Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
From the inside perspective right like I’ve done field cells are different when you can go in and actually you know say hello to a person and shake their hands. You know technological play got you those traditional things that sellers do you don’t have. You don’t always have that luxury an inside sales right. And so what I did was like I when I go I use this term a lot. But I humanized everything right. Like I took away that we were on Skype and I turned the video on. And like I did that on all my intro calls. Like all of them. And they were they’re so used to just somebody calling or not calling actually. And what that did was help them say Well there’s actually a person that I know I’ve talked to I can look at his LinkedIn and I’ve seen him blink I’ve seen him smile at me. I seen him laugh you know or whatever the case may be and that was the first step for these for these relationships because they could see me just like I could even if they never turned the video on at least they could see me. And then the second thing I did was I never spent time every single time I talk to the customer always talking about business. And the reason why I did that is you know I learned I learned from you know both my parents and other people around me that have built really great relationships is they really focus on the person and what happens when you know when I did that is or at least learn how to do it. Is focused on my clients is I learned so much about who they were when they were they were focused at. And what was driving him even some of their business decisions. Weirdly enough after getting to know them as a person and then I could then really go deeper with them like I call it like onion chillin’s like I’ve got I’ve already peeled back the the personal layer. And so when we do get you know get to talking about business it’s like people really do business with their friends than people they don’t know.
If you’d like to share this clip (please do!) you’ll have the most sharing options available on the YouTube clip itself.
- Managing leadership expectations around admin work and sales forecasting
- Having a business conversation based on earnings calls
- 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?
- 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