Category: how to prospect

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Buyer-Based Selling with Josh Braun #258

Josh Braun Sales Babble Sales Podcast

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Buyer-Based Selling with Josh Braun #258

Josh Braun Sales Babble Sales PodcastYou can be the greatest salesman in the world. But if the buyer isn’t struggling with a problem you can solve, you’re not going to make the sale.  More than 70 percent of B2B buyers fully define their needs before contacting a sales rep.  According to a new report from CSO Insights, almost half the buyers identify specific solutions before reaching out.  They know what they want and they’re informed. The internet has vastly changed the landscape towards buyer-based selling.  In 2019, this is the reality – buyers dictate the sales process.

In this sales podcast episode we meet Josh Braun the founder of Sales DNA, a company that helps  CEO’s and VP’s of Sales who want to increase cold outreach response rates and set more meetings. Josh  shares his beliefs in buyer-based selling and shares  concrete examples you can increase your response rates and set more meetings.

Don’t Study Selling

Business students should stop studying selling and instead study buying.  Although we are all buyers, too often we don’t look at the situation from the buyers point of view.  How often has this happened to you?

  • During the conversation the buyer sounds positive, they “get” what you’re talking about
  • When you follow up as promised, you can’t get them to respond.
  • You follow up and follow up, but no luck.
  • You thought they wanted to move forward, but the deal never happens.

This is the problem: we’re not taught how people buy, why people buy and why they don’t buy . As sellers our goal is to have someone take a call, schedule a meeting, sign an order form or pay an invoice. But in the end those goals have nothing to do with the buyers intent. The buyer is not interested. They don’t need us.

This is the harsh truth: the prospect is probably doing fine without you.

Struggle-O-Meter

Josh has a mental model he calls the struggle-o-meter.  He uses it to measure the severity of the problem a buyer experiences. Instead of assuming everything you sell has value, Josh recommends asking open ended questions to better understand the problem, then gauging whether to go forward.

  1. Problem is an opportunity to sell, but often the problem isn’t that bad. The problem must be in the red zone before they switch. If you think like a buyer, you can gauge if they are on the low end of the struggle-o-meter, or the high end. Don’t pitch until they are on the high end.
  2. If they are not ready to buy, put them into an email campaign. Drip out useful emails that slowly keeps you top of mind. Over time the pain will rise and when it does , it’s time to reach out again.

Take Action

By questioning with  finesse, you can dig into their motivation and better understand. Your solution has no value without a struggle.

How to Connect with Josh Braun

His website at Sales DNA

His BadAss Growth Guide

Josh on LinkedIn

Cold Calling Tips

Work on your cold calling today by listening the Sales Babble Sales Podcast!

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The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable with Darryl Praill #243

Darryl Praill Sales Babble

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The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable with Darryl Praill #243

Darryl Praill Sales BabbleOur guest is  Darryl Praill. Darryl is the Chief Marketing Officer of VanillaSoft, and a high-tech marketing executive with over 25 years’ experience. In this episode Darryl and I have a raucous conversation discussing the how marketing and sales departments commonly engage (or better put, fail too). This engagement commonly involves finger pointing, name calling and other bad behaviours. Darryl states that sales is not doing it’s job. Secondly, marketing should hold sales accountable for the leads it provides. In the end we find the topic is much messier.

Question Asked of Sales by Marketing

Answer the question….

  • Have you followed up on those leads?
  • What do you mean those leads were crap?
  • Why are you asking me for more leads, I just gave you a boat load of leads?

According to Darryl, too often sales fails to honor the leads it gets. Nor do they share what makes the leads of poor quality. He believes there should be a set of Mutual Rules of Engagement e.g., when sales gets a lead, they will follow up.  There should also be a dialogue describing what makes a good leads and how quick and vigilant sellers will work on the leads.

Issues with Lead Follow Up

What happens today:

  1. 48% of new leads never get contacted
  2. <2 call attempts are made
  3. Average time of follow up  35-60 hours
  4. 1 hour is the optimal time to follow up
  5. 8-12 attempts is optimal

So it begs the question, if sales it not doing it’s job the day should marketing holds sales accountable? Darryl believes it’s not all sales fault, it’s technology issues. CRMs for marketing are very different systems then CRMs used by sales organizations. If only they worked better.

How To Find Darryl Praill

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Debunking Sales Myths with Mike Schultz #216

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Debunking Sales Myths with Mike Schultz #216

Selling has changed tremendously in the last 10 years. But prospecting has changed even more. Previous  research suggests that 57 percent of the purchase decision is complete before a customer calls a supplier.  This gives sellers the false impression that buyers don’t want or need to talk to them early in the buying process. They do! Mike Schultz visits Sales Babble for clarifying and debunking these sales myths with advice based on hard research.

Some Common Sales Myths

Rain Group is a sales research institute just completed a study on prospecting. They talked to 488 buyers, asking them what  is the process they have used for past purchases.

They study found it’s a sales myth that buyers don’t want to talk to sellers, eg. 67% sale done digitally. But this should slow sellers down.  71%  of buyers said they want to talk to sellers at the early part of their research. They want context. With too many choices it becomes to difficult for buyers to choose “Its the ‘paradox of choice” according to Barry Schwartz.

  • Myth cold calling is dead. Greater than 50%  of buyers prefer to be contacted by the telephone. It is second only to email. Of the buyers researched,  57% have had the seller reach out to them on the phone.
  • 82% of buyers take meetings with people they don’t know but have talked to on the phone.
  • Buyers need inspiration, start with your existing clients.

What Winners Do

It’s a myth that buyers don’t want to hear about capabilities and only benefits. The #1 content buyers want is features and capabilities. It’s buyers primary research on their industry. They want descriptions of the capabilities in context. They desire content customized 100% to their business  Not mass mail merges.

Great Sellers WAVE

  1. Winners Mindset – The Mindset of a winner is strategic,  not tactics only.
  2. Attraction Campaign – multistep and modal approach to reach out and connect to buyers. The number of attempts to reach a prospect should be 8 (not 3).
  3. Value – Get prospects to say wow that could be worthwhile (to have a call, meet, agree to demonstration or buy).
  4. Execution -Winners do all the tactical parts. They take action to turn around objections. They exercise executive functions to stay focused in a noisy world.  They have the ability to concentrate and focus for prospecting (which is the hardest thing to do).

 

Cold meetings that have a value approach will turn deals into wins. When sellers focus on value, 96% said it was influential. They want to be educated and collaborative >90%.  Yet the meetings must be interesting and add value. Most sales meetings are not valuable to most buyers. If they are impressive they will buy  things.

Take Action Plan

To get good at prospecting you have to make it 100% of your focus.   Attack it like you’re going to make it work. Build an  attraction campaign.

How To Find Mike Schultz

Website: https://www.raingroup.com

Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/mike_schultz

RAIN Group Twitter: https://twitter.com/rainselling

RAIN Group Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RAINGroup/

Mike LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeschultz50/

RAIN Group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rain-group_2/

Mike mentioned that we was happy to share a copy of the report with the audience:  5-sales-prospecting-myths-debunked

How to Prospect and Generate Leads

Here are past episodes that talk about the mindset for lead generation.

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What’s Not Working In Sales Today with Brandon Bruce #204

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What’s Not Working In Sales Today with Brandon Bruce #204

Brandon Bruce grew up in a tiny California town of 800 people where he only had one classmate at a school with outhouses as their bathroom. He went from these humble beginnings to now Cofounding and growing Cirrus Insight to $12 million in revenue and #41 on the Inc. 500 list (after a six-year rollercoaster of sales success and setbacks). Today Brandon and I discuss what’s not working in sales today.

Times Have Changed for Sales

Cold emailing and cold calling still work, but not as well as in the past. The internet is changing consumers behavior.  They are spending more time alone shopping and comparing before calling the sales line. It used to be that growing a big email lists was the path to success. But it doesn’t work as well as it did in the past. People can smell a pitch a mile away. A small list of targeted prospects is better.

Sales Solutions That May Work

Be eminently reachable – post your calendar online and let people find a spot that works for them.

Use email prudently asking for advice and help if you’re a startup:

  • Hi I’m a founder like you, 
  • I’ve created a new application, it does THIS,
  • I’d really appreciate it if you would download, and give it a try
  • then give us some feedback on it and  tells us what we did right and not right
  • We’re very open for feedback.

In this example you’re not selling but asking for advice. Kill them with flattery, by not selling, but getting them engaged. Be vulnerable and admit  you may not have the answer, but you’re open for feedback. This is authentic. Pushy sales is what’s not working in sales today.

How to Find Brandon Bruce

Brandon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbruce/

Website https://www.cirrusinsight.com/

Twitter @cirrusinsight

Babble me to enter the drswing for Brandon’s swag!

Business Development

Listen to past episodes to find ways to grow business quickly.

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How To Generate Leads without Sales and Marketing with John Tripolsky #191

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John Tripolsky Sales Babble Advice Generate Leads without Sales and MarketingHow To Generate Leads without Sales and Marketing with John Tripolsky #191

In this episode we meet John Tripolsky, CEO of JTE Marketing. John shares his process to generate leads through a referral process. When starting John had neither  marketing nor a sales staff. Instead he leveraged his existing network to find qualified prospects and generate leads. It worked and this is how to generate leads without sales and marketing!

Hire a Team Without Hiring

The JTE Marketing earned its first two clients from friends and family. They repeated the process by working networking meetings. John kept attending and connected with five people. From those five they built their portfolio. Building personal relationships is what matters.

John is a strong advocate for LinkedIn. He has 7K connections. Almost all have gotten a personal message welcoming them to connect.   Not everyone is a qualified prospect. Yet all know people who ARE qualified. Referrals come from both existing and non clients

Lead Generation Referral Process

  1. Use the three letter word “ask”    Sit down and casually start… “let’s talk about XYZ …..”
  2. He then asks…. “Do you know anyone I could talk too? “
  3. Next he asks … “Would you introduce me? Would you send an introduction email?”
  4. Share “I would love to talk to them and pick their brain about …. “
  5. Once you get the lead follow up … “John Smith recommended I give you a call…”
  6. Lastly asks if they would be open to personally set down and chat for 10 minutes. In person

This is how you learn about a market and it’s nomenclature. It’s also solid advice on how to generate leads without sales and marketing. This process is great news for startups!

A Watershed Deal

After a terrific presentation he was asked for a proposal. He had no idea what to do but eventually created an order form. It was not pretty. Since he’s a marketing company, he believed this poorly represented the company. He made it beautiful with graphics and brand worthy style.

Make your invoices and quotes BEAUTIFUL!

He recommends Pandadoc 

Having a great proposal maintains the positive feeling that happened at the time of the presentation.

Take Action Advice

Ask……  Make it second nature to make requests of clients and prospects. Get over the hump of shyness. If you never ask you’re never going to get anything from it. Keep forward momentum, embrace lifelong learning and ASK.

Where To Find John Tripolsky

This is the link to the JTE Marketing Group

You can also find John on LinkedIn

How to Prospect and Generate Leads

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Repeatable Success for Sales Development Reps with Brendan Barrett #188

Brendan Barrett Sales Babble

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Brendan Barrett Sales Babble

Repeatable Success for Sales Development Reps with Brendan Barrett #188

 

There is a growing trend for companies to separate business development from deal closing. We’re talking about two different people: One person setting up appointments the Sales Development Reps (SDR) and the other is the  closer. In this episode our guest Brendan Barrett and I walk through the SDR process with it’s pros and cons. We do some roleplaying in order to show practical advice for anyone prospecting and trying to set up an appointment.

 

What and Why an SDR?

SDR stands for Sales Development Reps – appointment setters, prospectors and cold callers.  Brendon calls the the Roller to the Closer .  This is different than the traditional inside sales (an order taker).   This is all outbound sales and Business Development.  They are sometimes called Business Development Reps or BDR.

More efficient for closers, who can be closing deals daily vs spending time in the office setting up their own meetings.

Downside of SDRs.

  • Details get dropped
  • Having a process imperative
  • Communication

What Makes For SDR Success?

  • Entry level position
  • Hungry, coachable, naturally curious

SDR Process

In this section we walked through the SDR process and gave practical examples for the Listeners.

  1. Create a relationship
    • Use LinkedIn to prospect
    • Reach out to sescretary
    • Take 2-5 touches to get a meeting
  2. Create a dialogue (conversation)
    • “I’m looking for people who set up your brown bag discussions
    • “I saw your post on LinkedIn and I’m curious about it …..
    • Could be set up on Facebook, Messenger, LinkedIn or email
    • Always wish somebody a good day, that opens up people
  3. Qualify
    • Prospecting is market research
    • Some deals take years, hand off slow deals to marketing to keep them warm
    • Laws of attraction applies by showing interest. Create curiosity, get them to ask you about you
    • Be skeptical, don’t assume they are qualified
    • Ideally you want them to see the value and self qualify
  4. Win permission to sell
    • Make a phone call about them
    • “How was the weekend, what do you have going on this week
    • If you met at a conference, start there, “what’s your next conference on your calendar
  5. Introduction to Closer
    • Sounds like we could work with you well but I’m not the right person

Take Action Advice

Nice guys win and smarter guys win more!

Be helpful!

How To Find Brendan Barrett

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How to Prospect and Generate Leads

Other great episodes on business development. Listen today!

 

 

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7 LinkedIn Strategies for Generating Qualified Leads with Janis Pettit #176

Janis Pettit Sales Babble

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Janis Pettit Sales Babble

7 LinkedIn Strategies for Generating Qualified Leads with Janis Pettit

If you’re running out of leads, this week’s episode is exactly what you need. Janis Pettit is an expert on the new LinkedIn interface. Today  we dig in and uncover 7 LinkedIn strategies for generating qualified leads. Janis takes us from setting up your profile, finding prospects, connecting, engaging,  moving them to a webinar presentation and on your email list. Not only does this work, but you can do the same thing on Facebook . Of course this assumes that’s where you’re prospect hang out! Stop the cold cold calling and start leveraging social media today!

Lead Generation Today

When it comes to B2B sales and marketing,  LinkedIn is the bomb. 41% millionaires are on LinkedIn with the  average income at $75K.  Members of LinkedIn are buyers. Janis gave us 7 strategies to turn those buyers, into prospects.

  1. Make sure your LinkedIn profiles clearly states who your are. Only  focus on people who have issues that you can provide solutions.
  2. Identify your ideal prospect, find them using advanced search, send a note to connect. Expect 40% will accept. Once they accept, engage them in a conversation and ask a strategic question.
  3. Keep track of your messaging in your CRM. This engagement can take weeks per prospect. Stay organized and follow up.
  4. Find active groups and become visible by offering valuable content.  Janis gave an example of an eBook she authored. Cross post on your “status update” on LinkedIn.
  5. When people view your status update, reach out to them and connect.
  6. Create a high converting funnel, get their email and place it on an email list. From that list offer webinars to engage and convert them into clients.
  7. Work on it 30 minutes a day

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Facebook for Prospecting

The above process can be used on Facebook too. It’s all dependent on the market niche you serve. If you’re interested in:

  • restaurants
  • retail
  • small businesses

How to Find Janis Pettit

Janis can be found at her company  Small Business, Big Results

Get a free copy of her eBook “How to Get More Business Leads From The New LinkedIn” to LinkedIn Strategies for Generating Qualified Leads

Connect with her on Facebook

Connect with her on LinkedIn 

Slidebean Examples Created for Sales Babble

As I mentioned here are  couple slide decks that I created for two Sales Babble presentations. Enjoy!

https://app.slidebean.com/p/hggYElvrRX/Tips-For-Selling-Success

https://app.slidebean.com/p/tvielUvSqi/Selling-With-Confidence-for-Startups

Get a free Slidebean account today!

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Why Qualifying Prospects is Like Selling To Zebras with Jeff Koser #171

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Why Qualifying Prospects is Like Selling To Zebras with Jeff Koser #170

Our guest today is Jeff Koser, author of the book “Selling to Zebras”.  Jeff believes that good prospects should be as easy to spot as a zebra. Far too many sellers have no idea what problems they solve for their clients.  They can’t distinguish a hot prospect from zoo animal. That’s the topic for today and what you can do know your perfect client and get results.

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What’s a Zebra?

If you don’t know your ideal client (your Zebra),  sales, business development and marketing are going to be misaligned. Nor will you be able to connect with Power, what Jeff calls the sole person who can decide to buy without checking the budget. The goal here is to only be selling to zebras.

Sales Process

Build your Zebra – Define your ideal client and design your avatar. Use
7 attributes, score each attribute 0-4 with  red yellow green. The high score is 28

  • 0-16 is in the red (you’re never going to make the sales)
  • 17-22 is in yellow (you’re deal is in trouble, you’re not selling to zebras)
  • 23-28 is in green (you’ve earned the right to ask for the business)
Zebra Attributes
  1. organizational profile
  2. operations
  3. power
  4. funding
  5. value
  6. technology
  7. service

Voice of the Customer – find the person who can buy without a budget. Discover THEIR problem and solve it. Power focuses on cost avoidance. Ask your current customers what problem you solved when they came on board. Find out what value you bring. Build a business case why someone should buy from you

Business Case – the Value Proposition. This process forces you to do your homework. Identify why they are your zebra, you’ve build a business case for your product, now you can frame your product in Power’s context.

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How to Find Jeff Koser

Jeff’s company is Selling To Zebras:

Take Action Advice

Don’t give up. If you have a dream the single biggest difference between succeeding and failing is your willing to continue to persevere.

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SlideBean in the Media

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Ideal Clients, Avatars and Value Proposition Examples

Here are past episode you just might find addicting. Grow your sales today!

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7 Healthy Phone Habits to Get First Meetings with Marylou Tyler #150

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7 Healthy Phone Habits to Get First Meetings #150

In this episode we talk about one of the most powerful selling tools you have  in your command, the telephone. Unfortunately too many sellers are ineffective using the phone for their prospecting efforts. Our guest is Marylou Tyler. She’s an expert in managing call centers and setting up efficient processes to maximize phone call success. Marylou is the author of the recently released book Predictable Prospecting. In this episode she shares the 7 healthy phone habits you need to get first meetings.

How To Generate High Quality Leads

Marylou believes you should adhere to a  method to generate high quality leads. For starters, she recommends you first schedule a block of time. This will get you into the calling mindset. A block of time allows you to be prepared for the conversation and advance the sale.

  1. Set a call objective for every call you do.  Set primary and secondary call objectives e.g gathering intelligence or setting up a meeting. Having an objective creates focus.
  2. Your tone of voice. Studies show that for compelling calls, 75% of the call is based on how you say it, versus 25% is the words.
  3. Use positive language. The Midwest is a permission based place. You must frame conversations positively: “oh I’m so sorry to keep you waiting”.  Negative language does not perform as well positive.
  4. Create a winning opener to get your foot in the door. Imply you have a right to be there. The opener should have an explicit or implicit referral.
    1. “Good morning Jackie, John recommended I give you a call. Our XYZ product caught his attention and he thought you might feel the same ”  Explicit
    2. “Hello Jackie, I see your CEO is interested in the XYZ initiative in a magazine article” Implicit
  5. Craft a interest grabbing statement.  Use words like “maximize , grow, reduce, minimize….” The goal is to  grab their interest and share a result. Build a script and memorize it.
  6. Know what questions ask.  Focus on  implication questions. Write them down and have them readily available. Don’t let executives disconcert you. Have the mindset that you’re a business executive too and equal to a CEO .  When you ask  questions it tells the prospect you are truly interested in understanding their problem.
  7. Love your objections. These are the reason prospects want to buy from you. Objections lead to the greater pain point.

Bonus Habit      Always have a reason to call. Set a goal to talk to 20 companies in a  2 hour time span and generate  4-5 meaningful conversations.  Full sales cycle sales reps should target two,  2-hour blocks per week. If you’re inside sales, it’s all day long.

Take Action Advice

Embrace habit. Create a space for repeatable work.  Set a time and you will succeed.

How To Connect with Mary Lour Tyler

How to Prospect and Generate Leads

Here are previous episodes that talk about lead generation and cold calling on the phone. Check them out!

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Myths on Social Selling with Mark Hunter #142

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mark-hunter-myths-on-social-sellingMyths on Social Selling with  Mark Hunter

In this episode we meet Mark Hunter the author of the new book High Profit Selling.  Mark discusses the myths on social selling and practical things you can do to get social and connect deeply with a half dozen prospects and close them. Mark is a master at prospecting with a wealth of advice.

Skeptical on Social Selling?

The myths on Social Selling is built on first creating content, publishing it and then waiting for leads to flow into your sales funnel. Mark famously says, “You can’t eat click and likes.”  So true!

High profit sales is about connecting one-on-one with a few prospects. It’s more productive to work a few qualified prospects versus a hundred leads. Mark made some important points debunking the myths on social selling:

  • Your passion must be to help others see and achieve what they didn’t think was possible. That was the theme of last weeks episode when we talked about how master sellers have HEAT.  H is Helpful.
  • Your job is to bring prospects information they can’t find on the internet. If they can find it online, they don’t need you.  Your buyers need an advocate.
  • If you can get prospects to say “That’s a good question” you’re on the right track to connecting. Every conversation with a prospect must add value.
  • Few sellers have the fortitude to keep following up. Trying once or twice is not enough. People are busy, keep calling and sharing that you have some insights you think can help their business.
  • Use voice mail to share your message. Consider each voice mail a billboard. You only have a few seconds of their time to get your message across. When they are ready, they’ll connect.

Mark said it doesn’t matter what you sell, what matters is your desire to help. This is a reoccurring mantra here at Sales Babble.

Cold Call Script

Mark shared a great non-pushy cold call script:
Hi Pat, this is Mark Hunter. I have some great insights on what’s happening next year in Chicago in the business community. Give me a buzz 4024452110 Mark Hunter 4024452110. Thanks. 

Where To Find Mark Hunter

You can find Mark and his books here:

How to Prospect and Generate Leads Using Social Selling

As mentioned in the podcast, Social Selling has been a hot topic for quite some time. Here are some episodes that can help you better leverage social media and connect with prospects.