“Do an external dry run because that gives you the ability to really prove your value proposition and your hold story and normally you will get a lot of good feedback from your customer.” – Jan-Erik Jank & Tim Brömme in today’s Tip 519

Do you do a dry run?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jan & Tim!

Sales Excellence Podcast on LinkedIn
Sales Excellence Podcast
Sales Excellence on Apple Podcast
How to Build a World-Class Presales Team – Interview with Jon Upton
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jan & Tim. Jan is a Presales Manager at SAP and Tim is an Enterprise Solutions Consultant at Xactly. Both of them are in Germany and together they host the Sales Excellence Podcast. Here they are:

Jan-Erik Jank: Tim, when you’ve done the last dry run?

Tim Brömme: That’s an excellent question, Jan. In fact, I have one scheduled coming up next week, but maybe we should take a step back and talk about what the dry run is in the first place. Put yourself in a position that you have an important customer meeting coming up and of course, you want to put your best foot forward, and therefore good preparation and dry run is really a meeting before that actual meeting.

Jan-Erik Jank: And in fact, we would like to practice, right. We would like to go with the whole sales teams through the end to end presentation and demo flow to figure out if there is anything we could improve to do even better performance when we go onsite to our customer.

Tim Brömme: That’s right.

Jan-Erik Jank: But I heard that there could be some mistakes.

Tim Brömme: Yes. There are four common mistakes that we would like to highlight at this stage. First mistake is really obvious, not doing a dry run at all. Very common second mistake using the session and not being prepared. Right. Coming there, sledding the presentation around not really doing what you need to do. Thirdly, having a too late. Right. Of course, the session is there to provide feedback then in to incorporate that feedback. So doing it too late will not give you the chance to incorporate that. And fourthly focusing too much on software, as opposed to off the other things that you just talked about.

Jan-Erik Jank: And who should be on a trial run. I mean, of course, the salesperson and the presets person should be there, but feel free to invite colleagues who don’t know anything about the deal, because they can then step in and give their honest feedback to you. But also think about inviting the presets miniature or the state miniature as they also can give you valuable feedback. And finally, if you would like to go beyond your internal dry run, you should definitely ask the champion at your customer site or the people you are dealing with at your customer side, and also do an external dry run because that gives you the ability to really prove your value proposition and your hold story and normally you will get a lot of good feedback from your customer. You can then also incorporate it into your pitch.

Tim Brömme: Absolutely. And that’s dry runs for you. Best of success.

Scott Ingram: Now I even asked Tim and Jan how to pronounce their last names, but I knew I was going to butcher them. So you’ll find their complete names and links to their LinkedIn profiles and their Sales Excellence Podcast at DailySales.Tips/519.

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

“So grab their attention, help them understand the problem that you solve for them, and have to keep it simple and fun.” – Marc McDougall in today’s Tip 518

Do you have a killer LinkedIn bio?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Marc!

Marc McDougall on LinkedIn
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Marc McDougall. Marc is a B2B Conversion Specialist out of Atlanta who helps B2B SAAS companies to land more demos by making their website convert more traffic. Here he is:

Marc McDougall: When is the last time you’ve actually committed the two minutes necessary to read someone’s full LinkedIn bio? If you’re like me, it’s probably never, but I get compliments all the time from people that say that, what after reading my LinkedIn bio, they thought it was refreshing, delightful, and it’s totally clear to them that if they have the problem I’m solving they would reach out to me.

So how do you build a compelling LinkedIn bio that sells? Well, first you have to understand what do people want when they’re reading a LinkedIn bio. And to understand this, you have to think about things from your perspective when you’re reading someone else’s bio. So you can understand what other people are thinking when they’re reading your bio. You’re generally not really interested in all the huge list of accomplishments that a person’s achieved or all the awards they’ve received or all the things they’ve done in their life. You’re mostly interested in getting to know them a little bit and then learning what they can do for you. So if you take that and spin it around, here’s how you write a really good LinkedIn bio.

First. You should make sure that the first line grabs their attention. So the first line in my bio is, “You’ve probably received an overly enthusiastic cold email from me.” And that’s because, for my consulting practice, I get almost all my clients through cold email. And if they find me on LinkedIn, it’s usually secondary. So when they read that, they’ll think, “Oh, Whoa, how did you know?” And it’s a little interesting novel thing that goes through their hat and they keep reading.

The second priority is to help them understand what problem you solve and how you do it. So you’re answering that question. What can you do for me? Right? It’s about them. You want also to keep it simple and fun. There’s so many LinkedIn bios out there, especially people that are in upper management with just super complicated, boring bios. Don’t be afraid to have a little fun with it. People appreciate humor, just cause you’re in the C suite doesn’t mean you can’t laugh anymore. And for crying out loud the fourth thing. Talk in the first person, is almost all the LinkedIn bios I find if your name is Marc, they all say, “Marc is an accomplished marketing leader who does dah, dah, dah.” And it’s just so strange. You know, you feel very disconnected as the reader, when you’re talking to someone that clearly wrote their own bio, but it’s speaking in the third person.

So grab their attention, help them understand the problem that you solve for them and have to keep it simple and fun, and write it in the first person. And at the end, your LinkedIn bio is about you, but it’s not for you. So try and keep that in mind next time you’re freshening up and you’ll see that it has a profound impact on ability to close more deals.

Scott Ingram: You should seriously go check out the opening line on Marc’s LinkedIn profile right now. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. Of course, I’ve got a link for you at DailySales.Tips/518 there you’ll also find Marc’s offer for a free clarity call if you’re SAAS site isn’t converting as much traffic as it should be.

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

“Stop chasing the maybe’s and get to the real no’s quickly and get to the real yeses even faster.” – Armand Farrokh in today’s Tip 517

How do you handle objections?

Join the conversation below and be sure to connect with Armand on LinkedIn!

Carta
Armand Farrokh on LinkedIn
30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast
503: Part 1 of the Cold Call: Phone Openers
510: Part 2 of the Cold Call: Value Props

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Armand Farrokh. Armand is a Director of Sales at Carta and Host of the 30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast. This is part 3 of Armand’s 3 part series on cold calls. Here he is:

Armand Farrokh: What’s up everybody! This is Armand Farrokh, host of the 30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast and Director of Sales over at Carta. Today, we’re going to talk about the last piece of the cold call. And this tip comes courtesy of Josh Durst-Weisman, who was my number one SDR over at Carta. It’s about the objections.

More importantly, we’re going to talk about the dismissive objections, which are the most common type of objection. They tend to sound like not interested, send me an email, or call me back in three months. And the reason they’re called dismissive objections is they’re like swatting away, a fly. They’re not a real objection. And so the way you need to handle these objections is by getting to the real objection. The reason why they’re saying they’re not interested. And so the way you handle it is by something called the double ask. And so the first thing you’ll do is someone slams you with, call me back in three months or send me an email.

You’re going to ask them for permission to ask a tough question. And so I might say, “Hey, you know, I’m totally fine sending you an email, let me draft it up right now. But before I do that, do you mind if I ask you a brutally honest question.” And shut up, just wait for them to say yes. So they’re opening the door and then you say, “Well, honestly, you know, usually when people ask me to send them an email, they’re just really kind and they’re politely asking me to go away and they don’t want to just tell me, no, right now. Is that what’s happening here or should I actually send you the email?” And one of two things is going to happen. You’re either going to get the real objection or they’re going to say, “Yeah, no. I’m serious. Send me an email. And this is what I’m hoping to see. I’m just going through this other thing right now.” So stop chasing the maybes and get to the real nos quickly and get to the real yeses even faster. Later guys.

Scott Ingram: For a link to Armand’s 30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast and to connect with him on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/517. We’ll also have the rest of the cold calling tips in this series linked up for you there as well.

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

“Pay attention to how many times you blame the lack of time for not getting things done.” – Liz Wendling in today’s Tip 516

Do you have a busy badge that needs to be surrendered?

Join the conversation below and check the link to get a free audio program from Liz!

Liz Wendling Website (FREE Audio Program)
Liz Wendling Blog
The Heart of Authentic Selling
Sell Without Selling Your Soul
Liz Wendling 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 Liz Wending. Liz is a nationally recognized business and sales consultant and the author of 6 books. Liz shows professionals how to make a profound difference in the way they sell and communicate both online and offline. Here she is:

Liz Wendling: You will close more sales when you relinquish your busy badge. Do these words sound familiar? I don’t have enough time. I am so busy. I just can’t find the time to do that right now. Those excuses are more common than the common cold. When life and work get busy, or when you don’t want to feel guilty about avoiding a task or an obligation, the time excuse rolls off your lips. Lack of time is a lousy excuse. Stop convincing yourself that you don’t have time to be successful. Chronic excuse-making around time is an excellent way to evade doing the work that needs to be done. Look, you can’t manage time. You can only manage your priorities. I don’t believe anyone has a time management problem. I think they have a priority dilemma.

How many times a day do you utter these income killing phrases? The phrases that say,” I don’t have time. I’m so busy.” Catch yourself. It is time to relinquish your busy badge. Professionals who have the right attitude. Don’t use excuses they say, “Even though I’m busy, I’ll make time for marketing this week. I’ll make a few extra hours to hop on LinkedIn and do social media.” Or “I know I don’t have a lot of time this week, but I will find time to attend a luncheon or a meeting. Even though my schedule is tight.” Look, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. You are either using your time prudently or you’re frittering it away. And my belief is that I’m so busy and I haven’t gotten the time is code for I haven’t got the desire.

Let that sink in. When you say I’m too busy, it really could be code for, “I don’t really want to do it.” And time is a great excuse. So ask yourself, is this urgent important or non-essential, if you want something badly enough, nothing should stop you. Nothing should get in your way. We’re all busy. Life is busy, even toddlers are busy. You and I have the same amount of time each day. Everyone on earth has 168 hours to divvy up throughout the week. It is what you do with your time that determines where your business ends up. Pay attention to how many times you blame the lack of time for not getting things done. Pay attention for how many minutes you further away, when you find yourself, let’s say mindlessly researching on the internet or scrolling on Facebook or checking on LinkedIn.

Being responsible for how you use your time is the process of seeing it, owning it, solving it, controlling it, and doing it. Scrutinize your use of time requires a level of ownership that includes doing what is a necessary and true focus on being proactive and accountability, not reactive excuses. You see excuses keep you stuck in that same holding pattern of not being responsible. So I ask you, do you have a busy badge that needs to be surrendered?

Scott Ingram: As always we’ve got more about Liz for you at DailySales.Tips/516. One of those links will take you to a free audio program where Liz will show you how to transform your sales language and change your sales results.

Once you’ve connected with Liz and checked out her resources, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“The big thing with a cold call is you want to create a pattern interruption. You want to say something different at the beginning of that call that will grab their attention” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 515

How do you call cold during this pandemic?

Join the conversation below and go check out the link to the virtual tour!

Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
Think Outside the Script Summer Virtual Tour
Scott Ingram on Summer Virtual Tour
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jason Bay is back. Jason is the Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting and he’s also hosting the Think Outside the Script Summer Virtual Tour which you’ll hear more about in just a couple of minutes. Here’s Jason:

Jason Bay: Hey, this is Jason with Blissful Prospecting. I hope you’re doing safe and great. How you been during this COVID-19 thing? Terrible way to open up your cold calls. Now I’m going to talk about intro lines and things that you can use here, but the reason why those lines are so bad is one, you’re talking about COVID 19 and Coronavirus in your opening line. You’re automatically getting the call off to a negative start, right? You’re talking about something that people probably aren’t super stoked about, but two, it’s really insincere. When you say I hope you’re doing safe and great. I’m assuming this person you’re cold calling you don’t know. So do you actually hope that they are doing safe and great when you don’t even know who this person is? And lastly, it’s what everyone’s saying right now. So the big thing with a cold call is you want to create a pattern interruption. You want to say something different at the beginning of that call that will grab their attention, right? You want them to focus on what you’re saying and really grab their attention that first 10 seconds, right? So your job is to be different. So I want to share just real quick, a couple of lines, there’s five of them that a combination of our clients are using and people on our podcasts have shared and I am personally using all of these and we’re coaching our clients to use these lines as well.

So the first one is from Sarah Brasier over at Gong, who I did an interview with and she’s also been interviewed on Scott’s podcast. She’s just a freaking rock star. I don’t know if I’m allowed to use profanity on this podcast. I’m going to say rockstar, but she’s super awesome. And here’s what she says.

So after she does the, you know “Hey, this is Jason Bay with Blissful Prospecting.” These are lines that are gonna come right after you introduce yourself. And she says “Hey, I know it’s kinda weird to be making calls when there’s a pandemic going on but…” And then she goes into an upfront contract, right? So she does talk about the pandemic, but she acknowledges that “Hey, it might be kind of weird.” And that’s a variation of a line that you can use. That’s really effective. Like, “Hey, I know it might be kind of weird to be giving you a cold call right now.” It’s a really, really great one. You’re acknowledging the elephant in the room.

The second one is someone that Jonathan Mehan over at BombBomb who I’m coaching he prefers this line that’s like very, very upfront about the fact that it’s a cold call and he uses a Sandler style upfront contract. And his sounds like this “Hey, so I’m cold calling you right now. It should take me about 30 seconds to tell you why I called and about 30 seconds for you to tell me if you want to keep talking, sound fair?” So it’s got that upfront contract, which I’m a huge fan of, but he just says, “Hey, I’m cold calling you right now.” And the response he gets to that is really, really good.

So a couple of these other ones are ones that I don’t even know. I think I’ve either heard of, or just have figured out how to do myself. But my favorite one to use is, “Hey, this is Jason with Blissful Prospecting. You know, I probably caught you at home in the middle of something, but…” The reason for my call and then I go into the call. That’s my favorite one. I know I probably caught you at home in the middle of something.

So a great way to kind of acknowledge the situation that people are working from home without having to talk about Corona or COVID or any of that other BS.

Number four, this is a really cool one too. “Hey Jason, with blissful prospecting, you know, I’m sure the last thing you’re expecting right now is to get a cold call, but the reason for my call is this.” And then you can either go into an upfront contract or go into your pitch or whatever it might be.

Okay. There’s another one that works really well to you. And this last one is more of a getting straight to business, you know, kind of approach. So you could say something like, “Hey Jason with blissful prospecting. You know, I know this call is probably unexpected, so I’ll get right to it.” I always use this line when I could hear the other person like inpatients on the line from the other person’s or I get a sense that they’re just extremely busy and I can hear it in their tone of voice, but “Hey, I know this call is probably unexpected..” Sell get right to it. You’re acknowledging the elephant in the room. You’re letting them know that this was not a call from someone that they know. And you’re also letting them know that you’re going to get right to it.

So those are five lines that you can try right now that are working really well for our clients in their cold calls and before I take off one quick update, I wanted to give you an announcement is we’re hosting a Summer Virtual Tour called Think Outside the Script. And it’s 100% focused on prospecting. It’s actually rounded up Scott Ingram was one of them. I rounded up 40 of the top sales speakers, and sales reps to talk about how they cold email cold calls, use LinkedIn, how they do social selling. And it’s all focused on prospecting and how you can prospect better, smarter, more efficiently to book more meetings. And it’s free. It’s live. The events are not condensed down into two or three days. Nothing’s prerecorded. It’s spread out over the entire summer and there’s true, three of them per week. And you can pick the ones that you want to go to and you can check that out at TOUR, So that’s tour.blissfulprospecting.com. 40 talks. Like I said, they’re live, they’re free. Go check it out. There’s likely going to be a handful of people in there that you recognize, and that you’re a big fan of, Scott’s one of those. So tour.blissfulprospecting.com. And thanks for tuning in, I’ll talk to you later.

Scott Ingram: Of course we’ll also have a link to the virtual tour for you at DailySales.Tips/515, and my presentation is scheduled for June 25th at Noon, so I hope you’ll join Jason and I for that.

Once you’ve gotten yourself signed-up, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“If you want people to react and go act off of the things that you’re doing, make stuff with your prospects, they don’t have to be customers.” – Ryan O’Hara in today’s Tip 514

Do you have prospecting tips? 

Join the conversation below and learn more about Ryan!

20 Actionable Prospecting Tactics in 30 Minutes
Ryan O’Hara on LinkedIn
LeadIQ
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today over on the Sales Success Stories podcast I’ve just released Ryan O’Hara’s complete presentation titled 20 Actionable Prospecting Tactics in 30 Minutes that he presented at least year’s Sales Success Summit. There’s some really great stuff in there and we all had a fun of ton with Ryan in that talk. Here’s just a little sampler, I believe these are his tips #2, #3 and #24 from that talk. Here’s Ryan O’Hara from LeadIQ:

Ryan O’Hara: Tactic, number two in a good way to get a higher increase on your response rates is you need to hide your touches. So many sales reps that are out there today will be on the phone with someone. And they’ll be like, “Oh, can you send me more info? And they’re like, what kind of info?” And then they give something and they’re like, “All right, I’ll send it to you. And they get off the phone.” Our whole job is to be excited and we want to make our touches excited. So you got to hype your stuff. That means you should be saying something like I’m going to send you the greatest email you’ve ever seen.

Now remember earlier, Dale Dupree talks about not doing gimmicks and stuff. That brings me to point number three, you need to live up to the hype afterward. Actually send a damn good email. That’s a picture of my mom. She apparently thinks of a huge disappointment in this. I don’t know why I picked it and put this picture and now it just makes you look bad. But the idea is that you should follow the litmus test of if any cold email or cold call you had ever got posted online you should be proud of it. That’s a really easy litmus test that you should get your whole team to think about.

If I make shitty macaroni art and my mom puts it on the fridge, I should be proud of that macaroni art. And that’s how you want this to be. So make sure you do that stuff. When you’re just starting out. No, one’s going to see your posts. No, one’s going to relate to it. The cool part is whirled a group here and we all can help each other and support each other from this event.

If you want people to react and go act off of the things that you’re doing, make stuff with your prospects, they don’t have to be customers. I’m going to show you something that’s gonna make me look like a huge jerk. Cause I think Scott was on my podcast at one point. If I get an email, it says, “Thanks for the email. We’re not interested at this time.” I’m fine with that. It’s a reply. I can pull that person out of my sequence and stop reaching out to them. But here’s the other cool thing I could do. I could say, “You know what? It’s obviously not a good time to buy. I’m going to have this person on my podcast. So I’ll go have this person, my podcast. And guess what we do over that hour of laughing and recording and splash and water at each other, somehow just got really weird.

You know, it’s happening, but guess what I can do. I can now actually go and say, I know that person, we usually get on a text basis after like I text everyone that I’ve had on my podcast and what the other cool part is, I’ll go post that podcast and tag that person. If any of you can do it, you all know how to talk If you work in sales, like if you don’t know how to talk, then I dunno, you could, you can write a book or something, but I put a podcast out. I tagged that person. I give them the file to put on their own LinkedIn. They posted out all the people that comment engages on the podcast with that person. I can then prospect those people. And we all know each other like we all know other VPs of sales and VPs of marketing stuff.

So all these people come in and like them and I’ll prospect them and go, “Oh my gosh, it’s another prospect.” And honestly, I’m a huge jerk. Well, how many episodes I’ve done right? Half these people that I’ve done stuff with. I actually think that they have some cool insight and you should definitely check out my podcast, but I’m not plugging that what I’m plugging is I’ve done a ton of these episodes like half the reason I’ll do some of these is because these guys will be like, I want to break into this account. And I’m like, all right, I’ll get to know them a little bit more and you know will happen, five or six months later, they’ll come in and they will actually turn into a customer inbound and we’ll give it credit back to the SDR for that.

Scott Ingram: If you want to hear the other 22 tips that Ryan shared, then either just jump over to the Sales Success Stories podcast for that episode, or as always we’ll have links for you at DailySales.Tips/514, and it’s also worth noting that if you join the listener list while you’re there on the DailySales.Tips website, I’ll be glad to send you the vide of your choice from a previous Sales Success Summit, including this one featuring Ryan.

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

“Ask a clarifying question, gather some additional context, and then respond.” – Mike Simmons in today’s Tip 513

How do you handle objections?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Mike!

Mike Simmons on LinkedIn
Catalyst Sale
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Mike Simmons. Mike is the Founder of Catalyst Sale a full-service Sales Operations and Enablement Consultancy and he also hosts a podcast with the same name. The Catalyst Sale. Here’s Mike:

Mike Simmons: How do you handle objections? This is one of the most common questions that’s out there. And there are so many fricking opinions about how to handle objections. My approach, the one that I recommend and it can be frustrating for a number of folks. So I think the tone is really important and intent is really important.

But anytime someone has an objection, if I’m on point, sometimes I screw up and sometimes I miss this, but anytime somebody has an objection, what I try to do is respond to the question and all I’m doing is I’m trying to clarify it. And you know, Chris Voss talks about it in his masterclass around negotiation and I know a couple of you are fans of his stuff, and I think he’s absolutely awesome. And if you’ve not watched the masterclass, you should, if you’ve not read, never split the difference you should. If you’ve not listened to some of his stuff that he shares on his podcast and in places where he’s been a guest, you should.

So let’s say that the objection is pricing. That’s insane your price is too high. We’re never going to pay that well. Okay. What do you mean too high, how? What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to gather some information rather than come through and the most common one on prices. Well, if you compare us to others in the marketplace, this is how we’ve gone for pricing. They don’t care about that right now. Let’s get demonstrate to them that we’re actually listening, that we’ve heard the challenge that they’re bringing up and that we’re not actually guessing on what it is that they’re looking for. Maybe the objection is, the content is just too remedial. I’m looking for something that’s a little bit more interactive from any learning perspective.

Well, why is that interactive from what perspective, how do you see your end-users, the people inside the organization, actually using the product. Once we get a little bit more information, then we can actually respond again in context. But the other thing that I’m trying to do is try to kind of like what we talk about with the territory plan stuff. I’m trying to get the customer to make a decision, share information with us so that I’m reacting to that piece of information, not reacting or guessing to the broader thing that they just asked for.

So take away from this is when handling objections, don’t handle them. Don’t respond. Don’t turn that into, I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to share information about why, what you’re thinking is not correct. Ask a clarifying question. Don’t be a jerk about it, but ask a clarifying question, gather some additional context and then respond to that one. Unless when they clarify another thing pops up in there and it makes sense to ask another question. I wouldn’t ask more than two questions after the objection, but certainly, ask at least one and don’t just respond to it.

Scott Ingram: For more about Mike Simmons and the Catalyst Sale, just click over to DailySales.Tips/513 and we’ll have everything for you there.

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

“When you feel stuff’s not right, just take a step back reevaluate and then lean in again.” – David Henzel in today’s Tip 512

How do you make decisions in your life?

Join the conversation below and learn more about David!

David Henzel on LinkedIn
Managing Happiness
David Henzel Website
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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 David Henzel. David is a serial entrepreneur currently leading more than half a dozen different projects, so you’re going to want to check out his LinkedIn profile, but first, here’s his tip:

David Henzel: One thing that helps me a lot is being in the right mindset. Let me tell you a story.

One day in yoga, my yoga teacher said something so profound that almost fell out of a downward-facing dog. She claimed that every decision in life, you either make out of love or out of fear. And I always knew this deep down inside of me, but I was not able to articulate that well.

So how do we make decisions in life? We either make them out of love or other fear.

If you make them out of love, you’re 100% on the right path. If you make them out of fear, you’re on the wrong path.

Let me give you a few examples that really illustrate how powerful this can be.

The first example I want to give you is out of the sales world.

If you sell a product of love, you enrich somebody’s life. You sell this product because you know that this product will solve people’s problems. You know that this is a good product and this product will help people. So other people will feel this. They feel that you have good intentions and this love will radiate out and they’re much more likely to buy.

On the other hand, if you sell somebody a product purely because you have to pay your mortgage and you think about the money that you make often, people will also feel this. So sending out of love, feel is always much easier than selling out of fear.

If you sell out of love, you enrich people’s lives. If you sell a fear, you take away from people.

So a few years ago, I asked my assistant to send out a company-wide newsletter every Monday at 4:00 PM, to keep everybody informed on what’s going on in the business. And every time I received a draft of this newsletter, I had to correct a million things. So I said to her, you’re doing this out of fear and not out of love. And she looked at me like, “What do you want from me?”

So I explained, if you would write this newsletter out of love, you would make sure that you really understand everything that’s going on. Even though you’re not super technical and we are a very technical business, and everybody who receives this newsletter gets the most joy out of it and the most information out of it. So ideally the person that receives this is looking forward to it, but you’re doing this other fear. You’re only doing it because I told you so you’re doing it because David said at 4:00 PM, this thing has to go out and that’s the sole reason why you’re doing it. So you’re operating out of fear. And after we had this conversation, I never had to correct a single newsletter again.

This concept also helped me tremendously when people knocked on my door, which happened a lot at MaxCDN. I always give them the answer to their questions out of fear, because I didn’t want to lose the trade of thought, I just had and I want to get back into what I was doing. And this has never really worked that well.

Once I flipped my thinking, I gave much better advice and life just became a lot easier. It also helps me with the little things it’s kind of stupid, but it really works for me.

So when I have to log into my email server, for example, and I get the two-step authentication where I get like a six-digit password by a text message, I always think I’m going to forget it. And so my brain is filled with fear and then I really forget this number. And when I flip my thinking, it works and I can retain the number. If I’m filled with fear, I suck. If I fill it with love, everything’s just flowing.

Similar to talking here on camera. When I get to feel it with fear. And I think like, how am I perceived as a sock hardware sets, et cetera, then I get stuck. But if I think about the message that I’m giving you and that I want to help you, and that this will make your life better, I can just flow in and I can talk.

The same thing with public speaking. I hate public speaking with a passion, but also I’ve stuffed it I want to share with the world. And when I stand on stage and I think about how am I perceived. Now do people think I have a weird German accent to a standard, do they think that called us this idiot look or whatever I can’t deliver a speech but if my mind is full of love, and I think about the message that I have and that this will improve people’s lives. I can give a good presentation. So it’s, it’s really crazy how this works. So do yourself a favor, make decisions out of love, not out of fear.

Now, this is a big one. And I think a lot of you notice, you know, the honeydew lists like stuff that your wife wants you to do. I always did these things. In my case, it’s home improvements. My wife always wants to do stuff around the house. “Hey, could you put this together?” “Could you hang up this frame.” Or whatever. And I hate this type of work. It’s really the last thing I want to do. I prefer to do my texts over this. I don’t know what it is, but I really, really hate it.

So every time my wife asks me to do something, I do it out of fear because I want to avoid conflict with her. And then when I do it, I hate the process. And the result is most likely, very shitty because I’m not doing it with love, right? And then I have a fight with my wife afterward. So nobody’s winning.

So being aware of the concept of love and fear, I still start other fear cause I still can’t stand the work. But then I switched to love because I want to make my wife happy and I want to make my place nicer. And all of a sudden it flows. I enjoy the work, the results much better. And I’m fine with my wife.

I don’t want to get all cheesy and bringing Star Wars analogies, but still remember when you’re the set salute do or do not, there is no try. There is so much truth to this. And I always sent this video snippet to people in the business. When one of my guys says, they’re going to try when they give them a task, because trying is the most inefficient way not to do something. How do you do something? Or you don’t. Don’t waste your time in the middle. And if you do stuff, you do with love. You go all in, you lean in and you get it done.

If you try you tiptoe around it, you fear that you’re going to fail. And if you think that you are most likely going to fail, whether you think you can do it or whether or not both times, you’re right.

So how can you figure this out? How can you apply this in your own life? The thing that works best is your emotions. They’re a really good barometer to tell you if you’re in the red zone or if in the green zone. If you feel good about something you’re on the right path, you’re filled with love. If you feel bad about something something’s not right and you need to adjust. So use this inner compass, it works really, really well. When you feel stuff’s not right, just take a step back reevaluate and then lean in again.

Scott Ingram: For more about David, just click over to DailySales.Tips/512 there we’ll also have a link to his passion project called Managing Happiness which is a course that helps people figure out their A-Game habits, their personal mission, vision, core values, and goals. It’s worth checking out.

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

“Read books that change the way you think about everything, not just about the way you do what you do professionally.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 511

What is your favorite book?

Join the conversation below and go check out all the links!

Chosen Vision
Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
A Perfect Union of Contrary Things by Sarah Jensen with Maynard James Keenan

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 Jeff Bajorek is back. Here he is:

Jeff Bajorek: My tip for you today is to take a break from reading sales books. Yes, I’m a guy who writes sales books. Yes, I have friends who write really good sales books. I’m telling you that while those books are valuable, while that information is golden if you spend time just reading about selling. You’re going to develop tunnel vision. You’re going to be too focused on the tactical nature of what you do and not on the other roadblocks that get in your way and prevent you from doing it.

Now, as I work with clients and as I speak with salespeople and sales leaders, what I’ve come to realize is that there are only two things that you can do to sell more that is spend more time selling and make sure you’re advancing in those sales processes when you’re in them. You’ve heard me talk about that before, but what are the things that get in your way, they almost always have to do with mindset and perspective and thinking about things in a different way. Approaching subject matter from a different angle.

So what I’m going to challenge you to do is read books that change the way you think about everything, not just about the way you do what you do professionally. And when you think about things that make overarching changes in your thought processes, that’s when you have impacts everywhere, not just in your business life, but in your family life, in your personal life and in your spiritual life as well.

So read books that make you think differently, like the seam to lab and Malcolm Gladwell are brilliant. They take subject matter that you may have held dearly for a long time, and they attack it from different angles to challenge those beliefs. And if your beliefs stand up to those challenges, then you’re in great shape. But in almost every situation you’re going to think differently. And that has far-reaching consequences. Books like Radical Candor from Kim Scott. Books, like anything that Renee Brown has written over the last half dozen years. Read biographies by people, you respect.

Watch their journeys, watch their challenges, watch the things that they’ve faced, how they overcome them. You can almost always see a parallel to your own life and it’s impossible not to be inspired by the fact that these people overcame tremendous adversity to reach the levels of talent and accomplishment that they have. Read things through your spiritual mind, read things for your, that’s the Bible for some people or other religious texts, depending on what you practice or celebrate, or Hey, maybe even all of them so you can learn or any of them. So you can learn about other people’s belief systems and maybe get a different idea of where they’re approaching things from.

There’s so much out there that you can read, and you’re not going to be able to get it all, but I’m want to caution you that if you’re too hyper-focused in any one direction or nat one subject matter, you’re going to be missing out on the bigger stuff that can in the wider perspective, that will help you in so many ways to remove the roadblocks that will make those tactics so much more effective when you’re able to really get involved and dig in.

So expand your horizons a little bit, read a couple of sales books and make sure you’re not ignoring those things, but to make sure you’re well-rounded, there’s so much out there that can help you, even though you may not suspect it right away. And I hope you take me up on that challenge.

Scott Ingram: If you value and appreciate Jeff’s tips the way I do, then please click over to DailySales.Tips/511. In addition to all of the usual stuff, there’s also a link to support Jeff’s favorite cause, Chosen Vision. Every year Jeff does something really special and valuable to help them raise money and this year is no different. Check out that link, see what Jeff is offering and I hope you’ll consider joining me in contributing.

Oh, and all of those books that Jeff just mentioned. They’re all listed there as well. DailySales.Tips/511

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

“Lead with context and then talk about the problems that the folks who have that context typically have.” – Armand Farrokh in today’s Tip 510

What is your value props?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Armand.

Carta
Armand Farrokh on LinkedIn
30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast
503: Part 1 of the Cold Call: Phone Openers
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 Armand Farrokh. Armand is a Director of Sales at Carta and Host of the 30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast. This is part 2 of Armand’s 3 part series on cold calls. Here he is:

Armand Farrokh: What’s up everybody. My name is Armand Farrokh. I’m a Director of Sales over at Carta and the host of The 30 Minutes to President’s Club Podcast. Last time we talked about cold call openers. Today, we’re going to be talking about cold call value propositions.

So last time we talked, we said the cold call opener should not be “How’s your day going.” It should not be, “Did I catch you at a bad time?” It should lead with context. And so if your context is your buying trigger is, “Hey, you raised a financing round.” You would just lead with that on the phone. “Hey, I noticed you raised around the other day. Congrats. It’s Armand of Carta. Have you heard her name tossed around?” And I get them to sit up with that context.

The value prop, a lot of people drop the ball by doing a feature dump right after that. Well, you laid up this perfect context. Now, all I have to do is set up the context so that the context matches the value prop. And so if that is my buyer trigger, I’m going to say, this is the problem that people with that buyer trigger tend to have.

And so at Carta, we sell valuation services because companies need to value their company after round, and then we help them manage their equity. So issue options to folks. And so if the context is you just raised around the value prop is going to lead with typically language.

So typically after you raise around. We find that you spend a ton of time issuing options to new employees, issuing certificates, new investors, and you’ve got to sink five grand into the ground on evaluation. We essentially automate all that stuff. So it’s close to free and it takes half the time. Can I get a couple minutes to see if that’d be helpful for you guys? And so instead of painting out, “Whoa, Carta is the leading provider in cap table management software, and we let you issue options.” All I’m saying is this is the problem you’re facing. And guess what, we solve that. So lead with context and then talk about the problems that the folks who have that context typically have. Solve the problems. Don’t sell the product.

Scott Ingram: For a link to Armand’s podcast and to connect with him on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/510. Next week we’ll feature part 3 of this cold calling series, and of course you can always come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!