Outbound Sales Lift

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#82: Listen as Matt Austin, Head of Global Inside Sales at Comfy, discusses the sales mindset. He shares his experience with building high-achieving teams, the importance of setting concrete goals, and how to break goals into achievable parts.

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Importance of the Sales Mindset (0:26)

Tactics are great, but if you don’t look at how they fit into an overall methodology, you can get lost trying too many things at once.

Some tactics will work, some won’t, but we never know which way to go if we don’t have some consistency.

Part of the biggest problem is that people don’t have a set way to implement these tactics in their day-to-day lives. So it becomes this nebulous thing of, “I know I should show up as my best self today, but I don’t don’t know how.”

The first part of developing a strong sales mindset is being clear about your “why.” Why are you doing what you’re doing? 

Get down and ask it for several different reasons you want to be in sales. That’ll get you down to the core of what you’re doing.

Then remind yourself of those whys every day. That’s what will keep you going, so put physical reminders on your desk.

Concrete Goals (5:12)

Having concrete goals allows us not to get overwhelmed by the big picture because it can sometimes be intimidating. If we can break them down into smaller bones, that will enable us to feel good about ourselves when we’re in the process. 

It’s not just goals- but concrete goals and breaking them down step by step. This gives us actionable pieces we can take a day or week at a time.

It helps to focus on what we can control because there’s so much in sales that we don’t.

The numbers don’t lie. If you want to succeed, look at the math of what you have to do. It makes everything a lot more black and white. Sometimes you have to let your goals come to you. 

Putting it into Practice (12:08)

Every time a deal slips or someone would tell us “no,” it’s easy to take it personally.

We can’t worry about the rejection we had yesterday because it’s about what we need to do today to take the next step toward those goals. 

If we can stay focused on today, show up as our best selves, and improve a little bit from yesterday, it allows us to remain focused on our process. That will get us closer to accomplishing concrete goals.

Focus on small goals. Write them down and put them in front of you on sticky notes on your monitor or desk. 

Know your math. And keep a continuous learning mindset. Finally, stay curious and focused on your professional development.

The ones that control all of these things take ownership of a sales mindset.

Matt’s Bio:

I am an accomplished sales leader with a passion for bulding high-achieving teams. There is nothing that brings more joy in the workplace than to be able to watch professionals grow in an environment where being human is the center of our interactions.

Now on my third sales organization build-out, I have developed a deep understanding of the metrics that drive a SaaS business and the requirements necessary components of a Go-To-Market organization to drive growth.

Important Links:

Matt’s LinkedIn Profile

Comfy’s Website

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Getting Information Out (0:22)

Whatever your sales process is, an important foundational piece is not just marketing but really selling.

You’ve got to help the process by pushing back, which furthers the sales conversation. But to get back to it, ideally, you have at least a couple of pieces that are cohesive and compelling to your target prospects.

Companies need a place to start. They don’t even have a single one-pager and might just be thinking- what do I send? 

Having specific examples based on one particular company or situation is great to pass on to a prospect to further that conversation.

Many sales happen in between the conversations, so what are you doing in between that first and second call?

Those are such important times where you can reinforce what you’ve heard and validate a lot of what you bring to the table. Then, you can really set up the next call. 

Importance of Deliverables (6:05)

At each step, there’s a deliverable or outcome that the prospect or client can expect to earn from you. So that’s where you shift it in a way from “here’s what we do” into “here’s what you get from working with us.”

You don’t want to put onboarding as your first stage on your client’s success map because that’s not super valuable to the client. What’s beneficial to the client is the output of your onboarding. 

Sometimes it’s in the framing. For example, it might be onboarding or internally, or it might be we’re onboarding this client. But in the client success map, it might be called that strategic roadmap or that audit of where this relationship can go.

We do messaging is twofold: we follow the StoryBrand messaging framework and then move the interview process to Zoom. So interviewing these people is where the golden nuggets are for your messaging. 

Marketing vs. Sales (13:40) 

There’s a lot of thought leadership between marketing and sales and how those two departments come together. We just refer to it as a revenue team.

It’s a blend of marketing and salespeople. So you need to be diligent about how you do it. It’s not just saying let’s have marketing support sales. 

The role as a marketing agency is really to support the sales effort. So the best marketers are close to sales. They’re attached to the hip of sales. So it’s not just part of what we call the revenue team, which is let’s drive to a shared revenue goal.

Stephen’s Bio:

Stephen is a sales rep turned inbound marketer, giving him a unique perspective on marketing-sales alignment and how marketing can best support a company’s sales efforts. Stephen is CMO at Vantage Impact, helping clients set up and optimize HubSpot’s tools to market better and sell more effectively and efficiently. His unique modernized approach to marketing and sales is a game changer for the financial services industry, helping advisory practices move beyond cookie cutter content and hand shaking at events, to be more digital and automated without losing personal touch.

Golf, cold brew, bourbon (in that order). Big fan of goofy t-shirts and craft brewery trucker hats. ——

Last year Traci Beach and I started a second business with our brother-in-law, Boston Cardinal. In the middle of a pandemic with a bunch of little kids running around felt like the right time 😳😁…so we formed Vantage Impact. We are excited about this business because the model we’ve built is very unique.

Yet what we did was very simple really: we combined our Craft Impact: A Growth & Communications Agency business with Boston’s 10+ years of financial advisor recruiting experience, where he managed 1500+ financial advisor transitions.

Vantage Impact exists to guide financial advisors through big changes for their practice. We have two sides to the business: Transition and Growth.

Once we help advisors find the right firm, talent or custodian, we leverage strategic marketing and change communications, so they can grow a practice that’s profitable, impactful and life giving.

Cheers 🍻 to 2 “Impact” businesses 😛 and 3 little kids…what a ride!

Important Links:

Stephen Beach’s LinkedIn Profile

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#80: Listen as Tyler Lindley, host of The Sales Lift Podcast, discusses social selling in 2022. He looks at the everlasting presence of LinkedIn, the boom of video content on TikTok, and how other media like podcasting and private social groups can up your selling game.

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LinkedIn in 2022 (1:00)

LinkedIn is still the predominant B2B professional networking site. If you are a B2B seller in this day and age, you have to be active on LinkedIn. 

Your profile is your opportunity to showcase your background skillset and tell a story. You want to make sure your profile is speaking to your target audience.

A lot of sales reps just repost. However, it’s best when sales leaders give their spin on that content and add a little bit of context about why that material resonated with them or create your organic content. 

You have to have the confidence to write some of those and post them. It will take some time to get some traction, but it starts with just having the confidence to start.

Whoever’s looking you up on LinkedIn, make it easy for them to find you and organize your content with maybe a hashtag. 

It would help if you tried to connect with your prospects to make it easier to message them on LinkedIn, obviously, and share things with them.

Importance of Video Content (6:22)

Get involved in discussions because many discussions are happening, and a lot of sales reps are sitting around lurking versus getting involved in those conversations.

Video is critical. TikTok is now one of the most popular websites globally, more popular than YouTube, which is crazy.

It’s easy to create video content on TikTok, and you can post it on TikTok or repurpose that content for other social platforms. 

Repurposing content is straightforward. You can add in the text boxes, making it easy to use. So definitely don’t sleep on TikTok.

The more you click publish, the more videos you create, the better you’re going to get no matter which platform you’re using, whether you’re dropping in at any time.

Podcasting and Other Media (12:16) 

Bucket podcasting podcasts are blowing up, they’re really popular, and they’re going to remain popular. 

All B2B sellers could have success creating a podcast, talking to their prospects, bringing them on as, bringing on industry experts, and just starting more discourse around topics your prospects might find.

It’s hard for you to stand out and build relationships with folks because there’s just so much noise on LinkedIn and Twitter.

People who post on Twitter naturally tend to be a little bit more off the cuff. It’s a little bit more personal. A lot of people e their Twitter content for LinkedIn.

Get involved in that conversation if you find an active prospect on Twitter.

Private Social Groups (15:46)

These groups have a slack group attached to them or some discord or Facebook group element.

Private social groups are a place to learn as B2B sellers. We need always to be learning and honing the craft. There’s a conversation about the sales process, development, leadership, and sales management. 

Private social groups are great for networking and meeting people, either in your space or people you can learn from and the sales.

You need to get involved and try to find opportunities. Many people post in those private social groups and not in a public forum or social media.

It’s a great way to meet people because everybody in those groups has something in common. 

Tyler’s Bio:

Hey y’all, I’m Tyler.

I’m a dad, husband, sales leader, podcaster & sales coach.

I help scale up CEOs & revenue leaders grow their business with a reliable revenue engine.

I also coach new SDRs in tech & SaaS sales to succeed in their roles early on and lay the foundation for a career in sales.

Important Links:

Tyler Lindley’s LinkedIn Profile

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Having A Plan (0:22)

A lot of stress comes with entrepreneurship, but being in sales and leading territories teaches you many things about becoming an entrepreneur and how you could eventually start your own business. Sales is a great place to start.

Writing out a business plan teaches you if the business is viable and to put it all on red and risk everything and do. It’s always good to have a plan. 

It’s hard when you have dreams in your head, but you can see them on paper when you take the time to write them down. Then you write a plan, and then you go, “oh crap. I’m actually going to have to do this.”

There’s a lot of pressure there, and that’s not taught in schools.

Crossover to Sales (6:14)

Salespeople, in general, are the most risk-tolerant in a company, which comes in handy when opening your own business. It’s an individual decision. 

If you’re this great hunter that can always open new accounts, what’s a blessing becomes a curse. 

Many folks think you’re only as good as your last quarter and sales. So you always have to be a student of your craft, but you also have always to watch your back because the pressure gets high as you succeed. 

You always need to be talking to people. You always need to have mentors. You always need to be in front of people and their advice. 

Everyone needs to be well-educated on money.

Salespeople have a lot of guts to plan their day. They have to be disciplined with their schedule and time, and they have to fit everything in between many sales jobs. They also have to have customer service components.

The anxiety of Sales and Business Ownership (14:28)

Owning a business gives you flexibility and control that you otherwise wouldn’t have in sales, but things happen in life. You’ll get fired, you’ll get territorial realignments, etc., so control is an illusion.

Anybody can do entrepreneurship. 

Always have those conversations, always investigate, and look at businesses. Understand how they’re run, how financing works, how profit and loss works, and all the business components because it will help you be a better salesperson.

You can’t run off your natural ability all the time; you have to hone your skills. And if you want to start your own thing, it’s certainly a path to do that. 

Joe’s Bio:

Joe Sponcia comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience from a varied background including, Sales, Sales Leadership, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship.

He has worked in small, family owned companies as well as large, corporate entities, and has packed all of his experience into the three companies he now co-founded: Holston Logistics, Sunshine Transit Group, and Mobile Wrench Works.

His goal is to help people who want to make the leap into being a business owner, not so daunting.

Important Links:

Joe Sponcia’s LinkedIn Profile

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Overcoming Objections (0:22)

When an objection comes up in sales, that’s really where the sale begins. And it’s a lot easier to cover what not to do with objections. 

What you want to do is be curious. You want to learn more and keep your prospect engaged. 

For most sales reps to learn how to overcome objections, they have to lose many of them. So try not to get eaten by the same objection twice.

Objections can happen as late as your negotiation and contract phase or as soon as someone picks up the phone and says, “not interested.” 

The best reps don’t get rattled. It doesn’t take any wind out of their sale. They almost pretend like they didn’t hear it and move on to the next question that they were going to ask.

The best thing you can do is learn from each scenario and think about what you could have said differently after the fact. 

Don’t get beat by the same objection twice. We hear new objections all the time, but eventually, you should be building up a library of answers.

Expecting Objections (7:22)

You could get up to four objections on every call, and it’s not necessary to overcome them right away. It’s okay: you’re becoming more curious and learning.

You don’t even have to try to overcome the objection necessarily. Maybe the goal starts as extending the conversation or learning about the objection. 

Acknowledge what they say because they want to feel acknowledged. It’s essential to do this empathetically when you recognize something.

You have to understand your prospect. Then, find ways to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes.

Approaching Common Objections (13:08)

Most objections fall under the category of a lack of value. There’s not enough perceived value in what you’re presenting because if there were, they wouldn’t have a budget.

Then there’s just the brush-off. You hit on a lot of the brush-offs early on. “Hey, I’m busy, and it was this, it’s “not interested.’

Another is that you’re not listening. Reps are quick to hop off and try to have a conversation about a specific area or a value they might bring. As soon as the prospect says, “Nah, that’s not a fit for us,” they stop listening and start pushing.

Objections can feel personal, so separate your identity from the call’s outcome.  

You’re not going to make every sale, and there will always be someone else to approach.

Nick’s Bio:

Nick Krebs is a sales coach at Vendition with experience working in sales at Yelp and other high-growth startups!

Important Links:

Nick’s LinkedIn Profile

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#77: Listen as Alvaro Garcia, SDR at Reside Worldwide, discusses bringing creativity into sales. He shares his experience in the hospitality industry, how it’s given him a unique approach to sales, and how to create opportunities.

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Translate Energy into Sales Messaging (0:22)

Focus on solving a customer’s problem creatively so that they don’t realize that you’re solving their problems.

Interrupt the pattern of everyday conversations with your energy and see if it gets anyone to open emails or respond more often.

Just do what you think is right, and hopefully, people will find that interesting. 

Talk to the reps when onboarding and figure out where they excel. A lot of companies allow their reps to use their most considerable skillset.

Finding Your Strengths (4:37)

Companies also need to be comfortable allowing sales reps to change if they don’t see success.

Many reps need to have that conversation with their manager, so when some of their efforts aren’t working, they can figure out where they’re strongest. 

Multi-channel approaches mean not just focusing on one skill set. However, if a rep is solid in one area, it’s okay to have their sequences and outreach skewed towards that type of communication, most likely to start conversations at the end of the day.

Know that that situation can change at any moment, and you can also influence that change.

Solving Problems (9:50)

Coming from a hospitality background helps sales because you get an opportunity to be yourself, and not every day is the same. 

It’s great working in the hospitality industry where you’re always creating an opportunity to change someone’s attitude or creating an opportunity for someone else—or creating an opportunity for yourself. 

Companies are made up of people, and people work with people. We’re in each stage, human-to-human conversation; whether you’re B2B, B2C, or whatever industry you’re in, we’re all people trying to connect with other people.

Creating Opportunities (13:43)

Dive deeper into people’s LinkedIn profiles. It’s an opportunity for someone to post about themselves and capture someone’s attention, sometimes unknowingly.

You have to get good at telling a brief story about something about them and then weave it into something your company, service, or product saw.

Figure out your “why.” Figure out why you’re in this role and if that role or that company works for you.

Alvaro’s Bio:

Young professional with a wine/hospitality background that has recently jumped into the Relocation and Mobility industry. Passionate about building relationships and motivating others.

Important Links:

Alvaro’s LinkedIn Profile

Reside Worldwide Website

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#76: Listen as Tyler Lindley, B2B expert and host of The Sales Lift Podcast, revisits two of the most impactful episodes from 2021. First, we listen to Carl Ferreira and learn what it takes to crush the AE role at a billion-dollar scale-up. Then, we highlight our interview with Anna Rofsky and talk about taking calculated risks in your sales career.

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Refining Your Mindset (0:22)

Carl just transitioned to Refine Labs, where he’s the Director of Sales, and Anna is a Sales Manager at Forethought. They both have been promoted from their days as AEs and are now in leadership positions.

In sales, a lot of us have that go-getter hunter mentality. We want to be at the top of the board. 

But it takes more than just that to be the top new rep at a big company or a small company, or any company.

Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the “new guy” mentality. You were hired for a reason, and you want to have that confidence, even if you’re first-time selling.

You need to know your product inside and out better than anyone else because you are the expert, and learning that product can help to have better conversations.

Adapt Your Coaching Style (7:32)

Look for weirdness and be open to it, and personality is at the forefront of your training style.

Transferring knowledge isn’t the same as transferring competency. When onboarding reps, it’s not just about shoving as much knowledge as you can in front of them. 

Also, we also need the space to learn how to be competent on our own. Learn how to fail, learn how to get better. So you can’t always hold your trainee’s hand.

In episode 18 with Chris Walker, he and Tyler talked about how better selling starts with better marketing. 

Qualifying and Disqualifying Prospects (11:03)

You have to qualify and disqualify your prospects just as they’re qualifying and disqualifying.

You have to understand their pain points, why they would buy, their whole business structure, and what their goals are in the immediate three months.

We want to think about our prospects and our customers’ long-term goals as much as their short-term goals. 

Just understanding that consulting motion and how you can learn more about their business, goals, and overarching themes and strategies they’re working on. 

Then hopefully, you figure out how your product or service helps move those goals forward instead of just pushing.

Important Links:

Carl’s LinkedIn Profile

Anna’s LinkedIn Profile

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#75: Listen as Andy Paul, host of the "Sales Enablement Podcast" and author of the upcoming book, "Sell Without Selling Out," discusses the human side of selling in Part 2 of our interview. He covers what training works best for new hires and why starting with a humanistic approach is ideal.

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Demonstrating Expertise and Integrity (0:22)

Starting strong comes down to making a connection, being sincere, and having a genuine interest in learning about them. 

Make sure you understand what is most important to them and see how you can help them get it.

Curiosity is more about questioning; you’re learning and gathering information. But there’s also a question the buyers ask, and it’s rarely asked aloud.

We answer it through operating with integrity, making sure our motivations are abundantly clear to the buyer that we act in alignment with those motivations and demonstrate our competence.

Then you need to keep them by evolving as their needs change. 

Understanding Uniqueness (5:45)

Look for opportunities to go back, revisit, and understand more about your buyer’s situation when things change based on new information.

The spontaneous insight that we collectively arrive at later in the sales process is the most impactful.

Now the buyer understands how smart we are because we gave them insight right at the beginning and evolved it to meet their needs.

Questions that trigger insights on the buyer’s part are infinitely more powerful and impactful than the pre-packaged ones we deliver at the beginning.

The heart of the matter is that every customer is unique and different, so their answers and needs will all be different.

Andy’s definition of business acumen for sellers is not understanding how one situation is different from another. Understanding that difference is an opportunity.

New Hires and Training (9:46)

Too many sellers think they need to have all the answers right away. And when you think of all the answers, selling becomes more of a zero-sum game because you will persuade people to buy. 

That’s not a very productive way to go about things, and you shouldn’t feel compelled to have the answers.

For many sellers, learning about business independent of your selling is learning about business. Learn how to read financial statements, Republic filings for public companies, and how a company operates. 

Being an SDR or any entry-level sales job is a tough job. Andy urges companies to hire old SDRs because they might do a better job and find another entry-level role for new sellers. 

It’s a different language, so teach your new hires to be human before you try to teach them how to be sellers. 

Andy’s Bio:

Andy’s hit “Accelerate Your Sales” podcast was acquired by ringDNA in 2020. Since re-named “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul”, the show continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals each week. Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, “Zero-Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales”.

He is ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts. And he has consulted with some of the biggest businesses in the world including Square, Philips, Grubhub, and more, making him one of the leading voices in the sales industry today.

Important Links:

AndyPaul.com

Andy’s LinkedIn Profile

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#74: Listen as Andy Paul, host of the “Sales Enablement Podcast” and author of the upcoming book, “Sell Without Selling Out,” discusses selling vs. selling out. He covers what makes a good seller, why buyers often resist certain approaches, and why a humanistic sales approach is best.

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Buyer Resistance (0:22)

We need to get a lot better at selling to humans, and part of the problem is that for so many sellers where they’re socialized, trained, and coached to behave in ways that buyers instinctively resist.

They use pushy, sleazy, and intellectually lazy behaviors Andy lumps into as “salesy” behaviors. So why are we still doing those? They don’t work, and the buyers instinctively resist them. 

Research shows a majority of the purchase decision, the criteria in the mind of the buyer purchase decision, are based on how they experience you as a seller. Not you as a company and the company you represent, but you as a seller, as an individual.

Connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity are your ticket to the level of success you want to achieve in the world.

We’re all wired to want to connect with those innate human behaviors. Part of our empathy understands how other people feel and how we can help them. 

Automation in Buyer Experience (5:38)

Push back against a process because the established process doesn’t align with who you are. It doesn’t align with your values or how I see the world.

As we’ve become more automated, many people take the easy way and lose sight that they succeed only to the degree to which they help develop their sellers.

If you want a long career in sales, you must learn how to create a memorable buying experience and help buyers achieve the most important things. 

A Seller’s Job (10:45)

For many investors, their goals don’t align with those of the management.

If you ask most sellers, what’s your job? The most common answer is that their job is to go out and persuade somebody to buy their product or service. 

The job is not to persuade them to buy what you have; it’s to understand the most important thing to them and then help them get that. 

If you go in with the idea of needing to connect with a person and earn credibility and trust, you can use your curiosity to ask great questions and surface what’s most important to them. 

Ask great follow-up questions to make sure that you understand what’s most important to them. Then, give value to help them achieve the desired outcome.

In sales, we’re not trying to persuade someone to do one thing or another. 

We’re trying to connect, pique curiosity, understand their situation, and if there’s an opportunity to help, we help. Otherwise, we move on.

Nailing Down the Selling Process (16:17)

There’s an issue with how we train sellers. Often we give sellers a list of questions that you ask or through listening to your peers and the recordings.

We’re good at gathering information, but we’re not good at really understanding what’s most important to the buyer.

A competitor who understands that they sell and create this experience with a buyer, continually discovering, understanding, and exploring further will always beat you. 

Most sellers miss the killer question that comes after: what are we missing? 

We think we understand everything. We’re all in agreement. We’ve got it. Okay, but what are we missing?

You make yourself attractive to another person by being interested in them.

Andy’s Bio:

Andy’s hit “Accelerate Your Sales” podcast was acquired by ringDNA in 2020. Since re-named “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul”, the show continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals each week. Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, “Zero-Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales”.

He is ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts. And he has consulted with some of the biggest businesses in the world including Square, Philips, Grubhub and more, making him one of the leading voices in the sales industry today.

Important Links:

AndyPaul.com

Andy’s LinkedIn Profile

Click here for Episode #73 show notes with full transcript, links mentioned, and more!

#73: Listen as Kathryn Bennett, Director of RFP Excellence at Loopio, discusses her experience at winning with RFPs. She explains how to streamline the RFP process, the differences between RFI and RFP, and how it applies to public and private procurement efforts.

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What is RFP and Why Does It Matter? (0:22)

RFP is the request for proposal that you get from enterprise organizations or entities often in the sales domain. 

You’ll hear it referred to as an RFX, an umbrella of types of responses that they might be soliciting.

So there are security, questionnaires, or DDQ issues like qualifications and documents. The RFP process is a formalized procurement process designed to advantage the buyer by providing specific types of information.

It requires a little more documentation simply because the entity is trying to do its due diligence by thoroughly reviewing its options.

In the RFP process, what it does, ultimately buyers are looking to save money by making more responsible decisions.

We want to make sure that we’re communicating the best value through our RFP documents.

You are often in a much more controlled environment because you’ve had to qualify to attempt to propose to these folks. And therefore, your pool of competition is much smaller, and you are in a better position to win the business.

RFPs in Startups and Scale-Ups (4:46)

One of the first things you need to consider in this instance is how you’ll find the opportunities. For example, if you’re selling into the business community, you usually have to get invited to submit to an RFP.

You may be discounting your pricing on a larger scale, but how you position yourself needs to be competitive.

You can get one small component of a larger project that helps you build your past performance and get your resume built up. Then you have that experience with the other entity partnerships. 

So being in that early startup environment and looking to win through RFP partnerships should be a key component of your strategy.

RFPs cost around $5k to $10k of labor and materials put together, and they’re not a small endeavor. And so, at least to those for larger enterprise efforts, that’s why the capture process is so important.

Maybe you fill out the RFI documents and never hear from the company again. That’s also pretty common, so don’t be discouraged.

RFI vs. RFP (9:52)

It goes down the sales and marketing funnels in terms of effort. One of the three main types of documents in this context will be the RFI at the top of the sales funnel.

RFI and RFQ stages don’t always happen. They’re optional and for very conscientious buyers or regulated buyers. 

By the time you get to the RFP, you’re building on those foundations, moving down the marketing funnel, and the buyer has decided that they are going to buy.

Many sales leaders will try to chase every RFP that comes through the door because they see it as a marketing opportunity. Kathryn makes it clear that by the time RFP has come out, you no longer have the chance to market.

Public vs. Private Procurement (14:00)

It’s vital to differentiate between public and private procurement efforts.

First of all, in private sector buying, they don’t have ethical rules around it. But they don’t have any legal prohibitions against public sector buying.

If there’s even a whiff of impropriety about the fact that maybe this person is in there influencing the sales process unfairly, those procurement people’s jobs are at risk. And in fact, they could be a legal liability. 

When it comes to public procurement, it makes sense to warm up. But no, the decision is not made before you walk in the door, which is why you would craft your proposal. 

For private procurement, you can often email the person leading the charge and say, “Hey, can I ask a question about this?” Then, maybe they’ll put it out to the rest of the buyers. That might not be true for public procurement. 

You need to be cognizant that they will publish the questions you ask, but you can strategically ask questions that torpedo your competition or that support your position.

If you intend to move into the enterprise space or sell space with governments, you have to have a good content management system.

The earlier you start managing content for your sales and proposal efforts, the more reliable and sustainable your processes will be.