Having Time vs Making Time: A Lesson from the Trail

I’m two weeks from the Tarawera 100-miler and I’m asked all the time –

“How to do have the time to train for ultramarathons?”

I don’t HAVE the time. I MAKE the time – every week, every day.

Today, I'm on the 5:50am train to spend the day at the Alchemist Accelerator Demo Day, so making time meant crawling out to the garage at 4am for a workout.

Every day, it’s the same - making time in between everything else that I gotta do – clients, workshops, picking up my son from jiu-jitsu, swapping kitchen duties with my wife. 

Making time means bolting out the door at 6am on Saturdays for a quick 10 miles. 

Making time means deadlifts at 7am on Sunday morning. 

Making time means running hills in Bernal Heights at 4am when I’m in SF for the night.

Making time means unapologetically blocking time on a Tuesday afternoon for midday run.

I get it – the investor meetings… product releases… candidate interviews… 

You never have the time to sell, but your company, and customers, need you to sell. Stop waiting until you have the time to sell, and make the time instead.

Type WORKSHEET below & I’ll send you our “10-Hour Sales Week Planner.” It’ll help you make the time. Because that’s what you gotta do.

In this episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, I interviewed Refract Co-Founder, Richard Smith.

Richard has over ten years of sales experience working for and building high activity and scalable outbound software sales teams. He has been a regular contributor to leading sales content sites such as Hubspot and SalesHacker and was nominated as a Top 50 SaaS Sales Leader in the UK. 

Richard is passionate about fixing the broken mindset towards sales coaching and helping salespeople become the very best they can be.

Some of the topics that Richard and I discussed in this episode are:

• The importance of product demo as a catalyst in your sales process.
• Why is it important to qualify your leads.
• Understanding when it is fitting to have a smaller pipeline. 
• The importance of being vigilant when qualifying your leads.
• Keeping yourself accountable when it comes to selling your product.

Links & Resources

Richard on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/richard-smith-refract

Refract website:  www.refract.ai

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million:

www.amazon.com/Sales-Acceleration-Formula-Technology-Inbound/dp/1119047072 

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.

In this episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, I interviewed Refract Co-Founder, Richard Smith.

Richard has over ten years of sales experience working for and building high activity and scalable outbound software sales teams. He has been a regular contributor to leading sales content sites such as Hubspot and SalesHacker and was nominated as a Top 50 SaaS Sales Leader in the UK. 

Richard is passionate about fixing the broken mindset to sales coaching and helping salespeople become the very best they can be.

Some of the topics that Richard and I discussed in this episode are:

• The importance of having a meaningful conversation that therefore creates a positive experience for your customer.
• Focus the discovery call on where the sales are won or lost.
• Create a checklist from your experience with leading indicators for good sales conversation.
• The need for approval that salespeople have and how it can work against them.
• Tips to create an environment where you can ask tough questions and lower the resistance in the sale.
• How to use the simplistic questions in your discovery call.
• Why the phrase ‘I think’ can negatively influence you in your sales.
• Frameworks to analyze your sales conversation to improve and make your own sales conversation better.

Links & Resources

Richard on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/richard-smith-refract

Refract website: www.refract.ai

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million:

www.amazon.com/Sales-Acceleration-Formula-Technology-Inbound/dp/1119047072 

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.

“Daily Dose: The past is the past” 

If you've watched my videos lately you know that two months ago, I ran a 200-mile ultramarathon around Lake Tahoe.  For the last eight weeks, I've been celebrating and enjoying my personal glory of finishing this race. 

There comes a time where you've got to transition from what you've done to what you're going to do.  Even my friends around me are asking – "Man, that was really cool. What's next?" 

This past week, I've accepted a simple, important lesson –

The past is the past, and it's time to move on to the future. 

Too often, we can find ourselves lulled into a sense of completion, a sense of finality. We feel great about that product launch or that new customer or the leads we got from the conference booth.

When you've done something important and hard, you absolutely have to take time to celebrate. You must take the time to rejoice in your accomplishments.

After that celebration is over, huddle up with your team and ask, "Okay, what's next?" and get back to work.

For me, I registered for two new races, two 100-milers, one in February and one in June.  I might have a third in August. Regardless, I'm not past the past, and looking ahead to what's next.

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.

“Daily Dose: One Step at a Time"

I just signed up for my next ultra marathon – it's in February down in New Zealand.

This past weekend, I built out the next three months – what does the training look like? What's January going to look like?  What's December gonna look like? What is the rest of November going to look like?

From there I break it down week-by-week – When are my long runs in the hills and how will I fit in my training with the holidays.

People ask me all the time – "How do you train? How do you get ready for these races?" 

And there's something that I realized over the weekend as I was getting ready for my one workout on Sunday morning. 

As much as I put together monthly training programs or three-month training programs and how I want each week to look, the one thing that matters is the next workout.

For your company, the lesson is the same.

When you're building your company and you're growing your sales, too often we fixate on where do we need to be by the end of the year? Where do we need to be by the end of next quarter? 

Yes, you've got to set the vision. You need to know where you want to go. 

But when it comes down to it, it starts with doing those 20 calls today. It starts with preparing the right way for the next meeting. It starts with having the right plan of action for that conference you're flying to tomorrow. 

Everything begins with that one thing that's in front of you – next sales call, the next customer, the next product release. 

Just do the next thing, do the one thing that's in front of you, that's gonna get you closer to where you want to do – one step at a time.

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.

In this episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, I interviewed TaskDrive's, Chief Revenue Officer, Mark Colgan.

Mark has over eleven years of experience in B2B sales and marketing. As the TaskDrive CRO, Mark leads the growth strategies across 100-person remote sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams.

 In his spare time, he helps B2B SaaS companies scale revenue with their sales and marketing automation and customer journey optimization.

Some of the topics that Mark and I discussed in this episode are:

• His process for lead research at TaskDrive.
• Signals to use when you are doing lead research. Some examples are hiring, press releases, online articles, technology change, and job titles.
• How to use inbound and outbound marketing strategies in your sales process.
• The importance of identifying the customers that are actively buying, open to buying and the ones that are not buying.
• Strategies to target and win back the customers that are not actively buying.
• Identifying some key lead sourcing playbooks for B2B companies.

Links & resources

TaskDrive: taskdrive.com

Mark Colgan on LinkedIn: 

www.linkedin.com/in/markcolganmarketing

[Blog Post] 14 Lead sourcing playbooks for B2B companies:

taskdrive.com/lead-generation/lead-sourcing-playbooks-for-b2b-companies

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.

“Daily Dose: Dude – Are you good?”

This kid was 8-years-old and he needed to know.  This was serious business – a birthday party kickball game with all of his friends from school.

Another dad and I jumped into the mix to make things interesting for the kids.

Team captains were selected and it was time to pick teams.  This 8-year picked his best friend first, and when it came time for his next pick, the best friend pointed at me and said – “Pick him! Pick him!”

With my running and training regimen, I’m a pretty athletic-looking guy. Not to mention I’m a 45-year-old adult playing against a bunch of kids.  It was pretty obvious to me that he should pick me net.

But none of that mattered to him. He didn’t know about the three Ironmans. He didn’t know about my 100- and 200-mile ultramarathons. 

To him, I was just another person in the crowd. All he wanted to know is if I was going to help him win. That’s it. Plain and simple.

It’s like that with your company.  

Your customers don’t care about your funding. They don’t care who your investors are. They don’t care about what you’ve done before. They don’t care about your past success.

All they care about is what you can do for them, right now, today. Can you help them win in their game?  

He did pick me, and when he did, I felt like I had something to prove to show him that he made the right choice. 

Completely silly, right? But that’s how it should work. Nothing is a given.

Earn every customer. Help them win. 

Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:

Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com

Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.