Marylou Tyler is the author of Predictable Revenue and Predictable Prospecting. She has worked with a number of few co-authors and produced a book that will certainly help any startup company out there. Being one of the best sales enablement strategist, she is an expert when it comes to maximizing your resources and is always willing to share her knowledge to everyone who needs help.
This podcast focuses both on the incredible things that a startup business owner can do to improve sales and the common mistakes everyone should avoid. The following are some of the topics tackled by Scott and Marylou:
Podcast Notes:
05:10 – The three sections of Predictable Prospecting: Target, Engage, Optimize
05:42 – Internalizing Your Competitive Position
07:25 – Six-Factor SWOT Analysis
14:00 – Importance of taking a break
15: 33 – Developing an Ideal Account Profile
20:16 – McKinsey’s MECE model and Issue Tree
23:33 – Compel with ContentTM
25:07 – Common mistakes start-up businesses make in the selling process
27:42 – Emails and when to use each type
31:38 - Mass personalized versus Hyper personalized emails
37:47 – Eight-Touch, 13-Business Day Email
39:01 – Customer Referral Program
48:12 – Campaign Formula, Appointment-setting and sales funnels
53:26 – Neil Rackham, “The Professor of Professional Selling”
Quick links:
Dionne Mischler is a sales expert. She is the CEO and Founder of Inside Sales by Design, which helps companies to be “deliberate, intentional, and successful”. Aside from that, she is also the Founder of Sales Enablement Society.
In this podcast episode, the main focus is on how you can hire the best people for your sales team and when you should scale it up as a startup selling company. Scott and Dionne tackled a wide range of topics:
Podcast Notes:
5:37 – Why Dionne chose the appendage “…by Design”, why “Inside Sales by Design”
9:00 – Scalability of Inside Sales by Design
12:00 – The importance, process, and options in conducting market validation
18:45 – Why I do what I do at SalesQualia
20:53 – Dionne’s presentation “Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan”; Different views of and approaches to time
31:05 – Sales process; the importance of good customer experience; how we can keep our current customers
35:17 – How we can influence people’s perspective on time; our ideal customer
41:57 – Account-based Sales Development; what you should do in using the account-based approach; who’s who in the zoo
53:54 – Mistakes people commit in hiring more people for their sales team; Realistic revenue expectations, underestimating how hard it is to find good talent
58:50 – Signals that tell whether or not you are ready to ramp on your sales team
Websites mentioned:
Dionne Mischler’s LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/dionnemischler
Inside Sales by Design: http://www.insidesalesbydesign.com/
Sales Enablement Society on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/15155218
This SalesCast is brought to you by SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, Scott and Lincoln discuss the concept of time to first value, customer success and customer acquisition. How to have a successful pull through rate for potential customers and the cost of free. Key areas we cover are:
Detailed Notes:
This episode is brought to you by SalesQualia. If you’re a startup looking to Find Customers, Grow Revenue and Build Your Sales Process, check out the Startup Selling Program.
In this episode, I interview Peter Cohan, most known for his “GREAT DEMO!” system and training – teaching software companies the RIGHT way to demo their products.
Key areas we cover are:
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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
01:55 – How did Peter get into teaching demos.
04:30 – How to assemble data on a when a sale happens.
07:35 – Doing it right the first time your demo’s going to be much shorter and you might only have to do one of those and get you to the finish line.
09:00 – No such thing as a standard customer/demo.
15:00 – Doing discovery, ask sufficient questions to be able to design a demo that fits the customer’s need.
23:18 – The curse of knowledge, when you have seen it all before and you forget that every customer is unique. Put the knowledge you think you have behind your back and ask the right questions.
26:05 – Pre answering questions before they are asked takes away the role of the audience. Takes away the ability to interact.
28:47 – How to address having new people in the meeting that you haven’t had a chance to do needs assessment with.
33:46 – Always start a demo that has people you haven’t interacted with before with three questions; what’s your name, job title and what would they like to take away from the demo.
41:18 – Turning the demo from being all about the vendor, to being all about the customer.
46:33 – Have the fewest number of steps to complete any particular task.
50:27 – Manage your infrastructure. Expect your hard disk will crash! Be ready for anything.
57:17 – Do the last thing first, don’t teach people how things work but show them what good things you’re offering to help them solve their problems.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
Key words: startup selling, sales, product demos, scott sambucci, salesqualia, startups, enterprise sales
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, our special guest Patrick Campbell, Co-Founder and CEO at Price Intelligently, discusses the hardest parts of pricing products for startup CEOS, the fears associated with not making a sales because of price, his survey method for identifying the price prospects are willing to pay for your product, and how to deal with raising a product’s price and the associated retention drop off. Key areas covered:
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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
03:26 – The hardest thing for companies to learn about pricing their products.
08:50 - How does an entrepreneur deal with the fear of not wanting to blow a deal?
11:56 – Always make sure that your price increase is worth it.
14:50 – Guidepost suggestions to try.
16:10 – Four main questions recommended to ask.
24:00 – Finding the value metric and making sure reinforce value with your price.
25:10 – How to handle customers who are used to pay per user and how to overcome that bureaucratic barrier.
31:20 – How would you recommend handling that price question when it’s too early to actually give a price?
39:30 – Recognizing the problem children.
42:00 – Handling a price range that’s large.
43:20 – When you’re better off charging more than trying to charge less.
48:30 – Should your price be exactly 100 or can it be 99?
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, our special guest Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist for The Bridge Group, Inc., gives advice on hiring Sales Development Reps for startup CEOS, discusses the importance of hiring veterans and how beneficial they are to young companies, as well as a plethora of other great tactics and tips. Key areas covered are:
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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
02:15 – The Trigger event for Trish to write the book “The Sales Development Playbook.”
04:13 – How do you define Sales Development for people?
05:20 – The Five Whys. Why listen? Why Care? Why change? Why you? Why now?
06:45 – What advice would you give a team to stop doing now and start doing right away relating to sales development.
07:55 – What is the one thing startup CEOs should do that they’re not already doing?
10:00 – What’s the first thing startup CEOs should do where they misstep early in the process of setting up the sales development process?
12:56 – Why a 50/50 breakdown making a good hire.
13:30 – If you can’t afford to hire more than one, should you hire one?
14:15 – Reasons why outsourcing Sales Development Rep functions to a vendor fails.
16:05 – Why don’t startup CEOs spend more effort on the time piece of the investment?
18:15 – Why military to civilian transitions and job shifters are good targets for potential SDRs?
20:00 – The one question to immediately ask to vet out if a candidate is worth pursuing in a formal interview process.
25:03 – After passing the 40 second interview, what’s the next part of that call that makes for a good SDR call.
26:45 – How do you use numbers if you don’t know those could actually apply?
32:00 – How do you vet out whether or not somebody has budget early on?
34:28 – Why to choose a scale of 1 to 4.
36:05 – A skeleton key question to make a person not guarded or have their armor on to open up.
40:00 – Shutouts to make sure people hear the message.
41:02 – How to reach Trish.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
SalesCast 18 – Revenue Acquisition Portfolio
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this special, On the Road with Scott Sambucci episode of the Startup Selling podcast, Scott discusses the idea of Revenue Acquisition Portfolios; a way of looking at the amount of time (investment) you place into different lead funnels versus the return on that investment (sales). Key areas covered:
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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!
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, Scott speaks with special guest Melanie Wong from Box.com about her experience transitioning from being a lawyer into becoming a top prospector for big customers at Box.com. Key areas covered are:
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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
02:15 – What Melanie is working on.
04:53 – Law is cool and fun.
06:00 – What was most frustrating making a conversion to get into sales.
09:05 – An example where a cold call, has turned a client into a mega client.
11:30 – How to find these project engineers.
15:00 – The pitch to start off on a cold call.
16:50 – What is the pattern to use.
24:10 – How to start the email, “I’d love to introduce you to our executive team.”
27:17 – The job of an SDR, Sales Development Rep.
28:24 – In that cadence of call, call, email, email, how to craft that out in a way that is effective.
31:21 – What are the early signals that a deal is going south?
34:41 – What constitutes a hard question to know they want to get into this now.
36:44 – The strategy to navigate through trying to find multiple people.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss the 10-Day Sales Call Challenge, a short, focused project to help build familiarity towards the sales process and understanding how to develop metrics for success. Key areas we cover are:
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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
02:00 – What is the 10 Day Sales Call Challenge?
03:30 – How to be ready and able to do the 10-day challenge.
08:10 – What are you doing to keep that pipeline filled or to keep up with 10 calls a day.
11:55 – How to make that first contact with a prospect to go into the whole 10 calls.
17:05 – Try and create familiarity towards a sales opportunity
21:00 – How much better of a response you have in an InMail message versus just doing straight cold calling.
24:05 – What are some other you know avenues, some other portals you would use to try and yourself out there, try and find some more of these prospects for your 10 days sales calls challenge.
28:40 – Suggestions to finding good and worthwhile channels, and how to create metrics of success.
33:05 – What is the biggest piece of learning that you have made so far?
36:10 – Things to really stress on.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss the importance of talking to prospects about their 2017 budgets at the beginning of 2016, and how to start prepping your product delivery to be best prepared for getting a prospect’s 2017 budget. Key areas we cover are:
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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
00:41 – What does it mean to have that big B in the budget too for 2017?
03:20 – Recommended strategies.
05:06 – What are the first actions to take?
08:53 – How do you start selling to people when a lot of their budget is already eaten up?
11:26 – Who you look to and how to go about prospecting at the beginning of the year when a product has a pretty high price.
15:43 – Adverse effects making you feel you haven't done enough, even though you have done a lot, to actually be able to make that bigger sale to the overall company.
20:22 – Experiencing, “Why are we spending this $10,000 for the pilot? Shut it down."
23:10 - The next moves on getting into that 2017 budget after running the pilot?
27:30 – Explaining and answering questions.
32:56 – Business review lead into dealing with the budget process.
37:30 – What mature companies do.
38:00 – Organic growth within a company versus take it all right now or right here.
40:20 – Questions to ask during quarterly reviews.
43:15 – January advice, working on getting into that 2017 budget.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss what to do around the holiday season in preparation for the coming year. Key areas we cover are:
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
01:16 – Look for media contacts.
08:43 – Use this time of the year to map out a 5 or 10 blog post series for yourself.
15:04 – Looking at the conference planning for 2016.
17:33 – How to go about strategically getting everything ready for the conferences.
21:14 – Get in touch with the conference organizers.
23:16 – Going back to your current customers.
25:43 – Three strategies you can use to make money.
26:45 – Going back and doing some analysis of your pipeline.
28:08 – Who are you selling to?
29:26 – The “WHY?”
29:50 – The “HOW?”
32:00 – Using an email template and having everyone on board on where the company needs to go.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss what to do around the holiday season in preparation for the coming year. Key areas we cover are:
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
04:26 – Things you could be doing that would motivate sales in the holidays or the next year.
04:46 – Write handwritten notes to people.
06:50 – Going through your top 20 contact.
10:04 – Email your contacts to see who’s interested or not.
12:10 – Clear your virtual desk, and archive all emails. Send an email to contacts you’ve been in touch with over a 6-month period.
17:30 – Go social, use it for research.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss the process to qualify and pursue potential sales leads, as well as tips to help you position yourself at a conference. Key areas we cover are:
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
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
02:56 – How to quickly identify whether you want to pursue a person as potential sales lead.
05:55 - Lessons when you’re out calling people on the phone or email.
06:25 – Taking leadership in the conversations.
07:16 – The types of selling approaches to use.
09:18 – The number one tip of the day.
10:38 – Qualify your lead or your conversation first.
12:35 – Learning how to position yourself.
15:25 – What you should be doing for value proposition.
20:00 – How long to generally wait before trying to create more contact with potential leads.
23:45 – What to do with the people that you weren’t able to touch base with at a conference.
27:15 – One thing you notice you’re not doing at a conference.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, our special guest Sean Murphy, of SKMurphy, sits down with Scott to discuss the concept of diagnosing new ideas in a startup, discovering early adopters, and much more. Key areas we cover are:
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
03:42 – How to describe the idea of diagnosing a discovery for startups and entrepreneurs, why it’s important when it comes to sales.
07:40 – Having a model of what the impact of your enterprise software is going to be on a person’s operations.
10:00 – Tips for a Startup CEO in preparing for a questioning strategy.
15:00 – “I don’t know,” is a powerful response.
17:00 – Creating more communication nodes between you as a startup and the target company.
20:58 – The purchase decision and what the customer is really worried about.
22:43 – How to reduce risk as salesperson or as a startup CEO for people to work with you as a startup.
25:44 – Challenges working with startups.
28:18 – The right way to get customer feedback and use it in a positive way.
31:37 – The early market problems.
35:15 – Zone of proximal development.
40:14 – Ways you can tell you’re working with a successful change agent, early adopter.
44:11 – As a startup, how to find early adopters, innovators at organizations that have the pain and are willing to accept partial solutions.
46:00 – Where to find early adopters.
48:37 – The number where you finally say “All right, I need to switch my hypothesis.”
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, Scott hosts Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban from KaiNexus, a software company that serves hospitals and health systems. Greg and Mark speak about how they built a successful startup utilizing the LEAN methodology and understanding the importance of LISTENING to customers. Key areas covered are:
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
02:45 – How KaiNexus was started.
05:35 – The potential of what could be done in Healthcare.
06:45 – What underpins the feeling of Mark and Greg are on a crusade for continuous improvement.
09:40 – How a company can apply the four steps, Identify, Act, Resolve, Recognize to their process.
13:10 – How someone can take 5% or 10% out of a day to make sure they’re improving.
16:50 – How to build habits.
18:45 – The continuous improvement principle, the idea of a small test of change.
20:30 – The know-it-all versus the learn-it-all. What is the learn-it-all and what it means.
22:50 – What could be learnt in the sales process and how you could apply it.
25:45 – Understanding a customer’s need and knowing what part of the product is the right fit.
28:15 – Time is the most precious thing for an entrepreneur, how to choose to use that time.
30:05 – Identifying customers that believe in your “why” statements.
35:25 – The more narrow you set your focus, the greater chance that a small company is able to solve that problem better.
37:30 – Early versions of KaiNexus, did it feel like consulting when Mark and Greg were starting up?
38:40 – Focusing on your customers and their success.
39:40 – The organizational behavior and psychology aspect is critically important to the implementation.
41:20 – Churn rate is important to think about when you’re developing a SaaS enterprise.
42:55 – Recommendation to a small team to go about their own Seven-Day, 30-Day or 100-Day challenge to permanently improve their company.
45:06 – How to implement the 100-Day challenge in your company.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
The Sales Podcast - #9 – “Hiring Sales People.”
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss when and how to hire your sales person. Where to find them, and how to evaluate them in an interview process. Key areas we cover are:
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
02:40 – Metrics to use when looking for a sales person.
03:20 – Importance of hiring lower level, or to go for a person who’ll build a sales department underneath them.
04:05 – You shouldn’t be a startup CEO if you’re afraid of selling, or don’t want to sell, also if you think it’s not important to do it yourself.
04:47 – Giving the sales person a framework of how it worked for you for them to be more effective.
07:25 – When to make your first hiring decision.
08:26 – The first sales related hire.
09:40 – Sales conversations a startup founder will have.
10:14 – Setting up general conversations around market/customer discovery.
10:36 – Intermediate steps companies can take before hiring a true VP of sales.
12:23 – When to go out and hire a sales person.
14:05 – Having a repeatable sales process.
14:35 – Diversify your sales person portfolio.
15:50 – The initial time period to judge and hire on, and how long to measure success.
16:18 – Reasons to get rid of a sales person.
20:00 – Finding ways to shorten the sales cycle.
21:48 – Where to source original candidates.
24:35 – The one most revealing question for a candidate and why?
27:25 – The types of people to look for.
28:22 – Behavioral assessments to do.
32:10 – How to structure compensation packages for sales people.
37:15 – How to know if the sales compensation program is the right one for you, or if you should make changes.
40:40 – How to make sure you structure compensation packages for team members to reach their goals.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
The Sales Podcast - #8 – “Implementation Planning.”
This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Improve Sales Performance with:
In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss the importance of discussing the implementation plan for your product with your prospective new client both early and often. Key areas we cover are:
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
01:50 – What are implementation plans and how are they used.
02:15 – The four major stages of an enterprise sale.
03:13 – When to start thinking about implementation planning and start talking about it with a prospective client.
04:45 – What happens after a client says, “Yes.”
06:32 – How to use Implementation planning to help in the sales process in general.
11:00 – The pros and cons of implementation planning using different approaches.
16:08 – How a good implementation plan helps a purchaser deal with detractors within a company that may not want to implement your product.
18:30 – How to handle using third party implementation planning consultants, when you and your prospect have your own preferred processes.
20:58- How to avoid being blamed when a process doesn’t happen, by documenting your interactions.
21:43 – As a startup, you need to own the implementation process and avoid Outsourcing.
23:20 – Defining the success of your implementation plan.
27:00 – How to alleviate that fear of implementation planning.
32:38 – Having a checklist to help reduce risk.
34:27 – Software that helps with collaboration.
36:50 – The biggest piece of advice when it comes to implementations plans.
39:00 – How to think and qualify if a prospect is actually going to become a sale.
Resources mentioned or related to this podcast
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:
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:
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