Love Selling Hate Sales Podcast

The good thing about using experience to fuel growth is that it cannot be bought and therefore acquired so easily. Because experience does not grow on trees, it requires that we spend a considerable amount of time and energy to gain and store it. In this solo episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, Joshua talks about the relationship between success and experience, why being new doesn't necessarily make you less of a performer, and how to gain meaningful experience to help you accomplish your goals. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Age does not define experience
• Not all experience gained is relevant 
• You need to know how to apply your experience 

QUOTES

Joshua on why experience doesn't necessarily follow age: "Just because you're older than someone, doesn't necessarily define you as more experienced. Just because you're younger, doesn't mean that you don't have the prerequisite experience to be successful in a certain profession."

Joshua on what application of experience means: "The application of your experience is bringing stories to the table when you hear something that triggers an experience that you had. It's being able to draw from your memory bank to help build trust in sales."

Joshua on why being young isn't necessarily a handicap: "You don't need age to be a limiter. But those who have age and time on their side should definitely use that cast amount of experience and make the application and relevance very very front and center for the person you're talking to."

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

If you can only pick one out of the many sales tools at your disposal, without a doubt you will need a sales list. Without the list, selling would be like finding a needle in a haystack, or trying to fish in a lifeless pond; it just wouldn't be efficient nor repeatable, if at all possible.

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks to Brandon Bornancin, CEO and Founder of Seamless.ai about the importance of having a good sales list that provides not just accurate, but relevant information. Tune in until the end to hear how to get $500 in credits for free, exclusive to the listeners of this podcast. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• How Brandon realized the importance of the sales list 
• Why selling is a lot like fishing 
• How to sort and understand relevant data points 
• The bigger the organization, the more people you need to sell to
• Utilize all channels to reach out to your prospects 
• Think like a marketer, sell like a marketer 
• The ideal sales tech stack for a B2B seller 
• Maximize your sales list with hyper personalized reach outs 
• Try exceeding your quota by 3 to 5 times 

QUOTES

Brandon on selling to different-sized organizations: "If you're going after SMB, you could easily just go after the decision-makers and shareholders. If you're going after mid-market, I would recommend expanding that seller's circle. When you're going after enterprise, you've got a big grid. Influencers, users, budget holders, decision-makers, approval, legal. You've got a ton of people that you gotta work through."

Brandon on sales campaigns: "I believe in getting people in and out of the funnel as quickly as possible. I don't believe in 30-day campaigns, 60-day campaigns, 90-day campaigns. I believe in one to two week campaigns. I'm going to hit you leveraging all the channels, trying to deliver as much value as humanly possible to you to transform your life, take you from where you're at -- your biggest problems, challenges, pains, struggles, to where you want to go." 

Why Brandon uses every platform available to reach prospects: "The top brands that you know in the world: Apple, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Walmart, Target -- they've got a million ads across a million channels. if people don't know you, they can't buy from you. So you gotta leverage all of these multi-channel campaigns in sales."

Connect with Brandon using the link below: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbornancin/

Use the Promo Codes Josh Wagner or Love Selling Hate Sales to get $500 in credits for free: https://seamless.ai/

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

Cold-calling, particularly opening a conversation with a stranger on the phone is one of the difficult and yet important skills to master as a salesperson. For new sellers, it can be a very intimidating task in the absence of any good mentor providing guidance and emotional support. In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks to Sam Absalom, a Sales Associate with CRE One Source about the key lessons he has learned on the job so far, as well as a few actionable tips that sellers can apply today to improve their cold-calling game. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Your first cold calls are going to suck
• Try not to take rejection personally 
• Don't give up so easily, you have nothing to lose 
• Your tone makes a world of a difference 
• Focus on getting people to ask about what you do
• Stop doing things that don't work 
• Don't be afraid to experiment with your approach
• Advice for people looking to work in a startup environment 

QUOTES

Sam's advice for first-time cold callers: "Your natural instinct, immediately when you get someone on the phone and as soon as they sound bothered or uninterested, you want to hang up because you feel like you're being a nuisance. I discovered that at this point, I'm only on the phone, I've got nothing to lose. If they're not interested, try to ask those provoking questions that just keeps them on the line."

Sam's tips for keeping people on the line: "The biggest thing that I found is I got them hooked as soon as they ask me what we do. My only goal in the first 23 seconds is have them ask me, 'well what is it that you do.' Because as soon as they've asked that question I've got them hooked. And at least, if nothing else, I'm going to get an email out of this phone call."

SHOW RESOURCES: 

• Business Case Lift Model: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a6cYWGkILYaUJ6iLSAxNgRO-XRWZmmzX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true
• Exec Summary Example: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uSKTaQjl2LLQajgyaweFnW6E2mOuvBMB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true
• ROI Model Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cCAyA3F7RiWI621qGhVIGKzJAPGDwMAJ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true

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

As sellers, it can be tempting to rely on value consultant teams for building a business case. However, it’s always helpful to understand the inner workings of building a business case, especially in startup environments where value consultants may not be readily available.

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales episode, our host Joshua Wagner shares five easy steps to building your own business case that you can use to build value and pursue smaller but equally important deals. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Stop relying on value consultants for building a business case 
• Don't underestimate the value of smaller deals 
• You want to separate yourself from the other salespeople
• Step 1: Focus on collecting the inputs and baseline
• Step 2: Identify and find the growth levers 
• Step 3: Identify and show the lift 
• Step 4: Build an ROI model 
• Step 5: Create an executive summary 

QUOTES

Josh on why sellers need to know how to build a business case: "I've seen time and time again, that when you're working in a deal cycle and you need to go to your value consulting or value engineer group to build out a business case. They only want to work on the biggest of the big deals. They want to work on the big sexy logos, the million dollar deals, whatever it may be. In the mean time, there are plenty of six-figure plus deals out there that are going to get tremendous value out of building a business case."

Josh on the importance of identifying and showing revenue lift: "Executives, they love to see revenue lift. They love to see what's possible. So making sure that you really highlight what that lift looks like as a part of your model is super important."

SHOW RESOURCES: 

• Business Case Lift Model: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1a6cYWGkILYaUJ6iLSAxNgRO-XRWZmmzX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true
• Exec Summary Example: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uSKTaQjl2LLQajgyaweFnW6E2mOuvBMB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true
• ROI Model Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cCAyA3F7RiWI621qGhVIGKzJAPGDwMAJ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100270421913823308516&rtpof=true&sd=true

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

You’ve heard it here before but it bears repeating: nobody went to school for sales and even less people went to school for sales leadership. We invest a great deal in terms of training for sellers, so why are we not doing the same for our frontline managers? 

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks to sales management and leadership coach Shawn Buxton about the most pressing issues that sales leaders face, and introduces his framework for addressing the gaping hole that is the absence of training and support for sales leaders. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Sales leadership vs sales management: what's the difference?
• The best sellers don't necessarily make good managers
• Sales leaders should be intentional in creating their own cultures
• A clearly defined culture helps you coach more specifically
• Use your one-on-one time to deliver customized coaching
• The 3 Levels of Communication: Contact, Conversation, and Connection
• Good communication goes beyond simple Slack messages
• It's crucial to get mentorship from the outside
• The benefits of having an intentional leader

QUOTES

Shawn on the difference between sales management and sales leadership: "I would say almost anybody can be a good sales manager if you're just looking at the management duties. But very few people are good at sales leadership because there's so much nuance to the roles and responsibilities of a sales leader versus just a sales manager."

Shawn on the absence of intentionality in creating company cultures: "The mistake that most leaders make, even at the most senior level is that they're building accidental cultures instead of intentional cultures. Meaning, they're just hiring cool people, people that maybe have great skills or they're cool or nice. They're good to people and they're just kind of crossing their fingers and hoping that something good comes out of it."

What most sales leaders get wrong about communication, according to Shawn: "The biggest mistake that sales leaders make in regards to communication is they have too high of expectations for the level of communication that they're constantly executing. They're just making contact but they're expecting connection-level performance, connection-level results."

Connect with Shawn through the links below:

• Shawn’s High Performance Sales Leadership Coaching Program: https://www.shawnbuxton.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnbuxton/

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

Every business owner and hiring manager knows that hiring and training new talent is already expensive. But what makes it more costly is when you have to do it all again due to hiring the wrong people for the job.

In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Joshua Wagner talks to healthcare executive and bestselling author Nigel Green on why hiring salespeople is the biggest challenge in the sales world today, and what proactive strategies are available for hiring managers today to stop making the same expensive hiring mistakes.

Nigel also touches on the skills and educational background that sellers can pick up to differentiate themselves and give them an edge over their peers. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• The biggest challenge in sales today: hiring salespeople 
• What's going wrong in sales hiring today? 
• Do not forget to do a job analysis 
• Have your interviews reveal the kind of seller that your job applicant is 
• Compete with no one but yourself 
• Be aware of your own hiring biases
• Selling has become more about math than persuasion 
• Sellers are losing because they can't create a business case 
• Where the sales field is going and how sales managers should adapt

QUOTES

Nigel on the proof that we are not good at hiring sellers: "What's going wrong with sales hiring is that most sales managers think they're good at it. If they were in fact good at it, then why is it the case that the average tenure of an account executive, which is a closer or a middle-tier performer in a sales organization, is 11 months or less?"

Nigel's tips for becoming a better salesperson if you don't have a STEM background: "If you're listening to this and you don't have a STEM background, well you should study just economics. Because so much of selling today has become about math, statistics, probability, and not about woo, persuasion."

Connect with Nigel through the links below:

• Nigel's Training Course For Hiring Salespeople: https://www.therevenueharvest.com/hiring-salespeople
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

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

Whether you’re on the bear or the bull side of the market, there’s no question that markets right now are unstable. Therefore, the challenge for companies right now is to weather the possible turbulence through sound management practices and strategies designed to help you win in the long-term. In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks to Shift Paradigm’s VP Senior Principal Daniel Gaugler about maintaining growth in periods of instability. Daniel offers advice on focusing on your customer’s needs, strengthening relationships, and refining your process to meet your end goals. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Focus on your customer's problems and how to solve them
• In uncertain times, more is often less 
• Lean on your niche to differentiate yourself 
• Think Process, not People 
• Reduce friction where you can in the process  
• Relationships matter 
• Customers are talking to you because they want to win 
• How much do you need to worry about targeting? 
• The wider we go, the more we dilute the value we deliver

QUOTES

Daniel on what to do when sales targets are missed: "I always use a phrase. It's 'Think process, not people.' I use that primarily when targets are missed, the first response is to blame people and not to inspect the process in which we're going. Is it right? Does it meet the needs of our buyers, does this help us get to where we want to go?"

Daniel on the relevance of the Predictable Revenue model today: "As marketers and salespeople, we need to figure out how to be on the curve on the way up, not the one that is declining, which is where I would see predictable revenue today."

Daniel on overcoming skepticism in technology sales: "There is skepticism particularly if you're in technology sales today where everyone's bought technology that has not worked. But at the end of the day, if someone's in a conversation with you, you have to remember that they joined for a reason. And that's because they're hoping this solves some need that they have. They want to say yes, we just got to find what those guard rails are."

Connect with Daniel through the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgaugler/

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

We are often taught that the simplest solution is often the correct one. With today’s modern technology, sellers today often forget that the easiest and best way to know more about your customers is to just ask them the question. In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Joshua Wagner talks to Alpha Inbound CEO Nigel Thomas about his direct approach to sales and what it takes to turn prospects into paying and loyal customers. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• A good product is important, but you still need to sell it 
• Sales is about conviction, control, and being unforgettable 
• Most people love talking but hate listening
• Just talk to your customers 
• What a good discovery call looks like 
• Always answer with a story 
• Your team needs to have really good unit economics 
• You have to know the business of their business

QUOTES

Nigel on making an indelible impression: "At the end of the day, when you show up for that call for the first time, you've never met that person, you've got about three seconds to make an impression, probably less. ‘What is it going to be? Is it going to be different to everyone else they've spoken to today?’ Because guess what, if it's not, they're gonna forget you in a heartbeat."

How to find out what Suzy is having for lunch, according to Nigel: "Imagine you're in a park somewhere. Suzy is over there sitting on a park bench. You got to figure out what she's having for lunch. And again, how are we going to do that? We can do some research. We can go on Google. We can figure out where Suzy is on social media. We can go to the most powerful technology platforms and build out an incredible algorithm and predict what exactly she's going to have for lunch. Or, we're just going to go and ask her."

Connect with Nigel  through the links below:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelthomas-ai/
• 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.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com

SHOW SUMMARY

Remember the game 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you try to link any other person to the prolific actor in six or less points of separation? Well, the same concept applies to building your pipeline. In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Joshua Wagner outlines a three-point process where you can build your pipeline via the people you already know, both in person and on LinkedIn. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Start building one-to-many relationships 
• Use LinkedIn to drive executive door-openers 
• Referrals from your customers are a source of gold

QUOTES

Josh on how you can build fruitful partnerships: "Regardless if one to many relationships are a good fit for you, you still need to do your due diligence around, 'Does your solution solve a problem for their customer base? Is it a good fit? Are you able to complement the types of services or products that they offer?'"

Josh on utilizing your executive team's LinkedIn connections: "As email gets crowded, as cold-calling gets crowded, you're asking SDRs to reach out to the most seasoned people on organizations. We're gonna see that being more and more of a challenge. Leveraging your executives and their networks to open those doors is a one to many path to creating relationships at the highest levels and opening doors for you and your organization."

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

You can’t control what happens to you, but you can always control how you react to it. In this solo episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, our host Josh Wagner talks about having the confidence to stick to your fundamentals and always doing the right thing, even if sometimes it doesn’t immediately lead to success. Because eventually, the hard work will pay off, and you’ll be glad you did when you get to reap the rewards. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Parallels between professional sports and sales
• You can do everything perfectly and still get lackluster results
• Seek to control only the things that you can control
• Confidence is always king

QUOTES

Josh on the similarities between professional sports and sales: "At the end of the day, it's a performance-based business. What really matters is the result. You could be doing the same thing over and over and over again, and sometimes you could be riding a high, you could be really crushing it. And then other times, you might be doing those exact same things, and it's really really low because the results aren't there."

Josh on staying the course in the face of failure: "You can only control what you can control. You have to stick to the fundamentals. The worst thing you can do is start reaching for things that are outside of your norm, outside of what makes you great, outside of what puts the focus on your customer, the customer's results, and how you can make the most impact on their business."

Josh on the role of sales professionals: "At the end of the day, in sales like professional sports, confidence is king. It's really our role as sales professionals to focus on the things that matter. Focus on what we can control and ensure that we are putting our customer at the center of all that."

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