Feb 26, 2019
Takeaways
- Pleasantly Persistent: Keep pursuing your prospect using personalized messaging while communicating value. Overtime, the relationship will unfold so that you spend your time on qualified and interested buyers.
- Make it Personal: Although tempting, don’t just use the templated email that you know won’t get opened. Spend the time to identify details about the person you’re emailing and get creative with it.
- Email Subject Lines: Using anonymous data across all clients, SalesLoft has determined the top subject lines had three things in common – they were three words or less, they contained some sort of mail merge data, and they contained a question mark.
- Discounting: While obviously wanting to maximize contract values, there are four appropriate situations where you can provide a discount. Can you get your prospect to sign a longer term commitment? Are they buying the highest version or package of the service? Can they buy higher quantity of the package or service? Are they able to buy today or pay cash upfront for the entire order?
Full Notes
Book Recommendation
- Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Sponsor
- Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
Feb 19, 2019
Takeaways
- Master the First 20 Seconds: We all get defensive when we receive an unexpected call from someone we don’t know. Don’t take it personal as it’s a cultural issue. However, it is your job to dissolve that defensiveness very quickly. First thing first — remove iffy language. Don’t tell them you’re “just calling” as if you have nothing better to do. Also, don’t ask them how they are. Not only is that a tell tale sign that you’re a salesperson, but when a stranger asks about your health, you get even more defensive. You need to quickly get to the reason for your call and then immediately show them how the call is relevant to them. Notice, this has nothing to do with you.
- Prepare to Think on Your Feet: I get it. Email is easier because you have time to both think and edit. On the phone, you clearly don’t get that luxury. So, be prepared. Obviously you need to have a couple of open ended questions ready to go, but you also need to know what the 3-4 typical responses are that you’re likely to get from the prospect. As you prepare for those responses, now you just need to ask your question and truly listen to the response. And remember, the sound of the human voice contains so much information you’re losing by relying on text based communication.
- Help Prospects Make Decisions: I’ve gone against the grain a bit with the notion of decision fatigue from a personal standpoint, but from the point of the prospect I get it. Instead of leaving everything up to them, prompt them by giving them the “next best step.” I’ve found that if I just ask them what to do next, I get delay after delay It usually sounds like, “me think about it” or “let me talk to so and so,” but when I give them the next step most people take or the one I believe is right for them, I can move a deal along a lot faster. Realize, you’ve sold your solution dozens if not hundreds of times, yet this is the first time they’ve gone through a sales process for your solution.
Full Notes
Book Recommendation
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Sponsor
- Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
Feb 12, 2019
Takeaways
- Invest Time Building the Right List: Knowing who your ideal prospect is, is only the beginning of a good outreach plan. Don’t take for granted the amount of work that goes into identifying exactly who those people are and trying to acquire their contact information. If you’re doing this manually, it’s a lot of work, and even if you’re paying for data sources, it still takes a lot of preparation to do it right. After you identify the right people, next spend some time trying to hypothesize what problems each of these companies uniquely face and what messaging you can use to address them on an individual level.
- Build Discipline Into Your Calendar: As a sales professional, it’s almost a given we have some level of ADD and the unique ability to find every squirrel there is in our day to day. That said, when you’re to take your game to the next level, blocking time on your calendar for all important activities is the first step to ensuring that success. Sure, you may believe you can multitask, or you may believe you have superhuman powers to just be able to will everything into getting done, but you could also just schedule the activities and make commitments to yourself. I use this technique to even schedule in time to learn about new things. Giving myself that permission ensures I don’t feel guilty about not doing something else high on my priority list.
- Learn to Reset Everyday: Look, I’m a gambler and always find it humorous when I go to Vegas and see previous outcomes of the roulette wheel displayed. Why? Because they literally have nothing to do with the independent event of the next spin, yet some people let them guide their bets. Whether you just closed a one million dollar deal or heard “no” 47 times, yesterday is in the past and should have no bearing on what you do today. In sales we have really high highs and just as low of lows, you have to force yourself to manage that energy and see each day just like the roulette wheel—an independent event.
Full Notes
Book Recommendation
- Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler
Sponsor
- Costello - What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
Feb 5, 2019
Takeaways
- Plan Your Target Accounts: Too many sales reps take the shotgun approach when it comes to prospecting. To me, it feels like that’s the reason we get so many shitty emails and generic LinkedIn connection requests. Take the time to plan out who you’re going to target over the next 90 days. Whether that’s 100 accounts or just 30, you’ll be able to actually customize your outreach to each person individually, or better, work to find a common connection to make an introduction.
- Role Play with Your Companies Executives: Think about who in your company has served in the role of your target buyer. Whether that is by title or just responsibility, they have likely faced the same issues you’re trying to sell into. Practicing your cold call or pitch with them could provide great insight that you wouldn’t be able to get from a prospect.
- Gain Mutual Feedback on Losses: You all know how passionate I am about coaching — I mean, it is how I make a living after all. But, I can’t tell you how important it is to be able to first coach yourself. If you’re not willing to take the time to breakdown a call or a meeting and tell me the top three things you think you did wrong or what could be improved, well, the reality is, you’re not going to listen to anything anyone else has to say about it either.
Full Notes
Book Recommendations
- Sales EQ by Jeb Blount
- Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort
Sponsor
- Costello - What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.
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