The Importance of Ongoing Training and Professional Development for Salespeople

Are your salespeople trained to tell relevant stories and sell in the appointment? Do they know how to catch a prospect's attention fast? Using sales scripts is a great way to keep your message focused and concise. To get the best results, your sales reps should be armed with a bulletproof script and serious training to overcome sales objections. Today's guest shares his experience and expertise in creating a big sales team that is constantly growing and improving through continuous training. Tune in to gain valuable insights on scaling your agency, building a winning sales script, and how to support ongoing professional development.

Scott Scully is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a b2b lead generation and business growth agency that offers multi-channel marketing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. In his 28 years in the business, Scott’s main focus has been in the marketing and lead gen space with three companies that all exceed $12 million in revenue.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Building a winning sales script.
• Handling outreach by creating exclusivity.
• Gamifying growth.

 

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E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Podcast Takeover!!

Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason’s podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he’s helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show.

 

Handling Outreach by Building an Exclusivity Perspective

Scott has owned three successful marketing companies always aiming to help businesses grow. His current brainchild, Abstrakt Marketing, scaled 20% annually over 12 years, crossing $50M in 2021 revenue.

His team builds predictable sales pipelines - website design, content creation, social media, and extensive email and phone outreach. They make hundreds of calls daily, qualifying and scheduling initial consultations.

But outreach takes shape through their sales enablement blueprint. First comes research and list cleansing to identify ideal prospects. Another key element is that the client has their target defined. Scott is a huge believer in having a defined niche. This way, his team can come with expertise in that particular niche. Working from an exclusivity perspective helps his team build up in terms of why they're calling them, who they are, and why potential clients need to meet with them.

Building a Winning Agency Sales Script

Scott knows cold calls aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, so he crafted a blueprint to catch attention fast. To build a solid script, he focused on getting people’s attention, exclusivity, scarcity, and then selling the appointment.

First of all, Scott recommends letting clients know you’ll be brief and go straight to the point. That’s huge because it shows you value their time and acknowledge the call is an interruption. Next, state the reason for your call and introduce your company. Take this as an opportunity to differentiate yourself. “If I'm a managed service provider, there are a lot of managed service providers these days. So why are you different?” Scott explains. This is where specialization becomes very important. If you’re able to differentiate yourself as a managed service provider who happens to specialize in their particular industry, now you have their attention.

Also, you can get ahead through influencer social proof. "We're tightly networked with industry leaders nationally - we understand your daily challenges and can plug you into best practices." This insider credibility will make you irresistible.

Why You Should Never Lose Sight of Your Goals to Sell the Appointment

Once you have your script and can differentiate yourself, the most important thing is to not forget your goal of selling the appointment. For Scott, the worst-case scenario is when the call is handled by a sales enablement person who lacks a clear understanding of the ins and outs of the sales presentation itself. In those cases, they may fall into mini-pitching. As a result, the prospect could make the decision to not show up based on that call.

Overeager reps also risk sharing too much about what comes next. In those cases, once the time for the appointment comes, a prospect may feel they’ve already talked about some of those things and you may not have their full attention and participation. This is why he insists on the importance of selling the appointment. As long as you overcome the objections and answer why that meeting is important, you’ll be good for the next round.

Exclusivity also raises the stakes. His agency only works with one company in a particular area and niche. It’s not about making threats to go to the competition but rather presenting a unique offer to get that opportunity for a meeting. "We only partner with one roofing contractor per region" conveys privileged access, not threats. By presenting engagement as a unique opportunity, they compel action.

Data-Driven Prospecting: Separating Needles from the Haystack

With hundreds of daily calls, how do they qualify these prospects? First of all, Scott credits their unbelievable database. Of course, there’s no such thing as perfect data so outreach provides invaluable validation to determine whether or not to put them on the phone with a sales rep.

If they’re coming into a particular market, their data would've already given them an idea of who usually picks up the phone, who responds to emails, and who they interact with on social.

They also try to be as smart as they can about who in the organization they’re trying to contact. When sending emails, they’re already hitting multiple people within an organization because the decision-making process isn't always the same. When it comes to making phone outreach, they’ll run tracks on different titles until they determine who makes the decision. Finally, they’ll get the particular client qualifiers so they can meet their expectations.

Gamifying Growth for Ongoing Development

There’s a low barrier to entry for becoming a salesperson. However, in order to actually be good at it there are usually many rounds of training. Scott's two-week boot camp immerses new hires in Salesforce, processes, and company ethos. Towards the end, they’ll have specific training around the industries that they're going to serve and the clients they’ll be picking up.

It’s a very complete process. However, Scott is a big believer in ongoing training so professional development is mandatory for an hour weekly. There are many options available and different tracks they can follow around their training. Each employee will accumulate points for their training, which will eventually lead to them earning a “belt” a sort of martial arts gamified acknowledgment to elevate employees who are getting ahead on their training, with the ultimate goal being to become a black belt.

Ultimately, Scott makes sure there are options for them in terms of growing their careers within the agency. Because of that, a lot of them are pretty hungry and self-motivated to go get the training.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners who can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.