Category: sales tools example

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How AI Can Give Sales Superpowers with Lars Nilson #256

Lars Nilson Sales Babble Sales Podcast

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How AI Can Give Sales Superpowers with Lars Nilson #256

Lars Nilson Sales Babble Sales PodcastArtificial Intelligence (AI) is a topic near and dear to my Sales Babble heart.  Most AI conversations center around the great possibilities that it brings to the world. Good examples in selling includes processes that automate, save time, increase quality. This includes ways to decrease frustration with more automated and intuitive software. But AI conversations can also center around the darker side. By that it means concerns of automation taking away our jobs and our humanity. In this Sales Babble sales podcast episode we meet Lars Nilson. Lars wrote an article on LinkedIn titled “Will AI Replace Sales Development, NO but it will give us Superpowers”.  Because of the concerns and interest of AI,  Lars and I discuss emerging tools and processes that you can use to become more successful in sales.

Good Time To Get Into Sales

Its not B2B it’s P2P, people to people.  Because of this Lars believes it’s never  been a better time to get into sales at a venture backed B2B company. If you pick a company with great management, great onboarding and  a set of great selling techniques, you can be successful.

Account Based Selling

Account–based selling is a multi-touch, multi-channel strategy coordinated across the entire company to pursue a target number of high-value accounts. Marketing and Sales work together from the very start, and throughout the revenue cycle.   Because prospective buyers take themselves down the sales cycle by accessing information online, sellers need to target individuals (stakeholders) who make buying decisions. Next target specific companies and a person which counters the past practice of branding and sending out messages to random people. We now consider that spam.

Tools to Target Opportunities

Lars mentioned a number of sales engagement tools that provide sales superpowers for sales reps.  These tools use AI to target ideal accounts:

  • Discover.org
  • Zoom.info
  • LinkedIn navigator
  • Outreach.io
  • Salesloft
  • Insidesales.com
  • Outreach.io
  • Gong.io

These tools can be used to do a one to many (1:M) cardinality of outreach. Meanwhile the goal of each of these tools is to personalize and automate your:

  • messages
  • emails
  • voice messages
  • direct mail
  • social media

Because humans are  still needed to make it all work, one of the best sales superpowers is the old fashioned warm introduction curated out of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is still one the best ways meet people and yes it used AI too. Next find people that have the titles who might best represent your company. Humans are necessary here! You have to do the work to find your ideal clients and the titles of the people that are relevant.

The CRM is still a solid technology to keep sales reps organized.  They leverage  read receipts on email and chatbots. Lars recommends that sales reps also turn to the tools leveraged by LDRs and SDRs. The more they work in an account-based selling environment, the better.

How To Find Lars Nilsson

Lars mentioned his company Sales Source

  • (415)   840-5168
  • lars at salessource.com

This was the LinkedIn article we talked about.  “Will AI Replace Sales Development? No… But It Will Give Us Superpowers”

Sales Tools Boost Productivity

Here are some past Sales Babble sales podcast episodes on sales tool that make a difference.

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Webinars that Work with Todd Earwood #246

Todd Earwood Sales Babble

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Webinars that Work with Todd Earwood #246

Todd Earwood Sales BabbleTodd Earwood is the founder and CEO of MoneyPath. Todd believes in using webinars as powerful sales tools that will engage customers for years to come, and he helps his clients do just that through Webinar Works. In this  episode Todd and I discuss what it takes to build effective webinars that work. In a world where there is more work than time, we consider the possibility of using automation to tease out highly qualified prospects.

What’s new About Webinars?

A webinar is a video sales presentation made over the web. The presentation maybe live or automated. The webinar can be augmented with technology to advance interest in a product or service. In either case a webinar is a way of getting leads to self identify interest. If a visitor spends a long time on a webinar, they are a hot prospect. This is how you can make webinars that work.

Keys to High Quality Webinars That Work

  • Webinars should private, don’t publish on social media
  • Target a very narrow persona, may only have 1 or 2 people show up
  • People are strongly motivated to avoid pain, not so much gain. Be mindful of your focus.
  • Hook on a persona. For example consider this headline “Top 5 mistakes and pitfall that Z make regarding Y topic”
  • Arm sales with snippet content.  Make separate blogs posts and videos for each mistake and consider it a reusable asset
  • Have two people host the webinar
  • Have polls – leave a comment or use a tool
    • Do you agree? YES or NO or THE POPE IS CATHOLIC
  • At the end of the webinar ask, which question was the most interesting for you?
  • Then ask “now that you’ve been educated on this topic, what’s your next step?”
    1. research
    2. love it going to hand it off
    3. love this topic I need to learn more now

Build  a webform poll on the video page… people will  click it.

Segmented Follow Up: Follow up with ALL who show up. Break up the signups into groups by interest; follow up who didn’t show up and offer to have them watch the replay.

How To Connect with Todd Earwood

5 mistakes entrepreneurs makes working out an idea

Webinar Works is for you if…
You want to use a turnkey, proven process to drive leads
You think creating content is too much work, much less a webinar
You wish there was a new way to target old prospects or dead leads
You want to discover from first-hand companies who have used this system

Get your assessment here:  https://www.webinarworks.co/salesbabble

Lead Generation Strategies

Let’s keep the babble going. Here are past episodes on lead gen. Listen now!

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Nimble Social Sales and Marketing with Jon Ferrara #238

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Nimble Social Sales and Marketing with Jon Ferrara #238

Jon Ferrara believes the more people you can help grow, the more you grow. It’s one of the reasons he pioneered contact management and CRM with GoldMine in the 90’s, a company he sold for $125 million, and then he came back to invent the Nimble social CRM for nimble social sales and marketing.

Jon’s core values include building products that help others achieve their

  • passion,
  • plan,
  • purpose

to drive success. Don’t rely on your company to build your network. You own that. In this episode we learn how.

Sustainable Garden

Establish an identity in places where your prospects congregate. Share content often and talk about how they can personally grow. People buy a better version of themselves. Be that version and they will see you as an expert.  Don’t talk about you, talk about them. People are going to hire you based on your network. So, make sure and take good care of your personal CRM.

How To Stand Out

The more digital we get, the more human we need to be. You can get past traditional social sales and marketing by picking up the phone and sending handwritten notes.

5 Fs of Life

This list shows how you get connected and stay connect. Talk about these topics to find the softer side and deeper connection with others.

  • Family
  • Friends
  • Food
  • Fun
  • Fellowship

5 Es of Social Selling

Use this list to build your brand and stand out from the crowd:

  • Educate
  • Enchant
  • Engage
  • Embrace
  • Empower

The more people you grow, the more you grow  – Zig Ziglar

Take Action Today

Sales is the new Service. Service is the new sales.

How To Find Jon Ferrara

To connect with Jon here are the links for nimble social sales and marketing mentioned in the podcast.
This is Jon on LinkedIn and on Twitter 

The CRM we spoke about is Nimble.com  and you can email Jon at jon @ nimble.com

After the Two Week free trial use the discount code  jon40 (40% off)

We are both fans of Hardcore History with Dan Carlin

Social Selling

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Top 10 Sales and Marketing Tools for 2018

Top 10 Sales and Marketing Tools

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Top 10 Sales and Marketing ToolsTop 10 Sales and Marketing Tools for 2018 #196

In this episode Neil Kristianson from Email Splat visits Sales Babble in the international podcast studio. As we gather around the fire,  Neil and I drink homebrews, sample salsa, mustards, various cheeses and crackers. But this is not and end-of-year sendoff. Throughout this bacchanalia, Neil and I share the top 10 sales and marketing tools, we feel Sales Babble listeners should adopt in 2018. Below are links to each of the tools mentioned in this episode.

Neils Sales and Marketing Tools

  • Rescuetime – A personal analytics service that shows you how you spend your time and provides tools to help you be more productive.
  • Web Merge – An online platform that allows you to easily collect data, populate a document and send it to any contact automatically. We provide you with flexible document types, dynamic content, and delivery options that fit to your business needs.
  • Stepshot Guides – A unique software to create training manuals, technical blog reviews, software workflow presentations and step-by-step guides with no hassle.
  • Zapier – Connect the apps you use everyday to automate your work and be more productive. 1000+ apps and easy integrations – get started in minutes.
  • Create Space – Provides free tools to help you self-publish and distribute your books, DVDs, CDs, and video downloads on-demand on Amazon.com and other channels.

Pat’s Sales and Marketing Tools

  • Hunter.io – Easy way to find professional email addresses. Give a domain name and get the list of all the emails related to it found on the internet.
  • ToDoist – Trusted by millions, Todoist is the best online task management app and to do list. For Web, iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, Outlook and many more!
  • MailTester – Check if an e-mail address is valid or not. Find out why a mail bounces. Get technical information about a mail account and it’s mail (SMTP) server.
  • Active Campaign – Integrated email marketing, marketing automation, and small business CRM. Send beautiful newsletters, setup behavioral based automations, and benefit from sales automation.
  • SlyDial – Voice messaging service which connects you directly to someone’s mobile voicemail… pretty sly huh?

Plus 2 Tools

For no extra cost to you, we included 2 extra tools!

  • Neil’s Tool – LastPass – Password manager for businesses. Whether you need to share passwords with colleagues or enforce a company-wide password policy, LastPass is the online password manager for your business.
  • Pat’s Tool – Serps – International and local keyword rankings. Check keyword rankings positions in Google or Yahoo from over 100 country and language combinations.

How to Find Neil Kristianson

Shout out to Poor House Brewing  and our appreciation for sharing the Mango Habanero Pale Ale recipe.

Past Tool Episodes with Neil Kristianson

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Transformative Sales Tools with the Tool Master Miles Austin #185

Miles Austin Sales Babble #185

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Miles Austin Sales Babble #185Transformative Sales Tools with the Tool Master Miles Austin #185

In this episode we meet the tool master Miles Austin who shares a number of transformative sales tools that will increase your efficiency, productivity and ability to close sales. Miles is a highly engaging guest, a guy you can relate to. Yeah we’ll be geeking out. But if discovering more leads, booking more sales, and becoming a highly sought out sales professional sounds like a good thing –  then hang on and listen up.

List of Transformative Sales Tools

The following is a list of sales tools that were mentioned during the interview. I’m not familiar with all of these tools. But Miles speak highly of them. Enjoy.

These transformative sales tools can kickstart your selling revolution. Change is hard and it’s easy to stay the course and do nothing.  But consider this. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Pick one tool and consider it a single step.  Take action!

How To Find Miles Austin

This is Miles Austin’s web page.  Click here to download his Entrepreneur Launch Pad

https://www.fillthefunnel.com

https://facebook.com/MilesRAustin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesaustin/

How to Find Pat Helmers

This is my personal website PatHelmers.com 

Check it out! http://helmershomestead.org/

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Sales Tools

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How Salespeople Overcome Procrastination with Eric Twiggs #178

eric twiggs sales babble

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eric twiggs sales babble How Salespeople Overcome Procrastination with Eric Twiggs #178

In this episode we meet the procrastination prevention partner Eric Twiggs. Eric and I have a lively discussion covering practical ways on how salespeople overcome procrastination. We talk about mindset, processes, and automation tools that can increase productivity and success.

The habit to accept is the ability to take action. If you put things off that take you away from your life goals, you will be frustrated and unsuccessful. The root of procrastination is due to a lack of goals and focus. Turn that around.

In sales sellers commonly struggle with:

  • Following up
  • Call reluctance

What’s the answer to overcoming this struggle? Eric says

“Know your numbers, ratios of calls per answers and sales advances. Know the number of your activities. Let the law of averages work to your favor. Know that optimists are commonly more successful in sales. Get the right attitude.”

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But I Don’t Feel Like It

People often use their lack of interest as a reason to put off a task.  Don’t let inertia keep you in place. Become aware of your personality type.  Are you a Driver or a Motivator? By understanding yourself, you can overcome feelings, and displace it with habit and action.

Steps To Overcome Procrastination

  1. Turn off all notifications on your cell phone
  2. Use a smart phone app to automate your life
    1. Hootsuite – preplans social media posts
    2. SMS Scheduler – send text message reminders
    3. Rescue Time – blocks websites for a set period of time
    4. Kitchen Timer for the Pomodoro method
    5. Stick K website – makes goals public to others who hold you accountable (actually put money on the line)

Procrastination Pyramid

Eric spokes at length on his procrastination pyramid:

  1. Watch your attitude and don’t label yourself as a procrastinator.
  2. Be aware of your optimal times, power times and personality type.
  3. Animation, know your sleeping and exercise habits and control them.
  4. Automation – Understand what tools help and what tools hinder your productivity.
  5. Activity and taking action, over and over.

Take Action Advice

Don’t let perfect become the enemy of progress . Done is better than perfect.

How To Find Eric Twiggs

To learn more about how salespeople overcome procrastination go to his website   www.ericmtwiggs.com

To find his new book go to www.ericmtwiggs.com/thedisciplineofnow

@thedisciplineofnow on Twitter

Get his free eBook “One Moment in Time Preparing Your Life For Your Defining Moment”   Send an email to eric@ericmtwiggs.com and mention Sales Babble!

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Sales Skills Training

We have lots of other episodes on skills you can work on. Listen today!

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SlideBean Free Trial

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

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How To Get the Most From Your CRM with Omer Lizotte

Omer Lizotte CRM Advice

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Omer Lizotte CRM Advice How To Get the Most From Your CRM with Omer Lizotte

This episode is for anyone who has a CRM. Our guest Omer Lizotte explains how to get the most from you CRM. Omer has studied CRM usage across many industries. He recently authored a book titled “Do you CRM me?: An Analytical Guide to Customer Relationship Management “. The book is full of case studies and advice that can help you bump up your selling productivity and efficiency.

 

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Start Simple Not Big

Omer recommends starting with the simple data that best represents your prospects. Track ONLY that data. Never include data that “may” have value some day.

  1. Information – Collect what’s most relevant to your ideal client
  2. Organization – Make data easy to find and use for sellers and managers
  3. Application – Focus on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
  4. Test – Don’t assume, see if data valuable
  5. Learn – Improve CRM with experience

Start simple, don’t collect everything, and don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.

Organizations need to support their staff with IT personal. Provide skilled staff who can: configure reports, configure data, analyze work flow, aid both sellers, managers and administrative staff.

As the organization matures, integrate that knowledge into the CRM. Don’t bite off too much at first.

 

 

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How To Find Omer Lizotte

How To Get the Most From Your CRM with Omer Lizotte

Omer can be found on LinkedIn 

This is his book on Amazon:  Do you CRM me?: An Analytical Guide to Customer Relationship Management

Here is a great past episode The 7 Best Free CRM Systems for Business with Cara Wood

Sales Tools

Here are other past episodes that address sales tools that can add to your efficiency and productivity.

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SlideBean Free Trial

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How To Schedule Sales Appointments with Automated Emails with Neil Kristianson #157

Neil Kristianson Automated Email

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Neil Kristianson Automated EmailHow To Schedule Sales Appointments with Automated Emails

In this episode returning guest Neil Kristianson shares his automated email expertise. How many times have you walked away from a networking event or a conference with a truckload  of business cards wondering how you’re going to follow up? Neil tells us exactly what to do to keep those leads warm and convert them into an appointments with automated emails. 

 Problems With Follow Up

People collect leads at an event. Then they struggle with what to do with them. Maybe they send an email, maybe two. But that’s the national average. Studies say you need to follow up at least 8 times before you can convert a lead to a conversation.

Things you must do:

  • Get them out of social media into a place you can control. Create your own email list.
  • Prospects read their email.  You’re not at risk of losing them like you do with your FB or LI account.
  • Email is easier to follow up with vs a social media venue.
  • Don’t add them to your generic blog list without permission.
  • Ask permission by giving tips on your topic. Get them to put themselves on your email list.
  • Let them download something of value.

Email systems are all permission based. Don’t buy a list and just add them. That’s a No No!

Gmail  canned response

Use this for the first email you send to your prospect.

How To Use Gmail Canned Responses

 

Engaging Email Keeps Prospect Warm

You must get people to interact with your emails. Google looks at the behavior of the readers of your email. If they are not opened, you will be moved to the promotions tab.

  • Plain text emails are more likely to be opened then fancy pretty emails. Google prefer genuine authentic emails.
  • Create a welcome series of 5 – 7 emails.
  • Each email should talk about one thing. There should be 1 call to action. Don’t confuse the reader. Focus on the core thing.
  • Have a story… Email #1 What’s your problem, #2  the issues you face, #3 solutions they can use.
  • Create Lead Magnets: Downloads, video, free consulting call, etc…..
  • Email has two games…. a short term sell and a long term nurture.

How To Find Neil Kristianson

Join the Sales Babble Facebook Group

There are daily postings on the private Sales Babble Facebook Group.

Lead Magnet Episode

Listen to this past episode on How to Build a Lead Magnet  with Yoon Cannon.   These are used to get people on your email list.

Lead Generation Strategies

 

 

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Top 10 Tools Sales and Marketing for 2017 With Neil Kristianson #144

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top 10 tools sales and marketing episodeThe 2016 Annual Fireside Chat With Neil Kristianson #144

This is our annual end of year episode with our favored guest Neil Kristianson, marketing and automated email expert. Neil  joins the fireside chat to discuss the top 10 tools for sales and marketing we used this past year.

Start off your 2017 with these great time savers. Pour a beer and enjoy!

Top 10 Tools Sales and Marketing in 2017

The top 5 tools are recommended by Pat. The bottom 10 tools were recommended by Neil.

  1. SkyScanner.com -a travel tool that allows you to find the cheapest flight between countries over a months time.
  2. Witopia.com –  a tool that provides virtual private network services that allows your computer to look like it’s in a different country on the internet (great for banking and communist countries).
  3. Slack.com  – a messaging app for teams. Very slick way to build culture across teams geographically apart
  4. WeChat.com – The premiere messaging app for individuals in Asia. Clever tool with features being cloned by FaceBook.
  5. Genius Scan  –   A terrific app for scanning documents and converting them to a PDF
  6. Scrivner – a management system for documents, notes and metadata designed to aid the writing process.
  7. Video Motion Pro – instant video creation software.
  8. Evernote –  Note taking app to  capture, nurture, and share text across any device.
  9. GoToMeeting  the most famous screen sharing system for webinars, presentations, and alternative to the telephone
  10. Lucid Chart –  intuitive and collaborative diagramming solution

Where To Find Neil Kristianson

You can find Neil online for automated email and marketing advice:

This is Neil’s email business Email Splat

This is the Facebook Forum he hosts Beyond the Opt-in

Neil’s new podcast Beyond The Opt-In 

End of  Year Episodes

Here are our previous end of year episodes. Don’t miss them!

End of Year in 2015

End of Year in 2014

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The 7 Best Free CRM Systems for Business with Cara Wood

Cara Wood CRM Capterra Writer

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Cara Wood CRM Capterra The 7 Best Free CRM Systems for Business with Cara Wood

In this episode we meet Cara Wood, CRM expert and staff writer for Capterra.  Capterra is a marketing company that specializes in business software reviews.  Today we take Cara’s expertise and have her walk us through 7 free CRM systems for business.  For each of these tools we discuss the  pros, cons, and in what situation the CRM system makes the most business sense. All of these systems are free systems or work in the freemium model; you get started for free and charged you as you grow. 

7 Free CRM Systems Reviewed

Cara wrote an article regarding free CRM systems for business. She researched a number of CRMs and focuses on free one’s specifically. CRM stands for  Customer Relationship Management tool.   It contains contact information on clients and prospective clients.  It also provides reports on sales, tracks lead flow, a to-do list, reminders, and the ability take notes on each interaction.

Fortune is in the Follow Up

I adhere to the 3×8 rule  where you call 8 times in 3 day intervals. It’s by constant follow up are you able to get on your prospects radar and create a relationship.

Many people hate CRM systems. Sales people worry about peers poaching prospects. Most CRMs provide bounds to keep people separated. CRMs should be of help, not a hindrance.

CRM Systems For Business

Hubspot – Cara’s personal favorite. Totally free, not a freemium. The pros of this system is that it’s integrated with the Hubspot marketing software.

Insightly – This system is integrated with email, but not full content marketing email integration.  All features are available. Free for two years. Two users. 150 contacts. Most businesses don’t start paying to use a CRM until 100 contacts.  $12/user

Zurmo – Open Source CRM. You load this on your servers. Provides gamification. 

Bitrix24 – CRM for 12 free users and 5Gb of storage and contains Project Management software (fully loaded) for managing projects.

Free CRM – Free for a year only. 100 free users and 10K contacts. Feature rich. $25/user/mo.

Really Simple Systems – great for novice CRM users for 100 accounts. $8/mo per user.

Highrise – 2 users and 100 contacts.

Note: For some of the systems mentioned in  this post there are  affiliate links.

How To Find Cara Wood

Cara Wood is a marketer at Capterra, a website that helps business software buyers find the perfect software. She enjoys writing about CRMs, marketing tech, and retail tech. And when she’s not writing, she can be found horseback riding and singing Taylor Swift songs. Find her on LinkedIn and Twitter!

This is the article she wrote: The 10 Best Free and Open Source CRM Software Solutions

Sales Process Articles

Get organized and professional. Here are  more Sales Babble articles on  adding structure, order and success to your selling process.