Authentic Persuasion Show

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[437] Training Session - 33 - Authentic Persuasion Q&A Part 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 12:50:45 +0000

My clients treat me like I should be on demand, and that I work for them. Is there anything I can do to change that?

In this special episode of my training session, I continue to address questions that are sales-related.

One of the things that I love doing more than anything, is helping facilitate transformation.

Learn more as I discuss questions and topics that will help you improve in your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[436] Training Session - 32 - Authentic Persuasion Q&A Part 3

Jason Cutter — Mon, 23 May 2022 15:06:03 +0000

My manager asked me to move up to a team lead supervisor role, should I do it?

I used to be a door-to-door salesperson. Now I'm over the phone and working from home, I'm struggling to get the same results I used to get. What can I do?

In this special episode of my training session, I continue to address questions that are sales-related.

Learn more as I provide some insights on a wide range of topics and issues that I see to help you in your selling effectiveness.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[435] Training Session - 31 - Authentic Persuasion Q&A for Leaders

Jason Cutter — Tue, 17 May 2022 13:45:00 +0000

How do you recruit authentic salespeople who will be effective?

How do I manage my reps to a process, but give them the latitude of being authentic?

In this special episode of my training session, I addressed some leadership-focused questions that will help everyone in a leadership role.

Learn more about leadership, how to be effective, and how authentic persuasion applies to it.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[434] Training Session - 30 - Authentic Persuasion Q&A Part 2

Jason Cutter — Mon, 09 May 2022 16:43:40 +0000

What is the one question I should be asking that will help me close more deals? You said it is my duty to help people, especially as their guide, but my product doesn't change lives. How do I get people to care?

These are some of the questions that I get that I am going to go through and answer in this episode.

Learn more as I provide some insights on a wide range of topics and issues that I see to help you in your selling effectiveness.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[433] Training Session - 29 - Authentic Persuasion Q&A

Jason Cutter — Mon, 02 May 2022 13:38:18 +0000

Will people buy at me if I am being my real self? How can I become effective in being authentic?

People actually want you and your authentic self and they want to know that they are dealing with a human who cares.

In this special episode of my training session, I am going to answer questions that are frequently asked to me recently, and that are relative to authentic persuasion.

Learn more from all the questions that I will address in this session, and together let's become authentic persuaders!

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[432] Training Session - 28 - They won’t buy today…now what?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:22:36 +0000

What happens after, when people don't buy? Is there anything you can do about it?

In sales, no matter what, it's not B2C nor B2B, but H2H. It's human to human. The big thing is that no matter what you sell, no matter who you're dealing with, none of that really matters at the fundamental base because you have to remember that you're dealing with another human.

In this episode, I talk about what happens when people don't buy, and this episode is more tactical than the previous ones.

Tune in and learn more as I talk about this topic and more helpful tips that can help you improve in your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[431] Training Session - 27 - Why Does The Sales Experience Matter?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:40:22 +0000

What does sales experience mean to you? Why does it even have to matter? The sales experience is about what the prospect is dealing with, what your employees are dealing with, and then ultimately what your company is facilitating. In this episode of my training session, I talk about the sales experience and what it means to the salesperson, the customer, and the company. Learn more about this topic and a lot more helpful tips to improve your sales operations!

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[S2E09] Q&A: How Do You Motivate Your Team? How Much Turnover Is Okay? (and more)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 13:18:10 +0000

In this special episode, Oliver and Jason are having a Q&A Session.

Learn about the following topics:

When I was in sales, I worked hard because I was driven to succeed and make money. But it seems like reps now don't have that same desire to put in the effort. How can I motivate them like I was motivated?

What tools can you use to spot training needs? (KPIs, attrition, churn)

What is an acceptable amount of turnover? Ours feels high, but it might not - not sure.

How do I get my reps to make more calls?

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

[430] Training Session - 26 - Marry The Vision. Date The Strategy

Jason Cutter — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:30:00 +0000

What does it mean to "Marry the Vision, and Date the Strategy"? Why is this important to be applied by everyone in an organization?

The mission and vision explain what you do, who you're focused on, and the value you provide. While the strategies, are about how are you going to get there.

In this episode, I talk about mission and vision, and I will help you understand it more deeply – especially the importance of focusing on it to achieve success.

Learn more about strategies, growth, the importance of change and taking risks, and a lot more helpful tips!

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[S2E08] Why Companies Don’t Build Better Training Programs?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 13:14:27 +0000

Why don't companies build better training programs for their staff, and for their leaders?

In this episode, Oliver and Jason talk about how training programs can help your sales team achieve success.

One of the biggest things where companies fail to build scalable training programs is when they put somebody in that role and they rely on that person alone to do everything.

Learn more about the importance of training, some challenges that companies face, and what are the solutions to them.

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

[429] Training Session - 25 - Working Together: Marketing & Sales

Jason Cutter — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 13:23:00 +0000

Why does working together as a team matter so much? How can you break down silos between marketing and sales?

One of the things that get in the way is when a prospective customer hears or reads something, then they get to the salesperson, and the salesperson says something different.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about how marketing and sales should work together to achieve success.

Learn more about marketing and sales, being one as a team, and becoming the pillars of authentic persuasion.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[S2E07] Why Do Sales Leaders Get Bogged Down In The Details?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 15:32:42 +0000

Why do sales leaders get bogged down in things that may or may not be helpful for their sales teams?

When companies have too much data that nobody knows really where to start, you won't really know where to focus your time and energy. One of the big keys for managers or leaders who feel like they're bogged down in too much detail is understanding what are the key performance indicators.

In this episode, Oliver and Jason talk about what keeps sales leaders bogged down in the details, and of course, a lot of helpful tips to get over them.

Learn more about how to overcome the overwhelming challenges sales leaders face, and scale together with your team!

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

[S2E06] Why Aren't Sales Teams Good at Recruiting?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 13:21:00 +0000

Why aren't sales teams good at recruiting? What are some of the big recruitment issues? One of the issues is that organizations try to hire people that are just like them, hoping that person knows what to do and will come pretty much ready to be the best. In this episode, Oliver and I talk about why sales teams can't fill or recruit the positions with the right people. Learn more about recruitment challenges, how to resolve the issues, and a lot more helpful tips for your team!

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

[428] Training Session - 24 - Sales Processes

Jason Cutter — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:07:00 +0000

Why is it important to follow a sales process? How can it help you in becoming authentic?

If you are not sure about a sales process, or why one would be valuable, the key is that what you're looking for is scalable, consistent, expected results.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about sales processes.

Learn more about the importance or benefits of having a sales process, types of salespeople, and becoming a successful sales professional.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[S2E05] Why Do Sales Teams Have So Much Turnover? (pt.2)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 14:33:39 +0000

Why do sales teams have so much turnover? Why causes your team to have low morale? If everybody else is churning around, morale sweeps through like wildfire. When you're looking at people burning out, it always has that negative atmosphere and negativity breeds negativity. In this episode, Oliver and Jason talk about continue to talk about why sales teams have so much turnover. Learn more about keeping your employees, addressing turnover issues, and motivating your team.

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

[047] Lead Data Enhancements and Appends, with Steven Moreno from IM Data Center

Jason Cutter — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:45:00 +0000

How can you be more effective in your marketing? How has it changed over the past 20 years?

In this episode, Steven Moreno from IM Data Center and I, talk about lead data enhancements and appends.

We also talked about his experiences in helping his clients by providing precision targeting for online marketing, telemarketing, and anything to do with enhancing data and adding more attributes to it.

Learn more about data, lead generation, marketing, and a lot more helpful tips Steven and I got for you.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

Connect with Steven on Linkedin

[427] Training Session - 23 - Mindset & Mental Health

Jason Cutter — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 12:05:58 +0000

What are some factors that affect our mental health? How is this relevant to you, being in a sales role?

In this episode of my training session, I talk about mindset and mental health.

There's a lot that goes into sales and selling, and a lot that makes it a tough mental game, which then can lead to a lot of mental health issues.

The big key is to look at your actions, your activities, and don't compare it to what other people have.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[S2E04] Why Do Sales Teams Have So Much Turnover? (pt 1)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:13:58 +0000

Why do sales teams have so much turnover? How do you address this problem? Sales is predominantly thought to have a higher expected turnover because it's such a rough gig. In any company, there's always going to be some level of turnover, where people just come and go. In this episode, Oliver and Jason talk about the factors that lead to employee turnovers. Learn more about turnovers, and also about building your career path.

Learn more about how to build your Call Center Confidence

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

[426] Training Session - 22 - Getting Your Ideal Sales Job

Jason Cutter — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 13:48:59 +0000

As a salesperson, you might want to ask yourself – "what type of things do I want to sell?" or "what kind of product or service would I be excited by and believe in?"

In this episode of my training session, I talk about getting your ideal sales job.

If you have a sales role, and you're not sure if it's right for you or how to go about it, this session is for you.

Learn more about knowing yourself, becoming successful in your sales role, and together let's all become an Authentic Persuader!

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[425] Training Session - 21 - Generating Referrals

Jason Cutter — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 14:06:49 +0000

How do referrals help you in your sales career? What happens when you don't focus on it?

One of the biggest challenges I see with people in sales is that they are so focused in the moment, in the short-term, and they're not thinking long-term. It's really tough to farm when you're worried about eating today.

In this session of my training session, I talked about generating referrals.

Learn more about this topic and a lot more tips on how it can bring a big impact to your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[424] Training Session - 20 - Preventing Buyer's Remorse

Jason Cutter — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:25:24 +0000

Was it really something I wanted to do? Is that something I should do? Does this make sense to me?

These are some of the few questions customers might have after making a purchase. It's human nature for everyone to have some form of buyer's remorse after purchasing almost anything of any value.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about how to avoid buyer's remorse.

Learn more about this topic and you will find more success with your deals.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[423] Training Session - 19 - Addressing The Cancellation Paradox

Jason Cutter — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 13:30:00 +0000

What does a paradox mean? What comes to mind when you hear the words "The Cancellation Paradox"?

If you're a sales professional, you're going to have people that are going to cancel or people that are going to change their minds. It is always not easy to guide people who are stuck in their comfort zone.

In this episode of my training session, I explained what the cancellation paradox means and how does it apply to being an authentic persuader.

Also, learn more about moving people forward and the difference between an order taker and an authentic persuader.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E422] Conversation on the Senior Living Foresight Show

Jason Cutter — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 13:30:00 +0000

How do you sell without selling? Why is empathy pivotal when it comes to sales?

Sales is sales at a basic level, and the fundamentals are the same. People usually default to order taker mode, and they don't really know how to make it applicable to a particular customer.

In this special episode, you are going to be listening to my conversation with Rachel Hill from Foresight TV where I was a guest on the show.

Learn more about effective selling, sales success keys, and most of all, about Authentic Persuasion.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E421] Training Session - 18 - Overcoming Your Own Objections

Jason Cutter — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 14:08:36 +0000

What are some of the obstacles you face in your sales career? How can you go over your own doubts?

Becoming a customer is a fundamental experience that everyone has prior to entering a sales career. We sometimes bring our customer experiences with us, and it will be quite difficult for you to persuade others if you don't believe you would do it yourself.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about the objections that you could have for yourself as a salesperson. Once you get those out of the way, other objections actually are easier to overcome, and you'll find more success.

Learn more about success in sales through overcoming objections, and other tips that are helpful for you to close more deals.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E420] Training Session - 17 - Kicking Off Your New Year

Jason Cutter — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 13:45:00 +0000

How do you make the shift from being a salesperson to a sales professional? Are you always evaluating yourself and looking for ways to improve?

Remember that everything in life is sales. If you want your children to do something, you'll need to use some level of persuasion, leadership, and trust to convince them to agree. This is a fundamental point that is true.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about the last 16 sessions that I had in the last year. I also talked about assessing yourself and becoming eager to set goals and make plans to be more effective.

Learn more about how you can make yourself into a sales professional, success traits that you need to practice, setting goals, and become that Authentic Persuader out there.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E419] Welcome to 2022: What Is Coming Up For This Year

Jason Cutter — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 14:12:38 +0000

Welcome to 2022! What's next for the Authentic Persuasion Show?

In this episode, I am going to give you a recap of what the plans are for this year.

Focusing on my ultimate mission – to enable and encourage over a million authentic persuaders in the world, let's shift the way sales is done.

Make sure to go to jasoncutter.com and look for the authentic persuasion weekly training sessions, and register via zoom.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E418] Order Takers vs. Authentic Persuaders

Jason Cutter — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 14:00:00 +0000

What type of salesperson are you? Are you just taking orders, or are you an authentic persuader?

Your goal is to guide people through a process and to a specific destination. Don't only build rapport, demonstrate empathy, and develop trust, and then just hope that your customers will want to do business with you.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about some of the indications that I noticed, that someone is an order taker, and then how to get over it.

Learn more about being an effective and successful sales professional, as well as being a guide to your customers in taking them to a better position.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E417] How Do You Build Up and Trigger Urgency?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 14:00:00 +0000

How do you build up and trigger urgency? Why is this so important in your sales process?

This is the make-or-break step, and it's where most order takers fail. This is the part that, when done poorly, feels quite unpleasant, similar to when you think of that person who is entirely concerned with pushing and pressuring you to buy something.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about Urgency, which is the Fifth Step of what I have built called the Authentic Persuasion Pathway. This is something so important as it builds up the foundation of being an Authentic Persuader.

Learn more about urgency, how to be successful in your sales process, and increase your closing rate.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E416] Can You Win at Sales with Authenticity?

Jason Cutter — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 15:46:11 +0000

What type of salesperson are you? Can you win at sales with Authenticity?

Most people associate the phrase "sales" with a grossly misleading image of a - jacket, tie, and pushy car salesperson. Remember that the most respected people are the ones who are honest, and these people are the ones who earn trust.

In this special episode, my guest Jeff Kirchick is a writer of a Book called Authentic Selling, and I invited him to be on the show because the world needs more authentic sales influence.

Learn more about authentic selling and authentic persuasion, and be that successful sales professional out there.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E415] Important Closes You Should Be Using

Jason Cutter — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 14:00:00 +0000

What are some important closes that you should be using, or are so fundamental? How critical is it to have a thorough understanding of your sales role?

When sales is done in a certain way, it's all about human to human. No matter what, your job is to help a confused, worried, scared, or excited person, make the right decision for them and help them feel safe. Always view yourself as a professional, you will shift the way you sell.

In this episode, I talk about closing sales deals professionally, and also the fundamentals of being a successful guide to your customers.

Learn more about the types of closing processes, closing deals, and being a successful sales professional.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E414] What If You Don't Close A Deal?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 14:04:29 +0000

What if you don't close a deal? What happens when you have a sales conversation with someone, and then you have to do some follow-up?

In most sales environments, rarely ever is it a hundred percent, one-call close. People sometimes need to check in with someone else because they don't feel safe and are relying on a lifeline. That basically says they don't trust you.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about Following-up, which is also a part of what I have built called the Authentic Persuasion Pathway.

Learn more about being effective in following up, having the right mentality when doing it, and becoming that Authentic Persuader in the world of sales.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E413] Training Session - 12 - Being a Purveyor of Hope

Jason Cutter — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:00:00 +0000

How can you be a purveyor of hope? Why is it critical to recognize that everything you do is for the benefit of the customer?

As a salesperson, you are the one giving your customers the path, as your role is to be their guide. This is where you tell your prospects, how they can get up the mountain safely, and how they can get out of pain or achieve a goal.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about Hope and where does it fit in achieving success in the sales world.

Learn more about Hope, the Authentic Persuasion Pathway, and breaking free of your comfort zone.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E412] Training Session – 11 – Diagnose, then Prescribe

Jason Cutter — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:46:21 +0000

Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. What does this mean? How does this relate to becoming an Authentic Persuader?

In terms of sales, diagnosing involves deciding what is going on for your potential buyer and evaluating if you can help them. The key is that you must first diagnose and determine what they are suffering from, as well as what their aim is and where they want to go.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about the step that you need to know and go through before proceeding to the Authentic Persuasion Pathway of Hope. No matter what you're selling, no matter what size corporation you might be, it's all about what that person wants, what they need, and how you can help them.

Learn more about the Authentic Persuasion Pathway, great customer service, and creating solutions for your customers' problems.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E411] Training Session - 10 - What is the formula of Trust?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 13:07:48 +0000

What is the foundation to developing trust? What are the advantages of being a trustworthy salesperson?

When all else is equal, people will buy from individuals they know, like, and trust. You can't ask, demand, or compel someone to trust you. It can only be built using a formula.

In this training session, I talk about the third step of the Authentic Persuasion Pathway which is Trust and its formula.

Learn more about how to gain your prospects' trust, and why is this important to becoming an Authentic Persuader.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E410] Training Session-09- Empathizing for Success

Jason Cutter — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 12:55:26 +0000

Do you empathize in order to succeed? Should you even be concerned about potential customers?

In this episode of my training session, I continue to talk about empathy and actually winning with it in all your sales process.

Always ensure that you leave them in a better state than you found them. Asking questions, listening, and making them feel cared about are all ways to win. It's not only about saying, "I really care about you."

Learn more even about empathy, caring for customers, and winning prospects. These all will help you achieve success in your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E409] Training Session - 08 - Effective Empathy

Jason Cutter — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:04:16 +0000

How do you show empathy in a way that is effective? Are you getting positive results in your sales conversations?

There is no right or wrong, good or bad when it comes to demonstrating empathy; it's all about effectiveness. This is where you ask questions, go through your fact-finding process, analyze, and try to get to the bottom of the issue and obtain the information you require.

In this episode of my training session, I talk about the second step of what I built called the authentic persuasion pathway – which is empathy.

Learn more on how to become a certified authentic persuader especially about empathy and how to be successful in your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E407] Training Session - 06 - What Are They Afraid Of?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 13:07:20 +0000

What is it that you are afraid of? As a salesperson, are you able to face challenges?

If you want to be successful in sales, you need to know what your prospect is going through. Purchasing something new involves change. And, for the most part, change can be worrisome.

In this episode of my live training session, I talk about the persuasion piece of my book the Authentic Persuasion, and the elements of it.

Learn more about leaving your comfort zone and the importance of change,

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E406] Training Session - 05 - Are You Being A Leader?

Jason Cutter — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 14:06:02 +0000

Are you being a leader? What does it entail to become a leader on your own?

In this episode of my live training session, I discuss all you need to know about leadership and its elements.

I don't mean leadership in the sense of managers, supervisors, directors, or bosses, or someone in charge of salespeople. I'm referring to you, the salesperson who is in charge of, and has a leadership role and responsibility in, the conversation with your prospects during the transaction.

Learn more about responsibility, being accountable, and what it really means to be a leader.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E405] Training Session - 04 - Acknowledging Your Strengths

Jason Cutter — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

How well do you know yourself as a salesperson? Do you work on your weaknesses so you can become better at them and make them your strengths?

If you want to be really effective at sales and persuading people, you have to understand how your mind is working, and then apply those to your prospects. It is important to know and embrace who you are.

In this episode of my training session, I discuss about acknowledging your strengths. My goal is to help you master your authentic self-awareness side, and be a sales professional – a persuasion master.

Learn more as I give you some good frameworks to think about that are most important, especially in your sales career.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E404] Training Session - 03 - Know Fear & WHY

Jason Cutter — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 13:58:13 +0000

What are your personal fears and how do you deal with them? How well can you recognize these feelings in yourself?

Fear is something you can't get rid of. Fear is always present; it is a part of us. The idea is to recognize your fear, experience it, then go ahead and do it anyway. We've all arrived at this point because we've figured out how to survive and grow.

In this episode, I talk about knowing your fear and conquering it. Because it is impossible to be fearless, I will help you in recognizing and facing your fears so that you can sell with Authentic Persuasion.

Learn more as I help you realize and feel empowered as you create your sales career and become a sales professional.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E403] Training Session - 02 - Making Yourself Into A Sales Pro

Jason Cutter — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

What are some positive characteristics of a salesperson? What distinguishes effective salespeople from the rest?

Every successful salesperson, in my opinion, possesses five characteristics. All of these are attributes that may be learned and improved through time.

In this episode, I talk about the good attributes of a sales professional that can you help you in identifying how to improve to become more of an authentic persuader.

Learn more about success in sales, good traits, and what it takes to become a great salesperson

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E402] Training Session - 01 - Are You An Order Taker?

Jason Cutter — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 14:23:11 +0000

What does it mean to be an order taker? In the field of sales, what do these people do?

Salespeople who are acting like order takers are trying to close deals and maybe giving up a lot on price, or they're so worried about upsetting the other person by selling them or moving them forward in the conversation.

In this episode of my Training Session, I talk about the fundamentals of selling and what it means to be an order taker. I will help you win the sales game by getting you back to the basics and make sure you understand and apply them.

Learn more as I discuss about this and other relevant topics that will help you in being an Authentic Persuader.

Find out if your Sales Operation in Scalable

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[401] Announcing the new Scalable Call Center Sales Podcast

Jason Cutter — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 13:50:00 +0000

What's next for the Authentic Persuasion Show?

Some of you may have wondered where I went once the podcast season ended.

Here, I will tell you what's been going on with me for the past couple of months.

Stay tuned for what's coming!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[400] ASK! with Mark Victor Hansen

Jason Cutter — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Do you want to know the mindset of a salesperson? Are you interested in developing skills in the sales industry? Are you looking for answers on how to become successful in sales?

Sales is the highest paid work yet the lowest paid easy work in the world. It’s thought-and-feeling transfers where you don’t know when people are getting in and what their attitude is. Selling allows you to be with very powerful people while aiming to create and contribute.

In this episode, Mark, a motivational speaker and co-author for Chicken Soup for the Soul, and I discussed the seven roadblocks in doing sales. We talked about building self-awareness and how salespersons need to persuade themselves before others.

Learn about how to overcome roadblocks in sales, deal with fears and worries about rejection, go to a high sense of self-confidence, and visualize your future.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[399] Do You Have A Mission?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What is your mission? What drives you? And we’re not talking about big life purpose, not even about, how you're going to change the world. But more of like, what is at the core?

One of the biggest things that have been found in a person’s life is that when you set a mission, or set a goal, or set some intention, what happens is that life has different plans for you, and it usually tests you or throws you off course. And then you just go that new direction. You’re not going to go into your full path and your past about what has happened from being a kid to getting to this point. But it's been very windy all over the place. And most of the time, you just go with the flow. It's never where you ended up.

In this episode, I talked about the importance of rethinking your mission, figuring out what’s going to drive you to push you through that wall, and knowing the core of this life journey you choose to take.

Learn about the journey to get to that mission, to know your core values and how that gives impact to so many people, about having time and availabilities which is a key to getting help, and overcoming barriers, challenges, rejection, struggles falling to help you keep going.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[398] Getting Your Mind Right, with Kevin Stacey

Jason Cutter — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Do you doubt yourself? Are you not confident enough to take on sales? Do you have what it takes to be a top salesperson, or are you going to cower away?

People who are confident trust their capabilities. They do not wallow in fear and hide; instead, they are driven through a positive mindset and clear goals. Our brains fickle, be confident enough to take on the challenge and adapt to changing situations—when it matters the most.

In this episode, Kevin, former brain-imaging specialist, effectiveness expert, and author of the book “MindRight: Navigate the Noise,” dived into sales as a mental game with me. We talked about brain training, the importance of mental resilience, getting offensive in sales, and the aspects of mental activity.

Learn about exercising your emotions to pump your life, the common mistake people commit, being reactive to your mental activity, and the mindset of a successful salesperson.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[397] Dominating Stages and Sales Success, with Jennifer Gottlieb

Jason Cutter — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you wondering how you can improve your company’s sales? Interested to know how can you authentically connect with your audience rather than simply making a sales pitch? What does “thoughtful” communication really mean when you’re talking to a customer? What’s the strategy behind successful conversations?

If you are a salesperson or a business owner, you know that effective public speaking is a really important skill in sales. The skillful use of public speaking can improve your sales through authentically connecting with your customers rather than simply making a sales pitch. The key is to make it a two-way conversation instead of a blatant sales pitch. Good public speaking skills make it possible for you to sell the value of what you have to offer to your customers. It provides you with a way to communicate and build trust with potential customers and prospective clients.

In this episode, I chat with Jen Gottlieb, Co-founder and Chief Mindset Officer of the acclaimed PR company, Super Connector Media. Today, we talk about how she shares her passion to help experts and entrepreneurs gain confidence and get out into the mainstream media or any major event to share their knowledge with the masses. We also talk about how similar public speaking and sales are, and how you can apply the same flow, process, skills in public speaking into your conversations with your potential customers.

Learn about the importance of how shifting your mindset will help you gain confidence and knowledge to get yourself out there and bring value to people, connecting with your tribe and connecting with your ultimate potential will give you the authority to be on top of your industry.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[396] Door2Door Success, with Sam Taggart

Jason Cutter — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What does it really take to be successful in door-to-door selling? Analyze the situation, be intuitive and come up with a way to break the ice and have a good authentic conversation with who you are selling to, and then do the transaction.

The three types of salespersons are “dinosaurs..” herbivores (they take the leads and transact), carnivores (hunters), and omnivores (leads, online transactions knocking on doors). There are different approaches: first, when the salesperson knocks on your door and sells you their product and closes the transaction on the spot, or second, appointment setting for the closer.

In this episode, Sam Taggart, the Founder of The D2D Association, D2D Con, The D2DExperts, speaker and author, and host of D2D-Podcast, and I discuss what he has learned in his years of experience in door to door sales and know about his journey. We also talked about the different approaches in the D to D space.

Learn about the mindset of a door to door salesperson, how to overcome door to door sales challenges, and how authenticity fits in, in this realm.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[395] BOLD Business Success, with Jess Dewell

Jason Cutter — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How do we find the missing elements that are keys to our success? How do we move forward and go to where we need to go? Do you want to make sure your actions align with yourself in the future?

Your company wants and needs you to succeed. If you work for a company and you're failing, then they're missing out. As a business, they're in the business of succeeding and making money and being successful. One missing element can change everything, and it all relies upon your company's mission to move forward.

In this episode, Jess and I talk about the importance of a company's mission. We talked about maintaining and creating a consistent experience for customers, incentivizing your team, and creating a result-driven and mission-driven team.

Learn about managing your team, knowing the missing element that hinders you from achieving your goals, and aligning your actions to your mission and values.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[394] APS Live with Michael Ferree (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Have you effectively utilized your prospect client’s data to close a successful deal? How has lead generation evolved throughout the years? Does traditional marketing still work, or will it eventually go out of date?

Time passes by quickly, and the business industry would likewise adapt to these changes. Techniques and strategies will never be obsolete; they will be repurposed and reinvented to address the new changes in the rapidly growing society.

In this episode, Michael, Founder and CEO of Lead Generation World, and I talked about lead generation. We talked about its various aspects and evolution throughout the years, subscription-based lead generation, challenges in performance marketing, and the perception towards sales in the mental aspect.

Learn about navigating around uncertain scenarios, the importance of handling your customer’s data appropriately, how to be successful in sales, and how to be authentically persuasive in writing.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[393] Adding ROCKET FUEL to your life, with C Roc

Jason Cutter — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What comes to your mind when you heard the word ‘rocket fuel’? Do you possess that rocket fuel within you? How can you turn setbacks into capital rocket fuel? A lot of times, people aren't grateful for the things they have. They worry about what they don't have and that's the first thing that blocks them.

In sales and in business, in entrepreneurship, if you have something you want, you have a grand vision, a clear vision, and you're perversely unyielding towards it, you're going to get it. You're not going to stop. You're going to get it. If you look at any top salesperson, they are obsessed with their career, their path, their mission.

In this episode, Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco, CEO of People Building Inc., and I discussed how does a person’s belief system affect their perspective and decisions in life. Truly, you gotta be spending your time telling people who you are and what you do. The main problem is all businesses and salespeople have is nobody knows who they are.

Learn about the concept of being stubborn in a positive way, knowing your direction, switching your mindset around your setback, focusing on your mission, and being a great leader to your team.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[392] APS Live with Maya Connet (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Can sales be a career for women? How are women making a shift into tech sales? Women are effective in sales because they are good listeners. If most of the time is spent listening to clients, the salesperson gets a wealth of crucial data to build a compelling, collaborative, consultative, mutual success plan to achieve a partnership. Nurturing is needed in enterprise sales. Salespeople must engage with buyers as people first, and employees second. A “human” gesture can be as simple as remembering someone’s favorite wine or inquiring about their spouse is an approach in the human first element. In the end, customers do business with people they like.

Not many women choose sales as their career, especially in the tech business. Most women are great with interaction and communication but never consider a career in sales, due to lack of existing role models. It starts in perceiving that it is possible for women to be in sales. There is a need to teach the next generation that it is an exciting, as well as lucrative career and that it relies on the strengths of women’s relationship building.

In this episode, Maya Connet, an Enterprise Revenue Director of Clary, and I discuss what saleswomen in tech business are doing to change the industry. We talk about the priority of digital transformation. We also touch on why it's necessary to understand what virtual sellers are doing now.

Learn about why women have the ability to be effective in sales, the nurturing aspect in enterprise sales, human first, employee second approach, collaborative selling, texting as the new frontier and texting relationship.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[391] Sales Success through Connectedness, with David Meltzer

Jason Cutter — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you interested in making a lot of money? Do you like to empower a billion people to be happy? Do you want to learn how to achieve your dreams?

Your happiness is determined by whether you can enjoy the consistent persistent pursuit of whatever your potential is. The key is having enough drive persistence aggressiveness towards an outcome, but detaching your emotions from the outcome and put it on the drive. Utilizing a strategy that is angled towards a plan and rolling back in the right trajectory according to your goals can result in remarkable success.

In this episode, David Meltzer, Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing, and I discussed the ability to articulate more value in sales and how to utilize a salesperson’s credibility. We talked about the attitudes that are keys to true success and how identifying fears can make a big difference. We discussed the paradigm of receiving and giving to create more abundance to help more people.

Learn about how to overcome your fear, create a vision and mission board, have the attitude of being more interested than interesting, and enjoy the consistent every day without quit pursuit of your potential.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[390] Sales Team Success using the C3 Framework, with Mali Phonpadith

Jason Cutter — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Where do companies miss the mark that affects their community and culture? Is your team happy in the workplace they are performing in? Moreover, is your company, organization, or team in a healthy collaborative environment?

Working in a workplace where everyone is collaborating and working together is an ideal workplace that can result in a healthy environment. Though not all companies have the same workplace, a happy and healthy workplace is very beneficial.

In this episode, Mali, Founder and CEO of the SOAR Community Network and TedX Speaker, and I discuss companies' culture, the non-competitive environment, how companies support their employees, and how they are self-aware a leader.

Learn about the importance of core values, the importance of creating a non-competitive workplace, what mindset a leader should have, and why you should take care of your team and employees.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[389] When No Leads To $$$

Jason Cutter — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 13:50:37 +0000

Telling NO actually leads to money - As a Salesperson, how do you sleep at night when you persuade people to buy from you? How can rejecting or saying no lead to more money and profit? Are you leading your customers to the framework you know you can help when they need your product and services?

Authenticity and saying NO to the wrong people is one of the easiest and best solutions for balancing in your head the difference between ripping off your clients vs. providing them with information and service that they need. Understand that there are abundance and there a lot of people that are looking for your products. Saying no to one customer isn’t going to affect your business.

In this episode, I talk about how saying NO and being authentic to your clients leads to money.

Learn about the effects of rejecting customers, how understanding abundance can help you with your customers, and how to gain more referrals by saying NO.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E388] Improving Retention from an HR Expert, with Eric Stewart

Jason Cutter — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you facing high turnover in your company? When it comes to addressing turnover concerns, what is your first step to employee retention issue? Do you hire candidates based on their skills or attitude? Have you seen any commonality on the reasons why your employees leave?

There are so many reasons why employees leave a company and most of them are avoidable. Let’s face it, employee turnover is costly, and it’s a problem in organizations all across the world, especially in sales where landing with an employee who authentically believes and sticks to your company’s mission and vision is very rare. You may already be working to improve retention, but the effectiveness of your solutions depends if you have stemmed the flow at the source by solving the problems at their roots.

In this episode, Eric, HR Executive with over 20+ years in the Hospitality & Cruise Industry shares the most important steps you can take toward improving employee retention, how effective retention strategies often begin during the employee recruitment process, and the importance of employee feedback and some things you might want to consider on exit interview that you can take and maybe translate it back into your business before you lose any more people.

Learn how to determine where your retention problems actually are and find out how you’re going to measure the impact of your solutions. Once you’ve determined your problem areas, it’s time to get to work. Retention issues, most of the time, are connected, and solving one can help you solve others.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[387] Balance Between Abundance and Urgency

Jason Cutter — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How do we move people forward in the sales conversation? Are you having doubts about losing the chance of closing a sale from a potential client? Do you want to know the balance between Abundancy and Urgency?

There are about 7 billion people on the planet. Not everyone will buy from you, and not everyone is a potential client. Still, opportunities present themselves at the right moment. There are enough people out there, and you don't need to push people to close. There are all the clients in the world for you that you would ever want, and they're there for you.

In this episode, I talk about the balance between abundance and urgency. I discuss moving towards riding the line between abundance and urgency, the abundance mindset, and the keys to achieving the balance.

Learn about trusting abundance, the Lay-Down, the abundance mindset, and the Balance between Abundance and Urgency.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[386] Mindset Guidance for Sales Success, with Tim Skiba

Jason Cutter — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Do you want to know the secret to effective sales? Do you want to learn how to become a successful salesperson and be able to help others as well? Sales is a mental game. Being in charge of the sales process and providing service to the customer require a lot of focusing on. It’s important to know the whole train of focus for salespeople with their prospective customers. In this episode, Tim, a Master Mindset Change Specialist, and I discussed the effective ways of building relationships with your clients that will lead to increasing your sales. We talked about how mirroring people’s language can be a key in rapport. We tackled the mindset and limitations for salespeople and the core motivations for doing sales.

Learn about the authenticity and motivation in doing your sales, how fear can be a bigger motivator in life, creating rapport and connection with your clients, helping your clients identify and overcome their fears, and how listening to your customers can play a bigger part in successful relationship and sales.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[385] B2G (Government) Sales Success, with Kevin Jans

Jason Cutter — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What are the proper ways to approach the government as a business entity? Do you think your current knowledge is sufficient to deal with its complexity? How will you navigate yourself when you are in a pinch? Do you have what it takes to deal with them?

The government is one of the essential keys to business success. Your business will not stand tall for a long time without satisfying the correct requirements and, most importantly—a pure and genuine intention. Your authenticity works best not just to your customers but to the government entities as well.

In this episode, Kevin, Founder and President of Skyway Acquisition and a Podcast Co-Host of Government Contracting Officer Podcast, discussed about the puzzles behind government contracting with me. We talked about different business concepts, the importance of relationship-building with the government, how human factors affect decision-making, and the significance of knowing your niche.

Learn about how government contracting works, how to approach a government entity as a business owner, sales fundamentals, and what are the things that you should not do when dealing with the government!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[384] APS Live - Everyone Is Different (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How does your optimism in the business industry measures in 2021? Have you found a way to steer around the challenges facing you this year? Does your current sales perspective match with the shifts brought by the pandemic? How will you stand out in the new era of sales?

We all have different wants, needs, and perspectives on how we deal with our day to day lives—these rang true resoundingly in the business industry. A salesperson’s challenge is to figure out how to resonate with a client’s needs and wants that would ultimately turn into sales. Different situations require different solutions but finding the right solution is like finding a needle in a haystack—as if finding a phoenix feather or a dragon scale.

In this episode, I discussed the different shifts a salesperson could take in the industry this 2021. I talked about the inherent difference between knowledge and wisdom, why you should treat your clients differently, leveraging negative experiences to produce positive sales character, and most importantly, the caveats of the golden rule from a sales perspective.

Learn about the things to learn as a salesperson to better understand your clients, the different aspects of sales diversity through gender, the importance of knowing your baggage, how to be a better buyer, and the killer question that a salesperson should know!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[383] Confident Introvert and Sales Success, with Stephanie Michelle

Jason Cutter — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you an Introvert? Or an Extrovert? How can you create a network of people who connects with you in a suitable way to your interests? How can you meet somebody and form a relationship with them?

There’s a difference between being an introvert and just being shy. Networking and connecting with other people requires confidence and having the ability to communicate. Sometimes you are an introvert but can speak to many people and view you as an extrovert.

In this episode, a Forbes-featured leadership & life coach, certified hypnotherapist Stephanie, author of the best-selling book Confident Introvert, and I discussed the misconceptions of being an introvert and extrovert. We talked about online networking, introversion, and knowing what is authentic to you.

Learn about creating networks, forging relationships and connections online, the Confident Introvert, and the meaning of authenticity.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn

Stephanie's Bio Stephanie Michelle is a Forbes-featured leadership & life coach, certified hypnotherapist, and best-selling author of the transformational networking book, Confident Introvert. She has facilitated over 1,000 events and established a fulfilling career helping people generate meaningful connections with themselves and others that catapult them forward in their career and life. To date, Stephanie has helped thousands of people celebrate their strengths, step into their authentic confidence, and make meaningful connections through speaking at places like Harvard University and 1:1 coaching.

Stephanie's Links: 1. Get a free networking remotely resource sheet: stephaniethoma.com/freebie 2. Apply for a 1:1 Leadership & Life coaching discovery call with Stephanie: stephaniethoma.com/coaching 3. Buy Stephanie's transformational networking book, Confident Introvert: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089ZZ6T58?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420&fbclid=IwAR33ff1ygDJQdE5HNyy2brb1RCZYeWRiF-T361X3KjrfO2i3-YN0SgOnguQ

Learn more about StephanieShow less

[382] APS Live with JD Gershbein (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 14:03:52 +0000

How can you put yourself in the position to win business? How does consistency contribute to your authenticity? We're all a work in progress. We're all trying to get better, do better. We're all continuously adapting, reinventing ourselves, improving ourselves, communicating with the world. And from that you take and you build and you assimilate, you put this version of yourself out there.

We're different than the way we look, and the way we act, the way we behave. LinkedIn gives us the opportunity to reconstruct ourselves in real-time. Also, LinkedIn is a great platform on the branding side for your business. It’s an amazing program to have a good first impression of your career.

In this episode, JD Gershbein, a personal branding strategist, LinkedIn advisor, and I discussed about branding strategies. Without a doubt, we have to become great shepherds of our story. We're the only ones who could truly tell it properly. And if we don't tell it, we can't sell it. We’re going to talk about what you can do to create a story that will resonate with your target audience. Also, we wanted to touch on the authenticity of your LinkedIn.

Learn about creating a strategy for your profile, project building/rebuilding, how you can inspire your target audience, and how does assembling your network will have a great impact on your LinkedIn profile.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[381] Selling From The Heart, with Larry Levine

Jason Cutter — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How do you show your authenticity to your clients? Does your authenticity build around your interest in profits? Or is it to deepen the relationship and create an image of charisma? Do you want to transform your selling such that it would be your new calling?

Humans are naturally emphatic. This is precisely why authenticity is the beacon of a salesperson to success. However, authenticity is now being misused and misrepresented. It is now linked to being fake and having no desire to think of the clients' well-being. When will be the right time to change this? – Now is the right time, and it starts with you.

In this episode, Larry Levine, author of "Selling from the Heart" and the Co-Host of Selling from the Heart Podcast, joined in the show to discuss how to sell from the heart effectively. We talked about the importance of relationships, their lack of adoption in the general sales community, the salesperson's mindset, should practice, and why first impression matters.

Learn about the importance of building a meaningful relationship, having a learning mindset, creating your impression, and why interactions are essential as a salesperson..

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[380] Speed To Lead Success through Persistence, with Jesse Teron

Jason Cutter — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What is persistence? What does it provide, and why is persistence valuable to companies?

A lot of times, order takers don't even know why somebody would want it. They know what the brochure says, what they were told in training, but they haven't walked a mile in their customer's shoes enough to go. Your duty and responsibility are to help the right people move forward. Being confident and understanding the value of what you can bring to your customer will put you in the right place.

In this episode, Jesse Teron, co-founder of persistence AI, discussed sales marketing, what he does in their company, and what value their product can bring to people.

Learn about lead conversion and taking leads, web-based things. We'll dive into the 'hello' to the close part of those sales conversations.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[379] How Confident Are You?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How does lack of confidence hold you back from showing your best self? Can you possibly pretend to have confidence and get the attention of your audience? Many people, especially when they go into sales, do not plan to sell for the long haul. For most, it isn't their life goal.

Nothing comes from nothing. You cannot give what you did not receive. Like any other job item, it is also crucial to invest in training, coaching, and mentoring your sales reps to equip them with skills, knowledge, and confidence, especially when they are just starting. It is tough enough to grasp all the information you need to sell effectively, but building confidence? It is another story.

In this episode, I talk about Albert Bandura's quote that says, "Confidence is the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce a given attainment. It's your belief in your efficacy."

Learn about building up your confidence and being more effective in sales, to get you into conversations, and how it benefits you.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[378] Network Marketing Sales Done Right, with Richard Brooke

Jason Cutter — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Have you encountered weird-looks when introducing yourself as a salesperson? Do you find it difficult to convince prospect clients? All businesses need to sell to survive but why do so many people are repelled against the idea of a “salesperson”?

It is common to see bad apples mixed in a stack of good ones, this is proven to be true in the business industry as well. Being marked with a negative branding is catastrophic for people who are honest and authentic with their craft. It suddenly becomes hard to convince other people because of a disaster associated with you – all caused by the bad apple.

In this episode, Richard, a Veteran in the Marketing Network Industry, a Coach and an Author, and I discussed about the state of sales and marketing. We talked about the stigma associated to sales and how it painted a bad reputation in network marketing, the new way of selling, the mindset of a successful salesperson, and why it’s hard to associate authenticity and selling.

Learn about the upside of network marketing, the importance of building relationships with clients while maintain your social media presence, and most importantly the element of authenticity and rawness in dealing with prospects.

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[377] Enrolling versus Selling

Jason Cutter — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What does it mean to ENROLL versus to SELL? Enrollment may be seen as similar to selling, but it is not the same thing. However, it is true that those who are very good at enrollment, have no trouble selling. So what should your focus be?

When people hear the word “sales”, it’s almost synonymous with “pitch”, delivered by someone who does not truly listen and fully understand what his customer wants or needs, but enrollment is a different way of approaching the situation. Yes, you may want a particular outcome – a new client, but the result will be best for you when you approach the situation by finding out what your customer wants first and directing your conversation toward that.

In this episode, I talk about the terms enrolling and selling and their distinction. Also, I discussed what does persuasion takes part in these two.

Learn about the difference between enrolling and selling, what roles these two are playing in sales and marketing, and is enrolling really better than selling in sales?

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[376] Success through Admired Leadership, with Dr. Suzanne Peterson

Jason Cutter — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

What do you feel about your leadership role? How will you improve your leadership skills and be the person you aspire to be?

Leadership is a word where the meaning differs relative to the scale. A student leader's responsibility appears menial in the grand scheme of things, but a country leader is responsible for the constituents' lives. Being a leader should not be taken easy; it is a role vested either officially or through a consensus.

In this episode, Suzanne Peterson, Leadership Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management, Advisor, and a sought-after Speaker, discusses different characteristics of an effective leader. We talked about identifying your comfort zone as a leader, what leadership in business looks likes, the structured vs. natural mindset, and how the best companies nurture an effective leader.

Learn about how to be an effective leader, the significance of communication and relationship building, what defines an excellent leader, and why rewarding great leaders in your company is essential.

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[375] The Success Finder, with Brandon Straza

Jason Cutter — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you seeing stagnant sales figures despite the fact that your sales team looks busier than ever? It could be because your salespeople have fallen into the trap of bad sales habits and toxic sales strategies. The real question here is what makes a good salesman?

Selling is all about connecting and build real and genuine relationships. You want to become a partner and a consultant to your prospect, and not just someone who wants to sell them something.

In this episode, Brandon, founder of the company Success Finder, and I talk through about effectively helping and solving customer’s problems. We talked about how you show your sincerity in your voice to show your customer their best interests and your willingness to help them.

Learn about creating value on what you’re selling, being genuine and natural as a salesperson, and how can you show your emotion through your voice.

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[374] Virtual Sales Tips

Jason Cutter — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you out of ideas on what to do during the pandemic? Are you concerned about how to transition your traditional sales persona to the virtual space?

With the risk of spreading the virus in mind, the business world made the largest shift towards the virtual space. Different companies are now slowly adapting to the new normal and embrace what the future holds for them. It may have been forced on salespeople, but if we want to survive, we must adapt.

In this episode, I discussed how the pandemic changed the salespeople’s regular course from in-person meetings to virtual meetings, how to maximize the digital tools and sales activities that will carry us through this crisis and beyond, and most importantly, the importance of staying authentic to our clients in person or digitally.

Learn about proper grooming, virtual etiquettes, fixing mannerisms, and why being authentic is the key to survive as a salesperson during the pandemic. As salespeople, we are to continue to successfully adjust to this monumental change in strategy.

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[373] From Computer Programmer to Global Sales Leader, with Matthew Newman

Jason Cutter — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Having trouble reaching your clients during this pandemic? How can you manage your sales team to be able to keep up with today’s demands? How will you build trust with clients?

Having an analytical approach to what you are selling is very important. Setting up your team and knowing what will work in the work environment and making the sales is crucial especially with the current situation. We all know that we won’t be back to “business as usual” anytime soon. As we come to settle into this reality that the current state of things might be the new normal, we need to take a more systematic and analytical approach to our sales strategies. Because for any business, sales drive revenue.

In this episode, Matt Newman, a Global Head of Sales, will be joining me to help you understand how you will be able to value get your clients to trust you, how you will be able to help them and encourage your own. Take a little step back and revitalize your sales process, discover and meet your customer needs, and improve your sales experience.

Learn about Persuasion in the sales process, keeping up with the technology to meet your clients, having an analytical approach to sales, and more! Join us and we’ll venture into the questions we need to answer. Note: the content in this podcast and post represents Matt's personal views and not that of ISS.

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[372] APS Live with Casey Hasten (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Do you want to scale down your turnover-rate to scale up your business? Are you tired of wasting most of your resources hiring employees without plans to stay for the long haul?

Today’s recruiting environment has never been more challenging. Just when you were working to meet your recruitment quotas, the whole world went sideways. Amidst all the chaos, how do you stay focused on your business goals and hire the right candidate?

In this episode, Casey, a Podcast Host, and Director of Recruiting, and I discussed sales and recruitment. We talked about the challenges SMEs face to scale up their businesses and how sourcing and hiring the right virtual candidates have been extra challenging to recruiters in this unprecedented time.

Learn about how to integrate your virtually-recruited employees during this crisis, creating the distinction between work and life, and acknowledging the importance of setting standard work protocols as we try to adapt to the changing times to fit the circumstances of what COVID-19 has brought us.

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[371] How to be a Home Service Millionaire, with Tommy Mello

Jason Cutter — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 14:25:40 +0000

What can you do to improve your relationship with your team? How will this change your company? Many people are chasing after customers or clients. And so many people are letting their top talent go and getting another person.

Most people believe that they need to wait till everything's perfect to make a decision. People usually, if they don't own it, they're not going to do it in the same way. The biggest challenge for a lot of people is they don't even understand who they are as leaders, as owners, entrepreneurs, even salespeople. They don't understand who they are. They don't understand like they're trying to do everything.

In this episode, Tommy, CEO of A1 garage door service, and I discussed about building a team, having anybody on your team, and having there be some goal, having everyone come up with their solutions and their accountabilities.

Learn about sales, leadership, service-based businesses, where they struggle, how they can succeed.

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[370] Sales Succes through Mindfulness, with Joy Rains

Jason Cutter — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How does being mindful has a great impact on your sales profession? Where should you focus on to achieve success? Mindfulness is an awareness of the present moment. Noticing your visualization and affirmations would be things to do when you're not with your customer to train your mind.

Mindfulness helps you respond consciously rather than react unconsciously. Meditation is a practice of training your mind. So it goes where you want it to go rather than where the horse wants it to go. We need to assign meaning to situations in order to function in the world. However, we also can benefit by understanding the meaning we're assigning to things and then asking if this is true.

In this episode, Joy, an author, loves introducing people to mindfulness skills, and I discussed how can you practice being mindful and how it’ll help you as a sales professional. We talked about what can you do to keep engaged with your customer and how you can make your customer feel that they’re being understood and that you meet their needs.

Learn about the benefit of being mindful, how you can apply it to your sales and marketing, what opportunities you can have by being mindful, and how does being mindful will help you reach your success.

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[369] Selling in 2021

Jason Cutter — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Are you struggling to get a sale during this pandemic? Are you worried everything will stall out for your business? Do you want to know how you will be able to get back on track this 2021?

2020 has been a challenging year to close sales and gain trust. With the current situation, creating client relationships is difficult. The best thing to do in this time to gain clients is focus on empathy and nurturing relationships. Sales is a people business. And we are most successful when we make connections, create deep networks, and cultivate professional and personal relations from the ground up. The physical interaction may have been difficult for all of us, nevertheless, building new client relationships and fostering existing relationship is still possible, even virtually.

In this episode I’ll dig deeper on how empathy goes a long way to build relationships and nurture relationships. We will talk about the right way to empathize with your clients. We will venture on how we can encourage building relationships to help you and your clients in this trying time.

Learn about the big differences between sympathy and empathy, getting your clients to trust you and helping them. Get yourself through this year! Times may be strange and challenging but with the right approach, tools, proactive communication strategy coupled with good old empathy, strong client relationships are still within reach.

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[368] Sales and Contact Center Success through Benchmarking, with Bruce Belfiore

Jason Cutter — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How can you get the right people? Does comparing yourself to others have a value? You need to have better staffing so that you could make more sales. More staff getting, more support bringing in training, bring in help, and being perfect.

If we get the right people in, we onboard them the right way, we incentivize them the right way, we coach and mentor them the right way and we have the right kinds of incentives for them, then it turns into a thing of beauty. It’s important to think about in terms of your own organization. Everyone's got their thing and it's sometimes it's us against the other. Sometimes it's not as outwardly aggressive. Sometimes it's just passive. It's just a lack of communication.

In this episode, Bruce, CEO of benchmark portal, and I discussed what is the essence of management. We talked about how can you be creative in your sales and revenue, provide good service, and the cost of recruiting.

Learn about choosing the right people, prospecting, getting the best for your organization, and data-based persuasion.

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[367] APS Live with Benita Samuels (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Is your business geared with the highest visibility? Have you laid down a sturdy foundation for your business to grow and prosper? Have you taken into consideration the advantages of having a well-equipped business publicity?

Fading into obscurity is one of the most disastrous scenarios that any businessperson would want to avoid. With the massive transition to e-commerce due to the pandemic, businesses are now scrambling to find ways to stay at the top of visibility. Existing traditional strategies are now evolving to complement with the rise of e-commerce.

In this episode, Benita, Founder of Benita S. Samuels Marketing and Communication, and I talked about how to improve your business visibility. We talked about different marketing perceptions, laying the foundation of your business, the importance of reviews and reputations, and why we should not lose our sight in the midst of a problem.

Learn about marketing visibility, website building, the importance of having a clear conversation with your clients, and tips on how to transform your traditional marketing during the pandemic.

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[366] Leadership and Sales of a Global Outsourcing Company, with Chanie Gluck

Jason Cutter — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Have you found your unique selling point? Were you able to utilize it to its max potential? Or are you still trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses?

“We are all born unique”, one of the most common statements you can hear from advocates of personal development. Learning our unique abilities and using them to our advantage is optimal but how to leverage that in sales is another story. You encounter different people with different attitudes and the greatest challenge is if you are able to use your unique selling point to entice prospect clients.

In this episode, Chanie, CEO of 4D Global Medical Billing Services, and I discussed about what makes an effective CEO. We talked about the challenges she faced as she grew her business from scratch, discovering her unique abilities, the importance of a team that fits culturally, and how she developed them in their full potential.

Learn about why a healthy competition is excellent between employees, the importance of bonding experience with clients, spotting the traits, skills, and personality of a top salesperson, and the reason why a CEO fails in managing salespeople!

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[365] Welcome to 2021!

Jason Cutter — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 13:45:00 +0000

How is your mindset going to 2021? Will you expect and start your year full of optimism? Or will you be cautious and set your mind towards possibilities? Are you well-prepared as you face 2021?

The pandemic set the world into a roller coaster. Any business, big corporations to small businessowners, were thrown off guard and unprepared how to deal against the problems introduced by the pandemic. Many might have adjusted and adapted immediately, but the world will not return to its original state. We are now faced with this new normal, and it is up to us as to how we face it, going towards 2021.

In this episode, I talked about how life is all about mental game. I talked about the different mindset people will lean themselves coming this 2021, the importance of stability during the pandemic, and applying the learnings that you gained during your sales career in 2020 as we transition to 2021.

Learn about the importance of mindset shifting, how to start your new year with a successful mindset, and learning how to appreciate your survival as you face the pandemic.

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[364] Finishing Strong (in your sales process)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you want to end your year in sales career with splendor? Do you want to finally close the deal and start your prosperous new year? Do you want to finish this year strong and fulfilled?

This year is full of ups and downs. The world, as we know it, is moving forward towards an unknown future. We might not be able to see it, but we can certainly prepare for it. Hence, it is now the time to prepare yourself and end this year with a big bang.

In this episode, I talked about finishing strong in your sales career. I talked about how being transactional is not the end goal of every salesperson, how to relate the serving-waiting experience to our business, and how to get to the finish line.

Learn about the right approach a salesperson should position, the disadvantage of a transaction-based salesperson, and how to build your foundation as you go with your journey as a salesperson.

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[363] APS Live with Kwame Christian

Jason Cutter — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you terrible at negotiating? Do you want to improve your negotiation skills a notch? Do you want to know the secret to your business success?

Negotiation is simply an agreement of the terms between the two parties. As simple as it sounds, the tremendous pressure and intimidation a negotiator go through is not simple at all. It requires more than words but also the harmony in emotions, goals, and potentially, a conflict of interest.

In this episode, Kwame, an Attorney, Professor, and Director of the American Negotiation Institute, discusses negotiation tactics with me. We talk about how negotiation makes your life better, the limitless power of negotiation, and the must-learn compassionate curiosity framework.

Learn about building your confidence, how to lead and facilitate your team, the process of negotiation in sales, and how to start a conversation.

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[362] APS Live with Aleasha Bahr

Jason Cutter — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Is it a bad idea to promote salespeople? What’s the good idea? Organizations move people up thinking that because they sell well, they can lead well. They have the wrong expectation at all levels. Most organizations barely provide sales training. They provide some sales training and then they hope that people do it or they play a number game.

A lot of people are good at something but don’t know how to teach it. Companies tend to promote top salespeople into a leadership role, into a management role, into a team lead role and they’re working their way up in there. For top salespeople where it’s either natural or they’ve worked on those skills, it’s really hard for them to coach other people. That’s what it takes for organizations who want to be successful is actually investing time and effort with those leaders and managers so that they can be effective.

In this episode, Aleasha, a sales and marketing coach, and I discussed sales management. We talk about the main premise of the five love languages and how is it connected to sales management.

Learn about sales management, things to think about when promoting a salesperson, an effective way of promoting a salesperson, leadership, and listing.

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[361] APS Live with Rob Howze

Jason Cutter — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you know your clients well enough? Have you formed an emotional connection with them? Have they expressed their trust in you completely?

People are born unique, hence our decisions and how we execute them are dependent on that unique trait. Aligning oneself to your clients will already give a big advantage against your competitors. Now, cultivate that connection and have a conversation with one another to earn your client’s trust and everything starts from there onwards.

In this episode, Rob, an Empowering Artist and Founder of CampFit, and I discussed about the importance of building empathy in sales conversation. We talked about how to connect the dots to bring people close, the steps to make yourself relatable, the key to build trust and uncovering the deepest level of truth.

Learn about how to properly introduce yourself to your client, why empathy is the key to a successful business, the importance of doing everything in order, and how to utilize technology to your advantage.

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[360] Happy Holidays from the APS

Jason Cutter — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

It is the most wonderful time of the year, Christmas Day.

A week to go, before getting into a New Year.

In this episode, I encourage everyone to take time to reflect on what has happened over the year. See the good in all things, and take lessons from the bad.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Authentic Persuasion Show!

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[359] What Can You Do If You Don't Have Flash and Sizzle?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

What does it truly take to be successful in sales? Are you an ideal salesperson that has what it takes to be successful? Do you want to know how to be a successful salesperson?

A lot of people want to get into sales but they are being they are held back by fear of objections. One thing about sales is that it is full of failures. You can get less than what you are giving and that’s the point of sales. It’s all about losing and winning at the same time.

In this episode, I talk about the difference between what people think it takes to be a successful salesperson, what people think is the ideal salesperson, and what I think could actually be successful.

Learn about what to do to be a successful salesperson, how to make sales, and what it is to be truly successful in sales.

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[358] Observations From A First Time Sales Leader, with Adam Chickman

Jason Cutter — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you have what it takes to be a leader? Do you know the difference between a manager and a leader? Are you aligned with the mission of your company?

Being a leader is as heavy as lifting a mountain. A leader sets the right direction for the future of his team and makes sure that decisions being made aligns with the interest of the parties. And it is for you to find out, if you are a leader or a manager.

In this episode, Adam, a Revenue Leader and the Vice President of Sales on ActiveProspect, and I discussed about leadership and generating sales for your company. We talked about the challenges faced by companies during the Pandemic, the difference between a manager and a leader, building relationships and ActiveProspect’s mission to be the best channel for customer’s acquisition.

Learn about the value of saying “No”, knowing who do you want to work with and its advantage, how to lead your team and achieve mutual success, and how to apply your leadership skills, in sales.

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[357] Are You Making It Easy For Your Prospects To Buy?

Jason Cutter — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

What are you doing to meet your prospects? Having trouble getting clients to meet due to time conflict? Do you want to expand your tools on how you will be able to properly meet clients and make it easier for both sides?

We often get ourselves fixated on how we want to meet our clients and we lose a percentage of them due to these issues. Prospects tend to veer into different types of medium like chat, email and phone calls but it does not seem to fit to what we are comfortable with. Time management for meeting clients is never easy and sometimes having trouble setting this up, we lose our potential clients.

In this episode let me discuss further on meeting your prospects, how you’ll manage it and your options on meeting them on their preferred medium.

Learn about effectively managing different situations on meeting your prospects and expanding your tools to have an easy way to schedule these meetings with them.

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[356] Sales and Leadership Success via Podcasting, with Craig Hewitt

Jason Cutter — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are interested in a way to revolutionize podcasting? Do you want to change the way to disseminate information on your clients and your employees? Do you want to learn the best practices of a successful company?

Podcasting has changed the game of dialogues in the entertainment space. Interviews in the past were linear in which an interview is published in the newspapers and online articles or a live-television interview. In this age, Podcasting is the norm. However, we are yet to discover the intricacies and miracle, podcasting can offer.

In this episode, Craig Hewitt, Founder of Castos, and I discussed ways of utilizing podcasts for your business. We talked about the difficulties faced by podcasters, how podcast is a growing part of online content and e-commerce, and sales vs. marketing on business.

Learn about the method to disseminate information quickly, the two flavors of podcasting, how to connect yourself to your employees as a business leader, and how to choose future employees.

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[355] Financial Wellness and Sales Success, with George Grombacher

Jason Cutter — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you interested in how to generate your wealth? Do you have doubts about handling your finances? Do you want to learn what your company might have missed out for an effective sales team?

Dealing with finances has never been easy. Money is not just some paper printed and handed out to people. It requires intelligence, prudence and decisive-decision making to make most out of it. Improper handling will lose not only your company or employees, but most probably your entire career.

In this episode, George, Founder and Chief Community Officer of Money Alignment Academy, and I discussed the effective way of handling your company. We talked about the effective sales process and styles, the types of people you should be working with, and how to be a champion in your own game.

Learn about the advantage of training your employees, creating your recruitment strategy, what mindset should a salesperson possess, and the four hierarchies to achieve success.

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[354] Does Your Recruiting Process Feel Like It's Failing?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you have the right recruitment process? Looking to hire the right person for your team? Putting the right people into your team is very crucial and can be the foundation for the success of the company. And the hiring process is the first step in hiring people for your team.

Determining if the recruitment process is effective can be the key to hiring the best people for your company and there are a lot of things to consider in choosing the right person for the organization. People who are looking to get hired at your company are not always the right person and oftentimes generating a lot of leads for possible recruits isn’t reliable.

In this episode, I talk about the recruitment process, the challenge of hiring the right people, opportunities, and the interview process. Factors to know in the hiring process and what to expect on a possible recruit.

Learn about the challenges in the hiring process and how to hire the right person for the company. How to know if the person is fit to be in your organization and how to handle the interview process.

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[353] Using Your Voice More Effectively, with Tracy Goodwin

Jason Cutter — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Have you utilized your voice to its max potential? Do you have a problem in connecting with your clients? Do you have that resonance in you? Having a conversation, as a salesperson, might be too linear. You offer your services, you persuade them, then you close the deal. But persuasion demands a resonance in emotion.

Our subconscious mind can pick up even the tiniest sound around us. And people’s subconscious, operates differently. It can be loud, quiet, moderate, fast, slow and that’s the challenge that every salesperson needs to address.

In this episode, Tracy, Founder of Captivate the Room, and I talked about the psychology of the voice. Things about the different voice elements and varieties, the mystery behind our subconscious minds, the importance of emotional resonance, and how sales are relative to everyone’s life.

Learn about the different tactics to utilize your voice, the right way to use mirroring, how to control a conversation and craft the perfect words, and how to use your voice to transform people’s lives.

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[352] Ready For Your First Sales Team?

Jason Cutter — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 14:11:31 +0000

Do you have the right people on your team? Do you want to escape the situation of being the founder and the only best salesperson in your company? Oftentimes you need the right people for your organization because being the only salesperson could be a positive step in moving forward but it creates a lot of problems and you’ll want to transition away from that kind of situation.

Being the top salesperson in your organization is a title that can be uplifting but it can be very stressful at times and you just want the right people on your team who can extract themselves from the sales side. People are not going to be as successful in sales as you but with the right leadership, your organization will go a long way and you won’t have to worry about being the only salesperson in your company.

In this episode, I talk about being the CEO/Founder and the only salesperson in your team and how it affects the growth of your company, choosing the right people to hire for your team, and what you need to do to build a reliant and successful team.

Learn about how the right people give the best results, how to build a team, and how to lead your team for you to escape being the only salesperson in your own company.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[351] Why Steve Hates Authenticity, with Steve Sims

Jason Cutter — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

How can you be successful at networking? How can you be the solution to your client’s problem? Relationships often build up networks and those networks can get you to the right persons you want to work with. And to build relationships, you need to ask yourself how can you be the solution to your client’s problem.

Trying something is beneficial in building up your relationships and creating networks. People will look at how authentic you are and how you can help them with their problems and getting out of your comfort zone can be the key to becoming your client's solution.

In this episode, Steve Sims, the author of Bluefishing, and I talk about what is authenticity, how to communicate with your clients, networking, and building relationships.

Learn about why trying something new make you adapt to different situations, how being transparent is more favorable than being authentic, how other people could get you to the people you want to work with, and how attitude can affect your success.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[350] Networking: More Than Who You Know, with Frank Agin

Jason Cutter — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you having trouble trying to connect with people? Feeling blanked out and not knowing what to say? Do you want to know how to lead a conversation in your favor? Any businessperson would feel the itch to strike a deal. However, it takes a lot of mental fortitude and persuasion to close the deal.

Forging business relations is the hardest aspect of the business to build. It takes time, dedication, research, and a lot of trust to maintain the connection. And a single mistake, in a business decision, is all it takes to ruin your reputation.

In this episode, Frank Agin, Founder & President of AmSpirit, and I talked about building professional relationships and business networking. We talked about the long term and short-term prospects of building relationships, the ugly side of networking, and how the new normal changes the perspective of relationship building.

Learn about expanding your network and its advantages, the importance of building your credentials, being authentic, and its relevance to the golden rule, and how to build trust.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[349] Why Promoting Your Top Sales Reps Doesn’t Work

Jason Cutter — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 13:43:51 +0000

Have you ever thought of promoting your top salesperson into a lead role? Thinking that a top salesperson, as a leader, equates to a top sales team? Have you provided them enough support, to help assist you in reviving your company?

“Survival of the fittest”, as what the law of the jungle says and that is true in the business industry. It takes an astounding amount of effort, resilience, and knowledge to outwit the competition. Hence, it is befitting that selecting the correct leader should be done not in haste, not in desperation, but with accurate judgment.

In this episode, I talked about the proper way of selecting your next leader, the difference between a top salesperson vs. a good leader, the importance of learning the correct language, and the key to a successful company.

Learn about leadership, decision-making, team-motivation, and building the correct framework for your company.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[348] Martech and Sales Success, with Benjamin Shapiro

Jason Cutter — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Why is there a fine line between marketing and sales? How will you interpret the data gathered to create a lead indicator? Does your marketing data translate to effective sales? Does the structure of your business matter?

Information is at every customer’s fingertips. Companies struggle to sell products and services to new customers and retain loyal customers. The pressure is on the marketing and sales department to find solutions to effective customer cohesion and to keep satisfaction maximized.

In today's episode, Benjamin Shapiro and I discuss how cohesiveness between marketing and sales is the starting point for a company’s success, the secrets of effective marketing, the recipe to understand your customer’s standpoint, and why a personal company is a successful company.

Learn about effective data gathering and interpretation, productive marketing and sales collaboration, the limits of persuasion, and maintaining business relevance.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[347] Tips and Tactics Don't Work

Jason Cutter — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 14:02:47 +0000

When it comes to sales, it is vital that we ask ourselves this question:

"Am I selling TO somebody? Or am I selling FOR, or WITH somebody?"

In this episode, I talk about understanding the importance of the foundation, and internal aspects of "why" you are selling.

This is where most salespeople fall short, when they look for, and focus on - the tips and tactics, or sometimes, the shortcuts.

Learn about the fundamentals of sales, being authentic, and selling from the heart. These will help you keep customer relationships and hit long-term goals.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[346] Sales Success via ABM, with Kristina Jaramillo

Jason Cutter — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you want your withered sales to see the light once again? Are you approaching your customers in the correct way? Do you have a hard time being unique against your competitors? Do you really know who your customers are?

As technology progresses day by day, many companies have a hard time adapting to changes. Companies develop various marketing strategies and techniques that set them apart from competitors. Satisfying your customers can solidify your company against the competition.

In this episode, Kristina and I discuss her exemplary journey revitalizing “stale” companies: companies confused about which market to target, methods of addressing which department a company should focus resources, and what business approach to employ to hook customers.

Learn about effective marketing, developing strategies, building customer impression, and a proper mindset towards success.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[345] APS Live with John Welch (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 15:22:19 +0000

How can you create an audience that begs you for help? How do you attract them to you?

People buy from you because they feel a connection with you. Buyers connect with “the right person” not so much because of how the product works, but how the right person made them feel good, and part of the community.

In this episode of Authentic Persuasion Show, John Welch talks about scaling and growing your business without following the usual, tired recommended methodology or standard practices. You’ll find out how to think outside the box to grow your B2B or B2C business.

Learn about:

How to sell your product without explaining that product – instead, make your prospects feel good about you
Storytelling secrets
Business flows for predictability and consistency

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E344] What To Do If You Are A Toxic Salesperson

Jason Cutter — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 14:06:20 +0000

What if you are a toxic salesperson? In episode 342, I addressed this topic for the leaders listening. Now, I want to help you – if this applies to you. I truly want you to take your great sales ability and come at your role as a positive force on the team and for the company. I know that just because you currently don’t play well with others doesn’t mean you can’t change. In fact, I would say that if you could shift your mindset around “change” and “teamwork” that you will become unstoppable (in positive ways)!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[343] Leadership and Sales Success, with Evan Knox

Jason Cutter — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 14:27:07 +0000

Want to separate your company from the competition? How do you set the right expectations? Building and scaling a successful company could be a difficult venture. One of the challenges to small business organizations is to bring in the wrong type of salesperson.

Many times, companies do not set the right expectations or over-promise on deliverables. If the sales team set the proper expectation and do not oversell, that boosts customer lifetime value. If you’re in marketing, be willing to learn every single time. Successful business owners over the long term are humble and teachable, they’re not afraid and not flying blind.

In this episode, Evan and I talk through how to transform your team from order takers into quota breakers. Common observations plus the marketing side. The minute we over-promise in marketing or sales, it does not help the company. We walk through the value of the product.

Learn about sales and marketing, messaging, and strategy. Significantly increase your revenue.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[342] Why Do Companies Tolerate Toxic Salespeople?

Jason Cutter — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Why do companies tolerate toxic energy or behavior in the sales team? Simple: Money A top-performing, revenue-generating rep that also happens to be toxic to the corporate/team culture is better than no rep...right? In this episode, I address this trend, why it happens, and what sales and business leaders should do about it.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[341] Don't Be The Weird Guy At The BBQ, With Daniel Vander Kooi

Jason Cutter — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Don’t be the Weird Guy at the barbeque. Change sales successfully with effective company culture.

Transform your sales team from order takers to quarter breakers, significantly increase revenue, and create scalable sales systems.

In today's episode, Daniel Vander Kooi, Founder/CEO of Manna Insurance Group, and I talked about how to build companies through his quote “Culture is King,” focusing on corporate culture, sales, and business operations.

Learn about: How you impact people by living in the moment, operating the business like a family (Man-a-Fam), engaging the 5 love languages (gifts, acts of service, quality time, touch, and words of affirmation), and building sales with authentic persuasion and your Integrity.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[340] APS Live with Collin Mitchell (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 14:10:55 +0000

What are the benefits of being authentic? How can a mindset help you achieve your goals? The most common mistake is focusing your energy on one activity. Look at what you’re doing and think about it like a professional.

Most content you see scrolling through social media is from “the pros” – people who have been doing this a while. They aren’t overnight successes. They put together nice videos, look good on camera, and sound confident. It’s well crafted.

In this episode, Collin and I talk about how to be authentic and persuasive. Believing in yourself and what you sell creates a positive mindset, why having a personalized email can be tough, and how being yourself can advantageous to reach your goals.

Learn about constructively doing top-funnel activities, using videos for prospecting, being authentic, having the right mindset, investing time to ask for help/ feedback, and using the phone as your primary channel for sales.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[339] Tis the Season...but for what?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 14:42:13 +0000

It’s that time of year where things slow down for salespeople.

The holiday season is upon us, and the prospective buyers are distracted, busy, tuned out.

They don’t want to make buying decisions or don’t care about anything other than making it through the holidays.

Well, at least that is what most salespeople think.

They assume, because of what they have been told, that sales will be less in December.

If your sales are down…it's because of YOU, not the market.

In this episode, I will cover why that is and the choices you have.

And maybe…just maybe…you actually want to do less work…which I will explain.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[338] APS Live with Jarrett Thomas (Replay)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 13:55:52 +0000

How do you build a relationship with somebody who doesn’t know you on the other end of the line? What do you say to keep their attention? If you are randomly calling, emailing, or directly emailing your prospects, STOP! It is NOT a numbers game. Become useful and help your prospects. Create value by providing your prospects with useful bite-sized information.

How annoyed were you when answering your last cold call? Your customers feel the same way. Instead of resorting to cold calling, create content that can potentially get thousands of views -- and STILL hit that same target audience. This makes you more relatable. Even if people don’t know you, they may know your posts and content. That’s how you create demand. It’s just like being on the phone with the customers, proactively answer their questions through content.

In this episode, we have invited Jarrett Thomas, Senior Account Executive at iPullRank, podcaster, content creator, and digital marketer. He shares the strategy to create valuable content that can reach your target audience better than cold calling. Jarrett explains the importance of knowing your prospects: have a working knowledge of each potential customer, the problems they face, and how your product can solve those problems -- instead of presenting the hard sales pitch on your first interaction.

Listen in, discover how to stay authentic throughout your sales process, move that “conversation” to a discovery call, then nurture interactions and relationships have with your clients. It’s all about building authentic relationships and be a relevant resource to solve their pain. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They come to you when they’re ready.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[337] What if they just want the info, and don't answer questions?

Jason Cutter — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 13:58:00 +0000

“Just tell me what you are selling, I don’t want to answer any of your questions.”

Or maybe: “Can you just show me the demo? I want to see it and I will let you know if I am interested.”

Or even: “You don’t need to know that info (in response to trying to get through your discovery questions.”

If you have ever had that happen to you, you know how frustrating that can be.

Unfortunately, it also means you have instantly become an Order Taker and the prospect views what you are offering as a commodity.

In this episode, I will cover WHY that happens and what you can say to overcome that and get back to your Sales Success Fundamentals.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[336] Conversational Intelligence and Sales Experience, with Gregg Johnson

Jason Cutter — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

How can you match the wants/needs of your buyer? Looking for the best tool to deliver the best combination of digital experience, human touch, and advice? Oftentimes, you want to drive more effective customer acquisition to deliver a better buying experience for your customers. And, people constantly want some buying assistance and want to talk to somebody to make sure they've got the right product or service.

There’s an art and craftsmanship to being a seller that’s understanding the consumer’s needs, wants, and desires, and figuring out how to best match that. People, even if they're doing something digitally, it gives them comfort and confidence to know that if they want help and assistance, there's an opportunity for them to get one, whether it's a chat or a conversation which makes consumers much more equipped. Making more things available via digital self-service is great.

In this episode, Gregg Johnson, the CEO of Invoca, and I talk about the challenge of selling your products or services online. Things about having good customer service, experience, and selling. How they help the revenue teams, the sales and marketing teams at those companies deliver the best combination of digital experience and human touch and advice.

Learn about challenges in sales and marketing, how you understand where your buyers coming from, the power of digital self-service and human connection combination, how a CEO maintains his commitment to the organization, and how your go-to-market model will help you reach your success!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[335] Sales Success Trait - Persistence

Jason Cutter — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 13:51:25 +0000

How would you rate your level of persistence? Do you know why you are even persisting in the first place?

In my experience there are 5 Sales Success Traits. These are skills that can be learned and enhanced with focused practice.

And they are all necessary for becoming a Sales Professional.

Most people might think that only “Natural Born Salespeople” can be successful in sales. I disagree. Check out today’s episode where I explain Sales Success Trait #4 = Persistence

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[334] Sales Success Trait - Creativity

Jason Cutter — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 13:50:01 +0000

How creative would you say that you are?

I used to think that only applied to painting or music.

In my experience, there are 5 Sales Success Traits. These are skills that can be learned and enhanced with focused practice.

And they are all necessary for becoming a Sales Professional. Most people might think that only “Natural Born Salespeople” can be successful in sales. I disagree. Check out today’s episode where I explain Sales Success Trait #3 - Creativity

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E333] Sales Success Trait - Curiosity

Jason Cutter — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you curious about your prospects, your industry, and the world? Are you constantly trying to learn new things in and outside of sales?

In my experience, there are 5 Sales Success Traits. These are skills that can be learned and enhanced with focused practice.

And they are all necessary for becoming a Sales Professional.

Most people might think that only “Natural Born Salespeople” can be successful in sales. I disagree. Check out today’s episode where I explain Sales Success Trait #2 = Curiosity

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[332] Sales Success Trait - Openness

Jason Cutter — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you open to new things? Or to constructive feedback?

In my experience, there are 5 Sales Success Traits. These are skills that can be learned and enhanced with focused practice. And they are all necessary for becoming a Sales Professional. Most people might think that only “Natural Born Salespeople” can be successful in sales. I disagree. Check out today’s episode where I explain Sales Success Trait #1 = Openness/Willingness

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[331] Sales Enablement and Radical Outcomes, with Juliana Stancampiano

Jason Cutter — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Being in Virtual Conferences is great and fascinating. We really focus on connecting with one another, having free flow conversations with people that maybe you wouldn't necessarily have access to on a day-to-day basis.

In this episode, Juliana Stancampiano, CEO of Oxygen will be our guest today. She will be talking about her experience in Sales Enablement that made a hard change this year because previously, they were typically in person but is now in the virtual world.

We are via technology right now and yet our human side has to come out even more. So we support our sellers and help our sellers engage with customers that are going through this unprecedented time.
We actually have to figure out how to work together, because our clients are expecting us to do something. I have these skills, and you have these skills and we need to have them mixed together so that we can have this stronger, more cohesive conversation set with our clients.
If you don't feel good wearing it, don't wear it. And I think authenticity is like that. If something doesn't feel good, it shines through. And we talk a lot about how it leaks out if you're not comfortable with something, and so I think being authentic is being honest, and having integrity and so many different components.

Learn about: Engaging with customers virtually, knowing your audience, resilience, different mindsets. If you want to improve your selling effectiveness, please go to http://voxwithjason.com/

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[330] Success Through Channel Partnerships, with Rob Spee

Jason Cutter — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

What is a channel partner? Why do we need channel partners? How can we build a channel strategy to accelerate the growth of our company? These are some of the questions people ask when they are interested in having channel partners and what it can do to their businesses.

Instead of selling directly to the end customer, a channel partner helps you scale your sales faster and more efficiently. A channel partner is one who partners with a manufacturing company, to market and sell a manufacture's product. In fact, 75% of the commerce in the world is sold through channels.

In this podcast, we have invited Rob Spee, Regional Vice President of America's channels at OutSystems. Rob talks about the concept of channel partnerships, the role of channel partners to business growth, and how they are helping companies leverage partnerships to dramatically accelerate global revenue growth. Learn how channel partnerships is hugely beneficial to your businesses, create revenue streams, boost sales, and open your company up to a wealth of shared resources.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[329] What Are You Afraid Will Come Up?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 13:27:34 +0000

Change equals danger. What are you holding back in your sales conversation? Whether it’s signing up for your service or buying your products, that requires a change in trying something new. Nothing is perfect, so there are risks and mistakes involved when taking these chances. In this episode, I talk about how salespeople should disclose the negatives of their products or services during the sales pitch and how there is always some sort of trade-off where a product can be perfect at a high cost. A reflection of your sales conversation from the outside is needed to understand why you are afraid that bringing up the flaws would lose a sale. Learn more about how selling can relate to the situation of mentioning the highlights when dating, but also how being open and honest helps to prevent buyers’ remorse.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[328] Field Sales Success in 2020, with Steven Benson

Jason Cutter — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

What are you seeing now within the industry of Field Sales? What are you seeing with the trend at all of the field sales moving into inside sales?

A lot of people assume that field sales isn’t happening right now, and that’s definitely not the case. About 20 percent of customers have either gone out of the business or changed their go-to-market model in some way where they are no longer needed, and the other 80 percent are the most essential businesses in some way.

In this episode of the Authentic Persuasion Show, Jason Cutter will be interviewing Steve Benson, CEO, and founder of Badger Maps. Learn the strategies and tactics to be successful in Outside Sales. You'll learn practical tips on how to sell at peak performance, about Field Sales!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[327] Do's & Don'ts of Asking For The Sale

Jason Cutter — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Why would your clients say yes? You don’t always have to ask to close the deal.

Rewind to when you were a customer and didn't like it when salespeople were pushy in their sales tactics. That is why you should know your intentions and analyze what value you can provide. If you do ask, there should be some level of trust and relationship built with your client. Your goal needs to be focusing on why they would say yes during the sales pitch.

In this episode, I talk about the best chance of success is increasing the relationship with clients and how it’s always about what their needs and wants are. You shouldn’t ask when your authentic approach in persuading shows that you know what the best solution is already. Learn more about how your life experiences of asking can correlate to the fear of rejection such as asking someone to go on a date or play with you when you were a kid.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[326] Sales Success Through Educating And Honesty, with Michael Bradley

Jason Cutter — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Thinking about getting into selling insurance? Are you worried that selling insurance is hard? Most of the time you’re going to have people tell you “No”. Even when you locate a good prospect, the product itself is hard to sell. People are loath to discuss how important it is to have insurance. Unlike a new car or cellphone, insurance provides none of the instant gratifications that leads people to make impulse purchases. People don’t want them unless when they need them. Purchasing insurance may not seem like a high priority for most people. But let’s face it, accidents happen unexpectedly. In this episode, Michael Bradley of Bradley Insurance Group talks about insurance generally and how the product itself is a challenge to sell to people. He also shares his sales processes and approach to making sure they deliver a good product for the right price because, at the end of the day, people have to trust who they’re doing business with. Learn how education and staying honest with your customers about your product will help them acknowledged its importance. In the case of selling insurance, people will realize that if and when they have a claim, and if and when they have a problem, insurance is their best friend.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[325] Success From Focusing On Long Term Relationships, with Gregory Kovsky

Jason Cutter — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Get up from the table, walk to the other side, and look at the deal from the opposite side. Look at it from both sides of the table. Ensure the deal is fair and honest.

The golden rule, or principle: Embrace life professionally and personally, can be found in every culture around the world. Basically, “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.” Salespeople can fall into the “golden rule” trap. Selling to others as you want to be sold to, limits your effectiveness.

In this episode of Authentic Persuasion Show, Gregory Kovsky and I will talk about Greg’s business in helping other businesses. Gregory has worked in the professional Mergers and Acquisition Intermediary Business for IBA since the spring of 1994. In 2000, he purchased the company from its founder and became its successor as the CEO and president of the firm.

Other business brokers miss the mark. They should focus on the commission, their personal outcome on the sale, and getting unity of purpose with the client or buyer. We’re paid by performance until the deal is closed, or the client is satisfied.
Salespeople need to share benefits to the buyer, in relationship to the cost. Allow the purchaser to make an intelligent decision. Be authentic, be knowledgeable, share your experience with the customer so they can complete the acquisition, and be happy. A salesperson should think long-term in order to be successful.
A salesperson should speak the people’s language in order to have a message that resonates. Speak their language. Don’t speak in MBA or financial jargon to a customer.

Learn about: teaching reps to mentally switch between tables, mutual respect, courtesy, reputation, and success.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[324] Winning By Playing The Long Game

Jason Cutter — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Expensive does not mean better. You can win more sales with a long-term approach to selling.

It is the duty of a salesperson to serve customers with products that are the best fit. Consider what is in the best interest of your customer when introducing an item even if this means underselling.

In this episode, I talk about using the persuasion approach to move customers forward, how selling should be seen as a service to serve others, and whether the products you sold creates buyer's remorse or happiness for them to come back next time.

Hear more about the given example of how selling an expensive versus an inexpensive gun that matches a customer’s needs better will create trust and customer satisfaction.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[323] Always Be Helping with Collin Mitchell

Jason Cutter — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 13:50:00 +0000

Learn how to transform your sales team from order takers to quota breakers. Significantly increase your revenue and create scalable sales systems, you should be listening to Authentic Persuasion Show with Jason Cutter!

A lot of people think persuasion is a bad word, but rather it should be used properly and done right. A good intention is a skill that will serve you in many areas of your life both personally or professionally and it will help a person understand what’s going to happen if they don’t go on that journey.

In this episode, Collin is a 4X founder passionate about sales and serving others. His current ventures include Monster VoIP and SalesCast. He loves everything about sales and still makes cold calls for fun. In fact, he is a practitioner, not just a founder who wants to help people.

Here is something we do or other people do as well is to ask for “feedback”. Not just ask for feedback that you win but, ask for feedback from the business that you lose as well, the people that say no to your sales.
Number one rule if anyone pushes me in the corner and says give me one piece of advice to help my sales career – “Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.”
When we ask for a feedback, a lot of times people were just confused about something or there wasn’t really good clarity around or maybe they aren’t listening and made an assumption along the way that just made them ghost the sales rep, stop taking the calls, not sign the deal, could be there was a crappy discovery done, or something didn’t get uncovered.

Learn about: Persuasion, getting feedback in sales that has been won and lost, take responsibility and not relying on others

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[322] Success Traits of an Authentic Persuader

Jason Cutter — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Each person is unique. They have different needs and wants even if their problems may be similar.

When a problem approaches, how do you find solutions to solve it? As your goal is to help solve your client’s problem, it is best to determine a solution that is the best fit by being curious and asking questions.

In this episode, I talk about having a deep level of curiosity when problem-solving, asking questions as if it’s your first time hearing the problem, and shifting your mindset when you get desensitized from hearing similar situations multiple times.

Hear more about how your problem-solving approach differs the first and second time when solving a puzzle, watching a mystery movie, or even reading a mystery novel.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[321] Personalization and Value, with Mario Martinez Jr.

Jason Cutter — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 13:45:00 +0000

How can businesses start their digital transformation? Can businesses find success in social selling? Digital sales strategy can create a game-changing impact on your sales team and their results. With the current pandemic, it has significantly influenced the way companies run their businesses and manage their people. It is indeed possible for businesses to succeed and continue in a digital-only remote platform.

Digital sales leverage digital platforms to find, engage, and connect with prospective buyers. Most long-time business owners grew up selling in a different way than how we sell today. Most leaders have never used digital channels to be able to engage with their buyers. The process of social selling requires a shift of mindset to use these channels to provide value, develop trust, and build relationships with buyers.

In this episode, Mario Martinez Jr of Vengreso talks about the services they provide in the company – leveraging digital channels to find, engage, and connect with potential buyers. This pandemic could serve as a wake-up call for business leaders to embrace digital transformation. Undeniably, remote work has come, and it’s here to stay. Embracing digital transformation can maintain businesses their ability to ensure essential and provide quality service during and after the pandemic.

Learn how to build relationships on digital platforms and turn online connections into offline sales conversations. Leverage this approach to be consistent, authentic, and effective in engaging the modern buyer to start more sales conversations.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[320] Revenue Generating, with Vince Beese

Jason Cutter — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you bringing all the revenue you deserve in your company? Are you making as many sales as you want to? Do you build enough customer relationships to ensure the long-term success of your company?

Only few companies’ sales strategies revolve on throwing random tactics and see what sticks. Most businesses that see consistent success in sales implement some degree of guidance to their sales people. Sales people need a defined framework that serve as a reference point that lets them know what to do next. That framework is referred as a sales cycle.

In this episode, Vince Beese, co-founder of The Revenue Exchange talks about the importance of establishing a sales cycle especially in global revenue, hiring the right sales people, and pushing the reps to be flexible and understand the necessity of collaboration in closing deals.

Learn how having a sales cycle in place allows you to evaluate the efficacy of your sales effort. Develop a relationship with your clients, be involved, and collaborate early in the process, and work hand-in-hand with your customer. Discover their pains and meet them where they are.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[319] How Are You Selling When Not Selling?

Jason Cutter — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are sales one size fits all? How do you operate in your sales life versus personal life?

The way you handle interactions in your sales role is similar to how you act when you recommended products to your friends or family. When asked what phone they should buy next, you will probably say iPhone because you have it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for them.

In this episode, I talk about taking a mental assessment to observe the way you operate, balancing the conversion where your prospects speak for two-thirds of the time, and switching to curiosity mode by asking questions first before giving options.

Hear more about what response I often give when someone asks me what book I recommend they should read. The same response goes to providing recommendations such as phones, computers, or sports topics.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[318] Success Through Self-Awareness, with Kristin Sherry

Jason Cutter — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Is your business in need of a sales boost? Or perhaps a total revamp of your “sales strategy”. Many business owners don’t like selling because they are not very good at it. That’s perfect! People don’t want to be overtly sold to. But let’s face it, your success depends on it, no matter how you do it and what you call it.

The key to a sales strategy is knowing how. How can you give value? How can you develop a meaningful engagement that will lead to a genuine relationship? How can you spin your content so you are selling them without making them feel like you’re selling them? The Secret Sauce to successful sales is human connection. Don’t focus on the numbers. Think about the best way to help your client solve their problems and guide them on how to get there.

In this episode, Kristin Sherry, creator of YouMap, shares how selling is truly about building and leveraging human connection. Kristin has a unique ability to connect with people by exuding genuine interest, understanding, and above all warmth.

Learn how to shift your focus and begin building genuine relationships with your community. Start with listening and understanding your client’s viewpoints and needs. Be genuine in your effort to resolve their issues in order to achieve their business or personal goals. Above all, really care. It works like a charm.

“People won’t remember what you said or did; they will remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[317] Check Your Baggage

Jason Cutter — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Drop your baggage. Do you carry positive baggage of stories, hope, and empathy in your sales role?

Don’t let the negative baggage weigh you down. The mental baggage that you carry daily with you is based on your experiences. As a salesperson, how you present to others in your sales career will determine the effectiveness of your conversations.

In this episode, I talk about having someone analyze your conversations with clients to find limitations about yourself, how your decision-making process affects the way you close, and how unpacking your baggage of feelings towards other people in your sales role is a better way to serve clients.

Learn more about why you shouldn’t sell to people the same you want to buy with the given example of a car salesperson having a tough time selling Mercedes to their clients.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[316] Shifting Behaviors, with Sean Doyle

Jason Cutter — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

How many sales and marketing steps do you have? Does having a sales & marketing process help you win more deals? The “fun” part in sales lies in the fact that buyers can be picky, overly cautious, impulsive, and even suspicious. The only thing that works for some as unstable as this is to work under a structured framework. At the end of the day, everyone wants to have a system that just delivers repeatable, consistent results, and profitability, right?

Most of the businesses would identify with the experience of hiring an ad agency, a marketing person, a developer who can help improve the website, and nothing happened. They can’t figure out why there were no results. What’s happening in those situations? This only proves that you need to have a formal sales & marketing process.

In this episode, Sean Doyle, co-founder, principal, and director of strategy at FitzMartin talks about the application behavioral science revolutionizes the art of sales & marketing. Mr. Doyle discusses how cognitive marketing supports our sales process to help businesses have an alignment in terms of sales & marketing.

Learn to understand where your buyer is in a cycle and how to leverage the tools necessary to implement and succeed a process. Rather than only choosing to make decisions based on thoughts and emotions, choose to use the power of data and a scientific approach to your business.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E315] Visibility Architecture, with Benita Samuels

Jason Cutter — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Are you postponing digital marketing? If you have been avoiding digital marketing, is it because you think you are not simply ready? Do you find yourself overwhelmed just figuring out the digital marketing angle? Your customers and potential customers are definitely already online. Right now. Today. There’s a good chance they might already be looking for a business like yours, but if they can’t find you easily, they will turn their heads and choose someone else.

Yes, digital marketing gives you the opportunity to increase your brand awareness, generate leads, stay top of mind, and boost sales. But more than those, social selling allows you to interact directly with customers, likewise give them the chance to interact directly with your brand. It allows you to be more intentional with creating relationships, having conversations, talking with those in your community so that you can ultimately move them off the social platform and have a one-to-one conversation with them, and provide them with a value that you are committed to deliver.

In this episode, Benita Samuels, a visibility expert, digital and social media specialist, talks about digital marketing, what it looks like now moving connections into a conversation, and empowering business owners with the skills to use digital marketing to find, engage, and convert connections into clients.

Learn how to eliminate the limiting belief that digital marketing is not for you and understand that establishing social media presence is not a short game. It is an investment. Regardless of the size of your business, you have to be present digitally to survive and stay relevant.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[314] Sales Success through being Human

Jason Cutter — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Do you have fun in your sales conversations? Don’t be afraid to show that you are human when speaking to your prospects. A sales conversation does not have to be perfect, this will lead to prospects more unwillingly to buy from you. They may worry about being manipulated or tricked if you are too perfect. In this episode, I talk about creating an enjoyable experience by being human in your sales process, having a balance of seriousness and laughter to build a connection, and how making mistakes and forgetting things sometimes is okay. Learn more about how acting like a human at the beginning of your conversion can create more successful deals by using the intent of care in your sales process.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E313] Value Content and Persuasion, with John Welch

Jason Cutter — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

Is your marketing strategy failing to produce the results you want? Or have you ever questioned yourself if your business can survive without a strategic marketing plan or no marketing plan at all? While your business could grow and see results every now and then, investing in a diverse marketing plan will expedite and consistently produce the growth you’re looking for. Otherwise, marketing without a strategy is just noise before failure.

If you aren’t strategic and thoughtful about how you spend your money, you’re more likely to waste your money on campaigns, tactics, and strategies that don’t work. Simply knowing how your business runs and what products and services you offer in the public are not enough to plan to thrive in the business. You need to have a solid marketing plan in place. It requires you to know who your target consumers are.

In this episode, John Welch of Skymouse Studios talks about how companies should understand what they’re trying to accomplish, and where their marketing fits into that in order to secure a more thriving business for a long time period of time. John shares the importance of how time management and picking the right activities and do them consistently play important roles to generate interest and success in your company.

Learn about how you can significantly increase your revenue by creating a thorough marketing plan that considers all of the elements that go into your plan and execution process. Consider not only making money, but also providing needs, values, and interest to your potential customers, and developing authentic and genuine connections and friendship.

If you want to get to know more about John Welch and his team, and would like to get tips and learn effective marketing strategies, check this website: https://skymousestudios.com/about/

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[312] How To Ask More Questions

Jason Cutter — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:30:01 +0000

Asking questions means you care. What questions do you ask to help move forward the sales process with your prospects? Closing deals by hope will not work long term in your sales profession. Show that you care about them by shifting your focus as a sales professional to figure out what your prospect’s needs, wants, or desires are. In this episode, I discuss why salespeople tend to avoid asking a lot of questions, how having the intent to help clients get to a better place is necessary, and how setting the expectation of ‘why’ behind a request makes it easier to comply. Learn more about the ‘why’ given the scenarios such as your boss asking you to clean out the office or when someone asks if they can cut in line at a grocery market.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Buy Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[E311] Inwardly Motivated, Outwardly Focused, with Bob Burg

Jason Cutter — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 13:45:00 +0000

What is the biggest motivation in your business? What picture do you paint when you hear the word “success” in terms of your business? If your target is to manipulate others to purchase your products and avail of your services, then you might want to rethink your ways.

Sales shouldn’t be about manipulation. It should be about solving problems and delivering genuine value to your prospects. Value-creation is the key to customer loyalty and the lifeline of every successful business. Yes, we all want revenue in our business. We all want to generate money in our business. And the only way to make a lot of money in sales is not to make money as your target. Your target is serving others. Money is simply the reward for hitting the target. It is not the target itself. Your target is serving others.

In this episode, learn about how providing value to customers will create success in your business, current shifts & progress we see in the sales world, winning traits of a successful sales leader in comparison to those who are struggling.

Learn how to shift your focus from getting to giving, and constantly and consistently provide immense value to others, because this is the only winning way to sustainable successful sales.

If you want to learn more about Bob Burg and be one of those who want to build your influence in your business and create a valuable impact to others, visit his website https://burg.com/ or connect with him personally at socialmedia@burg.com.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Or go to Jason’s HUB – www.JasonCutter.com

[Replay] Riderflex, with Steve Urban

Jason Cutter — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Don’t pitch in the first 15 seconds. It’s not about getting what you want, how do you help other people?

A sustainable approach is persuading your prospects for the right reasons. If you’re selling to your prospects, view yourself as a professional like a doctor to find solutions to their problem.

Featured on the Riderflex Podcast hosted by Steve Urban, I talk about my windy path that makes me different, advice for salespeople to empower them as a professional, and my opinion on cold LinkedIn pitch messages.

Hear more about my method on Authentic Persuasion, using the doctor analogy in a sales process, and my advice on writing a book.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Steve on Linkedin

Watch on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_eIiG7vfKY

Listen on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/09IaCHdlIMqSzMjvIqkxZ4

Listen on iTunes
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jason-cutter-ceo-founder-cutter-consulting-group-riderflex/id1341900751?i=1000489302588

[Replay] Lead Generation World, with Michael Ferree

Jason Cutter — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

The robotic scripts don’t work. People want real human interactions when making decisions on what to buy.

If people find that you are not genuinely trying to help them and only trying to close a deal, it’s not surprising if they rejected your offer. Active listening and asking questions to understand them is part of the duty of a salesperson.

Featured on the Lead World Generation Podcast hosted by Michael Ferree, I talk about how to identify if prospects want to buy by understanding personality and behaviors in a conversation, what drives a salesperson to be motivated, the challenge that salespeople face with rejections.

Learn more about the ways to handle rejections and why you should or should not take it personally.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Michael on Linkedin

Subscribe to the Lead Generation World
https://leadgenerationworld.com/ep-36-jason-cutter-cutter-consulting-group/

Listen on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5tzGc8YpYKPKUACiOhOp8p

Listen on Apple Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2-23-12-49-22-lead-generation-world-podcast-ep-36-jason-cutter/id1497945492?i=1000475429047

[Replay] The Sales Conversion, with Rylee Meek

Jason Cutter — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

People don’t make decisions. How do you sell to them over the phone?

To move prospects towards a closed deal, a salesperson should gain their trust and help them make a beneficial decision. People tend to buy when they find that a salesperson is not manipulating.

Featured on The Sales Conversion Podcast hosted by Rylee Meek, I talk about the importance of listening during a sales call, why people don’t pay as much attention to their sales process when the economy is good, and how companies should fix what isn’t working for them during this crisis.

Learn more about how to consider behaviors of prospects during a sales call and how it differs from face to face conversations.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Rylee on Linkedin

Subscribe to The Sales Conversion Podcast
https://ryleemeek.com/the-sales-conversion-podcast/

Listen on Apple Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jason-cutter/id1508586091?i=1000473721943

Listen on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IlzYgTZ0xF7V6yfnbv1C6

[Replay] LeadsCon Industry, Warren Picket

Jason Cutter — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do cheap leads mean higher conversion rates? Is it always about the lowest cost?

To close at a good rate, it’s just a numbers game. A low cost in leads may result in higher cost in the long run, which is important to consider as a buyer or lead provider.

Featured on the LeadsCon Industry podcast hosted by Warren Pickett, I talk about setting the right expectations from a buyers’ perspective, building relationships with sales reps so they can move forward with the same message in a sales conversation, and encountering mistakes that companies often make with unclosed leads.

Learn more about why not to set too high expectations and what it takes for campaigns to be successful as a lead provider.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

https://www.buzzsprout.com/989410/4781216-successful-lead-conversion-from-a-buyer-s-perspective

Connect with Warren on Linkedin

Show Link:

Listen on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/successful-lead-conversion-from-a-buyers-perspective/id1508203773?i=1000486658330

Listen on Google Podcast

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS85ODk0MTAucnNz/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC00NzgxMjE2?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimoqL7-aDsAhWWpp4KHUu3D9sQkfYCegQIARAF

[Replay] Sell With A Story, with Paul Smith

Jason Cutter — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

‘What do you recommend?’ ‘Which one should I buy?’ Those are the questions often asked by customers.

Having options makes it difficult for clients to make a decision. A salesperson’s duty is to lay out the best one or two options that fit their needs, providing valuable solutions to their problems.

Featured on Sell with A Story hosted by Paul Smith, I shared stories on mistakes I made in my early sales career, the concept of Paradox of Choice with providing too many options, and why you should sell for things you believe in.

Learn more about how giving too many options leads to trouble closing deals and what to avoid in the future.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

https://leadwithastory.com/swas046/

Connect with Paul on Linkedin

Listen to the full episode

Listen on Apple Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-regrets-selling-and-the-paradox-of-choice/id1200332527?i=1000493038728

Connect with Paul

https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/

[Replay] Health Coach Academy, with Omar Cumberbatch

Jason Cutter — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you have ‘sales’ in your title? How do people view salespeople?

Salespeople are often seen as tricky and manipulative, however, the strategy for sales success is being authentic and not shy away from being who you are in a sales conversation. Embrace yourself as the sales professional to help and provide value, but also ask yourself why you want to be successful in your role.

Featured on Omar Cumberbatch’s podcast Health Coach Academy, I talk about how people view salespeople, the umbrella in my concept of authentic persuasion, and why having the word ‘sales’ in titles are often avoided.

Learn more about how to envision yourself as a salesperson as it is your duty to help your clients identify and find solutions to their problems.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

https://healthcoachacademy.libsyn.com/secrets-to-massive-sales-success

Connect with Omar on Linkedin

Listen to the full episode

Connect with Omar Cumberbatch

https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-cumberbatch-a6199934/

Listen on Apple Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/secrets-to-massive-sales-success/id1294421391?i=1000486039295

[Replay] Screw The Naysayers, with Tim Alison

Jason Cutter — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Why do you want to be successful in sales? What is your purpose as a sales professional?

The approach to selling only to close deals and making profit is not an effective long-term strategy in sales. Figure out your prospect’s needs by asking questions and understanding at a deeper level.

Featured in Tim Alison’s podcast Screw the Naysayers, we discuss the management impact in a sales team, understanding behaviors of sales representatives, and the ways to motivate salespeople.

Learn more about the mindset of being a professional salesperson and asking yourself ‘why’ when finding the purpose in helping prospects resolve their needs.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Tim on Linkedin

Show Link: https://screwthenaysayers.podbean.com/e/278-jason-cutter/

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eps-279-to-sell-more-get-connected-with-your-why-jason-cutter/id1381225773?i=1000484037940

[Replay] People Catalysts, with Karla Nelson

Jason Cutter — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Why do buyers avoid changes? Why does it take them days or weeks to decide on a new product or service?

Fear exists as a result of changes. During the approach process, a salesperson should build rapport and find products or services that fit their buyer’s needs. The goal is to help buyers overcome the fear of making mistakes when trying new products and services.

Featured on the People Catalyst episode 140 hosted by Karla Nelson, we discuss the way our brain takes part in the avoidance of pain, the importance of creating a safe space for buyers, and how fear of change affects the sales process.

Learn more about how the brain fights for survival in affecting the prospects’ decision-making process, and how asking enough questions can build a credible relationship.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Karla on Linkedin

Show Link: https://thepeoplecatalysts.com/authentic-persuasion/

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/authentic-persuasion/id1228734872?i=1000488656456

[Replay] Future Proof Selling, with Steven Norman

Jason Cutter — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Why do you want to be successful? What is your intention when you approach your client?

Rejections in sales are difficult and there may be mistakes made in your past sales experience. Your process in being real to persuade should focus with the intention of helping others with listening and understanding their needs.

Featured in this episode of Future-Proof Selling hosted by Steven Norman, we discuss deeply about self-awareness, leadership, and being authentic when selling.

Learn about the ‘sell holes, not drills’ concept and how you can use the method of authentic persuasion when customers are looking to buy.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Steven on Linkedin

Show Link: https://futureproofselling.libsyn.com/authenticity-in-sales-with-jason-cutter

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/authenticity-in-sales-with-jason-cutter/id1442038938?i=1000488981186

[Replay] Everyday Is Saturday, with Sam Crowley

Jason Cutter — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Why do you want to be in sales? How many options do you give to prospects when selling?

Your goal as a salesperson should be finding solutions tailored to fit your prospect’s needs, instead of having a ‘sales’ title so you can sell and make a sale. Rather than using manipulation, persuading with empathy and trust fosters a connection that creates long term success.

Featured in this episode of Every Day is Saturday hosted by Sam Crowley, I discuss my windy path and the experiences that led me to becoming a coach and consultant in sales, using the method of authentic persuasion, and transforming from an order taker to a quota breaker.

Learn about the strategies to being authentic in using your skills and who you are when you persuade in a sales role, along with the doctor analogy to find solutions for consumer needs.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Sam on Linkedin

Show Link: http://everydayissaturday.com/authentic-persuasion-with-jason-cutter/

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/authentic-persuasion-with-jason-cutter/id258740374?i=1000472225947

Check out the links to the showShow less

[E300] Why Slumps Happen (+300th Episode!)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

It happens to everyone – the dreaded sales slump.

But why? And more importantly, what can you do about it?

I will cover my experiences about seeing countless reps fall into sales slumps, and the ones who have successfully pulled themselves out of it.

I also talk about this milestone episode, the fact that this is the last episode in Season 3, and what will happen with the show when it comes back online.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E299] Honest to Greatness, with Peter Kozodoy (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Despite the less glamorous aspects of running your own business, the liberating feeling of having that autonomy and being able to make our own decisions are definitely worth it. And that’s one of the defining factors of success. It is having the creative freedom to run our business with our own ideas, rather than being limited by someone else’s vision or rules.

You are now your own boss. And by definition gives you the right to your own successes and failures. Whether it is a victory or challenge, the ups and downs that you’ll experience in setting up, running, and growing your own business.

Despite all these, running your own business is the absolute best way to get the freedom and flexibility that many of us long for. The pull towards freedom is innate in all of us as human beings. It also automatically creates this sense of purpose as you continually push yourself and set ambitious goals.

To experience that freedom and success, you’ll need to set up your business the right way, from an ambitious vision and business model to the day of how you run your business.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn

Peter’s Bio

Peter Kozodoy is the award-winning author of Honest to Greatness, an Inc. 5000 serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and business coach who works with organizations and their leaders to help them overcome self-limiting bullsh*t and use honesty to achieve greatness.

His articles on leadership and entrepreneurship have appeared in Forbes, Inc., HuffPost, PR Daily, and more. He holds a BA in economics from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia Business School and lives outside New York City with his wife and their spoiled dog. To strike up an honest conversation, visit PeterKozodoy.com.

Links

Website: https://peterkozodoy.com/go

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkozodoy/

[E298] Honest to Greatness, with Peter Kozodoy (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

It’s surprising how our self-limiting beliefs, the lies and assumptions we tell ourselves can prevent us from achieving the goals we’ve laid out by ourselves. Only by keeping an open mind, communicating with others, and understanding their standpoint, will allow us to have an open conversation without ego barriers.

It takes time and a great deal of understanding. But it could also liberate us from the misalignments we have in our lives. We get to know more of ourselves in the process and be in touch with our values. When you are out of alignment with what you really believe and want in life, it would be difficult for you to bring authenticity to the table.

By being real and authentic, you’d easily be able to genuinely relate with others. It may be in your personal life or in your business. Relationships are built that are developed by trust, open communication, and authenticity.

Life is too short to do something you don’t like doing. So get yourself into that alignment by being real and honest to yourself.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn

Peter’s Bio

Website: https://peterkozodoy.com/go

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkozodoy/

[E297] Honest to Greatness, with Peter Kozodoy (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

People believe that being fully honest somehow directs us to lose in some aspects of our lives, especially in business. The truth is, not being fully honest only blocks your real energy, your true power and influence. Real honesty lets energy flow into one’s work.

Honesty should not only be displayed in workplace or businesses. It is more than how we sell & how we market. It speaks more about our leadership, building teams together, creating cultures, and what we put in the society as human beings. It is about how we communicate with each other to build trust and relate with people.

As we progress in life, we often seek to know our own truths and what we are truly made of. The best approach to discovery is to weed out the unnecessary baggage you have in life. Change your language. Learn to actively listen from others, even if it’s a painful truth about you. Let go of the ego that is keeping you from expanding and only bringing truth to the table.

Whenever you move from just telling the truth to both telling and really meaning what you say, life immediately responds to that change. By moving toward true honesty, one can create the life responses and breakthroughs to success that one is seeking, even in your own businesses.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn

Peter’s Bio

Website: https://peterkozodoy.com/go

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkozodoy/

[E296] Honest to Greatness, with Peter Kozodoy (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 05:31:04 +0000

In the hustle and bustle of the business scenario today, speed is essential to making decisions and it has become so easy to forget the most important trait, being honest. When you think about traditional marketing practices, honestly probably isn’t the first thing to mind.

As it has been apparent that most businesses only focus on persuasion more than the absolute truth, we are now beginning to see a shift towards honesty in businesses, specifically in relation to Sales & Marketing. Top performing salespeople know that there is nothing more powerful than being honest, strategically. Any product is naturally imperfect like anything else. It has its own strengths and weaknesses. Rather than mystify the flaws of your products or services, you should embrace them and speak about them openly, honestly, and most importantly work to make them better.

In this episode, Peter Kozodoy, author of the book Honest to Greatness, talks about how strategic honesty can be leveraged to achieve great success. He talks about acknowledging weakness while maintaining a positive positioning is very endearing to customers. Instead of turning customers away, this honest communication inculcates a sense of confidence to the viewers and customers that a business understands their shortcomings and will change accordingly.

In the world of sales, true honesty is rare. But acknowledging your shortcomings will only make customers trust the legitimacy of your strengths and that’s why you can use it to your advantage. It will surely open doors to more prospects wanting to do business with you.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn

Peter’s Bio

Website: https://peterkozodoy.com/go

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkozodoy/

[E295] How Are Your Transitions?

Jason Cutter — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you have solid transitions for moving through your sales conversation?

The transition is the bit that allows for a fluid movement from one portion of your sales process to the next.

Top performing salespeople are pros at the transition.

As you guessed it, struggling salespeople don’t usually have good transitions ready.

In this episode, I will cover why that happens, and how to build transitions that will help you close more deals.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E294] Solving The CRM Problem, with Jeroen Corthout (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Did you know your mindset has a lot to do with your success in sales? For many years, the sales community have operated with the belief that success on sales is dependent solely on innate abilities like communication skills and outgoing personality. The assumption has been, if you didn’t have “it”, you couldn’t be taught it.

To become a top performing sales person, talent is not enough. In a community where the market is very competitive and crowded with sellers, you must continually improve your knowledge and skills. In simple words – you must sell beyond your natural ability.

There are two common mindsets of salespeople. First is the fixed mindset, believing that you can do little to change your abilities. And the growth mindset, believing that through effort you can improve your abilities. No matter how good you are at sales, you can always improve. And those who have a growth mindset are far more likely to be successful than those who don’t.

If you have a fixed mindset, it is something that you should address because it hinders your ability to achieve the level of success you desire. Your mindset is your mindset and you have the choice to change it. With the empowering belief that your sales skills can be continually strengthened, you will inspire yourself to achieve high levels of sales performance.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jeroen on LinkedIn

Jeroen’s Bio

Jeroen is co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B, mostly popular with agencies and fast-growing startup companies.

Salesflare itself was founded when Jeroen and his co-founder Lieven wanted to follow up on the leads for their software company in an easier way. They didn’t like to keep track of their leads manually and built Salesflare, which pulls customer data together automatically and then actively helps you to follow up.

It’s now the most popular CRM on Product Hunt and top-rated on review platforms like G2 for its ease of use and automation features.

Links

Website: https://salesflare.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/

[E293] Solving The CRM Problem, with Jeroen Corthout (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Like so many words associated with sales, there is so much to talk about the importance of authenticity & persuasion. And in today’s selling environment, authenticity is the most important virtue sales people can demonstrate, even if it means pointing them to a competitor that can give them exactly what they need.

Contrary to what people believe, persuasion is all about getting emotional engagement with other people. It’s not a shady tactic that involves convincing and forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. It is about trying to understand the other person better than our own interests.

A mindset shift is often required for those who want to increase their persuasive abilities. Genuinely believe what other people have to say, and what’s in their mind is genuinely as valuable as what is in your own mind. A persuasive sales conversation is at its root, about the exchange of value.

Listen more, understand people’s words more, and focus on the value you bring to your clients. Learning and understanding how to do this shifts the seller into a position to persuade with empathy.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jeroen on LinkedIn

Jeroen’s Bio

Jeroen is co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B, mostly popular with agencies and fast-growing startup companies.

It’s now the most popular CRM on Product Hunt and top-rated on review platforms like G2 for its ease of use and automation features.

Links

Website: https://salesflare.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/

[E292] Solving The CRM Problem, with Jeroen Corthout (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 06:03:08 +0000

Do you take a short-term or a long-term sales strategy to your business? One thing is for sure and couldn’t be stressed enough, try and avoid damaging your long-term sales strategy to make short-term pay off.

If you have a small or medium sized business, then it is likely you are focused on sales, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is natural to be driven by ROI. But one of the biggest mistakes that people make is rushing straight to the sales pitch. And on the best ways to sell while not being pushy is to take your time.

If you come off like you’re desperate for the sale, it will turn your prospect off. The main priority is to get your customer comfortable. This is why it’s crucial to also keep an eye on the future. Build your brand with a long-term perspective and your customers will respond accordingly. But if you only focus on sales, you may meet your sales goal, but your customers have no dedication to your brand. Hence, your customer retention is considerably very low.

It is so important to develop your own sales process. A sales process helps you organize your sales interactions by giving you steps to follow before you actually close the deal.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jeroen on LinkedIn

Jeroen’s Bio

Jeroen is co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B, mostly popular with agencies and fast-growing startup companies.

It’s now the most popular CRM on Product Hunt and top-rated on review platforms like G2 for its ease of use and automation features.

Links

Website: https://salesflare.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/

[E291] Solving The CRM Problem, with Jeroen Corthout (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

In sales, knowing the right people to reach out and connect with at the right time is very crucial. With the tools that salespeople are using today, many businesses have adopted to using CRM system because the sales data can be stored centrally with easy to follow format to monitor sales processes and optimize selling.

CRM is really a great tool that seems to be underestimated. For most sales people, the time spent on entering data into the CRM system or application keeps them from their main task which is to sell. CRM is not being used to its full potential because sales people are focusing on new contacts who they believe will lead to more closed deals. But is that what really is there for CRM?

In this episode, Jeroen Corthout, CEO and co-founder of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM that startups and small businesses love to use, shares how Salesflare fills out itself so its users don’t have to manually input data. This is a kind of CRM that will allow you to never miss a follow-up again. It helps you keep track of all your interaction with people you are in contact with and automatically converts into clear to do lists from the data it gathers on customer activities and interactions towards you. This interface shows you all the opportunities and the stages they’re in.

Learn how Salesflare can be a game-changer for your business, especially in your sales section. It definitely saves time and energy.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jeroen on LinkedIn

Jeroen’s Bio

Jeroen is co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B, mostly popular with agencies and fast-growing startup companies.

Salesflare itself was founded when Jeroen and his co-founder Lieven wanted to follow up on the leads for their software company in an easier way. They didn’t like to keep track of their leads manually and built Salesflare, which pulls customer data together automatically and then actively helps you to follow up.

It’s now the most popular CRM on Product Hunt and top-rated on review platforms like G2 for its ease of use and automation features.

Links

Website: https://salesflare.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/

[E290] Getting Ghosted

Jason Cutter — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are your prospects disappearing on you like a ghost in the night?

It is one of the biggest issues my coaching and consulting clients are facing. It has always been a part of sales, but now it feels like it occurring at an even higher percentage.

In this episode, I share the main reasons WHY it happens, then I will dive into a few tips for getting people back on board the communication train.

Of course, prevention is always the best medicine – so check out this episode to learn some ways you can keep it from happening in the first place.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E289] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

In digital marketing, businesses are truly struggling with this question – should we be who our audiences want us to be? Or should we be who we truly are and find the right audiences for us?

Authenticity is not only being sincere and honest. It’s about being reliable, dependable, and true to what you say you will do coupled with your intentional actions. And it starts with self-awareness which takes reflection.

Let’s face it, every company, is in the business of making money. You can stay authentic by selling a service that you genuinely believe in and that you feel generally works, and genuinely helps people. If you have this set of compelling mission for your organization, you will the fuel for an authentic presence in marketing. If your sales & marketing reflects that mission you are authentic.

You’re also authentic if you listen to your audiences, if you seek their opinions and are accepting and willing to improve for the better. As long as it doesn’t stand against who you truly are as an organization, you can do this and be authentic.

If you want to connect with Sam and get to know more of him & his team and learn about their services, you can head over to his website and social media platforms: LinkedIn | Website | Podcast | YouTube

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn

Sam’s Bio

Sam is a digital marketing, sales and business growth evangelist.

He helps businesses that are tired of constantly hunting for new customers to gain a consistent flow of INBOUND leads & sales.

He typically does this via SEO – Positioning your business at the top of Google infront of companies needing your product or service. And just as importantly, ensures your website is effective at converting your hard earned visitors into a regular stream of new customers.

He is also host of Sam’s Business Growth Show – A regular top 100 Apple Podcast where he interviews global business leaders to learn their story and actionable digital marketing and business growth tips to skyrocket your sales.

Links–

Web Choice: https://www.webdesignchoice.co.uk/

Sam’s Business Growth Show: https://www.samsbusinessgrowthshow.com/

Sam Dunning LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/

Learn more about SamShow less

[E288] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Digital Marketing can transform your business providing you’re doing it right. Despite the benefits it offers, a lot of businesses fail to capitalize on what digital marketing can do for them.

You have to identify the ways that you are probably doing wrong. The most important thing to consider is your customer. Customers should be a priority. Whatever tool, resource, strategy, and method you have, they should talk about your customers’ problems and how your service or product can resolve these problems.

Understanding the needs of your customer is the cornerstone of any successful business, so it’s not something you can afford to overlook.

Tailor your content and service to the advantage of your prospects and target demographic then you’ll find it easier to convert. As a result, your conversion rate will increase and your business will become much more profitable.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn

Sam’s Bio

Sam is a digital marketing, sales and business growth evangelist.

He helps businesses that are tired of constantly hunting for new customers to gain a consistent flow of INBOUND leads & sales.

Web Choice: https://www.webdesignchoice.co.uk/

Sam’s Business Growth Show: https://www.samsbusinessgrowthshow.com/

Sam Dunning LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/

Learn more about SamShow less

[E287] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

There’s no such thing as born salesperson. A great salesperson makes it look easy but it has taken them time to hone their skills and they are constantly seeking out to learn to better help their prospects.

The top sale performers are the ones always seeking to learn and grow. They always want new information. They also recognize that sales is a process. They understand that every business has its own playbook for a reason. It doesn’t matter what process you follow. The most important thing is you’re not just winging it. You’ve got something that you can follow that’s consistent and repeatable.

Along these lines, for sales people who aspire for more and know they’re struggling, you can learn a lot about excelling in sales by listening to the best teammates alongside you. Shadow them. Take some time each day to listen to how your best teammates conduct successful sales calls.

You can pick up phrases, opening, and closing strategies, techniques on building rapport and apply them so that you can personalize your own calls.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn

Sam’s Bio

Sam is a digital marketing, sales and business growth evangelist.

He helps businesses that are tired of constantly hunting for new customers to gain a consistent flow of INBOUND leads & sales.

Web Choice: https://www.webdesignchoice.co.uk/

Sam’s Business Growth Show: https://www.samsbusinessgrowthshow.com/

Sam Dunning LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/

Learn more about SamShow less

[E286] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Join me as I engage in a dynamic conversation with special guest Sam Dunning, Sales Director and Co-owner of Web Choice, a digital marketing agency.

In this episode, Sam and I explore the challenges and successes in the digital marketing realm, shedding light on valuable insights for businesses aiming to enhance their lead generation, sales, and brand positioning.

Don't miss this engaging conversation as they share success stories, and provide valuable insights for sales professionals looking to navigate the evolving landscape with authenticity and strategic prowess.

Tune in for a dose of inspiration and practical tips and scale your sales and marketing game.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn

Sam’s Bio

Sam is a digital marketing, sales and business growth evangelist.

He helps businesses that are tired of constantly hunting for new customers to gain a consistent flow of INBOUND leads & sales.

Web Choice: https://www.webdesignchoice.co.uk/

Sam’s Business Growth Show: https://www.samsbusinessgrowthshow.com/

Sam Dunning LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samdunning/

Learn more about Sam

[E285] Where was your sales career 19 years ago?

Jason Cutter — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Sometimes in your career and in life you need to take time to reflect.

There are milestone days that trigger emotional memories.

Today is one of those globally historic days. But this is not a ‘here is my 9/11 story’ episode.

But it is a call to action – for you to look at where you were 19 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago.

How far have you come in your sales career? Were you even in sales before this year?

And…having looked back…now look forward – where do you want to be in a year, 5, 10, or 19 more years?

Check out today’s episode that is less about sales tips and more about motivation and direction.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E284] Leading As A CRO, with Christine Bottagaro (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

How much information should you put on your web form? Do you want to put a little bit of information so you can get a lot of leads unfiltered, or you want a lot of information so that it is very narrow, with very few responses but higher intent?

The strategy behind that is understanding the value that you’re providing with the asset that you’re giving access to, and then gate accordingly. The more form fields you have, the fewer the responses.

It is quality more than quantity. It all goes back to what you want to achieve. It also comes down to how well you know the people that you want to be talking to and the group that you’re solving problems for.

Over time you will realize the kind of group that you’re actually targeting. Then you can trim out everything else and go specific over time, because you now know what you want to do.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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Connect with Christine on LinkedIn

Christine’s Bio

A challenge-seeker, Christine loves tech, focusing on building storylines, high-performing teams, and pipeline through Sales and Marketing functions. Happiest when collaborating, innovating, and delivering, Christine marries strategy with execution. Christine’s leadership roles at Sybase, SAP, Rally, Rogue Wave, and Kapost give her deep experience in tech go-to-markets, customer connections, and acquisitions.

Links:

Linkedin – www.linkedin.com/in/christinebottagaro
Website – https://resurface.io

[E283] Leading As A CRO, with Christine Bottagaro (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

You can’t just dust off an old compensation plan. To boost productivity, you have to speed up on modern trends and align your comp plan to what you want your salespeople to achieve.

Start with what you want to achieve. And make sure your comp plan recognizes that. You want to make sure that you’re rewarding the behavior that the organization wants. It can get complex if you have cross product. And that’s where you want to make sure if it’s a team effort that the team is rewarded when the team succeeds.

Be intentional and proactive. Here’s the comp plan – here’s how you will win – here’s what we want you to focus on. It’s not hand holding. But it’s partnering. It’s collaboration.

It is about putting value on their performance and concrete contribution.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Christine on LinkedIn

Christine’s Bio

Links:

Linkedin – www.linkedin.com/in/christinebottagaro
Website – https://resurface.io

[E282] Leading As A CRO, with Christine Bottagaro (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

The more consistent your messaging, the more consistent your branding. If we look at how we present ourselves to our existing customers, buyers, and prospects, are we consistent with our branding? How do you ensure a consistent brand presence in all your on and offline brand communications?

The most critical piece in any business is building that buyer confidence and it is the key to buyer enablement. Whether via words, design, offerings, perspective, solutions, on and offline, your brand should build awareness and develop trust and loyalty with your existing customers and prospects.

Don’t leave your brand open to a variety of interpretations. That’s why it is important to develop standards for brand consistency, on and offline. Be authentic around the problems that you solve and the value that you bring. Every interaction customers have with your brand should embody the brand promises and its core values. And it is important to understand that but still deal with everybody differently.

It’s not always one size fits all. Keep the core of authenticity but still understand your audience.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Christine on LinkedIn

Christine’s Bio

Links:

Linkedin – www.linkedin.com/in/christinebottagaro
Website – https://resurface.io

[E281] Leading As A CRO, with Christine Bottagaro (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

When we think about a collaboration mindset, we probably think about teams. If teams are not on the same page – the time, money, and effort spent will all be wasted. Seriously, who can afford that? Collaborating may not be a natural thing for some individuals. But how can we restructure our approach and see success from it?

Collaboration is more than just seeing things eye to eye. Collaboration is working together. In the revenue operations pipeline, it is about bridging the gap and abolishing the divide between sales, marketing, customer service retention, revenue operations, and all other functions under the umbrella. It means working on the same goals and overlapping of responsibilities. It means working for each other, not to get ahead of the other.

In this podcast, Christine Bottagaro shares her experience on how a collaborative environment has driven her, her team, and their business to succeed. She also shares how understanding the business inside out has made her look at every function holistically which is critical in collaboration.

Once you listen, understand, and walk through those other disciplines, you will have empathy for what the challenges others face. You can navigate a pathway to better understand and know how to piece things together to drive teamwork and collaboration. Teamwork does not come naturally to everyone. But rethinking your approach and learning what it takes to develop a collaborative team are the keys to building effective teams.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Christine on LinkedIn

Christine’s Bio

Links:

Linkedin – www.linkedin.com/in/christinebottagaro
Website – https://resurface.io

[E280] Special Episode of TSEP

Jason Cutter — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

It’s your DUTY to tell your prospects what to do.

In this special episode, I start off by sharing an important Authentic Persuader sales tip about what it means to be a professional.

Then, in the second half of the show, I share the ideas I have for the direction for the show, and ask for your feedback/ideas/suggestions.

[Note – if this is your first time listening to the show, make sure to check other ‘normal’ episodes!]

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E279] Helping Agencies Sell More, with Dan Englander (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Remember to follow up and send a Thank You note. Rejection is a common part of sales, but what do you do when you are declined for a position and feel that you are the right fit for the role?

A company may reject you, but this is up to you to reach out and fight for what you think is right for you. The highlight in this situation is to not give up even if you are told that you are not suitable for a role.

In this last part of the episode with Dan, we talk about how putting in the effort to get better is crucial as a salesperson regarding whether or not you have the skill set coming into the company as a new hire.

Learn about how sales are like mountain climbing, mapping out the way to reach your destination, and not giving up. The unexpected part of sales is that often there is no practice like a Superbowl game.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Dan’s Bio:

Dan Englander is the CEO and Founder of Sales Schema, a fractional new business team for marketing agencies, and he hosts The Digital Agency Growth Podcast. Previously, Dan was the first employee Head of New Business at IdeaRocket, and before that, Account Coordinator at DXagency. He’s the author of Mastering Account Management and The B2B Sales Blueprint. In his spare time, he enjoys developing new aches and pains via Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Links:

[E278] Helping Agencies Sell More, with Dan Englander (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Sales are like going to the gym. What happens when you go to the gym continuously and then stop for a week or two?

This example comes down to a similar approach to a sales and marketing team. When you don’t deliver consistent performance, you can’t expect a long sales cycle.

Part 3 of this episode includes topics on how hiring salespeople do not necessarily mean experience, the key is being open to learning while training the right people with the right intentions for your company.

Learn about the factors that go behind becoming a better salesperson and bringing together a diverse team from different background industries.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Dan’s Bio:

Links:

[E277] Helping Agencies Sell More, with Dan Englander (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you good at outbound calls but lack the skills to present a demo? How can you find the right person that can perform cold colds, inbound sales, and demo presentations all at once?

The answer is you can’t. That will be very unlikely to find someone who can do it all. The important factor is having the right team of salespeople who can execute strategies to get tasks done even if the system of a company is not ideal.

In part 2 of this episode with Dan, we share some important sales-related issues with hiring different salespeople that can perform different skills, following the vision and mission of a company and starting with the right people at the base level.

Learn about the German phrase “Fingerspitzengefühl” on how that can apply to the concept of sales, and how B2B differs from B2C when it comes to collecting data.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Dan’s Bio:

Links:

[E276] Helping Agencies Sell More, with Dan Englander (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Having one salesperson to do it all? Don’t expect just one salesperson to complete all the elements in a sales team.

Hiring for the right fit in your sales team is a process to match your company’s mission and values. Creating an effective team culture requires an entrepreneurial mindset for salespeople when selling. To improve your sales performance, leveraging data can provide psychological cues to enhance your sales operation.

In this episode, Dan and I discuss topics such as marketing in sales, managing the salespeople, and training new hires.

Learn why salespeople need to think creatively and strategically, but also being able to reach an engagement level with clients.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Dan’s Bio:

Links:

[E275] Being an Authentic Persuader

Jason Cutter — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

I have a new book coming out – it is the culmination of what I have learned from my long career of being in the sales seat and leading teams. It is the playbook that I developed for myself and others in similar situations – salespeople, who might not have seen themselves being in a sales career, fell into sales, and now want to succeed. Maybe you are struggling to find success, or you had it – and hit a plateau. When you sell with authentic persuasion then it totally changes the game.

In this special episode, I share the background of what it feels like when you are an Authentic Persuader.

Many times people wonder or worry that sales success requires manipulation, tricks, and tactics. As someone who grew up avoiding sales roles (and dealing with the public in general), I know what it is like to be successful by using persuasion and being authentic.

Make sure to order your copy of Selling With Authentic Persuasion: Transform from Order Taker to Quota Breaker: https://www.authenticpersuasion.com/pre-order-selling-with-authentic-persuasion/

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E274] Tales of a new CRO, with Darryl Praill (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you hold your team accountable based on company values? The behavior of your sales team is determined by your company’s mission and values.

Aligning with teams in different apartments creates a seamless and effective approach to your business. This is where understanding the vision and goals to improve productivity is by contributing their strengths to tie results together.

Technology plays an important role in today’s businesses. Taking the ability to analyze and track data can direct your business to additional strategies, but also help to further your process on current and future trends on how a salesperson is performing.

Learn about what it takes to ensure that your company has a clear set of values for your team to make the right decisions, achieve company goals, and define your brand character.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn

Darryl’s Bio:

Darryl Praill is the Chief Revenue Officer at VanillaSoft, the industry’s most established Sales Engagement Platform. As an accomplished award-winning marketer, a Sales World Top 50 Keynote speaker, a 2020 top 10 SaaS Branding Expert, a Top 19 B2B Marketer to Watch in 2019, a social media influencer, a category-leading podcaster, and a serial entrepreneur. Darryl has raised almost $100 million in venture capital, acquired, merged and taken companies public, been hired and fired, and worked for companies of all sizes

Links:

• VanillaSoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanillasoft/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanillasoft/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanillasoft/

• Darryl Praill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylpraill/

[E273] Tales of a new CRO, with Darryl Praill (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Your sales team represents the structure of your company. Should they deliver more productivity to get more leads so that they can increase profit?

There needs to be structure within an organization to guide salespeople on targeting their leads. Narrowing down to target prospects creates effective results that add value to their company.

Top salespeople may show leading performance, however, that does not necessarily mean they fit the team culture. With one person not being a team player or creating negative tension, this results in affecting the performance of the rest of the team.

Having the mentality of being all in one team and supporting one another is part of the key to success. That is where training plays an important role for salespeople who need to improve their performance and grow their knowledge of selling. This combination of behaviors and actions in a sales team indicates back to the management team.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn

Links:

• VanillaSoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanillasoft/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanillasoft/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanillasoft/

• Darryl Praill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylpraill/

[E272] Tales of a new CRO, with Darryl Praill (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Taking action to scale is essential to increase potential growth within your company. Are you considering all the factors that come before the process of scaling?

The sales team takes part in the company structure in which they contribute value to when speaking to prospects. A Salesperson should know the products or services that they are selling and who they are representing in their roles. That is the key skill to becoming a successful salesperson, by understanding and knowing the resources available for them to utilize.

In this part 2 episode, Darryl shares his vision on what it takes to build a structural team, train sales team on where the scale hits, and how the numbers do not define reaching to targets.

Learn how the process of sales contributes to being part of the success and growth of a business, but also its activities that impacts the marketing team as well.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn

Links:

• VanillaSoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanillasoft/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanillasoft/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanillasoft/

• Darryl Praill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylpraill/

[E271] Tales of a new CRO, with Darryl Praill (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Is your marketing team held accountable for the number of sales? Moreover, is your sales team targeting all the possible leads to close a sale?

When given a list of leads, salespeople tend to select prospects that they find will close sales. It is crucial to take account of all leads to ensure that you are driving maximum revenue. Tracking how much revenue is driven can lead back to the sales team to discover space for improvements.

In this episode, Darryl the Chief Revenue Officer and I discuss the importance of company structure, driving leads, and having the right salespeople on the team.

Learn how to use the strategies and techniques as a salesperson to gain revenue. Hear about the encounters within a sales team and the ways to hold them responsible for reaching their leads.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn

Links:

• VanillaSoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanillasoft/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanillasoft/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanillasoft/

• Darryl Praill

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrylpraill/

[E270] From Vacuums to IT sales, with Grandpa Stork (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

What matters most during the sales process? How can you go beyond approaching and presenting to create long term relationships with your clients?

Salespeople have to keep a professional image as they approach their clients, however, that is not what maintains their strategy to close sales. Reaching to prospects during the sales process is not just demonstrating products or services to them. It requires understanding and being attentive to your clients.

In this episode, Grandpa Stork shares the importance of developing relationships, forming connections, and listening to clients during the sales process.

Learn how to build relationships as a salesperson by having a transparent and authentic connection with clients, conquering your fear of failing, and finding ways to go beyond having valuable conversations.

Donate for Grandpa Stork’s cause: paypal.com/paypalme/grandpastork

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Grandpa on LinkedIn

Anthony a.k.a. Grandpa Stork’s bio:

‘I’m a Grandpa!”

Motto: Dream Big – Play Hard – Give Back – Have Fun

Anthony Hall aka Grandpa STORK, is a dragon flying, superhero – in training; an IT veteran (hardware/software dev) with over 27 yrs experience in business development and sales.

The current side-hustle is as a Training Coordinator for the Holistic Information Security Practitioner Institute (HISPI), a nonprofit Cybersecurity Training and Certification organization.

After witnessing the birth of his first grandchild, Anthony founded The Rose of Education Organization (TREO), Inc, a Space Tourism industry startup developing operations in Education, Entertainment, and Exploration.

So that his grandchildren and their grandchildren, the children of Africa, and around the World in marginalized communities, might aspire to become Captains of Industry, not just a ‘captive audience’ on humanity’s grand voyage among the stars.

Have You METT TREO?

Mentors, Educators, Teachers, and Technologists.

The Rose of Education Organization.

“Where Education is Child’s Play and Technology is a Game.”

50 year Mission: EDEN3 Mars Colony

Star Date: 24.11.2060 (inauguration)

What kind of games and sports will humanity play in Space?

TREO’s business plan is to become the answer to the above question.

Imagining what it would be like to stand on the back of a dragon while it’s flying, Grandpa STORK created the Dragon’s Fire Flying EGG (Exercise Game Gear) – the Art of Fitness, to turn humanity’s fantasy of human-powered flight into a Virtual Reality, exercise, and game.

The Dragon’s EGG is a component of the Dragon’s Fire Flying Suite of Live-Action (LA), AR & VR Games: Basketball • Quidditch • Squash • Sentinels and the Dragon’s Fire. The 4th Dimension of health, wellness, and fitness.

Grandpa STORK took his ‘dragon flying game on the road, Feb 2014, to test and develop a prototype, 78 months and 17 countries later, Grandpa is still flying high, bringing the House of Flying Dragons Pop-Up Circus and School for the Gifted to the World.

Success Stories:

Putting Spies on Ice

From Ashes to Aalborg

Quest for the Dragon’s EGG

From Easter Hill to Silicon Valley

The Sentinels and the Dragon’s Fire

Social Media links:

Website: www.hispi.org / www.thecyberist.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/iamonlyclay

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups/3477989 / https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonymhall/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theroseofeducation

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/antman488

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonymhall/

M: +255 768821432 (Tanzania)

E: grandpastorks.hofd@gmail.com

WhatsApp: +254758564347

Skype: therose.ofeducation

Learn more about GrandpaShow less

[E269] From Vacuums to IT sales, with Grandpa Stork (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you value relationship selling? What are the things that matter most in the sales world?

Successful salespeople focus on their interaction with their clients, rather than the pricing or the details of what they are selling. All these are critical, but the status of your relationship with your clients can keep their loyalty, and in effect, increase your sales in the long-term process.

In this episode, Grandpa Stork and I talked about the inherent gifts and talents that each of us has. These two things coupled with a good character will bring great significance to the people you deal with. We also talked about maintaining good connections and how he has been able to do so.

Learn about: Discovering and Pursuing gifts, and talents, Relationship Selling, What matters most, and the Worth of a Good Character.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Grandpa on LinkedIn

Anthony a.k.a. Grandpa Stork’s bio:

‘I’m a Grandpa!”

Motto: Dream Big – Play Hard – Give Back – Have Fun

Anthony Hall aka Grandpa STORK, is a dragon flying, superhero – in training; an IT veteran (hardware/software dev) with over 27 yrs experience in business development and sales.

The current side-hustle is as a Training Coordinator for the Holistic Information Security Practitioner Institute (HISPI), a nonprofit Cybersecurity Training and Certification organization.

Have You METT TREO?

Mentors, Educators, Teachers, and Technologists.

The Rose of Education Organization.

“Where Education is Child’s Play and Technology is a Game.”

50 year Mission: EDEN3 Mars Colony

Star Date: 24.11.2060 (inauguration)

What kind of games and sports will humanity play in Space?

TREO’s business plan is to become the answer to the above question.

Success Stories:

Putting Spies on Ice

From Ashes to Aalborg

Quest for the Dragon’s EGG

From Easter Hill to Silicon Valley

The Sentinels and the Dragon’s Fire

Social Media links:

Website: www.hispi.org / www.thecyberist.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/iamonlyclay

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups/3477989 / https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonymhall/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theroseofeducation

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/antman488

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonymhall/

M: +255 768821432 (Tanzania)

E: grandpastorks.hofd@gmail.com

WhatsApp: +254758564347

Skype: therose.ofeducation

Learn more about GrandpaShow less

[E268] Sales Rebellion, with Dale Dupree (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Buyers inherently have always been in that place of wanting more, no matter what. But they’ve been cultured by the sales profession to be where they’re at. They hear what it is that they’re telling salespeople to do. But again, inherently, they want something bigger, they want something better, they want something more altruistic.

And prospects know how to spot authenticity. And they dislike incongruent communication. They can sense when a salesperson says one thing but means something. And they’ll feel put off by your company and your product. It’s a cycle of behavior in every purchase they make for a certain service or product.

And any salesperson can interrupt that pattern. But be careful not to try to strategically pattern interrupt where that becomes the new inauthentic sales mode. You’ve got to find what works best for you. And there’s no right or wrong as long as it’s coming with a certain intention. It’s a fine line at the end of the day, and it’s an important one to recognize and to make sure that you’re on for the right reasons.

We often hear people say to separate work from life because there needs to be a balance. Well, guess what, the best balance is to love what you do. Be the game-changer. Bring hope back to sales, build legacies, and put people before products and services. Create that legacy and start treating your territory like a community.

Rise up against the status quo of the sales world… Join The Sales Rebellion! Visit Dale Dupree’s website and see him lead the game

You can also hit him up at his email Dale@TheSalesRebellion.com

And social media accounts

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Dale on LinkedIn

Dale’s Bio:

Dale Dupree was once known as The Copier Warrior and is the appointed Leader and Founder of The Sales Rebellion. He is born and raised in Orlando, FL. Has a sales background that dates back to his childhood as he was raised wandering the halls of his father’s business but has been a full-time sales professional for 13+ years. Founded on March 1st of 2019, Dale now provides sales training and development through his firm, The Sales Rebellion, that challenges the status quo. He is audacious with his outreach, intentional in his sales walk and driven to create a community of sales professionals that cause undeniable curiosity and true impact in their walk with prospects and clients alike by teaching the masses how to choose legendary in their sales career. The Rebellion believes in people over products, community over commission checks, fellowship over negotiations, and experiences over performing a pitch.

Learn more about DaleShow less

[E267] Sales Rebellion, with Dale Dupree (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Sales is about you playing your game for your reasons. It’s about helping individuals get to a better place with your product or service. And it is the toughest thing to get through for people who have either raised themselves in a certain way or been raised in sales in a certain way by managers or trainers that only involves closing the deals no matter what it takes.

Caring for your customers is a term not often heard in the sales process. For most businesses, sales is just a means to an end. Honestly caring about the people who buy what you have to sell is the key to success in sales. Sometimes, to an extent that enables people to buy from somebody else because it is not just a good fit. At the end of the day, caring about their needs first might just lead you to tell a potential customer that your product may not be the best for them or that a competitor’s product might be.

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care. Before trying to persuade your prospects to buy your product or service, they need to first know that you truly care about solving their problems. It’s more about being genuine and authentic at every step of the relationship you have built with them.

Being on the journey with your buyer, and not in front or behind your buyer, is what makes a difference. When you can start thinking from that perspective, you change the game. And when the game has been changed, it never goes back to anything normal.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

https://www.thesalesrebellion.com/

Connect with Dale on LinkedIn

Dale’s Bio:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/copierwarrior/

Learn more about DaleShow less

[E266] Sales Rebellion, with Dale Dupree (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

It is common knowledge in the sales world right now that the only thing to win in sales is you should use manipulation, tricks, and hard sale techniques and strategies. But should you really? The art of psychological sales techniques can lead you down the road of deception. There are already too many salespeople willing to tell you what they think you want to hear to make the sale. Don’t turn into one of them.

The number one thing you should focus on becoming a better salesperson is AUTHENTICITY. Prospects can instinctively notice when a salesperson says one thing but means something else. It’s more than just fulfillment that you are getting from selling a product. It is the fulfillment of being who you truly are and want to be, to begin with. Don’t contort yourself to make a sale. Instead, tap into your true strengths, be vulnerable to communicate in the most effective way with the prospect in front of you.

In this episode, Dale Dupree founder of The Sales Rebellion inspires you to rise up against the status quo of the sales world and help people sell in a different way by being their authentic selves and rebel against those who told them to conform or controlled their sales walk.

Learn how to change your sales game and embrace your authentic self as we dig deep about sales and your calling. Hear more about the sales battles that most people are fighting and learn to change the game in the ever-so-boring sales bullpen.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

https://www.thesalesrebellion.com/

Connect with Dale on LinkedIn

Dale’s Bio:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/copierwarrior/

Learn more about DaleShow less

[E265] Clarity, Confidence, and Authority, with Jane Clare (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

There’s a balance of persuading people and moving people in the right way when it’s the right fit.

There’s some persuasion when you’re helping them get past a fear to make a decision, get over their own worries about change especially in this unprecedented times due to the COVID-19 Crisis.

Everyone’s kind of in a reset mode and a little bit more back into survival mode just looking for what’s true out there and what’s real. And also being smarter with their money, with their time, with their attention to what’s true & authentic.

A lot of people now are shifting their businesses online. But it takes some skills. People have to understand that the business principles stay the same, but the routes and tools used are very specific when online. It’s always a process. It takes time. It’s about your intentions and the goals you want to work at constantly.

Take responsibility on what you really need to do. This is the time to learn, practice and master on how you can grow your online business organically.

If you’re a coach or a consultant and you’re looking to build your business online, check out Jane Clare’s website at Jane Clare Coaching

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jane on LinkedIn

Jane’s Bio:

Business Strategy Coaching for Start-Up to Scale-Up’s.

For Consultants, Coaches, and Creatives….who need to:

A. Gain Confidence In Your Perfect Niche And Ideal Client?

B. Have A Clear Marketing Message That Hits Home?

C. You want to Stop Losing Money, As Selling Isn’t Your Thing?

Jane Clare is a “Business In Life Coach”, her own term for her very unique blend of combining results-driven business coaching, whilst empowering all life skill areas.

Her Links:

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/janeclarecoaching

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/janeclarecoaching/

Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8C%9F-jane-clare-313051149/

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbVLP5v8nWhWMRDVWsGUV8w

Learn more about JaneShow less

[E264] Clarity, Confidence, and Authority, with Jane Clare (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

You could use any approach to make some level of sales happen. But is it sustainable? And is it the proper way to do it for yourself or those customers of your company brands?

Sales is more than just hard sales pitch, monthly targets and quotas, financial goals and bonuses. It is creating real engagement and real conversations. It’s taking responsibility, accountability, and action of what you are selling and promise to provide. If you are genuine, and you add real value to what somebody wants or needs, then it’s going to happen. You don’t have to sell it. It’s about creating a match. That’s how you create real clients.

In this episode, Jane Clare shares the importance of knowing your niche, your client, building and maintaining the authenticity of your brand.

Learn how your business’ success can depend on your ability to add REAL & AUTHENTIC value to your clients, create sustainable relationships, and get through the know, like, and trust factor.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Jane on LinkedIn

Jane’s Bio:

Business Strategy Coaching for Start-Up to Scale-Up’s.

For Consultants, Coaches, and Creatives….who need to:

A. Gain Confidence In Your Perfect Niche And Ideal Client?

B. Have A Clear Marketing Message That Hits Home?

C. You want to Stop Losing Money, As Selling Isn’t Your Thing?

Jane Clare is a “Business In Life Coach”, her own term for her very unique blend of combining results-driven business coaching, whilst empowering all life skill areas.

Her Links:

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/janeclarecoaching

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/janeclarecoaching/

Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8C%9F-jane-clare-313051149/

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbVLP5v8nWhWMRDVWsGUV8w

Learn more about JaneShow less

[E263] Relationship Building, with Matt Ward (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

One of the best ways to jumpstart referrals in the short term is handwritten cards. They’re just not done enough by the people. It takes less than five minutes to write a card. Go on Amazon and buy those magic cards. Don’t put your brand or logo on the card at all. Don’t put your business card in the card, you just sign your name. That’s it. And the minute you put your business card in there it becomes about you not them. Send these cards to 20 people on your contacts. There is an absolute guarantee that you will receive a referral. You will see how it becomes a game-changer for your business.

Remember that this will only work if you stay in touch at different touchpoints at different times. Send them handwritten cards, ping them on LinkedIn every now and then, send them voice messages and text messages every so often. Learn the trick of Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) and play with it. That you will be in fact, be the top of mind when a client is ready, willing, and able to buy or refer because that is what referral is all about.

To know more about Matt Ward, his work and programs, visit his website and see him in action!:
https://breakthrough-champion.com/

Be sure to also subscribe to his Podcast Show Fitness Business Foundations:
http://www.fitnessbusinessfoundations.com/

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Matt’s Bio:

Matt is the founder of Breakthrough Champion.

In 2002 Matt started a website agency, inConcert Web Solutions, which he, in turn, sold in 2018, so that he could focus on helping businesses get more word of mouth referrals! His book “MORE…Word of Mouth Referrals, Lifelong Customers & Raving Fans”, released in September 2018 and was a #1 New Release!

Matt is a professional member of the National Speakers Association and a podcast host of the popular small business podcast Square Peg Round Hole! He’s a 40 Under 40 Recipient and Chamber Small Business Owner of the Year!

His Links:

Website – http://www.mattwardspeaks.com/

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwardspeaks/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mattwardspeaks

[E262] Relationship Building, with Matt Ward (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Salespeople are often shortsighted and focused on just one thing. And that one thing they focused on is money and it is rampant in the world of business. When people are focused on money, they’re not focused on helping. And when they’re not focused on helping, they don’t nurture relationships and build that care that is very vital in building relationships to have the best clients and referrals you will ever get. You don’t get referrals for meeting expectations, you get it for crushing expectations.

It is also important to know when to say NO to customers or turn away someone else because you helped them go somewhere else who can give them just the right solutions and services that you think are fit for them. This is a strong trait of being ethical and clients take notice on this and they start immediately referring you because YOU are ethical.

If you’re in business, realize that the goal is not to sell a hundred percent of the people you talk to. There should be some kind of qualification and assessing whether a client is a good fit or not. Remember that you don’t need every client in the world. Your NO is very powerful to getting referrals.

And when you tell people NO, you do it for the right reasons. Leverage that because these people will be shocked. Tell the wrong people NO and then nurture the relationship. Follow up with those people as well. You don’t realize that these people, your contacts can refer far more than clients.

Just do the right thing and exceeding expectations, and business will come to you.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Matt’s Bio:

Matt is the founder of Breakthrough Champion.

His Links:

Website – http://www.mattwardspeaks.com/

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwardspeaks/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mattwardspeaks

[E261] Relationship Building, with Matt Ward (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

The number ONE Pillar in the four-pillar strategy is over-deliver. Let your work speak for itself. Be so great at what you do. Exceed your client’s expectations. Show up and give an extra mile in your service. That’s a quicker turnaround. That’s a better product, a better service.

The four pillars are over-deliver, listening, surprise, and not self-serving ads. If you apply those elements not just to your clients but all your contacts, you’re going to get business. They will surely help you evolve and get into the centers of influence. That’s the reciprocity effect that kicks in when you start to do the work that you do.

But most of the time, salespeople shortcut the system to get clients. People have to realize that the most simple and effective strategy is to build touchpoints and nurture that relationship ongoing and be present.

Network with your clients. Look for opportunities to connect people with other people. It’s all about those relationships that you just keep building over time. And you nurture them. You stay in touch.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Matt’s Bio:

Matt is the founder of Breakthrough Champion.

His Links:

Website – http://www.mattwardspeaks.com/

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwardspeaks/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mattwardspeaks

[E260] Relationship Building, with Matt Ward (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

How many of you have a referral strategy? Is your approach to looking for referrals done correctly or are you just not doing it at all?

Word-Of-Mouth is immensely powerful. In fact, it’s the BEST marketing tool you have. But are you making good use of it? 99% will say that the number one source of new business in their business comes from referrals. And a lot of service-based businesses are focused on getting referrals from customers and clients, which is a huge MISTAKE! It is not just about the like and trust. A referral is that person who is willing and able to buy. It is that person who is teed up, and almost pretty much sold brought to you by someone you know, trust, and care about!

In this episode, Matt Ward, founder of Breakthrough Champions defines referrals, who to consider as referrals and the key elements in looking for one.

Learn about the right way to get clients without having to sound desperate and awkward, that you won’t ever have to ask for another referral in your entire life.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn

Matt’s Bio:

Matt is the founder of Breakthrough Champion.

His Links:

Website – http://www.mattwardspeaks.com/

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwardspeaks/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mattwardspeaks

[E259] Fitness Sales Success, with Justin Hanover (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

With things going on because of the global pandemic, people are forced to embrace the new normal. That goes the same for businesses. Industries have learned to adapt working remotely or virtually, when it seemed to be impossible before all these crazy times.

For health and fitness, a lot of instructors have gone online coaching in the space of health and fitness. This goes to show that the business thrive not primarily because of its equipment and physical facilities but because of the coaching aspect.

It’s the accountability aspect. That’s what’s going to help people make habit shifts to then make the transformation that they want.

Most businesses have always limited themselves into face to face sales transactions. Because that’s what they are used to.

But if a business believes they’re providing value and care regardless of what platform they use to deliver their service, then technology can absolutely be in their favor.

Because that’s all what matters in the business – shifting the gears to adapt and meet the needs of the customers.

For mentorship, coaching, and business consultation inquiries

Book your connection call with Justin here:
https://fitnessbusinessfoundation.com/mentorshipbusinesses

Be sure to also subscribe to his Podcast Show Fitness Business Foundations:
http://www.fitnessbusinessfoundations.com/

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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Connect with Justin on LinkedIn

Justin’s Bio

I am an entrepreneur, podcaster, and a student of life.

I started my entrepreneurial career at just 19 years old with just $2,000 to my name. My first venture was in the fitness world. I started by going to people’s homes and providing training services and then opened my first 500 square foot location. I built that business over time to a 6,000 square foot location and over 350 members. I did this over a 10-year span.

Coming into my 10th year in business my wife and I realized that being in the fitness business and having a facility was not how we were going to continue our journey. The lifestyle of running a facility was not matching up with how I wanted to live so I made a huge pivot. I closed the facility down to pursue moving fully online. I now coach new entrepreneurs on how to maximize profit without sacrificing their life. I feel this is something not pushed enough in the entrepreneurial world. I want to make sure they are building themselves and the life they want first so the business integrates with that foundation.

Over my decade of business personal development has played a huge role in my own growth and progress. Which is why it is a pivotal part of my coaching. I now help online coaches build thriving businesses with Coaches Creating Impact. I work with all types of online coaches that are either looking to get established or scale their business to their next level.

I also started my podcast called How I Built My Online Coaching Business. Now more than ever with the world going online at a faster rate people need help with building their business. Which is why I bring on talented coaches to break down exactly how they built their business. As well as sharing tactical tips to apply right away. I am committed to helping people succeed!

I have been married now for over 3 years and my wife and I are closer than ever with making this shift, and we are both focused on creating the life we want. We enjoy each day with our dog and traveling as much as we can.

Social Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.hanover

Instagram: – h https://www.instagram.com/onlinecoachgrowthpodcast/

Podcast: www.onlinecoachimpact.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-hanover-417aa533/

[E258] Fitness Sales Success, with Justin Hanover (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

No matter what type of the business platform you have, you have to treat the sales process as an ongoing journey. Building relationships and nurturing them and keeping that sales mentality are vital for customer loyalty.

Continue to build that relationship even after that one membership sign up because it is the key to upselling more of your services.

Building the trust of customers will go a long way and in return they are more likely to keep buying from someone they know, like and trust.

Understand, communicate, and speak on their level. Meet them where they’re at. Personalize the conversation, tailor-fit the service and solution. Make them feel like your business’ product or service is simply made for them.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn

Justin’s Bio

I am an entrepreneur, podcaster, and a student of life.

Social Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.hanover

Instagram: – h https://www.instagram.com/onlinecoachgrowthpodcast/

Podcast: www.onlinecoachimpact.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-hanover-417aa533/

[E257] Fitness Sales Success, with Justin Hanover (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

People, most of the time, don’t realize the energy that they’re carrying into different things.

If you are in a sales conversation with somebody, and you’re not very enthusiastic about it, do you think you’re gonna get a sale?

Justin shares how the mental shifting is very important in overcoming that scarcity mindset. A lot of successful entrepreneurs or sales people do it because it is impactful and it works.

With the right energy, it definitely overcomes lack of experience.

Oftentimes, clients are dealing with limiting beliefs that is stopping them from being successful. And that’s what businesses are there for to help them with. For some reason, businesses may be experiencing the same dilemma when it comes to sales. Any business should address what is blocking them in having a productive sales conversation with a customer.

With the right frame of mind, any business can step up in the right direction. Followed by implementing sales strategies and tactics. That’s the formula to confidently convert a customer into a sale.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn

Justin’s Bio

I am an entrepreneur, podcaster, and a student of life.

Social Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.hanover

Instagram: – h https://www.instagram.com/onlinecoachgrowthpodcast/

Podcast: www.onlinecoachimpact.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-hanover-417aa533/

[E256] Fitness Sales Success, with Justin Hanover (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you a fitness business owner that wants to build an efficient, effective, profitable business that actually adds to your lifestyle? Entrepreneurs often say business strategies, sales strategies, and business tactics are the keys to being successful. But what if I tell you none of it matters unless you have your mindset right?

A lot of service based businesses originally thought when they first get into business, their plethora of certifications is the driving factor for people to want to try their services. But most business owners didn’t know that these customers do not know about your certifications and they absolutely do not care. Now, the deciding question for people to consider your business lies on: Can you help them? Do you understand where they’re at? Can you provide a solution to people’s problems? Because that’s ALL THAT MATTERS!

In this episode, Justin Hanover of Fitness Business Foundations talks about profitable business, and achieving sales in the approach of Health and Fitness and apply across different industries.

Plus, learn about the foundation of having the right mindset to attract customers into your business!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn

Justin’s Bio

I am an entrepreneur, podcaster, and a student of life.

Social Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.hanover

Instagram: – h https://www.instagram.com/onlinecoachgrowthpodcast/

Podcast: www.onlinecoachimpact.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-hanover-417aa533/

[E255] Stop Disassembling Cars

Jason Cutter — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

When selling, are you going into so much detail about how your service works that you are actually losing deals?

So many reps over-explain – essentially disassembling the entire car in order to prove that it has value.

This habit can be the result of several things.

In this episode, I unpack the reasons why it happens and what to do about it instead.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E254] Relational Brand Building, with Jarrett Thomas (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

What is your intention behind the calls you are making?

According to Jarrett, it’s about being smart, working hard, and building relationships.

Instead of making 100’s of calls a day, make less, then reach out and connect human to human.

Check out this final part of our conversation.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Jarrett on LinkedIn

Jarrett’s Bio

I’ve been in digital sales for close to 10 years and have experience selling Display advertising, SEO, Saas, programmatic Ads & Social Media Analytics. I’ve had the pleasure to work with brands like Overstock, HFC, Radio City Music Hall, CannTrust, Canadian Paralympics, Lionsgate Films, and many more.

I’m more than a sales quota, I’m a father, brother, friend, colleague, and the type person that is willing to go the extra mile to help someone in need. My work ethic is something I truly hang my hat on and I’m continuously looking for ways to better myself both personally and professionally. I’m all about building genuine relationships and doing good business that helps all involved.

His Links:

[E253] Relational Brand Building, with Jarrett Thomas (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you memorable during your outbound calls?

Always remember that your goal is to make an impression on the person you are reaching out to.

Jarrett shares his thoughts and experiences on how to breakthrough during that cold call and turn it into longer conversations that lead into relationships and sales.

We also chat about personal branding, and how that was a major shift for him in terms of sales success.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Jarrett on LinkedIn

Jarrett’s Bio

His Links:

[E252] Relational Brand Building, with Jarrett Thomas (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you making tons of calls and going through the motions?

Or are you learning from the experience, feedback, and making shifts?

How are you doing on changing your strategy from outbound grinding to inbound relationship building?

Check out part 2 of my conversation with Jarrett – where we cover these topics. He is such a relational salesperson, and he shares his focus on driving inbound calls.

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Connect with Jarrett on LinkedIn

Jarrett’s Bio

His Links:

[E251] Relational Brand Building, with Jarrett Thomas (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

When selling during a pandemic, we need to ask ourselves: What is important right now? What relationships have I built? What foundation is in place?

There are metric-doing steps. And there are relationship-building steps.

In this episode, Jarrett and I talk about selling during Covid-19 times, using social media, and the power (and leverage) of relationships.

Learn about: what an economic buyer is, decision criteria, identifying pain, and the power of champions.

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Connect with Jarrett on LinkedIn

Jarrett’s Bio

His Links:

[E250] Sell Holes, Not Drills

Jason Cutter — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

You are selling the wrong thing.

Your prospects don’t care about the features of what you are selling.

They might not even care about the benefits.

Unless it is what they need.

Most sales reps are focusing on the incorrect value.

No one buys a drill – they buy the hole.

And a professional salesperson knows they aren’t buying the hole either.

They are buying what that hole will do for them.

Are you too busy selling DRILLS, or are you asking questions and then listening for the HOLES?

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[E249] Directing Revenue, with Maya Connet (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

How do you get more diversity in your sales team?

Maya has been in the Silicon Valley, in predominately male occupied sales teams.

She shares her tips for companies, and for individuals who find themselves with a lack of diversity around them.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Maya on LinkedIn

Maya’s Bio:

Maya Connet is a UCLA alum, who started her career at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management doing Marketing and Communications for the Professional MBA Programs. Next, she worked for The Wall Street Journal in Advertising Sales, selling print, digital, custom content, and sponsorships to marketers. She transferred from the LA to the San Francisco office and was focused on the B2B technology vertical. Maya then transitioned to Marketo where she had the opportunity to sell to incredible brands like the LA Clippers, LA Kings & Galaxy, Rosewood Hotels, ZipRecruiter. Maya then sold for Oracle Marketing Cloud before landing at the revenue operations platform, Clari, as an Enterprise Sales Director, based out of Silicon Valley, working with some of the top Enterprise Tech companies in the world.

Maya grew up in Petaluma, California (with potbelly pigs and chickens as pets), enjoys yoga, Orangetheory, snowboarding in Tahoe and wine tasting.

Maya’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayaparmerconnet/

Twitter: @mayapconnet

Website: https://www.clari.com/

Email: mconnet@clari.com

Learn more about Maya

[E248] Directing Revenue, with Maya Connet (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

The key to building bridges between sales and marketing is transparency.

One trick is to automate as much of the data tracking as possible.

That way no one can bias it to tell their side of the ‘story’.

It will also improve communication.

In this episode, Maya shares what she sees that leads to success as Director of Revenue.

We also chat about what happens when someone new comes into a leadership role, and what they are focused on.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Maya on LinkedIn

Maya’s Bio:

Maya grew up in Petaluma, California (with potbelly pigs and chickens as pets), enjoys yoga, Orangetheory, snowboarding in Tahoe and wine tasting.

Maya’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayaparmerconnet/

Twitter: @mayapconnet

Website: https://www.clari.com/

Email: mconnet@clari.com

Learn more about MayaShow less

[E247] Directing Revenue, with Maya Connet (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you including your customer’s CFO in buying process?

Most B2B sellers are afraid of what Finance might say, so they hope the deal goes through without dealing with them.

But they are the ultimate gatekeeper.

In this episode, Maya and I discuss this topic, plus how to shift Salespeople who are operating like Order Takers, and why having Revenue Ops is a game changer for companies.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Maya on LinkedIn

Maya’s Bio:

Maya grew up in Petaluma, California (with potbelly pigs and chickens as pets), enjoys yoga, Orangetheory, snowboarding in Tahoe and wine tasting.

Maya’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayaparmerconnet/

Twitter: @mayapconnet

Website: https://www.clari.com/

Email: mconnet@clari.com

Learn more about MayaShow less

[E246] Directing Revenue, with Maya Connet (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

The new school of B2B sales is about relationships.

It is about being intentional with your prospective buyer, treating them like a human, and supporting them in their goals.

That is how you win in sales – especially ones with longer sales cycles.

In this episode we talk about women in sales leadership roles, what HBR noted as the reasons, and how things could totally change with remote working.

Maya is a Director of Revenue and shares about relational selling in a B2B environment.

Really its about going outside of what you might think it takes to close a deal and be successful.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Maya on LinkedIn

[E245] Book Review: No Ego

Jason Cutter — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

We all have an Ego.

Not just salespeople (although theirs is usually pretty big).

The problem, as you may have guessed, is that an unhealthy ego will get in the way of success.

In this episode, I share my thoughts and experiences from reading Cy Wakeman’s No Ego book, and how it can help teams, managers, leaders, and even salespeople succeed.

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Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E244] Prejudging Their Ability To Pay

Jason Cutter — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Unless you are a clairvoyant – stop trying to assume you can read your prospect’s mind.

You will be wrong most of the time.

Especially when you assume that they won’t want to pay your price.

In my experience, if you are afraid of the price/cost conversation, it’s because of either/both of these reasons:

1) You have seen their bank account balance, checked all their credit card limits, appraised their house value, checked their business line of credit, and confirmed that all of their friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors will not help them in any way, or

2) You haven’t done your job completely of helping them see the value they will get from your product/service.

In today’s episode, I expand on the trend I have seen and where it comes from – where reps are prejudging either that someone can’t afford it…or won’t want to pay your price.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E243] Build Your Confidence – And Network – with Travis Chappell (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you confident? Do you focus on building confidence, in the right areas for the right reasons?

Travis Chappell and I – in this final part of the conversation – finish off talking about what salespeople should focus on most, and how to get there.

And of course, since he is absolutely focused on his network – we wrap up talking about relationships.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Travis on LinkedIn

[E242] Build Your Confidence – And Network – with Travis Chappell (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

What if you left every relationship better than you found it?

That is Travis Chappell’s philosophy, as he helps people focus on building better networks and focusing on relationships first, creating long-term value, then selling.

Check out Part 2 of our conversation where we dive deeper into relationships to help in sales, and life.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Connect with Travis on LinkedIn

[E241] Build Your Confidence – And Network – with Travis Chappell (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 05:44:00 +0000

What if you sold based on relationships?

What if you had the confidence to preserve until you were successful?

On this 3-part series I have Travis Chappell, who among many things (See bio below) has been selling since he was a kid and has so many lessons/insights to share.

I wasn’t a sales-kid, Travis was – so we start off talking about what that was like for him, and what he learned from it (including the value of Door-To-Door sales).

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Travis on LinkedIn

[E240] Book Review: Five Love Languages

Jason Cutter — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

One of the best leadership and management books I always recommend is the Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman.

Might seem like an odd choice for a ‘business’ book, but it is vital if your goal is to have your team members, coworkers, managers and other stakeholders feel like you truly care about them.

Yes, we know the axiom in sales – people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That is a classic strategy to employ for sales success with prospects.

But it is also important to remember for leadership.

People who might follow you need to know you care about them first.

Check out my breakdown of why I think the Five Love Languages is a must-read, and if you haven’t – get a copy of the book, and then have you and your team take one of the free online tests to determine which one you are.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E239] Security, Safety & Sales, with Zack Knight (Part 4)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

How can you sell psychological safety?

How do you sell diversity to your employees/team?

How will you help someone accept, and hopefully embrace, change?

Check out the final part of my conversation with Zack Knight.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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Connect with Zack on LinkedInShow less

[E238] Security, Safety & Sales, with Zack Knight (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

At times, life is about learning what you don’t want to do.

Or who you want to learn from.

Or whose sales style you don’t like.

Or a career you no longer want to do.

Zack and I cover this and more in Part 3 of our conversation.

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Connect with Zack on LinkedIn

[E237] Security, Safety & Sales, with Zack Knight (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

You have a duty to your prospects to help them buy the right solution.

Whether it is persuading them on the best actions to deescalate an issue as a police officer.

Or selling security and safety as a consultant.

To be successful also takes conviction of what you are offering, why they need it, and that you are confident in yourself.

Check out Part 2 of my conversation with Zack Knight.

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Connect with Zack on LinkedIn

[E236] Security, Safety & Sales, with Zack Knight (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

What do police, the military, security, safety, and sales have to do with each other?

Even if you don’t think you are in sales, you are always selling.

In this series, I speak with Zack Knight who has done many ‘non-sales’ roles, yet we speak about how success in those roles require the ability to persuade.

We also discuss what it looks like when you fail to ‘close the sale’ in various industries.

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Connect with Zack on LinkedIn

[E235] Book Review: EMyth Revisited

Jason Cutter — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

When a business book will help you sell better.

Yes – this is a business book that guides small business owners to success instead of the fate that awaits a large percentage of people who start their own company.

In this episode, I review the book and share why I feel it’s a critical book not just for business owners but for salespeople (especially when you are selling to small business owners).

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

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[E234] Sell With A Story, with Paul Smith (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Are you telling stories in the wrong way?

Yes – there is a correct way to tell a story.

I wrap up the conversation I had with Paul Smith in this episode. Make sure to check out the first two segments, and use the links below to connect with Paul.

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Connect with Paul on LinkedIn

[E233] Sell With A Story, with Paul Smith (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you know how to tell an effective story?

Part 2 of my conversation with Paul Smith

We continue our discussion about how to use stories as an important tool to help your prospects move forward towards the close.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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Connect with Paul on LinkedIn

[E232] Sell With A Story, with Paul Smith (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

One of the oldest types of communication is storytelling.

When your goal is to persuade/sell someone on your idea/product/service, one great technique is to tell stories.

Some salespeople are better than others.

My guest for this mini-series is Paul Smith, author, coach, trainer, and speaker focused on helping people tell better stories.

In this episode, we talk about the formula to use for using stories effectively in a sales conversation.

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Connect with Paul on LinkedIn

[E231] People Buy From People They Like & Trust (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

People don’t buy features…they buy solutions.

AND

(most) People want to deal with and buy from someone they like and trust.

When you are selling a product/service that with fairly equal competitor options the prospect could choose from then one factor in their decision making process will be their interaction and relationship with you.

This is in response to a questions I received:

“If you are selling the exact same product same specs and everything, pricing is very similar, how do you get the prospective client to buy “you” (Other than the obvious answer of build building rapport)”

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[E230] When your customers complain + sell without selling (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

There are times when your service fails, and customers are unhappy.

You might even start to lose faith in what you are selling.

In this episode I discuss how to overcome that, mentally, as a salesperson.

The second topic for this episode is around selling without “selling”.

It’s helping people buy versus PUSHING them with your sales pitch.

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Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E229] All You Have To Do Is Ask, with Dr. Wayne Baker (Part 3)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Now is the time to ask for what you want.

This is the last segment of my conversation with Dr. Wayne Baker – a champion on a mission to empower power to ask for what they want.

Of course, this is completely applicable to the challenges that most salespeople encounter, within their own minds.

And I am not just referring to asking for that sale.

I mean asking for what you want in your career – training, opportunities, advancements, mentorship.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E228] All You Have To Do Is Ask, with Dr. Wayne Baker (Part 2)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Do you know how to ask for what you want?

Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Wayne Baker

We continue our discussion about how salespeople (and everyone, really) can improve their ability to ask for what they want, as well as what gets in the way – mentally – of going for it!

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E227] All You Have To Do Is Ask, with Dr. Wayne Baker (Part 1)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

Most people aren’t asking for what they want.

While it might seem like salespeople are the exception, in my experience, they are rarely asking for the sale, the promotion, the opportunity, etc.

In this 3-part series, I speak with Dr. Wayne Baker, who is an ASKING expert.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E226] Getting them to buy YOU (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 05:45:00 +0000

How do you get your prospects to buy “you”, especially when what you are selling is similarly available by other companies or professionals?

Luckily, people don’t buy features, they buy solutions. And they buy from people they like and trust.

In this Q&A session, taken from a LinkedIn video I did, I share my thoughts on building rapport and beyond such that your prospects understand that you care about them.

Once that happens, they will buy from you.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

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[E225] Objections, Buying Signals, Slumps, and Follow-Ups (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Ever had a prospect ask you a question or raise an objection?

Has someone given you clear buying signals that you might have missed?

Have you ever been in a sales slump?

Not sure what to do about your follow up process?

Well, you are in luck – turns out I address all of these in today’s Authentic Persuasion Q&A

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E224] Proper follow-up or nagging? (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:00:00 +0000

What’s the difference between a friendly follow-up with a client and nagging them for their business?

How do you politely ensure that each client knows you are top of mind or Priority Number One while still juggling the needs of others?

I address this, plus a question about time management as a successful salesperson, in today’s Authentic Persuasion Q&A

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E223] Effectively building rapport (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:00:00 +0000

How do you effectively build rapport so the prospect feels comfortable enough to move forward?

You might not realize it, but there is a correct amount of rapport (and of course, an incorrect way).

The key with rapport is that it should be that initial stage that builds the foundation for the rest of the sales conversation.

In today’s Authentic Persuasion Q&A I address this topic submitted via LinkedIn.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E222] How can you keep the conversation going? (Q&A)

Jason Cutter — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 06:00:00 +0000

How can you keep the conversation going, with questions, to keep the conversation going with your potential customer?

How do you get the most info out of them to help with your sales process?

After the conversation is over, how do you stay organized enough to make sure and do the follow-up calls until the business is won?

In today’s Authentic Persuasion Q&A I address this topic submitted via LinkedIn.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E221] Welcome to Season 3

Jason Cutter — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 06:00:00 +0000

How can you gain access to decision-makers?

Welcome to Season 3! Time to kick off another great season.

This episode is part recap, part season intro, and then part Q&A session

If you are struggling with gaining access to decision-makers or getting your prospect/contact to be your champion up the chain, this episode is for you.

Book your free Sales Power Call with Jason

Enroll in the Persuading Like A Professional Online Mini-Course

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

[E220] Closing out Season 2

Jason Cutter — Fri, 01 May 2020 05:15:00 +0000

In this last episode of season 2 of the Sales Experience Podcast, I reminisce about the season that was and what we have accomplished together.

I talk about the lessons that you as a company manager or a salesperson should draw from the COVID-19 situation. I also talk about the Authentic Persuasion Program that I launched recently.

What I cover:

The accomplishments, lessons, and successes of season 2 as it comes to an end.
Companies’ vulnerabilities that have been exposed by the Coronavirus situation and the steps you can take to survive.
If you need help with your sales team, operations systems processes, and skill training email me at jason@cutterconsulting.com
The importance of providing value to your customers while focusing on opportunities and not being opportunistic.
The mistakes companies and salespeople are making that are keeping them worried during this time and how they can change that.

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

E220 – Transcript

Hey there, welcome to the season-ending episode of the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. This is episode 220 I can’t believe it. It’s been a lot. When I first started this show just over a year ago. My goal is to do a hundred episodes, five episodes a week and see where things went and see if I wanted to do it. And here we are, 220 episodes in season two and we’re wrapping this up. Interestingly, uh, season one was 110 episodes. Season two is going to be 110 episodes. Season two if you haven’t been listening or if you’ve been following along, was filled with a lot of amazing guests. So season one was mostly me talking. Season two was just guest after guest in these bite sized mini series types of conversations with tons of insight across a lot of industries and different focuses by people you know, at different levels.

Some consultants, some in charge of sales organizations or companies, some authors, other podcasters, and hopefully you listened to all those episodes if not go back. There’s definitely some amazing people who have given their time to share this message and be a part of this sales experience focus that I have on helping people sail in the right way, close deals in the right way, and then also provide a great experience for their customers as they’re moving forward. So, and then obviously it’s definitely been an interesting time for everybody over the last few months when we look back at what’s happened and how much the world has changed in the last two months. And depending on where you live, like how much that’s affected you in your part of the world, some more extreme than others. And definitely with the uncertainty in the world, that changing in business, sending people home to work remote and everything is different.

How long will it last? What will happen when people go back to their offices or out in public like normal, like literally nobody knows. But here’s what I do know is that these events have exposed companies’ vulnerabilities, right? So when times were good for 11 years, it’s easy to think that your business was built on a solid foundation, right? But when things changed overnight, it was a wake up call for a lot of companies and salespeople. Some of them got it, some of them put their head in the sand and hope that it would just get better, but it’s not. Some thrived and moved forward. Others crumbled and fell apart or on the verge of falling apart. It really comes down to, was your corporate culture strong enough to withstand this? Did you have proper systems in place to continue operating? Were your sales reps skilled enough to be capable of succeeding without having a manager stand over their shoulder?

I mean, that’s one of the things that can make companies, I wouldn’t say lazy, but just kind of not putting the same processes in place when it’s very easy to go out onto the floor and talk to reps or stand over shoulders or listen or have those conversations. When you do that, that’s great, but you’re micromanaging and you’re not coaching and you’re not leading. You’re just managing and so what happens when you don’t have that and you’re seeing a lot of companies out there. I’m talking to a lot of companies who just literally are struggling because what they thought they had, they didn’t, and it’s not there specifically for anyone listening to this, if you need help with your sales team, operation, systems, processes, skills training, definitely get in touch with me. You can email me jason@cutterconsultinggroup.com now, during this time, I’ve also been speaking with a lot of salespeople and managers about pushing through and still selling.

I’ve also, if you’re following me at all online on social media, you know that I’ve launched a program that I call Authentic Persuasion, which is really this combination and blend of everything that I have done over the years to be successful in my own selling career and then also training people and using these two words that when you hear them together, it makes instant sense, but how do you do it? Right? Authentic Persuasion, and I know that, I know that. I know that. I know that that is the key of what’s been missing for a lot of sales people out there and is missing right now for their success. If you’re underperforming, if you’re concerned about long term success, you just want to continue learning and growing. Please go to AuthenticPersuasion.com, download the free book and then check out the online sales training program. And again, not in a sales pitch, but more in a like, I just, as part of my mission through the sales experience podcast and everything I’m focusing on and how much I just want to help salespeople be more effective.

This key, the Authentic Persuasion key is what is missing. And again, the phrase that I use a lot is to “go from order taker to quota breaker.” And what’s missing in there for a lot of sales reps is the empowerment and the strength and the courage and the ability and the skills to use something like authentic persuasion. Also, if you’re a business owner or a manager, I’m running group Authentic Persuasion Program courses for companies who want to have their whole team improved in the way that they do sales and their effectiveness. So please reach out. If you’re on LinkedIn, make sure to follow the #authenticpersuasion. I’m posting daily videos, they’re about authentic persuasion topics and so you can go there and hear more about that and also get your daily dose of listening to me talking here while we take this break before season three, if you’re on Facebook, I started at authentic persuasion Facebook groups.

You can check that out. And of course if you’re ready to chat and you want to talk more about your sales, your business, get some guidance for yourself, for your career or for your team. Find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com site as well. And really the key is, is that I want to just remind everybody that in times like this, just like anytime, there’s always opportunities, so there’s always an opportunity to sell and be successful if you provide value to your customers. So even right now, and a lot of people were challenged, especially early on with this, and they didn’t feel like selling and they didn’t feel like they could have those conversations. The key is when your intentions are clear and their intentions are right and you’re focusing on opportunities not being opportunistic, then there’s no reason not to be selling because if you’re selling and you’re a professional, then you’re providing value to your customers.

You’re taking them from this point here to a higher state, a better state, whether it’s a goal, whether it’s solving a problem, helping them buy something that they need or want, whatever that is, there’s always a chance to have an opportunity for sales and to continue to grow. When you’re doing the right thing and you’re providing value and you’re solving problems. One of the things I see right now is there’s a lot of companies who are struggling and worried about making sales and sales reps who are making them worried about making sales. And the underlying theme that I see is that at the base level, inside, there’s just, I think missing confidence, a lack of belief that what they’re doing is actually helping their customers. Because when you know you’re helping somebody with what you’re selling, A. you have no problem moving forward with the transaction, which is what I teach through the authentic persuasion program, and then B. you have no problem also winning.

They’re gonna win. You’re gonna win. You’re going to charge for that service, for that product, for whatever it is that you are doing that’s providing that value. You’re going to get rewarded for that, and that is reasonable. That is commerce, that is life. If you’re giving value to somebody else, then you should definitely get something in return. So want to leave you with that on this closing for season two, episode 220 it’s been a fantastic journey. I appreciate everybody who’s been listening with supporting downloads, it’s amazing and I take none of it for granted. I’m excited every time I go in there and I look at the numbers and see the downloads and see the locations and see all the different places where this is being listened to and I just think of if there’s any way that one of these episodes or any of this is impacting anybody doing sales in some positive way and changing the way sales is done for the benefit of both the customer and for you, the salesperson or your organization.

If you own or lead a sales team, if just a single one of these 220 episodes affects one person. Then I am super excited and of course if this is something that’s impacting you and you have some feedback, you want to tell me how it’s made a difference for you, please reach out to me. You can email me again, jason@cutterconsultinggroup.com find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, go to the website, send me a message, let me know. I love hearing that. Also in season three, I’m not quite sure exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to shift the focus a little bit. I think I might talk to more sales people and kind of answer questions and help them overcome challenges. So if you’re listening to this, you’re in sales and there’s things that you’re struggling with or you want some advice or you want to chat with a sales nerd like myself, talk through some stuff, sales related, please reach out to me as well. And of course, make sure to subscribe to the show for when it returns, leaving a rating or review if that’s possible. Wherever you’re listening to this, it’s amazing. Helps get this out. And that’s it for season two, episode 220 thanks again for being a part of this journey. Please stay safe. Stay sane, which is the harder part for a lot of people during these unprecedented times. And as always, remember that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E219] Diversity in Sales with Rakhi Voria – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Final segment with the amazing Rakhi Voria. We go back to the topic of diversity (which is more than just race or gender), and the true business danger of only hiring one type of person for your teams.

She is in the long list of guests here on the podcast that once again brings up confidence, grit, perseverance, and empathy to win in sales. She also shares the value of getting back in the trenches as a sales leader.

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Rakhi on LinkedIn

Rakhi’s Bio

As the Director of IBM Global Digital Sales Development, Rakhi Voria manages a team that is responsible for the strategy, implementation, and revenue of the Digital Sales Development (DSD) function globally. Within the DSD sales force, there are ~350 Digital Development Representatives and Business Development Representatives responsible for driving client engagement, deal progression, and closure of select deals. Rakhi previously worked at Microsoft and most recently served as the Chief of Staff to the Corporate Vice President of WW Inside Sales, where she played a key role in building a new digital sales force for Microsoft, growing the team to 2,000 digital sellers globally and the business to over $5B in under 3 years.

Rakhi has a strong passion for advancing women in sales and millennials in business and regularly shares her thoughts on these topics by speaking at conferences and writing publications in Forbes as a member of the Forbes Business Development Council. She currently serves as Executive Co-Chair of Women@IBM NYC, which is focused on attracting, retaining, and advancing women. At Microsoft, she was Co-Chair of the Women@Microsoft Board, a network of over 20,000 women across 15 regional chapters globally.

Rakhi has been featured in Geekwire, The Seattle Times, Vizaca, Career Contessa, Be Leaderly, and other publications and was named a Top Sales Woman to Watch in 2019. She earned her M.Sc. from the University of Oxford and her B.A. from Colorado College. Rakhi is based in New York City.

Rakhi’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakhivoria/

Forbes articles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/people/rakhivoria/#48e2218175a1

Women in sales documentary feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAnPbQJSHQ

E219 – Transcript

Jason: Hello and welcome to the final part of my conversation with Rakhi Voria. If you haven’t checked out episodes one, two and three of this mini series of our conversation. This is one continuous conversation that we had talking about sales, digital diversity, kind of what it takes to be successful in sales. All of it. This final part, we’re going to wrap it up here and here we go. Part four.

Rakhi: Some people literally to this day even say we’d love for people with competitive sports backgrounds as an example. And right off the bat that probably might actually really make some women not be interested in a sales organization or if they see the word Hunter on the job description. It’s just a very aggressive word. So I think it’s really important to be super intentional, as simple as the job descriptions.

Jason: And since you brought up recruiting, it’s interesting because I had made some notes before we were going to talk and we’re going to talk about diversity, which we have, and there’s the common diversity kind of approaches for what you want to have within your organization. And we talked about having a diverse background or diverse group of people with sex men and women in the organization at all levels. And then there’s obviously ethnicity, there’s race, nationality, and kind of bringing all these perspectives. Okay. I think one of the most important things which you’ve just touched on is experience as well and it’s having a very diverse workforce and group all parts of the org chart which are diverse with experiences, right? So you come from Microsoft and now you’re at IBM. This person that you just hired was that Starbucks. This other one was working at the mall.

Jason: This other person is maybe competitive sports or in the military, cause I’ve worked with lots of people in the military as well and I think that’s valuable. I think it could be dangerous for organizations when they’re focused on one type of person and that’s very singular and they want this certain background or experience and they’re missing out. You said this very early on in our conversation is the world is changing, the world is more diverse, and so you may like your certain, you know, let’s say an organization likes its certain archetype of what they think a salesperson should be, but then your customers are changing and the people are calling are changing, right? It’s not just, and I’m going to say it, it’s not just white males calling other white males that organizations to sell them stuff, right? Maybe white males calling like yourself, Indian American women to talk about this solution. It’s like, okay, so being diverse and being okay with that. I mean, I think that’d be experiences. I think that’s huge.

Rakhi: Yeah, and I mean diversity spans across so many things. It’s obviously gender, it’s race, but I always encourage people to look at age as well. I mean when we look at some of the customers that we’re selling to, it might very well be a 25 year old CEO and so I think it’s just so important to have sellers who really reflect your customer base and can engage with them in a way that is a little bit more natural than maybe somebody who has been in the industry for a long time. I think it’s really valuable to have both perspectives and I think as long as you have the right investments and enablement in training, you can really teach anyone to do anything as long as they have some of those fundamental skills that we talked about around being able to communicate and listen and all of those important things. The rest of it, you know, I mean I would just sort of throw out whatever traditional notions you have about what to do good seller entails and really be open minded. It might mean some short term trade-offs. You might not get somebody who is selling on day one, but maybe they will be selling on day 31 after a month of the right training and enablement and they might be a better long term fit and solution for your company.

Jason: And depending on what you’re selling, the biggest kind of attribute I used to look for when I was hiring people, especially when dealing directly to consumers, but even business to business is I always looked for potential candidates to come on the team who had some life experiences and some hardships. So it wasn’t that everything was difficult in their life or something catastrophic or terrible had happened. But what I found was to be effective in sales, it’s listening, it’s empathy, you know, it’s understanding the other person, might be going through something you’re selling even if it’s business, a business, right? Talking to that, let’s say VP of marketing about your software solution that’s going to help. Like you still have to understand they’re a person, they have a job, they have a life, they have problems, but you know, they’ve got all these things going on. And I’ve had some really amazing salespeople work for me that were young in age, early twenties but had been through so much stuff in their life that they brought that experience, that empathy, and they just, it was amazing. Right? And I think that’s something that’s missed and hard to kind of recruit for or put on a job description, his life experiences. But I think that’s valuable as well.

Rakhi: I completely agree. I mean, I think people who have persevered in the face of some level of adversity really end up having a good career in sales. I mean, I personally, I think that’s what helped me in some ways. I grew up with a single mom. My dad left when I was very young and she was just amazing. And I saw that women can do everything. And I had two older sisters who helped raise me. And I think that that taught me a lot of things. I grew up at a young age. It taught me to make the best out of what I have, leveraging whatever resources, connections, experiences that I had. And it also taught me to be willing to ask for help because you can’t do it on your own. And I saw that growing up. And I think honestly, part of my story was why the recruiter at Microsoft eventually sort of encouraged me to look at sales because she did even mention you have a strong track record of success. You’ve persevered across a lot of different hardships in situations that you might have been faced with at a young age. And so you have a level of grit that is required to be successful in sales.

Jason: And I think that’s something that a lot of people overlook, whether it’s, well, they get into sales, especially, you know, this conversation about women in sales and their effectiveness and what holds them back. And a lot of them, I think that they’re, cause they’re not a killer, they shouldn’t be in it. But having grit going through things, whether it’s sales or any other profession or career, don’t discount what you’ve been through. I know for myself, I used to beat myself up a lot because my path was very windy. I didn’t go to school for something that I then graduated college and then went into and I had that career for 20 years. Right. Like using that letter, like a kind of, you look at my path, it’s very windy, it’s all over the place. But then what that taught me was a lot of life experiences, a lot of various perspectives on the world. I’ve been handed a lot of grit for sure. And then that’s made me successful now and I think a lot of people feel that same way. It’s like, well, I can’t like go into our recruiting thing. I just work in retail. I can’t do this. But can you bring that experience? Like what have you been through as a person and then apply that to anything in your life and be successful.

Rakhi: Yeah, I mean I think you need grit for every profession, but you really need it when, and when you have a customer who’s maybe telling you no five times in a row or that you’re offering is too expensive or not as good as the competition or whatever it might be.

Jason: Right. I mean that’s the life of sales, which is why you know, a lot of people don’t want to do it or can’t stay in it. And I think going back to something you said a little bit ago about looking at it long term, it’s first determining self-awareness is sales for you. Like once you get into it or you’re looking in the sales is sales for you, is it something you want to do? Self-awareness, like what are your strengths? What can you bring to those conversations? Like you were talking about what it takes to be successful in digital sales and sales in general. I mean a lot of that is self-awareness and bringing that to those conversations. Once you make that decision. What I always tell people, I was like, once you realize sales is for you, just lock in a goal and a timeline of how long you’re going to give it to like figure it out and then be successful and really give it its due because you’re going to get hit in the face a lot and you’re going to fall down a lot. And not just when you’re new, but just constantly. And so you have to have something pushing you and some reason you’re doing it and why you’re going to stay in it long term, right? Whether it’s a year or two years, but just don’t stop too soon.

Rakhi: For sure. Because I think all of those things that make sales really hard actually make it a great profession and a great training ground for you to build a variety of skills. So, I mean we’ve talked a lot about those already. The confidence, grit, perseverance, I mean, yeah. A better way to develop all of those things and by having to build trust with a stranger. But I also tell people all the time that you’re gonna really learn a lot of tangible hard skills. Like how to position, influence, negotiate effectively. You have to be knowledgeable, have answers. And the reality is we’re always, always selling whether, we like to say it out loud or not. I mean, when we’re interviewing for a job we are selling. When we’re convincing someone to go on a date with us, we’re selling.

Jason: Or convincing the person that we’re with to go to a certain movie versus you know, not going to a movie. I mean that’s, you know, I end every episode and I will when we finish this, I mean everything in like the sales. No matter what. Whether you like it or not.

Rakhi: Exactly. So learning how to sell, learning how to sell well, I mean it’s a great thing for everybody to have in their back pocket. And as you said, it’s important to think about how long you want to do anything for. For me, actually I took my sales role and went in a bit of a different direction. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve been in a direct sales role frankly. They started in a direct sales role. I was in front of customers. I loved that. But then I quickly pivoted and went to a more corporate role. I was Microsoft financing America’s business development leader. And so basically my job was to make it so that our financing sellers had what they needed to be successful, whether it was putting an offer in motion or a sales play or making sure they had the right training.

Rakhi: So it was my way to sort of get a little bit away from direct sales, but still deeply engage with sellers and supporting them. Having been a seller myself. And then as you said, I went and helped Microsoft build their digital sales team as the chief of staff to the corporate vice president over there. We hired 2000 people and under three years and now I’m at IBM helping to manage a large sales organization but also evolve it. And so I really encourage people to realize that there isn’t a linear path in sales. You don’t have to start as a seller, then go into management, then be a VP of sales. It is such a transferable and marketable skill and I think you can do really anything with it.

Jason: Final question. Do you ever miss selling and or have you thought recently since IBM putting the headset back on and uh, doing some direct sales?

Rakhi: I do miss it and I realized that actually when I was on my recent Asia tour, so I had a chance to go to Seoul, Korea recently and meet with some of our customers who are exploring different opportunities and it just reminded me how much I missed it actually. So I do get to do a little bit of that here and there. I mean it’s not as frequent as I would probably like to, but anytime I go to one of my sales centers and spend time with the teams, I try to meet with a business partner as well as a customer. So I mean I definitely do see myself maybe at some point going back into that world a little bit more directly. I’ve never had a, I guess, true enterprise sales experience. A lot of it has typically been on the corporate side or commercial space or small, medium size. And so I think maybe it’d be fun to be like a managing director for a large customer or something at some point. Who knows?

Jason: And like you said, you’d never know your path in life and there’s no linear direct exact path you’re going to go. So who knows.

Rakhi: Exactly. Good to be able to find it.

Jason: Thanks for being on the show so that people can find you, I’m going to put the links in the show notes that you’ve given me, but for people listening right now where some good places for them to find you, follow you, see the kind of initiatives you’re working on.

Rakhi: Well, I would say LinkedIn and Twitter are the best ways to connect with me. Also, you can follow me on my Forbes business development council page where you can see the articles I’ve written on some of the topics that we discussed today. So really forward to engaging with this audience and happy to chat anytime on all things sales.

Jason: Well Rakhi, thank you for being on the show. It has been amazing and I appreciate just interacting with people like yourself that are almost on an opposite end of the spectrum of sales. Yet sales is still sales. So I appreciate everything that, uh, you’re doing to help with that in the world of sales and making it a better place.

Rakhi: Thank you. Same to you.

Jason: And for everyone listening, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast where you can listen to these episodes, see the transcripts, and see all of her show notes and links. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you give them.

[E218] Diversity in Sales with Rakhi Voria – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

More of the conversation with Rakhi Voria from IBM.

Topics we cover:

Removing barriers from your prospects to buy
Making changes to your sales process
Splitting up your sales team into roles

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Rakhi on LinkedIn

Rakhi’s Bio

Rakhi’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakhivoria/

Forbes articles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/people/rakhivoria/#48e2218175a1

Women in sales documentary feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAnPbQJSHQ

E218 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Rakhi Voria. She is an amazing, powerful global digital sales leader. Please make sure to follow her online, interact with her if you feel that you know the stuff that she’s providing. It makes sense for you. She’s all about diversity and then also effective, honest, great sales experience as we touch on when talking about the sales experience. If you haven’t made sure to listen to parts one and two, here you go. Here’s part three of my conversation with Rakhi.

Rakhi: We would really want to help customers achieve their own business outcomes, but we want to do it in a way that is as seamless as possible for them to engage with us. And I think the more barriers that we can remove in terms of getting out the information to them as quickly as possible, tailoring the conversation to them as much as possible, showing them as many references, use cases that are actually relevant to the industry that they’re in. I think that’s really what it means to support a customer.

Jason: That’s great. And, uh, I think all of that is very valuable and it’s so fascinating. As I’m listening to you talk, there were so many vital things in there. So if you listen to that, make sure to replay that over and over again because I agree with everything you’ve said there. No need to recap any of that now for your role, let’s say IBM specific where you’re at now, what kind of initiatives or things have you kind of either put in place or helped mold or change in the digital sales role to kind of achieve that vision of that sales experience on your end?

Rakhi: Well, I joined IBM about a year ago, so I just came up on my one year anniversary and we’ve made a lot of changes over the past year. I mean, I think during my first six months I spent a lot of time learning and listening and doing my big world tour and having a chance to really sit with our sellers, our managers side by side with them, understanding what’s working, what’s not, which tools are best, which ones are falling short, where do they need help? And I encourage anyone who’s listening who is maybe moving to a new company or a new role to really invest in that time. I think for me, I struggled with that a little bit because on the one hand I wanted to be viewed as somebody who genuinely did want to learn and to understand how the business worked. On the other hand, I think especially coming externally, there is this pressure to make some changes pretty quickly and people are sort of wondering, okay, well what are you going to put your stamp on in this organization?

Rakhi: We’re expecting some level of change and transformation and I just encourage people to really be thoughtful in those changes. I mean, if things are working, just because you’re new doesn’t mean you have to change things. Maybe you change one thing instead of five. For me, I would say that there were several things that were working quite well actually. I think the team has made a lot of strides over the past few years. Several metrics were doing really well, but I did see an opportunity to just sort of streamline some of the activities that our sellers were doing. So I think as I had described, the team was really the first line of contact that IBM had with a customer. It was a mix of inbound, outbound, a lot of different plays, sellers across all different business units, all different geographies. And I think one of the challenges was, we had asked our teams to do too many things.

Rakhi: We are trying to be everything to everyone. And when you do that, it’s really hard to scale versus when you’re really focused on something in particular. So we had some of the most sharp sellers I’ve ever seen. I mean, they’re so well trained, they’re so fabulous, but we almost need to help, help them get certain roadblocks out of their way in order to be able to succeed. So there’s a few changes that we implemented just recently, so I’ll have to see if it all works so far. But one of the things is we actually split inbound and outbound. So when I first came into the role, we spent a lot of time doing some industry analysis, looking at how IBM digital development functions sort of compared to the industry across a variety of dimensions. So workload skills, organizational design, compensation models, etc.

Rakhi: And one of the things that really caught my eye was how many people in the industry have split inbound and outbound? There’s an article from 2019 by Topo that was the benchmark report. They said that 59% of the industry has already moved to this model. It seems to yield better results when you help sellers build confidence in skill. Inbound sellers can become more product savvy. Outbound sellers can truly learn how to prospect and work on white space and upsell and cross sell and everything. So we decided to deploy that model actually. Unfortunately we weren’t able to do it everywhere just because of critical mass and language and geo complexities. But that’s one of the things that we did. And then a couple of other changes that we made is we’ve actually made it so that the sellers have more of an opportunity to progress and close deals themselves.

Rakhi: Prior to this change, they were more of the lead generation team and creating a lot of opportunities, sometimes passing themselves, oftentimes passing to somebody else for closure, although they would stay kind of in lock step with those opportunity owners. But now we’ve really sort of expanded their ability to actually progress, reheat, nurture deals because again, they’re the first line of contact with the customer. And so ideally you would want to be with that customer throughout that cycle versus having too many handoffs and just making it as easy as possible for them to interact with as few people as possible to get them what they need. So yeah, we’re very excited about those changes and really looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

Jason: Well, and I think those are interesting changes and amazing and I appreciate the fact that even as a large organization and wanting to make those changes, because usually with bigger organizations, it’s a big ship that’s slow to turn. And I appreciate the fact that you’re getting in there and whoever’s supporting you is putting some of those initiatives in place. I totally agree with you about having that first point of contact being the one who kind of takes more and more of the relationship. Obviously if it’s like a just an inbound who’s then forwarding it onto more of the seller salesperson, that’s one thing, but I know from my experience for ever, typically the person that the customer, the prospect talks to first if they want to keep moving forward in the conversations, it’s because they trust that person. They like that person. They have a rapport with that initial contact.

Jason: And it’s actually sometimes really hard to replicate that down the chain even with handoffs because that person has stuck with them. I know a long time ago I was in a business with a partner of mine. If he got a phone call first and then I tried to take over that rest of that sale and transaction, they would either always ask for him and want to talk to him or it would just feel weird and it was vice versa. It was amazing how like that first person that they talked to was the person that kind of, I wouldn’t say bonded with but like trusted because they were willing to talk more.

Rakhi: Yeah, and I think that’s a very natural thing for a prospect to want to do.

Jason: Yeah, and then the other part that I appreciate, and obviously I got people who are listening to this of all size organizations, a lot of them are small and they can’t justify it, but I support that same method of the inbound versus the outbound sales teams. Partially because it’s two different personalities that are going to be successful at those. There are people who can do both, right? Like I’m sure you could do both. I can do both. I know a lot of sales professionals who could do both even within the same day and back to back conversations, but really the value in my experience tell me yours is that when you separate inbound and outbound, then it allows people to just focus on those conversations and that approach and those relationships which are completely different. And like you’re saying is being more focused instead of kind of broad but being more narrow with your sellers and salespeople. More of a sniper than a shotgun. Just trying to be everything to everybody but just like, okay, how do you do this one thing and do it really well and then as a machine, how do we feed you with as many of those opportunities as possible so you can just do what you do best in this moment?

Rakhi: I agree. I mean I think inbound and outbound are very, very different sales motions and require a different profile and that’s exactly why we made this change and in addition to really being able to focus sellers and help them really build that competence of skill that we talked about, I think it also then gives you the opportunity to really improve and optimize the actual activities that they’re doing. So I mean splitting inbound and outbound was the first step of what has been and will continue to be a journey for us as we kind of evolve the organization. But now what we’re really doing is looking at, okay, what are all of the things that an inbound rep did? What are all of the things that an outbound rep did? What are the things we could stop doing? What are the things that are working that we want to double down on? Where do they maybe need more support or messaging or scripts, or what is it within that actual process of the activities that they’re doing that might not be working or that has the opportunity to get better. And then actually investing in those channels too.

Jason: Right. And I think when you do that, which I’m sure you’ve found that there’s some stuff that you’re just cutting out that are unnecessary, but then, like you said, doubling down on the things that do work and how do you do more of it than how do you support that with systems, with processes, with technology so that they can do it. It’s so interesting how many times I’ve seen an organization in the past where they have somebody trying to do both. They’re doing outbound, they’re doing cold calls, they’re power dialing there, doing mass email. They’re doing whatever on the outbound business development, SDR, BDR, even if it’s for themselves as a sales executive, they’re in this hunting kind of attack mode and then you serve up an inbound lead where somebody started this conversation maybe online and then they’re the ones reaching out. You want to serve them and meet them where they are and you have this Hunter killer who’s just still in this hunting mode, get on the phone or interact with somebody who’s just like ready to get help and just wants to be kind of nurtured and, and understood and ask questions but just literally destroy that conversation cause they’re moving at a completely different pace then what was necessary for that inbound.

Rakhi: Yup. For sure.

Jason: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of money being spent on leads that are wasted by not having them split. And again, if you’re listening to this, the sooner you can or the better you can split those into different groups, the outbound, the inbound and then you might even find, you know, within those subcategories, right. The outbound for the opening and the outbound for like the actual moving the conversations. And those are two different groups of people sometimes. So in terms of digital, again, your life has been spent digital as far as your careers at Microsoft and IBM. Mine has not. So I’m just fascinated with you in the digital sales realm, what does it take or what kind of salespeople are successful in that? There’s obviously the common things in sales, and you even mentioned it earlier when we were talking about women in sales and success in sales in general, but what does it take for someone to be successful in digital sales? Like what kind of attributes do you see for that or activities?

Rakhi: You know, honestly, I think it is really the same as what you would expect for face to face. I mean, you obviously need to be a good listener. You need to be somebody who is asking a lot of questions. You need to be professional regardless of if you’re home on your video or in person, you need to be an effective communicator. Just because you’re not sitting physically in front of a customer doesn’t mean you’re only talking to them via email. I mean you’re often probably talking to them on the phone, on video, etc. So I think all of those things that make a face to face seller successful are absolutely critical for digital sales as well. That being said, I think there are things that really set digital sellers apart. For example, um, really being well versed in the art of social selling. So really being able to leverage things like LinkedIn sales navigator and being trained in social selling.

Rakhi: I know a lot of companies now invest in that to make sure that every single rep really knows how to prospect with people well, whether it’s on LinkedIn or via email or not. Some of those blanket things that you had mentioned that you get a lot of earlier. And I do myself and I mean I think nowadays like sellers are getting so, so creative in the way that they do that and they’re using Twitter and Instagram and all of these things and the lines are really blurring between your professional life as a seller and your personal life as a human being. And I think that’s a good thing. I mean, I actually have a seller of mine in Canada and she is really obsessed with the show, the bachelor, and she has this Twitter account, thousands and thousands of followers. Where, she tweets about the bachelor on Monday nights when it plays.

Rakhi: And she’s actually engaged several customers through that. Customers who like the bachelor and she makes a lot of jokes about comparisons between the show as well as IBM solutions. And she makes jokes about it and she’s like, well, you know, you need to get IBM security or systems or whatever. And I don’t know how she came up with this creativity, but I love it. And I just think obviously you want to coach your sellers to be representatives of your company. To be professional in every endeavor, your brand. But I think we are sometimes almost too afraid of just showing our whole self. And that’s really what customers want to see nowadays. They want to see that you’re a real person and that you get it. So I think all of those things are really important. But then when it comes to actually recruiting, I would also love to offer a few tips on that because I think unfortunately so many sales teams really recruit from a lot of traditional sources.

Rakhi: And I have found that some of my best hires are from really non traditional places like the military as an example, I found people who have come from the military to be very relentless, focused. They have a sense of comradery, teaming and just sportsmanship. And I think all of those things are actually really great for sales. Retail could be a great place, even if you’re an enterprise tech company. I’ve actually had situations where I’ve recruited people from like a local Starbucks as an example just because they’re that good. So I think you have to really widen the talent pool, keep an eye out any and everywhere, especially if you want to recruit diverse people who might not naturally consider roles in sales and just really create an environment that fosters inclusiveness so that they want to join your organization. And that takes a lot of effort, unfortunately, but it’s well worth it.

Rakhi: So I think things like even really going through your job descriptions and red lining them and making sure that you’re using the right verbiage to attract the right candidate. A lot of people post a lot of things around requiring certain sales experience or some people, literally to this day, even say we’d love for people with competitive sports backgrounds as an example. And right off the bat, that probably might actually really make some women not be interested in a sales organization or if they see the word Hunter on the job description. It’s just a very aggressive word. So I think it’s really important to be super intentional, as simple as the job descriptions.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part three. Thanks again for listening to this. Make sure to come back tomorrow for the final part of the conversation. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. People remember the experience you gave them.

[E217] Diversity in Sales with Rakhi Voria – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Part 2 of the conversation with Rakhi Voria, from IBM.

We continue to talk about the impact of digital sales (which is really anything other than face to face) and how that fits in with each sales process, and LifeTime Value of customers.

We also talk about meeting your customers where they want to be as a way to trust you.

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Rakhi on LinkedIn

Rakhi’s Bio

Rakhi’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakhivoria/

Forbes articles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/people/rakhivoria/#48e2218175a1

Women in sales documentary feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAnPbQJSHQ

E217 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome to part two of my conversation with Rakhi Voria. Make sure that you subscribe. You can catch all these episodes. This is a four part series, so listen to all of them together. Here you go. Part two of my conversation with Rakhi.

Rakhi Voria: So I think there’s a lot of different ways that you can go to market. It goes to the type of company that you are, the type of companies that you’re trying to recruit to and also just trying different methods that work depending on what that audience looks like.

Jason: And I know for me in my beginning stages of my sales career, I don’t know if this was like it for you, but when I first started it was face to face sales. So I was in the mortgage business. The guy I worked for, he said okay when the phone rings, set an appointment as quickly as possible, meet them face to face and do that because it’s all about face to face, building, rapport, building trust, having a relationship and then you can move it to phone calls after that. And then I remember years later doing a phone-only-based sales thing and that was like a radical shift for me because I didn’t think that was possible based on how I was raised, where it’s face to face and reading body language and then shifting to this phone only. And I think that’s a valid point that you’re saying is, see that the world’s evolving and then also understand where your customers are at and that the old way of doing it might not be as necessary, right?

Jason: Like there’s people who literally right now are buying cars digitally better than being spit out by a vending machine type of setup, right? Where literally there’s just a vending machine stack of cars. This is in the U S and then cars are just getting popped out and then you go pick up your car and that’s it. Right? Versus the old model of this battle on a car lot with salespeople. So I think that’s a great reminder of kind of being adaptable and shifting. And if, obviously if IBM and Microsoft, some big beasts can do it, then most people if you want to, you can adjust.

Rakhi: Sure. And I think the reality is even if you’re a face to face seller, you’re probably segmenting your customers already. I saw a lot of people doing that in my sales roles, including myself. I mean even when I was a face to face seller, you can’t always touch every single customer. A lot of people adopt 80 20 type of rule. 80% of your customers you’re probably going to engage with via digital methods, 20% maybe some of the top tier opportunities. You’re going to have to focus on doing more of that in person, face to face. So even people who are face to face I think are faced with some of those challenges and tradeoffs that they have to make because the reality is your portfolio is probably getting bigger and bigger and you’re going to have to prioritize.

Jason: So for prioritizing. It’s interesting because obviously there’re the easy people who are responsive that you want to talk to better interacting well, like the easy people that you enjoy talking to, but then there’s the ones that make sense. What are some tips that you think as far as prioritizing for a salesperson for that 80 20 or how they break that down or somebody unaware of who that is for them? They’re doing it intuitively, but they actually don’t have a framework around that. What do you suggest for people to do?

Rakhi: That’s a tough question. It truly depends on what your business goals are at any given time. So I think that’s why it’s so important to work with your manager or to understand what are your targets, what are you being goaled against, et cetera. So for some people it might be as simple as revenue, and so you obviously want to get as much revenue as quickly as possible and you’re going to gravitate to some of those largest opportunities. For other people, like companies like mine, you might have different metrics and KPIs around new customer acquisition as an example or customer success types of things where you’re trying to actually expand a company’s footprint versus actually targeting someone who could be a new client for the company. So I think in general it’s really important to understand what your personal business goals are for your division, for your organization so that you can prioritize accordingly.

Rakhi: But I mean at the end of the day, I think revenue tends to be King for most sales then that’s the reality of it. I would encourage people to think about things from a longer term perspective. One of the challenges that I see with sellers who are obviously motivated by targets and attainment and everything rightfully so, is sometimes they’re unfortunately more focused on the short term game. And the reality is, I mean there’s so much data out there that obviously shows that one purchase leads to two leads to three leads to four, etc. And so it’s important to harness customers as quickly as possible. But at the same time I think it’s also being okay with managers coaching sellers to maybe take the brakes off a little bit. Take your time, really build kind of a left to right 360 view offering for a customer because if you actually ended up taking that time you might end up with a larger deal and something that’s a lot more strategic for your company.

Jason: And selling to that person in the proper way for them, not just for you, not just for your pressure, not just your quotas and numbers and goals cause you can really I wouldn’t say destroy, I mean that’s possible but you can really like harm or cause a deal to either not be as good or not happen now because of that pressure. If somebody’s thinking short term, they’re thinking, okay I need to meet these numbers or I need to make this commission or I have this kind of inherent incentive that’s going on or this pressure from my managers. It can make people make poor decisions in the short term like you’re saying, which I think is a great reminder versus long term. Right. Long Term is about referrals. It’s about more farming versus hunting, not just hunting as in killing, but like hunting is how do I eat today? Farming is what do I plant so that in a year from now or in six months from now, like literally I’m just pulling fruit off of trees instead of having to run around in the wild and hopefully find something.

Rakhi: For sure. And I think it matters even more for people who are typically in business development, sales development types of roles. So the organization that I’m responsible for is the digital sales development organization as you mentioned. And the sellers within my organization are often the first line of contact that a customer will typically ever have with IBM. And they’re catching a lot of the inbound responses that are coming through our digital channels and their prospecting. And because of that, they’re really the custodian of the IBM experience and we get to shape whether or not a customer chooses us versus another solution. So with that becomes an even more significant amount of responsibility to ensure that we’re engaging with the right touch at the right time. As I had mentioned and now it matters more than ever because digital seems to be one of the only ways that we can engage given the environment

Jason: And then the long term thinking is interesting and when you talk about it, right? Like I think a lot about referrals and what you’re talking about is true as well, which is one sale leads to another, not just referrals but with that same client. And I think one of the important things obviously from business owners and managers too, help sales reps think long term is the lifetime value of those clients. What that’s worth long term instead of just worrying about, okay, what can I get today? Like what is somebody worth? And not just like monetarily but when it’s set up right and the relationships because somebody is thinking too short term like you’re saying and their first interactions or the conversation or the pressure or they’re pushing someone to buy, then that person might not stay with the company very long or might not have a great experience. And that could be actually worse than getting the sale. Like not even getting the sale in the first place. Sometimes you can bring people on board in the wrong ways that will actually hurt you as a company.

Rakhi: For sure.

Jason: So let’s talk about your global experience, which I think is fascinating cause I don’t have that. So I have experience working with some companies consulting wise internationally, but not selling like you do. How do you see that? Because I have people listening to this podcast all over the world. What variations you see the way maybe it’s done in America versus other countries, whether it’s digital or things like that. Is there things that you see that vary, there’s some things that you know pretty much consistent from your experience?

Rakhi: Yes. I mean being in a global role has really taught me a lot. Basically I’ve had a chance to see how different cultures do business, how we’re able to conduct business in different places and I really encourage people if they have the opportunity at some point in their career, especially in a sales organization to try to get a global role. Because I think as much as you want to drive global consistency, standardization across tools, processes, playbooks, etc, when you actually go into the geographies and have a chance to spend time with your sellers, your managers, your customers, even you really see that there is a lot of variants and rightfully so. So we have to really be thoughtful about what are the things that we need to truly mandate across the globe to ensure that we have some level of consistency, but where do we want to localize our offerings, our go to market, the way we engage with customers so that we can actually approach them in a way that makes sense for them.

Rakhi: So I’d say that there are a lot of different things that we see, especially in Asia. There’s some interesting things. For example, in China, a lot of people do business over we chat, so it’s basically their version of kind of WhatsApp. And a lot of my sellers engage with each other on WeChat. I have a manager who every day sends trainings, tips and tricks, etc, on the WeChat group, for our inside sales team at IBM. I see people texting their clients on WeChat as well. So that’s obviously very different than what you might see in another geography. One thing I found was interesting as I had a chance to meet my team in Bangalore a couple of months ago, and they were saying that basically the culture of doing business in India is typically on the third time that you engage with a customer, they typically want to meet you even if you’re a digital seller.

Rakhi: And a lot of that is because there tends to be some false advertising in India where people are pretending to be other companies or maybe they’re a business partner or something like that. And so there’s all kinds of challenges. So I think because of that mentality, there are certain customers who just don’t feel as comfortable moving forward and having deeper discussions unless they’ve actually face to face, perhaps met the representative or the seller from your organization. And so for those reasons, we have to really be thoughtful and think about, well, where can we afford to maybe put a person face to face versus where do we want to continue to have a digital conversation? And really just sort of making sure that you’re understanding the climate and culture of every place. Because the reality is, even though I’m Indian, I spent my whole life living and working and growing up in the United States. And so I have to really rely on my local teams and managers to educate me on how to do business there.

Jason: Right. And if you guys had built a process that says like, no face to face meetings, digital means digital, that’s it. Then you’d have this segment in India where you probably lose a lot of opportunities in business because you’re trying to do it one way instead of meeting the local needs of people. And I think it’s interesting too, when you balance that where, you know, a lot of times sales reps have this idea of they need to do like, I gotta do this, or I gotta send emails. That’s how I close deals. Balancing that as a leader and a manager of, okay, so when is sending emails or meeting someone face to face necessary to get the deal done? Or just the sales reps excuse for the way they do it instead of moving deals forward.

Rakhi: Right.

Jason: So let’s talk about the sales experience. So obviously that’s the name of my show, it’s the sales experience podcast and we’ll talk about big enterprise sales because that’s what you’ve been doing for so long and are familiar with. And digital sales. What does a great sales experience look like?

Rakhi: Wow, that’s a great question. I would say that a great sales experience looks like helping a customer achieve their business outcomes, whether or not it’s what we wanted to sell them. So I think there’s so many times here where we go into conversations and we think, Oh, this person came and talked to us about X, Y, Z. And so we naturally want to sell them a certain offering or whatever. And then the more you unpeel and have conversations with their line of business owners and the CTO and the CIO and sometimes even HR and other resources that you might not naturally connect with, the more you realize that there’s actually more of a holistic discussion that needs happen. And that might end in closing of a sale, which ideally like that’s what my favorite sales experience would look like, but it might lead to something else.

Rakhi:

I mean it might lead to them introducing us to another company where we could help at my open up an opportunity where we’ve helped a certain division and then they open up the doors for a different division that you want to support. So I would say that ultimately, I mean ideally we would really want to help customers achieve their own business outcomes, but we want to do it in a way that is as seamless as possible for them to engage with us. And I think the more barriers that we can remove in terms of getting out the information to them as quickly as possible, tailoring the conversation to them as much as possible, showing them as many references, use cases that are actually relevant to the industry that they’re in. I think that’s really what it means to support a customer.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two. Again, make sure to subscribe. You can go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com and find the transcripts and all of Rakhi’s links. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales people. Remember the experience, you get them.

[E216] Diversity in Sales with Rakhi Voria – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Rakhi Voria, the current Director of IBM Global Digital Sales Development, has gone from selling lemonade as a kid to global sales leader and champion for diversity.

In this series we talk about diversity in the world of sales, to building out global digital sales teams and processes.

Some gems:
“There’s actually a lot of statistics out there that say that women are better at sales than men.”

“I think the traditional notions of what makes a person successful has really changed.”

“We have to get really, really crystal clear about what we’re selling, who we’re selling to, what their needs are, where they are in the industry.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Rakhi on LinkedIn

Rakhi’s Bio

Rakhi’s Links:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rakhivoria/

Forbes articles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/people/rakhivoria/#48e2218175a1

Women in sales documentary feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAnPbQJSHQ

E216 – Transcript

Jason: Hi, welcome to the sales experience podcast. On today’s episode I have Rakhi Voria. She is currently the director of IBM global digital sales development, which is a mouthful. She’s previously helped build digital sales at Microsoft to a team of over 2000 digital sellers globally. She’s also a member of Forbes Business Development Council, Executive Co-chair of Women at IBM and YC, which she also had a similar role at Microsoft in the past. Rakhi, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Rakhi: Thank you. Jason’s pleasure to be here.

Jason: So here you are having developed yourself as a kid from selling lemonade to a global sales leader and there’s so many topics that I want to talk about and just see where this conversation is going to go because you have had such a diverse kind of background and different path than I know for myself, I’m inside sales, telephone sales person, mostly consumer. Here you are focused mostly on digital sales, business, kind of big brand names, Microsoft, IBM and then also doing it on a global scale. And so let’s first start with the topic of diversity in sales and kind of what that means to you and what you’re focused on and how you think that helps with success in sales.

Rakhi: Sure. Well, I am usually passionate about having diversity in sales and particularly getting more women into sales and I think part of it is because of my own personal story. I myself fell into sales. I was not targeting a sales role when I applied to work at Microsoft straight out of graduate school, I applied for a marketing position and it was the recruiter actually who put me in the queue for sales and she said, you know, I think you listen intently. You communicate effectively, you have a consistent track record of success. All of those things are really important when it comes to sales, and I think I had this visceral reaction at the time. I sorta said, Oh my gosh, I would never go into sales. It’s so masculine, so competitive. I don’t have the personality for it. I’m not aggressive enough. But the recruiter was right.

Rakhi: I actually ended up loving my first sales role. It was a licensing sales specialist and I was actually really good at it. And so I think for so many different reasons, a lot of women tend to hold themselves back from sales positions. And I think a lot of people who might not necessarily fit certain characteristics of what a seller should “look like”. But I think it’s now more important than ever for so many different reasons. I mean, first of all, when you think about your customer base, the reality is we want to be able to emulate what our customers look like and our customers want to feel like they can engage with us and that we have empathy for them. And I think when it comes to women in sales in particular, there are a lot of reasons why women should go into sales.

Rakhi: First of all, women are really good at it. And so there’s actually a lot of statistics out there that say that women are better at sales than men. In fact, there’s also a lot of studies out there about how diversity is better for the bottom line. They say that companies with a higher number of diverse board directors have 42% higher return on sales compared to companies without that diversity on their board. So I think there’s a lot out there in terms of it just being better for the bottom line, but there’s also a lot out there on how it’s just the right thing to do.

Jason: Yeah, and it’s so fascinating that you talk about how women can be better at sales because in my experience, the top sales reps on most teams are women and not just because they have the killer thing, which is what I want to talk to you about as well. Right? It’s not that classic killer sales kind of approach, but just because when they get it and they can ask questions and they can listen and then move people forward. I think one of the biggest advantages that women have from all the successful ones I’ve seen in sales is that there’s no movies about women ripping people off in sales, which I’ve mentioned many times on the show in the past and I think that’s valuable where the stereotype is, if I, for example, if I’m calling somebody and it’s a sales type of interaction where I’m trying to sell to somebody, there’s going to be some level of guard that’s going to be up because they’re gonna think I’m out to sell them something for my own game. And when a woman calls somebody or is talking to someone about sales, it just generally the wall is down and it feels more like somebody who’s trying to help without those kinds of barriers.

Rakhi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think women have characteristics and skills that make them a very natural fit for sales. Like the ability to build trust or nurture relationships and listen and provide recommendations and all of the things that you just described.

Jason: Yeah. And then what’s interesting is that I know, you know, and this is probably what happened to you when you were not getting into our resisting it, when you wanted to go for the marketing role, is that thinking that to be successful in sales, you have to be this killer or you have to be this natural born salesperson or this person who’s going to manipulate or lie or push people to do things that they don’t want to do. When in fact, I mean, I think we’re both in alignment with this is that’s actually not what it takes to be successful. Long term, short term. Yes, you can do some shady stuff, but long term, no. And what the world needs is the opposite of those classic sales kinds of approaches.

Rakhi: That’s true. And I think even today, there’s still some times, unfortunately just a bad reputation that sales gets, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, but he asked individuals to describe what they think of when they hear the word sales. And the main adjectives were pushy, annoying, manipulative, dishonest. So I think those are words that no woman or man frankly wants to be associated with. And clearly there’s still a bias when it comes to sales, regardless of gender, frankly.

Jason: Yeah. Well, and that’s really the basis of my podcast, this show is to make that transition, help people realize like they can be successful in sales, which is why the stuff that you’re doing on a global ambassador standpoint, I think it’s so important because the more we can shift the way sales is done and how people view themselves as a salesperson know, the more we can eventually shift that perception of sales.

Rakhi: Absolutely.

Jason: So let’s talk about that, aspects of salespeople need to be a killer versus not. I mean, you’ve done some interviews and I’ve seen some videos where you’ve talked about that. Expand on that more in what you’re seeing kind of in digital sales or sales in general? You know.

Rakhi: Yeah, I mean I think the traditional notion of sales in general has really changed. And even the way that we sell and go to market has really changed. Customers have really shifted their desire to engage with companies from in person to digital engagement. We’ve seen a lot of data in the industry about that. A lot of teams that are building inside and digital skills, skills and organizations and everything to be able to, essentially meet customers where they are and help them with the right touch at the right time with the right insights and their digital journey. But I would say, I mean I think the traditional notions of what makes a person successful has really changed. It is the ability to show empathy, to listen, to be able to really understand what a company needs before actually essentially sharing what your offering is. And that’s too often what I think we see just too much of its people sort of going in with a mission.

Rakhi: We all have targets. I get it. I personally have a target, but the reality is it’s more about going to market with a conversation about your overall solutions versus one specific thing. That’s something we’ve thought a lot about at IBM, frankly. We actually recently have made some changes to the way that we sell and we think about things more from a conversation’s perspective versus a specific offering because so many of our different offerings actually come together as one. And so we’ve been training our sellers quite a bit on how to have those cross conversation discussions with people in a way that really asks them about what they need and how we can position our things to them versus being so aggressive and using that killer mentality that you described

Jason: And with your product and with a lot of things that I know with the companies I work with, what they have to sell is something complex, right? That’s why there’s some interaction and it’s not just an order that can be placed online. Yes, there’s digital sales that happen in all things. There’s an option for that, but a lot of times there needs to be some kind of conversation, some kind of discovery, some kind of solution-based prescription and diagnosis if you will. And I think that’s really where the value of salespeople comes in is not giving information or spewing out, like you said, where they start out talking about themselves, like the classic sales process. Especially if you’ve ever been to a trade show or walked up to a booth or gotten a phone call from somebody and they’re just spitting out monologues of information and telling you how great they are instead, asking questions and using discovery and trying to figure out what the solution is and then seeing the whole kind of catalog or buffet like you’re saying, of what else is in the solutions. What else can help that person with the goal of helping them, not selling them just this widget, but helping them get to a better place.

Rakhi: Yeah, and today I think things are still too vague. We have to get really, really crystal clear about what we’re selling, who we’re selling to, what their needs are, where they are in the industry. I think the best thing that salespeople can do is come up with customer references that are relevant. I can’t tell you how many times I have people who are trying to sell to me and they tell me something about something that’s in a completely different industry or a tiny startup. And I have to remind them while I work at a really big enterprise tech company, our needs are different, our desires are different. We have a lot of challenges that may be a small, a little bit more agile company, it might not have. And so I think the more we can really cater our messaging and tailoring it to the specific person that we’re talking to, even at an individual level, the better off we’ll be.

Jason: Which makes total sense. And I think that’s a valuable tip for anyone listening is be careful who you’re selling. I mean, I get that all the time on LinkedIn messages where people are just shotgunning messages to me and offering to help me grow my business without any idea of what I do or what I need or what I want. And I can imagine that same thing. I mean, you work at IBM, it’s a big company. If you know, I’m telling you some kind of easy solution or expecting you to make even a quick answer, quick buying decision, then it’s just not gonna work.

Rakhi: Absolutely.

Jason: So when you’re talking about there’s the process, it’s interesting because when I hear you talking about it, like I said, I’ve always been an inside sales, telephone sales person and leader. You’re on the digital side, right? But you also mentioned both is having that conversation, the digital, the phone, some kind of interaction, whether it’s online, but I think the valuable part that you said, which I appreciate and I’m always doing my part to not just focus on, just tell them everything’s gotta be telephone sales, right? It’s about a holistic solution. But really that point that you made about meeting people where they’re at or where they want to be in their buying journey, what are some of the things that you’ve developed with that? Or what would you suggest for a company or sales leaders in developing that? Let’s say if they’re starting out with one thing that they’ve only do face to face or they only do phone sales and not just all digital, but just a whole package of that selling journey.

Rakhi: Sure. I think it really does vary across industries and across size of companies, so it’s important for every single person who’s listening to really think about what will work best for you. For me, I mean I’ll share my experience. Having worked at two very large technology companies, both Microsoft and now IBM, I think we have both still to this day. There’s a certain level of client who does require more onsite experience services and really hand holding and understanding and feeling the technology and having resources who are on premises regularly trying to help them adopt their technology, use their technology, trying to make connections between where maybe the second purchase might be if they’ve already invested in one thing, how do we make it even better or bigger for them? Whereas we have several other companies, whether it’s small or large or whatever it might be, who truly do prefer engaging via digital methods, whether that’s over the phone or on video conference or whatever it might be.

Rakhi: So part of it is just really having to understand your client base and depending on what their needs are, their size are, you can really have to think about just sort of what is the best way to get to them. I’ve experienced some very, very large enterprise customers who they themselves don’t necessarily care about having face to face engagement anymore. And so I think the world has really changed. There’s a lot of data on this. There was a study that came out a year ago by insidesales.com that said, even the number of account executives who are field sellers, the amount of time that they spend selling remotely has actually increased by 89% over the past four years, which means that even field sellers are actually now engaging with their customers more and more over the phone. They’re typically working out of their home offices like you and I are right now. So I think there’s a lot of different ways that you can go to market. It goes to the type of company that you are, the type of companies that you’re trying to recruit to, and also just trying different methods that work depending on what that audience looks like.

Jason: That’s it for part one of my conversation with Rakhi Voria. Please make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com check out the show notes. Also, her links prior to the final part of the fourth part of this series. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you give them.

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[E215] Proactive Relationship Management with Adam Honig – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Fourth and final segment of the conversation with Adam Honig from Spiro.AI.

More gems:

On Selling vs. Buying – “I feel like most buyers want to feel like they discovered it too!”

Using persuasion – “so that’s why the persuasion comes in, you know, because we’re all somewhat skeptical about the world.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Adam on Linkedin

Adam’s Bio:

Adam is passionate about helping companies make more money using artificial intelligence, and is the driving force behind Spiro’s pioneering new approach: proactive relationship management. As CEO, he is focused on the company’s overall market strategy and vision.

Previously, Adam co-founded a software company which he led through its successful IPO and sale. Afterwards, he founded Innoveer, one of the largest CRM consulting firms, which was successfully acquired by Cloud Sherpas (and then Accenture).

Where to follow Adam:

Links:

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/infographic-not-your-fathers-crm/

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/proactive-relationship-management/

E215 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back sales experience podcast. This is part four. My final segment of the conversation I had with Adam. Hopefully you’ve enjoying all of it where we’re talking about CRMs and the processes and sales reps and managing and everything around kind of all of that part where we’re talking about success and this part here we’re going to address Adam’s feelings and experience based on what it takes to create that successful sales experience and then also what really good reps do in being effective and successful as salespeople. Here you go. Here’s part four. Enjoy.

Jason: When the economy changes, when things go down, when there is a shift and all of a sudden those opportunities in that tracking matter, then all of a sudden people will start to pay attention,

Adam: Well, I, you know, I’m a big believer in measuring step productivity, you know? So if you think about a very simple sales process from a lead to a qualified lead to a proposal or a quote to a win ratio, knowing exactly what the measures are and what you expect, you know, throughout that cycle. And then when you’re in a challenging sales environment, then you know, Hey, I better have 10 more leads if I’m going to make the numbers. Because if you don’t know what those percentages are, you’ll, I mean, you’re always gonna miss, you know, that’s, that’s my point of view.

Adam: You’ve got to know those because you have to have that baseline all the time. And for anyone listening to this, if you don’t know those stages, if you don’t know those numbers, especially if your reps aren’t using the CRM, which they probably aren’t, but you need to go back, even if it’s historical data and try to figure out those, you have that baseline of what success looks like. And then when things change or get difficult, you know, your business, the vertical competitors, whatever that force might be, you can’t just say, okay, well we used to close a hundred deals, now we close 50 right? Like we need to pump up marketing. Maybe that’s not the issue. Maybe it’s the people who are showing up for appointments or demos or the followup or sometimes companies will shotgun and just try to throw more stuff in all the buckets. But most often there’s one bucket or two buckets. The stages that are the issue.

Adam: We had that challenge at Spiro, we had a sales process challenge that we were winning the right number of deals. And so in terms of the proposals given out, that number was good, but we weren’t getting enough proposals out. But we were getting enough leads in and you know, kind of the, the breakthrough for us was realizing that we weren’t doing a good enough job really surfacing customer pain and we were spending too much time talking about us, you know? And, and for some people where the solution just boom, matched up perfectly with what they needed, it went right through and that was our win and then everybody else was like, yeah, I dunno. You know? And so we weren’t kind of getting to that, helping people understand how Spiro can solve their problems step, which is what was required to get the quote percentage off. So yeah, I would definitely keep a close eye on those ratios, especially the economy goes up and it goes down. I mean it’s all over the place. So I would definitely, if sales leadership were to ask me probably the number one thing that they should be doing, paying attention to those metrics in this kind of situation.

Jason: 100% and I love the, in your honest sharing, talking about, you know, where you guys were having an issue and it brings up something I try to mention all the time and it’s something I see that’s a constant factor with companies and or sales reps that are struggling, which is where literally they’re just talking about themselves the most, right? They think what they have. It’s either two sides. One is it’s awesome and it’s cool and it’s innovative. They just want to talk about it because it’s amazing, right? Like I could see that from your perspective. Or there’s reps on the other side, which just literally they’re not paying attention or they’re making it all about their own ego and they’re just sharing it. If you’re in sales, nobody cares what you do. They want to know what it’s going to do for them. Right?

Jason: And what you’re saying is those like easy lay down ones and that’s where, you know, I, I use the term a lot that I’ve seen is order takers, right? Order takers type sales reps can do all kinds of things wrong in a sales process. Still close a certain amount of deals because there’s some people who you’ll talk to that’ll be like, yeah, I get it. I want it. Here’s my credit card, let’s go. But usually you can never hit your quota. You can never make enough sales or money by that approach. So I’m glad that you said that and brought it up and that you guys recognized it and then made the shift more discovery, I’m sure.

Adam: Yeah, totally. We totally redid our discovery process and focused on what we felt like were the key pain issues that customers would need to have to be a good fit for Spiro. That was a key exercise that we went through. And I have to say since we did that, everything has kind of gone back to the where I expected it to be. So, you know, I feel like, Oh, okay, well gosh, we, we got, uh, we did okay on that one.

Jason: Well, and what’s fascinating to me and this human behavior wise is if you’re selling something that requires a lot of education, right? So let’s talk about you for example, in Spiro. So most people know what a CRM is, right? So anyone in sales management leadership, they know what a CRM is. They probably know they should be using one. Like you don’t have to educate them on what a CRM does, but you guys have to educate people on why you’re not a CRM and what it does differently. And there’s this learning curve, this education piece. There’s more information you have to share. The standard thing I see is that a lot of people, when they feel they have something that people won’t know about, that they have to educate, they lead with that education. The problem is that you can tell people about it.

Jason: They still don’t know how it affects them. And so the actual response is the more innovative and learning curve and information is required for someone to get what you do and why you’re different in my experience is the least you need to talk about it up front because you really want to know how to then apply it. Like if I tell you I have the solution for you, I want to know your problem and then tell you, okay, so based on your problem, here’s what it does for this thing and this thing and this thing and here’s how it makes your life better. But most people default to the more that they feel like they have to educate people, the more they educate and use long monologues and people don’t care.

Adam: I’m with you on 200%. I feel like most buyers want to feel like they discovered it too. Yeah. You know, so like they want to feel like they basically kind of invented it, you know, to the point. And so we have a, in our discovery process, which I love, which is basically saying, well based upon everything we’ve talked about, just imagine you had a million engineers that could write some software for you. What would it be like? You know, just tell me about that. And this is before we’ve told them anything about Spiro. It amazes me that most of the time they kind of say all of the things that we do. And then we’re like, okay, well it seems like we might have a good fit here. Let me tell you a little bit about us, you know, so.

Jason: And if you can unlock that for people, for your customers, you know, for everyone listening to this, if you can use those kinds of questions, get people thinking about it and come up with like, if you could do this, if you could have built it, what would it have done for you? Right. And then those people, obviously not everyone’s going to be thinking in that realm, but anybody who is, if they’re thinking about that, then that’s a home run product market fit for that group. Assuming they don’t then think, Oh wait a second, I could just build this myself. Which is the rebuttal sometimes to that.

Adam: Yeah. Well, that’s fine. They can go build their own Spiro for them and you know, I’ll license it from them cause it, we spend about 9 million bucks doing it. So if they can do it cheaper, I’m good on that.

Jason: And that kind of customer, you know, in my experience doesn’t make for a very good customer anyway because they’re always going to think they could have done it better. So those are in that category of people, I’m, I’m happy to not sell or have my reps sell to the ones who just think they can do it better themselves. We’re going to go try like give it a shot.

Adam: Yeah, for sure.

Jason: In that process, one final question I have is in your experience, because you’ve seen a lot of sales reps, right? This is not CRM related question, what do you attribute successful salespeople to doing or being, or having that really makes them successful?

Adam: Well, it really has to be a mix of things. You know, salespeople need to have the persuasion that you mentioned before to get people to connect the dots between what their pain or need is with, you know, how we can help them. And it can be hard for prospects to really listen to that. And so that’s why the persuasion comes in, you know, because it’s, you know, people, we’re all somewhat skeptical about the world. And so, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey Jason, I’ve got this great idea, blah, blah, blah. You’re like, yeah, right. So you need to be really good to navigate that part of the sales process. But if you don’t have the ability at the beginning, the front end of it really understand and listen well, it’s not gonna work either. So there’s kind of both listening and persuading component to it. And that’s really tricky because often people are really good at one, but not the other. So how do you marry the two of those together?

Jason: Yeah, I think that’s a great observation. I mean, the fundamental thing that you’re running up against with pretty much every prospect that doesn’t have their credit card in hand is that people want to stay in their comfort zone and they, and change is scary, right? Change equals death. And so what if they buy and they shouldn’t then, so you’ve really got to make it relevant to them and why it’s a safe decision, which like you said, like asking questions, listening leads, that persuasion part. And it is fascinating, the number of people I agree with, I’ve seen just like you where they can do one or the other, right? They can persuade, but it’s just so misguided and terrible that it’s like the wrong direction or not based on facts. It’s just all fluff. And then there are the people who can ask and can listen and know everything about that person. And they now have new Facebook friends and they share their favorite restaurants and all of that stuff and they’re crying on each other’s shoulder, but literally no sales.

Adam: Right. So, yeah. Cool

Jason: Yeah. Cool. Well, um, where is the best place for people to find you? To find the technology to, you know, engage in this kind of you and, or your pursuit of, uh, killing CRMs

Adam: I mean, I definitely would encourage people to connect with me on LinkedIn. So I’m just Adam Honig on LinkedIn with Spiro. It should be pretty easy to find. There are some other guys named Adam Honig, but I usually come up first. So you know, of course, I’m on Twitter. Uh, and if you know, if companies or salespeople are interested in learning more about basically it’s CRM that nobody needs to use. I mean you can always check out spiro.ai. We’ve got the fancy artificial intelligence domain name there. Yeah, exactly. So in Spiro, by the way, we named the company after the Latin words Ferrari, which means to breathe. So it’s our mission to breathe new life into this really terrible piece of technology that we’ve been talking about today. So hopefully that’ll help people keep it in their mind. Oh, the Latin scholars out there.

Jason: There we go. That’s they probably already thinking that already. Well, and I appreciate you and kind of this mission, cause one of the things I see, right? CRM is a great tool for management when it’s done right. It’s usually not something like you on what you’re working on in your mission. So take that piece away from salespeople. When it’s done properly, it will allow salespeople to focus on what they should, which is the right prospects and the right sales experience and moving the right customers forward and doing that at scale. So, you know, I see that as a great thing to help hopefully improve the world of sales, the right salespeople in the right direction. So I appreciate it and thanks for being on the show and talking about CRM and hopefully everyone actually tuned all the way through with our warning about this conversation not being about CRM usage and beating reps for that. So thank you for being on the show.

Adam: Yeah, my pleasure.

Jason: Cool. And for everyone listening, if you want to check out the rest of Adam’s links and also the transcript from these episodes, you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

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[E214] Proactive Relationship Management with Adam Honig – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Part 3 of Adam Honig, from Spiro.ai making his case for the death of the CRM.

This should make most sales reps and managers happy, as the CRM can be the bane of their existence.

Some gems…

“I fundamentally believe sales is all about helping people”

“like the saying goes like the worst kind of a lie you tell is the one to yourself.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Adam on Linkedin

Adam’s Bio:

Where to follow Adam:

Links:

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/infographic-not-your-fathers-crm/

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/proactive-relationship-management/

E214 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Adam Honig. We’re going to continue where we left off in part two if you didn’t catch it and make sure to download and listen to part one and two as we’re going to continue this conversation. But here it is part three of my conversation with Adam.

Adam: I mean there’s some people who feel like taking their own notes helps engage their mind and thinking about it, but there’s other people who just want to be in the flow and working with it, you know? And, and so if the software can do that, great for you. You know, there are some people who are better at followup reminders than another, so the software can help you with that. You know? So there’s a lot of things just for the individual salesperson that this type of approach can help.

Jason: So just real quick, I guess kind of plug and or kind of explanation of Spiro and then I want to get into some sales related topics, but what have you guys done with that? Because I think this is, and again, not as a sales pitch for what you guys do, but also I think it’s really interesting for people to hear about it and see where the technology is going and what options are out there as everything’s evolving, right. I mean there’s phone systems and setups out there where literally like you’re saying, where it will take a call, transcribe it, use NLP and AI and behavioral conversation information and basically tell you how you scored, who’s talking and who talked the most on those calls. So I think all of that is fascinating for companies who want to evolve and be innovative. So a little bit about what Spiro does and how it works.

Adam: Yeah, so we have a product which we’ve cleverly named Spiro. We’re not very good at naming things it seems, but anyway, you know, we spend about four years building it. We’re in the market about a year, two years now, and we’ve got about 200 customers and it’s a replacement for CRM. So it’s for companies that want to get rid of CRM or don’t have CRM, but they need a sales platform to help make their sales teams more productive and also forecast and run the business. So CRM components are in it in terms of having a pipeline and a list of contacts if you want, or a list of deals that you’re working and stuff like that. But it literally works in the background to watch what the sales team is doing. It updates itself, it creates contacts, it adds deals, it listens to phone calls and transcribes them.

Adam: Everything we’ve been talking about, but it uses that data to make sure that the sales team is proactively following up on everything and not letting anything fall through the cracks. So if I have a conversation with you, it’ll remind me about the follow up. If I’ve got a proposal out to you, you know, it’ll automatically, you know, add that in so that I can put that into the forecast properly. And then for sales leaders, it pulls up all of that insight into a reporting environment so they can really know what’s going on and help coach and guide the team more effectively.

Jason: Got it. And the fundamental key is how that’s done automatically, right? Without the sales reps intervention for the most part.

Adam: Yeah. So I mean we connected directly to people’s emails. It comes with the voiceover IP dialing solution. So you’re literally, every call is going through Spiro and everything’s being transcribed and recorded for a lot of times we’re connecting Spiro to the company’s ERP systems or ordering systems or anything like that. So it’s able to pull all that data in. Then we have a machine learning model that sits underneath all of that, that’s constantly analyzing all of the data that it’s seeing from everywhere and pushing recommendations to people. It could be via email, it could be via SMS, it could be in the Spiro app and it says, okay, don’t forget to call Sally because you know she’s the next most important you need to talk to. And if you find that you’ve got an hour for either prospecting or following up on deals spirit, we’ll just give you one after the other, after the other, if the people that you need to reach out to to move stuff forward. So it’s sort of a no think environment. That’s part of what we’re doing.

Jason: So then let’s take that and kind of go into some of the stuff that I like to talk about in the show. And since you’ve done, you know, essentially CRM sales consulting and are running organizations for so long, this being the sales experience podcast, what do you think a great sales experience looks like for salespeople and for customers? Either what you’re doing at Spiro or what you’ve seen in the past or what you think, like what does that great sales experience look like?

Adam: Well you, you basically called me old just like a couple of minutes ago, but I am a big fan. You said he had all this experience, but uh, I’m a fan. I’m a big Zig Ziglar fan, and you know, I fundamentally believe sales is all about helping people and you know, I feel like the best salespeople, they’re there, they’re kind of like customer success people, but repurchase like they’re really out there to understand, give prospects and customers a chance to explain their problems and even help them think through the problems. Because a lot of times we have to really articulate, you know, what we’re trying to solve before we can figure out what it is in the nugget, you know? And so I think great sales people and a great sales experience is all about the kind of way that you’re learning throughout and you’re, you know, from the customer and they feel like they’re being helped through something and not really being pushed anything. That’s where I would start.

Jason: I think that’s a great point too because I’m really big on seeing that journey of a customer from the beginning all the way through. A lot of things focused on the customer experience, which is once they become a customer, customer service, fulfillment, processing, you know, retention, all of that. For me, it starts with marketing moves to sales. You’ve got to make sure it’s on the lineman, but I agree with you completely. I mean a great sales experience as somebody who understands that prospect and then sets them up properly as a customer, not just in order to get that commission of that sale today, but for that person to be wildly successful with the product or service as you know, a good fit.

Adam: Right. One of the thing I I always advocate for is surveying your prospects, you know, after the sale, how well did we do? Not from like a, I’m trying to re-engage you and sell you in a different way kind of thing, but just really like, Hey, you know what our job here is to help you. And I really, you know, answer one question, how well did we do in that process to give us feedback, you know, on how we’re doing that. And uh, I mean that’s not something that we do in the product or anything like that. It’s just sort of part of the process to really reinforce that behavior both for the sales team and then to figure out if you need to make any course corrections on it.

Jason: And what’s interesting for any owners or managers who are, or even sales reps listening to this is basically what Adam is saying is that you make the sale, someone you know, swipes their card or pays the invoices moving forward. You’re saying like at the end of that process now they’re a customer, the sale is done, survey them and see how the sales process went.

Adam: I’m actually saying survey the lost deals. I mean your, your customers. I mean for goodness sakes, I hope they’re going to say everything went well. You know, that would be terrible if they didn’t, you know, but you know, a lot of times the, the solution or the service that the salesperson is providing just isn’t the thing that they need and that’s no harm or foul on them, but they should still be, you know, a useful resource and helping out and stuff like that. Then that’ll turn into referrals or future business or anything like that. And I we, a lot of companies do customer surveys, but you know, I don’t find like a lot of people do prospect surveys.

Jason: Yeah. In my experience with that, whenever I brought that up, the companies or approach that with managers, owners or sales reps, the ones who know that they’re doing things the proper way, meaning using persuasion. So not just being an order taker where they just lay down to whatever deals, but you know, actually moving people forward, which takes persuasion but not manipulation. And if they’re actually selling something that has value, which hopefully most people are, then there shouldn’t be any resistance to surveying either knew we sold clients like the day they’re sold, like how was the buying experience or a, you know, what you’re saying is the last deals like the lost prospects. If you’re competent in what you do and you know that you’re one of the good guys’ air quotes, then that’s not an issue. The challenge is, and I see this when I bring this up to people and they’re like, Oh no, we would never do that. To me that’s a red flag. Like if you’re listening to this and you have that reaction to what Adam just said and you’re like, no, we would never want to do that. Like we don’t want to open up that Pandora’s box. Then you really want to take a serious assessment of your sales process and or your team.

Adam: Yeah, I mean it’s like the saying goes like the worst kind of a lie you tell is the one to yourself. It can be painful. And you know, we’ve sent out surveys and gotten some, you know, negative comments and stuff like that and you know, that’s, you know, that’s the only way you can really improve if you really know where you are.

Jason: Yeah. And I think that’s a huge one to survey those lost prospects and you’re right, I mean, no, just to get the feedback and see what happened. Because again, if you’re a true sales organization that’s doing some kind of consultative sale, right. So it’s not a one size fits all. It’s not an everybody wins, right? It’s not everyone gets a magazine subscription. Anyone who answers that door, I’m going to sell them a set of knives. It’s like I have a solution like yours, and even my business, right? It’s not a good fit for everybody. But if it is like you should do the deal and if it’s not, then it totally makes sense, right? Like I don’t support for most professional organizations, 100% close ratio because that means you’re pushing people through and that’s not effective and that’s not good and not sustainable. So you’re always going to have those people who aren’t a good fit. You want to know that you’re still on the right path. Your product is still Oh, affect source services, effective for most everyone or the people you want to target. But you also want to know those middle ones where maybe your rep said something wrong or marketing is not in alignment or your process is broken. You shouldn’t be afraid of that feedback.

Adam: Yeah. Otherwise, like I said, how can you fix it? So I think that’s really, it would be interesting if more companies did that for sure. And maybe that’s our next company, Jason. Maybe we’ll build a software platform for prospect, you know, survey.

Jason: Yeah. And I think that, I think you’re going to have, uh, the software is the easy part, the change management, like getting people to use the CRM. So getting owners and managers to be excited about serving their lost deals. Cause again, there’s those innovators, those are early adopters who would want to do that. And like I want to know. And then there’s those other people who are just like, no, I just put my head in the sand, you know, kind of like the CRM discussion and I’m making enough money. We’re doing well. The reps are closing enough deals. Like we don’t want to know. Right. I don’t care about they’re using the CRM. I don’t care about the prospects we lost. Just keep close with deals.

Adam: Yup. Yup. Well it’s a good point.

Jason: Well again. And CRM usage. You know, marketing. A lot of stuff I talk about in this show and a lot of stuff you probably dealt with over the years, you know, there’s times where the economy and the market is good and things are good and you don’t care cause it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the reps are using the CRM. I don’t care what opportunities are out there. We’re making money, we’re closing. When the economy changes, when things go down, when there is a shift, and all of a sudden those opportunities in that tracking matter, then all of a sudden people will start to pay attention.

Jason: That’s it for part three. Again, make sure to subscribe. If you want to read the transcripts or check out Adam’s links before part four, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast find all the episodes, show notes, links, and transcripts there. As always, keep in mind everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

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[E213] Proactive Relationship Management with Adam Honig – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Part 2 of the CRM busting conversation with Adam Honig, from Spiro.ai.

Love CRMs? Hate CRMs? We talk about why…for both groups.

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Adam’s Bio:

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Links:

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/infographic-not-your-fathers-crm/

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/proactive-relationship-management/

E213 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back, part two, my conversation with Adam Honig from Spiro.ai. We’re going to continue this conversation talking about CRMs, not talking about CRM, sales reps, all of those things. Here you go, here’s the episode. I’ll see you at the end. If it’s a long sale cycle, you need more relational people, it’s going to be more analytics, there’s going to be a lot more that you have to know. If it’s short, then it’s about, you know, being able to use persuasion, get in there, you don’t want to overburden somebody and then make the sale happen and then move on.

Adam: Right, right. Yeah, no, that’s a really good way of thinking about it as well.

Jason: So let’s talk about CRMs then since that’s kind of the point and the focus of this in your experience, because you’ve done the CRM game for a really long time and obviously there’s your technology, which we’ll talk about when that comes up. In your experience, any way to get like sales reps to do the right behavior, to reinforce the right behavior, encourage the right behavior for anyone listening to this who has a CRM or they’re on spreadsheets and they’re like, what can I do?

Adam: I don’t think so. I think the time is, listen, the first, so I was a partner at Siebel Systems in the 90s with the first true CRM that came out, and I worked with every CRM since, I’ll just give you one example. In my last company, we worked with a company called Covidien, which is a medical equipment maker, a $3 billion company. They had spent $3 million to implement salesforce.com with a sensor and like six months later, 10% of their sales team was using it. So the answer at the time was for them to pay me a half a million dollars to do some rework to the system and try to change it. So the sales people were going to use it and stuff like that.

Adam: And yeah, I mean we made some changes that, you know, usage went up to 30% they were super happy, but it’s a terrible thing. No, I think there’s just systematic issues as to why 20 years later after CRM was invented, we’re still saying how do we get salespeople to use it. And what happened for me was I just had this moment in the movies. Of course as these things happen that I realized, you know, that we should not continue trying to solve this problem. It’s like you can only fix the house so much. At some point you have to be like, listen, we need a new foundation. Okay, you’re going to lose the kitchen. It doesn’t matter. Like let’s just tear the thing down and build something that actually works for sales people instead of, you know, asking them to change the way that they’re doing. Cause I don’t think they’re ever going to do that. That’s just one man’s point of view here.

Jason: Yeah. And at the top because I almost thought you were going to give some actual tips, but it makes sense kind of with what your experience has been and where you’re going with this. And you know what you guys do at Spiro

Adam: And I tell you that the classic change management things to get people to adopt CRM. So you make people live in the system, you run all of your meetings with the system pulled up to you know, name and shame them. If they’re not putting data in, you put incentives in place to encourage the right behavior. You have negative things that happen if people don’t follow the rules and four weeks later all of that goes out the window because you’re chasing this deal. And it’s much more important than doing any of these, you know, things, I just charge you half a million dollars for it. That’s the problem with all of it.

Jason: Yeah. And it’s tough cause I really agree based on my experience, which definitely hasn’t been as long as yours. But in all the organizations I’ve seen where people aren’t using it, the only time where it really does work well where a CRM but it’s beyond a CRM because it’s actually more order management and sales management is when all orders or things have to go through that CRM in order to be a consummated, right. For the sales rep to move a purchase order through, like it has to go through that, then you know that at least those are going to be done 100%

Adam: Right. Yeah. I mean a lot of sales VPs, you know that I’ve met with when we were trying to get them to do CRM were like, well I’ll just fire all the sales reps who don’t use the CRM. Well I’ve never seen that happen. You know, it’s never the case.

Jason: And I have threatened that in the past when I’ve been a VP of sales or been told to threaten that from higher up and yeah, it never happens. And I also fundamentally know if you do it and you bring in new people, I mean like you’re talking about fundamentally, it’s just a, it’s a function of what makes sense. Right? Square peg in the round hole.

Adam: Well, I’ll tell you something really funny that’s related to this. So one of the things, you know, kind of working in Syria and all this time, my natural assumption was that every company had a CRM. And when we started Spiro, what we realized is that actually they don’t. And so Spiro has customers, big steel manufacturers, logistics firms, all kinds of companies, big sales teams running everything on Excel and stuff like that.

Jason: And not, and not Excel like with Google sheets where they’re shared stuff. It’s these sheets where they’re, yeah, I met a, a month or so ago, I was at a trade show and uh, met a company there in the roofing industry and they, uh, $15 million a year in revenue on spreadsheets

Adam: Like, so I, I mean, I met with, uh, you know, we were pitching a client who’s a fortune 500 company, I’m going to call them iron mountain. But it doesn’t have to be them. Maybe it is, I’m not going to say, and uh, they have a sales team, uh, one of their divisions that every week they fax in all of the people that they called from their printed out spreadsheets. And I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. Where are we here?

Jason: And just to confirm, depending on when you’re listening to this, this episode was also recorded in the year 2020.

Adam: Right. And this was last year or so maybe. But they were like, well, we, you know, we corporate IT can’t get to us to help us with this. We don’t know what to do. So this is what our strategy is. And they had Salesforce for order management. So when a customer bought something, yeah, they’d go key it into Salesforce. And that was the first point at which they knew that there was a prospect in their pipeline when they had the PO. Here’s the point. So my point is, I’m sorry. So if CRM is really something that’s going to help everybody, why are these guys doing that? Isn’t it a 100% of the market is like, Oh yeah, well everybody’s got CRM. I mean it’s supposed to like 40% which is what I’m kind of estimating at this point.

Jason: Right. Well, I mean, I think it’s because if salespeople are good at the selling part and not the admin part, they’re generating money. And then there’s no, no evolutionary pressure on the business to say, well, we’re missing opportunities. We’re losing money. So we better have a system in place and make people use it and have that shift. Right.

Adam: And since most of the software companies out there are run by engineers who, I have many friends who are engineers, I have nothing about engineers, you know, they’re like, okay, CRM is a problem. We’re gonna fix it. We’ll make it the buttons bigger and the fields easier to put stuff in and you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, and do this stuff and maybe salespeople will use it and it’s, but it’s, no, it’s just this fundamental issue that that’s not going to happen.

Jason: So here’s what’s interesting is on the consulting side, I have many companies I work with that need help with their CRM, using it, like all of this stuff we’re talking about, that’s always challenging. And then we’re essentially saying it’s never going to work better. Some things from management, also the order, you know, putting things orders in and then moving them forward. Like that’s the value of the CRM. But you’re right, like knowing what opportunities or potential clients and prospects are out there prior to that actual order being placed. Most of the time you just literally have no idea and you know, just hold sales reps accountable to their quota and their numbers and say here, do this production, but I have no way of tracking your activity. And so it’s interesting because on one side I have that part that I’m dealing with companies.

Jason: And then the other side, which is something I’ve said for at least a year now, and we’ll say it right now, it’s 2020 like why aren’t we manually entering anything anyway? Like why aren’t we just thinking stuff anywhere in our lives? Right? Think of all the stuff that is automated now that you don’t have to, I mean, I can literally talk into my phone and get food delivered within a half hour, like goes to your point, right? I’m, I’m basically setting you up, which is, you know, why would you even have to enter anything into a CRM anyway? It’s 2020.

Adam: Yeah, it’s a real conundrum. I mean, you know, I think that the software vendors in the CRM space are just thinking about it wrong. That’s my point of view. And then the big successful ones like Salesforce, who’s a great company, you know, they’ve got a product which depends on like tens of thousand ad-ons to make it better. And you know, if you, you want to spend, you know, money for Salesforce, then add a lot of stuff together to it. You can do some of the things

Jason: And paying somebody who has a bachelor’s degree in Salesforce and potentially a master’s degree in Salesforce to then be able to actually make it your own.

Adam: Exactly. And that’s great. And you know, I’m sure for some companies that’s definitely the way to go. But at spiro. You know, our kind of point of view was, well, you know, if we didn’t have a legacy product like Salesforce, how would we make it, what would it do just by itself. So we were able, we had the benefit of, of starting the company at a time where we could take advantage of all of this voice recognition and natural language processing and stuff like that to kind of build a solution that, I mean frankly people don’t have to use, I mean this is not the goal. Like isn’t that what you want? Forget about talking something into your phone. Call somebody. All the notes go in. It sets the reminder cause it heard you say, Hey Jason, I’ll call you back next Tuesday, you know, or whatever you and then you know, like, and even summarizes it. So later when you go back and want to know what happened, you don’t have to like read like five pages of the transcription. You can just see, Oh yeah, this was the summary of it. I mean, wouldn’t that be the dream? Why don’t we do that instead?

Jason: That then you just don’t have to do anything. Just sell. Right.

Adam: Exactly. I mean, you still have to think, you know, hopefully and listen really well and all those core sales skills. But you know, you don’t have to worry, you know, if you’re in the moment with a prospect, I mean there’s some people who feel like taking their own notes helps engage their mind and think about it. But there’s other people who just want to be in the flow and working with it, you know? And, and so if the software can do that, great for you. You know, there are some people who are better at follow up reminders than another, so the software can help you with that, you know? So there’s a lot of things that have just for the individual sales person that this type of approach can help

Jason: That’s it for part two. Make sure to subscribe everywhere that podcasts are available, iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google play. Everywhere that podcasts are available, you should go find it. Made sure to subscribe so you can get all the new episodes and if possible, leave a rating or review. All of those really help. And I appreciated it and I see all of those. So thank you for everyone that who does that and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. People remember the experience you gave them.

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[E212] Proactive Relationship Management with Adam Honig – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Adam Honig, from Spiro.ai is on a mission to get rid of the CRM, especially for sales teams. And this is coming from a guy who spent years as a CRM consultant and expert!

Check out this interesting discussion around why the CRM doesn’t work and what alternatives there are for managing a sales team and a sales pipeline.

Episode highlight:

“One of the big problems of course is CRM is kind of a one size fits all. It doesn’t adapt itself to the working style of the team.”

“Sometimes people tell me that they feel like they’re in a bad relationship with it because all it does is take from them. It doesn’t give anything back.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Adam on Linkedin

Adam’s Bio:

Where to follow Adam:

Links:

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/infographic-not-your-fathers-crm/

https://spiro.ai/resources/guide/proactive-relationship-management/

E212 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. On today’s episode I have Adam Honig, CEO of spiro.ai. He has founded and led companies to IPO and sales. He’s even run some really big CRM consulting companies and then been a part of those being taken over and sold by the companies and his current venture is with Spiro and it’s helping companies make more money using artificial intelligence and actually to get rid of the CRM which should be a fun conversation. Adam, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Adam: Thanks Jason. I’m really happy you brought up that getting rid of CRM cause usually if you hear a CRM mentioned in the beginning of a podcast people might want to skip it. So don’t skip it cause we’re all about burning it down, not about making it better. So I just want to put that right away into the conversation.

Jason: I’m glad you did cause it’s funny cause I hadn’t thought about bringing that up but it’s so true. Obviously the place we’re going to start with, but you know who knows where I was going to go is the fundamental thing that most sales people do not like CRM. They don’t use a CRM. They don’t want to put the data in. Now I know some professional salespeople who, true professionals where they use a CRM, they enter everything. They know the reports, they know their numbers. They’re using that as a powerful tool because they have that operational side. But yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because if somebody is listening, especially if it’s a salesperson or a manager, they might think, Oh my gosh, this is going to be about CRMs and I don’t want to listen to this because I’m tired of being told that I need to use my CRM.

Adam: I mentioned CRM to people. Usually I get a very funny reaction. Sometimes people tell me that they feel like they’re in a bad relationship with it because all it does is take from them. It doesn’t give anything back. Then there’s other people. I was actually at a conference and we, I asked the crowd of salespeople how much they like their CRM and some guy threw something at me. So you know, there’s like a wide range of people who go all the way from dislike to hate. So you know, you’re sting field to be in. I’ve worked in CRM for about 20 years before starting Spiro and it’s just like, I often draw a graph that shows how much money people spend on something and how much they hate it. And CRM is the top right quadrant.

Jason: They spend the most and they hate it the most.

Adam: They spend the most and they hate it the most. And it, everybody just feels like it’s a necessary evil, but it’s not.

Jason: Versus what’s probably in the whatever quadrant that might be where spends the most but loves it the most. Something like what? A Ferrari or a Lamborghini.

Adam: Yeah, or you know, something like that. Exactly. Or, a fabulous vacation. Like would you have rather have a fabulous vacation in Hawaii or a CRM system that works really well? I mean, you know, I’d say 99 out of a hundred salespeople would choose Hawaii, you know, like whatever.

Jason: Yeah, I think that’s pretty even the people who love CRMs and see the value in them, nobody’s going to pick that.

Adam: I once interviewed a sales leader and I was asking him about CRM cause this comes up a lot for me. And he said, you know, when I interview people for hiring, I ask them how well they do using their CRM. You know, and I never hire the ones that tell me that they do a good job with it because either they’re lying or they’re terrible salespeople. And I was like, Whoa, that’s one of extreme but well.

Jason: But I’ll tell you. So like having managed sales managers and having, you know, as a consultant and dealing with companies where they’re either struggling or failing with their CRM usage or they’re even on spreadsheets, which is even more of a mess. That’s an interesting question that that person you’re talking to asks, because I also know that there’s a lot of people out there who use a CRM a lot, are diligent with their notes and their updates as a way to procrastinate and stall from actually doing sales activities.

Adam: Right? So it’s, it’s you’re sort of in a double bind. So my last company was a very large consulting firm. We worked with like MetLife and Charles Schwab and people like that, helping them implement CRM, Salesforce, Oracle, whatever. And we did this project for a company called Abbott Lab where we analyzed how well their salespeople were doing and how much data they put into Salesforce in this case. And you know, of course there were some exceptions, but it was pretty much the inverse. The more they put in, the worst they were at sales. And so I don’t know if that’s a causal relation, meaning that it caused them to do less or not, or what you said it was just a way of them filling their time. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit insidious, the whole CRM thing.

Jason: And I think it really is, there’s a happy medium. There’s the people who can put data in and be effective and do it quickly and use it as a tool and you know, and optimize that. But yeah, I mean I, I’ve seen those people who they’re really detailed at the CRM and, from a management perspective I actually have to tell them, spend less time on your notes and your updates and actually do more phone calls. Right? Like their number of phone calls are low because they’re doing this and it’s really a procrastination method.

Adam: Well one of the big problems of course is CRM is kind of a one size fits all. It doesn’t adapt itself to the working style of the team. And so you might have some team members who are really good at taking notes and striking the balance. You might have others that don’t know how to manage their time and it just doesn’t help it cause it’s really inflexible.

Jason: How much do you think, cause this conversation is not just going to be about CRMs and why nobody uses them. It might end up mostly being about that. But you know, the question I have is more on the the nature versus nurture, and this is obviously for salespeople as thing managers, owners, but it’s more of the like are the people who generally go into sales, the kind of people who don’t want to have to do CRM stuff cause they just want to sell? Or is it that CRMs like which one is it the chicken or the egg? Right, like of why there’s no data going in.

Adam: I believe that great salespeople are very in the moment they’re focused on the person or group that they’re talking to. They’re listening really well and they’re trying to be super engaged. And I just find those types of skills and then obviously solutioning to figure out a way to help the prospect or customer and all of those skills or seem orthogonal to the kind of analytic note taking behavior that we would expect from people who are more academically oriented or in the accounting profession or something like that. You know, after a lot of time in the field, I’ve come to believe that it’s just an opposite reaction. So it’s, I don’t know whether that’s nature or nurture to go to your metaphor, it’s kind of working into the nature of salespeople to have them be note takers.

Jason: Yeah, and I, and I think there’s, it’s a very rare breed of successful salesperson who has the detailed analytical side. I mean it does happen in any industry and everywhere, but generally sales attracts the people who are more promoter type, outgoing, want to talk to people, you know, are used to getting through life or experiences or issues or challenges by thinking about stuff, talking about it, moving, taking action, you know, not sitting down and making flow charts or graphs or spreadsheets about it. I feel like for myself, for example, like I’m a spreadsheet flowchart. Like that’s my default, any new project, I’m making a flow chart and a spreadsheet. Like those are my two things and I can sell the living crap out of anything just because I’ve learned that and I can kind of use it. But I also learned early on in sales not to bring too much analyzing to a sales process because you can cause your customers to also have analysis paralysis.

Adam: So it’s, it’s a tricky problem. You know, so I, you know, I’d say a lot of sales leaders look for different approaches to this, but Spiro we use the predictive index model to be hiring salespeople. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that. It’s sort of a cognitive behavioral assessment to understand personality types. And we have a point of view saying that we think certain personality types with the characteristics you mentioned work really well in sales and you know, our hiring process makes sure that we’re getting more of the people that we think are a high percentage of success and to, you know, just, you know, kind of focus on individual bets, if you know what I mean. Across the board.

Adam: Are you familiar with that model at all? It’s like a 10 or 15 questionnaire and then you can kind of get a glimmer of insight as to what’s going on for the person.

Jason: Yeah, I think those are really important for the hiring process, especially if you do that somewhere in the beginning before even having conversations and either filter people out if it’s clear on what you want or don’t want. And then you know, also have some kind of range in there where you still want to talk to the person. But I think that’s, I mean, you know, once you, you develop as a company, as a business owner or manager, the right understanding of the personality behaviors kind of approach that you want, that works well for your product or service, then, you know, figure out some kind of test or metric to be able to get more of that and filter out the ones that you know, absolutely aren’t going to work.

Adam: Definitely. And of course you have to match that against your target buyer too, right? Like if you’re selling to accountants or engineers, you know, it probably helps to have people who are a little bit more analytic in that sales function, right?

Jason: Yes. And, but here’s the, one of the interesting things about that is that if you put two analytical people together, nothing’s going to get done because they’re going to go into this researching hole of analysis paralysis. But if you have somebody who’s way too outgoing and extrovert salesperson, let’s-meet-at-happy-hour-to-get-this-sale-done type of person, and you combine that with an accounting customer that’s going to be too far over cause they’re also not going to trust it and it’s not going to feel right.

Adam: Exactly. And I think, you know, often kind of the buying persona gets overlooked in sales hiring.

Jason: Yeah, and I think what’s important, and this is what I tell a lot of clients as well and I’ve talked about on the show, is you also want to match your sales hires, who you’re looking for and what their natural tendency is with your sales cycle. So do you have a really short sales cycle? Is it a one call close or is it within, you know, a matter of hours or days from the initial contact? Or is it long? Right? Because if it’s a long sales cycle, you need more relational people. It’s going to be more analytics. There’s going to be a lot more that you have to know. If it’s short, then it’s about, you know, being able to use persuasion, get in there. You don’t want to overburden somebody and then make the sale happen and then move on.

Adam: Right, right. Yeah. No, that’s a really good way of thinking about it as well.

Jason: That’s it for part one. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com to get the transcript. All of Adam’s show notes. As always, keep in mind that everything in life, the sales people, remember the experience you gave them.

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[E211] Higher Level Thinking with Bob Sager – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Final segment of my conversation with Bob Sager, founder of SpearPoint Solutions, on creativity, profitability, and effectiveness in business and sales.

Some gems from Part 4:

“One way to do that is just with lots of questions instead”

“In today’s world to be successful, you’ve got to be a problem solver.”

“And part of that comes from the scarcity mindset versus abundance mind.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bob on Linkedin

Bob’s Bio

The founder of SpearPoint Solutions, LLC, Bob’s professional background includes over three decades of experience in sales, leadership and training. He uses that experience and innovative thinking to develop business strategies that help organizations get unstuck. He also facilitates training on methods of thinking more creatively that can help any business or nonprofit thrive in the today’s economy. Among other accomplishments, Bob is the inventor of the innovative/creative thinking game, What’s the BIG Idea?™, author of the personal achievement book, Discovering Your Greatness and the book of innovative strategies and how to create them, 101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas: And Ten Ways YOU Can Create Your Own. He is also the host and chief innovator of the Out-THINK the Competition podcast.

Bob’s Links

Web site: www.SpearPointOnline.com

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/bobsager

Twitter handle: @Bob Sager

The SpearPoint Solutions company page on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/spearpoint-solutions-llc

Company page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SpearPointSolutions

Links to Bob’s books:

Discovering Your Greatness: A Higher Level Thinking and Action Guide

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0752Q2NXZ

101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas: And Ten Ways YOU Can Create Your Own

This book is published by our company. I curated the content and am one of 39 contributing authors.

Living a Wealthy Life: Stories of Gaining an Abundance in All Five Forms of Wealth

https://www.valuewalk.com/author/sagerbobgmail-com/

Author page (where people can access all my articles) at Valuewalk.com

E211 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome to the final part of my conversation with Bob. If you haven’t listened to parts one, two and three. Our journey has been all over the place. If you know my show, if you’ve listened to this season 2 especially if you know that I have these questions that I want to ask people. I’m not going to get to them with Bob because our conversation is so great and we kind of finish on a note here talking about abundance, wrapping it in, in there about caring about your prospect, doing it the right way. A lot of themes carry throughout that help you, whether you’re business to business, sales, business to consumer, you’re managing a sales team and you’re trying to find ways to help your team be more effective and manage them to a higher level. Lots of great concepts here. It’s the final part. Enjoy.

Bob: The guy said, if you say it, they doubt it. If they say it, it is the truth. And so I think if you’re good at asking questions that are empathetic with your customer, they’ll lead themselves and a lot of cases to the decision, even though you’re sort of guiding the conversation, they’ll lead themselves so the decision that you’re the right person to do business for them.

Jason: And I love that reminder cause I haven’t thought about that in so long, where people entering into an interaction where they know they’re dealing with a salesperson. Now that salesperson could have any kind of variety of titles. Companies are very creative to try to hide the fact that it’s a salesperson, but it’s actually a salesperson, account executive, sales consultant, like whatever you want to call it. It’s still a sales role. When a prospect enters into that conversation or that interaction, the defenses are up for most of them because they know it’s going to be this battle.

Jason: Or they know the salesperson. The classic model is to use manipulation or to push them into buying even if they don’t want to. And so their defenses are going to be up. And like you said, if I’m a salesperson that I tell you something, those defenses are gonna make you repel that even if I said the sky is blue, you’re going to be like, no, it’s not. Because I know if I agree with you, if the sky is blue then I’m going to have to buy your product or service, you know, or what some of the old school strategies are. Okay, get them to say yes five times or seven times and then it’s a sold deal, right? Like the sky is blue and do you like chocolate? Like whatever it is. And so prospects are just going to disagree and that’s great that you point out.

Jason: One way to do that is just with lots of questions instead so that they’re coming up with the answers, they’re moving themselves towards the finish line. And again, that goes back to what I said, like I don’t focus a lot on closing lines and strategies and techniques because if you guide somebody through that, then it’s done, right? Like the doctor example, the doctor isn’t having to use sales closing manipulative techniques when they diagnose the problem and give you a prescription or the surgery or the therapy or the medication you need. Like it’s like, here you go. Do you have any questions? Great. Now go do it. Right? They’re not like having to, is this something you’re interested in doing today, Bob? If I can find a way to solve this problem for you, would you be interested in signing the contract? No. Like you have a problem, I’m going to solve it. That’s it. And then go on your way.

Bob: Or the classic car sales line “Can I earn your business today?”

Jason: Can I earn your business to do surgery on your leg that’s broken today? Is that something I can do? Is there anyone else who needs to be involved in this decision today Bob? To get your heart issue taken care of, like, no, but, and again, if you shift to that from the classic sales model that we were all taught and out there and you shift to more of that kind of consultative caring, like you said, being empathetic for the person, how do you solve their problem? Then the rest of it just falls in line when it’s supposed to.

Bob: And I think people really do kind of, we alluded to this earlier in this conversation, people really do have a sense, are you just trying to sell me something or do you really legitimately want to solve a problem I have. Yeah, and I think professional salespeople, at least in today’s world to be successful, you’ve got to be a problem solver. That’s it, and you’ve got to care about that client beyond that transaction, right? You’re transaction oriented. You might succeed in a very short term. You’re going to fail in the long term.

Jason: You will because it’s tough to keep up that grind all the time because you’re literally one bad day or one bad week away from just being over, right. If it’s just a pure Hunter model where you only eat what you kill in that moment and there’s no longterm to it, that’s a dangerous edge to walk on for a long term.

Bob: About three times a year I run a business success mastermind group and one of the qualifications for people to be paid part of that is they’ve got to be the kind of people that want to serve their way to success and in order to serve your way to success, the customer in a scenario has to win dramatically bigger than you do, right? Whatever your product or service costs. I mean I get some, I guess a relatively large dollars for consulting with companies and developing strategies for them, but when I look at the net result, how much more are they getting out of it than I do? Cause it ought to be like a total way out of proportion.

Jason: Total home run, slam dunk, where somebody wants to hire you or hire someone like me and it’s literally a no brainer because of the scale of what they’re going to win.

Bob: Right? I mean, David Meltzer, who’s the CEO of sports one marketing he says, it’s the 120 model, I gave you $100 bill, would you give me a 20 back? Would that be okay with you? How many times a day would you like to do that? Right? So that’s the kind of value prop that people ought to have in their business. At least something along those lines, right? Or the customer wins so much bigger than what they’re investing in whatever you’re selling. So I think when you can structure it that way and what are, and that has to be their value of perception, right? And that’s very important because whatever people perceive is the truth to them. So that’s why having those little hinges that swing those big doors is so important because the customer has to receive value that’s surprising and unexpected, right? So that’s a really important mindset and philosophy to have.

Jason: And that helps answer the of how do you sleep at night, especially as a salesperson when you’re giving that kind of return on investment at such a magnitude where it’s a hands down win for every prospect, even if you have to push them forward because you see that the solution is there, you see that they need it based on their answers and you kind of have to make them a little uncomfortable because they’re in their comfort zone. Even when you do that, but it’s for their benefit and then the return is 5 times, 10 times, greater than what they’re going to pay. You can charge them what’s appropriate because you know it’s still gonna win. Cause a lot of people are like, well, you know, I feel bad if I make a lot of money as a sales person. Are you giving a lot of value? Then it doesn’t matter. Again, going back to the doctor example, brain surgeons make a lot of money. What’s the value in the brain surgery that saved somebody’s life, right? Like, you know, what’s the ROI on that? And uh, okay. And no one really questions that no one ever says, Oh, well, you know, brain surgeons make too much, right? No, they don’t. Some people say, Oh, sales people make too much. But if you’re providing solutions and you’re doing it in the right way and you care, then it’s unlimited.

Bob: I think if people have a, you speak to a good point here, people have an issue making a lot of money is because they’re uncertain of the value that they’re bringing. And part of that comes from, you alluded to this a little bit before, the scarcity mindset versus abundance mindset and you know, put together a graphic that I use in an entrepreneurship training that we do and it shows a little, uh, mole Hill. These armies are fighting over. There’s a little territory and that’s a wealth of the world that they perceive. And there’s this gigantic mountain of abundance that they can’t see because there are storm clouds over top of them. I call them the six storm clouds of scarcity just fear, doubt, discouragement, conflict, greed and envy. And only when your thinking rises up above those storm clouds, those scarcity of storm clouds, then all of a sudden you see all this abundance available and you think, How was I ever fighting a war over that a little bit?

Jason: Yeah. Cause now you can see it, right? You see the much bigger picture and all the resources that are available.

Bob: Absolutely.

Jason: That’s a fantastic place to stop because I love that visual and the abundance side. Where’s the best place for people to find you? Anything that you’re doing, the stuff that you’ve published and notes. And the things on creative thinking for anybody and I would love people to just interact with you and all the stuff you’re doing.

Bob: Well I’ll give a couple of resources. If people love created business ideas, strategies, resources, they can listen to my podcast if they’d like. It’s called out-think the competition was available on most major platforms and anchor is the homepage for that. They can find me on LinkedIn. I have links to all the media. Might do write a series of articles for valuebox.com they can find me there. Uh, I mean they can visit our website. They’d like spearpointonline.com. I’m all over Jason.

Jason: That’s awesome. And there’s the creativity ebook that you put together. I forget the title of it. I went through it. It was amazing stuff. I was starting to put some of that in place in the business. What is that called then? Where’s a good place to get that?

Bob: It’s called seeing the invisible so you can do the impossible. If somebody messages me on LinkedIn that will probably be the best way to get and say, look, I want a copy of your ebook. Jason said it’s amazing. And there were a couple of books of mine on Amazon as well. If they request that seeing the invisible guide, there’ll be links to them in there and so they can find them there.

Jason: And not a promotional, not a paid product placement. You’re not paying me to say this or giving me any cut of the free ebook that you send out.

Jason: But I know for myself, like I said earlier, I’ve always thought like creativity was the arts and music and whatnot. And then reading that ebook and going through just helped me also just see other ways to be creative and what means to be creative and you know how to apply that to different things. So please anyone listening to this, reach out to Bob, read that. It’s got a lot of workbook type stuff in there and things to think about and activities. So yeah, that one’s great. So I appreciate all that work you’re doing Bob, both for the creative side but then also the fun shops and getting people to be innovative, not just with the technology piece but using their brains. So I appreciate that.

Bob: That’s the greatest supercomputer in the world.

Jason: It’s true. It’s been around for quite some time.

Jason: Well Bob, so thank you for being on the show, Bob. I appreciate it. And for everyone listening, there will be all of his links in the show notes and the transcription. And again, Bob, thanks for being on. And for everyone listening, if you want to catch the full transcript of this and all of the episodes, make sure to subscribe everywhere that podcasts are available. And you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast to find the transcripts and everything on there. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

[E210] Higher Level Thinking with Bob Sager – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Continuing the conversation with Bob Sager, founder of SpearPoint Solutions, on creativity, profitability, and effectiveness in business and sales.

Some gems from Part 3:

“If it’s a good fit, if I’m serving people well, I don’t have to trick them into doing business with me.”

“I think one of the things that kills salespeople is there reluctance to hear no from somebody.”

“The more that you care about the result for your customer, the better questions you’re going to come up with to ask.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn

Bob’s Bio

Bob’s Links

Web site: www.SpearPointOnline.com

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/bobsager

Twitter handle: @Bob Sager

The SpearPoint Solutions company page on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/spearpoint-solutions-llc

Company page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SpearPointSolutions

Links to Bob’s books:

Discovering Your Greatness: A Higher Level Thinking and Action Guide

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0752Q2NXZ

101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas: And Ten Ways YOU Can Create Your Own

This book is published by our company. I curated the content and am one of 39 contributing authors.

Living a Wealthy Life: Stories of Gaining an Abundance in All Five Forms of Wealth

Author page (where people can access all my articles) at Valuewalk.com

https://www.valuewalk.com/author/sagerbobgmail-com/

E210 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Thank you for joining part 3 of my conversation with Bob Sager. If you missed it and make sure to go back and listen to part one and two, this is going to be the continuation of the conversation where we started off talking about creativity. Then we moved into sales. Talking about mindset, we’re talking about abundance kind of all over the place. So valuable for sales reps, managers in terms of this kind of creative concept. So here you go. Part three, enjoy.

Bob: You’ve got to first get their attention. So there’s a reason that your YouTube ads are skippable after five seconds at least, and a lot of. So, you know, it’s kind of a rare ad that catches my attention enough in that first five seconds. That’s what you gotta do. If you’re going to have a long form or blog posts or whatever it is, you better catch their attention right away.

Bob: And, um, do you mind if I make a couple of suggestions on how to do it? So opening with a question that can’t be answered by yes or no, that’s an excellent way to do it. Especially if it’s focused on the customer as he wrote. I think too many salespeople, too many companies generally they’re trying to be the hero. Right. You’re talking about how great they are and all they’ve accomplished. Well, the customer doesn’t give a crap about that. They don’t care about you until it’s important enough to them to care about you. So you got them in them, the hero in the story. Or you are as the guy. Helping the hero further their quest. So opening with a question that is focused on the customer as hero or furthering their journey. That’s really the way to go about capturing attention.

Jason: Yeah. No, and I think that’s huge and it’s something I’ve preached for a long time and I train and hopefully train out of salespeople a lot, which is that classic default response of the long self-centered monologue at the beginning of the sales interaction. Right? Whether it’s a phone call or it’s a meeting or you know, I go to conferences and I walk around the expo hall and you walk up to a booth and next thing you know it’s been two minutes of a long monologue about how great the company is and what they do and then it turns out it’s literally not a good fit, nor is it something I want. And so making that shift and getting away from sales rep centric focused conversations too, like you said, making the customer the hero if you can, how do you solve their biggest issues with your product or service?

Jason: And then the rest of it’s just easy. You don’t need closing lines and tactics when you take that approach versus the sales rep centric approach.

Bob: You make an excellent point, Jason. If you are focused on solving a customer’s problem, supplying their needs in a way that’s better than competitors, having them sign paperwork or write you a check or whatever. Oh, it’s just a natural thing.

Jason: It’s just that it’s the natural result in progression. That’s it. Like it’s just, it can happen.

Bob: Yeah. I did a lot of sales training early in my career. It was almost like you had to learn to trick people into signing. Well maybe that was effective at one time. I’m not sure. Well, I was never very comfortable with that. I thought, you know, if it’s a good fit, if I’m serving people well, I don’t have to trick them into doing business with me.

Jason: No, I completely agree something I preach a lot on everything I write and train and publish. It’s all about that thing. Right? Even when companies hire me, it’s not about the closing lines and strategies and the manipulation when you do it all up front. Right. Almost. Kind of like how a doctor operates. Lots of questions, lots of testing, lots of kind of understanding the problem and then a diagnosis, then a prescription and then that’s it. Like there is no, you know, let me think about it. It’s okay. This sounds good.

Bob: Well, they’re not going to think about it anyway right. As soon as you walk out the door, they’re not thinking about you anymore. It’s amazing how you know that’s, that’s just another form of no.

Jason: Well, and that one’s always important too as a, as a sidebar tip for salespeople or anyone listening. It is when you get that I need to think about it or send me an email or send me more information. You know, one of the things that I am constantly training reps to do is to not accept that at face value and push back a little bit and confirm. Because sometimes people do need information, sometimes they need to think about it. There’s analytical people who aren’t going to buy on the spot or maybe there’s a committee of people that need to be involved or a spouse. It could be anything, right? A legit reason. But to find out, are you wanting me to send you information because you actually want to do research and then we’re going to talk next week or are you just trying to be polite and nice and get rid of me without hurting my feelings or causing confrontation? Right. Like which one is it?

Jason: And if they say, I just wanted to get rid of you. I’m not interested in this, but I just didn’t want you to give me the high pressure sale. Then, great. Now I know. Sounds good. I’ll send it to you if you change your mind. Great. Otherwise, you know I’m not going to chase you down forever.

Bob: And listen, one of the things that I did. I spent 17 years in financial services and the way we did things, the way we operated is we would talk with the client on an initial call. We would gather information to find out if we could help them. We will do an analysis on where they work currently financially and their waste. We’d help them. We’d come back and recommend those last seconds. Oh, and so what we did on that is, what I did in any way is I would tell people upfront, look, we’ve got some great information here for you.

Bob: We think you guys have some positive recommendations. And the only thing I would ask is after we get done reviewing things tonight, tell me yes, you’re telling me no, you’re comfortable with that, right? And like you’re not gonna hurt my feelings if you tell me no, this is not, it doesn’t sound good for you. So let’s do that. Can we agree to that up front? And then so that way it was either a yes or no at the end of the day and you know, we weren’t chasing around after each other. Now I’m going to say you don’t follow up with people and that kind of thing. Cause sometimes timing is just off. But I think one of the things that kills sales people is their reluctance to hear no from somebody.

Jason: Well and I think that that combined with what you’re talking about, the manipulative style of like when you started out in sales and kind of when I started out in sales, is that that’s all in my experience based around scarcity.

Jason: It’s around this fear that there’s just not enough out there and anyone I talk to, I need to strangle hold until I get the deal out of them. Because if I don’t, where am I going to get more deals from? And again, it’s a very dangerous line because you’ll be a salesperson who comes from abundance. It says there’s enough people, there’s 7 billion people on the planet. I can find enough customers. Like be so abundant focused and you know, kind of positive thinking, the secret mode where instead of actually making your followup calls and moving people forward, you just kind of sit back waiting for things to fall in your lap, which won’t work long term. But if it’s a good fit, it’s a good fit. If it’s not a good fit, like your financial service example, then it’s not a good fit and move on.

Bob: I saw Jack Canfield talking about this, but there’s a bunch of people, uh, on a series on YouTube called go for no. And they talk about, uh, your convention story reminded me of this Jason, that they had this book, Jack Canfield and, his co author had this book chicken soup for the soul. Yeah. And uh, nobody wanted it. Right? Nobody was interested. And that’s the best like other than the Bible, I think that’s the best selling book in the history of the world. And they’ve sold over half a billion copies of the books in that series and nobody wanted it. Right? So all these people told him no, but he was just determined that he was gonna to find the right person. So I think it is important to think positive, but it’s also important to act positive hopes, not a strategy. Right. So, so you’ve got to take action on those positive thoughts. You’ve got to go out there and be as Bob Berg, uh, calls it a be a Go giver.

Jason: Yeah. Interesting. Well, and I like what you said about, you know, hope is not a strategy. That’s a good reminder to people. They think, you know, hopefully these people call me back. Well, you know, you’re not going to survive very long, especially financially based on hope.

Bob: One of my mentors in the financial services industry said he had a, his, um, prospect list and people stayed on that prospect list till they told him yes or they died or told him to go to hell.

Jason: Yeah. That’s it. I mean, and that’s really the result you want is you want that. Those are basically the only three options, but usually only think of the yes and the no option. But yeah, the uh, the third one too, which unfortunately happens sometimes, but yeah, I mean that’s it.

Jason: And a good sales professional who’s not using manipulation but it’s using persuasion and problem solving in a consultative sales approach is going to go and push somebody to go one of those two directions. The yes or the no. And then the creative part, tying this back to the initial part of our conversation is being creative. So part of that creativity is how do I get to them? How do I have that conversation? How do I break through their shell? You know, if the noise, right, whether it’s phone calls or emails, texts, that strategies we’re talking about. And then when I’m talking to them, the creative part in my opinion is the questions like you mentioned and asking questions and figuring out what is the actual problem that I can actually solve or what is their goal and what’s the positive thing I can get them towards with my product or service.

Jason: How can I be creative in helping them get to where they want to be, either myself or with something else I could point them in a better direction.

Bob: Right. And I think the more that you care about the result for your customer, the better questions you’re going to come up with to ask. I forget who it was that said, know you have one mouth and two ears you have to use them in that proportion.

Jason: I think everybody’s grandmother or parent said that to them.

Bob: Right. But you know, it’s so true. And people think, I think they had this perception, of selling is something where this person doing the selling is doing all the talking, but if you’re doing that, you are really missing it. You know, there’s one high quality sales training I had Jason, the guy said, if you say it, they doubt it, if they say it is the truth. And so I think if you’re good at asking questions that are empathetic with your customer, they’ll lead themselves and a lot of cases to the decision, even though you’re sort of guiding the conversation, they’ll lead themselves to the decision that you’re the right person to do business for them.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part three. Make sure to subscribe if you haven’t always, and if you can leave a rating or review. All of that helps with people who are looking for a great podcast about sales, about mindset, about creativity, whatever it is, sales, sales, management related, all of that really helps. Please do that. I love that and appreciate it so much when people do, as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. People remember the experience you gave them.

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

[E209] Higher Level Thinking with Bob Sager – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Continuing the conversation with Bob Sager, founder of SpearPoint Solutions, on creativity, profitability, and effectiveness in business and sales.

Some gems from Part 2:

“So the differentiation doesn’t necessarily have to be anything, but it has to be something that makes the customer go ‘Right…That’s unexpected!’”

“hinges are small – doors are enormous – but they swing on hinges” (referring to creating leverage with small acts)

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn

Bob’s Bio

Bob’s Links

Web site: www.SpearPointOnline.com

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/bobsager

Twitter handle: @Bob Sager

The SpearPoint Solutions company page on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/spearpoint-solutions-llc

Company page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SpearPointSolutions

Links to Bob’s books:

Discovering Your Greatness: A Higher Level Thinking and Action Guide

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0752Q2NXZ

101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas: And Ten Ways YOU Can Create Your Own

This book is published by our company. I curated the content and am one of 39 contributing authors.

Living a Wealthy Life: Stories of Gaining an Abundance in All Five Forms of Wealth

Author page (where people can access all my articles) at Valuewalk.com

https://www.valuewalk.com/author/sagerbobgmail-com/

E209 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Thank you for joining today. This is going to be part two of my conversation with Bob Sager. We’re going to continue where we left off yesterday talking about creativity, how that applies to sales. As always, make sure to go to the website to get the transcript as well as Bob’s links. And here you go. Enjoy part two.

Bob: Those were two of them. Yeah, and there was a real doubt on the nuclear energy. Right? Right. So that was impossible. And look for the people who said that for them it probably wasn’t possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually impossible. It was just impossible for them because that was their belief. And if you believe something, for you, it’s true.

Jason: That’s it. That’s all that matters. Well, and it’s interesting regarding creativity where we’re talking about this, your fun shop and facilitating this and kind of coming up with ideas and being safe.

Jason: And then there’s the other end of the spectrum. My mind is thinking about with, let’s talk about salespeople or just people in general, which is your back is against the wall. You’re in a stressful situation and you’ve got to come up with a solution or else, and so then that’s when the juice’s can fly, right? Like there’s this interesting kind of middle realm. I know for myself where if I’m comfortable enough, it’s tough for me to come up with creative ideas when I’m pushed against the wall or I’m kind of in a panicky mode or I’ve got to get something done or I don’t know how to solve it. It just forces me to then come up with creative ideas because I know the other option is not okay because it’s going to be some kind of failure. So where do you see that kind of balance or how do you frame that for people or how do you facilitate that? What do you tell people in that kind of realm?

Bob: Well, you bring up a good point and I think how you resolve that speaks to your character, right? There is great power in what I call attitude. How’d you get it done? Failure’s not an option, right? There is power in that because it does force you to focus. Now the question is “Do you have integrity?”, because if you have integrity, then the solutions, you’re going to come up with are customer focused. If you don’t, and you need to make a sale for you. Then that’s kind of a problem. Well at least it can be if you think it’s okay to not act with integrity in this case.

Jason: Yeah, right. Well that really comes down to the intent, right? So what’s your intention? Because you can have both. You want to make the sale or you need to make the sale because you have a bill to pay or a quota to make and do it in the right way where you got to go through and find who needs it the most and it will still value them or be valuable to them.

Bob: And look, Jason, I think that, and I’m sure you breached this in the training that you do, that’s why prospecting is so important. That’s why you want to have more prospects and you can really get to, because I remember four or five years ago I did a training on creative or a group of insurance sales people and I was following up somebody and I said, you know, he makes a great point. And I said, piggyback back on that. This doesn’t have to do with creativity, but it’s important to understand, is that when you need to make a sale, you almost never will. And the reason is if you’ve gone through traditional sales training, you were told that there are three things that communicate people. It’s a body language, tone of voice and the words that you say, but I’m telling you, there’s a fourth thing that communicates to people, on a nonverbal level, the they can sense whether you have their best interest at heart and if you need to make a sale and you’re sitting there, I don’t care if your presentation is perfect.

Bob: If you need to make a sale, you almost never will because people just have a sense. I’m not really sure I trust this person that has my best interest at heart.

Jason: Yeah, I think you’re right. As far as a fourth category, cause it’s, I always talk about you know animals can sense fear, right? I mean prospects can tell that in many lines of businesses, especially like an auto sales, the term for that is called commission breath, which is where like that’s all of the focuses. Like you know, you can just feel that coming out of the sales person cause they need to make the sale and sometimes it can work. Sometimes you can still get the sale. In my experience long term, that customer won’t be happy so they’re going to wake up with buyer’s remorse the next day in five minutes. I’ve seen people literally get off the phone from signing up to then immediately call back customer service to cancel like on the spot because the pressure and the sales reps intention was not correct and they weren’t doing it for the right reasons. Like for the customer. It’s the same thing. I mean you know, sales and relationships are all the same thing. If you’re single and desperate, that will come across as well. And that will repel any future mates or relationships you want to have because you can just feel it like, and no one wants to interact with it.

Bob: Well it’s been a long time since my dating days. I think you’re probably correct on that.

Jason: So on the creative topic, because it’s interesting that you started with talking about not just the arts, cause we talked about that in advance. That’s always something I beat myself up. I thought I wasn’t creative because I am not a good painter, not a good musician, like I’ve never worked on it. I just don’t naturally have those skills. And so I didn’t think I was creative. And then for the longest time I figured out that my creative medium was actually Excel. It was actually spreadsheets or I can do some amazing stuff with spreadsheets. It’s kind of like where time loses all meaning and I can do that. And then I really realized that when it comes to sales and interactions and coming up with solutions for customers, but that’s just a creative form in itself. Like what’s simple things for somebody listening to this can they do to become more creative? What stuff could help anybody in the creative realm, especially salespeople or sales managers.

Bob: Now look, we do a whole half day bunched up on this topic, but you can really start applying this to yourself. There’s a creative thinking method called Go Ops. And when I recently doing a series of articles for a website called valuewalk.com and I published an article about this very thing. And the method is to write down everything that you know right, to be true about the situation. And then ask yourself, what is the exact opposite of that? Like the right approach through this scenario is this, write that down. Now what’s the exact opposite of that? And you’ll be amazed that when you start considering in what ways might we do that opposite, in what ways might the opposite be more effective or give us, um, you know, a little bit of a different feel to the customer. Then you’ll be surprised how you can find some real pearls in there. It does take some work, right? And you do have to turn your sort of creative thinking on. But that’ll cause you to do that.

Bob: I’m sure you’ve noticed the statements, close the mind and questions open the mind. Right? If I say that’s impossible that we don’t have anywhere to go, right, but if I asked that question that I asked up front, in what ways might we, then all of a sudden that opens up, that forces us to begin thinking about things and new ways. So that “go opposite” method. That’s something that really anybody can apply and it’s a really good way to look at things and begin considering new possibilities in difficult situations.

Jason: Yeah, and I could totally see where if you do that, go opposite methods so you have what you know. And then what could be the opposite of that? The answer could be at that extreme opposite. It could be somewhere in the middle. Right. And again, I’m thinking at this from the sales person perspective. Kind of going back to something you said earlier, which is doing the opposite, right? Of all the salespeople in the world or in your vertical, in your industry are doing it a certain way, then what could you do that’s the opposite and still effective. And still with the right intention and the right focus for the customers, right? So not in a harmful way, but what could you do that’s opposite and how do you go against what is the norm to still be effective and using that method like, okay, so if everyone is making phone calls like this, how do I do it? Everyone makes phone calls from nine to five during the day.

Jason: What would be the opposite? Right? Okay, so 7:00 AM calls, 6:00 PM calls. What do I have to do that would be the other end. The opposite of that actually, you know it’s funny cause this is 2020 right? So phone calls, emails, text messages, all of that is becoming the norm. But what could be an opposite and shocking result is actually face to face communication. Visiting somebody, going to a trade show, just doing something that no one expects because it’s not the norm. What would be the opposite?

Bob: It could be something as simple as salespeople are writing two paragraph emails and I write a one sentence email, right? It doesn’t have to be anything major. You know, one of the things that I like to talk about in the workshops or fun shops is hinges are small doors are enormous but doors swing on hinges, right? Yeah.

Bob: So the differentiation doesn’t necessarily have to be anything huge, but it has to be something that makes the customer go right. That’s unexpected. And it just sort of reframes their expectation from you. So I think salespeople are well-served to consider that particular method right there. And shorter emails are much better by the way.

Jason: Shorter email. I even found myself, cause I can write like crazy, I can bang out a lot of content really fast and you know, it’s descriptive and it’s helpful. But I could literally write a couple thousand words in one sitting and through some coaching and people I know who like look at my emails or look at messages or like just go short one sentence per line, paragraph space in between. Just make it easy to read, short and sweet. So it’s like, okay, so how do I do the opposite? Just a, you know, shorter messages.

Bob: But TLDR is a real thing.

Jason: That’s it, like lots of pages just break it up. And it’s funny because I didn’t realize it, but the emails I like to read or the blog posts are broken up like that. I mean, and this goes into the debate total sidebar, which is short form versus long form. There’s a debate that says, you know, no one wants to read long form anymore. Attention spans aren’t there. No one’s going to read 5,000 word blog post or email. People will, if it’s valuable and they want the information that’s in there and it’s engaging, the right people, the right audience, will read whatever that you send them that’s valuable.

Bob: Listen, that’s true. But you’ve got uh, you know, it’s kind of like the farmer and his mule. You’ve got to first get their attention. So there’s a reason that your YouTube ads are skippable after five seconds. At least a lot of em. So you know, it’s kind of a rare ad that catches my attention enough in that first five seconds. That’s what you’ve gotta do. If you’re going to have a long form or blog posts or whatever it is, you better catch their attention right away. And, um, do you mind if I make a couple of suggestions on how you do that?

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part 2. It’s going to be a four part series, so make sure to subscribe everywhere that podcasts are sold so that you can get all the episodes each and every day. You can also go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website to get the transcript. All of Bob’s links, as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. People remember the experience you gave them.

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[E208] Higher Level Thinking with Bob Sager – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Bob Sager, founder of SpearPoint Solutions, joined me on the show for a conversation about creativity, profitability, and effectiveness in business and sales.

Some gems from Part 1:

“The reality is we’re all born as creative thinkers.”

“But if you’re doing things and selling that are exactly like all the other salespeople, you’re going to be perceived exactly the same as them.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn

Bob’s Bio

Bob’s Links

Web site: www.SpearPointOnline.com

LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/bobsager

Twitter handle: @Bob Sager

The SpearPoint Solutions company page on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/spearpoint-solutions-llc

Company page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SpearPointSolutions

Links to Bob’s books:

Discovering Your Greatness: A Higher Level Thinking and Action Guide

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0752Q2NXZ

101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas: And Ten Ways YOU Can Create Your Own

This book is published by our company. I curated the content and am one of 39 contributing authors.

Living a Wealthy Life: Stories of Gaining an Abundance in All Five Forms of Wealth

https://www.valuewalk.com/author/sagerbobgmail-com/

Author page (where people can access all my articles) at Valuewalk.com

E208 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. On today’s episode, I have Bob Sager, founder of spear point solutions along with lots of other things, books, courses, programs, whatnot. With over three decades of experience in sales, leadership and training, he brings all of that to help organizations develop innovative thinking and strategies to basically get on stock and go to a higher level. Bob, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Bob: Jason, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Jason: So first off, and I’ve got to point this out, we got connected through the amazing Adam Connors who was a guest on my show in this season too. Like I met him to have him on the show because he’s such a great networker and I wanted to talk more about that for my audience and then doing what he does best. He connected us and so I wanted to shout on him and appreciate him. And you know, I’m sure you value that relationship as well with him.

Bob: Oh yeah. Adam’s one of my favorite people.

Jason: Yeah, he is a nonstop connector and what I love most about him and anyone who didn’t listen to those episodes, make sure to check that out. But a great connector and a great networker is all about helping other people and getting them what they need without kind of a handout and expectations back. So I really appreciate him and he pushed several times for us to talk because we’re both so busy. He’s like, yeah dude, you need to get Bob on your show because Bob is amazing. So here we are finally.

Bob: Oh, I’ll try to live up to that.

Jason: Lots of pressure. So now this is a sales related podcast and you are in many different things all around strategy and innovation. But the topic I want to start with for people who are unfamiliar with you is that you focus on the innovation side, but not just the innovation. Like how do we bring in technology and it’s 2020 so how do we automate an AI and all these things, but more of like creative thinking.

Jason: And I want to talk about where that intersects or how that’s a powerful tool for anybody, specifically sales reps, managers, people who are running a sales team and where creativity really should fit in.

Bob: Well, look, there’s sort of a popularization. Of innovation and technology being equal. But that’s really not the case. I mean innovation is just doing anything better. So when you think about innovation, it’s natural in today’s world would think, Oh, innovation equals tech. But that’s not necessarily the case. It’s doing anything that we do in a better manner. So I think really that’s where creative thinking comes in. If it’s okay with you, Jason, I’d like to dispel a notion right up front.

Bob: People have a tendency to equate creativity, artists, musicians, authors, people who can do design take great photographs. And that is creativity, that artistic creativity. But that’s really only one little narrow segment of creativity. The reality is we’re all born as creative thinkers. And I mean, think about this. Do you ever watch a child, especially a preschooler. All they do all day long is learn new things and imagine new possibilities. And then we shift them to highschool and that’s no longer encouraged. Yeah. And in some cases it’s actively discouraged. And talking about this training conference I did yesterday, kids are taught that there’s one answer. And why is the one answer? Because that’s what’s on the test, right? So they’re not really encouraged to think about new and different ways to do things. And so if we didn’t exercise our bodies eventually or muscles would atrophy and we wouldn’t be able to use them.

Bob: I mean, if I tried to go out and run a marathon today, I probably fall over from a heart attack. I do get some exercise, but, well, I’m not used to running like that. Like you know, I was when what I used to imagine myself to be an athlete. So that’s just the same way with creative thinking when you haven’t used that skillset in a while, you kind of have to awake that thing up, get it up out of bed. But when you do, but some of the training we call fun shops, training fun shops that we do, by the way, I call them that because you’re not at work. Right. That wakes people’s creativity up and quite frankly, they usually shock themselves and what they’re able to come up with. Like how was I able to come up with that idea to do that, that way?

Bob: A great question for people to ask, that sort of thing opens up their mind is in what ways might I, like if you’re a salesperson and you’re thinking, well, I’m having a really difficult time getting an appointment to see this person. In fact, I widened the circle word other in there and what other ways my eye other than just trying to beat up the gatekeeper. Right. And so I think as it applies to sales, I don’t think that’s really any different than it applies in the marketplace generally. But if you’re doing things and selling that are exactly like all the other salespeople, you’re going to be perceived exactly the same as them. So you’re going to get the same reaction. And that’s probably not what you want.

Jason: No, and it’s interesting because that’s one of the big things I focus on and had been telling sales teams for the last couple of years. If everyone is doing it a certain way, we want to figure out a different way. Right? So if everyone is doing cold calling, which is the, at least that’s what it feels like is the common occurrence right now. Especially when I looked through my LinkedIn feed, like where everyone’s just talking about and promoting the millions of cold calls that they’re making in a sales role. Then how do you do it differently? How do you approach it differently? How do your conversations differ? How do you treat those interactions differently to move them forward instead of being like them? I mean that’s one of the big things. I don’t necessarily teach a lot of closing lines and closing tactics because customers are used to that. Like prospects see those things coming and it makes them shut down. So how do you move somebody forward and in a different way?

Jason: I love the aspect of what you’re saying, which is the creativity part. Because I know for myself, I don’t use that label enough. When working, let’s say specifically with sales reps where like, okay, let’s be creative and figure this out. It’s more of let’s figure this out, but not tying it to that muscle of creativity like as a specific label and saying, okay, we are going to get creative. Now what I do know is as a sales manager and a sales leader, the really effective ones talk to a salesperson who’s struggling, hitting a wall like they’re stuck on a deal or whatever it might be, and then can come up with this creative, innovative solution outside the box and say, okay, well let’s try this approach differently. Like in, that’s where the creative comes in being kind of separate from the trenches by a layer. That always helps too.

Bob: Oh, we talked yesterday in the fun shop that I did yesterday about we did an exercise where we were coming up with new ideas for marketing and that’s a real challenge. In fact, one of the gals that set that up told me after my training was over, she said, I’m so glad that we did this because we’re always talking about we’ve got to come up with ideas for better ways to market. And we almost kind of never get to it. Yeah, and I think probably one of the reasons that that is is people develop comfort zones in their life, right? You burn a lot of calories when you’re thinking consciously and so your body has sort of programmed itself to once you’ve learned how to do something to move that to subconscious reality where you don’t have to constantly think about it any more. When was the last time you consciously thought about how to walk

Jason: Or drive the car right versus when you were 16 when it was like a huge mental task to do all the steps right.

Bob: Or tie your shoes or anything else that your subconscious figures out that, okay, we did it this way before we didn’t die and so this is the way we’re going to do it from now on.

Bob: Or the same way in how they think about problem solving in that they think they’re thinking new thoughts about it. Well, what they’re really doing is going a hundred miles an hour on a circular freeway and it seems like they’re going somewhere. Well, they’re going to come right back around to the same thing, and so what creative thinking does is it gives them an off ramp to go into and explore new worlds and new thinking and seeing new solutions that previously were invisible.

Jason: Yeah. It’s interesting because I think that’s some of the value of people like yourself and I with when we’re going to an organization do a training session or on a consulting basis, is to facilitate that and create that space where it’s okay to think about things creatively, come up with ideas, brainstorm, just go wild with that list. Like I’m just imagining you in this fun shop where it’s literally like whiteboard or a big piece of paper writing out ideas.

Jason: Nothing is too crazy. Like let’s throw it all against the wall and let’s just see what comes up with. But most people, like you said, they’re in their comfort zone. They’re afraid of going outside of it because outside of comfort zone could be death. And so they don’t want to come up with new ideas or be the one who says, Hey, maybe we should try renting a skywriting plane, put our marketing message out. Right? Like no one wants to come up with that. But in a group when it’s facilitated, you never know what’s going to come up.

Bob: Right. And you know, one of the things that I tell people at the beginning before we jump in and we play games, right? As opposed to just sort of a brainstorming because people lack some structure, right? And they like to compete, right? We will play a game where we’ll have a sort of a little round Robin tournament of coming up with ideas and the people that are in there are judging the ideas, right?

Bob: So it’s sort of like you’ve got business A competitor B. yeah. And the people that are deciding on the ideas or the customers, right? And so when you have that kind of a system, that sort of a structure and you make it fun and people are laughing and I tell them up front, there’s no such thing as a bad idea. In fact, sometimes you ought to come up with the most ridiculous idea where you think this is the most ridiculous idea you can. Right? I mean, imagine that you came up with an idea for a taxi company that owned no vehicles, right. Or combinations company that own no hotel room. Right? I mean those sound like ridiculous ideas and yet both those things exist in the world today.

Bob: Right? The first product I ever invented was inspirational poster called: “Impossible is an opinion.” It had the title in the middle, Jason, and then around the perimeter were all these things down through history that people had said were impossible but ended up not being impossible.

Jason: Like going to the moon or the four minute mile.

Bob: And those were two of them. Yeah. And there was a real doubt on the nuclear energy. Right? So that was impossible. And look for the people who said that for them, it probably wasn’t possible. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually impossible. It was just impossible for them because that was their belief. And if you believe something for you, it’s true.

Jason: That’s it for part 1 of my conversation with Bob Sager. Please make sure to subscribe to the show so you can catch all the episodes in this four-part mini series that we’re doing. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E207] Sales Negotiations with Kwame Christian – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Final segment of speaking with Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute.

Some gems from Part 4:

“Sometimes the best thing you could do for a relationship is wait.”

“It’s all about intent.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

Connect with Kwame on LinkedIn

Kwame’s Bio:

Kwame Christian, Esq., M.A. is the Director of the American Negotiation Institute where he conducts negotiation and conflict management workshops around the country. As an attorney and mediator with a bachelors of arts in Psychology, a Master of Public Policy, and a law degree, Kwame brings a unique multidisciplinary approach to making difficult conversations easier. In addition to his role with the American Negotiation Institute, Kwame also serves as a professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, the top ranked dispute resolution program in the country, and Otterbein University’s MBA program.

He is the author of the best selling book Nobody Will Play With Me: How to Use Compassionate Curiosity to Find Confidence in Conflict and his TEDx Talk, Finding Confidence in Conflict, was the most popular TED Talk on the topic of conflict of 2017. Kwame also hosts the top negotiation podcast in the world, Negotiate Anything. The show has been downloaded over 1,000,000 times and has listeners in 183 different countries.

Kwame’s Links:

Website: https://americannegotiationinstitute.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwamechristian

Learn more about KwameShow less

E207 – Transcript

Jason Welcome to the final section of my conversation with Kwame Christian. We had a lot of fun. If you didn’t, if you’re listening to this and you just got this episode, make sure to go back and listen to parts one, two and three because this is a continuation and the final portion of that conversation all in one. Here you go. Part four, enjoy.

Kwame: So what I’ll instead do is, but that shot clock and then take action and then the hope is have micro failures. So I tried to do something. Okay, recognize this specific way didn’t work. It’s not that the whole thing didn’t work. Now I’ve gotten more data so I can adjust my strategy slightly and then continue to move forward. So it’s about doing it in a reasoned way, but the mentality about failing faster I think is just a recognition of that there’s value in that failure and you can’t fear it and it’s a major part of progress, but it doesn’t give you the license to be sloppy. You have the license to fail, not to be sloppy.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, trying something new like an activity doesn’t mean, you know, jumping off a cliff without a parachute. Right? You want to fail smartly if you will. And I think this is interesting too, to tie in as just a reminder and anyone who’s listened to me or probably you, any of your audiences, you know, this has probably hurt both of us say this a lot in our respective things, but it’s a good reminder here, which is the mindset and the why, right? Like why are you doing that? Because that’s super important. You know, when you’re talking about failing fast, failing forward, we’re having this conversation of just trying things, negotiation, all of that. It’s like, why are you doing it as an individual, as a salesperson or you’re trying to create a business whenever it is you’re doing. Like why are you doing it and why is the failing and the learning important to help you get to where you want to go and the big picture.

Kwame: Exactly. Yeah.

Jason: So what do you think, we talked about the sales reps, like where do you see salespeople like struggle wrapping this back around to the conflict and negotiation side? Like where do you see them really struggling? Where could people make the biggest change with the smallest amount of effort in your experience?

Kwame: Yeah, I think it has to be a mindset thing. Let’s go to the license to fail because the failure comes in in different ways and so it might be actually having a conversation with somebody and that feels like failure because it didn’t work out the way that we wanted to. But we also have to think about having the license to experience things that feel like failure. And so sometimes that would be waiting. Sometimes the best thing you could do for a relationship is wait, play the long game because trust takes time to build. That’s the first thing. And then also for different people it takes different amounts of time to build. And so I think about sometimes where clients have come in after like a year or two or something like that where they’ve made initial contact. I tried to close something with them, they said no. And then recognizing when there is productive tension by having the conversation and pushing the conversation and unproductive tension because you’re pushing too hard and you push away. And I feel like that was a knowing sigh from you.

Jason: No, it is. You know, it’s just so interesting because when you tap into that and you feel it, like, you know, and it’s always tough as a management side to like get reps to know like when they should push that person or when they shouldn’t push. Right? Like when pushing that person is the key and they need it because otherwise they’re going to put their head back in the sand or if you push that other person wrong, you know, just delete their file. Like literally delete everything I know about them because it’s over and you ruined it. Right. And that’s so wild. That’s one of the toughest things to teach.

Kwame: Exactly. It’s a field thing. That’s the thing. You can teach them the existence of it. But as far as being able to recognize that that is a thing that they need to feel themselves. And it reminds me of this interesting occupation called a chicken sexer. Yup. So what a chicken sexer does is their job is to figure out if this chick that’s been born, the baby chicken, if it is a boy or a girl, which is very important. The sooner you figure that out, the more money the farm makes. Because if you can figure out that it’s a chicken, then this is valuable to you. Chickens can be used for eggs and they could be used for eating. Yeah. The hens. Exactly. And so the, um, the root, if it’s a boy, then it’s a rooster. You can’t eat. I mean, I guess you could, but we don’t do that in America typically.

Kwame: And so if you can figure that out faster, then you don’t spend money taking care of the potential rooster. Now the thing is, when it comes to figuring out whether or not the chicken is a boy or a girl, there’s no clear indication. There’s no way to do it through a machine. You have to look at it. But if you ask the person who’s looking at the chick, what are they seeing? They can’t tell you what it is that they’re seeing. And people go through these courses for a long period of time and only about what 5% of people ever get to the point where they can do it consistently. But it’s a feel thing. You don’t know. You can’t explain it. It’s just a feel thing. And that’s the same way it is with whether or not you’re pushing somebody in the right way. You have to feel it. And it’s so difficult to describe, and I think about it in my mediations because I have to figure out whether or not I’m pushing them too hard because there’s a point where the brain is either, 1. too tired to process new information or 2. they just are not feeling it. And you have to get to that, delete the file point. But it’s a mixture of tone and body language and personality that can really only be understood through experience.

Jason: And what I’ll tell you, because my background is a smidge different than yours. So my bachelor’s degree is in Marine Biology, so nothing to do with it. Your bachelor’s degree is in psychology. So you went the right direction. You built up this nice and Scholastic foundation that’s building up. However, since being in sales, I think I have a degree or at least a minor in psychology and all this stuff I’d studied and that’s what I would suggest for anybody out there. If you’re in sales, you want to be in sales long term and you want to be successful. Study a lot of psychology, study, a lot of behavior, personality types. I mean you don’t have to go full on like Myers Briggs, which can be really complicated, but somewhere in that direction just kind of understand people. I mean even astrology and astrological signs and Tashman theory like you learn that kind of stuff and all of that. Like, I mean one of the biggest things I tell people all the time and it always blows them away is one really good strategy for management and also sales is the five love languages. Like if you know that you can be more successful in sales once you kind of pick up on the triggers of your prospect and what they want and need and then especially management, it’s a home run.

Kwame: Absolutely, and the thing is the more of these different types of assessments you avail yourself to and methodologies and studies and all those things, the better you will be at pattern recognition because it’s not an either or type of thing. Are you thinking about Myers Briggs or you’re talking to about Strengths Finder or the four tendencies of the five love languages, there’s so many things you could do.

Kwame: But if you get a general understanding of all of them, you could say, Oh wait, this person, their love language is gift giving. That’s what they like. Okay, I see that because of X, Y, Z. Something that I can do to make it a little bit more productive or move the needle when it comes to trust is I can just bring them a gift, not a gift that is so big that it seems like a bribe, but something that lets them know that I was thinking of them, and so that’s a good way to let them know that I truly care. And so these are little things, tips and tricks that you can use to make genuine connections with people. And kind of brought back to what you were saying before about the fear of manipulation. It only becomes manipulation if you’re doing it for the wrong purpose. When it comes to persuasion and manipulation, the end goal is the same, but the intent is different.

Jason: It’s all about intent. That’s it. That’s a great place to end. Kwame what’s the best way for people to find you? Obviously, you know, talking about people adding to their repertoire, your course, my course, you know, all of that. Where’s a good place for people to find you?

Kwame: Yeah. I think the best way to start would be the podcast. I’m assuming your podcast listeners are podcast listeners. Let’s go ahead and get started with the “negotiate anything” podcast is the number one ranked negotiation podcast in the world. And we have a course coming out on focusing specifically on confidence and then building tools and techniques on that. But focusing really on looking inside yourself, finding your unique strengths and skills and building on it. Because I think a lot of times when it comes to negotiation, persuasion literature, we’re giving recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter if you know what to do if you’re too afraid to do it. So that’s one of the focuses. And then we do trainings as well. But start with the podcast. That is the easiest way to get in touch with us and hopefully that you joined the negotiate anything tribe.

Jason: Yeah. And uh, I’ll put all of your links in the show notes, the transcription. Kwame, thanks for being here and I appreciate you for what you’re doing in general and helping people negotiate better, have more confidence, just be better humans in terms of relationships, which handling conflict. So I appreciate that.

Kwame: Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jason.

Jason: Yeah, and for everyone listening again, you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com go to the podcast page. You can find this episode and all the transcript for these, this conversation, as well as the show notes, Kwame’s links, and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E206] Sales Negotiations with Kwame Christian – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Part 3 of my conversation with Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute.

Some gems from Part 3:

“Oh, I’m talking to a salesperson. That means they’re trying to sell me on something.” (Explaining Reactive Devaluation)

“The best sales experience experiences are the ones that leave me in a better position than where I started win, lose or draw.”

“As long as this failure helps me to advance my position, good.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

Connect with Kwame on LinkedIn

Kwame’s Bio:

Kwame’s Links:

Website: https://americannegotiationinstitute.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwamechristian/

Learn more about KwameShow less

E206 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to another section of the guest conversation I had with Kwame Christian. We are having a great conversation about negotiation, sales, conflict, all of those strategies. If you haven’t, make sure you check out parts one and two. Here you go. Part three, enjoy.

Kwame: One of the things that people say is that negotiation is the art of deal making. I think about it more as the art of deal discovery. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to work with you to see if a deal exists. I need to learn more about you or more about your company, your perspective, and see if there is a deal to be had. Because if I think about it as deal making, then I might feel unnecessary and inappropriate pressure to make a deal and force a deal when it’s not appropriate.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, the first part is to make sure that there is something there to even work with, right? Are they a qualified person? Whether you’re selling your negotiation training, I’m doing consulting or we’re working with sales people or anybody to, you know, and they’ve got to make sure there’s a qualified prospect, like is the other person you’re talking to, even a good fit. And then from there it’s okay, so you got to do your discovery and then from there, okay, then what are the terms or how do we get there? It’s interesting because my brain is just thinking like instead of even salesperson, like you’re just a facilitator, right? I mean, yes, mediator and kind of what you’re talking about, you’re almost a success facilitator as a salesperson because you’re just trying to help the other person get to a better place.

Kwame: Exactly. And I think in some companies you’re seeing them move away from the term salesperson. And in negotiation there’s a concept called reactive devaluation. And so essentially this is a bias. The easiest way to think about it is, I call it the, because you said it, I don’t believe it, bias.

Jason: So that’s, uh, so you mean dealing with kids?

Kwame: Exactly, that’s exactly the example, because sometimes it’s like, Oh, I’d tell my son to do something and then they’re skeptical and then somebody else says the exact same thing. They’re like, Oh, that’s a good idea. What happened? Oh, you said it. So I don’t believe it. And so it’s that mentality oftentimes it’s like, Oh, I’m talking to a sales person. That means they’re trying to sell me on something.

Jason: Their motivation is one-sided. And so either not trust them or be worried and on high alert all the time.

Kwame: Exactly. And then the, I think this is a great way to segue back to the conversation about win-win because this is what we’re really going for. We want to have a conversation where we have the tone, the feeling around it is collaborative, where I’m working with you. And I think that’s where the idea of when win comes from, right? Because technically if we’re having a fantastic deal, yeah, I get a commission and you improve your life.

Jason: Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Right? That’s just capitalism. That’s commerce. That’s trading value.

Kwame: Exactly. Yeah. So I think it’s really the tone trying to make it clear to them that, listen, I am not trying to take advantage of you. I’m here to work with you. And if you think about Jim Camp’s approach to negotiation, it’s called start with No, which is really interesting because what they found is that when people say no, the emotion that they’re trying to get to is safety. I say no because it feels safer than saying yes because yes commits me to an uncertain future. And so one of the things I like to do when in my difficult conversations is I start off by letting them know, listen, it is okay to say no, I’m going to talk to you about this. And it might not be for you. And if it’s not, that’s fine. Not a problem. And so when you let people know, Hey, you have the right to say no, just that acts can make them feel a lot more comfortable in the conversation because it’s the exact opposite of what they anticipate you’re going to do as a salesperson.

Jason: And I love that because I’ve always done that and tried to encourage other people in sales to do that as well, which is start off the conversation with this may not be a good fit and if it isn’t, I’ll let you know. Or if you don’t think it’s a good fit, you let me know. But like the point is the collaborative, right? It’s a good fit. I’m not going to try to sell you just for the sake of selling you. And that’s one of the big things, you know, I even see a lot of value in that. Even as a sales person telling somebody know like, Hey, this isn’t a good fit, this isn’t a good solution, whatever it is, which usually blows their mind because no one would ever think that would happen from a sales person. And then turning that into a relationship or referrals or just pointing them in a better direction, knowing you did the right thing. When you come from that approach, then when you do say yes or you know it’s the right thing, then you know it’s the right thing. Right?

Kwame: Exactly. Yeah.

Jason: So let’s talk about, so you have all this experience negotiation media. And it’s funny because every time we talk about negotiation and you mentioned it, all I can think of is like hostage negotiation. I don’t know why, but like literally that’s just what comes to my mind. So talking about sales, you know, what do you see as a great sales experience bringing in all these aspects in your psychology, in the legal and the mediation and that kind of approach. Like what do you see as that great sales experience?

Kwame: I would think about it from a big picture perspective. And so a lot of times the issue that we have in these conversations and perspective towards the conversation is the fact that we have a narrow minded view, just a myopic perspective on what the goal is. Because we get so fixated on this particular person, this commission, this opportunity that we forget, Hey, this is really just but one move in a larger chess game of life. Right? And so when I think about a good sales experience is after the fact. If I look back on it one year, two years, 10 years in the future, I need to ask myself, did I put myself in a better position overall, did this work for me personally? They didn’t work for me professionally. And when I think about it, big picture, a lot of times it makes the situation easier to handle because I feel less pressure first of all. And second of all, it helps me to be a little bit more strategic with the decision. It actually helps me to say no to clients a lot more effectively as well. So for me, I think about the big picture, I don’t want to focus on the short term emotions because eventually that’ll fade away or the thing that’ll stay is my position after the fact. So for me the best sales experience experiences are the ones that leave me in a better position than where I started win, lose or draw.

Jason: Got it, makes sense. And as far as salespeople go and all of your experience, what have you seen either yourself and others that make for a really professional like high quality, high performance salesperson? In terms of what we’re talking about, right?

Kwame: I would say it is the willingness to lose. So this is going to sound weird. There’s a section in my book called the license to fail because if you’re not experiencing certain types of failures, it might be an indication that you’re not trying hard enough. And so the salespeople that I think are going to do the best are the ones that almost embrace failure. They’re not going out there trying to lose like, Hey, I hope I lose today. Saying that I am going to employ the techniques that I believe are best. I learned a new technique. I’m going to try this technique because I think it might improve my ability to close. And if by pushing somebody and going through that, that productive tension, I ended up losing a client and I say, okay, I’m going to use this as a learning experience and I’m not going to shy away from it. And I think that’s an important part of sales, but just really any competitor in general, if you want to improve your position in life, if you want to get better at something, you need to give yourself the license to fail to see what your limits are so you can improve and get that data so you can make better assessments going forward.

Jason: That’s brilliant. I absolutely love it because I’m listening to it and thinking, I was just having a conversation yesterday with somebody where we were talking about, you know, there’s two ways to learn in life, right? Is to do it right and then to fail and then learn from it and then know what not to do next time or to read and study other successful people to figure out how to be successful. That is great and everyone will always tell you, do that. Read about successful people, learn what they do. Copy what they do. Success leaves clues like do that. However, as humans, as most people, we learn best and strongest. When we make those mistakes. Now it’s good to take what you read or learn about somebody else and what they’re doing successfully. Like offline, before we started talking, we were talking about Ted talk and the one you did and I’m super curious about if you could tell me all the tips you want.

Jason: I could study, all I want, doesn’t matter. I’m going to get out there if I fail or I stumble. Like that’s the way it’s going to permanently imprint, but I’ve got to do it right. And I think the key differentiator too with what you’re talking about is the difference between failure and lose. Correct me if I’m wrong here, right? So in my opinion, life is about failing. I mean obviously if you’re getting outside of your comfort zone, you’re going to fall down, you’re going to fail, right? Losing is when you stop and you don’t try to improve and you just give up, right? That’s losing, right? So imagine a kid, right? So you have four year olds learning to start walking years ago, falls down for the first time and just never gets up again and says, Hey, that’s not for me. I’m just not going to walk. I don’t think I’m meant for it. Right. He failed because he fell. We all did when we learned to walk and then got back up and kept doing it. Right. Versus losing, which is, I tried it once, it didn’t work. Now I quit.

Kwame: Exactly. I think that’s a key distinction because the thing I like to say to myself is fail forward. Yup. As long as I’m moving in the right direction. Kind of going back to what I said before, it’s all about positioning. As long as this failure helps me to advance my position, good. It was an important part of the process and we have to remember that we are the authors of our own life. And so when it comes to what happens in our life, it’s up to us to give that thing meaning to interpret it in a way that’s most favorable to us. And so in my book, I’m not a loser. Yeah. I have some failures along the way, but I’m asking myself as I’m pending the story of my life. I say for quantum, we got back up and this was a success. This was actually beneficial because blah, blah, blah. We have that opportunity.

Jason: Yeah. And I think that’s good. And I, and I will speak from a sales management experience, which I’ve done for a very long time. I have never been upset or frustrated with a salesperson who tried new things or pushed the boundary or you know, as long as it’s coming from a good place in their heart and with the right focus and plate and intention, right. As long as it’s coming from the right intention, whatever they do, if they don’t close the deal or if it doesn’t work out in their favor, but they’re trying new things and they’re going after new approaches and they’re doing that, never been upset, never been frustrated. More frustrated with the ones who don’t do anything different and it’s not working right. Like they’re beating a headache, their head against the wall and they don’t realize that doesn’t work. And they’re not willing to try anything different cause they’re so scared and stuck in their comfort zone. That’s more frustrating. I would rather see people try all these different things. It not work, but we can dial that in. Right?

Kwame: Exactly. Again, like you said, like we’ve talked about before, just have to move forward. That’s it.

Jason: Fail forward. Some people say fail fast. What do you think about that?

Kwame: I like that to a certain extent. You fail fast because it gives you the opportunity to recalibrate, but you have to fail in a reasoned way. Um, it can’t just say, okay, I’m going to fail Willy nilly.

Jason: I’m just going to throw a ton of money at this Shopify store and see if it works. And just like, no, you gotta be smart while you fail fast and forward.

Kwame: A big part of it is recognizing when you’re experiencing paralysis by analysis. I know for me, I can overthink things. Yeah. I mentioned it before. I’m a, I love playing chess. I can overanalyze anything. Yeah. And so one of the things I do is I put a shot clock on it.

Jason: No, I was just going to ask if you do that. Yeah.

Kwame: Yeah. As I say, okay, it should take about this amount of time to make a decision on this issue and if it goes beyond that, that’s probably just my fear disguising itself as analysis. So I feel better about my procrastination. And so what I’ll instead do is put that shot clock and then take action and then the hope is have micro failures. So I tried to do something, okay, recognize this specific way didn’t work. It’s not that the whole thing didn’t work. Now I’ve gotten more data so I can adjust my strategy slightly and then continue to move forward. So it’s about doing it in a reasoned way, but the mentality about failing faster I think is just a recognition of that there’s value in failure and you can’t fear it and it’s a major part of progress, but it doesn’t give you the license to be sloppy. You have the license to fail, not to be sloppy.

Jason: That’s for part 3. One final section coming up next tomorrow. Make sure you subscribe to get all of the episodes. Go to the website, cutterconsultinggroup.com go to the podcast page, find Kwame’s links, connect with him. You can find the transcripts, as well as the show notes, leave you like I always do and I mean it, and please make sure to shows podcasts that we can get this message out there. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E205] Sales Negotiations with Kwame Christian – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Part 2 of my conversation with Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute, where we continue talking about confrontation and negotiating specifically in a sales role.

Some gems from Part 2:

“Try to always look at it from the positive”

“A lot of times when people think about negotiation, it’s not necessarily negotiation, it’s kind of losing with style.”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

Connect with Kwame on LinkedIn

Kwame’s Bio:

Kwame’s Links:
Website: https://americannegotiationinstitute.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwamechristian

Learn more about KwameShow less

E205 – Transcript

Jason: So excited that you’re here. Welcome to another part of my conversation with Kwame Christian. Here you go. Enjoy this part 2.

Kwame: They might be trying to adjust their position in a way that allows them to save face and feel good about themselves. And again, if we rescue them from that productive tension by saying something, we’re cutting off that cognitive process. So in a lot of times we need to sit there and wait, let this process work and it doesn’t feel good a lot of times, but you have to take the time and see what happens on the other side.

Jason: Yeah, cause what I have seen many times, and this is just life, right? This is our, again, the lizard part of our brain that we’ve discussed where something negative happens and then moving forward you want to avoid that negative thing cause there’s an association, right? So you touch a hot stove, you realize that sucked and so you just don’t want to do that again. You kind of have this fear, this hesitation, you’re around a hot stove. And so same thing happens with salespeople, right? As you can tell them to sit in that silence and wait during the attention and just see what happens. Well the first time they do that, if the other person comes back and then basically hits them with more objections or says no or walks away from the deal, then they associate that silence with that negative outcome. And so one of the biggest things for anyone listening to this, if you had that is just, reset it.

Jason: Try to always look at it from the positive. Optimistic. I mean that’s one experience you had. Not all of them. I mean if you do it every single time there’s something you’re doing wrong. Like if everyone says no after you do that silence. But it’s happened before. Just try not to be gun shy and try not to rush into it because of one negative experience. And I think it’s so great. I mean cause sometimes people are just processing. Sometimes people need a minute and then they think about and they go, okay this is good. And like you said, people want to buy, they don’t want to be sold to. So if some people, if they feel like you’re working your magic, you’re trying to manipulate them and then they actually do want it, they got to figure out, okay, how do I, how do I make it sound like this was my idea, which is one of the things I use a lot with people is helping them realize it was their idea because they’re really smart and so they must have come up with this idea and so I’m just here to facilitate.

Kwame: That’s a great way to think about it. That’s fantastic. And when I think about my mediations and my negotiations and just difficult conversations in general, the worst thing that happens with the use of the effective pause is somebody says what? They might just say, is there anything else? Or do you have a question? Or something like that. I’d be a little bit awkward, but I say, Oh no, I was just giving you time to think and then I just move on. That’s the worst thing that can happen because right when you think about the potential negative outcomes, silence has very few negative ramifications. The consequences are minimal. But if you care to compare that to the other alternative where you say something that you regret, you can’t really do much about that. I have a four year old and I always say you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Sometimes when things come out you kind of have to live with that new reality. So we’ll have all the potential mistakes you make. There are fewer negative consequences if the pause doesn’t work the way that you’d like it to.

Jason: So how much of that, I’m just picturing, right? So your background, mediation, negotiations, two parties in mediation, maybe they’re required to be there or they’ve agreed to be there, they’re trying to do some outcome versus let’s say a sales interaction where I would really like there to be an end result of our negotiation in the sales. You know, I’m a salesperson, you’re a prospect, but there’s no requirement. Right? Like they’re not required to sit there and go through this process versus like a mediation. What kind of difference do you see? And I’m just thinking about like how much different is it like mediating like in a legal sense versus sales, what translates well and what doesn’t translate well?

Kwame: Yeah. Well, when it comes to the context, you have to consider the context too. So let’s think about mediation. It’s two people who have been in litigation or they don’t like each other.

Jason: Yeah, true. True. They’re not starting off on a good foot, is that what you’re saying?

Kwame: But what’s interesting is that the way that I like to do mediations, at least to start off is I separate the parties. So even though they’re not there on the best of circumstances, I can still build a relationship of trust where we can talk freely. There might be laughter and some levity in there and it’s okay. But if you have the people there, then that tension can become unproductive. And so we don’t like that. So that’s a key difference. I think one of the main differences is that there is a situation with sales where there is a much, I think Glossier potential outcome. It’s either, okay, I stay where I am right now. The status quo, this is comfortable, or potentially I engage in uh, begin a relationship where I advanced my situation. And so I think the upside is greater in sales. It’s easier to have a positive orientation and there’s not that conflict where it’s like, Hey, I don’t like you personally and I think you’re wrong. I might disagree or am I just, I prefer the status quo right now, those types of things. And so it’s a different type of conflict. I prefer the sales one. It’s a little bit easier to deal with.

Kwame: But still it’s a blessing though, because as a mediator, there’s really nothing on the line. I get paid either way. I don’t get a commission if there’s a deal. But in sales, because for me, I’m selling negotiation trainings, there’s a big upside for me. And so I feel a little bit more pressure actually in the, uh, the sales type of difficult conversations because my lifestyle changes depending on how this deal goes.

Jason: Right. Well, and that’s, it’s interesting because that sounds like the difference between, let’s say a commission salesperson or someone who’s making commissions and bonuses versus a salaried employee, right? Like you show up and you do your job and you get paid whether you’re good or not. Like there’s some level of performance expectation, but still it’s like at the end of the day, based on whatever happened, you made your money versus sales where, well, if you have the right comp plan, it’s all about you and your, your success.

Jason: So let’s talk about negotiation and creating win-win situations. You know, I encounter a lot of salespeople that are worried about using manipulation, pushing people in the buy things. They feel like the industry of sales or the profession of sales has a bad wrap where it’s like the salesperson or the business has, is winning at the expense of the prospect. Right? So it’s a win lose, not necessarily a win-win, which obviously isn’t correct. There are some industries that work that way and some companies that do, but it’s not that way. So let’s talk about like negotiation and sales and win-win in your experience.

Kwame: Yeah. And so I think it’s important to recognize how to distinguish the two processes. And this is the way I think about it. And to make it easier for me. So for me, I think about sales as generating interest and negotiation is more about closing the deal. And so they’re cousins in my mind. I mean they’re right there, siblings almost twins, but they’re right there. And so for me, the reason I like to distinguish these two processes is because if it gets muddy then the persuasive processes are not as effective. So if I’m in a sales type of conversation and they started talking about lowering the price, the issue is at that point, I’m not even sure if you’re at the point where you have truly reached that level of commitment where I need to start negotiating price, are you even interested or are you just trying to lower my price in order to get a better deal with somebody else?

Kwame: That’s not clear to me. And so once I’m closer to the point in the sales funnel or the sale discussion where I believe I am the guy, then we can start talking about what the details of the deals are, what terms work better for you. But for me, when I’m generating interest, I want to just make sure, Hey, is this something you really want to buy just to make sure that things are productive? Because I’d used slightly different techniques in different parts of the conversation.

Jason: I love it because you’re right, when it comes to something like price, right? Are we negotiating price or still in the sales part where we’re talking about value, right? Is it a price issue because you don’t understand or appreciate the value or is there literally a constraint on the money and is this going to result in you being a good customer? Because a lot of times in my experience, I’m sure you’ve had the same thing, lower price or negotiate price and kind of give up some position on your side to get the deal done. Generally results in a client you may not want longterm.

Kwame: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know the ones for me, the, the clients that are the most cost-sensitive were the people who ended up being the most problematic and that might be for the reason that they don’t truly value the service or they don’t really appreciate the work. Whatever it is. I just know that that’s a rule of thumb that I followed and I heard it from my mentors. I was like, ah, no, they seem okay. And then a year later I’m like, oh it’s true.

Jason: It’s always, and it’s always true and I’m always having that conversation with new sales reps or people that are struggling, who are wanting to negotiate price with a manager, like with someone like me or consultant who’s trying to help and like, Hey, you know, what can we do on this deal? And they’re basically trying to, they’re now advocating for the customer to try to sell the business and the management on why the customer needs a better deal. And it’s just, it holds true all the time. I mean, those customers generally, they don’t value it. They don’t have as much skin in the game. I mean, there’s something to be said about when you’re paying for something and you value it, then you’re gonna use it. You’re gonna appreciate it.

Kwame: Exactly. One thing too about the, uh, the win-win methodology that I think can be problematic sometimes is that when we think about win-win as the only way to negotiate, then we kind of get locked into this idea that I need to compromise in order to get the deal done. A lot of times when people think about negotiation, it’s not necessarily negotiation, it’s kind of losing with style.

Kwame: The person said, Hey, can I have a discount? You said, yes, great. Close the deal. Okay, well let’s take a step back. The question that we need to ask ourselves is, number one, did they need a discount? Right? We ask them, I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’ve already committed in our minds to buying this thing and then we say, ah, why not? I’ll ask for a discount if I get it, great. If not, I’ll still buy. And so we need to challenge our assumptions that compromise needs to happen in that regard. And really when it comes to negotiation, I don’t think people should adopt a necessarily a win win methodology. They should have a flexible approach. It’s like, okay, what is the strategy best suited for this particular outcome? Usually I will say this, usually win-win does get it done right?

Kwame: You want to have that collaborative approach but sometimes the person might be trying to push you into doing something that doesn’t work for you and so in that situation you need to have a little bit more of an assertive style where compromise is inappropriate and so that’s something that’s really important especially on the sales side to pay attention to because we’re so focused on closing deals that sometimes we say to ourselves, I’m going to give up whatever it takes to close the deal as long as I have some kind of margin. But again, kind of going back to what it is that you said, what kind of clients are we attracting? Is this truly a good deal

Jason: And I can’t think of the phrases I would rather use instead of win-win but that’s making my brain think about like something else like around value and value instead of win-win. Right? So like making sure both sides are getting value instead of a feeling like this winning like, cause normally when you think of winning, someone has to lose. Right? And so when, when is this catchy great term, which you know, most people use. I use it all the time and it’s something better than win, lose or lose, lose, which a lot of reps do. You know, they’ll do lose win where the company’s losing in order to, you know, help the client. But it’s something to think about. Definitely have to come up with some term. Maybe we could chat about it afterwards. Something other than win-win. But it’s like value-based and success based. Right. So again, going back to what you said earlier, sales is about helping your prospects become clients and then be successful in getting from where they are now to a better place in their life or in their business, whatever that is. And so what’s a good phrase for that?

Kwame: I think the best way to think about it is using a collaborative approach. And so regardless, I’m working with you in some capacity, especially in a sales type of thing. There’s no true conflict in the sense that I am against you, which is great because ultimately if everything works out and there should be a long term relationship and so we want to orient it in this way, so instead of thinking it as them sitting across the table from us, we are coming to their side of the table and looking at the problem from a similar perspective to see what we can do. I think about it too. Also one of the things that people say is that negotiation is the art of deal making. I think about it more as the art of deal discovery. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to work with you to see if a deal exists. I need to learn more about you or more about your company, your perspective and see if there is a deal to be had. Because if I think about it as deal making, then I might feel unnecessary and inappropriate pressure to make a deal and force a deal when it’s not appropriate.

Jason: That’s it for part two. Make sure to subscribe so you can catch all of these episodes. Part 3 and part 4 coming up soon. cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the transcripts, show notes, and Kwame’s links. As always, keep in mind everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E204] Sales Negotiations with Kwame Christian – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute, joins me to talk about salespeople, negotiation skills, and your obligation to use confrontation when persuading others.

Some gems from Part 1:

“The easiest thing you can do is look at it as an opportunity (confrontation).”

“…it’s basically your duty at that point.”

“There is gold on the other side of that tension”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Get help with your sales team

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn

Connect with Kwame on LinkedIn

Kwame’s Bio:

Kwame’s Links:
Website: https://americannegotiationinstitute.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwamechristian

Learn More About KwameShow less

E204 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. On today’s episode I have Kwame Christian, he is the director of the American negotiation Institute. He wrote a book titled: nobody will play with me, How do you use compassionate curiosity to find confidence in conflict and has a podcast called: negotiate anything. Kwame, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Kwame: Hey Jason, thanks for having me.

Jason: So I say this about all my guests and I truly mean it. I am excited to chat with you. I think this is going to be super fun. I mean, at least for me, I think you and I are going to have fun. Hopefully the listeners will as well. I mean your background is a degree in psychology and then being an attorney and a leading mediator in legal field and people with the mediation needs, and then you’ve kind of turn to this focus on negotiation and the book and the podcast and the Ted talk.

Jason: So, obviously from a sales background, I see all of that as an intersection, both the psychology and the negotiation side with sales. Let’s start there.

Kwame: Perfect. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And when it comes down to it, I think the easiest way to understand my narrative and the course that I’m on is the fact that I love psychology. I love psychology. And the reason I was attracted to negotiation was in law school. I took a negotiation course and it was the first time I saw psychology being utilized for a business or legal purpose. So I was hooked at that point. And then as I started to dig deeper into it, I realized that it was a little bit more for me because I personally was not good at having difficult conversations. And when I was able to go through the negotiation class at the law school, I realized that the ability to be good in negotiations and difficult conversations, conflict, it’s not a talent, it’s a skill and you can actually take the time to learn it and improve it.

Kwame: And so blending the psychology to make my persuasive endeavors more effective was one thing, but also using the psychology to overcome my personal fears was I think the bigger thing. And I just want to share that with as many people as I can.

Jason: And what’s interesting about that is watching your Ted talk and reading, some of the stuff that you’ve done is, there is negotiation, which of course is a sales podcast. And so there’s okay negotiation and sales, maybe it is a negotiation or not. The conflict side is the part that really struck me when you’re talking about it, right? So there’s the conflict side and the the fear of conflict. And I see that a lot of times in salespeople where they’re afraid of let’s say pushing for the sale. A lot of people have more on the order taker end of the spectrum and they’re afraid of it.

Jason: You know when you get into that psychological kind of fight or flight lizard brain part that we both talk about in our own respective things and where that fits in and avoiding conflict, but instead looking at it where conflict that you could use and that you need to overcome and for the right reasons. I mean that’s the big key, right? Is the right reasons for overcoming that conflict.

Kwame: Absolutely. And it really comes down to mindset when we really think about it. So psychologically we are always evaluating situations, am I going to approach this situation or avoid it?

Kwame: And a lot of times if you have a negative orientation toward conflict, what’s going to happen is you’re going to avoid the situation. Either you avoid having the conversation entirely or you are forced to or whatever circumstance they actually have the conversation. And because you still have that avoid mentality, you’re not going to be your best self in the conversation. So it really comes down to mindset when it’s all said and done.

Jason: And what is some of the suggestions that you have for people? Because mindset is usually a factor of things that happen as a child or growing up or a conflict in the house or the way that things were done growing up in your experiences and a lot of times that carries with you and you just have this thing you’re carrying around as your set point for what you view as conflict, how you handle it, like for you, how do you help people get past that? What’s some of the stuff that you tell salespeople to do or anybody to do if they’re shying away from conflict or you know, needing to get past that.

Kwame: The easiest thing you can do is look at it as an opportunity. So the challenge I have for everybody is this is an opportunity to blank, your goal is to fill in the blank right there before the conversation that you’re struggling with. And if you’re creative enough, you can find the answer to that question. It’s an opportunity to learn. It’s an opportunity to rebuild the relationship. It’s an opportunity to advance my career. It’s an opportunity to help this person with the problem that I know they’re having. And so think about it. For instance, as a salesperson, the reason that we do what we do is because we genuinely believe that our product or service can solve the problem that people are facing, right? And so we want to be able to have the conversation, even if the person might be reticent or a little bit shy or whatever the issue might be, we still want to have the conversation because we genuinely believe that what we have could be beneficial for them. And so just adjusting your mentality, and thinking about every conversation as an opportunity is going to be very significant when it comes to improving your ability in the conversations.

Jason: And I think that’s huge because when I think about salespeople who are hesitating from conflict and conflict in a sales interaction is pushing somebody, pushing the prospect towards where they could be, right? Like if you have a friend who’s got, let’s say an addiction problem and you know that they should be doing something different or you could offer advice or you want to support them, you’re afraid of bringing it up because you’re afraid of the conflict and what may happen. And the drama in a sales role, you have your prospect, like you said, you believe in your product or service and you know that it could help the right people, right? So you have a qualified prospect and now you want to move them forward, then that conflict is not something that’s going to cause drama. And if the other person reacts negatively to it, you still have to go forward because you know that’s what you’ve got to do and it’s basically your duty.

Jason: At that point it’s your obligation to confront that person who’s not moving forward with your product or service because you know that it could help them. And I think that’s one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen with salespeople who realize like, wait a second, this is really helpful. Like there’s a lot of people in sales who, they’re selling something but they don’t really understand the impact like to the other person in their life, whether it’s a business or it’s a consumer. Like if you’re helping a business, let’s say with marketing, I mean that could be make it or break it for that business. I mean that could people’s jobs at that company if the company expands or contracts. And so once you realize that and put it in perspective, then the conflict side is negligible. Right?

Kwame: Exactly. Because you’re seeing the bigger picture. Just like you said, it’s perspective and one of the things that we need to consider is the concept of productive tension. And so I am a, I’m a chess nerd. I love playing chess. I’m reading a book right now by Gary Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time. And he said one of the things that novice chess players do is when there is a situation where there are multiple pieces that could attack or kill another piece, what they want to do is they jump the gun and attack the piece very quickly because sitting with that tension where multiple moves might go past where one piece could kill another piece and both players clearly know it, it’s uncomfortable, and it really has an impact on their cognitive process. That pressure causes them to make a mistake and what they’re trying to do is alleviate that pressure by creating chaos essentially.

Kwame: And what we ended up doing oftentimes as salespeople or people who are negotiating, we’re having difficult conversations in general is that our orientation is toward seeing the pressure that we feel as a negative, the tension that we feel as a negative thing, and sometimes that tension is a necessary part of the process. These conversations are by design, difficult and if you’re having it in a way that avoids tension, it’s likely that you’re not pushing hard enough or challenging people in to the core where you need to in order to move them in the right direction.

Jason: That’s so wild because I’m listening to you think and then I’ll translate it in my brain into, you know, the sales experiences that I’ve seen, the reps that I’ve worked with, even myself in sales situations. And you’re right, I mean that’s why I use the phrase order taker. Like if you’re not pushing things forward into some kind of conflict, then you’re just taking orders because then it’s a function of either somebody who wants to buy or not. I mean you might as well be working like the register somewhere in a retail store because you’re basically taking orders, right? But if you are a salesperson and you’re tasked with the responsibility of closing deals, then you’re going to have to push people outside of their comfort zone. It’s going to create conflict. There’s going to be that tension. And it’s interesting because once you get comfortable with that tension, then you’ll ask questions that will push people to where they don’t want to go. And then also when they push back and fight back or come up with objections, you just don’t even deal with it or you just kind of ignore it or you’re okay with silence, right? Like it’s that silence that a lot of sales reps, new sales reps, underperforming reps will just kind of jump on because they want to fill in that gap and they’re afraid of that tension and what’s building kind of like their chest example. Right?

Kwame: Exactly. And the thing is there is gold on the other side of that tension because let’s use silence as an example. What does that mean? It means a lot of things. And so we have to have the curiosity necessary to explore what it is that this particular silence means. So let’s explore some of those things. So silence could mean that they’re thinking, let’s say they’re an introvert, they process slower and deeper. And so it’s not that there is nothing there, it’s that they’re creating it and you need to give them time to respond. And if you jump in too quickly and rescue them from that silence, now that gold that they’re mining in their brain, you don’t have the option to harvest it, you can’t take it out, right? That’s one thing. The other thing is that you might have overcome one of their major objections and they saw themselves saying, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want this, blah, blah, blah.

Kwame: But then you’ve done a good job of drawing out the hidden objections and now they’re starting to realize, wait a second. The reality that I believe that was in is not what it really is. I might actually need this. And so when you think about the way that people process information, it takes a little bit of time for them to adjust from their original position to another position. So they have to consider where they were before, where they’re potentially going, what was the thing that changed their perspective? And really they want to do it in a way that saves face. People don’t like to feel as though, Hey, Jason’s just a wizard, he overwhelmed me with his persuasive skills and now I see the world that the way you read it, they might be trying to adjust their position in a way that allows them to save face and feel good about themselves. And again, if we rescue them from that productive tension by saying something, we’re cutting off that cognitive process. So in a lot of times we need to sit there and wait, let this process work and it doesn’t feel good a lot of times, but you have to take the time and see what happens on the other side.

Jason: That’s it for part one of my conversation with Kwame Christian, and make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com to find the show notes, his links and the transcript, and make sure to subscribe to catch all of these episodes. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E203] Sales Recruiting with Ken Lazar – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the fourth segment of the conversation I had with Ken.

In Part 4, Ken and I talk about:

Top 3 priorities once you get hired for that new sales role
Every successful salesperson must act like an “Owner”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ken on LinkedIn

Ken’s Bio:

Ken Lazar is a Professional Recruiter and Principal in Ability Professional Network, LLC.

Having spent over twenty years in talent acquisition and professional staffing, Ken previously held the positions of Managing Director for Experis Division of ManpowerGroup and District Manager for Kelly Services. Ken’s teams have put over 12,000 people to work.

Over the course of his career, Ken has won many top sales awards including District of the Year, the Consumer’s Choice Award for “Best Staffing Agency” in Central Ohio and the Leadership Award for Influential Selling. Ken led his team to twice winning his companies highest award, the ManpowerGroup “Power Award”, for growth, profitability and community service.

Understanding the needs of top sales performers and the importance of sourcing and hiring top sales professionals, Ken and his son Matt formed Ability Professional Network, LLC. The recruiting staff at APN are specialists at recruiting sales and sales management professionals. The company’s goal is to help its clients to grow their business and their candidates to reach their career potential.

A graduate in Industrial Engineering from Kettering University with a Master of Science in Industrial Administration from the Krannert Business School at Purdue University, Ken and his wife, Nancy, reside in Plain City, Ohio.

Ken is an avid golfer, custom pen maker and owns the best dog on the planet.

Ken’s Links:

Websites:

•KenLazar.com

E203 – Transcript

Jason: Hey, welcome to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back to part four of my conversation with Ken Lazar. This is the final of our four-part mini-series. As always, make sure that you subscribe and if you haven’t listened to the first three parts, because we’re going to wrap it up in this final part, talking about what top sales reps do when they’re in a new role and if that’s you or you’re looking for a new role or you want to see how you did when you started, kind of a self-awareness test. Make sure to listen to this part if you’re an owner or a manager, take some of this that we cover in your recruiting and in your management to identify if you really got a winner that you’re going to be hiring or if you really hired that winner if they’re following the steps that they should and checking the boxes of what a successful rep does.

Ken: You’ve really got to start putting prospects in the funnel. That’s the most important thing. If you start out putting really, really good quality prospects into your funnel and continue to do that, you’re going to be successful regardless. It’s what people do not understand that that the top of the sales process is the most critical? You don’t have prospects, you don’t have successful salespeople. Is that what you see and what you’ve seen, Jason?

Jason: Yeah, and I love those three parts. So to recap, the first one is the top salespeople. The top performers, in general, understand their comp plan. Know what’s involved in order to make the most amount of money possible, and not just for money sake, but that’s the indicator of winning and being successful in that role, which means you’re A. closing lots of deals helping lots of customers, which is the goal, and B. helping the company be successful and getting them to where they want to be. And so you’re doing it. And I think that’s always important because there’s two kinds of people in the world, the ones who sit down to play, let’s say a new game or do something and they read all the rules to see how they can win or they just kind of jump in and hope they can figure it out.

Jason: The people who read the rules and then see everything that’s involved and then know how they can win within the framework of those rules are always going to be more successful. Then the second one you said was about having a plan. There’s so many salespeople who show up and just say, okay, you tell me what I’m going to do and what I should do instead of treating it like their own business. No matter what you do, any employee at any company is essentially their own business. That role is theirs to make or break and especially in sales, I mean you may be getting a paycheck from somebody else and have a job that you have to go to or someone that you report to, but fundamentally that is your own business to succeed or not. And then the third part is the quality of the prospects. I mean, you know, whether you’re being given leads or you’re going out and getting the leads, you know where you spend your time, who’s the right one, who’s the best prospect for you to talk to that will get you the results you want versus just being busy for busy sake.

Ken: You got them all. Jason, I couldn’t agree with that. You summed that up perfectly.

Jason: Yeah and I, it’s interesting cause when you put those three together like you did and cause I’ve thought about those in different aspects when you put those three together as what a top salesperson would do, especially out of the gate. So if you’re listening to this and you’re going into sales or you’re thinking about changing roles or you’re looking at kind of how you started your current career versus how it’s going, put those three things together. And obviously for the managers listening, the more you can help facilitate that or find people who will do that. And you can usually see those indications in the interview process. I’m sure you’ve seen that too Ken wherein the interview process, you can see those glimmers of the person who wants to know the comp plan and the numbers want to have a plan or is already thinking of a plan and it’s already thinking about the ideal prospects.

Ken: I guess the, the one other thing that the fourth is thinking like an owner, which is very important. Yeah, I tell the story a lot. I put it in my blog as I was out running one day. It was like in July, it was just hotter than Hades. And so I got back and I’m coming back in my neighborhood and we have this interest in the neighborhood. It’s got some plants in there and some Gates and stuff like that. And there was this lady there that was hand watering the shrubs and everything there. She had this big huge truck with this tank on the back of it. And I said, boy, it’s been really hot. It hasn’t been a lot of water. She says, yeah, your subdivision, doesn’t have an irrigation system for the front. Oh, the entrance. So I’m out here watering the plant.

Ken: You know, we had this company that didn’t do that before you and I want to just want to tell you what a great job that you’re doing and to come out here and water the plants on your own and everything. That’s really great. I want you to tell your owner what good things I think about your company. She says, thanks, I’m the owner. It just goes to show you that whatever you do, you know, if you think like an owner, you’re going to do what’s necessary to get the job done. And that’s what a good salesperson does. He brings him the resources he does what’s necessary, what the client wants, and those are the successful salespeople, not what the salesperson wants or how do I serve my client

Jason: Well, and I think that goes for the successful salespeople, successful employees in any role in any organization, whether they have aspirations to move up or just be really good at what they do and enjoy it and be satisfied. People who take ownership of their role and treat it like their own and work hard and do a great job for themselves and their own reasons. Not because they’re told to or asked to or threatened against, you know, not doing it because it’s their own and they own it at some level.

Ken: Couldn’t say it better Jason. That’s exactly right.

Jason: Well, so that seems like a great place to stop, but I want to give you one more opportunity, one last word, something else to share with the listeners, sales recruiting for owners, for sales reps, whatever that might be.

Ken: Well selfishly I’m going to plug my company if you don’t mind. In order to find good salespeople, you need to find people that do that for a living, there’s a lot of really good human resources people out there. There’s a lot of good corporate recruiters out there, but finding good sales professionals is an entirely different animal. So my feeling is if you’re, if you need to put salespeople in place, whether you have an open position or whether you need to add to the sales force cause you’re bringing on new products or what have you, I would recommend that you find your agency lik ability professional network that you trust to help you through that process because the cost of a bad hire or the costs of a recurrent bad hire is more than what a recruiting agency would charge you for the recruiting thing. So my feeling is to use an outside recruiter whenever you can. I think that you’ll be more successful than plus the time constraints in doing it by yourself or your internal recruiters. That’s just, that’s just my selfish plug for my company and for my industry. Jason, I hope you don’t mind.

Jason: Not at all. And I completely agree. I mean, you know, depending on what level company, if you’re listening to this that you’re recruiting for, there’s definitely an over-under where hiring an agency, getting a recruiter staffing firm involved is definitely worth it. Especially to get you away from the paid ads or the placement on job boards and instead finding those gems of people who may or may not be looking, but could be valuable assets. I mean, I think that’s always worth it. And everyone knows the cost of turnover, especially in sales and how much that costs and time and money. So where can people find more information about you, can or get in touch with you?

Ken: Well, go to our website, it’s abilityprofessional.com and I have a present for your listeners.

Jason: Yeah. What is it?

Ken: So if you are a candidate that’s looking to find a new position, if you go on our website and create a profile and upload your resume into our website, I’ve written a book, it’s called a 30-day roadmap to your new job. And uh, we’ll give you a link to, uh, go to that resource so that you can use that in your journey on your next job search. It’s one day per page. It talks about what you should do for your mind, for your body to keep fit during that day and spirit, some kind of a special saying or some kind of quote that you can use for the day to keep you going. So that’s free. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to call me, call my cell directly. I keep it on my hip all the time. (614) 403-6079 or klazar@abilityprofessional.com

Jason: That’s awesome. Thanks, Ken for sharing that item with everybody if they go on the site and submit their info and uh, for being available to chat. And thank you for being on the shows. It was lots of fun and hopefully valuable for reps and managers and owners so that we’re listening.

Ken: It’s been a pleasure. Jason, thank you for the invitation for sure.

Jason: And for everyone listening, if you want to catch the transcript for this, also, if you want to get Ken’s links, you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com go to the podcast page and find this episode. And all the information there, including the show notes and, uh, make sure to subscribe to this iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud. You can go to Spotify. Also Google play. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. And people remember the experience you gave them.

[E202] Sales Recruiting with Ken Lazar – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Ken.

In Part 3, Ken and I talk about:

Advice for salespeople looking to get hired
Leveraging social media to get recruited

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ken on LinkedIn

Ken’s Bio:

Ken Lazar is a Professional Recruiter and Principal in Ability Professional Network, LLC.

Ken is an avid golfer, custom pen maker and owns the best dog on the planet.

Ken’s Links:

Websites:

•KenLazar.com

E202 – Transcript

Jason: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. So glad that you’re here. This is part three of my conversation with Ken Lazar from ability professional network. And we’re just going to continue the conversation. Make sure if you haven’t done it already, listened to part one and part two because we’re just going to keep rolling through this discussion about recruiting, sales professionals, that whole process. What works, what doesn’t work in this day and age with this market. So here you go. Part three, enjoy.

Ken: I don’t know about you, but I have seen more professionals crop their wife out of their wedding picture. You’ll have the, the Carnation in their Guten air and that does not connote a sales profession. So my feeling is, to go to Penney’s, go to Target, go somewhere and get a professional headshot. My recommendation is, although this may be a little old school, I suggest you put on a sports coat.

Jason: Well, if you’re, you’re, you’re going old school with the sport coat and tie and the pennies reference for their photo shoots. So, uh, but yeah, I mean all of those are good. I mean definitely put some effort into it. I know for me what I did and getting professional shots done recently was I found somebody through my network that was, you know, an aspiring professional photographer and you know, he did a great job, did a bunch of great work, took a lot of shots and uh, yeah, it was great.

Ken: Yeah. So that’s number one is that’s very important. The other is that you need to make sure that people can get a hold of you. So on your LinkedIn profile, a lot of people don’t know unless you tell LinkedIn that you would like to have your telephone number and email address visible to everybody. The only people that can see it as your first-level connections. So my recommendation is that you put your telephone number and your email address in your summary so people can get a hold of you. Either recruiters, corporate recruiters or professional recruiters like me, so they don’t have to do a lot of leg work to get a hold of you. So that’s preparation. The second is, is that your resume really has to be professionally done. Especially if you are looking for a sales leadership position. Make sure that somebody who knows how to write resumes does it. Remember that your resume is just not a uh, a summary of your professional accomplishments. It’s actually a marketing document. So you really need to make that very professional and in the direction that you want to go in your career. So those are two things that, but I’m going to suggest that you do immediately just to make sure that people can find you as a passive candidate. Makes sense to you?

Jason: Yeah, and I like that tip about LinkedIn, especially the standardized side. Yeah. A lot of candidates don’t realize that if you’ve never been on the recruiting side, you don’t know what it’s like to look at hundreds of resumes in all different formats with all formatting and locations and trying to find what you need in there. Various lengths, various information, you know, that’s there or not there. And uh, that is great about LinkedIn. Is it’s standard. If somebody fills in most of the information, everything will be there. And, uh, if you’re looking for a top performer job and you’re a sales pro, then yeah, you want to make sure, especially B2B, you want to make sure your LinkedIn is tight anyway.

Ken: Our feeling is that we really don’t promote any candidates that do not really have a robust LinkedIn profile, especially in sales. Because if they really don’t, and I don’t know how serious they are about their profession.

Jason: Well and that’s, I mean that’s the thing, right? I mean they say what you do and in one area is what you do in all areas. And so, you know, if you’re a salesperson, and this is to everyone listening, cause this is my experience, it’s the same thing with the, you know, CRM data and your emails and your communication. You know, if you’re not putting the effort into your LinkedIn and that as a marketing tool on a presentation for yourself, there’s a good chance that you could be successful in sales because you’re getting by on what you’re saying and your conversations. But are you operating in a professional level in all areas where you’re looking at the entire package and being that professional.

Ken: Yeah, and if you are actively seeking a position, if you’re in transition, then your LinkedIn profile really needs to mirror your resume. Almost word for word.

Ken: If you are well professional that is just using LinkedIn for social media or other means, then your LinkedIn profile can look different. It’s more company-focused than for you, personal. So you really need to focus on which end of the spectrum you are, you uh, are you a candidate or you’re looking to gain business through your LinkedIn profile.

Jason: Yeah, and I know for myself there’s been many different periods in my life where I’m not using LinkedIn because I’m busy at a job in a role and I’m not really leveraging LinkedIn cause it’s not important for what I’m doing. But then always remember is when you make that shift or you’re looking for opportunities is to update it in the same way you would update a resume.

Ken: And then to be active. I mean it doesn’t take a lot of time to post something. Once a week on LinkedIn to your network or to your groups, just to keep your name out there. You never know who’s watching, especially if it is relevant to your profession. We should put that stuff out there and you come across with every day. But it’s kind of like an afterthought to post it on LinkedIn.

Jason: Yeah. So let me ask you this about other social media. How important have you seen it from your role helping companies with their recruiting top sales performers in looking at the person’s other social media? Like how much does that factor in these days?

Ken: Not much. No. I mean, I Google candidates. I really don’t go on their Facebook page and take a look at what they’re doing on Facebook. There are two different strategies. One is a personal network, the other one’s a professional network. But, Facebook, I don’t use it as a tool for recruiting at all.

Jason: But what about kind of investigating somebody who might be a candidate. Is that pretty common still? You know, you said Google it and then see what comes up. What about checking the social media just to see what you’re getting into.

Ken: I’ve seen candidates being rejected for positions for the proliferation of junk that they put on their Facebook page. And it’s a shame that because they can be highly qualified in their professional life, but in their post, in their personal life is crazy. So present company excluded. I’m sure.

Jason: I don’t do much on social media anyway. I keep all my crazy to myself.

Ken: Yeah. So if you’re out there and you think you’re going to promote your career or if you’re in job search mode, I would absolutely recommend that you take a look at your LinkedIn profile. I assume that your Facebook profile to make, I take anything out of there that it is controversial.

Jason: Yeah, it’s definitely, I mean, because again, it’s partially for the company because the biggest thing I’ve seen, you know, salespeople understand or anybody listening to this, like one of the biggest things from a recruiting standpoint is, is this going to be a cultural fit? So based on the organization, the values, the mission, and the vision for the company, is somebody going to be a good fit? And while it might seem like, well, this is how I am at work and this is how I am in my personal life, I’ve rarely ever found somebody who can be two different people. They’re always the same person you are and who you are wherever you go. And so you might kind of pretend in a sales profession or professional environment to be one way, but at some point that that division will go away and you’ll, your true colors, whoever you are, will come out good or bad or positive or negative, whatever that is.

Jason: And so is it a good fit for some organizations posting crazy stuff on Facebook could be a perfect fit because that fits in with who they are, but it’s when it’s not a good fit that it stands out and you know, organizations are going to make those decisions.

Ken: I agree. So you just need to make sure that nothing there that would keep you from getting a job or eliminate you from getting the job. Absolutely.

Jason: Yeah. And then the other thing that always to keep in mind too is that if your searching and I’m searching and somebody who’s recruiting a searching, you know there’s a good chance at some point a prospect, a prospective customer is going to search, especially if it’s a bigger transaction or a longer sales cycle. At some point, it’s going to come up with who is this person we’re dealing with? It could come up in that same search and then will that help or hurt your chances of closing that deal and your reputation.

Ken: And your career, your career. Absolutely. Cause that stuff’s out there forever.

Jason: So let me ask you this, shifting a little bit. So you’ve hired somebody, you’ve put them in place, you know, for one of your client’s companies hire to make that decision. In your experience, what are those top salespeople doing that makes them successful once they’re in that role?

Ken: Well one is that they’re going to take a look at their compensation plan. She has made sure that they understand what it takes for them to be successful personally with regard to their baseless division. So that’s the mark of a good salesperson. What is the company asking me to do to make my compensation as high as possible, which will be directly influenced how the company grows.

Ken: So that’s important. The other one is a plan. So a lot of my clients are during the interview asking the candidates, but what are you going to do in the first 90 days? Now that you know something about my company, now that you know something about the position, how would you go about this? And you really need to put together that 90-day plan in order to, uh, to be successful. Then you really need to get feedback from your hiring manager as often as possible. How am I doing? What do I need to do better? What else do I need to do to keep that moving? And for salespeople, regardless of who you are, you really got to start putting prospects in the funnel. That’s the most important thing. If you start out putting, really, really good quality prospects into your funnel and continue to do that, you’re going to be successful regardless. It’s that what people do not understand is that the top of the sales process is the most critical. You don’t have prospects, you don’t have successful salespeople. Is that what you see and what you’ve seen, Jason?

Jason: Alright, everybody, that’s it for part three of the conversation. We’ve got one more left tomorrow. Make sure to subscribe so you can get alerts whenever there’s new episodes each and every day, five days a week. Get your daily dose of the sales experience podcast. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E201] Sales Recruiting with Ken Lazar – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Ken.

In Part 2, Ken and I talk about:

Why “Hire Slow, Fire Fast” might not be right for your organization
Are you making your hiring process too painful?

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ken on LinkedIn

Ken’s Bio:

Ken Lazar is a Professional Recruiter and Principal in Ability Professional Network, LLC.

Ken is an avid golfer, custom pen maker and owns the best dog on the planet.

Ken’s Links:

Websites:

•KenLazar.com

E201 – Transcript

Jason: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Ken Lazar from ability professional network. He and I are just going to continue the conversation about recruiting both for managers and owners who are listening. This could be very valuable in kind of some of the strategies and what he’s seeing in the marketplace from the recruiting side of dealing with just sales professionals and then also if you’re a sales professional or an aspiring sales professional. This whole conversation, these four parts, super valuable to help you get some insight into what it’s like recruiting sales professionals, how to be prepared and what do you really want instead of what you feel you should do. But what do you really want? So here it is part to enjoy.

Jason: To present themselves instead of me filtering through the 50 or 80 or a hundred candidates that are all along. The same ones you’re talking about are the people who seem to be submitting cause it’s easy and no real intention of moving forward with it. And so I make them do a little bit of work and then the right people will, you know, kind of keep pressing forward.

Ken: Well good that you have some filters in there because it takes a lot of time. They go through the resume.

Jason: Yeah. It can be a giant time suck of just filtering through the candidates in mass.

Ken: So there’s another strategy that’s, I dunno if you’ve uh, it’s called hire slow fire fast. They’ve got a good story. You’ll get a chuckle out of this. So I was on a panel discussion with a group of people, business owners and uh, the guy who was sitting next to me, a successful guy too. They were asked a question, how do you hire? And he goes, Kenny says we hire slow and fire fast. And I’m going, okay, I hear you. So afterwards I went up to him and I said, I heard you say that you hired slow and fire fast. He says, yup, that’s the way we hire. And I said, how do you manage your company with only B and C players? And he looks at me like I was absolutely crazy. I said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, if you hire slow, the A players are not going to stick around.

Ken: What you are hiring are going to be the B and C players and if you’re waiting so long to hire them, why are you firing them fast? If you are training them and doing the right thing, then you should not be hiring on fast is it too long to hire slow. So I don’t know. I think that that’s a bad strategy in the current market. I think that you need to keep the hiring process moving along. You need to keep your candidates well aware of what’s going on. I don’t mean to hire precipitously. I mean you can take your time and make sure that your candidates understand what you’re doing. Just not letting them wait.

Jason: So do you think a hire fast fire faster is better?

Ken: No. I want the companies to have a definite hiring process and when they start out, and then I asked them what the hiring process is going to be if they’re giving me the assignment and we followed the process and we tell the candidates what to, what the timeframe is going to be, what the process is, how many people that they’re going to interview. So the candidate has clear expectations about the hiring process. If you just hire slow just for hiring slow, that doesn’t make any sense.

Jason: Well, and that’s interesting because I’ve been a part of several organizations where they just feel like it’s not valuable unless it’s slow and or painful in the recruiting process. Right. So even for the candidates and the number of interviews and the time you have to wait in between, you know, it’s kind of like the old dating rule of waiting 48 hours, just putting these things in place to make it long and drawn out. What’s your thought on that?

Ken: It’s like waterboarding. And I will tell you this is crazy that this happened to a very good friend of mine. Otherwise, I would call a person crazy. So my friend that went up to interview at a hospital or director-level position. You got there in the morning and you started interviewing in the morning and at the end of the day he had interviewed with 42 people. Some were one-on-one, some were in groups. It took 42 people to look at him. Do you give a fair opinion on whether he was qualified for the position? So my feeling is that you should keep the process going as fast as you can. I just to make sure that you are keeping good candidates interested.

Jason: So let me ask you this about the recruiting process since we’re talking about it in the timeline and the process, I know that you deal with a lot of different clients, a lot of different companies. Is there kind of a standard model you like to use for the interviews, the number of interviews, the processes you make salespeople go through? Is that pretty dependent on the company?

Ken: It’s driven by our clients, Jason. But each of our clients has a methodology in their hiring process. Sometimes they ask us our opinion and we’ll give them our opinion. But some clients, like the first interview to be a telephone interview in person interview and then maybe multiple in-person interviews during the day. Some of our clients like to bring the salespeople or candidates in immediately. They want to see now the very first time, don’t want to waste their time on the telephone. They can see so much more in a face to face interview and you’re looking at nonverbal communication, verbal communication, all those types of things. So I prefer to get the client and the candidates in front of the client as soon as possible to make good decisions.

Jason: Yeah. Well, and my only caveat with that is what I’ve found from my experience is two things. One is depending on what the sale involves, phone face to face, where the primary time is spent in that sale is that’s the best place to start with the interview. So in my experience, a lot of inside sales type of jobs, call centers, it’s a phone job. And so really what I want is to talk to somebody over the phone first, see if that conversation is easy. Is it somebody I’m enjoying talking to? Because there’s some people who face to face, they’re really good, but over the phone they’re not. And obviously vice versa. If it’s a face to face job, then your phone skills are one thing, but how you present yourself. And then the other part, what’s your opinion on is, what I’ve found too that’s very important is depending on how long the sales cycle is, that the salesperson is walking into what they’re going to be selling the product or service is that the interview process and or some of the hoops and challenges should be commiserate to that process. Right? So if it’s a longer sales cycle, maybe they have to do a little bit more to make sure they have the stamina when they get into that role.

Ken: Well, that’s a good point. I never thought of it that way. But Jason, I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, there are sales professionals that are very transactional in what they’re selling,

Jason: Which is great if you’re recruiting or you’re in a role where it’s a transactional, you know, sales role, right. And it fits them.

Ken: Yeah. And then they’re going to have a different sales cycle process and outlook. Then a person that is selling capital equipment for example, right. We deal with some clients that have some very expensive, very engineered machinery. The time, the sales cycle, we were talking maybe a $10 million piece of machinery, it could be a year. So you have a different type of salesperson that’s going to be successful in that environment versus something a person that’s going to be more transactional, like retail’s very transaction. Right. So, uh, yeah, you’re absolutely right. And putting a transactional salesperson in a long sales cycle will drive them crazy.

Jason: Yup. And vice versa. You put a long sales cycle person who’s, you know, used to relationships and constant contact and moving it forward a little bit at a time and bringing in lots of stakeholders and you put them in a short sales cycle, transactional type of thing. Whether it’s a one call close or retail or you know, maybe car sales and it’s not going to be a good fit because there’s not the same urgency.

Ken: That’s exactly right.

Jason: And so what I’ve found is then I take that person, you know, depending on what the role is, make the interview process somewhat relative to the sales cycle. Obviously if it’s a 18 months sales cycle, it’s not going to be an 18th month interview, but it’s also not going to be really quick. And if it’s a short sales cycle, that interview process might be quicker and might get to the cut to the chase faster because of, you know, the people you’re dealing with.

Ken: Yeah, I agree with that. Totally. And actually there’s this philosophy about make your interview candidate more of a sales call, have him make a sales call on you and that will give you a good indication about what type of salesperson he is.

Jason: So let’s get back to the candidates. I’m thinking about, you know, the people who might be listening to this show, and let’s talk about the sales professionals who are listening. Maybe they’re thinking about changing jobs, maybe they’re in between jobs right now. What’s some of the advice would give to that person who’s looking either for a better opportunity, a new opportunity, whether the economy is good or maybe by the time they listen to this, it’s shifted and the market’s changed. What are you seeing or what would you tell the prospective sales pro out there?

Ken: Well, I would tell them to be prepared. So the main hiring media right now actually is LinkedIn. So I would rather look at a candidate’s LinkedIn profile than I would the resume. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is that the LinkedIn profiles are all commonly structured. So I know where to look for things or as a resume that could be anywhere. So, and the other thing is, is that I can click on a URL for a LinkedIn profile and determine whether or not that this person has spent a lot of time, uh, developing a story about professionalism. I would rather recruit on a LinkedIn profile rather than on a resume. So, number one and most important is get a decent headshot. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I have seen more professionals crop their wife out of their wedding picture. He’ll have the Carnation in their Guten air and that does not connote a sales profession. So my feeling is to go to Penney’s, go to target, go somewhere and get a professional headshot. My recommendation is, although this may be old school, I suggest you put on a sports coat.

Jason: Alright, that’s it for part two of my conversation with Ken. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find the show notes, the transcripts, and all of Ken’s links on there. And also if you want more information, go on the website. You can hit me up or you can follow me on LinkedIn as well. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E200] Sales Recruiting with Ken Lazar – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Are you in a hiring position, challenged with finding top sales professionals to join the team?

Are you a salesperson looking to get your next great sales opportunity?

In this 4-part series, I speak with Ken Lazar from Ability Professional Network. Having helped hire over 12,000 people, he knows a thing or two about both sides of the hiring process – both from the recruiting/company end and from the new employee looking to come on board. We talk about both parts, plus what his tips for the priorities of a new salesperson when they get hired.

In Part 1, Ken and I talk about:

Recruiting, sales and marketing require the same starting point – knowing who your ideal prospect/candidate is
Salespeople – make sure you are a good culture fit with your company
Finding top salespeople in this job market

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ken on LinkedIn

Ken’s Bio:

Ken Lazar is a Professional Recruiter and Principal in Ability Professional Network, LLC.

Ken is an avid golfer, custom pen maker and owns the best dog on the planet.

Ken’s Links:

Websites:

•KenLazar.com

E200 – Transcript

Jason: Hey and welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason cutter. On today’s episode I have, Ken Lazar, so having spent over 20 years focused on professional staffing. He now runs his company ability professional network, which focuses on recruiting top sales performers for his clients. Now after placing over 12,000 people into jobs, he knows a thing or two about recruiting and finding the right fit. And I’ve spent so many years dealing with candidates, recruiting and hiring. So excited to have him on the show. Ken, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Ken: Thank you Jason. I really appreciate the invitation.

Jason: Yeah, and like I said, as soon as we connected I was thinking, man, I know this is one of the biggest challenges for most organizations, dealing with salespeople, not just the turnover, but also finding the right fit and all of that. And so for everyone listening, if you’re in sales, well probably be a very valuable episode for you to listen to, to hear, kind of look behind the curtain and into the mind of a sales recruiter. You know, then Ken is going to share. If you’re a manager and owner, obviously this is going to be great from either confirming what you’re doing on the recruiting side and it’s working well or maybe some new information. So Ken, let’s start with the recruiting process. So since at the very beginning, since the first stage is always what you read about the candidate, whether it’s a profile cover letter, resume, like what you’re seeing about them on paper, what is it that you’re typically looking for in your experience for that person who’s going to be a top performer?

Ken: Well, first of all, we start with what we call developing a profile of the ideal candidate with our client. So even though we’re hiring sales professionals, each particular assignment, it can be different with regard to the qualifications of the candidate, the education of the candidate, the experience of the candidates. So we develop a profile and then we go out and we find either in our database or using other social media candidates that meet that profile and develop a talent pool of those candidates that we start reaching out to. It’s kind of the process starts, it starts with the client and the qualifications for the position.

Jason: Got it. So starting there then, which is the step before the initial step. I know that’s so important when recruiting is to know exactly what you’re looking for the same as it is with marketing and sales. You know, you’ve got to know your prospect, what you’re going after, what are some strategies that people can use on their side to determine that? Like what does that process looking for you to break down what that ideal candidate might look like?

Ken: Well I think before we go into a process, because we’ve developed a prietary process that we go out and find candidates. I think Jason, we probably should talk a little bit about the state of the market. What’s going on out there in the sales market? How about that? So everybody knows right now, well most people know that it’s a candidate driven market. So the current unemployment rate for business to business sales professionals, which is what we typically recruit is between two and 3%, which is basically full employment. And I’m sure that you see that Jason, when you’re recruiting salespeople for your inside sales teams.

Jason: Yeah. No matter what, whether it’s business to business, business to consumer, inside, outside sales, all the good people have jobs already.

Ken: Yeah. So the people that we are talking to are people that are working or people that are in a slight transition and we’re asking them to take a look at the assignment that we have to see if it’s something that they want to take to further their career. So another metric that we should talk about is the time to hire and there’s a group out there called the DHI group and they have been monitoring time to hire probably for the past 25 years. And from the time that the job order goes out to the time that the candidate is sitting in their desk, is that for sales positions, the average time to hire right now is 48 days. No, that in itself is not significant. What is significant is the longest time to hire in recent history. So we are taking longer to hire sales professionals than we ever have.

Jason: Makes sense. That’s what it feels like in the market place as well is the, whether you’re recruiting somebody who’s already working or finding and going through the candidates that you have available, it definitely feels like that’s definitely a supply and demand issue in favor of the candidates.

Ken: Yeah. So, uh, depending upon which side of the desk that you’re sitting on, 48 days, it can be an eternity for a hiring manager that has an open territory and he’s competition are in there knocking on the doors of the territory that is vacant, that can be an eternity, especially if the last longer than that on the candidate side of the good sales, uh, professionals, their stock is really high right now and they’ve been very successful. So to you get them to move from one company to another? You really have to have a compelling story in order them to get them to move to your competition.

Ken: And what’s happening. These candidates, they’re demanding significant wage increases to switch employers. So the crazy thing that’s happening right now, and I see it all the time, Jason, is that a client will give me an assignment and will give me a budget for what the compensation ought to be. And really what the client thinks a compensation ought to be is really not as relevant as what the market is driving that compensation. So what happens is, is I give candidates and I submit them to find out that the candidates that they want with the qualifications and the education of the territory are demanding a higher wage and they’re currently paying their current employees. And that can really be a problem within, I don’t know if you were seeing that in your organization.

Jason: Yeah, I have uh, I’ve seen that recently with some clients on my side, on the consulting side where recruiting is occurring, want to bring in new reps. The wage in the market as a base wage is higher or should be higher than previous hires. You know, previous sales people that have been brought in. And then there’s an issue of what do you do about that? Uh, you bring people in higher. What about the other people on board? Always assuming that wage information is completely transparent and everyone will talk about it then you know, what kind of morale issue might you have and how do you handle that.

Ken: Yeah, so if you’re going out to hire new sales professionals, you really need to be looking at the top 15% of sales candidates in your industry. Anything below that, you’re not going to be very satisfied with the success of the sales candidates. So I think we both ought to take a look at what some traditional methods are, Jason, that people have been using to see why they’re failing. How about that?

Jason: Failing at what? Ken

Ken: Failing at getting good candidates.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, uh, that’s always a challenge. I’ve seen that forever as far as you know, is it a strategy issue? Is it a culture fit? Is it a, the message, is it the compensation, you know, in this difficult market, let’s say right now, what are you seeing most?

Ken: Well, first of all, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes out there.

Jason: Oh go for it. Anybody who’s listening to this show for a while has gotten used to that at some point.

Ken: Well, I mean we’ll talk about some traditional methods and then we’ll talk about why they’re not working. And if you’re using these methods, I think you’re probably see the same things that I’m seeing, but we’ll just walk through them? And, and the first one of course are job boards. So, uh, job boards, you know, going back to when monster.com came on board probably about 15 years ago had been the mainstay of finding candidates. The issue is with job boards is that typically you are only looking at active job seekers and not passive job seekers. So back in the recession, the great recession, there were a lot of active job seekers out there. So you had to really, you gotta pick well, you wanted to pick off of job boards and you’re getting some good candidates. But now only about, we figure about 8% of potential sales candidates are actually active job seekers on job boards.

Ken: So I thought that that was kind of a low figure. So we got contacted by one of the major job boards and they contact me every so once in a while and want to give me access to the job boards. So they give me some free time. So this one job board contacted me and said, Ken, we’ll take all of the current job orders that you have on your website that you’re showing there and we’ll put them on our job board for 10 days just to show you how many good candidates you’re going to find that are gonna apply to your jobs and…

Jason: Trying to sell you on why you should post them on the job board and pay for that.

Ken: Yeah. And it’s a good strategy, gave me some time for free and see and I get to keep the candidates that applied and if the good candidates will, then I will buy a license, which are about $2 million. I’ll see, right now the job boards are really, really costing a lot of money. So we did it and they took our jobs and they put them on their job board and uh, we waited and some of our sales positions, yeah. Are fairly hard to fill, but we got around 80 candidates that submitted their resumes to those open positions. So guess, how many of those 80 people that submitted the resumes to our positions were actually qualified candidates?

Jason: I’m going to guess eight.

Ken: You would be high by eight.

Jason: Oh wow.

Ken: There were none, there were no candidates that applied that were even remotely, uh, qualified for the position. I mean we got things anywhere from, not that there’s anything about yoga instructors, but we’ve got everything from except sales candidates that we wanted to see. So my feeling is, right now is for sales positions. Job orders are not going to be where you need to spend a lot of your time and nor your money. So what’s your experience, Jason? Have you used job boards in the past?

Jason: I have, I’ve used them way in the past, you know, from everything from Craigslist to Monster to Indeed. And even recently in the past six months. And it’s interesting cause that same experience has happened for me on my side. Yeah. Such that what I’ve defaulted to for years is to put some hoops in place, for potentially qualified people to go through those hoops to present themselves. Instead of me filtering through the 50 or 80 or a hundred candidates that are all along the same ones you’re talking about or the people who seem to be submitting cause it’s easy and no real intention of moving forward with it. And so I make them do a little bit of work and then the right people will, you know, kind of keep pressing forward.

Ken: Well good that you have some filters in there because it takes a lot of time to go through the resume.

Jason: Alright everybody, that’s it for part one of my conversation with Ken Lazar. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find all of Ken’s links before the final part in this mini series as well as show notes and the transcripts. Make sure to subscribe everywhere that podcasts are sold and if possible, leave a rating or review. All of that really helps and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E199] Technical Sales Mastery with Ian Peterman – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the final segment of the conversation I had with Ian.

In Part 4, Ian and I talk about:

The windy journey of life and sales effectiveness
Sales should continue the conversation that Marketing started
You’re not just selling – you’re educating your customers
Succeeding in sales by being about relationships (not high-pressure tactics)

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

Ian’s Bio:

Ian is an amazing entrepreneur, business owner, and an amazing individual. Ian grew up surrounded by design, engineering, accounting, and entrepreneurial people. Ian always had the desire to work for himself. After working as an engineer and designer for over a decade within startups and companies like HP, Adidas, Robot, and Nike, Ian founded the Peterman Design Firm. The firm has been named one of the top design and branding firms of 2019 by DesignRush, Clutch, The Manifest and Visual Objects.

Ian has been in the branding world for 7 years now running two different design firms. Social media isn’t a have to, it’s a get to and it’s a huge opportunity for brands to engage with people at all stages of their relationship to offer education, build trust, and share value. When done right, it’s an avenue for being seen, well understood, and garnering powerful loyalty with your ideal clients and customers.

Ian’s Links:

Website: http://www.petermanfirm.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetermanFirm/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/petermanfirm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petermanfirm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PetermanFirm

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianpeterman/

E199 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to another episode of the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part four of Ian Peterman and I’s conversation about sales engineering, branding mostly about sales and engineering. We talk about niching, what you do and the sales experience, title, wide range of things, whether you’re a sales rep, a manager, owner, super interesting conversation. When you step back and look at it from any position, if you have experience in the realm of sales, especially with anything technical, sales and engineering, even sales and marketing where there are different stakeholders involved with a sale, then this is an important conversation. So if you haven’t checked it out, make sure you listen to parts one, two and three. Subscribe to the episodes and here you go. Here’s part four enjoy.

Ian: And I can knock to owners and the managers in the company that are wanting the project completed. And so my is kind of uh, odd turn because I got too broad and then narrowed it by just by changing the position of what I did. So I had technically still, you know, through my company, I offer product design, branding, marketing, all of these components. But they aren’t my personal specialty, my specialty is bringing them together. So it’s a journey. It’s always a journey getting there.

Jason: Well, and I think that’s fascinating because I can totally visualize that and obviously it might be some salespeople listening to this and they’re like, what does this have to do with me? I mean you never know where your life is going to go and what you’re going to do and you know kind of what your focus is in your niches. But to hear your kind of journey, it’s very similar to mine and I can just imagine how you were doing everything and then narrowed it down, narrowed it down again and then, you know, cause I’ve done the same thing, which then broadens it because you realize you can do a lot of things and then bringing it back down together. But more from a higher level. And you know, for any owners out there listening to this and you’re thinking about what do you do with your sales team, what do you do with your product or service?

Jason: You know, really focus on what that niche is and the niche within that niche, you know, and how many customers do you really need? What does that number look like? What does that universe, as they say from a marketing perspective, how many people out there would be your total addressable market? And then, you know, how do you serve them within that niche? So let me ask you this question. Now that you know what you know and you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re bringing all these people together, talking about the sales side, what does the ideal sales experience look like within an organization? You know, as a salesperson, but then also, you know, for the customer who’s looking at buying, like what have you seen? What is in your mind, what is the ideal sales experience look like?

Ian: So in my mind, from the customer’s standpoint, the sales experience should be a very seamless and smooth process starting with, you know, the first time that they buy as a customer. You can hear about the company, you know, it’s making as a customer, I would want to see the same branding, the same messaging. You know, having a consistent feel through whatever the initial advertising, however you get me as a lead, right? Transitioning smoothly into actually talking to a rep, you know, talking to somebody in sales and then purchasing in continuing that journey down the road of actually using the product and things like that. Those when it’s not, when it’s disjointed and I’ll use you experienced, I just, Starbucks has a very, very good customer experience when you’re in their stores, right? It’s the exact same coffee. Every user experiences is great until you get to use their tech support for their app and as not as great.

Ian: And so when you have those disjointing, you know, and especially in the sales process and you’re about to go spend money, especially if we’re talking about larger enterprise purchases, you know, we’re talking about tens hundred thousands of dollars being spent. You know, when you go through a process and you hit a disjointed piece where it jolts you and you get sent over to somebody else that doesn’t know you, doesn’t actually look at your information and starts talking to you, you know, things like that. That is the opposite of what you wine was smooth. You know, like you talked about the, when you had two people on your Skype call, all of a sudden it was very smooth and transition, you know, tech information and that tech support seamlessly joins in. From a salesperson point of view, it’s, to me it’s having the technical backup to make sure that I can actually talk to the customer, answer the customer’s questions, you know, have them on a Skype call with me, have an engineer sitting next to me so that I don’t look like an idiot.

Ian: I can just say, Hey, this is, here’s a question and let them answer the technical side. It’s having them, whoever does the marketing and advertising and making sure that their sales copy is directing the correct people and giving them the right initial information. I’ve done a lot of work with companies that there, there’s a huge disjoint because marketing is off doing their own thing and they do. They run these lovely ads and they get leads and then they go to the sales team. The sales team started talking to them and they go, Oh, well this ad says this and we’re looking for this, and there’s some level, you know, it’s not a full like, Oh we don’t even sell that product. But there’s some level of disconnect between that initial contact that was through an ad or something like that. And then when sales takes over, they have a hurdle basically that they’re given to jump over before you can even actually have a sales conversation is you’re correcting misinformation that another department but out there, so it’s making sure that that whole process is smooth and you’re able to answer the questions, have the right information with you and actually close the sales smoothly.

Jason: Yeah, I think that one is huge with what marketing is saying. That conversation then should be the same as what sales is saying engineering development. And then once somebody becomes a customer, account management, customer success, you know, customer service, tech support, all of that. Let’s, that’s why I’m a huge proponent of the sales experience being more than just sales. Right. And they, you know, big term is customer experience, but thinking about it even well before that person is a customer and looking at that whole journey of somebody going all the way through and how smooth is, cause you’re right that my example of the call with the two people on it literally just felt like one person, one organization, you know, the email afterwards, just a continuation of that. It didn’t, you know, there was one message that everyone was a part of, you know, from their website forward. And so I think that’s great advice.

Ian: Yeah, it’s, so I was talking to somebody else about this and the way I consider a customer experience and journey, it starts from the second they first learn about your company till the second they are no longer your customer and that, you know, that whole process from entrance to exit, that’s their experience of your company. And that, you know, there’s on the backend, there’s some companies I’ve worked with that, that uh, the backend experience was bad enough so they could never recapture those customers. And so you know, not that sales is necessarily part of that, but account management, if your sales and account management, that’s definitely part of your job.

Jason: Well and but a lot of it comes from like what you’re saying is the marketing’s got to have the same message as sales and they all have to set the right expectation for what the product or service does. If you’re a salesperson listening to this, keep in mind that your goal is to set the right expectation for the customer to be successful with your product or service longterm. Not just say whatever it takes to get the deal, but set the right expectation. If it’s a good fit, it will be a good fit. And here’s what I’ll tell you because I know this to be true for every product or service out there is not perfect. There is no perfect product or service in the world. There’s always some downside or some trade off, right? It’s never perfect. Like this might be the perfect solution except it’s going to be really expensive.

Jason: So there’s going to be a trade off, right? It’s just not possible. You know, there’s always a, or a trade off or what somebody is going to see as kind of uh, negative, you know, it’s not always terrible. It could be minor salespeople like to gloss over those. They don’t want to mention those. And in fact, I think when it’s done right by a sales professional, they’re actually going to bring those things up relative to, you know, with the good and the bad relative to somebody’s situation. That’s going to be a customer pointing it out and setting the right expectation, right? Here’s what we do. But by the way, our program does it do this. So you’re going to want to make sure you keep this in mind when you’re using our software, right? For example, I’ve had many times where somebody has sold me some software saying it will do everything. I get into it and it doesn’t. And then it’s just terrible because the expectation was set for how amazingly perfect it was. But when in fact, you know nothing. Now everything’s got some kind of downside or other side to it.

Ian: Well, and I think that instead of looking at as a downside, that could be this crippling thing to make you not make the sale. It’s, it really is an opportunity to educate and help your customer. You know, if you’re, if you’re the person that’s selling the product says, Hey, ours doesn’t do these three things, but you know, using a software integrates with these three programs over here that we’ll as together be able to take care of those needs that you might in eating those features. We can’t do that part, but we are a software connects to this other thing over here and you’ll get the whole package. You just be upfront with that. Then you’re not just selling people, you’re teaching them, you’re informing them and you’re consulting them a little bit on, you know, this is how we would recommend setting up your thing with using our product and then they’re going to buy from you because you’re helping them. You’re providing a product that does exactly what you say it does. Nothing more, nothing less, and you’ve given them a way to use their product. Even if they wanted a feature that you don’t have, if you give them another way to augment your product, basically it means engineering doesn’t have to come up with a new product and you can still make the sale.

Jason: Right. Exactly. Well, and that’s 100% true because here’s what I know to be so true, which is every customer, every prospect out there who’s looking at buying something or is interacting with a salesperson is just waiting for the catch or waiting to uncover the, I always call it the gotcha, right? Like here’s all these good things, here’s this downside, right? So they’re always waiting or trying to figure that out. And the more transparent you can be as a salesperson to actually bring that out, when you’re in your sales process, you’ve talked about what it’s going to do for them, talk about what it’s not going to do. And then like you’re saying, provide a solution. Be a sales consultant, even in your role, no matter what your title is, and then help them understand, Hey, here’s what it won’t do and here’s my suggestion and here’s what we found customers are successful with, you know, integrating this with that or are using our tool or our physical product and here’s the ways to use it in these other aspects.

Jason: When you do that and when you’re transparent, customers will actually appreciate it cause I go, okay, I knew there was going to be something, now we know what it is, now we’ve talked about it, I’m okay with that now I want to be a customer anyway instead of that being a surprise, right. Instead of that being an account management onboarding surprise that they find out and now they’re pissed and now they want to cancel or they’re not going to send you referrals. Right. Like I think that transparency is so huge and that’s where a lot of sales reps fail because they’re so afraid of losing the deal. That shouldn’t be a deal anyway. If that’s really like a stopping point.

Ian: Right. Wellness, especially you say if you’re just pass, if you’re passing the pain to the next person in line, it’s still a pain.

Jason: Yeah, and it’s just going to get worse, right? At some point it’s going to be so terrible, it’s just going to explode instead of managing it. It’s like the example, right? Like if your check engine light is on your car, if you can go deal with it right away, it’s okay. And then if it starts making noise because you’re procrastinating and then the noise gets worse and then now there’s like smoke or fumes come in. Like at some point it’s going to be so terrible. Like the problem is giant. If you solve it early, you can like, you know, get way ahead of it. Same thing in sales. You can get way ahead of something that might be negative to your prospect and set it up in the right way and set the right expectation. It won’t ever be a problem.

Ian: Setting those expectations and you’re getting ahead of the Nos too because if you tell them all the reasons could say no to your product anyway, right up front, you just skipped the entire conversation of the masking you a whole bunch of questions to see if it’s a no. You’d say, well it’s going to be a no. If these, if you would need these things, we can’t help you.

Jason: Right. And usually that kind of conversation about the nos or the negatives are kind of a takeaway conversation we’ll usually get most people to then want to buy because they appreciate the honesty and it will also make them want it for the right reasons, especially if you’re telling them why they probably shouldn’t use it or you know the takeaway and not in a manipulative way. Just say, Hey, this might not be good for you and post you were like, wait, no, I want it. Let’s do it. You know, cause that’s opposite of what salespeople, there’s a lot of salespeople are just monologues pushing, coming up with these slick lines and closing people and trying to like force a man and Hey, if I can get you this, will you sign the contract today? Type of like high pressure stuff instead of just, you know, being a person, having a conversation, solving problems and moving people forward.

Ian: Which is relationship. So yeah, that’s the reality is know like, and trust. It’s a thing. Yeah. And I think a lot of us forget those, Oh no, I can sell anybody anything. It’s fine. And we forget that. They don’t know us. They’re not going to buy right now. So it’s, yeah.

Jason: Well I think that’s a great place to stop, especially on the relationship side because where we started this conversation was about relationships between sales, engineering, marketing, bringing everyone together, kind of come full circle with the relationship being about all those parties and the customer, you know, the prospect turning into a customer for life, raving fan. You know, somebody who’s sending referrals.

Jason: So that’s a great place to stop. Ian, what’s a, you know, where should people go online to find you? How do they get in touch with you? Like where’s a good place to, cause they want your help with like branding, engineering, sales or anything else you’re working on. Where should they go?

Ian: The best would be the main website, which is petermanfirm.com P E T E R M A N F I R M or you can always find me on LinkedIn and Twitter occasionally. Those are the best places to get me.

Jason: Perfect. And I will have all of that in the show notes for the episodes. Ian, thank you for being on the sales experience podcast and I appreciate you doing what you can for sales and engineering firms and bringing everyone together out there because I know what that feels like from both sides of the equation. And I appreciate anybody who’s trying to make that better for everybody.

Ian: Yeah, you as well. It’s good to meet other people trying to make that process better for everyone. That’s, you know, that’s my hope.

Jason: That’s my mission. You know, bring everybody we can. And it kind of shift the way sales is done and the way customers view sales. So yes, thank you. And for everyone listening, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com go to the website there. I’ll have the transcript from Ian and I’s conversation, all of Ian’s links as well. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E198] Technical Sales Mastery with Ian Peterman – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Ian.

In Part 3, Ian and I talk about:

Be careful not to oversell your product/service
Success comes from selling to your niche customers (and knowing who they are)
More niche discussion – sometimes you have to go wide, get the experience, then niche down again

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

Ian’s Bio:

Ian’s Links:

Website: http://www.petermanfirm.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetermanFirm/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/petermanfirm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petermanfirm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PetermanFirm

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianpeterman/

E198 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Ian Peterman. We are going to keep rolling through this conversation. If you haven’t, make sure to subscribe to the show so you can get them each day they come out and I will see you after the show.

Ian: Yeah, you don’t just happen to throw a bunch of people in a room and say now be friendly and communicative. You have to really think about it and create that culture and maintain the culture. I mean that’s, you know, that’s why huge companies are hiring VPs of culture. And I think I’ve seen some sea level of culture where it figured out that it’s so important that they now they have to have roles in order to help guide and curate and grow the culture in a specific direction instead of just hoping it’s going to work out.

Jason: So we’ve talked a bit about selling technical stuff on the sales side, right? So focusing on the salespeople, what would you say that you see a lot of? Cause I have my experiences. But what are you seeing these days of how not to sell, let’s say technical products or services? Like what is it that you’re seeing is some epidemics in the world of technical sales?

Ian: I think a lot of it is the same as others are trying to be everything to everyone is definitely, especially in the SAS area, you know as with software it’s super easy to add things and so trying to over basically oversell and, and make custom products out of what should be a standard, you know, one, two, maybe three option product. I think that’s just, well it’s in trying to get sales and you get excited, you think, Oh it’s going to be easy to add.

Ian: I think that was probably the biggest one that I see. And then the next would be, you know, in technical selling technical things is just not having enough information to actually make the sale. You know, if it’s, when the sales are going easy and there’s no questions, there’s no technical questions during the call or sales process of, you know, does this, are these two things going to fit together? And it’s pretty much you can just skim the manual and you’ll be able to answer all the questions. Once those sales teams hit the point where you have a customer that’s really in depth, that breakdown is pretty brutal sometimes. So those are the really the two that I see. And maybe there’s some others that you see.

Jason: No, you know, and I, I would say the first one that you talked about, which is the kind of the scope creep and the feature creep and wanting to add things. And a fundamental problem which you hit on, you know right away was products or services. You know, if we talk about SAS in particular, where they’re trying to be everything to everyone they see as their potential market, every single person or they want to make the most of every opportunity, every prospect conversation they have. And so they’re going to try to either turn their square peg into a round hole to match the prospect or you know, force the round hole prospect or round peg prospect into their square hole. And the reason feel like this is the biggest epidemic, both from what I’ve seen from the consulting side, but also just being consumer is let’s say I go to a trade show and I’m walking around, right? Like I went to a MarTech conference recently and you know, marketing technology and every booth that I went up to, they all thought I would be a perfect fit for what they’re selling.

Jason: And I’m like, okay, so what do you guys do? Well, we do, you know, program or project management software designed for organizations of, you know, 50 to a hundred people. And I’m like, okay, well that’s not me. Well, but you could use it like, it’s like, no, no, no, that’s not. And they were trying to just push me into that box. It’s like, no, that’s not a good fit. And I just see that so much for organization salespeople who just think everybody should be their buyer. And it’s not like if you’re really doing it correctly there, it’s not an open space of every single person. There’s an ideal market, there’s an ideal customer, there’s someone who’s a home run, and then there’s kind of some, you know, expanded bell curve from there and then there’s just the people who aren’t a good fit. And I think as a company, you’ve got to be careful not to let your product creep into that territory of trying to be everything to everybody because then it’s going to become nothing to everybody. Right. Then it’s not going to be valuable or special to the right people.

Ian: Right. Yeah. I think having a niche and making sure that your sales team knows what your niche is, you know? I think it’s obviously it’s exciting if you tell a salesperson, and in my experience, it’s only that I can sell this to every person on the planet. I do the math in my head, I’m like, that’s amazing. Let’s do that. That’d be great. Commission, right? Is best salesperson in the world sell to everybody. But realistically it’s, you got to make sure your sales team knows your exact niche. And you know that people outside of your niche are going to buy your products. You know, that definitely happens. But got to focus on your niche and you’ve got gotta be really good and got to know those people and you got to ask the questions. You know, even at a trade show, they should be asking you questions about who you are before they try to sell you. Right. Saves everybody time. And that’s, you know, that’s what gives sales people a bad rap is they’ve tried to sell you stuff you don’t want.

Jason: Well that’s always my strategy. When I work with clients and I’m in their booth and helping their rep, like people come into the booth all the time, you know, if I’m standing in the booth and I say, well what do you guys do? And I’m like, well before I tell you what we do, what do you do? And then I actually ask them questions, which usually throws off, you know, people walk in the trade floor, throws them off a lot, but I want to know. And then within 30 seconds I’ll tell, okay, here’s what we do. Or it’s not a good fit. And here’s why and here’s what I suggest instead. You know? And the more of that we can do, which is kind of what I push a lot on this podcast, is the more that reps can do that, understand who it’s a home run for and not in a like, Oh I couldn’t sell that person because it wasn’t a good fit.

Jason: But knowing who’s a good fit or not, when you can do that, then it’s easier. Cause I have a client who, they have one of those wide open products where their software, their app could apply to every business in the world, which potentially it’s perfect and it’s great, but it’s also stressful because where do you even start? And instead you want to niche down as well as you can because then you can really focus and speak that person’s language when you try to do everything and sell everybody. It’s a tough one. It’s tough to even know where to begin.

Ian: Yeah, it’s, and it’s something we all struggle with at some point. Hopefully if you start your own company, you know when you’re trying to figure that out. But it’s so key. It’s important to know who you’re going after you and every time you niche down, you probably should niche down a little bit farther than you think you should. But it’s amazing to see the results when you do and how you ended up having, you know, your customers aren’t just an okay customer that buy your product and they don’t complain. You know, they turn into people that advocate and they tell all of their friends, you should buy this product because it’s amazing and I love it and it does all these things and it’s perfect for them. And so you create less work for yourself as a salesperson by making your customers, your advocates, and then they go sell for you and you still sell a product. You just sell the people that are really going to buy it and really like it and really love the product and it’s perfect for them. Everybody else will follow or not. And that’s, you have to let them go.

Jason: And I think that’s really the one, two punch what you just said, which is niching down, focusing on who’s like a home run client, who will become that advocate and then thinking long term and then looking at referrals and how do I over time just build up this business, which is more referral based because people are excited and speaking the right language. And then if there’s outside that network that you want to get to are different demographics. Maybe there’s a different version of the product or service. Maybe there’s a different way it can be used, you know, then that’s more of an engineering sales engineer process. But otherwise you have focused on your niche, focused on relationships, and then you know, plant those seeds for referrals.

Ian: Right. Well and the other thing that to keep in mind too is you don’t, when you niche down, it doesn’t mean you’re going to stay in that niche forever. You can always niche down, become super successful, and then say, well, I have four other niches. I’m going to work down and do one a year. Do something that, you know, spread it out. Just niching down one at a time doesn’t mean you’re going to all of a sudden limit yourself to only that niche for the rest of your life. The rest of the product’s life. No one else is ever going to see it or buy it or understand it. You’re just stuck there and I think I have heard that fear from entrepreneurs, startup owners, things like that. They’re like, well, how are we going to get stuck? How are we going to get stuck in this one niche where all of a sudden we’re only the product for 20 to 25 year old men and that’s it. No one else is ever going to look at us and it’s not real. You know? If it is, then it’s because your product is that specific and that’s okay, then that’s your product. You shouldn’t try selling it to everybody else, but you know, if it is broad enough for the entire world, pick a niche. We want to do another niche. It’s it’s, that’s how you grow.

Jason: Yeah, and then have teams that are experts within your organization at those individual niches because it’s really tough to be an expert at a lot of different niches, like let’s say your, your pneumatic equipment you’re talking about, right? Like whether it’s this group, that group that like it’s tough to know all those industries. So here’s an interesting question and I’ve never asked anybody this on the show and not too many times in real life either is, let’s talk about Ian, right? And Ian himself in his journey. So it used to be in design, engineering, branding. You went out on your own. Tell me about your niche journey. Like where did you start, how much of the world that you want to tackle? You know, cause I know there’s people listening to this who are like, yeah, he’s saying that, but like what does that mean? Because I know as a listener to other podcasts, I’m like, okay, well give me something practical or give me an example. So where did you start with your ideal world when you started, let’s say however long that was seven years ago. You’re like, I’m going to tackle the world of branding and engineering and sales and then like where did you start? And then where have you realized like you’re just narrowed down niche?

Ian: I’ll do you one better. I’ll go back. About 14 years ago, first started freelancing on the side and I did any job I did any CAD job you could think of because I started out in the engineering CAD cited all 3D modeling and things like that and so I pretty much took any job I could find any, you know, my hourly rate was terrible. It was about $8 an hour and you know, I started there and did that up until about seven years ago and I didn’t even think about niching down at that. As long as you’re like, Oh, I’m doing this work, I’m building my portfolio. Right. That’s the, if you’re in the design world, that’s your excuse for doing whatever job right away. Like, Oh, it’s just for the portfolio. It’ll be fine. I’ll eventually get out of it. Not everybody does, but I did it seven years ago.

Ian: A partner at a design firm launched that and we went through a lot of changes. There was a lot of discussion. It was probably one of our biggest topics actually between the partners was thinking about who is our ideal market, what market do we want to be in? And because of the team we had, we had product design, branding, marketing, all together. And so with that kind of design team, you can do pretty much anything. There’s not really a, it is a whole world. Anybody that ever wants to do any kind of design, we could do it for them. So we basically just picked a couple areas. We ended up, we worked in the vaping industry because that started getting big at that time. So we did that and we picked a couple industries that basically we used the four partners. We’ve picked a favorite industry and we kind of went off after those.

Ian: But even with that, even going down to just three or four niches, it was still too much. And so basically when that I separated from that group, we kind of closed that one down. Some people got tired of design work. And so when I started in my earn that I have now, just a couple of years ago, I kind of shifted back and I went to, I’m going to do CAD, but I’m going to do only product design, only physical consumer electronic type products. I narrowed down what I thought was narrowing down, but consumer electronics is extremely broad. You know, it’s insanely broad actually. Right? And so there’s a lot of, you know, the whole excuse of, Oh, it’ll just be a four portfolio that didn’t count anymore. And I started realizing I needed a niche more when I started talking to more clients that were like, well, do you have experience in this?

Ian: And when I was able to say yes and too many categories, but not a huge amount, I wasn’t able to say, well I have 10 years of experience in this specific category. Then it, started, you know, certain clients didn’t work with me cause they’re like, well we need somebody with experience, but we need a lot of experience. We need somebody that specialized in these pieces. And so as a generalist, there’s only so much you can do. And that’s really, if you don’t niche down, you’re, you’re a generalist with not a huge amount of experience in a specific industry. And there’s a lot of people, especially in what I do that need the in-depth experiences. So what I did was I took a little bit of an interesting turn, uh, and I kept trying to narrow down and actually broaden out. So I hired a graphic designer.

Ian: I broadened back into branding and marketing. But because of those, all those pieces, they come together and they’re, the reason I’ve tried to work it out in my head of doing it all together is because they all, they all mesh together. They all have to talk to each other. And so in doing all that and talking to different clients and getting that experience, I moved over and now my expertise is really designed management it’s my niche. And so I hire out all the other design things that I am not a specialist in and I have for my specialty is in building a design team together to put a project or launch a product or launch a company and manage all the pieces that have to go together. And I have the design background so I can actually talk to the designers, I can talk to engineers, I can talk to marketers and I can talk to owners and the managers in the company that are wanting the project completed. And so my is kind of an odd turn because I got too broad and then narrowed it by just changing the position of what I did. So I had technically still up know through my company. I offer product design, branding, marketing, all of these components, but they aren’t my personal specialty. My specialty is bringing them together. So it’s a journey. It’s always a journey getting there.

Jason: Alright, that’s it for part three of four. Again, make sure to subscribe and if you want to check out Ian’s links, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can go to slash podcast, find the episodes on their show notes, transcription, as well as his links. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.

[E197] Technical Sales Mastery with Ian Peterman – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Ian.

In Part 2, Ian and I talk about:

Making your technical sales process seamless for the customer
Don’t leave the sales team without support
Keep your team small, even when growing

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

Ian’s Bio:

Ian’s Links:

Website: http://www.petermanfirm.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetermanFirm/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/petermanfirm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petermanfirm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PetermanFirm

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianpeterman/

E197 – Transcript

Jason: Hey, welcome back to the sales experience podcast. So glad that you’re here. This is part two of my conversation with Ian Peterman. Make sure to check out all the information online, cutterconsultinggroup.com show notes, transcription as well as his links. And if you haven’t subscribed to the show, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, it’s also on SoundCloud, Google play, you can find it on the website everywhere. Subscribe, make sure to be a part of this and get all the episodes every time they come out. And here is part two of my conversation with Ian.

Ian: When that happens, you know you don’t need a ton of technical expertise. What you need is listening skills. So you listen to the customer and you listen to the engineer and you bring the information together and let that process guide you. And when that happens and that focus isn’t so much on trying to, it does lengthen the sales process a little bit because you are going back and forth between two information sources. But that’s been the most successful in my experience of non-engineering sales.

Jason: Well, and I will say from my experience on a customer side recently, let’s say in the past couple of months, there’s been some different, you know, software solutions I’ve been looking at for some of my consulting clients, and I didn’t even realize it at the time, but literally we set up a conference call, we did a zoom call, and then the next thing you know there’s two people on the call. There’s my sales rep that I had started interacting with. And then there’s another person who turns out to be that technical programmer, kind of designer person. Sales rep kind of starts the process, ask them questions other person takes over is giving advice, giving kind of clues and where it could go and what the solution would look like and when done right. You know, and this is good advice to any organization, anyone listening when done right, it shouldn’t feel like there’s two different parts, right? So there’s a sales salesperson engineering like, I’ve got to go talk to this, or we’re two different parts. It should feel like one whole kind of unit that’s helping with the sales product. Because as you’re talking I’m thinking, wow, I didn’t even realize what happened cause it was so smooth and easy.

Ian: Right. Yeah. And that’s the relationship part is you have to keep it easy and comfortable and yeah, as easy as possible for their customers. So there’s no hiccup, there’s no rough edges. And that’s, you know, that whole process actually is part of the branding work that we do is consulting companies on the fact that that can’t ever be a break. Your engineers and your salespeople have to be able to communicate to outside people in the same way to match your company.

Jason: So there’s going to be probably two different kinds of salespeople listening to this episode of you and I talk. One is the salesperson who is not selling anything technical, so maybe selling something simple or they don’t have to deal with sales engineers or technical engineers, programmers, designers, whatever that might be. And then there’s the ones who are already doing it. They’re already in it and they’re already experiencing this every day. For the ones who are currently doing any kind of technical sales, you know, involving another part of the organization to make things happen. Like what’s the one piece of advice you give to them outside of what we’ve talked about or the one area you see organizations just struggle and fail where you know, you come in and kind of, you know, give them guidance. Like what’s that, what’s the big things you’re seeing

Ian: With sales it’s a lot of not pulling in the right resources earlier enough. Is, you know, kind of getting caught up when you’re not the technical person and you’re doing the sales process and it’s obviously you can, you can sell things without understanding them if it goes really well, but it’s better to pull in and organizations don’t always do this. They don’t allow engineering to spend the man hours supporting sales always as much as they should. And so you end up having sales sitting over in their pocket wishing they could talk to an engineer and your engineers making products that may not fit what they’re actually trying to sell. And so there needs to be in, if you are one of those sales people that don’t have the technical knowledge and they don’t have that technical support, it’s something that you should advocate for in your, in your role as it having a technical support of some kind.

Ian: Even if it’s one engineer spending a couple hours a week being involved on a sales call or even just technical training, just not, you know, not training the sales team to be engineers, but letting them dive into the technical background of it to ease that. It just depends on how many people are involved in your organization, but that kind of a lack of connect of information. The invisible wall that typically is a one of the bigger hurdles that I’ve seen. And it’s not so much in smaller as your really small, everybody seems to know a lot about everything and it works really well. But then as soon as you hit the tipping point where you first start breaking your company into divisions and you have different, you know, head of Zion, head of engineering, head of sales, that early stage is very dangerous because you start segmenting that and you feel like you need to be super rigid.

Ian: And so I see a lot of companies that are extremely rigid in their first, or, we’re divisions. You’re a sales now, you only do sales, you only do engineering where we have different budgets, we have different, and you know, as you get bigger you start to have a little bleeding between the groups typically because they can not hire entire sales engineer teams. But it’s a very dangerous thing is of dividing your company a little bit too harshly in lines on the sand. And there’s gotta be intercommunication and knowledge flow between your engineering or sales. Cause when they, the first couple of salespeople you hire, you know they’re not going to be the first salesperson you had who knew everything and talked to the engineers and everybody did everything that those first new hires, once you have that division is they are just sales or they don’t have the company background that you know, the early sales team had experience from.

Jason: Yeah. And I think that’s a really valid point. Very interesting. Because as I’ve seen with my experience with companies, when it’s really small, most likely everyone is in kind of the same room, right? Like if it’s really start up mode, whether it’s, you know, it’s an open office or you know, total garage mode, everybody’s in one room, sales, engineering, customer service, account management. Yeah. All you gotta do is turn around and ask him, Hey do we have this or can we do this? And sometimes that’s usually good for information. It’s bad because sometimes engineering programmers say okay cool, we’ll add it and there’s no process. Then all of a sudden you have just a thousand features that either don’t work right or nobody’s using. Cause it was a one off thing and that’s when it gets right. And then the large one, I could totally see what you’re saying is when it’s large enough then there’s this sales engineering where there is the bridge and it’s deliberate and it’s kind of you know, covering that gap between those two silos.

Jason: But it’s the middle size as you’re growing org charts gets separated, there’s silos. Then there’s people who feel like sales is my domain, engineering is my domain, marketing is my domain. And so then they’re kind of protecting it. But I also know from the other side, which is okay and I’ve seen this where it’s okay we want to open communication, we want to have sales and engineering or marketing or whoever it is, kind of talk with each other. And then there’s ones who will take advantage of that and it’s too much and it’s too distracting. So I think it’s very valid. What you’re saying is, you know, make sure there’s some process in place and even if it’s just a few hours a week, whatever that is, you don’t want it to be like a free for all. Where sales is just going to engineering, engineering is distracted not getting what they need to get done because sales is always bringing them into everything. So you want to make sure the structure and accessibility, you know, and not to separate.

Ian: Yeah and I think that process too is, you know, you start to silo, but the second you silo part of that should also be creating the bridge. The bridge should be there. The second there’s a silo, you just are controlling the information foot. Like you said, the engineering team isn’t swamped by sales constantly asking them 24/7 questions and just that that process, when you do hit that point and you say, okay, well we have design, we have engineering, we have marketing, we have sales. Make sure that at least that there’s one point of contact in each team that can communicate with all the others and this, that minimal amount of time. And one point of contact has done wonders. I’ve been in companies where even having separate engineering departments for, you know, you have electrical engineering over here, right. The engineering gets separated so much.

Ian: That company they had to get, I think it was two or three points of contacts in each division and they had to have weekly meetings, just them outside of management, even doing anything just to make sure that things were happening and there was enough communication between departments because the head, you know, VP of engineering 1 and VP of engineering 2, they only have so much time and when you have huge and as kind of, when you get a little bit bigger and you have 20 person teams in multiple areas, I’m making sure that communications flow is there from the get go is it saves a lot of pain. That company lost a lot of money. When you have that disjointed, you’re spending more money on one thing when you should be spending on something else. Recovery is always hard.

Jason: I bet. Well, and from what I’ve seen, the organizations that do it right are connected at the top, somewhere above those divisions. And the culture is such where they see those as two parts of the whole, not two separate entities, right? Like if there’s a VP of sales and engineering, then their branch under one person who’s going to join them together. Once it becomes VP of sales, VP of engineering, VP of marketing, then it’s kind of everyone fighting for their territory or everyone’s busy with their own kind of mandates and their own budgets. And so for organizations, small, medium size, especially the more you can keep it joined right above those divisions with some kind of leadership and the culture is one of working together. It’s always for the best.

Ian: Yeah, and culture is so important. There’s quite a few companies that they don’t think about their culture when they start to, and that is a huge part of some of the branding work that we do is correcting and helping guide people’s company culture and having a culture of communication and working together and things like that.

Ian: It doesn’t just happen. You know, you don’t just happen to throw a bunch of people in a room and say, now be friendly and communicative. You have to really think about it and create that culture and maintain the culture. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s why huge companies are hiring VPs of culture. And I think I’ve seen some sea level of culture where it figured out that it’s so important that they now they have to have roles in order to help guide and curate and grow the culture in a specific direction instead of just hoping it’s going to work out.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two. Make sure to subscribe so you can catch the other parts. I will see you tomorrow for part three. As always, keep in mind everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E196] Technical Sales Mastery with Ian Peterman – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Are you selling a technical product or service?

Do you struggle with being in the middle between your customer, engineer/product development, and marketing?

On this 4-part series, Ian Peterman joins me to talk about his experiences starting out as an engineer and moving into a consulting role. We talk about the challenges of technical-based sales and ensuring the best structure for success in moving prospects to customers.

In Part 1, Ian and I talk about:

Engineers and Salespeople – can’t we all just get along?
Don’t Field of Dreams your product
Making sure the sales team is providing valuable feedback and suggestions
Sales – being the bridge between customers and engineers/designers

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn

Ian’s Bio:

Ian’s Links:

Website: http://www.petermanfirm.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetermanFirm/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/petermanfirm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petermanfirm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PetermanFirm

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianpeterman/

E196 – Transcript

Jason: Hi and welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason cutter. On today’s episode, I have Ian Peterman. He started his professional life in the world of engineering and design and for the last seven years has been running design firms and as he puts it, social media isn’t a half too. It’s a get to and it’s a huge opportunity for brands to engage with people at all stages of their relationship to offer education, build trust and share value. Ian, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Ian: Thanks. Appreciate it Jason, and good to be here.

Jason: Yeah, so this is a sales related podcast. Anyone that listens to this knows I have a wide variety of guests that come on the show and all different things. It’s not a marketing show. However, and you and I probably will agree on this, there’s a ton of overlap, especially when it’s done right between the world of marketing and the world of sales, which is why I’m super excited to have you on the show and kind of talk about branding and marketing and how that relates and fits in.

Ian: Absolutely! It’s, get a surprise, a lot of people on how much marketing is a part of everything. You mentioned me being an engineering world and the engineer’s not understanding that marketing and sales is part of engineering too is a problem that I found. So yeah, it’s all interlaced quite heavily together.

Jason: Let’s talk about that specific cause I was thinking at one point, we might talk a bit about marketing, but let’s talk about engineers and sales because I have so many experiences, but I want to get your opinion first. How do you help bridge that gap? So for any sales leaders, sales managers, or even leaders of product development engineering groups, like how do you make those two play together?

Ian: A lot of work. It’s really a, it’s making sure that when you start a project out, uh, you know, so we’re talking about new product development or you know, updates to a product line. It’s making sure that that conversation starts with both being involved. And whenever it sits in just one, that’s when problems usually arise. So in my experience, some of the most successful products that I’ve ever worked on were actually started primarily by marketing. And then they involved engineering early on to say, can we actually even do the product that we want to do because it’s a bit of a dance or you go and you say, Oh, I’m going to develop a new product. And the head of engineering goes, yes, we can engineer that, but budget-wise we need to hit this mark and so it’s going to look like this now.

Ian: And then marketing looks at it six months later and hundred thousands of dollars later they go, Oh well nobody wants that. That looks ugly. You know, it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t fit the market that we’re really going after. And so to avoid that, it’s making sure that you’re, you have that conversation with your sales reps, you have it with your marketing, you have your engineer, at least it’s the one on board to look at it and say, here are some issues that might happen when you try to launch that product. And it’s that early communication early on often is usually what saves you down the road in finding yourself with a product that doesn’t actually fit the needs.

Jason: So you’re saying the field of dreams model isn’t the right way to go, just build it and they will come?

Ian: Both. So it’s, it always has to be a combination. You’re going to have a, you should always have that way out there concepts that you know my be a little too far out there, but then you bring it back to reality from two points. Perspective one is sales. I guess we actually need to go market and make sure of their market for us or if you have products just talking to your sales rep, what are the products that are selling really well right now? What is doing well and how do we make a product that fills a hole? Because a lot of the times in my experience when you talk to a sales team, they can tell you exactly what their customers are asking them for.

Ian: And so when you’re trying to develop a new product or grow your line, that should be the first place you go to is you go to your sales team and you say, well what are they asking you for? What are your customers when you try to sell our product, what is their first answer? Does it have this feature and you have just tell them no. What is that and that is a good point to start when you already have that kind of information is actually using your sales team as a market research because they are, they should know their customers and what they actually want.

Jason: But let me play devil’s advocate on the side of engineers and business owners who I know this happens to a lot, which is feature creep and product creep as far as like cause salespeople and because this is where all of my experience has been, salespeople will always want every bell and whistle. They’ll always want to make every customer happy. They will always want to make sure if anyone asks for it, they’re going to say yes. They’re going to think it’s important. Everything is urgent, everything is necessary. Yet. However, from a business side and from a feature side, whether it’s a product or service, you know, whether it’s a SAS solution, like whatever it is, what is like the limit or how do you keep that under control or you know, what do you tell salespeople about that process?

Ian: Well, the way I would typically handle it is, you know, you get the information from the salespeople, but they shouldn’t be the ones making the decision. So it’s, I prefer being able to look at the data, you know, get it from the salespeople, get their lists, but use it as empirical data. You know, if you have 10 sales people and there are a thousand, whatever it is, you have X amount of things that they ask them and you say, well what about these features? You can get a feel for how many customers are actually asking for it and then use that information to decide whether it’s hit a certain point of interest. You know, it’s like feature requests on a Zass by farms primarily. It’s so easy to, you know, ask for those. So those kinds of surveys, but when you have a sales team, having them ask a little more detailed questions can get you a little more information because it’s not always just, Oh I want to feature.

Ian: They might say that, but if you can have your sales team ask a little bit more detailed questions on the why do you need that feature? Then that can help you as a business owner decide do I actually need to do it? Or maybe another feature that your sales team just isn’t explaining well that can accomplish that or maybe it’s not an entirely new feature. Maybe it’s a sub feature on a sub menu of your program that that is all you need to add in. Now you have the function I that actually solves the problem that the customer has or believes they need fixed with the platform.

Jason: Yeah, and I think that’s a really good point and I just, all the sales reps and managers out there listening to this, I think that’s very valid and very important is to keep in mind like if your customers or prospects, because this is usually where I see it come in as prospects are asking for something. Sales reps want to close the deal, don’t want to lose a deal because they’re missing a feature. The first stage is asking lots of questions of that prospect, what it is they want. The second part is being educated as a sales rep and going to management, going to ownership. Who are the development team? Whoever, depending on how big your organization, whoever’s involved and understanding if maybe that is there, like you’re saying, and maybe it’s just not being used completely or if it is something you’d be added.

Jason: But don’t, you know as I’m hearing you talk, I’m thinking about if you were to let a kid pick the shopping list for the grocery store and then let them just everything on the list, just go. Then you know, they’re going to be eating lucky charms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you know, and Mac and cheese and ice cream. And so, you know, there’s things that, you know, obviously there’s limits and if you’re a salesperson, just get lots of detail and then you know, move that value up the chain. And if it’s a valid feature from what I’ve seen, then it’s something you’re gonna want to put into the product, the service, whatever it is.

Ian: Well and I think that’s where the conversation between engineering and sales needs to happen too, is that sales might have a feature that they want added or a new product and engineering might look at it and say, yeah, that’s, that would take us, you know, 30 minutes to add. Do you want to add it right now? So having on some level deciding what inside of your engineering team is an acceptable amount of, you know, extra feature work or the side piece of that, you know, things that you can just quickly add or you can quickly do. And in my experience with a lot of physical product development is when you work with the sales engineers for let’s say pneumatic pumps, you go to them with your need of this is what I need to do with it.

Ian: And then they actually help figure out how to use their product to fit that need. And so depending on what level, you know, if you’re doing a product that’s going to million people or hundreds of thousands of people and it’s not really customizable and that’s not the experience and that that you can’t do that. But on larger, let’s say enterprise level SAS or you know, custom physical products, things like that, having their engineering experience inside of your sales team will allow them to actually modify the product a little bit to meet the needs without necessarily redoing tooling. So, you know, when I’ve worked with like pneumatic pumps and things like that, they don’t retool their entire line for me just to make a new thing. But they configure products to work for certain situation or provide feedback on how to make the whole product work with their product. And so that having that sales engineer is very helpful and depending on what your industry is obviously.

Jason: So let’s talk about the sales side of it. Right? So there’s the engineering and the working together and I’ve been a part of organizations, sales and non-sales related where engineers are making products, making services, making applications without any thought of how the customer actually uses them, how they’re actually sold, how a normal human would use that item. Again, whether it’s a physical product or a widget, it doesn’t matter like I’ve seen the whole range but let’s talk about the sales side. So what about selling those kinds of things. So selling something technical product or service without being technical or being a technical sales person or you know, getting into the weeds like you know, what have you found in your experience when kind of merging those two or attacking a technical sale without technical sales people,

Ian: It can get really messy really quickly and it really depends on the sales person and what their approach is. And the best solution that I’ve found is that when you’re trying to sell something really technical and you have non technical sales, is that you let the salesperson do the sales part and you make sure that an engineering person is backing them for information and you just have the sales person control the conversation in terms of you know, asking questions, discovery, things like that. And then always going, alright, I’m going to talk to my engineer. And that way they can build the relationship part that the engineer doesn’t handle and they can basically become a bridge between engineering and the customer. And when that happens, you know you don’t need a ton of technical expertise. What you need is listening skills. So you listened to the customer and you listened to the engineer and you bring the information together and let that process guide you. And when that happens and the focus isn’t so much on trying to, it does lengthen the sales process a little bit because you are going back and forth between two information sources. But that’s been the most successful in my experience of non-engineering sales.

Jason: Alright, everybody. Thanks for listening. This was part one of my conversation with Ian Peterman. He and I are going to continue talking. As you’ll hear in the rest of this mini series set of episodes, make sure to check out his information, his links prior to the final show, part four. You can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find the transcript, show notes and his links, and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E195] Growth Through Sales with Sean Sheppard – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the final segment of the conversation I had with Sean.

In Part 4, Sean and I talk about:

Enrolling versus selling
Always focus your sales efforts on the prospects who agree with your worldview
The classic selling mistake
Less people, more dogs

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn

Sean’s Bio:

Sean is a serial entrepreneur VC and co-founder of GrowthX and GrowthX Academy, with three successful exits, who has successfully grown dozens of early-stage companies across a wide variety of products and markets. He was recently named the #2 Online Sales Influencer and contributor at The Huffington Post. He’s now committed to working with countries, companies, entrepreneurs and those who want to work with them on building startup ecosystems and developing the next generation of leaders for the innovation economy.

GrowthX | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

E195 – Transcript

Jason: Alright everybody. Welcome to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to the final part, part four of my conversation with Sean Sheppard from growth X and growth X Academy. If you haven’t, make sure to tune in to the first three parts, all of this will make sense as we wrap it up in this final part and you will truly understand why I want him in the show and how much value he has to bring to listeners. Some of it is just going to sound repetitive. It’s going to sound like things that I’ve talked about on the show for the previous hundred and so many episodes. It’s all in alignment with my vision, my focus, what I want for the sales industry as a whole. For sales reps, for you listening, whether you’re a salesperson, you’re a manager or you own a company, startup or you’ve been around for a while and you’re looking for success, you want to create the right sales experience.

Jason: Sean is a man after my own heart. And sometimes repetition is the best thing. So he says a lot of things that I’ve said before, but it’s great hearing it from someone else who’s in their different focus dealing with startups, but it’s truly amazing. And here go part four.

Sean: If you share it with them in an honest way, the ones that will nurture themselves closer to you will understand, will absolutely buy into your vision, but also respect your reality and be willing to invest the two things that matter more than anything else at this stage. The time and the truth. That’s all I want from you. I want time and truth. I want the time of you and or X number of people in your team and I want them all to tell me the truth. And if you guys do that, I promise you’ll get what you want.

Jason: And that early stage selling, you’re talking about, you’re talking about recruiting those people. The term I’ve always used and what I found is very important is enrolling. So more of an enrollment than a sales process. And that can go on even as companies mature, but you’re actually enrolling somebody into your vision and where you’re going and what you’re doing more than selling it to them and then hoping they just buy it. You’re wanting them to come on this journey with you, which even at again, at a mature sales level where it’s developed and you have a script and a process when you’re enrolling people to come with you, it’s a much higher level. Then you’ve got this raving fan advocate kind of relationship where people are onboard and they’ll look past your mistakes, your issues because they’re in it for something bigger that includes their own, you know, success.

Sean: I think enrollment is a fine way to analogize it. You can think of it like you’re, you know, someone’s applying to go to your school and you’re the enrollment advisor or counselor and you’re trying to decide whether or not they are going to be successful on your campus. I don’t say you take the enrollment advisor only counselor attitude like I’m better than you. Yeah, yeah. No, not at all. But there should be a mindset of I am seeking applicants to work with me. And those need to be partners and you need to treat them like you treat business partners, they have, you are signing up together to work together for some period of time. You want to make sure it’s successful. It is very much like a marriage or an engagement, pre-marriage. So you use that dating mentality, right.

Sean: And you know you can swipe whatever direction you know as many times as you want in the no category. What does that swipe right or swipe left? Okay, so swipe left is a note, right? You might swipe left 70 times to find three that you want to have conversations with, right. And then you might go to have drinks or dinner or whatever and then you figure out which ones you want to continue to pursue. And that’s very much in that bank. But don’t do it with an attitude like, you know, I’ve only got so much. You have to be ruthless with yourself and your team, but you have to be obviously respectful, as supportive and humble with the market, but be very honest. These are the kinds of people I’m looking for.

Sean: This is the kind of mindset, people who agree with me on these things and share my worldview. Seth Godin is one of my mentors, one of the best lines ever about marketing. Anything’s unclick. There are two kinds of people, Sean, in this world, when you’re in marketing, those would agree with your worldview and those who don’t right? Reach out to the ones that agree with your worldview and tell them the truth and state that worldview right out of the gate like we stayed our worldview of growth, right? It’s very simple. Most companies fail because of markets and behaviors, not products. We look to great product focus founders who care just as much about making money is raising it, care more about our health than our money. And those are the ones that we want to invest in. And that saves us a lot of trouble with bad for customers because when you’re building your customer profile, you shouldn’t just be building what your ideal initial profile is.

Sean: Build your bad fit profile. We’ve all had those people. People that are high maintenance or expectations are too high. They want things you can’t deliver on. Those are mainstream mindsets and you have to listen for those flags and just say thank you. It’s never, no, it’s just not. No.

Jason: Well, and when you’re clear on your vision and kind of the mission of your organization and of yourself and your sales role, let’s say, then it’s very easy to identify who’s going to be a good fit and what you can do. And then going back to that dating analogy, I think that’s super important cause I’ve been telling people this for years, just like you wouldn’t do on a first date or when you meet somebody and you’re starting a relationship, don’t start with talking about yourself for the majority of the conversation. Nobody likes that person because you know a lot of people in sales do that, especially the, you know, let’s say even the product founder or the product based salesperson who is selling from a place of, you know what they know, and how they feel about it.

Jason: All they want to do is share and monologue and tell it because they’re so excited. They’re not asking questions, they’re not uncovering if the person has a need and then how they can actually solve it. And so that’s always important to understand in any relationship. You know, just lead with questions, get the other person to talk, and then you’ll find out everything you need to know. And then relying back on your vision and your mission and your core values, like where you’re going is that person now everything that they just said, is that a good fit? Do I want them as a part of the team, right? As a customer and then now we can have a conversation about, now I have the solution to get you from here to share.

Sean: Share your why. Yeah. Why are you even doing this? Why are you contacting me? Why are you in this business? Why are you going down this road and you do it by constructing a very simple, what I call initial value hypothesis. Look, I’m doing this because of this reason and I think I can help you in this way because I’ve helped others like you and I’d like to know if that’s possible. I haven’t said a Goddamn word about a product or a market. It doesn’t matter.

Jason: Nobody buys a drill because they need a drill, right? They need a hole and they don’t need a hole. Right? Like I say, they don’t need a hole. They need to say hang a picture, right? And they don’t need to hang a picture. They just need to keep their wife happy or their husband happy. And that’s what it all comes down to, right?

Sean: That’s absolutely right. And if you have my world view, happy wife, happy life, then you’re going to do it.

Joseph: And you’ll pay whatever it takes to get that drill, to get that hole, to hang that picture, to make you know your significant other happy.

Sean: But once you understand your why, your job now is to understand there’s. Right? And so in order to do that, you’ve got to stop talking and start asking and start listening and construct a conversational framework. This is one of the biggest areas where I see sales professionals and startups fail. I run a meeting, they don’t know how to walk in with an agenda that’s very clear about seeking fit in an orderly manner that’s very respectful and efficient of everyone’s time and resources. And because to me, the purpose of every interaction, a presale, is to determine whether or not you want to continue spending time, money, and resources together.

Sean: And if so, why and how and set a next step. It’s that simple. It’s hard to do again because as I said, the minute you get seduced by any looky look expresses interest in what you’re doing, you get all excited and then that’s personally validating. And then your emotions take over and the lizard brain runs it. And before you know it, you’re spending your time chasing. Yeah. Things that are never gonna come to anything.

Jason: And you feel good because when you’re having a meeting with your manager or the owner or somebody else, you can talk about this pipeline of great leads who all said they’re super interested and they’re all just, you know, you’re going to call them back next month or they’re going to call you back and they’re going to want to buy and you’ll never hear from them again.

Sean: That’s right. And that’s a whole other conversation than everybody. Anybody who’s spent any time in sales has had people go dark on them without a promotion. And the number one reason why that happens is the people that you’ve been talking to never truly recognized the need that was great enough to compel them to page. Wait, that doesn’t mean they won’t evaluate options and ask you questions and make meetings with you and take meetings with you and do all those other things. It’s your responsibility, not theirs. A 5% improvement in the qualification at the top of the funnel can result in as much as a 20 to 25% change in the bottom of your phone. Do the math. It’s freaking mind-blowing. So this is all about when people ask me, what’s the number one thing, what’s the number one thing I can do to improve my conversion rates and my close rates? Which by the way, closing is bullshit.

Sean: It’s, it’s not a tactic or a manipulation, right? It’s a byproduct of being fully immersed in giving people what they want. It happens when you do the right things. It’s not something somebody can learn to do, but if you want to improve your closing percentage, improve your pre qualification, that’s it. This is all about finding fit. Not everybody is going to be your customer and not everybody should be. And it’s not personal, I know I say don’t take anything personally. I can say it, but I also know, as I said before, I’m talking to both sides of my mouth. I believe that personal, professional development are indistinguishable. I think it’s a distinction without a difference. Same thing here. Yes, you’re going to take it personally, but do it within context. Compartmentalize it, recognize it. It’s not your fault. It’s just not a fit.

Sean: I’ll tell you what, I’m serious. The longer I live, the fewer people I surround myself with and the more I like my dog.

Jason: Well, and that’s the thing, right? So if you’re in sales and it is your fault because you’re missing some skills or some abilities, then take that personal and work on it. Otherwise, don’t take it personal. And I think that’s a great place to stop because I think that’s important for salespeople to realize and kind of focus on whether it’s early stage, start out, late-stage, just a company that’s just running and they’re getting into sales and all of that’s valuable. So Sean, where’s the best place for people to find you? Information growth X, what you guys are doing, I know you mentioned it earlier, but why don’t you remind everybody again?

Sean: Yeah, sure. They can go to growthx.com they can go to gxacademy.com for the school. They can certainly Google YouTube, all my talks, I travel now doing like keynotes, workshops, sales kickoffs. You know I do a lot of teaching people and certifying people in our market acceleration program. I’m helping them building ecosystems around the globe to help them reduce the failure rate of startups and improve the success rate of scallops as well as help these companies and governments and communities build their own Silicon Valley-style ecosystems so that they stopped losing their top entrepreneurs to the most expensive place in the country and they can be home close to their families and customers.

Jason: That’s great. Well, Sean, I appreciate both the work that you’re doing out there and trying to help these companies be successful and make that transition from product, you know, founders and owners to being able to sell and actually generate incomes that are raised money. Of course, I appreciate you being on the show here and sharing all this with everybody.

Sean: Jason, it’s my pleasure. I love the work you’re doing. Don’t stop. Keep it up. Anything, any other time you want to have me on or anything before you just let me know.

Jason: Yeah, we’ll definitely have to do a part two. Thanks again, Sean.

Sean: And a little healthier.

Jason: Yeah, well without the coughing for sure. We’ll do a healthy version, maybe sometime in the, a cough free version for sure. And for everyone listening, if you want to check out the show notes, all of Shawn’s links, all of his information, the transcript for this, you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast you can find episodes on there. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E194] Growth Through Sales with Sean Sheppard – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Sean.

In Part 3, Sean and I talk about:

Truth + Emotional Intelligence
Keeping things simple to solve your prospect’s problem
Understanding the five main groups of human behavior
Knowing your metrics for moving forward (winning)

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn

Sean’s Bio:

GrowthX | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

E194 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Sean Sheppard. As always, make sure to subscribe to the show so you can catch all these if you haven’t yet. Get part one and part two. Listen to those first so you can hear this continuation of our conversation, but without any further adieu, here we go. Sean and I diving into the third segment

Sean: Is because everybody wants that easy button that Apple provides you today but they don’t understand or Amazon, they don’t understand how hard and difficult that is and Amazon is the most valuable company in the world. They don’t make shit except all of us happy.

Jason: Yup. Make it easy and simple for us to get things that we want.

Sean: And so you want the optimal experience. That’s the optimal experience. You go into the conversation with a strong value hypothesis about how you think you can help someone and why you think that and then begin to have a conversation to validate that and then create less work and more value through the process, not the other way around.

Sean: All too often I see the complete opposite and if you are trying to pursue the truth, you have to get people to be honest with you and in today’s market, people will not tell you the truth if it creates more work or conflict. So you have to avoid both of those things. Create an environment where it’s easy for people to give you feedback. That’s part of the growth mindset. Feedback is a gift. Remove the word rejection from your vocabulary. Replace it with feedback and embrace it and behave in a way that allows people to say, yeah, I want to tell you the truth. I can’t wait to tell you. It feels good to talk to someone about these things. That emotional intelligence, care attribute and developing that emotional intelligence aspect of who you are is a critical part of that. But that’s an ongoing experience.

Sean: You can’t just do this stuff every time you feel like it or you think about it every single day. You need to be learning. You need to set aside time. Don’t listen to the freaking radio on the commute. Pull up the podcast like sales experience. Right? Or something like that. Learn something new. There’s no distinction in the innovation economy between personal and professional development. Do you want to be a great professional? You’d be a great person and you focus on that and you will get there. That’s my sales professional.

Jason: Right. So it’s interesting too that you’re talking about making it easier and not harder. I do see that a lot where companies, they don’t quite understand. I mean they think it’s easy cause they’re in it, right? They’re product designers, they’re engineers, they’re creators. They think it’s easy because in their mind it’s all simple.

Jason: They created it, they know how it works, they over-engineer it, but it’s still, it all makes sense in their brain and it solves a problem that they are excited to focus on and not thinking about the end-user. And then the salesperson is taking that and trying to sell that and overwhelming that prospect, that potential customer, which like you mentioned early on, the lizard brain is what motivates and drives a lot of us and that lizard brain, that primal brain is still imagining a hundred thousand years ago in a cave where afraid of change and buying something has changed and if you’re causing somebody to have to make a change, which is the sales process in a nutshell, and it’s going to be more difficult to get them to see how it improves their lives. Just because you’re excited doesn’t mean anything, then you’re going to have a tough go at it.

Sean: I’m glad you brought that up. Especially the word change. I tell all of our companies and anybody who listens when I do these workshops and keynotes around the world and all the rest is your number one competitor isn’t some other company or some incumbent. It’s the resistance to change. People naturally do not like or want change. And so when you’re taking something someplace new, you have to recognize that and only focus on working with people who share an innovator or early adopter mindset. Stay away from the mainstream in the skeptics and the laggards because they will eat up your resources but never deliver anything in return. And you have to be ruthless with your own time and how you share it and who you invested in because you don’t have a lot of time. You do no one any good, including yourself in your own family and those that you support much to say nothing of the marketplace itself by wasting your resources in areas that aren’t going to help you stay alive.

Jason: Yeah, and that’s very important to keep in mind as you’re talking about the stage of which accompanies at. So if nobody knows who you are or your product or your service, maybe you’ve created something new, there’s no brand awareness, maybe you don’t have a lot of social proof. You need to find those people who would like to wait outside of a store for hours to be the first one to buy that thing, to say that they bought that thing right when they could have waited a week and paid probably less and not had to wait.

Sean: So Geoffrey Moore calls it everybody who was interested. Again, the dynamic of taking a product to market for the first time needs to read Geoffrey Moore’s crossing the chasm or at least get the book summary and understand the five communities of human behavior and how they respond to risk and change and what you just described as the innovator.

Sean: That’s the person that goes out and buys the latest greatest thing. Even though it’s twice as expensive as it will be in a year and half as good as it will be once all the bugs are worked out. Most people in business, however, don’t have budgets and there’s a reason they don’t have budgets because people don’t trust them. That’s right. But you know what they are great at? they’re great at providing product feedback and they’re very, very useful early on. So when you’re working on features and functions and use cases and trying to understand how people are going to use your product or service, that’s where it’s most effective. But the people that are gonna help you the most are the early adopters. The early adopters are the people that have a strategic interest in helping you become successful because they see an order of magnitude change or transformation in their own life, in their own world.

Sean: If you succeed with them and they have budgets, they may not have big ones, but that budget’s big enough to build a business and there are enough of them. Now they’re, you know, typically you’re talking about collectively innovators are about one in seven, one at eight people, and early adopters are about one five people. So you’re talking about less than 20% of the market. And we’re not talking about organizational psychologists, we’re talking about individual psychologists. So as it gets complex and you’re selling into multiple people in a large enterprise, right? The average enterprise sale is about seven influencers involved in making decisions. Only two of those seven, just statistically speaking, would even meet the pre chasm, profile that you should be looking for as part of what we call your initial customer profile, which is a very different thing than your ideal customer profile in three or five years.

Sean: And that’s one of the dynamics that companies and founders have to struggle with. They go out to their investors and they go out into the world and they say, if we get this much of this market, this is what we’re going to be worth. And this is how this all works. That assumes a lot. That assumes that you’ve crossed that chasm and that you’ve gotten innovators and early adopters. Well, you can’t get there without them because the mainstream will not buy from you until they have referenceable use cases from other mainstream players. And they’re not going to get those until you are in a place of maturity with innovators and early adopters even attempt that. So it’s very important to identify those people, flag them early and often and only work with them. And if they don’t exist in an account or an opportunity right now, move on.

Sean: Because the last thing you want us to spend 6, 8, 10, 12 months on a deal that just goes dark. It never goes anywhere.

Jason: And fighting those, you know, late adopters and the people in the middle who literally need tons of convincing and they’re not going to be the first one to take the risk and they’re not going to be the one to put their neck on the line without valid proof. You’re going to spend all your time convincing them when you don’t have the time or the resources.

Sean: Like the old adage you, no one ever got fired for hiring IBM. And that’s fine. And so if you take that scenario that we just talked about and you played that out, hopefully now people will understand why knowledge, skills, and behaviors and attributes necessary to be successful in this economy are what they are.

Sean: Because in order to identify those people, you have to have strong business and market accuracy. You have to have strong emotional intelligence and great communication skills to be able to articulate to people to get their attention. You have to be an amazing cross functional communicator between the market and the product team and everybody else who’s involved in learning from that. You have to be able to embrace ambiguity that you have to have a love for helping people get what they want and you have to be strategic enough in your mindset and your thinking to look beyond not just the person that you’re trying to help, but how they’re measured in their role and how their boss’ and their bosses’ boss and their boss’s boss’s boss and their investors and then their customers and so on, all the way through to see the forest through the trees.

Sean: Because if you can’t do that, your chances of being successful in this area with limited time, money, resources go dramatically down.

Jason: Yeah. It’s interesting because the clients that I work with, the salespeople are just thinking about how their product solution can help that business. Right, and they’re thinking very narrow. I’ve been training people and telling them, what does your prospective customer, that individual at that company, what keeps them up at night, what wakes them up at two in the morning worried or wondering what their boss is going to call them out on or ask them about or could, you know, push them on at any moment and how can you solve that to make them the hero, right? And then just keep pushing that up the line instead of thinking, well, I have this thing that’s amazing and you should want it. Right? Think about that other person.

Sean: It’s what I call finding fit. Everything is about finding fit. At this stage, we’re not trying to sell anything to anybody. What we’re trying to do is seek fit. See if you’re a startup and you have one person responsible for building a product and another person responsible for building a market, how many people can you actually freaking talk to everyday? Not many. No. So in what metrics are going to guarantee that you get to that next round of money or that you get to break even so you can stay on the field longer or some interim step? Can I get two or three paid customers so that I can demonstrate that whatever it is, we call it a market milestone. You establish a market milestone by reverse engineering your funnel from the bottom up. Number one, you define an organizational objective. You turn that into a definable win.

Sean: Like I said, maybe three proofs of concept that are paid, maybe three free pilots, maybe converting free customers to pay customers, maybe doing 30 customer interviews with key profiles that you’ve identified or personas you’ve identified. I dunno picky right? Yeah. Maybe it is a revenue number, but it’d be based on something thoughtful though is predicting revenue results and forecasting revenue on a future when you don’t have a past is bullshit and a waste of everyone’s time. Yeah, so it needs to be traction-based for it to actually mean something. That’s why I say like the number of proofs of concept. I say I need three customers with this profile over the next six months, and you assign a deadline timeline to it and then you build your funnel, right? I need X number of qualified opportunities to do that. I need X number of qualified conversations to do that.

Sean: I need X number of qualified prospects to reach out to to do that. Right? And so when you’re doing that, you recognize that, alright, everything I’m doing is a hypothesis I’ve constructed based on a lot of thoughtful research and interaction and experience to determine that this might be the ideal initial customer profile and proof of concept necessary to meet those needs. So every conversation you’re having in the market needs to be centered around whether or not this person or this entity or this opportunity is actually a fit. You’d have to have a mindset of disqualifying people out of your funnel, not a mindset of qualifying. And you need to be okay with moving somebody out of your qualified opportunities and into your nurture framework or what we call it, nurture and opportunity framework, where we take them out of the opportunity pipeline qualified ops, and we put them into a qualified nurture pipeline.

Sean: It says maybe one day down the road because they’re a mainstream customer, right, and they’re not going to give us a list. Now we know that they may say otherwise, but I’ve been through this. There’s no point right now cause all I need are three customers. I just need three.

Jason: You need to find those three innovative or early adopters.

Sean: Absolutely. So I’m going to be tight on fit, right? This is all about establishing criteria. This is why I call the mindset not selling products to customers, but recruiting partners. You need to have a recruitment mindset. When you’re taking something, someplace in it, you have a reality and you have a vision. You share the vision, you’re honest about your reality and early adopters and innovators. We’ll meet you in that Venn diagram if you share it with them in an honest way. The ones that will nurture themselves closer to you will understand, will absolutely buy into your vision, but also respect your reality and be willing to invest the two things that matter more than anything else at this stage.

Sean: The time and the truth. That’s all I want from you. I want time and truth. I want the time of you and or X number of people in your team and I want them all to tell me the truth and if you guys do that, I promise you’ll get what you want.

Jason: Alright, everybody, that’s it for part three. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate if you’re listening to these episodes, if you’re tuning in, if you’re listening to this conversation, Sean and I have because hopefully, that means either you’re on the same mission, the same path as us in building the right sales experience for success for companies and for customers, or you’re looking at sales or you’re looking at how you change your sales experience and you’re looking for tips and this is the vehicle to help you get there. Make sure to subscribe. You can also go to cutterconsultinggroup.com to find the episode, the show notes, the links, the transcript. As always, keep in mind everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E193] Growth Through Sales with Sean Sheppard – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Sean.

In Part 2, Sean and I talk about:

Salespeople who need a built process vs. ones that can create the process
Self-awareness – what type of operator/founder/salesperson are you?
How most people (honestly) feel about change
Your #1 goal as a salesperson (and a company that provides a product/service)

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn

Sean’s Bio:

GrowthX | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

E193 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast and welcome to part two of my conversation with Sean Sheppard from the growth X and growth X Academy family of businesses out there changing the world via sales, which is really in alignment with how I feel about sales and the mission of this sales experience podcast. He is focused on doing it for startups early seed round type of companies who need help going from product idea into launching and generating income instead of just raising money. And you might be wondering why I have someone like that on the show for talking about sales. Make sure to catch all four parts of this conversation that he and I have and you will understand from front to back why I wanted to speak with them and the value that he has, which is literally in alignment with myself. So make sure to subscribe to the show so you can catch all the episodes here it is part 2.

Sean: And they can drive that functional learning that needs to happen in order to build something that people want because everybody just forgets you raise $1 million in this town. That’s 12 months of money that goes like that, especially if you’re selling B2B in a 12 to 18-month sales cycle. You don’t have enough money to do this. So you have to do it in the most practical and realistic approach possible.

Jason: And it’s so true in my experience as what you’re saying is that there are the ones who like to build and create from a sales, from scripting, from marketing, from just that whole process. And then there are the ones who just like to show up and do, and they just can’t handle anything that’s not already outlined or processed or something that doesn’t fit into what they’ve always done. So cause they’re not gonna mold to your process, they’re just going to bring what they’ve always done and it better work for you or not. And if it doesn’t, it’s your fault. Not to bash those salespeople. It’s just a fit for startup companies or wherever you’re at in your mature cycle. If you have no scripts, no process, no marketing, and you know you need somebody to bridge all those departments. Like you said, that’s one type of person versus here’s a process, here’s the playbook. Now get on the field and run with it.

Sean: That’s right. There’s a difference between creators and operators are like, you know, inventors, innovators, an operator, all three are very different. They all have their own specialty and it’s typically built into their DNA and that’s what I mean. It’s less about what background experience or skills or knowledge someone has and it has more to do with their characteristics and attributes. What is their nature? Do they get frustrated in a big company like I had a job once.

Sean: That was it. It’s like people always ask me, you know how do I know if I’m an entrepreneur person, you don’t choose. It chooses you.

Jason: Right. Go get a job and see how that feels.

Sean: It pulls you in a direction. In its purest form. It doesn’t mean you can’t be an entrepreneur later. Of course you can, but it does require a change in behaviors. If you’re somebody who’s traditionally been an operator and you want to try and be an innovator, it requires a change in behaviors and thoughts, mostly thoughts which drive behaviors. And the same thing goes if you’re an inventor who wants to be an innovator or an operator, you have to change your thoughts and behaviors to get to that point. And that’s fine, but more often than not, we’re going to fall back on our lizard brain every time things get difficult because everybody’s got a plan as Mike Tyson said until you get punched in the mouth.

Sean: And so that’s what happens. People say they’re going to do one thing and then the moment they get into the market, things don’t go well or they get seduced or pulled in a certain direction by people who express interest that have no ability to do business with them but have a willingness to suck up their time and resources. And those are the kinds of things that you see over and over again. So our focus is really on that dynamic that exists between taking something someplace new that is a learning process. The whole thing is a learning plan. Our entire market acceleration program and XP and I encourage everybody listening to this to go to growthx.com and sign up for it. The hashtag GX MX P newsletter. Every week we cover a different section of our, you know, I’d like to say world-renowned market acceleration program.

Sean: It is now being licensed by accelerators, incubators, universities, governments, corporations, startups, grow stage companies and entrepreneurs all over the world. Because it’s all about that dynamic. How do you in a measurable way find the truth about where your product fits in the market, create a functional learning organization to pursue that truth in the leanest way possible and determine whether or not profitability can, and it should exist in a predictable, scalable way. And it’s all about those things. So that dynamic is very different. The attributes necessary to support it, the way to measure it, execute against it, and learn where that truth exists. All rides in that area. And so if you have a true entrepreneur on the product side, they’ll get it. They’ll understand that they don’t know what they don’t know about where the product that’s in the market. If it does it all, we may not know what to do about it and that’s great.

Sean: So that’s the recognition of all right now I need somebody who does, but don’t go get that guy that comes from some big company that’s never taken something someplace new. I see it in big companies, small companies, and everywhere else. Cause that’s not about the stage of the company. It’s about the stage of the product in a market

Jason: And to the salespeople listening, right? And obviously managers and founders, but to those salespeople listening, it’s really about that self-awareness. It’s about knowing who you are and what you like to do, what you enjoy and what you’re best at that you can then bring to the market. Right? Like I realized that a long time ago about myself is that I really enjoy building it from the ground upsales, marketing processes, scripts, technology, all of that. I love fixing it when it’s broken, when it’s running smooth, I get bored and that’s not fun for me.

Jason: And I want to move on to something else. Right? I am not a longterm operator. I’m not the kind of person that likes pulling a lever for 30 years, day in and day out. And that’s what I do. I like building great. I’ve even found in the past when I’ve stepped back and then I’ve fixed this habit, I’ve even found it where I’ll literally dive really deep to find more problems and or break something so that I can then fix it because that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy the creating and optimizing. And so for salespeople, it’s really key to know that because I’ve seen that what you’re saying is where we’ve hired somebody as a sales rep, tons of experience companies in early stage, it’s very flexible. Like what we do today might be different than what we do or call on or say tomorrow.

Jason: And some people literally can’t handle that pace of change. And like you said, that ambiguity of what’s going to happen next week, we have no idea. We know what the vision is, right? So we’re married to that, but we don’t know what the strategy will be.

Sean: Seah, I mean there’s two things I want to, there’s two paths I want to take the conversation based on that. One is personal and professional development conversation for sales professionals, which I completely agree with. So that means for example, and now you’re getting me on my, you know, my growth X Academy soapbox, we launched growth X because most companies are failing because of markets and people not products. So we wanted to address it. We launched the Academy because nobody teaches professional selling. Okay. And nobody teaches it. The stage relevant selling of taking something someplace new and it’s very, very frustrating.

Sean: There are over 6,000 institutions of higher learning purportedly in North America and less than a hundred even have a sales course. And most of those, God bless them, those people haven’t sold anything. They don’t know what they’re doing. Exactly. And so what ends up happening over half of college graduates end up in sales, customer facing related roles with no background knowledge or experience skills or behaviors necessary to support it. And what do you end up with? You end up with endemics 60% turnover in the industry. In the first five years, right? And that hasn’t changed. And who bears the responsibility and costs associated with that? Us the employers, right? Every year gal comes out with the same pole, come graduation time from all these college graduates graduating from these liberal arts colleges. And by the way, I’ve never seen a job posting that says seeking liberal artists. So from the schools saying, yeah, are your graduates prepared for the workforce and the rules?

Sean: 8 and 10 say yes or 9 and 10 say yes. And then you ask the employers 8 and 10 or 9 and 10 disagree. There’s a giant gap there, right? And so now the Academy was designed to fill in a very focused and specific way to support our portfolio of investments as well as the community at large for all sorts of awesome people that want to transition from non-tech industry to High tech growth. They may come out of real estate or finance or retail or law or whatever, and they want to work in tech, but they don’t want to be a coder. I want to be an engineer. Great. So we’ve got a path in it and they can learn entrepreneurial selling and they can learn digital marketing, they can learn UX design thinking, it can even learn data science and some light programming to support data science in UX design in the Academy.

Sean: And all of that comes from this fact that our educational system was born in the industrial revolution as a way to put people to work in factories. You died, do you know if he asleep like Rip Van Winkle 150 years ago and you woke up today and you looked around? The only thing that would look the same as the classroom, there’s a reason they use bells in the classroom to mimic factory whistles. There’s a reason they have programmatic learning moving from one subject to the next and they’ve got everybody lined up in desk rows and they go altogether. And the only thing, two people in a classroom having common is their age and location and that’s absurd. And that’s just so beyond the pale. I can’t even tell you that’s not preparing anybody for the innovation economy. No. The skills that are necessary to be successful in the innovation economy are number one, you need a mindset. You need a mindset that says, I want to be alert at all, not to know it all. We call it a growth mindset, okay? It means that you can learn anything and master anything.

Jason: But also, you know, learn anything but also not, I’m guessing also not relying on knowledge, right? Because knowledge and information can now be found at your fingertips. It’s the wisdom to know what to do with create.

Sean: Yes. It’s a creativity of that. So you want to separate yourself in the age of AI, build your EI, your emotional intelligence. That’s the second thing behind mindset. Third is business activity. You can help anybody be successful. So to me in the role of sales is your job in this world is to help other people get what they want. Okay? If you help them get what they want, you will get what you want.

Sean: And if you honestly believe that you can have everything that you want, but in order to do that, you need to know who these people are. You need to understand how they work in tech. You need to speak to them in a language they understand. Just cause we both speak English doesn’t mean we both speak finance or we both speak SAS. We both speak retail and we both speak HR. Okay? You can learn that stuff very quickly through business and market acumen. Understanding how business works and how you can contribute to it as the seller is your primary objective and then behind that you need to be able to communicate effectively. If you can’t articulate your value based on those prior things, having the great growth mindset where you’re ready to learn at all times. Strong emotional intelligence so that you can care about somebody before you know what to care about, that you can understand their business and how they run it and how you can contribute to it.

Sean: That you can immediately adapt their taxonomy, their industry, vertical sector lingo and understand not just who they are, but who their customers are and how that drives everyone’s behavior and then ultimately articulate that in a way. It helps you get them what they want. Solve real problems for real customers in a measurable way and if you can do that, I don’t give a shit what industry or what sector. I don’t care what product or what market or any of those things. It doesn’t matter because everybody always asks me about this with MXP too. Is MXP your market acceleration program B2B or is it B to C or is it a marketplace saying as a technology only? No, it’s all of the above. It’s fundamentals. It’s H to H human to human cause until bots starts selling to bots and they don’t need us anymore, it’s still the process of one human interacting with another and trying to learn from that experience and so I that you call your podcast a sales experience for that very reason.

Sean: You know what creates an optimal sales experience. I think it’s applying what I just alluded to, in a way. That does two things for customers and people always need to keep this in mind. The first thing is to create less work for people, not more every day.

Jason: Are you talking the sales person for the customer or you’re talking to the company for their salespeople?

Sean: No, I’m talking to the salesperson for the customer. Everything the company does for the salespeople should be in support of that. To me, every organization has an upside-down pyramid. Yup. Okay. At the or funnel. Think about it as a funnel. Okay. To me, everything’s a funnel. I learned that in college, hanging out with. Absolutely. Everything’s a funnel. At the top of the funnel is your customer’s customer. Okay. And then below that is your customer.

Sean: And then below that is the people who face your customers, right? The people who find them. Right? The people who acquire them, sales and the people who keep and grow them. Customer service or customer success. And then everything else inside the business is underneath that and support of that. And at the bottom of the funnel is the executive and or investors and board and the people that support them. So everything that the company does internally needs to be driven by that experience. Does that make sense? So when I speak about this, I speak about it in terms of you need to go to market in a way that immediately creates less work and more value, not the other way around because what the problem is is we’re so heavily driven and focused on our own self and our own product and our own service.

Sean: We often forget what kind of experience we need to create for our customers. That’s one of the reasons user experience design and design thinking is one of the critical components of that we teach in our entrepreneurial selling program as well as in the UX design program is because everybody wants that easy button that Apple provides you today, but they don’t understand, or Amazon, they don’t understand how hard and difficult that is. Amazon is the most valuable company in the world. They don’t make shit except all of us happy.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two. Again, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast where you can find the transcript, show notes, all of his links, catch Sean where he’s at online, his website, and of course, make sure to subscribe so you can catch apart for three tomorrow. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E192] Growth Through Sales with Sean Sheppard – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Whether you are an aspiring founder, or seasoned sales professional – success comes from growth. The best, long term sustainable growth strategy is selling more and generating income (versus raising money).

I had a chance to speak with Sean Sheppard, a serial entrepreneur, venture capital master and founder of GrowthX. We wind a conversational path from start up founders, to selling, to mindset, to human behavior.

In Part 1, Sean and I talk about:

Selling as a Start Up Founder
A businesses goal is to make money
Having a clear message across marketing and sales

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn

Sean’s Bio:

GrowthX | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

E192 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason cutter. On today’s episode I have Sean Sheppard. He is the co-founder of growth X and the growth X Academy. He is a contributor for Huffington post and has been for a long time a leading online sales influencer and is taking all of his experiences with building and selling businesses to help others start up their businesses and an ecosystem where he’s developing the next generation of leaders for this innovative economy that we’re now in going into this new decade. Sean, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Sean: Hey, thanks for having me, Jason. I’m happy to be here.

Jason: Yeah, I’m really excited to have you on because of one thing that you’ve listed in your LinkedIn that really got my attention. I thought this would be a fun place to start our conversation where you said that your focus with growth X is to help entrepreneurs make money and not just raise money.

Jason: And I thought this would be fascinating because obviously the basis of that takes some sales. And with the startup economy, Silicon Valley, there’s a lot of selling that goes on to fundraise, but it’s different when you’re actually selling something to generate money. So let’s start there. Tell me kind of how you get people to shift to that or what different skill does it take? The sell actual product or service versus fundraising?

Sean: Yeah, look, I’ve always been an aspiring sales professional at heart from day one. Yes. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur and a founder of five companies with three exits. Uh, very expensive learning experience. Growth X should be, I hope to be my last job and the legacy that I can leave behind. And we started growth X because as a founder I was always the sales founder. I’m the non tech founder as they like to say in a very derogatory sense in Silicon Valley.

Sean: As if it’s a second class citizen status to be a non-tech found. But what I noticed and what I always had with me, it was great product-focused founders who would be wonderful partners. For me being the market focus side and I view any business through that prism of you’ve got a product side of your business and you’ve got a market side of your business and if you’re not paying equal attention to both, it doesn’t mean you’re going to fail, but you’re certainly not de-risking the opportunity because at the end of the day when you’re taking something someplace new, you have limited time, money and resources to find the truth about where your product or service or widget or software or whatever it is fits in the market. And what I found as a serial entrepreneur turned investor, turned frustrated investor because companies were failing.

Sean: They were failing because they couldn’t build a market. And in the Valley in particular where there’s this very technology and developed technology focus and science focus, product focus, there is not enough emphasis. It has not been enough emphasis on sales. Traditionally product focus founders have always looked at sales as a commodity. And the reality is we now live in a different era. We live in what I call this age of, what we call it, growth X, this age of applied technology where it’s never been easier or cheaper to get a product or service to market. As a result, it’s also never been more difficult or expensive to get real traction for it in the market. So I think the pendulum is swung entirely in a different direction the other direction. And yet you still see 80% of founders focused 80% of their time on product in technology and staring at their screens as opposed to identifying problems and markets that they can solve really well and focus on solving the problem than delivering a product to serve that problem.

Sean: And hopefully with the sense of the notion that there’s a bigger market behind that one, two or three early customers that you can validate that you can solve this problem for it. So as myself and my partner started to look at it, we were all angel investors. We saw that the problem was really not in product development, but in market development as we’d like to call it. It doesn’t matter what you build, if you can’t get somebody to buy it, it’s not a thing, right? It’s not dog food until a dog food eats it as they like to say. So we built our entire fund structure and model and approach around the idea of helping our companies make money, not raise money. And the focus in the Valley, especially in the startup world, is always very much focused at the accelerator and incubator level on raising money and people “celebrate the race.”

Sean: And then what happens is, is they have that cold splash of water, that epiphany moment where let’s say that inflection point where they realize in their own mind and heart that, Oh shoot, I just raised $1 million. Now what do I do with it? When they hadn’t had any idea. Get customers, keep customers and grow customers. And that needs to be the emphasis because nothing happens until someone sells something and no one is typically able to sell something until somebody else recognizes a need. And people can’t recognize a need until they absolutely can articulate and identify a problem and gain mutual agreement on what that looks like and then explore different ways to solve it. And so you can reverse engineer your way into product-market fit if you’re focused on finding a market where there’s a problem that’s big enough that you can solve really well on a predictable, profitable, scalable way. And so our entire emphasis and focus the last six years at growth X has been on accelerating market development for great product development teams.

Jason: And there’s so much in what you just covered. I think what’s interesting is that a lot of stuff is started by that product, you know, developer creator in a field of dreams kind of a way, right? So if you build it, they will come and they just assume that something is so amazing. They hope it’s amazing, they hope people will want it because they think that people will want it or they realize that they built it for themselves. They think everyone else will. And yeah, it’s interesting what you say, how noisy things have become with, you know, there’s so many people creating so many things that are out there. Then costs even more and it’s harder to get awareness because it is so noisy and people being inundated with so much different stuff.

Jason: Can you get that founder, that product focus founder to become a salesperson or is the best strategy to bring in a salesperson to offset that product-focused founder?

Sean: It depends, right? If it’s a solo founder then you don’t have much of a choice other than to get that person. In my view, I think the founding team needs to sell the first deals that get you through the learning curve and they have to demonstrate to me that they can do that before they’re even an investible company. And our thesis personally as seed stage investors looking for early customers and early revenue and a clear path to product market fit with the right kinds of, milestone driven, you know, activities. So if you’re a solo founder, you want to stay a solo founder, then you’ve got to demonstrate to me that you can close the first X number of customers, give you a statistically significant cohort, right?

Sean: That says, okay, I think I’ve got a problem. I’ve figured out a way to solve it and here’s what I’ve learned from that. And then here are the unit economics support. The idea, this is a predictable, profitable, potentially predictable, profitable, scalable approach on a team level. If you have a founding team, there should absolutely be somebody of equal weight and importance and influence that is responsible for the market side of the business to work with the product side and they have to work together in a very iterative way. And that product person or product team has to respect that market developer’s role and the influence and importance of the market at large in the process of developing their product. And if they don’t, their chances of winning are reduced. And it’s typically a miserable experience for the team. Doesn’t mean you’re not going to win anyone with a product as sold, but it’s sure isn’t fun if you’re a market developer or an early sales founder, co-founder for sales hire in a startup.

Jason: And I think that obviously continues on even as the company develops where that communication between sales and marketing and the product development team needs to stay together and be tight at some level, right? Not necessarily at sales rep as the organization gets bigger and developer individuals, but management needs to be communicating, bringing everyone together and making sure it’s one cohesive team. Because I’ve seen that so many times. I’m sure you have as well, where there’s kind of a two teams kind of battling each other. Product development wants to create this. Sales wants to just sell this and sell this hope and dream and then you know, can it actually be delivered on?

Sean: So yeah, there’s often a huge disconnect there. Look one of the things that we notice, look, 70% of funded startups seed stage, never get to an 8 round or breakeven. 70% in the Valley, 7 out of 10, 8 of the top 10 reasons why that happens have to do with markets and people not with products and technology.

Sean: Only two of them have anything to do with the product or the tech itself or supply chain or anything about delivery. It’s all about whether or not your team can find the truth about where our product fits in the market, be functional learners and determine whether or not profitability exists in a market where people actually want something that you have to offer and the behaviors of the team are critical to that. So if they’re not behaving correctly and they’re not aligned from day one, it makes that a challenge. And one of the biggest problems that I see is we hire the wrong person at this stage. And that’s what I call stage relevance because my focus has always been on being the guy that takes something someplace new. It’s a very different dynamic, when you’re a stranger taking something strange to a bunch of other strangers.

Sean: Then when you’re working in a big company with a brand name and marketing support, resources and money and a history and a clear book of business and support and all the resources you need to go ahead and operate and optimize something that’s already been standardized. But when you’re creating, it’s very different. So one of the classic mistakes I see, we started to make over and over again. I say go try it. Say they’re, say they’re building a SAS product in financial services and they’re going to go sell the big banks. The first thing they do is they go find some senior sales guy that’s been selling financial services into big banks at some big company for a lot of years and has a book of business. It’s very impressive. They have C-suite relationships at all the major players. So what happens first? Well, that person wants a big fat salary and unlimited PTO and health care and you know all these things that startups don’t have.

Sean: Yeah. They want support. They want marketing materials and collateral. They want a clear, crisp message on a website. They want case studies, they want all this stuff that doesn’t exist. Right. And number one, they want that. Number two, most of them don’t have experience in creating those things. Number three, the team that they’re working for just wants them to close their relationships and convert those people into customers. Exactly. Meanwhile, so 6, 8, 12, 15, 18 months go by and there haven’t been any conversions or maybe there’s been one or two, but there hasn’t been enough to sustain the business to get to the next level and that person’s eaten up a shit ton of your, of your capital resources. They’re frustrated. The product team is frustrated because they love their product. They just think this shit should fly off the shelves.

Sean: Why? I don’t know. Probably because they made it. They have some vision in their head that everybody’s going to want what they have and they’ve never sold anything either. And they certainly haven’t done it at this stage, which is very different than selling, as I said, in a mature environment. So those two expectations collide. You get a shit show. And it usually ends up sucking up the majority of the resources and killing companies and it happens well more than 50% of the time, more like 70 to 80% of the time. I see that. So my advice to those people is immediately don’t hire those people, make them advisors, give them a half a point or a quarter-point or a point, whatever you believe is necessary of equity. Put them on a schedule with that equity of typically a one year cliff and give them an opportunity to earn that equity by making introductions into key relationships and acting as a credible objective. Third-party advisor to their book of business, their Rolodex as well as to you and see if that works.

Sean: And if that works, and then they’re willing to take on all the things that we talked about, which is half the salary, twice the upside on the equity side, have to build their own comp plan that meets the organizational investor objectives, convert and define these proofs of concept and then build out all the things necessary to get yourself to something that would just keep you on the field long enough to learn and get to that next milestone. Then you could have that conversation, but in the meantime, what you need is somebody who’s either won or failed at taking something someplace new and they can’t help themselves. They have to do it again. They embrace ambiguity, they love to create, they communicate beautifully across teams.

Sean: They can talk to the humans in the marketplace and the engineers on their own team and they can drive that functional learning that needs to happen in order to build something that people want because everybody just forgets. You raise $1 million in this town. That’s 12 months of money that goes like that. Especially if you’re selling B2B in a 12 to 18-month sales cycle. You don’t have enough money, to do this. So you have to do it in the most practical and realistic approach possible.

Jason: Alright, everybody, that’s it for part one of my conversation with Sean Sheppard. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com so you can find the transcripts, his links, and the show notes for this. We had an amazing conversation. For the rest of this, just a spoiler alert, please make sure to subscribe everywhere you can find podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify. It’s also on SoundCloud, Google play. It’s on the cutter consulting group website if you want to listen to it or download it from there. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E191] From Paramedic to Sales Leader with Chris Cebollero – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the last segment of the conversation I had with Chris.

In Part 4, Chris and I talk about:

Are you developing your skills for long term success?
Patience – key for winning at life
Being a relational salesperson and building trust
Getting your prospects to come to you

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn:

Chris’s Bio:

Chris Cebollero is an EMS Leader and Internationally Recognized Leadership Specialist, Best Selling Author, Coach and Motivational Lecturer. His dynamic and energetic speaking style has entertained, motivated and educated individuals, groups and teams for over 25 years. Chris is currently the Senior Partner of his own consulting firm specializing in Leadership Development, Individual and Executive Coaching, and Organizational Process Improvement. Chris has been seen on ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX. He is a Certified Member of the John Maxwell Team, and is an Official Member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Chris has spent 30 years in the Emergency Medical Services career field and continues to be an advocate for delivering the best care possible.

Chris’s Links:

His Book: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Leader-Success-II-Introduction-ebook/dp/B010OLTPS2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscebollero/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChiefofEMS

E191 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back. This is part four so glad that you’re here. My name again is Jason Cutter and on this last segment of the conversation with Chris Cebollero we’re just wrapping it up, talking about sales experience, talking about more about emotional intelligence and how all of that plays in. It was a great conversation. Make sure at the end of this episode Chris mentions his links. You can also find them on the website where I’ve got the transcripts. Also make sure to follow Chris, check out his content. If you’re in sales leadership, he is a great resource as well. And if you’re in the medical field, emergency medical field, then you probably already know his name and all of the great work that he does and has done. But at the end he talks about the books that he’s written and where you can find him.

Jason: So here it is. The final part. Enjoy.

Chris: Well 2019 went and 365 days, 12 months, 52 weeks. But what happened was, is you didn’t have an intentional process to develop yourself or to have goals in 2019 and you let 2019 live you and you didn’t live 2019 so now that we get into 2020 and now we’re talking about the first couple months here, what plans do you have for yourself? What goals do you have for yourself that 2020 doesn’t live you, but that’s being intentional into being the very best that you can be. Jason, I don’t think we do that enough.

Jason: No, and I think the component that’s missing for a lot of people, and I’ll speak for myself because I used to be this way and I’ve worked to shift it, is that the most people are also missing the patience side, right?

Jason: So if we’re talking about any kind of transformation, being intentional, like your cousin’s weight loss story, it’s also about being patient. It’s not about losing, how do I lose 500 pounds by next Thursday? It’s, how do I lose, you know, and I tell people, if you lost a pound a week,

Chris: So I got the pound a week club.

Jason: Right? A pound a week, that’s 52 pounds a year. If you did that for two years, that’s a hundred pounds healthy, sustainable, consistent, just lose a pound a week, right? No fad diet where you’re losing 20 pounds. So you can look good in a bathing suit.

Chris: It’s about a lifestyle change and how we’re doing it live in our life

Jason: And for salespeople, and we’re talking about the emotional intelligence and the curiosity and the being intentional with all that. It’s also allowing the framework for the patience of, okay, well I want to be here as a sales person or I want to achieve these goals.

Jason: It’s like, but you’ve gotta be patient, right? You got to read and learn and you’re not going to be amazing tomorrow if you’re deficient in something. Just play the long game. I say this to people. Life is both very short and very long. Life is very short, where you need to live in the moment. Live in today. Appreciate today cause you never know and then life is also very, very long or you have the time to get things done or if you’re miserable it’s going to feel very long and life is going to be very un-fun for a very long time.

Chris: Yeah, I’m with you 100% I think you’re absolutely right.

Jason: So let me ask you, I have a bunch of questions I try to ask. I’m not usually too good at it because we have a fun conversation we covered anyway. But the one question I want to ask for you is what do you think makes for a great sales experience?

Chris: Well I gotta tell you I am one of the worst customers I think. I don’t, I don’t want people coming to my office and to sell me.

Chris: I want to, I want to call when I need you. I don’t like the pop in, I don’t want the sales pitch. I know what I want cause I do my research on it. And I think what makes a great sales experience for me is the professionals that know that, that understand who I am as a customer. That understand that I’m going to give you a hard time. You got to win your way into my heart for me to be a good client or customer for you. And uh, particularly I put them through the paces just to see their tenacity, just to see their persistence. But I want it on my terms. And I think that that goes back to the processes of you need to learn who I am. You need to learn what’s important to me. And if you don’t, that’s a quick way to make sure that, you don’t come back into my office.

Chris: As a matter of fact, I had salespeople kicked out of the hospital system that I worked in because of them trying to circumvent me. So because I wasn’t moving quick enough for their decision, again, we talk about an 18 month sales process. They decided to go to my medical director or they decided to go to my vice president and try to move the process along. Well, I had them banned from the hospital so they couldn’t come in at all and sell to anybody. So you need to know your clients and customers and you need to make sure that you meet their expectations. And, uh, I think that’s what’s important for the sales experience.

Jason: And a couple of things. The first part is, it’s interesting because I’m the same way as far as I don’t want people to come in to sell me. If I want something, I’ll go to them. But it’s interesting because when I listened to you speak, and we’re recording this on video as well, so I’m watching you explain this, I truly understand and can totally see you being that hard guy that’s going to put them through the paces. And then I also get this very strong feeling that as soon as you do let somebody in and you do trust them and you do want to work with them, like you’re a relational guy. And then unless they screw something up terribly, like you’re good for life with them. Like once they’re in with you, they’re probably in and, and things are great.

Chris: Yeah, I agree. And I think we have to get to that process. And uh, but you know, I think that you’re absolutely right. I think that it is about relationships and you know, Paul Martinelio will tell us that to be a great salesperson, you’ve gotta be able, people gotta be able to know, like, and trust you. And a trust is a big word and big word in a process of, you know, trying to sell somebody something and I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone into a store and there’s been poor customer service and I’ve walked out of the store where I was going to, I had a, a pocket full of cash and my ready to buy some stuff and I just went to the next store because I can pick and choose where I spend my money. I can pick who I’m going to engage with.

Chris: I can pick and choose. Now is my money that walks out the door gonna close that business. I don’t care if it does or not, but I’m not going back. You know, if they have other people that appreciate that level of service, that’s fine. And I don’t think we use that enough. Right? I don’t think we use the fact that I don’t need you. I don’t need to eat here. I don’t need to go to this store. I can find other stores that sell these brand of jeans and um, I think that that’s what makes, should make us happy.

Jason: And the right, the right companies, the right businesses that get that and provide that service no matter what. No prejudging, no treating different people differently based on how they look or act or what kind of customer they’re going to be. Those are the ones that win longterm. I mean, I used to do that just for fun when I was back in college and I would go to like jewelry stores and I would dress like a college student. I have like, you know, flip flops on pocketful of money ready to buy. And I’d literally go into stores and have people like not even acknowledge my presence and then I would wait for a few minutes and walk out and just keep going until I found one where people just engaged with me and talk to me. And then they had access to it from there. So the other part that’s interesting in what you’re talking about, and maybe you can give some tips because I think this would be valuable from your side to help sales people and managers is I work with a lot of business to business companies.

Jason: So they face challenges like the sales people who are trying to get to you and get you to make a decision. So they’re trying to sell to you. They present to you, you have your own reasons why you’re delayed on the process for taking your time. Maybe it’s not urgent, maybe you have a lot of hoops that you have to go through as an owner or a manager or whatever. And so the salesperson then goes to other people in the org chart to try to get the decision made, right? Because the sales person has their goals and their timelines. Is there an effective way they could do that where it doesn’t get them banned from the hospital, you know, quote-unquote where you know, talking to other people in the org chart would be valuable and would help you with your decision or is that just a no go for you?

Chris: I think that that has to be something that’s a common grant. Was there someone else I can talk to? Is there someone else I can present to? Does it help your case if, and you know, in my case as the chief of EMS and when you start to think about fire chiefs and EMS chiefs and police chiefs, I’m going to say we got a little bit of an ego going, but I think that the common ground there is let’s discuss it together. Is there someone that I need to help? What can I do? But when I’m saying this is going to be a process, you know, I’m not going to be able to get this money this year. You know, going to my boss and saying, you know, we need to spend, you know, one point $5 million in monitors and where are you going to find the money? I know what the budget looks like. You know, I know what that process looks like. You know, when it comes to the final pitch to say, I’m going to go with these monitors. Maybe it’s time for you to do that. But if we’re going to develop a trusting relationship, we’ve gotta be in it together. And that together is, okay, I think I need to get you in front of my boss. I think I need to get you in front of my medical director. And it’s that agreement that I think needs to happen.

Jason: And that’s a great lesson because it’s really about coming to you. Like you said, if I, if I heard you right, it’s coming to you and you’re still in the decision process is trying to work together and partner together. Is there somebody else they need to talk to? Is there something else that can be done? And then at some point it’s just letting you make your decision, right? I mean, there’s a balance of persistence and checking in that then becomes nagging and pushy salesperson, desperate for their end of month, end of quarter, whatever that might be versus, you know, just working with you and looking at it longterm and relationship, which is what we started the whole conversation with.

Chris: You know? And I think that one of the things that’s important as well in this from a customer standpoint is not the mislead the salesperson either. So a lot of times we’ll say things just either get him off the phone or to get him off our back or to, we have to be as transparent as we can be as well. Let’s say, you know, the process is going to take some time and not getting misleading information. Because if I’m saying, you know, I just can’t get my boss to agree, they’re going to say, well, I bet you if I get in front of him, I can get them to a great, you know, so if I’m not giving them the truth, I think that that sends the wrong message as well because they’ve got to know, like, and trust me as well. Sure, they want to make the sale, but they want to make the sale if someone that they’re going to respect as well, because regardless if they’re going to make a commission on this or not, they’ve got to feel comfortable and have good, uh, unethical relationship that, you know what, maybe that’s not the best organization that I want to be selling to it.

Chris: People know that they’re in their territory and they’ve got no choice. Sometimes they’re the only ones that are selling that piece of equipment in that area, but you’ve got to be fair to them as well.

Jason: Yeah, and I, and I think that’s important for salespeople to just always ask questions, always dig as deep as possible. If you’re getting the kind of end of phone call, send me information, we need to think about it or I need to meet, you know, ask questions to go deeper and deeper. And then you know, really, you know, because prospects, customers aren’t going to think like you are where they need to be honest and I need to share exactly what’s going on because that’s not how they view it yet. Maybe it’s too early in the relationship with a salesperson. So a salesperson just needs to ask and make sure they understand. I mean one of the things is, you know, I see a lot of people get the, well just send me an email with some information. I’ll look at it and then I’ll get back to you. And then what I found after years of doing is I would ask people, I said, Hey, I can happily send you information, but is it information and research that you want to do? And then we can talk. Or is this just your nice way of getting rid of me because you don’t want to tell me, no one hurt my feelings, but you’re really not interested.

Chris: Remember I don’t hurt your feelings. You allow your feelings to be hurt.

Jason: Right. I couldn’t hurt the prospect’s feelings, but you know, they’re probably not as, uh, as self-aware as you and I, uh, Chris, thank you for being on the show. Where’s the best place for people to find you? Find the information you have out there. I also know that you’ve done a lot of video or a TV appearance is the last stuff like that. So where’s the best place for people to find you?

Chris: Yeah, you go to my website, www.chriscebollero.com check out my books on Amazon. I’ve got three great books that just came out. One or not came out. They’d been out. One is ultimate leadership. 10 rules for success. The rules I had to develop to be a good leader, ultimate success, which is the skills you need to have to be a great leader. And last October, Jason, I put out a great book, advice to my younger self and if we can go back in a time machine to our 25-year-old self, what’s the one piece of advice that we would give ourselves to help our journey to be a lot easier? What’s really great about this book is that I had a lot of my peers in the United States write the chapters, so I just wrote one and then I have 11 great authors that put their expertise Danny Creed who’s been on your show actually wrote one of the chapters, you know? So it really is advice from a lot of great people and whether you’re 25 years old and looking to start your career or you’re 45 years old and you want to change it, get some great advice. But uh, that’s how you can find me best.

Jason: On that note, I wanted to give you the last word. What’s one message you want to put out there? One piece of advice or maybe it’s something that you discovered when you were going through that process of what you would tell your younger self. What do you want to leave the audience with?

Chris: You’re not as important as you think you are. So you’ve gotta be able to earn your leadership every day. If you think that you’re good, then you’re going to let somebody down. You know, you’ve gotta be able to understand that you’re going to make mistakes and then you reflect on those mistakes and that’s where you gain your wisdom.

Jason: Perfect. Thanks, Chris for being here.

Chris: Alrighty. Thanks. Let me come back again and we’ll have another great talk.

Jason: Yeah, we’ll do a recap. Maybe you and Danny, all of us, one big group conversation could do that. And for everyone out there, if you want to get the transcript for this, plus Chris’s links, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find everything there under the podcast page. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E190] From Paramedic to Sales Leader with Chris Cebollero – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Chris.

In Part 3, Chris and I talk about:

The single, most important trait I have uncovered for sales success
Almost equally important: empathy and emotional intelligence
What Chris tells people when they ask him what the worst thing he ever saw as a paramedic
The key take-aways from Chris’s book – Ultimate Leadership

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn:

Chris’s Bio:

Chris’s Links:

His Book: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Leader-Success-II-Introduction-ebook/dp/B010OLTPS2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscebollero/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChiefofEMS

E190 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. Thank you for joining this here. This is part three of my conversation with Chris Cebollero where we talk about sales, emotional intelligence. We’ve covered a lot of topics so far. If you haven’t heard them already, make sure to listen to download parts one and part two from the last couple of days. This is part three where we just continue the conversation and so here we go. Part three. Enjoy.

Jason: Like if we’re talking about sports like you said, it’s not what’s in the ring or on the field, it’s all the prep that goes into that moment. Same thing with sales. It’s not, you know, having that conversation and doing well, it’s all the prep that goes into it so that you can listen and then respond appropriately and move that conversation forward without even thinking about it. Right? With just being on autopilot.

Chris: Jason, let me ask you a question. I mean, so one of the things that I like to do is when I talk with, and I think that you’re one of the preeminent, uh, sales experts, you know, in the United States, when we start to think about all the people that you get to talk to and the shows that you, you know, and I, I, I could say that a longtime listener, first time caller, kind of my friend Danny Creed, I mean he’s, he’s somebody that I’ve had on my show before, but I’d be interested to know from your expertise, you talked to all these folks, what is the one common thread that you find in this sales genre that is truly the secret sauce. I mean, there’s gotta be that one thing that just makes people successful, that makes them stand out for the crowd and talking to them. I mean, you’ve got over a hundred shows. What is it that you’ve found that truly is the difference-maker?

Jason: I mentioned it earlier. The one common theme of everybody I’ve talked to is curiosity. It’s that deep level curiosity, both of themselves and the world and how it operates. And then their prospects, that curiosity drives the questions, the curiosity drives the empathy and the desire to help somebody and to get to the root of that. So the curiosity is so important. It’s interesting because when you meet somebody who is not curious, it’s painful, especially in a sales role because they’re not asking questions. They don’t get it, they don’t care. But as salespeople and leaders, it’s about curiosity. And then I think, you know, the other part in that is just empathy and then emotional intelligence, which I know you, you are big speaker about emotional intelligence such that you can pick up the cues, you can listen, you care with the empathy and then you want to solve. And then you have the persistence and the grit to literally just go all out to help that other person in whatever way you can.

Chris: I want to follow up on that. But you know, when you think about emotional intelligence, I think it’s something that you have to understand your own emotions. I think self-awareness is one of the components of emotional intelligence. And I think it’s the most important characteristic or attribute that, uh, that a leader can have. You may be great at communication, you may be great at resource management, but if you allow your emotions to dictate your actions, you’re not going to be very credible as a leader. I think empathy as well as understanding, you know, what that other person is going through. But when you talk about curiosity might follow up, question to you would be, if you don’t have that as a skill, what’s the best way to develop that? I mean, because you know, you’ve made that a common thread. You’ve said it like three times on this podcast, but how do you now develop the curiosity if it’s not something that you’ve done before?

Jason: So here’s what I know, at least in my life and what I’ve seen in lots of others is everybody is curious about something. So there is a curiosity in everybody about something in the world or in life. And I think the key is, is that if you’re in a sales role and you’re not curious and you don’t care, there’s a good chance you’re just in the wrong sales role selling the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. So let me give you a story, an example. So past life, I worked at Microsoft doing tech support over the phone. This is when they was still in the United States. We, in fact, two years after I started, we lost our jobs to China and India because the outsourcing started like with us leaving, which was fine cause I didn’t want to be there. But it was interesting because about six months into it I was doing it and I was good at it cause I could solve problems and it was great.

Jason: But I didn’t care and I wasn’t excited about it. And I started to notice that on Monday mornings I would come in and all of my coworkers would be talking about computers and programs and programming and they, you know, just change their jumpers on their motherboard over the weekend. And they were reading, you know, programming magazines over the weekend. And I was playing basketball and hanging out and doing other things. I couldn’t care less. And I realized like that was not, they were in the zone. I was not. And so after a couple of years I left and then years and years later I ended up helping people in foreclosure and you know, with their mortgages. And then I found that literally in my free time I was reading like banking magazines and finance magazines and finance websites and earmarking pages in, you know, banker trade journals and circling articles.

Jason: Like I found what I was curious about and what excited me. And then it was easy, like it was a square peg in a square hole. And so what I’ve found is everyone’s curious, if you’re in a role and you’re not curious and you don’t care, most likely you need to go find a different role. Not change from sales. You could still be in sales, but what is it that you love? What is it you do in your free time? Like, what are you like these days rights end of, you know, right now we’re, we’re going from one decade to another. And it’s like, okay, what are you watching on YouTube? What are you reading? What are you doing in your free time? Cause that’s what you’re curious about.

Chris: Very interesting. You know, it’s, it’s something that I think that, uh, you know, we all have the ability to do, but we’ve gotta be able now to think about, you know, the, there’s no blueprint on how to be a great sales person. People will say to me, Oh, you’d be a great salesman. And I was like, you know what? I don’t know. And, but you know, you sell every day, don’t you? When you influence people in your own organization or when you influence people that you talk to in the store, you’re selling them something, you’re selling them. Yeah. You’re selling them a gift of motivation, a gift of inspiration and a, you know, but I think that there was no blueprint that says, how do they know, like, and trust you. How do you develop the curiosity, you know, how do you develop the patience in a sales cycle that may be 18 months long?

Chris: And that to me, that’s be frustrating as heck. I don’t, you know, I’ve got to be able to keep enough people in the funnel that I’ve got an 18-month sales cycle that I need to keep that going. I mean, I would think that that would be so frustrating, but you know, but it’s a, it’s the, it’s the gift. You know, people will say to me, I can never be a paramedic and you know, what’s, what’s the worst thing that you’ve ever seen? That’s the question I get all the time. What’s the worst thing you ever seen? I’m going to tell you the worst thing I ever seen here in a minute, by the way. But you know, I say that, you know what? It takes a special person to be able to be a paramedic. It takes a special person to be in, in medical sales. I take a special person to be in electronic sales. That’s where you’ve become your expert. But here’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen as a paramedic. Jason, you’re ready?

Jason: Yup.

Chris: Pineapple on pizza. Worst thing I’ve ever seen.

Jason: We’ll have to disagree on that. Agree to disagree.

Chris: But it’s the worst thing. People don’t need to hear the blood and guts thing. So that’s why usually my typical answer is pineapple on pizza.

Jason: So let me ask you, because we talked about, I I, you know, briefly mentioned emotional intelligence. So one of the things is about creating that. So back to like turning the question on you, which asking me if you don’t have curiosity, how do you improve that? If somebody doesn’t have emotional intelligence or enough EQ. What do you see as a way to either create more of that or enhance what they have?

Chris: Yeah, so in my book, ultimate leadership, 10 rules for success, those are the rules that I had to come up with to be a successful leader. Rule number one, never allow your emotions to dictate your action and that’s positive or negative. Sometimes when we are in a happy mood, we make decisions that we shouldn’t make you feel. Look, not just negative emotions dictate your actions, but it could be positive emotions. But the reason that I learned that is because I allowed my emotions to dictate my actions in front of my workforce. And I pointed my finger and I yelled and I swore. And that followed me around like a black cloud for almost a decade, huh? At the be able to figure out the why. The two components of emotional intelligence that are the most important.

Chris: One is self-awareness and two is self self-regulation. Self control. We have to be able to understand the why. Why do we react the way that we do? Why does that person who’s coming down the hall that is heading toward door, that we hope we could close the door without them noticing we’re closing the door. Why did they bug us and why did they push our buttons? And why do people have to be on time and what do I care if that we have to understand that. Why? Because until we understand the why that we react the way that we do, positive or negative, we’ll never get the handle on emotional intelligence. You know, I remember one time my son, uh, I must’ve been like 17 or 18 years old. He had a job. He bought his own Honda civic, brand new car, Honda Civic. I was proud of the boy. And uh, he, um, decided the paint has rims, neon pink in my brand new $10,000 blacktop driveway. And I came home and saw pink all over my new driveway. And I went in and I’m like, wow, the heck are you doing? Can you help me? How dumb do you have to be that you’ve got to spray a brand new car, Neon Pink and he looked at me and he said, Dad, what’s up with all that emotional intelligence stuff you talk about?

Jason: Damn it.

Chris: But I had to find out really. I mean, so why is it that you reacted? I wrote an article and I never really published yet, but it’s the anatomy of a thought. Okay. So there was somebody who I just really irritated in my field. I think just, I mean, they really irritated me in my field. I mean, and I sat there one day and I said, well, why do they irritate me? And I went through this process, the anatomy of a thought until I finally got to the end that they were disrespectful and rude to me at one point in my life. And I kept the grudge. That’s why I couldn’t stand them. Until you understand the why, you’re never going to fix it. You’re never going to be able to control it. So the first thing that I say to you is no one can make you feel something that you don’t want to feel. You know, we think about that from a cognitive behavioral therapy standpoint. I can’t make you feeling, my daughter will call me all the time. Mom’s making me mad.

Chris: No, she’s not making you mad. You’re allowing what she’s doing to make you mad. Why is she making you mad? I can’t live here anymore. Who you telling? That’s why we’re not married anymore. But uh, it’s still the point of why. That’s your secret.

Jason: Yeah. And I, and I think that’s important. And again, this goes into, you know, people, the self awareness, but spending time and understanding, especially sales people, managers, leaders, business owners, like what self-aware about your strengths, who you are, what you’re really good at, and then how you react to things and why and where that’s coming from. And then when you talk about salespeople in their sales roles, is that the emotional swings, the ups and the downs, right? So they get good news and they’re so up and then they hear something else. And the emotional level is just a superficial kind of thing. It’s not a deep level. Like, I know what I’m doing, I know what I’m good at and I know what I’m focused on instead of it’s a, you know, just a leaf in the wind almost.

Chris: I think you’re absolutely right. I think you hit the nail on the head.

Jason: So let’s talk about intentional transformation because we’ve been talking about being intentional and one of the topics that you have is intentional transformation. And so I’m guessing that’s in line of what we were just talking about. But what does that, what does that really mean and where do you see that in an organization, let’s say mostly sales related? Like how do you see that playing out?

Chris: Yeah, but I think that, you know, being intentional about, you know, helping people, being intentional about growing people, being intentional about developing yourself is something that we leave to chant, right? If we know that somebody is weaker than us in our organization, a lot of times we’re happy just to let them be weak because we can be strong and we’ve got to be able to help develop those people that need our help. Right? So being intentional and being able to have good intentional transformation really comes down to being the best resource we can be to the people who were around us. You know, I said it earlier in this show that, you know, when people are around us, they feel better about who they are or they feel better about, they’re happy about, you know, and somebody said that to me the other day, you know, in that organization I’m helping that it’s working with Amazon.

Chris: You always make me feel better about myself. Well, you know what, you’re an awesome person? Why don’t you feel better about yourself? And I think that it’s, it’s just that little bit of caring, you know, maybe it’s even a little bit of empathy that you’re saying, you know what, you’re, you’re not as bad as you think you are. I was talking to my cousin a few months back, you know, she lost 500 pounds, 500 pounds in five years or six years, whatever it was. And uh, you know, I asked her a secret. I said, how’d you lose 500 pounds? She goes, I didn’t, I lost 40, I lost 30. I lost six in that. I lost. So it wasn’t 500 how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time kind of thing. But she was intentional about it. You know, it wasn’t, I’m going to lose 500.

Chris: She looked at the numbers, she weighed, you know, whatever it was, and she, um, said, alright, I’m going to do, just get down to this round number. Okay, now I weigh four 89, I’m going to lose nine pounds then, you know. So I think that when we think about intentionality, it’s something that we don’t think about that we just allow the process to happen. You know, one of the big things, you know, we just want in 2020, as you mentioned, and people will always say to me, Oh my gosh, it’s December. Where did 2019 go? Well, 2019 went in 365 days, 12 months, 52 weeks. But what happened was, is you didn’t have an intentional process to develop yourself or to have goals in 2019 and you let 2019 live you when you didn’t live 2019. So now that we get into 2020, and now we’re talking about the first couple months here, what plans do you have for yourself? What goals do you have for yourself that 2020 doesn’t live you, but that’s being intentional and to being the very best that you can be. Jason, I don’t think we do that enough.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part three. Make sure to subscribe so you can get tomorrow’s episode and all of them as soon as they’re published. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google play. Also go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website where you can find the podcast links for Chris, the transcript, any show notes. You can also contact me through there. And then if you want to, you can follow me on LinkedIn where I post a lot of this content and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E189] From Paramedic to Sales Leader with Chris Cebollero – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Chris.

In Part 2, Chris and I talk about:

Remember: Everyone is going through something
Recruiting the right people for your sales team
How bad do you want success?
“Champions aren’t crowned in the ring!”

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn:

Chris’s Bio:

Chris’s Links:

His Book: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Leader-Success-II-Introduction-ebook/dp/B010OLTPS2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscebollero/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChiefofEMS

E189 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part two of my conversation with Chris Cebollero. Please make sure if you haven’t already to subscribe to the podcast wherever you found this at iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, it’s on SoundCloud. You can find on Google play. You can also go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website. You can find the podcast, you can find all the links to where to subscribe and download, as well as the transcripts. And of course you can find Chris’s links there. But here we go. Part two, enjoy.

Chris: You see a lot of different faces on people. You see smiles, you see scowls, you’ll see frowns. Who got that bad diagnosis, right? Who just lost a friend whose baby is in the ICU and we go ahead and pass judgment on people to say, well, they look pretty mean, or Oh my God, they’re not friendly at all. It’s the same thing with the people that we come in contact with. We all have something going on in our days. And just to add a little bit of cheer, a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of motivation, what does it really hurt?

Jason: Yeah. Well and, and it’s two sides, right? So I think that’s important because when you’re in a hospital you can just assume that nobody is there for really good reasons. And so something is going on, right? Like I’ve been in enough waiting rooms where you could just look around and you can just imagine the story. And I’ve also overheard people come in and then share stories, but then you go out into the real world and you’re at the grocery store or you’re driving in traffic or you’re at the mall and somebody does something rude or cuts you off or says something. Right? It’s also understanding like everyone’s going through something and it’s not personal and to give, you know, somewhat empathetic. And then if you can try to add value in some way,

Chris: I think that that’s the ultimate test of emotional intelligence as well when you get into the world, right? And people doing those things that are just selfish. You know, people are doing the things that are just uh, you know, irritating the cutting you off or the, you know, whatever it is or not holding the door. And that’s the ultimate test. Why is it bugging you? Why, why do you care about it, you know, that doesn’t affect you. I mean, if people don’t want to extend courtesy, if people want to cut you off, if people want to be rude when they talk to you, how do you deal with it? And to me that’s the ultimate, one of the things that I did a long time ago when I was in the workforce and was a leader, I used to take my EMT or paramedic new employees to breakfast or lunch and I would get there early and I would intentionally asked the waitress to mess up their order just to see how they would interact with the waitress. You want to see when they get the character of somebody, watch how they interact with waitstaff. Watch, see if they look at them at their eyes, see if they ask what their name is. See if they are showing respect and uh, that’s a good quality. That’s a good character measure as to how they treat their waitstaff.

Jason: I forget who it was, but I had read somewhere else that somebody did that as one of their interview steps is before even hiring somebody doing that, the restaurant scenario with the screwed up order and then just testing to see how’s that person, how did they respond? Right.

Chris: I think I got that from there was an article or something I read, but it a, it was a long time ago. But you know, again, I think that we have to be able, you know, when we do interviews and we try to figure out who we’re going to invite into our organization to help us be successful. And I think that we forget that we invite these people into our organization to help us be successful. When I come and sit in front of you, I’m putting on the clean shirt I’m putting on, I’m giving you the very best that I got, but I’m hiding some of those character flaws that I may have. Yeah. It’s almost a, and then, you know, you give me references that people who are going to say that I’m the greatest in the world, right? I’m of course I want to hear the people that are going to say, you know that you’re horrible but you’ve got good character and you’re going to be able to fix it because now I’ve gotta be able to take you and your skills.

Chris: And when you come into my organization, I’ve got to be able to take you from point A to point B to make my organization successful. But we’ve got to get to the true character of people. And I think that’s sometimes that’s a challenge. I mean, you know, when you’re in the business world yourself, I mean, how do you help those, you know, those people find those right employees? Cause you got to think about it. You gotta think about retention, you gotta think about engagement, you gotta think about satisfaction. And we need to know these people intimately, professionally, intimately, so we can help guide them and motivate them. And I think we forget that. You know, you want to make sure that you have good recruitment and med tech and retention. It comes down to engagement and satisfaction. And you’re gonna find that you’re going to be great at it. But I’m babbling a little bit. I think it comes down to the character of those people.

Jason: Well, and what I’ve found is when recruiting or helping companies with their recruiting is what I have done to be successful in that is to put people through the appropriate amount of hoops and tests relative to what the job is. I mean, is it a short sales cycle? Isn’t a long sales cycle. It’s a long sales cycle. There’s going to be a bunch of hoops that’s going to be a long process. Is it a sales process that involves lots of calling and outreach and managing a pipeline and hearing NO or being delayed? If so, I’m going to delay people or just ignore them and then make them see who comes back and says, Hey, it’s Friday. You said you were going to call me by Friday. I haven’t heard from you. You know, are you still interested in me? And can we move forward, right?

Jason: Cause that person, however, like you said, everyone puts on the nice shirt and the nice smile and gets themselves all good and perfect on the outside. But given enough opportunity in the interview process, you will see because people are who they are and they can only hide it and pretend so long. So you’ll see it. Do they talk a lot or do they listen a lot? Do they ask questions? Are they asking no questions. And so depending on what you need from your sales role, you can see that and you just put them through. Do you need them to memorize scripts? I’ve also had it where in the interview process, in between interviews, I said, here, take this one page script, memorize it, call me back when you’re ready, we’ll schedule the next one. That’s totally up to you whenever, however long it takes for you to memorize it, cause some people, I’ve had people literally go out in the car, memorize it, come back 30 minutes later and then nail it. I’ve had other people take a week because like me, they have not as great as memorizing. But if it takes memorizing scripts, see if they can memorize it, see if they have the desire and the work ethic and the commitment to getting it done.

Chris: And I think that comes down to how much want the opportunity. And that’s really what it comes down to is success doesn’t just poke you on the shoulder and say, Hey, I’m success Jason. I’m here. I’m going to create success. Success creates wealth. And we’ve got to be able to develop those opportunities. And when I sit with you and you impress me with that interview to say, you know what? This is a company that I want to work for. I’m going to go out in the car and take 30 minutes to nail the script. If I take a week to do it, is that somebody who I’m going to consider for that position? And I think our job, you know, when we think about, you know, bringing people into our organization to help us be successful, I think we got it all wrong because we hire people.

Chris: And they have a certain amount of skill and a certain amount of experience. And you know, we say, you know what, let’s go ahead and partner and let’s work together. And then we bring them into the organization. We say, here’s your desk. Sit here. Don’t start any trouble. Let me know if you have any problems. But I think that that’s when the organizational socialization really starts in developing them into the culture of the organization. We’ve got to be able to invest in their professional development. So they’re now here with this level of skill when they come in. But we want them to have this level of skill when they’re working with us and then eventually continue to grow. And I think as leaders in an organization, we forget that sometimes just because somebody has a resume that you know, the size of their arm doesn’t necessarily mean they’re at the pinnacle of their career.

Chris: And my job as a leader in that organization is to get the very best out of you and getting the very best out of you isn’t you being stagnant. It’s you creating to grow. There’s a lot of salespeople out there that do a lot of great work and they invest in those people that they’re trying to engage with, but what are they doing to invest in themselves to become better and bring themselves to the next level so they’re able to bring the client and customer to the next level as well. I think that’s a missing component, Jason.

Jason: It’s interesting how sales as a profession, air quotes, theoretically a profession does not have that same level of internal and external work ethic during the Workday, outside of the Workday as viewed as this thing. Now, there are some, obviously people who are at the top of their game treat it like a profession. They’re doing the research, they’re going to conferences, they’re going to seminars, they’re reading books, they’re listening to audio, and they’re trying to improve themselves and their skills and understanding all different things, right? Maybe they sell machinery, but they’re studying behavior and psychology and active listing, like you’re talking about, leadership and so there’s a lot of it where people just aren’t doing it right? If you’re a professional athlete and you’re wanting to play and be paid professionally to play a sport, you know, it’s not just the one hour, two hour, three hour on the field or on the court, right? That’s 10% of your life in a given week. And so, you know, there’s so much more that goes into it and studying and watching tape, right. As I say, like of your interactions, listening to recordings or, or you know, having someone sit in your meetings and just people don’t, they don’t put in that extra effort to make it a profession and treat it like such. And then the reflection is on the community. The world as a whole is people just view sales people as less than or just out for their own interests instead of a professional.

Chris: Yeah, I think you’re right. I love how you put that into a little bit of a, you know, put a bow on that. You know, Joe Frazier has the great quote that says, you know, champions aren’t, aren’t crowned in the ring. That’s just where they’re recognized. And you feed yourself at four o’clock in the morning during the run. That’s where the championship is being made. And think about that from our standpoint of our own professional development. When we set goals for ourselves, it’s not reaching the goal. That’s the highlight for us. It’s the journey that we take in reaching the goal. That’s the growth and development that reaching the goal is just the extra gravy in that process. But I think that we’ve got to be able to make certain that we don’t cheat ourselves in that process. You know, I’ll tell you a story and you know, you talk about sales and how long the process is.

Chris: I don’t know that there’s any longer process of sales than being in the medical field. I mean, because you walk into somebody’s office with a brand new defibrillator that costs $30,000 and now I’ve got to outfit 50 ambulances with a $30,000 piece of equipment. I’m not buying that in a month. No, it’s going to take me a year to 18 months to get that approved and budgeted and finally on those ambulances. So there was one time we were getting ready to change. I was in Fort worth, Texas and there was a uh, the, you know, I put the RFP out that we were going to look for some defibrillators and we had the different vendors come in and there was, uh, I was having, I needed some leadership training that I didn’t have time to do and one of the vendors for the Phillips organization said, well, would you mind if I came in and talked about it?

Chris: This is what my reference resume is when it comes to leadership and I just missed doing it. You know, can I put on a little class for you? Absolutely. How cool is that? Happy to do it. He did a great job, you know, but it was above and beyond what he was trying to do. They have to know, like, and trust you. I had a problem. He gave me a solution that had nothing to do with the Phillips monitor. And I think that, you know, being able to be that resource as we go back to what we were talking about before. I mean, how great was that for him to say, let me teach you guys some stuff that I enjoy as well

Jason: And that’s where all the studying and the prep and everything in your life up to that moment then allows you. Then when the opportunity comes up in the game, you can make that play, right? Like if we’re talking about sports, it’s like you said, it’s not what’s in the ring or on the field. It’s all the prep that goes into that moment. Same thing with sales. It’s not, you know, having that conversation and doing well, it’s all the prep that goes into it so that you can listen and then respond appropriately and move that conversation forward without even thinking about it. Right? With just being on autopilot.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for my conversation with Chris Cebollero. Again, remember you can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the transcript, Chris’s links, and I’ll leave you like I always do as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. People remember the experience you gave them.

[E188] Know Your Numbers with Casey Carroll (Full)

Jason Cutter — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Normally I record episodes in advance, get them ready, schedule them, and do my best to have the conversations and content be “evergreen” (so that it is long-lasting and not trendy and short-lived).

Given the situation in the economy, with the Covid-19 virus driving most companies in America to have their teams work from home, it is causing a lot of challenges for sales organizations.

Casey Carroll and I have a conversation that centers on performance marketing, sales success, and knowing your numbers. While this is a very important topic that most business owners, sales managers, and even reps should listen to – right now it is even more timely as we discuss why these metrics are so critical in good economic times and bad ones (like the recession we are potentially heading into)

Because of the relevance of this topic and our conversation regarding sales and the economy, I decided to release the full conversation in one episode. I did not want to make this a 4 part series as I wanted you to listen to all of it as soon as possible.

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Casey on LinkedIn

Casey’s Bio:

He is the founder of the Action Advertising Agency, which is focused on helping small to medium business owners find new customers using digital advertising.

Casey’s Links:

Website: https://actionad.agency/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaseyCarrollLIVE/
And https://www.facebook.com/actionadsagency
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyscarroll/

Learn more about CaseyShow less

[E187] From Paramedic to Sales Leader with Chris Cebollero – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 07:22:45 +0000

Do you ever feel like your sales success is a matter of life or death?

What if it actually was?

Chris Cebollero started his career as an EMS (paramedic), moved his way up in emergency health care organizations, and has become an international leadership consultant and coach. You might not think that a prior paramedic has much to talk about sales, but you would be wrong. During our 4-part series, Chris and I talk about sales success, recruiting the right people, relational sales processes, and how much of it parallels emergency care.

In Part 1, Chris and I talk about:

Selling something that could actually mean life or death
Using a doctor’s process in sales
Always remember what people are buying
Winning the long game by focusing on abundance

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn:

Chris’s Bio:

Chris’s Links:

His Book: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Leader-Success-II-Introduction-ebook/dp/B010OLTPS2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscebollero/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChiefofEMS

E187 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. On today’s episode I have Chris Cebollero. Chris is an emergency medical services leader and internationally recognized leadership specialist, bestselling author, coach, motivational lecture. Chris is currently the senior partner at his own consulting firm, specializing in leadership development, individual and executive coaching and organizational process improvement. Chris, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Chris: I got to tell you, Jason, I am so excited to be here and I want to thank you for the opportunity not only to talk with you, but to hopefully entertain your audience.

Jason: I think it will be really fun and one of the things that I’m excited about and as I’m going through this podcast journey, I’ve been networking and meeting with different people with lots of different backgrounds. You know, in the past I’ve dealt with mostly salespeople, sales leaders, you know, more on a business to business, but your fascinating to me because your experience comes from the world of EMS, right?

Jason: Which is an ambulance and emergency response. And since it’s a sales-related podcast, I’m excited to see where we’re going to go with that. What you’ve learned in the world of actual life and death and how that compares to sales and sales leadership, which always feels like life and death but really isn’t.

Chris: I think. One of the things that you gotta think about is that everything we do in life truly comes down to communication. And it makes no difference if you’re trying to close that big deal, or if you’re trying to talk to somebody about the reason they feel the way that they do. I mean, think about what you have to do and you have to develop a rapport. They’ve got to know, like, and trust you before you put their hand, before you put your hands on them to try to deliver care. You know, you’ve gotta be able to deal with, you know, making sure that people get the very best from you.

Chris: You know, you’ve gotta be able to ensure that if conflict happens, how you’re going to be able to manage that. So when we think about the skill, I mean, the skill set is still the same. You know, what we’re trying to give them is a little bit different. As a salesperson, you have a product or you have a service that you’re trying to give them from an EMS side, my services, I’m here to take care of you. I’m here to deliver the highest quality of patient care. And those sales folks are trying to deliver the best that they have. So really I have to sell myself because in a short amount of time I’ve got to develop rapport. They’ve got to know, like, and trust me and they’ve got to allow me to help them on what could be the worst day of their life.

Jason: Well, and then what’s interesting because I’ve done this for years, is correlate sales process, especially a consultative sale with how a doctor operates, right?

Jason: With lots of questions, tests, you know, taking blood samples and doing all of that to then come up with a diagnosis and then a prescription instead of just jumping into treating everyone the same and throwing the same thing at every single person. And if we look at that, if the EMS side, right, let’s say the ambulance shows up and it’s emergency response, that window is much shorter, but it’s the same process.

Chris: It is. And you know, you have to be able to be the ultimate detective of the body to find out. You know, I come into someone’s home, a 50-year-old female who’s a little bit overweight with diabetes that has abdominal pain. I’ve got to know that the number one sign for women over 50 who were overweight with diabetes is their heart having a heart attack. The number one sign is abdominal pain.

Chris: So the same thing when you go into somebody’s office and you start to talk to them about what they need. When you go into somebody’s home, and start to talk about what they need, you’ve still got to be able to talk to them. You still gotta be able to gauge, you know, how long have you been feeling this way? You know, what are the answers to this? You know, how are we going to be able to develop, you know, the best plan to take care of you. And you know, but you know, you think about it and everything that we’re talking about is those basic skills that you need to have. You know, communication. I mean active listening, you know, one of the things we talked about before we started to record is, you know, this year as a, as you look through the reflections, I had to figure out how do I develop some better active listening skills and you know, but that’s the, that’s the whole context.

Chris: You know, I’ve talked to a lot of sales people in my career and I say, I asked him the same question. What’s the number one thing? The number one thing that you have to do to be a successful salesperson. And it’s always listening. It’s always finding out what you can do for them. And sometimes it may not even be a resource that you have, but being able to connect your network to say, you know, I got a guy for that. Let me go ahead and get you in touch. Now all of a sudden you don’t become valuable, just valuable in your niche. You now become valuable as, as somebody that has a network that you know, can now associate with those people. So now we’re connecting relationships and that’s what makes you really valuable. Same thing with me, you know, from an EMS side, I’m going to go ahead and deliver the highest quality of patient care that I can. And then I’ve got to be able to bring my guys in those doctors and those nurses to say they’re going to take care even better than I am.

Jason: Well and it’s interesting too with the active listening and you know what I’ve seen is the big trend with a lot of people I’ve been talking to this year as well, which is the curiosity, right? It’s being curious at a deep level about the other person, about their situation, maybe about their pain and then you know, actively listening to their responses and then figuring out what to do. And, and I love what you mentioned, that it’s about what you can provide, but if you can’t, then who else do you know? Which other way can you send them? Because I think that’s very valuable. And that’s what separates the kind of pushy, manipulative sales people who just want to put all the square and round pegs into their square hole no matter what. Versus the people who know what they sell, they’re professional. And if they can’t help somebody, then they’ll send them in a different direction, in a better direction. So I think that’s interesting you talk about that, especially in, in your realm.

Chris: You know, they don’t buy products and they don’t buy services, you know, they buy solutions to what they need. They need, you know, I needed a new pair of jeans the other day. Well that was the problem. Where do I buy my jeans from? Yeah. I have to be able to find the right place to do it. So as we start to learn the people that we work within the sales capacity, in the medical capacity, they may need something that you don’t provide. And, but you just say, well that’s too bad. Figure it out. No. Would you say is, you know what, there’s somebody that I trust and let me go and give you their name. You tell him that Chris sent you over and for them to take care of you and, and you know, I’m going to call them and follow up with them as well.

Chris: I mean, now we’ve just taken care of that problem for them. It’s not in our area of expertise, but you know what, I’m going to give you somebody that you’re going to trust. You know the other day. I’ve got somebody coming over to my home to put up some drywall in my basement, you know, I want to do it, but I just don’t have the time to do it. But he doesn’t have somebody who can tape and finish the joints. Right? I said, well that’s going to be a problem. And I was talking to a friend of mine, I said, so what kind of guy puts up drywall and it doesn’t have this tape.

Jason: Right. It doesn’t do the mudding and taping. Yeah.

Chris: And he goes, well, you know what, I got a guy for you. So I got the guy to put it in. I got another guy to come in and do it. But, uh, I was getting ready to find a new contractor, but I really liked the guy. I wanted to give him the work. And so he took care of my problem for me without even me thinking about it. I mean, so you think about it in your sense, I mean, I’m sure in your business as a consultant as well, I mean, how many times do you refer your clients to other people and you know, people that aren’t confident, they feel a little bit weird about that, wait a minute, I’ll send my customer to somebody else. But now you’ve just increased. I mean, how many times have you done it and maybe not even realize you’re doing it?

Jason: Yeah. It really comes from a place of abundance is understanding that there’s enough for everybody, right? 7 billion people on the planet. Like you don’t need to force everybody into it. And that just do the right thing for people. And that will always work out. And that’s relationship, like you said, like you went to your, your friend and they referred you to the Mudder and taper that you could use. Right? And like that builds that relationship even stronger. Even if he, even if your drywall guy referred you to somebody, you would then see your drywall guy in a better light because it’s like, okay, well he’s relational and providing solutions even if it’s not his.

Chris: You know, it’s funny because I was scheduled to do a motivational talk and somebody called me and needed the same day and I said, I’m sorry. I said, I’m unavailable. I said, but if you trust me, let me give you a guy that I think will do a great job for you. Well, they went ahead and went up booking, you know, my friend and he did a great job and the client called me to say, Hey, he was a great reference and thank you very much. Well, it was about, I don’t know, maybe three or four months later, I got a call from a lady who said, I got your number from the initial client, let’s call him Bill, who called my friend and said, he said that you’re a guy of integrity, that I should look you up to do my motivational talk. Now when I hung up the phone, I was like, well, how cool is that?

Chris: I mean, they could have very easily called Joe, my friend and ask them to come. But instead, she gave him my name because I took care of him. And I think that that was a very, very valuable lesson that it’s not about what you can do for somebody today, but it’s that they’re coming back around to you and being continual customers are a, you’re a continual resource for them. And you know, John Maxwell is my friend and mentor and one of the things that he says all the time is that we need to add value to people every day. And you know, when you think about the term integrity, people will say, you know, it’s doing the right thing even when nobody is looking. When we value the people every day. And we have to be able to do that intentionally. You know, today’s the day I want to talk with Jason and I’m going to add value to them. You never know what’s going to come back to you. And when people feel better when they’re around you, they’re going to want to be around you more. They’re going to want to engage with you more. They’re going to want to make sure that you’re the person that they reach out to. And I think that that’s a very, very simple recipe to success. Add value to somebody every day and watch what comes back to you.

Jason: And I think there’s people who are great at it, right? Like people like yourself. And that’s something I strive for as well. But it’s kind of an intangible that a lot of people might do but don’t realize and the others don’t do. But that could be that part, right? That’s what’s missing. Like you said, of the company who wanted to hire you and then you refer it. You never know when that’s going to be. That’s some intangible like you might be able to trace it back to the value you gave to somebody, but you just never know. You never know where things are going to lead. But you know, like you said, being intentional about it. Like how do I provide value for anybody? And everybody. I mean, even for myself, I go to the store, I’m checking out at the grocery store. I try to, you know, maybe not add value and give that person some tips, but you know, just try to make them smile or make them happy in some way. And you know, leave it better than I found it.

Chris: I’m working with a client right now. They have an Amazon distributorship. So their job is to deliver packages for Amazon. Amazon contracts that out. You probably see those Gray Amazon vans that drive around your city. Those are independently owned and they’re branded with Amazon. Well, I’m working with a new company. They started operation in July of last year and they need help with organizational improvement. They need help with workflow development. They need hope with leadership. So long story short, I had one of the supervisors in my car and I said, let’s stop at McDonald’s and get some lunch, you know, around with a Big Mac, you know, and I’ll stay right. And I was talking to the lady and I was like, you know, thank you very much. And you know, I appreciate the work that you’re doing. And you know, I said, uh, what was her name? You know, as we were waiting.

Chris: And I said, well, thank you very much Cindy. I appreciate it. And then when we left, the person who was sitting next to me was a younger supervisor as first time being a supervisor. He goes, man, you really kind of laid it on thick with her. I said, how many people don’t even look at her in her face? How many people don’t even care that she exists. What I wanted her to know was, one, I appreciated the service she was giving me, but two, to me the service was important. And whether I was the only one that did it for her today, you’d have to add that value. And it was kind of a lesson. I hope he took it and he was able to do something with it. But we just never know that. And it comes from this, Jason. So we go back to the medical, right? When you walk in a hospital, you see a lot of different faces on people. You see smiles, you see scowls, you’ll see frowns who just got that bad diagnosis, right? We just lost a friend whose baby is in the ICU and we go ahead and pass judgment on people to say, well, they look pretty mean, or Oh my God, they’re not friendly at all.

Chris: It’s the same thing with the people that we come in contact with. We all have something going on in days. You know, and just to add a little bit of cheer, a little bit of inspiration, a little bit of motivation. What does it really hurt?

Jason: Alright, thanks for listening to part one of my conversation with Chris. Please make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find the podcast, that transcript from this part of the conversation as all of Chris’s links, and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E186] The Coaching Effect with Bill Eckstrom – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the fourth segment of the conversation I had with Bill.

In Part 4, Bill and I talk about:

Success comes when you are always growing and learning
Bill’s version of a Great Sales Experience
Healthy tension…necessary for sales people and their coaches, and sales people and their prospects
Bill’s 4 steps for achieving great results with your sales

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

Bill’s Bio:

William Eckstrom is the President and founder of the EcSell Institute. Bill has spent his entire career in the sales arena; the first 14 years in personal production and then 13 in various sales leadership roles. His management career began in 2000 as a District Manager for a medical equipment company and was promoted to U.S. Director of Sales in 2003. In 2004, Bill was lured away to become Senior Vice President of Business Development for a publicly-traded healthcare organization. In 2008, he founded the EcSell Institute to fill a void he witnessed and personally experienced in the sales leadership profession.

Bill presented a TEDx Talk to an audience of over 1,700 at the University of Nevada, Reno where he shared life-altering, personal and professional development ideas through the introduction of the “Growth Rings.” Since the release of the Talk, it received 100,00 views in just one week and now has over 3,000,000 views.

Most recently Bill helped co-author The Coaching Effect: What great leaders do to increase sales, enhance performance, and sustain growth which became an Amazon-Best Selling book in it’s first week of launching.

As a result of his experiences, his company’s findings, and his public speaking skills, Bill’s work as a keynote speaker is highly regarded throughout North America. While his audiences call him “profoundly authentic”, “highly entertaining” and much more, Bill is most proud of the fact his material is based on EcSell’s science and research—he does not present motivational fluff. He has presented to hundreds of groups ranging in size from 25-2,500 on topics found on his personal website, billeckstrom.com.

Lincoln, Nebraska is home for Bill and his wife. Together they have three children, Will Jr, Claire and Maddie. Philanthropically, Bill prefers a very hands-on approach as evidenced by his current involvement and passion–working and training their Yellow Labrador, Aspen, for therapy dog work. Soon he and his four-legged companion will be visiting children in hospitals and senior citizens in nursing home settings. Bill also has a strong need to be in the outdoors and finds time each year to spend in field and stream with his children and close friends.

Bill’s Links:

EcSell’s website: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/

Bill’s bio: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/bill-eckstrom

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billeckstrom/

E186 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back to the final part of my conversation with Bill Eckstrom. So glad that you’re here. Thank you for tuning in. If you haven’t, make sure you listen to the previous 3 parts. So part one through three. The last three days where Bill and I are talking about coaching in terms of sales, leadership, sales management, where coaches can go wrong or sales managers can fail, where organizations and leaders, owners, executives will struggle if they don’t make the right decisions with managers and then hold them accountable, track everything and move everything forward. In this portion here, Bill and I have some interesting revelations that come up. I say something which I’ve never thought of before and it comes into play. Here we’re talking about salespeople and hobbies. Are you doing sales as a hobby or as a career? Similar to what you would do with any other hobby or sport or event. And also Bill breaks down his formula for what it looks like to be an effective coach. So he covers that and so here you go. Part four.

Bill: If I don’t want to grow the culture that should be on the team is like, you know, that is not acceptable culturally. No organization should say, Hey, we’re okay with our people not growing. I mean, what if you’re a salesperson? You know, if you’re working with the organization and some of the sales people come up and say, Hey, you know what, that new methodology you’re showing us, man, Jason, I just don’t have time. I really don’t want to change my behaviors to grow this year. How long would they last in an organization?

Jason: As long as it takes for everyone else to be on board and start performing and raising that bar up where they’re now the leftover remnants of the old way and no longer fit in with the organization. And I think it’s interesting to talk about

Bill: And that has to permeate everything, every level within an organization.

Jason: And I think it’s important to talk about relatives, right? Like you said, is that it’s not just about becoming that superstar. It’s about growth for that individual and where they want to go and what that growth means. That growth doesn’t mean like, okay, we’re going to grow. And you need to make $1 million or 100,000 or whatever it is for your role. It’s more growth for you as an individual because if you’re not growing, you’re dying, right? At some level and you know it’s philosophical and people kind of freak out. But if you’re not learning new things and growing and trying to develop or have better conversations or listened better, whatever that looks like in your role and in your life, you’re not doing that. You’re just kind of stagnant and just coasting through life. And for me, you know, on a fundamental level, I just think life is too short for that. That’s not the point of life to just coast. I look forward to the weekend and coast through the weekend and then go back to work and coast. Like that’s, there’s more to life than that.

Bill: This is or there isn’t. And I’ve in, my daughter was laughing at me not long ago because she said she’s going to put on my tombstone that growth only occurs in a state of discomfort.

Jason: Perfect. That’s great.

Bill: No, but that is so true now. We can’t live a life of discomfort and growth. I understand that. You know, we all have our orders, we all have the things that make us comfortable, that prepare us for those growth moments. But to not grow is really, you’re missing life. It’s just that simple. You’re just missing life.

Jason: Yeah. And then the other part, like, you know, using the golf analogy for example, is the top golfers. They know their numbers. Amateur golfers may or may not know their numbers. They usually do. They know some of them. They might not know all of them. And I think the real difference is, is if you’re going out and you’re just playing golf for fun and you don’t really keep track and you don’t really care, that’s a hobby. Not a profession, not a career, not a drive, not something that you really want to improve and get better at. Which is fine. Right? We all have hobbies, whatever it is, where I don’t need to be the best golfer in the world. I just like playing. It’s a fun hobby. I go on for some time with my friends and it’s just fun, right? Nothing wrong with that. However, there’s a lot of sales reps and managers who treat their career as a hobby where they don’t track the numbers, they don’t know the numbers. It’s equivalent to going out and playing some golf with your friends. They show up and they play sales with their friends and it’s more in hobby mode and most organizations tolerate it yet don’t get where they need to be because you know it’s operating in sales hobby mode.

Bill: You’re, I’m, I’m writing that down. What you just said, Jason, don’t treat your career as a hobby. I have, I just love how you said that and it’s spot on. Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. I that’s very profound and I like that and I’m going to use that and I’ll give you credit.

Jason: Maybe credit at least the first couple of times and then you can take it as your own but that just literally, that just came to me as we’re talking about this because again, not everyone strives to be a top golfer or a top basketball player, right? Like I enjoy playing basketball. I will never be a top basketball player, like a professional. Nor if I had started early on maybe but maybe not. But I enjoy it. It’s a fun hobby. It’s interesting cause I still keep track of my stats when I play and like how many misses and how I’m doing. But it’s a hobby. It’s just something fun. I don’t care. And then business is different and there’s a lot of people who, you know don’t separate those and don’t have that drive.

Jason: So let’s talk about, cause I have some questions that I keep struggling to ask people but I knew this was going to happen with us.

Jason: I even told you in advance, we’re probably going to get on a roll. We’re going to talk about, you know, coaching and leadership and probably not even get to this, but let’s talk about real quick, give you an opportunity. What does a great sales experience look like? And you can talk about it from the salesperson kind of point of view or from how the company creates that or you know, a sales experience from a coach because a coach is now selling the sales people on that. If you want to keep it in that framework like what does a great sales experience mean to you?

Bill: You know, one of the things that, and it was actually our VP of sales use this term several years ago and he uses it frequently and I, and I love how he says it and he said the most impactful, positive experiential asset you can give a salesperson is a great coach. And that hit me right between the eyes because he is spot on that you want to create a great experience for a salesperson, give him a great coach because that coach either you know, creates positive experiences or negative experiences. And keep in mind when I say that we don’t look at those as positive growth experiences as someone who is necessarily stress-free, happy, big kumbaya group hug event. That’s not how we measure growth. Positive growth experiences come at times of stress, positive growth experiences are induced. Sometimes stress is deliberately induced by great coaches to create growth. So I think the best experience you could ever give a salesperson is to give him a great coach and then understand what great coaching looks like, feels like. So you know the right one to bring forward.

Jason: And I think what’s fascinating because I look at the whole value chain, the whole org chart from the salesperson on up to the owner. And I think what’s interesting is that literally if we were to take the words that you just used about a coach with a sales person, with a sales professional, and instead replace coach with salesperson and then replace salesperson with customer or prospect, it’s also the same thing that creates that best experience for them. Like a really good salesperson is a coach that leads that prospect and consults them and figures out how they can win and what they need in their life and then coaches them to the finish line. And a salesperson who acts like a coach and a consultant, right? Cause this has always been my approach. And I help other people understand is that’s not always comfortable and cute and cuddly for the prospect.

Jason: I have said some things to some prospects out of love and concern and care as their coach and as a salesperson who wants to see them get over the finish line because they’re blinded by it or they’re either being ignorant to, you know, what’s in their way from getting from here to there, right? In that purchasing decision. And so literally, sometimes it’s tough talk. Sometimes it’s pushing buttons with the ultimate goal of that coach. And so I think the same topic, you’re covering coach to salespeople as salespeople to customers, you know, it’s the whole thing. It’s just, it’s a philosophy, right? Of all of it.

Bill: It is. And that’s a great analogy because we know, we measure it. One of the things that we see, one of the themes is what we call complexity or challenge, which is, are you creating a healthy tension basically between you and your salesperson as a coach? Because growth only occurs in this state of discomfort. We know that. Are you moving them outside of the comfort zones? Do you understand what, how that’s unique teacher, those people and are you maximizing that for each person? Just like it takes for great salesperson to adapt to the uniqueness of each customer? It’s done the exact same way. Why people don’t carry that when they move into a coaching role. We don’t know. All we know is that most don’t. Our director research calls a management paradigm.

Jason: Yeah, it’s definitely something. It’s a management something that’s for sure. Right. So before we wrap up, anything else? I’ll let you up the last word in this kind of conversation about coaching leadership. You know, just anything else we might’ve missed or not covered in our time.

Bill: Thank you. By the way, for that opportunity. What I would tell people is follow all 4 steps. Number one is measure. If you’re really wondering what to do by your coach, measure how good your leadership team is today. Number two, train and educate them or develop them and educate them. I know training is an odd word at times, but to measurement that not give them the opportunity to improve is shame on you and shame on them. So first step, measure, second step, develop and try and educate. Third step is to implement. Don’t ever do those things. Trainees walkway. I’m sure you see it all the time in your business, which training is one thing, but training and then having an accountability partners, having deadlines and all along the way to make sure the behaviors that you’re training to, get implemented and the last step for set, being track and analyze. Take a look back and see what’s happening, what needs to be tweaked and then rinse and repeat. Do whatever year.

Jason: Perfect. That’s it. That’s the formula right there. No matter what you’re working on in sales and business, in life, anything that you want to improve and optimize, maximize. I mean that’s it. That’s the four steps for sure.

Bill: Thank you.

Jason: Thank you Bill. And I’m going to put all of your information in the show notes so people have your links information. But for now for people to saying, where’s the best place from the find you, your business, you know, the stuff that you’ve done, anything you know, anything of value that you’ve created, like where’s some good places to find that?

Bill: Oh well thank you. So billeckstrom.com our company’s website is ecsellinstitute.com so that’s E C S E L L thank you for asking about our book. Our book just released in April’s hit the bestseller list. It’s called the coaching effect and we’re really, really proud of that. So that’s a fun thing to always bring up. And if there’s questions on this whole discomfort thing, as I said earlier, I did a Ted talk called white comfort will ruin your life and that’s of course can be seen on YouTube. And that talk went viral the year it was really. So that’s really been a fun thing as well. So I think those four ways and of course linkedin, I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. That’s always a good time. And again, I’m Bill Eckstrom, my LinkedIn, Instagram, I’m out there, all the usual social media places, Twitter, so on and so forth.

Jason: Very cool. Well thank you Bill. Uh, again for being on here and talking about sales and coaching and leadership. I appreciate that and what you are doing and kind of both are similar focus on, you know, helping improve sales organization. So I appreciate that. Thanks for being here.

Bill: Yeah. Jason, I got to tell you, the only reason these things are fun is when you get asked great questions. And you ask great questions. You certainly walk the talk. I’m sure of what you’re training people. So I appreciate you my friend.

Jason: I sort of had a plan, but it’s all about going in the flow and making value. So I appreciate that. And for everyone listening again, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the episode and all of Bill’s links as well as the transcription for this. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E185] The Coaching Effect with Bill Eckstrom – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Bill.

In Part 3, Bill and I talk about:

Managers: Do you know what motives each on your sales reps?
Coaching success by asking questions (which is also how you win as a sales professional!)
Do you really want to be held accountable?

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

Bill’s Bio:

Bill’s Links:

EcSell’s website: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/

Bill’s bio: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/bill-eckstrom

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billeckstrom/

E185 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back to part 3 of my conversation with Bill Eckstrom. My name is Jason Cutter. So glad that you’re here. I appreciate the fact that if you’re listening to this, if you’re in a leadership role in a sales organization that hopefully your goal is to shift yourself into coaching and into measurable coaching, not just coaching and leading and knowing how to do it and what you should do and how you should talk to your salespeople or how you should coach them or help them, but doing it in a measurable way in which there’s tracked results and you know the effort that’s being put in and then the results coming out in the same way. And what’s interesting is exactly how you expect salespeople to operate and have their numbers and know what those conversions are as they go through the process, which we talked about in part 1 is the same way as a coach, a leader, a manager, an executive should be tracked with the effort and then the results and then tweaking things as you go. So here it is part 3 and enjoy.

Jason: If you recognize them in a meeting and you have a team meeting and you say, Hey, Jim did a great job, Jim will actually stop doing well because Jim doesn’t like public acknowledgement and doesn’t do it for that and will actually stop selling because he doesn’t want to be called out again. Even if it was a positive thing. And then Carol, if you don’t call out Carol, Carol will stop selling because all she wants is gold stars and accolades and the money’s great, but what she wants is that acknowledgement and none of it’s right or wrong. It’s just you have to be able to coach all of them.

Bill: Yeah, and the beautiful part in what you said is so spot on, Jason. The best part about that now is organizations can actually measure and quantify if using that as an example, whether or not that’s occurring, whether or not they are acknowledging and whether the sales people feel like they’re unique, whether or not they are treating people uniquely in helping that person move towards a career objectives and helping them, you know, what’s different aspects of their skill development that are just simply unique to that person. And organizations shouldn’t be guessing this stuff because it is so important to performance. They need to quantify that just like they’re quantifying how much salespeople sell.

Jason: So let’s talk about that because this is always the hard part. You’ve mentioned it several times where you know, the sales manager should be doing these things, could be doing these things. Nobody has any idea of what’s actually being done and everyone’s flying blind. So how do you actually measure that? Like how do you actually get that down?

Bill: Good question. There’s a couple of different ways. First when we talk about measurement, and I mentioned that before, and the only way to understand the coaching dynamic between a coach and a salesperson, when you use sales as the example here, the only way to understand that is to survey the sales people. And I’m not talking about 360 I’m not talking about which I’m not a huge fan of. Anyway, I’m talking about bottom up measurements. And sometimes when I say that people go, Oh, well I’m sure that’s, you know, the most accurate, you know, maybe you should be a boss or a peer looking, you know, what, how much time, you know, when I’m in a sales leadership role, I don’t see my boss tagging me around to see, Oh well I’m coaching, right? None of my peers at the company hanging with me to see, while I’m coaching. The only people that are good enough measurement of that are the people on my team. And quite frankly, those are the ones that matter most, right. And I liken it to the easy way to look at it is to say if you were trying to measure customer service, the service you’re providing your customers, would you ask your customer service people how well are they providing the service or would you go to your customers?

Jason: Of course.

Bill: Right, so that’s the number one and by surveying salespeople we are, and asking them the right questions. We can really understand the coaching dynamic that takes place between sales coach and salesperson. So that’s number 1. And the other way to quantify is really to understand the activities the amount of activities are doing. So if you understand the outcome, and that is the only way to measure an output of coaching is to what we call the coaching effect survey. And again, I’m not trying to be self-promotional. That’s what we call ours coaching effect survey. That is the outcome, okay? That’s through the eyes of the salespeople, how they believe that dynamic occurs between their manager and themselves. The input of that though is what is a coach doing on the front end? Are they doing their one-to-one meetings? Are they writing with me in the field?

Bill: Are they hopping on a phone call with the salesperson and a prospect or a client? Are they holding team meetings? So all those are coaching inputs. And if we can quantify that and the way we do it is we have a coaching Cod that we have our clients use. And if they’re going to do a one on one meeting instead of keeping notes in a word document, keep them in the cloud. And if you’re going to go do a ride along or you’re going to join a salesperson on a sales call and you’re going to give them feedback, we’ll make sure you document the feedback and everything goes in a singular system. And when that happens, you have vast amounts of data that you can now marry with survey results and you get coaching inputs and coaching outcomes and it’s really, you know, you can correlate those things together to determine what creates the most discretionary effort.

Jason: And what I’ve seen, and this is kind of for the managers for the, more for the owners out there who might be listening to this, is that one of the things that occur in what you’re talking about with those systems, cause I’ve rolled that out myself as well, is either direct and outward resistance from sales manager coaches to not wanting to do it all the way to the other end of the spectrum of you know, not doing it but like passively forgetting, ignoring it, you know, Oh I did the one-on-one. I just didn’t document it because they don’t want to be held accountable. And I think the real key and what I’ve found, which you’ve talked about as well, is marrying it with the why. So why sales manager coach, it’s so important. We’re going to have this new system, we’re going to track you and not to track you so we can hold you accountable and we can punish you.

Jason: Like in the same way that some sales reps get defensive when you want to start going through their numbers, right? The winners want to be held accountable and they want to know how did they win? The people who are struggling, I don’t want to say the losers, but the ones who have that mindset where they don’t necessarily want to perform at that level because they know it requires accountability, feedback and being honest about it that they are going to shy away from it. I mean you’ve got to set that why as a company and then you’ll notice if your manager is a good fit or not. If they want to win, if they’re going to jump on board, you know over the right amount of time with your new system.

Bill: Exactly. Forget our system. You brought up a great point. Just think philosophically, is your organization one of excellent and if it’s one of excellence, do you need data to help you with that? And the answers are always, you know, everybody always says, yeah, we’re a company of excellence or yeah, we’re a data driven company. If that’s the case, you know, here’s the example use. Do you know a professional golfer that doesn’t track their ways hit, you know, sand saves putts per green, right? They have all their data and all their metrics and golfers are looking at them constantly. Every tennis player on the tour knows first serve percentage, second serve percentage, return points 1 every data point. Because with those data points, I can grow. But yet when we get to leadership roles, they have a tendency to shy away and say, Oh, I don’t know if I want to know that stuff. Here’s what’s so interesting and probably where we should focus as much of our time is on this. 30% of them though, Jason want to know the top 20% we see our heads and tails better than the bottom 80 we see about 30% of people that really want to know that information and they look at this type of information and they say, I’m going to do that because I see a way to improve my skills in my role.

Jason: Yeah. And, and I think it’s really just comes down to how people view themselves in their job and their role, whether it’s salespeople, managers, executives, you know, obviously it’s easy to say, well, you know, this professional athlete, this professional golfer or tennis person, you know, basketball player, they’re professional. That’s what they do. They get paid lots of money. But you know, anybody in any role could also act like that professional, that pro who’s gonna put in the effort and wants to know and wants to improve and tracks all of their numbers and knows their numbers, know there’s team’s numbers before the sake of, you know, that conversion. And really, and this is kind of my focus was lot of people is if you’re not operating in that way, and obviously superstardom isn’t for everybody, it takes a lot of work, 10,000 hours. It’s a grind. There’s a lot of pain and blood and sweat and tears and all of that. You know, especially like you said, getting out of the comfort zone and into discomfort, right? No pain, no gain. Not everyone is built for that. But if you’re in a leadership role, you know, really want people who are in that mode and want to succeed at the level, you know, that they could and always want to grow relative to them.

Bill: Yeah, Jason, you’re right. And I use those examples like professional golfers or professional tennis players, but the reality is what we’re talking about is growth. It’s that simple. I don’t have to be the top sales person and I have to be in the top 5% I don’t. If I want to grow, I need to know how to grow. And that’s really what it is. It’s all about growth and having information that allows me to get better in the areas that matter most. So I would tell you whether I am a professional golfer or whether I am a frontline sales leader, if I don’t want to grow the culture that should be on the team is like, you know, that is not acceptable. Culturally. No organization should say, Hey, we’re okay with our people not growing. I mean, what if you’re a salesperson? You know, if you have, you’re working with the organization and some of the sales people come up and say, Hey, you know what? That new methodology you’re showing us, man, Jason, I just don’t have time. I really don’t want to change my behaviors to grow this year. How long would they last in an organization?

Jason: Alright, that’s it for part 3. We’ll stop it here for today. If you haven’t, make sure to subscribe, you can get these episodes every single day when they come out. You can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast and find the episode, transcripts. Bill’s links, my links, all of my info. You can also find me on linked in, so I’m there a lot. If you want to talk about sales, if you want chat, if you need help with your organization, you want to talk about coaching and leadership or developing out your sales team or your sales leaders, please use my website cutterconsultinggroup.com reach out to me. You can email me, fill out the contact form. You can call me, you can text me or you can find me on LinkedIn. And as always, let me leave you like I love to do, which is keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E184] The Coaching Effect with Bill Eckstrom – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Bill.

In Part 2, Bill and I talk about:

The 4 step process of measuring performance
Creating a coaching culture
Success comes from being uncomfortable
Tapping into WHY you want to be successful

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

Bill’s Bio:

Bill’s Links:

EcSell’s website: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/

Bill’s bio: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/bill-eckstrom

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billeckstrom/

E184 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back to another segment of the guest conversation that I had with Bill Eckstrom. We are having lots of fun. Make sure to check out yesterday’s episode, which was part 1 of 4. This one’s going to be part two. We’re just going to keep the conversation rolling about coaching and leadership and here you go.

Bill: We try and get leadership teams to understand that knowing this is not an evaluation process, it’s an improvement process and so it’s the communication of how organizations go about. This is everything Jason.

Jason: What do you mean in improvement process versus evaluation?

Bill: Because the way it should be done is first of all the measure, right? There’s kind of a four step process that should be. Number one is to measure. In other words, measure first and foremost, you need to quantify how much coaching is occurring and how well the coaching is occurring. So that’s number one and when you do that, that provides everybody the opportunity then to get better. Think about it. If you’re doing a salespeople, if you quantified how much the working and how well the working that gives the coach the ability to help that person improve and grow the next year. Wouldn’t you agree? We need to do the exact same thing in a sales coaching role. Help them understand how much coaching they’re doing and how they’re doing it well and was that in place. That provides a gap between where they are and where they want to be. So then you can provide improvement tools and understanding of what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing well and how to close that gap. So that’s how it needs to be looked at. Instead of sales leaders saying, Hey, I feel like a big brother watching over me, they need to look at and say, Hey, it’s an opportunity for me to grow.

Jason: And how do you make that shift or how have you seen it in your research and all your experience? Because I’ve seen that a lot happens a lot, let’s say with me as a consultant and then also me as a VP of sales and marketing and organizations. I’ll usually be brought in in either of those roles as some kind of layer between an owner and a sales manager. And then the sales manager starts to freak out because there’s accountability and there’s expectations and there’s some coaching and leadership now where there was, like you said, the autonomy of the sales manager just running the sales team.

Bill: So are you asking Jason, how do we create PA?

Jason: I guess it’s a question. The first part is probably, you know, based on the company culture, having the right person who’s open to taking feedback, you know, those fundamental traits that would make it possible. You know, that’s probably the right answer to that because if it’s not the right fit and somebody isn’t open and doesn’t want to grow and it doesn’t matter what you do, you’ve got to have that kind of that foundation first, right?

Bill: Yeah. Well there’s no question part of it, part of it is cultural, but what we really want to do is help leaders, coaches understand that they can create their own culture. You know, it’s a, think about this, if you’ve got in our research shows 40% of people in coaching roles today in sales leadership roles today are not willing, in spite of having information on things they can do to improve, they are not willing or just refuse to change their existing activities and behaviors to get better team results, 40% so 4 out of 10 are not going to do it. 3 out of 10 Jason, 30 well actually 31% in sales coaching roles either inhibit performance or provide no discretionary effort. And when I use that term, discretionary effort, here’s what I mean, cause I’ve used it a couple times. Now, if a sales coach doesn’t come into work, right, salespeople still show up and sell stuff because that’s their job.

Bill: That makes sense, right? If a manager goes on vacation, their salespeople don’t all leave and not come into work right now of course everybody jokes and says, I’m not sure what they do or don’t, but we all know that to be true. So salespeople will still sell without a leader in place. How much more will they sell? So what’s that leader in place? If they sell 10 million without a manager, they better sell 12 or 14 million with the manager. That gap or that Delta is what we refer to as a discretionary effort, a coach drives. So that’s really what we’re looking for. Now I’ve got to get back to your question. I can’t remember what it was.

Jason: So you talked about the, well and that’s interesting you talk about before we get back to that, the value of the manager as a coach and what they, you know, could be getting the team to be doing extra and doing more. You know, and a lot of managers just think, well if I’m not around, they’re not going to do anything. Some of that I think is a culture built by that sales manager coach who’s basically created a team that relies on that person and isn’t working for their own benefits and is kind of controlled by this person. But back to the question is that, you know, okay, so we know that managers, you know, they should be coaching, we should, we want to quantify, we want to help them and shift them to where they could be doing in the activities. And the type of the managing coaching they should be doing is how do you get them there? You know, again, they have to be open to it, but like how do you make that shift?

Bill: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting everything to answer that question without getting sidetracked because I love going down.

Bill: It begins with the why and I think Simon Sinek in his Ted talk really did a nice job of saying it. Listen, why are we even considering making this shift? Not to be self-promotional by any means, but I did a TEDx talk on, it’s called white comfort will ruin your life. And in there I describe the difference between order and complexity and order being comfort. It’s doing the same thing, getting predictable outcomes. And that’s what leads to comfort. But anytime you change an input that makes outcomes unpredictable and that leads to discomfort, the gap being growth only occurs in a state of discomfort. So instead of us trying to just go into say a leadership team and saying, Hey, you’re going to go now, you’re now going to go do A, B, and C and D. because if you do that, more sales will be made by your salespeople that that’s not enough.

Bill: There has to be a background of understanding why better coaching should be involved. Why does the organization even moving in this direction? What is the impact of you doing this versus not doing this? And really kind of self analyzing saying, if I don’t do this now all of a sudden, a year later we hired Jason to come in and we’re going to have our, we’re going to teach our sales people a new sales methodology that will be more effective. We’ll get more stuff sold. Hey salespeople, I want you to now implement these things that Jason teaching you. Oh, okay, coach, tell me about how you implemented the coaching stuff. So it’s a behavioral leading by example. And if a manager/coach is not willing to do things differently with their people to get different results, they can’t ever expect that of their sales people.

Jason: And it has to come from that why, right? Like there has to be reason why, not just at the personal level, like, Hey coach, here’s why it’s important to you here. Sales person. Here’s why this is important to you. What’s your why? What do you want to achieve? How would this help you with your own personal life? Or you know, what you care about or what’s important to you. But also as an organizational why? Like here’s the purpose, the mission, here’s what we’re driven by. Our core values. Like that same stuff that Simon Sinek says, especially in his book was start with why is, you know, those three circles that you know, and it’s about why this change is occurring and how it fits into the direction the company needs to go and the bigger purpose behind it, right? Like, it’s not just about throwing a new sales process, a new sales system, a new coaching method at somebody. But it’s like why are we doing this and how will this impact us and our customers.

Bill: Exactly. And that trickles down to it and everybody’s why is unique and that’s one of the hardest parts about coaching Jason is a coach needs to understand the needs of his or her sales people. Exactly like a great salesperson needs to understand the needs of his or her clients or prospects. And one of the biggest mistakes we see in coaching is somebody moves, goes from a producer role to a coaching role and all of a sudden it’s like, Hey go do it the way I did it and it doesn’t work that way

Jason: And not just go do it like I did it, but the, Oh how do I say it. The self centered kind of egotistical focus, which is also be motivated for the same reasons that I was when I was a salesperson. Right. Assuming that you’re motivated by money because I’m a top producer and I’m motivated by money cause I like buying new stuff or uh, you know, I have a family, I have a house, you know, whatever it is. They just assume that everybody will have the same purpose, the same reason, the same why that gets them out of bed. And that’s the same thing that drives him. I was like go close more deals so that you can make you know, $100,000. Well that’s not everybody’s motivation that the money might be the scorecard, but you know, what motivates them? Why are they in sales? Why do they want to be successful?

Jason: What’s like, I always say like what’s on their vision board? Like what would they put on their vision board that makes them feel like they want to move forward? And so, you know, a lot of sales managers, like some really good ones that I’ve seen that understand the personal aspect. They know every single person on a team, whether it’s 20 or 40 people, they know every single person’s reason. Their why, what drives them, how they like to be coached, how they don’t like to be coached, what they like to be recognized for in meetings. The ones that if you recognize them in a meeting and you have a team meeting and you say, Hey, Jim did a great job, Jim will actually stop doing well because Jim doesn’t like public acknowledgment and doesn’t do it for that and will actually stop selling because he doesn’t want to be called out again.

Jason: Even if it was a positive thing and then Carol, if you don’t call out Carol, Carol will stop selling because all she wants is gold stars and accolades and the money’s great, but what she wants is that acknowledgment and none of it’s right or wrong. It’s just you have to be able to coach all of them.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you find it. It’s on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Play. You can also go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website. Click on podcasts and you can find this episode and all the other episodes available there with transcripts, you’ll also find all of Bill’s links. So if you want to get in touch with Bill or follow him or hit him up online, or check out his Ted talk, all of those links will be there. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E183] The Coaching Effect with Bill Eckstrom – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

If you are a sales leader – are you coaching or managing your team?

If you are a sales professional – do you want to be coached and held accountable?

On this next 4-part series I have a great conversation with Bill Eckstrom, from the EcSell Institute, about what it means to coach a sales team to success. Check out each episode where Chris shares many tactical ways to coach and on being coached.

In Part 1, Bill and I talk about:

Coaching vs. Managing/Leading
The Four Activities of a Coach
Why your sales metrics matter
The classic mistake of sales management

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

Bill’s Bio:

Bill’s Links:

EcSell’s website: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/

Bill’s bio: https://www.ecsellinstitute.com/bill-eckstrom

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billeckstrom/

E183 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. On today’s episode I have Bill Eckstrom after a long management career that started in 2000 in medical equipment. He started the Ecsell Institute in 2008 and he is very much a man after my own heart based on research, data, facts providing value, and as he puts it without a lot of motivational fluff and hype. Bill, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Bill: Jason. Thank you. It’s fun to be with you.

Jason: Yeah, so I’m really excited to talk again. You know, I’m not a big fluff person. Anyone who listens to me knows me like I probably should use more stories and put in more fluff. But you wrote a book called the coaching effect and I kind of wanted to start there because the subtitle is what great leaders do to increase sales, enhance performance, and sustain growth. And since this is a sales-related show, I wanted to start there and talk about what great coaching looks like when leading sales people getting great results. Kind of in that framework.

Bill: Okay, well you know we could start and go on this topic forever. Great coaching, there’s really two components to it. It’s how much and how well and when you kind of move everything aside. That’s what it comes down to and I say how much meaning that we’ve seen in our research and our research consists of thousands and thousands and thousands of surveying salespeople about the coaching, that dynamic between themselves and their manager and we’ve measured, Oh now over 130,000 coaching interactions in the workplace, primarily between sales leaders and salespeople and what we’ve been able to discern, Jason, is that while there’s a million things, sales managers, leaders, coaches, whatever you want to call them, are supposed to be doing. By the way, we prefer the term coach over manager or leader. While there’s all kinds of things they should be doing. We have found four activities that have the highest correlation to what we referred to as discretionary effort and we can tease this part here in a minute, but those activities are one-to-one meetings with between coach and salesperson.

Bill: They are career development discussions. The third is team meetings and the fourth is called post-call feedback. So objective feedback, giving objective feedback, for sales call. So those are the four activities. And while those are probably not very cutting edge on a thing, Jason, you’re sitting there going, ah, g-mail, that’s rocket science. What’s interesting in our research is nobody knows if those are occurring. Nobody knows, you know, gee, do I want my sales managers to be with my salespeople once a quarter? Yes. Do I want them, giving feedback to my salespeople? Yes. Well, they don’t know if that’s occurring. They don’t know what they’re spending 70% of the time with the bottom 30% of their producers or vice versa. If you ask executive sales leaders if they want their sales managers to be going on joint calls, when they call on key accounts, their response is always, Oh, of course I do. But they don’t know if that’s happening. And then all that aside, nobody knows how the quality of the coaching that does occur. So it’s the quantity measurement and a quality measurement. By the way, quality has a bigger impact on team discretionary effort than anything else. So there’s a long answer to a short question, I apologize.

Jason: No, I think that’s great. And it’s interesting because you’ve said, you know, you listed the four items and then you said it’s a no brainer, right? Obviously everyone knows that. And it’s interesting how many people don’t know that. Like it’s a no brainer to me because of where, you know what I’ve developed and you know, we’re similar to that way, but with a lot of organizations, with a lot of leaders, it’s interesting how many, you know, like the post-call feedback, let’s say, how many organizations don’t record calls or meetings or don’t do ride alongs or don’t have any analysis after the fact. And then there’s the, is it actually happening and then the quantity is it happening and then the quality of what’s occurring. I mean, all of that is…

Bill: Let me ask you this, Jason. When you’re working with an inside sales team, are you recommending that they quantify the work? Meaning what metrics are you making sure that they are reviewing?

Jason: Yeah, I mean if we’re talking about reps and managers/coaches, you know, it’s going to be about.. From a sales perspective, it’s, you know, if I’m a salesperson, then it’s, you know, it’s the number of contacts, conversations, how much talk time, and then the different stages that conversion through whatever that process is, you know, and what those conversion percentage should be from let’s say, you know, a lead to a quote to you know, a contract center, you know, whatever it is for that sales.

Bill: Exactly. So what you just said is what every organization, every sales department should be tracking, especially inside sales or outside sales. But here’s what’s interesting. When you ask sales executives, is the performance of your sales team a reflection of how well they’re coached and led every executive sales leader, not true. 99 out of 100 will say, Oh, absolutely it is. And then you say, okay, so you track all this data about your sales people. What are your sales managers doing and how well do they do it? And the answer is always a blank stare. They have all kinds of data and information on the producer and no information on what they have just said is the biggest determinant on whether or not they’re productive or not productive.

Jason: Yeah. And then the conversations always are, okay, so what is the manager doing all day? What did the manager do this week? Well, they met with some reps and they went through some things and they pushed the reps and they spent time coaching them. Okay, well how much? How often? What did they do? You know, when is it gonna happen again? Yeah.

Bill: Yeah. It’s the hardest role I’ve, I’ve walked in those shoes and looking at your background, sounds like you’d have to, it’s the most challenging role, what we call SM1, sales management one. It’s the most challenging role there is, in the sales department because they’re expected to be a customer service expert. They’re supposed to be a motivator. They’re supposed to be a strategist, supposed to be a pioneer. They’re supposed to be a recruiter. They’re supposed to be a sales expert. They have every hat they’re supposed to be experts on and in the, in what we’re seeing in our, in our research is in what do we typically do, to who do we promote into management.

Jason: Top salespeople.

Bill: Right? And what we see in our research is that only 4 to 5% of salespeople have the ability to be a great coach. That means 95 96 should stay.

Jason: Well. And what I’ve always seen, because this is why I’ve advised against moving top salespeople into management, is that kind of like athletes where a top salesperson in my experience is really good at sales. It mostly will come natural, but it’s also something they’ve been working on for a very long time and they don’t really understand enough of how they are successful and what they do to be successful. And then they can’t necessarily coach other people because they just get it, right. Like uh Michael Jordan just gets it. He put in a lot of effort, but he just gets it, right. That’s why you don’t see a lot of great players in sports become great coaches because they don’t understand why everyone else just doesn’t get it. And then we put them in a, you know, top salespeople in the sales management positions and they don’t understand and they don’t coach and they don’t lead. And then there’s all those other things you’re talking about that a manager is supposed to do. That’s just not within the scope of probably their strengths.

Bill: Yeah. And if you liken it to a runner, if you ask a spritz or how do you run so fast? and they just kind of shake their heads. I didn’t know. I just move my legs.

Jason: Well, I just do it.

Bill: Yeah. Ask Barry Sanders now that’s dating me. Right? How did it make so many moves on the football? I don’t know. I just run, I’ll never forget the best salesperson I’d ever been around in my life. Her name is Sherry and she was in a medical equipment business and I used to dig and probe into her as to how she did what she did. I would watch her and witness everything. And I asked her to speak to the balance of our sales people one time and she couldn’t explain what she did. She didn’t, she just did it. So it’s a rare person that has the ability to play the game and coach the game.

Jason: Yup. And I think that’s very true. It’s, you know, some people just see it, right? It’s just seeing the matrix, uh, versus being able to explain it.

Bill: Exactly. Yup.

Jason: Okay. So we have this, let’s say, I don’t want to say blind spot, but we have this natural tendency in organizations to have this sales manager who’s not necessarily being held to specific numbers metrics. So what do you do about that? Like what’s the solution? Obviously other, you know, don’t hire, don’t move your top salesperson into sales management roles. That’ll be the first one. You know, what is the solution? What are you guys seeing as kind of the, the best approach to take with that sales manager that should be a coach?

Bill: You know, that’s such a powerful and profound question. And by the way, I’m not saying don’t take your top sales person and move them into a management role. Don’t take the top person and move them into a coaching role if they don’t have the ability to coach.

Jason: Right? Yeah. There’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of top salespeople who have management tendencies, leadership tendencies, they can do both and they can break down what they do and help others. And you can see that on the floor and you know when it’s the good fit, right and when they couldn’t help. Yeah.

Bill: Yes, exactly. And those are about 1 out of 20 so you know the challenge, which is really interesting, we run into this with organizations all the time. It is a paradigm shift. Now organizations are looking at what managers are doing or again, we’re going to call them coaches. What coaches are doing in not working as opposed to only what salespeople are doing or not doing and coaches don’t like it. They have been able to run under the radar and without having any accountability or responsibility to behavior or activity.

Bill: Now. So what we try and get leadership teams to understand is that knowing this is not an evaluation process, it’s an improvement process and so it’s the communication of how organizations go about. This is everything Jason.

Jason: Alright, that’s it for part one of my conversation with Bill Eckstrom. As you can tell, we think a lot of like we’re focused on coaching and leadership in a sales organization and how that relates within the org to managers and how they deal with sales reps. and then also if you’re in sales, how that applies to you from the top down. So how if your manager and coach and leader could be working with you, but then also how you can translate that into your conversations and how you coach your prospects into becoming clients, which I really cover more in part four and kind of talk about that. But for now, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the transcript for this. You can also find Bill’s links for his website, his information, his Ted talk, all of that. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E182] Positive Mindset with Libby Gill – Part 3 of 3

Jason Cutter — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Libby.

In Part 3, Libby and I talk about:

Self-awareness is key
Libby’s Hope Theory
Positivity for success

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetlibbygill/?eid=ARDsv9uLoyb6ydPiTE7c3FWQucwW5VT6lY1kZObvuVbR2QYh3Moo4aBZep8Xma0qTbgBnGeAxlmNCM_N

Connect with Libby on LinkedIn

Libby’s Bio:

Libby Gill knows change. She grew up on two continents and went to eight different schools before putting herself through college waiting tables. Starting her career as an assistant at Embassy Communications, a television company founded by the legendary Norman Lear, Libby survived three mergers to emerge as the head of publicity, advertising, and promotion for Sony’s worldwide television group in just five years.

After her first career heading communications at media giants Sony, Universal, and Turner Broadcasting, Libby founded LA-based Libby Gill & Company, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. She guides individuals and organizations to lead through change, challenge, and chaos by deeply engaging employees in a shared future-focused vision of success.

In her consulting, coaching, and keynotes Libby helps her clients:

• Reframe change as an opportunity for massive growth

• Re-energize your best performers to reach their full potential

• Reinvent your corporate culture to embrace ambiguity

Her clients include Abbott Medical, ADP, Disney, Ernst & Young, Facebook, First American Insurance, Hyundai, Microsoft, Sony, Sutter Health, Viacom, Warner Bros., Wells Fargo, as well as non-profits and small businesses. A global speaker, Libby has delivered keynote presentations on three continents and in 36 US states for organizations including Acura, ADP, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Disney, Honda, Intel, Kellogg’s, Marriott International, Medtronic, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, United Healthcare, Vanguard, and many more.

Libby is the author of five books, including the award-winning You Unstuck, Capture the Mindshare and the Market Share Will Follow, and Traveling Hopefully. Her latest book is The Hope-Driven Leader: Harness the Power of Positivity at Work. A former columnist for the Dallas Morning News, Libby has published book chapters and peer-reviewed articles for numerous journals and trade publications. Business leaders including Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, Stephen M.R. Covey, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, and Dr. Ken Blanchard have endorsed her work. Currently, she is co-authoring a book about Rice University’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders with former Brigadier General and Director of the Institute Thomas Kolditz, Ph.D.

A frequent media guest, Libby has appeared on the CBS Early Show, CNN, Inside Edition, NPR, the Today Show, and in BusinessWeek, Time, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and many more. Libby lives with her husband in Los Angeles and is the proud mother of two millennials sons and step-mom to a step-daughter and step-son.

Libby’s Links:

Website: https://libbygill.com/

Her Books: https://libbygill.com/books/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibbyGill

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzRyNbIN3VEQ-CFdqyJFPZA?view_as=public

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libbygillleadershipexpert/

Learn more about LibbyShow less

E182 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Libby Gill. She is a force and I appreciate so much what she’s doing in the world. Focusing on positivity, leadership coaching. Make sure to subscribe to this show so you can get all the future episodes and if you haven’t, make sure you check out parts 1 and 2 of my conversation with Libby because it’s just a continuation. We’re just on this train and at the end, she’s going to share her links, make sure to check out her information and support her in whatever way you can and get support from her. She shares an interesting quiz that she has on her website that might be useful. So stay until the end and here you go. Part three.

Libby: That to me is fascinating. I started to be a marriage therapist and I grew up in a family of strengths and thought, you know, they’re just pretty nutty. I don’t don’t want to do that. There wasn’t a positive psychology back then or I would have done it, but, and so I went the other way, but I’ve always been fascinating. On the marriage of brains and the workplace, how does, how we think affect what we do and choices we make and how we act with others?

Jason: Yeah, and I think really the big key is if self awareness of who you are, most people aren’t, but even as a manager is being able to discover self-awareness for somebody else. It’s like you’re saying somebody might be on the autism scale or anxiety, they might not know it or understand what’s driving them, right? Their anxiety and their brain is driving the questions and the needing to know and needing to control everything. The manager views that as a pain in the butt, but when the managers can learn how to assess that and see it not as a way to judge and then pigeonhole people, but to see it become aware and they’ll go, okay, be empathetic to where it’s coming from first and then second, how do I get that person into the right place? Whether it’s in sales or it’s in another team within the organization based on their skill set and the way their brain works. How do I point them like a weapon? At a different thing that then makes them happy, benefits the organization, benefits the customers and so on.

Libby: Wouldn’t it be so awesome if everybody thought that way? I’ll tell you, when I was in entertainment, it was still a, you know, there’s somebody cheaper and younger than you are, so don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. Thanks. And it really felt like that. And I did feel like I had to, you know, put on the suit of armor to go to the office every day and it was wearing, it’s changed to some degree. And once I got out of that, I saw a lot of companies where people really cared about, you know, are my people thriving? Are they growing, are they developing, do they have the right training or coaching? And that was to me was that was a revelation that was a breath of fresh air. And that’s about the point where I said, Oh, I’m going to take the skills that I had and apply them over here. And I always had a team of young green people. And my job was to, cause what we did was very labor intensive. You send somebody out to the set of, you know, law and order and married with children to babysit a news reporter for three days. I wasn’t going to do that. So you had to train these young people to become real professionals. And I love that. How do we turn them into leaders? How do we make them better at what they are? And that was the fun of it.

Jason: So let’s segue, cause this seems like a perfect place cause I really wanted to talk about one of your projects, one of your focus, which is the positivity and the power of positivity and your hope theory. And I think what’s interesting, obviously the world needs more positivity and most people feel that way, yet it doesn’t happen. There’s this weird barrier between we want it to be positive, we want our team to be excited, we want our employees to be happy and positive. Sometimes that’s where that stops. It’s just a nice thought.

Libby: Yeah, it’s kind of a, wouldn’t that be nice if, but it’s too much trouble and there’s no bottom line, a reward, which in fact I think there is. And there’s been a lot of demonstration of that. Now. I discovered this, I wrote a book called traveling hopefully years ago and it was sort of about my journey of in life and work and I grew up in a family with an alcoholic parent, a mentally ill parent. It was a Rocky road for a long time for me. And I kind of grew myself up at age 18 and the day I started my first real job working for Norman Lear’s production company, which was really cool. He’s the all in the family and all those great sitcoms. My stepmother committed suicide and so there was this huge disconnect with work and family and you know, it’s just a mess.

Libby: And so I wrote that book and it was about hope was kind of the idea of tomorrow is going to be better and I just believe that in my gut, Tomorrow is going to be better. This is a really bad day, but tomorrow is going to be better, a little better, a lot better. I don’t know, but I’m just going to keep moving forward. And that was my mantra. I was just what I believed. If you had hope and you had the right tools, so it just became hope and tools became sort of my inner mantra. And then later as I became a coach and I did tons of research and reading as I still do, I know you do as well to see what’s going on out there, you know with other thought leaders and experts and books. And I discovered hope theory, which is comes from science and comes from the medical community and positive psychology.

Libby: And it simply boils down to having a vision of the future that is lofty and ambitious and ideal, but also grounded in reality. Like, Oh we can get up here, but there will be bumps along the way. If you’re setting the bar high, it’s not going to be easy, but it is attainable. And when you can paint that picture of for people and a lot of great leaders do this. We’re going way up here, not going to be easy and the next six months or the next two years or the next whatever, we’re going to hit obstacles and we’re going to have to overcome them together because this vision is important and we’ve got that strategy that’s going to take us along. And that’s really what hope is. And the word itself comes from old English, the word hope Aeon, which means to leap forward with expectation.

Libby: And that just caught me, I just thought, yeah, that’s it. That’s it. It’s that belief. And there are some amazing studies about people that identify as hopeful, their mortality. They live longer. I mean they, they can self cure. They’ve got, and I’m not saying you can cure all diseases, but their outcomes medically are much higher because it’s not just a mind over matter, but in fact physiologically they release brain chemicals like endorphins and enkephalins things that boost their immune system and suppress pain so that they can in fact go through painful rehabs and treatments. And so it’s really fascinating what our brain can do and literally healing ourselves, making ourselves better. Can you look at those people who do, you know, swim channels and it’s like, how do you do that? Well, they believe they can do it and by gosh they do. And that’s why the mile, you know, how the mile that people run gets and sports teams, I mean, come on, I got to change all the rules in baseball and basketball because everybody’s so much better than they were a year ago or a decade ago because they’ve got, they see it and they just get better at it.

Libby: In fact, when athletes or musicians practice their sport in their heads, like you know, you’re on a piano practicing your concert or shooting free throws, the same part of your brain activates that it would if you were actually in that event.

Jason: Yeah, I mean I’ve seen that in the like, you know, reports that show MRI readings of somebody thinking about that event and how active their brain is. And it’s all that hope. And I think what’s interesting too as you’re talking about the hope and kind of the struggles in life is bumpy, but one more day, you know, tomorrow will be better. The thing that I learned and I try to remind everyone as if you’re listening to this podcast right now, I guarantee and can save for sure that you’ve survived 100% of your bad days, right? If you’re here right now in this moment, you have made it through everything that life has thrown at you so far by definition. And so you know that I love marrying that with what you’re talking about, which is you know it. Depending on what you’re going through right now, tomorrow will be better, like to hope that tomorrow will be positive.

Libby: Well, and you know Jason, I just joined the board of, this is near and dear to my heart, but of a, an organization, the nonprofit board called the DD Hirsch mental health services and they developed the first suicide prevention center and call line in the United States. They are world leaders in this and in fact they’ve done it. It’s a repository of research about mental health and suicide and they have studies about people who’ve attempted suicide. It’s almost but not succeeded. It’s nearly a hundred percent of people who say, the minute I try, I did whatever I knew it was a mistake and I wanted to live and we do have this inborn thing we want to survive. And when you can get beyond the mere survival and get to that level of, you know, the Maslow’s pyramid of self actualization and life gets really exciting, but it doesn’t get that way overnight or necessarily early. I mean it was, I was into my thirties before I even thought all this stuff was doable, but I know it was worth giving it a shot. And then life started to get fun and now it’s, you know, this is what you hope. It’s better than ever. As you grow older, things are more fun and more exciting and richer and that’s the way you want to keep going forward.

Jason: Now for people who are in sales, this is obviously a sales related podcast. They may be wondering like what the heck are you guys babbling on about with the mind and hope and positivity. But it all connects back to where we first started about which is the mindset, especially in sales because sales is 100% a mental game, right? So first you’ve got to stop running from the tigers and lions and bears that you think are chasing you when you’ve got to pick up the phone and call that person back. So you’ve got to get past that. It’s all a mental game. It’s struggle, it’s fear, it’s concern, it’s doubt, it’s self awareness. And so all of that is the hope and the positivity and knowing like, okay, I’m going to make one more call. And then I think the biggest lesson for this is is taking what you’re talking about and then tying that into the kind of the empathy and projecting out and remembering that everybody in life is going through something at this very moment.

Jason: It might be at the tail end, it might just be starting, they might be in the middle of it. I’ve been in some situations where like internally I am just on fire because stuff is exploding in my life and I’ve got to kind of set that aside in public face because that’s not person at the grocery store, you know, they don’t need me lashing out at them. Right. And hearing about it. And so as a salesperson, a lot of times I take it personal and just always remember if you’re going through stuff, everyone else is going through stuff and just do your best and make it positive and hopeful for them and everybody you’re dealing with and try to make their experience better. And which will, by default, I mean I know one of the things I heard was if you’re in a funk and you’re feeling depressed or anxious or worried about things, one of the best things to do is to go do something for somebody else and give to somebody else. And if you’re in sales, it might not seem like, okay, well I’m gonna sell somebody to make money. But like if you can give them the gift of you helping them and being a professional and consulting them in some way and helping them achieve a better situation for them, you will then get that gift in return.

Libby: You hand them the right product or service and a good experience doing it, then you’ve absolutely improved their day and your own sales people. It can be very high stress profession as you will know. So I also think you’ve got to find that repository of how do you replenish, how do you rebuild whatever it is you need to do. Cause like you said, you’re 100% on, but on your off times really nurture yourself and find whether it’s sports or fitness or spiritual, whatever it is, music that refills that so you can come back to the workplace and back into that feeling good about yourself and handling and managing that stress.

Jason: And it’s interesting because we’ve talked in the past and prior to this and there was something you had said about being an extrovert and kind of in that, especially like I think you said a situational extrovert where it’s depending on what you’re doing if you’re on stage or speaking to a group or speaking to a company. And it’s funny because I’m that same way, like with the group, I’m one way by myself, I’m different and there’s a term that I heard which is called ambivert, which is not an extrovert, not an introvert. And there’s a lot of people in sales who feel like they have to be an extrovert, but it’s not who they are. Or they can do it and then they feel bad because they’re like, otherwise they just melt into nothing. But I think it like you’re talking about that self awareness and understanding and knowing who you are in this situation and then what you need to recover and recharge your batteries and then go back out there and play the game again.

Libby: Do it again. Yeah. And just finding the joy in the little moments to this, you know? Yay. I closed the deal. I made a sale, I had a good day. There was no traffic, whatever that is that you can at the end of the day say, yeah, I did my job, I felt good about it and tomorrow’s going to be even better.

Jason: And when it doesn’t go your way, just understand like you said, tomorrow will be tomorrow could be better. Positive. That’s great. Well I, you being on the show, this has been fascinating cause I love, again, I always love talking to somebody who started out in their career in one place. Right? So you’re in media, you’re in PR. I mean that’s, you want to talk about sales, that’s some sales stuff right there because you’re, you’re the ultimate spin master. And I think, I know in another life I could’ve been in PR because that same spin that you do in sales or with products and services and management, like sometimes you’ve got to spend some really bad news in a positive way for the team. It’s all PR. And so I appreciate that. And this has been fun. Where’s the best place for people to find you? The work you’re doing reach out to you. Where’s that at?

Libby: Just go to my website, libbygill.com L I B B Y G I L L and I’ve got a really fun thing. We didn’t get to it, but I’ve got a leadership assessment if you want to see what kind of leader you are and on four different scales, we’ll see where you fall in each one and what that means. And it’s, it’s really relevant to sales folks to see. I’m this kind of a leader on this kind of a communicator. So that’s fun and always happy to hear from any of your listeners. Just shoot me an email. All my contact stuff is on my website.

Jason: Perfect. And what would be like outside of what we’ve talked about, what would be one thing you’d want to leave everyone with or have everyone focus on?

Libby: Oh, that’s such a good question. I think there’s a statement. It was the quote that I used to title my book traveling, hopefully. And it’s a Robert Louis Stevenson quote and he said to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. And it’s just that sense of as we go through the, you know, the good and the bad and the ugly as we go through it. We’ve got to find some joy and some beauty in it and service to others. And you’re right about that. Nothing makes you feel better than that.

Jason: And when you’re joyful, not just happy, which is conditional but joyful, you can get through anything you see the best in every situation or understand that it will always get better. So thank you for that. And Libby, thanks for being on the show.

Jason: And for everyone listening, obviously we’re going to put her links in the show notes. You can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com to find that, check her out, make sure to reach out to her if you have any questions, needs check out that leadership assessment, which is great. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales. And people remember the experience you gave them.

[E181] Positive Mindset with Libby Gill – Part 2 of 3

Jason Cutter — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Libby.

In Part 2, Libby and I talk about:

Remembering in sales you are dealing with another Human
Are you coming across as a Friend or Foe?
Perceived vs. Actual danger
Want to be more effective at sales? Help your prospects feel safe

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetlibbygill/?eid=ARDsv9uLoyb6ydPiTE7c3FWQucwW5VT6lY1kZObvuVbR2QYh3Moo4aBZep8Xma0qTbgBnGeAxlmNCM_N

Connect with Libby on LinkedIn

Libby’s Bio:

In her consulting, coaching, and keynotes Libby helps her clients:

• Reframe change as an opportunity for massive growth

• Re-energize your best performers to reach their full potential

• Reinvent your corporate culture to embrace ambiguity

Libby’s Links:

Website: https://libbygill.com/

Her Books: https://libbygill.com/books/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibbyGill

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzRyNbIN3VEQ-CFdqyJFPZA?view_as=public

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libbygillleadershipexpert/

Learn more about LibbyShow less

E181 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to segment 2 on the sales experience podcast of my conversation with Libby Gill. We are talking about mindset and coaching and leadership in organizations. We talk about vision, we continue these conversations in this second part. So here it is and enjoy.

Libby: They really need to always be growing and developing to learn how, gee, our customers are changing, our clients have changed, they’re so informed now they can find everything online before I even get a chance to talk to them. How do you change to meet those needs and the way that your customers are growing? So they’ve got to keep that development mindset or they’re gonna, you know they’re going to go the way of time to move out to something else.

Jason: Yeah, and I think when it comes to that growth mindset that you’re talking about, and that last point you made about customers now have information at their hands. What used to be the value of a salesperson wasn’t the knowledge, right? It wasn’t, you know, the car salesperson, it was the knowledge about the car and the prices in the market. And that’s why people went to go buy a car because they didn’t know. Now people walk onto a car lot with more information than anybody else has ever had before about that car everywhere else, what everyone else is paying for it. And then the playing field is not even level anymore. Like it’s just so consumer side and the challenges, there’s a lot of salespeople still thinking that their power and their ability comes from their knowledge and it’s not right. It’s about relationships and asking questions and having conversations. And if you have that growth mindset like you’re talking about, then you understand that and you want to evolve with the sales, not with the customers. It’s not that you’re not valuable anymore, it’s just a different conversation. Not for long monologues, spewing out lots of data that people literally could look up while you’re talking.

Libby: Right, exactly. I, Hey, I go in, I’ve got the price in hand cause I’ve already gotten it from, you know, Edmunds or cars.com or Costco or somewhere. I know exactly what I should be paying for it. I’m not going to negotiate. I know what I want and I want the best service provider that I believe in and trust to be selling it to me. And uh, that’s, so what’s so much fun about sales is I see sales people thinking like, how do I connect with this person versus this person versus, and it’s very different. It’s, it’s that it goes back to as humans part of the animal kingdom, we feel first and we think second. And that’s the connection. I mean you’re talking about a used car or I mean a car, you know what you want, you feel it and then you back it up with the data, then you think of how you’re going to justify it and the salesperson is your collaborator in that process.

Libby: But we really do feel first, so it’s emotional connections that really drive, I think anything sales, mission, engagement at work, all of those things. And people that connect on that level because they get that, you know, it goes back to the tribal things. So funny that when people say your name, when they’re introduced, if they smile, when they learn your name, they are more likely to remember your name. Interesting. Yeah. Cause your brain is identifying them already as a friend. Cause you know we make those shortcut assumptions, friend or foe, friend or foe. Oh look you seem nice and you’re smiling and your eyes are bright. Therefore I’m going to remember you because you’re on the front side foe, not so much. I’m going to check you out and stay far away as I can. And some people do this instinctively without ever recognizing this is a a brain response. We don’t have time to calculate it. We make these, you know these jumps and conclusions but that’s what we’re doing. It’s kind of this survival instinct that drives a lot of our behavior.

Jason: And if you look at a historically right to tribal and way tribal, like you know tens a hundred thousand years ago is you’re trying to survive every moment of the day and the brain didn’t evolve to then think about it and then make decisions. It’s got to make them and thinking comes second. And a lot of people in life are operating still that way and salespeople are operating that way and not understanding it, or they’re not understanding their prospects are operating that way as well. And they’re trying to use logic when sometimes it’s not going to do any gut, right? There is no logic to be had with it. And I know in Malcolm Gladwell’s book blink, he talked about that, where it’s like this instant feeling, reaction, kind of decision judgment, you know, that we’re just programmed to make so.

Libby: And, and we have to be, I mean, if you’re, you’re driving down the road, a kid runs out in the street, you don’t have time to calculate velocity. Right?

Jason: Let me see what I should do. Should I stop? I don’t know. Yeah.

Libby: You just slam on the brakes and that’s it. And that’s so much of our thinking. And then the, the rationale comes around that. And I see that in leadership, particularly tied to risk taking. And what we were talking about with change is that there’s so many good reasons not to change. And these excuses and companies have their own specific excuse making, which is just part of their language and culture, which, wow, sometimes I’ll play kind of, you know, stumped me with your excuse. If I haven’t heard it before, I’m going to give you a book or something and people will come up with things. It’s like, Whoa, welders don’t do it that way. Okay, that’s interesting. Good to know. Because they will come up with their language of excuse making to avoid a risk. Even though intellectually you may know that it would be a benefit that part of us, I just call the immediate negative response is going to shut you down because your fear center is saying, Oh, new, different, dangerous. That’s not good. Just keep doing what you’re doing. That’s safe and that’s what we can’t afford to do.

Jason: And so what do you do in those situations where you’re hearing these excuses where people are just avoiding all risks? They want to stay in their comfort zone. They want to stay in this cave because they know this cave is safe even though it’s cold and wet and moldy, but the next cave could be filled with bears, so it’s better to just stay in this cage.

Libby: Well, the first is the awareness level is understanding that we are truly driven by fighter flight and they all know that and it’s like, you know, it’s our autonomic nervous system. You don’t have to trigger it. It’s just going to start with your sweaty palms and the blood rushing and adrenaline, all of that stuff. But that that is not just tied to danger, which is what it was meant to do is our early warning signal. It’s tied to perceive the danger. So going on a sales call or having a cranky client can trigger that fear center of your brain. Literally the same way it would be if you saw a speeding car coming towards you. Your brain does not distinguish between actual physical danger and perceived danger. So that can be one good way to for people to think about this. If you’re driving home the same way you do all the time, you don’t remember the stop signs or the, you know, you stopped, everything was fine and you made it home.

Libby: But if you go a completely different route through some other neighborhood, suddenly you’re aware of, Oh, there’s a store on that corner, there’s a bank over there. There’s this because your brain says you are different watch out you and different and there’s no actual danger that there’s a heightened sense of awareness because it’s different. If you can translate that as opportunity for growth, change and risk equals opportunity for growth, not something to fear and back away from, and you can get people taking little risks, then bigger and bigger and bigger, they begin to see, Oh, you know what, that didn’t really kill me. That didn’t really scare me so much. I’m still here. And things as simple as feedback where being on the giving or the receiving side are really scary for anybody and really uncomfortable and, and when you can point out, look, this is difficult on both and you’re just going to get past it because here’s an operation.

Libby: Here’s a system that will help you get past it. So you are working on the internal piece as well as combining it with the external, which is why you say vision and strategy. The vision is this big esoteric abstract thing that you’re excited about and the strategy is, Oh, here’s how we’re going to do it. So you don’t really have, you don’t really have an opportunity for the fear to take part too much because you’ve shut that down to some degree because you’re following a plan that gives you a sense of comfort and stability.

Jason: Yeah, and I think there’s so much in that that you were talking about and it’s interesting, especially when dealing with salespeople and change and risk. I mean our brains, like you’re talking about, our brains literally still think there might be a saber tooth tiger or lion or something that’s going to jump out. Right. And I joke about all the time, like the most dangerous thing now in most people’s lives is probably drivers who are texting or distracted that might hit you or do something like, other than that, there’s very little risk and danger in the modern world and especially first world countries, right? And so, but our brains don’t know that. Our brains literally think, like you said, you know, it still feels the same. It feels sweaty palms just scared, nervous, worried. I remember I started doing Toastmasters years ago because I wanted to work on my public speaking and I just remembered the fear, the feeling like I was just going to die and bodily fluids were going to come out of everywhere prior to a speech in front of a group that was very nice and supportive and it still felt like absolute death in my head.

Jason: And it took a lot to get over and it still never goes away. But it’s just interesting how we respond. And then that feedback and getting that feedback and helping grow and wanting to get better and then understanding like you’re not going to die. Uh, making a sales call is you’re not going to die if they say no, even if they yell at you, you’re not going to die. It’s just you’ll learn and move on, but you won’t die.

Libby: And then the other piece of that whole fight and flight that people forget about is the third component freeze. Also animal kingdom, you know, the deer stops and instructs the rabbit stops is as if you’re not going to notice if they stop and hold still. And as people we do the same. If I just kind of go under the radar, just keep doing what I’m doing. Don’t make any waves, don’t call any attention to myself. That can be safe. And it can be also incredibly unrewarding and boring. So, I mean there are slogans. I have clients around the world who cite the same saying it’s something like the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. It’s a Dutch saying, it’s a French saying. It’s a Vietnamese saying, Canadian saying, but it’s that sense of if you stick out, somebody’s gonna smack you. And when you can begin to say, you know, and the world is a little bit more embracing of our differences now. And so it’s like, you know, just be who you are out there and anything that you think is a limitation is probably an asset. So shine a spotlight on it and be proud of what you got that’s different.

Jason: Yeah. And that whole nail sticking up and people not wanting to stand out the way I should be. That. And how I relate that to people is we look at black sheep, right? The term black sheep is when you stand out and you’re different and you’re ostracized. When we look at tribal, if you stood out and didn’t get along with the tribe, they would kick you out of the tribe. You’re fending for yourself. You’re not going to survive very long in nature and you’re going to die. So the worst thing to do ever way back in the day was to be banished from the tribe and nobody, and that’s what everyone’s worried about, right? Is that if they’re going to do something, they get kicked out of the tribe. Right. Oh, I have an Android, not an iPhone, I’m going to get kicked out of the tribe of the society because I don’t fit in like everybody else.

Jason: And it’s interesting because the term black sheep, like when we look at that, like in the animal kingdom, most of the sheep are white. If you’re born as a black sheep, it means the Wolf can identify you and will, will hunt you down as every else the sheep are running. And so people don’t want to be that black sheep. But like you said, there’s nothing to be afraid of and you’re not going to be kicked out of the tribe of people just because you beat your own drum. And like you said, people are more embracing and you can now with the internet, find more different tribes that you probably fit in well based on who you are.

Libby: Yeah. I remember I had a friend who used to call me when in my entertainment days, which are, it’s a tough business and it was very male dominated. Still is to some degree, although that’s loosened up and you know, I’m taking calls, wall street journal, New York times, and there are always problems and I’m the corporate spokesperson for all the problems. So it was, there were a lot of triggers there. And I remember thinking that it was just if the flip side, Oh my friend called me, the ballerina on the football field was kind of her term for here’s this nice person and she’s getting kicked around. But the flip side of that sense of being fear of being ostracized is a desire to belong. And when you can embrace people for their otherness, for their talents, for their gifts, for their smile, for whatever it is you lessen all those anxieties so that people can begin to flourish, that they can begin to shine.

Libby: And one thing I’m really passionate about and starting to work with is there’s a community of neurodiversity and those are people whose brains are simply wired differently, whether they’re on the spectrum or they’ve got anxiety or they’re different in some sense from the neuro-typical, which is, you know, normal people. If there were such a thing. And often they can find difficulty communicating because they ask a lot of questions. They want to follow the rules, they want to do things right. And that doesn’t always sit well with a busy manager who says just figure it out. And so what I’m starting to do with a partner is look at how can we train management to understand there’s this wonderful hidden talent pool of people that have these supposedly limitations that are actually gifts. I mean there are some things that they can do with their brains, like questioning the status quo and being creative problem solvers and saying, Hey, wait a minute.

Libby: Did you notice that you had two policies that were in direct opposition of one another? That’s a problem. And they can really start to shine and thrive with just that little bit of understanding. So that to me is fascinating. I’m always, I started to be a marriage therapist and I grew up in a family of strengths and thought, you know, they’re just pretty nutty. I don’t don’t want to do that. There was no positive psychology back then or I would’ve done it, but so I went the other way. But I’ve always been fascinating on the marriage of brains and the workplace. How does, how we think affect what we do and the choices we make and how we act with others.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part two of my conversation with Libby. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast where he can find this episode, transcripts, all of the episodes available. You can find her links as well as all the information that is in her bio and what she has done. She is absolutely amazing and a force to be reckoned with in the world of positivity and coaching and leadership. And I just think it’s amazing where she has been and where she is now and the kind of companies that she works for and the values she provides. So please make sure to support her, check out her work in what she’s doing. And as always, remember that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E180] Positive Mindset with Libby Gill – Part 1 of 3

Jason Cutter — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Do you have control of your mindset as a sales professional?

In this 3-part series, I speak with the amazing Libby Gill. Our conversational journey goes from human behavior, comfort zones, helping your prospects buy from you (which equals a scary change in their mind), and ultimately, we end up talking about how a positive mindset is a key for success – in sales and life!

In Part 1, Libby and I talk about:

Shawshank Redemption Mindset
Leading Millennials
Bringing everyone together by having a Mission and Vision
Marry the Vision…Date the Strategy

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetlibbygill/?eid=ARDsv9uLoyb6ydPiTE7c3FWQucwW5VT6lY1kZObvuVbR2QYh3Moo4aBZep8Xma0qTbgBnGeAxlmNCM_N

Connect with Libby on LinkedIn

Libby’s Bio:

In her consulting, coaching, and keynotes Libby helps her clients:

• Reframe change as an opportunity for massive growth

• Re-energize your best performers to reach their full potential

• Reinvent your corporate culture to embrace ambiguity

Libby’s Links:

Website: https://libbygill.com/

Her Books: https://libbygill.com/books/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibbyGill

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzRyNbIN3VEQ-CFdqyJFPZA?view_as=public

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libbygillleadershipexpert/

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E180 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. On today’s episode I have Libby Gill now she’s an executive coach, leadership expert, speaker, bestselling author. What I found most fascinating about Libby is that her professional corporate experience prior to what she does now was in television and cable marketing, running PR and campaigns. For some companies you might have heard of like Sony pictures, Turner broadcast, and universal. Yet now she’s focused on helping leaders and groups on identifying who they are and why they need to take bolder risks. Libby, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Libby: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Jason: I’m so glad. And when we first spoke we discussed about a few things and I thought this would be great for where we want to start the conversation. The first one was mindset, which I know you focus a lot on. Obviously we’re talking about sales on this podcast, but you deal with leaders, founders, executives on mindset, and so what are you seeing? What kind of challenges do you experience and how do you help them kind of make the shift

Libby: At its most simple. There’s sort of two types of mindset. One is the fixed mindset. It’s the way it is, can be effective with people who want to continue to handle things in an orderly fashion the way it’s been done before. And that might be okay. And then on the other side is the growth mindset. And I think that’s where you and I and a lot of people fall into that side of there’s gotta be a better way. We can change it, tweak it, grow it, develop it, and really working with people to see a belief in a different or better way. And it’s so funny in all the organizations that I’ve talked to over the years, cause I’ve been doing this part of my job, I hate to date myself, but almost 20 years now, it seems to fall into kind of two camps when they send in that change leader.

Libby: And I always feel so sorry for anybody who’s labeled the change agent because it’s like you’re walking in the door with a target on your back. They just don’t even want to see you. But about 25% of people seem to be ready for that and waiting for somebody who’s going to unlock that. It’s like it’s time to change. It’s time to be bold and branch out and everybody else is on a kind of a continuum of, Oh my gosh, just, I’m going to just hide under my desk to, well, we’ll wait and see how this goes and I’ll, and it’s really developing. I mean, if we’re going to stick around, we’ve got to grow and change.

Jason: Right. And like I think it’s a Shawshank redemption. You get busy living or get busy dying. Right? I mean it’s all about you’re either changing and growing in some way or you’re dying and decaying because there is no like stable. Some people think there’s stability, but there’s not, there’s, you’ve got to always be evolving in some way.

Libby: Yeah. And who would want to do the same thing and God bless my relatives, but I have people in my family that same job for 30 years and yes, they’ll flow up through it somewhat, but I just think, how can you even be in the same field for that long? Wouldn’t you want to go experience another industry or discipline or part of the country or other country or something new and exciting? It’s just that it’s just how my brain works and my ex husband, good guy, but he used to refer to me as the malcontent because it was like, okay, I got this job now what’s after this one and what’s, you know, it was that. I’ve just thrived on that sense of there’s something else ahead of this one.

Jason: Yeah. What else is out there? What can I do? What can I learn? What can I be a part of? I am the same way as you. I, you know, would never imagine myself being in one of those roles where I’m doing the same thing or something similar for a very long period of time. Right? Like somebody who’s working at a factory for 30 years and that’s what they do. And nothing wrong with it. Everyone’s got a different mindset. Like you’re saying. There’s the fixed mindset where somebody is happy with that. They like their comfort zone, they like what they know and what they do and that makes them happy. And it’s possible to, and I’m sure you’ve seen this where there’s people, let’s say like myself, where I have a growth mindset in some areas and then some areas I have more of a fixed mindset, you know, in my life where I, maybe I like these routines or I’m okay with this structure, the same kind of monotony day in and day out where I don’t have to think about it because it’s so fixed. And then there’s other parts where it unleashes and I’m just, you know,

Libby: Well I think that in technology when you’re, it’s like, don’t make me get a new phone. I just got used to this one. You know, it’s that kind of sense of you don’t want everything to change all the time. But the most inspiring and exciting leaders are the ones who can see the future and in a very realistic and palpable way, and paint that picture for everybody else so that it’s kind of, Oh, I get what he’s talking about, or I get where she’s going and I see where I connect to that. And that’s when people get really excited.

Jason: Yeah. And that change agent that change, you know, manage your person who’s coming in and facilitating this owner’s kind of wild idea of change or what they want to go about can be very painful for everyone else in the organization who maybe it’s not, they’re not on the same boat as the owner or founder or executive that wants to go that way. And they struggle with it. And usually, and I don’t know if this is what you’ve seen, but usually it’s because there’s not some core values and kind of mission and purpose that facilitates.

Libby: Well, that’s the thing is you’ve got to make that not only that big picture of where we’re headed so clear, but you’ve also got to tie people to the outcomes so that when there’s a change, here’s the business outcome, here’s where we’re going and why and here’s the potential benefit to you. You’re going to learn something new. You’re going to be compensated, you’re going to grow, you’re going to take a big risk and feel great about yourself. Your team is going to be seen differently and we’ve got to be really, really mindful and I see this a lot with people who, if I could think of a new word for millennials, I would love to, because I think they get slapped unfairly with me. They’re slackers. They’re, it’s all such nonsense and it’s more on their older, their senior leaders who have to be mindful of the fact that there is no longevity in their lives.

Libby: They didn’t see institutions or marriages or churches or anything last. So why should they expect to be treated as though they’re going to be there for another 10 or 20 or 30 years? They want to know I’m learning this so that this, and here’s how this will help me in my career, either here or on my next job. And it’s not that hard. And I’m constantly preaching this to more senior leaders is connect the dots for them. Let them know right down to, and here’s what this says and here’s what I’m training to do is called in case you want to add that to your skills on LinkedIn and why not? Because you know, in this market people are being poached, right and left. So you might as well acknowledge that if I can make a great place for you here and you’re going to continue to grow and flow through the organization, why would you leave?

Jason: Yeah. And I think that’s interesting because I heard somebody talk about that in a keynote where it’s about the generations. And I think one of the things I’ve noticed as true is that you could label it and say, all millennials are this, or all gen this is that. And it’s not true. Some of it’s true and there’s some kind of tendencies in there and some basis of it. But there’s those different people. I mean there’s slacker baby boomers who literally job hopped and never, you know, figured out what they wanted to be when they grew up. Right. And it just changed. It’s for everyone. It’s really about who are you having in your company? What kind of people are you hiring and attracting and what do you expect from them and what are you providing?

Libby: And again, it’s all about that is I hear a lot of young leaders saying, because millennials are now managing lots of other millennials, and gen Z is what’s the narrative they want to know what’s the story? What is the story of the company? How does that connect to my heart and soul and my future? And it should be, I mean, leaders should be able to say that if you can’t describe what the benefit of your organization or your job or your team is, then you should go figure that out because people internally want to know that they should, everybody should be able to recite, not the big old wop and mission statement that no one ever reads again, but that I love that March of dimes used to say, we save babies or maybe they still do. I mean, can you think of a higher calling? We save babies, we educate children, we make the quality of people’s lives better because we help them handle their diabetes. Whatever it is, connecting the people that feel like they’re not part of the process. You know, they’re the, I don’t think we have file clerks today, but whatever, you know the people on that food chain that still have to know, Oh, with the end of this process, I’m part of this whole machine that makes lives better for people and everybody needs to do that all the way up and down.

Jason: Yeah. And I’ve seen organizations that are very successful from the top down when they have that mission, that vision, that overarching kind of sense of where they’re going and why. And then they have some core values in there that everyone can kind of hold each other accountable and understand that we’ll break that divide between the generations or how people think or you know, what this group needs. And, and it’s interesting cause I haven’t used this phrase in a lot, but I learned this and this is very applicable, especially when you’re talking about change. But you know, let’s say the millennials or people who want to know the why is the phrase marry the vision, date the strategy, right? So a company should marry the vision. What are we like March of dimes saving babies, right? That is the vision. That’s easy. Everyone knows it. And the organization. Now what’s different is that March of dimes, 1990 versus March of dimes 19 you know, or 2020 is going to be a lot different because the strategy is different. So you want to marry the vision but date the strategy and sometimes the strategy changes. And if everyone understands that, then when a new strategy comes, or a new software or a CRM or a new rule comes down, everyone understands like the ship is still going that direction. Now we’re just, you know, doing something a little difficult.

Libby: I just wrote that down. I think that’s brilliant. That’s exactly right. And it’s, and you don’t connect people to the strategy. I mean you do in an operational sense, but that’s not what gets their hearts and souls all worked up and excited. It’s the vision. And frankly, if people will gravitate out of your company, if they don’t, if that vision doesn’t fit them and maybe sooner or later and honestly you hope it’s sooner because you know they should self disqualify and go out and do something that speaks to them. But leaders by really identifying what that is, and you know this in sales, I mean the last thing you want to do is spend all your time with somebody who’s not a prospect, right? You want to get them out kindly of course, but as soon as you can or you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Libby: And it’s the same with your employees. You want to identify this is what we do here, this is how we do it and this is what we stand for. And when people can get behind that and know that they’re in the right place. Now the trick is of course leaders have to fulfill that for the longterm. You can’t say it and not do it. And there are companies that do that. It’s worse than not really identifying your vision. If you put it out there in a big bold way and then you don’t sustain it. Yeah, that’s bad news and it’s really up to the kind of leader. But back to that mindset issue, I see. What was sales-people, and I’ve worked with them a lot, is you know, is that they often have that growth mindset because you know, you get either inspired or beaten down by your numbers.

Libby: And I guess it depends on the day and the economy and what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. But I see most sales people because they have that need to connect and, and for whatever reason that’s inherent to them. But they really need to always be growing and developing to learn how G our customers are changing. Our clients have changed. They’re so informed now they can find everything online before I even get a chance to talk to them. How do you change to meet those needs and the way that your customers are growing, so they’ve got to keep that development mindset or they’re going to, you know, they’re going to go the way of time to move out to something else.

Jason: Alright. That’s it for part 1 of my conversation with Libby Gill. Make sure to check out cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find this episode, the transcript and Libby’s links. Also make sure to subscribe to the show everywhere that podcasts can be found. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify. You can find it on SoundCloud, Google play. Also the cutterconsultinggroup.com website. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E179] Leveraging Prospect Data with Eric Kider – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the fourth, and final, segment of the conversation I had with Eric.

In Part 4, Eric and I talk about:

Moving your business from Survival to Stability
What is the right amount of data?
Making sure your data is accurate – how often should it be verified/updated?

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn

Eric’s Bio:

Eric is the Senior Vice President & General Manager for Credit Solutions at Infogroup. Credit.net provides in-depth information on businesses of all sizes, including small businesses:

•To empower people with the ability to make smarter business credit decisions.
•Identify opportunities in the industry, unmet customer needs, core competencies of Infogroup

•Cross-selling to existing customers, and partnership possibilities

•Create detailed roadmap including resources and investments needed

•Product Improvements envisioned, partnerships channels, go to market and sales changes, etc.

•Refine product offerings and develop new solutions based on market feedback

•Collaborate across Infogroup to drive cross-selling and leverage the broader platform of services.

•Work with the executive leadership team and present to Board growth strategies, investment requirements, and acquisitions.

Eric holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in economics and government from Skidmore College in New York. His post-graduate studies were in business administration, management, and operations from Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom.

Eric’s Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickider/

Infogroup: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infogroup/

Credit.net: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credit-net/about/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Infogroup/

E179 – Transcript

Jason: Alright. Welcome to the final part of my conversation with Eric Kider of Infogroup. We are having a long great conversation at this point. You’re catching it part form, make sure but listen to part one, two and three, but we’re talking about performance-based profitability marketing. It’s interesting because as we’re recording this, I’m just thinking like how valuable this is, whether you get data from them or not, you know wherever you’re getting your data from or whatever marketing you’re doing or whatever your sales strategy is, it’s all about the value in knowing where you want to go, knowing who your clients are and making sure that you’re working internally or externally to accomplish those goals through your marketing efforts, through your budget, through your dollars spent. So make sure you do that no matter what. Again, not as a commercial for Infogroup, but definitely a valuable service. I’ve used it with so many of my clients and my own role in other organizations and so just make sure you’re always looking at the best options for you in your organization and what fits. So here we go, part four, enjoy.

Jason: Then you know, working backwards from there and being smart and sending out quality messages to the correct contacts instead of, you know, pray and spray model, then you know, then it makes sense, right? Even if you’re buying more expensive data, you’re doing more expensive mailers or digital marketing, then you know, as long as you’re meeting that thousand dollars cost per acquisition or whatever you set, then the numbers make sense.

Eric: Absolutely. Well and that’s why, you know, a lot of times people who are in this space, you know, let’s kind of talk about the small and middle-market customer segment out there. And again, middle-market is this kind of nebulous term cause you could, you know, you really don’t necessarily know the definition because everybody in the market today has different terminology and definitions of what is or is not a middle-market sized company. But I look at companies that are in business that, you know, if you think about their first, you know, one to five years being in business, Jason, they’re trying to survive, right? They’re not thinking about credit or cash flow or their exposure in their accounts receivables. They’re first is trying to get customers into their establishment or buying their products in order to stay in business. So that one to five year window is just surviving, right?

Eric: You know, turning their dream and their passion into a reality. But then after the kind of the three to five to six-year window, all of a sudden they start reeling. You know, realizing that, you know, it’s time for us to maybe start thinking about our cash flow. You know, especially if you want to start making some capital investments if we want to start expanding. And that’s kind of where you start seeing customers regardless of size or what product or what industry they’re in. They all go through the same process of trying now to figure out what type of credit or risk types of decisioning and criteria and methodologies do they apply in order to balance how much is too much, how much is too little. And that’s kind of where we, you know, we look at bringing that whole dynamic of profitability based prospecting into the conversation.

Eric: Cause that’s the best way for us that we’ve seen helping small businesses in realizing that credit and risk don’t need to be a showstopper or a business slowdown factor. In fact, it should be seen as a great compliment to improving your growth in a more quality-oriented manner. And that yes, when you start hitting the seven to 10-year window and you start growing your revenues from five to 15 to 25 million and you start growing your employee base from five people to 25 to 50 you start realizing that ultimately you start getting a bit more savvy to what type of applications and systems and processes do you leverage. But the information itself still becomes part of your core, right? That data and information will always be the fuel that enables your platforms and processes to perform its best and if you don’t maintain or keep that data as fresh and as current and up to date as possible, then ultimately you’re just, unfortunately, cutting yourself short for what could be a very longterm profitable growth agenda.

Jason: And without this sounding like a complete sales pitch for Infogroup and for what you guys do, you know with that kind of comment is that it really comes down to garbage in, garbage out when it comes to data and marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right? If you want to just buy bulk data or you want to, you know, have your analysis and just kind of throw stuff out there. You know, obviously quality is better if you can afford it, but you have to know what you’re doing first. You have to know what you’re looking for. Can’t just spend money on, you know, more expensive data that’s going to get you good results unless you know what to do with it and what you’re looking for. Which I know you guys help a lot of clients with dissecting and understanding, you know, what they really need and where they should go after it.

Jason: But you know, it’s one of those things like if you’re in business and you’re looking at it longterm, right? So maybe you’re in your first few years of business or you’re just getting started and you’re getting started in the marketing world because maybe you’ve done friends and family and referrals and you know, kind of some light stuff or trade shows and you’re kind of progressing into bigger scale is once you start doing it at scale and your buying data and doing a marketing and doing all those things that are involved, that data will pile up like crazy. I’ve seen it so many times where you just end up with 5 million, 10 million, 15 million records and most of it could be complete garbage. And then you have this uh CRM data management mess. And it’s really key if you can, as much as possible for anyone listening to that’s running any marketing campaigns, just focus on quality, smaller amounts, you know, more sniper mode than you know, shotgun.

Eric: Absolutely. Well, and that’s why when you think, and I love what you said because you know, regardless of which data provider businesses use, and again, I have experience with as you know, two or three others and people could look on LinkedIn and see that. But the thing that I love about Infogroup is the fact that the way in which the data compilation process operates with us and what we’ve been doing for more than 45 years based out of our Papillion Nebraska data center here is really an incredible bottoms-up approach in building out the deepest and richest data for those companies that are small, middle-market and even though large enterprise and strategic level, but really what the focus of building out the application for marketing and sales purposes. And that’s important for your listeners to understand because how companies build the data and aggregate data and then fabricate that is a very important dimension to understand because most of your providers that are not Infogroup, most people aren’t aware to ask that question.

Eric: How is your data fabricated? What’s the process and what’s the use cases that it’s been built for as a primary source cause some data compilers, we’d always have started with a more top-down approach. They’ll start with the overall parent and then work down as a way to help understand the risk profile and the dimension of how that company is constructed and that’s a good use case by the way. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad way of doing it. In fact, depending on how you’re looking at that data, that combined with a bottoms-up compiler gives you the best of breed of your data information. It really does, but to your point, people also don’t always look at their customer data in a way that it is a living, breathing entity and therefore just like you change your oil in your car every five or 10,000 miles depending upon what type of car you have.

Eric: Same with your customer data. No one today is really governing how often you should update or review the accuracy and completeness of your customer data. But we actually have done things in the space of data services where before doing a campaign for our client, Jason, I said to this customer recently, just last week, I said, look, give me your customer file and they work with thousands of businesses in North America. And I said, well, why? You know, why do we want to give you our customer file? And I said, well, I first want to assess the thoroughness, the accuracy and completeness of your current customer file. There’s no charge, by the way, we don’t charge an info group to do that. It’s a data quality assessment and it’s really insightful because we tell back to the client, here’s how many records we have that you don’t have that are incomplete in your database.

Eric: And it could be as simple as the address change you don’t have recorded correctly. The zip code, you don’t have zip plus four the SIC code, you don’t have detail. We can provide that to you. And by the way, that is the first step. I always do with my clients because I want to make sure that their house is first clean. Then from there we sit down with their marketing and sales team and say, okay, let’s talk about what your best customers look like from your viewpoint and then why we do that. Jason is then we apply our own analytics. We have a bunch of data scientists here in our office site in Papillion, Nebraska where they take the customer file and without insight from the customer, we present back to the client what we’ve modeled based on what we see as their best customer.

Eric: And yes, we do apply credit and risk dimensions to what we’ve defined as their best clients and in some cases there’s about a 40 to 50% overlap. So you know the customer is right in their definition of what their SIC codes or, what type of demographic and firmographic makeup their best customers. But the other 50% that they’ve not thought about is the risk profile. And all of a sudden when we present the risk profile back to the sales and marketing person, I always invite the finance person or whoever is responsible in some cases it’s also the head of operations to show them what the risk profile looks like and immediately they turn around and say, Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize we had a lot of companies that actually only had a B rating in your credit score, Eric or… That’s interesting. There’s not many verified records.

Eric: There’s a lot of suspects. We should really talk about what we do here. And so it becomes a really interesting conversation. And then, and only then once we’ve had that as the third step, we then talk about, well let’s present to you your prospect universe modeled after best lookalike clients and let’s work with you on what is your outcomes, the messaging and the specific offering to that target. And we could either help you with that marketing campaign or you can do it yourself, but ultimately it’s that full, real end-to-end kind of soup to nuts offering that is different about Infogroup than a lot of other clients and companies out there. Because what we do, other companies can do Jason and I know for a fact other companies can do it. It’s just a manner by which how we do it is a little bit different.

Jason: Well, and I appreciate that and if everyone listening, it might have sounded like a long sales pitch and promo for Infogroup and I just know from my own experience because I’ve helped many clients with this and been a client of Infogroup in the past, definitely not intended to be a commercial, but more explanation. So people out there can hear the work that you’re doing, Eric and what Infogroup does and really, again, anybody who knows me and listens to this podcast knows that I’m just all about helping people be successful in their sales career or running a sales team. And that’s why I wanted you to be on the show and kind of enlightened people both to what Infogroup does as well as you know, just kind of how the data market, the credit market and all that works. You know, whether they use you guys or just take these gems and are smarter about their data and their marketing. So I appreciate you being on the show Eric, and where’s the best place for people to find more information about you, what you’re doing yourself and then also Infogroup.

Eric: Well first of all Jason, thank you for your time and, and if it did sound like a sales pitch, my apologies cause you know, you know I’m passionate about this and to me at the end of the day, what really these are customers and what you as your point as far as what you present in your podcast, what people are looking for are the insights to help them succeed. And that’s that really is, you know, whether they use us or I prefer of course they can use us, but if they use other companies. That process that we’ve walked through and spoke about for the last, you know, few minutes to me that is applicable to anyone and everyone, but for us the best way to reach me is either through LinkedIn. I’m there on LinkedIn as well as going to our Infogroup website, which is just simply www.infogroup.com and then if you want to see specifically more about what credit.net offers, it is as simple as www.credit.net it’s that simple.

Jason: Eric, thanks again for being on the show and sharing all your insight in the world of data and credit. I appreciate it very much.

Eric: Well, thank you so much for your time, Jason. I appreciate the invitation

Jason: And for everyone listening, if you want to find out more information, Eric went through his links, but you can also find them on the website, cutterconsultinggroup.com his info, his bio show notes, as well as transcript from these episodes in any of the applicable links. And I make sure to subscribe to the shows. You can be up to date when new episodes are released. It’s everywhere. You can find podcasts, and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales, and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E178] Leveraging Prospect Data with Eric Kider – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Eric.

In Part 3, Eric and I talk about:

Credit risk data for business prospecting
Are your reps actually selling the clients you want?
Utilizing data triggers to maximize timing of your prospecting efforts

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn

Eric’s Bio:

•Cross-selling to existing customers, and partnership possibilities

•Create detailed roadmap including resources and investments needed

•Product Improvements envisioned, partnerships channels, go to market and sales changes, etc.

•Refine product offerings and develop new solutions based on market feedback

•Collaborate across Infogroup to drive cross-selling and leverage the broader platform of services.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickider/

Infogroup: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infogroup/

Credit.net: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credit-net/about/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Infogroup/

E178 – Transcript

Jason: Hey there. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast and welcome to part three of my conversation with Eric Kider from Infogroup. If you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and check out parts one and two where we continue our conversation talking about performance, metrics, data profitability of marketing. We’re focusing on performance-based marketing, not branding, marketing, and having some kind of rate of return and how valuable that is and making sure that you’re doing it in a proper way for your organization. So again, it’s not always about spending lots of money on data or on marketing, it’s about knowing your numbers, knowing what you’re trying to achieve and what your goals are for your business. And then working backwards to determine what’s the best way for you to get there. So here you go, part three, enjoy.

Eric: And a lot of them now using the first quarter, you know, between January and March, to really accelerate those marketing efforts in order to start bringing in some real strong quality leads for them to really exit into February, March, and age into really building into the trajectory of growing their business in a very positive way. They’re really accelerating in more so these days because of what’s happening in the economy.

Jason: Well, and I know based on the conversations that I’ve been having with business owners, managers, and even salespeople in the past three to six months, they’ve been centered on the fact that everybody knows there will be some economic downturn. Right? So you’re listening to this. This is the first quarter of 2020 and depending on when you listen to this could be either accurate or inaccurate in forecasting it, but everyone knows that we can’t see, you know, these good times that we’re in right now can’t sustain forever. And there’s a lot of people who either aren’t winning even when it’s good like this, or they’re winning and they’re worried because it may not be built on some fundamentals. And a foundation and you know, if anything changes in the market, how are they going to be recession-proof in their industry?

Eric: Yeah. Well, and that’s kind of why you’re absolutely right, because everybody is watching, you know, the market hit both 29,000 you know, and you go watch all the experts. And by the way, all the experts have different viewpoints on how, and everybody’s riding this wave right now while it’s still a wave. But you know, the thing that we also started to talk about it, and I know it was something that you know, we raised before to some of our clients is this whole concept that while things are our very good plan for that, of when the bubble will hit, even though we don’t know when the bubble will burst. And so we’ve been introducing, you know, cause people think about credit solutions and credit.net by that of just what it means, which is more credit and risk based services that we offer our clients. But as Infogroup, you know, we’re trained in offering the complete suite of marketing sales.

Eric: You know, data services were, includes as you know, the match cleanse and upended one’s customer files. You know, we do the full suite of everything, including even helping with marketing campaigns and be including in developing the creative. But one of the things that we now started to introduce is taking the credit risk dimension and putting it into more of a profitability based prospecting discipline. And we started to introduce that to a lot of our clients. And it’s beginning to resonate because while times are good, they’re loving the fact that we’re getting in there getting business generated and the very quality and the dimension of leads coming into them. But at the same token, we’ve been working with the finance and credit and risk officers and groups inside of organizations in order to have them not be a back office function, Jason, but helping them bring all of their knowledge and insights into what really does comprise a best customer and the most profitable customer into and working with their sales and marketing teams.

Eric: And I’ll tell you the conversations that we’re helping to facilitate are bringing finally finance into the front end of the process and it’s helping to improve that discipline that says finance don’t, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the naysayers or the negative dimensions into helping or stopping a company from growing but imposing different credit rules or decision criteria. On the contrary, they can be helping to improve that of identifying what do the best customers look like. Not by using your traditional marketing terminology like those that have accepted your offer or have clicked through your email campaign. Those are critical metrics. Don’t get me wrong Jason, but the ones that accept the offer and that pay you on time consistency, that’s the one customer you’re trying to look and model after and therefore they are even creating this dynamic that says if you’re working with your finance team and your order of credit decision person on the front end, the sales people don’t have to worry about credit decisioning and going through the back process cause the leads that they’re getting have already been pre-approved. No different than how like an American express or any of the credit card issuers today sends you out a campaign that says, Jason, you’ve been preapproved for $50,000 credit card. Right? That same concept. So in this case we’re bringing that profitability based prospecting into the dialogue. When people think about doing their campaigns. And I’ll tell you it’s finally helping the finance person smile during these meetings cause they’re saying we are an enabler of the business. Don’t look at us as a disabler. So it’s kind of refreshing now.

Jason: Well and it’s a dramatic shift because you know, and this is one of the things I work on with a lot of clients and companies that have been a part of is where there’s this attitude on the sales side where more prospects are better, more leads are better. Just give us more people and I can close anyone at any time. And you know, there’s a lot of great salespeople out there, but there’s also a lot of organizations where the culture is still the classic one where it’s all about closing the deal, short term moving on and never looking back from a sales perspective. And the downside. And the challenge with that is, are you producing an actual good customer for the business? Which is, you know, kind of what my focus is with this podcast being the sales experience.

Jason: It’s the experience of the sales rep, the experience of the company, the experience the customer then has short term and long because it all starts from the marketing all the way through the fulfillment and the customer satisfaction side. But you know, salespeople, the classic one is, you know, just give me enough leads, I’ll close them and make it somebody else’s problem. If they don’t pay or if they’re not profitable, then it’s not, you know, it’s not their issue. And I think what’s more important, like you’re saying is, is it a profitable person? So getting operations, getting finance, no matter what vertical you’re in, no matter what you sell is, is that somebody you want to deal with is you know, what kind of customers make up your most profitable ones from a lifetime value standpoint and where can you get more quality customers instead of just quantity customers?

Eric: Absolutely Jason. And you know, the thing that people have been asking me is, well, do I really need a full credit department or finance department? And I spoken to two businesses that have only five employees. And I said, look, whoever does your credit decisioning or whatever type of credit review process you have, we ultimately can help you put that process into action to help you improve your overall prospecting. And this person said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, when you think about going after your best customers, let’s look first at who and what would be the composition of what does compile or comprise your best customer. Let’s define that first. And then from there, what’s interesting is we then build in triggers, not only to help identify the prospect universe modeling after their best customers, but we actually help that person in that organization identify triggers of what events may take place using our data.

Eric: So that way they can also reach out proactively to their current clients to upsell and cross-sell. And that’s something that companies today all do by the way. So cross-sell is not a new discipline, Jason, as you know. You know you’ve done these before your podcast, but you know what’s interesting is that people don’t realize that there are triggers and the triggers could be positive in which you could tell your salesperson, Hey, go call Jason incorporated. It seems like they’ve got actually an interesting either infusion of cash or they’ve got an improvement in their credit rating that may, in fact, allow us to extend even further their line of credit. So instead of a $30,000 line, you can tell them now that we’ve increased in the 50,000 and by doing that, you’ve now potentially opened up a whole different opportunity for them to buy more products from you.

Eric: You don’t have to wait for them to ask for the order, the order and that you know. And on the flip side, the alerts could also help you mitigate risk is if a company is actually having or showing some signs of financial difficulty, your finance person could send that alert to the salesperson and therefore they could actually watch closely or change the way in which they would offer terms to that client. Instead of offering net 30 maybe they’ll ask for 50% upfront and then pay me back, you know, within two weeks. So I always tell people don’t say no to a company even though they may not have the financial strength. Just change your terms, you know, get ACH payment for example upfront. Don’t let them have net 30 or net 45. Exactly. Exactly.

Jason: Well, and so, you know, we’re talking about this profitability, the lifetime value. It’s always amazing to me how many companies don’t know that they don’t know the lifetime value, the profitability of their customers. They don’t know which ones are the most profitable. And that’s one of the biggest things that I do when I start talking to an organization. They don’t know what those numbers is. We just do the analysis, figure out who is most profitable, who do you want in your pipeline full of customers and what’s their lifetime value? Because then, you know, and this is wrapping this full circle back around to where we started with the data and the quality and you know the potential costs, right? Cause it’s, it’s more expensive when you’re getting better data from the source that’s confirmed by, you know, telephone operators, making sure that it’s valid, but you know, it really just comes down to if you know that lifetime value for, you know, the profitability of your customers, then you can back into, well what’s that cost per acquisition of a new customer?

Jason: What am I willing to spend? Right? If a new customer equates to $10,000 in revenue for me, what am I willing to spend to acquire? A new customer is at 5,000 is it 1000 you know, relative to everything else that you have going on and what your goal is, right? Versus that guy who wanted a one to one. You know, what is your ratio, especially with your overhead? And so if you set that number, let’s say at a hundred or a thousand dollars cost per acquisition, then you know, working backward from there and being smart and sending out quality messages to the correct contacts instead of, you know, pray and spray model, then you know, then it makes sense, right? Even if you’re buying more expensive data, you’re doing more expensive mailers or digital marketing, then you know, as long as you’re meeting that thousand dollar cost per acquisition or whatever you set, then the numbers make sense.

Jason: Alright, everybody, that’s it for part three. Again, make sure you’re subscribed, share this podcast, rate it, rank it, everything that’s possible. Wherever you’re getting. If you want the transcripts, show notes or Eric’s links, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com again, thank you for listening to this episode, to this series. Hopefully, it’s valuable. Hopefully, it’s something that’s helping you with your sales or marketing careers, and as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales, and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E177] Leveraging Prospect Data with Eric Kider – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Eric.

In Part 2, Eric and I talk about:

Data quality in terms of “opportunity cost”
You get what you pay for with data…and cheaper isn’t always bad
ROI of your data

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn

Eric’s Bio:

•Cross-selling to existing customers, and partnership possibilities

•Create detailed roadmap including resources and investments needed

•Product Improvements envisioned, partnerships channels, go to market and sales changes, etc.

•Refine product offerings and develop new solutions based on market feedback

•Collaborate across Infogroup to drive cross-selling and leverage the broader platform of services.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickider/

Infogroup: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infogroup/

Credit.net: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credit-net/about/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Infogroup/

E177 – Transcript

Jason: Hey, welcome back to the sales experience podcast. Welcome to another portion of my guest conversation with Eric Kider from Infogroup. Now as you are listening to this, and I’m going to mention it a few times in these intros of this four-part series, it might sound like this is a little bit of a commercial for Infogroup, but it’s definitely not paid product placement. It’s not a paid advertisement. I truly am excited and believe it and I mentioned it in the final segment that when Eric and I are wrapping up, but literally the information that Eric shares is valid. If you’re interested in data or need data for marketing, it’s so vital if you’re in a sales or marketing management role and all of that, whether it’s with Infogroup or through any other company out there that doesn’t, it’s so valid and valuable if you’re doing performance-based marketing, so make sure, listen to this episode, subscribe, check out every portion of the series. It’s so great if you’re in a sales leadership or marketing leadership, finance leadership type of role where you’re dealing with salespeople. It’s so important. Here we go part two.

Eric: By looking in, leveraging the best data upfront and doing that kind of analysis, you’re actually saving money by not having campaigns sent out to information or customers that are actually not accurate or that’s not the right data or worse, it’s the wrong audience. And therefore where you think you’re spending too much money on the front end of getting the right data at a right analytics put in to get the right prospect universe put together. In fact, if you do really the comparison downstream, you realize that you’re actually spending a lot more money by not doing that first step upfront.

Jason: And if you think about that, you know, cause I’m imagining you know, the resistance and I’ve seen it before where I’ve advised companies or owners, you know, that we need to get better data. And it’s the same thing if you extrapolate that out for the sales reps, if you were to give a salesperson, let’s say 20 or 30 calls a week and you know, half of those don’t qualify, then you’re wasting a lot of their time and keeping them, you know, from closing more deals, right? It’s an opportunity costs and or whatever cost to generate those. So it’s the same thing. If I understand what you’re saying, which is you know, if your, let’s say you’re doing direct mail, you’re old school, which even though it’s 2020 direct mail still works or you’re doing digital advertising or email, whatever that is you might be doing is do you want to send, you know, 100,000 letters and just hope that the data is good or do you want to send, you know, let’s say 50,000 letters and then know that you know you’re going to have a higher response rate because it’s more actual data that you know is going to be effective.

Eric: Absolutely correct. Absolute correct. And again, you know, it’s interesting because today again, there are so many providers of information or data out there in the US you know, market that it is hard, you know, for people to determine who do I go to.

Eric: And you know, sometimes people use budget, which by the way is an important first step as an indicator. And it kind of a even a regulator of how and who they go after in order to get and purchase their data. And you know, look, I’m not saying someone should not focus on budget alone because especially if they’re on a budget constraints, they want to kind of get the most for the least amount of money. But also would caution that by keeping budget as a regulator, ultimately what you might be doing is thinking that you’re getting a lot more records or information for that dollar. But the quality, the timeliness, the latency and all the factors that go into that, you might be fooling yourself because that information is really just money that you’re throwing into the trash can. And therefore, you know, you’re, although you’re getting a million records, it’s a million that is just, you know, almost 60% dated or no longer valid.

Eric: And therefore, yeah, the numbers sound great based on the price you’re paying, but you’re never getting back that ROI because you’re just not sure where it’s coming from or the origination of the source. And so, you know, I totally understand. You know, one company said to me, well, my budget is X. What can you do for me? And I always start off with saying, well, what’s the outcome you’re trying to drive? Right? What are you looking for? And let’s then, let’s talk about the measure of success of this campaign. What’s your target audience? What’s your messaging? What’s the actual expectation of conversion and what’s the rule of, you know, overall the critical success factors. And I’ve had companies, companies saying, well, I really just want for now a break even. I know it sounds weird, Jason. I had one client say, I just want to have a one-to-one return, Eric.

Eric: So I said, okay, for every dollar you spend on marketing, you want a dollar return. The guy goes, yes. I said, may I ask why? Because traditionally you would think you want at least a 1.1 or 1.2 or some element that’s higher than one. And he said to me, we’re in the game right now of building our brand awareness. And so even if I get a one-to-one, I know I’m not losing money, but I am getting a brand imprint by email, by using multichannel approach, including direct mail, Jason, that will help me in the future because I know that company that I’m mailing or connecting to will have my brand in their front of mind, especially when they’re thinking about certain things that we might be able to help them with. And so that’s a different strategy. And so we helped design a specific set of campaigns, leveraging everything from direct mail to email to banners to you name it, and that multichannel approach.

Eric: Ultimately we’re tracking with that company and we are returning a one to one return. And that’s kind of being successful because we’ve met that expectation for that client. But that’s a very specific example of, of how one should think about what they’re going into with their campaign. You know, I also find companies that are believing that they drop a million emails, you know, of course not all at once cause you don’t want to get, you know, you don’t wanna get spam house or he mad at you. But I’ve had companies drop million and they say, okay, well we’ll just, we just want to keep on dropping these emails without necessarily the clarity of what’s the measure of success from the dropping those emails. You know, it’s not this bounce backs or how many of you get returned without opt outs. It’s more of what you’re trying to drive as a business and a lot of times people just don’t connect that first outcome metric to that of the campaign or activity they’re doing.

Jason: Yeah, and there’s so much in what you were talking about. One thing that popped in my head is the client that you had that wanted a one to one ratio, it sounds super weird on the surface and probably not necessarily great, but if they have a long term strategy, it makes sense. And at the same time, you know, I’m in California, in your Silicon Valley, there’s a lot of organizations that don’t even care about a one to one return because they just want to build the branding. They’re just looking at fundraising and they’re not trying to run a, you know, let’s say a profitable business model in the short term. So yeah, it’s interesting when you talk about one to one actually being, you know, a thing to strive for. A lot of organizations out there who are running a completely different fundraising model.

Eric: Oh absolutely. But you know, but to your point, that’s what’s amazing because when you think about the world of marketing to that of engaging and increasing the number of inbound quality leads that then turn to obviously a sale as well as that of the value delivery you provide to your clients. You know, just staying with that one example, it did surprise me, right? Because again, it doesn’t sound logical because coming from my background, it always was a driving factor that you always want a positive ROI, right? Not really. Do you ever talk to anybody about delivering a neutral? Right now, I guess neutral is better than negative of course. But the strategy that this chief marketing officer shared to me was pretty profound because it was part of a complete picture that he had where he knew the specific campaign that we were working with was in connection to other campaigns where there were positive ROI connection to, but in our case, our specific campaign was one that he was dripping and going after new prospects and really realized that it’ll take three to six months of just multiple touches through multiple channels in order to bring brand awareness to that audience and then by month seven or eight he’d hit that person would hit them with a different campaign that would be more targeted to then converting that to a sale.

Eric: Pretty cool. By the way, Again, it was just you think about the strategy and they will using our data for those different types of campaigns. Still the same kind of data but different sequencing of how and what messaging were being sent to that population.

Jason: Well, and I think what’s critical is two parts that I see a lot of businesses a small and medium, they don’t even understand or they’re not even thinking about it. One is, what is the timeframe? What is the timeline of which you want to look at if a marketing campaign is successful and where is it making sense? Right? So you send direct mail or you send emails or you did do digital ads. You’re doing something that’s building brand awareness, but you know, they say it takes 7, 10 different touches for somebody to want to engage with you, right? There’s always going to be those people who it doesn’t matter, they see it once they’re interested, they’re early adopters, they’re jumping in on it, they want to sign up for whatever it is or they want help or they want to buy. And so you have those instant ones, they’ll short term and then you know, how much longer does it take to get the rest of the results?

Jason: How long is that long tail of trailing phone calls or emails or contacts or walks into the dealership. Like, you know, you’ve gotta be able to set that framework so you know if it’s successful. And what I’ve done with some campaigns in the past, especially direct mail, is looking at, okay, well we know how much we want eventually and based on, you know, four years of data, we know that based on how much we mail now and what this is, here’s what the results will be, week one, two, three, four out, 12 weeks. And then you know, from there in bigger chunks of time and so that we know, Hey, based on four weeks or eight weeks in, we know for on the path to winning or not. And then you can make your adjustments. And so you’ve always got to have that timeframe for whether you know, if you’ve won or not. And it’s gotta be relative to the type of campaigns you’re running.

Eric: Oh, absolutely. Well, and that’s why everybody wants today. Instant gratification, right? Not necessarily mean. I mean, I would love nothing more than to drop a bunch of emails, and within the next nanoseconds, having our phone, inbound phone, no started ringing off the hook. I mean, or emails coming back to saying, yes, I’ll buy, you know, that would be, that’s panacea, you know? But today, businesses as well as consumers, as you know, Jason are just more savvy. You know, they have access to more, not only information but more insight. See, so information is interesting, but the consumer today has more insight and as you said earlier, reviews that are provided on Yelp or think about TripAdvisor, right? 15 2030 years ago, you know, no one really thought about TripAdvisor. You would go on a vacation and then, you know, if you had a bad experience, you pretty much were stuck, right?

Eric: You know, you just spoke with your family, your friends. But now if you post something on TripAdvisor, you’re speaking now to millions, right? If not hundreds of millions of different people who also visited that hotel or that restaurant or whatever. And now people are leveraging that, not just for information, but insight that helps them make the decision whether or not they want to go visit that hotel or do that excursion while they’re in, you know, Cabo San Lucas or somewhere. Right? So it’s a very different world we’re in right now. And you know, to me it’s part of going back to the core data that is just pure data that’s not leveraged to be more insight and information to improve your campaigns or your marketing and sales effectiveness. Really just, unfortunately, most people just go in and they don’t always think through that or the measure of success. Right.

Eric: And yes, as you said just before, what’s the timeframe? So what’s the gating mechanism? How long am I willing to try this out and is that reasonable? And if the answer is in your head as a business owner or as a sales leader or even as an associate, you know, sales executive, if it’s not reasonable, then you need to recalibrate to say, okay, well I need results like in the next 30 days. Well, that becomes a very different game plan than that of what I need over three months or six months as part of a nurturing and drip kind of campaign. Very different strategies would be applying to either one scenario. So yeah. You know, that’s been kind of the conversations we’ve been having entering 2020 with most of our clients. And to me that’s kind of what’s exciting because you know, the market is showing real strength.

Eric: There is a lot of craziness going on obviously in the US markets these days, but businesses are feeling positive about what is currently the kind of tailwind behind us right now, even exited in 2019 and a lot of them now using the first quarter, you know, between January and March, to really accelerate those marketing efforts in order to start bringing in some real strong quality leads for them to really exit into go February, March, and age into really building into the trajectory of growing their business in a very positive way. They’re really accelerating in more so these days because of what’s happening in the economy.

Jason: Alright, that’s it for part two of my conversation with Eric. Make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com so you can find the show notes, transcription. Eric’s links as always, keep in mind everything in life is salespeople remember the experience you gave them.

[E176] Leveraging Prospect Data with Eric Kider – Part 1 of 4

Jason Cutter — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 05:15:00 +0000

Are you responsible for setting up your team with the best prospect data possible?

Eric Kider, from Credit.net/Infogroup joins me for a 4-part series where we talk about business prospecting data, accurate sources of data, and the sales closing effectiveness metrics.

In Part 1, Eric and I talk about:

Who owns the best data
Compilers vs. Aggregators
Data verification methods

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Eric on LinkedIn

Eric’s Bio:

•Cross-selling to existing customers, and partnership possibilities

•Create detailed roadmap including resources and investments needed

•Product Improvements envisioned, partnerships channels, go to market and sales changes, etc.

•Refine product offerings and develop new solutions based on market feedback

•Collaborate across Infogroup to drive cross-selling and leverage the broader platform of services.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickider/

Infogroup: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infogroup/

Credit.net: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credit-net/about/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Infogroup/

E176 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason cutter. On today’s episode, I have Eric Kider, he is the senior vice president and general manager of credit solutions at Infogroup and he is driving his division to satisfy the business needs within small and medium business credit markets. Eric, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Eric: Thank you so much, Jason.

Jason: So I’m really excited to have you on the show and I know I say that for every single guest I talked to, but everybody comes from so many different backgrounds and have many different focus. And for you with that intro that I was covering, I mean what you do now and what you focused on for a while is helping businesses with either their own credit information or helping them with getting the data for their prospecting side. And obviously I have a wide range of listeners, anything from sales reps to managers to owners. And I thought this would be a fun topic for us to cover and you know, talk about prospecting and data and credit and wherever this might go.

Eric: No, that’s great Jason. Well, thank you again for the invitation. I’m excited to be here.

Jason: One of the things that I know that we’ve talked about in the past, and we’ve done some work together with clients on the, you know, on the data side and prospecting is this concept which a lot of companies don’t understand. When I’m dealing with them on the consulting side and we’re talking about sales, we’re talking about marketing. Everybody wants to get the good leads or they want to buy data and they don’t understand the difference between, you know, someone who’s aggregating data or someone who has the actual source of data or verified data. So I thought that’d be a fun place to start to kind of help clarify that for people who are listening.

Eric: Yeah, I know, that’s a great point. Well, you know what’s interesting about data, especially more so today than you know, 2030 even 50 years ago, data is available almost everywhere and through multiple sources. You know, people today leverage Google or Bing or any of the search engines. And a lot of times people who, you know, think that those search engines are the originators of that data. In other words, people think Google is everything, right? It’s the Uber of the world of information. But what people don’t realize is that actually Google, just like being in other search engines actually source their data to power that search through other companies through providing that information as part of being the data compilers. And there are only maybe two or three major data compilers in the US market. Infogroup is one of those data compilers. And what that is in reality for people to understand is that the compiler is the originator of the data they use and leverage inclusive of us with Infogroup leverage is thousands of sources in order to build our business and consumer databases.

Eric: And then there are second data providers out there that are more resellers. And so what they’ll do is they’ll typically work with one of the data originators or compilers and then they’ll take that data and they’ll either do some manipulation or some additional what they consider to be value add to that core. But in some cases, most people don’t realize who they’re buying from, whether it be a compiler or a reseller. And that does matter because the aging factor and the data latency factor comes into play because the compilers in the market have that information in the most recent and UpToDate and current fashion versus a reseller, which data could be, although it’s presented as current, it could be anywhere between a week to two weeks to up to even months old in that of latency in aging. So it does matter to understand the difference between that compiler and a reseller. And that’s kind of an important element when you are thinking about going after and looking for acquiring new customers or even looking to perform either credit or some type of risk management for your company.

Jason: And so for compilers, how like let’s say Infogroup or others in the market, like how often is that data being refreshed, updated? You’d said the other ones are, you know, could be weeks old. But what’s a compiler at?

Eric: Well, the compiler, so for info group, we have updates made to our database every day. In fact, every minute, every hour of the day gets updated based on the process that we have within our data operations team. So that could be made through a series of automation technologies that we leverage, whether it be web crawling or others, including that of we still are leveraging outbound phone calls in our tele research team who actually call and make outbound phone calls, approximately 25 million per year to businesses across the US and Canada to verify and confirm some of their basic demographic and firmographic information. And when I tell that to clients, you know, they kind of say, well that sounds pretty old school. And in our case, we believe that as a compiler of data that’s critical, especially if you’re trying to make sure that when you’re making an outbound phone call or mailing a direct mail to a given client at a location to promote your goods and services, we still think that that’s the best way to confirm that that business is still operating as though it is and should be to make your campaigns that much more effective. Whereas on other companies that are resellers, you know, like I said, they’ll take our data and that data could be anywhere between five days up to a month if not longer old. And although it’s still good and it’s still accurate, there is a difference of dimensionality as to what you’re trying to do when you’re thinking about going to market and doing your various campaigns for driving that growth in that given discipline would be sales, marketing or even doing some type of credit or risk management for your company.

Jason: Well, and I think that’s interesting because a lot of people, I’ll say for myself as well, not understanding all of the data back end as well as you do, is that there’s a misunderstanding that if it’s on the internet, A. it’s accurate and B. it’s updated constantly and it’s instant, right? So if I look up a company, whatever’s on there should be accurate. And it’s interesting because sometimes I’ll look up, you know, even let’s say it’s a restaurant or a business, a local business, and at times it says people are reporting that this business is closed and you know, it’s, it’s still online, right? The business has actually gone out of business or shut down and you know, only through let’s say a Yelp comment. Do you have any indication that it may or may not exist anymore?

Eric: Oh that’s absolutely right. And, and you know, it’s interesting, you know, cause that’s a great example where, you know, even crowdsourcing or that of the, the way in which people today you leverage those sites like Yelp or, or even for example even TripAdvisor, right? You have people now adding content and feedback to that of you know, companies, businesses that they are engaging with. That actually provides another source of information for companies to leverage. And that’s by the way, some of that information we do leverage. We leverage a lot of social sites in order to populate and provide a richer and broader depth to our business record as well as our consumer record. But in our case, you know, there are also different gradients of data quality that we also share with our clients so that for example, you know companies will put out the size of their database, right?

Eric: They’ll tell you they have 30 million, 50 million records or businesses in the US or Canadian market or whatever market they’re operating in. Well, they don’t tell you whether or not they have the depth of verifying that company record. Going back to what you said about whether it’s still in business or what type of you know status are they and an info group. We do have four different categories of data, so we have a verified record, which means that that company we have physically spoken to, confirmed and accurately portrayed that of the information that that is a real business operating at the location with the details that allow you to know that we’ve physically spoken to that person or that company. We have a pre-verified record, which means that we believe that the company is operating as a business, but we’ve not been able to connect with anybody at that firm in order to confirm that of what we’re doing or what they’re doing with that of what their business.

Eric: We then also have a suspect record where we actually have a belief that that company could be operating but their operation may be out of business at that location. They’re not returning our phone calls so we can’t call it even pre-verified cause we’re just not certain as to what is the current delineation or status. And so we call it a suspect record. And then yes, we also have out of business records and in that case, Jason, we only put an out of business record when we’ve confirmed it with the secretary of state in which that business was operating that they too filed as an out of business. In other words, they closed that entity or that location. So we had that gradient of different quality because we want businesses to understand when they’re engaging with their different campaigns or different sales and marketing activities, we want them to know that ultimately they’re working with a business that either is verified or in some cases not. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do business with them, but it means that you should definitely proceed with caution because we’ve not been able to confirm that that is a legitimate or valid location or the correct data for that company.

Jason: So as I’m listening to you talk, I’m thinking about all of this data, the verifying and everything that’s going into this or talking about aggregator, you know, kind of compilers versus resellers and people who are, you know, kind of lagging or, or adding things to it. But it’s not from the source itself. And you know, I’m thinking about the fact that anybody who’s listening to this who has experience getting data or doing any marketing knows that the cost is just going to go up and up. Obviously the more accurate, more detailed, more information that you have and the more current, right. So the older it gets, the more times it’s been resold or the less accurate that it may be. Obviously the cheaper it’s going to get. So you know when we’re talking about that, which again it’s all about what you get for your money, right? It’s not that spending more is bad. It’s all about at the end of the day is the data you’re buying, the marketing you’re doing effective to get the right leads in front of your sales reps, and then is it profitable, right? Like the end of the day, are you producing something that meets your cost per acquisition? Are you making profitable sales and you know, have a lifetime value that well exceeds you know, what you’re spending in marketing and sales.

Eric: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, it’s interesting Jason, cause you know I’ve had a couple of recent conversations with clients as they kind of crossed over into 2020 and you know, some of them have asked me because of my background, which data provider you know are better than one versus the other? Or which one should we be leveraging? Or in some cases, they even ask, you know, how is Infogroup better than X or Y as a comparative? And you know, I’ll tell you Jason, what’s interesting about what you said is, I wish I could say that there is one perfect data provider, but there aren’t, because everybody’s business and use cases are very unique. Now, I always say is a best practice, leveraging that of our data alongside a secondary data provider, whether it be a compiler or a reseller is a best practice because you have the best of both worlds.

Eric: And when I say that to certain clients, they say, Oh God, but that really adds, you know, cost almost double the cost to my data and overall marketing efforts. And actually it’s not the case because when you do the real ROI in the development of looking at what the cost is to do your marketing campaign, by looking in, leveraging the best data upfront and doing that kind of analysis, you’re actually saving money by not having campaigns sent out to information or customers that are actually not accurate or that’s not the right data or worse, it’s the wrong audience and therefore where you think you’re spending too much money on the front end of getting the right data at the right analytics put in to get the right prospect universe put together. In fact, if you do really the comparison downstream, you realize that you’re actually spending a lot more money by not doing that first step of.

Jason: Alright, everybody, that’s it for part one of my conversation with Eric Kider from Infogroup. Please make sure to check out the show notes, the transcription, Eric’s links in the information on the podcast. You can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com where you can find the episode and all the episodes on there. Also make sure to subscribe, share the podcast every time you do it helps spread more information and positive outlook and focus on how sales could and should be done out there in the world. So I appreciate it and any little bit helps. Everything makes a difference. So thanks again. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E175] Doing Sales Automation Right with Shawn Finder – Part 4 of 4

Jason Cutter — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the fourth/final segment of the conversation I had with Shawn.

In Part 4, Shawn and I talk about:

Shawn’s list of what it takes to be a successful sales rep
How Shawn recruits top performing sales pros
A very interesting cold outbounding script/strategy
Customizing your sales process for success

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn

Shawn’s Bio:

Shawn Finder has always been an entrepreneur at heart. At age 24, Shawn entered the entrepreneurial world after competing as one of Canada’s top-ranked tennis players. He started out importing packaging from the Orient and selling to top retailers in North America. However, knowing he always loved selling and list building, he founded ExchangeLeads in 2013 which helps his company build quality lists for outreaching new prospects. This was followed by his new venture Autoklose in 2017 that combines both sales engagement and list building all-in-one platform

Social Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfinder/

Twitter: @autoklose

Instagram: @sfinds

Website: www.autoklose.com

B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

673 Years of Sales Excellence
Book: https://autoklose.com/books/salesleaders

Books:
B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

Learn more about ShawnShow less

E175 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. So glad you’re here. Before we dive into this, please make sure to subscribe, rate, review the show, share this with other people you know that helps so much with this podcast with getting the message out there and with helping other salespeople, other businesses, other companies do things in the right way which will then shift that landscape. Now we’re about to kick into part for my conversation with Shawn Finder. If you haven’t three previous parts, now obviously it’s going to be a standalone. We’re going through my questions where I actually asked him and he’s talking about the sales experience and what top reps do and what struggling reps don’t do. And then we also talk about the hiring process, but make sure you listen to those of the three sections cause it’s one continuous conversation, one take as we go through all of this and we had a good time, almost 50 minutes of conversation where at the end and we stopped recording, both of us were like, wow, I couldn’t believe it went by so smooth.

Jason: So hopefully you’re enjoying this. And at the end Shawn will talk about his links and where you can find him and get in touch with him. So here you are part four, enjoy.

Shawn: So if you’re selling to a C level person versus a VP level or versus like a just a regular SDR for example, what’s going to make them tick is all different. So make sure you know their buyers personas. A sale does not stop once you pay, you have to know how to upgrade people down the road because as you add new features you might be adding different revenue streams. And lastly I would say like we talked about dating, ask the right questions and ask enough questions because you want to get to know that person at that company and as a prospect.

Jason: And I love that list, like all six of those things are a home run with that last one that you’re talking about with asking questions, how do you instill that or find that person? Right. This partly goes into one of the other question I would ask, which is recruiting and hiring, but you know, having that curiosity, how do you find that? How do you train that? How do you ensure that you’ve got someone on the team that’s going to do that for you?

Shawn: I always make sure there’s a, you know, here’s a handful of questions. You have to at least get three of these edge and every single call. So there’s five questions that will help you understand more about the person’s business. You know, Oh, are you, what are you currently have in your sales staff? Learn what they have because it also, it’ll lead to conversations where if they say, Oh, well, you know, we’re deciding between HubSpot and Salesforce and if you’re knowledgeable, you can actually come out now in consult and say, Hey, well, you know, I use HubSpot in the past and I liked Salesforce, but these are the differentiator. Now. You’ve also become a market leader and helping them decide on another product and they’re more likely to buy your product.

Jason: Got it. So you serve up a list of questions and say each time, no matter what, ask at least three of these. Get at least three of these answers. And then do you have a quality control and audit process recordings? How do you ensure that it gets done?

Shawn: Everything is recorded and then it’s all saved to our CRM.

Jason: Perfect. Okay. So the second one that I would ask is how did you build this process? Like how did you come about this? I mean obviously I’m going to guess based on your own experience, but how did you create all of this with the team?

Shawn: So, uh, I would say there’s a few things. The first thing is trial and error. What we do is I’m a true believer in testing different things and testing things that you know, your competitors are doing, but testing new things all the time.

Shawn: And then what you do is you eliminate the things that don’t work every quarter and you doubled down on the things that work. So that’s what we’ve tried with, you know, a just doing sales automation and then including calls and then including social. So once you get the process down path that’s working and getting those 16 demos a month, we doubled down on that. Another one. You know, learning that you can’t rely on one channel nowadays 10 years ago, you could now you have to have multiple channels inside of a sequence. Mechan includes social, it can be door to door knocking, mail, phone. You have to have at least two to three channels to be successful. Another one that really helped us build our sales experience and our process was every morning at eight 30 we have a 15 minute huddle with our AEs and every evening at three 45 we have a 15 minute with our SDRs.

Shawn: So that 50 minutes is where we come on, we talk strategy, we talk some answers and kind of build that company so the AEs can hear what the SDRs are asking ya, STR to kind of hear what the AEs are asking. And lastly, every Monday on our Monday morning meeting, every person on my team must try something new. Now that could be anything new. It could be a new message, it could be a new cold top call tactic, it could be anything. But you have to present one new thing. And then if it works, we have other people replicated on the team.

Jason: So what does that, what do you mean? What does that look like? Give me an example.

Shawn: So one thing new might be, you know, for example, here’s what one of my team, they got a list of 15 people with the name Mike. Okay. And they did a video video and they said, hi Mike, I’m calling from ABC. Okay. Knowing that all those 15 people’s names were Mike, it looks like it’s personalized one-on-one who was actually sent to 15 different people with the name Mike in the same industry and it looked more personalized. So you know, somebody like that, that can be very, it can be like that. Or it could be there could be making a cold call saying, you know, Hey Jason, you know, this is a complete, this is completely a cold call, but I just need two minutes of your time. Instead of going into the script, kind of just letting them know this is a cold call. I want two minutes. So just trying different things and they come back and they tell us how that went. So every week they have to introduce one new thing

Jason: And I’ll say in reverse order of as I’m listening and thinking about it, I love that tactic and that’s what I do with teams now and, and really believe in that, which is disclosing right away that this is a cold call. If you’re doing cold calls. I love using that technique and saying, Hey, I know this is a cold call. I know you weren’t expecting it, but if you could just give me 60 seconds, then I just want to ask you a few questions and learn more about your business. And if it’s a good fit, then we can schedule a different time to talk. Otherwise, you know, I’ll let you know and just sets that expectation for you know, what you’re really asking and you know, sure. Give 60 seconds and then that’s it. 100% and then I think it’s fascinating. And the reason why I asked for some examples is because on one side, you know, you’re talking about the system and having a process and a sales process that’s measured.

Jason: And then balancing that with being innovative in the right ways and testing things, which sometimes is a scary balance with salespeople because they think they know a different way to do it or they want to do it a different way. And if they’re always trying new things and it’s not working, how do you know what’s not working? And it’s tough to have predictable results so that you no longer have a system, you just have like a kind of a free for all, uh, experiments going on. And so it’s interesting to hear you say that you encourage that on a regular basis and have them come up with ideas and then test them. And I’m guessing there’s some rules or some requirements as far as the framework within your process.

Shawn: Oh, 100%. So there’s different frameworks inside each process. And obviously, you know, we don’t implement any of the new processes until they’re obviously tried, tested. But it just, I always like, you know, I find that the world is sales always evolving and if you keep doing the same thing all the time, you’re not going to look and explore different things. So it may even be, you know, a new thing might be you know, doing a video on LinkedIn, you just post to going and giving a sales type and seeing a big like just anything different to keep you always thinking and on your feet. I think it really works well because it also helps people kind of, you know, expand and grow as a salesperson.

Jason: Well and I love that so much because in my experience, which you probably have had the same experience in all your years, is that the best salespeople are going to understand your framework. They’re going to understand the rules of the game and then they’re going to always be looking for ways to play the game better no matter what it is. Hopefully ethically and legally and within, you know, again the rules where we’re playing monopoly, but how do I play monopoly better and how do I strategize better? And so they’re doing that anyway. The top people are always doing like your whole example with the video card and the and the mic and making the videos and they seem custom but they’re not at that scale. And so the top reps are doing. And what I love the most about what you’re talking about, which is key for so many companies, is then taking what that one person is trying but sharing that with the group and so that everyone kind of knows it and then everyone can learn. Because what I generally see is the top sales reps are innovative and trying and experimenting, but nobody else knows it unless somebody shares. And then you have this one rep who’s winning but you know, nobody else is doing it that same way. And it could be something that’s awesome for everybody.

Shawn: Yeah. And also, you know, it’s a little bit of fun because everyone in the group, every sales person kind of be like, who’s going to be the most creative this week? And it’s kind of like a fun thing for us on, on Monday meeting.

Jason: So cool. So like on that note, moving forward, like let’s talk about both the top sales reps, the successful ones and the unsuccessful ones. What are the successful sales reps doing, you know that you’ve seen and what are the unsuccessful sales reps not doing or doing?

Shawn: That’s a, a lot of this, we actually touched upon it because some of them you’re not little actually laughed up though. Top salespeople always ask the right questions and build relationships before they prospect. So it was try and build relationships, find something in common, find something they can talk about before they actually go in with a sales pitch. They always use a little bit of humor on our call. Actually our top sales guy, and we’ll tell you what he says, if he has a prospect that’s very close to closing on the call or the demo, he’ll at the end be like, okay, so a, should we call Rhonda and accounting and get this deal signed? And I’m not even telling you. Everybody laughs it call Rhonda and accounting. It’s just a funny thing could run into sounds like an account things name and every time, and I’ll tell you that the close rate on that is about 90% once he says, so what do you think? Should we call, call Rhonda and accounting and uh, and get this PandaDoc’s signed 80% of the to go like, yeah, we’re going to call Rhonda right now. And they laugh and they do it. They do it.

Jason: I love it. I absolutely love it.

Shawn: And the last one, we, I would say know the competitors and know the space. So I’m one of those people that I never put down my competitors and I teach people not to put down your competitors because sitting your competitors, there’s enough business in the world for everybody. And I think, you know, competitors might do things well, but you’ve got to find what you do better and what feature you might have better. So I think good sales people don’t have to put down their competitors were unsuccessful. Sales reps say, Oh well that company’s terrible, et cetera, and you shouldn’t use them. So that’s why I think I would say the four things that top sales people do and make them successful.

Jason: And I’m so glad you brought up that about competition because I’ve seen that same thing where you know from an abundance standpoint you can talk about how great you are to solve that prospect’s problem. If you truly can, like if it’s a good fit. Like you said, not everyone is a good fit for everybody, but if it is truly a good fit, there’s no reason to make your sale at the detriment of some other business, you know, and putting them down versus you just know you have superior product 100% then the last one here, and I kind of asked it and I want to go more into it real quick, is when hiring salespeople, what had tributes are you looking for? With the standard caveat that we’ve all probably learned, which is salespeople, good ones are going to be selling you on the interview. And so you can’t always trust everything they’re going to tell you depending on how good they are in sales.

Shawn: Yeah, so here’s the four things that I look at. Some people always ask why, but these are my four that I look on the resume. And then I look in the interview one. Have they played a competitive sport before? Has he or she been involved in a sport and even just as a, you know, in high school, university, anything? Have they played a sport? Two, are they outgoing, extrovert, personality three I like to kind of like, like money hungry, like you know, sales skill, you want to make more money. So they go to themselves, they’re not that type of salesperson that, okay, I want to hit my quota, then I’ll slow down because I’ve made my number and I’m going to have secure in my job. Any sales person that’s really successful always want to make more money. And the last one is, I actually look to see if they’ve ever worked at a bank.

Jason: Okay. Explain that one.

Shawn: Because banks, every bank that ever hired anybody for anything, they have a very, probably the best training that you can do. So if you’re gonna work at a bank, as a teller or a teller or doing calling for a bank, they’re going to teach you how to get on the phone and call. So when you get somebody that’s worked at a bank, you already have someone that had been trained on your, on someone else’s dollar. So your training will be a lot less than with if someone that did not work with me. I find the banks train the best people and that’s why I always actually look on resumes to see if people have any experience working in a bank.

Jason: It’s so interesting. I’ve never heard of that felt. I’ve heard of the sports one. I’ve heard of people, you know, especially someone who comes from, let’s say like a background like yours where somebody has experience in sports, they understand the team, the competition, the drive, the effort, the sweat, the blood, the tears, like the nonstop relentlessness. Like I understand that and I’ve seen that so many times before. But the bank one is fascinating and makes total sense.

Shawn: Banks spend so much money and time on training and they give you books and books. You have three months of training before you’re doing anything and if you’re on the calls, you’re making so many cold calls and practicing so much before you actually start the call. That ideally I always say let’s, I love somebody that’s worked in the bank because now my cost for training is one third. The cost would be if I had someone that never had any training.

Jason: I love it. Well thank you for all that info and hopefully that helps. Some people listening to this, especially either they’re trying to get a job. So if you’ve been in sales and you worked at a bank and especially if you’re in the Toronto area, reach out to Shawn for sure. And on that note, Shawn, so where would be a good place? I’ll put all these notes, all these links in the show notes, but people listening, where’s a good place for people to find you? Find your business, you know all of that where, where’s the good place?

Shawn: So if you want to reach out to me, you can email me at this shawn@autoklose.com LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn. I’ll put a lot of content out there. I’m always on LinkedIn and obviously if you want to learn more about our product autoklose www.autoklose.com that’s autoclose with a K and uh. That should be good enough to start to get in touch with me.

Jason: Yeah, if that doesn’t work, they’re not trying hard enough cause you’re, you’re all over the place and I love it and the stuff on LinkedIn is great and Shawn, thank you again for being here and talking about sales and relationship and all of these things that I appreciate very much and thank you.

Shawn: That was a lot of fun. Jason, thanks for having me.

Jason: Alright, and for everyone else listening, if you want to catch the transcript for this, and also all of Shawn’s links go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the podcast episode on there. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E174] Doing Sales Automation Right with Shawn Finder – Part 3 of 4

Jason Cutter — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the third segment of the conversation I had with Shawn.

In Part 3, Shawn and I talk about:

Once again, talking about how sales is like dating/courtship
Success comes when you listen more than you speak
Using rapport in the right way
Knowing your prospect’s industry before you make that call

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn

Shawn’s Bio:

Social Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfinder/

Twitter: @autoklose

Instagram: @sfinds

Website: www.autoklose.com

B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

673 Years of Sales Excellence
Book: https://autoklose.com/books/salesleaders

Books:
B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

Learn more about ShawnShow less

E174 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason cutter. Thank you for being here. So glad that you’re catching this. This is going to be part three of my conversation with Shawn Finder. If you haven’t made sure to listen to part one and part two cause we’re just going to continue on where we left off in yesterday’s episode and here you go. Let’s get right in.

Shawn: I call those little types of clients that will email, you know, CEOs or companies and tell them how they should prioritize their features for their product and what your roadmap should be. They’re kind of the clients that you, you know, I, as I tell people, not every client is good for every business and you know, I’m one of those guys that if I find a client that will be more of a headache to our organization, then will help us or help them. There’s nothing wrong with saying no to a client and denying clients

Jason: either your product or your service. And you know, I use the correlation with relationships a lot in dating. I mean, you know, if your having to beg somebody else to go on a date with you or be in a relationship, it will always be that way. You’re always going to have to justify and sell yourself to that other person. They’re going to feel like they’re in control and you’re going to have to play by their rules. And I see a lot of people in relationships that get into that because there you might be desperate or they think that’s the way it should be. And then in sales, see a lot of salespeople do that, especially with the pressure of end of quarter or end of the pay period and they think they got to get deals done so they’ve got to give it away and you know, Hey, if I can get you a better deal, is this something you’d want to do today where sometimes you have to give some deals. You know there’s, you know, you’ve got to make some allowances ensuring that that prospect is fully onboard and you know, they really wanted, but maybe there was a budgetary issue if you’re even willing to do that. And it’s funny,

Shawn: set an example because one of the examples I always tell salespeople, I say if you’re going to go on a date and you talk 90% you’re sitting up for dinner and you’ve talked 90% of the time at that dinner date, what’s going to happen? You’re probably not going to get a second day. And I go to the same thing as calling a salesperson. If you’re not, if you’re speaking 90% of the phone, you’re probably not going to have that prospect. So obviously you want to make sure that you have that correlation because dating is just like, you know, there’s kind of just like selling.

Jason: It’s all relationships. Everything in life is sales, which I say at the end of every episode that I do. And I think what’s interesting too about that date point and talking 90% is also if you start out the conversation, you sit down with your date and then you spend five minutes of a monologue talking about how great you are and the awards you’ve won and how much money you make and how great you, you know your business is. And your life that will not work. And if it does work, you’re going to be with the wrong person who’s just going to want you for those things and it’s going to probably not be a great relationship. And I see so many salespeople do that where they start out with the, you know, self-promoting monologue about how great they are and forget that the other person literally doesn’t care the 100% they don’t care. They absolutely don’t care about you and your awards and your company and how well you’re ranked and this or that. Like they don’t care. They just want to know how you can help them. Completely agree. Especially if you’re reaching out to them cold then they really want to know.

Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. It won’t work. Well if all you do is talk about yourself

Jason: now on that note here, because I’ve talked to several, you know, people in, in industries kind of like yourself or their running teams, how prepared do you feel the SDR should be in advance of actually having that conversation with that potential prospect?

Shawn: Oh, I think SDRs don’t do enough due diligence before they got on the call. You know, one thing I remember back in the day when I used to do uh, when I had a sales job, probably about seven, eight years ago now, what I used to do, it was always I, you know, I’m a big sports guy, so I would actually look on, you know, Monday night football, say Minnesota is playing Seattle. I’d actually go and start targeting PF Seattle, won that game. I would target Seattle people and actually go after only people in Seattle and say, Hey, what a great game over the Vikings last night. And Hey, no, 90% of people in well in the U S especially are very passionate about NFL. They’re for, you know, male and female. Everyone likes their football, they like their college football. So I always used to bring sports into it, but you can’t just go in, you know, empty handed.

Shawn: I always tell SDRs like, no one or two things. Like, you know, if somebody reached out to me today and said, Oh, hi Shawn, I want to, uh, I want to have a call with you, discussed my product, my product does this, this, this. But if they reached out and said, Hey Shawn, you know, I love that you played tennis and I used to play tennis tracks, used to coach it for a week. I love to introduce you to my product or showing my product or service. I’m way more willing to answer number two, the nose that I used to play professional tennis than somebody that just went out and tried to give the sale right away.

Jason: Sure. Like a little bit of research, a little bit of saying, and that’s funny about the sports example because I know especially from living in Seattle for nine years and how dead, and this was not, this was when the Seahawks were not good. They were working on being good, but they weren’t. So they were traditionally just not a good team. But the loyal base there just loved it. And it was interesting to watch the ebb and flow of the morale of the whole region relative to how the team did after a game. Right? Monday after the weekend, if the team won, you’re going to get great results out of your team, out of your people. Everyone was happy, everyone was on fire. If it was a bad game, if they lost, especially if it was a heartbreak, just discount Monday cause everyone’s going to be in a bad.

Shawn: Yeah. Yeah. I remember we did a campaign, it worked out well for some people, but when it was the Chicago bears kicker, I think he missed three field goal kicks in the same game and we started reaching out saying, you know, perky missed, but we can like something like that. And it was like, you know, we had a lot of people that were really passionate and were like, you know, you’re making a lot of people actually when you gave them so that at the end of the day you want the engagement, you know, good guy. But yeah, no, I always use sports and funding if I didn’t even realize that Seattle actually just played Minnesota. I just mentioned to you that you just played on Monday night. That was really funny.

Jason: Oh, that’s awesome. But the other part too though, and this is where I wonder where you stand, is how educated about the prospect in their business do you think the SDR should be as well? You know there’s the personal side like you said, which I think is a huge part to breaking down that barrier, that first instant wall and getting your foot enough in the door to have a conversation, but then understanding enough about the business. Because again, like I think that person who you said, if they reached out to you and they said, Hey, I used to coach tennis and this and then say, Hey, I’ve got this solution for you. When you get on the phone with person, how much discovery do you want them to do with their questions of you in the process versus how much should they already know in this day and age and not waste your time with, you know, questions they could have answered.

Shawn: That’s a great question. So you know, here’s something that I know that over the last few years I’ve, you know, tried to a teach people is let’s just use for example, a data company. Let’s just use a company that sells data. Now if I was going to sell the data, you can just call and say, Hey, we have a bunch of data we would like to sell to you. Or if you called me, it’s called somebody that was, for example, in the transportation industry and say, Hey, I have a lot of logistics contacts. So you say words that logistics for them. Or if you say to a CTO, it contacts, I think it all, you have to know a little bit about who that target market is. And you can pretty much do that in, you know, check their website, do a little bit of due diligence in 30 seconds and find out, find out who their competitors are mentioned that know if you work with one of the competitors. So I think you need to spend a little bit of time, not too much time could you still want to be able to prospect enough people, but you need to spend a few minutes before each call just to get to know a little bit about the person as well as the company to really try and get the best results from that prospect.

Jason: Now with you in a, let’s say in a self promotional way for auto close, do you guys with the technology and with what you found works well, do you serve that up to SDRs in the right way? That’s fast. And here’s why I ask this question because what I’ve seen the trend with both SDRs and with AEs at times with with closers is they want to go into that call prepared and then they spend too much time preparing. And like we talked about earlier on in our conversation, there’s the hesitation to making those phone calls and they’re basically in analysis paralysis where they want to know so much to call somebody who may not even answer. So you know, how do you serve that up? Or how do you limit your people to like, okay, I want you to know this, this and this, and then make the call.

Shawn: Well, so depending if you’re gonna, you’re gonna be very nearshore. For example, let’s just use this for example. Then let’s say for example, I was giving my ass you and say, you guys, I want you to go after this. Let’s see transportation. Okay? In that messaging where you might do that first three seconds and you want to pitch, you know, transportation companies, you know, I know for example, they work with manufacturing companies and manufacturing companies have skids that go on trucks and there’s full truck load versus no less than a truckload. So you’ve got to know that information and you put that in those key words in your message. So if I was going to reach out to transportation, I always teach even a any sales engagement tool, it could be ours or another one. You want to have something that they can relate to.

Shawn: Cause if I start saying LTD and you know, full truck load and you know, manufacturing companies, cause I know that’s a target market of a lot or transportation because they’re, you know, wholesale or distributing a product or service to other companies. So I think you have to know a little bit and put that in your messaging or else it’s just going to sound too generic. And if they’re going to get 50 messages a day, but yours is the one that says the keywords are going to make them tick, you’re more likely to get that reply.

Jason: Got it. Well and, and I think that’s an important part is especially if you can segment your efforts by industry so you know enough about the industry in general and then you can add a little bit without having to overly research, right? Because again, that’s where I see SDRs and AEs have with as they researched that say they do 10 15 minutes of background checking and compiling and they get themselves already for their strategy session, their phone call and then sometimes just literally leave a message which then now they’ve got to repeat the process again.

Shawn: Yeah and I mean, you know, nowadays, I mean there’s companies out there and there’s so much content going out that a lot of these companies you know comprised you kind of like snapshots in the morning. Like for example, if you see an email come in and say, you know, Apple merges with Samsung and you know, they’re in the teleco, you know, in the telecom space or et cetera, you know, you could use that to your advantage in your messaging. So always be looking for, you know, acquisitions and mergers in the space or you know, some of their competitors and what they’re doing. Cause any of those little things that you can mention that they’re familiar with will help them actually reply to your sequence or your email

Jason: for sure. Okay. So I am going to try something. I haven’t always been successful here on season two with the podcast, which is to go through the questions which I had sent to you in advance. So I want to go through it because I’m really fascinated about your perspective since you’ve done sales for so long and then built your organization. So the first one here is in your opinion like what does a great sales experience look like?

Shawn: So I would say a great sales experience at my company would look mean. And knowing these six things a, a sales person could identify the goals, you know, to make sure that a salesperson understands that sales is a process. I would say that it’s important for salespeople to be able to measure every step of the sales process. That is from start to finish. Also, number four would be understanding buyer’s personas. So if you’re selling to a C level person versus VP level versus like a, just a regular SDR for example, what’s going to make them tick is all different. So make sure you know their buyers personas. You know a sale does not stop once you pay. You have to know how to upgrade people down the road. Cause as you add new features, you might be adding different revenue streams. And lastly, I would say like we talked about dating, ask the right questions and ask enough questions because you want to get to know that person at that company and I as a prospect. All right,

Jason: That’s it. Another part of my conversation with Shawn makes sure to go to my website, cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the episode transcripts, show notes, his links, the other episodes on there as well as many other topics and things that might be of interest to you. Subscribe, rate, review the show anywhere that you can. It helps other people identify this as a great tool to help them in their sales career. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

[E173] Doing Sales Automation Right with Shawn Finder – Part 2 of 4

Jason Cutter — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 05:15:00 +0000

This is the second segment of the conversation I had with Shawn.

In Part 2, Shawn and I talk about:

Working on your presentation skills
Different types of learners…make sure you build your process to sell to each!
Pro Tip: Spend time/effort creating better-looking sales demos
More leads don’t always equal more sales
When you think price is the issue (but it isn’t)

Download The Power of Authentic Persuasion ebook

Enroll in the Authentic Persuasion Online Course

Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn

Shawn’s Bio:

Social Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfinder/

Twitter: @autoklose

Instagram: @sfinds

Website: www.autoklose.com

B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

673 Years of Sales Excellence
Book: https://autoklose.com/books/salesleaders

Books:
B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales

Learn more about ShawnShow less

E173 – Transcript

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. You are about to enjoy part two of my conversation with Shawn Finder from autoklose. Now if you didn’t check it out, make sure to listen to yesterday’s episode, part one where we start the conversation talking about SDRs, BDRs like that outreach automation, that balance between automation and relationship and personal touches. In this one here we continue this conversation and talk more about that. The engagement with that looks like the right process, the numbers and we’d go into a lot of detail but here you go. Here is part two.

Shawn: So what we did was we actually kept track of how long their calls were, listen to the recordings after he gave them tips. But we’ll also do just random, we’ll just come up with a random thing once a week for three weeks and every week you’d have to do it. And it was like just a random activity we’d come up with has nothing to do with our product or service, but just to get them used to a getting rejected on the phone cause we want them to get rejected enough. They realize not everyone you’re going to call is going to say yes I want to buy your product or service.

Jason: Yeah. Well and that’s where I think, you know, one of the biggest things that I suggest to every single salesperson is groups like Toastmasters where you’re just going and practicing public speaking and being comfortable talking to people. Networking events are great where literally, you know, you get over that fear of just meeting people, talking to people, just understand, just have a conversation with no agenda and then you can apply those skills to, you know, whatever it is that you’re selling.

Shawn: 100% I completely agree.

Jason: So you’ve got this, you got the people making the phone calls, doing the outreach, you have the automation and so what kind of success rate do you have with that? What are you looking at? You know, one of the other comments you have made online or another podcast is talking about, you know, the win rate and what’s acceptable and you know, I kind of want to talk about where, you know, I hear this a lot where companies are excited because their win rate, their sale rate, their close rate is they’re like, Hey, it’s 10% it’s 15% we’re excited. This is great. Yet you kind of have a different approach on that.

Shawn: Yeah. So you know, funny enough, something we actually changed recently, but our win rate, if you can build that relationship with people but also kind of be a little bit witty on the phone and have a little bit of a personality and relate to them, you know, close rate depends on that. I find if I’m a two account managers or account executives beside each other and one of them that, you know, spends the first, even two, three minutes trying to, you know, how’s the weather, we don’t talk about sports, talk about something to get that, that really helps with the win rate. But funny enough, and this is completely something happened a week ago is designed, you know, you, you wouldn’t believe that if you have something like this, a little black and white and you add a little bit designed stuff, even when you are doing a demo of your product, it can really, really help your wing rate. Um, people like our visual learners like to see visual things. So if you do have even a website, anything like that, if you want to really close with or do a PowerPoint presentation, one thing I’ve learned is focus a lot on the design when I used to not focus on the design because it can really help that win rate.

Jason: And so what do you mean? You’re talking about if you’re doing a demo, a screenshare, something like that. Like how the presentation looks. Just not, not just the content.

Shawn: It could be the presentation. For example, if you’re doing a demo of your SAS product, I’m talking about even your user UX UI inside your SAS product is extremely important. I was speaking to somebody the other day and they had about a 20% close rate on top of what they were doing before by just changing how their user interface looks inside the software. So I think near the digital design, not only inside the software but also in your presentations and not doing too much text, but doing more visual stuff can really help with that win rate.

Jason: Well, and, and it’s interesting when you talk about that because the very first thing that pops into my mind is Apple products. And let’s say I iPhones, I mean I obviously hardcore iPhone users will think that iPhones are the best, but from a technical standpoint, they’re not always the best. They have issues. Battery life isn’t great, but one thing is that interface and the usability in the simple and it’s beautiful and the products are very like experientially great, which then makes people want to use them and loyal to them.

Shawn: I think it’s, it’s, you just touched on an exact, it’s the user interface of an Apple product. Obviously their branding really helps them. Yes. You know, if you have something that’s visually appealing or you have something that’s black and white, it might be a little bit better. You’re still going to take the visual appealing one because a, you know, people want to see you with that iPhone and, and all the tools and all the apps inside are colorful. So I think they’ve done a really good job with their user interface. But I will agree with you that their battery is not, it’s not that good as my phone dies about twice a day.

Jason: Well, and I am a non iPhone user, typically Android, but everybody around me who has iPhones that are constantly dying or needed to be plugged in. So I totally get that. And it’s interesting because I don’t talk about this a lot on my podcast because I focus more on the sales process and let’s say talking, uh, you know, asking questions and discovery and then solving problems. But this is an interesting point that you bring up, which makes me think about, and the focus which is on that experiential side, especially because now in this day and age, everything is tending more online, more, you know, instant, more easy. And then I think where things are going also though as people just crave the experience and so you know, how’s it look, how’s it feel? What are all their senses that are triggering it? Even if like literally we’re talking about a SAS, you know, a SAS product, a B to B like okay, well you wouldn’t think that matters too much. But you know, if you’re in that business and you’re selling it, how people experience what you have is just as important as technically what it does.

Shawn: 100% you know, there’s one thing I learned like a few years ago, even just the colors you choose on your brand, on your logo, on your website. I mean it was funny and I looked at it and it’s like if you look at Muslim of the most successful companies in the world, they always use blue. Like they always have the color blue. And if you look into it and you know there’s been studies done that the color, you know, kind of has some meaning behind why these big companies choose, for example, the color blue. So I think design is very important, but just having something that’s visually appealing cause everyone wants people to look at something and think, Oh that looks good. Oh that looks good. And then they kind of start looking at the functionalities work. Ideally in the real world it should be, you should be looking at the functionalities in saying, okay, I don’t care if it’s black and white, but that’s not how sales people are business. People think, yeah, yeah. Then you know,

Jason: the functionality is separate, but they want something that’s appealing. So that’s fascinating how much of a difference that can make me. My brain generally goes more towards function and usability as far as, you know, as a user on my end, as well as like a salesperson. So not necessarily the aesthetic side. So that’s a really good reminder. I know for me to obviously make sure it’s also visually appealing.

Shawn: Right? Yeah. No, I’m, I’m one of those guys. I like something that’s very user friendly. Yeah. If it’s black and white, but it does the job like you know, it’s like kind of thing. Like I say with her and it’s like it gets you from A to B. It doesn’t matter how it looks as long as it gets you to a to B. So I’m, I’m kinda one of those people that like, like things simple and user friendly. And then obviously the, the visual and design is obviously not on.

Jason: So where do you think, going back to the win rate, where like a good win rate should be? Like if somebody, you know, let’s say B2B SAS, like using an SDR type model, when then you have a closer, like what is that win rate? What should the closers be closing at?

Shawn: That’s a great question. So right now, and we’re testing that out. I’m looking at, you know, each of our SDRs, we’re hoping that every week they can bring four qualified leads to my AE because what we find is, you know, our age dependent, obviously it’s product dependent. I mean, if you have a, if you’re selling, you know, Salesforce and the client’s already looking for a CRM, it’s a lot easier than somebody you know, from a cold prospect. But I would say for demos, which you’re looking at 16 qualified leads for my AEs a month. And then you know, from what we see, we have anywhere between, you know, 30 to 50% but actually closed. And that’s, you know, that all comes down to, like we said, you know, is it user friendly and all that other stuff with the product. But I would say, you know, 16 leads per SDR a month, and then you’re looking about 30 to 40% closer by the eighties after that.

Jason: And I think those numbers are really important. Especially like you said, it’s all relative, right? Whether you’re selling apples and you weren’t talking about phones, I’m guessing you’re talking about fruit, uh, but you know, selling apples to SAS, software to marketing, to consulting, like whatever it is, is have those specific numbers and what’s the right volume, which then kicks out the correct quality to your salespeople. Now you never want to tighten it up so much where it’s 100% close where you know you’re only going to talk to people who are absolutely ready because then that means you’re just order taking and you’ve set this up where you know you’re not actually doing some sales stuff and moving things wrong or your pricing is wrong where it’s too low. And it’s funny though on that note, it’s interesting because I’ve had that debate with salespeople before where they said, well, the pricing is too high and if it was lower I could sell more.

Jason: And so a couple of times I have actually with the approval of ownership changed the pricing for a short period of time. And I said, okay, you think pricing’s the issue, you think that’s what the issue is? Okay for this week, here’s what the price is. So normally it’s this much, now it’s going to be this much, now go now sell lots. And then what’s fascinating is when the price is too low, it seems too good to be true. And then you have, in my experience, a closing rates because now people don’t believe there’s actual value in it.

Shawn: Yeah. And you know, talk to me about that. In general, I would say I learned that early on as well. If you price too low, you know, how do I determine pricing? I say what I price is too low and I have people telling me I’m too cheap. I know I have to raise the prices, but when I raise the prices and somebody goes, you’re too expensive. I know my price is maybe a little too expensive. So you wanna try and find that sweet spot. But also, you know, to your point, I found that if you are too low, you actually might be attracting the wrong clients, the clients that you don’t even want for your business. Those are the kind of clients that will go into your support and you know, literally drive them nuts. And then, you know, after a month, signing a one year contract, after a month, if they don’t get a return on their investment, they’re gonna ask for a refund. So I find you got to make sure that your pricing is determined by when you have a client that says you’re not too cheap but you’re not too expensive and then you kind of know where you should be. But as I said, I learned the lesson when we started out by pricing out too low and getting the, getting the clients I don’t want, you know, using our product.

Jason: And that’s a great reminder for anyone listening. Sales managers when talking about lowering priced in order to close a deal and the point at which you should lower it and how much you should lower it. A lot of salespeople just to get the sale, will want to give a deal, want to lower price, want to offer end of month, end of quarter, end of year special deals. Like get people in the boat, you know, meet those quotas, meet those numbers. And for me, based on my experience and just looking at it psychologically, I am fairly against those kinds of incentives because then it does what you’re talking about, which is attracts the wrong people. They weren’t, weren’t willing to buy when they first saw your product or service and now that there’s a deal, they’re willing to give it a shot, but essentially you’ve begged them for the business and they now own you because they’re doing you a favor and then they’re just going to be a pain in your butt. They’re probably going to be a very difficult.

Shawn: I call those little types of clients that will email, you know, CEOs or companies and tell them how they should prioritize their features for their product and what your roadmap should be. They’re kind of the clients that you, you know, I tell people not every client is good for every business and you know, I’m one of those guys that if I find a client that will be more of a headache to our organization, then will help us or help them. There’s nothing wrong with saying no to a client and denying client either your product or your.

Jason: Alright. That concludes part two of my conversation with Shawn Finder. Again, go to the cutterconsultinggroup.com website. You can find the transcript, the show notes, his links, this episode, lots of other episodes and information on there. And thank you so much for listening. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. Wherever you’re downloading these shows from as well as rate and review and more than anything too, and I don’t ask this enough, share this with anybody you know that’s in sales now, whether they’re B2B, SAS and kind of the realm that Sean is in and what he focuses on business to consumer. It could be face to face, it could be over the phone, the internet could be in a retail store, wherever it is. Anybody that’s in sales, sales managers, owners of a business thinking, getting into sales, share this podcast with them. Help me spread the message and the focus and goal of helping people shift the way sales is done so that we can create a sales profession as a thing that people are proud to call themselves instead of being worried or embarrassed or concerned that it’s looked down upon. So that’s it for this episode. As always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.