Sales Strategy & Enablement by Revenue.io

Kris Rudeegraap, CEO and Co-Founder of Sendoso, joins me again in this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Sendoso sends digital and physical gifts for B2B sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Kris Rudeegraap and Braydan Young left jobs as account executives and co-founded Sendoso (originally CoffeeSender) in 2016. CoffeeSender began by sending Starbucks gift cards. CoffeeSender expanded their gifts to a great variety of items and became Sendoso. Kris comments on how their company grew. Kris explains the use cases he sees most often and how Sendoso is being used with TalkDesk, Outreach, and Salesforce. Sendoso has gifts from about 500 merchants, including e-gifts, consumables, and hard goods. Sendoso also works with Amazon. Kris explains. Sendoso can include hand-written notes. Sendoso also inventories gifts. Kris discusses the various categories and their popularity. About 50% are warehoused and print-on-demand items. The other 50% of sales are split about evenly between E-gifts and consumables. The staff does the taste tests. Kris reveals the back-end of Sendoso: five warehouses around the world plus drop-ship partners for perishable and consumable goods. Sendoso built the software to run their infrastructure and a front-end Sendoso app. Kris tells how Sendoso can be used in demand-generation marketing, situational gifting after a demo or to get a meeting, and for customer success. HR can use it for employee-to-employee sending. Certain industries impose limitations on gifts and Sendoso tracks orders to work within compliance guidelines and validation rules. Kris discusses ROI. Sendoso is scalable, compared to using in-house resources. Direct mail converts better than other channels; Kris’s customers are seeing success with gifts. Sendoso suggests gifts according to account needs. What kinds of sales representatives get the best results from gifting? Kris shares some observations. Sendoso is putting together a data trends report. Sendoso just raised $40 million in Series B Financing. They’re hiring across the board and investing resources into R&D. Kris shares his vision of growth for the next two years. Unlike email, gift-sending has a cost, so market saturation is unlikely. Kris talks about personalization. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Paul Smith, author of Sell with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, and Ten Stories Great Leaders Tell, joins me again on this episode of the Sales Enablement Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYS Paul Smith trains people to tell stories; his customer base is increasing. He says only 10% to 15% of the time you talk to people should consist of stories, two to three minutes long. That is six to nine minutes an hour. Stories are not like jokes with a punchline. Paul will not supply you with stories to tell. They are conversational. Some of them should be planned within your pitch, some are extemporaneous from a repertoire you’ve built. Paul shares the eight specific questions a sales story should answer. Don’t memorize a story but remember the short answers to those questions in the story. Andy shares a John Steinbeck quote: “If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. … The strange and foreign is not interesting — only the deeply personal and familiar.” Andy works to build the buyer’s vision story. Perfect delivery is not necessary. You are speaking, not performing a role. If you tell a story that is helpful to them, you are providing value, not wasting their time. Paul doesn’t train people about delivery. Andy’s stories are drawn from his experiences, including things others have shared with him. A story starts to sound like a pitch the moment it starts sounding like a script. Scripts make people defensive, not prone to listen. Converse with people, don’t talk at them. Stories are engaging and relaxing. Paul shares 10 stories great leaders tell. The first four are: “Where we came from,” (founding); “Why we can’t stay there,” (the case for change);  “Where we’re going,” (vision); and “How we’re going to get there,” (strategy). The values stories are: “What we believe,” “Who we serve,” “What we do for them,” and “How we differ from our competitors.” The personal stories are: “Why I lead the way I do,” and “Why you should want to work here.” Every leader needs at least one good story each for sales, marketing, and recruiting. Salespeople, marketing people, and HR people will each need lots of stories to tell. Paul shares a story from Ben Koberna, CEO of EASiBuy. Because the concept is unfamiliar, Ben Koberna constantly retells a story about what a reverse auction service is and what it does. Paul summarizes how you can apply the 10 leadership stories. For example, in a strategy story, the heroes in the stories are the people whom you are trying to convince to embrace your vision and help you accomplish it. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Pat Morrissey, SVP and GM at Upland Software, joins me on this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Pat Morrissey explains customer revenue optimization in the complex B2B selling world at Altify (Upland Software). Their value proposition is about the intersection of strategy, methodology, and technology. Upland acquired Altify to change from a sales enablement perspective to a strategic value proposition for the head of sales, with capabilities to help activate the revenue team and generate customer outcomes. Rethink your go-to-market model and your methodology. The renewal is at least as important as the first sale. Do we understand what problems the customer wants to solve? Can we articulate how we will solve them? Selling conditions are changing quickly. Instead of working out your strategy to get a customer, consider the customer’s strategy and how you will help them fulfill it. Pat shares a case study of working with Workday. Andy recalls being part of a large team selling mainframe computing. Sales methodology is headed back in the direction of team selling. Do you understand the prospect? What is your customer’s personal win? If you understand the person, you sell from a genuine place for a meaningful win. What’s in it for the customer? Selling is a business of human connections. Have the humility to know what you don’t know. Falsely assuming you know everything destroys your credibility. Act in a way that the customer perceives as persistently relevant. That’s how to become their trusted advisor. In each interaction, get the customer closer to making a decision. In a pipeline review, ask the seller what value their prospect needs next to help them make a decision. Is the seller defensive about the question? Customer revenue optimization is grounded in methodology. What outcome do we expect and what value do we deliver at each step? Do we understand the numbers? Pat shares a customer case. No matter what sales methodology you use, you have to look at the underlying behaviors that are captured and decode which behaviors go with sales results and impact. Coaching helps to develop skills over time. Everyone deserves to be coached. The top performers tend to be those who are most comfortable with the human elements of sales. Better humans are better salespeople. Communication is one of the most important sales attributes. Do your sellers receive coaching on human-to-human communication? Would counseling improve sales numbers? How long is their onboarding? Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content.___Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Todd Caponi, author of The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results, joins me on this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Todd Caponi has five hopes for sales in 2020. The first hope is the death of the “Death of sales” trope. Cold calling is still important. Sales employment has grown. Classroom training is ineffective. Todd offers solutions. There should be learning every day on the job. Andy talks about the curated book club he offers to companies. Todd advises learning to be a “buyer journey sherpa.” Todd’s second hope is that sales will rise on the list of “trusted professions.” Todd shares the secret of “4.2-star” reviews. If your facade is “perfect,” buyers will spend more time researching you because they doubt you. Andy tells how he used transparency as an underdog Burroughs salesperson against IBM’s fear, uncertainty, and doubt sales pitch. Todd talks about transparent negotiation, showing your motives. It generates trust. Adam Grant wrote about Givers, Takers, and Matchers. Unfettered Givers are the least successful. The most successful are Givers. Be clear about your self-interest. Allow your buyers to negotiate their deals. Andy tells an anecdote about a company using contract negotiators to sign so salespeople were removed from the negotiations. Salespeople should be the trusted contact, not the adversarial negotiator. Sales negotiations should be managed in the qualification phase. Tie their business case to the investment they need to make to get there. Don’t find yourself at the end of a deal facing a buyer’s demand for a 30% discount. Todd’s third hope is paying more attention to behavioral science and decision science in sales. Todd talks about emotional decision-making over logical rationalization. How does Todd flip the script to tell a story? Thomas Huxley advised learning something about everything and everything about something. Each sales conversation is unique. What you’ve studied helps in various situations. Todd’s fourth hope is for sales organizations to realize that enablement needs 2X to 3X the investment that companies are currently giving it. Today’s sellers and sales managers need more training to be more engaged. Todd’s fifth hope is that organizations realize the need to go back to pods and walls and replace annoying and distracting open office plans. There are reasons for walls. A recent Harvard study debunks every supposed benefit of open offices. They do not help anyone. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Richard Smith, Co-Founder and Head of Sales at Refract, joins me on this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Andy and Richard discuss performing for outcomes as an underdog. In a competitive field, your biggest differentiator as a salesperson is how you speak, how you sell to customers, and how you help them buy. Andy used to sell Burroughs computers and was an underdog against IBM in every sale. Andy found ways to sell, regardless of IBM. He had a similar situation working for Apple when IBM released the PC. Selling is influencing. Andy talks about the two decisions a customer makes before a purchase. Richard says if you shine a light on a problem the prospect has before they know they have it, you will be in place to help them to the solution. If you enter the fray when the competition is known, you can crush the competition with superior discovery and personal service. Success comes through hard work, human connection, and immediate responses with value. Time is the biggest killer of deals. Get the customer through the pipeline as soon as possible. Don’t be a slow seller. Give the customer the information they need to move to the next stage of the decision-making process. Richard explores Mark Roberge’s comparison of the doctor-patient relationship to the salesperson-customer relationship. Lead the process. Richard founded Refract based on his experiences as an uncoached SDR. Refracts tools help the manager listen to sales conversations and coach effectively for better outcomes. Dashboards don’t measure quality. Refract is in the competitive category of Conversational Intelligence. Their strength with this emerging technology, is in post-sales customer success, helping customers understand trends in their sales conversations. Refract addresses two areas of coaching: reviewing the “game tape” of a conversation and “pre-game practice” before a conversation. Richard shares process details. Can conversational intelligence tools help salespeople learn to listen better? The context is more important than the keywords that are used. Bias prevents understanding. Refract alerts salespeople on things they missed in calls. There is no optimum talk time ratio in a conversation. It depends on the situation and the companies. Data gives insights; the context of a conversational is key. Listen carefully to improve performance for your personality. Education, training, and coaching are separate matters. Andy and Richard compare their views on these areas. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Rob Käll, CEO of Cien, Inc., joins me on this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Cien, Inc. is headquartered in Miami, Florida. Cien means 100 in Spanish. The name refers to reaching 100% of quota. Cien offers AI for SaaS businesses that are scaling. Rob tells of working in SaaS and not seeing revenue scale with the sales team’s growth. In 2016, Rob and a business partner addressed the problem of scaling sales revenue by starting Cien. Cien is a web app. A prospect can get a Hidden Revenue Assessment to start the conversation. Hidden revenue refers to reps who are not making quota. AI identifies the root causes of that hidden revenue by analyzing a prospect company’s anonymized sales data. Then the prospect can sign up to start using the Cien AI product. The tool is designed for sales leaders. Most sales coaching today is not structured or measured. AI can help leaders and coaches address the problems using a value chain. Rob explains ‘value chain’ and how to measure ‘inferred work ethic’ instead of activity metrics. Rob talks about evaluating communication skills and engagement ability. Cien AI allows for individual characteristics. You can’t clone sales stars but you can improve reps’ skills in using effective sales tools. The reason most sales reps do not hit quota is that they are failing in one or two core attributes. Sales managers are also causing by stacking the deck against some reps. AI demystifies sales. Rob explains the procedures Cien AI uses to analyze sales data and provide solutions to problems. Cien accesses CRM data, emails, and phone calls. The more data is seen, the better the assessment will be. AI analyzes the time reps are spending on various activities. It also analyzes if sales leaders have been distributing leads unevenly. Rob explains how Cien implements the process for their clients. The more time reps spend talking with their prospects about the prospect’s core problems and needs, the more engagement and selling opportunities they will have. Rob talks about scoring opportunities by value. What about the value delivered to the prospect? That can be inferred from the opportunities that do not close versus the sales that close. Cien AI uses natural language processing to parse conversations and find if appropriate questions were asked at the right time. Then engagement ability can be measured. Andy wants to measure what really matters. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI. Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content.(Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul.)

Howard Brown, Founder and CEO of RingDNA, joins me again on this episode.KEY TAKEAWAYS Howard describes the tools RingDNA provides to help sales teams perform better to achieve better results. Howard started RingDNA in 2012, providing reps with contextual information in telephony, email, and SMS. In 2014, RingDNA started analyzing customers’ recorded phone calls for them. RingDNA helps reps to be better conversationalists and ask better questions, get to the point, and add value. Howard applies his background as a psychologist to the analysis of sales conversations at scale. A change in communication can lead to a better outcome. Science is often hard to find. Variables need to be accounted for in testing. The most important part of AI is knowing the questions to ask. There is no super cadence that works over everything. Reps require effective coaching. Is there a case for combining SDR and AE roles? Why is SDR attrition high? Why are sales closing rates so low? A single contact for the customer minimizes friction. Andy and Howard discuss learning. People learn at different rates. Be patient with onboarding. Onboarding is more than product knowledge. Howard looks for improvements in several areas. Reps should ask at the end of each call, “Did this call meet your expectations?” That will reveal the value — if there was value. Take it as an opportunity to grow. Coaches should seek single coachable moments to help their reps. To manage change, adopt one change and work at it until it is successful. Then adopt another change. Make changes in sequence, not in parallel. Productivity is more important than activity. If you arbitrarily raise your quota by 15%, have your reps been coached to become 15% better? How will they make quota if they are not better at closing? What are we measuring reps on for improvement? What are we measuring around conversations? How should they be scored? Howard explains how RingDNA telephony scores rep calls with AI. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Shari Levitin, speaker and bestselling author of Heart and Sell: 10 Universal Truths Every Salesperson Needs to Know, joins me on this episode of the Sales Enablement Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYS Shari used her sales consulting experiences to write a sales book that is a life book. Citing Brené Brown, Shari notes that who you are matters more than what you do. Shari quotes David Brooks that we have resume virtues and eulogy virtues. The eulogy virtues make the difference in today’s digital environment. We need to do in sales what Alexa can’t do. Shari defines “proven” principles. First, look at the source and filter the principle through your common sense and experience. Try changing one part of your method at a time. Does it work consistently for you? Anything that can be told can be asked. When you ask a question, you get more information. Today, we have to help people learn how to buy, so we ask questions to get them to that buying decision. Shari sees, from company to company, the same default behaviors that do not serve them well. Buyers do not always follow the same journey. Their needs vary. Sellers must learn behaviors that meet buyers’ needs. How do we get people to change? Shari says, make it fun! She shares her four pillars of an effective training and coaching program: life-long learning, creative connection, facilitation, and ongoing coaching. Shari and Andy agree that it’s necessary not only for a company to reward quota but also to reward a growth mindset of education. Shari’s company provides a budget for development. One of Shari’s universal truths is that trust begins with empathy. Harvard Business Review says that empathy and competency are the two most important components of influence, with empathy leading in importance. Empathy gets you in the door; competency, reliability, and integrity keep you there. Those are four components of trust. Begin with empathy, not competency. People need to know you care about them and their concerns. If you can diagnose your customer’s problem, you will be given the right to solve it. That begins with empathy and knowing your customers. Empathy goes beyond cognition. It is an emotional connection. It is not sympathy but understanding. Powered by ringDNA: the revenue acceleration platform that helps businesses scale growth through AI.Visit ringdna.com/andy for exclusive Sales Enablement content._Formerly the Accelerate! Your Sales podcast with Andy Paul

Ben Salzman and Kyle Williams, Principals at Dogpatch Advisors, join me on this episode.

Craig Walker, CEO of Dialpad, joins me on this episode of Sales Enablement podcast.SUMMARYCraig Walker and some co-workers at Google Voice noticed that businesses were adopting cloud productivity suites. They recognized that business communications also belonged in the cloud. Craig and his associates left Google and co-founded Dialpad in 2011, offering cloud communication services. Their products are UberConference, DialpadTalk, DialpadSell, DialpadSupport, and AI that instantly converts conversations to text and suggests content in real-time for you to use in conversations. Craig explains DialpadSell and TalkIQ.Sales performance is worsening even while we are in the Golden Age of tech. Good sales reps want to improve. TalkIQ AI can help them improve their practices and performance. Sales people who lack the will to improve cannot easily be helped to change. Andy talks about his company’s curated book club for sales teams. Andy notes the shortcomings of some tech being used today. Craig describes the advantages of having Voice Intelligence in your sales conversations.