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.
• 
  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.