236 percent?

236 percent!

Yes, Collin Mitchell is serious. He wants to help you increase your positive outbound replies by 236% through personalization.

But he doesn’t mean traditional personalization by targeting a persona or an ICP. He doesn’t even mean combing a prospect’s LinkedIn profile to find out where they went to college or connecting based on a recent post.

Collin Mitchell and Humantic AI are taking personalization a step further by understanding a prospect’s personality type and using it to your advantage. Knowing someone’s personality type can improve your communication and pitch by helping you present information in a way your prospect is most likely to respond.

With insights into specifics such as which personality type prefers longer emails versus bulleted lists or how to increase your open rate with a perfect subject line, you can win over more prospects with tailored outreach.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

01:07: Using personalization to increase your outbound sales replies

• Baseline sequences for outreach
• Moving from personas and ICPs to personality types

04:49: Tailoring your outreach based on how your prospect prefers to receive information

• Subject lines, bullet points, and message content
• The importance of the right CTA

13:15: How is it possible to figure out a prospect’s personality type?

• Using social media profiles to your advantage
• Blending different personality types using specific surveys
• How much data is needed to understand a person’s personality type

However, JR explains that companies should consider taking their recruiting efforts a step further by targeting entry-level sales reps who are focused on getting better and want to grow in their role versus those who are solely focused on a paycheck.

Lastly, JR shares his tips for closing a deal and ensuring that the top sales talent will thrive at your company.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

01:00: How companies can position themselves to recruit top sales talent

• Missionary versus mercenary employees — how to spot them and which one is right for your company
• The importance of work-life balance and remote work

08:31: Discussion training and professional development in the hiring process

• Emphasizing competitive culture while providing the skills needed to succeed
• Selling a position through a job description

17:39: Positing your company well during the interview process

• Who should participate in interviews

Amelia explains that evangelists typically use social media, making connections online then having one-on-one conversations with prospects. She believes that no matter what stage of growth a company is in, the sales evangelist role can help develop key relationships that drive sales.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

The basics: Explaining the sales evangelist role

• 01:27: What it means to be a lead evangelist
• 03:28: The difference between a sales evangelist and an SDR
• 06:42: Does the evangelist role sit in sales or marketing?

Digging deeper: How to incorporate a sales evangelist role in your company

• 10:34: The stage of growth during which companies should start thinking about a sales evangelist role
• 19:07: The differences between social selling and evangelism

Developing an evangelist: Doing it differently than “the way it’s always been done”

• 20:47: Moving beyond cold calling to a different type of outreach
• 23:35: Finding the right roles for your team

And that’s the power of a personal brand.

Yurii Veremchuk joins Tyler Lindley to share tips and insights around how to build your personal brand and the importance of content in sales. He explains how social media can boost sales by elevating both individuals and the company profile. While it may seem daunting to get started, once you do, a personal brand can elevate your work in sales and may also enhance your understanding of yourself.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Building a personal brand in sales

• 00:51: Why a personal brand is important in sales
• 02:23: Using content to create your personal brand

Why a personal brand is also important for sales leaders

• 05:04: How a company benefits from a sales leader developing a personal brand
• 06:07: How you personally benefit from developing a personal brand as a sales leader
• 12:41: How to use data to show the impact creating content can have for your company

Challenges in getting started with building a personal brand

• 16:01: Connecting with leaders in your industry
• 18:03: Overcoming imposter syndrome
• 21:27: What if no one is interacting with your content right away?

Tyler focuses on three things — organization, interviewing, and consistency — and explores how he’s had to hone each skill to deliver engaging and relevant episodes while also exploring the relationship to his work in sales.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Organization

• 00:55: The importance of research, production, and release when recording a podcast episode

Interviewing

• 01:40: Why staying quiet is just as important as asking good questions
• 02:41: How sales deals can be won or lost depending on the questions you ask

Consistency

• 02:36: Sales is about showing up

On the latest episode of Outbound Sales Lift, Kellen Casebeer shares the ins and outs of building and using an Ideal Customer Profile to help you sell. He explains how deep to go when developing a customer profile, who should be creating an ICP (hint: it’s probably you, at least in part), and how to use your profile to have a memorable conversation with a prospect.

Tyler and Kellen also dive in to attention-grabbing cold call introductions and how to use the concept of dilemmas to engage prospects.

If you want more than just a name on a list for your prospecting, this episode will help you understand the true value of developing an Ideal Customer Profile.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

00:47: Kellen explains what an Ideal Customer Profile is, how to develop one, and who should be responsible for developing an ICP

05:24: How SDRs can go deeper in building their understanding of an ICP

07:11: Why being direct, and starting with known objections, can improve your cold calls

13:01: Defining dilemmas and using pattern interruption to better connect with prospects

17:26: The importance of not just understanding prospects’ pain points, but why they have yet to be resolved

ABOUT KELLEN CASEBEER

Kellen is a Sales Advisor for SDA & Founder of a paid sales community called The Speakeasy. He also sells a guide for breaking into remote sales without any selling experience.

Channing and Tyler explore the ins and outs of remote management including hybrid versus fully remote teams, how to connect and communicate with remote SDRs, in-person meetings, and peer enablement.<br>
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Remote Leadership versus In-Person Leadership

• 02:06: How can you create accountability remotely given that SDRs are typically entry level employees?
• 03:38: Importance of a daily standup meeting to bring the sales team together for time-blocking
• 06:29: Advantages and disadvantages of hybrid sales teams

Communicating with Remote Sales Teams

• 09:41: How to set team norms when using Slack to communicate
• 13:06: Establishing communication methods as a manager — text, phone calls, etc.

Building Trust with Remote SDRs

• 17:45: Remote SDR enablement
• 19:18: Benefits of peer-to-peer sales coaching
• 21:48: Giving feedback when managing a remote sales team

ABOUT CHANNING FERRER

Channing is a Go-To-Market advisor, proven Chief Revenue Officer, and an early-stage investor. He has extensive experience developing and growing international teams, implementing processes & systems across global technology companies. He has helped both start-up and mature organizations to scale. His reputation for success is based on his experience designing inside and field sales teams and building processes across multiple Saas companies. He has consistently driven market leading revenue growth.

Jack and Tyler compare notes on effective scorecards to provide actionable, useful feedback to sales reps. Lastly, they discuss coaching in a remote work environment and how to develop culture when your team isn’t regularly sharing an office.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

SDR Call Coaching

• 00:52: Jack compares the four types of call coaching to sports, including the role of a coach or SDR manager
• 02:10: Why most SDR programs aren’t coaching

The Role of SDR Managers

• 09:21: What SDR managers need for an effective cold call role play
• 13:56: What makes an effective scorecard — keeping it simple and putting yourself in the prospect’s shoes

Sales Coaching and Culture in a Remote Work Environment

• 18:46: SDR coaching in remote work environments
• 26:07 Building culture in a remove work environment

Lastly, they dive into how SDR managers can coach reps in areas like accountability and time management to improve their overall account-based selling techniques.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• 0:57 Tips for developing an account-based sales strategy by building on your inbound function and working with your customer success team
• 5:42 The importance of good messaging in an outbound sales strategy, including a discussion of Challenger and Gap selling
• 12:55 How to coach reps to build relationships with prospects through teaching and messaging
• 18:12 Framing better questions in outbound messaging
• 23:12 Developing the process behind account-based sales — time management, accountability, and SDR managers modeling behaviors

Tyler shares advice from his experience managing SDRs to ensure that future leaders are equipped with both the soft and hard skills needed to train and coach teams to achieve their goals.<br>

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS<br>

[1:03]: Hiring new sales reps

• Specific qualities SDR managers should look for during the hiring process
• Who should be involved in hiring
• Tips for questions and exercises that will uncover traits sales reps should (and shouldn’t) have to be successful

[4:55]: Onboarding & Training

• How to set new SDRs up for success at the outset
• Tyler explains the difference between training and coaching

[7:41] Coaching SDRs

• Advice for SDR managers coaching reps in specific skills such as cold calling
• Skills coaching versus mindset coaching

[12:21] Sales Data & Reporting

• SDR managers need to stay connected to the data
• Why tracking every sales metric possible isn’t always the best path forward

[14:59] Leadership as an SDR Manager

• Moving into the SDR manager role after being a top performing SDR
• Considering your team above your individual performance
• Being fulfilled by team success

This episode is part one of the compilation of his conversations, covering topics including advice for first-time SDR managers, personalization in outbound prospecting, and whether or not LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool is really worth it for sales reps.

Guests include:

• Bryan Mueller, ID3 Consulting
• David Mattson, CEO & President of Sandler Training
• Gray Winsler, Account Executive at Qwilr
• Jesse Lipson, Founder & CEO of Coffee
• John Rosar, CEO of REVGEN
• Dan Mott, Founder of SIX3MEDIA

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

[1:00] Tyler shares key themes from his time at INBOUND — building relationships, leveraging your social networks, and the power of community.

[2:25] Brian Mueller of ID3 Consulting discusses:

• How inbound and outbound strategies complement each other
• Building personas
• SDR management tips for coaching and training sales reps

[11:50] David Mattson, CEO & president of Sandler Training shares his thoughts on:

• How first-time SDR managers can focus on growing themselves and the business while also training sales reps
• Developing a common sales methodology across roles
• Changes in outbound over the last few years including a reliance on technology and a lack of attention being paid to onboarding and training new SDRs

[20:53] Gray Winsler, account executive at Qwilr explains:

• How Qwilr can help SDRs and AEs in various stages of the sales process
• The importance of creativity in sales

[25:52] Tyler discusses pattern interrupting in sales and how he leveraged this tactic at INBOUND.

[26:29] Jesse Lipson, founder & CEO of Coffee discusses:

• Why companies are bad at outbound
• How the SDR role has changed over the last few years
• Why he built his company, Coffee, and how it can help sales professionals

[32:31] John Rosar, CEO of REVGEN explains:

• What outbound means to him
• The importance of educating prospects
• The tools and resources he suggests providing to new SDRs

[39:45] Dan Mott, founder of SIX3MEDIA talks about:

• Why he doesn’t think LinkedIn Sales Navigator is that valuable for SDRs
• The importance of content to continue nurturing leads
• How SDRs can get started creating content

[46:17] Tyler closes the episode by exploring the power of a personal brand and how to scale from one-to-one communication to one-to-many content creation.

Click here for full episode show notes, transcripts, and more!

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Intro (0:00)

Your offer is your differential for any company, especially a sales team at any company in general.  

It’s the unique value you’re bringing to the market, how you’re uniquely positioning yourself to me. A solid offer can make or break a sale before it even gets into motion.

Tear down an offer into a “foot in the door” offer or a tripwire offer you could set your sales team with. 

If you’re solely competing on price, you’re just trying to do the same thing one iota better than the person standing next to you. 

Positioning your offer unique to your market gives you something fresh to sell. Don’t want to sell the same thing as everybody else in the same way everybody else is doing it.

Part of this is really educating your buyer. That’s a rapid way to differentiate yourself from what everybody else is doing. 

Now suddenly, you’ve positioned yourself as an authority and somebody who has the goods. You’ve got a process and Intel into this business that will allow you to sell at a much higher ticket than you would otherwise.

Setting Yourself Apart (5:36)

You want to be more strategic with the services you provide. You’re probably running a two-week strategy session. You’re getting into your clients’ tools or whatever that means for you and your industry.

Sending it on the front end makes the full engagement way more enticing. 

Your prospects are comparing you against the five other competitors. They’re trying to basically understand the strategy they should be thinking about during the sales process before any money exchanges.

Sometimes people get confused, and they think for this process to feel robust enough for this engagement, they need to feel like it’s worth their time. What they want are results.

If you’re selling to small businesses, what you’re putting into our offer is 1000% of your proposal.

Sales Reps have to understand their market and their services well enough to explain outcomes or soft problems in the sales conversation. They can say- Here’s how we solve your problem. But first, we’re going to step in. 

Foot in the Door Offers (14:39)

What they’re doing from day one is sitting in on these backend calls where you, as the founder or as the senior salesperson, are walking them through this massive proposal. 

That essentially is the foot-in-the-door offer.

They’re hearing all the questions answered, all of the details of the services you provide, and hearing you go back and forth. 

So really, what they’re gaining is very in-depth product market training throughout the foot-in-the-door process. Even if they’re not the ones closing the full engagement on the back end.

So it accelerates the timeline within which they can be selling the full thing. 

Another key component to successful delivery is shrinking the cost and shrinking the timeline to actually delivering. Bring in the roadmap or present the roadmap to your client.

JJ Russell’s Bio:

Former senior sales guy for Sales Driven Agency. Co-Owner and Director of The Best Damn Agency Mastermind, the most elite community for growth-minded 7 and 8-Figure digital agency CEO’s.

Important Links:

JJ’s LinkedIn Profile

The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

Click here for full episode show notes, transcripts, and more!

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Intro (0:00)

Top performers in any profession, especially sales, are all wired differently for perfection. But unfortunately, high standards are the norm, and they can be detrimental as your career progresses. 

So what happens when life and you’re thrown off your game? You’re at the bottom, and that’s where resilience comes in.

Today’s salesperson is a person who is helpful because anyone can shop you out on the internet. 

By the time a customer gets to you, they know they will be talking to someone. And they want to know what’s behind all of the marketing jargon.

Work-Life Balance (5:35)

Eventually, you’re going to burn out. If your company has any form of a culture where you’re going to get fired, you can try and do it again elsewhere. But it’s a short lift.

A sales career is riddled with ups and downs. If anyone says that it’s not, they’re lying,

Jill was four or five deals away from achieving “founders club” HubSpot. She was heading into Q4 when she had to give birth, and she remembers sitting at her desk crying.

It was a difficult transition for her because she was used to having the flexibility she needed to be at the top of the boards. Now she had this huge responsibility and all the other things she was trying to balance. But this was a different type of responsibility.

Often we’re nervous about bringing up life outside the dashboard because it feels like we’re not “all in.” And God forbid your manager thinks your eye isn’t on the prize. It’s terrifying.

This is why the sales manager role is so important. Many sales reps’ experience at a company lives and dies by who they report to. It’s not the VP, the director, or the CEO. It’s their manager and the relationship between the sales manager and the sales.

Jill’s adrenaline held out until her daughter turned six months old. Then she hit exhaustion. 

Sales Management and Leadership (13:50) 

Our kids are us. They become a huge part of our lives, and either a manager accepts that and incorporates it into the way they treat the frontline sales rep or ignores it.

There is a level of trust. If this manager has your back, they get you as a human being. They understand your personal goals. 

You’ve got to develop trust with the reps to have a two-way relationship. And that relationship becomes significant. 

If folks are going to find this level of balance of self-forgiveness, empathy, and resilience to maintain a sales career. You can fake it for a few years, but eventually, that catches up with you.

Grief can also destroy a personal life and career, so you have to give your employees space. If you hear someone die, your job as a sales manager is to shut down the computer.

The worst thing a manager can tell you is that you’re giving excuses when you are actually vulnerable.

Jill Fratianne’s Bio:

Jill Fratianne a.k.a “JillyFrat” has been a top performing sales rep at HubSpot for going on 13yrs after switching careers from a concert violist and can still be seen on state with the Portland Symphony. She’s held various sales roles at HubSpot and is currently in Channel Sales. Her passion lies in helping cultivate resilient sales cultures as well as coaching and uplifting business leaders to be their best. She also has a significant stake in real estate, is a mother, and wife of a hot sauce entrepreneur. Fun fact, er Great Danes have been seen on Animal Planet

Important Links:

Jill’s Website

Jill’s LinkedIn Profile

Click here for episode show notes, transcript, and more!

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Intro (0:00)

Onboarding is one of the most pivotal moments. That first impression; it is that first introduction to you and your company and their experience.

Companies need to get this right because companies that do onboarding. Retaining their new sales reps and retaining great sales reps is key to growth. It's so hard to scale and maintain your sales team and efforts if you always have turnover.

This is a really pivotal time for sales reps because this is how you get out of the gates quickly.

The Five Pillars of Sales (2:39)

The first key pillar of sales onboarding is you need a playbook. You need something to give that new rep on day one. It should be an overview of everything, and it doesn't have to be a super long document for those just getting started.

The second key pillar is enabling reps to plan their day and teaching them some best practices around time management. 

The third key pillar is product industry and company knowledge. We need all of this product knowledge because they need to be talking to customers innovatively and efficiently. They need to have all these conversations and answer all these questions from day one. 

Highlight the problem. That you solve for your prospects and highlight the key differentiators that you have against your competitors. If a new sales rep knows the key issues that your company solves, they know the key ways in which your company is different from the competitors.

The fourth key pillar is tools. We've got to enable our teams with tools. There are a lot of tools out there that you can arm your team with, but just make sure that's a part of the consideration and getting folks up to speed on those tools. 

The fifth key pillar is the sales process. What does an ideal process look like from start to finish regarding what I'm doing? Make sure that you have that process outlined and make sure that your CRM is clear on how they navigate.

Outro (14:51)

The first impression is so important for all the reps out there listening. So make sure that you're taking advantage of these resources. 

Sales onboarding is all about building a strong foundation that you, the rep, can build on. So you want your reps to have a really strong foundation, and all these things create that foundation.

Click here for the full episode transcript, show notes, and more!

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Importance of Alignment (1:00)

Alignment promotes a better customer experience. You’ll process people and data more efficiently, more people will love your product, and you’re just going to generate more business. 

Put prospects at the top of the marketing funnel, and they drop into the sales funnel, then revenue, and then success like a one-way system. 

Whereas if you think about a flywheel, this is like a cycle. The client or a prospect can join that flywheel at any point.

The customer experience is never-ending because they stay in a flywheel. The growth flywheel is all about retention, referral, and increasing every customer’s lifetime value. 

Make sure you have enough leads in the funnel or flywheel to manage losing customers to the churn.

It’s hard to know why a customer leaves. The largest point of churn tends to be activation and the onboarding process.

We need to stop taking our attention away from the point in which we generate the first point of revenue and switch our thinking to lifetime value. At the end of the day, revenue operations are all about this ratio of cost per customer acquisition to the lifetime value. 

Balancing Systems (7:33)

The handoff between any department of systems is the key. This includes multiple areas of your revenue and operations funnel and between sales and customer success. 

It’s also important that you’re not only just looping these people into your customer success, but you’re getting a product in bulk part of customer success.

Demand vs. under sales aren’t something all companies are doing. It’s a new way of thinking.

Start automating the calls, so reps can start dialing straight out from HubSpot and then record or transcribe that information. 

Make sure the sales teams actually receive compensation for their generated leads.

Key Goal for Sales Teams (15:04)

Custom integrations are as simple as going onto the HubSpot marketplace, searching sales tools, and then looking through the list of all the native integrations that are available.

If people are familiar with no-code tools, such as Integra mat or Zapier, these tools can integrate no-code or low-code, then there are bespoke integrations. 

There are three ways either off-the-shelf low-code, no-code, or bespoke. 

The fewer tools, the better where possible because, the more tools you have, the more things that can go wrong.

Natalie’s Bio:

Natalie is an award-winning entrepreneur and CEO of RevOps Automated the HubSpot partner consultancy providing Revenue Operations as a Service. This self-confessed data geek helps B2B SaaS businesses get every ounce of value from HubSpot. It’s her mission to help businesses bring all of their data into one place, and unlock insights to help marketing, sales and success make better business decisions.

In her spare time, you can find her surfing on the UK south coast or fighting in the boxing ring.

Important Links:

RevOps Automated Website

Natalie’s LinkedIn Profile

#87: Listen as Stephen Beach, Co-Founder and CMO at Vantage Impact, discusses following up and nurturing prospects who may not necessarily be ready to buy right now.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Adding Value (0:22)

It’s more valuable, faster, more efficient to nurture your prospects that you’ve already done a lot of the leg work to get them out of the gates. So it’s a more powerful channel to put a lot of time and energy into.

We feel like nothing’s happening on their side, and we don’t want to be the annoying salesperson.

But if you truly believe in your product or your service, you know, deep down, that it’s going to help. That’s your mindset. If you don’t have that belief, then all this nurturing and trying to stay in touch with them will probably feel a little bit desperate. 

It’s embracing the customer-centric mindset. 

Tactically speaking, share with people. Talk about industry news articles. Find an article that’s relevant to your client. Come across it on your LinkedIn feed or whatever it is and your Google alerts and copy and paste the URL and send it over to them.

​​Compile a database of this type of stuff that you could pull from.

These can start conversations that otherwise would be hard to start because that isn’t very pleasant if you’re checking in. So if you’re adding value, now you’ve got that open space for dialogue that maybe can take place.

Ask yourself- how do you close the deal? A lot of the time, the answer is to continue to show value to the prospect repeatedly.

Nurturing Prospects (9:33) 

Stay in front for as long as possible with them, and as you keep showing them value, as many things as you can are directly related to them. 

As we’re nurturing prospects, we’re trying to build a relationship, and we’re trying to add value continuously.

Is there anyone in your network that would benefit from talking with me or just having a 15-minute introduction? And a lot of times, you get a good response to that. 

Adding value activities, especially I love giving them a referral, introducing someone to them that they might help, or they might work with or whatever that to me is huge.

Podcasting as a Way of Connecting (13:05)

We reach out to a prospect, somebody I’m already talking to, and ask if they want to be on our series. That way, it’s a blend of marketing and sales, but who will say no to that. And all of a sudden, you’re in front of them.

Again, they’re talking to somebody on the team, so we’re developing the relationship. It’s very natural for them to be like, oh yeah, by the way, you should talk to this other person. Interview them or tell them a bit about what you do.

It doesn’t matter if you work with all these folks you’re helping, and you’re building that network. You don’t always have to build. 

In a one-to-one relationship, with the advantage of social media and podcasts and all the available tools, you can build these one-to-many style relationships.

Stephen’s Bio:

Stephen is a sales rep turned inbound marketer, giving him a unique perspective on marketing-sales alignment and how marketing can best support a company’s sales efforts. Stephen is CMO at Vantage Impact, helping clients set up and optimize HubSpot’s tools to market better and sell more effectively and efficiently. His unique modernized approach to marketing and sales is a game changer for the financial services industry, helping advisory practices move beyond cookie cutter content and hand shaking at events, to be more digital and automated without losing personal touch.

Golf, cold brew, bourbon (in that order). Big fan of goofy t-shirts and craft brewery trucker hats. ——

Last year Traci Beach and I started a second business with our brother-in-law, Boston Cardinal. In the middle of a pandemic with a bunch of little kids running around felt like the right time 😳😁…so we formed Vantage Impact. We are excited about this business because the model we’ve built is very unique.

Yet what we did was very simple really: we combined our Craft Impact: A Growth & Communications Agency business with Boston’s 10+ years of financial advisor recruiting experience, where he managed 1500+ financial advisor transitions.

Vantage Impact exists to guide financial advisors through big changes for their practice. We have two sides to the business: Transition and Growth.

Once we help advisors find the right firm, talent or custodian, we leverage strategic marketing and change communications, so they can grow a practice that’s profitable, impactful and life giving.

Cheers 🍻 to 2 “Impact” businesses 😛 and 3 little kids…what a ride!

Important Links:

Stephen Beach’s LinkedIn Profile

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Gaps in Sales Coaching (0:22)

Duane spent the last decade in sales, half specifically in SaaS, and has helped companies grow. He took that and turned it into a consultancy, working with SAS founders and sales managers.

One gap we still run into is the stereotypical way we promote into sales leadership by picking top sales reps where they end up not getting education. 

The biggest gap in sales coaching is that there's no one there leading the charge to help these managers understand all the different aspects of being a leader.

You've got a challenger mindset even in sales, and you do commercial teaching. But, that's still different than an ongoing relationship with your team and holding them accountable. 

It's a completely different skillset from putting in the activity close and fine-tuning your sales process to being okay with resting your commission and checking on someone else's efforts.

Finding Good Sales Leaders (5:52)

One of the reasons previously successful sales reps can become truly great sales managers is because they can tap into their experience of when they were going through that phase and then channel that through a leadership strategy. So they can speak from a position of experience. 

Many reps don't get exposed to understanding what it takes, levers to pull, and what to pay attention to as a leader. As a result, they don't have a good leader they're following, or they just never thought of reading leadership books to get better at their job.

If they're coming from a larger organization, they may have been so specialized and in their lane that they don't have that ability to see the forest for the trees. 

Generalized vs. Specialized Reps (10:42)

You can't just be specialized in one thing; you have to know enough about everything to be successful these days, 

It's becoming a much more desired trait in well-rounded salespeople to be a deep generalist because you need to be agile. 

You need to be able to pivot, and you need to be able to act on your feet while on the call instead of needing to grab your sales engineer.

A lot of sales reps tend to just keep on talking. But when they speak less initially, they end up talking a lot more at the end because they're gathering information.

One-On-Ones vs. Coaching Calls (15:02)

One-on-one is for the sales rep and is about 30 to 45 minutes. Don't bring an agenda. It's for them. It's their opportunity to ask you questions about the organization. 

If they want to talk about career development, this is their time where they're not being coached.

It's a time for them to be heard and express things that are going on. 

A lot of times, you learn so much more about the team. In addition, you have the privilege to lead from those meetings than you do on tactical coaching calls. 

Duane always likes to check-in to see how they're doing in their role in their career, focus on scheduling their next PTL, and set goals and competitions around vacations.

The one-on-one stuff is interesting, and it's something that needs to be more intentional on every sales team.

For coaching, choose one thing instead of three to five things for them to work on. What is the one thing that they could have done better? So that if they try to focus on one thing, it's less overwhelming. 

Duane's Bio:

My name is Duane Dufault. I'm a college dropout construction worker who made a complete shift in my life over a decade ago so I could be home for my kids. I've sold just about everything from newspapers, toilets and flooring, to printers door to door, SMB Saas, Mid-market, and all the way up to fortune 100 Enterprise Software. You name it, and I've sold it, sold into it, or helped someone sell it. If not, chances are, it won't take me long to help you figure it out 

AND - Ive taken startups from 17 employees to over 60, from 2mill in ARR to over 11mill in ARR while bring bootstrapped, AND having an acquisition under my belt of over $320Million...

Important Links:

Duane's Website

Duane's LinkedIn Profile

Duane's Twitter Profile

#85: Listen as David Ledgerwood, Managing Partner at Add One Zero, discusses gathering sales intelligence from the front lines in sales development.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Gathering Sales Intelligence (0:22)

David’s firm tracks the close ratio as one of their critical KPIs because it saves time and it gets more money for the client, which gets more money for them.

They pay attention to metrics from the call and annotate every recording. Those recordings flag four different things: a need, a question, an objection, or a positive response.

They record everything into a database before compressing and normalizing that data. Then communicate with marketing at the top of the funnel and give that information.

Interestingly, it became less about sales intelligence than it became about customer discovery meetings.

David wants to inform and grow a business because he works with service companies, premium marketing companies, professional services, consultants, etc. They’re not SAS. 

Being Front and Center (7:35)

If everybody wants to know something, it’s critical to put it out front and center.

Enroll prospects in an email sequence to help them get everything they should know before the call. 

Send them emails over the next few days before the call, and feed them information framed in a way to help save time behind the scenes.

If they didn’t book a meeting, send them the booking sequence, and enroll them in the pre-call sequence. 

Expanding The Four Buckets (11:19)

Know what they’re looking for and what they want in every call. If you do it right and ask the right questions, you’ll elicit information. Almost every call is very need-heavy on the front. 

There’s a difference between “I need more leads” and “I need more prospects to talk to.” 

We exist to understand why a prospect might like your product and then action. 

It doesn’t matter if you call it marketing or sales; it’s the commercial revenue engine we need to build.

David’s Bio:

Prior to starting Add1Zero, Ledge led Sales and Services for Gun.io, during which time he sold and managed more than 100,000 hours of development and 10x revenues to a mid-7-figure run rate.

Ledge’s 20-year business career began in professional services at PwC where he carved out a weird niche as a Bash developer and checked the Fortune 500 box with UPS, JPMorganChase, and Aetna. If you’ve received a package or deposited a check, there’s a pretty decent chance some piece of code he wrote was somehow involved.

He moved to a major publishing company right about when Web 2.0 started to eat newspapers and periodicals for lunch, giving him a front-row seat to disruption and honing his taste for entrepreneurial pursuits while learning how Sales and Operations must gel for customer success.

In 2007 he walked out of his stable job and moved from New Jersey to Nashville to start a company, which he grew to a $500K run rate before crashing and burning in the Great Recession. Without taking a day off, he joined an EdTech firm and ran efforts to drive $2M to $20M growth. Then he took a COO role while side hustling to coach, mentor, and build his network of founders and execs.

Important Links:

David’s LinkedIn Profile

Add1Zero’s Website

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

What is Random Enablement? (0:22)

Unfortunately, random acts of an ailment are still something that you see more often than strategic sales enablement. 

If sales leadership is not thinking strategically and is just running around, trying to fix the most urgent problem right then, you end up with misaligned enablements that are random.

These are so reactive that they even have that much of an impact? There’s a lack of understanding of sales as a structured process.

As soon as you create understanding, you suddenly create that alignment needed to create ongoing support. To have that alignment and buy-in on a leadership level is required for sales to be genuinely enabled and set up for success.

3 Stages of Sales Enablement (5:03)

There are three stages of the evolution of sales enablement within an organization. 

If you spend too much time on sales enablement initiatives, and especially if cash flow is an issue, that might cause problems for the organizations 

Formalize the coaching approach across an organization and create the structures necessary to implement a coaching program effectively. 

Often we want to try to keep any client forever. Still, we also support the client in managing that transition from the lowest maturity stage to ultimately hiring a senior sales resource. As a result, they can drive that strategy effectively and maintain that alignment across the company.

Streamlining the Process (10:05)

Often organizations fall into the trap of analysis paralysis because they spend so much time analyzing all the moving parts, mainly because there are so many.

Unless you’re dealing with major corporations that are very established and interact with markets that are changing very frequently, you don’t want to spend too long analyzing. 

Felix has a streamlined process for the study of development that takes about four weeks. So it’s a very full-on and involved program on that front.

Companies often miss out on hiring full-time senior sales and admin resources because sales enablement is a new discipline.

There are probably many definitions of sales and amens out there as people use the term. But what it certainly means is strategically aligning all the necessary components for sales to succeed. 

We typically look at buyer acumen or essentially understanding what matters to the buyer and the problem you solve.

The buyer journey has to be core to anything done around sales enablement. 

Felix’s Bio:

Over the last 15 years, Felix Krueger has worked as a sales enabler, seller, and buyer with some of the most recognized names in B2B technology and online media. Today he is the host of The State of Sales Enablement podcast and the CEO of FFWD, a global sales enablement consulting firm specialized in optimizing the revenue performance of SaaS, IT, and media companies.

Important Links:

Felix’s LinkedIn Profile

FFWD Website

#83: Listen as Brian Smith, Revenue Enablement Manager at Vendition, discusses balancing work-life with home-life in sales. He shares how he managed to overcome specific struggles and offers insight into how to show up for the people that matter.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Importance of Work-Life Balance (0:22)

It was a lot of trial and error in the very beginning. Balance is a hard thing to do in general. The biggest thing when walking into that stage of life is to surround yourself with people who have been there.

The best thing we do right in our careers is setting expectations, and the key is setting them for yourself and those close to you.

Engineers think about the end goal and work backward. It made Brian be more disciplined in his day. 

The most important thing is that we show up for the closest people to us. There’s eventually going to be a time when you’re going to have to choose to be intentional about that balance.

You must show up because people depend on you to get them to school, practice, or the doctor. It’s important. 

Finding Balance (5:45)

The important thing is to carve out time for yourself and your family. 

Making a lot of money is excellent, but is it worth it if you’re not doing it to give yourself a fuller life and have some great experiences?

Whenever that time happens, pause whatever you have in the tubes that demand your attention. Hone the ability to be a little flexible and pliable, but give yourself space for life to happen because life always happens. 

There was an initial shock, and it’s always hard. There’s a lot of change, and you’re trying to figure it out. Sometimes you can get complacent. 

Implementing Balance in Your Work-Life (13:27)

Get done with the action items you need to take the next step of your career and then be done. 

Maximize space when everything else is quiet, such as early morning, night, or even lunch. 

Block out time and don’t talk to anybody. Knock out those most important things that are job critical first as early as you can,

Everyone has expectations for who your group is – whether it’s family, friends, spouse, etc. They want you to show up, and they want you to be intentional. 

Don’t be afraid to reach out to people, and don’t fail at the work-life balance slow: fail fast and learn.

Brian’s Bio:

Important Links:

Brian’s LinkedIn Profile

#82: Listen as Matt Austin, Head of Global Inside Sales at Comfy, discusses the sales mindset. He shares his experience with building high-achieving teams, the importance of setting concrete goals, and how to break goals into achievable parts.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Importance of the Sales Mindset (0:26)

Tactics are great, but if you don’t look at how they fit into an overall methodology, you can get lost trying too many things at once.

Some tactics will work, some won’t, but we never know which way to go if we don’t have some consistency.

Part of the biggest problem is that people don’t have a set way to implement these tactics in their day-to-day lives. So it becomes this nebulous thing of, “I know I should show up as my best self today, but I don’t don’t know how.”

The first part of developing a strong sales mindset is being clear about your “why.” Why are you doing what you’re doing? 

Get down and ask it for several different reasons you want to be in sales. That’ll get you down to the core of what you’re doing.

Then remind yourself of those whys every day. That’s what will keep you going, so put physical reminders on your desk.

Concrete Goals (5:12)

Having concrete goals allows us not to get overwhelmed by the big picture because it can sometimes be intimidating. If we can break them down into smaller bones, that will enable us to feel good about ourselves when we’re in the process. 

It’s not just goals- but concrete goals and breaking them down step by step. This gives us actionable pieces we can take a day or week at a time.

It helps to focus on what we can control because there’s so much in sales that we don’t.

The numbers don’t lie. If you want to succeed, look at the math of what you have to do. It makes everything a lot more black and white. Sometimes you have to let your goals come to you. 

Putting it into Practice (12:08)

Every time a deal slips or someone would tell us “no,” it’s easy to take it personally.

We can’t worry about the rejection we had yesterday because it’s about what we need to do today to take the next step toward those goals. 

If we can stay focused on today, show up as our best selves, and improve a little bit from yesterday, it allows us to remain focused on our process. That will get us closer to accomplishing concrete goals.

Focus on small goals. Write them down and put them in front of you on sticky notes on your monitor or desk. 

Know your math. And keep a continuous learning mindset. Finally, stay curious and focused on your professional development.

The ones that control all of these things take ownership of a sales mindset.

Matt’s Bio:

I am an accomplished sales leader with a passion for bulding high-achieving teams. There is nothing that brings more joy in the workplace than to be able to watch professionals grow in an environment where being human is the center of our interactions.

Now on my third sales organization build-out, I have developed a deep understanding of the metrics that drive a SaaS business and the requirements necessary components of a Go-To-Market organization to drive growth.

Important Links:

Matt’s LinkedIn Profile

Comfy’s Website

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Getting Information Out (0:22)

Whatever your sales process is, an important foundational piece is not just marketing but really selling.

You’ve got to help the process by pushing back, which furthers the sales conversation. But to get back to it, ideally, you have at least a couple of pieces that are cohesive and compelling to your target prospects.

Companies need a place to start. They don’t even have a single one-pager and might just be thinking- what do I send? 

Having specific examples based on one particular company or situation is great to pass on to a prospect to further that conversation.

Many sales happen in between the conversations, so what are you doing in between that first and second call?

Those are such important times where you can reinforce what you’ve heard and validate a lot of what you bring to the table. Then, you can really set up the next call. 

Importance of Deliverables (6:05)

At each step, there’s a deliverable or outcome that the prospect or client can expect to earn from you. So that’s where you shift it in a way from “here’s what we do” into “here’s what you get from working with us.”

You don’t want to put onboarding as your first stage on your client’s success map because that’s not super valuable to the client. What’s beneficial to the client is the output of your onboarding. 

Sometimes it’s in the framing. For example, it might be onboarding or internally, or it might be we’re onboarding this client. But in the client success map, it might be called that strategic roadmap or that audit of where this relationship can go.

We do messaging is twofold: we follow the StoryBrand messaging framework and then move the interview process to Zoom. So interviewing these people is where the golden nuggets are for your messaging. 

Marketing vs. Sales (13:40) 

There’s a lot of thought leadership between marketing and sales and how those two departments come together. We just refer to it as a revenue team.

It’s a blend of marketing and salespeople. So you need to be diligent about how you do it. It’s not just saying let’s have marketing support sales. 

The role as a marketing agency is really to support the sales effort. So the best marketers are close to sales. They’re attached to the hip of sales. So it’s not just part of what we call the revenue team, which is let’s drive to a shared revenue goal.

Stephen’s Bio:

Stephen is a sales rep turned inbound marketer, giving him a unique perspective on marketing-sales alignment and how marketing can best support a company’s sales efforts. Stephen is CMO at Vantage Impact, helping clients set up and optimize HubSpot’s tools to market better and sell more effectively and efficiently. His unique modernized approach to marketing and sales is a game changer for the financial services industry, helping advisory practices move beyond cookie cutter content and hand shaking at events, to be more digital and automated without losing personal touch.

Golf, cold brew, bourbon (in that order). Big fan of goofy t-shirts and craft brewery trucker hats. ——

Last year Traci Beach and I started a second business with our brother-in-law, Boston Cardinal. In the middle of a pandemic with a bunch of little kids running around felt like the right time 😳😁…so we formed Vantage Impact. We are excited about this business because the model we’ve built is very unique.

Yet what we did was very simple really: we combined our Craft Impact: A Growth & Communications Agency business with Boston’s 10+ years of financial advisor recruiting experience, where he managed 1500+ financial advisor transitions.

Vantage Impact exists to guide financial advisors through big changes for their practice. We have two sides to the business: Transition and Growth.

Once we help advisors find the right firm, talent or custodian, we leverage strategic marketing and change communications, so they can grow a practice that’s profitable, impactful and life giving.

Cheers 🍻 to 2 “Impact” businesses 😛 and 3 little kids…what a ride!

Important Links:

Stephen Beach’s LinkedIn Profile

#80: Listen as Tyler Lindley, host of The Sales Lift Podcast, discusses social selling in 2022. He looks at the everlasting presence of LinkedIn, the boom of video content on TikTok, and how other media like podcasting and private social groups can up your selling game.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

LinkedIn in 2022 (1:00)

LinkedIn is still the predominant B2B professional networking site. If you are a B2B seller in this day and age, you have to be active on LinkedIn. 

Your profile is your opportunity to showcase your background skillset and tell a story. You want to make sure your profile is speaking to your target audience.

A lot of sales reps just repost. However, it’s best when sales leaders give their spin on that content and add a little bit of context about why that material resonated with them or create your organic content. 

You have to have the confidence to write some of those and post them. It will take some time to get some traction, but it starts with just having the confidence to start.

Whoever’s looking you up on LinkedIn, make it easy for them to find you and organize your content with maybe a hashtag. 

It would help if you tried to connect with your prospects to make it easier to message them on LinkedIn, obviously, and share things with them.

Importance of Video Content (6:22)

Get involved in discussions because many discussions are happening, and a lot of sales reps are sitting around lurking versus getting involved in those conversations.

Video is critical. TikTok is now one of the most popular websites globally, more popular than YouTube, which is crazy.

It’s easy to create video content on TikTok, and you can post it on TikTok or repurpose that content for other social platforms. 

Repurposing content is straightforward. You can add in the text boxes, making it easy to use. So definitely don’t sleep on TikTok.

The more you click publish, the more videos you create, the better you’re going to get no matter which platform you’re using, whether you’re dropping in at any time.

Podcasting and Other Media (12:16) 

Bucket podcasting podcasts are blowing up, they’re really popular, and they’re going to remain popular. 

All B2B sellers could have success creating a podcast, talking to their prospects, bringing them on as, bringing on industry experts, and just starting more discourse around topics your prospects might find.

It’s hard for you to stand out and build relationships with folks because there’s just so much noise on LinkedIn and Twitter.

People who post on Twitter naturally tend to be a little bit more off the cuff. It’s a little bit more personal. A lot of people e their Twitter content for LinkedIn.

Get involved in that conversation if you find an active prospect on Twitter.

Private Social Groups (15:46)

These groups have a slack group attached to them or some discord or Facebook group element.

Private social groups are a place to learn as B2B sellers. We need always to be learning and honing the craft. There’s a conversation about the sales process, development, leadership, and sales management. 

Private social groups are great for networking and meeting people, either in your space or people you can learn from and the sales.

You need to get involved and try to find opportunities. Many people post in those private social groups and not in a public forum or social media.

It’s a great way to meet people because everybody in those groups has something in common. 

Tyler’s Bio:

Hey y’all, I’m Tyler.

I’m a dad, husband, sales leader, podcaster & sales coach.

I help scale up CEOs & revenue leaders grow their business with a reliable revenue engine.

I also coach new SDRs in tech & SaaS sales to succeed in their roles early on and lay the foundation for a career in sales.

Important Links:

Tyler Lindley’s LinkedIn Profile

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Having A Plan (0:22)

A lot of stress comes with entrepreneurship, but being in sales and leading territories teaches you many things about becoming an entrepreneur and how you could eventually start your own business. Sales is a great place to start.

Writing out a business plan teaches you if the business is viable and to put it all on red and risk everything and do. It’s always good to have a plan. 

It’s hard when you have dreams in your head, but you can see them on paper when you take the time to write them down. Then you write a plan, and then you go, “oh crap. I’m actually going to have to do this.”

There’s a lot of pressure there, and that’s not taught in schools.

Crossover to Sales (6:14)

Salespeople, in general, are the most risk-tolerant in a company, which comes in handy when opening your own business. It’s an individual decision. 

If you’re this great hunter that can always open new accounts, what’s a blessing becomes a curse. 

Many folks think you’re only as good as your last quarter and sales. So you always have to be a student of your craft, but you also have always to watch your back because the pressure gets high as you succeed. 

You always need to be talking to people. You always need to have mentors. You always need to be in front of people and their advice. 

Everyone needs to be well-educated on money.

Salespeople have a lot of guts to plan their day. They have to be disciplined with their schedule and time, and they have to fit everything in between many sales jobs. They also have to have customer service components.

The anxiety of Sales and Business Ownership (14:28)

Owning a business gives you flexibility and control that you otherwise wouldn’t have in sales, but things happen in life. You’ll get fired, you’ll get territorial realignments, etc., so control is an illusion.

Anybody can do entrepreneurship. 

Always have those conversations, always investigate, and look at businesses. Understand how they’re run, how financing works, how profit and loss works, and all the business components because it will help you be a better salesperson.

You can’t run off your natural ability all the time; you have to hone your skills. And if you want to start your own thing, it’s certainly a path to do that. 

Joe’s Bio:

Joe Sponcia comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience from a varied background including, Sales, Sales Leadership, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship.

He has worked in small, family owned companies as well as large, corporate entities, and has packed all of his experience into the three companies he now co-founded: Holston Logistics, Sunshine Transit Group, and Mobile Wrench Works.

His goal is to help people who want to make the leap into being a business owner, not so daunting.

Important Links:

Joe Sponcia’s LinkedIn Profile

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Overcoming Objections (0:22)

When an objection comes up in sales, that’s really where the sale begins. And it’s a lot easier to cover what not to do with objections. 

What you want to do is be curious. You want to learn more and keep your prospect engaged. 

For most sales reps to learn how to overcome objections, they have to lose many of them. So try not to get eaten by the same objection twice.

Objections can happen as late as your negotiation and contract phase or as soon as someone picks up the phone and says, “not interested.” 

The best reps don’t get rattled. It doesn’t take any wind out of their sale. They almost pretend like they didn’t hear it and move on to the next question that they were going to ask.

The best thing you can do is learn from each scenario and think about what you could have said differently after the fact. 

Don’t get beat by the same objection twice. We hear new objections all the time, but eventually, you should be building up a library of answers.

Expecting Objections (7:22)

You could get up to four objections on every call, and it’s not necessary to overcome them right away. It’s okay: you’re becoming more curious and learning.

You don’t even have to try to overcome the objection necessarily. Maybe the goal starts as extending the conversation or learning about the objection. 

Acknowledge what they say because they want to feel acknowledged. It’s essential to do this empathetically when you recognize something.

You have to understand your prospect. Then, find ways to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes.

Approaching Common Objections (13:08)

Most objections fall under the category of a lack of value. There’s not enough perceived value in what you’re presenting because if there were, they wouldn’t have a budget.

Then there’s just the brush-off. You hit on a lot of the brush-offs early on. “Hey, I’m busy, and it was this, it’s “not interested.’

Another is that you’re not listening. Reps are quick to hop off and try to have a conversation about a specific area or a value they might bring. As soon as the prospect says, “Nah, that’s not a fit for us,” they stop listening and start pushing.

Objections can feel personal, so separate your identity from the call’s outcome.  

You’re not going to make every sale, and there will always be someone else to approach.

Nick’s Bio:

Nick Krebs is a sales coach at Vendition with experience working in sales at Yelp and other high-growth startups!

Important Links:

Nick’s LinkedIn Profile

#77: Listen as Alvaro Garcia, SDR at Reside Worldwide, discusses bringing creativity into sales. He shares his experience in the hospitality industry, how it’s given him a unique approach to sales, and how to create opportunities.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Translate Energy into Sales Messaging (0:22)

Focus on solving a customer’s problem creatively so that they don’t realize that you’re solving their problems.

Interrupt the pattern of everyday conversations with your energy and see if it gets anyone to open emails or respond more often.

Just do what you think is right, and hopefully, people will find that interesting. 

Talk to the reps when onboarding and figure out where they excel. A lot of companies allow their reps to use their most considerable skillset.

Finding Your Strengths (4:37)

Companies also need to be comfortable allowing sales reps to change if they don’t see success.

Many reps need to have that conversation with their manager, so when some of their efforts aren’t working, they can figure out where they’re strongest. 

Multi-channel approaches mean not just focusing on one skill set. However, if a rep is solid in one area, it’s okay to have their sequences and outreach skewed towards that type of communication, most likely to start conversations at the end of the day.

Know that that situation can change at any moment, and you can also influence that change.

Solving Problems (9:50)

Coming from a hospitality background helps sales because you get an opportunity to be yourself, and not every day is the same. 

It’s great working in the hospitality industry where you’re always creating an opportunity to change someone’s attitude or creating an opportunity for someone else—or creating an opportunity for yourself. 

Companies are made up of people, and people work with people. We’re in each stage, human-to-human conversation; whether you’re B2B, B2C, or whatever industry you’re in, we’re all people trying to connect with other people.

Creating Opportunities (13:43)

Dive deeper into people’s LinkedIn profiles. It’s an opportunity for someone to post about themselves and capture someone’s attention, sometimes unknowingly.

You have to get good at telling a brief story about something about them and then weave it into something your company, service, or product saw.

Figure out your “why.” Figure out why you’re in this role and if that role or that company works for you.

Alvaro’s Bio:

Young professional with a wine/hospitality background that has recently jumped into the Relocation and Mobility industry. Passionate about building relationships and motivating others.

Important Links:

Alvaro’s LinkedIn Profile

Reside Worldwide Website

#76: Listen as Tyler Lindley, B2B expert and host of The Sales Lift Podcast, revisits two of the most impactful episodes from 2021. First, we listen to Carl Ferreira and learn what it takes to crush the AE role at a billion-dollar scale-up. Then, we highlight our interview with Anna Rofsky and talk about taking calculated risks in your sales career.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Refining Your Mindset (0:22)

Carl just transitioned to Refine Labs, where he’s the Director of Sales, and Anna is a Sales Manager at Forethought. They both have been promoted from their days as AEs and are now in leadership positions.

In sales, a lot of us have that go-getter hunter mentality. We want to be at the top of the board. 

But it takes more than just that to be the top new rep at a big company or a small company, or any company.

Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the “new guy” mentality. You were hired for a reason, and you want to have that confidence, even if you’re first-time selling.

You need to know your product inside and out better than anyone else because you are the expert, and learning that product can help to have better conversations.

Adapt Your Coaching Style (7:32)

Look for weirdness and be open to it, and personality is at the forefront of your training style.

Transferring knowledge isn’t the same as transferring competency. When onboarding reps, it’s not just about shoving as much knowledge as you can in front of them. 

Also, we also need the space to learn how to be competent on our own. Learn how to fail, learn how to get better. So you can’t always hold your trainee’s hand.

In episode 18 with Chris Walker, he and Tyler talked about how better selling starts with better marketing. 

Qualifying and Disqualifying Prospects (11:03)

You have to qualify and disqualify your prospects just as they’re qualifying and disqualifying.

You have to understand their pain points, why they would buy, their whole business structure, and what their goals are in the immediate three months.

We want to think about our prospects and our customers’ long-term goals as much as their short-term goals. 

Just understanding that consulting motion and how you can learn more about their business, goals, and overarching themes and strategies they’re working on. 

Then hopefully, you figure out how your product or service helps move those goals forward instead of just pushing.

Important Links:

Carl’s LinkedIn Profile

Anna’s LinkedIn Profile

#75: Listen as Andy Paul, host of the "Sales Enablement Podcast" and author of the upcoming book, "Sell Without Selling Out," discusses the human side of selling in Part 2 of our interview. He covers what training works best for new hires and why starting with a humanistic approach is ideal.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Demonstrating Expertise and Integrity (0:22)

Starting strong comes down to making a connection, being sincere, and having a genuine interest in learning about them. 

Make sure you understand what is most important to them and see how you can help them get it.

Curiosity is more about questioning; you’re learning and gathering information. But there’s also a question the buyers ask, and it’s rarely asked aloud.

We answer it through operating with integrity, making sure our motivations are abundantly clear to the buyer that we act in alignment with those motivations and demonstrate our competence.

Then you need to keep them by evolving as their needs change. 

Understanding Uniqueness (5:45)

Look for opportunities to go back, revisit, and understand more about your buyer’s situation when things change based on new information.

The spontaneous insight that we collectively arrive at later in the sales process is the most impactful.

Now the buyer understands how smart we are because we gave them insight right at the beginning and evolved it to meet their needs.

Questions that trigger insights on the buyer’s part are infinitely more powerful and impactful than the pre-packaged ones we deliver at the beginning.

The heart of the matter is that every customer is unique and different, so their answers and needs will all be different.

Andy’s definition of business acumen for sellers is not understanding how one situation is different from another. Understanding that difference is an opportunity.

New Hires and Training (9:46)

Too many sellers think they need to have all the answers right away. And when you think of all the answers, selling becomes more of a zero-sum game because you will persuade people to buy. 

That’s not a very productive way to go about things, and you shouldn’t feel compelled to have the answers.

For many sellers, learning about business independent of your selling is learning about business. Learn how to read financial statements, Republic filings for public companies, and how a company operates. 

Being an SDR or any entry-level sales job is a tough job. Andy urges companies to hire old SDRs because they might do a better job and find another entry-level role for new sellers. 

It’s a different language, so teach your new hires to be human before you try to teach them how to be sellers. 

Andy’s Bio:

Andy’s hit “Accelerate Your Sales” podcast was acquired by ringDNA in 2020. Since re-named “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul”, the show continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals each week. Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, “Zero-Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales”.

He is ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts. And he has consulted with some of the biggest businesses in the world including Square, Philips, Grubhub, and more, making him one of the leading voices in the sales industry today.

Important Links:

AndyPaul.com

Andy’s LinkedIn Profile

#74: Listen as Andy Paul, host of the “Sales Enablement Podcast” and author of the upcoming book, “Sell Without Selling Out,” discusses selling vs. selling out. He covers what makes a good seller, why buyers often resist certain approaches, and why a humanistic sales approach is best.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Buyer Resistance (0:22)

We need to get a lot better at selling to humans, and part of the problem is that for so many sellers where they’re socialized, trained, and coached to behave in ways that buyers instinctively resist.

They use pushy, sleazy, and intellectually lazy behaviors Andy lumps into as “salesy” behaviors. So why are we still doing those? They don’t work, and the buyers instinctively resist them. 

Research shows a majority of the purchase decision, the criteria in the mind of the buyer purchase decision, are based on how they experience you as a seller. Not you as a company and the company you represent, but you as a seller, as an individual.

Connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity are your ticket to the level of success you want to achieve in the world.

We’re all wired to want to connect with those innate human behaviors. Part of our empathy understands how other people feel and how we can help them. 

Automation in Buyer Experience (5:38)

Push back against a process because the established process doesn’t align with who you are. It doesn’t align with your values or how I see the world.

As we’ve become more automated, many people take the easy way and lose sight that they succeed only to the degree to which they help develop their sellers.

If you want a long career in sales, you must learn how to create a memorable buying experience and help buyers achieve the most important things. 

A Seller’s Job (10:45)

For many investors, their goals don’t align with those of the management.

If you ask most sellers, what’s your job? The most common answer is that their job is to go out and persuade somebody to buy their product or service. 

The job is not to persuade them to buy what you have; it’s to understand the most important thing to them and then help them get that. 

If you go in with the idea of needing to connect with a person and earn credibility and trust, you can use your curiosity to ask great questions and surface what’s most important to them. 

Ask great follow-up questions to make sure that you understand what’s most important to them. Then, give value to help them achieve the desired outcome.

In sales, we’re not trying to persuade someone to do one thing or another. 

We’re trying to connect, pique curiosity, understand their situation, and if there’s an opportunity to help, we help. Otherwise, we move on.

Nailing Down the Selling Process (16:17)

There’s an issue with how we train sellers. Often we give sellers a list of questions that you ask or through listening to your peers and the recordings.

We’re good at gathering information, but we’re not good at really understanding what’s most important to the buyer.

A competitor who understands that they sell and create this experience with a buyer, continually discovering, understanding, and exploring further will always beat you. 

Most sellers miss the killer question that comes after: what are we missing? 

We think we understand everything. We’re all in agreement. We’ve got it. Okay, but what are we missing?

You make yourself attractive to another person by being interested in them.

Andy’s Bio:

Andy’s hit “Accelerate Your Sales” podcast was acquired by ringDNA in 2020. Since re-named “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul”, the show continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals each week. Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, “Zero-Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales”.

He is ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts. And he has consulted with some of the biggest businesses in the world including Square, Philips, Grubhub and more, making him one of the leading voices in the sales industry today.

Important Links:

AndyPaul.com

Andy’s LinkedIn Profile

#73: Listen as Kathryn Bennett, Director of RFP Excellence at Loopio, discusses her experience at winning with RFPs. She explains how to streamline the RFP process, the differences between RFI and RFP, and how it applies to public and private procurement efforts.

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

What is RFP and Why Does It Matter? (0:22)

RFP is the request for proposal that you get from enterprise organizations or entities often in the sales domain. 

You’ll hear it referred to as an RFX, an umbrella of types of responses that they might be soliciting.

So there are security, questionnaires, or DDQ issues like qualifications and documents. The RFP process is a formalized procurement process designed to advantage the buyer by providing specific types of information.

It requires a little more documentation simply because the entity is trying to do its due diligence by thoroughly reviewing its options.

In the RFP process, what it does, ultimately buyers are looking to save money by making more responsible decisions.

We want to make sure that we’re communicating the best value through our RFP documents.

You are often in a much more controlled environment because you’ve had to qualify to attempt to propose to these folks. And therefore, your pool of competition is much smaller, and you are in a better position to win the business.

RFPs in Startups and Scale-Ups (4:46)

One of the first things you need to consider in this instance is how you’ll find the opportunities. For example, if you’re selling into the business community, you usually have to get invited to submit to an RFP.

You may be discounting your pricing on a larger scale, but how you position yourself needs to be competitive.

You can get one small component of a larger project that helps you build your past performance and get your resume built up. Then you have that experience with the other entity partnerships. 

So being in that early startup environment and looking to win through RFP partnerships should be a key component of your strategy.

RFPs cost around $5k to $10k of labor and materials put together, and they’re not a small endeavor. And so, at least to those for larger enterprise efforts, that’s why the capture process is so important.

Maybe you fill out the RFI documents and never hear from the company again. That’s also pretty common, so don’t be discouraged.

RFI vs. RFP (9:52)

It goes down the sales and marketing funnels in terms of effort. One of the three main types of documents in this context will be the RFI at the top of the sales funnel.

RFI and RFQ stages don’t always happen. They’re optional and for very conscientious buyers or regulated buyers. 

By the time you get to the RFP, you’re building on those foundations, moving down the marketing funnel, and the buyer has decided that they are going to buy.

Many sales leaders will try to chase every RFP that comes through the door because they see it as a marketing opportunity. Kathryn makes it clear that by the time RFP has come out, you no longer have the chance to market.

Public vs. Private Procurement (14:00)

It’s vital to differentiate between public and private procurement efforts.

First of all, in private sector buying, they don’t have ethical rules around it. But they don’t have any legal prohibitions against public sector buying.

If there’s even a whiff of impropriety about the fact that maybe this person is in there influencing the sales process unfairly, those procurement people’s jobs are at risk. And in fact, they could be a legal liability. 

When it comes to public procurement, it makes sense to warm up. But no, the decision is not made before you walk in the door, which is why you would craft your proposal. 

For private procurement, you can often email the person leading the charge and say, “Hey, can I ask a question about this?” Then, maybe they’ll put it out to the rest of the buyers. That might not be true for public procurement. 

You need to be cognizant that they will publish the questions you ask, but you can strategically ask questions that torpedo your competition or that support your position.

If you intend to move into the enterprise space or sell space with governments, you have to have a good content management system.

The earlier you start managing content for your sales and proposal efforts, the more reliable and sustainable your processes will be.

Streamlining the Hiring Process (0:23)

Sales recruiting is extremely critical to any organization and necessary to get this right because your sales reps are at the forefront of your entire organization. 

People forget that the interview process is a two-way street: having your elevator pitch down is necessary for an interviewee; as an interviewer, a quick, detailed, and efficient interview process.

Being empathetic, kind, and diligent with feedback goes the extra mile when closing a candidate. For a lot of the junior candidates, it's about tonality and making them comfortable.

Questioning Strategies (5:45)

Pull from behavioral questions and situational questions.

Behavioral questions revolve around the candidate's accomplishments and their storytelling ability. For example, many companies will ask the question, "tell me about a time that you have seen success."

Situational questions are good because they assess how the candidate can think on their feet and use critical thinking.

Doing your best to try to make the candidate feel comfortable is key. You don't want them so bogged up with nerves they can't answer it.

Stick to more professional examples, but if you have a great personal story that makes you who you are, make sure you keep it relevant.

"Tell me about yourself" questions are critical. You have to be able to entice that interviewer in the first 30 to 45 seconds, just like you would a prospect, and this question is often one of the first ones you're asked.

The majority of the process comes down to whether or not they can do the job. But a good 30-40% of it also assesses if a candidate can work alongside the team. 

Common Mistakes (10:47)

Don't miss out on a candidate because you have FOMO. If they're a good candidate, they're going to get swooped up, so you better schedule next steps to keep them warm and engaged in the process. 

Companies should always provide feedback whether they move forward or reject a candidate. This helps them in the future while allowing you to assess their coachability skills. 

When an offer is made, and the manager doesn't reach out to congratulate the candidate, it doesn't feel like the offer is real since those team members aren't sharing excitement or encouragement. 

Some companies only have a one-step interview process. It's rare, but an individual needs to meet at least two to three folks on the team to understand if they can work there. So ensure you have more than just a single process is key.

Role of the Recruiter (14:19)

The recruiter is the strategic matchmaker and works with candidates to figure out what they are looking for in their new professional home.

They also work with companies to determine what they want in an ideal hire, soft skills, technical skills background, etc.

Recruiters want managers to interview three to five candidates and hire one of them. So they work closely with the companies before setting up interviews to figure out their ideal candidate and process. 

Trust your gut as a hiring manager and run with it. Set viable expectations and just be open to young junior people who don't have prior SDR experience because that's what the whole business model is.

Gabriella's Bio:

Director of Strategic Accounts at Vendition 

I have been recruiting SDRs for the past 3.5 years 

Placed over 100s of SDRs

Important Links:

Gabriella's LinkedIn Profile

Click here for the full show notes, transcript, and more!

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Getting Started with Hiring (0:23)

You don’t need an absolute all-star sales rep for your first hire, but you need someone with the business acumen and presence of mind to give you a feedback loop.

Before you even go looking for someone, take what you’re currently doing and put it down on paper. 

Get it into a process in a repeatable way of having conversations.

​​Hardcore prospecting that maybe you’re probably not doing your referring referrals, but you need leverage to get more people. 

Enabling Your New Hires (7:51)

Enabling your new hire depends on what your hope is for the organization. 

Bryan has worked with companies with a lifestyle-type business, and they want to grow it a little bit versus the companies who want to scale. 

Often the ones who want to scale, no matter how good they are at sales, can’t get out of their own way. Acceleration is what they need. 

Identify what you’re doing and document the main pain points you need hires to solve. It doesn’t matter where you are in the process. You need to ask good questions. 

Ideally, you’re bringing on people who are raising the bar each time.

It is hard to retain good sales talents, especially today, so you have to give them a reason to stay.

It’s a commitment to your organization’s vision and actual mission that gets someone so passionate. So it’s key to make sure you have that right person.

Once a hire gets their groove, focus on the knowledge and information they need to enable why you hired them.

Bryan recommends the book Working Backwards.

Measuring Success (17:02)

The core of it is to measure inputs, track outputs, and then start to see what you can do to change those outputs.

You’ve got to take that part seriously because if you hire sales reps and put them in the system, they may or may succeed over a long period without that consistent feedback and consistent outreach.

You’re not only making them productive for you, but you’re keeping them happy because they feel like they’re still growing and learning.

Sales is a tough industry, and most top sales reps leave because they get tired of the conversation. Of course, they’re good at conversation, but nothing is challenging. 

That’s why companies need to innovate, give them a new product line to sell you a new service, and have them figure out new problems.

Click here for the full episode show notes, transcript, and more!

Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:

Why Podcast Selling? (0:23)

If you had a podcast where you interview the types of people that you want to build relationships with, it’s not with the idea you’ll never have to pick up the phone again; podcasts won’t solve all of your prospecting problems. 

But they are a great way to build high-quality relationships by adding value from day one.

Many sellers struggle with posting original content on social media, and a podcast can easily solve that. 

Inviting people you want to do business with or partner with in some way can drive revenue for you in your role. 

Then you can create pieces that are lifting them, and most of your prospects out there would be willing to hop on a podcast interview.

The more conversations you have, especially the more high-quality conversations, not every person that you have on a podcast is not going to become a prospect.

Podcasts as Skill Builders (5:46)

People always tell you to learn your prospects, understand their language, know how they talk, what makes them tick, what they care about, and all these things. You have to be very curious, and you have to ask great questions. 

All of those skills transfer to every other sales conversation that you have with your prospects. And you’re going to be a much more skilled seller by practicing through podcasting.

One thing people get nervous about is nobody is going to listen to the podcast. Does it even matter? 

But they’re skills you can build, and you’re getting a masterclass in how to be a better seller. So it isn’t a failure if you’re getting all these other benefits. 

Getting Started (9:08)

A host is a platform where you post your episodes and push them out to all podcast platforms. If you’re a new seller, free might sound good. 

Names should somewhat tell people what the show is about, especially if you want to build listenership over time. For example, if it’s a sales show, it should have sales in the title or something like that. 

If you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to do it, so make sure you have passion driving you. 

Many new podcasters think nobody will want to be on a show that doesn’t even exist yet. 

However, there are so many people accustomed to being invited on shows that don’t exist yet because it’s very common for many people to start their show and record their first four or five before they actually launch that way.

Start with maybe four or five friendlies people you know that be on the show, who would give you feedback. 

Listen Notes is a platform that has the most accurate data source for podcasting to help you get started on improving your metrics and targeting your ideal listeners.

The Benefits of Podcast Selling (17:12) 

There is no outside to the conversation: it can’t be farmed out to someone else, or it wouldn’t be authentic.

Starting a podcast sounds nuts. So, guesting on shows might be a good, comfortable place to start. 

You should be guesting on podcasts regularly as part of your strategy because you’re going to be investing in your brand. You’re going to be elevating your thought leadership and getting your message out there.

The key is to ensure that you get on the right shows with the type of people you want to get your message in front.

Remember, it’s just a big sales pitch. Show up and provide some value and education for the listeners. That’s why podcast hosts do this.

Collin’s Bio:

Collin Mitchell is a 4x Founder passionate about Sales, Entrepreneurship, and Podcasting! Collin is the Co-Founder of Salescast and Host of Sales Transformation. Collin lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife, three kids, and a new puppy!

Click here to view the full show notes, transcript, and more for this episode!

Check out the Cliff Notes below:

The Role of Motivation (:28)

It's interesting to think of commission as extrinsic motivation to get you to achieve an objective.

People are setting higher quotas so that the company grows, but then you still have this missing alignment between what people are hitting and where they're getting to that point.

You have to find this intrinsic approach to motivate somebody, to get to a point where they're earning an income that satisfies their needs.

So we're looking at it from an approach, instead of trying to put a quote on you that's higher than what you can probably achieve. 

Where the Companies Go Wrong (4:39)

This is all tons of research and time trying to identify what's this good blend of setting a salary point in a quota and then how do you then continue driving on top of that quota.

There are a ton of variables involved in each of the companies. Then there's the scalability of setting quotas higher in different spaces, industries, and services. 

That's where the tricky part lies because you can find tons of articles and research about there with commission people in the SAS space, but not necessarily service. 

So, it comes down to figuring out a problem inside our space that everyone might not be going through the same kind. The best approach is a consultative, strategic selling process. 

Quotas and commissions exist because that's just how it's always been, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best model or the most motivating model for sales reps.

Balancing Stress (8:28)

We naturally think if we push harder, we can make more, but that doesn't always mean you hit quota. Sometimes, that means burning out and making less, which is a vicious cycle. It's why mental health and sales it's a hot topic.

Then there's the part about your customer suffering because you're stressed out now, and you're coming to these calls with stress.  

Ben is trying to challenge the status quo in a way that does make sense and does fit. They are trying to be the place where people want to work and enjoy working there. 

They also have a reduced work program where you can get paid the same amount but have reduced working hours. It adds sustainability and reduces stress, which increases performance efficiency. 

Attracting Quality Talent (12:39)

It's crucial to hold to your vision. When you start doing that, though, it seems like it attracts more talent. 

It's all about being with yourself, the people you would want to work with, and bringing together a culture. 

There's also the Steve jobs approach of hiring people that are smarter than you.

Many people coming out of school have few job opportunities and choose the one that has the biggest salary. They don't pay much attention to opportunities that will make them the happiest or give them a good balance. That comes later. 

Culture will be way more impactful on life, the commission structure follows, and then flexibility. That's what's going to drive your happiness. 

Click here for full episode show notes, transcript, and more!

Why Systems Matter (0:55)

The five things a sales operating system should focus on are process, method, message, technology, and training.

The process is the steps that your sales team should take from prospecting to closing. The method is those tactics, behaviors, and best practices to turn prospects into buyers. The message is your ideas, value prop, and anything else about what your brand is saying.

Next are the materials you have to support your sales team throughout the buyer's journey and how you use technology to gather actionable data for your team. Finally, training looks at how you identify skill gaps in the process and level up your team through onboarding, one-on-ones, and coaching. 

Having organization around your sales system and process allows everyone to grasp it easier from a growth and training perspective as you bring new people into the sales organization.

As salespeople, we are driven by closing revenue, relationships, and communication, but we are not perfect. We forget things, things drop off, and that's why having a tried-and-true system in place is so beneficial. 

Developing A Sales Process (5:06) 

The first thing that happens is that you have a tough time adding people to the sales team and then retaining those you walked in. So you want your first impression as a boss is that you have everything you need to have together. 

Hiring and maintaining good talent is critical because there is so much turnover in this industry. Anything you can do to alleviate the chaos of onboarding helps. 

Creating a playbook allows sales reps to take it with them and make it their own. Lastly, make sure your marketing and sales efforts are aligned. 

Without a sales system in place, your sales team likely goes rogue. Everyone across the revenue organization should be speaking the same language, or else all sides suffer. 

Where to Start (9:30)

It depends on what stage of growth you're in. If you've started your business already and you have at least one client, you have to audit what you've done to that point. 

If you don't have a team, you may not be doing a lot of training and onboarding. First, you have to audit to see what you are doing in the five areas? From there, it's about deciding how to add your next person. 

The next people to join should be SDRs, marketers, AEs, and success reps added as you scale. The more you give to brand new employees joining the revenue organization, the easier their onboarding is and the faster they impact your prospects and buyers.

Good communication, coachability, and curiosity are all very important. These are all things you can vet for during the application and interview process.  

Click here for full episode show notes, transcript, and more!

Difficulties When Starting (0:28)

Typically, the transition starts with an SMB company, typically a series B, closing many SMB deals, and then they get an enterprise deal that falls in their laps.

The biggest change is the number of stakeholders involved.

SMB can be intimidating because you have many people involved in the decision-making in a lot of different roles, and some of them are senior leaders.

Each stakeholder has unique, usually self-centered interests as to why they want to purchase one solution over another. 

It's your job as the sales rep to figure out, stakeholder by stakeholder, what is important to each individual, and then hone in on that.

Have individual conversations with every stakeholder when possible and pay attention to each stakeholder. If you don't know what's important to this stakeholder over here, that could be a wrench in your gears.

If at all possible, you want to close it this year to make it a little bit more manageable and keep yourself sane. But remember, you're playing the long game. 

The Process Behind the Deal (4:16)

There are two very distinct cycles in a deal's decision process in the enterprise world: generating group consensus and the procurement paper process. 

The lion's share of the two processes happens separately. You try to get the paper process going as early as possible.

If you're outbounding into the account, there is no defined initiative and no defined pain. So there's no budget set aside for this, but you generate some interest and uncover some pain.

The status quo you're selling against is always your biggest competitor.

RFP do themselves a disservice by not engaging each vendor the way they should be engaged. So they're generally hit or miss.

Even if you weren't involved early in the RFP creation process, you have a very solid shot in the deal. But if you can get in at the RFP creation process- that's awesome.

Smaller SMB sales might involve one person, maybe two or three, but it seems like the further you go upmarket and enterprise deals, the more stakeholders you'll need.

Team Selling (9:01)

You can't be a lone-ranger when teams are selling; if you're going to lose, don't lose alone.  

You should be working with your SDR or BDR on that account plan. Then as you get into the cycle itself, your team starts expanding, and your STR probably won't be so much involved anymore.

You, as the rep, need to spot the issues in the deal and bring in the right people to solve those challenges and convert stakeholders into supporters.

When looking at hiring an enterprise rep, the first thing to start with is talking about how they build up your territory. What have they done that similarly in the past, and are they creative?

Self-sufficiency is also something to look for because the last thing you want is a rep who sits around waiting for someone to give them direction. 

It's probably not a good idea to take a pure SMB rep that has never worked a large deal and throw them into an enterprise role. 

It's better to start them with Mid-Market deals and work their way up. 

Driving Sales (13:47)

There's usually very little room for growth in an SMB account, and you want to have a team specifically there for upselling and cross-selling.

The organization has to do with the comp plans. There's a lot that goes into whether or not it's worth upselling or cross-selling.

There is no better customer than your current customer, and that's where your loyalty should be: focused on them. Of course, then, they will continue buying from you. 

Don't just show up when there's a problem. Instead, try to break that text barrier as early as possible and use any excuse to get that first text message out the door. 

It's not just about upselling. It's about building and maintaining relationships. 

For businesses looking to break into enterprise selling, Alex suggests taking a break every so often to look at what you're doing. Then, ask yourself what it will take to close an enterprise deal and test the waters first. 

Build the process, figure out what works, and then scale it rather than jumping right in. 

Why Passion Is Important (0:58)

The essence of sales, creativity, and personalization is what we do as human beings. We hear a lot about B2B and B2C sales, but never H2H or "human to human" sales. 

Think about how you communicate with your friends, your family, somebody that you're trying to date for the first time or your wife of 20 years, your husband or friend. It's okay to be human. And that's what makes us different in sales.

If you're not passionate about what you're selling, you might need to find something else to sell because creativity is fueled by passion.

If you don't have that passion, you have to get it. Start by asking yourself, "why?" Why do you do this every day?

Turn that "why" into your passion and turn that passion into creativity in your sales outreach. You need to make sure that you are focused on that passion and creativity because you're going to come across as bland and authentic without it.

Focus on what you can do today to bring passion and creativity to your outreach.

Finding The Passion (4:19)

Sales is a math game. In that regard, you've got to make sure you're doing the right amount of inputs to get to the output. But sales is also an art. 

The only way to get better at that art is to practice it every single day. 

You have to understand your prospect. A lot of being creative and personal starts with understanding your prospect. 

So you need to get into their shoes. You need to understand what their world looks like.

​​We have to understand that our prospects are getting hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of emails—all the time. 

Many of them are coming from sales reps, just like you, and the bland emails may not even end up in the inbox. And it starts with the subject line. 

Personalizing Video Selling and Cold Calls (12:22)

If you're not selling with video in this day and age, you're falling behind. Prospects respond to video because it's personalized and creative.

You want a good background, good lighting, and a strong voice. You want it clear, concise, and to the point.

Use those videos to your advantage. You can even create generic versions of these videos and send them to prospects. They don't all have to be personalized, but you want to make as many of them as personalized as possible. 

Everyone should have a script going into a cold call because it's critical to have a game plan.

And it's not just the words in the cold call script, but how you deliver them. So you are the punctuation of the script; just don't go too crazy with it. 

The difference between standing out and not is getting that email getting opened. 

Click here for the full episode show notes & more!

Forming A Sales Development Team (0:38)

When thinking about adding a sales development team, talent, internal support training, and tech stack are common things people go to. But the time and opportunity cost is probably the biggest factor.

The growth speed depends on how much horsepower has been put behind it, budget-wise, and everything from the get-go. 

Once you get a full-time manager and have all the investments of the tech stack, the data, the sales enablement, the training component of it, and the training program, that's when you've started to recoup your investment. 

It could be a full 18 to 24 months to see an SDR organization mature, guaranteed that you start from scratch.

There are going to be bumps along the way. Mike has seen companies let go of an outsourced firm after they've built themselves up on their own, and then all of a sudden, a year or two later, they come back to the firm they initially hired.

Balancing Insourcing and Outsourcing (4:44)

The maturity level of the marketing organization in terms of driving awareness, driving leads, and driving people to the website is very indicative of where a company is in its sourcing. 

CML or a VP of marketing is one of the early strategic hires. A lot of the sales efforts initially are founder-led, but they'll hire a marketer and start building up that marketing infrastructure.

They have to have an SDR, either outsourced from an outsource SDR company like Mike's or insourced from hiring within the organization. 

As the company grows, there comes the point where the founders can't do everything. 

When you have a product-market fit and have to hit the gas, you have to have a sales professional or sales leader because, at that point, you're probably going to have some additional funding.

Marketing and Sales Alignment (8:17)

There can definitely be contention on who owns the SDR function. For example, is it owned by the sales leader or by the marketing leader? 

If the marketing leader is the first one in, they typically own that function because they generate leads that need follow-up.

Then, when the sales leaders come in, there should be a little bit of a turf battle because they're the ones who have to build an organization. So they've got to scale. 

The chief revenue officer is supposed to be the person that ties in sales and marketing and even customer success into a single leader. So maybe it's just as a VP of sales initially or a couple of senior sales executives, and that's how you start the sales organization until, eventually, it's a CRO.

Whether you hire one at a time or multiple at once depends on how much you have from a venture funding standpoint.

Revenue Operating Systems (0:33)

Everyone must agree on a framework, measures and dimensions, and different processes, workflows, and permission systems. Those are all core tenants that gum up the revenue process.

We all have to share the same scorecard, and we all have to be moving in the same direction.

Revenue operations are certainly the fundamental technical aspect of how you enable an organization to drive revenue. But sometimes, what happens is it doesn’t do a good job.

Each aspect of an organization (marketing, sales, service, management, etc.) plugs into revenue operations to be able to extract the value from it.

=====================

Building Revenue Operating Systems (3:58)

Ben starts with a three-step process of frame focusing and growth. First, you have to understand the current reality, and the truth is everybody defines their reality based on their perspective of the situation.

The second part focuses on what success is for each part, which is part of the cascading reality.

Once you decide on that, you have the two pivot points: where you are and where you want to be in the current reality vs. preferred future.

Spend the time to capture existing business processes, permission systems, and workflows.

=====================

Building and Using Scorecards (6:51)

We have to define a common scorecard by how it influences decisions and behavior at every level. So revenue, customer acquisition, MRR, ARR, growth- all of those kinds of things are lagging indicators that need accounting for.

The scorecard needs to have a combination of leading indicators to give everyone clarity around what was successful that day.

As a manager, you should know where your people are moving. The earlier you can intervene when a variable or variance is observed, the sooner you can resolve it before it becomes a real impediment to growth.

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Role of Management (13:26)

The purpose of Revenue Operating Systems is to enable everyone to be more successful. For that to be true, the manager must believe that their fundamental goal is to enable other people to succeed.

What often happens on the revenue side is we promote substantial individual contributors into management roles because if you’re a great revenue leader, you’re a great revenue generator. But it doesn’t often work that way.

You, as a manager, can do what you knew best, which is resolving that friction. And they, as a contributor, can do what they do best, which is develop relationships and drive that revenue.

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Ben's Bio:

Ben Stroup is Chief Growth Architect and President at Velocity Strategy Solutions, a next-generation business strategy, and management consulting firm focused on helping ambitious leaders align teams, reduce complexity, eliminate friction, and drive revenue. He is a futurist, disruptor, and data champion having served organizations from $5MM to more than $500MM in revenue for more than 18 years. 

Ben's written and edited dozens of books on leadership and growth and is a frequent speaker, podcaster, and guest for business and industry groups. His most recent book, Master the Pivot, was released in 2020. Ben and his wife and two boys live in the Nashville, Tennessee area.

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Approaching Sales Scripts (0:32)

It's understandable to be unsure of scripts because they can make people sound robotic and monotonous. However, the key to scripts is not just crafting a message but understanding it and working with it.

From a marketing perspective, it's about crafting the message of the brand and company, then adapting the value proposition so that the sales team can speak to a variety of clients in a way that works and that they can make their own.

Evolution of a Dynamic Script (4:40)

As the industry changes and companies pivot to selling a different type of product or to a different person, it’s important to keep your script dynamic. So you don’t get stuck on the words. 

In sales, it's really important to believe and understand what you're saying, especially as a new SDR. So your first ninety days or six months is all about getting comfortable with what you're saying.

Stop selling and start talking to people like they're human beings.

It's a matter of sheer respect. Marketing and sales are about hitting people in the right way, at the right time, so that they hear your message. SDRs are likely hitting people with the right message at the wrong time. 
If you've done your prospecting, you'll know when it might not be the right time. So asking that permission upfront is so important. Otherwise, your message may fall on deaf ears.

It's a conversation for a reason. You need to be adding value to the person you're talking to, and you need to leave that person better than you found them.

Different Types of Scripts (10:09)

There are certain key things SDRs need to find out before they can pass something over to sales to show they’re doing their job.

If you're just trying to hit five qualifying questions, you're not listening to what the person says on the other end of the phone. Or they've already answered it in passing, and you're not reacting to what they're saying.

Scripts are also important for setting the call's tone, whether it's a cold call, discovery call, etc. And they become a lot looser once you get past the intro of the call.

You have to have the tools and resources now to be smart about how we go about sales and marketing. The last thing you want is to insult people by reaching out to them when they never needed your services. 

Jocelyn Quall's Bio:

Jocelyn is the Sr. Director of Marketing & Sales Development at Reside, a leading prop-tech and B2B global hospitality provider. She is responsible for driving all lead gen and demand growth efforts for the Reside brand portfolio. 

Jocelyn has spent her career working with B2B and B2C hospitality leaders; growing with the industry as it pivoted toward technology-led and experience-driven. She is a passionate storyteller and loves crafting messages that elicit emotions and drive engagement with her audience.

After hours, you’ll find Jocelyn mastering her job as a first-time mom to Liam, honing her communication skills with her husband, and chasing her chickens and dog around her property in Monroe, WA. She’s always ready to host family and friends with a bottle of red, a new recipe to test and a story to share.

Please visit The Sales Lift Website for full show notes and more!

Show Notes:

Encouragement and Raising the Bar (0:42)

The perfect recipe is a balance between accountability and encouragement, and most sales leaders will fall closer to one of those two ends on the spectrum.

An important aspect is to know where your rep's ceiling is and raise it for them. For example, say, "I know you think that this is your bar, but I see more out of you, and I'm going to hold you to that until you get there."

We want to raise that ceiling for everyone because if we can do that across the board, we likely can hit our numbers more easily as a team.

Building Accountability (4:40)

It's important to be very open and transparent with your reps about expectations and where they fall. That makes accountability easy because the numbers do the talking. 

While a lot of reps are pitted against one another, it's really about competing with themselves at the end of the day.

Once you have the right visibility, it makes it a lot easier to hold them accountable and stay on the same page. Put the numbers in front of them and figure out together what's the right path to get there.

Look at those numbers consistently and set that standard from the beginning versus being a little more wishy-washy on what activities lead to the outcomes we're looking for.

Chris uses a productivity quadrant, and if you don't use Ambition you can easily create it. It's essentially a skill-versus-will chart.

Highlighting opportunities for the rep and showing them exact areas where they may have some weaknesses is important.

Coaching to Empower (12:21)

We want to build a muscle of self-awareness within our reps to begin self-diagnosing as they move on in their careers. It's important to empower them. 

That one-on-one interaction is the most important interaction you're going to have with your reps every week. So, you want your reps to look forward to that 30-minute slot.

When they lead that conversation, it tends to be more valuable for them, which is why Chris always suggests empowering them to lead that discussion.

It can be intimidating for them because they don't necessarily know what we should be talking about. So what Chris likes to do is give a really high-level agenda of what he'd like to talk about, but not set it in stone.

Setting The Agenda (16:23)

Working remotely poses other challenges since you're not face-to-face. 

A simple "how are you doing" is a great way to open up that discussion. Some reps will give a generic answer, but others will use it as an opportunity to let you know what they've been struggling with. 

The second thing Chris always covers in his one-on-ones is what goals the rep has for the week. Again, it's helpful to have the meeting early on in the week to set goals and make a plan.

The third is what the path to quota this month is. That's a really big area where you want the rep to take control of the conversation and make a plan for themselves. 

This leads to asking what the rep will need to win that week so you can help them get the tools they need to succeed. 

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for listening!

Transcript:

Hey y'all. I'm Tyler and this is The Sales Lift. The Sales Lift is a sales enablement podcast hosted by me, Tyler Lindley. This is episode one, a solo episode with just me. Most episodes will feature a conversation with an expert in marketing, sales or sales enablement, where we gain insight and ideas from that guest interview. Occasionally, episodes will be just myself discussing a key idea or theme around sales enablement that I think will be valuable to you. At the end of the day, that's what this podcast is about, bringing value to you, the listener and who exactly is this podcast for? 

This podcast is for business leaders, marketing leaders, sales leaders and sales enablement professionals that are interested in learning more about sales enablement and how it can help your company grow and succeed and scale faster. 

So that brings us to today's episode. Episode one, what is sales enablement? Sales enablement. It's a buzzword that's used often but often misunderstood. A big part of this podcast we'll be exploring what sales enablement means exactly. We will work to define what sales enablement is and why you should care about implementing sales enablement as part of your strategy for your organization. You know, part of this podcast will be to work on creating a crowdsourced definition of sales enablement from the discussions I have with marketing, sales, and enablement professionals. But because this is only episode one, I'm obviously still working on that crowdsourced definition. 

So here's what I think based on what I know so far. Sales enablement means empowering your sales team to sell better and faster and with more useful resources. It's a collective effort involving marketing, sales and customer success teams that can align better to increase sales. Sales enablement is about enabling that individual sales rep on your team to overachieve because they have so much ammunition going into the sales process. And those resources can come from a sales manager or the marketing team or the customer success team, even executive leaders or specific enablement professionals. It really just means getting set up for success versus failure, setting your sales team up for success. You know, I've been in sales and I've felt supported and I've also felt ignored by the organization around me. And it really has a huge impact on the confidence that those individual sales reps have when going into a sales conversation. 

Some of the key themes that we're going to explore in this show are first is marketing and sales alignment. You know, a company's marketing and sales budgets are typically two of the largest line item expenses for most organizations. However, rarely are marketing and sales teams in sync. You know, they don't communicate, they have different ideas about the ideal customer profile that their business should be targeting. Or maybe there's a really messy handoff from the marketing team to the sales team when a prospect is ready to talk to sales. Wherever it might occur, if marketing and sales aren't aligned, it can lead to a variety of issues for companies trying to generate more revenue. 

Another key theme we're going to explore is sales training and onboarding. You know, sales training and onboarding are really the systems and the information that you give your sales team to help them close more deals. The sales training is really that framework, it's the methodology that you give to the sales team so that they can implement a consistent process for moving prospects to customers. Onboarding, on the other hand, is that initial sales training, where you give that new information to new sales hires, so you can get them up to speed as in selling quickly and effectively as quickly as possible. You know, it's a lot more than just product knowledge. But it really is about the skills and information necessary to succeed as a new sales rep. 

Another key theme, the buyers journey, you know, that process that you take your prospects through from those first touches online to signing on the dotted line to upsells and referrals and more. Every step of that buyer's journey should be important. It should be planned and scripted and improved upon over time. The buyers journey is really it's always a work in progress, you know, how can your company make it better? How can you delight your buyers at every step of that journey? And how can you reduce that buyer's remorse that a lot of your new customers have right after they buy from you? 

Another key theme we're gonna explore is sales tools and technology. You know, what resources are you giving your sales reps to keep up with their sales process and connect with prospects and existing clients more easily. Things like CRMs, communication tools, marketing platforms and more. You know, there's thousands of software tools that exists to help increase sales, but it's important to not just choose a bunch of tools that get in the way of making sales, but rather choose the right set of tools that will allow the sales team to perform at peak levels with little confusion in the process. 

I'm so excited to take this journey together and really determine how sales enablement can help you and your business succeed in the future. Please check out our website at thesaleslift.com for episode show notes. We're going to have blog posts on sales enablement best practices. There'll be a sign up there for our newsletter that's going to feature all of this great content sent to your email inbox. So you can also feel free to email your questions directly to me at Tyler @ thesaleslift.com. If you need help implementing some of these ideas you hear, you know, let me know. If you know of someone that I should interview on this podcast, drop me a note because I really look forward to creating a dialogue and getting to know most of you personally, as you listen to the show and engage with this content online. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you again soon here right next week on The Sales Lift. Take care!