If you are trying to figure out what to do next when it comes to starting new business and getting doors opened with high level decision makers. This show is for you. My guest today is Caryn Kopp of Kopp Consulting. Caryn’s business is all about  opening doors and meeting with the right decision makers. If you aren’t talking to the right person it is impossible to close the deal.

Caryn is also the author of Biz Dev Done Right which is all about uncovering and managing the blind spots in the sales process. When business development is done right there is no limit to what we can do. Caryn is the Chief Door Opener at Kopp consulting, and her service has helped thousands of business owners and salespeople secure meetings with the right people. Today, she shares expert insights into the sales and business development process.

Episode Highlights:

• Her book is an Amazon bestseller and it helps uncover the blind spots that keep sellers from executing as they should.
• It uncovers the strategies and methodology to get the sales success we all deserve.
• It creates a predictable selling machine to get your foot in the door.
• The different types of salespeople that are out there. Farmers who grow the business and hunters who find the business.
• There are many different types of hunters. Closers and those who create new relationships. These are the openers who you want to hire to get business in the door.
• Salespeople are often strong in closing or opening. Kopp Consulting only hires openers.
• They offer outsourced openers with a proven process for creating sales messaging for high level prospects.
• Sometimes salespeople can’t get the meetings because of lack of time.
• Outsourcing to keep the top of the funnel full with new relationships.
• Then the sales people only have to go to meetings and close the sale.
• Getting the relationship open is a very different skill set.
• Having a full top of the funnel is a very efficient process.
• How when working with companies it is the bigger the better. They often work on the whale accounts.
• The client sales cycle may have different lengths, but they all want to keep the top of the funnel full.
• How they have short term and long term ongoing sales client relationships.
• How the right messaging, prospect, and readiness opens the door. This process takes two weeks for Caryn’s team.
• Two week onboarding at the top of the funnel. Launch with messaging and meetings. The handoff once they get the meeting includes remote access email through the client's company. The communication is seamless.
• They send the invite, and the meeting notification, and then an appointment report with the entire background of the meeting and client needs.

Resources:

• Kopp Consulting
• Biz Dev Done Right
• [email protected]

Whatever role you play in a sales position, there are a lot of moving parts and specific challenges involved with your unique role. Today, I talk to an account executive who has held many roles in the sales cycle and is passionate about making life for salespeople easier. We talk about his vast knowledge and lessons learned, along with how his company OppSource has developed a platform to make salespeople more productive.

Today’s guest is Andy Zehren. I met Andy by chance, but discovered that he had so much experience that he would be a perfect guest for the podcast.  Andy is an account executive for OppSource a platform that makes B2B sales prospecting and engagement easier. They help find and prioritize prospects and enable one sales rep to do the work of three with their automated touchplans.

Episode Highlights:

• How Andy has held a lot of different roles in sales and he started as an SDR.
• How each different role has had specific challenges.
• Andy works with sales people at OppSource helping them with solutions to be more productive and make their lives better.
• The importance of building relationships and challenges with automation.
• Challenges of spending too much time and energy on a small amount of accounts.
• Working smarter and hyper personalization. Average attempts at cold prospecting used to be four and now it is nine.
• Saving time using a template, but making sure that the person you are reaching out to knows that you are a person reaching out to them.
• The importance of having strong software that helps with followups.
• Making sure that sells people moving is a seamless experience for the company and the prospect.
• How OppSource simplifies the process of preparing for the sales workday using a smart technology solution.
• The importance of finding the most productive call hours.
• Having the ability to reach out to all of the decision makers and strategic selling.

Resources:

• Andy Zehren LinkedIn
• @AZehren Twitter
• OppSource
• [email protected]

The current trend with sales teams is moving away from generic messages and the batch and blast approach. The method that everyone's talking about and trying to focus on now is personalization. Customized methods can be incredibly difficult for an SDR to create. My guest today is an expert at personalization for sales teams and we discuss challenges and solutions for crafting personalized emails for effective sales.

On today’s show, I am speaking with Kristina McMillan from TOPO a research and advisory firm that focuses exclusively on sales and marketing organizations. They have dedicated practices for sales, sales development, and marketing. The focus is on market research, executive advisory, and the study of high-growth organizations to understand the processes, levers, and best practices that contribute to high growth.

Episode Highlights:

• Challenges with creating personalization at scale and having a repeatable structure that allow customization.
• The four stage messaging framework research, crafting the message, 2-3 touches a week, and using technology to automate.
• Knowing what to look for in the research stage.
• The three steps to crafting a message: setup, engage, and offer.
• The importance of understanding the role of the contact person.
• The offer should draw the client into the conversation to learn how I can help them.
• Using the touch patterns together with the framework. Sequencing and cadencing.
• Touch at least two to three times a week. A frequency that builds familiarity.
• Recognition and having a multifaceted profile for contacting a client.
• The importance of telling stories or having cliffhangers and persuasive copywriting.
• How people will respond when you offer something of value to them.
• Maximizing your return on effort.

Resources:

• TOPO
• Kristina McMillan on LinkedIn
• Kristina McMillan on Twitter @Lifeiterated
• TOPO Blog
• [email protected]

There are a lot of definitions of sales enablement. What is it? How do we do it? Why does it matter? Having a process and mindset that extends across an entire organization can help enable salespeople to be successful. Still, it would help to have a clear plan and goal to get the most impact out of the enablement process.

Today, I have two guests Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey.  Cory and Hilmon just happen to know a little bit about sales enablement. They are the authors of The Sales Enablement Playbook and they run ClozeLoop a sales enablement platform. They are based in San Francisco, and this is a fun and lively episode with two guests diving into the topic of sales enablement.

Episode Highlights:

• Cory and Hilmon share their definition of sales enablement and focusing on the prospect.
• How there isn’t a one thing silver bullet type solution to sales enablement.
• Every department needs to contribute to sales enablement.
• Having a mindset based on customer engagement where every team contributes.
• Having the customer conversation at the center of the bullseye. Then as the concentric circles move out there are other team members contributing.
• Understanding your messaging and how it relates to buyer personas.  
• Pain points and features and how they relate to customer stories.
• Issues with a disconnect between marketing and sales. Creating micro content for the salespeople.
• The three types of sales conversations: lone wolf, scripting, or finding the sweet spot of the entire team's effort.
• Creating a playbook that allows a natural feedback loop.
• Knowledge management is about the conversations.

Resources:

• ClozeLoop
• The Sales Enablement Playbook
• Cory Bray on LinkedIn
• Hilmon Sorey on LinkedIn

When people in sales hear the word story, they think the focus is on marketing. What if I told you that there was a way for sales executives to use story to frame their sales conversations? Story can be used to explain what a company does, the value they deliver, and how they are different. Story can also be used to begin a conversation, continue a conversation, and feed that all important sales pipeline.

This week’s guest is Jim O’Gara the founder and CEO of Story Dimensions. Jim shares why he began his company. Along with how sales professionals can use story throughout their sales process, and how Story Dimensions can help automate, organize, and publicize the process. Story can be a valuable tool in the sales process, and Jim shows us easy ways to implement story into the process.  

Episode Highlights:

• How Story Dimensions came into being and what they offer
• Lack of relevant customer stories and insights in the buying process
• Providing salespeople with a consistent stream of relevant stories
• Tactics for using story in different phases of the buying journey
• Connecting with buyers on a more human level
• Compartmentalizing the most relevant part of content
• Structuring content for salespeople to easily share
• Tracking usage and capturing analytics for matching stories and personas
• Account based selling and meeting with multiple stakeholders

Resources:

• Story Dimensions
• @StoryDimensions on Twitter
• James O’Gara on Twitter @jogara
• James O’Gara on LinkedIn
• Story Dimensions Live Demo

Starting a conversation is the first step in the sales process, and it is also a step that most salespeople would like to be more successful at. There are a lot of channels that can be used to start that all important first conversation, but today we are going to discuss an emerging channel that can generate curiosity and add that personal touch.

Today, I am speaking with Fernando Silva who is a solutions associate at Wistia which is really the same role as a sales development rep or SDR. Wistia is a professional video hosting platform that offers analytics along with video marketing tools. They also offer advanced marketing integrations for video that can help create the ultimate lead nurturing tool. I met Fernando at a conference, and I was intrigued with how he is using video to reach out and start conversations.

Episode Highlights:

• How Marylou tripled her response rates with cold video
• How Wistia targets large and small accounts but they focus on the SMB space
• Fernando works more on the inbound model of contacts who go to the website
• They use free accounts for signups, then they begin outreach with customers who fit their target personas
• SDRs reaching out and introducing themselves with video
• Researching the customer and their website and pointing out tips and suggestions in personalized video
• There is a learning curve to making great video, but Fernando can make about 30 in a 2 hour period
• Putting the word [video] in the subject line
• Touchpoints and replies help nurture the conversation with more embedded video
• The easiest way to get started is with the Soapbox Chrome extension

Resources:

• Wistia
• Soapbox
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Every business from solo entrepreneurs to small business owners and people working within larger businesses need systems to create consistency, make the work easier, and achieve better results. Today, I speak with Nancy Gaines the CEO and Founder of Gain Advantages on systems and the process of creating systems to free up time and money and create opportunities for businesses of all sizes to scale.

Nancy Gaines has been advising small businesses and Fortune 100 companies on how to increase revenues through proven systems for almost two decades. She is a best-selling author and international keynote speaker. Nancy has been named in the Top 100 Productivity Experts to follow on Twitter and has a global podcast downloaded in over 70 countries. Her main focus is creating business processes with actionable steps so her clients achieve more consistency, ease, and ultimate success.

Episode Highlights:

• Nancy helps small business owners to scale

• She creates systems and processes to avoid trading hours for dollars

• Models for productivity that help us to scale
• Five systems in every business
• Following up with sales, marketing, operations, your team, and money
• Starting with systemizing your biggest pain point
• The 24 hours, 7 days and 30 day method for following up (24,7,30)
• The cold contact email method using video
• Following up with personalized cards and handwritten notes
• Customizing the cadence of follow up for different customers
• Chunking up tasks and doing similar tasks together
• Having a single focus and single task for phone time
• Working for 50 minutes and then taking a 10 minute break
• Taking time to think and ask questions about your business
• Delegating tasks that are below your pay rate

Resources:

• 100 Proven Systems You Need to Boost Results
• Nancy Gaines Website
• IBM
• Ernst & Young
• Soapbox
• Nancy Gaines Show

Building, training, and growing a sales team can be expensive and time consuming. New businesses and especially growing businesses will need a team to move the sales and business process foreword and generate revenue to continue the growth. Our guest today is someone who has come up with a solution to the problem of creating and growing a sales team.  

Today, I speak with Stephen Hayes the founder of Inside Sales. Which is a group of on demand sales professionals that assist growing businesses with the sales process and with additional sales team help. This process is cost efficient with ready to go sales professionals that also bring tools, techniques, and technology that can be plugged into a growing business to accelerate the process.

Episode Highlights:

• How companies were struggling with building an inside sales model
• Stephen noticed the need and created the service solution for inside sales help
• They will often augment an existing sales team and help them scale
• They also help businesses that have no team or a sales bottleneck
• Demand generation, lead generation and opportunity generation
• With new companies they help build the entire go to market and playbook
• Importance of having systems in place to measure if the strategy is working
• They only work with products they like and believe in
• How being in too much of a hurry causes false starts and loss of credibility
• Having a full program up and running in 45 days is the timeline
• Sales cycles and learning curves could extend the timeframe
• It’s important to treat SDRs well and keep them motivated
• Tools used are multi touch, multi channel including phone and email and social
• They also have micro and macro events and direct mail
• Customized landing pages and video and animation are also used
• They also focus on great data sources that allow them to work at scale
• Revisiting lost leads
• Rewarding and empowering all representatives

Resources:

• Inside Sales
• Inside Sales Team Careers

Without prospects, there will be no sales. Yet, companies can struggle with incorporating prospecting into the sales process and getting people to balance the time spent prospecting compared with the all important task of closing the deal. This issue can be especially prevalent with leaner bootstrapped companies. Today, we will learn about an innovative method of solving this problem and attracting new sales talent.  

Today, I speak with Patrick Rodgers who is VP of Sales at LearnCore a leading sales training and coaching platform that combines technology with people for optimum results. Patrick is leading and building the sales organization for this bootstrapped company. We talk about the idea of prospecting as a sales function and some of the challenges when expecting AEs to close and prospect.

Episode Highlights:

• Challenges of scaling a bootstrapped company
• Difficulty of finding AEs who would go through the entire sales cycle
• Starting a 9 - 12 month sales training focused on prospecting
• Learning the process from start to finish they became top producers
• The program allowed growth acceleration and attracted talent
• Getting a perspective from different sales representatives
• Sales roles in the sales funnel process
• Shadowing into different areas and hitting sales goals
• Opening doors for the team and making it an easier path
• Challenges getting AEs to value the meetings set up by SDRs
• Having a blueprint for AEs so that SDRs and AEs work together
• Moving from sheer will to habit when changing roles
• Breaking down the training perspective into a career path

Resources:

• LearnCore
• Patrick Rodgers on LinkedIn
• Patrick Rodgers on Twitter @P_Rodge