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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 October 12, 2020. It featured sales expert and consultant Art Sobczak, author the best-selling Smart Calling (Third Edition).]

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EPISODE 312: Well-Known Sales Prospecting Expert and Author Art Sobczak Says Sales Professionals Are Doing Customers a Disservice By Not Doing This Right Now

ART’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “If you really believe in what you have and you feel that there are people that could take advantage of it, you are actually doing a disservice to people by not being a strong sales professional. The world needs professional salespeople, especially right now, to lead and they need to hear your message. If it’s just not a fit today, no problem, at least you found out. A decision is better than no decision so again, you can do this, go out there, give it a shot. Let’s make things happen. You can make 2021 your best year ever.”

Art Sobczak: Fred, first of all thank you for having me on and hi to everybody out there that are followers of mine already and for those of you who’ve never heard of me, I’m going to share some information with you today that’s going to make your prospecting easier, more fun, help you get more yes’s and fewer no’s and help you never be rejected again. Normally people get a little skeptical when I say the no rejection and I know in your promotion for this, Fred, you were talking about, “Are you afraid to pick up the phone?” The thing is today there are so many people that are afraid to pick up the phone because of rejection. Let me just ask you, what are you hearing from your members as it relates to rejection and the phone?

Fred Diamond: We’re telling people even today, you’ve got to pick up the phone, you’ve got to connect. Like you said in the book, sales is talking to people, it’s a verb so we’re telling people, “You’ve got to be talking to people and you’ve got to overcome the fear of the rejection.” We hear that all the time and it’s probably one of the top 5 things that we work with sales professionals on, we work with a lot of B to B complex sales professionals but a lot of it comes down to just picking up the phone and making that connection.

Art Sobczak: Let’s address that. I believe that in sales probably about 95% of what we accomplish is due to this and that is our thinking, because if our thinking isn’t right, nothing else matters. The other things we’re going to be talking about today will be the messaging, will be the mechanics and I’m going to give you the mechanics but we really do need to focus on this rejection thing. Now, whenever I’m doing live programs out with people in person – hopefully that’ll come back shortly – I always ask the question, “Who here’s been rejected before on a phone call?” and of course people are falling over themselves putting their hands up. I say, “Sure. Now let me ask you, how do you know?” and people are going, “Well, I hear a no, or they say don’t call me anymore or we’re all good or it’s their dial tone when they hang up.” I say okay, fine.

Anybody that’s every placed phone call before, sales or prospecting call, probably has experienced those things but that’s exactly what it is, it’s all an experience. Now, is rejection an experience or the way you define the experience? It’s always the definition, it’s just a thing, those are things that happen to us and if you have a choice to define what happens to you, why wouldn’t you define it as something positive as opposed to something negative? If you continue to tell yourself that you’re a horrible person, you’re eventually going to believe that. If you keep telling yourself, “I got rejected” you’re going to start avoiding the behavior that is causing you to get the feeling that you’re mistakenly telling yourself. You’re telling yourself a wrong story and it’s kind of absurd because if you look at other professions, if something doesn’t work they don’t say, “I got rejected.” An accountant spreadsheet didn’t add up, “Oh, I got rejected by that spreadsheet.” A mechanic, something doesn’t work with the engine, “Got rejected by that engine.” Of course not, that’s just crazy, so why would we choose to call this rejection? It’s just something that didn’t work.

Here’s something else about rejection, it’s really pretty selfish if you’re choosing to not place calls because you fear this thing called rejection. Let’s get our values straight here, what do you mostly value? I would assume that most people are in sales because they want to make money, that’s normally the #1 driver for salespeople and also, we want to help other people. If we’re putting our silly little fear of getting a no in front of really what we should be valuing which is making money, providing for our family, helping other people out there, we’re putting that ahead of those other values. Let’s put this in perspective, many people also say, “That’s all well and good but that’s just words.” That’s right, our actions follow our words and our thoughts so what can we do to never be rejected again? How about this: instead of calling whatever happens to us on the phone ‘rejection’, let’s find something positive that we can apply a positive label to. As a matter of fact, let’s be proactive with what we’re doing on our calls.

I always suggest that salespeople have a secondary objective for every one of their calls, the primary is going to be, “What do we want them to do as a result of this call?” which could be set the appointment or go with our proposal, whatever that might be, that’s action-oriented. The secondary objective is more for our attitude than anything and it’s defined as this: what can I attempt at minimum on every single call? Because now that doesn’t rely on the other person’s reaction, it’s totally in my control. If I can say that I at least want to ask this question or at least I want to keep the door open for a future call, we call can accomplish something every time we pick up the phone so at the end of the day we can say, “I accomplished my primary objective two times and I accomplished my secondary the rest of the time.” That’s a pretty good day contrasted with the person who said, “I got rejected 40 times today, can’t wait to do it again tomorrow” – said no one ever. [Laughs]

Let’s just put things in perspective here and here’s the thing, we’re all professional salespeople – I assume that we are – we have picked a profession where every single day proactively we’re going out and playing in heavy traffic on the interstate. When you do that, when you put yourself in harm’s way, occasionally you’re going to get nicked and sometimes you’ll take one head-on but how we react to that is going to determine how we’re going to do the rest of the day, the week, the month and the year. The people who have excelled at this game – and there are many of you out there right now nodding your head saying, “Yeah, that’s me” – you’ve done this, you do this. There are people that say, “So what? No big deal.”

One of my first corporate sales trainers way back in the day said, “When you’re prospecting, you need to react like the barber does.” What does the barber say? “Next.” [Laughs] we just move onto the next one. I could talk for hours about this, there’s more material on this in the book but we’ve got to get our head on straight and also, by the way, here’s one more thing. Fred, one thing that I’m seeing out there now and I’m perusing these things on LinkedIn where all of a sudden all these experts are suggesting what you should be saying on your sales development prospecting calls. People are suggesting these gimmicky things like, “Start out with, ‘I just want to let you know this is a cold call’ or, ‘You’re not expecting my call and I just want to take 15 seconds of your time and then you can hang up on me if you want’.” I’m looking at all this stuff going, “You’re apologizing for contacting somebody.” As a matter of fact, I got one of those calls and somebody said that to me, they said, “This is a cold call and you can decide after 10 seconds if you want to hang up or not.” I said, “Let me ask you a question, are you that unconfident in what you’re selling that you don’t think you have value, that you think I’m going to hang up on you? Where are you coming from?”

You need to feel like what you have is so valuable – and again, assuming you’re calling the right people – that everybody should have a need for it. Again, with our messaging we’re not going to say that but we’ve got to have that mindset. Let’s assume you’ve got that mindset, let’s get into the actual messaging and process here. I’m going to give you an example of one of these dumb cold calls. “Hey, Pat, Dale Stevens with DS Associates, we do virtual sales training and I’d like to get 15 minutes on your calendar to introduce our programs to you.” Fred, have you ever gotten that call or something like it?

Fred Diamond: I get them 50 times a day on LinkedIn to be honest with you. The connect-and-pitch type of a thing.

Art Sobczak: Right here in this brief little opening, this person made about 7 mistakes. For example, a huge one, “I want to take something from you that’s more valuable than money, which is your time, and I haven’t given you a reason to do so. Now I’m talking about my thing, my thing are my programs.” They don’t care about your programs and there’s absolutely no reason for this person to even stay on the phone with you right now, let alone give you 15 minutes. Again, these are also me-oriented and there’s so many different versions of this plus, the person hasn’t talked about me, what’s going on in my world, hasn’t given any indication that they know something about me. Here’s the thing today, like you mentioned, Fred. You’re getting all of these messages every day, we’re all bombarded with anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand messages per day of all types whether it be phone, email, banner ads, whatever. As a result, we’ve become professional ignorers, we have to ignore most messaging that we get because we just simply can’t respond to most of it. Which ones do we listen to? The ones that are about us, the ones that cause us to lean in, the ones that may have something to do with something that’s going on in our world right now that’s relevant.

Let me give you an example of a smart call. “Hey Pat, Art Sobczak here, President of Business by Phone. I saw your post on LinkedIn about looking for a prospecting workshop for your virtual national sales meeting. I specialize working with sales teams whose pipeline is dried up and they find they now need to prospect but hadn’t had to before. What we do is I help them avoid call reluctance and rejection and use a proven conversational process to get appointments in sales and this results in reps being confident in their calling, having a consistent predictable pipeline. I’d like to ask a few questions to see if it makes sense to have a conversation.” Let me break this down, what did I do here? #1, I’ve got a connection right at the beginning. We’re going to go through this step by step and I’m going to give you guys a template, we’re going to fast-forward right to the good stuff so as soon as you get off this call, you can plug this into your own template and start making successful calls. The connection here is I know something about you and now I’ve really set myself apart from about 98% of the salespeople out there. Now I’m also addressing something that’s going on in your world and now I’m saying, “What we do is we specialize…” and everybody likes to work with a specialist as opposed to a generalist, “working with sales teams whose pipeline has dried up.” Now I’m framing this in terms of something that’s going on in your world and I already know this because what I’ve also done is I’ve done some social engineering. Social engineering is talking to someone other than a decision maker for the purpose of gathering sales intelligence. Who I would have spoken with here is a salesperson on this team because I would have called into the organization – which I do, by the way – and ask salespeople questions, because we all know salespeople like to talk [laughs]. So, I know they’re having some problems because their pipeline has dried up, so I’m describing and framing what’s going on in his world so now he’s thinking, “Yes, that’s me” and starting to lean in a little bit.

Now we have what I call the possible value proposition, “This is what we do”, I help them avoid call reluctance, rejection, I’m giving a little bit of credibility here and then I’m talking about the result, “Being confident in their calling, having a consistent predictable pipeline” and if you want to add some numbers here, sometimes I’ll say, “With my most recent client, this has increased their closed appointments by 75%”, that’s more social proof. Notice the ending here, I’m not saying I want to get on your calendar, I want to take 15 minutes of your time, I want to have you come to a webinar. All I want to do is earn a few more seconds with you, so the hardest decision you have to make at this point is to answer a couple questions. Notice how I say, “To see if it makes sense to have a conversation” which is a little ninja trick there because we’re already having a conversation [laughs]. That’s all we’re trying to do here, and the answer that I’m looking for at the end of this is, “Okay, sure. What do you want to know?” Notice I’m not apologizing, I’m not saying, “This is a cold call”.

Here’s the thing, we’ve got about 15 seconds to put somebody in a positive receptive state of mind and then move them to the questioning, those are the two objectives for a prospecting opening. By the way, I never use the term ‘cold call’ except in a derogatory sense because there’s absolutely no reason for anybody to ever place a cold call today and the people that do it, I say they’re just dumb. Within a couple seconds, a couple key strokes we can have so much information about people, organizations and situations, things that are going on and frankly, it shows tremendous disrespect if we haven’t’ taken the time to find out about the people we’re calling because we’re trying to take up their time but I haven’t taken any of my time to find out about you, to even see if what I have is going to be of value. It is mind-boggling and by the way, the people that say, “We don’t have time to do research, we need to place calls”, that’s just ridiculous because this is not just a numbers game.

We use numbers to measure activity and placing a large number of calls and placing quality calls are not mutually exclusive. How many attempts does it take to actually get somebody on the phone? The numbers are all over the board, 3, 5, 10, 15, pick a number. You’re not having to do all that research before every call, you’re doing it in a major way the first time, then you’re putting it in your notes, you’re creating your opening and voice mail and then you’re reviewing it before the next calls.

I’m getting off on a ramp on that, I’m passionate about this, can you tell?

Fred Diamond: Art, two quick comments. Nathan says it’s not really the rejection, it’s knowing what to say to continue the conversation to entice the customer. There’s two particular things that I love about this, one is, “I saw your post.” You’re paying attention to the prospect, you’re seeing something that he or she has said they are in need of as compared to you starting off with, “Here’s what I offer.” I also like the way you say, “We specialize in working with sales teams whose pipeline has dried up”, call reluctance and rejection. You’re not talking about some wide, broad, “We help with sales performance” because no one’s going to respond to that, but if the VP of Sales or Director of Sales knows that, “My people are struggling with call rejection and we don’t really have a great conversational process”, those are very specific things that you help them achieve. This is obviously light years ahead of the first example that you showed.

Art Sobczak: Obviously this is one of my examples, but everybody out there, you have results, you’re selling results. We’re not selling our things, we’re selling our results and I would suggest what you do is an exercise, if you haven’t done this already it’s actually relatively simple. You sit down, take your 20 best customers or clients and interview them, ask them, “What tangible, specific results are you getting by working with us?” Now you have a list of possible value propositions you may be able to use with your other customers based on the criteria that we’re going to find out in doing our research.

One thing I’m hearing today, you might be hearing this too from your members, is that, “Nobody’s picking up their phone anymore, we’re in a pandemic, nobody’s buying.” The fact is that people are still buying and I understand that there are certain industries and businesses that have been decimated by this, unfortunately. But many people have pivoted and some people are actually thriving. One of my coaching group members the other day on a call said that he is at 135% of quota where the rest of his team are at about 60% to 70%. I said, “What are you doing?” he said, “I’m being more innovative, I’m making more calls, I’m fine-tuning my approach, I’m staying connected to people, I’m sending out more emails with their targeted emails because I’m just not smiling and dialing and throwing it up against the wall. I’m being more strategic but I haven’t stopped my activity and my mindset is people are still buying, may as well be from me.”

But the thing is they’re talking to fewer salespeople, the one who they see have some potential value so smart calling was relevant before and it’s been successful for a long time, it’s even more relevant today and basically, it’s simply knowing something about the people, the situations and the organizations that we’re calling into so that we can tailor, customize and personalize our messaging to that individual to set ourselves apart from everybody else and to get them to lean in and say, “Let’s talk.” What we’re going to do here is we’re going to get right to the good stuff.

It’s funny because I’ll get emails almost every day, “What’s that one voicemail that’s going to get me put through” or, “What’s that one thing I can say, that secret message?” and secret sauce, I always say, “If you ever find it, let me know because I can probably sell it for a lot of money.” The thing is that this is a process, however I’m going to get right to the messaging for the smart calling process that if you just did this and you just filled in the blanks, you’d probably be able to have a passable call. I would encourage you, go download the template, there’s also a training video there that’s about 45 minutes or so that actually walks you through all the other things I was talking about. Social engineering, setting your objectives, asking some questions, we’ll get into voicemail, working with assistance. By the way, I don’t call them gatekeepers because that’s negative and we want to treat them with respect. I’m just going to go through the template with you, we’re going to fill in the blanks, I’m going to show you how easy this is and then we’ll open it up for questions.

This is a fill-in-the-blank template that follows the smart calling process. Step one in the process is pretty easy, it’s introducing yourself and your company. Then we have this thing called the connection, so when I gave you the example before I said, “I saw your LinkedIn post.” A connection could be anything you know about them, you were talking to somebody else, you’ve seen something on their website, you saw an article, you saw their post, maybe you heard something, you saw a news item or you can just say, “I know something about you, I understand your organization is in the process of expanding, opening up five new locations.” Again, what this does is sets the tone, sets yourself apart, I’m different from every other sales rep who’s pitching their stuff, I know something about you. Now again we’re starting to peak a little bit of curiosity and attention here. “I saw your post on LinkedIn Inside Sales group we both participate in about looking for a prospecting workshop for your 2020 meeting.”

Next, specialize. “We specialize in working with…” who or that. Let me explain this, and by the way, you can be a specialist in a lot of different things. You can say, “We specialize in working with…” you can say the title, type of organization or for example here what I have is dental practices, family owned businesses. “We specialize in working with…” who or that and now we’re describing a situation that they are encountering. People are looking for more targeted web traffic that needed 24/7 option for the security monitoring. Again, we’re just framing the situation that they are likely in and again, describing it in terms of the problem or a desire. Again, now people are saying, “Okay, that’s me.” They’re putting themselves in that box, “This guy is somebody that specializes in working with people like me” so there’s a lot of psychology going on in what we’re doing here. This is mine, “We specialize in working with sales teams who have new business quotas, might not be as confident in their prospecting as management would like.” This was a pre-pandemic one.

Next step, this is where we get into our possible value, this could either be pain avoidance or something they desire, a gain or result, again just simple psychology here. This totally comes from your prior pre-call planning and your research, your list of possible value. Notice I always call this possible value because we never know if it’s actually going to be of value until they tell us, so we have to have this thing called a hypothesis of value and that’s a huge word for me. Hypothesis of value is I can surmise that this may be of value based on what I know about them, based on what somebody else told me in their organization.

In the template I’ve got a lot of different idea starters here and again, you need to customize these things for your situation. We’ve got minimization, things they don’t want, maximization, things they might want and of course, you absolutely have to customize this to your business. What we do is we help them avoid call reluctance and rejection and also increase their numbers of quality calls, appointments in sales using a proven conversational prospecting process. That was similar to the example I gave earlier and then, we like to give an end results here. What’s interesting, Fred is that I’ve been in the sales training business for over 35 years now and I know a lot of you are thinking, “He must have started when he was 12.”

Fred Diamond: Someone just said, “We were not thinking that.”

Art Sobczak: [Laughs] one thing I’ve found is that as salespeople, sometimes we’re afraid to be obvious and don’t assume that people are going to derive the benefit or the result out of what you’re describing, so don’t be afraid to be obvious with saying what that means. Let’s paint a picture for them, an example here is, “For our clients, this has resulted in gains ranging from…” “The final outcome is the workforce is more motivated and productive.” Now, again we’re talking about the results. Notice what I haven’t done here is I haven’t said, “I want to talk to you about training” because who needs more training? “I want to sell you some webinars, I want to sell you a virtual program.” Exciting, right? No, let’s get to the end result. This results in reps being more confident in their calling, having a consistent, predictable pipeline and I want to use language that they’re familiar with. Again, I can pick that language out of their posts, off their website and especially when I’m talking to somebody else in their organization.

When I’m talking to salespeople doing this social engineering, I’m asking about what’s the biggest problem preventing you from doing your prospecting? Call reluctance, fear of rejection, not having a process, we don’t know what to say. Now I’m writing all that stuff down because I’m putting it into my messaging that’s going to resonate with them. Now what we want to do at the end again is not ask for a decision, we don’t want to ask for their time, we don’t want to say, “I want to become your vendor”, we just simply want to move to the questioning. What I like to do is review what you’re doing now for your whatever, “I’d like to ask a few questions to see if I could provide you some information, to see if this might be of some value to you, to see if it might be worth it having a further conversation.” Again, if I’ve done a good job up to this point where people are now leaning in going, “This all sounds good so far, sure, what do you want to know?”

So now, where are we? We’re in the interactive questioning phase of the call. By the way, there are many people out there who generally state, “The first phone call is only to set up an appointment” which to me is idiocy because I’m going to make a phone call and get you on the phone so I can set up another phone call to get you on the phone? [Laughs] if you’re already talking to me and if the music is still playing, I’m going to stay on the dancefloor. If they are indeed to busy to speak with you, they’re going to let you know but they picked up the phone so they must have some time now. They’re still on the phone with you, if I provided value that you want to know about, I’m going to ask you some questions. Now, how far you take it really is a matter of your sales model but my feeling is I’ve been teaching inside sales for over 35 years and I’ve always been a big believer in this new thing called remote selling. This isn’t new, folks, it’s been around forever and everything imaginable has been sold by phone and will continue to be, so don’t ever say that we can’t do this by phone because for every person who says you can’t do this by phone, there’s somebody doing it right now. You may as well tell me electricity doesn’t work, because it does work. There’s the template.

Fred Diamond: Thank you so much. We’re getting questions flying in here, by the way, Dan in Virginia says, “When the value is clear, the decision is easy”, one of the best quote I have ever heard and that goes exactly with what you are saying. I want to have you dispel a couple of myths as well, in your book Smart Calling you go into what’s real and what’s not real and you just started hitting on a couple of them that you can make phone calls today. It’s October of 2020, people are picking up the phone and we have some members of the IES whose industry has been shaken, people in the entertainment, hospitality space, but we have people in professional services and government space and healthcare who are having their best years ever.

Call length, you talked about this in the very beginning. We had a session a couple weeks ago with a guy named Nimit Bhatt who’s with a company called memoryBlue, he said his biggest myth is that people think they have to be so fast to get their message across in 15 seconds, or else the customer is just going to hang up on them. You’re obviously a fast-talker, but talk about that, is that a myth? Obviously you don’t want to waste their time and talk about things that are totally insignificant, because if you’re good in sales you’re going to be selling to people who can make decisions. You are selling to people whose time is important but talk about that, the quickness of a call, the length of a call.

Art Sobczak: That boggles my mind because if somebody goes in with this mentality of, “I’ve just got to puke out my presentation or opening in 10 seconds”, that’s just simply a story that you’re telling yourself. Why would you think that? Because if somebody was too busy to speak with you, they wouldn’t have picked up the phone and the other thing is, do you have something of value that is going to help that listener? If you have a strong belief that you do, then of course you need to be calm so that you’re going to be able to communicate that in such a way that the person is going to lean in and take some interest in it. By the way, when you looked at the example that I gave, there might be some people out there going, “That’s a lot of words, that’s too long.”

In all my years of doing this, here’s what I found about something being too long, too long is not a function of number of words, too long is a function of too boring. For example, I’m not interested in opera and if somebody started talking to me about opera, the first three words are too long, it’s too much time. But if somebody was talking to me about a brisket recipe that helped them win a competition in a barbecue contest, I would spend a half hour listening to them because that’s what I’m interested in, I’m a competition barbecue cook. You see some of those barbecue shows on TV? I’ve competed against some of those people and actually beat some of those people.

Anyway, that’s what I’m interested in. By the way, that’s why your messaging is so important. I would encourage you, when you create your opening statement – and by the way, your voice mail should almost be identical to that opening – then what you want to do is go through the editing process. When I’m reviewing openings from clients and people that go through my programs, I put them through two tests. #1 is the length test which is, “Is every single word in this adding to what I’m trying to accomplish?” and that is put them in a positive frame of mind and move them to the questions. If I have words that are just taking up space, we’re going to cut it out and this is actually one of my superpowers because I can review an opening and I can cut out a word or two here or there and even make it stronger and make it shorter. With that being said, something that has a lot of words, every single word could still be something that’s adding to what we’re trying to accomplish.

My other test is the resistance test. Is there anything in there that could cause somebody, anybody, to put up some resistance right at the beginning? If there’s a chance of that, why have that in there? I’ll put in that category all these people out there that are saying things like, “This is a cold call and you can hang up on me if you want” or, “You don’t know me, we’ve not met before, you and I are not acquainted” and it’s like okay, Captain Obvious, no kidding. [Laughs] we’re giving them an opportunity to create some resistance. If your messaging is tight, present it conversationally and confidently like you’re talking to a peer. Business people do not want to talk to somebody who places themselves beneath the decision maker, why would we want to talk to somebody that doesn’t view themselves as being worthy of speaking with us?

Fred Diamond: We have a bunch of questions that are flying in here, let’s take Janice’s question here. We talked about LinkedIn and I talked before about the LinkedIn connection and pitch which is the worst sales tactic in the history of sales. Talk about LinkedIn for a little bit here, let’s not talk about LinkedIn from establishing yourself as a thought leader or making connections, but what are your suggestions right now? Talk about LinkedIn from a prospecting perspective and what are some of your best practices to get to the next level? Thank you, Janice for the question.

Art Sobczak: LinkedIn is so powerful, you need to become an expert and become proficient at using LinkedIn. I’m not the expert and I’ve actually partnered with an expert, Crystal Thies, the LinkedIn Ninja, we actually have a LinkedIn course which she is revising. What we don’t want to do and I’ve heard this term, I can’t take credit for it, but you don’t want to do the pitch slap which is after somebody accepts your connection request, immediately pitching them on, “Here’s what I want to do.” LinkedIn is a great way to get yourself in front of the people that you want to speak with.

As a matter of fact, I’ve had Phil Gerbyshak on my inner circle group the other day talking specifically about this and he said, which I agree with and suggest as well, “You want to comment on people’s posts, you want to like their posts, you want to get your name familiar with them before you start contacting them. When you reach out to them, always personalize your message and you want to have some kind of common connection or add some value.” You could talk about what you do, “We specialize in working with ___ helping them to ___, thought it might be worthwhile for us to connect here.” Don’t ask for a decision here and then what I suggest is you can send them something, email them something and again, we’re using multimedia approach which I am a believer in because we communicate in a lot of different ways. Then when you do place your phone call, you’re referencing all these other things but we’re still going to have some possible value there, but now I’ve got the opportunity to mention the fact that we’re not strangers. We’re connected on LinkedIn and I still got to have the value.

Fred Diamond: We have another question here from Bruce, he’s talking about gatekeepers, the front office, you said that’s not a word that you like to use but nonetheless, what are some of your strategies? Because if you’re calling most cases the VP or above, in a lot of cases there is someone who is taking their calls and managing their schedules. I believe you can get to those people but nonetheless, let’s talk about navigating through that channel to eventually get to the right person. Bruce, thank you for the question.

Art Sobczak: First of all, get rid of the terms ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘screener’ because those are negative and if we call them that, then that assumes there’s an adversarial role here. By the way, those people are much more proficient and better at getting rid of salespeople than salespeople are, regardless of how clever they are, at trying to go past through, under or over them. These people are the most important people in the world at that moment that you’re attempting to get through to the decision maker and actually, we have the same goal. As an assistant – that’s the new name – we have the same goal as they do, which is to protect the decision maker’s time. We don’t want every single salesperson talking to them and they couldn’t possibly do it, but you have some value. What we’re going to do is we’re going to work with the assistant, I suggest that you do some social engineering with them. The social engineering script or process is introduce yourself and company, “Art Sobczak here with Business by Phone, I’m going to be speaking with Fred Diamond” and notice what I’m doing here is I’m using an assumptive statement, “And I really want to make sure that what I have would be of some relevance to him.

There’s probably some information you could help me with.” Notice what I’ve done here, I’ve used the magic H word and then I’ve used a justification statement which has given a reason why I’m going to do my next thing, which is asking you some questions. “There’s probably some information you could help me with.” Now what I’m doing is I’m setting myself apart from every other salesperson who’s probably trying to use some stupid goofy technique of, “Yes, Fred Diamond, please, please put me through” or if they say, “What’s this in reference to?” “It’s a business matter, will you please put me through? It’s in relation to one of your competitors.” All this goofy crap that has been talked about over the years, they see through that, they’ve heard it a thousand times. What they’re doing is they’re asking themselves this question, “Does this person have anything of possible value that the boss might be interested in?” and unless we’re able to communicate that through both our words and our actions and our attitude, we’re going to get brushed off. They’re going to do what many salespeople think they do which is guard the gate, they’re screening things out. What does a screen do? Lets in the good stuff, keeps out the bad stuff.

Fred Diamond: Art, can we have you back on the show at some point? Because I could talk to you for 4-5 hours, I’m getting so many great questions here but we need to get to your final thought. I’m going to take one more question, then I’m going to ask you to tell us how people can get in contact with you. We have a number of people here who are asking for some of your resources, Adelle asks if you could put up the slide with the action words, I presume that most of this stuff is on your website, they can find a lot of this stuff already. I’m going to take one last question here from Pierre and then I’m going to ask you for your final thought on what people should do today. We’re recording today’s webinar October 2nd, it’s the beginning of Q4. This question comes in from Pierre and Pierre is just north of us in Montreal, he’s actually a reader of your book so that’s good. “Art, I’m currently reading the book, so far my favorite chapter is chapter five, secondary objectives can pay off in the future. Can you elaborate a little further on how the secondary objective can be a seed for later harvest?” Pierre, thank you for that question and thank you to all the people who submitted questions that we didn’t get to, we will get your questions to Art. Let’s take that one, the secondary objective and then we have your website, and then give us your final thought, your action step for people watching the show today.

Art Sobczak: Pierre, thank you so much and actually, thank you for bringing that up because I forgot to mention that. The secondary objective is again, what can we accomplish at minimum or what can we attempt at minimum? That’s for our attitude but the second part of that is we can plant a seed on every single call. Let’s say for example we’re having a conversation with somebody and they decide that we’re not going to do business today, but maybe I found out something about them that’s a problem or a pain, so instead of saying, “Keep us in mind” or, “I’ll send you some stuff” I’m going to say something like this. “Fred, I understand that this may not be a fit for you today but if you find that your salespeople aren’t really hitting quota, they aren’t making the calls and they’re telling you they’re just not confident with their messaging, keep in mind that I’ve got this process that we’ve implemented in thousands of companies that will help them do just that.

If you find that happening as you move forward, you’ve got my information. Will you give me a call?” What I’ve done there instead of saying keep us in mind, I’ve framed this in terms of, “Here’s the situation. If you experience that, give me a call.” Here’s the thing about that, all of us get the blue birds that fly in that we’ve written off that say, “Things have changed, we reconsider, we want to do business now.” Why was that? Because they thought about you, something happened. Now I’m just giving them something to look for. Pierre, thank you so much for sharing that, email me and I will send you a personalized label to stick on the inside of your book so you’ll have a signed book. Here are other ways to get in contact with me and Fred, you asked for my final thought here.

I’ve got so many thoughts – which some people might find unbelievable – but you can do this.  Even if you are afraid of picking up the phone, you’re afraid of no’s, I encourage you. Reconsider, go through the material, you don’t even have to buy the book – I would encourage you to buy the book because I make about a dollar on each one – but just go to the site, get the template, go through the training and I think you’ll find that this is not that difficult. It’s talking to another person. If you really believe in what you have and you feel that there are people that could take advantage of it, you are actually doing a disservice to people. The world needs professional salespeople, especially right now, to lead and they need to hear your message. If it’s just not a fit today, no problem, at least you found out. A decision is better than no decision so again, you can do this, go out there, give it a shot, let’s make things happen. You can still make 2021 your best year ever.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 312: Well-Known Sales Prospecting Expert and Author Art Sobczak Says Sales Professionals Are Doing Customers a Disservice By Not Doing This Right Now first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers Panel Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on May 20, 2020. It featured sales leaders Gary Milwit (JG Wentworth) and Expert Sales Trainer Bob Greene.]

EPISODE 236: Great Ideas for Leading Sales Teams and Customers Forward from Wentworth’s Gary Milwit and Sales Training Expert Bob Greene

Listen to Gary Milwit’s Podcast .

BOB’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “What’s my advice for sales professionals today? First thing I would do is pick up the phone. When you’re having a conversation with your prospects, just pick up the phone and say, “I’m calling to see how you’re doing. I want to understand your business and what challenges you’re facing.” Once your prospect realizes that it’s not a sales call and that it’s a caring call that’s huge because now you have an opportunity to hone your phone skills and build rapport the same time.”

Fred Diamond: Gary Milwit, it’s great to see you today, thank you so much for being here. Wentworth, you guys are an IES member, you’re also an IES Premier Sales Employer so congratulations on that, it’s a great place to work. I know that you’ve been very busy over the last two months, you’re hiring a bunch of people getting them on boarded. Why don’t you tell us what’s going on with you? Tell us what your big priorities are right now.

Gary Milwit: It’s great to be here, thanks. That is right, we are hiring a lot of people. Since we went remote we’ve had 39 newly hired salespeople graduate from our onboarding program and we have 31 that are in the program currently. They’ve never been to the office, not one of our offices, never been there so it’s a huge priority to make sure they’re trained up and to make sure they’re sales ready when they get to the virtual sales floor.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things you’re doing if you’re onboarding people right now in this virtual world? They’re not going to see their coworkers or maybe they’ll see them on a Zoom screen or something. What are some of the things you’re doing to get these people acclimated to the company?

Gary Milwit: That’s the challenge, the challenge is getting them acclimated to the company, they’ve barely even been inside of it. We have to have people come to visit us, we have to have a lot of meetings, we have to be short, we have to be very productive in what we do and we have to be organized. One of the things that we’re doing to make sure the people are engaged is we have to add value every time we have a meeting and we have a lot of meetings. If they don’t add value we’re no good.

Fred Diamond: It’s great that you’re hiring because a lot of places aren’t. Introduce the people to what your company does, they might have seen your company on commercials or something but tell us again what Wentworth does for the people who don’t know.

Gary Milwit: We have two different divisions, we have one division that deals with debt release, debt settlement so we help people settle their credit card and secure debts which is a brand new organization for us, brand new division. Then we also have a division that buys future payment streams, so structured settlements, annuities, lottery wins. Bob knows all about this, Bob had a structured settlement from a company that he sold and is a former Stone Street Capital client, actually. We buy future payments for present value money and we usually deal with consumers.

Fred Diamond: What do your salespeople do? Before we went into this “new world” if you will, constantly prospecting, making phone calls, is it a hundred call a day type of a job or what type of things do people do who work for your company?

Gary Milwit: It’s a huge sales force. We have three different offices, huge sales force, lots of inbound leads, you see the commercials, we’re on TV, direct response television, TBC advertising. You have to earn your way to that lead floor so we have an inbound team and we also have an outbound team. The people that are onboarding are learning how to onboard and sell through outbound calling which for those of you that are on this call, that’s a 2% close rate on average on outbound call, not easy so you’ve got to learn how to leave the voicemail, got to learn how to receive that and engage quickly. We have inbound and outbound all inside sales.

Fred Diamond: Bob Greene, I’ve known you for a while. You’re a sales trainer extraordinaire, you’ve trained thousands if not tens of thousands of people in many industries, association world, the financial services world, if you will. You’re a pretty upbeat and positive guy, why don’t you give us a positive surprise that’s come out of this? Again, from the sales and business world what’s something positive that we can reflect back on today?

Bob Greene: It’s funny, one of my clients have to use a call center and I’m training them similar to what Gary is experiencing, we’re doing national recruiting, we’re hiring, we’re figuring out onboarding protocols and a pleasant surprise I found is we’ve gone from a physical to a virtual call center, productivity has increased. We’re getting people spending more time focused on their job, taking less breaks, not showing up for work late, not calling in sick and the actual productivity, their actual workflow is better now that they’re working virtually because they feel that we’ve invested in them and they’re returning the investment to us.

Fred Diamond: Gary, how about with you as well? What’s a positive thing? We’ll get deep into some of the challenges that sales professionals are having to overcome right now and we’re going to be aspirational.

Gary Milwit: I think the best thing that could ever come out of this is that you can’t manage by proxy, you can’t manage just because you’re there, it doesn’t mean you’re managing, it doesn’t mean you’re leading just because you’re present. The virtual presence is real, you’ve got to be on time, you’ve got to be prepared, you’ve got to actually plan your day and if you do that, it gives you the chance to be a little more flexible with other people, understand that things are going to happen and I think we’re being flexible for the right reasons now. It’s because we’re planning, because we’re doing more managing and more leading by being in the fire, basically, we have to be there.

What’s present? Believe it or not, by being virtual. It’s a whole different game and I think it’s going to change when we get back to work in that you can’t just think that you’re managing when you’re there, just because you’re talking to someone doesn’t mean anything more than you’re nicely mentoring. We’ve got to manage hard and lead better and we do that by being more organized. The biggest surprise is how disorganized, really, we might have been. That’s the biggest thing, we were disorganized, now we’re organized.

Fred Diamond: Gary talked about his day. What does an ideal day look like for both of you? Bob, as a sales leader, sales trainer, no one’s driving anymore, no one’s having to go from meeting to meeting or driving to the office. We’re all getting up, we’re eating breakfast, taking a shower, whatever but what do you think the ideal day today looks like for sales professionals?

Bob Greene: The ideal day starts the night before, you have to do your planning of what you want to accomplish the night before, you have to have that plan in place. I typically put together at least 10 things I want to accomplish the following day whether it’s scheduled meetings or activities I want to pursue and then I start my day at 5:00 in the morning and I use that time because it’s quiet. That’s when I do my reading, I’ll check the periodicals, I’ll check the internet and then around 7:00 o’clock I’m working from home. I’ve got my family that I’m working in making sure my kids are getting up for their online school and things like that. Starting the work day it’s a structured day, I’m at my desk every day by 9:00 o’clock sharp engaging with clients, reaching out to prospects, I actually block out a time around lunch time where I’ll do my prospecting for an hour or two and then it’s a standard work day. Then I shut it off by 5:30, 6:00 o’clock I turn off the switch and it’s now time for my family.

Fred Diamond: Gary, how about you? Again, you manage a lot of people who are maybe in their first or second job, maybe their third job in sales. What do you think the ideal day looks like today?

Gary Milwit: The ideal day looks like hour blocks. If you take your day and you block it off by every hour, the ideal day looks like a 45 minutes to an hour of work and then at least 15 minute break, a real break. The distractions that we get in the office weren’t so bad because we need distractions, we need to get our brain settled down so the ideal day is blocked out every hour. My day every day starts at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and then I make the schedules and do all that stuff and my first call is 8:30 in the morning and then it goes from there. I do a lot of training now, I didn’t used to do a lot of training before and really it’s not training, it’s teaching, there’s a difference because we’re teaching and teaching is the foundation. If you can’t coach then you can’t train till someone actually knows what the hell you’re talking about. Teaching is different, I used to be a high school teacher but I haven’t taught sales in a long time so it’s new for me and we’re learning. My ideal day is 12 hours [laughs].

Fred Diamond: That leads to the next question here, what’s changed for you? Again, over the last 7 weeks how have you changed as a sales leader? Both you guys are really instrumental in helping sales professionals. Now, obviously Gary you’re helping a lot of people get started in their career, you’re also helping people get started, be more effective. Think about yourself, how have you changed as a sales leader in the past 7 weeks? Gary, why don’t you go first on that?

Gary Milwit: The biggest change for me is that I stopped thinking about what to do and started doing it, or telling somebody else what to do. We only have one other person, it’s me and my Director of Learning Development, it’s just two of us doing all the stuff. What we know is that everyone forgets quickly so repeat, repeat, repeat. That’s changed, I’m never going to forget that, I’m always going to do it and I’m practicing now because when I talked to you last week I assume that you’re going to remember something and the assumptions are what kills every sale. I’m treating this like I’m selling every day, earn trust, build rapport, engage, add value. That’s what we have to do, that’s how it’s changed, I’ve always done it but now I’m really doing it, I’m in the game. We’re going to be better afterwards, I think.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you, how have you changed? Again, you’ve worked with tens of thousands of sales professionals, maybe hundreds. You’re also a pretty reflective guy, we see the reflection in your dome up there.

Bob Greene: Yeah, a little bit [laughs]

Fred Diamond: But seriously, how have you changed over the last 7 weeks?

Bob Greene: Outside of the beard, my Corona beard, I think it’s a change of messaging. The outreach for me is still sales focused but it’s not sales oriented. My goal is not to move a sale forward or to close and earn business right now, it’s to maintain relationships and to establish myself as somebody who is there for them when they’re not buying so that when my customers are again ready to buy I’ll be top of mind and they think of me first. I employ a concept called gifting which I spoke about earlier of communicating value. If I see an article that is relevant to a customer, whether it’s to their business needs or maybe I know that their kids play sports or something like that, I forward it with a little note.

I’ll write personal handwritten notes and put them in the mail because that’s a point of differentiation, people aren’t getting physical mail and it goes to their office and then it migrates to their home and they eventually get it but again, the thought is recognizing how to communicate differently. Everybody is using email so another tool is how to write effective emails and how to write them in a way that people will respond so it’s not a long involved email, it’s short, no more than 125 words, easy to read on their phone screen, simple things like that. The messaging has changed to one of care and concern rather than sales.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that for a second. We’ve been doing four webcasts a week, I mentioned before we’re actually doing a new one on sales mindset every Thursday. One of the key things that’s come across for me is that if you’re a sales professional now may not be the easiest time to “sell” but you’re still a sales professional. What are some things you should be doing today as a sales professional? You may not be closing but what are some of the attributes that you should be thinking about? Gary, you mentioned preparation before, let’s be real specific today. Again, it’s May 20th, 2020, what are some things sales professionals if they’re in a space where their customers are not buying the way they might normally have in the last 5, 7, 10 years, what are some things they should be working on? Gary, why don’t you get us started with that?

Gary Milwit: They should be working on meeting their objectives, not the goals. The goals are to sell, every salesperson’s goal is to sell and close business. Stop the nonsense, that’s not your prospect’s goal, prospect’s goal has nothing to do with that so you have to see what are the objectives of the sales process. The first thing you have to be is engaging and there’s only three ways for someone to engage, you’re going to make them curious, they’re going to be familiar with you or there’s something there for them. Figure out what it is for them, why are you calling? To give them something. Be interested in the people that you talk to, not interesting, no one cares. No one cares about you right now but you have to care about them, that’s how you’re going to be a pro with or without the virus, that’s how you become a sales pro, engage with the objective and then go for each objective after that. Build rapport, earn trust, then you can start to talk about what it is that you want to talk about, but not until then.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you? What are the top two or three things that sales professionals should be working on right now to become the deeper, richer professional?

Bob Greene: I always say that sales is the closest thing you can get to sports without having to lace up a pair of cleats. I’m a huge baseball fan and the Washington Nationals which is the team I follow, they’re not playing baseball but what are those baseball players doing? They’re still practicing, they’re still honing their skills, they’re still working out, they’re still keeping their bodies in shape so that when the season starts, they’ll be able to start playing. It’s the same thing for us, we’re professionals, we have a job to do. Yes, we might not be on the field to play right now, we might not be closing business but we still have to do all the preparation that will enable us to be successful when we do step on the field so we’re ready to play.

Fred Diamond: Let’s get specific, Bob. What are three things if someone said to you, “Bob, I’m a sales professional, my customers aren’t buying right now, tell me three specific things that I should do today, May 20th, to improve myself as a professional”?

Bob Greene: First thing I would do is pick up the phone. When you’re calling somebody and you’re having a conversation with them, you just pick up the phone and say, “I’m calling to see how you’re doing. I want to understand your business and what challenges you’re facing” and once your prospect realizes that it’s not a sales call, it’s a caring call that’s huge because now you have an opportunity to hone your phone skills and build rapport the same time.

The second thing I would do is look at how you write an email, and I talked about this before. You have to have clarity of purpose, you have to have a bottom line upfront approach and I think now is a great time, there’s lots of resources out there. I know I provide resources to help people write better emails, their communication skills should be improved, now’s a really great time to hone those skills.

Finally, I would do reading, I would read either sales books, periodicals, understand what’s going on in the economy so that you have interesting things to talk about when you get on the phone or when you’re sending an email so that you can be engaging. If all you have to talk about is your company and software, you’re boring, there’s no curiosity there but if you can engage someone in a conversation that’s of interest to them, now you have a dialogue which can lead to a relationship.

Fred Diamond: Get on the phone, read. Gary, how about you? Three specific things people could do when they leave today’s webinar in about 45 minutes.

Gary Milwit: Practice this: how, why, tell me more about that. That’s the way you build rapport, ask those questions and you win every time. How…? Anything after that is fine. How are you? Wait for the answer. Tell me more about that, and why. Those are questions that build rapport, practice those questions, practice with whoever you can. If you’re on the phone or whenever you pick up the phone if you ask, “How are you?” wait for the answer, just don’t blow over it. How questions work, why questions work and tell me more about that. I tell my people that all the time, it’s what we practice and then to what Bob’s point was, NBA players are in the lay-up lines every day until they retire. Every day from the start of their junior leagues until they retire they go to the lay-up line mark and do lay-ups. NFL players practice every day for their entire careers until they retire. Salespeople stop working at it, you stop working at it after each training session. Work at it every day.

Bob Greene: Every day.

Fred Diamond: Bob, you mentioned some books. Look behind me, people, you see I’ve got bookshelves, every sales book, there’s great ones out there, coming out there, some of the people we’ve had on our past webinars have written some tremendous things. If you have a question for Bob and Gary, send it via the question panel or if there’s a point that you want to get across. Gary, you were talking about engagement a few moments ago, I want to talk about the other big E word which is empathy. As a matter of fact, the first two, three weeks we were doing the webcast everybody was saying, you need to be empathetic. You talked about, “How are you?” the how questions to get started. We’ve gotten some questions from people over the last couple of webcasts who have said, “I’m getting empathy fatigued, what do I do now that I’m done being empathetic?” Bob, what does empathy really mean in the sales process and how do we avoid what some people are now referring to as ’empathy fatigue’?

Bob Greene: Empathy is a buzz word. As sales professionals we’re trained to be active listeners, the action of active listening is empathetic. You’re hearing what somebody says, you’re responding to it in a way that shows them that you care but you have to be careful because a sales professional is not to let empathy devolve into sympathy where you feel sorry for your customer and you don’t ask for the sale and you step away from the sales process. Empathy is what we do every day, as a sales professional it shouldn’t be a scary word, it’s active listening.

Fred Diamond: I want to talk about listening for a second. Gary, what’s your take on empathy? Bob, I want to follow up with you after Gary talks about listening. Listening comes up all the time on the Sales Game Changers podcast. How do you physically become a better active listener? It’s easy to say, “Be a better listener” but give us some of your ideas on how you get better at listening. Gary, why don’t you give us your thoughts on empathy and how can people be more empathetic today when maybe this empathy fatigue is setting in?

Gary Milwit: I agree with Bob 100%, empathy is a buzz word, it’s like morale used to be back in the old days, “our morale”. This is how you’re empathetic: listen, be interested and ask the question and wait for the answer and then ask again and follow up with it and stop talking. The way you stop talking, I’ll just jump in on that, listen for the buzz words from your customers. Okay, yes, right, uh-huh, all those things, whenever they say that they’re not listening anymore, stop talking. We call it the reverse play, run the reverse play as soon as you start talking and you start hearing, “Right, uh-huh, yeah” you’ve got to reverse the field beyond talking too much and then ask the next question. Hopefully it starts with a how or why.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you? Give us some thoughts on how you become a better listener.

Bob Greene: Basically when you’re asking questions – and before you go in to talk to a client you should prepare a question tree so that you have understanding of what you want to uncover and the questions you want to ask and you’re anticipating the response. Here’s the important thing, when you ask a question and you’re hearing the answer are you hearing it to ask your next question or are you hearing it to understand? Hearing and listening are two different things. Hearing is the physical noise, listening is the conceptual understanding of what’s being said so when you ask a question, listen to understand and then pause and then ask your next question.

Don’t just check a box, “Okay, I asked that question, here’s my next question” and you’re not processing the information. To be an active listener is simply using your listening skills to process the information that’s being shared and not to stay on a scripted response sheet that, “Okay, I asked this question, what’s my next question?” and you’re not even listening to the answer because you want to go down the checklist.

Fred Diamond: Again, if you have a question for Gary or for Bob, submit them via your question panel. Gary, you mentioned recently that your company has one a whole bunch of new hires. A question comes in, “In the remote environment which we’re all in today and it looks like it’s going to be this way for quite possibly through at least the end of the summer, what’s the #1 thing you’re looking for in a new hire knowing that there’s this new environment? What should they be prepared for before joining your team?” Gary, you just mentioned you hired a whole bunch of new people. Bob, I know you help your clients with a lot of recruiting. What are some of those things that you’re looking for in a new hire in today’s environment?

Gary Milwit: We’re looking for people that are eager to learn and especially now because they’re teachable, they’re actually learning more so they have to want to learn more. People that are coming right out of school are used to learning so it’s a good time to get them and if they’re not, this is their second or third job or they’re a little more veteran, be willing to learn. We don’t know everything, just be willing to learn. Outside of that I think you’re a winner.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you? What are some of the things we should be looking for in our new hires?

Bob Greene: Gary summed it up really well, I look to hire the smartest people who are willing to learn how to learn and who don’t come in with any preconceived notion of, “I know this” because that shows me that they don’t. The main thing is – again, it’s a coaching philosophy – I hire the best athletes and then I find the right position. If somebody has good cognitive skill and they’re smart and they’re bright, if I’m hiring somebody entry level I’m not hiring them for that position, I want them to move up into the organization, I’m hiring them for the next level position and I’m seeing if they have the capability to move up into that position. They might start off a little bit lower than they’d want to but now they have the experience of working within the company and moving themselves up through the ranks.

One of the things I like about this call center that is one of my clients now is I’m training their call center personnel but in order to train them I have to be on the call center, I have to be on the phone. I’m functioning as a screener, I’m functioning as a closer, I’m living that life, I’m eating my own dog food because if I’m going to train somebody how to do the job,  have to know how to do the job. I have tremendous respect for anybody who takes inbound calls because my career has always been outbound calling. Inbound calling is a whole different talent and a whole different mindset, kudos to people who do it well.

Fred Diamond: Question says, “I am one of the people who’s concerned about the future of my company. What are your suggestions for me?” That’s an interesting question, we’re in a stressful time, a lot of us have gotten “used to” whatever we are today. If you’ve never worked from home you’ve gotten used to Zoom, you’ve gotten used to a schedule. This is two months into whatever we’re in so people have gotten acclimated and accustomed but what’s happening right now is customers are struggling and customer’s customers are struggling, people have been laid off, people have been furloughed.

We have some members that are in the hospitality space and 90% of the people in the hospitality space at some of the larger companies, let alone the hotels themselves, have been furloughed. How would you help a sales professional that’s dealing with stress right now? We also have salespeople who are working home with kids and a spouse and you can’t travel, we talked about this before, we’re doing today’s broadcast from Northern Virginia, Bob and I are both in Northern Virginia and Gary is across the river in Montgomery County. People can’t travel, you’re scared to death about going into a restaurant still. What’s your advice for your sales professionals on how to deal with the anxiety and stress that we’re seeing today? Bob Greene, why don’t you get us started?

Bob Greene: I like talking to other sales professionals. I think LinkedIn is a great network for me, I reach out to people daily just to touch base, to get a pulse, get a temperature, how they’re doing across the country, across the world, I have global contacts. The other thing I find very interesting is I’ve been getting a lot of people reaching out to me who have been laid off and asking me to introduce them to other people within my network. I do have an extensive network within LinkedIn and I’m always happy to provide those introductions and connections, I think you have to pay it forward, you have to take care of each other, we are a community of professionals.

I think it’s really essential that if you reach out to somebody in earnest for help that we extend the helping hand and assist because it might be us the next day and if you can demonstrate kindness and you can demonstrate caring and you can help people, you don’t know where they’re going to end up but they’re going to think of you. They’re going to remember what you did for them so down the road if you need something from them in terms of a contact or a lead or something like that it becomes reciprocated. I think the most important thing we can do as sales professionals right now is to care for ourselves as a community.

Fred Diamond: Gary, for you. Once again, Wentworth is a IES Premier Sales Employer, congratulations for that, you do a lot of great things for your team. How are you helping them deal with the stress right now?

Gary Milwit: I’m more flexible, I listen to find out not necessarily what’s wrong but I understand if there’s anxiety, I try to give positivity every day, I try to stay positive, I’m pretty optimistic as it is. I always give the same advice here, make sure that your manager knows what you’re doing, you’re remote, don’t assume that they know. Manage up a little bit, let people know what you’re doing every day. If you have a good idea, share it with people, call your colleagues, call for a Zoom meeting or a Lifesize meeting, whatever tools you use, get together with people. Don’t wait for somebody to do it for you because when you’re out there and you put yourself out there and you get a little uncomfortable you’re going to grow and people are going to recognize it and you’re not going to be the one, it’s the other guy. Don’t let someone make a decision for you, it’s like the umpire, don’t let the umpire make the call for the third strike, go down swinging, get aggressive. Don’t let somebody else make the call for you.

Fred Diamond: I always love that bit of advice which is, “Don’t think for your customer, don’t give your customer the answers.” We’ve got a couple great questions here about prospecting. The question was, “What is your biggest challenge?” and 42% said it’s difficult to connect with customers so let’s talk about the concept of new business prospecting. We know where everybody is, some people are going to start going back to the office in a couple of weeks, we’re seeing a little bit of that but for the most part people are going to be home, we know where people are.

Bob Greene, what are some of your thoughts? Should people be prospecting right now new business? We know people are home, we know that they’re home almost 7/24, is it okay to call somebody at 7:00 o’clock in the morning on their cellphone because we know that they’re home? In most cases too, there aren’t the gatekeepers that we have historically been aware of because they’re also at home so we know where people are. Let’s talk about prospecting for new business today. Again, we’re doing today’s webcast, it’s May 20th, we’re 7 weeks into whatever we’re into here. Let’s talk about that for a little bit and then Gary, you’re going to get that same question as well. Let’s talk about prospecting for new business today, not talking to existing customers. What are your suggestions on that? Bob Greene.

Bob Greene: I like to use a soft touch right now, I wouldn’t demonstrate cold calling per se but what I do, I post a lot of content on LinkedIn and then when people like and comment on my content, on what I posted I look to see who these people are and if their company is aligned with my ideal customer profile. If they do, I reach out and I thank them for liking or commenting on my content and I start the conversation in that regard and I say, “How are things going?” Much like Gary says, how are you doing? Tell me more, why is that? You do it virtually through LinkedIn and it’s a way of establishing rapport and it becomes an organic way of actually prospect because now you’ve qualified a customer and they’re not even being qualified. You’re just having a conversation but at the same time you’re building up the ability to say, “Who would I talk to in your company or what’s your process for becoming a vendor, or how do I get started working with you guys? Is this something that could be of value?” and you do it incrementally over the course of several conversations, it’s not a sales pitch.

Fred Diamond: Gary, how about you? Prospecting new business. Do you guys do a lot of prospecting as it is normally?

Gary Milwit: We have a ginormous database so we actually make tons and tons of outbound calls, people are on this thing today, they’re averaging in 175 calls a day. In some of them we’re doing more, in some of them we’re doing 140, 120. What you need to know on prospecting, when you call somebody they don’t need anything, you’ve got to unlock the want, you’ve got to unlock what they want. They don’t need anything, they call you when they need something so know the difference.

I can separate that easily with the inbound/outbound mentality because we have a lot of inbound leads but when you’re calling outbound you have a 2% chance to close and a 5% chance someone’s going to pick up, leave a great voicemail, that close rate goes to 6% because they’re calling you because you’ve spurred something on. You have to be engaging, you’re calling out and when they say pick up the phone you thankfully pick up the phone and get into it with engagement. What’s in it for them? Absolutely you can prospect, just know that you’re dealing with a different animal when you start making those outbound calls, they don’t need anything, you’ve got to unlock wants.

Fred Diamond: If you have any more questions for Gary or for Bob, we’re going to go till about 45 minutes after the hour, thank you so much for the great questions. The question comes in here, “If you’ve only been working remote, what’s the best way to get acclimated to the office once all this clears?” I have a slight variation of that question, “How do you see the pandemic” – I hate using the word – “How do you see this situation changing the way we sell moving forward?” Again, you all don’t have crystal balls but is it going to be all Zoom? Is everybody going to be home? From a sales perspective, what do you think we’re going to be once this clears up? Gary, why don’t you get us started?

Gary Milwit: If I were to bet all my money I’d say we’re going to be exactly the same as we were before, just better at it. I think we as humans revert back to the way we were but we’re going to be stronger and better and we’re going to be more flexible. Our company had three people work remote in the history of the company before we went on this pandemic, we’re a pretty big company, 400 in change people were remote so it’s going to change everything and it’s going to be better but people are going to be people, we’ve still got to train and we’ve still got to repeat, we still got to do everything we’ve done and we’ve got to be better at it. I don’t look for anything crazy, it’s crazy now, it’s not going to be crazy when we get back to work.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you?

Bob Greene: I used to do a lot of international travel for business and I think that’s going to be diminished, I think that organizations are going to recognize the efficiency and cost savings that can be derived from virtual meetings and I think there’s still going to be business travel but it’s not going to be with the frequency or the relationship building that it used to be. I feel sad for that because it was probably the best part of my job was building the relationships and cultivating those lifetime friendships that I have with some of my former clients and current clients. I think that you’re going to see, Gary was talking about blocking off certain parts of the day in a schedule and I think you’re going to see Zoom meetings or similar type of video conferencing become part of everybody’s daily routine, the challenge is how to avoid the Zoom fatigue. I don’t have an answer for that and I don’t know how you differentiate one teleconference from the next whereas when you’re going to meet with somebody, there’s a lot of energy that you bring into a physical office when you’re going to meet with a client that’s gone now. You don’t have that so how do you reach through the screen and create that sort of comradery and rapport? It’s a challenge, I think people are still figuring that out so I hope Gary is right that it does resume and that people go back to their normal workflow but once an organization realizes the cost savings that they can derive from not having to travel sales personnel, I think you’re going to see a diminished travel budget.

Fred Diamond: We have time for a couple more questions if you have a last question you want to get in. A good question here from the audience, “What are these guys doing to stay fresh?” We talked about what the sales professionals can be doing. Bob, you look good, your beard has been trimmed, you look healthy. Gary, you look great, too. What are you guys both doing? You talked about when you get up and what your day looks like but you guys are hard-charging, Gary, you’re a classic hard-charging sales professional. What are some things you both are doing right now to stay sane, to get yourselves better as sales leaders and professionals?

Bob Greene: Gary, you want to take this one first?

Gary Milwit: I do yoga once or twice, believe it or not. Actually, I make sure that I at least do some exercise every day and I have done some yoga with my wife in front of the TV which I never would have done that before [laughs]. You stay fresh by being comfortable, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, do different things and that’s how you grow. This whole thing has been great for me personally, believe it or not because I meet more people in different meetings, I see different people in a company I never saw before. I see them virtually but I was in Rockville and they were in Pennsylvania anyway so I can tell you definitively that I have relationships with people I’ve never seen in person and they are deep relationships. I just got off a session with six people that are sales reps force that just finished our training, I’m close with all of them and I hope they feel the same way and I’ve never seen them in person.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you? You look good, what are you doing?

Bob Greene: I’m practicing cooking, actually. Not that I’m the best but I did lamb the other night which came out really good. The other thing is I’m probably an eternal optimist so I always want to keep things in perspective and with this COVID-19, my sons and I, our four boys still at home, we’ve been binge watching The Walking Dead on Netflix and it kind of put things in perspective.

Fred Diamond: That is true. Besides, obviously some of the financial stuff that most people we’ve been working with are dealing with because of the economic issues, a lot of people are developing relationships. I agree with you, Gary. I’ve connected with people on LinkedIn that I just knew from LinkedIn and a 30 minute Zoom call takes those relationships so far ahead. We have time for two more questions here, a lot of questions come flying in here. What are your expectations for your salespeople? Again, we know that in certain cases the economy is challenged right now but Gary, your company helps people, you get them cash right now when they need it with the settlements, why don’t you answer that question? What are your expectations for the salespeople today? Then we’ll ask you for some of your final thoughts. Gary, why don’t you go first?

Gary Milwit: We haven’t changed what we expect, we expect people to do what they’re supposed to do every day, make the calls, close the calls that come to you and write business, that’s what we expect and we are not compromising on that. I’m not compromising on putting people on the sales floor, they’re not ready so it’s ratcheting it up a little bit. We know that what we’re doing is the right thing, we want to be good for our customers and to do that you’ve got to be sharp every day. We’re not compromising, our expectations are you’ve got to be on your A game every day.

Fred Diamond: Bob, how about you? What are your expectations right now?

Bob Greene: I would say the same. Be professional, do your job, you know what you have to do. As management you look at the KPIs to make sure that they’re aligned with the outreach you want to achieve, be professional.

Fred Diamond: I want to thank Bob Greene, I want to thank Gary Milwit, you both have been great friends and supporters of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. By the way, Gary has been a guest on the Sales Game Changers podcast, just go to salesgamechangerspodcast.com/garymilwit, you see his name there and you’ll find his episode.

Gary Milwit: Episode Twenty-two.

Fred Diamond: Yeah, you were way back. [Laughs] Bob, we’ll obviously get you on the show. We’ve already recorded today’s webcast as a Sales Game Changers podcast, it’ll be available on Friday, we’re also going to post this on LinkedIn as a replay. I want to thank you both for the great ideas, the great insights. Why don’t you give us one final thought? We ask this question at the end of every webcast. Things are happening every single day, we’re not asking, “What do you think things are going to be like in the next year?” We’re asking, “What are things that people should be working on today?” You’ve given us some great ideas, just to wrap up here, Bob Greene, get us started. What do you think the challenges will be the next week as we get to next week’s programs? What are the challenges for the next week and once again, how do you suggest that people overcome them listening to today’s webcast?

Bob Greene: I think the most important thing is like when you get on an airplane and they tell you when the oxygen masks drop, “Take care of yourself first before you take care of your children or anybody else in your family”, I think as sales professionals we have to take care of ourselves first. We have to make sure mentally that we’re in a good place, physically we’re taking care of ourselves, we really have to invest that time because if we’re not taking care of ourselves we can’t be there for anybody else whether our company is going to rely on us, whether our customers are going to rely on us. It’s not going to mean anything if we’re not there to be dependable, we’re not able to be relied on because we haven’t taken care of ourselves. Get enough sleep, exercise, eat right, do the basics, be professional, have an intellectual curiosity about the world around you and otherwise, the economy hasn’t opened up yet so basically it’s Groundhog Day but do these things every day.

Fred Diamond: Thanks, Bob. Gary, bring us home.

Gary Milwit: I think everyone needs to recognize that everyone is partially correct, no one is ever wrong 100%. Find out what’s right, find out what’s good, ask the question, “What good has come out of this? How do you improve because of this?” The bad stuff will come out in the wash. Find out what’s good, there’s good in everything, find the 1% that’s good if it’s only 1% and then capitalize on it, nothing else matters.

Fred Diamond: I want to thank you both once again for the great insights. Bob Greene, thank you so much. Gary Milwit, thank you so much. I want to thank all the people from around the world who’ve listened to today’s webcast and who are listening to this episode as a future Sales Game Changers podcast. My name is Fred Diamond, thank you so much.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 236: Great Ideas for Leading Sales Teams and Customers Forward from Wentworth’s Gary Milwit and Sales Training Expert Bob Greene first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 211: Inside Sales Expert Marc Gonyea of memoryBlue Offers Three Must Implement Strategies He Learned from Managing Hundreds of High-Tech Sales Development Reps

MARC’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Some of this might be trite but you must always be continuously improving as a selling professional. Knowing about the technology is key but it’s not nearly as crucial as paying attention to your sales PERFORMANCE. You have to treat your selling profession as a true craft and keep working to get better at it. If you’re not doing that, you’re going to lose.”

Marc Gonyea is the cofounder at memoryBlue.

He’s an expert on inside sales having managed nearly a thousand young SDRs (sales development reps).

We’re talked about how to optimize phone sales and how young sales professionals can optimize their careers.

Marc can be found on LinkedIn here.

Fred Diamond: Marc, it’s great to have you on the Sales Game Changers podcast. We’ve actually known each other for a long time, I met you and your co-founder before you even founded the firm, you’ve done a lot of work together over the years, you guys have done tremendous work for many companies. Tell us a little more about your journey as a successful sales leader and tell us what memoryBlue does.

Marc Gonyea: Fred, happy to be here. I’ll tell you before we get into me, I remember reading your articles in the Washington Business Journal some time during probably late 2002, early 2003. We started the company April of 2002 right after the dot com bubble burst and I think it was a weekly article. I said, “I got to meet this guy.”

Fred Diamond: Thanks, man.

Marc Gonyea: I cold called you and you agreed to meet me at Silver Diner for… I think we probably had breakfast.

Fred Diamond: We did, we had breakfast.

Marc Gonyea: Let’s say it was 2003, that was nearly 17 years ago.

Fred Diamond: Nearly 17 and actually we’re doing today’s podcast interview at memoryBlue’s offices, it’s in Tysons Corner, Virginia which is about 20 miles outside of Washington DC. There’s a buzz here, you’ve got a palpable buzz going on here. You’ve got tons of people on the phone doing great things, you’ve got a lot of signs, a lot of metrics so congratulations to you and your partner for your success.

Marc Gonyea: Thanks.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about memoryBlue, tell us what you do and let our audience know.

Marc Gonyea: I’ll give you the quick and dirty on the company. The original question, I started off at Computer Associates, C.A., I worked for a gentleman who was a guest on one of your other podcasts, Mike Miller, he’s the VP of Federal now at Veeam Software. I was fortunate enough, he hired me and I worked there for a couple of years on the inside and went to MicroStrategy which was a darling of the internet dot com boom, a great company to this day but they were certainly a high flier. In both those companies I was in an inside sales position and after the dot com bubble burst I wanted to start my own business and so did my co-founder/business partner, Chris Corcoran and we went through a bunch of ideas.

One of the ideas was inspired by what we had done as professionals which was inside sales so we said, “What if we started a company around what we did in the first couple years of our sales career?” Because at MicroStrategy I had graduated to an indirect field sales role. Chris Corcoran, my co-founder was employed at a company called F5 Networks, they’re still around, publicly traded, a little balancing to limited loosely software firm infrastructure company and we started the firm in April of 2002.

Now we’ve got 5 offices, San Jose, Austin, here, in Vienna, McLean or Tysons officially now, they changed the postal service so we all it Tysons, and then we’re going to Denver in February.

Fred Diamond: Good for you, you have a tremendous alumni network, I see a lot of posts on LinkedIn about people who used to work for memoryBlue who have now gone on to greater things in sales leadership. 17 years, that’s pretty incredible, you’ve brought a lot of great value for a lot of companies and we’re going to get to that on today’s podcast. Let’s get started here, what are the two biggest challenges that sales leaders face when managing young sales professionals today?

Marc Gonyea: That’s a great question. I think one of the key elements of managing young professionals is the fact that they’re kind of like Warren Buffet as a value traditional value investor. He likes to invest in assets that he thinks are undervalued as it relates to the stock market, we believe that most college grads today are value stocks with potential ridiculous subside. What I mean by that is you have to recognize that there’s a lot of inherent value there but to get that value you have to put the time and energy into developing and managing them. We hire people from all walks of life but the majority of the people we hire, this might be their first professional endeavor.

Fred Diamond: What might be some of the things that you help them develop? What are some of the high priorities?

Marc Gonyea: We believe that what we primarily do as a service to other companies can be done in-house, can be done by our clients and we believe you should do it in-house assuming you can put into place these key objectives that you need to do to develop folks professionally. Continuous ongoing training, not just training someone when they first start for a week, for a couple days and then never do it again but you’ve got to do it every week, come hell or high water. Every Wednesday we do training whether you like it or not. Continuous improvement around the craft of selling.

We have a technology that we’ve purchased called ExecVision which is a technology you can integrate into your technology sales stack which allows you to require your employees to listen to what they sound like on the phone and what they say and how they’re saying it. Both of these things, having people listen to themselves on the phone and improve each week and providing some rigor and some critical thought to how they sound, people don’t want to do that because nobody likes how they sound on the phone. You’ve got to put a lot of time and energy into that one aspect of ensuring that they break down these calls and listen to them when the managers provide feedback. It takes a lot of work to come up with a training syllabus each and every Wednesday for the majority of the year, time and energy.

Fred Diamond: I’m curious, you’ve hired a lot of people right out of college, you said first, maybe second job out of college. What are some of the things you look for in someone who’s coming out of college that you think will help them be successful?

Marc Gonyea: Two things. Recently – when I say recently I mean maybe in the past 5 years – sales is a much more appreciated value or discipline of study in undergrad business programs nowadays. Many schools have sales teams and they compete in a selling program, you might have a minor in sales, you might have a professor of sales and if you’re recruiting the student out of one of those schools then those are people who’ve already raised their hand and said, “I want to get into sales.” Those are the young professionals, the young adults who’ve recognized that this is a tremendous opportunity in sales and they’ve self-selected in to getting to that profession.

That itself is amazing, not everyone goes to a school where that’s an option and not everyone may have that common affinity for sales. Another one is someone who’s shown some dedication or commitment to something over a longer period of time. Your GPA is important but that’s not necessarily a cutoff to go into sales, it’s not at memoryBlue. It might be someone who’s started off as a reporter at the school newspaper and worked their way up to sports editor and that took 3 or 4 years, or someone who maybe had the same summer job 3 summers in a row. You have to be a responsible, disciplined young adult to show that sort of commitment to the same job or extracurricular activity over the duration of your college career.

Fred Diamond: Interesting, how about athletics? Do you hire athletes?

Marc Gonyea: Absolutely. We love athletes, I love them because certainly they’re used to winning and losing, they’re used to hearing things or things maybe happening, perhaps they get injured or you were a star in high school and you get to the college level and you might not be a star anymore. Particularly the individual sports like swimming, wrestlers, tennis, particularly a sport like swimming, the time is your time and you have to compete with yourself to get better and there aren’t a lot of areas or avenues for excuses. Anyone who certainly plays athletics in college or even high school, not everybody’s gifted enough to play in college, it gives you a level of self-awareness that you may not have otherwise.

Fred Diamond: Again, your company primarily does phone calls for companies, the goal being the outsource inside sales, if you will. You must have made at least millions, maybe tens of millions of phone calls, I guess. Tell us some things you’ve learned over the last couple of years, what are some of your key observations from the millions of phone calls that your people have made?

Marc Gonyea: This is the #1 thing, you have to use other facets of ability to touch someone to get their attention, to get them curious and interested so it’s email, it’s email cadences, it’s voicemails, it’s LinkedIn. To us, it comes down to the phone. Why does it come down to the phone? Primarily because nothing happens until you actually speak with someone, you can’t qualify someone over email, you can’t figure out what’s going on in their environment, you’re not going to get better as a sales professional by just simply emailing and LinkedIn messaging someone, but it’s difficult. The more things change the more they stay the same, it’s very difficult for people – young professionals or mid-stream to more senior – to want to get on the phone and get uncomfortable talking to someone that they don’t know, a stranger.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, you’ve hired over a thousand people to work in memoryBlue, what’s the weed-out like? Once they get here again, you said that you recruit from colleges where they’ve already self-selected, so to speak but once people get out of school or something is there a weed-out type of thing that happens as well?

Marc Gonyea: We try and do a really good job of letting people know what it’s like to work here before you start, and when I say we try, we have folks take a personality assessment based on the DiSC methodology around trying to profile folks who may have a certain aptitude or maybe a mindset to come in and do well. Does it mean that it’s universally right or wrong? It’s a filter to try and pre-screen folks. We’re also very candid, it’s a very difficult job. We do a lot of great things here, we will develop you, you get to work with some of the most intellectually stimulating, game changing technology companies around on the planet but you better be ready to handle the rejection and the no’s. It’s hard to tell before somebody starts if they’ve got the gumption to do that so one of the ways you can do that is by being very transparent during the interview process of what their day to day is going to look like.

That’s one of the ways we do it and we like to develop and bring people along which means that we deal with the failure of people not doing that well but we try and deal with it by getting out in front of it as soon as possible because you can control most of the things in sales. You can control most of the elements in sales to help you be successful.

Fred Diamond:  Typically when I interview a VP of sales I always ask this question, “Sales has gotten harder, people don’t return your phone calls, they don’t answer your emails.” You mentioned before, you said there needs to be not just the phone, although the phone is the most important thing, complemented with LinkedIn and emails and other types of touches. Give us one or two things that you’ve seen over the last year or two that may be of value to our listeners. For example, you should make in every call before 7 o’clock in the morning. You have guys come in at 3 in the morning to make phone calls?

Marc Gonyea: This is gold, what I’m about to drop right now, Fred. We have a young woman who works for us out of our Boston office and her mother is a sales professional. she’s a Vice President of Sales out of a company. One of her clients is a cyber company, an emerging cyber firm and it’s difficult to get folks in cyber on the phone, but you can get them on the phone and they’re very reticent to share with you details of their day in and day out because they’re in the cyber business. She was experiencing some trouble getting folks on the phone so talking with her mom outside of work, her mom suggested that she leave voicemails on a Sunday evening. She left 26-27 voicemails coupled with a LinkedIn message to the prospects two Sundays ago.

I don’t know what day it is today, but of those she got six responses and she booked two meetings, if I remember correctly. That’s a non-traditional approach where you’re calling a prospect on a Sunday evening leaving a short relevant voicemail, hitting them with a short relevant LinkedIn note and that’s the first thing they pick up when they roll into the office on Monday and it says a lot about you as a professional. You’re willing to invest the time and the energy into doing that on a Sunday and then you’re able to stand out from the crowd.

Fred Diamond: That’s good.

Marc Gonyea: That’s not programmatic. It could be programmatic if you wanted it to be but it’s certainly someone who’s trying to be resourceful.

Fred Diamond: You’ve got to be resourceful, my friend, you’ve got to be creative. That came up recently with a podcast we did with Frank Dimina over at Splunk, you’re talking about process, you have your strategies, times to make phone calls, the ways, the embrace, but you’ve got to be creative. Making those 26 calls on a Sunday night to everyone’s voicemail, coming in the next day with the LinkedIn messaging, you’ve got to be thinking about creative ways to do it. You’ve managed, again, we mentioned hundreds of young sales professionals. Where are they excelling today and where are they struggling?

Marc Gonyea: I think the most difficult thing about being a young professional nowadays is probably the culture of being driven to distraction or the culture of interruption. They’re always on in the sense that they’re easy to communicate with. I remember my father was working and if I called him at work I was probably going to get in trouble that night. There was a strict ‘don’t interrupt your dad as long as he was employed with the US Army’ type deal. I think nowadays with the onslaught of social media it’s easier for folks to be interrupted when they’re at work which is good and bad.

The bad thing is in a sales profession what we do here is uncomfortable, it takes people out of their comfort zone. We schedule two calling blitzes each day where you need to be on the phones and if you’re not on the phones, there’s a problem in the sense of how you’re managing your time and your day. It’s easy for that phone to interrupt you when you’re calling a CSO from a major retailer. What would you rather do, text your buddy about your fantasy football result on Monday morning or would you rather call the CSO from the Gap who probably isn’t exactly looking for your phone call on that Monday morning? It’s easy for them to be interrupted and thus in term be distracted, and not just on their phone but the use of the internet.

It almost equates to – I’m dating myself – my father, maybe if he had a TV and a VCR on top of his DVD player, on top of his desk, at lunch he popped in a movie and watched the movie at lunch, that type of stuff wouldn’t have flown where he is but that’s what people do. Younger folks might light up their phone and watch Game of Thrones on their phone at lunch during work but it’s work. It’s lunch time but it’s easy for that distraction to creep into something else later in the day.

Fred Diamond: I’m curious, again working with a lot of young professionals, you mentioned LinkedIn, of course the phone we’re talking about and email. Do you allow them to use other types of social media like Instagram or Snapchat or anything in the sales process or is it pretty much phone, email, LinkedIn?

Marc Gonyea: I would allow them if someone could prove to me or show me that that’s a reliable and repeatable process. Sure, if it’s relevant to the prospect, absolutely. I think you need to build up some credibility but my guess is there are people in high tech who are clients we want to sell to who are pretty active on social media. Twitter probably primarily even though Twitter is not Instagram, it’s not Snapchat. The answer would be yes, but you need to do it with some thought.

Fred Diamond: You’ve listened to and managed millions of phone calls, why don’t you give us the best practice for being successful today at inside sales? You talked about the focus, you talked about call blitzes but give us something today, what are some of the best practices that you need to have being deployed to be successful in inside sales today?

Marc Gonyea: I think one of the key elements – I’ll hit on it again, I’ll just wear this topic out – is treating the profession as a craft and you have to, like any professional – athletes will watch game film and break it down, comedians who develop routines, they harness and fine-tune those routines over hundreds of sets and they record and they listen to themselves. I can’t speak for everyone but I know a great many of them do. If you’re a sales professional you need to review and listen to how you interact with the prospect, how do you sound, what does your tone sound like? Are you comfortable with silence, do you ask questions, do you talk too much, are you not talking enough? It’s usually the opposite in salespeople. I would advocate listening to your sales calls, breaking them down including hand-written commentary like getting down into it and then asking someone else to break down those calls for you, ideally your sales manager. That’s what we do here.

Fred Diamond: Before we take a short break, how many calls does a typical memoryBlue SDR make on a daily basis?

Marc Gonyea: The minimum is a hundred dials but that’s a leading indicator. It needs to be a hundred.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Marc, you’ve given us some great advice. For lack of repeating, I might get some similar answers here but you’ve given us so many gems already. Again, as an experienced sales and business exec, again you’ve managed nearly a thousand or over a thousand sales development reps, what advice would you give to young professionals starting out their careers particularly in the tech and sales industries? I guess my question is a little bit different. The people that you’re bringing in, you don’t keep them for a long time, a lot of them go to work for some of your clients and you’ve done an amazing job keeping that flow going. What would you tell them to have a long term career, things they should be thinking about? Obviously you’ve got to come in, you’ve got to make almost a hundred phone calls a day or a hundred dials a day but what might be some of the advice you would give them to have longer term careers?

Marc Gonyea: Some of this might be trite but the idea of continuous improvement. You have to try and get better at the role and I don’t want that to be confused with ‘we’re a high-tech sales profession’ but some folks, particularly maybe early on in their career become really obsessed with the technology – and it’s good, knowing about the technology is key but it’s not as crucial as paying attention to the sales performance. I keep going back to this, to the craft of selling. You want to educate yourself along the lines of what the technology is and what it does and the value it brings but in today’s world if you’re a technology company and you want to develop a new feature or function, it’s easier to do that now than it ever was.

You outsource the development to the Ukraine or to India or even Argentina or you can do some of it in-house. The vendors are all saying the same thing about what the technology does for the most part, so what distinguishes you is your ability as a sales professional to separate yourself from the other sales professionals. You have to treat your selling profession as a true craft and you are working to get better at it. If you’re not doing that, you’re going to lose and it doesn’t stop when you’re 22, 25, 30, 35 or 40 – I’m older than all those four, but that’s the difference.

Fred Diamond: The Sales Game Changers that we interview, at least half of the people I interview for the podcast say it’s about continuous improvement, continuing to learn. You mentioned technology changes so much every single year it’s like you’ve got to stay on top of it, but I like what you just said that you really got to get good at the sales process versus the technology. I’m just curious, again we have a whole room here, we’re doing today’s podcast on the floor of memoryBlue in Tysons, Virginia. For our Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, it’s about 20 minutes from Washington DC. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a lot of tech in this area, there’s a lot of history with technology so you have a lot of great companies here. I’m just curious, what would you tell your 22 year old self, Marc, about how to be more successful in sales?

Marc Gonyea: I probably would have told myself to make more calls [Laughs] People back in the days of the dinosaur picked the phone up more. It was harder to get information, I remember driving around Fair Lakes Circle here in Washington DC and I would go door to door in some of the lobbies of some of the buildings trying to figure out who I could call, go back and then call because you were allowed to go. Maybe you could have, I used to go door to door when I was in college painting people’s houses but I didn’t do it in my first professional sales job, but I think you only get better by interacting more with folks. So I would have told myself to make more calls, to talk to more people, to work on developing my game.

Fred Diamond: Just curiously, when you’re coaching do you get on the phone as well?

Marc Gonyea: No, I haven’t been on the phone in a little while. I’d like to, but no. I go back and forth with the idea of having one day a year where everyone in the company makes calls. Doesn’t matter if you’re in marketing or if you’re in operations or in recruiting or if you’re Chris or Marc, you’ve got to make calls too to get a slight reminder as to what it’s all really about but we haven’t done that yet. It still takes a lot of man hours.

Fred Diamond: Again, your company is based on that, that’s what companies are hiring you to do and I’ve been running the Institute for Excellence in Sales now for 7 years and people ask me, “What’s the one thing you’ve learned?” and you’ve been reiterating this: it’s about picking up the phone – not texting – it’s about picking up the phone and making phone calls because you need to have engagement with prospects. And you just don’t call once, you sometimes call 10, 15, 20 times and like you also said, you’ve got to be smart about the complementation. Marc, let’s talk about selling habits for a second. What’s one of your selling habits that you’d like to impart upon the audience here to help them take their career to the next level?

Marc Gonyea: One of my selling habits that I think is critical for me – I can’t say it will be for everyone else – is trying to remember the fact that you want to treat people how you want to be treated. I try and keep in mind that if I was on the other side of the table or the other side of the phone, how would I want to be serviced? It’s tough to do that because everyone has competing interests, you’ve got to hit your quota, maybe salespeople are trying to maximize their comp plan or they’re trying to earn a trip to President’s Club or some sort of multiplier in addition to their comp or they’re getting pressure from their boss, who knows what it is? But I think it comes down to how would you like to be treated, and if you can stay with that manifesto along the lines of the other things like delivering.

Fred Diamond: Overpromise and under deliver.

Marc Gonyea: Yeah, and doing what you say you’re going to do, those things are important but I think if you keep that in mind over the long course, that’ll serve you well.

Fred Diamond: I’m just curious, again you have your people come in the office every day, they’re on the phone, what do you tell them about building networks and what’s some of your advice for the people listening to the podcast?

Marc Gonyea: It’s a small world. The high-tech sales world is very small. You may think it’s big but it’s not that big and this goes back to – it might be an overuse expression – never burn a bridge. Try and never burn a bridge, there’s something to be said for the fact that if everyone loves you, you might not be doing something right. Everyone’s going to have their detractors, no matter who you are and what profession and how you roll, but I think it’s important for folks particularly early in their career to keep in mind the fact that the folks they’re working with now, they may see again or they may work with or they might get a call about their job performance or they might get an employment verification request. A, “What was it like working with them?” type of inquisitive question or nature by folks they’re going to work with down the road or in the high-tech sales world. VP’s of Sales, VP’s of Marketing, they’re not in the job all that long. Hate it or love it, there’s a lot of transition going on and someone you work with at company A you may work again with at maybe not company B, but D, E or F. You’ve got to keep that in mind.

Fred Diamond: We talked today on the Sales Game Changers podcast with Marc Gonyea, the co-founder at memoryBlue. Marc, you’ve given us some great insights today. Again, we have Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, give us a final thought to inspire them today.

Marc Gonyea: That’s a good one. I think if you’re in the high tech sales world in 2019 heading into 2020 in the United States, I heard this morning on CNBC that we’re in the eleventh year of an economic expansion. I think from month to month over growth or expansion it might be the greatest economy ever in terms of expansion growth so you need to recognize that if you’re selling today, it may not get much better than this. You need to lean into it because there’s another recession coming, Fred [Laughs]. I don’t know when it is but if I’m selling high-tech in 2019 to nearly anyone, this is a great profession, it’s a great job to have. You’re in no better job, in no better place, in no better time economically speaking. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, be grateful for that.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 211: Inside Sales Expert Marc Gonyea of memoryBlue Offers Three Must Implement Strategies He Learned from Managing Hundreds of High-Tech Sales Development Reps first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 198: The Sales Evangelist – Donald Kelly – Says This Approach to Sales Prospecting Will Set You Apart from All Other Sellers

DONALD’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Every organization out there has some kind of problem, your prospects do. Somebody is going to solve that problem for them, so why not you? Take the advantage, go the high road, figure this out first and be the first one to solve the problem. If you do that, you stand out more than anybody else.”

Donald Kelly is known as the Sales Evangelist.

He conducts workshops, keynote presentations, design sales processes, offer sales team training and coach sales individuals and executives.

He’s the host of The Sales Evangelist podcast which is heard in over 155 countries.

Find Donald on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: You’re a celebrity in the sales performance improvement world so I’m thrilled to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you that we need to know?

Donald Kelly: I have a podcast, like you mentioned, the Sales Evangelist Podcast and that’s dedicated towards helping new and struggling sellers to improve their sales game because when I started off selling, I had a passion and desire but I sucked at what I was doing. [Laughs] I did well in B to C but when I came to the B to B world it was a different game for me and it was just really difficult. I started the podcast as a means of being able to educate those individuals that were in the same shoes I was and to help them to elevate their game as well. That’s a little bit about me.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about what you offer. I know you have the podcast, of course but do you also do training, consulting? What types of things do you do as a business?

Donald Kelly: Naturally as the podcast started to grow, I started to get individuals that reach out to me for coaching. I started to do individual one-on-one coaching and that was fun doing that with reps, but then obviously when the business side came from it, these reps would bring it back to companies and then I started getting entrepreneurs who wanted to develop their sales. Some of them just were solo-preneurs, those guys who were selling or maybe making $500 thousand a year, close to a mil but they wanted to replicate themselves so they said, “Can you come in and do some consulting for us and show us what we need to do to create a sales force and help set that stuff up?”

So I started doing a couple of those and then that started to grow as well. Naturally, the speaking opportunity came from it and it just started making sense for me after doing this for several years. In 2015 I left the full-time gig to do the podcasting and all of that. The business side of the podcast didn’t make money per se but it led to leads and opportunities for coaching, speaking and consulting. Now the podcast is a means of generating its own income as well and take care of its own expenses.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you first got into sales as a career.

Donald Kelly: It was in college, even prior to college. Everyone in my family did something towards sales. Growing up as a Jamaican boy, everybody sells something [laughs] so I saw it as in my family and I didn’t see it as sales as a business. “You’re a businessman if you sell something, man.” I’m outgoing and people always said, “Man, you’d be perfect for sales” so then I started doing a little bit of stuff and then went into college, and then that’s where everyone was like, “You definitely need to be in sales.” The universities didn’t have any sales programs.

Fred Diamond: Where did you go to school?

Donald Kelly: Brigham Young, it was the Brigham Young University, Idaho campus, so I ate a lot of potatoes [Laughs]. My friends would tell me I should consider doing this so I went and got a couple sales jobs, I worked in a Dish Network facility office where we called out over the phone and then I started to do time share presentations where we were getting people doing the SDR work and getting people to time share. Then I went and did door to door security sales and did server job as well so all of these things were more like the entertaining the one-on-one with the individual, the consumer and did pretty darn well at that.

In the summer sales I made like $20 thousand in three months doing door to door and that was the low end. That was my first year doing it and I did it for one year, I needed to get money for a non-paid internship. That was the B to C side and I did well with it. Then I worked for IT training company and they dabbled in both sides. We sold to the consumer as well as we sold to the businesses, and that’s when I started to get into the professional world of selling. It was hard.

Fred Diamond: We’ve had a number of Sales Game Changers that we’ve interviewed for the podcast and a couple of them have started in door-to-door, grind-it-out selling various types of things. Why don’t you tell us some of the key lessons you learned from some of those first few sales jobs that have stuck with you?

Donald Kelly: One of the things that I learned especially doing door to door security is not necessarily hard work but working smart. I’ll use hustle, I know that word is tossed around so much now it gets watered down, but I saw people who were working hard and they’re walking around all day but they weren’t doing effective work, they weren’t hustling effectively. They got tired and got burned out and went home. If you’re hustling it means that you’re efficient, you got on a door at a certain time, you knew your messaging, you practiced before you got there and you found out when things are not going to work, and you don’t try to make it. In the door to door security world it’s a one shot hit, it’s a one hit wonder. If I knock on your door, I have 45 minutes.

The idea of me coming back to you, if I was to do that all day long, just go back to all of these houses, I would never make any sales so if it doesn’t work, I need to move onto the next one. It taught me that I just need to be efficient and I need to hustle, that’s one of the biggest things I took. When I came to the B to B side and I started doing some BDR work for a software company and I was in inside sales, I just knew that I needed to not just sit here and loath over, “I’m just going to keep calling this guy over and over again.” It’s like, “I’m going to call them but I need to recognize when something is not going to work and I need to move on, just be efficient and to hustle.” Planning was a key thing, too coming in from that side of the world because it was a full commission job. Your morning time, you do a meeting at 10 o’clock, you drive and you get out by eleven, midday and you’re going till the evening time. During that time period it’s my game time and I’m not going to stop and go on Facebook or sit down and play Angry Birds – maybe I did once in a while – but you’re out there and your time is money because it’s full commission. You need to pay rent.

Fred Diamond: Donald, a lot of people follow you on the internet, on Facebook, LinkedIn and other places, you have a very popular show so a lot of people probably view you as a mentor. Why don’t you tell us about a mentor or two that has impacted your sales career?

Donald Kelly: One of the mentors that helped me is named Steve Hatch, he’s actually local here in Orlando and he took me under his wing at that IT training company. He was the CEO of the company and he had to do the sales. He brought me in, again, my personality, he thought that would help but realize you need a lot more than just personality. Steve brought me in but he taught me not only the sale side but taught me the business, helped me to understand business acumen and threw me into some deep ends.

One of those deep ends was I did a little bit of marketing with him but we were trying to figure out a deal with a local NPR station. He helped me to be able to lead that and to negotiate and to work with NPR as far as this deal. He [Inaudible 09:01] but he was a great mentor and also affiliated with my church as well, so he was a leader in that sense and was a father figure in my life. He helped me to recognize the type of individuals that I could grow up to become. He helped me with that a lot, from the sales to business acumen as well as the individual enough to be a new sense of society [Laughs].

Fred Diamond: Speaking of being an individual, you just became a father as well.

Donald Kelly: I did, yes.

Fred Diamond: Congratulations.

Donald Kelly: Two weeks today after recording, two weeks ago.

Fred Diamond: That’s great, it’s probably been about two months ago when the show comes out. You deal with a lot of sales professionals and a lot of people who aren’t necessarily sales professionals but when you think about the sales professionals that you work with, what are the two biggest challenges that you think they’re faced with right now?

Donald Kelly: I would say the two biggest challenges I feel that sales reps are facing with, a lot of the ones that I meet with in the small companies is prospecting and prospecting effectively. I feel a lot of people are pulled in different worlds. They’re told that cold calling is dead but when you work with a lot of small companies, the CEO’s of those companies, that’s how they built the darned thing so they’re saying, “You need to do cold calling, you need to go that route.”

Then the social aspect, it’s putting yourself out on social media, it’s hard to do that and I think sometimes people don’t have that confidence to do it effectively. They will wait for the inbound leads and we’re taught that if you do the content, an inbound is going to come and it’s true, some of that stuff does happen but I feel that a lot of the sales reps that I work with on a day to day basis, it’s prospecting. I’m constantly trying to give them ideas and to give them training about how to utilize LinkedIn and how to do that effectively or how to take advantage of cadences and set up a flow, we call them the flow process of outreach.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about prospecting for a second, then. Again, you’re an expert on that so a lot of people engage you for it. Give us a tip or two on something that’s top of mind that you believe people should be thinking about as they prospect.

Donald Kelly: It’s the multi-channel outreach or omni-channel approach. What I feel with that, what I teach when I work with these sales reps, I try to encourage them to start to game off on social media to make that interaction and to connect with people, genuine connection. I’m not talking about ‘liking’ somebody’s thing, I’m talking about engagement. For instance, I did a post the other day, actually last night about role play and now I had a couple people that came on to that. I’m taking a conversation from the stream into the inbox and started to say, “Hey, thank you so much, Fred for commenting on my post, loved the comment, would love to connect.”

And once I connect, now I can take that conversation to a phone call because that phone call makes it so much warmer in engaging. Then also I take advantage of utilizing, depending on the type of product the organization is selling – if it’s something that’s going to be simple like a software for $10 dollars a month, it doesn’t make sense to do that – but for some of the bigger things, enterprise sales, what we have seen is to utilize the snail mail in that process as well to grab the attention. I will send something into the snail mail, maybe three days later. That grabs your attention, that cues it up for my cold call.

Fred Diamond: Do you physically mail it or do you Federal Express or what do you do?

Donald Kelly: Physically, USPS, you can take advantage of some of those flat rate boxes depending on what you’re doing. One of the clients – I’ll give you an example with this – they were trying to get demonstration, they were in the behavioral health space and their sales reps were doing a lot of the cold calls alone and they weren’t doing a multi-channel approach and that wasn’t working too well. We said, “Okay, let’s try an experiment.” What we did was we said, “Let’s get a box” and we created a ticket, like a Willy Wonka ticket and it was like, “Join us for demos”, like a movie ticket and then we gave them popcorn.

We wowed them and one of them found out they like Coke products and lucky it didn’t explode, but we sent them a Diet Coke in the mail. Diet Coke, popcorn, the Orville Popcorn and Swedish fish. Then we also found out his receptionist, the one that gave us some information on what kind of stuff he likes, we put two Starbucks $5 dollar gift cards, it was about $12 dollars for this box altogether. We did a bunch of these and then they were able to land 3 of the 12 from this experiment that came on, and that was about $100,000 dollar deal that they were able to close more revenue annually form just doing three boxes.

Fred Diamond: The key issue again is how do you get through? There’s a bigger challenge than ever to get through, as you know. People don’t return your phone calls, they don’t take the calls, it’s very difficult to get through. You’re going back to snail mail to get through to get those meetings. Donald, you’ve had a great career in sales, you’ve had a lot of success. Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, why don’t you tell us about your biggest success that you’re most proud of? Besides your new baby.

Donald Kelly: The biggest success I would share was when I was working in software space, we were selling to city, county, governments, K12, this was large. The average deal size that I was working on was about $30 thousand dollars, maybe $50 thousand dollars. This one client, I went in and it was like the perfect sales situation where you found one individual and then that person was our champion. We worked with that champion for about 6 months and nothing happened, then finally came to an opportunity, we found other people in the organization, he broke it out and then we started to do the consulting type of selling with multiple departments and then we started to uncover a pain and difficulties.

It was the perfect scenario, Fred. Then from that standpoint we created K Study from it because this was going before the board, so it was presentation after presentation and we were able to secure this deal. It was a multi 6-figure deal that I was able to help bring into the organization. It just worked out perfect from the start to building relationship, getting referrals in, networking, all the way down to conversion and then upselling afterwards. It was fantastic.

[Sponsor break]

Fred Diamond: Donald, why don’t you give us a tip for the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe to take their careers to the next level?

Donald Kelly: Great question on this one. I read a lot of books and try to improve my game. One of my favorite books recently is Mike Weinberg’s ‘Sales Management. Simplified.’ and the whole book, for anyone who ever read any of Mike’s books, what he always goes back to is the fundamentals. Always, just go back to the fundamentals. For me, I think right now more than ever as far as sales reps taking their game to the next level is really mastering those things. I feel the biggest part besides prospecting is asking appropriate questions, questions that will get down to the heart and questions that will get to real issues. I feel, especially with the folks who I work with, a lot of them who are coming from the tech space and they’re pushing software, it’s really just like, “Hi, Fred, demo” and try to get something there.

Fred Diamond: Show up and throw up.

Donald Kelly: Yeah, and those demos go nowhere. I have a client right now that I’m working with and it was absolutely amazing, Fred, the amount of frequent demonstrations and did they have a proposal? I’m like, “Yes, this looks amazing looking at their pipeline” but it was all for show because none of those, they knew nothing about the individuals and knew nothing about the problem. I think we’re skipping that process, that part just a little bit. If there’s one thing I feel any sales rep can master is mastering discovery, mastering asking meaningful questions, questions that are going to really show your expertise and coming prepared to ask those questions. I’m not talking about worthless crap like saying you sell time management or…

Fred Diamond: Software, yeah.

Donald Kelly: Yeah, I want to know, understanding that right now, time management is one of the biggest issues going on, blah, blah, blah and especially in your industry, the regulatory changes. What are you guys doing to fix that?

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us about a selling habit that you have that has led to your continued success?

Donald Kelly: Planning, planning, planning. I created a book because I couldn’t find a planner that could do it. You and I aren’t doing video right now and people can’t see us, but one side of it was the day to day planner where I broke it down from 6 am, I think about 5 am starting morning to about 8 pm in evening and broken up into 30 minute blocks. I read a book by Kevin Kruse called ’15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management’ and then another book was ‘The 12 week year’, fantastic book.

What I was doing and what I see a lot of sales reps do is we take all of our things in our mind that we need to do, say 15, 20 things that we need to do for today. The ones who plan may just take those and throw as many of them as they can up on a calendar, maybe, but it just wasn’t fitting right for me. What I started to do, I started to break down my day based on categories to see if what I’m doing was effective. In my role as a business owner, I have sales activities and marketing activities, operations and stuff like that so I started to figure out what I was doing on a day to day basis. I track all of those tasks for like a week and I can see where I have commonality, what task I’m doing over and over again and the ones that I don’t need to do. I eliminate the ones that I don’t need to do, get my team to do that and then focus on the sales related one so then now on my day to day task, each morning I sit down or each day before the end of the day, I put down what I need to get done for tomorrow based on categories that I need to focus on.

Then I take those tasks and put them on the planner so then now everything that’s on the planner has to be meaningful towards the end result, and then I have to tie to my KPI’s. At the end of the day now I’m judging my day to say, “I had 5 tasks that I needed to get done today, I got 14 out of the 15 so I had a 90%-ish, 93%, I had a good day, I’m A.” But if I get anything lower than a C, something get really wrong. I feel that many of our sales reps, what happens is that we willy-nilly each day because we follow – and Mike talks a lot about this, too – we follow based on what the CRM tells us to task as opposed to us being in charge and to take control, have meaningful activities for each and every hour of the day.

Fred Diamond: Donald, that’s great. Before we ask you for your final tip for the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe, I want to go back to something you said before. You mentioned preparation, give us an idea or two on how the Sales Game Changers listening to the podcast need to think about preparation. What’s a tip or two that you would suggest to help them be more prepared as they go in for the sales call?

Donald Kelly: Three minutes, you need to have three minute prep, and don’t try to go too far than that. If at all possible right now, we live in a global world so if you have a focus list of clients that you’re trying to get access to, maybe you can find somebody on Upwork or whatnot to outsource to say, “I want you to go do some research on these people and come back with some information.” Then now you can take that information, also your LinkedIn information to have three understanding how does this company that I’m calling into make money?

What challenges that they may have that I they’re probably not even aware of? Simply you can do that through a Google search through the industry and you can find industry related magazine. Especially if you’re focusing, I like to make our clients have their reps focus on industries so they can become proficient at that and now you can find out what are some of the common challenges that they’re facing and then understanding how does this person’s role, how do they help the company make money? You’re understanding what the company does, challenges the company may face. If you understand the challenges the company or industry may be facing, you can automatically tie your solution probably to that and then you can understand how Fred is affected by that, how Fred’s role makes money for that organization. If I can make Fred look good, solve that problem for that organization, I’m in a good situation.

Fred Diamond: That is such a great bit of advice there, Donald. One thing we keep hearing on the Sales Game Changers podcast is, “If you can help your customer achieve his or her goals, you’re so much further down the path. It’s not about you, it really is about what your customer is trying to do for their customers.” Donald, it’s been great having you on the Sales Game Changers podcast, we’ve been friends for a couple years now, it’s great to talk to you in some more detail. I love following you, I love what you say out there, I love the advice that you’re giving to the sales professionals who are seeking your assistance. Why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe today?

Donald Kelly: The final thought that I would give – and it’s something that I believe strongly in – is that everyone has a problem. Every organization out there has some kind of problem, your prospects do. Somebody is going to solve that problem for them, why not you? Why not you take the advantage, go the high road, figure this out first and be the first one to solve the problem? If you do that, you stand out more than anybody else.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 198: The Sales Evangelist – Donald Kelly – Says This Approach to Sales Prospecting Will Set You Apart from All Other Sellers first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

SPECIAL EPISODE 011: Proactive Sales Prospecting Expert Tibor Shanto Shares Numerous Strategies You Can Take to Make 2019 Your Most Successful Selling Year Ever

TIBOR’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Let’s focus on time. I think that people squander their time, people tend to think about time as being somewhat fluid and they tend to think of it as having an endless supply, but your quota ends every year so there isn’t an endless supply. There are only so many hours in a year that you could sell, What you do with time will determine your success.”

Tibor Shanto is with Renbor Sales Solutions.

He’s an author of two books you can find on Amazon and is well-known as an expert on sales prospecting.

Many of our listeners have probably read some of his articles and follow him on social media as well.

He was a featured speaker at the Institute for Excellence in Sales in September 2018 and today we’re going to be talking about proactive prospecting.

Find Tibor on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: We’re going to talk about proactive prospecting, let’s get started. When’s the best time to call?

Tibor Shanto: Anytime.

Fred Diamond: OK, next question. [Laughs] no, anytime…

Tibor Shanto: I think there’s a myth, people are always trying to find the optimal time and there probably is an optimal time and there probably is an optimal time, but that doesn’t mean that other times are not effective when it comes to filling your pipeline which is what the exercise is about with viable opportunities. I think that anytime is a good time to call, there are some logical barriers and things that you should think about. Often I find that I’m at Starbucks 10 minutes before a meeting or what have you, it’s a good time to make calls.

I think people can also be smart about it because you are getting ready for a meeting, you might be rushed so you may want to call those people who may be somebody that you spoke to 6 months ago and it’s time to see if you can re-engage so it’s not as harsh of a cold call as maybe somebody that you’ve never spoken to, has no awareness or what have you. In that sense I would block different times with different types of calls but anytime is a good time to make a call.

Fred Diamond: How about Saturday morning?

Tibor Shanto: I’ve shared with you before that I used to work with a lady who was a copier rep – they like to say “printing solutions rep” – and she found that a segment of her market, small business people who were generally busy during the week who were not available in conventional hours because they were out of the shops between 8 and 6 and so on, she found she had success with some of them because one told her, “Call me back Saturday morning.” She thought it was a blow-off but to her credit, she followed through and she had a pretty good conversation. She tried that and she looked for others so she made it a habit. During a couple of hours on a Saturday morning she would call a certain type of prospect and she had success.

Fred Diamond: One thing you and I have talked about in the past is the whole notion of the fact that you’re a sales prospector for a company – and again, most people listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast are in B to B or enterprise sales. You’re one person trying to reach a decision maker, talk about what’s going on with that person. We have our objective which is to get an appointment or something to the next stage, but what’s going on in that guy’s or that lady’s world that we need to be conscious of?

Tibor Shanto: If I knew, I would make a million but I have some pretty good ideas. To your point, we set out with our objectives which is fairly valid, we have a quota whether it’s at the contributor level, the manager level, the VP level. We have to deliver to our company, that’s what we’re employed to do so it’s perfectly fair and valid to expect that the person we’re calling also has a set of marching orders whether it’s self-generated or generated for them by their organization. That’s what they’re focused on, they’re not sitting there waiting for Tibor to call and offer them the greatest prospecting program ever. They’re focused on gaining market share, they’re focused on expanding into different geographies, they’re focused on what are they going to do vis-a-vis the new tariffs in their marketplace and things along those lines?

It’s up to me to try to get into that lane with them than to expect them to abandon everything that was important to them before the phone rang and transfer onto me. The analogy I like to use is I used to run – I had an accident then, I don’t anymore. In the winter I used to run in the treadmill downstairs in the basement, so it was easy if the kids wanted to come and talk to be, I’d be in the basement on the treadmill, they had a captive audience for half an hour. When the snow disappeared in the spring, it was a different proposition because if they wanted to talk to me they had to run along with me. It’s the same way with prospectors, if you want to keep up with the person, you have to enter their lane and their direction and get their attention in a way that they see us continuing to support their journey, not mine.

Fred Diamond: Let’s get a little bit deeper there. Let’s say I’m a new sales professional, I’m someone who’s out of school, maybe it’s my first job, maybe it’s my second job. My job is to make 50 phone calls a day to get 5 appointments scheduled for maybe my direct sales team or my account managers, if you will. Let’s talk a little more about really what’s going on when you’re calling. For example, there’s a word you like to use that we are professional interrupters. Talk a little more so that the listeners listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast understand more what that means. How does that show up to the person you’re trying to get on the call?

Tibor Shanto: I think one thing that salespeople need to do is to get out of sales. I’m often asked what book a salesperson or sales organizations should read and I always say tongue-in-cheek after they’ve read mine the next one they should read – but they could start with the other one as well because I think it’s a better primer – but I believe that they should read The 10-Day MBA. It’s difficult for you to talk to a business person who is in a different process and a different head space and as I said before, to bring them into your head space where they see no value initially.

I think by reading The 10-Day MBA you begin to understand what are business people thinking about. If I’m calling a CFO within a mid-sized manufacturer of something, what are they likely to think about? What are the likely hot buttons that they’re likely to respond to, what are the likely clichés that they’re going to hang up on you on or delete your email or whatever the case might be? I think you start with that, what’s the person, what’s their role, what’s their contribution to their company and then how can I impact that in a positive way? That will depend on A, who you’re calling and to a lesser degree what it is that you’re selling.

One thing I get often asked by salespeople, how do I know that? I think the internet exposes all secrets, so if you go to a few association sites and if you look at a role in a particular manufacturing sector and so on, the topics that that association is putting on their website, the keynotes that they’re bringing in to their current conference are likely the topics that their audience is thinking about, because otherwise they wouldn’t spend $1,200 dollars to go and listen to things that are not interesting to them.

Fred Diamond: That’s an interesting point. We’ve done about 150 Sales Game Changer interviews and I’m thrilled to be talking to you today. Again, we’re talking to Tibor Shanto, he’s an expert on sales prospecting. One of the key themes that keeps coming up time and time again is that you need more than ever to truly provide value for the people that you’re talking to. Sales has always been about creating value and demonstrating value, but you need to take it to the next level now because customers can also go to the internet to get information about you and not just your product, but the technologies or solutions that they may need. We talk to people about that all the time, we say, “You need to know not just your customer’s operations and their processes, but the business challenges that they’re faced with.”

Tibor Shanto: This is something that I rail on about and I’m sorry if I do too much, but I think there’s not enough definition in sales. We seem to use these words as though they have no consequences, and you know sticks and stones may break your bones but words will kill your sales. First thing to do is to define what value is. People are going to think it’s funny, but I’ve had this over and over again when I do workshops. I’ll ask 5 salespeople to define value and you end up with 7 different definitions because the first 2 will change their mind based on what the next 3 say. How can you consistently be successful and focused and process-driven when the goal posts are always moving?

What we work with with our clients is to have a clear and actionable definition of value that doesn’t change with the time of day and the weather. You can find it on my website but I’m happy to share it here and I’ll do it nice and slowly, that customers will see value in anything that you bring that helps them overcome hurdles or barriers towards their objectives or solid gaps between where they are and where their objectives are. “We’re looking to penetrate the southwest and we need to do it in this way, but there’s an obstacle.” If I can remove that obstacle, small or big, they’re going to see value.

Visually picture Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, the buyer is on one side of the gorge, the objective is on the other side of the gorge. Can I help them move towards it? Again, I don’t want salespeople to think that they have to leap that buyer to the other side of the cliff but if you can move them incrementally and show some way for them to remove a small obstacle towards their objective, you get more credibility, you get more trust and they’re willing to share more information with you based on that you built the next element of the bridge and you keep building that. Eventually, you get them towards their objectives and if you do it well enough you actually help them formulate their next set of objectives so now you’ve built in the opportunity for you in an ongoing way.

That’s what I work with people and we can break it down further into components, but that’s the broad definition if I can help you get to your objectives. The killer for most salespeople is few people wake up with the objective of buying a product, they wake up with the objective of moving the dial on their business forward and if I don’t talk about that, I’m beat from the start.

Fred Diamond: Tibor, let’s get specific here. Voicemail: should I be using voicemail and how do I optimize voicemail?

Tibor Shanto: I think anybody who doesn’t leave a voicemail should hand in their cards and find another profession because they clearly do not want to succeed and anybody that would like to challenge that. You’ll have my address from the notes, I’m happy to take it on publicly or otherwise. Voicemail is a must, I used to be in the school that didn’t leave voicemail. I used to get calluses on my fingers and I’m old enough to remember the rotary phone, not the push button and calling somebody a hundred times. Even if you diminish your expectations that you’re going to get zero called back, I’m going to argue that there’s still value to voicemail in a couple of different ways. One is it’s a touch point, we all know it’s getting more and more effort to get to a prospect.

Our prospects are busier, they have a lot of different things that they’re dealing with so it’s going to take – and depending on who you listen to – but I would say at least 18 touch points over the course of 3 weeks. These touch points could be a combination of things, from email to voicemail to snail mail to LinkedIn touches and any other means of reaching the individual. Again, associations have fairly good mechanisms for communicating with members and so on. To me, use all mediums available to you including text and snail mail because what you’re trying to do is work your way up on the priority list for that individual. Think about all the things that that individual is having to deal with, and if you can be consistent in your message as to how you can help them achieve their objectives the way that we defined that earlier, then that’s going to continue to resonate with them.

If you leave them a voicemail and you follow that up with an intelligent email and the same day you happen to look at their LinkedIn profile, you don’t necessarily have to ask them to connect but you know LinkedIn will tell you who has looked at your profile, all of the sudden you’re putting three dots out there. What you’re doing is raising your profile in a minor way in the person’s mind and if you continue that in an intelligent and continuous way over the next 3 weeks, you have a much better chance of reaching them. I know people who go longer, I know people who go shorter. You need to find your own equilibrium but I would suggest if you’re doing less than 15 you’re not doing enough.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about the call. People ask me all the time what I’ve learned from running the Institute for Excellence in Sales. There’s two main things that I’ve learned, one is again we talked about value, you have to keep giving more and more value, more than ever. Again, that’s the basic core of sales is bringing value to your customer. The other thing people ask me all the time is what’s the most important tool device in the sales process? It’s easily the phone, I believe. Let’s talk about the call itself. Do you say, “Hi, how are you doing? How’s your weekend? Did you catch the game last night?” If I’m a young prospector in my 20’s and I do get through to a director of IT or procurement or finance, someone who’s maybe 20, 30 years older with a lot more experience, is he or she interested in my question about the weekend?

Tibor Shanto: I don’t think they are. The success in the call starts long time before the call, people thinks that’s when it happens but it happens a long time before and I’m assuming that part of your prep for the call is you’re going to check the individual out. I’m not saying do a deep dive on their history and do a thesis on them that will be marked at Harvard, but you do want to look at their LinkedIn profile. You want to do a quick Google search and see what they come up with and so on. If you find that the person is let’s say a Wolverine’s fan, the Michigan Wolverines and something significant happened with the Wolverines. I think if you weave that into the conversation it’s probably a good thing. I wouldn’t start with it, but it’s probably a good thing. I hate the emails I get from people on LinkedIn, they think they know something about me and they go, “Hey, I’m a Jethro Tull fan, too.” Who cares? It has nothing to do with what you’re trying to sell me and you’re probably not scoring points because it doesn’t enter that part of my reality. I don’t think that’s a good thing, I think if you started with a statement that gave you credibility, that spoke to their objectives then I think your age and their age begins to go away because all of the sudden you’re saying something relevant. “This person is talking about something that I was thinking about.”

If you remember Michael Bosworth of Solution Selling, I met him a couple years ago and he’s really into storytelling. You know I don’t need to sell it, I’m hoping you have a podcast somewhere where he talks about how young people can use storytelling as a means of bridging the gap so I’ll let him expand on that because he’s much better. I think in terms of a phone call it starts a lot earlier so how I start the call may be shaped by some information that I find about the person. Again, I wouldn’t call up and say I’m a Wolverine’s fan but if there was some big thing I would make mention of it in the conversation as I’m humanizing things from the cold start to what do you call it.

At the very beginning I want to make it all about them, I think salespeople and sales organizations are too wound up about themselves and they tend to talk about themselves. I spoke to you about how I always find it humorous when somebody calls me and they say, “Hi, it’s Joy here, I’m on the mid-west manager for such and such” and by the time she finishes telling me who she is I’ve hung up because I’ll wait for the movie. Start with what’s in it for them. To go back to what you and I spoke about a few minutes ago, what are the objectives that you based on your experience, based on the work that you did in advance that you think will resonate with this person? It’s not science, you’re going to miss, you’re going to hit and that’s why I say go for like 3.

Over time, if you review why you’re winning deals, why you’re losing deals you begin to realize there are certain objectives either cyclically or otherwise that are going to be current for that person. If you lead with those objectives and how you might have been able to impact them and at the same time provide examples of that that the person can relate to, then you build a level of credibility where the person might say, “I’ll give you 10 more seconds.” Notice I’m not saying, “Where do I sign and where do I buy?” but it’ll be what I’m going for, it’s let’s change this from this choppy, uncomfortable water that we see at the beginning of the call to something that resembles more of a conversation.

Fred Diamond: When I was a marketing consultant before I took over the Institute, whenever I would introduce myself I would always say, “Fred Diamond, DIAMOND Strategic Marketing. I’ve done work for companies like Microsoft and Apple.” How important is that to get credibility, by mentioning some of the big brand, big name companies that you’re working with? I believe customers listen a certain way to that, what are your thoughts? 

Tibor Shanto: I think they listen to it in a certain way but you do have to be careful and you have to match like with like. I remember when I was with my last corporate employer and one of the clients that had a lot of success with and I wore it like a badge of honor was one of the big 5 and I’d sold them an enterprise deal. Everybody that I went and spoke to after, I would always lead with this and then I realized the guy just outside of Toronto who has an office in Toronto and maybe one in the northern suburb, he doesn’t relate to one of the big 5.

When I introduce the companies, I like to go for something that’s big that everybody in Canada would recognize or if I’m prospecting in the states everybody in the states would recognize.

Secondly, I’d try and localize it a little bit either vertically or geographically and then if you have the opportunity – and after 15 years in business, I have it – I generally have worked with one of their competitors so I leave that as the third. When I introduce it, I wouldn’t go Microsoft and Apple because either one of those will get you bonus points. You’ve done work with them, you’ve got the halo. Now, I want to bring it down but I also recognize that I might be speaking to maybe a more regional player so I’ll give one of those and then I know that locally they compete with Acme Corp who I may have done business with and I put that in. Then quickly I go to what they realized is the result of dealing with me, not what I’ve provided them.

Fred Diamond: Before we get your final tip, I’ve got time for one more question. This question comes up not infrequently. We’ve had speakers that have written The Challenger Sale, Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon have both appeared on the Institute’s stage before. One of the things that they focus on in the Challenger customer is the fact that you’re not talking to one person. Originally in the book I believe they said 5.4 people on average and they recalculated afterwards and said it was closer to 6 and a half, 7.

You and I know that if you’re selling enterprise technology you have the economic buyer, the financial buyer, back to use those types of trades. For titles, you have director of IT, director of finance, procurement, there could be as many as 6 to 7 people that you’re talking to. If you’re the prospector trying to get into that account, what do you suggest? Should they go pick one and go after that person as well as they can or should they pick 3 and have a trident approach, if you will? What are your thoughts on the best practices knowing that the people listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast are selling into enterprise deals, there’s more than one customer, sometimes as many as 7 people involved in the decision?

Tibor Shanto: Putting aside a lot of the great work that is in the Challenger customer where they go beyond that and they talk about 7 personality types and mobilizers – I would read that book as you’re listening to this interview or maybe one after the other. Putting all that aside which is very important so I’m reluctant to say “putting all that aside” but we do have time constraints. I think that if you look at it, what they’re talking about primarily is creating a consensus.

There is this notion of safety in numbers and I’ve always lived with that safety in numbers. In fact, organizations and some of the best salespeople are the ones who can actually demonstrate that they have access to the bench in their organizations and it’s the same thing within companies. What you want to do is go to those people who can give you access to other people. One of the things again underlying all this is you’ve got to constantly review why you’re winning and why you’re losing.

When you’re looking at why you’re winning, what was the pattern? Who was the one that allowed you to create the biggest opening, was it procurement? Generally not. Was it the economic buyer, what have you? You might see a pattern that when I go and talk to this person first and then I talk to this person, there’s a greater harmony between them and I could use that to then reach the next person. In general if I understand the question correctly I think that you should be calling all your targeted audiences simultaneously tailoring your approach to what their reality is because it’s based on how they view the world as opposed to how you view the world. I would very much let them know that you are talking to those other people because they might feel more inclined to engage if they know that their peers are interested than lone wolf type of thing.

Fred Diamond: Not an end around approach.

Tibor Shanto: No. If you have to, you do an end around but that should be a last resort. You should be at the point where you say, “If I do nothing, I’m dead so I might as well do something because there might be life after that” but that’s at the end of the process, not at the beginning.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought? One idea, most important thing that people listening to today’s Sales Game Changers podcast around the globe should be implementing, should be thinking about to become better as prospectors?

Tibor Shanto: Just one?

Fred Diamond: Just one, we’ve got time for one.

Tibor Shanto: Since you said we have time for one, let’s focus on time. I think that people squander their time, people tend to think about time as being somewhat fluid and they tend to think of it as having an endless supply and it sort of does, but your quota ends every year so there isn’t an endless supply. There are only so many hours in a year that you could sell, so 1,760 is the number. 220 days, 8 hours a day, that’s your face time. What you do with that will determine your success. Again, use these terms very deliberately, how you spend that time, how you invest that time, what expectations for return you set for that time will dictate how you use that time.

The post SPECIAL EPISODE 011: Proactive Sales Prospecting Expert Tibor Shanto Shares Numerous Strategies You Can Take to Make 2019 Your Most Successful Selling Year Ever first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.