Love Selling Hate Sales Podcast

Jonathan Mahan and Josh discuss the Practice Lab, a place for sales professionals to come and practice their selling skills. They talk about the gap between knowing and executing, and how practice can help close that gap. They also discuss how sales can be a hate-filled profession, with a lot of time spent on the management side of things, and how the Practice Lab provides an opportunity to experience the art and craft of selling without all the trappings of the profession.

HIGHLIGHTS

JONATHAN: SALES SKILLS ARE RELEVANT TO REAL-LIFE RELATIONSHIPS

“The actual art of building relationships, and managing your emotions, and reading other people's emotions, controlling your communications both your nonverbal and your verbal communication, having tough conversations. All of this stuff is very difficult stuff to do, and these skills that make you so good at selling are the exact skills that you need to excel in all relationships in your life.”

Connect with Jonathan and his work using the links below: 

• Jonathan Mahan | ThePracticeLab.co

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

GIMME’ FIVE!

In this special edition of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, we will be journeying down memory lane as we take a look at some of the best moments of the show. In this episode, we will be featuring the best moments from Bryan Whittington, Mike O'Kelly, AJ Alonzo, Ollie Whitfield, and even one from our very own host, Joshua Wagner.

If you missed the episode where these buckets of wisdom came from, here’s you chance to play them back:

• Finding The Right-Fit Sales Motion For Your Organization with Bryan Whittington
• Take Control Of Your Sales Career with Mike O'Kelly
• Redefining The SDR Job with AJ Alonzo
• The Nitty Gritty Of Sales Engagement with Ollie Whitfield
• 7 Steps To Building A Pipeline For Life

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

HOW DO YOU LEAP TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

Deep and deliberate practice. Intense personal training. These are the things that build up a pro athlete. These are the reasons why pro athletes are close to peak physical perfection. Sellers can also level up their game to perfection by doing the same things, to develop themselves into pros in the selling field. Tune in and learn all of these from Sales Coach, and co-founder of The Practice Lab, Jordana Zeldin, in this latest episode of Love Selling Hate Sales.

HIGHLIGHTS

JORDANA: DEPTH OF LISTENING = WILLINGNESS TO DISCLOSE

“How deeply you listen directly impacts the amount that the person you're listening to is willing to disclose. If we're expecting, as sellers, that prospects open up to a total stranger about their deep dark challenges, one powerful way to encourage that is by listening really attentively.”

JORDANA: NOBODY’S THERE BUT YOU

“No one's sitting there watching you, or listening to your pitch, writing down a list of questions that they're just dying to share with you. It's your job to draw them in and be very strategic with that question, and put yourself in their world.”  

JORDANA: THE STUMBLES AND TUMBLES WILL DEVELOP YOU MORE

“The science of behavioral change and skill development, as well as neuroscience, backs everything that you just said, which is that if you go slowly and deeply; making mistakes, stumbling, doubling back, and making corrections, that is where you most effectively develop your neurological circuitry.”

Connect with Jordana and her work using the links below: 

• Jordana Zeldin | ThePracticeLab.co

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

IT WAS A GREAT RIDE, BUT GREATER JOURNEYS ARE UP AHEAD

From Sell without Selling Out with Andy Paul to The Highs And Lows Of Building Out An Enterprise Sales Organization with Amanda Georgoff, we’ve had a great run full of inspiring stories and amazing insights.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Our journey together doesn’t end here. More exciting episodes and amazing guests are coming your way, so make sure to stay tuned to the coming episodes of LOVE SELLING HATE SALES!

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

EVERY TEAM NEEDS A COACH, SALES TOO.

In this episode of Love Selling Hate Sales, Josh talks to Cory Bray, Co-Founder of CoachCRM, about the importance of coaching in sales. Bray emphasizes that sales leaders should focus on coaching the people on their team, not just on the plays that are being run. By coaching the people on your team, you can help them grow and develop their skills, which will in turn lead to more success in the sales process.

HIGHLIGHTS

ANDY: Provide value with the intention

“Part of the hiring process should be defining the competencies required for the job. So in a sales job, it could be discovery, demo, a presentation, running a sales process, maybe landed, expand, things like that, and when you're defining the role, at least internally, if not as part of the formal job description, you got to be very clear about what competencies do you need to be mastered coming into this role? and which ones are you okay, If they're still developing?”

ANDY: The Four Pillars of Selling

“I just think that self-awareness thing is so underrated and sale. There are so many opportunities that are opened up to you that you don't even realize because you are having dozens of conversations a week with different types of businesses, different types of use cases, different types of personalities.”

Connect with Cory and her work using the links below: 

• Cory Bray | CoachCRM.com | Clozeloop.com

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

EVERYBODY HATES A TYPICAL SALESY SELLER

Best-selling author and sales consultant Andy Paul is in the pod to talk about doing away with typical salesy behavior and returning to a buyer-centric mode of selling. Instead of persuasion and manipulation, Andy advocates for truly understanding your buyer’s pain points and ensuring that what you’re selling is the appropriate solution to their problems. So ditch the manipulative tactics and engage in adding value,and you can learn how in this latest episode of Love Selling Hate Sales.

HIGHLIGHTS

ANDY: Provide value with the intention

“If we know that progress is value, then we have to be very intentional about how we provide the value. So what I write about my book is, you need to create a very simple value plan for every interaction you have with the buyer.”

ANDY: The Four Pillars of Selling

“The four pillars of selling are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity. Now, these are innately human behaviors that drive this buyer-centric way of selling. Which also, by the way, if executed properly, compresses decision cycles and increases your win rates.”

ANDY: Rule of thumb on winning odds

“Rule of thumb: Your odds of winning a deal are in inverse proportion to the number of times you ask the buyer to tell you their story.”

Connect with Andy and her work using the links below: 

Andy Paul | AndyPaul.com

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

Josh Wagner | ShiftParadigm.com | JoshuaDWagner.com | LoveSellingHateSales.com

We all know that acquiring a new client is several times more expensive and time-consuming than simply retaining an old one. But with so many accounts to manage, how do you ensure that everyone remains engaged and accounted for? In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, your host Josh Wagner talks to Shift Paradigm’s Managing Director Jamie Kirmess about managing a book of business, retaining old clients even after kickoff, and how to make your Quarterly Business Review more engaging and useful to clients. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Always create value for your client first
• How to probe for the kind of value that your clients need 
• Earn your client's trust by acting as their consultant
• Effective consulting takes experience, practice, and learning 
• Anecdotal information can be very powerful 
• Portfolio management is all about scaling you 
• How to retain your executive sponsor after kicking off 
• The tools that help keep Jamie's life in order 
• Why you need to do Quarterly Business Review
• How Jamie gathers information on market trends, insights, etc.

QUOTES

Jamie on providing value to customers: "Customers can pick up on when you're being disingenuous or when you have an ulterior motive. And so the first thing that I always say is figure out what value means to the customer. What do they care about? What are they being measured against? What are some of their fears?"

Jamie's overview on portfolio management: "Portfolio management is conceptually the combination of all the different strategies and tactics that you can use to really get the most value out of your portfolio. This is where you have to be a bit self-serving. Put the needs of your customer first, and realize that you are only one person." 

Jamie's opinion on QBRs and their importance in customer success: "QBRs to me, become less a report card on what we did and become more of an opportunity to reflect on that, celebrate wins, and also think about what's next. That doesn't mean asking the customer to present a roadmap to you. That means preparing for that QBR to understand the roadmap and to infuse insights or market trends so that the session becomes really valuable to your customer."

Connect with Jamie and her work using the links below: 

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiekirmess/

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz/
• Company website: https://www.shiftparadigm.com/
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com

Negotiating a deal is arguably the most important part of creating a deal because it determines whether the deal makes sense for you in the first place. Unfortunately, this is also the part where a lot of sellers screw up because of lack of know-how, training, or both. 

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sakes, our host Josh Wagner talks to Negotiation Ninja’s Head of Sales and Training, Mark Raffan. Mark gives advice on understanding the difference of negotiation strategy from tactics, knowing what makes a good deal, and how to negotiate your way into getting one. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Negotiation strategy is NOT tactics 
• Deals are not created out of thin air 
• Know what YOU want to get out of a negotiation first
• Sellers are people-pleasers to a fault 
• Don't talk yourself into a discount 
• Sellers need to be invested with their contracts too 
• A deal is only great if you got more than you needed 
• Don't sacrifice the strategy for tactics
• Don't just follow one book: read as much as you can 

QUOTES

The importance of having a sound negotiation strategy, says Mark: "You cannot have a good negotiation without good strategy. I think the media has done us a disservice. Movies like Wolf of Wall Street or Boiler Room, those kinds of movies where you see these slick talkin' sales dudes on the phone and all of a sudden, they're able to magically create a deal out of thin air. The reality is that's just not reality."

Where a lot of salespeople fail while trying to create a deal, says Mark: "A lot of people go into negotiations without having any idea of what they're trying to achieve. And then they come out with a deal and they're like, 'Hey I got a great deal.' And you're like, 'Woah, don't qualify it with great.' How do you know it's great? You got a deal. We have no idea whether it's great because you didn't know what you wanted to achieve in the first place." 

Why you need to have a good strategy before using tactics over it, says Mark: "There's a lot of negotiation strategy out there that will teach you to 'Say these three things and you'll get better results.' It sounds really really good, and you will sound phenomenal. But if the three things that you're saying don't align with the strategy that you haven't built, you're gonna sound great, but it's not gonna generate results."

Connect with Mark and his work using the links below: 

• Website: https://www.negotiations.ninja/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/NegotiationPod
• Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/negotiations-ninja-podcast/id1300435924
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markraffan/
• Email: [email protected]

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz/
• Company website: https://www.shiftparadigm.com/
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.comPodcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com

Many people out there think that as sellers we must always give way to what customers want. While there’s a grain of truth in that statement, we do aim to solve our customers’ problems after all — there comes a time when we need to stick to our process because it ends up being the most beneficial path for both parties. 

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks about the three things that you can do to encourage a prospect to engage with you in the sales process. Most of the time they work, but if they don’t, then you probably weren’t a good fit for them anyway. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Do an accusations audit 
• What happens next? 
• The polite walk away

QUOTES

When you should consider politely walking away from a prospect, says Josh: "If you run in to a buyer or a prospect who really doesn't want to engage with you, they really just want a quote or a proposal or some pricing, if they're not willing to give you the little bit of time that it takes to make a solid recommendation or think through what a good solution might be, or really determine if you're a fit for what it is they're trying to solve for, then you politely walk away."

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz/
• Company website: https://www.shiftparadigm.com/
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner shares his five tips for gaining experience fast, aimed at the relatively new seller who wants to jumpstart their career. Josh’s advice is practical, designed to help sellers understand their line of work better in a shorter period of time. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• No other way to gain experience than time
• Join and engage with your community 
• Insist that you have time to talk to customers 
• Use the phone to gather intelligent market research
• Try to start any kind of business

QUOTES

Josh on the importance of having time to learn: "I said experience isn't an age thing. But there is simply no substitute for time. The more time you have, the more experience you can gain."

Josh's advice for new sellers to jumpstart their understanding of the job: "[As] part of your onboarding, tell your manager: 'Listen, all the training and enablement is great. But I need time speaking directly with customers.' And your job is not to sell here. Your job is to do some discovery. Learn from them."

Josh on why you need to try starting a business: "There are so many things that are generally business related that you can learn starting even the simplest business that translate into your sales career. Because at the end of the day, you want to be talking to executives. You want to be talking to senior-level people. They are thinking about their day to day and how to run the business. If you can speak to them in terms of how you run a business, it's gonna help you connect to them on a better level." 

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz/
• Company website: https://www.shiftparadigm.com/
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com