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Business Insights & Strategies From Experts: Unveiling Simple Truths Behind Success. I’m always grateful for Reviews and remember to Subscribe
Episodes
Saturday Apr 04, 2020
Saturday Apr 04, 2020
Covid-19 has thrown us all into a state of unwelcome change. The economy has been kicked in the crotch but it's not dead. Now is NOT the time for you or your salespeople to sit back and whimper about the unfairness of the situation. It is the time to seize the good in this crisis.
Many of you will be going through a process identical to grief.
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
Your job as a sales manager or sales leader is to help your salespeople reach Acceptance. Managers who coach each salesperson in their team for 3-3.5 hours will help their people be STRONGER through this crisis and help their business THRIVE not just survive.
Business leaders, now is NOT the time to cut back on training. It is the time to double down on SALES training. Product training is NOT sales training. Develop a cadence of training and coaching because your salespeople are critical to the current and future survival of your business. Sales is the lifeblood of your business. EVERY role, your equity, shareholder value all depend on your salespeople performing during this period.
Buyers are easier to get hold of now than they ever have been or will be in your lifetime. We are seeing a 300% increase in access to decision makers. Of course you need to be sensitive to their current situation but if you can help them, you do them a massive disservice by waiting, by not prospecting, by not calling customers and engaging in discussions about their business, their people, their vision, their future.
No punches pulled and some very cold, hard truths in this episode. Last year 56% of salespeople worldwide FAILED to hit quota. That number will plummet this year. 13% of sales teams HIT quota last year. I believe that number will stay more or less the same. Why? Because those teams are being trained and coached by GOOD managers.
This is the time invest in your managers to become great managers.Most sales managers are tapped on the shoulder and told "Congratulations. You are one" without any training or onboarding into the role. Their bosses don't coach them either. That is a massive dereliction of duty as a leader. Get outside help if you don't know how to do this yourself effectively.
Now is the time to remove the salespeople who are not able or willing to change. You hired them so make sure you do everything you can to help them and if you have to cut heads, do it kindly and fairly. It is a kindness to them and good decision for the business.
You can get hold of Dylis and dylisguyan.com
Friday Mar 27, 2020
Friday Mar 27, 2020
My guest is #KurtShaver, Chief Sales Officer at #Vengresso. He is a tech sales veteran of 36 years who moved into digital B2B social selling.
Kurt explains the difference between social marketing and social selling. As a seller, your objective is to get engagement to generate a sales conversation. We explain how to use social selling to drive opportunities forward or out of the funnel, how to identify the players in the buying committee and deliver value to open them up to your offering.
Kurt raises the question about how do you track success in you digital selling? How else can social and digital platforms help your company? Where else can we take this social lark?
Digital technologies like LinkedIn can support your sales, your recruitment and your marketing. Kurt cites an example where a potential heavy hitting new hire that an MSP was hoping to hire, was concerned because their strategy on LinkedIn was weak and it was affecting his decision. We identify a serious gap which presents an important opportunity, which is the recruitment of partners.
We dig into why selfish vendor marketing leaves their partners cold and is a hangover of traditional marketing not adapting to the social era. Social has flattened and democratised content distribution but few vendors or marketers have adapted well. We investigate why too much IT marketing is focused too narrowly on IT, and is missing their real audience in the line of business.
Kurt gives you a beautifully elegant tip to tap into the expertise of your technical leads who suffer the curse of knowledge so they can position themselves as subject matter experts but keep them under control so they don’t sink your sale.
We investigate how to win mindshare in a crowded market with your customers and your partners. Kurt identifies the crucial importance of being timely, to localize your content by putting the power in the hands of the individual salesperson to ensure that the right conversations are coordinated and delivered correctly to the right people with the right buyers. I explain why failure to coordinate effectively will rack up unnecessary and eye-wateringly high, hidden costs of sale. The metrics that used to work in the past, no longer do, because of the current level of complexity, the number of buyers involved, and the increased difficulty.
Contact Kurt:
Kurt’s LinkedIn Profile Websites-
vengreso.com (Digital Sales Transformation)
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bit.ly/Social_Selling_Boot_Camp (Social Selling BootCamp)
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vengreso.com/blog (Digital Sales Blog)
Friday Mar 20, 2020
Friday Mar 20, 2020
#AlexMoscow, CEO of 9mmPR has been working with CEOs for the past 20 years helping them to tell their story through the voice of their customers.
Alex explains why you mustn't sell overtly using PR. You have to speak with the voice of your customer. Do you really know why they bought from you? Why they disqualified your competition? How far you have help them come? If you don't really know what problem you solve, it makes your sales a matter of luck rather than judgement. Understanding "Why?", "So what?", " Who cares?" This is incredibly powerful and missed by so many of your competitors.
Good stories don't make you the hero. Your customer is the hero. You are Sherpa Tensing or Obi Wan. You are not Sir Edmund Hillary or Luke Skywalker, your customer is.
Alex recommends you act out the story which lets them see themselves in your stories. He reminds us that we love to earwig a good conversation. We discuss why it's vital to enter the conversations that your prospects are already having using micro-narratives.
What makes you, your market's perfect partner? In a world where time is a scarce commodity, failing to have a clear answer to this question means you will routinely find yourself in competitive situations. Give a clear answer and you are the only one they speak to.
How do you position yourself as the aspirational choice? What makes people want to be part of the community that grows up around you? Are you using testimonials as powerful micro-narratives that make your clients the hero?
PR lets you borrow the credibility of your customer and the editorial team without blowing your own trumpet.
Alex elevates the why and the impact to help you tell stories that emotionally engage your target audience. If they are triggered emotionally, they will take action and contact you.
Check out the freakonomics podcast for a fresh view on stuff you think you know and the book "The Great Mental Models" by #ShaneParrish
Contact Alex if you want to raise your profile in the press:
Alex’s Profile:linkedin.com/in/alexmoscowWebsite: 9mmpr.com (9MM Public Relations Ltd)Phone: 07967 604 652 (Mobile)Email: alex@9mmpr.comMonday Mar 16, 2020
Monday Mar 16, 2020
#JohnBedwany is a seasoned sales veteran who is the the world's leading expert in #AuthenticRelationshipManagement. What is #ARM? The best salespeople are able to develop peer to peer benchmarks, developing and sharing intelligence about what other comparable decision makers are thinking and worrying about. Positioning yourself as a thought leader and source of valuable executive education and insight allows you to displace incumbents.
A-players stand apart from everyone else because of the authentic relationships they develop through transparent intent. Only very few salespeople do any genuine segmentation. The best identify those accounts they have a high probability of closing because you can improve their business position.
We discuss how to establish control over your sales without being authoritarian, how to stay relevant over the long term & maintain deal velocity by defining personalised roadmaps to yes. We also explore how the salesperson can marshal all the resources, people and milestones to ensure predictability in your pipeline and forecast. You'll understand why winging it is an act of criminal negligence on the part of both salesperson and their manager. We explain why scripts are harmful to the buying experience.
John helps his clients establish deep credibility with their prospects over time using a closed loop prospecting process but he bemoans the fact that lazy and incompetent salespeople blow up well qualified opportunities through lack of preparation. Having a mentoring system, coaching and regular investment in the individuals in the sales team with a personalised training budget will positively impact performance.
I make the point that true trickledown occurs when you train and coach your senior executive team and refer to what #JeffMagee suggested which is that the Chief Learning Officer spends their time coaching and developing the leadership team.
John makes some very interesting author recommendations
You can contact John via:
John’s LinkedIn ProfileWebsite-
dbdept.com.au (Company Website)
Friday Mar 13, 2020
Friday Mar 13, 2020
#KevinBeales is CEO of #Refract.ai. Refract is a canny technology that uses #AI to help managers and salespeople slice and dice sales conversations with prospects and customers.
Imagine being able to break down every second of a call to understand talk time between seller and buyer, the kind of language used to persuade or dissuade a prospect, the verbs and adjectives, the use of silence or the propensity to fill silence with the sound of the seller's voice.
These technologies are potentially incredibly useful for managers who can use the data to coach and deliver predictable performance improvement of individual salespeople.
Kevin shares some of the frequently UNasked questions that CXOs should be asking but aren't. We dissect the gaps in management coaching capability that have led to the shocking statistic that in 2019 on 13% of sales teams worldwide hit quota and only 44% of individual, full time, "professional" salespeople hit their quota.
As we face another downturn, it is more important than ever that managers invest sufficient time, consistently, in helping their salespeople improve. In particular, skills like prospecting, qualification and heading of stalls and put offs are key. But these tools can also help senior executives identify gaps in their management layer.
Contact Kevin via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbeales/
Monday Mar 09, 2020
Monday Mar 09, 2020
#IanMoyse is a veteran sales director of 25+ years experience with 13 years in #cloud #technologysales.
- What's impeding your sales team from achieving target?
- What are the obstacles the manager needs to help the salesperson overcome?
- How can the manager help the salesperson perform at their optimal level?
- Why aren't CEOs and CSOs getting out in the field with their salespeople to speak to customers and experience the challenges salespeople are facing day to day?
- How can you use executive bridging to help salespeople win business and make customers feel special and valued?
- What can CEOs do to uncover the reality of the sales role instead of perceptions and conjecture?
Senior leaders can learn significant lessons by getting their hands dirty by getting out in the field and in front of customers. That does NOT mean the senior manager takes over. The salesperson is the CAPTAIN, the senior executive is CREW. Both sides need to feel empowered to tell the truth, have the right to make mistakes and take risks without fear of being punished or diminished. This only works if you have planned the calls together, rehearsed the conversation and agreed clear demarkation of roles. Ian makes the important point that the salesperson needs to brief upwards and manage upwards.
We explore the power of the eye baton technique and the rules of any crew member being asked and answering a question so that the salesperson isn't undermined or loses power.
Ian explains the critical importance of simple dashboards that focus on the basics. What's in the pipeline? Is it stuck or moving forward? What information is being gathered as you advance? What is real and what isn't based on the quality of information being gathered?
He explores the importance of gathering quality information and documenting it so the salesperson and the manager know what needs to be learned or done
We touch on CRM hygiene and adoption. A huge mistake is investing in CRM to provide audit with better audit information instead of implementing CRM to help salespeople sell more, more often, for more money and do so more simply and efficiently. Building a sales playbook into the CRM will help raise the game of your middle 60% of your salesforce and assist managers with coaching their salespeople to raise their game. How is your CRM helping your managers understand what is happening, what's real, what isn't and how you're using technology to enable managers to get the best out of their salespeople?
Ian's coaching philosophy is built around his "Earning, Yearning and Learning" model which has helped him help his people perform to their potential. He has a strong track record of having salespeople work for him multiple times throughout their careers because he shows he cares, he helps them grow and develop, he invests in them and invests in external training and coaching.
Ian makes an interesting point that using external coaches and trainers brings fresh insights, objectivity and best practices from other markets and industries. He is refreshingly vulnerable in that he recognises he is not the finished article. He is always learning which is infectious to his team. Failure to adapt to current conditions make most salespeople a spent force because they are stuck in the past using approaches and tactics that no longer work.
Ian makes the crucial point that even if you are on target, you can be better. You are NEVER the finished article.
We wrap up by exploring the common mistakes with sales and sales management hiring. Recruitment is such a critical element of every manager's role and it is done so badly, so often. Hiring managers WANT the candidate in front of them to succeed, yet so many salespeople are unprepared. Hiring managers have a problem and the candidate is a potential solution.
Ian's response to my golden ticket question is profoundly simple but on the money.
You can get hold of Ian via #LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/ianmoyse
Website: ianmoyse.brandyourself.com/ (Personal Website)
Friday Feb 28, 2020
Friday Feb 28, 2020
#GeoffBurch is like Marmite. He's wasp honey! We explore example after example of shit selling, fuelled by awful management and non-existent leadership. We dig into how broken compensation and measurement systems drive the wrong behaviours and self-delusion by senior management.
We uncover some depressing patterns of behaviour by salespeople driven to avoid punishment. In a world where customers are better informed than ever salespeople have to adjust to what works TODAY, not rely on what used to work yesterday.
We dig into how great salespeople build credibility by how they sell not what they sell. Geoff explains why you should always tell your customer when you're doing something good for your customer. He leaned how to up sell from his very canny mother. I share a fabulous tip to grow your profitable revenues and reduce my prospecting burden by 95%.
Geoff is a consummate storyteller. We had such a laugh on this episode. Listen for the shooting story to learn why so many managers are so ineffective after having been successful in sales. The conversation evolves into the importance of focus, clarity and common purpose.
He introduces the concept of the #talkingbottom. It is depressingly funny as it descends into how broken culture spirals into disappointing customer experience and a culture of blame and excuses.
Geoff makes 2 brilliant book suggestions for your reading list.
Contact Geoff via LinkedIn
Websites
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geoffburch.com (Company Website)
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geoffburch.com (Blog)
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Friday Feb 21, 2020
Friday Feb 21, 2020
The plan never survives contact with the enemy.
#DrJeffreyMagee explains why most of us only hit our peak revenue building years in our 50s, unless you're smart. Either you're a cost centre or you're a profit centre. Either you are part of your own plan or you become part of someone else's plan.
He builds and develops peak performance in individuals and businesses. We explore why leaders focus on the wrong end of the problem because they are so stuck in the weeds. The questions CEOs should be asking about what works today not what used to work; what assets your competition don't have today that you can leverage; what is the 360 capability of your #humancapital; can you objectively remove the noise out of your head and look at your people as assets; what is the #trajectory you need to pursue
Jeff shares his formula for growing your people to maximise their potential:
- Aptitude
- Application
- Attitude
We delve into why sales recruitment is done so poorly. Jeff questions whether hiring managers know what they are looking for, or how to onboard them effectively, raise the bar through hiring and ongoing training and skills development.
Listen to find out how to maximise successful hires. Jeff has a formula to help you manage optimal performance.
We explore why modern sellers need to adapt to modern buyers' changing patterns of behaviour. We dig into the potency of a strong money concept and self concept for moving sales from transactional to value based. Jeff and I get tough around the lowering of the bar and the trend towards compromising on work standards in sales.
We cut through the crap, and identify exactly why weak, ineffective, lazy sales management are passing the buck, instead of taking responsibility for the team's number. They are creating the rod of underperformance for their own back by failing to understand what will make a sales hire succeed in role and they are afraid to hold people to account.
We map out the runway for sales management success. The gaping chasm between sales management excellence and what passes for average is massive. 94% (NINETY FOUR PERCENT) of sales managers are NOT QUALIFIED for the role.
Player managers are like multitasking - doing twice as much as you should half as well as you could - because they are distracted from their real job by carrying a personal target. their job is to hire the best people and get the best out of them. Give them a personal target and that is where you focus their attention. Bloody idiotic and a false economy.
Jeff explains why the emphasis on tactical (compliance, standard operating procedures, compliance, product knowledge etc) instead of operational (management, leadership, supervisory) and strategic (where senior leaders live) training is at the heart of why many organisations get into trouble. He explains the true value of Chief Learning Officers spending their time delivering strategic elegation (elevating & delegating) to the senior bench of the company.
We draw an important parallel between how a few, wealthy, committed influencers have been able to hijack the global political narrative by playing the long game, and shift the narrative to the right and towards populism causing the average voter to fail to question what they are seeing and hearing in the media. Successful leaders need to satisfy the day to day but they also need to be courageous enough to play the long game, driving towards their long term vision. The best spread their risk, encourage diversity.
The annual business report tells you how to compete with or sell to every public enterprise; they tell you about their past, present, future. Can you tap into their trends? Are you playing the future game or stuck in a rut in the past? Get our of the short term trap. Fail to learn and train yourself and your leaders, your people to think at your peril.
Salesmanship is about selling only one thing, change. Unless you get your salespeople to do the basics well, consistently over time and meaning it, you are toast. Stop getting distracted by the next shiny object that is sales enablement until you have got the basics right. Once you have the basics right, then use technology to make yourself more efficient and more effective.
Jeff advises you to read and listen to people who have the scar tissue from failure in the real world and their lessons learned, but find content produced by people who are BETTER than you, not at the same level or lesser.
Jeff can be contacted on LinkedIn.
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ProfessionalPerformanceMagazine.com (Company Website)
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JeffreyMagee.com (Company Website)
Subscribe to #ProfessionalPerformanceMagazine. It just deals with success and is packed with fantastic content every issue.
Tuesday Feb 18, 2020
Tuesday Feb 18, 2020
#ZachSelch has helped build sales channels across 130+ countries. As a good Jewish boy he's built successful and sustained channels in Saudi Arabia, throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. He's a true internationalist. Zach has recruited over 1000 partners for his employers and clients but he doesn't build a land army; he builds a special forces unit.
In each market he generally only works with one partner, whether they are distributors, resellers or agents. He builds clear trust based contracts and clear expectations up front that he is in it for the long term, that the partner will get paid, operate with total transparency, and uncompromising integrity.
He focuses his time on helping the partners to sell because no matter how good they are at installing a product, no one makes any money and the partnership will fail. Never assume that your partners can sell. Most can't. Most partners are plumbers - they know how to weld and cut pipes - it's your job to help them build a plumbing business. That means selling, building systems and processes, hiring the right people.
Zach shares his partner onboarding process which is tried and tested. Familiarisation with the local culture is critical. Providing partners with short training videos is important because distributors rarely put much time into training partners on how to sell. This meant that Zach earned the right to mentor the individual salespeople, helping them make more money because his job is to get the result no matter what it takes and not being distracted to maximise #TimeAvailableForSelling and #TimeAvailableForManagement.
Stop hurting sales with the pointless, and add value each time you touch your partners' salespeople. Ignore this and you will reduce the time available for selling and they're highly productive you risk reducing the highly productive selling time to as low as 3%-7.35% of their time.
Zach makes it his policy to help the careers of his distributor salespeople. Treat them like they are your own, your protégés. Stop behaving like an overpaid clerk. You need to manage your distributors. Calling once a month and adding no value is why you are failing to optimise your channel sales performance. Help them prospect. Get out in the field with them.
Meeting once a year at a trade show and making a call once a month is a major dereliction of duty. Don't think that you've done your hard work and a channel role is a prize where you can sit in your ivory tower and the money will come rolling in to smash your quota. Channel sales is the toughest sales role there is bar none. It is not a place to send failed direct salespeople. It is where you send your best salespeople who have management capability.
You grow companies fast by leveraging the power of your partnerships. You grow them sustainably, by planning, recruiting great partners who can sell, getting into the trenches, training & coaching them to be great sellers, holding each other accountable and making them successful.
"There is only one way out of my network. And that's in a box!" - Zach Selch
Zach has built a lifetime network which means he can set up a distribution network in 25% of the time than other people.
We explore the up front contract he establishes to protect both sides. It will surprise you if you are only used to selling via partners in your own local market. It cuts out 3-4 months of dead time, prevents getting tied up in pointless stuff that lawyers think is important and will hurt you commercially. He establishes clear expectations in return for exclusivity. He also shares how he gets partners to open up all their customer and prospect information when you meet resistance or pushback.
Subscribe to his videos. Here's one example you'll enjoy
Connect with him on LinkedIn here
Zach suggests these 3 biographies of General Sherman
Sherman: Soldier, realist, American by BH Liddell Hart
A Soldier's Passion For Order by John Marszalek
If you enjoyed this podcast please subscribe, comment and share. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts here. Again, please subscribe, comment and share.
If you believe you or someone you know would make an interesting guest for The Inquisitor Podcast, please let me know by emailing me on mcauchi@sandler.com
Happy international selling!
Monday Feb 10, 2020
Monday Feb 10, 2020
#MikeWeinberg is one of the most authentic, sincere and dedicated sales thought leaders on the planet today. He gloriously pulls no punches.
His brilliant books and training come from 3 decades of scar tissue. No arsty fartsy theory that hasn't been tested in the field with real salespeople and real sales managers. Mike is author of #SalesTruth, #NewSalesSimplified and #SalesManagementSimplified. They are must reads. Buy them all now. If they don't already grace your bookshelves, Audible library or Kindle reader, you are missing out.
You can see him speak at #Outbound in May 2020. Get a taste of what to expect in our fireside chat where we tear apart the myths and truths around:
If you're in a leadership role and don't like or understand sales, pay particularly close attention. If you have a team who is meant to be bringing in net new business ask yourself if you're trying to kill elephants with a plough? Are your farmers really zookeepers? And do your hunters use a sniper rifle or indiscriminately shoot anything that moves with an Uzi on drive by shootings.
We have a laugh, occasionally at your expense. Not because we're bad people but because we are passionate about helping salespeople reach their potential and if we didn't laugh we'd have to cry. What passes for average in sales is APPALLING. Sales management is a mess and sales leaders, God help us, you really need a rocket up your arse! This interview may light the touch paper. Pucker up ladies and geniltalmen. This going to be an uncomfortable ride ...