Takeaways

• Stop Trying to Wing It: Just because salespeople fall under the category of “influencers” doesn’t mean they’ve earned the right to wing it. Buyers will let you own the process if you’re willing to. Meaning if you have a structured process, if you’re working someone through a pain funnel and articulating your next step, your audience will typically let you work. It’s when you try to just ‘wing it,’ that the system breaks down and you ultimately lose control over the sales process.
• Know Your Weaknesses: Scott mentioned there being five major weaknesses that every salesperson has in some capacity. Need for approval, fear of rejection, low money tolerance, non-supported buy cycle and record collection. Knowing where you sit in each of these allows you to seek the coaching or mentorship needed for growth.
• Understand Your Identity vs Your Role: All of us have a unique identity comprised of our beliefs, values, principles, desires and emotions. We also have a plethora of roles that we play such as son or daughter, mother or father, friend, co-worker, salesperson, etc. If we confuse the performances in our roles with our identity, our self image can and will go up and down with each success or failure.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/scott-cramer/

Book Recommendations

• You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
• Og Mandino's University of Success by Og Mandino

Sponsor

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

Takeaways

1. Figure Out a Growth Trajectory: One of the first challenges I see a lot of salespeople struggle with is their quota or actual goal. Regardless of what the number is, going from zero to that number can seem daunting. Instead of focusing on the end, find the unit of growth that makes your sales process work and then do the backwards math to develop your daily game plan. You’ll find this activity to be a lot more manageable.
2. Quit Being Afraid of Cold Calls: It’s so much easier to send out a quick batch of emails, but the simple (and harsh) truth is cold calling works. A personal conversation is more memorable, not to mention more open-ended, than the 100th email you prospect receives in a given day. First thing first, you can’t sound like every other salesperson on the planet. Instead of trying to get them to say yes, be skeptical and determine if they even have the problems your product or service can help. Second, create equal business stature -- tell them you’re only going to take 30 seconds of their time and then they get to decide if you should keep talking. And last, realize the whole point of a cold call is to set up a meeting, NOT immediately sell them something.
3. Find the Right Clients to Call: Ask yourself the following questions: Who are my acceptable clients? Who are my typical clients? Who are my ideal clients? Look at the demographics for the niche you’re in. Group potential clients by location, years in business, revenue, industry, employees, or whatever you can to narrow down the scope. Then, overlay that with the top reasons your last 3-5 customers bought from you. Being able to tell similar stories makes the conversation more fluid.
4. Write Emails that Get Responses: Your subject line is the most important piece with the sole goal of getting the recipient to open the email. A few of the things I’ve seen work include using three words or less, not capitalizing the first word, asking a question and using the prospect's first name. But getting a response is another story. The body of the email should be short and NOT about you. You prospects don’t care about you because they don’t know you. Instead, focus on what you think they’re problem could be and how others have solved a similar challenge.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/jim-brown/

Book Recommendation

• The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson

Sponsor

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

Takeaways

1. Nurture Wins: Nurture campaigns are an investment, but they can pay huge dividends in the long-term. In general, no one will ever buy less because you care more. Finding ways to engage with prospects at another level than simply making a phone call or sending an email makes a significant difference these days. What can you send a prospect to differentiate yourself and show them you really care?
2. Push Your Tone to the Limit: On a scale of one to ten, with one being beloved Fred Rogers and ten being brutally honest Joan Rivers, where do you fall? Being nice is nice and all, but sometimes it helps to step outside your comfort zone. Understanding where you fall on this tonal scale is important, but more important is finding the line of where your prospects sit. What can you say to move them to the edge of emotion and stand out in their inbox? If you upset some people along the way, so be it. It doesn’t make sense to dwell on the one or two people you may have shocked when you see the increased pipeline you’re able to build.
3. Understand the Curse of Knowledge: You know what they say about making assumptions, right? Don’t do it. Why? Because aside from the obvious negative consequences, the knowledge in your head may be harder for others to comprehend than you think. It’s easy to assume that because you have domain knowledge, everyone does. Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. It’s always better to start fresh and build upon a mutual understanding than to assume you’re already on the same page.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/todd-muffley/

Book Recommendation

• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

Sponsor

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

Takeaways

1. Everybody is in Sales: Personality can only take you so far. Introvert or extrovert doesn’t matter and doesn’t define you as a sales person. What does is how you sell. No matter what you end up doing, you are in sales. Whether that means selling your ideas to your boss, selling co-workers on a new approach to a problem, or directly selling a service to a customer -- everything starts with sales.
2. Break the Silence: I’ve been in a enough sales rooms to tell you the silence is absolutely deafening today. On one end, you’ve got a whole bunch of brand new salespeople with no business acumen and hole bunch of “tools” in their hands they have to try to figure out. On the other end you’ve got more experienced reps going into conference rooms to “make their calls.” All of this has got to stop. Let’s work together, out loud, to move the needle.
3. Go For No: It’s one thing to know you’re going to hear “no” a lot. It’s something else entirely how you approach it. Instead of making a goal to set five appointments, make a goal to get 100 people to tell you no. Now, even if you get to your goal of five appointments, you have to keep going, because you haven’t gotten your 100 no’s. Want to see the immediate impact of this? For the next week, try to get 20 no’s a day in your personal life. Ask for your coffee for free. Ask for a discount on your lunch. Ask your cable provider if they can lower your bill. You’ll be surprised what happens when you just start asking.

Full Notes

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

Book Recommendation

• The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and John David Mann
• Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There by Richard Fenton

Sponsor

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