Sales Reinvented

Tony Hughes points out that we live in a digital-first world. 2020 was a catalyst for accelerating what people are describing as the 4th industrial revolution. He emphasizes that “There’s timeless principles of selling that we need to adapt as we modernize the way that we engage clients.” One of the big trends is that companies are shifting resources from field selling to using the tech stack to sell digitally. So how can you drive change in a digital world? How do you excel with digital selling? Tony Hughes shares his take in this episode of Sales Reinvented!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:11] Digital and social selling 
• [3:41] How to improve your digital selling 
• [7:35] Tony’s digital selling blueprint
• [9:46] Attributes that lead to greatness
• [12:19] Tools + techniques + strategies
• [16:46] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [19:27] Tony demonstrates the power of connections

How to improve your digital selling 

Most buyer’s journeys begin in their trusted online network. They seek social proof for the things that they’re looking at purchasing. Tony was talking to a group of 18 CEOs about modernizing the way they sell. One was the CEO in Australia for a North American company that sells into the pharmacy industry. The two highest-performing territories in North America didn’t have salespeople in them for four months out of the year. This company had been convinced that they needed to maintain mindshare with pharmacists. When they interviewed the pharmacists and business owners they found some interesting things. 

Firstly, the pharmacists noted that when the reps called on them, it took them away from serving customers. Secondly, they thought the information being shared with them was just marketing material that they’d rather get in an email or snail mail. The only thing the buyer valued is that they were getting a great price. So this company decided to run some testing in Australia, removing their reps completely. The business has never been stronger. Tony’s point? The belief that bots can never replace you is nonsense. 

Tony’s digital selling blueprint

Tony believes that any blueprint has to begin with understanding your ideal customer profile. You need to think about their:

1. Firmographics: What is their vertical? How big are they? Where are they located?
2. Technographics: What are the attributes of the organizations? What is their competition?
3. Psychographics: Are they in a growth mindset? Are they in crisis? Do they outsource? Are they trying to innovate and disrupt the market? 

Companies with a growth mindset are the most likely to purchase. 

Then you need to look at the buyer personas—those that say “yes” or form a consensus. You then build the conversation narrative. Once you do that, you need to map the buyer’s journey and go and be where they are. It will certainly include social media, but it will be in other places as well. You move away from the “us” narrative because no one wants to hear it. You need to lead with a narrative about how they can drive improved results in their role. If you do all of that well, they’ll want to understand why you would be the best solution for them. 

What three attributes does Tony believe lead to greatness? Listen to find out!

Tools + techniques + strategies

Tony recommends that you look at the tech stack that you’ve got. How can you use what you already have? Would your boss say you’re a good user of CRM? Do you capture meeting notes, build a dashboard, and identify the next best actions to take? 

Secondly, use the sales intelligence tools available to you, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can also build searches that monitor for trigger events within your customer base as well as your ICPs and buyer personas within the marketplace. 

Can you do pragmatic research? Are you using sales intelligence tools that get you emails and phone numbers? Tony believes the fastest path—and highest probability to a new sale—is when you can provide relevance and context through a trusted relationship and a trigger event. Listen to learn what Tony does with this. 

Listen to find out what Tony’s top digital selling dos and don’ts are—some might surprise you!

The power of connection

A great friend of Tony’s is a CEO who just took a role with a new company. As they were talking over breakfast, Tony offered to introduce someone who would be a good fit as a client. When Tony’s friend posted a LinkedIn update about his new role, he liked it, commented, and shared it. He tagged the name of the person he thought would be a good client and said “You two should get together.” This person responded within five minutes and messaged Tony’s friend. 

Connect with Tony Hughes

• Connect on LinkedIn
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• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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When you’re selling on LinkedIn—or any other social platform—you’re creating conversations. Maybe you’ve made a connection, had a Zoom call, and take the relationship to a trade show, conference, etc. With virtual selling, you may do the entire sales cycle online. The B2B buyer is at a point where they prefer this. So salespeople need to be primed on social selling skills and able to take it to the next level. You have to learn the best way of engaging with customers if you continue to sell virtually. Viveka von Rosen shares some great tips in this episode of Sales Reinvented!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:34] Social selling versus digital selling
• [3:42] How to improve digital selling capabilities
• [4:53] Viveka’s digital selling strategy
• [7:57] Necessary attributes + characteristics
• [8:49] Tools + techniques + strategies
• [10:33] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [12:35] Understanding the pain point you solve

How to improve social selling capabilities

Digital selling isn’t going away. Viveka emphasizes that you must move beyond “Let’s get on LinkedIn'' and “Let’s shoot a couple videos” to teach sellers how to be charismatic online. They need to learn how to move past images and insert their voice. You can do video cover stories that play where your cover photo would normally go. You can record voice introduction videos. Your profile needs to come to life. But your sellers need to know how to use those features. Viveka points out that your competitors will understand the necessity and are becoming savvy. 

Viveka’s digital selling strategy

Before you reach out and engage with people to fill your pipeline, you need to make sure you look good. Many companies in the social selling space need help. Anyone customer-facing needs a good strong brand. From there, they need to be taught how to engage—not connect. You need to learn how to build face-to-name and top-of-mind awareness so when they are invited to connect they’re more likely to say “yes.” 

Then you need to prove value before you try to take the person home. People somehow think they can get on LinkedIn, connect with someone, and start selling their wares. LinkedIn is about creating strong conversations and building know, like, and trust. You nurture those relationships by sharing valuable content. You need to put this all together in an easily repeatable cadence.

What are the attributes + characteristics necessary to succeed? Listen to hear Viveka’s thoughts!

Tools, techniques, and strategies to embrace

Viveka always recommends that you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Unfortunately, she points out that a lot of salespeople don’t understand the best ways of using the tool. She also recommends a good CRM—whether it’s Salesforce, Hubspot, or Nimble—that works. Viveka is a huge fan of selling with video. They use OneMob but there are many great email video tools out there. Using video in messages, emails, and texts gives people a great sense of who you are. There are strategies that you can put in place to be more charismatic online. With a little practice, you can use it well and be effective. Listen to hear Viveka’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts!

Your buyer needs to experience the pain point you solve

When Viveka started training salespeople how to sell on LinkedIn (in 2009), most people didn't even know what it was. They didn’t understand the value in it. She had flown to New York to speak to a law firm. She can still see them staring at her with their arms crossed, brows furrowed, questioning the validity of selling on LinkedIn. She started to explain the features and watched their eyes glaze over. She finally just told herself to stop talking. She switched gears and asked them how they would buy a car. They all said that they would do research first. 

So she asked them to Google their names. The first thing that came up was the company website. But halfway down the results page would be LinkedIn. So she pointed out that a potential client will look at their profile to make sure they’re a good fit. So she asked them to click on their profile. What they saw was the most bare-boned pathetic example of a profile. She could immediately see their walls come down. Everyone started to listen. 

The moral of the story? You need to get your buyer to experience the point of pain that you solve, to physically experience it. That will move you toward the sale more than anything else.

Resources & People Mentioned

• LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day
• 101 Ways to Rock LinkedIn
• OneMob
• BombBomb

Connect with Viveka von Rosen

• Connect on LinkedIn
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• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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Ryan Kugler believes you have to embrace both digital selling and old-school ways of selling, such as sending emails and making cold calls. How does he find success with both strategies? Why does he believe persistence pays off? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented for a completely different take on digital and social selling. 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:10] How are digital and social selling different?
• [1:36] Why is digital selling so important? 
• [2:04] Ryan’s blueprint for digital sales
• [3:01] The attributes of a great salesperson
• [3:44] Tools + techniques + strategies
• [4:59] Ryan’s digital selling dos and don’ts
• [8:35] Why persistence pays off

Ryan’s blueprint for digital sales

Ryan has found that email is the easiest way to connect with someone—as long as you do it right. He always asks a question in the subject line so the prospect wants to open your email. Then you give them the answer to the question you asked in the subject line. It can be a few simple sentences, then you pitch your product. He’s also a huge fan of jumping on the phone. 

Ryan notes that social networking depends on what product or service you’re pitching. If it’s to a consumer, Ryan recommends Instagram or Facebook. If you’re in the B2B space, LinkedIn is the way to go. Ryan has three businesses, none of which are consumer-based, so he doesn’t spend a lot of time on Instagram or Facebook. 

What are the attributes of a great salesperson? Listen to hear Ryan’s thoughts. 

Motivation begins with you

Ryan believes something as simple as listening to great podcasts and being able to hear others’ experiences is extremely helpful. Secondly, you need to educate yourself on sales and find a way to motivate yourself. You have to have the intention to sell. 

If you are a true salesperson, you want to read books about sales, find a coach, a mentor, or something that motivates you to wake up every day and do it. It’s all about investing in personal development. After that, it’s a numbers game: get your name out there. Make sure your product or service is something that people want. 

Ryan’s digital selling dos and don’ts

What rules does Ryan follow to find success with digital sales? He shares some thoughts:

• When you send an email, your email platform is saving those email addresses. That gives you an address book of people you’ve connected with. Ryan recommends that you go through those contacts once a month and email each person to check-in. 
• Make sure you’re keeping every email address. 
• Call and set up an email blast so they get a monthly email pitching your product. 
• Always reply to every email you get (by the end of the day or within 24 hours). If you don’t return a call or reply to emails, that customer will assume you’re too busy for them and you’ll lose their business.
• Don’t just sit on your laurels. Just closed a big deal? Great. Celebrate, and get back at it again the next morning. 
• Always be creating. Don’t get distracted by social media or other tasks. When you’re at work for those 8–10 hours, do the work. 

Why persistence pays off

Ryan points out that sales involve prospecting, right? You need a base of customers to call. Ryan has a customer he’s been calling for 15 years (leaving messages and sending emails). This person would see his email or hear his name somehow. In March of 2020, COVID hit. This person finally called him back and said “I need this right now.” That phone call led to the biggest sale he’d ever made—it was the same amount of sales he’d done for 25 years. The moral of the story? Don’t give up. The persistence will pay off eventually, even if it takes 20 years. 

Connect with Ryan Kugler

• Connect on LinkedIn
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• LinkedIn
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Bill McCormick believes that relationships are the most important difference between digital selling and social selling. To Bill, digital selling encompasses all mediums. It’s email, SMS, chat, direct messages, phone calls, video, etc. It’s larger numbers and more impersonal outreach. Social selling is social. It’s about establishing a relationship and a connection with a person and moving that relationship along until there’s an opportunity for a sales conversation. Hear his complete thoughts on digital and social selling in this episode of Sales reinvented!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:13] The difference between digital and social selling
• [2:12] Why digital selling is so important today
• [3:55] Bill’s ideal digital selling strategy
• [7:13] The attributes you need to reach success
• [9:44] Tools + techniques + strategies to improve
• [12:14] Digital selling dos and don’ts
• [15:17] Why consistency and persistence are key

How to improve digital selling capabilities

Things can change in a moment. Even as things begin to open, Bill doubts that we’ll return to how things used to be. He believes we’ll be looking at a hybrid model for companies where many more people will work from home. McKinsey reported that 75% of buyers are saying that when they get back in the office, they’d prefer initial meetings to be conducted virtually. 

People need digital communication to set up meetings and have the meetings. Companies need to support their reps with decent technology (camera, microphones, laptop, etc.) and teach them how to use it so they’ll be successful. 

Bill’s ideal digital selling strategy

Bill implores salespeople: Don’t try to build relationships with mass outreach. Use social selling to build relationships. You use digital outreach—like an email campaign—to get valuable information out. The second part—using social selling to build relationships—means you need to slow your outreach to increase your outcome. You have to go fast to go slow. 

So you have to identify social tactics that will build relationships and credibility and build a cadence around that. Don’t just blindly connect with people and pitch your product because they’re your ideal client. You need to identify them, view their LinkedIn profile (or other social platforms), and engage with their content. That gives you a reason to connect with them. Once you’ve done that, you need a well-crafted welcome message with a piece of content that’s educational and ready to send them if they want it. 

When you do this consistently, it builds relationships that lead to more sales conversations. It takes time—but you don't end up burning people. When you do mass outreach and you get a conversion rate of 5–10%, that’s considered successful. But what are you doing to the other 95% of people? When you slow your outreach, you aren’t burning those that aren’t responding. 

Tools + techniques + strategies to improve

Bill believes that much of digital selling will have to be video, which means you have to be comfortable in your own skin. You also have to be authentic and comfortable talking about yourself in a way that shows people that you’re human. You have to be open to learning new technology, tactics, and strategies. You have to be adaptable. Lastly, you must be consistent with digital and social selling. People have to get used to you. It develops a relationship and credibility—that is what makes a difference in your digital selling efforts. 

Video isn’t the future—it’s the here and now. If you’re not using it, you’re being left behind. If you hate the way you look and sound in a video, guess what? You look and sound the same in a physical meeting. It’s not different and you have to get used to it. Treat the camera as someone’s face and look them in the eye when you speak. Eye contact builds trust and it’s no different with virtual communication. All prospects, clients, former clients, etc. are all people. Digital selling can seem impersonal, but you can really create a connection across a screen. 

Digital selling dos and don’ts

Bill shares a few things to keep in mind with digital and social selling: 

1. Make sure that you’re authentic no matter what medium you’re using. Don’t mislead or manipulate. Don’t give false compliments 
2. You must understand the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication. In Jeb Blount’s book, “Virtual Selling,” he shares that asynchronous communication is the giving of information. Synchronous communication is a conversation. You have to know the difference between the two and you have to earn the right for a sales conversation. 
3. Stop practicing the golden rule and practice the platinum rule. Part of virtual selling is passing along valuable information. Bill notes that “We always tell people what we want to say, not what they want to hear.” The platinum rule? Do unto others as they want to be done unto. It essentially means you need to find out what your prospects care about and tell them what they want to know. 

Bill shares a digital sales story that demonstrates the need for consistency and persistence. Listen to the whole episode to learn more!

Resources & People Mentioned

• Virtual Selling by Jeb Blount
• The McKinsey article

Connect with Bill McCormick

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

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• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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Audio Production and Show notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

How do you supercharge your social selling? According to Janice B Gordon, one of the steps is keeping your social selling content relevant to your customer. You also have the freedom to showcase your personality and form connections. Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to hear the 7 strategies Janice uses to supercharge social selling effectiveness!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:03] Keep your social selling content relevant
• [2:22] How to improve digital selling capabilities
• [4:32] 7 strategies to supercharge your social selling effectiveness
• [8:07] The attributes that help a social seller succeed
• [11:12] Tools + techniques to improve digital selling
• [13:22] Top 3 digital selling dos and don'ts
• [16:22] You never know who’s reading your content

How to improve digital selling capabilities

As the world is coming out of the pandemic, everyone is online. Janice points out that if your customers are in the digital pond, you have to be right there with them. 89% of top-performing salespeople find great success on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. Janice also shares that 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of executives use social media to make buying decisions. They’re influential, they have large budgets, and they buy frequently. That’s why it’s important to sell online.

Organizations need to train and coach alongside the seller. They often just give them training on selling and shove them off and say “Go and do it.” Janice emphasizes that it just doesn’t work. There needs to be a fundamental mindset shift, especially for an older person. It can take them longer. You need to develop and move people from where they are one level at a time. You’ve got to walk alongside the salesperson until they get it. 

7 strategies to supercharge your social selling effectiveness

Social selling is about finding relevant people to have a relevant conversation to serve them more efficiently. Relevant people are ideal customers, stakeholders, and influencers. You have to understand your target market so you know they are relevant to your particular goal. A relevant conversation demonstrates that you understand what they’re looking for, what’s useful to them, and what will help move them forward. In this episode, Janice shared 7 things that can help you do that.

1. Nail down your ideal customers (the people that love what you do).
2. Define and optimize your personal profile for sales. Your profile is the window to your expertise and personality. 
3. If you have a website, people can find you through content on LinkedIn, which might drive them to download something on your website. People spend far too much time on their websites, not enough on their social profiles. If that profile doesn’t represent you, they won’t travel through it. 
4. Engage and connect rather than connect and engage. You do this with your personality. Engaging comes with understanding your audience and getting on their radar.
5. Create visibility through your content that both engages and educates. It’s got to be relevant to them and help move them forward.
6. Turn social conversations into sales opportunities. Social selling is about developing relevant conversations with relevant people. Ultimately, you want it to lead to sales. Take the social conversation offline (or online) to a targeted meeting with them where they know you’ll talk about a solution with them.
7. Create a social selling customer growth plan. Once you understand your customers, you need to systemize the process so it is scalable. You want to attract more people to have more conversations to create more sales opportunities. 

The attributes that help a social seller succeed

Social selling is about building opportunities to have relevant conversations. But you have to have confidence in your abilities. That’s why someone needs to walk with you to help develop the skills and confidence you may not have yet. 

Janice believes that you have to engage with personality. Use your humor, your quirky stance on the world, and make it personal. You need a tribe of people that identify with your core values and your interests. It gives you a great starting point. You need to confidently talk about personal things that will engage other people. You have to do this to show that you’re three-dimensional. Janice recommends that you: 

1. Share three pieces of content and ask questions over a couple of weeks. Why? To engage with the people that answer. A question develops into a conversation. 
2. Co-create with the customer. Understand that you don’t have the answer to everything. But by developing your listening and questioning skills, you’ll co-create a solution to get more buy-in. 
3. Lastly, you must love what you do. If you do, you’ll make a difference. 

What are some tools and techniques to improve digital selling? Keep listening for Janice’s thoughts!

Top 3 digital selling dos and don'ts

What are Janice’s dos and don’ts? 

• Never contact anyone unless you’ve done your research on them. You must have a feel of who the person is and what they’re about—even if you have to speak to someone else first. Why? First impressions count.
• Always use that sense of someone in your connection. Connect with them using your personality. 
• Never connect and sell immediately on LinkedIn. No one wants to hear a pitch immediately. 
• Don’t wrap a pitch telling someone about yourself. They never asked.
• Instead, ask them a question about something you’ve already read on their blog. Ask about them and their interests. Let them know you want to learn more. 
• Do not connect and engage—engage and connect. 

Read their blogs and posts, like and comment. When you comment intelligently, you’re demonstrating an interest in them. You can start a conversation. When you connect with them, they’ll recognize you and be excited for the conversation. 

In this episode, Janice also shares a story that drives home the point that you never know who’s reading your content—so keep them coming. 

Resources & People Mentioned

• Business Evolution by Janice B Gordon
• Social Buying Meets Social Selling

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Digital selling is the current evolution of sales and marketing. Organizations have to evolve—or get left behind. They need to identify and connect with customers in ways they haven’t before. Technology enables them to do it faster, more efficiently, and more frequently resulting in better outcomes. 

The idea is to be smarter, efficient, and have more targeted selling activities. This should include tools and processes to engage and sell to a customer. It’s engaging in things like digital presentations, videos, digital sales collateral, email campaigns, AI, automation, your CRM, etc. Want to learn more? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented with Justin Zappulla!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:13] The difference between digital selling and social selling
• [2:28] How to improve your digital selling capabilities
• [3:05] Justin’s perfect digital selling strategy
• [4:15] The attributes + characteristics of a successful digital seller
• [5:28] Focus on the virtual sales call
• [6:53] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [9:01] Justin’s favorite digital selling story

Justin’s perfect digital selling strategy

Justin believes that any great sales strategy begins with the customer, which is why you must take the time to map the customer journey. How do your customers identify, evaluate, and make purchasing decisions? You then build your sales strategy around that. Justin notes that a typical buyer’s journey has three phases, consisting of awareness, consideration, and making the decision.

So you have to focus on how you’re enabling tools, technology, data, and the sales and marketing function to drive the best outcome at each of those stages of the buyer’s journey. How can you leverage data to make better decisions? What digital tools can be implemented by sales or marketing to get a better outcome?

What are the attributes + characteristics of a successful digital seller? Listen to hear Justin’s thoughts!

Focus on the virtual sales call

What’s the area that will give you the most impact? According to Justin, it’s the sales call. During the pandemic, sellers couldn’t meet face-to-face with customers. They learned to leverage Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, etc. to hold sales calls. In this new virtual world, Justin emphasizes that it’s critical to develop the skills needed to execute that virtual sales call. It’s the new way modern sellers will connect with customers and paramount to master. 

Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts

Justin shares some of his tips to improve your digital sales: 

• Engage your customers online. Don’t be afraid of this. Your customers are connecting in different ways, so must you. 
• Learn technology. Make it part of your skillset so you can confidently move through the various stages of the sales process leveraging technology.
• Be open to doing things differently. Great salespeople are looking for ways to improve and evolve. 
• Don’t fight the change. It’s a natural progression. Even though it was thrust upon the world, Justin believes we would’ve landed here anyway. 
• Don't try to do everything at once. Take one bite at a time to get where you want to go. 
• Don’t panic. Understand that this is natural and enjoy it. 

Justin’s favorite digital selling story

Early in 2020, Justin was on the buyer side of a sales call. It was executed seamlessly. The rep running the presentation was adept at the program. He toggled the views so each participant could see each other and make eye contact. He seamlessly transitioned to the documents and data they were presenting. They used animation tools to highlight key points. They moved seamlessly through each team member that was speaking. It felt natural without being choppy and saying things like “Can you see my screen.” They were well prepared.

Justin got off that call and went “Wow. This will change how salespeople sell forever.” Moving calls to video and sharing media are the new skills salespeople need to develop. Sales have evolved almost overnight into a new format. This is what high-performing sellers need to do to be successful with sales calls. 

Connect with Justin Zappulla

• Connect on LinkedIn
• Follow on Twitter

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• LinkedIn
• Twitter 

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Nearly everyone has moved to digital selling for the last year or so. Even though things are opening, there will continue to be a digital component or hybrid model in play. Plus, organizations are enjoying the cost-savings from doing virtual meetings. Julie Hansen points out that Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales will take place virtually. 

Organizations need to have a strategy in place to handle the continued transition. How can they improve it? According to Julie, organizations need to focus on making a human connection through technology. How can you connect with people on the other side of the screen? Julie shares her thoughts in this episode of Sales Reinvented! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:04] The difference between digital and social selling
• [1:38] Why is digital selling so important?
• [3:50] Julie’s digital selling strategy
• [7:29] Attributes + characteristics of a great digital salesperson
• [9:13] Tools + techniques + strategies
• [11:25] Top 3 dos and top 3 don’ts
• [13:53] Julie’s favorite digital selling story

Improve digital selling by forming connections

Most companies have enough technology and tools in place to be successful with digital selling. However, a successful strategy begins with taking the tools you have and learning how to connect with someone through a camera. You have to learn to understand what the customer is feeling or seeing on the other side of the screen. It’s an art and a science. You can’t do the same things you’d do in person and expect it to translate through video. It’s why people don’t feel seen or heard. How do you create an in-person experience in a virtual world? It’s not all about technology. 

Julie believes that you have to learn how to make eye contact and read on-screen body language. If you can’t do that, you’ll make wrong assumptions, miscommunicate, and misinterpret what’s being said. You have to engage someone with a small amount of real estate. You need to understand how your customer is experiencing the interaction. Until you do that, you aren’t creating that in-person experience. It can be as simple as looking at the camera when they’re speaking to you instead of watching the image of them. You have to adapt.

Attributes + characteristics of a great digital salesperson

Julie notes that you need all the same characteristics selling digitally as you do in person—credibility, an interest in others, empathy, curiosity, and trustworthiness. But she emphasizes that those that are successful in the digital world are those that are adaptable. You can’t just “ride it out,” you have to adapt and change from what you’ve done before. If you don’t, you’ll struggle. 

The salespeople that recognize they want to have a deeper connection with their customers and make the virtual experience fulfilling and meaningful are those that will succeed. empathy, curiosity, and other traits won’t show up in a video if you don’t know how to use them properly. Someone won’t feel empathy if you aren’t making eye contact. They won’t feel cared about if your face is a blank slate. You may feel all of those things but must communicate them. Julie shares, “It doesn’t exist if the camera doesn’t see it.” 

Tools + techniques + strategies

Julie sees that people tend to be very passive virtually. People show up like they’re sitting in front of a screen. They’re in receiving mode and settled into a blank “resting business face.” If you’re not aware that it’s typical on-screen behavior, you may panic. One strategy is to learn how to recognize on-screen behavior and how to interact and break through the passive cycle. Julie shares a few dos and don’ts that can help you do that:

1. Do look at the camera as much as possible. It should be about 80% of the time in person and especially digitally. 
2. Look at a camera when you’re asking a question. The person on the receiving end will feel like you’re talking to them.
3. Use gestures if it comes naturally. If you don’t do what comes naturally, it will destroy your energy.
4. Don’t turn your camera off just because your customer doesn’t have their camera on. It’s not a great excuse. They'll benefit from seeing you.
5. Don’t jump from call to call. You have to stop and regain your energy. The camera reads energy and sales itself is the transfer of energy. 
6. Don’t forget about your face. You need to know what it’s saying. You think you look happy but your face isn’t communicating it. Use your face to communicate emotions and give context and meaning to what you’re saying. 

It’s about connecting with your audience

Julie had a coaching call with a salesperson. The business development rep was sent to her because he couldn’t convert calls to demos. She watched some of his recordings and pointed out two things that were impacting his presentations:

• He wasn’t making eye contact. He didn’t seem engaged and looked down when he asked questions.
• When the customer’s opened up and shared, his face seemed blank; devoid of concern or empathy. 

They worked through sharing how you feel with your face and making eye contact. The next month, he converted 20% of his calls to demos. It was all about the connection with his audience. At the end of the day, it is your connection with the buyer that makes a sale, not the tools or technology. 

Resources & People Mentioned

• Selling On-Video Master Class

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Many organizations are revising their go-to-market strategies to include digital and social selling. But what should that process look like? How can you find success if you’ve only known a world of traditional sales? Shane Gibson—the co-author of Real Results in a Virtual Economy—shares some of his tips and strategies in this episode of Sales Reinvented. Check it out! 

Outline of This Episode

• [1:10] The difference between digital and social selling 
• [2:45] Why digital selling is important in today’s world
• [5:15] Shane’s blueprint for a digital selling strategy
• [9:33] The virtual sales competency map
• [13:48] Tools + techniques + strategies to improve digital selling 
• [17:59] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
• [22:28] Shane’s favorite digital selling story

Why is digital selling important in today’s world?

What can organizations do to improve their digital selling capabilities? Everyone was forced to sell remotely because of the Coronavirus pandemic. We’ve had seven years of digital adoption happen in a year, where the consumer—both business and individuals—have made the majority of purchasing decisions digitally. It’s a larger market accustomed to making decisions remotely. Shane clearly believes that’s not going to stop. 

Shane shares that most people don’t have the budget to fly their sales teams around the world. So you have to knock on people’s doors using digital tools. You have to learn to think like digital-first sales organizations. Why is it so important? Gartner predicted that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales will be conducted digitally. 

Shane’s digital selling blueprint

Shane starts with the customer and works his way backward. He notes that sales leaders fall in love with the tools all the time. The challenge with digital tools is that they’re thrown at you and you get excited about them. Shane emphasizes that you need to get excited about your customer first. 

Your strategy needs to be customer-centric. What channels are your customers on? What platforms are they making purchasing decisions on? What is their buying process? How do they use digital tools in that decision-making process? How can you develop a process that enables the buyer?

Your customer should be the #1 focus

It’s time to move from giving salespeople the tools they need to giving the customer the tools they need. Up to 80% of the customer buying cycle happens before the sales organization knows they exist. So you must become the #1 source for self-education for potential customers. Content marketing specific to your target niche is a vital part of the sales process.

You must first understand your niche. The #1 challenge for most sales organizations is getting the first conversation with a prospect. You have to move from a focus on closing to a focus on starting the conversation. This starts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and even chatbots on websites. The goal should be starting contextual conversations with the customer and curating content that resonates with them.

What is Shane’s “Principle of Context?” Listen to learn more about the importance of context! 

Shane’s virtual sales competency map

What do sales professionals need to master to become successful with digital selling? Shane shares his virtual competency skills to master: 

1. Sales mastery: People spend too much time on social channels or playing with data, and spend less time on people skills. But you’re still selling to people. You have to master relational selling skills.
2. Networking skills: You have to be good at content creation, curation, and online conversation.
3. Technology fluency: This is the next hurdle a salesperson must master. Can you speak tech? Interpret data? Are you great at learning and adapting to new tools successfully? 
4. Virtual communications: Are you good at disseminating information digitally? What about broadcasting digitally? Can you easily jump on a zoom call or a podcast? Are you savvy with multi-platform writing skills?
5. Virtual soft skills and right brain sales skills: Artificial intelligence automates everything that’s repetitive. If you’re a cut-and-paste type of salesperson, everything you do can be automated. Your safe place is right-brain thinking. Can you negotiate and build rapport? Are you creative? Are you good at networking and prospecting? These are key skills that will become the biggest differentiator for salespeople in their organizations. 

What are Shane’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts? Listen to find out! 

Resources & People Mentioned

• Real Results in a Virtual Economy by Dr. Denis Cauvier & Shane Gibson
• Guerrilla Social Media Marketing by Jay Levinson & Shane Gibson
• B2B Sales Interactions

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Why is credibility so important for salespeople? Does it impact prospecting and lead generation more than one might think? In this episode of Sales Reinvented, Lee Smith argues that credibility is the thing that sets you apart—and you need to embrace it. 

Lee Smith is the CEO and Founder of SalesFuel. He is also the author of “SalesCred,” and the international bestseller “Hire Smarter, Sell More!” He’s uniquely qualified to share prospecting and lead generation dos and don’ts. Don’t miss it!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:10] Prospecting + lead generation
• [1:53] Why are they important?
• [2:33] How buyers qualify you
• [3:49] The three components of credibility
• [5:38] Improve your preparation and discovery
• [7:16] Lee’s top 3 dos and don’ts

Credibility is how buyers qualify you

Successful lead generation and prospecting are all about credibility. Lee emphasizes that too many times salespeople focus on whether or not they fit the ICP, are a marketing or sales qualified lead, etc. He looks at it differently. 

Buyers are looking to qualify you and determine if you’re credible. Do they respond to emails? Do they answer your calls? Do they invite you to compete for the business? 59% of buyers are researching the sellers before meeting with them. They want to know if you’re useful—or a waste of their time. 

They go on LinkedIn, check your website, and do internet searches. If they find nothing—or don’t like what they see—you won’t get invited to the table. Who do you have the most credibility with so you can earn their trust? 

The three components of credibility

You have to be known. You have to show that you have the business acumen and experience to prove that you can help their business, help them achieve their goals, and help them solve their problems.

You have to be likable. Show buyers that you like and respect them. Show up on time, don’t take advantage of them, and don’t pretend to be what you’re not. Don’t try to trick them. You have to be trustworthy and full of integrity. You have to show authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy.

Resilience is key. You will face adversity. You will have doors slammed in your face. You have to learn the lesson from the loss and take it forward and do a better job next time.

Don’t neglect preparation and research

Lee implores salespeople to improve their pre-call preparation skills. Do your research up front and don’t walk in empty-handed—or you’ll walk out empty-handed. You must provide value that is relevant to your buyer. 

You have to ask smart questions. Then you have to shut up and listen to them all the way through. You’ll often get the most important information at the end of someone’s answer. Then you have to be curious and ask follow-up questions. 

The person asking questions leads the conversations. If you’re credible, they’re more likely to answer your questions honestly because they know you can help and won’t misuse the information. It gives you the leverage you need to create a strong offer and close the deal.

What are Lee’s top 3 prospecting and lead generation dos and don’ts? Listen to find out!

Credibility attracts the customers you want

A company was just bought out and was being pushed to do things they weren’t comfortable with. The person who had just taken over the team had listened to Lee’s podcast and was aware of him. Because of credibility that Lee had built through articles, his podcast, other companies that he’d worked with, made him top of mind. So Lee was brought in to work with this group.

Credibility allowed him to attract the type of client he wanted to do business with. Lee believes your credibility acts as a magnet. It either attracts people to you or repels them away from you. He notes that “The more credibility you have today, the easier sales become tomorrow.”

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In today's episode of Sales Reinvented, we do a special episode exchange with the Outside Sales Podcast. Steve Benson interviews legendary sales author Victor Antonio. They discuss the importance of the sales presentation process and how to get in front of any objection. Victor talks about the “Hero Story” process and how to gain the confidence of your prospect. This episode is packed with useful information that will help you master your sales presentations. Don’t miss it!

Outline of This Episode

• [1:22] More about Victor Antonio
• [2:22] Why you need a presentation process
• [7:16] How to properly uncover objections
• [11:58] The structure of a great presentation
• [15:23] The structure of the hero story
• [21:15] How to sell a similar product
• [23:37] How to show a prospect social proof
• [28:41] How to move toward the ask
• [31:06] Learn to pivot on the fly
• [33:26] Steve’s “Sales in 60 seconds” segment
• [35:46] The best way to practice presentations 
• [38:18] The first step to master sales presentations 
• [46:28] How to connect with Victor Antonio

Why you need a presentation process

Victor points out that everyone has a sales process. But somewhere in that process, you have to give a presentation. Most people don’t talk about the fact that there is a process to that presentation. He needs to answer these two questions first: 

1. Who is your audience going to be?
2. What are their pain points? 

Before Victor does a keynote or a presentation, he asks his customers to let him talk to salespeople to see what they’re struggling with. They give him the blueprint for what he says from the stage. It’s also important to use their language when he talks to them about their pain.

Victor likes to use the iceberg analogy. You can only see 10% of an iceberg, the other 90% is underwater. Most salespeople talk about features, benefits, and advantages. Customers focus on quality, service, and price. Most salespeople don’t look at the unstated or latent needs. 

If you understand what’s holding a customer back from a buying decision, you can sell more effectively when you present. You need to find the 90% of issues below the iceberg and address them. Listen to hear Victor and Steve walk through a hypothetical scenario to drive the point home. 

How to properly uncover objections

Victor recommends getting all of your salespeople together and asking: “What is holding back our customers from buying?” Remove features, benefits, advantages, quality, service, and price from the equation. What’s left? You’ll end up with a laundry list of things holding them back. Which ones come up the most commonly? You can figure out what the latent needs are. 

You can then bring these concerns up in a sales presentation proactively before they even come up as an objection. Victor will go into a sales presentation and raise the objection himself. Why? Because when you raise the objection, you control the objection and how you can dispose of it. If the customer brings it up, you’re defending yourself—and less likely to change their mind. 

The structure of a great presentation

Victor folds a sheet of paper in half four separate times. Once he unfolds it, he’s left with 16 squares. That is how you begin your presentation layout. Each box represents a slide. He chooses what he wants to start with at the beginning to make an impact. By the 3rd or 4th slide, he’s introducing the first objection. If you continue to interlace common objections into your presentation, you’ll feel the resistance lessen. 

He notes that the biggest mistake outside salespeople make is that they go in and share who they are, what the agenda is, and background about the company. Then they talk about their mission statement and other businesses they’ve worked with. They’ve spent the first 5–10 minutes talking about themselves. The customers don’t care. Those minutes are the most valuable time you have most—most people waste it.

Instead, start by demonstrating that you understand their pain. Spend the 5–10 minutes on them and they’ll be ready to listen to you. How does he work the product and conclusion in using the hero story method? Listen to hear what his structure looks like. 

How to move toward the ask

You have to guide toward your close. It begins once you present your solution. You’re blocking objections and reducing resistance. As you show something, you look for confirmation. You’re conversing with them. Share how you do things and share insight—information beyond the obvious. When you get “huh” or “I didn’t know that” types of responses, you know you’re doing well in your presentation. 

When you get to the end, it’s a natural ask: “We’ve gone through all of these features. Is there any reason we couldn’t start a demo next week to see how this works? You can then look at the data to see if it makes sense.” 63% of salespeople don’t ask for the order or the next stage in the process. 

What can you do to pivot on the fly? What’s the best way to practice presentations? How should you practice to master sales presentations? Listen to the whole episode to hear more of Victor’s expert insight!

Resources & People Mentioned

• Victor’s Sales Training Courses

Connect with Steve Benson

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Connect with Victor Antonio

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More about the Outside Sales Talk Podcast

Here at the Outside Sales Podcast, we realized that while there were many sales focused Podcasts out and about, there weren’t any specific to Outside Sales. We wanted to change that. That’s why we created this space where everything is about OUTSIDE SALES. Host Steve Benson, CEO and founder of Badger Maps, talks to industry leaders and experts to learn the strategies and tactics that make them successful in Outside Sales. Hop on to discover practical tips on how to sell at peak performance.

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