The Sales Engagement Podcast: Recent Episodes
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The Sales Engagement podcast is the #1 podcast focused on engaging your customers and prospects in the modern sales era. This show features real life stories and best practices from revenue leaders doing the job day in and day out, in a casual, radio-like talk show.Each episode features modern tactics, strategies, hacks, and tips to get the most out of your sales engagement strategy and help you navigate the next generation of sales. You’ll find an energetic talks that will provide you with real actionable value around building meaningful connections and creating a better selling experience through authentic conversations that you can measure.The Sales Engagement podcast is here to help B2B sales leaders, customer success leaders, and marketing leaders innovate and usher in the next era of modern sales by building pipeline, up-selling customers, and ultimately generating more revenue with more efficiency.This podcast is brought to you by Outreach.io, the leading Sales Engagement platform.
A creative and highly motivational strategist, this episode’s guest holds an MBA from Pepperdine, an executive certificate from Harvard, and has recently published her latest book.
Jennifer Davis is the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Learfield, a media and technology leader in the energetic college sports industry.
Her impeccable resume includes time as the former Head of Product Marketing Management at AWS and the CMO at Honeywell, and she’s also a former contributor to Forbes.
Listen in as we discuss:
- How Jennifer’s exceptionally well-rounded background made her a formidable business leader
- The mechanisms to achieve results
- Customer-obsessed marketing
- Matching your attention with discipline
More information about Jennifer Davis and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbdavis/
- Company Website: https://www.learfield.com/
- Well Made Decisions, the new book by Jennifer Davis
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
The pandemic has altered practically every aspect of our lives, especially when it comes to face-to-face sales and the office culture.
A lifelong learner and coach, my guest is an innovative healthcare sales leader with extensive experience in Fortune 500 companies.
Tom Whalen is the Director of Inside Sales - Extended Care at healthcare giant McKesson, and he shares his insights and experiences in adapting to the new normal.
Join us as we discuss:
- How the pandemic irrevocably changed traditional sales tactics
- Shifting communication styles with both your workforce and customers
- Staying engaged and motivated in the evolving sales environment
More information about Tom Whalen and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwhalen/
- Company Website: https://www.mckesson.com/
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
What is the ONE playbook that will help my team drive predictable & repeatable pipeline, once and for all?
Aiming to answer that question, Becc Holland & Scott Barker deliver an answer on the one overarching playbook that can create predictable & repeatable pipeline for Sales teams of ALL sizes, SDR teams at ALL stages, and ALL based on data!
Join us as we hear from Becc Holland about:
- New and different sequences
- Identifying what leads are the correct ones for your business
- How to make connections with leads and close sales
More information about Becc Holland and today’s topic at:
- LinkedIn Profile: Becc - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccholland-flipthescript/
- Company Website: https://www.flipthescript.co/encyclopedia-of-sales-plays-webinar
For more engaging sales conversations, follow The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
Most of the time, you need to engage multiple stakeholders to get a deal across the line, so relying on a single internal champion just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Solutions are growing in complexity and budgets continue to become more restrictive. Which means decisions are made unilaterally. This is especially true for enterprise deals.
So, how do you identify the right stakeholders and their priorities in order to close more deals?
Join us as we hear from Jamal and Andrew about:
- How to discover the priorities of each stakeholder in an enterprise deal
- How to tailor your demo conversations to the priorities of each stakeholder
- How to read 10-K reports and analyze quarterly analyst calls
More information about Jamal Reimer and Andrew Mewborn and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: Jamal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamal-reimer/
- LinkedIn Profile: Andrew - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amewborn/
- Company Website: https://www.saleshacker.com/lp/multithread-enterprise-deals
For more engaging sales conversations, follow The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
Learn the methods that top salespeople are using on LinkedIn to form better relationships, build their personal brand, and grow business.
Join us as we discuss with Scott Ingram, Account Director at Relationship One:
- How to optimize your LinkedIn profile for the people you want to attract
- The difference between soliciting and connecting with people on LinkedIn
- The value of experimentation on LinkedIn
More information about Scott Ingram and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottingram/
- Company Website: https://www.relationshipone.com/
- Other Relevant Links: https://www.saleshacker.com/lp/tips-sales-success-linkedin
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
If you’d like to hear unexpected steps to a great cold call, including brand-new pattern interrupts, then this is the episode for you.
Join us as we discuss with Becc Holland, CEO & Founder at Flip the Script:
- Why you should get monomaniacal about timing
- What three metrics to use to know your buyer
- How pattern interrupts can help you build human connection
More information about Becc and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccholland-flipthescript/
- Company Website: https://www.flipthescript.co/
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, our website, or anywhere you get podcasts.
We all know a unicorn company — One with super fast growth and a billion dollar valuation. But what makes these particular companies stand out? Are there strategies common across many of them that you can incorporate into your own business for faster paced growth?
In this episode, we speak with Ryan Gibson, Manager of Sales Development at Outreach.io, Jason Prindle, Director of Inside Sales and Global Sales Development at BigID, and Taylor Jones, Business Development Manager at SalesForce, about unicorn companies and how they perform better than others.
Join us as we discuss:
- What each brings to the discussion & how they got hired at their unicorn
- How to deal w/ hiring too many too fast
- Deciding between an external top performer or internal hire
- Balancing the need for top tier talent w/ diversity & inclusive initiatives
- The process for ramping up sales reps
- Advice for those getting into leadership roles
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
What we don’t need is another podcast episode about how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the face of business. We’ve heard a million of those. We all know the world is different than it’s ever been, and it’s likely not fully going back.
What is helpful, however, are methods and strategies to continue to deepen relationships. To really connect with people, away from Zoom, in order to continue to develop enablement and connection.
Which is why on this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we’re talking with a panel of sales professionals from all across the industry, all about enablement, connection, and what it takes to deepen relationships.
Some of the topics we talked about include:
- Why being comfortable in your own home on Zoom is key
- How to stay connected in the Zoom world that we live in
- Why a Zoom meeting may at times be the most efficient way to connect
- How do we help sales reps while live on a call?
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
It’s no secret that being a woman in sales can be a challenge. In what has typically been a male-dominated profession, it can be tough to not only find your voice as a woman, but also to set yourself up for progression in your career.
But remember: Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in heels.
On this episode of Sales Engagement, we gathered some of the best and brightest minds in the industry, from all different backgrounds and walks of life, to have a robust discussion all about finding your voice as a woman in sales.
Some of the topics we covered in this live discussion were:
- Finding your voice as a woman in sales
- How to position yourself to move into your next role
- How to recognize the potential in everyone
- How all of us can be the change that we want to see in our organization
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking about you except you. Your customers don’t wake up thinking about your business — they think about themselves, their business, their challenges.
Understanding yourself as well as others is the key to finding your voice in sales.
In this episode, I speak with Kimberly Morgan, VP, US Sales at K3 Business Technologies, about her trajectory as a female sales leader.
Join us as we discuss:
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The badass female leader who mentored younger Kimberly
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Positivity and accountability to yourself
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Creating community and connection with like-minded female leaders
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Breaking through the sales noise by understanding the person on the other side of the phone
Check out this resource we mentioned:
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
The sales excellence function is the perfect marriage between sales enablement and data analysis. What would that look like in your company?
In this episode, I speak with Lucrezia Keane, SVP Sales Excellence at GWI, about what their new sales excellence function has achieved and where it’s going next.
Join us as we discuss:
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Data that companies should track to help SDRs build connections
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Why sales teams should report to sales excellence
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The intricate relationship between sales excellence and sales tools
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How advance planning reduces friction during implementation
Check out this resource we mentioned:
- The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
When you take an honest look at your business and realize that you utterly lack the expertise to build and support a BDR/SDR team, what then?
Here’s a little guide for what to expect when you outsource sales (versus why you might consider building in-house anyway).
In this episode, I interview Peter Lipton, Director, Global Head of Sales - Technology & Alliances at JDX Consulting, about the differences between outsourcing and enhancing a BDR/SDR team.
Join us as we discuss:
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The reasoning behind outsourcing the sales function
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What expertise is needed to outsource successfully
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The decision to bring sales back in house
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The major challenges of process and internal trust
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Why it’s so hard to hire good BDRs
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
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How to Own the World by Andrew Craig
-
The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
There’s a hole in your company, and diversity can solve it. It’s no secret that we’re all different from one another—nothing could be more obvious—and it’s long past the time to welcome a more diverse working world.
Today, we heard from Shauna Cour, Vice President of Employer Sales at Ovia Health, and Jerice O'Malley, Head of Business Development and Sales at Amplify Consulting Partners Inc., about what it means to create a space for difficult conversations, build up psychological safety, and eliminate silence culture.
Join us as we discuss:
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The long-term impact of facilitating psychological safety
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How empathy is powerful in the workplace
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Why setting boundaries and expectations is crucial
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The danger of silence culture
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
The four stages of sales enablement maturity are these: none, random, formal, and adaptive.
If you haven’t made it to formal yet, you won’t be able to reach an adaptive level of sales enablement maturity.
In this episode, I interview Mike Kunkle, VP, Sales Effectiveness Services at SPARXiQ, about the principles in his book, The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement, as well as actionable tactics for moving toward the formal level and beyond.
Join us as we discuss:
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Taking on a holistic approach to enablement
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What a mature model really means
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The steps in the gap analysis prioritization approach
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Why buyer acumen should underlie your entire strategy
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A sales process methodology aligned with the buyer journey
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
You have a big problem if your VP of Sales is the best salesperson in the company. Their job is actually to help make their teams better than they ever were.
Today, we hear from Wesley Ulysse, Vice President of Sales, North America at Red Points, about an alternative leadership style driven by open-mindedness, patience, inclusivity, vulnerability, and dynamism.
Join us as we discuss:
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Why patience can be the biggest leadership challenge
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The reason your VP of Sales shouldn’t be the top seller
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How an open-minded manager interviews and hires
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The most important quality a manager can have is…?
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
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There’s no one size fits all when it comes to setting your team up for success—however, there’s much you can do to build and support a development-focused environment.
Today we are joined by James Buckley, Director of Business Development at Attest, to discuss how he motivates, trains, and connects with his SDRs.
Join us as we discuss:
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Encouraging SDR development
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How having a growth mindset improves your team
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Why setting customized KPIs is critical
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The importance of comprehensive onboarding material
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Whether by fear of change or ignorance to opportunity, automation isn’t always top of mind for many organizations. But, when speed is the name of the game, you can’t afford to not have an eye out at all times for ways to automate your business.
Still not convinced? We speak with an expert of automation, David Gauld, Sales Operations Lead at CTS. He walks us through his strategies and why fixing time sinks may be the single most important thing you can do to enable your teams.
We talk all about:
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Tips for companies moving into the glow-up stage
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How to have data-driven conversations within your organization
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Creating more productivity through the work week with mindset shift
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Understanding why to prioritize automation
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
An assumption that management often has about SDRs is that the role is simply filled by junior sales reps. Not so — not if it’s done right!
Today we are joined by Nissim Yves Ohayon, Director, Global Business Development at OCTOPAI, to talk about elevating the SDR role to its proper function.
Join us as we discuss:
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Management’s assumptions about SDRs
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What SDRs actually do for sales reps
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Peer to peer learning strategies
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Helping SDRs develop a career progression
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount
- Quiet by Susan Cain
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Enablement requires an iterative mindset.
We’ll build what we need today, and if what we need is different tomorrow, we’ll change. Enablement isn’t set in stone; rather, it’s always evolving.
In this episode, I interview Christi Loucks, Head of Revenue Enablement & Operations at SecZetta Inc., about building an enablement team from scratch and the overlap between enablement and operations.
Join us as we discuss:
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How building programs snowballs into enablement
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Prioritizing time and attention when running multiple departments
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Keeping an iterative mindset (and overcoming perfectionism)
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What enablement and operations have in common
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Showing up to sales trainings dressed as a giant lobster
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
It’s much harder to connect with someone and read someone virtually (though part of that is because we are just lazy at it). Yet virtual communication and engagement for brands is more important today than ever before.
In this episode, we interview Robin Bartlett, Commercial Director at The Social Element, about building trust in a virtual environment using social channels.
Listen as we discuss:
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The very first step is responding to customers
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Being genuine and providing value — especially when no sale is on the horizon
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The importance of referrals in meeting people online
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Robin’s team-wide strategy for building an online presence
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What’s changed lately in online communication strategies
Check out these resources we mentioned:
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The Naked Salesman by Trent Leyshan
-
Rachel Boothroyd Training & Coaching
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Being customer-centric is a discipline. Yes, all companies say they are customer-obsessed, but few actually employ the discipline to allow customer-centricity to permeate the whole company.
In this episode, I speak with Jennifer Davis, CMO at Learfield IMG College, about the discipline to become customer-centric.
Join us as we discuss:
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How companies can stop diminishing what makes them great
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The discipline of customer centricity
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Leadership that stays customer obsessed
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Personal resource management: time and attention
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Discipline, communication, and goal setting
Check out this resource we mentioned:
- Well-Made Decisions by Jennifer Davis
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
If you’re looking for the latest trends in the market but don’t want to be late to the game, your best option? Look at the data outliers.
Data has become integral to the future success of a business. If your organization hasn’t made a place for it in the boardroom, today is a good day to start.
We speak with Sameer Rahman, Director of Insight at The Royal Mint. He’s here to talk us through data’s importance and where it’s headed next.
We talk all about:
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The modernization of data over time
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What data in the boardroom looks like & its impact on future success
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The best tools to leverage data
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
The great resignation.
We’ve all heard about it. In the United States, COVID-19 has led to what’s been dubbed “The Great Resignation.” According to recent research by Microsoft, more than 40% of the global workforce are considering leaving their employers this year.
That’s a lot of talent walking out the door. So how do you keep that talent? How do you invest in your workforce so that they won’t want to leave? It’s like that Richard Branson quote: “Train people well enough so that they can leave. Treat them well enough that they don’t want to.” On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Jerice O'Malley, Head of Business Development & Sales at Amplify Consulting Partners Inc, to talk all about:
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The Great Resignation and how she’s seen it impact the consulting world
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Advice for managers who are looking to retain their top talent
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Why people follow leaders from company to company
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Why people are staying at jobs for less and less time these days
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Aligning the entire sale cycle doesn’t happen overnight — and it certainly doesn’t happen without a framework in place. With so many methodologies to choose from, how can you know which ones best fit your organization?
We speak with Natalia Markulincova, Global Business Development Manager at Leapwork. She walks us through Leapwork’s sales methodologies alignment and their hyper personalized approach to global cultures.
We talk all about:
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A global point of view of strong sales processes married to methodologies
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Methodology impact on the team compared to previous initiatives
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How Leapwork built such a strong culture with empowered, motivated employees
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Mitigating SDR burnout risk and fostering retainment
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Houston, we have a problem.
A messaging problem.
So often, it seems like no matter how well you think you’re doing, sales and marketing are speaking two different languages. It’s like they’re two members of the same team, but from different countries. They might be “technically” headed in the same direction, but how much better would life be if they were speaking the same language?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sat down with Edvinas Pozniakas - On-Site SEO Te am Lead at NordVPN - for a chat about messaging, consistency, and team alignment.
Some of the the topics we covered:
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Why getting alignment between sales and marketing is key
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Why their organization implemented a “smarketing” team and how yours can too
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The challenges they faced in aligning the two teams
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The top 3 books he recommends for ultimate professional development
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Is there a more iconic line than Jerry McGuire screaming into the telephone:
“SHOW ME THE MONEY!”
For every sales organization out there, for as much as we talk about culture and charisma, at the end of the day, our aim is to close deals for our company, and to get those customers to show us the proverbial money.
Which is why on this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sat down with Oyin Bamgbose, VP of Sales at Infinity, for a conversation all about the sales cycle, and more specifically, understanding the target addressable market.
Some things we talked about:
- The sales cycle as a whole
- Understanding the target addressable market
- Creating a culture around closing deals quickly
- The challenges of getting everybody on the same page
- The biggest time waster when it comes to the target addressable market
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
It’s not every day that you find a successful person so willing to openly discuss their mistakes, so that you can avoid them.
Ben Rogers, CMO at Travala , is one of those rare finds who recently joined me on the Sales Engagement Podcast.
In this episode we discuss:
What to expect when transitioning from a corporate role into your own startup
Which advice not to take and what to replace it with instead
How Ben fosters a growth culture at Travala
The mistakes that Ben made and how you can avoid them
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead & Win (a book by Jocko Willink)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Sales Engagement Podcast in your favorite podcast player.
If you love wearing many hats — and it can truly be energizing — then a people lead might well be the role for you. From the entire employee journey to actioning the strategy behind the growth of the entire company, people lead is a position that enables a company’s scalability through a focus on building fantastic teams.
In this episode, I interview Alya Dikouchine, People Lead at 3S Money, about scaling a company by listening to and understanding people.
Join us as we discuss:
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Alya’s joy in the classic many-hat scenario
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Creating an at-work support network of people
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Actionable ways to demonstrate listening to your employees
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The importance of feedback in people lead success
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Culture, retention, and facilitating individual growth
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- The Cult of We by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Would you buy from a company you don’t trust on a personal level? We wouldn’t either.
Every member of your organization that interacts with the customer has the chance to make or break a sale. Recognizing this power can help enable your sales team by removing any pain points along the customer journey.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, we talk with Vince Maltese, Head of Sales Enablement at Accelya. He joins the show to talk all about:
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Enablement as the ethos of the company
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Company mistakes around enablement & advice on how to improve
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Understanding the Miller Heiman methodology
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The customer journey and post-pandemic changes
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Building out a company’s enablement division
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
The difference between a manager and leader often gets blurred. While the two roles overlap, like a sales manager supervising their team but inspiring them along the way, it’s important to distinguish just how important leadership is by itself.
So, what’s the true differentiator for a leader? They’re early adopters of innovation.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, we talk with Dustin Abney. Dustin is the Enterprise Sales Manager - U.S. East at Redgate Software. He joins the show to talk all about:
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The single characteristic that helped drive Dustin’s career forward
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Insight into Dustin’s personal development and strategies for the audience
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The differences between managing and leading a team
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
We all need mentors.
Whether you think you’re okay going it alone or not, the truth is that every person would benefit from a mentor. And not just a mentor, but a mentor from within their industry. The question is, how do you go about finding one?
Finding a new mentor can be a lot like blind dating. It’s not really something that you want to just grab out of a hat. It takes time, effort, patience, and in some cases, a lot of trial and error before you find the right one. But one thing remains true: A solid mentorship can do wonders for your career.
How?
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, we talk with Helena Wood. Helena is the VP of Marketing at ZenCargo and joined the show to talk all about:
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The importance of finding a mentor within your industry
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How to go about establishing a mentor/mentee relationship
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Building the courage to reach out to a mentor
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The guiding principles to keep in mind when looking for a mentor
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Three qualities that make up a strong mentorship
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Two weeks is the perfect time frame. At least, that’s what Kevin Probst , Head of Growth and Revenue Operations at Alasco , discovered when he converted his RevOps team process to sprints.
In this episode, I interview Kevin about why his company made the switch, how it went, and advice for other RevOps teams thinking about adopting agile.
Join us as we discuss:
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Why an experimentation mindset was essential
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The role of RevOps is to create and implement processes
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The reason RevOps is not a service department
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How to start tracking pipeline and quota for forecasting
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
The Big Five for Life by John Strelecky
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or our website .
It’s all about relationships.
It’s true in life, and it’s true in business. People would rather buy from someone they feel they have a solid relationship with, even if it means possibly paying a bit more. You cannot discount the importance of relationships.
Which is why it’s more important than ever before to not only establish your own personal brand, but to really focus your time and attention on making sure that your network is solid. That your network is filled with people that you care about and have relationships with.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, we talk with Rinse Jacobs . Rinse is the Head of International Sales and VP of Digital Banking at SolarisBankAG. He was kind enough to come on the show and talk all about:
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Why going the extra mile for relationships will always pay off in the end
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The importance of establishing your own personal brand
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How to build an international network
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Overcoming the cultural differences between your company and your international customers
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
No more hour-long meetings, either internally or with prospects. Welcome to the world of the 15-minute sales cycle, where you spend two minutes explaining what you do and the rest of the call focusing on making your prospect’s time productive.
In this episode, I interview Lee West , Managing Director at M-Brain Global , about the sales crisis that precipitated the adoption of the 15-minute sales cycle.
Join us as we discuss:
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The origins of the theory for the 15-minute model
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Asking directly why your prospect took the meeting
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Moving from 50 to 200 meetings per month
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When to spend longer than 15 minutes
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Obstacles to letting go of the hour-long meeting
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
What are the qualities of revenue innovators? And are you one?
Revenue innovators are a new class of leaders who prioritize the most innovative sales technologies and make business decisions based on data rather than intuition. They can be any member of a revenue team who thinks strategically about applying technology in innovative ways.
In this episode, Mark Kosoglow , VP of Sales at Outreach, interviews Dr. Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach , about her most recent publication focusing on innovation in modern sales technology.
Join us as we discuss:
- Mary’s evolution as an analyst (and her latest projects)
- A 15-point evaluation of the modern sales or revenue leader
- How revenue innovators apply technology
- Creating a culture or environment that supports innovation
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Keep up with Mary’s writing at the Outreach blog
- Mary cohosts a podcast about Revenue Innovators
- Mary’s latest publication
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
What do teams want most in 2021 and 2022? Human connection and employers that support them at home.
This might look like offering hybrid work schedules, providing access to coaching, deliberate culture and community creation, and support for spouses and parents — but what it will mean for certain is vulnerability.
In this episode, I interview the Cofounders and Cohosts of Women in Sales Club about their predictions for work in the nest 18 months:
-Gabrielle Blackwell, Sales Development Manager, Commercial at Gong
-Alexine Mudawar, Major Account Executive at Displayr
Join us as we discuss:
The origin story of Women in Sales Club
What onboarding and being onboarded remotely was like
Personal brand building and community creation
What hybrid work could (and should) look like
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
You’re a BDR director who just joined a company with no prior BDR function at all. Your gut response is probably to start hiring right away, but that’s not the technique that worked best for today’s Sales Engagement guest.
In this episode, I interview Luke Boddis , BDR Director at Checkout.com , about building his BDR team from scratch.
Join us as we discuss:
The importance of constantly refreshing the playbook
Why video prospecting builds trust so quickly
Key characteristics of great BDR candidates
The onboarding/ramping program at Checkout.com
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
Legacy by James Kerr
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
Culture is the most important part of a team, especially considering that 80% of your resources leave through the door every work day.
Building and maintaining culture in a startup is hard enough, but doing so in the office, at home, and with a hybrid work model is harder still. Ready for some tips on building culture in a hybrid sales team?
In this episode, I interview Sven Mößbauer , Head of Sales Development at Personio, about maintaining a strong team culture during the last 18+ months.
Join us as we discuss:
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Going beyond Zoom to have fun together as a team
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How hypergrowth affects the sales team
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Why sales development leaders need alignment with AEs
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The strategy for returning to the workplace
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
It’s one thing to embrace change personally, but it’s another thing altogether to bring people along with you in your growth mindset. Want to learn how?
In this episode, I interview Talia Esskandanian , Director, Inside Sales at Voltus, Inc ., about leadership, growth, culture, and change.
Join us as we discuss:
Talia’s newfound passion for the energy industry
Hiring for core values and strategic interview questions
Overcommunication and other coaching tips
Building a growth mindset into your team
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
When your job causes you to despair, you recognize that you have no choice but to find a new and creative solution working for yourself. Entrepreneurship sparks parts of your creativity and work ethic that you probably didn’t know you had.
In this episode, I interview Jarron Vosburg , Vice President of Sales at JumpCrew , about how he seized his own destiny and sought a role where he could control his influence.
Jarron talked with me about:
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Leading with humility
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Combining his what he loved into a new business
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Taking six weeks to close his first deal at JumpCrew
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Why you’ve got to just shoot your shot
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
We’re digging into the myth that AEs (or other revenue roles) don’t need automation.
Spoiler alert: They really do.
In this episode, I interview Justin Michael , Co-Founder at HYPCCCYCL , about his automation tools lightbulb moment and how he sparks that recognition in others.
In this episode we discuss:
How the scalability of automation validates your process
Why automation gives you the gift of time
What to do to stay organized on the automated touches
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
Tech-Powered Sales by Justin Michael
Combo Prospecting by Tony J. Hughe s
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts , on Spotify , or on our website .
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
You’ve identified someone who could definitely grow into a managerial role, but you’re not sure how to coach them. What you need is a career development framework that is built especially to transition reps into managers.
In this episode, I interview Taylor Corr , Head of US Corporate Sales at Quantcast , about feedback, management training, and how self-knowledge makes you a better coach.
In this episode we discuss:
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Qualities of future leaders, including eagerness
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Management training starts with emotional intelligence
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How keeping a manager journal helps you identify opportunities for praise
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Giving and getting feedback
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Advice for aspiring managers on preparing yourself to lead
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify , or on our website .
Here’s how to become the top producer of all time at your organization. Always make it about you versus you, never about you versus your team members.
Oh, and building a personal brand for yourself isn’t a bad strategy, either.
Recently on The Sales Engagement Podcast, I had a great conversation with Danny Marogy, VP, National Accounts at United Wholesale Mortgage, about how he achieved the dream that so many of us hold.
“My degree went from criminal justice to finance and economics, a complete 180,” Danny said.
Get ready as we talk about choosing a structured, disciplined lifestyle at work and home, creating a personal brand for yourself, refining your techniques for leading a team while still producing, and of course — keeping focused, keeping positive, and never relaxing.
Let’s dive right in!
If you’re selling complex software, you need sales, marketing, and product teams that both match that complexity and match each other.
You need go-to-market collaboration across teams. But how?
In this episode, I interview Ashley Estilette, CMO at Mitratech, about developing a Scrum Team to raise the bar on go-to-market collaboration.
In this episode we discuss:
- Paying attention to how the 3 teams look, act, and feel together
- Being obsessive about your focus
- Crafting a winning Scrum/Tiger team
- Building a culture based on trust
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
“Lead with value,” says every single person on LinkedIn. But, well, we all value different things. Let’s take a step back and think about what is actually valuable to the person we’re speaking to.
In this episode, I interview Mike Quiggins, Managing Partner at Eraclides Gelman, about the three aspects of creating value in go-to-market messaging.
In this episode we discuss:
- How much does the other person care about your topic?
- How open are they about the topic (willing to consider other views)?
- How strong-willed are they?
- The effectiveness of a simple message
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
By conducting both customer and competitor research, you can set your product or service up for success right from the start. It helps you build a community, guide your sales and marketing teams, develop your product roadmap, and differentiate yourself from the rest of the competitive landscape.
In this episode, Kristen Schafer, Sr Integrated Marketing Manager at Faithlife, shares some tips and tricks for conducting customer and competitive research, as well as some advice for aligning sales and marketing.
What we talked about:
- Tips for approaching customer research
- Tips for approaching competitive research
- Increasing sales and marketing alignment
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement
in your favorite podcast player.
The CIO role is changing.
COVID has accelerated that change, but the function has been transforming for years.
These days, the role is about more than technology — it’s much more focused on revenue and engagement.
Just ask Gamiel Gran, Strategic Business Development & Corporate Innovation Network — aka Mayfield Edge — at Mayfield Fund, whose career has led him to notice the massive transformation of the CIO role.
He joins me in this episode to discuss:
- How COVID made CIOs the hero (and increased competition in the field)
- Why CIOs are becoming more revenue-oriented (and how to help them get there)
- Getting the CRO, CFO and CIO aligned and working together
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Does it feel like your sales and marketing departments are out of sync?
Today’s the day you eliminate the invisible barrier between the two and put the strategies and shared goals in place to ensure that your entire company is rowing in the same direction.
In this episode, I talk with Lynne Capozzi, the CMO at Acquia, about how to drive alignment between sales and marketing.
What we talked about:
- Misalignment between sales and marketing
- Inviting product to the revenue kickoff
- Investigating the impact of self-serve options and community led-growth
- Revenue trends
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Everything gets easier when you put in the hours up front. Whether you're buying real estate, starting a career, or launching a business, things snowball when you invest early.
Do it now. You can't start any younger.
In this episode, I interview Sam Silverman, Vice President of Sales at Prometric, about how to diversify your revenue streams to prepare for the future.
What we talked about:
- How to scale your investments
- Getting educated in your subfield
- When to add employees
- Three tips for getting started with multiple income streams
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You just raked in $1M for the second year in a row, but…you’re deeply unfulfilled and your personal life is in tatters.
You need to admit that you need help.
In this episode, I interview Ian Koniak, Strategic Account Director at Salesforce, about how he actually faced his unhappiness and started to create a fulfilling life for himself.
What we talked about:
- Separating self-worth from performance
- Prioritizing family and health while eliminating addictions
- The transformative power of a healthy routine
- Authenticity and coaching
To see a ton of motivational videos, check out Ian’s YouTube channel.
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
For so many sales professionals, it’s getting harder and harder to hit quota these days. The buying journey has changed, things have moved entirely online, and it’s getting more and more challenging to hit those quotas.
How do you continue to make the calls and the connections without drastically growing your sales team?
So many organizations simply throw headcount at the problem, rather than stepping back and taking a hard look at what they could be doing to increase efficiency without drastically increasing headcount.
The answer is a properly implemented tech stack.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, we talk with Jason Ring. Jason is the Global Head of Sales for Emerging Companies at Global Shares, and was kind enough to talk with us all about:
- The power of the SDR
- How to get started implementing a proper tech stack
- Getting the budget to implement your tech stack to increase efficiency
- Things to avoid when building out your tech stack
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
How do you explain the sales profession to a kid to make them excited to choose a sales career? Because done well, sales is one of the most influential and rewarding career choices that there is.
I recently had a chance to chat with my friend John Barrows about sales education — for both sales professionals and kids.
What we talked about:
- Trends in sales training
- Ways to overcome the sales stereotype
- The importance of believing in what you sell
- How to describe the sales career to kids
Check out John's kids book.
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
At the heart of nearly every professional sales process is the pitch.
When done right, it’s one of the single most effective tools in a salesperson’s arsenal. When done wrong, it’s like watching the lion hunt the gazelle, because in the end, you just feel bad for the gazelle.
But what if there were a way to know the secrets of the presentation? To really be able to nail the pitch every time, with the confidence of a seasoned professional?
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we talk with Brian Burkhart. Brian is the Founder & Chief Word Guy at SquarePlanet Presentations.
What we talked about:
- What makes a great presentation
- The mistakes that people often make when giving bad ones
- Why sometimes you should just walk away from a prospect.
- The importance of knowing your core values and how those inform your presentations
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
The business world has changed and sales teams must adapt to the new reality quickly or find themselves out in the cold. An innovative way to keep your sales pipeline secure is by utilizing video technology to follow up with and inform potential customers.
Today we’ll be discussing that concept and more with Ciaran O’Neill, the much-admired leader of the global SDR team at Kainos, a leading-edge software company headquartered in Belfast.
Enjoy this lively and informative chat with Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or visit our website.
What if your first day as a BDR manager were also your company’s first day working from home during the pandemic? How would you lead?
Well, that scenario actually happened to two BDR managers at Salsify, Emily Glasser and Tori Smith. We recently chatted with them about their best insights for remote leadership.
What we talked about:
- The road to BDR manager
- Motivating a remote team
- How to onboard remotely
- Creating an environment of support
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Not a lot of us are excited when the 5:00 AM alarm goes off.
But we could train ourselves to be.
Recently on Sales Engagement, I was able to chat with Tom Alaimo, Growth Account Executive at Gong, about setting yourself up for success with a killer morning routine.
What we talked about:
- How Tom achieved sales rep of the year in North America with self-discipline
- Tom’s morning rituals
- The importance of completing the top two priorities by noon
- How to get started waking up early
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagementin your favorite podcast player.
One of the biggest myths about sales leadership is that leaders have to be cheerleaders. What should a sales leader’s job be?
That’s what I chatted about with Shawn Buxton, Sr Manager of Sales Leadership Enablement at LogMeIn.
What we talked about:
- Why sales managers should forget cheerleading
- The 4 main sources of motivation
- Creating a culture of motivation
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Growth is the only thing that matters.
Given that, we need to be more intentional about what and how we’re trying to grow.
In this episode, I interview Kyle Norton, Head of Revenue, Canada at Shopify, about career growth strategies.
What we talked about:
- There’s no getting around the need for hard work
- Kyle’s 3-part framework for career growth
- How he teaches his team deep learning using strategies from mixed martial arts
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
People ask too many questions after your presentation, so you’re worried you didn’t communicate clearly.
You need a communication coach.
In this episode, I interview Monique Russell, Training & Communication Consultant at Clear Communication Solutions, about communication wins, fails, and top tips for intentional presence.
What we talked about:
— The most common areas Monique coaches on
— What most people overlook before addressing an audience
— Engaging the whole voice
— Intentional presence
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast: Monique is the author of Intentional Motherhood: Who Said It Would Be Easy
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Sales is conversations. Sales is relationships.
Leadership is conversations. Leadership is relationships.
How do you ensure that these relationships and conversations are happening on a foundation of true connection?
In this episode, I interview Ben Schemper, CEO at Abundant, about human connection, culture, and leadership.
What we talked about:
- Leaders have influence to affect culture profoundly
- Engaging not just the mind but also the heart
- The importance of psychological safety
- The traits of an abundant leader
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
It’s an all-new way to compensate that takes out the aggression and possessiveness but leaves the drive and the ownership.
In this episode, I interview Jamison Powell, VP of Sales at monday.com, about their brilliant flat compensation plan.
What we talked about:
- Prioritizing company goals over individual goals
- The effect on culture that flat compensation creates
- The human drive for excellence beyond wealth
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Outreach in Africa should look totally different than it does in the Nordics. Is your BDR team showing cultural awareness in their multichannel approach?
In this episode, I interview Sven Kliem, Director of Business Development and Sales Operations at Mapp Digital, about building a culturally minded BDR team.
What we talked about:
- Taking a cultural approach to building BDR teams
- The importance of openness
- Why omnichannel is so necessary in outreach
- The reverse funnel approach to goal-setting
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Building a career in sales comes down to three simple things: knowing yourself, relationships and choosing your tactics.
I am joined by Jesse Rothstein, Global Account Manager for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, to discuss these things in more detail so you can use them to enhance your sales career, starting right this moment.
What we talked about:
- Jesse’s superhero origin story
- The power of consistently doing simple things really well
- Specific lessons from Jesse’s time at LinkedIn
- The book he authored: “Carry That Quota”
We mention these resources during the show, for you to look up and make use of:
- Jesse Rothstein’s LinkedIn Profile
- LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions
- Outreach’s Website
- Carry That Quota (Book by Jesse Rothstein)
- The Action Method
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Sales Engagement Podcast in your favorite podcast player.
Who’s buying from you, and who are you selling to - are they the same people?
It’s three for the price of one today, as I’m joined by TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper, and Jason Serota, Head of Commercial Business Development (Americas) at Adobe
What we talked about:
- Superhero origin stories of both TJ and Jason
- Storytelling as a key skill set for sales
- Defining ICPs - ideal customer profiles
- DCP vs TCP (desired vs true customer profile)
- Lagging, current and emerging ICPs, as categories
- Involving the right people at the right time
- Advice for individuals working in and leading sales functions
We mention these resources during the show, for you to look up and make use of:
- The Hero’s Journey
- The greatest sales deck ever made
- TJ Macke’s LinkedIn profile
- Jason Serota’s LinkedIn profile
- Outreach’s website
- Sapper’s website
- Adobe’s website
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Sales Engagement Podcast in your favorite podcast player.
We’re wrapping up this month’s episodes by observing Women’s History Month. You’re about to learn from some of the best insights by female sales leaders that we’re proud to highlight on our podcast.
Celebrate with us by listening to these selections from 4 of our standout guests (and check out their full episodes for more excellence).
Today on Sales Engagement, you’ll hear from:
- Jessica Breslav, Chief Customer Officer at Index Exchange
- Ryann Leonard, Senior Director of Global Restaurant Operations and Enablement at Slice
- Colleen Manning, Vice President of Sales at Clora
- Nieka Mamczak, Sr. Manager of Productivity and Enablement- Customer Success at Drift
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
We’re so very proud to observe Women’s History Month by sharing some of the best insights by female sales leaders who are elevating the sales profession.
Celebrate with us by listening to these selections from 5 of our standout guests (and check out their full episodes for more excellence).
Today on Sales Engagement, you’ll hear from:
- Heidi Cadwallader, Director of Customer Care & Inside Sales at VWR
- Jerice O’Malley, Head of Sales at Amplify Consulting Partners
- Rebecca Croucher, SVP, Head of North America Marketing & Sales Enablement at manpowergroup
- Elizabeth Niemczyk, Head of Sales and Business Development at Extend
- Lauren Bailey, Founder and President at Factor 8
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Which sounds easier — summiting a mountain by yourself on foot or together with someone who already knows the way? Exactly.
We shouldn’t navigate in the dark. We should build ourselves a network.
In this episode, I interview Hang Black, VP of Global Revenue Enablement at Juniper Networks, about her experience as a first-generation immigrant and woman of color — as well as her book, Embrace Your Edge.
What we talked about:
- The meaning of navigating in the dark
- How Hang’s upbringing gave her the eyes of an observer
- Ways to build your network
- The difference between mentors and allies
Resources we mentioned during the episode:
- Hang’s book is Embrace Your Edge
- Check out Liz Wiseman’s books
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
If there’s one thing that’s been put to the test in the last year, it’s company culture. As a majority of companies throughout the United States and beyond have moved to remote work, maintaining that company culture has become a challenge.
It’s hard to recreate the office culture when you’re sitting behind a webcam in your living room, or having to navigate internet connectivity issues.
So how do you maintain that culture? The thing that makes your company special? After all, culture is one of the reasons that people come to work for you, and it’s one of the main reasons people stay. Or leave.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we chat with Donald McKenna. Donald is the Vice President of Sales at Global Industrial, and had quite a bit to say about
- Maintaining a thriving, healthy culture, even through a global pandemic.
- Making sure you’re supporting those front line sales managers
- Why you should be getting buy-in from your “influencers” before you bring changes to the broader team
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
We have five generations working in telecom sales now… all on the same team.
It’s no walk in the park to manage a team of a dozen reps ranging in age from 18 to 65.
I recently had a chance to pick the brain of Aaron Owen, Inside Sales Manager at Verizon, about his experience leading a cross-generational team.
What we talked about:
- People: the tendencies of different generations
- Process: whether two daily meetings is too many
- Technology: the best channels to communicate are all the channels
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Remote work is for real now. How do organizations best address the internal needs of their remote workforce?
Recently on Sales Engagement, I interviewed Anup Khera, CRO at Smarp, about strategies for leaders to improve employee communications and overcome the challenges of the remote working environment.
What we talked about:
- The 3 areas that remote work permanently changed
- Versatile strategies for combating Zoom fatigue & fostering culture
- The importance of emotional intelligence for leaders
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Sales Engagement in your favorite podcast player.
Most of us in sales didn’t wake up one day with a calling (although the ones who did are a force of nature, too).
We discovered it accidentally... or because it was the first job we could get... or by word of mouth... or because we read something about how great it was.
Recently on Sales Engagement, we featured the stories of three onetime SDRs who talk about how they discovered their dream job:
- Stephen Farnsworth, Head of Product Marketing, Revenue Operations at Workato
- Roberto Carrero, Account Executive at Outreach
- Meghan Donovan, Sales Sequence Specialist at Outreach
What we talked about:
- What life was like before they found tech sales
- Their path to SDR and beyond
- Career advice and encouragement for new SDRs
P.S. Outreach is hiring SDRs!
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for The Sales Engagement Podcast in your favorite podcast player.
The statistics are clear: Every $1 you invest in mental health could yield a $4 return.
In other words, you could potentially 4x your sales team by raising their emotional literacy. How?
Recently on Sales Engagement, I had a chance to speak with Jeff Riseley, Founder at Sales Health Alliance, about supporting the mental health of sales reps.
What we talked about:
- Prioritizing mental health
- The 2 parts of your brain that are warring for control
- Actions reps can take to address stress
- Actions leaders can take to improve the mental health of teams
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- Jeff built Sales Health Alliance to be a resource before a business
- The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1-800-273-8255
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Yes, they picked up the phone. But that doesn’t mean they actually want to talk to you — or that they have time right now.
Make this your motto: Don’t assume nothing.
In this episode, I interview Jonathan Ashkenazi, Head of International Sales Development at Guardicore, about “Don’t assume nothing.”
What we talked about:
- Conscious selling & the triangle of fit
- Dos and don’ts of cold calling
- The right response to “Now’s not a good time”
- Changes in the sales enablement space
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Conscious Selling
- The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Leadership through change is on all our minds lately.
Change is the one constant, right?
In this episode, I had a great conversation with Heidi Cadwallader, Director of Inside Sales at VWR, about focusing on your people while driving towards your goals during change.
What we talked about:
- Leadership during change
- Rebuilding/restructuring a team
- Keeping your talent with vision, recognition, and feedback
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
We’re about to the point in 2021 that new year resolutions start to wane. It’s the human way: We get excited about a goal, we go about four weeks, we don’t see immediate results, and our motivation fizzles.
In this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we’re exploring three resolutions that sellers need to keep for longer than a few weeks (it’s worth it, we promise!).
Rian Lanigan, Managing Director at Sandler Training, shares…
- How and why you should make your own sales methodology
- How to not feel completely awkward asking for referrals
- 3 resolutions every seller needs to make (and keep) in 2021
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Let’s get rid of golf and commit to soccer.
We don’t want a bunch of individual reps aiming for their own targets but a true sales team that wins or loses when the customer does.
I recently chatted with Chris Geddes, Director of Enterprise Sales Strategy at Microsoft, about trust-based selling on 3 horizons to create a true sales team.
What we talked about:
- Designing a roadmap backwards
- The 3 legs that trust stands on
- Why trust-based selling is nonlinear
- Revisiting sales compensation & making a true team
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you could work with anyone you wanted, you’d pick people you trust. That’s a no-brainer.
Today on Sales Engagement, I’m talking to Mark Stock, Head of Inside Sales at Accela, about the hiring and job hunting in the tiny tech sales bubble.
What we talked about:
- What hiring managers look for in a sales rep
- Advice for navigating politics & networking
- How to maintain relationships with an eye for rehiring
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It may seem like the understatement of the century, but 2020 has been a rough year for everybody. From canceled plans to upended vacations to stay-at-home orders, this year has taken its toll on us all.
But rather than wallow in the bummer that was 2020, let’s try and find the silver lining of the past 12 months. Is there good that has come from it? Have we learned anything new?
The answer to both of those questions is a resounding “yes” and that’s why we’re thrilled to have Meyer Prinsloo on the Sales Engagement podcast. Meyer is the Chief Marketing Officer at Essensys, a software company providing a custom solution for flexible workspaces.
It’s probably safe to say that a company that exists to help flexible workspaces is ending 2020 with a unique perspective. We discussed:
- Meyer’s three key things he’s learned as a CMO in the past year
- How Essenesys has helped flexible space companies become more efficient
- Why communication is the more important now than ever before
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You look around the room of sales leaders and realize you’re still the only woman.
It can’t go on like this.
In this episode, I interview Jerice O’Malley, Head of Sales at Amplify, about how she achieved sales leadership success and helps raise other women to sales leadership roles.
What we talked about:
- Strategies for networking during a pandemic
- Jerice’s journey to sales leadership
- The importance of D&I initiatives
- Mentorship and relationship begin with conversation
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-
GirlsClub is a mentorship program for female sales leaders
- Kiva is a nonprofit focused on micro lending
- SV Academy helps reduce barriers to tech sales roles
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
How do you know whether you’re doing the right thing with your career?
Today’s guest used to be mired in uncertainty, like most of us, but has finally arrived at his calling: sales development leadership.
In this episode, I interview Evan Nissenbaum, Global Director of Sales Development at Hyperscience, about his route to career certainty.
What we talked about:
- Leadership insight from the sales track
- How to find a mentor
- The right sales career path & earning your stripes
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
In the mid-2000s, your employee engagement was about 53%, which is, frankly, not ideal.
Now, it’s 84%, and your salespeople are telling you they hope you’ll continue peer-to-peer sharing in open office hours in 2021 because it’s been super helpful.
In this episode, I interview Paul Bleier, Director of Sales Enablement at TELUS Business, about building a sales enablement process.
What we talked about:
- Tech: the cornerstone of the tech stack is…
- Process: the 4 pillars and what they mean
- People: being a change agent
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
People hate to change. We love the comfort of the status quo.
By our very nature, salespeople are agents of change. But what does that mean for discovery?
In this episode, I interview David Morse, Chief Customer Officer/Chief Revenue Officer at TrueMotion, about the art and science of discovery.
What we talked about:
- The role of discovery in the sales process
- 2 changes in discovery today: time and information
- The psychology of change
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Just like the financial crisis in 2008, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has been challenging, to say the least.
Not every moment has been bad, though. Some changes we implemented have launched us into more success than we imagined — and we aren’t going back to the way we used to do things.
In this episode, I interview Martin Leamon, Chief Commercial Officer at WebCreationUK, about positive outcomes of embracing changes.
What we talked about:
- What it was like when the phones stopped ringing overnight
- Changes to marketing & sales that drove 5 record months in a row
- 2 new customer profiles for online presence
- Time for a bit of navel gazing
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
He’d been on LinkedIn for over a decade but only started posting a year ago.
Now he has a following of thousands, even though he says he’s nobody.
My guest on Sales Engagement recently was Andrew Metz, Regional Vice President at Zywave, who talked with me about his LinkedIn content strategy and success.
What we talked about:
- 3 keys to being authentic online
- Intangible benefits of building your LinkedIn brand
- The types of posts people want to see (hint: not fluff)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You’re an IC right now, but you want to be in leadership.
You hear about an opportunity outside your current company… What should you do?
Recently on the Sales Engagement podcast, we had a chance to chat with Rory Stern, VP, Northern Europe at CybelAngel, about what it takes to plunge into leadership — and the best route to get there.
What we talked about:
- Rory’s quest for financial stability
- Amazing leadership role models
- How to crush it as an IC
- How to crush it as a sales leader
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It’s not enough to get a renewal every year or three.
You want to go beyond 100% to increase that net dollar retention number. You need to get the AE more involved in the customer journey.
In this episode, I interview Adrian Foley, Global Head of Sales at Teamwork, about the AE’s role throughout the customer journey.
What we talked about:
- The ideal AE/CSM relationship
- Understanding account health
- 2 tried & true tactics for AEs
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you’re not spending loads of money on PR, you’re doing marketing all wrong. Or are you?
In this episode, I interview Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, about debunking 3 marketing myths.
What we talked about:
- PR is overrated
- An email that will 100% land a meeting with Tom
- BDRs under sales or marketing?
- What actually changes at the $100 million milestone
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
With inbound, the prospect is already about 80% sure they’re going to buy from you.
But with outbound, they’re starting from a perspective of “Why should I care?”
In this episode, I interview Bryan Elsesser, Senior Director, Sales Development at Aircall, about reverse engineering your outbound.
What we talked about:
- Why & how to start at the bottom of the funnel
- Creating dedicated outbound SDRs & AEs
- Troubleshooting your outbound program
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Ernest didn’t expect there to be quite that much overlap between what he learned in the NFL and his new career as an SDR.
(Hint: Very hard work is a big one.)
In this episode, I interview Ernest Owusu, Sr. Director of Sales Development at 6Sense, about sales lessons from the NFL.
What we talked about:
- Focusing on the process, not the goal
- Staying hungry for self-improvement
- You need humility to start over & win
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
The key to identifying a winning sales rep isn’t about whether they have deep industry knowledge.
Instead, it has to do with character.
In this episode, I interview Nigel Hobson, Head of Sales, Americas, at Afex, about how to look for A+ reps during the hiring process.
What we talked about:
- Motivation & who is responsible for it
- Why self-discipline is tied to professionalism
- You need a blend of more & less experienced salespeople
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It’s been really tough to keep positive, especially in, yes, a pandemic.
But positivity pays dividends.
In this episode, I interview Hugh Ghods, Sr. Sales Leader at Hootsuite, about the best of the COVID-19 workplace changes and how we can all practice optimism about the future.
What we talked about:
- The frenzy of the first 2 weeks
- Shifting from video calls to phone calls on a walk
- The importance of nurture
- Hugh’s hopes for 2021
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You post a video on LinkedIn that might reach a few thousand people.
From all of those, you might get half a dozen messages, only one of which you could turn into a six-figure deal.
Was the video worth it?
In this episode, I interview Russ Macumber, Strategy Director & General Manager at Impress!ve Digital, about how his video posts keep crushing it on LinkedIn.
What we talked about:
- The best sales reps are efficient & constantly better themselves
- How to develop your online presence with authenticity
- 3 insider tips about video (including how to bucket inspiration)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Most people want to go somewhere with their careers. They’re usually not comfortable staying in one spot for too long.
Sure there are some folks who get into a role and they want to do that role for their entire careers, but most people aren’t like that. Most folks want to use a role to learn, grow, and help them move into the next role.
But how do you do that, particularly in a sales role? What does an entry level cold-calling sales rep have to do to put themselves in a position for the next role, and then once they get there, how do they keep setting themselves up for success?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we talked with Ryann Leonard. Ryann is the Director of Global Restaurant Operations & Enablement at Slice. She’s had an amazing career run, and spent over 2 years as a cold-calling sales rep, all while setting herself up for the next thing.
We talked all about:
- What enabled her to spend two and a half years as a cold-calling sales rep, and how she turned rejection into opportunity
- How to set yourself up as the no-brainer for the next big promotion
- What to do if and when you’re passed over for the promotion and how to recover
- Actions you can take today to make your role more than what it currently is
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Look, we’re all busy. Everybody is doing far more now than they’ve ever had to do before. We’re all wearing hats that we likely never intended to wear.
But the truth is, the work still has to get done. Your company still has to bring in revenue, and “I’m not used to doing this thing” isn’t an excuse. Maybe you’ve found yourself with more teams reporting to you. Maybe you’re not quite sure how to integrate all those teams to achieve the most success.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Liz Sophia. Liz is the VP of Field Marketing at Manhattan Associates, and was kind enough to come on the show and talk all about the schedule.
How does her team organize their week to fire on all cylinders? How do they set up meetings, who is invited to those meetings, and what was the driving force behind including product in their weekly meetings?
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
By 2021, 25-30% of the workforce will (still) be working from home multiple days a week.
Remote work isn’t going away anytime soon.
In this episode, I interview Rob Falcone, Sr. Director of Sales Engineering and Strategy at Guru and author of Just F*ing Demo!, about collecting and spreading information through your org… virtually.
What we talked about:
- How to serve up info in your org
- 3 yes to providing info virtually
- Where to star improving your process (with an audit)
- Who should own responsibility for updating information
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website
You roll out this fantastic new talk track… and only 2 people use it.
You can’t get discouraged or offended. You have to cheerlead for their success.
In this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, I had a chance to talk with Jamin Fochtman, Head of Sales Enablement at Addepar, about sales enablement.
Jamin told me about:
- The critical skills of a sales enablement professional
- Some hurdles to implementing change
- His favorite technology & how he uses it for coaching
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Nobody likes change.
Whether it’s a major change like a move or a new CEO, or a minor change like a new chef at your favorite restaurant, or a redesign of your phone’s layout, change is hard for everyone.
But some people deal with it better than others.
Which is why understanding change management is so crucial for your organization. Specifically in the midst of the COVID pandemic, we’re all dealing with a lot more change than normal, and if we don’t know how to implement it correctly within our organization, it can be daunting.
Thankfully, there are people like Bosman du Plessis. Bosman is the Director of Sales Operations at Locumtenens.com, and was kind enough to come on the show recently and discuss:
-His four principles of change management
-Why change management is more like a rugby match than you may realize
-The common pitfalls teams face when implementing change
-Why empathy is the most underrated aspect of successful change management
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
There’s a stereotype in the sales world. One about field sales and inside sales. And it’s one that isn’t doing anybody any favors, especially as we navigate through COVID.
Jake Tatel, Global Director of Inside Sales & Marketing Automation, Intel.
What we talked about:
- How the WFH pandemic has caused a lot of us to adopt an “inside seller” mindset
- Why the “inside sales vs. field sales” game isn’t going to do anybody any favors
- The changes that have been brought about by COVID that are here to stay
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Where do you start creating your sequences in cadences?
If you already have your sequences, how do you optimize them?
In this episode, I interview Patricia McLaren, Cofounder at RevShoppe, about building and optimizing sequences.
What we talked about:
-Segmenting your sequences (go persona-based)
-Using the right touchpoints
-Incorporating creativity & emotion into sequences
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
When you multi-thread in sales, you’re taking control of the outcome. You worked hard to get that big meeting — why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to close?
CEO of Skaled Consulting and multi-threading wizard, Jake Dunlap, joins me in this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast to chat about everything multi-threading:
-How to get the meetings that matter at the ToFu
-3 practical tips for a successful Discovery Meeting
-How to successfully use LinkedIn to multi-thread
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
We feel the pressure to drive results, but performance is what we should obsess about.
In this episode, I interview Steve McKenzie, VP of Sales at Mimecast, about sales leadership and what it takes to be successful.
Steve & I talked about:
-Obsessing about performance, not results
-3 performance measurements for sales
-Steve’s philosophy of losing is about learning
-Bonus: Don’t surf on the white water… Go for the green water
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you’ve not added the 10K to your sales arsenal, you’re missing out.
What’s a 10K? It’s a document that public companies are required by the SEC to publish every year. And it’s essentially a report that provides transparency into how a company is performing.
It’s all there. Risks, deals, mergers, acquisitions, management discussions, and financial reports. And if you use it the right way, it can be a crucial tool in your sales toolbox.
But you’ve got to know how to use it. How to read it. How it’s organized. And that’s where Jamal Reimer comes in. Jamal was our guest on this special episode of the Sales Engagement podcast. Special because it’s not just an audio podcast.
Jamal was nice enough to use Zoom to walk us through how to read and utilize a 10k report.
But Jamal walked us through
- What a 10K actually is
- The 4 major areas of every 10K
- Why the quarterly analyst calls are a goldmine if you’re looking for information on a company.
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
For someone so successful to admit to making leadership mistakes — that’s powerful.
In this episode, I interview Stratford Canning, Director of Sales Development at Forrester, about a few things he wishes he’d known as a new sales development leader.
We talked about:
-What’s changed in sales development over the last few years
-Why balance makes an effective leader
-3 technology-related mistakes you could be making
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that for the vast majority of us, COVID has caused us to spend more time sitting. Most of us aren’t commuting to the office, unless you count the 10 steps from the bedroom to the desk.
We’re spending less time walking to the car, walking to the building, and as a result, many of us are spending less time on exercise.
Our gyms are closed, and we either don’t have the equipment to work out at home, or we don’t know how. What are you supposed to use in place of a dumbbell? What do you do if you don’t have a spin bike?
And besides physical exercise, a lot of us have neglected taking care of ourselves in a lot of other ways. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, we’re not exercising. So what are we going to do about it?
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we talk with Nieka Namczak. Nieka is the Sales Enablement & Productivity Manger at Udemy, and came to chat all about:
-Self-care, and why it’s more than just physical exercise
-How to make taking care of yourself a priority
-How to help your team embrace it
-Why it will pay dividends in the long run
Some things never change. Optimism is still the only free stimulus. Tuning out the news improves your mental health. And if you focus on your customer, you'll be fine.
In this episode, I interview Bill McDermott, president and CEO at ServiceNow, about the biggest transformation in our generation and what's not changing.
Bill & I talked about:
-What's different about the most recent economic downturn
-How to highlight racial and social inequality in this country
-Staying connected to the hustle spirit
-And using systems of action to expand your market
Resource mentioned:
Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Customers have changed their buying behaviors, and we need to meet them where they are now.
In this episode, I interview Britney Bartlett, senior director of global virtual sales specialists at Cisco, about how to create a virtual sales specialist team with the people you already have.
Britney & I talked about:
-Creating a global virtual sales specialist team
-How to implement change in a big organization
-Piloting to learn
-Hindsight 2020: What leaders should be thinking about
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It may be the understatement of the century, but COVID-19 and the ensuing pandemic has completely altered the sales industry, likely forever. There is no longer such a thing as “business as usual.”
And being a sales leader comes with an added set of challenges. You’re going through all of the same emotions, and feeling a lot of the same impact as everyone else, but you’ve got a team to lead. People that depend on you.
So how should your strategy shift as you accommodate this “new normal?” What are you dealing with now that would’ve been unheard of 6 months ago? How have you had to grow yourself as a leader?
On this special Unleash Summit episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sat down with LaKendra Davis, who is the Assistant Vice President of Government Solutions at AT&T. We talked all about (among other things)
-How the sales leadership role has changed,
-Shifting strategies as a result of COVID
-How she keeps morale up in the midst of a pandemic
-Why vulnerability might just be your greatest asset
An awful lot of people are stressed out right now. A whole generation of sales professionals are living through the most turbulent sales landscape they’ve ever encountered.
Maybe you weren’t a sales professional during the 2008 economic downturn, or you were too young to have been in the industry during the dot com bubble burst of 2000 & 2001.
If we’re completely honest with ourselves, it can be really tempting to wallow in negativity. To look at the current landscape and write the whole thing off as a lost cause. Maybe it’s time to pack it up and change careers. Throw in the towel.
Not so fast.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we got to sit down with Steve DeMarco. Steve is the Chief Revenue Officer at LeanData, and has been a sales professional during some of the most volatile and turbulent times the industry has seen in the last several decades, and we talked all about:
-Some of the major life events he’s seen in the last 20 years
-How crisis can make you a better salesperson
-Why now is the perfect time to focus on enablement
-Why it’s never the wrong time to master the fundamentals
It’s the one thing you have to get right along the way — a sales process.
How you’re adhering to the buyer’s journey & your market/product mix.
In this episode, I interview Joshua Stalnaker, VP of Inside Sales at Amplify, about building a sales process that doesn’t lose.
What we talked about:
-The components of a winning sales process
-Best practices for research, discovery, & positioning
-It’s the little things that make a big difference
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Selling to Zebras by Jeff and Chad Koser
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It’s not typical to spend the first 3 months in your new role just… listening to people.
But that’s what it takes to build a lasting and strategic sales culture.
In this episode, I interview Remy Piazza, Chief Sales Officer, North America at Bureau Veritas, about creating a sales culture from the ground up.
What we talked about:
-The 3 pillars of building a sales culture
-Tactics: listening, coaching, & hiring
-Why a unifying vision or strategy is essential for long-term success
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-The ABC's of Building a Business Team That Wins on creating a mission everyone can get behind
-Shoutout to Xerox for superior consultative selling
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Everyone is cost-centric right now — but especially CFOs.
When your product or service is priced at premium, how do you use storytelling to sell at a time when the phones are uncharacteristically quiet?
In this episode, I interview Paul Shortley, SVP of Global Sales, Marketing Effectiveness at Nielsen, about the tactics of sales messaging.
What we talked about:
-A strong messaging platform starts with your customer
-Exactly where to place your “NASCAR slide”
-Sell benefits, not features
-Why premium is still better than good enough
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If remote work means you’ve never even met your own manager in person, how are you supposed to network with total strangers?
Networking takes courage… but our guest’s 9 tips won’t hurt.
In this episode, I interview Victoria Salazar, BDR Team Lead at Reachdesk, about the art of networking.
What we talked about:
-How to get started in networking
-The best ways to leverage networking groups
-Networking with coworkers and prospects who aren’t buying right now
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Women in Sales Everywhere (WISE)
-#GirlsClub
-RevGenius
-America Needs You
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If there’s a job posting with 10 qualifications, a man will apply when he has about 6 of those.
A woman will tend to wait not just until she has all 10, but until she’s mastered them.
In this episode, I interview Lauren Bailey, Founder and President at Factor 8 and Founder at #GirlsClub, about how to boost more women into sales leadership.
What we talked about:
-The secret sauce of #GirlsClub (& tenets it teaches)
-5 ways any person can be an advocate for women in sales leadership
-Some women wait to be asked — so ask them!
-The button of encouragement
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
What if you could have the best of both worlds?
With an artist mother and inside business father, today’s guest grew up combining those two seemingly opposite traits. And then he got fed up with making other people rich.
In this episode, I interview Erik Kostelnik, Founder & CEO of Postal.io, about channeling his competitiveness and creativity into being a sales CEO.
What we talked about:
-The journey from sales to entrepreneur
-How to find & be a good cofounder
-Leadership insights for sales CEOs
-Sales transformation back to the offline world
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
A lot of companies have seen immense growth in the past 9 months. COVID has accelerated so many businesses, and caused them to grow in ways that they may have never expected.
And few industries have experienced the kind of growth and expansion as the food delivery industry. With us all stuck at home for the past nine months, food delivery apps have exploded onto the scene.
Whereas a few years ago, your options may have been pizza, sushi, and maybe Chinese, now you can get literally any food you want delivered right to your doorstep.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Anneliese Niebauer, Mid-Market Sales Manager at UberEats, for a conversation about:
-How to implement large scale change
-How to help your team through immense change in a short period of time.
-What you can do to create a culture of successful change management
It’s something we don’t like to talk about a lot, but whether we like or not, the sales industry as a whole is predominantly male.
In fact, according to one recent study only 19% of sales leadership positions were occupied by women.
Whatever the reason for that, it’s unacceptable.
But it being unacceptable doesn't mean a whole lot when you’re the only woman in the boardroom with 12 other men.
So on this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we chat with Jessica Breslav, the Executive Managing Director at Critero, all about:
-Her journey through the sales world
-Being the only woman in the room and how to have the confidence that you need
-Her advice to her younger self and what she wishes she had known at 22
Let’s talk about big companies.
Specifically, about selling to big companies. What do you need to know to sell to the enterprise, and why do so many companies end up with enterprise deals that completely fall apart?
What is so unique about enterprise sales that causes so many headaches?
So that’s why on this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we’re sitting down with Eric Martin, the Sales Manager at Vanta for a conversation all about
-Selling to the enterprise
-Why so many smaller companies struggle with it
-How you can set yourself up for success the next time you find yourself in that situation.
-Why you should never let security be a blocker when trying to sell to an Enterprise
COVID has exposed a lot of blind spots in the way we all work.
From networking to Zoom calls to emails, we’ve all noticed subtle little things that we used to think we were really good at that we actually could use a lot of work on.
And nowhere has that been more highlighted than in the area of time management.
For those of us that weren’t used to working from home, this work-from-home routine may have highlighted the myriad of ways in which we’re not nearly as good at time management as we thought.
Which is why the Blitz is so important.
What is the Blitz? On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Ryan West, National Accounts Manager at Choice Hotels, for a discussion all about
-The power of the Blitz
-The ways that you can get forty, fifty, or even sixty percent better results
-How individual contributors and leaders alike can leverage the power of the Blitz
One thing that COVID-19 has done is completely disrupt the recruitment and hiring process for nearly every company on earth.
What used to be a fairly straightforward process has had to become an act of adaptation, adjustment, and reallocation of resources.
The days of the “Career Fair” seem to be long over. We can’t exactly get pizza and beer and have everybody to the office to try and talk them into applying to work for our companies anymore, so we’re going to have to get creative.
Joe Matar is our guest on this episode. He’s the VP of marketing at Brazen, and he’s here to talk all about
-The virtual career fair
-Why you deserve a job that you love
-How to stand out as a job seeker in these crazy times we’re living in right now.
Let’s talk about sales enablement.
Specifically, what good sales enablement is doing for your sales reps. Is it helping them or hindering them?
Are you setting them up to be the best possible sales reps they can be, or are you weighing them down with needless tasks and functions that are holding them back? Are you simply giving them too much of a good thing?
In this episode, we talk to Cat Young, Head of Global Sales Enablement Strategy at Xerox, all about
-Collaboration within your teams and how to make it work
-Making sure that sales reps feel heard
-How to leverage data to help make the best next decisions for your sales reps.
No matter how good your SDRs are, the odds are they won’t stay SDRs forever, since the average tenure for a SDR is just shy of a year and a half.
Which begs the question:
As an SDR, how do you prepare for what’s next? Where do you go after your role as an SDR? What options are out there, and how do you know which one is right for you?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sat down with 4 different folks from Sphera who have all navigated through the SDR role into something different. Whether they became an AE or CSM, they all had some great things to say on how they navigated their careers. We talked all about:
-The jump from the SDR role to the AE role, and the most important skill you can learn as an SDR
-The perfect role if you love the client but don’t want the outbound work
-How to create the ideal SDR culture in your organization
You’re probably spending too much time trying to become an expert on your product and on your company.
Yes, you heard us right.
Sometimes, it seems particularly with younger sales professionals, that we spend so much of our time consuming sales content, that we forget that our products and our companies are just smaller pieces of a bigger puzzle.
And really investing in your own business acumen is one of the best things you can do for your sales career.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sit down with Joseph Monahan, New Business & Client Sales Manager at BoomTown, for a discussion all about:
-Why you should be investing your own business acumen
-Why you need a mentor, and how to get one
-Why you should start a podcast, even though everyone on earth has one
As sales professionals, we’re always trying to put ourselves in the buyers’ shoes, right?
We’re always looking for ways to empathize, sympathize, and show the buyers that we understand what they’re going through, how to solve the problems they’re facing, and how we can help.
But what does putting yourself in the buyers’ shoes really look like? How do you actually do that?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Vincent PhamVan, Founder at Vyten Career Coaching for a talk all about
-Why buyer empathy could be the best thing for your career
-How to navigate opportunities that you feel like you may not deserve
-Why it all comes down to trust and relationship (but don’t count out passion and hustle)
The disconnect between college and the sales world and the gaping hole in a broken sales recruiting supply chain is what led Danny Leonard and Manoj Jonna to form Ramped Careers. A sales-centric Fellowship program that equips the next generation of entry-level talent with workplace-ready skills. The Ramped Fellowship program offers practical sales & business development training, preparing Sales Development Reps (SDRs) for robust sales careers.
What we talked about:
-How the SDR supply chain is broken.
-Preparing college students properly for careers in sales.
-The many hats worn by a modern salesperson.
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If someone says, a salesperson is soft, what’s the implication?
Ten years ago, using that term to describe a salesperson meant they couldn’t hack it. They weren’t tough enough to make it in sales.
Colleen Stanley, CEO of SalesLeadership, Inc knows all about that perception. She started out in sales without the luxury of training or even collateral.
She was the furthest thing from soft.
She built her own lead lists, figured things out on the fly, and eventually built a leadership training program, as well as a company around a soft skill;
Emotional Intelligence or EQ.
Colleen sits down to map out how a soft skill is going to make your sales game stronger.
What we talked about:
-How a soft skill produces hard sales results -The 3 E’s of Emotionally Intelligent Sales -Being at the top of your sales leadership game Check out Colleen’s book:
Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leaders
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
John Jenkins, Senior Director, Customer Experience at Realtor.com sat down with us for a much-needed break and shared the ups, downs, successes, and challenges of moving his 300 plus sales team to a fully remote environment as the pandemic unfolded.
What we talked about:
-Lessons learned transitioning a large sales team offsite
-Getting the messaging right is key
-Giving your team the trust and time to adjust
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
We can’t win all the time. That’s just a fact of life.
What we can do is position ourselves to do our best to deliver winning results by practicing what we can control.
In this episode, I interview Matt Millen, Chief Growth Officer of Sapper Consulting, about the traits of a winner.
What we talked about:
-Peers & mentors
-3 steps to consistent winning
-A framework for leadership mentality
-Technology, COVID-19, & modern sales challenges
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Most of us would love to be executives.
But almost all of us lack executive presence.
In this episode, I interview Richard Park, VP Inside Sales & Growth COE at Solera, about breaking into the executive level.
What we talked about:
-What executive presence is & why it matters
-3 tactics for building your executive presence
-Great leaders are great listeners — & accessible to their followers
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you see the phrase “unprecedented times” one more time, you’re probably going to hurl.
And don’t “hope this email finds your family well.” What if they’re single? What if a family member just passed?
Let’s be more human in the way we sell.
In this episode, I interview Amy Volas, Founder and CEO at Avenue Talent Partners, and Samantha McKenna, Founder at #samsales Consulting.
What we talked about:
-Don’t be reactive, do be human
-Don’t focus on metrics, do focus on outcome
-Don’t innovate, do get back to the basics
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
In this COVID climate, we are seeing people double down on their current customer base, budgets being cut, and a necessary fluid approach to operations as a whole is emerging.
Your sales teams need to be sharper than ever.
Having access to scientifically mined data, customized to your needs is becoming table stakes. Having this kind of high-level data on hands turns into more efficient, higher producing, and less frustrated sales reps.
Ben Salzman and Kyle Williams from Dogpatch Advisors are doing a great job pushing the outbound data science forward.
With engineering mindsets and some impressive industry experience, Ben and Kyle have developed a modern sales framework that is shaping the future of prospecting.
What we talked about:
-Data science on a tangible level -What kind of data is going to benefit sales? -Hyper informed outbound sales efforts For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Macroeconomics teams forecast that automotive sales most likely will decrease 14-22% among the China, US and European markets in 2020 because of Covid-19.
People are sheltering in place, they’ve lost income, and things across the board-and the world- are all uncertain. Heading out to purchase a new car to park in your driveway just doesn’t seem at the top of the priority list.
Developing a range of scenarios and robust contingency plans to navigate through these turbulent times is key.
As the SVP of Sales and Business Development at Roadster, Amit Chandarana has had to do his own pivot, adapt and learn routine.
What we talked about:
-3 Rules of Sales: Efficiency, Engagement and Satisfaction
-Donut droppers
-Straightforward, solution based dialogues
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
2020 has been brutal thus far. Across the board, from C-suites on down, we are hearing that sometimes people feel they are accomplishing so much and adapting really well to new business practices and remote lifestyles, and other times it’s as if they are walking around in circles, unsure where to even start and wondering if anything will ever be “normal” again.
John Moore, Vice President of Revenue Enablement at Bigtincan sits down to give some great insight and share his experiences with all of these conflicting scenarios. Bigtincan has employed a global remote team since it’s 2011 launch, and has ironed out the virtual kinks that many companies are just seeing now for the first time. What else can they offer? Take a listen.
What we talked about:
- Pandemic protocols: Transitioning off site.
- Phase 2: Actionable enablement for your remote teams
- Re-Onboarding: How to approach coming back to an in person environment
Checkout these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Link to the CSO Insights study John mentions: https://www.csoinsights.com/research-studies/
- Learn about Hermann Ebbinghouse’s memory studies
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
John Healy, Sales Director at Grub Hub joins the show to explore to share his views on leadership in the sales environment. Coaching and building sales teams to succeed is his core value. His team’s success is a direct representation of his value as a leader, whether they are driving results for him or killing it elsewhere.
What we talked about:
-Coaching and developing salespeople
-Equipping individuals to reach career goals
-Leadership styles
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Mark Mangal, Manager, Global Business Development at Aptean sits down with me to talk about the transition from salesperson to sales manager. He shares some of the core lessons he brought with him from his sales days, as well as some skills he has picked up in his time as a leader.
What we talked about:
-Jumping from sales to sales leadership
-Performance
-Recruiting & training
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Daniel Gray, CCO at Deluxe Entertainment has a really impressive background and
a wealth of sales and leadership knowledge. He’s at the top of the game, but he isn’t here to tell that story. That you can Google.
Daniel sat down with me to talk about the strategies he has come to believe in after a stellar career and access to the world's top sales trainers. We talk about the most effective technique he has learned along the way in incredible detail as a value add to the sales community as a whole.
What we talked about:
-Pivoting perspective on the sales cycle
-Templatizing a “Sequence of Events”
-How your technique and bottom line benefit
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
With a strong CDN in place, Sales Ops can identify and prioritize who the valuable prospects are, and then push those leads down to Sales Reps. Aaron Lockhart, Senior Manager Sales Operations at Limelight Networks discusses how his Sales Ops team goes through that process, maximizing every lead and letting the Sales Reps do what they do best-Sell. What we talked about:
- Identifying your total addressable market
- Prioritizing your outreach
- Shoring up your sales cycle to assure an above bar customer experience
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Traditional sales training is dead forever.
And good riddance, honestly.
Welcome to virtual sales training, which is not just relevant for current events but also cognitively effective.
In this episode, I interview Mario M. Martinez, Jr., the Founder and CEO of Vengreso, about his all-virtual sales training program.
What we talked about:
-We forget 66% of something an hour after we heard it
-3 cognitive retention strategies
-7 things digital training does that traditional doesn’t
-3+ bullet points (You can just copy/paste your blog subheadings here, or main points)
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Mario’s podcast, the Modern Selling Podcast
-Training modules at Vengreso
-Mario’s Twitter @M_3jr
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you had to come up with a theme for the way you lead your team, what would it be?
Today’s guest would say that his theme is the importance of human connection. It’s the starting place for personalization and authenticity in sales.
In this episode, I interview Sean Simerly, Head of Sales Development at Benchling, about the 2 guiding lights he uses to lead and develop his team.
What we talked about:
-Connecting with people is where narrative and communication come into play
-Sean’s 2 guiding lights for hiring, training, and developing new SDRs
-Your goal shouldn’t be sales but a genuine conversation between 2 people
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
After spending some time coming up in the sales trenches together, special guest Jeff Swan and I are back together to riff about where Jeff’s career has taken him.
As the Founder and CEO of RevUp Sales, Jeff has developed some strong strategies to “rev up” a sales campaign, with Email Sequence at the tip of the spear. A self professed “Marketing Exec with sales DNA”, Jeff walks us through an in depth tour of successful sales plans in these strange and challenging times.
What we talked about:
-Email Sequence: Silver bullet or killer component -Tell your prospects a valuable story -Knowing your buyer
-Email Statistics 2020
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
When you used to be a pro soccer player, you use the word “coach” in a really specific way.
It means sparking the natural curiosity in your team. It means figuring out what motivates them and helping them reach their goals.
In this episode, I interview Neil Barlow, Senior Director of Global Sales, New & Exp, at Diligent, about coaching the team, as well as MEDDIC, Neil’s favorite sales methodology.
What we talked about:
-Look in the mirror and ask yourself if management is really what you want
-Coaching changes the meaning of success (the focus isn’t on you anymore)
-How MEDDIC transformed Neil’s team & how you can implement the framework, too
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
A pause can be a time for reflection about your true motivation. It’s also often followed by positive changes.
Let’s call this time “the Great Pause” rather than a new normal while we explore some existential questions about work and life.
In this episode, I interview Brendan Short, Founder at the Revenue Engine, about what SDRs should be doing during the Great Pause.
What we talked about:
-Asking deep questions about your goals
-Tons of tips for creating content
-Learning a new skill could change your whole future
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Brendan’s newsletter, Sales Lessons of the Week
-Mary Shea’s blog posts
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Once upon a time on the savannah, humans reacted to every shadow — in case it was a saber-toothed tiger.
Well, there are hardly any saber toothed tigers on our Zoom calls, but we’re still operating on that archaic fight-or-flight response.
In this episode, I interview Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, about the cognitive pitfalls that we are still making.
What we talked about:
-We aren’t ever going back to what life was like in January 2020
-6 ways to adapt your internal and external business models
-Why the illusion of transparency means you need virtual communication training, stat
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-You have to read Gleb’s book, Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic
-He’s super active on LinkedIn, too
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Your clients are basically in 1 of 3 situations right now: devastated, paused, or thriving.
Over half are paused… but they don’t have to be.
I had the opportunity to chat with Eric Gruber, CEO of Personal ABM and Stop the Sales Drop, about how to reach out to companies that are paused.
What we talked about:
-Account-based awareness isn’t the same as account-based marketing
-Tips for personalization that goes beyond the first 2 sentences
-How to scale the personalized ABM approach
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Wouldn’t it be great if your prospects asked you what the next steps were?
That’s not only within the realm of possibility, it’s what happens when you stop needing to be liked.
In this episode, I interview Steve Heroux, Founder and CEO of Victory Selling and author of Sales Is NOT a Dirty Word.
What we talked about:
-Integrity sells (better than smoke and mirrors)
-The need to be liked is killing your sales
-Closing is easy if you quit focusing on it
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-The Sales DNA Test at Victory Selling
-Steve’s book, Sales Is NOT a Dirty Word
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It’s not just getting the leads into the hands of the right people at the right time.
It’s getting the right leads into the hands of the right people at the right time.
In this episode, I interview Sean Lane, Director of Sales Operations at Drift, about how he has optimized the top-of-funnel role of sales ops.
What we talked about:
-What are the “right” leads?
-Speed is the one major priority at Drift
-The sales team is the customer of sales ops
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
-Sean is the host of Drift’s podcast, Operations with Sean Lane
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You used to be able to plan your week on, say, Sunday night.
Now you have your calendar open constantly for next month.
I had a chance to chat with Kaitlen Kelly, Sales Development Team Lead - EMEA at Outreach, about being a new SDR team lead.
What we talked about:
-Achieving 173% of quota in Q1
-What Kaitlen looked for in a new company during her career transition
-Prioritizing relationship with your reps
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-SDRs Anonymous
-The Miller 17 in ProActive Sales Management by William “Skip” Miller
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
There’s a crucial difference between management and leadership: Management focuses on the numbers, while leadership focuses on the people.
Developing the whole person should be the job of business development leaders. That, and cheerleading.
In this episode, I interview Drake Duenas, Business Development Leader at Vertafore, about relationships as the foundation for personal development.
What we talked about:
-Feedback is more effective when it comes from a place of caring
-Group learning exercises in the form of weekly call coaching
-The best advice Drake received was to be a cheerleader
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Your first goal should be no surprises.
After that, you’ll learn to pivot from grit to scale.
And along the way, you need to lead for the next generation.
In this episode, I interview Matt Glaser, VP of Sales Operations at Vimeo, about the principles that have shaped his career for success.
What we talked about:
-Why “no surprises” means being able to forecast & predict finances
-Coaching is a sign of being ready to scale
-Lead the next generation of sales leaders with information enablement
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Job seeking during a hiring freeze in a pandemic has to rank pretty high on our “worst nightmare” scale.
For sales reps in tech — or who want to break into tech — today’s guest gives insider tips for job searching.
In this episode, I interview Mike Theron, the COO at Rainmakers, about B2B tech sales hiring trends.
What we talked about:
-3 industries hiring during the pandemic
-Treat your job search like a sales process
-A clever way to leverage your network
-Keeping positive and not panicking
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
In Canada, the workforce is about 18% gig workers. In the States, it’s probably closer to 35%.
In this world, outsourcing your talent doesn’t have to mean overseas. The time is ripe for a blended workforce full of local talent.
In this episode, I interview Jordan Lewis, Cofounder and CEO of Stable.work, about the gig economy in sales.
What we talked about:
-A new category of work — blended workforce
-So many benefits of leveraging specialist freelancers
-Outsourcing means going local, not overseas
-Sales reps win with emotional intelligence
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Unless you’ve been on a deserted island for the past few months (which actually sounds really nice) you’ve noticed that the country is experiencing ongoing racial tensions.
Protests, demonstrations, riots.
As a result, an awful lot of companies are speaking up and speaking out about diversity. They’re making commitments to be more diverse in hiring, recruiting, and every other part of their business.
Which is great.
But it begs the question: What does true diversity look like in a large organization?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sit down with Elias Torres, CTO & Co-Founder at Drift for a conversation all about
-Diversity in the workplace
-The difference that having a founder of color can make
-Why diversity is no longer a nicety, but a necessity
-Making diversity & inclusion a habit, not a goal
82% of us seek out the negative reviews first. We mostly ignore the 5-stars and scroll down until we see some 2-star reviews.
What does that mean for us in a recession?
In this episode, we interview Todd Caponi, author of The Transparency Sale, about how sales should cope in a recession.
What we talked about:
-Why a 4.3 rating sells better than a 5.0
-The 2 human responses toward spend in a recession
-Throw out your old messaging & pivot this way
-Loneliness is a serious health risk
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Todd’s virtual series for Sales Assembly
-2 classic books on selling: The 5 Great Rules of Selling (1946) and The Mind of the Buyer (1922)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It sounds counterintuitive to sell based on what’s not great about your product. In a downmarket, though, people are craving predictability.
Transparency about your product boosts trust like crazy.
In this episode, I interview Todd Caponi, Founder and Speaker at Sales Melon, about transparent negotiation and how to approach a downturn.
What we talked about:
-Leading with the negatives
-The 4 ways to give discounts during negotiation
-Your best downmarket sales strategy
-What extreme firmographic focus means for your reps
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
-Todd’s book is The Transparency Sale
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Say you’re the leader of a sales team.
Maybe you’re a VP. Maybe you’re a director of sales. Maybe you’re a sales manager.
Whatever your title, you have a very specific role at your organization. Your job is to lead the sales team. To set direction, vision, strategy, and purpose.
But how do you hire? As your company grows, how do you handle the changing needs of a sales organization?
How do you balance the confidence needed to succeed in a sales role with the fact that you’re human and sometimes you have to talk yourself into getting out of bed in the morning?
What is your responsibility as the leader of a sales team, and how do you manage the energy of a dynamic group of sales professionals?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with John Eitel, the VP of Sales at Canva, for a discussion around:
-The different employee needs of a growing company
-How to deal with cold feet when what you need is confidence
-The responsibility of a sales leader
-Managing the energy of a sales team
-So much more
Would you agree that the shortest route to a promotion is to always be asking questions?
Positioning yourself as a student will earn you expertise and launch you into leadership in no time at all.
In this episode, I interview Matt Reuter, Sales Development Manager at GTT, about his experience leading sales development teams both small and scaled.
What we talked about:
-Leading at an established company vs. a growing company
-Having a numerical strategy for scaling your SDR team
-Training SDRs on how to lower resistance
-Become an expert at something — especially a sales tool, if you can
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You want to build your brand on LinkedIn, but honestly you have no idea how.
The best way is to learn from someone who’s done it.
In this episode, I interview Sarah Brazier, Senior Sales Development Representative at Gong, about growing her LinkedIn brand.
What we talked about:
-6 ways to up your LinkedIn game
-Knowing what your goal is for your posts
-True stories of how Sarah’s profile created opportunities
-Whether LinkedIn is the right avenue for you
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Building a Brand on LinkedIn, Part 1
-Storytelling Masterclass with David Sedaris
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Does your marketing department celebrate receiving hate mail?
Uh… why not? A strong emotional reaction means your content wasn’t boring.
I had an amazing conversation with Udi Ledergor, CMO at Gong, about Gong’s secret sauce for building brands.
What we talked about:
-3 principles of brand building, including edginess
-Why having a tiny content team gives you control over voice
-You shouldn’t gate your best content
-Ideas can come from everywhere — and should
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Read Udi’s Forbes articles
-Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
-Take a look at Gong Labs
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
How do you sell a solution before you have a product? By giving it away for free.
In this episode, I interview Scott Britton, Cofounder of Troops.ai, about his entrepreneurial story.
What we talked about:
-How to overcome fear in entrepreneurship by finding your conviction
-Discovery is probably the most important part of the pricing strategy
-Just flat out ask your prospects how much they’d pay for a solution
-Scott’s advice on whether to go with your gut
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
In a perfect world, the AE and SC are so aligned that the customer experience leads straight to the president’s club.
That perfect world isn’t as hard to visit as you might think.
In this episode, I interview James Kaikis, Senior Manager of Manufacturing Solutions Engineering at Salesforce and Cofounder of the PreSales Collective, about perfecting the AE/SC relationship.
What we talked about:
-What not to do (ahem, lane swervers, looking at you)
-4 qualities of ideal alignment between AEs and SCs
-The importance of listening to feedback
-Sales is a motivated environment… people want to be their best
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Have you decided what to do with your current playbooks?
Hint: Don’t throw them all away.
In this episode, I interview Evan Carlton, Sales Enablement Manager at Matillion, about how he’s optimized his playbook.
What we talked about:
-Adapting your messaging without over-pivoting
-Changing your top of funnel approach
-Focusing on nurturing, not selling
-Taking the opportunity for personal growth
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You’ve been hanging out at home, kicking around the idea of launching a podcast, but you have no idea how to get started.
In this episode, I interview Chris Hatfield, Sales and Mindfulness Coach at Not Another Sales Guy, about the 5 steps he took to start his podcast
What we talked about:
-Starting with your internal and external why
-The many, many benefits of podcasting
-Meet Scott, the imaginary first listener of Chris’s podcast
-The steps Chris took to launch his podcast
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Not Another Sales Podcast, Chris’s podcast
-Anchor, the free software Chris used to get started
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Is there a common thread that runs through businesses that survive and business that don’t?
Our guest today says yes — and it’s the sales organizations that know their clients the best through data analytics.
In this episode, I interview Kevin Ascher, Founder and CEO of AcousticSelling, about how data will serve you both in and out of a crisis.
What we talked about:
-The only 4 KPIs that matter
-Making CRM easy & seamless for reps
-Tips for cleaning up your data collection
-How an AI can make recommendations for which prospects to focus on — with numeric proof
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Businesses have had 4 responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: thriving, struggling, pausing, or adapting.
Knowing which bucket the company on the other end of the call belongs to should affect the approach your sales team takes.
In this episode, I interview Bryan Rutcofsky, the VP of Global Sales at Wix Answers, about the 4 buckets and his sales approaches.
What we talked about:
-Business just can’t stop altogether, but it does have to adapt
-How to recognize traits of the 4 buckets
-Tailoring your conversation based on the type of business you’re calling
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You have something to sell, but you’re not sure whether now is the right time. Or, if you know your product can help, how do you educate about its value?
Most of us are in this position right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this episode, I interview Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman, about her sales coaching tips for the current climate.
What we talked about:
-Processing the polar opposite opinions about whether or not to sell right now
-What to do if you shouldn’t be selling (and how to keep up morale)
-How to sell if you should be selling
-Everyone is thinking longer-term now, and you should be, too
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Sales leadership lessons don’t come cheap.
But they do shape a sales leader who excels in embracing challenges and supporting her team.
In this episode, I interview Rebecca Croucher, VP of Sales and North American Sales Operations at ManpowerGroup, about finding leadership success in loving challenges.
What we talked about:
-Her excitement for the unique challenges at a startup
-There are no unsolvable problems… if you apply persistence
-Sales team leadership requires learning to be an encourager and a supporter
-Rebecca is proud to put forward hiring solutions in the wake of pandemic unemployment
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Finding a product solution to please everyone sounds like an impossible task.
If it’s not going to deliver a measurable business outcome, then it’s probably just a want — something that sounds convenient but doesn’t necessarily make your business more efficient.
In this episode, I interview Maxwell Monson, Sales Operations Program Manager at Infoblox, about assessing and managing projects successfully.
What we talked about:
- 4 elements to consider in project assessment (including the waterfall effect)
- Tips for working with sales reps
- Viewing your sales rep as a store of insider knowledge
- Don’t customize a solution — using its out of the box features is best
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
True story, my short LinkedIn post about awesome startups that are hiring during the pandemic went viral.
People devoured information that gave them hope about their job prospects.
In this episode, I interview Shane Lunak, Senior Sales/Marketing Recruiter at Outreach, about how to stand out as an A+ candidate during the application and interview process.
What we talked about:
-5 outstanding ways to stand out as a candidate
-Sales reps should know exactly what their numbers were
-Right & wrong ways to reach out directly to recruiters
-Update your resume, seriously
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
-Awesome startups that are hiring right now
-Outreach’s career board
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You have to have a special relationship with Zoom to call yourself the Zoom King.
As in, you have to be the world’s leading expert in virtual backgrounds.
In this episode, I interviewed Red Russak, the Zoom King and founding team member at Apptentive.
What we talked about:
- Dos and don’ts of virtual backgrounds
- Virtual background ideas & tone guidelines
- Fun backgrounds help people open up to you and see you as a person, not just another Zoom call
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
This century has had its share of crises already, and COVID-19 is only the latest.
What’s really important for sales in times like these? (Hint: Not revenue.)
In this episode, I interview Henry Evans, CEO of Dynamic Results, about emotional safety during a crisis.
What we talked about:
- Emotional safety isn’t squishy
- There are 2 pillars of emotional safety: the F word and the C word (not what you’re thinking)
- 3 techniques for creating trust
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- The free Emotional Safety eSchool challenge
- The free Accountability eSchool challenge
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Video is exploding in popularity — and necessity — as we are all moving to the virtual world due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today’s episode will help you reimagine your sales strategy through video.
In this episode, I interview Karthi Mariappan, Co-Founder and CEO of Hippo Video, about the dos and don’ts of video right now.
What we talked about:
- 2 don’ts of video, including not pushing the sale
- 2 dos of video, including paying attention to tone
- Remember that humans are resilient and creative under stress
- We’ll come out of this with great new learning about ourselves and each other
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Your huge annual conference was scheduled in early April. Well, all those opportunities got scratched.
How do you recreate a conference-grade level of opportunity using only digital channels?
In this episode, I interview Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip, about how to adapt your digital channels for our unprecedented times.
What we talked about:
- Relevance matters most in marketing right now
- How to create digital destinations — 3 layers to consider
- Getting someone to engage means planning their next event
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
There’s a scientific reason why cramming for exams doesn’t help you learn. It’s called the forgetting curve.
If you want to train your SDRs, you have to help them conquer the forgetting curve with a few learning strategies…
I had a chance recently to talk with Shawn Pillow, Director of Sales Enablement at Granicus, about the antidote for the forgetting curve.
What we talked about:
- You forget 90% of what you learned within 24 hours
- Spaced, continuous learning is the antidote for forgetting
- Active recall is the key to continuous learning
- Tips for creating a culture of learning (hint: reward your reps)
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- Shawn learned about so much about human behavior from his professor Dan Ariely
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
All of us have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of us are worrying for loved ones, others are struggling to cope with staying at home.
It’s hard to stay positive and choose optimism, but focusing on the good is more essential than ever.
In this episode, I interview Mike Conti, Director of Business Development at G2 Crowd, about working remotely, team culture, and positive changes to work
What we talked about:
- Appreciating your legacy
- Bringing out the best in each other with culture
- People really want to know the answer to “how are you?”
- 3 tips for remote work
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you’re a new SDR, you’re looking to management for leadership by example.
But what are the qualities of a good management team — and how do you learn what they’re teaching?
In this episode, I interviewed Phil Lacorte, VP of Revenue Operations at Trifacta, to learn from him about leadership insights that he gained from sales and rev ops.
What we talked about:
- Rev ops is just a company-wide coaching role
- Facets of a strong leadership team
- 4 pieces of advice that he always gives new SDRs
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
At least 25% of being a new SDR is being able to lean over to the rep next to you and ask for immediate feedback.
Well, what happens when your whole team is working from their kitchen table now?
Leading a remote team presents all-new challenges for SDRs and their managers.
In this episode, I interview Nimit Bhatt, Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at memoryBlue, about managing a distributed team.
What we talked about:
- Communication is everything
- Fostering team camaraderie is a close second
- Use call coaching software
- Give even more shout-outs and recognition than before
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- The Sales Minute with Nimit
- Sales Hacker has so much knowledge for SDRs to study
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
If you travel for work, your whole schedule has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic.
You’re trying to figure out how to work remotely… not just staying connected to your office but around the world.
I got to talk to Kaveh Sarhangpour, BD Manager, Product Partnerships at Square, about his insights into adjusting to remote work life.
What we talked about:
- Effective remote communication techniques
- How to achieve asynchronous communication
- Time blocking is essential
- What the best communication style is (surprisingly, not straight empathy)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
A few years into your sales career, you realize, I’m actually committing to sales. ...But now what?
Learning to perfect your sales craft is the next major step for upping your sales game.
In this episode, I talk with Christina Stone, the Account Director of Enterprise Accounts at TechTarget, about how to perfect your craft in sales.
What we talked about:
- Control what you can control
- Christina’s 3 ways to perfect your sales craft
- How to analyze your recorded calls & meetings
- Go where your company is going
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
So many of us in sales have said these words: “Anything but sales.”
What is it that draws us in? We love a challenge.
In this episode, I interview Mataya Frizell, Inside Sales Manager at World Manager, about tactical tips for crushing the first year.
What we talked about:
- How to get from sales to sales manager in 10 months
- Tactical tips about goal setting
- Personalization is key
- Using your intuition for when to push a Type A personality
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
When was the last time you thought about risk?
As a sales professional, odds are that you’re not constantly thinking about enterprise risk as you put together your sales strategies.
But you should be.
Why? Because there is 100% chance that the enterprise customers that you’re selling to are thinking about risk.
And they’re thinking about it a lot.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we sit down with Chris Donato to talk about:
- All things enterprise selling
- Why sales professionals avoid the topic of risk mitigation, and why that’s a mistake
- How to frame risk to alleviate your customer’s fears
- How to have a fighting chance against an incumbent company
What a weird time to be living through right now.
Entire sports leagues have ceased operations, cities are going into “lock-down,” and many small businesses are hanging on by a thread, having to radically adjust their operating model to stay open and keep people employed.
With all of the noise, it can be a scary time to be in any profession. But how do you navigate the sales world in a time like this?
Are people really itching to be sold to?
How can you lead a sales team through a time like this and still feel like you have a soul when it’s all said and done?
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, we took a few minutes to sit down with Ben Dietz, President of Mintel Americas at Mintel, to talk about:
- How to lead your team through adversity
- Why it might be time to dial back the pitches
- Why empathy just might be the most important thing right now
As they say, “intent is everything.”
Nowhere is that more true than sales.
If you can’t capitalize on customer intent and convert that into actionable follow-up, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
But the customer is savvy today. They have more information at their disposal than ever before, and some studies have shown that as much as 70% of research happens before ever talking with a salesperson.
So how do you harness intent?
How do you capitalize on the work that is done before a customer ever gets to your door and turn that into a relationship?
Maura Brady is the RVP of Sales at 6Sense and was a guest on the Sales Engagement Podcast recently. We talked all about :
- Women in sales
- Harnessing intent, and how to approach different types of intent
- What she calls “The Dark Funnel”
- How to turn intent into action
As distracting as that new technology might seem, the fundamentals of sales haven’t changed.
Not only are the fundamentals the same 5 they’ve always been, they’re arguably more important now to help cut through all the distractions that beset sales professionals.
I had a chance to chat with Mike Morgan, SVP of Sales at iHeartMedia, about why we should all be obsessing about sales fundamentals.
What we talked about:
- The 5-step process of sales
- Things you must establish during the discovery period
- What a good closing for a pitch sounds like
- Treat your clients like your friends (because they are)
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
When was the last time you got on a stage and did improv?
If you’re like most people, the answer is probably never. After all, improv is scary, right? To be on a stage, with no script, no direction, and no answers?
But what if improv were actually exactly what you needed to sharpen your sales skills?
What if the answer to every salesperson who lacked confidence, or had trouble initiating a conversation, were to be prescribed improv?
On a recent episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down to chat with Bridget Quigg, who is the founder of “You’re a Genius,” a workshop that teaches sales and career skills through the fast paced world of improv comedy.
We talked all about:
- How to build trust with your colleagues
- Why improv may just be the best sales skill you can have
- Why silence in a meeting isn’t always a bad thing
- How to make your colleagues look as good as possible, and why that’s the best thing for your career.
A global media and competitive intelligence company had to close its Montreal office because the managing director moved to Amsterdam. If you're most companies, what do you do? You put out a job ad, hire a local director, get them up to spend, and hope for the best. But Meltwater tried something different.
They promoted Jessica Roman, a young sales manager with two years of experience. A risky move? Maybe. But with coaching and mentoring, Jessica developed first Meltwater's Montreal office and then its entire Canadian operation. Today, she serves as Meltwater's national director for Canada.
We brought Jessica on The Sales Engagement Podcast, to talk about the secret sauce of building loyalty and hiring with the future in mind.
On LinkedIn, it isn’t just about getting more visibility. It’s about getting the right visibility.
This is something I’m incredibly passionate about. Last year, content on LinkedIn grew by 400%. And it’s only gotten hotter
I recently got to interview another person who takes LinkedIn content as seriously as I do: Amy Volas, Founder and CEO of Avenue Talent Partners.
What we talked about:
- How to know if you should start personal branding now or later
- Understand your community to give them value, not word vomit
- The 4 stages of growing an audience for your personal brand
- Who owns your content? (Hint: Probably not you.)
Check out these pages we mentioned during the podcast:
- Amy’s LinkedIn articles
- Justin Walsh’s LinkedIn playbook
For even more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Hypergrowth is something to be proud of, but…
It can also be really distracting with 20+ problems cropping up at once.
Hypergrowth, unfortunately, is known for having such a fast pace that you can’t possibly juggle that many balls at once.
In this episode, I interview Tarik Sehovic, Growth Manager at Clearbanc, about 3 practical techniques for sustainable hypergrowth.
What we talked about:
- Spending 10% of your week on creative thinking
- Having a foundation in place before you decide to scale
- Lessons from Crossing the Chasm
- How Tarik went from negotiating a contract to onboarding in 2 hours
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You only see your kids for like 15 minutes tops.
You’re constantly doing work on your phone over the weekend.
Everyone else is landing huge deals, but not you. Why?
I grabbed half an hour to chat with Ryan Staley, VP of Strategic Accounts at FlexPrintMPS, about why you should invest in personal development for yourself.
What we talked about:
- How to have a successful career without sacrificing what matters
- Transitioning your mindset to making bigger sales
- Work/life balance tips (including activity batching)
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Amy Volas’s LinkedIn articles
- The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
- Mindset by Carol Dweck
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
So… which comes first, the sales process or the sales technology?
It can be hard enough to implement new technology, but it’s harder still when that impacts your sales process — or requires you to rewrite it from the ground up.
In this episode, I interview Jordan Greaser, Founder and CEO of Greaser Consulting, about how to avoid the frustration that comes with launching new sales tech.
What we talked about:
- How to blend sales process with technology
- 4 implementation mistakes for sales technology
- The impact of frontline managers and how to support them
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
It can be one of the most terrifying parts of a sales process… when it’s finally your turn to justify the commercials and show the value.
Ideally, you’ll be able to share that the value you’re bringing to the table is 10x the price that the customer is paying. But that isn’t always easy.
In this episode, I interview Mike Genstil, Founder and Chairman at VisualizeROI.
What we talked about:
- The 4 buckets of value and which one’s hardest
- Using familiar language to make your sale easier
- How to avoid red flags and get your ROI thrown out
- Pricing your solution for optimal savings to the customer
For even more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
A famous English poet once penned the phrase, “No man is an island.”
And nowhere is that more true than in the professional world.
Nobody, no matter how it may look, has gotten to where they are, achieved their success, or risen to the leadership position they’re in without the help of others.
And few people are as crucial to those people’s success as a mentor.
Someone who can cut through all the fluff, look at things objectively, and help you navigate the ups and downs that come with a career. The hard stuff, and the fun stuff as well. Mentors are there for it all.
But how on earth do you go about finding one? It’s not as easy as just walking up to someone and saying, “Hey, will you be my mentor?” right?
On a recent episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Sunanda Nair, an Enterprise Account Executive at Tidelift, for a discussion about
- How to find a mentor
- How to be a mentor
- How on earth to know WHEN and HOW to ask for help from a mentor
In the tech circles I run in, it seems every leader I’ve spoken with has shared the same problem:
Finding great talent to fill their sales teams.
And from what I can tell, this isn’t just a problem in tech sales. It’s everywhere. Everyone wants to keep their hiring funnel overflowing, but only a few manage it.
The good news is the talent pool hasn’t dried up. They’re out there and you can find them.
To help find out how, I invited Tim Yandel, VP of Sales at Hired onto today’s show. Tim’s an expert on finding the best talent in today’s market and shared some useful tips with us.
He went over:
- Why a “network-first” attitude is so important
- Why your company should be focused on more than your cool product
- How thinking outside the box can land you better talent
- How to find potential in people (and why you should)
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
“I don’t want to do sales, I don’t want to do sales…”
Anybody considering a career in sales should look for management that is directly involved in growing you professionally and personally. Especially investigate whether your direct first line managers are providing a high level of support to grow your career.
On this episode, I interview Tim Dovedot, Inside Sales Leader at Zscaler, about training recent college grads who are opposed to sales careers.
What we talked about:
- The 2 ingredients for sales success
- How to know if your management is aligned on growing you as an SDR
- What frontline managers need to do to get street cred with their team
- Embracing the revolving door of new talent
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- StrengthsFinder 2.0
For even more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
You tell your manager you want a promotion, but you’re forced to wait at least a year. How do you make your metrics so compelling that you get your promotion early anyway?
Crush the numbers.
I recently chatted with Phil Neizvestny, Account Executive at Aircall, about how being the #1 SDR earned him an unheard of promotion in less than a year.
What we talked about:
- Top 4 tips for first-time SDRs (including no skiing)
- How to ask for a promotion
- What to do if you don’t get promoted right away
- Promotion boils down to performance
- Put out the same energy into the world that you want to get back
For even more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
That one rep who earns 300% of plan? That thing they have that everyone else doesn’t is the drive to improve their game. That, plus short, killer messaging.
On this episode, I interview Ryan Barry, CRO at Zappi, about enterprise engagement strategy with a little touch of ABM.
What we talked about:
- Defining enterprise individually per account
- Why you shouldn’t remunerate on calls per day
- Putting value before an ask
- Curiosity is the thing that reps need that you can’t teach
Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:
- Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
For more engaging sales conversations like this one, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
As a sales leader, you have a vague idea that using Outlook 2010 isn’t helping you out anymore. But you have no idea how to start modernizing.
On today’s episode, I got to talk with my good friend Chris Sweat, founder of StemFlow, about what brought about his entrepreneurial career and everything he’s learned along the way about sales transformation.
What we talked about:
- Things that are holding organizations back from seeking modernization
- How the rise of sales ops is a hopeful beacon for sales transformation
- The 3 elements you need in place for sales transformation success
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website.
The thing that changes a sales rep's behavior is not more insights. It's better incentives. If you can change the incentives, you can change the behaviors.
Haggai Levi began working at the juncture of sales incentives and machine learning at Google where he led teams of machine learning experts and data scientists to improve the company's service productivity.
Haggai is now the CEO of SetSail, a company that provides AI-powered sales incentives. He and his team developed a machine learning powered sales incentive system that uses sophisticated rhythms to understand how much progress reps are making each week and to incentivize them on making progress with deals the company cares about.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, Haggai explains how a machine learning powered system leaves a trail of carrots for sales reps instead of just giving them a big carrot at the end and thus improves the sales process.
If you took a new job and on day 1, your boss told you,
“The next year is going to be the hardest and most challenging year of your life.”
Would you stay?
Or would you do what so many others in the current workforce are seeming to do and bolt for the door in search of something a little easier and more manageable?
Now imagine that this new job was in a new city, in an industry that you knew next to nothing about.
What would you do?
If you’re anything like Tyler Menke, you’d summon every ounce of courage that you had, dive in head-first, and commit to slugging it out in a new industry, a new city, and a new job, all in pursuit of long term success.
Tyler is the Strategic Accounts Manager at Myriad Genetics, and was a gust on the Sales Engagement Podcast recently. We talked about
- Overcoming obstacles
- The grind of the hardest year of his life.
- Why he thinks work-life balance is way more complicated than people think.
- The difference between a goal and a commitment.
His new book, The Pirate's Guide to Sales.
It’s funny how you try to explain what it means to be “in the tech field” to family and friends at holidays and such.
But actually, when they don’t get it and keep not getting it, that indicates a real problem with accessibility and education about tech jobs.
When nobody even knows what working in tech means, how will they decide to make it their career? Exactly.
On this episode, I interview Marco Montano, Senior Manager of Inside Sales at Seismic, about how he’s a diversity leader.
What we talked about:
- How “the right fit” is a phrase that should be eliminated forever
- Why it’s a huge problem that nobody knows what tech sales means
- Marco’s dream of touring students through a series of tech offices
This post is based on a Sales Engagement podcast with Marco Montano. To hear this episode and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.
If you asked 10 people, you’d get a 50-50 split. Sales development reps should be sales. No, they should be marketing.
Or — and here’s a crazy thought — they could be their own department.
On this episode, I interview Joe Venuti, Senior Director of Inside Sales at Sendoso, to talk about positioning SDRs inside the company.
What we talked about:
- 3 primary functions of business development
- Whether SDRs should be sales, marketing, or their own department
- Top tips for BDRs and business development leaders
This post is based on a Sales Engagement podcast with Joe Venuti. To hear this episode and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.
What’s the one major thing your prospecting is missing? Empathy.
Bet you didn’t think that was the answer.
On this episode, I interview Jason Bay, Co-Founder of Blissful Prospecting, about the art and science of prospecting.
What we talked about:
- How to build the empathy muscle
- The 5 points in Jason’s REPLY checklist
- Strategies for interrupting the pattern of cold calls
This post is based on a podcast interview with Jason Bay at Blissful Prospecting. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can listen to every episode here.
Once you have about 20% market penetration, year-over-year growth starts to taper off.
That’s why you should expand into new markets before you reach those points. For a lot of companies, the honeypot starts to run dry and they have to look into new areas.
In this episode we interviewed Jake Young, Director of New Market Sales at Weave HQ, about how Weave is expanding from a focused base of only selling to healthcare companies to much, much more.
What we talked about:
- How to begin expanding into new markets
- How to measure lead sources for potential new markets
- What to do about over- or underperforming reps in new-market experiments
- How to identify internal candidates
- How to look for similar characteristics to your current customers in new markets
- One piece of advice to somebody looking to open up a new market
Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Jake’s LinkedIn
- Jake David Young
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Being on the ground floor of a startup as an SDR can be very exciting.
It can also be a little overwhelming searching for the right startup to dedicate your time to. What if their processes are different? What if you have to learn a new technology?
Luckily, Resy’s Director of Inside Sales, Cara Felleman, and SDR Manager, Madison Zeinert, have joined me for this Women in Revenue Wednesday session on The Sales Engagement Podcast.
They list a slew of factors to look for before hopping on board a new company as an SDR.
Plus, we talk about:
- Why you should look for professional opportunities to learn
- How to deal with change in a startup
- Being passionate about the industry you’re in
Resy is hiring!
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Marketplace noise is accelerating, products are multiplying, and attention span is weaning. All the while, sales reps are often lasting less and less time in their roles.
What’s a sales leader to do?
Ask Derek Rahn, VP of Sales at LeadGenius. His brilliance doesn’t just come from his 15 amazing years in sales, but in the way he’s able to communicate his success to his team and others. On this episode, he gives 3 ways that every sales leader needs to rethink the sales function.
What we talked about:
- Refining your techstack
- People, then process, then technology
- When enhancing your techstack, consider the entire org
- Tech does nothing without training
- Combining personalization with relevancy & novelty in your messaging
- A few ways to enhance your messaging
- Going vertical with your reps
- Verticalization of sales reps
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website..
Branding in the 21st century comes with a unique set of challenges, particularly around social media.
Social media never had a slow acceptance into culture. It came like a tidal wave, washed over every aspect of our lives, upset the norm, and left us all without rules to float and meander on a sea of undefined expectations, particularly for personal branding in our careers. Questions like these arise:
- What’s OK to post?
- How vulnerable should I be?
- Is it even good to post?
To answer these questions, I invited 22-year-old Mark Metry on the Sales Engagement podcast. Don’t be fooled by his age — he’s a podcast expert, a LinkedIn expert, a TEDx and Forbes featured keynote speaker, and he’ll even be featured on The Social Movement — an Amazon Prime docuseries.
What we talked about:
- The power of social media for personal branding (particularly LinkedIn)
- The sound of branding in the 21st century: podcasting
- Common threads of success
- Self-evolution
- Living a life of service
- Self-doubt
- True success
- Personal branding
- You'll destroy yourself w/ social media if you aren't personally successful
- Sharing defeats the power of your past
Checkout these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- Mark’s Humans 2.0 podcast
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
“Thoughts limit us, and our thoughts enable us.” If you’d read that on a Hallmark card, you’d probably keep moving. But when a clinical psychologist with 20 years of experience in organizational behavior says it, maybe it’s worth considering.
His name’s Dr. Russell Thackeray. He’s the Founder and Director of QED — an organizational development consultancy focusing on resiliency and company culture.
On this episode, Dr. Thackeray dives into the psychology of building resiliency on your sales team.
What we talked about:
- Organizational behavior
- How your thoughts affect behavior
- How to teach your team to tackle difficult challenges:
-
- Turn the “impossible” into a goal
- Rehearse
- Measure the right KPIs
- Consider the buyer first
- Buyer’s journey/buyer’s experience
- Working with today’s informed buyers
- Dr. Thackeray’s 3 takeaways:
-
- It’s OK to fail
- Learning is key.
- Double-down on what you’re best at
For more engaging sales conversations, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Chris saw a flyer this flyer on his car: “Make $1K on Christmas break.” As a freshman paying his own through college, Chris believed it.
He signed up to start selling Cutco knives door-to-door, which launched his career into sales. Along the way, he became the first manager in Vector Marketing’s history to win President’s Club. Later, he moved to California, became a GM for Access Nurses, then founded TakeLessons.com, who partnered with Amazon, and, now, he’s the VP of Sales at Andela.
On this episode, Chris Waldron delivers his top lessons for sales professionals:
What we talked about:
- Focusing on the customer’s pain points
- Asking for referrals
- How to self-diagnose & self-prescribe
- Sales process
- Partnering with Amazon
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
On this week’s edition of Women in Revenue Wednesday, we sat down with Heather Combs, chief revenue officer at Three Pillar Global. There, Heather oversees marketing, business development and operations.
Three Pillar Global builds breakthrough software products that power digital businesses. They help companies like PBS and Carfax build digital products that drive revenue and help with customer growth.
We sat down with Heather to talk about the modern role of the CRO and to get her best advice for reaching that coveted C-Suite level.
When it comes to our SDR teams, we all struggle with gender diversity.
Obviously, there are a lot of organizations trying to combat that, but today, most sales teams are still predominantly male.
That’s not the case for Pareto Law. Globally, their sales team is 61% female.
So, I wanted to invite Gabrielle Crofts, Sales Director at Pareto, onto the Sales Engagement podcast to talk about how her company is leading the way when it comes to diversity.
There’s a struggle within every company undergoing high growth. On one hand, you may be hiring like crazy, while, on the other, leaders must keep the positive, upbeat, fun, high-performing culture.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, Nick Rathjen, VP of Account Development at Samsara, discusses how he keeps their company culture strong, while onboarding 4 new sales reps per week. (Yes! That means by the end of the year, he’ll have onboarded 225 new sales reps!)
What we talked about:
- ‘Culture is a meal. People are the ingredients’
- ‘Hire candidates with a desire to learn’
- How to embrace fun without losing performance
- 3 ways to manage performance
- Manager-to-rep performance management happens during weekly 1-on-1s
- Pro tip: Give individuals the freedom to make mistakes and individuals pursue their own management style
- Director-manager performance management
This is an interview with Nick Rathjen from Samsara.
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Everyone knows that onboarding is like drinking through a firehose.
But we kind of just accept that’s the way it is.
Well, Kris Hartvigsen, CEO and Founder of Dooly.ai, believes there’s a better way.
He came on the Sales Engagement podcast to tell us about everboarding and how it could help you increase your ramp by months.
What we talked about:
- What’s broken in onboarding
- What is everboarding
- The advantages of everboarding
Resources we talked about:
- Kris’s LinkedIn
- Dooly.ai
When I was down at the Surf & Sales Summit, I met Dan O’Sullivan. We were hanging out in Costa Rica together, surfing in the morning and talking sales in the afternoon. And when I heard a little about his story, I knew I had to invite him on the Sales Engagement podcast.
See, as a sales professional, he’s a bit of a unicorn. He’s been at one company, TransPerfect, for 22 years. Dan started as one of 7 salespeople and has risen to the role of VP of Sales, Travel Solutions, EMEA at TransPerfect. So, I invited him on the show to talk about why staying at one company for a while can actually be really beneficial to your sales career.
What we talked about:
- Why so many young people bounce from job to job
- The benefits of staying with one company
- How to think about your career from a long-term perspective
Resources we talked about:
- Dan’s LinkedIn
- TransPerfect
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
“Would you be available to jump on a call next week for a quick demo?”
How many times have you heard those words? Or better yet, how many times have you been the one saying those words?
When you’re a prospect hearing those words, what is your first thought? Odds are, it’s not one of excitement or anticipation.
You’re thinking about sales pitches and demos that have fallen flat in the past. Ones where the rep wasn’t prepared, or the technology didn’t work, or they clearly hadn’t researched your company or done any homework.
But as the SDR or the AE, what if you could turn the tables?
On the latest episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Dave Kennett, CEO & Founder of Replayz to talk about
- The 3 biggest mistakes he’s seen in demos
- Some great things he’s seen
- How to structure your demo to make the biggest impact.
Chris Yoko is passionate about fostering a great company culture. And he’s built a company culture at Yoko Consulting where his people can thrive.
How’d he do it?
That’s what he came on this episode of Sales Engagement to talk about.
What we talked about:
- Why he’s passionate about culture in the first place
- The philosophy that leads to a great company culture
- How to ensure your policies and processes support a thriving culture
Resources we talked about:
- Chris’s LinkedIn
- Yoko Consulting
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Ben Parker and Aaron Bollinger are co-founders of Kronologic, an application that schedules sales meetings for you and helps you predict future bookings based on the meetings that you’re having now.
But what’s really cool is the equation they came up with to help sales reps calculate how much each meeting is worth in revenue. I invited them to come on this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast to tell us all about it.
What we talked about:
- Sales meeting math
- Average value per meeting
- Lead deficit
- Why these numbers matter
Resources we talked about:
- Ben’s LinkedIn
- Aarons’s LinkedIn
- Kronologic
This is an interview with Ben Parker and Aaron Bollinger from Kronologic. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Whether you're in business development, sales, or whatever it may be, you need to find a way to stay on top of your leads and your prospects.
And who knows how to do that better than marketers?
They've been doing it with marketing automation way before these sales engagement tools and technologies ever came online.
So, on the latest episode of the Sales Engagement podcast we welcomed expert marketer, Kristy Sharrow, to share her top 7 tips for nurturing leads. Kristy is currently VP of Marketing at Quikly.
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
Lance Tyson is a seasoned entrepreneur who is known for training professional athletes and entertainers, and is the founder behind the Tyson Group.
Lance got his start in sales with Dale Carnegie Training where he became a trusted advisor and sports teams began to form a relationship with him there, which he was able to maintain in later years.
Today he has worked with organizations such as the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Golden State Warriors, the Dallas Cowboys, the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Sports Management, and the LA Rams.
His biggest problem?
Knowing who to cheer for.
He openly admits he’s not too choosy--he’s a fan of anyone he does business with.
In today’s podcast you’ll learn why as he puts it in his book (of the same title) selling is an away game.
He leaves listeners with three key takeaways:
- Understand how people buy in today’s tech savvy market
- Master the Undersell--there are so many extreme sources of information--people are looking for persuasive selling i.e. “have you ever thought of it this way?” Buyers think they are experts as well
- Sales is a lonely game so learn how to play against yourself!
The sales process has gotten extremely robotic across many different verticals — and people don't want that. To earn the right to text C-suite executives, you have to be authentic first.
On this episode, I talk with Kyle Willis, Director of Sales Development at Directive, about how to harvest your unique qualities to become successful in sales.
What we talked about:
- Learning to build your confidence by celebrating small wins
- Best practices for texting C-suite
- The kind of determination that would make you jump on a pogo stick for one hour to win a dirt bike
- How sales is like personal fitness
Checkout these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- Men’s Fitness (Kyle was featured on the cover!)
To hear this episode and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
A few weeks ago I met someone awesome at an event. And during our conversation she shared some of her company’s diversity stats.
They blew me away.
I’m so impressed by the level of diversity ShipBob has been able to achieve throughout their company, and I wanted to know more about how they did it.
So, Elizabeth Niemczyk, Senior Manager of Business Development at ShipBob, came on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about how the company has intentionally focused on achieving diversity.
What we talked about:
- How they’ve achieved such incredible diversity
- Why focusing on coaching matters
- Why you need to be strategic about your job descriptions
- How diversity makes the company stronger
Resources we talked about:
- Elizabeth’s LinkedIn
- ShipBob
It’s not everyday A-list celebrities give a workshop on B2B sales. But Tyra Banks did just that when she coined the term “flawsome.” For B2B sellers, flawsome means this:
Be transparent, and lead with your flaws.
Todd Caponi joined us to tell us exactly why transparency sells in B2B. Todd is the Managing Director for VentureSCALE, an accelerator for B2B tech companies. He’s also a speaker, trainer, and author of The Transparency Sale.
What we talked about:
- Statistics show that people don’t listen to 5-star reviews
- Buyers want predictable relationship outcomes
- The IKEA example: great at one thing (not so great at others)
- Don’t go out and say, ‘Our company sucks’
Checkout these resources we mentioned during the podcast:
- PowerReviews & Northwestern University study
- PowerReviews 2016 study
This is an interview with Todd Caponi from VentureSCALE. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.
I heard that Jonas Master gave an incredible talk at the SiriusDecisions Summit back in May. And that in that talk he shared a lot of really cool thoughts about sales training and sales coaching. Naturally we thought, "Let's get that guy on the podcast."
So, on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, Jonas joined us to share some more thoughts about sales training and coaching. Jonas is currently the Director of Global Sales Training at LogMeIn.
What we talked about:
- The coaching idea that’s generating buzz around the world
- How their coaching program works
- The ROI it’s generating
Resources we talked about:
- LogMeIn
- Jonas’s LinkedIn
It’s the dream of every start up.
No matter how small you start, every small business wants to grow. To get bigger. Maybe you started with 2 employees and dream of having thousands. Or maybe you’ve already got thousands but dream of having tens of thousands.
Every successful company reaches that tipping point.
Where the old systems and processes just don’t work anymore. They’re not sufficient for the size and scale of the company.
Ivan Gomez, Global Sales Development Executive at Tenable, was a guest on the Sales Engagement Podcast and discussed:
- The Tipping Point that every growing company encounters
- How to revamp your hiring process to keep up with company growth
- What changes need to be made when your company starts growing
Every single company on earth wants to have a healthy work-life balance.
More and more millennials these days are listing a healthy work-life balance as one of the driving forces behind the reason they choose to work for a company.
So how does your company embrace a healthy balance? How do you ensure that the work is getting done while still maintaining a culture of openness and respect? While treating people like adults?
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Colleen Manning, Director of sales at ezCater, to talk about:
- What it takes to implement a healthy work/life culture
- How leadership can model a work/life balance from the top down
- Why “hustle” can only get you so far
There’s no doubt that we’re in the age of information.
With a little research, anybody can find nearly everything about your product and company.
Why, then, do we insist on telling potential buyers all about ourselves in the first five minutes of meeting?
The author of Evolved Selling and Chief Evangelist at Mediafly, Tom Pisello, fills us in on the B2B selling strategy he’s found to be most effective.
We explore:
- The “cold-as-ice” buyer
- Being a sales facilitator
- The CLOSE approach
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can listen to every episode here.
It’s that age-old question.
“How are you tracking your metrics?”
No matter which business you’re in, if you’re in the sales world, at some point you've had a discussion with someone about metrics.
How are you measuring success? What does it look like to blow expectations out of the water? How do you get more of your reps to perform that same way?
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with David Duncan, VP of sales at Epos Now, to talk about:
- Conversion Metrics: What are they and how do you measure them?
- How to benchmark your sales reps
- How to keep them consistent
- How to duplicate those reps across teams
Predicting sales is an integral aspect of any business’s health.
This is even more true when you have multiple sales teams around the globe, all trying to predict what’s in their sales pipelines.
Enter in, this week’s guest on the Sales Engagement Podcast, Monica O’Kelly. Monica is the Senior Director of Revenue Operations at TripleLift, a company that helps advertisers with native advertising campaigns.
When Monica joined the team in 2017 in a sales planning role, one of the first things she wanted to address was managing global sales pipelines. She formed a revenue functions team in 2017 and has been overseeing that for the past two-and-a-half years.
Their team did two key things to facilitate change.
First, they started integrating Salesforce as a key component in managing their pipeline.
Then, they created a nuanced approach that helped her to create a better system for predicting business.
Their approach involved sellers reporting their predicted sales volumes for every quarter based on a three-tiered system called commit-probable-upside.
Commit -A conservative estimate of sales. This is guaranteed to the business.
Probable-This is the seller’s estimate as to how much he or she can sell.
Upside: This is a blue sky projection, based on every deal closing.
As a result of Monica and her team’s hard work, sellers have reported that they are doing a better job of accurately depicting their numbers by using this formula for a realistic approach to forecasting, and the business is growing as a result.
What do you consider to be worn out sales tactics?
In the wrong hands, any tactic from cold calling to email automation can be counterintuitive.
In this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we check in with Brent Pearson, the founder of Enboarder.
He gives us the lowdown on:
- His unorthodox go-to-market strategy
- The best way to use sales automation tools
- Visual prospecting
Resources mentioned: Dogpatch Advisors
To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can listen to every episode here.
Carmen is the cofounder of Kula Partners, an agency that specializes in working with B2B manufacturers.
As a niche agency they service a lot of companies that need highly specialized and attentive help.
Carmen Pirie has been in the agency business for over 15 years. Before that, he worked client-side marketing roles, and even had a stint in politics.
Now, as an agency owner in Halifax he is focused on bringing clients as much value in the B2B manufacturing sector as possible by helping them with their marketing and sales.
SAAS companies have driven a lot of the conversation about marketing over the last few years. Hubspot is a great example.
However, in Carman’s mind, the funnel is flawed.
Listen to this podcast to find out why Carman believes that traditional funnel approaches should be flipped on their head.
Hiring is one of the hardest things to get right at any organization.
Especially at a tech company in a small market.
No one knows that better than Mark Guest, Director of Business Development to Business Development Manager at Absorb.
In this episode, Mark breaks down what he did in the early stages of Absorb to find great hires. With only a few other tech companies pulling in talent in Calgary, Mark had to get creative in order to find and attract the best talent.
Mark was very intentional about the type of employee he wanted in his sales department. For instance, since Calgary wasn’t a big tech hub back then, he knew that anyone looking for a lot of notoriety and acclaim probably wasn’t going to want a sales role in a small industry. Using the powers of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, he was able to search for interests such as rare sports prowess or service industry experience.
His line of thinking was pretty simple: in Canada it’s easy to enjoy being a great hockey player, because everyone loves a great hockey player. But it’s very difficult to become a great rower in Canada, because it is not as socially rewarding.
Delegating roles within any organization is difficult.
Especially in a large company.
In order to make the most of every employee’s skills sets its important to have great processes in place.
Today’s guest, Stephanie Jenkins isn’t just the VP of Sales at Glassdoor, she is also the woman responsible for making sure that Glassdoor’s employees are equipped with the knowledge and tools to sell.
As the VP of Sales, her title calls on her to be the direct report for 150 people at Glassdoor in Chicago.
She also sits down and shares with us her tips on how to improve sales conversion.
- It's all about speed when responding to leads
- Specializing roles increases speed
- Test which wording is the most successful, and find the open rates for each role and industry
- Make sure that leads don’t go stale by creating new messaging periodically
- Instantly chat with the customer as soon as they get on the site by integrating chatbots into your sales process
Most people can tell when they are being sold to and start to get upset, or get defensive.
In order to excel in a difficult sales environment, it takes a lot of hustle, a lot of drive, and even more passion.
Jacki Leahy is a self-described weapon of friendliness, who has a personal mission to engage and interact with people--even when they hate being called on the phone.
Jacki was the number ten hire at LinkSquares an AI-powered contract management cloud service and continues to be a secret weapon to the company today.
So how does Jacki make such a difficult job rewarding? She shares four points that anyone in sales can use for cold-calling or other disciplines in order to make the process easier.
Wouldn’t you like to see a 280% increase in productive opportunity?
Wouldn’t you like to get your message across 60,000 times faster than usual?
Try using images, not words.
I got to have a conversation with Kyle Williams and Ben Salzman from Dogpatch Advisors about the very cutting edge of sales engagement: Visual prospecting.
Sales engagement and outreach are a big part of data-driven sales, and the new showstopper in the field is visual prospecting.
How do you become the next Jimi Hendrix of sales?
You might research some tips from the current superstar of sales.
Maybe you watch a keynote he or she delivered. Or subscribe to their podcast.
Or maybe you have an excellent coach.
Waylon McGill, the Director of Sales at Indeed.com, is in the business of making rockstar-level sales reps. His passion for coaching has allowed him to develop a unique approach to training reps. In this episode, we cover the biggest mistakes new reps make, call coaching, and more.
What’s your biggest fear?
Thunderstorms?
Spiders?
Failure?
Turns out, even the most successful people have faced failure myriads of times. Failure is the one thing you can almost always count on happening before you reach your desired result.
We discuss this in further depth with Pete Prowitt, the head of Relationship Manager Teams of North America at Intercom. In this episode, we touch on increasing customer success, using empathy in sales, and more.
Are you failing forward every day?
That’s right. Failing forward.
If you do, you should consider it a strength!
Rachael Rohn, Regional President of Compass in Chicago, tells us her team has all but mastered the art of failing forward. In this episode, we discuss hiring for humility, workplace culture, and more.
There's a lot of career paths that salespeople can take.
There's the traditional path of going from BDR, to AE, to Sales Manager, to VP. That's a great path to take. But there's a lot of other paths available to you, too.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast I wanted to talk through one of those more non-traditional paths — entrepreneurship. And to help me with this discussion I invited successful salesperson turned successful entrepreneur, Kris Hartvigsen, Founder and CEO of Dooly.
We talked about what makes a founder, well, a founder, why a career in sales prepares you to be a great entrepreneur, and how being a founder makes you a better salesperson.
Luke Lightning has a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry.
He’s also the CRO for Inside.com.
So, what do chemistry and sales have in common? Well, a lot actually.
Luke came on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast to share some of the most valuable lessons he has learned through his experiences.
We discussed topics including: the importance of diversity inclusion, how to interview for remote work, why alignment should extend beyond sales and marketing, and why you should focus on building relationships.
Welcome to another Women in Revenue Wednesday session. We’re so excited to introduce you to TWO incredible women in tech who are joining us for this week’s talk.
Kim Graves and Maggie Hott both work for the tech powerhouse Slack as managers of mid-market sales. Kim currently leads a team based out of Vancouver while Maggie runs the mid-market sales team in the San Francisco headquarters.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Slack is a communications platform that brings together people, data and applications. The best part is, it cuts down the amount of time you spend on email dramatically by giving you a platform to communicate with your team instantly and find important information quickly.
Both Maggie and Kim have a wealth of knowledge to share on what they’ve learned in the several years they’ve spent working and growing in the tech industry.
Being successful in sales requires hard work.
It requires strengthening your weaknesses, pushing through tasks you don’t like doing, and sticking things out.
We call that grit.
There’s probably no better person to talk about grit than Bill Green. As CRO at PROLIFIQ, Bill leads go-to-market, sales, and enablement. He came on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about grit — what is it, how sales leaders can hire for it, and why it will make you successful.
Let’s face it: BDRs isn’t a role that is known for tenure. It’s not known to be a role that people get and stay in for years at a time. The average tenure for an BDR is a mere 16 months.
So how do you keep your BDRs engaged, active, and excited about what you’re doing at your organization? Amidst the onslaught of cold calling, ghosting, and unreturned emails, how do you make sure that your BDRs know that what they’re doing matters?
Sara Colombo, Director of Business Development at Jellyvision, was a guest on the Sales Engagement podcast recently and had some fantastic thoughts around this topic of BDR retention, and what it looks like in her world at Jellyvision.
Daniel Rodriquez, Head of Revenue at Alyce, received a lot of spammy junk mail from marketers as a startup owner.
It demoralized him.
Instead of letting it make him cynical, he turned it into an opportunity by becoming the Head of Revenue at Alyce, a company that helps to humanize outbound sales.
The key is their patented 5 pillar approach to sales.
Be thoughtful, understand the person (not the persona,) give consistently, empower buyers with choice, and stand for something. Using these five pillars makes it easy to create a genuine approach to making outbound more human and as a result, more successful.
On this episode of our Women in Revenue series I was lucky enough to have Kristina McMillan from TOPO join us to talk about executive presence.
As VP of Research she spends every single day having exciting, interesting, and sometimes challenging conversations with revenue leaders across a lot of well-known organizations.
She’s the perfect person to dive into executive presence and unpack how salespeople can aim to develop it.
Today’s conversation is a little different from some of the other discussions we've had before on The Sales Engagement podcast. Our guest on this episode is Adam Steinberg, CEO of 10xFinders. He has spent almost a decade working in the recruiting industry.
What you might not know about recruiters is that they’re really just expert salespeople.
And there’s a lot of great lessons that we can learn from them.
So, I wanted to focus this discussion on the parallels between sales and recruiting, on key principles that sales organizations can take from the recruiting industry to be more effective.
Unlike many leaders, Kevin Dorsey figured out his sales team doesn’t have a work ethic problem. When they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, it’s not because they’re lazy.
It’s because they’re scared.
Kevin is the VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop. One of his biggest passions there is coaching salespeople beyond their fears. But, he’s coaching them in a way the industry has yet to see.
Kevin had an epiphany one night as he was thinking about why his sales reps just wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do. At the time, he was reading a book that advised, when it comes to solving a problem, throw your first answer away and see what answer #2 is.
His first answer was the same one most leaders have: The problem was the salesperson’s work ethic. They just don’t know how to work hard. He decided to follow the advice of the book and rule that out. After two whiskeys, he thought, It has to be fear. What else could it be?
With this realization in mind, and a little more research, Kevin started doing three things with his team that has seen tremendous results. Tune in to hear more.
What would it take to reach President’s club more than six times?
Tom Castley, VP of Account Management at Apptio, is one of those rare finds who’s actually lived it. He always worked in the software industry and held numerous leadership positions, but part of him always knew he’d end up in sales.
We’re so glad he did. Because now, we get to soak in the wealth of wisdom he’s gained on his journey to becoming a top 1% seller. On this episode, Tom walks us through the four Ts to consider if you want to reach President’s Club, specific habits that helped him, and so much more.
We haven't done a lot of account executive focused episodes on The Sales Engagement podcast yet.
But we want to change that.
Rebecca Feiten is Senior Enterprise Account Executive at Outreach. In her role, she’s selling to accounts with 2000 people or more. And a lot of them involve a complicated array of internal stakeholders, large teams, or selling a multitude of products.
Nevertheless, Rebecca is one of our top performers, executing well on a daily basis.
How does she do it?
Well, that’s what I invited her on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about. On this show Rebecca is sharing the three things she credits with her daily success.
Here’s what she said about managing follow-up, account planning, and building a coalition of internal advocates.
Over the past six years, one of the biggest things that's changed is the way we communicate as people. Six years and prior we communicated primarily through our phones. But now, we have so many other options, like video, chat, text, and voice.
The landscape now is that we have different pockets of people who prefer to communicate in different ways. Some people still like using the phone while others only want to communicate via message.
As a salesperson, you need to be tapping into all of those pockets to reach your true potential.
One of the newer channels through which you can reach people is social. So, on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, I interviewed social selling expert, Daniel Disney. He’s built an incredible presence on LinkedIn, and he’s also the Founder and CEO of The Daily Sales. And yes, that’s his real last name.
Daniel gave us his best advice on how to use social selling to increase engagement with your customers.
Whether you like it or not, your career is based on how good of a company you choose to work with.
You could be an unbelievable sales rep, but if the company you pick is bad, you're just not going to have a great career there.
With so many options, and so many places to choose from, how do you even think about starting the decision making process of where to take the next step in your sales career?
Well, that’s what Sam Jacobs came on the latest episode of The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about. Sam is the Founder of Revenue Collective and host of The Sales Hacker podcast.
On this show, he talked about the two criteria you should focus on when choosing an employer: market size and the quality of leadership.
So often in sales we're focused on winning, scoring the deal, and getting out of it what we want. But the person on the other side of the deal is thinking about winning, too.
And if you can help them score a win, you’ll probably score one, too.
Tip Moore believes that winning starts with connecting — you’ve got to connect with the client to truly understand how to help them. So, how do you do that?
Well, that’s what I invited Tip to talk about on the latest episode of The Sales Engagement podcast. Tip is the Enterprise Sales Director at Pushpay. These are his thoughts on connecting with clients to find the win.
On today’s episode of The Sales Engagement podcast I talked with Jeff Bajorek about how technology can actually make the lives of sales people more complicated. What does that mean? And how can you ensure you’re using technology to enable your sales teams to be more successful? We cover all of that and more in this episode.
You’ve seen the movies. Coffee’s for closers, right?
It’s a fun concept, a bit tongue-in-cheek. You close a deal, bump chests, and feel accomplished. The problem is, some salespeople actually mean it when they say “Always be closing.”
Instead, Josh Jordan, Founder of preHIRED, says you should “Always be clarifying.” It doesn’t matter if you close a deal if you don’t know why you did.
Listen in to get yourself out of a closing mindset and into one that will help you win more sustainably.
Video can be a great way to create authentic conversations with your buyers and drive engagement. So, on this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, I interviewed Sati Hillyer, who talked about the power of video for enterprises. Sati is Founder and CEO of OneMob, a video engagement platform.
Check out what he had to say about why and how you should be using video to drive engagement.
The discovery call.
It’s that ever important step between a cold call, and a bonafide customer relationship. It’s what takes the relationship from prospect to partner.
But what should the role of the discovery call be? How early should you do one? What kind of work needs to be done before you come out of the gate swinging. What kind of homework do you need to do?
To be sure, there are a lot of questions, and probably just as many answers.
Jamal Reimer has closed over $150 million of SaaS revenue in his career.
I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.
That revenue total includes a string of wins over several years, but it also includes giant mega deals for Oracle, where Jamal is a Strategic Account Manager.
That made him the perfect person to talk to about how to close massive deals. And his advice did not disappoint.
In this episode, you’ll hear all about the principles that have allowed Jamal to close mega deals. You’ll also hear his favorite big deal story, one that came right down to the final hours before the fiscal year ran out before a rather dramatic finish.
Traditionally, “alignment” between teams looked like this:
Marketing did its thing then passed (or, more accurately, threw) the baton to sales, who then closed the deal and passed the baton again to customer success.
There was a lot of movement, but there was one crucial element missing: synergy.
In this episode Sterling Snow, SVP of Revenue at Divvy, talks about how to line up multiple teams around a single target—and why that target should always be revenue focused.
Some people think sales outreach is new, but it’s been going on for decades.
What once was called “lead nurturing” is now “outreach,” but both ideas are essentially the same: You want to be as personalized as possible, while maintaining scalability.
In this episode we interview Jesus Requena, Director of Growth Marketing at Unity Technologies, who talks about how distinguishing between high-touch and low-touch leads has allowed their company to scale their outreach while still maintaining a human element for the right accounts.
In building an organization, you need to set expectations for your team. Your people are the most important assets you have. Providing them with expectations will build a culture around your company AND the people you care about. It’s that simple. When you care about your employees, your team and your organization, you will succeed. So, don’t reschedule your next one-on-one meeting!
Today on the podcast, we’re joined by Gary Smyth. Gary is the Senior Director of Sales at Informatica. He gives us the inside scoop on building teams and providing your team with the knowledge they need to make decisions to better your organization.
We’ve all been there.
Every one of us has worked for one of those bosses. The one that hovers over your shoulder making sure that you do things right. Or the one that seems to burn all their employees out in record time.
Recently on the Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Justin Welsh, Senior Vice President of Sales at PatientPop, to talk about letting go of control, finding the best talent, and so much more.
Rejection.
We all face it. Everybody who has ever live has had to deal with being turned down. With having someone not want what you’re selling.
The question is not, “if you get rejected?” The question is, “when you get rejected.”
On a recent episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, we sat down with Morgan J Ingram, Director of Sales Execution & Evolution at JBarrows Sales Training. Morgan has made it his life’s mission to be the world’s number one motivator.
We often focus on the product, the service, the features, and the functionality. And by doing that, we forget about the why. Before we make that first cold call or jump into a demo, we need to remember why we're here.
That’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode of The Sales Engagement podcast. Our guest today is Ryan Reisert, Co-founder and CEO of The Sales Developers, a company focused on delivering world-class, outbound sales. On this show, Ryan talked about the why — why we do what we do.
Let’s dig in.
There are two big mistakes we make in onboarding: too much or too little. Too little is having your reps come in for a two day’s worth of onboarding. But that's not new hire training. That's orientation. Too much is trying to teach them everything. So, where’s the sweet spot?
That’s what we’re talking on today's episode of The Sales Engagement podcast. In this episode, we're welcoming back Lauren Bailey. You might remember Lauren, from Episode 35, where we talked about the right way to leave a sales voicemail. Lauren is the Founder of Factor 8, a company dedicated to building confidence with frontline sales reps and managers. She's also Founder of Sales Bar. And Girls Club. No big deal.
Today Lauren shared her thoughts on what training for reps should look like. Here’s what she had to say.
Whether you’re a millennial or not, we’re simply more comfortable texting, emailing, social selling, and more in today’s day and age. While those methods are very effective, there’s no method more effective than looking someone in the eyes and building a relationship.
Tom Alaimo, Sales Manager at TechTarget, is our guest today. He figured out early on in his career that he needed to learn more about his customers if he was going to get serious about meeting more of them in person. He needed to know what they read, what they think about, and their lingo in order to build stronger in-person interactions.
On today’s episode, Tom walks us through why face time is worth the time, he gives us five tips for nailing your next sales meeting and shares his advice on ending a sales presentation strong.
Imagine an organization with an average performing sequence that gets a 66% open rate and 25% reply rate. And one where their best performing sequence actually gets them a 76% open rate.
Pick your jaw off the ground, these are real numbers from David Hershenson, the Director of Sales Development and Productivity at tray.io. We were so honored to host him on the Sales Engagement podcast where he shared some of the secrets that have led to this extraordinary success.
David’s team has six specific outbound sequences they use and track today based on the certain buyers they’re going after. The majority of the time, they’re using emails, voicemails and social media touches. He says it’s really important to have a predefined pattern over a set number of days to maximize the SDR’s chance of getting a response.
Tune in to hear David’s three steps to creating a successful sequence.
As data has gotten cheaper, companies have started buying it. All of it.
But that’s actually the worst thing we can do. Just ask your sales team.
Instead, we should should focus on what attributes matter the most and dig deep on those, said Michael Pollack, our latest guest on The Sales Engagement podcast. He is the Co-Founder at Intricately, a company dedicated to helping cloud vendors understand how businesses are investing in their digital infrastructure.
In this episode, Michael explained the 6 main types of data. He also talked about optimizing your sales organization, outlining a great framework you can use to identify the data that matters most to you.
Here’s what he had to say.
Every single entrepreneur on the planet - past, present, & future, - have one thing in common: They have big, lofty, crazy goals. They have a vision for their company. A vision for what they want to do, the product they want to bring to market, and how they think that product could make the world a better place.
But how do you get there? How do you move from “I have this absolutely crazy idea,” to “this idea is coming to fruition and becoming a reality?”
Your emails aren’t working.
How much time and effort have you spent trying to craft what you thought was the perfect email campaign? You edit and re-edit, and finally, you are ready to put it out into the world, and you hit “send.”
And nothing happens.
Is your company that uninteresting? Not at all. Odds are, you’re just going about your email all wrong. And it’s not your fault, it’s probably just that nobody has ever taught you how to write emails well. After all, how many terribly written emails do you get every day? And what do you do with those emails?
Just try to imagine organizing 300+ events all over the world--every single year.
(You’re dying a little bit, right?)
For Andy Mowat and Dan Murphy at Culture Amp, that’s reality.
And they’re loving it.
And they want you to be able to explode your ability to offer and organize events, too, whether that’s an intimate 10-person dinner or a flagship event with 2,000 people.
“Events are a core part of our community offering,” Andy said.
Andy’s the Vice President of GTM Operations, and Dan’s the Director of Global Sales Development. They’re on fire with how they turned events, which was a big deal before they arrived, into an absolute machine.
That’s 12 different types of events.
With over 300 events per year.
Ranging from 10 to 2,000 people.
So, how do they do it?
There’s an old poem that says, “No man is an island.”
Nobody does it alone. Nobody gets to the place in their career where they want to be on their own, without others helping them get there. Ask anybody at the top of their field how they got there, and they’ll talk about the people that helped them get there.
The people who believed in them. The people who gave them chances. The people that helped them see something in themselves that they couldn’t see on their own.
Roderick Jefferson, CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates, was on the Sales Engagement podcast lately talking about mentors and sponsors. What they? Why do you need them? And what is the difference?
We spoke with Cara Felleman, Director of Sales Development and Inside Sales at Resy, a restaurant reservation platform.
Felleman believes that learning from failure gives you the grit, the willingness to go the extra mile to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Previous failures prepared her to start her current job.
In this episode we unpack:
- Why missing her first sales goal was a good thing.
- Questions to ask the top salespeople.
- Trust the numbers.
- Failure Academy.
- A successful sales manager’s role.
- Develop your own brain trust.
- Another sweet success for Felleman?
Are you speaking the same language as your customer? Are you sure?
To truly understand a prospect’s language, you need to understand their context according to Whitney Sales, General Partner at Acceleprise Ventures and creator of The Sales Method.
You’ll learn:
- What does speaking your customer’s language mean?
- What are the three things you need to look for in a customer?
- How to use their objection language to make the sale.
- Have your customers teach you their language.
- Why pitching 50 times a day is the best way to improve.
- Some final advice.
We have a big announcement to make! We are so pumped to finally release the Sales Engagement book.
To celebrate, Mark Kosoglow, VP of Sales at Outreach, co-hosted today’s podcast episode to tell us all about the new book. Mark has been at Outreach since the very beginning. He joined the team because he saw an opportunity to change the way sales is done. He is passionate about helping salespeople be more successful in this important profession.
Mark considers himself a sales philosopher. And we love that! Because like most philosophers, he desired to put his learnings into a book. But he didn’t do it on his own. One of his colleagues had the idea of getting the best minds in sales engagement together to create a cloud of ideas that they could put into a book.
It comes down to: We think is better than Me think. And because of that, we’re celebrating the introduction of the Sales Engagement book!
What can you learn about sales from someone who’s struggled with a drug and alcohol addiction? So much.
Kyle Bastien is the director of sales enablement at Drift. There have been so many moments over the years where he has been asked about his sales methodology. Why he does things the way he does them. He quickly started to realize that the most common things people asked him about just so happened to be habits he developed and had to learn on his journey to getting and staying sober.
He describes this process as learning how to be a normal human being. He was using drugs and alcohol all the time-before, during and after work. But now that he’s three and half years sober, he’s got a lot of great learnings to share. He believes getting through substance abuse helped him become a better salesperson in three ways:
- Healthy Habits
- Extreme Ownership
- Better Conversations
Let’s dig deeper into these theories.
Diversity.
So many people are craving it in their organizations today, but it seems like so few people are actually addressing or talking about it, for fear of offending someone, or saying the wrong thing.
We all agree that we need diverse workforces. It’s clear form an ethical, moral, and social justice standpoint why hiring a diverse workforce is important. Nobody wants to work in a place where everybody looks, thinks, talks, and acts exactly like them.
And more importantly, nobody wants to buy from a place like that either.
But beyond the ethical and moral benefits of a diverse workforce, what if there were business benefits too? What if hiring a diverse sales team actually meant that you’d be making more sales, and bringing in more revenue?
We’ve all been there.
You’ve done the pre-call planning. You have a game plan. You’re ready to rock.
Then, the client asks that question. Makes that comment.
Suddenly, you’re lost.
What do you do?
How do you get your message across, when your plans go out the window?
Well, that’s what Andy Eninger came on The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about.
Andy is the Learning and Development Program Designer for Second City Works.
Second City Works is the B2B professional services arm of Second City, the nursery for all of your favorite improv comedians. If they're on SNL, they've probably come through Second City. Like Tina Fey.
Anyway. Second City Works helps people like us deliver a better performance in conference calls or client meetings.
Here’s what Andy had to say about improvising strategically.
We’ve all been there.
The new reps come in.
So enthusiastic. On fire.
And then, they tank. Just for a little bit. It’s dreaded, but feels inevitable.
So, what do you do?
Well, that’s what Matt Schatz (pronounced “shots”. As in, “I went to the doctor and got a lot of shots) came on The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about.
Matt’s a really unique guy.
He grew up in the Bay area, the moved to San Antonio for college. He graduated with a masters degree in teaching, and started teaching Social Studies to 6th graders.
Then, his best friend started a little company focused on web design. The company grew, pivoted, and eventually underwent a name change. The name of the company now? Rackspace. After working at Rackspace for ten years Matt spent some time doing volunteer work in Southeast Asia.
Now, he’s the SVP of Global Sales at WP Engine.
Here’s what he has to say about the Dummy Curve.
Look at your email inbox.
No really, check it out. How many sales emails do you have? Yeah, us too.
Everyone wants 15 minutes. As it becomes harder and harder to differentiate, it becomes more and more essential to target the right accounts at the right moment.
We all believe in intent data, intuitively. But operationalizing it … that’s another story.
That’s where Ben Ramsey comes in. He’s a 3-time VP of sales, who recently stepped out on his own to create a upcoming intent data sales product.
On this episode of the Sales Engagement podcast, Ben tells us why intent data is here to stay, and gives us his thoughts on how it may be utilized.
43%.
That’s the number of of B2B sales reps that actually achieve quota year to year.
Just because your sales reps know what they need to do to seal the deal, doesn’t mean they’re actually doing it.
Solving the knowing gap isn’t the problem. It's solving the “doing” problem.
Nick Siddoway came on The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about solving what he calls the “doing” problem.
He’s the Executive VP of Sales and Delivery at Primary Intelligence, an organization dedicated to helping sales teams reach their quotas, beat out the competition, and stay ahead of the curve.
Nick’s company recently put out the Done Differently Report. The report evaluated one thousand B2B purchase decisions that were made. The decisions were either to buy, or not to buy. Primary Intelligence talked to the decision makers - they wanted to understand what drove the prospects not to buy. What could the vendors have done differently to win their business?
“Sales is the best career in the world!” says Adam Clark, the director of sales at Repay.
“It is the only career that you can work for somebody else while being your own boss. You are responsible for your own destiny. You can decide what you want to get paid. You can decide what hours you want to work, and you can ultimately decide how successful or not you want to be. So have fun doing it.”
Clark offered five tips on how to succeed in sales (without really trying).
What if you had a crystal ball?
What if you could see the trends and changes that would take place in sales over the next few years? Well, that's sort of what Tim Flynn has. (he says he doesn't, but we're not convinced).
A seasoned expert, Tim came on The Sales Engagement podcast to talk about a shift he expects to see in the B2B space.
”OutBound 2019 is Cirque du Solei takes over a rock concert to disrupt a sales meeting.” -- Mark Hunter
“That’s how over the top OutBound is. It's an amazing event because it's all about outbound prospecting, 100% outbound prospecting,” says Mark Hunter, co-founder of the conference, nationally in-demand sales speaker, and the best-selling author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price and High-Profit Prospecting.
For the third year in a row, the OutBound Conference (Atlanta, April 23-26, 2019), promises to rock the world of sales with the themes of Prospecting, Productivity, and Pipeline.
This year’s speakers includes: Jeb Blount, Anthony Iannarino, Mark Hunter, Mike Weinberg, Colleen Francis, Andrea Waltz, Victor Antonio, Jeffrey Gitomer, Bob Burg, Waldo Waldman, Shari Levitin, Jen Gluckow, Larry Levine, James Muir, Max Altschuler, Chris Beall, Bernadette McClellan, Meredith Elliott Powell, Lee Salz, and Gene McNaughton.
Outsourcing your sales development isn’t necessarily a good fit for every organization. While it has the ability to save time and money for some, it simply doesn’t make sense for others.
Kevin Warner knows this. As the CEO and outbound sales leader at Leadium, he helps organizations engage in strategic sales development activities that bring you qualified leads. From strategy to execution, they provide full service support.
Do your salespeople need the training to learn how to close better?
To find out some amazing cold calling techniques, we spoke with Josh Braun, the Founder of SalesDNA, which helps companies generate a steady flow of meetings each month with qualified buyers and migrate them forward to the point where they buy.
Great salespeople are made not born. You need to look at the whole training system.
To get the best sales hiring and training tips, we spoke with Erin Anderson, commercial global sales director at Egnyte, which delivers secure content collaboration, compliant data protection, and simple infrastructure modernization, all through a single SaaS solution.
Train your sales team with these six Ps:
- Persona
- Plan
- Probe
- Prepare
- Prequalify
- Post-mortem
This is how Dominic Atkatz, Sales Development Manager at FLEXE.com, does it.
FLEXE is behind the world's first collaborative warehousing platform and networks over 1,000 warehouses around the country. They help companies that have ever-changing warehousing needs connect with companies that are seeking to maximize the utility of their warehouse space and labor.
AI is everywhere.
From our phones to our cars, from our email accounts to our facebook accounts. If a company can automate customer support and outreach, odds are they’re already doing so. The only question is, to what extent?
But how do you use AI for sales? What is it? What is it not? Where is the difference between AI and machine learning, and what are the challenges that exist in the AI sales space?
“Unless you’re Oprah or Barack Obama, no one cares what you think.”
There’s often a gap in experience between sales reps and the people they are trying to sell to.
This can lead to prospects feeling like they are being told how to do things by someone who has no business trying to tell them anything. Fortunately, David Priemer has spent his career studying proven practices to overcome this gap.
David is the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist of Cerebral Selling a company dedicated to helping reps, leaders, and their organizations supercharge their growth through understanding the science of sales.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, David explains what experience asymmetry is and 3 ways your sales reps can overcome it to increase their credibility.
We know measuring sales productivity is all a numbers game.
But chances are you may be doing it wrong.
Rob Käll started working on this problem when his company over a period of 3 years went from 2 to 100 sales reps and he didn’t get 50 times the bookings. And he always thought there must be an answer to that.
Rob is the CEO and Co-founder of Cien.ai, a software tool that uses machine learning and natural language processing to help measure the productivity of sales reps and identify their points of improvement.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, Rob explains how sales productivity should be defined, how it should be measured, and how doing so can be an incredibly effective way to achieve predictable growth.
If you’re 30 years old, you grew up using AOL Instant Messenger to build relationships.
They are the people making business decisions today.
On this episode of the The Sales Engagement Podcast, I talk with Dan Gottlieb about why chat is so revolutionary now and why it’s changing sales.
Dan is an Analyst at Topo, a research and advisory firm that helps companies adopt the patterns and plays to achieve drive revenue and grow faster.
Lead Forms are not immediate, they’re not interactive, and they don’t necessarily connect you to the right person right away. But Chat might have big potential in the near future to effect more than just the early stage of inbound.
Dan breaks down the reasons Chat has tremendous potential for your business and answers some of the objections to why companies don’t invest in it.
What do you tell a sales leader who just wants the team to do what they say?
“I say 1) You’re not a leader. And 2) Get ready for attrition.”
Roderick Jefferson is the CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates a sales enablement consultant that focuses on driving growth in small/mid-size and Fortune 500 companies.
With over 20 years in sales enablement, Roderick has gained a lot of practical insight on the tools and strategies sales leaders use to foster growth in their teams.
Roderick believes that one of the most powerful things a sales leader can do is learn to listen to their subordinates and demonstrate that they value the needs of their team over the things that they want to say. On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, Roderick explains a 3 part conversation framework that will help any person in a leadership position to become not just a sales manager, but a leader growing leaders.
Alice Heiman is the Founder of Alice Heiman LLC an agency that provides companies dealing with complex B2B sales the tactics and strategies to experience rapid exponential growth.
She also is the Co-Founder and CRO of TradeShowMakeover an online summit focused solely on helping companies to stop leaving money on the trade show floor.
When Alice is consulting a company on how to dominate the trade show, often times the biggest point of failure she identifies is poor planning.
Trade shows are a big expense; you need to generate plenty of revenue from the event.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast, Alice broke down the 3 phases she says are crucial to Trade Show ROI.
There are robots out there working for call centers who are better at providing a stellar customer experience than some of your sales team members. Is that your team? If your customer experience isn’t a top priority for everyone in the organization then you’re not doing it right.
Dale Zwizinski is the SVP of North American Sales at SmartAction where he is crazy passionate about building a customer experience that will have people excited to speak with a bot. SmartAction is a customer experience organization with AI technology designed to make life less hard. They’re on a mission to make life less hard for those customers who have to dial into their favorite brand’s call center.
Dale is sure about one thing: the customer experience is everything. On today’s episode, we talk about how leaving an empty seat in every meeting brings this life.
“It’s about helping others achieve what they didn’t think is possible, “ he shared.
And what’s the best way to do that?
Communicate.
Sales has progressed in so many directions in recent year. It can be confusing to keep up with the latest. In this episode, we get back to the basics with Mark Hunter, aka, The Sales Hunter.
Kevin Ramani has worked for Nasa. He’s built things with his hands that are currently on Mars.
But years ago he made a switch to something he says is way harder: starting companies.
Kevin is the Founder and Sales Coach at Ramani Ventures a coaching service to help founders and CEOs accelerate success by reaching go-to-market fit and scaling a high performing sales organization. Previously he was the Head of Sales at Close.io a sales workflow optimization tool to help organizations close more deals.
Before finding incredible success with Close.io and his current company, he’s been through the rollercoaster of founding companies that have failed miserably. Now he works with early-stage startup founders to help coach them and build a repeatable sales process.
Kevin has mastered networking with a unique skill that not many put into practice well. In this episode, we talk about the one question Kevin asks to build a robust network, something that listeners can apply to their sales process for much greater success.
You’ve mastered your pitch but what about active listening or taking the focus off yourself?
We’ve all experienced cringeworthy sales behavior. And many, if we’re honest, have practiced it.
Cringe-inducing tactics make prospects want to get away. And the salespeople who practice them get burned out. Why? Well for one, they don’t understand their why.
And as Amy Volas joined me on this episode of the Sales Engagement Podcast to point out, they display 3 highly destructive sales mistakes.
Amy is the Founder and CEO of Avenue Talent Partners a zero-cringe recruiting company dedicated to helping businesses hire proven sales performers.
Sales has always been Amy’s first love, and there is no one better to highlight the traits that make the meaningful connections needed to close deals.
“He told us one of the co-founders of our competitor parties with Kanye West, and brought a picture like a private investigator.”
The candidates that really stand out to Test.io are the ones who can find out under the surface things about their industry and competition that they couldn’t have simply googled.
Max Schulz is the Head of Sales in the US at Test.io. He joined me on the podcast to talk about what Test.io has done differently to equip their SDR’s and how they find the best candidates for hire.
Test.io was founded in Berlin in 2011 and in 2016 launched a customer success office in San Francisco. The sales and success team has gone from then being just Max to now an office of 20 and a mostly outbound organization. There is very little inbound that they rely on. So Max has had a front-row seat to the building and scaling of sales teams.
Max Altschuler hosts Dogpatch Advisors to discuss the future of sales engagement. They discuss the Outbound Ops model, custom code to find relevance at scale, visual prospecting and other concepts from their research and development efforts.
Sales is a confidence sport. You’re beat up all day long with rejections, and it can discouraging until you get that one successful sale that gets you hooked.
That feeling of success is what gets Lauren Bailey out of bed every morning. Not so much feeling it herself, but helping other sales professionals feel successful more often in their work. Lauren is the President of Factor8 and Founder of the new e-learning platform The Sales Bar.
She found her sweet spot in helping sales professionals love the job more by training them to be successful selling over the phone. Email is a comfortable barrier for a lot of sales professionals, but when you skip the sales calls you miss out opportunities for personal connection and engagement.
Lauren walks us through what kills confidence the most when it comes to leaving voicemails and how to do it right to see a 50% improvement in call backs.
Practice makes perfect. Well, maybe not always perfect, but at the very least, practice will always make progress. It’s true whether you’re training for a marathon, teaching a child how to ride a bike, or learning how to pitch your product.
Despite this reality, not enough sales companies put enough effort into creating opportunities for their reps to practice what they’re pitching each and every day. Imagine the progress they could make with even just 10 minutes of practice a week.
Bryan Naas is the Director of Sales Engagement at Lessonly, a sales training software. They work primarily with sales and customer service teams to help them train reps and provide development opportunities to practice at scale so that they can perform better when it’s time to get in front of a customer.
Your team of salespeople should be nothing more than an army of storytellers because stories improve engagement. Any position on your team that entails major front-facing time with prospects should be able to speak clearly and deeply on your product using the power of story.
Beau Brooks doesn’t just want his sales team pitching a product to a prospect, he wants them to passionately share relatable stories of success from others who’ve said yes. As the VP of Sales at Formstack, Beau leads the team of people on the frontlines; the group that interacts with leaders in diverse industries, which can make relatable storytelling hard to keep up with.
He wants nothing more than for his team to be equipped to confidently share the value former customers have received from their product. This helps people understand why they’re even talking to you in the first place. As Beau says, it should be less about here’s what my product does and more about here’s how people are benefiting from my product.
Role specialization is becoming more and more important to the customer experience.
Roy Raanani, CEO of Chorus.ai, joins us to chat about how the conversational intelligence leader creates a seamless customer experience (and how you can too).
If you want to take at a deep dive into the mind of customers to improve their experience, this is the episode for you.
ALERT: Double-Length Extraordinary Episode hosted by Sales Hacker's Scott Barker!
Richard Harris is one of our favorite people to sit down with. Before branching out on his own to start The Harris Consulting Group, Richard spent many years building SDR teams and running sales operations. He’s been immersed in sales culture long enough to hold a wealth of knowledge that he’s always willing to share.
He even began his interview on The Sales Engagement podcast with a great sales tip: what he calls the question behind the question. A method to better understand someone’s perspective and intention when they ask you a question.
He told us, “whenever someone asks you a question, there’s always a picture in their head. Ask them to paint that picture.” So when I asked him how he sees sales engagement changing between sellers and buyers today, he asked me, “when you said that word sales engagement, what picture was going through your head?” Thrown off for a second, I quickly answered, “a handshake.”
The result? Richard knew exactly what I meant by sales engagement. I wasn’t asking about tech stack, I was trying to get to the human element in sales, and Richard’s question got us there. Our conversation on today’s episodes is filled with techniques like this one to make you a better communicator and engage your customers more effectively.
How much is your sales development representative producing for your business? Are you pleased with that number?
In a traditional sales funnel, an SDR will work the top of the funnel sorting through it and finding the best qualified leads. But what if you could outsource that top of funnel function, or “grunt work,” and increase production by 2-3 times? No, you don’t fire all your SDRs, you outsource so that they can hyper focus on that actual work that leads to sales.
Rex Biberston, Co-Founder and COO of The Sales Developers, helps businesses improve their outbound sales strategies. One of the most effective ways to do so? Outsource the top of the funnel function.
Do you ever think, “If only I could get in front of more people, I’d be able to close more business?” Those thoughts hound every sales person in every industry. Video provides the way to get your shot.
On this episode of The Sales Engagement podcast, Stephen Pacinelli from BombBomb joins us. BombBomb is an entire company dedicated to helping sales professionals send personalized video messages to prospects. Stephen’s the CMO, but he says he’s just a salesperson masquerading as a marketer.
Listen in to discover Stephen’s top secrets to creating personalized videos that get opened, get watched, and get results.
It’s a modern workforce, and usually that means technology. But in our quest to pursue the convenience of technology we’ve neglected a powerful tool for sales conversations: the telephone. All of your efforts in sales should be driving more conversations because that’s what creates business.
“If you’re not good on the phone, you’re going to fail,” says Ryan Donohue, Head of Sales at FDAzilla. Ryan helps businesses regulated by the FDA (20% of the US economy) access the data needed to be better prepared for FDA inspections. As the leader of the sales team, he also trains new sales reps in pursuing excellent phone conversations.
So much of the workforce today is made up of people who have grown up with cellphones. They’re so comfortable with texting and email that they actually feel reluctant to use the phone for what it was originally designed to do: make phone calls.
Texts and emails are so much easier to manage because you have a safety barrier in response time. But when you pick up the phone, that barrier disappears between you and the other person, which can be pretty intimidating. When you’re so concerned about having all the knowledge, facts, and figures you might need for a conversation, making a phone call is terrifying. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The sales process is a long and arduous one. Having a healthy pipeline or funnel is what we all hope to create, but why doesn’t it always happen?
Is your account executive or salesperson a general one? In other words, are they doing all the work? When your sales rep is in charge of every layer of the sales process, from prospecting to qualifying to pitching, getting just one sale can be exhausting. That’s why many companies, especially in the tech industry, are breaking down that process to allow a sales rep do the one thing they’re really good at: sell.
Lindsey Liranzo manages the BDR and SDR team over at ZOOM where she’s seen these roles double the amount the amount business they’re able to generate. A former SDR herself, she loves the excitement and ability a BDR/SDR has to be able to call a CIO and give them a value proposition. So many great skills are learned in this role, which is why she loves developing them.
When thinking about a SDRs, most don’t give them the credit that they deserve. Typically seen as a temporary stop in a career progression, Nick Psaros, Director of Sales with Egnyte, joins us to chat about the effective game plan that has allowed his SDRs to be successful while providing much needed recognition in the company.
At Outreach, we love events. We love attending them, talking about them on our podcast, and launching them. It’s one of the most effective ways to get in front of your prospects and customers in one place.
“It’s almost like an ABM in person,” says Max Altschuler, our VP of Marketing. Not only do you get to just be around people who are in your customer profile, but you get to meet many of them face-to-face as well. Finding targeted face-to-face time is so valuable, and events are one of the best places to do so.
But maybe you’re not convinced that events are worth your business’ money. Travel is expensive and it causes some of your best employees to leave the office for a few days. So why should you continue to send your sales reps to events? Better yet, how can you ensure you’ll get a return on your investment?
Make sure they do these five things before they buy their plane ticket.
Isn’t it exciting when you’ve got a ton of leads at the top of your funnel? They make their way through the different steps you’ve set up and you eagerly watch as they inch closer to the bottom. But just as you’re getting ready to bring out the demo or agreement, they shut the door.
What went wrong? They seemed like the perfect customer based on your qualifications and yet they didn’t bite…
Jeremy von Halle knows this feeling all too well. He’s the senior director of revenue operations at Jellyvision where he helps people understand and choose healthcare/benefits packages.
It’s a complicated industry, but he’s out to make it a little bit easier for companies and their employers. Working at Jellyvision, he realized why the right customers weren’t taking action and purchasing their product; it was all about the timing. So he began implementing strategies to help his business development reps spend less time on leads that wouldn’t bite because the timing was wrong.
Sales is hard to stay on top of. When the industry, and the technology that pushes it forward, is constantly changing, it’s natural to want to keep up and change with it.
Big, sweeping changes feel exciting and innovative, but have you stopped to consider whether you’ve mastered (or even tested) the art of change management? Or do you tend to just announce a change with the expectation that everyone will buy-in? It’s an important question to ask yourself as a business leader.
We sat down with Chad Dyar, Director of Sales Enablement at OnDeck. His role is about change, but more than change, it’s about healthy growth and development. As the leader of the sales enablement team, his focus is on driving sales productivity and efficiency through performance management, process improvement, technology implementation, new tool adoption, and creating development opportunities.
Square: It’s led by one of the great CEOs of our time, Jack Dorsey. On the surface, it can be easy to think Square’s moving at lighting speed, constantly creating technology that’s changing their industry.
You’d be totally correct.
But you’d also be right if you thought that they had an old school sales mentality: boots-on-the-ground, literally knocking-on-the-door sales tactics. Somehow, they’ve combined both.
We know because we talked to the Head of Sales, Tom Hanrahan. This guy’s an anomaly himself.
He started his sales career selling uniforms with Aramark before moving to NYC to work for LivingSocial as a Sales Leader. Next up was Seattle, with a small company named Amazon. Of course, you he had a stint in silicon valley. But his next move was unexpected: He took up the Head of Sales position for Square, and moved to St. Louis.
Tom came on our Sales Engagement Podcast to share how Square is not only pushing the envelope in POS and credit card processing, but it’s revolutionizing every sales tactic, by inventing new ones and combining old ones.
Their sales teams borrow from every category but fits in none.
You have to check this out.
On this special Thanksgiving episode, your host, Joe Vignolo shares his thoughts on how gratitude can impact sales productivity.
Take a break from the grind, think about what you're grateful for and come back from the holiday weekend feeling refreshed and recharged.
As a special thank you to our listeners, we want to offer 20% off your ticket to the upcoming Unleash Sales Engagement Conference. Head to https://unleash.outreach.io/ and use promo code: podgoals for your special offer.
The world is changing, and with it, the way that we work.
The notion of one central office for everybody seems to be on its way out. Everybody commuting to headquarters from the far flung corners of the area is an old and increasingly outdated idea. The remote office is becoming more and more mainstream.
Most all of the large companies are putting down remote offices in places far from their headquarters. Amazon. AirBNB. Google. Nike. You name the company, they probably have a remote office.
The benefits of the remote office are more than we can name here. They can be more affordable, offer better tax incentives, and allow you to reach a different type of potential employee.
Account intelligence is usually a term associated with marketing, not sales. Marketing collects details on a prospective buyer— what new projects they have, company growth, new teams, etc., and sales never sees the information. Doesn’t that sound like valuable intel for sales to have?
We think so, too.
So does Alex Greer, CEO of al HQ. He founded the company in 2018 to give sellers the ability to see when buyers are looking to purchase solutions within the sellers’ industries. He knows that’s the sort of information he would have loved to have in his 10-year sales career: Alex managed regional sales all the way to global sales teams at Cloudera, Medallia, and Lucifer Lighting.
Alex is dedicated to helping sales professionals know when their buyers are researching and ready to purchase, and he shared some of his best tips on our Sales Engagement podcast.
We caught it all right here.
Personalization is all the rage these days. Personalize your messages and you’ll get higher open rates. But there are two guys preaching that relevance may be even more important to consider in your outbound ops.
Ben Salzman and Kyle Williams run Dogpatch Advisors where they help companies increase revenue through outbound ops and data-driven sales techniques.
Another thing they teach their clients to do is visual prospecting. There is just too much information and context trying to be crammed into one email these days, often times causing you to lose the prospect. While forgetting that an image is worth 1,000 words.
Visual prospecting is dynamically tailored imagery that goes to a specific prospect; essentially putting their world into the message. But how do you do that for hundreds of prospects?
LinkedIn, email, phone calling— it’s all part of the normal B2B sales approach. Strength in various channels is simply table stakes. Breaking through the noise and offering a real relationship to buyers is the challenge every B2B salesperson faces.
Kris Rudeegraap received and sent plenty of the above in his decade in various sales positions in silicon valley. After 10 years in sales, he decided to challenge the communication norm and founded Sendoso, an integrated direct mail and gifting solution.
But don’t think annoying cable bill ads. Think more warm and fuzzy socks, fancy macaroons, and engraved wine bottles.
Kris hopped on our Sales Engagement podcast and delivered a powerful message on why direct mail isn’t just on a comeback, but it’s essential to your B2B sales program.
No matter who you are, it’s painfully obvious that the lack of women in the world of sales leadership is a problem.
There are women in the roles, to be sure. But the overwhelming majority of those in positions of sales leadership are men.
It’s a problem, but it’s not an unsolvable problem.
What comes to mind when you think of salespeople?
Is it the used car salesman with his hair slicked back, desperate to get you into that car before you leave the lot today?
Or that snake oil salesman from decades ago traveling from town to town peddling something that he knows is a hoax?
If you ask customers the question, “Do you like talking to salespeople?” the answer is almost always going to be a unanimous no. Even sales people don’t like talking to salespeople. But why is that?
Joanne Black, founder of No More Cold Calling, is on a mission to end cold calling. For more than 22 years, she’s been helping businesses stop the madness of cold calling and referral sell instead.
Joanne defines a referral as receiving an introduction to the person you want to meet. Tune in as she discusses how each caller can become a part of your network.
Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled, is today’s guest on The Sales Engagement podcast. Jake is a sales wizard with a phenomenal track record of growth and shared with us his best tips for creating a LinkedIn profile that sells. Tune in!
Andrew Mewborn is a sales engineer at Outreach.io, and he joined us for the second time on The Sales Engagement Podcast to illustrate how to construct your ideal metrics that truly impact revenue.
On this episode, Andrew shares how to reverse engineer your sales to discover pitfalls, toss out wasteful data, and double down in key areas, all to ultimately drive revenue. Tune in!
Dan Gottlieb, Sales Development Analyst at TOPO, is our guest on today’s episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast. Dan walks us through the evolution of sales tech and how you can use it to scale your sales team at twice the pace of your competition. Tune in!
Bravado is a professional community for sales people, whose mission is to elevate the profession of sales, help buyers solve problems, all while championing the salespeople who treat their customers with respect.
Our guest on today's podcast is Sahil Mansuri, CEO of Bravado. Sahil talks about the evolution of the sales profession, where we are on the sales pendulum, why your reputation is crucial, and so much more. Tune in!
Daniel Barber, CEO of DataGrail, walks us through what the sales profession needs to know now about impending changes to data privacy and how he views these changes as beneficial to both sellers and customers. Tune in!
Peter Chun, VP of Sales at Lucidchart, tells us how he’s using visual communications to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of both sales and employee engagement in this week’s episode. Tune in as he and Mark give great insight into the impacts and implications of true face time and visual tech.
We hear from Josh Braun, who shares with us his secret tool for getting the sale--and it's probably not what you think. Josh is a former kindergarten teacher who is bringing his teaching skills and insight to the B2B sales game and we're excited to have him on the show to talk all things engagement. Tune in!
We're talking all things data and testing with our VP of Data Science, Pavel Dmitriev. Pavel explains the how and why behind using data science and AB testing to grow engagement without the guesswork. Tune in!
Mark discusses the importance of sales development to growing your sales engagement with David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound. Tenbound is a leader in helping SaaS companies build and develop their Sales Development programs. Tune in!
Andrew Mewborn, Solutions Consultant at Outreach, tells our Joe Vignolo how signing up for improv classes turned out to be an unexpected and incredible sales engagement tool. Tune in for his best tips and a few big laughs on this week’s episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast.
We're talking about healthy work environments with our guest, Jason Vargas, Senior Consultant at Skaled, on today's episode of The Sales Engagement Podcast. Jason shares with us his insights on preventing toxic workplaces while also actively promoting sales engagement. Tune in!
If you’re looking for out of the box, insanely effective ways to train your new SDRs and stand out at events, you’re going to love this.
On this episode, we talk with Sam Nelson, SDR Agoge Leader at Outreach, as he shares with us incredible insight into the beauty of the Agoge methodology. Tune in!
In this episode, Mark talks with Tito Bohrt, Founder and CEO of AltiSales, about the changing landscape of sales engagement and Tito offers his best tips on landing high-value accounts.
Max chats to Chris Orlob, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Gong.io, about what it takes to make innovative and effective sales calls that work, even at the C-Suite level. Tune in!
Mark Kosoglow, VP of Sales at Outreach, talks with the always insightful Jacco vanderKooij, as he shares his industry-changing definition of what sales engagement could (and should!) be.
Max talks with Trish Bertuzzi, CEO of The Bridge Group, Inc, about the surprising results of our Buyer Engagement Survey. Tune in!
Max and Manny dive deep into the topic of Sales Engagement and it’s essential fit in the modern Sales Stack. Tune in!