“What we’re really focused on right now is profiling and making sure that we understand ideal customer profile and we understand target audiences and we’ve got really good messaging on how we help companies emerge from the stronger.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 449

What you are focused on?

Join the conversation below and submit your own tip!

David Weiss on LinkedIn
24: ADP Sales Pro, David Weiss, on Generating 2-3X Results by Taking a Scientific Approach
75: Take The Lead with David Weiss
87: Better Sales Leadership, Mental Health in Sales & Other Wisdom from the Weisses
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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. Last week I reached out to the Sales Success Community and asked for more real tips. Tips that are relevant right now. Not about the things that we should be doing, but the things that people are doing. Things that are working. Today David Weiss from ADP is going to bring some balance with a dose of reality because it might be that most things aren’t working right now. Here’s David:

David Weiss: Good afternoon Sales Success Community, David Weiss coming at you with another tip of the day. So this tip, I’ve got a lot of people reaching out to me lately wondering what I’m focused on or what you know we’re doing during these times to sell things and prospect and all of this. And look there’s a lot of opinions out there and I value all of them and probably all of them are right depending on your scenario. I’m just going to share my scenario right now.

So my scenario right now is we work a lot in the world of recruiting and human capital and that’s in flux right now. A lot of people I would typically sell to are, unfortunately, they’re having to do a restructuring of their workforce or at the very least, there’s a ton of uncertainty in their business. So they’re not necessarily leaning into a sales process, right now. So we are doing seating, we are going out and mentioning to the marketplace how we can help others scale and rebound from these things quickly. And those are getting met with mixed messages or mixed responses. But what we’re really focused on right now is training. And what we’re really focused on right now is profiling and making sure that we understand ideal customer profile and we understand target audiences and we’ve got really good messaging on how we help companies emerge from the stronger and us ourselves become more educated on our solution in our industry and emerge from this as better salespeople and with a greater ability to help the communities that we serve. And that’s what we’re really focused on right now.

Cause look at the enterprise space there aren’t as many people buying super large scale unless it makes a lot of sense. You know, because they’re in some sort of mission-critical business. So a lot of them are kind of waiting to see and picking and choosing their timing and slowing things down. So what we can control right now because we can’t control what they’re doing, is we can control ourselves and we can control the books we read in the trainings, we take in the profiling we do and things along those lines.

So when we do come out of this and we will, we are stronger and better people for it. So that’s what we’re focused on right now. I also like to think that gives us more flexibility to have a different work-life balances and schedules than we’ve ever needed because a lot of us are full-time teachers as well as parents and employees right now. So we need to be kind of smart on how we balance our time. So that’s what we’re focused on. Excited to hear what you guys are focused on and what you see working out there. Thanks for listening

Scott Ingram: For more about David and for details on how to submit your own tip, where you can talk about what is or isn’t working for you right now, just click over to DailySales.Tips/449

Then, as always, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. There some really helpful stuff coming. Thanks for listening!

“It allows you to take a moment and focus on what’s going right in your life when the world seems to be in chaos.” – Mike Anderson in today’s Tip 448

Do you have your own gratitude journal?

Join the conversation below and share your own thoughts!

Terryberry
Mike Anderson on LinkedIn
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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 Mike Anderson from Terryberry, and if you listened to yesterday’s tip from Jack Wilson you’ll understand a bit more about what prompted this tip from Mike. It’s really good stuff. Give a listen:

Mike Anderson: Hi, Sales Success Community. This is Mike Anderson over at Terryberry, and my tip today is all about gratitude, specifically doing a gratitude journal. Okay? I know what you’re thinking that sounds probably pretty corny, or maybe a little hokey. In fact, that’s actually what I muttered under my breath when my wife brought this idea to me about two weeks ago.

But here’s the thing, if you’re like me and you’re struggling with this new normal of working from home or being stuck in your house, it can weigh on you mentally.
So here’s my call to action for all you.

Start a gratitude journal. Take five minutes each morning, write down a few things you’re grateful for and they don’t have to be monumental.

For example, mine today where I was grateful for the beautiful weather to take my dog for a walk this morning. My favorite coffee creamer was finally back in stock at the grocery store and I love it. And I finally was able to put that in my coffee this morning. Three for me was just my family’s health. And there’s a thing that happens when you show gratitude. It grounds you, it allows you to take a moment and focus on what’s going right in your life when the world seems to be in chaos. And really it just puts you in a better place mentally.

So that’s my challenge to all you. Gratitude journal five minutes morning, write down a few things. Start with three and I bet you’ll see some improvements in your mental wellbeing anyway Sale Success Community, be safe, be healthy and happy selling.

Scott Ingram: I’m grateful for Mike and this tip. I’m grateful for this Sales Success Community and the way everyone is willing to help each other and I’m grateful for you and the fact that you’re listening right now. More about Mike at DailySales.Tips/448 and as always, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“if you are not spending more time with your customers and prospects, and if you’re not asking them what they think they should do next, or what you think that telling them what you think you should do next, then you’re missing out.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 446

How do you sell more?

Join the conversation below and check out all the links!

Rethink The Way You Sell Community
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
Jeff’Bajorek on YouTube
The Why And The Buy Podcast
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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. It must be Thursday because here’s your weekly idea from Jeff Bajorek. Here he is:

Jeff Bajorek: Two things you need to do if you want to sell more. Spend more time selling, make sure while you’re selling you’re asking for next steps and moving things forward in your process. Those are the only two things that get in the way from salespeople selling more. You’re either not spending enough time in your sales process or while you’re there, you’re not moving it forward.

If you’re not thinking about your productivity, if you’re not thinking about your day to day in terms of whether or not that project that’s right in front of you, that task that your manager gave you, that memo that you need to read or that email that you need to respond to, is this helping me, spend more time in my sales process? Is this encouraging me to ask for the next step in that sales process or is it everything else, right?

I don’t care about your tech stack. I don’t care about the CRM that you’re using. I don’t care about your social media presence, your personal brand, your cold calling, outreach techniques, your subject lines in your emails. Oh great. You’re using video and email the prospect. Good for you, are you selling? Is it enabling you to sell more? Is it enabling you to ask for next steps? Spend more time selling, keep selling while you’re selling.

It’s really that simple and you should be able to, that should be the litmus test that you hold yourself to when you’re doing anything during the day. But only if you want to sell more. If you don’t want to sell more, well then volunteer for committees. If you don’t want to sell more, then you know, spend time organizing your desk, spend time getting your calendar situated. Make sure that the data that you put into your CRM is just perfect. Make sure every report is turned in on time.

There’s a lot of things that you can do that will disguise themselves. Those activities will disguise themselves as productive selling activities. But if you are not spending more time with your customers and prospects, and if you’re not asking them what they think they should do next, or what you think that telling them what you think you should do next, then you’re missing out.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff Bajorek, including a link to his Rethink The Way You Sell Community and the video version of this tip where you can see Jeff and his passion, just click over to DailySales.Tips/446

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

“By asking the hard questions early, you will eliminate any question marks and check these steps off your list as you progress through the sales process.” – Pat Rodgers in today’s Tip 445

Have you purchased something like this before??

Join the conversation below and learn more about Pat!

Loupe
Manager Minute
Loupe on Twitter
Loupe on LinkedIn
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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 Pat Rodgers. Pat is the CEO of Loupe and is a veteran sales leader and manager. Here he is:

Pat Rodgers: I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about aligning your sales process to the buyer’s journey, that by aligning to them and meeting them where they are, it will make for a smoother sale. I think all of this is true. However, what happens when your buyer doesn’t actually know how to buy? Well, I’m going to walk you through is a simple takeaway that will hopefully change the way you approach your sales process. Our job as salespeople in leaders is to align what we offer to our client’s needs in order to create value. Our second most important job is to close business in the timeline we’ve established to achieve quota and sales targets. And we don’t forecast our business accurately this leads to slip deals, which lead to really uncomfortable conversations with your manager, or even worse, missing an accelerator and leaving money on the table.

Let’s talk about how we avoid this happening to you. It begins with one somewhat uncomfortable question; Have you purchased something like this before? And it needs to come out as early as humanly possible, which is the uncomfortable part. As an example, every seller can probably recall a time in their career when you have what I like to call happiers. For you younger sellers, it probably sounded something like this. This deal is perfect. The buyer loves me. We’re texting. It’s definitely coming in and then it didn’t. You remember that deal? We all had them.

Now, if you step back, did you remember to ask the contact if they’d ever bought a product like yours before if they’d ever bought anything before? If you don’t attack this question as early as possible, come back to bite you in one way or another. It doesn’t mean you won’t win the deal. You can still win, but you may not win on time and thus a slip deal. At some point in your very first conversation, you will know if there’s some level of alignment and understanding of value for your offering. This is when you have to ask the most important question; “Mr. and Mrs. Prospect. It sounds like we have alignment. How would something like this be purchased in your organization?” Then pause, wait and don’t speak until they respond. It’s the hardest part, silence is where you’re going to get the most information. If they don’t answer or can’t answer, let them know you want to help them determine the steps to gain approval. If they do, they’re going to give you a wealth of information. Show them that you’re on their side. Share Gates and the process you’ve seen hit before in software it maybe IT approval, security review, et cetera, et cetera. Build them up and ask if they would be the one that would actually sign something like this or is there somebody else that we need to get involved. Throughout other hurdles, you’ve seen. Do they have procurement? Will they need budget approval? When is the best time to get these folks involved? Depending on the time of year, really deep. Do you think your general counsel is going to be on vacation this August or taking a big holiday for Christmas and New Year’s, you name it, whatever it is, get out ahead of it because if they see value and they have some level of alignment, they want to help you, help them.

Guide them through the buying process. By asking these questions early, you’re plotting out not only the tasks you need to accomplish but the steps your prospect has to go accomplish internally. If they don’t, they’ll never be able to buy what you’re offering. These questions will also help you to determine if you’re talking to a tire kicker, a gatekeeper, a champion, or the actual economic buyer. A quick no, because this person has no authority to buy, is much better than wasting weeks or months on a deal going nowhere. Even better if they realize they can’t buy but still want it, use them to guide you through the organization. If they see value, they will appreciate that you have helped guide them throughout the process. By asking the hard questions early, you will eliminate any question marks and check these steps off your list as you progress through the sales process. This is when you have truly aligned to how buyers buy, whether it is an experienced buyer or someone who has never bought before or new to the company you’re going to be covered. Understand the true timelines and be in the driver’s seat to close deals faster and become much more accurate when it comes to the actual signature date. Hit quota and your forecast. Happy selling.

Scott Ingram: For more from Pat, subscribe to the Manager Minute, a once-weekly personal note from Pat that’s written exclusively for current or aspiring sales managers. It’s delivered every Sunday morning and takes less than 1 minute to read. We’ll have that link and more for you at DailySales.Tips/445

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

“Leverage personal video as part of your sales process” – Casey Hill in today’s Tip 444

How about you? Are you using videos as a part of your sales process?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Casey and Bonjoro!

Bonjoro
Bonjoro on Twitter
Bonjoro on Facebook
Bonjoro’s video funnel playbook
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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 Casey Hill from Bonjoro. Casey is a leader in sales and growth hacking and is a top ten writer in the world on Quora for SaaS sales, SaaS Marketing and SaaS. Here he is:

Casey Hill: Hi everyone! My name is Casey with Bonjoro. We’re a personalized video messaging company and I wanted to talk today about the power of building personal human authentic connections as part of the sales process. So before kind of even diving into that, I want to take you guys through a little thought example that was talked about in a TedTalk I recently listened to. So they ask people to think of a person whose name was “Baker” and then they said to think of the profession, a “Baker”. And they actually, they asked two separate groups and then they circle back in a few hours and they saw how good retention was between those two groups and they found a pretty stark contrast. And the stark contrast was in favor of the people remembering the profession “Baker”. Now, why was that? Why were people so much more likely to remember the profession “Baker” than a person?

And the reason is context. When you just give someone a name, they don’t know. In that case, whether it’s male, whether it’s female, they don’t have any context to put around it. But in the case of the profession, you think of a Baker, you think of the hat, you might think of the smells, you have all of these different associations. So that same principle is true when it comes to video as well. So when most people follow up, say after a sales conversation, they send a standard email. The challenge with the standard emails, standard text, email is you’re lacking those context pieces. There is no tone, there is no body language, there’s no facial expression, there’s not all of these components that contribute to relationship building to that contribute to building familiarity, right?

So one of the things that we’re trying to do at Bonjoro is we’re working with sales teams and we’re helping them try to build more of those authentic connections to close more deals, to build more traffic and also to get stronger refers with these relationships and withstanding out you have more people that are talking about it that are kind of spreading the word. And so again, there’s a lot of ways you can use video to help in your sales process. A lot that I’ve kind of used personally. So one is if you’re a part of a sales process where you do meetings with people, consultations, demos, walkthroughs, that type of thing. A great application is to do an introduction before that with a Bonjoro, just reach out to them, make a connection, set some expectations. It’s an awesome way to, number one, make sure that people show up. So a lot of people we see on sales teams are using this initially to reduce no show rate because you know, many businesses struggle with that. Someone books appointment but they don’t show up. The second thing is to create a better context for the conversation by kind of setting that in advance. So instead of just sending an email that says, “Hey, we’re going to talk about X, Y, Z” you’re able to have something that’s a little bit more personable.

Then after someone has a meeting, the next place that you can really insert video effectively is after the conversation has taken place. So you send out something after proposal and for the competition, you know they’re just flooding people with those standard texting emails. That person who met with you might’ve met with five competitors and they’re all gonna follow up in the same way. They’re going to hit them on the phones, they’re going to hit them in the inbox with the emails, and that person’s going to have a lot of messaging that looks really similar.

But if you use personal video, that’s a way that you really stand out. It’s a concept that a famous marketer called Seth Godin calls “The purple cow” and basically what that means is if you were going down the street and you see a cow, you’re not going to think anything of it cause you see a million cows. But if you see a purple cow, you’re going to stop and you’re going to check that out and you’re going to tell people about it. So it’s the same thing is true with video. If you follow up and you have a personal video that’s catered to that person, it really spans out in the inbox. It’s different, it’s powerful, it’s compelling. And so that’s my tip for today, leverage personal video as part of your sales process.

Scott Ingram: For more about Casey and Bonjoro and of course the video version of this tip, just click over to DailySales.Tips/444 On that page there’s also a link to their video playbook library that includes an extensive library of templates for how to use video at all different points in the customer lifecycle. There no opt-in or purchase required, it’s just a great resource for anyone interested in the video medium. Again you’ll find that link at DailySales.Tips/444

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

“When you create impact, make it massive. If it isn’t massive, it likely won’t gain enough attention or enthusiasm to really catch on. You want momentum and excitement.” – Alex Smith in today’s Tip 443

How do you present your next idea to make the biggest impact?

Join the conversation below and feel free to share your own idea!

Alex Smith on LinkedIn
Alex Smith on Twitter
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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 Alex Smith. Alex is a super active member of the Sales Success Community and consistently shares great insights on LinkedIn where you’re going to want to follow him. Here he is with a tip that he shared with me a number of weeks ago that might be even more relevant right now:

Alex Smith: Have you ever had a great idea at your workplace but it was never implemented? I’ve had ideas that had amazing excitement and lunch and others that are currently sitting in an idea graveyard somewhere and likely will never be brought back to life and everything in between.

So my tip today will help you with actionable ways to prepare you to present your next idea work so that it has the best chance to make the biggest impact.

I’m someone that always loves challenging myself to come up with new ways of doing things. I really look at sales as an art form and it’s up to us to be creative on how we want to approach it. If I ever lose a sale, I will always want to ask what I could have done differently. So I started doing the same with ideas.

One consistent theme that I began to notice was that all of my improvements really centered around how they were presented and my process. Ideas are no different than the products and services you might be selling. So why not adopt similar sales processes the next time you need to present them?

Many of us know the importance of getting our sales process right. We put intricate detail into them. They are the lenses that make our forecasts, crystal clear. Any smudge on the lens, and we clean it up immediately.

We’ve all learned some amazing processes, whether it’s been from David Weiss and MEDDPICC or Trey Simonton and his joint action plan. Whatever process you like to use, I urge you to treat your ideas with the same level of care that you would to one of your sales plans. Your ideas reflect your creativity and you want to give them the best chance to succeed.

So list out your ideas and go through a deliberate sales process with each. I guarantee you can translate whatever current sales process, were processed you subscribed to in order to sell your ideas. Just think about it. Each idea will solve a problem for your organization and delivers a specific impact. List out each idea, the problem it solves and next to it the impact your organization if you solve it, a pic chart for ideas if you will. Make the idea personal.

Your boss might want to make quota, but your CEO needs to increase market share. You need to know how your idea and show how your idea generates revenue and quantify it and you need to create urgency. How will this get your boss and upper management’s attention to act? Create a chart and list this all out.

One of my favorite sales quotes also applies to ideas. If the problem is the reason to change the impact is the urgency to change. I like to say things like, “If we continue to do things this way, this is what we might be risking or not capturing by failing to try this.”

When you create impact, make it massive. If it isn’t massive, it likely won’t gain enough attention or enthusiasm to really catch on. You want momentum and excitement. You’re looking for,” I love that idea. Let’s do it” not, “Oh yeah, that’s a good idea” and then crickets.

Can you gain support for the idea across the organization? If so, with who? What’s your budgeting process look like? Budget timelines. Does it require a financial investment? If so, what’s the ROI? Even better can we start with no revenue investment. If the investment is not revenue but just productivity time clearly spell that out. All things you can put in a chart you’re going for, how can you make it really easy for management to say yes. Remove friction and make them think that they leave little to no extra work on their end and this will just be extra money that’s coming in.

Mark Cuban once said a great quote when he said, “The greatest value you can offer to your boss is to reduce their stress.” So clearly show them how your idea does that for them. I’m always eager to get ideas out there, but to make them really catch on, we need to put a deliberate process behind them. There’s so many examples of people doing that in this community who came up with a new idea internally to increase visibility with senior execs, get promoted, increase influence at companies and learn along the way.

A quote that really guides me on the importance of selling ideas and building excitement was said by the iconic businesswoman and founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Mary Kay Ash when she said: “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will always go further than a great idea that inspires no one.”

So I urge you to go forth and create a killer process with your next idea at work and generate incredible excitement at your organization. I’d love to hear from you on what ideas you’ve pitched that worked well and maybe also we can swap stories of ones that didn’t and talk about why. I’m always game to chat. Thanks, everyone for listening and good luck with your ideas.

Scott Ingram: For a link to connect with Alex and more, just click over to DailySales.Tips/443 and we’ll have everything for you there.

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

“The actionable insights that are going to help us individually and collectively break through and be better for the adversity on the other side.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 422

Do you want to share your own sales tip?

Join the conversation below and thank you for being a part of this Sales Success Community!

Career Board: Powered by Outreach
Finding Sales Success on LinkedIn
2019 Sales Success Summit Videos
2020 Sales Success Summit
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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. Usually, I try to share one of my own tips here about once a week, and it’s been almost two weeks since my last tip. Part of that was because I was so focused on delivering the Finding Sales Success on the LinkedIn webinar and delivering the free PDF that includes 108 tips from 36 LinkedIn Sales Stars. That webinar was a massive success. It ended up being the biggest webinar ever on The Sales Experts Channel of over 500 that have been presented over the years. The recording and the PDF are now available, you can find those at top1.fm/LinkedInSalesStars, but I think the real reason I haven’t shared a tip in almost two weeks is I don’t feel like I have the answers.

We’re still figuring all of this out and I’m a great big optimist, but I’m also a realist and I think the reality is that we’re just at the beginning of this thing. The majority of the economy basically got turned off like a light switch. Unfortunately, it’s not going to just turn back on. We’re not going to get the all-clear alarm and then everything is going to go back to the way it was, and not to get really depressing, but about a week ago I tried to find the definition of depression. Not mental depression, but economic depression. Turns out there isn’t really an agreed-upon definition beyond some version of “really bad recession.” I think the reality is that that’s where we’re headed. This thing has impacted the entire world. We’re all going to have to get through this and then recover together and unfortunately, I think that recovery is going to take a while. Lots of sales professionals are losing their jobs right now and through new fault of their own. You might be one of them. This is a time when real leaders will emerge, and anybody can step up and be one of those leaders. Even you. It doesn’t matter the position you’re in. We need people to lead us through this. We need to lead ourselves and our families through this.

I love the work that Outreach is doing. They’ve been talking about how one of their core values is “we’ve got your back,” and they’ve stepped up to demonstrate that. They very quickly started pulling together a list of companies that are hiring along with a comprehensive list of job openings. Check that out at http://outreach.io/gethired. Others are discounting or even giving away their books, courses and other resources. That’s something I started doing about two weeks ago. If you are already on or join the listener list at DailySales.Tips, the default email will offer you the video of your choice from the last Sales Success Summit. Reply to that email and I will send you ALL of the videos from the last two Sales Success Summits. That’s over 30 videos and something like 19 and a half hours of content that sell for a couple hundred dollars. Say the word and I’ll get you access to all of it for free. I’m not saying we all need to give away our solutions, but if you’re in a position like I am, where these assets really don’t have any cost for me to deliver to you and I am super grateful to still have a job and clients who are continuing to invest and work with us. The least I can do is pay it forward. We’ve got to come together and help each other. The Sales Success Community has always been about growth, development and higher levels of achievement.

Right now, for some, it might just be about survival and I totally get that. I want to do everything I can to help you not only survive, but thrive. In addition to the stories of layoffs, I’m also hearing amazing stories about crazy innovations and breakthroughs. I’m probably butchering this or maybe I’m just making it up, but I think I’ve heard that constraint is the mother of all invention. We’re all pretty constrained right now. I texted a couple of friends and even though it supposed to rain pretty much non-stop for the next few days in Austin. We’re going to find a way to go for a walk together, at a distance of 6-10 feet from each other of course, but I need to start interacting with some other humans in a more meaningful way than on another Zoom meeting, and with people who don’t live in my house.

I also want to keep this podcast as positive, constructive and uplifting as I can. I’m going to need your help to do that. Bring me your stories of success. Maybe it’s your own. Maybe it’s something that you’re seeing out there. A company that is really going above and beyond and serving their community, their customers and ideally the sales community. I’m really trying to cut back my news consumption because it’s just not helping. That’s not where the good news is. Help me feature the goods news here. The actionable insights that are going to help us individually and collectively break through and be better for the adversity on the other side. Thank you for being a part of this Sales Success Community and thank you for listening.

As always we’ll have links to everything at DailySales.Tips/442, and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“I pick the people that I ask really specifically because there needs to be like a very clear, clear something that’s happening in their company or something that they tell me in our conversations that makes it worth the ask” – Sarah Brazier in today’s Tip 441

How do you prospect on LinkedIn?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Sarah!

LinkedIn Sales Stars
Sarah Brazier on LinkedIn
Sarah Brazier on Sales Success Stories Interview
Gong
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. I get to point you in two really solid directions at once with this clip. This is from my most recent Sales Success Stories interview with Sarah Brazier, who is the top SDR at Gong. Here she’s talking about how she prospects on LinkedIn and she’s fully legit there as well and was part of the LinkedIn Sales Stars assets I started rolling out this week. Give a listen to the clip and then I’ll tell you a bit more at the end:

Sarah Brazier: I learned this more and more as people start hitting me up on LinkedIn. Like it’s weird, it’s kind of like I’m an SDR, but now people are prospecting me. I’d know that often it’s because people think I’m not an SDR. People think I’m something else and they did go to my page and look at the part where it says senior SDR.

They think I lead a team or one time somebody thought I was like a Director of Content, that’s what they told me. They’re like, “Hey, you’re the director of content, right? And I’m like, “No, I’m not. I’m SDR.” And I’m just an individual contributor. So what I do is if someone comments on my post or sometimes people will chat me and they’ll say, “Hey, I really enjoy your content” or they just happen to be an ICP. Usually, it’s someone that’s actually like in one of my coworker’s names, but they’re like the right person and they’re the right account, the right kind of industry. So I’ll just respond to their note or I’ll just say hi to them. I’ll say, “Hey, I appreciate you commenting on my posts. That’s actually really interesting.” And I’ll ask them an open-ended question about what they do.

And then we start talking and then I just ask them questions about them and ask, you know, it could be one time I talked to a CRO and it was just about, he manages a team in San Francisco, but he lives in Atlanta. Like why? What’s that commute like? And we just talked for like five days back and forth. And then I was like, “Hey, you know, you can totally tell me now.” I always say this. I’m like, “Hey listen, I know it’s not cool to pitch over LinkedIn so you can totally tell me, no and my feelings won’t be hurt. But I did notice these couple things are going on in your company or you write this thing about yourself on LinkedIn or you’ve been following your content. I’m just curious like would you be open to a 15-minute no-pressure conversation.” But that asked comes after we spent a lot of time chatting and building rapport and I pick the people that I ask really specifically because there needs to be like a very clear, clear something that’s happening in their company or something that they tell me in our conversations that makes it worth the ask because otherwise you’re just going to step on someone’s toes and I don’t want to do that. I want to talk to people who want to talk to me cause like that’s what we do as salespeople.

Scott Ingram: Yeah. So I’m interested specifically in kind of the patience piece because I feel like the best I get is like fake patience where somebody starts the casual conversation but about the most, they can go is like two messages and two minutes and then here comes a pitch. It’s like you know what, gosh, you need to just chill for a minute. Like two messages, two exchanges. It’s not even a whole conversation. So what do you look for? Like is it five days? Is that a magical thing? Like how have you developed this patience to just because it works if you do it but nobody does.

Sarah Brazier: Yeah, well that’s when you use like when do you ask somebody out that you just met at a bar? Well, definitely not. It’s not the first line, that’s the second line. Typically what you do, if people still do this, like if people don’t Tinder about it or Bumble or whatever. Like if you meet someone that you find interesting and you just strike up a casual conversation with them, you have an hour-long conversation at the bar or on the park bench or wherever, but you talk to them for a while and then after you’ve talked and you’ve gotten to know them, that’s when you can qualify them into should I ask this person out or not? And I think the same rule applies to sales. Like I lead the conversation into asking qualifying questions, but super casually like, “Hey, you know, I saw that your team just grew like 200% like what’s that experience like? How are you doing that?” Or I’ll say something like, “I noticed your team’s growing really, really rapidly, our team is too. What are you doing that’s working as you scale? And I genuinely am curious what other companies are doing because like our company’s growing really quickly. So I just want to compare, you know, are we like other people are not.” And I think once they’re like kind of qualified, once there’s something happening, but two lines in is not enough to get to know you at all.

Scott Ingram: You can hear my full two-hour interview with Sarah in episode 90 on the Sales Success Stories podcast, and you can read Sarah’s LinkedIn tips in the free PDF that includes 108 tips from 36 LinkedIn Sales Stars. You’ll find links to both of those things in addition to a link to Sarah’s LinkedIn profile of course at DailySales.Tips/441

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

“Be the undercover boss and actually uncover the why so that you can be a consultant to your customers.” – Tyler Menke in today’s Tip 440

How do you uncover your ‘Why’?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Tyler!

The Pirate’s Guide to Sales: A Seller’s Guide for Getting from Why to Buy Paperback
The Pirate’s Guide to Sales: A Seller’s Guide for Getting From Why to Buy Kindle Edition
The Pirate’s Guide to Sales
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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 Tyler Menke. Tyler is a lifelong sales guy working in the medical device space. With an MBA, Lean Six Sigma Certification and a popular book on sales titled: “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales – A Seller’s Guide from Getting from Why to Buy” He kinda knows what he’s talking about. Here he is:

Tyler Menke: Let’s talk about a hot topic in sales today, the ‘Why’. And why I think we still have it wrong. As important as starting with the why is to create a valued partnership. How often are we still going off of assumptions instead of facts?

Do you know why your close coworker is always on edge or anxious or do you even really know why certain close family members are set in the ways the way they are?

We have to dig deeper in today’s business world to uncover the why. One of the more impactful trainings I’ve done through the years is Lean Six Sigma training. In the lean world, It’s all about going to the Gemba or the actual place of learning.

My analogy to this is often the show undercover boss and the show CEOs go undercover to meet at the Gemba or the floor closest to the customer. They’re always enlightened and all struck by what they find. They then take that information back to the top and make game-changing decisions.

How often do we ask to observe and learn our customer’s business prior to selling to them?

Over the last few years in medical sales, I began to pitch and ask for observation to further understand and be a consultant to my customers. I’m often surprised how many agree to this when asked properly.

The nice thing about it is when they do agree, you not only become the undercover boss, so to speak, but you also inevitably get two calls out of one. Ask for the opportunity to evaluate their business and then write a report up on your findings to see if you can even be a value to them.

Ask for that second meeting to deliver your findings. Be the undercover boss and actually uncover the why so that you can be a consultant to your customers.

Scott Ingram: For more about Tyler and a link to his book, “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales,” just click over to DailySales.Tips/440 and if you’re not already on it. Be sure to join the listener list while you’re there. Those who were already subscribed got early access to the free PDF featuring 108 tips from 36 LinkedIn Sales Stars that Tyler was also a part of this week. You want to be on the listener list. Good things will happen to you. At least I try to make good things happen for you.

Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!