“I love these emails, because it keeps the whole company in the loop on significant new sales, and most importantly provides an opportunity for sales to thank everyone who was involved in the win.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 1529

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

Scott Ingram on LinkedIn
2023 Sales Success Summit
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Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I wanted to share a great cultural practice that I picked up years ago at Bazaarvoice that I’ve brought over to my current organization. It’s a How The Deal Was Done email, or HTDWD.

These emails are sent to everyone in the company to celebrate new wins above a certain size and all new customers. I love these emails, because it keeps the whole company in the loop on significant new sales, and most importantly provides an opportunity for sales to thank everyone who was involved in the win.

The structure I typically use looks something like this. They start with the customer’s logo and a little bit about them. It talks a little bit about what was sold and the dollar value of the deal. From there it talks about the reasons why we won and then moves on to the all-important thank you section where you can give a shoutout to everyone who contributed to the close.

For me, this is the real point of these emails. It’s all about recognizing your teammates with specific callouts as to their contributions and inevitably there are a few people who went above and beyond who get special praise.

In the How The Deal Was Done email I sent this week I had to massively thank our inside council who on at least a half dozen occasions turned around redlines within hours and literally saved me weeks in this particular deal.

Then the last component is what’s next, and this is an opportunity to talk about what can happen next if we deliver successfully and sometimes I’ll use this section to give a nod to my team members who are now coming into the picture to help onboard the new customer.

It’s an amazing practice that I’d recommend to anyone, especially those in small to midsize organizations. It keeps sales from being a blackhole and helps everyone feel like they’re a part of the team.

For a simple template, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1529 and I’ll have one for you there. Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to tell a friend about the podcast and then come right back for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

HTDWD Template:

Subject: #HTDWD – [Customer Name]

[Customer Logo]

Who: [High-level overview of the customer]

Project/Deal Specifics: [Details around the deal components, what products were sold, etc.]

Deal Value: [Dollar value of the deal. ARR/MRR, etc.]

Why We Won: [Details on why you ultimately won the business]

Thank You to those who contributed to the win: [List individuals by name and describe their specific contributions]

What’s Next: [Details about future opportunities and shoutouts to implementation/onboarding team members who will be taking the lead if appropriate or known]

 

“I am happy I didn’t take a real deep leadership role earlier in my career because I was very self-focused and just wanted to perform for myself.” – Paul DiVincenzo in today’s Tip 1528

How about you? How can mentors help you succeed in a sales leadership role?

Join the conversation below and go check out the full interview with Paul!

Submit a Sales Tip
Paul DiVincenzo on LinkedIn
Paul DiVincenzo on Sales Success Stories Interview
Paul DiVincenzo on Sales Success Stories Interview (Round 2)

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. There’s so much good stuff in this conversation I just had with Paul DiVincenzo over on the Sales Success Stories podcast that I can’t resist sharing another clip. Listen to this:

Scott Ingram: Let me take one quick detour, and then we’ll continue on the journey because this was also your first, if I’m not mistaken, your first real leadership position, correct?

Paul DiVincenzo: Yeah. So I did some regional leadership at Cintas, but it was very brief. So I would consider this my first real leadership, yes.

Scott Ingram: So just quickly, what were the biggest lessons learned there? And what do you wish you knew or what do you wish you had worked on before you found yourself in that position?

Paul DiVincenzo: I think I shared this at the event a few years ago. Number one, I think it came for me at the perfect time. I think people think they’re ready for leadership, or they might want it because that’s the next step of their company or whatever. But I am happy I didn’t take a real deep leadership role earlier in my career because I was very self-focused and just wanted to perform for myself. Whereas because my leadership experience came later in my career, I lucked out a little bit in being naturally ready to not be the center of attention. And I hope that’s the right leadership for most people is to be as selfless as possible and to really be focused on the team and their wins. And earlier in my career, I’m sure I would have been fine, but I don’t think I would have been as ready. So I think I left out there a little bit, but it may be something for the audience to think about, depending on where they’re in their career. And I’ve seen great leaders take it earlier in their career and do amazing things. But I think it’s a maturity game, and so people should really think about that before they take the role and even if that’s what they want to do at that moment.

And so that’s for the audience. What I think I maybe would have liked to do in the run-up to it, I think what I didn’t do just because I was moving so quickly would have been to reach out to some of the great leaders that I’ve had in my career. And I didn’t take the time to do that before I started my first leadership role. I did as I went into the next ones, but that probably would have helped just a little bit because as I’ve done it, post my first leadership role, it comes back to that perspective that I talked about. So I’m pushing myself for growth and by nature of that, I’m literally walking into the unknown. I’m stepping off a cliff that I’ve never been on before. And it sounds common sense in hindsight, like most things, but if somebody is taking a leadership role, and that’s what I should have done is just reached out to people and said, Hey, I’m going to take this role. So it’s not really a question. Here’s what I’m walking into. Here’s the challenge. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. And just simply said, What else do you think I should consider?

And it does not matter what industry they’re from. I have found a very basic comment from that type of experienced person is mind-blowing for me. It would be something that is so basic for them because they’ve been in leadership or they’ve been in roles all the way up through the CRO role. And they’ll just say, yeah, maybe consider this or think about that, or think about, in this case, taking on a leadership role at a startup, you’re building a machine. And one of those experienced folks said to me, and I had already started building the machine, said, Hey, tell me about what you’re doing. I laid it out. He said, okay, you should just think about the machine you’re building for the outcome that you now know. If you need more clarity on the outcome, similar to what I advised the group here earlier, get that from your leadership or CEO or whatever, and then just make sure the machine you’re building is delivering on that because it may not be. It may be just this machine you’ve been dreaming up you’ve wanted to build for so long, but you don’t know it’s going to deliver that particular outcome.

So it’s really getting to what is the minimum effective dose to deliver it and then building on that. I’ll pause there, but the answer, long answer to question is mentorship, network, reach out, have conversations 5 to 15 minutes. It’ll save you five months to a year.

Scott Ingram: For the link to my full conversation with Paul and to connect with him on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1528. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come right back for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Those are the five shifts I needed to make was getting real, unlocking my superpower, getting the secret weapon, which is part of your part of that in the community, raising my standards, and investing in mentoring.” – Paul DiVincenzo in today’s Tip 1527

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and check out the links!

Submit a Sales Tip
Paul DiVincenzo on LinkedIn
Paul DiVincenzo on Sales Success Stories Interview
Paul DiVincenzo on Sales Success Stories Interview (Round 2)

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 from the most recent Sales Success Stories podcast episode that just released today feature my round 2 interview with Paul DiVincenzo as he talks through his sales career transformation. Here’s a taste:

Paul DiVincenzo: I had been at Cintas, almost a total of 14 years in two different stints. So I actually had come back to Cintas. So at that moment, I was about 11 years in. I didn’t make the decision lightly. I really took almost about a year to evaluate, was there another path that I really need to leave the organization?

When I sat down and thought about it, I really, as with most people, just evaluated it, what am I most interested in? And so this is maybe where we can break it up. Instead of the top three things of being successful, what I’ve now categorized them as five shifts that I needed to make to really become a better person for myself and better myself and then be much more resilient going forward. So I had to make five shifts, and I didn’t have those at the time, but that’s what I’ve developed over this five-year period. But at that time I needed to… I’ll lay out the five shifts and then we can go into them if it makes most sense.

So the first one is I had to get real is what I call it. So getting real with myself. I had to identify what I thought was and then unlock my superpower. I had to tap into what I did not have at that time, which now I call my secret weapon, which is a strategic community, Sales Success is part of that. And really having a great network at that time in my career, I did not have that. Most of it was very insulated within one organization or maybe two. And so other people may be able to relate. I had to raise my standard for myself, what I think was possible for myself. And then I think we even talked about it last time. I crippled, doubled, quadrupled down on mentoring.

So those are the five shifts I needed to make was getting real, unlocking my superpower, getting the secret weapon, which is part of your part of that in the community, raising my standards, and investing in mentoring. So that was the journey. The first part of getting real was, especially for people in this community, if you’re a top salesperson, you feel like you’re at the peak of some sort, is to really reflect on what does it mean to be successful for yourself, whether that’s money, family, a combo of those and many other things.

But also too, just sometimes in sales, I found so far as we get a recruiter call, we might be interested in that, or we get some other ping depending on the economy. And there’s a lot of reaction. And so what I did at that time was I sat down and thought about, what do I like to talk about the most? And it could be medical advice, it could have been health, it could have been all kinds of things, but I definitely am a little bit of a techie. So as I sat down and evaluated the market, I decided I want to go into technology, started the journey 12 months, looked at where I wanted to go, and decided technology is the industry of the vertical, if you will.

Scott Ingram: For a link to my full interview with Paul and to connect with him on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1527. Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click right back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“You have to invest in building your network and strengthening those connections BEFORE you need them.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 1525

Who should you reach out to today to shore up a loose linkage?

Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!

Scott Ingram on LinkedIn
2023 Sales Success Summit
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. Today, let’s talk about your network. The people you surround yourself with can help you with just about anything. They can help you find your next role, they can open the door to your next big deal, they can provide you the guidance you need to grow personally or professionally and so much more. But let me ask you this: Are you investing in those relationships? Are you making deposits of social capital so that you can draw on those investments in the future when you need them?

One of the best book titles of all time is Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty, a timeless book on networking, written by Harvey Mackay. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, but it’s point is obvious on the surface. You have to invest in building your network and strengthening those connections BEFORE you need them. Who should you reach out to today to shore up a loose linkage? How can you help somebody in your circle, because someday you might need some help yourself. Thanks for listening!

“Do a good enough discovery that you can narrow down what is most important to that customer.” – Shari Levitin in today’s Tip 1524

Do you know what’s most important to your customer?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Shari!

Take the Quiz
Shari Levitin Virtual Training
Shari Levitin on LinkedIn
Heart and Sell: 10 Universal Truths Every Salesperson Needs to Know
The Sales Development Playbook 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. In the spirit of Jack Wilson’s Less is More tip yesterday, today’s tip comes from Shari Levitin. Shari helps sales teams bridge the gap between beating quota and selling with an authentic, heartfelt approach. LinkedIn recognized her as a Top Ten Voice in Sales and Salesforce distinguished her as a Top 20 Global Sales Expert. Here she is:

Shari Levitin: Three is a magic number. A lot of people don’t realize this, but if you think about a joke, for example, it usually happens in threes. This happened, then this happened, and then this is the punchline. Whenever you’re giving somebody a choice, whether it’s pricing or products, I don’t ever like to give more than three choices. Now, if you’re selling jewelry or you’re selling cars, you’re not going to have three cars on the lot. You’re not going to have three rings in the showcase. But what your job to do as a seller, again, is to do a good enough discovery that you can narrow down what is most important to that customer. If you’re selling jewelry, are you looking for gold or platinum? Are you looking for precious stones or maybe more of a faux jewelry? So whatever the case may be, your goal is to narrow, narrow, narrow, like a funnel so that then you may have 200 things in a showcase but you want to say, Let me show you these three items. Because again, if I start showing you 26 items, people would rather make no decision than make the wrong decision. They have regret.

Scott Ingram: For links to plenty more from Shari, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1524. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“So the better approach is actually to just stick with your top one or two points and not bring up the other factors at all because they actually take away from your buyer’s ability to make a confident and informed decision.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 1523

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and connect with Jack on LinkedIn!

Jack Wilson Sales Tips on Spotify
Jack Wilson on LinkedIn
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. Today, Jack Wilson is back, and remember yesterday when I told you to come back for a great sales tip. Yeah. Give a listen to this:

Jack Wilson: What’s going on, Daily Sales Tip? Jack Wilson back with another tip. This tip actually comes from a lot of recent reading, specifically from the book The JOLT Effect, which I highly recommend. It’s written by the same authors that did the studies for the Challenger sale and the Challenger customer. But what the JOLT effect talks about is how indecision is actually a bigger villain to sellers than the status quo by a 60-40 ratio.

Now, JOLT is actually an acronym, and the L in JOLT stands for Limit Exploration. If we couple that strategy and information together with what we know about brain science and how the fact that when we present arguments to people, they’re not actually additive, they’re averaging. It becomes much more of a powerful concept.

What do I mean by averaging versus additive?

So let’s say you’re in a sales process and you wanted to present rather five arguments to your buyer. Well, if you scored those arguments arbitrarily based on the strength of their merits, let’s say you give two of them 90, one of them is 60, the other one is 70, the overall score is above 300. We think it’s additive and they all combine. But in reality, the way our brains work is we have an averaging effect. So we take all those scores and we average them to about a 70. What that means is that the weaker scores actually detract from your stronger points. So the better approach is actually to just stick with your top one or two points and not bring up the other factors at all because they actually take away from your buyer’s ability to make a confident and informed decision.

So what I want you to do with this information is the next time you go into a sales motion, I want you to create a proforma for yourself. On the right-hand side of the proforma, I want you to write down what your buyer needs or the requirements that you’ve uncovered through discovery or the pain points, however, you label them, what are the things that you’re going to need to provide or solve for or the outcomes that they need. Then I want you to score them on a scale of zero to 100. 100 obviously being the most important, zero being not.

And then on the left-hand side of that proforma, I want you to do the same thing with your recommended solutions to each of those problems. After you’ve created what should be a pretty exhaustive list, I want you to look at the numbers that you’ve created for yourself based on what you know about the buyer and the strengths of your arguments. And I want you to create the average. So average up on the right-hand side, the average of all those pain points or outcomes, and then average up the scores of all your solutions. Whatever that average number is, that’s the median, that’s the middle point. What I want you to do now is to forget about everything that scores less than the median, because what that means is they’re only going to create noise and complication and take away from your opportunity.

So on the solution side, everything you scored above that average, I want you to keep those. And then I want you to align those with the solutions that respond to them accordingly that all score above the median. Now, if you want to do a really good job at this, you can create your own minimum standard by saying you don’t want anything under a B plus or an 80-85. And then you can go only with the strongest, most concise, and clearest argument so that you can avoid indecision. This is a complicated one, so you might have to listen to it once or twice. But trust me, the less is more.

Scott Ingram: I bet Jack would love to average up is LinkedIn connection to conversation score. Click over to DailySales.Tips/1523, click the link to message him on LinkedIn and tell him how much you enjoy his tips. Thanks for listening and come on back tomorrow for yet another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“I don’t have to show every little tiny detailed feature, but I need to understand, what are the top three things that you have problems with. What are your top three pains?” – Mike Wander in today’s Tip 1522

Do you solve problems with your product demo?

Join the conversation below and be sure to check out the links!

EnableMinutes on LinkedIn
EnableMinutes on YouTube
EnableMinutes on TikTok
EnableMinutes on Instagram
Mike Wander 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 our friends at Allego and their EnableMinutes show. This one features Mike Wander. Mike is an AE at Lavender, an AI email assistant that helps you write better emails faster. Here he is:

Mike Wander: How do you lead with product without actually leading with product? Because that’s what sales is. And you focus on that human-to-human interaction. I book a 30-minute call, and that 30-minute call, I accomplish discovery and I also will demo the product. Now, I only spend about five or six minutes actually showing what Lavender does. And the reason being is because I don’t have to show every little tiny detailed feature, but I need to understand, what are the top three things that you have problems with. What are your top three pains? And then I have to be thinking constantly, how is Lavender best suited to help you? And so when I’m talking through the product, I’m talking through, Okay, when your team is using this, your team spends 15 minutes writing an email, it should only take them two. That’s because they’re switching through all these tabs. So let me show you the workflow on how it would look for your team to actually write an email with Lavender. And so I’m showing you features of the tool, but I’m actually just solving your problem. I’m not actually telling you, Well, we do this and we do this, and we can also do that.

Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Mike, and to subscribe to EnableMinutes on your favorite platform, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1522. Once you’ve been over there, be sure to come right back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“One thing that’s really important for sales teams to consider as they’re doing this is to be careful with the customer and inside company information that you might have access to, especially when it comes to demoing your product or showing information about what your product can do.” – Evan Powell in today’s Tip 1521

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and learn more about Evan!

Evan Powell on LinkedIn
Reprise on LinkedIn
Reprise Blog
Submit a Sales Tip

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

Transcript

Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Evan Powell. Evan is a Co-Founder and Head of Operations at Reprise. His background building and scaling SaaS companies spans positions with Glasswing Ventures, F-Prime Capital, and InsightSquared. Evan studied International Finance at Tufts University and received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Here he is:

Evan Powell: I came from sales, and I know that as a salesperson in an engagement with a prospect, our goal is to satisfy their needs, make sure that we’re answering all their questions, giving them all the information that can help them make an informed decision. But one thing that’s really important for sales teams to consider as they’re doing this is to be careful with the customer and inside company information that you might have access to, especially when it comes to demoing your product or showing information about what your product can do.

Accidentally or deliberately showing information that could be considered confidential, aside from all of the potential legal issues and contractual issues with your customers that could create, it also might not be as helpful as you think it is. This actually happened to me recently. I was taking a demo with a vendor, and I asked the question on how their product could do a certain thing that I needed. And they said, You know what? I don’t have this in my demo environment, but let me show you. I had a customer who implemented that way just last week, and suddenly I was looking at customer data. And while it showed me that the product could actually do exactly the thing that I wanted it to do, it also showed me that I needed to be nervous about doing business with that vendor because it might be my data on that demo next week. And we ended up not moving forward with them after that.

And so it was the thing that this is a well-meaning salesperson. The data wasn’t particularly crown jewels confidential, but it was just enough to give me pause and end up going with a competitor. And so I think it’s really important that as salespeople, when we’re in those kinds of engagements, we slow down, take a second and think, hey, is this actually going to help me move forward with this prospect? Or am I reflex trying to help them and doing something that could create a problem for me or my company or just me in this sales engagement?

Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Evan, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1521. Once you’ve been over there, be sure to come right back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!

“Be honest with yourself about where you are across all these five areas and address those that need work head-on. Ask for help from your sales leader. Be conscious of them, and they’ll really be what drives your success more than anything else you do.” – Will Milano in today’s Tip 1520

What’s your thought about this?

Join the conversation below and go check out the links!

Mental Selling Podcast
Mental Selling on Apple Podcast
Integrity Solutions
Ep 052 What the Top 1% of Sales Performers Believe
Will Milano 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 Will Milano. Will is a B2B marketing leader and brand strategist with over 20 years of experience developing impactful strategic marketing functions for professional services brands. He is currently CMO for Integrity Solutions, a leading sales training & development firm based in Nashville, TN, and host of the Mental Selling podcast. Here he is:

Will Milano: A salesperson’s attitudes, their motivations, and their beliefs play a huge part in sales success. Think about it, 70, 80, probably 90 % of what drives a salesperson’s success are these internal factors. And yet the degree of coaching and training that actually focuses here is typically pretty minimal. We’re going to talk briefly today about five dimensions that you can think introspectively about that are the real drivers behind these attitudes and beliefs.

The first is your view of selling. It may sound simple, but a lot of salespeople get into the profession by accident or by chance. Do you really view selling as finding needs, uncovering needs, bringing value, or are you interrupting people’s day? Are you helping your customers make buying decisions that are in their best interests? Or is sometimes selling about being manipulative or pushing to get what you want at all costs? You’ve got to be really honest about what your core view of selling is and address it head-on.

Second is view of your abilities. This is really simply your confidence, your confidence in your ability to make a difference and articulate that value. It’s things like your view of your ability to get and host meetings with senior-level executives.

The third is your values. Everybody strives for things like honesty, integrity, doing the right things, but you’ve got to really go beyond just the buzzwords and get very clear about the specific behaviors and attributes behind them. How are you showing up in the room? What’s your brand as a salesperson? And do your values match what your organization claims that it stands for? That’s another one to get really honest about.

Fourth is your commitment to activities. So this is things like, are you checking boxes throughout your day just to get things done off your to-do list? Are you staying “busy?” Or are you doing the results producing activities that will really create and advance opportunities for you?

And then fifth is your belief in product. This is the degree that you really show the passion and advocacy for what your products and services say that they’ll do. Your customers are going to pick up on this one way or the other. If you truly believe in what you’re representing, then your customers are going to believe in what they can do for them as well.

Are these five dimensions in alignment? If one or more are not, the others are inevitably going to suffer, and you won’t succeed to the degree that you’re really capable of. One of the areas may be weak, but that might not be the problem. It might actually be the symptom of a bigger problem.

So be honest with yourself about where you are across all these five areas and address those that need work head-on. Ask for help from your sales leader. Be conscious of them, and they’ll really be what drives your success more than anything else you do.

Scott Ingram: For a link to subscribe to Will’s Mental Selling Podcast and to listen to the episode that we did together, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1520. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!