Whether you love the sales process or feel overwhelmed just thinking about it, having strong sales is critical for any business to be successful. To help boost your sales game, I asked my client and sales expert Victor Adefuye to join the show and share what really makes someone good at sales, how sales and marketing play a role in your business, the power of LinkedIn to help close the deal, how to leverage your current connections for referrals, and how LinkedIN can play a role in your entire sales and marketing strategy!

In this podcast episode, we share: 

• Victor’s journey from being a lawyer to a sales consultant for entrepreneurs 
• What makes someone good at sales
• The relationship of sales and marketing 
• Advice for using LinkedIn to improve your sales and marketing 
• The value of referrals and how to ask for targeted referrals from satisfied clients 
• Suggestions for early-stage entrepreneurs to use networking for learning vs. pitching
• How thought leadership helps with the sales process 

Memorable Quotes: 

• “Sales is scary but it’s also critical to entrepreneurship and building any business.”
• “The best thing you can do to be an effective salesperson is to be an effective listener.”
• “It’s important to have a good [LinkedIn] profile that accurately communicates the value you can deliver.” 
• “...It’s much more targeted and much more effective than asking for an open-ended referral.”
• “LinkedIn is part of the entire strategy.”
• “If you don’t have customers, your obsession should be ‘I need to learn as much as I can about the market’.”
• “The mindset shift of ‘I’m not selling, I’m listening’ is so valuable no matter where you are in the process.” 

Meet Victor Adefuye: Victor is a creative and entrepreneurial sales professional with a passion for tackling big challenges.  He founded Dana after seeing too many startups make the same mistakes around sales planning, hiring and management. Victor began his career as an attorney, where he developed his communication and presentation skills.  He then leveraged these abilities in his first sales role at Northwestern Mutual, where he was recognized as one of the top young producers in the company. Subsequently, Victor joined the entrepreneurial world, serving as Co-Founder & President of WellnessRebates, VP of Business Development at Apex Leaders LLC, and as a sales consultant to various B2B startups.  He is a graduate of Duke University and The George Washington University Law School.

Connect with Victor:

http://winningbydesign.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoradefuye/

Links Mentioned:

https://onlinedrea.com/linkedin

• Social Report: The world’s most complete social media management platform and my social media management tool of choice.
• Savvy Social School: Everything you need to increase visibility, growth, and engagement on social media