Future-Proof Selling

Mike Adams has just written a book called Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell. This book really blew my mind, and I think it's a missing link for a lot of sales organisations and a lot of salespeople.

How do we get customer's to open up and share their pain points?

How do we get them to trust us and engage on a deeper level?

How do we get to that point where we can highlight the flaws in their status quo without offending them?

Many salespeople know that this is the key to being successful in large deals but very few can actually do it. Sales storytelling can be a great method for addressing these important components of the complex sale.

Mike steps us through why storytelling is so powerful and how to do it effectively, all along the way teaching us through his powerful stories. Time absolutely flew by in this discussion as Mike was so incredibly engaging.

Max Altschuler is a pioneer of modern sales. He founded Sales Hacker and wrote the seminal book on leveraging sales technology, "Hacking Sales." After Sales Hacker was acquired by Outreach.io he became the VP of Marketing for the company. He recently wrote another book sure to be a classic, "Career Hacking for Millennials."

We talk about the evolution of sales technology over the past decade which has been nothing short of breathtaking. Max gives us advice for sales leaders trying to prioritise, figure out where to start, and how they can get the most leverage out of sales tech.

We then shift gears and discuss working with Millennials; which is getting more and more critical every year. Max is millennial himself and has some great advice for companies and leaders on getting the maximum out of today's workforce.

Keenan is one of the most clear-headed and straightforward sales thought leaders out there. He recently launched an amazing book called 'Gap Selling' which is creating a huge amount of buzz, something you all have to check out.

In his own very direct and energetic style Keenan shares his thoughts on what's going on with sales leadership, sales coaching, how we should be thinking about our customer's business challenges and be building powerful business cases for change, and much more. Keenan's company, A Sales Guy, recently did a survey which revealed that 84% of sales managers say they are coaching but only 42% of salespeople say they are coached! I got a lot out of this discussion and I am sure you will too.

There are direct links between CX success and company growth and profitability. Everyone seems to be investing in this area but not many are getting it right. Chris Connelly, VP Customer Success Management, SAP Asia Pacific Japan, is one of the pioneers in this field, he also previously held the role of Customer Success director for Salesforce, so has a lot of authority on this topic.

We cover how to set up and make the Customer Success function really work for a business and produce results. The interface with the account teams and others is critical so we spend some time here. We also cover the broad range of potential key success metrics and how to give your team the right goals. And there are plenty of real life examples covered in this discussion.

Tamara Schenk is the Research Director at CSO Insights, the research division of Miller Heiman. Tamara recently wrote a book on sales enablement, which is called Sales Enablement: A Master Framework to Engage, Equip and Empower a World-class Sales Force.

Sales Enablement is a fast growing discipline with 59% of sales organisations currently reporting a sales enablement initiative or function compared to only 19% in 2013. We discuss what sales enablement is all about, the key trends emerging and what's critical to make it work.

Jordan Mara is a master prospector and an all around expert on modern sales strategies. He is the founder of Coho Sales Consulting, the world's leading sales training and enablement business for SaaS startups.

A lot of investment has been pouring into outbound lead-generation teams but most companies are achieving poor results. Old volume-driven outbound prospecting approaches focused on how good our products and company are just don't cut through anymore and produce ever-diminshing returns. Companies also potentially damage their brand by aggressively calling into accounts without proper preparation and co-ordination with other sales functions.

Jordan draws on his track record of success to share with us what's really working today and how you can achieve great lead-gen results with a high quality, research-driven approach.

Donal Daly and I talk about the big challenges facing sales organisations today and what the best organisations around the world are doing to stay ahead of the pack. Donal shares real life client case studies and gives us many expert tips on what we need to be focusing on. Some great insight from a real industry leader.

Donal is the author of the best-selling book 'Digital Transformation in a Customer First World'. He is also the Chairman of Altify, a company with an incredible history of pioneering in the sales industry and committed to 'Elevating the world's most successful sales organizations'.

Michele Buckley is the Global Sales & Marketing Advisor for the Software and Tech Industry at Gartner. She shares details from her latest research on how buying decisions are getting made in large accounts for Software/Saas and Tech products. She talks about the increased complexity of buying, managing risk in our deals and the importance of leading with business outcomes in all of our customer interactions. Some excellent advice for anyone in this field.

Victor Antonio is a renowned and compelling global keynote speaker on sales and management. A fantastic storyteller and sales thought leader, Victor has written 13 books on sales and motivation, has posted over 800 YouTube videos and enjoys a huge global following.

Victor is a leading advocate for augmenting our sales teams with technology and talks about his recent book, Sales Ex:Machina, How AI is Changing the World of Selling, which is mind-blowing on its own.

He also gives us some great ideas on how critical the sales function is as companies face increased competition and commoditisation. We also talk about how salespeople can generate insight and really bring value to their clients. Victor also laments the poor quality of presentation skills he observes amongst the sales profession.

Tony shares his thoughts on effective prospecting, how to personalise our messaging to potential buyers and how we must leverage insight to progress the sale. He also gives us real life examples of how these approaches should be used in the real sales world.

Tony also gives us some great advice on how sales teams and salespeople should be leveraging technology so they can be more effective and focus on what really matters.

Tony J. Hughes is a bestselling author and the most read person in LinkedIn on the topic of B2B sales leadership. He is also rated as the most influential person in professional selling within Asia-Pacific by Top Sales World and ranked as the #1 sales blogger by both Top Sales magazine and by Best Sales Blogger Awards.

Discover more about Tony on his Website or via LinkedIn