“Confused people don’t buy things. People that are confident, people that understand what the situation is and people that have got a roadmap of exactly what’s going on are quite happy to get their credit card out.” – Adam Hempenstall in today’s Tip 309

How do you close deals faster?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Adam!

Better Proposals Website
Proposal University
2019 Proposal Report
Proposal Templates
Better Proposals Facebook page

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 Adam Hempenstall. Adam is the CEO & Founder of Better Proposals, where they offer proposal software and also offer Proposal Writing University. Here’s Adam with another proposal related tip:

Adam Hempenstall: One of the easiest ways to make sure that you find it very difficult to close deals and get your proposals agreed is by making it difficult for them to do that. So making it difficult would be not providing clear instructions on what the next steps are. It would be making sure that they have to jump through loads of hoops to sign or approve the proposal and it would be making it difficult for them to even do that by not providing any instructions at all or any method of doing that. I’ve looked at thousands of proposals in my time running a proposal software company and what I’ve seen is that the best proposals are the ones where they lead the client through a journey. So they’re starting out with the introduction. They’re giving them a clear idea of what it is their problems are and how they can solve them. Then walk them through the mechanics of what it is they’re going to do. Then they’re taking it through a little bit of social proof and then they’re going through the pricing and they’re going through the legal, any guarantees, and then they’re asking them to buy and they’re saying, “These are the next steps. If you want to go ahead, this is what you need to do.” And then they’re giving them a really, really easy way of approving that proposal. So instead of asking them to print something out, scribble on it, take a picture of it, email it back in some other convoluted method of approving something. They’re using digital signatures. Now, these things have been around for a long, long time. You know, we’ve all ticked a box and said, I agree to terms and conditions. It’s not new stuff and everybody can figure it out. But if you’re not using this to age your sales process becoming quicker, easier, more efficient for the poor person who’s reading this stuff, then you are going to be making your own life difficult. The last thing is money and payments. So once a deal has been signed, generally, the first thing you want to be doing is getting paid or getting a deposit on file so that you can start the process of actually doing the work for that client. And the easiest way to do this is by making sure that the very next thing that they do after signing the proposal is paying a deposit of some description. So I would encourage you to look at different proposal software that can do this a better proposal is one, but there’s plenty out there that do this stuff. Make sure that you’re making it easy for people. At the end of the day. Confused people don’t buy things. People that are confident, people that understand what the situation is and people that have got a roadmap of exactly what’s going on are quite happy to get their credit card out. You know, pen and paper, signed things, and then pay. So bear that in mind when you’re writing your proposals. Try to keep things nice and simple, made sure that you’re asking for the business, and then explain very clearly in simple instructions what to do next. Hope that helps.

Scott Ingram: You can learn more about Adam’s Better Proposals solutions and sign up for free at betterproposals.io

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

“You got to know which ones are important and stay on those until you close one.” – David Walter in today’s Tip 308

How do you close the process?

Join the conversation below and learn more about David!

Stratospheric Lead Generation Secrets
The Million Dollar Rebuttal and Stratospheric Lead Generation Secrets: Cold Calling is NOT a Numbers Game!
Million Dollar Rebuttal
David Walter 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 David Walter. According to David, he set a record of 15 appointments a day every day for
6 months straight while working in the call center of a PEO firm. He’s also the author of the Million Dollar Rebuttal. Here he is with today’s tip:

David Walter: Today I’m going to talk about closing. Now, of all the steps in the sales process, closing has achieved mythical status. In fact, probably right now there’s a bunch of salespeople gather around the water cooler and they’re swapping their big fish closing stories. Like I said, this when I closed it, magical close. Oh, I said this when I closed it, and so closing is a legendary thing, you know? In fact, I remember clearly years ago when I wrote the Million-Dollar Rebuttal, I worked in the call center and I saw a salesman going by and he had a just amazing suit on, a compliment on the suits that “Man, that’s a great suit.” And then he confided in me, this is my lucky closing suit, and I thought about that. I thought about “Wow, look, you closing suit.” How interesting. And so the problem is that most salespeople, they believe that nothing really happens in the buyer’s mind all the way through the process and that everything hangs the entire decision hangs on the clothes, the magic clothes.

If course, this outdated notion couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that every step you take, every word out of your mouth, it’s all part of the closing process. In fact, this idea could best be expressed. And the common mantra that we hear always be closing A, B, C, always be closing. Now the best way I can try to illustrate this concept of always be closing is to compare it to buttoning up a shirt. Don’t you start at the bottom, you button your button up all the way up, and then you button all the way to the top. You know your button, your shirt up. Of course, if you button up your shirt when you button the last button, you don’t celebrate. Say, “Oh, it all hinged on this last button. This was the only thing I needed was this last button.” That’d be completely ridiculous, right? Every button along the way is just as important as the next. So basically when you think about like this closing, the last step is simply the next step in the process and they are all connected together. Just like buttoning up your shirt. Now the best way to apply this concept, if you, any kind of sales professional usually have a slide deck. So what you need to do is you need to look at the slide deck. Each slide individually needs to be closed. You don’t want to move on to the next one, the next one until you close the idea. You know, basically most salespeople just simply go through and do the information and move on to the next one, next one, next one. Because they’re waiting and in their mind, everything hinges on that last slide or there, whatever their clothes is. That’s what they focus everything on is that clothes, right? But what we’re talking about is everything’s connected. Each one is connected together. So each slide has to be closed. Now, I’m not saying that you have to get an absolute yes from each person. Each slide, you’ve got to pick your battles. You got to know you know which ones are important and stay on those until you close one. But sometimes you can move. They may not agree with every slide and you can move onto the next one. Otherwise, you’re going to beat him over the head. You must answer, you must answer yes before we move on to the next one. You don’t want to be that rigid, right? That’s not what I’m talking about throughout the entire presentation. There’s some core principles that some of the slides that you must get an agreement with before moving on, and so what I’m talking about is that I’m advocating explaining your principle. Then you have an illustration like I used here with the button, right? Buttoning up illustration. You may have some examples. Then you want to ask questions and of course, you’ve got to have that pivotal question that you get them on record agreeing to the principle. You know, if this happened, then that would be great for you. Sorta like Zig Ziglar’s three-question close the way he put people on. You know, if you agree to this and that, then this, so you can use that. You want to focus on each slide and then move onto the next one. So ultimately, if you apply this principle and you can stop thinking that the close is magical and everything hinges on the close, it’s still important, but it’s not the most important. You think of the processes every step in the process. Everything you do is part of closing. Remember to always be closing,

Scott Ingram: You can learn more about David and the Million Dollar Rebuttal by clicking over to DailySales.Tips/308. David is also offering 5 copies of his book to Daily Sales Tips listeners. All you have to do is make sure you’re on the listener list which you can also join when you’re learning about David and watching the video version of his tip at DailySales.Tips/308 and then just send me an email to [email protected] If you’re one of the first 5 and haven’t claimed another book in the last 30 days you’ll win. If not, your consolation prize isn’t a set of steak knives, but an email from me.

Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Adam Hempenstall

“If you want to get deals closed by a certain time, look at the realistic timeline and look at the steps left in the sales process.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 307

What about you? Are you being desperate?

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

David Weiss on LinkedIn
Your Definitive Sales Career Guide

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. David Weiss from ADP is back today with some advice for sales leaders as we near the end of the month and the end of the quarter:

David Weiss: Happy Friday, Sales Success Community. This is David Weiss with a tip of the day. So this tip is for all those sales leaders out there. As we get into the holidays and as we get into the end of our months, I’m seeing a lot of people that may not be hitting their number or maybe off or may just want to drive in some extra revenue for the end of the year or the end of the month, end of the quarter, what have you. And what I’d ask you to do is just stop and don’t be desperate. I am seeing this in businesses were trying to wrap things up and I’m being asked or you know, people I know are being asked to offer deals or incentives or wave things or discounts and whatnot. And that can be a way to get clients to move forward. However, you need to look and understand what part of the sales process you’re in. If you start offering those things too early before you’ve agreed on even the business terms. You look desperate and you also look like you don’t understand the client’s buying process, which is gonna frustrate them or you actually anger them cause they’re like, I can’t even meet the deadline that you’re trying to meet so I can’t take advantage of this thing and you shouldn’t have even offered me it because now I want it now I can’t have it to you. Cause some frustration there. There are other things like say your business is closing at the end of the month and you’re a week away from its closing and you try and ask your salespeople to go offer this discount if they sign now. But you haven’t even presented a contract yet. Or maybe you’ve presented a contract but you haven’t gotten red lines back and you ask them that and they told you that their legal process is going to take a couple of weeks and there’s nothing they can do about it ’cause that’s just how long it takes. So then ask your salespeople and your salespeople will probably do their jobs and do what you ask them to do. But even if the client says that they want to do business with you now or says that they want to take advantage of that incentive, they can’t because your team hasn’t generated the contract yet or the contract can’t get through legal and all of a sudden you offered an incentive that has, that people want to take advantage of that has no potential of hitting the appropriate deadlines. And you frustrated your salespeople, you frustrated your clients, you set unrealistic expectations and you actually potentially just even gave away some of the businesses money. Cause you know what happens once you offer an incentive with a deadline to it, even deadline passes, people still want that incentive. But you didn’t get your angle, which was getting your opportunity close faster. So what I’d asked, you know, sales leaders to do is if you want to get deals closed by a certain time, look at the realistic timeline and look at the steps left in the sales process. And again, work backward to determine that. If you’re gonna offer an incentive, the client can actually take advantage of the incentive and the client can meet the milestones that need to be met in the timeline that you’re offering it in. And if they can’t, don’t offer it. Just be realistic. We’re all gonna have quota next month, we’re all gonna have quota next year. I know we’re all trying to do our best to hit numbers, but there’s no point in offering something that is unachievable and that sets the wrong expectations and just really can’t get done. It just hurts everyone. And you take something that was organic, that was working, that was going to close anyway, and you throw disruption in it and you throw unrealistic expectations in it and you cause frustration and you cause urgency where there shouldn’t be or where there can’t be because they can’t meet the timelines that you’re establishing. So just food for thought. I hope that makes sense to everyone. Happy to answer any questions around it. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and holiday season and look forward to coming to you with another tip in the future. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Scott Ingram: David’s tip makes so much sense. I’m going to pile on just a little bit and suggest that once you’ve done the work to identify which opportunities in your pipeline even have a shot at closing that you then go back and listen to Tip #191 from James Muir where he talks about what he calls “The Something Special” variation of the perfect close. It’s the perfect companion to this reminder from David.

That’s it for today. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“There are steps in a process and when you focus on a process, you get results. But when you focus on results, you get frustrated and that’s where so many salespeople go wrong.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 306

Do you have a discipline problem?

Join the conversation below and check the links to the previous tips in this series!

299: You Have a Messaging Problem
292: You Have a Preparation Problem
285: You Have a Pipeline Problem
208: You Don’t Have a Closing Problem
Jeff Bajorek 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 Jeff Bajorek is back with part 14 of the 16 part series that he kicked off back in tip #208 called “You Don’t Have a Closing Problem.” Here he is with today’s installment:

Jeff Bajorek: You don’t have a closing problem. You have a discipline problem. If you’ve been paying attention up until now, you realize that there’s a whole lot more that goes into making a sale than just a handful of the right words said to the right person at the right time. There are steps in a process and when you focus on a process, you get results. But when you focus on results, you get frustrated and that’s where so many salespeople go wrong. They don’t accept that there are things that need to be done on a regular basis to put themselves in a position to win in order to win more because you’re not going to win them all because you can’t control everything. So are you accepting responsibility for the outcome or are you just taking responsibility for your task list? Are you taking ownership of that outcome? Are you doing a little bit extra? Are you thinking differently about what needs to happen or are you just doing what you’re told? What do you do when a daily or even weekly basis to make sure that you are constantly putting yourself in a position to win? Are you doing anything on a daily basis? Are you doing anything with a routine that your customers and prospects can begin to count on? Look, it’s not all going to be fun, but all of it along the way somewhere is worth doing if not absolutely necessary. Are you willing to do what needs to be done to get the job done or are you just showing up every day punching a clock and hoping for the best?

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff and for links to the previous tips in this series just click over to DailySales.Tips/306 that’s also where you’ll find the video version of Jeff’s tip and links to help you connect with Jeff directly.

Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from David Weiss.

“If you’re not reaching out 15 to 20 times over the next 30 days, you’re not standing out to your prospect. People get busy. Life happens. So don’t give up on these leads. ” – Mark Evans in today’s Tip 305

Are you leaving meat on the bone?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Mark!

Raise Your Standards: The Definitive Guide to Building Seven-Figure Sales
Mark Evans Website
Mark Evans on LinkedIn
Mark Evans on Instagram

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 Mark Evans. Mark is the Founder of the Standard Sales Company and just yesterday published his new book: Raise Your Standards – The Definitive Guide to Building Seven-Figure Sales. Here he is:

Mark Evans: Are you leaving meat on the bone? Now if you have kids, maybe the story would resonate with you. I have two daughters, one who’s eight and one who’s five and there is times when we go out to eat as a family where the following happens. My youngest fills her plate up to the brim with what most consider a Thanksgiving day feast. She basically has a manhole cover that’s filled with food and here’s what happens next. She sits down, she takes a few bites, she gets distracted, she claims she’s fall. I ended up finishing everything on the plate and I have to take a nap. Now, this little situation played out a couple of times and it got me thinking about the old saying, I’m leaving meat on the bone. And when it comes to sales, there are many organizations, sales teams, and individuals that are doing just that, leaving meat on the bone.

So I want to talk to you about two areas that you can improve today. First, let’s start with prospects. If you’re not following a strong cadence when it comes to new leads, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity. A cadence is the how and the when you’re going to follow up with a lead. Now, if you’re not reaching out 15 to 20 times over the next 30 days, you’re not standing out to your prospect. People get busy. Life happens. So don’t give up on these leads. Most executives and people are getting over a hundred different emails in a single day, so you’ve got to find a way to grab them by the shirt collar and get their attention. You need to also be using multiple forms of communication when it comes to getting in touch with these leads. Just like love languages. Every prospect has a communication language. They may want to communicate and respond best to email, texts, social media, phone calls, direct mail, and it’s your job to figure out which one works for them. You also should be calling back on people that said no to you over the past two years for them, management changes and for you hopefully your product, your service, and your company change, so don’t write these leads off for the rest of eternity. Let’s move on to your current customers. This may be one of the most overlooked aspects of everyone’s business, so few companies are doing customer communication effectively and those that do are going to have more customers and be happier than they know what to do with. Now, those that don’t are going to get swallowed up by changing technology or the biggest behemoth of their competitor. Start at a minimum, a weekly or monthly communication strategy. People often buy products or services because they like the or person that sold them. Now you’re going to deprive them of that because you’re not going to follow up on a weekly or monthly basis. That’s pretty sad. What about anniversary cards on the day they signed up with you birthday cards or just a nice thank you card for their business? In this day of increasing technology where I’m fairly certain, my Amazon Alexa is listening to me sleeping and showing me an ad for something in my dreams, that personal touch will never be lost. Not take the information above and pick out that low hanging fruit feast on the meat that’s still left on the bone. There’s no shortage of opportunity right now. Will it always be like this? Honestly, I don’t know, but that’s why now is the time to capitalize on every opportunity and every lead. Maximize every lead. Get all the juicy can out of your current operation and get as efficient and effective as you can. So if there’s a correction or in the market or 2008 you’re ready. While your competition struggles hard, you put distance between them and you happy selling and thanks in advance

Scott Ingram: For more about Mark and his new book: Raise Your Standards, click over to DailySales.Tips/305 and Mark is being super generous and offering 5 copies of his book to listeners of the Daily Sales Tips podcast, as well as a grand prize that includes a 30 minute sales strategy call, Access to his Sales Quickstart package that he normally sells for almost $2,000 and access to his weekly accountability emails for a month. You have to be on the listener list to quality, and you can do that at DailySales.Tips and then just send me an email to [email protected] with “Raise Your Standards” as the subject. Thanks for listening, thanks for your emails. Even if you don’t win it gives me a chance to say hi, and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Jeff Bajorek

“So the goal here instead of objection handling is to do some things and to check these things that might be making the prospect subconsciously think that you’re just some sales person that’s trying to be really pushy.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 304

How do you handle “Not Interested”?

Join the conversation below and go check Jason’s LinkedIn post!

Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
Jason’s LinkedIn Post

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 Jason Bay from Blissful Prospecting is back with another prospecting tip, and this is just super solid stuff, check it out:

Jason Bay: Jason Bay: The dreaded, not interested if you make cold calls, you’ve definitely heard prospects say this before, and I got an email from one of our email subscribers who wanted to know, well, how do I handle “Not interested”? You know, when people say this and that and they’re rude about it. And my thinking here in our, my approach has always been not to address necessarily objections, which you do have to address them. Don’t get me wrong, but to learn from them and go back to, well, you know, what did I do that maybe made this person respond like this? How could I prevent this objection? And what am I doing in the call that is maybe making people just write me off? So I think about it from the prospect’s perspective, from a second. They don’t know you. They’re busy. And if you sound like every other salesperson, they’re going to want to hang up immediately. As soon as you hear someone say, “Hey, I’m Jason was blissful prospecting and I was calling because we have this special offer and we do this” like you’re immediately going to want to hang up. The tone is sounded extremely salesy. I’m seeing something that every salesperson says when they make a cold call and it’s not a pattern interruption. So the goal here instead of objection handling is to do some things and to check these things that might be making the prospect subconsciously think that you’re just some salesy person that’s trying to be really pushy.

So the first thing that you can do instead of handling the objection and preventing, not interested from coming up is to check your tonality. I just recorded another episode about this, but the big thing here with tonality is to stand up when you’re making calls and you need to really be upbeat, positive, and excited to talk with a prospect and you need to do this in a genuine way. The way that I have found that works best is or is around your mentality here. So if you approach the call with, I don’t need to sell to this person, my goal is not to sell something to them in this call because that comes later, right? Don’t sell during cold calls; sell during the sales process, right? When you’re actually doing sales calls in a demo caller or proposal call or whatever that you’re doing in your sales process, go in with the mentality of helping the prospect. So go in with how can I help this person? And you’re going to find that your tonality changes a lot when it’s, you know, “Hey, you know, Jason was blissful prospecting here, wanted to know how you guys handle outbound or do you guys typically do that with your SDRs? Do you have account executives that are joining? This was really curious how you guys approached that.” That tonality there is much different than, “Hey, I was calling because we help people with prospecting and I was wanting to know how you guys handle that and if we could maybe help you with it.” It’s a completely different tone and approach. So number one, check your tonality. Number two, use a simple opener. You really want to get the person talking as soon as possible. And there’s a ton of controversy on this. I think it’s hilarious, but I, in the show notes, there’s a LinkedIn post that I wrote on this topic and you’ll get to see there’s a ton of people that disagree with this approach, but I love gong.oi’s data. There’s a link to this article as well with how to open the call and what they find most effective. So the number one thing is you do not want to hide your name or your company, talk to the prospect as if you already have a relationship with them. That is different than pretending that you have a relationship with them. When I say talking to them as if you already know them, he means to talk to them casually like you would a friend or coworkers, not to pretend like you know them. So the way that opened up is really simple. “Hey Adam, Jason was blissful prospecting. How you been?” that question just try it. Do it a couple of dozen times, see how it goes. But the tonality of “Hey, have you been” talk to them like I said like they are someone that you already know and we have a lot of success with our clients using that line. And oftentimes people will respond, well,” Hey, I’ve been good. How have you been?” And you get right into it. So that’s number three, get straight to the point. So go straight to, Hey, the reason for my call is, or I’m calling because, or the purpose of this call is to go straight into it. People want to know that you’re going to get to the point right away if you’re still hearing, not interested. I really like Beck Hollins approach over a chorus.ai. So if someone says, “Hey, I’m not interested.” Be like, “Hey, you know what, I actually been hearing that a lot lately and I’m thinking it’s because I’m not doing a very good job of explaining the value of what we do. You know, if you give me 30 seconds, I’ll do my best to let you know how we can help you out. And then you can decide if you want to continue chatting. Does that sound fair?” And the reason why this works really well is you’re giving the prospect a choice. Instead of ramming your pitch down their throat, you’re giving them a choice of whether to hear you out and you’re being open with them. You’re showing a little bit of vulnerability actually in saying that, “Hey, this hasn’t been going really that well for me and I’ve been hearing this and I’m thinking it’s because I’m not doing a good job and you’re taking ownership over it.“ So I’m curious, how do you handle “not interested”? But let me know in that LinkedIn post in the comments and would love to hear from you

Scott Ingram: For the link to that LinkedIn post, just click over to DailySales.Tips/304 and it’d be great to get your perspective in there. I’ve already shared mine, so you can see that and feel free to tag me or mention the show in your comment so we can all continue the conversation together.

Then come back tomorrow for another great sales tip and another big giveaway of a book that was just published today. Thanks for listening!

“By asking these two questions, you are creating a warm and trusting environment built on respect and understanding. You show that you’re genuinely interested in helping your counterpart across the table to be successful.” – Mark Schenkius in today’s Tip 303

What are your objectives for your business this year? What can I do to support you in achieving these objectives?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Mark!

ROI 10
The Other Side of Sales
Mark Schenkius 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 Mark Schenkius out of the Netherlands and his tip is about perspective. Ironically it’s a perspective like Mark’s that I’ve long wanted to include in the show because Mark spent 15 years in procurement. He’s just published a book called: “The Other Side of Sales” which I’ll tell you more about once we hear from Mark. Here he is:

Mark Schenkius: Today I want to talk about Perspective. Any relationship between the buyer and a seller starts with perspective and to illustrate that, let me start with the following example. Imagine you’re sitting opposite a buyer at a negotiation table and in between the both of you is a coffee cup. From your perspective, the air might be on the right side. However, if you would ask the buyer, they would say the is on the left side. Now, this is fascinating because you’re looking at the exact same object that’s physically in front of you and you still both have a different perspective of the situation. Can you imagine what it looks like in a more complex negotiation? You could easily be miles apart and I’ve seen it happen so often, sellers making proposals that are servicing their own needs instead of the customer. I’ve literally had thousands of interactions with sellers and I can guarantee you that the ones who didn’t understand my position never won any business.

So what can you do as a seller? What’s the golden tip in these situations? Well, my advice would be to ask the following two questions to a buyer when you meet him. Question one, What are your objectives for your business this year? By asking this, you avoid the trap of a buyer saying, just give me a better price. Instead, you’re focusing on the bigger picture of your organization that the buyer part of. This way, you’re forcing them to take a step back from their personal objectives. Probably you’ll get one of the following answers. We want to grow our business this year by X percent or want to stay ahead of our competitors, or perhaps we want to become more profitable this year and they’re all very valid answers and probably our objectives will be similar within your own organization. The second question you could then raise would be, What can I do to support you in achieving these objectives? This question opens up a world of opportunities ranging from partnerships all the way down to price reductions and the great thing about his is that by asking these two questions, you are creating a warm and trusting environment built on respect and understanding. You show that you’re genuinely interested in helping your counterpart across the table to be successful. Now, which buyer doesn’t want that?

Scott Ingram: I think we can all agree that the better you understand your buyer and their perspectives, the better the outcomes. Mark is sharing all of these secrets from the time he spent as a professional buyer in his book: The Other Side of Sales and he’s offering 3 copies of the book to listeners of the Daily Sales Tips podcast! All you have to do is be one of the first 3 people to send me an email with the subject line: The Other Side of Sales and I’ll get you connected with Mark to get your copy. Just one caveat. I ask that you join the listener list if you haven’t already at DailySales.Tips/303 where you’ll also find more about Mark including links to his book.

Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great tip from Jason Bay!

“Conversations are key. Have more of them!” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 302

Do you ask for advice?

Join the conversation below and make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast!

Submit a Sales Tip

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

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. This week I’ve been on both sides of an activity that I think is super important, and that is asking for advice. Perhaps not everybody is wired this way, but my thinking and my ideas seems to get much better when I ask for advice. This is basically how I process. Talking a particular idea or challenge through with somebody helps me gain more clarity simply by trying to explain it to them. I’ll then let them know that I’m open to their feedback or suggestions. I might even ask a specific question. The resulting conversation almost always leads to an even better idea. The beauty is, you can do this with several people around the same topic. Each might ask you a different set of questions or have another thought or suggestion that you can then layer on top of the original idea and continue to iterate. You can do this with anyone really. I will frequently do this with my manager and my leadership. I’ll do this with my customers or with an internal champion. I’ll do it with my peers, and I’ve certainly done it with many in this community. They’ve also done it with me. As much as I can I try to return the favor and pay it forward by helping people work through their own questions, challenges, and opportunities. Nick sent me a note on LinkedIn with a giant potentially life-altering question. Those are the ones that it’s particularly important to seek out a lot of advice. Ideally, you can find some mentors who have been down a similar path before and can provide some perspective and maybe even Sherpa like guidance. I think this is a critically important process and one you almost can’t do too much. Conversations are key. Have more of them!

Then come back tomorrow for another great sales tip! I’m particularly excited about the set of tips coming up this week. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss them. Thanks for listening!

“Whenever you meet a new client, make sure that you’re going through a series of questions that uncover the issues that they might face and that you can then solve.” – Adam Hempenstall in today’s Tip 301

What are the most important things in your business proposal?

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Better Proposals Website
Proposal University
2019 Proposal Report
Proposal Templates
Better Proposals Facebook page

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 Adam Hempenstall. Adam is the CEO & Founder of Better Proposals, where they offer proposal software and also offer Proposal Writing University. Here’s Adam with another proposal related tip:

Adam Hempenstall: One of the simplest things that you can do to make sure that you’re closing more of your sales and making sure that you’re winning more of your proposals is to ensure that the introduction is absolutely spot on. Now what I mean by this is the first meaningful piece of text that your client rates, so this isn’t in the email that you’re delivering it with. This is once they’ve opened the document or the presentation or whatever it is, what’s the first thing they get to read? Now, usually, or most people do as a mistake here is the talk about themselves. They talk about, you know, maybe awards they’ve won or the kind of business that they are or how they do things and that kind of stuff and it’s not the way to go. The first thing you need to do is you just grab them with something that’s important to them and something that means something to them. And that is their problem or what they are trying to achieve, so their goals. And this is only achievable when you understand what those goals are, what the problems they’re facing and what that really means to their business or their life or whatever.

So to start all of this off, the easiest way that you can make sure that this is perfect every single time is whenever you meet a new client, make sure that you’re going through a series of questions that uncover the issues that they might face and that you can then solve. So you want to have a set of questions that you refer back to every single time and they should uncover things. Now, don’t be afraid of asking why. So if somebody asks, says that they want more leads in their business, for instance, why do they want more leads in their business? They want more money. Okay, well maybe it would be easier to increase your conversion rate. No, no, no. We want more leads. Why though? So dig in, a comfortable being uncomfortable. And once you do that and once you start pushing past some of these initial barriers, you’ll find that you get information that you’ve never had before. And only once you get to that point, can you really write a rural quality introduction or you know, overview or executive summary, how of you want to refer to it. And once you’ve done that, it’s gonna grip them. So when they read the proposal, they’re reading it through this lens of you understanding them. Compare that to the old way of writing about yourself first. And they’re reading this proposal with, you know, glazed over, look in their eye and they’re really not taking any of it in. So you get this bit right first and everything else. Even if it’s not great, we’ll flow much, much easier. It will be much, much easier to write. But even if it isn’t amazing, it is still being led with a really, really quality piece. So ask great questions in your meeting or on your discovery sessions, however, you do them, and then make sure that the first piece of meaningful texts that they read in the proposal is a really good quality description of their problems and what it is that they’re trying to achieve. I hope that helps.

Scott Ingram: You can learn more about Adam’s Better Proposals solutions and sign up for free at betterproposals.io

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

“Thank you for coming along for this journey, and a massive thanks to everyone who has ever contributed their own tip.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 300

Thank you so much for listening!

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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. This is tip #300 of the show and I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on that. Somehow tip 100 didn’t phase me. Neither did 200 or 250, but 300 seems more meaningful. So first and foremost I just wanted to say thanks. It’s because of you that I keep doing these, and there are a lot of you. So thank you for coming along for this journey, and a massive thanks to everyone who has ever contributed their own tip. That’s what makes this show because otherwise all that’s left is me and my thoughts, which I’m sure are fine, but I’m pretty sure neither you nor I want that to be the experience every single day.

What’s impressed me most about this show is how quickly it’s gotten traction. We only launched it in January of this year, you know, exactly 300 days ago, and for months it’s been the #2 sales podcast on Spotify of hundreds of sales podcasts. That’s actually going to be my tip for you today. I think one of the big reasons it’s done so well on Spotify is because that’s probably the best platform to binge the show on. Spotify essentially provides auto-binge without any additional effort on your part. So whether you’re a week or two behind, or you want to go back to the beginning and do an epic binge, all you have to do is start with the earliest episode you want to binge from and press play. Spotify will automatically play every episode after that without you having to do anything. Then if you’re impatient like me you can also increase your listening speed to 1.5 or 2x. Give it a try, it’s been a game-changer for me and might be a great way to review all of the episodes to date. Don’t worry, it’s smart enough to adjust the tone so you don’t have to listen to a bunch of great sales tips delivered by the chipmunks. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

As always, thank you so much for listening, and be sure to come back tomorrow and every day after that for another great sales tip!