“Make the pre-call research go away, replace it with curiosity-based scripting that you get really, really good at” – Chris Beall in today’s Tip 848

How about you? Do you do pre-call research?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Chris!

Market Dominance Guys Podcast
ConnectAndSell
Chris Beall on LinkedIn

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Chris Beall, the CEO of ConnectAndSell. For 30 years, Chris has led software start-ups as a founder or developer. He believes the most powerful part of software systems are human beings, and the value key is to let the computer do what it does well to free up human potential. Here he is:

Chris Beall: Here’s a tip for anyone in B2B sales. At some point you’ve got to make cold call, maybe a bunch of them. And if you’ve ever got to do that, it doesn’t matter if you’re a sales development rep or an account executive, you are probably going to do pre-call research. 61% of all sales reps recently surveyed said, “Yeah, they do pre-call research.” Well, stop it. Pre-call research is a waste and it leads you astray.

Why is it a waste? Because 22 out of 23 times on average, your list may be a little riskier than that, but 22 out of 23 times you’re going to end up navigating a phone system or waiting for ringing if you’re lucky enough to have cell phone numbers only and you’re going to end up in voicemail and pre-call research is not going to make somebody return your voicemail. Call you back. It’s just not going to happen.

So secondly, once you’ve wasted all that time, you’ve actually made yourself worse. So say you do 5 minutes of pre-call research for those 22 calls that it’s going to take an order to get one conversation. That’s one hundred plus minutes of research for one conversation, plus all the time dialing and so forth you probably two hours to get a conversation, then you’ve got to update your CRM, so forth, and so on. And when you finally do get somebody your pre-call research is going to tempt you into trying to say something that catches their attention that has to do with them that you found out from publicly available information. And one, you’re probably wrong about what they’re interested in right now. What they’re interested in right now is getting off the phone with their self-image intact. So you’re almost certainly wrong about that because that’s not what you’re going to talk about.

And then secondly, your guess when it’s off by a little, it’s off by a lot. Call me and say, “Hey, I see you went to Arizona State University. “And I’m going to say, “Well, didn’t you notice I also went to the University of Arizona,” and then you’re confused. So your guesses are not going to be relevant to me. I’m not waiting for a salesperson to call me. And nobody is in order to say something about our background or whatever. What we’re looking for is for somebody to get us curious enough to want to actually take a meeting, to invest a little bit of time to hear more.

So work just on curiosity and curiosity has nothing to do with that person, has everything to do with what is interesting that they could be learning in a discovery meeting with you or a colleague that you’re setting meetings for.

So make the pre-call research go away, replace it with curiosity-based scripting that you get really, really good at, that you’re really good at the tone. You’re really good at delivery. And you sincerely believe in the potential value of the meetings with a human being that you’re talking with, even if they never do business with you.

Scott Ingram: For more about Chris, ConnectAndSell, and for a link to his Market Dominance Guys podcast, just click over to DailySales.Tips/848

Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“The more I fail, the more I learn. And the more I learn, the more I win.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 847

How do you sustain your confidence?

Join the conversation below and let’s support Jeff and his Golf Marathon fundraiser!

Donate to Chosen Vision
[email protected]
Books by Jeff Bajorek
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
The Why And The Buy Podcast

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jeff Bajorek. So it must be Saturday. Here he is:

Jeff Bajorek: There are a lot of tips and tricks and hacks out there for building or gaining confidence, and some of them work for some people better than others. But today, what I want to give you are three keys to sustaining confidence, to rebuilding that confidence, because we all know it’s fleeting from time to time.

Key #1. Remind yourself of what you know to be true. You’ve won before. You’ve built things before. You’ve made things happen before that other people didn’t think you could do. Rely on those memories, remind yourself of what that felt like, and remember that if you did it before, you can do it again.

Key #2. Redefine what success looks like. Don’t try to cram an entire sales process into a single sales call, focus on learning one thing with every single outreach attempt, when the difference between failure and success is whether or not you’ve learned you’ve created a completely different lens through which you can look at your sales calls and you’re going to find that a lot more progress comes when you recognize that a lot of little wins, they add up.

Key #3. I want you to address your dysfunctional relationship with failure, is probably not even dysfunctional, it’s probably toxic. And for all of the self-talk that you give yourself about how I love to win, but not as much as I hate losing like, Yeah, okay, hold on. That’s fine. But refer back to key #2 about what success actually looks like. And then also remember that you learn a lot more from failure than you do from success.

So let’s consider that and maybe not beat yourself up too badly when things don’t go the way that you wanted them to, because there are really limiting benefits or a limited number of benefits to that kind of self-talk. And what does that do to your mindset? Does it really drive you? Probably not as much as you’d like to think.

So, look, when you break these things down, when you put all these keys together, right. Remind yourself that you’ve been successful before. And you know what? People also believe that you can be successful now. So you should, too. Secondly, failure is not exactly what you think it is. It’s probably a much lower bar to something successful than you may think. So take a real good look at what you’re asking yourself to do. And number three, when you do fail, recognize that it is a learning opportunity. The more I fail, the more I learn. And the more I learn, the more I win. I think about that. I’ll talk to you again next week.

Scott Ingram: It’s not too late to support Jeff and his Golf Marathon fundraiser in support of Chosen Vision. Last I checked he was just shy of his $2500 goal and maybe you can be the one to put him over the edge and take advantage of his super-generous group coaching offer that includes access to Jason Bay, Christie Walters, Larry Levin, and Mike Simmons as well. We’ve got a link for you at DailySales.Tips/847.

Once you’ve clicked over there, but sure to click back here tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Complexity is the reply killer that you aren’t thinking about.” – Will Allred in today’s Tip 846

How do you get a positive response?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Will!

Will Allred on LinkedIn
Lavender

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Will Allred and since Will is self introducing I’m just going to let him take it from here:

Will Allred: Hey there! I’m Will Allred, one of the Co-Founders and COO at Lavender. At Lavender, we help you write better emails faster. We see a lot of emails that Lavender like millions and their respective versions. So we’ve gotten pretty good at parsing out what’s good and what’s bad, and really what it takes to get a positive response.

So today I’m going to talk to you about writing complexity. Complexity is the reply killer that you aren’t thinking about. How do I know that? Because it’s the number one mistake that sellers make when writing an email. Emails that get the most positive replies are written at a 5th-grade reading level. Yeah. Over 70% of the emails that we see are written beyond a 10th-grade reading level. Let me repeat that. The emails that get the most replies are written at a 5th-grade reading level, yet over 70% of the emails we see are written beyond a 10th-grade reading level.

Are you seeing the mismatch? So let’s talk about what I’m going to cover quickly.

One, I’m going to clearly define what it means to have complex writing. I’m going to talk about why it’s killing your reply rates. I’m going to speak to how you can fix it and your emails. And lastly, I’m going to talk about applying this to your next cadence.

So first things first. What is complex writing? At Lavender, we measure complexity by reading level. Reading levels, a simple score measured by grade level. What is the minimum grade level you’d expect someone to have to be educated at, in order to understand something? So a 5th-grade reading level means it’s probably too verbose for a 3rd-grader yet it’s on point for a 5th-grader in anyone educated beyond a 5th-grade reading level, they would understand it.

So you calculate a grade level with three elements, length of sentences, the number of syllables per sentence, and the distribution of those syllables in the sentence.

So what makes your writing more complex? Big uncommon words, complicated sentence structures, and run-on sentences.

So we know what makes our writing complicated, but why is our writing so complicated? It’s simple, your ego. We want to impress. So we use flashy buzzwords instead of colloquial, AKA common language. And it’s why our complex writing fails. We’re not meeting the reader where they are. People don’t have the attention span that we think they do. You have to remember, they’re not waiting around for you to reach out. And their brain is looking to do the least amount of work possible.

So expect the first glance of your email to be a skim as they look to categorize and sort your email out, even worse for your reply rate. Your initial email open is 8x more likely to be on someone’s phone. The lovely folks at Facebook did research around attention when we do something on our phone versus the computer and the results are kind of horrifying. We have almost 40% less attention on a phone. That’s where they’re going to reach your email. So when you send them for both languages, they tune out. They miss the point and worse. They sort it in their brain is bad cold outreach, and you’re doomed to their mental spam filter.

So let’s talk about what makes your prospect’s brain happy and help you get more positive replies.

Number one. Simple common words.

Two. Short sentences. Your copy should feel choppy.

Three. Small paragraphs. If you’re going past four sentences in a paragraph it’s typically too long and it looks like a big wall of text on someone’s phone.

And lastly, keep your email to a single idea and a single request. So let’s dive deeper on that last point, keeping your email to a single point.

If you ask a prospect to do two things, you’ve just doubled the effort it takes to reply. You want to make things easy on them. So focus your email on one value prop, one goal, or one request. Each sentence, paragraph, email should all be one idea. And honestly, cadences are no different. So when you’re dripping a series of sales emails, it’s really popular to try to add different value props into your trip. You know, email by email, don’t do this. It doesn’t align with how your prospect’s brain work.

So memory favors repetition know structure, your cadence into bursts. So three to five touch points about a specific request or value prop. Then pause, then another three to five touch points about a different value prop. This keeps your value prop clear to the other individual and it doesn’t muddy what you guys do, and it keeps things simple. And that maximizes your chance of getting a reply.

Hopefully, this is a helpful tip. If you’d like more help with your emails, I encourage you to try our email system at Lavender. It’s free to start at TryLavender.com

Scott Ingram: For more about Will and Lavender, just click over to DailySales.Tips/846.

Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Use a building block template, not a standalone template” – Kristina Finseth in today’s Tip 845

Do you use building block email templates?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Kristina!

Kristina Finseth on LinkedIn
Outbound FIRE Framework Course
Email Uncovered Video Channel
Submit a Sales Tip

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Kristina Finseth. Kristina leads growth marketing at Interseller, a prospecting & outreach platform for recruiters and sellers. In her role, she is responsible for leading both the marketing and sales development teams. Kristina is also the creator of the Outbound FIRE Framework Course, focused on getting you to 80%+ opens, 30%+ replies, and 10%+ booked meetings off of cold email outreach alone. Here she is:

Kristina Finseth: Want to talk real quickly about email templates and specifically standalone email templates versus what I would call a building block email template. Standalone email templates are those ones that you Google and probably everyone else Googles something with the search terms along the lines of high-performing sales email templates or email templates to bump up my email and the inbox. And more than likely, what’s happening is if you found those and you are using them with zero to little modification, chances are a whole lot of other people are, too.

And so what ends up happening is your deliverability is already going to be impacted. And so what’s really important is that you use something more along the lines, especially for an initial touchpoint of a building block template. And the big difference there is there are key components of that template that change each and every time, which keeps the content fresh, makes each email seem different, and doesn’t impact your deliverability in a negative way.

And so let me share a quick example with you of the template that we are using here at Interseller and our outbound process. It’s part of the Outbound FIRE Framework. And then there’s some leading teams at Gong, at Chili Piper, at HubSpot, that are also using this as a similar approach as part of their kind of, I would say, toolbelt for outreach.

So you’ll notice here what’s very different about this template is there are two components that shift every single time. And these are just like company name or first name, their entire phrases or sentences that end up changing and keeping that content fresh. So you’ll notice something like, “Hey, about your LinkedIn post” or “about your press release” or something about the company or the person at the personalized level. And I’ll say something like, “Hey, I noticed you recently posted on LinkedIn about X, that I’d reach out. Your comment Y was right on the money and I couldn’t agree more. And then with that said, I’d love to get you on a quick 10 to 15-minute call to learn about you, your company, and your priorities would love to earn the right to talk through how Interseller might fit in.” And so what you’ll notice here and what’s very unique about this building block template as well, is that there is no spelling out of who the company is, what we do, there’s no spelling out of a problem we solve or other companies that we’re helping to solve that problem. There’s no solution here. Everything is very, very centered around the person or at the company level. And so what you’ll notice is it feels a little weird, right? Like how do they know who I am? How do they know what I do?

Here’s an example that filled out. “Hey, Daniel, I noticed you recently shared an ERE article on LinkedIn about veteran recruiting that I had reached out. This article is super insightful but this” and then here’s a quote, “influence hiring managers to interview veterans…, was right on the money and I couldn’t agree more.” And again, that sentence about earning the right to talk through how Interseller might find is the only place that I mention the company. And if it’s interesting, what you’ll notice is that they will click and so this is something that I have been tracking for well over a year, and I started noticing trends pretty early on last year right before Covid hit. And it’s this correlation between the amount of people who click and by click in this context. I mean, they have clicked the website link in my signature block to the amount of people who actually reply back is almost apples to apples.

And so what’s happening here is I’m not spelling anything out, but I’m generating curiosity enough that the prospect is going out and doing their research. They’re connecting the dots. They’re replying back with that context in mind. And so you’re kind of turning an outbound lead into an inbound lead if there’s interest. And this number, again, is almost identical. And so just to kind of take you on a journey here and how this building block template kind of help surface, that is you’ll notice here I sent an email. They clicked the website after they opened. Same thing, they clicked the website a little bit later, and then here’s a response from someone off of that first message that has nothing to do with my product. Right?

Thank you for reaching out and for your interest in my company. Interseller seems like a great platform. We’re currently in a bit of a stall stage… And so you’ll see they connect the dots by doing their own research. And there’s something psychological there about being in control of deciding how you respond back to someone kind of being in control of surfacing information, just like we would if we were buying something on Amazon and researching reviews from other folks that have purchased that product or use that product.

So. Big takeaways here, use a building block template, not a standalone template, right? Make sure key components are changing out each time so that it stays fresh in your deliverability is higher. And then the second piece here is just remembered, you don’t have to spell everything out. Your prospect, if you generate curiosity, they will go and do their own research.

Scott Ingram: As you could probably hear, there’s a video version of this tip where you can see the actual emails that Kristina is referencing. We’ll have that link, links for you to connect with Kristina and to learn more about her Outbound FIRE Framework course at DailySales.Tips/845

After you’ve clicked over there, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“A really simple and subtle way to begin to underscore the collaborative nature of the conversation is to swap out all that ‘I’ focused language for ‘we’ focused language.” – Jordana Zeldin in today’s Tip 844

How do you create collaborative conversations with your prospect?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jordana!

Jordana Zeldin on LinkedInQ
Spriing Training

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jordana Zeldin. Jordana is a Sales Coach and the Founder of Spriing Training, a coaching consultancy that helps sellers and sales teams feel and be more human in their selling. The result? Selling that feels better for you, for your prospects, for your revenue. Here she is:

Jordana Zeldin: Your meeting agenda can be a really powerful place, not just to talk about what you and your prospect are going to do together. You know what you’re going to cover, what you’re going to talk about, but also how you’re going to be together, what the dynamic of your conversation can feel like. To my mind, there is almost no better adjective to describe the very best-selling conversations than collaborative. And you can actually begin to lay the groundwork for collaborative selling conversations right in your agenda. And I’m going to be talking about two really easy ways to do that.

First of all, you know, agendas are usually chocked full of ‘I’ focus language, right? As the seller delivering their agenda. We often talk about that, you know, I want to do this. Next, I’d like to do this. From there, I’ll tell you about this. Right? And all of that suggests that this meeting is really about you and your needs and your wants as the seller rather than your prospect. But a really simple and subtle way to begin to underscore the collaborative nature of the conversation is to swap out all that ‘I’ focused language for ‘we’ focused language. Like, from there we can. Together we can determine. Based on what you tell me, I can share… Right? So using language to queue up and trigger that this is going to be a conversation that’s really fueled by you and your prospect on the same team working together.

Now, a common thing that I see at the end of an agenda to get confirmation or buy-in is to ask a question like, does that sound good or does that make sense? Or even a, you know, a better but still closed-ended question like, is there anything else you want to add to the agenda? A far better and more effective question that allows you to not only learn more about what matters to your prospect, but also give them the early experience of feeling seen and heard is to ask an open-ended question like this. “What do you want to make sure we talk about?” Or “That’s what I had in mind. What do you want to add to the agenda today?” Or even, “You know, so that was just what I had in mind. But what’s the most important thing that you want to come away from our time together with?” That gets them contributing early, sharing what matters to them most. Right? Beginning the process of it being a dialog rather than a monologue, while also giving you as the seller an invaluable compass that allows you to shape the conversation and kind of molded around what you learned they care about most.

Scott Ingram: To connect with Jordana on LinkedIn and to learn more about Spriing Training, just click over to DailySales.Tips/844

Then, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Use this list to your advantage depending on how old and successful the company you work for is.” – Evan Kelsay in today’s Tip 843

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and check out the links!

Sales Success Summit
Evan Kelsey on Linkedin
Demystifying the 10K for Sales Professionals
56: Evan Kelsay of Seismic – 800% Achievement with a Massive Deal
74: Let Sellers Sell with Evan Kelsay (Round 2)

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip is an excerpt from a bonus episode that we just released on the Sales Success Stories podcast today featuring Evan Kelsay’s full Sales Success Summit presentation titled: Demystifying the 10K for Sales Professionals. Check this out:

Evan Kelsay: Now, I know this session was supposed to be all about the 10K’s, but frankly, I find the conference presentations, the proxy statements, and the annual reports to be full of just as much, if not more gold to help me sell into an account. Let’s start with a proxy statement. In addition to the annual report that an account publishes every year, you should be able to find what’s called a proxy statement. Its main purpose is to tell the SEC that their Board of Directors is legit and outline the method of compensating key executives at the company.

There’s two nuggets of immediate gold in a proxy statement.

Number one is what makes up the compensation structure for executives at that account. Let’s face it, people are motivated by what they’re incentivized with money to do. What you’re looking for is a section that says something like annual incentives, award calculations, or how the account is breaking down the measurements for executive pay for that next year for specific executives. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and the account will name specific strategic initiatives a particular executive has to show progress in to get their bonus. Likely, one of the executives listed is at the top of the food chain for your world. So aligning what you solve for to what the executive is getting paid on is a really good recipe for getting them to give you your day in court as it directly aligns with their biggest interest, their bank account.

The other section I find particularly valuable is the section where the account tells you who on the board benchmarks the executive compensation against. You’re looking for a section with the phrase peer group in it and a list of companies. I just had control f and search for the phrase. The companies listed in this section are the companies the Board of Directors at the account think are the most similar to your account. They factor in a bunch of things like complexity and size of the account, geography, industry they sell into, number of products, centralized versus federated control, et cetera.

Some of these companies will be direct competitors of your account, which is helpful to know who’s on the shortlist in terms of its perceived competition. However, it will likely be a bunch of other companies on the list that don’t compete directly with your account. But the board things are similar types of companies on many fronts. I call them, “The brother from another mother companies.”

Use this list to your advantage depending on how old and successful the company you work for is, you may not be able to go to that target account and say, “Look at all your competitors who are using us,” but you may have a bunch of peer companies as clients to point to and say “Your board thinks these companies are like you and we’ve made those companies successful. So you should give us a look.”

Let’s move on to my personal favorite, the conference presentation…

Scott Ingram: I left that little tease at the end there, because the full presentation is about 24 minutes long and is full of gold nuggets like these. We’ll have a link for you at DailySales.Tips/843. We’ll also include links to Evan Kelsay’s LinkedIn profile, the Sales Success Summit, and the two other interview episodes that Evan’s been featured in.

Once you’ve checked out all of that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Make sure you’re saving some time in the evening, at least twice a week for an hour or two each to go through and prospect on LinkedIn.” – Evan Patterson in today’s Tip 842

Do you social selling after dark?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Evan!

[email protected]
Evan Patterson on LinkedIn
Social Selling Tips

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Evan Patterson. Evan is a business development professional with demonstrated savviness in social selling, email prospecting, B2B affiliate, and influencer marketing and creative outreach strategies. He’s a Senior BDR at Reprise and a Social Selling Coach and Belonging, Inclusion and Culture Co-Leader at SDR Nation. Here he is:

Evan Patterson: Hey there. My name is Evan Patterson. I’m a senior BDR over at Reprise. I’m also a coach at SDR Nation and I help of their belonging, inclusion, and culture organization as well. So my biggest tip lately, it’s been social selling, but do it after dark. Really. I mean it. What you got to do is don’t work more, please, but rearrange your schedule, work a little bit in the evening at least once or twice a week for a couple of hours.

I promise you, everybody else is doing I’m scrolling all over LinkedIn. All of our social media. Go where your prospects are. Take my social selling tips. I got eight of them on my LinkTree, but take those social selling tips and apply them to your prospecting methods after dark. Really, that’s when people are online. That’s when people are on social media. That is what people are doing scrolling through LinkedIn, like I said. You know, you’re guilty of it too.

So make sure you’re saving some time in the evening, at least twice a week for an hour or two each to go through and prospect on LinkedIn. It’ll work. I’ve had times where I got five meetings in just a couple of hours back to back. It’s pretty cool. Give it a go. Tell me how it works. Talk to you later.

Scott Ingram: If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/842 we’ll have Evan’s email address and links to his LinkedIn. If you send him a message he’ll hook you up with a 12 month free trial of Reprise, a code-free demo tech platform that’s fueling product-led growth for marketers and salespeople. DailySales.Tips/842.

Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Focus on a deal getting done, but really focused on the impact, but not in a salesy way.” – Jheryn Kenney in today’s Tip 841

How about you? Are you a salesy salesperson?

Join the conversation below and check out the full interview with Jheryn!

Jheryn Kenney on LinkedIn
Jheryn Kenney on Sales Success Stories Interview

Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes in the form of two clips from last week’s epic episode 118 on the Sales Success Stories podcast featuring Jheryn Kenney who’s #1 on the LinkedIn Sales Solutions team. Check this out:

Jheryn Kenney: That’s such a good question because I think we often just move so fast that we don’t really kind of just take time to hone in on what it is that’s making a difference. I will say, the first is that I’m a real human being and I believe that everybody else in the world is a real human being. So often we get these reputations and sales of being sleazy and super pushy or phony. And I am just not, I am a real person. And I just know that no matter what level the stakeholder may be in, they have life worries, stressors. They have, you know, children who break the rules and challenge them or embarrass them in the store. They’ve been heartbroken. Just everything about them is also a human and they also have a job to do. So that’s one thing, just being a human.

Two, is I have a strength. Some people call it a superpower of discovering and or developing mobilizers. So I think it’s easy to get caught off or kind of maybe feel like you’re chasing the rabbit when people say the right things or give you buying signals. But really, what I’ve seen, what’s helped me succeed is just knowing who is actually going to get this done or who’s going to be my partner and getting this done. I think a big part of that comes from understanding people, caring about people, but also understanding them and helping them to win.

The third thing I would add is I have this deep-seated expectation of excellence from myself and the people around me, and I see the people around me. It’s more of a belief in their excellence. And so I think that winning is an awesome output of being excellent. And that’s whether that’s me as an individual contributor to a particular deal or if that’s a team working together to do something amazing, but having that fierce belief that excellence is a requirement, it goes a long, long way. And some people call that grit, but it goes a long way. You could say both.

And I realized I didn’t even answer your other question about how I got to the top at LinkedIn. So right now, I was surprised actually to finish our last half at a hundred and fifty percent goal. I wasn’t surprised by that, but I was surprised that I finished #1 really, just because there’s so many good and talented people, so many like just genuinely good people who care a lot. And I see how far that goes. So it was exciting. For me, I think it’s all that I mentioned before, being human with my customers, finding mobilizers, helping them win. Let’s focus on a deal getting done, but really focused on the impact, but not in a salesy way. Like I really think that salespeople cheesy and probably sounds crazy coming from somebody who’s been in sales for twenty years. I really, really do like it. I’m so turned off by salesy Salespeople and I find myself having to stop myself from like correcting people are calling out what they did wrong when they’re trying to sell me on something because I’m pretty easy to sell and I want to buy, I want to support people. But like, I get annoyed when people do like that cliche salesy stuff.

So I think not doing that. Finding the mobilizers, finding where the business is because there’s a lot out there. So finding the big wins. Nothing really magical, though, nothing really magical, but really just focusing on customers and also knowing my worth. And I don’t mean me as an individual, knowing my company’s worth. And so it’s become a bit more competitive than it once was. But I thrive on that. I’m totally OK with it. But I also don’t take for granted. I think it’s easy when you work in a space or you’re familiar with the space. It’s easy to forget how powerful what it is that you’re bringing to the table is and like how meaningful the difference can be to that company, to that to that team, whatever it might be, but I think we got shy like I feel like we’re like extremest Salespeople are either crazy, aggressive and like cheesy or like super afraid and bashful. You know, there is a place in between there. And I think that’s the most authentic and genuine place. Like if it’s true, it’s not drinking the Kool-Aid. You know, if it’s true that this is going to be the impact to your company, then it’s true. Don’t back down from that. And when people challenge you, even like the one who I’m talking to, I was talking about earlier, the mobilizer, she tried to back down a little bit and I called him out on, you know, I challenged her on what I know to be true and the difference that we can make anyway. So that’s it. You can tell I get excited about it.

Scott Ingram: We dig into all of this and more in the full interview. For the rest of Jheryn’s episode on the Sales Success Stories podcast, hopefully, you’re already subscribed, but I’m guessing you’re already in your podcast app. Just do a quick search and make sure you’re subscribed. That was episode 118, but of course, we’ll have a link for you at DailySales.Tips/841 as well.

Once you’ve downloaded that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Think about where your buyer’s processes are broken.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 840

How about you? Are you going to raise your game? 

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. It’s Jeff Bajorek Day! I mean, it’s Saturday, so here’s Jeff:

Jeff Bajorek: There’s no doubt that someone like you who listens to a podcast like this has heard the data that’s been circulating for the past several months by Gartner saying that 33% of buyers want a less experience. And in that number, among millennials, that number is as high as 44%. And that sounds pretty concerning and I think it should be concerning. I want you to be careful, though, and there’s a tip coming, but I want you to be careful about how you receive the messaging there and Gartner’s of marketing and sales from there, very, very good at planting seeds that could grow into anything, particularly things that help them.

So if you’re looking for help to do a little bit better marketing as I am, this is worth paying attention to. I tip my hat to them. But the narrative is going to be about how we need to eliminate reps or about how there are going to be fewer reps in the field because buyers just don’t want them. And I go back to Henry Ford, who is attributed with the quote of if I asked my customers what they wanted, they’d tell me faster horses. Right? We need to remember that buyers don’t know everything they need to know in order to make the decisions they need to make. And just because we asked them what they wanted, that doesn’t mean that they know what’s on the menu, right? And so what the narrative is going to suggest is that sales was not a profession that you should pursue and that salespeople are going away and get into marketing. Right? Come on. Have we not seen this movie before?

Look, the data is real. I’m not disputing the data. What I’m going to challenge is your response to that data. Are you going to fold up like a cheap lawn chair? Or are you kind of person who listens to a show like this, which means that you’re the kind of person that wants to be a top performer? Are you going to raise your game? And what this data gives us is some insight into how to make the buyers appreciate salespeople more. Right? I mean, I get really fired up when I hear people talking about how reps are not respected and we need to, you know, get rid of bad sales reps. Like we need to encourage sales reps to be a little more empathetic. We need to encourage them to be better listeners. We need to encourage them to do better discovery. We need to encourage them to become experts in their field so they can actually steward some of these decision-making processes and actually smooth out a lot of the wrinkles in the buying process.

So think about this is my challenge for you is my tip for you is think about where your buyer’s processes are broken. Think about where you make it hard for people to buy from you. And every company has a sales prevention department. Don’t even act like you’re immune. But think about the ways that you can smooth out the buying process. Think about the ways you can be a more trusted advisor to your prospects and to your customers and see if that doesn’t change their response.

You know, it’s funny. I want you to think about this as I get ready to leave because this is already too long for one of my sales tips. But 33%  of the buyers out there. Want a rep-free experience, that means 1/3 of your customers, yet probably yours, too. Wish you weren’t involved. How does that make you feel? What are you going to do about it? And can you pick maybe which 1/3 of your customers that maybe you should talk to about how you can make their experience better?

I hope that sits with you. I hope that fires you up a little bit. I hope you do something about it. And I’ll be back next week.

Scott Ingram: For more from Jeff including the very important link with all of the details around his golf marathon charity fundraiser and all of the greatness you can receive for contributing to that. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/840 and we’ll hook you up.

Once you’ve been over there and clicked to learn how to contribute… Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!