Conquer Local Podcast

The Entrepreneurial Life is less about skills and more about the drive. What matters is that you determine your goals and live them out, whatever that looks like.

Jeff Adamson, Co-Founder & CMO at Neo Financial and Co-Founder of SkipTheDishes, is on the podcast as he is the definition of embracing the entrepreneurial life. He shares the nitty-gritty details of what he went through to ensure he succeed in his undertakings of being an entrepreneur. From sleeping in his car, having nothing but doubters saying this won't work, and using his credit card limits as the investments. Jeff has not only successfully co-founded not one but two organizations to a multi-billion valuation.

Jeff Adamson is a former world-class athlete who ditched his comfy corporate job to co-found Canada's most popular consumer tech brand, SkipTheDishes.com. Having grown SkipTheDishes to a multi-billion dollar brand, Jeff is once again venturing outside his comfort zone as co-founder and Chief Merchant Officer at Neo Financial, where Jeff and his team are building the future of Canadian banking and rewards. When he's not building startups, Jeff can be found running ultra-marathons or at home changing diapers with his amazing and ever-supportive wife.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

In this Master Sales Series, we’re talking about the Four Fastest ways to Burn a Lead. We work tirelessly to market, attract, and qualify leads. We can burn them in a single step, with a click of a button, and we spend a lot of time talking about how we can do it right. In this episode, we hone in on where we might be going wrong.

We will cover:

1. The cost of wasting leads
2. How slow follow-up impacts conversion
3. Not enough points of contact
4. Not having a specific person assigned for follow-up
5. Weak discovery and qualification

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

Positioning yourself as a LinkedIn Expert, Industry Expert, or Thought Leader is all around creating a personal brand and adding meaningful value to your business network.

Viveka von Rosen, Co-Founder & Chief Visibility Officer of Vengreso, is back for Part 2. She is the ultimate LinkedIn Expert and is sharing the 101 ways to rock LinkedIn. In part two, we discuss:

1. Connect: Connect and network with target buyers with the objective of turning every online conversation into an offline.
2. Feed: Feed or nurture your network with regular content to help them on their journey and create further engagement.
3. Cadence: Develop a daily, weekly, and monthly set of digital selling activities to drive more conversations and/or expand relationships.

Cofounder of Vengreso, the largest provider of full-spectrum Modern Digital Sales transformation solutions. Known as the @LinkedInExpert, she’s the author of the best-selling “LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day” AND “LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand!”. She’s been named in Forbes (4 years running) as a top social media expert and is a regular contributor and has been featured in Forbes, BuzzFeed, Inc, CNN, Entrepreneur, Selling Power, and the Social Media Examiner. Her business mission is to help sales professionals and business owners create more quality and qualified conversions on LinkedIn.

Resources:

• Prospecting article with the follow-up cadences
• Two-step referral methodology
• Video on video cover stories

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

Becoming a LinkedIn Expert is vitally important, now more than ever, to create a strong personal brand so that you stand out from your competition.

We get to speak with Viveka von Rosen, Co-Founder & Chief Visibility Officer of Vengreso, the ultimate LinkedIn Expert. Viveka is on the podcast for not one but two episodes sharing 101 ways to rock LinkedIn. In part one, we discuss:

1. Mindset: today’s modern seller must recognize that buyers have become better at buying faster than sellers have become at selling. Adapt or die to the buyers' decision;
2. Brand: establish a personal and professional presence online with a social profile that drives your prospective buyer to engage with you;
3. Engaging: find and engage with your buyers by discovering and sharing valuable information to help solve real business problems.

Cofounder of Vengreso, the largest provider of full-spectrum Modern Digital Sales transformation solutions. Known as the @LinkedInExpert, she’s the author of the best-selling "LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day" AND "LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand!”. She's been named in Forbes (4 years running) as a top social media expert and is a regular contributor and has been featured in Forbes, BuzzFeed, Inc, CNN, Entrepreneur, Selling Power, and the Social Media Examiner. Her business mission is to help sales professionals and business owners create more quality and qualified conversions on LinkedIn.

Resources:

• Prospecting article with the follow-up cadences
• Two-step referral methodology
• Video on video cover stories

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

For sales professionals, empathy in sales is essential because, without a relationship, there's no trust. Don't reserve it exclusively for deals you're trying to close immediately.

We have Jerry Acuff, CEO & Founder at DeltaPoint, as our guest this week on the Conquer Local Podcast. Jerry was a reluctant salesperson. When he realized his dream of becoming a college football coach wouldn't come true, he stumbled into sales. He says so himself that he would never hire himself. Every step of the way, Jerry has remained humble to his success. Jerry drops his vast amount of knowledge with us; do what is right by your customer—even if that means they don't do business with you—trust is the most important thing you can have with a customer. Empathy in sales has to be there right along with trust. 

"People buy things from people they like; people buy from people they like and trust."

Jerry’s expertise has led to numerous awards and recognitions, including the title of one of the 50 best salespeople of all time and one of the top 10 sales experts in the world, according to salesgurus.net. Jerry has been featured on MSNBC and the ABC Radio Network, as well as on TheStreet.com, WSJ.com, Fortune, Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, Managed Care Pharmacy Practice, Fast Company, Selling Power, and “Selling Power Live.” He shares his passion for selling and building business relationships in his 3 best-selling business books: The Relationship Edge, The Relationship Edge in Business, and Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer. Jerry is the CEO and founder of DELTA POINT in Scottsdale, Arizona. DeltaPoint works with sales and marketing leaders to implement innovative ways to sell and market in today’s crowded marketplace.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

If you have ever worked in B2B software for any amount of time, you have probably stumbled across the IT Channel and didn't even know it.

Andrew Down, Director of Sales for the IT Channel at Vendasta, never thought of himself as a technical person, but 13 years in the IT industry says otherwise. In this episode, we discuss the MSPs (Managed Service Providers), the VARs (Value Added Resellers), and what the difference is between them. The reseller channel is essential in B2B tech, both for end-users, many who buy 100% of their technology through a reseller, and for software companies, some who sell exclusively through the channel. Like almost everything else in technology, the IT Channel is changing. Fast.

Andrew Down is a Saskatchewan-based business professional and entrepreneur with strong corporate, non-profit, and public sector sales experience. Other experience includes senior leadership, strategic planning, business development, VAR/MSP/IT Channel, marketing, event management, consulting services, and training. Andrew has a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing from the University of Saskatchewan and has been in the IT industry for over 12 years. He has a passion for empowering businesses to embrace leading-edge technology solutions to improve business operations. Andrew possesses a keen interest in personal and professional development, including networking, non-profit/community engagement, connecting, and continuous learning.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

How does a marketing agency find success through the pandemic, and how can they help their community? It's about keeping local businesses informed and helping them succeed. If they succeed, you succeed.  

We have Mitchell Slater, Founder and CEO, from Slater Strategies joining us from Alaska/Florida. Mitchell got his start at just 17 years old in print advertising and quickly realized he had to make the shift to the digital space. He found early success by attending conferences and learning from others' mistakes who have tried and failed. As many agencies went through the same problem, finding success through the pandemic, he knew he needed to figure out how to adapt and help local businesses. Through the challenges that 2020 brought, Mitchell had his most successful year to date. He did this by educating the local businesses around him, finding his niche, and utilizing his network. A key piece to Mitchell's success was no longer being bound by geography because the entire world went remote.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

The probability of selling to existing customers is 60-70 percent, and the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20 percent.

Master Sales Series is back again; we are reviewing the benefits of marketing to existing customers. As sales professionals, we put a ton of effort into lead generation, but we miss out on opportunities by ignoring the customers we already have. We will go through these five steps:

1. What are the benefits?
2. Before you sell - re-discover
3. Marketing to customers in the retention stage
4. Marketing to customers in the advocacy stage
5. Onboarding at every stage

Studies show 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, but most only spend 21% of their marketing budgets on customers they already have. It's so important to redirect some of our time and effort towards customers who already see the value. They will thrive, and so will you.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

What does the state of local businesses in Italy look like as we reach the pandemic's first anniversary? 

Conquer Local travels to Italy to speak with Roberto Giacchi, CEO at Italiaonline. Italiaonline is the largest and top digital group in Italy; they are an email provider, web advertising sales agency, and digital communication agency. They truly act full circle in the digital world, both in what they do and who they talk to. George and Roberto discuss what makes Italiaonline's business model unique and different than the rest of the country, the state of local businesses in Italy due to the pandemic and how businesses adapted to the mandatory lockdown, and the toil of working remote as we reach the first anniversary of when the pandemic started.

Born in Turin in 1968, he graduated in Economics from La Sapienza University in Rome. His career began at KPMG in 1994. In 1998 he joined TIM group and followed the M&A activities for the international development of the group in Latin America and Europe. In 1999 he joined Bain & Company, where he followed projects of strategic, commercial, and financial nature, in particular for the Telecom, Internet & Technology sector, becoming Partner in 2005. In 2007 he was appointed CEO of PosteMobile and leads the company from its foundation throughout the start-up phase until its success on the market. In 2014 he moved to Poste Italiane and assumed responsibility for the Mail, Communication, and Logistics business unit, participating with this role in the group's successful IPO up in 2015. Subsequently, in 2016 he assumed responsibility for all Poste Italiane Group products of the Business and P.A. Market. In 2017, he became Group Chief Financial Officer of Poste Italiane; in December 2018, he is appointed CEO of Italiaonline.

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The channel software stack comprises a group of technologies that help companies develop, design, and execute plans to find, recruit, onboard, develop, enable, incent, co-sell with, manage, measure, and report on partners.

Influencer of the year - Jay McBain, Principal Analyst - Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems at Forrester, joins the Conquer Local Podcast this week. Jay brings the fire by bringing the knowledge around everything around Channel Software, Channel Partners, and Channel Tech Stack. He can speak to almost everything; we dig into Google eliminating cookies, why 76% of CEOs believe their business model will be different in 5 years, and how Apple updated their phones to be completely anonymous. He shares four things that every company in every vertical is becoming a tech company: Automation, Cloud Acceleration, Remote Technology, and Partner Experience.

Jay McBain is one of the most visible and respected thought leaders in the global channel. Named 2021 Channel Influencer of the Year by Channel Partners Magazine, Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, and numerous channel magazines top influencer lists, he is often sought out for industry guidance and future trends. He has spent his 27-year career in various executive channel sales, marketing, and strategy roles within IBM, Lenovo, and ChannelEyes. Jay is the principal analyst for global channels, partnerships, and ecosystems at Forrester, one of the world's most influential global research and advisory firms.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

Resources:

Channel Software Tech Stack 2021

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021