Sales Babble

How To Scale Sales With a Customer Service Mindset with Sean Tierney #237

In this episode we meet Sean Tierney, Director of Sales for Pagely, a premier managed WordPress hosting provider. Sean has over twenty years of experience in tech, marketing and sales roles and specializes in automation and sales systematization. Sean lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal where he mentors startups in the Startup Lisboa incubator. We talk about his 7 step process on how to scale sales organizations and do so with a customer service mindset.

7 Step Scale Sales Process and Philosophy

Sean’s sales philosophy has a mindset that sales is just customer service before they are a customer. He breaks it down into 7 steps.

* Map out the flows of the current reality. This is broken into two parts:

*  How information is moving through the system:

* Where does it live?

* How does it get there?

* What are the forms on your site?

* What systems does it flow to?

* What’s done with the data?

* Understand the buyer journey:

* How do people go from not knowing your service to knowing your service?

* How do they get onto your website?

* How do they buy?

* How are they onboarded?

* How do they receive support?

* How are they upsold?

* Track KPIs – Key Performance Indicators. Metrics are tactical, KPIS are strategic eg. MRR Monthly Recurring Revenue, ARR Annual Recurring Revenue and Sales cycle time. Have a spreadsheet but just track the metrics that matter.

* Establish a Process – use a CRM or a Kanban style with a pipeline and method for following up.

* Flintstone It – Do things manually to start and then automate over time.

* Delegate – Map out your org chart when starting and note the roles you’re playing. He found the SDR role was bottlenecking him. AE Account Executive role and Onboarding role he could still own. To grow staff he had one intern listen to calls recorded and placed in knowledge based.

* Automate – tools are a set of scaffolding for doing tedious stuff. The goal is to make each person more efficient.

* Scaling Personal Attention – a philosophy on automation. Despite size, highly personalize and create powerful experiences that scale with a boutique feel. e.g. pagely.com/explore took the consultative sale process with interactive videos.

Take Action Now

If you can’t explain what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t be shooting from the hip. Map it out, understand your sales process and you’ll understand it at a very deep level.

Tools Mentioned

* Put your email on automation with Active Campaign.

* For a calendar consider Calendly.com and YouCanBook.me

* For  scheduled sending and email reminders using Gmail Boomerang

* Text Expander  using Typenator

How To Find Sean Tierney

This is his company Pagely

Win Deals At Your Price with Sales Differentiation with Lee Salz #236

Our guest is Lee Salz a leading sales management strategist, bestselling author and CEO of Sales  Architects.  Lee is a returning guest, visiting nearly three years ago in Episode 88 How to Differentiate when Selling a Commodity with Lee Salz #88   Lee has a new new book out titled Sales Differentiation – 19 powerful strategies to win more deals at the price you want.  In this episode  we talk about things that you can do to stand out, show value, work around price concerns and actually charge a premium. Stop selling on price and boost your sales today. 

How to Differentiate when Selling a Commodity

Sales people too often complain “If we don’t drop our price, we will lose the deal.”   It’s too easy drop the price and cut into the companies margins. Profits matter!  To win deals at the prices you want, Lee believes your needed strategy is differentiation.

During the interview Lee walked us through a few of his 19 easy-to-implement concepts to help salespeople win deals while protecting margin. He believes these concepts are applicable to any salesperson in any industry and are based on the foundation that how you sell, not just what you sell, differentiates you.

Some highlights mentioned:

* Focus on what you sell, and how you sell.

* References – don’t treat it like chore, but opportunity to connect like minded buyers.

* Price – you can’t be too early but you can be too late. Explain meaningful difference early on.

* Your greatest competitor is not the status quo, but other sellers competing for your prospects time

* Author a RFP for your industry and give to prospects as an example to tip the focus to your favor.

* Your personality is the number one differentiator – especially those with internal company relationships.

Take Action

If you haven’t taken to the time to define how you’re differentiated, spend a moment and reflect on value that you bring to the market. Next build that definition so you can win more deals at the prices you want.

How To Find Lee Salz

Website: www.SalesArchitects.com

Twitter: @salesarchitects

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leesalz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalesManagementMinute

Lee’s New Book – Published October 2, 2018

Sales Differentiation – 19 powerful strategies to win more deals at the price you want.

Get the bonus opportunity at www.SalesDifferentiation.com

Sales Differentiation for Closing Sales

Here are past episodes to keep the babble up. Listen now!

* How to Differentiate when Selling a Commodity with Lee Salz

* Valve Stem Sales Strategy with Corey Philip #229

*

The Introverts Super Selling Powers with Beth Beulow #235

In this episode we meet Beth Beulow, author, business coach, speaker and host of the Introvert Entrepreneur Podcast. Beth is a avid proponent of the introverts super selling powers. She believes when introverts can leverage their natural gifts of listening, preparation, making people feel safe, and see selling as an educational process, they can be highly successful in sales.

Introverts, Extraverts and Ambiverts

We discussed the book To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink on the success of various personality types in the selling role. According to the book:

* Extraverts – performed the least, too pushy, too aggressive

* Introverts – performed better, good listeners, yet too meek

* Ambiverts – converted sales best, a bit of both extraverts and introverts, most successful

lf you’re not connecting with the buyer it could be a lack of balance in the conversation. When you have resonance, that’s powerful selling. Not all great conversations close sales. The timing maybe wrong.  But remember, it’s a marathon not a sprint. At the very least you might get a referral.

Introvert Super Duper Sales Powers

Introverts commonly have the following characteristics. They can be powerfully leveraged for selling:

* Sales is education. It’s only a story that sales is icky. Share what you have to offer with a focus to make their lives better (whether or not they buy).

* Connecting one on one. Introverts commonly say they are NOT good in groups, but good one-on-one.  This is actually a super power. Sales is P2P,  person to person. If you can connect with a person, you can make a sale.

* Listen with curiosity. Many introverts are very good at sitting back and asking questions. This is how you discover what the client needs.

* Create safety – create an environment where people can open up. You can do this by being real and allowing people the ability to be vulnerable.

* Preference for preparation – There is power in doing homework and researching to make sure the meeting is more productive. For many, preparation calms the nerves.

Know how you’re going to start. Know how you’re going to close and be open to how you get there. Trust yourself.

Take Action

Look at your website and ask the question, “is this differentiated from the rest? Or do I look like everyone else?”   Remember that a confused mind always says no.

How to Find Beth Beulow

You can  find Beth ALL over the internet!

* Book on Amazon (“The Introvert Entrepreneur”)

* Facebook (theintrovertentrepreneur)

* Twitter (introvertcoach)

* LinkedIn (bethbuelow)

* Podcast on iTunes

* YouTube (introvertentrepreneu)

* Pinterest (coachbethb)

* Google+ (+BethBuelow)

* Book (“Insight”)

This is the free offer mentioned during the podcas...