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Predictable Prospecting's Podcast

Tired of wondering where your next lead will come from? What if you had a reliable, and predictable, source of new potential customers coming into your sales funnel each month? This is Predictable Prospecting and here I'll show you how some of the best sales leaders in the industry are creating consistent, and measurable procedures to bring in fresh, qualified leads to their sales funnels each and every month.
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Now displaying: 2018
Apr 3, 2018

My guest today is Matt Benati, the CEO, and co-founder of LeadGnome. As salespeople, we tend to focus on the perfect pitch, the hottest leads, and the smartest marketing strategies. With all this noise and bustle we forget that there is an existing client base that needs just as much attention as a new client. The best way to keep the lines of communication open with an existing client is to use automated systems.

LeadGnome is an automated email system that collects data from email replies. The information it provides allows companies to clean out contact lists and remind clients of changing contact information. Matt gives us an in-the-trenches look at automated systems. He also shares why he started LeadGnome and why automation is an important component of  the future of sales.

Episode highlights:

  • How LeadGnome came to be.
  • How automated messages help a business keep clients informed.
  • The useful information automated messages provide.
  • Automation’s role in bringing marketing and sales together.
  • Building an influence map and how automation makes that easier.
  • The service LeadGnome provides to their clients.
  • When to implement an automated system in your business.

Resources:

LeadGnome

Matt Benati’s email

 

Mar 27, 2018

It’s important for prospectors to understand the entire funnel, not just the top and middle of the funnel. Today’s guest has a breadth of knowledge for the entire funnel and a particular focus on frontline sales, leadership, and managers.

Dave A. Brock is the CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a California-based consulting organization that focuses on helping clients develop and execute business, sales, marketing, customer service, and new product strategies. Dave is also the author of Sales Manager Survival Guide. Listen to the episode to hear what David has to say about frontline sales.

Episode Highlights:

How Dave got started in the area of sales performance

How too many apps and tools can be detrimental to sales performance

Why the sales manager needs to be part of the plan when implementing a new tool

A sales manager’s role, and how that can be leveraged to maximize the performance of each sales person.

The qualities that make a great sales manager

The importance of determining a process that works before bringing in automation tools

Why it’s necessary to focus on fundamentals and the ideal customer profile

Dave’s new book, Sales Executive Survival Guide, coming out in May

Resources:

David Brock

Dave on Twitter

Partners in EXCELLENCE

Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog

Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons From Sales' Front Lines

Mar 22, 2018

A 5-minute quick listen on the 2 universal mistakes we make when holding conversations with buyers.

Mar 13, 2018

Being an entrepreneur doesn’t always stop with creating one successful business. Some entrepreneurs make a business out of creating different businesses. Today’s guest is a serial entrepreneur that creates businesses and sells them.

Mansour Salame is an engineer by training, and he is currently the CEO and founder of a company called FrontSpin. However, Mansour says that he doesn’t think of himself as an engineer or a salesperson so much as he thinks of himself as a person who can find value for customers and clients. Listen in to this interesting interview to hear Mansour’s insights about growth and scaling. 

Episode Highlights: 

  • Mansour’s first job out of college as a project manager, and how that led to his introduction to sales and startups
  • The importance of understanding a client’s needs in detail
  • How to put a process in place that you can scale to the level of growth that you’re at
  • How process can be divided into two categories: search mode and scaling mode
  • How Mansour is scaling processes at his current company now
  • The importance of improving and tweaking the process to make it more successful, even when in scaling mode
  • Why considering the customer’s process is necessary when creating your own processes
  • How measuring metrics and benchmarks fit into both search and scaling modes
  • How scaling without first figuring out the process can lead to low morale and other problems
  • How sales messaging needs to change as you scale
  • How a trend toward personalization affects production and scalability

Resources:

Mansour Salame

FrontSpin

Mar 6, 2018

When it comes to sales having the right team in place makes all the difference in the world. Today’s guest is someone who understands how to create and build a team with the right people. He understands building a brand and creating and nourishing the company to scale.

Today’s guest is Paul Fifield the chief revenue officer for UNiDAYS a student affinity network that connects verified global students with relevant brands and services. Paul and I go way back. We’ve known each other for years and worked together in the early days. This is a great episode where we talk about how to grow a team and to build a team that consists of the right people.

Episode Highlights:

  • When Paul first arrived in New York, he read Marylou’s book and then hired her as a consultant.
  • The importance of hiring. A brilliant process won’t work without the right people.
  • If you’ve hired great, people you can actually get a lot wrong in your business and still be okay.
  • Getting the right people into your business that are brilliant when it comes to your business.
  • As businesses scale, the early processes will break and need to be refined.
  • Having a hiring process and predicting who will be successful in your business by using systems.
  • Paul talks about some of the things you should look for when creating a business development team. You need people who can create great emails and have writing skills.
  • These people also have to have great phone skills and be articulate.
  • To save time, and find the right fit design your entire hiring process to look for the skills.
  • By doing this you can probably discount 75% of your applicants.
  • Also have a voice call and set up a scoring system look for things like voice clarity and vocabulary, plus the energy levels of the person.
  • What you’re hirers are in-role, check to see if you got your testing right.
  • Paul’s current business is focusing on generation Z. They engage with all types of different brands who want to reach this demographic.
  • Paul believes in splitting roles to create predictability.
  • Initiating conversations, tone of voice, and not “being in sales”.
  • Paul has a two-week training class for his new hires. He also tells a funny story about how one of his new hires prospected Jeff Bezos.
  • When your team isn’t too big you can scale fast.

Resources:

Feb 27, 2018

Troy Kirby is a sports business consultant who builds relationships and revenue for sports organizations. He is the owner of Tao of Sports where he consults for B2B vendors, professional teams, and college athletic departments. He also hosts the Tao of Sports podcast.

We have a really interesting conversation on today’s show. Troy comes from the world of sports, and he is an expert in sports sales. He is going to share some of his great stories in the area of sales, education, where he came from, and what he was trained for. He is also going to share his sales experience from the perspective of focusing on engaging people and getting them to come to his events.  

Episode Highlights:

  • When people give you time and opportunity it is a gift, and you need to give back.
  • Stand up comedy and open mic night helped Troy become relatable.
  • If you have a speaking opportunity. Go and screw up. The whole idea is to get practice relating to people.
  • Listen to other people and be interested in what they do. Build a relationship that way.
  • People want to do business with people who listen to them not talk at them.
  • Change your mindset and have a yes mentality.
  • Troy ended up having a great conversation interviewing the Octomom and allowing her to talk more and treating her with equity and respect.
  • Qualifying people by how much money they have, yet they might be a great source of referrals.
  • If someone tells you not to do something, they probably don’t know what they are talking about.
  • Troy is known in the sports industry as the sales ticket guy.
  • Take an active investment in other people, but also take a chance on yourself.
  • Play the long game and really knock the cover off the ball. Plan for the long term.
  • Do the work in advance and build your contact over time. Don’t use other people as an excuse for not achieving.
  • How we are overly entertained. Put the time in your business, and it will yield out so much more.
  • The importance of the daily commitment to the process. It takes time to build relationships and work and work that system.
  • Thinking outside of the box and getting people to come to your events. Troy shares his red turf story where the turf could be seen from space.
  • You have to be able to tell a story, sell a narrative, and believe in yourself. Take risks and don’t be threatened by what you are doing.

Resources:

Feb 20, 2018

Shimon Lazarov the CEO of LiveCoach is here today to talk about you as a person. I focus on sales and spend a lot of time focused on the ins and outs of the sales process, but the person behind the sales matters too. Shimon is here to shed some light on coaching and the importance of having a coach.

Coaching can increase productivity, success, and life satisfaction. Ongoing coaching is usually more useful than a one-time coaching session. Finding and connecting with the right coach for you isn’t that easy. Shimon created LiveCoach to connect coaches and clients through an easy to use online platform.

Episode Highlights:

  • Business coaching versus life coaching. People work with coaches to accomplish something that they don’t know how to do or to be held accountable, so that they follow through or to aspire to new horizons.
  • People usually prefer a coach over a peer to help them be held accountable.
  • Some people only need specific help for one thing. Other people want accountability or they want their life to be better.
  • There is a link between something in life bothering people and their work success and productivity.
  • Personal and professional success are interrelated.
  • How coaches have neutral objectivity and your best interest in mind.
  • The more neutral a coach is the better and more effective that coach will be.
  • The LiveCoach platform can help you find a coach by describing your situation or you can be matched through their algorithms.
  • You can talk to several coaches for free to help find the best coach fit for you.
  • When you start talking to people, you will be surprised by the amount of insights that you will get.
  • Shimon suggests talking to as many coaches as you can.
  • Many coaches do a questionnaire or a review as prep work. Some part of the initial work will be reflection about what you want to achieve and gaining clarity.

Resources:

Feb 13, 2018

Carson V. Heady is an author and sales leader that I am really excited about talking to. He is in the trenches when it comes to sales. He is there digging in the dirt making sure that those sales are happening. I asked him to come on the show is because he is diving into an becoming an expert at social selling.

When it comes to prospecting, we are habit machines that block out times to do single tasks, and we get stuck when it comes to integrating all of the social tasks into our process. Carson is going to talk about best practices around integrating social into the sales process and specifically the prospecting side of things.

Episode Highlights:

  • How social selling is bubbling up as something that we should pay attention to.
  • Sales is still a relationship game, but social will enable us to build relationships and stay top of mind.
  • How platforms have caught on and integrated into people’s day.
  • These platform enable us to target specific areas and when people make changes.
  • We can keep at the pulse of what is going on.
  • It also enables to continue the post sales relationship.
  • Display etiquette and be succinct and state your desired value that you are bringing.
  • It comes down to adding value.
  • How social selling allows us to do a lot of experimentation.
  • These social tools can help us take the cold out of cold calling and introducing ourselves in a relatively passive way.
  • Consistently reaching out to 5 to 10 people a day and stacking it into your daily routine.
  • How it takes a long time to craft and cultivate social relationships, but the returns are unbelievable.
  • Gearing messages for your audience and understanding what is working and what is not.
  • The stuff that works can be transferred over to your email sequences.
  • Assimilate social selling into your evolving sales process.
  • Finding the right tools that will work specifically for you and using them to be more effective.
  • Begin with the end in mind. What your goal is? Social selling is a wonderful way to share and connect with people.

Resources:

Feb 6, 2018

The telephone is a vital instrument for us to use when having sales conversations. Telephone sales expert Art Sobczak is here today to share some of his amazing telephone sales knowledge. I consider Art Sobczak a mentor. I have been following him since 1985. He is the president of Business by Phone and the author of books like Smart Calling, Sell More in Less Time, and Telephone Tips that Sell. He is an expert in utilizing the phone for sales conversations.

Art shares how selling is the greatest profession in the world, and how he wakes up everyday knowing that there are people out there that he can serve in this profession. A lot has changed over the years, but people still buy from people, and aside from face-to-face, voice-to-voice is the best way to sell to those people. This is a great conversation, and Art shares tips and selling knowledge from his 35 years of selling experience.

Episode Highlights:

  • Art wakes up everyday knowing that there are people out there waiting to be served.
  • Making a difference through the greatest profession in the world which is sales.
  • How a lot has changed over the years, but people still buy from humans and the most effective way to sell is by speaking with people.
  • Other than face to face, the best way to sell is voice to voice.
  • How sales enablement tools can be distracting if not used correctly or effectively.
  • The importance of examining what your sales process looks like and who you are selling to.
  • How using the phone is a permission based tool that can cut through a lot of the clutter.
  • How fear of the phone stems from a lack of knowledge.
  • The importance of having relevant and targeted messaging.
  • Different calls require varying degrees of preparation and research.
  • The problems of disguising call avoidance as research.
  • When you get voicemail, your purpose is to leave a question in that person's mind.
  • The importance of call quality and investing in good equipment.   

Resources:

Jan 30, 2018

Henry Schuck is the Co-Founder and CEO of DiscoverOrg a platform for finding, connecting, and selling to more prospects using a accurate high-quality contact database. The company was founded in 2007, and Henry has led it through rapid growth going from the original three employees to over 500 today.

Henry is the list expert, so put your seatbelts on. We have a great conversation about lists. In this episode, he shares the story of how he and a friend founded DiscoverOrg and how they grew the company. They even had to refine their product to meet their own sales needs. Once they got the process down, their sales numbers went through the roof.

Episode Highlights:

  • DiscoverOrg is a sales intelligence tool that profiles who's who in about 175,000 corporations.
  • They use a mix of proprietary technology and a team of 300 human researchers.
  • Maintaining the data is one of the most difficult aspects.
  • It takes 70 hours to count to a million. They profile almost 3 million contacts across their database.
  • Henry has been in this space for more than half of his life. He began with a small intelligence company called iProfile.
  • Then he went to law school.
  • In 2007, Henry and a friend from iProfile started DiscoverOrg and grew it organically.
  • They were missing projections by 6 million dollars in 2010. They started thinking about how to plug that hole.
  • Working backwards to reach a goal. They found the resources they needed, but they needed to build the list datasets for themselves.
  • They realized they needed a team of English speaking humans to solve their information gap in their lists.
  • They would score fits on a scale of 1 through 5 using what they called fit rank. Then they would have the human team build out the lists of the companies that fit.
  • Knowing what companies and people to talk to and their contact information and what tools they use and then target the approach to them.
  • Once they got the processes into place to deliver high quality information, they blew their sales numbers out.
  • The biggest lever you have to pull is the data you feed your SDR team allowing them to focus on messaging and follow up.
  • You want your datatool to cleanse and maintain the numbers, emails, and contact info.
  • This is an investment that pays off through everything in your organization.
  • They looked at performance metrics to see how many calls needed to be made to hit sales numbers and then worked backwards to provide that amount of contacts.
  • If a company doesn’t respond, you still continue to call them. They are still in your market. Organization priorities are constantly changing.
  • List fatigue and a 30% attrition rate. Refreshing the lists is absolutely critical.

Resources:

Jan 23, 2018

Mario Martinez Jr. is the CEO and founder of a fantastic company called Vengreso. They are a B2B digital sales transformation company and they do their magic through content marketing, social selling, and a variety of things. Mario spent 82 consecutive quarters in B2B sales and leadership roles growing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually.

Mario is one of 19 sales influencers invited to appear in the Salesforce documentary film "The Story of Sales" to be launched in 2018. He is recognized as the Number 1 Top Sales Performance Guru in the world, named 2018's Top 10 Sales Influencers by The Modern Sales Magazine, and in 2017 he was named the Top 25 Inside Sales Professional and the 6th Most Influential Social Selling Leader globally.

As a renowned digital sales evangelist, Mario teaches marketing and sales professionals how to develop an engaging personal brand to attract today's modern buyer using the digital sales ecosystem. Mario is the host of the popular Selling With Social Podcast. He's been featured in Forbes, INC., the Examiner.com and is a contributor to the Huffington Post. He's a highly sought-after Keynote Speaker with brands such as LinkedIn, SAP, and Cisco. He is also known to open a keynote with a Salsa dance.

Episode Highlights:

  • Social versus digital and how social selling to engage, build relationships, and create conversations will just become selling.
  • Digital is just using your online presence to establish and create a personal and professional presence.
  • It’s about discovering a platform to engage with your clients.
  • After engaging with clients, we need to connect with them to sell to them.
  • Feeding your network isn’t just putting content in your feed, it is also providing customized information to individual prospects and clients.
  • It’s also a good idea to automate what you can.
  • The sales job is to prospect one-on-one. Marketing is one to many.
  • The five steps to digital selling. Have the right brand. Correctly initiate, engage, and maintain a relationship. Do the research and use tools to effectively connect with buyers. Feed your network regularly. Measure your prospecting success through the number of conversations you have.
  • The two, three, and four-week meeting request rule: “Here are three dates and times that work for me.” Also look for when in the day the buyer likes to meet.
  • Asking for a 30 minute as opposed to a 15 minute appointment.
  • The sole purpose of identifying whether a prospect has a problem that you can solve.
  • Three by three rule. Research the person, the company, and get to know the prospect a bit before the meeting. Find three things in three minutes to incorporate into the conversation that show that you did your homework.

Resources:

Jan 9, 2018

Account based marketing or ABM is an alternative to B2B. It’s a strategy where an individual account is treated as its own market of one. Brandon Redlinger manages growth at Engagio which provides software products for account based marketing and account based sales.

Brandon is going to share his experiences and strategies working in this funnel. I’m hoping that you will come away with some key takeaways and educational points that you can apply right away. Brandon also shares how account based everything may be more appropriate because bigger companies are now pushing account based success in all aspects of sales and marketing.

Episode Highlights:

  • The account based approach is strategic marketing that is personal and relevant coordinated between different functions.
  • It can be used in the top of the funnel to open doors or lower in the funnel for account expansion, upsells, and more.
  • This concept is similar to strategic selling targeted at a smaller set of accounts but at bigger deals.
  • Technology is enabling marketing to help sales open doors by using intelligence, predictive modeling, and engagement scoring.
  • Casting a wide net with marketing, inbound, content, demand generation, and ABM.
  • How account based marketing helps in all five levels of awareness.
  • Large companies have global accounts with many divisions. This is why working with relationships within the accounts is important.
  • How engagio allows tracking with a different customer touchpoints like SalesForce, Marketo, your CRM, or Google Apps.
  • The importance of retention and how many VCs are looking at these numbers over growth numbers.
  • How a lot of people will jump into ABM and get it wrong. How important it is to look at if it is right for you and fits within your business model.
  • The importance of not executing before you have a plan.
  • The co-founder of Engagio was actually the co-founder of Marketo, and he left because he feels that account based marketing is the future of B2B.

Resources:

Jan 2, 2018

Having issues with mindset and skill set can amplify issues that we may have at the top of the sales funnel. Will Barron the host of The Salesman Podcast is here today to talk about mindset. He has so many skills and there are so many topics that we can talk about, but I wanted to hone in on mindset because having the right mindset can amplify our sales success.

Will has interviewed so many people and has had so many conversations that he brings a wealth of knowledge to the show. The Salesman Podcast is the most downloaded award winning B2B sales show on iTunes. The reason Will started his podcast was because he was hitting his sales marks, but he wanted to go beyond that and smash it. Now he shares some of his deep dive sales knowledge with us here today.

Episode Highlights:

  • How Will has personally beat his chronic procrastination through habits.
  • His biggest sales mind hack was actually understanding why he wanted to work in sales in the first place.
  • He worked in sales because he wanted to save up cash to start a business.
  • Once he made this plan he worked harder, put his head down, and got things done.
  • Having an end goal can be an underrated sales tool.
  • How he started asking the questions of what he wanted to achieve through his sales work throughout his life and minimize regrets.
  • Projecting your future happiness and asking if what you are doing now will lead to your happiness.
  • Marginally acceptable goals, acceptable goals, and whoopie goals!
  • Focusing on blocking out time for productive single focused goals.
  • Will’s passion is getting people excited about science. His motivation for doing the sales podcast is leading to his goal of starting his new Excited About Science podcast.
  • He wants to break the mundaneness of life by giving people fun facts about science every morning.
  • Will shares his routine and how he timeblocks and protects himself from distractions. Then it is habit and process.
  • How getting a 25 minute pomodoro task done helps to build momentum.
  • It is easier to carry on with the work then to change the task.
  • Start in small blocks and work your way up. Start with 25 minutes and work up.
  • Being specific with our goals and making sure you physically have the time to fill in the slots or else you have to be more efficient.
  • Use trial and error to move your blocks around until you find the best nuggets of time to get stuff done.
  • It’s about highest impact and lowest effort.
  • Working the way your prospects work to have those conversations.

Resources:

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