The Sales Evangelist

Every sales professional and entrepreneur needs a profitable brand, and the key is to build a brand online and leverage it for rapid sales growth.   Corey Blake is the CEO at MWI, an international digital marketing agency. His background is in sales and business development and he has managed great sales teams over the years. Validate your brand When it comes to building a brand and then leveraging it for growth, you must begin by validating your brand. You basically want to turn off any sirens that the potential customer has about you as a seller.   We all know that a stigma exists around sellers, and you likely even experience it when someone gets on the phone with you to sell you something, despite the fact that you're in sales yourself.   The biggest challenge often originates from the fact that we build great brands and we know we have value to offer, but we don't know how to convince people to pay for it. How you validate your brand is critical in that process.   It's simply legitimizing your brand, service, or product. You must find a third party or another way to validate it. You could share that your brand has been featured on certain sites or that you've been invited to certain events.   When you're starting out, go to your customer. Offer to give a customer your product or service in exchange for their use of it. Explain that you think it will make his life better and that you'd like to ask for his testimonial.   Now you've got validation and social proof to use in your next sales conversation. Personal confidence Seeing someone use your product provides you, as the seller, a certain amount of confidence as well.   If you prefer, you can create great case studies or build a social media presence that includes amazing content. For MWI, for example, they can validate themselves as great content creators by creating great content.   As a bonus, TSE has used those product giveaways as an opportunity to gain feedback during our initial launches so we can figure out where we need to tweak our training or our products. It also helps us build a case study. Through all of this, you'll build your own excitement and you'll develop even more confidence, which is the key to success. Begin your entrepreneur journey by selling yourself on the value you're providing to the world.   [Tweet "If you can't sell yourself, you'll never sell to anyone else. Become the greatest ambassador for the value you're going to provide. #ValueAmbassador"] Linking value Once you've established confidence in your value, use your marketing to communicate it to your potential customers. It's not enough to be sold on your own value, but you must find someone else who is sold on your value as well.   Find a publication that will tell its audience how legit you are.   Once you've built this validation, you'll have an amazing ability to sell your product or service with exclusivity. You'll find yourself in the driver's seat and gives you leverage in your communication and makes your sale more exclusive.   If you establish exclusivity, you almost won't have to sell your customers as much. You'll simply have to educate them and move them along the sales process. Exclusivity is priceless. Finding balance No one wants to be perceived as the typical used car salesman. Don't come across as gimmicky, selfish, or ignorant. Instead, strive for confident, competent, professional, and controlled. There's a balance to it.   Assume your customer has never heard of your validation and mention it to him. Within the first 20 seconds, provide that validation to establish confidence and control. Find a way to organically share it without being perceived as cocky.   The alarms about whether you're legit will shut down. Then you can offer the idea that you only work with a certain kind of brand, and that allows you to operate with a lot more control. Close early, close often Make sure you're asking for the business. Develop specific strategies to close deals. Beautiful branding and validation won't matter if you can't close. Consistently think strategically about how you'll move this sale to the place you want it.   Provide the customer with the right information and the right details so that she'll be ready to close. Closing amounts to more than the way you speak, the speed of your speech, and the tone of your voice. These things do constantly lead to close, but you have to figure out how to move to the specific points along the process.   Many sellers are fearful of the conversion side so they hold off too long. Or they get anxious and they ask for the sale way too soon. If you follow the process, that's where you'll see the difference. Sales process You can have all the right components in place, but without a repeatable sales process, you'll struggle to support your sales. If your process isn't organized in a way that leads to close at all times, you won't succeed.   Determine how to leverage all the components you've gathered to move your customers toward a deal. Leverage your value, your validation, your exclusivity, and your communication to ask for the business.   Corey's goal at the end of the sales process is to structure the process so that the _customer_ asks for the next steps without him having to sell it. That's when you know you've hit the nail on the head. Organizing your tools Corey worked with James Carberry at Sweetfish Media to help him set up a process of validation. James already had significant validation because he had a large number of podcasts with great guests and he writes for large publications. They simply had to find a way to organize the validation.   In their case, all the tools were sitting there waiting to be used.   Focus on providing real value. Sell yourself on the value you're providing to individuals and industry. When you love what you're doing and you aren't simply trying to make a buck, people will want to be part of that.   Good businesses are built on products that will make a difference. It doesn't have to be an altruistic notion like ending world hunger. We would all benefit if we could go to work every day and provide value that you believe in to everyone else. "Build a Brand Online and Leverage It for Rapid Sales Growth" episode resources You can connect with Corey at Corey@mwi.com. Mention that you heard me on this podcast. You can also find him on LinkedIn @Corey Blake.   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. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. 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

We consume information from a variety of platforms, so we have to connect with prospects from different angles using **omnichannel outreach**. We have to find our audience where they happen to be listening. Mark Kasoglow is the VP of Sales at Outreach, a sales engagement channel, and he’s explaining today how sales reps can include omnichannel outreach in their efforts. His passion is developing people and creating a winning, fun, positive atmosphere where people are inspired to do their best. He said if you are going to have a hard worker, they have to enjoy work. That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy what you do. It means you enjoy working and you’re likely always tinkering around the house. His dad taught him that if you make people’s work easy, they’ll work hard for you. To that end, he tries to make people’s work easier so they’ll work harder. ##What is omnichannel? Consider the following questions as you’re considering what omnichannel is. Do you answer the phone when someone calls? Do you reply to every email you receive? Will you sometimes engage with people who contact you on social media? Will you sometimes talk with people who stop by your home or office to sell something? That’s omnichannel. As humans, we engage with people in many different ways depending on our mood or their approach or the channel. The point of omnichannel outreach is to meet people where they are. People have preferred methods of communication, and by limiting yourself to a single channel you’re excluding a large number of people. You’re missing out on a growing audience. Because your audience is all over the place and they communicate in different ways, you have to do the same. #omnichannel ##Overthinking omnichannel Many people don’t understand how to use omnichannel. With social, for example, if I’m targeting you on [social media](https://thesalesevangelist.com/episode846/), I’d begin by following you. Then I’d read your posts and engage in activity to let you know that I’m interested in you as a human and in the things you’re doing. After I’ve built an online social relationship, the person I’m targeting should understand a little bit of why I’m interacting with them. At that point, you can reach out with a value pitch or something that helps people understand what you’re offering. As humans and nonsellers, we do this kind of stuff all the time very naturally, but then when we bring it to our careers and the way we make money, we get weird about it. We do stupid stuff that we would never do as a normal human. But the truth is that if you engage professionally on social media the same way you engage on your personal pages, you’ll be a great social seller. ##Beginning with omnichannel Sales managers who hear this may wonder how to introduce these concepts without disrupting the success their team members are already having. Admittedly it’s difficult to introduce change while trying to avoid disrupting the status quo. At Outreach, the teams begin with a hypothesis like, “I believe that by engaging with our top 10 accounts that we can create more meetings.” It’s specific and measurable. Then they create a plan to go do that. Maybe set up a strike team of your best reps or a cross-section of different kinds of reps and have them run the same process. Then, using KPIs, measure their results against the control results. If there’s a lift, then people will be happy to move to the new techniques. Realize that you cannot have people who conduct activities in different ways. There must be a workflow and process in place to ensure that you’re measuring the process rather than the ability of the individual. In the end, you must have the guts to make a decision. The only sellers who should balk at this kind of change are those that live in the exact house that they want, who are driving the exact car that they want, and they are happy coming into work. If a seller fits that description, he’s likely already making $10 million a year or he is lying to himself. ##Tracking results Sometimes our tracking processes do a fantastic job of motivating our activities, but they produce such a heavy cognitive load that teams spend more time managing them than they do in their sales activities. Mark equates sales to plate spinning, where you spin up a couple of people on Monday, and then spin a couple more on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday, but you have to return to the Monday people to keep them spinning. The problem is that you can only spin so many plates at a time. Technology allows you to add a motor to the stick that will keep the plate spinning until the motor runs out of gas. Technology helps you administer and run the system, and Outreach does exactly the same thing. ##Personalize Even if you’re automating a system, you can build out processes that allow you to be personable. Include a first step that involves research to discover two or three specific things about your prospect. Then include those in your CRM and write an email based on those things you found. The first step should not be an automated email. Even if you send an automated email to 10,000 people and get 100responses back, you will have burned out 9,900 people by sending a generic email. Take your time and send personalized messages to a select group of people. ##Organization size Outreach works with single seller startups and huge companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and Amazon. The tool is meant to be flexible. The sweet spot is probably from 100-500 users; a company that is seeking to really nail down their scaling strategy. It’s for those companies who can’t afford to rely on the top 20 percent to carry the load for the other 80 percent. Your company must have a much more operational system driven way of selling. One of its secret sauces is its integration with SalesForce and Dynamics so that every action is logged into the CRM automatically. The tool uses a feature called Amplify that involves complex, futuristic machine learning. ##Machine learning As an example, the average percentage for out-of-office replies is 17 percent. So 1 in 5 of those responses will likely include the date the person will return, and the name and phone number of someone else in the organization who may even be higher in the organization. And most reps probably delete those emails despite all the good information that’s in them. You’re 46 percent less likely to book a meeting with someone if you contact them a second time when they’re out of the office. Pair that information with the fact that the majority of those emails will include the contact information for another person on the team. Outreach has created machine learning that can read out-of-office replies. It reads the date of return in the email and offers an option to pause all communication until the recipient returns. It also notifies you of the other team member’s contact information. With one click, you can address these issues. From the company’s origins, they scanned emails and discovered 73,000 phone numbers in the email signature blocks. Of those contacts, only 23 percent of those were added to [CRM](https://thesalesevangelist.com/episode979/) by the reps. Seventy-seven percent of those were never captured. In 9 out of 10 deals, you end up talking with the person who was originally listed on that out-of-office email. And considering how much less likely you are to book a deal if you contact the person again while they are out of office, it’s damaging your efforts if you don’t read the out-of-office email. This helps you be more personable because you’re not contacting the person continually while he’s on vacation. ##Multiple channels If you aren’t contacting people on multiple channels, you’re limiting your ability to succeed. But don’t go willy-nilly spending half your day on LinkedIn. It’s a waste of time. Create a defined experiment with a hypothesis to test against, measure it, and see if you can get better at what matters by doing something different. If you can combine those two things, you can potentially improve your performance in two weeks. ##"Omnichannel Outreach" episode resources You can connect with Mark on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkosoglow/), where he’s fairly active. He doesn’t do Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. You can also connect with him at [outreach.io](https://www.outreach.io/) to book a demo and experience world-class inbound lead handling. Within two minutes you get a personalized email from a rep, and within 15 minutes, large companies get a phone call from a rep. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at [Donald C. Kelly](https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/) and watch the things I'm sharing there. You've heard us talk about the [TSE Certified Sales Training Program](https://thesalesevangelist.com/hustlers/), and we're offering the [first module free](https://the-sales-evangelist.teachable.com/courses/the-sales-evangelist/lectures/8879661) 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](https://www.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. Take advantage of a 30-day free trial, including a free book of your choice, at [audible.com/tse](http://audible.com/tse). I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on [Apple Podcast](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-evangelist-sales-training-sales-coaching-business/id788738885?mt=2), [Google Podcast](https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/I3glp3xlbzb65ib6k4d2332kqda), [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/donald-kelly/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald), 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](http://freesfx.co.uk/) and [Bensound](http://www.bensound.com/).Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

In order to succeed in business long-term, choose a market with room to grow, and consider these 5 things to look for when choosing your market. Ryan Levesque recently landed on Inc.’s list of 500 fastest growing companies, and his company just passed the $10 million mark for annual revenue. He admits that he has made a lot of mistakes along the way and learned a lot as well.  Finding a niche Ryan said many business owners and entrepreneurs make the common mistake of following conventional wisdom in the early days of the venture. They focus on what they will sell or create rather than focusing on who they will serve. Who is your market? Who is your niche? He has engaged in more than 23 niche markets, from making jewelry out of Scrabble tiles to weight loss and satellite television. Through the process, he has learned the importance of focusing on people rather than things. He points to choosing the right market as the most important factor of all.  You can be the most charistmatic salesperson with the best closer, but if you have chosen a bad market, none of that will matter.  Wrong product and people I’ve personally made the mistake of trying to sell the wrong product to the wrong people. I discovered a product that I liked and I thought other people would like it, too. But it didn’t make money because it wasn’t a good fit. There wasn’t a market for it.  Ryan outlines the indicators you should look for in his book, Choose. He said though, that writing a book invites communication from two different camps: those who love what they read and those who claim it didn’t work. He said it leaves you wondering whether you gave bad information.  Niche markets In his first book, Ask, Ryan revealed the methodology he used to successfully enter niche markets. They figured out how to warm up prospects and how to determine what people want.  It includes a specific set of questions designed to help you understand your audience at a deep emotional level so you can better sell and serve.  In an online environment, you ask questions on your website so you can funnel people into different “buckets” based on their situations.  Ryan focused on uncovering commonalities. For example, what did the people who didn’t succeed have in common? What were they doing wrong? He discovered that he didn’t teach people how he chose the 23 markets he engaged with. Of the millions of niche markets a business could engage with, what did these 23 have in common? He engaged in what he called the biggest research project of his life. He sought to figure out why the 23 markets had succeeded where others had not. Then he looked at his most successful clients and tried to figure out what separates the successful ones from the unsuccessful ones. He uncovered seven factor that will make or break your business’ success. The seven factors that Ryan uncovered are universal, foundational pieces that will help you find green markets, or those markets that are a “go” versus yellow which aren’t quite ready and red, which you should stay away from.  Evergreen markets Consider the following study in contrasts on the topic of evergreen markets, which are relevant now and will still be relevant 20 years from now.  Ryan engaged in the Scrabble tile jewelry market about the time Etsy was coming online. Jewelry combining Scrabble tiles and origami paper was extremely popular at the same time he and his family were living in Asia.   They discovered a woman who was teaching people how to make the jewelry on Etsy and making about $10,000 a month selling the tutorials. There was no overhead, and her homemade version of a tutorial was selling like crazy.  Ryan and his wife decided to make a go of it, so she learned to make the jewelry while he worked on selling it. They built a better mousetrap, and before they knew it they were picking up steam. Before they knew it they were making $10,000 a month.  The ending wasn’t a happy one. The jewelry was completely a fad so sales dropped off almost overnight. Ryan had quit his job and his wife was in grad school so she wasn’t making any money. Avoid fad markets as you’re choosing your niche.  Ryan then engaged in the oldest hobby in America: gardening. He researched niches within the gardening market and he discovered orchid care. He started a business teaching people how to care for orchids and they took the business from zero to $25,000 a month. The tiny little niche business still pays their mortgage and their living expenses.  Consider the example of fidget spinners and bitcoin as a study in evergreen markets. Enthusiast market The enthusiast market is in contrast with a problem solution market. The problem solution market involves solving problems for the people around you. Once you’ve solved the problem, people move on with their lives. Consider the example of flood removal. If your basement floods, once the water is removed, you never engage with them again. You won’t sign up for newsletters or Facebook groups.  If you own a dog, you will be a consumer in that market for years and years. Look for a market where you can generate a customer once and then sell to that customer over and over again. Chasing after new customers constantly is the hardest thing in the world to do.  Urgent problem Those two markets aren’t enough on their own. You must have an urgent problem in the context of the enthusiast market.  Many people will consider selling dog coffee mugs or Christmas ornaments. But none of those items address an urgent problem.  Urgent problems are those that keep people up at night. People talk about a $1,000 problem, but a $10,000 problem is 10 times bigger than that. An example from the dog market is the issue of peeing and pooping on the carpet. The issue becomes a $10,000 problem when you’re planning to travel across the company with a dog that still pees and poops everywhere. Now the problem is urgent. Now you’re not shopping around to find a 10 percent discount off a potty training solution.   You’re looking for the urgent problem within the enthusiast, evergreen market.  Imagine you come to me with that problem and I help you solve it. Now, I’ve become your trusted advisor in the market. So now, when you have the next big problem, you’ll come back to me. Whether it’s biting or barking or pulling on the leash, you’ll trust me to help you with it.  Future problems Seek a market in which, after you’ve solved the initial problem, the success of solving that problem leads to another problem. Imagine helping people negotiate a better salary. If you help your customer negotiate a $10,000 raise, you’ve created a new problem. Now he doesn’t know what to do with the extra money.  You’ve created a new problem for your customer.  Begin by choosing the right market for you. Once you’ve chosen, figure out what your market wants by asking. The next problem might be that they need to hire a first employee. Then the customer might need to establish process and system.  As you solve problems, new problems emerge. Think of it as “new level, new devil.”  This gives you the opportunity to serve that customer for years and years.   Players with money Don’t sell to broke people. If someone can’t put a roof over their head or food on their table, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is. They just can’t afford it.  Make sure you’re in a market that has a high concentration of players with money. The term comes from Gary Halbert, one of the all-time great direct response copywriters. It means that you don’t necessarily need millionaires or billionaires, but people who spend a disproportionate amount of money in that area of their lives.  We all know people who have a crazy hobby or obsession or some part of life where they spend a lot of money. Dog owners are a perfect example because of all the crazy stuff they spend money on, like pet insurance and operations and vacations.  On the other hand, Ryan launched a business in the memory improvement market, but because it targeted students who didn’t have a lot of money, he learned the lesson about people with money the hard way. He learned that you can’t build a big business around broke people.  Whatever you’re pursuing, business doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to start. Don’t allow perfection paralysis take you over. Better to execute at a B+ level today and then improve moving forward.  Episode resources Ryan is offering TSE listeners a free hard copy of his new book, Choose. All you have to do is pay a few dollars in shipping and handling. In addition, he’s providing $200 in free bonuses, including the audio book. He has mindset training about some of the topics addressed here. Visit choosethebook.com/tse to take advantage of the offer.  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. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. 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

We’ve all encountered the guy who attends events just to see what he can get for himself, but there are ways to effectively use networking events in your sales outreach efforts. You know the type: his conversations are one-sided because he’s only focused on his next big opportunity, and he has no time to learn about your business. His pitch kicks in when he finds out you’re a business owner. But he could have fixed his approach. And you can make sure you’re not like him in your outreach. New clients No matter what type of sales you’re in, you need to get clients in the hopper. The way you get new leads varies based upon your industry. Some demand door-to-door while others require phone calls. Today, we at The Sales Evangelist use social media and other efforts as well as networking events. Typically, at networking events, I encounter potential clients or people who can connect me with other people who are potential clients. Outreach done well can be very rewarding. But as we mentioned in the teaser, you can’t become the obnoxious guy that others avoid. He may not even realize he’s coming across that way. He has likely had just enough random success to believe that he’s effective. But he could perform a lot better and gain more leads and opportunities if he changed his approach. Plan Before you attend a networking event, do your best to find out who will be there. Will the people there tie in with your demographic? Will they represent your ideal customer? It may be impossible to find out who will be there, but it’s worth the effort to try. If you know the organizers, ask them about the top companies that will be represented there. If they give you names, research them before the actual event. Use tools like LinkedIn to gather data about those companies. Plan who you want to connect with at the event. Develop a short list. The spray-and-pray mentality that involves giving out 10,000 business cards doesn’t look good. Instead, be intentional about the cards you give out. Broaden your reach Identify people you’d like to do business with as well as those who can become potential partners for you. Then, consider those who may not purchase directly from you but who can introduce you to other complementary partners. You could even consider connecting with those you consider competition. I’ve had a good working relationship with companies I compete with, and we were able to help each other out. Whether we’re pursuing the same customers or different ones, it doesn’t make sense to burn bridges unnecessarily. It’s also good to identify people that you could potentially help. Be genuinely interested People don’t necessarily care about you but everyone cares about their own problems. We’re all trying to solve problems, so the obnoxious seller might do well to understand our challenges. Perhaps he should have been curious about our business and asked additional questions. Be sincere. You’ll never have enough information to prescribe a solution if you don’t listen. Ask questions. Then ask followup questions. We did a great episode with Bob Burg who gave us great insights on this issue. It’s worth mentioning, too, that we’re having a local sales meetup where Bob will be the guest speaker. We’ll be talking about his book, The Go Giver. Bob recommends having a list of questions you can ask. Why did you get involved in this business? What’s the biggest challenge you are seeing? This leads to deeper discussions that will help you identify issues. Simple message Be prepared for their questions. Don’t begin by telling them what you have to offer, but be prepared for them to ask. Give a simple clean message that’s no more than 30 seconds. Let him know what you do. Consider something like this: “We help small businesses who are interested in growth, build out a sales process that's actually going to help them increase revenue. We do this through consulting as well as through sales training.” This will lead to further discussion and it will open opportunities for you to talk more. It may even provide more time for you to pitch in front of the group. Jason Lynette, who appeared on episode 1081, gave a masterful message about situations where you have more time to share your message. Draw in the room Jason told a story of a murder. A woman came into his office with a horrible fear of bugs. She was a high-powered attorney who backed out of the case of a lifetime because she saw a cockroach in the courtroom. Within 10 days after their first meeting, she killed a housefly with her bare hands. Draw in the room. While everyone else shares what they have to offer, you demonstrate that you’re a human. Entertain them. Share a story. Prove that you’re someone they could work with. Connection Then you can ask whether or not they know others who might benefit from what you offer. Consider, too, whether you might be able to help them by identifying people who can benefit from their product or services. After the event, connect with all of those same people on LinkedIn. Remind them that you connected and nurture that relationship. Then you can utilize those connections to build your business. I shared this with you because I want to help. I don't want you to be that guy at a networking event. I want you to find more ideal customers. I want you to build stronger value. I want you to close more deals, but most importantly, I want to challenge you each and every single day to go out and do big things. “Effectively Use Networking Events In Your Sales Outreach Efforts” 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. 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

Ethan Beute from BombBomb equates good marketing to selling by teaching, and he explains how you can generate a lift in cold email responses with video. Cold email response BombBomb recently conducted a study with a large international tech company that revealed the power that video has in improving cold email responses. The company offers a freemium service but they weren’t sure how to convert the freemium users into revenue opportunities. The company has teams in countries around the world and they were reaching out to create conversation and generate appointments. They contacted customers who had been using the free service for a while and asked for the opportunity to share some other ways they might be able to help. BombBomb conducted a pilot program with them that included an AB test of video emails vs. plain text emails. They increased replies from these people by 56 percent. Imagine, then, if you can turn a percentage of those responses into scheduled appointments and then a percentage of those appointments into paid opportunities, that’s a tremendous impact. BombBomb also found that the video emails created better appointments because the prospects felt as though they knew the seller better, which is a powerful dynamic. The effort was voluntary, so there was no requirement to send a specific number of videos each day. The company sent about 1,000 videos in a three-and-a-half week period, and the people who sent the most videos were already the highest performers. Cultural shift Rollouts like this one represent a cultural shift to your sales team. This isn’t simply a new tool to add to the stack. This video effort allows sellers to communicate more clearly with their prospects and to increase conversion because the interaction takes on a more human characteristic. If you’re considering deploying video into your team, consider the following: Find people on your team who are already excited by the idea. Roll the video concept out to them and accumulate some early wins. Share what they learned and what you learned with the rest of the team as you roll the concept into the larger group. Ethan theorizes that the connection between the high performers and the willingness to use video traces back to their constant desire to become better. They likely listen to podcasts or read books. They invest in themselves and are open to new ideas and new practices. People who adopt new practices tend to have a growth mindset. Because they are open to new ways of doing things, they generally find success, and they often have fun doing it. #GrowthMindset Voicemail with personality The pilot project involved initial touch emails, so it amounted to basically a voicemail with a face and a voice and a personality. It wasn’t simply an email signature. The sender was no longer faceless but instead became a real human being with real value to offer. If you find yourself thinking you have far too many leads to manage this kind of outreach, first acknowledge what a great problem that is to have. Recognize that you don’t have to send personal videos. You can send out a triggered video that delivers the third time a user interacts with your product. By using a trigger-point, you can capitalize on moments in your relationship with a prospect. Even if you don’t greet them by name, you’re acknowledging their presence and valuing their time. Face-to-Face meeting There are many elements that make video a winning play for sellers. To start, most sellers are far better in person than in other arenas. Most sales process drive toward a face-to-face meeting whether it’s in person or online. Human contact is extremely valuable, so you should get face-to-face as early in the process as possible. That allows people to feel as though they know you before they ever meet you. You can save time by skipping the awkward slow-start questions about the weather. You’ll help put your prospects more at ease. Hesitation This style of video works because it’s casual, it’s not scripted or polished, and it’s honest. It isn’t over-produced, but rather it involves just a webcam or a smartphone. You would send it in place of the email you typically send. Although you can send nicer, more produced videos, that isn’t what we’re discussing. Those videos often feel as though someone is trying to sell you something, because they generally are. It’s a different style of communication. Ethan hears all the time that the videos that earn the best responses are the simple ones. But as humans, we have a natural fear of rejection. We wonder if the video is good enough. We might even re-record it multiple times, which can lead to us spending 30 minutes to recording a 30-second video. It’s a waste of time in this scenario because the video doesn't have to do all the work. It simply has to introduce you and express your sincerity and enthusiasm. If you find yourself thinking you don’t know what to say, that’s not true. What would you say if you were typing out an email? What would you have said in a voicemail? It can be as simple as creating a habit and developing a process. Improve your process Instead of writing three paragraphs to respond to prospects, you can use videos to walk them through mockups or demonstrations. One of our clients uses videos to demonstrate 3D printing without having to send a lot of stuff in the mail. You can save yourself a tremendous amount of time by responding via video and you’ll also come across as more human. It’s also true that many people are better talking than they are writing. This offers an opportunity to say what’s on your mind without having to compose something. Video is more fun for a lot of people because it’s more like a conversation. It offers better, warmer replies. This is about human connection at its most fundamental level. It’s about connecting with people eye-to-eye, face-to-face in digital channels that we rely on every day. Relationships through video If you found anything here provocative, this is all rolled out in Ethan’s book, Rehumanize Your Business. We’ll help you with all the nuts and bolts of video communication. You’re going to hit the send or post button multiple times today. Ask yourself on the next 3-5 sends whether it would be better to send something in person. Much of this is emotional and you can thank a customer or calm a customer down who is concerned or anxious. Could you say it more clearly if you said it face-to-face? "Lift In Cold Email Responses With Video" episode resources You can grab a copy of Ethan's book, Rehumanize Your Business. Find Ethan on all the social networks and at BombBomb. You can email him at ethan@bombbomb.com. 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. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us. 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 often seek the path of least resistance, and if your programs aren’t designed to incentivize them to sell, your sellers may game the system and engage in activities that won’t help themselves or the company.  If you design your commission plans and your structures effectively, you’ll create more effective sellers who feel like they’ve actually earned something and who will achieve wins more often.  Happy sellers As a sales leader, you know that your sales reps will make outbound calls and try to close deals. Your goal is to incentivize them to do their jobs. You want them to be happy. You also know that if they are earning something, they will feel good.  In the natural order of things, if they are doing well, they’ll love working for you and the company will prosper as well.  Flawed incentives In her book, The Sales Development Playbook, Trish Bertuzzi lays out different concepts to help organizations develop the proper incentives. Sometimes companies design their incentives poorly so that reps are only encouraged to make phone calls.  Many reps will game that system because it doesn’t measure anything meaningful to the company. If you’re only counting activities, they’ll figure out that all they have to do is make phone calls.  You know, though, that appointments lead to more deals. So if you’re expecting an appointment every 20 phone calls, but your reps are simply calling and hanging up without having meaningful conversations, you won’t likely achieve those appointments.  Commissions Trish points out that many companies promise great incentives but we neglect to clarify the actual process were seeking. We make promises about being able to “earn more than the CEO” without explaining our expectations.  We fail to tell them, for example, that the sales cycle is seven months long, so it will likely take them about three months to really get established. They probably won’t make any real money until about 10 months into the process. Then it will take about 30 days beyond the close date for them to get their payout.  You can help them survive the long cycle by offering ways for the rep to win. Perhaps you’ll provide a more competitive base because you realize it will take them a while to build a commission.  Set up for success Without a meaningful way to win, your sales reps may stick around for a few months and then move on to something else. Instead, set them up to succeed.  If you’re talking about your BDRs, how can you give them an opportunity to make money? If your AEs earn 10 percent for a closed deal because you know it will be a while before they close a deal, they’ll be eating pretty well. Your BDRs, on the other hand, earn only 1 percent, they’ll have to wait a long cycle before they get their piece. How excited do you think your people will be to work hard in the cycle? What if you pay them per appointment set, but they get part at the beginning of the process and part at the back end of the process.  If you offer $10 for each appointment, they can earn $5 at the front and $5 at the back. If your reps set quality appointments with qualified prospects, they’ll earn $5 at the beginning and $5 at the end. If the prospect isn’t a quality one, they’ll get the initial money but not the money at the end.  Then, if you realize that your sellers have a lot of rejected opportunities, you can determine that either the AE is doing something wrong or the BDR is. Once you determine which is the case, you can coach them to close those deals.   Hoarding appointments Here’s the other challenge. Some sales reps will realize that they’ve already earned what they needed for a certain month and they make the decision to sit on other opportunities for the following month. They hang on to them to make sure they’ll hit their numbers the next time.  Again, you can incentivize this. You can set an expectation of 20 leads per month, or five per week. If your reps hit that number, they will earn the full amount for those appointments. If your reps only land 16 appointments, their earnings will be pro-rated to reflect the shortfall.  If, on the other hand, some of your sellers exceed the 20 appointments, you can raise the amount they’ll earn for quality appointments. They’ll still get half at the front and half at the back.  Now everyone is happy because they are earning money throughout the process instead of starving until the deals close.  It’s easier to keep a good seller than to start over again searching for new ones.  Make sure they eat Make sure your sellers have an opportunity to eat.  I’m a strong believer that if hire the right people, pay people right, coach them, and train them, they’ll perform for you. But you also have to make sure they don’t game the system. Make sure that everyone walks away with the sense that the process is fair.    "Incentivize them to sell" episode resources You can check out Trish Bertuzzi’s book, The Sales Development Playbook, with a free trial of Audible. Check out the 30-day free trial to listen to the book for free.  If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. 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.   Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Asking questions and learning about the client is an accepted part of sales, but the key is assessing curiosity to optimize the performance of outbound sales reps. Alex Burg, who has a consultancy in curiosity quotient selling, focuses on leveraging mutual curiosity. He said isn’t so much the case that sellers aren’t thinking about curiosity, but rather that they are thinking about it too tactically.   Learning about clients Most sales methodologies are a bit too complicated and don’t really require that much detail. Sellers don’t need to write down 27 questions before they sit down with clients. They simply need to learn enough to ask intelligent, informed questions. By demonstrating your curiosity, you built rapport much more quickly. Stephen M.R. Covey wrote a book called Speed of Trust that reports a significant correlation between the development of trust and the pace of decision making. In other words, if you really want to accelerate your sales cycle, build trust. And the fastest way to build trust is to demonstrate curiosity. Types of curiosity Alex distinguishes between social curiosity, which is about people, and technical curiosity, which is about how things work. If you’re in a transactional sales environment, you must focus on getting a decision made quickly. So too much open-ended curiosity could be detrimental. Begin by assessing what kind of sales organization and what kind of sales process you’re engaged in. You also must know what sort of clients you’re selling to. Then, assess your individuals and your organizations to determine whether you have the right characteristics to thrive in a particular sales environment. From there, you can assign or hire people based on their ability to deliver on those requirements. Assessments As an individual, a certain degree of introspection will help you determine whether sales even makes sense for you as a career. There are many assessments available that can help you determine whether you’re epistemically curious with a general thirst for knowledge or perceptually curious with a desire to solve problems and fix things. If you’re epistemically curious, you’re well suited for long sales cycles, complex selling, and larger deal size. If you’re more focused on getting it done today, you’ll benefit more from a transactional sales environment. You’ll get more satisfaction from quick decisions Leverage strengths Once we understand where people’s strengths lie, leverage this information in the sales environment and then coach your team accordingly. The most important part of the sales process is the initial discovery. That’s where you’re qualifying the prospect. The thing you have the most control over is how you spend your time. Determine whether you even have a solution that makes sense for the prospect. If we can get a little better at driving rapport and a little better at collecting information, we can reduce the sales cycle. Imagine what it would do to your bottom line if you could shorten it from 6 months to 3. Creating questions You must begin by learning enough about the client to ask intelligent questions. Your leadership must also have a mindset that encourages curiosity. Make appropriate risk-taking acceptable. Many companies will say they want to develop a curious organization, but then they don’t act that way. They focus more on mitigating risk than on allowing reasonable risk. Ask the tough questions that aren’t always comfortable. Don’t necessarily show up with a list of 15 questions. Instead, develop a list of the five most important questions and then focus your attention on those. Mindfulness Before you get on the phone with your clients, eliminate all distractions. Turn off your notifications on your phone so you can really listen to what the other person is saying. Don’t simply go through the checklist. Focus on asking better questions. Realize, too, that if you learn from situations that you view as a mistake, then they aren’t truly mistakes. They are learning journeys, and they aren’t negative experiences. By demonstrating your interest in your prospect, you develop rapport, make the sales cycle more efficient, and hopefully shorten  Injecting curiosity Individual sellers can begin by learning the tools to become more curious. The big win, though, is when companies try to inject more curiosity into their organizations. Companies that are too internally focused and not client-centric make poor decisions. Alex recalls working for a company who sent a rep to get a deal signed by a prospect who was in the hospital following a heart attack. The key to long-term success is delivering great value to your clients. In order to do that, you must conduct yourself in a way that communicates your intent to deliver the best possible outcomes. Arm your people with tools to conduct themselves that way. Leverage technology to make sure your reps have the information they need at their fingertips. Judging intelligence People judge our intelligence and empathy by the questions we ask. As a seller, it’s better to approach a client and ask about the issues that are most critical to the company’s growth. Communicate to the client that you aren’t throwing out a blanket solution. Base your proposed solution on what the expressed needs are. Come prepared. The primary reason clients become dissatisfied with sellers or that they don’t buy is because the seller didn’t care about them or their businesses. This seller deficit disorder happens when we propose solutions that aren’t informed by knowledge about the client. We must make it painfully obvious that we understand the client’s perspective so our solutions feels like something uniquely designed to solve their problems rather than something off-the-shelf. If you’re a sales manager working inculcate more curiosity into your sales organization, offer tools that help your client and your salesforce be more curious. Then, when your people use them and find success, celebrate that and give them opportunity to share their stories. Embed ambassadors in your sales organizations. Don’t forget this is about mutual curiosity. When you think you know enough about your clients, ask one more question. “Assessing Curiosity to Optimize the Performance of Outbound Sales Reps” episode resources You can connect with Alex via email at alex@cqselling.com  or on his website at www.cqselling.com where you can schedule an interview or a phone call. You can also call him at (770) 330-6221. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. 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. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.  Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

Sales is equal parts art and science and one of the keys to success is leveraging sales incentive data to increase performance and ROI.  Jason Atkins is the founder of 360 Insights, a software platform that enables large brands to execute all of their channel incentive strategies. Jason’s company works with tens of thousands of salespeople who work for major brands and helps them get smarter and make data-driven decisions.  Critical data Many people believe that sellers must be born with the skillset to succeed. We believe that anyone with a desire to sell can succeed and get the proper training. Understanding data will help tremendously.  The art of sales deals with the relationships, the conversation handling, and dealing with objections. The science of sales revolves around data and activities.  Jason recalled hearing that we’ve created more data in the last year than in all of mankind combined. That kind of growth is exponential. Think about how much data that represents.  So how do you mine through the data and leverage the insights contained within it? How do you make the data actionable? Leveraging data Many companies believe that consumers buy products become of promotions or rebates. Jason’s company doesn’t believe that’s always accurate. Their response to these situations is that they’ll track the data and the consumer purchase information, and they’ll figure out why the consumers bought what they did.  What they found was that the promotion was the fourth reason the consumer purchased. The number one reason was “because the sales guy told me to buy it.”  The question becomes why are you so focused on the promotion when you should be focused on the key drivers to the relationship? Consider how you’re educating the buyer about your product? How are they ensured that you’re the trusted advisor? Purchases are a big decision, and people often buy based upon advice from others. How are you leveraging that to ensure that you provide great advice? Status quo Many of us make choices based upon the status quo. Zig Ziglar tells a story that his wife always cut the ends off of the meatloaf without really knowing why. Turns out the meatloaf was always too big for the pan she had, but no one knew that’s why she did it. Zig’s wife just always cut the ends off.  In sales, we often do things because that’s how our company has always done it. Instead, we should look at the data and determine what is actually most effective.  Jason’s company always deals in context for the data. In the case of the meatloaf, no one had context for why the ends were cut off.  Determine the context for decisions that were made in the past, then look at the hypothesis of what we should be doing in the future. Then we can execute against that and then measure it.  Executing sales incentives One of the first keys is to understand why people sell what they sell. Jason’s company started by interviewing 1,500 sales reps to determine why they sell what they sell. They determined that sellers do so because of quality, because of price point, because of brand, because they’ve been educated, to ensure happy customers, because they want to know what’s in it for them, and because they of the relationship they have with the brand.  People don’t want to sell something that isn’t great. They like to buy something they’ve heard of before, so new brands often struggle.  Creating sales incentive Focus on building data around the data you have, and building context so you can get to better decisions.  Start by understanding the customer journey and the decisions that are made throughout that journey. Then align the incentives across the journey. At the end of the day, an incentive is just a motivation tactic to get to a specific action.  Incentives might include rebates that are perceived as price discounts, sales incentives that motivate a seller to keep a specific brand top of mind, or volume incentives to drive sales into locations.  If you want to run an incentive program, don’t think about the incentive. Instead, think about the customer journey and identify opportunities to use incentives to drive actions.  Customer journey Many silos exist in larger companies. Certain teams in the company understand different components of the buyer’s journey. It’s really important to bring all those silos together to understand the complete journey.  In the early days of incentives, many companies intentionally made rebates difficult to submit in hopes that consumers wouldn’t actually send them in. But in a digital and social age, that kind of program is problematic. Brands realized that this kind of program could backfire.  Jason’s company saw a huge opportunity to step in and create an unbelievable experience for the consumer. Instead of a rebate being the last touch point a brand had with its consumers, the rebate should now be the basis of the next journey they have with you.  Many organizations have people now that understand all of the customer touch points so they can actually start to map them out.  Looking back and forward Think about insights and data in terms of looking backward and looking forward. Most companies look backward on a monthly or weekly basis. Jason’s goal is to encourage companies to forecast so they can start to optimize as a company.  If someone comes to us with $1 million we can help them figure out what to do with it to drive sales.  Then imagine being a salesperson who has a conversation where you’re talking to your customer about what’s happening in his competitors’ businesses. You can demonstrate the results the competitor is getting and the things they are doing. That’s unbelievable data that can help your clients make better decisions.  You make money based on what you sell, so you can leverage data to sell more so your customers sell more. Everyone makes more money. #SalesData Model the masters There’s plenty of material to read about leveraging data. Attend webinars and then model the masters. Find the people who are doing this the best and then model the activity they are doing.  When Jason launched his company, he discovered that there was one seller who earned more than $1 million in sales incentives from about five or six different brands over the course of a year. The person was crushing it because he saw a huge opportunity to move traditionally brick-and-mortar sales to online selling.  Look at the people who are doing things differently. Find those who are challenging the status quo. It takes tenacity to be successful as a seller.  Understand the customer journey from beginning to end. Understand the data that happens through the journey and then figure out how to leverage that.  "Leveraging Sales Incentive Data to Increase Performance and ROI" episode resources You can connect with Jason at 360Insights.com. He and his team love to talk to people and have great conversations about sales.   If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. 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. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

You’ve likely heard the scenario before where an interviewer asks a seller to “Sell me this pen,” but how much value does this approach offer?? It’s bad enough that you’re already nervous about the interview, but if you’re thrown into a situation where the director of sales asks you to sell him a pen when you really have very little information to start from, you may find yourself fumbling for something to say.  Features and benefits Sellers who don’t know much about the product they are selling or the audience they are selling to usually revert to features and benefits. They sell the aspects of the product that they can see.  “It’s comfortable.” “It has a good grip.” “It has a clicky thing and even a laser pointer. That’s great for folks who do presentations.” “It writes smoothly and it isn’t too expensive. In fact, it’s cheaper than many of the pens on the market. And if you buy it today, I can throw in a notepad and a pocket protector.”  Why would people even do this test in the first place? Quick thinking People often conduct this test to see how well you think on your feet and how you perform under pressure. And though I can understand those motivations, this test won’t truly work unless you’re selling something that might be a consumer sale.  Typically, sellers aren’t selling simple products like pens. Rather they are selling something like a software solution that is much more expensive and has a much longer sales cycle. In those cases, it won’t matter as much how good you are with your words. You won’t be able to persuade someone within one minute to buy your expensive product.  If you’re selling inexpensive trinkets on the side of the road, it might just work. But if you’re selling something with a significant price value, it won’t.   Reviews  This idea might have provided a good judge of a seller’s abilities in the 80s and 90s, but today’s buyers rely on reviews. They are researching and asking friends and family for insights and input.  Today’s buyers will prepare before they enter the arena.  So as a sales leader, what if you stopped using this unrealistic test and offered a better one? What if you gave your sellers a scenario and ask them to prepare for it?  Test your sellers to see whether they can find true problems or interesting facts, figures, or statistics that will help you win the deal. Determine whether the sellers will try to “wing it” instead of coming prepared.  Sales scenario You want a sales rep who is prepared, so use your interview opportunity to determine their ability to prepare. Ask your receptionist to send a scenario to the interviewees. Let them know they will be asked to role play a selling scenario like this.  Present a scenario in which a particular business owner has a certain set of challenges. He is already working with a particular vendor. The sellers’ job is to show up prepared to understand the product and services and have a meaningful conversation selling this service to the business owner.  If the sales rep shows up with information about the company in-hand and prepared to have a meaningful discussion, you’ve likely found a good seller. If the seller shows up with the intention to “wing it,” you’ll know what you’re up against.  Selling pens The secret to successful selling lies with asking appropriate questions, even in the case of selling a pen. If you do use the pen test, expect your sellers to begin by finding out whether the buyer even needs a pen.It doesn’t matter how much ink it will hold or how great the cap is if the seller doesn’t need it.  Instead of spending the time pressuring the buyer to spend money on a pen, expect your sellers to begin by asking questions.  Meaningful questions about the buyer’s situation will either qualify or disqualify the buyer. It will also communicate that the seller understands the buyer’s actual situation. The seller will demonstrate a desire to identify the pain point and solve the problem.  Maybe the customer needs a computer more than a pen. Don’t waste your time pitching a product the customer doesn’t need.  Consultants Seek sellers who will serve as consultants rather than those who will try to trick the customers. Help the buyer feel like he is making a buying decision rather than being sold to.  Jeffrey Gitomer said that people love to buy but they hate to be sold to. Help your customers understand the true pain that exists and then help them solve it. If you do this, they’ll evangelize about you and ultimately help you get more business.  Empower your sales reps to sell on their own. Teach them to become consultants who ask meaningful questions to identify challenges that the buyers may not even realize they have.  He’ll be successful and he’ll have great clients who love him.  If you create a meaningful scenario for your interviews, you’ll have more meaningful discussions and dialogues and both parties will enjoy the process more.  Besides, we probably already have enough pens.      "Sell me this pen" 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. 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. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound. Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com

We're talking about key metrics this month, and today Shawn Finder talks about the key metrics to track in your outbound strategy that will help you be successful.  Shawn was a professional tennis player before he launched into entrepreneurship in the form of Autoklose, a company that automates the top of the sales funnels for sales representatives.     Cold calling Shawn divides outbound into three different categories: cold-calling, emailing, and database because your database is the engine that keeps that car moving. You must have at least two of those inside your outbound strategy.  Within those three categories, you'll have different metrics.  Cold calling will include dial-to-connection percentage, dials-to-appointment ratio, dials-to-opportunity, and dials-to-deal. When you're cold calling, if you're dialing 100 people but you're only reaching 5, that isn't very successful. Maybe you're dialing 100 and reaching 10 knowing that 3 of those will turn into prospects and one of those will close.  If you don't know those analytics, you're going to fail because the analytics keep you moving forward toward the right strategy.  Frustration Beyond simply tracking numbers, metrics can help you avoid frustration as a sales rep. Many sellers get frustrated if they send five emails but the person never responds or if they make 15 calls but never reach anyone.  If you know that every 50 calls you should be getting three opportunities, you'll benchmark your success to those numbers.  As an SDR or a sales rep, unless you know your metrics ahead of time, you're going to get frustrated if you think you're not getting results. Knowing the analytics before you start will help you approach your calls differently. Statistics Shawn has found over time that most people, to include account managers, don't look enough at the stats. As a result, they don't know what is good versus what is bad, or what is terrible versus what is great.  His company lists the weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals for each rep. They track forecast versus actual numbers. The goal is to make sure they know whether they are on par to hit quota, outperform quota, or underperform.  They use a whiteboard in addition to digital tracking because reps don't always visit the spreadsheets. When the reps see their names with their metrics on the board every time they walk into the office, it keeps them accountable. It helps them know what they have to do in order to achieve their numbers.  Important metrics  The dials-to-appointment ratio is important to Shawn because if he's paying a dialer, and he knows how much each appointment can be worth, and he knows how many appointments he has to have in order to close a deal, he can then determine the ROI on his expense.  If he's spending $4,000 on a dialer and earning $9,000, that $5,000 profit is the biggest ratio for him.  [Tweet "There's nothing wrong with trying new things, but if the concept isn't making you money, you must pivot and try something new. #pivot"] Email statistics For email statistics, consider open rates, click rates, and reply rates.  Open rates rely on your ability to convince someone to open your email. Most people spend a lot of time on the body of the email. Shawn suggests spending more time on the subject line and your first three seconds of the email. The number one reason is that 72 percent of people are opening emails on mobile phones. They only see your subject line and opening line.   Make your subject line three to five words, and do not talk about yourself in the first line of the email. If you want a high open rate, have a good subject line. Keep everything personalized. Try "Hi, first name." Another one he has used successfully is, "Hey Donald, Let's Have Coffee?"  Coffee works well because you're not selling. It's more casual.   Opening lines Consider what will make your prospects want to open the email you've sent.  If I can save your sales team five hours a day in prospecting would you give me 15 minutes? If I could fill your calendar with appointments, would you give me 15 minutes? Don't lead with information about you that the reader can find in your signature block.  Your first email should be a little longer, but the second and third emails should be shorter, no longer than four sentences. If they're longer, no one is reading them.  Keep it short and precise. Give value. Share case studies and stories and testimonials. Tell them how you'll solve their challenges.  Email success There's a difference between click rates and reply rates. When you send emails, have your CTA goal in your head. If your goal is to get a reply, make your reply rate a priority. If your goal is to get a click, then make that your priority.  Make it very simple for your end user.  Many people don't consider database part of the outbound effort but it corresponds well with your email and your phone. If you have inaccurate information in your database, you'll waste a lot of time.  For cold calling, if you have the wrong phone numbers, it will hurt your dial-to-deal ratio, as well as your dial-to-connection and your dial-to-appointment. If your data is wrong, your analytics will be wrong.   Verify database  If you want to make sure your emails aren't bouncing and they aren't catch all, have your emails verified before you actually do your campaign. Verification can be very cheap, as little as $20 for 1,000. Spend the money so you can focus on the 750 that are valid without wasting your time on the ones that aren't.  People change jobs frequently, so do your due diligence and verify the contact info.  Autoklose validates information real-time as you begin a campaign. The company offers a Chrome plugin that validates everything against LinkedIn to ensure that the person is still in the position. Having clean data is the engine to any of your outbound strategy campaigns.  Campaign tips Determine your metrics before you start your campaign so you have something to benchmark against. Identify the key metrics to track in your outbound strategy. Also, stop giving up after one to two calls. Recognize that it will take five to six touches. Integrate different strategies like social. Engage with your clients. Build relationships with them.   episode resources You can connect with Shawn via email at Shawn@autoklose.com or on the website, www.autoklose.com. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn already, do that at Donald C. Kelly and watch the things I'm sharing there. 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. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it. 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. Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.Mentioned in this episode:HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOSHubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS hubpspot.com/marketers bluemangostudios.com