“Nobody cares about numbers. Nobody cares about the results. What people care about is the personal feeling they get when the outcome they’re looking for is achieved or even achievable.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 299

Do you have a  messaging problem?

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

292: You Have a Preparation Problem
285: You Have a Pipeline Problem
208: You Don’t Have a Closing Problem
Jeff Bajorek: Rethink the Way You Sell
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 13 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 messaging problem. When’s the last time you took a look or listen to the words that you use? Are you trying to generate any emotional response or are you just spewing facts and figures? Nobody cares about numbers. Nobody cares about the results. What people care about is the personal feeling they get when the outcome they’re looking for is achieved or even achievable. Are you forgetting that sales are made emotionally first and then justified logically? Are you leading with the logic and hoping that the emotion will follow? So many people get this wrong. Think about your messaging and recognize that you are not going to please everybody. If you try to please everybody, you end up thrilling nobody. If you’re not thrilling anybody, they’re not going to be interested in taking the next step with you. Remember that you’re asking someone to change the way they do business. That is a big ask. There’s a lot of inertia to overcome, and you throw in a stat or a figure or a pie chart or something like that’s hopefully going to get them emotionally engaged. Well, let’s probably the wrong approach. Rethink your messaging, rethink the words that you use. Make sure you’re getting some kind of an emotional response, hopefully not one that leaves them angry or pissed off at you, and you’re going to have a lot more success.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff and for links to the previous tips in this series just click over to DailySales.Tips/299 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 a bit of a celebratory tip.

“So by staying consistent, what my main goal is to have that person think of me first when the time is right to buy.” – Jill Ammon in today’s Tip 298

Do you have consistency and persistency?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jill!

Jill Ammon on LinkedIn
Jill’s LinkedIn post
Jill Ammon on Sales Success Stories Interview

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 clip comes from my most recent interview on the Sales Success Stories Podcast where I talked with Jill Ammon. Jill has been the number one Account Executive at Continuum for the last 5 years running. Here’s what she had to say when I asked her about what contributed most to her success:

Jill Ammon: My family would say, I’m a natural-born salesperson. I say “No” because I don’t fall into some of the typical stereotypes, but I think a lot of getting to where I am today really is just my driving work ethic, which I have to attribute that to my parents. They taught my sister and I very well from a young age that you have to be motivated to get, get any place in life. You can’t sit back and let it come to you. So a lot of that is with the consistency and persistency. So I am constantly making my calls, running through my sales cycle, working my pipeline, and basically if someone tells me “No” today, but they don’t tell me to get lost, then I’m going to reach out to them in the future. So by staying consistent, what my main goal is to have that person think of me first when the time is right to buy. So with consistency and persistency, I like to walk on the borderline of not stalking the customer, but always having them know that I’m there when needed. So I don’t want to be that annoying salesperson that they’re going to hang up and dread my calls. They told me to follow up in six months from now, I’m putting a note in Salesforce and I’m following up with them in six months from now. And you know that might turn into the conversation at that point. Or they might say, “Hey, if you don’t mind, I’m not quite ready yet, could you try me back in another month or two?” I’m here to work on their timeline and I think that’s really been the main focus of how I’ve been able to be a top performer year in and year out.

Scott Ingram: To hear my full interview with Jill, you’ll find that in episode 80 of the Sales Success Stories podcast, or as always you can click over to DailySales.Tips/298 where we’ll have links for you, and a picture of the giant banner recognizing Jill that hangs in the Continuum office.

Then be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Jeff Bajorek.

“Remember that every prospect you interact with, including the assistant, could be your ticket to the next big sale. So show up, be present, and make a really great first impression.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 297

How do you improve your tonality on cold calls?

Join the conversation below and go check out 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 yet another great prospecting tip. Here he is:

Jason Bay: So making cold calls is much different than sending an email, obviously because people can hear your voice, but you’re still not giving the prospect what they would get if they were talking to you in person. So since they aren’t able to read your body language, tonality becomes a very, very important part. So how you sound, do you sound confident, are you positive, are you upbeat that sort of thing can really make the difference between a successful or an unsuccessful cold call. And I was working with a few clients and their cold calls the other day and I wanted to share some breakthroughs that they made because they were actually saying the right things. So it had nothing to do with what they were saying their tonality was just off like the person on the other end, I could hear, which was just not excited to talk to them. And when they would speak to the assistants, they just didn’t sound very excited to help them.

So here are six tips that you can use to improve your tonality. So number one, stand up when you’re making calls. There’s something about sitting in your chair all day that just makes you really, really low energy in oftentimes just mixing it up a little bit in standing up to make your calls and being able to kind of move around a little bit and move your arms around like that, gets the blood flow going and it’s going to come out in your calls. The second thing you can do is go for a quick five-minute walk. So before you start doing your cold calls or you come in for the office at the beginning of the day, like go on a quick walk, just get some fresh air, get the blood flowing, hopefully the sun’s out where you’re at, and get some sunshine and just go on and get the blood flowing and get moving. The third thing that you can do, this is something that I recommend for introverted, which I am an introvert. Is think about the times during your week where you have the most social energy. So if one of our clients, that’s when he was at the gym where he sees people that are on a regular basis and he’s really social because he knows these people, he’s excited to see them. And one thing that you can do is channel the energy that you feel during those times where you feel most social and treat prospects that you talked to exactly like the people you interact with when you feel really social. And again, that’s a great one for each fruit. Number four, a really simple one. Smile when you talk. So smiling when you talk is the difference between what I’m talking about right now and that tone right there versus me talking like this, you can definitely hear it. People can hear the smile through your voice. One thing you can try is keeping a small little like a pocket mirror on your desk and just looking at yourself to see if you’re smiling or not. That’s a great one that I’ve been using for like 10 years. Actually, that was a tip I got a very long time ago. Number five grabs a coffee in the morning before you start working and go to the coffee shop with the goal of making the barista and one other person standing in line with you a smile by saying “Hi” to them. So just get yourself in a conversational social mood and go into the coffee shop or the store or wherever you go to get food maybe before work is a great way to do that. And lastly, number six, bring it back to your why. Remember that every prospect you interact with, including the assistant, could be your ticket to the next big sale. So show up, be present, and make a really great first impression. This person could be your ticket, like I said, to your next big sale. So be excited. Show up. So what I want to know, and there’s going to be linked to this in the show notes, is I wrote a post about this on LinkedIn and got a ton of feedback from people around what they do to improve their tonality, but I would love to know from you what you do to improve the tonality and keep positive and upbeat in your calls. Go ahead and check out that link in the show notes and good luck on your calls.

Scott Ingram: You can find the link to Jason’s LinkedIn post at DailySales.Tips/297. As Jason said, there are already some great comments in that thread, and hopefully, you’ll add your own and answer the question: How do you improve your tonality on cold calls? It’s a little thing, but it makes a big difference.

Once you’ve answered that question, jump on the listener list on that page as well so I can send you the video of your choice from the 2019 Sales Success Summit. Then come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“So don’t buy into the belief that people weren’t interested in what you were selling. And accept the truth and the responsibility that your email wasn’t interesting and your email missed the mark.” – Liz Wendling in today’s Tip 296

Is your email creating the impact that you want?

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

Liz Wendling Blog
The Heart of Authentic Selling
Sell Without Selling Your Soul
Liz Wendling Website
Liz Wendling on LinkedIn

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

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Liz Wending. Liz is a nationally recognized business and sales consultant and the author of 6 books. Liz shows professionals how to make a profound difference in the way they sell and communicate both online and offline. Here she is:

Liz Wendling: Most people make a snap judgment in the first few moments, sometimes seconds of meeting someone based on the way they communicate. Now that’s happening face to face or online. You have a chance to either make a memorable or a mundane first impression. I’ll use an example of email communication when it comes to the online world. When it comes to email communication these days, you have about two to three seconds to get someone’s attention, roughly seven seconds to build some sort of interest and about 20 seconds to get them to take action. The receivers of your emails are reading them with the finger on the trigger of the delete button. With precious seconds ticking away don’t waste time starting your email. Communication with these overused, outdated, cheesy and value lists, opening lines that sound like this; I hope you’re doing great. I hope you had a great weekend. I hope this email finds you well. I trust you’re staying busy. I hope you’re having a good day. Stop it. Those sentences are actually for you. Yeah, they’re for you. They’re not for the recipient. Those opening lines make you feel good. They make you feel like you’re connecting. But what’s really happening in these opening lines is that you’re not adding any value. All they do is make you sound like everyone else on the planet and everyone else that pops inside of someone’s inbox. And keep in mind that most of the spam emails that you received, the ones that end up in your trash anyway all start out the same way. So why would you set yourself up to fail? You don’t need these cheesy opening lines and the receiver doesn’t appreciate these cheesy opening lines. Your prospect that you are emailing needs to be engaged or they are simply just going to stop reading. So it’s time to stop sending generic expected and typical emails with those opening lines. I always appreciate it when a professional takes the time to send me a well-crafted and thought out email that gets my attention, holds my interest, and then causes me to take some action. And they don’t need to use those cheesy old school lines. So don’t buy into the belief that people weren’t interested in what you were selling. And accept the truth and the responsibility that your email wasn’t interesting and your email missed the mark. So next time you go to tap out an email and before you hit send, I want you to ask yourself, this is my email creating the impact I want? or am I just sending another email that’s likely to be headed right to the trash?

Scott Ingram: As always we’ve got more links for you at DailySales.Tips/296. One of those links will take you to a free audio program where Liz will show you how to transform your sales language and change your sales results.

Thanks for listening and be sure to stop by tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“Don’t worry so much about the choices that other people are making. We all have different priorities and goals at different points in our life and heck different points in our week.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 295

How do you spend your weekend?

Join the conversation below and I hope you have a great weekend!

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’m publishing this tip on a Sunday and I notice an interesting phenomenon many weekends when I open LinkedIn to scroll through the feed a bit. Almost inevitably I’ll find a couple of messages coming from two sides. On one side you’ll have the hustle porn type message suggesting that it’s great to be working through the weekend and striving to get ahead, and on the other side, I’ll see a message more or less shaming those that aren’t taking a break and suggesting that we should all step away.

Here’s my thought. You, do you and don’t worry so much about the choices that other people are making. We all have different priorities and goals at different points in our life and heck different points in our week. Maybe, like David was talking about yesterday, you made a commitment to yourself and really need to crank through some work stuff or another professional project. Maybe you’ve committed to yourself that you’re going to turn off all of the electronic distractions and just be with your family. At the end of the day, it’s your choice. You get to make those decisions.

We all need to worry a little bit less about the decisions that other people are making. You never really know what’s driving them and their decision.

So whether you’re over-achieving a little bit and listening to this on Sunday. I hope you have a great, enjoyable, perhaps productive rest of your weekend. If you took a break and are coming to this later. Good for you. It’s all good. Thanks for listening, and you know what comes next: Come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“When you have a task, pick a deadline for yourself and when you’re going to accomplish it, map out a plan in a fairly quick fashion and then just grit it out and just do it and just get it done.” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 294

How about you? How are things getting done? Do you have a plan?

Join the conversation below and feel free to share it with us!

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. Today I’ve got another great tip from David Weiss. I’ll let David share his thought and then I’ll add a bit of my own commentary at the end. Here he is:

David Weiss: Hello Sales Success Community, David Weiss here with a tip of the day. So my tip of the day is all about getting things done and executing on a plan. So I want to do this through a couple stories. The first is one around the book that I just wrote with my friend Andy; Your Definitive Sales Career Guide. And the book is solely designed for a entry level, recently graduated from school, folks that are thinking about a career in sales and they just want to learn more about is sales right for them and how to get the job and then how to be successful in their early stages of their career. So one of our audiences for this is college students and then also deans and professors of colleges that if they liked the book and are willing to recommend it, they can help us as influencers to our target audience. So I found a publication online that had all 150 schools in the United States that have major or minor programs tied to their business school in sales and had a conversation with Andy on Friday afternoon. And we committed to splitting this list of a 150 schools and doing our profiling of each school and each professor. And essentially what we were trying to do is figure out who led the sales program, what was their email address, what was their phone number, what was their physical address to mail them stuff, and what was their LinkedIn profile. So we agreed to do this I created an Excel spreadsheet and I was done with my 75-ish accounts by a Saturday morning. So I spent a significant amount of time. I mean, we’re talking, 70 hours worth of work going through, going to each single website, identifying each individual information on every single school, and then moving to the next one. And then it’s Saturday morning and I’m thinking to myself, I wonder what Andy’s up to. And I kind of knew what he was up to and I said, well, knowing my friend, it’s probably gonna take at least another week to get this done. And in my usual, highly impatient and sense of urgency self, I said “I just want it done now”. So I took some ownership of that and I didn’t want to put it on, Andy. It’s not his fault, it’s mine. And I said, “Okay, I just got to go get it done.” So then by about 7:00 AM Sunday morning, I had finished and I took some breaks to, of course, do other things in between, but I got it done. And I sent it to Andy and he comes over the top and says, “David, this was a superhuman effort. I don’t know how you do these things. No one else can work at your pace.” And he inflated my ego. But then I thought to myself, you know what? I just don’t agree with him. I don’t agree that I’m special or that what I achieved was was anything that anyone else couldn’t. And I think that’s one of the points I’m trying to make is that what I did was I looked at a task. I identified what needed to go into that task to be successful. I figured out how to accomplish it and then I just went and did it. I didn’t go out drinking. I didn’t decide to watch a movie. I didn’t decide to do some other things that trust me would have been way more fun. I set a goal and a target and I just sacrificed what needed to be sacrificed. I did what needed to be done to accomplish that goal. And yeah, it was a day or two of my time. But the outcome is I now know every single person I want to target for this book. And so I thought to myself. Man, I bet other people are struggling with this where they identify a task and, or they want to accomplish something and they get paralyzed in fear or doubt or just the sheer, struggle that is the thing they’re trying to accomplish and they shut down or do other things or get distracted or what have you. And my thoughts, everyone is set a goal and just do it. Just commit to it and just get it done. And you’ll feel so good when you do.

And I want to give another example of this. I’m super proud of my wife. She is in the process of expanding her offices. She is in private practice. She’s opening a new office and we needed to get the furniture to furnish it. And we’ve been through this task multiple times before as she’s grown her practice. And what we typically do is drive around every furniture store in Houston and look for good deals and look for things that make sense and order them and they get piecemealed and delivered and all these different times. And it’s a multi-week process and some of it gets ordered on Amazon and Wayfair and other places and it’s a huge pain. And my wife told me we didn’t have enough time to do this because she needed to move offices because they were being painted and this needed to be ready in about a week. So we really had that weekend to accomplish it. So I said, “Okay, how are we going to do this?” And the first thing was we made a list of everything we needed. So we needed two end tables, a cabinet, a bookshelf, a couple of lamps, a couch, three different chairs, a play table, an office chair for her to sit in a rug. And I’m probably missing some stuff, but it was a lot. So we made a list of all of that. We kind of started looking online for color schemes or one on, we kind of chose something that we wanted to color scheme and style we wanted to go with. And then I went to Wayfair and we narrowed it down. We found 300,000 plus items in all these different categories. But he said, all right, let’s use their filters. And we narrowed it and it turned out to be about 700 to a thousand items in each of the categories I listed. So we just went through all of them and 700 here, 700 there, 700 there, so on and so forth. Found the top three to five we liked in each category and then narrowed it down from there and then just committed to it and bought them. And they’re being delivered in another week and I’m to spend the next weekend probably putting things together. So, which is super fun and I can’t wait. But the point is, and I think this is what I’m trying to say to you all, is these tasks for not fun they were not enjoyable but accomplish something them we’re not superhuman efforts they’re not things that many of us can’t do. But again, most people when they look at things like this that I’ve found, it’s tough. So they overthink it or they plan too much on the front end or they delay starting it where they, or because it’s not enjoyable. They allow themselves to get distracted. So my recommendation to the group, when you have a task, pick a deadline for yourself and when you’re going to accomplish it, map out a plan in a fairly quick fashion and the just grit it out and just do it and just get it done. And you may realize like I’ve realized at times when I’ve done these things. That I probably set a very unrealistic and ridiculous, insane task and deadline date. But I’ve said to myself when I’ve done that, “Okay David, well, you’re just gonna pull in all night or night and you’re going to get it done.” Because that’s what I committed to myself to do and I’m not going to let myself down. And then next time I have to do that task, I’m going to set for a realistic, instead of maybe one night or one day to do it, maybe I’m gonna give myself two or three or four days because I now know what it will take. But I didn’t give up. I didn’t let myself down. I committed to it, I executed on it and I got it done. And I just recommend everyone else when they’re running into tasks like this, just do the work. Just grit it out. Just go do it. You’ll feel so much better and you’ll be way ahead of your peers and of other people that do allow themselves to not accomplish it in the deadlines that they set. So I hope this was helpful. If I can answer any questions on how I approach these things, or if anyone’s running into troubles with tasks, feel free to use me as a resource. And thank you all for listening.

Scott Ingram: So first and foremost I want you to click over to DailySales.Tips/294 where you’ll find links to all things David Weiss including his new book: Your Sales Career Guide, which he’s currently offering at cost. So I hope you’ll help support him and grab a copy of the book, but I also wanted to pile on with my own quick story. I laughed when David sent me this tip earlier this week because I did something very similar on a late-night flight on Monday. I had a complex task that needed to be done to inform some next steps on a project that I’m working on and it likely won’t be until later next week that I’m able to get the expertise that I really need to complete that task correctly, but it was a critical path type of item and I was at a complete standstill until it got done. So even though the way I accomplished it was ugly and imperfect. I was able to keep the process going. At the end of the day it all comes down to this bias towards action. Do you have it? Do you act? One action I hope you’ll take right now is to join the listener list. You’ll also find that at DailySales.Tips/294, and when you do I’d be glad to send you the video of your choice from the Sales Success Summit. Maybe you’d like to see David’s presentation on Building Business Cases and Closing the Gaps in your Sales Process. Just let me know.

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

“You run all of that stuff down early on, everything else flows easily after that. And then you can get this thing sent out. Getting it sent within 24 hours the simplest, easiest way that you can increase your conversion rate.” – Adam Hempenstall in today’s Tip 293

Are you sending your proposal within 24 hours?

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. If you guessed that Adam’s tip is about proposals. You’d be right! Here he is:

Adam Hempenstall: If you ask most people how long it takes them to write proposals and then send them. I think most of us would agree the three to four days is pretty reasonable. Much longer than that and you start running the risk of them losing interest or forgetting about the meeting and you send it too soon. And to end up with the age-old concept of people thinking that you’re too eager and you’re not busy enough and all that kind of stuff. So there are two schools of thought there. So most people end up just settling with this idea of sending it in about three days. The problem is data says that you should send it quicker. So every year at better proposals we conduct a report of hundreds of thousands of proposals and we look at a whole bunch of different things and work out what converts best. And one of the questions that we asked was; What’s the difference or is there a difference between proposals that you send within three to four days versus say within 24 hours. And what we’ve found is that every single year there is a significant bump in the conversion rate if you send your proposal within 24 hours. So just the most recent report we did, it was 15 %. So is around a 15% increased conversion rate by literally just sending your proposal within 24 hours. And this makes sense, doesn’t it?

So if you imagine going into your recent meeting and you have a great conversation with your client, everybody’s super excited, you’re excited about the project, they’re excited about getting their problem fixed. And at the end of the meeting, the guy or the girl says to you, great, send us a proposal then and then three days goes past and then the weekend and then it’s Monday morning and all that drama. And then you think, “Oh, I’ll send it on Tuesday” and you send it on Tuesday. And by this point all of the laughs and the jokes and the rapport and the understanding and the phrases that they use that you could remember. All of that stuff starts to wash away. Just slowly, little bits of it. And you know, this is before you’ve even started to sit there and trying to write this thing out, everything gets harder the longer you leave it. And that’s only the first part of the problem. The second part is they’ve had that their excitement level is dropping dramatically every hour. So what I would say to you is if you want to have them do the easiest thing you could possibly can, to increase your conversion rate, it would be to send your proposal as quickly as you possibly can after the discovery session or meeting phone call, whatever it is for you. The easiest way I’ve found to be doing this over the years is to simply just sit down immediately after the meeting and just write the introduction at least. That way that you’re writing all the reporting’s important stuff down, the stuff that’s important to them. You know that goal, the solutions that they’re after. You run all of that stuff down early on, everything else flows easily after that. And then you can get this thing sent out. Getting it sent within 24 hours the simplest, easiest way that you can increase your conversion rate. 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 I hope you’ll come back here within the next 24 hours for another great sale tip. Thanks for listening!

“Continue to provide value, continue to make sure that you’re invited back to provide more value. Your prospect will not allow you to waste their time twice, so make sure you’re prepared for the interaction so you can have the next interaction to keep things moving along to the point where you can close the sale.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 292

Do you have a preparation problem?

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

285: You Have a Pipeline Problem
278: You Have a Decision Maker Problem
208: You Don’t Have a Closing Problem
Jeff Bajorek: Rethink the Way You Sell
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 12 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 preparation problem. Great. You’ve got the meeting now what? Where are you in the process? What needs to happen right now? What needs to happen immediately afterward? My friend James Muir wrote a tremendous book called The Perfect Close and I think you should check it out. But in that book, one of the gems that I’ve taken from that book are three questions that every sales rep needs to ask themselves before any sales call. Why should this person see me? What do I want them to do and how do I provide value with this interaction? Basically, what am I doing here? What do I need to do next and how do I make sure that I get invited back? Are you taking advantage of the opportunity that’s in front of you or is this just another box that you’re checking? Yeah, we’re going to meet. Yeah, I’m going to check-in. Yeah. I’m going to touch base and see how things are going. This is where processes go to die. Don’t do that. Take advantage of every opportunity that you have. Make sure that you’re moving the ball forward. If you have an opportunity to sell something, sell something. If you’re just there to nurture the relationship, make sure there’s a next step to where you can get to the point where you’re going to sell something. Remember, nobody wants to have their base touched. That’s not what this is about. You’re there to provide value, continue to provide value, continue to make sure that you’re invited back to provide more value. Your prospect will not allow you to waste their time twice, so make sure you’re prepared for the interaction so you can have the next interaction to keep things moving along to the point where you can close the sale.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff and for links to the previous tips in this series just click over to DailySales.Tips/292 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!

“Every time I feel like giving up or any time I feel like I don’t want to keep going, I think back to that and I think about future me and my future kids and I want to give them the same story and I want this to teach the same intrinsic motivators and the work ethic that my parents instilled in me.” – Eddie Baez in today’s Tip 291

How about you? What motivates you?

Join the conversation below and check out the full conversation with Eddie Baez!

Eddie Baez on Sales Success Stories Interview
Eddie Baez on LinkedIn
IBIS World

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 I’ve got something on my mind, and thought I’d share a clip from my most recent interview on Sales Success Stories with Eddie Baez first, to frame the opportunity. Eddie has been the #1 top performer in his role at IBIS World for the last 3 years. Here’s what he said when I asked him about what motivates him:

Eddie Baez: It’s my parents. This one’s tough. All right, so growing up, my parents didn’t separate. You know, right away they didn’t separate well into my teens. And you know, frankly if I’m a hundred percent honest, my dad was actually a great guy and they’re still really good friends, which helped a lot because when my mom got sick, he came back and helped us out and it was very platonic, but it helped nonetheless. And I think he did a phenomenal job. And I think the biggest thing that both of my parents agreed on, despite their differences, was making sure that my brother and I were okay and that we had a future to come back to after all these big challenges we’re out of the way. So both of my parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic and my dad held down so many blue-collar jobs. I mean from a foreman in the fashion district, a movie set security guard, which was probably his most fun job. And you know, he got to meet lineage Leonardo DiCaprio, which was cool. And then his last job was as a janitor at a pretty large company. But you know, it was nothing but blue-collar jobs. My dad never took a sick day above everything else. He never complained about his jobs or anything that, if money was tight, he’d never complained. And he was no stranger to picking up extra shifts to support the family. And then on the opposite side of the spectrum. My mom, actually, sorry, not on the opposite side of the spectrum, let’s run that back. My mom, very similar to my father owns her own business daycare business and it was a daycare provider for over 15 years. And the only time she wasn’t doing it was when she got sick for about five or six years. And her immediate thought, like I said, after getting sick, getting the great news that she was cancer-free was that I need to get back to work, support my kids and get through it. And for me, that is in the back of my mind, just the most indelible thing possible. I mean, every

Scott Ingram: If you want to listen to my full conversation with Eddie, and I hope you will, it’s available in episode number 79 on the Sales Success Stories podcast, but here’s why I shared this particular clip. I’ve seen this over and over again with quite a few of the top performers that I’ve interviewed. They experienced some serious adversity growing up. In quite a few cases their parents were immigrants or they grew up poor and they have a chip on their shoulders. The resulting drive and work ethic are unbelievable. Yet at the same time, I see certain industries, and I’m looking directly at your technology, where they won’t even interview somebody without previous tech experience. I want to challenge the broader community around this. I believe there are very few solutions or industries that are so technical that they can’t be learned with dedicated study over the course of a few months. What can’t be learned over the course of a few months is true drive and true grit. That’s not something you teach somebody. My challenge to sales managers who are hiring is this. Take a chance. Put aside what you think the mold for a solid salesperson looks like. Instead, talk to a broader set of individuals from much more diverse backgrounds. Find somebody with some incredible innate drive and perhaps a chip on their shoulder and take a chance. I’d be willing to bet that they’ll crack your solid salesperson mold with a breakout performance given enough time and coaching. Are you up for the challenge?

I appreciate you listening to my rant today. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Jeff Bajorek.

“So the next time you approach a call and you don’t know who to ask for, remember to ask for help, that’s the person’s job. Let them know why you’re reaching out, so personalize the outreach. Let them know about challenges you can help with and where you add value” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 290

Do you know who to ask for?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jason!

Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
283: Working Around or Working With Gatekeepers
137: Writing Cold Emails Using the REPLY Method

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 tip, and I think after listening to this you’ll understand why I bring him back onto the show every week:

Jason Bay: Do you ever run into a situation where you’re doing research on a company and you’ve just cannot figure out who exactly to reach out to? I run into this quite a bit actually in our clients run into it quite a bit where there’s not enough information on LinkedIn and we know that you know, let’s say I’m working with a commercial real estate company right now and they really want to talk to people in operations roles. Primarily new chief level and VP of operations if the company is big enough. But a lot of the companies that are calling on are in industries where a lot of people don’t use LinkedIn, so they’re having to call through the main corporate line and they don’t even know who to ask for. And I thought that you might be running into a situation like that where there isn’t all this information online to research.

So what do you do? So I just recorded one on how to work with gatekeepers. So I suggest you check that one out if you haven’t yet. And the goal here really is that we want to work with the person that we’re calling because we don’t even know who to even ask for. So when you approach this, you want to go into a mindset of, I’m going to show this person that I did the best job that I could be researching and then I’m not just some random person smiling and dialing and I’m going to ask them for help. So when you get an assistant that answers the phone, you might just say, “Hey, you know, this is Jason of Blissful Prospecting. I was hoping you might be able to help me out.” And the tonality, and again, I talked about this and the other are reps. So it is really important that you want to treat this person like they are a worker at a grocery store or any other type of store where you might be asking someone for help. Their job is to help you. So don’t be afraid to ask them for help. And that’s the type of tone that you want to use too. As I was wondering if you might be able to help me out and then they’re going to say, “Yeah, what’s up?” Or “Hey, would it be happy to help you” depending on how friendly the person is.

Now you want to let them know you did your research. What we like to use is the REPLY method framework, and we’re going to open with Personalization, which is the P In REPLY. We’re going to continue with Empathy, which is the E in REPLY. And then we’re going to talk about Results, which is the R of REPLY. So I’m just gonna do an example for like this commercial real estate company that we’re working for. I’m working with, excuse me right now. So “Hey, you know, I was reaching out. I noticed that you guys have six locations spread out across Oregon and Washington and one of the big challenges that we hear with companies like yours is they’re looking to consolidate locations so they can be more efficient with the real estate spend. And one of the ways that we’ve worked with similar companies is by helping with that process, helping make sure that you guys make smart decisions around where you choose to stay, but also saving money in the process.” And the next part here you want to do is let them know that you did your research; “Hey, you know I was doing a bunch of digging around on LinkedIn and your guys’ and I to the best of my ability, I tried to make sure I knew who the person was to talk to and it looks like Adam is the closest fit, but I wasn’t sure is that I thought that might be something you might be able to help me out with. Do you know if Adam is the right person to talk with or do you think I should be talking to someone else?” And you’d be surprised how helpful people are. In a lot of cases, they’re gonna be like, well no, actually so-and-so is in charge of that. Let me see if they’re in. And another way that you can approach this too is; “Hey, have you heard anything about this? Or do you know anything about who might be managing in this case, its real estate you anything about who might be in charge of that? And you’re like I said, I did the best that I could to research this. And, and for life, we couldn’t really figure out who would be best to talk to. And I want to make sure I’m not wasting anyone’s time and able to bring as much value to that conversation as I can. Any idea who might be the right person to talk to.” And again, that tonality is very important. And then showing that you did your research and how you can offer value in coming from a place of wanting to help them is the way to go. So the next time you approach a call and you don’t know who to ask for, remember to ask for help, that’s the person’s job. Let them know why you’re reaching out, so personalize the outreach. Let them know about the challenges you can help with and where you add value, and then let them know that you did the best of your ability to research and ask them who they think would be the best person to talk with.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jason Bay and Blissful Prospecting, just click over to DailySales.Tips/290. We’ll also have a link to Jason Bay on LinkedIn so you can connect with him directly because he doesn’t just share great tips here.

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