Full Funnel Freedom

In today's episode, we talk about the three crucial things to consider before terminating an employee. Letting go of an employee is undoubtedly one of the hardest things an employer can ever do. Not only are you impacting a person's livelihood, but unfair termination could also spark discontent within an organization. Nevertheless, some firings are necessary and unavoidable, but the more you understand termination, the easier it will be to manage the entire process.

What You'll Learn:

- Factors to consider before firing an employee

- Why employers need to set clear expectations from the get-go

- Understanding the consequence ladder

- Tips for coaching and developing your employees

- The difference between tactical and strategic coaching

- Why the willingness to change is so important

- How to create a performance improvement plan

- Why leaders need to make termination decisions based on data

Terminating an employee on an impulse can be a risky move for any type of business, which is why you need a practical process to help reduce your liability. On the other hand, it's best to give the concerned employee plenty of time, tools and opportunity to improve before cracking the whip. We all know that recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training a new employee can be very costly. The extra effort you put in to improve an employee may prove fruitful, provided the employee is willing to change.

Resources:

- Accountability The Sandler Way https://www.hamish.sandler.com/resources/sandler-books/accountability

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we talk to Dan Wardle about how to keep your sales funnel consistently full using video and managing a mountain of inbound leads. Dan Wardle is currently the head of sales at Vidyard, responsible for all areas of revenue including the enterprise, SMB, and self-serve segments. In previous roles, Dan led the Growth department at Vidyard, SMB sales at Salesforce.com and channel sales management at BlackBerry.

What You'll Learn:

- How to manage a mountain of inbound leads

- Traits that define a top-achieving salesperson

- Redefining work-life balance in sales

- How Dan keeps in touch with his team now that most of them are remote

- How sales leaders can manage their team's pipeline expectations

- Vidyard's partner program

- Video prospecting and selling for sales teams

- Ways sales and marketing should be working together

It's almost a cliche, but it holds true: people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Buyers don't want to hand their money to some faceless salesperson hiding behind an email - there needs to be some human element in the interaction.

But how can you create that know, like, and trust in this virtual selling environment? Simple, use video. Dan explains that the top performing salespeople are the ones who want to be human and create an authentic and personalized connection with prospects through video messaging.

Resources:

- Vidyard.com https://www.vidyard.com/

- Connect with Dan Wardle https://www.linkedin.com/in/wardledan/

- "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel Pink https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/

- The Way I Heard It Podcast https://mikerowe.com/podcast/

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we go through practical steps and strategies around building an effective sales team. We all know that great sales leaders are only as good as their sales team. One bad hire could mean losing out on lucrative contracts, while a team full of A-players can and will catapult your revenue to unimaginable heights. To achieve this, you'll need a sales team structure that describes how you organize workflow for your team. And the model you adopt should ensure you maintain an efficient workflow.

What You'll Learn:

- The anatomy of the modern sales team

- Building a sales team in the hybrid selling environment

- Building a skill based sales team

- Lead qualification experts and why they are important

- How to identify qualified closers in your team

- What the sales expansion group is

- Why the Hunter-Farmer sales mindset is detrimental to sales success

Business success is primarily determined by the success of an organization's sales team. After all, any company would struggle to keep its doors open without new business coming in. That said, if you're building a sales team, coming up with the right strategy can be the trickiest thing to get right. Hopefully, today's topic of discussion helps in getting you to take that first step.

Resources:

- Book: Making Channel Sales Work by David Davies https://www.amazon.co.uk/MAKING-CHANNEL-SALES-WORK-World-Class-ebook/dp/B07FDHMRH2

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In this episode, we talk about role-plays and why they are the single most important activities we can do as leaders to develop our teams and create full funnel freedom. Although role-play exercises are crucial when developing strong conversational tactics and sales delivery, it's surprising how little attention is paid to doing them right.

What You'll Learn:

- Dos and don'ts of using role-plays as a sales training tool

- Deliberate practice and role-play exercises

- Why scripts are useless during a role-play exercise

- Reasons why you and your team need to role-play

- How to close a sale in a role-play scenario

- Debriefs and the most important parts or a role-play exercise

- How to set the stage for role-playing

- Role-playing exercise examples

- Role-playing pitfalls to avoid

Most salespeople don't think very highly of sales role-playing. It's hard to blame them because almost every sales professional has taken part in at least one unrealistic, awkward, or embarrassing role-playing situation. As a sales leader, if your goal is to equip your team with the best prospect-handling skills, then you need to start implementing regular, reality-based, and highly structured role-play exercises.

Resources:

- Peak by Anders Ericson

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we talk to Tom Short, the Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Kudos, an award-winning employee recognition platform. Over the course of 25 years, Tom has used his passion for entrepreneurship and marketing to found numerous highly successful companies, where employee experience has been the cornerstone to building effective teams.

What You'll Learn:

- Why sales playbooks are crucial in the modern sales process

- What to include in a sales playbook

- Why not all inbound leads are ideal clients

- The 'train the trainer' methodology

- How to get prospects to sell themselves

- What to do when a prospect starts ghosting you

- Zoom-alongs and other key management tactics

- Why not everyone gets a demo

- How to put together a practical playbook

Remember, sales playbooks are more than a catalog of call scripts and sales sheets. They are your go-to guides for tackling a salesperson's biggest challenges and a roadmap for driving significant productivity gains. So, if you want to ensure you aren't celebrating random wins and that your losses can be traced back to the moment where things went wrong, ensure you have a sales playbook.

Resources:

- Kudos.com

- Blinkist.com

- Virtual Selling Article by Jeb Blount

- Gong.io

- The ONE Thing by Gary Keller

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we're going to talk about how our salespeople unintentionally kill their credibility with clients and prospects. We've all been in situations where a salesperson used words or phrases that made you think twice about doing business with them. And it even might be you who used those words and wondered why a hot deal went dead. Of all the crappy sales pitches your salespeople could use, the four phrases we talk about in this episode tend to be the most detrimental.

What You'll Learn:

- The four phrases that kill a salesperson's credibility

- Why salespeople need to stop using "begging words"

- How to record and analyze sales calls

- Why you need to start holding your prospects accountable

- The benefits of guarding your credibility as a salesperson

- Which words weaken your statements and undermine actions

You probably already know that you don't have to be extremely different from your competition to win business in sales. You just need to be slightly different. At the bare minimum, being different involves guarding your credibility by avoiding words that could actually hurt your chances of earning a prospect's business.

Resources:

- The One Word Leaders Should Stop Using

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, I will explain how linear thinking kills full funnel freedom. Our brains burn about 20% of the calories we consume. And so, to conserve energy, humans tend to employ linear thinking. In essence, a linear process has a starting point and an ending point, and our brains make it as simple and straight as possible. Linear thinking, unfortunately, stifles creativity.

What You'll Learn:

- What linear thinking is

- The pros and cons of linear thinking

- How to promote flexibility in your sales team

- Helping your team to seek growth opportunities

- Giving your team permission to think strategically

- How to get out of the comfort zone

- Why you need to promote a win or learn mindset in your team

- How to lead your team with a vision

Linear thinking in sales is all about logic and ticking all the boxes when qualifying a prospect. However, following a process to the core means salespeople will start rejecting ideal prospects because they didn't exactly fit the boxes our salesperson wanted to check. This is why we preach non-linear thinking, where a salesperson can make tweaks to the process of defining an ideal sale.

Resources:

- Change: The Sandler Way by Hamish Knox

- The Sales Coach's Playbook: Breaking the Performance Code by Bill Bartlett

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

Today we are talking about asking better questions, and training your salespeople to ask better questions. There is a tendency among salespeople to babble through questions because they are either afraid of silence or afraid that their prospect may give an answer that isn't "beneficial" to them. Nevertheless, your value as a salesperson is based on the amount of information you get, not the amount of information you give. So, ask the right questions, but give your prospects time to respond.

What You'll Learn:

- How to ask better questions

- Conversation goals and follow-up questions

- When to keep questions open-ended

- Why you need to give prospects time to think and respond

- How to overcome the fear of silence

- How to use the 15-second pause

- The demerits of question stacking

- Why you must stop interrupting prospects when they speak

Many of today's sales leaders want to build collaborative work environments. They want to harness the skills of independent thinking and help their teams make intelligent business decisions. Yet, they don't ask the right questions. And when they do, they don't allow time for their salespeople to answer - a trend that needs to stop if we are to enjoy better communication and ultimately, full funnel freedom.

Resources:

- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we will reveal the seven words to coach your salespeople to use that will make them more effective when selling. In sales and everyday living, the right words often lead to the right reaction. If you use the right words, your prospects will begin to see the benefits of working with you. On the other hand, using the wrong words will mean closing deals will become an issue.

What You'll Learn:

- How to optimize your sales vocabulary

- The best words to use during sales conversations

- Why you should base all your sales conversations around customers' needs

- How to eliminate unnecessary friction from the sales process

- How to stay cool under pressure in sales

- How to use the right words to bring the future to the present

- Why you need to remove the word "budget" from your sales vocabulary

- How to make effective selling words work for you

Using the right words and speaking your prospects' preferred language builds rapport and makes you easier to trust. Remember that the selling process starts with a linguistic engagement and slowly transitions into a financial transaction. Using the right words speeds up the transition; the wrong words do the opposite and prevent the transition from ever happening.

Resources:

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc

In today's episode, we will explain why maintaining full-funnel freedom is like flying an airplane. We all set goals and targets at the beginning of every new month, week, or quarter. However, just like flying an airplane, the path is rarely straight and we find ourselves constantly drifting off-course. Thus, we need to constantly make these little minor adjustments to ensure that we end up at the right destination.

What You'll Learn:

- How to set individual targets and team goals

- The benefits of weekly check-ins and check-outs

- How to become a strong communicator

- Which sales metrics sales leaders must track

- How to keep your team organized and on course

- Differentiating between prospects and suspects

- How to identify the red and yellow flags early on in the sales process

- The importance of perspective, purpose, and tracking progress

- When and how to negotiate discount requests

Drifting away from the intended target happens every day. For the most part, sales teams become so absorbed in their own process that they forget to lift their heads and notice if they have moved off course. But going off-course is rarely detrimental as long as we spot the red flags early enough and course correct.

Resources:

- Full Funnel Freedom https://fullfunnelfreedom.com

- Connect with Hamish Knox on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishknox/

- Connect with Hamish Knox on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandlerinyyc