Scaling a Small Manufacturing Company

Mastermind Group Incredible Asks Jeb Blount Their Toughest Sales Questions In this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Mastermind Group Incredible asks Jeb Blount their real-life questions as he provides solutions to overcome their toughest sales challenges. Some of their questions include: standing out in a final round interview process, targeting and selling into larger accounts, losing to a competitor, and ways to contact hard-to-reach stakeholders on LinkedIn. Whether you're a solopreneur, small business owner, sales professional, you'll take away powerful strategies to advance your career, grow your business, or land your dream account. Small companies lose customers because they take them for granted and don't address their concerns. To win big deals, put a wedge between the incumbent vendor and the customer and look for issues that can be addressed. Personalized service and attention are selling points for small companies managing accounts with larger competitors. The hardest thing to do when scaling a business is moving from where you are to the next place. To get big accounts, create a list of 10-25 dream accounts and target them specifically. When using LinkedIn, sending a voice message or using Vidyard for video messages can be effective. Layering on other parts of a messaging sequence, such as phone calls or handwritten notes, can increase effectiveness. Chat GPT can be a useful tool for writing proposals and creating sales messages, but it can also degrade the quality of written communication if used lazily. Q: How Do I Stand Out In The Final Round Of The Interview Process? To leave a lasting impression during a presentation in your final round of interviews, use a strategic approach. A useful tactic is to speak last, also known as the availability bias. In a final presentation interview, demonstrating ROI is crucial, especially in today's economy. Use a business case to showcase the value you bring. Start by discussing what you discovered during the discovery phase, the problems you faced, and the future state after your program is implemented. Highlight values that are important to individual stakeholders, like personal outcomes and emotional outcomes such as peace of mind and trust in the vendor. Be sure to make your case using business language, not just marketing brochures, and support it with math. To provide a value framework, follow these steps: articulate the problem you discovered, make a recommendation to solve it, and describe the outcomes your recommendation will generate in terms of measurable business outcomes, personal outcomes, and emotional outcomes. Use the audience's language and be specific. By following this structure, you'll help the audience absorb information more effectively. Q: How Do I start Targeting Larger Accounts? Scaling up into larger businesses can be overwhelming, but the first step is to take action. While hitting singles may be easier, it's important to pursue bigger opportunities to gain experience selling larger deals. However, it's also important to not overlook the value of smaller deals and to have a consistent pipeline of singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. This helps de-risk your pipeline and income while providing opportunities for growth and a bigger income. To reduce risk in your pipeline, it's crucial to have strong qualifying mechanisms and a solid understanding of a potential client's fit with your company. Identifying decision-making roles and stakeholders is also essential. When pursuing a deal, it's important to build an unassailable business case for why your company is the right choice. This involves mapping out every detail and identifying potential challenges and solutions. Finally, use murder boarding to identify potential obstacles and develop strategies to overcome them. By the time of the final presentation, you should feel confident that the client has already made the decision to do busin...