By David J Fionda
In this Top 50 podcast, David Fionda will interview industry leaders and provide actionable ideas to prepare your company for breakthrough sales revenue.
Dave, an Outsourced/F
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The podcast currently has 12 episodes available.
In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, host Dave Fionda speaks with Elevator Pitch Coach Andrew Winig about those crucial 30 seconds you get to introduce yourself to someone new. If you've ever struggled with what to say in that tiny "elevator pitch" window, this is the podcast episode to listen to.
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Andy draws on improv, sales and even his dating experience to share wonderful insights into networking dynamics and the principles of successful pitches.
As an entrepreneur and business owner, Andy discovered that business networking success starts with an effective 30-Second Elevator pitch. His proven 3-Step Elevator Pitch Coaching Process is based on his 10 year journey from cold call to referral salesman. Andy’s mission: to help small businesses get better leads from business networking. Andy received a BSCS from Yale University, where he was awarded a magna cum laude and elected to the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society.
In Episode 10 of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, mental toughness expert Matt Phillips speaks about the true business differentiator. Matt, a former pro athlete, helps business leaders transform their teams and crush their strategic goals. His focus is the one differentiator that makes the difference between business success and failure: mental toughness.
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The five elements of mental toughness, according to Matt, are:
These five elements are instilled in athletes by their coach. Matt coaches business leaders to use these same five elements in their day-to-day lives to achieve success. He offers three big pieces of advice in the podcast:
Matt Phillips is the Founder & CEO of Pro Athlete Advantage, and is regarded as one of the leading experts on human performance and mental toughness development in the world. A former professional baseball player, Matt discovered that peak performance requires a dominant “inner game”. Using his Mental Toughness approach, Matt teaches business leaders and professional athletes how to systematically build their confidence, focus, emotional control, and energy so they can take their game to the next level. Matt counsels corporations on how to build high performance leaders and teams to crush their financial and strategic goals. His unique business model, a five-step process called "Ignite Your Mindset," is a mental toughness program that helps corporate teams and leaders increase their self-confidence so they take consistent action towards their goals, get laser-focused on hitting their numbers and results, master their emotions, and make sure they have high energy every day so they come to work to perform at the peak of their capabilities.
In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, award-winning Sandler trainer and sales coach Joe Ippolito explains how to build a scalable sales process. Joe shares how even inexperienced salespeople can consistently qualify and close in a few simple steps. If the thought of selling scares you, Joe is the person to listen to.
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Joe Ippolito is the President of TOPLINE Performance Solutions, an authorized Sandler Training franchise. For the past decade, Joe has been an award-winning Sandler trainer, author, coach, and speaker. His columns on cutting-edge sales topics have appeared regularly in the Boston Business Journal. Joe has successfully trained and consulted with business owners, senior managers and sales professionals from a variety of industries including professional service firms, manufacturing, consumer product companies, information technology providers, healthcare and biotech, to name a few. He has worked with start-ups, building and scaling their sales process infrastructure, as well as established organizations committed to growth. Joe’s successful clients are both companies and entrepreneurs that are committed to becoming leaders in their industry by developing their human capital and themselves, giving them a true competitive advantage.
In Episode 8 of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, Ken Cheo shares his secrets to business development success on LinkedIn. The world's largest professional social network, LinkedIn is the perfect place to grow and nurture important connections, before, during and after the sale. Ken will give you the understanding and the techniques you need to get the most out of this great business resource.
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The three best ways to grow your business on LinkedIn, according to Ken, are:
Some excerpts from the great conversation between Ken and host Dave Fionda:
"LinkedIn is the biggest professional network in the world. There's no question about it. 706 million people are on LinkedIn, and it's going to a billion really fast.... Every Fortune 500 company is there.... 75% of ... corporate buyers use social media and 50% of them say they use LinkedIn.... 76% of [those] say they have a positive image of people they're connected to."
"[Who] knows if there's ever going to be another trade show, [but] everybody who is anybody [is on Linkedin now]."
"[On] social media, it doesn't matter which platform you're using. It's a vehicle to develop a relationship. Once you develop that relationship, then you've earned the right to take it into a conversation outside of the platform, and that's what LinkedIn enables you to do: ... connect, build a relationship, and take it outside email or phone."
"It's not about what you did. They don't care about what you did. It's about what you're going to do [for them]. So, put in there who you help, how you help them, and what key results they can expect from you."
Ken Cheo, is the President of Our Sales Coach. Prior to forming Our Sales Coach, Ken had been training and coaching business owners and salespeople since 2006 as the owner of a Winfree Business Growth Advisors practice. He had enjoyed over 20 years of sales and sales management experience with consistent results growing engineering service and construction companies in the Greater Boston area at rates between 25% and 100%. His broad experience includes assistance in hiring key staff members, coaching and training salespeople, sales, marketing, and new business development. Ken Cheo has participated in speaking engagements and seminars on a variety of sales and marketing related subjects. His goal over the next five years is to empower 100 local small to medium-sized business owners to achieve their corporate vision.
In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, our regular show host Dave Fionda shares his tips on how entrepreneurial CEOs and tech founders can grow and hone their business development skills—even if they're not good at the "hard sell." Business development isn’t about selling, he reminds us. It's about identifying, closing and nurturing the key relationships you need to acquire many customers.
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Are you a natural-born sales person? If not, don't despair: Dave tells us you can still become a kick-butt business development professional.
Business owners have to wear many hats—sales, customer service, marketer, human resource, finance and others. Many times critical business development skills for founders is overlooked. But business development isn’t about selling. Sales is about acquiring one customer. Business development is about identifying, closing and nurturing the key relationships you need to acquire many customers. Selling (closing) is part of that equation, but it's not the only part.
So how do business leaders without a sales background learn to build and hone their ability to close the deal? First, don't forget that these are learnable skills, not inherent traits or personality characteristics.
The three most important skills that owners and technical founders need to develop, according to Dave, are:
Sales skills, Dave argues, will get you one sale. Business development skills will get you many sales. He gives a specific example from his own experience—how he was able to turn on his business development skills to get a deal made that launched a successful overseas business where 14 previous attempts had failed.
Dave is a 35-year sales and business development veteran, a CPA, author, mentor and, most importantly, a technical founder himself. Dave’s entire career has been focused on helping companies grow and be more successful. He loves helping companies succeed. Dave founded and grew 5 ventures in his career and sold three of them successfully. He is a mentor for the Mass Challenge startup competition and has also taught at three of the leading business universities in the US ( Babson, Northeastern and Bentley) and has presented keynotes and executive briefings all over the U.S. and Canada. Dave received his BS in Accounting from Bentley University and an MS in Technology Commercialization from Northeastern University.
In Episode 6 of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, marketing and business growth guru Tim Fitzpatrick shows host Dave Fionda how entrepreneurial CEOs and technical founders can quickly scale their marketing through an innovative, agile-inspired marketing plan approach. Throw away your 50-page plan and listen in!
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Tim advises that your strategic marketing plan should include six major elements:
He explains these elements in detail, and shows Dave how to create sprint-like processes to "find" and "fail" marketing channels quickly, moving the successful ones into your longer-term marketing plan. He also suggests which channels to take advantage of early on, and which to give more time to ensure they're given the time they need to show success.
Some of his favorite channels for early-stage businesses include "offline" referrals, the oft-forgotten website, online reviews and the extremely powerful (and also easily overlooked) email marketing channel. He reminds us to respond to our reviews, keep engaged, and show empathy and understanding.
Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well as a founder and executive in a wholesale distribution company that grew 60% a year before it was acquired. As president of Rialto Marketing, Tim helps small business owners and entrepreneurs eliminate the confusion of marketing using an amazingly simple plan so they can grow.
In Episode 5 of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, host Dave Fionda speaks with growth advisor and exit strategist Kerri Salls about the pain points associated with building a business, how to create an employee-powered culture of excellence, and how to break through the growth obstacles your organization is facing.
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Kerri's five keys to building a successful business in the "new normal" are:
Kerri is an experienced owner, consultant and advisor who helps owner led businesses develop scalable growth strategies, performance excellence and multiply their businesses long term value. She is among the elite exit strategists entrusted by owners of private companies to guide them through pre-transaction preparations to reduce risk and increase intrinsic business value by 70-100%. Kerri is also an accomplished speaker, podcast host and the author of the books "Harvest Your Wealth" and numerous other books, white papers and articles.
In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, host Dave Fionda speaks with brand strategy consultant Doug Fox about the top five branding and messaging mistakes marketers make. If you worry about how to balance sales and goodwill, this is the podcast episode for you.
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The five big messaging mistakes, in a nutshell:
Doug is a proven brand and marketing strategist with 20+ years experience successfully building and repositioning global brands and businesses. He has a proven reputation of helping his clients be more ‘Foxy‘, strengthening their brands and generating more demand for their products, services and solutions. He specializes in taking very complex offerings and simplifying them down to what is most compelling and motivating for prospects. We're proud to have him as one of our podcast guests.
The podcast currently has 12 episodes available.