SalesQualia

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Ep. 56: The Process is the Process – A Daily Dose Edition

The process is the process!  In today’s episode of the Startup Selling podcast, we did a Daily Dose edition. Stephen and I talk about the concept of the process is the process.

A couple of quick notes about this episode. First of all, we talked about the importance of process versus outcome. How many times do we scramble, and work, and grit our way to an outcome; however, without a measurable, distinct, process that outcome might be achieved, but it is either not repeatable or we don’t know exactly why we achieved that outcome. Second, the process is important because it allows us to then specifically test some new ideas and see how we can continuously improve. And third, in this episode, we give you a little backstage look on one of our processes that actually did not go as planned with a new client, what we learned from it and how we improved things moving forward.

Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Startup Selling podcast. If you are enjoying the content here, we’d love it if you would do two things, please. One,  leave a review on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to the Startup Selling podcast. And two, please tell a friend or 10! The best way for others to hear and to learn about the Startup Selling podcast is for them to hear it from people just like you. So if you’re digging the content, please tell a friend or 10 so that we can get the word out to as many people as possible.

Also, if you’re interested in learning more about Startup Selling, one of the easiest ways for me to help you is to give you a (free) copy of my book called: “Startup Selling: How to Sell If You Really, Really Have To And Don’t Know How.”

Just go to www.startupselling.co and you can download your free copy right there.

Thanks so much for listening!

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Ep. 55: When & How to Use Cold-Calling, Partnership Programs & Vetting Your Sales Hires: Live Sales Q&A

 

Today’s episode is a little bit of an experiment. Every month I run what’s called a Live Sales Q and A. It’s an open forum Webinar for anybody who wants to join and ask whatever sales question they have – could be a question about their prospecting, about their pipeline pull through, building teams, managing teams, SDR metrics, whatever sales related topics come up. I answer them!  In this particular case, there were three topics that came up, which were pretty top of mind for a lot of people out there.

So in this particular episode, we covered three main topics. The first topic that we covered was cold calling: when to cold call, is cold calling dead, how to cold call, and how to think about cold calling as part of an outreach sequence. We certainly tackled the question of cold calling, in general, more so what we did is talk about the importance of outbound calling. I don’t call it cold calling cause I think there’s no reason to do a pure cold call anymore, but I think of it as warm calling. And so we talked about how to use warm calling as part of a multitouch on the channel sales engagement sequence.

The second topic that I covered in this live sales Q and A was on partnerships, when to use partnerships and how to use partnerships as part of your sales funnel at your startup.  In particular, there are three different places where you can use partnerships: one based on prospecting and legion, the second one being in your sales pipeline to co-sell or resell your product, and third, on the customer success integration side of your business. We talked in detail about those three parts of your sales funnel and how partnerships could be part of what you’re doing to both distribute your product and, of course, sell and support your product.

The third topic that we talked about was how to assess an account executive. More specifically, how do we know if somebody is the right fit? How do we know that somebody is motivated by the right things to make sure that they’re a good match culturally with our startup, and for our staff, as it relates to our vision, mission, and values of the company.  Not just are they the kind of person that can sell my stuff.

Those are the three big topics that we covered in the Live Q and A. I’d love to get your feedback if you feel like this is a good way to redistribute this information and content that we’re doing.

We can certainly pop more of this type of content into the podcasts so that if you’re listening on your commute, listening in the car, or maybe as you’re shopping at Trader Joe’s (it’s one of the places I listen to podcasts all the time). If it’s the same for you and if this is a way for us to get more content, more information and more ideas to you, the startup founder and the startup sales leader, then by all means, I’m happy to do it as part of our podcast sequence.

I’ll make two asks of you: one ask is that if you are listening to this podcast and you are what I call a repeat offender, that probably tells me that you really like the content. And if you do like the content, please leave a review on SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify. Where are you? I would love to see your review. Not just for me though, it helps other people just like you find the podcast and helps us to increase the number of people that are listening, downloading and subscribing to what we’re doing here.

Number two is if you would tell a friend or 10 about this podcast, that would be awesome. A word of mouth is still the best way to get the distribution of this content out to more and more people.

Thanks so much for listening!

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Be The Leader Your Prospects Need You To Be

It all started so positively.  The prospect was excited to talk after they filled out the “I’d like more info” link on your site. They asked you tons of questions about your product. They couldn’t wait to see the demo and they loved what the saw. They asked about price and asked for a proposal, which of course you sent right away.

You gave them everything they wanted and you thought – “Oh man, this is a hot one!” You even did a little cabbage patch jig – “We’re gettin’ a new customer! We’re gettin’ a new customer!”

Then it all stopped.

They stopped asking questions about features and pricing.

They stopped answering emails.

They stopped returning calls.

What happened?

You made yourself useless. You gave them all the information they wanted, but not all the information they needed.

And the problem is that as soon as your prospect thinks they have all of the information they need, they think they don’t need you anymore.  The prospect was so nice early in the sales process because they needed information and you’re the one that could give it to them.

The worst part? They don’t have all of the information they actually need to make the right decision to solve their problem.

That one-pager with screenshots and bullet-pointed feature list?  Even if they do share it with the team, anyone spending more than three seconds on it is only looking for the features that are missing.

That pricing question you answered? What you gave them was really just a range because there are all kinds of variables that affect price –how many users, the version they need and how much help they need with implementation.

That product demo you showed? At least half the features you showed didn’t even matter to the prospect, but you don’t know which half, so you showed all 76 clicks all the way down to how to change the background colors of the text boxes, hoping that one of them would be the one that sealed the deal.

That proposal you drafted? Most of what you wrote was guesswork because you didn’t talk about implementation, integrations, training, or timing.

(BTW… Grab a copy of “10 Questions to Ask Before Every Product Demo” here.)

As the salesperson, you have to control the conversation. You have to control which information is shared and when to share it. Your prospects are coming to you because they have a problem, but just like a patient visiting a doctor – they only know the symptoms. You’re the expert in solving their problem. You’re the one that can uncover the root cause for the what ails them.

Instead of answering every question about the feature set, ask them about their workflow and the outcomes they want to achieve.

Instead of giving the harbor tour, learn about the prospect’s critical business issue and focus the demo on only those features that matter.

Instead of sending a proposal, build an implementation plan that details every step along the way after they sign the contract.

Now, you might be saying – “Yeah but sometimes prospects don’t want to answer questions. They won’t tell us about the key business problems. They won’t let us talk to their IT team about integrations, or their Vice President about pricing or their Risk Officer about security and stability questions.

Yeah. Those prospects were never really prospects. They’re tire-kickers, buyer vampires, gatekeepers, or managers that run teams but don’t make purchasing decisions.

An enterprise sale is never a just a transaction – it’s a collaboration, it’s a partnership, it’s really just a big implementation project that you and your prospect are working on together. As the project manager, it’s your job to decide which information is important to know about them, and what they need to know about your product.

Create collaboration, control the flow of information and build cooperation into your selling process. If they’re not willing to collaborate, cooperate,  and follow your lead, they were never qualified in the first place.

Be the leader your prospects need you to be.

Scott “Take the Lead” Sambucci

Want a little help with your sales? Got a gnarly question or just want to jam on a touch sales problem? Let’s work on it together at my next Live Sales Q&A.

Bring your questions prospecting, lead qualification, pipeline pull-through, pricing, hiring your sales team, sales metrics, or anything else you need to figure out to help you grow and scale your startup. Click here to grab your spot.