The Sales Evangelist

Building a Culture of Empathy and Accountability   Every organization needs a culture of empathy and accountability no matter what it’s doing. Sometimes, we only have empathy and neglect accountability but it’s important to have both. Justin Dauer is with us in this episode to explain to us how to get both and give recommendations on the right way to do it.  Justin is the VP of the Human Center Design at BSwift, a healthcare and benefits management firm owned by CVS Health.  He is also a writer and a public speaker when he isn’t in his 9-5 job, and he enjoys talking about humility, empathy, and accountability.  Discovering agency culture  Justin’s entire career revolves around agencies primarily in the creative direction. In his 10 years being in the business, he observed that agency culture tends to burn people out. In some cultures, the driving factor is perceived by who went out the door last, regardless of the reasons why others left earlier. Maybe they went to pick up their kids from school or went to a doctor’s appointment. Meanwhile, whatever their reasons are, someone else in the firm is tapping a wristwatch noting the fact that they left early. This buildup of passive-aggressive situations in the agency space resonates to many because they have experienced it too.  He got a tremendous amount of feedback so he knew it was an important topic, which prompted him to write a book about it.  Burnout Burnout has a domino effect that is detrimental to an organization or an agency, partly because agency space is often about making money. Most times, a name on a spreadsheet doesn’t equate to an individual. The name has to do the work and that’s all there is.  Justin shared the same experience before he was in a senior position. He’d come to the office and face a stack of papers, printouts, and a load of work with red lines on them. His value for the day depended on the quantity of work he could do for the day, without regard for quality in the process.  There is no room to pause in some agencies, so employees can’t do anything not work-related, even in their free time. They fear that if their supervisor walks by and sees them, he’ll ask why they aren’t working. Employees are constantly on the edge, which isn’t healthy and wears them down. But as human beings, we all need to pause and calibrate.  Another example of burnout is the cost of hiring people over and over again, which takes a toll on the organization’s morale.  Addressing the issue  Solving this takes action, not lip service. It’s good to start by demonstrating respect and humility. Humility is baked into both empathy and accountability. Humility is when a leader admits a mistake and follows up with an action plan.  Dialog is a two-way street, which means less oration and delegation but more of a collaboration. Once a mistake has been made, admit it. This is what accountability is about.  People who work in high-stress environments have little pockets of culture. They might gather in a kitchen and talk about something related to their craft. Saturating the culture from the top communicates that when they make a mistake, there's a culture of support where people will rally around them and help them improve.   Leaders must set the tone Leaders have to be the ones to set the tone. They should be the first to trust that their employees have done their job before they leave work for personal errands. Consider, too, that some may be single parents taking half the day off to pick up their kids from school. The simple concept of trust is something that’s taken for granted when it shouldn’t be taken for granted at all.  Some organizations have a culture of fostering growth where leaders are truly leaders rather than taskmasters. When they find a problem, they ask questions, and they open a dialog to discover solutions to the problem.  The same thing happened to me in the past where my team members share stuff with me. I made a culture of discussing things with each other and it proved to be a good move. Team members share their brilliant ideas that I couldn’t have conceived on my own, and it  made the work more efficient.  Everyone has value It is ideal to have everyone be involved in the thought process when running a workshop. The same is also true in business. You want people from C-level to people who are answering the phone in the room, because everyone has a voice and that voice has value. Hierarchies should be thrown out the window.  In business, everyone’s viewpoint is important, from the stakeholders to the other people in the room with different perspectives.  Leaders should set the tone by making others feel like they are heard. The employees need to feel empowered and realize that they are appreciated and valued and know that it’s ok to have an outside viewpoint. #Culture Sales leaders and managers must be cognizant of what the new hire thinks when they come in. They have to be aware that they won’t be scoffed at and demanded to go back to their desks when they get coffee from the coffee machine. They need to know that they are not chained to their desks and that they are allowed to work on another floor or to take their laptops outside if it’s not against company rules.  Simplicity  Another way to create a culture within the organization is through simplicity. People will more likely engage with things that are simple and easily understood.. Simplicity is also clarity which is one of Scott M. Cutlip’s  Seven C’s of Communication. What you’re saying should be exactly what you mean.  Government Digital Services in the UK fosters this kind of cultural sense. They put up signs that say ‘It’s okay to x’, that it’s okay not to check their email after work, that it’s okay to have a day-off, and that it’s okay to pause and talk to their coworkers. These are simple and clear and people engage in them. It makes sense for businesses to do this as well but it’s still put by the wayside.   Top to bottom approach We did this in one of the companies I worked for where they gave us a Wii. It was super cool and we could play the Wii to destress and have a good time. The company was a small organization and we got all the people to be in the break area for 10-15 minutes and play Wii bowling. But then the sales leaders saw us playing and told the CEO about it. They told us that we could play it either before work or after work, and nobody touched it since.  It was the culture that killed it. We could have had that 15-minute break and then go back to our desks afterward but the culture says that you can’t have fun. It says that growing a business and growing sales can’t be fun. This goes to show that when you don’t have the culture built from the top then clearly, you’re in trouble.  The danger in perks is that sometimes it can take away one’s individuality, too. Some big tech companies have sleeping pods where you can zone out for a little bit. They get you a cab or buy you dinner if you work beyond 9 p.m. or they send someone to get your laundry at home. These perks look good on paper but they keep people in the office and squeeze more hours out of them and marginalize them and take their individuality away. They think of these people more as a production line who is there to work and sacrifice their personal life. So we must all be wary about perks like that.  Be observant  If you are someone looking for a job in any industry, maybe in tech or in sales, keep your head on a swivel and be observant. When you’re looking for a position, really poke in on the culture and see the things that are important to you. Are the people validated and supported? Poke in on their level of accountability as an organization. Be involved and have a dialogue, you’re just not there to be grilled. Ask questions or talk to people who have worked there or who are working there. The manner in which your questions are received is a huge indicator of the validity of their response. Do these things before signing because you’ll never be able to do these dialogue and transparent conversations when you’ve signed the papers.  In the end, it’s important to respect people ultimately because that goes beyond being a good person and being a good human being. Respect, humility, and empathy go far in the workplace. It permeates innovation, office dynamics, and creativity. It permeates everything. The golden rule always applies - treat others the same way you want to be treated. This permeates so many things at the business level, the profitability level, and the quality of work level.  “Building a Culture of Empathy and Accountability” episode resources Connect with Jason (@pseudoroom) by following him on Twitter, and his online portfolio at Pseudoroom.com. He also has a book entitled Cultivating a Creative Culture and a second edition that’s coming by next year.  You can also connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com or try our first module of  TSE Certified Sales Training Program or 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.  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

Many of us start our day with emails, and knowing that, The Sales Evangelist team has outlined 5 reasons why Gmail is the best email tool for sellers.  Multiple functions  Google’s Gmail Suite is an incredible tool for companies due to its many functions. For The Sales Evangelist, we use domains. I personally have Donald as my domain and this is connected to my Gmail business suite. Every email that I receive goes through my domain and into my Gmail inbox.  Aside from that, it is also easy to set up. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that you can check for instructions. You can also hit Google and read about how to sign up for the suite.  Integration  A lot of platforms have integration but for me, Gmail beats them all. While Outlook has 365, it seems clunky and the apps are difficult to integrate.The same couldn’t be said with the Google-owned Gmail. Google is the top-dog in the industry and has a massive number of users. With that many people using Gmail accounts, it became necessary for developers to find ways to integrate their apps and tools into Gmail.  I use Calendly, a tool that integrates seamlessly into Gmail. Other apps like Hubspot and LinkedIn Sales Navigator connect to Gmail as well. These tools and plugins make full use of Gmail’s integration capabilities.  Templates Google has what they call canned responses and these are found on the settings of Gmail. Look for the settings, and click on advanced. This option explains what canned responses are and provides instructions on how you can create templates for common messages that you send. You then click enable and save the changes.  For a sales rep who's always out there sending intro emails, follow-up emails, and other responses, this canned response is a good thing. Although you need to personalize it, you will not need to write the whole thing over and over again when you’re using the template. You can just tweak it.  You can make templates for commonly asked questions that you get. You can just type out the common responses to these questions and make it into a canned email. Now, that’s your template. You can learn more about this in Episode 11 of The Sales Evangelist. You can also connect with us on YouTube for more videos. Mail scheduler The third reason Gmail is the best for sales reps is its ability to schedule emails. The great thing about this is it’s free. I used Boomerang and Hubspot in the past but now, I just go to my Gmail account and click compose at the bottom.  You’ll see that arrow next to the send button; you click on that and you can then easily schedule your mail. This feature is helpful for busy people and busy prospects as well.  Sometimes we are inundated with so much on a day-to-day basis that we take the work home. The same can be said with business owners, VPs, executives, or mid-level managers. They are so busy and they can’t respond to mail throughout the day. This is where scheduled mail comes in.  You can send an email to busy prospects on a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you’ll be amazed when you get their response. #Email  Email callbacks  Outlook and other providers offer email callback as well, and it’s very useful in case you make mistakes in sending out your mail.  Say that when you used your canned response you weren’t able to personalize it enough and ended up putting the wrong person’s name. This isn’t a good thing, so you need to unsend it. You can do so with Gmail.  Go to the top right corner, click settings, click on general, and look for the undo send. You can send cancellations up to different time periods. You can keep the email longer to give you more time to recognize your mistakes, edit them out, save, and send.  Shortcuts  Here’s the fifth reason: the shortcuts. It’s also an easy one and you can find it on the cog and click advance. You can create your custom keyboard shortcuts once it’s enabled and saved. Google has default shortcuts you can use or you can utilize the shortcut feature and make your own.  As a busy sales rep, you can just hit C and you’d be able to compose an email or reply to an email, or hit A and reply to a particular mail. There are several other shortcuts that you can use to save your precious time. You can check out Episode 1137 of The Sales Evangelist for more information about this feature.  I like Gmail because of its integration, the ability to create templates, the scheduled responses, the email callbacks, and the shortcuts.  “5 Reasons Gmail Is The Best Email Tool For Sellers” episode resources Time is money and we want to work as efficiently as possible. We keep including TSE Certified Sales Training Program every chance that we get because we want to help you. So, check the program out and explore the possibilities.  This episode is brought to you in part by TSE Certified Sales Training Program, designed to help sales reps and sales team on how to improve their skills in finding the right customers, 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 to your friends and colleagues.  If you can, please provide your review and rating on Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and in other platforms where you consume this podcast. Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Visnostic selling translates your information from vendor-speak to client-speak, and sellers who understand the fundamentals of visnostic selling will change the way they think about sales.  Kimberlee Slavik has been a top performer in sales for more than 20 years, and she recently released a book called Visnostic Selling. Her goal is to help sales and marketing professionals harness the power of neuroscience by translating vendor-speak into client-speak.  Storytelling Kimberlee always assumed her sales success resulted largely from dumb luck until she listened to Michael Bosworth’s latest book, What Great Salespeople Do. The book talks about storytelling and neuroscience and explains the chemical reactions that happen in the brain. Stories make the Bible the best-selling book of all time because they allow readers to visualize events.   She was listening to the book while she was driving so she couldn’t highlight or make notes, but the content made sense to her. It was the first time she recognized the science behind her own success.  Because her career selling complex intangibles requires her to qualify clients very well, she must be able to articulate what she can do for them. She hopes to help other people figure out the science that it took her so long to discover.  Visnostics Visnostics is a trademarked word that combines visualization and diagnostics. Instead of showing up to a demonstration with a bunch of slides or a brochure or a website full of words to say, visnostics teaches you to reword everything. Speak in the first-person as though the client was actually saying these things. When you do, it triggers a completely different response in the brain. The order of words also plays a tremendous role.  This isn’t a questionnaire that asks questions on your way to helping you diagnose. Truthfully, no one looks forward to filling out surveys. Instead, provide a statement instead of a question and offer three different ways to respond: “I can say this today.” “I wish I could say this today.”  “I don’t know.” If your prospect chooses the first option, he must score himself on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning he has a long way to go and 5 meaning it’s perfect.  They’re very engaged because they know they have to respond to what you’re saying. It allows you to sort of hijack the prospect’s brain because they have to concentrate to answer. It’s a powerful tool for sellers. When you trigger chemicals in your client’s brain without him even realizing it, that’s powerful. The prospect wants to tell you his story because this is what the visnostic statement creates. Instead of the seller doing all the talking, this process prompts the client to share their stories. Visnostic statements The book teaches people to create a spreadsheet in which one column includes all of the seller’s gnostic statements, and the book also helps sellers understand how to create those powerful visnostic statements. Another column maps out each of the visnostic statements to a summarization of a statement of work. In other words, how you can turn a non-strength into a strength.  Once the salesperson walks the client through the statements, they’ll have a sense of the things that the client is doing well, the areas with the biggest room for improvement, and areas that simply need tweaking.  Within an hour or two, the seller can be confident and competent in front of their clients.  Getting started Kimberlee begins by asking sellers to visualize a dollar sign, a clock, and a toolbox. Those images represent results related to finances and timelines and there’s an associated impact. The first words will be “I’m going to save you $1 million in a month.” For an office furniture salesperson, the aerodynamic office furniture will create more comfortable employees who work harder and work longer. The seller will then establish visnostic statements according to segmentation.  You can figure out your segmentation by talking to past clients who will tell you more than your marketing department ever could. Since they are actually using the furniture, they’ll help you flush out differentiation. #MarketSegment Change your approach When you start thinking dollar sign, clock, and toolbox, revisit your own marketing message. Start at your own website and pick out all the words that represent results. Many people are disappointed to discover that they don’t have as many as they thought they did. It might trigger you to find results by talking to past clients to understand how working with you has impacted their lives.  One real estate agent had recommendations that all sounded the same on his site. He had a long paragraph that took up half the page describing his work. Kimberlee had to dig to find results statements, but when she did, she put together this visnostic statement:  “My realtor had a contract on all three of my homes in less than a week when all other realtors were averaging 100 days or more.” The reader now knows that the person sharing the recommendation wasn’t just a lucky sell. The realtor sold three homes in less than a week. The statement also differentiated the realtor from his competition by specifying how long other realtors were taking to sell houses.  This new way of thinking will change the way you view your marketing materials, your brochures, and your website.  Working well Most organizations are oblivious to the fact that marketing and sales don’t work well together. Her workshops require that marketing and sales sit in the same room together during the translation from features and functions into visnostic language. They move from vendor-speak to client-speak and it makes a world of difference.  When the two teams work together, it creates a powerful team-building exercise. When their efforts are aligned and they are in sync, magic happens. When they are out of alignment, sales suffer.  Managers who are interested in this kind of training must do their homework first. Make sure you’ve bought into the program and that you understand it. Kimberlee invites readers to connect with her personally for what amounts to a free consultation.  After the initial consultation, she invites organizations to put their very best presenter on the phone with her. She does a Zoom call to record the presentation so she can see the best presentation they have to offer. She then dissects and separates it to identify vendor-speak and client-speak.  Kimberlee did this for a Fortune 20 company, and the result was 28 pages of transcript, and of those, only half a page amounted to information the client would like to have. Additionally, the graphics were beautiful but they weren’t designed to help the audience retain the data being presented. Painting a picture Kimberlee worked with a realtor in the sale of her own house who used visnostics to generate interest. She wrote a description about a dock that the homeowners could visit at the end of a long day, and a kitchen island that was big enough for mom and dad to make lunches at while the kids sat down for breakfast. She described the kind of life people might live inside the house, and she got 7 offers on the first day. The house ultimately sold for more than $30,000 over asking price. The realtor had people competing for the house, and she got three new listings with people who wanted to use the same approach to sell their own houses.  Stop selling features and functions. Think of this content as the death of product marketing.  “Fundamentals of Visnostic Selling” episode resources Connect with Kimberlee on LinkedIn or Google the term visnostic. Listeners can email her at podcast@dynaexec.com to get something from Kimberlee, and then she’ll send the feedback to The Sales Evangelist so we can continue to help more people understand why podcasts are a valuable use of time.  You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561) 578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. As a savvy seller, you’ll want to continue learning, and you can take advantage of a free 30-day trial, complete with a free audiobook, on Audible. They have thousands of books to choose from and you can begin your free trial today.  I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. When you share your experiences with the show, others will read the reviews and give us a listen. You can also check us out on Spotify. I truly appreciate you and appreciate your reviews and your subscription, and your willingness to tell your friends and anyone you know that's in sales about the podcast. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

You likely have your own horror stories of a traveling seller, but you can use technology to streamline your process and free your time for sales.  Kristen Estrada is a regional sales executive with SAP Concur covering the South Florida area. She has spent 20 years selling everything from consumables to skincare, legal services, and now cloud-based software.    Language barrier During Kristen’s work with a beauty company, she traveled to Dubai with a great team of male sellers who spoke Arabic. She struggled to feel welcome in the foreign culture but she tried to make the best of it. While she was there, she got sick and lost her voice, but she still had to work.  The last day of the trade show, she broke down the booth with her colleagues and then headed to the airport but she had gotten her departure dates mixed up. Her flight didn’t leave until the next day, and though she tried to negotiate an earlier departure, the airlines wanted to charge her $1,500 to change her ticket.  Kristen knew her employer wouldn’t pay that, so she headed back to her hotel, which was already full. She didn’t speak Arabic and the hotel wasn’t being helpful. Out of desperation, she asked her colleague if she could stay in his room for the night.  Perhaps because he knew that would be uncomfortable, he made a phone call to the front desk and got her room back. She eventually made it home the next day, but it wasn’t a great experience for her. In fact, she feels bad when people ask about the trip, because she’s certain that others have great experiences there. From a professional standpoint, she was able to make some connections at the trade show and even sell some products right off the floor. Unfortunately, the lack of support during her stay left her feeling lost and overwhelmed.    Cash flow During another trip to Miami, Kristen was working for a small business with a very tight cash flow. Because she was close to the owner, she did her best to protect the bottom line by staying in two-star hotels. She loved the job and the products and the company, so she was willing to do whatever was necessary to help.  She and a female colleague were sharing a room near the convention center in what she calls a “dumpy hotel.” They dropped their stuff off after check-in and rushed over to a trade show. When they returned, there was a “boot” on the hotel door, like the ones you find on your car when you’ve parked illegally.  They inquired at the front desk where the clerk told them that their credit card had been declined. It was odd, because the room couldn’t have been worth much more than about $59 a night, but they paid the bill with a personal card, stayed the night, and left the next day to find another hotel.    Travel safety  Every traveler wants to stay in a safe environment, but for females traveling alone, this is especially true. Following these experiences, Kristen approached the company leadership seeking the freedom to book her own travel moving forward. She was willing to stay within a certain dollar amount; she simply wanted to book safer accommodations.  As she has continued in her professional journey, she finds that she still cares where she stays when she travels for business. She considers herself lucky to work for a company that values her safety and knows where she is at all times because of apps and technology. If there’s an emergency, they know exactly where to find her. They can quickly get her out of a sketchy situation if necessary.    Mobile app SAP Concur is a mobile app that allows users to book business trips. It services 40 million customers worldwide, many through the app called TripIt. TripIt is a free app that organizes your trips and notifies you of changes to your itinerary. It also provides safety scores by neighborhood so travelers can book properties where they feel safe.  Companies of all sizes can benefit from Concur. It’s especially affordable for startups because it provides the ability to book travel and create expense reports.    Using Concur Kristen usually works with accounting departments or leadership teams who inquire about the small business package. It offers a bundled discount and services an entire sales team.  Once you sign up for the service, you download the app, and then connect your corporate card. If you’re using personal money for reimbursement, you submit photos of receipts and the app captures those and sends them to an approver within your finance team who can quickly get you reimbursed.  Kristen’s experience traveling abroad often required her to create spreadsheets for her expenses where she made copies of receipts, provided conversions from euros to dollars, and then waited weeks to get her money back. As a seller, she wasn’t getting paid to create spreadsheets, and she recognized the struggle of keeping track of receipts. Technology is your friend. It provides everything you need to handle your travel and focus on sales.      “Improve the Buying Experience Through Content” episode resources You can email her at Kristen.Estrada@sap.com or find her on LinkedIn. If you haven’t already, connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that.    Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. You can also check us out on Spotify. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Some companies will be harder to connect with than others, but sellers who don’t give up so easily may find that an intentional approach can overcome those things that appear to be obstacles. Jacob Wardrop is the sales director at an email management provider called 28Hands, which helps people who feel overwhelmed with the volume of email and they need a more automated way of handling it.    Old school Jacob once worked as a sales rep selling software to the construction industry, and he was assigned a geographical territory. The businesses ranged from 10 employees to about 400, and a couple had more than 500. One of those companies already worked with his competitor, and Jacob’s company had never been able to gain any traction with the other.  Despite making probably 200 calls, his company didn’t know what the prospect was currently using and the company wasn’t even sure if it was a good fit. They simply knew that the prospective company was massive and that there weren’t very many construction businesses of that size in the UK.  In short, the company wasn’t very open to the outside world. Employees weren’t able to use LinkedIn, there was a no-name policy from the reception, and nobody used their own email addresses. Each of the 19 offices had its own email address, and as emails came in, the receptionist would sift through them and hand them off.    Finding a way in His background was predominantly outbound so he had what he calls a hunter mentality. He spent a lot of years doing small deals, kissing a lot of frogs and doing a lot of meetings without a lot of reward. Eventually, he started doing bigger deals, and because he had a taste of success, he saw a great opportunity with this new company.  He was reasonably sure he could get a meeting with them despite the fact that he couldn’t use LinkedIn or email, so the challenge was to get a foot in the door. Every seller before had failed to get beyond the receptionist, and Jacob got caught in that trap briefly, as well.  In the end, he counted 67 phone calls to the prospect, and he calls the experience a lesson in thinking about the best way in to an organization rather than just relying on a call list.     Seeking a favor He started by scouring the website to see what information he could find. From there, because he worked in a geographical region, he trusted that he could find existing clients who worked in the same sector who would be willing to help out. He built a good relationship with some finance partners and other local companies. Over the course of three months, he felt comfortable asking for a favor.  He asked for information about who the problem solver was in the company. In other words, if you wanted to get something done there, who would you ask? His clients gave him the gentleman’s name, and also gave him permission to use their name in his email contact.  He sent a message requesting to speak to the managing director, and he got past the first stage where people tended to get stuck in this organization. The managing director agreed to a call and a meeting, largely out of curiosity. They had never worked with a company like ours, but many similar businesses were already working with us.    Getting the right person The initial email kicked off an 18-month sales cycle.  The key to starting a conversation is getting in with the right person at the right time and generating curiosity about the products and services you offer. #SalesProcess Sometimes sellers want to make things easy for ourselves so we end up sounding like everyone else. Many salespeople will be handed accounts that others have farmed for years, and they’ll be tempted to repeat the same cycles and call all the same people. Instead, consider taking a fresh look and seeking alternative people. Get creative in terms of how you’ll connect.  Give serious consideration to how you’ll be listened to.   Referral The managing director passed him off to a management team to help with the initiative. The fact that he had a referral from someone at the top of the organization made a big difference. It means that Jacob could always call him and that he could update him on progress. That meant that the people he was meeting with were accountable for something.  This deal was worth about half a million, while the average deal previously had been about $100K. It was a record deal, and after a lot of meetings and site visits, his company landed it.  Many more traditional companies take a long time to make a decision, and there’s a lot of advice that says you shouldn’t keep pursuing opportunities which aren’t active. In this case, the fact that it took a long time was frustrating, but ultimately it was worthwhile.  By the end of the deal, Jacob was weary from the stress and sleepless nights, so on a Friday afternoon when he knew the deal was close, he drove there. He arrived at 2 and stayed until 9 waiting for the company to be in a position to sign the deal.  He persevered and stayed diligent and worked to separate himself from what everyone else was doing.    Building a process Eventually, he left a very comfortable position for one that didn’t have all the necessary components for success. He was frustrated and surrounded by negative energy.  He read a book called The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters that addressed how to focus on the things that are within your control. Jacob wrote down all the key elements of a high-performing seller, from data profiling and gathering to business development and having a senior sales team.  The group had a product it could sell and a good message, but no intensity culture around it. He booked eight meetings in a day to see what he could learn off the back of that experience. He discovered that by simplifying and writing down a few key things and a simple goal helped him refine the message. It gave him some optimism because it generated some results.    Generating data The company started building data on its prospects from scratch until it could afford to have data profiles populated into the CRM. They recruited business development people and started working to answer questions. Why isn’t marketing doing certain things? Why isn’t the SDR doing certain things?  It’s a much better approach than blaming other people for your problems or your challenges, which ultimately doesn’t help. It simply generates negative energy.  Once you take control of the situation and decide to control your own destiny, that’s when things can turn around.  Now, his team works to book 10 meetings before it spends a load of time or money on marketing content. It doesn’t matter whether they use email or LinkedIn. Simply that they book 10 meetings in a new sector because that element is within their control. You learn a lot when you’re in a room with 10 customers instead of being in an office.   Focus on the components that you don’t need other people for. Become a bit of a lone wolf and then build something.    Critique yourself Regardless of the outcome, whether it’s positive or negative, analyze what you did well. You can have a bad call that still ends well.  Many sales people base all their self-esteem and confidence on outcomes from clients, which is a bit fickle since some of it results from luck. The danger is that they start to believe their own hype.  Analyze yourself at every opportunity. Write down the things you’ve done well and the things you haven’t done well.    "Don't Give Up So Easily" episode resources You can connect with Jacob on LinkedIn or connect with him via email at Jacob.Waldrop@28hands.com.  You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561) 578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. As a savvy seller, you’ll want to continue learning, and you can take advantage of a free 30-day trial, complete with a free audiobook, on Audible. They have thousands of books to choose from and you can begin your free trial today.  I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. When you share your experiences with the show, others will read the reviews and give us a listen. I truly appreciate you and appreciate your reviews and your subscription, and your willingness to tell your friends and anyone you know that's in sales about the podcast. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

If I’m working with a prospect who unexpectedly decides to hire a different company, it might sound impossible, but it’s possible to close a deal with a prospect who goes with your competitor.  David Adley is an outbound sales manager at Bonfire, a digital platform for selling custom apparel. Bonfire works with nonprofits, influencers, and anyone who wants an easy solution to selling an awesome shirt online.    Sales journey David started selling knives door-to-door during college and he discovered he had a passion for it. He discovered that when you’re succeeding, you’re having fun.  He worked as a sales rep for a music company, and because he was a music major in college, he assumed it would be the perfect marriage of two things he loved. He was playing in a band at the time, and he had to make a decision about his priorities, so he picked music over sales.  For almost four years he gigged with a band before taking the job at Bonfire as a customer success rep. He was basically making ends meet while doing the rock star thing. David grew into his role. Because the CEO knew he had sold knives in college, he invited David to take a shot at growing the sales team. He took the leap, and that’s where his journey began.   Fund-raising Bonfire operates in cause-based fundraising as well as the influencer space. Early in David’s career, he worked with a big client named Crusoe the Celebrity Dachshund. He’s a big deal in the animal influencer game and he has hilarious content.  He’s also the big fish in David’s story, which is about learning empathy, timing, and persistence, three things that sellers need if they are looking to up their game. The company was still small then and he didn’t want to mess up the opportunity.  He asked the CEO for help, and together they conducted discovery together. The CEO, Brian Marks, shared wisdom with him, and they discovered that Crusoe wasn’t actually a great fit for the platform at the time. They weren’t equipped to give him everything he needed to have a successful apparel campaign.  The company was geared to fund-raising at the time and wasn’t really built for influencers.    Surprise advice Brian advised David to provide pro bono graphic design work to Crusoe and then told David to recommend that Crusoe sell his designs on a competitor’s platform. Typically custom graphics take about three days, but they turned this one around same-day because it was such a great opportunity even though they couldn’t work with him. David said he couldn’t imagine sending a potential VIP seller to a competitor, but this is where he really started to learn persistence. After they sent Crusoe away, it was still his responsibility to keep Bonfire top-of-mind for him. He did that by actively checking in during opportune moments, like when he won an award for best animal content creator.  David congratulated them and checked in with his manager frequently.    Great rapport They developed a great rapport despite the fact that they never sold anything on Bonfire’s site to this point. Eventually, when Bonfire relaunched its site with more accommodating features for influencer clientele, the timing was perfect.  Crusoe’s manager got back to them during a periodic check-in and was anxious to give the company a shot. The new website was officially about three days old at this point, so David was still a little nervous about bandwidth at this point.  Eventually, the account was the highest-selling campaign on the site up to that point, and it pushed the company to its brink in those early days. He calls it a thrilling experience for everyone involved.    Nurture the relationship Almost two years passed between the time when David sent Crusoe to his competitors and then welcomed him to Bonfire as a customer. He did it by nurturing the relationship and staying in contact with his managers. He let them know about the changes at the company, and eventually, it made sense for them to work with Bonfire.  Crusoe never forgot how the company hooked him up in the early days. As a young rep, David had been so focused on closing that he couldn’t fathom making this kind of decision. The CEO, on the other hand, was looking out for Crusoe’s best interests, and he did what a good sales rep should do: he empathized. He wasn’t so hungry for a deal that he tried to close something that wasn’t a good fit. He put himself in the client’s shoes and did what was right for the client. Then the client paid it forward. He never forgot the solid favor the company did.  It was a long, remarkable lesson that resulted in a relationship that still exists today.    Building value When sellers build value, loyalty results as a natural by-product. Very often we get shortsighted because in the sales space, we tend to focus on what we need right now. We don’t allow ourselves to think about the future. The result is that we often think only of ourselves. Many new reps especially get so quota-driven that we lose sight of our customer’s needs. David said he’s thankful he was able to learn the lesson early in his career because it allows him to detach himself from deals, and to teach his reps to do the same.  Focus on what’s best for the client and find the right timing for a campaign launch rather than doing something that isn’t in anyone’s best interest. #CampaignLaunch Bonfire measures success as a campaign that sells more than 200 apparel items. The Crusoe campaign sold more than 3,000 items, which is about 15 times more than the typical revenue.    Scaling sales David’s realization that you can’t simply scale a team by taking your own personal success and applying it to everyone was his biggest challenge as a sales leader. He isn’t data-driven by nature, but operates more by the seat of his pants. He uses a throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. Then he repeats what succeeds. And while that worked for him in a young startup environment where there wasn’t a blueprint, it doesn’t work to scale.  He had to develop a data-driven approach because not everyone can sell like he can. He had to overcome the notion that everyone should do what worked for him. The truth, as he discovered, is that there are lots of awesome personalities and skill sets that can sell effectively. Diving into the data to discover why those personalities could sell effectively was huge.     Tracking data They started by establishing a baseline metric for success. Once you’ve determined what your team is doing every day, you can hone those skills to arrive at the place where you’re closing more deals or launching more campaigns.  David once operated according to a gut-feel to determine how many messages to send out, but they couldn’t rely on that. They needed to establish a number of new outreach messages a day. In this case, it was 25 new outreach messages a day, with the intention to convert 35 percent of those into demos. If 10 percent of those convert to launch campaigns, a BDR can launch three a week and be set up for long-term success.  The key was drilling down those numbers to figure out what needed to happen at each stage of the pipeline. Telling new reps what they need to do in order to be successful makes a big difference. If they hit those benchmarks, they can feel really good about their trajectory.  David said he wouldn’t have learned the lessons about empathy, timing, and persistence if he hadn’t been willing to ask for help. Many new reps want to put their heads down and prove themselves. He said that the best reps ask tons of questions and aren’t afraid to fail. Success occurs when you put yourself out there, ask for help, and then apply the lessons you learn effectively.    “How To Close A Deal With A Prospect Who Goes With Your Competitor” episode resources You can connect with David via email at David@bonfire.com. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn and check out Bonfire.com. Find his music at Griff’s Room Band. You can also connect with his mom, who is a professional storyteller, at Characters By Kim.   Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that.    Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

The Sales Evangelist podcast features experts from all over the world, and Zoom helps us bridge the distance for video conference calls without added expense or travel.   We use Zoom to power The Sales Evangelist Certified Sales Training, and it enables us to help sales reps and sales teams improve their skills, find the right customers, generate effective activities, establish successful strategies, build strong value, and close more deals.     World travel Zoom is a powerful video platform that makes it easy to communicate with people all over the world in a matter of minutes. It powers webinars, video conferencing, and video phone calls. In the early days of The Sales Evangelist, we used Go To Meeting for our conferencing and demonstration needs. It was the Kleenex of the industry.  Skype was available but it was mostly used for personal needs, like friends and family members looking to stay connected. Eventually it was bought by Microsoft, and we tried using Skype Business for our podcast interviews. Though the audio quality was ok, the service frequently dropped calls. Additionally, because there was no way to record, I had to incorporate a third-party app to save our interviews.    User-friendly Around this time, a guest came on the show and shared his experience using Zoom. His company did all of its recording with Zoom and they liked that it integrated with a lot of other tools the company was already using. I was skeptical, but when I started my research, I discovered that a lot of other industry folks were using it as well.  The audio quality was great and it didn’t generate a lot of background transformer-type noise. Other tools like Google Hangouts and join.me emerged, but they were clunky and complicated for the customer who was logging in.    Selling points Perhaps most importantly, Zoom was free to use. It didn’t have the same capabilities as the robust premium account, but I could log in and talk to someone for 45 minutes, or invite up to 100 different people to join me on a call. Eventually I discovered I wanted access to the premium tools, and it was easy for me to transition to a paid account, as well as being cost effective for a small business.  Zoom offered high-quality HD video recording that I could record to my cloud account or use on my YouTube or social media channels. I could also connect it to Dropbox.  It integrated easily with Slack, which made it easy for me to communicate internally with my team. Zoom also integrated seamlessly with Salesforce, Google Drive, Gmail, and Blackboard. In some cases, the connection requires Zapier, and in others the tools connect directly.    Sharing information Zoom offers powerful educational capabilities as well. If I’m giving a demonstration to a buyer I can use the tools to underline or highlight important things and give the buyer complete interaction on the proposal. Screenshare is an option, of course, and you can even use your cell phone, either plugged in or via wifi and Bluetooth, for screen shares.  People buy after they recognize value. If you teach them something they didn’t know before, you’ll engage your prospects, despite the fact that they are sitting in China and you’re in Milwaukee.    Powerhouse Zoom is a powerhouse that beats the pants off the big name providers in the industry. If you’re planning to renew your GoToMeeting account, check out Zoom first. I’m not getting any money from them for doing this, but I use Zoom daily and it’s perfect for the work that I do.  Zoom Rooms allow you to gather multiple people on a screen, and the company is hosting a conference called Zoomtopia this October. Zoom is pushing the boundaries of connecting people, and the company continues growing.  Even for the technologically-challenged people in our lives, Zoom works well because it’s user-friendly.    “Video Conference Calls” episode resources Check out Zoom.us for more information about video conferencing for your organization.  If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. I’m fairly easy to connect with. Just comment on something about my podcast. Send me an email. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561) 578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. As a savvy seller, you’ll want to continue learning, and you can take advantage of a free 30-day trial, complete with a free audio book, on Audible. They have thousands of books to choose from and you can begin your free trial today.  I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. When you share your experiences with the show, others will read the reviews and give us a listen. I truly appreciate you and appreciate your reviews and your subscription, and your willingness to tell your friends and anyone you know that's in sales about the podcast. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Whether you’re a sales rep or a sales leader, a sales manager or a business owner, we can learn valuable lessons from the study of how Hubspot grew from 50-1500 individuals.  Sam Mallikarjunan has sold for a variety of organizations, from the five-person startup to the Fortune 500 company, so he has seen the sales story at a couple of stages. He’s a fellow at Hubspot and he teaches digital marketing at Harvard University.  New revenue Sam loves the idea that whoever chases two rabbits catches neither because it’s a reminder to him to focus. He has spent the last year focused on teaching, speaking, and research. He points to doing one thing at a time and doing it really well before moving on.  A weird pivot exists for startups that are growing from “we’ll take anybody’s money” to losing cash faster than you can acquire new cash. The core pivot occurs when you reach the point where you’re struggling for customer retention, because the economics of your model will break down.   It’s a matter of sales reps making time to ensure that they are bringing in new revenue. One new customer was upset because she couldn’t access her email after signing on with Hubspot. She had cancelled her Internet provider because she thought that’s what Hubspot was.  It cost the company money because they had to service the issue. The problem didn’t arise because the seller was a bad person. He just didn’t verify that the customer was going to be successful. Healthy revenue The company implemented clawbacks which withdraw commissions from sellers if the customer cancels their account within a certain window. Sellers are heavily incentivized to ensure that the person they are bringing on will result in healthy revenue.  Because Hubspot is a SAS, a recurring revenue model, the company loses money acquiring customers. The company doesn’t break even for some months. If the customer cancels too quickly, the business loses money.  Cashflow is more important than your mother.  Keeping customers Many companies miss the core principle, which is that you can’t spend money to get customers unless you’re good at keeping them. If you’re selling iPad covers that are cheap, people will likely only buy from you once. But if you’re really good at keeping customers, it’s not necessarily how much they pay in the first transaction, but rather the lifetime value.  If you’re good at keeping those customers, you can pay your sales reps really well. You can give them lots of collateral to help them close deals. You can also spend a lot of money on marketing to tee them up for good conversations or on training for their reps. Sales sequence Sam recalls being a cell phone salesman in a mall. He asked his customers questions about cell phones, but he didn’t listen to their answers because it didn’t matter what they said. He was going to ask the next question in his sequence. Either they would sign on the dotted line or walk away. It didn’t matter to him.  The company had more than 50 percent cancellation rate coming out of the kiosks, but the sellers never missed quota. He got big bonuses for his teams because they always met their quota. It cost the company a lot of money in support costs, lost device costs, and refunds, so they shut down the entire unit and retrained the reps.  The company was designed as a subscription model, which meant they would lose a little bit of money to acquire customers.   Platinum rule The platinum rule goes a step farther than the golden rule, which only requires that you treat people the way you want to be treated. The platinum mindset demands that you treat people the way they want to be treated.  Trust is core to the sales process, and trust begins by taking the time to ask questions and understand who you’re selling to. People like to be personalized.  Sam points to Netflix’s business model as an ideal one because it has motivated him to rate more than 800 movies. He said he does it because he knows that Netflix will use the information to improve his experience. He points to the fact that prospects will volunteer their information when they know it’s being used to help them make better decisions.  Negative reviews When Jeff Bezos of Amazon first added negative reviews to the Amazon website, his investors thought he was crazy to include information that would discourage people from buying things. His response was that you don’t make money when you sell things, but rather when you help people make purchase decisions.  He said that sellers often lose sight of the fact that it’s more important to help people make the decision that’s best rather than making the decision the seller wants them to make. It’s sometimes powerful to not sell to a buyer when you can’t find the value proposition. They may figure it out themselves because you’ve built that trust and then buy from you anyway. You aren’t costing the company money and you’ll improve your retention. Talking least He points to the fact that he always thought if he talked the most, he would leave with the most. He discovered, though, that when he asked meaningful questions, he talked the least, and he did well. Sam discovered that holding his meetings at a cigar lounge helped him monitor how much he talked, because if his cigar went out, it meant he talked too much and didn’t listen enough.  Candle problem A famous psychology study challenges people to fix a candle to a way in a way that it doesn’t drop any wax when it’s lit. People try melting the candle to the wall but nothing works. The right answer, he said, is to dump out the box of tacks, tack the box to the wall, and then add the candle.  If you give people the right incentive, you fire up the part of your brain that excites them. If you need someone to turn a wheel, the best way to accomplish that is to give them a dollar for every revolution they make. The hardest thing to do is to convince people to give something a fair shake. When what you’re doing isn’t working, you tend to do more of the same with greater intensity.  People are driven to change when there’s impetus, which is usually when things are going poorly. When you shift your conversation and slow down your sales cycle and ask more questions and give more answers, you’ll make it easy for people to reach out to you. “Hubspot Grew” episode resources Connect with Sam Mallikarjunan on his website or on LinkedIn.  Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that.  Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Your closing process will often require you to speak to a board or a group of people about your product or service, and you must provide value to your audience when presenting in person. The Sales Evangelist Certified Sales Training Program provides specific sections for prospecting, building value, and converting to a paying client, and we’ve designed the training to help sellers prepare for presentations and to train their teams to do the same. It’s designed to help sales reps and sales teams improve their skills, find the right customers, adopt the right activities, ask the right questions, build strong value, and close more deals.  Guessing game Many situations demand that sellers meet with a team of individuals who will ask a variety of questions about the product or service. You’re wasting your time if you don’t understand the problems they need to solve or the challenges they are facing. It doesn’t make sense to play the guessing game during the limited time you have with this group of people.  Once you understand the issue, you must also determine who the decision-makers and buyers are. You must understand the timeframe they are working against and their budget for the purchase.  The company you’re pitching to will also bring in competitors who will pitch as well, but they aren’t your concern.  Storytelling John Livesay recently spoke about storytelling and the need to be memorable. It doesn’t matter who presents first or last, but rather who tells a better story.  Consider having other team members attend the presentation with you and introduce themselves by telling an interesting story. Perhaps your CTO can share how his love of Legos® pushed him to create complex things and find solutions to problems. It inserts personality into the presentation.  Tactical presentation Make sure you know who will present information on the buyer’s behalf. Have someone from your organization research to determine who will attend. If possible, learn what those people hope to discover from your presentation. Engage your champion, or the person you’ve been working with to this point, to find out whether you can introduce yourself prior to the presentation. When you do that, ask them what questions they’d like you to address in your presentation and then be prepared to address those specific topics.  Once you understand who will attend and what information they’ll be seeking, you can build your presentation around those topics.  Recruit help If at all possible, take someone else to the presentation with you. Take several people if you can. Assemble a team of people from different departments.  When you set up in the conference room, don’t divide yourself on opposite sides of the table. Use name cards for both groups to indicate where different people should sit. Also make sure you spell everyone’s names correctly.  Intersperse the members of your group among the members of the company you’re pitching to. When you have breaks in the action, because the two teams are sitting together, they’ll be able to share conversation instead of squaring off like rival gangs.  We recently used name cards for a presentation and they were a huge hit. The company was blown away by the preparation and the organization that went into the meeting. They assumed that if we were willing to invest that much preparation in a presentation like this, we’d certainly do it in our efforts to help them solve their problems.  Control engagement Develop slides that include imagery rather than a jumble of words. Tell a story about the problem your prospect is facing and how you can help solve it. Demonstrate your solution.  Assign one member of your team to watch for reactions from the others in the room. Use him as a spotter. If he notices that someone is disengaged or fighting against sleep, he can signal that to you by interjecting or posing a question that will signal to you to adjust your direction.  Have him watch for body language that indicates interest or to take note of those people who are jotting down things while you’re talking. If, for example, the IT director takes lots of notes during the presentation, at the break I could suggest to the presenters that we talk a bit about IT and the most common questions we hear.  The spotter’s role in any presentation is to be an integrator and to make sure questions get answered. We don’t want anyone to leave with unanswered questions. #SalesPresentation  Business case Thank your champion in front of the entire group for making the presentation possible. Make her feel good in front of her colleagues.  Then begin the work of building a business case for your prospect. Explain that you’ll answer the questions they submitted ahead of time and address the challenges you see based on the lessons you’ve learned. Describe how you’ve solved these problems for others and how you’ll translate that to this organization.  Talk about how much the problem is likely costing the company and why they need to fix it. Explain how you’ll help, and do it all using stories.  Virtual meetings You can apply many of these same concepts to your virtual meetings as well. Although you can’t intersperse the participants, you can consider sending some treats that will arrive prior to the presentation. You can even send treats that somehow tie to the presentation you’ll be making, like Swedish Fish to make the case that you’re going to help them land bigger clients.  Work to stand out from the pack by being unique and telling an amazing story.  Action plan When the meeting is complete, everyone in that room should leave feeling like they participated and like they were fulfilled by what happened. Then provide a specific action plan for what happens next.  Present a few different options for ways to move forward. Give them time frames and explain the steps required to progress.  I conduct presentations this way and they work well for me and for the people I’m presenting to. I want you to realize the same benefits in your own presentations. "Presenting In Person" episode resources If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. I’m fairly easy to connect with. Just comment on something about my podcast. Send me an email. You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester. You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. If you and your team are interested in learning more, we'd love to have you join us. Call (561) 578-1729 to speak directly to me or one of our team members about the program. This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. As a savvy seller, you’ll want to continue learning, and you can take advantage of a free 30-day trial, complete with a free audio book, on Audible. They have thousands of books to choose from and you can begin your free trial today.  I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. When you share your experiences with the show, others will read the reviews and give us a listen. I truly appreciate you and appreciate your reviews and your subscription, and your willingness to tell your friends and anyone you know that's in sales about the podcast. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Time often brings a great deal of change, and some ideas don’t survive the passage of time; though there are people who don’t believe it’s true, even with social selling, cold calling is not dead.   Aaron Abodeely has a passion for helping sales reps and small business owners distribute their messages, and he noticed along the way that the industry was lagging behind in digital trends like social selling. Evolution is hard because we get into a bubble and a routine of doing things a certain way. We build processes around certain tasks but unless we’re out in the space learning from other people, we can’t learn how to evolve.  Cold calling Typically, cold calling involves calling, emailing, or nurturing leads that are cold outreach, meaning that these contacts haven’t had much, if any, contact with our business or our value proposition. You’re going in cold. We often have sales development reps in enterprise IT designated to contact these leads.  Email came on the scene in the early 1990s, and it joined the landscape of cold calling and door-to-door selling and networking events.  When social selling came on the scene, we learned that we needed to connect with specific contacts within specific organizations. We needed to find those people on social media and engage with them. Some of those connections would be senior connections while others would be peer-to-peer. Social selling is the back end of social engagement, which is simply making friends and introducing ourselves to people in the space. It’s exhibiting genuine curiosity. The selling comes much later, which is why companies often struggle with this concept.  Relevant and tailored I reached out to Aaron on Instagram, but he noted that he isn’t particularly active there, as Linked In is his preferred method of contact. I sent him a message that I loved his content and loved what he was doing and I invited him to have a conversation with me. He explained that my invitation caught him off guard because I used specific details to affirm his work and explain the relevance of our messages.  I sent him an audio message that was tailored to him, but it didn’t seek to sell him anything. We can’t pitch people right out of the gate because they don’t even know us yet.  Although it makes sense that you meet someone, pitch to them, and then they buy, the truth is that if everyone in sales uses this same technique, no one will stand out.  Social media Many people believe that because we’re in the age of social selling, it’s foolish to invest in cold calling, but Aaron is on a mission to revive the concept. When he was an inside sales manager at his last company, he wasn’t doing much cold calling, but now, in his role as a consultant for clients, he’s effectively using email and cold calling to connect with an audience.  He was trying to drive attendance to an event earlier this year, and many of those who took part said they discovered the information via email or LinkedIn or Twitter. Because he connected with them on social media, when he contacted them via email, they remembered him.  The point is that we shouldn’t rely solely on any single method of outreach. It’s the mix of approaches that helps sellers get in front of the audience.  Psychological wins When we discover that a contact is excited to talk to us because we’ve made connections with him, that’s a psychological win. Instead of cold calling, it becomes warm calling because we’ve used advanced strategies to warm that conversation.  By warming them up via social media and sharing relevant content, you’re engaging your audience. That way, when you do call, your name is familiar to them.  There are automated ways to spam people on social media but consider the cost of a lead in your industry. The industry average for a trade show is $800 but for social media, it’s like $300. Do your own research, but considering that it takes only a few hours of your time to get in front of someone who might take an interest in your product, that’s big.  Measure results The challenge for executives and sales managers is that they don’t know how to measure these results. As a result, people spam on social media because they think they don’t have time to nurture this person.  Many reps, in an attempt to save their jobs and meet their metrics, schedule a bunch of spam so they can reflect their efforts.  Part of the argument for why cold calling and email aren’t dead is the reality that if we spend 80 percent of our time on cold calling and email and we hit our targets, we’re coming pretty close.  Track how much time you’re spending on these ventures and then track your success rates from those efforts. As you begin to see success from these efforts, you can increase the amount of time you invest in them. Making time It can be difficult to make time for this kind of outreach, but consider investing an hour over breakfast or in the afternoon with a beer. Connect with 20 of your key buyers together and practice developing messaging that encourages relationships. Convey that your prospect is doing interesting stuff and you’d like to engage with him.  A lot of companies are forward-leaning in this area because their buyers are people who are very active on social media.  Driving engagement Aaron recently had eight days to drive attendance to a technical workshop. He started by taking over the presenter’s LinkedIn profile and creating explainer videos of him sharing why folks might want to attend this event. They deployed the video on LinkedIn and also one-on-one to specific people who might find the information relevant. They also employed cold calling as a follow up to LinkedIn and email messages.  You can be aggressive with it but you must think long-term about the results. Some type of two-way engagement is very good. For example, you’ve liked their post or left a comment and they responded. That’s a good sign and a healthy indicator. You can also send a thoughtful connection request. You simply have to adjust to who your buyer is.  Make videos or launch a blog where you share thoughts about the industry.   2-way dialogue Begin by learning the language of the industry you’re pursuing. Go to technical meetups and learn to use the language your prospects use.  [Tweet "Make your language conversational. Know your niche. Learn the space. In order to stand out as a subject-matter expert, you must speak the part. #SalesLanguage"] Read magazines. Use meetups or YouTube. You may sound dumb trying to talk the way buyers talk, but it isn’t a sleazy thing. It’s your attempt at learning to communicate the way they do. Imagine going to a foreign country where people speak a different language. You may sound clumsy but you’re attempting to speak their language.  It’s human nature to modulate how you speak to people.  Some executives are scared to create content or speak broadly into the space, so start small. Seek help If you’re apprehensive about this, take screenshots and find time to sit with your sales leaders. Show this stuff to them in a one-on-one meeting. Demonstrate how you can get in front of C-level buyers. Make sure you’re hitting your baseline goals with calls and emails in order to get the leadership to adopt these concepts.  “Cold Calling is NOT Dead” episode resources Check out the Outcome Studio Podcast where Aaron interviews people who are sales and marketing experts or who just have cool stories to tell. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Instagram.  Connect with me at donald@thesalesevangelist.com. Try the first module of the TSE Certified Sales Training Program for free. This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance. TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump. If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that.  Tools for sellers This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It's super easy, it's helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link. Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out. I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility. If you haven't already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.  Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com