I prefer email and mainly because LinkedIn Sales Navigator only allows you to have 30 inMails a month. So I’m doing everything I can by using some email finding tools to reach out to these people. I’m introducing myself. I’m introducing the team. I specify in every email that this could be for business or personal use, because that doesn’t give them an out either way, and I’m asking for 15 minutes for a coffee. So I’m buying these people a cup of coffee once I get the meeting. The meetings never last 15 minutes. They’re usually like 30 minutes to an hour. It’s just very non-threatening to get your foot in the door with some of these companies.
Clip: Allen’s half million dollar sales result and goal for next year
So I hit a personal best from the 16-17 season which just ended in April. I did a half million in ticket sales, and just to put that in perspective. The second highest person in our league did about three hundred thousand. So it was great for me obviously to continue to push myself and so now for next season or the season we’re currently selling for that starts in November. I’m going for six hundred thousand, would be the next logical step. So it’s going to take a lot of hard work and effort, but I’m hoping I’ll get there.
Clip: Allen Schlesinger’s Social Selling Formula: 100-10-2
So I set a personal goal for myself if I’m in the office and not out on appointments to hit about 100 new people every single day. Most of those people I’m reaching out to through email by using LinkedIn and those tools that I mentioned to find those people. And then I try to focus on landing about 10 face to face meetings a week in the Austin area. And hopefully from one leading to the other there 2, roughly 2 new deals that close every week as a result of those efforts. It takes a lot of time to hit 100 people a day, and so that’s why I’ll come in early just to get going faster.
Clip: Allen Schlesinger is the NBA’s Poster Child for Social Selling
LinkedIn allows me to really narrow down who I’m looking for, and then there’s some tools that help you find people’s contact information that I’ll utilize with LinkedIn. Whether it be a tool called Hunter or a tool called Prospect Works that really help you. They basically find people’s contact information. They scour Google for you. So I’ve really kind of embraced it and the NBA seems like they’ve used me as their poster child pretty much for social selling. Where now I’ve talked to probably a third of the teams in the actual NBA as well as all the teams in the development league. I’ve gone to Charlotte to present at the American Hockey League meetings and then I presented two times now at the NBA D-League meetings. One in Chicago and one in Indianapolis. It’s been fun teaching about this and I think it seems like more teams now are investing their financial resources and time into learning more on how to utilize social selling
Clip: Allen Schlesinger on Social Selling: “I haven’t made a cold call in 5 years.”
They refer to me as the LinkedIn Guy in our office. I don’t make any cold calls at all. I haven’t made a cold call in over 5 years. In our industry that’s been kind of a no-no. It’s still somewhat smile and dial, but I think it’s slowly changing. Social selling has allowed me to get in doors that I would have never got to before. I’ve sold tickets to two of the six billionaires in Austin. Those people would not have taken my phone calls, or their executive assistants would have blocked me from getting into those doors. It opens up an entirely different world that you’ll never get into by phone call.
Clip: Allen Schlesinger – Sales Differentiators: Persistence, Hard Work and Building Relationships
There’s a few things that have really helped me set myself apart. One is persistence. I probably don’t know what the word ‘no’ means. I’ll follow-up on numerous occasions. I utilize texting quite a bit to touch base with people. Then the other thing is working harder than everybody else. I’m in the office every morning at 7:30 with my coffee. Starting my day that way just to get ahead of everybody else and have that hour to myself where I’m just focused. The last thing is really building relationships. I really try to build friendships with all my clients where I’m not just hanging out with them at our games. I’m also hanging out with them socially. Whether it’s my wife and I or them and their wife. Stuff like that.
Episode 21: Social Selling his way to the top of the NBA Development League – Allen Schlesinger of the Austin Spurs
Allen Schlesinger — Social Selling
You don’t need cold calls if you sell on social.
Allen Schlesinger is the Premium Sales Manager for the Austin Spurs. He has been the #1 seller in all of the NBA Development League (NBA G League) for the last four years consecutively. Allen started off with no experience in sales, and has risen to become one of the top sellers in his industry — and he hasn’t made a cold call in five years! Allen uses social selling on Continue Reading …
Clip: Barry Womack – Listen to Yourself and Get Feedback
Clip from Episode 20 featuring Cvent’s Top Enterprise Sales Rep – Barry Womack:
I think one of the biggest things is listen to yourself and take feedback. Even today, 7 years into my sales career I always ask for feedback. I ask for feedback from my customers, my prospects, especially the ones I feel like I have a good relationship with. I’ll always ask for feedback. What did you think? How did we do as a team? Also ask your colleagues. Ask your executives and people that are involved in these conversations that you have. So just ask for that feedback and I think you’ll find that people are very willing to give it and are there to actively help you improve. I’m a big advocate of listening to yourself so I record almost every meeting, demonstration that I do on WebEx. So I’ll fire it up, I’ll always ask for permission from the customer and kind of use it as a… I’ll send this over to you afterwards and you can share it with colleagues or what have you, but it’s really also a great opportunity for me to go back and listen to the conversations that I’m having. See how I sound. See what I can improve on. Help with objections as they come up. If I don’t like how i respond to something. Come up with a way to know how to respond to that better the next time.
Clip: Barry Womack on Qualifying Sales Opportunities
Clip from Episode 20 featuring Cvent’s Top Enterprise Sales Rep – Barry Womack:
I think also, just kind of learning or deciding when customers or prospects are worth your time. I don’t think everybody’s created equal. Obviously you want to have as much opportunity as you possible can when speaking to customers or prospects. But it’s important to start figuring out when you should disqualify somebody and stop the conversation. I think is equally as important as continuing down a path that ultimately ends up in failure. So that was another big thing that was tough for me I think to pick up early on as you get excited with these conversations you have. New opportunities, and you want to take it to the end and there’s probably some white flags that you probably could have identified.
Clip: Sales is a Learned Skill – Barry Womack
Clip from Episode 20 featuring Cvent’s Top Enterprise Sales Rep – Barry Womack:
I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned was that sales is really I think a learned skill. I think maybe I even came into sales thinking that people were just naturals. You had to be just a great smooth talker, and I think I learned pretty quickly that sales is something you can learn. Sales is something you have to learn. It’s something you practice. Something you have to have a lot of patience with, but at the end of the day it is a learned skill. So I think that was one of the biggest lessons that I’ve had to learn on my side to be successful.
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