Andy Paul's Blog, page 5

759: The B2B Playbook For (Re)Igniting Growth, with Aaron Ross

In today’s episode, Aaron Ross, who co-wrote the playbook for new Saas companies, and I discuss why you need to specialize your sales roles to create predictable, scalable revenue.

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765: How to Maximize a Customer’s Long-Term Financial Value, with Peter Fader

Peter Fader, is a professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the co-founder of Theta Equity Partners. He’s also author of the The Customer Centricity Playbook: Implement a Winning Strategy Driven by Customer Lifetime Value.

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764: If You’re Charging Somebody 50 Grand You Better Have Taken Them Out for a Steak Dinner, with Steve Benson

In today’s episode, Steve Benson, the founder and CEO of BadgerMapping, the #1 route planning app for field sales teams, stops by to to talk about what fields sales teams and individual field sellers need to do, and are doing, to adapt to a radically changed sales environment.

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763: TOPO’s Senior Sales Analyst on How You Should Adjust Your Sales Messaging During COVID-19, with Dan Gottlieb

Dan Gottlieb is a Senior Analyst for TOPO, a sales and marketing advisory firm that is now part of Gartner. Today, he shares TOPO’s recommendations for how you should adjust your sales messaging for the COVID-19 era.

We’ll dig into why your messaging during this time requires NUANCE, EMPATHY, VALUE, AND OFFERS. That’s right. Given that the buyer is confronting a new reality, and is in changed circumstances, what is now the compelling business problem that they have to solve? And how do you start the conversations to identify them.

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762: Sales Influence, with Victor Antonio

In this episode, Victor Antonio (speaker and author of, “Sales Influence”), joins me to discuss how to elevate individual and team sales performance.

We start our conversation with this provocative quote from Victor: “At times, it seems to me, that the more we engage with technology, the less we engage with clients.” Is that the case? And, if it is, where do we go from here to enable sellers to connect and have more productive sales conversations. Tune in for all that and more.

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761: A Mind for Sales, with Mark Hunter

My good friend Mark Hunter (AKA “The Sales Hunter”) stops in for a phenomenal conversation about his new book, “A Mind for Sales”. Listen and learn why Mark thinks mindset is the biggest difference between an average salesperson and a peak performer, and why you should never allow the past to impact how you feel about you next sales activity.

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760: How to Use Video in Outbound Prospecting, with Stephen Pacinelli

In today’s episode, Chief Marketing Officer of BombBomb, Stephen Pacinelli, and I talk about proactive prospecting, standing out in a crowded space, and when to use a campaign vs personalized touch.

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758: What is Sales Enablement? with Howard Brown

In today’s episode, my friend Howard Brown (Founder and CEO of ringDNA) stops by to help answer the question, “What is sales enablement?”

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757: How to Improve Selling w/ Bridget Gleason

Bridget Gleason, Head of Sales and Customer Success at Tidelift, joins me again in this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS



Bridget has been a guest on Accelerate more than 100 times! Andy and Bridget discuss A Mind for Sales, Daily Habits and Practical Strategies for Sales Success, by Mark Hunter. Curiosity is a great fit for sales if you do the work.Bridget wasn’t satisfied in her career until she got into sales. She desired to talk to customers. Andy brings up hard parts of sales. Bridget doesn’t know of a job where every aspect of it is enjoyable. Make your calls first.Bridget refers to Brian Tracy’s Eat that Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Do the hard things first to get to the fun stuff.How do we enable sellers to perform to the best of their ability? Andy lists five factors: skills, behaviors, mindsets, mentors, and experience. What skills enable you to perform at a higher level? How did you learn that lesson?Andy considers listening and asking great follow-up questions to be top skills. The right questions help you to understand the buyer’s needs. That provides great value to the buyer.Bridget shares one of the worst sales phone calls ever made to her; it angered her! It takes lots of practice to make good calls. Show reps how to ask questions and get needed answers without using a scripted checklist.Bridget wasn’t allowed to make a sales call before taking weeks of training. Investing in training pays off in making sales reps more effective. If SDRs were paid more, would they stay longer?Bridget describes Tidelift’s team-selling model. Each member is comped on the total sales number, by their experience. The work is more interesting for everyone. Bridget describes the levels of sales roles at Tidelift.Andy would like to see highly-skilled senior prospectors on a career path starting with SDR. Bridget talks about the professional BDRs she saw in Israel at Logz.io. Would it ‘take a movement’ to have those in the U.S.?Andy says you learn to sell from your customers, your peers, your managers, your mentors, and books. Some of Andy’s mentors were CEOs who were his customers. He recalls the video training he received, which he laughs at.Bridget’s training was very valuable. At Wang, the top reps taught the new reps. Andy visited a retail CEO who mentored Andy to sell to him. Cultivate the relationship before asking for the order. We sell human-to-human.Andy has told customers when his product wasn’t the right fit. Years later, he did business with some of them under more appropriate conditions. Bridget says it’s also the right thing to do. Be trustworthy.

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756: Follow Up and Sell, with Jeff Shore

Jeff Shore, Founder and President of Shore Consulting, Inc. and a top-selling author, joins me talk all about follow-up. Specifically, how do you follow up with a buyer who isn’t ready to move forward? Listen and learn how to provide value that helps the buyer stay informed until they are ready to engage.

KEY TAKEAWAYS



Jeff’s seventh book is coming! It’s about sales follow-up after the appointment. Jeff found there weren’t a lot of sales follow-up books, so he wrote it to help people get this poorly-understood idea.What does follow-up mean? If the customer “wants to think about it,” after you ask for the order, the customer is not ready; you need to follow up to keep the sale alive.Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics, said when you rob people of the emotional impulse, they make worse decisions. Jeff seeks to elevate the emotional altitude and extend it throughout the sales process.Andy cites Herbert Simon on maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers make the best decisions but they are the least happy with those decisions. Satisficers make faster decisions and are happier with their choices.Each follow-up must provide value. Don’t convince the buyer with discounts, persuade the buyer with a good solution to their problem. Andy shares a ‘war story’ that ended with a highly-discounted sale to a sour customer.If you have to work too hard to make a sale, something is wrong with your value proposition or your business practices. Your perception of your value as a professional is critical to how you extend value to your prospects.If your prospect is qualified for your product, there is no reason to let the relationship lapse. Schedule follow-ups for the next 90 days with value for every interaction. Jeff suggests, solving a problem they don’t know they have.Instead of treating contacts as targets, treat them as your customers. When you create content for customers, personalize it also for prospects. Stay in the game with them, whatever their buying stage is.Are you really in the running? A prospect may not have confidence in you. Your product may be a commodity. Make such a deep connection with the prospect that you are the differentiator.Keep finding new ways to serve with industry news, ideas, and solutions. Your ability to differentiate yourself as a seller is increasingly important. Make sure your prospects remember you, even if they don’t buy.You won’t get all the sales but your behaviors can build connections that lead to sales. Make sure you do all the right things and do all you can do. Getting a sale doesn’t mean you did everything right. Develop good behaviors.The phone is ‘new’ again. Call and connect. Or record a personalized short video. Send gifts. Invest in your sales relationships. Don’t wait for the prospect to call you; call them while your last visit is still fresh. And call after a sale!

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