Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
So Phil you you talked about being a team player. I mean you basically made a transition to be the ultimate team player. Talk about what you’re doing right now. Yes, you know I left being an account manager and transitioning to another role in Microsoft which is so I’m still with an inside sales but I’m actually in a role that is focused on seller enablement which is interesting right from my point of view as I’m sort of this is nice buffer between the real world and the corporate glass box right which is really now being able to take content in all these different you know resources around Microsoft and give sellers the best of the best that they can go execute with their customers. And I do it at scale now being able to support close of about 1600 plus sellers around the world and our inside model to go do that with customers.
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- Managing leadership expectations around admin work and sales forecasting
- Having a business conversation based on earnings calls
- Building relationships in inside sales “I humanized everything”
- Learning about business, entrepreneurship and finance to win in sales
- “I’m going to do whatever it takes for my customer to be successful”
- Business acumen and financial acumen are more important than sales skills especially at the c-level
- “At the end of the day a great seller doesn’t always sell”
- Building trust and influence by telling a customer “No”
- “#1 comes with a price”
- Getting out of the data and just having conversations to build pipeline
- “I would spend about 4-5 hours a day just talking to customers”
- Effectively introducing yourself to existing customers as their new account manager
- Phil’s toolkit for managing a territory of 168 accounts
- Using gratitude to stay sane “given the stress that sellers have”
- Keeping a clean email inbox
- Staying focused on the results and on selling time
- After a call, when the information is freshest, go document it
- “I had one day every week where I didn’t talk to existing customers” Going after all new customers
- The mentality that it takes to get to #1
- Having a quarterback mentality “I wanted to put in 150% so that way at least I hit quota”
- Leading the team as an individual contributor
- Sales: Do you really want to do this?
- How are you going to differentiate yourself from the millions of other sellers?
- “Think about that territory or book of business as your own business”
- You should enjoy it with a passion or you should do something else because you won’t be successful