“Think bigger because when you think bigger, you’ll do better.” – Jeff Bajorek on today’s Tip 208

Do you have a closing problem?

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

Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
Jeff’Bajorek on YouTube
JeffBajorek.com
The Why and The Buy podcast
Monday Musing: You Don’t Have a Closing 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 Jeff Bajorek is back in his resident spot on most Thursdays and I’m really excited about this idea that he’s kicking off in today’s tip. Here give a listen:

Jeff Bajorek: People ask me all the time for help closing sales. They say “Jeff, I’ve got a closing problem. I need some help getting the ball across the goal line. I just need to finish the job and I’ll be so much better off.” Well duh. But there’s a lot that goes into finishing the job. You don’t have a closing problem so much as you have an opening problem, a messaging problem and engagement problem, a preparation problem. You see where I’m going with this. Now, I sat down for a while and with the help of a couple of friends, including Scott Ingram, I put together a list of 16 problems that you are more likely to have than a closing problem. And I want you to think about the sales process as a whole. I want you to think about that puzzle that you try to put together every time you start prospecting a new client. And when you think of all the pieces in the puzzle that need to be put together and unless you have all of the pieces that puzzles never quite complete using that same metaphor. Sure, I’ll keep going. The closing piece, the last piece, how hard is that one to put in when you have all the other pieces where they need to go. So I want you to think about your so-called closing problem. When I want you to think about all the other pieces in the process that get put together in one place, in the right places, in order to make that close actually happen. And I want you to work there. I came up with 16 of those kinds of pieces and I put them all together in a white paper that you can get on my website at JeffBajorek.com now I’m going to direct you back to my podcast, The Why and The Buy. Where recently I recorded a 10 minute or so episode about each one of these 16 problems that if you alleviate will alleviate your closing problem, but you don’t even have to do that because regularly here on this show, I’m going to go through each one of these 16 problems in a little more detail so you can really maximize the benefit of the lesson and consider each one individually. My tip for you today is to think bigger because when you think bigger, you’ll do better.

Scott Ingram: All of this sounds to me like just one more reason to make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast and for you to tell you friends to subscribe to the podcast because this series alone is going to provide a ton of value, but do yourself a favor and get a sneak preview. On the website at DailySales.Tips/208 we’ve got links for you to Jeff’s white paper with all 16 problems as well as to his episode on The Why & The Buy podcast where he talks them through.

More to come my friends. Thanks for listening!

” I try to always think about what is the “so what”, are the what’s in it for me factor for the prospective customer as well.” – Jacquelyn Nicholson on today’s Tip 207

So What? What’s in it for the person you’re selling to?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Jacquelyn!

Jacquelyn Nicholson on LinkedIn
Jacquelyn Nicholson on Sales Success Stories Interview
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Coaches, Mentors and You by Jacquelyn Nicholson
Sales Success Stories Book

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 thought we’d continue the theme that I started off on Sunday talking about how we need to consider the buyer’s experience in tip 204. Then yesterday Jason in some ways extended that idea in tip 206 with his ideas around prospecting with cohesive messaging. This clip from my conversation with Jacquelyn Nicholson, way back in episode 8 of the Sales Success Stories podcast, does a nice job of bringing it all together.

Jacquelyn Nicholson: And then the last thing for me comes from the genesis of my career where I wasn’t always selling. Before this, I used to be the person sitting across from you, Mr. Seller, to buy something. And for me, it came down to something I call “so what”. So I would sit there and I would listen to these vendors coming in to talk to me endlessly and it was really to the point where I was sitting there you know as they blathered on and on and on about how fantastic their product or their service was and I was thinking. So what? Do you even know what I do? Do you even know what’s important to me? And so for me, I find that that’s a really a deadly mistake that sales professionals can make is going on and on. And so I try to always think about what is the “so what”, are the what’s in it for me factor for the prospective customer as well.

Scott Ingram: If you want more from Jacquelyn you’ve got several options. You can listen to our original interview. You can join the listener list at DailySales.Tips and get access to the video of her presentation at last year’s Sales Success Summit titled: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Coaches, Mentors and You OR you can pick up a copy of the Sales Success Stories book and read the three stories she contributed to that. Links to all of those and more are available for you at DailySales.Tips/207 where you’re always welcome to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

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

“Because if you send something that doesn’t relate to a prospect, it doesn’t matter how fancy the video is or how much time you took to handwrite a direct mail piece, they’re just not going to respond.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 206

How do you make a cohesive message to your prospect?

Join the conversation below and share your ideas!

Blissful Prospecting
Blissful Prospecting Newsletter
Jason Bay on LinkedIn
137: Writing Cold Emails Using the REPLY Method – Jason Bay

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 really great prospecting tip. Here he is:

Jason Bay: What are the big trends that I see in prospect and right now is everyone’s talking about multichannel and multi-touch prospecting, using two or three different, you know, mediums, whether that be a phone, email, social, direct mails, a big thing right now. And I really believe that what’s getting lost is the message. So don’t get me wrong, the number of touches in the channels that you use is extremely important because that’s what’s required to break through to prospects these days. But what is getting lost in translation here is what the message says. Because if you send something that doesn’t relate to a prospect, it doesn’t matter how fancy the video is or how much time you took to handwrite a direct mail piece, they’re just not going to respond. They might appreciate the personalized effort and that sort of thing. But if it doesn’t address the challenge that they’re having when you don’t have a strong value prop or it’s not personalized in a way that really resonates with them, they’re just not going to respond. So what I want to talk about is the importance of message over medium. So we really believe at blissful prospecting that the message that you give as much more important than the medium that you give it in. And that message is something that can be repurposed to an email, a cold email. It can be in a personalized video that’s 45 to 60 seconds. And it can be used when cold calling too. So how you talk about what you do, how you relate with the prospect. It can be used in voicemails and that sort of thing. So what I want to focus on here is making the message cohesive. So what that means is essentially the whole message is connected. So I did a past episode that’s linked in the show notes for the reply method. So I want to talk about the pieces of a cold outreach message that are important and needed. And then how you can connect those. So the REPLY Method, the R stands for Results. So your value prop, what results you can get for the prospect. The E is for Empathy. So what challenges the prospects having, how they speak about things in their own language. The P is for Personalization. So what are you picking out about the prospect or their company? Something that’s unique, that’s different from every other prospect. The L for Laser-Focus. So how that applies here is, you know, how long is the email? Is it, you know, three to five sentences or less? Is the video, 30 to 60 seconds is the voicemail less than 30 seconds, et Cetera. And then lastly, you have the Y which is You. So making it about the prospect. So the way that we structure this is we lead with personalization. We follow that with empathy. So that’s the challenge. Then we share the results that we can accomplish. And then we have the call to action, which is that laser focus part. So what I want to do is give you a very tangible example of a client that we’re working with and how all of this comes together. So the client sells CPA and accounting services specifically to marketing agencies under 50 employees, 40 to 50 employees. And their primary persona is agency owners. So a big challenge agency owners have when they’re hiring is maintaining their profit margin. So that’s what we’re going to focus this one on. So that first piece of personalization could be you picking out companies on LinkedIn and filtering by companies that are hiring that have active job posts right now. So the personalization in email or voicemail might sound something like, “Hey, notice you’re hiring for content marketing managers. Sounds like things are going really well.” So the personalization is connected to that challenge of hiring and maintaining profit margins. So the next piece in the messaging is the empathy. So you might say something like “Hey, hiring is an exciting time. But what our agency clients tell us is that they’re also worried that costs could get out of control, especially if they don’t have a way of tracking profitability down to the employee.” So I’ve personalized it. The personalization is connected to this empathy challenged piece that I just shared. It’s related to hiring. Now we’re going to get into the results piece. We help agency owners by providing the same site insights that they would get from a full-time CFO. You’ll learn how to budget for new hires, know when those new hires will be profitable, and most importantly, how to track their individual profitability. So you know if you might need to let them go in the future. So the results piece, again, it’s connected to hiring. So the call to action here at the end is also connected. We’d love to share a few strategies our agency clients are using to make sure they maintain their profit margins as they grow. What’s the best way to get some time on your calendar. Right in that call to action will differ slightly, right? Depending on if you’re sending an email, a video, or, or leaving a voicemail. But you can see that the personalization is related to hiring. It connects to the challenge. It connects to the results that you’re telling them that you can get in your call to action is also connected. So make sure that your message is cohesive and make sure that you’re really focusing on what it is that you’re saying. And then looking at the mediums in which you’re going to say it and next, and you’ll find that you’ll definitely increase your reply rates and you’ll get more prospects telling you things like “Hey, yeah, I definitely resonate with what you said. You know, let’s chat.”

Scott Ingram: If you’re getting as much out of Jason’s tips as I am, you’ll want to do what I just did and sign up for his email newsletter. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/206 for a direct link.

Thanks for listening and be sure to swing by tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“That team player mentality is what makes you win and then you and your whole team win.” – Paul DiVincenzo in today’s Tip 205

Do you also have a team player mentally?

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

Paul DiVincenzo on LinkedIn
Paul DiVincenzo 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. Today’s tip comes from my conversation with Paul DiVincenzo in episode 40 of the Sales Success Stories Podcast. At the time or our interview in 2018, Paul had been the #1 top performer at Cintas for 4 of the last 5 years. This was just one of his gold nuggets of knowledge:

Paul DiVincenzo: What I’ve noticed is the average salespeople at least in my industry. I can only speak to that is they are not a team player is the best way for me to describe it. I think that the average rep thinks that they are a lone wolf. They can do it all on their own and that they don’t want anybody to take their glory whether that because they got credit for the sale or whatever it is. But I think that to me is what the definition of average is and I’ve seen it specifically on performance. So you know we’ve got many many reps and that’s always what I see is they feel like they can do it all on their own verses. Even though I guess I wouldn’t call it mentorship but being a team player at least in most many sales organizations today you have to be a team player and you have to be great at it. To really get the largest accounts and largest deals to come together and finally be done and that team player mentality is what makes you win and then you and your whole team win. And the numbers reflect that.

Scott Ingram: If you’d like to hear my entire hour and forty-minute conversation with Paul you can just click over to top1.fm/40 and that’ll take you right there.

Thanks for listening and make you’ve subscribed to the podcast in your podcast app and come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“But the net of all of this is we’re not thinking enough about what that buying experience feels like for our buyer” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 204

How is my prospect experiencing this process from me? Am I helping lead them through that process?

Join the conversation below and share your ideas!

Sales Success Stories Book – Volume 2
Sales Success Stories Book
B2B Sales Mentors Book
Sales Success Stories
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 are listening to the daily sales tips podcast and I’m your host Scott Ingram. Today I’m going to do something a little bit differently. Typically, I actually script out a good chunk of these tips and I kind of read that script and just try and make it sound like I’m not reading a script, but today is a little bit of a rant and we started this conversation on Friday a once a month we have an attendee, a networking call for the folks that have registered for the Sales Success Summit. We’ve had some great, great conversations. It’s just we’re trying to build relationships going into the summit since it’s still a couple of months away, put faces with names, try and add some value going into that event. We’ve had some really, really interesting conversations and one of the things that came up that I kind of prompted in Friday’s conversation was we are not considering the buyer’s experienced enough in the way that we’re selling. So just this last week, getting back from vacation, I bought a Tesla. I took delivery on the car the day that I got back from vacation. And with that, there were actually essentially three different purchasing components to that. Right. So there was buying the Tesla itself, which was much, much better than the traditional buy a car at a dealer experience where, I gotta go back and talk to my manager and this process takes three, four hours. It was all online. I went up to the domain in Austin to drive the car cause I hadn’t been in one and so great experience there, but they’re just there to kind of show it off. There’s, there’s no sales pressure. They’re just there to provide that service and give people the experience because they know, right. If you’re buying the car, you know everything you need to know, what does a salesperson at a car dealership, know these days that we haven’t already found out online. So I just needed to get in the car and validate that decision. And when I did it was kind of no brainer. And from there go online, go order it. You know there were very, very few moving parts. It was a very, very simple, straightforward process. So Tesla did a great job. The next piece was working out the financing for the car and so I went to a couple of different banks and you know to play the rate game a little bit and what it frustrated me through that process, the application process and getting the quotes and all of that, that was pretty straightforward, pretty easy. What I wasn’t it really excited about is I actually ended up spending the only real kind of work that I did on vacation. The only time I pulled out my laptop was to finish the basically closing the loan and getting the loan funded and Tesla page so that they would deliver the car and there were too many parts of that where I was doing the follow-up and I was managing the process, where I really felt like the bank that I took the loan from should have been doing that. They could’ve easily been more proactive about that process and made it so way more seamless for me to wear. I mean there at the end of the deal, the ordering document was a one-page document and we did it on DocuSign. So super easy. Once we got there, the steps in the middle could have used some work. And then the last experience I had was finding the electrician and getting the quotes for the installation of the charger in my garage. And that was fascinating because the front end of that process was great from both companies that they had a really easy online form. And I sent in pictures of what I was saying, I didn’t even talk to a salesperson. Right? So, that’s its own issue. We won’t go into that, but the response is what was broken at least for one of the companies. So the next morning I get both quotes within about an hour of each other. The first quote is the best quote, right? It’s a great rate, but it was completely generic. There was just nothing of substance in this email. And in fact, the email came from generic email addresses. Actually, it looked like it came out of QuickBooks, which was confusing. It didn’t come from an individual. It came from the company. There was no phone number, there was just the quote information. It was like, “Hey, just sign this and send it back and we’ll schedule your installation.” The next quote, response was almost twice as much, but it was laid out great, right? It was, here’s a couple of different options. We can do this. One of two different ways. Here’s quotes for both approaches. It came from a human, the human’s name was Scott. So he had a leg up and then the, his very next email, minutes later was, here’s why you ought to do business with us. Right? And it was just a great human articulation of this is, this is the type of company that we are, this is why we care about the stuff and this is why we do this type of work. And then I got a text from Scott and said: “Hey, I just emailed you all the stuff, you know, let me know how I can help.” So there wasn’t anything crazy that he did. And you know, I think they missed an opportunity because all I did is send them the previous quote and they matched it. He could have sold the, he certainly could’ve gotten a couple of hundred extra dollars out of their service because it was more valuable. So hopefully he’s not listening to this. Well, I already signed to the coast, so we’re good. But the net of all of this is we’re not thinking enough about what that buying experience feels like for our buyer. And I think obviously in B2B there’s a lot more complexity to this a lot of times. And where the conversation went as we talked through this as a group on Friday is sometimes when you sell something that doesn’t fit into a very natural box like that they’ve bought before, if it’s unique, then your process is even harder. Because a lot of times they don’t even know who they need to go talk to. Who do I actually sell this to? So my challenge for you here, and I guess the tip in all of this is we need to give some more thought to how is my prospect experiencing this process from me? Am I helping lead them through that process? And asking them the questions about the steps that they might have internally that they might not even be aware of or haven’t thought of yet, and making sure that you’re not asking them to now go sell your solution internally. You need to get into a position where you’re the one that gets to do that. So the help that they should be able to provide is, “Hey, help set up the meeting, but let me do the work.” You shouldn’t have to do this right. When, and that might come to finding the budget or getting through contracts or getting through the other procurement steps or whatever that is. But at any point, if there’s an opportunity for you to do the work and for you to be proactive and do the things that need to get done in that buying process, that are just things that they, they have to do internally, right? You, you can’t sign the contract for them. You can’t allocate the budget for them. Right. But really getting in and anything else where you can again, help lead through that process and take things off their plate and make that experience better. I think a couple of things happen. One, it’s a massive differentiator. It builds a ton of trust because the natural thinking there is okay if they’re this good on the front end in the sales process and the sales experience, they’ve got to be great on the delivery side of things and on the customer service and customer experience side once I become a client. And you become so much more referable, right. That experience is so much easier to say, “Hey, you ought to buy a Tesla.” Because this is the experience that you get to have, and it’s not like the regular crappy car buying experience that you normally have. It’s so much easier to refer that versus, well, you could talk to the sales guy. He helped me, but you know, it is what it is. That’s not the kind of referral that I want. Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and I will see you tomorrow with another great sales tip.

“We’re all human. We all have doubts. We’re all afraid sometimes.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 203

I guess it was just helpful to hear this over and over again from so many different amazing individuals.

Join the conversation below and check Conan O’Brien’s podcast!

Conan O’Brien Episode 21

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. If I’m being totally honest with you the quality of tips the next couple of days might take a bit of a dip. I worked my butt off to make sure we had enough stuff to keep the show going through my entire two-week absence, but what I didn’t really plan for was what I was going to do when I got back when there are so many other things that required my attention. All that to say that today’s tip might kinda suck, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Over the course of my vacation, we drove over 2500 miles from Boston through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and then most of the way around Newfoundland. My original plan was for us all to listen to family-friendly audiobooks in the car, but somehow or other that never happened and instead, my wife started playing episodes from Conan O’Brien’s podcast: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and we kinda couldn’t stop. My girls were having fun with them so we must have listened to close to 30 episodes.

The one takeaway through all of that, that I thought might be relevant for you is how much I heard the imposter syndrome theme. Here Conan is talking to some of the most successful entertainers in the world. People who have worked incredibly hard over typically decades who massively doubted themselves a lot of the time. It made me realize that that’s probably a pretty universal feeling. The problem is that doubt and fear can really hurt us if we let it. You’re never going to get the meeting with the true decision-maker if you’re thinking: “who am I to be talking to the CEO of a Billion dollar company” or “What do I know? I’m just a sales guy.” We’ve all had thoughts like these, but what you start to realize over time is that we’re all just people. Top business leaders, the most successful entertainers. Heck, top salespeople. We’re all human. We all have doubts. We’re all afraid sometimes.

I guess it was just helpful to hear this over and over again from so many different amazing individuals.

One bonus tip for you here as well. At the end of episode 21 where Conan interviews Nicole Byer, he tells a story about a text exchange with his assistant that starts at about the 51-minute mark and takes about 5 minutes. It’s not appropriate if you’ve got young kids with you, but I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. Do yourself a favor and give a listen. We’ll put a link in the show notes at DailySales.Tips/203 and see if you don’t laugh until you cry or pee or whatever.

Anyway. Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another sales tip. I’m not sure if it will be great or not though.

“Recovering from vacation and getting back into the zone at work is what’s top of mind for me today, so I thought I’d share a few ideas that might be useful for you the next time you return from being out of the office for a while.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 202

What do you do? Do you have any tips or tricks that have helped you to quickly and productively recover from a vacation break?

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

Sales Success Stories Book – Volume 2
Sales Success Stories Book
B2B Sales Mentors Book
Sales Success Stories
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. If you’re a regular listener to this podcast you know that I’ve been out on vacation for the last two weeks and just got back. Recovering from vacation and getting back into the zone at work is what’s top of mind for me today, so I thought I’d share a few ideas that might be useful for you the next time you return from being out of the office for a while.

The first thing I try to do, and somehow forgot this time is to set my Out of Office message to indicate that I’ll be returning the day after I actually get back. I usually do the same thing with my calendar and block my first day back. That way, at least in theory, you get a day that’s relatively free of meetings, interruptions and people expecting to hear back from you to get through all of your emails, get organized and in a place where you can be relatively proactive when you officially return – rather than having to spend a couple of days in all out fire fighting mode trying to get caught up.

Then, if you’re anything like me, the first big task is tackling all of that email. I came back to just over 1200 messages, which isn’t too horrible considering I was out for a full two weeks. I’m sure the Out of Office message I had setup helped reduce the volume as well. I’m a daily inbox zero guy, so having 1200 messages to contend with feels pretty daunting, but I see this as an opportunity, and if you’re not the inbox zero type, but aspire to be the same opportunity exists for you as well. Having this volume of emails helps me see what really matters and what doesn’t. It allows me to more clearly see what types of newsletters and other services really add value. It also becomes really clear who’s just sending me too much email. The unsubscribe link becomes my friend and helps make future Scott’s inbox that much easier to manage.

From there it’s all about digging into the real messages. Invariably this is going to create an action list. I use a tool called Todoist to manage that list and what I love about Todoist is I can both select due dates for tasks, and I can also easily drag things around within a given day to place high priority items at the top. For me, the key is to avoid the feeling of overwhelm, which would sort of defeat the purpose of having had a nice break to refresh and recharge. Going through and getting organized this way helps me clearly see what requires immediate attention, and what can wait a few days. It’s also fun to watch issues resolve themselves and not require an action after all.

With email out of the way, it’s time to check in with my boss and my colleagues who were covering for me. Here I want to capture anything that I didn’t already pick up in my email triage, and then it’s on to my pipeline. What moved and what didn’t while I was out? Which conversations and opportunities do I need to prioritize so that I don’t lose any more momentum from a deal flow perspective.

With all of that done. It’s basically time to crank and execute against that prioritized action list I’ve built for myself.

That the gist of my approach. What do you do? Do you have any tips or tricks that have helped you to quickly and productively recover from a vacation break? I’d love to hear it. Feel free to add a comment at DailySales.Tips/202 or just send me a note directly at [email protected]

Thanks for listening and be sure to check in tomorrow for another great sales tip!

“Fish where the fish are. ” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 201

How do you help people in the way that it’s going to be most productive for you?

Join the conversation below and share your ideas!

Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
Jeff’Bajorek on YouTube
JeffBajorek.com

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, talking about fish apparently:

Jeff Bajorek: Headline Management 101. Fish where the fish are. Now, you know how you can help. You know what your company brings to the table. You also know who you can help. So within those boundaries, how do you do that? How do you help people in the way that it’s going to be most productive for you? Now, look, you have to always, always, always put the customer’s best interests first, but you always have to remember that you have a job to do. So within the boundaries of how you can help and who you can best help. How can you get your job done? How can you make sure that you’re selling enough of the right things to enough of the right people? I think this requires a little bit of planning and I think within that planning you start with the most expensive thing that is reasonable for you to sell and reasonable for them to buy and you work back from there and you lead with that expensive product. You let them know that you have that to offer them even if they’re not ready to buy it right now. If you find out that’s just not going to be a good fit either ever or just right now, then you move on to number two and then you move on to number three and then you move on to number four. You should have a plan for what you can sell to people. You should have a plan for the multiple solutions you can sell to these companies and you should start with the thing that is going to be most productive for you both. Don’t try to sell small-dollar items to the people who are ready to buy the high ticket items. Also know that if you are only comfortable selling small-dollar items, you got to find a lot of people to sell them to because the number doesn’t change the factors in the equation do so you can sell a few things at a high price or you can sell a lot of things at a low price, but if you’re not spending your time in the right places, then you’re going to have a hard time getting your job done. If you don’t hit that number, you’re not going to keep your job. If you don’t keep your job, you don’t get to help. That is not a path I want to see you go down. I also do not want to see you go down the path of trying to put the wrong solution in front of the wrong customer. This is a thought process, right? If you’re going to fish you and if you want to catch a big fish, you need to fish where the big fish are. If you’re okay catching a whole lot of little fish, if they’re going to be harder to cook, they’re going to be harder to prepare. They’re going to be harder to sell, so you need to spend more time there. But from a time-management standpoint, from a solution management standpoint, understand what you bring to the table, understand who you best can help and make sure that you’re helping the most people in the most productive, in the most profitable way possible. Think about this ahead of time and you will be much more prepared for your sales calls. You’ll be much more prepared for your sales meetings with your manager and you’ll be much more prepared to hit your number.

Scott Ingram: Given that I’m taking down my own “Gone Fishing” sign today and returning back to work after a two-week vacation with the family. I’m hoping I’m more mentally prepared to tackle the rest of 2019. Now to be fair, I recorded this before I left, but I suspect I’ll have some new thoughts and insights to share with you from my trip, probably this weekend.

So make sure you’re subscribed, keep on listening, and as always with each of these tips you’ll find the associated videos from those who provide them. Jeff for example ALWAYS includes a video version of his tip. The transcripts are there as well if you’d prefer to read these things and hopefully, you’ve already joined the listener list and can look forward to my weekly emails coming your way again next week. You’ll find all of that at DailySales.Tips/201

Thanks so much for listening, and as always. I’ll talk to you, tomorrow!

“There’s a better way to engage stakeholders and then do your product pitch. Use sales insights to engage critical stakeholders and use these meetings to better understand their goals and concerns. ” – Chris Ortolano in today’s Tip 200

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Chris Ortolano of Outbound Edge is back to help us all eliminate the “muddle” in the middle of the sales pipeline. Here he is with today’s tip:

Chris Ortolano: Do you lead sales meetings first with a demo, then pivot to case studies and white papers? That may leave your audience in the dark, especially if they don’t really understand what or why they need to change. There’s a better way to engage stakeholders and then do your product pitch. Use sales insights to engage critical stakeholders and use these meetings to better understand their goals and concerns. Influencers and decision-makers are more willing to evaluate new products once they understand the market forces, technology trends and how similar companies are adapting. First, you’ve got to know who’s who in your buying group? There are four groups of stakeholders in almost every complex buying decision Advocates, Influencers, Adversaries, and Partners. Use an integrated account mapping solution or a simple worksheet to quickly identify the key contacts in each of these four groups. Next, develop a stakeholder engagement plan. The first round of conversations in any sales process must convey something compelling about market forces, technology trends and how specific companies are adapting to change. Don’t drone on with facts and figures, case studies or white papers. By tailoring your sales insights specifically for someone in the decision making role, you quickly open up a two-way conversation that is both relevant and personal. To connect with an influencer. First, reach out and connect with a potential advocate in your prospect company or an existing account. Ask them, what problems are you working on solving these days. Be sure not to pitch your product or services at first. The key to stakeholder engagement is to build relationships based on mutual understanding, benefit and ultimately trust. You have to be patient and persistent, not spammy or salesy. To differentiate from the many other vendors who are hungry to set demos but not building trust. Then what’s the ask? Ask your advocate for an intro to one of the influencers inside their company and reference the sales insights you wish to share. You might reveal a few insights, but not all as it’s important to get the meeting with the influencer first and bonus use video or a product narrative to really make your insights pop. Let your advocate know the sales insights meeting is only 10 minutes. Reach out to decision-makers in series and gather there company-specific insights with each new meeting. Keep building relationships, sharing your sales insights and gathering knowledge. When your stakeholder engagement is complete, you are now prepared to report back to the buying group. Your report should reflect a blend of your sales insights and there are current states that allows you to propose a product or service your stakeholders are ready to use.

Scott Ingram: As always you can click over to DailySales.Tips/200 for more, and be sure to connect with Chris on LinkedIn if you haven’t already and ask him for another complimentary template to help you develop your own sales insights process so you can start engaging influencers and decision-makers today.

Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Jeff Bajorek