Without meaning to, my friend Jeb Blount created quite a clamour on LinkedIn. The poll he posted asked which medium to use first in a prospecting sequence: phone, email, social media, or an in-person visit. He argued (and I agree) that the phone should start your sequence. The reason is simple and straightforward: if the person who answers your call agrees to a meeting, you no longer need a sequence.

The comments on Jeb’s poll were both revealing and incredibly disappointing. Cold calling has consistently been a lightning rod on social media, with a few salespeople advocating for an “all of the above” approach, including the telephone. But I want to set aside that debate for a few minutes, because the comments highlighted a much larger potential threat: fear of sales.

The Mass Infection of Fear

One vocal opponent of cold calling, an entrepreneur, commented on Jeb’s thread that his approach was to buy ads on Facebook, providing a link that a prospective client might click on. Only after the prospect clicked the link did this person believe he could reach out them. The problems with this approach would overflow a week’s worth of posts, so in the interests of time I’ll just note a couple. First, one-to-many messaging is marketing, not sales. Second, no individual salesperson has a Facebook pixel and a budget to run ads. Relying on Facebook ads may be the right choice for entrepreneurs but its awful advice for a salesperson. What’s underneath that advice, however, is worse: the entrepreneur was too afraid to call his prospective clients.

Other comments suggested that one must warm up the prospective client by sending them an email, claiming that it is important for the client to see your name on an email before they get your call. To be honest, I’m having trouble following that logic. How exactly does getting a cold email create the desire to speak to the person who sent it? Unless you spend your day starting at your phone, hoping against hope that the people who just spammed you will call you to spam you again, then you cannot possibly believe that an email makes it safer to dial a prospect’s number. And there’s the rub: when email-first salespeople talk about safety, they broadcast the same fear of calling a stranger. An odd thing, that, given that every good thing that ever happens to you in sales is the result of meeting a stranger.

Finally, one person suggested that the best way to start a prospecting sequence is with a warm referral. His response gave a very long explanation of how to respond to an introduction over email or on LinkedIn, again emphasizing the asynchronous communication tools that so many salespeople hide behind. The same people who are afraid of calling a stranger are also reluctant to call up their clients and ask for a referral. They worry about imposing on their client, so they avoid asking for the referral in a real conversation and instead defer it to email.

With all this fear floating around, here’s a reminder: no salesperson has ever been scarred for life by making a cold call, although many have experienced incredibly negative consequences because they didn’t create enough opportunities.

The Long-term Harm of Fearing Your Clients

There are deleterious effects of teaching salespeople to fear their prospective clients. If a ten-minute phone conversation is so dangerous, then I can only imagine how much the salesperson should fear advising the client on what they need to do to improve their results. And just imagine those poor salespeople working on big deals, with multi-year, multi-million dollar payoffs, the kind that require the salesperson to negotiate with the client, or worse, their purchasing department. Terrifying, I tell you. Just terrifying.

This fear-based approach goes hand in hand with the idea that marketing is responsible for creating sales opportunities and that sales appointments should be handled by crude robots. Conflict aversion is harmful to the development of a salesperson, simply because embracing conflict is the only way to make a positive difference for your clients. No one is ever going to find a compliant, conflict-averse, namby-pamby, order-taker to be consultative, nor will they ever find them to be a trusted advisor.

What makes one a trusted advisor is their willingness to tell the truth at any price, even the price of the deal. The need to be liked is not the same as being likable. The first is detrimental, the other is an advantage. But the advantage of being likable is not available to one who fears their client, especially when it prevents them from having the necessary conversations around change.

A New Hope

In my view, the new hope is the SDR. While salespeople in this category are rarely deployed as effectively as they should be, at least they aren’t being infected with the result-crushing belief that they should fear making a phone call: cold, hot, or indifferent. Their willingness to keep making cold calls will help them develop crucial character traits for sales effectiveness: comfort with conflict, understanding how to trade value for time, unafraid of proposing next steps, able to handle objections, and unaffected by what others would call rejection.

For a long time now, I have been telling sales leaders to prioritize the development of their sales force. Those who take this advice are doing well. Those who don’t often arrest their salespeople’s development, whether it’s by giving into fear or falling for other get-out-of-work-free promises by faux-experts—few of which even consider the long-term effects of their decisions or recommendations.

Do Good Work:

• Look for advice that serves your results.
• Avoid people who would infect you with their fears.
• Never be afraid of calling anyone when you believe you may be able to help them—even if they reject or ignore you.

The post The Fear And Generational Shift Against Cold Calling appeared first on Head Of Sales.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in…

• How Seth distinguishes between career and work.
• Why Seth believes there is no such thing as writer’s block.
• What makes you an artist and how to find your voice.
• What people can do to start trusting themselves in their work.
• Why generosity cannot be transactional.
• What Seth sees as the job of the future.

Career vs. Work

I had a discussion with a friend recently regarding the difference between having a career and having what I consider my work. We didn’t necessarily agree about the distinction.

I asked Seth to clarify for me.

Seth replied that the subtitle of his book is “Ship Creative Work,” so he HAS to know how to define “work”. He defines it as something we don’t do as a hobby and something we don’t do for ourselves. It has to have an “otherness” to it as well as a level of professionalism. If we make something and call it our work, it is a reflection of our choices about how we decided to contribute to whatever situation that we are in.

Doing the work is a fulfilling way to spend one’s day. Your work is NOT your career. The word “career” implies that the industrial system is in charge of the arc of your work. More than ever before, many people don’t have careers — they have a series of projects that reflect THEIR choices, instead of what their employer decided they should do. Listen to this episode to hear this and several more of Seth’s revolutionary ideas. They are sure to cause a paradigm shift in the way you see things!

There is no such thing as writer’s block.

Many people believe writer’s block is real. Seth counters by saying there is no such thing. He says The Practice contains thirty to forty ideas that counter what people believe — writer’s block is one of those ideas. Writer’s block is really just fear of bad writing. If you’re willing to do bad writing, then good writing will slip through — it can’t be helped. When people say “I don’t have any ideas,” what they mean is they don’t have any guaranteed-to-work ideas.

Seth believes that creativity is a professional practice just as much as any other professional practice. Professionals show up every day. They don’t wait for the muse or the right emotions or “flow”. They don’t know if it’s going to work. They just DO the work. They can’t be the critic or determine what will create value for someone. They just have to put it out there consistently and see what happens. Listen to hear more about the fascinating views Seth shares on creativity, consistency, and value!

What is Seth selling?

Seth says that with this latest book, he wants to sell people on finding their potential to contribute to our culture in a way they are proud of. To stop hiding and whining and scamming. To start trusting themselves. To start showing up and creating art with generosity. And to learn that trust is worth WAY more than attention on social media.

There are so many fantastic ideas we touched on that I can’t even begin to tell you about them all here. You’re going to want to hop on the podcast and listen to this episode to get all the wisdom Seth shares!

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

Connect with Seth Godin

• Seth’s Website
• Seth’s Amazon Author Page 
• Follow Seth on Medium
• Follow Seth on Twitter
• Follow Seth on Instagram
• Follow Seth on Facebook
• Seth can be found on LinkedIn at Akimbo Workshops and altMBA

The post Selling with Seth Godin (Podcast) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

1. Be a market expert

A successful Business Development person knows the playing field of their industry. They understand the ebbs and flows of the market. They know the key players and their respective unique selling points.

Most salespeople know information on their own business, but not necessarily that of the competitors whom they are up against. These are the alternatives that your prospect may be weighing up and comparing you to. When you know the fuller picture, you know what questions you need to ask, you know the types of problems the client may be encountering. You know how those problems can be fixed and which businesses (including yours) can resolve them.

As you ask better questions (and knowledgeable of the pain points and solutions) your value increases and the client see you as an industry expert.

Be and act as thought leader of your field – be seen as the authority

2. Mindset

Success, your opinion of the world and how you operate, all starts in your own head. It starts with how you decide to view the world.

Empowered are those that have decided to adopt the stance of:

‘I choose how I view my situation’,

‘I’m in charge of my thoughts’

‘I don’t let what is happening outside of me affect my mindset’.

Seeing each interaction as a lesson of how you could have made better choices – being able to rise above and think ‘what can I learn from this, what can I improve next time’.

Planning and practising what you could say next time to hard wiring the circuits of your brain and reprogram your mind to choosing a better future response.

Take time to breathe, to slow the mind down. Ditch what may not be serving you, be it alcohol, caffeine, bad choice of foods, recognising and managing any other negative influences. Reframe yourself positively on what you do have and look at the situation through new eyes. Take care of your number one asset – you.

Adopt a position of gratitude, put things into perspective.

3. Be aware of your value

Often, we get caught up in our own product that we don’t see what the implications are for the buyer. To know this, you need to know innately what pain your prospect is experiencing, for how long, what solutions they have tried, what they liked and didn’t like. Be informed about the different solutions available to them and the uniqueness of each.

What do you personally bring to the table? Are you professional, reliable, consistent, helpful? People ‘buy into’ people. They are buying into you to trust what you are selling them. Ensure you are always operating at your best, so they (and indeed your colleagues) see the best version of you.

4. Work smart

Working smart starts with planning days, weeks and months ahead.

“He who fails to plans is planning to fail”. Winston Churchill

Know who to target, when, how much time it will take. Know which prospects and clients will have the biggest positive impact on your bottom line. Prioritise the most profitable clients and focus on how you can engage with and bring them value.

The best Business Development people remove distractions. They know what approach to take and have practiced and refined what questions to ask and what compelling solution(s) they can put forward.

5. Get more business

Do what others will not do.

The client says ‘no’. So what? Learn, be resilient and move on. The world will not stop spinning. Lessons are everywhere. Opportunities are far and wide.

When you are with a potential client, abandon all assumptions and baggage of what they will or will not buy. Be present and focused on them and their situation. The more you understand them, the more you can help them.

Unfortunately, most salespeople are too preoccupied with getting their own message across, without first fully understanding the client. This mistake means the client doesn’t feel heard, isn’t fully understood and all opportunities to serve them are missed.

If you are regimented in your engagement you will be running the meeting your way, missing signals and not putting the client first. Your job is to run every engagement in a meaningful, relevant way – make it about them.

The person with the most behavioural flexibility gets the sale.

6. Take action consistently

Most salespeople are stuck in a reactive mode and not in a proactive mode.
Knowing that when you engage with more people, you will get more business. This means you have to carve off time to focus on giving the more profitable potentials more of your time and energy.

Conclusions

Sales is a profession. To demonstrate to the client that you are professional, trustworthy and a leader in your field, you need to act likewise.

Sales is an intelligent interaction where you are using sophisticated interpersonal skills and communication methods to help a client solve a problem.

The post 6 Steps For Business Development Success appeared first on Head Of Sales.

There are, however, many things you are not going to lose during our emergency. This list is also what you must retain, even though some will require considerable effort as we face our global crisis.

Your Relationships: You are not going to lose the lifetime of relationships you have built and nurtured over a lifetime. On the other side, you are going to have your family, your friends, your clients, and your partners. They will be thrilled to have you still, and you will be here to help each other.

Your Attitude: It is natural to feel fear and doubt. But it’s essential you keep a positive, optimistic, future-oriented, and empowered attitude and belief system. There is nothing to gain by being pessimistic, especially when you need to take action. You need to keep your attitude positive, even though it isn’t always going to be easy.

Your Knowledge: It has been a very long time since I have heard anyone say, “No one can take your education away from you.” Even though some of what we believed may be proven wrong, like the idea that “it can’t happen here,” what you know will still be intact, and it will be beneficial in the future.

Your Experience: Another form of knowledge, and one that you will also retain in the future. Your experience is still going to be valuable, and it may be worth even more when we reach the other side, as we begin to rebuild. Your situational knowledge is an advantage in the future.

Your Memories: A life is made up of experiences, the best and most important of which include your friends and your family. The best things in life are not things; they are our memories, and particularly the ones we make with the ones we love.

Your Goals and Dreams: Your goals and dreams might take a hit, but when something is important to you, it is still going to be important to you in the future. You can, should, must keep your achievable goals and your dreams. Let them fuel you through this challenge.

Your Hunger: The key to reaching your goals and finding wild success is mostly hunger. If you were hungry before, you will be even hungrier on the other side of this crisis. Let the desire wake you up in the morning and taking action as soon as your feet hit the floor.

Your Ability to Help: Your ability to help, to share, to create value for others is only going to grow stronger during difficult times. It is difficult to worry about yourself and your future if you are focused on helping others who need you.

Your Soul: The part of you that is unique isn’t going to go missing. The Buddhist koan, “show me your original face before your mother and father were born” is an attempt to help you recognize this part of you. There is no threat of losing what is essentially you.

Your Spiritual Faith: In times of crisis, it is easy to doubt your faith, to question what you believe, what you know. The word faith is to believe without physical proof, but trusting what your spirit perceives. Your faith will endure this test.

Please remember that we are in the middle chapters of our story, not the ending.

The post What You Will Not Lose in A Crisis appeared first on Head Of Sales.

I ran a sales management masterclass for a global client and here are the key points I made to 30 sales managers about the way we all need to lead and inspire teams.

1. Purpose.

No sense of mission or purpose for the difference you’re making in the lives of others.Intent is everything… potential customers can smell it. There is nothing more repelling than having ‘sales breath’ where you’re all about yourself and making your sale rather than being all about them and the outcomes they need to achieve while managing risk. What difference do you make in the lives of your customers… personally and professionally? Be clear about the answer and ensure all of your salespeople are too. As a sales manager, make sure you’re all about your people rather than yourself and that you act in the best interests of your people, your customers, and your company.

2. Strategy. 

Every organization is political in nature and this means that there are competing priorities and hidden agendas. You need a strategy for managing relationships and engineering best value for the customer while creating a comparative bias toward the strengths of your team, your company, and your solution. Strategy need not be complicated but you must know how you can change the rules on the competition, kill the customer’s apathy, and embed yourself in a compelling business case where there is an inbuilt bias toward what you do best in the market.

3. Technology and Data.

Failure to be data-driven and leverage technologies. Average deal size is shrinking, the number of people to cover in an account is increasing, sales cycles are taking longer, and there is increased competition. All of this means that you and your salespeople must apply effort where it will be most productive. Treasure time, fully embrace your CRM system, leverage LinkedIn’s, harness data intelligence tools that provide direct dials and the insights that create context and ‘warm’ engagement. Leverage the strengths of weak ties to never make cold calls yet go get punch drunk on the phone while your competition has slipped into ‘snoozer mode’ of passive social selling. Combinations of technology and driving concurrent channels of outreach are how the best are crushing quota.

4. The right conversations. 

No-one is interested in what you do and how it works until they first see you as someone who can help them achieve the important outcomes they are accountable for in their role. Lead with why conversations matter and be specific about the opportunities you see for them to improve revenue, reduce costs, increase profitability and have a positive impact on the metrics by which they are measured and personally that matter to them. Have a ‘hypothesis of value’ about how they could improve their business based on what you’re seeing with other customers who have a similar profile. Make your narrative all about them rather than yourself!

5. Sense of urgency. 

Time kills deals. Momentum is difficult to create and so very easy to lose. Treasure every opportunity and constantly think about how you can create progression every day with each stakeholder in every opportunity. What’s the next step? What are the key milestones and dates? Who needs to be on board to achieve consensus and in order for a decision to be made? Hope and prayer is not a strategy… success is earned. Between the opening and the close is the middle… the middle is the place where many deals die. Your biggest risk is usually complacency. Constantly ask why it matters and what happens if it slips. If there is a not a ‘compelling event’ then there had better be a compelling business case.

6. Discipline. 

We must do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and regardless of how we feel. Beyond going through the motions, we need to also execute masterfully. The discipline of training and repetitive correct execution is the hallmark of the very best in their field.

“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights. But I Do”

Ronnie Coleman

7. Execution. 

Having a rubbish narrative and not executing the fundamentals is the most common reason for sales failure. If you can’t secure meaningful conversations with the people of power and set the right agenda, then you’re working with someone else’s agenda. The customer forms an opinion of us quickly and we need to earn their trust and respect at every stage and through every interaction. Many deals are lost by the seller tripping over their own shoelaces. Can we write professionally and do we proof-read? Do we turn up on time? Have we done our research? Do we have insight? Is our demo relevant? Are our slides on point and all about them not us? Do we ask the right open questions? The list goes on… make every post a winner. You and your team need to all do the basics well.

8. Managing Expectations. 

Let’s face it… your boss is a lunatic who has an insatiable appetite for ever-increasing performance results and no regard for your personal life. They are happy to burn you out, throw you under the bus or melt you with their blow torch. You must manage their expectations. Customers are also crazy as they bark orders for you to jump through hoops and dance to their discord. They adopt ill-conceived strategies for managing their risks and often unwittingly work against themselves. It’s essential to positively influence their process, set the right agenda, then ‘culturally’ align. Ensure you have alignment with their process and reasonable goals and achievable time-frames. Be proactive early and know that yes-people are not respected.

9. Humility and the willingness to learn. 

Lifelong learning is the hallmark of the smartest humble people on the planet. Conversely, salespeople must be the worst readers on the planet. So many sellers think they know it all and have no need of improvement. Curiosity and a willingness to learn is what transforms a sales career. The best sales managers have their people on a reading program and they test whether they actually read or listen to the books, watch the videos, do the research. They turn sales meeting into sessions that actually provide value for the salespeople rather than cadence forecast meetings.

The post Actions That Lead to Sales Success appeared first on Head Of Sales.

“I don’t believe in burnout.” – Grant Cardone

Do something you love and you’ll never truly work a day in your life.

People ask me, “Tony, how do you keep up the frenetic pace of 25 hours every day? How are you not beyond burnt out on selling, calling, and traveling across continents incessantly after 3 decades?” It doesn’t mean I love every element of what I do on a daily basis or enjoy the rejection laden gauntlet… even I run from dawn until dusk and I’ve had moments of near-implosion this year with finishing my next book, meeting client commitments and continuing to publish blog articles .

I blast ahead by getting off on the high I feel miles into a bike ride. I thrive on challenging myself daily for the breakthrough. When you really don’t care about hearing a ‘no’, the yeses are sweet! When all possible rain is water off a duck’s back because you’re making a positive difference, then you’ll make money rain too.

It’s possible to be joyful about this thing called SALES if you’re making a positive difference in the lives of all those you touch.

I have several secrets to preventing and avoiding burnout out over a 30 year career in sales. Here we go:

1. 80/20 rule. Isolate the 20% of your activity that yields 80% of the results or output. Do that before lunch. If I don’t do 2 major things that scare me before lunch, I shouldn’t have even worked that day. Yes, that means directly call 2 or 3 CEOs who could partner with me, who I could consult on revenue acceleration.
2. Curiosity. Yes, it killed the cat but not the human. You must become infinitely interested in other people. Even fascinated by buyer psychology… What makes them tick? How are each of their problems different like a snowflake or fingerprint? You could even take a course from Barry Rhein on Curiosity Based Selling. Prospects are fascinating. Peel the onion with open SPIN questions and turn your ‘listen to talk’ ratio on 20/80. Super hard to do and that discipline of “being fully there” (as I highlight in RSVPselling methodology) will “open doors where there were once walls,” per philosopher Joseph Campbell.
3. Exercise. You’re not going to hit 10X Massive action being sedentary hitting the red bull and jolt cola. Work/life balance comes from concentrating really hard and doing that ‘one thing’ as effectively (and highly leveraged) as possible in that moment. Exercise improves stamina and brain function. You can only become caffeinated for so long. The body’s natural energy systems bloom into a supernova of dopamine (not the Facebook cat video clicker kind), serotonin and endorphins when you can get your heart rate up. For me that’s cycling and not just weekend warrioring it. I often wake in the dark to strike out to put in 60 kilometers.
4. Altruism: I truly seek to help my partners, customers and network to PIF: pay it forward. There are some aspects to what I do that have more residual intrinsic value than money can ever buy. Mentoring wonderful people that exceed my ability. Truly stunning and humbling! Behavioral change at the client level and the client’s team is extremely rewarding when they grok the sales process, methodology and start to hammer high action down through the funnel to CLOSED-WON. Watching all the principles I espouse in these blogs, hardened in the trenches, come to fruition for those that would dare try apply COMBO literally, is what I live for!
5. Passion: You can call it Grant Cardone 10X or Obsession but I stay dedicated to setting 10X goals every day, every quarter and every year to push myself to the next level. I’ve hit many of them inadvertently by shooting for the stars and hitting a mountain.
6. Go off the grid: Every 90 days, shut off all your electronics and go into the outback on walkabout. You’ve gotta unplug from social media, your cell phone alerts, the screens, Netflix and chill, and inbox Zero false hope. Go back to nature or run across your country like Forest Gump. Get real and back to who you are as a human. Epiphanies flow to an open mind. Digital overload has deadened human creativity. Do you think Michaelangelo was rushing to respond to a tweet?
7. Life-Long Learning: Constantly strive for knowledge, wisdom, mentorship, reverse mentorship and read widely across many subject matter areas to cross-train. I absolutely loved this video by Jeb Blount. Readers are leaders and writers are sellers. Never stop learning! There’s truly a correlation between the level of success possible and how much one reads. Yes, you can learn by apprenticeship and doing but you need to get Zig, Bosworth, Eades, Thull, Holden, Rackham, Adamson, Holmes, et. al burned into your DNA! Turn your car into a classroom.

Instead of burning out, KTFB – keep the fire burning.

Sure there are days where you’ll feel overwhelmed (I have many), face the crippling defeat of a lost sale, be met with only silence and rejection, face the blowtorch of internal corporate politics, and flat out want to quit. You’re only human and that’s par for the course. But just like Billy Joel entreated, “Don’t forget your second wind!”

Persistence, tenacity, and grit will pay off in spades. Approach your life and your role with a “beginner’s mind” and growth mindset. Carpe Diem – Seize the day! Sometimes I feel like Benjamin Buttons. You’d be shocked that after reading hundreds of books, attending more seminars than I can remember, and coaching/closure of thousands of sales cycles, it’s still day one on the learning curve.

We’ve never lived in a more exciting time than right now. The machine age, the blossoming of the fourth industrial revolution (from automation to intelligence) where heart, man, machine and software automation are all simultaneously hitting a wild nexus point to finally carry the realm of B2B Complex Sales forward is incredibly invigorating!

The post Secrets To Minimise Burnout appeared first on Head Of Sales.

When I sell there’s typically something nagging at my conscience that I’m avoiding. When I start the day there’s typically someone I’m afraid to call. Maybe the timing isn’t right or they’re too senior. Shoulda, woulda, coulda becomes didn’t.

Yes, I’m human. But to transcend I use fear as a guide that points me to what I should do next. Repetition is the mother of skill but it also gives us another profound gift which is the development of ‘gut instinct.’

Trust your gut. Let’s unpack this because we don’t really see gut instinct discussed in many books or blogs because it’s our inner dialog, our inner voice and world.

Jack Canfield used to say, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” Another one was, “FEAR: future events appearing real.”

I thought these two concepts were a bit esoteric and it would serve my audience to bring them to light.

When you sit down at work tomorrow, do not check your email. Write down what you are most afraid to do instead. Granted, this thing is high integrity: moral, ethical, etc. Maybe it is a demon you need to face. Most likely you’re procrastinating, overthinking, or trying to be too perfect.

NOW TAKE ACTION!!!

That’s really the secret – my gut talks to me throughout the day, an inner voice I trust. It leads me through the deal. I play out 50 chess moves and stay a dozen moves ahead. When the voice is nagging at me or I’m fearful of something, it’s probably something I really need to do.

When you look at the company, who intimidates you that could sign? Start there. Call there first. Call and have a conversation. The likelihood they delegate you or you get their executive assistant is 99%.

Put up pricing that is awe inspiring and value based. Don’t cave. Be principled in your negotiation.

So what are you afraid of most? Is it your success? Ruffling feathers. Do you think you can hunt for new business and win without stepping on any toes? To make a great omelet you’ve just gotta break eggs.

Do this experiment: Next time you prospect a company, add a Board Member. Just add them on LinkedIn. Once they add you back, write them a 3 sentence message thanking them and mentioning you’d like to have a quick chat about their thoughts on XYZ. You will be absolutely shocked how few people ever talk to Board Members, VCs, CEOs (yes, there still aren’t many on LinkedIn), COOs or CFOs. Yet these folks always get drawn in at the 11th hour to rubber stamp your deal!

A couple pithy quotes come to mind that are super relevant to this post. The late, great Dr. Wayne Dyer used to always say:

“Be independent of the good opinion of other people.” – Abraham Maslow

“The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.” – Tim Ferriss

So maybe I’m not advocating for throwing painkillers and pizza in the blender and fighting the angel of death. But there’s a comedic metaphor in here.

Your inner voice will seldom lie and always knows where to take you. Your compass or North Star will be when you move from selling to make money to serving other people. When you truly, in your heart of hearts are seeking to care and improve the business and lives of everyone you touch, get ready. You are in store to a) start to really enjoy this job and your life and b) be met with a remarkable set of magical circumstances.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

Things we sellers fear most or Seven Steps To Sales Heaven? Only you can decide.

1. You are not in client services. You are not going to close an entire enterprise deal without a roller coaster of a decision maker, trial by fire in a committee, group think, emotion or crisis mode. They will RFP and reverse auction to squeeze you every time. Who doesn’t drive a hard bargain? Don’t you!
2. Of course, you’re afraid to dial the CFO, he can torpedo the account, the opportunity and pull it off the forecast. Relish this. Live in reality, not delusion. Qualify out – it’s OK. Live in truth.
3. Your presentation doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, if you are speaking more than 20% of the time while on-site you are only shooting your close rate in the foot. They will know you by the quality of your SPIN questions and listening.
4. If you’re not a team player, management will fire you. Nope. Pipeline cures all ills and top revenue producers are untouchable!
5. What if I burn out? Burn to shine and you’ll never burn out. The harder you push every minute of the job, the faster the time will fly. Burnout is a myth as is work-life balance. When you’re at work, prospect incessantly. Communicate with current opportunities, warm leads and drive on into the dark stormy night fearlessly with your fog lights on to slay the dragons of the unknown.
6. Calling one more time. Calling too many times as to be improper. Calling over someone’s head. Why fear any of these?
7. Pushing back. And the greatest fear of all in sales that separates the titans from the also rans: walking on the deal. You MUST be willing to walk on every deal. Especially after 6 months of the dance and in the 11th hour with everything riding on it. Always and only negotiate from a position of strength and never let them see you sweat or walk on you!

I don’t know what else to tell you. This sales thing violates a lot of psychology. We humans are fearful, sensitive creatures that fear the dark, the unknown and disappointing each other. We relish conformity, abhor rejection and seek the comfort of cliques. This is why I am beginning to think the lone wolf isn’t the worst analogy. It travels in packs but gets the hunting done. I’m not saying to be a wolf, but at least unleash the wolf in you: the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Never fear what you will lose. Fear instead only, the opportunity cost of not giving every moment of your sales day and life your absolute all!

As you sell… What do you fear? Where does your gut instinct take you? What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

The post The Ultimate Sales Fuel: Fear Meets Gut Instinct appeared first on Head Of Sales.

We’ve all been there: a sea of people, pulled together from across the country or region, locked in a windowless room with artificial light, seated at round tables with mints and water, patiently waiting for the parade of presenters to finish their ‘Death by PowerPoint’ presentations so we can get to the coffee station during the day and then the bar at night to start really engaging with our colleagues. During the day some relief can be found in the smartphones that everyone will be less and less discreetly looking at repeatedly, checking messages and social media for something to actually engage in, as the show drags on.

Every now and then the boredom is punctuated by some lively motivational speaker who tells us ‘You can do anything!’ (insert FIST PUMP), ‘Just believe in yourself’ (insert HIGH FIVE), ‘Be positive and great things will happen for you’ (insert VISUALISATION EXERCISE), ‘Now turn and tell the person next to you why you are so awesome and deserve endless riches’ (insert GROUP ACTIVITY), ‘Think about the challenges you have overcome that made you who you are’ (insert STORYTELLING). And so on.

This interlude is like a sugar hit. Perks people up for a short while, and then fades again.

The sales conference may have a big awards night or extracurricular activities, an entertainment extravaganza filled with lots of fun things to do, lots of food and drink, lots of prize giving, etc. That is fine, that can be appropriate. On top of that, participants simply might enjoy the location, the hotel, meeting colleagues, getting some time out. But is this what the conference should be all about?

So let’s start to rethink why and how we run sales conferences.

Why have a sales conference?

They are expensive to run and time consuming so we had better make it worth our while. Be clear about what you are actually trying to achieve. If the purpose is to get people together, interact, have a good time away from work, fine. But if it is about selling, sharing or generating knowledge, or any other topics relevant for everyday work, you cannot leave achieving such a goal to chance, or PowerPoint.

Purpose & Context

• There must be an overarching purpose to running a sales conference, a meaningful story and context that people can relate to.
• Set clear goals. What are you trying to achieve by running the sales conference?
  • Launch a new game changing product or service?
  • Reset the culture and team dynamics?
  • Launch the new sales strategy?
  • Bring the team together to focus on new capabilities, competitive edge, etc.?
• Have a plan. A good conference follows a logic thread, a storyline, it systematically builds something up and guides people to this result.

Make sure you are very clear about what you are trying to achieve. And any motivational speakers you bring into the mix must serve this purpose and context. Any extracurricular activities can still add flavour to this mix if planned and done well.

How to run a sales conference

There are a number of simple guidelines to follow to get your sales conference right:

• Actively engage people from the outset. Make it clear that they are not meant to be passive recipients of whatever kind of messages.
• Set context and purpose, and then create the right environment for active engagement. Make sure your preparation work has identified not only what is important to the organisation, but also what is relevant for the participants.
• Creating meaningful engagement acts as a catalyst for positive change and momentum. Giving your audience the chance to participate and contribute creates more buy-in than most motivational speakers.
• Rather than talking at the audience and telling them what we want them to hear and do, why not turn it around and make the audience the content providers, the active participants and the bringers of wisdom? Turn the audience into active contributors.

We have helped many companies turn around their sales conferences into dynamic actively engaged events that ignite opportunity and lead people to the future where they feel a sense of ownership and can-do moving forward beyond the conference.

Designing activities that stimulate communication and tap into the wisdom of the room in more concrete, meaningful ways is key.

Here is an example:

Recently, we started working with a new client who had just taken over the role as head of sales. We helped him prepare the new sales strategy, including their value proposition, sales messaging and a new solution sales approach. He had an upcoming sales conference for 150 people to kick off this new strategy. This was a make or break situation as the previous sales strategies and sales conferences had fallen short of expectations and went nowhere in the long run. Yet his people were desperately wanting direction and purpose; they loved their company and wanted to see it succeed.

Our client wanted the sales conference to deliver the following:

1. Re-energise and focus the sales teams to a true customer centric sales strategy and get them excited about how they fit into it.
2. Explain and align them to the company’s purpose and values.
3. Give them one view across all of the businesses and organisational capability.
4. Set out a high level sales strategy and plan, and then set some goals for the year, for both managers and their teams.
5. Help team members have a clear understanding of each of the key customer value propositions across their offerings.
6. Ensure the team members understand what they will be prioritising in the coming 12 months, and what success looks like if they achieve those priorities.
7. Get individual teams started to develop their own plans for how they will contribute to the overall plan.
8. On top of that ensure that everyone will have fun along the way.

Our client wanted to hear people saying:

“That was the best and most inspiring sales conference I have ever been to”.

“I know where I fit in, and what I’ve got to do, and I’m excited about the future”.

And that is what he got.

We designed a sales conference that was full of enriching activities that all linked back to his goals for the team. Day 1 set the scene and Day 2 became an active ‘market place’, a beehive of purposeful activity, focused on starting the transition from a culture of transactional selling to a solution selling culture.

Case study driven and focused on diversity, teamwork, learning and active communication, the teams were empowered to learn all about what their company offered their clients – products, services, solutions, people and value. Instead of enduring a dozen slideshows about company division, products and services, 150 people worked simultaneously and actively in small teams across the day assessing situations, solving problems, learning about new opportunities and solutions, learning from each other, getting to know each other.

As a ‘side-effect’ they also gathered all the information that otherwise would have been presented to them in the traditional way. But in the context of real life case studies they could immediately contextualise and use this information. It stuck right away. The owners of all this information also were happy, because they had the opportunity not only to present, but to engage and interact with their audience and hence position themselves much more effectively.

At 4pm on Day 2, the conference was still pumping. People were on task actively engaged and supporting each other. The energy was focused and aligned. It never waned from 8.30am on Day 1.

We had many people come to us saying how wonderful this was. How happy they were. This energy has carried over into the workplace. Now active work is happening to bring about the changes needed and everybody is on board and wanting to make it happen.

A sales conference can’t change everything overnight but it can ignite opportunity, purpose and agency. It’s about engaging the very people who attend and making them the active participants and leaders of change.  When sales conferences are designed with the participants in mind they can:

• Help develop and reinforce a culture and team that is highly engaged and performing in the market place.
• Create a sense of belonging and understanding of where they fit in, and mutual obligation to each other to deliver for customers.
• Build confidence that there is a plan in place for teams to follow and be supported to deliver, but also that there will be accountability for outcomes
• Present a clear direction of what is expected of everyone and where they fit in.
• Present the opportunity to be supported and challenged by each other
• Create a sense of ownership and engagement over what everyone is accountable for.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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If you have decided you are in charge of your outcomes then this is the article for you.

A success mindset means you are:

• accountable
• always enhancing your performance
• driving for improvement.

You seek, and create, great results. You have created a set of habits.

Substantial, continuous business growth stems from the right habits repeated so consistently they become unconscious. The same way as one healthy meal eaten a week ago won’t get us thinner- (damn) one great day doing calls won’t get us to smash our targets every month.

What we are after is creating a habit of repeated, consistent excellent behaviour.

7 steps for creating the right habits

1) RECOGNITION

So before we ‘create a habit’ we need to recognise that one needs to be created!

Sounds simple right? I just think of it, write it down and do it.

Well if it was that easy everyone would be doing it!

First you need to recognise that things can be done better, that in the case of sales (which usually means the ‘habit’ is connected to business growth) then more business is out there waiting for you.

There is always more to understand, to learn, to process, to adopt. Never think you have reached ‘the top’ as then you are closed to learning. So, the first step is the recognition that there is more to learn, we can always evolve. That growth comes from stretching your skill set. (Good news is that once stretched it never shrinks back).

If you are a sales manager you may have fallen into the habit of telling your team what to do, tell them their new habit- i.e. how many calls to make etc.

What is often missing in this attempt to drum up business and new behaviours/ habits is the team just isn’t sold on it!

You need them to recognise there is a fantastic habit to adopt.

2) DESIRE

Now you’ve recognised there’s more out there to learn, you need to create the desire to want to do something about it!

Recognition without desire is, well, pointless for sales!

Sales is about taking action whatever the weather.

Desire comes from knowing how it will affect your life. And therefore having an inner need that’s so burning, you would move mountains to make it happen. If you are doing something out of your ‘norm’ the behaviour you want to create needs to be an inner need so strong that you are prepared to do things you don’t normally do.

If it’s border line desire, it won’t get past go. You won’t even start. The first obstacle will stall you.

If you are a manager don’t bang on about your desire to increase sales: you are not your team! Sarah’s desire to get results isn’t the same as Marco’s.

Work out what fires their desire. When do their eyes light up? What does each person care about? What motivates that person?

3) FOCUS ON THE OUTCOME

Make sure you are crystal clear on your outcome.

“More money” won’t cut the mustard. (would you be happy with a dollar more)? Be specific.

• Write it up so it’s in your visual cortex.
• See that goal/number.
• Believe that goal.
• Run the feeling you will feel when you get there, when you have it.
• What do you see – how will you feel?
• Start to ‘step into the shoes’ of that person who has achieved their outcome.

Now, look back… what did it take to get there?

4) ACTION

Break down what needs to happen to achieve that outcome.

What do you need to do daily, weekly, monthly to make that happen? Bullet point it.

For around 80% of us that are highly visual, it would help to put that list up somewhere where we see it daily. How many calls do I need to do daily with XYZ conversion to get this amount over the line. Be crystal clear on the journey needed.

5) CREATE A ‘TRIGGER’

If your action is to call prospects every morning then create an ‘anchor’ around a routine you do each morning.

For example, each time I have my coffee I will call up my first prospect.

To create ‘space’ to do your new behaviour you need to break an old one. What do you normally do when you have your coffee? If what you currently do is more appealing than your new ‘action’ you will struggle to find the will to drop it. Create a new space for your habit.

6) HABITS ARE MUSCLES

Use it or loose it. (Or in this case ‘do it or loose it’).

Do it every day. Habits are actions repeated so often you are unaware. So, do it when you say you will. Commit to it.

If it’s daily that’s an easier habit for most then making it weekly or monthly.

Daily for 30 days…then cha-ching you now have a new behaviour/ habit!

7) MEASURE

Have check in points to measure how you are tracking. Review every 3 months or so, this way you can tweak and evolve your habit.

My question to you: what anchors have you created for yourself to stick to your habits?

The post Mindset determines your success appeared first on Head Of Sales.

I’ve read a brilliant book, The Sales Survival Handbook by Ken Kupchick which details the realities of a career in sales, sprinkled with humour.

Here is an edited excerpt on what salespeople can expect in their career. Ken has arranged these into three categories—the good, the bad, and the crazy.

The Good

Let’s start off with all of the great things that can happen to you in sales:

• You have the opportunity to make more money than you’ve ever made before but you’ll never have to worry about what to do in your free time since you won’t have any.
• You’ll get to meet many different people from all walks of life and it’s the only job where you can call someone dozens of times without having to worry about a restraining order.
• There is great job security since nearly every company in the world has a sales force.
• You are in complete control of your own income, which means you’ll be able to buy lots of new things you’ll never get to enjoy since you’ll always be working.
• You will become an expert in persuasion, which can help you in business as well as relationships.
• Your coworkers will become like your family—the kind of family you want to abandon forever once you’re old enough to leave.
• The fast-paced and diverse lifestyle of sales can make the workday feel exciting.
• Once you have established a big enough recurring customer base, you can have a more flexible schedule and spend your time pursuing your passions, if you have any left by that point in your life.

The Bad

Sales is a constant battle for success; here are some of the challenges you’ll deal with:

• Customers lie to you on a regular basis, which has spawned the popular sales phrase “buyers are liars.”
• Compensation plans and quotas change constantly, and while management presents them as “new and improved,” they almost always make it more difficult to earn money.
• Sales can be so stressful that some people experience PSSD—Post-Sales Stress Disorder.
• Management constantly puts more and more pressure on sales reps to produce. “What have you done for me lately?” isn’t just a guilt trip from your spouse anymore, it’s a guilt trip from your sales manager, whom you spend more time with than your spouse anyway.
• At the end of every month, quarter, etc., you go from “hero to zero,” when everyone starts from scratch again. If you performed poorly, you go from “zero to zero,” and if that happens too many times in a row, you go from “zero to unemployed.”
• The competition can be intense, nearly violent, and doesn’t always play fair, and that’s just your coworkers.
• Even though you’re usually selling to new people, the repetition of prospecting, pitching, and following up will make you dream about work every night, when you’d rather dream about your manager falling down the stairs.
• The sales training “gurus” your company will hire have never successfully sold anything in their lives except for their sales training to your company.
• Demanding clients and hard-driving managers will mean long work hours, and you will get to see your family less than you’d like to, or exactly as little as you’d like to.
• Since you’ll be making more money than you’ve ever made in your life, an audible gasp will emanate from your throat when you see how much money has been taken out of your commission check for taxes.

The Crazy

Here are some crazy facts that you need to know if you want to survive in sales:

• It takes an average of 12 follow-up calls to close a deal, which is at least 11 more calls than you’ll ever feel like making.
• The best time to cold-call someone is between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m., which is exactly when the rush of your gigantic afternoon energy drink starts to wear off.
• Thursday is considered the best day to prospect, by which point in the week all you can think about is moving to a country with a three-day workweek.
• In 2007, it took an average of less than four phone calls to close a deal, and now it takes eight. At this pace, by 2030, it will probably take 300.
• An average of 50 percent of sales go to the first person to contact a prospect, and zero percent go to the first person to show up at the prospect’s house at midnight.
• Only about 11 percent of salespeople ask for referrals, probably because the other 89 percent wouldn’t recommend themselves to anyone either.
• Each year in business, you’ll lose about 14 percent of your customers and 42 percent of your hair.
• Nearly 13 percent of all the jobs in the United States are full-time sales positions, and the other 87 percent are filled by those who spend their days ignoring salespeople.
• It is estimated that over half of the people making their living in sales should do something else, which is a fact that slightly more than half of us are already well aware of.
• Over 90 percent of all customer sales interactions happen over the phone, which is bad news for any salespeople who have a really high-pitched voice.

You can Buy Ken’s book on Amazon here.

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