Andy Paul's Blog, page 23

632: Leverage Channels to Quickly Scale Sales w/ Bridget Gleason & Dave Taylor

 

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays. Special guest on this episode is Dave Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer at Impartner, the number one SaaS Solution for Managing Your Channel.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Andy introduces guest, Dave Taylor, CMO at Impartner. Impartner recently conducted a study on the increasing difficulty of filling Enterprise sales roles. Impartner sells SaaS solutions that enable indirect channel sales.
Over the last few years, Impartner customers complained of difficulty to find qualified Enterprise salespeople. This inspired Impartner’s study. 74% of companies are lacking qualified reps and so are not hitting revenue targets.
Indirect channel sales are scalable. You can ramp up or scale down your team as you need. It is a reasonable approach to supplementing your sales team. Dave explains how to leverage the indirect channel reps.
The headaches of recruiting, hiring, and training are carried by Impartner, not by the client. The scaling company trains the reps in their product and process.
Impartner’s clients are 80-90% in tech. Some large manufacturers have been reaching out to Impartner. They were already using channel marketing. About 67-70% of B2B commerce is still done through channels.
Dave was a field sales rep for Intel, just as they were moved to “sales force automation” (CRM). They chose Siebel and it took a year-and-a-half to implement. At the time, it was a competitive edge. Now everyone is on CRM.
Impartner is built on the premise that if CRM works for direct channels, it should work for indirect channels. Customers tell them they have complete control over the direct channel, but their indirect channel is a black box.
Bridget suggests that startups need to be close to the customer, so it’s not helpful to move to a channel too early. Potentially, though, scaling is easier with channels.
Dave cites Atlassian, a SaaS company that went 100% channel from the start. That is easy with a SaaS model. For many startups, Dave recommends starting direct.
Andy asks more about the study results. Why do companies always look outside for sales? Shouldn’t companies invest in developing their people?
Bridget notes VPs would prefer to promote from within, but sometimes find it is not a good match when a position opens us. Andy sees we are on a slide in productivity. Dave gives examples of channel blends.
Channel sales reps are under the control of Impartner clients. The tools make it easy to interact. Dave explains client success examples. Meaningful engagement helps all parties. However, partner loyalty is passé.

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631: Mastering the Basics is the Future of Selling w/ Tom Hopkins

 

Tom Hopkins, Speaker and Sales Trainer at Tom Hopkins International and author of How to Master the Art of Selling, and 18 other books on selling, joins me for the second time on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Tom says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is keeping themselves disciplined to keep their momentum up even at the end of the year, so they start the year with new prospects. Send a Thanksgiving note!
Following up and keeping in touch to show appreciation has never been more important than it is today. Tom has 10 sample thank you notes for all occasions. Find them on the free resource page at TomHopkins.com.
Tom divides his clients into three groups: A, B, and C. He sends Christmas gifts to decision makers in the A group, letters to the B group, and emails to the C group. These create relationship feelings. Holiday parties are also good.
Besides following up and keeping in touch, Tom recommends giving more service than the customer expects, as great ways to keep yourself on the customer’s mind when they buy again or have referrals for you.
A key differentiator is to build a personal human touch. Make sure they have reasons to know, like, and trust you.
Tom talks about habits. At the end of each day he reviews the day’s activities, and the six priorities for the next day in order of importance. He sleeps better and wakes up better prepared. His days are more productive.
Don’t choose a job by income; find what you want to do when looking for a job. Wayne Gretzky told Tom “I had a burning passion for all aspects of hockey.” The happiest people are doing something they have passion about.
To go into sales, start with enough money set aside to support you for six months while you build a client base.
The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Tom got into real estate and had to become a master at selling. In his fifth year he sold 365 houses and was celebrated for it. Now he writes books and gives weekly seminars.
Tom wrote his first book in 1979. Since then the consumer is much more knowledgeable today than ever before. Sellers need to be better than in the past, and keep your attitude up.
Tom suggests a new salesperson should go to a bookseller and ask what book on sales goes out the door the most. That’s one to get. Tom suggests his own Selling for Dummies. Become a student of the art of selling.
In the future salespeople will have to be smarter, sharper, more talented, and skillful than ever before, to keep up with consumers. Master prospecting and the other basic fundamentals of selling and getting referrals.

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630: Gamify Sales Training for Rapid Onboarding w/ Sam Caucci

Sam Caucci, Founder and CEO of 1Huddle and author of Not Our Job: How College Has Destroyed a Generation of Workers and How to Fix It and Closing in the Red Zone: 12 Principles to Finishing the Sale When it Counts, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Sam says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is the battle to get upskilled today in sales roles. Companies are not investing in training programs, and it is up to the rep to keep up with tools and skills.
Information is more available than ever and customers are accessing it. We need reps to keep up with information and tools.
1Huddle is a workforce training platform to help companies get their reps upskilled and ready to work. The training takes place on a game platform.
Sam explains the games. They can be single player games of about three minutes or large group multiplayer games of about 20 minutes.
Companies deploy new games on a weekly or monthly basis, as they need for how often their products change.
Sam explains how the games give managers a platform for coaching. The modules can be edited as easily as a spreadsheet. After the initial launch, companies manage their game design internally.
The platform is simple enough for managers to use without significant training in how to use it.
There are more distractions today than ever before, and employees tend to have little company loyalty. Recognition is essential for engagement with today’s workforce. Find the way to get the best from your team.
In games, we have a ‘restart’ button. In work, we can’t just restart with a customer. We have to be aware of the consequences of our actions. There are no easy fixes.
Sam suggests ways for recognizing or regarding your team members: the best parking spot for a week, a small gift, dinner with the boss. There must be an achievement tied to the reward. 1Huddle holds weekly team contests.
Be thoughtful with the rewards. Tie them to the company culture. Sam gives examples.

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#629: Are there Universal Truths in Sales? w/ Bridget Gleason & Ken Lundin

 

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays. Special guest on this episode is Ken Lundin, Sales Leader Coach and Host of The B2B Sales Summit.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Andy introduces a guest, Ken Lundin. Ken recently interviewed Andy for the B2B Sales Summit. Ken’s background is 25 years in sales and, recently, consulting. He noticed a void in B2B so he organized the summit.
Ken perceived a significant gap in the knowledge, education, and training that sales reps and managers need. The chief difference with this summit is that the presenters are all practitioners and not there to sell tech.
Can the industry come to an agreement about universal truths in sales? From all the expert interviews Ken did for the summit, he says it was awesome that there were some universal truths they uncovered together.
There are definitely keys to success. Success leaves clues. People shift to opinions that reinforce their comfort zones and avoid opinions that force them to move outside their comfort zone.
Process methodology provides a framework for consistency. Reps have to figure out what resonates with the prospect within that framework. Is there a core set of values that salespeople need?
Core values involve respecting the buyer relationship. Are you customer-centered? Are you empathetic? Can you listen like the buyer? How do we hire reps for these values, and teach them?
Because sales is a service, everything needs to be built on service. Sales managers have done a poor job on coaching to solve problems for customers. Instead, they keep deals in the pipeline that may not belong there.
Ken interviewed Colleen Stanley for the summit about EQ in sales. EQ is more than customer empathy, it’s how you manage your own emotion to serve the customer best.
Being customer-centered sometimes conflicts with the culture of a team and a company. How the company operates establishes their culture. Andy cites Elay Cohen saying the sales manager is the custodian of culture.
Are the sales managers being coached enough on how to lead the team to embody corporate values? Ken says, generally, no. The biggest mistake of a new sales manager is to think their job is ‘reports’ instead of mentoring reps.
Bridget would say to sales managers who are not being well-prepared by their company that they should find a mentor, join groups of other sales managers, or take a manager’s training class, and otherwise continue to grow.
Andy notes confusion between tactical coaching, mentoring for growth, and managing for results. Ken suggests always defining terms in these discussions.

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#628: Serve First in Order to Sell w/ Damian Thompson

 

Damian Thompson, Chief Customer Officer of LeadFuze, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Damian says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is an identity problem. The average person’s view of sales is unfavorable. Reps use words other than ‘sales’ as job titles. Damian says reps should own the sales job title.
Reps have the wrong idea about their roles, making success harder. Their job is to serve, not to push. Sales is service, not manipulation. Sales solves problems.
B2B sales is a complex puzzle to solve. Reps who can solve problems make the best salespeople. But sales leaders advertise for aggressive hunters, not for curious, analytical problem solvers. ‘Closing’ is the wrong word.
Customer success is one of the keys to sales. As customers use your solution to their problem repeatedly, you create a long-term paying customer relationship.
Andy and Damian discuss the fallacies of probability-weighted forecasts. You have no idea what the buyer is really thinking. Do they even want a solution? The customer may even be afraid a solution will replace them.
Damian talks about the history of sales training, starting with IBM. Fifty years later, it does not hold up. B2B is not transactional. When a sales rep gets defensive about a deal, it is clear the deal is not going to happen.
Buyers do not plan to ‘string along’ sales reps. When there is no decision, the rep didn’t qualify or disqualify the buyer properly. It’s not the customer’s ‘fault.’ Serve your customer by helping them make their right decision.
The Internet has opened up information about the product, for customers, and about the customer, for reps. Customers are being deluged by emails. But people often answer their mobile phones. People can be reached.
Reps need to work past rejection and make multiple attempts to contact until they get into a conversation. Reps need passion and a firm belief in the value they add to the customer. Reps need persistence.
The customer is the judge of what is of value to them. The value you deliver has to be something the customer wants. If they invest time in you, they need value in return. The ‘first sale’ is the exchange of value and time.

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#627: Boost Sales Effectiveness with Visual Technologies w/ Evan Nisselson

 

Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV Capital, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Evan says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is finding the right customers that need the services that reps are selling. You need the right ROI on the time you spend to find the customer.
Long emails are not valuable. Put the ‘ask’ up front. Then, maybe, “if you’re interested, there’s more below.” Put the first word of each topic in bold, to make it easier to skim.
LDV Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in people building visual technology businesses — any technology that captures, analyzes, monetizes, displays, or distributes visual data. Evan lists some examples.
In August 2017, LDV Capital Insights predicted there will be 45 billion cameras by 2022. The report defines a ‘camera’ as a lens and a sensor. Smartphones have multiple cameras and will have more.
‘The Internet of Eyes’ will be larger than the IOT. Inanimate objects will have cameras. An autonomous vehicle will have 25-30 cameras, outside and inside, not including RADAR/LIDAR. Where will the data be captured?
About 90% of the data the human brain analyzes is visual. For AI to mimic humans, at least 90% of the data AI analyzes will be visual. LDV looks at where the cameras will be to determine the investment opportunities.
Historically, pictures were for keeping memories. Going forward, the majority of visual data captured will never be seen by the human eye.
Will we be surveilled constantly? The value proposition is to balance privacy issues against benefits to society. Cameras may help you with a healthy food or fitness goal.
All types of robots, in a factory, or an autonomous boat, a drone, and others, will use visual data for operations, never displayed. ‘Display’ will be a minor visual data use. Evan discusses use cases of cameras in the home.
What are the sales and marketing use cases? Will some cameras be customer-facing, to help them on the buying journey? In airports, can billboards be personalized to the people walking by? Directed marketing helps customers.
Evan said he took a photo of shoes and a pop-up asked if he wanted to buy those shoes. Computer vision allows you to translate an image into a purchase. Customers’ micro-expressions can also be analyzed.
The B2B value proposition of image analysis is to get customers sooner to validate whether there is a problem to solve.

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#626: Six Lessons from 600 Episodes of Accelerate! w/ Bridget Gleason.

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Andy introduces the topic: what Andy has learned from recording over 600 episodes of #Accelerate.
B2B selling hasn’t changed that much. It’s still about those person-to-person moments when the seller has to communicate and deliver value to the buyer. Those moments cannot be outsourced to technology.
Technology is going to have a massive impact on sales and sales outcomes but it’s not having that impact, yet, as far as contributing to levels of sales or productivity.
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Amara’s Law. Andy expects this to happen in sales.
Bridget thinks that without the new technologies, sales performance would be further behind buyer behavior than it is. Technology has not raised the level of sales performance, but Andy expects that it will, in time.
The vast majority of sales tools released in the last five years are sales-centric. Andy is looking for tools that make the buyer’s experience easier. Such tools would improve sales performance hugely. A few exist.
Human sales skills need to improve. There are more barriers to connection. Bridget never answers a phone call or an email from someone she doesn’t know. Yet phone and email are still the primary outreach tools.
The science of selling has two dimensions: data, which we don’t yet really know how to analyze and use, and social psychology, which has been revolutionized in the last 50 years. Andy discusses these two dimensions.
In sales, where your business is to build relationships with people in order to inspire and influence their decisions, it is very important to know how people arrive at decisions. Reps influence buyers to buy solutions they need.
The number one challenge mentioned on #Accelerate is that reps are overwhelmed. Andy reviews the aspects of being overwhelmed.
Bridget suggests that improved prioritization and time management skills would help reps to face their challenges. Multitasking is a myth. Focus is necessary.
Sales leaders and salespeople are not investing enough in their own development, on their own time, regardless of any training the company offers. Bridget says this is not universal. A few reps are self-directed. All should read!

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#625: How Coaching Drives Sales Success w/ Bill Eckstrom

 

Bill Eckstrom, President of EcSell Institute, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Bill says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is poor coaching from leaders. Research says 30% of sales managers unknowingly block team performance.
Bill defines coaching as creating processes, relationships, and growth experiences. Coaching includes management, leadership, and individual development.
The economic value of a manager is how much more their team sells with the manager in the role. The coach’s role is to drive the differential — or discretionary effort — from the people on their team.
The discretionary effort is measured by the quantity and quality of coaching. By measuring a coach’s activities through the responses of the team, you can correlate coaching activities and behaviors to team performance.
Bill lists five primary and key coaching activities.
There are a quantity component and a quality component for each of the high-payoff coaching activities. Bill gives a case study of a company where half of the managers increased their coaching quality and half of them did not.
Organizations track their reps’ activities but very rarely do they track their coaches’ activities. Most companies do not invest in training for sales managers. Most sales managers don’t ask for training.
Every level of leadership needs a coach. At what moment do you become a finished product? Coach Vince Lombardi’s quotes are on development, not tactics.
Employees and reps model how they treat their customers on how management treats the employees. Organizations need to measure and quantify their managerial coaching behaviors to avoid bad outcomes.
It is fruitless to try to become customer-centric if your company treats employees badly. Bill and Andy point out two specific companies as examples of poor customer experience, presumably because of poor coaching.
Sports teams win or lose by their coaching. This also holds true in business. We should invest in managers and senior managers so they can coach their teams. Lacking that, seek development through reading and programs.
Great coaches see within individuals things they haven’t yet seen about themselves and they ignite those things. Author Peter Jensen calls this developmental bias.

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Success and Failure Both Start with Your Character

Mindset is important. Yet, you can develop whatever mindset you desire and still fail.

You can be a highly skilled sales professional and still fail.

Yes, mindset and skills are important. However, they run a distant second place to the importance of character in a salesperson.

Keep this in mind: Success and failure both start with your character.

Your character is the first thing another person perceives about you when you initially meet (in person and virtually.) “What type of person is this and can I trust her or him?”

This is a fundamental, important, and unavoidable, part of human nature. However, I’m often struck by the teachings of many sales trainers and supposed sales experts who think that the methods they teach enable sellers to bypass this step and make them immune to the laws of nature. They don’t.

It’s first things first. You can spend an inordinate amount of time to craft the perfect opening to a phone call, and you can have a success oriented mindset and still fail to connect and engage with a buyer if they sense something amiss in your character. Character precedes everything.

When we trot out the sales adage that people buy from those they “know, like and trust” what we’re talking about is character.

A few examples of important values that build character:

Do you have integrity? This doesn’t mean honesty. Integrity means that your words and your actions are in alignment. Are you really there to serve the interests of the buyer or is that just talk? Buyers can instantly sense the difference.

What are your motives? If you’re motivated by helping the buyer, that will be evident to the buyer. If you’re just in sales for the money, the customer will very quickly sense that your motives are at cross purposes with their needs. It comes through in your words and actions.

What is your intent? Are you just trying to sell what you have or is it your intent to help the buyer find the best solution to their requirements? Even if it means referring the buyer to a competitor?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher said “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.” This is true in both the positive and the negative cases with your character.

Your character is a direct reflection of your personal values. I’ve come up a simple acronym that summarizes the values that should comprise your character. I call it HERO.

H is for Helpful. Success in sales starts with a help-first, service mindset; not a selling mindset. Start every sales opportunity with the commitment to helping the buyer successfully achieve his or her objectives.

E is for Empathetic Listener. It’s not enough to understand the buyer’s point of view. You must be able to listen to what you’re saying to the buyer the same way they do. This is what makes empathy come to life for a seller. That’s how you bridge the empathy gap between you and the buyer.

R is for Responsive. Being responsive means prioritizing the needs of buyer. Buyers don’t set out to spend an open-ended amount time in making a purchase decision.They want to quickly gather the information they need to make a good decision with the least investment of their time and resources possible. Being responsive is the key to making that happen and aligning your actions with their objectives.

O is for Open-minded Problem Solver. Buyers need your help to define both objective they are trying to achieve and the solution to achieving it. However, too many sales leaders are still fixated on hiring sales people that fit the tired and obsolete hunter-extrovert-aggressive-closer profile. How do any of those characteristics help buyers make good decisions quickly? They don’t. Buyers would much rather talk to introverted analytical problem solvers every day of the week.

Many of your sales challenges may actually be character challenges. For instance, if you’re not generating not enough second calls from your first calls, it could be a character issue. (Just like if you have a lot of first dates, but not a lot of second dates…) If you have too many deals suddenly go radio silent, it could be your character.

Here’s the bottom line. You can’t bluff your way through a character deficiency. Oh, sure, you might be able to fool some of the people some of the time. However, we see the proof every day, in what we read and hear in the news, that your true character eventually will be exposed.

Your character doesn’t have to be a life sentence. You can adopt the values that make you more human and “other-centric.” It takes self-awareness and humility to admit that you don’t have a sales problem as much as a character issue. Being a HERO would be a good first step toward positive change.

 

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#624: Design the Customer Experience to Win the Sale w/ Carlos Hidalgo

 

Carlos Hidalgo, Founder & CEO of VisumCx and author of Driving Demand: Transforming B2B Marketing to Meet the Needs of the Modern Buyer, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Carlos says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today, especially seasoned reps, is understanding that the way they used to sell no longer applies. The buyer will only contact those on their short list.
Customers, according to CEB, are already 57% along the way to a solution. Carlos says to talk to customers in depth about what they are solving. The customer may need a broader view. There is usually another decider.
Carlos discusses the customer experience within the buying process — before a purchase is made. It is the arc from brand engagement to customer advocacy after the sale. A great buying experience is essential.
Carlos asks organizations how they enable, equip, and empower their staff in every area to deliver the type of experience that the customers are demanding. Doing what’s best for the customer benefits the organization.
In the buying process, customers want to gather the information they need to make a good decision with the least investment of time and effort possible. The customer does not intentionally stretch out the process.
Is the selling process aligned with the customer buying process? Ask the customer ahead of time what their buying objective is. What are they trying to achieve? There might not even be a fit for your solution.
The deal resolves more quickly and closes faster when the rep takes a buyer-centric approach. The price may not even be a factor. Build trust first.
Carlos says SDRs should be asked to validate the lead by asking a few questions before handing the lead to sales. Carlos describes a warm hand-off with an introduction, not just setting an appointment.
The SDR has an important role, and it should not be a throw-away position. It is not training for field sales. It may take years to get good at it and improve the customer experience.
Carlos explains designing the customer experience, based on what they expect. Know the experience your customer wants and make sure you deliver on that expectation. You may even find you’re targeting the wrong customers.
You have to go into the field and talk to your customers about what they expect from you at every touch point. You may hear that “your baby is ugly” and you can’t be defensive about it. You have to learn how to improve.
Carlos praises the customer experience quality of two companies — Apple and Subaru. They have each earned his loyalty and advocacy through their attention to him and to his expectations.

 

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