Selling Made Simple, Salesman Podcast, This Week In Sales, And More...

Stop rushing to come second.

In sales second place doesn’t count. Only one salesperson wins the deal.

The flip-side? When you’re the best selling becomes easy.

People will fly across the world to visit the best restaurant.

People will wait in line for hours to get a piece of paper squiggled from the best athlete.

When you’re ill, you don’t ask for the second-best doctor. You’ll shout, demand and pay way over the market rate to speak to the best.

We all have limited time and so we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top. If you’re not the best salesperson, you don’t exist.

Our culture celebrates the best. It’s typical that the top salesperson in your industry makes 10 times more than the second best. Probably 100 times more than the 10th best seller.

It’s a steep curve.

There’s only room at the very top for a few people. That scarcity makes being number one worth something.

Do you want to earn more money? Get more respect? Want to stop cold calling and have buyers throwing themselves at you instead? Then become number one.

At this point you might be screaming in your head “of course I want to be the best”. But do you really? Where is the evidence?

What have you gone through that your competition hasn’t? What expertise have you developed that they don’t have? What audience have you slaved away to create that they don’t have access to because they’ve been watching game of thrones instead?

It’s easy being number one. It’s arduous work to get there.

If you want to dominate the mind of your buyer, become number one.

Not the number one generic salesperson in the world. There’s too much competition.

Become the number one salesperson for your specific product, in your specific industry, in your specific location, for your specific ideal buyer. That’s doable, right?

Being average is for losers.

Being number one makes selling simple.

Everybody loves a remarkable story.

The difference between an average story and a remarkable one is the amount of imagination that is captured.

Remarkable stories take your buyers somewhere new.

Remarkable stories aren’t always factual, but they are always consistent.

Buyers have a tough time working out if the hero was called Barry or Brian but they’re very good at sniffing out inconsistencies in how the story starts and ends.

Remarkable stories build trust.

In a world where nobody trusts anyone anymore stories are an increasingly powerful weapon of mass attention. We don’t trust the news. We don’t trust vaccine manufacturers. We don’t trust salespeople… unless they tell a remarkable story.

Remarkable stories don’t require high production values, slide decks or a conference room.

Either the buyer is eager to listen, or they’re not.

Remarkable stories are never aimed at an entire market.

What is remarkable to you isn’t remarkable to me. When you dumb down a story to make it fit for many, it becomes average to all. The most remarkable stories match the world view of a tiny audience and then the tiny audience amplifies it on your behalf.

Finally. remarkable stories don’t teach buyers anything new.

Instead, the very best stories agree with what the buyer already believes and makes them feel smart. The more secure you can make the buyer feel with your stories, the more likely they will be to buy your product.

Make more calls. Send more emails. Knock on more doors. Use more technology. More!

It doesn’t work.

The problem for most salespeople isn’t that they need more.

The problem is that they don’t know how to sell.

At a certain point, giving a racing driver more power, more grip, more downforce doesn’t make the car go faster.

Skill becomes the limiting factor.

Would I beat Lewis Hamilton in a race if my car had 20% more horsepower?

Heck no.

Would I be able to keep up with Lewis if I had an instructor next to me and another additional 50% horsepower?

Nope.

If your buyer doesn’t care about your story and the value that you deliver to the market, then it doesn’t matter how many times you reach out.

More isn’t the solution to your problem. Getting better at selling is the answer.

“So, Will you big smart arse, how do I get better at selling them?”

There are four steps –

* Personality – Become the person who is comfortable talking about money, being rejected, and doing the work.

* Process – Understand the step-by-step frameworks that take a person from prospect to buyer.

* Platform – Become known in your industry as an expert and shortcut the sales cycle by going straight to adding value.

* Performance – Turbocharge your efforts by becoming motivated, productive, and influential.

More interruption is lazy. It’s lazy because if you really did know how to sell, you’d impact your prospects rather than send them more crap.

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

* What omnichannel means for sales professionals

* Software to track sales commissions

* Conversational commerce

And much more!

NEWS:

Omnichannel in B2B sales: The new normal in a year that has been anything but

* ⅔ buyers prefer remote human interactions or digital self service

* Eight in ten B2B leaders say that omnichannel is as or more effective than traditional methods—a sentiment that has grown sharply throughout the past year—rising from 54 percent at the start of the pandemic to 83 percent in February 2021.

* B2B budget projections indicate a willingness to spend as well. Despite ongoing market volatility, six in ten respondents plan to maintain or grow their operating expenditure investments over the next five years. And nearly half (47 percent) plan to expand their capital expenditure over the same period

* Hybrid sales reps will soon become the most common sales role. With omnichannel established as the new buying norm, 64 percent of B2Bs intend to increase the number of hybrid sellers over the next six months

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/omnichannel-in-b2b-sales-the-new-normal-in-a-year-that-has-been-anything-but

QuotaPath raises $21.3M in Insight Partners-led round to help sales teams better track commissions

AJ Bruno, Cole Evetts and Eric Heydenberk founded QuotaPath with the mission of helping “companies build and scale high-performing, motivated growth teams.”

The startup said it gives teams a way to streamline the commission process and avoid inaccurate budgets, incorrect payouts, and “unhappy sales reps due to poor sales commission planning, reporting and administration.”

Through real-time CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Close.com, sales reps are able to glean more insight into earnings and quota attainment, the company said.

“With QuotaPath, a sales team can forecast more earnings and create more goals around what they want to do,” Bruno said, “and connect those goals to the bottom line of the company.”

“With 10.5 million salespeople in the U.S., this is a very large market,” Bruno said.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/28/quotapath-raises-21-3m-in-insight-partners-led-round-to-help-sales-teams-better-track-commissions/

CM.com Recognized as a Major Player in the 2021 IDC MarketScape for the Worldwide Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) Market

CM.com, a global leader in cloud software for conversational commerce, has been positioned as a Major Player in the 2021 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Communication Platform as a Service Vendor Assessment.

Create excellent conversational customer experiences and turn any conversation into a conversion.

I recently bought a new car. I wanted an estate (or a wagon if you’re in the US) as I needed something I could transport Walter in for our adventures.

I could have spent £10k on a used Skoda Superb estate or I could have spent £100k on a new Audi RS4 estate.

So how did I know the right price to pay? I needed to go somewhere between useless and useless.

* Spend too little and the buyer gets “useless”. They’ve spent money but they get a product that doesn’t work.  This is going cheap on a software project and ending up with a tool that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.* Spend just enough and the software will work but it won’t be fun or intuitive.* In the Goldilocks Zone the software will fulfill its original promise. It won’t be particularly fancy, but you’ll be able to leverage it to drive revenue, save costs or eliminate complexity. This is what we want to be selling to the buyer.* Spend too much and you’ll get additional features or luxuries that don’t make a difference to the output.* Go even further and you’re back to “useless”. This is when you must reduce functionality to justify the price. Like owning a watch covered in diamonds. You’ll never wear the stupid diamond watch because you’re scared of getting robbed and so it’s less useful than a cheaper one that you will wear every day made from stainless steel.

The goal of B2B selling is to drive revenue, reduce costs or eliminate complexity. As soon as you communicate more than that, the buyer see’s you as overpriced. If you don’t communicate one of these three things, they see you as cheap.

If you position yourself in the Goldilocks zone, it doesn’t matter what your competitors pricing is.

* If the competitor is cheaper than you, then communicate to the buyer that what they’re getting isn’t going to work.* If the competition is more expensive, communicate to the buyer that they’re spending on things that don’t make a difference.

This forces the competition to try and justify their pricing against your pricing. This makes you look strong.

The more sensible your pricing looks, the more likely a risk averse, scared of change buyer (which makes up 99.9% of the marketplace) will buy from you. Sensible wins.

On this episode of the Social Selling Show, Will Barron and Daniel Disney talk about your B2B sales cadence and when to social selling touches.

Social Selling Show Hosts:

* Daniel Disney is the King of Social Selling, a best selling author of the Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide and keynote speaker.

* Will Barron is the founder of Salesman.org where he helps B2B sales professionals master modern sales in just 28 days.

Transcript:

Will Barron:

This episode of the show is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show. My name is Will Barron. I’m the founder of salesman.org. And joining me, co-host to this show, the king of social selling, Daniel Disney. Daniel, how’s it going, mate?

 

Daniel Disney:

It’s going very well Will, excited to be back and digging into our next episode. This background shouldn’t be around for much longer. I’ve got some exciting furniture coming in the next week or two to turn this into the new Social Selling HQ. So hopefully in a couple of episodes time, we’ll be in a much more settled instead of box chaotic area. But excited to be back, Will.

 

What is a Sales Cadence? · [01:11]

 

Will Barron:

We should probably reveal the curtain a little bit, we do batch some of these episodes. So Daniel hasn’t been lazy if you see this episode a few weeks after the previous one, because we talked about you moving weeks ago now and anyone who follows you on social media as well, which will be a reasonable percentage of the audience, right? They might have seen that you’re moving house. I don’t know you did a LinkedIn post about it as well. So Daniel isn’t being lazy, we just batch some of these episodes together so they come out a few weeks after each one airs. But with that, I couldn’t get a good transition in the Daniel. I failed there slightly. We’re going to talk about cadences in this effort. I thought the episode podcast timelines I could together, but I couldn’t. We’re going to talk about cadences.

 

Will Barron:

Now I’m interested here in a few points to pick your brains on where social selling fits in with a more traditional sales cadence. And then cadence is on social media. Whether that be on LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever else as well, wherever we can find our potential customers, whether that’s its own conversation in its own right. But to get started, can you just give us an idea for someone who isn’t familiar with that word, cadence, perhaps someone like myself in medical device sales, who sold pretty much in person in field sales his whole career, what does cadence mean, especially in the world of selling via the internet?

 

Daniel Disney:

Cadence Will, it’s essentially a process. It’s a series of activities you do throughout the sales process, depending on which parts of it to either prospect or again, through any other parts of the sales process. So a common sales cadence around prospecting would be, maybe you try them on cold call, then you leave a voicemail, then you follow up by connecting on LinkedIn, then you send them an email. We’ll dig into all this today. But that is a cadence. It is a process. There are a lot of companies that don’t have a cadence out there. They don’t follow any guidance. And it’s very much just shooting in the wind as such. And the reality is once you have some structure, you start to see generally good increases in results....

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

* All the sales tech companies getting funding* Chorus.ai doing conversational intelligence within Zoom meetings* If this is the end of the traveling salesman

And much more!

News:

Outplay gets $7.3M from Sequoia Capital India to help outbound sales team scale their campaigns

The new capital will be used for tech development and hiring, and brings Outplay’s total raised so far to $9.3 million. Its previous funding was a $2 million raise from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge announced in March after Outplay took part in the program’s fourth cohort.

One major new feature is Magic Outbound Chat, a web chat box that is launched when a prospective customer clicks on an email link. Salespeople are notified and provided with context about the prospect. Laxman told TechCrunch that most chat boxes are designed for inbound sales teams, and Magic Outbound Chat has helped some of its teams grow their sales pipeline by 300%.

Magic outbound chat looks like a strong play moving forward.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/21/outplay-gets-7-3m-from-sequoia-capital-india-to-help-outbound-sales-team-scale-their-campaigns/

Chorus.ai Launches Conversational Intelligence App Within Zoom Meetings

Chorus.ai, a ZoomInfo company and Conversational Intelligence Platform leader for high-growth revenue teams, today announced the availability of the Chorus app for Zoom Video Communications, Inc. The new app brings Chorus’ Conversation Intelligence capabilities directly into the Zoom Meeting experience.

As an embedded experience accessible within Zoom Meetings, the Chorus app for Zoom enables revenue teams to be more engaged on calls, leading to stronger relationships and, in turn, higher conversion rates:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chorusai-launches-conversation-intelligence-app-within-zoom-meetings-301338581.html

Sales Impact Academy receives boost from Stage 2 Capital with $4 million investment

A growing go-to-market learning platform received a major boost forward today with the announcement that Stage 2 Capital would provide a $3 million seed round and $1 million in debt financing to fund additional educational content.

Sales Impact Academy Ltd., which started in 2019, has seen 900% growth in subscription revenue over the past 12 months by creating a live curriculum for sales teams taught by leading experts in the field.

https://siliconangle.com/2021/07/21/sales-impact-academy-receives-boost-from-stage-2-capital-with-4-million-investment-cubeconversations/

Can Sales Assessments Help Address High Sales Turnover Rates?

Would it surprise you to learn that the average turnover rate for salespeople is 34% and that nearly two-thirds of that churn is a result of “involuntary turnover”?

On this episode of the Sales Leadership Show, Tim and Marin share who’s responsible for our teams mental health at work and the best way to approach this subject with our colleagues.

Resources:

* Tim on LinkedIn

* Marin on LinkedIn

* Uncrushed.org – A platform for community and mental health awareness

Transcript:

Will:

Marin and Tim, welcome to the sales leadership show.

Marin:

Thanks for having us. Happy to be here.

 

Who’s responsibility is it to support your teams mental health? · [05:14]

 

Marin:

Yeah. It’s a big question to start with. I like that you’re just heavy hitter question right out of the gate. That’s one of the most thought provoking questions. I’d say, for myself as a leader, I feel, to my own self and my own values, a responsibility to my team to lead vulnerably and authentically myself, to make that a safe space for them to also show up in the same way. I don’t know that I have a legal obligation or, you know what I mean? I can speak for my own journey, and I think that that’s just what it comes down to is each individual has to answer for themselves, how they show up in this world. For me, how I show up at work is how I show up outside of work. I am the same person everywhere and I can’t make my team take care of themselves, but I can make it a safe space for my own actions and leading in the way I lead my life and the stories I share with them, to make it okay for them to do the same at work and to express if they need help. Then that’s as far as I can take anyone else. I can only do it myself and then make it okay for others.

Will:

Do you think this is common? Because what you just described seems like you’d be a great boss to work for. Is this common in the workplace, what you’re describing?

Marin:

I have my own life experience to go off of and I’ve had a lot of amazing leaders. It’s a great question. Statistically, I have no idea, but I think that there is a movement towards it. Brené Brown is one of my favourites, and in her Dare to Lead, she talks a lot about vulnerability and authenticity, but appropriate boundaries around that too. Not just oversharing or things that are inappropriate at the workplace, but there is a thoughtful way to do it. I share a lot of similarities with Brené. I’ve been in recovery myself in a 12 step community or coming up next, actually this week is 16 years sober, so it’s just really who I am as a person and my foundation to life.

Marin:

I’ve had a lot of great leaders that show up authentically and vulnerably, but is it common? I have no idea. I’d love to see the data. I don’t know. But I think it’s becoming more common and I think that, that, I can say at Salesforce, it’s something that I see and I am encouraged to be as a leader myself, more and more. There seems to be a bigger focus on it. I think it’s a movement. I think it’s a shift though. It is not, when I entered the workforce, how corporate worlds worked in my experience.

On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Daniel Disney shares his social selling secrets through his new book “The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide.”

Resources:

* The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide by Daniel Disney

* Daniel’s LinkedIn

* DanielDisney.Online

Transcript

Will Barron:

This episode is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot studio. Coming up on today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast.

 

Daniel Disney:

But the reality is, you’re not going to buy from someone you don’t like. You’re definitely not going to buy it from someone you don’t trust.

 

Daniel Disney:

But the impact it has on traditional sales is even bigger. So when you do make calls… Will, I did something very similar recently where I was approaching a CEO of a very large global company.

 

Daniel Disney:

SalesLoft as a company are now working with him to help support that continued personal brand growth. You see it with a lot of these micro influencers that have grown within these companies. They’re one of the best resources that companies have, where you get these creative people putting out content, and that is where the potential lies.

 

Will Barron:

Hello, Sales Nation. My name is Will Barron, and I’m the host of the Salesman podcast, world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. In today’s episode, we have the king of social selling, Daniel Disney. He’s my cohost on the Social Selling Show, which you can find [email protected] as well as this episode, the show notes, and a link to his brand new book, The Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide.

 

Will Barron:

We’re touching on the book. We’re touching on social selling. We’re touching on the future of just selling on the internet in general and a whole lot more. And so with that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

Will Barron:

Daniel, welcome to the Salesman podcast.

 

Daniel Disney:

Will, thank you so much for having me back.

 

Will Barron:

You’re more than welcome, sir. How many times have you been on the show now? Victor Antonio I think has had the most returns. You’re probably second on returns on this show, I think moving forward now.

 

Daniel Disney:

I think this is our third or fourth time, and obviously we’re recording the amazing Social Selling Show together. So we’re spending a lot of time together, Will. I’m really excited to be back with you today.

 

Will Barron:

Good stuff. Well, we’re going to touch on the book, the Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide, throughout the conversation. We’ll share with the audience where they can find that and more about yourself towards the end of the show. The title of this episode, we’ll stay true to that, Turning LinkedIn Into a Lead Sales and Revenue Generating Machine, that’s why I won’t dive into in this episode, Daniel.

 

People Buy From People They Know, Like, and Trust. Is the Concept Still Relevant in Today’s Selling Environment? · [01:53] 

 

Will Barron:

So with that, mate, one thing that you say in the book, about halfway through, I really wanted to pull out and to emphasise, because this might tee up the rest of the conversation, then. You say, quote, “There is one universal truth that we know in...

Social Selling Show Hosts:

* Daniel Disney is the King of Social Selling, a best selling author and keynote speaker. Daniel is also the founder of The Daily Sales.

* Will Barron is the founder of Salesman.org where he helps B2B sales professionals master modern sales in just 28 days.