by Nancy Calabrese | May 10, 2021 | Podcast
On this week’s episode, our guest is “The LinkedIn Whisperer”, Brynne Tillman! Brynne is the CEO of Social Sales Link and for over a decade has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams, and business leaders how to leverage the awesome power of LinkedIn for social selling. She has adapted proven traditional sales techniques to the new, digital world in order to find and engage the right target market.
LinkedIn is the most powerful digital database for business. It offers users the ability to search and filter connections and leverage relationships in order to earn referrals and the permission to name-drop, like a virtual sales conference lobby social. Brynne’s insights into LinkedIn marketing helps companies and individuals maximize business opportunities on the site. Her tips include:
- How to convert your profile from a resume into a client resource
- Why it’s important to use a permission-based model
- How to engage with influencer articles to find new business
- The importance of offering free content to your network
- And so much more
Brynne’s company offers e-learning memberships, coaching, and a community of like-minded business people making the most of what LinkedIn has to offer, but you can get all of her most important LinkedIn lessons by listening in now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it is Nancy Calabrese. And it’s time for Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Joining us today is Brynne Tillman, the LinkedIn Whisperer and CEO of Social Sales Link. For over a decade, she has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams and business leaders how to leverage LinkedIn for social selling.
As a former sales trainer, and personal producer, Brynne adopted all of the traditional sales techniques and adapted them to the new digital world. She guides professionals to establish a thought leader and subject matter expert brand, find and engage the right targeted market and leverage clients and networking partners for warm introductions into qualified buyers. In addition, Brynne is the author of the LinkedIn Sales Playbook, A Tactical Guide to Social Selling. So folks, I’m sure we can all agree that LinkedIn is all over the place today, and an excellent resource, especially for the b2b world. Brynne, I know you have an abundance of tips to share with us today. So welcome to the show.
Brynne Tillman: Oh, my gosh, Nancy, thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored.
Nancy: Oh, well, ditto, ditto. And, you know, as I, as I opened up, LinkedIn is all over the place. I believe in LinkedIn marketing as an important channel in the marketing process. I’ve gotten clients from it, as I’m sure many of my listeners have. But why is it so important in sales and marketing? Why is this channel really credit a critical component to a plan?
Brynne: There’s so many directions, I can go with that answer. But the first one and the most simple one is that’s where the business people are. Right? This is, this is the professional platform, that almost everyone in business, particularly in the US, but even globally, is at least at least has a presence. So that’s number one. Number two, not only is it the biggest, I believe the biggest professional database, but it is the the only self updated database, meaning there are things like Dun and Bradstreet lists and Zoom info.
But all of those are updated by either bots that are scanning the web or human beings, where LinkedIn is, hey, I moved my my company, I’m at a new company, I’m updating my profile. So I’ve been really, it’s as up to date as any info you can get anywhere. And the number one from a sales perspective, why I think LinkedIn is the most powerful tool in any tool chest, not just today is because we have the ability to search and filter our connections, connections and identify who they know that we want to meet and leverage our relationships to get right one referrals or permission to name drop. And I could go on with another 50. But I’ll start with those three.
Nancy: Wow. So you know, what really caught my attention in the opener was that you adapted traditional sales techniques to the digital world? What techniques Did you adapt in particular? And how did you know it was time to do it?
Brynne: Well, you know, I, I don’t I started doing this before it was time to do it. But I knew it was a better way a faster way to get to where I wanted to go. So I guess it’s sort of a two part question. So let’s, I’m going to back up for a second and answer. The first part is what what did I do to adapt? And the interesting thing in answering that question is, what I do is bring in what I would traditionally do, just do it on digital. So for example, I’m just going to throw one example out and again, there could be 50 of these but I come across this very engaged upon article by an influencer in the industry who’s attracting lots of my potential buyers. I just stumbled across it or I went and I purposely founded but either way, there’s a gold mine sitting here.
So I want you to think about this. This is a networking event that article, author is the keynote. And all these people that are commenting are, you know, in the audience or even in the lobby having a conversation before they even go into the audience. And they’re talking about the topic that that keynote has just posted, right? So in real life, if that were the case, you would walk into a circle of people talking at a networking event in or you know, prior to the, the, the main stage, and you would listen, first you wouldn’t kill, you wouldn’t butt your head into a circle of people say, hey, guys, I help companies just like yours. Right, right. That’s what this what people are doing on LinkedIn.
What we need to do is get into that circle, listen, ask questions like, what would you naturally do in that environment? And we need to do ask questions, provide additional insights, not about your stuff. But about the topic you’re engaging on. Maybe I own everyone’s engaging on Nancy’s content that is so fabulous. And I say, hey, I, you know, I’m now one on one with someone who commented on Nancy’s stuff. And I say, I don’t know if you heard her podcast two weeks ago with Meredith Powell was absolutely phenomenal. If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll send you a link. And I’m still having a conversation around the topic. I haven’t moved to me yet. Because in real life, you wouldn’t move to you until they say, so by the way, what do you do?
Nancy: Right.
Brynne: Right. And some of that is, hey, they visit your profile. And you notice they visit your profile. So now they know what you do. And you can say, Hey, I noticed you checked out my profile, and I was checking out yours. I’m not sure if you’re exploring this kind of content. But you are, I’d be happy to send you that information too. Right. But it’s a permission based. It’s not pitching your face. And so you know, when you ask the question, taking the traditional networking in sales online, the irony of that is I didn’t have to do too much adapting.
Nancy: Right. I love what you just said permission based, not pitching in your face.
Brynne: Yes.
Nancy: All right. Did you come up with that?
Brynne: Yes.
Nancy: That’s a good one. I may steal it from you.
Brynne: I’ve already coined it, but you’re welcome to use it.
Nancy: Okay. I’ll give you a shout out if I use it, okay?
Brynne: Three times and then it’s yours.
Nancy: Okay, thank you. So that answers the one part that when did you know it was the right time to kind of cut the cord and really just go into it.
Brynne: Well, I was actually a co owner of the sales training company. And we were using LinkedIn and watching 10 years ago, as a as a loss leader, or maybe a win leader, because we were charging, but we would then sell them into more traditional sales training. And it wasn’t aligning well with me, I really wanted to just do the LinkedIn stuff. And my partner at the time didn’t. So we gave each other a hug. She laughed at me. And she said, when this trend is over, you’re always welcome back. And that’s seven and a half years later. We’re still here. But I love it. And it really it just resonates with me. You know, I see the LinkedIn logo and I get happy. It’s just my world.
Nancy: Yeah, well, you’re passionate about it. You know, speaking of passion, I just listened to Simon Sinek talk about passion, which I found on LinkedIn. And so it all goes back to LinkedIn. You also, and I read that you suggest converting your LinkedIn profile from a resume to a resource to become a thought leader. Why is this so important?
Brynne: Well, so I mean, if you’re looking for a job, just hold your ears and scream real loud, because when I’m about to say is wrong. But if you’re looking, if you are in a business development role, you have to earn the right for someone to care about what you do. You even have to earn the right for someone to care about how you can help them. I can’t tell you how many clients start with me, I don’t understand why I can’t get a call. I bring so much value. But they don’t know that yet.
So no matter what you think you bring to the table. Yeah, they don’t even they have no interest in checking out your table. Right. So you have to earn the right for them to even want a conversation with you. And it can start with the profile. Right? And so they show up. And if it’s all resume driven, and if you’re like a real like hardcore sales person, and it’s my mission, my passion, my years in business, my great negotiating skills, my President’s Club four years in a row. You’re gonna lose them. That’s not what matters to them.
Nancy: Well, what I wanted to add was in listening to you describe that, you’re not describing what you do to help others correct and, and why people come to you, versus this is my great story and hope you love it come to me.
Brynne: So, the interesting thing is, the next mistake people make is they tell them how they can help them first.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: So you have to earn the right for them to care about how you can help them. And I’m not saying you have to tell them how they could buy from you, or they’ll never buy from you. But you’ve got to earn the right for them to care about that. And so that’s where the resource piece comes in. So, and there’s two major places to be a resource. Could be more, but two that we really stress, which is the about section and the featured section. So most people start their about section about me. Move all that into the experience. About you, about the company, about your products and services, move that into the experience, and make the about section about them.
And don’t tell them how you can help them, actually help them. That’s the difference, right? If we will we help companies from go from this size to this size, we’ve helped a company move from a $10 million company to $100 million company in five years. We’ve all right, like, so I don’t even care yet. Because here’s the thing, they’re not actively shop, most of them are not actively shopping your stuff. They’re not at a networking meeting, you went up to someone in a networking meeting, and you’re in your first conversations, you’re talking about how we’ve helped other companies succeed, their eyes are rolling in the back of their head going, I can’t wait to get over to the crab dip and lead this person.
But we’re doing it on LinkedIn, right? On LinkedIn. So what do we have to do, we have to really provide value. And I am going to make a bet that almost everyone on this that’s listening to this today has done this in real life, you’re talking with someone, you ask them about their business, you learn a little bit about their challenges. And we offer value and insights before we talk about our company. We offer some ideas for that we offer right and now all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, this is a smart person, this person is real. We’re not this is totally free consulting. And there are some sales trainers that say don’t ever give free consulting away.
And I say hogwash, give it away as much as you want. I mean, not the same person for hours at a time, but a lot of people for 10 minutes at a time, right? Because they get to test drive you. Right. And you don’t very well maybe it’s different today, but very few people ever bought a car without test driving it, you got to drive the car for 10 minutes for free. And then if you wanted to keep driving the car, you bought it. But if you didn’t test drive it, you may not have known you’d love that car. And so we have to let them test drive us. And that comes out of bringing insights and value to the conversation naturally and organically in a way that says, oh my god, that was the free stuff like in the back of their head. Imagine if I worked with them.
So back to the profile. That’s the job of the profile to do that to let them test drive us. So your about section should cover the challenge, some real insights, some aha moments that get them not only learning something new, but thinking differently about the way they’re doing business today, because that’s what gets them to raise their hand and say, yeah, I’m open to a conversation.
Nancy: Well, so I kind of think maybe we covered this because I had asked you to come up with a unique idea that is different and sets you apart, I guess within your space, right, the world of other LinkedIn marketers, what makes you unique?
Brynne: I think one of the things that I do is I simplify everything. My clients will are blown away at how simple it is to implement what we teach. There are a lot of people that are really smart in our space. But everything seems very complicated and it’s over. Not I don’t wanna say overthought because you know, when I listened to it, I love it. But I’m on that level potentially, right? But for new people, like our trainings are short, but they’re impactful and they know exactly what to do and how to do it. And they have the right mindset for it. So they know why. They know how, and they get like that we’re working toward a goal and this what we’re doing right now is part of that goal. There’s very little fluff in anything you do.
Nancy: Well, that’s right up my alley. Talk to me about something you would like to spotlight. What in particular you want to share with the audience?
Brynne: Or you mean in an insights perspective?
Nancy: Well, um, you know, I know that you have the social sales link, maybe you can talk further about that and a membership program.
Brynne: We do. So everything is simple. Our e learning, it’s $99. And then we have if you’re a member, and you have coaching at $29 a month, so we keep it really, really simple. We have a twice weekly group coaching calls where our members come on, and they ask their questions, and they share their screens. And as a community, we work together to really bring value and insights. And what’s really fun is like much the people in the community are doing business with each other. And the people in the community are referring each other.
So it’s gone way beyond like my little project. And it’s really an animal in and of itself, which is amazing. I’m so obsessed with it. I’m so happy. And then on the other side of it, which is our primary business or has been for most of the years is the corporate training. We teach both LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to sales teams.
Nancy: Okay. And you know, I’m sure, just a guess here that you’re full of interesting stories. Do you have one you would share with the audience?
Brynne: Oh, sure. Okay, um, this is my own story. I have client stories, too. But I would say probably nine, eight or nine years ago, I was practicing what I teach. So I had a client named Rob Petcove, who owned a benefits company now they’ve been bought out by Gallagher since but it was his own little benefits company the time. And we did some great stuff for them. And so of course, I’m gonna ask for referrals, because that’s what we do is really good sales people.
But what I teach is to mine connections, and instead of saying, Rob, who do you know, I would say, Rob, I see, you know, these people, when we talk through them. One of them happened to be Rob Curley, who was a heavy hitter at TD Bank that I had been trying to get into for years and just had no luck. And I said, so how do you know Rob Curley? He goes, both our boys had juvenile diabetes. We’ve been in the same group since they were little. And he’s a great guy. I really love him. So can you make an introduction? Sure. Within 20 minutes, it was still in his office. I had a reply with Monday morning. 10am. Here’s the address.
Nancy: Love it.
Brynne: I showed up. And he looked at me and he’s like, alright, go. And I said, Well, why am I here he goes, because if Rob Petcove asked me to do something I’m doing and he’s one of my favorite people. So I said, if I can show you commercial lenders, how you can do the same thing he looked at his calendar, he said two weeks from Thursday. 11am. By the way, how much and it was the fastest sale I ever made. And they are still my client today.
Nancy: Love it. Wow. I think I don’t know if you document that story. Pass it out. Because it’s a good one, for sure. It’s leveraging the connections on LinkedIn.
Brynne: Yeah, that story is actually in my first book, that I published.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: But I mean, I’ve told it for years and years, and I’ve actually even told it to Rob’s team. So.
Nancy: I love it. Yeah. So tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Brynne: So I don’t know if nobody agrees with me on this. But we just finished a study. So I proved something out. So I don’t know, completely like no one agrees with me, because I do think there are people even colleagues that agree. And one particular colleague that inspired the study. But it’s whether or not to send someone a link to content. So we typically, throughout you would say, you know, hey, I noticed you’re interested in this. And this, I found a blog post on this topic. Here are some of the great insights, thought you get some value from it. Here’s the link. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
So we did that for a long time just sharing valuable content, nurturing our connections. And one of the my colleagues said, that feels really spammy today. I really, this is an existing connection that I’ve had engagement with, but okay, so let’s, if that’s feeling spammy, let’s ask permission. So now, you know, I might say, hey, Nancy, I came across this article in Selling Magazine that I thought, you know, as someone who is deeply connected into sales, training, coaching, you find it of interest. Some of my takeaways were this, this and this, let me know if you’d like the link, I’d be happy to send it over to you.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: So we did the test. And literally last week we finished it. We did 100 messages, giving the link and 100 messages, asking permission to send the link. The 100 messages that we sent, we got 19 click throughs. Not bad. Right? You okay, 19? That’s not bad, right? And remember, these are existing connections. So it’s not cold calling. It’s just nurturing people that we’ve already connected to. So 19 sounds right. But the second hundred, 69 of them said, sure, send me the link and 58 clicked through.
Nancy: Wow.
Brynne: Right?
Nancy: Yeah.
Brynne: They didn’t feel spammy. I think two things happen. And now what I’m about to say is not part of the study. It’s my observation. Number one, they didn’t feel spammed by me. All right, they had the option, and they didn’t feel like I was trying to throw a link in their face. The second thing is FOMO fear of missing out, if I send you the link, you have the link, you can click through anytime, you’re not missing anything. It’s always available to you. If I dont’ send the link, you’re probably like, hmm, I wonder if that’s a good link.
Nancy: I bet you’re right. Cool. So I’m just curious, what would be the next step, the people that went into it.
Brynne: So I mean, it would depend on so in this particular case, the next step was inviting them to if they clicked through inviting them to a webinar that was on that subject, which is in two weeks, so I’ll let you know. But that was the cadence we decided. So it looks like you had some interest in a day in the life of a social seller was around cadence and putting, you know, kind of a process around your social selling, if you’re interested, it’s completely free. And then we’ll sell them into the E learning for $99. At the end, they’re gonna get so much value. Right? You know, you know, but but that’s sort of the cadence. And then and if they want to hop off and not listen to the pitch, I mean, we’ll be really one of my transition slides is because I teach them about, you know, do we earn the right, we earned the right idea.
And I’ll say, did we earn the right to tell you a little bit about how you could work with us? Put a y in chat? And everyone, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Right. So we just did a permission base, can I sell to you? So my webinar runs the same way as everything else, then I’m asking you permission, can I tell you how you can work with us in the $99 you learning $29 a month coaching, and my and we sent it out to way more than those 200. But those were the 200 we were tracking for the money. And then most of the others were permission based. But we’ll probably have three or 400 people that register and maybe 150 to two hundred people that show up and maybe 75 that buy.
Nancy: All right, yeah. I’ll take that right.
Brynne: Yes, absolutely.
Nancy: Yeah. We are coming to the end of an amazing conversation. And the one takeaway, if anybody walks out of this or stop, you know, gets out of this program, what would that be? What do you want to leave the listeners with?
Brynne: The one takeaway is really treat the person on the other side of the message the same way you would on the other side of the table? These are human beings that we’re doing business with no automation, no bots, you wouldn’t send a robot to network for you. Just show up, be human, be of value. Have real conversations, the sales will come when the time is right.
Nancy: Wow. How can we find you? How can my listeners get in front of you?
Brynne: Well, I’m still the only Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn, which is pretty good. So that works. You can also access our free content and find us there at socialsaleslink.com/library, and there’s a ton of great resources there. But I think that’s those are probably the best ways to connect.
Nancy: Well, if this was awesome for me, and I hope it’s been awesome for all of you listening in. Have a fantastic sales day everyone and remember, reach out to Brynne. Let’s all get the most out of LinkedIn marketing. See you next time.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | May 3, 2021 | Podcast
This week’s special guest is Lisa Magnuson, the Founder and Corporate Sales Strategist of Top Line Sales. Lisa is a sales mastermind with a proven track record of helping her clients land big deals regularly. She loves sales and sales leadership and is the author of four books and over 250 articles on a variety of sales topics. Her roll-up-your-sleeves style helps clients land seven-figure deals. Lisa shares with us the secrets not just to improving sales but to going after, and winning, 5x sales opportunities.
Whether it’s working with a temporary account team or an established sales team, coming on board at the planning, proposal, or presentation stage for a 6, 9, or 18-month timeframe, Lisa brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation. She shares:
- How to score and then prioritize sales opportunities
- Signs that a deal will move forward or stall out
- The importance of using a relationship map and the SWOT process
- The necessity of rigorous pre-call planning
- And much more
5x deals, deals that are five times the size of an average deal, need to be approached differently – they need their own strategy for success. Lisa has the proven approach for winning these types of deals AND a free offer for listeners. Get ready to learn!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and this is Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we are speaking with the fabulous Lisa Magnuson. She is the founder and corporate sales strategist of Top Line Sales. She’s a mastermind sales strategist with a proven track record of helping her clients land seven-figure deals. Lisa has a roll up your sleeves approach that has helped her clients win contracts, totaling over 350 million in new revenue. She is the author of four books on sales, including The Top Sales Leader Playbook, How to Win 5x Deals Repeatedly. She’s published more than 250 articles on sales topics ranging from pre call planning to landing 5x accounts. She is frequently featured on radio shows webinars, and social media and our podcast today. So this is gonna be a great sales discussion, folks, especially about winning 5x deals. Let’s get started. Lisa, welcome to the show.
Lisa Magnuson: Thank you, Nancy. Happy to be here.
Nancy: Yeah, you know, in doing my homework about you. The one word that kept coming to my mind is, I’m guessing you love sales. Lisa, is that a correct guess?
Lisa: I do love sales. That’s very funny. I love sales. And I love sales leadership, too.
Nancy: Yeah. So, you know, for all of us listening, were coming out of COVID. Thank goodness, and there’s hope in the air. You know, what are your predictions for sales in 21? I mean, our 5x deals out there?
Lisa: They are. Absolutely. And just to kind of clarify. So a 5x deal is a deal about five times your average deal size. So you know, if your listeners have an average deal size of about $100,000 on a 5x deal is a $500,000 deal. So everybody knows that you have to do different things when you are going after those kinds of opportunities. But back to your question. Yeah, last year, we saw prospects really stay with the status quo, they really did not have an appetite for change. I think it had to do with, you know, with risk, nobody wanted to take any risk. We didn’t see big proposals, as many big proposals, we certainly see as many RFPs not that really any sales organization wants to see an RFP. Right. But, but yeah, that is definitely changing. And I’m seeing all kinds of activities around larger deals with my clients this year.
Nancy: Wow, you know, I’ve read the you believe having a rigorous prospect strategy and sticking to it is critical, you know, define rigorous for us and what has to be done?
Lisa: Yeah, I absolutely believe that by having kind of a strategy or sort of a way that you go after large deals over time, increases your likelihood of winning exponentially. You know, when I’m working with account teams, you know, temporary teams that come together around an opportunity, and we sort of map out our our time together. So maybe that’s six months, nine months, 18 months, whatever we think it’s going to take to go after these these big deals. I tell them, it’s like every time we meet and talk about the accounting, the strategy and agree on actions and advances, and people take action, you just increase your likelihood of winning that deal by whatever, 10% more and you just marched down that path. And pretty soon, you won. And now you’re thinking about your win celebration. So yeah, I believe absolutely believe in a very deliberate, purposeful and systematic approach to going after very, very large deals.
Nancy: Yeah. And so what would be like step one.
Lisa: Step one, you know when I work with account teams and I do this work, every week for the last 16 years and and and I try to meet the team where they are. So sometimes I come in a little later than I would like to to help them. You know, maybe they’re at the proposal stage, or the presentation stage. And and so you know, we kind of come in and make that incredibly valuable and as productive as possible. But if you really are thinking about where do you start, if you’re starting from the beginning, you really want to start with choosing the right opportunities.
And and I have a scoring tool that works really well, that looks at more than just the size of the contract, or the opportunity, or the deal that looks at seven or eight factors. And you can actually think about those things, you can score those, and many my many of my clients, you know, maybe we’ll score five or six possible opportunities, and then we’ll pick the best two or three to concentrate on based on on the scoring results. So you’re going to spend a lot of time on these deals, and it’s really important that you pick your best opportunities.
Nancy: Yeah. You know, I’m in listening to what you say. So you have this plan, you’re working on it. What are the signs that it’s going to move forward? Or what what are the signs where this deal may not happen?
Lisa: Well, the signs that it’s going to move forward are that your prospect is with you, you are in lockstep. So, you know and and prospect by prospect, I don’t mean singular. Whenever you’re going after a big opportunity, it’s usually there’s usually you have your own account team, maybe that’s the account executive and the sales manager and the VP of sales, and maybe somebody from professional services or, or marketing or the account manager, there’s any number of people that form that account team.
And then on the prospect side, we know that their buying teams are increasing every year, they add more people, to those those buying teams. So you know, you are making progress when you are advancing in lockstep with your prospect. And, and so and that’s got to sort of, you know, play out over time new people come in and out. And to answer the second part of your question, you know, you have stalled or stopped dreaded terms, for sales people.
Nancy: We don’t like those words, but.
Lisa: We don’t like reality. We don’t like it when it happens. We don’t like it. Sometimes we’re like way in and it happens. But yeah, when when when you’re not in lockstep when you’re not moving forward, you have stalled or stopped. And that’s kind of the death nail for for advancing.
Nancy: Yeah, you know, I love stories. We chatted before this, you love stories, so share a story with the audience that they would really find interesting and fascinating.
Lisa: Absolutely. So one of my favorite stories, so many stories, but one of my favorite stories was a was one of my clients that had the opportunity for really big deals. And we, we did all the things we put together the account team, and we scored the opportunity that we and we chose someone we started working with that with those opportunities and developing them. And they identified an opportunity for basically a 40 million what ended up being a $40 million deal. So even though their type of business lent itself to big deals in general, this was big, even on their scale. The problem was that, that the prospect didn’t really, they preferred somebody else, they already had a partner that they that they liked.
And then in addition to that, there were some some kind of hurdles that seemed a little bit insurmountable, some geographical hurdles, that that was that were a big thing. So even though this big opportunity was out there, it didn’t start from a position of strength and it wasn’t an existing customer. You always increase your chances if you’re trying to expand an existing customer, but this was a brand new customer never did business. They prefer or prospects they preferred somebody else. Plus there are some big challenges. And that’s so that’s typical that happens. It’s like you’re at the beginning and you’re just looking at this wall. And we just persevered. We just kept meeting and we did all kinds of strategy work.
We we did a relationship map who do we know who do we need to know how do we really grow the relationships we did a SWOT thinking about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, both from an internal perspective and external. What did they think were the strengths versus what the prospect might have viewed as the strengths. And then we we use that landscape to develop our our strategy, our overall strategy, and our short, medium and long term goals for for this opportunity. And we just kept meeting we probably met, you know, when when things were really happening, we’d meet like every couple of weeks to do strategy work, we never met less than once a month. And, you know, all that work, every single meeting that they had with that prospect, tons of pre call planning it all it all paid off. Nine months later they close that contract $40 million.
Nancy: Wow.
Lisa: New customer for them. And this is a coup de gras, Nancy, you’re going to love this. Within 90 days after they started implementing their solution, that brand new customer gave them a referral to somebody else with a similar up similar opportunity that they never would have probably known about. If they didn’t get that referral, just like, crazy.
Nancy: Wow. Holy cow. You know, you are all about planning. And I know you are insistent on pre call planning. And I can only imagine how many of these plans are put into place, especially when you go in after large business. I mean, why is it so important to have this stuff put down in writing on in the computer? Why is it so critical?
Lisa: Well, there’s all the strategy work. And to me, that’s account planning. And that’s critical, because here’s what I have found over the 30 years that I’ve been doing this. 16 years as as a consultant. Is that people get together. And if you don’t capture the the thinking and expertise of the team and the strategic, you know, insights, and the action items, if you don’t capture those things, then the next time they get to get together. And I’ve seen this play out so many times they couldn’t even count. They just talked about the exact same stuff. They get together again, and they just have the same conversation, but yet nothing happens. So so that’s probably the most important reason to capture the account plans.
But you said pre call planning. And to me, those are two different things. You’ve got account planning. But then you have pre call planning. So pre call planning is planning for a very specific prospect meeting. And if I had a client one time in the Bay Area in California, and they said, Lisa, what is you know, if there was just one thing, what would it be? And I said it. Pre call planning. Because if you commit to rigorous pre call planning for all your prospect meetings, then your system, you’re improving your likelihood of of that meeting leading to another meeting, you’re avoiding the stalls and stops. And so basically, it’s where the rubber meets the road, why wouldn’t you want to plan for the interaction with the prospect, especially now, when it’s so hard to get those meetings? Right?
So my thing lately, Nancy is pre compliant is no longer optional, is not optional anymore. If you want to, if you want to hit your quota, if you want to blow it out of the, you know, blow it out of the water, you got to commit to pre call planning. You have to do that you have to make sure every prospect conversation is productive.
Nancy: Yeah, you know, to me, sales is all about activities, doing the right activities to keep the conversations going forward. And I agree with you, it’s a huge component to at least you know, this way, you’re not guessing you’ve done your homework, you have some idea where you’d like to take this conversation along. So let’s segue into you, and what you would like me to spotlight.
Lisa: I think that that, or one of the things that if you go with the notion of pre call planning is no longer optional. One of the things that I think would be incredibly valuable for your listeners and your audience is my pre call planning guide. And, and that is what I would like you to spotlight. It’s it’s a two page fillable pdf, I use it myself, it’s rock solid in terms of kind of a thought process, it’s really just very simply walks you through the thought process. And your listeners can get that for free on my website, they can download it, and they can start using it today and they can start using it to improve their effects effectiveness.
There’s lots of statistics around pre call planning and, you know, at a minimum, the statistics that are out there would say that they can bump their productivity by 20%. Meaning their cut their prospect news can be 20% more effective, just by committing to pre call planning. And it is a discipline. I mean you it’s it’s, you know, it tells people kind of like to wing it?
Nancy: I’m not a big fan of winging it. I mean, I learned a long time ago winging it is too exhausting. It’s exhausting, right. And by having a plan in place, takes the pressure off of what has to happen, right? You know what, so we’re gonna get to, at the end of our talk today, I want to make sure my listeners know how to find you. But, you know, one last, yeah, one last question. Last year, we touched on it right? It was a different year of selling, we all learned lessons. How can sellers apply what we learned from last year, I think you have a couple of ideas.
Lisa: I do have a couple of ideas on that, because I think we do need to kind of really dig deep as to what has changed. And you can see it in the statistics and the trends. And we all know it from just personal experience. Basically, we have to keep it simple distraction is our biggest enemy right now. Our prospects are distracted, we’re distracted, we’re all distracted, we have to keep it simple. Conversations have to be simple. Proposals have to be simple. Presentations or demonstrations have to be simple. Next steps have to be simple. Everything has to be simple. So that is one of the things. The other thing is it’s got to be about your prospects 100% of the time.
And what I mean by that is, you cannot go into any meeting and be thinking about what you want to tell them, you have to be thinking about where they are and what they want to hear. And how can you add value to them based on where they are. And if you don’t keep that perspective, if you if you literally can put yourself in their shoes and kind of go, well, right now they’re collecting information they’re deciding on, they’re identifying any risks. They’re, you know, they’re sort of assessing the magnitude of their problem. We’re cackler, you add value to that, if that’s where they are, how can you add value to them. And if you if you keep that mindset of keeping things simple, you know, talking about risk, what perceived risk do they have. Getting it out on the table.
Figuring out how to add value, then you’re going to you’re going to advance with them, they’re going to view you as that resource and that trusted partner and, and trusted resource, and they’re going to want to keep talking to you. And and you know not to keep coming back to pre call planning. But that’s a lot to accomplish in a in a prospect conversation, if you didn’t do your pre call planning. So pre call planning is where you sort of have that conversation be successful by design. It’s like, what are those discussion points? What questions do you want to ask? What value do you want to offer? All of that has to be thought about in advance during your pre call planning.
Nancy: Yeah. How long should a pre call planning take?
Lisa: Is that as you know, I get that question all the time. And here’s, here’s, here’s how I answer it. So if you are experienced, you know, it pre call planning has become a habit like, let’s just take my two page fillable PDF. Pre call planning form, you know, it has kind of a whole series that you want to think through and whatever to do your to get to your agenda and your your plan for the meeting. You know, if you’re experienced with that, and it’s just a call between you and you know, one person on the prospect side, you can do it in 15 minutes. You can quickly think through those things very quickly.
It can be a 15 minute pre call plan. You know, there’s maybe a couple people either on the prospect side, your side’s a little more complex, maybe it’s 30 minutes. And if it’s a really important call, you’re planning for first time prospect, but it’s a big accountant. It’s a 5x opportunity, it’s going to take an hour. You’re going to have your account team, and you’re going to spend an hour. And if it’s an executive call, you know, a true C suite executive, you are going to take whatever time is required. And I’ve been on pre call planning, you know, meetings with my clients where we spend a couple hours planning for an incredibly important executive call. Because we know if we don’t we won’t get a second call. And that you know, once and done isn’t really gonna do anything for us.
Nancy: Yeah, by the way, I downloaded it. It’s awesome. So we’re gonna say, right, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I love the fact that you could just edit it online. You don’t have to print it, write it out. It’s all in the computer. So I think my takeaway right now as we’re wrapping up the program is sales is a sport, right? And activities become habits, right? Creating the habits that that will allow the conversations to move forward. Is that correct? And pre call planning
Lisa: 100 percent.
Nancy: Is that habit. Key habit.
Lisa: Yep, and if you just pick one thing, pick that, pick that and that will serve you well. Yes, if you want to go after really, really big opportunities, there’s more you have to do more than that. But pick pre call planning as the first thing as as, as that fundamental thing. I call it the multiplier effect, you know, you pick one thing, it’s going to have a multiplier effect. And that’s what pre call planning will do for your, your listeners.
Nancy: Great stuff. So, how can my audience reach you?
Lisa: Yeah, well, they definitely going to want to go to my website, which is www.toplinesales.com. www.toplinesales.com. There’s all kinds of resources there. I’ve been on brighttalk for five, four years, and I’ve got webinars all that free content, really bright talk sales experts channel is a really great resource for sales people. But that pre call plan I believe it’s on the resource page at the bottom. And so they’re gonna want to get that. And also they can click through they can buy my book, they can click through and connect with me on LinkedIn. So that’s kind of the hub.
Nancy: That is is. Well, thank you all for listening in and a special thank you Lisa for joining the program. Sharing your wisdom, your sales wisdom, with all of us and you know, remember to reach out to Lisa folks when you’re ready for 5x and you want to get things right. Make it a great sales day everyone and Lisa, I do hope you’re gonna come back.
Lisa: Thank you, Nancy. I would love to come back.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 26, 2021 | Podcast
Our special guest on this week’s episode of Conversational Selling is Alice Heiman. Alice is the Founder and Chief Sales Energizer of Alice Heiman, a sales strategy and tactics consultancy. She works with SMB companies to drive growth and bring about change through the newest research and best practices in positive mindsets. Her work often involves coaching CEOs to take the first steps to change a company’s approach to sales. Her view of sales success involves everyone in the business and yields real results fast.
Alice is an award-winning sales expert who has appeared as a guest on multiple TV and radio programs, as well as in print publications. We are so excited to have her share her expert insights with us! She explains:
- The keys to a positive sales mindset
- Sales strategy communication, process, and deployment
- Who is ultimately responsible for sales
- And more
Be ready to take your sales strategy to the next level with our Alice Heiman interview. Listen now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hello everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it is time for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what is going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Alice Heiman, Founder and Chief Sales Energizer of Alice Heiman. Alice helps SMB companies drive growth by incorporating the newest research and best practices to enable business owners to bring about change that leads to growth. She demonstrates how sales performance is directly related to a leader’s mindset. Alice is a nationally recognized sales expert. She’s made numerous guest appearances on television and radio broadcasts. In addition to be featured in print publications, including Entrepreneurs, Startups, and Selling Power magazine. For over two decades of teaching others the fine art of selling, she’s earned a host of awards, including Sales Woman of the Year, Marketer of the Year and many more. Well, folks, what else can I say except welcome to the show, Alice.
Alice Heiman: Oh thank you, Nancy. Thank you so much. I will say it is lovely to be recognized for one’s accomplishments. So I appreciate it.
Nancy: Well, you earned it. And we want to broadcast that for sure. Yeah. So let’s jump right in. You stated when sales leaders change the way they work with sales teams, results are immediate and dramatic. That’s a really powerful state statement. Tell us more.
Alice: Well, I think a lot of times in sales, especially in larger organizations, when the sales numbers are not being hit, or things are not going quite the way we want them to. And maybe we’re not retaining customers at the rate we would like. Or there are other issues in sales, we tend to look at the sales team, bark at the sales team, even perhaps, and blame the sales team. And in many cases, it just really isn’t their problem. And it definitely isn’t only their problem. So what I have learned over the many years that I’ve been doing this is that leadership needs to change.
So when sales are down, look in the mirror, you are the one who should be making the changes, especially as CEO, you’re the one who allows those leaders to lead. And they allow their sales teams to do what they’re doing, which most of the time, you know, isn’t that they’re not trying, I don’t know very many sales teams who are just sitting around not trying to make sales, they are trying to make sales, but something’s wrong. And the CEO really needs to take a hold of that and the leaders and when those leaders do that, it’s remarkable.
Nancy: Yeah, you know, you’re you’re making me think of in my career, some leaders give a lot of rope. And some sales people love that. Right? They’re not being bogged down. Other leaders have a very tight rein. When do you know you’ve got to tighten the reins? I think that’s kind of what you’re saying. Right? The leadership has to know when to jump in, and help correct whatever’s taking place.
Alice: Yeah, I believe it’s more about the strategy, the way the strategy is communicated. And the process that is built to deploy the strategy, because it is much easier to manage process than people. And so tightening the reins, doesn’t typically work because we haven’t really communicated well in the first place and made our expectations known. And so it comes down to accountability. If we have a great plan, if we communicate that plan, well, if we put all the processes in place, so that everyone can do their part of that plan, then it’s simply about holding people accountable. And if we do that consistently, they’re either gonna move up or out. There’s no other place for them to go.
Nancy: Yeah, you talk a lot about mindset. And my experience is mindset and sales go hand in hand. Why is it especially important in sales leadership?
Alice: Well, I mean, I can’t even imagine, you know, a salesperson with a bad mindset making their quota that’s for sure. I can’t imagine a leader with a bad mindset, actually able to lead in any positive way that would make an impact. I do believe mindset is important in life in general. But if you’re in a bad mood, if your mindset is such that, you know, you feel you’re a loser, or you feel your customers are losers, or you just cannot get a positive thought going, how is that going to come across to the people you work with, and to the people you sell to? So internally, and externally, it’s going to be painfully obvious. So because we are customer facing, and, you know, not every job is customer facing.
So if somebody is in a bad mood that day, or doesn’t have the best mindset, but they still function and get, you know, whatever, put on the shelf, or get the accounting done, okay, they’re not doing their best job, but it’s not gonna make or break us necessarily. But when a salesperson, a customer facing person, a customer success person, or anyone who faces the customer is in a bad mood has a bad mindset, it comes out, people can see it, the words that they use the grimace on their face, the impatience, the frustration, it all comes out. So we simply have to be in control of our mindset, which is absolutely possible. It’s not easy, but it’s absolutely possible. And sales people truly must have a great mindset and so must their leaders.
Nancy: Yeah. Everything you stated is so true. And you know, sticking around people, professionals with, like, mindset just makes it easier wouldn’t you say and get rid of the bad mindset in your circle or center of influence. You’ve also stated that you have an innate understanding of selling with the equally important talent for communicating easily with a variety of personalities and backgrounds. How is that? And is there a magic wand that could make us all be able to have that talent?
Alice: Well, I do believe that anyone who truly wants to sell can be trained to sell if they have a positive mindset, and they want to do it. But when I say innate ability, I feel like for me, it just comes very naturally. And why? Because I don’t sell. I simply love to solve problems. So I want to listen to the people that have a need. And I really want to hear them and I want to collaborate with them and share ideas and knock things around and ask some more questions, come up with some solutions, and then provide those resources that will help them solve their problem. Sometimes those resources come from me and I make a sale. And sometimes those resources come from someone else.
So I I genuinely care. That’s innate in me, I genuinely care. I listen. I want to help them. And so that really works for me. I do believe that if you want to be good at sales, you do have to care. And if if you don’t care about what you’re selling, or don’t care about the people that you sell to, this is not the right job for you. There are many other jobs where you don’t have to be customer facing. And you don’t have to have that same level of caring. But sales is a helping profession. And so we definitely have to choose people to go into sales that already care and really want to help.
Nancy: Interesting. I love your unique idea that you believe sets to apart. Share it with the audience.
Alice: Well, I believe that sales should be easy. A lot of people think sales is hard. A lot of people talk about the grind, you know, oh yeah, sales is a grind. It’s hard, I can’t get ahold of anybody. All of that language is negative mindset. And as you use that language, it becomes true. Sales is hard. It is a grind, if that’s what you say, and that’s what you do. And that’s what you believe. But truly, sales should be easy. If you again care and genuinely want to help. If you use methods that help you meet people through introductions versus constantly doing cold outreach, which is just exhausting. If you, you know, have great conversations with people, and listen and help them sales is easy. It’s not hard.
Nancy: I again, I completely agree with you. And I think too, one point you made is to use multiple challenges. I mean, channels of outreach, right? Don’t make it all outbound cold, you want to develop relationships, centers of influence, right, get referrals, and so on. And when I read your response, share sale should be easy. My only add on to that is it should be fun, wouldn’t you say?
Alice: Yeah. It should be fun. Because when you solve people’s problems, especially when it’s a problem that’s really troubling their business or help, they’re losing revenue. And you can help them fix that. And they become happy and look at you as a trusted adviser. I mean, it’s fun. I mean, I wake up every single day, I cannot wait to do what I do. I love to talk to my clients. I love helping people sell. It is fun.
Nancy: Did you do anything before sales? Or you just came out and you were sales?
Alice: I never dreamed in a million years, Nancy that I would go into sales. It wasn’t even on my mind ever. I spent a lot of time in high school doing art and being in theater and designing sets and costumes and acting. I went to college to be an art major. And I did not have sales on my mind. I didn’t end up graduating with a degree in art, I switched to elementary education. And I was an educator for 13 years before I went into business, I taught Junior High special education, I taught some elementary grades. And then for most of my career as a teacher, I was a reading specialist, working with children of all ages, who were struggling with reading, so I was a true problem solver. And a lot of what I learned while I was teaching transferred very, very well into the sales world.
Nancy: Wow. A real interesting. Speaking of interesting, I know you’re you’re full of stories, share one that you think we would all be intrigued to hear?
Alice: Well, I yes, I have a million stories. I I love to tell stories. And I think it’s an important way to communicate for all sales people, and all leaders as well. But um, I have a client that I just adore. And I was working with them a couple of years ago and, and things were going pretty well. But then, you know, we we kind of parted ways for a while and I got a call from the CEO. And he was, you know, thinking that sales were just going to kind of run themselves. One day he woke up, and he said, oh my gosh, sales are not going to run themselves. And he had the sales reporting to a non sales leader. And it just wasn’t working. So he decided that he was going to lead sales.
And I thought, well, that’ll be interesting. So he did. And he, you know, hired me to work with him on helping him lead sales. But of course, as with all CEOs of growing companies, they’re busy doing many things, you know, they could be out getting financing and investors, they could be making acquisitions. They’re leading the leaders of their company, they’re doing many, many, many things for their company. So having time to focus on one area, the it ops or you know, finance or sales would be difficult because they have so many things to do. Yeah, but anyway, he tried it.
Nancy: Okay.
Alice: And, um, you know, he realized that that that really wasn’t going to work all that well. So I had a lot of fun. I’m working with him. And I think the best thing about him leading sales was he did realize that he needed a sales leader. He did realize that it was hard the way they were doing it. And back to sales should be easy. I said to him, well, it doesn’t have to be this hard. Would you like it to be easier? Let’s, you know, let’s work on that. And so of course we did. We had someone that we moved into that sales leadership position that I now coach, and it’s working out beautifully, because through this process, we came to realize, you know, that leading sales as the CEO, which is critically important, doesn’t mean you have to manage the sales people, it means you lead the strategy, right, and you give the support that is needed
And then, you know, we also we really realized that there were not good expectations set or really any expectation set. And so everybody was just doing their own thing. So once we set the expectations and held people to them, I gotta say they were at 57% of no, I’m sorry, they were 87% of quota, the second week, into the month, once we got all of this into place. I mean, amazing things can happen. Right? It’s easier. So we realized that, and I think that, um, you know, again, the sales people were feeling kind of discouraged, because they were doing it the hard way. So when we showed them how to do it the easy way, oh, my gosh, their whole demeanor changed, their mindset changed. It’s just delightful to work with them, and they love what they’re doing.
Nancy: Wonderful. So you when you have a methodology that works and flows, it really takes so much pressure off of sales people, right? Because they know if by just doing the ABC activities, it’s going to happen.
Alice: Right. Do the right activity, right. You know, do it consistently. And you’ll get results. And the other key here too, is a lot of CEOs that I work with, they are smaller companies under 100 million in sales, and a lot of them built their businesses from the ground up, and they love their people. But most of them hold on to non performers way too long. So that’s another thing we realized that there were some non performers that just simply needed to go. And you’ve heard this before. I’ll say it again, it’s still true. Hire slow, fire fast.
Nancy: Fire fast. Yep. It’s true.
Alice: You know, if it’s not working out, release them to go off to their next adventure where they can be successful. And you know, relieve yourself and them of the pain. And then take your time to hire the right people. You know, many interviews, many types of interviews and make sure they’re vetting you as much as you’re vetting them. Because if they’re not, you don’t want them.
Nancy: I get it. I think you know, I don’t know if I’m putting words in your mouth. You’re putting words in my mouth. We speak the same language, Alice. Yeah, so what would you like me to spotlight?
Alice: Well, I have something really fun that I’m a bit nervous about, but I’m going to share it with you. I’m starting a podcast.
Nancy: Congratulations.
Alice: Yeah. Thank you! The working title, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to keep it, is Elevate Your Sales with Alice Heiman. And I’m excited because I’m going to be interviewing CEOs about how they got their start in sales and how they built their sales organizations, a little bit like Guy Raz, How I Built This, but this is all focused on sales. And what’s going to be so much fun is they’re sharing not only their successes, but their struggles so that other CEOs can learn from them.
Nancy: That’s awesome. And we all need a community no matter what role we play. A like minded community to share what they’re doing well, but also what their stumbling blocks might have been, and how they what they learned, right from overcoming it. I can’t wait to is going to be audio or visual.
Alice: Well it’s going to be both or at least I’m gonna try. Just starting out, you know, you started a podcast not that long ago. So yeah, there’s a lot of choices to be made, but I’m gonna try to do both.
Nancy: You’ve got it. Tell me something that is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Alice: Well, I’m not sure about this, but I think some would disagree. The CEO is ultimately responsible for sales. And you know, what does that mean? Of course, of course, the CEO is ultimately responsible for everything. They’re the one running the company. But I think in too many cases, the sales team is blamed the sales leadership and the sales team are blamed when sales are down when we’re losing customers. And truly, that is because the CEO is not doing, you know, not doing their part not playing the role that they need to play, not providing a strategy not providing support. You can’t just look at the sales team and blame them. As the CEO, you have to look in the mirror and see what part you’re playing in the sales failure.
Nancy: Hey, the buck always stops. Oh, yeah. And then, what is one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Alice: I believe that driving sales growth at any organization involves everyone. It’s not just the responsibility of the sales team.
Nancy: Yeah.
Alice: I just don’t think you can just say, oh, hey, you know, it’s just the sales team. it’s their responsibility, oh, I don’t do sales. You can’t use that kind of language. Everyone is in sales, because it really truly boils down to the customer experience. And everyone in a company has something to do with that customer experience. So we can’t just leave it to the sales team and tell them go sell and you know, go retain those customers. Everyone has to be involved.
Nancy: Everyone has a role and creates a solid successful unit, if everyone participates in the roll. This is awesome stuff. And, you know, how can my audience find you?
Alice: Well, the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn. I’m Alice Heiman. And that’s h e i m a n. You can also find me on my blog, and my website, which is aliceheiman.com, and most recently, you can find me on clubhouse at Alice Heiman as well.
Nancy: All right. Well, listen, thank you all for listening in. And thank you, Alice, so much for joining the program. Remember everyone out there reach out to Alice, when you want to get things right. And I think Alice, you’re all about getting it right, especially in sales. I want everybody to make it an awesome sales day. And Alice, I hope you come back.
Alice: Oh, thank you for having me. I’d love to come back. And everyone if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, please let me know that you heard me here with Nancy. And I’ll accept your request immediately. If you don’t tell me you heard me with Nancy, then I leave you in a pile till I have time to go research you, so just say hey, I heard you with Nancy. And I’m happy to connect and I’m happy to take your questions there as well. Thank you, Nancy. This has really been a pleasure.
Nancy: Oh, pleasure here, too.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 19, 2021 | Podcast
On this week’s episode of Conversational Selling, our special guest is Tonya Bjurstrom, Founder of Dirby Solutions. Tonya leverages her impressive customer experience skill set to help companies gain valuable insight from their customers and better identify untapped opportunities for growth. Customer retention is so important and Tonya shares how to get the most out of it for our businesses.
Most companies treat their customers well, many have developed great relationships with them, but few really tap into their customers as an avenue of growth or means to find solutions to their business challenges. Tonya takes listeners through the following steps to begin fully utilizing customer value:
- Identifying key desired insights
- Creating space where the customer is comfortable sharing
- Phrasing questions to elicit more feedback
- And more
By staying curious about your customers, asking the right questions in the right way, and allowing them to guide the decision-making process, you’ll maintain their loyalty, increase revenue, and grow your business. It always starts with the human conversation. Listen now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hello, everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese. And yes, it is time for Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Joining us today is Tonya Bjurstrom. She is the Founder of Dirby Solutions, the voice of the customer. Her company builds and implements strategies and programs to get over that get other b2b companies closer to their customers by uncovering new insight. This insight generates new opportunities that increase customer retention, so important. And of course, customer revenue.
Her clients leverage her skills as a fractional CXO to improve the experience of customers. Tonya’s sweet spot is her ability to grow from an existing customer base. She knows how to ask the right questions in the right way, and understands how to apply the feedback. She creates a nurturing experience that generates valuable insight, and identifies untapped opportunities. So everyone, all my listeners, we all know that customer retention is such a hot topic in today’s world, and it costs so much more to replace a customer than to retain an existing customer. So I am, and I’m sure you are really anxious to learn some of your techniques. Tonya, welcome to the show.
Tonya: Thank you, Nancy. It’s always great to speak to you whether it’s in an interview or you know, just on the phone, but I love the opportunity to be on your podcast because even just the name Conversational Selling and that is that is so my style. That is so what I really built Derby on is being able to create just really easy conversations with customers, you know, that’s how you’re able to uncover the deepest insights. So, thanks for having me.
Nancy: So I’m gonna high five you in the air. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Virtual high five. Yeah. Okay. I also love the name, you chose voice of the customer, you know, I’m thinking of voice the show on TV, right? It’s all about a sound voice. And you’ve had such a successful career, what drove you to specialize in VOC, you’re the voice of the customer?
Tonya: You know, when I launched Derby, it really was more as a generalized sales consulting practice. I was working primarily with tech companies, who were having a variety of different challenges with their sales efforts. And which, with each of these companies, when I started the engagement, you know, my first step, and you know, looking at the sales or marketing or customer experience issues a customer is having, my first step is talking to their customers, because who better will be able to identify, you know, why? Why is the product being purchased? What points in the sales process, were really key for them making a decision to work with this particular company? What kind of an experience are they having, it’s really the customers that have the deepest insights and those topics.
And this, this idea was was new to many of the companies I was working with. They treated their customers very well, they had great relationships with their customers, but they weren’t tapping into their customers as a means of growth. And so that was where I decided to really focus the efforts of Derby on to the voice of the customer and using it as a growth strategy. Not only as a strategy to grow in revenue for organizations, but as a strategy to grow overall. To provide a better experience. right. To you know, really even it can even deep into the happiness of their employees if you have better engagement with customers. So that’s really where where the idea came.
Nancy: It really resonates with all of us. And you know you also write and I love this to curiosity killed the cat or so the saying goes, thankfully, I am not a cat. Do you want to expand on that? It was very catchy when I read it.
Tonya: You know, I think that’s that’s one of the the natural tendencies that I have that has made me successful in this particular area of business is I am, I’m just naturally a very curious person. And I have always asked a lot of questions. And so that serves that serves me very well in working with companies who, who need to explore the types of questions that they’re asking not only their customers, but themselves. You know, there’s an expression that I absolutely love, which is when you believe you know, the answer, you fail to ask the right question.
Nancy: You beat me to it. Expand on that, ok.
Tonya: Sure, go right ahead.
Nancy: No, go finish your sentence. I was just looking at. You just answered my next question. But good.
Tonya: Yeah. I mean, you know, that is just, I think it’s, it’s human nature. Right. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s human nature for assumption and bias to impact how we seek out information, how we make decisions. And it’s really easy to rather than ask questions that are truly going to uncover new insight, to ask questions that are going to justify your assumptions. Are going to justify past decisions. And, you know, there’s no malice in this. It’s many, many times. It’s it’s subconscious, right. And so being, you know, being able to have a fresh perspective on a situation, and be able to have whoever is providing that perspective, ask the question, then, is a really move, removing that chance, assumption or bias to jump in and dictate what kind of insight you uncover.
Nancy: Yeah, and, you know, that’s a good segue into what makes you unique in your company. And you start off always, you know, every time I’ve spoken to was asking the right questions in the right way. Talk more about that. You know, I think we’d all want to know, what are the right questions? How do you ask them?
Tonya: Sure. So, you know, if, if you look at a discussion between two people, sometimes, and I’m sure, Nancy, you’ve had this experience, and others who are listening, have had this experience where when you allow that awkward silence? Some people do better with than others, right? But as you become skilled as an interviewer as you are, you know, that that awkward silence, silence can often be where the greatest insights are born. Where you’re giving somebody an opportunity to really, to really sit in a question, and really think about what it is that they have to say. And so that is, that is one very specific thing that I think is important, if you’re going to be asking questions of somebody, allowing that awkward silence is one of the pieces of asking them in the right way.
You know, and then the other side of it is creating a space that feels very comfortable. That truly feels like you know, a conversation over coffee. That’s how you’re going to be able to get the best insight, if somebody feels that level of comfort, and openness in sharing their feedback. And then you get into some specifics, right, you get into specifics of how you phrase questions, so that you’re making sure those questions are phrased in a way that are allowing for open feedback, right, that ask a, you know, open ended, not a closed ended question, right need to do that. But you also need to phrase it in a way where you’re, you’re able to pull the type of insights that you’re looking for, without directing where that customer is going to go. So, you know, providing some guidance within the question to keep things on topic, but not not directing where that customer ends up. So, again, going back to that assumption and bias piece is right, using your phrasing of a question to do that.
Nancy: And I’m guessing and I could be wrong, that the questions will change from customer to customer. Is that a fair statement?
Tonya: Yeah, it depends. It depends on how somebody is approaching a program, right? You know, for Voice of the Customer programs, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways that you can do it. In my approach. You know, I use questions as a guide. So I establish what we call a KDI Key Desired insights with my clients. And that’s where we’re like, Okay, so we’re going into this program, what is the insight? We aren’t we first are uncovering what insight my clients need. So somebody’s going into a voice of the customer program, they really need to go into it with some intention, you know, for this particular piece, what what do we really want to understand from our customers?
What areas are we having the most challenges in right now within our business, that we believe our customers could provide some insight to help us on? Or, you know, what are our primary concerns with the customer experience? Or, you know, how, how should we move forward with our product roadmap? Are there some features that we’re not, we’re not thinking of that our customers really need? So looking at what the insights are, that they really want to pull, and then building questions that support those insights. But the questions are really just a guide. So okay, when I’m, so when I’m doing these interviews, I have my questions in front of me. And they’re the same questions that I’m going to ask every customer for this particular program.
But we might not get to all of the questions because the customer has some really great specific insight on one particular area that we just dig into. Or it might bring up another question that isn’t on our list, but that is very natural and support the the KDIs, the key desired insights. So that’s really my recommendation. It’s a balance of, yes, you have, you have a direction, you have a set of questions, but it’s your guide. It’s not a script.
Nancy: And that’s okay. So, basically, what you’re describing is a skill. It could be a learned skill, is that correct? And how would people go about learning this, and you know, what I’m thinking of as you’re speaking. I’m thinking of active listening, as the driver and listening to how the customer responds to know if you have to pivot in another direction? or stay on the questions. Would you agree with that?
Tonya: I would absolutely agree with that. You know, I think that listening, you know, and, and particularly in our sales profession, right, you know, listening is a skill that is always talked about, has forever been talked about, I think, you know, you find the pounded out tablets, and they’re gonna talk about listening. You know, always. And so I think I think you’re absolutely right. But I think that with all of the distractions, and, you know, just difficulty of attention that we have in the, you know, in today’s market, I think it’s even more important than ever, truly, I really think that it’s a skill that that has still not been fully embraced by a lot of salespeople. And it’s important, and not just sales people, but their managers and executives and everybody on down the line.
Nancy: Yeah, what is something you’d want me to spotlight? What do you want to talk about?
Tonya: You know, I, it’s really important for, you know, for people to understand that the customer experience, oftentimes, particularly if you’re looking at SMB, who as we all know, and this is typically limited on resource resources, the customer experience oftentimes ends up being a byproduct of other efforts, right? So your customer experience is going to fall under sales, or it’s going to fall under marketing, or, you know, once the sale is made. It’s now if it’s, if it’s a technical company, right, it’s now the support staff that’s responsible for the customer experience. And that isn’t that isn’t enough.
You know, the customer experience needs to be something that’s very intentional. You know, I think that’s where you see, so many companies now, hiring customer experience officers, right that CXO. Because it’s becoming so much more important, it’s becoming more important for retention purposes. You mentioned in the introduction, how much it costs, to acquire a new customer, versus retaining your existing customers. And you know, the number I use is at least five times right now, so much research and studies and different statistics around that. But I think for most companies, it’s at least five times more to acquire a new customer than it was to retain an existing customer.
You have to recruit, you know, in order to grow, you need to acquire new customers. I mean, you can’t stop doing that. But right. I think that that happens oftentimes at the expense of really retaining those existing customers. Leveraging those existing customers. We work hard. You know, you work hard, Nancy, I work hard. Every client, we work with every company out there, we work hard to win our customers. And companies need to keep them. And they need to be able to leverage them as, as a resource to sell more. So that’s, that’s what I really like for people to think about is to make improving the customer experience in an intentional practice, not a byproduct.
Nancy: Yeah, so I want to go back to and I apologize, your designated questions. What was that accurate acronym you use? Not a KPI?
Tonya: Yes, you’re not a real company? If you don’t have acronyms, right. So I had to come up with. I call them my KDIs. My key desired insights.
Nancy: Desired insights. So when you’re faced in front of a customer, or, you know, yeah, a customer and you’re representing them, how do you draw those insights out? Do they truly know what the issues are?
Tonya: You know, I have a worksheet that I use, you know, is the kind of the first step once, once a customer signs on, the first step in our process is to look through those and I have a list of gosh, just a couple of different areas, within an organization that I have found can benefit from insight through the these customer programs. And so I have again, and I have some questions, because I’m always asking questions. I have some questions that I asked. And, you know, usually, in my experience, there’s, there’s a couple things that people absolutely know, that they, you know, they absolutely know that this is an area of concern, this is something that we need to work on.
And we get that in the mix very quickly. And then there, there oftentimes ends up being at least one or two of those KDIs, I usually established two to four, right? It’s too much. If you get too many, then it’s just not manageable. But I think two to four is a good number going into any, any program like this, there’s usually a couple that we that we tease out that they weren’t thinking about, before the process started, that a big word thinking could could be areas where customer insight would be a benefit. And yeah.
Nancy: You know, you you’ve been around in sales, and I am what I love about you is you’re honest, and upfront. Tell me something you believe is true that almost nobody agrees with you on?
Tonya: That’s a good one. Um, I think the first thing that comes to mind, and I think this is relevant today, you know, with all of the time that we have spent on zoom over the past year or so, is that I have found when I complete these interviews with with the customers that are doing it over the phone, just a good old fashioned phone call is the best way to uncover the most deep and candid insights. I think for you know, for a lot of customers, being in you know, their office, whether it be home office, or their office office, and just sitting comfortably in a chair with a cup of coffee.
And they’re on the phone, and they don’t have to worry about, you know, what they’re looking like on a zoom camera that that is for these interviews, the best format. And I think that people think that that’s we passed that right that no, of everybody’s on zoom, or you know, in person, people are just as comfortable. And of course, those those types of conversations have their place. But for this work, just over the phone, that’s what I found to be the best way to complete these interviews.
Nancy: Well, you know, I’m a big fan of that. And I think that the phones are a heck of a lot long, longer way than other modes of communication. I mean, the next best might be Zoom, because you’re still speaking right back and forth. But if it’s in written format, there’s so much that can be lost in the translation. So thank you for bringing up the phone again. I really appreciate that.
Tonya: Yes, you’re right, Nancy. Well, and that’s one of the reasons that I think you and I really, you know, we agree on a lot of things. And there’s a lot of synergy there. As we both appreciate the ability and the importance of just picking up the phone and having a conversation.
Nancy: Pick up that phone, everyone. Okay, we do have to wrap this up. But I’d like you to share one takeaway you’d like the audience to leave with.
Tonya: You know, I’m going to go back to what you said about my curiosity killing the cat, but thankfully, we’re not cats. Right. Be curious, right. My takeaway is genuinely truly be curious and allow fresh perspectives into your business. Because in order to, you know, in order to uncover new insight, you need fresh perspectives. So whether those are from third parties or whether those are from your customers, please let it be from your customers regardless of who else you include. Be curious and ask them questions.
Nancy: Awesome. Well oh, and how can my audience find you?
Tonya: So they can find me on my website. So Dirby is spelled Dirby. Okay, and my website is dirbysolutions.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. I would love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn. Tonya t o n y a Bjurstrom b j u r s t r o m. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on LinkedIn. So yeah.
Nancy: Yeah, well, you in that beautiful smile will find you for sure. So thank you for everyone listening in. Thank you, Tonya for being on the show everyone have a fantastic sales day and take care of your customer.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 12, 2021 | Podcast
Our special guest on this week’s episode of Conversational Selling is Lauren Bailey, the Founder and President of Factor 8 – an award-winning sales rep and manager training company. She is a 20 year veteran of the inside sales industry. Traveling the world, she has worked with the likes of Sony, Grainger, Microsoft, and Google. Lauren is also the Founder of The Girls Club, an organization committed to getting more women into sales management and leadership.
We speak with Lauren about the importance of inside selling and providing inside sellers with the training and coaching they need to be successful and avoid burnout, as well as:
- Which sales trends will last beyond the pandemic
- How inside sellers can best utilize a script while remaining authentic
- What’s being done to bring more women into sales management positions
- And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hello, everyone. It’s Nancy Calabrese, and yes, it is time for Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we are lucky to speak with Lauren Bailey, president and founder of Factor 8. She is a 20 year veteran of the inside sales industry. Lauren has worked as both the Director of Sales and Director of Training while traveling the world to launch inside sales teams. She’s worked with in house and outsourced sales team selling outbound, inbound, via chat, direct, field teamed and channel. Her primary industry experiences in IT, software and distribution. Corporate experience in clients include SAP, Sony, Ingram micro, Grainger, Microsoft and Google. Lauren is also the founder of The Girls Club, an organization committed to getting more women in sales, management and leadership. Now you all know folks that I live, eat and breathe inside sales. So this is going to be an awesome conversation. Welcome to the show, Lauren.
Lauren Bailey: Thank you so much, Nancy. I couldn’t be that old. Clearly. Somebody else had all that experience.
Nancy: Well, you sound young and full of vim and vigor, right.
Lauren: You know, my first inside sales management job, I went and bought a pair of fake reading glasses. So people would take me seriously. And now I’m having this flashback moment of, you know, as soon as you put a plus in the number of years of experience. I’ve stopped counting birthdays, Nancy.
Nancy: Yeah, but I’m not gonna volunteer mine. And by the way, now the reading glasses are real. Okay.
Lauren: Oh, god, yes. And they’re in every room of my house. I’m like minutes away from the old lady chain.
Nancy: There you go. So let me start by I want to bring up a topic that I know that is near and dear to both of us, and why training and coaching is so especially important for inside sales reps. Why is that?
Lauren: Because inside sales is where so many people start their careers, right? Inside sales is growing at a rate somewhere between seven and 20x field sales. And that’s that was pre pandemic, right? So give me a break it this is where people start it is the way of the future. Like assimilation is on its way, resistance is futile. So when you’re starting a career there, I mean, come on. People are graduating college now with almost zero business acumens. How is it that they actually would have any sales acumen and, and so we’ve got to teach these young professionals, how it’s done. That’s reason one, but reason to them even more passionate about and I promise to stop somewhere before reason 18, but reason is that sales is a confidence sport. And when we don’t teach people how to be successful at inside sales, they burn out fast. And more and more and more our industry is doing that. We’re teaching young professionals to hate selling. And that breaks my heart.
Nancy: You know, I’m baffled each and every day when people seem to have difficulties, having conversations and selling over the phone, or virtually, you know, because it’s really just a connection with another human being. You know, every sales rep today has had to make the transition to inside sales this past year obviously. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, what trends are you seeing now that we’re all going to be vaccinated? Hopefully in the next couple of months. I kind of think more and more companies are just going to move to virtual inside selling. What do you believe and see out there?
Lauren: Most of the companies I’m talking with Nancy are talking about hybrid. Okay, so I can’t wait to go back to face and face pardon me face to face. So think about your medical and your pharma and your large industrial. I need to touch and see and feel of product. Or I’ve been only face to face for years. I’m very, very, very traditional. Or super complex products, right? So the left hand side of the product lifecycle, they can’t wait to go back. They’re all just biding their time and they’re struggling through virtual today and we can tell funny stories about that if you’d like. But north to the companies I’m talking to Yeah. Are are talking hybrid, there’s a percentage of the workforce that can’t wait to get back in, inside, even inside sales inside right on site, right.
And there’s a percentage that will never commute again, some companies have sold the corporate office space, some have already started to own this. And I guess I don’t have to hire right here in my city, I’ll go find that fabulous talent 3000 miles away, because we can all work virtually. So I think there will always be more of a virtual and inside component than there would have been otherwise without the pandemic. And listen, like I said, resistance is futile. I’ve watched so many industries go through the product lifecycle and some work towards the top. They embrace inside sales, right? 20 years ago, I was convincing people you could buy a computer over the phone. 10 years ago, it was software over the phone. And now it’s big box retail. It’s pharma. It’s medical, more and more people are getting there, and would have gotten there eventually. But the pandemic forced them to get there. Yeah, they won’t go back.
Nancy: But why is there so much resistance in general? It doesn’t make any sense to me.
Lauren: Listen, it’s cheaper. It’s more efficient, right? Harder. It’s harder. And I think that’s something right, because listen, we can’t see each other right now, I’m literally looking at the LinkedIn picture, because I can’t look at you face to face, we’re not on video.
Nancy: I’m waiving at you. I’m just waving.
Lauren: I see that. That’s nice. So inside sales is harder. It feels also like a departure. It right the traditional face to face long time, culture of that type of sale, feels like their customer demands it. Now, we all know that more and more and more customers are used to self serving the buyers journey, the internet, you know all these newfangled things that are changing the sales experience. They are real. But yeah, there are some industries where I’m used to buying face to face. And I’m used to selling face to face. And that’s where the cutting edge is. That’s the resistance right. I’m behind the cutting edge. Or I just don’t want to learn the new tricks.
Nancy: You know, I talk about inside sales and outside sales as two ways of networking. So outside sales, you go to networking events, right, you develop the relationships, hopefully, the decision makers you want to be in front of are going to be attending them right and or you’re referred to prospects that are hopefully are in your target audience, right. A lot of hands have to be shook before conversations are taken to the next level.
Lauren: That’s a lot of hand sanitizer these days.
Nancy: Oh, yeah, right. Right there. They’re doing the high five or the knuckle. Right. With masks. So the the other side of it is with what we do for a living, we’re very targeted, right, we can have more conversations in a shorter period of time. And we’re doing phone networking. So rather well, rather than shaking a hand, you know, face to face. We’re having those conversations that will take it over the edge. And again, I think there’s a mindset that oh, my God, nobody’s gonna ever want to speak to me. The this doesn’t work. And I totally disagree.
Lauren: Yeah, you have to disagree. But But listen in, in the change resistor’s defense, we’ve all been telemarketed to at home. And that, right. So there’s your sick, there’s your stigma. I don’t know. I don’t like being called that way. Okay, sure. But guess what I can call 50 people. And you can drive as fast as you can. But you’re not going to see a 10th of that. So that’s that’s the the upside downside right there in a nut shell for sure.
Nancy: Yeah, you’re right. And then it goes back to what you do. So well. It’s the coaching and the training, to develop the skill to engage with, you know, people that you’ve just never met or seen.
Lauren: That’s the point, isn’t it? Right? How do we make the phone efficient and not scary? How do we use tips and tricks to get ahold of more people and get through to more people and keep more people on the phone so that we’re, we’re so glad we’re inside quote unquote, or virtual, because we can be more efficient. And we’re not just feeling the whah whah of not getting through to people because it’s high burnout. It’s tough.
Nancy: Yeah, it is. Thank god for you and me. We may we were the only two standing but I’m not burned out, are you?
Lauren: No, I love it. And it’s been fun to watch so many new people come to virtual selling. Right and 20 years people aren’t going to say no versus outside sales. So just gonna say sales, right? Maybe don’t play virtual sales instead. Field or virtual. Face to face or virtual or maybe just sales.
Nancy: What sets you apart?
Lauren: Oh, gosh, as an inside seller? As a coach as a trainer as a woman as an entrepreneur?
Nancy: Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.
Lauren: Listen, I will, I’m gonna go with that was, I wasn’t ready for that question. And I think the answer I want to hear from any seller too, right. And it’s authenticity. I had an opportunity just this morning to listen to Seth Godin speak. And he has a phrase I love using in my training, and that is, let your freak flag fly. And all too often, as sellers, especially inside sellers, we get all stuck behind our mask, right. And sometimes we have to put on a mask by the way and a cape to feel competent enough to dial out 50 times and get rejected. But when we let that down, when we take the mask off, and just let our personalities shine through.
Now there’s connect to and and over the phone, it has to be bigger, right? I mean, you have to let the freak flag fly so people have something to connect to face to face. If I can see something in your office, I can see something about your appearance. We’re at an event together having a beer, but over the phone I got to to try harder, right? I gotta have a face for radio, I got to have a personality. For radio, I’ve got to try harder. And that means being authentic and being a little weird. And being okay with that. And that is something I’ve gotten good at.
Nancy: You know what? Weird, I love it. I love having fun. And I also in a conversation with a stranger. If I flub it, I’ll say oh, my God, I just flubbed it. And I keep moving on. Showing your human side. Takes the pressure off of what you’re there to do. And yeah, people want to hear from other human people. Yep.
Lauren: So yeah, 100 percent. Okay, so listen, that brings up something big. Nancy, now you and I talked about this right before we started the call. That is why I hate scripts. I think scripts are masks that hide the humans. So now that you just agreed with me, try arguing with me. How is it you like scripts?
Nancy: Oh, my God, you know, for us here. And for me, it’s a tool and a guide. And you can take those words initially, when you you know, if you’re a brand new inside sales rep, you’ve got to have some kind of a format or a template. And by sticking with a script, what happens after you, you repeat it multiple times, it really becomes a part of your persona. So we’re not asking our team to read it verbatim. You know, they have to every time I onboard somebody, I asked them to pick Who’s your favorite actor or actress. They give me the name. I say, okay, you’re becoming that person. And you’ve just been handed a script, and you’re going to appear on a movie. Does anybody in a movie sound like they’re reading the script?
No, the script is the tool and in inside sales, especially and you know, frankly, if I’m out in front of an audience, or, you know, networking, I still have the the format in my head as to how to carry a conversation that sounds genuine. We teach here, it’s all about you. Them, right, not about us. So we want to get them talking. And I believe that having that as a basic tool, and over time, you know, it’s in your head. You don’t need it anymore. What happens is, the people on the other end of the call are like, oh, this person sounds different. Oh my god, there’s some really genuine, they’re having fun. And then we all get to the point where we’re going to be told no, right? Because outbound calling is a no business. So that’s where the work I think begins that you really want to start selling, mastering the objection. So no, I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk about you. Why do you think scripts suck?
Lauren: Because you can’t script genuine. Don’t script to sound genuine. Just be genuine.
Nancy: Right. I think you can do both. So everyone out there. It’s really great. When you meet another professional you respect and you have different points of view. So you heard. Yeah, Lauren’s. You’ve heard mine. And I betcha we’re still going to shake hands and depart as friends, right, Lauren?
Lauren: Oh, 100 percent. But it’s a fun thing to debate, isn’t it? Because half the sellers want it. Right. It’s a crutch. Don’t take it away from me. Yeah, and the other half are feeling, right. Like, this is just, it’s phony. It’s not me. And it killed my confidence to read someone else’s words. So healthy debates, a good thing. And the flexibility to script or no script is a good thing.
Nancy: But let’s talk further about it. Because, you know, I don’t need a person to read word for word if there were other if they were words they were more comfortable with. It’s getting the gist across, right?
Lauren: Yes. That’s okay. So I’ll give you that. Let’s meet in the middle at a message guide. Right? A conversation starter, a messaging starter.
Nancy: I like that.
Lauren: What I like to do is take a script and break it down and say, okay, great. This first section, what’s the goal? Right, now that we’ve got the goal? What are some key words or key questions? And why are we asking those? Alright, great. Write it in your own words.
Nancy: Yep, I’m right with you there.
Lauren: Write in your own words how you will acheive those goals. Yeah, just make some bullet points. Set a goal, or write and I love that I’ve got bullet points in front of me that says, okay, section one goal, check. Got it. Next, check. Got it. And here’s some go to questions. When I think of what to do, I’ll go pull one of those out. But if they write it, it’s their words. So it’s taking the script and breaking it into a goal and then translating it into something that feels confident for them. I’ll lean in on that.
Nancy: Oh, totally. I totally agree with you. So you see out of this discussion, we agree. And what scripts allow you to do is not to come off as a salesperson, not knowing what questions to ask, right? So along with the script you don’t get stuck. The goal is to keep the conversation going to determine are you speaking with the decision maker? And if so, is there a need at the time of the call? At least that’s our approach. And I know that there are multiple approaches out there, but it’s something to fall back on. So everyone out there, make it your own words, but follow the process. Would you agree with that?
Lauren: I’ll give it to you there too. Here’s something else we agree on. You said always make it about them. We call that swift at Factory. So what’s in in for them okay? If you’re always focused on that, then you’re keeping it fast, and customer focused. So what’s in it for them?
Nancy: All about them. So I want to spotlight something about you. What would you like to talk about?
Lauren: Girls Club. Absolutely. That’s my passion. Girls Club, started three years ago, because I got sick of talking about it. I spoke on one too many panels about why there aren’t more women in sales leadership. And you know, the lunch ended. And then I thought, great, we’ll have the same conversation next year. See you at the same conference on the same panel next year. And I thought, you know, I’m done. I’m done talking about it, I want to do something about it. And it’s been wildly successful. This is our third year, we’ve been part of over 70 promotions. And it’s, it’s changing lives. It’s really exciting.
Nancy: So what is it about though? How do you attract people? What’s the message out there?
Lauren: Sure. The mission is to change the face of sales by helping more women earn leadership positions in revenue. And we do that I think the secret sauce, frankly, is the confidence building. So we have cohorts every year, and they’re doing a six month super intense, rapid management certification. So we take individual contributors in sales. We certify them to become frontline leaders in sales. Because that’s where we’re targeting. It’s called the broken rung that first half of that first promotion. And in that six months they are getting management skills. But they’re also getting mentoring by other female sales leaders super hard to find I grew up surrounded by men. I bet you did too.
Nancy: Oh, yeah.
Lauren: And yeah, and then that the last part is a silver bullet. We work on building confidence. I think that’s what’s been really missing for so many women. And they just Nancy, they just take off like rockets. Yeah, it’s it’s awesome to watch.
Nancy: It must be very rewarding for you.
Lauren: Very much so. Yeah, very much so. I love getting my favorite thing probably is, you know, we love the thank you notes in the oh my God, I’ve been promoted notes. But we have women coming back to mentor for us. I graduated three years ago. And at least once a week now I’m getting some sort of a message. Like, oh my gosh, I was going into interview or get funding or partner with or sell to or whatever it is. And I noticed that she or he had a Girls Club badge. On their LinkedIn profile, everything clicked from there. Right? It was like, I know, I found somebody who’s going to give me a fair shot, who’s going to give themselves to develop me. I just feel comfortable, like, women don’t feel like they’re walking into a room alone anymore. And that’s the part that I think beats my soul the most. That’s why.
Nancy: Well, you know, we said before the interview, we could go on for hours, I definitely would like to do this again with you. And, you know, take a deeper dive into what you do. But what is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Lauren: Sales, like life, is a confidence sport. When you can help build confidence of your sellers, they’re going to be more successful. And we do that we learn out loud about that and talk about it really openly in Girls Club, and I’ve taken them with me on my own journey of brokering and building my own self confidence. And it’s like, the volume got turned up on my whole life. Life is a confidence sport, and if there’s right, there’s one profession, that’s more about confidence than any other, it’s sales.
Nancy: Yep. And it gets fired up from coaching and mentoring that keeps the confidence alive. Well, you know, really thank you, Lauren, for all of your great tips and conversation and thank you folks for all listening in. Question, how to how to my people find you?
Lauren: You can find our sales training and coaching at fctor8.com. And if you’d like to nominate somebody or you yourself are interested in getting involved with Girls Club, either in going through the certification to get into management or mentoring a young woman on our way up. Men and women are very, very welcome. Find us at wearegirlsclub.com.
Nancy: Yeah, what a way to give back. You know, wrapping up, I want everyone to have a fantastic sales day and remember, reach out and follow Lauren. Learn more about the Girls Club, and what we all can do to help inspire young professionals and help give them the confidence they need to be successful. Thank you again, Lauren.
Lauren: Thank you, Nancy. This is great.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
