The Sales Evangelist

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

The sales landscape has changed as buyers have gained access to more information, and the result for sellers is changing rules for sales tools.  Subhanjan Sarkar runs a company called Pitch Link, which helps companies solve the problem of being able to scale by finding good salespeople.     Balance of power David Cancel wrote a book called Conversational Marketing in which he suggests that the balance of power has shifted from supply to demand and from company to customer. Thirty years ago, selling centered around the ability to mass-produce products in factories. Walmart’s mantra at the time was “stack them high and sell them low.” The system used to work with the information estimate tree that existed between suppliers and buyers, because the suppliers and makers always had more information available to them than the buyers did. The buyer never knew, prior to the Internet, that certain items were available from other sources for lower prices.  Over the last 20 years, the buying and selling process has been disrupted. Most of us won’t say it out loud because so much of the information from the previous era becomes irrelevant.    Old things Subhanjan said that people often challenge him on this premise because they can point to places where the old way of doing things still works. Though it may still work, it is less effective. Email open rates, for example, have dropped from 40 percent to 2.8 percent.People aren’t taking calls from people they don’t know.   The fundamental shift is this: traditional sales was based on the principle of interruption but buyers don’t want interruptions. This doesn’t mean that reps shouldn’t do their jobs anymore. It simply means that reps must change the way they do things.  He points out that they are called salespeople for a reason. They aren’t called prospecting people or lead-generation people. But they are expected to fill up a CRM, to write emails, to prospect, and to make phone calls.    Local connections In traditional sales, people knew each other because they went to school together. They played football or baseball together and then they graduated and one became the manager of the local factory while the other became a salesman. They built trust over the course of 20 years.  Now people trust brands rather than salespeople. They might eventually trust the salesperson over five to 10 years of working together, but initially, it’s the brand.    PitchLink As Subhanjan built the company, he understood the story behind the company’s development in great detail. He could explain why the company evolved the way it did because he was in the thick of it. Then, he hired a hot-shot sales guy who understood marketing automation and social selling, but his storytelling wasn’t as authentic.  The company’s story wasn’t being delivered authentically, so the company discovered a need to standardize its narrative. The more tactical problem was that without face-to-face meetings, the sellers couldn’t make pitches. The presentations got postponed.  Small organizations that only have three interested prospects will struggle if they aren’t able to meet with two of them for weeks or even months. That’s catastrophic.  Finally, they discovered that even if they could meet someone within a prospective company, it was often difficult to schedule meetings with the decision-makers.  How do we establish our product or service or value proposition? And how do we do it so that our prospect isn’t rushed?    Creating experience PitchLink worked to create an experience that was as close to face-to-face as possible without actually being face-to-face. It could never be exactly the same but they worked to create a system that allowed room for narratives and questions. They built a tool that allows users to link up any kind of file format like a playlist.  So imagine how you would pitch to a prospect about your product. Just as you would start by greeting the prospect and thanking him for the time, you can record audio or video of the same personalized introduction. The moment the prospect clicks the link, he immediately sees the personalized greeting.  Your pitch will include the pitch, the scenario, a demo, and a comparison with competitors. All the elements of a typical pitch can be packaged into a single product and sent as a link to your prospects. You can effectively do all the things you would do in person by way of this link.    Freedom These packaged presentations free your prospects to consume your information when they have the time and mental capacity to do so. They’ll also be free to engage with specific parts of your presentation multiple times if necessary.  Once they’ve done that, they can decide whether the product is right for them, and then invite others to view it. All invitees see the ame pitch on the same interface and they can ask questions within this interface. All users can see the questions asked and the answers that were given.  Everyone is always on the same page.  Clients are busy and focused on other things. The way we sold in the past won’t always work, so we have to evaluate new options and provide them in a way that’s best for the prospects. #SalesEvolution   Sales myths The biggest myth perpetuated on us is that great sales guys close deals. Suhanjan believes that sales are closed by the buyer who finally signs the deal. He believes that sellers must respect that shift.  The buyer is in control of the process, so we must rethink the way we talk about value transaction. Sales has evolved so much that perhaps we can’t even talk about sales anymore.    “Changing Rules for Sales Tools” episode resources You can connect with Subhanjan Sarkar on LinkedIn and at PitchLink, where you can also sign up for a free trial. Listeners of The Sales Evangelist podcast will get 120 days free instead of the 90 days that everyone else gets.  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. 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

Sellers must work to effectively plan their activities in order to accomplish the important tasks in their days, and since I’ve struggled with the same challenges, I’ve developed a new planning tool to help with that effort.    For most of us, it isn’t unreasonable to find that we have more tasks due in a day than we can possibly accomplish, and we can end up feeling like we’ve failed when we come up short. Unless we change how we do things, our days will feel like Groundhog Day, and we’ll repeat the same ineffective patterns every day.    Falling short If we fail to complete our to-do list every single day, we’ll end the day feeling like we’ve failed. Worse yet, our list will grow every day because it will include tasks from the previous day that we didn’t finish. Eventually, we’ll feel emotionally drained by our ineffectiveness.  Now, while you’re trying to find new leads, get new deals, and close new opportunities, you’ll likely be preoccupied with your looming to-do list.  You’ll never completely escape the stressful moments and days in sales, but if you learn to effectively manage the time you have, you’ll better manage that stress. Whether you’re selling cars or selling services, you’re at risk of being frustrated by the to-do list.    Identifying the process I discovered in my own process of organizing tasks I was spending as much time planning the tasks as I did accomplishing them. The result was that I was going in circles. I had read a book by Kevin Cruz called 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management that prompted me to take control of my schedule. (I recommend you read it, too. It’s available on Audible.) I started by writing down all the tasks I needed to do each day, keeping in mind that I function best when I keep my days broken up. Kevin recommended breaking your day into 15-minute increments, which was a great idea, but honestly 30-minute increments worked best for me. I planned my entire day, including tasks like reading a sales book, listening to a podcast, prospecting, LinkedIn outreach, follow-up with clients, or proposal preparation.    Creating a planner I decided to create my own planner that specifically addresses my unique tasks. One side of the planner allows me to list all the different tasks I do and divide them into different categories. In my case, as a business owner, I have certain categories that other sellers may not have.  The top of each page has my KPIs which will help me generate sales and move the needle. They include new prospects, new opportunities, deals, progress. I list my top three goals or priorities for the day and things that I know I must get done. Some of them will be sales related and some will be beyond sales.  For example, Mondays are podcast interview days. Other tasks on other days might include working with a team member to accomplish an internal task or meeting with a bookkeeper. Some days I’m writing a guest blog post for Hubspot or some other publication or creating content for social media. I also include personal tasks like appointments.  At the bottom of the page, because I’m also a consultant, I track my clients and the consultations I have with them.    Devoting time On the second side of the page, I allocate time for each of the different tasks, in either 15- or 30-minute increments. I order the tasks according to importance because I have them divided by category.  Over time, I can track the categories and tasks that are taking a lot of my time. In some cases, I can push some of those tasks to other team members to free time in my own schedule.  As an example, I realized I was spending a lot of time handling emails and I wasn’t able to efficiently get back to people when I needed to. I trained my executive assistant to help manage my email account and invested a couple of days into helping her establish a process. Now she helps me distinguish between junk emails and those that require an answer. As a result, my admin tasks have diminished a bit.  If you’re thinking you don’t have the luxury of an executive assistant, it’s possible to find trustworthy people on platforms like Upwork.   Maximizing time Some tasks can be shared by other team members through the use of templates. If I need a presentation created, I can use a template from PandaDoc to have someone else create it for me. This frees up my time to focus on things that matter the most.  At the end of the day, I can note my actual accomplishments for the day and how much I was able to achieve. Based on those numbers, I can judge how efficient I was. Did I get to 70 percent? Strive to get A’s, but know that B’s are ok. C’s are no good.  I’m going to create a video to share on LinkedIn that will show you how you can build a planner of your own, and ultimately we’ll create a planner for sellers, though our current one targets entrepreneurs. Work to identify the tasks that only you can do and make sure those are the tasks that land on your calendar. Then judge your success based upon your ability to accomplish those things.    “New Planning Tool” episode resources 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

Sellers that don’t have good data will struggle to repeat their success so we must recognize the importance of data in sales.    Kyle Morris operates a company called SifData which features an application that sits on Salesforce to help companies track job changes.     Defining data Sales reps are very intuitive. They understand things well and many people assume that anecdotes and data are the same. They assume that, because they closed a deal with a company similar to the one they are interacting with, that constitutes data. Because a tactic worked previously, they may assume that they can use that information as data moving forward.  In other words, they assume that if a tactic worked once, it’s solid and they should continue using it.  Kyle points out that the plural of anecdote isn’t data. We must stay objective and make decisions based upon actual information rather than sticking our finger to the wind to determine which way it’s blowing.  Data is  objective information about people, companies, or whatever your data set is that helps you make informed decisions. One of the easiest ways to identify the companies that could buy your product is by identifying the companies that have already bought your product. Figure out what’s common among them and then use that as a template to decide who to sell to in the future. If you’re selling to companies that are unique, you might find another market that also has that same commonality.   Some data will get you pretty far but you must be able to fill in the gaps that data doesn’t cover. Having anecdotes that prove your point isn’t the same as having data. #SalesData Data problems The two biggest problems common to data are that companies use data sources that are inconsistent and that they have too much data that isn’t actually valuable.  Consider Uber as an example. If you’re trying to sell to Uber, some sellers might consider it enterprise while others view it as mid-market since they only have a couple of thousand employees. LinkedIn might reflect that the company has 35,000 employees, including drivers. If companies aren’t careful about where they are choosing data, it can create confusion.  Be consistent about where you get data, even if it isn’t perfect, because you’ll at least be consistently wrong. Limit the number of resources you use to make classifications, especially for things like territories or number of employees or revenue.  Many CRMs have a full page of information that reps never use. It doesn’t add value and it actually becomes a burden to them. Approach this with the same mentality you use when designing your website: what’s above the fold is critically different than what’s below the fold.It’s impactful where things are placed, and if reps have a bunch of unnecessary information at the top of the form it burdens them.  If the reps don’t absolutely need it, then remove it. Streamline your process. Develop a discipline around reducing the amount of noise that your reps see based on the information they need. If the data won’t actually impact how they work through the sales process, it should be removed since it won’t actually move the needle.  Guesstimation Donald Miller says that if you confuse, you lose. We cannot confuse our reps. If we do, they’ll likely go back to what they’ve always done before, which is guesstimation.  Imagine driving a truck built in 1965 versus a fighter jet built in 2019. The truck likely haas a stick shift and like two buttons for the radio, so almost any person can use it to get from point A to point B. Put that same person in a fighter jet with a million buttons and they won’t understand how to move forward.  Sales reps must be able to execute and they shouldn’t be asked to fly a fighter jet if all they really need is a 1965 Chevy.  Additionally, more data points mean that some operator has to maintain those fields. You must make sure the information is accurate because inaccurate data will make your CRM less valuable. Again, if that happens, your reps will start using anecdotes to make decisions again.  Cry wolf All those unnecessary fields will prompt your reps to fill them in, which will become cumbersome. If it isn’t a useful data point, they may just plug something in to fill the blank so they can move on. Your reps must be able to trust the fields that are on the page.  Make the process simple and easy to engage. Remove as much as you can from the page layout so that your reps are only interacting with data that moves the needle.  Everything can’t be critical. You can’t have 10 tier-one problems with no tier-two problems. You cannot cry wolf and represent that everything is vital.   Kyle recalls his operations team once telling him that they needed a new field to be added to the CRM. He insisted that the team could add one field if they could identify two that could be removed. He said that it forces them to be intentional about the information they gather.  Words are currency. You must make sure the process is easy. Find ways to break down barriers. Effective data Kyle said he’s a fan of using very specific people in very specific roles. Sales reps are most effective at building rapport, identifying pain and need, and closing deals.If you’re using your sales reps to collect data, you’re probably spending more money for it than you need to. And just as you would never ask your data-entry person to close deals, you probably shouldn’t ask your sellers to crunch data.  Businesses may think they are being efficient by asking sellers to multi-task. They may figure the seller is already going to be on the site anyway so he can just collect the data. Consider the brain change that must take place in that situation. Sales reps must change their entire thought process in order to shift gears into data collection. Switching back and forth can be tedious because it requires different muscles. Allow the people who are better at data to handle data.  Every minute your seller isn’t selling results in money down the drain. Keep your opportunity costs in mind.  Refresh data Establish a process to refresh your data. As your company continues to accumulate accounts, you must track which ones are good or bad. Make it part of your cadence and establish a date on which you’ll refresh data.  Consider hiring a team overseas to log into your Salesforce and identify the accounts that haven’t been updated in the past year and then refresh the data. Then track when the fields were updated.  Also monitor duplicate accounts in your CRM which pollute your database. But before you can start eliminating duplicate accounts, you must work to ensure that you’ve prevented the problem of new duplicates. Duplicates create more mental overhead for your reps because two reps may be unknowingly working on the same account at the same time. It’s wasted energy that could be focused toward closing.  Don’t assume that anecdotes and data are the same thing. Be sure, too, that you pick a single source of truth and stick with it. There’s no perfect data source, but at least be consistently imperfect. Allow your sellers to trust what they are working on.  “Importance of Data in Sales” episode resources You can connect with Kyle Morris on LinkedIn or send him an email at Kyle@sifdata.com. You’re a savvy salesperson who wants to learn and grow. Check out audible for thousands of titles, plus a free 30-day trial, plus a free book.  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. 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