We actually had Jill Rowley at our office earlier this week. She’s a social selling guru if you will and she talked a little bit about how in order to be interesting you need to be interested. And I really like this because it’s something that I try to be in my research phase. I try to actually be interested in what a company’s doing. Maybe understand their business model. Maybe understand what that specific marketing executive wants to have for their goals. And as I have experience more and more speaking with these professionals I can kind of understand what priorities they have, what they’d like to hit. But every individual company is also different so if I’m able to take the time and really be interested in what I believe they’re looking to accomplish it often transpires into more likely to them being more likely to chat with me as well.
Clip: Reid Oliver, BDR – Research is one of the most important things – reaching out for a purpose
For me it all begins in the research phase. We use Salesforce here so I will often look into accounts and run specific reports on whether we’ve had conversations with them in the past. We’ve met with them at conferences. If we’ve never had any sort of interaction with them I’ll go even deeper and do things like follow the company on Sales Navigator. Setup Google alerts, just so I can understand when people are interested in the video process. Because if you can understand when a company has a reason to invest in video or invest in their digital strategy. You’re going to be more likely to have that conversation. So I really begin with the research phase and try to understand; does it make sense to be reaching out at this point in time. I find that research is one of the most important things whether it’s the company or whether it’s specific people. Because if you really feel in the back of your mind that you’re reaching out for a purpose and for a reason. It’s not going to bother you whether you’re interrupting their day or whether they’re too busy because you’re coming there with real value and you really want to help and you really believe in the company you’re standing behind. So I think that’s a big part of how you find the companies that you’re going after and the people specifically that you’re looking to contact.
Clip: Top BDR Reid Oliver on learning, being a sponge and taking action on that knowledge
Something I think was imperative was asking a ton of questions and really learning. I’m lucky enough that I’m in a position that I have a manager who’s a rockstar across our company. He’s always open to learning new things and helping us grow. So I really leveraged that early on and I asked a lot of situational specific questions. Whether it be how to handle current messaging. What strategies to go into accounts with, and it really helped me ramp up really quickly and get to where I wanted to be in the role. Then not only my specific manager, but I also tried to really be a sponge and soak in everything that my peers were doing when I saw that they were being successful. So whether that was somebody in a role that I wanted to move into at some point in the company. Somebody who was doing really well in the BDR spot. I tried to pick and choose things that I saw them doing that were working and put them into my own processes and really try to make a fit there. So that was a big thing for me at the beginning. The second thing is actually just taking action from what I was learning. I think it’s easy to have one thing go in one ear and out the other, especially when you have a lot going on. But to actually be meticulous in what you’re learning and actually action that knowledge to your day to day processes is a really big thing. It doesn’t matter what you’re reading or what you’re hearing in blog posts. You really need to actually put it towards your day to day and see what’s being successful.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler – Reach out to other top sales performers
My actionable suggestion would be in your company right now you need to locate the people that are top performers and are essentially where you want to be. And you need to ask for their time and try to set aside some intentional hours or minutes to speak with those people and to understand what it is they’re doing differently that’s getting the results that you ultimately want to have. That and not just people in your work environment, but also outside of your work environment that are ultimately going to bring you upward. So making more intentional efforts and I would say in the next week, I guess that would be my challenge, is find that person and actually reach out to them and try to set something up with them. Scott: That’s awesome, that’s actually my favorite suggestion so far, and I’ll add two pieces to that. One is I think anytime you are trying to open that type of relationship. Kyle already made some good suggestions earlier about making it finite and defining exactly what you need. I think the other thing you can think about is what can you bring of value to that relationship. That’s a place you can actually leverage me. If you are reaching out to the number one seller in your organization, one of the things you might want to suggest is ‘hey I listen to this show called the Sales Success Stories podcast and they talk to top sellers like you’ I would love to introduce you to Scott and I’ll give you my email address right now so you’re in a position that you can make that type of intro because we’ve been friends forever. You’ve been listening to me for hours. So you can send a note to scott at top1 dot fm.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler – Surround yourself with other top performers
You need to target the people that are successful, that are where you want to be. And do your best to make that something that you do on a regular basis. So one of the things that I’ve done with a couple other people that I consider top performers at our company is we go out once per month. We go out and we have a brunch on a Friday. I think it’s the first Friday of every month, and we just talk about things and when you’re rubbing shoulders with people that are top performers it just starts to rub off on you. It keeps your game sharp. So I would say the first thing you need to do when taking massive action is reach out to people that are really where you want to be
Clip: Kyle Gutzler on using customer examples not your quota to establish timelines and close
Something that I’m a big believer of is talking in terms of how other customers have won with my process or how other customers have essentially gone through the steps to get something approved. I think it’s one thing if you’re a sales person and you say this is why you do it this way because I have a quota to hit. Versus, I’m going to speak kind of from a neutral standpoint and tell you, here’s how this other customer did it. Not me. You kind of put yourself as a neutral third party, and so I’m a big believer of saying ‘what our customers would tell you’ or ‘here’s how this customer did it,’ and having kind of a bank of different customer stories that are ultimately going to help your timeline. And you can use that really for any topic, not just timelines but literally every aspect of your sales process. Rely as much as you can on talking about how other customers have done it, and how they’ve ultimately won.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler on Controlling the Sales Process “Most people want to be told what to do”
Actually most people want to be told what to do, believe it or not. This is probably, and this isn’t scientifically backed Scott, so maybe I’m wrong on this but. It’s belief that actually most people want to be told this is the way that it works and here’s the steps to do it and here’s when we’re going to get on a phone call next. So when I’m talking to people I have absolute control of the process because I actually fundamentally believe people want to be told what to do.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler “Surround yourself with people of influence and people that bring you up”
I think honestly the biggest thing is continuing to surround yourself with people of influence and people that bring you up. I’ve made both an intentional effort to try to surround myself with people that bring the best out of me. While also kind of removing the people that are toxic in my life. The ones that if I was going through a tough season would almost feed into that in a negative way. So I would say the relationships piece is probably the biggest aspect of that.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler – Sales quotas should not be thought of as a destination
I think for sales people honestly quotas do a little bit of a disservice. Because I think the way that people view a quota is it’s almost like a destination, and personally for me in my sales career I’ve seen a lot of people once they hit their quota then they kind of start to coast. I’ve noticed for me, if I can continue to accelerate and continue to work off of momentum. If I’ve sold some deals and I’ve hit my quota there’s really an opportunity for you to take off in maybe the second half of your month or the second half of your quarter. So for me it’s always been about ignoring what other people have done at my company and what other people have identified as what’s possible as far as targets that you can hit. How many deals you can close within a given month. The size of the deals that you close. The total volume of sales over the course of a month, and I outlined it in my article, but I think because of that mindset I was able to set a couple of records for our company. Both by selling the most amount of units for our segment within a given month, and then the most dollar amount. So basically sales dollars over the course of a month as well.
Clip: Kyle Gutzler – You build self confidence as a sales person with repetition
A lot of that has to do with self confidence. The way I was able to become more self confident as a sales person I would say one of the main things is just repetition. I almost compare it to like if you were going to the gym. It’s something that you constantly have to work on. You’re going to see results if you’re in the gym more often and consistently. So with my sales process I just really tried to jam repetition. Do as many calls as possible and really live in that moment as much as possible. So I ultimately became more confident as a sales person.
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