Shane Gibson's Podcast – Social Selling – B2B Sales and Influence

Too often salespeople even when surrounded by a large corporation do things all on their own.  They have been selected because of their personal drive and focus, but this can also be a downfall.

This podcast is focused on the importance of connecting with and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders. Who knows, maybe the marketing team wants to know who your ideal client is!

Today’s assignment is pretty straight forward. Mindshare = Walletshare. With that said mindshare is gained through adding value in multiple contexts with clients. Your assingment today is to add value by letting five of your key accounts know you are thinking about them and care about their success.

Team selling is a whole new dynamic for a lot of new sales people, even tenured sales people and executives can often miss in a team environment. Sales people are measured by their individual contribution to the bottom-line but in team selling they need to take a look at the bigger picture and engage and coordinate a whole team.

Today’s assignment after you listen to the podcast is as follows:

1)    Develop your own Edification sheet or elevator pitch for your team mates

2)    Get each of them to do that as well for you and then memorize each others “Edification Sheet”

3)    Develop a checklist for prepping for meetings that ensures that you:

a.    Know the key strengths and purpose of those people on your team

b.    Determine the meeting lead

c.    Warm everyone up for the call

d.    Debrief after the meeting  with the key questions:

– What went well?

– What didn’t go well?

– What could we do better?

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We work hard to target the right companies, get past the gatekeeper, and get a commitment from the client to meet with us.  But are we prepared? This is a two part podcast on getting ready for meetings.  Today we will focus on individual sales calls and tomorrow we will talk about how to plan out team selling scenarios.

After you listen to today’s podcast here is your assignment:

#1) Brainstorm all of the possible objections you could get in your typical sales call and either pre-empt them or memorize your answers

#2) Be prepared for the worst case scenario, map out what those could be and how you will handle them.

#3) Be prepared for the best case scenario, what will you need to close the deal or negotiate with a key prospect on the spot?

#4) Map out key research sources you can review and confirm before heading to the meeting

#5) Build a checklist for this process and go through before each meeting well in advance

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