The Sales Evangelist (Donald C. Kelly)

Today’s guest is Nelson Leitao and he’s going to share important lessons learned about perseverance during a 10-year climb up the customer ladder. In this episode we’ll discuss what that means. 

The art of selling

• Nelson loves his job for two particular reasons: Interacting with people and getting the chance to improve patient experience. 
• For Nelson, being in the medical sales field, he isn’t only dealing with devices, he is helping people through his products. 
• Their company’s vision is A day without passion in healthcare is a lost day. 
• Nelson worked for his company for 25 years already but he’s only been working in sales for 10 of those years. 
• One hard lesson came from offering the same solution to three different companies. He focused on the sale more than unique customer needs and it cost him two of the three prospects.
• What Nelson didn’t acknowledge was that there were three different customers, three different processes, and three different needs. Instead of customizing the offer to each company, he mistakenly thought giving them the same solution would solve everything. 
• Nelson is now quicker to subscribe to his company’s vision to listen more than he talks.
• Nelson had to reframe his mindset and though it was a huge challenge, he was able to pull through.

Climbing the customer ladder 

• It’s similar to marriage in that it has its ups and downs and there may be challenges you have to overcome everyday.
• Climbing the customer ladder is about how you improve your relationship with your customer. It’s dynamic because your customers all have different needs. Climbing the customer ladder means climbing their trust.  
• First, you need to be present and customers need to feel that focus everyday. They want to know they can ask for your help and you’re there even when you don’t have all the answers. 
• Be committed to helping people and opening doors for the customers. 
• The motivation is knowing you will win with them, you will gain more experience and learn the process, and you will understand their needs. 

Looking outside the box

• Being in the healthcare sector, most people focus on technology and clinical solutions but there’s more to it. 
• The technology and the devices are good but they also need to implement a good workflow. 
• With Nelson managing accounts for financially depressed countries, he is prompted to think of the financial implications for his customers. 
• It is important to be creative and to show something different to separate you from other companies. 
•  Help the customers bring out the solutions the best they can.

“Motivation: Important Lessons I Learned About Perseverance During My 10-Year Climb Up the Customer Ladder” episode resources 

Connect with Nelson Leitao on LinkedIn. You can also send him an email at nelson.leitao@siemenshealthineers.com.

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and

Failures can be crippling if we allow them to be, but when we have the proper guidance, we can learn how to turn failure into success. Airica Kraehmer of Gracious Care Recovery shares her own story here and reminds us that we can turn our weaknesses into our strengths.

Airica’s story doesn’t directly involve sales, but it does involve difficulty and mental toughness.

She started working as a model in the fashion industry and she had a dream to succeed there. She realized that the fashion industry demands that you be your own product and that you bring your A-game all the time. She called it cut-throat.

As a result, there’s room for exploitation. Airica found herself the victim of human trafficking because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She wrote down her story, and when she finished her book, she looked for outlets that would help her share it. She figured telling her story would help her move beyond the struggle.

She became an international best-selling author, and it taught her that she could rise above the low points in life.

After she moved to Florida, Airica realized that the state was number two in the country in terms of human trafficking, tied with Houston. After the upcoming Super Bowl, Florida is projected to move into the number one spot due to the large influx of people.

Hearing stories of other victims made her realize that she was part of something bigger. She realized that the process would repeat if she didn’t do something to help.

She reminded herself that there were as many good people in the world as there were bad people.

Nobody wanted to talk about trafficking, so she kept encountering closed doors. She compares it to cold calling for sellers. [07:23]

Though people cared about it, they didn’t feel like they could speak out about it.

She kept knocking on doors, and eventually, she found Gracious Care Recovery. There were survivors there who recognized the need for people to speak out.

Her message to sellers, then, is to keep knocking on doors. Despite the fact that she was addressing an impossibly hard topic, she found people who would engage.

Get in the other person’s mindset. We each have different experiences, and we’re each traveling a different journey. That means we each have different ideas.

That can be a powerful tool as long as we remember that the effort isn’t all about us. It’s about who we can help and who we can serve.

Keep in mind that the prospect isn’t rejecting you. It simply isn’t the right time for your prospect.

If you’re a sales manager who is motivating a team to overcome rejection, teach your team members to practice persistence.

Be persistent, but be kind. Be willing to invest the time to build trust.

Sales is a numbers game to some degree, and you have to keep reaching out in order to achieve results. Especially now that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year, you have to keep knocking in order to hit your targets.

Airica compares her personal experience to bankruptcy. It was the ultimate low. She had nothing left. And she knew it would take years to recover.

She learned that you have to leave behind the things that don’t serve you well and that you shouldn’t focus too much on the why. It’s ok, for example, to ask why something happened, but refuse to stay focused on it.

Instead, look to the future and ask yourself what you can do to address what happened.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who am I serving?
• What is my purpose?
• What’s my goal?

Once you’ve identified those things, align your morals and values with your goals.

Tackle one goal at a time. Small goals will accumulate quickly and result in large accomplishments.

So often, as sales reps, we neglect to realize that the customer journey starts with the prospect experience.

Sean McDade, PhD, is the founder and CEO of PeopleMetrics; a software and services company that helps organizations measure and create a better customer experience by listening to their customers and prospects.  Sean is also the author of “Listen or Die: 40 Lessons that turn Customer Feedback into Gold,” a book about how to listen to your customers, clients and prospects in order to create a better experience for them.

Any time that a company interacts with a customer or prospect, they are providing a customer experience. It could be a digital experience on a website, an in-person experience through a meeting with a sales rep, or customer experiences via contact centers or online chats.

A great company is one that consciously manages those interactions to create positive experiences for their customers.

As a sales rep, the experience you give to your prospects is very important. The prospect’s interaction with a sales rep sets the tone for the experience he can expect as a customer.

This is especially true if you are selling B2B products, software, professional services, or any high-end consumer products that a prospect is likely to spend significant dollars on to purchase.

A sales rep can increase the value in the sales process by answering questions in detail, by solving problems, and by reducing pain for the prospect.

The metric used to measure customer experience is substantially higher for sales reps who add value over those who do not.

When a prospect feels that he was lied to, or misled, at the beginning, it is difficult to recover. The great sales reps are the ones who set the tone for a great customer or client experience over the long-term.

As for the sales reps who are not setting a positive tone – Sean believes they are creating the very real possibility that the client will churn in the future instead.

Marketing sets the brand promise. They set the expectations but it is up to the sales reps to bring it to life.

The prospects will remember their conversations with sales reps long after they’ve forgotten the marketing campaign. The sales rep has more credibility and is more effective, as a result, in setting a positive – or negative – tone with the prospect.

PeopleMetrics measures various attributes by sending a survey to each prospect to determine the experiences that the reps create.

In this way, Sean has found the prospects always feel that value has been added to their experience whenever a sales rep is able to provide these five things:

• Be prepared. A great sales rep is one who is super-prepared. They know the prospect inside and out; the reps don’t ask questions that are easily found online, for example.
• Be comfortable answering questions. A great sales rep understands their prospect’s situation and can suggest solutions.
• Be a good listener. A great sales rep listens more than he talks and will really understand the needs of the prospect as a result.
• Be knowledgeable about your product. Be able to answer questions beyond what is already available online.
• Be proactive. Be timely and follow-up.

Sometimes all it takes to differentiate from the competition successfully is to think past the first solution. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the co-founder of Leaddelta, Ved Rasic, to learn how he launched a successful company after thinking past the first solution. 

Understand the main assumptions of a crowded market:

• If you’re in a crowded market, that means there’s a demand.
• The leading mistake salespeople make: they scan what others do and try to repeat it.
• Your goal should be to move past that first option (option A) and create option B.
• Understand how people arrive at the stage where they need your product.
• To do this successfully, know the pain points and goals of your customers.

Once you understand the why, how do you differentiate based on those pain points?

• For the small businesses that utilize full-cycle sale reps, you have several interactions with your customers. It’s cliche, but listen to those interactions.
• Don’t just listen for phrases you want to hear, but understand their problems and goals to determine how to help them best.
• Be curious. Let prospects talk more because that often leads to higher closing rates.

Leaddelta can be incredibly helpful in differentiation.

• The platform is essentially a table or CRM-style view of your first-degree LinkedIn connections. 
• This setup makes LinkedIn a better platform because it provides a spam-free, ad-free environment to add notes, tags and save time.
• Leaddelta has over 1400 users, and 50% are paid. And that’s what you can get from thinking about the option B perspective.

The typical salesperson collects LinkedIn connections like Pokemon cards. Instead, use those connections to create powerful relationships.

• Think about what customers talk about that makes them want a product or service. 
• Use storytelling to help you become a better sales rep.
• Follow Ved on LinkedIn and Twitter, and visit his company website at leaddelta.com for more information.

Join Donald’s Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.

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How Do I Sell During The Coronavirus Outbreak? 

Many industries are affected by the coronavirus pandemic. With that, there are a lot of questions in the sales community about how to move through this season well.  How can you sell while everyone is quarantined and practicing social distancing? 

Scott Romney is a senior account executive at Soci. He loves sales and building relationships. Soci’s goal is to help their clients overcome the challenges that may come from internal alignment or with their local franchise partners. Soci can come in to balance their clients’ social media reviews and  do it using just one platform. 

Facing the challenges

Businesses that are sole-ownership need to take special care with protecting their brand. The main challenge that salespeople are facing right now is how to keep doing sales without compromising the health of all involved and their businesses. Most salespeople are now hiding by not calling people or having conversations with their prospects and clients. What these same people need to wake up to, however, is the reality that the economy is not dead.  It’s still going and very much alive. We’re not currently in recession and the economy can still pick up once the pandemic is controlled and managed. 

The economy is not dead.  People are still working but they are working differently. 

#COVID19

Understanding the circumstances is imperative to be able to see the opportunity in times of crisis. We all have defining moments in our careers that can change our mindset. You need to ask yourself what these defining moments mean for you. Looking at the challenge brought about by the coronavirus outbreak, ask yourself how this defining moment can change your outlook as a small business. Look at the efficiency and gaps when implementing new flexible working hours and the critical role that social media plays amid COVID-19. Social media isn’t just all fluff but a real lifeline, especially with staying connected to clients.

In every crisis, there’s an opportunity. As salespeople, it’s part of the job to take advantage of the online resources and get to work digitally. This means of communication can help businesses inform, educate, and connect with their clients. 

Keep working

Even with the pandemic, 99% of the world’s population are still working. Salespeople can pick up the phone and build relationships with their prospects despite the change in how we do business. You can connect and build value, helping your clients see you as a thought leader by continuing to offer counsel.  There is still an opportunity to help with pain points. 

It’s time to have a positive side. The nation has faced far greater challenges in the past but they were overcome. As a sales leader, recognize you can come out of this crisis as a leader and not a lagger. Let your prospects know you are working, even in this dire situation, and keep them informed. Make it your goal to build relationships because only a handful of people are currently moving in that direction.  Take this as an opportunity to grow the business by leaning into your clients. This is a defining moment you can take advantage of. Just keep working. 

Change your messaging

Before the virus outbreak, Scott called on prospects with the message they were doing a good job but wanted to share information to further improve their standing on social media. The updated message emphasizes that social media is now a lifeline they need to utilize if they aren’t already there. 

For example, a local fitness gym, All Time Fitness, has jumped into the social media scene. Despite being closed down due to the virus, they are now utilizing social media by sharing some exercise tips people can do at home. They are also using FaceTime and offering a personal coaching session. They realize this is a great time to...

How to Reach Decision-Makers When Selling to Enterprises

When selling, we want to talk to the decision makers but how do you reach them in order to qualify them as a prospect?  Let’s talk about that in this episode. 

Erik Kostelnik is the CEO of Postal.io,  a sales marketing engagement platform that generates leads, increases sales, and improves customer retention by optimizing offline engagement and interactions. 

Challenges in reaching out to decision makers

There have always been obstacles in selling; however, in the last 20 years, it has gotten a lot noisier due to sales and marketing automation. As a result, it has become more difficult to grab the attention of potential clients. People are just overrun by messages and have become desensitized. You need to be different if you want to interrupt this massive flow of data to the decision-makers.  

How to reach decision makers

Historically we have operated on “five touches” to get to a yes or a no response. Operating within these parameters, sales reps standardized the workflow with these five touches in mind. The number of touches has increased, however, due to the volume of people trying to do the same things. It’s become even harder to get a hold of decision-makers. 

The solution is to go back to personalization. Formatted emails need to be removed from your own sequences and be replaced with persona-based selling. Sequence your outreaches using social media platforms, emails, and phone call pitches. You can use this steps: 

• Send an email with a gift, like an ebook.
• Reach out through LinkedIn.
• Make a personal phone call.
• Email them.
• Repeat this process three times.

With this process, you can reach decision makers, even offline.

During this process, sharpen your sales sword and differentiate yourself from the competitors. 

“How to Reach Decision-Makers When Selling to Enterprises” episode resources 

Reach out to Erik Kostelnik via his LinkedIn account. You can also check out the website. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTEND trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at  → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse. This course is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules for free! You can go and visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals also call us at (561) 570-5077. 

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Three Things Small Businesses Get Wrong When Marketing  

Businesses often make mistakes in their marketing campaigns and as a result, don’t maximize their exposure. Let’s discuss how strategic decisions about your online presence can make a bigger impact. 

Stephen Hart is the host of the Trailblazers.fm podcast and is also a digital brand strategist. Stephen enhances marketing and communications for a global software firm by coaching individuals and businesses to improve their own brand. Through his experience, Stephen is seeing the need for people to address their brand presence and their digital footprint. It’s important for your brand to represent your product well and this is done by your prospects associating your online presence with a reputation of quality.. 

Digitally sophisticated 

People today are more digitally sophisticated. Employers and consumers often end up going to Google or asking Alexa and Siri for answers to their questions. The same is true when consumers are looking for products or services.  They research and ask relevant questions using social platforms before making a final purchasing decision. People look at company websites, verified reviews online, the company’s social platform, and their customer service and support. 

People want confirmation online long before they ever speak to their first salesperson. There are many touchpoints that consumers look for and by the time they make the decision to meet a product or service rep, most of them have already made up their minds. 

Five key areas of branding

Branding is critical because it’s a visual representation that lets the consumer know what you and your company are all about. Stephen has five key elements that entrepreneurs should consider to define their personal brand. These 5 elements that will help your digital presence include:

• Color
• Font
• Mood and vibe
• Logo
• Voice or the tone of your written content

Colors in branding

Color is  important because it’s one of the elements that offer people the first impressions about your brand presence. Research has shown that people make a judgment within 90 seconds based on color tone alone. This is especially important for salespeople and business professionals with a global touch who are dealing with people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. 

There are websites that can help you decide what color palette works best with your vision.  Think about two or three colors that set the tone, and an additional one or two colors you might use as an accent.  The website can help you work out these different combinations.  

Hex Code 

The hex code is a hexadecimal code that refers to the specific color that you want to choose. You can use this hex code to have a consistent color for your brand. You can document your six-digit color code throughout different platforms so you’re consistently getting the right color and shade.. This will come in handy when making PowerPoint presentations, images in Canva, and more. Just type in the hex code and your color will automatically appear. 

Even beyond your website, the colors you should choose should carry into

 your social media. Use them when you create motivational graphics for your social media posts and other areas you want a digital footprint. You want to create a cohesive visual feel across all platforms. This trains people to think of you when they see your color combinations. 

Be involved in building your brand

While it may be a good idea to have experts and professionals handle the execution of your branding...

Have you ever thought to use AI to increase sales? In today’s society, the application of AI is apparent throughout many industries, including sales. 27% of global consumers say that AI can deliver better service than humans, 38% believe AI will soon improve customer service, and 73% of global consumers  are willing to utilize AI if it makes their lives easier. 

Chad Burmeister is a cofounder of  Sales Ex Inc. Their company is rooted in the idea that AI can increase revenue, eliminate repetition, and make selling more efficient and effective. 

Growing up, Chad had always been at the cutting edge of technology and was always looking for ways to make people’s lives more efficient. 

Chad is officially releasing his book, AI for Sales, this Thanksgiving, November 28th along with Stu Heinecke’s Get the Meeting. If you buy both books on Amazon and send them a screenshot, you’ll get a dozen VIP conference codes for next year to attend events such as Sales 3.0 and AISP. With the codes, you’ll get a20% - 85% discount.. Chad is encouraging everyone to read the books and meet the authors at the conferences. 

Use AI to increase sales 

Chad has seven virtual sellers who are commissioned salespeople. The team has set up a daily data poll for these virtual sellers with a company called Lead 411. The data is fed into their CRM and the CRM goes through their email bot, a virtual assistant named Marissa Brown. They create preconfigured emails that filter through these virtual assistants so multiple batches of  emails can be sent every day. The AIs are preprogrammed to have a “conversation” akin to what you see on a chat feature. When a person responds, the AIs can communicate with the prospects.

The chatbots can also set up meetings and appointments.The AIs chatbots are configured to know when to schedule an appointment. It knows when you’re out of the office or if you have time for a meeting. 

One simple questions has about a thousand variations, such as the cost of a service or a product. The AI knows what to listen for and offers a very simple answer. It then replies with the cost, along with a link to your calendar so the prospect can set up a meeting. 

As the business owner, you need to teach the AI to respond in a way that gets the highest level of conversion. If you are a BDR (Business Developer Representative)assigned to pulling data from a CRM and pushing the send button, then your job might be in jeopardy. However, most BDRS are doing more than just pulling data. They are also pulling relevant lists, and doing research. Additional tasks include figuring out which people to send emails to, writing a good email, and leaving a voicemail as needed.BDRs are responsible for a complex system of outreach. 

Setting appointments via AI 

Chad’s tools called BDR.AI executes 50 to 100 connection requests per day through LinkedIn and  gets over 100 emails a day on the same platform. 

By using this software, they get five to fifteen meetings a month.  As a result, the organization can work more efficiently. The AI allows  the BDR more time to do other tasks. This would include getting on the phone to connect with people personally. This enables them to understand their customer’s needs and show a more personal interest to the prospects. The tools let the bots and humans do what they do best. 

In Sales, AIs can let you do more with less. #SalesTechnology

Tokyo, for example, pushed a 4-day work week and the results have shown about  40% increase in productivity. That increase can be attributed to the use of AI in their respective industries. 

Salespeople can do more with their day than just sitting in their offices,  making appointments and making calls. They can now spend time with their families or take the Friday off to just improve their quality of life. 

The downside of...

Your closing process will often require you to speak to a board or a group of people about your product or service, and you must provide value to your audience when presenting in person.

The Sales Evangelist Certified Sales Training Program provides specific sections for prospecting, building value, and converting to a paying client, and we’ve designed the training to help sellers prepare for presentations and to train their teams to do the same. It’s designed to help sales reps and sales teams improve their skills, find the right customers, adopt the right activities, ask the right questions, build strong value, and close more deals. 

Guessing game

Many situations demand that sellers meet with a team of individuals who will ask a variety of questions about the product or service. You’re wasting your time if you don’t understand the problems they need to solve or the challenges they are facing. It doesn’t make sense to play the guessing game during the limited time you have with this group of people. 

Once you understand the issue, you must also determine who the decision-makers and buyers are. You must understand the timeframe they are working against and their budget for the purchase. 

The company you’re pitching to will also bring in competitors who will pitch as well, but they aren’t your concern. 

Storytelling

John Livesay recently spoke about storytelling and the need to be memorable. It doesn’t matter who presents first or last, but rather who tells a better story. 

Consider having other team members attend the presentation with you and introduce themselves by telling an interesting story. Perhaps your CTO can share how his love of Legos® pushed him to create complex things and find solutions to problems. It inserts personality into the presentation. 

Tactical presentation

Make sure you know who will present information on the buyer’s behalf. Have someone from your organization research to determine who will attend.

If possible, learn what those people hope to discover from your presentation. Engage your champion, or the person you’ve been working with to this point, to find out whether you can introduce yourself prior to the presentation. When you do that, ask them what questions they’d like you to address in your presentation and then be prepared to address those specific topics. 

Once you understand who will attend and what information they’ll be seeking, you can build your presentation around those topics. 

Recruit help

If at all possible, take someone else to the presentation with you. Take several people if you can. Assemble a team of people from different departments. 

When you set up in the conference room, don’t divide yourself on opposite sides of the table. Use name cards for both groups to indicate where different people should sit. Also make sure you spell everyone’s names correctly. 

Intersperse the members of your group among the members of the company you’re pitching to. When you have breaks in the action, because the two teams are sitting together, they’ll be able to share conversation instead of squaring off like rival gangs. 

We recently used name cards for a presentation and they were a huge hit. The company was blown away by the preparation and the organization that went into the meeting. They assumed that if we were willing to invest that much preparation in a presentation like this, we’d certainly do it in our efforts to help them solve their problems. 

Control engagement

Develop slides that include imagery rather than a jumble of words. Tell a story about the problem your prospect is facing and how you can help solve it. Demonstrate your solution. 

Assign one member of your team...

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we discuss time management and how daily planning can help you be more effective in your role as a seller.

It seems like there is never enough time in the day to get things done. We need an extra day in the week or at least an extra hour a day.  I was always so busy that it felt like I didn’t even have time to sit down to read a book. Even knowing how important personal development was, I always managed to put it off.

Then, I took a vacation.

It is amazing how much you can do when you are in the air for five hours with limited distraction.

So what changed? What happened? The amount of time I had certainly didn’t change. My focus did.

How many times have you been told to try daily planning? Now, how many times have you actually done it?  [02:04]

If you are the modern seller that I know you are, you are distracted. Reading proposals, talking to customers, going to meetings, checking email ... These are all distractions. Every time an email pings your phone, you are pulled in a different direction.

Everyone - from internal teams to clients to prospects to friends - is vying for your time and attention. As a result, important things fall through the cracks. You finish at the end of each day and find yourself wondering if you accomplished anything at all.

It all goes back to the very powerful principle of being acted upon as opposed to acting. [02:59]

Thinking back to a previous episode when we spoke to Greg McKeown about his book Essentialism, I’m reminded that we can’t have priorities.  The plural of the word ‘priority’ shouldn’t even exist. There can only be one priority.

Essentialism means to focus on the essentials. As a seller, your most important task is to bring in new customers and close deals. So, what activities will lead you to that result?

Until you understand what you need to do as a seller, you will not be able to stay focused. You will always be acted upon. Sure, there will always be important distractions but oftentimes they are not the activities that you need to do to accomplish your goal. [04:46]

To help you stay focused and have the time to do the things that matter the most, I want you to think about these three questions:

1. Will the activity move me toward my essential goal of helping people make a decision and close a deal?
2. Do I have to do it? Is this a task that no one else can do?
3. Does it have to be done right now?

If the activity doesn’t tie into your goal or responsibility, don’t do it.

Let’s suppose you’ve set a goal to prospect for 30 minutes a day. It is certainly a step towards achieving your goal, so it needs to be done. But do you have to do it yourself? Or could you pass some of it off to an internal sales team? Or to someone on Fiverr.com?

Suppose you get a call from your boss and she needs a report. Does she need it right now? Is there someone on your team that can take care of it for you? If you are the only one who can do it, can you move it to the end of the day so as not to take away from your prime working time?

When you focus on the essential things, the distractions fall away. The things that used to pull you away move out of focus. [05:41]

I recommend taking an hour each week to plan for the upcoming week. Be sure you are fully vetted and ready so that you can avoid those distractions. What are the important tasks ahead? Schedule everything out. Set time for

Every person in every industry can improve a little bit every day by focusing on self-improvement and developing respected leadership traits. Whether you’re a seller, a sales leader, or someone who isn’t even involved in sales, you’ll likely find yourself responsible for guiding people and helping them succeed. 

Luis Weger works with a startup focused on changing the medical construction industry and serves as an offer in the Army Reserves. He recently launched a company called "Self: Reinvented" designed to help others discover their purpose and passion and enhance their resiliency.

He believes that anyone can develop their leadership skills, even those who seem to be natural-born leaders. 

2 ACT

He developed a phrase to help people remember the important aspects of leadership. Leaders must remember 2 ACT. Each letter in the acronym represents two concepts. 

A = Aware and Accountable

C = Competent and Confident

T = Trusting and Trustworthy. 

From his experience leading people, training people, and working with clients, leaders must have these six attributes in order to lead well. It’s especially true in the sales profession. 

Aware and Accountable

Every military leader learns situational awareness because it’s vital in foreign countries. You cannot operate in enemy territory without knowing what’s going on around you. 

In business, this refers to knowing what’s going on around you. It also refers to emotional awareness. 

• Are you in tune with the people around you? 
• Do you know what’s happening within the company you represent?
• Do you understand what your client needs? 
• Are you tracking changes in the industry you’re in?

Industries change constantly, from rules and regulations to policies and procedures. You must stay aware of the changes that are taking place. 

Leaders who live under a rock won’t be leaders very long. You cannot ignore the realities in which you operate because if no one’s following you, you aren’t truly a leader. 

Luis was recently invited to change military units, and he discovered just prior to the transition that there was only one other officer in the unit. That meant that he and the commander were responsible for all 50 soldiers. No one told him that ahead of time, but because he was aware, he picked up on the situation and made an informed decision.

Accountability is also vitally important in the sales industry. 

Being a sales leader means taking accountability for the performance of your team. Don’t pass the blame. Share the credit wherever you can and take ownership of mistakes. 

Leaders guide and protect their team members. They sit down behind-the-scenes with their team members and acknowledge the things that went wrong. Then they help them correct those problems. 

Competence and Confidence

Luis points to the book The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey as one of his favorites. When you’re in the sales profession, your clients look to you as the expert. You represent the perfect solution to your client’s problem.

If you have ever sat across the table from a person who doesn’t truly understand the industry he is selling in, you recognize the importance of competence. No one expects you to be an expert in everything. In fact, companies recruit fresh blood all the time. It’s one thing to bring a new perspective in the form of someone who is learning and quite another thing to recruit someone who is incompetent. 

In the military, lieutenants who come right out of college outrank noncommissioned officers who have been in the military for 20...

How To Ensure Your Sales Teams Actually Have Time To Sell

All organizations, no matter what size, need to know how to ensure your sales teams actually have time to sell. 

Resa Gooding is a partner in an Hubspot certified agency and they mostly help companies, especially startups, in Israel. As one of the top three agencies in Israel, they primarily work with startups and other traditional companies such as agriculture and manufacturing. They are helping them understand the value of CRM and how to effectively apply it to their companies. 

Challenges salespeople face

The most common problem in the sales force is the lack of training given to the sales team. This lack of experience causes inefficiency as the companies throw their sales reps in deep waters  and expect them to swim. 

Many companies are so focused on the technology or the product they’re producing,  they don’t spend adequate time sharing the value and benefits of their product with the sales force.  An untrained team ends up spending more time on the administrative tasks instead of selling. They need to be given the information and the tools to effectively sit down with a new prospect. 

If management fails to offer the sales team a way to stay accountable to the work day activities, management can mistakenly think their team isn’t working. There has to be a system in place so the sales team can report their activities and successes.  Having this in place also gives management a tangible way of seeing the work their team is doing. For example, how many calls they’ve made in the workday. 

Resa set up marketing campaigns for her clients but began to see that if  sales people didn’t know how to work with the prospects that came from the marketing, the efforts were in vain. She saw that to make marketing effective, the sales people needed to be able to  summarize conversations properly and sales reps needed to reduce their time spent on administrative efforts. They needed to be equipped to spend their time selling. Resa aims to give salespeople the time to study their product, set up appointments, and communicate with prospects effectively, instead of spending their time doing administrative tasks. 

Ensure that your sales teams are having the time to sell

Sales reps need training in order to be successful and reach their goals. Sales processes they can follow have to be set up so their efforts can be checked by management.  This promotes accountability. 

There are three tools that can be used to ensure that sales teams are getting more time to sell their company’s product.

Connect your email inbox to your CRM software

You can use HubSpot, SaleForce, or other similar CRM software. At the end of the day, what matters is that your sales team is more efficient in their work. The first thing you can do is connect your email inbox to the CRM software you’re using. 

This is efficiency at its best.  Using this software allows your manager to see the emails exchanged between you and prospects or customers.  Enabling the manager to view this communication directly eliminates the need to summarize conversations at a later time.  Leave that to your CRM. 

Both marketing and sales today can be measured through this software. Managers and the sales team no longer have to meet each time reports need to be made. All aspects of the sales process can be viewed as needed and everything is measurable. 

Earlier salespeople, like the ones who sold door-to-door, had to write down all their data or write a report about their sales day. Today, the salesperson just needs to connect to their email inbox on the CRM platform and reports are immediate.

Using CRM increase the sales reps’ available time up to 21% compared to doing the reports manually. 

For example, when you attend a conference, typically you have to wait until you get home to  input information manually.

How do you get high email open rates? Discover the secret framework in this episode of the "Sales Evangelist Podcast."

I, the podcast host, sit down with special guest Vin Matano and discuss his four-part cold email secret. I'm telling you, you don't want to miss this episode. 

Vin shares his deep expertise in cold email outreach. Tune in to learn his effective email strategies that'll bring you tremendous success.

Who Is Vin Matano?

• Spending six years at Demandbase, Vin started as a BDR (Business Development Representative) before moving into a closing role on the mid-market major's team. 
• Recently, he embarked on an entrepreneurship journey, eager to leverage his rich experience in sales.
• But that's not all. In this episode, Vin unveils the number one outreach channel that played a pivotal role in growing his pipeline. The reveal happens right at 1:09. And no, it's not cold calling. Can you guess what it is?

Cold Emailing Success: What’s His Secret? (2:36 – 4:04)

• Many sales representatives struggle with personalized outreach. What on earth are you supposed to write? 
• Vin shares the ideal email structure to help you figure it out:
• Observation
• Problem Statement 
• Solution
• Call -To - Action


• Click play and discover why this email framework gives high open rates!

Crafting Irresistible Subject Lines (4:51 - 8: 01)

• Please don't...

Account-based selling isn’t like your typical sales procedure. While both take skill and finesse, Account-based selling requires mastery over both your company and your clients. For the past year and a half, Thomas has worked for Amazon Web Services, making nine-figure deals. And on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, he and Donald discuss what you need to know about selling to enterprise organizations. (Fun fact: On today’s undisclosed episode of recording, it’s our guest Thomas Niewiara’s birthday!)

Amazon is (to say the least) not a small organization, and they do both account-based and traditional sales approaches.

• Working with Amazon Web Services’ global accounts team, Thomas manages large AWS customers.
• Before, he did many sales and sales engineering roles from Google Cloud to a cybersecurity startup.
• The difference between traditional and account-based selling: the conventional model is a top-down funnel centered around creating and nurturing brand awareness. In account-based sales, you start by identifying critical strategic accounts to focus on and then building lead generation around them.

How to start account-based selling:

• Develop executive-level relationships because prospecting with a bottom-up approach might not work when 1000s of people work within one company segment. 
• Because most of these larger accounts are public, analyze available financial statements (such as 10k’s) to frame your specific solutions. 

Thomas spends much more time than average on research.

• He spends 40% of his time researching for his accounts, with the remaining 60% going towards pitching, presenting, and other facets of his work.
• Why does he spend so much time researching? You need to understand the problem before you prescribe the solution.
• As an account rep with these clients, you are the expert. You’re expected to know all the key players within that account and how they work with each other.
• He has google alerts for both of his accounts, and he uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator for company alerts.
• He moves nine-figure deals. With that amount of money, you need to bring knowledge and professionalism to the table.

Thomas’ final takeaways and sales advice:

• It’s essential to develop a relationship with the customer, but for account-based selling, it becomes even more important to network internally. 
• Know all the tools available to you to do your job as best you can.
• For listeners working in bigger companies, check if coworkers have past connections and...

What Is Social Dynamic Selling & Why Does This Work So Well?

Many sellers appreciate how social dynamic selling works well. It’s effective and has connected more than 2 million consumers to their clients. 

Rylee Meek grew up in a small town in South Dakota but is now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lived in a town with very few opportunities but at the age of 15, he already had that drive to start earning money. He got a job at a pizza joint and made a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. He dove into the entrepreneurial world at that young age. His family made a significant amount of money from network marketing and that impacted his path. He met many like-minded people who directed him to the right books to read. It was his initial step of taking that entrepreneurship role. 

He then started working with a network marketing company instead of proceeding to college. At 19 years of age, he was able to get his   BMW but then he realized that his income came solely from the effort and from working up to 17 hours a day. So he started to do things differently. He worked for Prudential but then he wanted to work and sell to more people and not just family members and friends. He proceeded to take another job selling home remodeling. Rylee clearly remembered what the manager told him on that interview, that the job is 85% negative but he needs to focus on the 15% that’s positive to make it through. Until now, Rylee still believes in focusing on the 15% because that’s what matters. Getting 85 Nos to get 15 Yeses was all it took. 

Network marketing journey 

Rylee invested in several network marketing ventures and met many challenges along the way. At one time he became homeless after putting much of his money into a business in Mexico. Their company was shut down by the government and he needed to come back to the states. He spent some time thinking of the things he could do next. He was invited to a pitch presentation and that helped his wheels spinning. His first presentation was done a few months after and he made $2.1 million in sales. They then started recruiting, hiring, and training. When everything worked out well, Rylee stepped back from presenting and started doing coaching, training, and teaching their sales reps. 

Reaching the masses

Rylee was earning well and could take his products to the masses but he didn’t have any passion for his products. While there are many businesses who have so much passion for their products but do not have the vehicle to take their products to the masses. 

He thought hard and brainstormed on all of the things that they’ve been doing right with their company from the coaching to selling their products and services. Rylee wrote everything down and that gave birth to what is now the social dynamic selling system.

Social dynamic selling works well

The core of social dynamic selling is dinner seminars. Invite people and give them a nice steak dinner. You then establish the presenter as the authoritative figure in that industry to gain the trust of the guests. After giving the pitch, you can ask them for an appointment and meet with them the following day to close the deal. 

It is important to create a message. It is an atmosphere where you’re sending an invitation directly to your potential clients to come over to listen to your presentation and craft that into multiple different verticals. 

It takes a little bit of money to make this happen and your product has to have a decent enough margin for this to work. 

Rylee’s team uses direct mail. Many may say that this method is archaic but they had a higher return on investment using direct mail. It beat all the other kinds of marketing including Facebook, Google, and SEO. The response they get from direct mail is crucial in any campaign. Regardless of the method that you’re using, you need to know and track your...

Sales objections happen all the time but with the health crisis today, it’s a standing question of how the pandemic may impact your customer’s sales objections or how it has already impacted them. Join Donald Kelly and Chris Mele as they talk about the pandemic, customers, and sales objections. 

• Being in a software company means that the people you’re working with are former executives from other software companies as well. 
• It’s a very complex environment and so people are critical of the academic principles and the things they adopt because there are real things that work for a software company and there are those that don’t. 
• For Chris Mele’s experience, how they price, package, and license their technology has a direct connection to the sales force. 

The impact of the pandemic on sales objections

• One of the biggest changes is the aversion to risks and this comes in many different forms. Buyers today are more risk-averse, especially when it comes to new relationships. 
• Salespeople and companies start seeing the transaction size compress. People are no longer very keen on allocating cash.
• With the pandemic, people are more stressed and thus more uncertain. It’s a tough selling environment. Unless you’re in the industry where you’re selling tools such as Zoom and other related tools. 

Why are there objections?

• Price isn’t the only reason people aren’t buying. 
• There are many companies today that offer premium prices that are doing well. There are a few companies that raised their prices and while they have fewer customers coming in, they’ve been able to isolate who they’re serving and they’re able to substantiate that premium value. 
• Salespeople can destabilize the deal when you use word nuggets around the pricing, implying flexibility, at the early stages of the sales dialogue. 

Handling objections

• In the B2B perspective, there are many things that you can do outside of the price that you are charging. 
• If people aren’t buying because of the price then you need to start evaluating your offer. Ask yourself what it is you’re offering and if you need to offer all of that. If you can offer just half of it then do so. 
• Never look at your cost, instead, look at the value that you’re offering.
• Figure out what it is that you’re offering and the people to whom you’re offering. Make sure that you can name them. 
• You may have a mix of customers you’re selling to pre-COVID and this group may include big and small enterprises. With the pandemic, you are losing some of these customers so it’s critical that you become very specific to the people you’re offering your products to. 
• Even if the company falls down, you as the salesperson can still adopt. You may see the need to change the pricing a little bit or create your own little rules. The challenge here is to make sure that each salesperson isn’t changing the landscape entirely. Even when a customer meets two sales reps from the same company, their core offer and pricing should be the same. 
• Pricing is an important part of the dialogue because it represents money that’s being invested. Sales reps have to be transparent and be upfront about the pricing early on the sales dialogue. 

“Objections: How the Pandemic May Impact Your Customer’s Sales Objections” episode resources

Follow Chris Mele on LinkedIn. You can also check more of his books and activities on his website. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram,

We all experience pain and grief and in these seasons, we can feel depths of emotion that are hard to resolve.  How does unresolved grief affect your sales potential? Let’s learn about dealing with unresolved grief today with Herdyne Mercier. 

Herdyne Mercier is the Chief Grief Crusader and host of  Redefining Grief Podcast with Herdyne Mercier. Her job is to create safe spaces so that broken hearts can be seen, heard, and validated. The process helps you get unstuck from your unresolved grief and get you to a place of purposeful living. 

Redefining grief 

Herdyne defines grief as experiencing any kind of loss. This isn’t limited to losing a loved one to death. Grief can also be felt when you move to a new place, experience job loss, go through divorce, or when filing for bankruptcy. Herdyne had the exact feeling when along with her husband, they filed for bankruptcy back in 2007/2008. The real estate market crashed and they couldn’t sell their home. Her husband, James Mercier, could not find a job with a Master’s Degree.  Herdyne had to become the main provider for the family while James delivered newspapers and sushi. As a new mother, she grieved having only thirteen days to spend with her newborn son before she realized she had to go back to work. As James adjusted to being a stay-at-home father, he too grieved as a man because of the job he’d lost.  

The grief almost cost them their marriage when Herdyne told her husband that she needed a divorce but James, in his wisdom, suggested they go to counseling together instead. The process of overcoming her own grief helped her create a brand that represents a woman who had forgotten to put on her MASK (an acronym we’ll explain) but is now healed. In her healing, she is now able to serve others. 

Days of grieving

Many are grieving loss due to the pandemic. People have lost their jobs and some have lost the people they love from this illness. We have all lost something in this pandemic and are trying to figure out how to navigate this new normal. There’s a lot of frustration and pain in the process. 

The first step is to not compare your grief story to someone else’s. We may feel that our loss is greater than others but in truth, we can’t actually quantify loss. Our culture does not teach us how to deal with loss. Instead, we focus on aiming for the top and shooting for number one. We want the biggest house and the nicest car, but we aren’t told what to do with our emotions. We’re not guided toward healing when loss occurs. 

This is nobody’s fault - not your parents, not your grandparents, or any other people around you. Circumstances are what they are; however,Herdyne teaches to be still and know your purpose. How do you go about doing that? 

The truth and connection anchor

Emotional anchors will set you free.  The first, is truth.  Be honest about your grief. The next anchor is connection. Look for that person in whom you can confide and be totally transparent.

One of the biggest myths a griever has to overcome is the belief they have to do it alone.  

Overcoming your truth

They say time heals all wounds but Herdyne doesn’t believe this to be true. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. While time may pass on, you can remain emotionally stuck. 

Some also believe that keeping yourself busy will help you forget your grief, that if you stay busy, the grief will eventually fade. The truth is, grief won’t just disappear.  Left unchecked, it will manifest in other ways. These alternatives are just pacifying and soothing behaviours. Giving a hungry baby a pacifier only means you’ve helped to delay, but not address, the real problem of hunger.  In the same vein, you need to heal and not just soothe by taking time for yourself,  finding a community, possibly hiring a grief coach or a therapist, and finding

If you find that your deals are falling through the cracks or you're losing your prospects to your competition, perhaps the problem is that you're not leaving anything behind.  You might be thinking of brochures and other leave-behinds, but that's not what we're talking about here. Instead, we're talking about the things you should be leaving behind any why these things are so critical to moving your deal forward.  Research phase Unless you're dealing with a referral, when you're dealing with a prospect, that person is probably considering other people as well. Even if the prospect reached out to you and seems completely interested, that person is ultimately looking for the best deal.  You must stay top of mind. Ensure that you stay relevant and always present without being annoying. You must give the prospect something valuable.  Content Consider leaving content behind that ties directly to what you've already discussed. Or leave content that helps the prospect prepare for the next scheduled meeting.  Once you've done this a time or two, you'll understand why it's so important.  Imagine IT companies in this situation that are evaluating service companies. You won't be the only company they are considering, but you want them to forget those other companies and focus on yours.  One option is to determine which other companies the prospect is considering. Create landmines Create landmines for the competitor.  For instance, when I sold document management services, I had a competitor whose services were only good for one department. The competitor served that department very well, but the other departments hated their services.  I planted the idea in our prospects' minds that a tool that only benefits one department isn't really a valuable tool for the entire company. My leave-behind was the idea that the competitor would only benefit a small portion of the company. If it wasn't a good fit, certain departments wouldn't use it, which would result in wasted money because no one used the software.  I suggested to the prospect that a solution that benefits everyone would be a better fit. Format In the past, that kind of content might have appeared in the form of a white paper. Now, however, your prospects are busy and many things are grabbing at their attention. Instead, consider a LinkedIn post or article, or a podcast, or a video addressing the issue. Identify the top things that make your company a favorable choice. Highlight the challenges that your company can solve better than the competition.  Educate your buyer before you return for the next meeting or demonstration. That way, when the prospect meets with the competition, they'll know what issues to ask questions about.  If you're not leaving anything behind, the prospect may simply respond to the flashy, cool presentation.  Notifications Make this tool even more powerful by using tools that notify you when the prospect opens the message or clicks on the video.  Consider, for example, that you send a video for your prospect to watch prior to the next meeting. Maybe it answers questions that frequently occur during the second meeting.  If you send it with BombBomb, you'll know when the prospect watched it, and whether they watched the entire video. It helps you know when and how the prospect is engaging with your content.  Do something different Everyone is leaving a business card, so you must do something that helps you stand out from the crowd. Make your company the obvious choice. Position yourself as the trusted advisor and the one who is helping the prospect understand all the important considerations before making a decision.  If you're not leaving anything behind, your promising deal may disappear.  "You’re Not Leaving Anything Behind" episode resources If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the...

Do you take the time to follow up with potential clients?

Maybe a client told you right now is not the time they want to work with you. Just because they said no then doesn't mean you should give up.

Sales representatives need to have a follow-up process to know when it's time for them to contact old business deals. In this episode of "The Sales Evangelist Podcast," host Donald Kelly speaks with Jake Tacher on the importance of doing follow-ups to gain clients.

Jake shares his wealth of knowledge and experience in the sales world, shedding light on the critical role of follow-up in sales success and providing actionable insights for sales leaders and individual contributors. Discover the three follow-up strategies he shares in this episode.

Jake's Background and Expertise

• Jake is a seasoned fractional CRO professional and sales director. With a career that spans from starting as an SDR to becoming a sales manager, he now focuses on driving growth through sales coaching, consulting, and recruiting. 
• Jake also offers sales training programs and shares his extensive experience transforming underperforming SDRs into high-performing assets.

The Definition of Effective Follow-Up

• Jake defines effective follow-up as any contact attempt-based activity with a prospect that aims to push them along the buyer's journey. 
• Whether it's aiming for a meeting or a closed deal, the essence of follow-up lies in continually engaging with prospects to move them closer to the desired outcome.

Challenges and Solutions in the Follow-Up Process

• Jake addresses the common challenges faced by sales professionals regarding the follow-up method. 
• He highlights the fear of rejection and the need for preparation or confidence in approaching follow-up conversations. 
• Jake observes that these obstacles often stem from inadequate training and resource allocation within sales organizations.

Tactical Approaches to Effective Follow-Up

As you're working to expand your reach and grow your network, recognize the importance of building diversity into your network so you'll be better positioned to succeed in your industry.

I met Sharon Manker at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council ROAR Conference, which connects minority-owned and women-owned businesses with Fortune 100 companies. Sharon has worked in supply chain for two decades, in both the for-profit and the nonprofit sectors, in utility and now in healthcare. In her words, she negotiates for a living.

She also works to engage diverse suppliers in a woman-owned, veteran-owned, minority-owned system.

Many small business owners lack the vehicle to connect with the right decision makers. They don't know how to meet the people who actually influence the contracts.

When they discover their limitation, they often observe that they just didn't realize how it impacted their work.

As a supply chain person, Sharon works to connect qualified suppliers to the businesses who need them. She also works to connect those same businesses with her business stakeholders.

To that end, she attends events and even hosts events that allow people to connect and build relationships. The trick is to recognize that as you're working to connect with the decision makers, there are people along the way who can help you do exactly that.

When you aren't able to attend these events, Sharon points to other opportunities to connect with people: chambers of commerce and councils, just to name two.

You'll be positioned to find corporate partners there. You'll encounter people who are actively engaged and ready to increase their supplier diversity.

Even if you attend these events and find out about developments that are 24 months away, future gains will happen. Put in the work now and build relationships now.

Many corporations prioritize working with small businesses because they have committed to certain diversity goals, such as spending a certain amount of their operating expenses with diverse suppliers. In some states, in fact, this diversity is mandated.

This demands a pool of Minority Business Enterprises, Veteran Business Enterprises, and LGBTQ enterprises that can help meet the needs of those businesses.

It can't be a last-minute effort, either. You don't want to wait until you're in an emergency situation to begin vetting partners. Those organizations must proactively work to find the best option in every category to provide the product or service they need.

Some corporations connect with small businesses simply because they value giving back to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

If you're an entrepreneur or a seller listening to this, find groups like this to connect with, because if you can land a large contract, you can eat pretty well for a while.

If you balance your regular prospecting with your networking events while you work to connect with large corporations, you'll more easily keep a steady flow of connections. #CorporatePartners

Create a strategic plan for your business. In your case, your plan for success is that failure is not an option. Instead, when you fail, you learn a lesson, and you repeat that until you get to a successful outcome.

You can't give up. You must stay...

How to Reach Executive Decision Makers, and Why They are Listening Right Now

In previous episodes, we’ve covered that sales reps have to touch base with several people within their industry, especially the executive decision-makers. This may seem a  daunting task in today’s climate but it’s necessary. 

In this episode, we talk to Jeremy Miller, the founder of Sticky Branding. His experience in moving through recessions with the family business, and with his own brand, prepared him for the economic downturn that resulted from covid. With the knowledge he’s accumulated, he’s helping other businesses turn it around and in many cases, launch even better. 

Reach out executives

The pandemic leveled the playing field for all - every sales rep and even the executives are going through the same experiences together. Almost all businesses are in a state of change as they push the threshold of what they’ve known as common business practices.  They’re having to relearn where to listen. Sales reps who are equipped with the right knowledge and who are positioning themselves to talk with the right executives are going to see success despite current industry standards. 

Bring value to the executives 

There are three ways to sell: 

• feature benefits selling 
• solution perspective selling 
• provoking the customer

Jeremy suggests that the last one is the best approach today as businesses right now are changing. As a sales rep, ask yourself, “Who needs the expertise of our company most right now?” Approach your customers with the question, “Who in your organization knows about the need first?”  Ask them what their problems are and offer them a solution. 

The business executive team should be looking at the market and asking the important questions: Where do we play? How do we win? What are the issues that our clients are facing? 

It’s a team effort

Have a team meeting that talks about value proposition and the sales efforts on a weekly basis. Make it a dedicated meeting and discuss how you sell right now. What are the shifts you are making as a company? Talk about the strategies that work and get feedback from everyone on the team.

Sales is the sharp end of the spear when it comes to business development. The organization must learn to adapt with the trend and make the necessary changes to have a competitive advantage. Sales teams who are thriving keep everyone in their organization from getting laid off. 

“How to Reach Executive Decision Makers, and Why They are Listening Right Now” episode resources

Follow Jeremy Miller on LinkedIn now to learn more. 

If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald directly. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Crmble, the easy-peasy CRM for Trello that helps you manage your contacts and leads without investing in complicated solutions, sync all your data, manage custom fields, and get powerful reporting on your sales. Try Crmble now for free at www.crmble.com/tse. This course is also brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales...

The Accidental Seller Series 2 - "DeJuan Brown"

This is the second episode of the series The Accidental Seller. There are more accidental sellers in the sales industry than we know of. In fact, there are about 4.14 million sales professionals in the United States who fell into this career. 

DeJuan Brown wanted to be a chemist when he was a kid. He also wanted to be a system analyst because he wanted to follow his uncle’s footsteps who worked as a system analyst for Guardian Life for a long time. But in college, he studied Psychology and Philosophy. The mathematics included in studying both Chemistry and System Analysis dissuaded him to push through with his childhood careers. 

His view of sales and of the salespeople came about when his father started selling Insurance when he was two years old. Selling insurance then was very different compared to how it’s done today. People are able to sign up online or pay for their premium online but before, selling insurance was a door-to-door sport. His dad would spend hours going door to door collecting premiums from people. Seeing his dad selling made him think that sales was super lucrative on the back end but also super hard at the same time. DeJuan initially thought that salespeople were undesirable. 

The sale stigma 

The perception of salespeople then didn’t change much until today. There’s still a bad stigma and DeJuan didn’t want to be associated with it. Salespeople are seen as sleazy and manipulative and even though his Dad is not like that, he came to adapt that view as well. It’s apparent with a car salesman and the salespeople you see in infomercials and TV. 

People kept telling DeJuan that he’d be good in sales but for him, it was a choice between using his skills for the worse which is doing sales or using it for the best which is helping people through law and other things. 

The accidental seller

DeJuan was doing a variety of things and was moving from one job to another. He ended up waiting tables and bartending. He was good at it and made a tremendous amount of money in it. His friends kept telling him to go into sales because he’s good at selling entrees but still the stigma of salespeople stuck in his mind. The stigma prevented him from considering the possibility until his buddy got a job at Intuit. 

His buddy convinced him to get into sales and he applied. He got a schedule for an interview and got a part-time job of 16 hours a week doing transactional sales. That’s when he got into sales. 

He fell in love with the reward of sales and it was the first time that he felt good about serving people. 

Fears in sales 

He had fears and trepidation when he started sales and most of the fear revolved on the thinking that he had to push people. DeJuan wanted to help people. If they want something, he wants to help them get it and if they do not want to get the product and services, then he doesn’t want to push them and he just wants to leave them alone. 

The fear went away relatively early in the process when he realized that he was helping people. He understood people and all that they have at their disposal. He gave them all their options and made sure that they made decisions based on what they have. Helping people changed his paradigm on sales audits. 

DeJuan thought about quitting during his tough times but his experience helped him get through the rough times. When he isn’t at the top of the leaderboard, he thinks of quitting and starting out on another career. 

Sales is a rollercoaster ride: here’s no such thing as always up and always positive. #SalesMotivation

That fact kept him on and motivated him. 

There’s no such thing as every time you dial, someone picks up the phone or responds to every email. Understanding that helped him control the inputs and outputs. The mindset shift helped him shift his attitude towards selling. 

His first...

How To Tell A Story That Connects & Sells

In this episode, we are going to talk about how to tell a story that connects and sells. We tell stories to inspire others, show empathy, and more. The problem is, we don’t know how to tell stories in a way that consumers will be compelled to buy our products. This is what Jude Charles is going to teach you in this episode. 

Jude Charles is a story-driven filmmaker, brand strategist, and a speaker who’s been running a video production company for the past 13 years. He’s been helping entrepreneurs tell stories effectively to be able to connect with prospects and clients. 

What is a story? 

Stories are universal. There is no difference between a story about your normal day and a story you might tell during a sales meeting. The only difference is the ending and its goal. 

Stories are about a specific moment in time. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What happens at the end will make your story impactful. 

When you’re telling a story in sales, you want the listener to buy into the service you’re selling. This story has to matter in a way that by the end, they will want to buy your product or service. Stories can make a connection. 

Case Example: Money Heist

Storytelling works because it’s relatable. A Netflix show called Money Heist has a story that pulls you in. It includes a group of nine guys that are getting ready to rob a mint in Spain. Although viewers aren’t robbers themselves, as the movie unfolds, the audience begins to relate to these men and become more invested in the characters and the plot. The viewer gets to know these nine guys and sees their reasons for wanting to rob the mint. 

The same is true in selling. You want to share a story with your client that he/she can relate to. Instead of just selling your products and services outright, or presenting bullet points of the benefits, share a success story instead. Set the scene by beginning with the problem. You’ll then go into the actual journey that leads to solving the problem.  As the story unfolds, the client or prospect should be able to picture themselves in the scenario. By the end, they will see themselves as the one rescued from the problem by the solutions you have to offer. 

The basics of presenting a story 

When forming a story, think about how you will sit with the client and talk to them about what you’re doing. 

The number one question in your client’s mind is about who you are and why they should do business with you. It’s during this assessment your story telling should be an integral part of the sales process. It will become part of the conversation you’re having with your client. The basic framework of storytelling is pretty much the same: 

• Start with a problem
• How you went on the journey of solving the problem
• Reveal the solution 
• Share the results of the solution 

Jude keeps a story bank and saves story notes throughout the day, from the biggest details down to the minute ones. It’s these pieces that are used to create a story that is meaningful to the client. 

Kinds of Stories

There are different kinds of stories. When you talk about yourself, then you are telling the Who are you? story. Other stories include Client Success stories. These kinds of stories not only build your credibility but they prove your process has worked for someone else. 

There are also Closing Stories and Value Stories. These are your core values. Clients like to see integrity and transparency so you can tell a story that illustrates these values.

To see examples of great stories, a recommended book is...

Oh no! It’s happening again.

The biggest search engines are making changes. But, this time, it’s to protect people’s email accounts. Sellers sending out over 500 emails per day may want to stop because there will be repercussions for doing so. 

In this episode of "The Sales Evangelist Podcast," host Donald Kelly addresses the recent strict changes announced by Yahoo and Google regarding email outreach. 

How will these changes affect your sales approach? What are the limits to how many emails can you send now? 

Tune in to this week’s episode and learn how to adapt to these recent changes.

Understanding Yahoo and Google's Changes

• Donald breaks down the changes announced by Yahoo and Google, highlighting that bulk senders who dispatch more than 5000 emails per day must adapt to align with the heightened requirements. 
• These changes aim to shield end users from spam and potential security risks associated with excessive unsolicited emails.

Insights Derived from Mailgun

• Referencing insights from Mailgun, Donald delves into the implications for sales professionals and how these changes impact their outreach strategies. 
• He emphasizes that aligning with the standards enforced by Google and Yahoo is essential for safeguarding email deliverability and maintaining a positive sender reputation.

Essential Practices for Email Outreach

• Donald outlines three crucial elements that sales professionals must prioritize to navigate the evolving email outreach landscape. 
• These include authenticating emails, enabling easy unsubscribe options, and sending targeted emails that cater to recipients' interests and preferences.

Implications for Sales Professionals

• Addressing the potential impact on sales professionals, Donald discusses the nuances of these changes for individual contributors and organizations. 

Are you tired of the same old tactics falling flat in your sales discovery calls? 

Everyone wants to make a sale, but too often, the approach is to pitch the product or service right out of the gate. Is there a better way to connect with your prospects and truly understand their needs before you dive into your sales pitch? 

Host Donald Kelly speaks with guest Paul Butterfield on having a solid strategy for sales discovery in this episode of "The Sales Evangelist Podcast." Paul dives deep into the importance of understanding the customer's journey and shares insights on creating a unified, customer-focused experience across various teams. 

He emphasizes the need for a robust discovery process and how it can significantly impact the quality of the buyer's experience. Tune in to hear how effective discovery calls can revolutionize your sales approach and elevate your success in closing deals.

Paul's Experience and Expertise

• Paul is the founder of the Revenue Flywheel Group, focusing on enabling B2B companies to create a unified customer journey. 
• With extensive experience in the field, Paul brings real-world examples to support his insights, making this episode a valuable resource for sales leaders and individual contributors.

The Flawed Approach to Discovery Calls

• Paul highlights the all-too-common practice of immediately jumping into a demo without fully understanding the customer's needs. 
• He acknowledges the prevalence of pitch decks laden with bragging rights and emphasizes the need for a shift in mindset regarding the purpose of a sales interaction.

The Power of Effective Discovery

• Paul passionately advocates for a more in-depth approach to discovery calls, stressing the importance of preparing for a business-level conversation. 
• He believes that a successful discovery call can create a vision in the prospect's mind and help them understand how to achieve their future state. 
• Moreover, Paul emphasizes how this approach enhances the customer experience and filters out deals that may not be a good fit early in the process.

Many sellers discover that their perfect pitch is not working because, as they work to build value, they are appealing to logic rather than emotion.

We're devoting the whole month to a discussion about building value, and some of today's information comes from the book The Transparency Sale written by Todd Caponey. Todd will visit with us on the podcast in the near future, but today we'll talk about the decision-making process and the role our brains play.

Every day, we engage in activities every day that are so routine that we don't even think about them. When we drive to work, we put a seatbelt on without even thinking about it. When we back the car up, we put our arms over the seat beside us and then look backward.

You're able to listen to this podcast while you're driving because you don't even have to think about driving.

Todd talks about three levels of the brain, which you may have heard of before. The reptilian part, the limbic part, and the neocortex.

The reptilian portion is the core or center, and it's the oldest part of the brain. It prompts us to do things without thinking. It drives our instincts. It's the part that prompts us to react to pain without thinking, and it's part of our survival.

The limbic portion is more intricate and it helps deals with feelings and emotions. It helps us make decisions and motivates our behaviors.

The neo- or frontal cortex is the newest part of our brain and it's associated with information and logic. It's the largest part of the brain and it ties with math and reasoning and justification.

[Tweet "We make decisions emotionally and justify them logically, and it's our brain that makes it possible. #brainpower"]

We typically show up to our prospect meetings with PowerPoint presentations, charts, spreadsheets, and graphs of all the amazing things our product or service can do. We show up prepared to sell to the customer's neocortex -- the logical part.

Remember, though, that the logic part of our brain isn't where decisions are made. Decisions form in the middle portion of the brain, where our feelings and emotions reside.

You must help people make a decision emotionally, and then justify it logically. You can build value as a sales rep by using stories to tap into the emotion or pain that the prospect is experiencing.

Unless there is some kind of pain, your customer won't make a decision.

The reptilian part of our brain wants us to stay where we are. If nothing is harming us, why would we move? Leave things as they are.

Until someone points out the reason we need to make a change and appeals to our emotion, we'll never see a need to move. If a seller use emotion to prompt the customer to move and then help him justify the move logically, he'll be much more likely to make a change.

Tie the emotion and the logic together to help your prospects understand the need to make a change.

I recently met a guy who sells water filtration systems in Florida. He begins by asking people whether people drink water, and many people say no because it tastes bad and it's unclean and unhealthy.

He points out that taking a shower in the same water can be just as unhealthy because your skin is your body's...

How do you move beyond having a network of connections on LinkedIn to leveraging it to drive meaningful conversations and opportunities?

In this episode of “The Sales Evangelist Podcast,” host Donald Kelly chats with Brandon Lee, the founder of FistBump, on the best practices for maximizing your impact on LinkedIn. 

Discover powerful techniques for engaging with prospects, creating compelling content, and establishing genuine connections that lead to tangible results. Tune in to hear essential strategies for utilizing LinkedIn to drive sales success.

Brandon Lee’s Background

• Brandon founded Fist Bump, which offers a done-for-you and done-with-you model aimed at C-suite sales leaders looking to leverage LinkedIn more effectively. 
• The service appeals to individuals seeking guidance on improving their LinkedIn utilization and those lacking the time to do it themselves.

LinkedIn as a Sales Tool

• Donald and Brandon discuss the critical role of LinkedIn in B2B sales and business.
• They tackle the common issue of professionals failing to effectively utilize their LinkedIn connections after making them, highlighting the need for a more strategic approach to networking and relationship-building on the platform.

Best Practices for Utilizing LinkedIn

• Brandon emphasizes the importance of adopting a networking, rather than a purely sales-driven, mindset when using LinkedIn. 
• He shares the challenges of coming across as just another demanding voice in the crowd and advises on shifting from a lead generation to a demand creation mindset.

Creating Intriguing Content

• Brandon stresses the significance of sharing educational and informative content that resonates with buyers, regardless of whether they are currently in the market. 
• He delves into the strategy of transforming valuable customer insights into engaging social posts and provides examples of how to

Creating a valuable and accurate sales forecast is dependent on your ability to anticipate the success of sales. So how does the founder and CEO of forma.ai Nabeil Alazzam motivate and drive his team to maintain momentum? Through sales incentives! Using sales incentives and data-driven forecasting, Nabeil encourages his salespeople to reach specific and measurable objectives.

How Nabeil defines sales forecasting:

• It depends on whether the forecast is for a team leader or a representative. As a leader, it’s taking data across the team and using it to aggregate results.
• On the rep level, accuracy is critical. If you’re confident which accounts close, you can better visualize what else is needed to do to hit a target number.

Common forecasting mistakes:

• Being overconfident with deals without a data-driven element to justify the belief.
• Instead, utilize checkpoints throughout the sales process to know if a prospect will move forward.
• Another common mistake is that a lack of nuanced checkpoints leads to overprioritizing a fast-cycle sales prospect.
• As a sales rep, use data to allocate time free of bias towards the accounts most likely to close (without taking the speed of the sales cycle into account.)

Segmentation and forecasting go hand-in-hand.

• Use data when thinking about an audience cluster. A checklist sales reps have for different groups of people can and should look different depending on the best likely outcome for each group. 
• For managers, don’t think of data points as averages across the board.
• Understand your different customer segments and establish guidelines within each audience as data points.

Start data-driven forecasting:

• Forecasting is a crawl, walk, run approach.
• When running, you can automate the segmenting approach. In the crawl, it’s simply acknowledging that people buy differently and may need different buying propositions.
• Think about the types of clients you serve and what success looks like with each of those groups, segmenting by sector, growth stage, and the number of employees.
• Think about the forecasting method and sales practice you should apply to each (and create data points based on these audiences.)

How can incentives help our forecasting?

• Incentives drive behavior. And, ideally, better salespeople get paid more. If you can’t set forecasting successfully, you can’t allocate the proper incentives to the right salespeople.
• If you start to novice a prospecting segment is beginning to lag, you can be specific in your incentive to correct your trajectory.
• The goal should be to design incentive structures so the rep understands how much time they should allocate to that goal without detracting from the overall performance.

Connect with Nabeil on forma.ai and reach out on LinkedIn.

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

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Gain the advantage of accurate, quality lead generation data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can get a 60-day free trial of Sales Navigator at www.LinkedIn.com/TSE. 

This episode is brought to you in part by...

You send hundreds of messages on LinkedIn every week, but you are still waiting for someone to get back to you. Maybe there’s one or two who have the courtesy of saying hello back to you, but it never goes any further than that.

As a sales representative, you know how important LinkedIn is to help you gain clients. However, if you’re not creating engaging conversations with prospects, it will be hard to build a pipeline.

In this episode of the TES podcast, host Donald Kelly shares five creative ways to do outbound with LinkedIn. Tune in and hear what he has to say.

Stop Sending Generic LinkedIn Requests

• You may find it easier to send basic messages stating who you are and what you can do for prospects. However, these types of LinkedIn messages often get ignored. 

• Instead, consider sending a personalized message to your prospective clients. This involves reviewing their profiles and seeing how to connect with them.

Don’t Just Care About Building Your Pipeline

• Yes, your goals are to gain clients and make money. But this shouldn’t be all you care about. People can sense this and will know if this is the only thing you’re worried about.

• Donald shares why sales reps should focus on building relationships with prospective clients. 

• Always remember that people crave connections. If your prospects have a positive relationship with you, they’re more likely to do business with you.

How to Send a Personalized Message on LinkedIn?

• Even if the person you’re speaking with turns out to be someone who you don’t work with, they may be some help later on. This is another reason why sales reps need to send personalized messages on LinkedIn.

• How can you do this?

• Ask questions: Once again, dig through their profiles and be curious about what they or their company share on LinkedIn.

• Engage on the platform: Don’t be a fly on the wall, and take the time to comment on the posts your connects share. It shows you’re genuinely interested in them and not just trying to take their money.

• Give compliments: If you see they’re doing good in something, compliment them. Donald discusses how complimenting prospects will help them engage more with you in the messages.

The goal of the TSE podcast is to help sales reps 3x their sales pipeline and close twice as many deals. Every week, we share two episodes to help sellers reach their goals. So, if you need help building your pipeline and closing deals, subscribe and listen to this episode.

“You need to make sure you strive to have some kind of genuine connection with human beings; people are craving that these days.” - Donald Kelly.

Resources

Donald C. Kelly on LinkedIn

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly discusses why 2023 will be a difficult year for sellers. He also discusses how, despite the upcoming challenge, how you as a seller can continue to succeed in your field.

What exactly is going to be different about 2023?

• Ever since the pandemic, inflation rates and the general cost of living have STEADILY increased. This makes people far, FAR more hesitant to actually spend money. Why should someone buy your product or service when money is already tight?
• Alongside higher inflation rates, the feds have also hiked up interest rates to curb inflation. Since there are higher interest rates, people are less likely actually to borrow money. This means that businesses will be slower to grow.

Here are some quick facts, from Donald’s personal experience and the State of Sales report:

• 69% of sellers are saying that selling is actually becoming HARDER for them.
• 92% of sellers claimed that they’ve had to start using a NEW method of selling their product or service.

With all of this in mind, what can you do as a seller to keep a steady stream of purchases coming in?

• One key thing to focus on, with the current market, is to focus on LOW RISK but HIGH REWARD activities. One example of this is cross-selling. Are you maximizing your profits off of current buyers? What can you do, or offer, existing buyers to generate even more income?
• Another activity you can do is focus on cross-functioning. Work within your organization and your different departments to help create cohesiveness. Instead of working in multiple, different organizations, you can focus on working as an ENTIRE unit.
• A third example of what sellers are doing to keep steady profits and deals coming down the pipeline is targeting new markets. Instead of continuing to operate in the exact same way, see if there aren’t different methods or people you can promote to. Are there buyers more comfortable with parting with their money? Is there some tweaking you could do to get a RECURRING payment? Again, focus on low-risk ventures that will bring in the highest rewards.

You can connect with Donald more and learn about perfecting your craft as a seller on his Instagram at donaldckelly or on his LinkedIn profile, also at donaldckelly.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

2. This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com. 

3. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. 

The sales landscape is totally changing. You need to adapt to succeed. Deep Sales, a part of the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, can help you do just that. Check it out yourself and get a 60-day free trial at Linkedin.com/TSE.

4. This episode is brought to you in part by Calendly.

The power of scheduling automation has never been more critical than it is today. Your sales team needs a solution to easily meet with prospects at the right time, every time. Finish the year strong

Due to the pandemic, most businesses have transitioned to working remotely. In this episode you’ll learn how to maximize sales productivity when working with a remote team. 

Ensuring sales productivity 

• At a very young age, author, speaker and organization improvement consultant

Brad Jeavons watched his mother selling over the phone. He saw how she used trust and value to make an impact on her customers. The consultative approach his mother used was effective. 

• Brad made note that using the phone can cover a lot of turf. 
• Brad also studied the strategies of big companies such as McDonalds and Apple, and how their practices are applicable to productivity and sales performance. 
• Some of the best practices and operational/enterprise excellence in the world today come from the largest organizations. 
• With working remotely, we can take all these practices to another level.

The 4 Ps in Productivity 

•   The 4 Ps in Sales Productivity: 

1. Plan - you need to be able to focus and create a plan of attack. Know who is still currently buying and learn how to adjust the plan. This plan has to be done with people, not to people. 
2. People - We need to show empathy toward our sales team because everyone is feeling the effects of the pandemic. Build trust within your team. 
3. Process - Collaboration is important in team processes. It enables everyone to be in on the plan and adjust the plan as a whole. 
4. Partner with your customers - Go into these relationships as an abundant consultant, not just as a merchant selling to customers. Sell with a purpose. The only way to do so is by helping the sales team form a process they will practice with consistency. 

• Brad uses the customer journey mapping technique to help sales teams develop an abundant sales approach in which they become highly skilled as they practice. 
• Agile sales and marketing processes start with the customer’s buying journey. This is before the discovery phase. It’s focusing the team on the customer’s pain points and their needs. It enables them to connect to the customers on a deeper level. 
• The Devotion phase allows you to focus on how you can serve your clients so they become people who are devoted to your product or service. 

“S1: Maximize Sales Productivity When Working With a Remote Team” episode resources 

Follow Brad Jeavons on LinkedIn. You can also get his book, Agile Sales: Delivering Customer Journeys of Value and Delight. You can also visit his site to learn more 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTEND trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at  → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse. 

This episode is also partly

Connecting with prospects over the phone can be daunting. Your success as a rep comes down to what you say, and more importantly, how you say it. In this episode, Donald Kelly meets with sales expert Jeremy Chen to discuss the dreaded cold call. Chen’s sales team primarily uses cold calling to generate business, but that’s not why he’s so passionate about it. He’s passionate because, in his words, “a cold call saved his life.”

Always Act Like You Belong

• When job hunting, Chen accidentally called the CEO of a massive Canadian company! Even though the CEO hung up on him, he got a call back a few weeks later that connected him with a job.

• Because Chen didn’t initially know he was calling the CEO, he didn’t have any tension or fear when he called. Even execs are just people – embrace confidence.

Just Make the Call

• You never know where a call will take you! When Chen called the CEO of Telus, it completely changed his life.

• Don’t get discouraged. Hang in there and try not to take the rejection personally. Keep trying.

Use a Pattern Interrupt

• Chen uses transparency. He actually says, “This is a sales call… Feel free to hang up on me if you don’t take sales calls.” This weeds out the prospects who aren’t interested.

• If the person doesn’t hang up, Chen doesn’t use industry jargon. He explains things in layman’s terms.

• He asks questions and LISTENS. Instead of railroading prospects, he lets the prospect explain their pain.

Remember Your Purpose

• Stay on target. In your first call, all you need to do is book an appointment, not make a sale.

• You might gain some insights into your prospect’s pain points. Take note, but don’t try to explore the whole story.

• Offer them a specific time (and place if you’re meeting in person). 

“Just make the call. I know that a lot of reps that I deal with today, they’re nervous, they don’t feel like their leads are the greatest, their territory sucks, whatever. Make the call. You have no idea where your next call is going to take you.” – Jeremy Chen

Resources

Reach out to Jeremy via e-mail: jeremy@jeremychensales.com

For more information, check out: JeremyChenSales.com

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Sales Foundation.

I think we can all agree that sales should be fun. However, many times, we find ourselves in a quagmire where we’re not progressing and deals are not going the way that they should. This is why we created TSE Sales Foundation. It’s a program designed to help sales professionals just like you master the fundamentals of sales so they can radically improve their sales pipeline and close more deals. To find out more about TSE Sales Foundation and our next start date, simply go to thesalesevangelist.com/foundation.

Credits

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of

How To Build A Sales Engine That Will Land Massive Deals – Repeatedly

Every sales person wants to build a sales engine that will land them improve their business, earn massive deals, and generate future sales. In this episode, we’ll talk about how to move toward these goals. 

Lisa Magnuson’s whole career has been in sales, specifically in sales management and sales leadership. Sales has always been Lisa’s passion and getting into Clorox, which is used in homes and businesses around the world, is where she experienced closing big deals. 

The struggles in generating sales 

There are several struggles companies face when trying to generate sales. During a crisis, the most difficult phase of the sales cycle is prospecting which is hard enough without added pressures.  During a time when everyone is already cautious you have to be careful about coming off as self-serving. Just conducting regular business can isolate potential clients. This is a concern that is applicable for both BDRs and SDRs. No one is exempted. 

Lisa is an expert when it comes to knowing the right strategies you can use to prepare your team to get through a crisis. There are mindsets you can incorporate in your process to make sure you hit the ground running when we get back to the new normal. 

Building your sales engine

Regardless of who you are, we were all left feeling that elements of our lives were cut short. This pandemic has affected all of us and we are trying to figure out how to pivot and thrive amid the challenge. The best way to do that is to serve and offer a hand to someone else. 

The focus should be to keep the dialogue  going. All the stages in the prospecting process are important. The mantra for this time is “lead with your heart, then offer a hand”. That’s how you build your sales engine. That “hand” may look like a valuable idea you got from one of your customers or clients and you’re able to pass it on to others.. You need to keep it simple and interesting for your clients. You can drop a message inviting your prospects to a virtual coffee and talk about the idea that may resonate to them and you go from there. There are also other things that you can do to land opportunities that are worth five times more than your normal contract size. 

Do more soft prospecting 

Sending an email template to people you have never met before is hard prospecting. Soft prospecting is sending out emails to the people you know and already have a personal connection with. Take the time to reach out and ask how they’re doing. Once you know the kind of help they need,  you can lend a hand by sharing what is working for your other clients. Give them an opportunity to receive this information to see if it resonates with their goals. 

When soft prospecting, just remember:  

• Lead with your heart
• Offer a hand
• Relate to their sales challenges
• Give them a possible solution
• Offer to engage in a way that make sense 

Maintain your sales engine

Because of the coronavirus, many sales people are having to deal with the disappointment of cancellation and postponement. We may not be landing the deals we thought we would but this doesn’t mean we should stop the push to find new opportunities.

Lisa’s new book, The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly, talks about sixteen plays to build those 5X deals, many of which can be done right now. 

Scoring your opportunities

You can continue scoring your opportunities without any customer interaction. Decide on the characteristics of your big deals and score them. Gather...

Women are doing great things in the sales industry. In this episode, Donald Kelly is joined by an amazing woman, Nadia Rashid. Listen as Nadia shares how to overcome the most common objections in B2B sales. 

Nadia Rashid is the SVP of Sales for Seismic on the East Coast. She manages all the teams from the commercial mid-market all the way through enterprise and global. 

Defining Objections

• For Nadia, objections are obstacles. These are the concerns that prospective buyers convey. Objections are buyers’ concerns that salespeople need to overcome. 
• The objection is almost needed in sales because it allows the buyers to do a clear assessment of what’s in the market. 
• It’s also a good indicator between a good salesperson and a great salesperson. How you react to objection when it’s thrown at you shows how much experience you have. 

Overcoming objections

• Nadia teaches sales reps to ask difficult questions in every call - are there any concerns? Is there any reason we shouldn’t move forward to the next step? These questions help sales reps ensure that there is a sales relationship built and that there are no surprises. 
• Nadia categorizes objections in several areas, an example of which is the top of the funnel objections. These are objections during the actual sales cycle such as the lack of budget, the lack of resources, cost justification, and competing priorities. 
• When there’s an objection, it’s important to take a pause. While others feel that it’s uncomfortable, this pause allows the buyers to gather their thoughts. 
• Do the five-second rule for assessment. 
• Nadia also asks sales reps to listen to other top sales representatives and learn from them. Oftentimes, they learn two things from these great sales reps: to actively listen and to ask a lot of open-ended questions to understand and validate the good stuff. 
• Think of objections as a four-step process. 

• Ensure that you’re listening.
• Always validate and ensure that your buyer/the person you’re talking to understands what you’re saying.
• Respond accurately. There’s no need to lie; if you don’t know the answer tell them honestly. 
• Confirm that you’ve resolved the objection. 
• An open dialogue is much more collaborative and better received. 
• Come from a place of concern. You need to care about what it is that you’re solving for the prospect and how your solution is going to impact them. 
• As sales reps, it’s critical to listen well and ask open-ended questions to trigger the buyers to think. 
• Open-ended questions allow you to see if there is an opportunity there and see how engaged the prospects are. 

“Objections: How to Overcome the Most Common Objections in B2B Sales” episode resources

Follow Nadia Rashid on LinkedIn. Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. 

Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone calls and emails and not receiving a response is real. 

85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation. All text messaging is not equal. Customers respond to people, NOT BOTS. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in conversions. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you...

Getting to know Scott Roy and Roy Whitten

Scott Roy is the co-founder and CEO of the Whitten & Roy Partnership. It’s a sales consultancy that works with organizations to transform their sales performance. They work with 45 countries in the B2C and B2B markets. 

Roy Whitten has been friends with Scott Roy for many years and they’ve journeyed through their sales careers together. Roy started in door-to-door selling but later on, transitioned into applying transformational work to B2B and B2C companies. He used his education and works in transformative learning to coach and train more than 100,000 people. 

Managing attitude to increase sales

• The issue is that when sales are going well, the attitude is great. When the sales aren’t going well, the attitude takes a downturn. 
• As a sales leader, Scott is looking for ways to help his team manage their attitude and drastically increase sales. 
• Managing attitude is more than just a causative attitude. It’s maintaining a purposeful attitude. It means having the ability to stay on track and see how things are going to work out positively. 
• The first part in managing attitude is by getting a clear picture of what the purpose is for your selling activity and conversations. The second part is no longer being a victim of circumstances and taking control of the process instead of being affected by the situation. 
• Scott volunteered in Cambodia and he discovered that the fundamental belief in selling is shared by many people whether they’re from a developing country or in the U.S: That selling is about pitching, convincing, and sometimes, pressuring people to make a decision.  
• Decision intelliegence can help salespeople to become so much more effective than the pitch, convince, and persuade strategy. This means being committed to help clients make the best possible decision. 

Drastically increase sales with these 4 steps

• Step one: Find a problem, stay on the problem, and not get off the problem until it’s solved. It’s about taking the customer through the journey of discovering their pain point and helping them identify the causes in order to eventually come up with a solution.
• Step two: Know the impact of these problems on the company, employees, the brand, and additional touch points. 
• Step three: It’s all about the solution. It’s how the products or eservice meet the problems in a way that the problems are solved. 
• Step four: Calculate the return on investments and make sure that what you’re spending is worth it.
• R = A+C+E. Result is based on three things: The attitude you bring to every moment of the conversation. C is the competence you have in how well you are able to get you customers to explore the problem. E is effort or execution as you do the activities at the right time to effectively sell. 
• Approach the customers with a problem proposition, not with what you can do for them. 

“The Best Way to Manage Attitude and Drastically Increase Sales” episode resources 

Reach out to Scott and Roy via their LinkedIn accounts. You can also visit their official website to learn more. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram,

Sometimes, getting a prospect to say “yes” requires the right personality. But what if your personality doesn’t quite match theirs? How can you prevent them from hanging up the phone?

My guest, James Buckley—the self-proclaimed phone expert and co-host of the Sell Better Podcast—is here to share the communication style you need to instantly increase your cold-call success rate. Click play and learn how to align your sales style with your prospect’s personality.

Meet James Buckley

• After meeting James Buckley, it’s clear why he’s known as “the phone guy.” His communication style evokes emotions far more swiftly and effectively than email ever could. 
• James personalizes his sales approach by being authentic, intuitively connecting with prospective customers in a way that builds rapport and trust. 
• Thanks to his unique methods, James has become a valuable resource for both new and seasoned sales professionals. 
• Be sure to check out Sell Better, where he shares daily and weekly sales tips.

Have the Right Personality

• The wrong approach could be keeping you from closing deals. James explains how to tailor your communication based on personality cues you can often pick up from LinkedIn profiles. 
• For example, if someone appears friendly in their profile, adopt a jovial tone; but if a prospect’s profile has a more serious vibe, use a tone that matches.

Think Smaller with Emails

• James says, don’t write a novel when emailing prospects! Decision-makers often read emails on mobile devices, so the shorter, the better. His advice? 
• Make your emails concise and to the point by removing unnecessary words. 
• Here are three ways ChatGPT prompts to improve your emails:
• Rewrite the email to...

LinkedIn is a platform that allows professionals to network and connect with others in their industry. In this episode, Donal Kelly talks about the three LinkedIn strategies that provide results. 

• The issue here is that there are too many people on LinkedIn, and when we find people, we start pitching right away without adding value to them. 
• Ensure that you are engaging and not just going to the platform pitching and pitching. 

Three LinkedIn strategies you need

• Make sure that you are sharing content. ,

• Create videos that you can share.,

• Utilize the LinkedIn polls.,

Share your ideas/contents

• You know a lot of information about your industry that you need to share with other people. 
• The goal is to become a thought leader and an expert in your own space. 
• Tribal Impact saw that 55% of decision-makers use LinkedIn content to evaluate potential partners. 
• Important people are looking at your content and the value that you add to every post you share. So make sure that you’re sharing content relevant to your ideal customers.
• Think of what your prospects are thinking but would never say to anyone and write a post about it. This content is relatable to many customers in your sphere. 

Create videos to share on social platforms, especially LinkedIn

• Videos are five times more likely to increase your engagement on LinkedIn than any other type of content. 
• Recreate your content and make it into videos. Use hashtags when sharing your video content for more visibility. 
• You can also use videos and send them via private messages. It makes your messages more personalized and increases your chances of engagement. 

Utilize LinkedIn polls

• Polls are like sharing a little message and then asking people for their opinion on the matter. 
• Tribal Impact said that they saw 115% higher engagements in their polls for the last six months compared to other content they posted. 
• Don’t just ask any questions. Make sure that your questions add value. 
• Try to engage everyone who answers the poll and use hashtags in your post. 

“LinkedIn: Three LinkedIn Strategies Providing Results” episode resources

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, about any sales concerns. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio. 

Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone calls and emails and not receiving a response is real. 

85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation. All text messaging is not equal. Customers respond to people, NOT BOTS. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in conversions. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by NetHunt CRM.

NetHunt CRM is a sales automation tool that lives inside Gmail. It covers a full set of features to manage leads, nurture customer relations, monitor sales progress, and automate sales and marketing workflows. With native-like Gmail and G Suite integration, you can access all the CRM data, launch bulk email campaigns, and set up automated sequences right from your inbox. NetHunt helps to move your leads down your sales funnel and never let the valuable prospects go untouched.

NetHunt CRM offers TSE listeners a 40%...

Emotional connections are an important part of life but sometimes sales professionals forget that those emotional experiences can help us make genuine connections with our prospects. In some cases, those emotional connections can help us close more deals.

On Valentine’s Day, we’re sharing some ideas for ways that you can build emotional connections with your prospects.

The TSE Certified Sales Training Program began as a result of my inexperience as a seller. I wasn’t a great sales rep, but I went through training that transformed me.

I created TSE Hustler’s League, which was my own version of a sales training program. Since then, that program has evolved into the TSECSP.

You can take the course alone or with a group to gain from group coaching. The new semester will begin in April.

Salespeople often overlook the importance of connecting with buyers on an emotional level.

CLICK TO TWEET

At some point in your life, you were likely interested in someone but you were afraid of letting that person know. You might have even been rejected by that person.

Imagine your buyers in that scenario. They encounter emotional experiences daily. They have problems and challenges daily that they need help solving. If you step into that role, you have an opportunity to create emotional connections.

Think back to those clients you’ve successfully brought on board. Perhaps they were afraid of losing their jobs if they couldn’t solve a problem at work. Or afraid of losing track of invoices. Or unable to follow up on opportunities that came through their pipelines.

They likely signed on with you because you were able to demonstrate to them how they could solve a problem. You created a connection by helping them.

If you’re sending email as part of your prospecting process, are your subject lines boring?

“Join us for a free webinar.”

Your prospect doesn’t care about your webinar. He cares about his problem. He doesn’t care about your business or your product until you show him how it can help him.

Tap into his struggles to help him care about your business.

If you’re dealing with finance directors who are frustrated with the invoicing process, try this subject line: “Dave, are you frustrated with these invoicing situations?”

That may not be exactly his struggle, but if the rest of your ideal customers are struggling with this issue, it’s likely that Dave is, too.

If Dave is, in fact, frustrated with this issue, he’ll likely click on your email. When he opens it, the first line will include his name, and will immediately tie back to that subject line.

“We’ve helped more than 10,000 finance directors solve the problem of not being able to process invoices on time. We’ve helped them avoid miscalculations and lost invoices.”

Once you’ve made an emotional connection with your buyer, you can offer the solution to his...

The world is changing, and sales representatives must adapt. This is especially true when it comes to content creation.

Do you know what the top-performing social media content is nowadays? 

It's video creation! If you're not taking the time to create and promote videos, it may keep you from building your pipeline.

In this thought-provoking TSE episode, host Donald Kelly speaks with Adam Robinson, founder and CEO of Retention, about his approach to content creation. Adam discusses the significance of establishing content pillars and sub-pillars to maintain coherence and deliver a unified message. This technique has been instrumental in Adam's success, solidifying the foundation for his content strategy.

Discover Adam's methods to improve your sales techniques.

The Chris Walker Method

• Adam credits Chris Walker for the impact his approach has had on Adam's own content creation journey. 

• By consistently reinforcing a central message, Adam emphasizes the role of repetition in strengthening the audience's understanding and recall. 

• He also touches upon the growing propensity for video content, hinting at the potential crossover for YouTubers into corporate positions, as video prowess becomes increasingly valuable in business.

Building Trust with Organic Content

• Both Adam and Donald concur on the superior efficacy of organic social content compared to traditional ads when building trust. 

• Donald personally reflects on his inclination towards products discovered on social media, favoring YouTube for its less intrusive nature over website videos. This preference underscores the shift towards content platforms that offer a more genuine connection with audiences.

Adam's Philosophy on Social Media and Connection

• Adam elucidates the pivotal role of social media in forming relationships and amplifying one's presence. 

• He shares his own narrative of venturing into content creation, underlining the initial uncertainties and the growth that followed. 

• His experiences testify to the value of perseverance and authenticity in the content creation landscape.

Establishing a Unique Voice

• The conversation delves into Adam's early challenges in content creation within an unfamiliar niche, his strategic moves to raise brand awareness, and the evolution that led him to discover his unique voice. 

• Adam parallels Chris Walker's style, acknowledging the influence and adaptation of Chris's methods in his video production process.

Behind-the-Scenes and List-Style Content

• Adam and Donald discuss the fascinating effect of behind-the-scenes style videos and their ability to captivate audiences with a sneak peek into the creative process. 

• Adam also extols the unexpected success of unconventional formats like lengthy list-style LinkedIn posts and sideways 'fake podcast' videos, which resonate more with audiences than high-budget docuseries.

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly meets with Paul Owen, the owner of Sales Talent, to discuss the importance of planning when it comes to sales, and why all salespeople should have some sort of a plan to maximize their performance.

The importance of planning in the world of sales:

• Many salespeople will go into a deal without a plan in mind. Instead, they simply rely on their past experiences and instincts. This CAN work in some instances, but having a plan is always better.
• When you approach each sale with a structure in mind, you can replicate success more reliably. Instead of winging it and simply having one-off successes, a plan gives you the framework and tools you need to consistently make a profit.

Why don’t salespeople utilize planning more?

• A lot of salespeople believe that going off of a plan is too RESTRICTIVE. One big misconception sellers have is that sales are too dynamic and unique to utilize one sales plan. Sales are unique, yes, but they still have some commonalities. These commonalities allow sellers to actually utilize a plan to better equip themselves to finalize the deal.
• Another reason why salespeople don’t use planning more is that they’re naturally good at selling. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This CAN work if the salesperson works individually. When they start to build a business, however, they’ll run into issues. Unless the entrepreneur finds people who are also naturally good at sales, they won’t be able to teach new sellers how to effectively sell. Having a plan in place can alleviate this problem.

How can you start using planning in your sales?

• Take notes of past sales, and what did and didn’t work, and utilize that to create a plan. Although sales are unique, there are still common themes and elements between them. Take those common themes and elements and use them to create a framework for your future sales.
• Use buyer feedback. Ask past clients for their experience and utilize this feedback. Implement what works and get rid of what doesn’t to streamline your sales process and create planning designed to increase your sales.

You can get a hold of Paul Owen and learn more about using structure and plans in your sales through LinkedIn. Owen also runs a website for his company called www.salestalentuk.com with blog posts and more information.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

2. This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com. 

3. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. 

The sales landscape is totally changing. You need to adapt to succeed. Deep Sales, a part of the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, can help you do just that. Check it out yourself and get a 60-day free trial at Linkedin.com/TSE.

4. This episode is brought to you in part by Calendly.

The power of scheduling automation has never been more critical than it is today. Your sales team needs a solution to easily meet with prospects at the right time, every time. Finish the year strong and...

How do sleep and sales relate?

You’ll have to listen to this exciting Sales Evangelist Podcast episode to find out. Host Donald Kelly delves into the crucial topic of sleep and its impact on sales performance with guest expert Tanessa Shears. 

Tanessa, a specialist in wearable tech and health hacks, discusses how improving sleep quality can lead to increased energy, clarity, and better problem-solving skills, making it a foundational element for a successful sales career.

Tune in now to gain access to Tanessa's wealth of knowledge and uncover actionable strategies to optimize your sleep quality, enhance your energy levels, and revolutionize your sales performance.

Impact of Sleep on Sales Professionals

• Tanessa highlights the common tendency among sales professionals to neglect quality sleep to pursue productivity and achieve sales targets. 
• The "hustle and grind" culture often leads to sacrificing sleep and neglecting personal health while striving for professional success. 
• She emphasizes the detrimental effects of insufficient sleep, including brain fog, stress, and compromised cognitive function, that can significantly hinder sales professionals' performance.

Addressing Sleep Challenges in Sales

• Tanessa shares her experiences working with entrepreneurs, a group often caught up in the fast-paced business world, where neglecting sleep and health has become normative. 
• She emphasizes the need to recognize the actual sleep time versus the time spent in bed, the importance of consistent sleep schedules, and the significant impact of sleep quality on overall performance.

Practical Tips for Improving Sleep

• Highlighting the significance of sleep duration and consistency, Tanessa provides actionable ways to improve sleep quality. 
• She advises sales professionals to allocate enough time for sleep, maintain consistent sleep schedules, and focus on the quality of sleep, particularly emphasizing the benefits of deep and REM sleep. 

Creating an authentic personal brand is important because everything that we develop in business is based on creating a personal brand. As sales reps, polishing your personal brand must be a priority to stand out to everyone no matter where you go or where you are. 

Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster are co-founders of intrinsic branding practice Root + River. They have combined their experience and expertise in branding and passion for personal growth to guide individuals in combining authentic original brands that attract new opportunities and levels of possibilities. 

The intrinsic practice 

Both Emily and Justin believe that every great brand is a spiritual experience. As coaches, they guide individuals regardless of the roles they play in the organization. Their goal is to make them understand that deep foundational soul of their brand and put that into practical use every day. 

Branding is a practice, which means you need to do it every single day whether you are aware of it or not. Intrinsic practice will help you be aware of the things that you do and get organized around them so that those things will have far greater impact for a longer time. 

What is branding?

In simple terms, a brand is how other people experience what you believe. The brand is how people experience you in everyday situations and conversations. If you understand what that experience is giving to people, you can tap into that in a more conscious manner to help build your brand in a way that has greater impact. 

Frank Rogers is a good example. He is a great salesperson who developed a thought leadership brand. He doesn’t wait for the market to tell him what to say. Instead, he leads from the front. 

Chip Scholz from North Carolina is another example. He is an executive coach with a very memorable brand who uses a direct and Socratic approach in his coaching. 

Regardless of the audience you are talking to and the role you have, whether you’re a coach or a sales leader, you must follow the same principles because you are responsible for two brands. First, you’re responsible for your personal brand, and second, you’re responsible for the brand that you are representing. 

There are three specific qualities in intrinsic branding: inner traits that show up in the outer world. 

• Be original. 

Don’t be a karaoke singer or cover band. Be an original thinker, an original producer. 

• Articulate well.

Learn how to tell your story eloquently, consistently, and compellingly. Do this without hesitation and insecurities. Share your story from the heart with conviction. 

• Be vulnerable.

Do not give a packaged version of yourself. It is best to carry the lightest armor you can because when you do, you emanate something. 

All three traits help to make a brand a positive contagion. 

Originality 

Anyone in any position has an opportunity to take an inventory of what their true expertise is and what they are better at doing than anybody else. If you are good in sales, ask yourself how it manifests, what it looks like for you, and in what aspect of the selling process you are crushing it. 

These are difficult questions to answer because most times, what comes easily to us doesn’t get much value. But if you are able to tune into the things that you are good at and able to share those with people, you’ll have the opportunity to be an original thinker and brand yourself as a thought leader in whatever sliver of space that is. 

Make sure that you share the tips that you have and give feedback to people who are open to it. You begin to build...

Why having a sales trainer is a good idea?

In this episode of the Sales Evangelist podcast, host Donald Kelly will provide four benefits to having one. If you’re ready to save time and elevate your game, listen to why you need a sales trainer to help you achieve greatness!

Why Listen to Donald on Sales Training?

• He has years of experience as a sales representative, sales leader, and individual contributor.

• Based on his three levels of experience within the sales industry, he will share the difference between those who do and don’t receive sales training. 

• Donald shares his experience working with two companies that didn’t provide sales training. He had to figure out how to make sales independently and often struggled to close deals.

• When he started working with a company that provided sales training, he received a $30,000 deal within his first three months of working with them.

• Thanks to the third company investing in a sales training program, they were able to help their representatives improve their process.

Sales Training Brings New Ideas

• A great sales trainer will bring fresh concepts to improve sales. Donald noticed after receiving sales training, he started to come up with different ideas on how he could improve his techniques.

• Companies can work with other organizations to understand what works and is not working within the industry. The ideas they receive help them create a sales process to win over potential customers.

• However, you must work with a sales trainer who is up-to-date with today’s methods and can provide fresh ideas. The new ideas give sales representatives the confidence to apply different techniques. 

A Sales Trainer Helps Improve Your Process

• Remember, sales fundamentals don’t change, but the process will! 

• Don’t make the mistake of working with someone using an outdated sales process. Once again, you need someone skilled in using today's digital methods.

• 50% of potential customers are millennials, so it’s essential to have a sales process that will connect with them.

Sales Trainers Can Help You Save Time

• As a leader, you can’t do everything on your own. You want your sales team to have the proper training, but you can’t provide one-on-one care to them. 

• A sales trainer will help you save time and provide the proper training to your representatives. Listen to Donald explain how a sales trainer can effectively organize and guide your team.

Generate ROI With Sales Training

• A good sales trainer will be able to provide examples of how they have helped other companies.

• Look at their case studies to see how they improved the sales process for others.

• Find a sales trainer that is...

As we move into 2022, there’s no time like the present to set new goals and be prepared for the year ahead. So what is Donald doing to prepare for 2022?  He’s adding three books to his reading list (and you should too.)

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks:

•  Getting past your comfort zone can be a challenge. When it comes to quotas, commissions, and sales targets, many salespeople trap themselves into thinking that they can only do a certain amount. 
• But I’ll ask you this - why can’t you make more? Don’t be your own worst enemy!
• If your company limits your commissions, maybe it's time to find a new job to break through and get to the next level. 

The Billion Dollar Secret by Rafael Badziag:

• This guy interviewed billionaire people and asked them what it takes to make a billion dollars.
• You may not get a billion dollars in sales revenue yourself, but why can’t you get six or seven figures?
• Get past limits you set yourself to unlock more money for you.
• Salespeople reap what they sow - focusing on the ideal customer who makes more significant purchases can be what brings onto the 7-figure level.

The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran:

• Salespeople are super productive between October and December because of the shorter quarter. But why can’t you have this same urgency throughout the year?
• The 12 Week Year breaks down overarching goals into smaller, 12-week-long goals that help you achieve whatever goals you’ve set for yourself.

And now, the bonus book: Donald’s Sales Planner!

• (Yes, this is a shameless plug.) When searching for a sales planner, Donald realized those in the market weren’t what he wanted. 
• Instead of a reactive planner, he wanted one that kept him focused on his goals and moving forward.
• His planner encourages you to focus on tasks that directly correlate to success by utilizing the 12-week concept framework.
• It features a performance tracker at the end of each day or week.
• It is a 3-month planner, promoting focus on each quarter, and features a performance tracker for each day and week to ensure you’re on track to reach quotas.
• Even if you don’t use this planner, plan! Spend 30 minutes each day planning the next day to see more success in the new year. 
• To order the planner for the start of 2022, visit thesalesevangelist.com/salesplanner.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by mParticle.

Are you tired of wading through thousands of open sales positions to find the one perfect for you? Well, look no further. mParticle is one of the leading independent customer data platforms out there, and they’re looking for motivated remote sellers (just like yourself.) 

With top-name clients from Spotify and Burger...

What’s the ideal word count for a successful cold email? To find out, tune into this episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast.

In this episode, I sit down with Jason Kramer to discuss the ins and outs of effective email outreach. Jason, the founder of Cultivize, shares his proven framework for enhancing email effectiveness and driving better results in the sales process. 

Click play to gain actionable insights and strategies in email outreach.

Meet Jason Kramer

• Jason Kramer founded Cultivize, a company dedicated to helping businesses optimize their sales process through nurtured lead generation and effective use of CRM tools.
• With a marketing background and deep sales experience, Jason has pioneered innovative strategies for ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

The Magic Number for a Successful Email

• One of the key takeaways from this episode is the ideal word count for an email. But what is it?
• To find out, tune into this episode at 3:33! This magic number ensures clarity and focus, making your emails more effective.

Effective Cold and Warm Outreach Strategy

• Jason sheds light on different strategies for cold outreach and warm leads. He provides a detailed email framework that includes:
• 1. Introduction Email (8:11 - 9:47): Short, to the point, focusing on the problem you solve.
• 2. Case Study Email (9:55 - 10:54): Provide proof of your solution’s effectiveness.
• 3. Follow-Up Emails (10:55 - 11:47): Checking if the prospect received your previous email.
• 4. Reintroduction Email (12:26 - 12:59): Offering additional value and insights.

Forecasting (and really all parts of selling) grows more successful when you communicate value. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Tom “The ROI Guy” Pisello. As an entrepreneur, speaker, and author of the book Evolved Selling™: Optimizing Sales Enablement in the Age of Frugalnomics, Tom specializes in value to get the most out of your efforts. 

Three big trends characterize the post-pandemic era of sales:

• First, there’s a tremendous amount of sales turnover. While the Great Resignation is not news, sales will struggle to retain top sellers in favor of faster-growing companies. 
• Second, the buyer is changing. They’re in control of the buying process, cautious of the seller, and more economically focused than ever - it’s the decision by risk aversion.
• Third, we’re in an environment where sales is understaffed, you need engagement, the buyer is more challenging to sell to, and predictable revenue is decreasing.

How do we find (and retain) great talent?

• Growing a team will be challenging. Of course, throwing money and benefits at it is part of the equation, but you also must provide intangible benefits like career development to make your position seem worthwhile.
• What is the purpose of your organization or group? And more importantly, how can you include new personnel to feel that they actively work towards that purpose?
• Create an atmosphere of authenticity that suits your personnel to retain talent.
• It’s not just a long game for selling; it’s a long game for hiring.

Overcoming the ice-cold buyers:

• Buyers have incredible access to resources and information than ever, even compared to a few years ago. Sellers used to be in control, but now it's the opposite.
• In that, they have information overload. And great salespeople guide prospects through this challenge. 
• The curated content a salesperson supply is an excellent direction for the next generation of salespeople.
• If you can show that pain is worth addressing (and that you provide a uniquely differentiating solution), you demonstrate a fiscal reason to make a decision.

Tackling the issue of predictability:

• The old way of leveraging spreadsheets and expert resources within the organization no longer works - only 17% approach forecasting scientifically.
• We now have systems that track multiple criteria, but they act in silos. Aggregating data points to develop a more comprehensive and data-driven forecast will yield more accurate results.
• Know what “good” looks like so you know what to focus on. What works to close a deal, and what are the associated steps?
• Visualize patterns to prioritize to understand the correlations and next best actions.

Episode Resources:

• For more great content from Tom, connect with him on LinkedIn or visit evolvedselling.com.
• Listen to Tom’s podcast, The Evolver’s Podcast, and read his book,

When you have sales meetings with your prospects, the last you need is a boring presentation turning people away from your awesome content. You want them to get excited! And on today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Alex Dripchak, relationship manager at Mercer, to give us his inside tips to learn how to lead, run, and organize effective meetings.

Why is Alex so passionate about demystifying sales?

• Alex founded and runs Commence, a college to career development skill program.
• He’s also recently published a book on destigmatizing sales for younger people, which breaks down the positive traits and skills salespeople have.

• With 57 U.S. colleges having an official sales major, the word “sales” is slowly become less of a dirty word. However, there is an entrenched viewpoint people need to overcome.

How can you lead effective meetings in your sales life?

• There are components of meetings, whether virtual or in-person, that just suck. Namely, when people push their own agendas down your throat. So, how instead can you turn that into an effective meeting?
• Structure your meetings around reaching individual goals that lead to the end result.
• Keep yourself dynamic and versatile in responding to the needs of individual clients.
• Ask better questions that lead to higher engagement to encourage the prospect’s voice.
• To save time, create a framework to use for every first call, contract negotiation, or meeting with a specific purpose. Then, tailor that framework for individual clients, so you don’t recreate the wheel each time.

The Three Strategies:

• Shut up and listen
• Develop effective questions
• Rehearse and practice

Of course, what would TSE be without a bonus strategy?

• Understand the subtlety between question and engagement prompts. 
• The default is inertia, or lack of movement. Get your prospects to engage with you.
• For example, Alex responds, “did I answer your question in full” after answering a prospect’s question.
• Not only does this put the onus on himself, but it also encourages prospects to further indicate if they need more explanation. 
• Integrate engagement prompts throughout a presentation or meeting to keep people focused. Don’t set aside 20 minutes for a Q&A that may or may not be needed.
• Stop treating people as roles, prospects, and managers. Think of them as people. They aren’t just invested in the company, they’re invested in themselves. 

Alex’s major takeaway: Especially in complex sales, make sure you spend time proportionally to its importance. If you aren’t bordering on something tedious and tiresome for an important task, you haven’t gone far enough.

To get in contact with Alex, you can find him at his website (which includes links and information to his new book), his coaching website for current college students and recent graduates, or connect with him on

How to Build A Six Figure Income Even If You're Not Great At Closing! 

Ever wonder how you can build a six-figure income even if you’re not great at closing? Closing is one of the most important parts of sales. It is crucial and every word you utter during closing matters. 

Terry Hansen hails from Idaho Falls, Idaho. His plan is simple but he still has impressive sales success stories. He’s worked with many organizations and sales reps around the country and helped them boost their sales. Throughout his sales journey, Terry has observed three bottleneck scenarios in which entrepreneurs and sales professionals can get stuck.

The first is that many struggle to increase their sales and income because they are not getting in front of the right kinds of companies and individuals. They are going at it like opening a phone book and just calling from the top of the list, hoping that someone will buy from them. Once on the phone, they don’t spend time introducing themselves, starting a conversation and making appointments.

The second scenario a bottleneck can occur  is the lack of framework to qualify customers and salespeople end up closing  with people they shouldn’t. This comes from a scarcity mindset. There will always be goals and  sales quotas, that have to be hit. Because of this, many people in sales end up trying to sell to without taking the time to  determine whether they’re selling to their target customer.. Sometimes, salespeople can close a client and later have regrets because they didn’t share their work values. 

The third bottleneck in failing to close well comes from not having the right skills. 

It is each of these three scenarios that can become the speed bumps that keep entrepreneurs from growing their sales. 

The value of prospecting 

Many sales books stress the importance of having closing techniques. You have to be a champion in overcoming objections and resolving concerns to become successful in growing your sales. Another secret to success is becoming an account manager. You need to have stellar customer service, be able to ask for referrals, take good care of your base, and keep your competitors from your clients.

Terry read a variety of books and did everything they suggested but he still wasn’t hitting his quotas and achieving the level of success he wanted. He then had lunch with a great mentor and  was venting about his frustrations. Terry let him know that despite doing the right things, he was still living paycheck to paycheck. His mentor shared an illustration about two salespeople, one  great at appointment setting but lousy with closing and the other, great at closing but bad with appointment setting. The first salesperson could schedule 40 appointments per month but only closed 10% of those appointments, which resulted in only four sales per month. The second salesperson lands four appointments per month. He is an amazing closer and  but can only close deals 50% of the time, making two sales per month. 

Terry understood that he would make  more money by being good at setting appointments and increasing opportunities. Closing is equally important but the analogy taught him he needed to redouble his efforts in making appointments and meeting with people. 

The challenges in prospecting 

Prospecting is uncomfortable, scary, and awkward.  Stereotypes of salespeople being manipulative, talking a lot, listening too little, and using high pressure tactics have to be overcome. Most salespeople don’t want to be perceived as manipulative and try to make relationships a priority. However, there  can be a period of adjustment as they work to avoid reflecting the negative stereotype. 

Salespeople are having a difficult time getting past the gatekeeper and making contact with the decision-maker. Too often they leave multiple voicemails and emails with the hopes of getting a reply but typically, that doesn’t happen. The

Are you ready to boost your sales performance to the next level?

You can start by taking ownership of your professional development. Stop waiting for the company to provide the necessary training and build your sales skills yourself. 

How can you do this?

In this episode of “The Sales Evangelist Podcast,” host Donald Kelly speaks with Matt Doyon, a seasoned sales leader, on the game-changing concept of the 3x3 coaching methodology.

Matt shares his experiences and insights to show how this coaching framework can revolutionize sales training and improve performance. Hear why sales representatives must take ownership of their skill development for tangible results.

Matt Doyon's Background

• During his tenure at Rock Content, Matt Doyon pioneered the "three by three coaching" method. 
• With a focus on empowering individual sellers, Matt's approach emphasizes skill development, accountability, and personal ownership of the coaching process.

The Three-by-Three Coaching Method Explained

• At the core of the three-by-three coaching method lies the belief that individual sellers are the owners of their coaching process. 
• This framework provides guardrails to enhance accountability and drive skill development. 
• The first "three" refers to the skill category - technical, professional, and personal skills.
• These categories encompass core sales skills, professional skills like time management, and personal skills such as emotional intelligence and growth mindset.
• The "par" methodology governs the second "three" by outlining the point of focus, action plan, and results. This empowers sellers to identify specific areas for improvement, create actionable strategies, and measure the tangible impact of their efforts.

Real-life Success Stories

• Matt shares a compelling success story where a struggling sales rep was able to identify and...

We are going old school today. I’m sharing a past episode of my conversation with Tim Riesterer, co-author of The Three Value Conversations, where he shares details of his book. Check it out to learn the conversations you need to be having to master your sales craft.

Meet Tim Riesterer

• Tim is the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Corporate Visions. He has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales and is a co-founder of Customer Message Management.
• Tim also worked with Corporate Visions LLC, where he was the CEO until it was acquired by Corporate Visions in 2008.
• He brings a lot of great insights to a sales conversation, and during this episode, he offers some great thoughts relative to his book.   

Importance of Value Conversations

• Being a sales professional is hard! You have to provide a solution that isn’t complex and too difficult for your prospects to understand.
• How can you do this when you’re stuck at the proposal stage, getting caught up on prices, and unable to build your pipeline?
• By having conversations with prospects that help educate them and bring value to them!

The Three Value Conversations

• Tim breaks down his book in full detail and shares how to overcome common sales challenges to bring value to prospects:
• The time for change: Feeling stuck at the status quo? Learn your prospect’s situation and get them to recognize they need to change before they buy from you.
• Unconsidered need: You already know your prospects' pain points, and so do they. Customers know what their problems are and may believe they have already found their solutions. To get you away from the proposal stage, help them discover their hidden problems.
• Finances: 80% of business deals need to be signed off by a CFO. However, only 10% of most opportunities have a CFO as a contact. Learn how companies make money to get in front of the CEOs and move deals forward.

Whiteboard vs. PowerPoint Presentation

• Most people think it’s a better idea to create these beautiful PowerPoint presentations so others won’t get bored while they’re talking.
• Tim did research on this and found that people actually prefer to watch a simple whiteboard stick figure story than a creative PowerPoint presentation.
• You’ll be surprised how much more credible and engaging you seem by just drawing on a whiteboard with a marker and talking to your audience.

“Value is created when a salesperson’s lips move.” - Tim Riesterer.

Resources

Corporate Vision’s Website 

Tim’s on Twitter @TRiesterer

Get Tim’s book on Amazon 

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

2.  This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at

The sales process seems to be getting more difficult and if you don’t know what you are doing it can be scary. On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald talks with salespeople Ari and Kristen about how to overcome the fear of cold calling. 

What makes cold calling scary?

• No being prepared to have conversations with high-level executives and to overcome their objections. If you learn what the prospect is selling and who they are selling to you will have a better chance.
• The fear of sounding stupid. If you haven’t done your research you will sound like you don’t know what you are talking about. The conversation will be more organic and authentic if you have done research beforehand. 
• The fear of hearing no. Once you accept that a majority of the people you call are going to say no, it is easier to handle it. Reframe your thinking and realize that the prospects who say no aren’t the ones you are looking for. 

How do you effectively do research and still maintain volume?

• As you get better at research, you can do it a lot faster. With experience, you can see common trends in each industry. 
• Have an understanding of what their business is going through, even if you are totally off, a good senior-level leader will appreciate the fact that you did research. 
• Focus on what they sell, who they sell it to, and how they sell it. You don’t need to read an entire annual report to understand what they do. 
• Use all resources available to you including job descriptions. 

What advice do Ari and Kristen have for BDRs who are scared

• You won’t get over the fear of making calls by not making calls. Make as many calls as you can and learn from your mistakes. 
• Practice with a team lead, manager, or AE. Record your role plays and have your manager review them. 
• Let yourself be vulnerable and let yourself make mistakes. 
• No question is a dumb question, if you are having trouble ask for help. 

To hear more from Ari and Kristen, connect with them on LinkedIn. 

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

The sales landscape is totally changing. The way that we are selling is out of line with the way our prospects are buying. You need to adapt to succeed. Imagine if you could use data that could give you insights into when somebody is ready and the challenges they are facing so you can fine-tune your message specifically toward them. Deep Sales, a part of the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, can help you do just that. Check it out yourself and get a 60-day free trial at Linkedin.com/TSE.

This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Are you tired of a digital workspace cluttered with notes, folders, files, and half-filled spreadsheets? (Not that we’re speaking from personal experience.) Luckily, we’ve found the solution.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Scratchpad creates a streamlined workflow that allows everyone to be a little more productive each day without the hassle of updating a database with whatever info you can find. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Calendly.

The power of scheduling automation has never been more critical than it is today. Your sales team needs a solution to easily meet with prospects at the right time, every time. With calendly, you can turn more meetings into revenue, accelerate your sales cycle, and increase your win rate when you choose to...

The modern seller is exceptional in their industry and knows what to do to add value to prospects, keep a full pipeline, and close more deals. But how exactly can we be modern sellers? In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by sales consultant Amy Franko to discuss what she believes makes modern sellers stand out in today’s market.  

The modern seller excels in three things:

• Their value is an essential part of the conversation; they look to be a part of the equation that closes a deal. 
• They are seen as difference makers in the eyes of their clients and others in the industry.
• Prospects and buyers believe modern sellers have a competitive advantage over the other sellers in the industry.

Anyone can be a modern seller:

• Understand the makeup of your territory and what you’ve been assigned to sell. Then, take a strategic view of what makes up your territory.
• Determine if you have a business plan for your inventory, revenue, and profit.
• The hallmark of a modern seller is the ability to take something complex and boil it down to something simple. Set goals and milestones that indicate if you’re on the right trajectory.
• Understand your ideal client profile and know what is important to the people you pursue. 

Focus on building relationships.

• Once you clearly understand your verticals, you can focus on building relationships with decision-makers.
• Connect with one or two people a week to something of potential value to them, whether that’s introducing them to another contact or sharing articles and information. 

Read Amy’s book, The Modern Seller, to dive into the five capabilities any sales professional should build in themselves and their teams. For more information and content from Amy, connect with her on LinkedIn or visit amyfranko.com. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Are you tired of a digital workspace cluttered with notes, folders, files, and half-filled spreadsheets? (Not that we’re speaking from personal experience.) Luckily, we’ve found the solution.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Scratchpad creates a streamlined workflow that allows everyone to be a little more productive each day without the hassle of updating a database with whatever info you can find. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com. 

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d...

A good salesperson knows how to nurture “No” into “Yes”. Hearing No in the sales world is common regardless of what you sell or to whom you’re selling to. When you hear a no, you can’t just back down and give up. You need to get back on track and fix it. 

Craig Klein is based in Houston and he works in the energy business. He used to make deals with large oil companies and the deals would take a year or more to close. With that period of time and the level of complexity of every sale, he sought help from others. 

He began Sales Nexus to address that inefficiency. Today, his company helps other businesses to grow and aims to help everyone in the community give their fair share of making their community a better place to live. 

No is difficult to hear 

Craig was trained by Dave Blanchard for awhile. Dave does executive training and he talks a lot about our need to be right. Humans as we are, once the idea is planted in our head and we start dreaming about it, the idea becomes real. If that idea is taken away, we end up getting hurt. 

It is the same with sales. We meet our clients with big plans for closing the deal but when we turn up, we are told no and that hurts. There’s a lot of burnout in the sales position because sales reps tend to make many phone calls and end up getting No. The thing about it is that when we hear No, we tend to take a step back and sometimes, we don’t ever make a step forward again. 

Nurture “No” into “Yes”

Salespeople need to learn to be a bit aware of themselves and to focus on the customers' needs, not on what they need. It’s also important to realize that sometimes, the prospects say “No” not because they don’t want to do business with you. They may be tied to a contract to your competitor or now may not be a good time. 

The primary way to nurture “No” into “Yes” is to have a sales strategy that makes you stay engaged with the prospects and build relationships over time. #Relationships

It’s not efficient to just focus on who you can close this month, it’s also about focusing on the people you can close deals with in due time. 

Stay in touch 

For every No you get, you make sure to take their name, their email address, their phone number, and keep it somewhere safe. You always have to write down everything you have learned from this customer including their budget cycle and their needs. Then, you create a system that allows you to keep connecting with time and getting them engaged. Check them out every once in a while and ask them how they’re doing. Let them know that you’re there. 

Meanwhile, you can find somebody else who is ready right now. Just keep nurturing and keep moving forward. 

Change your mindset that you will close every deal you have because that won’t happen. Instead, think of every appointment as a way of establishing a relationship based on trust. Resonate to them that you came not just to close but to understand what their needs are. 

Salespeople are like doctors. Physicians don’t sell their service in a way that’s too in your face. They diagnose their patients and examine what is something wrong with them. They then show you the patients how they can help with the problem. 

The same is true for salespeople. We examine their problem and we show them how we can help. You don’t sell the product the moment you meet them. You warm them up and figure out what they need first before presenting your options. 

The automated email drip campaign 

Craig’s Sales Nexus Platform uses an automated email drip campaign in order to stay in touch with their potential customers. They take every lead and put it into their system and into an...

To some people, building outreach sequences for prospects is easy. However, for most people, that isn’t the case. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the co-creator of the Money Sequence, Miranda Morrison, to explain how she built a sequence that doubled engagement upon implementation.

Sequencing, especially in tech sales, is critical.

• Before the money sequence, Miranda’s company had email segmentation for many audiences depending on their interests, position, and what information would be most pertinent to them.
• What made it successful was the combination of ‘spray and pray’ with highly personalized and individualized approaches. 
• Personalizing later in the sequence (by reference to an article or important piece) shows a degree of research that is most effective without spending too much time.
• Personalization at scale is the best approach. However, there are times a more personalized email is more appropriate, which is often later in the sales cycle.

What metrics were they focused on?

• The goal for each SDR was to book ten meetings each month, and Miranda found that short and sweet messaging was well-opened but infrequently responded to. 
• Moving to a more personalized sequence later in the cycle resulted in a larger shift.
• After converting to the money sequence, Miranda adjusted her copy to be more bulleted and more personalized that presented the same information, but the tone as a whole was catered more toward the job title of the prospect.

The Money Sequence - 18 steps over 28 days:

• Always start with a phone call and ensure you have the correct phone number. Call and email on day one. 
• Day Two - Phone call again
• Day Four - Phone call with an email. With this email, Miranda utilizes Drift for videos. Putting a face to a name is the best way to separate yourself from the pack in an email format.
• In her video, she gave insight into what the platform looked like so the prospect wasn’t entering a meeting completely blind.
• If there isn’t an opportunity for personalization, the video still serves as a source of information that people would open.
• Steps 5-8 are phone calls and a LinkedIn request
• On Day 10, she manually replies on the same thread as her video message.
• Step 11 (Day 13) - Another phone call
• Her other best email? Coffee on me. Coffee chat sessions with ideal clients offering a gift card in exchange for taking a look.

Miranda’s advice to someone scared of reaching out and facing rejection? She used to be terrified of it. But most of the time, the people you’re contacting are used to it and know what’s happening. If you provide genuine value, there is nothing wrong with how you reach out.  Maybe the money sequence isn’t perfect for your industry. If not, find what works and stick with it.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Are you tired of a digital workspace cluttered with notes, folders, files, and half-filled spreadsheets? (Not that we’re speaking from personal...

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a handy tool to help you find prospects, but if you’re not using it right, you won’t be able to target the ones who have the say in closing a deal. How can you learn to use it to get in touch with C-suite executives? Find out in this episode with my guests Mike and John Murphy, the father-and-son duo of Text Tonality, and learn their three-step strategy for using LinkedIn.

Where Did Their Passion for LinkedIn Come From?

• After struggling to find new clients, John turned to his son Mike for help. Mike had a unique strategy that helped his father find high-stakes clients in no time.
• Thanks to Mike’s method, he and his father are now the proud owners of Text Tonality.

Understanding What Filters Are

• When you first use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you’ll notice the many different filters within the tool. Mike noticed that people usually use the filters incorrectly in two different ways: either using too many or not enough filters.
• There are a certain number of filters you can use to help you find the right clients. If you DM Mike, he gives you the code to his free training to help you learn this trick.

What To Say to C-Suite Executives When You Find Them

• John shares that to get your message out correctly, you first have to position yourself in front of them.
• They have to see how you can help them with their problem. If you can’t get them to see this, then they’re not going to spend 30 minutes on the phone with you.
• Start with the big problem they have to intrigue them with a solution.

Sending LinkedIn Messages Without Spamming

• John and Mike share that it’s best not to send messages within LinkedIn connections. They share how sending Text Tonality messages works better after waiting a day after sending a connection request.
• Mike also shares how probing can help get prospects to speak to you more after they say no thank you to your first message.
• If you’re struggling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, consider working with John and Mike at Text Tonality to learn more of their secrets.

“Don't be afraid to follow up. People won’t get mad at you. They don't mind as long as you do it right." - John Murphy. 

"You want to think about how there is an element of numbers to this. A key performance indicator that we look for is a 25% acceptance rate, which means I'm targeting the right people and my profile is resonating." - Mike Murphy. 

Resources

Learn more LinkedIn secrets at Text Tonality 

Connect with John and Mike on LinkedIn

Don’t forget about the Sales Navigator Secrets Code: wealth24

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

2.   This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.

3.  This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.

Improve your...

In the sales world, the mantra "do more with less" often feels more like a challenge than a guiding principle. In this episode, I chat with Anthony Nava, Senior SDR Manager at Crunchbase. 

With years of dedicated service and experience, Anthony reveals the innovative strategies that have helped his team thrive despite tight resources. Discover how Anthony's blend of empathy, tech-savviness, and strategic thinking can transform your sales team's performance.

Meet Anthony Nava

• He leads the sales efforts for the team, contributing significantly to their success through various innovative and strategic approaches. 
• Anthony has navigated the company's various transitions and challenges, leveraging tools like AI to maximize efficiency and performance. 
• Before joining Crunchbase, Anthony amassed valuable skills and knowledge that have made him an effective leader and a critical asset to the organization.

Embracing AI to Boost Sales Efficiency

• When faced with limited resources, Anthony leverages AI tools to drive efficiency and maintain high performance. Essential tools mentioned include:
• Attention AI: Helps in call listening, note-taking, and integrating insights into Salesforce, saving time for SDRs and allowing for focused coaching.
• Crunchbase Insights: Using AI to determine accounts in a buying position, providing a strategic advantage by identifying potential deals before competitors.

Adjusting Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

• Anthony discusses the critical pivot toward refining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to enhance sales efficacy. 
• His team, through data analysis and collaboration with marketing, identified key decision-makers who had a high impact on deal closures:
• Finance Involvement: Around 80% of closed deals involved finance personnel from the early stages.

Time management is often considered one of the essential skills to master in the professional world. As one of the resources we never seem to have enough of, time certainly is a resource to use to the best of our abilities. But today’s guest, Antonio Thornton, argues that time management doesn’t exist. How does it not? Check out today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist to find out!

Why does time management not exist? 

• How many hours in the day do you have? 24. Just like everyone else. You can’t manage time, but you can manage yourself according to time.
• Managing yourself within time comes down to three main criteria: monitoring, monetizing, and maximizing your time.

Monitoring your time:

• Most people have no idea what they’re doing. Most people confuse busy with productive - they do not equate.
• Productive does not equate to profitable. 
• The productivity paradox: People tend to focus on tasks that make them feel productive, even if they aren’t profitable.
• Cleaning out your inbox or desk and shuffling papers might keep you busy, but those tasks aren’t productive.

Monetizing your time:

• There is no difference between each other’s times. Most of us spend time on activities that don’t generate revenue - responding to email, completing training, and updating websites. While these things might be necessary, they aren’t RGAs: revenue-generating activities.
• It doesn’t matter how much work you put into these activities; you won’t make any money no matter how much time you contribute.
• Learning and training are productive tasks, and research is a productive activity that can inform you before a sales call, but those tasks in of themselves aren’t profitable. If you only do those tasks, you will not make a single dollar.
• Whether you’re a salesperson or entrepreneur, there’s only one thing that makes money in sales: getting an offer in front of people.

Maximizing your time:

• The difference between a salesperson who generates $60,000 versus $6 million is all in what they do each day.
• Ask yourself how you can leverage what you’re doing to create an exponential result.
• Find the tasks and projects you can accomplish that lead to a higher amount of RGA.

Antonio’s final takeaway? Time is our most valuable commodity. To have a great life, moderate, monetize, and maximize your time. To get in touch with him, visit his company website or send an email to time@timebank.gps.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here:

How to build a sales engine that will land massive deals – repeatedly

A sales engine is a great strategy to increase your number of closed deals. As a sales manager, how do you build a sales engine to land massive deals for your team? 

Nigel Green works with  executive investors and sales leaders of companies to help them scale up faster and smarter. As a sales advisor, he works behind the scenes to ensure that leaders are hitting their targets at the end of the year. Nigel understands that if you don’t relentlessly pursue your craft and coach your team well, you won’t be in the game very long. 

The revenue harvest

Nigel coined the  term, Revenue Harvest, in this sales leaders almanac containing the fruits of 15 years of experience. He’s been helping various companies build their sales team faster so investors have a chance to grow their private equity. Sales leaders in this kind of environment need to act fast.

When Nigel moved to a farm, an hour outside of the city, he was able to observe the farming community. He realized that leading a sales team was very similar to tending crops. Both can face circumstances that are outside of our control. The farmer knows he’s got to produce a crop but looking at the year, he wonders when it’s going to be too hot or too cold, when it's going to rain, or not. These are elements a farmer can’t control but he can’t be paralyzed by the uncontrollables. He’s got to get to work. 

In Revenue Harvest, Nigel shows sales leaders how to yield results year-in and year-out that are consistent.  Nigel has broken this down into seven principles a sales leader can follow. 

Create a plan

The first principle in the Revenue Harvest helps sales leaders understand what a plan really is and how to do it well. Most sales people don’t have a plan. They’ve been given a plan by their leader but they haven’t pushed back in areas where it’s not realistic.  Leaders need buy-in from the influencers on their team and it needs to be implemented in a time period that will be effective, before the first quarter. Sales leaders have a responsibility to not only assign the revenue and targets of the plan to the sales rep, but also to the customers.

The plan also has to account for the metrics that are important to the business. Only the sales leader can make sure that everybody on the team is spending their time well and score-carding. The leader needs to incentivize the team in a way that is aligned with the CEO or COO’s goals. Oftentimes, time isn’t a salesperson’s friend but with planning, time can be used more efficiently. 

Planning for adversity

The truth is, most people don’t plan for adversity.  We plan the year assuming that everything is going to be perfect. We don’t plan for the person who is going to quit or go on maternity leave and we don’t plan for competitors to launch a new product. Most sales leaders don’t expect adversity but the truth is, it can come when we least expect it. 

A real plan accounts for adversity. The first step in planning is to ask when the budgest season starts. The budget season is a common language in private equity companies. This season typically falls in September or October. By that time, the heads of the company want to see a completed budget expenses revenue target, if new reps need to be hired, etc.. As a proactive leader, you want to go to the heads of the company to get a sense of what it is they want you to accomplish, what resources they’re going to give you throughout the year, and negotiate if it doesn’t sound feasible. Sales leaders have the responsibility of making sure that adequate resources are in play to hit the numbers.

Positioning 

Positioning is...

Not all deals come to a close, so when a deal doesn’t close, how long should you wait before re-engaging the prospect? David Perry speaks in length about closing in today’s episode. 

• David is a big fan of value selling. 
• Value selling is part of the training that enterprise sellers can go through. It is a value-based approach which is a seemingly simple framework on the surface but with a lot of power behind it. 
• Looking at frameworks is helpful when conversing with other salespeople or whoever is involved in the deal. 
• The more you look at the framework, the more you are able to see the things that are taking priority in the organization at a given moment. 
• There are top three reasons why deals don’t close: 

• The lack of access to power
• Timing
• The lack of articulation of value or tying it to the key master sector business issue
• Sales reps, however, have a whole array of reasons why deals don’t close. 
• Value selling is very difficult since every customer has their own view and perspective of what value is. You need to be able to translate that value for it to be considered value for the overall organization. 
• Before re-engaging the prospect, you will want to make sure that the team has a clear idea of what the gap is. Brainstorm with the team about the issues and forecast the additional risks that you will have when you re-engage with a prospect. 
• All the issues with the deal must be discussed with the rest of the team no matter how minute those issues may be. 
• When you are having a problem re-engaging the prospect even when the deal is almost at the end of the line, it’s good to take a step back and identify the bad signal and whether it’s the lack of access to power or something else. 
• At the end of the day, your first step is to call or email the prospect to try and get back on their calendar. 
• Chapter 11 of David’s book, Game of Sales: Lessons Learned Working at Adobe, Google, and IBM, lists all the value sources that you can use as hooks for re-engaging and catching the attention of your prospects. 
• With huge deals and with so much at stake, it’s normal to feel like the deal is dead several times over. 
• Reaching an impasse doesn’t mean that you have to let go of the deal. 
• It’s important to always be prepared no matter who you meet, especially if you are meeting with the executives. Make sure to learn what you can before the arranged meeting. Identify their style and make sure to adapt and adjust. 
• Make sure to highlight the risks of the deal to the executives. Transparency is important. 

“Prospecting: When a Deal Doesn’t Close, How Long Should I Wait Before Re-Engaging the Prospect?” episode resources

Follow David Perry on LinkedIn. You can also check out his book, Game of Sales: Lessons Learned Working at Adobe, Google, and IBM on Amazon or get the PDF here. You can check more resources here. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

Try Skipio at

You want to speak with a company's high stakeholders but have no idea how to reach them. Prospecting is always a challenge for sellers, but it’s easier when you use this powerful sales technique that’ll get through to anyone. 

In this episode, I chat with Stu Heinecke, a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, marketer, and author, about using contact marketing for prospecting.  Listen to the secrets he used with his sales teams to reach prospective clients and close more deals.

Stu Heinecke’s Background

• Stu Heinecke, a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, discovered the power of “Contact Marketing” early in his career, earning him two Hall of Fame nominations as a marketer.
• He now hosts and writes for the How To Get A Meeting with Anyone podcast and blog.
• Additionally, Heinecke is the founder and president of Contact, a company specializing in contact marketing.

Importance of Business Cards

• When was the last time you saw someone pull out a business card? Thanks to the digital world we live in today, it's rare.
• However, Stu shares why it's essential to go back to the basics to help clients remember who you are.

Upgrading Business Cards to Devices

• Say goodbye to business cards and hello to engagement devices. The regular business cards aren't impressing people anymore, especially those with long titles. So, instead of giving them a card, you provide them with an engagement device. 
• An example of this is Kevin Mitnick's card. The card does not contain logos, words, or descriptions. It speaks for what the company does. 
• The goal is to make business cards serve as visual metaphors for your best work. They still fit in their pocket, but they use them differently, and not only when they give you a call.

How Does Contact Marketing Work

Meetings serve an important purpose in business so we must learn how to run better meetings to avoid the feeling that we are wasting our time. 

Reshan Richards is a career educator who launched an app — targeted for use in schools — that ultimately became a software business. He has seen a significant intersection between things that are effective in both business practices and the classroom. Together with Steve Valentine, also a career educator, he is collaborating to articulate and pinpoint the specific moves that can be borrowed from the teaching profession and implemented in business. Steve has studied leadership and its application in order to work with young people and help them understand basic leadership. 

Meeting mistakes

The problems that plague corporate meetings often mirror those of ineffective classrooms. Primarily, the transmission of information isn’t right for the audience who is meant to understand it. People often go back to their defaults or their own experiences to measure what is right.

If, for example, you get called into a meeting where one person is doing all the talking or all the work, it isn’t a good use of anyone’s time. It wasn’t likely called for the service of the people who are meant to share the information. In education, a difference exists between the transmission of information and the building of knowledge. 

Reshan and Steve believe that the best kinds of meetings are those that leave people feeling like they couldn’t possibly have had the same great experience without the meeting. In other words, there’s no substitute for the meeting, and people are glad they went. 

Unfortunately, that’s a rare occurrence in both business and education.

If you think about the amount of time and effort it takes to secure a face-to-face meeting with a customer or client, it’s important to be respectful of that person’s time, energy and attention. Never leave him doubting why he was called into that room. #BetterMeetings

Bad meetings

Reshan’s company, Explain Everything, worked with a Fortune 100 company to help them run better training for new-to-title employees. As he evaluated their structure, he realized that 90 percent of the time during a week-long seminar was spent sitting watching PowerPoint presentations. The other 10 percent of the time was application of what they learned. The following week, those employees were sent into the field. 

The meetings were efficient and easy to plan, but retention was low, so he worked with them to rethink their time together. He encouraged the company to think about how it might best utilize the experts in the meetings as well as how the information should be delivered. 

They also found that they were teaching concepts on Monday that the employees wouldn’t get to apply until Thursday. The distance between the lesson and the application meant that the employees had to learn the information twice. 

For Steve, the very best meetings are those that are allowed to be messy and those that permit people to drop their status. He measures the quality of a meeting by the extent to which people are treated as learners and the extent to which they actually learn something they didn’t know when they walked in. 

That information doesn’t have to appear as a revelation. Rather it can simply be the chance to build knowledge together in the temporal context they share. 

Internal meetings

Planning a great meeting looks exactly the same as planning a great lesson or learning experience. Reshan and Steve think in terms of three motions, or phases. 

1. Before the meeting
2. During the meeting
3. After the meeting
...

If you’re not using LinkedIn to build up the front of your sales pipeline, let this be your sign to take the leap. In this episode, our host Donald Kelly has an info-packed conversation with Megan Killion, the powerhouse behind MKC Agency. You probably already know content creation isn’t just about sharing articles and posting pics. Listen in to hear proven strategies for connecting with the right audience and starting quality conversations.

Content Strategy

• You can’t just “post and ghost”! Your engagement is necessary.
• Megan cautions against the use of LinkedIn pods that automate engagement using bots. Going this route won’t help you gain traction with the people you want to reach.
• Her number one tip for aspiring creators on LinkedIn is to use polls. LinkedIn’s algorithm results in more engagement with polls than other kinds of posts, but you have to be strategic about them.

 Identify Ideal Customers

• When you market to everyone, you market to no one. 
• Use your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) to narrow down the list of people you’re interested in reaching with your content.
• Learn your buyers’ pain points, demographics, values, attitudes, etc. Get as niche as you can.
• Your ideal audience should be behind you in knowledge by 3-5 years. These people will find your content engaging without feeling like it’s above or below them.

 Setting Up Your Process

• Make a list of 5-10 subjects that you are an expert on. Within each subject, identify specific teachable topics. This is going to form the basis of the content you create (at least at first). 
• “Niche down,” just like when you define your ideal customer. Get increasingly more specific about what you know well and speak on those things.
• Define who you are. Identify your values and the values of your business. Know what makes you unique and capture that...

Most sellers take the time to master their pitching or objection handling skills. However, do you ever stop to take the time to master your active listening skills?

Join me in this episode with my guest, Zach Bradshaw, President of Business Development at Brightkey, as we deep dive into the nuances of active listening in sales.

Introduction: Meet Zach Bradshaw

• Zach is the Vice President of Business Development at Brightkey, a company that specializes in providing managed services to businesses. 
• His success stems from the many failures and obstacles he faced throughout his professional journey. 
• Overcoming rejected proposals and poor approaches has allowed him to hone his ability to listen to clients. 
• Now, he guides his team to approach client interactions without preconceived notions and to focus on genuinely understanding clients' problems in order to address them. 

The Power of Listening in Sales

• Recently, I conducted a LinkedIn poll and discovered that one of the most important sales skills is active listening. 
• However, this doesn’t just involve using your ears to understand consumers' pain points.
• Zach shares that a seller must also take the time to understand the unsaid and read between the lines, which is a crucial aspect of active listening.

Preparing for Effective Sales Conversations

• Always prepare yourself before engaging in sales meetings. Zach advises sales reps to conduct comprehensive research on their prospects to gain a deep understanding of their businesses. 
• Analyzing CRM data and reviewing past interactions allows you to anticipate potential challenges and tailor your marketing approach accordingly. This preparation sets the stage for a more meaningful and productive dialogue with potential clients.

The Role of Team Collaboration and Continuous Learning

Many salespeople are bombarded with countless tech tools to make their lives easier. But what if one tool helped unify your department’s sales process? On today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the CEO and co-founder of Scratchpad, Pouyan Salehi, to discuss how sellers can utilize Scratchpad to eliminate their sales stack drag.

Salespeople have many tools at their disposal but often rely on their own systems.

• People are digitally duct-taping a workspace together to do the job they need rather than using a unified system.
• This means sellers can spend hours each week updating the next steps for management to view, creating a massive waste of time. 
• Scratchpad unifies sellers’ efforts by creating a space for sellers to work. Athletes have gyms, artists have studios, and salespeople have Scratchpad - a workspace for them.

The end goal? Eliminate sales stack drag.

• For salespeople, drag is an important concept; it’s the burden on salespeople that prevents them from doing their best.
• This could be due to many reasons, from the available tech stack and new sales methodologies to product information and new competitors.
• Salespeople have to hit quotas and solve these challenges that create drag in their work.

Sellers, on average, only spend 40% of their time selling. 

• Scratchpad gives you back time in your day, helping you reinvest that time into efforts that contribute to your bottom line. 
• It helps sales teams share client information to make selling seamless, eliminating additional conversations to verify information already gathered.
• Scratchpad was built with the seller in mind because If they love it, they’re more likely to encourage adoption to leadership. 
• After adoption, sales leaders often realize Scratchpad doesn’t just increase sales performance but also employee morale.

From individual usage to departmental adoption:

• Everyone processes information differently, and that level of flexibility should exist within a team’s space. 
• Scrathpad’s deliberate customization meets salespeople where they are and is built to go anywhere with you.
• It removes bouncing between tabs, uniting everything you need in just one place.
• The concept of a new tool is thought of as another thing sellers have to learn. But anyone can start seeing value with Scratchpad after just a few minutes of use.

Visit scratchpad.com to sign up and get started using this helpful platform, and connect with Pouyan on LinkedIn for more great content.

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The Great Resignation has become the Great Reshuffle, meaning it can be difficult for sales professionals like you to find leads and close deals. Luckily, Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is here for you!

Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is the only tool that uses real-time alerts and up-to-date insights to help you know when prospects are ready to buy. And, with over 30 advanced filters, sales professionals can quickly find genuine leads with the intent to purchase.

Gain the advantage of accurate, quality lead generation data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can get a 60-day free trial of Sales Navigator at www.LinkedIn.com/TSE. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that...

Have you ever noticed how hostile the world is today?

You go to turn on the news, and the reporter is discussing the latest shootings or the war in Russia. When you scroll through social media, you notice the many arguments people are having over the slightest disagreement.

What about your inner self? Do you find your mental health in a primarily negative state? When one bad thing happens to you, do you fixate on it all day?

With so much negativity around, how can you change it to thrive in a more positive environment?

In this episode of "The Sales Evangelist Podcast," host Donald Kelly speaks with Anthony Iannarino, the author of the book "The Negativity Fast." Tune in to discover the health risks of negativity, the benefits of gratitude, and why you need to grab a copy of this book.

Negativity Fast Background

• After the shutdown and people returning to their regular routines, Anthony noticed how everyone around had a negative aurora around them. Everybody complained about everything, no matter how minor the issue was.
• Due to this, he conducted research on why humans are more pessimistic and struggle with staying positive. In his book, you’ll discover the scientific reasons for negativity and how people can switch to becoming more positive.
• One thing he noticed while researching and writing the book was that he was writing it for the wrong group of people. He believes mindfulness and knowing the importance of mental health should be taught to children in elementary schools. Doing so will help them remain optimistic as they become adults, and they can struggle less when it comes to their mental health.

Why Are People So Negative?

• Anthony discusses how many people operate on negativity bias in his book. This prevents them from seeing the positives in their lives.
• He also shares the four elements of negativity bias:
• Negative potency: Negative things register more emotionally than positive things.
• Steeper negative gradients: The closer you get to an adverse event, the more damaging it feels to you.

Gatekeepers: the infamous villains of the sales world. Regardless of industry, most high-level executives employ some type of executive assistant or secretary to serve as a gatekeeper. A necessary part of the professional world, these assistants act as a filter that forces salespeople to maintain high standards and thoughtful targeting to pass. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald interviews Natasha Bowles, founder of Natasha Bowles Professional Staffing Agency, to learn more about how salespeople should interact with gatekeepers for more successful results. 

The main priority of an executive assistant: securing the executive’s time. 

• If Natasha didn’t protect her executive’s time, salespeople (among others) would occupy all their time.
• That doesn’t mean salespeople are bad. But it does mean she ensures the salespeople she lets pass are prepared and offer a product or service genuinely beneficial to her executive’s company.
• Executives receive 250-1000 emails every day. She is a necessary filter that helps executives find time to do their jobs. 
• Therefore, as salespeople, you must convince both the executive and the gatekeeper that you’re worthy of their time.

Get past the virtual inbox - Natasha’s tips for email outreach:

• Natasha automatically discards anything that looks like an email blast- emails containing no information about the company and just discuss the sender’s product.
• To get to the executive, show initiative, research the target company and show how you can help solve a problem.
• It’s not just personalizing the email; it’s demonstrating understanding of the target and what you can offer them.

It’s basic human decency, but still applicable: be respectful.

• Gatekeepers will notes a dismissive or demanding salesperson. And, if they need that product or service, the gatekeeper will look elsewhere.
• In 2018, Natasha was tasked with finding an alarm system, water cooler, and other aspects for a new building.
• The man she was looking to buy from refused to talk to her, insisting on interacting with her executive at every stage of the buying journey.
• Natasha ultimately ended the partnership with his company because he refused to work with her, and she found a different supplier.
• Salespeople have a long-standing perception that they need to speak with the decision-maker. But the decision-maker doesn’t necessarily mean the top-level executive. It’s whoever is in charge of the decision (I know, it’s shocking.)

Develop (and maintain) a relationship with the gatekeeper to be effective.

• Find a balance between demonstrating product knowledge without going over people’s heads.
• Don’t explain hyper-specific nuances, but emphasize what sets your product apart from the competition.
• Maintaining a relationship is just as important as the initial sale. Remember, executives meet with 5-15 people each day. And executive assistants interact with dozens more.
• If you don’t interact with the gatekeeper until it’s time to upsell a year later, that gatekeeper will not remember you. 
• Maintain the relationship, stay in touch, and develop a personal connection to ensure the gatekeeper reaches out when the time comes.

Connect with her on LinkedIn (at natashabeingww) to learn more about her experiences. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in

Are you ready to uncover the secrets of successful sales strategies in a highly competitive landscape?

In this episode of "The Sales Evangelist Podcast," host Donald Kelly chats with guest Claudio Meidler, an experienced sales professional working as an account executive for Google's German team in Dublin. Claudio shares his insights on navigating the competitive landscape and securing the share of the wallet when selling to enterprise or mid-level organizations.

Tune in to this enriching episode and gain a fresh perspective on navigating the modern sales landscape with confidence and finesse.

Building Credibility and Delivering Value

• Claudio emphasizes the importance of standing out in terms of service level and delivering value beyond the competition.
• He discusses the significance of conducting thorough research before approaching potential clients understanding their needs, pain points, and industry-specific knowledge.
• Claudio highlights the effectiveness of providing insights, market knowledge, predictions, case studies, and testimonials early in the conversation to build immediate credibility and trust.

Unconventional Approaches to Success

• Donald and Claudio discuss breaking away from traditional sales tactics and how being direct and tactful can yield powerful results.
• Claudio discusses the importance of addressing unspoken concerns and objections, expressing understanding and empathy, and using direct language to navigate potential hesitations or objections from the buyer's side.
• The role-play between the two demonstrates how this approach can open up dialogues and lead to deeper, more fruitful conversations.

Creating a Lasting Impact

• Claudio shares his perspective on delivering service without expecting an immediate return on investment, following up on bold questions, and continually striving to exceed the client's expectations.
• He emphasizes the value of constant learning and adaptability in the sales process, where leveraging unconventional techniques can...

The Sales Manager's Guide To Greatness! 

You may have been a top salesperson, and still continue to be, but that doesn’t always qualify you to be a top sales manager. Both have very different skill sets and require mastery in very different skills. 

Kevin F. Davis is the author of the book The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: Ten Essential Strategies for Leading your Team to the Top. Kevin started his career in sales at an entry level position and worked hard to become a general manager. His new role gave him the opportunity to train and coach 250 sales people and directly manage the sales team and sales managers. 

He also founded TopLine Leadership, Inc. where they have offered sales coaching and leadership workshops to corporate clients and groups of sales managers for the last 27 years. Other books Kevin has written include Getting into your Customer’s Head and Slow Down, Sell Faster.

On writing the book 

There aren’t a lot of books written about how to effectively manage sales people so Kevin wrote his books to help fill this void in the marketplace and to offer support that was sorely lacking. Research has shown that up to 80% of all sales managers in North America don’t get the training they need in order to be successful. Their company may not have a budget for it or they offer management training that is too general to solve the specific problems of their sales managers. 

Not enough time 

Managers have to spend the majority of their work day answering emails, dealing with interruptions, going to meetings, and answering questions from their sales team. With this constant activity, they are too overwhelmed the distractions to coach their salespeople.    

The self-serving bias  

Most salespeople think they’re better than they actually are. We tend to overestimate our capabilities and underestimate our weaknesses. The result is a sales team who think they’re better than they are and don’t fully appreciate the mistakes they may be making. Because they aren’t being coached, they don’t know they’re making mistakes and end up perpetuating existing problems. Unfortunately, salespeople are getting a lot less feedback from overtaxed sales managers. Because they are so busy, managers tend to wait for a sales rep to come and ask questions instead of being proactive. An opportunity to coach comes from approaching the sales team with critical questions throughout the entire sales process. Kevin points out that the salespeople on the team who appear to be  the least needy are probably the people who need coaching the most.

Great salespeople don’t always make great sales managers. #SalesTruths

According to Kevin, a great sales rep who has mastered  their sales role inhibits that individual’s success as a sales manager. As sellers, we love to take charge of a situation and work it through to have a successful outcome. Once you become a sales manager it can be tempting to jump into a conversation a sales rep is having with their client. This can send a message to the team you don’t trust their process and destroys an opportunity for valuable coaching following that meeting. Kevin further added that the sales people who report to you are your Number One customers so you should care about how to make them the most effective they can be. 

From being task-oriented to people-oriented

One attribute of a great sales leader is recognizing the importance of sharing time between tasks and coaching their team. Sales managers need to be able to focus on their...

Sales and marketing teams? Sometimes, they clash like siblings, which tends to hold companies back from hitting their goals. 

Getting every single seller in the company to have that CEO-level drive? That's a whole other challenge.

Is there a way to tackle both of these sales challenges with one simple move? My guest, Garrett Mehrguth, sales and marketing expert and founder of Directive, says yes. 

He's here to break down how getting sales and marketing on the same page can actually empower individual sellers to think and act like the CEO. Tune in to hear how this alignment can make some serious magic happen.

Meet Garrett Mehrguth

• Garrett Mehrguth founded Directive in 2013, which is the largest independent B2B performance marketing agency in the world. Today, Directive boasts a diverse team of more than 130 professionals, located around the world, including the USA, LATAM, Canada, and London, servicing brands like Dropbox, Wiz, AWS, and Gong.
• He believes true company growth only happens through sales and marketing team collaboration. When both teams ask questions and follow up, they can start thinking outside the box to find leads and close deals.

Collaboration Foundation

• What’s the first step to get sales and marketing teams working together? Garrett says sellers need to start attending the weekly marketing meetings.
• Don’t just say you need to spend more time cold-calling to meet quota; the meeting may help you learn how to perform better with inbound sales and develop solution-selling skills.
• Not only do you have to understand your product, but you also have to understand your customer and articulate the product’s value to them.
• Sellers who attend the marketing meeting will be able to bridge the gap between how both teams convey value to leads in their messages.

Paid Social vs. Search in the AI World

• Garrett suggests considering paid search as someone in marketing and paid social as someone in sales to understand the difference.
• He also shares how sales reps tend to believe that paid search ads are better due to their win rates. 
• However, you could probably become the seller of the year by learning how to do more value and solution selling from outbound and paid social methods.

Sales & Marketing Account-Based Selling

• Garrett built his business based on sales and marketing teams using the same account list. Six years ago, with 10,000 accounts to reach, he directed his sales and marketing teams to use account-based selling.
• He shares why he is so passionate about this sales method and why sellers do themselves a disservice by not being obsessed with the product.

“You should know the product better than anyone. The second you become the most obsessed person with the product is the second you get promoted, and the second you start hitting quota.” - Garrett Mehrguth.

Resources

Connect with Garrett on LinkedIn.

Learn more about his company at Directive Consulting.  

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

2.  This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not

When we convince ourselves that we have nothing more to learn, we fail to ask enough questions and we sometimes even commit sales malpractice.

Brian Robinson has been in sales for more than 20 years, but he said that he only thought he knew how to sell while he was in corporate America. He calls his plunge into entrepreneurialism the hardest thing he has ever done, and while it was successful, he said his eyes were opened when he entered the world of "you don't sell, you don't eat."

Brian is the author of the book The Selling Formula, which codifies the steps he used to succeed in that venture.

Many salespeople do the old "show up and throw up." We're so anxious to get to the presentation that we neglect to ask the very best questions we can ask to uncover the needs. We're seeking sincere engagement from our prospect, so this is the most critical component.

Brian noticed that the best physicians diagnose illness with a list of carefully-crafted questions. That information became especially important when he worked for Johnson and Johnson selling internal devices for laparoscopy. Though the device was clinically superior to anything on the market, he wasn't getting any responses for trial evaluations.

He knew the device was superior, so he combed through the features and benefits and put together a list of questions related to them. He structured them in a specific order and the wording of each was intentional as well.

He tested the questions, and within about 30 days his trial evaluations doubled because of that list of questions.

When word got out that he had produced those kinds of results, people started asking for his list of questions. He passed it along and found that when people followed the questions exactly, they got the exact same results: they doubled their results.

Brian grew fascinated with the whole idea of going deep on questions. He even developed a personal mantra that questions are the key to life.

Although it took several iterations for Brian to get the list and order of questions exactly right, he stuck with it and he achieved success. There's still an opportunity to make it even better, but it's working very consistently now.

Brian defines sales malpractice as providing a diagnosis before you really understand the underlying issues. You won't be able to give your prospect the best possible answer, and until you've uncovered a need, you won't be able to proceed to the sales conversation.

You have to earn the right to have that conversation. If you rush too quickly into the presentation, your sales presentation won't be nearly what it could have been.

The key to all of it is how you create your questions.

Begin by making a spreadsheet with three columns. The first is your features, the second is the benefits related to the feature, and in the third column write down every question you can think of related to those features.

Then take an 80/20 approach. Of the questions you've written, which 20% of questions will elicit 80% of the most critical benefits of your product? Start with general fact-finding questions and move into those 80/20 in the most appropriate order to identify the needs.

Imagine you're selling premade home-cooked meals. What are two benefits to that service?

One is that you're saving about 60 minutes per meal on grocery shopping, food prep, and cooking time. The other

It seems counterintuitive in sales, but leading with your flaws can shorten the sales cycle and disarm your customers, ultimately leading you to better metrics. Todd Caponi was the chief revenue officer for a company called Power Reviews which helps retailers and brands collect and display ratings and reviews on their website. His time there caused him to rethink the way he leads sales organizations because he discovered that consumers were more likely to buy a product that had a 4.2 to 4.5 rating than a 5-star rating. Statistics show that 95 percent of consumers in the B2C world are looking at reviews before they buy. Of those, 82 percent are looking for negative reviews before buying. Todd wondered what might happen if the same notion could be applied to the B2B world. Pros and cons Todd embraced the idea of embracing the pros and cons and leading with them. He discovered that his first deal, which previously had a sales cycle of 6 months, closed within 4 weeks. They discovered that when you lead with your flaws, your sales cycle speeds up dramatically. You’ll qualify deals faster and eliminate those deals that you probably weren’t going to win anyway. Todd was in New York when his VP of sales called him to say the company had an inbound lead from an apparel brand that wanted to initiate an evaluation. The brand happened to be headquartered in NY, so Todd scheduled coffee with the senior vice president of e-commerce. The coffee meeting became a presentation instead, and the SVP got right to the point. Competitor is better He said that his company had been talking to Todd’s competitor, and he wanted to know why Todd’s company was better than the competitor. Todd figured he had nothing to lose, so he asked an unexpected question. “Do you mind if I tell you why the competitor is better?” He explained that the competitor had offerings that his own company didn’t, so if he wasn’t going to be able to meet their needs, he wanted to determine that quickly so both parties could move on. The room deflated. The guy clearly thought Todd was crazy, but he agreed to the idea. Todd talked about an add-on that the other company had but explained that his own company was focused on certain core beliefs. The SVP acknowledged that the add-on the competitor was offering wasn’t a necessity for his company, so they moved on. Transparency Within 20 minutes, the SVP kicked everyone else out of the meeting and grabbed a folder that includes the company’s budget for ratings and review software. He pointed to a number inside and asked Todd if he could hit that figure. The two engaged in a collaborative process that culminated in a deal a few weeks later. The company didn’t initiate an evaluation. It simply chose Todd’s company. He recounted that he had called Todd’s competitor, who quickly went on a rant about the add-on that distinguished the two companies. Every time they led with their flaws, it completely disarmed their prospects. The company built its sales cycle on a foundation of trust and all of its metrics moved in a dramatically positive direction. Wired to resist Todd said that we’re all wired to resist being sold to. As a buyer, he simply wants to be able to predict what his experience with a certain product will be like, and then to get the best deal he can. He said that a salesperson will demonstrate within the first five minutes whether he will be a great resource or push toward a sale even if it isn’t what the buyer wants. People believe in authenticity and honesty. Many of them believe that there’s a trade-off required so that in order to have authenticity and honesty, you will sacrifice results. But the data suggests otherwise. The data says that when you provide authenticity and honesty to your customers, you’ll maximize your sales results. Truthfully, the era of hiding your flaws from your prospects is over. The proliferation of ratings and reviews has moved into the B2B area and it has become the way of the world. B2B buying

New reps and veteran sellers alike are looking for the missing piece in their sales game – look no further. In this electrifying interview, your host Donald Kelly speaks with Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Holmes International, about how her finger-on-the-pulse approach connects with the foundational elements of her father’s work (The Ultimate Sales Machine) to bring us into the future of selling.

 What is a Dream 100?

• There is always a smaller number of better buyers than there are buyers. Selling to your better buyers is smarter and cheaper than selling to anyone else.
• When he was a seller, Chet Holmes spent his energy focusing on his ideal clients rather than selling to 20,000 prospects.
• “In your face, in your space, in your place.” Chet Holmes used a lot of marketing tactics WITHOUT spamming. Aim to be interested instead of interesting!

 Identify YOUR Dream 100

• Start by going through your contacts and identifying the people who could be in your Dream 100 – without social media.
• Don’t get overwhelmed – start with a Dream 5 or Dream 10! Place your focus there, and build on it.

 3 Dream 100 DON’Ts

1. It doesn’t need to be “100”. The most important thing to do is find your better buyers – the customers who are really right for you.
2. It doesn’t need to be people outside of your sphere. After looking through your contacts, check your social media, your CRM (customer relationship management), and other places in your SOI (sphere of influence).
3. Bigger isn’t always better. Even if big accounts bring in a lot of money, they may not be profitable, and they may not need you. You may not like working with them, which makes them NOT a dream client!

“My father was a fifth-degree blackbelt. He realized that there are only so many ways that you kick or you punch, and it’s just a matter of practicing these things over, and over, and over again. He’s famous for the saying, ‘Mastery isn’t about doing 4,000...

Salespeople often find themselves asking, “how do I increase my sales motivation?” It’s a common challenge and in today’s episode, Aaron talks about how you can further your sales journey by increasing your motivation.

Aaron Conjelado was an account executive for an advertising company in the Philippines. He spent two years in that position and had great success in it. Moving into the US, Aaron didn’t meet with a lot of salespeople, and with the pandemic, he lost touch with his sales skills and got rusty. 

Cultivating motivation 

• Aaron doubted his skills in sales. He was anxious and worried whether people would understand him, especially with his thick accent. 
• He started doubting himself and his abilities in sales. 
• It’s important to face reality to be able to find a way to perform better. 
• Find a mentor to help you overcome your doubts. Discuss your planned course of action. 
• Listen and learn as much as you can from your coach. 
• Another key is practicing your pitch. 
• It’s also effective to practice your script whenever you can. Imagine different situations and practice your responses to objections. 
• Seeing great results from your efforts to improve is also a good motivation. 
• The important thing is to not quit because all the sacrifice you put into will eventually come back to you in multiple folds. 
• It all circles back to having a purpose and a reason. 
• If you put in the work, you'll start seeing magic and you'll start seeing results.
• When you’re in doubt, always go back to what your purpose is. 

“Motivation: How Do I Increase My Sales Motivation?” episode resources

Connect with Aaron Conjelado via LinkedIn. You can also email him at Aaron@thesalesevangelist.com. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTEND trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at  → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse. 

This episode is also partly brought to you by Wingman. Wingman uses AI-software to empower remote sales teams with conversation intelligence, actionable insights on successful playbooks, and delivers real-time coaching.

This course is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules free! You can go and visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals also call us at (561) 570-5077. "We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our 2 mins survey here:...

How To Qualify Your Prospects In Under 10 Minutes

How can a salesperson qualify a lead in under 10 minutes? Jason Swenk can help. He is a self-proclaimed professional Uber driver for his children, who are 13 and 9 years old, but his main job is to work with agency owners grow and create freedom in their company.

The downstream sales process

The downstream sales process doesn’t start the conversation by immediately selling to a potential client.  Launching a meeting by talking about a product is a tactic many sales reps use but it doesn’t often lead to closing. The downstream sales process is more about taking away the risks and making sure that the transaction works for both parties and ensures both parties have good experiences. 

Mistakes that people often do

Oftentimes, people sell their core services right off the bat, and immediately go to the high ticket item regardless if it meets the client’s need. In this scenario a high commission is the goal by trying to capture a major commitment from a client who doesn’t yet see the value in what you’re offering.  You’re trying to sell long term or short-term contracts to people who don’t fit the criteria of your ideal client. For long-term gains, you have to know and find your ideal customer.

Knowing the profile of your ideal customers takes a while especially if you are just starting out. You need time to figure out who the ideal client is so you don’t waste time or resources. Conversing with clients who aren’t actually your ideal customers is akin to flirting with someone who you were never meant to have a relationship with. This is caused by both desperation and misplaced optimism, which can be common in sales. 

Another mistake that salespeople can make is the failure to ask questions. Salespeople tend to keep talking with statements and forget that the most valuable aspects of the conversation will come from the client answering their questions.  Asking a prospect questions will reveal their pain points, the impact of the problems on their business, and how these problems make them feel. 

Identifying the right people

It is important to identify what kind of client you want to work with and getting to know what their biggest challenges are. For example, say you’re an agency that wants to work with lawyers. Which lawyers are you really going after? 

• Go for a specific type of lawyer. For example, personal injury attorneys. 

• After that, take it a step further, and decide to work with personal injury lawyers who are doing pay-per-click paid advertising 

After you have the most specific profile you can get, it’s time to make a call. When you do, don’t offer everything, just offer a sneak peek. Sell it as a foot-in-the-door service. This strategy takes the pressure off of the new sales guy and the prospects as well.  This benefits both parties because you’re not asking for more than just a small, simple commitment. You’re giving them a slice of the pie instead of giving them the whole pie without even knowing if they like it or not. 

To join you, you’re client gets three options:

• Identify everything you’re doing and lay-out a plan you can execute
• Lay out a plan, love it, and we will help you out. 
• Hate the plan and we give you your money back so that you have nothing to lose. 

Fixing the problem

A great salesperson thinks two steps ahead. This means that as you are in a meeting, you are already setting up the next one. As you’re walking your potential clients through the front door, help them feel they are already partners in building...

B2B sales optimization requires a longterm commitment to create quality content that will grow your audience and increase your success.

Bill Bice, CEO of  boomtime, said he was born to be an entrepreneur, launching his first business when he was 14. He loves to talk about sales and marketing because it makes the biggest difference in business. 

Data and marketing

As business owners, we all know that we have to spend money on marketing, but it’s tough to do if you’re not seeing the ROI. For Bill, marketing is about data, which allows you to understand what’s working. The difficulty occurs when you have too much data because it can be difficult to gather valuable insights that help you improve marketing.

Smaller companies often have more freedom to bring their sales and marketing together. In larger companies, the two disciplines are separate, and they are often at odds. Marketing isn’t doing the support work the sales team needs and each blames the other for lack of performance. 

In smaller companies, the CEO or entrepreneur can decide to tie the two together. 

Bill calls himself a big fan of the challenger sales approach, which resulted from research done in Fortune 500 companies. The concept of using key insights to drive a sales approach creates sales optimization in smaller companies. It’s a perfect example of tying together marketing and sales so that marketing generates insights that truly help sellers. It creates better opportunities which result in better success. 

Optimize sales

To begin with, businesses must be better at 

1. capturing leads 
2. following up on those leads
3. staying top-of-mind with that larger audience that we’re building 

In any complex, high-value sale, a content-driven approach to marketing is the perfect way to optimize the sales process. 

Then, if you’ve done the hard work of taking care of your customers, they’ll tell others about your business which creates referrals. Now the goal is to amplify that effect. 

How do we make word-of-mouth work even better? 

Capturing leads

Micro-commitments are the most effective part of capturing leads. Your website was once a replacement for the Yellow Pages, and a way to get people to pick up the phone. Now, the most important piece of information for a prospective client is an email address. 

If you ask for the prospect’s name, you’ll reduce conversion by 20%. If you ask for the phone number, you’ll reduce conversion by 60%. Every additional field you add reduces conversion by another 8%.

Ask for the one thing you really want from the prospect, which is an email address. You have to be willing to do something that is really hard in order to get those referrals and capture those leads. 

You have to give your best stuff away for free. Give away your deepest and best expertise in exchange for the really valuable thing, which is the email address. #CaptureProspects

The traditional battle between sales and marketing centers around what makes a qualified lead. All we really want is to get people to follow us on LinkedIn and to get the prospects’ email addresses. If we grow our audience in those two places and we’re constantly sending people back to our website with high-value insight, that creates success. 

What’s actually hard to do is the day-to-day work in the trenches, because it’s the consistency that makes this work. 

Marketing mistakes

Many marketers commit the number one mistake of talking about themselves. Nobody cares. 

Are you talking about the problems your target audience struggles with, and are you helping them solve those problems?

In this episode, Donald speaks with Kevin, the Chief Technology Officer of the Americas at Ciena. They discuss the complexities and challenges of B2B enterprise selling. 

Kevin shares insights into the evolving landscape of enterprise deals, emphasizing the importance of understanding the "why" behind a product or service offering. The conversation highlights the need for effective communication and providing memorable examples to decision-making committees, ultimately leading to successful outcomes.

The Increasing Complexity of B2B Enterprise Selling

• As technology advances, B2B enterprise selling has become more complex and confusing.
• The integration of tools like AI adds layers of complexity to the selling process.
• It is crucial to adhere to the basics and understand the fundamentals of enterprise selling.

The Role of Kevin as the Chief Technology Officer of the Americas

• Kevin leads a technical team of sales engineers and sales specialists at Ciena.
• The team's primary objective is to assist business customers in making the right purchasing decisions.

Challenges in Enterprise-level and Complex Deals

• In the past, individual decision-makers played a key role in the purchasing process.
• However, in today's enterprise deals, decision-making power rests with a complex council of decision-makers.
• Sales professionals must equip their customers with the necessary skills and tools to present the value proposition to the entire decision-making council effectively.

Shifting Focus from the "What" to the "Why"

• Previously, the sales pitch predominantly focused on describing the technical aspects of the product (the "what").

We've learned multiple perspectives in our series over forecasting that help create a more accurate and beneficial forecast. But how can you take your efforts to the next level? In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the Director of Enterprise Sales at Envoy, Sarah Lash, to discuss proper forecasting techniques from both a selling and management perspective. 

There are significant forecasting issues:

• Some people rely too much on the map and aren’t listening to what’s happening in the business.
• On the flip, some people listen too much to intuition without diving deep enough.
• From a management perspective, sales reps might provide you with a shadow pipeline (data entered into an incorrect pipeline), forcing you to identify those issues.
• There is also the problem of the intraquarter revenue - opportunities that open and close in the same quarter. How should we factor those into forecasting?
• Whether you’re a rep or a manager, lack of communication will distinguish the most accurate forecasting.

Don’t just focus on the data; focus on the right data:

• The “I need X amount of pipeline to get to this number” mentality has positive and negative effects.
• Similarly, a purely cause and effect mentality does not do justice to the nuances of selling.
• Instead of waiting for a prospect to say a specific phrase to indicate the likelihood of purchase, integrate information beyond your personal experiences with the selling process.

Have a mutual action plan:

• Creating an example that establishes a “good’ reference point is essential for sellers to understand what actions result in the most buy-ins.
• When creating a mutual action plan, start backward. For example, what is the timeline the prospect would like something to be implemented? 
• Then, ask what steps need to be taken before that date to reach the end result?
• Remember, it’s not just evaluating pricing but determining if there are technical, legal, or security issues that need solving. 
• Create a calendar based on these milestones, and as a seller, you can use this to gain information.
• Finally, determine what could go wrong and establish how to address those.

Forecasting involves a balance of data and intuition: 

• It’s a combination of 50/50, but it’s never so explicitly balanced. The beauty is the combination of the two, in whatever capacity each deal necessitates.
• To practice intuition with her team, Sarah conducts a large-deal review call with her organization each week to hear sellers talk about deals to learn and grow with one another.
• When interacting with a prospect, set expectations from the beginning. For example, ask someone if you can ask multiple questions.
• Disarm the prospect as much as possible. You want to understand why milestones, behaviors, and expectations are the way they are.

Sarah’s final takeaway for sellers? Be confident you know your craft because confidence is your ability to be the partner your customer needs. To find more content and information from...

Even if you’ve been selling for years, it’s possible that you’ve overlooked some ideas that will help you perform better, like working to shorten the sales process with video. 

Today we’ll discuss some ideas that will help you shorten your sales cycle and some ways to use video to accomplish it. I’ll also share a real-life example from one of my clients to demonstrate how effective it can be.

Video is so simple and so powerful that it’s hard to imagine that some people aren’t taking advantage of it. We’ve talked about it on The Sales Evangelist for months because it’s a powerful tool that’s available to every seller.

I recently read a study that showed that 7 out of 10 B2B buyers watch a video somewhere in their buying process. So 70 percent of buyers are watching videos that are usually generated by the marketing department.

But why aren’t we in sales using it as well? It’s simpler for the buyer to consume, and it isn’t difficult for us to make them.

Videos are everywhere and we engage with them daily on Netflix, YouTube, and other places. Stories are part of our lives.

We can use them in our prospecting, in our closings, and to build value throughout the entire sales process. Use video to follow up with a client or share a testimonial. Create a video overview of your product.

Chaz works in the 3D printing industry, which for some of us is still rather unfamiliar. Because his product is cutting-edge, it can be difficult for him to explain what he’s doing to his customers.

The emails can get long and confusing. His customers have lots of technical questions. Chaz realized that it would be very time-consuming to answer all of those questions each time they arise. When he tried to get his customers to hop on a call so he could answer the questions, they often went dark on him.

He decided to use video to answer questions for his customers. It shortens the process because it’s quicker than email, and it helps him build trust with his customers.

Chaz said that he can shorten the sales process with video by up to a week.

If you could shave time off of each of your deals, how much more could you process? How many more clients could you obtain? Could you close more deals or earn more commission?

Imagine your current customers running into trouble with the product you sold them. Instead of asking them to ship it back to you so you can troubleshoot the problem, why not use video to help them identify the glitch.

You can walk them through the process and provide guidance that will help them improve the outcome the next time.

Chaz uses the video to carry the customer through the process and it freed up more time in his day because he was able to help his customer quickly and efficiently so he could move on to other things.

We’ve told you about a number of different video tools like BombBomb, Loom, Wistia, and Soapbox. There’s another called Vineyard, and probably many more that I haven’t named.

Video humanizes you for your customer, and research has proven that people do business with those that they know, like, and trust. When your customer can see and hear you, you’ll be able to build trust much more quickly in addition to helping your customer.

You can use video in your prospecting by following up with your prospects. Try using it in your 

Sometimes the best way to close more deals isn’t by adding new people to your pipeline (though that’s always a good thing.) Instead, the best thing is to address the issues that make a deal fail before they fail. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the CEO of Challenger, Andee Harris, to get her take on failed deals and how to address those issues directly with our prospects. 

Challenger is a sales training company:

• The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson explains many of the principles Challenger uses in their training.
• Early sellers might be timid, which usually leads to a failure to recognize when a deal isn’t moving in the right direction.
• In Andee’s experience, continuous feedback is a great way to course-correct throughout the sales process to tailor the experience and selling strategy to the specific prospect. 
• Passive selling isn’t the best form of selling for either party - taking control of the purchase and helping the buyer buy the product is your job.

Three ways to notify deals before they go south:

• Integrate an avenue for continuous feedback. If a buyer likes you as a sales rep, they’ll want to share methods to improve their experience. 
• Realize that one size doesn't fit all. What works for one client might not work for another. 
• Constantly be learning. Be curious, and look to understand and be self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Andee’s final takeaway? Understand that we’re in a complex selling environment. Multiple factors influence the selling process, but it isn’t impossible to create wins and do phenomenally well. To get in touch with Andee, visit challengerinc.com or connect with Andee on LinkedIn.

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The Great Resignation has become the Great Reshuffle, meaning it can be difficult for sales professionals like you to find leads and close deals. Luckily, Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is here for you!

Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is the only tool that uses real-time alerts and up-to-date insights to help you know when prospects are ready to buy. And, with over 30 advanced filters, sales professionals can quickly find genuine leads with the intent to purchase.

Gain the advantage of accurate, quality lead generation data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can get a 60-day free trial of Sales Navigator at www.LinkedIn.com/TSE. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls...

I'm Afraid of Losing My Sales Job 

Everywhere you look, people are affected by circumstances that could not have been foreseen just a couple of months ago. Due to this upheaval, some people are losing their jobs. Is the fear of losing your sales position an added concern for you as well? In this episode, Donald offers some encouragement. 

Everyone agrees it’s a hard time. This quarantine is unprecedented in most of our lifetimes and The Sales Evangelist is here for you and Donald has been getting a number of questions about what to do in the event of job loss.  Sales reps from all over the world are concerned and are afraid of losing their jobs. The harsh reality is that in this season, many will lose their positions while companies rally to stay afloat. 

Donald has been there.  He had just graduated from college and was working for a small company when everyone was called to the conference room by the CEO and the executive team. Once gathered, they were told that the company was closing its doors that day. The reality didn’t sink in for Donald right away. He had a difficult time processing what he was hearing and as he listened, it started to sink in that he had just gotten an apartment and had his own bills to pay. Needless to say, he was freaking out. 

Life goes on

Under these circumstances it’s natural to feel stress and anxiety. It was an unfortunate situation that Donald was in and felt the full weight of it. However, he eventually learned that life goes on. Things got better. They will for you too. There’s going to be a brighter day and things will work out for you and your family.  It may be hard to see past this time of isolation and you may worry about how you can earn for your family and loved ones. Don’t overthink things. There will be a path that will make itself clear to you. 

The circumstances surrounding COVID-19 is new to all of us, but most of us have experienced an unexpected job loss. Stressing about it, worrying about it, and beating yourself up because you lost your job won’t bring the work back. This isn’t your fault. 

You are awesome 

Having a job in the first place means you have what it takes to bring value to a company. This illustrates you have something in you that will provide opportunities. Even if that job is put on hold for now, your value remains and the next company will benefit.

Hopefully current employers are researching and taking full advantage of the governmental relief that is being offered in order to keep teams together. These opportunities are meant to help us. 

Another door will open 

When one door closes, another door opens.  It may sound cliche but it’s true. You can expedite that by building your network and community. These relationships tend to look out for one another. When Donald lost his job, he used his free time to build his network. He connected with people on LinkedIn and he brought value to other people. Through his presence on LinkedIn, one of his competitors saw what happened to Donald and reached out. He was told of another opportunity and was able to benefit from that connection. 

If you are released from your job use the time wisely until the next job.  Learn new skills, read more books, and continue to add value to yourself. Be valuable to others by serving them in their needs. Build that network. Connect with people and figure out creative ways you can build value. No matter what happens, you will always have your personal brand. It’s something you can take wherever you are in this world. Make sure you’re ready when things get better.

“I'm Afraid of Losing My Sales Job” episode resources

Remember you don’t have to carry this burden on your own. There are people out there who are willing to help you and guide you, like Donald. Find them, connect with them, and build value...

Sellers who discover how to be successful without a marketing department, in a crowded marketplace, and when the customer isn't even looking will be successful in almost any circumstances.

I got a question from a listener named Jon Billings who wanted to know how he could teach people who "don't know what they don't know." For instance, if the customer isn't looking because he doesn't know he has a problem, how do I communicate that?

Especially in the case of sellers who don't have access to a marketing department, how is that even possible?

Your goal is to educate your prospects so that they will look to you instead of your competition when they need help solving a problem.

Educating is the new sales. Regardless of the industry, you're in, your marketplace is likely crowded.

• How do you stand out from the competition?
• How do you help customers recognize you as a differentiator?

You have to challenge the status quo, especially when many of your prospects already have solutions or they don't realize the existence of a problem.

[Tweet "You must create content consistently and then share it so that you build a community. That way, when someone is ready, they'll come to you first. #ContentCreation"]

Become a content producer.

Even if you have a marketing department, you should have your own individual brand. Take that brand with you wherever you go.

Even if you change industries, your brand goes with you.

Write down the top 10 questions that customers ask you or that prospects bring up in conversation. Whether they center around cost or service, answer those questions in the form of sharable content.

You can write a blog or produce a podcast. Even better, you can create a LinkedIn article or video.

Focus on the problem while you're answering the question.

For example, what other issues could your prospect focus on if he outsourced his IT services to your company? What opportunity costs exist?

My friend Kyle invited me to do a LinkedIn Live with him recently and we recorded an episode with him for our show as well.

Kyle told us about how he started sharing videos on YouTube answering questions, and though the videos weren't very fancy in his estimation, someone reached out to him from Coca Cola with an opportunity for him.

He's in the tech industry, and though there are countless other tech firms out there that are sending out RFPs. Kyle decided to be different, and it grabbed people's attention.

You won't want to pitch your prospects right away. Instead, connect with them and ask for their assistance. Maybe you're looking to write a LinkedIn article about things that the directors of large companies dislike and you'd like input from people who are filling those roles.

Get one tip from 10 people, and then when you post the article, tag all of the people who contributed. They'll see your post, they'll likely see your profile, and they'll likely see your website.

Now, when you ask for a chance to introduce yourself in the future, they'll be more likely to at least give you a chance since you connected on LinkedIn.

Even if you don't have the benefit of written case studies, you may have some client testimonials or some stories you can tell. Talk about the problems your clients once had and highlight how you helped them solve those problems.

Now that you've written an article about the 10 things that directors of large companies dislike, you could also pitch podcast hosts with the idea.

There are three great closing questions that salespeople often ask because everyone in the sales arena wants to make sure that we’re closing effectively. The answers to the three great closing questions will help salespeople close like a pro. 

Albert Alexander has been a partner in a construction equipment sales company that makes parts for excavators and bulldozers for 11 years now. Albert does all the marketing, inside sales, and digital marketing for the company. 

Closing questions

Often, sales reps are good at finding prospects and having a talk with them. Things change, however, when they’re turning them into leads. There are challenges in closing. 

Sales reps have this predisposed idea about how they purchase that gets in the way when they try to close a deal. Albert’s company grows 70% every year and that’s because they stick people to a process. 

For other sales reps, they stop in the middle of the process and it stops the action of the process moving forward. It could be because of the fear of rejection or any other reason, but the end result is the same. It halts the closing process. 

Imposing your buying style 

There are many decision types and processes that they take. For this reason, sales reps should know their customers through their pains and needs and be completely open to the different decision styles they have. Sales reps should remove their own fears and worries of rejection from the sales process and focus on their customers instead. If they do that, they can be empathetic to the needs of the clients. 

Say, for example, the client’s million-dollar equipment is not working and it needs a $50,000 part that the company sells. For the sales rep, the amount is huge and so he’d say, “I understand you need to think about it,” but that’s not the case for the client. The client is willing to spend $50,000 for his million-dollar equipment to work, but because the sales rep put his purchasing decision in the process, the entire closing will take a hit. 

Sales reps need to change their perspective or their purchasing styles and decisions when closing a deal. Sales reps need to learn to think like the clients they’re talking to instead of imposing their fears, views, concerns, or buying styles to their clients. 

Make a good logical decision for and with somebody, even when they’re concerned. Remind them of the things that are logical and that matter. 

The first step to close a deal is to put yourself in that person’s shoes better and eliminate the fears and worries. 

Closing styles 

We all have closing styles and the first one is the assumptive close. It's extremely easy and it’s when sales reps choose and assume the next information that you have to collect and continue down the process. It’s almost like assuming that everything’s good and done after they’ve spoken with the client. 

This works for Albert’s company. They’ve implemented the assumptive process and it improved their closing deals to 25%.

So, their sales reps ask the following questions: 

• Hey, where did you want me to deliver that?
• When did you want that delivered? 
• How did you want to pay for that? 
• Is it going to be a Mastercard or wire transfer?

Most sales reps think that closing is an event and it shouldn’t be. They think that they have to ask questions and shake hands. That’s not how it works. 

If they investigate, build rapport, and lay out the solution that’s logical and emotionally fulfilling, sales reps can assume the next information and assume. Closing is not an event, it should be a natural thing. Sales reps should do all the work upfront and...

How To Build Rapport By Asking Directed, Relevant Questions 

For many salespeople, building rapport is a skill that needs to be learned. It’s not always easy for sales reps to build relationships with potential or existing clients.  Asking direct and relevant questions is a great launch fine-tuning the art of building rapport. In this episode we learn more about how to do this well. 

Andrew Sletter has been in the same company, the Window and Door Store for 10 years. Their company sells windows and doors with a focus on in-home sales.  They work directly with the consumer and are with their customers for every step of the process, including installation.  The company’s office is located in Bismarck, North Dakota and they handle the North Dakota and Western Minnesota market. 

The salesman’s profile

Andrew doesn’t see himself as a true salesman. He believes that many salespeople are doing themselves a disservice by trying to fit into a particular profile. Andrew isn’t an influencer or a promoter.  Based on his DISC personality profile, he is more of the perfectionist individual. In his career, he’s seen all different types of personalities become successful in sales. Many sales reps feel the pressure to become somebody they’re not but as a sales manager, Andrew knows salespeople just need to be true to who they are and learn the skills needed to have a great career.  

Though Andrew didn’t set out to become a sales leader, he honed his skills to become successful. Daniel Pink, the author of the book To Sell is Human, writes that surprisingly, the best sales people aren’t the extroverts or the introverts. It's the ambiverts that make it to the top of the chain. Why? The ambiverts tend to have the characteristics of boths and it serves them well.  If you aren’t an ambivert, though, take heart. Andrew knows anyone who can hold a conversation with somebody has what it takes to become a great salesperson. 

Building the trust 

An important skill that salespeople need to have is the ability to know when and if a product or service is a good fit for a potential client. With direct-to-consumer businesses this is especially important. Building trust and rapport in the early stages of inquiry will help with this evaluation. If done correctly, not only will this prospect become a new client, there is an opportunity to develop the relationship into a life-long customer. 

Building rapport is about having trust between two people.  If a salesperson states their product is the best in the industry, but hasn’t built trust, the consumer can determine very quickly they don’t want to work with that individual.  The consumer today is very savvy. They’ve usually done the research even before approaching the salesperson. They already know about the product and the industry and will purchase with the sales rep who aligns with their value system. It is up to the salesperson to uncover those values in order to close the sale. 

Building Rapport 

Rapport is more than just value-based selling. For Andrew, it’s also about authentic selling. The number one deciding factor of whether or not a consumer is going to purchase is the credibility of the salesperson. Credibility and rapport first, product or service second. It’s the job of the salesperson to uncover the prospect’s values because if the values aren’t in alignment, the ability to close is greatly diminished.  Selling to the modern consumer requires wisdom and discovery. The sales goal has to be secondary to the customer’s needs.  

The credibility of the salesperson is #1 priority whether or not people buy. #SalesCredibility

Discovering the value 

From the beginning a salesperson needs to have a conversation with the prospect. Allow them to tell their story because it’s their story that needs to be heard. Be...

LinkedIn is a good place to prospect. In this episode, listen and learn as Brynne Tillman and Donald talk about how to convert your LinkedIn connections into meaningful conversations. 

When is LinkedIn ineffective?

• Back in the early months of 2020, people connected with others and then threw their pitch in. This was ineffective. 
• Today, salespeople are so desperate that they put their pitches in their connection request message. 
• Salespeople are becoming more and more desperate that they no longer know how to get other people’s attention. 
• Brynne calls it  pitch slapping, and it’s not a good approach because  it turns people off. 
• LinkedIn has become a platform where people are getting all kinds of notifications left and right. 
• This approach is not only ineffective, it’s also damaging. 
• We all want to have as many conversations as possible on LinkedIn but what we don’t want to do is sell on LinkedIn. 
• When connecting with people on LinkedIn, treat them and talk to them as if they’re on the other side of the table. This is what real-life networking is all about. 
• You would never walk up to a person in real life and right then and there introduce yourself and reach out. The same is true on LinkedIn. 

Building LinkedIn connections the right way

• As salespeople, always remember that you need to earn the right to get a conversation. You can’t assume that they want to talk to you when they’re getting several other connections in a day. 
• Connecting with them is not an agreement that they will be having a conversation with you. You need to earn the right to keep moving forward. How? Position your profile as a resource. People will look at your profile when you connect with them. They need to see that you can provide value. 

• Your profile’s goal is to get people to stay. It has to do five things: 

1. It has to resonate with your buyer
2. It has to create curiosity
3. Make sure it teaches them something new
4. Ensure that what they’ve learned prompts them to think differently about their current state
5. Let your profile’s content lead to your solution

• Social selling is about content. 
• Salespeople often make the mistake of telling people how they can help instead of just helping them. Everybody is saying that they can help. 
• Top-ranked keynote speaker Michael Port said that you need to give away so much value that you’re afraid you gave too much, and then give more. 
• You need to use LinkedIn in a way that you are adding value to your prospective clients. 74% of buyers choose the sales rep who adds value and insight, not the one with the lowest bid. 
• Build an authentic connection and let them know that you’re going to be with them. 
• Your connections are your best referrals. You can ask them if you can use the name of the people they are connected with and whom you are about to connect to.
• Export your connections and put them in a spreadsheet. Do an inventory of your existing connections and see who in the list you can have a conversation with. 

“Prospecting: How to Convert Your LinkedIn Connections Into Meaningful Conversations” episode resources

Connect with Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn and you can also check out the Linkedin library for various resources! 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and

How do you get past objections? To make it more specific, what can you do if you can’t address your prospect’s objections during a call? Natasha Davis joins Donald Kelly in this next episode on objections. 

• Natasha Davis is a brand strategist, and she recently released her second book entitled, Unleash Your Millionaire Mindset and Build Your Brand. The book talks about the business from top to bottom and all the in-betweens. It’s about the things we’re afraid of and the things we don’t usually talk about. 
• As a brand strategist, it’s her brand to look at a company from the top to the bottom and all the in-betweens. 
• Natasha wasn’t always the entrepreneur. She started her working career as a nurse doing emergency and trauma, and she loved her job. She got bit by the entrepreneurship bug, and when she realized she couldn’t shake it off, she dipped her toes in it. 
• After a while, she realized that she likes being an entrepreneur, so she made the shift and went from being a nurse into what she is now. 
• Sometimes, salespeople are so passionate about what they could give that they forget that objections are part of the business. 
• In this era, businesses need to scale and keep scaling. Companies need to think big, build momentum, and scale fast. 

Addressing Objections with Prospects

• Not being prepared for the objection is painful for a business. 
• Document the objections. Whenever you get an objection, don’t just leave it in your head. Document what the objection or rejection was, create a document, and build responses to the objection/rejection. 
• Most times, the reason for the rejection is because we failed to give them enough information for them to make the decision. Without ample information, people just eventually end up saying no.  
• Many sales reps get too excited about what they offer. We forget that it’s not about us - it’s about them. It’s always about what the prospects need, about the solutions that work for them, and it’s about their pain points. 
• Your goal is to tone down the pressure of selling to have that natural conversation where you’re giving out information to help your prospects. 
• A lot of times, businesses struggle around process and performance. 
• People are core to a business, but the process or the system is also as critical. Without a process/system in place, your people would be working in chaos. 

Use the right approach

• Keep learning and keep putting things together. That allows you to take a step back and start identifying the needs of the prospects from the point of hello, from the point of the first contact, whether it’s an email, on social media, or other platforms. 
• Know the pain points before entering into a conversation instead of offering everything you have like a buffet. People don’t want that many options. 
• Start the conversation by asking the why by determining their reasons for reaching out and knowing their trigger points. 
• Know your products like the back of your eyelids. You need to break down your products and services into bits that prospects can understand and appreciate. 
• Establish a transactional relationship at the beginning of the conversation. Still, you can’t enter into the price conversation before you’ve established an agreement that the solution you offer is what they’re looking for. 
• It will help you set up that transactional relationship if you have the basic information pinned down. So, put up basic preliminary questions in your online appointment. 
• While it is not wrong to have a red carpet concept for your business, you need to remember that you’re not meant to service every person in every industry. There’s only a certain subset...

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald Kelly gives us the scoop on one major closing question you’re neglecting to ask.

But first, let’s picture this scenario.

• Dave is a salesperson who has been working with his lead, Bob, for three months. 
• His sale is in the bag; he gave a fantastic presentation, his sales engineer answered every question the prospect had, and Dave sent them a proposal.
• Despite going through every step in the process, Dave didn’t get the result he wanted; he got hit with the “we’re going to need some more time to think about it” conversation. Where did he go wrong?

It’s simple - there’s one question he forgot to ask.

• The ultimate question: Would I make this purchase based on the same information I know if I were the buyer?
• Sales is shortsighted - we’re focused on our pipeline. Dave was focused on meeting his quota, impressing his manager, and making sales rather than his prospect’s needs. 

How can you ask this question to improve your sales strategy?

• Habit #5 of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” - Seek first to understand, then seek to be understood. 
• Consider the context of the buyer. What business problem are you solving for them? Look at the industry they’re in and their relationship with the software to make informed decisions.
• Did you give the buyer a parachute in case things go south? Did you give them an out? Not every deal will close - that’s just a given. But asking this question will provide you with more predictability with closings. 
• If we are more diligent in asking questions and analyze the deal from the buyer’s standpoint, your sales will increase. 

Donald’s ultimate takeaway? Start the conversion process earlier. Ask your prospects, “based on what you know, do you feel confident moving forward?” If you fix any problems early, the prospect will have a higher degree of confidence at the end of the sales process.

Connect with Donald on LinkedIn and let him know if this helped close more deals.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

As you move closer to the end of a deal, you'll likely encounter more objections, and identifying key stakeholders is the secret to overcoming those challenges.

As you move into deeper conversation with the prospect, you may not realize that there are other people involved in the process, even if you aren't directly interacting with them. Your job as seller is to find out who they are.

Today we'll help you understand who those key stakeholders are, how you should work with them, and how you can prepare for the process.

Imagine you have an initial conversation with someone who is interested in your lawn care business. You generated some interest and they expressed a desire to know more. You'll naturally address how you've helped other people in the past and take other steps to build value.

At this point, you'll want to find out who else will be involved in this conversation. Typically, though, sellers neglect to ask that question.

Ideally, you should find out whether the prospect has made a decision like this before. If so, has it been a long time?

You do this kind of work on a day-to-day basis, but the prospect doesn't. He needs guidance, and you can help him move forward.

Avoid making him feel as though he isn't competent to make the decision. Instead of asking him who should be involved in the next call, ask it this way: "At this point in the conversation, my clients typically invite other people into the conversation."

Instead of asking whether he'd like to invite others in, I would simply ask him who he would like to invite into the conversation. He might identify the CFO or the decision maker.

Next, I would point out that, in order to make sure the next meeting is as valuable as possible, I'd like to know whether I can connect with some of those stakeholders to find out what they'd like to hear.

If he has an objection, reframe the request so that he's the one making the contact with his stakeholders on your behalf. Keep him involved in the process so he feels comfortable.

The first stakeholder is your decision maker. He tends to be the person that sellers most often keep their eyes on because he's the one that will do the final sign-off.

But he may not get involved until later in the process. The decision maker may expect the influencer and the champion to do all of the hard work.

Second is your influencer or the person who has the ear of your decision maker. She may be the right-hand person of your decision maker, or she may just be someone who has a connection with him.

In some companies, this may be an administrative assistant, and sales reps must be mindful not to overlook these people. These executive assistants often wield much influence with the leadership.

My wife worked in a similar position once, and her recommendation often depended on how the sellers treated her when they called into the office.

End users are the people who will use the product or service you're offering, and they're the ones you'll likely interact with the most. We must make sure that they understand us and that we understand them.

The buyer will sign the check to close the deal. If he doesn't like the deal, he will likely have key influence in it.

The champion is the person who likes you and who brought you into the fold. She invited your team to consider the possibility of hiring you.

We recently did an entire episode about the importance of the champion. The...

On today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, we talk with Kris Nelson, head of sales for CoSchedule.com, about how businesses can move from "click, try, buy" to having a full-fledged sales team.

CoSchedule is a SaaS-based marketing platform that helps marketers to stay organized through a combination of content calendar, a product, project management solutions and execution via social campaigns and email campaigns.

CoSchedule took the time to focus on true growth and the company has seen tremendous results. Prior to reaching that point, however, the business, which began as a "click, try and buy," didn’t even have a sales team.

Initially, they released the product as a straightforward "click, try and buy," product because it made sense at the time. They also designed it for small teams and individuals. The level of product and the price point didn’t really dictate a need for a dedicated sales team. [01:26]

As the product progressed and became more complicated, however, it became apparent that they needed a sales team to help the clients really understand how CoSchedule could benefit them.

It was simply a natural progression to establish a sales force as the product grew and the price point increased, especially with some of the advanced plans. They moved away from the "click, try and buy," and toward a professional marketing team and into a standard sales cycle. [03:17]

I’ve always thought it was a waste of time and resources to have the sales reps focus on low-end sales, think $15 a month kind of stuff because customers don’t need help making a decision at the price point.

Higher end products are different. Companies who ask customers to pay more become more concerned with the quality of the product, and that's when you need a sales team.

It is truly an overkill to engage someone in a formalized, professional sales cycle at some of the lower price points. At the higher price points, it makes total sense.

You have to be sure you are asking the right questions of the organization to make sure your product is a fit. The sale is nice but long-term happy customers are the true goal. [04:25]

Kris credits CEO and co-founder of CoSchedule, Garrett Moon, as the person who helped take the company where it is today.

It began with a series of phone calls to prospects to see if the market was viable and to see if it made sense to move the price point. Once that was established as true, Moon hired more people, including Kris, and the sales process was on its way. [05:58]

Kris says that CoSchedule is still an extremely heavy inbound model. They still decide the best fit for each client, whether that be the "click, try and buy," model for the lower level plans, or working with a sales rep for the higher level plans.

Kris really had to learn and understand the buying process of the companies that use CoSchedule to determine how many real touch points would be needed from a sales standpoint to be effective.  

CoSchedule has a three-call process in place now.

The first, known as the discovery call, allows the sales team to learn more about the client’s business, teach them about CoSchedule and then try to determine at a really high level if there is a potential business fit. If everything matches from a budget standpoint and a use case standpoint, they move forward with the second call.

The second call is a full-scale demonstration of the product. It...

What's the best way to offer a discount to a client?

Find out in this exciting episode of The Sales Evangelist Podcast. Host Donald Kelly speaks with sales expert Richard Harris about his new book, "The Seller's Journey," and dives into the intricacies of mastering sales strategies. 

Richard shares valuable tactics around sales, pricing, negotiation, and creating win-win scenarios with customers. He also addresses the critical role of understanding procurement and highlights the importance of qualifying for discounts and leveraging them as a sales rep.

Hear why you should pick up a copy of Richard's new book and how it can help you in your sales career.

Richard’s Background

• Richard is a sales strategist and trainer with extensive experience in go-to-market and founder-led sales strategies. 
• He is also the author of the recent book, "The Seller's Journey," which encapsulates his decade-long expertise in sales.

Earning the Right to Ask Questions

• Richard discusses his niche in sales training, where he emphasizes the importance of earning the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and the timing of these questions in the sales process. 
• Through his extensive experience in consulting, Richard has honed his framework for enabling sales professionals to navigate the intricacies of engaging buyers effectively.

Highlights from "The Seller's Journey" Book

• Richard delves into the core concepts of his book, "The Seller's Journey." The book is divided into two parts: the mindset and framework, followed by 13 tactics that delve into critical aspects of sales strategies. 
• These tactics include addressing respect in sales, effective negotiation techniques, and the art of framing questions around needs, economic impact, access to authority, and timelines.
• Richard emphasizes that the book delves into the mindset needed for navigating the sales domain effectively. With the right mindset, sales professionals can approach their roles with confidence and strategic insight.

Roleplay...

Why Your Contracts Are Not Working and How To Fix Them! 

Ever ask yourself why your contracts are not working and wondered how to fix them? Jason Kren is the man with the answer to that frequently asked question. 

Sales people want nothing more than to see their contracts and deals turn into a close. Unfortunately, there are times when the inefficiency of getting contracts signed can delay income or prevent a closing all together.  How can you make this process more streamlined so this doesn’t occur? Jason Kren’s company PactSafe could be the solution you’re looking for.

PactSafe is a company that was built from the ground up. They manage clickwrap contract acceptance at scale. This means they have the ability to manage millions of clickwrap contracts at a super high velocity. 

An example of this type of contract is illustrated by Disney+.  The company recently launched its video streaming service and opened with 10 million subscribers in the first 24 hours of launch. At the end of the sign-up process is a contract that states the terms and conditions of the service that users are getting. These contracts are often the highest valued contracts that a company’s legal department manages on an annual basis. 

Jason’s company takes this type of contract and utilizes the PactSafe platform. It’s a quick wrap embedded contract and once it’s accepted, the platform will track the version that’s accepted. Using the platform, they can track the time when the contract was accepted and who accepted it. PactSafe can also reproduce what the contract looks like on an individual screen and know whether the contract is downloaded on a mobile device, computer, or  tablet. 

In terms of sales contracts, this platform makes things run smoothly. With just one click, users have signed a legally binding agreement.

In the sales application, this same type of contract and platform can be used to speed up the process for sales. 

Making contracts easier to understand

Sales people and legal departments can partner together to make a contract more user friendly and understandable to the customer so closing is easier. The first step is for sales leaders to talk to the legal department about contract design.  This includes the language used in the contract, down to the words and phrases, so the contract is easier to accept and lessens the points of negotiation. Ultimately, this removes friction from every step. Moving toward a standardized contract in the contract design includes multiple components that should have the end result in mind. Efficiency and speed of acceptance by the customer is the goal.

These contracts are often in order forms for upsells and cross-sells within the organization. 

Adopt a standardized language 

A key area to review when moving toward a standardized system for contracts is reviewing the areas that don’t need to be negotiated each time. These areas can already be written and in place each time. Contracts such as these are better for the customers and for the salesperson. While the legal team handles the design of the contract, it’s the sales team’s job to change the language used in presenting the contract to the customer.  Most salespeople today are still using archaic language when talking about contracts. An example is “I’m going to send you the contract and once you’re done reviewing it and signing it, we can start.” You want to streamline the process. Sending the contract over for a potential client to dictate the turnaround time can lead to a delay in closing and waste time.

With a new design the approach changes to “The contract is ready to go. I’m going to send you its link so you can click on it and we’ll get started.” 

It eliminates having to talk about the contract and you’re sending the terms they just have to accept. That little shift in your language can increase velocity and...

We set goals and we try to achieve them. The truth is, however, goals must meet a few requirements for them to be achievable. You need SMART sales goals. What are smart sales goals? Let’s talk about that in this episode. 

Aiming for SMART sales goals 

• SMART stands for: 

S - specific

M - measurable

A - attainable

R - realistic

T- time bound

• A goal that says, ‘I want to be successful by the end of 2021…’ is not realistic. 
• When you set a goal, you need to evaluate specific elements first. Ask yourself if it is specific enough, measurable, attainable, realistic, and if it is time-bound. 
• Setting SMART goals is important because you can easily run out of steam if you don’t seem to be making progress. 
• People move forward with vision and motivation.
• Your life has more meaning when you have something to look forward to. 
• Generic goals are often not accomplished. 
• Make micro SMART goals to help you accomplish your big SMART goals. 
• Use SMART goals for your team to encourage them to accomplish more. It will collectively help toward the overall vision. 
• Use a chart or an excel sheet where you can record and track your goal. This will help you check your progress and give you visual support as you get closer to your goal. The little check marks will inspire you. 
• The TSE team uses a leaderboard where performance can be tracked and that visual inspires us towards accomplishing our goals. 
• Examples of SMART sales goals: 

1. I want to set 10 appointments per week. 
2. I want to have at least 95% of my appointments be accepted by the account executive over the next 10 days. 
3. I want to be able to close 20 deals in the next month. 

“Goal Setting: What are SMART Sales Goals and How Important Are They For You” episode resources 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns. 

Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTEND trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at  → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse. 

This episode is also partly brought to you by Wingman. Wingman uses AI-software to empower remote sales teams with conversation intelligence, actionable insights on successful playbooks, and delivers real-time coaching.

This course is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. It will help them elevate their sales game. Sign up now and get the first two modules free! You can go and visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals also call us at (561) 570-5077. "We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show.

I saw a question on Reddit recently from a seller who wondered whether or not to create content on LinkedIn. The seller worried that writing about topics like quota, rejection, or prospecting might sound too salesy and might hurt his pipeline. 

The truth is that many sellers have fear around the concept of creating content because we worry about how the audience will accept our ideas. 

Middle school prom

Not only should we post our own content on LinkedIn; we should also engage with other people’s content. 

Unfortunately, many of us treat LinkedIn like a middle school prom. We stand around the edge of the room watching each other, too afraid to dance. We might speak to a friend or two, but we’re afraid to look stupid, so we don’t dance. Instead, we let everybody else enjoy themselves. 

We don’t want to look stupid on the dance floor, so perhaps we look stupid on the sidelines instead. We’re afraid of the critics who might make fun of our efforts

Many sellers treat LinkedIn like a middle school dance. We don’t participate because we’re afraid of looking silly. #SalesContent

True engagement

Engagement doesn’t involve moving around the room and saying hi to people at the dance. On LinkedIn, clicking “like” for a few posts doesn’t qualify as engagement. It won’t sustain relationships. It’s basically an indication of approval. 

Engagement requires you to bring other people into the conversation. If, for example, you’re in the water industry, and you see an article about the danger of water purification tablets, you can tag another colleague who wrote about the same topic. 

The author of the piece will take note of your efforts to bring someone else to his page, and your colleague will take note as well. 

Talk to people and work to create lasting relationships.

‘Salesy’ content

The question on Reddit came from a seller who worried that his prospects might tire of always seeing sales-related content. But consider your own news feed. Are you annoyed by the fact that you frequently see the same faces over and over again? Or do you simply choose to read things that are relevant and skip over the ones that are not? 

On the other hand, when one of those people shares something that helps you or connects you with someone else, that brand sticks in your mind. When you need help with something, you’ll remember the guys who showed up in your feed. 

When you post content and engage with other content, you stay top-of-mind with your audience. 

Audience

Make sure that you’re posting the right kind of content for your audience. Gear it toward your prospect. If you’re targeting salespeople, it’s ok to post sales content. But if you’re targeting decision-makers at Fortune 500 companies, don’t post about yourself. Post what the leaders in that industry want to know or read. 

Gear your content toward the people you want to attract. 

Don’t be paralyzed by the fear that your content won’t sound perfect. Understand who you’re targeting and who you want to attract. 

LinkedIn impressions

To understand how value-rich LinkedIn is, listen to TSE 1085 on our podcast. In it, my friend Steven Hart shared some LinkedIn stats with us based on the 48 Eyeopening LinkedIn Statistics for 2019.

LinkedIn provides 36 billion impressions per month. That’s 468 billion impressions per year, or 9 billion impressions per week. Users see content 9 billion times per week. 

Now factor in that there are 500 million people on LinkedIn, and only a fraction of them are active there. Of those, only 3 million people share content weekly. So those 3 million people who share content weekly are getting 9 billion impressions. 

The rest of us are afraid to share content, so we’re sitting on the...

As a salesperson, you (hopefully) enjoy interacting with your prospects. However, a typical sales mistake is forcing the prospect to fit our communication style rather than the other way around. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by the author of The Savage Leader and founder of Group Sixty, Darren Reinke, to discuss building rapport the way the prospect wants. 

Sellers assume prospects like to communicate in the same style as the seller.

• Selling should start with the understanding that we’re all different. Establishing that early on will impact your ability to build rapport.
• Some people might like starting with a conversation; others prefer to focus on the tasks at hand. We’re all different.
• Get a sense of the customer’s style by learning what motivates and drives them.
• Listen to the prospect and pay attention to their tone and how they conduct themselves to understand how to communicate.

Three steps to learn a prospect’s communication style:

• Intention: Have a willingness to change and do something different. Question if there are better ways to build rapport as a seller and think about the potential achievements.
• Reflection: Know what kind of seller you are and use that understanding to change your communication (when necessary.)
• Action: Analyze someone’s body language, tone of speaking, and how they interact and put that change into play.

A focus on the commission can ruin the relationship. 

• If you see someone as a dollar sign, you probably won’t build rapport anytime soon.
• Ask prompts to directly understand the audience - How do you like to receive information? How do you want to communicate?
• Asking questions (and listening to the answers) will indicate how you can best communicate. Be more intentional with your questions.
• People will come back to the conversation repeatedly because they like talking to you. Less talking and more listening is the best way to build relationships.

Darren’s biggest takeaway? Don’t sell the way you like to sell; sell the way the prospect wants to be sold. Tailor your style to engage your audience. Find Darren on LinkedIn, visit his website thesavageleader.com, and find his book on Amazon.

This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The Great Resignation has become the Great Reshuffle, meaning it can be difficult for sales professionals like you to find leads and close deals. Luckily, Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is here for you!

Sales Navigator from LinkedIn is the only tool that uses real-time alerts and up-to-date insights to help you know when prospects are ready to buy. And, with over 30 advanced filters, sales professionals can quickly find genuine leads with the intent to purchase.

Gain the advantage of accurate, quality lead generation data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can get a 60-day free trial of Sales Navigator at www.LinkedIn.com/TSE. 

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are

Some people aren’t into the idea of rejection but actually, there are positive reasons why getting a no is not such a bad thing. 

Francisco Terreros is a co-founder of Felkrem, a full-service sports marketing agency focused on two core services. First, they represent professional footballers/soccer players in their careers both on and off the field, and secondly, they sell brands and reach the players’ demographics through sports and marketing. They are FIFA agents and marketers who do sales every day. The sell to parents and kids they want to sign to their firm as well as to teams and sponsors. 

They are selling their experience as sports marketers to brands who want to capitalize on their understanding of how to navigate and reach their target demographics. 

Their company is surviving, thriving, and growing rapidly despite the competition in the industry. Felkrem is dealing with the athletes' professions and their dreams. 

Getting no as a sales rep

Sales reps have been in this situation once or twice in their careers as salespeople. It’s difficult to hear the rejection, and much more difficult to accept it. But why do we get a no and why is getting a no not such a bad thing? 

A seller’s job depends on his ability to  get a yes, so naturally, a no for an answer is a hard pill to swallow. 

Lions are the kings of the jungle. It’s their natural instinct to turn their chase into actual food. They have their hunting strategies matrixed down that when the prey gets away, they don’t just give up. They walk and find another kill. They also don't necessarily go for the biggest and the fastest one. They change their game occasionally  and go for something else. 

As sellers, we need to think like lions. It is our instinct to turn the potential sales opportunities into yeses. Our game must also be matrixed so that when we hear no, we don’t walk away dejected. Instead, we walk away with a new plan in our head. We should learn to walk away and get the next one. We need to understand that no is part of the process and it’s going to help us figure out what we must tweak to get the yes. 

Overcoming this is a hard job because our lives depend on the yes. ‘

The sales process is a numbers game and our closing rate of yes comes before several nos. Your sales career will change once you realize that and calculate how many nos you need to get a yes. Simply put, a no means one step closer to the yes. 

Back to the beginning 

We must all begin learning the basics before we become successful in our craft. Cisco got an internship with the sponsorship department in a major league soccer team in his area. He was assigned to support the sponsorship team. He took pictures of activations, set up banners in the stadium, and met with clients at the game to let them into the gate. He was a secretary but he needed to be more. He started coming in two hours before his shift and observed. With his notepad in hand, he listened to the sponsorship guide sell and he took notes to understand the process. Weeks later, he asked for more and he was given a list of people. He started calling and calling and got zero yeses. 

Years later he realized that all those nos taught him something since they got him closer to the job. The nos helped him understand himself and his techniques and what he needed to do to change the no into a yes. 

Cisco wouldn’t have been able to understand that it’s all a system and a process if he didn’t start with the basics. 

The hungry lion 

The analogy of the lion is perfect for this subject matter. After missing their prey for a couple of times, a hungry lion is more zealous than ever to catch another one. A hungry lion is persistent and patient in an intelligent way, not in a...

The sales space is a huge industry but it needs more diversity. In this episode, DeJuan Brown talks about how we remove the barriers to sales for people of color. 

Studies show that 78.9% of salespeople in all industries are white, 11.2% are tan, and the remaining percentage is divided into various ethnicities. There is so much success in sales but there are barriers - both visible and not so visible to many. 

The barriers in sales

• Job descriptions can become a barrier, especially for black people. These are individuals who do not have much experience in a specific space. Some jobs need 7-10 years of experience before one can even get a nod for an interview. 
• There’s also the perception that sellers don’t make money and that a career in sales is just a plan B, C, or D. 
• In some communities, there’s still a stigma on salespeople. They’re the ones you shut your door to, they are the car dealers, the door-to-door insurance man, and other undesirable roles. 

Changing the mindset

• Sales leaders and professionals who have experienced in sales and who have seen saw how it  can could support families for generations have to be vocal. T, they need to speak up, and start talking to break the stigma. 
• Salespeople who are achieving success in the sales world need to put their success on display to attract other people into the sales space. It’s essential to help these people to make it in sales and get themselves past the door. 
• Some people already have the skills to get into sales and succeed in it but they lack the right mindset. As sales leaders, your goal is to put that spark in them, to bring them along for the ride, and teach them what they can do. 
• There is a need to attract a new generation of salespeople and when you do that, you need to have a place for them to grow. They need guidance on how to navigate the sales space to avoid the pitfalls. 
• Job description is a barrier and many companies today are eliminating cutting people off right off out the bat because of it. Organizations are looking for years and years of experience that many do not have. What they do have is the right attitude but they don’t get to show their tenacity off because they’ve been cut off by the experience requirement. 
• Young black people who want to get into the sales space need good mentors. They need to be taught the truth that sometimes companies are looking for people who can do the job right and who have the right attitude. 
• Aspiring salespeople need to lean into communities, gain get confidence from their mentors, and have the humility to ask for help in improving their skills. 
• Companies right now are looking for ways to make gender-neutral job descriptions. DeJuan, however, would like to see that same effort to create job descriptions that wouldn’t box people out. 
• DeJuan encourages sales leaders today to keep learning from the people before them, to keep learning and sharpening one another, look for ways to help others get into the sales space, and ensure that these new salespeople are properly equipped. 

“Diversity: How Do We Remove the Barriers to Sales for People of Color?” episode resources

De Juan and other great minded individuals who were also mentioned in this podcast created a community called Sales for the Culture. It’s a community to attract and empower black people in technology sales. Check out the community on LinkedIn. 

Connect with DeJuan Brown on LinkedIn, Marcus Knight, and Jacob Gebrewold. 

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn,

New sellers struggle to make sales because they lack the skill and experience to ask well-crafted questions and build rapport with their prospects. In this episode of The Sales Evangelist, guest Tony Morris tells us the five ways for new sellers to sell like pros.

As an author, podcaster, entrepreneur, and speaker for sales conferences worldwide, Tony knows how any beginner in the sales world can stand out.  

Follow the 80/20 rule (but in the proper order)

• Sales reps should apply the 80/20 rule when talking to prospects: listen 80% of the time and speak 20% of the time. (We have two ears and one mouth, so use them in that order.)
• Many salespeople use the 80/20 rule, but reversed. Tony’s first tip for new sellers: talk less and listen more. 
• When you encourage your prospect to talk more, you learn more about their needs and how you can help them.

Ask the right questions. 

• What makes a bad question? Any question that prompts a one-word answer. These questions are impersonal and don’t provide insight into the prospect’s journey.
• Instead, ask what Tony calls the “killer questions:” questions that allow you to understand what the prospect is looking for, what they’ve seen in your competition, and how you can help. 
• Sales managers should encourage their teams to ask open-ended questions. The goal is to hold a conversation, not an interrogation.

Treat people how they want to be treated.

• Remember the childhood The Golden Rule? Treat people how you want to be treated.
• In sales, throw that out the window. Follow the Platinum Rule: treat people how they want to be treated.
• You don’t respond to clients the same way every time because they all have different perspectives of what that looks like. Pay attention to how they want to be treated, and respond accordingly. 

Be interested, not interesting.

• Top salespeople are genuinely curious and interested in their prospects. Your job is not to sell but to serve by helping them buy what is most appropriate to their needs.
• Genuine interest will transform regular customers into ambassadors who recommend you to their friends, family, and colleagues.  

Be The Challenger 

• The book The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon challenged Tony’s perspective on sales. 
• Tony initially thought sales to be about relationships. However, this book shows most successful salespeople share insights to make their prospects think differently. 

Do the basics brilliantly.

• We over-complicate the sales process. The basics are pretty simple: schedule meetings, prepare questions to preempt objections, build rapport, understand problems, and develop solutions. 
• For example, you need to offer multiple touchpoints. If they are genuine prospect, connect with them on LinkedIn, comment on their post, send them articles of interest or a copy of your book. 
• Once you know how to do things the right way, you’ll want to keep going. The more you get good results, the more these actions become habitual.

 Connect with Tony Morris via his LinkedIn, and you can also check out his website, Tony Morris International.  

If you are interested in more sales stories, you can talk to Donald directly. Reach him on LinkedIn, Instagram,

Going into an interview can be tough. Whether it’s your very first interview or your twentieth, the nerves never go away completely. You don’t want to sound like an idiot, right? But what if you had a cheat sheet and knew the most common questions salespeople tend to mess up? That’s exactly what we did for today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist. Today we’re joined by Kathleen Steffey, founder, and CEO of Naviga Recruiting, to learn how to answer difficult interview questions and secure your next sales gig.

Question One: Anything related to your sales process. 

• A VP of Sales might ask an interviewee about their selling process from beginning to end. Even if that salesperson knows their approach, they often just don’t know how to articulate it.
• If someone can’t walk through their process, a leader might think they lack depth or aren’t methodical.
• Think about your process in advance, write it down, and go from there.

Question Two: Tell me where you came in against quota?

• You have to know when you came in against quota, whether it’s over or under. If a sales rep doesn’t know their numbers, it’s considered a big negative.
• What if your business doesn’t measure by quota? (Yes, those companies exist.) Create your own measurable goals that define success, and know if you’ve achieved those goals. 

Question Three: What is your prospecting strategy?

• Ten years ago, people could get away with merely pounding the pavement or cold calling. But in today’s marketplace, if you’re not handling prospecting in an integrated manner, you’re viewed as antiquated.
• Know your strategy, and if your strategy is purely through one pipeline, you likely want to reevaluate your strategy.  

Question Four: How do you differentiate yourself in the selling process?

• If you’re meeting your numbers, you might not have ever had to think about this. But the sales process has changed where you have to be creative to be successful.
• Show an interviewer you're different; show them your resilience and prospecting skills through your process. It wins, especially for salespeople.

Find Naviga Recruiting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and connect directly with Kathleen on LinkedIn.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.\

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, a course designed to help new and struggling sellers to master the fundamentals of sales and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here:

You can differentiate in more ways than one. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Thomas Capraro to learn what he did to differentiate himself after decades in the industry, especially selling when competition is incredibly similar. 

Be prepared and be confident enough to ask tough questions.

• You want the prospect to be able to tell you that you’ve done your homework.
• Software like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, and Salesforce help you understand a prospect’s background and learn more about them.

Treat your small clients just like your large clients.

• You never know who your clients are connected to. For example, one of Thomas’s clients once referred him to a huge IT company headquartered in Boca, leading to a substantial business transaction.
• Thomas wants his clients to be treated equally, so his company requires every customer to receive a visit every 90 days to ensure their needs are met.
• A human connection makes all the difference in the sales process. In an increasingly automated field, a personal connection can make all the difference.

People buy from people.

• Thomas has a certain cadence that he follows, which outlines what type of interaction he should do.
• At night he does what he likes to call administrivia
• Thomas completes reports and administrative tasks at the end of the day or on weekends, so he has the time to focus on his craft.
• As new ways of operating and selling come into play, do your homework. 

Know when to listen (which is most of the time.)

• Ask open-ended questions and make an effort to genuinely feel like you want to know the value as a person and friend before as a prospect. And that relationship will take time.
• The days of the one-call closes are gone.
• As soon as you leave a meeting, take notes and record them on your phone or write them down so the next time you talk to that prospect, you can recap the previous conversation.
• You can send them news articles or other pertinent information that they might like to show you were paying attention. 

Major takeaway: Do your research and come knowing more than the other person/ Be prepared, both physically and mentally, and be ready to ask the right questions (and listen to the responses.)

You can find Thomas on Facebook to learn more about his thoughts and experiences. Join Donald’s Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizers, to find a community of people to share, reflect, and grow with on your sales journey.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This course is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Certified Training Program, designed to help new and struggling sellers master sales fundamentals and close more deals. Help elevate your sales game and sign up now to get the first two modules free! You can visit www.thesalesevangelist.com/closemoredeals or call (561) 570-5077 for more information. We value your opinion and always...

It’s no secret that mentors and coaches can be the extra push that gets us to the top. But how can we go about finding great mentors? In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, Donald is joined by Gabrielle Blackwell (GB), co-founder of Women in Sales Club (which focuses on empowering and enabling women to succeed in sales), to discuss her tactics and strategy when finding and interacting with a potential mentor.

The problem: There’s a need for mentors.

• When GB got into sales, she wanted to be the best. However, she needed to learn more first.
• After suffering a concussion from a car accident, she needed to revitalize her efforts and get back on her sales feet. So, GB talked to people to evaluate if she was moving in the right direction.
• Sales reps and leaders need to acknowledge that you don’t have to know everything.
• Admitting you don’t know something requires an environment where you feel comfortable. And, upon noticing the discrepancy between what you know and what you need to know, you can ask for help.

People either want to change or have to change.

• “I don’t know” needs to be normalized. 
• And before management can care about meeting expectations, they need to show you how to meet those expectations. It’s their job to teach you. Part of advocating for yourself involves recognizing when you need to advocate for yourself.
• A mentor is not going to fall in your lap.
• Sandler’s You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar discusses the Dummy Curve. (When you first start something, you ask questions. But as you learn more, you regurgitate what you know rather than listen to what’s happening around you.)

You don’t need to let people know how much you know.

• If someone asked me to be a mentor, what is it you’re trying to accomplish? What is it about me that makes you uniquely qualified to be a mentor?
• Who are subject matter experts at what you’re trying to get better at?
• Once you target those people, consume their content—research what they’re doing. Approach them with questions and comments about their content and their work. Show the drive.

It’s such a show of strength to ask for help. If you know what you need help with, that’s great. But if you don’t know what you don’t know, that’s also great. For more great content from GB, sign up for the Women in Sales Club Newsletter and connect with her on LinkedIn.

This episode is brought to you in part by Skipio.

Are you sick of crickets? As a salesperson, the pain of reaching out with phone calls or emails and not receiving a response is real.

But all text messaging is not created equal. 85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage in a conversation, not listen to bots. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in the conversions you want. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by mParticle.

Are you tired of wading through thousands of open sales positions to find the one perfect for you? Well, look no further. mParticle is one of the leading...

Now that 2023 is here, EVERYONE is a seller! In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, our host Donald Kelly meets with Ted Blosser to talk more about selling in this upcoming year.

The Importance of Momentum

• Momentum is KEY in business, whether you’re a seller or not. Think about it: If you’re some start up company, you have to generate momentum to build your business. If you’re a seller, you have to generate momentum for your sales. Momentum is key.
• This is DOUBLY true with the current economic situation. As business slows and profits wane, sellers and businesses have to be ready to REBUILD that momentum to come back even stronger as the economy recovers.
• Generating momentum is important, yes, but how do you actually build this momentum? Through SELLERS. Blosser gives the example of Tesla in its early years: Elon Musk made EVERYONE act as a seller when the company nearly went under. Being able to sell is critical in the generation of momentum,

Three Key Points For Sellers

• Blosser has also identified 3 KEY things for sellers to keep in mind, in the upcoming year. The first thing is: Focus on outbounding.
• The second thing is: Make everyone a seller. As different people interact with clients throughout the sales process, they ALL have a chance to add value and upsell. Get everyone involved to think, and act, like a seller.
• The final thing is: Change marketer’s mindsets. This combines the two other points. Marketing teams generate leads and CONSTANTLY interact with clients. This is your BEST opportunity to upsell and get extra profits from qualified leads.

The Mindset Shift

• In the past, especially when the market was more saturated, businesses and sellers took a quantity over quality approach. Sellers focused SOLELY on just sheer numbers, but not things like conversion rate.
• With the current state of the market, quality is king. Instead of focusing on several inefficient things, focus on a few VERY efficient ones. Blosser compares this to a regular infantry vs special ops approach: Instead of sending waves of infantry out, send a few highly specialized, and effective, soldiers out.

If you want to connect with Ted Blosser more, or learn about shifting your mindset, you can talk to him on LinkedIn or at his website, www.workramp.com. You can talk to Donald and drop him a message on LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Instagram at donaldckelly. You can also join TSE’s space on Circle to talk to Donald and other sellers looking to improve their craft.

This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com.

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