Brett Trainor Unplugged

Sales is often focused on pushing the product or trying to understand the customer's needs. But there is one aspect that is often overlooked, emotions.

Emotions let us know when someone is happy or not. Being able to read your customer’s emotions is a powerful skill that startups should learn.

How do you read emotions? Today, we chat with emotions expert Dan Hill, who breaks it down for us. We talk about prospecting the customer experience, customer success, employee engagement, and so much more.

Find out how to interpret emotions to benefit your business by tuning in to the show!

Resource Links:

We’ll be talking about:

Dan’s background and what he’s working on [02:06]

The value of reading emotions [04:33]

Emotions are the currency of business  [06:49]

Understanding the signals to the 7 core emotions [09:04]

Getting started on adopting facial coding to your routine [14:26]

Make customers smile to trigger engagement [17:51]

The importance of building rapport [20:51]

Why you want to sell to people’s wants [22:50]

Facial expressions as a good indicator of the customer experience [24:24]

Facial coding as a unique kind of differentiation [29:12]

How to figure out more about who a person is [30:45]

The role of the feedback loop with maintaining employee value [34:04]

The difference between EQ and reading emotions [36:31]

The need for diversity and taking in others’ perspectives [38:32]

The one thing Dan highly recommends [42:31]

About Our Guest:

Dan Hill is a PhD holder, author, speaker, trainer, and expert in the area of reading emotions and decoding facial expressions. Widely known, he has consulted with over 50% of the world’s top 100 companies and has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Fox, CNN, and ESPN. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast. 

Connect with B2B Founder: 

Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySoKsETeKxu-Fnf2VfE7Gg/

Founders often push their products by highlighting the features and functions they offer. While it’s best to create a product that solves a problem, the right way to reach and engage your customer requires a different approach altogether.

You might be pushing your product or service too much that you’re creating unnecessary friction for your customer. So take a step back because there is an art to modern selling.

Why do buyers buy? Today, we chat with David Priemer, a research scientist turned tech entrepreneur. We go over the importance of messaging, focusing on pain points, how to build trust, the value of having a natural conviction towards your product, and more.

Get into the show now to learn the science behind sales.

Resource Links:

We’ll be talking about:

The negativity surrounding selling and the culmination of his book [02:51]

The differences between working in a startup and with a huge company [04:49]

Why you should put your message out there like a lightning rod [07:24]

People buy based on emotion [09:28]

Focus on pains and problems, not features and functions [11:18]

Remove unnecessary friction when getting a customer to buy [12:46]

The purpose of content is to educate [15:01]

What founders can do to build successful sales teams [18:56]

Show expertise to build trust and confidence in you [22:11]

The best practice when introducing your product [27:48]

Have conviction in the value you provide [31:07]

An example of a business nailing the messaging [35:15]

The best way to do cold calls [36:47]

What’s next for David [38:38]

The one thing David highly recommends [40:23]

About Our Guest:

David Priemer is the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist of Cerebral Selling, a modern sales training built through the lens of science and empathy. 

David is the author of the highly recommended book “Sell The Way You Buy” which came out last April 2020.

Get more of his free content on their YouTube.

If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast.

Connect with B2B Founder: 

Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySoKsETeKxu-Fnf2VfE7Gg/

Entrepreneurs are always told that the best way to start a business is to solve a problem. Scaling the business to grow beyond the network you have is a different problem.

Relying solely on the people you know won’t get you to your goals. But there is no shortage of successful businesses we can take inspiration from.

Today, we have IntelligenceBank CEO, Tessa Court. We talk about how she scaled her business beyond her network, doing it profitably, how she priced her offering, adding credibility through big logos or brands, and so much more.

Head on over to find out how this founder scaled her business to reach that million dollar mark!

Resource Links:

We’ll be talking about:

Introduction to IntelligenceBank [02:15]

Building a business from something you know [03:27]

When starting a business, tap into a growing market [05:00]

Founding a tech business when you’re not a technical person [07:23]

Big clients build your credibility [10:35]

Selling beyond their network [14:50]

Work on fit at the start to get to that million dollar mark [17:17]

Focus on your business milestones [19:36]

Hire early the people who will push your business forward [22:38]

The passion and devotion of her team [26:20]

Culture and values needs to be set from the top [28:50]

Valuing people more than the product [32:40]

What’s next for IntelligenceBank [34:13]

The importance of taking time out [35:40]

About Our Guest:

Tessa Court is the CEO and Director of IntelligenceBank, a leading digital asset management and marketing and operations platform. They currently support over 400 brands and 350,000 users in over 55 countries. They help marketing departments manage the content that gets produced, approved, and distributed through the process they provide. 

Tess was previously head of a global sales and marketing team when she couldn’t find a solution to her problem. She started IntelligenceBank to provide a solution to that problem.  

You can connect with Tessa through her LinkedIn.

If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast.

Connect with B2B Founder: 

Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySoKsETeKxu-Fnf2VfE7Gg/

Founders are often faced with the question of how to scale their business to reach that million-dollar mark. Are you still doing your marketing and sales correctly? Is your network working to your benefit?

The right question here is what are the tactics needed to be able to build your business to achieve the high levels you want. Today, we pick the brains of a B2B subject matter expert.

In this episode, we have a chat with Terminus Co-founder and Chief Evangelist, Sangram Vajre. We talk about his thoughts on why sales and marketing sucks, why customer success should be your first hire, the conversation you should have with your customer, and so much more.

Whether you have stalled in your efforts or are about to start scaling, get into this episode now.

Resource Links:

Brett Trainor Website (https://bretttrainor.com/)

“3 Stages of Startup Growth and How To Breakthrough” (https://bretttrainor.com/resources/)

We’ll be talking about:

Which should you focus on: product-market fit or problem-solving network? [02:19]

The power of a community around your product [05:04]

The right route for category creation [09:38]

Creating authenticity and building trust [13:25]

Look at partners to leverage and start conversations [14:57]

Get out of the process to be able to scale [19:11]

What to consider when bringing somebody in [21:54]

How you should communicate with your customers [25:31]

ABM for transactional businesses [30:07]

Why your marketing and sales don’t function [33:22]

Set expectations when you’re hiring [37:47]

The next challenge for Terminus [41:05]

One thing Sangram recommends [43:19]

About Our Guest:

Sangram Vajre is the Co-founder and Chief Evangelist of Terminus, an account-based marketing (ABM) platform. Since starting five years ago with three co-founders, Terminus has grown to about 250 people. 

The author of two books, “Account-Based Marketing For Dummies” and “BM is B2B.: Why B2B Marketing and Sales is Broken and How to Fix it”, Sangram also started a movement called #FlipMyFunnel which has grown to over 100,000 members.

Sangram is the host of the #FlipMyFunnel daily podcast. Every Monday, he has a live show called Office Hours with Sangram where they talk about business ideas, marketing, ABM, and other stuff. 

He has a newsletter on LinkedIn called Becoming Intentional.

If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast.

Connect with B2B Founder: 

Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySoKsETeKxu-Fnf2VfE7Gg/

Vivek Khandelwal is the co-founder and COO of high growth software company, iZooto. 

In this episode, we discuss how iZooto was able to gain early momentum and validate their offering. We also discuss the key tactics and strategies as they scaled their business to over $1 million in annual re-occurring revenue in less than 4 years.

(By the way, they process over a billion notifications a day.)

We also talk pricing, workflows, customer success and many other topics including how to divide and conquer with 3 other co-founders.

One of my favorite quotes from this episode from Vivek was, “Founders can scale a business, but it is not sustainable."

John Vuong, CEO and Founder of LocalSEOSearch, joins the program to discuss his journey to the 5% Club.

John’s sales and marketing background allowed him to gain traction early, but the business really took off when he made the investment in on-boarding and customer success. 

We discuss how he was able to scale without taking VC money, why his business model focused on reoccurring revenue and cash flow was a priority.   

Huckabuy CEO and founder Geoff Atkinson discusses how he was able to get his business “unstuck” after a very successful launch. He shares what he did, what worked, and most importantly, what he would have done differently. He also alludes to how Huckabuy is growing even during the pandemic.

Huckabuy is a fast-growing tech startup based in Park City, Utah. They are a SaaS company that is changing how organizations grow their organic search channel through a technology-forward SEO approach.

Prior to Huckabuy, Geoff was the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Analytics at Overstock.com where he developed expertise in SEO and managed everything from pricing algorithms to content generation. He was named Advertising Age’s “Top 40 Under 40” list

In today’s short solo episode, I discuss the “big” announcement regarding the podcast (no, it is not going away, but you will have to listen) and what is next.

Thank you all for your continued support.  We do appreciate it.

Until next week, cheers!

On this episode, we welcome Gregory Skeete to the program.  Gregory helps entrepreneurs and business owners to 'engineer' their best selves and systematically achieve results that are both successful and significant while maintaining their ideal work-life balance and lifestyle.

Gregory’s unique background has allowed him to provide a unique and powerful perspective on how entrepreneurs can become the best versions of themselves and not only transform themselves but also their businesses.

Stay tuned next week for a big announcement!

On this episode, we welcome Martin Hill to the program. Martin is the CEO, Founder and inventor of The Beebo: a free hand bottle holder designed to enhance the feeding time between you and your baby. On this episode, Martin shares his unbelievable growth journey.  It was an amazing combination of ingenuity, timing and a successful pitch on the shark tank.  Plus, Martin even announces that his company is for sale at the end of the show.

Twitter: @the_beeboInstagram: the_beebo