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Elevating the Sales Profession
On-Demand Webinar

Elevating the Sales Profession

On-demand webinar about changing the sales culture with James Buckley, Director of Business Development and Partner Manager at JB Sales.
James Buckley
Chief Evangelist and Master of Ceremonies
Mafalda Johannsen

→ What needs to change in the sales industry

→ Investing in your human capital

→ Investing in yourself

→ Coaching in the moment

What does it take to change the perception of salespeople?

- Educate your sales reps on personas

- Train your sales reps to not just connect and pitch right away.

💡TIP💡

  • Spend time getting to know who is your ideal persona
  • Invest in Human Capital
  • Invest in your people
  • Stop saying these words🚫 (Clichés to avoid)
  • Following up
  • Touching base
  • Checking in

How should we invest in Human Capital?

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people if you are going to tell them what to do"

Steve Jobs

🧠You hire smart people so they tell you what to do🧠

If you don't give them a chance to teach new things because you don't give them a vehicle to share their knowledge then we-can't learn from each other. That's detrimental to the company's growth and development

What do you suggest for a team or for teams to share the knowledge among themselves?

  • Keep it simple don't overcomplicate it
  • Have a single source, a single repository where all of the content and collateral live.
  • Keep it organized
  • Slim down your communication to places that are universal at the company(especially remote teams)
  • If you are going to invest in your human capital, make it so that they can invest in themselves (while you are at it invest in yours)
“A number one characteristic of a successful seller is that they adapt to change Very quickly"

James Buckley

Change is always done with them, & not to them... And because that's true, they adapt fast, they shift easily. They figure out where their time needs to be spent and if you are not good at this get good at it.

Where you put your time is what directly impacts your goals.

💡Figure out where your time needs to be spent.💡

Hedgehog Concept (by Jim Collins)

  • What do you do best?
  • What do you like to do the most?
  • What are the economic resources that you have that allow you to do those things?

Doing this exercise👐 will change where you focus and put your time…

Screenshot 2022-10-24 at 12.21.00.png

A great Advise👆 for when your company or culture doesn't allow SDR or BDRS to share ideas, and only allows them to do what they ask without questioning….

If your company or leadership is telling you what to say and how to say it, you should be going through the motion you can follow. Because every great leader learned how to follow first. As well as going the extra mile, while collecting data that will impact change. However, you should also be exploring new avenues, new techniques, new tactics, and collecting that data so you can present it to leadership in a way that is meaningful to them.

If you can make it in your own way you must have a way to back it up❗️

No one cares if you disagree, but if you disagree and have the data to support why the way that you are doing things works.

Invest in you

💢People expect something to change but keep doing the same thing every day. And that is not effective or productive for your growth development, success, and goals.💢

When you go to college you learn how to learn, how to go find resources and obtain the information that enables you to be successful. A sales career is no different. There are a lot of resources out there that provide with you the right tools, information, skills, and takeaway, among other things to be successful.

☝🏼"It's no one's job to make you successful that responsibility lies within you"

Frustrated with why you haven't seen results and you're only three months in?

STOP 🛑 IT ✋🏼… go out there and take action, and find the things that you need to find to help you be successful in the near future. INVEST in you✨

Knowledge Sharing.

They expect growth and development just to happen.

Keep this in mind throughout your sales journey!

⭐*It's no one's job to make you successful, that responsibility lies with you.*⭐

Take action, and find the things that will make you successful in the future, INVEST IN YOURSELF.

No one else will do it for you.

We live in a global world…. When we sell, how do you keep engaging speech with different uniqueness?

Set a timer for 5 min, and listen to other people from the country. You will be able to pick up on linguistics, process, tones, and the way they express themselves and mirror it.

You want people to feel comfortable with you, to trust you, so they'll drop the wall.

One important basic of sales that applies no matter what culture is:

DO YOUR RESEARCH, KNOW YOUR PERSONA

Qualify, discover, and provide value...

You have never sold anything in your life

If you are a top performer and you do well, you provide a path to value, and the person that you provide that path to decides to buy from you.

You put them in a position where they have to make a decision that you were the best option to go with.

"It's not our job to convince or persuade people to buy what we have. Your job is to sell what we have to people that need it"

John Barrows

Difference between discovery and qualification

  • Discovery is about them when you start talking about their what's and how's, their processes their needs, their priorities, their challenges, and their pains.
  • Qualification is about you, this means that when you are qualifying someone, what you are basically saying is "Can you buy from me, do you have enough capital, budget?

These two things align differently throughout the sales cycle, because qualification starts at the very beginning, and never quicks back in, however, discovery takes place throughout the entire sales cycle.

Recommended qualifier question for discovery by James Buckley:

What can you tell me about how you buy "stuff" (your product) like this?

The reason that this is a powerful question is …

  1. You are managing expectations early in the conversation. [Expectation management is an enormous factor throughout our sales cycles.]
  2. Is the prospect knowledgeable about how they buy things for the company. If they can't tell you the buying process, chances are they're not part of the decision-making committee (they don't have a lot of power)

Everyone says that the sales process is broken and they are very critical and judgemental of salespeople...

But no one talks about the buying process being broken too...

There is a big misconception when it comes to buyers, and that is "the customer is always right".

When a customer comes to you asking for a "solution" to what they want and goes directly to pricing. Our tendency is to try to hide it...

Have you had people come to you and immediately ask for the price?

A good way to answer this question is... What do you need pricing for?

This question is another qualifier, if they abandon the conversation, you've just disqualified them. This will save you a lot of time if they are not even willing to have a conversation... what is the likelihood that your efforts are going to yield a sale?

If they answered the previous question, and they've expressed their pains and challenges you can give an estimate.

What they want is quick and easy pricing!

A range is a good way to make it easy for potential customers.

Feature-benefit selling is a straightforward but highly effective sales strategy. The premise behind it is simple: the salesperson's job is to connect the features of their product to the benefits the customer will receive if they use it.

If you don't have the solution (feature) for their problem, don't sell the promise.

Selling the promise puts you in a bad situation and you are selling a deal that becomes a problem for your customer success team.

Sell what you have, not what they want.

The market should tell you what you should be prioritizing.

SDRs, BDRs, and CS are the eyes and ears of the product team because they are in direct contact with the prospects. Share as much as you can.

Marketing and sales alignment is one of the toughest things that companies lack. But those that get it right, are in consistent growth that creates more revenue.

Personal Brand

A personal brand is very important. Don't build your digital presence around that product.

Culture and progression matter in your careers.

If you build your personal brand based on a specific value or company when you move (change careers, jobs), that brand, value, and the network become useless.

When you are building a brand make sure that the brand attracts people to you, not to your product.

Coaching in the moment

If you are not tracking all the results that you are getting and ab testing, as a leader, you should start doing it. Tracking and measuring is something that leadership does so that they can make well-informed decisions about changes that need to happen to the team.

Coach metaphor💫

If the game is going well, the coach only gives suggestions, not critiques. When things are bad, the coach calls everyone in and directs them on what to do. Coaching in the moment will help leaders to :

  1. Provide instant motivation and tactical takeaways.
  2. Keep them invested in change and growth and development as they move forward through their career. When they move forward and improve, that's the time that you step aside and watch their improvement, by also validating the change.
  • When giving feedback, be specific.
  • Tactical is the way to go for leaders.
  • Praise in public, but if you are going to critique, do it in private.

TAKEAWAYS

  • Hire talent and train them effectively
  • Understand your buyer persona well
  • Be proactive in everything you do
  • Provide/ask for specific feedback

📗Book recommendations

"Good to Great"- Jim Collins

*"Riding the waves of culture" -*Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars

Is about cultures in the world, the workplace, and basics that no matter the culture you have to apply.