Sales Game Changers | Tips from Successful Sales Leaders

This is episode 276. Read the complete transcription here. MIKE'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Understand how your actions, your products or your services impact the customer's desired outcome. As a team, understand how what you're doing impacts the team that you work with and for extra credit - and we do this all the time at Verizon and particularly the public sector - how your solutions or your actions impact the societal benefits of what's happening. Show up for your communities that you live in, that you work in, that you educate in, think of things that you can do whether inside or outside of work to do something positive and proactive for someone else in need. It is extremely rewarding for everybody involved and it really keeps you grounded in what you may think to be big problems. Other folks in this country, in this day and age have much bigger problems. Be that shining light and help someone else get to a better place."

This is episode 275. Read the complete transcript on The Sales Game Changers Podcast website. STEVE'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "I never think of what I'm doing as selling even though I'm a sales professional and all I do is sell. I always approach sales from a technical perspective, when I worked for IBM I approached it as a technical expert. I'm a technical expert around bookkeeping now so I know what questions to ask them about how they pay their people and how they pay their bills. When they're sitting there, they're thinking, "This doesn't sound like a sales call." Become a technical expert in what you sell. The other thing to think about when you're selling is that no one's driving the cheapest car made, there are cheap cars but everyone buys for value, it depends on who they are and how they define value. Sales is never about money, it's always about problems so as you go forward, if you can solve the problems of your clients, you'll sell in any market, in a good market and in a bad market."

This is episode 274. Read the complete transcript here. TOM'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Be prepared to seize the moment when it is in front of you. When Johnny Carson introduced me to perform to 26 million people, I knew exactly what I was going to say and I knew exactly where I was going. I seized the moment and that's another thing that salespeople have told me through the years as well as great athletes. A baseball player is hitting .142 and he's about to go back to the minors and all of a sudden, he's up with bases loaded. If he seizes this moment, his whole life is going to change. Sales is the same to you what the Tonight Show was to me. If you're in position to meet that customer with the huge deal that's going to turn your whole life around and you're not prepared for it? That's silly."

This is episode 273. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JAVIER'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Two Words. Be Deliberate. We don't have the water cooler or the coffee shop nowadays and we don't have all these physical things that we've been used to working with our customers and our business partners. Reach out to them not asking for money or their business. I found this to be rewarding for myself and I found it to be a way to develop connection. If you're in a geographic territory, it's a muscle that you have to develop. Make sure you block off time throughout the week calling on your customers and just listen, and not with any intent. Don't use empathy as a weapon. Use empathy as a tool to really see how they're going and make sure that you connect."

This is episode 272. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. NIMIT'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Tell a story when prospecting. First, take a long look at your value proposition and come up with a story to tell your prospects. Write out in your own words how you have solved a certain problem for a prospect before and then do that for another problem. Then call somebody that you called three weeks ago, they're not going to remember you, and try to actually get curious with them. Tell that story and see if that can get you farther into the process."

This is episode 271. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. JOHN'S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: "Speak directly to your customers every day. I didn't say text, I didn't say email, speak to them. Get on the phone and talk to individuals because it's very easy to get caught up in thing like strategy sessions, building tools, being in meetings, managing up, explaining the situation to leadership and to ownership. You're going to really understand what you need to do and what your path is if you continually talk to customers on a daily basis - and I mean that if you're SVP of the largest sales organization in the world or if you're a junior salesperson just starting out. Make sure that you're talking to customers specifically on a daily basis."

This is episode 270. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. CHARLES' TIP TO SALES LEADERS: "If I really had to boil it down (how you could build yourself as a trust-based seller), I would pick "listening" and I know it sounds boring, I know it's hardly the first time anybody has ever heard this, but it really is powerful. I don't mean listening to refine the problem statement, I don't mean listening to hone into the right hypothesis, I mean listening that just pays attention to the other person, that validates them by offering up 100% focus of your mind and your attention on them. It leads to reciprocity. When you start by paying attention to the other person, that creates in them a natural response to them wanting to listen to what you have. And it's sequential. People have to know that you care and then they naturally become much more willing to listen to what you have to say. Pay attention to people for their purposes, not for yours. It's how you create trust."

This is episode 269. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. MERIDITH'S TIP TO SALES LEADERS: "Think about SEEDS, WEEDS and NEEDS. Every 30 days as a sales team sit down and I just want you to reflect. SEEDS are what are you doing that's really working. What's really growing the sales team? WEEDS are what's weighing you down. What do you need to stop doing? NEEDS are what do you need that you don't have? Color code your calendar to visually see how you're doing. Anything that's green is revenue generating; red is transforming the business to take it to another level and to get it ready for what's after this pandemic and everything else is peach. If you look at my calendar in March and April, it was far too full with peach. Now I'm very careful to balance my calendar making me far more productive and thrive. SHED THE PEACH FAST and keep moving. You are your best sales coach!"

This is episode 268. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. VICTOR'S TIP TO SALES LEADERS: "If we know that the recovery is going to be gradual, the question is how do sales professionals take advantage of this? First, look at your sales process today and think right now which meetings did I used to have that were face-to-face and where am I struggling now in this remote world, and how can I optimize that? If you have a good sense of where changes need to be made then you can start thinking about how to adopt these best practices so you can optimize it for the remote world. Start by focusing on the three most important in the middle of the sales process which is the demo of your solution, the stakeholder meeting and the proposal review."

This is episode 267. Read the complete transcript on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website. This is a replay of the OPTIMAL SALES MINDSET Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on July 16, 2020. It featured value proposition expert and best-selling author Jose Palomino. JOSE'S TIP TO SALES LEADERS: "Value creation is answering the question how do you help your customers navigate difficult times better? I would give people three words to think about and that's fears, frustrations and hopes. "What is my customer afraid of? What are they frustrated by?" What are they complaining about and what are they hopeful for? What are they looking towards in the future? Sit down and ask yourself this very simple question, "What resources can I enlist in my organization to address those fears, frustrations and hopes in any way?" It may have nothing to do with what I'm selling; it really is about becoming that partner."