Crevan O’Malley is a sales leader with over 20 years of experience in the Tech sector including time with tech giants like Dell and Oracle and is currently the Sales Director at EMEA HubSpot.

In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Crevan shares how to rebuild your post-COVID sales pipelines using research from HubSpot’s recent 2021 Sales Enablement report.

Resources:

Hubspot.com

Crevan on LinkedIn

HubSpot Report: 2021 Sales Enablement

Transcript:

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Crevan O’Malley:

Sales people generally are optimistic people. This is a great day. I think we’re hopefully on the way out of the difficult period we’ve had in 2020. Yeah, the data said to us that 40% are less likely to hit their targets. I think people would probably be shocked. That’s quite a dramatic percentage of sales individuals, sales teams, organisations.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, Sales Nation. My name is Will Barron and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast. The world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have the absolute legend, Crevan O’Malley. He is the EMEA sales director over at hubspot.com. He’s got over 20 years experience in the tech sector, and on today’s episode, we’re getting into how you can rebuild your pipeline post-COVID in 2021 and beyond. Everything that we talk about in this episode is available in the show notes over at salesman.org. And with that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

Will Barron:

We’re going to attempt to cover a topic that is going to be incredibly valuable to the audience today for all of the individual sales contributors. And that is how we can rebuild our sales pipelines post this COVID shenanigans that hopefully as we record this, today’s the first day that a post-trial vaccine has been given to someone in the UK. I think this is a world first. So hopefully we’re coming towards the end of some of this shenanigans. So a lot of salespeople listening to this are going to have their pipelines have been battered, they’ve been bruised, and hopefully we can put them back together at the end of this episode.

 

The Percentage of Organisations That Generally Miss Their Revenue Targets Compared to 40% of Businesses Expected to Miss Revenue Goals in 2020 · [01:38] 

 

Will Barron:

So with that said, let’s start with some data rather than just us both throwing anecdotes at each other. So a recent HubSpot sales enablement survey showed that 40% of businesses are expected to miss their revenue goals for this year. So can you put perhaps a bit of context on this? And again, you may not know this off the top of your head, but what percentage of organisations generally miss their targets versus this 40% figure that we’re facing right now?

 

Crevan O’Malley:

Yeah, it’s really, really interesting bit of research that we did recently. And I think to the point about the vaccination, definitely salespeople generally are optimistic people. This is a great day. I think we’re hopefully on the way out of the difficult period we’ve had in 2020. Yeah, the data said to us that 40% are less likely to hit their targets. I think people would probably be shocked. That’s quite a dramatic percentage of sales individuals, sales teams, organisations.

 

Crevan O’Malley:

If we break down the data a little bit, I think maybe it’s not as shocking.

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 

* Intelligent sales demo automation * How only 24% of salespeople are high performers* We say “bye-bye” to trade shows

And much more!

This Week In Sales hosts:

* Will Barron – Salesman.org/Youtube* Victor Antonio – Youtube.com/user/salesinfluence

Topics:

Salesforce: “State of Sales” report 

Salesforce surveyed nearly 6,000 sales professionals. Double blind survey from May-June 2020. 

Sales teams using AI has increased from 21% in 2018 ro 37% in 2020. High performing salespeople are 2.8x more likely to use AI. 

63% of sales professionals are confident in their organisation’s ability to train/retrain salespeople. 

70% of orgs are retaining field sales reps to sell from home.

72% of salespeople say they’ve been “productive from home” during the COVID pandemic. BUT 48% say they’re less productive than they used to be. 

c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/research/Salesforce-State-of-Sales-4th-Ed.pdf

Consensus – Intelligent Demo Automation: 

The latest research makes it clear that the B2B buying process has become too complex and difficult and buyers today crave companies and experienced guides who make the process easier.

Focus on making buying easier and your prospects will buy from you faster and more often.  Sales teams can shorten the sales cycle by as much as 68% when they learn to equip their champion—the people promoting their solution inside the target account. 

Allego Expands Sales Learning and Enablement Market Leadership with Acquisition of Refract

Allego – Transform your organization with mobile, interactive learning and enablement technology built for today’s distributed teams.

Refract – Refract analyses every call and demo, profiling the revenue defining moments, revealing what leads to successful outcomes for your team today.

allego.com/news/allego-expands-sales-learning-and-enablement-market-leadership-with-acquisition-of-refract/

Bye Bye Tradeshows: B2B trade shows won’t recover for years

Live events like tradeshows and conferences have traditionally ranked as one of the top sources of leads, but that all but dissolved in 2020. As a result of the pandemic, the event industry is a shell of its former self, according to a piece by MarketingCharts citing data from PwC:

“PwC estimates that the U.S. trade show market will be cut in size by almost two-thirds this year.”

swordandthescript.com/2020/10/b2b-marketing-budget-trade-shows/

Chorus.ai launches “momentum”

It allows you to search for things like – Decision maker enga...

In today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast, Jason Bay of BlissfulProspecting.com explains what empathy-based objection handling is and how salespeople can leverage it to close more deals.

Resources:

BlissfulProspecting.com

Jason on LinkedIn

Transcript 

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast.

 

Jason Bay:

Cold calling and objection handling are usually the two biggest fears that I hear when we work with sales teams and individual reps. And with objection handling, if you think about where that fear comes from, it’s almost like what I hear a lot, and I’m sure you’ve done a lot of these interviews and work with a lot of folks, it’s like, “I don’t want to be salesy.”

 

Will Barron:

Hello, Sales Nation. My name is Will Barron and I’m the host of The Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have the absolute legend, he’s been on the show a couple of times now, we have Jason Bay of blissfulprospecting.com. And on today’s episode, we’re getting into what Jason calls, empathy-based objection handling. Now, this sounds a little bit airy fairy and wishy-washy, it’s truly not. It’s truly transformative. If you’re doing any type of outbound calls, emails, it’s valuable there for you.

 

What is Empathy-based Objection Handling and How Can Salespeople Leverage it to Close More Deals? · [01:09] 

 

Will Barron:

And so with that, let’s jump right into it. Okay. So, we’re going to dive into, and I’m not going to beat around the bush here, I’m going to ask you to explain this and if there’s a framework to describe it, but we’re going to talk about empathy-based objection handling. Jason, what the heck is empathy-based objection handling and how can we leverage it to get more deals done?

 

“Cold calling and objection handling are usually the two biggest fears that I hear when we work with sales teams and individual reps. And with objection handling, if you think about where that fear comes from, it’s almost like, “I don’t want to be salesy.” – Jason Bay · [01:15] 

 

Jason Bay:

Yeah. So, I would think about, cold calling and objection handling are usually the two biggest fears that I hear when we work with sales teams and individual reps. And with objection handling, if you think about where that fear comes from, it’s almost like what I hear a lot, I’m sure you’ve done a lot of these interviews and worked with a lot of folks, it’s like, “I don’t want to be salesy.” Right? “I don’t want to push too hard.” And I think they look at objection handling with like, “I need to get what I want out of this interaction with a prospect, and doing that doesn’t feel very good to me.” And being on the receiving end of that as a prospect, when I feel like someone just keeps pushing and pushing and pushing without acknowledging, that doesn’t feel very good either.

 

Jason Bay:

So, the empathy-based part is, how can I give the prospect what they need out of the interaction first? And then, I can ask for what I want. A way that I could explain this with an analogy is what I call the objection-rebuttal infinity loop. And if you picture an infinity symbol, right? A sideways eight. This is based off the relationship dance, by the way. So, I learned about this in couples therapy. So,

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 

* Salesforce buying Slack for 27 BILLION* Facebook acquiring a CRM company* What COVID means for the office space you used to work from

And much more!

This Week In Sales hosts:

* Will Barron – Salesman.org/Youtube* Victor Antonio – Youtube.com/user/salesinfluence

Topics:

Salesforce buys Slack for $27.7 billion

Messaging app Slack will be acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion in what will be the software company’s biggest acquisition to date. The deal is expected to complete during the second quarter of 2021, following regulatory approval and the usual round of box-ticking.

Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff, “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world,”

engadget.com/salesforce-buys-slack-210947704.html#comments

Facebook acquires Kustomer, a CRM start-up

By bringing Kustomer into the fold, Facebook will provide small businesses that use its service to advertise and sell goods more features to close sales through the social network’s services.

The deal was valued at a little more than $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter

cnbc.com/2020/11/30/facebook-acquires-kustomer-a-crm-start-up.html

Vengreso Launches FlyMSG, the Text Expander That Helps Salespeople Type Less, Sell More

Vengreso, the digital sales training and consulting service provider, today announces the launch of FlyMSG, the text expander tool that helps sales and marketing professionals type less and sell more.

Developed by a team of sales experts who know the pain points of the modern seller, the tool gives users quick access to presaved, customized messaging templates and is available for free as a Chrome extension.

prweb.com/releases/vengreso_launches_flymsg_the_text_expander_that_helps_salespeople_type_less_sell_more/prweb17574215.htm

A.I. video email automation 

They reached out with an interesting pitch to get on the Salesman Podcast. They used their own tool that converts text to a video, human avatar. At a glance it’s convincing but it’s obvious it’s not a real person if you listen to 20 seconds… 

rephrase.ai/

After Covid-19, Collaborative Learning Will Be Crucial For Sales Teams

According to a July 2020 McKinsey analysis, 96% of B2B sales teams have fully or partially shifted to remote selling. As many as 79% of B2B companies say they will likely sustain these shifts for 12 months or more beyond th...

Ed Barrett is the VP of Sales, EMEA Partner at HubSpot. He is an MBA graduate with 20 years of experience in commercial and people management across many different products and markets.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Ed and Will dive into the recent HubSpot 2021 Sales Enablement Report and look forward to how sales professionals can have success after COVID.

Resources:

HubSpot Report: COVID-19 Marketing And Sales Benchmark Data

HubSpot Report: 2021 Sales Enablement

Ed on LinkedIn

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Ed Barrett:

We can’t compare 2020 with, say, the recession of 2008, because a recession typically will bring down the whole economy and every segment of the economy, and that impacts sales, of course, and purchasing. This is different because we’ve seen some industries, some verticals actually explode. A lot of the way people think about this is themselves, and I’m working remotely, therefore how do I engage? But as salespeople, we’ve got to first think, “What’s the customer doing?” And if a third or a half of the customer… people were talking with them, engaging, are not going to be physically in the office, then face to face goes away, and you’re not going to be rocking up to their home and saying, “Hey, it’s me.” That’s not going to happen, so I think that’s a significant change.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron, and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast. The world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have the legend that is Ed Barrett. He is the senior director over at HubSpot for EMEA partner sales. And on today’s episode, we’re getting into the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey, which showed that 40% of London sales reps are failing. And Ed joins me on today’s episode to share what we can do about it and how we can turn this around. Everything that we talk about is available in the show notes of this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

58% of Sales Reps From The HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey Are Finding it Difficult or Predicting That They’re Going to Struggle Hitting Targets in 2020. Why Is This The Case? · [01:40] 

 

Will Barron:

On today’s show, we’re going to dive deeper into, and we’ve touched on it in other shows and in other episodes, the HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey. And we’re hopefully trying to answer the question and add a bit of value to the audience by answering the question, “Why is 40% of London’s sales reps failing?” And we’ll touch on what they should do about it, but let’s start with one data point and then we’ll see where we go from there. So, if 58% of sales reps from this HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey are finding it difficult or announcing that they’re going to find it difficult to hit target this year, how much of this is down to we’re just in an economic downturn, and how much of this is perhaps COVID laid on top of that, and how much of it is just sales is changing as well?

 

“We can’t compare 2020 with, say, the recession of 2008, because a recession typically will bring down the whole economy and every segment of the economy and that impacts sales and purchasing. This is different because we’ve seen some industries actually explode.

David Klättborg and Bora Brännström are the co-founders of Megadeals Advisory, where they help B2B companies doing large deals implement a scalable marketing and sales orchestration.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, David and Bora explain what a Mega Deal is, why you should care, and how to start closing more of them.

Resources:

David on LinkedIn

Bora on LinkedIn

Book: Megadeals

MegaDeals.com

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

David Klättborg:

It is great if you can close 10 deals instead of a mega deals. What we see in the research or what we saw in the research is that you actually tend to sign a mega deal out of a existing deal. So it’s very, very seldom that you go in and sign a mega deal, the first thing you do.

 

Bora Brännström:

To become a big B2B enterprise company, you can’t do it without doing mega deals.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Baron, and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have two legends. This is an incredible episode, we have David Klättborg and we have Bora Brännström from Megadeals Advisory which you can find over at megadeals.com. And that’s exactly what we’re getting into on today’s episode of the show, how to close a mega deal. One, what it is. We define it. Two, who you need on board. And then three, how you can qualify and start to move down this process of closing mega deals. Everything we talk about including the book is available in the show notes over at salesman.org. And with that, let’s jump right in. Today’s topic, we’re going to go a few steps further than we ever have done in the past. And we’re going to talk about how to close not just any deal, but a mega deal.

 

Why Would Salespeople Want to Close One Mega Deal Instead of 10 Smaller Ones? · [01:30]

 

Will Barron:

So just to tee up the conversation, and we’ll see where we go from here. But just to sell the audience on this idea of closing mega deals, why would I want to close one mega deal over 10 smaller ones? What is the benefits of going down this route and this approach?

 

“What we saw in the research is that you actually tend to sign a mega deal out of an existing deal. So it’s very, very seldom that you go in and sign a mega deal as the first thing you do.” – David Klattborg · [01:50] 

 

David Klättborg:

Well, I mean, it is great if you can close 10 deals instead of a mega deals. What we see in the research, or what we saw in the research is that you actually tend to sign a mega deal out of a existing deal. So it’s very, very seldom that you go in and sign a mega deal, the first thing you do. So start with 10 and then grow from there and a lot of people talk about cross selling, etc. But you often find the opportunities to do a mega deals within the accounts you actually have, by growing them. Also, it’s very important since in the research, we saw that 1% of the deals could actually stand for 80, 90% of of the revenue and the profit. So the importance of these deals are massive. So you don’t want to lose one of those accounts as well.

 

Will Barron:

Nicolas Vandenberghe is the CEO of Chili Piper, an Inbound Revenue Acceleration platform and the CEO KosmoTime, a Time Management app.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Nicolas shares the steps we need to take to accelerate our sales and we also get into all the experiments that he’s running over at Chili Piper.

Resources:

ChiliPiper.com

KosmoTime.com

Nicolas on LinkedIn

Book: Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success

Book: The Enigma of Reason

Book: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

Transcript:

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Nicolas Vandenberghe:

You read that something is a really good idea, so say a thought in your email. I ask you, put the title thought in an email. So it starts working, but then people get used to it and they recognise it as spam. We pattern recognise. And then that thing that used to work is now recognisable as spam and you delete it. All these techniques have a short lifespan.

 

Nicolas Vandenberghe:

You know, in the end of a sales call you say, put it in your own words. In your own words, what is it that you see in my product that can help you? But it’s phrasing in their own words. They convince themselves, or at least they make it clear why they should do it and they feel more committed.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron, and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. In today’s episode, we have the legend that is Nicolas Vandenberghe. He’s the CEO over at ChiliPiper.com.

 

Will Barron:

On today’s episode, we’re getting into how you can reduce the time from when a buyer puts up their hand and says, “Hey, I need help. I have a problem,” to when you, I, the salesperson, gets on the phone or a meeting with them and then solves these issues and gets deals done. Everything we talk about in this episode is available in the show notes over at salesman.org. With that, let’s jump right into it.

 

Will Barron:

We’re going to dive into a topic today which I think is going to become increasingly important as buyers are working from home, sellers are working from home, and this is the speed from interaction to a salesperson engaging with a potential customer.

 

Is There Data That Proves Quicker Reaction Times Actually Lead to More Deals Being Closed? · [01:40] 

 

Will Barron:

But before we get into the hows and the whys of all of this, is there any data that shows that we should be focusing on the speed from a customer putting up their hand to a buyer engaging with them? Is there data that shows that quicker reaction times actually leads to more sales being closed?

 

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 

* Almost half of sales leaders have avoided the shift to remote selling* The UK see’s the biggest drop in economic output in 300 years* Salesforce rumoured to wanting to acquire Slack

And much more!

This Week In Sales hosts:

* Will Barron – Salesman.org/Youtube* Victor Antonio – Youtube.com/user/salesinfluence

Topics:

HubSpot Sales Enablement Survey: Rebuilding the UK’s new business pipeline

* Research found that 56% of UK businesses have seen their new business pipeline reduced because of COVID-19 and expect recovery to take 12 months* Almost half (48%) of UK businesses haven’t made any changes to support remote selling* While 64% of respondents are finding it more difficult to build relationships with prospects due to having less face-to-face contact* The research also found that 58% of sales representatives across the country feel it will be difficult to reach their targets by the end of the year* Younger people aged 18-40 are the most optimistic about their chances of meeting targets through November and December, and are 26% more optimistic than those over 55.* 22%) of sales representatives are looking to sell into new markets, showing the willingness to be flexible through the difficult times.

hubspot.com/sales-enablement-report?utm_campaign=Sell-smarter-grow-better&utm_source=homepage-banner

British Chancellor – Spending Review 

* Biggest drop in economic output in 300 years* He’s not expecting the economy to get back to pre-pandemic levels for two years* Unemployment predicted to rise to a peak next year of 2.6 million people in the UK. 

bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-55080606

Goldman Sachs said to cut ‘classic middle-aged males’ in equities trading

* One headhunter said most of those leaving are “classic middle-aged males” of the kind whose skills are increasingly being superannuated by technologists at all banks.

news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/3004890/goldman-cut-in-equities

5 Thoughts on Salesforce’s Reported Interest in Acquiring Slack

Why would the world’s biggest CRM software company be interested in buying a firm whose software is most commonly used by people to message their co-workers? It probably has a lot to do with how that software is now also increasingly used to interact with people at other firms via shared messaging channels

It’s quite an understatement to say that Salesforce, whose sales and marketing expenses still equal more than 40% of its revenue, both has tremendous go-to-market reach with enterprises and is considered to be very good at selling and marketing its wares.

Tim Clarke is the founder of UNCrushed.org, a platform and community for mental health awareness.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Tim shares practical strategies to help recognise and deal with B2B sales burnout.

Resources:

UNCrushed.org

The excellent UNCrushed content hub

Tim on LinkedIn

@TimxClarke

Book: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Book: Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Brene Brown’s TED Talk: Listening to Shame

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Tim Clarke:

Well, I think the first thing to do is just define what burnout is. It was interesting in the last year, the World Health Organisation, they actually recognised burnout as a legitimate medical diagnosis. So it kind of gives it kind of like a diction. If you go back multiple years, people would be like, “Well, it’s a choice.” One of the things I like to do is I have these three circles. And so on the inner circle is really looking at like, what are my behaviours? Am I isolating? Am I cutting myself off from people? Am I not putting in the hours that I should be at work?

 

Will Barron:

Hello sales nation. My name is Will Barron and I’m the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have the legend, he’s been on the show a few times now, the legend that is Tim Clarke. And he is the CEO of founder of uncrushed.org, which is a platform and a community for mental health awareness.

 

Will Barron:

And on today’s episode, we’re getting into B2B selling burnout, how you can recognise it, how you can deal with it and how you can approach your manager to set some boundaries, a whole tonne of other topics related to this as well. This is a really valuable episode for all salespeople so I’m glad you’re listening to it, or you’re watching it on YouTube if you’re watching the YouTube version of this right now. And with that, let’s jump right into it. Right. Well, on today’s episode, we’re going to get into a topic and we can go multiple ways of it, it’s a conversation, we’ll see where it goes.

 

What Percentage of Either Salespeople or Employees In General Face Burnout Each Year in Their Careers? · [01:40] 

 

Will Barron:

But I want to talk about how we can… The end of the goal, the goal of the show should be how we can avoid to having burnout to B2B sales and we’ll get into why I think B2B sales is particularly set up for burnout and a whole lot more. But, and I don’t want to put you on the spot here if you don’t have the numbers in front of you, but even anecdotally,

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at: 

* If insurance salespeople are now obsolete * Why selling practice might make perfect* If you should get paid daily rather than monthly

And much more!

This Week In Sales hosts:

* Victor Antonio – Youtube.com/user/salesinfluence* Will Barron – Salesman.org/Youtube

Topics:

Your car insurance salesman is now an AI bot connected to blockchain

Malta-based virtual assistant firm Vaiot has integrated IBM’s Watson Assistant with the Cosmos blockchain to sell car insurance.

The new platform features an end-to-end sales process that does not require human assistance to complete the car insurance contracts. The mobile app interacts with customers via voice or text, initially asking a series of questions to identify and suggest insurance options.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/your-car-insurance-salesman-is-now-an-ai-bot-connected-to-blockchain

X.ai

X.ai the leading meeting scheduling tool for individuals and teams, today announced a major update to their AI scheduling technology that lets their users request a meeting over email or Slack in any language.

https://salestechstar.com/sales-marketing/x-ai-adds-scheduling-support-for-different-55-languages/

MindTickle raises $100 million

Helps large and small businesses through it’s sales readiness platform has raised $100 million in venture funding.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/15/sales-readiness-platform-mindtickle-raises-100-million-led-by-softbank-vision-fund-2/

Prospify

Discover the proposal software that gives control and insight into the most important stage of your sales process. From design to sign-off, get the confidence and consistency to dominate your deals.

https://www.proposify.com/

Hold the Emoji and Other Tips for Successful Email Negotiations

According to 2019 research (that was recently published) by IACCM, a global contract management association, about 75 percent of contract negotiations are completely virtual.

https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/hold-the-emoji-and-other-tips-for-successful-email-negotiations-15581

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

UPtick enables reps to practice the real-life customer interactions they face. Like playing a video game, reps work their way through challenging scenarios and receive consistent, expert feedback from UPtick’s virtual coach.