Clip from Episode 39: Microsoft’s #1 Inside Sales Corporate Account Manager – Phil Terrill:
There is a lot of our you know actual tools right. So for me and not to to pitch Microsoft but you know specifically like I was between using our own CRM system which over time I became really efficient at using you know just to again minimize the noise from sales managers and sales leadership about where deals are at. You know the best sellers. You know what I started to observe is the best sellers had great sales hygiene. They just had their business intact. And the same is like how you would think about financials or anything like that is you know tight financials or tight house. You know is a great place. It is a great place to be. And so one of these are our CRM two I use I had what I call the master playbook. It’s all in the master playbook was everything. So when I would go to different data sources you know across Microsoft which you know through acquisitions and you know 40 plus years of being in business Microsoft just had data on data some more data some hidden data somewhere else I’m sure. And so I actually started to centralize all of this information on my customers and one massive playbook and in excel and that I had what I started going away from and this is a little bit of redundancy but it was good for me to be able to take really copious notes on a call and then transfer them or transcribe them you know back into our CRM in a you know consumable way for sales leadership because they were just you know some contextual things that. I was taking notes on that might have been like a you know Scott’s going on vacation to is like you know or whatever. Some of those kind of things. But between using our CRM using a combination of excel and One Note those are like my go-to’s and then my little notepad that I just had on the side for scratched commentary or things and I organize it that way. Well every time I got off a call I documented it in CRM. Every time something major happened in the organization you know I put them in my One Note a major meeting you know role changes at a senior level or at any point you know I am using using Sales Navigator helped as well. Right. Being able to just you know target or you know track people this sounds so bad. Well it really gives me a way to see what what movements were happening and the customers I had. I used those three to sort of document those things. So both quantitatively and qualitatively and then administratively for the sales leadership you know to have what they need in and then so I had what I needed on a call slide. That’s how I did it.
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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
- 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