The Win Rate Podcast with Andy Paul

Welcome back to the Win Rate Podcast. Today Andy welcomes two amazing guests, Matt Benelli, sales coach and Co-Founder of CoachEm, and Lori Richardson, Sales Advisor, Founder and President of Women Sales Pros and author of She Sells. The roundtable starts today by discussing how pushing larger investments to frontline managers would create a wave of positive change across sales organizations. They give some personal stories of starting out as young salespeople and finding their footing with clients. They explain why their genuine curiosity gave them an advantage and how SDR’s can learn from their approach.The group also talks through the short-comings of companies win rate tracking, how some CRM results need a more objective eye and context, why companies focus on scaling but end up not knowing how to sell their product, why upper management pressure can bring a breakdown of good sales practices, and how progressing successfully in your sales career means being conscious of the experience buyers are having with you. Connect with Lori and Matt on LinkedInHighlights[00:07:49] Inexperienced frontline managers struggle with their roles.[00:11:04] Importance of tracking critical metrics.[00:16:24] B2B industry experiences low win rates; [00:25:00] Improving win rates and aligning incentives for sales.[00:27:54] Choose carefully who you sell to.[00:36:37] Balancing revenue and understanding buyer decisions.[00:42:31] Youthful appearance helped build meaningful relationships.[00:47:16] System design influences win rates; strategic focus needed.[00:51:16] "Intentional actions shape your career and success."[00:57:37] First impressions matter when connecting with buyers in sales.

Today Andy brings another amazing round-table discussion with Brandon Fluharty, enterprise sales professional, and Founder of Be Focused, Live Great. Kyle Williams, enterprise seller and sales leader for companies such as Google, and the founder and CEO of Brickstack. And Meghann Misiak, sales enablement professional, sales coach, and Founder of The Path To Presidents Club.The group shares their expertise and insights on how to redefine success in sales by focusing on performance and the human-centered buyer-first approach.They explore the importance of psychological safety, ownership, and agency in sales, and why sales effectiveness should go beyond just achieving results. They ask the big question - why do people stay in sales? They discuss how winning the customer's business, at its core, is knowing that you helped them assess their options and form a deeper understanding of their needs. And dig down a few layers into assessing win rate data and knowing that when you play, you win.Connect with Brandon, Kyle, and Meghann on LinkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism

Welcome back to The Win Rate Podcast! Today Andy welcomes two incredible guests, Mark Hunter, (the Sales Hunter), renowned sales speaker, consultant, and author. And Jeff Bajorek, Chief Revenue Officer at Orases. sales trainer, and advisor for B2B sales leaders.The group kicks off the conversation talking about the importance of realizing that every customer feels that they and their company are unique, and discuss the best way to exhibit both your depth of experience and your ability to connect personally to close deals. They talk about the inherent tension in sales conversations and how casting a wide net can dilute the context and effectiveness of each prospect. They explore the fear that salespeople may have in creating the appropriate tension and the misconceptions that often surround the sales process.Mark and Jeff share their insights on the importance of qualifying leads and creating relationships with customers that build trust, remove risk, and make clients feel safe with you. Andy agrees and remarks that while AI will be able to emulate many things, there are these human elements that are irreplaceable. They challenge the notion that every lead should be moved to close and they all agree that an overcrowded pipeline is a leading cause of low win rates (Even though there is often pressure to keep filling your pipeline).Mark, Jeff, and Andy all bring insightful personal experiences from their deep sales experience to this episode. Most of it boils down to some simple things. Be patient enough to educate and often re-educate your customer, be open, be human, be curious, and be likable. Connect with Jeff and Mark on LInkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors - AllegoClozdCognism

Welcome back to The Win Rate podcast! Today Andy is joined by sales experts Jen Allen-Knuth, Head of Community Growth at Lavender, Bridget Gleason, a multi-time successful CRO and Head of Sales and is currently CRO at Util, and David J. P. Fisher. aka D-Fish, sales author, sales advisor, and Global Social Selling Lead-Sr. Sales Enablement Program Manager at SAS. The group begins by discussing the challenges of onboarding new salespeople effectively and proposes looking to sports management techniques for some guidance. They question whether enough time is spent coaching salespeople on building relationships virtually and adapting to the changing communication preferences of younger generations.Stressing the importance of the relationship sale and building trust with buyers. They criticize weak leadership that prioritizes metrics over meeting the needs of buyers and highlight the shifting preferences of buyers and  the need for organizations to adapt to these changes.They continue giving invaluable insights on managing high-volume leads, lead qualification, and the pitfalls of holding onto outdated sales tactics. They shed light on the misalignment of incentives between marketers and salespeople and the lack of customer-centric approaches in many organizations. The discussion then turns to the advantages of working with startups, personalized training, and the importance of identifying pain points before discussing technical solutions. Connect with the roundtable on LinkedIn here:JenBridgetDavidHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism

Welcome back to The Win Rate podcast. Today Andy welcomes Tim Hughes, CEO of DLA ignite and author of Social Selling, and Eric Stine who is just coming off his roles of CRO and Chief Commercial Officer at Skillsoft. Eric, Tim, and Andy explore the importance of evaluating performance at different levels within organizations and the impact it has on overall success, how misclassifying leads affects sales pipelines, and the common practice of capturing leads early on without properly assessing their potential. They explore the repercussions of this, including the pressure to maintain an artificially high pipeline multiple and the struggle to differentiate between top performers and those who struggle to say no to low-quality leads.They also share valuable insights on the role played by first line managers, the challenges they face, and innovative ways to improve effectiveness. And within all the data, they reflect on why human connection is essential for closing deals and how it can still be easy to build a relationship in a short span of time even when face to face interaction isn’t as common as it once was.Find Tim and Eric on LinkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognismKey Quotes"If you have fairly good sales reps and they're well enabled, then they are performing that early stage discovery almost unconsciously."— Eric 00:21:410 0:21:52Pipeline Management: "I have plenty of sales reps that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world that have win rates of 35, 45%. But they have one bad behavior, which is they can't say no to a lead."— Eric 00:23:32 00:23:43Improving First Line Management: "And for me, the critical inflection point and where I spend a lot of time as a leader is on first line management, because I think a lot of success or failure happens based on what your first line managers do..."— Eric 00:25:240 0:25:35I was fortunate to work for people that I remember asked a boss once what's our pipeline or multiple should I have? And he says, whatever you need to hit your number. Okay, that's good advice. And for me that was yeah, I generally ran 1.5 throughout my career and I was selling big stuff, but that's what worked for me. And somebody else may need three, somebody else may need four. — Andy 00:28:320 0:29:27 "I think there has to be we still need to train sales leaders because we still have the situation where we take the best salespeople and make them leaders. And quite often they're not leaders and they have to learn how to deal with people."— Tim 00:30:530 0:31:07“We should have known earlier we didn't talk to the right person that we should have talked to, that would have just devastated us. It was a great lesson, right?"— Andy 00:36:060 0:36:13"Got one thing out of that meeting. I got money for manager enablement. Because manager enablement is like a hurricane or a wildfire. Nobody wants to pay for prevention, but once the storm hits, they'll pay for the cleanup."— Eric 00:41:330 0:41:45

Today Andy is joined by Vince Beese, Founder and CEO of Sales@Scale, Anthony Iannorino, Keynote speaker, bestselling author and renowned sales leader, and Mike Bosworth, bestselling author, speaker, and sales philosopher as they discuss the importance of sales leaders thinking critically about how to make their teams more effective. They begin with the headshaking statistic of a 17% win rate and agree that any action is better than leaving your team in such a horrible situation.They emphasize the significance of considering all stakeholders involved in the sales process, including the reps, their families, the clients, and the company itself. They urge leaders to assess whether they are truly helping these individuals and if not, to act before the situation gets worse.The group discusses the effectiveness of different types of sales leads and dig into the data about self-sourced vs. generating inbound leads with lower win rates, and how each of those play out over time.They share stories about the importance of sales effectiveness and learning early on, the need for a solid strategy and theory to guide sales efforts so you don’t waste time and resources. They also discuss the value of recognizing changes in buyer behavior, why certain approaches are more effective than others, and that transparency and truthfulness are vital. Not just to clients, but most importantly to ourselves, as they note that salespeople often credit their wins to superior salesmanship and attribute losses to external factors.They also reflect on the common mistakes of rushing deals for quick wins, but losing out on larger long-term gains.Follow Anthony, Vince, and Mike on LinkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism

Today Andy is joined by guests Amy Hrehovcik, sales enablement guru, podcaster and coach, Cian McLoughlin, CEO of Trinity Perspectives, and Leslie Venetz, Founder of Sales Team Builder. Together they delve into the world of bid management, communication, and sales. They start by discussing the power of creativity and innovation in documentation, emphasizing the impact that visual appeal can have on perceptions of competence and professionalism. They highlight the importance of personalization and communication as the guests share their experiences of customers' frustration with generic content and the value of incorporating win themes into demos, documents, and responses. They stress the need to balance automation with human nuance, emphasizing the challenging but necessary task of creating an environment where customers feel comfortable providing candid feedback. The conversation then shifts to the return of face-to-face and explore the benefits of in-person interactions, such as improved communication, body language reading, and relationship building, which have led to quicker sales cycles. They then turn to the most important topic -  win-loss analyses. They reveal that  product and price play almost no role in decision-making and the buyer's experience with the seller is the primary factor driving decisions, especially when products are perceived to be similar. Leslie and Amy share insights on the importance of retrospectives or after-action reviews, stressing the need to go back to buyers and gather accurate information on why a deal was won or lost. This information is crucial for improving future deals, as initial responses are often not the real reasons. They also stress the need for experimentation in the current business landscape and the potential negative impact of carelessness or lapses in professionalism, the invisible friction in the sales cycle, and maintaining high standards of professionalism to build and retain trust throughout the process.Follow Cian, Amy, and Leslie on LinkedIn Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism

Welcome to the first episode of The Win Rate Podcast with Andy Paul! After years of providing essential sales advice via his wildly successful Sales Enablement Podcast, Andy has a new mission.  As overall B2B sales effectiveness has declined over the past decade he has made it his goal to provide sellers with the critical  knowledge they need to elevate their Win Rate, which is the most important measure of the value they provide to buyers.Today Andy welcomes his guests, Brandon Fluharty and Dave Brock, to explore the most important factors that influence win rates and provide practical takeaways sellers can use to improve theirs. They start by discussing the decline in sales effectiveness and the average win rate in B2B sales for medium sized deals, which is currently at 17%. And they explore why so many sales managers and sellers are seemingly unaware of their win rates and the impact their win rates have on their sales. They discuss the irrational focus of many sales leaders on sales activity, such as the number of dials and emails made, and question the effectiveness of using technology to robotically send out personalized emails quickly. Dave discusses the need for a culture shift and emphasizes the importance of measuring impact rather than just focusing on activity metrics. They also explore the core performance levers in sales, including win rate, average deal size, and sales cycle. Throughout today’s episode, Andy, Brandon, and Dave emphasize the need to find the right type of customers and focus on what they value, and the importance of effectively managing the  time, energy, and attention of buyers and sellers alike. They emphasize the importance of defining one's impact and prioritizing high-value activities to increase fulfillment and results. Key Subjects:* Defining win rate, tracking progress, managing process.* Impact over activity in high-growth SaaS companies.* Outcomes over activities.* Low win rates impact on marketing effectiveness and product-market fit.* "Importance of performance levers in sales"* Reduced meetings, doubled productivity, increased revenue.* Design thinking needed in changing macroeconomic environment.* Find customers who value your offer, prioritize tasks.* More is not always betterFollow Brandon on LinkedInFollow Dave on LinkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism