124 Key Aspects of a Profitable Business (with Adam Lean)
Adam Lean is the Founder of The CFO Project, a business dedicated to helping small business owners have a financially healthy business by providing them their very own Chief Financial Officer. That way, they can focus more on what they do best while knowing that they are on the right track financially.
“The whole point of any business is to make a profit, and ‘profit’ and ‘cash flow’ are financial concepts, and so somebody has to be an expert at those financial concepts for a business to run well.”
Adam Lean is the Founder of The CFO Project, a business dedicated to helping small business owners have a financially healthy business by providing them their very own Chief Financial Officer. That way, they can focus more on what they do best while knowing that they are on the right track financially.
In this episode, we talk about:
Adam’s career trajectory, from corporate to the business world
The CFO Project, what it is and how it works
Difference between corporate and business world
What sets apart a successful business from a short-lived one
Why 50% of small businesses fail
How small businesses can manage their finances better
Adam’s take on sales
To learn more about the topics in this episode, be sure to check out Adam’s free resources for It’s Time to Sell listeners, and check out the full episode!
What The CFO Project is
We give business owners their own CFOs to meet with on a regular basis, and we have this system that the CFO will walk the business owner through every month, so that the business owner is very clear on the financial health of their business and what they need to do to get the business on track financially.
So the CFO does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work of understanding the financial status of the business and then meeting with the business owner so that the owner can understand their business better and help them make better, more informed decisions. That way, the business owner can focus on what they do best, which is usually sales and operations.
The Reality of Starting a Business
According to the Small Business Administration, 50% of all businesses never see their fifth birthday. That’s a sad reality.
Nobody goes into business thinking ‘I’m going to fail’ or ‘I’m never going to make it’; I mean business owners pour their time, money and energy – and even going to debt – for their business.
Why Small Businesses Fail
The biggest reason for why businesses fail is because of lack of financial management.
Most business owners get into business because they’re an expert at their craft. That is why business owners are usually great at operations and sales, because they love what they’re doing.
But at the end of the day, the whole point of any business is to make a profit, and ‘profit’ and ‘cash flow’ are financial concepts, and so somebody has to be an expert at those financial concepts for a business to run well. It would be very beneficial and smart for any business owner to get someone who is an expert in these matters to manage these aspects of the business for them.
123 Badger Maps for Field Sales Reps with Steve Benson
Steve Benson is the CEO and Founder of Badger Maps, the number one app for route planning and scheduling to help outside sales reps save up to 10 hours every week in busy work. Prior to Badger Maps, Steve worked in sales at IBM and HP, and also worked as Regional Sales Manager at Google.
“Sales is less about being pushy and it’s more about being able to explain how valuable your product can be to your customer. That way, your customers will be able to empathize with you.”
Steve Benson is the CEO and Founder of Badger Maps, the number one app for route planning and scheduling to help outside sales reps save up to 10 hours every week in busy work. Prior to Badger Maps, Steve worked in sales at IBM and HP, and also worked as Regional Sales Manager at Google.
In this episode, we talk about:
How outside sales reps can use Badger Maps
Methods used to scaling the business
Growing the sales capacity of Badger Maps
Empathy in the Sales Industry
The importance of emotional intelligence as a salesperson
Green and red flags for hiring salespeople
Overcoming client objections
Leadership lessons
To learn more, listen to the full episode!
Finding Empathetic Salespeople
When I think about hiring sales people, I’m looking for high levels of communication skills – someone who is a great listener and could be empathetic to the customer. Just, emotional intelligence.
Do they have the ability to understand their own emotional states and the emotional states of their customers?
Because they will need that to connect and manage relationships. And so I think emotional intelligence is something that salespeople should really have.
Red Flags When Hiring Salespeople
People who are not action-oriented is a red flag for me when hiring sales people.
You want a salesperson who can roll up their sleeves and execute. I’m looking for people who leads from the front. It’s easy to pick someone who can pick things up really fast, but loyalty, commitment and grit to get things done is probably more important.
Being a Servant Leader
One of my biggest lessons is to be a servant leader.
I try to put myself in the mindframe that everyone doesn’t work for me at the company; I work for all of them.
It’s an upside down pyramid and I’m at the bottom, enabling them and supporting them. And I think in general, people overweight the hard skills and underweight the soft skills such as the emotional intelligence it takes to be a great leader.
122 Book-Writing Tips and the Publishing Process with Judy Weintraub
Judy Weintraub is the Founder and President of SkillBites, a company she started to help entrepreneurs get known for their expertise and help their sales performance by becoming published authors.
“A book can really scale your business so much, because you become known as the expert or leading authority in your field, so it greatly enhances your credibility.”
Judy Weintraub is the Founder and President of SkillBites, a company she started to help entrepreneurs get known for their expertise and help their sales performance by becoming published authors.
In this episode, we talk about:
Writing a book
Hiring a writing coach
Why YOU should get started on writing a book
Writing long VS short books
Tips for people who are not good at writing
Identifying a great book topic
How to get started with writing
Overcoming mental blocks
Tips on getting your book published
Self-publishing VS Traditional Publishers
Judy’s company, SkillBites
If you’re interested in writing a book, or maybe you’re currently struggling through the writing and/or publishing process, this episode is for you!
Don’t miss out on this one!
Why Write a Book?
A book can really scale your business so much, because you become known as the expert or leading authority in your field, so it greatly enhances your credibility. Besides that, it also increases your visibility because there will be people who’ll find you from searching for the topic for your book, who might not have known about your expertise.
There are millions of people buying books everyday online, and you’re going to find those people who locate your book and contact you when you’ve got a book up on Amazon. It also opens up doors to lots of different opportunities such as radio interviews and newspaper interviews and speaking engagements.
Because if you speak out there today, you’re not going to get the big gigs unless you have a book, and having that book gets you those opportunities for speaking engagements.
Can Someone Be a Published Author Even If They’re Not a Good Writer?
You definitely can become an author even if you’re not a good writer.
You have expertise, and all you need to do is to get the ideas out of your head, which you can do by speaking. If you’re not a very good writer, you can speak your book, get it transcribed and you can work from that. You can also have a ghostwriter or an editor work from the transcription.
Identifying a Topic and Writing a Book About It
Finding the right topic is a key ingredient to writing a successful book. If you’re going to put in all that time, effort and money to get the book done, you want to make sure that that’s going to be valuable.
So to determine the right topic, you first want to identify what your objective or goal is for writing that book. If you’re looking to grow a particular aspect of your business, that’s a pretty good clue as to the topic that you want to write on.
You also want to think about who is your target reader: Who do you want coming to you for your services or products, and what are their needs and concerns that you can address in your book?
121 Mindset Hacks and Marketing Essentials with Kathryn Binkley
Kathryn Binkley is a business strategist and coach who help women entrepreneurs to build wildly successful online businesses. Before becoming a coach, Kathryn graduated with a degree in BA Psychology and started working for a marketing agency for nearly a decade. As a market expert, she helped businesses figure out where to best invest their marketing dollars, and now, she helps women entrepreneurs grow in the business that they love.
“One of the things that can improve your mindset is when you start to take responsibility and getting out of the victim mindset that things are happening to you and start owning that you are choosing your current situation..”
Kathryn Binkley is a business strategist and coach who help women entrepreneurs to build wildly successful online businesses. Before becoming a coach, Kathryn graduated with a degree in BA Psychology and started working for a marketing agency for nearly a decade. As a market expert, she helped businesses figure out where to best invest their marketing dollars, and now, she helps women entrepreneurs grow in the business that they love.
In this episode, we talk about:
The relationship between sales and marketing
How female entrepreneurs approach sales
Content marketing and putting yourself out there
Building the ‘trust factor’
How to improve your mindset and attract abundance
Major mistakes in marketing that entrepreneurs make
Check out the full episode!
Building the ‘Trust Factor’ Before Meeting a Client
Content marketing is huge, and that is something that I highly recommend to anyone – not necessarily to do it all but to pick even just one thing to start with, and get that content out there.
It builds that trust factor before you even have that conversation with your prospect client. It establishes your authority and expertise and opens that door.
Improving Your Mindset
One of the things that can improve your mindset is when you start to take responsibility and getting out of the victim mindset that things are happening to you and start owning that you are choosing your current situation. So whatever result you’re getting in your business, you’re choosing that. You’re choosing the way that you’re handling your business and showing up, and so you’re choosing your results.
Once you make that conscious choice to change things, then you can start to look at what outcomes you want and why you want them, and also, why you might not want them.
Major Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make
I like to talk about strategy, visibility, lead generation and sales. And what I see most often that’s happening in the marketing space is that my clients are coming to me, focused on only one or maybe a couple of areas. When you jump around the process, there’s a high possibility that you will have inconsistent revenue coming in.
You really need a marketing system or process that includes four of those that are happening at all times.
120 ‘Dating’ Your Customer and Working with the Government with Rivers Corbett
Rivers Corbett is a serial entrepreneur, TedX speaker, entrepreneur in residence in New Brunswick, video author of 13 Fears of Entrepreneurs, host of the Startup Canada Podcast, and co-founder of GoForth Garage for entrepreneurs.
Rivers help entrepreneurs succeed by helping them understand and implement the right formula for building an epic business.
“The go-to of businesses is to go get funding, and there’s nothing wrong with getting funding, but we forget that a key metric for success in business is sales.”
Rivers Corbett is a serial entrepreneur, TedX speaker, entrepreneur in residence in New Brunswick, video author of 13 Fears of Entrepreneurs, host of the Startup Canada Podcast, and co-founder of GoForth Garage for entrepreneurs.
Rivers help entrepreneurs succeed by helping them understand and implement the right formula for building an epic business.
In this episode, we talk about:
Getting funding and selling your products
Selling to the right individual
Building a relationship with your customer
Bringing the entrepreneurial spirit in a bureaucratic organization
Taking care of your mental health as an entrepreneur
Best way to move the economy forward
Making sales all about the customer
Check out the full episode!
‘Dating’ the Customer
My biggest challenge has always been asking for the sale. But I have learned that all sales is is a process of ‘dating’ a customer.
And what you have to do is figure out your value proposition and who is the individual that wants it, and whether they want it to the point that they actually want to pay for it. Once you understand that, then you can start to have a dialogue around how you can ‘date’ together.
If I’m selling food and you’re in the brick business, then what are you doing talking to me? A lot of people sit around and just start talking to anybody. Initially, it is about getting to the right individual that has a need for your product or service.
Being an Entrepreneur in Residence in New Brunswick
Government is starting to change a bit, but a lot of it has to do with having people understand that entrepreneurial culture, having people get an appreciation of the importance of engaging entrepreneurs in policies and strategic decisions.
I suffered from depression during my journey as an entrepreneur, and today, I was invited to speak in front of my teammates [in the government] about the whole issue, and I started off by telling them, “Entrepreneurs, more than anybody, struggle with depression, anxiety and mental health issues.” And if we as a society aren’t supporting those individuals who drive the whole economic engine of our pure existence, then we are just kicking ourselves in the head because these people can’t create jobs, they can’t create innovation.
And so it’s really cool to talk about this with my colleagues because they’re now getting that voice of the entrepreneur, so when it comes to them making the decisions, they’re thinking in a different way.
Mental Health Status of Entrepreneurs
Mental health issues are more prevalent among entrepreneurs.
I went through it twice during my journey and I consider it one of the greatest lessons that ever happened to me because one, I can talk about it, and two, I think I’m going to live longer because I now know how to deal with it. I figured out how to fix my engine and it allows me to be a better entrepreneur. But definitely the stats show that entrepreneurs, more than the average person, suffer from some form of mental health issue.
119 Marketing Tips for Niche-Specific Businesses with Jason Linett
Jason Linett is an expert at helping organizations and the people within them create powerful change and sharpen their strategies.
As a speaker, author, and hypnotist, Jason has put in more than fifteen years of professional study and on-the-job experience tracking how top performers in many industries achieve astounding results.
“The last five letters of the word ‘attraction’ is ACTION – so there has to be that moment of getting out there, producing the content, listening to your audience. What are those things that I can help solve in a much more direct way?”
Jason Linett is an expert at helping organizations and the people within them create powerful change and sharpen their strategies.
As a speaker, author, and hypnotist, Jason has put in more than fifteen years of professional study and on-the-job experience tracking how top performers in many industries achieve astounding results.
In this episode, we talk about:
How to market yourself in a very specific niche
Standing out in your own niche
Worst advice he’s received
Simplifying the referral process
Using social media in new ways
Rethinking old marketing strategies
Turning every opportunity into assets
How to gain momentum in your business
What moves people to make a change
Finding strength in being vulnerable
Check out the full episode!
Marketing Tips for People In Specific Niches
In terms of starting a business, it’s always helpful to start to define who is that ideal client avatar. Who is that person you’re looking for? So while you might think I’d have to sell the hypnosis, I really need to build everything from the perspective that people are already looking for this, so let me now lead with a value, lead with content, so they’re able to make that educated decision.
So in terms of any aspect of what we do in our work, where is that audience already gathering? What are the things they are already looking for and how can we help them make that buying decision?
Rather than asking the question, “What can I sell them?” it’s better to ask, “What can I give them? What experience can I share with them?”
Using Old Tools for New Things
One thing that holds people back sometimes is that we like to stand off and say, “That doesn’t work.” Some people don’t try writing articles for magazines because they believe that print media is dead, or perhaps they believe that Facebook won’t work because it’s oversaturated. But rather than not venturing into things because you think they won’t work, you can think about it differently and say, “Well, how can I make that work better? How do I enhance that?”
It’s not about the platform, it’s the strategy.
Simplifying the Referral Process
Sometimes in the game of getting business referrals, it’s to not that the person doesn’t like you and that’s why they’re not sending referrals, it’s that you did not make it easy for them to send the referrals.
For example, there’s this chiropractor who would refer me to her clients all the time. She’s the type who drinks eight cups of espressos a day, and so there’s just this natural excitement about her. And so whenever she makes the referrals, it’s a bit much because of all the excitement that she has.
So recognizing that that wasn’t necessarily the buying decision strategy of some of her patients, what I did was I swung by her office and dropped off a bunch of CDs so that if she ever thought of referring me to her patients, she can just give them one of these CDs and she could say something like, “Hey, you should listen to this. This is someone of the local area and this is a great way to meet him even before you call him.” So in that way, I made the referral process easier for her.
Mentions
118 Make Your Business Stand Out Through Content Marketing – with Madeleine Lambert
Madeleine Lambert is the co-founder of Content Refined, a fast growing content marketing company that provides cutting-edge online content for affiliate marketers, e-commerce businesses and SaaS companies.
“People won’t trust you if you’re flaky and if don’t come through on your promises.
Madeleine Lambert is the co-founder of Content Refined, a fast growing content marketing company that provides cutting-edge online content for affiliate marketers, e-commerce businesses and SaaS companies.
In this episode, we talk about:
How to stand out in an overcrowded niche
Content marketing tips and strategies for 2019
Content Refined: their story and services
Pain points in starting a company
Bridging traditional and online marketing strategies
Finding your voice online
Creating win-win relationships
If you want to learn more about how you can use content to distinguish yourself online, check out the full episode!
Having a Personalized Content Marketing Strategy
I truly believe that content is king and is going to be the most effective way to market yourself and make sales online.
But so much of content marketing right now is completely automated – you write your content and then plug it into all sorts of funnels to make it work for you, and it’s very hands-off and not as personal as it used to be.
So I do believe in creating that personal touch to your content marketing strategy. And what I mean by that is by creating really great relationships and creating content that is going to be useful to different types of audiences, then they’ll use that content to leverage your services.
Chris on Win-Win Relationships
Striking those win-win trusting relationships that are not necessarily tied monetarily is a tough one to conquer, but once you conquer them and you create these trusting relationships, they go a lot further than those traditional affiliate, monetarily-driven relationships. Trusting relationships is at the core of what business is all about.
Building Trust with Your Audience and Partners
Making great connections, getting to know people, building trust with people and following through with what you say you’d do is a really important piece of advice. Don’t be flaky – people won’t trust you if you’re flaky and don’t come through on your promises.
Do what you say you’re going to do – that’s how you build trust.
Mentions
Connect with Madeleine Lambert (LinkedIn).
Content Refined (site)
Content Refined FREE Internal SOPs
To get your free internal SOPs, fill in your email and use the code: chris
Platform by Michael Hyatt (book)
117 Lessons Learned in Sales and Content Marketing with Matt Watson
Matt Watson is the founder of Stackify and FullScale.io. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur who likes solving problems with technology. Before Stackify, he founded VinSolutions and then sold it to AutoTrader.com in May 2011 for $150 MM.
“There’s so many go-to marketing strategies, and partnerships work really well. But I would definitely caution anybody that you should always have a Plan B for marketing.”
Matt Watson is the founder of Stackify and FullScale.io. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur who likes solving problems with technology. Before Stackify, he founded VinSolutions and then sold it to AutoTrader.com in May 2011 for $150 MM.
In this episode, we talk about:
The Lean Startup Methodology
Having your own content marketing strategies
Adapting to setbacks caused by ineffective marketing strategies
Having a Plan B for marketing
Matt’s experience with partnerships
Stackify’s content marketing strategies
Modern sales strategies
There’s a lot of things to learn about content marketing and sales strategies in this episode, so go check it out!
Having a Plan B for Marketing
There’s definitely a pivot on the journey for us. We thought we reached a big partnership with another company that was going to resell our product, and we thought we were going to be billionaires because the largest company in the industry wanted to partner with us and was going to resell our product. And we spent a lot of our time working with them, trying to train them, their field staff – I mean we magically had a hundred salespeople that was supposedly going to go out and sell our product.
However, they ended up selling nothing. It was a massive waste of time that we spent probably over a year, hoping that they would sell our product for us.
So you see, it’s so easy to get caught in that trap of finding a partner that you think is going to sell your product for you. But I would definitely caution anybody that you should always have a Plan B.
Why Content Marketing Works
We have over 1,000 customers all over the world, and about 60% of them are international. So in the early days of Stackify, we tried a lot of different marketing strategies, from pay-per-click to different display ads to social media – all sorts of different things – and really struggled with how to reach our audience. Our customer acquisition costs were very high.
But we finally came to the realization that there’s one universal truth in this world, that if somebody has a problem, they go to Google and they search for it.
And so we really put all of our effort into content marketing, and we published three to five blog posts a week, and we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. That has created a monster amount of content and traffic for us. We get over a million website users a month, and 90% of our users now found us through all the content marketing that we do.
The Evolving Nature of Sales Strategy
Sales today is not only the stereotypical salesperson who’s sitting and waiting for the next customer to come in.
Sales today is all about putting yourself out there in multiple ways and having conversations with some customers, setting up funnels and content marketing for different types of customers and businesses. It’s actually a very fun time to be in sales. Having a traditional sales department may work for the type of business that you’re in, however, in today’s business landscape, sales can happen quite organically.
116 Starting Your Own Business and Social Media Strategies with Krista Mashore
Based in Northern California, Krista Mashore sold 69 homes in her first year and has personally sold well over 100 homes every year since. On track to sell 200 homes this year, Krista also coaches and trains brokers and agents throughout the U.S. on cutting edge real estate techniques and technologies you can’t learn from any other trainer or coach out there.
Krista has recently been recognized in “Top Agent Magazine” as one of the leading agents in California, as well as by the Wall Street Journal in the Top 1% of Realtors Nationwide.
“If you put people before things always, the things will come.”
Based in Northern California, Krista Mashore sold 69 homes in her first year and has personally sold well over 100 homes every year since. On track to sell 200 homes this year, Krista also coaches and trains brokers and agents throughout the U.S. on cutting edge real estate techniques and technologies you can’t learn from any other trainer or coach out there.
Krista has recently been recognized in “Top Agent Magazine” as one of the leading agents in California, as well as by the Wall Street Journal in the Top 1% of Realtors Nationwide.
In this episode, we talk about:
Quitting your corporate job and starting your own business
Finding your passion
What to do when you struggle with closing sales
Mental toughness
How to dominate in the marketplace using social media
How to stand out as a community leader in your neighborhood
This entire episode is just a gold mine of wisdom and encouragement, and her story and journey will surely inspire you to tackle your struggles head on.
Don’t miss out on this amazing episode!!
Creating Content That Matters to Your Ideal Clients
For me, my client avatar are local business professionals and real estate agents across the country. So what I do is you just start putting out content via video without asking your client avatar to do anything at all. So you just start generating tons of content and you’re just completely serving. It’s value, value, value. The idea is to serve, not to sell, initially, because you want your community, your client avatar to get to know you, to like you and trust you.
So you are constantly just putting out video content, giving them information, helping them, giving them tips, telling them about your products and services, letting them know who you are.
What Success Really Looks Like
I was happy before, I really was, and I was very successful. But I reached my peak and I was just so tied to my phone and my job, I didn’t have any time off. I’d go on a vacation with my kids and they’d be like, “Mom, get off your phone!” And I was just tired of it.
It hasn’t been easy. Before I was successful, I had two years where I wasn’t, where it just was not clicking. And so what I decided to do was utilize the exact same strategy that I had utilized in my real estate business to become the community market leader in my coaching business. Once I did that, everything just completely changed. And so for people out there, just know that you can do it!
Building Mental Toughness for Sales
Have an abundance mindset. Know that the more that you give, the more that you’ll receive, and we don’t give so that we will receive – that’s not the meaning behind it – but just know that the more that you serve people, the more that you help people, the more that you have that open mindedness just to be there, the money comes. And also really wrapping yourself around your own mindset – getting up everyday, showing gratitude, writing down the six things that you’re going to actually accomplish, making sure that you write down six things that you’re grateful for, visualizing your day, visualizing your outcomes, doing these habits on a daily basis, and again, being so pigheaded persistent as Chet Holmes from The Ultimate Sales Machine would say.
The ultimate pigheaded persistence is what you need and be consistent in your endeavors, and if you never stop and you continue and you create these habits every single day, your business and your mindset will shift.
Mentions
Connect with Krista on LinkedIn
Website: Krista Mashore
Sell 100+ Homes a Year by Krista Mashore (book)
F.I.R.E.: Your Crappy Job Won’t Quit Itself by Krista Mashore (book, available on January)
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth (book)
115 Blockchain Technology, Adbank and Sales Strategies – with Jon Gillham
Jon Gillham is the CEO and Founder of Adbank, a powerful online ad platform built on Ethereum to remove costly middlemen & dramatically reduce the $50 billion problem of ad fraud using advanced AI technology.
By using the Adbank platform, publishers can get paid more for their content while charging advertisers less and creating a transparent ecosystem that benefits all key stakeholders in the industry. Existing ad platforms will be able to access cutting edge anti-fraud AI tools through Adbank’s API and powered with ADB tokens.
“Sales should be a positive word for every entrepreneur.”
Jon Gillham is the CEO and Founder of Adbank, a powerful online ad platform built on Ethereum to remove costly middlemen & dramatically reduce the $50 billion problem of ad fraud using advanced AI technology.
By using the Adbank platform, publishers can get paid more for their content while charging advertisers less and creating a transparent ecosystem that benefits all key stakeholders in the industry. Existing ad platforms will be able to access cutting edge anti-fraud AI tools through Adbank’s API and powered with ADB tokens.
In this episode, we talk about:
Blockchain technology
Ways on how to sell your ideas
Growing your online network
Building a personal brand versus building a corporate brand
What Adbank is
If you want to learn more about the topics, check out the entire episode!
What is blockchain technology?
Instead of a database that sits with your bank, what blockchain allows us to do is get into that database, and instead of a centralized trusted authority, it’s now a decentralized system that creates a distributed trusted environment versus a single point of trust.
There’s some pretty interesting applications where based on whoever middleman exists to act as a trust agent to make a transaction happen between two parties, blockchain can come in and provide some efficiencies and act as a solution to the trust problem.
How have you went about growing your sales?
We’ve been really consistent from the start, with a heavy focus on systems and automation, and doing a very traditional valuable information share, followed by a lead capture, followed by educating them on what our company does.
It’s very formulaic. Most sales copies looks like an engineer wrote it, because an engineer did write it, and not necessarily optimized for sales but optimized for sales for the right person who understands the problem. So very inbound, lots of automation, and very focused on ensuring that we get the right clients in the door.
Building a Personal Brand Versus a Corporate Brand
I have significantly shifted my focus to be at the far backseat as possible, and putting other members of the team forward for several reasons, but keeping the brand around the company.
We all have a personal brand, so it’s not necessarily a binary decision because you can’t choose to not have a personal brand because we all do. And so continuing to be aware of that, but my focus is shifting away from increasing my personal brand and focusing on the business and other team members
Mentions
Connect with Jon on LinkedIn
Email Jon at john@adbank.network
Website: https://adbank.network/
114 Opening Doors of Prospected Clients – with Chris Spurvey
Today is going to be a solo episode. Now, I have been working with a client and we’ve been trying to get in the door of some new clients. I spent the last couple of weeks doing a little bit of research and practical application.
We are wanting to get in the door of new prospects and I thought of recording a short episode to share with you these ideas, ideas we have been deploying based on our research and practical application.
“The idea is to deliver value, become known and then open up or reach out with an email, or a connection request, and then take it from there.”
Today is going to be a solo episode. Now, I have been working with a client and we’ve been trying to get in the door of some new clients. I spent the last couple of weeks doing a little bit of research and practical application.
We are wanting to get in the door of new prospects and I thought of recording a short episode to share with you these ideas, ideas we have been deploying based on our research and practical application.
Please subscribe to It’s Time to Sell on iTunes by clicking the button above, and give us an honest rating!
Get in the Door
The best way to get in the door of a new client is to go through a direct referral, or somebody you know who knows somebody. I always believe in the idea of growing our networks with the intention of giving value in both directions. Of course, they will probably do the same thing for you.
Direct Referral by far is the most effective way to get in the door.
I am a big believer and user of LinkedIn Sales Navigator which is a paid subscription. It allows users of to really mine and dig deep into organizations and to find the people who we think may be decision makers. LinkedIn rewards proper outreach and ultimately providing value to the people that you reach out to. That is a big part of my cold and warm outreach.
As you work it over time, you save target accounts that you are going after and also save leads within the accounts. LinkedIn curates the content from your leads and your accounts, sort of an aggregator of news, articles, everything on the web about your accounts.
Leads don’t necessarily have to be connections.
But I am not a big proponent of reaching out to people you don’t know and they don’t know you. It comes across as spam-y, especially if you follow up on a sales message almost right away after they connect.
Strike up a Conversation
How do you actually get in the door of some decision makers within these accounts that you are targeting?
Typically, I would reach out with an email, and I’ll send a message something along the lines of
“Hi [First Name].
I hope this message finds you well. I hope you don’t mind the cold outreach. I came across your profile while doing some research.
Insert if you happen to know a mutual connection with that person, someone potentially of influence.
I noticed you are connected to [First Name, Last Name of that person]. [First name] is a personal friend of mine/connection of mine. Phenomenal Person.
Label out there what company you are with, and if you have a strong title, put that out there because it adds credibility to you. Then, maybe put a little teaser out there.
The reason for my outreach/ my reach out is I am [your title for an organization] [my organization] and it’s a brand new facility/ a newly built facility. The facility was built due to a lack of cold storage space in the Atlantic Canadian Region. We’d like to educate the right people at [Company X] about the facility. Perhaps there is a way we can serve you.
Go higher in the organization. Reach out the president or the vice president.
Is there anyone that comes to mind within the company that we might be best to connect with? Thanks so much.
Affix your signature and then your phone number.
The Second Layer
If you bring value to somebody, you make them aware of something, they feel obligated to return the favor of the form of replying to this email, giving you some insight through their company.
You can reach out to the person that that person referred you to.
[Mike],
They suggested I reach out to you. He suggested you were the best person to reach out to. I hope this message finds you well.
The reason for my reach out is I am the [general manager] of the [name of facility] that recently opened, a cold storage facility and logistic facility in [New Brunswick]. The facility was built due to a lack of cold storage in the Atlantic Canadian Region. We’d like to educate the right people at [Company] about the facility.
Perhaps there is a way we can serve you. Would you be open for a quick call over the next week or two? Thanks so much.
[Your Name]
[Your Phone Number]
Try to find the phone number of the head office. Reach out and call the individual.
Leverage referrals as much as you can, and start to penetrate some of these opportunities. Never give up. Leveraging email is one of the smartest things we can do. Use your personal touch. A personal note or email. Make it a point to write down and remember the personal interests and details of the individuals.
Find the key decision makers and invest your energy in getting to that right person, not to the people below. Go to the top, as high in the organization as you can. Then work your way down.
Treat gatekeepers, such as executive assistants, secretaries, and front desk people like gold. Let them know how much you appreciate their professionalism and their assistance. Being rude to these intermediaries is obviously the death sentence.
113 Authenticity and Building Relationships in Sales – with Larry Levine
Larry Levine is the international best-selling author of Selling From the Heart and the co-host of the Selling From the Heart Podcast. With 30 years of in-the-field sales experience within the B2B technology space, he knows what it takes to be a successful sales professional.
Now Larry coaches B2B sales professionals to do what he did. Since 2015 Larry has coached both quota-busting tenured reps and green millennials just beginning their careers. Both appreciate the practical nature of his coaching.
“You don’t become successful overnight. It was a series of small steps that you did on a consistent daily basis that got you to where you’re at today.”
Larry Levine is the international best-selling author of Selling From the Heart and the co-host of the Selling From the Heart Podcast. With 30 years of in-the-field sales experience within the B2B technology space, he knows what it takes to be a successful sales professional.
Now Larry coaches B2B sales professionals to do what he did. Since 2015 Larry has coached both quota-busting tenured reps and green millennials just beginning their careers. Both appreciate the practical nature of his coaching.
In this episode, we talk about:
Building culture within a sales organization
Being your authentic self
The “spray and pray” technique (and why it’s outdated)
Building relationships in sales
Having a non-pretentious voice in social media
Growing as a sales person
Authenticity has become a rare commodity in the sales industry. However, it is a much needed element to help you connect with people and with yourself. If you want more nuggets about authenticity and building relationships, give this episode a listen!
Problem Among Sales Professionals Today
I think the problem exists in multiple levels. I’ll poke holes and throw darts at the individual salespeople across the board, that they’ve got to own up the responsibility of growing themselves and being leaders and lead themselves, and hold themselves accountable and grow their business, grow themselves and all that.
There’s a certain aspect they’ve got to throw on them. There’s also equally as much poking holes and throwing darts at management and upper management because they’ve allowed it to happen. And it’s all of this put together and I think it’s unfair for anybody to say it’s all the sales individual’s fault, that it’s all management fault, that it’s all the upper management’s fault or it’s the CEO’s fault.
It’s collectively everybody’s fault because they’ve allowed it to happen for such a long time that now, we’re faced with “Okay, now what do we do,” and everyone’s grasping at straws to help turn themselves around.
The Power of Consistency
There are successful businesses, sales leaders and sales individuals all over the place.
But I said, listen, you don’t become successful overnight. It was a series of small steps that you did on a consistent, daily basis that got you to where you’re at today.
And most people are going to go, “Of course,” and so I said, okay, then let’s flip this on its head.
And I go, oh, if we understand that there’s issues out there, that we all can improve, it didn’t happen overnight. It was a series of inconsistent steps that we did on a daily basis, and that’s why we’re here. So we can’t fix these things overnight. It’s going to be a series of small steps you do every single day that you hold yourself as a sales person, a sales leader, an executive, to non-negotiable things that I must do, and that’s my challenge to people.
Larry’s thoughts on “spray and pray”
The spray and pray in sales, it’s just unfortunate but that’s what I tell people. If you just take a step back and you humanize this – it’s that age old saying, right, “Don’t do unto others that you wish not done to you”? Isn’t it true? And this stuff is not complicated. And the funny thing is, I always ask people, let’s flip it on its head.
You’re not a salesperson now, you’re the person in the other shoes. If you started seeing all this, what would you do? And then there’s dead silence because they know.
Mentions
Connect with Larry on LinkedIn
Selling from the Heart (podcast)
Selling from the Heart (book) by Larry Levine
Website: https://www.sellingfromtheheart.net/
112 The Power of An Effective Sales Message – with Zach Messler
Zach Messler is a product marketing guy at heart. For twenty years, he has been into product marketing, sales and product messaging for B2B tech. He left his corporate career over a year ago to pursue his passion for effective communication towards efficient marketing.
Now, he helps entrepreneurs with their messaging, to know what to say and how to say it so that they make a bigger impact on the world, and a bigger impact on their wallets.
“It’s what you say, and how you say it. Everybody is a sales person. You’re selling all the time, whether you know it or not.”
Zach Messler is a product marketing guy at heart. For twenty years, he has been into product marketing, sales and product messaging for B2B tech. He left his corporate career over a year ago to pursue his passion for effective communication towards efficient marketing.
Now, he helps entrepreneurs with their messaging, to know what to say and how to say it so that they make a bigger impact on the world, and a bigger impact on their wallets.
In this episode, we talk about:
What your message is,
What product marketing is all about,
Why clarity is important,
How change affects the way we do sales and many more.
If you’re dead serious about how to get your product out there to your audience and have them buy it then you have to tune in to this wonderful episode.
Please subscribe to It’s Time to Sell on iTunes by clicking the green button below, and give us an honest rating!
Your Message is your Mess
It’s funny. I’ve been following this one guy and he says (one of the things that he says is), “Your mess is your message.” And I’m not so sure about that but then you know, you start to think about things and, how I got to where I am, is kind of my mess.
So I was working in tech for 20 years, and I was working at this one company that was just, everybody was pretty set in their ways. It was from the top down, and there was a certain structure in place. And it was just expected that you did things a certain way. I was being told that, the things to do from a marketing perspective from not the guy I reported to, but the guy he reported to, the Head of Marketing, was telling me a certain way that I had to do things, and I knew it wasn’t the right way.
I was at a point where I wasn’t really happy in the job because of that, because I was doing work that I didn’t believe in. I knew it wasn’t going to have an impact, and so I had a decision to make. I decided I’m going to look for a new job. At that point I also decided, if I’m ready to quit, if I’m ready to look for a new job, I’m just going to do what I know is right, and I’m not going to be afraid of anyone or anything because, I’m ready to go find a job. So if by doing the right thing I get laid off, I get fired, I get whatever, then so be it. Okay, great! So this is probably about a year and a half in, in a three-and-a-half-year tenure at this company.
And so I started doing that, and all of a sudden, things blew up in a good way. I started to see a bigger impact. I had a much closer relationship with the Sales team, and the Sales team started growing, and my impact got bigger. And then it just got to a point where I wanted to help more people, than just a few hundred salespeople at one company. And that’s why I went off to do my own thing.
So if it weren’t for being in this place, in an organization where things were, “this is our status quo”, “this is how things have to be”, “you’re going to do it this way”, if it weren’t for being in an environment like that, where my ways of messaging and marketing and the ways of the guy running the show there, weren’t so diametrically opposed, then who knows? I’d probably still be working in the corporate world.
And really, prior to that experience? I wouldn’t have said it then but looking back, I can say it now. I think I was afraid. I was afraid to be me. Because there was me, and there was corporate me, and corporate me was very buttoned up. And I’m not buttoned up. What you see is truly, what you see is what you get.
What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is one of these disciplines that means different things to different organizations.
Largely in my career, I’ve been the first Product Marketing hire and I’ve put infrastructure in place, and it’s messaging. It’s how do you talk about things, what do you say and how do you say it. It’s sales enablement. so it’s all the traditional Murakami-type stuff like the datasheets, and the brochures, and Excel sheets, and those sort of things, and its content.
Content Marketing has kind of drifted off and become its own big thing. But as a Product Marketer, I see Product Marketing as the center of the universe. Because again, it’s largely about positioning and messaging, what to say and how to say it.
So yeah, I’ve worked really closely with salespeople and it was just as is. It was largely a teaching role, it’s training, it’s coming up with messages, it’s understanding the buying audience better than anyone in the company – that’s largely the job, and then it’s translating. It’s the bridge between the product, and all the people that build and run and manage the product, and the market, and all the people that sell to, that uncover, that identify, that qualify and sell to the market. So it’s a translation job.
For me again it’s, what you say and how you say it, are extremely important. In Marketing, in Sales, in really anything, in any type of communication.
Everybody is a salesperson. You’re selling all the time whether you know it or not because, even if you’re not selling a product, you might be selling an idea. You’re always selling something. I know Daniel Pink wrote a book on that, “To Sell is Human”, a really good book.
Why Clarity is So Important
If your communication’s going to be effective, if your sales messaging, if your sales conversations are going to be good, if they’re going to work, if they’re going to be successful, they have to be clear, they have to be compelling, and they have to be convincing.
And so for me, to be clear is to be understood. To be compelling is to grab attention and to hold on to it. And then to be convincing is to drive someone to take the action that you want them to take. Clear, compelling, and convincing.
To be clear, it’s a practice to break things down into three areas. You answer three questions essentially, “What is it that I’m talking about?”, “What does it do?”, and “Why does it matter to my buying audience?”. It’s a little more nuance than that, but it’s usually, especially with founders, and especially with entrepreneurs, they’re excited about what they’re bringing forth to the world, and they dive right into the details.
It’s interesting. I went to a pitch contest last night, it was awesome. It was AARP has this innovation lab outside of DC, and they did a pitch competition. This was their national finals last night, and they had eight start-ups up pitching to the audience, and it was wild. Few of the eight were really good and they connected with the audience, but a bunch of them just dove so quickly into the detail and I was lost.
That’s really the key. When you do this exercise, “What is it?” – and it’s quite literally, “WHAT IS IT?”, it’s not getting into what it does, it’s not getting into why someone should care, or what you think of it. It’s like the example I’ve used before, “Okay, I’m holding a glass. You can’t see it but I just picked up a glass. So what is it?” “It’s a cylindrical container made out of glass. What does it do? It holds liquid.” It says few words as you can use, this exercise. This isn’t stuff that you’re going to flaw on a website, this isn’t stuff that you’re necessarily going to throw into a conversation.
The point of this is being able to get to the essence of the thing that you’re talking about. Because if you understand the essence of the thing that you’re talking about, whether it’s a glass which is easy, or some really complex idea that you’re trying to sell or trying to get across, or a product that you care so deeply about, that you’re so excited about, that you start speaking too fast and get into the details too quick, if you understand the essence, you’re going to be able to speak to it more clearly.
When you practice this, what happens over time is your communication becomes more clear.
How Change Affects the Way We Do Sales
People have a sense of, “everybody’s a marketer”, “everybody’s a salesperson”, “everyone’s a marketer”. Everyone believes they understand Marketing, but they don’t often. Because the conventional wisdom of Marketing – and even to make it more nuance, Messaging – is, “Okay I have a product. I need to talk about my product.” And today’s buyer, forget about it.
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling it’s, things change. This is what I was saying before, “I’m standing at the top of this giant water slide, ready to go down.” This is it.
Today’s buyers are dramatically different from the way they were even five years ago. That especially, most of what people think of as Product Messaging or Sales Messaging is, “You know I got to talk about my product, and the benefits, and the features, and what it does, and how awesome it is…” but buyers change.
Back in 2007, and it was the launch of the iPhone, it changed everybody. Now you have what you didn’t have 10 years ago. You have access to anything. Any information, anything you want at any time, you’re in control. And what happened back then was, control of a
Sales situation shifted from the seller to the buyer. The buyer has the control right now of the interaction. The buyer often doesn’t even need the salesperson, and that’s a fundamental shift.
And so if you start talking about how great your product is, and your buyer doesn’t know, doesn’t realize, doesn’t believe that they have a problem, that your product sells. Or, they have a circumstance that your product will help, or enhance, or something, if they can’t connect those dots, then you’ve just lost because, you’re annoying, and I don’t want to talk to you.
111 Rewinding the Tape, Where I am Today, and New Ventures – with Chris Spurvey
Our episode today will be short and sweet. A lot of things have been going on in the past few weeks and I thought I’d share it with all of you.
Please subscribe to It’s Time to Sell on iTunes by clicking the green button below, and give us an honest rating!
Our episode today will be short and sweet. A lot of things have been going on in the past few weeks and I thought I’d share it with all of you.
Please subscribe to It’s Time to Sell on iTunes by clicking the green button below, and give us an honest rating!
Rewinding the tape: what I did before. Going broad in your business.
Last November, I took the big leap of faith and left my safe secure job working with one of the larger companies in the world – a multinational advisory firm. Prior to that I had launched my book, launched my podcast, grew a little bit of a following by delivering value and just putting myself out there in a very genuine and authentic way. I shared stories, tips and tactics that are pretty well-focused on sales, and growing business through human-to-human sales techniques.
At a certain point last year, I felt an ache in my stomach and I really wanted to jump out and do something on a full-time basis. So I took the leap of faith and in late November I finished my last day in KPMG and went out on my own.
Where I Am Today: Consulting and Speaking Engagements
I have a good group of customers and clients that I work with on a monthly basis, growing revenues for their businesses. Those clients range in size, you know, from $2-million dollars in annual revenue and up to much a larger $50-million dollars in annual revenue.
For some, I just run a weekly sales meeting where I meet with all the people who are doing sales within the company. I run an accountability meeting where we grow the pipeline and we work things through the pipeline on a weekly basis.
I’m actually attending meetings in some cases with certain clients, where I’m observing, chiming in, coaching after the meetings with prospective clients, and it’s a lot of fun. I’m getting some great results for my clients and obviously getting some great results for me and my business – Chris Spurvey Consulting Incorporated. So that’s that, that’s what I’ve been up to in terms of my consulting business.
When it comes to speaking, it’s been very organic. I get people and organizations reaching out to me on occasion, and a couple of times a month I give talks here in my home province in Newfoundland, along with a few people throughout the rest of Canada.
Dockridge Digital and the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast
I have two other initiatives I want to share with you.
I’ve co-founded another company called Dockridge Digital with my two pals – David Chesney and Dan Shay. These two, fine gentlemen approached me about a month ago, and I’ve now become a part-owner of the company.
I’ve also began collaborating with two very special friends of mine – Carol Bartlett and Jol Hunter.
To make the long story short, the three of us decided to collaborate on a new podcast, the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast. We plan to launch a weekly show. The first 5 episodes are centered around Jol and his work.
Jol is a very special human being. He formulated some key learnings from having visited the owners of 500 businesses, and in the first 5 episodes we deep dive into his five learnings in terms of how businesses can scale and grow and reach their full potential.
I certainly welcome you to listen to that podcast, and subscribe to receive updates at bottomlinetopline.com.
I think you’ll hear some very unique perspectives and hopefully some great things for you to take away and grow your business.
110 Generosity Grows Businesses – with Ellen Rogin
Today’s guest is Ellen Rogin, CPA, CFP, a renowned speaker, money expert, NY Times’ Best- selling author and Abundance Activist. Ellen combines her financial expertise and creativity in motivating people to shift their viewpoints that businesses grow when it starts to create generous opportunities to make a greater positive impact.
Her books had helped a lot of business owners develop strong “financial belief management skills” to be a rock star not only in growing their business, but also giving back to the community and inspire others.
“A good business flourishes on a healthy mindset that you will reap what you sow.”
Today’s guest is Ellen Rogin, CPA, CFP, a renowned speaker, money expert, NY Times’ Best- selling author and Abundance Activist. Ellen combines her financial expertise and creativity in motivating people to shift their viewpoints that businesses grow when it starts to create generous opportunities to make a greater positive impact.
Her books had helped a lot of business owners develop strong “financial belief management skills” to be a rock star not only in growing their business, but also giving back to the community and inspire others.
In this episode, we talk about:
The importance of generosity as a business core,
The science and effects of giving,
The ways she incorporated generosity in personal and business matters, and many more.
If you’re a business owner who’s ready to grow and make a positive impact, I recommend you tune in.
Generosity As a Core Value
People were hanging on so tightly to what they had, so afraid they weren’t going to be okay. At the same time that people in their lives and charities needed their money more than ever.
Now if you think your hands as being clenched, how can you possibly receive?
On the other hand, if you are always giving, giving and giving, some people have a money belief that it’s not okay to have money. It’s not spiritual or something not okay with people with money. And you’re always giving and your palms are always open doesn’t work either. Giving and receiving are both important. If you thought of a coin, there are other sides of the coin. You can’t have a giver without a receiver.
I built my financial advisory practice with that in mind. When I first started, I didn’t call it “generosity is the new currency in business.” But I was lucky to be taught very early in my career about networking and told me that what you sow, you reap. That has always been my strategy for building businesses.
If I want more business, I have to be out there giving more business to other people.
When you are out there giving, with no expectation of something in return, it always flows back to you just not necessarily from the same person whom you gave to.
And I believe it works that way with money too. The more generous you are, the more that flows in to you. When you’re loosening that grip on your finances, then things flow back.
The Science Behind Giving
Generosity is actually the physical manifestation of your gratitude. You don’t have to have a lot of money to be generous. Take a breath and focus on what is working well in your life.
People have a complicated relationship with money, whether they have a lot of money or not. The things that made people more successful were a lot more about how they thought and felt about their money.
If people could have a healthy money mindset and were more content about money, the whole idea of building their prosperity works so much more effectively.
One thing is they’ve found something called subjective wealth. When you give financially, your brain interprets that as “Oh, if I was able to give, I must be rich!” Giving 500 dollars gives you the same emotional buzz as getting a 10,000 dollar raise.
Volunteering has more positive impact on your health than people taking an aspirin every day for their heart. Kids that are generous are more successful as adults. They have lower depression rates.
It’s not just because it feels good but there’s a lot of science that shows that this actually does help us.
In terms of a business building strategy when you can focus on adding value, really being of service to other people in the work that you do, not only does it feel good and I think really boosts your motivation, I also think it grows your business. My business grew 39% in a down market in a recession. I credit a lot of that to shifting my viewpoint.
Incorporating Generosity
At this point, my goal is to build significant business so that I am walking my talk but the ultimate mission is to make the world a more generous place.
Setup a systematic savings plan and a systematic giving plan for yourself. Whatever percentage makes sense for you and to wherever you want to give it. So it could be a family member, a faith-based thing, a charity that is really important to you. Our family has been able to take volunteer vacations all over the world because we have allocated money and we have taken it out of our giving account.
People want to do good business with good people. So when you think about your business how are you out there serving? Sometimes people are so quiet about that, and it’s not necessarily needed. You could be inspiring people. It’s a way to have conversations with people.
If you give gifts to your clients, you may want to consider making them charitable gifts.
Be authentic and consistent. You don’t want you out there just giving to the community and being a jerk to the people that work for you.
There’s so many science that the world is ready for this. There are so many social enterprises starting now and people want to do business with good people so whether you are doing it in your own personal way, or you’re doing it through your business, having a positive impact on the world is really what is going to bring you business success but also personal happiness and that’s what most of it is really about. How can you make a contribution?
Mentions
Connect with Ellen on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
Website: https://www.ellenrogin.com/
Guided Meditation + Special Report: https://www.ellenrogin.com/goodies
Reach out via email: Ellen@Ellenrogin.com
Meditation Apps: Insight Timer, Headspace, Calm
109 Are You Telling the Right Story – with Dom Cappuccilli
Today’s guest is Dom Cappuccilli, CEO and Founder of The Clean Sell. Dom combines the power of a trained storyteller with the real-world experience of an elite salesperson. In fact, he became an elite salesperson because he was a trained storyteller. His consulting firm has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to not only tell a better sales story, but also built many of their sales efforts from the ground up.
“It’s not just about telling a great story – it’s about telling the right story.”
Today’s guest is Dom Cappuccilli, CEO and Founder of The Clean Sell. Dom combines the power of a trained storyteller with the real-world experience of an elite salesperson. In fact, he became an elite salesperson because he was a trained storyteller. His consulting firm has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to not only tell a better sales story, but also built many of their sales efforts from the ground up.
In this episode, we talk about:
Whis journey from storytelling to sales
the myth of the superhero salesperson
the story you should be telling, and
the right time to scale up.
If you’re a business owner who’s ready to scale your business, I recommend you tune in!
Scaling
Somebody starts a company because they see a problem in the market that they have a unique ability to solve and they understand the industry. Usually they are technical or a subject matter expert in that. That is their craft, that is their industry, that’s what they have. That craft is not sales.
But when your friend gets to fifteen people and all of a sudden – I don’t know if he has funding or what happened – and he wants to scale, he now is in a really tough predicament. Because that scaling and that sales function and that sales piece falls on his shoulders/her shoulders.
So what do you do?
The Myth of the Superhero Salesperson
Generally, what I see happen are one of three things.
The first one is inhouse outsourcing. They hire a VP of sales who has this relevant experience, they have this big resume that they worked in the industry and they promise this rolodex of people they may reach out to.
It sounds like this great dream and they have this fantasy of the founder who gets to meet with their VP of sales and just see their numbers go up and they don’t have to anything except this weekly meeting where they get a report on the good news.
That is a fallacy, it’s like the myth of the superhero sales person that’s how a colleague of mine calls it. This is a big trouble spot for a lot of companies.
The second thing that they do is they hire too young, hungry people or one young hungry person and they say, “Go do this!” The problem there is those people don’t have the expertise to build a sales process on their own, so they will struggle unless you get a really good person with great potential and can really do it.
But those are executors generally, they’re kind of junior level sales talent at that point. They haven’t been through enough to really build that from the ground up, and they’re going to struggle without structure, and you’re not able to give them structure.
The third one is they do it themselves and I would recommend doing it yourself.
If it’s between that and the other two choices and do it yourself successfully, twenty times before you hire someone else. You need to be, in these early days, be out there talking to customers, you need to understand the product, what’s going on, what their needs are and really build that.
The Story to Tell
We’ve talked about storytelling in the past and how you can leverage your story so people can connect with you and your business. But Dom has a different take on storytelling.
Let’s start with the story they shouldn’t be telling.
If I could summarize what I do pretty clearly it’s that I teach companies to tell their client’s story, and the story of the problem they solve – not their own story.
Any story is interesting if you care about it, and like honestly, nobody gives a shit about my story unless it relates to a problem that they have and it’s something that helps them within their lives then my story matters.
So what I teach my clients is the first thing that you have to do even before you tell the story is make sure you’re telling the right one. Tell the story of the problem that you’re going to solve for this client that goes beyond the initial sales conversation – that goes to your marketing, your content marketing.
Be the person to talking about that problem so people will come to you when they need to solve it.
Mentions
Connect with Dom on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
Website: https://www.thecleansell.com
Reach out via email: dom@thecleansell.com
The Art of Acting by Stella Adler
108 8 Principles that will Build, Manage and Protect Trust with Your Customers – with Natalie Doyle Oldfield
Today’s guest is Natalie Doyle Oldfield. She is a trust authority, consultant and keynote speaker who works with companies to grow their business and build customer loyalty and trust.
A former Chief Marketing Officer, she is the author of THE POWER OF TRUST: How Top Companies Build, Manage and Protect It, and creator of The Client Trust Index ™ and the online Becoming a Trusted Advisor program.
Natalie was named a 2018 and 2017 Top Thought Leader in Trust by Trust Across America.
“Trustworthiness is a skill that can be learned. There are 8 principles at the heart of a customer’s decision to trust a company. Saying that, I will give you a caveat, for business leaders especially, customers don’t buy from companies they buy from people, so that is really important. -Natalie Doyle Oldfield”
Today’s guest is Natalie Doyle Oldfield. She is a trust authority, consultant and keynote speaker who works with companies to grow their business and build customer loyalty and trust.
A former Chief Marketing Officer, she is the author of THE POWER OF TRUST: How Top Companies Build, Manage and Protect It, and creator of The Client Trust Index ™ and the online Becoming a Trusted Advisor program.
Natalie was named a 2018 and 2017 Top Thought Leader in Trust by Trust Across America.
Natalie talks about the power of trust and the 8 underlying principles at the heart of a customer’s decision to trust a company.
This is definitely something that you have to tune in to.
Can we build the capability to be trustworthy?
Trustworthiness is a skill that can be learned.
In my research, what we found is that there are 8 principles at the heart of a customer’s decision to trust a company. Saying that, I will give you a caveat, for business leaders especially, customers don’t buy from companies they buy from people, so that is really important. Specifically from people who are informed, empowered, can solve customer problems and issues, and what I would suggest they are trusted advisers.
You can learn to build trust. Some people are more natural than others. The research I have done and validated over 7 years of testing through the scientific process in academia shows that there are 8 principles and when you learn these 8 principles and learn how to apply them in your business you will build trust, manage, or protect the trust you have with your customers.
The 8 Principles
These 8 principles are part of a model to build trust. On my paper, I am drawing a circle, in the middle of that circle, I am writing on my notepad the Customer Centered Trust Circle. Because for me, it all has to start with the customer.
When an organization starts with the culture of trust that’s focused on the customer, the organization has clearly articulated values, purpose, vision and mission. And I really believe that at the center of any organization’s focus and purpose should be a customer strategy. Every organization is created to serve a customer.
On another ring I will draw on that circle, is that the organization has the capabilities and competencies so they can do what they promised to do. The next ring is interactions, interactions with people. Trust, as you know, is at the basic quality and the heart of every human interaction. We know when it goes off or when it is damaged. Basically this ring is about how we communicate, how we behave and how we serve.
THE 8 PRINCIPLES OF TRUST AND THAT IS FOR CUSTOMERS INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ORGANIZATION:
#1 – Listen carefully with empathy and compassion. Question and involve the customer and stakeholder in the dialogue.
Communication is the gateway to trust. Listening is the gateway to communication. Taking the time to listen to the customers and stakeholders without bias and without filter and demonstrating empathy and compassion and involving them in conversations that affect them is foundational to building and sustaining to trust.
#2 – Communicate using clear, concrete, conversational language
Clarity inspires trust and we feel confident when we understand what’s happening around us; when we don’t understand we tend to glaze over and when we glaze over we don’t understand oftentimes that means we don’t believe so that leads to distrust.
Confidence, clarity, simplicity inspire trust. I suggest to my clients that they communicate in simple, everyday language that customers and stakeholders understand.
Trusted advisers are often very good at describing issues in the customer’s terms and understanding the customer’s language.
#3 – Be honest and transparent. Honesty is always the best policy.
This one is proactively sharing and communicating as much relevant information that you can with your customers. One simple phrase that encourages trust is the simple but difficult admission of “I don’t know.” Trusted advisers acknowledge they don’t know every answer but when you do this that encourages confidence and humility which shows self-awareness so that’s one thing that builds trust. Nothing builds trust like the truth.
#4 – Being consistent, predictable and reliable.
What’s significant about this principle as it relates to selling is that when we combine when we combine consistency, predictable and reliable behavior, communication and how we serve it reduces risk and vulnerability. It’s a lot easier to buy from a person or a company or to support where we are not at risk. Customers don’t want to be at risk, they don’t want to be vulnerable. It’s extremely important for trusted advisers and for people who want to become a trusted adviser to really focus on being consistent in all their messages predictable and reliable. One way you could do this is to follow-up.
The one thing we want to do with building trust is it goes hand in hand with showing someone respect.
#5 – Act in the best interest of customers and stakeholders and the public.
This is where we get to the heart of intentions and motives. Your customer must believe that you are putting their interests first. Trust only succeeds when a customer’s expectation is met and motives are clear. We know as a customer when a company is doing the right thing for us when they are acting in our best interests. As an example, they might recommend another company’s product or services if they don’t think that they have the right solution for you.
#6 – Doing the right thing
When you make a mistake, fix it. Nothing’s gonna clearly project your values, integrity and ethics than doing the right thing. This is one thing that you should never compromise even if it cost you a sale or business for a short term. When your organization makes a mistake, just communicate how you will fix it and do so in a timely manner. Fix it in a way that if it happened to you, you’d want it to be fixed and something you could be proud of.
#7 – Deliver on your promise.
This is about walking the talk. Demonstrating integrity by delivering on what you say you’re going to do, keeping your commitments, behaving and having the capabilities you say you have, measuring continually to stay up to date with your skills, and honoring your word. Every customer wants what we promise to deliver.
#8 – Commit to the long term.
Time is a major factor to this. This is so important because trust is assessed and reassessed continually over time through our experience with an organization or a person. We all want to deal with people who are committed to us for the long-term. It’s about setting goals, innovative, being knowledgeable, achieving and measuring results, a continual focus on building and strengthening and protecting relationships with customers.
Mentions
Connect with Natalie on LinkedIn
The Power of Trust: How Top Companies Build, Manage and Protect It by Natalie Doyle Oldfield
Building Trust with Customers: A Workbook Eight Guiding Principles by Natalie Doyle Oldfield
Website: https://successthroughtrust.com/
107 The Importance of Cultural Competence in Business – with Dr. Richard Nongard
Richard is a serial entrepreneur and has owned several restaurants and multi-million dollar e-commerce platforms. He shares a pathway of engaging community, changing culture and building identity as the formula for leadership and business results.
“Cultural competency opens a lot of doors.
“Most people don’t have the insight to step into somebody else’s frame of reference to look through their eyes, which means companies and entrepreneurs who want to build a successful business will really have to learn the different skills cultural competencies that can open the doors for them.” – Dr. Richard Nongard
Relationships are built on something shared between two people – maybe a hobby, a favorite sports team, the school they graduated from, or a vision. And when it comes to sales, relationship-building is so much easier than prospecting.
Today’s guest is Dr. Richard Nongard. Richard is an expert in business leadership and business psychology.
He started out in car sales in the early 1980’s and parlayed his sales experience into leadership experience by moving on as an entrepreneur and executive in both the healthcare and educational sectors. He is a licensed psychotherapist who views his training in counseling as a degree in “problem-solving”.
Richard is a serial entrepreneur and has owned several restaurants and multi-million dollar e-commerce platforms. He shares a pathway of engaging community, changing culture and building identity as the formula for leadership and business results.
In this episode, we talk about:
diversification,
the ups and downs of entrepreneurship
cross-cultural awareness
cultural competence,
goal-setting vs intention, and
morning rituals.
Richard also gives some great real-life examples and tips on how to leverage cultural competence in your sales conversations, and some rapport-building skills related to cross-cultural awareness.
This is a good one, so make sure to give it a listen
Diversification
Multiple streams of income is absolutely important for everybody. I’ve learned that the hard way.
September 11th, 2001 was devastating to my business, and the reason why is because largely, at that point, I was on-site, providing services, and suddenly I had travel restrictions, I had customers who were unable to travel.
I had a business model where I went and spoke and I got paid and I got paid well, but I never got paid after the fact.
Everything was live and everything was one-shot, and by 2001 I had learned that I really needed to develop the online presence and build that business so that I could create residual income alternative revenue streams.
Today, our company actually provides tax services and infrastructure for other mental health and healthcare organizations.
Cross-Cultural Awareness
I’ve always been interested in cultural awareness. I realized early on that it was going to be important in my ability to create a sustaining business, to be able to create rapport with people whose experiences were different than mine.
I really want to be able to sell to everybody.
Put it in a political context in America, I want both Republicans and Democrats to spend money with me.
Navigating a minefield of different beliefs while being able to be true to your own core values is a really important cross-cultural challenge.
People think of cross-cultural challenges as “this racial group is different than this racial group” or “this ethnic group is different than this ethnic group,” or “this language group is different than this language group.”
But cross-cultural awareness deals with inter-generational differences. It deals with financial differences. It simply deals with the different experiences that different people have, and ultimately, everybody has differences.
By using the tools and the resources that might come from cross-cultural leadership or cross-cultural engagement, and applying them to entrepreneurship and sales, specifically, produces what I’ve identified as six very specific outcomes, and those outcomes are incredibly positive.
3 of 6 Outcomes
Cultural competence creates rapport. Every salesperson early on in their sales training learns about the value of rapport.
Rapport is being able to share a space with another person with both mutual respect, but an exchange of ideas. That moves us from small talk into what might be called “search talk.”
By engaging in search talk through rapport, I can do a better job at selling because I’m meeting my client’s very specific needs.
I was in grad school when I was actually selling Hondas, so I was practicing being a therapist while I was selling cars and I fashioned myself as the car counselor.
When I truly helped my customers meet their needs with their automotive purchase, then I ended up actually having some pretty big commission checks.
Cultural competence, it’s far more efficient when I can understand my customer’s vantage point and viewpoint. When I can share a space with them, efficiency becomes part of the sales process.
And efficiency is important because I like to move on to other sales processes, and of course, even a little bit of cultural competence can open potentially new markets.
Those are three out of those six things that I think are really important.
Mentions
Connect with Richard on LinkedIn
Viral Leadership: Seize the Power of Now to Create Lasting Transformation in Business by Richard Nongard
Transformational Leadership: How To Lead From Your Strengths And Maximize Your Impact by Richard Nongard
Website: http://viralleadership.com
106 The “Easiest” Path to Closing the Deal – with Brandon Bruce, Cirrus Insight
Today’s guest is Brandon Bruce, COO and Co-founder at Cirrus Insight – a plugin for Gmail and Outlook for sales people. It’s an all-in-one sales productivity platform with world-class Salesforce integration. In just six years, Brandon has helped Cirrus Insight grow to to $12m in annual revenue, 58 employees, and #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies.
“The new gets old, and the old is new again. That’s just how the world works.
Gone are the days of the door-to-door salesman. We don’t need to leave our offices anymore to get a potential customer into a sales conversation. We now have a myriad of communication tools at our disposal – email, social media, text…even chatbots.
But you know what’s really effective?
Face-to-face conversations.
After exploring the world of email marketing and online selling, I found that nothing works as well as calling up a client for coffee, or treating them to dinner.
Today’s guest is Brandon Bruce, COO and Co-founder at Cirrus Insight – a plugin for Gmail and Outlook for sales people. It’s an all-in-one sales productivity platform with world-class Salesforce integration. In just six years, Brandon has helped Cirrus Insight grow to to $12m in annual revenue, 58 employees, and #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies.
In this episode, we talk about:
how they started their company,
what’s working (and not working) in sales today,
sales in complex environments
when to form a sales team,
and the different paths to closing the deal.
If you’re looking for ways to improve on your selling skills, I recommend you tune in.
Sales Enablement
Seven years ago, I don’t think the category that we’re in existed. No one was going around at conferences talking about sales enablement. That was the phrase that people were using.
There was this new category that’s emerged, sales enablement seems to be the dominant phrase; sometimes people would often call it sales acceleration, sales operation – there’s a lot of titles there.
There’s a lot of people now working in that field to essentially equip the producers, the salespeople, with the tools they need to be successful, which I think is a recognition by all these organizations and corporations that sales is hard.
Otherwise, you just hire a bunch of people and say, “Just go sell the thing. Just go be a salesperson.”
But instead, now there’s this industry of enablement and operations professionals whose job is to go out and source the right tools, the right training, the right process, to make sure you’re getting out of the way, but also facilitating what the salespeople are trying to accomplish out there.
Email Lists and Voicemails
Back when we started, the things that were working – it’s whoever built the biggest mailing list wins. If you had more emails, then you’re early in the automated marketing game, so you’re just getting in front of people and your competitors’ work.
Does it still work to have a great opt in email list? Absolutely, it’s still extremely valuable.
But the volume that all of us are seeing in the inbox, the volume of voicemails that we’re getting – so much higher now.
I didn’t get a lot of voicemails everyday back when we started; now, it’s like all the time. Thankfully it’s a digital voicemail, right, so you don’t actually listen to them. You just scan it.
But those are the challenges for the salespeople. People don’t pick up their phone because they have caller ID. They don’t listen to voicemail because they have digital voicemails – they just delete it. And there’s such a high volume of email that even if it’s a great email, they may or may not actually see it.
Thankfully email still works really well.
The Paths to Closing the Deal
We’re finding LinkedIn is a good channel. Certainly not a cure-all, it’s not like, “Oh I went on LinkedIn and all of a sudden I started killing it.” But it’s a good way to break through for certain people, the folks that are on there a lot.
It’s a good way to get around or supplement the inbox with another message on another platform.
But to your earlier point, it’s not door-to-door anymore. It’s one of those “What’s old is new” again. A lot of the stuff that seems to be working is in-person – getting out to events, shaking hands, taking people to dinner, getting to know about them, their goals, their career, their organization, their business, and then seeing how do we fit as a product or a service provider.
Then the key is in that last 30 seconds of the two-hour dinner.
You say, “Hey, this has been great. We’ve all learned a lot.” But too often there’s a parting of ways and there’s like, “Now how do we followup?”
You just go back to the old, “Well, I’ll just send a bunch of followup emails.”
Probably not.
Yes, you want to email them, but I think it’s that last 30 seconds of,
“Hey this has been great. Who else do we need to talk with?” Loop them those folks you mentioned earlier, great, let’s all get on the same channel.
“Let’s find out quickly if this is gonna work, because if it’s not we’ll leave you alone. Here’s my cellphone number, can I get yours? That way we can text.”
Text is the best. If you can get someone’s cellphone number, then they want to hear from you, and you want to hear from them, and you’re connected now.
People don’t ignore that. There’s not really a SPAM filter for text message. You don’t get a message from Apple or Google, “Hey we just blocked this text message.”
If someone’s truly interested and they’re willing to share that mobile number with you and say, “Yeah, definitely text me. We’ll get together, I wanna followup” or “I wanna loop in Jimmy or Sally on our team and we’re gonna all take a look at your product or service,” then it’s game time.
Make the connection on LinkedIn, do the email, but a text message is a great way. First in-person, then text – you’re rolling.
Mentions
Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn
Reach out via email: brandon@cirrusinsight.com
Check out Cirrus Insight on Facebook
Website: https://www.cirrusinsight.com/
Miller Heimann Sales Methodology (Conceptual Selling)
105: Jason Hsiao – Use Video to Build Relationships and Amplify Your Marketing
Today’s guest is Jason Hsiao, Chief Video Officer & Co-Founder of Animoto. Animoto is an award-winning online video maker that makes it easy for anyone to create professional-quality video.
Used by millions of consumers, businesses, photographers and educators, Animoto is deeply rooted in the belief that making videos should be simple, cost-effective, and accessible to everyone.
“TVideo is one of the most compelling and impactful ways to capture that more authentic version of a brand.” – Jason Hsiao, Animoto
Curious about how to use video effectively to market your business? Hit that play button right away.
Today’s guest is Jason Hsiao, Chief Video Officer & Co-Founder of Animoto. Animoto is an award-winning online video maker that makes it easy for anyone to create professional-quality video.
Used by millions of consumers, businesses, photographers and educators, Animoto is deeply rooted in the belief that making videos should be simple, cost-effective, and accessible to everyone.
In this episode, we talk about:
how Animoto started,
niching down,
how to be customer-centric,
video as a sales tool,
video as a marketing tool,
how to use video to build relationships,
why you should be using video to promote your business, and a lot more.
If you read my show notes, I often say “there’s a lot to learn from this episode, so stick around.”
I meant it the last 106 times, and I’m going to say it again today:
There’s a lot to learn from this episode – not just about video marketing, but also about business. So stick around and enjoy the show!
How Animoto Came To Be
My previous life was as a TV producer. I was doing a bunch of stuff for MTV, Comedy Central. My friend, who is now my co-founder, Stevie, he was actually also working in TV, doing documentary work for ABC – a big network here in the States.
We actually both had pretty successful careers going for us in TV and film. The backstory is we actually went to high school and college together with a couple of other co-founders. We’ve been friends for a long time; we always loved video and the magic of video. We were always making all sorts of videos in the evenings and weekends, and in school.
Fast forward 10 years after college, the fact that we were both going to be in New York City, living our dream jobs and working in television was pretty cool.
But I think for us, it was this time of anxiousness. We could see how quickly everything was changing around us. Technology was just changing everything, and these mobile things – they were getting smaller and smaller to the point that you could fit them in your pocket and even fold them up.
It just seemed inevitable that these things would probably one day have internet connection or maybe even a camera. And then this whole emergence of cloud computing right then, they just blew our mind about what could be possible with all that.
It felt inevitable that everything was going to change very soon, and that video had to be central to a lot of that, that video would no longer be reserved for these big, huge, giant companies like Viacom and stuff that could afford 200-person teams to put out one minute of video.
Everyday people should be able to embrace and enjoy the power of video.
When I say that today, it’s like, “Well, duh?” But 12 years ago, that was not the case. Phones did not yet have cameras or internet or anything like that.
Niching Down
This is probably the best thing you can do for your business. A lot of people would give their left arm to have multiple lines of revenue and customers, but in the early stages of small companies and startups, it’s really important to have that laser focus.
In the beginning, we had a lot of “faux” success.
But here’s the thing – I think this is a great lesson and not something uncommon to a lot of entrepreneurs out there.
When we launched Animoto, we had a lot of different people using it; more people creating videos than we could have thought. We had photographers, moms, travelers, churches, nonprofits, realtors, restaurants, marketers – all sorts of businesses – and we’re like, “Oh my gosh! This is amazing!”
Who wouldn’t want their product or service being used by everyone?
Fast forward a few years after that, I think what we realized is not only did it become really hard for us operationally to run a business where we were serving a little bit of every one –.
When everyone’s asking for different things, how do you prioritize and who are you actually good for?
To be honest, we became a bit of a patchwork quilt, kind of like a Frankenstein of a product and organization, because we’re just a little bit all over the place and it was reflected in the product experience.
So we had this big moment maybe five years into it, where we said,
Listen, would we rather be kind of good at a lot of things, or best in the world at one thing?
Imagine if every single person in our company was pointed in the exact same direction – not kind of generally in the same direction, but laser-focused in the exact, same direction – how powerful our impact could be?
Video as a Tool to Amplify Your Marketing
I think the other misnomer [sic] is that,
“Oh yeah, videos on social media – it’s just about capturing awareness, very top of the funnel type of thing, just come and get people’s attention.”
But what’s happening is, increasingly, you can serve more and more parts of that customer journey before people even get to your website. You can not only create that awareness; you can get people interested, you can actually even educate them about what it is you have to offer.
It’s amazing. Increasingly we just hear people, “Oh yeah, by the time I get to their site, I just buy because I’ve already learned everything.”
We work with a bunch of younger folks, they don’t even go to websites anymore.
When they hear about a new brand, the first thing they do is they go on social to see what’s happening on Instagram or Facebook. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I love this company.”
“Have you ever been to the website?”
“No, why would I?”
Because it’s all on social, right?
Mentions
Connect with Jason on Twitter and LinkedIn
Website: https://animoto.com/
Jason’s special offer for our listeners: https://animoto.com/entrepreneursthatsell