“Keep investing in yourself. Keep learning and keep improving” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 259

Do you want to share your own sales tip?

Join the conversation below and share your own tips!

Submit a Sales Tip

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of the most senior sales leaders of a multi-billion dollar enterprise sales organization earlier this week, and we were talking about the Sales Success Summit and those who were involved in it. His perspective was that he believed there was a very high correlation between top performers and those who were investing in personal development. He suggested that there was nothing but upside for the individual, and for the organization that adopted that kind of mindset. I suppose I’m preaching to the choir here a little bit, since you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now, or sharing these tips with your team if you didn’t share this belief and that kind of growth mindset, but he equated it to investing in an MBA. Making that kind of commitment to advance and grow can only serve you in your career.

Similarly, the conversation that I had over drinks in New York with a few fans of the show in our little “flash meetup,” if you’re on the listener list and get my emails you might have seen that. If you’re not you should be and you can join anytime for free a DailySales.Tips. Anyway, I was blown away by just how many books were mentioned over the course of that conversation. Shoutout to Eddie, Sebastian, and Scott. The level of intelligence and associated performance was really high and clearly, that was driven by the investments they’ve been making in their own personal development.

This is barely a tip. It’s really more of an observation, but I think the correlation and causation here is clear. Keep investing in yourself. Keep learning and keep improving. Then one of the best ways you can further develop your thinking and growth is to teach it to someone else or mentor someone else. Remember that this show is basically an open forum. You’re always welcome to share your own tip, and I seriously hope you’ll consider it. Potentially as a further investment in your own personal development. All of those details are a DailySales.Tips/submit

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

“Thinking back in the past and understanding anything that comes your way, in my honest opinion, should be equal or greater than what you’re doing today.” – Amy Volas in today’s Tip 258

Is your new sales job is right for you?

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

Amy Volas on LinkedIn
Amy Volas on Twitter
Avenue Talent Partners on Facebook
Avenue Talent Partners
Avenue Talent Partners Blog

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 Amy Volas. Amy is a sales fanatic turned entrepreneur, she was bitten by the startup bug and can’t imagine spending her time anywhere else. She created Avenue Talent Partners to help with the tremendous task of growing startups through one of their most valuable assets—salespeople. Here she is with some advice if you’re considering a change:

Amy Volas: So the question is, how should I evaluate whether a new sales job or opportunity is right for me? I think it starts with thinking about what you’re doing today and what you’ve really liked, what you haven’t liked so much. Thinking back in the past and understanding anything that comes your way, in my honest opinion, should be equal or greater than what you’re doing today. And so if you understand all of those elements and then you evaluate what comes your way in earnest from the standpoint of it’s going to help me do better things and not just for the money, because whenever I’ve gone just for the money, it’s never worked out so well. And that’s the case for many, many people that I speak with. So what does that really look like? And understanding that and knowing that, and then holding the opportunities that come your way accountable to that helps you understand whether it’s the right time to make a move and it’s the right opportunity.

Scott Ingram: For more about Amy and Avenue Talent Partners, just click over to DailySales.Tips/258 Amy is a great follow on LinkedIn, so I’d definitely recommend that you take that action.

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

“Think first, the action is important but if you are doing the things that needed to be done, you’d be getting the results you were looking for” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 257

Do you have a strategy problem?

Join the conversation below and DON’T forget to wish Jeff a Happy Birthday!

208: You Don’t Have a Closing Problem
215: You Have an Opening Problem
222: You Have an Engagement Problem
229: You Have a Discovery Problem
236: You Have a Questioning Problem
243: You Have a Rapport Problem
250: You Have a Process Problem

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 Jeff Bajorek. This is part 7 of Jeff’s 16 part series that he kicked off back in tip #208 called “You Don’t Have a Closing Problem.” Here’s Jeff, who just celebrated his birthday earlier this week, with today’s installment:

Jeff Bajorek: You don’t have a closing problem. You have a strategy problem. When’s the last time you stopped what you were doing and thought about what you should be doing instead? Yes, I’m giving you permission to stop. It’s easy to get caught up in the zeitgeists of more calls, more prospecting, more sales activity, more and more and more and more and more. Does doing more of something that’s not working make any sense? You need to stop for a few minutes. You need to bounce some ideas off some colleagues; maybe you bounce some ideas, awesome colleagues in a conference room or a virtual conference room with some people from marketing with some people from upper-level management. Maybe you put your heads together and scrutinized the approach that you’re taking. Are you differentiating yourself? Look, if you cannot differentiate, you cannot sell. You’ve heard me say that before. I will continue to say it because it is the key to selling and everybody in the market, well maybe not everybody, but most people that I talk to, they complain about being commoditized or feeling commoditized and the price is the most important issue. We’ve really got to be competitive there because our customers are sensitive to this and there’s a lot of competition. I don’t care if there’s a lot of competition out there. You’re different from all of them. If you weren’t different than there wouldn’t be multiple companies providing the solutions you provide. If those differentiators are not so apparent on the surface, then you need to dig a little bit, but just going and making calls and making it about money, you’re doing yourself and your prospects a disservice. If you feel commoditized is because you haven’t put the thought in to make yourself any different than a commodity. So I want you to scrutinize your approach. I want you to scrutinize your messaging. I want you to scrutinize the way you position your company and then I want you to decide if you need to make a hundred phone calls or if you need to do more email campaigns or if you need to do more print advertising or if you need to start a podcast. Whatever it is, don’t just do those things because someone told you do those things because you decided that was the most effective approach for you to reach your prospects with your relevant differentiators. Think first, action is important but if you are doing the things that needed to be done, you’d be getting the results you were looking for, wouldn’t you? If you’re not, you got to go back to the drawing board.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff and for links to the previous tips in this series just click over to DailySales.Tips/257 that’s also where you’ll find the video version of Jeff’s tip. Don’t forget to wish Jeff a Happy Birthday as well. It was one of those big ones that ends with a zero. He still looks young as you’ve seen if you watch Jeff in these videos!

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

You’re different from all of them. If you weren’t different than there wouldn’t be multiple companies providing the solutions you provide.

“So start with your destination and then navigate them with your quote-unquote directions” – Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan in today’s Tip 256

How do you focus on better sales presentations?

Join the conversation below and share your experience too!

Startup Hypeman
Startup Hypeman: Offer
Startup Hypeman: The Podcast
Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan 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 Rajiv Nathan, otherwise known as ‘RajNATION.’ RajNATION is the founder of Startup Hypeman where he helps startups not suck at how they pitch and tell their story, so they stand out to customers and stand apart from their competitors. Here he is with today’s tip:

Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan: Let’s talk about sales presentations today. Typically in a sales presentation, we have this tendency to make it all about us, right? We’re pitching the prospective customer on our services. So we design a whole presentation built around our ability and our capacity to deliver on a product or service. But that logic actually works against us because essentially what we’re doing is asking someone to sit down for 15, 20 maybe even 40 minutes to just hear us talk about ourselves and think about in any other context you’ve been in. How much have you enjoyed being in a conversation with someone where all they do is talk about themselves. So that same logic applies to sales presentations. And on top of that, there are specific components of the presentation that you can modify to ultimately have the best results. Today I’m going to focus on one specific aspect of your presentation and that is your introduction. A1nd this is something I had to learn the hard way from doing it the wrong way several times over. Now, most people will start a sales presentation by showing a slide of a bunch of logos of their clients or that slide we’ll talk about, there’ll be a photo of where the company is headquartered and it’ll be like headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, 420 employees, yadda, yadda, yadda. These awards or something to that effect. Maybe another version of that introductory slide might be like your technology capabilities, and that’s how most companies start a sales presentation because they think it’s impressing the other person, but the reality is the other person’s not there to hear you talk about your own accolades. The other person is there to figure out if you are capable of solving their problem. So naturally, even if you do understand that the next course of action people take, if they’re going to modify their presentation and cut out those slides I mentioned before is, try to build some type of anticipation. They will work on an element of a story which is great. That’s what you want in a sales presentation. However, where this differs than say your traditional storybook is that your first slide after of course your cover slide, your first slide should actually be providing them with the destination. My college marketing professor always used to say ‘Give them the gift’ and that’s what you want to do. You want to give them the gift first. Whatever is the big vision you are pitching them. Make that the first slide and say “Hey, today we are here to talk about how we believe you can get to X, Y, and Z point by doing these things.” And then after you do that, then you can reset and say “So to get there, here’s what we need to understand first..” and then you build up the story slide by slide to ultimately return to that destination towards the end of the presentation, but give them the destination first and here’s why that’s so vitally important. It is because the.., I’ll give you an analogy. Think about when you were a kid and your parents said, “Hey, get in the car. We’re going to Disney World” and you were like, “Yeah, awesome! Disney World.” Now think about if they said, “Hey kids, get in the car. We’re going to drive for the next 20 hours, but we’re not telling you where.” You would have said “No!” and you would have been kicking and screaming the whole way through. You don’t want to make your prospective customers the ladder case. You want them to be the former where they are so excited because they know you’re taking them to Disney World, not; Hey, sit with me for the next 20 30 minutes to be able to ultimately figure out where we’re going. Right? Give them the destination first. When you type something into Google maps, you have to have a destination to know the directions to get there. So start with your destination and then navigate them with your quote-unquote directions to ultimately get there. Show them Disneyworld out of the gate to get them excited, to give them an anchor to logically to mentally hang on to so that the rest of the presentation makes sense.

Scott Ingram: If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/256 you’ll find the video version of this tip, the transcript and more about RajNATION. You’ll also find a special link to his Startup Hypeman website where you can get a free ebook on how to really pitch case studies in your cold outreach to get prospects to take a meeting with you.

After you’re done downloading that, make sure you come see us tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“It’s all about just finding a way to break through all this intense noise and breakthrough their email inbox to grab their attention.” – Vincent Matano in today’s Tip 255

How do you breakthrough their email inbox to grab their attention?

Join the conversation below and check the full interview with Vincent!

Vincent Matano on LinkedIn
Vincent Matano on Sales Success Stories Interview
Demandbase

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 a clip for you from the latest episode on my Sales Success Stories podcast that just released today. Vincent Matano is the #1 Sales Development Rep at Demandbase and just took home the BEAST award from David Dulany’s Sales Development Conference. There’s close to an hour of greatness in our full conversation today, but here’s just a quick excerpt to give you a taste:

Vincent Matano: I am an email first sales I went rep. I know that’s very stereotypical nowadays everyone says sales reps are scared of the phone. Not scared of the phone, I just think that email is, I have seen a lot of success with this, so I’m very heavy on email, but I don’t just stick to email. I think that’s where the part of getting creative is. You know, if the email is not working, find a different channel, use phone, right? If the phone’s not working, find a different channel, send a gift. What I like to do is send a gift over with a nice handwritten note, and even if your company doesn’t have a service that allows you to do to deliver gifts, a handwritten note goes a long way and I found them being super, super effective just by writing a handwritten note referencing. The same way you’re customizing your email, throw that in a handwritten note and it’s guaranteed a response just because they’re getting that. They’re feeling the physical touch of the card. They’re seeing that you took the time to not only research the company and themselves, but you’re taking the time to actually handwrite a note, stamp it and bring it to a post office. So those are just things that go a really long way. You know, leveraging video, doing Vidyards. There’s a whole host of things that you can do to get creative. I would say the most creative thing that I’ve done was reaching out to one of my accounts, couldn’t get in touch with one of the CMO’s. I actually sent him a show in the mail and said with a handwritten note and said; “hope this gets my foot in the door. You still didn’t open my emails” so I was like “Aw man, what do I do?” So I actually created a Vidyard, tweeted it to him and he got back to me via email. It’s like “love the idea. I love the show.” So it’s all about just finding a way to break through all this intense noise and breakthrough their email inbox to grab their attention.

Scott Ingram: For links to everything including Vincent’s full interview on Sales Success Stories, just click over to DailySales.Tips/255, but hopefully you’re already subscribed to the podcast as well. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? Pause this tip in your podcast app. First, make sure you’re subscribed here and then do a search for Sales Success Stories and subscribe to that as well. If you’re already subscribed to both, I’d love it if you’d take a minute to write a quick review. What do you like the most about these shows?

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

“Find something that’s actually relevant that you can tie back to your value prop or challenge that you help the prospect with.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 254

How much time is it worth investing in personalization?

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

Jason Bay LinkedIn post
Blissful Prospecting
Jason Bay 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 Jason Bay from Blissful Prospecting is back, a day earlier than usual, because tomorrow I’ve got a clip from a brand new Sales Success Stories episode for you. That, and this tip touches on a big topic and I didn’t want to wait another day to share it with you. Here’s Jason:

Jason Bay: One of the very controversial, I’ll say topics and prospect and right now is Personalization. There’s this whole personalization at scale concept of you know, do we essentially it’s the age-old debate in sales of quality over quantity and I believe that you should do both and this whole personalization at scale topics very controversial because people are talking about, I’m wondering like how much time is it worth investing in personalization and I think that’s one way of looking at it. I think the other way of looking at it too is let’s not look at personalization as like I need to find out what sports team this person likes or what they like to do in their free time. What if I just look for ways to add context to how I could help them. So I want to give you some examples of this because this will make this a little more applicable to what you’re doing. So these are two cold emails that I put on LinkedIn and I wrote to myself because I send a lot of videos for prospecting and I’m on a lot of podcasts. And one thing that is a big pain point for me is that it takes a long time for me to send these videos. So I’m going to send these emails through the lens of we have some sort of software that can help cut down the time it takes to personalize and send these videos. And also link to this on LinkedIn too. So check out the show notes you can see and all the feedback that people have because people kind of are debating me. You’re back and forth, which approach you should take. So here’s the email number one, same personalization in both emails. By the way, these first couple sentences it’s “Hey, Jason Heard you on the Sell or Die podcast. What you said about using videos to get the attention of busy prospects really stuck out to me.” Classic personalization and this is something you can use for any type of content that the prospect is featured on. You’re using their first sentence to save where you found them and then you’re using the second sentence to say what you got from that. The next paragraph goes into a value prop, “So our platform is used by top companies like Google, Amazon and LinkedIn. They’ve seen a 151% improvement in pipeline generation. We also have a 4.8-star rating on G2. Here’s a case study” with a hyperlink and then a call to action. “Can we chat for 30 minutes later this week or next?” It’s very typical of the emails that I see and get in a lot of reps that we work with send, they put in a value prop. They mentioned all these big companies for social proof they’ve worked with and they talk about the results that they’ve gotten. There’s no context into there about the platform or the call to action and how it can help me with the videos that I’m sending. So let’s look at another example. Same personalization again. “Hey, Jason Heard you on the Sell or Die podcast, what you said about using videos to get the attention of busy prospects really stuck out to me.” So again, same personalization. What we do here next, and by the way you can use this in a cold call too. It’s the same sort of messaging that you’re going to use. It says “Looks like personalization is a key part to your outbound success. One way [similar client] uses [platform] is to cut the research time for personalization in half. Thought it would be helpful for those cool videos you’re sending.” So this value prop isn’t really around increasing your pipeline. All that stuff is just saying, “Hey, you send a lot of videos. That seems to be a key part of your success and something you believe in.” And I am showing empathy here and that “Hey, this takes a long time to do. I thought it would be helpful for those cool videos you’re sending and can you providing context around who can. How you can help them.” And then the call to action is with sending your videos and half the time be worth a conversation. So instead of always going in for the meeting, it’s okay to ask an open-ended question at the end too and make it connected to what you used in your personalization. So again, here what you’re trying to do is not just pick out something unique about the person, their favorite sports team or some hobby that they’re into. Find something that’s actually relevant that you can tie back to your value prop or challenge that you help the prospect with. When you start doing this, it’s going to take longer. You might take 5 minutes, 10 minutes to personalize one of your emails to send out, but you can repurpose that email in your cold calls. So you can reference back to some of the stuff in later emails as well. But taking that extra time to provide context is going to make the email flow as if you were just writing it for them versus throwing it onto a template.

Scott Ingram: Make sure you check out Jason’s LinkedIn post about this. It helps to see what he’s talking about in writing and you can share your own thoughts in the comments as well. You’ll find the link at DailySales.Tips/254

“And when you find those people who do execute and who do follow through and do bring those opportunities, they are gold” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 253

What can you do for them? How can you make sure that you are paying it forward and paying it back to them?

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

249. Partner with Purpose and Process – Jack Wilson
2019 Sales Success Summit

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, earlier this week and tip #249, Jack Wilson talked about partnering with purpose and process and while I love the contents of that tip, I think the topic is potentially even more important and it’s something that we haven’t really addressed here on the daily sales tip show really at all in until Jack brought this up and it’s this idea of developing business through relationships and more specifically through essentially channel type relationships. Right? A lot of times this is other companies or other sales professionals, a lot of the time that are selling in adjacent markets that are maybe complementary to or at least selling to the same types of individuals who become your buyers and really leveraging those relationships, creating those opportunities together and Jack talks about some really great positioning around that and some expectation setting. It’s something that I don’t do actually. It’s something I’m starting to do a lot more in the way that my current role is evolving and something I used to do a ton of early in my career, especially when I was working with ADP and companies like that. And one of the things that I found and that really was core to my success in a lot of those efforts is recognizing that not everybody is wired to deliver those types of opportunities. Some people are very generous and they get it, they’re willing to share, they’re willing to make those introductions and some people just aren’t, it’s literally just not in their DNA. And the most important thing for me was figuring out who are those right people. And you know I feel like it’s almost a filtering process, right? You spend a lot of time when you’re developing those kinds of networks and you’re developing, call it your own personal channel, just doing the filtering and figuring out who are the people that are going to be able to help me and who do I trust enough to refer to my clients, right? Because I’m certainly putting my reputation on the line anytime that I do that. And I worked with the CEO of a, of a very small company here in Austin years and years ago who had this great model that I’ve really adopted ever since when it came to these partnering types of conversations and as he was beginning that relationship and there tends to be it’s all big talk, right? Talk is totally cheapened in this place, right? There can be all of the promises in the world of all the business that we’re going to be able to do together, but none of that matters until those introductions start to get made and what he would always ask and I learned so much from him in his process here, he just say, show me one. And the idea was, look, this talk is great. We’re really excited about being able to do all of this work together, but let’s just do one deal together and see how that goes and make sure that we both benefit. You’ll get an opportunity to see how I work. I’ll get an opportunity to see how you work and we’ll get to know each other through this process, but let’s not boil the ocean, show me one. And so it makes it very tangible, very actionable. Ideally in that conversation, we can identify the one who’s it going to be, right? We just talked about how much opportunity is out there, what’s the one company or who is the one individual that we want to focus on right now? And maybe you can make an introduction right now. Maybe you want to pick up the phone. I had another friend just at an incredible kind of pillar of networking here in Austin. His name is Peter Strople. And Peter, he never wanted to have any follow-up items for himself, right? He knew, Hey, this, this probably isn’t gonna get done if I don’t do this right now. And he would literally, anytime he had one of those opportunities to make an introduction, he would just pull out his phone, call that person. He had enough relationship. They’d almost always pick up and he’d hand the phone to you. You know, he might give a really short introduction, but it was, you’re on this spot right here. Let’s do this right now. So you know, think about those types of opportunities, right? Rather than dragging out this process, thinking about can we make the introduction, can we affect this change? Can you show me one right now in this moment and begin going through that. And when you find those people who do execute and who do follow through and do bring those opportunities, they are gold, right? If you’ve got one individual that might bring you, let’s say they’re in a position that they can bring you to three, four, maybe five opportunities, even in a given year, they are hundreds of times more valuable than the person that talks a big game but is never going to make that introduction. And so the thing that I always focused on after somebody had shown me one right. After the fact that they’ve shown, Hey, they can deliver, those are the people that you want to take care of. Those are the people that are the heart and core of your network and your relationships. And that’s something that I continue to this day. You know, the people who have been the most involved, the most invested in the Sales Success community, and who, again, didn’t talk a big game but just continually delivered, right? The ones who brought people to the Sales Success Summit, the people who consistently on schedule without my having to harass them to death, deliver sales tips. And you know, I mean, you can find those people on the show. It’s really, really obvious. And in particular, Jeff Bajorek and Jason Bay. Every week they’re on the show and they’re the people that I have to worry about the least. So what I’m gonna encourage you to do this, I’ve gone a little bit long, as I got up on my soapbox today, but I want you to think about that idea of show me one, right? Then the next time you’re in that conversation finding that one opportunity to be able to execute and work on right now. And then think about who’s already in your network that’s already showed you one that showed you two or three, and they’re wired the way that you want. They already believe in you. They already trust you. You already have that Goodwill. What can you do for them? How can you make sure that you are paying it forward and paying it back to them and really investing in those relationships because over time they will absolutely be the most valuable. All right, thanks for listening to today’s tip. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and come back tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“As salespeople, we have an endless number of processes that we engage in on a day to day basis. Sometimes when those processes seem to be bringing success, we kind of do them mindlessly..” – DeJuan Brown in today’s Tip 252

How were you approaching that? How are you constantly trying to improve and finding those areas to work on?

Join the conversation below and send an email to Scott for the Summit podcast list!

DeJuan Brown on LinkedIn
DeJuan Brown on Sales Success Stories Interview
2019 Sales Success Summit

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

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Last week I sent a note to everyone’s that’s registered for the Sales Success Summit and suggested that the ultimate way to prepare for that experience would be to go back and listen to all of the interviews I’ve done with the top 1% sales performers who will be taking the stage at the Summit, and even those who I didn’t have room for in the agenda, but will be joining at the event as an attendee. I’ve started that process myself and I wanted to share these quick excerpts from DeJuan Brown from nearly 3 years ago. We’ve since become really good friends, but this comes from my very first deep dive conversation with DeJuan in episode 6 of the Sales Success Stories Podcast:

DeJuan Brown: The second I think would be a never-ending quest for a better way. I don’t think that in anything I’ve ever done or any activity I’ve ever undertaken, there’s not been a better way to do it, a better way to kind of approach it. And so I’m always on a quest for finding that better way. With regard to sales, with regard to relationship building, with regard to service and that assumes really that I can’t be the best in every area. And I think that that lends to, lends itself to humility, which is a trait that I really covered.

Scott Ingram: With the never-ending quest for a better way. How were you approaching that? How are you constantly trying to improve and finding those areas to work on?

DeJuan Brown: That’s a good question. I think it starts with that question, right? So you know, you have, as salespeople, we have an endless number of processes that we engage in on a day to day basis. Sometimes when those processes seem to be bringing success, we kind of do them mindlessly. And so when I try to do is to avoid that and be intentional about asking the question like, is this the best way possible to do X? Right. And that could be from prospecting. That could be from how I actually dial. That could be from a voicemail leaving or email drafting every process that I engage in on a day to day basis at some point. And hopefully continuously. I’m always asking the question, is this currently the best way? And that’s a sets me out on a quest for to research, right. So I mean it’s Google is a beautiful thing when it comes to this type of research because you could literally Google the best way to do whatever it is that you are engaged in and continually reading new articles, listening to new podcasts, new angles and directions on everything that we’re doing and never believing that we have it sewn or we have the market cornered on proficiency or efficiency or productivity.

Scott Ingram: If you click over too DailySales.Tips/252 you’ll find links to more about DeJuan Brown including this full interview from episode 6 of the Sales Success Stories podcast. And if you’re interested and want to go on this same deep-dive review of that podcast that I’m on. Send me an email at [email protected] and just ask for the Summit podcast list and I’ll be happy to send that to you.

Thanks for listening. Make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast in your favorite podcast app and come back tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“When you are working with a buyer, do your prep, do your homework, know what they care about and take your talk track whatever it is and tailor it…” – David Weiss in today’s Tip 251

How do you know your audience?

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

David Weiss on LinkedIn
David Weiss on 1st Sales Success Stories Interview
David Weiss on 2nd Sales Success Stories Interview
2019 Sales Success Summit

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 Weiss of ADP who’s been a regular fixture in the Sales Success Community having now made 2 appearances on the Sales Success Stories podcast, he contributed to the book project and will be on the stage again at the Sales Success Summit next month. Let me hand things over to David for now and I’ll tell you where you can find links to all of that stuff at the end:

David Weiss: Good Morning Sales Success Community. David Weiss here coming at you with some tips for the day. My tip today is “Know Your Audience.” So I was on a call recently and with myself, the CFO of a fairly large company and another salesperson. And we started the conversation with this sales salesperson kind of using our standard talk tracks, which we have built to be pretty concise for the HR community. And we were going through them and our value proposition and the CFO stopped us probably halfway through the talk track and just said, “Hey look, you know, love your ideas, but this just isn’t a fit for our organization.” And I jumped in and started asking some questions around their role, their responsibilities, and the main things they’re tasked with an organization. So for instance, CFO’s are often tasked with saving money, reducing operating expenditure, finding ways to make an organization a more revenue, consolidating vendors. Doing different things that directly impact an organization’s revenue flow or money management or things along those lines. So I started asking questions around that and they were like “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m tasked for. That’s exactly what I’m trying to accomplish.” And I then said to them “Okay, well here are the main ways our solution directly impacts those things.” And they said, “Wait, so you’re telling me the expenditure I have here, here and here you all are going to decrease?” And I was like “Yes and we’re going to decrease it by about this much.” And they were like “Well that would mean this many, this much more. And it was in millions of dollars to my organization.” I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right and that’s normal and that’s what we do every day.” And I said, “Okay, now you’re speaking a language I can hear.” And from there the conversation evolved and it went really well. And this person now championed us to the HR and operational partners that we also often work with. So my, my point to the audience is this, we all have typical buyers that we’ve built talk tracks for. There are buyers that we also touch within the life cycle of a deal that may not be our standard or that we may have not developed very specific talk tracks for. And my recommendation is absolutely to do so. Know what’s in the head of your buyers. Know your COO’s care about, your CHRO’s, your CFO’s, your CEO’s know what the kind of trigger buttons KPI’s things that they’re mostly tasks or things that they care about. And make sure you build individual talk tracks for them. Because in the same vein, if we went to a CHRO with a CFO talk track, they may be excited if they’re highly business-minded, but it doesn’t necessarily impact the core things that they’re trying to do. So when you do that, you’re going to be able to speak a language the person you’re talking to can hear. Because otherwise, you might as well almost be speaking German to an American citizen. Cause they just don’t get it. They won’t be able to truly hear you, truly understand you. They may get the gist, they may see some value, but it doesn’t resonate to what they’re trying to solve for. So that’s my tip of the day. When you are working with a buyer, do your prep, do your homework, know what they care about and take your talk track whatever it is and tailor it and lead with the most important things in the things that people care about and the things that they want to hear from you first, and then you can go into everything else. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate your listening. More to come!

Scott Ingram: For links to all things David Weiss just click over to DailySales.Tips/251

Then come back by tomorrow for another great sales tip.

“Know where you need to go, know where you are and know how to get there.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 250

Do you have a process problem?

Join the conversation below and check all the links to Jeff’s previous tips in this series!

208: You Don’t Have a Closing Problem
215: You Have an Opening Problem
222: You Have an Engagement Problem
229: You Have a Discovery Problem
236: You Have a Questioning Problem
243: You Have a Rapport Problem

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 Jeff Bajorek. This is part 6 of Jeff’s 16 part series that he kicked off back in tip #208 called “You Don’t Have a Closing Problem.” I don’t know about you, but I’m really enjoying the way this is coming together. Here he is with today’s installment:

Jeff Bajorek: You don’t have a closing problem. You have a process problem. Do you have a defined sales process? Do you know how to make the sale you’re trying to make right now? Can you explain that process to your prospect? Because chances are if you’re really on the cutting edge of things, if you’re really demonstrating your value as a trusted advisor, you’re going to be telling them about something they don’t know anything about. You’re going to be showing them a solution to a problem that they don’t even know they have yet. I want you to think for a second about how impressive of a proposition that could be, but we’ll get to that at another time. You are guiding someone through a process that they are unfamiliar with. Are you at least familiar with it? If you don’t know the steps it takes, if you don’t know the people, who need to be involved, if you don’t need to, if you don’t know how long it’s going to take, how on earth are you going to make the sale? Look, you don’t need to have a 19 step definition for everything that you’re going to need to do over the next couple of months or a couple of weeks, but you should have a pretty darn good idea of what it’s going to take and when you have a good idea of what it’s going to take, not only can you stay in control of the meeting or the interaction you’re having right now, but you will be able to ask for the next step when it’s appropriate. So many sales processes get just get hung up in these, these follow up loops. “Oh, I had a great conversation with that prospect. Okay, cool. What’s next? Oh, I didn’t ask. Oh, I’ve got to follow up with that. Yeah, I’m going to follow up.” What happens when you say you have to follow up? It basically means that you’re starting over from scratch because you didn’t take care of the opportunity when you had it in front of you and ask for that next step while you had that person’s current attention. Know where you need to go, know where you are and know how to get there. Think about this stuff before you get going. The whole process becomes a whole lot smoother and you end up speeding sales processes up because you’re not slowing buying processes down. Your selling process is going to be different from your prospect’s buying process. You will not be able to create any additional urgency on their part, but you will be able to avoid slowing things down.

Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff and for links to the previous tips in this series just click over to DailySales.Tips/250 that’s also where you’ll find the video version of Jeff’s tip.

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