Special Holiday Episode

https://www.salestuners.com/12-days-christmas/

Sponsors

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  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Break the Mold: What do you believe is expected in your specific industry? What are all the other reps doing to call on similar prospects? If you want to stand out and be seen, you’ve got to do something different. Could you actually walk in your prospect's office? Could you mail them something that gets their attention? Could you write an article about a topic they’re interested in and use them for a quote or reference? Quit following all the “best practices” and use some creativity to open doors.
2. Why Ask Why: I listen to sales calls from my clients every day. In nearly 99% of the recordings, I hear prospects ask questions or give objections and the sale rep immediately answers or gives a rebuttal. But do they know why the prospect is even asking or saying whatever it is they said? Do you? Wouldn’t it be nice to have more context? By simply asking “why” most times a prospect will back up and elaborate on their statement giving you both the opportunity to thank as well as gain clarity.
3. Build a Power Circle: Look, cold calling is hard. I get it. Wouldn’t it be nice if all we had to deal with was inbound leads and referrals? Well, the good news is, you don’t need to rely on your marketing team. Whatever industry you’re in, figure out the top 4-5 non-competitive companies or types of companies that also sell to your same customer profile. Reach out to reps from those companies and figure out how to help each other. You’ll be amazed at the reciprocity.

Full Notes

•  https://www.salestuners.com/dale-dupree/

Book Recommendation

• Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blunt

Sponsors

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  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Trial and Error: In the absence of data in the early days, you have to lean on good selling principles. What does that mean? The only thing prospects care about are their problems — not yours. You have to work diligently to understand your buyer and figure out how they talk about their pain points. Doing so will allow you to test different positioning statements and align your features not only to their pain points but also to your own price points.
2. Qualify with Goals and Challenges: Qualifying with BANT may be the least enjoyable conversation for a prospect — especially when it’s done too early. Oftentimes, prospects will lie to you to either get off the call or lie to you to keep you on the call (so they can steal information from you). By leading the conversation around what their goals and challenges are, you’re able to better determine whether you should continue having a conversation.
3. Quit Thanking Prospects for their Time: If you’ve uncovered a real challenge or helped a prospect identify a plan to get them to a goal, why would you thank them for their time? Think about it, if they got more out of the call than you did, shouldn’t they be thanking you? The idea behind this is to maintain equal business stature as opposed to thinking you’re less than them.

Full Notes

• https://www.salestuners.com/pete-caputa

Book Recommendations

• Baseline Selling by Dave Kurlan

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Empathy Saves Time: I know it sounds counterintuitive, but slowing down a sales process can often times speed up the deal. If you lean into your prospect and get a good emotional intelligence read, the empathy you show gets them to open up about their actual concerns.
2. Get to “No": When you are leading your prospect to say “yes," they get worried about what they are committing to and anxiety creates confusion. But, when you get them to say “no,” they feel protected and they have the illusion of control. Once a person says “no,” they’ll likely give you implementable context to move the deal forward.
3. There’s Always a Favorite and a Fool: If you can’t get the scope of your prospect's problem, you need to realize they never envisioned you in that solution. In every deal, there’s a favorite and a fool. The fool is often used to drive down the price on the favorite and expose their weaknesses. Thus, you should be looking for proof of life in every opportunity.

Full Notes

•  https://www.salestuners.com/chris-voss/

Book Recommendation

• Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Develop your Persona/Pain/Feature Content Matrix: Think through each persona you sell to. What pain or pains do you solve for that specific type of person or company? Then list out the features of your product that directly correlate to that pain and that person. Lastly, determine what content and stories you have that match all of the above.
2. Don’t Conflate Sales Training with Sales Coaching: A good sales trainer can teach you what to do. A great sales coach can help you understand how to do it, but even more importantly, why you should. Take for instance prospecting, through training, I can teach you what to do all day long. But, it’s not until you actually try to apply it that real learning begins. Then, you bring it back and we adjust based on our findings.
3. Write it Down: You can call me old school, but I still believe in physically writing things down. Regardless of whether you do it manually or digitally, reading over your notes helps you understand what you think you heard versus what was actually said. Recording calls is great for verbatim recognition, but your notes are what determine how well you actually understand something and/or what you think is important.

Full Notes

• https://www.salestuners.com/cory-bray/

Book Recommendations

• The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Leiker
• Jobs to Be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation by Stephen Wunker and Jessica Wattman

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Attitude is Everything: A trend that I see becoming more and more prevalent every day is new grads thinking they should be able to jump from Sales Development Rep to Chief Revenue Officer. I’ll admit, I too thought I knew everything at 22, and 25, and 30, but the more I learned the more I realized there was to learn. Carrying a learning attitude combined with a personal “why” will help you climb the rungs quickly.
2. Build Your Own Tools: It’s easy to look to your manager or even the company as a whole to provide all the tools you need. Instead, look to them for guidance or a framework and build your own. This forces you to be both adaptable and personally accountable. Knowing something is one thing, but the next step is making it your own.
3. You Create Your Audience: This whole show is about the behaviors, attitudes, and techniques of sales success, and I think Richard summed it up nicely by saying it’s the combination of all three of those things that creates the audience you sell to. The way you ask questions, your ability to read your prospect and put them at ease, whether or not you keep your word, think hard about whether or not you would buy from yourself.

Full Notes

• https://www.salestuners.com/richard-vis/

Book Recommendation

• The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Sales is Change Management: This is especially true when we’re selling disruptive products, but it’s our job as salespeople to change how our prospects view the world and show them how we can help them achieve their desires. Anything else, Mark says, is narcissistic or even psychopathic.
2. Saving Money and Saving Time are the Two Worst Value Props: Both concepts are limited value propositions. The limiting factor of saving money is taking what a prospect is currently spending and lowering it down to zero — whatever the number, you can’t go any farther. With time, there’s no such thing as 100% efficiency, so this proposition is also limited to a finite ending.
3. Maslow Drives all Deals: When you’re selling at the top of an organization, executives are more vision driven than they are pain driven. While I don’t disagree with that, I did challenge the notion that pain based selling is counterproductive in those situations.Mark says once a person has moved past the first few rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs they are focused on inventing a future that does not yet exist using methodologies that have not yet been invented and they will partner with companies that will help them get that vision.

Book Recommendation

• Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Full Notes

• https://www.salestuners.com/mark-s-a-smith/

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Create Visibility to Buy Time: To many, it seems like sales boils down to have you closed a deal or not. Most people don’t see or care about all the elements that go into a deal prior to a signature event happening. In order for you to have the time to execute, you must create systems that allow your CEO to see those incremental steps you’re taking. That information also allows you to have potentially difficult or challenging conversations.
2. Learn How to Win Graciously: I used to have a big ego, going as far as to even thinking my sales effort was the reason everyone else on the team got a paycheck. Thankfully, I’ve had some events in my life humble me. That said, when you close a deal, be sure to thank those who played a role in your win. Did an SDR set that appoint for you? Did marketing influence the lead? Did the product team roll out a new update that made your talk track sticky? Thank those people. You couldn’t do what you do without them.
3. Commit to Being Better: If you’ve been doing what you do for five years, you’d probably say you have five years of experience, right? Wrong! For a lot of you, you probably have one year of experience five times. What’s the difference? If you think you can just show up to work every day and go through the motions, that’s not making you better, and you’re not gaining experience. You have to commit to self improvement. Outside of the work day, are you practicing and role playing new tactics? Are you listening to your calls and making notes on where you can improve? Are you seeking mentorship and guidance? It’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to get better or stay average.

Full Notes

•  https://www.salestuners.com/chris-dailey/

Book Recommendations

• Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham 

Sponsors

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

• The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Call Executives Early: There’s been so many great takeaways on this show, that I’m surprised this has never come up. When you call on busy people, they are just that — busy. During the day they are serving the people in their organization. If you want to connect with them, do it before or after everyone else is in the office. I can personally tell you that I get more email response before 8am, than I do the rest of the day. I’ve also been able to connect directly with my prospects on the phone before their assistants come in.
2. Reward the Little Things that Make Up the Big Things: I loved the Brian and I were on the same page with this. If all you are incentivizing or, as a rep, if all you are focused on is the end number or end goal, it can become very stressful when you don’t hit it. You also waste a lot of time figuring out what didn’t work. By having shorter feedback loop cycles and focusing on the smaller wins that create the big wins, we can all move mountains.
3. Track Your Own Success: No one will ever care more about you than you will. I know they say “what gets measured, gets improved” and while it’s true, it’s even more important on a personal level. Forget the technology, put a sheet of paper in front of you and write down your goals, track your in-day performance, and make notes to yourself about what works and what needs to be improved.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/brian-trautschold/

Book Recommendations

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Create Replicable Processes: The best ways I’ve learned to master a concept are to first write it down, and then second is to teach it. Doing both of those naturally forces the ability for the process to be replicable. Once it can be replicated, it can be measured, and once it can be measured, it can be improved.
2. Add Value in Every Outreach: If your calls, emails or social posts aren’t adding value to a prospect's life, why even do it? Put yourself in there shoes assuming they’re inundated with messages. Figure out how to make your point succinctly with a clear message of implied value.
3. Ask Customers How You Could Have Improved Their Buying Experience: Most companies do some version of NPS surveys or Net Promotor Score to learn what customers think about using their product. But, when was the last time you asked your customers what you could have done differently in the sales process? For a lot of sales reps the only feedback we get is whether we won or lost the deal, which frankly doesn’t help us get better.

Book Recommendation 

• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/simon-mutlu/

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
• The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Selling Your Friends is Not Traction: When launching a new product (or company for that matter), it’s easy to immediately to your friends for your first sales. The problem is, they have a vested interest in liking you and wanting to support you. Thus, you don’t have to overcome skepticism. You have to quickly learn the challenges non-affiliated prospects are going to raise and figure out how to sell to that in order to grow.
2. You’ll Never Sell Anything While You are Talking: I know it almost sounds blasphemous, but customers will talk themselves into buying something if you let them. By asking the right questions and being courteous enough to shut up and actually listen to their answers, you’ll discover a whole new side of the sales process.
3. Understand What Your Buyer is Up Against: Buyers are under assault every day. They’re getting bombarded with spam disguised as prospecting, dodging calls by getting rid of their voicemail, and making sense of the countless salespeople lying to them to get a deal done. What they really want to know is what happens to them after they buy from you. Will you make them look like a hero or a chump?

Book Recommendation

• Outlander Series by Diane Gabaldon 

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/kristin-zhivago/

Sponsors

What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Be Human: There’s a myth being perpetuated that buyers don’t have time for small talk anymore. This is just simply not true. Buyers want to connect with you on a human level, they’ve just had so many bad experiences with sellers that they turn off at the slightest hint of inauthenticity.
2. Ask Killer Questions: Coming up with two to three anchor questions that spur conversation as it relates to your product or service should be the highest priority in your organization. Yes, even higher than a demo or pitch deck. You have to get a prospect thinking and that’s impossible to do if you are the one talking. The best possible question to ask is one they should know the answer to but don’t.
3. Listen Without Filters: How do you receive information? How do you communicate information? What biases or filters do you have preventing information from getting through. When you’re listening to a prospect, are you focused on what they’re actually telling you or are you looking for a specific response that you can attack? Your ability to show empathy here can get you a long way.
4. Deliver Value at Every Touch: If a prospect is going to give you their time, what value are you going to give them in return? What information is going to help them get closer to a decision? If you don’t know the answer to these questions before every call or outreach, why are you even doing it? You need to be intentional and deliberate with your process. If you’re not guiding them, then you’re just hoping the see something along the way.

Book Recommendation 

• The Complete Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 by Mark Roberge
• Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/andy-paul/

Sponsors

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• 
  The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Playbooks are Living Documents: Cold call scripts, prospect email templates, ideal customer profiles, objection handling, competitive differentiation — whatever you choose to include in your sales playbook should never be written in pen. Either quarterly or, at worst, monthly you need to revisit the elements to see what remains true and what needs to be changed. Anyone participating in the sales process should get a voice in the matter as they may have perspective you’re not privy to.
2. Let Your Prospect Discover the Solution: Whether you’re selling into greenfield, replacing a competitor, or providing an alternative to an existing manual process, you’ll always be better suited to let a prospect discover the solution to their problem than by forcing a presentation down there throat. I’ve often said the best presentation you’ll ever give is the one your prospect never sees. Think about that as you put together your questioning strategy.
3. No One is Above Coaching: MJ, Kobe, LeBron… what do those names have in common? For one, they’re three of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game. Second, they all have coaches and often times they even personally hire additional coaches to work on specific things in their game or with their body. I don’t care how successful you’ve been, seeking out coaching can be huge for your career.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/paul-dean/

Book Recommendation

• The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales by Trish Bertuzzi

Sponsors

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Intellect vs Emotion: People don’t buy for intellectual reasons. They buy emotionally and then rationalize their decision after the fact. Rather than doing a feature/benefit vomit, get to know the person you’re attempting to sell to and understand what is motivating their desire to change.
2. Define the Theme of the Opportunity: If you’re able to define the top 2-3 business drivers of an opportunity (I’m talking real pain, not just indicators of pain) you should be able to define an overarching theme for each individual opportunity. This will help you overcome typical objection BS by getting back the prospects real “why.”
3. Create a Close Plan: Hope is not a strategy. I’ve heard way too many reps tell me they’re going to close a hot lead in 30 days, yet they can’t tell me a single step they need to take in order to get there. Creating a close plan forces you to think through a realistic timeline and put anchors on a calendar by listing every meeting you still need, which pieces of content the prospect will likely need, who from your team will need to get involved, and dates each of those will happen.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/dave-enmark/

Book Recommendation

• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Sponsors

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Learn to Position Yourself: Rather than selling pieces of the puzzle, focus on what the entire puzzle should look like. Doing this helps you become seen as an expert in your field and one that can be a resource or even a consultant to your prospect so they call you when they have questions. If you do this successfully, price will rarely be an issue.  
2. Get to the Root Cause: Let’s be honest, prospects lie to us. Sometimes it deliberate, but other times they just don’t know. Instead of trying to sell to the symptoms or indicators of pain, dig deeper to figure out the root cause of the issue they’re experiencing. This may mean you need to be higher in the organization talking to someone who gets the bigger picture.  
3. Know Your Walkway Point: When entering a negotiation, it’s critical your know your BATNA - Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. Once you know the limit, you’re able to frame the conversation and not be susceptible to low anchors your prospect is likely to throw out.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/mike-chudy/

Book Recommendations

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss

Sponsors

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
• The pipeline-centric system is strategically built on a proven selling methodology that keeps teams focused on the only thing they can control in sales – actions that push deals to close.

Takeaways

1. Overcome the “Send Me Info” Objection: The goal of cold calling is not to just send information, but to get into a conversation. That said, I know every has to deal with the prospect who just says “send me some information and I’ll take a look.” One of the best ways I’ve dealt with this objection is to counter with, “I’d be happy to, but we have 347 different one-sheeters and I have no idea which one I’d send… can you tell me more about what you’re looking for?”
2. Qualify Anyone Who Will Take the Call: What do you absolutely need to know from a prospect before you can move forward? All too often reps focus on titles thinking they can’t get a deal done without talking to the highest person in an organization. If you understand the true qualification criteria, you may realize you can use multiple people in the organization to not only gather that information, but also to build champions for you internally.
3. Be Patient with The Process: Unless you sell a product that is conducive to a one-call close, realize you’re not going close a prospect on your first call. I say that because if you get comfortable with your process, you’ll start to see patterns form in the timing you're able to catch someone, you’ll see patterns in follow-up strategies, and you’ll see patterns in discovery and objections. These patterns can illustrate an opportunity to streamline your goals by practicing patience.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/carrie-simpson/

Book Recommendations

• Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller

Sponsor

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Teaching Can be Detrimental: Spending too much time educating your prospect and not enough time selling opens up what I like to call the “friend zone” of sales. Sure your prospect likes you, but that’s because you’re providing them with free consulting. You have to understand this balance and get comfortable setting the right expectations in the sales process.
2. Sometimes You Need to Get Burned: Sales is a contact sport. All the training and coaching in the world can’t prepare you for the first time you actually get hit. Spending time with a prospect, getting “happy ears” as Katie called it, only to have them go dark on you at the end is one of the biggest lessons you have to learn on your own.
3. Moving Up Isn’t Always the Best: While I’m not yet an old man yelling “get off my lawn” to every passerby, I am one to tell you that skipping rungs on the ladder of success is not always the right choice. I’ve seen way too many people think “if I can just become the VP of whatever,” I’ll fix all the problems and everything will be better — only to burn out before getting there or be completely miserable once they do make it. Enjoy the journey and put more stock in that than on the destination itself.

Book Recommendation

• Love Warrior: A Memoir by Glennon Doyle

Sponsor

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Top Book Recomendations 

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Joshua Principle, Leadership Secrets of RSVPselling by Tony Hughes
• The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olsen

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/a-year-in-review/

Sponsor

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

• Effort + Execution + Empathy: It used to just be a numbers game. You put in the work, you made your calls, you sent your emails and it produced results. Then everyone started ramping up the volume. Today you have to not only put in the effort, but also apply strategic execution and have empathy for your buyer. Have you done your homework? Do you understand the real challenges they’re having? Do you actually care? Prospects buy from us because they believe we can get them to a place they can’t get to on their own.
• You Can’t Lose What You Don’t Have: Too many reps focus their energy on everything that could go wrong instead of what might go right. Very similar to Mike’s story, I didn’t come from much. So knowing that I’ve done without before and been fine, I have a different perspective on the world. I’m willing to take risks that others may not because I don’t have a false sense of security.
• Short Term Thinking vs Long Term Thinking: It’s the difference between “I want to sell to this company today” vs “I want to build a relationship that may carry me throughout my career.” Yes, I know you have a number to hit this week, month, and quarter, but if you put in the work today to build a solid pipeline, you can give yourself the freedom to build lasting value with your prospects.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/mike-julian/

Book Recommendation

• The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

Sponsor

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Sales Meetings are Not Coaching Sessions: Every sales team has a weekly call. The reality is, for most, this is nothing more than a transfer of information meeting. Debriefing the week that was and getting updates for the week to come. Coaching is “improved performance” and no sales meeting I’ve ever been in does that. Instead, let’s work on getting into specific details of opportunities by way of what happened during the calls — the words that were used, role playing objections that could have been handled another way, or client stories to use as references in certain scenarios (with context). Breaking down those areas of improvement just like an elite athlete could be the difference between a promotion and interviewing at other companies.
2. Prospecting at all Levels: No matter what your title says, if you belong to a sales organization, some amount of time in your day should be spent on direct prospecting. I know this is counter to the populist movement of hyper-specialization, but I seriously believe everyone should be prospecting. If you work with me, you’re either prospecting for new clients or prospecting for a new job. Sales is the lifeblood of an organization and prospecting is the only thing that will save you in the event of a downturn.
3. Challenge Your Prospects: It seems like everyone is comfortable hearing “no” from a prospect, maybe even too comfortable, but I rarely hear of sales reps being willing to say “no” or pushback on their prospects for fear of killing an opportunity. I’ve often seen requests for references, white papers, and trials as nothing more than stall tactics. Be willing to challenge a prospect and get them to help you understand what exactly will change if you do what they’re asking.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/richard-smith/

Book Recommendation

• From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin

Sponsor

What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Write Your Own Rules: If you’re going to be a consultative salesperson, you must empower yourself. You must be able to think on your feet without sounding like a robot. You’re not always going to be able to have someone whispering in your ear or reading off a script, so when you see something wrong, fix it. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had to overcome is thinking about what everyone else expected of me and trying to prove something to them instead of charting my own path.
2. Overcome Rather than Avoid Burnout: As Dan mentioned, burnout happens whether you’re the CEO or the SDR, so accept it and learn how to overcome it. You could get burnt out on your car, the breakfast you eat every day, or even your favorite sub shop, so figure out the things that trigger the high highs as well as the low lows and work to maintain balance between the two.
3. Failure is Not Finite: It’s only truly a failure when you decide to give up. I recently came off the biggest professional failure of my career and I can assure you there were times I felt like I should just take my ball and go home as if this game wasn’t the one for me. Fortunately, I was able to pick myself back up, start another business (which included this podcast) and face the world that I thought would forever reject me because of my my recent performance.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/dan-fantasia/

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Book Recommendation

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Takeaways

1. Remove General Blanket Training: If you don’t know where to spend your time, you’ll fall into the trap of generalized training where every person on the team gets the same negotiation training or competitive update. Instead, modern sales organizations the fidelity of lessons need to be able to be created quickly by anyone and enable reps to consume it in 10-15 minutes. Because, let’s be honest, none of us have four hours to stare at Powerpoints.
2. Focus on Business Mechanics: Justin broke the sales process down into a gear analogy stating the “deal mechanics” gear simply can’t turn unless the “business mechanics” gear is in motion. Focus on determining what is actually wrong, who in the prospect’s organization is truly responsible for fixing it as well as when they actually need to have it fix it.
3. Anchor Capabilities to Value: If you’ve been in sales more than 10 minutes, you’ve probably been told to sell the solution not your features and benefits. Yet, every single day I hear reps explaining how a prospect can accomplish a task simply by clicking a couple of buttons. Stop it. There’s a reason you’ve never received a demo of Amazon.com. You’re not there to learn how to click buttons, you’re there to ensure a package arrives at your house in two days (or less).

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/justin-fite/

Book Recommendations

• The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Set Tough, Aggressive Targets: I’ve always struggled with the concept of “quota” and “quota attainment.” Yes, of course we have to have goals for ourselves, but in my opinion, these should be the minimum expectations, not the end result. Whether your quota is $100,000 or $1,000,000 set your targets more aggressive. For instance, if you set an outlandish number of say 10X your goal and build your prospecting plan from there, you’re going to easily overshoot all expectations and leave your company wondering where they even got the number to begin with.
2. Balance Personal Coaching with Professional Accountability: Too many salespeople focus solely on the end results -- asking, “how much did you close?” I’m sorry, but this is the wrong question and a sign you’re working for a poor sales leader. The only thing we can control is our daily behaviors and activities. That’s why it’s incredibly important to hold yourself accountable to consistent inputs. This is also where the balance of coaching should come into play. You can’t wait to weeks to get the coaching you need for daily behavior.
3. Tie Personal Goals to Performance: What are the intrinsic motivations that cause you do what you do? Essentially, what is your why? Whether it’s buying a house, raising a kid, or just leveling up in your career, tying these personal goals to your daily behavior creates the constant effort need for long terms achievement.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/david-duncan/

Book Recommendations

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do

Takeaways

1. Take Advantage of Opportunity: There is a short window of time to take advantage of every opportunity. If you wait until an opportunity presents itself, it’s already too late. Seek out chances to learn, be more efficient, and give 100 percent from the get-go so you’re never in a position to wonder what might have been. Doors open on a daily basis, but oftentimes they are short and they are small. It’s crucial to take advantage of them when they’re there.
2. Preparation and Repetition Always Win: You know what you need to do. You’ve spent time role playing real scenarios. You’ve paid attention in training and during your one-on-one’s. With that, don’t think that your sales manager knows something you don’t. You’re the one facing live fire every time you get on a call. Make sure you’re taking the time to prepare and let the repetition of muscle memory take control.
3. Don’t Wait Until The End: The earlier you ask hard questions, the better. For instance, if you wait until the negotiation stage to start discussing budget, you’ve already lost. You need to be able to tie your value to real business problems without it looking like you’re now just trying to close a deal. Figure out how to show your prospect they’re better off with you, than without you by going deep in the beginning.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/cody-lamens/

Book Recommendation

• When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Nice Guys Finish First: Kyle believes there’s a misconception out there that salespeople who are selfish are the ones who win the most business. He says It’s the other way around. When you sell with service on your mind (and heart), you will succeed. The best salespeople are the ones who care so much they’re willing to go out on the edge and work hard to make sure their organization accomplishes the thing or solves the problem it aims to solve. What that means starts with doing research beforehand and digging into the needs of the prospect, but it goes deeper than that. Be honest. Be upfront with them. Solve their problem, whatever it may be.
2. Practice Sincerity: If you’re not sincere about it, your job is over before it even starts. Instead, find ways to eliminate tasks that don’t require sincerity. Converting accounts is a process that requires empathy. That means finding not only the right people to call, but taking it a step farther and having meaningful conversations about how you can make their lives better. Finding something to love about what you represent will take you far. Knowing in your heart that what you’re selling with make someone’s life better can be the difference between a converted account and a dead lead.
3. Sell Yourself First: If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, no trendy sales strategy is going to help you. The first person who needs to be sold in any sort of engagement is the actual seller themselves. Because if you believe in something, if it is a fundamental belief of yours, you are truly representing it as best you can by using it to serve others. From there, you can convert target accounts to customer accounts because you have a belief system in place that empowers you to take on whatever obstacles and hurdles necessary.
4. Breakthrough the Clutter: Nearly everyone is on email overload these days, and there are apps and filters galore that stand between your message and your desired audience. While the first thing you need to do is stand out with a catchy email subject line, getting a response to your outreach should follow four steps: show the pains of the organization, hypothesize solutions, define clear next steps and demonstrate persistence.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/kyle-porter/

Book Recommendation

• The Joshua Principle: Leadership Secrets of RSVP Selling by Tony Hughes and Mike LeMaster
• The Truth About Leads by Dan McDade

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.