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Today’s show featured an interview with fractional sales and marketing leader Barry Toser from the TNT Advisory Group.
Find Barry on LinkedIn.
BARRY’S TIP: “Identify who the key decision makers are and work with them on particular programs and events. There are industry events and conferences where the senior level buyers attend. This provides a great opportunity to network and build relationships with that, with them in that kind of environment. Always look for ways to offer value. Take them to dinner. Don’t be bashful.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: All right, thank you so much. Welcome to another episode of the Sales Story and a Tip podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. Of course, I’m cofounder of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. And Barry, I’m the host of over 700 Sales Game Changers podcasts.
We talk about an exciting or interesting or inspirational story from their sales career, and then we ask for a tip that they learn from that story that they can share with the tens of thousands of people listening to this on Apple podcasts. And by the way, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, please go up, give us a five-star review. We would greatly appreciate it. Or they could be watching this on YouTube. And if you’re watching this particular show with Barry Toser, go give us a thumbs up.
All right, Barry, it’s great to see you. My guest today is Barry Toser. Barry, why don’t you give us a brief introduction?
Barry Toser: I’m the president of TNT Advisory. TNT Advisory is a fractional business that is geared towards solving company’s sales and business development challenges. And I have spent my entire career on the sales and marketing side of business, really helping companies to grow and drive revenue. And that’s what I’m doing now in my current role with my own TNT Advisory company.
Fred Diamond: All right, so I’m excited to hear your story.
Barry Toser, tell me a great sales story. Yeah, Fred.
Barry Toser: Well, I’ve got an interesting story to share from several years ago when I was running a division for Transaction Network Services, a payments and data services company. And at the time, our largest customer was a telecom service provider. And our buyers and contacts were technical in nature and on the network side of the business. This was a very competitive environment with a lot of companies vying for this business, as is the case in the telecom industry.
And the agreement that we had in place was to provide some advanced networking services. And it was a large enough deal, over $10 million a year in annual revenues, that I actually had visibility to the CEO of the provider. And we were looking for a way to build a stronger relationship at that level. And in most cases, as you know, with large companies and in this case, the revenue for the company was over a billion and a half dollars.
It’s difficult to get a relationship with the CEO, so this was a challenge. Now, at the same time that all of this was going on, I was also the cofounder and president of a large industry networking group that was primarily a volunteer organization. And we had quite a few people involved with running this group, including my wife, who served as the executive director.
And in this role for the networking group, I happened to be the face of the organization. Now this all comes into play and I’ll explain this in just a minute. Many years before that, I had become certified in Miller and Heiman Strategic Selling, and I decided to apply a key principle of that program, identifying and engaging with a key decision maker.
By coming up with a strategy to develop this relationship with the CEO. And I was hoping to be able to establish trust and credibility and strengthen our position within the account. So I try to put this all together through the networking organization. Through Miller and Heiman, I happen to have a board seat available with the networking organization. I came up with a plan to offer that board seat to the CEO for our largest customer. And this was something within my control. And it certainly would create a win win situation where the CEO would gain some prominence in the role being on the board of our group.
Our group had an excellent reputation and of course then I would be able to further solidify the
relationship if he were to join my board.
Now, if he turned down my offer, then it would be back to the drawing board with all of this. But fortunately, the CEO agreed to serve on the board and as a result, I was able to forge a very close relationship with him. We became good business contacts, we interacted together, went to many events that I invited him to, and we ended up really forging a very good and close relationship and an excellent partnership.
So as a result of all of this forging that relationship, it helped to fend off the competition and we were able to keep this account for the long term. We actually increased revenues enough that my group, using that account as a catalyst, we were able to triple revenues in our division and turned around the performance for a division that had previously languished before I came on board with my team.
So, a very, very good story.
Now, everyone listening to this may not have the type of opportunity that I just described to reach out to the CEO of one of your largest customers, but I think some of the same principles apply to other senior level contacts.
Fred Diamond: Yeah, that’s a great story. And it hearkens me back to when I went to work for myself as a fractional chief marketing officer in 2003. There was a company that I targeted, and I had been approached. I was an outsourced chief marketing officer, and I had been approached by some of the salespeople at this particular technology company. And they said, our marketing, it’s not good. We’re struggling with sales. We need you to come on, but we need to convince our CEO that you’re worth bringing on to help us get things going.
So I met with him, and we met a couple of times. I was also involved with a very large technology organization, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, which I’m sure you were involved with at various points. And I was in charge of the business development and sales committee, so I was the one who was scheduling events every single month.
So I scheduled a panel, and I invited the CEO of this company to be on the panel. And we had 100 people in the room. And NVTC did a lot of advertising, and he was thrilled. And he gave me a contract, and I was a consultant for them for about 10-11 months and was one of my first clients.
And he would say to his salespeople, he said, look what this guy did. He put me on a panel in front of 100 people. He was creative enough. He just didn’t keep selling me on the value I would bring as a consultant. Of course, you know, there’s value, of course, that I brought him in that particular role, but I remember that, and that is a great strategy for the salespeople out there. And good for you for making that happen.
Give us some tips that you took away from that particular story.
Barry Toser: I think it’s really important to strategize on how you can develop these relationships.
You want to have these relationships throughout the organization, because obviously, if you’re single threaded, and you just have one contact that you’ve done the deal with and that contact ends up leaving the company, then you might have the whole account in jeopardy and at peril.
So, you know, how do you develop these relationships? I’ll try to give you a couple thoughts and tips on that.
I think first, very important to identify who these key decision makers are and try to make some kind of connection with them. And how do you do that? Well, as you described, you can, you know work with them on particular programs and events. There are industry events, there are conferences where the senior level buyers attend. They’re likely to be present there. This provides, you know, just a great opportunity to network and build relationships with that, with them in that kind of environment, you know, always look for ways to offer value.
You know, try to share, you know, industry insights. Try to provide solutions to problems that they may be facing. And this helps you to establish credibility and trust. Leverage those existing relationships. If you have them within the company, try to build those relationships out with the senior level buyers and invite senior level contacts to different events that you might be involved in yourself.
Or even take them to a lunch, take them to dinner.
Don’t be bashful.
Reach out to these people and see if you can get them, you know, to join you. You know, take them to a local sporting event, a local program, or particular topic of interest to them. There are lots of different ways that you can try to build out these relationships. Just consistently follow up with the potential buyers, you know, after the initial meetings and conversations, maintain that relationship.
Always keep the lines of communications open, and it’s all about building good relationships.
Fred Diamond: Those are some great bits of advice. A couple of things come to my mind. One is a lot of times salespeople think that the value is related specifically to their product or service or solution. And they need to constantly be thinking of ways to show the value. My product will help you do this.
That’s another thing. Our service will help you do this. That or the other thing. The value could be, you know, something nuanced that you helped the company achieve because you were paying attention to what they needed.
I’m going to go back before we close here on the guy I referred to before guy hired me as an outsourced CMO, before it was even sexy to call it fractional 2003. And he came to me one day and he said, do you know what the best thing was that you did for me?
And I said, well, you must be referring to the world class sales and marketing integration program that I developed to ensure that your salespeople had the tools and the communications to be successful.
He said, no, that was really good.
I said, okay, well, then you must be talking about the integrated marketing automation strategy that I put into play to target messages to our specific targeted customers that usually only see at, you know, billion-dollar companies, not at $10 million companies.
He said, no, that was, that was good, too.
He said, the best thing you did for me was you introduced me to, and he mentioned somebody who was a quasi-government employee in the economic development world of the DC area. And he said, I’ve been trying to meet that person for five years. You knew that person.
You know, you’re talking about relationships, Barry Toser, and you just made a phone call and you got me lunch with this person that I’ve been trying to meet for five years. And I don’t know if anything’s ever going to come of it, but you were able to make that happen for me, and that was the most valuable thing you ever did. And in my head, I was thinking, what about all this world class marketing things and differentiation strategies?
But I said, cool, good. And it got me a client for, like I said, almost a year. He then led to other clients because he got so much value out of that one thing that I did.
So the message here for me to the listeners is that your value isn’t always my product is going to help you do this. Service isn’t going to always do this. What else can you, as the sales professional, provide to help your customer achieve their goals?
All right, once again, I want to thank Barry Toser, my guest today on the Sales Story and a Tip podcast.