Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
A lot of the time. You know the sellers specially in the inside model or in general when you send the intro e-mail you always are saying like new account manager like new right the word new or intro call or you know using these like very starter phrases or what I considered at that time or even now are these like they’re scary. Like for like lack of any other term like there’s just simple down right. It’s very scary for a customer to get an e-mail from a seller. Or account manager saying I’m your new guy or new girl. And the reason why I preface what I’m going to tell you the specifics around the messaging is like when you get that mail I’ve done it before I’ve done some other roles like that were more outbound related right. And it’s this could be a turnoff for a lot of customers like they don’t want a new person because it’s their frustration. They had a better relationship you know regardless of if you do internal hand offs or not just the way the customer psyche is if they’re going to go back to their old person or their partner. And so what I did was I sent these messages of OK like I’m not going to use the word intro and some of that kind of stuff and what I did was I said it I’m saying the word introduced but I didn’t use the word introduce. I told them this story. Look I just we just started the new fiscal year. I’m your account manager. I really think I’m your new account manager like I’m your account manager. Here are the things that I’ve identified that we need to go through based on these compelling events that are coming in so I would always include the compelling events. At Microsoft compelling events our end of life, end of support. Those two are can coexist there. There are agreement renewals anything that was coming from where I would call an internal engagement. So like we’re doing like a software asset review I would use some of these triggers right these compelling events to let them know like I’m very aware of you already. So I’m I’m not just calling your emailing you to say hello. Right. I really want to say hello and talk and let you know I validate through this e-mail or through this voicemail that, A.) I know who you are. I know the business are ready and I’m ready to talk to you and I have these resources available to get it done.
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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”
- 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