Labcast Podcast by OpenView Labs

After taking over our personal lives, mobile products have now made their way into the workplace and mark the future of B2B SaaS. Find out what’s driving that momentum and what challenges lie ahead.

We recently published a report on the 2015 State of B2B Mobile Growth Metrics which was largely data driven. But often, data doesn’t tell the full story, which is why we collaborated with Adam Marchick of Kahuna on the report to add in the entrepreneur’s perspective. To tie it all together, I sat down with our friend Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital who gives an outside investor’s view on current market momentum, obstacles mobile B2B companies need to overcome and the many distinctions between mobile business apps and web-based products.

Listen to the full recording below to hear us speak with Kevin about why mobile is sparking the next revolution in tech.

This Week’s Guest

“When we look at where mobile is starting to make a really interesting impact it’s actually in some of these old line industries that historically have been laggards. The opportunity in the mobile world … is building mobile applications to address the 80% of the global workforce that has never had great technology to do their jobs.”

— Kevin Spain, General Partner at Emergence Capital

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Kevin Spain Podcast

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Key Takeaways

* The shift to mobile is similar to the shift to cloud platforms. When businesses like Salesforce pioneered the cloud, the appeal for buyers and vendors alike was flexibility and ease of use. Mobile offers the same opportunity and opens up entirely new categories of applications. As a result, we’re seeing a lot of opportunity in mobilizing or adding mobile adjuncts to existing cloud products.

* Mobile addresses the needs of an enormous market. Kevin points out that 80% of the global workforce don’t sit at desks. Mobile apps allow software companies to expand into industries like construction, manufacturing, and healthcare and deliver software solutions to users who have not traditionally relied on technology to do their jobs.

* For mobile there is an incredible premium you have to place on focus and simplicity. Of course, going mobile isn’t easy. OpenView’s mobile growth metrics report found that cheap and quick mobile development runs the risk of being ineffective, and Kevin’s experiences haven’t been any different. Product focus and simplicity have always been table stakes in enterprise SaaS, but they’re even more important in mobile.

* The days of being web-only are quickly moving behind us. While “mobile” is a blanket term to describe a wide range of product strategies (supplementary to a web-based product, native mobile, etc.), one truism is universal: we’re reaching the point where SaaS companies can no longer afford not to have a mobile presence.

* Monetization varies by application. Most companies with mobile applications are taking similar approaches to web-based software (per user/per month, etc.), but some are beginning to experiment with in-app purchases. Monetization will evolve as more companies experiment with pricing strategies and platforms like the App Store and Google Play allow for more sophisticated billing.

* There is a need for new mobile-specific metrics. Mobile-focused B2B SaaS companies rely on the same key metrics as trad...

There’s plenty of hype around social selling these days and, frankly, Mike Weinberg is sick of hearing it. Learn why he’s dead set on dispelling social selling myths that aren’t just misleading, but flat-out dangerous.

You hear them everywhere these days — loud, shrill voices proclaiming that everything has changed, that social selling has replaced traditional prospecting and selling. In this week’s episode of Labcast, Mike Weinberg, founder of The New Sales Coach and one of OpenView’s Top 25 B2B Sales Influencers for 2014, explains why he believes that kind of thinking is dangerous, and why we should look to social as a supplemental tool rather than a replacement. Fair warning: This may get loud.

This Week’s Guest

“Many salespeople incorporate social in their repertoire and use it really well, but they still have to be really good at telling their story, at running a discovery session and identifying needs, at doing the hard work, at representing the company, and managing the deal well.”

— Mike Weinberg, founder of The New Sales Coach

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Key Takeaways

* The social selling balloon is leaking air fast — let’s just stick a needle in it and pop it. People are saying that everything that used to work doesn’t, that social selling is the answer, and that if you master it you will be the king of selling forever. This is exactly what the reactive, passive salesperson who is either scared to hunt or doesn’t want to hunt wants to hear. Telling them that they don’t need to proactively target, prospect, and pursue potential customers who haven’t already raised their hand is dangerous.

* Myth: Buyer is 80% through the “buying process” before they are willing to engage or seek out a salesperson. Sure, this statement may apply to the reactive salesperson who is sitting around waiting, but no true proactive salesperson waits for buyer to be 80% down the path before engaging. By that point, too many of the cards have already been dealt and you may be forced to play a hand you may not like.

* Don’t be late to the party. If you are waiting in reactive mode then you’re going to be late to the party and possibly last to the opportunity. That means you won’t have a hand in establishing the narrative. You won’t influence the buying criteria or help shape their buying process. Meanwhile, your more proactive competitor got in early and built a relationship before the buyer had urgency, a clear budget, and a clearer understanding of what they think their specific need is.

* Stop calling it social selling. Call it what it is (marketing). Think of social as another tool in your tool box to help you identify potential customers and conduct pre-call activities such as research, etc. Social is great as an additional tool (not a replacement).

* Social is awesome, but calls are still the ‘protein on the plate.’ The best use of social is as a supplement to traditional prospecting and sales techniques. Don’t be confused — connections and retweet are not sales metrics. Those who do well in sales are those who are good at the traditional aspects of selling, but can incorporate social into their repertoire.

* 3 keys to transforming your results:

* Make a great list. Get strategic. Save time and energy to be proactive by going after one targeted list of prospects at a time.

* Sharpen your story. Stop talking about what you do and start talking about what you do for customers. Focus on what’s important to the customer.

* Be selfish with your time.

In this week’s Labcast, Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper, authors of the upcoming book The Lean Brand, explain why we need a new approach to branding that centers around quick iterations and removing waste.

Key Takeaways

* Branding typically has a lot of waste: Lean branding is about eliminating waste and engaging in value added activities to deliver value for your customers. For startups, since many companies don’t have a large amount of data to work with, a good first step is to document your assumptions and start running experiments to discover the value you are creating.

* A product is simply a utility to solve a problem. A brand is the emotional impact that the product and the company have on the customer: A strong brand leads people to care about your organization and creates passionate customers.

* Your story is their story: Be familiar, be confident, and be able to talk about your story to your audience in an honest way. If your story resonates keep a note of what’s working, what’s not, and what you can iterate on. Remember, you and your customer have a shared aspiration that you’re trying to achieve together.

* Don’t ask “how do I get my first 1,000 customers?” Rather ask yourself, “How do I get one truly passionate customer?” If you can understand why you’ve resonated with that customer, chances are you can replicate that passion in others.

* Forget traditional marketing strategies to gain feedback: Surveys will never fully answer the question, “Are you passionate about us?” You need to go out and test your branding face to face, through interactive experiments, to determine the level of emotional impact your company will have on your customers.

* The brand is the responsibility of everyone in the organization, and it’s shared between you and your audience: Your brand is not just your assets, but everything you do and don’t do to interact with your customers. Customers will ultimately attribute value or render you irrelevant.

* There’s no one-size-fits-all equation for the branding process: The company’s mission, vision, values, logo, and color scheme added together does not equal a brand. Rather, branding takes on meaning when people gain value from it. As a result, the journey to developing a brand is different for everyone.

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Transcript

Recording: This is Labcast, ideas and insights for the expansion stage senior manager, hosted by OpenView Labs.

Jonathan Crowe: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Labcast. This is your host, Jonathan Crowe. This week’s guests on the program are Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper, authors of the new book, “The Lean Brand.”

I’m particularly excited to have you guys on board this week because, as everyone probably knows, we’re big fans of lean and agile development here at OpenView. But one thing I personally really enjoyed is seeing that the discussion around lean is starting to break outside the confines of product development.

All of a sudden, there are people other than developers talking about being agile and about applying lean, agile principles to other disciplines, like marketing and sales. I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s really, really interesting.

So a great case and point is this book, which is the first in applying lean principles to brand development. I’m really excited to dive in. But before we do, I thought we could step back just a little bit and mention that, Brant, we’ve had you on the program before, last year, around the release of your first book, “The Lean Entrepreneur.

Looking back, Sarah Bird admits that her ascension to CEO of Moz, one of the B2B tech world’s most respected companies, was a little non-traditional. In fact, when you consider that she twice thought about quitting, Bird says it’s kind of amazing that she reached this point at all.

Then again, as Fishkin explained in a blog post when he stepped down as CEO, Bird was an obvious choice as his successor because, for much of the last decade, she’d been navigating the company’s journey from the metaphorical passenger’s seat. It didn’t hurt that Bird’s strengths — people, operations, and finance — were also the ones that Moz needed most as it prepared to scale to its next stage of growth.

We recently sat down with Bird as part of our Founder’s Corner series to talk about the challenges she faced in succeeding a beloved CEO like Fishkin, the importance of CEOs surrounding themselves with great advisors and mentors, and her role in inspiring a more diverse group of people (particularly women) to explore opportunities in the tech space.

“Whenever a problem is presented to you as a leader you have this interesting choice point… You can say, we tried doing [something like this before] and it flopped, let’s not do it. Or you can say it might be different this time. What would we have to do or what would have to be true for us to make it different this time? Let’s try it again.”

— Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

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Key Takeaways

On stepping in as a new CEO

* Things that weren’t hard: Bird was the 8th employee at Moz. She was there essentially from the beginning. As such, she was already deeply familiar with the organization. By the time of the transition she had already been managing the teams, talking with investors, and working with the board. In that sense, the transition was natural and easy.

* Things that were hard: Stepping into roles that Fishkin had always filled and that she wasn’t naturally drawn to — specifically, the PR, interviewing, and public-facing part of the job.

* Things not to worry about: Doing things exactly like the previous CEO did them. You likely have different strengths and maybe a different style. It’s okay if there are some aspects of the job that you don’t do as well. There will be others you do better. The key is figuring out how you personally can provide the most value to the company.

On the importance of meshing with your executive team

* Focus on identifying people with complimentary skill sets: While Fishkin brought a lot to marketing and building Moz’s brand, with her legal background Bird brought a lot to HR, business modeling, and finance. Together, they covered a good mix and learned a lot from one another.

* Surrounding yourself with the right people: Look for smart, talented people who can offer insights into your blind spots in a way that is solution-oriented.

On growing as a leader

* Having the right amount of confidence: It’s about being vulnerable and open enough to accept feedback and other people’s opinions, but decisive enough to also act on your own.

* Balancing creativity and planning: You have to do enough planning to know what you’re trying to do and communicate it, but not so much that you become wedded to a bad idea.

* Thinking strategically: As CEO, your job is creating the vision for the company, communicating it clearly, and seeing it put into action. One of the biggest challenges is focusing on that long-term big picture goal and on the day-to-day efforts of getting stuff done at the same time. A good approach is to translate big ideas into smaller tactical m...

If you’re a salesperson, getting rejected is a daily occurrence. Yes, you have to get used to it, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it, or settle for every “no” your prospects throw at you. In fact, many of the most common sales objections aren’t as final as you might think. As sales educator Jeff Hoffman explains, with the right reaction, you might be surprised by how often you can turn any excuse into an opportunity.

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Key Takeaways

“If it’s what I would consider to be a false objection my goal is not to deal with it. My goal is to side step it and continue talking.”

— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates

* People tend to diffuse the responsibility for their objection by using plural pronouns. This usually means they don’t have the authority to tell you their department has no budget.

* Leave budget alone. Find a way to ask questions about something else so they can’t push you off the call.

* Figure out what “We don’t have the budget” actually means. The term is broad and meaningless, so call them out. They won’t want to look like they’re fooling you or they’re full of it, so force them to defend themselves by getting specific.

Transcript

Announcer: This is Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and CeCe Bazar. For more information go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.

CeCe: Thanks for tuning in to the Strictly Sales library here wiki for all your sales questions and objection handling. We are joined today by Jeff Hoffman to talk a little bit about budgets and your clients. So Jeff something that people here especially when they’re prospecting just as an objection right out the gate is “Oh we have no budget for that.”

Jeff: Right. Right. Well it comes up at different times and I think where it comes up in the sales process is going to dictate the way you handle it. If it’s a serious question around budget, it’s generally going to require more than a short answer but we tend to hear that a lot early if it’s really not so much around budget but a way to kind of outbox us.

CeCe: Totally.

Jeff: And for that I think we need to have some good tools.

CeCe Bazar: So let’s jump in a role play on how exactly we might be able to handle that.

Jeff: Sure. I think right away so we can do it and I’ll give you a couple of examples so why don’t you fire at me with the budget question.

CeCe: Thanks so much for your call Jeff but actually we don’t even have budget for that right now.

Jeff: I’m sorry. Who’s we?

CeCe: The entire marketing organization. No budget.

Jeff: Time out. Now one of the first things I do with weird objections is I isolate the plural pronoun. You said… You said we and I said who’s we? Because when people give objections in the plural, we, our, they, they’re diffusing responsibility for the actual objection which we don’t let them do.

So we both know the person you’re talking to doesn’t have the authority to tell you that the entire marketing department doesn’t have budget. That’s absurd. So by saying we. Now if she said I don’t have budget, I would do something else. So we’ll go back and you can say your answer again. I’m sorry. Who’s we?

CeCe: The marketing organization.

Jeff: So this is my first call to your company and I know very little about your structure. How many folks are in your marketing department?

CeCe: We have seven people in marketing.

Jeff: Okay. Does that roll up to a VP of marketing?

CeCe: Yes. We have an interim VP of marketing right now.

Jeff: What do you mean interim?

In this episode of the Strictly Sales podcast, sales executive and educator Jeff Hoffman shares his tips for pushing through a cold call regardless of whether your prospect says they’re “all set.”

It’s the kiss of death on a cold call. Salespeople hear it all the time, “We’re all set.” So what do you do when you hear those three words?

No need to fumble awkwardly. In this episode of Strictly Sales, Jeff Hoffman explains how to turn that phrase into a “reverse close” that will leave even the most stubborn customers interested.

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Key Takeaways

“With the reverse close…I basically took your objection and threw it away.”

— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates

* Try a “reverse close.” Just say, “You’re probably right,” and keep talking.

* Challenge them quickly. After you acknowledge they’re probably right, say it will only take 5 minutes to find out for sure and ask if they can stay on the phone with you for that amount of time.

* 20 percent conversion: The majority probably won’t bite, but one out of five is pretty good in terms of converting an aggressive objection.

Transcript

Announcer: This is Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and CeCe Bazar. For more information go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.

CeCe: Thanks for joining Strictly Sales Library, your go-to place for all of your sales questions. This is CeCe Bazar and I’m joined by Jeff Hoffman. Jeff, today we want to talk about the kiss of death on a sales call. The thing that people hear all the time, “We’re all set”.

Jeff: Yes. We’re all set.

CeCe: We’re all set. How do we handle that, Jeff?

Jeff: Well that, I enjoy that one because there’s a really good technique for it. But realize that this is not the same as going through a sales process when they’ve given you 30 minutes and said, “I’m all set.” I mean I just want to be clear on that. A lot of the objections we’re talking about can fall in different places in a sales cycle. So we’ll deal with “I’m all set” on that cold call, when you’re just trying to get kind of get in the account, and they’re like, “Oh, we’re all set with that.” It’s kind of like brushing you off.

I’ve seen a lot of reps kind of struggle with that. I mean, CeCe, you’ve hear a lot of sales people?

CeCe: Of course.

Jeff: When they hear that, what are you hearing sales reps say to the “Oh, I’m all set.” What does the rep typically say?

CeCe: They typically fumble. Start throwing up all over themselves with their words. Its like, “Oh, okay. Well, um, you know, here’s what I’m going to do. Maybe I’ll send you over some information, and, uh, if you have any questions you can reach back out.”

Jeff: Yeah. So that’s just a mess. Just an absolute mess. And I’ve heard other reps that do like, they challenge the customer.

CeCe: Okay.

Jeff:  “What do you mean all set? Are you sure?” It’s like ugh… What are you going to do? Challenge the guy? Or challenge the person that think that they’re . . . That all said, I think that these are really weak attempts. The only effective way to handle what I call, you know, highly aggressive, you know let’s call it early objection, which this would be.Because this is saying, unlike the “I’ll send the information” or “It’s a bad time” which is more passive/aggressive and leaves an opening for future conversation, this is an absolute go away.

CeCe: Totally.

Jeff: And by the way,

Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO of Mattermark, shares the story behind her company’s vision and her tips for making it through the transition from early-stage startup to achieving rapid growth.

This week we’re kicking off a new series in which we’ll be interviewing SaaS founders and CEOs to share their stories and insights behind what it takes to build and grow a great SaaS company.

We were excited to confirm Danielle Morrill as one of our first guests, since — like many people in the tech world and investment community — we’re regular readers of the Mattermark Daily newsletter. Danielle was kind enough to let us interview her for the podcast below. Tune in to learn more about her strategy behind Mattermark’s content, her thoughts on women and salespeople in tech, and her advice for entrepreneurs and VCs.

This Week in the Founder’s Corner

“People complain about lots of things. That’s usually a really good sign, because it shows investment on the part of those people to tell you these things and trust that you’ll do something good with them.”

— Danielle Morrill, CEO at Mattermark

 

 

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Key Takeaways

On utilizing content to build brand awareness and drive growth

* Write about the things others are afraid to talk about. It’s the unspoken things that people actually want to dig into.

* It’s not about the brand you’ve already created, it’s about what you actually have to say. It’s important to take stances and work hard to provide truly valuable content.

* No one is reading that post you wrote two years ago. Too many VCs assume they can cover a topic once and every entrepreneur will see it.

On metrics

* What to focus on: It all comes down to revenue. But you can’t just look at revenue, because it’s a lagging indicator of how you’re doing.

* Obsessing over one metric can be dangerous. You may be looking at it out of context and miss out on a bunch of other things.

* Look at your funnel. Then figure out the best lever you can use. Focus on that.

On delegating and managing a team

* Balancing the bigger picture and day-to-day: Make sure individual goals have a clear connection to high-level company goals, but also make them something a team member can act on immediately and see results.

On how VCs can help entrepreneurs

* Be more transparent and share basic knowledge. There are a lot of opportunities to help founders feel like they’re on a level playing field in terms of information.

On the old startup mentality of “making something” vs. “selling something”

* Learning to embrace sales and marketing: Ultimately, you do have to sell something and it’s just a question of how early are you going to get good at that?

* Growth hacking: The truth is that sales and marketing actually are metrics-driven and they never weren’t.

* Founders are more experienced and business-minded. I think there’s just better quality founders now. And that trickles down to everything else.

Transcript

Announcer: This is Labcast, insights and ideas for the expansion-stage senior manager, hosted by OpenView Labs.

Jonathan: Hi, everyone and welcome to Labcast. This is your host, Jonathan Crowe. This week, we’re kicking off a new series, in which we’ll be interviewing founders, hearing their stories and getting their insights on the challenges and best practices of building great software companies.

In this episode of the Strictly Sales podcast, sales executive and educator Jeff Hoffman shares his tips for turning one of your biggest roadblocks into one of your greatest assets. Learn how cold calling gatekeepers can get you better results.

As a sales person, by now you’re used to rejection. And one of the most common ones you’ve likely received comes in the form of a deflection from a gatekeeper. “They’re unavailable right now. Why don’t you give me your contact information, and I’d be happy to pass it along.” Sound familiar?

So how do you get past that initial roadblock? In this episode of Strictly Sales, Jeff Hoffman explains his best tricks for turning an otherwise waste of a phone call into a meaningful conversation that gets you what you want and leaves a lasting impression. After all, gatekeepers don’t need to be your enemy. In fact, if you approach them correctly they can even be one of your greatest assets.

This week, learn how to stop assistants from giving you the brush off and start getting you through to the decision makers.

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Key Takeaways

“I don’t understand sales reps who spend their time writing proposals by themselves. If you want to inspire someone to respond, why don’t you ask what they want to see?”

— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates

* Speaking to an assistant can be very powerful (if you know what you’re doing). Most of the time, you’ll get a better response rate from leaving a voicemail to the decision-maker directly than you will with a message with an assistant. But not always.

* Make sure the conversation is memorable. Ask the assistant how long they’ve been with the company, make them feel valuable to you.

* Ask the EA what message you should leave to inspire a response. No need to try figuring this out yourself, brainstorm a message with the person who works closest to your prospect.

* Ask for their name at the end of the phone call. It comes off as more polite and personal.

Transcript

Announcer: This is Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and CeCe Bazar. For more information, go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.

Cece: Thanks for tuning back in to the Strictly Sales library with Jeff Hoffman. Jeff is here to talk to us today about how you can get over some of the common objections you hear on the phone. The next one that we’re going to be talking about is gatekeepers.

Jeff, when I hear people calling into gatekeepers, where they’re often getting stuck is, “Oh, person X is unavailable right now. Why don’t you give me your contact information, and I’d be happy to pass it along.”

Jeff: Sure.

Cece:  Any Tips here?

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, there’s dozens of objections that we are well accustomed to, from what we call gatekeepers or people that are blocking us, either formally or informally, from access to the people we want to reach. We know, certainly, back in the Strictly Sales podcast library, we had a long one talking about gatekeepers. But for that specific objection, I think there is some stuff you can do. There, unlike other objections early, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to talk to you. I mean, they’re taking the message, but realize that taking your message or taking your name and number or getting information and passing it on, that passing it on actually decreases the response rate.

You have a better hit rate or response rate from a voicemail to power than you do from a written message from an assistant. That being said, speaking to an assistant is very powerful if you understand what you should be closing for.

So why don’t we do it in a role-play, and we’ll talk about it,

Sales executive and educator Jeff Hoffman shares his tricks for getting past the most common objections during sales calls.

There are few certainties in this world. If you’re a salesperson, getting rejected is one of them. “Just send me some more info.” “We don’t have the budget for that right now.” “No thanks, we’re all set.” Most initial objections follow the same patterns, and we’ve heard them all time and time again.

It’s what you do next that sets top performers from the rest.

Over the next few weeks on Strictly Sales, Jeff will be discussing his top tips and tricks on how to counter the most common sales objections.

Kicking things off this week — “Just send me some information.” Even though the lead is pushing you off the phone, there are ways to ensure you get to speak with them again. Learn how by tuning in below.

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“Every rep who listens to this needs to have an answer to [this] question. It always baffles me when reps don’t have a great answer. Because, what, you’ve never heard [this] objection before? You should be pretty well accustomed to hearing, ‘send me information.’“

— Jeff Hoffman, M. J. Hoffman and Associates

Key Takeaways

* Asks for specifics. What information are they looking for from you? [2:39]

* Give them a day to look over the information. Let them know that you’ll be calling back tomorrow, ask if a live person will be able to take that call. [2:48]

* Who else can you ask for? In case the person you speak to isn’t available tomorrow, ask for a different contact. [4:44]

Transcript

Announcer: Strictly Sales with Jeff Hoffman and Cece Bazar. For more information go to OpenView Labs or MJHoffman.com.

CeCe: Hi there and thank you for joining the Strictly Sales Library, your Wiki for all your sales questions. My name is Cece Bazar and I am joined here today by Jeff Hoffman. Jeff thanks for being here.

Jeff: Oh, my pleasure, Cece. Thanks for inviting me.

CeCe: Excellent. So, we would like to talk a little bit about common objections and give people out there listening a bit size way to handle things that they’re hearing all the time on the phone. The first common objection that we’d like to handle is that famous line, “Oh great, just send over some information.”

Jeff: Yeah, pretty common.

CeCe: Pretty common. So, before we jump right into the role play here, anything that you would like to offer up as kind of a theory around that?

Jeff: Well, I mean I think we all know that when people say send me some information, they’re unlikely that they want information. They just probably want to get you off the phone call as politely and end it with as little adversity as possible. So it’s a really common way that we got to end conversations.

So I want to start by saying that every rep who listens to this needs to have an answer to that question and it always baffles me when reps don’t have a great answer. Because it’s almost like, what you’ve never heard that objection before? You should be pretty well accustomed to hearing send me information.

So, there are a lot of ways you can handle it. And let’s be really clear what objections are. This isn’t a real objection. And we talk about objections in other podcasts and objections are rooted in questions or challenges about our products or services. And there’s all kinds.

But when some offers an objection on a cold call, because when you hear something like, “Send me information,” it’s not really an objection because it is not something you can’t handle, it’s not something you can’t move,

Are you struggling to feel confident with your new or existing sales job? Jill Konrath, author of the new book Agile Selling, explains why simply shifting your sales mindset can have a huge impact on your success.

Whether you’re just getting starting or you’ve been in sales for years, sometimes it’s hard to feel confident when walking into a room or getting on the phone for a sales call. The good news is there are simple things you can do to create a positive experience and generate positive outcomes no matter how the sale itself turns out.

Jill Konrath, author of Snap Selling, Selling to Big Companies, and most recently Agile Selling, says transforming a negative sales experience into a valuable learning lesson is an important state of mind that can propel you forward when things don’t pan out perfectly.

This Week’s Guest

“What amazed me about my first year in sales was the sheer amount of fear that I felt during that time. Many people in sales put on a good face and act confident but underneath it all there’s a fear that they won’t make it in sales.”

— Jill Konrath, author of Agile Selling

 

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 Key Takeaways

* Without the right mindset, its much easier to fail or mess up.

* Realize that success is a choice. Most people quit just before they get over the hump. If you just stay with it a little longer you figure it out.

* Some strategies to combat fear may seem trivial, but they really work:

* Transform failures into valuable learning lessons

* Even a small shift like sitting up straight can make you feel more confident

* Always return to the positive mindset. Its not natural at first, but you can condition yourself to treat all failures as positive experiences.

Transcript

Announcer: This is Labcast, insights and ideas for the expansion-stage senior manager, hosted by OpenView Labs.

CeCe: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is CeCe Bazar with OpenView Labs. Thrilled to be joined again by Jill Konrath, author of Agile Selling and SNAP Selling. Jill, thanks so much for joining us again today.

Jill: I’m glad to be back.

CeCe: Thanks. Last time we spoke with Jill, we were talking about rapid-learning and the ability to chunk down, dump, and sequence information that you can learn everything that you need to know faster. This is all part of Jill’s new book, Agile Selling and how salespeople can get up to speed quickly in today’s ever-changing sales world.

That was a huge success, Jill, but we’re back today to talk about something a little bit different and a little bit more fundamental. Let’s talk about mindset. I know this is something that you’ve spoken about in the past. How can mindset affect sales people and their performance?

Jill: It has a huge impact because the mindset buys new salespeople the time to become proficient. That’s a strange thing to say. A lot of people say, “What comes first,