“Visual metaphors are an excellent device for breaking through because they express a key thought the executive may find valuable.” – Stu Heinecke in today’s Tip 389

How you break through to the C-Suite?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Stu!

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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 Stu Heinecke, author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and Get the Meeting! Stu is a hall of fame-nominated marketer, one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists and, as the American Marketing Association just said, the “Father of Contact Marketing.” Sales teams all over the world are using Contact Marketing to break through to their top prospects and accounts faster and far more effectively, so you’re going to want to lean in and give this a listen:

Stu Heinecke: Hi, I’m Stu Heinecke, author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and my new book, Get the Meeting. If you can’t get meetings you can’t sell. But breaking through to the C-Suite, and top prospects and accounts can often be challenging. So here’s my sales tip for the day:

C-suite executives are busy, so make sure when you reach out, you have something useful and relevant to say—which is definitely not a pitch. It’s best if you use an insightful way to deliver valuable insights. And don’t just call and say, “Hey I have an insight.”Because that’s definitely not gonna work. Find a clever way to deliver it and get their attention. Visual metaphors are an excellent device for breaking through because they express a key thought the executive may find valuable. Another device—one I use all the time because I’m also a Wall Street Journal cartoonist—is to send a cartoon. If they laugh, they’re getting my point. And it’s powerful. Whatever you do, leave the prospects thinking, “Wow, I love the way you think.” Do that and you’re sure to break through a lot more often.

Scott Ingram: As always you’ll find links to all things Stu Heinecke at DailySales.Tips/389 and if you’ve got a story to share on how you broke through to the C-Suite. Email Stu and I. The first ten people who do will get a signed copy of his latest book: Get the Meeting! You’ll find Stu’s email address and a link to his website where you can get a free preview of the book at DailySales.Tips/389

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

“Don’t blow all your talking points in that first email, so that you have something else to say when you follow up. And make sure to spread it out through the cadence and you won’t run out of things to talk about.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 388

Thank you Jason for all of your great tips and good luck with your new show!

Join the conversation below and be sure to connect with Jason!

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. This is going to be the last time that we get to hear a great prospecting tip from Jason Bay at Blissful Prospecting for a while because he’s getting ready to launch his own podcast. Here he is with his final tip, for now:

Jason Bay: Cadences or sequences as they’re called with Outreach.io’s platform is essentially a series of touches that you can use to get ahold of a prospect. So there’s outbound sequences and cadences and or inbound sequences and cadences. I’m going to talk to you about outbound and the reason why this is a really relevant thing is that typically when we work with companies, I tell them that you need to reach out to the prospect 10 to 15 times over the period of 30 to 45 days and usually get a lot of concerns. And number one concern is… “Hey, I’ll run out of things to say.” Number two is… “Well, aren’t we going to be bugging the prospect.” And number three is… “Yeah, I don’t want to be a spammer.” And these are all legitimate concerns. But the reality is that most salespeople might call once or twice send one or two emails and then they give up. And I have a theory on why this happens and I want to share why it’s really important to not quit after three or four times, even if you’re doing an outbound sequence where the person did not sign up to hear from you.

The first theory I have is fear of persistence in the best way that I could describe this is through ad campaigns. And if you think about really popular companies like Nike and whatnot, a lot of the studies that they’ve done with ad campaigns is that we need to see an ad 7 to 10 plus times. That rule of seven is a really good one to use, but we need to see it 7 to 10 plus times before acting. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a well-known brand like Nike or a brand that you’ve never heard of. So the takeaway there is that most of us don’t have the brand recognition of a company like Nike. I’m assuming if you’re listening to this, so it’s not normal for a prospect to respond to your first few touches. So if you think of your outbound sequence, like a highly targeted personalized ad campaign, you’ll approach it a lot different. So now it becomes how can I create enough intrigue for this person to respond to this email order answer the phone. So just keep in mind that if someone doesn’t respond, they don’t respond to Ad campaigns from really well-known companies either, so you gotta be persistent.

The second theory I have, and this is a lot of what people have shared with me is… “Hey, I have nothing left to say. What do I say if I’ve got to reach out to the person 10 or 15 times?” So the action item here that you can focus on is not blowing all of your talking points in bullet point form in your first email. The big mistake I see sales teams make is that first email has three to five points in it and it’s all their value props, all the challenges they fix. It’s this huge, long-winded email and it leaves them with nothing else to say when they follow up.

So what you can do is come up with two to three strong value props or talking points that address what your prospect wants to accomplish and then challenges that might get in the way of them doing that. And you’re going to spread it out throughout the sequence. So sequences and cadence, there’s no magic formula, but a way that you can approach this is if I have three talking points. So talking point A is something around saving time and you want it to obviously be more specific than that, but I’m just saying something very generic. We can talk about saving money and then for us we might use the third one might be increasing response rates, let’s say by doing something with your cold emails.

So that first talking point, that first email is only going to talk about the value props associated with saving money and then any challenges associated with that. And then you’re going to call the person and your value prop that you’re going to lead within the challenge that you’re gonna talk about is around saving money and how you help people do that.

The second email, let’s say the person doesn’t pick up or respond to the first couple outreaches, that third touch, so you’ve already done a phone touch and an email touch. That third touch is going to be an email with a really short followup and I might say any thoughts or it might say… “Hey, I forgot to mention we have a case study with a company that’s very similar to yours and I wanted to share it for this reason.” So that’s three touches right there. And then you can add a four’s touch connecting with someone on LinkedIn and just sending a connection request.

So there’s four touches with two emails, one phone call and then in LinkedIn a message all centered around that first talking point. So that’s four touches for one talking point, multiply that by 3 and you have 12 touches with three talking points. So don’t blow all your talking points in that first email, so that you have something else to say when you follow up. And make sure to spread it out through the cadence and you won’t run out of things to talk about.

Scott Ingram: What’s ironic is that the title of this tip is I Run out of Things to Say. That’s really not Jason’s problem at all, and not why he’s moving on from his regular spot on the show. Instead, he’s really got more to say and we’ve talked about the podcast that he’s planning to launch in March and you’re definitely going to want to listen. So do yourself this favor and click over to DailySales.Tips/388. First, connect with Jason on LinkedIn, and then follow the link to Blissful Prospecting and join his mailing list so you’ll get to hear about his podcast launch, and in the meantime, I’ve created a Spotify playlist of all 32 tips that Jason has contributed. The short link to that is DailySales.Tips/JasonBay

Thank you Jason for all of your great tips and good luck with your new show.

Now don’t forget to come back tomorrow, for another great sales tip!

“Before anybody makes the decision of staying or going that they do their own diagnostic on themselves of taking account of when you’ve been the happiest, what that looks like.” – Amy Volas in today’s Tip 387

What do you need to think about before making a move?

Join the conversation below and follow Amy 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 I’ve asked Amy Volas to help those who are considering making a change. Amy’s first business love was Enterprise Sales, her second is startups and she took 20 years of experience to start Avenue Talent Partners where she works with startups to help them build and scale their enterprise sales tips. She’s one of the best minds in the sales recruiting space and here’s how she answers my question:

Amy Volas: So the question is, should I stay? Should I go? And what do I really need to think about before I make a move? And so I’m a big fan of leveraging perspective, right? So unless you, this is your very first job ever, it’s hard to have that perspective, but the world that I live intends to be more on the experience side and I challenge people to do the hard work on themselves of being thoughtful of, think about all the things that you’ve done or the different kinds of roles that you’ve had or the different companies that you’ve been a part of or the different leaders that you’ve worked for. And when you think about how you described that, I recommend that people take a little notebook with themselves. So I’m old school with paper and pen, but there are others that have apps for these things. When you’re talking to a colleague, your old boss, your mentor, your current boss, your husband, your wife, your friend, your partner, whoever it might be, your colleague, when you talk about what makes you happy and what challenges you and what don’t you like, all of that carries a weight. And so I suggest before anybody makes the decision of staying or going that they do their own diagnostic on themselves of taking account of when you’ve been the happiest, what that looks like. All of those things that I just rattled off and comparing and contrasting because the grass isn’t always greener on the other side and we live in this world where people make really quick decisions because the economy is so good and they make a quick move and then they regret it. And so before you confirm or deny whether it’s the time to leave or it’s not the time to leave, I think you need to understand the current situation. Is it situational? Can it be fixed? Is it just a bad day? Is it just a bad month for those of us in sales? We have bad quarters. Sometimes people have bad months, bad days, and so it can be difficult to see the forest through those trees. I think being respectful and true and honest with ourselves of knowing all of that and putting it through your own internal scorecard and being able to see, well, wait, I’m just having a bad month or we’re in the transition period in there. A lot of things that I don’t know, but it’s not worth it for me to leave yet. Or you know what, “We’ve been through all these changes and I have a new manager and they’re a beast and they make my life miserable and it’s been six months and I haven’t made the money that you know, I’ve been told that I would make and my customers are unhappy and there is no way that I can fix this. I’ve tried and nothing’s working”. Well then that might be time to go, but I think you owe it to yourself to go through that first.

Scott Ingram: If you’re not already, you need to go follow Amy Volas on LinkedIn right now. We’ll have a link to her profile and more at DailySales.Tips/387

Then make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Instead of having a one-way discovery conversation where you’re trying to get everything that you need and then doing a demo where you’re providing a one-way pitch, try to combine the two and have a conversation.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 386

How is your demo?

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

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. In yesterday’s tip from Pranav Hundoo, Pranav called me out for not having featured any tips related to demos on the podcast. He was right AND he did something about it by sharing his own tip, which was fantastic.

I thought I’d continue on the theme and turn this into a bit of a demo weekend and share one of my personal philosophies around demos and a strategy that used to work really well for me.

Now to be fair I haven’t really done demos the last few years as I’ve been working in the professional services space, but before that when working with Eloqua and then in the event technology space, as much as possible I did my own demos.

I always wanted to show my prospects that the solution was easy and intuitive enough for the sales guy to use because I always worried that bringing in some technical expert to run the demo just implied that it was difficult or complicated.

It also put me in a position to control everything. I didn’t have to stress so much about having a perfect mind melt with my sales engineer who may or may not take people down a path that I thought would be most relevant.

What I really want to talk about though is a process I developed called the demoscovery. This was driven by the idea that so often your potential new client just wants to see a demo. They want to get a sense of the solution, see what it’s actually about and make a determination for themselves around whether or not it might help them solve a particular problem or business issue.

Instead of doing that demo for them, we, of course, want to do a bunch of discovery. We want to try to understand their needs, their pain points, how much that gap in their business might be costing them an all of that. So instead of doing what the customer wants, we try to force them into a discovery process that for them is a time commitment that they often can’t even tell is worth it or not, because we haven’t showed them anything.

It creates friction and really goes against what the customer wants.

So I put the two together. I built a demo that was all about give and take and allowed me to run a really good discovery process while also demonstrating the solution. Now I totally get that this might not even be possible for some solutions, but where I did it most effectively was in that event technology space.

One of the primary things that my future clients wanted to see was a walkthrough of the event registration process. Both the front end and the back end. Fortunately for me, the software was easy to use and super customizable, so I built a demo event whereas we walked through that registration example I had embedded all of the things I wanted to know.

Some elements I would have pre-filled based on the research and prep I had done for the call. So at it’s most basic, I might have their name, email address, company and title pre-filled. This let me show off some of the marketing capabilities and demonstrate how we could set things up to show things that we already knew about their attendees once they clicked a registration link in an email.

From there I could talk to them all about the events they ran. How many, what type, how complex were they, how many people attended, all those kinds of things. While they’re telling me this I’m actually capturing the details inside the demo.

Then I could start asking about different functionality they might need. Would they need to manage hotel registrations, were they going to want a mobile app, all of those types of details.

This is what then drove the rest of my demo. I wouldn’t show them anything that wasn’t relevant. If they don’t need to worry about hotel registrations, then why on earth would I show that to them? If they told me a particular capability was really important I could go in more depth and also learn from them exactly why that specific capability was so important.

When I was done, and after using the option to register multiple attendees simultaneously if there were multiple people on the call. I would show them the confirmation email capabilities… Here I was able to send them that email confirmation with all of the details that I had captured through the process. It was the ultimate leave behind follow-up and it just happened in real-time. And of course, that confirmation email came from my email address and included my contact details.

Then as we transitioned into the back-end I was able to show them their own data, how it was used and what else we could do with it based on additional discussion around how they were hoping to make use of all of this information to drive sales, deliver better experiences or whatever else was important.

Now I wanted to give the specifics of this example to make it more real and show that this isn’t just some theory. Sure I had about the perfect product to run this Demoscovery process inside of, but I’ve been able to do versions of this with other solutions.

The point is this. Try to find ways that you can do your demo earlier. Turn it into a conversation. Instead of having a one-way discovery conversation where you’re trying to get everything that you need and then doing a demo where you’re providing a one-way pitch. Try to combine the two and have a conversation.

It’s a way better experience for everyone. It worked well for me, see if it works for you.

Thanks for listening and hey, if you want to share this. You can send your friends and colleagues to DailySales.Tips/386. Then, come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“Adopt it rather than blindly adopted and you’ll find more success with implementing it.” – Pranav Hundoo in today’s Tip 385

How about you? What’s your way to run effective demos?

Join the conversation below and connect with Pranav to send you his editable template of this tip.

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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 another long time listener and fan of the show, I love these! This is Pranav Hundoo. He is the Director of Growth for HR Tech Startup Hyphen in APAC. Here he is:

Pranav Hundoo: While I have been on an ear long last amazing journey here at the Daily Sales Tips podcast. I noticed there were not enough conversations around customer demos. You have learned tons about prospecting and are doing great discovery calls and managing your pipeline well, but let’s not ignore our best chances of hitting a hole in one. They’re most of our biggest opportunities for teeing yourself up for a great sales cycle, especially if you’re able to do a great job linking them to your learnings from the discovery stage. You can convince your prospects that you’ve understood their problems cruelly, their pains exactly. You can show them how exactly your product or services can solve them. You can also set yourself up for longterm success by using this opportunity to show them that you are a thought leader, an expert in this space. And once you’ve got their back, you will help them move past the current challenges they are facing and into a future where they’re being recognized as the leaders or howsoever your product or services can add that transformative value to their businesses.

I’m a big fan of templates. Creating a small set of guidelines that can be reused or repurposed to the situation such as a demo in this case. So what I’m going to do for you is share a template that has been giving me a lot of success over the years and of course a big shout out to Scott Barker at Sales Hacker for some of the content he has been sharing about cracking the demo code.

This template is a three-step, three-point easy to use and totally adaptable template to any product or service you’re selling.

Step 1: Setting three agenda items:

a. Recapping what has been spoken earlier.
b. Demoing how your product or service will achieve the transformed business date that your prospect wants.
c. The next steps. Always define your ideal takeaway even before you start showcasing anything.

Now you’ve got positive psychology working for your prospect and for you as well.

Step 2:  3 Whys, we’ll get you to your real answer. Remember, it might have been your SDR who had that earlier discovery conversation and it might have been with another person or together and the prospect to whom you are Demoing right now. So just double check if there’s any gap in your understanding. Probe deeper to ensure what you’re showcasing is 100% aligned to what they need. 3 Why’s or 3 What’s or 3 How’s, usually, do the trick. Do not hesitate to ask questions even if this is not a discovery call. The more you are uncovering the better you can adapt your demo script or your flow.

Step 3: Use at least three cases or customer success stories. It would be a name drop, a use case similarity, and industry similarity or an employee size from a similarity for that matter. They can be best used as One in the initial part where you are recapping their problem, a named drop of one of your best customers for whom you saw a similar problem. The second one can be somewhere down the middle, either as a tool to answer an objection or it’ll highlight how your USB can take them to that transform business date. And close out your demo with your most valuable story, possibly with a done of the tangible value you added to a customer’s business. If it helped your customer personally, make sure to mention that.

I’ll cross you not to make it too salesy. This can be a slippery slope somewhere way. So 3 steps, 3 things to do in each day. Having said that, you want to add a step, modify this template in any way. Hey, go ahead. It’s your process and your demo at the end of the day. Adopt it rather than blindly adopted and you’ll find more success with implementing it. Best of luck and happy demoing Daily Sales Tips listeners.

Scott Ingram: If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/385 you’ll find a transcript of this tip, as well as a link to Pranav’s LinkedIn profile. Connect with Pranav and let him know you heard him on the show and he’ll send you an editable template of this tip.

Then come back tomorrow for another sales tip where I’ll talk about one of my own most effective demo strategies. I’ll talk to you then.

“He’s a Shy Sales guy, may not look you in the eye, but he’ll still get you to buy” – Tyler Menke in today’s Tip 384

Was that cool or what?

Watch the video on LinkedIn and let Tyler know what you think!

The Pirate’s Guide to Sales: A Seller’s Guide for Getting from Why to Buy Paperback
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today, after 383 other tips. I’ve got a first for you. I have a sales song. Yes, you heard me right, we have the world premiere of an original sales song. In talking with the artist Tyler Menke after recording our last sales tip, he mentioned enjoying writing and playing a little music. I challenged him to write a sales song and he kinda laughed it off. About a week later I opened my inbox and lo and behold he did it! He had written, recorded, and sent this gem over for me to share with you. So, today I have for you, the world premiere of “Shy Sales Guy” by Tyler Menke, oh wait. One more thing before we do this. I try to keep this show clean so that if you’re listening in the car with kids you’re good. This one probably isn’t kid-appropriate AND if you’re like me and you listen to your podcasts sped up. Do yourself a favor and quickly drop this back to regular speed. Here it is. Ladies and Gentlemen. “Shy Sales Guy” by Tyler Menke:

Tyler Menke:

“Shy Sales Guy”

He didn’t have a way with words
In fact, I can’t recall a thing I heard
Though it didn’t matter what he said
This guy listened to me instead

Boy if I only knew introverts sold too
I’d a dropped my vendor n bought my shit from you

Chorus:

He’s a Shy Sales guy
May not look you in the eye
But he’ll still get you to buy
He’s a shy Sales guy
Catch him staring at his shoes
But at least there ain’t no smooze
He’s a shy Sales guy
I don’t even know his name
But he puts the current guy to shame

Yesterday I got a call from Jake
Talked an hour bout the supplements he take
It’s like he doesn’t have a clue
I got more important shit to do

So I hung up the phone and gave shy guy a ring.
Talked for a bit. He said not a thing.
Told him about the value to bring.
Hung up the phone and began to sing

Chorus Repeat

Verse:

It was just at that time, that I finally knew
What exactly it was that I had to do
Picked up the phone. called Jake back up.
Sat quiet a while, till he shut up

I said with a smile. He sat in denial
Been loyal now to you and your company awhile.
But now it’s time for me to switch.
Now I’ll never have to hear your silly ass pitch

Chorus Repeat

Scott Ingram: Was that cool or what? What’s even cooler is that you can find the lyrics for the song and a link to the video version that Tyler is going to post on LinkedIn a few hours after this goes live this morning. Just click over to DailySales.Tip/384 for all of that. Oh, and one more reason to go check that out. There’s also a link to Tyler’s book: “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales: A Seller’s Guide for Getting from Why to Buy Paperback.” Clearly Tyler is multi-talented because he does all of this while selling like the rest of us in the medical device space.

I hope you enjoyed this and I want to do more of this. Let’s try to have a little more fun on Fridays. If you’ve got a talent like this and you want to write a song for the sales community or you want to do a short comedy bit, or whatever else works well in audio. Let’s do it! There are lots of ways to connect with me to talk about it at DailySales.Tips

That’s it for today. Something tells me you’re going to go right back and listen to this one again, and maybe one more time after that.

Once you’ve done that and told a couple of friends. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“If you’re not paying any attention to your voicemail, how can you possibly expect your prospects or your customers to pay any attention to theirs.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 383

How can you differentiate yourself?

Join the conversation below and get a great email from Jeff Bajorek!

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jeff Bajorek is back with another simple way that you can differentiate yourself. Here he is:

Jeff Bajorek: You’ve heard me talk before about your outgoing voicemail message and using it as an opportunity to make someone’s day. They’re not expecting it, which makes it all the more powerful. And let’s be honest, if you’re not paying any attention to your voicemail, how can you possibly expect your prospects or your customers to pay any attention to theirs.

Today I want to talk to you about something a little bit different, but kind of along the same lines. What about your out of office email response? I’ve got a friend, let’s call him Adam, who works for GE. Because, well, that’s his name and that’s where he works. He’s on my mailing list and every once in a while I’ll send him an email on a Sunday and I’ll get an auto-response that he’s out of the office, but he does something really creative with I’ve really never seen before and I love it and I wanted to share it with you.

Here’s one from last fall; I’m out of my New York State Sales Territory this week, attending hands-on training and he goes through this thing about, you know, here’s who you can reach in my absence. And then at the bottom; Here’s an article about why continuous learning is important. It’s really cool. Just a little link. Here’s one from right around the turn of the year. Here is the same thing; Happy New Year I’ll be returning to work next week. Here is an article, quotes to inspire you to try new things in the New Year. This is such a simple thing to be able to do, but it’s an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself. No one else is doing this. Literally, I get hundreds of out of office responses every week when I send my emails and this is the only one I’ve ever seen that does it.

So I gave Adam an opportunity to provide this sales tip. He didn’t want to. So I took the liberty of promoting his good work because I really think it’s special and I think it’s an opportunity for you to stand out. When you can make someone’s day, especially when they’re not expecting it. It goes that much further and isn’t that what we’re trying to do. Because if you can’t differentiate, you can’t sell. Here’s a way that you can really differentiate.

Scott Ingram: To get that great email from Jeff every Sunday like I do. Click over to DailySales.Tips/383 and we’ll have a link to his website where you can do it, in addition to the video version of this tip, the transcript and a bit more.

Once you’ve done all of that. Come on back tomorrow for something really special. It’s going to be World Premier day here on Daily Sales Tips. You’re not going to want to miss this. I’ll talk to you then!

“Those objections just need to be heard and empathized with something I had to learn and overcome.” – Seth Copple in today’s Tip 382

How about you? How’s your prospecting?

Join the conversation below and Make your own contribution to the Sales Success Community!

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’ve got something really special for you. Seth does a good job of encapsulating the story in his tip, but Seth Copple reached out to me a full week before the end of January and thanked me for the podcast and attributed it to a massive turn-around in his results that had him at 120% of his quota for the full quarter after less than one month. Here’s Seth Copple with his story and some tips for you:

Seth Copple: I’ve only been in B2B sales as a BDR for less than one year. Two and a half quarters, when your peers say there’ll be peaks and valleys, they mean it. I mean, my first quarter was average I got 90% of quota. My second quarter was a wash. I achieved only 10% of quota like I was at the point of almost looking for other jobs. It was that bad, but I talked with my training manager and I listened to the Daily Sales Tips podcast every day for 30 minutes at least and started making changes. At safety skills, my prospects consist of safety professionals who, if you know anything about them, they’re the busiest, most no-nonsense prospects out there. Just absolutely don’t have time to talk on the phone or respond to an email longer than a sentence.

In order to better reach these busy, no-nonsense people, I had to change. The first change I made was I changed the way I handled their time on the phone. If they actually answered the phone, I just had to be real and set expectations that it takes 20 minutes to see our safety management system or training content, whichever better fit their needs.

The second thing I changed was making sure that I wasn’t going into conversations with the attitude that our product is a perfect fit for everybody. There’s no universal solution, otherwise, there wouldn’t be competitors, there wouldn’t be a diverse marketplace. So not every objection needs to be confronted immediately. That’s something I kind of learned the hard way because I’d start spinning stuff back to prospects and they would just hit a hard stop and hang up or say, “No, I’m not interested. Stop calling me.” Some of those objections just need to be heard and empathized with something I had to learn and overcome.

And the third change that I made was with prospecting and qualifying. It’s like dating. It to know when to speed things up or slow them down. Some of my prospects love the idea of what we do and think that we do have the perfect solution for them and want to jump right into that screen share demo. Those are my low hanging fruit. It’s super easy to talk to them. They’re energetic and it’s exciting to get them on the phone and into our solution and really help them in their business. However, I’m sure most of you know that’s not always the case. Most people that you cold call, cold email, they want to be academic because they have to appeal to their boss and there’s levels. There’s an organizational hierarchy that you have to overcome in order to be on their radar and get their attention and potentially pitch for their business. And part of that difficulty is them having to present the best option to their boss, to their company because they don’t want to look bad.

Organizational clarity is essential when prospecting B2B, especially if safety people. It’s about being there for them when they need you. Most not barraging them with crafty messaging to try and force them into the buying cycle. In our space, there are a ton of 3-year contracts that we have to compete with. So it’s not always easy to get somebody to say “Yes” to even just taking a look at what we do. Most of the time they’re not willing to talk until Q3 of the 3rd year of that contract being up.

So the three main takeaways from this that I’ve learned, some of them the hard way, and some of them from my training manager and your podcast view their time as the product you have to make the most of their time. Number two, be empathetic. Don’t overcome every objection if it doesn’t seem right. Number three, Prospecting. Qualifying a prospect is like dating. You’ve got to know when to speed things up, take it slow and I know when to keep it long-distance and when to go out.

Since I’ve implemented these three things into my processes and you know the way I do things. My boss and I have worked together on our specific application for safety professionals. I’ve been able to achieve 120% of my quota for the quarter in just one month and that has been my success story so far as a BDR in B2B sales.

Thanks for letting me share, Scott. If you’re new to being a BDR or just getting your feet wet in sales. I hope this helps.

Scott Ingram: Massive kudos to Seth, not just for the results and the hard work he did on himself, but also for taking me up on my challenge and sharing his story and these tips here on the podcast. If this is you. If you’ve found something that’s really working for you. Share it! Don’t keep it a secret. Make your own contribution to the Sales Success Community. You’ll find a link with instructions on how to submit your own tip as well as a transcript of Seth’s tip and links to connect with him at DailySales.Tips/382

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

“Engaging with people that are posting content that’s related to how you can help them and then posting content yourself and using that as a way to start conversations with people” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 381

How do you build your own thought leadership? 

Join the conversation below and make sure you’re on to Jason’s mailing list.

Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay 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 Jason Bay of Blissful Prospecting and it is solid stuff as always. Here he is:

Jason Bay: One thing that has changed quite a bit since outbound as we know it today in its current form at least became a thing. And it’s something I’ve been talking a lot about lately and it’s outbound 3.0. What’s changed is, I mean there’s been the advent of social media and LinkedIn’s become a really hot thing or kind of moving into this area of thought leadership. So I kind of want to walk you through what this means and what you need to start doing if you’re not doing this in your outreach right now.

So outbound 1.0 was very much a push type of marketing or prospecting activity. So this is in the 90s and the 2000s and this is where mass email blasts work really well. If you’re familiar with predictable revenue and the referral cold email is sending up a one-liner email, asking who the right person is to chat with about their company. That email used to work really well and you didn’t have to use a multichannel approach either you could just use cold email and it worked really well.

And then outbound 2.0 came around, and this is the late 2000’s two probably around 2016 to 17. This is before LinkedIn really started blowing up as a place to publish content. And this is where we started to notice that prospects and people in general, were getting really desensitized to mass email blast and they stop working. And what people had to start doing was multi-channel. So hey, instead of just sending an email campaign, you’ve got to mix that together with a phone and social and maybe you throw a direct mail end. But the bottom line is that it’s multichannel and those things work together instead of independent marketing or prospecting channels. And then pre-call research became a really big thing too. And sales navigator came out and it made least research less labor-intensive and the personalization, it was good enough if you just pointed out something about the person to show that you were human.

And that brings us to outbound 3.0 and this started happening around 2017 and we’re in full swing right now and it’s really where I see the next 5 to 10 years of prospecting going is that contact rates have decreased significantly because everyone is using sales engagement tools now. So it’s really easy to use a tool like Mailshake pay 25 bucks a month and you can start just murdering people with emails. So multichannel prospecting is definitely here to stay. That’s what we’ve learned in the last couple of years. And now we’re adding video to the mix. But the new thing right now that I alluded to earlier is thought leadership. So the strategy now is more of a push and a pull strategy where the sales reps that are really killing it on the appointment setting side are using a pull strategy. So places like LinkedIn getting featured on podcasts and they’re getting in front of their customers or potential customers. And they’re looking for people that are interacting with their staff or getting online and looking where they can start conversations prior to reaching out with their outbound cadence. And what that looks like right now and what you can start taking advantage of is a couple of different things.

So one, if you’re not posting any content on LinkedIn, what you could start looking for is, I would make it on your action list, spend 30 minutes a day connecting with 10 people that you want to prospect to and just start liking and commenting their content. And sooner or later what you’re going to find is they start popping up in your newsfeed and then you can have a reason for reaching out to them based on what they comment on, what they’re posting about, et cetera. If your prospects are really not on LinkedIn, much, another thing that you could do to are in terms of posting content. Another thing that you could do as you’re building up your followers is you can start engaging with people that visit your profile, but for whatever reason don’t connect with you or message you. So there’s a way that you can do that by going to your homepage on LinkedIn and just looking at people that have lifted at your profile, see if they fit into your ideal client profile and you could start prospecting to them. And then lastly, what you can do is start putting up a post or two each week and as you’re building up your followers, this is the way that I normally prospect and you can look at people that are liking and commenting on your posts and if they fit your ideal client profile, that’s a pretty warm lead that’s showing a lot of intent in engaging with your content that’s relative to, I’m assuming you’re posting about stuff that you can help with or challenges that your prospects have and that becomes the reason you can reach out to them.

So outbound 3.0 is all about thought leadership. And my action for you think more about how you can create more thought leadership and really simple ways by liking stuff, engaging with people that are posting content that’s related to how you can help them and then posting content yourself and using that as a way to start conversations with people.

Scott Ingram: Let’s talk about thought leadership for just one more minute. First, though, this is going to be Jason’s second to last weekly tip here on Daily Sales Tips. Because he’s getting ready to launch his own podcast, so make sure you’re on his mailing list so you can get the announcement about that as soon as it happens. You’ll find that link at DailySales.Tips/381 that also means I’m going to be in need of more really amazing prospecting tips and that’s your opportunity to build your own thought leadership.

This show is currently the number one sales podcast on Spotify in the US and the other thing that we’ve started doing more consistently is producing transcribed video versions of these tips. So if you contribute your own sales tip, we’ll send you that video file, which you can then share on LinkedIn to grow your own visibility and thought leadership.

The details on submitting a tip are at DailySales.Tips/Submit. Simple as that. Now be sure to come back tomorrow for another amazing sales tip from one of your fellow listeners.