Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
Are you going to prepare yourself just one be able to differentiate yourself from the millions of other sellers that exist today. But two how can you really go in into your customers or whatever you’re doing you know in a way that still unique to you so you don’t lose yourself like lose who you are. Because there is a corporate process or a corporate X Y or Z that you have to follow like you can’t that thing makes to me that made me you know successful was I never lost who I was right by trying to do any other processes or talking a certain way to a customer or whatever it is that you have you know recommend. My tip is figure out how you can one stay true to yourself while still executing corporate priorities because that will help give you these relationships or that the contexts are comfort to go have conversation with customers that are genuine or authentic because you’re presenting your authentic self at all times regardless of any of these other you know I’ll call external pressures of you being you.
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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
- From Top Account Manager to Sales Enablement at Microsoft
- Sales: Do you really want to do this?
- “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