Argh! I’m sharing something today that has me all kinds of riled up!

It’s a method of amateur selling  - taking shortcuts; choosing “efficiency” over “profit.”

It goes back to a mantra my dad used to repeat to us five kids growing up: “ A shortcut isn’t always a shortcut.” Meaning, there are times for automation, and there are times when automation will bite you in the butt. 

At the end of the day, all that matters is results, so if your results are average or less than average, it’s time to step it up. 

Let me frame this with most average sales organizations are taking short cuts, so this method is not popular.  Most people will disagree with you. And most people are average. 

But when you invest the time to do things right, you’ll reap more profits later. The five minutes you spend to prepare a cold call or cold email is going to slide you to the top of the other 100 messages they’ve received that day. 

I’ve shared a few of my best tips in here so you can stop being an amateur and transition to a world-class sales team.

© JPM Partners, LLC 

People often ask how I think an art background helped me in sales. 

Then I thought about all the artists, graphic designers, fashion designers, musicians and actors I’ve known that are highly successful salespeople. 

So today we’re going to take a break from the process of selling, which is valuable in itself and move into the art of selling which is much more interesting, authentic, and will bring some joy back into selling this year. 

Think about some of your favorite songs and movies. They all moved you or changed you in some way, even in a short period of time. 

Selling is similar; when you get someone to take action, it’s because they’ve changed in some way, and you are the catalyst for it. 

So, similar to a song or a story, there is a structure that will help you, which I’ll talk about today. 

Finally, we’ll touch on the importance of silence in selling as well as sales.

I challenged myself to 52 weeks of live Monday meetings, and we have just 4 left!  Going forward, I’ll be jumping in live at will and on a whim, so you’ll need to subscribe to my YouTube channel and/or join one of my Facebook Groups so you can get notified when it happens!

Have a wonderful holiday!

© JPM Partners, LLC 

There is an epidemic sweeping the nation.  Every entrepreneur or salesperson I coach who is having a challenge leveling up is because of one thing: dreaming too small.  They’re satisfied with the status quo. They’re satisfied with goals like, “Be debt-free.” “Buy a house.” “Save for retirement. Send my kids to college” Who cares? 

Yes, those are minimum necessities.  A house. A car. Food. Education. But the only person who cares about them is you.  Your clients don’t care. Your friends don’t care. The universe doesn’t care. Guess what? I’m pretty sure you don’t care that much, either.  If you have to wait another year to pay off your debt or buy a house, who cares? How much is it really going to hurt anyway? 

That’s exactly why you’re stuck in the same rut over and over again: your dreams are small so you’re playing small.  No one is going to play big to reach small goals. Makes sense, right? No one’s going to make one more phone call, start one more conversation, send one more email, for small goals. 

Do you think big goals just fall out of the sky onto people who were dreaming small? Nope. Cause even if they did, they wouldn’t recognize it was for them and would turn the other way.

So this year, it’s time to LEVEL UP. You are not serving ANYONE, especially YOU buy playing small in 2020.  We need you to bring ALL of you to the game.

I’m taking one 1-1 client for February. If you want in, we need to start talking now. jessicamagoch.youcanbook.me

Have a great week!

CEO, JPM Sales Partners

Custom Sales Playbook Designer and Creator of The TechSellerator

© JPM Partners, LLC 

I love this post I saw on Facebook about how Marilyn Monroe helped Ella Fitzgerald in her career. It’s an example of how successful people help others freely and that success is not an independent journey…

This Thanksgiving and Holiday season is a balance of giving and receiving.  If either is out of balance, you will feel depleted, sick, depressed and anxious. My yoga teacher used to call it “emotional constipation or depletion.” We’re either giving too much and feeling depleted because we’re not open to receive, or we’re taking more than we’re giving, which leads to emotional constipation of sorts. 

It’s a great balance to be aware of this season to stay healthy physically and emotionally but also applies to sales. If commissions and sales are the gift, the part we receive, then the sales consult and sales process has to be in the spirit of giving. If you think of prospecting, following up, and selling as giving, rather than asking for something, you’ll feel less anxious and more available to listen and advise. 

People who say, “I hate selling,” are really saying, “I hate asking people for money.” They have missed the part about helping and being of service. They are simply approaching it with the wrong mindset. Don’t sell, help. And never sell something you don’t really believe in. 

I also share a great exercise to do with your team called $100 bills to practice this mindset. 

A CEO Mindset isn't just for CEO's: you can be an employee and operate at a world-class level with a CEO mindset, or you can be struggling CEO because you're still operating with a status quo mentality. This exercise will develop your own world-class standards of performance:

1. Below are mindsets typical of the status quo, and thus generally accepted as true in our society. 

Salary = Security

Work for $$

Work happens M-F 9-5

Save for the future

Own a home

Be a millionaire

Little Risk = Little Gain

Failure = Defeat

Task-Oriented

Follows Systems

Limited by Time, $$

Follows Rules

Works Hard

Boss determines income

Institutional Education

Plans for next week, month or year

Minimum Standards

“Money is the root of all evil”

“Every man for himself”

“I can’t afford it” 

“I don’t have enough time”

“I can’t”

Successful people are lucky

Rich people are greedy

Work 30 years and retire at 65

Have you grabbed my latest freebie yet? It's my very own high converting sales script: The 8 Step Code to Convert Leads to Sales. You can get it here: freescript.jpmpartners.com

Have a great week!

CEO, JPM Sales Partners

Custom Sales Playbook Designer and Creator of The Sales Launch Code

© JPM Partners, LLC 

How good are you at listening? I’m going to give you a little test to find out. Grab a paper and pencil and join me now! 

Instructions: 

1. Draw a horizontal line from left to right. 

What did you come up with? 

If your instinct was that you needed to ask more questions to get the right shape, then your instincts are correct. 

But then why don’t salespeople follow them in sales meetings? 

Often there are just one or two questions asked and then, boom! here comes a 30-minute demo. 

When you ask the customer questions, lots of questions, you have all the information you need to sell them what they want to buy, so that you can actually keep your demo to just five minutes of totally relevant information. 

(You’ll notice that customers never ask “How do I log in?” which is how most demos start… )

This also helps tremendously when getting objections so you address the correct question or concern.

Customers will often surprise you with the answers to your questions. What was the biggest surprise you’ve had?

Have a great week!

© JPM Partners, LLC 

What is a Signature Selling Style Guide? 

It’s something I developed for my students to help bring more authenticity to their sales process.  

It can be difficult to take all the bits and pieces you receive about how to sell, how to overcome objections and how to close and align them with you are you so that you can be a powerhouse sales closer without sacrificing your integrity. .  

In this week’s video, I take you through how to Create your Signature Selling Style Guide in just under 10 minutes... 

It’s something you’ll have for a lifetime that will guide you on how to sell in a way that aligns with you and your values…

Everyone will have a different style guide, so it would be unfair to me to dictate what authentic selling is… 

It’s just that AUTHENTIC … 

Which means UNIQUE to you. 

Jump into the video and then share your results in the comments to declare the kind of entrepreneur or salesperson you REALLY are!

Resources mentioned: https://www.wordclouds.com/ 

© JPM Partners, LLC 

Melinda Elmborg of StartupAction.co is here for the last segment of our series!  Melinda is a former VC who was frustrated and tired of saying “no” to startups she knew she could help. 

So she started a virtual accelerator, Startup Action, to help startups get the launch they need, even without outside funding. 

Today she shares Mistake #3:  Broken Metrics and OKR’s

You need to make sure that your users are doing what you want them to do. Most companies have massive amounts of data but don’t know what to do with it. Good metrics help you make good investment decisions. 

Melinda explains how to automate your metrics with her favorite tools and filter and focus them across your entire team to have key results and objectives (OKR’s)

RESOURCE: > Measure What Matters

Melinda Elmborg of StartupAction.co is back on the show today!  Melinda is a former VC who was frustrated and tired of saying “no” to startups she knew she could help. 

So she started a virtual accelerator, Startup Action, to help startups get the launch they need, even without outside funding. 

Today she shares Mistake #2:  Going to Market without Product - Market Fit

Sometimes when startups have too much money, they will launch sales and marketing and, without product-market fit, will keep putting money in the wrong place. 

Like a bucket with holes, you won’t be able to get conversions with more ads or more sales meetings. 

Melinda explains how to make sure you have product-market fit and shares a great story about how a company learned this the hard way!

You can grab some of Melinda’s free resources and find out more about her accelerator here: 

Resources.startupaction.co

Stay tuned for Mistake #3 next week!  And if you missed mistake #1, you can grab it here.

Have a great week!

CEO, JPM Sales Partners

© JPM Partners, LLC

So delighted to have Melinda Elmborg of StartupAction.co joining us today!  Melinda is a former VC who was frustrated and tired of saying “no” to startups she knew she could help. 

So she started a virtual accelerator, Startup Action, to help startups get the launch they need, even without outside funding. 

Today she shares Mistake #1:  Innovator’s Bias

Innovator’s Bias is creating a product with blinders on and not consulting with customers. When you refuse to listen to the market or try to hide your product until its ready to launch, you run the risk of building something innovative that no one needs. 

Melinda explains how to speak to customers in a way that will get you the information you want and share a neat story about Zapier’s model to address this. 

Though this step may sound obvious, it’s the #1 often missed when she interviews startups for funding. If done properly, it will also tell you exactly what your market needs to hear in order to buy. 

You can grab some of Melinda’s free resources and find out more about her accelerator here: 

Resources.startupaction.co

Stay tuned for Mistake #2 next week!

Have a great week!

CEO, JPM Sales Partners

© JPM Partners, LLC