Ep.7: Burning Sales Questions Pt. 2

Startup Selling: Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci

SalesCast #7: Burning Sales Questions Pt. 2

This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:

1. Self-learning resources, including books on Amazon.com and self-paced online courses.
2. Workshops & Training, hosted at venues across Silicon Valley and the US.
3. 1:1 Coaching & Consulting for company founders and sales professionals that want a personalized plan.

In this episode, Scott hosts a webinar where participants ask their most burning sales question for both business to customer (B2C) and business to business (B2B or enterprise) markets.  This episode is the second half of a Burning Sales Question webinar that SalesQualia hosts regularly. Key areas covered:

• The main differences between selling a product versus a service and the benefits and disadvantages of each model.
• Techniques for handling a prospective customer who is losing interest in the sale.  How to approach other people at the company to revitalize the sale and knowing when a sale isn’t going to happen.
• How a sales manager or executive handles their team in a world where marketing funnels are becoming more targeted and specific everyday.
• As a sales executive or manager, knowing when to hold your sales team accountable for their performance and how to dissect their target markets to identify outside factors contributing to their lack of success.
• How to best compensate your sales team and understanding that your incentive programs direct the behavior of your sales team.

We hope you enjoy the podcast and would greatly appreciate feedback!  Any suggestions on future topics you would like to hear covered and/or podcast guests you’d like to hear would be great!  Enjoy!

Podcast Notes

1:50 – The main differences between selling a product versus a service and the benefits and disadvantages of each.

5:15 – The difficulty of selling a service based on money for time versus selling your service on a value for money model.

6:30 – The importance of finding ways to switch from selling a service a service to selling a product and how that change can help you scale your company.

7:30 – Methods for reinvigorating interest in your product when a prospective client starts to lose interest in the sale.

8:40 – How targeting the wrong buyer at a prospective company can cause a sale to stall because your “Company Hero” has been trying to sell your product internally to their own company.

10:50 – The method of triangulating information to help bring a stalled sale from crashing.  How identifying the different people at a prospective client that will be involved in the purchasing decision of your product can help you keep interest in the sale and quickly identify stall points.

14:00 – How to use new information about your product to bring disinterested buyers back to the table.

16:55 - How a sales manager or executive handles their team in a world where marketing funnels are becoming more targeted and specific everyday.

18:30 – How to measure success of your sales people by identifying optimal close rates by the end of your sales cycle.

19:00 – How to hold sales people accountable when your sales cycle utilizes well developed marketing funnels that provide them with very developed leads.

20:30 – How to dissect a sales person’s target market to identify outside factors that could be contributing to their lack of success.

21:50 – Using closing techniques versus implementation planning to close a sale with a prospective client and how an implementation plan can help a salesperson identify overlooked factors and people (i.e. technical review, contract phase, payment issues, etc.).

24:00 – How to best compensate a sales person by using different tactics to focus your sales person on the sales model your company employs (i.e. service plans, back end selling, customer retention, etc.).

24:50 – Whatever incentive program you setup is the behavior you will instill in your sales people.

Resources Mentioned or Related to this Podcast

• “Compensating the Sales Force” by David Cichelli.