Conquer Local Podcast

How to fix a broken Customer Journey after the sale is no easy feat, but we have the man who did just that. 

Originally from Australia, Michael Watkins VP of Partner Success at Vendasta, packed up his family and took on winter in Canada. Watkins takes us through the customer journey by reviewing all of the talk tracks, all of the scripts, and all of the vignettes, or whichever word you want to use for your customer success teams. It's important that it's not just a one and done, but instead takes iteration after iteration. It requires listening to the team, listening to customers, watching the conversion points, and seeing what's working and what's not. Once that process is defined, be prepared to make constant changes to refine it.

Watkins is passionate about helping business owners and marketing professionals understand the digital ecosystem as it continues to evolve.

His recent highlights include:

- 11% Digital revenue growth benefit through successful digital sales transformation program.

- $2.35 Million in revenue growth delivered through tactical webinar project.

- Leader of 17 talented individuals, responsible for: 50+ Sales tools, L&D and customer experience.

- Developed strategic partnerships with global vendors to improve and progress sales development.

With over 10 years professional digital marketing experience, Watkins remains focused on expanding his skills, and continuing his career progression towards a Strategic Marketing/ Program Management role within Innovative Digital Products.

The average SMB is worried about staying open in today's competitive market. The Google Guarantee can help.  

Justin Sanger, Chief Revenue Officer at OMG National, provides insight on what the Google Guarantee means for SMBs. Sanger refers to it as a game charger because it has an overall effect on how SEO keywords and pay-per-click ads function. An SMB doesn't always to hear the gritty details of lead measures and tactics, they often want a salesperson to cut the chase to know how it is going to effect their business. SEO has been changing at a rapid pace being at the will of the Google algorithms. Sanger shares how dealing with a fragmented and crowded landscape can hurt your agency and speaks to verticalization.

Thriving in routine by Optimizing the Sales Day and nothing will be forgotten. Work smarter not harder.

Steve Benson, CEO and Founder of Badger Maps, kicks off the first Conquer Local episode in 2020! Steve provides conquerors the insight in how to optimize the sales day, from the salespeople on the floor, sales managers, and at the executive level. Steve also tells us how his failures helped him succeed because frankly, SaaS startups are hard.

Three steps to get the conversion inside the sales funnel, getting the lead, qualifying the lead, and finally acquiring the customer. Listen to learn more!

We spoke with the SDRs, the BDRs, and now it's time to talk to the big kahuna, the VP of Revenue, Doug Campbell. He sits down with George to discuss managing a sales teams of 40+ and soon to be 90+ by the end of 2020. Doug explains that because they are growing so quickly they needed a scalable and repeatable training model. There is a term Dougs team uses, called the Unicorn Lead. 

Doug got his start in the newspaper industry selling advertising, which he quickly excelled at and branched out into sports marketing, jack of all sales you might say. Doug is widely recognized as an award-winning leader in driving revenue growth via successful teams throughout his 20+ year career. He is currently is the VP of Revenue with Vendasta where he continues to drive hyper-growth working with businesses across the globe.

Kudos to our listeners for providing this weeks topic! George pulls together best practices when it making Discovery Calls on this edition of the Master Sales Series.

Imagine you had 200 leads that came in and you were only going to close 10% of them or if you are a rock star, 25% of them. We get the nitty gritty details and proven tactics when having that first discovery call. As salespeople, we need to be very careful and deliberate in the way we are communicating with a customer when having those first calls. George runs through everything from that first initial call to discussing how leads come into your funnel, there are some different tactics for different scenarios. In some instances, we have been doing this for a long time, we know we have the answers and we can solve the problems of any customer. We have a tendency to skip over very important pieces for building rapport and trust.

Being able to sell to multi location businesses is becoming a necessity, we have Mike Giamprini to give Conquerors the scoop.

Mike Giamprini, Managing Partner of G Partners, shares his struggles and wins when it comes to selling multi location listings to SMBs. He shares his experience with 411 on the transition from traditional to digital media and how he had to completely retrain an entire sales force.  Mike tells us that if he were to go back in time and do it all over again he would focus more time on the educational piece because where there is confusion there is opportunity.

Mike is a veteran of the “local” space and has been leading sales and marketing organizations focused on helping businesses of all sizes thrive in a digital world. Knowing that national brands need to connect with audiences at the hyper-local level, Mike founded G Partners in 2016 with a best-in-class digital marketing stack of products and services and combined that with a deep knowledge of G Partners’ clients’ businesses to effectively drive growth at every stage of their customer’s journey.

What is forecasting? It's about creating predictable revenue model—you need a plan, it needs to be concrete, and it needs to have a strategy behind it. 

The Master Sales Series tackles the pain points of constructing a revenue model for a new year. We take a look at the three different personas of forecasting; the sandbagger, the sharp shooter, and the optimist. George shares from his own struggles and the times when he has missed his projected revenue. After doing extensive research and having conversations with industry experts George has developed a new approach to forecasting. 

George is responsible for business development with Vendasta’s large channel partners, as well as managing our in-house sales team. As the host of the Conquer Local Podcast, George’s personal mandate is to make local sales better. A digital interpreter, George has preached the gospel of online reputation management directly to the local businesses of hundreds of cities across North America. He translates his knowledge of the digital landscape into accessible information for those still stuck in the rut of traditional media. With nearly three decades of experience in marketing, sales and promotion, George is a highly compelling speaker, always in demand across North America — vital content and emphatic delivery are combined for an enlightening presentation. George’s expertise in sales, training, networking, management and marketing comes from the numerous executive and ownership positions he has held across multiple media and service-related businesses. His track record of success is continued here at Vendasta.

Discipline leads results with eight key metrics to drive revenue.

Steve Whittington, Executive Vice President of the Flaman Group, is back for a second time! After getting plucked off the face of a mountain by a helicopter Steve gave up mountain climbing and decided to channel is passion into his work. We get the inside scoop on Whittington's new book, Thriving in the Customer Age.  The book lays out the framework with eight key metrics that can be applied and used to measure the customer experience initiative results, tied directly to the bottom line.

Whittington has over 25 years experience in the (B2C) business to consumer, (B2B) business to business and (B2A) business to any space. From consulting, marketing agency work and as an executive and board member for manufacturing and retail firms.He is also Managing Director of a boutique digital agency, Graphic Intuitions. Steve's current board work includes serving as Chair of the Board for Flaman Fitness Canada, a national retailer; President of the Glenora Child Care Society; and a member of the Marketing Program Advisory Committee for NAIT's JR Shaw School of Business.

Outside his professional life, Steve is a leader in the mountains. An avid mountaineer, he has reached the summit of 50 mountains, including Mount Everest in 2013. On many of his climbs he has been the expedition leader and/or lead climber. Steve believes his leadership in the mountains has a direct application to his successful leadership in his business life.

The Master Sales Series is back! George Leith gives the dos and don'ts of conferences.

The man has attended over 500 conferences in his 30+ years of sales. George divulges over 10 different methods on how to improve yourself and your team when attending conferences.  Everything from making yourself memorable, creating goals for conferences, and how to gamify your team. This episode is one you will want to save and share with your sales teams before your next conference.

George is responsible for business development with Vendasta’s large channel partners, as well as managing our in-house sales team. As the host of the Conquer Local Podcast, George’s personal mandate is to make local sales better. A digital interpreter, George has preached the gospel of online reputation management directly to the local businesses of hundreds of cities across North America. He translates his knowledge of the digital landscape into accessible information for those still stuck in the rut of traditional media. With nearly three decades of experience in marketing, sales and promotion, George is a highly compelling speaker, always in demand across North America — vital content and emphatic delivery are combined for an enlightening presentation. George’s expertise in sales, training, networking, management and marketing comes from the numerous executive and ownership positions he has held across multiple media and service-related businesses. His track record of success is continued here at Vendasta.

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There are four sales formulas, one for hiring, training, managing, and demand generation for a scalable and repeatable revenue growth model.

Mark Roberge, Advisor to HubSpot and former Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot’s Sales Division, is our guest this week on the Conquer Local Podcast. Roberge and George Leith dive deep into his book, Sales Acceleration Formulas. They are four sales formulas, the sales hiring formula, the sales training formula, the sales management formula, and the demand generation formula. One important golden nugget from this week is for salespeople and sales leaders to get away from doing everything the same old way just because that's how their organization has been doing it. We need to apply data and be able to come up with ways to make it better. The most overused word is scalable, but that's what we're all aiming for. It’s to find repeatable models that are scalable to help meet the ever-growing goals in sales organizations.

Mark Roberge is the bestselling author of the award-winning book, “The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to Go from $0 to $100 Million”. Mark is one of the instructors for HubSpot Academy's Inbound Sales Certification and also a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School, where he teaches Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing in the second-year MBA program. Prior to his role as CRO, Mark served as SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services at HubSpot, increasing revenue over 6,000% and expanding the team from 1 to 450 employees. As a result, HubSpot placed #33 on the INC 500 Fastest Growing Companies list in 2011.

Subscribe to the podcast now, on iTunes goo.gl/8vPm1B and Google Play goo.gl/uyDsij