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Sales Success Media

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Peer Accountability & Growth Groups

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Richard Balius is the Head of Sales & Peer Group Coordinator at Sales Success Media. Richard has been leading peer advisory boards for CEOs of small to mid-market companies in Austin for over sixteen years. He’s also a results-driven sales leadership consultant focused on helping leaders deliver sales results in their organizations. Richard has spent his career helping private owners to build sales teams capable of growing revenue and defending margins.

In this episode, Richard shares his extensive knowledge of peer and group learning. With over 350 peer advisory meetings led with more than 50 CEOs, Richard understands the inherent value of peer learning. Scott and Richard break down the three components of group learning, which include peer, accountability, and growth. They analyze the origins of peer learning and speak to the ways in which both sales leaders and individual contributors can accelerate their careers.

Scott and Richard discuss the importance of having a facilitator in peer learning sessions. They delve deep into common topics of conversation that are touched upon in these group learnings, including career aspirations and how to know if your current role is the right one for you. Finally, Richard and Scott discuss the commitment necessary for those looking to join a peer learning group. It requires discipline, time, and, above all, having the right mindset.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott welcomes today’s guest, Richard Balius
06:30 – Richard expounds on the concept of peer learning
08:56 – Richard recalls a significant moment at the Sales Success Summit that reinforced the concept of peer learning
11:21 – How peer learning fosters development above other learning strategies
15:44 – Why it is critical for sales leaders to develop their team members and why many struggle with that aspect
21:58 – Richard speaks to the importance of having a facilitator in peer-group learning
27:12 – How Richard determines the ‘growth goal’
28:49 – The third component of group learning: Accountability
32:24 – Common topics of open conversation in group learning sessions
36:34 – The importance of committing your mindset and time to peer learning
44:49 – Richard invites interested listeners to reach out about the different types of groups offered
50:10 – Scott thanks Richard for joining the show

Tweetables:

“What I know about peer learning is it’s winning all across adult learning.” (06:55)

“The answer is not always your answer.” (15:11)

“When you internally seek out guidance from someone who is either your direct manager or in a sales leadership role and you’re looking for what’s next for me, the challenge is almost anything they say next is no longer an idea but more of a direction.” (16:18)

“Peer is a very powerful thing. And if I can get the learning environment right, people will learn and grow and I know it.” (24:33)

“I think an outside facilitator is a game-changer. I certainly think an outside facilitator changes the game if he/she is doing their job.” (26:38)

“A piece of that commitment, for me, is their mindset. You’ve got to come with the right mindset.” (39:08)

“I’m very compelled by this project and excited by the opportunity to help give individual contributors and sales leaders a place to really accelerate their careers.” (50:31)

Links Mentioned:

[email protected]
Sales Success Stories Podcast
2020 Sales Success Summit
Richard Balius on LinkedIn

2020 Sales Success Summit Preview

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This episode is brought to you by the 2020 Sales Success Summit and you can join us on the Live Stream Experience October 12th and 13th for free thanks to the support of our sponsors: Outreach, Sales Hacker, Vidyard, Terryberry, Alyce, and Gong. To learn more about them and to register for the Summit just click over to Top1Summit.com

I’m taking the week off this week from my regular sales day job to focus on delivering a world-class virtual event next week, and that of course, would be the 2020 Sales Success Summit.

Today I thought I’d give you a bit of a preview and let you know what to expect. Hopefully, you’re already registered, but if not, real quick, right now, click over to Top1Summit.com and fill out the registration form. It’ll only take a minute and thanks to our amazing sponsors the entire event is free to attend.

What won’t be free those is the videos of the sessions afterwards. The reason I’m doing that is because I really want you to be there live. While we’re not able to get together physically in-person I want you to think of this as a regular event. Invest your time, invest your attention, and really be there with us. I hope you’ll block your calendar, set your out of office message, and really engage with us over the course of these two days.

Now I’m technically hosting two experiences simultaneously. There’s what I’m calling the virtual experience that is exclusively for the paid ticket holders who were planning to be here in Austin. That includes all of the presenters and at least count I believe 28 of those individuals are the top 1% performers that you’ve heard here on the podcast. That experience will be super intimate, and we’ll all be getting together in-person next year at the 2021 Summit, because I decided to roll all of their tickets over in addition to providing this more exclusive virtual experience.

Everyone else will have an opportunity to be a part of the Live Stream Experience. This is the free sponsor-supported setup and I’ve asked the amazing Nikki Ivey to help host this side of things since I’ll be busy with the core of the Sales Success Community in the virtual experience.

Let me first walk you through the timing. The core event and content will take place from 10am to 3:30 or 4pm Central Time each day, however, the hour before and at least the 90 minutes after as well as during two breaks between the sessions we’ve got some epic networking opportunities for you. We’ve invested in a platform that’s going to allow you to meet new people, have live conversations and we’ve organized things around a variety of core topics so hopefully, you can go jump into conversations that are most relevant for you whether that’s prospecting in our Prospecting Parlor, enterprise selling in the Big Deal Brainstorm. Maybe you want to dive into our LinkedIn Lagoon or talk about the role you’re trying to hire for in a space we’re calling: We’re Hiring Y’all! There’s a Leadership Lounge, the Mentorship Meetup, and more, all to help you connect with other real sales humans!

For me, this is the main thing that’s been missing from so many other virtual events. That feeling of actually being at an event. It’s more than just incredible content, and you won’t be ushered into a giant Zoom room with 50 other people where it’s nearly impossible to have a productive conversation that meets your own personal needs.

Let’s talk about the content though, because it’s going to be really special.

If you’ve been listening to this show for any length of time then you already know that I only interview active, quota-carrying individual contributors who are either the #1 top performers at their companies or at least in the top 1% inside a very large sales org, and it’s those same people you’ll find presenting at the Summit.

We’ll start with a heavy dose of prospecting. Sarah Brazier is going to open things up and talk about Using LinkedIn to Book Meetings. Then Dale Dupree is going to talk through The Living Pipeline. Then during our first networking break, you’ll have the option of attending a sponsored session from Vidyard where you’ll find Vidyard’s VP of Marketing talking about From Prospecting to Proposals: How to Use Video to Sell Faster in 2021.

Now it’s worth noting that I will be making the sponsored presentations available afterwards so you don’t have to choose between networking and watching a compelling session from one of our sponsors. You can have the best of both worlds in that regard.

Then we’ll come back for one more prospecting dose from Vincent Matano as he talks through his Prospecting Checklist and Advanced Multi-Channel Prospecting.

That will bring us to Jacquelyn Nicholson’s presentation on Building Rapport and Relationships: From Prospect to Customer to Friend

That’ll take us to our second networking break, and if you want to follow along with this you’ll actually find the detailed schedule at the bottom of the page on Top1Summit.com

During that second networking break, you’ll get a chance to hear from Alyce’s Nina Butler who will talk about the ABP’s of Gifting in Sales: How to Win with 5 Gifting Plays.

If you engage fully and contribute to the conversations you’ll have an opportunity to win a gift from Alyce and see their service in action. It’s really cool. I’ll say a bit more about that in my introduction during the Summit.

To round out the first day Evan Kelsay is going to present: Demystifying the 10K for Sales Professionals and Camille Clemons is going to bring us home with Sales is a Team sport before we get to our final After Hours Networking session to conclude day1 on Monday.

Tuesday after our Pre-Game networking session and my short Day 2 welcome you’ll get to hear Matt Du Pont talk about Maximizing Your Commission Per Hour Worked.

When Matt’s done we’re going to dive into a panel discussion with DeJuan Brown, Nikki Ivey, Lisa Palmer, and Scott Leese titled Black at Work: Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination in Sales.

That’ll take us to our first official networking break of Day 2, but if you want to keep going with the Anti-Discrimination theme, Outreach is going to talk about some of their own Inclusive Hiring best practices.

After that, we get to hear from Lisa Palmer again as she talks about Team Selling, Visual Dartboarding, and Winning at Enterprise Scale.

Then Dave Schwartz is going to pick things up and help me make good on a commitment I made at least year’s Summit to delve deeper into the topic of mental health in sales. Something we all probably need to be more aware of, and that was before this current Pandemic situation. So Dave is going to present: The Hardest Conversation Worth Having: Your Mental Health.

Amy Quick will pick things up where Dave leaves off and talk about The Power of Being You.

She’ll take us into our second networking break where you’ll get a chance to converse or checkout Terryberry and Gong. Terryberry will be talking about recognition in a session called: We Want Cash (or do we?)

Then our closer is going to be Leila Mozaffarian who blew us all away with her presentation at last year’s Summit. This year she’ll be talking about Writing Your Next Chapter.

Which finally we bring things back to me where I’ll be talking through the future of the Sales Success Community and some additional ways that you can get involved in learning from and with the best of the best in addition to the announcement of the 2021 Sales Success Summit.

I hope you’re half excited as I am. Tons of great content, plus so many opportunities to connect. We’ll see you there. Top1Summit.com again is where you’ll go to register and to see the full agenda. Tell a friend, tell your team and we’ll see you online. Once you signup you’ll get all the details you need via email prior to the event.

Oh, and stay tuned next week. Like we did last year Jeff Bajorek is going to take over the podcast feed and share interviews that he’s doing with some of the presenters and other attendees. Those were a lot of fun last year, and I’m sure he’ll do a great job again this year.

I’ll see you at the Summit. Take care!

Bringing in the Biggest Deals: Evan Kelsay and Jamal Reimer

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This bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast is brought to you thanks to all of our amazing sponsors who are making it possible for us to bring you the Sales Success Summit Live Stream Experience for free. To learn about our sponsors and to register for the Summit. Just click over to Top1Summit.com

Today I’ve got the audio from a conversation between Evan Kelsay and Jamal Reimer at last year’s Sales Success Summit where they were essentially interviewing each other about Bringing in the Biggest Deals.

Evan was the star of episode 56 here on the podcast where we talked about how he achieved 800% of his annual number at Seismic with a massive deal, and Jamal was featured in episode 61 where we talked about Mega Deals and some of the behind the scenes of how he was able to land 3 different deals, each worth over $50M at Oracle. If you want a shortcut to both of those episodes you can just click over to top1.fm/56 and top1.fm/61 or top1.fm/evan-kelsay and top1.fm/jamal-reimer will take you there as well.

Here they are:

Evan Kelsay on Sales Success Stories Interview
Jamal Reimer on Sales Success Stories Interview
Sales Success Summit

For more content like this make sure you register for the upcoming Sales Success Summit. Again the Live Stream Experience is free thanks to our sponsors, and you’ll find all of those details at TopSummit.com

If you like this content in particular there are a couple of talks I think you’re really going to appreciate. The first is actually a presentation from Evan Kelsay. Evan will be talking about Demystifying the 10K for Sales Professionals. We’ve also just added Lisa Palmer to the lineup. If you didn’t hear Lisa in episode 100 you’ve got to go listen to that episode. Lisa will be talking about Team Selling, Visual Dartboarding and Winning at Enterprise Scale.

Top1Summit.com. That’s the spot.

Once you’ve gotten yourself registered, be sure to come back next week for another regular interview episode. Thanks for listening!

Episode 101: Top 1% Cisco Channel Sales Performer – Ivana Zivkovic Meesters

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Ivana Zivkovic Meesters is a Partner Account Manager at Cisco Systems, an organization that enables people to make powerful connections–whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Ivana works in channel sales, focusing primarily on building relationships with her sellers, leveraging those relationships, and constantly adapting new sales strategies and best practices. A nine-year veteran at Cisco, Ivana has Continue Reading …

Sales Internship Opportunity

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This bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast is brought to you thanks to all of our amazing sponsors who are making it possible for us to bring you the Sales Success Summit Live Stream Experience for free. To learn about our sponsors and to register for the Summit. Just click over to Top1Summit.com

Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast I wanted to tell you about a sales internship program we’re working on building, and ask for your help to identify the perfect candidates, or maybe you are the perfect candidate? If you’re already an active listener, then you’ve got a huge advantage and head start.

As we build towards this year’s Sales Success Summit we’re looking for 3 individuals who will help us proactively reach out to sales leaders at targeted companies to invite them and their teams to join us on the Live Stream Experience.

I’m not even sure it’s fair to call this sales, because all you’ll be doing is reaching out to offer something of value that doesn’t cost a dime.

The perfect candidate is somebody who’s really driven and looking to break into sales, or it could be somebody that’s between roles who’s looking to stay sharp and build some great new relationships and show off their skills to a whole lot of senior sales leaders.

This isn’t a long-term thing as the Summit is less than 7 weeks away and our thought is that you’d put in 20-30 hours a week of effort while also interviewing and otherwise growing your skillset.

We’ll provide all of the tools you need including a top1.fm email address, access to our CRM, a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, and more. You’ll get coaching and support from myself and Richard Balius who has a couple of decades of sales leadership experience.

You’ll be paid for each person within your target accounts who signs up, and after you’ve achieved the requisite number of registrations you’ll earn a seat at the sold-out Sales Success Summit virtual experience with just 100 others where you’ll have an opportunity to interact directly with over 25 of the top-performing sales professionals that you’ve heard on this show. It’s the ultimate networking opportunity.

Our goal is to help you fast track your sales career and grow your personal brand. We’re also planning to hire for 1 or 2 permanent roles after the Summit, and we’ll certainly be looking at the top interns first.

If you know somebody that would be the perfect fit for this internship, please have them listen to this episode, and here’s how to apply. Do it fast because the fuse for this opportunity is super short:

First, register for the Sales Success Summit Live Stream Experience yourself at Top1Summit.com so you can see what it’s like and get the follow-up/welcome email and video from me.

Then get at least 3 of your friends in sales to do the same. Make sure they put your name in the “How did you hear about the Summit?” field. That should give you a sense of how easy it is to ask others to join us.

Then create a Vidyard video introducing yourself and explaining why you’re interested in this opportunity and email it to [email protected] and [email protected]. You’ll also find the free Vidyard plugin at top1.fm/vidyard

Don’t overthink this step. Just record your video and send it, and we’ll reply to everyone who sends one so you know exactly where you stand.

Our goal is to build a really valuable experience. You’ll have an opportunity to earn a few bucks, earn a seat at the table with some of the best of the best in sales today, reach out to sales leaders with something of value, and set yourself up for a great future in sales with the experience, mentoring and relationships you’ll build.

Thanks for your help and thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week with another amazing interview where I’ll deconstruct another top-performing sales professional and try to understand what makes them great. I’ll talk to you then, oh, and thanks so much for helping us find some of the best sales interns the sales community has ever seen.

Episode 100: You Can’t Look Up and Down at the Same Time – How Lisa Palmer Embraced Research, Championed for Diversity, and Found Her True North

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Lisa Palmer is a Global Business Outcomes partner at Teradata, an organization that leverages pervasive data intelligence to deliver analytics that matter most to businesses. Lisa holds a highly unique role at Teradata, focusing primarily on big enterprise sales discussions. Throughout her career she has also acted as a C Suite advisor, CIO & CMO, thought leader, and business coach. Lisa is a structured problem solver and communicator who crafts recommendations directly supported by facts. Using this approach, she has helped organizations pivot to new business models, fix what’s broken, and create quick and sustainable growth-to-scale. To say she’s well-rounded and ingratiated into the zeitgeist of the sales industry would be a gross understatement.

In this episode, Lisa expounds on her role at Teradata and provides insights as to how she navigated a balance between art and science to success in sales. Lisa shares her thoughts on the politics of sales as well as concepts such as reverse mentoring, that she has implemented throughout her career. Lisa lists three specific attributes she believes have contributed to her success and gives the audience a taste of her secret sauce. This includes her positive high energy attitude, her collaborative sales style, and her client-centric approach. Lisa describes a typical day in the life, from waking up early and reading books and articles about sales and business to time-blocking to ensure she structures her workday appropriately. Lisa is a big believer in energy management and, thus, goes to great lengths to ensure she manages her time and energy efficiently.

Lisa speaks to her specific sales philosophy and style that she utilizes when interacting with clients. Lisa takes a unique approach where she poses questions to her clients to allow them to fully grasp what they truly want and need. This helps them to regain focus and clarity on what they want to achieve for their business, their department, and themselves personally. She lays out a framework for her clients that allows them to dig in further. Finally, Lisa poses an actionable challenge to the audience. First, she suggests focusing specifically on your client. That includes going out and doing the proper research. Secondly, she proposes building the strongest selling team around you that you can possibly build by focusing your networking skills inward. Lastly, she suggests tight team communication and making sure that you have a structure around when and how you are communicating in order to set expectations so that you can best serve the clients you work with.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott thanks the sponsors of today’s 100th episode, Terryberry, Vidyard, and Alyce
00:41 – Scott welcomes today’s guest, Lisa Palmer
01:22 – The top three attributes that Lisa attributes to her success
01:44 – Number 1: Focusing on the client
06:01 – Number 2: Building the strongest selling team you can possibly build
12:56 – Number 3: Tight team communication and continually adjusting
15:08 – Lisa speaks to the role that project management plays in sales as well as The Golden Triangle
17:29 – Lisa’s unique role at Teradata
19:21 – Scott takes a moment to thank one of today’s sponsors, Terryberry
20:09 – Lisa quantifies her sales results
20:35 – Lisa shares her personal sales origin story
24:47 – The importance of empathy and communication
26:24 – What Lisa would do differently if given the chance
30:39 – What is resonating with Lisa in the current marketplace
35:52 – Lisa’s favorite sales success story
41:34 – How Lisa manages politics within sales
44:44 – Lisa speaks to the concept of finding your ‘True North’
49:40 – Tools and apps that Lisa uses on a daily basis
51:00 – Scott takes a moment to thank another one of today’s sponsors, Vidyard
53:39 – The books, news, podcasts, and trade information that Lisa consumes
57:33 – Lisa describes a typical day in the life
59:14 – How Lisa structures her workday currently
1:04:45 – The vital role creativity plays in sales
1:06:43 – The specific sales philosophy that Lisa subscribes to
1:08:55 – Lisa’s sales style
1:13:30 – Scott takes a moment to thank another one of today’s sponsors, Alyce
1:14:23 – Lisa expounds on overcoming the challenges of working remotely in sales
1:20:01 – What motivates and drives Lisa
1:22:05 – Scott makes a bold prediction about Lisa’s work and encourages listeners to connect with her
1:23:30 – One of Lisa’s beliefs that the average salesperson would think is crazy
1:26:47 – An average salesperson’s belief that Lisa thinks is crazy
1:28:48 – The metric that Lisa values above all else
1:30:31 – The most important lessons Lisa has learned throughout her career
1:33:31 – Strategies Lisa employs to understand others in order to communicate more effectively
1:34:42 – Advice Lisa would give to an upstart salesperson
1:36:51 – The value of community and, specifically, why Scott continues to build his Sales Success Stories community
1:38:22 – Advice Lisa would give to a struggling, middle-of-the-pack salesperson, especially given the current global pandemic
1:41:44 – Lisa breaks down the concept and value of reverse mentoring
1:46:49 – What Lisa hopes to get out of her experience at the upcoming Sales Success Summit
1:48:29 – Lisa speaks to actions we all can take to be an ally in the fight against sexism in the workplace
1:50:31 – Lisa shares some final thoughts with the audience
1:52:05 – Scott shares some exciting plans for the 2020 and 2021 Sales Success Summits
1:55:07– Lisa’s actionable challenge to the audience

Tweetables:

“I’m a huge believer in research. And so, I spend a great deal of time researching the company itself, researching their industry, researching the individuals that are potentially prospects, or that have invested in our enterprise relationship. And I bring all of that to the table in conversations with my internal team.” (09:56)

“I really think it’s important to embrace the diversity that is available to us today.” (28:33)

“I’m always looking for content that I can share with the individuals that we serve inside of our clients that will help them to continually shore up from a political perspective why they’re doing what they’re doing.” (49:00)

“I believe in energy management. So, literally thinking about what times of the day is my energy the strongest and when does my energy wane.” (58:06)

“I am a firm believer that it [sales] is art and science. I’m an engineer. I believe in science. It’s grounded my thinking and my way that I approach the world for many years. But I also believe that if you adhere strictly to science you are really missing the nuances that make you a great seller.” (1:05:26)

“It’s about making an investment in others, Scott. And I have had so many people throughout my career be gracious and generous and invest in me. It is the very least I can do.” (1:23:15)

“The more that you can expand and diversify the people that are part of your core network, the quicker you will be successful.” (1:35:41)

Links Mentioned:

[email protected]
Sales Success Stories Podcast
2020 Sales Success Summit
Lisa Palmer on LinkedIn
Better Sales Networks Article
HBR Article on Managing Energy, Not Time
Jungle Gym Career Article
Scott’s SDR Guests
Scott’s Enterprise Sales Guests

Sponsors Mentioned:

Terryberry
Vidyard
Alyce

Books Mentioned:

What Great Salespeople Do
The Future of Leadership in the Age of AI1
Confidence Creator
Multipliers

Tools Mentioned:

Vidyard
LinkedIn
Sales Navigator
Simply Wall St App
Microsoft OneNote
Calendly App
Wall Street Journal
Bubble

Request Access to the 12 minute “Secret Track” portion of Scott’s conversations with Lisa: