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

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

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

  • Changing the sales conversion (is ‘consultative selling’ obsolete?) with Linda Richardson
    Linda Richardson joins me on this episode of the Upgraded Salesman Show to discuss how the sales conversation is changing and what the future of sales is going to look like.
     
    Is consultative selling obsolete? 
    “The how to [sell] is the easy part. The hard part is the commitment. The commitment to learning, to getting better tomorrow than you are today”
     
    We start the show with Linda giving us an overview of the old model of consultative selling for anyone who isn’t familiar (and who better to hear it from!) before we look at how this is evolving over time into something that has greatly more value to the end customer.
     

     
    Prospecting is dead, long live prospecting
    Next we dive into how prospecting for sales people has changed with the internet becoming ubiquitous across the developed world. There is way more information about the products you’re selling online and prospects are more informed than ever before they even get to speak with you.
     
    “I think the area of prospecting has dramatically, DRAMATICALLY changed”
     
    I ask Linda if marketing taking some of the responsibility for the beginning of the sales funnel away from the individual sales person is a good thing or bad. Then we look at if sales people should be getting more involved with marketing on a personal level by working on their personal branding.
     
    Are sales roles becoming obsolete?
    “The way I see it, the sales person will remain important if the client needs value ad”
     
    Finally we discus if sales roles will become more or less important over time and if they will have to become experts in their field and evolve in new ways to be able to offer the customer more value in their business.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Linda Richardson is  a  consultant, writer, sales leader, and  founder and builder of Richardson.  Early her career Linda drove the movement to Consultative Selling to help salespeople adapt to changes in client needs and  engage in need based dialogues.  Consultative Selling became mainstream and served sales forces well for several decades.
    Linda’s new book,  Changing the Sales Conversation, McGraw-Hill -December 2013, focuses on the five conversation changers that have been identified to be needed to  succeed with highly informed clients in the new sales landscape.  She has circled back to salespeople as teachers, not touting  the superiority of  their product capabilities, but bringing  insights, ideas, and delivering results to their clients.
    For years, decades theorists have debated whether selling is an art or a science. Now there is an answer:  Selling was primarily an art, but now it truly is also a science as well.  The art is in the innate talent some are born with and the skills they can develop; the science is in the sales process, metrics,  sales enablement tools, and research now available to sales teams with a click.
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    LindaRichardson.com
     
    Books mentioned:
    Changing the Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate, and Close
    To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
    33 min
  • How to build a power network to help you close more sales (and how to get in front of those elusive decision makers) with Judy Robinett
    Judy Robinett joins me on this episode of the Upgraded Salesman Show to share her tips on how to become a power connector. Networking is sometimes overlooked by sales people but Julie gives us an overview of how big our network should be, how to leverage it and how to build it in the first place.
    I start the show by asking Judy if she thinks that cold calling is a viable method of building a network up from scratch or if internet selling techniques such as social media and email are better approaches.
     
    LinkedIn for network building
    We discuss how LinkedIn can be leveraged to build real networks that drive turnover and Judy’s comments may surprise people. In my personal experience it’s generally easier to connect with the people you want to work with than you might imagine at first.
     
    “You just do some research on them and reach out in a gracious manor and I’ve never had anybody turn me down”
     
    Nervous around the C -Suite?
    Next I ask Judy is us ‘lowly salesmen’ have a right to feel nervous about stepping up our game and networking with the C-Suite at their level, at their events and adding value on their level. Do they command more respect or are they just people like the rest of us?
     
    Do millennial not communicate as well because of technology?
    Judy and I discuss if millennial sales people are missing opportunities by being glued to their phones, texting, emailing and browsing the web when they could be connecting on the phone or in person to person encounters more often.
     
    “Study after study shows that your network equals your net-worth” 
     
    We wrap up the show by looking at what you should do when you finally get in front of that person that you want to bring into your network. We go through the importance of a firm handshake, tricking your brain to influence your body language by imagining that you’re best friends and much more.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Judy Robinett is the author of How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+150 Rule (McGraw-Hill, May 2014), a book that provides instant, effective strategies for meeting the people you need to know and bonding with them fast to further your goals and theirs. Robinett is a business thought leader who is known as “the woman with the titanium digital Rolodex.” She has been profiled in Fast Company, Forbes, Venture Beat, Huffington Post, and Bloomberg Businessweek as a sterling example of the new breed of “super connectors” who use their experience and networks to accelerate growth and enhance profitability.
    In her more than 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur and corporate leader, Robinett has served as the CEO of both public and private companies and in management positions at Fortune 500 companies. Robinett has given hundreds of speeches worldwide for audiences at MIT, BIO, BIO-Europe, CalPoly, AT&T, Westinghouse, and the Department of Energy.
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    JudyRobinett.com
     
    Books mentioned:
    How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule for Turning Your Business Network into Profits
    How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare
    34 min
  • Why the top 20% of salespeople bring in 80% of the results (and how you can get yourself into that elite group) with Tony Cole
    Tony Cole joins me on this episode of the Upgraded Salesman Show to explain why 20% of the sales people within a company always bring in more than 80% of the revenue and how you can get yourself into that top 20%.
     
    The 80/20 of sales performance
    Tony starts by explaining that the top 20% of sale reps tend to remain at the top year in year out and there are a common set of traits he sees within them when he is doing sales training and consulting.
     
    “The top 20% don’t have thing we call a need for approval”
     
    We dive into some of the common traits that separate the pros from the rest and then I ask if these traits of the super sales rep are something people are born with or if they can be learnt over time. Then we look at millennial specifically and why there seems to be a lot more moaning from younger reps than perhaps the older ones.
     
    Sales process vs belief
    We wrap up the show by looking how much of the probability of being in the top 20% comes from mindset and belief vs having strict sales process and technical selling skill.
     
    “Those people in the top 20%, follow a sales process”
     
    It should be no surprise that the top salespeople in any company have a strict sales process in place, even if it isn’t perfect, they all have a base to work from.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Anthony Cole was born and raised in the blueberry capital of the world, Hammonton, New Jersey and is the founder of Anthony Cole Training Group.  Simply put – they have one goal – to help people and organizations be the absolute best they can be.  Help them realize their greatest potential so that they can experience and have the life of abundance promised in John 10:10.

    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    AnthonyColeTraining.com
    FREE Sales eBooks from Tony
    Tony mentioned this podcast when he suggested that Steve Jobs was the greatest salesman of all time:

     
    Books mentioned:
    The 21st Century Agent – Audio Book
    Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Life
    Why is Selling So #%&@ Hard?!? – Free eBook
    Resurrecting Anthony: A True Story of Courage and Destination
     
    37 min
  • Securing mission impossible sales appointments (with CEOs and the people your competition would love to meet) with Buki Mosaku
    Buki Mosaku joins me on the Upgraded Salesman Podcast to discuss results oriented appointment making and how we can use this to secure those mission impossible style C-Suit level sales meetings that are becoming more and more important to close the big deals.
    We start off by discussing if a cold call or an email is the best way to set up a in person sales meeting and then Buki brings up something new for me and that is combining cold calling with social media efforts to close more appointments.
    “The salesman of today needs to be a leader because people like to be lead”
    We take social media further as a way to break through obscurity with your prospects. Is as simple as if they don’t know who you are they can’t buy from you, if they do know who you are and they come to you without you approaching them – you’re in a powerful position and it’s an easy close.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Buki is the founder of Inquire Management which is a corporate development and sales training consultancy that help sales people and professional service teams in large, medium and small companies to generate more prospects, close more sales and grow existing business. Clients include: Shell, JP Morgan, Aviva, Aviva Investors, Goldman Sachs to name a few. Their key differentiator is the ability to get results and immediate returns on investment derived from customised programmes, public workshops, audio books and pragmatic sales consultancy.

    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    InquireManagement.com
    Buki suggests that Muhammad Ali was the greatest salesman of all time due to his belief. I mention a interview in the show and this is a clip from it –

     
    Books mentioned:
    The Greatest Salesman in the World
    The Secret Of Deliberate Creation (Audio CD)


    The New Psycho-Cybernetics: The Original Science of Self-improvement and Success That Has Changed the Lives of 30 Million People

    38 min
  • Upgrade your attitudes, unlock your sales skills and unleash the closer within you! With Gavin Ingham
    Gavin Ingham joins me on the Upgraded Salesman Podcast to answer the question – which is more important in selling, attitude or practical sales skills?
    We discuss in Gavin’s experience if he thinks salesmen are ballsy enough or need to work harder to close the deal, how to get over limiting sales beliefs like ‘my product is overpriced, we need to sell cheaper’ and
    Gavin explains that although you might know the tactics of negotiation for example, you can struggle to use these skills if you’re not mentally tough and don’t have adequate mental toughness.
    “What salespeople need to do is decide what they need to believe to succeed and THEN find evidence to support that”
    Using examples such as re-sellers selling the same products which massively different results Gavin shows us how to upgrade your attitudes to unlock your sales skills and unleash the closer in you.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Gavin Ingham is a dynamic, straight-speaking presenter who will provoke audiences to think about business and life in a whole new way. An expert in mental toughness, Gavin asks the difficult, game-changing questions that other people don’t ask. He helps executives face up to making tough decisions, leaders coach more effectively and sales teams win more sales.
    He is the author of 3 books and has spoken at more than 1000 conferences in the last 10 years. When he is not stirring up an event somewhere or closing a deal, you might well find him bashing out some boogie-woogie on the piano. He’s no Jools Holland but if you ask nicely he might just play a riff or two.
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    GavinIngham.com
    GavinIngham.com/blog
     
    Books mentioned:
    Become A Recognized Authority In Your Field – In 60 Days Or Less
    Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement
    Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Life
    The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
    Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities (Wiley Series in Psychology of Crime, Policing and Law)
    Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength
    Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

    39 min
  • Master the mental game of selling with Bill Cole
    Bill Cole joins me on the Upgraded Salesman Podcast to discuss the mental game of selling.
    I start the show by asking Bill what percentage of sales success he thinks comes from the mental game side of things vs processes and sales skills that can be taught easily.
    “If you’re a beginner in sales, you got no game…”
    Bill explains that at first process and sales skills gives the best bang for buck as green salesmen don’t know anything about the business of sales. Over time however the mental aspect becomes more and more important and at the top of the game a small shift here can make massive differences in performance.
     
    Becoming resistant to sales rejection 
    Next up I ask Bill if salesmen learn to deal with rejection by having the phone slammed down on them over and over for extended periods of time or if there is a smarter way to go about it.
     
    How to get in the right frame of mind before making a sales call
    Bill explains a very important strategy which will get you in the zone before you make a sales call or do a presentation. It’s similar to how he trains athletes to perform when before their big moments too.
    Bill recommends making a list of all the benefits your product will have for the end customer and how it will positively effect their life to add some positivity to your sales mindset.
    “When you’re in front of that other human being, you’re going to be more fully present and much better able to listen to them”
    We also discuss the benefits of meditation for sales people to help them focus, get in the zone and then learn how to relax afterwards. I share that whenever I’ve spoken to sales managers in companies I’ve worked at in the past they’ve thought it too ‘woo woo’ to take seriously but Bill and I see it as a powerful tool.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Bill Cole, MS, MA, is a thought leader in the worlds of peak performance, coaching and the mental game. His imaginative, visionary work has been profiled hundreds of times in both the electronic and print media, ranging from MSNBC.com, Success Magazine, HuffPost Live TV show, The BBC and more.
    Bill is an internationally and nationally recognized authority on peak performance and coaching. He has coached at the highest levels of corporate America, the Olympics, major-league pro sports and big-time college athletics. A multiple Hall-Of-Fame honoree as an athlete, coach and school alumnus, he is an in-the-trenches coach and consultant to corporations, universities, associations, businesses, organizations and individuals and is the creator and developer of many leading-edge workshops, seminars and training programs.
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    MentalGameCoach.com
     
    32 min
  • Is Sales Just A Numbers Game? (And Is nternet killing sales?) with Matt Heinz
    Matt Heinz joins me on the Upgraded Salesman Podcast to discuss if there is an impending merger of sales and marketing in medium-large companies.
    I start the show by asking if sales and marketing teams should be pulled together under one roof in large enterprises or if there are specific reasons why they should be kept separate.
     
    The same pipeline
    Matt brings up a great point right out of the gate and that is that most companies do not have the same CRM and pipeline management systems across their sales and marketing teams. This means that they are potentially pulling in different directions or not sharing data which could easily be used to close more business.
     “Marketing need to know that their job is not to generate campaigns, not to generate leads. Their job is to create sales pipeline”
     
    Should salespeople be thought leaders?
    I often promote that for the individual salespersons career they should be creating content and becoming known as experts in their field. Matt however suggests that from a senior management perspective this is not the best use of time for the salesman – they are employed to sell.
    Matt’s standpoint is that marketing should be giving salesmen both leads and the content to share on their networks. Freeing up their time to build relationships and closing the deals which pushing content just can’t do.
     
    Are sales reps being cut out?
    With an increase of content marketing by businesses, the buyer is becoming more informed about the product before they even meet us salesmen. I ask Matt how he thinks this is going to effect sales cycles and complex B2B sales in the future.
     
    Networking – the one reason we will always need salesmen
    We wrap up the show by discussing the number one reason why I think we will always need to employ a real, physical salesperson to close leads that have been handed down through the sales funnel and that is networking. It’s virtually impossible to substitute a human conversation with someone when they’re nearly ready to by and no content or video can replace this.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. He is a dynamic speaker, memorable not only for his keen insight and humor, but his actionable and motivating takeaways.
    Matt’s career focuses on consistently delivering measurable results with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt is a repeat winner of Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers. 
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 

     
    Show notes:
    HeinzMarketing.com

    Successful social Selling – Free ebook download
     
    Show notes:
    The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation
    To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others
    34 min
  • Has email killed the cold call? (plus voice mail campaigns and video sales calls) with Wendy Weiss
    Wendy Weiss joins me on the first ever Upgraded Salesman Podcast to discuss the nemesis of many sales people – cold calling.
    We start the show with Wendy explaining why she is known as the queen of cold calling, her history in ballet and how this lead to a career in business development.
     
    Is cold calling something that people are naturally good at? 
    I ask Wendy if cold calling is a skill or something that people are born naturally good at.
    “There is this myth out there Will, the myth of the born sales person. Nobody is born knowing how to do this”
    Next we move onto something that really grinds my gears, the myth of the born salesman. Sales is just a skill like any other and Wendy and I discuss this point further.
     
    Cold calling success – Script vs sales skill
    I ask Wendy how much of the gut feeling of ‘yes this sounds interesting’ when someone cold calls me is down to an excellent script vs great selling skill.
    Wendy explains that it’s around 50/50 most of the time. The mindset of most salesmen who cold call is that they hate it and this comes across on the phone. One of the biggest upgrades you can have is to turn this on it’s head and believe that you’re actually doing the prospect a favor by calling them – you’re going to make their life better, save them money or increase their turnover.
    They’re going to be really grateful you called.
     
    But it never gets me anywhere
    Wendy and I then discuss how useful cold calling is as a tool. You should be having a reasonably high success rate in closing a second followup from a cold call otherwise something isn’t going right in your preparation.

    “There are only two reasons why a prospect says their not interested. The first is that you’re not talking to the right person…”

    Wendy explains that if you’re not having success in cold calling you need to look at two areas of your preparation –

    Are you talking to the right people?
    Are you saying anything interesting?

    These are the two main issues beginner sales people have when they first start attempting to cold call prospects.
     
    Is email killing  cold calling? 
    I ask Wendy if email is now a better alternative to cold calling (playing devils advocate a little here) and her response is that most deals close on the phone. So even if you’re sending prospecting emails out before cold calling you’re going to need to speak with that individual on the phone before you can do any real selling.
    I totally agree with this and although I sometimes do use a system of emailing first to get appointments on the phone set up, the goal of the email is always to get the phone appointment, never to try and win business right there and then in text.
     

     
    Guest info:
    Wendy Weiss, who is known as The Queen of Cold Calling™, is an author, speaker, sales trainer, and sales coach. She is recognized as one of the leading authorities on lead generation, cold calling and new business development and she helps clients speed up their sales cycle, reach more prospects directly and generate more sales revenue. Her clients include Avon Products, ADP, Sprint and thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the country.
    Wendy has been featured in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur Magazine, Selling Power, Inc, Forbes and various other business and sales publications. She is the author of Cold Calling for Women:Opening Doors & Closing Sales and The Sales Winner’s Handbook: Essential Scripts & Strategies to Skyrocket Sales Performance.
     
    Listen on your mobile device: 
    24 min

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