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Encore – Sales Success Everything 2021

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In today’s bonus episode, while you wait for another interview to release next week, I thought I’d take this opportunity to update the trailer for the show and give you a look ahead at many of the things we’re working on for you in 2021 as part of what I like to refer to as Sales Success Everything.

I released the original intro for this show on October 21, 2016. Over 4 years ago! You’re still welcome to go back and listen to that, you’ll find it in episode zero, but a lot has changed in that time and for a couple of reasons, I named this episode Encore.

First, because one of the ways that Merriam-Webster defines Encore is as “a second achievement especially that surpasses the first.” That is ALWAYS my goal. To continue to improve both myself and all of this content and everything we do for this Sales Success Community.

We’re also getting ready to kick off our Encore Series where I’m bringing back all of the presenters from last year’s Sales Success Summit to replay their presentations in a way that you can interact with them and your fellow sales professionals. That will be happening all through Q1 and you’ll find those details and that schedule at top1.fm/encore

That whole series is totally free thanks to our amazing sponsors, and I hope you’ll check them out as well. You’ll find a complete list of our sponsors at top1.fm/sponsors

I should probably start with a bit of context, especially if you’re a new listener. Here on Sales Success Stories I only interview active, quota-carrying individual contributors who are either the outright number 1 top performers in their role, or their at least in the top 1% of sellers inside a very large organization.

I’m all about deconstructing world-class sales performers and we go deep, though if you ever want to get a quick sense of an episode you can listen to the first few minutes where I always ask each of my guests to talk about the 3 things that they believe have contributed the most to their success in sales.

I try to feature a wide variety of sales professionals from Sales Development Reps to Account Executives. You’ll find interviews with enterprise sellers who are winning mega deals to those who are in more transactional roles and bringing on 10 or more clients a month. I’m also working to feature more professionals for more industries this year. I’ll admit that there’s a pretty heavy SAAS and technology focus here, and I’m looking to bring on others from more diverse industries, but will likely stay almost 100% focused on B2B sales as we do that.

If you are, or you know one of those consistent top 1% level performers I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out to me to talk about that, or really anything else sales related in an email to [email protected]

Speaking of top1.fm, that’s T-O-P the Number 1 dot FM. That’s where you’ll find the show notes for each and every one of our episodes including links to all of the tools, books, podcasts, and everything else that they mention. It’s also where you can join the Listener List where you can some more of the behind the scenes, sneak previews, special offers, and more. Just drop your name and email address into one of the forms on top1.fm and you’ll get a note from me about once a week.

Though I’ve got a new weblink and concept to talk to you about as well. Over the years this show has branched out in a lot of different ways. To the Daily Sales Tips podcast where I’ve shared and curated a new idea or concept for you every single day for the last 717 days in a row, all in 5 minutes or less. To the Sales Success Stories Books, the Sales Success Summit, our Peer Accountability, and Growth Groups, the LinkedIn Sales Stars initiative, and more. It’s gotten to be a lot.

So we decided to try to put everything on a single page at SalesSuccessEverything.com. Now Sales Success Everything has a couple of meanings. There’s obviously the most literal Sales Success Everything that we offer. These Sales Success Stories, the Sales Success Community, the Sales Success Summit, and on and on, but having now interviewed over 100 amazing sales professionals I can tell you that the very best Sales Professionals also happen to be some of the very best humans.

To me, Sales Success Everything is a mindset and a verb. It’s a way of thinking and being that’s about excellence in everything you do, and it’s a way of acting in the best interest of our clients our companies, and our community that is about service and making everything better. That’s what I think of when I say Sales Success Everything. I hope you will too.

So check out that page. Cruise through our different offerings.

The main pieces are the podcast. Every other Tuesday right here you’ll find a new interview episode. Those always get released at 4:30 am Central Time and as usual, I’ve got a great one coming up for you next Tuesday. There’s also the Daily Sales Tips podcast where you’ll find those much quicker tips, but I also typically share a snippet from many of these longer-form episodes with a core concept or other idea for you to consider. I’d encourage you to subscribe to both shows wherever you listen to podcasts.

There’s also the listener list that I mentioned earlier where you can get my weekly email, and that’s really the best way to keep up with all of the things that are going on, but we’ll also be doing quarterly updates of our LinkedIn Sales Stars Top 100 list, and actually have something special in the works on that front that should be available in Q2. If you’re listening to this later in the year there will be yet another link at SalesSuccessEverything.com for you.

We’ll also be releasing the second volume of the Sales Success Stories book later this year. That project has gotten really interesting as I’m now collaborating with Dale Carnegie and their Chief Sales Officer, Dan Heffernan to take that book from good to great and can’t wait to share the final result with you, which we’ll likely do in conjunction with the Sales Success Summit.

The Summit is our flagship event. For a number of us in the community this has become our Christmas and THE event we look forward to all year. It’s scheduled for October 12th and 13th here in Austin, and I for one can’t wait to hang out and learn from this community in-person again. The 2020 Summit was a virtual event by necessity and I desperately missed being in the same place with everyone. So fingers crossed that’s going to be a big deal, but it’s also a very intimate deal with a maximum of 200 participants, and over half of those tickets are already spoken for, so if you’re thinking of joining us you’ll want to act soon and you can find those details at top1.fm/summit or of course on SalesSuccessEverything.com

Finally, the last things I’ll mention for now are our Peer Accountability and Growth Groups. I’m not going to go into extensive details here, but you can go back to the bonus episode I did with Richard Balius who leads that effort for us on October 20th, 2020 or, you guessed it, follow the link at SalesSuccessEverything.com you can hear Richard and I talking through the concept that’s really for the Sales Professional who is looking to collaborate with some similarly invested peers in a facilitated model to really take their results to the next level. Getting involved in one of those groups also includes your Summit ticket, so if you were considering the Summit you might want to consider one of our Peer Groups as the next level of commitment to your own growth and success.

So as you can see, there’s a lot more going on than just the podcast and the conversations you hear here, and I hope you’ll consider getting move involved than just being a passive listener. Take an active role and join us on this journey to Sales Success that’s never quite finished.

Thanks for listening, thanks for subscribing, and just to be sure I’ve captured everything I’ve mentioned we’ve set up one more page where this episode will actually live at top1.fm/2021. Go there, cruise through the various offerings, and at the very least, join the listener list so you can be as completely in the Sales Success Everything loop as possible.

I appreciate you more than you know. Here to you and your success in 2021!

How to Land Your Dream Tech Sales Job

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Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast like I typically do between the bi-weekly interview episodes that always feature #1 and top 1% quota-carrying sales performers, I’ve got a little bonus for you. This is the audio from a webinar I did on The Sales Experts Channel with Jacob Gebrewold called How to Land Your Dream Tech Sales Job. I thought it was super relevant and deserved a place here because it’s not just about running an incredible interview process. There are a lot of things you can take away and consider applying to your regular sales process. Also, if you’d prefer to watch the webinar, it’s available on-demand and you can see Jacob and I talk his story through if you’ll click over to top1.fm/DreamSalesJob that will take you straight there: top1.fm/DreamSalesJob all one word.

But before we get into this, let me quickly give a shoutout to some of our sponsors. Alyce, Vidyard, and Terryberry have been incredible sponsors this year and I hope you’ll show them some love for their support of this show. You can learn more about them and all of our sponsors at top1.fm/sponsors

With that. Here the audio from the webinar:

The Encore Series and More!

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Today I’ve just got a short preview for you of some things to come and some ways for you to get more involved in the Sales Success Community.

It starts with the encore series. Starting Friday, January 8th, and running all through Q1 2021 we’ll be getting together each Friday from 2-4pm Central Time.

In each of these sessions, we’ll replay a presentation from the 2020 Sales Success Summit with the presenter present to answer your questions live during the presentation. That will then be followed by an even more in-depth live Q&A, Ask Me Anything type of session and finally, you’ll have an opportunity to connect with each other in our virtual networking environment.

You can register for free, thanks once again to our sponsors, at top1.fm/encore.

The first session on January 8th will feature Vin Matano and his presentation on The Prospecting Checklist and Advanced Multi-Channel Prospecting. January 15th we’ll have Dale Dupree on to walk us through The Living Pipeline.

On January 22nd you can connect with Sarah Brazier in her session on Using LinkedIn to Book Meetings and to wrap up January Jacquelyn Nicholson will join us on the 29th to review Building Rapport and Relationships: From Prospect to Customer to Friend.

Again, to register for free for anyone or all of those sessions and to see the rest of the schedule, just click over to top1.fm/encore, that’s E-N-C-O-R-E.

I’m also going to be kicking off a webinar series on The Sales Experts Channel the second Monday of every month at 2pm Central Time called All Things Sales Success – Tales from the Trenches. The first one of those will be January 11th and Jack Wilson will be joining me as we revisit his concept of Minimum Viable Habits and discuss productivity and planning to set yourself up for an incredible 2021.

You can get a bit of a preview of that show on December 15th, when Jacob Gebrewold will be joining me on The Sales Experts Channel, again at 2pm Central, where we’ll talk about How to Land Your Dream Tech Sales Job and dig into Jacob’s story and how he ran one of the best, you’ve got to hire me, type of efforts I think I’ve ever seen.

With all of The Sales Experts Channel sessions, you can always catch those on-demand if you’re not able to join us live and I’m going to set up links for all of these things at top1.fm/DecemberPreview. All one word. top1.fm/DecemberPreview

We’ll have links for you to register for the Encore Series, my All Things Sales Success – Tales from the Trenches session with Jack Wilson as well has How to Land Your Dream Tech Sales Job.

How to Land Your Dream Tech Sales Job
All Things Sales Success with Jack Wilson

While you’re there, if you’re not already getting my weekly emails every Tuesday morning, be sure to join the listener list so you can stay in the loop with not only all that’s coming up, but see our refresh of that email that we’re working to make even more valuable and compelling for you.

Top1.fm/DecemberPreview and be sure to come back next week when I’ve got another killer interview for you with a top-performing sales professional. You’re not going to want to miss this one.

I’ll talk to you then.

Episode 107: From Sales Trainer to #1 Manufacturing Salesperson at Epicor

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Michael Harris is a top Senior Sales ERP at Epicor, an organization that provides flexible, industry-specific software that is designed to meet the precise needs of their customers. Michael has had quite the career trajectory. He went from being a sales trainer to a quota-carrying sales professional – having never sold tech before – and within two years became the top-performing manufacturing salesperson at Epicor. Michael is alsoContinue Reading …

Closing Deals at Year End

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In this bonus episode of the Sales Success Stories podcast, as we get ready to round the corner into the final month of 2020 I thought this set of 3 tips from the Daily Sales Tips podcast might be particularly useful. These come from James Muir, Todd Caponi, and Mark Schenkius and all have to do with closing deals at the end of the quarter or the end of the year. If you like these, stick around afterward because I’ve got two other suggestions for you, but first, here are your tips:

191. The ’Something Special’ Variation on the Perfect Close – James Muir

619. Quarter End & The “Expiring Discount” – Todd Caponi

667. Year-End Perspective – Mark Schenkius

If you enjoyed these you might also want to check out the tip that I released today over on Daily Sales Tips in Tip #675 about Compelling Events. I’d also love to hear from you. Do you have your own proven approach to closing deals at the end of the Quater? Maybe you’ve got some really useful ideas around planning for 2021. Territory management and strategy, goal setting, or something along those lines. If so, let’s get you featured on Daily Sales Tips. For all of the details around contributing, just click over to DailySales.Tips/submit

Then make sure you’re subscribed to this podcast and come back next Tuesday for an interview with a sales trainer who went back into the field and became the #1 top-performing Enterprise Sales Rep at his company.

I’ll talk to you then.