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Sales Reinvented

We at Sales Reinvented are on a mission to change the negative perception of sales people. Each week we will be interviewing experts in the field of sales and sharing their knowledge, ideas and expertise with our listeners. They share with us in our vision of a world where selling is a profession to be proud of. The aim of our formatted show is to provide ‘snackable’ episodes that are short enough to listen to in one sitting but long enough to provide real value that will help you in your sales career. Welcome to the Sales Reinvented Podcast.
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Now displaying: August, 2021

At Sales Reinvented, we are on a mission to change the negative perception of selling. Welcome to the Sales Reinvented Podcast.

Aug 25, 2021

According to Patti Pokorchak, social “selling” should really be called social “prospecting.” Any good salesperson knows you can’t walk up to someone at a face-to-face networking event and immediately pitch them your wares. You have to build a connection and a relationship. Selling digitally should be the same way. Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to hear Patti’s thoughts on successful social prospecting. 

Outline of This Episode

  • [1:30] The differences between digital and social selling 
  • [2:15] How can organizations improve digital sales?
  • [3:23] Patti’s blueprint for digital sale success begins with engagement 
  • [5:38] Attributes or characteristics of a great digital salesperson
  • [6:47] Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve social prospecting
  • [8:08] Patti’s top three digital selling dos and don’ts
  • [12:08] Why email marketing is still a valid marketing strategy

Social prospecting success begins with engagement 

Patti’s business partner likes to say, “All roads lead to your website.” Patti believes the most important part of your website is your lead magnet. You need to be able to capture someone’s email address. Secondly, you have to engage with people daily. She points out that you can’t pretend that you’re active on social media if you’re just throwing up a link to your blog post. Being active means having a dialogue with people. 

If you comment on large influencer’s posts, you’ll get eyeballs on your answers. Patti gets most of her connection requests and clients through engaging in this way versus engaging on her own posts. She spends at least 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn adding value and engaging on people’s posts. Showing your expertise on someone else’s content helps you become a thought leader. She recommends that you do a weekly blog post, share it, and engage. 

Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve social prospecting

Patti notes that social media can be overwhelming. Her advice? Pick one platform. In the B2B environment, the go-to is LinkedIn. Spend your time on that network and get really good at social prospecting. Patti believes that Twitter is a great place to listen and learn, but not great for gaining business. Pick a market that fits your market. If you’re selling to women in the consumer market? Try Instagram or Pinterest. You don’t have to be on all platforms.

Patti recommends that you find ways to always be learning. The Sales Experts Channel has almost 1,000 videos that you can watch. YouTube is full of great content. Follow people that you think are doing social well. 

Top social prospecting dos and don’ts

What does Patti believe is the key to success? She shares some things you should—and shouldn’t—do.

  • Engage on other people’s posts with value-added comments. Don’t just “like” it and move on. It has far more impact than engaging on yours. Read the posts and give your two cents. 
  • Be patient. Social media is a long game. No matter what you’ve heard, do your research and be patient. It’s a high-touch, high-volume business that’s worth taking your time.
  • Pick one social media platform and get good at it. Learn to be effective in 15 minutes.
  • Stop selling. It’s not social selling, it’s social prospecting. You don’t immediately sell to someone in face-to-face networking. Get people to take baby steps to learn a bit at a time. 
  • Don’t just rely on digital and social selling. It’s a passive approach and one-way dialogue. Patti believes in picking up the phone and leaving a voicemail. Follow it with an email portraying the same message. You have to talk to people.
  • Don’t give up too soon. It takes 10–20 touches before you can even think about giving up. 

Don’t forget about email marketing

Patti now owns a hobby farm and garden center. When she started it, she knew nothing about farming and didn't know anyone. But after five years, she’s built a thriving business. Over those five years, she’s been collecting emails and had about 1500 people on her list (of avid gardeners). Patti wanted to celebrate her five years in business. Her garden center is seasonal, so she decided to open on 5/5 at 5 pm and ran $5 specials. 

She didn’t think many people would show up at 5 pm on a Friday—but she was mistaken. She had people waiting outside the garden gate. 50 people showed up in the five hours she was open. She was stuffing money in her pockets. She notes that you cannot underestimate the demand for something people want. A focused email list can go a long way with your target market. Email marketing is a great way to provide value and connect with your customers. 

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Patti Pokorchak

Connect With Paul Watts 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
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Aug 18, 2021

Steve Bensen believes that digital selling is important because it’s how buyers are buying. And your best leads—the people most likely to purchase from you—look for answers about your company online. They’re doing searches in Google, researching you, reading reviews, and looking at competitors. You need ads in the right places and content that will satisfy what they’re looking for. You need to provide the answers to their questions while also providing information about your company and what you can do for them. How did Steve achieve that with his business with a focus on digital marketing? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented to find out! 

Outline of This Episode

  • [1:05] The difference between digital and social selling
  • [2:03] How to improve digital selling capabilities
  • [4:15] Steve’s digital selling strategy
  • [6:14] Attributes + characteristics of a great digital seller
  • [8:08] Tools, techniques, or strategies to improve
  • [9:41] Steve’s digital selling dos and don’ts
  • [13:29] Leveraging LinkedIn learning with relevant content

Steve’s digital marketing strategy

You have to go where your customers are looking for you. Some companies may have a heavy presence on social media. Others may need to focus on writing articles or creating video content. You have to think about, “Where are my customers trying to find out more about this space?” 

Steve used to write an article or blog every night before he went to bed. He had a list of ideas that he added to when he thought of something. Your blog, writing for other blogs, and even just being quoted in other publications is huge. Long-form rich content that answers people’s questions is key. Those are assets that continue to yield leads. 

Badger Maps makes a mapping tool for field salespeople. Who’s looking for that? Maybe a VP of sales or sales operations. Where are those personas looking online? What questions are they asking? What articles are they interested in reading? Make that content so they’ll find you.

Steve notes that it isn’t the same blueprint for everyone. Steve looks at the top 10 places to create content and general awareness and then builds a strategy for each. What characteristics make for a great salesperson? Listen to hear Steve’s thoughts. 

Tools, techniques, and strategies to improve

For digital selling specifically, Steve recommends outsourcing Google ads because it’s so difficult to do well. But Steve emphasizes that content creation and content marketing should be done in-house (whether by someone full-time or part-time). The creation of content—that is valuable and relevant—to feed the SEO machine is best done by someone who specializes in that. But some things are so expertise-driven that they must be outsourced. 

Steves’ digital marketing dos and don’ts

What does Steve believe is key to digital marketing success? 

  • Be consistent. Keep creating great content regularly (email marketing, blog posts, social media, video, podcasting, etc.). Don’t dabble—commit to doing something and do it. The things that work in marketing compound over time when you’re consistent and in it for the long haul. 
  • Specialize. Develop specialized in-house roles. If video content is your strategy, you need someone excellent at creating videos. The same goes for social media marketing and writing blogs. 
  • Don’t be boring. Steve believes a lot of digital marketing material can be lame. You need to find a way to create unique value and don’t just regurgitate what’s already out there. 
  • Don’t get lost in the noise. Create a niche market that attracts your unique customer profile. Feed them the content they need and want to read/hear/watch. Steve’s podcast is called “Outside Sales Talk” because it’s specifically for outside salespeople and it creates value just for them

Leveraging LinkedIn learning

Steve loves creating LinkedIn videos. LinkedIn has a learning platform that allows you to create videos that are made available for anyone to watch. It’s one of Steve’s favorite digital marketing strategies. Steve created a video for them geared toward field salespeople. It allowed Steve to create a lot of reach—180,000 people have watched the video and done the training. It was something a lot of people have gotten value from. 

People reach out to Steve and engage all the time because of that one piece of content. He created something of value for the niche that purchases his product. Plus, it’s on a platform with extensive reach. Steve emphasizes the importance of creating valuable content and getting it in places your user can find it. If you do that, the word will get out about what you do. To hear more of his thoughts on digital marketing, listen to the whole episode!

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Steve Benson

Connect With Paul Watts 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
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Aug 11, 2021

Digital selling is omnichannel—anything that you can use online. It can be digital assets, PDFs, web pages, interactive quizzes, communities, and more. But when you sell digitally, you have to make a conscious effort to understand and engage with your buyer in ways and places they prefer. That’s why agility and flexibility are essential to the process. Carole Mahoney shares her thoughts on the digital sales process in this episode of Sales Reinvented. Don’t miss it! 

Outline of This Episode

  • [1:33] The difference between digital and social
  • [2:11] How to improve digital selling
  • [3:30] Carole’s digital selling strategy
  • [4:43] Attributes salespeople need to succeed
  • [6:39] Tools + techniques + strategies to utilize
  • [8:45] Top 3 digital dos and don’ts
  • [10:46] Learn to be digitally agile 

How to improve digital selling

In 1993 when the internet was first being launched, Carole realized that it would change everything—including the way people communicate and form relationships. That’s how organizations need to think of digital selling today. It’s been ignored for so long because face-to-face was an option, and thought to be more effective. But the way people buy has been changing since the internet was born. Businesses need to catch up! 

They need to be in tune with what is going on with their buyer when they’re engaging in these channels. Carole notes that they often make rash decisions to put everything online without thinking about buyer experience. You must learn from your buyers: how do they prefer to engage online? You don’t want to develop things that annoy or distract from what they’re trying to do. 

Carole’s digital selling strategy

Carole emphasizes that you have to start with conversations with prospects, buyers, and current customers to collaborate. Selling is something you do with others—not to others. If you want to build a strategy, it needs to start with one-to-one conversations. You need to learn about their pain points and frustrations and what to solve. 

How do they go about making confident decisions? How do they prefer to engage? In what ways? Some people hate email. Others can’t get off of it. How do your unique buyers want to communicate? Everyone has a different way to prefer to communicate online. You use that information to design a sales process that’s in alignment with how people buy. 

What attributes do salespeople need to have to succeed with digital selling? Listen to learn more!

Tools + techniques + strategies to utilize 

Carole recommends that all sales teams use Gryphon Networks. Most people just do call reviews and look at what’s already happened—things you can’t have an impact on. But things like role play and real-time coaching with your salespeople can be a game-changer. Gryphon has an AI that can be trained to give the seller coaching prompts at the moment. It can enhance the digital conversation sellers are having. 

Carole also recommends finding out where your team places in core competencies. She uses an assessment that can help you focus where your team needs further training and development. If you’d like to assess your team for free and see how they compare to the competition in your industry, check out the Sales Force Evaluation

What are Carole’s top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts? You’ll have to listen to find out!

Learn to be digitally agile 

Carole recently held a webinar series for Revenue Collective. Normally, she’d get a list of the people that signed up for the webinar and she’d personally reach out to them. But Carole didn’t get a list. So in her presentation, she shared some links for tools and techniques that were downloadable from her website that people could use immediately. She also made sure her LinkedIn profile was easy to find. What happened? 

Several people from the same company looked at her LinkedIn profile and other downloaded tools. She noted who they were, and reached out to one of them. She sent an email asking about what they downloaded and asked a specific question about it. In the end, it resulted in valuable conversations and Carole will be working with them soon. It was a 45–60 day sales cycle with a Vidyard video and emails—how they wanted to interact. 

The moral of the story? She had to adapt. She had to find a way to connect with people and provide them valuable resources. She had to find out who was interested in learning more and how to have a conversation. She had to use her website and digital assets to find those people and make it easier to engage. It goes to show that you can have a playbook, run the plays, and do the drills. But when you get on the field, you have to adapt. If you can’t adapt, the play will fail, and you’ll lose the game. 

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Carole Mahoney

Connect With Paul Watts 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

Aug 4, 2021

Tony Hughes points out that we live in a digital-first world. 2020 was a catalyst for accelerating what people are describing as the 4th industrial revolution. He emphasizes that “There’s timeless principles of selling that we need to adapt as we modernize the way that we engage clients.” One of the big trends is that companies are shifting resources from field selling to using the tech stack to sell digitally. So how can you drive change in a digital world? How do you excel with digital selling? Tony Hughes shares his take in this episode of Sales Reinvented!

Outline of This Episode

  • [1:11] Digital and social selling 
  • [3:41] How to improve your digital selling 
  • [7:35] Tony’s digital selling blueprint
  • [9:46] Attributes that lead to greatness
  • [12:19] Tools + techniques + strategies
  • [16:46] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
  • [19:27] Tony demonstrates the power of connections

How to improve your digital selling 

Most buyer’s journeys begin in their trusted online network. They seek social proof for the things that they’re looking at purchasing. Tony was talking to a group of 18 CEOs about modernizing the way they sell. One was the CEO in Australia for a North American company that sells into the pharmacy industry. The two highest-performing territories in North America didn’t have salespeople in them for four months out of the year. This company had been convinced that they needed to maintain mindshare with pharmacists. When they interviewed the pharmacists and business owners they found some interesting things. 

Firstly, the pharmacists noted that when the reps called on them, it took them away from serving customers. Secondly, they thought the information being shared with them was just marketing material that they’d rather get in an email or snail mail. The only thing the buyer valued is that they were getting a great price. So this company decided to run some testing in Australia, removing their reps completely. The business has never been stronger. Tony’s point? The belief that bots can never replace you is nonsense. 

Tony’s digital selling blueprint

Tony believes that any blueprint has to begin with understanding your ideal customer profile. You need to think about their:

  1. Firmographics: What is their vertical? How big are they? Where are they located?
  2. Technographics: What are the attributes of the organizations? What is their competition?
  3. Psychographics: Are they in a growth mindset? Are they in crisis? Do they outsource? Are they trying to innovate and disrupt the market? 

Companies with a growth mindset are the most likely to purchase. 

Then you need to look at the buyer personas—those that say “yes” or form a consensus. You then build the conversation narrative. Once you do that, you need to map the buyer’s journey and go and be where they are. It will certainly include social media, but it will be in other places as well. You move away from the “us” narrative because no one wants to hear it. You need to lead with a narrative about how they can drive improved results in their role. If you do all of that well, they’ll want to understand why you would be the best solution for them. 

What three attributes does Tony believe lead to greatness? Listen to find out!

Tools + techniques + strategies

Tony recommends that you look at the tech stack that you’ve got. How can you use what you already have? Would your boss say you’re a good user of CRM? Do you capture meeting notes, build a dashboard, and identify the next best actions to take? 

Secondly, use the sales intelligence tools available to you, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can also build searches that monitor for trigger events within your customer base as well as your ICPs and buyer personas within the marketplace. 

Can you do pragmatic research? Are you using sales intelligence tools that get you emails and phone numbers? Tony believes the fastest path—and highest probability to a new sale—is when you can provide relevance and context through a trusted relationship and a trigger event. Listen to learn what Tony does with this. 

Listen to find out what Tony’s top digital selling dos and don’ts are—some might surprise you!

The power of connection

A great friend of Tony’s is a CEO who just took a role with a new company. As they were talking over breakfast, Tony offered to introduce someone who would be a good fit as a client. When Tony’s friend posted a LinkedIn update about his new role, he liked it, commented, and shared it. He tagged the name of the person he thought would be a good client and said “You two should get together.” This person responded within five minutes and messaged Tony’s friend. 

Connect with Tony Hughes

Connect With Paul Watts 

Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED

Audio Production and Show notes by
PODCAST FAST TRACK
https://www.podcastfasttrack.com

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