The Death of a Salesman (Alexander Low)

In this podcast I listen to the wonderful Helen Gazzi from iDiscover 360 share her insight on what emotional intelligence means, alongside emotional availability and emotional adaptability.

She tackles some big subjects

Why do you go to work every day?

How do you use a challenge as a catalyst for growth?

How do you act upon what you discover about yourself?

Links to the resource she refers to

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/0747528306 -

Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ - Daniel Goleman    https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=daring+greatly&adgrpid=54731098033&gclid=CjwKCAiAgqDxBRBTEiwA59eEN9To_mFVbCFNbF-GqgvO7g2spSdJEcsQlcK7I3JFCbuFfLBXtHs4JxoCVBAQAvD_BwE&hvadid=259038080363&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9045997&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=14394394018102858368&hvtargid=aud-857382801822%3Akwd-298952491860&hydadcr=10540_1753771&tag=googhydr-21&ref=pd_sl_7iw8qrab9_e    Daring Greatly - Brene Brown    Mel Robbins - https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=mel+robbin&adgrpid=58999975890&gclid=CjwKCAiAgqDxBRBTEiwA59eENxK01JWKHNkuvPDabOCO1Ji5vFVWve4guGYiqVqKern1Xs__RmS6phoC040QAvD_BwE&hvadid=318498014059&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9045997&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=13833815967631388354&hvtargid=aud-857382801822%3Akwd-448973376237&hydadcr=11856_1766746&tag=googhydr-21&ref=pd_sl_8cabminzxj_e   Follow Helen on Linkedin and Instagram   Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-gazzi-20583896/   Instagram - @helengazzicoaching

Photo by Tengy Art on Unsplash

iDiscover360 - https://idiscover360.com/

In this episode, we have a returning guest, the brilliant Neil Mullarkey.

Neil Mullarkey is an English actor, writer and comedian. He was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England1. He is known for his work in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) and Spice World (1997)2. He is also a founding member of The Comedy Store Players and still appears with them regularly at London’s Comedy Store.  

Neil also works with individuals and organisations, coaching on all things Teambuilding, Corporate Leadership and Communication Skills, all of which is underpinned by the art that is "Improv". 

Neil has also authored his 4th book, "In the moment" where you will "Discover the insights and strategies that will help you improve your confidence, communication and creativity in every moment of your professional career."

In this episode, we dive into, what does it mean to be in the moment.

Neil shares a framework you can start using today.

Neil talks about the difference between having a structured approach and being able to react in the moment.

We work through a pitch example.

We talk about how moments matter.

How innovation can be achieved in the corridors - be it physical or digital.

We end on serendipity and the example Neil talks to is from the former Chairman of a Global Consulting business :

"He wants his share of the lucky market."

Learn more about Neil and get his book here >>> In the Moment book by Neil Mullarkey — Neil Mullarkey

Follow Neil on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilmullarkey/

Go see him in action in London - https://comedystoreplayers.com/

 

In this episode, I am joined by the CEO & Founder of www.upcontent.com - Scott Rogerson.

This is what UpContent does "UpContent is a leading intelligent content discovery technology that helps you drive new, more meaningful conversations with your audience. Quickly find, sort, read, and interact with the news and blog articles that meet your brand’s exacting standards–all while collaborating with your team to identify and leverage the right content, in the right channel, at the right time."

Therefore, I felt that Scott is probably one of the most qualified people to answer this question. I am also glad that it has taken us, probably the longest out of all of my guests, so far, to arrange to have him on the show - entirely my fault - as so much has happened in this space, including the Metaverse, yes we go there, that it gives us so much more to talk about.

So, take a seat at the table as Scott deconstructs, like a Michelin star chef, is content still king? 

-How to build effective relationships through content.

-Curation vs Creation vs Context

-How to provide information to your buyer so they can make an unbiased decision. In your favour.

-What works in how you leverage 3rd party content vs what does not.

-Metrics, what to measure, internal vs external.

-When to measure results, and how.

-What the percentage split should be in your type of content.

-The scourge of "artificial" lifestyle content or "Bragadocious" content and why this damaging your personal brand.

-We do flirt with the Metaverse.

-Scott leaves an easter egg.

-AND

-He does answer the question "Is content still king?"

Thank you to Scott for his time and energy on this episode. 

Thank you to Kate Bradley Chernis of www.lately.ai for connecting us in the first place.

Thank you to my listeners, what do you think, is content still king?

Follow Scott here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottarogerson/

Learn more about UpContent here - www.upcontent.com 

 

Welcome to the 100th Episode of this podcast. And what a guest we have for this one.

I met Neil Mullarkey on a coaching course called "Enrich your Pitch" where Neil took us through how one can use the art of improvisation in a business context.

Let's be honest, things don't always go as we plan and prospects and clients can throw you a curve ball from time to time - the key is how you handle that in real-time. 

Neil's pedigree speaks for itself, just look at his Wikipedia page :

"In the mid-1980s, he teamed up with Mike Myers as 'Mullarkey and Myers'. They would perform sketches based on their shared love of cartoons, B-movies and bad TV. They played around the burgeoning London pub circuit, particularly at the George IV in Chiswick, where they often shared the bill with the young Hugh Grant, then plying his trade in the Jockeys of Norfolk revue. As their fame increased, Mullarkey and Myers toured the UK, ending in a sold-out season at the Edinburgh Festival.

The two appeared as 'The Sound Asleep Club' on TV-am's 'Wide Awake Club', a children's TV show hosted at the time by Tommy Boyd. Mike eventually returned to Toronto, but Mullarkey would briefly join him to revive 'Mullarkey and Myers' in Canada. Later still, he appeared in Myers' début in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, as the Customs Officer who freaks Austin out with his Swedish-made penis pump. (He also appeared again in Goldmember and helped Mike Myers with uncredited rewrites of So I Married An Axe Murderer."

That's just the intro.

He has performed with Eddie Izzard, and Dawn French to name but a few comedic greats.

As a founding member of The Comedy Store Players, he is regularly performing on the UK comedy circuit.

In this episode, Neil takes us through his 5 step framework on how to use improvisation skills in a business context. 

That's all you're getting.

Tune in to and put this into practice.

Learn more about how Neil here :

https://neilmullarkey.com/

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilmullarkey/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/NeilMullarkey

For UK folk and anyone visiting who wants to see improv in action: https://comedystoreplayers.com/

As always, my heartfelt thanks to all of my guests for agreeing to be on this show, and you, my listeners - without which this would be for nothing!

 

 

 

In this episode, I speak with the wonderful Nikki Finucan. 

Nikki's headline on LinkedIn reads "Transformation is taking something that exists today and making it more beautiful!"

She specialises in creating synergies between process, technology and people to support, build, and develop high performing teams. Some of the change and transformation beautification. she has experience in: 1. Enhancing customer experience through nurturing existing clients, improving coverage and building strong relationships 2. Reducing selling expenses without compromising the client through remote selling 3. Helping teams to grow, retain and acquire clients all with the aim of increasing revenue 4. Aligning your processes and technology and collaborating with your teams to adopt it 5. Core technology programmes to ensure your teams can run effectively and consistently remotely, whether it is selling, customer service and self serve or finance.

In this episode we discuss the pitfalls of CRM deploy, why having a data-led approach and strategy is critical.

CRM is for everyone in the business, and why.

What are the challenges leaders face when working with Sales teams to drive adoption.

Do you lead with People or Technology?

Where does the customer fit into all of this?

We also end with talking with her initiative, Women Connect to help promote more women in the sales profession.

Please follow/connect with Nikki on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkifinucan/

It's automagical!

 

In this episode, I am joined by Kate Bradley Chernis, the CEO & co-founder of Lately, a new content distribution tool.  

Lately, which uses AI to automatically learn what sales and marketing messaging your customers are most likely to engage with so you can STOP GUESSING. It then builds a writing model, based on this data, to transform longform content like blogs, podcasts and videos into DROVES of targeted, pre-vetted social posts – in multiple languages. Benefits: - It takes the average human 12 minutes to write a social post. In 1.8 seconds, Lately’s AI will give you dozens. Multiply that times the hourly salary of any content creator on your team and you have MIND- BLOWING time and money savings. - Most longform content like blogs, videos and podcasts takes hours to create, then collects dust. Get exponentially more eyeballs on your hard-earned work by UNLOCKING the value with Lately's AI. View a 60 second sneak peek here: https://youtu.be/RlbRiAwwBiQ. As a former marketing agency owner, Kate initially created the idea for Lately out of spreadsheets for then-client, Walmart, and got them a 130% ROI, year-over-year for three years. Prior to founding Lately, Kate served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. She’s also an award-winning radio producer, engineer and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand-building, sales and marketing expertise. 

If you are serious about making your content work much harder for you, then you need to seriously consider using Lately - https://www.trylately.com/social-post-autogenerator

"86% of communications by sales, marketing & account teams are off-target and irrelevant."

In this episode, we're going to take this social and talk about how sales and marketing can become more relevant on LinkedIn to win status quo accounts. Today my guests are Kristina Jaramillo (President of Personal ABM and Stop the Sales Drop) and her partner Eric Gruber.

Personal ABM stands for Personal Account Based Marketing which means instead of speaking at accounts, sales, and marketing speak to specific accounts and the human buyers at those accounts.

I met Eric and Kristina through their recent virtual LinkedIn training, which I participated in a post-event master class.

You can get the on-demand recordings at stopthesalesdrop.com/linkedintraining.

Questions we tackle :

1.How do you describe the concept and how is it not being applied to social, email and live conversations?

2. How are sales and marketing not relevant in their social, email, and live selling conversation?

3. Can you share some examples of how sales and marketing leaders are not relevant to their LinkedIn profiles?

4. When it comes to messaging, you say that most sales and marketing teams are just pushing out what they think is their unique selling propositions and they are not entering their prospects' world. Can you explain what you mean?

5. Many companies have the data that sales and marketing need to target specific accounts - why are they getting it wrong?

6. Why do we need to go beyond campaigns and focusing on leads - and where should the focus be?

To find out more follow this link to their website and connect with the team on LinkedIn - https://www.personalabm.com/ and https://stopthesalesdrop.com/

It's time to rethink your outbound email marketing & prospecting strategy.

We can no longer rely on the old templated, spray, and pray approach. Your target market deserves more respect than this.

In this episode, I chat with Kristina Finseth. Not only is she a fan of avocados, she has worked both in a direct sales role and also marketing. She is now the Growth Marketing lead at Interseller. Interseller helps recruiters reduce the time it takes to make a hire. Interseller can find any candidate's personal email address and reach them with automated & personalized email sequences, all while keeping any ATS or CRM up-to-date.

Kristina has spent a year, testing and testing different approaches to email prospecting and outreach. Through data analysis, she has found a framework that can give you up to an 80% open rate, 50% reply rate, and 30% booked meeting rate. Without having to make a single cold call.

Her focus is less volume, higher quality, targeted messaging.

This is not an and/or debate about the merits of calling, vs email, vs social - it is about doing all of this better and more effectively, using data to get better results.

This is not a silver bullet to prospecting or selling. It requires, time, focus, and effort.

Through her learnings, Kristina has created the Outbound FIRE Framework, on Teachable, which you can sign up for today. If you are serious about improving your success rates using email, this will be well worth your investment.

Connect with Kristina on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinafinseth/

Sign up to her Masterclass on Teachable - https://outboundfireframework.teachable.com/p/outbound-fire-framework

If you are in recruitment, learn more about what Interseller can do for you - https://www.interseller.io/ 

Welcome to the first episode of 2023, where Ketna Mistry joins me.

We all see it on our news feeds on LinkedIn, the same bland corporate post being shared or re-posted multiple times. We also all know that our employee networks are potent when activated correctly - this can help with brand positioning, recruitment and pipeline generation. 

How do you get an Employee Advocacy programme off the ground with meaning and purpose - both for the business and the employee?

Ketna joins me today to share just this. Her career spans 17 years of helping businesses with their social media strategy and execution.

Her most recent role was with Savills, helping them drive an Employee Advocacy programme, which has both a b2b and a b2c angle - some say the 2 are now the same thing.  She has now set up her own practice to provide consulting advice on social media, strategy and more.

Let's get to it :

What is Employee Advocacy?

Are the reason some fail because of leadership, lack of resources or both?

Is Employee Advocacy and Social Selling the same?

Should all employees be part of a programme?

How do you begin the conversation with leaders about engaging in an Employee Advocacy programme?

How can you make your content work harder for you?

We will we finally see B2B Influencers in the mainstream? 

If you are starting one, what are the considerations you must give?

We cover a lot in this one; my thanks to Ketna for her time and insight. I

If you need help with your social media strategy and execution, connect with Ketna on LinkedIn.

 

As ever, my thanks to all my guests and you my listeners.

 

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by String Nguyen.

String is a 4 x LinkedIn Top Voice, founder of the Trusted Voice, and a Lenovo Brand Ambassador for ANZ.

How has she done all of this?

Using social media to create a personal brand and amplify her voice.

This is her story and how she did it.

She also shares her framework of the 7 Vs for doing this :

Vision

Values

Volk

Visuals

Voice

Validation

Victory

 

Oh, and she really likes Fried Chicken. 

Follow her here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stringstory/

In this episode, I ramble. It's been an up and down couple of weeks, therefore I just wanted to talk. I cover off a few things around what I am hearing in the market. My take a few things I have seen - what not to do. 

What I am doing with the time that I have, learning a new skill.

How running virtual workshops has changed my perspective on coaching.

I talk about how you can use a word cloud to see how good your digital profile is.

And I ramble, so will not be offended if you switch off half-way through.

Thanks as always for taking the time to listen. I really do appreciate it.

We now live in a quasi-virtual, hybrid, video-meeting-led world.

Albert Mehrabian, a researcher of body language, who first broke down the components of a face-to-face conversation. He found that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only.

Therefore, what does this mean for us in nonverbal communication, in a video-led world, where we can only see one's head and shoulders in a small box on a screen?

In this episode, I am joined by Rachel Cossar, Co-Founder and CEO of Virtual Sapiens.

"Rachel Cossar is a leader in the field of nonverbal communication and leadership presence facilitation. As a former nationally ranked athlete and professional ballet dancer, Rachel has a knack of translating unique skills into relatable business skills and competencies. Virtual Sapiens, Rachel's most recent venture, comes as an evolution of her combined work as founder of Choreography for Business, a nonverbal communication consulting firm as well as a faculty member with Mobius Executive Leadership and as a leadership presence facilitator with Ariel Group. Rachel has worked with leaders from GE, BCG, Pfizer, Accenture, McKinsey, HBS and more. Rachel believes in the power of leveraging unique channels of communication in their own unique ways. Whether it is in person, on stage or on video, human connection is the key to organizational impact. At Virtual Sapiens and in all endeavors, Rachel is known to lean in to the future, to uncertainty, and to strengthening human experiences in business and beyond. Rachel's thought leadership has been featured on the TEDx Northeastern stage, Harvard Business Review, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today and more.

In this episode, Rachel breaks this down for us into what we need to consider when meeting people for the first time in a video-first environment, be it an initial meeting, demo, pitch and more. 

Rachel shares the types of nonverbal cues one would see and react to in an in-person meeting and how this becomes more complex in a video environment. 

This includes speaking to listen to ratio, lighting, background framing, camera angle, standing vs sitting, hand, head and shoulder movement, and eye contact. 

And what impact this has on the person you are talking to.

This all leads us to why Rachel founded Virtual Sapiens, "is a machine-learning SaaS platform to help client-facing professionals master communication skills over video. Like a virtual coach, Virtual Sapiens leverages expert knowledge in body language and presence, providing users with individualized and consistent coaching prompts as well as in-call feedback over time. Virtual Sapiens amplifies human connection, builds human skills and leverages cutting edge technology to do so at scale."

This episode will give you food for thought and where AI technology is heading in this space - do we even need to be present?

To learn more about Virtual Sapiens and take their free assessment, follow this link : https://www.virtualsapiens.co/

You can follow Rachel on LinkedIn here : https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-cossar/

 

Thank you to Rachel for her time and insight and to you, my listeners.

 

Let's Party Like it's 1999.

This is when my guest Rick Hawkins started out his career in data science, or as it was called back in the day - BI, Business Intelligence.

Rick very kindly allowed me to interrupt his career break and be a guest on this episode, where we chat all things data. His career speaks for itself, having been on both the sell-side and buy-side of data science, business intelligence, graphing or wrangling. His profile reads :

"Data Leader and Chief Data Officer with vision, drive and extensive experience building transformational data capabilities. Most recently established a global data management capability and bespoke tooling from zero base at a leading bank. Passionate about data-led innovation, actively involved in setting cloud and data strategies at the CxO level and improving data literacy. Previously developed data practices and built cross-industry Data Management tools for several professional services organisations. Active participant in industry-wide consortiums shaping data regulation with the FCA and Bank of England and regular presenter at data conferences, including FIMA and CDAO"

His most most recent position was Chief Data Officer, Global Risk & Finance at global banking institution.

Whom better to get on and share his views on all things data and Formula 1.

The questions I pose are :

What is data in a business context?

Why is it taking so long to get right? 

We chat about a blog from 2017 about Marketing teams needing a data scientist(s); therefore, I ask, what is a Data Scientist?

How can sales & marketing teams learn from other business units wrangling data?

The ethics and debate of data privacy vs I want you to "know" me - this is a podcast in its own right.

The role of automation and ai vs Humans.

The Future.

Rick is a brilliant raconteur and uses clever analogies to simplify a complex topic - the Sat Nav one is brilliant, and I want salespeople especially to listen to this. And Birthdays.

We end with this question - Will Ferrari and Leclerc win the 2022 championship - and what an answer!

Thank you so much to Rick for giving up his time when he should be taking time off. 

Follow him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickarus/

 

"Death of a Salesman is a 1949 stage play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances. It is a two-act tragedy set in 1940s New York told through a montage of memories, dreams, and arguments of the protagonist Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is disappointed with his life, and appears to be slipping into senility. The play contains a variety of themes, such as the American Dream, the anatomy of truth, and infidelity. It explores the psychological chaos of the protagonist, and the capitalist society's impact on his life. It won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. It is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century" - wikipedia.

I always thought it apt as a title for the podcast, based on the underlying narrative and perception sales has had through the ages. Fast forward to today, in the modern era of sales and varying iterations, roles, and supporting functions in sales, we find ourselves at a tipping point.

What is the role of sales? If we are to believe the research, the stats range from 44% to 72% of buyers would prefer a salesperson free buying process. 

Note the word, would - none of this research is saying this is happening today, it is, if they could not have a salesperson in the buying process, they would prefer it.

Today's guest is none other than the brilliant Brent Adamson. Brent describes himself as "Researcher, author, presenter, and thinker with a passion for “productive disruption.”

He is the Global Head of Research at Ecosystems. Ecosystems is the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for collaborative customer value management.

Prior to this, Brent forged his career at CEB, now Gartner. He is the co-author of the Challenger Sale & Challenger Customer. 

Brent authored a brilliant piece in HBR titled "Traditional Sales & Marketing are Becoming Obsolete". You can listen to that episode where I chat with Jenna from Smart Technologies about what they have done to ensure it isn't. 

This leads us to this episode.

We could have chatted for hours on this, but we keep it to c. 45mins.

We cover :

What is selling in an ecosystem today and why sales leaders have to start thinking about it.

We take a look back in time to try and understand why we have got to where we are today.

Are we blurring what a sales process is vs what a sales cadence is?

We take a closer look at some of the stats that buyers are saying in that they would prefer a seller-free process.

And what might this mean for both the seller and the buyer?

We consider the statement "Buyer Centric", and ask the question, are we?

We wrap it up where Brent offers some brilliant questions you can ask your clients & prospects as well as start doing something called "Post Sales Discovery".

Brent is a brilliant raconteur and a razor-sharp mind when it comes to all things sales.

Follow Brent on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson/

Learn more about Ecosystems https://ecosystems.us/ and even join their Slack group https://ecosystems.us/customer-value-community/ 

The aforementioned HBR article https://hbr.org/2022/02/traditional-b2b-sales-and-marketing-are-becoming-obsolete 

As ever, thank you for tuning in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In an online world, what is intent, and, more importantly, what is the data?  Intent is always a hot topic of debate - just because someone visits your website, downloads something or attends an event, does this mean that person is a "hot lead" and ready to buy?

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Kerry Cunningham from 6sense.  Kerry has lived in this world before intent data was even a thing. His passion lies on helping sales & marketing functions align better, and his approach is :

 

"I rarely accept things in the business world as they are. I tend to see things as they should be and then get to work figuring stuff out. Over the last 5+ years, my focus for has been on driving the buying groups revolution in B2B, helping organizations transform from outmoded, ineffective lead-based demand gen practices to modern, buying team and opportunity-centric processes that unlock next-level performance. I also bring a unique combination of academic and real-world expertise in a variety of disciplines, including demand marketing, ABM, marketing operations, sales prospecting, messaging, organizational design and management, cross-cultural organizational design and change management, employee selection and retention, and performance management. "

 

As you will hear in this episode, Kerry does not hold back, so buckle up sales & marketing :

Hear how Kerry describes how, in the past, the best you can be at lead gen, was truly awful.

Why he realised that we were looking at things the wrong way.

What is intent data?

Is it relevant to B2B?

1st Party Data to 3rd Party Data to Anonymous data - why it all matters.

Leads are also a form of intent, but you are looking at them the wrong way.

A prospect vs someone with personal interest.

Why the way sales & marketing are incentivised goes against the best interest of the business.

What buying signals you should be listening for.

It's the combination of signals that hold the key to unlocking all of this.

And much, much more.

Kerry tackles this head-on, with some hard truths, which, if we are honest with ourselves, we could all be doing better.

He also ends with some practical advice you can start doing today with the marketing data you already have access to, just look at it through a different lense.

Follow Kerry on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrycunningham/

Learn more about what 6sense can do for you and your business https://6sense.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this episode, I discuss this and more with Tim Williams, the CEO of www.onalytica.com

Onalytica describes itself as “Connecting brands and influencer communities to create inspiring content.”

I discuss with Tim, what is social influence on Social Media? How can you really measure it? We discuss how leadership needs to look at social engagement metrics in a different way to a spreadsheet of numbers.

We discuss how B2B businesses can leverage the voice of their employees and the potential marketing power this has through Social Advocacy.

How do you get people to engage?

Is your target audience listening?

Who should lead these programmes?

Is this something new or has it always been around?

Who are your anomaly influencers?

Please connect with Tim on LinkedIn to find out more https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamstim1979/

 

 

 

We have all been there - you receive an email from your manager or a firmwide message. It doesn't quite land well with you, and you feel all sorts of things. 

The message from a colleague which is sent late at night for an ask.

The constant pings and notifications.

Whilst all the intentions behind the communications may well be meant well, sometimes, for the recipient, they are misinterpreted. Which can lead to all sorts. 

In this episode, Jacqui Hanbury, founder of The Pathway Communication Company, joins me.

Jacqui trained as an engineer before moving into sales, then product marketing, becoming a qualified communications coach before setting up her own business. 

Jacqui helps us understand how to communicate effectively in your organisation.

We discuss :

How to position what you are communicating.

Top-down messaging.

Managing up.

Communicating as a team.

The different channels.

The importance of letting people "vent".

How to manage difficult conversations.

How to make sure everyone is heard.

 

A lot of what we discuss will seem like common sense, fundamentally treating each other as humans and with respect.  Yet, we are sometimes guilty of forgetting this - even if it is not intentional.

Thank you, Jacqui, for your time on this episode.

Connect with Jacqui on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqui-hanbury/

Learn more about how Jacqui can help you and your business :

https://pathwaycc.co.uk/

 

 

 

Yes, it's another podcast about generative ai and its impact on sales & marketing.

Seth Marrs joins me as a returning guest. Seth is a research director at Forrester and is at the leading edge of "leveraging data, process and technology to transform global sales and service organizations."

Unless you live under a rock, you will have seen the explosion of conversation about generative ai and how it will change how we live and work, both at home and in the workplace. 

There is a narrative emerging that this will replace some aspects, and roles, in sales and marketing roles. 

Seth & I get into it, to try and cut through the noise :

What is generative ai?

Is it really that new?

Where are the main focus areas that Seth sees it being deployed?

What is the impact?

What will this mean for email copy and cadences?

Will we need to declare if something is purely AI generated?

Will there be a world where gen ai is talking to gen ai?

What do organisations need to consider when deploying gen ai across the enterprise?

 

My thanks to Seth, as ever, for his time and knowledge. It feels like we truly are at the dawn of a new era in sales and marketing.

 

How are you and your business using gen ai? 

 

Follow Seth here : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethmarrs/

Forrester resource on Generative AI : https://www.forrester.com/blogs/category/generative-ai/ 

 

This episode was recorded on May 23rd, 2023; hence, no doubt what was discussed will have moved on.

I am joined by Matt from Conversica on this podcast.

Conversica is a leading provider of Intelligent Virtual Assistants for business, helping organizations attract, grow and retain customers. The flagship Conversica® Sales AI Assistant helps companies find and secure customers more quickly and efficiently by autonomously contacting, engaging, qualifying and following up with leads via natural, two-way conversations.

Matt dispels the myths of what AI can and can't do. He corrects me that this is not conversational AI. He shares examples of how this works in a sales & marketing context, some stats on where their customer base has seen real term uplift in lead gen and sales revenue by using their technology.

A fascinating insight into where the world of "augmented sales reps" is going, and this is just the start. And Robo-Dogs.

Connect with Matt :

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjohnlewis/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/thebowseat (for all you rowers out there)

Or of course to Conversica and see for yourself how this works in reality - https://www.conversica.com/

The metaverse is coming. One way or the other it will be part of our daily routine. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but, in 10 years time, most definitely. 

How will we get there? Some say we are already there in the world of gaming.

In this episode, I am joined by Aragorn Meulendijks of Beemup and Your Open Metaverse. His headline on LinkedIn reads as thus :

"Let’s 𝘨𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦. A decentralized World, built in #UnrealEngine on top of a #Blockchain called #YourOpenMetaverse! "

Aragorn takes me and hopefully you on a journey through what was, is and will be the metaverse.

He explains why NFTs and the Metaverse seem to be intrinsicly linked in the media.

Could you NFT your house?

He uses a wonderful metpahor to explain how the metaverse of tomorrow will be different from what we see today. Fundamentally, how you will "own" your digital self and what this means and why.

We chat about where there are real world examples of the metaverse being used by both consumer business and b2b business.

What will be the bridge between reality and the metaverse?

If you want a straight forward explanation of what the Metaverse is and what it can mean for you, this is well worth a listen.

You can follow Aragorn on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/aragornmeulendijks/

Learn more about Beemup :

https://beemup.com/

Learn more about Your Open Metaverse:

https://www.yom.community/

Learn more about Unreal Engine: 

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/

As ever, thank you for listening and let us know what you think of the metaverse in the comments!

 

 

 

How would you feel about being coached by an AI-powered avatar?

That's precisely the world we now find ourselves in, and this is the topic of this episode.

I chat with Russell Zack, Head of Revenue at www.secondnature.ai, which describes itself as "Scale up your sales coaching with bite-sized, realistic, AI-driven role plays, immediate feedback, scoring and an amazing experience."

Oh, and there is Jenny, or whomever you want.

I was intrigued by how this all worked, and Russell kindly gave up his time to share how it all worked.

We chat all things such as :

The rise of AI in Sales and how the next generation of employees is much more comfortable, if not expecting this enablement. 

Is this different from all the fitness apps where you have a "coach" to train you?

Why it is important to have a robust sales strategy to overlay your sales coaching - whether it is in person, virtual or through an AI coach.

Data, Data and more data.

Real-time learning and feedback - how this helps scale your sales and enablement at pace.

Russell's own experience of being onboarded by Jenny.

This technology gives sales enablement the ability to create different sales scenarios - which is always on. 

How this can remove conscious and unconscious bias, HOWEVER, keep an eye on the base data, you are using.

I put Russell on the spot, and we look into the crystal ball - is there a possibility that you can turn this software into client-facing a role?

I believe this is the start of creating a new market in the world of sales enablement and supporting roles. It is not about replacing people but augmenting them. 

Thank you to Russell for sharing his time and insight; it's a brave new world. 

Follow Russell here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellzack/ 

 

 

 

 

 

Shane Mahi, CEO & Co-Founder of SalesDRIIVN believes so.

In this episode, we break down what was wrong with the antiquated outsourced models and how Shane, along with this co-founder Antoine saw what they thought was a gap in the market.

Shane started his business in March 2020, and they now have won a number of clients whom they work with. 

As you learn, this goes beyond the assumed, just setting appointments.

Shane and the team at SalesDRIIVN support their clients across 4 aspects of pipeline creation, or Hyper-Growth as they call it :

Business Intelligence : Make better business decisions with real actionable intelligence.

Human Intelligence :

Leading specialists in the creation of opportunities.

Artificial Intelligence :

Empowering your sales and marketing teams to achieve more with AI.

Growth Intelligence :

Actionable insights and intelligence to grow your business.

Shane breaks down the 4 areas they focus on and what that means for their clients

We chat about the challenges faced by SDRs & AEs today, and what this means for the roles in the future.

Where outsourcing your sales makes sense versus where maybe it might not. 

I share my experiences of working with an outsourced sales business in the past, and challenge Shane on "Is he not just dressing up appointment setting"

I put Shane on the spot and ask for his take on are we relying too much on automation in sales, and by doing so, losing the art of selling?

To learn more about what Shane and the team can do to help you get better meeting with better prospects, head on over to www.salesdriivn.com or

Connect with Shane on LinkedIn, mention this podcast - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanemahi/

Don't forget to subscribe if you are not already, and please do share with you networks.

As ever, thank you for listening.

 

 

 

Organisations are grappling with building a culture in a hybrid world, which enables them to achieve their vision, mission statement, purpose etc. For the most part it is focussed on doing right by clients, people & the environment. 

But how?

How is that then embodied across the different business units, where we all have different stakeholders, short term goals and KPIS - and by short term, typically these are 12 month cycles. 

Yet, in sales teams, these can be even shorter cycles, to quarters and even months, driven by revenue. 

Given that the average tenure of a seller is 18months, how does this marry up with the "insert year" vision. 

This got me thinking, does a sales culture matter? 

Thanks to Graham Smith, he introduced me to the brilliant Daniel Strode.

Dan, has recently published "The Culture Advantage - Empowering your people to drive innovation". He also talks about Web3.0, blockchain, Defi and NFT Strategies; he is the Group Director of Culture & Strategy, Global Human Resources at Banco Santander, where he is responsible for embedding The Santander Way, the common corporate culture of Banco Santander across 32 countries and with more than 202,000 colleagues globally.

Therefore, who better, to help answer this question. 

We chat about :

Culture is what you do when no one is looking.

The impact that the right culture can have on sales. And your clients.

The importance of having fun.

Why Lego's story is a lesson for all to learn from.

How you can create innovation by reframing what your clients/customers do.

How to manage the tension created between short term goals and kpi's and the long term needed to build the right culture. 

Why the right leadership behaviour is critical.

Why your people are your most powerful aspect in all of this. 

We end on the future of NFTs, and their role in building client/customer relationships - it's fascinating.

You can follow Dan on LinkedIn Dan Strode | LinkedIn

Learn more at www.danielstrode.com 

Buy his book Daniel Strode – The Culture Advantage 

My thanks to Graham Smith Graham Smith CIPD F.ISP | LinkedIn for the introduction.

Thank you Dan for an enlightening and thought provoking discussion. I hope the tree planting went well!

And, as always, my thanks to you, the listeners, let us know what you think in the comments!

 

What started out as Social Calling, a phrase coined by Nigel Edelshain back in 2009 and his take on Sales 2.0. 

Then became Social Selling from 2014, to the first book authored on the subject in 2016 by Timothy Hughes & Matt Reynolds, where they set the standard and framework that is still used today.

Has technology, automation, and the "economy of now" killed it?

 

Or, to be precise, Brent Adamson believes that "Traditional Sales & Marketing are becoming Obsolete"

Brent was the co-author of the Challenger Sales & Challenger Customer process. He authored an article on HBR with the aforementioned title. This leads us to my wonderful guest, Jenna Pipchuk, Chief Sales Officer & EVP Global Sales at SMART Technologies.

I read Jenna's story about how she and her colleague, Jeff Lowe, Chief Marketing Officer, ripped up the rule and redesigned from the ground up, how their sales & marketing functions worked together.

All of this with the global pandemic looming ahead of them.

Out of this was born the "Unified Commercial Engine" or UCE.

Could this be the new model for B2B sales?

We discuss :

The prevailing narrative of the rise of the millennial buyer and their buying preferences in the digital age.

How do you respond to this changing landscape?

When Jenna and Jeff both sat down at the start of this programme of change, they had no idea where they would end up.

How did they get buy-in from leadership? Clue, they didn't.

What was the process to dismantle their sales & marketing cycle, piece by piece?

How it was rebuilt around their customer's buying journey.

What is the complete customer infinity loop?

What do circles and squares have to do with all of this?

What does the organisational skill set of the future look like?

You don't pass the baton anymore, you are on journey together.

What is the secret sauce of the UCE?

and much, much more, including the results this is now yielding for them 2 years in.

If you are really serious about how you can, not only give your clients and prospects a better buying experience, while at the same equipping your teams for the future, this podcast is for you.

You can follow Jenna on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpipchuk/

This is the HBR article I reference - https://hbr.org/2022/02/traditional-b2b-sales-and-marketing-are-becoming-obsolete

Thank you to Jenna for giving up her time to share her story with me and more importantly, all of you. 

If you didn't believe it could be done, well, Jenna, Jeff and the team at SMART Technologies have shown us the way.

 

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Simon Marshall.

 

Simon runs his own Digital Marketing agency where he and his team help Professional Service firms get the best out of their marketing data to make better business decisions.

 

If you are in Sales, Marketing, Accounting or Law, you need to listen to this - the firms that get this will reap the rewards.

 

We cover off : 

 

Why your website is not working the way you think it is.

Why you need to look at attribution e.g. where are your audiences coming from? Both known & unknown.

If you are not using an awesome website he shares to optimise your content visibility, you should be.

Why using Google Search Console can help you figure out where your website needs improving.

How you can start to take a more holistic approach to multiple data sources from within your business to make better and more informed business decisions.

2mins is the optimum read time for most.

Does your content work like an F?

Do Sales, Market & Business Development need to re-skill in some of these areas?

 

Please do follow Simon on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonpaulmarshall/

and Twitter - https://twitter.com/CEO_TBD

 

In this episode, I am joined by Priya Shah, one of the co-founders of Sauce Video.

 

What started out as a video editing app for extreme sports enthusiasts transformed into a cloud-based video collaboration and editing tool.

 

Sauce Video was acquired by Oracle in April 2020  and they are now building this technology into their CX Content platform.

 

Priya is kind enough to share with me their story.

 

We also cover off why video is now such an important part of brands' total content marketing strategy.

How it can be used to drive employee advocacy and branding.

The different use cases for video, such as Sales Enablement, Compliance training, onboarding, and more.

We touch on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

How AI may help drive video personalization at scale.

We also talk about how the Oracle acquisition came about and what the road map looks like for the team.

I make a really bad joke, twice.

 

To learn more about Sauce Video & Oracle CX click here - https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/sauce-video/

Follow Priya on LinkedIn here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyashahsauce/

Follow me here - https://linktr.ee/alexanderlow 

Would you create a "digital twin" of yourself?

Fred has set out to do this, and he shares what he has learned so far with FredAI.

Using Interactive Tutor, Fred uploaded his books and blogs into their platform so that he could train it on all of his own content.

FredAI was created, as a chatbot where you can ask questions, and the answers will be based on all of Fred's content, thinking and wisdom that he has curated over 20 years. 

We chat through :

Why has he decided to do this?

What has the learning been so far?

How does he see this complimenting what Fred does in person?

Does FredAI hallucinate?

We then broaden the discussion to where we feel this could all go?

What other use cases might there be?

Coaching to ask the right questions. 

This is early days for FredAI, however, I encourage you to go and chat with "him" and give real Fred your feedback.

Find FredAI here >>> FredAI (collaborativeselling.co.uk)

If you want to set up your own chat bot, go here >>> Interactive Tutor

Connect with Fred here >>> Fred Copestake

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

 

 

 

There seems to be more tribalism than ever happening on social at the moment.

You are wrong, I am right. I will not engage in a conversation with you and hear your side of the conversation. End of.

The sales world is no different.

This works, that doesn't work. You are wrong, I am right. I have been guilty of it myself in the past. I am now listening to the other side of the conversation. I am learning too. 

Cold Calling - always causes the biggest "debate". It always has and no doubt always will.

It's here. It works for some, not others.

Recent McKinsey research cited "Top performers favour cold calls over cold emails. Across the 40,000 deals we looked at, old-fashioned telephone calls were superior for getting peoples initial attention.…, high performers relied on cold calls more than unsolicited emails, making 82 percent more cold calls than low performers and sending 26 percent fewer unsolicited emails" - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/how-data-analytics-helps-sales-reps-win-more-deals 

Something is obviously still working.

In this episode, I explore this with Gerry Hill, the EMEA VP of Connect & Sell https://connectandsell.com/ "Technology that Gets Your Best Sales People 8-10x More Live Conversations with Qualified Prospects, Every Day."

I have seen this technology live over at the Revenue Garage Channel on YouTube - https://revenuegarage.com/ 

And it works. It is as much about the quality of the data of your lists, as it is how you handle the call, which is an art form.

Gerry is a master of this art form, supported by the psychology of people, science, and data. 

Whether you are a believer in Cold Calling or not.

Just listen.

Listen to what Gerry has to say about cold calling, sales more generally, where it is all going. 

Connect with Gerry on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/beaccurate/

Or, give him a call. 

I spent 7 years in out and out sales roles, before making the move into Professional Services Business Development, joining PwC in Jan 2009. This launched my career to where I am today - along this journey, I have met some incredibly talented BD professionals.

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Dominic de Mariveles. I met Dominic when I joined Berwin Leighton Paisner as was, now BCLP, in Oct 2011. 

The approach Dominic takes to driving a BD culture in both his teams and the fee earners is a pragmatic yet robust one.

He not only believes but has proved, with a straightforward, no-frills approach to BD, that you can achieve double-digit revenue growth in 5 years.

We discuss :

What is Business Development in a Professional Services capacity?

Where has it got to today?

Why do we believe it is so varied in how it is executed?

Why is Professional Services "sales" so different to Corporate "sales". Or is it?

If we were to start a new BD function today, what would that look like?

The challenges for both small and large firms.

Do we have the right skills for where we need to be in 5 years?

How technology focussed should we be?

Why this has to be led from the top - if not, you will fail.

Be bold and brave.

I always learn something new when I speak to Dominic, and no doubt so will you.

If you believe Dominic can help you and you want to learn more - connect with him on LinkedIn, be sure to mention this podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicdemariveles/

 

As ever, my continued thanks to all of my guests, and you, our listeners. 

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the CEO of UpContent - Scott Rogerson 

Scott is a returning guest where we build on the original episode of "Is Content Still King." listen here >>> https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7q2ht-1195cab 

We cover off :

Why is Employee Advocacy still a nascent concept in business, with reference to the Cisco post that was doing the rounds?

Sales people, Lawyer, Consultants etc. need to see the value for them in leveraging their networks for what seems like corporate gain at a brand level - how should leadership go about the messaging on this?

Does any of this actually work for lead generation?

How do you prove it is working?

What type of content should your Sellers, Lawyers, and Consultants consider posting and engaging with?

The importance of the "hot take".

And, of course, we cannot not talk about the rise of GenAI.

It's a first in that this was a re-recording because I forgot to press record the first time around, so my huge thanks to Scott for his patience and agreeing to record again!

Connect with Scott here >>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottarogerson/

Learn more about UpContent here >>> https://www.upcontent.com/ 

 

"To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question."

With 436 million reported people you can reach on Twitter, should you be on it or not?

Well much like any social media platform you need to consider who your audience is and then do the research as to where they hang out, and it could well be Twitter.

Samantha Kelly, aka @Tweetinggoddess believes the Twitterverse can be a brilliant platform to connect and build a community with like-minded people. Her bio reads as follows :

Twitter Expert. Sprinkler of #Twittermagic Chief Community Officer @wedo_hq Nice people collector! Director @WomensinspireIE,Ted X Speaker.

Friend of Bill W.

Samantha joined Twitter in June 2011 and hasn't looked back, she even has the coveted blue verification tick and 64k, active and engaged, followers.

In this episode, we cover off questions such as :

How is Twitter different from other social media platforms? 

B2C vs B2B?

How do you know if your audience is on there?

How do you engage on Twitter compared to LinkedIn?

Twitter has had a bad press in the past when it comes to politics, amongst other things, what impact does this have in a business context?

How might you use Twitter to engage with your audience? And in what context?

Do you build a personal brand on Twitter in the same way you might do in LinkedIn?

Can you cross purpose content between social media platforms?

Should you use scheduling tools?

New(ish) features such as Spaces, Communities and newsletters.

and more.

If you are unsure about whether Twitter is the right place for you, then this is where you need to be, let Samantha be your guide.

You can of course follow Samantha on, well, Twitter https://twitter.com/Tweetinggoddess

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tweetinggoddess/

The Women's Inspire Network: https://www.womensinspirenetwork.com/

Wedo: https://getwedo.today/ "Kickstart your online business with Wedo: create live video and audio alleys, share content, automate invoices, take payments and send and receive money completely hassle-free. Become a Wedo beta member today!"

As ever, thank you for tuning in, let us know what you think in the comments, if you follow/connect with Samantha, be sure to mention the podcast!

 

 

 

 

Ironic the title of this episode, as you will hear, the audio on my side is not ideal, I did try to clean it up. The key thing is that today's guest Dr Jillian Ney, is crystal clear, and that is what it counts!

Are you listening? I mean really listening?

Social listening is nothing new, the question is should we be looking at it more closely through a sales & marketing lense?

Jillian is a digital anthropologist and the founder of The Social Intelligence Lab (The SI Lab) - a global community for professionals working with social and internet data. She is also the UK’s first “Dr. of Social Media.”  is an advocate of what is more widely known as ‘social listening’ she is on a mission to advance the value of social and internet data more broadly as a source of insight, not just social media. In addition, she promotes the improvement of practices and standards in the analysis of digital conversations, and supports professionals working in this space. She does this through The SI Lab by sharing content, hosting events and providing training. She also supports the growth of the sector via The SI Lab Jobs, and helps people find the right tools and technology through the SI Lab Directory."

In this episode, we cover off :

Jillian sharing her new framework approach :

- Real Time Analysis

- Decision Intelligence

- Insights

Taking an always on approach.

The question is what matters the most.

These are as much data governance discussions.

Breaking the perception of what social media is at a board level.

What can B2B learn from what B2C are doing in this space.

How do you know what behavioural trends to follow.

So much data is, you just need to know, where and how to look.

Attribution.

We cover a lot more too, this is a great listen for anyone who is considering how you might use social listening as part of your go to market.

Connect with Jillian here :(1) Dr Jillian Ney | LinkedIn

The Social Intelligence Lab : Home - The Social Intelligence Lab (thesilab.com)

As always, thank you for listening - (and apologies for my audio sounding like I am under water!)

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Andy Culligan.

Andy describes himself as :

"Fractional CMO, dipping the toe in CRO water. Salesperson stuck in a marketer's body." who talks about #sdrs, #tech, #sales, #martech, and #marketing.   I have known Andy for a while now, and he has been kind enough to have me a guest on a few of his webinars, hence it is a pleasure to finally pin him down to be a guest on the show.   The disconnect between Sales & Marketing functions is well documented and is now, more then ever, critical that we address it.    The question is how?   This where Andy comes in. Andy has been there and done it as a CMO across B2C and B2B, both in the high volume game as well as large enterprise, in SaaS Tech world.   We cover off Andy's career, and how this experience has shaped his thinking in the role of marketing and how it needs to work with Sales.   As you will hear, we have debate around what this relationship be, who serves who?   Andy is very honest in how he understood lead generation in the early part of his marketing career, or dare I say it - didn't understand.   Building on this, he shares what he did about this and how.    We discuss what the role of marketing should be tomorrow versus what it has been.   Andy shares his views on what data and metrics marketing teams should, and shouldn't measure - which is illuminating, to say the least.    Andy is honest about the mistakes he made in the past and what we can learn from those.   We could have talked way beyond the 50 mins on this one, but for the first time ever, I have messed up my diary management - there is always a first. We end somewhat more abruptly than I normally would - sorry Andy!   This is a brilliant listen, thank you to Andy.   You can follow him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-culligan/   As well as learn more about how he can help your business as at : www.andyculligan.com    As always, thank you for taking the time to listen.   If you are not already subscribed, please do and if you feel your network would benefit from listening to this, please do share with your network.

In this episode, we are going global with social.

I am joined by Anita Veszeli, Global Head of Social Engagement & Advocacy at Ericsson. 

Anita describes what she does as this "At Ericsson I enjoy a unique position with oversight of all social media, employee advocacy and influencer marketing across our global business. This bird’s eye view enables me to create a social-first strategy which helps colleagues around the world to better reach and engage with their customers. I believe in adopting a strategic approach to digital marketing, challenging existing ways of doing things, and measuring the impact of our programs. I enjoy working with the wider Marketing and Communications team, helping colleagues in Ericsson’s business areas and markets to use social to solve their business challenges. Our expertise and social media insights help them to make better decisions and speed up sales velocity. Key to our success is #TeamEricsson, our employee advocacy program, which involves around 10% of our global workforce. I’ve very proud of this community and look to actively support their involvement with both sharable content and training support."

I discuss with Anita, how she is able to achieve this, with the support of her team.

We cover off :

How do you bring a scepital leadership team on board.

How do you train employees at scale to understand the how and the why of social media.

How technology supports this.

How do you prove it is working.

What does the future look like for Employee Advocacy.

Follow Anita on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitaveszeli/

Follow Anita on Twitter @anitaveszeli

Read her article on 4 research backed tips to help you plan your 2021 social media strategy https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-research-backed-tips-help-you-plan-your-2021-social-anita-veszeli/ 

 

Do you know what your organisation's commitments are to getting to net-zero?

Do you understand how green your supply chain is that creates your product or service?

When selling your product or service, do you care?

Do your clients care?

If we are honest with ourselves, we are all guilty of "greenwashing" our sales.

However, that doesn't mean we have to carry on this way.

In this episode, I am joined by Andrew Gomarsall MBE.

For any England Rugby fan (of a certain age), he needs no introduction. For those that are not Rugby fans, or maybe are of a certain age, he describes himself as :

"I am a retired professional England rugby union player, having played the game I love since I was 6 years old, & going on to playing professionally for 16 years, winning the World Cup in 2003, & playing in the final of RWC 2007. Awarded an MBE for services to rugby in 2004."

Andrew is now the Executive Chairman of NS2, where sustainability is at the heart of what they do. He also recently spoke at COP26.

I heard Andrew speak at a dinner, hosted by Durham Lane, where we were debating how important is ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) as part of the sales process.

This leads us to this podcast, where I wanted to explore this further.

Andrew doesn't hold back in his views on where this is fundamentally broken in sales, and business more broadly.

However, we also discuss what YOU can start doing today. 

Andrew believes this starts with how you market your product service, even if you are not confident in making this part of your sales pitch.

Create awareness around what your business and the supply chain of your business are doing to get to Net-Zero. 

What does Scope 1, 2 & most importantly 3 mean to you? And your clients. 

Don't know what these are (I didn't) - go and learn.

As you will hear, this is not about what has gone by. It is about what we can all start doing today. No single business is perfect, even though some may suggest they are more so than others...

If you truly care about this, what the business you are working for is doing about it, and, most importantly how this can differentiate yourself in the world of sales, spend 40mins listening.

There may be an England rugby shirt on offer too.

You can follow Andrew on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewgomarsall/

Twitter (yes that is a picture of him with Muhammed Ali)

https://twitter.com/AndyGomarsall

and his business

https://www.linkedin.com/company/network-2-supplies-ltd/

As ever, thank you for listening, don't forget to subscribe and share with your network.

In this weeks episode, I am joined by the brilliant Mary Shea PhD.

Mary is the Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach, prior to this she was a Principal Analyst at Forrester. She also has a PhD in Musicology & Ethnomusicology, which, as you will hear, is a word I am unable to pronounce. 

What is a Revenue Innovator? Well, if you visit Mary's profile on LinkedIn, you will see this :

"Revenue Innovators : noun - a new cohort of revenue leaders who put buyers at the center of their strategies, who arm their sellers with the most innovative sales technologies, and who over-index on data, rather than intuition, to inform their business decisions. "

Quite a statement, I am sure you will agree. 

In this podcast, Mary takes us through what this means. 

She shares her fascinating background from playing in orchestra's around the world to her PhD to where she is now at Outreach.

Sales Engagement technology vs Engagement & Intelligence technology

Is Revenue Intelligence just Sales Enablement with a different name, or are we creating a new category?

CRM was never designed for sellers, so where are we now and what is its role for the 21st Century?

Point solutions becoming platforms of the future, what does this mean?

Are we creating a challenge for sellers by relying too much on automation?

How does this play into the "buyer first" and "buyer safety" and the discrepancy between seller & buyer?

Crafting buyer-centric strategies.

Do we need to re-brand how we refer to buyers?

The rise of the buying group, what does the mean?

Compensation plans focussed on quantitative metrics and why this is now a problem.

The "we have always done it this way" syndrome.

Sales & Marketing are still not aligned.

Is there a skills gap in Sales & Marketing to operate in a revenue intelligence-led world?

Are we really heading into a world where AI will make all the decisions for sellers?

The science vs the art of sales.

What does "in-person" mean today?

Can more traditional markets such as Professional Services, Financial Services and Insurance have Revenue Innovators and supporting technology platforms, such as Outreach?

 

Connect with Mary on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

Follow Mary on Twitter https://twitter.com/sheaoutr

Subscribe to her podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revenue-innovators/id1573980851

Learn more about Outreach https://www.outreach.io/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Employee Advocacy or Corporate Spam?

There is a fine balance to be had regarding Employee Advocacy.

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Andrew Seel, the CEO of Togethr. 

Andrew was been using the internet since the AOL days of CD-Roms and this started his career to where he finds himself today.

His mantra "At the heart of this is a belief that ultimately your people are your brand and that a shared purpose - which you act on and talk about - will set your brand apart in the modern world." 

Andrew and I chat talk through :

What is Employee Advocacy today?

Should Everyone in the organisation be part of the programme?

Do you need a technology platform to support it?

Data, Metrics, Tracking & Success.

How do you help people overcome "Imposter Syndrome"?

Corporate vs The Personal

The Rise of Community Voices in organisations.

And, of course, Generative AI.

 

To learn more about how Andrew and his team can help you launch your Employee Advocacy programmes, connect with him here >>> (6) Andrew Seel | LinkedIn

Or visit Togethr to access resources and more to help you get started. 

 

 

 

I am delighted to host Stuart J Barnett on this episode.

Stuart describes himself as Thought partner and confident to lawyers. He shares his story of what led him to what he does now. Whilst the focus of the discussion is around Lawyers and Law firms, having worked across multiple industries, his insight and advice is valuable to all.

We discuss the importance if internal influence if you are looking to get promoted, can you answer these 3 questions?

Who needs to know you?

Who do you need to know?

What do you want to be known for?

We also discuss how to deal with feedback as a leader. His comment "It's information that already exists, it's just new for you" really stood out for me.

You can connect with Stuart here on LinkedIn, if you do, please mention this podcast! https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartjbarnett/

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy it.

In this episode, I am joined by Seth Marrs, Principal Analyst, Sales Operations at Forrester. Seth wrote a blog back in February 2020 which piqued my interest. It starts :

• Dynamic guided selling is a concept that is poised to become a reality in B2B sales organizations
• Integrating sales tools to build an iterative process enables sales teams to win more
• E-commerce guided selling, configure, price and quote (CPQ) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) and AI are the foundation for every customer interaction

Sales tools have traditionally been used to enable administrative efficiencies for sales leaders who can drive adoption. Tools can identify top prospects, reduce admin and provide improved visibility to pipeline reporting. These things all sit at the periphery of what salespeople value most — winning the deal.  

 

Seth breaks down more research he and his team have been conducting to the market and with his clients. 

We break down Guided Selling into its component parts.

Why Sales & Marketing leaders need to be considering this in concert, not in isolation.

What are the challenges faced by Sales & Marketing when looking at who to build in a Guided Selling culture and behaviours.

What opportunity this presents for them.

Why this needs to be top of the agenda today.

Your buyers are buying in a very different way, in order to stay with them, you need to engage with them on their terms, not yours.

Where AI & Automation will support and augment this. 

You can connect or follow Seth on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethmarrs/ - be sure to mention this podcast when you do.

Seth has also shared more resource below for your consideration :

 

Supercharging Sales with Dynamic Guided Selling: http://bit.ly/2Oq2HuV

AI Can Get You a Date, But Can It Keep Your Buyers From Swiping Left? https://forr.com/2TnzjIH

What If the World Depended on the Accuracy of Your Org’s Data? https://www.siriusdecisions.com/blog/what-if-world-depended-on-data-accuracy?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=cso20&utm_term=covid19&utm_content=sdblog

Are You Managing Your Sales Data or Is It Managing You? https://forr.com/3ghzRYY

Sales Reps as Psychics: Buyers Want You to Know Their Expectations, Even if They Haven’t Told You What They Are https://forr.com/3j9CK0v

Cadence Optimization Is a Sales Rep Prospecting Superpower https://forr.com/30rbTp0

The Best of Both Worlds: Sales Reps Can Finally Get Value From Their Customer Interactions Without Needing to Log Them https://go.forrester.com/blogs/sales-reps-value-from-customer-interactions/

Quoting Is About More Than Just Efficiency — It’s Also A Key Sales Driver https://go.forrester.com/blogs/quoting-is-about-more-than-just-efficiency-its-also-a-key-sales-driver/

I See You! How Technology Increases Customer Transparency and Lifetime Value https://go.forrester.com/blogs/i-see-you-how-technology-increases-customer-transparency-and-lifetime-value/

You’ve Got My Attention — Now What? Providing High-Impact Predictive Content to Increase Sales Velocity https://go.forrester.com/blogs/predictive-content-increases-sales-velocity/

 

"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom."

I was raised on Pink Floyd, one of my late Father's favourite bands. 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Ash Roots, who at the time of recording was between roles, but now is the Chief Digital Officer at The University of Exeter. Where I spent 4 brilliant years studying French & Spanish, with my 3rd year in the wonderful city of Valencia. 

In this episode, we talk about all things digital and transformation. We move between the corporate world and higher education.

We chat about all things including :

Cereal Boxes

Ash's journey through the internet, having completed one of the first degrees on the web. 

No-one yet can predict the future, as far as we are aware.

Don't judge until it has happened or at least been tried.

Look at the trends.

What can we learn from teaching our parents how to use the VHS.

The Boss is the person who uses your product or service, not your boss.

We all get in the way.

How do you recognise if getting in the way is having a positive or negative impact.

Why you need to put the problem in the middle.

Co-creation vs Collaboration.

How the person sweeping the floor helped land the first mission on the moon.

The principles of value and effort, in making a sandwich. 

Can you capitalise on discomfort when we don't know the answer.

and more. 

Ash has a brilliant way of breaking down complex thinking into easy-to-digest and actionable ideas. I particularly loved our bit on co-creation vs collaboration, as this reset my thinking for sure. 

I also love the fact Ash is taking his experience into higher education, especially where I studied.

You can follow Ash on LinkedIn, Twitter and TikTok, yes TikTok.

LinkedIn - (5) Ash Roots | LinkedIn

Twitter - ash roots (@ashroots) / Twitter

TikTok - Ash (@ashjtroots) TikTok | Watch Ash's Newest TikTok Videos

If you choose to connect with Ash, be sure to mention this podcast. If you are a student at Exeter University, please do connect with Ash and myself also. 

Ash, thank you for your time, this is a brilliant episode.

Meet Ding Zheng, 14 years in Rap, 4 years in SaaS sales, then he combined the 2 to create the Sales Rapper which he describes as : "Sonic branding for products and services.  Source material dry? Supercharge your content strategy with a Sales Rap!"

Ding goes on to say :

How do you stand out when everybody's speaking and nobody's listening? You need to BE AWESOME and get a CULT FOLLOWING. But how? B2B is so boring... Let me RAP ABOUT YOUR B2B/B2C product so you can truly GO VIRAL in your space. The content gets the eyeballs, and the message gets the inbounds.

__________ 🎤 raps to promote your product/service 🤝 sales professional 📈 marketing enthusiast It’s hard to succeed with content. It’s HARDER to make truly engaging content when many might find the source material dry. Let me help. After failing as a rapper then finding success in tech sales, I realized my musical talents can help b2b, b2c, and dtc stand out. __________ "You should call yourself 'THE SALES RAPPER'" -astounded Zoomer following a 10/10 freestyle from yours truly So...how did a recovering struggle rapper end up in B2B sales? Well, as an independent musician, I've always had to sell.  This is his amazing story.

Follow on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dingzheng25/

Follow on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/dingzheng25

Follow on TikTok @salesrapper

In this episode, I am joined by Andrew Hough, CEO of the Association of Professional Sales, known as the APS.

The APS is professionalising the sales sector. By providing qualifications, professional membership, lettered accreditations and upholding standards of ethical selling, sales people can for the first-time progress along a structured career path, with the same level of skill, trust and career prospects as other established professions.

For sales lead companies this means a significant step change in sales effectiveness, calibre of sales employee, engagement in skills & behaviour improvement and reduced cost of sale.

For the sales professional this means a clear long, qualification led career path that rewards them in more ways than just this year’s bonus.

Andy, is a seasoned sales professional, with 20 plus years experience. He is a seller, he has led and managed sales teams as well as living through the changes that the industry is facing.

He and the team at the APS are on a mission to professionalise the role of sales, in the same way, that Accounting, Engineering, Lawyers and Marketing are. 

He shares his vision of what this looks like, how sellers can go about do this. 

We discuss how the team at the APS has successfully lobbied the UK government for this to be recognised under the Apprenticeship Levy, and more importantly how businesses can access this funding from UK Govt.

We also discuss where he believes the role of sales will be in the next 10 years.

You can connect with Andy on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhough/

Find out more about the APS here - https://associationofprofessionalsales.site-ym.com/

The Apprenticeship Levy here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeship-levy-how-it-will-work/apprenticeship-levy-how-it-will-work

 

CRM. The mere mention of the word usually brings horror and groans of, do we have to.

Associated with being a management tool to run pointless reports about activity, or lack of by the seller. Contact data that is wrong and out of date, or none whatsoever.

I ran a poll on LinkedIn which led to a response from one person that CRM does not help towards revenue generation, they are after the fact and, as far as they were concerned, an utter waste of time. 

It is still running and the majority of the votes said adoption was the biggest issue in their view. 

I have always defended CRM systems. When people tell me they are a waste of time. They are if you are not thinking about what sort of MI and data you want out of them to help you move a client relationship forward, understand the current state of play and more.

I believe they do contribute towards revenue generation and are having a renaissance in how they are now being deployed and adopted.

I would like to welcome Matt Woodford from Microsoft. Matt is the Portfolio Lead, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement, Western Europe. He has been on the Dynamics 365 side of things since 2014. So he knows a bit about CRM and the marketplace.

In this episode we cover off :

Why does CRM get such bad press?

How has CRM evolved?

With all this other technology we have to choose from such in the sales tech landscape, is CRM still relevant?

Matt gives us insight into the vision Microsoft has and the role Dynamics 365 plays in their entire ecosystem.

We chat about the Cloud, Automation & AI

Where is it all going?

Thank you to Matt for being so candid, whilst this is through a Microsoft lense, all that he says translates to CRMs in general, albeit some may not have as much capability as Dynamics 365, or the power of Azure, the fundamentals in my opinion remain true.

Follow Matt here https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewwoodford/

Learn more about Dynamics 365 and Digital Selling here https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-gb/sales/overview/

 

As ever, thank you for taking the time to tune in and listen, please feel free to share with your networks.

If you would like to be a guest, find me on LinkedIn and send me a message. If there is someone you would like to recommend, do the same thing.

Until next time.

 

 

Welcome to the final episode of 2023, and what better way than to help us all be "our true selves at work".

I am joined by Liz Villani, founder of #BeYourselfAtWork, a global movement dedicated to creating a new narrative around the way we work.

Liz and the team do this by helping you understand who you are, through your iAM.

"When you have your iAM you understand what makes you happy. You know you belong, you feel you are valued for who you are. You know how to be your best, and to be your most productive as a leader, manager and a person. All lifting your enjoyment and success at work."

 

I have been through the process with Liz to find out my iAM. It was a thought-provoking exercise and revealing, too. 

Liz has been working on this for almost 20 years, helping individuals and teams to understand themselves better.

We discuss my iAM and what it means. This isn't about being labelled as everyone has a unique iAM, because we are all unique.

We also discuss how organisations in Financial Services, Professional Services and Private Equity are using this approach in pitching and helping them win by truly standing out from a crowd of grey suits.

As you listen to our discussion, I encourage you to pause and reflect on what makes you, well, you.

You can learn more about #BeYourselfAtWork here https://www.beyourselfatwork.com/iam

Follow Liz on LinkedIn here : Liz Villani - beyourselfatwork | LinkedIn

Read my iAM here : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexanderlow_alexander-low-i-am-activity-7137362034442018816-E0mv?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop 

 

Thank you for taking the time to listen.

 

Be kind to yourself.

 

 

 

 

I don't mean, do they like your product or service. What are their personal values as humans? What is it that is important to them? 

Values such as Family, Trust, Experiences, and more. If you truly understand this, then you can begin to create the right type of content and copy which will act as a magnet, attracting your target audience to you, rather than repel them.

Welcome to the world of Valuegraphics.

I bumped into David Allison, the founder of Valuegraphics whilst listening to him being interviewed by Kate Chernis, the CEO of Latley. His thinking piqued my interest as he is basing his insight on a blend of neuroscience, sociology, and psychology. Backed by The Valuegraphics Database which is informed by almost a half-million surveys from around the world in 152 languages, about what people value, want, need, and expect in life. Metrics include 40 core human values like belonging friendships, money, authority, and family, as well as answers to another 370 questions covering a broad range of contextualizing topics. 

Over the next 40mins, David breaks this down to what it means to you, and more importantly, how you can start to think differently about your audience and audience segmentation - backed up by data. 

Taken from their website :

"Your target audience is hardwired to chase what they care about. It’s what humans do. Now we can detect what your audience is focused on, so you can easily connect the dots between what you have and what they want. This is innovative consumer research that will change the way you look at the world.

When we truly understand what we all value most, we can unleash enormous passion and power. This is the fundamental disruption of our time: we can now predict and influence what people will do next."

We also chat about David's book, his forthcoming book, what his dog ate for breakfast, and trash pandas.

Connect with David here https://www.linkedin.com/in/valuegraphicsfounder/

Learn more here https://valuegraphics.com/ 

This is what the World cares about the most https://valuegraphics.com/news/infographic-what-everyone-in-the-world-cares-about-most

David's book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Are-All-Same-Age-Valuegraphics-ebook/dp/B07GTBQB2J 

 

Delighted to welcome Nigel Willson on this week's episode.

Nigel is the founder of www.awakenai.org and former CTO for Professional Services at Microsoft, he describes himself as Global Speaker, Influencer and Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Technology (Ranked amongst top 20 AI Influencers in the World) - ex European Chief Technology Officer but now an independent voice on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - and he is genuinely all of these things.

I met Nigel at a Microsoft event where he blew my mind and most of the audience, on the future of AI and quantum computing. He is also the first person that has been able to explain what quantum is in terms that are easy to understand, and the potential impact this is going to have on society and business.

In this episode we discuss :

What is Artificial Narrow Intelligence vs Artificial General Intelligence?

The ethical challenges facing AI as a technology.

Is the Terminator a reality.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and how business is using it today and where it may go.

The potential impact of AI on the workforce.

The dangers of lazy AI.

As a leader of a business, what do you need to be thinking about right now on AI for you and your company to remain relevant.

Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelwillson/

Follow him on Twitter - https://twitter.com/nigewillson

I am joined by the wonderful Mary Henderson, where we discuss what is a personal brand, how do you present it, we also venture into how a CEO can use it to their advantage.

Mary is an internationally recognised Personal Branding Expert who knows how to commercialise a Personal Branding into a monetisable online (and offline) business. She is a speaker and author of a number of fictional & non-fictional books and the founder of Lights Cameras Action – an end to end online coaching program exclusively designed for coaches, consultants, startups and business owners that take them from idea to productisation and monetisation in months.  

Mary helps service-driven experts unpack & define their area of expertise into a Personal Brand so they can position themselves as an authority in their industry and social media by creating a bespoke business solution or methodology so they target a specific market or industry, deliberately and strategically.  She is regularly invited to speak to leaders & decision makers in the corporate landscape on why positioning their customer-facing people and senior executives from job titles to Personal Brands impacts their culture and bottom line in a positive way. 

In this episode, we discuss Mary's background which has led her to where she is now. How she turned around a Sales Team in early 2000 to leverage their personal brands in a more effective way. A concept way ahead of its time.

We also discuss how CEOs can learn from what Satya Nadella does at Microsoft to leverage their Personal Bran, or as she describes, their Reputation Brand.

You can connect with Mary on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryhendersoncoaching/

Find more about what she does and how she can help you on her website - https://www.maryhendersoncoaching.com/

In this episode, I am joined by Amir S Dhillon.

Amir shares his story about his journey and relationship with this mental health. 

We talk about the money he has raised over years for Mind https://www.mind.org.uk/ and why this is important to him.

We discuss why we believe mental health still carries a stigma.

We look at how mental health is being managed in the workplace, the rise of the mental health safety officer.

We discuss suicide.

You can :

1️ DONATE & LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/dr29Vur 2️ If you'd like to see more of this and previous year's campaigns, head here: https://lnkd.in/d83UeEt 3️ About Mind's amazing COVID work: https://lnkd.in/d6w5Pzj

Follow #movemberamir on social

Thank you

In this episode, I chat with Richard van der Blom, a social selling expert. Richard advises organizations around the world on how to implement social selling effectively as well as providing advice on content strategy, digital marketing, lead generation, and marketing consulting.

Through his own frustration at seeing a picture of salad perform much better on LinkedIn than his article on social selling strategy, he set about, with support from The Open University, Shield & Sprout Social, to try and get to the bottom of how the algorithm on LinkedIn works.

This is a hotly debated topic, with many people trying to figure out how to "game" it to get the views. 

Richard has just released his 2nd research report on what he believes are the "rules" of the game. 

He and the team have analyzed over 4000 posts on LinkedIn, every 15mins!

We break down his research across the different areas and dig into what does this really mean for you and how can you get your posts to work harder for you.

It doesn't matter if you are a seasoned user of LinkedIn or just starting out, you will learn something.

Link to the full research and Richard is here - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/richardvanderblom_linkedin-algorithm-research-report-2020-ugcPost-6721317491991285760-xc2g - be sure to mention this Podcast

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Jon Selig. 

Jon's headline on LinkedIn reads "Half sales guy. Half stand-up comic. All parental disappointment. I help sellers create punchlines that build pipeline".

He then goes on to say :

"Comedy Writing for Sales Teams" helps sales teams reverse-engineer a deeper understanding of your prospects, the problems you solve for them, your differentiators, and transforms our understanding into repeatable humor that shows empathy and understanding - so reps can keep their day jobs. Most sales reps sell products they've never used to people in industries they've never worked and whose jobs they've never had - yet their job is to connect repeatedly with their target audience. Stand-up comedians have to do the same repeatedly, which makes them salespeople with MUCH crappier comp plans. The best comedians make it about their audiences and trigger their emotions. By discussing relatable topics - and highlighting common truths about life's struggles (like marriage, dating, raising kids or smelly socks) - comedians are able to capture and hold their audience's notoriously-hard-to-capture attention. Your prospects (or “micro-audiences”) are no different. Reps need to quickly demonstrate relevance to capture their attention. A single joke (or "humor") that highlights a problem you solve for prospects grabs attention, shines a light on a challenge, triggers an emotional reaction, and makes reps credible & memorable, helping them to start new conversations across various outreach channels. Repeatedly.  

I discuss Jon's sales career, from his first sales role at Oracle, why he made the move into stand-up comedy, arguably one of the most brutal careers for live feedback - you think being hung up during a cold call is tough! How he was now bought both experiences and expertise to bear in sales coaching.

The way Jon breaks the opener of a cold call down into its component parts, and how one can then use comedic structure to make you stand out from the crowd is incredibly simple - roast their problem as he succinctly puts it.

To learn more about how Jon can help you and you teams go to www.jonselig.com OR

Connect with him on LinkedIn, don't forget to mention this podcast - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonselig/

And, subscribe to his YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknty-KYY0Vj3i5zVctujhA 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the one and only Wes "The Meep" Pennock.

 

Wes made the move into sales in 2019 having started out his career as a programmer. He now helps CEOs of startups build and scale their top of the funnel, lead generation. This is outbound, primarily focusing on email copy and sequences.

 

One might say that Wes could be the future model of what one part of your outbound team would look like, from a skillset perspective.

 

I have been fortunate enough to get to know Wes during the last 18 months or so, primarily through WhatsApp and Discord. He has a unique perspective on sales, especially coming from a technical programming background. 

 

Listen in as our conversation twists & turns where we debate :

Has sales technology become too technical for sellers?

Does this mean we need to focus more on sellers coming from a technical background?

or

Is this the fault of Sales Enablement/Rev Ops even the solution providers themselves?

Will we see the return of the full cycle rep? We have differing views on this.

Have we become too reliant on automation, and what does this mean for the next generation of seller?

Sit back and listen, to what at times may seem a little left field, however I believe we really need to start challenging the status quo in sales, and Wes is a good place to start.

 

To learn about how Wes can help you and your business increase top of funnel metrics, connect with him on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8D%97-wesley-pennock-a52845220/

 

As always, thank you for listening.

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by Julie Marshall, founder of Join up the Dots Consultancy.

Julie's career spans both sides of the Marketing agency world. She worked at brands such as Bacardi - Martini, and Rothmans - yes we did veer into Formula 1 sponsorship and her Vauxhall Cavalier. Julie was also a Global New Business Development lead at Flock, managing teams across New York, London & Hong Kong.

She wrote this blog, which caught my attention, hence I wanted to invite her to the podcast to discuss it further. 

The areas we include in our discussion are:

• Accountability – The need for everyone to play their part.
• Capability – Building essential skills within the organisation
• Playing to people strengths - Identify key tasks within marketing and new business and build on peoples strengths.
• Ways of working – the importance of process from posting social/ creating case studies.
• Data strategy – building database use of CRM.
• KPI’s tracking them/ Reporting.
• Communication – How do you communicate new business progress.
• Meetings – need the focus on new business.

To learn more about Join up the Dots, click here

Follow Julie on LinkedIn here

Side note, Julie is also an avid Paddle Boarder and Yoga-er, at the same time - Paddle Board Yoga. Who knew.

Thank you for listening and don't forget to follow, subscribe & share with your network!

 

 

Indeed, what is it - This phrase, in fact, put most words in front of Transformation have been talked about for aeons. 

Now businesses have been forced into action, or they say they are.

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Chris Hood. Chris is Business Innovation and Strategy at Google Cloud, as well as the host of the That Digital Show podcast. 

Chris' foray into sales, started out as "What once started as selling popcorn in a local movie theater and a film student, I found my love for cinema. This included receiving multiple industry awards for theatre marketing campaigns, including the National Association of Theater Owners coveted customer service award and Hollywood Reporter's grand prize showmanship award three years in a row for Jurassic Park (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and Apollo 13 (1995)."

He then came to a crossroads, produce movies or stay in sales. He chose the latter, which then led him to more of a technology play, as you will hear. And boy am I glad he did, as, over the next 45 mins, you will hear it straight. 

We tackle, well, I say we, I ask Chris some questions and he drops some brilliant insight on :

What is Transformation in the round?

What is Digital Transformation?

How does this play into Sales Transformation?

Why Sales Transformation doesn't even get off the ground. Even though everyone is talking about it.

Everyone you serve is a Customer. And why Blockbuster got it wrong (and it's not what you think).

Creating digital experiences.

Why B2B needs to start focussing on its sales & marketing data. 

How AI can play its part.

And yes, how and why B2B should strive to behave like a B2C. 

We end on, you're not selling a technology solution to the CTO (or any other job title for that matter). And why.

Huge thanks to Chris for his time and insight. You can learn more about his thinking and podcast here www.chrishood.com

Follow Chris here on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishood/

Follow Chris here on Twitter https://twitter.com/ChrisHood1

And, if you were triggered by his comments about sales processes, well, he gave you his email, so you know what to do. 

As ever, my thanks to you, my listeners.

You can find me all over social - https://linktr.ee/alexanderlow

 

 

 

What do 4000 years of geometry, Pythagoras theorem, and the future of sales have in common?

I discuss this and other things with Justin Michael and Patrick Joyce of JMC Consulting.

They are ripping up the rule book of the sales process and methodology. As we move into a post-pandemic world (This sounds like a Michael Bay movie) the way we sell in B2B is being upended. 

What channels should we be using?

What technology should we be using?

What data do we need?

Where does Automation fit into this?

How much further will Automation work before we realise we have gone too far? Have we gone too far already?

What even is the role of an SDR if research from Gartner is to be believed that one in three buyers do not want to engage with a seller throughout the buying process.

Mckinsey cites buyers are becoming more comfortable in spending big in a virtual world. 

Comp and reward, is this even fit for purpose?

We discuss what the future makeup of the sales team looks like?

Is History just repeating itself?

What is a Salesborg?

If you would like to understand this and more, tune in.

Connect with Justin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljustin/

Connect with (or text) Patrick - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwilliamjoyce/ 

In this episode, discuss what do we mean by this? How can we earn trust in the digital age? What is your purpose and the purpose of your organisation? What is the impact if you get this right.

In this episode, I am joined by Jeremy Dalton from PwC. 

Jeremy leads PwC's VR/AR team, helping clients understand, quantify, and implement the benefits of virtual reality and augmented reality technology (sometimes collectively referred to as XR, immersive technologies or spatial computing). We chat about his journey into the world of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

He shares real-world examples of how businesses are adopting VR & AR, and the benefits it can bring.

We discuss some fascinating results that he and his team have seen in VR training vs Classroom-based vs E-Learning.

Augmented Reality in Lego.

Why VR is not for every situation.

He also happens to be a Chartered Accountant (but prefers not to advertise that too loudly!). You can find him on :

Twitter under the handle @jeremycdalton

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremydalton/

Link to his book "Reality Check: A book about XR Technology in Business"  https://realitycheckxr.com/

 

If you google "what is RevOps" this is what you find, in the round :

"Revenue operations (RevOps) is the strategic integration of sales, marketing and service departments to provide a better end-to-end view to administration and management, while leaving day-to-day processes within the departments. The holistic approach of revenue ops is designed to break down silos between departments."

It is an idea, business unit or function that has been around in SaaS sales for a number of years. Some might argue that is an evolution of sales enablement, sales operations to what we now have today, revenue operations.

There is a narrative playing out on LinkedIn that Professional Service firms, Lawyers and Accountants, should adopt a rev ops mindset and approach to sales, bd & marketing. 

"But we can't even get people to use CRM, let alone think about how we might integrate all of this, under one budget and business unit that doesn't exits" I hear you think.

Well. just because it would seem we can't, does that mean we shouldn't try?

Today's guest, Ron Latz, and I, got into this debate, more broadly, on LinkedIn about sales and selling more broadly, which was started based on a post about rev ops in law firms, hence here we are, debating this further.

Ron is VP for Sales & Customer Success at Mockingbird Marketing. He describes what he and the team do as :

"My goal is to help growth-minded attorneys and law firms drive more qualified consultations and increase retained clients. Most agencies in the legal marketing arena are wrong or misguided, at best, and have brainwashed the industry to believe that vanity metrics like clicks, calls, and 'leads' are the guiding indictators that will put them on the path to success. At Mockingbird, we show you a very different and much better way. If you want to start accurately measuring your marketing effectiveness, learn how to put systems and processes in place to improve productivity and efficiency, and better serve your clients, come talk with us. Even if we're not aligned to help you reach your goals, I can promise you that you'll look at marketing your practice with a fresh and new perspective. "

 

In this episode we chat through :

Where is the US law firm market around the world of sales and technology?

What is the challenge with adoption?

Does it matter where they are on the growth curve to consider this?

Client expectations are changing.

Are lawyers / accountants even sales people?

What is Rev Ops and is it even relevant to professional services?

What does this mean for BD? Should this be their role?

Professional Services, don't know what they don't about all of this technology, so why should they care?

For those that do have the technology, is it being deployed and used in the way that it was intended?

Do professional services firms need to start thinking like Amazon? or is this just a cliché.

Is the change in mindset just too hard?

What small things can you do today with the technology you already have?

 

If you would like to connect with Ron to learn more about how he and the team can help you with your rev ops strategy, you can find him here on LinkedIn - (5) Ron Latz | LinkedIn 

 

Let us know what you think?

 

Thank you to Ron for his time and insight, and, as ever, thank you for listening. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a teacher or instructor   sen·​sei ˈsen-ˌsā plural sensei or senseis. : a teacher or instructor, usually of Japanese martial arts (such as karate or judo)   We are seeing the proliferation and acceleration of how GPT and ChatGPT is (potentially) transforming the way we live and work.   In this episode, I am joined by the CEO and Co-founder of Wonderway, a sales LMS platform who have launched a ChatGPT-based, real-time sales coach, Bowen Moody.   Bowen shares his story of how he moved from being a product manager at one of the largest shipping companies in the world to launching 2 start-ups which didn't quite get off the ground. This was also his first insight into the world of sales, and how hard it is.   3rd time's a charm, and Wonderway is almost five years old.    In this episode, we talk about :  

• Why Bowen set up Wonderway, based on his sales learning experiences.
• The science vs the art of sales.
• Are we over-engineering sales?
• Where he and the team saw a gap in the market with Conversation Intelligence platforms.
• You can use ChatGPT 4 to experiment with call recordings and any sales methodology.
• Will this require a change in the Sales Leaders / Sales Enablement Teams skills, etc?
• 5 months into their Beta testing, they are already surfacing some interesting results.
• What the future holds in all of this, with tools such as CoPilot and more.

  If you are not considering how you can work with GPT in your sales coaching and enablement functions, now is the time.   To connect with Bowen you can find him here on Linkedin. To learn more about Wonderway, go here.   Let us know if you are using GPT in your sales teams in the comments.   As always, thank you for listening!                  

Humans can only do so much with data and decision-making. No matter how good the data is, or the human. 

Therefore are we getting swept along by too much hype and hyperbole in the world of AI? Do we, therefore, need to re-think it?

Daniel Hulme, CEO of Satalia, believes we do. Daniels's pedigree in this space speaks for itself: Having received a Master's and Doctorate in AI at UCL, Daniel is also UCL's Computer Science Entrepreneur in Residence and a lecturer at LSE's Marshall Institute, focused on using AI to solve business and social problems. Daniel Hulme (PhD) is a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies and is the CEO of Satalia. Satalia is an award-winning company acquired by WPP in 2021 that provides AI products and solutions. Daniel is also the Chief AI Officer for WPP and helps define, identify, curate and promote AI capability and new opportunities for the benefit of the wider group and society.

In this episode, Daniel shares his insight into why both business and society need to re-think AI and what it can, and should do for us, whilst not losing sight of the ethical questions it can create.  

Daniel wants AI to be understood as Cool and not Creepy.

Daniel shares his take on what he believes the 6 categories of AI can be broken down as thus :

Passive Automation

Generative AI

Humanisation of AI

Machine Learning

Complex Decision Making

The Extension of yourself

Daniel breaks down each one before we deep dive into complex decision-making, as this has the most day-to-day application. Daniel shares re-world examples too.  Followed by a blend of generative AI and the Humanisation of AI.

We then end with a discussion on the metaverse, which leads us to Daniel's vision for society and how he is trying to build it. It's mind-blowing.

You can connect with Daniel here https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhulme/ to learn more about how he and his team can help you.

I am delighted to welcome Justin Michael on to this week's Podcast.

Justin is currently an RVP at ReAppi, a top 3 mobile retargeting platform, that drives double-digit incremental lift to clients like Amazon, HomeAdvisor, and Postmates.

He aspires to be one of the world's foremost experts on sales automation and a thought leader in mobile marketing. This requires a deep exploration and understanding of Machine Learning (ML), AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Deep Learning AI, and Neural Nets, in order to bridge toward Singularity as a technologist. He has been a pivotal force in explosive pipeline generation for the top mobile AdTech and MarTech startups by category over the past decade including Tune (double acquisition), Kochava, and Swrve as well as working for Sean Parker (Causes), LinkedIn (selling Sales Navigator), and Salesforce Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget). He is an expert in User Acquisition, Mobile Marketing Automation, Attribution Analytics, and Revenue Operations.

His new book, is set to release in 2021 entitled "Tech-Powered Sales." published by Harper Collins.

In this episode, we dive into his journey through to today.

What inspired him to co-author his book with Tony J Hughes (author of Combo Prospecting).

The challenges faced by sales today.

How sellers and sales leaders need to get a firm grip on the technology platforms they have in place today.

Why automation in sales is a positive thing and when deployed well and at scale can drive massive top of funnel gains.

Now is the time to up your TQ.

Follow and connect with Justin in LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljustin/

or 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/adtechmartech

The power of disinformation is nothing new.

We have seen history repeat itself. However, what has happened and continues to happen across the internet today, can be described as, terrifying.

Are we at a tipping point?

Depending on which camp you are in - the major platforms - no we are not, we have it under control,

to - everyone else, yes, we as a society need to do something about it.

As we have seen play out in front of our very eyes, governments have been toppled, political campaigns fought, some might say manipulated, on social media, not on the doorstep.

How will this potential impact B2B? Is it already impacting B2B? What are your brand safety protocols to get ahead of the narrative to combat any negative messaging and/or opinion - and more importantly, why is it happening?

Enter my next guest, Antony Cousins, CEO of Factamata

"The Factmata API helps you understand any piece of online content. It scores content on nine signals, including Hate speech and Political bias, to give you a deep understanding of the quality, safety, and credibility of any piece of content on the web."

I met Antony in a previous life when I was advising another AI / NLP start-up, but enough about me.

Antony claims he is not a spook, his career would suggest otherwise he started out in IT (or so he says) and then was the Press Officer for the UK Ministry of Defence, Counter-Terrorism Policy Officer for the UK Home Office, International Policy Advisor in the Middle East, back in the UK Ministry of Defence where managed the MOD response to the Arab Spring (he also shares on this podcast some other things he did in Afghanistan and Iraq....) before coming back into civilian life where he followed his starting career back in technology, this time in the world of AI & Natural Language Processing.

Antony shares his fascinating story thus far and how he is bringing that experience to the fore as CEO of Factmata, helping brands get a better understanding of what is the "why" behind the narrative online and where it is coming from and going to. And what to do.

As we are surrounded 24/7 by disinformation, fake news, extreme propaganda, organisations such as Factmata, led by Antony are taking a stand.

Learn more about how Factmata can help you and your business here

Connect with Antony here

Can you support Factmata with its crowdfunding? Click here 

Don't forget to follow and subscribe!

We will spend a combined total of 12 trillion hours online in 2021. 

We spend an average time of 6hrs 56m online every day.

The top 3 favourite social media platforms are Whatsapp, Facebook & Instagram.

Over 70% of all age groups still use a web-based email platform.

There are over 4bn active social media users.

I could go on.

All of this research and more comes from the brilliant Simon Kemp and his amazing team, supported by Hootsuite, We are Social, and a number of other data providers.

It is evident social and digital are here to stay.

We have seen what happened in 2020 and how this has changed the way we all engage online, both b2b and b2c.

In this episode, Simon & I discuss some of the key findings, as well as some of the stats which caught us by surprise - namely email marketing would seem to be alive and well.  

We also discuss the merits of Organic vs Paid across different platforms, when was the last time you clicked on an advert?

This leads us into the discussion of the demise of the cookie - not the chocolate chip variety, but the digital stalking variety.

Simon is pretty blunt in his view on this - we don't have attention span issues in the digital world. YOU need to create content that is worthy of my attention.

To access the free research, go to www.datareportal.com 

To debate cookies with Simon, connect with him here https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your network if you found it insightful.

As always, if you would like to be a guest on here, you know what to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between 40% and 60% of deals are lost due to clients or prospects making no decision.

So, how do you get them to make a decision?

One way or the other?

You need to JOLT them into one.

In this episode, I am joined by Ted McKenna, co-author of The JOLT Effect and co-founding Partner of DCMinsights.

Ted McKenna is an accomplished sales and customer experience researcher whose work has appeared in the pages of Harvard Business Review. He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a customer understanding lab focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies attract, engage, retain, and grow customer relationships. Prior to co-founding DCMi, Ted held numerous executive leadership positions in product, strategy, research, advisory, and enablement for Tethr, Russell Reynolds, and CEB (now, a part of Gartner).

We break down what The JOLT Effect is.

The book is based on a large-scale study of millions of sales conversations that revealed the key difference between high-performing and average-performing sales reps: the ability to address the customer’s fear of failure. The book explains why customers often hesitate to buy even when they have a clear intent and how sales reps can use a technique called JOLT - Judging the indecision, Offer your recommendation, Limiting the exploration, Take risk off the table - to create a sense of urgency and confidence in the customer’s decision.

Tune in to learn how you can unlock buyer indecision. 

You can learn more here >>> https://www.jolteffect.com/ 

Follow Ted on LinkedIn >>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-mckenna/ 

 

 

 

"Let people be people" - this is how Jim Bloomfield and I sign off this episode.

Jim runs Bloojam Consulting, and they help sales leaders and teams understand the psychology behind the behaviours of sales teams and perfomance.

The Why, the What and the How, if you will. 

"To quote Daniel Pink, "We're all in sales now." And yet how many people in client-facing roles imagined that selling would be critical to their success? Probably not many. Of those how many have been given any training in how to sell? Probably quite a few. But not in what matters. Less than 1/3 of sales transformation programmes are successful due to a lack of focus on changing behaviour. If you want to really drive revenue growth in your business you have to focus on developing and sustaining the sales capability of your client-facing teams. If you don't have the right people on the bus, no amount of investment in new processes or methodologies will compensate."

This is taken from Jim's LinkedIn profile

and goes on to say

"We are specialists in using psychometric tests and face-to-face assessments to help you to better understand the sales, customer service, management and leadership skills of your candidates and existing employees."

In this episode, we peel back the onion of sales training and behaviours. Jim gives insight into what he and his team have seen over the years and the supporting trends of - what makes a good salesperson.

We also discuss what 2020 has done for sales leaders and teams, what this means in terms of behavioural change, if any.

It requires change.

We talk about the generational shift of buyers and what this means for sales teams looking forward and beyond 2021.

Finally, is it "People buy People" or, as Jim says "Let People be People"

Connect with Jim here

or learn more about Bloojam Consulting here

As ever, thanks for listening, don't forget to subscribe and share with your network

 

In this episode, I am joined by Lukasz Maroszczyk.

Lukasz describes himself as,  a Global Senior Digital Marketing Manager, SEO Program Lead, Digital Selling - Account-Based Marketing program architect with Signify.

He caught my attention with his detailed article on LinkedIn about how he launched a social selling program globally, with some hard metrics to back up some of the numbers.

The executive summary, taken from his article is as follows :

- Pilot time: 9 months: Feb – Oct 2020 - Activation focus: 70 selected named accounts - Piloted markets: International key account management, France, UK&I, DACH, Nordics, CEE, US (84 people in total) - Contacts prospected: ~12.000 - Pipeline dynamics: 3x better dynamics for a new funnel for selected named accounts (+57% treatment group of 70 named accounts vs +19% in the control group) - ROI: 43:1 (calculated as the cost of licenses, advertising, and eLearning to created opportunity value)

 

Lukasz kindly breaks this down for us. We talk through :

 

The lead, up to the pilot, the seed was planted early on, where other countries had piloted in their own markets.

What had they learned from this?

The process the team went through to decide which accounts they were going to focus on and how they also A/B tested against accounts that were not part of the program.

How the team developed the blended approach to e-learning and "in-person training" in a virtual world.

The approach his team took to using Account-Based Marketing supported by paid marketing campaigns, and the results this yielded, on LinkedIn.

How he and the team tackled the attribution challenge to prove "social" really did influence the sales process to pipeline and attributable sales revenue. 

 

If you are serious about building social into your overall go-to-market strategy, especially for driving net new business from cold prospects/accounts, you must give this a listen.

Connect with Lukasz here https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukasz-maroszczyk/ - mention this podcast when you.

Thank you as ever for taking the time to listen, don't forget to follow, and share with your network!

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by Joe Barron, content manager at Cognism 

Joe caught my attention after I read one of his blogs titled - "Cognism's recipe for creating content worth $88,270 in annual revenue"

This is the perrenial challenge of any content marketing role for sales, prove to me this is working.

In Joe's blog, he builds on these themes :

"Proving that content is not only worthy of being a powerful lead gen machine in its own right, but also delivers strong ROI.

Budgets are tight, teams are small, and there’s the pressure to generate results - in a B2B marketing discipline that often takes time to bear fruit.

So, how do you do it?

Start by tracking the important things.

Things like: 

• Unique blog views.
• Google rankings.
• Content SQOs.
• Content closed-won deals.

Then you’ll be able to show how content is a key player in the sales, marketing, and wider business function."

Joe takes us through his journey thus far with Cognism, from when he first joined to where the team is today.

Key points we discuss :

• Marketing carrying a revenue quota, how does that work?
• How, he and his marketing colleagues join his sales colleagues for a day of cold calling, why?
• How you can build your content strategy towards one major piece of lead-generating content.
• The importance of data, which data and how to track and use the data.

Joe's full blog can be found here

You can learn more about Cognism here

Follow Joe on LinkedIn

As always, thank you for tuning in and listening, don't forget to subscribe and follow!

 

"Nobody has the answer to every question"

Delighted to welcome Delfim Pereira on to this week's episode. Delfim describes himself as a "Sales and Enablement Leader who mobilizes sales organizations to effectively differentiate the value proposition, coaches sales leaders to inspire greater discretionary effort and helps clients to make the most impactful buying decisions"

He has the background to back this up too, having "carried the bag" as he says, through to leading sales and sales enablement functions for global brands. Most notably for me, he spent several years at CEB who shaped the thinking behind the Challenger™ Sale, whose research a lot of social and digital selling programs are predicated on.

Over the next 30mins or so, we chat through what his view is on Sales Enablement is and isn't.

How technology now plays a big part of this and why social selling should not become a ‘commodity'.

How not only Sales needs to embrace Enablement, for it to truly work, it needs to be an organizational play.

He has an interesting take on how clients and prospects may need "un-teaching" based on what research they have done on a product or service, as this could hinder you rather than helping you. (The 57%).

If you want to learn more about Delfim, please do connect with him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/delfimpereira180/

Ask ten salespeople what Sales Enablement means to them, and you will likely get ten different answers. 

Therefore, I thought who better to have as my guest today than the brilliant Imogen McCourt, Head of B2B Sales Transformation and Enablement at The Economist Group and one of the founding members and President of the UK Sales Enablement Society Chapter.

Imogen has not followed the "traditional" SaaS path of Sales Enablement if such a thing exists. 

Imogen started her path to Enablement in 2010 as a Senior Director at Forrester, where they wrote research papers. She then moved into the execution of their research.

The rest, as you will hear, is history.

We start by trying to define what we both believe Sales Enablement means today and go from there.

We end up, unsurprisingly, talking about technology, generative AI, and what role we believe this will play.

Imogen gives us brilliant advice on how and where to get started.

Whether you are just starting or are a seasoned Sales Enablement pro, Imogen brings some refreshing perspectives.

You can follow Imogen here https://www.linkedin.com/in/imogen-mccourt-svpleader/

and join The Sales Enablement Society here https://www.linkedin.com/company/sesociety/mycompany/

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are a fee earner in professional services, balancing the fee-paying work and your business development activities can be challenging. Some may even say a little daunting. You trained to be an expert in law, accounting or consulting, not necessarily a salesperson. 

Yet, why do some seem able to go out and win businesses and have long-standing client relationships? What is it they do that you are not?

Is what they do even right for today's market?

This is the same question the team at DCM Insights wanted to answer. In partnership with Intapp, they surveyed 1800 partners across Law, Accounting and Consulting to understand what they do regarding business development and client relationship management. 

They also conducted 100 C Suite interviews to understand how and why they buy professional services.

This is also underpinned by the principles unearthed through decades of psychology experiments and anthropology findings applied by sales and marketing experts. 

This gives us "The Rainmaker Genome". 

There are five profiles of Partner and how they go to market :

Expert

Confidant

Activator

Debater

Realist

These are not personality-based but behaviour-based. Of the five profiles, one is predominantly more successful in business development and revenue growth. 

Not only this, these behaviours in how they go to market are teachable.

Listen to one of the founding Partners of DCM Insights and internationally acclaimed Sales Author, Matt Dixon share more on how the research was conducted, what the 5 profiles are and what this means for the future of the modern Rainmaker, as featured in Havard Business Review.

Learn more about DCM Insights and their Activator Development Programme : https://activatordevelopmentsystem.com/

Read the Harvard Business Review article : https://hbr.org/2023/11/what-todays-rainmakers-do-differently 

Follow Matt on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewxdixon/ 

 

Most people aren't "taught" sales at school, university or college. If you are like me, I fell into and lived and died by the sword. My late Father, David, was in software sales back in the day, and that provided the family with a comfortable lifestyle - hence it was the first job I took after university in London, telesales for a property company. We were never taught in the sense of a curriculum, you learned on the job. Some fell by the way side, others succeeded.

I then moved into recruitment, that (in)famous Alec Baldwin scene from Glenngarry Glen Ross was more or less our training manual. 

Put that coffee down.

Yes of course as the world of sales has matured, there are many disciples of different sales processes that are taught to sales teams - SPIN, TAS, BANT and The Challenger Sale. But these are all taught in flight as it were. 

None of this is taught when we are students. And still isn't, not in the main anyway.

Here is what my guest on this episode wants to change, however with a twist that will resonate with the 21st-century student.

Greg Smith is passionate about "self enablement" and supporting those that are at university/college and entering the workforce. His vision is to enable them to begin their sales coaching journey whilst still learning - and then, more importantly, support their sales learning journey throughout their entire career. 

Greg describes himself as "Sales and Marketing professional with over 10 years experience in Business Development and Sales Enablement within the SaaS industry. Successfully created, designed, marketed and sold the worlds first “sales practice field”. Acknowledged as a thought- leader and frequently invited to speak at industry events such as AA-ISP, Sales 3.0 and Sales Enablement Society. Possess the experience and awareness to identify problems and the prowess and tenacity to work through to a solution."

He is currently Product Manager, Digital Platforms at Imparta, which  "is a global leader in performance improvement for customer-facing teams, including sales and account management, customer success, and customer experience. Imparta's 3D Advantage® methodology is based on more than 20 years of research and experience with leading global organisations. It powers a complete, modular, award-winning curriculum that covers the entire customer Buying Cycle from initial need to renewal, and every role from early tenure to Chief Revenue Officer across a wide range of industries."

From here Greg founded Mixdeck - it's like Spotify for sales training! Home | MixDeck 

In this episode, we chat about all that he is doing and his vision of Mixdeck.

Why Greg created Mixdeck?

How it works.

The reaction that he is getting from the education sector.

What are the challenges faced with sales enablement generally.

What opportunity does this present for employers?

I throw him a curveball around the metaverse, because, why not.

and more.

We need to be talking more about this and how we can, dare I say it, make sales a profession, or even, make sales great again - it is a wonderful profession, it serves me well, and continues to do so. I believe many others in sales would agree.

Greg is on a mission to do just this.

To learn about how Mixdeck can support your sales career, sign up here : Home | MixDeck

If you would like to contribute your content to Mixdeck, pro-bono, get in touch with Greg here : (2) Greg Smith | LinkedIn

As ever, thank you for taking the time to listen.

 

 

 

 

 

In this episode, I chat with Jonathan Hollis, one of the co-founders of Mountside Ventures.

I met Jonathan when he was at PwC, running their Scale-up programme, which I mentor on.

9 months ago he and some of his colleagues, spun out Mountside Ventures with a view to change how VCs and Scale-ups can connect and raise capital. This is both on the Fund side as well as the Scale-up side. 

We discuss why he left the corporate machine.

What is has been like launching a business, during a pandemic, from his kitchen table.

He shares what they saw as a gap in the market and what they are doing to address it.

If you are a VC looking to raise institutional money or from family offices, you are selling futures - so what do you do?

How does VC find the next Unicorn?

If you are a scale-up, where do you place your bets?

Pitch and Marketing tactics, what is Jonathan seeing on trend at the moment?

You can contact Jonathan here

 

 

The eternal question on LinkedIn, about LinkedIn and the algorithm. 

Can you beat it?

Well, the person with the answer is the brilliant Richard van der Blom.

He and his team have released the 3rd iteration of their research on the algorithm. 

To give you the dos and the do nots. 

In this episode, Richard gives an overview of the notable changes.

We get into the " what makes a good LinkedIn post "

Should you put the link in the first comment?

Hasthtags.

Dwell Time.

Carousel content.

Polls.

And more.

If you want to understand how you can get LinkedIn to work with you rather than against you, then listen to this podcast.

Follow Richard here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardvanderblom/

His full report and research can be found here : https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6848141573990051840/

As ever, thank you for taking the time to listen, please do share this podcast with your network.

 

 

 

Welcome to another episode of my podcast.

Today we take a slightly different tack, but one that is close to my heart, having spent 5 years as an independent management consultant.

We are all aware of the narrative that is playing out around the "Great Resignation" and "The Great Re-Shuffle" as we all assess our working lives and what this means in how, where and whom we work for. 

My guest today wants to re-imagine how Independent Consultants, collaborate and co-create with each other, and how how they can access the market for work opportunities.

Rollo Crichton-Stuart is the founder of https://www.mychoix.com/  - pronounced "choice" - you will hear the amusing story that led him to this name - not quite the Shoe Dog and Nike swoosh story, but similar.

Whilst this episode leans toward those who are in the professional services marketplace, the vision Rollo and his team have is that this is relevant for all independent consultants who are able to advise across a myriad of subject matter expertise.

Rollo shares his story which led him to build Choix and why.

His experience of serving in the British Army, and challenging the status quo.

This led him into the City,

working in a fund management business,

to leading a transformation project for a global search firm,

to working in PR,

then startup world, to where we are today.

Choix describes itself as :

  "Redefining Consultancy

Connecting buyers and sellers of professional services have never been so streamlined. At Choix we have built a secure platform that helps consultants and businesses meet, benefiting the entire industry."

For those of us in this market, we are all to aware of the huge demand for talent, and this is where Choix comes in - this is not a recruitment play, but being a marketplace to connect the best independent talent out in the market, with clients who need the flexibility on "the bench".

However, it goes further, in that this is how Rollo and the team are building a community - we are seeing the rise of the "Chief Community Officer" role, and Choix is tapping into the burgeoning market and way of thinking.

Not only this, Rollo is passionate about how Choix can bring those that have taken career breaks, for whatever reason, back into the market in a way that suits their lifestyles, and gives access to brilliant talent for businesses.

We also get paid a visit by a gentleman in a hi-vis jacket on a scaffolding. Which is a first for me on a podcast recording.

I for one know that if Choix had been available when I started my journey as an Independent, I would have wanted to be part of this community. 

Thank you to Rollo for sharing his story and vision, and challenging the status quo.

To learn more, go to www.mychoix.com

Connect with Rollo on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rollo-crichton-stuart-95a07b2/ 

especially if you are interested in joining the team, as you will hear toward the end, he is hiring. 

As always, thank you to my listeners, and, if you believe your networks will find this podcast insightful, please do share!

 

 

If we look up what the word ecosystem means, we find this from The National Geographic Society: "An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life."

Work together is the key point here. 

How can B2B sales work together, not only internally, but across the ecosystem that supports the "bubble of life" that is the mutual client. 

Enter Cassandra Gholston who wanted to do exactly this, as a field seller, but could not find way to do it at scale and with the right people across her territory. Therefore, Cassandra founded PartnerTap back in 2017. 

Research is saying that "by 2025, nearly ⅓ of total global sales will come from partner ecosystems" and that "60% of business executives say a partner ecosystem is the most effective way to address, and even lead, disruption." This is where technology platforms such as PartnerTap allow your sellers, to connect and collaborate with their alliances or sales partners - this creates a much more compelling offer to market. It also starts to look at how, by partnering through the ecosystem, we can solve for the client total business, not just a particular aspect.

In this episode Cassandra breaks down what this means for B2B sales and the decade of the ecosystem :

We chat about :

Channel vs Alliance vs Co-Sell vs Ecosystem?

Every company is trying to solve one challenge, yet, when speaking clients, we learn about mulitple challenges to to solved.,

Technically, how does this work around the data sharing aspect?

The need for 3rd party validation - we are going to come to the table together to solve the total business challenge for you.

Culturally, behaviourally, what needs to change?

How social selling can support this.

How this creates a much richer solution set, but the modern seller needs to be partner friendly.

How do you sell this internally as well as bring the alliance partner into the fold?

How do you then go to market, together?

And more.

My thanks to Cassandra for her time and insight.

Follow Cassandra on LinkedIn: (1) Cassandra Gholston | LinkedIn

Learn more about PartnerTap : The leading enterprise ecosystem platform | PartnerTap

How are you leveraging your ecosystem?

 

As always, thank you for listening.

 

 

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Julia Nimchinski, co-founder of the GTM Community, HYPCCCYCL.

 

We discuss why current GTM motions are fundamentally broken and how and why you should challenge leadership by dismantling the status quo.

 

Join the community here: https://hypcccycl.com/, where you will learn from the best of the best in the industry.

Follow Julia on Linkedin: (3) Julia Nimchinski | LinkedIn 

I recently delivered a keynote on this topic, so thought i would share some of the themes i discussed here, with a final piece by Gerd Leonhard from his book Technology vs Humanity.

"AI is my sword. Sales data is my shield. The AI Sales Revolution has begun. Arm yourselves, brothers and sisters."

This is the headline of Rob Turley on LinkedIn, who is my guest today.  Rob is the co-founder of White Rabbit Intel where he describes their purpose as :

"Driving the vision, mission, and strategy of White Rabbit Intel--making advanced artificial intelligence analytics easily available, highly affordable, and commoditized, so that all businesses; small, medium, or enterprise have a solution to do better business at a revolutionary level of efficiency. To unlock the raw potential of data to connect business professionals to other businesses at a truly personal level. To allow businesses to see insight into what they actually are, what is working, define pain points while making real human connection the priority."

In this episode, we talk about, or rather I listen, to Rob's story where he shares why it is critical for sales & marketing teams to have their data in order to drive far more effective outreach to your target audience for the 21st Century. This makes sales teams more efficient in their prospecting, targeting the right people who are most likely to want to buy your product or service.

He shares some amazing stats around what he and his team have achieved for some of their customers in a matter of months around increasing pipeline and revenue, in double digital multiples in some cases. 

Rob's brain works at one hundred miles an hour, so strap yourself in. 

Follow Rob on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-turley/

Learn more about how White Rabbit Intel can help you and your sales teams here https://www.whiterabbitintel.com/

I am delighted to be joined by Tom Boston from SalesLoft. Tom is an SDR, where he leans on his experience of being a former Radio DJ, Genius in an Apple Store, to the hard yards of cold calling businesses to sell Gas. He now works for SalesLoft, educating the market on Sales Tech. 

Tom is also leveraging modern sales techniques through social as part of his overall sales process. In particular, his videos, which are brilliant.

We discuss how he has seen the world of selling change from the "Smile & Dial" days to the 21st Century processes and technology that can be used to get the attention of your buyer or create awareness online so that when the prospect picks up the phone or responds to an email, they already know who you are.

Tom shares his tips on being memorable, how he does it and what his learnings have been, and more importantly, is it working? Or is he just messing around on LinkedIn to get the likes? How does his Sales Director react to all of this?

We also discuss what "Sales Tech" is and how it can drive efficiency gains for the modern seller to become "Pleasantly Persistent" - yes I raised a virtual eyebrow at this phrase too. 

We also discuss biscuits. Pink Wafer, Custard Cream or Jaffa Cake. Is that even a biscuit?

To find out more about Tom, and more importantly, see his videos, connect with him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-boston/

"Sales is more than smiles and dials. SalesLoft powers all the stages of your revenue lifecycle while optimizing the customer’s experience." To find out more https://salesloft.com/why-salesloft/

Steve Wills believes you can.

Why?

He has done it himself.

Steve is a former Partner from EY and now describes himself as semi-professional. Having left EY in 2019, he now advises Professional Service firms on how they can build a culture, strategy, and playbook for having a sales led culture in a Partnership environment, including managing the EY / Microsoft Alliance across EMEA.

He learned the hard yards in the early 2000s when he and 24 of his fellow partners stepped out of a fee earning role and took on an out and out sales role, carrying a $20million USD target.

In this 50mins podcast, Steve shares his learnings of how they did it, what worked, what didn't. 

We chat about how other professional services industries might learn from what EY did, and were the first to do it. 

We talk about the challenges that the current partnership model can present, changing client expectations in a digital world, and how things will be very different for how client relationships are created, nurtured, and converted into business, in a post covid world.

Steve also shares 2 podcasts at the end of the discussion which he is listening to, and how this is helping give him a different perspective on selling today, versus when he first made the transition. 

Follow and connect with Steve here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/willssteve/

I reflect on where we are in the sales world in this episode.

I consider the 3 main channels to start a sales conversation:

The telephone

Email

Social Selling

- all of which are dead and don't work. Or do. Depending on whom you follow.

I then take a look at Gartner's 7 new technologies that will completely change sales between 2024 and 2030 :

Multimodality

Generative AI

AR & VR

Emotion AI

Digital Twin of the Customer

Digital Humans

Machine Customers.

I consider each of these and how they may or may not fit in sales as we believe them to be.

I then reflect on a post I saw from Tom Goodwin, challenging business on "disruption" and how this is the same for Sales. 

This leads me to talk to the podcasts I recorded with Jenna Pipchuk of Smart Technologies, born out of the article by Brent Adamson in Feb 2022 - Sales & Marketing is Obsolete.

I end with my thoughts on the most essential aspect of these predictions.

Your customers, past, present and future.

What do you think the future holds for Sales?

Links :

Podcast with Brent Adamson - Death of a Sales man https://alexanderlow.podbean.com/e/the-death-of-a-sales-man/

Podcast with Jenna Pipchuk - Are you becoming obsolete https://alexanderlow.podbean.com/e/are-you-becoming-obsolete/ 

Gartner https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/7-technology-disruptions-that-will-completely-change-sales?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=SM_GB_YOY_GTR_SOC_SF1_SM-SWG&utm_content=&sf262825364=1

Tom Goodwin LinkedIn Post https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7010598777816240130?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7010598777816240130%29 

 

 

Tom is my first-ever returning guest!

I have followed Tom's journey at SalesLoft for well over a year. He is an SDR there before more recently moving into an entirely new role, created for him.

Welcome to the era of the social sales evangelist.

What is that you may ask?

Well, that's exactly what I thought when I saw him update his profile, so, I messaged him and asked if he would be happy to come back on and talk through his path to this new role.

 

We chat about :

How he uses social to build the brand that is Tom - and why this is important for everyone in a sales role to think about their brand.

How he uses video to prospect, what the structure of the video is, optimum length and why being honest and paying a compliment works best.

We chat about the importance of having a supportive leadership team, which he has in abundance at SalesLoft.

Does it really work?

Tom goes on to share how his new role came about, and what this means for him and SalesLoft moving forward.

If you missed my first podcast with Tom - and his first-ever podcast! , you can listen here : https://alexanderlow.podbean.com/e/being-memorable-the-sales-tech-stack-your-favourite-biscuit/

Follow Tom on :

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-boston/

Twitter https://twitter.com/TomBoston

You can also find him hanging out on TikTok too tom_boston 

Learn more about SalesLoft : www.salesloft.com 

As always, thank you for listening, don't forget to follow and subscribe!

And share with your network too. 

Thank you.

 

 

"Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle Ages and rise of the Modern world" - Wikipedia.

Could the same be said for Marketing and Business Development in the Legal sector - or even more broadly?

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Dominic Ayres, who, through lockdown, decided to put pen to paper on "what would he would advise his younger self about navigating a marketing career in a Law firm."

Not an easy question to answer. 

Dominic is the International Senior Client, Marketing and Strategy Manager at Eversheds Sutherland law firm.

If you have never worked in a Law firm, or professional services firm, it is hard to explain the nuances and subtleties that you need to be able to adapt to. You are not working for one business, you could potentially be working for 10, 50, 100 individual businesses. Each with their own "CEO" and team supporting team. 

This requires a fair amount of stakeholder management, up, down, sideways and more. 

Therefore, in Dominic's own words, I have lifted this from his introduction to his book he posted on LinkedIn :

Make 2022 the year you "Be More Purposeful and Strategic with Your Career Direction". Getting ahead requires you to think strategically, embody specific values to help you stand out among your peers, and successfully navigate and build relationships with internal stakeholders. ‘How to Advance Your Career in Professional Services Marketing’ takes a deep inside look into how to go from a junior role to a senior role within the world of professional services marketing. Previously, if one wanted to learn how to advance their career within the industry in marketing and career management, they would have to learn on the job, read multiple books and combine the information of their own volition. This book takes two topics and combines them in a way that is easily digestible and applicable to wherever you’re at within your career. In addition to my own experience and guidance, I have sought out some of the best minds from across the industry worldwide to share their guidance and case studies on how they have developed their career and their key recommendations for you to follow. These professionals hold senior, director and CMO positions at some of the largest professional services firms such as the Big4, AM100, Magic Circle and other leading firms. If you are looking to become more intentional about your career development and excel in your career trajectory, this is the book for you. This book acts as a resource and tool guide to help you progress at each stage in your career to obtain promotions, raises, and become the verified expert within your organization. "

Wow, right?

In this episode, we debate our own, very different journey - Dominic from a Marketing angle, me, from a Business Development perspective. 

I ask :

Has the status quo really changed?

Will Legal go back to type as we return to some form of "normal" (and based on what I am hearing in the back channels, it would seem so for some firms).

Are we just moving the chess pieces around the market in BD & Marketing, or is there a genuine desire to bring expertise and knowledge from outside of Legal and Pro Servs?

How will Legal attract new talent as well as nurture what they have?

Is there a desire within our own community to want to learn what the new world order of Martech and Salestech, let alone AI might mean and how will Legal firms adopt this for their Client Development?

Is it the responsibility of leadership or the broader team to take ownership of this?

It's fair to say, we get stuck in on this podcast and could have discussed a lot more.

Chapeau to Dominic for doing this, it has been a while coming and is much a much-needed topic of debate in this sector.

And of course, as Dominic says "When you’re ready to get serious about your career trajectory, pick up a copy and get started on your future today." Available from today on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback - http://ow.ly/hOxF50HBatY

Follow Dominic here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicaayres/

As ever, thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you believe your network would find it helpful hear this podcast and get the book, please do share it.

If you are not subscribed, hit that subscribe button!

As ever, my thanks to Dominic and my listeners.

Alex

 

 

How do you price in a tough economy? 

How do you price in any situation?

How do you articulate the value-based outcomes your product or service will create?

Pricing has always been an art. Being told you were a close 2nd in a competitive pitch. Maybe no decision at all. 

In this week's episode,, Jonathan "Jonny" Adams from SBR Consulting joins me to discuss this and more.

We cover :

What is Jonny seeing in the market today?

How are the economic head winds impacting different markets?

Why negotiating with yourself is not a good place to start.

What are your tradeables?

What framework you should follow to articulate value.

We have a "Come on Down, the Price is Right" moment.

A bonus of what is Jonny's go-to BBQ recipe on his ceramic grill.

 

Connect with Jonny on LinkedIn here >>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnyadams/ 

Learn more about SBR Consulting here  >>> https://sbrconsulting.com/

"Failure to plan, practice, rehearse, capture lessons and debrief is an act of gross misconduct on their part of the salesperson and the part of their manager. It should result in a minimum of a written warning and repetition should result in dismissal. Harsh words? Not at all. Consider the cost of getting one opportunity into the top of the funnel."

Welcome to the world, and more importantly, thinking, of Marcus Cauchi. This is taken from one of his brilliant blogs on Medium, https://procustomer.medium.com/ 

Marcus' about section on LinkedIn reads thus :

"Marcus met the Devil at the crossroads on Route 66 and he sold him a short-term lease on very favourable terms" - testimonial from my accountant I work with CEOs, VPs of Sales & Marketing & Channel Chiefs of technology vendors who recognise that success is not a function of having hundreds of salespeople or dozens of channel partners who occasionally uncover a piece of business, but rather it’s a function of having a handful of select salespeople & partners who share a common vision, have common goals, and can be counted on to work collaboratively to effectively, efficiently, and consistently uncover new opportunities."

I wish I had a Marcus in my life in my early sales career, and thankful that I have met him now. 

He doesn't hold back, calls it as he sees it, calls out the BS we see and know to be true, but maybe won't look in the mirror. 

If you are serious about upping your sales performance as an individual, or that of your team, the next 40mins will be an education. 

Then you need to connect with Marcus and learn more about what he can do for you and your team.

Marcus is also the host of TheInquisitor Podcast, with over 300 hours of amazing guests and resources.

#TheInquisitor podcast can be found at: Podbean: https://lnkd.in/dEpJ76v Apple: https://lnkd.in/gMXwNtP Spotify: https://lnkd.in/dVBytnY

Marcus is a beacon of light in the sales world.

You can also follow Marcus on Twitter https://twitter.com/The_Inquisitor 

In this episode, I am joined by Rob Flaska (as in Alaska).

I met Rob in the crazy world of Clubhouse, listening in to his story on how he used TikTok to become an "Antfluencer" - yes, it is a thing. How did he do this? He watched how others were using the app. His work colleagues decided to have a competition on who could keep ants alive for the longest in an ant farm. Rob decided to document his journey on TikTok under robsants.

His following exploded to plus 400k, Ants were trending on TikTok and he now has a commercial deal with an Ant Farm. As you do.

Through these learnings, he set up a second account, growthsensei - this name will make sense when you listen in - he uses this account to support and guide Businesses on how to maximise the use of TikTok, through a business & marketing lense. 

This is all on top of his day job!

Listening to Rob and his advice made me realise the underlying fundamentals of social media are relevant across all platforms.

Know your niche.

Create a community.

Engage. 

This is well worth a listen if you are considering TikTok as a platform. 

You can find & follow Rob on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/robflaska/ and of course TikTok.

Just me on this podcast.

As I reflect on what has been the last year for me and beyond, I try to give some of my thoughts on where sales is, and, is possibly going.

It will be fair to say this one meanders off-piste at times, however, for me, the underlying theme is around how can we begin to look at the overall influence we have in our business networks and relationships?

What impact, if any, could this have on cold-calling, email outbound and social selling?

Who are we to say what works and doesn't work, when fundamentally it's your intended audience that dictates this, back up by deals closed/won.

What technology platforms exist, if any that can "score" a business relationship or "influence".

How might "influence" become broader than just sales within an organisation?

What might influence mean for Gen Z & Gen Alpha when their offline and online "personal brands" are so intertwined. 

How do you engage with an audience when they don't use the phone as a primary communication tool?

Fundamentally, it all comes back to the three things which are the title of this podcast, Sales, Relationships and Influence.

This for me is where we are heading, it's a question of how do we harness it?

As mentioned, this one does meander a little as my train of thought develops, but I wanted to sit down and just start talking.

Thank you for listening and your continued support on this podcast, I really do appreciate it.

Find me over here - https://linktr.ee/alexanderlow

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant David J.P. Fisher, or D.Fish. 

"David is an internationally-recognized keynote speaker, sales trainer, and business coach.  He focuses on bringing the human-to-human back into sales, social media, networking, and entrepreneurship.

He is the best-selling author of 12 books on sales, networking, social media, and entrepreneurship.  And he is also a prolific contributor to blogs in the sales and marketing space.

His goal is simple: help people become RockStars in their professional lives so that they can have a positive impact on those around them."

He is now the Global Social Selling Lead - Senior Sales Enablement Program Manager for SAS. 

David and I have been connected on LinkedIn for a while and have always been inspired by his balanced approach to selling in the modern world. Hence I was delighted when he agreed to be a guest on my podcast.

David cut his teeth in the world of sales, selling door to door, cutlery for Cutco, an American high-end cutlery company - the rest, as they say, is history.

 

We discuss :

Have the fundamentals of sales changed that much?

We talk about the evolution of technology in sales & marketing and the impact this is having.

With access to data we have today, the importance of being insight-led.

Does the issue of change sit with Sales Leaders?

Are we going back to a full-cycle sales approach?

Why David believes sellers should think and behave like a Sherpa on a mountain.

I also put David on the spot and asked him about his views on Generative AI.

And the fact that David was a rapper...

Thank you, David, for your time and insight on this episode.

To follow David and this thinking, do so here on LinkedIn David J.P. (D. Fish) Fisher | LinkedIn

To buy his books and more, you can go to his website here Hyper-Connected Selling - David J.P. Fisher (davidjpfisher.com) 

Do you have Sales Sherpas in your team?

 

 

 

In this episode, I am joined by the wonderful Samantha McKenna. I have followed Sam's career over the past couple of years to her now launching her own sales consulting business. 

She describes herself as overly enthusiastic, amongst other things. This is more like an almost obsessive passion for bettering sales and the sales community.

In this podcast, we discuss the dos and do not's of selling. What tips and techniques Sam uses to keep the conversation moving forward. We also discuss how sales should be reacting to and behaving in the current Covid-19 global crisis.

The #samsales Consulting's mission is to make a positive impact on the sales profession by helping organizations, large and small, to better operationalize the most important aspects of their businesses – sales, marketing, demand generation, and finance. Utilizing the skills and tactics that have made Sam a record-breaking and award-winning Enterprise sales executive and leader at some of the most recognizable names in SaaS, we quickly assess the current state of affairs for your organization or team and put into practice tangible processes and ideas that make an immediate impact.

You can connect with Sam on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/samsalesli/

Link to Ben Smith's blog from Reachdesk https://www.reachdesk.com/post/how-bdr-s-can-book-meetings-remotely

Link to Partners in Excellence blog http://partnersinexcellenceblog.com/should-we-be-selling/

In this week's episode, I am joined by Jakob. He is 18.

Jakob connected with me over the summer on LinkedIn. I was intrigued as to why an 18-year-old would want to connect, hence, before accepting, I asked him.

He said he had found my videos on YouTube useful in helping him build out his LinkedIn profile, and he wanted to connect. I also learned that he hosted his own podcast, which I have been on. 

I am not one for labelling profiles, as in my experience they do not hold true, however, Jakob is a Gen Z, therefore is growing up in a very different world to the one I did. I was interested to explore this further.

We talk about the impact the last 18 months or so has had on him and his peers.

What he and his friend did with their newly found spare time in early 2020? Which he described as, what any teenager with time on their hands would do, which is set up an Amazon FBA business. Very different to what I did, or could do as a teenager with time on their hands. 

We chat about the importance of exams, grades, the impact this has had on some of his peer's mental health - with this "perceived" pressure that it is all about the grades to succeed in life - any Gary Vee fans out there will know his view on this.

Jakob talks about how social media is almost a 24/7 thing for his generation. I talk about the potential impact this has on being able to network in person, how this might impact any roles in a business where day to day conversation is required, especially in a sales role. 

Jakob shares why he decided to defer University for a year, turn down an apprenticeship offer from a major firm and join a tech business.  He also talks about how he got the role, and didn't need a CV to do this - and why he believes CVs are a somewhat antiquated way to gauge someone's ability. 

I ask him about the expectations from an employer and their use of technology in the workplace as well as allowing employees to have a voice on social media. I challenge the social media side of things, to look at the perspective that we now seem to be in a world where everything has to be documented online, and the potential impact this could have on an employer brand, and ones career opportunity. 

I hope you enjoy this one, I felt we only scratched the surface, however, it's great to see such confidence and get up and go with Jakob. If there are more like him, both young Men & Women, we are going to be in good hands.

Connect with Jakob here https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakobheptinstall/

Subscribe to his podcast here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNkpW9V6gAWkNiuAeNGUVwA

 

As ever, thank you for listening, please do subscribe and share with your network!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Employee Advocacy is nothing new, it has been around for a while, yet we are seeing a resurgence in this, as well as tools to support it. Research show that you can increase your organic reach by as much 500% if you are able to activate the voice of your employees. If being the operative word here, and that is a big if.

In this episode I cover off where things go wrong, why and what you can do about it.

In this episode, I am joined by Devon Banks.

Devon is a 2 x LinkedIn Sales Star and recently joined Haas Alert as their only BDR.

She shares her story of how she had to change her direction of travel last year, 2020, due to covid decimating the hospitality industry where she held the position of GM for Training & Development for Wild Wing Hospitality Inc - Canada's largest Chicken Wing company.

Her story starts out early in her career working in a restaurant, gas station, to teaching English in Taiwan, followed by 5 years at Wild Wing before covid hit.

We chat through what the transition has been like and how she feels her skills are transferable to the modern-day sales world.

How she motivates herself when selling on her own as well as manages all this as a single parent.

We also discuss the conversation of women and diversity in sales, as well as, more broadly, skills for today versus yesterday. 

Please follow her story here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/devonbanks/

And links to Janelle and Gabrielle who also get a mention as voices to follow - 

Janelle https://www.linkedin.com/in/janellebenjamin/

Gabrielle https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielleblackwell/

And other links to resources you all may find helpful to broaden your horizons

Sales for the Culture : https://salesfortheculture.com/

Sales for the Culture is a communal movement of Black tech sellers, for Black tech sellers. We exist to make sure that Black people are attracted to, empowered in, enabled for, and included by the tech sales profession. From the VP at the $3B enterprise to the SDR who got hired last Friday, we are building the community that we need so that we don’t have to run alone anymore.

WOMEN IN TECH SALES (VIRTUAL) BOOTCAMP : https://www.talentminded.ca/women-in-tech-sales-1

THE WOMEN IN TECH SALES BOOTCAMP CONNECTS TOP EMPLOYERS TO DIVERSE TALENT

Less than 20% of tech sales positions are held by women - even less if you are a woman of colour. We created the Women in Tech Sales Bootcamp to change that - one cohort at a time.

Join us for a special evening of lightning talks and networking with the growing Women in Tech Sales Community!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-in-tech-sales-april-mixer-2021-tickets-149007763231

Thank you Devon for sharing your story.

 

In this episode, I am joined by the brilliant Chris Allen AKA Chief of Sales and Memes. Yes, memes. 

If you don't know what a meme is :

1 - an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.

2 - an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.   So, there you have it. How then does one become a Chief of Memes, and how, or why would it be relevant in B2B sales, especially on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not Facebook, I hear your inner voice saying.    I have followed Chris on LinkedIn for what felt like forever. We connected back in Feb 2018. Chris caught my attention by his Yellow Hat in his LinkedIn profile; more importantly how he has cleverly and subtly built his personal brand around this.    Chris is certainly pushing the boundaries on LinkedIn on how he is bringing, what one might describe as, the sub-culture of Memes onto LinkedIn. He was certainly an early adopter of this, which 18 plus months ago, was a risky strategy; the risk of the ire of the "Facebook" police on LinkedIn, as well as the employer brand.   In this episode, Chris shares his journey into sales from an IT / Technical background.   How he does not shy away from his passion of Gaming, and how he brings some of this into his B2B sales play on LinkedIn and social.    Breaks down his first post on LinkedIn that generated his first sale, and how from here, this led him to where he is today.    We chat about the balance of creating a personal brand under the corporate banner of the company you work for.  What comes first, your brand or the company? As you will hear, Chris has a robust view on this.   He admits that he has pushed the boundaries too far on the odd occasion.    I challenge Chris on how some of his audience reacts to his content, especially his buyers.   Chris flips this to how he also leverages his sales audience as a proxy to his intended audience.   We debate the evolution of content on LinkedIn and how this has transformed during the last 18months and what the future may hold - I unfairly put Chris on the spot on this one!   Whilst I recognise that Chris' approach is not for everyone, and nor should it be. Chris is an example of what can be achieved with humour, thought and intention.    Follow Chris and his story - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisallen-chief-of-memes/   Learn more about Licenseware - https://www.linkedin.com/company/licenseware/   As ever, thank you to Chris for his time and insight.   Thank you to you, my audience for your continued support, if you would like to be a guest, or if you know anyone who you think would be a great guest, feel free to reach out to me.     

In this episode, I chat with Anthony Barbuto, a practicing Attorney from Florida.

 

He shares with me why he uses social media.

His passion for all things Italian.

How he has amassed 100k plus followers on Facebook, 20k plus followers on Instagram AND 2million plus followers on TikTok and has become a verified TikTok content creator.

What do his peers think of it all? Does it bring in clients?

How does he find the time between his busy day job and creating the content that he does?

Please support and follow him His main website is here The Italian Enthusiast https://italianenthusiast.com/author/admin/ From here you will find all the links to his channels, including TikTok.

Peter studies combining data science with behavioural science, looking at Internal Bias, Needs, History, Stimulus & Context, External Influences & Wants.

I interviewed Peter 12 months ago at the beginning of the pandemic, where we discussed how organisations were having to react to the changing way people were buying, as we had been forced into an online remote environment. This also impacted the data on which business were basing their assumptions on.

Fast forward to March 2021, we are 12 months on, what's changed?

Peter shares

What he has seen happen over the last 12 months.

What is Predictive Behavioural Analysis.

The impact of moving to the cloud and the opportunity this brings for 2021 and beyond. 

The rise of the Artisan on the high street.

B2C is blurring into B2B.

Why leadership has had enough of data, they now want insight and actions to take.

Can B2B compete with Amazon when they don't have access to the data.

Do organisations need a "Peter" to help them.

If you are in either sales or marketing and you are interested in data, this one is for you.

Now is the time to be where your customers are going not where they have been.

Learn more about Peter here - https://xmplify.co.uk/

Connect with him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterdorrington/ 

 

“Experience is not what happens to you – it’s how you interpret what happens to you.” Aldous Huxley

I discuss with Peter Dorrington of Xmplify what Customer Experience is in the modern world.

Peter has unique experience in combining data science with behavioural science to understand what really matters to people and the practical experience to help business know how best to serve them and drive business impact.

On this podcast we have a fascinating delve into the world of data, buying behaviours and what business needs to be thinking about right now as they look at the next 6 months and beyond on their digital strategy. 

Are you listening to what your customers are really saying? 

What are you doing about it?

What investments in Customer Experience are you considering?

How is the CFO reacting to this?

As Katrina Neal tweeted back in 2017 "A marketer who says "I think" in front of data-driven execs may be asked to leave"

Social & Digital are great places to get a sense and feel of what the voice of the market is saying.

How are you then tieing this in with your operational data?

There is now an expectation of true 121 marketing.

We don't want a "Note from the CEO" landing in our inboxes.

We want you to know me not about me.

Connect with Pete on his website - www.xmplify.co.uk or on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterdorrington/

based on an article in Venture Beat on how distributed teams can help startups scale, how can large organisations benefit from this approach? Link to original article https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/06/distributed-teams-are-helping-startups-scale-faster/

in this episode I tackle the debate of selling through social - you don’t sell and close on social

In this episode, I share my views on what being an influencer in business to business really means, how you need to consider where your sphere of influence is, what data points you need to consider to ascertain if its working and finally, I touch on the mystery of the LinkedIn algorithm and how this may be impacting your reach.

I hope the volume is ok on this, I ran many tests before and all seemed to be ok!

In this episode, I cover off how we, at DLA ignite, believe social technology and mindset within an HR function can be a true catalyst for change. In short, we see it as a for HR to connect talent and technology to get the best out of people.

This can be broken down into 5 key areas of focus :

Social HR Professional

Social Talent

Social Learning

Employee Experience

Employer Branding