Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
The way I built out a day is. I would be I would typically spend you know especially early on around four or five hours just talking to customers. And I mean they was so tactical to the point of you know a lot of the time and we are the new rep. You know there’s this there’s this feeling of OK one Microsoft did it again. They gave me a new person. You know after you know either after we made an investment or we’re on the cusp of making an investment if we get to a switch. But I was going about four to five hours a day just talking to customers whether it’s the first introductory call or there might have been discussions already in progress and really getting involved that way. Or just spending time just reaching out and really having you know 30 which ended up being like 45 minute calls. You know again back to humanizing the conversation and get to know these folks and let them get to know me and ask any kind of questions they wanted to know.
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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
- 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