ValuePros Show

"Contrary to popular belief, being a good salesperson isn't just about the customer. It's also about having a better understanding of yourself."

Episode Overview

In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Casey Murray about the role of self-awareness in improving your connection to buyers. Casey is the President of The Virtual CRO and a sales coach who works directly with business-to-business (B2B) companies and their sales teams to improve their sales strategies. His services have helped baseball teams, cloud database and data security providers, insurance companies, and digital health services build better connections with their buyers. In addition to his direct consultation work, he runs a two-hour training seminar called the Win More Sales Program for B2B Inside Sales, in which he teaches attendees how to use their self-awareness to win more sales.

Understanding Ourselves to Connect with Buyers

Every once in a while, a salesperson will struggle to have a meaningful engagement with a buyer. After all, no two people are alike, and it can be difficult to "get outside" of yourself to find a different way to approach an unfamiliar sales situation. Our gut instincts can serve us well when working with buyers similar to ourselves, but those communication channels can break down when we encounter people who have a different perspective or who perceive us, the salesperson, in ways we didn't anticipate. These situations can impact our sales performance. They can also rock our confidence in our abilities as salespeople.

How do you address these shortfalls and learn to unlock our best performances?

According to Casey Murray, one of the keys to improving sales performance is gaining self-awareness, both about ourselves and our buyers. This means answering several important – and difficult – questions:

• Where do you excel or struggle most?
• What do your instincts tell you about what is and is not succeeding?
• How do you perceive yourself, and how do others perceive you?
• How do these perceptions affect your ability to make meaningful connections to potential buyers?

Ultimately, learning to interpret how you are perceived in a sales situation can go a long way to helping you adjust your sales strategy in the moment and with specific types of buyers. The selling communication process should involve a near-50/50 exchange, and the way you behave and interact with others can impact how you or your ideas are received.

These questions and adjustments are part of a process of self-awareness and part of learning to understand buyers to create more meaningful sales connections.

How do you develop a better understanding of your buyers?

There are two primary ways to better understand your buyers:

1. Professional Behavioral Assessments

Acquiring a professional assessment, such as those offered by Cassey Murray at The Virtual CRO or directly through TTI Success Insights, will provide you with a detailed write-up that you can compare to a database of personality and performance data points. This will help you identify your top behaviors and provide powerful insight into how buyers may react to you in a sales conversation.

1. Self-Audit

Take some time to analyze your sales interactions. Look at both the sales that went well and the sales that floundered. What felt good about the sale that went well (the pace, the flow of the conversation, etc.)? What felt off about the sale that went poorly (one-sided conversation, little feedback from the buyer, etc.)? Try to step back and consider both what you bring to the table and how your natural tendencies might drive your sales conversations in a particular direction.

Both methods will provide you with a language for interpreting buyer behaviors and how best to react to them to maximize success while avoiding disconnects in your sales conversations.

What are some common issues in sales conversations?

Many issues in sales conversations come down to personality differences. We can break these down into two categories: behaviors and motivations.

Your personality directly influences how you behave in professional settings, and how you behave in a sales conversation can drastically change how that conversation progresses. Are you a dominant-style seller? If so, you likely prefer to exert your influence and take control of the direction of a sales conversation. However, using such an approach to make a sale with a slow and meticulous buyer may result in a lost sale or, worse, a burnt bridge. Slow buyers desire an information-heavy, methodical approach without gut-based calls.

Motivation also plays a role in sales issues. Salespeople should consider what motivates a buyer to take action on behalf of the seller. These are sometimes called movement triggers. For example, some people are learners, who learn for learning's sake, while others are pragmatists, who prefer getting to the point. In a sales conversation between a learner and a pragmatist, their individual motivations are at odds. They are effectively a mismatch.

In both situations, there is a substantial disconnect between the buyer and seller. Without adjusting the approach, both scenarios may result in a lost sale or the feeling of wasted time.

According to Casey Murray, avoiding or mitigating these collapses in sales communication begins with self-awareness. Once you recognize the differences that exist between you and your buyer, you can make adjustments to your behavior to maximize the potential for a future sale. For more examples of common disconnects and issues in sales conversations, listen to the podcast above.

What can you do next?

Ultimately, the process of developing self-awareness begins with a self-audit. Ask yourself the difficult questions provided above and think deeply about your positive and negative sales conversations. Identify your weaknesses and strengths and encourage your colleagues to do the same. If you are able, acquire a professional assessment or encourage your employer to do so for your entire sales team.

And keep at it. Self-awareness is a tough nut to crack, and it takes time and patience.

Key Takeaways:

• Self-awareness is crucial to create meaningful engagements with buyers and involves understanding both ourselves as salespeople and our buyers. It also helps us avoid or mitigate disconnects in sales conversations.
• Interpreting the behavior and motivations of yourself and your buyers can help you make adjustments to your sales strategies before a sales conversation and in real time. Both can lead to more productive interactions.
• Self-audits and professional behavioral analytics are two methods that can help you analyze your sales interactions and improve your ability to have meaningful sales conversations. The former is a necessary foundation for developing seller self-awareness. The latter provides substantial data points that can be used to improve person-to-person sales conversations and improve the effectiveness of a sales team by identifying strengths and weaknesses and creating a safe space for addressing them.

In addition to his contributions to the podcast, Casey Murray has offered to provide a free assessment to SIX lucky listeners. If you're interested, listen to the episode to find out how you can sign up!

Resources:

• The Johari Window via Communication Theory
• Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger (Published by Little, Brown Spark)
• The Virtual CRO (Casey's Web site)
• The Virtual CRO's Win More Sales Program for B2B Inside Sales
• Connect with Casey on LinkedIn and Twitter

For More Great Content

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.

Credits

• Audio Editing and Production by
• ChirpSoundShow Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

"Every salesperson worries about their strategies becoming stale, especially when approaching buyers for the first time. If you wonder how you can approach cold calls and meetings with a fresh mindset, then this episode is for you."

Episode Overview

In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Sam Richter about the importance of research for improving the quality of your sales calls and meetings. Sam is the founder and CEO of SBR Worldwide / Know More and author of Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling. In addition to his extensive sales experience and numerous awards, he has also built a reputation as a pioneer of modern-day sales intelligence and has developed digital resources and search engines to streamline sales meeting preparation.

Sales Intelligence as a Gateway to Better Sales Meetings

As our society becomes more focused on digital technologies, salespeople must learn to adapt not only to the changes in the market but also to the changes in the expectations of prospective buyers. In particular, good salespeople must pay attention to the sales strategies that work and don't work in the modern sales environment.

Many sales are conducted using the method of the "cold call," an unsolicited sale conducted on the phone or in person. Today, the tactics of the classic cold call have fallen out of favor, mainly because they are viewed as formulaic and predictable, making them an annoyance for many potential clients. Most prospective buyers are used to the questions we have been asking for years, and they can often sense the fishing expedition that cold calls create. As a result, many prospective buyers are more likely to show you the door than they are to purchase your product or service.

Sam Richter argues that we can take the "cold" out of the cold call by learning how to acquire "sales intelligence." Today, we'll take a look at the what, why, and how of sales intelligence.

What is sales intelligence?

Sales intelligence involves using the Internet and other digital tools to learn information about the people you hope to sell to, which you can then use in a sales meeting to create stronger connections with buyers. Good sales intelligence begins with several key questions:

• What is going on in the world of the company? If you have a personal meeting, you should ask the same question about the people you will meet.
• What is essential to the company or the people you will meet that might make them interested in your solution in the immediate moment?
• How do you make your sales pitch relevant to the company and the people involved in a meeting? Alternatively, what will motivate the buyer to say "yes"?

Effectively, sales intelligence is a different kind of pre-meeting preparation that turns the conversation from you to the buyer. Unlike the traditional cold call method, sales intelligence asks you to consider the type of connections you wish to create with your buyers and to redirect your research to find those points of connection. In doing so, you gain focus for a sales conversation and learn to ask meaningful and useful questions before, during, and after a call or meeting.

Why does sales intelligence matter, and how can it improve your sales?

Before the Internet, many buyers would give a salesperson an hour or two in order to learn more about the product and the people selling it. Today, buyers have what Sam Richter calls "buyer's intelligence." They look up the sellers they plan to interact with and prepare themselves for meetings with specific goals in mind.

Sellers, however, don't often do this. Instead, they come ready to talk about themselves even though the buyer is more interested in discussing who they are, what they need, and so on. However, a buyer is less likely to take you seriously if you come to the table with the same strategies as every other salesperson with which they have interacted. Effectively, failing to do your homework gives a buyer the firm impression that you are lazy and disinterested. After all, the one thing most people are ultimately passionate about is themselves. Buyers are no different, and the key to reaching them is learning how to show real interest in them.

Another way to think about sales intelligence is by looking at the difference between what Sam Richter calls "low price game" and "high price game":

• In a "low price game," a seller treats a cold call or a meeting as a means to make a sale. Making a sale is every seller's ultimate goal, but if you overly focus on making the sale, you will likely ignore the value of what you are offering.
• In a "high price game," a seller treats a cold call or a meeting as a means to provide value. Effectively, salespeople who care about and show genuine interest in what a prospective buyer is doing are engaged in "high price game."

Both of these forms suggest that sales are fundamentally about mindset. If your mindset centers on what you will get out of a sales conversation, you'll not only have less success but you'll also find sales less enjoyable. However, if your mindset focuses on trying to help a prospective buyer achieve their goals, you'll find sales more meaningful and more fun. For this reason, Sam Richter thinks sales can be "the most noble profession."

How do you motivate yourself to do the work of sales intelligence?

There are two significant reasons why you should take sales intelligence seriously:

1. Increasing your bottom lineTo put it more bluntly: acquiring sales intelligence can increase your chances of making a sale!
2. Personal motivationsIf you're the type of person who knows what to expect in a sales conversation – cold call or otherwise – then you have an incentive to acquire information about a potential client that will lead to more direct sales meetings. You should also think about the reasons you want to succeed as a salesperson beyond the immediate gratification of making a sale.

Naturally, these two points rely heavily on your ultimate goals. It is good practice to establish those goals both on a professional and personal level so you can be strategic about your sales methods and outreach.

What can you do to build sales intelligence?

There are a variety of things you can do to acquire sales intelligence, though we only have room to cover a few of them here. Sam Richter has four tips for acquiring sales intelligence:

1. Use Google News or YouGotTheNews.com to find information about a company. If your search does not turn up information on a company, try looking at their industry. You can also use the Sales Intel Engine to simplify and focus your searches.
2. Use the same resources for the people involved in your meeting to find common points of interest or unique professional details that might be relevant to a meeting. You can also look at their LinkedIn profiles to find some of this information.
3. Make sure that your first words during the meeting are about them and their world.
4. Use the 3/5 (3 minutes to find five pieces of information) or the 5/3 (5 minutes to find three pieces of information) model to streamline your search process.

Following these essential tips will lead to you asking better questions and making stronger connections with your prospective buyers. For additional resources, see the links in the Resources section below.

All of this begins with you. Focus your sales mindset on "high price game" when conducting your outreach, and look towards relevance, value, and points of connection in your research about an industry, a company, or an individual. You will become a more effective and conscientious salesperson and maintain a continued passion for sales.

Key Takeaways:

• Sales intelligence is a type of pre-meeting preparation that involves using digital tools such as the Internet to learn more about the people we plan to interact with in cold calls or sales meetings. Focus on finding 3-5 pieces of relevant information about a company or its employees to create stronger connections to prospective buyers.
• Good salespeople know that showing genuine interest in your prospective buyers creates more meaningful sales situations and makes sales more fun. Buyers are adept at detecting a fishing expedition, so the more you can do to differentiate yourself from the crowd will improve your chances of getting the "Yes" for a meeting or a sale.
• There are good incentives for acquiring sales intelligence, including increasing your sales and helping you fulfill your personal motivations as a salesperson. Both are important as motivators for switching sales strategies to include better sales intelligence.

Resources:

• Sam's Links:
• • Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling
  • Sam's Know More University
  • Sam's free tools to help you improve your background research
  • Sam's Bio
  • Connect with Sam on LinkedIn
  • Sam's Sales Intelligence Search Engine (I'm personally a paying subscriber!)
• Additional Reading:
• • To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink

For More Great Content

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.

Credits

• Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound
• Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

"Stories are a fundamental part of who we are, but sometimes salespeople are reluctant to include them in their sales strategies. In this episode, we explore why personal stories are essential to your sales approach."

Episode Overview

In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Mike Adams about how to use your personal story to create meaningful connections with buyers and open the door to a sales friendship. Mike is the author of Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell and the co-founder and CEO of The Story Leader, a sales consultancy which focuses on teaching sellers how to use stories to improve sales. With nearly 20 years in the industry, he has gained exceptional direct experience with the value of storytelling as a sales art, which he brings to today's show.

The Importance of your Personal Story for Engaging Buyers

Storytelling is a fundamental part of our humanity. Stories are part of our everyday lives, from books and movies that influence our world to the tales we share among friends and family. Something so essential to our lives can also play a role in the way we approach sales. Indeed, as Mike Adams suggests, most salespeople remember the stories we've been told or have experienced over other minute details.

In other words, stories are just as important in your personal life as they are in your sales. Unfortunately, many salespeople are resistant to changing their approaches. After all, they must deal with rejection as a possibility in sales, and the fear of rejection can make the idea of change seem untenable.

However, if the first job of a salesperson is to connect with a potential client, then storytelling is a must-have tool for your sales toolbox. Stories help build friendships with clients, establish credibility and authority, and help drive sales conversations by showing how and why your company operates. They are also common features in the business world. Good salespeople regularly use personal stories, and many salespeople become CEOs or company founders. In fact, roughly 25% of CEOs began in sales.

What can you do to incorporate personal stories into your sales conversations? First, let's take a quick look at the primary stories in sales.

What are the common story types in sales?

According to Mike Adams, there are seven story types that every salesperson should know:

1. Personal Stories explore how you got to where you are in sales, what you do, and why you're there that day.
2. Key Staff Stories introduce a customer to another person in your organization to build that person's credibility before their sales meeting.
3. Company Stories explore how your company was created and why it didn't fail.
4. Insight Stories tap into an aspect of the customer or company that they didn't know.
5. Success Stories explore a successful client's journey, with attention to how things were before they hired you, the challenges they faced, the action plan you devised, and the subsequent results.
6. Value Stories discuss how one of your organization's leaders responded to a challenge or pressure while adhering to the values of the company.
7. Teaching Stories address a seller's struggle to close a deal by providing them with a story about a similar situation and how it was resolved.

We don't have the space to cover each of these in depth. Instead, we will focus on the importance of the personal story. However, if you'd like more information on each of these stories, we recommend you read Mike's book, Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell. There is also a free sales course on The Story Leader, which serves as a companion to the book.

What is a personal story in sales, and why do they matter?

Personal stories focus on your journey as a salesperson. They can establish how you became a salesperson, the route you took to get to the present, why you do what you do, and so on. They are also a way to tell a client that you are experienced without becoming a walking advertisement for yourself. Stories of this type often rely on anecdotes and a willingness to discuss the human qualities of the sales world. To put it another way, personal stories center vulnerability and honesty in a sales conversation.

The goal of personal stories is to encourage an exchange of stories between sellers and customers. These exchanges can give you essential insight into how your clients think about their business or themselves. More importantly, the vulnerability of personal story exchanges builds trust and, ideally, friendship. Since customers and sellers tend not to trust one another, it is often difficult to create those meaningful connections. Personal stories change the relationship you have with a customer, which can help you break through the mistrust and formal nature of a sales conversation.

Additionally, personal stories can result in three positive outcomes:

1. The development of authentic connections that are human-to-human rather than brochure-to-brochure
2. Reciprocation on the part of the customer
3. The increased likelihood that clients will provide truthful responses to your questions

All of these benefits can increase your sales. More importantly, these benefits build long-term relationships with your clients that are more productive for both sides. The stories and friendships you make during your career will also have lasting value.

What are some of the components of personal stories?

Mike Adams suggests that most personal stories should meet the following criteria:

• 3 minutes or less of content

Longer stories tend to include unnecessary details or wander. A 3-minute limitation forces you to create a tight, quick-moving narrative.

• Focused on 3-4 turning point events

Turning point events help explain how you became a salesperson, what led you to become the person you are now, and what you do. They also help establish your credibility as a salesperson by demonstrating experience and history. When deciding on events, focus on the defining moments in your sales career.

• Personal stories must feature a sequence of related events

A standard personal story presents turning point events in a linear and explicitly connected order. In other words, your story must go from A to B, from B to C, and so on.

• Always include dates and places

Including dates and places allows the listener to place themselves in your story. Effectively, you give the listener details that will help them imagine where you were, what you saw, etc. You want your listener to experience you and to know what it is like to be you for a few minutes.

• Don't focus only on success

Personal stories are meant to be personal. Nobody is perfect. Including events of failure gives the listener an incentive to reciprocate your vulnerability, which can create stronger personal connections with customers.

Remember that engaging stories are not a simple list of events. There must be a natural flow from one thing to the next. Consider mapping your story and writing down the explicit connections between each moment. Doing so will help you visualize your personal story and streamline the narrative.

What holds sellers back from incorporating personal stories into their sales strategies?

Fear.

Sellers often fear that customers don't want to hear their stories, perhaps because they are a waste of time or customers want to get down to business. However, Mike Adams argues that sellers should put themselves in the shoes of their customers. From a customer's perspective, you're just a person who intends to talk about your products. They don't know you or know why they should trust you with their business.

However, sellers must start the personal conversations that can cut through a customer's latent distrust. Personal stories can break the ice and make a real difference in your sales conversations. All we can suggest is that you try!

If you're interested in hearing Mike's in-depth analysis of Bruce's personal story, make sure to listen to the podcast!

Key Takeaways:

• Storytelling is a powerful human quality. Stories are part of our everyday lives and impact our world. In sales, they are essential for building stronger and long-lasting relationships with your clients, which provide numerous benefits for you on a personal and professional level.
• Personal stories can help salespeople break through the initial trust barrier with customers. These types of stories introduce vulnerability into the conversation, which can often build trust and friendship with your customers. Ideally, your customers will respond with their own stories, leading to long-term relationships that are beneficial for all involved.
• We all must learn to beat back the fear of rejection and vulnerability that comes with using personal stories in our sales conversations. One way to do this is to place yourself in the shoes of your customers and consider how they view a sales conversation. You'll see the value of using personal stories to break the ice!

Resources:

• Mike's Links:
• • Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell
  • Mike's sales firm, TheStoryLeader.com
  • Mike's online training programs
  • Mike's YouTube Channel on Storytelling
  • Follow Mike on twitter @MikeAdamsSales
  • Connect with Mike on Linkedin
• Additional Resources:
• • Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig

For More Great Content

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.

Credits

• Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound
• Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

"Sometimes a sales conversation can feel like we're speaking different languages. If you've ever had that experience, you may benefit from this week's podcast on the importance of business knowledge to every sale."

Episode Overview

In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to Darrell Amy about the importance of learning to manage and focus your time to become a more productive and valuable seller. Darrell is the founder and chief innovation officer of Convergo Marketing and a co-host on the Selling From the Heart Podcast. With his extensive experience, he provides business-to-business (B2B) companies with sales and marketing solutions with particular attention to increasing long-term value for his clients.

Creating Productive Sales Conversations with the Language of Business

Losing a potential sale is a difficult thing to experience, especially if you don't understand why it happened. Every salesperson worries about improving their productivity and earning a customer's emphatic "yes." While lost sales are an unavoidable part of the sales life, there are situations in which knowledge and experience can make a difference. For Darrell Amy, one major limitation in sales productivity is a lack of business knowledge. In other words, you need to recognize the importance of business value – immediate and long-term – in all sales conversations.

According to Darrell Amy, developing your business acumen by learning the language of business is essential for maximizing the success of your sales conversations. While good intentions have value to you, they generally lack sales value to the customer. To motivate customers to say "yes," you need to present a clear understanding of the return on investment (ROI). Businesses, after all, have a limited amount of their most prized resources: time and money.

More importantly, businesses typically focus their time and money on their strategic priorities, which extend beyond the return on investment (ROI). It doesn't matter if you're solving a problem or have great ideas. The priorities of a business require that they are careful with the attention they give and the resources they expend.

Unfortunately, business acumen is often missing from the sales equation. For this reason, Darrell Amy suggests that we view sales skills and business acumen as the two pillars of sales.

Why does business acumen matter in sales conversations?

Most salespeople have a robust sales toolbox full of the right questions and actions to drive sales conversations. However, one of the biggest challenges for even seasoned salespeople is learning how to drive business conversations. Some of us jump too quickly into sales conversation mode and skip the business side of the equation. We are also likely to miss two critical factors:

• Understanding the key drivers for a business, including their business goals and challenges
• Failing to bring these key drivers into a conversation to show a prospective buyer that we understand where they are coming from

Understanding what motivates a business allows the seller to elucidate how a solution or product fits into the world of the buyer and connects to the top-level goals and challenges of the company. Making these connections maximizes the potential for closing a sale.

One way to understand the priorities of a business is to consider the different levels of value. These include:

• Return on Investment (ROI)What are the immediate, hard costs to the buyer? What are the immediate, expected returns for the buyer?
• Business ImprovementHow will your product or service improve the business in the long-term (i.e., enhancing workflow or customer retention)? How might these improvements help the business save on the hard costs?
• Risk ReductionWhat are the risks the business faces as a consequence of its products or services (i.e., lawsuits, data breaches, etc.)? What can you do to minimize or remove those risks?

These values are dependent upon the business and its goals. While many of these values are not quantifiable, addressing them can turn a traditional sale into a deeper sale. Businesses are always thinking about business improvement or risk reduction, and the return on investment (ROI) can sometimes become a secondary interest. As such, demonstrating the value of your service or product to the long-term goals of the business offers the buyer more than just the return on investment (ROI). Instead, it offers exponential benefits.

Bringing the language of business into your sales conversations, thus, builds upon the two important dynamics of successful sales: trust and value.

How can you use the language of business in your sales conversations?

According to Darrell Amy, there are several immediate steps you can take to generate business-savvy sales conversations:

• Come to a prospective sale having done your homework on the business.
• Show genuine interest in learning about their business and prepare relevant questions to facilitate that learning.
• Begin sales conversations by establishing the company's top strategic goals. Connect the flow of the conversation to those goals so the buyer does not lose sight of the impact your service or product will have on their bottom line.
• Close a sale the same way you started it: by bringing the conversation back to the business goals you identified at the start. Doing so reinforces the value of what you are offering.

Using these methods will create stronger connections between your sales goals and the business goals of the prospective buyer. As a result, you reinforce the value of what you are offering, mainly because you have looked beyond the immediate return to the long-term benefits for the company.

How can you develop your business knowledge?

While you don't need to earn a business degree to become versed in business language and practices, there are a few things you can do to expand your knowledge base:

• Read business books and magazines

Take a look at the top business on Amazon and give some of them a read. Do the same with current business magazines. Both will keep you up-to-date with the field of business and the various perspectives involved.

• Listen to online lectures

Many universities offer lectures from various business courses in podcast form. Open Culture has a partial list of some of these courses.

• Take an online course

Websites such as EdX and Coursera offer online courses in a variety of business topics. Many of these courses are taught by top faculty at major universities and are either free or relatively affordable.

In other words, consume a steady diet of business education in addition to your sales education. After all, good sales professionals realize that learning is fundamental to sales success.

Remember that becoming a better seller is a progressive process. It takes time, effort, and perseverance. Adding business knowledge to your repertoire is just a part of the necessary process of adaptation. Take advantage of it.

Key Takeaways:

• Language of Business - Educate yourself on the language of business by reading, taking classes, and listening to business owners. Rather than relying on well-versed sales strategies, learn to develop your business knowledge so you can clearly and directly invest your goals in the priorities of the client's business.
• Genuine Curiosity - Begin a sales conversation by investing in the client's business by showing genuine curiosity in what they do and in their top strategic goals. By doing so, you create a stronger connection to the company and its goals, which builds trust and solidifies the value you bring to the table.
• Beyond Immediate ROI - Think beyond the immediate return on investment (ROI) to the other factors that may improve the client's business. This might include emphasizing the ways your solutions will help the business grow or reduce risk. In other words, think about long-term value in addition to guaranteed returns.

Resources:

• Selling From the Heart by Larry Levine
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Darrell's links:
• • Contact Darrell Amy on LinkedIn
  • Article: "What is Business Acumen"
  • Article: "The Critical Missing Ingredient in B2B Sales: Business Acumen"
  • Blog Post: "Four Ways Sales People Who Sell On Price Shoot Themselves In The Foot… and Destroy Industries"
  • Subscribe to Darrell's popular Selling from the Heart Podcast

For More Great Content

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.

Credits

• Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound
• Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

"Some of us have wondered how to become more efficient as salespeople while completing the many day-to-day tasks necessary that lead up to great sales conversations. If that describes you, then this episode is definitely worth your time."

Episode Overview

In this episode, Bruce Scheer talks to David Guarino about the importance of learning to manage and focus your time to become a more productive and valuable seller. David is a Veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and has over 25 years of sales experience in the electronics and manufacturing industries. In addition to serving as the Director of Business Development at Piston Automotive, he is also the owner of Driven Recruiting, an employment service that replaces the traditional hiring process with an assessment-based talent matching system.

Optimizing Your Most Important Resource: Time

We all know that time is finite, and yet so many of us struggle to use it effectively. For salespeople, failing to use time effectively can reduce productivity, increase stress, and limit our ability to have meaningful engagements with customers. Yet in our fast-paced, technology-infused present, it is easy to get distracted or lose focus. That's why it is so important to learn how to focus and maximize our time to provide value as a seller.

Why is it important to optimize your time as a seller?

Remember that everything in business changes. This includes sellers, clients, and companies. With change comes new technologies and systems, new client goals and needs, and new sales strategies and business practices. Let's not forget that the things we sell change, too, which necessitates that we all become effective adapters to our respective "worlds." Adaptation, however, requires energy and time, and the more the industry changes, the more components are added to the average workflow.

For David Guarino, change came not only to his chosen industry – automotive and manufacturing sales – but also to his perspective. He once saw the sales industry as focused on what sellers can do for the company, which he argues led to less trust and transparency for the seller and the consumer. Over his 25 years of experience, that changed, and he now sees sales requiring a focus on the value of time and how best to manage it.

For sellers, time optimization must look at the relationship between the seller, the client, and the company. Two major questions serve as a starting point for interpreting these relationships:

• How do we create value for our customers and our companies?
• How do we manage time to maximize that value?

Creating value through time management requires us to identify the goals and interests that each entity brings to the table. We can then align our personal goals with those of the company, which is crucial for determining where we are most productive and how best to maximize productivity through a focused workflow. These goals can also direct you to the things that are most important for your sales conversations. Ultimately, the goal of optimizing your time is identifying what matters so you can learn to distinguish between the things that deserve more of your time and the things that serve as distractions from your goals, your customer's goals, and your company's goals.

What can you do to manage your time?

According to David Guarino, there are three primary goals you can meet to manage your time more effectively:

1. Identify the areas and times in which you are most effective

As we explored in our discussion with Casey Murray, one of the most important processes for salespeople is to self-assess. For managing your time, there are some key questions to consider: How do you learn (process)? When do you learn (time of day)? Where do you learn (place)? Matching your productivity times and places to your personal and professional goals (seller, client, and company) will provide a starting point for establishing a focus for your time.

1. Avoid task-oriented workflows and distractions

Email notifications, everyday passive sales, and program management are important, but they are always present and can serve as a distraction. You don't need to be responsive to these things at all times. After all, it's not a race. Instead, focus on the most value for your time by turning off notifications when you don't need them, filtering your email messages to place the most important items first in your workflow, and use priority scheduling to avoid creating long lists of tasks that often never end.

1. Develop a routine

Once you have identified your productive times, places, and actions, you can build a daily routine that prioritizes the important things from seemingly urgent things. Routines should place your most critical components during times when you are most productive. Other things such as answering non-critical emails can be built into the routine at less optimal periods to give you a natural workflow.

One method for meeting all of these goals is to build a calendar model for your schedule. Unlike the task-based model, calendars emphasize the important pieces and remove the temptation to treat everything as urgent, which can be stressful and unproductive. Calendars offer structure to your workflow and let you focus on what you do best.

Lastly, we must all take care of ourselves. Pay attention to your sleep patterns and mental health. Losing too much sleep can dramatically impact your productivity. Additionally, elements such as diet and stress can impact your mood, behavior, and thought patterns, which, in turn, can also reduce productivity and work satisfaction. While some of these things are difficult to manage in our lives, it is essential to build a life routine that is reasonable for you. More information on the impact of sleep on our lives is linked in the resources section below.

What can you do to manage your customer's time?

Many salespeople are familiar with meetings, whether with clients or colleagues. While David Guarino believes that meetings should be avoided except when they are essential, he also suggests that we establish clear agendas for meetings with clearly stated objectives. Agenda-based meetings often reduce the frequency of distractions and unfocused discussions that lead to less meaningful and valuable sales interactions. Additionally, agendas establish respect between you and the client and appear professional by design.

To make agendas more effective, you can also ask for client input. Remember that a client's commitment to a meeting is incredibly important to them precisely because they are giving you their time. By asking for input, you help the client set their own goals and priorities; they can also suggest changes that may make the meeting more productive for both sides.

Agendas can also reduce our tendency to rush just to complete a task. Rushed communication is always less valuable than meaningful and purposeful communication. To avoid the rush instinct, consider these questions before you respond to an email or direct sales conversation:

• Are you responding just to respond?
• Are you listening to understand and provide value?
• Why are they asking for information?

These questions get at the nuances of a sales conversation, which help us identify what a client is actually looking for.

Where does this ultimately lead us?

According to David Guarino, sales are always personal, and we should strive to emphasize the personal connections in our sales conversations. It comes down to a simple question: why should anyone care?

In our technology-heavy world, it can be difficult to see the difference between the important things and the things that distract us by appearing urgent. Yet, we must always consider whether our technologies and systems serve our agenda as sellers rather than the agenda of distraction. For this reason, ask yourself a few questions:

• Are you using the tools properly?
• Are they enabling you to be more productive or effective?
• Are they cumbersome and distracting?

Every seller will have a slightly different response, but your answers may let you see a simple example of the distractions that take away from your productivity as a seller.

Key Takeaways:

• Value of Time - Recognize that time is valuable to everyone in a sales situation. You, your clients, and your company know that time is important; nobody likes wasting time or feeling like they don't have control over how their time is used. Once you identify how to value your own time, you will be better equipped to adjust your routine and schedule and focus on the things that matter most.

• Routine - Build a routine that focuses your energy on the important things. It is easy to become distracted by email or other common interactions that seep into our work lives. While you can't ignore all of these things, you can establish times for certain activities so you can focus on what matters most to your sales strategies. This is part of building a routine that maximizes productivity.

• Agendas - Use agendas to make meetings with clients or colleagues more meaningful. Agendas can serve as a guide for a meeting, which increases the potential for productive engagements. When establishing agendas for meetings, make sure to identify the goals of everyone involved and adjust your agenda accordingly.

Resources:

• Driven Recruiting
• Connect with David on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Mentioned in the episode:
• • Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
  • Sales Truth by Mike Weinberg
  • Verne Harnish Links:
  • • Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
    • Scaling Up
    • Gazelles (Service)
    • Follow Verne on LinkedIn and Twitter
  • Find Your Why and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
  • When by Daniel H. Pink
  • What Great Salespeople Do by Mike Bosworth and Ben Zoldan
  • Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell by Mike Adams
  • F.U. Money and Unlock It by Dan Lok
  • OutBound Sales Conference
• Other Fantastic Resources on this topic:
• • Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
  • "Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In An Underslept State'" by Terry Gross (NPR)
  • The Sales Blog by Anthony Iannarino
  • More Sales Less Time by Jill Konrath (Author of Snap Selling)

For More Great Content

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool short video that shows you how to do this.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit from the insights provided by my guests.

Credits

• Audio Editing and Production by ChirpSound
• Show Notes and Additional Writing by Shaun Duke from The Duke of Editing

Episode Overview

This episode, "How to lead in the buyer journey with Next Steps," featured Darrin Fleming, David Svigel, Principals at ROI-Selling and me – Bruce Scheer. The three of us have been helping sellers for years in having more concerted next step conversations that are useful in leading and supporting the buyer through the buying process. Specifically, we have partnered together to help clients with creating assessments and value-selling tools that are useful in helping buyers see and communicate the case for change and create urgency around change initiative.

When Things Go Wrong (with no concerted Next Steps)

There's a typical scenario that we see all the time. A seller is talking to a buyer. They have a wonderful introductory meeting, and it seems like there's some excitement in the air, and then the seller says, "So, what do you think our next step should be?" And then the buyer typically says, "Well, send me some information. I'm going to host some internal meetings and kind of shop this idea around, and we'll get back to you." And so, the seller agrees and spends a bunch of extra time gathering up and sending over information. And then, as one of our friends likes to say, the seller hears a thousand watts of silence! Nothing is happening on the buyer side. The seller chases a few times to ensure the information was received. No responses. Weeks go by. Finally, the seller gets lucky and catches the buyer by phone. And what do they hear? "Oh, sorry, man. Yeah, I have been really busy. We haven't looked at the stuff you sent and haven't had any meetings around it. Hmm. I'm kind of busy now. Can we talk another time?" And, then things just start to slide further South from there. This isn't unusual, and we believe not having concerted next steps to lead the buyer is a strong contributor to the stat we've been hearing - 58% of deals ending in 'no deal.'

When Things Go Right (with concerted Next Steps)

I had worked on in a joint initiative between Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, where they had eight solutions that they had identified between them. They wanted a go-to-market program with a concerted selling approach. One of the solution areas was business intelligence, and if a customer engaged with them on it – it would result in a multi-million-dollar deal. We built introductory conversation materials for reps to use in securing a meeting. In the initial discussion, the seller would offer a concerted next step called the Executive Briefing. If the client was willing to sponsor the Executive Briefing, including making sure the right people attended, the Executive Briefing would be confirmed. HP and Microsoft would bring in their "Top Gun" experts to talk to those executives about what business intelligence would mean for their organization. At the conclusion of the Executive Briefing, additional next steps would be laid out for consideration and agreement. It normally included an assessment and business case-building process, and a strategic workshop to shape the initiative, roadmap and action plan for success. What we found was over a 50% deal connect rate when we when we went down this concerted next-steps path. All the folks involved in shaping this program won a marketing program of the year award.

Best Practices in Leading the Buying Journey with Next Steps

It is important to put the seller in a position of leading the buyer towards next steps as opposed to the buyer leading the seller - which very often goes poorly because buyers are busy with their day jobs! The seller needs to be helping their buyers create the plan for the future, putting themselves in an advisory role to help define for the buyer what looks better in the future and how to get there. One of Bruce's clients has a buyer journey map they show at every client touchpoint. They will highlight the journey and steps their customers typically take to embark on an initiative and leverage their software and services. They will get agreement around the series of steps, including an assessment and value analysis useful for helping their buyer create an internal case for change. After that's established, they will move to a strategic planning workshop where they can further shape an initiative and make sure executives are fully aligned and bought in.

This is a very different orientation from the norm. Most organizations align their sellers around a sales process that's self-serving. The better approach is more buyer-centric – thinking about what the buyer needs at each next stage of their buying journey, and how can you move the customer through that buying stage with concerted next steps.

Simple 'Next Steps' Planning Framework

As you move through the buyer journey a few times, you start to be aware of natural junctures of what that buyer journey looks like, including some buyer-centric milestones along the way. There may be a stage where they want executives to be educated on the case and value of change. And maybe there's another step around strategy - what's the strategy to embark on this change initiative? Maybe there's another step about the initiative itself - who's going to be involved in this initiative? What's the roadmap look like in this initiative and, and what's timing around this initiative?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Outcomes - What are the outcomes that you're looking for at each one of these buying milestones? A few examples of outcomes would be key executives are educated on the opportunity and case for change, executives have agreed to a strategy and executives have agreed to provision resources for an initiative to be born.
2. Activities - What are the activities that need to happen on the seller side and on the buyer side to make sure you're reaching the desired outcomes? Examples include assessments, value analyses, strategic workshops and initiative action planning meetings.
3. Tools – What are the tools needed to support the key activities and desired outcomes at each stage, including Assessment Tools, ROI Calculators, Strategic Workshop Structure and Content, and marketing materials useful in selling each activity and tool as it's introduced into the buying process.

In advance of a client meeting or call, it's a best practice to do some mini-planning about what you want to discuss with the client and what are your desired outcomes and next steps you will introduce in the meeting.

Getting Your Next Steps in Place

To get your next steps in place, you ask your peers and folks in marketing – what tools do they have that you can leverage? You might be pleasantly surprised that something either exists or perhaps marketing commissioned having something developed that didn't see the light of day. Leverage what you can. Don't stop there though if concerted next step activities and tools don't exist. You might have to cook something up yourself to fill the gap, and get support overtime in having more professional and branded support and tools.

Resources and Links for this Episode

• Connect Darrin Fleming on LinkedIn
• Connect with David Svigel on LinkedIn
• View some ROI Selling Resources
• Surf the ROI-Selling Blog
• Join the Value Selling LinkedIn Group
• See some top-class ROI selling tools
• See a success story of a concerted next step for Brocade

For More Great Content

I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.

Credits

Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Williams, co-founder, and CEO of DealPoint and I talk about taking a buyer-centric approach in influencing the buying process.

Energy Being Wasted

Energy is wasted not just on the seller side of the sales process but also on the buyer side. When you look at the US and global economy, the amount of time that's wasted on bad deals is just criminal. As for selling organizations, if we can improve how we sell and how we interact with our counterparts in the buying side of the equation, the entire world economy could become more efficient just by doing sales better. Ultimately a good salesperson is a trusted advisor to the customer. And the more we can bring buyers and sellers closer together, the better off everybody is because salespeople tend to be very knowledgeable. They know how to make the buyers life easier or better. If we can help sellers express that relationship a little bit better, then everybody is better off.

What does being Seller-Centric Look Like in the Sales Process?

In a typical sales process, the seller starts with prospecting, qualifies a buyer, and then as fast as they can they move to a demo. Then there's going to be some negotiation, and then they go for the close. The problem lies in this is all focused on the seller's needs. And you'll notice that in all of those steps just described; there was no talking about education or talking about the buyer's actual problem. Sellers can very quickly get distracted from how they can help their buyer with too much thinking and focus on what do they need to sell. When the focus isn't on the buyer and their needs, there's a likelihood of several months going by and ending in a bad or no deal. This is a scenario of a seller showing up and throwing up, and racing to the demo to show how cool the stuff is. The buyer hasn't had a chance to express what's in it for them. A lot of times the buyer doesn't complain. A lot of people talk about deals ending in "no decision." This is the case where a buyer makes a decision, and and the decision is they don't want to talk to you. You can't blame the customer. They're busy. You didn't give them enough value or didn't offer them something that made it worth their time to engage with you. You'll be forewarned of this eventuality when you are presenting your sides, and the smartphone comes out.

How can a Seller be Buyer-Centric in the Buying Process?

In a good buyer-centric process, there are three components. You want to have a strong understanding of who the buyer is. There's your champion, but there are also going to be multiple decision makers in a typical enterprise deal. You have to be aware not only of what those parties names are but also what their interests and priorities are. You need to be able to present your solution to their problem in their flavor. You are presenting yourself as if you are an advisor to their organization, and you are being brought in and being paid by the organization to help them fix this problem. The CFO is going to have a different set of concerns than the IT manager, so you need to make sure that you understand what those concerns are. To get a meeting with key decision makers and stakeholders in the buying process, you can suggest to your champion the sorts of questions each one of them is likely to ask, and how it would be smart to get a meeting with them to answer those and any other concerns they might have. You can stress you will be able to speak to their concerns as you have great experience in answering those concerns for other buyers in other companies.

When the Real Selling Begins

Once you get everyone in the buying party aligned and saying "yes," many sellers think to themselves "mission accomplished." Sadly, that's often not the case. There's now a massive aspect of the buying process that still needs to transpire, and this often is when the real selling begins. The hard part is that the champion may not know exactly how the buying process works inside their organization. This is where it's critical to have a mutual action plan in place. For example, perhaps your solution has something to do with their production line. And they need their production line working by a critical date. Once that's established, you can work back in terms of the key buying steps in the buying process that will need to transpire to hit that critical milestone. For example, you can start to schedule a financial review, and deeper technical review, and a legal review as from experience you know clients generally do these things before the contract is signed. You can then work with the champion to figure out the names of people who will be part of those reviews and how to get on their schedule for review and signoff.

Introduce a Mutual Action Plan

Note you are a lot more likely to have the deal go forward because there's a clear plan of action. The buyer also feels good feeling that they're in safe hands because you've done this before and you're helping them guide this goal through their organization. Second, you have much higher accuracy of forecast because now you have these milestones that are set out, ideally with due dates. And if they slip, you know that you're not going to hit your close date so you can tell your manager you are not going to hit as forecast because you are missing these milestones which could be months in advance. You have much better notice. You can now use these milestones as a reason to call and lean on the customer because you can say we committed that to go live at a certain date they said they needed to hit, they are putting themselves at risk by slipping on the internal buying process. Note that you are positioning yourself as on their side and you are trying to help them attain what's important to them. This gets powerful when you can show them a hard dollar number for the cost of potential delay. A mutual action plan can be as simple as a Google Doc that you share back and forth with that customer so that you have these agreed milestones or have a mutual action plan.

Making Your Champion Look Awesome

You want to make your champion look awesome. One idea is to have a generic presentation that your Champion can turn around and use for their internal selling – in their brand. They can start presenting it, and they look like a smart person. It's also important to provide them with an executive summary that their boss's boss's boss can digest very quickly. It's very tempting to share a 30 page PowerPoint that has every single part of your value prop in beautiful full-color graphics. But senior decision makers don't have time or tolerance for that. They want a succinct summary, and then they can dig into detail if they want to.

Think about the Buying Experience

It's always important to make sure that you are giving a great buying experience. Look at the sales process from your buyer's eyes. What are they receiving? Is it just a whole bunch of emails? Is it a bunch of Google Docs that you're sharing? Make sure that you make it easy for them - not only to understand your value proposition, but also for them to share it internally. Just be cognizant of the fact that the prospect is not as good at this as you are, and give them the tools so that they can be successful inside their organization.

Summary Takeaways

Tom certainly knows this stuff and is dedicating his life energy to improving the interconnect between buyers and sellers and high consideration deals.

1. Making the buying process more efficient and effective facilitates beneficial change. That's a wonderful ambition. This happens by making the overall buying process more buyer-friendly and helping your champion buy.
2. You need to have a role or persona-based value proposition to each key party in the buying process.
3. Once they say "yes" is when the real selling begins. So many deals fall into "no deal" after then yes has been given. Here's where you need to help the buyer help themselves in removing friction from getting to yes and a signed contract. For complex sales, once the business side is satisfied, and they say yes you have to get through further technical, legal and financial hurdles. Tom's advice on how to be useful to your champion in these matters is extremely useful.

Resources and Links for this Episode

• Connect with Tom Williams on LinkedIn
• Visit Tom's company DealPoint.io
• Gain insights from Tom at his Blog
• Listen to Stu Heinecke's Podcast episode with Tom, How the Deal Room Converts the Sale

For More Great Content I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.

Credits Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview

This episode features Bernie Borges, Chief Marketing Officer at Vengreso. Vengreso's focus is on helping organizations with their digital sales transformation. Bernie has been on this focus for longer than most and comes to the table as a top-class marketer who continues to be very relevant for sales. He carried a bag in his personal sales career for ten years, and then switched over to the marketing side – so he's walked many miles in both shoes and is gifted in bringing both together to influence revenue growth. We will be talking about Content for Sales, and how to take advantage of and leverage content in your sales cycles. He will be answering the what, the when and the how of introducing content to your buyers to influence their engagement with you.

What is Going on in the World of Sales?

We are living in an age where the buyers go through the buying journey anywhere from 50% to 80% on their own. They're conducting research online and talking to their peers. And we know there's data that shows that 94% of b2b buyers consume between five and eight pieces of content from the vendor that they ultimately select.

What is Content for Sales?

If you are in sales, you don't want to be solely dependent on content that's coming just from your marketing department to influence the prospects you are talking to. You want to have some influence too. You want content that you can share with your buyers. Content for Sales is content that enables salespeople to influence in a positive, constructive and useful way – helping their buyers by sharing content with them - proactively. The goal is to share content that is useful, relevant and helpful to them. You are providing resources to them so that those buyers want to have a conversation with you.

What are Pitfalls with Content for Sales?

The biggest trap sellers find themselves in is "random acts of content." A lot of companies have a sales enablement function. This function exists so that the salespeople can focus on contacting and building relationships with prospects and can avoid the heavy lift of identifying the content that they need. The trap sellers find themselves falling into is working hard to find the content they need. And unfortunately, because it is hard work, it takes some effort and kudos to some salespeople who do it. A lot of other salespeople don't, and they really should be enabled by the marketing department with the right content.

Thinking about Your LinkedIn Profile

62% of decision makers review a sales persons LinkedIn profile and look for evidence that that salesperson can be helpful to them. You want to avoid having a profile that brags about how you make quota and go to President clubs, and how you're a great contract negotiator - because that's not what your buyer wants to read. You want to have the kind of a profile that communicates your credibility, authority, and expertise within your industry. You don't have to be a 30-year salesperson by any means. You just need to communicate that you understand and know the challenges in the industry and the pain points of your buyer, and how you help your buyer. You want to avoid the pitfall of being someone that the buyer visits online and goes "Nope" and moves on. You want to be a thumbs up person – the person they want to engage with.

One thing that has not changed since the beginning of time is that sales is about relationships. It's just so easy for the buyer to be invisible and not respond, and it's harder than ever to make those connections to build a relationship.

Being Consistent and Having a Cadence

For digital selling, you have to have a cadence. And a cadence means that you are doing things consistently and it's pre-determined. That doesn't mean every Tuesday at 9:30 am. It just means that daily, you've got a preset, predetermined set of activities that you're doing so that you are consistent. So that's another pitfall to avoid if you just say, yeah, I'm going to do this, and you think about it once a week, or every other week, and you just kind of, like parachute in and, and send someone a piece of content that again, is that random act of content. You're going to get limited results. You've got to have a cadence. If it sounds like this takes some work and some effort – it does. 94% of buyers are going to consume five to eight pieces of content from the vendor they ultimately select. Are you going to have the habit and cadence of engaging with your buyers with content that you know that they need to help them on their journey? We don't have a sales process anymore - the sales process is dead. It's the buyer's journey, and we have to engage the buyer on their journey and influence them by being a resource to them. We're not selling to them; we are helping them on their journey. Hopefully, at the end of their journey, they're doing business with you because you rose to the top in being helpful to them.

Content Relevant for Multiple Buyers

Let's say you're a b2b sales professional, and you sell a major system. There are ten people on the buying committee. Let's say it's a $300,000 average contract value, and it's a six to twelve-month sales cycle. Your solution has multiple aspects of information about it. So along the way, you need to be feeding content to the different people on the buying committee that's relevant to their role. For example, there's going to be some roles at the executive level, and content for them is all around total cost of ownership, return on investment, the value to the customer experience, etc. Then there's going to be people in the buying committee whose jobs are on the line to implement your solution. They need to understand what's it take to implement. They want to know what's involved, who's involved and what are the resources that are needed? They want to know what are the risks, what's the upside and other details. The point is you need to understand the different personas that are involved in the buying journey, and what their interests are.

Types of Content for Sales

Content types for sales are no different than all other content types - whether it's a case study, blog article, third-party research data, etc. As long as the content type matches and aligns with the persona and the journey, that's the most important thing to that individual - addressing the question that that potential buyer is probably trying to ask at that point in time.

The Role of Marketing in Content for Sales

Sellers can influence their marketing people on how to take an action toward content for sales. Marketing needs to understand 94% of buyers are going to are going to consume the five pieces of content from the winning vendor that they select. Marketers need to ensure enough content exists to feed those prospective buyers and enable sales people to be influential in the delivery of that content. Sales should be thinking about collaborating with marketing. It's an age-old topic - marketing and sales collaboration. But we're now in the age of digital and account-based marketing. We have more potential for alignment because the lines have blurred between sales and marketing. The modern marketer who is truly aligned with the sales team and the head of sales says to the head of sales, "your number is my number, and I want to work with you on the path to that number." The marketer then needs to support the sellers with great messaging and content they can use in their one-to-one conversations.

Summary Takeaways

Here are a few summary takeaways for this episode:

• The modern B2B buyer is spending a good deal of time surfing and being influenced outside of direct selling conversations with the vendor. They also consume 5-8 pieces of content from the vendor they ultimately select. So, the net of it is the modern buyer is seeking content, and the onus is on you to make sure they get relevant content to influence their decision and ultimately buy from you! You can appreciate Bernie's advice and warning - to stay away from "random acts of content."
• We also talked about cleaning up and sharpening your LinkedIn profile and recrafting your profile from a customer point of view. This means shifting the content focus – from all about you types of content to more about the industry and customer problems you help customers solve. Furthermore, you should showcase the resources and value you bring in helping customers solve for their challenges. Ultimately, we want potential buyers to want to have a relationship with us, and it's important to help them connect the dots on how we will be relevant to them.

Resources and Links for this Episode

• Connect with Bernie Borges on LinkedIn
• Learn about Digital Sales Transformation at Bernie's company Vengreso
• Download the Content for Sales Infographic Bernie mentioned
• Visit Bernie's Resource Center to learn more about Content for Sales
• Watch some videos on Vengreso's YouTube Channel
• Listen to the Selling with Social Sales Podcast

For More Great Content

I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.

Credits

Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview

In this episode, Chris Orlob, Senior Director of Product Marketing Gong.io and I talk about what's working and not working and CEO level sales conversations. Chris shares some surprising insights about how things change based on how high up in the organization you are having selling conversations – and how things should change to be more in-tune with senior business decision makers.

The Study Says … for Executives … No More than 4 Questions!

In the summer of 2017, Gong.io created a discovery call benchmark report. They analyzed a bunch of discovery calls to figure out what was working. They found that 11 to 14 questions was the "sweet spot" for a discovery call. Then in 2018, they released a new study that was pretty contradictory to original benchmark report. It showed that there was a very sharp decline in the likelihood to win a deal if you ask more than 4 questions. The difference between these two research studies was the first one, the one with the suggestion of 11 to 14 questions, didn't differentiate who the buyer was or what level they were in the organization. And the data for the second study was exclusively C suite executives. Bottomline, there was a sharp decrease in success rates after asking just a few questions at this senior executive level.

What's Different About Asking Executives Questions?

Sellers often go into discovery meetings asking information-gathering questions that enable the seller. If you're going to ask questions to a senior buyer, they should be questions that benefit the buyer, not you. These are questions that maybe make them think differently about an opportunity that's sitting under their nose, or it's reframing a problem that they've been dealing with. Instead of going through this, like generic line of discovery call questions where you're trying to qualify them, they don't really have patience for that. They don't like taking sales calls anyway, and when they do, they're doing it on a whim and a hope that the seller is going to provide value during that customer conversation. Most of the time, the seller does not.

There are a few interpretations of this data. The takeaway is to not ask four questions and that's going to solve all your problems. The first suggestion to get across is the questions you ask have to change - they have to be thought provoking. They can't be self serving. And then the second part is the bulk of your meeting with a senior executive has to be built around delivering insights to them, not just asking a bunch of questions.

Provoking Senior Executives

Back in 2009, when we were in a downturn, Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin, and Geoffrey Moore wrote an HBR article entitled, "In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers." This was seminal work that probably started the wave thinking around what we call "insight selling" today. I was working with Infosys on their cloud strategy go to market strategy and messaging, and their cloud leader, Vishnu, would mention to executives, "I've looked at IDC, Forrester, Gartner and others, and pretty much everybody is talking about the cloud and workloads in the cloud. And there's a prediction that in three years, about 70% of enterprise workloads will be cloud-based. So, Mr. or Mrs. CIO, where do you think you're going to be in three years? Do you think you will be on benchmark, below benchmark or even ahead of the pack?" And then he would watch a look of consternation form on their face. Then they would discuss their cloud strategy and how Infosys could be helpful. The best practice in asking provocative questions is to tee the question up with an interesting industry insight or fact or stat, and then move into the question. Then you are leading with insight. You're asking an open-ended questions. You will know you were successful when the executives cancel their meetings for the rest of the day so that they can think about this and maybe go for a walk around the block.

Elevating Sales Messaging – from Tactical to Strategic

It comes down to messaging in an educational way. It's elevating your message to be more strategic rather than tactical. A lot of sales messaging is very tactical. Either it's product-driven, or it's just talking about maybe a valid problem or opportunity - but not something a C level executive would deem as strategic. For example, Gong.io used to talk about sales coaching quite a bit and still do in some contexts. But when you tell a story about sales coaching, without doing the right things to make it sound more strategic, you get punted down lower in the organization - you get punted down and delegated to the person you sound like. And for us, that's typically like mid-level sales enablement person. If we tell that story and don't get me wrong, we love selling to sales enablement and helping them buy from us. But we would rather stick with the C suite executive.

Ways to Make Your Sales Messaging more Strategic

There are two ways that come to mind that you can make your messaging more strategic. The first way is tying your solution to a more strategic problem that the executive care about. That's the obvious one. It's very straightforward. For example, at Gong.io we talk about a major industry shift - product differentiation is dead. The way to beat your competitors has more to do with your sales conversations now and now that's tying it to a more strategic issue. If you can find an obvious bigger, more strategic problem to tie your value proposition to, that's your first obvious way to elevate the strategic importance of your messaging. But not everybody has that luxury.

The second way to make your sales messaging more strategic is to take whatever your messaging against today that is labeled as a tactical problem and wrap it in a larger story. So for Gong.io that would be coaching and tell a story that elevates the strategic importance of that problem. This is called agenda setting. Here's the example storyline we've used for setting the agenda. We have found that there is a shift in the industry. The sales environment today is completely different than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, you could hire a sales guy or a sales gal. And their expectations were to just show up and sell and make money. But we have this shift in the last 10 years called the millennial workforce. And these types of sales reps have much bigger expectations from their employers. They don't just want to show up and sell. They want to be the best sales guy or gal, they expect their employer to invest in their training and their development and to help them along the way. And if you don't do something to do that, all they have to do is respond to the latest LinkedIn InMail they've received from a recruiter that week and they will go elsewhere. And then we introduce the concept of coaching and how it fits into that. And now coaching is not framed in this tactical sense of, we can increase your win rates by one or 2%. It's framed in the sense of, hey, you're dealing with millennials. Now you're going to have to provide good coaching, just to build your organization, prevent attrition, and maintain like a world class company.

Resources and Links for this Episode

• Connect with Chris Orlob on LinkedIn
• Learn about Conversational Intelligence at Chris' company io
• HBR article "In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers."

For More Great Content

I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.

Credits

Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound

Episode Overview

For this episode, I'm speaking with Andy Paul. We had the opportunity to meet in person at the sales enablement conference in Denver, thanks to Nancy Nardin, Founder of Smart Selling Tools, who made the introduction. Andy has several books out and has launched a new learning community for sellers and leaders called The Sales House. In this episode, Andy breaks down some essential learnings around his BALD framework.

Humans are Underrated

We are in the era of AI, ML, and DL – and we are going to see a lot more automation in the economy. The people who can build relationships with other people and who can truly connect and collaborate with others - their value is going to increase. If you are not curious about what's going on, if you make yourself uninteresting, because you're not interested in other people and what's going on then, yeah, you're gonna be at a disadvantage. Those people who are learners and who want to stay on top of things and who are fascinated by automation – they are going to use it. It's not going to supplant us, and we are going to use it to be better humans! So, you just have to be curious about the other person. And that's going to lead you down a path. And if you need an app that says, hey, when you start this conversation, ask a question about them. That's fine. Use it if that's needed.

What is B.A.L.D.?

The "B" stands for "be human." The "A" stands for "ask great questions." The "L" stands for "listen slowly." And the "D" stands for "deliver value." This model applies to any relationship in your life. I call it a "relationship operating system." It doesn't matter whether it's in business or life.

Be Human

If you want to connect with someone else, this is what you do. Be human. Don't just be present - be focused. Put your phone away; look somebody in the eye. Make sure they understand that you're there. You're in the moment.

Ask Questions

Be curious. Ask great questions. By being interested in someone else's situation, you're making yourself interesting. And that's how the connection is formed. The science on this is pretty settled at this point. You do make people open up as people love to talk about what's important to them what they're passionate about. This includes small talk. Some might say busy executives don't have time for small talk. The science is incontrovertibly clear - small talk is key to making a connection with another person. "Where are you from?" is a great question. Just don't be scripted. Be authentic. You show up with scripted questions – you are likely to get scripted answers!

Listen Slowly

Before you respond to questions. You have to listen as you think the person is - hear the words the person is really saying. This is where empathy starts coming in. This is where you've got to be in the moment. You need to slow yourself down. Just pause for a second. Listen, slowly pause and draw them out. Listen without judgment. One study highlights you have roughly 24 biases you have to filter out to accurately hear what the person is saying. These cognitive biases exist and impact how we hear people. There's a great book people can read called "Blindspot" (book link in show notes). The purpose of the book is to help us be conscious of these filters that we see and listen through impacting the way we receive people and project information.

Deliver Value

Time is a limited and precious resource for people. They expect to receive a return on their investment of time. We all do. So, if a buyer gives us some of their time, and we give them nothing of value in return - we don't get more time. It's that simple. So, delivering value requires some forethought and some planning. This is the part about sales is hard for people to grasp. Selling is not purely instinctual. It's a deliberate act at every step of the way. We have to plan. In-person meetings, phone calls, emails, whatever - you have to deliver something of value in these interactions. You have to be aware before having the interaction - what that value is that you're going to be delivering, and what they're going to do as a result of having received it. Value is a deliberate act. Instead of doing a "check-in call" for example, maybe send an email stating "Mr. prospect, I was thinking about you this morning, as I read this article about your business and how companies like yours are using technology similar to what we have been talking about. There are two key points in here I really think we should discuss. Are you available on Tuesday at 9am?"

Resources and Links for this Episode

• Connect Andy Paul on LinkedIn
• Visit Andy's new learning community, The Sales House
• Book Andy mentions, "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People"

For More Great Content

I would appreciate it if you would subscribe, rate, and review this show at Apple Podcasts. Here's a cool very short video that shows you how to do this. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help me promote the show to others who will benefit.

Credits

Sound editing and show notes produced by – ChirpSound