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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Optimal Sales Mindset Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Fred Diamond on January 15, 2021. It featured Sales Prospecting Expert and “Chief Door Opener” Caryn Kopp. She’s the author of Biz Dev Done Right.]
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CARYN’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “The Kopp-Gap Method of Sales Messaging which, when it’s done properly, can render your competition irrelevant. It’s three sentences in a framework and when you’re able to articulate your gap messaging, you are able to get in doors that your competition cannot get in. You’re able to win business that your competition can’t win because you’re saying something that’s valuable to the prospect. It’s fill in the blank. “Anyone can,” and you fill in the blank, “But not everyone can,” and you fill in the blank. “For example,” fill in the blank.” Start with that and see how it does for you. If it’s done properly, it will render your competition irrelevant.”
Fred Diamond: Today we’re talking about opening doors, we’re talking about how to get meetings. It’s the beginning of 2021, Caryn, a lot has changed since the pandemic kicked in back in March of 2020, ten months ago. We’ve been talking about how things have changed almost on a daily/weekly basis but today we’re going to be talking about how to open doors, it’s absolutely critical right now. As we talked before about how things have changed almost on a daily basis, we used to say in the beginning that it’s really easy to get through to people because we know that everybody’s home, we know where everybody is. They’re probably home in their basement or in the converted garage or upstairs, not just you and your team but your customers. That’s changed, people have closed a little bit, people have had to deal with personal challenges, business challenges along the way. It’s great to have you here, you’re an Amazon Best-Selling author, Biz Dev Done Right, you’re one of the true experts in prospecting and helping companies and sales professionals get meetings. It’s great to have you here, we’re excited to get started.
Caryn Kopp: Thanks for having me here, I’m excited as well. It’s definitely changed, business development has changed in the last 10 months or so and what you said is exactly what we found. About every 3 or 4 weeks, what our door-openers are doing to get our clients these executive level meetings is changing. Right when the pandemic hit, as you say, people were available but a lot of people didn’t think so, so they weren’t reaching out to them but the people who were, they won. Fast-forward a couple of months, everybody knows that it’s not going to be going back anytime soon and everybody is trying to reach out, but now without the networking in-person trade shows, all the in-person things that go on, conferences, people were really like fish out of water when they used to develop business that way as to how to meet people.
Fast-forward a couple of months later, things have changed on the prospect side. They know that they need to do things that are long-term, they know they need to continue what their work is but reaching them now has become different and it’s challenging. It’s always been challenging, getting in the door was never easy. If it was easy, nobody would ever need my company. It is hard, but the way in the door has changed so I thought it would be really helpful to share with everybody out there what’s working for our door-openers today. Not three weeks ago, not four weeks ago, not five months ago or five years ago but what is actually working today to reach them and to have conversations that result in the path to the close which is what everybody needs. This isn’t going to change anytime soon, life is going to be like this for a little while and we still need to meet our quotas, we still need to run our businesses and we just need to operate differently. Anybody who’s still in the mindset of waiting until it changes, you have to flip your mindset now because business needs to go on.
Fred Diamond: You just made a great point. Every Wednesday we do our Sales Game Changers Live where we interview Sales VPs on what’s on their mind right now with their customers and their sales team and last week we had a guy named Bill Donellan who’s with Adobe, he’s a Senior VP of Sales over there. At the end of every webinar and podcast, as our listeners know, I ask for one action step. You’re going to give us a dozen of tips and then you’re going to give us one action step but Bill’s tip was make your number, he said, “Make your number, do all the things necessary but at the end of the day, make your number. Your company needs you to make your number.” All the things that you’re going to be talking about are not just about getting these meetings that don’t mean anything, but they’re getting meetings with the right people at the right time to help you hopefully help them to become customers.
Caryn Kopp: Exactly, one of our core values is create important wins, not just any wins. Every win is not an important one but we create the important wins and you need to, too. I love what you just said because if you start with the end in mind, you can reverse-engineer to make sure that the door opening you’re doing is the door-opening that’s going to get you to the end-result you want. Not all passes forward are going to do that so that’s actually a wonderful segue into this big chasm that people feel. When people hit my doorstep, this is usually the way they feel. Take a look at this guy over here, he needs to get in the prospect’s door and even if he were to climb down this chasm and climb back up the other side, take a look at the lock on that prospect’s door. This is how people feel, like it’s a vault and now even more so than ever before it feels like it’s a vault and it’s very difficult to get in. It feels like there’s some sort of secret out there that people don’t know so I’m going to share with you what those secrets are. When people come to me, they’re often talking about what they’re doing right now that isn’t working and there’s a lot of ready-fire-aim that’s going on out there. People are just scrambling to get in any door, have any conversation but they’re not the right conversations, they’re not the right doors, there are certain steps that need to be taken in order to get these doors open. I’m going to lay out what those steps are and then I’m going to share with you the blind spots – we’ll call them today pandemic blind spots because the blind spots now are different than the blind spots before that will help you to get in those doors.
Here are the planks, we call this the Five Planks of Door-Opening Success. The first plank is the right target, the second plank, the right message and I don’t mean marketing message, this is sales messaging. The third plank, right answers for objections – not just any answer, but the right answer. The fourth plank is the right door-opener, you need the right person doing the work who has the bandwidth to get it done. Even sometimes people have the right people but those right people don’t have enough time to get this job done properly. Then the right execution, is it a phone call? Is it an email? What kind of phone call, what kind of email? There’s a lot of inefficiency going on with people using poor execution even if they’re targeting the right people.
Let’s just go into a couple of the key blind spots having to do with this. Most of the time when people tell me that they’re not getting in as many doors as possible or they tell me that they have a lot of sales that are stuck in the proposal stage and won’t move to the close, the real issue is coming from target. If you fix target, it fixes a lot of things for you. Especially now, it’s really important to find out who are the buyers who are spending and Fred, this is how it comes over to me. The question is not, “Caryn, who’s spending?” The question is, “Caryn, where’s the often money? I can’t find it, the people who used to be buying from me before are no longer buying from me. The people who used to be my best referral sources are no longer referring people who have the ability to buy from me. What do I do now?” If that’s what’s happening to you, you have a target issue and it’s time to take a look at this wide world of prospects and go narrow. Some people in the pandemic pivoted their whole business when they didn’t really need to pivot, they needed to focus and target a particular group of people.
You might be asking, “That’s nice, thanks for telling me that but how do I go about doing that?” One of the things that we started doing during the pandemic is focusing for our clients on their prospect groups that were experiencing trigger events. A trigger event is an event that’s going on in a prospect segment that creates urgency around having an initial meeting and urgency around closing a sale. Urgency is a key piece and we were talking about urgency before the pandemic, but once the pandemic hit it became a more vital component and I’ll give you an example. When the pandemic hit, business leaders were either having a really great experience with their bank or a really bad experience with their bank, both people who were having bad experiences are out in the market shopping for a new bank. What does that do? It creates an opportunity for banks to go out there in the market and grab all of these decision-makers who are now looking for another bank. Not all the banks have the ability and the bandwidth to go out there and have these conversations with leaders. What did we do? We have a solution for that, we have the door-opener service, we can represent these banks, talk to the CEOs of these businesses who have already decided to switch and direct them to the right bank. What does that do for the bank? It grows their clientele. This is one example of a trigger event that was going on. What are other examples?
Here’s the way to think about it for you. Take a look out into your prospect group all the different kinds of prospects that would really value you. Is there something that’s affecting your prospect group? Think about the income statement, is there something that’s affecting their revenue? That’s what was happening for the banks. Is there something that’s affecting their expenses, their line item, their labor pools? Think of the staffing companies out there where the prospects are experiencing something that’s related to their labor pool, they can’t get labor for a particular reason. Maybe because they’re all experiencing issues with COVID. Is there something happening within their profit? Think about your prospect’s income statements and see if you can identify a particular trigger event that’s going on for them. Then you can take this wide world of prospects, make it more narrow, focus on people who are experiencing this trigger event and then you’ll use language – which we’ll talk about in a second – which will be most compelling to bring them to a conversation with you.
That’s urgency. Let’s talk about two more factors having to do with target that are really important. This is how we help our clients identify their sales sweet spot, here’s urgency, we just talked about that but if you remember Venn diagrams from fifth grade, we’re looking for the ultimate Venn diagram. You want to target a group of people who not only feels urgency but who also will find you to be the obvious solution. Once they know that you exist they wouldn’t even take a step without you being part of their decision set, they just need to know about you and will also willingly pay what you want to charge for your services. It’s very few people who hit my doorstep that sell on price, most of the people who hit my doorstep want to sell on value but not everybody out there is going to pay for value. What if you could very efficiently stop talking to people who would never willingly pay what you want to charge for your services? Think of how much more efficient you’d be. You want to take the group of prospects that you’ve been focusing on and make it narrower to fit into these particular circles. Before I switch over to message, Fred, is there anything you want to talk about having to do with target?
Fred Diamond: One thing that has come up a lot over the daily Sales Game Changers webinars and podcasts that we do is the concept that you need to bring even more value than you’ve ever had to bring. People who listen to the Sales Game Changers podcast frequently know that we’ll bring that up but sales is always about value creation, as a lot of the great sales leaders have told us. But even more so now, because of some of the things that you said – how is their income being affected? How can you find that? – we talk to sales reps about understanding where the value is to the right of where you are. It’s not just like, “I have this great solution, it could be helpful for you.” It’s the elite salespeople that we’re working with right now and the elite sales leaders are bringing this where the customer is going to be from a value perspective. I like some of the things that you talked about. If you could just talk about that for another second or two, how could sales professionals even more so understand where their customers are? And you’re right, when I look at the Venn diagram, willingness to pay, all those things definitely fit in. But the elite sales professionals right now are coming to their customer with value to help them get to where they need to get to because of where they are now. I’m just curious from the preparation perspective, what are some of the other factors that your team is going in to even further understand before we get to message?
Caryn Kopp: They work very nicely hand in hand but there’s one more factor and in fact, this came up yesterday on a conversation with a client where yes, it is about value. How do you create value? If everybody in your playing field is a tier, how are you here where this gap is value? That is actually the Kopp-Gap method of sales messaging which I’m going to talk about in a second. Before I get there, when it comes to figuring out who you’re going to target and what you’re going to say, there is the value that you provide as the outcome for the prospects who you want to be clients but that’s not always the reason why they’re going to take a meeting with you. There’s a difference and we call that point of entry. They may need the value that you bring but they may not take a meeting to discuss it because it’s already being somewhat covered by whatever their current solution is or another vendor. You may need a point of entry target, you may need a point of entry message in order to bring that right person to the table so that you could have a conversation about a different outcome. There’s a slight difference when it comes to door opening versus that first meeting and it’s a nuance and it’s very important that people understand that in order to get these right doors open. Does that make sense?
Fred Diamond: It does. Caryn, I want to talk about one other quick thing before you move on and you’re probably the best person that we could talk to about this. As a lot of people know who watch the webinars and listen to the Sales Game Changers podcast and read our blog posts, I’ve been saying from day 1 when people ask me, “What is the one thing you’ve learned, Fred?” and I’ve learned thousands because I’m spending every day talking to great leaders, thought leaders and authors like you. I always say the #1 thing is this, it’s the phone, the #1 sales tool on the planet, ladies and gentlemen. Rick who’s one of our frequent listeners said, “I knew you were going to bring up the phone.” Talk for a second about conversations, if you don’t mind.
Caryn Kopp: I don’t mind but I do have to tell you where that is on the Five Planks.
Fred Diamond: Okay, we’ll get to it then.
Caryn Kopp: The conversation here is execution but I will whet everybody’s appetite and tell you that one of the biggest most successful changes in the way business development is being successfully done right now is phone and conversation. You can’t have a ‘what if’ conversation through an email but a lot of people try, a lot of people will try to send a prospect an email that’s this long, nobody’s going to read it. You’ll spend a half an hour writing it and nobody’s going to read it, it has to be short and especially comes with a conversation, email alone is not going to do it, phone alone is not going to do it. Phone and email in combination with LinkedIn and some other things done well does it. Most of this kind of execution that I’ve seen happen when it’s not successful is because it is not done well or because the delivery system – phone, email, LinkedIn, whatever somebody chose – was not the right one for the job.
I don’t know about you, Fred, I get about 250 emails a day from sellers who are trying to sell me things because I’m the CEO of my company and I see those emails come through and if I see one more that has the word COVID in it or “the pandemic” I’m going to just jump out the window. I know that is so cold, that email, they’ve done no research about me, it is the same email they’ve sent to a thousand other people. That does not create a relationship with me, you know what does? Say something to me, do your research, tell me why you can be of more value to me than the rest of the people I know, the people I’ve already hired to do these jobs and the other 10 that I haven’t that I already know. What is it? Why should I take a meeting with you? That’s not coming through in an email, an email can’t do that, it’s too much to ask of a media that’s flat. The phone is really what’s working and my phone is next to me as yours is, it’s just on silent right now but it’s right there and I can see the texts come through as I’m on Zoom calls all day long. I may not be able to pick up the phone but I can see the text come in. Should you use somebody’s cell? We’re still in execution, my methodical mind, we’re going out of order but I’m going to roll with it today.
We’re talking about execution here, should you reach out on someone’s cell phone? Yes, you can do that now. You couldn’t before, it was a little creepy to do that before the pandemic. Now you can do that, you can reach out to somebody but I don’t recommend it is the first method of reaching out. I do recommend the phone call. Voicemail, yes, leave a voicemail of 6 sentences max, there’s an article on my website where you can read what those sentences are. Then you can send them an email and then let them know in the email, very short, that you’re going to text them because maybe that would be easier to connect. You could leave them a voicemail on their cellphone at that point and then you can have a very short text asking them to connect. This is what’s working right now, being too forceful is not working.
There are the three P’s of prospect follow up that I talk about which is persistence with patience without being a pest, you have to have those three. One of our clients was telling us her sales guy was not getting in enough doors and we started looking at his activity and the cadence of his activity, he called one prospect 20 times in a week, don’t do that [laughs]. Yes, the phone works but not like that. There is a balance between how often you’re reaching out and of course, what you say, the balance between phone and email in order to get the prospect’s attention but I can sit here and tell you, I run a company of people who do this and it is working. My door-openers are getting our clients in the door with executive level prospects today during the pandemic and have since the beginning of the pandemic. If you’re feeling like it’s not working for you, I want you to focus on the Five Planks of Door-Opening Success because this is what’s working.
Let’s switch over to the right message because it’s really important that we get there. A lot of people, when they think about message they think about marketing messaging. They think about what’s on their website, they think about what’s in their promotional materials but that’s not what we’re talking about here and that’s a big blind spot for people. We’re talking about sales messaging here, the spoken word, the email that’s meant for one person, not for a thousand people. What is it that you can say that is of such value to someone that they will say, “I do want this meeting. I didn’t think I did before but I do want it now. Because of something you said, I do want to have this meeting and I don’t want to put it off.” This is the value, it’s not why you’re different – nobody cares why you’re different – they only care why you are of more value to them. If you can articulate that in language that the prospect will agree with, you will separate yourself with value, you’re up here, everybody else is down here. I’m going to introduce a messaging methodology which we call the Kopp-Gap Method of Sales Messaging which when it’s done properly can render your competition irrelevant. I’m going to share with you the methodology, it’s very simple, it’s three sentences in a framework and then I want you to work on it because when you’re able to articulate your gap messaging, then you are able to get in doors that your competition cannot get in, you’re able to win business that your competition can’t win because you’re saying something that’s valuable to the prospect. Are you ready to see the framework?
Fred Diamond: Let’s see it.
Caryn Kopp: Here it is, three simple sentences. Everybody can and you fill in the blank, but not everyone can and you fill in the blank, for example and you fill in the blank. I’m going to give you an example that works with my company, we do door opening as I said, getting our clients in the door of the executive level. “Anybody can say they can get you some meetings but not everybody can say they have a 20 year history of getting executive level meetings to discuss big engagements on behalf of their clients. For example, one of our clients had 20 meetings in 18 weeks and closed a sale in the fourth quarter which is unheard of in their industry, that’s what we can do.” When you put your message into the gap message, you’re saying something to an individual that that person will agree with. When I say, “Not everybody can get meetings at the executive level” most people will nod their heads and agree with that.
I’ll give you another example, this one comes from the promotional products industry. “Anyone can say they give good customer service, but not everyone can prove it. We once charted a plane at our expense to fly the merchandise there to be on time so our client looked good, that’s what we can do.” This is a couple of examples of how this works. If you would like to try your Gap messaging and send it over to me, I’ll give you a couple comments back. We spend hours working on the exact message. Once you fill in these sentences I want you to go back and take a look at each individual word. Is every word working hard for you? Every word should work hard for you, we don’t just have satisfied clients, we have grateful clients, think of the difference between the word satisfied and grateful. Make sure that every word is working hard for you and that when you look at what you wrote, if you put your prospect’s hat on and feel how it’s going to land for the person, put yourself in that person’s shoes, that person has to agree with what you just said. Once you get there, it’s time to go for a test drive but don’t test drive it with your friends because they’re not your ideal market. You need to test drive it with people who are your ideal market and if your ideal market has changed and you need to go after a new market who is not your current clients, don’t test it with your current clients. Test it with someone who’s a representative A-level prospect for you and then keep working on it. If you notice things change and now people are saying, “I really want to have this meeting”, you know you’ve arrived at something that’s really good. Then share it with the rest of your sales teams, don’t make it hard for your friends who are on your sales team to be successful too. You never know who’s going to come up with the best words, this is actually a great team exercise as well.
Here we are, we’ve talked about the right target, the right sales message which also folds in the right answers for the objections. Let’s talk for a second about the door-opener, here’s a blind spot for the business leaders as well as the salespeople. Everybody knows the difference between hunters and farmers, the farmers grow the business and the hunters find the business but what most people don’t realize is that within the world of hunters there are different kinds of hunters. There are some that are really great at going on the meetings and closing the sales, in our world we call them the closers. There are other people who are intuitively great, they just got it in their DNA to open up relationships with people they don’t know. These people don’t need to go to a conference or a trade show or in-person networking, they can just pick up the phone and have a conversation with people. We call those people the openers, that is the only kind of person we hire at Kopp Consulting to do our door-opener service, we have made a science out of hiring those right people. It’s very rare, in my experience, to have one seller who’s equally great at both closing and opening, they’re usually better at one versus the other. Sellers, you know what I’m talking about and even if you’re great at opening, it may not be your favorite thing to do.
One way to have the best closers spend more time closing is to get them some help in having the doors open and that’s where a door-opener service like ours could be helpful. Sellers, if you find that you’re great closers but you need some help opening either because it’s a new market for you or you just don’t have enough time, tell your sales manager to call me and we’ll have a conversation about whether this could work for you. If you are responsible for opening and it’s not your favorite thing to do, you’re going to have to block your calendar to make yourself sit there and focus on the right people and do the right activities. Some tips for you: close your phone, don’t look at your phone, don’t look at your texts, don’t look at anything, just focus on the individuals who you’ve identified are the people who need you, who feel urgency, who would willingly pay, who would find you to be an obvious solution and open up a relationship with them. Zipping off a quick email, they know it. If you do your research and tell them why this meeting is so important to them, that’s a whole different ball game in terms of creating a relationship. Having the right door-opener do the right kind of work is one of the most efficient ways of developing new business and being successful.
Then I’m going to flip to right execution, there are a couple things we didn’t talk about before but before I do, is there anything you want to talk about having to do with the right door-opener?
Fred Diamond: I just have a quick distinction question. Again, the main sponsor of the Sales Game Changers webinars and podcasts is the Institute for Excellence in Sales. I remember once we had a meeting with a customer who was looking to have his junior team, which essentially were BDR door-openers. I’m just curious, do your door-openers consider themselves to be in sales? Do they consider themselves to be sales professionals and do you consider this function?
Caryn Kopp: These are nuances and terminology and everybody has different terms. Yes, my people would consider themselves in sales. I think if you’d ask them, they would tell you that business development is a subset of sales and I think if you’d ask them further, they would tell you that door-opening is a subset of business development. Here’s one distinction that’s really important because this came up on a program that I had tuned into yesterday. People think that an SDR is an SDR that is an SDR. There are times that when an SDR, somebody who’s new is exactly right, somebody who’s just learning the ropes and things like that is exactly right and there are other times when somebody more senior who’s been around the block, comes from business development, has gotten themselves in executive level doors for many years, knows how to do that and lay that foundation for a relationship. There are times when that is the right person for the job.
One of the things that you need to do is figure out what is right for you, if you’re selling something to an executive that involves a pretty big investment or is a conceptual sale versus a transactional sale, that is typically when the senior level business developer who’s just gifted in door-opening like my team, that’s when that person is the right person for that job to get that door open. Then we could get the door open for somebody else who’s either senior or that person can even be junior because we can guide that person along, but getting that meeting is the hardest part. Yesterday when I was on this program there was somebody who was speaking about some experiences that he has and in his opinion, getting in the door was for the junior person who’s learning. Not when it comes to getting in with executives to discuss big engagements because if you can’t get in, you don’t get to sit there and ever have a shot to close a sale.
Fred Diamond: Also, you don’t know what to say. The people who are in the junior side, they don’t understand business concepts, they don’t understand where the customer is going, they don’t even really understand roles. It takes some time, 3, 4, 5 years to truly understand that in context. Caryn, before we get to execution to wrap up today’s webinar, we have a question here that comes in. A lot of the sales professionals who are members of the IES have gone to live events and obviously they’re not happening right now. The question comes in, “Caryn, what channels do you feel are the best door-openers today other than the phone and email?” We talked a lot about the phone and we talked about how email couples with that, the pros and cons of both but are there other door-opener type things that may be effective today that your team is using?
Caryn Kopp: Yes and that I recommend for everybody. My team, when they’re getting in with net new people, we are using the phone and email and messaging that’s meant for someone. We will research the prospect and it’s not always on the first call that we get them, sometimes it’s the third, the fifth, it could be the 20th over a period of time but we are not saying the same thing. We are deepening that relationship over time and always giving them a reason, but that is for net new. Now, there are many other kinds of prospects. There’s leveraging your centers of influence to get referrals and things like that.
Let’s move off execution although this could fit in the realm of execution. Your clients can be prospects too, don’t forget about them. Have you sold everything you possibly can to the person who loves you most? Have you sold everything you possibly can to the people who are within that prospect’s company? Usually not. When I ask this question, people usually have overlooked something. There are a couple ways to think this through, what else, who else and what’s the big idea? Within your current clients, what other value can you provide the person who loves you most within that company? Is it ancillary products and services? Think about it, what would that person really value? Is it saying to that person instead of having the same conversation every quarter, “Let’s have the conversation now and map out the entire year, make it easier on you.” Now you just tripled the size of your sale possibly and also locked yourself in. The big idea, sometimes there’s something really big. Think, what’s bigger than that? You could come up with something that’s so big that tripling the size of any one client is like chump change. You could think of something that’s so big and then suggest it to the person who loves you most at your client organization, that person might just say yes. That’s something that a lot of people overlook, your clients can be prospects too.
When it comes to navigating to other decision makers within your client organization think about who else. I don’t like the word referral but you can ask who else, who else in your organization has a need? Who should I be talking to next? Then when you deliver that question, you need to be silent and let your person answer. Make a list of all the people who asked you for proposals over the last two years and call them back, don’t just send them an email, pick up the phone and call them, as we said. Ask for introductions, we talked about that but within your centers of influence. Who are the people who serve your same market? Tell them you’re looking to grow your business and as you do, you need to refer your people to people like them. Let’s have that conversation, have a virtual coffee and find out how they deliver to their clients and then they will ask you the same. Virtual networking groups, there’s lots of them but the one-on-ones is where the gold is. Pick out two or three people out of your networking group who serve the same clients as you and then go have a virtual coffee with them. You can take a role in your prospect’s industry group and meet all of that person’s colleagues at other companies, have that person introduce you.
I always save direct outreach for last because that’s the one that people don’t want to do but quite honestly, that is the one that is working today. Every day we are doing this for our clients. This will be in the PowerPoint but a couple new metrics for sales, make sure that a high percentage of the deals that you’re closing are deals that are right for you, make sure if you’re getting an objection you’re probably not saying something that’s all that interesting so think about your messaging. We have 99.9% of our first meetings go to second meetings, if yours don’t then you probably have a problem with target so you want to think about that as well. Don’t give up, because as long as you’re targeting the exact right people it’s just a matter of time before they say yes to your conversation. Dan Kennedy said the difference between garbage and salad is timing so hang in there because your competition won’t.
Fred Diamond: Caryn Kopp, I want to thank you so much. I want to thank everybody if you joined us today and if you’re listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast, thank you so much for doing so. Caryn, I just want to let you know, you may not know this, I know you’re a best-selling author and you’ve spoken to tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of professionals. With your book and your content and your practices and all the involvement you’ve had with various organizations like EO and WPO and Sales Experts Channel, I just want to let you know that you’ve impacted thousands if not tens of thousands of careers in such a positive way to help them get past some of the fear. I’m sitting here listening to you and I’m thinking, maybe we should change the name of the Institute for Excellence in Sales to the Institute for Excellence in just picking up the phone and calling people but that would actually get shy to the challenges that really go into sales. It really is much more than that but that is a starting point. First of all, I want to acknowledge you for all the great work you’ve done and continue to do and second of all, just give us one action step. You’ve given us so many great ideas but give us one action step. It’s January 15th, people are listening to this probably in the future in the Sales Game Changers podcast. What’s one thing they must do right now?
Caryn Kopp: This is the one thing we didn’t cover from execution so it circles us back with that and closes that loop as well. If you want more revenue, spend more time doing revenue-generating activities. There’s a direct correlation between time spent in success as long as you’re doing this right, so block time on your calendar and make sure that you are spending more time on revenue generating activities.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo