The Sales Evangelist

The marketplace is crowded, so if you understand how to instantly increase the perceived value of your offer, you'll be better able to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Bob Britton got his start in business as an auto mechanic and he had an opportunity to buy an existing business. He figured owning a business couldn't be that hard, so he jumped in, assuming he could do a better job than the people he had been working for.

He endured a season of failure but eventually started to improve as he learned the sales game. He realized that auto repair involves selling something that no one wants to buy, that no one is prepared to buy, and that no one ever has the money to buy.

He grew the business from a one-man show to a multi-million dollar business and then went on to other things.

If you can't clearly communicate your value and what sets you apart from everyone else, you're competing constantly on price. It's the only way people know how to measure. But if you're a value proposition, people will focus less on price and more on what they're getting. It's up to business owners to figure out what those value propositions are.

Begin by understanding what value really is. What you think is valuable is probably 27th on your prospect's list of what's valuable.

[Tweet "The thing we get wrong over and over again is that we don't take time to think our way through all the different things that our customers could consider valuable. #SellingValue"]

Consider even the smallest thing that might be considered valuable. Look beyond the obvious things like saving time or money because everyone claims to offer those.

Understand that perception is everything. When you're creating your value proposition, if your prospect believes it's important, it is. Perception is everything.

That determines how we start. Begin by looking at the business drivers which are often saving money and making money. But drill down deeper.

• Why would a customer use your offer?
• What does the customer really care about?

Think of things like operating cost, downtime, uptime, labor cost, customer retention, market share, productivity, profitability, time to market, lifetime customer value, and any number of other concerns.

Too many salespeople "wing it" when it comes to this process. They don't think about the questions they ask and they rely on general ones instead of working to be specific.

People will give us a limited amount of time and effort. Ask specific questions that move people in a distinct direction.

Many sellers will ask about concerns, but that's too general. Limit the question instead. What is your number one concern? Being specific will give you a lot better information from the customer because they'll talk about the thing that is top of mind.

Then, flip that around. Ask your prospect the one thing that he hates about your industry. It takes some guts to ask this, but the information you get back will be the most valuable feedback you've ever gotten.

Bob asked people the number one thing they hated about auto repair on his way to building a million-dollar company. He used all that feedback to differentiate himself from his competition.

Your clients can give you information that will help you tweak your business and increase your revenue. You won't have to push harder. Your clients will give you a to-do list that will help you improve.

Be willing to ask what your current clients dislike about working with your business. It will feel intimidating but they won't crucify you. They'll help you identify the things that are keeping them from buying more.

You may not need to dump more money into your business. You may not need to increase your leads but rather to just improve your close rate.

Once you've identified the business drivers, identify some sort of movement. People won't change unless your offering is significantly better than the status quo. People don't buy offers; they buy new things.

What's your movement? Increase, improve, accelerate, reduce, enhance, balance, free up, eliminate, minimize, revitalize, shrink, maximize. What kind of movement can you offer your clients?

Then add metrics to your value proposal to make it stronger and more believable.

Avoid using round numbers which sound less credible. When Bob was running the auto repair business, while everyone else was charging $87 an hour, he charged $98.68 an hour. When people asked how he came up with that number, he said that he figured out with his accountant the exact minimum he could charge to deliver the best service.

It's a psychological effort that will surprise your customers and shift their thinking. It will position you as different than everyone else.

Do your homework. Don't wing it because it won't give you the results you desire.

People may throw little tests out at you to see how you'll respond. If you aren't prepared, you'll end up losing credibility because you don't answer well.

Business drivers, movement, and metrics are the three things that create a tremendous amount of value for your business.

Do your homework. Position yourself as different, new, unique, and special.

Be creative. The competition has never been greater and the market is shifting. More people are becoming salespeople so you have to do everything you can to differentiate yourself.

You can connect with Bob at his website, marketingautomationgroup.com and opt-in for a free 7-day course. He constantly produces new content designed to help you increase your perceived value.

You've heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we're offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April.

You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You'll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

Sales leaders who neglect their own workload in an effort to help their sellers solve problems will find themselves falling behind, so it’s vital that sales leaders stop falling for the reactive trap.

You hired your sellers to handle their assigned responsibilities and to solve problems. When your sellers distract you with problems, you’ll have less time to focus on sales plans or strategies. You won’t have time to conduct meetings or create reports because you’re trying to keep deals from falling apart.

In his book, The Sales Manager’s Guide To Greatness, Kevin Davis talks about all the ways that sellers can distract their sales managers from their own workload. The problem with this kind of distraction is that the sales leader’s responsibilities are to grow the department or the business.

The business will suffer if sales leaders aren’t freed to do their own work.

Additionally, you’re teaching your sellers bad habits and cheating them of the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.

This is why many leaders feel stretched too thin.

Sellers who never learn to solve their own problems will limit their teams’ productivity. Your team will never have extraordinary growth because you’ll always be limited by your own ability to solve everyone else’s problems.

The sellers will never learn to solve problems, and they won’t learn to focus on solving problems for their customers. Instead, they’ll focus on features and benefits.

Additionally, they won’t be able to function as well in your absence, which means they will struggle any time you aren’t available. So what will happen if you decide to take vacation?

Sellers will only improve if they learn to solve their own problems and handle their own accounts. As each rep learns to handle his assigned responsibilities, you’ll be freed to focus on other things that will improve the team as a whole.

You may be tempted to think that you’re helping your sellers accomplish more, but the truth is that they’ll never learn to manage their own schedules and their own time if you consistently help them manage it.

Kevin points out that your involvement won’t likely encourage them to use their time for other tasks. Realistically, your sellers will simply be freed to do things like check social media or email.

Forty percent of sellers don’t like prospecting, so they won’t likely do it if they don’t have to. They are likely bringing you problems they don’t want to handle themselves.

Kevin suggests asking two questions of your sellers:

1. What have you done to solve the problem so far?
2. What do you think ought to be done?

Your sellers likely have basic problem-solving skills; otherwise, you wouldn’t have hired them. If this isn’t the case, you might have to start by making sure you have the right people on the bus.

Perhaps we’ll discover that the rep didn’t really qualify the prospect in the first place. Maybe the rep isn’t talking to the decision-maker.

Assuming those things aren’t true and that the buyer suddenly backed out of the deal, you must discover what caused the problem.

Coach the rep to ask questions that get to the root cause of the change. Teach your rep to use the 5 whys to figure out why the prospect changed her mind.

It’s tempting for sales leaders to try to “save the day” and be the hero. Instead, you need to teach your seller to act as a guide to the prospect and teach your seller how to frame the customer as the hero of the situation.

Consider identifying team leads who can help your sellers when they encounter problems. Maybe a senior sales rep can help answer questions or coach your sellers in weekly sales meetings.

Schedule coaching sessions where you can teach your team members how to use these techniques to identify why their deals are disintegrating. Help them identify the common objections so they’ll be prepared when they encounter them.

CLICK TO TWEET

No doubt you hope to be promoted someday and you’ll need someone to take over your role so you can advance.

Allow them to be part of the dialogue when you’re addressing issues in your area. Provide reassurance that it’s ok to try things and make mistakes.

If you have a hard time saying “no” to your sellers, make yourself unavailable to them. Insist that they begin working on the problems themselves. If they make a mistake, you can still step in if you must, but give them a chance to try solving the problems.

Take the time to coach your sellers. Make sure you give commands, give guidance, and give them room to run on their own.

Whether you’re a sales rep, a sales leader, or a business owner, use these concepts to improve your efficiency and your output.

Grab a copy of Kevin Davis’ book, The Sales Manager’s Guide To Greatness. You’ll be glad you did.

This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance.

TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump.

If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

Regardless of your industry or your product, relationships are the currency of your business, and though you can love people without leading them, you can’t lead people without loving them.

Ty Bennett is an entrepreneur who fell in love with the speaking and training development aspect of building a sales team and it led him to write books on the topic and start a training company called Leadership Inc.

Ty points out that we’re in the people business and we’re interacting with, networking with, leading and influencing people every day. The care, investment, and love you have for people will communicate that you have their best interest in mind.

Those relationships engender trust, foster accountability, and build a level of commitment that you want in your team. And love drives it.

Many business books never discuss love, perhaps because it isn’t considered a business-centric word. Ty addresses this issue in his new book called Partnership is the New Leadership.

He interviewed a guy on his podcast named Tim Sanders who wrote the book Love is the Killer App but this hasn’t always been a business word. Traditionally it has referred to personal relationships but when it drives your actions and when you’re coming from a place of service and contribution, that’s where love exists.

Leadership is much more effective there.

Some people believe that leaders can’t be perceived as soft, so they shy away from the idea of loving the members of the team. If you’re too soft, after all, you’ll be walked on.

If you were to line up 10 people and evaluate the production level of those people, you’ll find a relationship to how they feel about their manager. Statistically, most people will tell you that they hate their bosses, and also that people join companies and they leave bosses.

People also show up differently when they are in the right frame of mind; when they feel supported; when they feel heard; and when they have opportunities to win.

When people feel like part of a team, the commitment level changes drastically. #TeamCommitment

If you’re seeking to develop this kind of leadership without being perceived as soft, focus on being interested rather than interesting.

Rather than figuring out how to stand out and making it all about you, focus on the other person. Great leaders are those who truly care about other people and become adept at asking questions. They have a genuine curiosity about people. They want to know what drives them and what’s important to them.

As you get to know your people on a deeper level, it speaks volumes to your team members.

Now take things a step further and focus on hearing them. Don’t forget the idea that people support what they help create.

Give your team a voice. Welcome their feedback. Those efforts demonstrate that you care about what they have to say and you’re listening rather than simply issuing marching orders. You’re demonstrating that you’re confident enough in who you are to allow them to be part of the process.

We no longer live in the era of top-down leadership where I tell you what we’re going to do and you implement it. Social media has changed us psychologically and it has given each of us a voice.

Go above and beyond for your people. Do things that are not in your job description. Give more time, more energy, and more of yourself into your relationships. Reach out in ways that are meaningful to each person.

No doubt each of us can think of someone who has invested in us this way.

As leaders, those investments change our relationships. When you invest in people they become family.

Ask yourself whether people would ever say that about you.

This level of investment can be difficult because we’re busy. We have so much on our plates that it’s hard to think outside our own agenda.

It can also be tempting to focus on the things we have to do and ignore the things that we could do but aren’t required to do.

At the same time, we have to shift our mindset. Maybe we need to listen to a podcast or hear a story from a different leader. Maybe we need to find a leader who can open our eyes to different approaches. Perhaps read a book.

Although every industry is different, Ty interacted with sellers recently who told him that their loyalty was to their manager, not to the company. The product matters a lot less to them than the manager does.

If you’re seeking to become this kind of manager, start by carving out one-on-one time for your people as often as possible. Come in five minutes early and ask one of your people to come in five minutes early. Make time for it.

Find time to connect with your people with no agenda. It’s just to show that you care.

Ty also recommends reading The Go Giver, one of a series of books about adopting a giving mentality on the way to greater success.

Relationships change when people invest in them. When a leader invests, it will impact the relationship in a huge way.

If you’d like to connect with Ty, you can find him at tybennett.com and on LinkedIn, and you can check out The Relevant Leadership Podcast.

Grab a copy of his new book called Partnership is the New Leadership.

You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April.

You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

Stories pack a lot of power for sellers when used in the proper sales framework, and the good news is that stories are everywhere.

Today we’re sharing an excerpt from TSE Certified Sales Training Program that addresses how you can effectively use stories in your own sales.

Stories have existed since the dawn of time. Early cave drawings told stories of cavemen hunting, and those stories have been passed down.

It’s true of cultures and of the Bible. Stories paint a picture for us.

Stories exist in movies, songs, social media, and books. It all points to the fact that we love stories. Society loves stories because that’s how we make sense of the world.

Imagine you’re meeting with a prospect for the first time. Instead of talking about your widget and your certification, which could be boring, share a compelling reason for your prospect to do business with you.

Instead, share a problem and a solution to help me understand.

Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning explains the problem so that the prospect can understand it and it introduces characters.

The second part is the build or the escalation of the problem, where it seems that all is lost.

The third part is the breakthrough. It’s the payoff or the climax. It’s where everyone lives happily ever after.

It’s important to understand when to use stories.

Use them to reinforce a point or to help them understand the importance of your product or service. In the case of CRM, imagine a client who has been using Excel for years and he doesn’t understand the importance of upgrading to a better CRM.

You can begin by explaining that you understand why he is hesitant to invest in something that he might not actually need.

Then tell a story of another client who successfully used Excel as her CRM for years. The problem emerged when she hired a sales rep who wasn’t as familiar with the process as she was.

The sales rep failed to log some of his contacts, and they didn’t follow up on the lead. The potential client chose another provider because the company didn’t remember to follow up. In this case, it cost them $5,000.

If this happens multiple times a month, how much will it cost you?

We gave this client an opportunity to test our CRM for 30 days, and the company doubled its earnings as a result. The ability to log calls automatically and schedule appointments easily changed the company’s output.

CLICK TO TWEET

Consider using a free trial, too, to make the transaction less overwhelming.

Don’t make yourself the hero of the story. Craft the story so that your prospect is the hero because he tried the new CRM and it made a huge difference for his organization.

Apply these ideas and let me know how they worked. If you already knew them, stay with it.

This episode is brought to you by the TSE Certified Sales Training Program. I developed this training course because I struggled early on as a seller. Once I had the chance to go through my own training, I noticed a hockey-stick improvement in my performance.

TSE Certified Sales Training Program can help you out of your slump.

If you gave a lot of great presentations and did a lot of hard work, only to watch your prospects choose to work with your competitors, we can help you fix that. The new semester of TSE Certified Sales Training Program begins in April and it would be an absolute honor to have you join us.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. It’s super easy, it’s helpful, and I recommend that you try it out. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

Mailtag.io allows you to see around the corners. You can see when people open your email, or when they click on the link you sent. Mailtag.io will give you half-off your subscription for life when you use the Promo Code: Donald at check out.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss a single episode. Share it with your friends who would benefit from learning more.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

For business owners looking to scale their efforts, there are important factors involved in building a remote sales team, and implementing them can mean the difference between success and failure.

Liam Martin runs three companies related to managing remote workers: TimeDoctor.com, Staff.com, and his passion project, which is a conference on building and scaling remote teams. His organization helps companies monitor their remote employees’ productivity and efficiency.

He points to the fact that, early in his career, he waited too late to build a sales team, which is the meat-and-potatoes of his business.

Founders of a company have an understanding of the product or service that most sales reps won’t have. Founders may recognize as many as 10 different problems that you could tailor your product around or have meaningful conversations around.

Sales reps won’t necessarily recognize that many problems, so they may not have access to as many meaningful conversations.

The key, then, is hiring a proper sales manager. Sometimes the founder’s ego causes him to believe that he can effectively run a sales team, and he doesn’t recognize his shortcomings.

You must take a hard look at yourself and determine whether you’re truly a good sales leader. When Liam recognized that he wasn’t a good sales manager, he fired himself and hired a proper sales manager.

Be honest enough to determine what you can best do for your organization and then do that.

Liam’s company has three different stages of hiring remotely. He suggests that many remote teams aren’t as effective as the leadership believes they are.

Liam points to the bullpen or the area where junior employees are grouped together in a single workspace. The idea is that the employees will train and work together and benefit from one another’s experiences.

Remote employees don’t have a bullpen so it’s impossible to pick up nonverbal selling techniques that some employees are successfully using. Everyone is disconnected, so very often these sales teams won’t hit quota despite their training. As a result, they leave the company.

To solve the problem, Liam’s company works with remote salespeople for about a month. During that time, he has to either close an inbound deal or generate some kind of outbound activity. Based on that success, the company decides whether to invest more into the employee.

He says that although it’s an expensive system, building a remote sales team is ROI positive.

Successful remote employees must be self-motivated. Once the company hires a new remote employee and decides to invest in him, the company flies him to the sales manager in Canada where he will train in the office for three months.

The employee will either hit quota by the end of three months and will have a job, or he will not hit quota by the end of that time, and he will go home without a job.

From that point, the system rewards good salespeople financially. Successful sellers will earn more with this company than they will at other companies. At the same time, the pay structure is such that unsuccessful sellers won’t be able to survive.

The first three months, then, are critical to the seller’s success. Creating the bullpen experience has helped the company’s remote sellers be more successful.

Additionally, the company allows any employee to jump in on any Zoom call to ask for help or guidance.

CLICK TO TWEET

Liam points to a need to identify those sellers who can talk the talk but can’t walk the walk. Because the company is making a massive investment into its new hires, it must be able to quickly determine which employees are likely to be successful and which ones are not.

On average, his company has found that it can take anywhere from three to six months to determine whether an employee will be successful. Its goal is to shorten that period when possible.

The company would prefer a clear “yes” or “no” to a “maybe.” The more time it spends dealing with an employee who is a “maybe,” the more money it invests without fully knowing whether it will get anything in return.

If you want to learn more about building or scaling a remote team, visit runningremote.com. It’s a conference being held in Bali, and if you’ve never been to Bali, it’s another great reason to go.

If you’d like to get in touch with Liam, he’s excited about his interactions on YouTube right now, and you can find him at youtube.com/runningremote. After consuming the content, feel free to ask questions in the comments and he’ll be happy to respond.

You’ve heard us talk about the TSE Certified Sales Training Program, and we’re offering the first module free as a gift to you. Preview it. Check it out. If it makes sense for you to join, you can be part of our upcoming semester in April.

You can take it on your own or as part of the semester group. The program includes 65 videos altogether, and we just completed a beta group that helped us improve the program and maximize the information in it.

This episode is also brought to you in part by mailtag.io, a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that allows you to track and schedule your emails. You’ll receive real-time alerts anyone opens an email or clicks a link.

I hope you enjoyed the show today as much as I did. If so, please consider leaving us a rating on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you consume this content and share it with someone else who might benefit from our message. It helps others find our message and improves our visibility.

Audio provided by Free SFX and Bensound.

Mentioned in this episode:

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS

HubSpot and bluëmago | STUDIOS