“When your prospects are telling you that you lost on price, it really means that you failed somewhere in your sales process.” – Andy Racic in today’s Tip 189

Do you lose on price too?

Join the conversation below and share your experience!

Andy Racic on LinkedIn
Tango Health, Inc.

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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from a long time fan of the show and friend of mine, Andy Racic, who is the head of sales at Tango Health here in Austin. Andy along with David Weiss is getting ready to release a book together called Your Sales Career Guide. Just keep listening to this show and I’m sure we’ll have a tip from one or both of them the day that book is available. In the meantime, here’s Andy with today’s tip:

Andy Racic: You’re not losing on price. Or at least you’re not losing on price as frequently as your prospects would have you believe.

If you’re selling something that’s close enough to your competitor’s solution and you’re coming in at double their price, sure, in those cases you’re losing on price.

Realistically though, unless you’re in an early-stage startup, your company will have pricing guidelines that are in line with the rest of the market, so when your prospects are telling you that you lost on price, it really means that you failed somewhere in your sales process.

The next time you’re about to deliver a proposal, make sure you’ve done your due diligence to really understand what’s most important to your prospect. Ask them to stack rank the business outcomes they’re trying to achieve with your solution. Directly confirm with them that they understand and value of each piece of your proposed solution and how it solves for their desired outcomes. Ask them “if the price were equal between our solution and the others you’re currently evaluating, who would you go with?” and then ask them why. Understand who else they’re speaking with and how your solution compares to theirs. If you’re not doing this work, you’re not doing all of the jobs. Instead what you’re actually doing is hoping that your prospect is doing this work for you. And you’re really hoping that your competitors aren’t also doing this.

Scott Ingram: To find links to connect with Andy just click over to DailySales.Tips/189

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

“So my goal with these seven productivity hacks I’m going to share with you is to get back a little bit more of your time every day by helping you be a little fast from the computer.” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 188

What is your favorite productivity hack?

Join the conversation below and check out all the links!

Jason Bay on LinkedIn
Blissful Prospecting

Links to app recommendations:
Paste
Freshstart
PowerTools
Skitch
Keyboard shortcuts:
Mac/PC
Google Chrome

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 Jason Bay of Blissful Prospecting. Actually, this is more like 7 tips for the price of 1. Give a listen:

Jason Bay: One thing that we want to do as salespeople is really optimized and increase the amount of time that we spend in front of potential prospects selling and things that tend to get in the way of that or you know, meetings or we’re spending too much time on the computer looking for certain things. Or we might just be hunting down prospects and we don’t have efficient systems for going after them. So there are a lot of things that get in the way of us spending more time in front of prospects. And I don’t want to help you with all of those today, but what I do want to focus on is the time that you spend on your computer, you have sat next to a lot of salespeople in my career and in my observations, I noticed that they tend to waste anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes every day because they’re just too slow on the computer. So they can’t find out where that file’s located, that they need for that slide deck. They have certain things that they could be copying and pasting, but they handwrite every single time and there’s certain tasks they do that are inefficient and it just do it the same way over and over and over again. So my goal with these seven productivity hacks I’m going to share with you is to get back a little bit more of your time every day by helping you be a little fast from the computer. So make sure to check out the show notes. If it’s an app that I recommend, it will be linked-to in the show notes. So tip number one is using an app called Paste. This is only going to apply if you’re a Mac user, which I suspect is quite a bit of you that listened to this. But what I find with copying and pasting is there are certain phrases that I might respond to with our prospect that are very repeatable. It tends to be the same things over and over again. There are also certain like I have multiple scheduling links depending on what kind of meeting I’m scheduling and what Paste allows me to do is like I can actually bookmark all of this stuff within the app and then was a simple keyboard shortcut. I can open up these bookmarks and quickly paste them. So I don’t have to like rewrite the same things over again or hunt downlinks or things that I like to copy and paste. Tip number two is to Max out the speed on your mass and trackpad. This is a tip that Noah Kagan shares over at sumo me and one of the things that’s going to feel really weird when you do this. It’s going to feel like things are out of control on your computer but so you might incrementally work it up. But once I’ve gotten to the point where you maximize the mass on track speed, it’s not so slow for me to like, once I see what I want to click on, the amount of time it takes for me to actually click on it is a very, very short amount of time. I’m not limited by the speed of the trackpad or the mouse. Number three is use keyboard shortcuts. So again, this is going to be linked in the show notes because it’s going to depend on if you have a Mac or a PC. And if anything, I would recommend the shortcuts for Google chrome because all of you are probably using Google chrome, I would imagine. So with keyboard shortcuts, my goal is to spend at least amount of time and possible moving the mouse or trackpad to click on things. If I can do it on the keywords can be much than you haven’t been moved the mouse and click it. So switching between tabs, opening up new tabs, closing them, switching between windows just on your computer using keyboard shortcuts is gonna really, really increase the amount of speed that you have tasks switching. Number four is batch similar tasks together. One thing that I see a lot of reps doing is they only use their calendar to keep track of appointments and meetings. I mean, that’s one way to use a calendar. You obviously want to use it that way, but the big benefit you’re going to get from a calendar is also scheduling in advance and helping you prioritize things that are important versus urgent or that might be both. So for example, there might be things that you’re doing throughout the week such as writing proposals and the proposals might be something that, “hey, I need to do this within 24 hours.” But a lot of us, as soon as we get off a sales call, we immediately go into writing proposal and let’s say that’s a two o’clock in the afternoon. Well, that’s like prime time to be hitting the phones, so make sure that you like block off in advance. Maybe it’s two or three days a week when you’re sending out proposals. If it’s called blocks and you know that, hey, the afternoons are the best time to get hold of people and I tend to make these calls, I need to follow up with prospects that just haven’t heard back from or whatever. It may be. Block those times out in advance in your calendar so you don’t skip them. And so that you’re utilizing the best times of the day to make those calls. Number five is a Google Chrome extension called “Fresh Start.” So if you’re doing a particular task, and let’s say it requires you to have three to five different windows open at a time, or you can say, “Hey, I have a list building task and needs, LinkedIn sales navigator, lead IQ, and maybe some other stuff open, whatever you’re using, you can just click on a bookmark that you create for that.” And it’ll open up all those windows at once for you so you don’t have to open them individually. Number six is Power tools. Probably not going to apply if you’re a big company, but if you’re at a smaller company, you might be using Google sheets to sort a lot of your data and like, do you do it? It’s just a must-do. You gotta check it out, it’s going to save you a ton of time. And then number seven is an app called Skitch. So a lot of times we’re, you know, sending emails over to people and then asking them for feedback when it would be easier to just take a screenshot and then like point at what you want feedback on or to annotate it and like write something on it. So definitely would check out Skitch. So those are the tips. Hopefully one of those helps you save some time, but we would love to hear back from you. So let us know what your favorite productivity hack is by leaving a comment.

Scott Ingram: As Jason mentioned the show notes for this tip are pretty extensive and include a bunch of great links for you. To get to those details just click over to DailySales.Tips/188

Then make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast and come back tomorrow for another great sales tip from Andy Racic!

“Sometimes you just gotta have a little fun. Sometimes you have to risk doing something that won’t work in order for you to hit the nail on the head. Trying to avoid failure is no way to succeed. ” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 187

How about you? 

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

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 in his regular spot with today’s tip. Here it is:

Jeff Bajorek: They can’t all be zingers. You remember a couple of weeks ago I gave you a Daily Sales Tips. I’m about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and word. You know, what do you want to be when you grow up? Look, maybe that tip landed right at home, right where it needed to. I can tell you on my end it is not aging well. That is not my best work, but I was willing to take a risk. There’s actually a pretty solid principal underneath that in terms of asking questions that are going to be emotionally engaging and differentiating rather than the same old, same old that your prospects have heard from other mediocre sales reps that you do not want to appear to be like. But instead, it came off as a diatribe about the ratio between peanut butter and jelly. And I didn’t even mention that I would prefer crunchy peanut butter over creamy, but none of that matters because you know what? Sometimes you just got to put it out there. Sometimes you just gotta have a little fun. Sometimes you have to risk doing something that won’t work in order for you to hit the nail on the head. Trying to avoid failure is no way to succeed. I want you to think about that, and I also want you to think about the idea, the concept that if you try to please everybody, you will thrill no one. Think about those two things. Think about those two concepts as you go to work today. As you go to work tomorrow and the next day after that, don’t be afraid to get on the edge a little bit. You’re going to succeed a lot more. You’re going to have a lot more fun, and that’s what it’s really all about.

Scott Ingram: For the video version, the transcript and links to the greatness that is Jeff Bajorek just click over to DailySales.Tips/187

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

“We overcomplicate sales. When you call someone cold and you ask them for a minute to tell them why you call, they’re gonna probably say “No” because you’re a stranger. Like that is the basics of human interaction.” – Dale Dupree in today’s Tip 186

How do you write a great sales email?

Join the conversation below and share your ideas!

Dale Dupree on LinkedIn
Dale Dupree on Sales Success Stories Interview Part 1
Dale Dupree on Sales Success Stories Interview Part 2
Josh Braun on LinkedIn
Sales DNA

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. For those of you who have been following along, today marks the first day of my vacation and thanks to James Muir, Jason Bay, Jeff Bajorek, Dale Dupree, Jack Wilson, Chris Ortolano, and Andy Racic, the show will continue uninterrupted while I’m out. Today’s tip comes in the form of a clip from part 2 of my very long, but very valuable interview I did with Dale Dupree on the Sales Success Stories podcast. This “part” clocked in at just under 2 hours, so there’s tons more where this came from if you enjoy it. Here’s the clip:

Dale Dupree: It’s basic human interaction. I talked to people, so like anybody listening right now, I want you to go to your emails that you send out for cold prospecting that you keep wondering yourself like “Man, what am I doing wrong?” Or “Could I do better?” You know, I’m only getting at a 20% open rate or whatever it is. I want you to go and read those emails. I want you to read them out loud and I want you to read them out loud to like your mom or your dad or someone that loves you so that they can break it to you a lot easier than somebody that you don’t like. When they tell you that “Honey, nobody talks like that in real life.” You know, when I look at sometimes when I look at reps emails, and I was guilty of this at an early stage in my career that the words we use are obnoxious. You know, like we try to sound like I don’t know, like these scholars inside of the industry, right? Like, well all of a sudden you’re talking to Archimedes. The copier sales rep, out of nowhere. And to me it just, that makes sales complicated sale. We overcomplicate sales. When you call someone cold and you ask them for a minute to tell them why you call, they’re gonna probably say “No” because you’re a stranger. Like that is the basics of human interaction. So my approach starts there is that like I’m proactive in my sales walk where I say to myself what is normal about what I’m about to do and what is not normal. So that I can tell my prospect before I started pitching or even get the conversation going that “Hey look, I know what you’re expecting out of this call and I don’t like it either, so let’s try something different.” Right? So I just liked the approach of again like being transparent and that process is not like the surface level transparency that a lot of people talk about. Like the authentic leadership behind what transparency means. Like being a leader day in and day out as a salesperson, as a sales professional is extremely important. You know, and it ties back into the servant leadership as well too, which carries a lot of great principals that salespeople need like empathy. And so I think about all those things when I write an email, like have some empathy when you write an email, right? Like you will literally the opposite of the way that you sound right now, most likely. And people will look at it and go, “Huh, I’m interested” But Josh, do you want to know who writes great sales emails as Josh Braun. I met Josh Braun not too long ago, maybe about a year or so ago. And I’ve always been interested in him, Sales DNA. He’s a great dude. His cold emails are fire, right? And the thing is that he writes emails to people the way that he would want them to be written to him. Like again, like the principle of basic human interaction matching and marrying, right? All these, these very simple psychological effects that we work on. I took span and I took Sandler sales training and I learned the challenger sale and I mean I’ve done a ton of different sales training and gone through processes in the early stages of my career and even over the years just to dabble in it. But I’ll tell you that every time that what I see and what kind of as a climax to my statement, what I get out of it is that everything we tried to make everything a move and a technique and a tactic, but people just want to be treated like a human freaking being.

Scott Ingram: As always you’ll find links to everything Dale Dupree related, well maybe not everything, but certainly both part 1 and part 2 of this long-form interview as well as his LinkedIn profile and more at DailySales.Tips/186 We’ll have a link to at Sales DNA on that page as well.

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

“An ecosystem maturity model is a simple way to paint a picture, further qualify your prospects and engage even more stakeholders.” – Chris Ortolano in today’s Tip 185

Do you have your own ecosystem maturity model?

Join the conversation below and let us know!

Chris Ortolano on LinkedIn
Outbound Edge

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 Chris Ortolano. Chris is a sales productivity and enablement consultant based in Seattle Washington, who works with fast-growing companies to help them eliminate the “muddle” in the middle of the sales pipeline. Here he is with today’s tip:

Chris Ortolano: Buyers are building technology stacks. Yet many sellers are still only pitching single-point solutions as if their own solution is some type of standalone product. Then after the demo and before the proposal, an endless series of emails are exchanged to determine whether the stakeholders in the buying group are ready to make a decision. This sales process does little to help you understand your stakeholders, clarify their concerns, and demonstrate how your product actually improves upon their existing technology stack. There’s a better way. An ecosystem maturity model is a simple way to paint a picture, further qualify your prospects and engage even more stakeholders. Workflow solutions allow you to quickly diagram where your product or service that’s in the technology stack and understand the other types of tools your prospects are commonly using. Once you’ve diagrammed your ecosystem, here’s four questions you can use on your prospecting calls. First, many of our customers use products A, B, and C to solve problems 1, 2 and 3. How are you solving these types of problems? Two, our solution captures data specific to the X and Y parts of the Z process. How are you solving these types of problems? Three, executives use our dashboard reporting to understand critical KPIs and changes over time. How are you currently submitting progress reports to your executive leadership team? Four, our product also provides robust APIs with products A, B, and C, which allows for less context switching and more comprehensive department-wide reporting. How much time would that save you each week? Now, take 10 minutes to live role-play using your own ecosystem maturity model to help you get really comfortable using this new prospecting approach. By showing your stakeholders how your product fits into their ecosystem and listening closely to how they respond, you start to understand their most important business requirements. You’ll close the deal faster than you would have otherwise and faster than competitors who are still generically pitching a demo with only features and benefits. Use your ecosystem maturity model to develop more contexts for your stakeholder buying groups. Listen for their unique questions and concerns, then propose a solution they are ready to use.

Scott Ingram: If you’d like more from Chris click over to DailySales.Tips/185 there you’ll find a link to his Outbound Edge website where you can learn more about the 6 step middle funnel approach that is proven to help you engage more stakeholders and reduce sales cycles by highlighting the business process with your sales process.

You can also connect with Chris on LinkedIn and he’ll share a complimentary Lucidchart template to map your technology ecosystem, and then you can start using the 4 ecosystem prospecting questions today.

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

“They have a hard time with the pitch and an easy framework to follow, to deliver a super crisp pitch every single time is something I call ‘Que PASA’.” – Rajiv Nathan in today’s Tip 184

Do you have your own formula to follow?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan!

Startup Hypeman
Rajiv ‘RajNATION’ Nathan on LinkedIn
Startup Hypeman: Offer
Startup Hypeman: The Podcast

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 Nathan: Most sales reps who have a job of doing prospecting through email or cold call or even the sales reps whose responsibility it is to talk to the customer once they are already have gone through that initial 15-minute discovery process have a really hard time communicating what it is their company actually does. They have a hard time with the pitch and an easy framework to follow, to deliver a super crisp pitch every single time is something I call “Que Pasa.” It’s what we use it start a pipeline. Now if you’re familiar with any Spanish whatsoever, then you would know that “Que Pasa” means What’s up or What’s happening. So my philosophy is when you give your pitch, all you have to do is tell people “What’s up!” relative to the industry or to your business and “Que Pasa” has acronym P.A.S.A. Problem, Approach, Solution, Action. Problem, Approach, Solution, Action. Problem, Approach, Solution, Action. Why don’t you go ahead and say one time with me? Listen on your audio. I will imaginarily listen in on my end. “Problem, Approach, Solution, Action.” Good. So really what we’re accomplishing here is a much different way to pitch your company. See, most reps and even most founders of the company are used to talking about themselves, their company in a way that is entirely centered on what it is that they do. So they will pick up a phone or they will send an email and they will say, “Hi so-and-so, we are a midsize tech company that specializes in working with companies like yours, specializes in working with midsize legal firms and provide them a solution that doubles their contract review speeds.” Right? Something like that. And what that’s doing is just going in and saying “Hey, look at me. I’m awesome. I’m great. Work with me.” So what you want to do with the “Que Pasa” method is flip that entirely and instead start with empathy. Because when you start with a problem, you are going into that message. You’re going into that pitch by saying, “Hey, I understand that there is something going on in your work life that you don’t like, but you would like to fix that you’d like to change.” After that, you deliver the approach. The approach is a catchy, maybe even a sexy one-liner that tease up who your company is and what you do. The solution is what you’re teeing up for. So that’s the next, Problem, Approach, Solution. Solution is what do you do? What results do you provide? Finally, Action is your Call to Action. What do you want them to do? Are you looking for a meeting? Are you looking to get a response of some kind? Are you looking for them to download something, right? That’s those are all examples of an action step, “Problem, Approach, Solution, Action.” Start with the problems. You can create empathy upfront and show your prospect, your potential customer that you understand them and what’s happening in their life. Then you use that understanding to segway into a specific approach that you have towards that problem and the approach again is your catchy sexy one-liner, which then leads into the solution you provide that ultimately alleviates this pain and a result that could be expected. Finally, your action, which is your call to action, tells them, here’s what you have. Here’s what I want you to do about it. Here’s what I’m looking for out of this interaction. That is the formula to follow. That has helped a number of startup hype man clients get their message across and get their message to stand out to their specific audiences.

Scott Ingram: Click over to DailySales.Tips/184 where you’ll find links to all things RajNATION including his Startup Hypeman podcast. He’s also offering a free 10-minute SaaS Masterclass where he’ll talk you through step-by-step gameplay to revamp your messaging and demo calls to attract higher quality leads and improve demo conversion rates by as much as 26%. Plus the video he has on his website is awesome. Go check it out.

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

“Changing the minds of buyers, breaking out of the stereotypes and building real trust, not just as individuals, but as a true profession.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 183

What do you think?

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

Bravado
Cycling’s Best Performance Enhancer: Riding in the Peloton
Study reveals the best place for Tour riders to be in the peloton if they want to make the break
Aerodynamic drag in cycling pelotons: New insights by CFD simulation and wind tunnel testing

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. Yesterday I talked about some of my takeaways from having read Into Thin Air, a story about Climbing Mt. Everest. Today I want to talk about some science related to the Peloton in cycling and kind of wonder out loud if there’s an opportunity for all of us to leverage some of these findings together across the sales profession as a whole. So let’s start with what a Peloton actually is. While I’m not watching the Tour de France this year I’ve watched it many times in the past and if you want to see this in action that’s a great way, watch a stage of the Tour that’s happening right now through July 28th, but the Peloton is the main group of riders. This happens in all big bike races where you’ll see this tightly grouped pack of riders. Now they do that for the same reason that Geese fly in a V. Those at the front block the wind for those behind them, but last year some scientist in the Netherlands did some super detailed wind tunnel based studies on this phenomenon and found that it was WAY more efficient than anyone knew. I’ve got some great links at DailySales.Tips/183 to the study which has some awesome images as well as some other articles that comment on the findings that aren’t so technical. Basically, someone riding in the middle of this thing is experiencing 10% of the wind resistance that they would be experiencing if they were riding solo, and if you go even further back in the pack it’s as little as 5%. One of the articles I have linked for you suggests “it’s as if a rider is cycling at 12 to 15 km/h in a peloton that is speeding along at 54 km/h.” In other words, it’s massively efficient.

Here’s what’s interesting about all of this. Obviously, cycling is a competitive sport. It’s both an individual sport, but also a team sport, and if you really look at how the Tour and other big races play out the team element is massive as they work together typically in support of a single lead rider. What makes the peloton so fascinating is that it’s the default configuration for what I’m going to guess is easily 90-95% of any given race. That is all of the teams are working together to boost everyone’s performance and the winners are just decided in short bouts that typically take place on big climbs and in the final sprint at the end of each stage. So now you’re wondering, Ok Scott, but what does any of this have to do with sales. Well, here’s my thought. Too much of the time, we ride alone. The full force of the wind in our face at 0% efficiency. It’s a rare sales team where they truly work together to get better together and bring everyone along in their slipstream. Rarer still are multiple teams working together. I really don’t have any kind of answer here, it’s really more of a vision and a challenge. What if we started thinking both within our teams and across the entire sales industry with that Peloton like mindset. What if the strongest got out front to break the wind, but weren’t doing it as if they were in a time trial, but in a way where they were supporting the others on their team and in their industry. More proactively sharing their best practices and mentoring those who were following behind. What if together we were working to elevate the professionalism and the profession of sales. Changing the minds of buyers, breaking out of the stereotypes and building real trust, not just as individuals, but as a true profession. One company that I think is really starting to do this, and who I suspect you’re going to hear more about later this week is Bravado. They’re definitely doing some interesting things and I’ve included a link to their website at DailySales.Tips/183 for you, along with links to all things Peloton science.

Give it some thought. How can we be more supportive of each other and get to the point where we’re riding down the road at what feels like 10 mph and experience the results of moving down the road at 36 mph. I think it’s possible if we work better together. What do you think?

“And the reason I thought this was relevant for a sales tip, is that nobody summits Everest alone.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 182

I think we think of sales as a solo sport, but the reality is it’s very much a team sport, just like climbing Everest.

Join the conversation below and share your ideas too!

List of people who died climbing Mount Everest
Definition of 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 I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you after having read the book: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, which is his personal account of the Mt. Everest Disaster in 1996. While I can’t say I loved hearing about the disaster parts and some of the quite vivid details of how people died on the mountain. It certainly gave you a sense of just how dangerous an undertaking the feat really is. In the show notes at DailySales.Tips/182, I’ll include a link to the Wikipedia article that lists all of the people who have died climbing Mount Everest, which after another bad year this year is over 300 people long.

What really fascinated me, though, was just how intense the undertaking really is. The process takes a couple of months, and a lot of that time is just acclimating to the high altitude. At one point the author suggests that if it were possible to take someone from sea level and drop them off on the peak they would pretty quickly die since there’s only 1/3 as much oxygen in the air as there is a sea level.

Perhaps most interesting, and the reason I thought this was relevant for a sales tip, is that nobody summits Everest alone. There are the sherpas, which I learned is actually an ethnic group and not a job description in my pre-reading ignorance. Then there are guides and teammates, and perhaps most importantly the people who have done it before. That opportunity to learn from those who have been to the top, often multiple times, is critical.

Too often I think we think of sales as a solo sport, but the reality is it’s very much a team sport, just like climbing Everest.

It was also fun to think about this in the build-up to the Sales Success Summit. Really until reading this book, I’d thought of Summit in terms of the definition that is a conference of high-level officials. It’s interesting to think of it in terms of the other definition that is the peak, the apex and the topmost level attainable (Thanks Merriam Webster for all of that). I’m even thinking about putting together an acclimation set of resources for those who are planning to attend to spend time with in the weeks leading up to the Summit where they can go back and listen to the detailed conversations I’ve had with those who will be presenting, or even just attending as part of their ascent team to make the actual two day experience that much more impactful.

Anyway, I hope that was useful. Great book if you’re at all interested in what it takes to climb the world’s highest peak and then be sure to come back tomorrow because I’ve got another related thought that further explores the idea of sales being a team sport and how we all might be able to help each other achieve more together.

Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

“Her name is PAM and she’s been the key to winning all my deals and you need to get to know her too.” – Tom Fedro in today’s Tip 181

Is PAM in your building?

Join the conversation below and share your experience!

Tom Fedro on LinkedIn
Free Download: Take Your MEDS
Next Level Selling Book
Paragon Software Group

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 Tom Fedro. Tom just released his book Next Level Selling on Amazon where it is currently a #1 Best Seller. In addition to being an author, he co-founded and developed the business strategy and operations plan for Irvine, California based Paragon Software Group. Using his systems, methods and sales process, the company has sold over 200 million software licenses. Here’s Tom with today’s tip:

Tom Fedro: Hi folks! Tom Fedro here with a tip to help make sure you close that big deal, the six or seven-figure million dollars plus contract sitting on your pipeline report. Over the past couple of decades, I’ve lost a lot of deals, many, many opportunities leaving me with a great deal of what some call experience, but I refer to it as scar tissue from the battles, but I’ve also won many million dollars plus deals with some of the largest brands in the world buying from me and my team, including companies like American Airlines, Halliburton, Sprint, Cisco, Hewlett, Packard, Dell, and many others. What I found when I stepped back to look and analyze the difference between winning and losing, it became crystal clear. Every transaction I won, I had the same colleague with me. When we closed the business and on the deals I lost, she wasn’t there, she wasn’t even in the building. Her name is PAM and she’s been the key to winning all my deals and you need to get to know her too. Our analysis made it clear that every agreement we want without exception revolves around the same core set of qualities that I refer to as PAM. While she can be elusive, she must be at the table for a successful sale to take place. I’m not talking about an actual person here, but the three components of every winning high dollar transaction, our Pain, Authority and Money, P.A.M. if you can’t find her when you’re looking at that high percentage prospect on your pipeline, you’re probably wasting everybody’s time. For example, consider the importance of these three pieces and how crucial it is that they all work together. If there’s no pain, there’s no motivation to close the deal. So it’s not going to happen if you have the pain, but the person across the desk doesn’t have the authority to make a decision. There’s no deal if you found the pain and authority, but the prospect doesn’t have the money to move forward. Again, no deal. So as you look at your near term pipeline that you’re signing up for this month, this quarter or this year, is PAM in the room with you? Have you focused your discovery questions on ensuring there’s enough pain for your prospect to move forward? Have you confirmed the authority is ready to sign with you and the money is allocated for your transaction? You need all three or it’s time to get back to the negotiating table or find another prospect. Make sure PAM is in the building and win more business more predictably than ever before. Good luck and great selling!

Scott Ingram: For links to all things Tom Fedro you can click over to DailySales.Tips/181 where of course you’ll also find a link to his brand new book: Next Level Selling, as well as a link to his personal website where you can download his free “Take Your MEDS” guide to empower peak performance every day. Tom has also been kind enough to offer three signed copies of his book to listeners of this show, so if you’ll just send an email to me at [email protected] mentioning Tom and his book in episode 181 I’ll choose those three winners when I get back from vacation the second week of August.

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

“I could do something that would be transferable from place to place but just doesn’t seem to have the creative spark that I feel I need in order to give you something worth listening to.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 180

How about you? What do you do?

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

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 like he is almost every Thursday with more of a question than a tip, but as usual, it’s thought-provoking and valuable. Here he is:

Jeff Bajorek: Earlier today I was talking to a friend of mine and fellow Daily Sales Tip podcast contributor Dejuan Brown and I said, you know, I’d have a lot more sales tips if Scott didn’t make me record them all on videos. You can watch them as well as listen to them and right then it dawned on me that I had another sales tip. I need to record my ideas better. I need to have a place in a system that’s a little more consistent from day to day and from place to place so that I can put those ideas somewhere where they can incubate a little bit where I can think through them a little bit, flush them out a little bit better so that you get a good sales tip when you listen to something and not some half baked idea that may or may not hit the mark. Now for me, I love pen to paper, but the downside to that is I have a bunch of pieces of paper that look alike, that aren’t dated, that isn’t organized, that just have a bunch of random half-baked thoughts scribbled on them and need to be fleshed out. And then I don’t know how to put them all together. I could, by contrast, put this down on my phone, on my computer. I could do something that would be transferable from place to place but just doesn’t seem to have the creative spark that I feel I need in order to give you something worth listening to. So here’s my question to you. What do you do to capture your best ideas? How do you manage to flush them out? Because even if you’re not contributing to a regular podcast like this, you are thinking about your clients, you’re thinking about your prospects all the time. What do you do to let those ideas, to plant them somewhere to let them grow? I want to know, send me an email JB at JeffBajorek.com or send an email to Scott. Why don’t you comment on this post on the website? Hopefully, you’re going there to watch the videos anyway so that I’m not doing this for nothing and start the discussion there.

Scott Ingram: If you don’t want to email Jeff and I, join the conversation in the comments section at DailySales.Tips/180 and I’ll get us started with a quick thought in the context of this show. I’m a giant Evernote fan and have been for years. I’ve taken over 5,000 notes since I started using it sometime in 2011 and a perfect example of what Jeff’s talking about is a Tips note where I’ve started capturing future tip ideas that I’d like to share. In fact, that’s how I began thinking about two tips that really go together that I’ll share with you this weekend. The first will be called Into Thin Air and the other one is about The Sales Peloton. Capturing them in this way has allowed me to add thoughts to them as they’ve come to mind the last few days. I do the same thing with the agendas I have for future meetings with my clients and for 1:1’s with my boss. It’s an easy way to record those ideas in a way that I know I’ll see them again. You should see the note with all of the Ideas I’ve captured around the Sales Success Summit and one of the things I’ll be talking about during my own productivity presentation at that event is how I regularly review these notes so that I don’t lose or forget to act on some of these ideas.

How about you. What do you do? Again join the conversation at DailySales.Tips/180 and make sure you watch Jeff’s video so he can feel good about the hard work he does for each of these tips.

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