting. Prospecting is not to be confused with lead generation and prospecting tools aren’t lead generation software.  What is the difference between a lead and prospect? This is one of the most common misconceptions among those just entering the sales field. I’ll quickly elaborate on both.  A lead is someone who expresses interest in your product or service, visits your website, watches your videos or even fills out a form. It is often associated with the inbound sales process.  A prospect is someone potentially qualified, aligned with your target persona, that has engaged with you in some way, shape or form. It is more outbound related.  Both leads and prospects need to be nurtured and driven down your sales funnel in order to ultimately become buyers. Now let’s dive into sales prospecting tools. Listen to Episode #161 of the Modern Selling Podcast where I talk with Vengreso’s CBO and Co-Founder, Kurt Shaver, about my favorite sales prospecting tools. What are Sales Prospecting Tools? In any industry, the competition is high when it comes to finding potential buyers and convincing them to buy your product or service. This is a challenging task, and in order to achieve your sales goals, it is critical to be open and knowledgeable about new strategies, tools, and technologies that can level up your team’s prospecting game.  A sales prospecting tool is any software that helps you automate small, repetitive tasks, so your sales reps can save time and deliver the right messaging to your prospects.  These tools will give your sales reps all the necessary information, as well as help you make the best decision to determine whether a person is a good fit or not for your organization. It helps with sales productivity and efficiency that will leverage the engagement with your buyer persona.  Prospecting tools will essentially help you gather more information, move faster, target the right people and engage prospects in a more meaningful way in order to close more deals.  Sales Prospecting Tools to Find Contact Details Within the realm of sales prospecting tools, there are a myriad of use cases, designed for specific tasks. Here are a few of tools that allow sellers find contact details: Seamless and Zoominfo - Often called the Google of contact searching, these tools allow sellers to not only search for prospects’ email, website, and contact info, but also export these newly found prospects into a CSV.  Prospect.io - By using their Chrome extension, sellers are able to instantly search for decision makers within a domain name. Using AI, Prospect.io pulls up a list of emails, phone numbers and other relevant information within any organization. Additionally, with Prospect.io you can save a contact or, within seconds, send them an email. If you’ve sent an email, prospect’s tracking tool allows you to see if they’ve opened it, replied, and even converted on your website.  LinkedHub - Instead of spending time on data entry from LinkedIn to Hubspot, this B2B prospecting tool allows users to synchronize all info and messages directly into HubSpot. This beats the hassle of copying and pasting with the possibility of skipping valuable information. It tracks and synchronizes sales messaging from LinkedIn.  Tools to Qualify Prospects A second category of sales prospecting tools I’d like to dive into are those tools that help B2B sales teams qualify prospects. These tools help sellers assess how likely it is that a person will eventually buy from their organization.  LinkedIn Sales Navigator or LinkedIn - LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are two separate tools. The later features a more powerful set of search capabilities and personalized algorithms to help your sellers reach the right decision maker. Learn more about the difference between the free LinkedIn and LinkedIn Premium, including Sales Navigator. Crystal Knows - This is an AI sales tool that allows your sellers to get an inside scoop on any prospect before they reach out. This somewhat eerie tool reads all the information on the prospect that is available in the web and summarizes anything —from latest news to the kind of tone a prospect prefers to be reached out. For example, should the seller greet “Hey Mario” or “Dear Mario;” should they use a “best friend voice” or sound casual. Crystal Knows allows sellers to decipher how to reach out before they actually do. It’s like having their own crystal ball before they contact a prospect.   Tools for Booking Meetings Once sellers have the contact information and have qualified these prospects, they need to book a meeting because, let’s face it, the end result of successful prospecting is starting a conversation and eventually booking a meeting.  Nevertheless, there are often instances where there are more than two people involved in a sales meeting. In order to successfully schedule the availability of several parties, here are a few of my favorite tools to complete this task:  Calendly Time Trade Hubspot Meeting Links Doodle Many sales professionals will incorrectly send their info and expect a prospect to instantly engage and book a meeting with them. Instead, I recommend using one of these tools, sending a link and have the prospects choose the best time for them.  Tools for engaging your sales prospect  There are over 700 tools in the sales tech stack in the market today and many specialize in the function of engaging prospects. Which is why I’d like to further divide this category into sub-categories.  Sales Engagement, Sales Productivity and Sales Efficiency FlyMSG - This is one of my favorite sales tools as it falls not only under the sales engagement platform category but is also in the realm of sales productivity and sales efficiency.  FlyMSG is the first text expander tool that was thought of and built for the modern seller. The tool was developed by us, here at Vengreso, and it allows sales pros (as well as marketers) to quickly pull up their favorite sales messages, emails and scripts using a few simple keystrokes. With these abbreviations (known as flycuts) users won’t have to look through old emails and notepads to find their favorite content.  The tool is a Chrome Extension that will instantly increase your team’s sales productivity and uniformity across your sales messaging.  Here’s a use case example. Say someone offered me the opportunity to guest blog for Vengreso’s blog. Instead of looking through the last email I sent a former guest blogger, I created a flycut where I've already copied and pasted the desired content. This email’s content can be instantly pulled up using an abbreviation. This tool is great not just for sellers but also sales leaders and marketers who wish to increase productivity, especially during the remote selling era where every minute working from home counts.  Sales Cadence Within the sales cadence realm there are four main tools: Xant Outreach  SalesLoft VanillaSoft While a sales productivity tool like FlyMSG will help with 1 to 1 messaging, sales cadence tools will grab these individual messages they’ve created and throw them all together in a sequence, thus improving their chances of sending prospects directly down their sales pipeline. By harnessing the power of both types of tools, you’ll not only save time and create uniformity, but you’ll also become more organized in your sales prospecting techniques. Sales/Content Engagement Platforms These tools help sellers look at the different pieces of content they have available from marketing and help them create 1 to 1 level engagement in prospecting. A great hub to save all of your content in one place and know what to use and when.  Seismic  HighSpot Big tin can Showpad Postal.io  Sendoso The last two are known as gift and direct level marketing tools. These are used by sellers to engage with their buyers offline through sales gifts.  Sales Video  Still within the realm of sales engagement, but worthy of its own category, video for sales prospecting has been huge in 2020 in the world of virtual selling. We offer a selling with video training program specifically for this type of engagement platform. With in-person events postponed until who knows when, video (both synchronous and asynchronous) is the next best thing to have prospects see and build trust with sellers.  A few of my favorite video selling engagement platforms are:  OneMob HippoVideo  BombBomb  Vidyard Videolicious CoVideo These tools allow sellers to not only create and send videos but also add various filters to make them more engaging, as well as allowing sellers to see how many times their videos have been viewed.  Tools for sales prospect meetings Now that your sellers have a date for the actual sales meeting, they’re going to want to know what tools to use to host the meeting, what to do during and what to do after said meeting has finalized.  Zoom Video Communications - The preferred tool to host virtual sales meetings.  OrgChartHub - A tool that lets sellers build an org chart directly within HubSpot. Not necessarily a tool that is used with the prospect directly, but a tool that I use in every meeting. This helps bridge the gap between customer success, support and sales.  Gong.io - Gong will both record meetings as well as take notes for you. A sales intelligence tool to both prospect and revisit meetings with your sellers thus improving their confidence and cold calling abilities. Tools for social content sharing, inbound prospecting, and social selling  A few sections ago I spoke about the difference between a lead and a prospect and how they relate to inbound and outbound sales respectively. One of the ways to generate inbound traffic is by teaching your sellers how to share content on social networks thus, build credibility and visibility. It isn’t necessarily part of a social media strategy but it will help keep buyers engaged.  There are two types of content sharing platforms sellers can use. It can either be 1 to 1 sharing or one to many. On the one to many, we have tools that are also known as employee advocacy programs but are most commonly known as content sharing platforms. The content can be filtered by a plethora of categories to share both personal and business-related information. A few of our favorites are:  EveryoneSocial GaggleAmp DynamicSignals  GrapeVine6 On the 1 to 1 content sharing, I’d like to highlight the benefits of FlyMSG. Sellers who notice a new view on their profile can instantly send a pre-created, tailored message to the prospect who has viewed their profile. In this case, I have created a message for this particular scenario where someone has viewed my profile and, by using the flycut /thxview, within a blink I can send them an elaborate 289 character message thanking them for viewing my profile.  The Best Sales Prospecting Tools to Use in 2021 if you’re a Sales Leader  I’ve gone over quite a few sales prospecting tools over the course of this article, but to wrap this up, I’d like to summarize the best sales prospecting tools to use in 2021.  If you have a limited budget or would like to narrow down the tools to only the ones that you can’t do without. Here is a list of my favorites.  FlyMSG - For an all-in-one sales productivity, engagement and effectiveness tool, look no further than FlyMSG. Save time on tedious tasks and standardize your sales messaging and personalized emails. LinkedIn Sales Navigator - For sales qualification and sales engagement. This platform isn’t a requirement, in fact, most of our current clients aren’t LinkedIn Sales Navigator users. But if you have the budget, we recommend you use this tool.  LinkedHub - The best tool to find prospects and sync them directly on to HubSpot.  Seamless.ai - For looking up contact details this is my favorite tool.  Seismic - For sales engagement and content platform, Seismic. One of the 800-pound gorillas in this segment.  Postal.io - For gift marketing and direct mail.  OneMob - For video for sales, OneMob’s salesforce integration makes them my choice for top video for sales platforms.  HippoVideo - Similar to OneMob but their integration to HubSpot makes them a sales leader’s favorite. Both HippoVideo and OneMob allow sellers to create custom, content landing pages which ensures your prospects engage with sellers directly.  Gong.io - For meetings, I would leverage this tool as it not only records every call, but its ability to also take notes makes it well worth the investment. Calendly - My favorite tool for booking meetings.   EveryoneSocial - For social selling and content sharing.  With virtual selling potentially setting the stage for a new line of sales prospecting methods, in just 6 months time, we might just be adding to this list of tools, so stay tuned.

My guest is #KurtShaver, Chief Sales Officer at #Vengresso. He is a tech sales veteran of 36 years who moved into digital B2B social selling.  Kurt explains the difference between social marketing and social selling. As a seller, your objective is to get engagement to generate a sales conversation. We explain how to use social selling to drive opportunities forward or out of the funnel, how to identify the players in the buying committee and deliver value to open them up to your offering. Kurt raises the question about how do you track success in you digital selling? How else can social and digital platforms help your company? Where else can we take this social lark? Digital technologies like LinkedIn can support your sales, your recruitment and your marketing. Kurt cites an example where a potential heavy hitting new hire that an MSP was hoping to hire, was concerned because their strategy on LinkedIn was weak and it was affecting his decision. We identify a serious gap which presents an important opportunity, which is the recruitment of partners. We dig into why selfish vendor marketing leaves their partners cold and is a hangover of traditional marketing not adapting to the social era. Social has flattened and democratised content distribution but few vendors or marketers have adapted well. We investigate why too much IT marketing is focused too narrowly on IT, and is missing their real audience in the line of business. Kurt gives you a beautifully elegant tip to tap into the expertise of your technical leads who suffer the curse of knowledge so they can position themselves as subject matter experts but keep them under control so they don’t sink your sale. We investigate how to win mindshare in a crowded market with your customers and your partners. Kurt identifies the crucial importance of being timely, to localize your content by putting the power in the hands of the individual salesperson to ensure that the right conversations are coordinated and delivered correctly to the right people with the right buyers. I explain why failure to coordinate effectively will rack up unnecessary and eye-wateringly high, hidden costs of sale. The metrics that used to work in the past, no longer do, because of the current level of complexity, the number of buyers involved, and the increased difficulty.   Contact Kurt: Kurt’s LinkedIn Profilelinkedin.com/in/kurtshaver Websites vengreso.com  (Digital Sales Transformation) bit.ly/Social_Selling_Boot_Camp  (Social Selling BootCamp) vengreso.com/blog  (Digital Sales Blog) Phone+1 707 477-1043 (Mobile)Emailkurt@vengreso.com Twitter@kurtshaver 

  Subscribe to Modern Selling on the App of Your Choice! The COVID-19 outbreak has many sales leaders scrambling to create or find virtual sales training that works. In one sense, that’s entirely understandable. As the virus spreads, more and more sales training companies are having to cancel scheduled training events and companies are requiring their sales teams to work from home. Moving forward, methods of training that do not require in-person attendance are needed. But in another sense, I’m left shaking my head. This is 2020—it seems to me that most companies should have already had some form of virtual sales training in place. We at Vengreso have already created and implemented our own virtual instructor-led sales training program, focused on helping those who prospect via social media to do it in a modern and effective way.  We’ve seen incredible results from what we’ve created because we’ve integrated neuroscience and modern learning principles into our curriculum. On this episode, my guest Kurt Shaver (one of my co-founders at Vengreso) helps me unpack the principles that go into a powerful virtual sales training course to help you equip your sales team no matter the circumstances. This episode is sponsored by XANT, the enterprise leader in sales engagement. Xant has authored the Definitive Guide to Sales Cadence. Get your copy at www.SalesCadenceGuide.com Hands-Down, Virtual Sales Training Is More Effective Than In-Person Events Recent studies diving into the effectiveness of group training events reveal details that are both alarming and vitally important when developing any kind of training. A study by Gartner reveals that as a result of live group training events, participants lose 70% of what they’ve learned within six days and 87% within six weeks. That’s a very poor ROI in my book. Comparatively, the Harvard Business Review reports the opposite impact of virtual sales training: through virtual means of training, 80% of the information is retained after 60 days when a technique known as “spacing” is utilized. Interestingly, the utilization of spacing is ONLY possible in an online training environment.  We’ll unpack what spacing is in a moment, but to our point here—the difference between in-person group training and online/virtual training for your sales team could be significant when it comes to retention and effectiveness. If You Intend To Build Your Own Digital Sales Training, Take It Seriously During our conversation on this episode of #ModernSelling, Kurt makes a great point by referring to the effort and time required to learn a language. You don’t simply cram to learn the grammar and vocabulary of a foreign language and suddenly become fluent. It takes time—and that's time spent while immersed in the practice and use of the language. That's because practice makes perfect. Kurt’s point? The same is true for the creation and development of your digital sales training materials. You must ensure that what you’re creating will contain the right concepts and information AND be effective. For instance, our program took over 10,000 combined man-hours to compile, record, refine, and publish. The results - we received the Gold Stevie Award in 2020 for the best sales training program for the second consecutive year. So, don’t think you can slap something together quickly or easily. It requires funds and personnel to tackle a training project of this magnitude. If You're Going To Invest In Building Your Own Virtual Training, Do This! If you’re willing to put in the 10,000+ hours and financial resources to build a truly effective virtual sales training course for your team, good for you! But you’ll need to ensure effectiveness. How do you do that?  Certainly not with a powerpoint presentation and droning narration. In this episode we cover the following seven science-backed components to an effective online training. Include Gamification Implement Chunking and Spacing Promote Deliberate Practice Integrate plenty of Repetition into your course Use the power of Video to keep students engaged Include periodic exercises to Test Knowledge Supplement everything with Personal Coaching (group or one on one) Kurt and I define all of these in our conversation and explain why we prefer a group coaching approach to a one-on-one coaching approach, so be sure you listen! If You Can’t Build Your Own Online Sales Training, What Alternatives Exist? You may feel like you have neither the expertise nor the interest in investing in the creation of your own virtual sales training. That’s OK, there is no need to reinvent that wheel, especially if you’re only looking for a short-term solution while employees are working from home because of the restrictions forced by COVID-19. Our program—Selling with LinkedIn® —is one example of the types of resources that are available. You'll find others available online as well. But, be sure you're getting a course that's designed with those seven principles of effective learning. Our course includes them by design. Whatever you decide, ensure that your training dollars are being invested wisely. Listen to learn more about what we recommend and share the show with a colleague who is sitting at home trying to sell in the new normal! This episode is sponsored by XANT, the enterprise leader in sales engagement. Xant has authored the Definitive Guide to Sales Cadence. Get your copy at www.SalesCadenceGuide.com Outline of This Episode [2:13] Kurt’s career sales story [5:27] The current demand and need for virtual sales training [12:20] Critical components to any sales training, but especially online sales training [14:54] Two elements of modern sales training — the carrot and the stick [21:54] A powerful benefit offered by virtual sales training [29:51] The power and importance of incorporating videos [33:50] Coaching is the missing element in many sales training programs Resources Mentioned Connect with Kurt Shaver on LinkedIn Follow Kurt on Twitter: @kurtshaver Salesloft Outreach ARTICLE: 7 Proven Neuroscience Benefits of Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) For Sales Teams Kurt Shaver’s all-time favorite movie: Moonrise Kingdom Modern Marketing Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Modern Selling on the App of Your Choice!

In this episode listen in to our conversation with Kurt Shaver, Chief Sales Officer and Co-Founder at Vengreso. Kurt brings decades of sales experience and is on the front lines every day helping bring digital selling to companies everywhere. Hear why he thinks video has to be part of your strategy and how you can get over the hump to leverage this once in a lifetime trend that video has created for sellers.

On this episode of The B2B Mix Show, we talk with Kurt Shaver of Vengreso about the company's report, The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn 2019. During our conversation, Kurt shares: the distinction between digital selling and social selling Vengreso's findings regarding the correlation between a high SSI and sales success how only 27% of sales professionals in the study use LinkedIn's advanced search capabilities that only one-third of the study's subjects post content how only three in five subjects  publish media and documents to their profiles Whether you are a salesperson, an entrepreneur, or a marketer, this episode will shed light on some areas where you can improve your LinkedIn profile and behaviors to maximize your sales effectiveness. Get your copy of the report by visiting stateofdigitalselling.com Get in Contact with Kurt Shaver, Chief Sales Officer -- Vengreso. If you'd like to reach out to Kurt to discuss the report or learn more about Vengreso, you can email him at kurt@vengreso.com . You can also connect with him on LinkedIn. When you connect via LinkedIn, be sure to customize your invitation and tell him you heard him on talking with the Jackson sisters on The B2B  Mix Show podcast! __ About The B2B Mix Show The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk! Connect with us on social media: The B2B Mix Show - Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook Stacy Jackson -- Twitter, LinkedIn Alanna Jackson -- Twitter, LinkedIn

In this episode, Bill Banham chats with Kurt Shaver, former Silicon Valley VP of Sales who became a Social Selling speaker/trainer and marketing expert at Vengreso.

Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts On this episode, I welcome back to the show, the man, the myth, the LinkedIn legend, Kurt Shaver. Kurt returns to the #SellingWithSocial podcast to discuss Vengreso’s, The State of Digital Selling Report, and the three key digital sales strategies leaders need to implement ASAP for increased pipeline growth. For everyone who doesn’t know, Kurt is a co-founder and CSO of Vengreso. He shares the amazing insights we gleaned from the report and why branded profiles, with quality connections, and relevant content equal a winning digital sales strategy. You won’t want to miss a single minute of this episode because it is full of valuable information and real-time statistics on current sales behaviors. Are Your Salespeople Sharing Media On Social?  The answer is likely no. 60% of all sellers share no media on their LinkedIn profile. You may wonder why this makes a difference in your sales numbers? Kurt shares the example of Chris Sikora with CenturyLink and the merger that took place with Level 3 Communications.  After the merger, the Level 3 sales teams had unbranded, out-of-date LinkedIn profiles and it confused prospective customers as to which company they were working with. To create a seamless and branded transition, Chris reached out to Vengreso and we worked to update and rebrand all the CenturyLink and Level 3 sales representatives’ profiles.  With newly branded profiles, Chris encouraged the sales teams to share updated media, from videos to documents to reports on their pages. Essentially, together with Vengreso, Chris created a massive army of sales representatives with social profiles all focused on one message and the merger of the two companies became seamless for their buyers. If The New Buyer Looks At Social Before Committing... Then your sales teams should have updated profiles. LinkedIn, in the 2018 State of Sales Report, noted that 62% of buyers stated they check social profiles before committing to work with a brand. If this is the case, then marketing leaders need to be cognizant of what their teams are sharing with the world on social. The new buyer is less likely to reach out and get to know a company if the company does not have a professional social presence through its employees. Encourage customer-facing team members to update their LinkedIn profiles and then provide them the branded messaging they need to exude a unified message and brand to the world. By giving them media to share and a message to perpetuate, you are enabling your teams to build authority in their local space. Authority is one of the major keys to unlock increased sales and to reach higher-level target customers. What Is A Super Connector And Why Are They Important? Super connectors are LinkedIn users with 5,000 connections or more. In LinkedIn’s report, the correlation between the top salespeople and those who had 5,000 or more connections on LinkedIn was high. Why? Because the more connections you have in your industry, the more potential prospects and referrals you have on your digital Rolodex. People with high numbers of valuable connections know how to leverage those connections for referrals. Most of the respondents in our survey revealed that they had fewer than 1,000 connections. Increasing the number of quality connections in your industry beyond those people with whom you already have a relationship is a necessity for a properly engaged digital sales team. Leaders need to create connection strategies and encourage their teams to build and leverage their connections for increased sales. More than half of the respondents in the survey showed that they had not used LinkedIn to ask for an introduction or referral from someone in their network in the last three months… This is a terrible statistic that needs to change! Why Content Sharing Should Be The Backbone Of Your Digital Sales Strategies Once considered solely a marketing function, content sharing is a necessity for sales teams, but it is not being done. With 62% of buyers checking social media before committing to a relationship, relevant content needs to be on the salesperson’s page. This goes back to the authority building that is so important in the digital space.  78% of survey respondents stated that they had either never shared or occasionally shared content on their profile. This means they are not raising their visibility or credibility. Kurt says this is the new skill for salespeople to learn and it is one area that allows your business to beat your competition. Listen to learn the four steps to a solid digital sales strategy and why you need to implement one now! Outline of This Episode [01:16] Welcome back to the show Kurt Shaver, Vengreso’s CSO and LinkedIn expert. [03:06] Kurt shares two things you’d never know about him from his social profiles, and they are good! [06:04] Learn why Vengreso’s State of Digital Selling report is insightful for sales leaders. [08:07] Why should more salespeople share media on their branded LinkedIn profiles?  [15:00] Most sales professionals are not super connectors. Learn how this affects the bottom line. [22:45] Why the vast referral network created on LinkedIn is wasted by the average seller. [29:31] Sharing content is an important new digital selling skill. [37:40] Why properly utilizing LinkedIn requires more than just training and re-training. [39:58] Kurt shares his all-time favorite movie and the character he likes best! Resources Mentioned The State of Digital Selling Report Kurt on LinkedIn Kurt on Twitter: @KurtShaver Seamless.AI Implementing The PVC Sales Methodology For LinkedIn Social Selling, Episode #111 Modern Sales Leaders Need To Follow These 3 Techniques with Kurt Shaver, Episode #80 Constant Improvement Through Sales AI And A Purpose-Driven Mindset with Brandon Bornancin, Episode #74 Modern Marketing Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts Vengreso recently published an original report titled The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019. We surveyed 862 B2B sales reps across five industries: professional services, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services to assess their digital selling skills. The sales reps were asked 10 multiple-choice questions about how they use LinkedIn in their sales activities to assess how their use of LinkedIn impacts their digital selling results. Tune into today’s episode as Bernie and his guest Kurt Shaver, Co-founder and CSO at Vengreso, summarize the key findings that are published in the 20-page report. Get the full report on the Vengreso website or at stateofdigitalselling.com. Don’t miss out on the full report’s finding to understand how reps are being effective in digital selling through LinkedIn. How Has LinkedIn Impacted Digital Selling? One of the key takeaways from The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report is that LinkedIn has been severely under-utilized by sales and marketing professionals. Despite being the largest publicly available B2B database in the world, the number of professionals using the platform for sales engagement is disappointing. LinkedIn is a comprehensive tool sales professionals should use to find, engage, connect with, and foster relationships with potential customers. The scope and depth of information housed in the LinkedIn platform are enough to keep most sales professionals’ digital Rolodex full of prime prospects for years. It has already revolutionized digital selling among those sales and marketing teams who use it appropriately. Your LinkedIn Profile Is More Than A Resume Most LinkedIn users recognize the platform as a way to present a professional face to the business world. However, beyond uploading a professional picture and completing the resume portion of the bio, most salespeople fail to optimize their profiles. Sales professionals need to move beyond using LinkedIn solely as a resume and instead focus on presenting a profile written through the eyes of their target customer. The report shows that most sales professionals are unaware that LinkedIn allows you to upload a variety of media files to include documents, PDFs, videos, and reports. The backbone of digital selling is creating and maintaining credibility with your target customer. The percentage of salespeople using LinkedIn to repurpose existing content and spread new content is surprisingly low considering the power such information has in generating trust. Are Your Connections Referring You Business? It’s true that the quality of your connections is more important than the quantity, but approximately half of the sales professionals surveyed had fewer than 500 connections. The salespeople who generate the most revenue are those with the biggest network. Having a net of just anyone is not effective, but when you focus on connecting with large numbers of people in your area of focus, you enhance your ability to sell more effectively and consistently. When you have a large network, you have more people from whom to gain referrals. However, the number of individuals in sales who are not using their network for referrals is astounding. 93 percent of those surveyed in The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report have not or are not sure if they have ever asked for a referral from their connections. Considering the networking opportunities on LinkedIn, this is a huge area of improvement needed by sales professionals. Why Aren’t Sales Professionals Using The Advanced Search Feature? Not only are sales professionals not using their connections often enough to generate referrals and leads, but they are also not using the Advanced Search feature within LinkedIn. Perhaps most salespeople are unaware that this feature exists since 40 percent of those surveyed indicated they have never used the Advanced Search tool. This feature provides sales professionals the ability to create and save searches to find people they want to connect with and create Search Alerts that notify the user of new contacts matching the search criteria. Those who know how to use the Advanced Search feature are more effective at prospecting on LinkedIn. Bernie and Kurt closed this episode with an invitation to get the full report to read key insights on how to use the findings gained from this survey. To get the full 20-page report just go to www.stateofdigitalselling.com. Featured on This Episode Kurt on LinkedIn Kurt on Twitter: @KurtShaver Outline of This Episode [1:04] Bernie introduces today’s guest Kurt Shaver, CSO, and co-founder of Vengreso [2:16] Bernie reveals the purpose behind The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report and how the data was obtained. [3:40] Which version of LinkedIn are most sales teams using? [5:34] The version doesn’t matter so much as the training supplied to the reps. [6:33] How does the profile picture affect the efficacy of the profile as a whole? [9:03] Media takes your LinkedIn profile from a digital resume to a digital resource. [14:19] What the number of LinkedIn connections say about profile optimization? [17:01] Referrals through LinkedIn are tremendously underutilized. [18:55] LinkedIn’s least used resource? The Advanced Search feature. [21:08] How often are individual reps sharing content with their LinkedIn network? [25:28] Better sales calls are made when the sales rep does research. [26:29] Are salespeople using personal video messages in their digital selling tactics? [30:04] What does your LinkedIn SSI score say about your LinkedIn profile? [31:56] Download the report at stateofdigitalselling.com for additional insights. [32:35] Kurt’s final thoughts on the insights gained from The State of Digital Selling with LinkedIn in 2019 report. Resources & People Mentioned Episode 217 of The Modern Marketing Engine Podcast: The 4 Digital Selling Skills of the Successful Modern Seller Episode 242 of the MME Podcast: How Marketing & Sales Contribute To Digital Transformation At CenturyLink Episode 230 of the SBE Podcast: The Influential Role of Content in Sales Enablement Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP Eric Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom Video Communications Episode 246 of the MME Podcast: The Career Journey of the Modern CMO Episode 251 of the MME Podcast: 3 Ways to Ensure Marketing And Sales Produce Measurable Results The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://instagram.com/bernieborges https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast   Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast. You can click the PLAYER BUTTON at the top of this page… or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through the podcast subscription links above.  

SHOW NOTES SUBSCRIBE TO SALES SECRETS PODCAST ITUNES ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-secrets-from-the-top-1/id1455492030?mt=2 SPOTIFY ► https://open.spotify.com/show/1BKYsQoP1eXgHQcJtQJn1z?si=X1XhrMSlQpSfvQyCarxsNQ YOUTUBE ► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVUhkUq4OQo9b4GUlfXmlCg THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY SEAMLESS.AI - THE WORLD'S BEST SALES LEADS WEBSITE ► https://www.seamless.ai LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/seamlessai/ JOIN FOR FREE TODAY ► https://login.seamless.ai/invite/podcast SHOW DESCRIPTION Brandon Bornancin is a serial salesperson, entrepreneur and founder of Seamless.AI. Twice a week, Brandon interviews the world’s top sales experts like Jill Konrath, Aaron Ross, John Barrows, Trish Bertuzzi, Mark Hunter, Anthony Iannarino and many more -- to uncover actionable strategies, playbooks, tips and insights you can use to generate more revenue and close more business. If you want to learn the most powerful sales secrets from the top sales experts in the world, Sales Secrets From The Top 1% is the place to find them. SALES SECRET FROM THE TOP 1% WEBSITE ► https://www.secretsalesbook.com/ LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/sales-secret-book/ ABOUT BRANDON Brandon Bornancin is a serial salesperson (over $100M in sales deals), multi-million dollar sales tech entrepreneur, motivational sales speaker, international sales DJ (DJ NoQ5) and sales author who is obsessed with helping you maximize your sales success. Mr. Bornancin is currently the CEO & Founder at Seamless.ai delivering the world’s best sales leads. Over 10,000+ companies use Seamless.ai to generate millions in sales at companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Slack, Dell, Oracle & many others. Mr. Bornancin is also the author of "Sales Secrets From The Top 1%" where the world's best sales experts share their secrets to sales success and author of “The Ultimate Guide To Overcoming Sales Objections.” FOLLOW BRANDON LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbornancin/ FOLLOW KURT WEBSITE ► https://vengreso.com/ LINKEDIN ► https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtshaver/ ABOUT ► https://vengreso.com/our-team/kurt-shaver

Sales Reinvented Podcast Episode 121: Kurt Shaver. Kurt is the Chief Sales Officer and a co-founder of Vengreso - a digital sales training company. He frequently speaks about digital/social selling at sales kickoffs and conferences like Dreamforce, Digital Sales World, and Sales 3.0

Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts There is now no doubt, NO DOUBT that the company I am honored to lead as CEO is the world’s largest digital sales training company. Vengreso is almost two years old and the journey thus far has been incredible. On this episode of #SellingWithSocial, I invited my three co-founders to join me to help me tell the Vengreso story. You’ll hear from Kurt Shaver - our Chief Sales Officer, Viveka von Rosen - our Chief Visibility Officer, and Bernie Borges - our Chief Marketing Officer about their experiences in this wild journey. We'll also give you a powerful summary of what it takes to start your own digital sales process. Brand Drives Demand: Demonstrating How To Saturate Your Industry One of my favorite sayings that keeps our team on target is this: Brand drives demand. The meaning behind the phrase is that the more effective you are at consistently communicating your brand story and value, the more people and organizations will want to work with you. I say it all the time to our team because I know we can't just preach it, we have to do it. By creating loads of content, working together as a team to distribute and share it, and leveraging well-designed systems and processes we’ve gotten our content in front of 98 million people via social media. To help you understand exactly how staggering that number is, our nearest competition (a huge brand) has only reached 4 million people through social. Why did we focus on flooding the digital sales training space like this? Because we had to demonstrate what we teach: Brand drives demand. Companies That Adopt Social Selling Get 50% Higher Win Rates If it’s not obvious to you already, you need to know that sales methodology has changed forever. The prevalence of information available today makes it possible for buyers to actually get ahead of sales professionals in the buying cycle, discovering everything they want to know about a product or service through personal research, online reviews, YouTube unboxing videos, and more. So you tell me, why would you want a digital selling program? So that you can adapt your sales approach to the way buyers are buying. But here’s the biggest reason: The stats are in - companies that adopt social selling programs have 50% higher win rates than those that don’t. If you want to stay ahead of your competition, you’ve GOT to be selling socially. If you want to dominate your industry, digital sales is the only way to do it. What Kind Of Fishing Pole Are Your Sales Reps Using? At Vengreso we’ve enjoyed coming up with powerful imagery that helps us communicate the steps necessary to become effective at digital selling. Here's my favorite example: The first thing you need if you’re going to catch fish, is the right kind of pole. You can’t use a deep sea pole if you’re going trout fishing. Likewise, you can’t use a fly rod if you’re trying to catch Blue Marlin. What does the fishing pole represent? Believe it or not, it’s the LinkedIn profiles of your sales team. Why are LI profiles so important? It’s because of what the stats show us - 62% of decision-makers look at a sales rep’s LinkedIn profile before they decide whether to respond to their phone call, email, or other outreach. 62 percent! That’s huge - and it’s why a LinkedIn profile that is nothing more than a resume is not going to be beneficial to your sales strategy. You need to know how to make your sales team’s profiles powerful resources buyers can reference to see how you can bring value to the table for them. Listen to this episode to hear how the Vengreso team has made LinkedIn a major part of our digital sales training. You Can’t Launch A Digital Sales Program Without Giving Sellers The Right Bait When you fish, you can’t catch fish if you use the wrong bait. In digital sales, the bait is the content your sales team needs to move buyers to the point of making a decision. Your organization has to create that content and make it available to your team in an organized fashion. Our digital sales training includes showing sales organizations how to create a vault of content for the sales team that enables them to sell more effectively. We teach our clients how to organize their content around the buyer’s journey, particular industries, special needs, etc. The point is not the organizational system you use, but that you organize it in a way that YOUR sales team can easily access and use with buyers. Listen to learn more about how Vengreso is leading the way among digital sales training companies. Outline of This Episode [1:15] The co-founders of Vengreso and the largest digital sales training company in the world [5:55] Recent Data: 62% of decision makers look at a sales rep’s LinkedIn Profile before reaching out [8:20] Companies that adopt social selling get 50% higher win rates [11:48] What makes companies successful? Alignment between sales and marketing AND resourcing your sales team with great content [17:42] What you need in order to capture the attention of the “fish” you’re trying to catch [22:37] 5 products coming from Vengreso in the next few months [28:24] The 10 step methodology that is poised to win awards [34:55] 98 million people reached through social this year: how we did it [37:25] What life has been like as part of the Vengreso team [44:39] Embrace the change and roll with it Resources Mentioned Viveka von Rosen on Twitter Viveka on LinkedIn Bernie Borges on Twitter Bernie on LinkedIn Kurt Shaver on Twitter Kurt on LinkedIn Modern Marketing Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges LinkedIn State of Sales Report CSO Insights Report About Social Selling Tamara Schenk MOVIE: Kung Fu Panda 3 Miller Heiman Group Sales Navigator The Stevie Awards Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts Digital engagement is one of those things we all know we need to be doing, but that we don’t always dedicate time to. But if we can get over the hump and do it consistently, the benefits can be amazing. On this episode of #SellingWithSocial, Mario asked his friend and partner, Kurt Shaver to guest-host and to speak with one of his friends, Jenn Walsh about how to use LinkedIn and other platforms for better digital engagement. Jenn is a seasoned sales professional in the insurance industry and has recently started her new consulting company, Genuine Shift. In this conversation, Kurt and Jenn discuss how sales teams can approach “team selling” using social networks like LinkedIn, why digital relationships matter, how LinkedIn can be used proactively to bring in new talent, and wrap up with some easy wins on LinkedIn that can ensure you’re ready to engage digitally. Don’t miss this great conversation. Digital Engagement Isn’t Only A Solo Approach Much of the way sales is done using social media has to do with sharing content that builds your reputation as an authority in your industry. A big part of that is utilizing the social media resources your company provides. But there’s more that can be done within sales teams - not only to leverage company resources but to tag-team digital engagement with prospects. Jenn refers to it as "team selling." In this episode, she explains what “team selling” can look like on LinkedIn and how it can change the way you think about digital engagement, on this episode. Old-Style, Long-Lasting Relationships Matter - But Digital Relationships Can Be A Shortcut The 20th-century approach to sales was based on the belief that long-standing relationships are the only way that trust is built. In that model, there is no substitute for time. I’m definitely not going to say that long-standing relationships are irrelevant in the digital age, but I will agree with Jenn’s premise that digital engagement makes the possibility of a shorter timeline for building trust a reality. In this episode Jenn describes how you can leverage your digital assets - from your LinkedIn profile to your company’s resources - to make it possible for modern buyers to check you out, come to trust you, and feel comfortable buying from you in a fraction of the time it takes to build one of those long-standing relationships that were so important in the past. You won’t want to miss her advice. How To Use LinkedIn To Be More Proactive Finding Talent LinkedIn is a powerful channel sales organizations can use to find and court new talent for their organization. But many companies are not taking full advantage of the opportunity. Jenn says you need to realize that the young, fresh, hungry candidates for your sales positions are digitally savvy. Among other things, that means what they see online has a tremendous influence on them. That’s why your social media profiles need to be modern, current, and aligned with the freshest approaches in your industry. In this way, you’ll demonstrate that you (and your company) are forward-thinking and can be assured that the younger candidates you’re engaging with will feel supported and empowered working with you. Print Out Your LinkedIn Profile To Discover the Glaring Things That Need Updating A few times in this conversation, Jenn mentions the importance of updating your LinkedIn profile. But what exactly does that mean? Jenn highlights a number of things you can do to update your information and position yourself in a more impacting way. But one of the most practical and helpful things she mentions is the power of printing out a hard copy of your LinkedIn profile. There’s something about seeing it in black and white that enables you to notice things you overlook on the screen. You can even hand the print-out to a colleague or friend and ask them to look it over and make suggestions. Jenn shares many practical tips just like this during this conversation, highlighting how you can leverage your digital engagement for more sales, so don’t miss it. Outline of This Episode [1:22] Who is Jen Walsh - she helps high-level experts get unstuck [6:27] More and more sales are happening through team selling [11:47] Why relationships matter and how LinkedIn can accelerate trust [16:33] Getting into the flow of sharing content and engaging in dialog on social [24:38] How companies can use LinkedIn to bring in new talent [27:25] Making the time to engage digitally on LinkedIn [32:50] The 3 stages of content sharing on LinkedIn Resources Mentioned Jenn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/walshjenn/ Jenn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/@benefitslady Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/about/ Jenn’s favorite movie of all time - The Blind Side: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0878804/ Social Business Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts Click to Tweets: nefitsLady) and @KurtShaver on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Listen now! #sales @M_3Jr #DigitalSales #Digital engagements that lead to #sales aren’t something you have to do alone. Learn about team #selling from Jenn Walsh (@BenefitsLady) and @KurtShaver on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Listen now! @M_3Jr #DigitalSales Learn how #digital relationships can be a shortcut to new long-standing business connections. Join Jenn Walsh (@BenefitsLady) and @KurtShaver to learn how on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Listen now! @M_3Jr #DigitalSales You can use #LinkedIn to be more proactive finding and hiring new #talent for your #sales team. Join Jenn Walsh (@BenefitsLady) and @KurtShaver on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Listen now! @M_3Jr #DigitalSales Print out your #LinkedIn profile to discover glaring things that need updating. Hear more great #SalesTips like this from Jenn Walsh (@BenefitsLady) and @KurtShaver on this episode of #SellingWithSocial. Listen now! #sales @M_3Jr  

This week I interview Kurt Shaver from Vengreso about the challenges of social selling and using LinkedIn in a corporate environment

Kurt Shaver is a LinkedIn Trainer and Keynote speaker, helping B2B inside and outside sales teams win more business with digital sales techniques. If you want to grow your professional network of customers, prospects and partners, connect with more decision makers through introductions and referrals, and increase your visibility and value online, Kurt is the guy! Kurt carried a bag as a sales rep, led teams as VP of Sales and is now helping sales teams increase revenue through adopting the right sales tools and strategies. On this episode, he is sharing his in-depth knowledge and actionable tips about the most important social selling tool LinkedIn, and how you can use it to become more successful in outside sales.   Here are some of the topics covered in this episode: Why LinkedIn is crucial for Field Salespeople How to use LinkedIn to grow your network and build relationships 3 tips to make initial contact with a prospect on LinkedIn How to make a powerful LinkedIn profile that stands out and attracts your buyers What NOT to do on LinkedIn   Learn more about how to generate more leads with LinkedIn!   Listen to this episode on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you get your favorite podcast!   About the Guest: Kurt Shaver is a co-founder and Chief Sales Officer of Vengreso, a digital sales transformation company focusing on sales and marketing alignment. Kurt is an expert at getting sales teams to adopt new sales tools and techniques. Through a successful career in technology sales, Kurt learned what it takes to reach B2B decision makers. As a VP of Sales for a global software company, Kurt was the executive sponsor of a Salesforce.com rollout. That’s how he learned what it takes to get salespeople to adopt new tools and techniques. That knowledge led to him launch his own Salesforce consulting business in 2008. When LinkedIn went public in 2011, Kurt recognized that LinkedIn would be the next great sales technology and that it would require expert training. He pivoted his business and now has over 10,000 hours of experience training corporate sales teams like CenturyLink, Ericsson, and TelePacific Communications. Kurt is the creator of the Social Selling Boot Camp and is a member of the National Speakers Association. He frequently speaks at corporate sales meetings and conferences like Dreamforce, Sales 2.0, and LinkedIn’s Sales Connect.   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtshaver/ Twitter: @KurtShaver Website: https://vengreso.com/   Listen to more episodes of the Outside Sales Talk here!  

Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts My guest for this episode of #SellingWithSocial is our very own modern sales expert, Kurt Shaver. Kurt is a co-founder and Chief Sales Officer of Vengreso. Throughout this podcast, he shares 3 main techniques that every sales leader needs to stay on top of in order to bring in more qualified leads and achieve better success in the B2B environment. His insights may change the way you view modern selling forever - be sure to listen. What Does it Mean to be a Modern Sales Leader? The key idea for modern sales leaders to understand is that they have to be adaptable. The modern selling environment is constantly shifting, and leaders must be able to help their teams meet their customers where they’re at. As a leader, you must also be skilled at helping your team engage clients with the content your company creates. For the full discussion on what it takes to be a modern leader, don’t miss this episode. #1 - Stories Still Sell, You Simply Have to Share Them in New Ways One of the best ways modern sales professionals can add value to a buyer’s purchase journey is through sharing impactful content. Content that educates, inspires, and encourages people to action is still one of the greatest tools you have at your disposal. The internet has simply changed the way buyers find, learn and engage with content. It has shifted the power of accessing information about pricing, methodology, products and services into the hands of the buyer. The modern sales leader must understand that buyers are accessing this information on their own, most often before talking to a salesperson. The leader then must determine how they can enable their teams to reach these customers earlier on in their decision-making process. By working closely with their teams, a leader can greatly impact the way customers receive information about a company. #2 - The Modern Sales Leader Needs to Sell in Order to Teach and Train The entire selling department within your company must be a modern selling environment because simply having a modern leader is not enough. A leader needs to have a great team underneath them in order to be most effective. In order to teach and train a team to be modern professionals, the sales leader himself must stay abreast of B2B selling trends, tools, and best practices. If your title has the word “sales” in it at all, then you MUST be bringing in at least one qualified lead into your pipeline per month. Without the regular practice of actually selling to modern buyers, you’ll lose the ability to connect with your team and help them achieve greater success. Leaders also need to be open to change and be passionately curious about new ways of selling. Becoming familiar with the tools your company uses, studying tech trends, and brushing up on your coaching skills are all essential techniques. #3 - Updating Your Social Platforms is Essential to Hiring Top Talent When looking for new top talent, modern sales leaders need to understand that just as YOU are examining a prospective employee’s resume and LinkedIn profile, THEY are also looking right back at you. A prospective hire can control who they work for and which company they work for when searching for a new job, and they are looking to your online profiles to answer these 3 questions. Can you (the leader) help me get where I want to go? Will I fit in with the company culture? Are my superiors’ leadership styles and personalities going to fit with my own? Kurt explains hiring in this way, “If you’re a company looking for talent, you’re in a selling role!” Not only do your company’s profiles need to be optimized to attract top talent, your individual profiles need to address the answers to these 3 questions. If they look at your profile and can understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them, they will be even more likely to accept a position with your company vs your competition. Kurt explains in great detail how leaders can refine their hiring process on this episode, and you don’t want to miss it. Outline of This Episode [1:03] Kurt explains his career in sales and how he got involved in Vengreso [5:27] What is a modern sales leader? [8:50] Sharing impactful content is still critical to selling success - only the delivery method has shifted [17:45] The modern seller also requires a modern manager and leader [23:40] The candidate is in control when searching for a sales job [29:22] How can a leader improve their status on LinkedIn? Resources Mentioned Kurt’s profile on the Vengreso website Follow Kurt on Twitter: @KurtShaver HubSpot sales blog TOOL: OneMob video TOOL: Seamless.ai TOOL: Conversica Kurt’s all-time favorite movie, “The Wizard of Oz” Social Business Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts Modern sales leaders make or break the success of a business. That’s why on this episode of #SellingWithSocial I interview Carson Heady, author of “Birth of a Salesman” and a Corporate Territory Manager for Microsoft. He understands the challenges a modern sales leader faces, and on this episode, he shares 4 main guidelines every sales leader should follow for ultimate selling success. We discuss everything from making CRM data work for YOU to setting personal selling goals to stay on top of the evolving world of selling. This episode will give you actionable items to follow if you want to understand modern sales in new ways, and it should not be missed. Listen now! Turn Your CRM Data Into Leverageable Insights The best modern sales leaders understand that a CRM is useless for selling professionals unless it provides real insights and reports. When used correctly, a CRM can provide invaluable data on your company's targets, workforce, and pipelines. It can allow you to identify which metrics are slipping and create action plans to solve the issues before they balloon into massive selling problems. Carson explains that the number 1 metric all modern sales leaders need to understand is the conversion rates, or batting averages, for each one of their sales reps. This number tells you how successful a rep is in making the final sale, and having this dashboard set up in your CRM system will allow you to help your team become better at selling. Without leverageable insights into these rates, you’re letting valuable opportunities pass by. Connect to Prospects Through Personalized Social Media Interactions Sales interactions goes beyond simply sharing posts on social networks. In fact, Kurt Shaver our CSO discusses this on a recent podcast on successful modern seller skills which are required for today’s modern sales rep. Sales leaders today need to be leveraging social media platforms to make authentic, real connections with prospects. The opportunities to build a great brand reputation, find prospects, and connect with other sales professionals are limitless. One of the best strategies that Carson shares is sending personalized content to connections within your network, with a personalized message. Combining relevant resources with a personal touch allows you to rise above your competition and transform into the modern sales leader that the modern buyer requires. Set Personal Selling Goals to Bring Deals to the Table Even sales leaders need to continually bring deals to the table in order to stay connected with the modern selling environment. The best way to understand current techniques, tools and approaches that actually work is to go out and make cold calls, engage on social, send a video message or send a cold prospect an email. Modern sales leaders should set a goal for themselves every month and every quarter to bring in one new lead per month. Doing so will keep your skills sharp as to what is working and what is not. Carson explains that modern sales leadership is all about connecting with prospects. For more insights on how to keep selling to stay sharp, don’t miss this episode. Modern Sales Leaders Evolve With the Way Modern Prospects are Buying The most versatile way to stay on top of their sales game is to always be adapting. To understand the shifting audience, modern sales leaders need to be listening to the industry trends and speaking with other professionals. Being agile, flexible, intuitive, and unique are all keys to selling successfully. Carson also encourages all sales leaders to not only be great at selling on their own but also be able to teach and train their sales team in effective ways. You can’t afford to miss these insights and even more guidelines, all on this episode. Check it out! Outline of This Episode [1:02] Carson Heady introduces himself on this episode of Selling With Social [5:06] Carson explains the keys to being a great modern sales leader [9:20] Modern sales leaders need to bring deals to the table [14:53] Learning to leverage social media in modern selling environments [20:38] Perfecting the work/life balance as a sales leader [22:55] The top 3 tools every modern sales leader needs to be using [24:45] You need to know THIS piece of data in your CRM [32:40] Modern sellers evolve with the way modern prospects are buying Resources Mentioned Follow Carson on LinkedIn Follow Carson on Twitter: @CVHeady007 BOOK: “Birth of a Salesman (The Salesman Against the World)” Carson’s all-time favorite movie, “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade” TOOL: Grammarly TOOL: Crystal Knows TOOL: Seamless.ai Social Business Engine Podcast - Bernie Borges Connect with Mario! www.vengreso.com On Facebook On Twitter On YouTube On LinkedIn Subscribe to Selling With Social Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

Subscribe to Social Business Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts Every person who makes their livelihood from selling could benefit from improving their selling skills. In today’s sales climate, the growth of digital selling skills is one of the best returns on the investment of time it takes to grow as a sales professional. On this episode, Bernie’s guest is Kurt Shaver, co-founder and Chief Sales Officer at Vengreso. Kurt explains the 4 pillars of the modern seller, how his sales career led him to become a modern seller, what that means and what it takes to become one, and a few examples of modern selling in action. It doesn’t matter if you are in a direct sales role or not. If you recognize the impact of modern digital practices in business, this episode is relevant to you. You might even want to share it with others on your team. The 4 Must-Have Pillars of Being a Modern Seller A modern seller is one who is prepared to meet the modern buyer - on their terms and on the platforms they want to engage through. Is that via social? Via phone call? Via text? A modern seller learns what each prospect likes and engages in those ways. Beyond that foundational mindset, the modern seller develops these 4 essential modern selling skills. They establish their professional brand through an optimized LinkedIn profile. They develop a valuable online network (B2B engagement usually happens on LinkedIn) They do effective prospecting based on personas They engage through liking, commenting, sharing, and serving as an expert resource Bernie and Kurt unpack each of these modern sales skills in detail, so don’t miss this episode. How To Assess Your LinkedIn Profile For Effectiveness Every sales professional probably has a LinkedIn profile, but is it optimized to be attractive to your buyer? Kurt recommends that you think of your LinkedIn profile as you would a personal website. It should be designed with this one question in mind, “Who are you trying to attract?” Once you answer that question, you’ll be able to make effective decisions about the types of things those people are interested in - and how you can provide it to them on your profile so that you are positioned as a credible, expert resource they will respect. Your LinkedIn profile should serve as your individual website working for you 24/7. You’ll discover even more tips from Kurt just like this one, on this episode. Learn The Powerful Modern Selling Skills of Networking And Digital Prospecting Networking and prospecting are as old as the sales profession, but the digital age has brought us entirely new ways of doing them. Those who develop digital skills to do both effectively have a distinct advantage over those who are slow to adopt to modern selling. When it comes to networking, it needs to happen on two levels. First, you need to be able to make connections with potential customers. But you also need to establish relationships with people you consider partners - professionals in related or vertical industries who serve the same clientele you do. It’s the same approach as in the past, but it’s initiated primarily through digital channels - which is a new selling skill you may need to develop. Likewise prospecting today is very different than in the past, in ways that have huge advantages. First, you are able to overlay your personal network onto your prospect list to determine what relationships you may already have with your prospects, or what relationships a partner may have with them. Secondly, you are able to do significant research about your prospects via social before reaching out so that you can connect with them in relevant, helpful ways. These are just two of the modern digital selling skills necessary for success. Kurt shares all 4 in this conversation. Engagement Is Where Modern Selling Magic Happens It’s vital for every salesperson to become a trusted resource to those who are in their digital networks. The main way this is accomplished is through sharing content that is thoughtful and beneficial to the people within your network. But many sellers make the mistake of blasting their network with only their company’s content. It’s important to offer a balanced mix of general business news and info, in addition to content from your own vault. This enables others to see that you’re generous in sharing the expertise of others as well as sharing content about your own solutions. This tip from Kurt is a powerful form of sales enablement. Another important piece of the engagement puzzle is commenting. You want to engage with what others are sharing in a way that demonstrates your own interest, expertise, and care relating to the topics being discussed. It’s nothing more than getting involved in conversations - as salespeople are used to doing - only now it’s also done via digital channels. These selling skills are vital to the success of the modern B2B sales professional. Catch this entire podcast with Kurt Shaver to hear firsthand what takes to be a modern seller. Featured on This Episode Kurt on LinkedIn Kurt on Twitter: @KurtShaver Outline of This Episode [0:51] What you can expect from Kurt Shaver on this episode [2:10] How Kurt became a modern seller over the course of a long sales career [3:59] What does it mean to be a modern seller? [5:19] The 4 pillars for the modern seller [7:55] An optimized LinkedIn Profile: How to assess and modify yours [9:53] Growing a modern, digital network effectively [12:42] Prospecting in modern times is very different than in the past [15:40] What is effective engagement? [18:28] Examples of effective modern sellers applying great sales skills Resources & People Mentioned The FREE Digital Selling Benchmark Assessment Report - www.DigitalSellingBenchmarkReport.com The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Social Business Engine https://www.facebook.com/socialbusinessengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://twitter.com/sbengine Subscribe to Social Business Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast. You can click the PLAYER BUTTON at the top of this page… or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through the podcast subscription links above. This podcast originally appeared on Social Business Engine

In this episode we talk to Kurt Shaver, Chief Sales Officer at Vengreso.

Should salespeople blog and create their own content? How to leverage video to improve sales? What are some different types of content that you could be sharing? Kurt Shaver, the Chief Sales Officer (CSO) of Vengreso, talks to Shira Abel about social selling done right and where to begin. About Kurt Shaver • Kurt Shaver is the CSO at Vengreso, a Digital Sales Transformation company. As a former sales rep and VP of Sales, Kurt knows what it takes to reach B2B decision makers. • He is the creator of the Social Selling Boot Camp and has over 10,000 hours of social selling experience. • Kurt is a frequent speaker at events like Dreamforce, Sales 2.0, and LinkedIn's Sales Connect conference. His blog was named a Top Sales Blog and clients includes Hewlett Packard, CenturyLink, NetApp, Frontier Communications, Maritz Travel, and City National Bank. Key Takeaways: • Salesforce is the greatest potential content distribution force that B2B companies have. • While salespeople should be sharing company and industry content, they should be authentic and create their own. • Personal video is hot right now. If you’re not using yet, it’s time to get your salesperson trained on how to use it to close more deals. Please rate this podcast. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), a PR, marketing and design agency. Clients include: Folloze, Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, Pitango VC, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and traveling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives with her husband, teen and tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above. The SaaS Insider podcast is brought to you by Hunter & Bard, an agency specializing in PR, design, branding, and marketing strategy – helping SaaS companies develop mindshare. It’s also a member of the C-Suite Radio Network. Check out Hunter & Bard today at http://hunterandbard.com Tags and Keywords: social selling, digital marketing, saas Facebook Status: @shiraabel and @kurtshaver discuss content development, social selling, and the best tools to make it work for your business. Learn more about what other B2B companies are already doing and how to convince your salespeople to use social media in this episode of #SaaSInsider podcast. Twitter Status: @kurtshaver shares his tips on #SaaSInsider with @shiraabel on where to begin with social selling.

On this special episode, I interview my co-founders at Vengreso. What we’re doing at Vengreso is relevant to the editorial mission of the Social Business Engine podcast. It is my goal that each episode brings you valuable insights from brands, tech companies, authors and analysts that might get you inspired to think differently and take action to improve results in your business or your career. So, in that context, I’m introducing you to my co-founders at Vengreso. To be clear, I'm NOT pitching you on our company. Rather, I want to share with you a need we recognized in the way that businesses implement digital sales strategies, and how we’re addressing that need through digital sales transformation – aka the digital selling ecosystem. You will hear how Vengreso addresses the digital sales transformation and hopefully, you'll notice our passion and inspiration for "the movement" that makes up this digital sales ecosystem. View the show notes page: http://www.socialbusinessengine.com/podcasts/shattering-the-digital-sales-paradigm

Welcome to episode 152, this week I’m going to cover the new Neptune design quite a bit as there have been quite a few developments. Firstly a big thank-you to Kurt Shaver, Darrel Griffin and the mysterious ‘LoveWeb’ for giving the show 5 star reviews on iTunes - I massively appreciate your support. Darrel Griffin can also be found on Instagram and is my ‘go to’ contact on anything to do with graphics - especially those we use on LinkedIn. So I have a question - what size should we be making our LinkedIn profile background image? The official dimensions from LinkedIn are 1536 x 768px but this doesn’t seem to work as it zooms into the image. New Desktop Design Update It would seem that there is no way to see your sent invitation messages - this is crazy! When someone has a paid account and the ‘open profile’ feature enabled, it is free to send them a message, this used to be shown on their profile by changing ‘send InMail’ to ‘send message’ but now they have removed this. Video autoplay has been deprecated…which is odd because every other social media channel is moving towards video! LinkedIn have removed the link ‘structuring your search’ which explained how to use Boolean operators. This might be because they now realise the information they were providing was actually incorrect! Irina Shamaeva (who knows her stuff) has exposed LinkedIn’s advice in this article below. LinkedIn Tip Sheet Error And a New Hack - Irina Shamaeva So it would appear that we now need to use the operator Title: in front of every job title in an OR search string! The Great U-Turn LinkedIn have had to face an enormous amount of negative feedback about the new design. There was the online petition I mentioned last week which got c1800 signatures plus a huge response to their various posts asking for feedback. Sometimes people are so rude and negative, it really is unnecessary and if there is one comment that annoys me more than anything it’s… “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” What a load of crap! We should never wait for things to break before improving them. All the best ideas and progression come from taking the complete opposite view. Anyway the good news is that LinkedIn are listening and David Flink published this article this week; We heard you: we're making some changes to LinkedIn Search It would also appear that they are seriously considering bringing back postcode radius search…which would be massive! I really applaud LinkedIn for their approach. Taking criticism is not easy and to take this approach is refreshing and progressive. But…… Why did it ever get to this stage in the first place? I could have told them about all these faults in October but no-one was listening! LinkedIn say they survey members before making changes but either; They are asking the wrong people They are not listening. Such a massive u-turn on so many features should not be necessary at this stage. Waiting until almost full roll-out before listening means they have lost a massive amount of credibility. Thanks to Sandra Clark for her voicemail question about Sales Navigator. For me the three key benefits are as follows; Focussed home page feed. This massively improves your chances of engaging with those people you are especially focussed on. You can filter search results by ‘posted on LinkedIn in last 30 days’. I have found this to be really useful Saved searches are better, partly because of the above filter. You can receive daily email alerts about people who meet your criteria and are active Question: How do I create a showcase page in the new groups design? Answer You can’t! But you can if you revert back to the old design where you will find it in the menu on the edit button. Question: The messaging segment sends the message by pressing enter (which is not a good thing as the enter key is often used to insert a line-feed for starting a new paragraph). You leave no clue how to insert a new paragraph so my message is on solid block of text. How do I start a new paragraph in a message? Answer This depends how you are messaging. If you go to the specific messaging page you can change the default as seen below If however you are using the ‘in page’ messaging feature then you are effectively using a chat feature and every ‘return’ is a ‘send message’. This makes sense to me. If you want to construct a nicely laid out message, using the Messaging page.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin – there’s a huge chance that your ideal customer has an account on at least one of them. As our role as business developers continues to evolve, the technologies and techniques we use to connect with prospects has changed as well. My guest today is Kurt Shaver of The Sales Foundry, an expert on leveraging social selling and using Linkedin as part of the sales process. We discuss how to research and connect with prospects on Linkedin, becoming an business expert on your social media platforms, and the essential skills all new sales development reps need to have. Episode Highlights: Why is social selling important? The evolution of Linkedin: Outbound prospecting and inbound marketing Inbound marketing for the new SDR Broadcasting and curating Essential outbound marketing skills for the new SDR Working in time blocks while prospecting on Linkedin Researching and using Linkedin as a disqualification machine What does Kurt Shaver do? Resources: Connect with Kurt Shaver on Linkedin, follow him on Twitter, and visit him on the web at The Sales Foundry   Quotes/Tweets: “The primary function of Linkedin is lead generation”- Kurt Shaver “When everyone is on a social network, each person is essentially a mini marketer”- Kurt “Your number one priority is to leverage a common connection with your ideal customer”- Kurt “Ten connections per day, 22 business days per month, means 220 more connections. That’s how you build your network” - Marylou

LinkedIn is purchased by Microsoft. How this will impact brands and what you need to know to help your business thrive on LinkedIn. Expert advice from Kurt Shaver. ThinkLikeAJournalist.com

The two big reasons you should be using LinkedIn to increase business. Kurt Shaver shares tips on building your brand with LinkedIn. ThinkLikeAJournalist.com See the show notes.

In this episode, Kurt Shaver, founder of The Sales Foundry, and a leading social selling expert, shares his secrets for building a successful social selling program at your company. Listen in as we talk about: Why using social media is not the same as social selling. How to successfully integrate social selling into your existing sales process How to establish realistic goals, and metrics, for your social selling The 4 key elements that must be a part of any social selling training How to successfully get your sales reps to integrate social selling into their daily sales routine How sales managers should manage the social sales efforts of their teams Looking for additional tools to help you build your pipeline? Then this episode is a must listen for any CEO, sales leader or sales rep.

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Kurt Shaver delivers high-impact sales training and consulting to companies seeking increased production from their sales force. Kurt’s live training classes are followed by reinforcement sessions and exercises that insure the lessons become lasting habits. Consulting includes areas such as sales systems (CRM) implementation and effective compensation plans. Kurt brings 25 years of real selling experience to each client. His “street credibility” is critical to being accepted by a room full of seasoned salespeople. As a sales rep, Kurt learned how to build rapport, uncover needs, and differentiate his solution to win the business. Kurt won numerous Top Salesperson awards in his role as an individual contributor. Major accomplishments include closing a $5M deal for AT&T’s first private satellite earth station for a corporate customer and selling some of the first electronic catalogs to companies like IBM, Sprint, and Texas Instruments. As his management responsibilities grew, Kurt built sales teams at a number of fast growth companies. One of them made it to No. 11 on Fortune Magazine’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies” list for 2004. In the process, he developed the systems and skills to motivate and train salespeople to be successful. After 25 years of corporate sales success, Kurt started The Sales Foundry in 2008 to share his knowledge with businesses seeking to accelerate their revenue growth. The name “Sales Foundry” was chosen to represent the blue-collar, roll-up-your-sleeves nature of Kurt’s work. It is not board room strategy. Kurt focuses on teaching salespeople the tactical skills they need to succeed. Kurt has completed just about every well-known sales training methodology there is and he feels that it is less important to pick the right one than it is to pick one and embrace it completely throughout the organization. Kurt was named a “Top 25 Channel Sales Executive To Know” by VAR Business magazine and received the “Partner Excellence Award” from Salesforce.com. He holds a Master in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology but he has never let his knowledge of complex integrated circuitry get in the way of closing a big deal. Pro-Track Profile I interviewed Kurt at the January 22, 2011 NSA Northern California 30th Anniversary meeting, the week before the 2011 Pro-Track class kicks off. Kurt shared with me the reasons he is investing in Pro-Track. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.