The Sales Evangelist

Should I Start Off With Inside Sales or Outside Sales? Are you new to sales and asking yourself the universal sales question, “Should I start off with inside sales or outside sales?” Many share the same thought and I have five things to help you figure out a better way to go.   Inside sales vs outside sales  Every company is different, however, inside roles typically have the SDR (sales development rep) or the BDR (business development rep). Depending on the company, these may be different roles done by different individuals.  The business development reps may be the ones finding new prospects for the business. For some companies, the sales development reps are focused on the inbounds. When the sales come in through marketing or via the website, the sales development reps will get more information making them the first line of contact with the SDRs.They talk to potential clients, qualify them, and set them up for appointments.  An inside sales rep who’s also doing outbound tasks has a lot of work. The upside to outbound sales is getting a bigger commission than the person who’s doing solely inbound tasks.  The business development reps need to qualify people, follow up, and make sure that they know their company’s products and services to have meaningful conversations with potential customers.  For other companies, this doesn’t matter.  If you’re on inbound sales then your job is to generate opportunity whether it’d be through cold calling or setting up appointments for outside sales reps. If you’re on outbound sales then your job includes taking the first appointment, having a deeper discussion with the prospect, and building value with the prospects. You need to dive in and understand their needs to be able to go to the most important parts of the sales process which are the pitch, presentation, and closing the deal.  Inside sales first  If you’re new to sales, the best path you can go is inbound sales. Here are the reasons you need to consider why.  The decision of whether to go to inbound or outbound sales depends on the complexity of the product or service you’re selling. Consider a B2B sales scenario in which you’re selling a product with a certain level of complexity (computer software or something from the medical industry). Coming right out of college, you may not be used to such a level of complexity. Doing outside sales and having to develop the ability to sell the product and talk about it convincingly is not the easiest route.  This scenario will be different if you’re selling a simple product. You can easily up your game, learn everything about the product, and sell it in no time.  So, the first thing you should do is to evaluate the complexity of the sale that you’re doing. If the product is something that you’re not familiar with, learn as much as you can about the product first before you consider doing outside sales.  Industry The second thing to consider is that each industry has different ways of doing things.  Take for example a government-based industry. The deal size for government-based industries can go from $30-$150,000 and the sales cycle can run from 6-18 months. If you’re not knowledgeable about how that works, then you’re not going to last. You need to know what the industry is and make sure that you understand how it works.  Going to the inside gives you the opportunity to learn things and understand the lingo and the processes of the industry.  One thing I’ve learned from doing inside sales for the government is that every city government typically has a buying cycle anywhere around the October timeframe or sometime during the summer. Typically, a sales rep’s job from January to June is doing demonstrations. You can’t expect to close deals on those months. The government-industry has long sales cycles and new sales reps need to understand that before jumping into the game.  Sales cycle  Outside sales are good if you can close your product within 30 days but if it takes longer than that, then you need to rethink your decision.  Sales are like hunting or going on an adventure into a new world. It’s better to have a guide to be able to make the right decisions. In the same sense, inside sales provides a team that will guide you along the way. You’ll know the proper ways of doing things and get more help from the mothership. This is something you won’t have if you do outside sales working as a lone ranger in a remote territory without a support system.  Doing inside sales for a long sales cycle is best to get all the proper help before going off on your own.  Business acumen  Being new to sales or coming straight out of college means not having a strong understanding of the business. You’ll end up being one of those traditional sales reps that everyone’s making fun of, not the sales reps who is making value. You become the order taker and you’ll have a difficult time closing deals.  You won’t be authoritative because you won’t feel confident.  When you’re in inside sales, your job isn’t to close deals. Your job is to understand the challenges, to understand and create opportunities, and to know how to find the right people. #InsideSales The knowledge you get from inside sales will help you ease into the outside sales. If you do some ride-alongs, you can jump on some demonstrations with your account executive. Being an inside sales rep gives you the chance to hear what your account executive is doing and why she is doing that.  You have the chance to learn from their demonstrations and apply those learnings to your demonstrations when you start on your own. This will help you build your business acumen.  You’ll be able to hear your seniors when you’re on inside sales the way I did before with Heather Barkley.  She was one of the seniors in the bullpen when I was starting out and she gave me so much knowledge. Sometimes, she’d pull me out and explain the way things work. Her teachings helped me to frame my message as I was reaching out to prospects.  Mess up and learn  Being new in sales, you are bound to make mistakes. When you’re on inside sales, your quota may not be as large as the ones on outside sales.  There are a lot of expectations for someone in outside sales but in inside sales, you have some room to mess up.  If you are on outside sales and you’re getting all these qualified opportunities but you don’t know how to close these individuals, you’re not assertive enough, and you didn’t go through the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. You’ll eventually lose the opportunities.  When that happens, you have a higher chance of getting kicked off the team because you’re not qualified.  Diverse learning  Another great reason why you need to start in inside sales is the chance to meet every department and learn from different individuals. Being in inside sales allows you to understand and learn many things. You understand marketing messaging and how they communicate with sales. You also know where the accounting department is coming from. You learn about the challenges that departments face.  You learn in customer service that the best types of customers are the ones who don’t complain, who use the system, and more.  All these things will make you a better outside salesperson in the future.  Go inside first, at least for six months for you to learn the ropes. If you’re on the outside when you’re not prepared, you’ll end up frustrated.  Before you answer the question, “Should I start off with inside sales or outside sales?,” consider these things first:  Complexity of the product Type of industry Sales cycle Your business acumen Your room for error “Should I Start Off With Inside Sales or Outside Sales?” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It is designed to help sales reps and sales teams to improve their skills in finding the right customers, to know the activities and strategies that work, and how to ask the right questions to build a strong value and close business deals.  To see how helpful it can be, simply go to thesalesvengelist.com/freecourse to get the first two modules for free. Take a bite and have a feel of the course.  You’d want to be a savvy salesperson and Audible can help you do that. Enjoy the free 30-day trial and explore the thousands of books they have today.  I hope this episode has been fun and helpful to you. Please review and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcast. You can also hit subscribe and share our show with your friends and colleagues.  If you can, please provide your review and rating on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and other platforms where you consume this podcast.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Helping Your Sales Team Perform Their Best  I sat down with Fred Diamond at Podcast Movement 2019 to discuss the keys to helping your sales team perform their best. Fred is the host of Sales Game Changers Podcast and today he turned the microphone on me and allowed me to share the things I've learned during my career in sales.  The Sales Evangelist This podcast resulted from my own struggle as a B2B seller. Because of my own struggles, I wanted to help new and struggling sellers improve their sales game. I wanted to educate people who were in the same shoes and help elevate their performance.  As The Sales Evangelist podcast grew, people in our community of sellers reached out to me for sales coaching. I started with one-on-one coaching for reps, and then those reps took their training back to their companies, and I started hearing from entrepreneurs and other business owners who needed to replicate themselves so they could scale their companies.  I launched into the consulting side and helped businesses set up their sales teams. Eventually, that led to speaking opportunities and other things, so in 2015 I left my full-time job to do The Sales Evangelist full time.  The podcast didn’t make money on its own, but it did generate leads and coaching opportunities and speaking and consulting gigs. Now, though, it generates its own income.  Sales career I got into sales before college, partly because my entire family was involved in sales. As a Jamaican boy, I grew up in a setting where everyone sold something. I didn’t see it as sales, necessarily. I simply saw it as the family business.  I’m naturally outgoing, so people told me I’d be perfect in a sales career. That continued through college where I struggled to find a sales program.  Eventually, I got a couple of sales jobs in timeshares and door-to-door that involved B2C selling. I made about $20,000 in three months selling door-to-door over the summer during my first year.  When I transitioned to the professional world of selling, though, I struggled.  Lessons learned One of the things I learned selling door-to-door was the value of working smart. I saw people who worked hard but who weren’t effective, so they got burned out because they continued doing things that were ineffective. Those who hustled, on the other hand, worked efficiently and they practiced their messaging and they stopped doing things that didn’t work.  I learned that I had to be willing to move on when a sale didn’t work out.  Eventually, I moved into a BDR role in a B2B company, and I brought that need to work efficiently and plan my activities because it was a full-commission job.  Time is money, and I needed to pay rent.  During my time at the IT training company, Steve Hatch took me under his wing. He was the CEO of the company, and he taught me both the sales and the business sides of his company. In several cases, he did that by throwing me into the deep end.  We were trying to work a deal with a local NPR station and he helped me learn to lead the deal and negotiate the deal. He helped me see who I could eventually become.  Sales challenges Current sales reps face a number of challenges that are unique to the kind of setting they operate in. Most of the ones I meet with struggle with prospecting, and with prospecting effectively.  Many learn that cold calling is dead, for example, but they work for companies that were built by cold calling. Their leaders want them to engage in cold-calling but others tell them it’s ineffective, so they feel pulled in different directions.  At the same time, many sellers struggle with the idea of social selling in which they engage with people on social media. They often don’t have the confidence to do it effectively, so they wait for inbound leads to come, and though they do often come, it simply isn’t enough.  I constantly give training on how to use LinkedIn and how to take advantage of cadences and flow processes for outreach.  Prospecting Multichannel outreach, sometimes called omnichannel, matters the most in prospecting. When I work with sales reps, I encourage them to begin their interactions on social media. Make a genuine connection with people as a starting point.  Understand that genuine connection doesn’t mean you simply “like” something that they posted or shared. Instead, engage with that person. If someone comments on something you share, take that conversation to the inbox next and tell him how much you appreciate his comment. Then, once you’ve built that connection, you can move the conversation to a phone call.  Now you’ve created a warm, engaging connection.  Then, for enterprise sales, you can even take advantage of snail mail to send them something to grab their attention. We created a Willy Wonka style ticket and invited them to join us for our demo. We sent sodas and snacks and a Starbucks gift card. We spent about $12 for each of three boxes and landed about $100,000 worth of deals.  Sales tips I read a lot of books in an effort to improve my game, and one of my recent favorites is Mike Weinberg’s Sales Management. Simplified. because he focuses on fundamentals. For me, mastering those fundamentals is the key to moving to the next level. Aside from prospecting, asking appropriate questions makes a big difference as well.  Sellers who know nothing about their buyers our pipelines won’t matter at all. We’re skipping the discovery process and we’re missing a chance to ask meaningful questions and demonstrate our expertise.  Related to that topic, time management presents a big struggle for sellers right now. I attribute my continued success to planning. In fact, I’ve created a selling planner because I couldn’t find one that I liked.  I read a book by Kevin Kruse called the 15 Secrets Successful People Know  and another called The 12 Week Year related to time management. A lot of sales reps throw as many things as they can on a calendar in hopes that they can maximize their time.  Instead, I break my day down based on categories to measure my effectiveness. I separate sales activities, marketing activities, and operations. I tracked those activities for a week to see where the commonalities are and which tasks I’m repeatedly doing. Then, I eliminated tasks that my team could do for me so I could focus on sales-related tasks.  Preparation Do a three-minute prep prior to each sales call. If you have a focused list of clients, consider hiring someone to do research on each of those clients. Find out the following: How does this company make money? What challenges do they have that they aren’t even necessarily aware of? What common challenges are they facing? How does this person I’m going to call help the company make money? If you can help your customer achieve his goals, you’ll be so much further down the path. The process isn’t about you. Discover what your customers are trying to accomplish for their customers. #Sales Someone is going to solve your customer’s problem. Why don’t you figure it out first and be the first to provide the solution? “Helping Your Sales Team Perform” episode resources Connect with Donald on LinkedIn. Also, check out the Sales Game Changers Podcast.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales from the Street: Teach Them How To Educate  Derek Badala frequently travels with sales reps to teach them how to educate the customer in an effort to solve problems. As the director of sales at Synthax, he is always on the road traveling with sales reps and training them to become another version of himself — a skilled sales leader, influencer, and consultant.  Technology and education Being in the audiovisual industry, it could be said that technology and education are their biggest challenges. Making a sale is difficult, especially with new products. You must understand everything about the product and its application. Everybody is trying to get a sale and trying to close deals fast without asking all the necessary questions. With the competition in the market, there’s not enough time to learn about the new product and how it can be applied to the prospects’ problems. Derek focuses on educating the sales reps and covering all the ways that the products can be used, and less on the features and benefits. He’s working to find ways that his products can make clients' lives easier.  Sales reps must not skip this educating stage and must learn the product and its application to the lives of the client. Too much excitement over a deal that hasn’t happened yet may cause the deal to fall apart.  Skipping steps Derek had a client who was excited about getting a product from Digigram that would provide background music to stores. Neither the client nor the sales reps understood all the things about the product and its services. They got ahead of themselves and weren’t able to prepare the details that the client needed. Instead, the company should have better studied the client’s needs to know exactly how the products fit.  When reps skip steps, it can cause deals to fall apart, which can negatively affect your pipeline. Their company also sells widgets that clients can buy in retail stores. It’s difficult to educate salespeople in retail stores about the product because they have their personal favorites and they immediately suggest those products. It’s a challenge to tell them about your product and make them answer the customers’ questions. When customers aren’t given enough information about a product, they often buy something that they’re not happy with. They are boxed into thinking about this particular product that salespeople in the retail store like. This is always a challenge.  Trade shows  Derek’s company does a lot of trade shows where he teaches classes on audio networking, and how to do audio over IP net. He also teaches classes on how to choose the right audio interface for musicians so that they won’t be sold products they don’t need. The company’s goal is to educate the market and the customers through webcasts, webinars, and a whole lot more.  Lunch and Learn  The company also does a lot of lunch and learn while traveling. While the internet is an efficient tool in disseminating information, there’s still nothing more effective than getting in front of people and teaching them. Buying them lunch and then educating them about your products in a graceful way is very effective.  Derek travels with many sales reps and while traveling, he continues to teach them how to educate others as well. They attend sessions and they learn from him by example. Instead of telling them a litany of features and benefits of certain products, Derek tells them a story.  Don’t tell stories about what the product can do. Tell the story of how effective the product has been. #SolveProblems It is important to have success stories to tell about the products. Share little nuggets about the product to catch the clients’ attention.  Competition  The industry is growing and with it, competition grows as well. With every product line added, there’s new revenue being added into the business. Even when a company experiences growth, it’s still hard to miss that others are growing as well.  There are competitors out there who are as good as, if not better than you. Regardless of the competition, we’re now seeing more resellers who are interested in knowing more about the products they sell.  Derek’s company has grown since he joined in 2017 and he has seen a lot of improvements. They’re now seeing great improvements in the Ferrofish brand as it’s now being used for Broadway shows, the Superbowl, and for broadcast. It’s always a battle to be on the top line funnel. You always plant sales and cultivate the leads to turn them into closed deals.  Be the best listener  In sales, it is important to be the best listener. One of the biggest mistakes in sales is owning the talk. You want to know more about the customers to be able to present solutions to their problems. You need to listen to them and see how you can help.  After listening, you need to ask questions and listen to their responses. These steps are more important than presenting your clients with the features and benefits of the product.  “Teach Them How To Educate” episode resources Stay connected with Derek via his LinkedIn account. You can also visit their company website, RME-USA.com. If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Training Sales Program. It is a helpful guide for sales reps and sales leaders to become better in doing their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  Or you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  Thank you for tuning in and if you liked this episode, do give a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales From The Street - "Think Like A Large Company CEO" Vicki Antonio is a business consultant and a life coach who helps small business owners think like a large company CEO. This is a result of her journey of knowing what her purpose in life is. She started working when she was 13 years old and she found herself having a pattern of working with startups. Her experience made her realize that startups have a pattern of growing pains.  She used that when she got into real estate because she wanted to be that mom who goes to PTA meetings and football games for her kids. The knowledge gave her a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen as a whole.  With the fallout of the market, she learned some hard lessons. She then went into upper management in real estate and after that, she became a business developer for a global real estate franchise. She oversaw about 30 of their shops and her role was to get them developed, get them brand-compliant, and partner with brokers and owners to keep the business profitable. She was a coach for the company’s business needs, whatever those needs might be, on a day-to-day basis.  Blind spots Most business owners scale their businesses to a certain place and then they’d have a business blindspot. Very few people see the blindspot and see the capacity that they can get to at the beginning.  It’s similar to taking a vacation where you know where you’re going but you can’t see it from the place that you start. The closer you get to it, however, the clearer it gets. If you’re not familiar with the geographical location of the area, then you might have some detours that cause apprehensions. It may cause you to stop and get lost a little bit.  This is where Vicky comes in. She is the guide and she helps the companies see their direction in a clearer perspective.  Top problems  Fear is the first problem that small businesses face. Sometimes, they become fearful and they build only up to where they know, and then they get stagnant. The fear comes in because they’ve got to relinquish what they know.  It’s very much like taking your child to daycare for the first time. There’s apprehension and doubt about whether they can take care of your kid. The same is true for your business because you have an emotional attachment to it. You develop apprehension about handing it over. But it is important to allow someone else to come in, and then to trust that they will do their job. Trust and fear come hand-in-hand.  The fear of somebody else taking the business to the next level or the fear of engaging with another system are reasons why small businesses fail to progress.  Clarity is also difficult for business owners, especially the entrepreneurs who are self-employed salespeople. These people do a lot to get to a certain place. There’s a lot of things that go into play to get them to the end. Often, they don’t have clarity about what those things are because they either don’t have enough components to see the end or they have too many components that they no longer see the end. When you’re in that slump, you need an analysis of the things you do to see the cause of the stagnation.  Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan had coaches to give them the bird’s eye view, the area where they themselves could not see. The coaches help them and critique them. They also help them analyze what they are doing and how they can change it to make their play better. The same is true in sales.  Salespeople are good at what they do but there are still things that they just can’t see. Sometimes, salespeople get in their own way and do things because it felt right for years. Like Woods, even when his form is okay, his coach can be there with him and tell him things like, ‘ If you just turn the club a little bit then you’d see a better performance.’ As salespeople, you need a coach to analyze your system and your tools to make sure that you’re using them correctly. It is equally important that you trust their input and that the information you’re getting is helpful.  It is important for salespeople and business owners to trust the process.  Fear  Fear is false evidence appearing real. A lot of times, we think too much because we don’t have clarity about the direction that we take. We are also concerned about whether we’re doing things the proper way. This makes us fear the unknown, so we stay where we are instead of moving.   It’s not saying that you’re doing something wrong. It’s more like you’ve known how difficult the climb has been and you want to take things to the next level, or to the next pinnacle. Overcoming fear differs from one person to another because everybody’s risk factor is different. For the risk-takers, there’s a great reward but there’s a big gap there. It’s different for people who are not risk-takers because they calculate their risk to the point of comfortability and the rest is pain.  Trust  Your business is like your baby and you’ve put all your effort into it and invested much into it. You have the responsibility of making sure that it’s sustainable, it’s growing, it’s healthy, and it’s cared for.  Then somebody comes in and says to do the same things you’ve promised but it’s difficult to trust that person.  This fear can be overcome using a trust list. It’s helpful to create a list of people who have the same core values that you have and people who have track records of having done it already. There’s a good possibility that you can rest for a bit when you work with these people, do business with them, party with them, or engage with them.  The pattern of sales is changing now where relationships are being developed in the sales process. In the past, it has been a case of meeting a stranger, doing the transaction, and then never seeing them again. This time it’s different.  As a salesperson, you build a relationship with them and vet them to know who they are and you also see their track records.  Proof of credibility  When you think like a large company CEO, establishing proof of credibility is also important. When you’re mentioned in the local newspaper or on a TV interview or magazine, third-party validation builds credibility. Donald Miller’s book, Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen talked extensively about this.  Client testimonials and LinkedIn also build credibility. You can use the platform to give recommendations and also get recommendations from clients. People who will check in on your page will see you and the things you’ve done getting that quick validation.  You have to do your homework and leave your footprints, especially now that everybody is using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for marketing. They have great graphic artists and do amazing things. Sometimes, high profile companies do not excel in that area but they’re doing great in testimonials.  Social media is usually the first place that people go and not having great track records in that platform will rob you of opportunities. Social media, LinkedIn, and testimonial platforms are things that you can improve on.  Addressing clarity  Clarity is two-fold. Be clear about who you’re working with and what they’ve attained. Second, know who you are as a business. The second aspect is about knowing your niche, your market, your strong suits, and the things you can highlight about yourself.  Once you know yourself, then you’ll know how to work with others and how to bring somebody to engage to work with you.  It’s like the trip mentioned earlier, If you hop in a car without mapping out your destination, you won’t know the streets to take and you’ll end up lost. Startups are like that, too. Many startups think that they can be all things to all people but in truth, that’s not possible.  Vicki started out in real estate with a global and luxurious company. The properties can be worth millions. She has seen salespeople who wanted to get into that price point but because of the lack of experience, they hesitated. They had to first learn that in order to get to the high price point, they first need to stop taking the lower sales.  It’s important to let go of the old mindset and get into a new mindset by being clear about where you want to be and then knitting yourself to that thing. Jack of all trades Becoming a jack of all trades is good because salespeople and see opportunities but sometimes doing that means turning down an opportunity to do something. For example, if somebody wants their house painted and you’re a salesperson in real estate, if you decide to paint the house, you’re wasting an opportunity of making calls doing things that will potentially help you land your next $25,000 client.  You are impeding your progress because you can only spend money and time once. Your time has more value than the actual money you’re making.  All money is not good money. When you’re saying yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. #salespriorities.  The scripture says that you can do all those with Christ and that’s true but you can’t do it all at the same time.  You’re going to go through seasons, through phases, and through stages. If you learn the season and the stage that you’re in, then you understand the capacity for that time frame.  You need to understand the season that you’re in, the same way that you’re not going to sport a bathing suit when you’re headed to someplace cold. You’re not going to wear an overcoat when you’re headed to the beach.  This is the thing about clarity. It’s when you understand that you’re headed to the beach and you’re not going to feel offended or feel like you’re missing out on something when somebody steps in your elevator wearing an overcoat. You know that you are going in a different direction and it’s okay.  If at some point you want to change your direction or change course, then it’s okay. The most important thing is that you understand very clearly where you’re going when you’re making the change so that you don’t impede good opportunities in the season that you’re in.  Trust the process It is important to trust the process. Trust is huge because this is the area where you have to have some faith. There will be blindspots in the trust factor but if you’ve made your part then it will be easier. It’s best to prepare, carve out of clarity, train, and sharpen your tools and learn how to use them.  You’ve got to trust that when you take the leap, you’re gonna land in the right place.  Remember this: trust that when you take the leap, you’re gonna land in the right place.  "Think Like A Large Company CEO" episode resources Stay in touch with Vicki to learn more about her services by calling her at 561-774-1333. You can also visit her website at victoriousu.com and victorious’s lifestyle strategies. She’s also on Facebook, so check her out there, too.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by Audible. Check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Training Sales Program, a course to guide sales reps and sales leaders to become better at pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  I hope you liked this episode. If you’ve learned a thing or two then do give a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Every sales transaction differs from the others, but when you're selling in Europe vs. selling in the USA, it's important to understand the differences in culture.  Christine Schlonski works with entrepreneurs who have a negative view of sales. She helps them redefine their view of it so they can sell with ease, grace, and confidence and also ask their price. In short, she helps them makes sales, which is simply an interaction between people, fun.  Fear of selling Christine points to the depiction of sales in movies, coupled with bad sales experiences that we’ve all had. Subconsciously, we don’t want to be like these people. Women especially struggle to ask for what they truly want because it feels salesy or pushy. They often assume because they’re good people that buyers will line up to buy.  It’s possible to ask for the sale in a natural way but movies never depict sellers in a positive light. It’s likely that a movie about a seller who sells from the heart and brings value would be boring. But sales truly could be like that.  Set the expectation and then make the offer. Then consider what’s a go and what’s a no-go. How can we work together?  Sales differences Sales in the U.S. move quickly, while people in Europe like time. Realize, too, that Europe isn’t a single country, and sales differ across those countries. In France, for example, sales involves numerous decision-makers, and French people love meetings. Where Americans look to make things happen, you cannot simply show up with an offer and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.  Germans exist between those two extremes because they want to be a bit more efficient. Still, though, they cannot be pushed or pressured into decisions.  Relationships are still the key to all sales. The decision-maker needs to feel comfortable in the relationship and feel as though he is making a good decision.  Typically, larger companies have more complicated decision making processes. They often have male leaders and sometimes one of them will block the process because of politics or a need to be right.  Selling in Europe will never be a one-call close.  Unique preferences Christine had experiences in the past where her work with a global company selling high-ticket events over the phone was negatively affected by her American colleagues who were perceived as being pushy. The prospects assumed that her sales process would operate the same way, so they weren’t interested.  For companies who operate in different countries, training sellers to understand the cultural differences can present a challenge. Begin with the simple understanding that no two people are alike. Even without the cultural differences, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution because we’re all human with unique preferences.  Consider yourself as an example. How would you want to be treated during a call? What’s important to you? Then, be open to cultural differences and be aware of misunderstandings, but understand that it isn’t a case of the prospect not liking you. In Christine’s case, she learned to operate as though any “no” in the process was always her fault because she hadn’t managed some part of the process correctly.   She understands, too, that if she calls into the U.S. she needs to operate with the correct urgency, because it’s what they expect.  Small talk Sellers in the U.S. are pretty good with small talk, but in the U.K., for example, talk about the weather can be important. Some people perceive that as a waste of time, but you must adjust to the person you’re speaking to.  Adjusting the conversation to your audience doesn’t demand that you be fake. Pick something that’s meaningful to you that will bring the other person into the conversation as well.  Suspend your own thinking toward the customers’ needs. Accommodate them. In the U.S., for example, people don’t give a true answer to the question, “How are you?” Instead, they’ll say, “I’m fine.” In other countries, they’ll be more likely to answer honestly.  Approach with the desire to serve their needs.  Expectations In my own negotiations with a prospect for TSE Certified Sales Training Course, I discovered during the negotiation process that many buyers from eastern Europe want to ensure that they are getting the best deal. A  friend who is also from eastern Europe told me that they’ll often expect to be able to negotiate down a bit. So even if you have a fair price, they may expect you to adjust it.  In this case, I made the adjustment because it was a win-win opportunity.  Depending on the products you sell, the price level, and who your negotiating partners are, maybe you set something in place that you can add to the program rather than adjusting your price down. Add value without dropping the price. It gives them a feeling of a win.  Businesses are always trying to get the best deal, regardless of culture.  Authenticity Be true to yourself and be authentic. If you have a great product, begin with a connection. Small talk can feel superficial, so you must communicate that you’re not only interested in a sale.  Establish relationships with prospects so they don’t feel as though they are simply being sold to. Instead, offer them an invitation to buy. #RelationshipSelling “Selling In Europe” episode resources You can connect with Christine at her podcast, Heart Sells, where she interviews successful entrepreneurs who have overcome sales challenges and who operate from the heart. She seeks to showcase that sales can be fun and that anyone can learn sales. You can also find her at christineschlonski.com.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

My Sales Reps Say They Are Too Busy...I Think This Is Crap!  Sales reps and sales leaders face a lot of challenges, and some sales reps say they are too busy. Sometimes the problems are nothing major, but on some other times, the problem causes a ripple in the revenue. One situation that causes such negative impact in sales is when salespeople claim that their pipeline is down due to busyness. This is when sales reps spend much of their time helping current customers find opportunities and they no longer have the time to bring new business or clients.  This is a common situation among sales leaders and sales reps. It is a legitimate question because sometimes, sales reps come up with excuses and they don’t recognize that. Sales reps often have too much on their plate and they get so busy which then prevents them from getting out and doing sales activity.  Size of your organization  What is the size of your organization? This is an important question because if you’re working in an organization with sales in a small company, the sales rep is doing the prospecting and finding leads. After that, the sales rep tries to convert the leads into appointments that lead up to initial conversations. They build value, negotiate, and maintain the account. The sales reps are there in the entire process, but doing all that can cause problems.  If you’re in an enterprise organization, the sales reps’ main responsibility is closing deals. If you have different departments and individuals doing BDR work, researching, getting leads, doing client success, and managing accounts then there shouldn’t be any problem.  For small organizations, the sales reps are doing everything and the sales reps legitimately may be too busy.  Empathy  As sales manager, your first course of action is to show empathy. We can’t expect our sales reps to go out and show empathy to the prospects without giving them our empathy first. We need to truly understand where they’re coming from. For example, if a prospect says that the software isn’t working, you don’t argue with him. We can’t exactly tell the prospects to go figure the software out. The same is true for our sales reps. We can’t tell them to figure things out and make it happen. Give them the benefit of the doubt, hear them out first, and figure out why they feel overwhelmed.  Sales managers are busy people and you might feel that you don’t have enough time to manage everything, but you have to do it. You have to go to the second step after empathizing.  Diagnose  The next step is diagnosing. Start this by creating a time audit sheet. It can be on a word document or whatever means possible. Have your sales reps list all the tasks they do in a day,  including answering questions, answering prospects, reaching out on LinkedIn, and many others. They have to write everything down and the length of time they spent doing each task.  Finally, they need to label whether it’s a sales task or an admin task. If it’s something that directly connects to bringing new business in the organization, then label it as a sales task.  Reaching out for a client in LinkedIn is a sales activity but going through contracts in the database isn’t. In that case, have somebody else in the organization go through the contracts. Free up sales reps from doing admin tasks and let them do activities that directly tie to getting new prospects. #Revenue Another example is cleaning up the CRM. This isn’t a sales activity, especially if it’s not in the prime time. Maybe you can do this at home or delegate it to somebody else instead of letting the sales reps do it.  On a scale of 1-3  After putting labels to the tasks, categorize them on a scale of 1 - 3.  1 - it’s directly tied to bringing new business  2 - average 3 - it’s not so directly tied to bringing new business  Doing this will make you see that the majority of the sales reps’ time is spent on admin related activities. In smaller organizations, sales reps must do all kinds of tasks but you can avoid this.  Getting a sales resource individual to help the sales rep find prospects is a great idea.  The sales research rep connects with the operations department and makes sure that jobs are fulfilled. If the sales rep was to find a prospect and need a particular product or service to seal the deal, the sales research rep would do that task instead. The sales rep would have enough time to go and look for other prospects and clients.  Sales research reps are very much like project managers. They see to it that everything gets done and that the proper products and samples needed by the sales reps are provided and presented to the client.  This saves a lot of time and promotes efficiency in the organization.  The sales research reps are assistant to the sales reps and do the admin tasks for the sales reps. This way, the sales reps become more productive with their time.  You can do this to your company, too. Find some individuals who can help you alleviate the struggles of the sellers and let the sellers focus on what they do best: making sales.  “My Sales Reps Say They Are Too Busy...I Think This Is Crap!” episode resources Companies differ and what works for others may not work for you. Whatever the case may be, let us know of the results. You can connect with me via our Facebook page or LinkedIn. Drop me a message and let me know if this works well for your organization.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Training Sales Program. A course to guide sales reps and sales leaders to become better in doing their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  Or you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  Thank you for tuning in and if you liked this episode, do give a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Many sellers overlook fundamental selling principles, but salespeople must learn the importance of a strategic network for business and career success in order to become proficient in our jobs.  Judy Robinett is an advisor to Springboard, an incubator that helps women founders, with great statistics of 19 IPOs and 165 strategic sells. Judy loves educating people and meeting entrepreneurs and helping them with connections.  She wrote the book, How to Be a Power Connector, a bestseller in 2014, and she recently published another book called Crack the Funding Code: How Investors Think and What They Need to Hear to Fund Your Startup. It’s a book that tells us how investors think and what they need to hear to fund your startup.  The beginning Judy worked as a social worker but she didn’t stop there. She explored her options and opportunities after making some bad decisions like starting her own franchise restaurant. In time, her business failed and she had to sell it.  She worked with a then-unknown company called Skullcandy® when they were broke and had a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. She helped the company build its credibility and bring its revenue up again. That fueled her interest in startups and she became an investor herself. Fast forward to now, she’s a managing director at Golden Seeds.  Crack the funding code Many great entrepreneurs in the U.S. don’t understand the facts. For one, there’s no lack of money. In fact, there’s $318 trillion of private global wealth. These entrepreneurs don’t understand the players: there’s private equity that are all investing into startups as well as the sovereign wealth funds that manage 10% of the global GDP.  The book Crack the Funding Code is an easy-to-follow roadmap on how to find and pitch investors. The book’s appendix has term sheets, actual pitch decks, and other relevant research information. It is a book that will educate entrepreneurs because these people can change the world.  Lessons in mistakes Entrepreneurs take calculated risks. Along the way, missteps create lessons waiting to be learned. Judy’s bankruptcy lawyer said of her failed franchise restaurant, “They can break you but they can’t eat you.”  Judy learned to kick fear to the curb and understand that there’s no lack of resources in the world because resources are connected to human beings. It is true that sales are critical in finding and catching investors. It’s also important in catching the customers. Entrepreneurs must learn to navigate in their mistakes.  They need to figure out how to get investors to figure out how to find customers.  If you can’t figure out how to find a venture capitalist, you can’t figure out how to find a customer. #investors Funding mindset  Howard Stevenson, known as the Lion of Entrepreneurism at Harvard, wrote a book on how to be an angel investor. His book talked about how you can set yourself apart from everybody else. In order to be perceived as a high-potential startup: Be clear on your exit strategy and the comparables because investors want to get their money back.  Mitigate risks as viewed by the investors.  It is good for startups to put high-powered people in their advisory board to help build their credibility, especially if the CEO hasn’t done a startup before. In the VC investing world, people talk about adult supervision. This is critical because you want to have reliable people in your team with deep industry expertise who can open doors to money, media, and other resources that you might need.  Getting investors is more than just being good and being able to produce something.  One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs do in their pitches is the way they focus on technology and explain the details at length. Investors, however, care less about that. Harvard researchers found that the average amount of time people spend looking at a particular slide is 11 seconds. Financial slides, however, get 23 seconds worth of attention. Investors look for a team that can execute to a big enough market, the total addressable market (TAM).  Three C’s Arthur Rock was the first venture capitalist who started the industry in Silicon Valley. He said that if somebody comes to him with a B product but with an A team or an A product but with a B team, he’d always go for the A-team. This means that investors invest in the team that can execute.  So, the first C is you need to be coachable. We all have that blindspot of not knowing what we don’t know. It’s important to come across as coachable rather than arrogant. If somebody asks you about something that you don’t know, then be upfront and tell that person that you’ll get back to him. Then ask for help to show that you are coachable.  The second one is having a level of confidence. You are selling your concept, your company, and how you’re going to grow it to the investors so a level of confidence is important.  The third one is character. Howard Stevenson said in his book that when he hears an exaggeration or half-truth, he runs away instead of walking so that he won’t lose money. Investors have a way of looking at your character in a substantial way.  Be coachable  The moment we say that we don’t need more information is the moment that we stop growing. When we stop learning and stop being coached, we also stop progressing and growing.  A sales rep who has been selling for 10 years and who stops reading books about sales is stuck in the same way that an entrepreneur who stops needing advice is stuck.  Businesses fall short because entrepreneurs stop growing and because they don’t have a board of advisers to tell them the truth or advise them what to do.   CB Insights did a post mortem of 101 startups and one of the problems they found was the inability to learn and pivot. Clayton Christiansen, an expert on innovation at Harvard, said that 75% of startups pivot. Viagra didn’t start out being used the way it’s used today, but the nurses noticed a side-effect. Everybody must be in an exploration of finding out what you don’t know because that’s where growth happens.  The obstacle is a gift. Run to your obstacle much like David running toward Goliath. Understand that every time you have a vision, Goliath shows up so you must master how to learn and pivot.  There are two words that mean fear: the first refers to being terrified, and the second is the sense of awe and wonder. This happens when you step out of your comfort zone.  You need to reframe your fear and deal with it.  Network your way to the right investors  It is critical to be in the right room. Judy met a founder who was trying to get investors in Salt Lake City for her company but she was in the wrong room because she wasn’t Mormon and she was a woman. Judy took her to Boston and San Francisco where she closed deals and then sold her company for millions There are specific groups of investors. First, you start with your family, then your friends, then your credit cards, and you move up to the angel investor, the seed round. There are 400 angel groups in the U.S. and $317 trillion in private global wealth. There is no lack of money here. There’s also the governmental fund, the sovereign wealth fund. It is important that you know which group to go to.  You can find them via searching in Google, by going to pitch events, or by asking top lawyers and bankers who work with startups.  Do not forget to ask them the two golden questions:  What other ideas do you have for me? Who else do you know that I should talk to? On average, people know between 600 and 1,000 people. You don’t have to know tons of people; you need the right people to get in the right room.  Another good way to build your network is to find your way to private curated events and talk to people.  Let them know what you do. You can also ask them their opinion and who they know that you ought to be talking to as well. You’d be surprised at the number of people who are happy to help but you need to learn to ask.  This is particularly difficult if you are from the lower to middle class where you’re taught to keep your head down, get a degree, work hard, and don’t ask for help because people would notice. In truth, people do not notice.  According to research in Denmark, 5% of people in any corporation or organization are the true influencers and power brokers. Those are the people that you need to get to know. Delivering a compelling pitch You need a concise, compelling narrative. Dick Wilson, a VC who has had $1billion exit every year for the past five years, was asked how to create a compelling pitch. He said that it’s important to be concise, be compelling, and have passion.  You want to get to the second date so don’t spill all the details or all the financials because your job is to get those people to be interested in you and start doing due diligence. John Livesay, also known as Pitch Deck Guru, is a great man who can help you out with your compelling stories. Research often suggests that the majority of startups fail but that data is inaccurate. Hard research shows that about 50 percent fail because the owners aren’t willing to learn.  Reasons startups fail Phil Graham, one of the Y Combinator founders, said that there are two reasons why startups fail: lack of customers  lack of sales  One of the Dropbox founders said that before he started Dropbox, he didn’t know anything about sales engineering and product development. He bought the top three books in each of those areas, and he got an advisory board. Simply put, you don’t have to be brilliant and smarter than everybody else.  Don’t fail your startup. Use the two golden questions and start reaching out to strangers. Open your mouth and ask. Investors are everywhere and they need startups, too. They need to put their money into entrepreneurs’ startups so a little leg work and some networking is helpful. Go to the National Venture Capital Association and the National Angel Association to find lists of everybody.  Do your homework and do your due diligence on the investors.  “The importance of a strategic network for business and career success” episode resource  Stay in touch with Judy via email, judy@judyrobinett.com, and her LinkedIn account.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Training Sales Program. A course to guide sales reps and sales leaders to become better in doing their pitches and presentations. It has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  Or you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  Thank you for tuning in and if you liked this episode, do give a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Some people aren’t into the idea of rejection but actually, there are positive reasons why getting a no is not such a bad thing.  Francisco Terreros is a co-founder of Felkrem, a full-service sports marketing agency focused on two core services. First, they represent professional footballers/soccer players in their careers both on and off the field, and secondly, they sell brands and reach the players’ demographics through sports and marketing. They are FIFA agents and marketers who do sales every day. The sell to parents and kids they want to sign to their firm as well as to teams and sponsors.  They are selling their experience as sports marketers to brands who want to capitalize on their understanding of how to navigate and reach their target demographics.  Their company is surviving, thriving, and growing rapidly despite the competition in the industry. Felkrem is dealing with the athletes' professions and their dreams.  Getting no as a sales rep Sales reps have been in this situation once or twice in their careers as salespeople. It’s difficult to hear the rejection, and much more difficult to accept it. But why do we get a no and why is getting a no not such a bad thing?  A seller’s job depends on his ability to  get a yes, so naturally, a no for an answer is a hard pill to swallow.  Lions are the kings of the jungle. It’s their natural instinct to turn their chase into actual food. They have their hunting strategies matrixed down that when the prey gets away, they don’t just give up. They walk and find another kill. They also don't necessarily go for the biggest and the fastest one. They change their game occasionally  and go for something else.  As sellers, we need to think like lions. It is our instinct to turn the potential sales opportunities into yeses. Our game must also be matrixed so that when we hear no, we don’t walk away dejected. Instead, we walk away with a new plan in our head. We should learn to walk away and get the next one. We need to understand that no is part of the process and it’s going to help us figure out what we must tweak to get the yes.  Overcoming this is a hard job because our lives depend on the yes. ‘ The sales process is a numbers game and our closing rate of yes comes before several nos. Your sales career will change once you realize that and calculate how many nos you need to get a yes. Simply put, a no means one step closer to the yes.  Back to the beginning  We must all begin learning the basics before we become successful in our craft. Cisco got an internship with the sponsorship department in a major league soccer team in his area. He was assigned to support the sponsorship team. He took pictures of activations, set up banners in the stadium, and met with clients at the game to let them into the gate. He was a secretary but he needed to be more. He started coming in two hours before his shift and observed. With his notepad in hand, he listened to the sponsorship guide sell and he took notes to understand the process. Weeks later, he asked for more and he was given a list of people. He started calling and calling and got zero yeses.  Years later he realized that all those nos taught him something since they got him closer to the job. The nos helped him understand himself and his techniques and what he needed to do to change the no into a yes.  Cisco wouldn’t have been able to understand that it’s all a system and a process if he didn’t start with the basics.  The hungry lion  The analogy of the lion is perfect for this subject matter. After missing their prey for a couple of times, a hungry lion is more zealous than ever to catch another one. A hungry lion is persistent and patient in an intelligent way, not in a desperate way.  We need to help our team understand that. Teach your team to think like hunters and that the no is a way for them to become hungrier. Not desperate; just hungry. Desperation can be felt a mile away, so don’t be that desperate seller who tries to oversell. Be hungry and be patient.  A seller’s desperation is a puff of wind that clients don’t want to inhale. It’s also good to take a mental note that clients can hear your desperate sound even in a phone conversation. When your voice drops and your tone shifts, your client will start to zone out. Pay constant attention to how you sound and how you deliver your pitch.  Turn that no to a yes Cisco had a seller call him in the past for a pitch and his voice and tone were giveaways to his desperation. Cisco helped him understand the process of no and he asked the seller to count the nos he got before he had a yes. A week later, the seller talked to Cisco again but now with a triumphant voice. He said that he got 33 nos before he had a yes. Those 33 nos are no longer awful experiences because those are the setbacks that got him to a yes.  Knowing the nos is the beginning. Doing something to lower the no-to-yes ratio is the next step. You do that by identifying where the gaps are in your pitch or in the presentation and you fill those gaps.  ‘Check me’ partner   Accepting no is a difficult thing but this process is a continuous one. Even if you get better at getting yes, you’ll still face some nos along the way. It’s better to have someone who’ll be on the journey with you. Find someone who can check you and get you back to reality when you’re facing a slump. It can be your co-worker or your business partner. It can be another team member or your boss. It can be anybody who can get you back to your feet. Teach them to remind of you three things: What did you learn? What can I do better next time?  The no means you’re one step closer to the yes. Be reminded of those three things to overcome the depression and dejection that come with the no. So, go and find yourself a Check Me partner.  This can be applied to basically every aspect of our lives because our society fosters a culture of positivity and negativity. People have high emotions of happiness and low emotions of sadness. This contrast is good because you won’t be able to feel the satisfaction and elation that comes with happiness if you haven’t experienced something bad.  At the end of the day, rejection is a necessary evil to achieve heavenly success. Your no is one step closer to your heavenly staircase of success.  Remember that every no in sales means you’re one step closer to the yes. #Positivity  We don’t have to become an expert in overcoming rejection but we do have to understand the tools to help us overcome the rejection.  Learn to turn your awful nos to beautiful yeses.  “Why Getting a no is not Such a Bad Thing and How to Accept it!” episode resources  Connect with Cisco in his social media to be inspired. Follow him on Instagram or shoot him a mail.  This episode is brought to you in-part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a tool for sales reps and sales leaders to become better in doing their pitches and presentations. The program has 12 courses to help you find the right customers, ask the right questions, and close great deals. You can get the first two modules for free!  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  If you’re a reader and loves reading and listening to books, you can also check out Audible as well and explore this huge online library with thousands of books. Register now to get a free book and a 30-day free trial.  If you like this episode, don’t be shy and give us a thumbs up and rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

I saw a question on Reddit recently from a seller who wondered whether or not to create content on LinkedIn. The seller worried that writing about topics like quota, rejection, or prospecting might sound too salesy and might hurt his pipeline.  The truth is that many sellers have fear around the concept of creating content because we worry about how the audience will accept our ideas.  Middle school prom Not only should we post our own content on LinkedIn; we should also engage with other people’s content.  Unfortunately, many of us treat LinkedIn like a middle school prom. We stand around the edge of the room watching each other, too afraid to dance. We might speak to a friend or two, but we’re afraid to look stupid, so we don’t dance. Instead, we let everybody else enjoy themselves.  We don’t want to look stupid on the dance floor, so perhaps we look stupid on the sidelines instead. We’re afraid of the critics who might make fun of our efforts Many sellers treat LinkedIn like a middle school dance. We don’t participate because we’re afraid of looking silly. #SalesContent True engagement Engagement doesn’t involve moving around the room and saying hi to people at the dance. On LinkedIn, clicking “like” for a few posts doesn’t qualify as engagement. It won’t sustain relationships. It’s basically an indication of approval.  Engagement requires you to bring other people into the conversation. If, for example, you’re in the water industry, and you see an article about the danger of water purification tablets, you can tag another colleague who wrote about the same topic.  The author of the piece will take note of your efforts to bring someone else to his page, and your colleague will take note as well.  Talk to people and work to create lasting relationships. ‘Salesy’ content The question on Reddit came from a seller who worried that his prospects might tire of always seeing sales-related content. But consider your own news feed. Are you annoyed by the fact that you frequently see the same faces over and over again? Or do you simply choose to read things that are relevant and skip over the ones that are not?  On the other hand, when one of those people shares something that helps you or connects you with someone else, that brand sticks in your mind. When you need help with something, you’ll remember the guys who showed up in your feed.  When you post content and engage with other content, you stay top-of-mind with your audience.  Audience Make sure that you’re posting the right kind of content for your audience. Gear it toward your prospect. If you’re targeting salespeople, it’s ok to post sales content. But if you’re targeting decision-makers at Fortune 500 companies, don’t post about yourself. Post what the leaders in that industry want to know or read.  Gear your content toward the people you want to attract.  Don’t be paralyzed by the fear that your content won’t sound perfect. Understand who you’re targeting and who you want to attract.  LinkedIn impressions To understand how value-rich LinkedIn is, listen to TSE 1085 on our podcast. In it, my friend Steven Hart shared some LinkedIn stats with us based on the 48 Eyeopening LinkedIn Statistics for 2019. LinkedIn provides 36 billion impressions per month. That’s 468 billion impressions per year, or 9 billion impressions per week. Users see content 9 billion times per week.  Now factor in that there are 500 million people on LinkedIn, and only a fraction of them are active there. Of those, only 3 million people share content weekly. So those 3 million people who share content weekly are getting 9 billion impressions.  The rest of us are afraid to share content, so we’re sitting on the sidelines. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Grab attention Grab your reader’s attention, but be intentional about the stuff that you share. Post things that your prospect wants to read. You can certainly share industry-related content from magazines, but your content doesn’t always have to tie back.  Consider these options for content: Answer frequently-asked-questions about your industry Share content that your industry would want to know about. Share videos you create from your smartphone in which you answer questions. Post complementary content that is indirectly related to your industry. Repurpose your company’s own blog content. Seek to be helpful.  Challenge Also, consider asking your own audience questions about what they are doing and what they’d like to see. If you tag people in a post and ask them about the CRM they use, you’ll initiate engagement. As more people comment, it will gain more visibility. If someone from outside your own connections engages with it, reach out to that person and request a connection. Your challenge for the upcoming week is to share one piece of content every day.  Monday: share an industry-related piece that includes something interesting. Tuesday: answer a frequently-asked-question. Wednesday: answer a common question using video. Thursday: post complementary information. Friday: share something your company has created.  At the end of the week, if you don’t have any impressions, keep posting. You’re going to connect with new people. Ask your teammates for ideas if you can’t think of anything to post. “Create Content on LinkedIn” episode resources If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode has been made possible with the help of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program, a training course designed to help sellers in improving their performance. We want you guys to go out each and every single day to find more ideal customers and do big things. I hope you like and learned many things from this episode. If you did, please review us and give us a five-star rating on Apple podcast or in any platform you’re using - Google Podcast, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also share this with your friends and colleagues.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

How Leaders Sabotage the Sale Process Sales leaders sometimes make mistakes that compromise deals, so understanding how leaders sabotage the sale process can help us avoid the same mistake.  Erin Pheil is the founder of Mind Fix Group, a company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, high-achievers, and high-performers eliminate their biggest mental roadblocks that hold them back and keep them from achieving what they're capable of.  Head trash Some sales leaders have very specific definitions of what a sales leader is. For Erin, anybody who is in charge of guiding the people in making the right decisions and who is doing sales for a company is considered a sales leader.  Many sellers read books and work with experts to improve their skills in sales. They keep learning, and then they show up on calls. They often show up to these calls prepared, but also with head trash. They’re showing bits and pieces of their old mental programming and outdated beliefs that aren’t helpful in closing deals. They go to the calls and they try to combine new knowledge and strategies that their coaches have taught them with their old beliefs.  When things go wrong, they don’t blame themselves. They blame the technique and the process, or even the people they hired. They don’t look at their head trash and suspect that they might be the ones sabotaging the process.  Blaming the process, techniques, and tactics instead of examining how they’re screwing things up sabotages the sales process.  Accepting blame It takes courage to accept blame because it’s human nature to blame somebody else. It takes courage to stop, pause, and hold a mirror to yourself and ask how you’re contributing to the challenges that you’re experiencing. It’s much easier to project outward and place the blame.   Head trash commonly appears as the need for approval or the need to be liked. Sellers will show up to a sales call and, instead of focusing on guiding the prospect towards the right decision, they operate from an underlying need to be liked. This goes beyond having a bond and rapport. It's more of wanting to be approved. A person with that need often sabotages calls just to be liked.  They get nervous, they make concessions, and they apologize, which shifts the whole frame of conversation. Being liked becomes the more important outcome.  Self-doubt  Self-doubt can undermine your authenticity and sabotage your sales process because it causes you to question your own effectiveness. Trust your skills and abilities. #SalesSabotage Money block and old programming from a salesperson's childhood also have a negative impact on sales calls.  For example, a client raised to believe that she isn’t supposed to talk about money in the household where degree and certificates are the next big things had a huge block in her sales process. Since this particular client had no degree, she ended up questioning her ability and wouldn’t bring up the pricing until the last minute, or until the prospect asked for the price. This client had old head trash on the concept of pricing and money so that often the price in her head was different from the price that came out of her mouth.  Even with constant reminders here and there, she just couldn’t do it. It just wouldn't come out of her mouth the right way.  This is what head trash is. You show up with a plan and all the right information, but your old pieces of programming, beliefs, and thoughts sabotage and compromise your ability to make a productive call.  Figure your patterns  The first thing to do is to figure your patterns. Knowing your patterns brings awareness to your calls. You must pinpoint where in the process you’re having your patterns of resistance and frustrations.  Create a list of the areas where you keep repeating some patterns that you know do not serve you. It might be telling the same jokes, doing what you’re not supposed to do, or not talking about the money even though you have to.  The buyer might think that you’re hiding something or you have some trick up your sleeves. Before you know it, you have already sabotaged your opportunity. The same is true if you keep talking to your client without giving him the time to speak. It scares the prospect off as well.  Consider a salesperson who can’t even have an intro opportunity because she can’t stop talking. Her problem clearly exists at the beginning of the process.  This is a perfect example of a pattern of people who can’t stop talking. They don’t listen because it has been ingrained in their minds that they should keep talking so that someone will buy from them. They feel the need to show off and prove their expertise in order to be respected.  Changing patterns After listing the patterns that you observe, ask yourself, “What would I have to believe to be true in order to keep acting this way?” What we believe determines how we act.  If you believe that talking about money is wrong, then you’ll probably act in ways in accordance with that belief. A lot of these beliefs are in the back of our heads and most of us might not believe them to be true. But even if a tiny part of us holds true to that belief, then we’ll act according to those beliefs.  What you get from asking that question for each pattern is a list of old pieces of head trash,  programming, and beliefs that you’re still carrying around that are sabotaging your sales process.  Set aside time to implement the two things mentioned here. First, identify the patterns and second, come up with a list of what you’d have to believe to be true. This will open your mind and make you see things that you didn’t realize are impacting your close rate and your success as a sales leader.  “How Leaders Sabotage the Sale Process” episode resource Learn more from Erin and visit her website mindfixgroup.com. Check the hour-long training video that explains how your head trash is impacting your actions and behaviors and causing you to sabotage things. There are also case studies and stories of real people who have overcome their challenges.  If you’re a sales rep looking to hone your craft and learn from the top 1% of sellers, make plans to attend the Sales Success Summit in Austin, Tx, October 14-15. Scheduled on a Monday and Tuesday to limit the impact to the sales week, the Sales Success Summit connects sellers with top-level performers who have appeared on the podcast. Visit Top1Summit.com to learn more and register!  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program. It’s a tool for salespeople and sales leaders to help them improve their skills and abilities in finding the right customers, creating strategies that work, and asking the right questions to close powerful deals. You can go to The Sales Evangelist and see the first two modules for free.  This episode is brought to you in part by Audible, the awesome library with thousands of books. Try it now to get a 30-day free trial and a free book. Go to audibletrial.com/tse.  If you find this episode helpful, give us a ravishing review and rating on Apple podcast. We are also on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify.  Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com