“We need to represent ourselves as a subject matter expert and build trust and credibility with our prospects.” – Mike Kelleher in today’s Tip 730
How you can use some past successes that you’ve accomplished in a sales incentive program as a selling tool?
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Honoring Performance
How to Reward Top Performers When Incentive Trips are Canceled
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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 Mike Kelleher from Terryberry. Mike is a Certified Recognition Professional and a recognition industry veteran of 15 years. As the director of Terryberry’s Honoring Performance division, Mike’s expertise is in designing and implementing Performance-based Recognition programs. Terryberry manages some of the largest and most complex incentive and performance-based recognition programs in the industry. Here he is:
Mike Kelleher: Hey Scott, thanks so much for the great introduction. I can speak for everybody here at Terry Berry and tell you that we appreciate our partnership with you and the Sales Success Summit and the Daily Sales Tips. That’s very much appreciated, and we’re happy to share with the audience today. As Scott mentioned in the introduction, you can probably tell I’m obsessed with sales incentive programs and performance recognition programs. It’s what I think about constantly on a daily basis, making sure that we are designing programs that are going to effectively motivate people to achieve a high level of sales performance. And then, of course, to deliver great and meaningful awards for those top performers who meet their objectives.
And so my tip today, I wanted to play off kind of our expertise and share some ideas on how you can use some past successes that you’ve accomplished in a sales incentive program as a selling tool, and to help you build your own personal brand with new prospects and with existing clients, because really what’s one of the most important things that the successful salespeople do early in the sales cycle. We need to represent ourselves as a subject matter expert and build trust and credibility with our prospects. As we’re trying to foster these new relationships and position ourselves as experts.
So knowing that we need to sell ourselves just as much as we need to sell our solutions, I would challenge everyone to evaluate whether you’ve made your accomplishments as visible to your prospects as could be, because it can really help enhance your brand and how you’re perceived and making your past achievements more visible to this audience. Isn’t about bragging and it’s not about representing yourself as the best salesperson. This is about representing yourself as a reliable subject matter expert that can lend significant value in their buying process. That’s how you want to position yourself with this group.
So how can we do that? How can we create more visibility of some of our past achievements that can help add on to the brand and how we’re perceived?
Well, first off, we can make sure that LinkedIn profiles contain some of that information of the achievements that you’ve made. That’s an easy first step to make. Outside of that, I think it’s being aware of potentially working in some of the awards that you’ve earned in these programs and creating visibility there. And we try and help our clients do that with the awards that are presented to their top performers. This could be a president’s club lapel pin that you’ve earned. It could potentially be a custom watch or an award ring that’s been received. There’s other ways that you can incorporate the program logo or the program identity into things that are used on a daily basis in the business world, whether it’s a program logo that’s represented on your business card. If you’re presenting business cards and exchanging business cards after COVID is over.
But these are things that you can be mindful of to create conversations around your past successes, which lead your clients to understand that they’re dealing with a seasoned expert and a subject matter expert, that again is going to bring value to their buying process. So again, I would challenge you to look at how you can bring those past successes in to help build your brand and help create the trust and credibility with your clients that are going to help you succeed in closing those deals. So again, thanks so much for having me on, I wish everyone great success in 2021 and good selling.
Scott Ingram: For more about Mike, Terryberry and how they build incentive programs and for a link to their webinar that’s coming up this Thursday, January 21st on How to Reward Top Performers When Incentive Trips are Canceled, just click over to DailySales.Tips/730 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!