“Being more inclusive and bringing more women into sales is good for all of us. It’s good for women, and it’s good for the industry.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 779

How about you? Do you know an amazing woman that needs to be heard?

Join the conversation below and please encourage them to contribute to the show!

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 in celebration of International Women’s Day, I want to point you in the direction of all of the amazing women that I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here on the Daily Sales Tips podcast. If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/women you find a complete list of every sales tip that’s been shared by a woman in sales. There are currently 131 tips on that page, but the reality is that’s not enough. That’s less than 17% of all of the tips and I’m pretty sure we can do better. I used this opportunity to hold myself accountable to how many women we’re featuring on the podcast and year over year the percentage has improved to the point that we’re at just over 27% so far this year, but I still think we can do better.

So first I’d encourage you to dig into the list at DailySales.Tips/women and immerse yourself in some great tips from some amazing women. You’ll also find an all-female lineup on the show the rest of this week, but this isn’t about one day, one week, or one month. Being more inclusive and bringing more women into sales is good for all of us. It’s good for women, and it’s good for the industry. We all win.

So if you know of an amazing woman whose voice needs to be heard. Who has some amazing ideas. Please encourage them to contribute to the show. Everyone is welcome and the submission details are at DailySales.Tip/submit

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

“If you need to optimize for lifetime customer value, you need to bring in the right customer.” – Robbie Kellman Baxter in today’s Tip 778

How do you build a forever transaction with your customers?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Robbie!

Robbie Kellman Baxter on LinkedIn
The Membership Economy
The Forever Transaction
Subscription Stories
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 Robbie Kellman Baxter. Robbie is a consultant, speaker and the author of two bestselling books: The Membership Economy and The Forever Transaction, and hosts the podcast Subscription Stories. Robbie has more than 20 years of experience providing strategic business advice to major organizations, including Netflix, Microsoft, and The Wall Street Journal as well as dozens of venture-backed private SaaS businesses. Here she is:

Robbie Kellman Baxter: In traditional business, the goal of selling is to get the customer to buy. That moment of transaction is when you’re done hooray. And then you go out and sell the next account. It’s like big game hunting. And you’ve brought in that wooly mammoth and left the carcass on the floor of the cave while you go out and find the next big animal. But today with software as a service and an emphasis in many businesses on recurring revenue, rather than on that initial transaction size, the goal is to get the customer to come and stay in this membership economy. It’s all about building a long-term relationship with an emphasis, not just on the initial transaction, but on extending and expanding that transaction over time.

If you need to optimize for lifetime customer value, you need to bring in the right customer, a customer who is going to get value out of what they’re buying on an ongoing basis. And then you need to optimize the customer experience for engagement and retention. This means that it’s not enough to close the deal. You also want to make sure that they are onboarded for success and that your colleagues are tracking engagement as well. The sale itself is going to be easier because the upfront price is lower and the implementation is faster, but suddenly it’s critical that the customer is actually using the product and encouraging their colleagues to do the same. Instead of big game hunting. Now, what you’re doing is a lot more like farming.

Scott Ingram: We’ve got all kinds of stuff for you from Robbie, including a copy of an excerpt of her new book The Forever Transaction as well as links to her LinkedIn profile and her podcast at DailySales.Tips/778.

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

“You need to unplug. If you’re experiencing zoom fatigue, if you haven’t accommodated to the idea that this just is your job now, then you need to give yourself a break.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 777

How about you? Do you experience zoom fatigue?

Join the conversation below and feel free to share your experience!

[email protected]
Books by Jeff Bajorek
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
The Why And The Buy Podcast
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. It’s Saturday, so here’s our most regular of regulars, Jeff Bajorek:

Jeff Bajorek: I’m hearing a term ‘Zoom fatigue’ thrown around here really casually these days. And I’m not going to disregard what it is because look, I spend an average of five to six hours a day on zoom, much like you are. So I’m not going to tell you that I’m not fatigued by it. When I’m going to say is it’s my job to be on zoom five to six hours a day and probably yours too. So get used to it. Zoom fatigue is a you problem. And Oh, because your customers have zoom fatigue. That is not the reason they won’t meet with you. That is an excuse that you’re creating in your head for them not to meet with you because you’re afraid to face the real truth. And that truth is you’re just not compelling enough to give them a reason to be engaged enough to take that meeting.

Maybe just rewind that 15 seconds and hear it again. Okay. Look, prospects have had salesperson fatigue for as long as any of us can remember. Zoom is just a wrinkle in that scenario. They don’t want to hear from you any less because they have to have it over a video conference. They don’t want to hear crappy sales pitches from crappy salespeople. You have a choice to not be a crappy salesperson, delivering a crappy sales pitch. If you’re not interesting, they won’t be interested. You can work on your side of the equation. I suggest you do that. And when you figure that out, you’re going to have a lot more success.

Now, the other side of the coin is you may have zoom fatigue and you can’t bring your best to work. That’s a problem, but let’s call it what it is burnout. And I know a lot of people thought that the beginning of this pandemic, we were all going to be working from home. There’d be less travel time, less frustrating, commute, less wasted time. And we’d have more time to spend with our loved ones to spend with our hobbies and all that. And we all know that that idea flew out the door about nine months ago, right? Like we’ve all been spending more time in front of our computers trying to get more done partially because we have the uncertainty of the situation. We’re trying to do everything we can. And partially because yeah, most of us are probably pretty addicted to what we do on a daily basis and we just can’t unplug.

You need to unplug, if you’re experiencing zoom fatigue, if you haven’t accommodated to the idea that this just is your job now, then you need to give yourself a break. You need to set some boundaries. You need to work harder when you’re at work. So you can shut off when you’re not. I’m not saying I’m good at that. But what I am saying is that I know that that is the solution. I’m also not the one complaining about zoom fatigue.

So any way you slice it, whichever side of the coin, you want to look at this. Zoom fatigue is a you problem. You owe it to yourself, your company, and your customers to dig into the real reasons why zoom fatigue is an excuse and you need to solve them.

Scott Ingram: For links to many things Jeff Bajorek, just click over to DailySales.Tips/777. Hmm, 777 man I miss traveling. Oh well, guess I’ll just get on another Zoom meeting instead.

While I do that, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast, and then come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Rather than telling people how great you are or your products and services are, teach them how they can be great.” – Jon Ferrara in today’s Tip 776

How great you are?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jon!

Nimble
Jon Ferrara 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 Jon Ferrara. Jon is the CEO of Nimble and believes the more people you can help grow, the more you grow. It’s one of the reasons he pioneered contract management and CRM with Goldmine in the 90’s and re-entered the workforce in 2010 to launch the first social CRM with Nimble. Here he is:

Jon Ferrara: Have you come across a customer that wasn’t ready to buy. And have you wondered how you might stay top of mind with that customer in the future? So that when they’re ready to buy, they not only pick up the phone and call you, but they drag their friends with them and know it’s not by emailing them a quarterly newsletter, how great your products and services are. Guess what, nobody cares about your products and services. So stop talking about them. What they care about is themselves. People don’t buy great products, they begged better versions of themselves. And so rather than telling people how great you are or your products and services are, teach them how they can be great. I call it, if you teach people to fish, they’ll figure out that you sell fishing poles. How do you do it? It’s easy. You build identities in all the places where your prospects and customers and ideally their influencers are having conversations where people go to seek knowledge, to be better smarter, faster in and around the areas of the promise of your products and services and on a daily basis, share and inspire and educate with content.

Now you can either write that content or while you’re reading in the morning, you’ll have your cup of coffee, where you’re trying to learn more about your industry, share the things that inspire and educate you and what you want to make sure that you do is you attribute the person’s name who wrote it, and you hashtag the category. In my instance, I share content about how to be better at pound sales, pound marketing, pound social, pound entrepreneurship. And then when you share that content, make sure that you listen and engage with other people because you don’t want to be dropping fishing lures into the river and let fish just come by and nibble on your bait. And you don’t reel them in. Because the whole point of dripping content is to build your brand, build your network, setting yourself up as a trusted advisor so that when your customers need your products and services, they pick up the phone and call you. And they drag their friends with them. I call it the five ease of social selling. Educate, enchant, engage, embrace, and empower your customers. You do that best by giving your knowledge away. That sets you up as a trusted advisor. If you’re the trusted advisor, people will come to you. You don’t have to cold call them and you will have a funnel full of leaves. Thank you. Good luck and good selling.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jon and Nimble, just click over to DailySales.Tips/776 where you’ll find a code to get Nimble for 40% off for the first 3 months.

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

“Remember you will be most successful when you concentrate first on the success of others, and then your own success” – Malvina EL-Sayegh in today’s Tip 775

How do you structuring the conversation in your discovery call?

Join the conversation below and check out the links!

#Stayhuman Podcast
Personal Branding for Sales Professionals
Malvina EL-Sayegh on LinkedIn
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 Malvina EL-Sayegh. Malvina is an experienced Training Consultant with a 10-year history of working in the Financial Services Industry. She is a sales coach and host of the #stayhuman podcast which focuses on demystifying sales. Here she is:

Malvina EL-Sayegh: Let’s talk about discovery calls. We all know how daunting they can be. As potential, you are stepping into the unknown, but really it’s a great opportunity for both parties, you and your potential client to discover and learn more about the challenges, hurdles, and problems to then really decide if it makes sense for both of you to keep talking and take the next step. I want to introduce you to my five-step process in nailing your discovery call to make sure that you’re not jumping around all over the place, that you have a clear structure that you’re following, that you feel confident about the questions you’re asking, and if you’re doing things in the right way.

Let’s face it. We all hate conversations that bounce back and forward and midway through. We don’t really know what exactly is happening and where this is going and structuring the conversation in a discovery call. After you’ve done your research. You’ve preconditioned the meeting is really, really important.

Let me introduce you to my acronym FLOWS.

F – Find out all the issues. L – List them out and make sure they are complete. O – Optimize. Find out what’s most important to the client. W – What’s the evidence and impact. Remember people care about business results or business problems. And finally, S – Summarize. Did you get it right? Did you leave anything out? This structure of a discovery call will help you feel in control? Why? Because you’re not jumping all over the place.

Let me walk you through it, step by step.

F – Find out all the issues. Here you want to understand the problems that the customer’s trying to solve, or the results that they are trying to generate. I mean, if you look at it, people always make decisions. When they encountered these two factors.

L – Listed all out. You want to make sure that you have a complete list of problems or results. Ask them my favorite type of question. The AWE question that Michael Bungay Stanier talks in his book, the coaching habit. You want to ask and what else?

O – Optimize. Ultimately you want to find out what issue is the most important to the client. Get them to tell you what’s crucial and what makes the difference, what has been addressed?

W – What’s the evidence and impact. If a client is slowed down by technology within his firm, what does that mean for them? If their technology stack is clunky, what does that mean for the bottom line? You want to find out the impact and the evidence of how this appears.

S – Summarize. You want to end the conversation, ensuring that you understood all the issues and you didn’t leave anything out, summarize what you have understood, paraphrase, what the client has told you use the same language to connect with them, and then ask if I got it right. Did I miss anything out? And ultimately remember you will be most successful when you concentrate first on the success of others, and then your own success.

Scott Ingram: For more about Malvina including links to her #Stayhuman Podcast and her listenable course on Personal Branding for Sales Professionals, just click over to DailySales.Tips/775

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

“When we miss expectations and the journey looks like it will be more difficult than you anticipated, the reward itself looks like less of a reward.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 774

Do you set proper expectations right from the beginning?

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

Todd Caponi on LinkedIn
Todd Caponi on Twitter
The Transparency Sale Website
The Transparency Sale Book
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 my Transparent friend Todd Caponi is back. Todd is the author of the 3x award-winning & best-selling book, The Transparency Sale, and a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. Here he is:

Todd Caponi: Hey everybody. I want you to picture this for a second. It’s circumstance, where there was something you wanted, there was something you were excited about. And then when you got there or when you discovered what the journey was going to be like to actually acquire that reward or that thing that you really wanted, you decided, not worth it. Like I’m just going to move on with my life. I’m cool, without it. We are biased in many cases by the journey to a reward, meaning that if the journey is harder than expected, the reward itself will look like less of a reward. I mean, that just happened last week, we were out and about with my two kids who are eight and nine, they wanted ice cream. We went to Culvers. I love the frozen yogurt and the cars were wrapped around the building, the drive-through. And on the other side, at the pickup window, there was a bunch of cars that had their little stickers on it. They were still waiting for their food and we’re like, ah, this looks awful. We get in line. And very soon into it, both of my kids agreed. They’re like, can we just go home? Like we don’t need ice cream that bad, right? Ice cream is like the greatest thing ever to them. And because the journey to that reward looked like it was going to be difficult. They opted out. And so we see that an awful lot in our sales pursuits, we’ve got customers that are excited about what we’re offering, what we have to sell. They’re excited about us over a competitor and guess what happens. They opt for the status quo. And you’re just like, what happened?

Well, in many cases, it’s not them. It’s you? It’s the journey. It’s missing expectations. When we miss expectations and the journey looks like it will be more difficult than you anticipated, the reward itself looks like less of a reward. And how do we do that? A lot of times we do that through our own sales processes where we’ve, customer fills out a lead form and we don’t respond right away. And then when we do, we put the prospect on the jury stand and read them the inquisition of qualification questions before they earn the right to get a demo, right? Different steps that we put in the process that add friction that maybe other organizations don’t have, that sets you apart from them in a negative way.

My advice to you is two things. Number one. Set proper expectations right from the beginning. Again, obviously embracing transparency in what you do, but what you don’t do and what competitors potentially do better than you. Again, that’s why negative reviews on a website, help those products out it’s because expectations have been set properly, but set expectations in term of what the journey is going to be like. That’s why I’m such a huge advocate for mutual decision plans, right? Lay out the journey with the customer so they know what to expect. And if they want to opt-out, they opt out early, right? If you’re going to lose, lose fast.

And then number two, again, is look at your own buying journey and look for ways to remove friction. Where can you optimize the journey to help the customer make the right decision for them both in the short term and the longterm. Do those two things together and you know what? The customers will still view the reward in the same light they did when they first engaged. And that means faster sales cycles, higher win rates. And as a result, you’ll qualify deals in faster that you should win and qualify deals out faster that you’re going to lose anyway.

So give that a try to skip that some thought. If you’ve got questions I’m here, I’m happy to answer any questions that you’ve got and also would love to hear how it goes. So thank you and look forward to engaging with all of you. Thanks!

Scott Ingram: The video version of this tip and more about Todd Caponi and his book The Transparency Sale are all at DailySales.Tips/774 for you.

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

“Educate yourself as a leader on emotional intelligence. So you can really understand how to educate your employees on what tactical empathy is and how to use it. ” – Brittany Scott in today’s Tip 773

How do you build rapport with your prospect?

Join the conversation below and connect with Brittany on LinkedIn!

KnowBe4
Brittany Scott on LinkedIn
Never Split the Difference

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 Brittany Scott. Brittany is the VP of SMB Sales at KnowBe4, the world’s largest provider of security awareness training. She’s the Founder of the Women in Tech Employee Resource Group at her organization and mentors women looking to move up into executive roles with #GirlsClub. Here she is:

Brittany Scott: So the world of sales is changing and I’ve even seen it change in the four years that I’ve been with my company. And it’s so important that we are able to be flexible with change and understand what may have worked a year or two ago may not necessarily work now. So empathy is huge when trying to build rapport with your prospect, which I’m sure we’re all on the same page with this. If I were to ask you to define empathy, I’m sure a lot of you would be able to easily tell me it is understanding the feelings of another. However, if I were to ask you about tactical empathy, I feel like many of you may raise an eyebrow.

So Chris Voss actually coined this phrase in his book, Never Split the Difference. If you never read it, I implore you to do it for it. Not only helps you in negotiating business deals, but helps you in your day to day life as well. So tactical empathy is a way to deliberately influence your counterpart’s emotions by using certain tactics like mirrors, labels, and dynamic silence. So this taps into emotional intelligence, which I am a huge supporter for anyone working in any environment to really make this a one-two punch. This is a huge game-changer when trying to sell any products backed on any vertical.

So let me give you an example. So say you have a prospect on the phone and he’s pushing back because he wants you to get off the phone. Wow, I’ve been there lots of time and I’m sure you have too. So using a label would be a great way to deter this by saying, you know, it sounds as if time is a huge concern for you and then just shut up. He will give you more discovery. Maybe you’ll say something like, you know, I am busy implementing other projects. You can mere this by saying other projects and stay quiet. This is a great way to gain that discovery you are looking for without being too wordy, which we all know those sales reps.

Furthermore, having an environment where emotional intelligence is part of the training for sales reps, it’s huge. EPQ is something that we can train and improve upon that can really make us dynamic leaders in the workplace and make us more understanding to what drives each rep and how to pull out their full potential. I make an emission to work with my employees on this topic, and it really makes a difference in the overall environment and culture of the workplace.

So my sales tip for you is twofold. First, educate yourself as a leader on emotional intelligence. So you can really understand how to educate your employees on what tactical empathy is and how to use it. Secondly, have drills around this topic to really make the stick. So when your rep is hit with a rebuttal, they know how to easily navigate the waters of tactical empathy. Hey, check me out on LinkedIn. I would love to hear more of your insights as well.

Scott Ingram: To connect with Brittany on LinkedIn and to learn more about KnowBe4, just click over to DailySales.Tips/773.

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

“I think you need to be constantly asking your reps questions and finding out what they need to be successful.” – Steve Benson in today’s Tip 772

What can sales managers do to help their reps protect the margin and keep sales up in a bad economy?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Steve!

Badger Maps
Outside Sales Talk
Sales Hall of Fame
Steve Benson on LinkedIn
765: Actions Sales Managers Can Take in a Recession (Part 1) 

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 Steven Benson. Steve is the Founder and CEO of Badger Maps, the #1 route planner for field sales people. He also hosts the Outside Sales Talk podcast and is the founder of the Sales Hall of Fame. Here’s part two of his tip:

Steve Benson: Hi, I’m Steve Benson, CEO of Badger Maps. Today. I’m going to talk a bit about the action sales managers need to take in a recession and some of the challenges and solutions that sales reps, selling into a recession can experience. So first off an economy that’s in recession can bring a whole bunch of new challenges for sales reps and sales managers. First of all, desperate competitors doing desperate things. A lot of companies are really hurting and they’re really willing to do things they would never have done before. So things like deep discounting liquidating their inventory to make ends, meet, giving away free consulting, or other low costs, but valuable things that are all structured to be given away to steal your customers away from you.

Second new challenges from your prospects and your customers that you may experience like resistance from customers that wasn’t there before. Not wanting to engage. Not wanting to learn about your product, not wanting to meet with you, et cetera. Resistance to spending money. Spending freezes can often come from the very top. You’re also going to have to watch out for aggressive procurement offices who are looking to leverage the down economy for discounts, better terms, and generally, you’re going to try to jam down your margins.

So what can you do about these things? What can sales managers do to help their reps protect the margin and keep sales up in a bad economy?

Next thought things that a sales leader can do to change their behavior, to keep revenue flowing in these times, you know, an economic crisis is one of the toughest times to be a sales leader because the whole company depends on the revenue that your team produces to survive. So what do you need to change as a leader?

I’d say sales leaders in these times, and to be action-oriented, they need to confront reality. They need to be honest in their assessments of the challenges that are facing the organization. They need to embrace bad news, ask hard questions. And at the same time, I think it’s important that you maintain a positive outlook. You build an action plan and that you are transparent with your team about what that action plan is. I think you need to be more responsive, more supportive of your sales reps. It’s a good time to reassess the KPIs and not just focus on things like revenue, but also focus on KPIs. That might be more, forward-looking like proposals to qualified leads and new meetings with new qualified leads, things like that. I think you need to spend more time coaching sales team. You should spend 50% of your time coaching your sales team in any kind of time of change like this.

Whatever you don’t go silent. And it’s easy to slip into silence in our remote world. And I think you need to be constantly asking your reps questions and finding out what they need to be successful. Learning who on the team is having success right now with what type of customer profile, what is the playbook for that success. And then with the help of the rep that cracked the code, train the rest of the team to replicate that success. You know, a great sales leader always understands what’s going on at the ground level because that informs them on the direction they need to steer the ship.

I think a final thought, if this is a tactical thing in a down economy, you often need to change your messaging from we’ll help you do better, which is very common messaging that you see. It’s a, which works fine in a good economy, right? You need to change it too. We’ll help you do more with less. And then you need to go about showing your prospects how much in terms of dollars that you’ll help them do more than less could with less. It could be less money. It could be less manpower. It could be fewer resources.

I can use myself as an example here. I did this with my sales team when times were good. My sales team at Badger, their messaging to our customers was we’ll help you sell 20% more with your field sales team. And now in the down economy, I changed the messaging with them. And this is not just with the sales team, but also on the, you know, with the marketing team too. And the messaging has changed too, with Badger Maps, your outside sales team can generate the same revenue, even though your team is 20% smaller. And there’s really, there’s a huge difference between these two positionings and ways of communicating your message. Even though it basically says the same thing, but one of the messages will resonate way more with your prospects and customers in a down economy. So that’s what I have as my sales tip today. Thanks a lot.

Scott Ingram: You’ll find the first part of Steve’s tip in episode 765, and as always we’ll have links to Steve’s LinkedIn profile, Badger Maps, The Outside Sales Talk podcast, and the Sales Hall of Fame, when you click over to DailySales.Tips/772.

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

“The best option of all, is to ask questions to your buyer and the rest of their organization.” – Mark Schenkius in today’s Tip 771

Why buyers run RFP?

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

ROI 10
The Other Side of Sales
Mark Schenkius on LinkedIn
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 Mark Schenkius is back with another super insightful tip. Mark is the founder of ROI 10 where he helps sales professionals get better at dealing with buyers, and he’s also the author of “The Other Side of Sales,” where he shares his perspective after 15 years in procurement. Here he is:

Mark Schenkius: Hi everyone,

Today I’ll share some key insights why buyers run RFP’s. It helps you to better understand how to deal with them. Here’s an interesting opening statement for you:

New suppliers love RFP’s because it’s an opportunity to win business. Existing suppliers fear RFP’s because there’s a risk of losing business. It’s almost that simple.

Therefore, when a buyer runs an RFP, it’s crucial to know for you, as a supplier to them, how likely the buyer is going to change supplier.

If you’re a new supplier, a high likelihood to change is ideal whereas as a current supplier, you obviously prefer a low likelihood to change. So, regardless of whether you’re a new or existing supplier, it pays to know.

Firstly, I’ll run you through 5 options why buyers run RFP’s. Secondly, I’ll give you some tips how you can find out which of these options apply to your particular buyer.

The following 5 options are in increasing order of likelihood to change supplier. The first one means it’s highly unlikely that they will change and the fifth one means there is a high likelihood they will change supplier.

Option 1. Pressure:
The buyer is happy with their current supplier and they want to put pressure on them; probably to lower prices. They use an RFP to create a perception of competition. Needless to say, there is a very low likelihood the buyer will actually change supplier.

Option 2. Policy:
The buyer runs an RFP since this is an expectation from the company, but they have no real intention of changing. There is a low likelihood the buyer will change supplier.

Option 3. Benchmark:
The buyer is benchmarking service or tariffs of their current supplier. There is no real interest to change unless there is a significant opportunity. Medium to low likelihood to change.

Option 4. Benefits:
The buyer is interested in changing suppliers only if benefits can be achieved on quality, service, and/or price. In essence, this is a true RFP whereas the first 3 are fake RFP’s. There is a medium likelihood to change.

Option 5. Change:
The buyer is actively looking to change supplier most likely due to issues with their existing supplier. This is an ideal situation for new suppliers since the likelihood to change will be high.

So, how do you know which of these 5 options applies to you. It’s definitely not an easy one since most of the times, a buyer won’t tell you. However, it’s important to look for signals.

For example, does the buyer have a history of changing suppliers, or do they tend to stick with the old.

Or potentially, any information you pick up in the market around issues with their existing supplier.

And perhaps, the best option of all, is to ask questions to your buyer and the rest of their organization. Ask whether there are policies for running RFPs or ask them under what condition they are open to change suppliers.

In any case, it’s good to know upfront what your chances are during RFP’s, both as an existing and as a new supplier.

Happy negotiations everyone!

Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Mark and to get a copy of his book “The Other Side of Sales,” just click over to DailySalesTips/771

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

“You need to treat your reps as a leader, you need to treat your reps like your customers.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 770

How about you? What your perspective as a leader?

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Happy Saturday everyone. Here’s Jeff Bajorek:

Jeff Bajorek: If you’re leading a team right now, you are not going to be successful. If you still rely on the leadership techniques that you had, or the leadership techniques that were deployed with you, when you were starting out in your career. You can’t take the lessons you learned back in the day as a new rep and try to apply them to new reps today. There is a generational gap that needs to be addressed and it goes beyond language and it goes beyond attitude. It really has to do with trust.

Look, back in the day, 15, 20, 25 years ago. Yes, there were traveling salespeople and people got on planes all the time, but for the most part in most industries. And I know you’re probably shuttering to think this right now, but a lot of leadership and a lot of managers thought that salespeople were replaceable, interchangeable even.

And so look, you’re going to do this. You’re going to drive a number. You’re going to show me some revenue or we’re going to find somebody who will, that’s pretty common. Still happens in a lot of places today. Believe it or not. But you know, this kind of leadership by iron fist is, I don’t know how effective it was last time, but, or when in the past. But I know that people were a lot less inclined to move around than they are today.

What you look at sales reps of today, they’re not coin-operated as much as some people would like to assume they want fringe benefits. They want to be fulfilled in other ways non-monetary really, and quite frankly, they have more options because as more and more people work remotely, you can be in a revenue-generating position remotely from any time zone and be really, really effective.

So now all of a sudden companies realize that they don’t have an iron fist, that they can rule over their reps with. They need to engage them differently. You’ve heard me say this before. You need to treat your reps as a leader, you need to treat your reps like your customers. You need to show them what’s in it for them to succeed, to deliver the numbers that you’re asking them to deliver. You need to get to know them a little bit. You need to do some discovery with them to understand what buttons you going to be able to push, to get them to move a little bit. You’re not going to be able to take these reps and put them into an interchangeable process and treat them all, like they’re not individuals. You can’t treat everybody the same way and expect the same results.

you need to think, you always need to be thinking. And I know that there are playbooks from the past. You can’t copy the playbooks, but you need to copy why those plays worked. And one of the biggest flaws I see in people who are elevated into management roles is that they know that they were successful in the past. And they feel that they’ve earned that role, but they’re not very good at explaining or even understanding why what they did was so effective.

So if you’re a leader today, you’ve got a tough job. And I believe that frontline sales management is probably the toughest job in sales, but you’ve got a tough job because you have to engage with the team that you lead. You have to encourage the team that you lead and you cannot scale that process. It has to be individual. You have to meet people where they are and you have to know what makes them tick. You have to think about them like your customers.

Curious? You want to learn a little more, shoot me a message. I’m happy to engage with you on this. I’m happy to argue with you on this. You’re entitled to be wrong. I’m okay with that. And we’ll enjoy the talk. Even if we can’t agree to disagree, or even if we have to agree to disagree at the end. But I think if you think about this a little bit more, I hope you’re able to really change your perspective as a leader. And I hope this helps you get more out of your team.

Scott Ingram: If you want to reach out to Jeff to talk about this, we’ll have his contact info along with everything else at DailySales.Tips/770

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