Info

Sales Tuners

SalesTuners is a weekly podcast where I talk with great sales leaders and high performing individual salespeople about the attitude, actions, and abilities that have led to their success.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Sales Tuners
2019
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: May, 2017
May 30, 2017

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/keenan/

Takeaways

  1. It’s Not About Learning: It’s about applying what you love and who you are to what you do. While you need to understand your product, It’s more important to know how to sell than it is to know all the technical features and benefits of your offering. Comparing sales to fitness… you can educate yourself all you want about what it takes to get a perfect six pack, but none of that matters until you start applying that knowledge. Application and execution are the most important part of the puzzle.
  2. Be You: It’s okay to be inspired by successful salespeople, that likely why so many people listen to this show, but at the end of the day, you have be you. Everyone is different and what works for one person might not have the same impact on someone else. Whatever gives you energy, whatever makes you passionate, whatever gets you going in the morning - use that to build the YOU that you want to be. You have the power to make the choices that will empower you in the long run, so choose to be you from the start and you won’t let yourself down.
  3. Compete With Yourself First: Success in sales comes from a burning desire to be the best. That doesn’t by default mean you have to aggressively beat other people, it just means that you are uncomfortable staying where you are. As a result, you put in the work it takes to push yourself in order to move, grow and advance. That has to come from within or nothing is going to change.

Book Recommendation

Sponsor

  • Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
May 23, 2017

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/matt-millen/

Takeaways

  1. You Get What You Give: The quality of what you put into a sale is the quality of what you get back. Success is in itself a habit and there are rituals that go into creating success. The numbers play a role and the tools available are important, but ultimately it’s what you put into a sale that matters. It’s who you are, what you have to offer and how you offer it that closes a sale.
  2. Believe in Something: It’s different for everyone, but one tried and true belief system focuses on the importance of having a story, being active and having a positive mindset. Great sales reps live and breathe their business. They tell a story with a passion, conviction and soul. They are active in conversations and they believe in their heart that their product, that their business, is going to help whoever they are selling to.
  3. Learn From What Works: Trusting the process matters. If there’s a process, run the process. Learn the script. Don’t reinvent the wheel unnecessarily when something is working. Once you master what’s in place, then you can look for new ways to learn and engage. Most importantly, understand that hard work defines what you do. It may not always be easy, but sometimes you just need to put pen to paper and do the work. There are no shortcuts for success.

Book Recommendation

Sponsor

  • Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
May 16, 2017

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/mary-browning/

Takeaways

  1. It All Starts With Data (But It Doesn’t End There): Data is the list of people you’re going to call and the industry or demographics of companies you’re looking at. Taking those numbers to the next level focuses on the people behind the numbers. What are their common needs? How can you help meet them? When you consider the current marketplace, and the ins and outs of each organization, part of being a successful salesperson is understanding and meeting clients where they are at.
  2. Make Your Message Matter: It isn’t just about the numbers. What is the customer’s pain? You need to make it your job to find out, and quick! One of the biggest challenges in prospecting is that you generally have 30 seconds or less to uncover someone’s pain. That’s why it is so important to develop succinct ways to communicate a solution to that pain. Make it count.
  3. Consider Your Cadence: Most importantly, how a message is delivered should be diverse. It needs to be communicated through a mix of channels, including phone calls, emails, social media, direct mail or whatever other methods you see fit for your business. Staggering different types of communication throughout a period of time, like two weeks for example, is one of the best ways to reach someone in the long run. In most cases, a phone call or two just won’t cut it.
  4. Qualification Matters: What’s a scenario where a prospect probably isn’t going to move to a next step for you? Understanding that from the first time you take a meeting, allows you to really learn from the conversations you’re having and improve the overall conversation rate. If a meeting is disqualified, use that as an opportunity to grow by digging into why it didn’t work. From there you can structure qualifying questions to ask future prospects making you more knowledgeable and efficient in the process.

Book Recommendations

Sponsor

  • Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
May 9, 2017

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/bob-perkins/

Takeaways

  1. Be Selfish In a Good Way: Top sales reps are usually at the top for a reason. They’re driven, focused and selfish - in a good way. They’re also not that concerned with the welfare of those around them. They need that time and space to focus on their accounts, run their sales process the way they know works, are dedicated to improving themselves all along the way.
  2. Embrace the Digital Transformation: The role technology plays in sales isn’t going away. You can easily schedule meetings with apps like Calendly or completely automate it with services like X.ai. You can streamline the workflow for creating proposals with apps like our sponsor Octiv or simplify your outbound prospecting with tools like SalesLoft. There’s even a new product I recently demoed that brings better transparency and consistency to the discovery call process called Costello that you should check out.
  3. Keep Sales Personal: Time to contradict myself a bit. Even though I believe we have to embrace the digital transformation, understand we are at the risk of de-personalizing sales. All the tools, data, and analytics should be leveraged when appropriate, but at the end of the day, people buy from people they like. Differentiate yourself from the both the AI movement as well as average sales person by showing your personality. Flip on the switch for your webcam and ask your prospect to do the same. Write emails like a human being. Truly participate in the “social” part of social media.

Book Recommendation

Sponsor

  • Octiv – Transform the way your sales assets are created, distributed and tracked around the world. Because a better sales process is a better buying experience.
May 2, 2017

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/damian-thompson/

Takeaways

  1. All Interest Is Self Interest: Knowing your prospects is a good place to start, but often it helps to dig deeper. It helps to understand what motivates people and what makes them tick. It helps to remember that all interest is self interest. What does that mean for you? People buy emotionally and then rationalize their purchase intellectually after the fact. You have to get them excited or upset about something to truly move them.
  2. Question Everything: As soon as something becomes an accepted and widely used “best practice,” chances are its shelf life has already expired. For example, all the cute subject lines or cold email template you find, were awesome the first five times a prospect saw them. What are you doing today? What are you testing right now? Even if everything is going great and you’re beating quota, what should you be questioning to see if you could get even better?
  3. Niche Down Until it Hurts: It’s NOT possible to serve too small of a niche. If you really want to find success in sales, become the X for Y guy (i.e. CRM for dog groomers in hot weather states). While that may be an exaggeration, finding the common characteristics of the people that buy from you also you to become so good and so understood in a the space that it become easy to replicate.

Book Recommendation

Sponsor

  • Octiv – Transform the way your sales assets are created, distributed and tracked around the world. Because a better sales process is a better buying experience.
1