Breaking Sales

There's a fine line between unique and bizarre when it comes to piquing prospect interest. The more your outreach stretches convention, the more you risk alienating your audience. Sending an email or leaving a voicemail that entices the recipient to scream, "That's me!" is rewarding, but the odds of that happening are slim to nil. Maybe 10%, per the research. So, what impact does unusual outreach...

Listen, learn, and practice. Individually, they won't move the needle, but together, they create a powerful chain reaction. Talking about what you've learned makes you feel knowledgeable. Putting it into practice with a willingness to fail produces results. In this 180 Conversation, Dan and Kiley add a new twist. They break down an actual cold call voicemail message from a Lappin180 client. Bottom...

When your prospects compare your email outreach to your competitor – outside of your name and company, would they be able to tell the difference? The answer might surprise you. In this episode, Dan and Kiley offer you a glimpse into what prospects experience every day – an inbox saturated with offers for free demos, gift cards, and a pledge to take only 20 minutes of your time. Hint: if you don't...

Everything has a standard, and high performers follow and pursue a very different paradigm. In many cases, they look for conversation benchmarks that are 180-degrees different from what most sales professionals seek and observe. There's a strong likelihood that you might be valuing things in your conversation that provide little impact on your results. Listen in as Dan and Kiley deep dive on nine...

You can spend hours crafting the perfect sounding sales message, but if the prospect doesn't understand it, it's worthless. In this episode, Dan and Kiley talk about the perils of using buzzwords, empty promises, repetition, or language specific to your inner circle in your outreach. You may think you sound well-informed, but the only one you're impressing is yourself.

Flattery reeks of insincerity. When you walk into a store and a salesperson greets you with a compliment or an assumption, how do you feel? Does it trigger skepticism or trust? This style of outreach feels disingenuous: "I've been impressed with your work" or "It appears you've been doing well." Listen in as Dan and Kiley break down how praise can create barriers in your outreach strategy.  

Are you an A, B, or C-level player? Everyone likes to think they're an A player, and every leader wants A players on their team. But the reality is the journey to high performance starts with self-assessment, courage, and commitment. You have to take stock of where and how your talents and behaviors show up. If you're interested in self-assessing from the safety of wherever you privately listen to...

When your prospect meeting is going well, do you get ahead of yourself and become lazy with your questions and learning? In this 180 Conversation, Dan shares the importance of maintaining your focus on asking deep questions and learning. Never assume anything. Even when the prospect is ready to commit to another meeting.

With 5.7 million sales professionals making an average of 25 outreach attempts per day, your prospects are inundated with requests for their time. Prospects are savvy and skilled in learning how to avoid the time-suck of reading your conversation invite. Join Dan as he talks with Jeremey Donovan, SVP of Sales Strategy at SalesLoft, about tactics to help you avoid your prospect's immediate disquali...

When you send a LinkedIn message or introductory email to a prospect, do you ask for something or give something? Nine out of ten outreach emails ask prospects for their time and interest. Based on previous experience, what does this tell your prospect about your conversation intent – if they invite you in? It tells them you want to advance or position a sale. In this episode, Dan and Kiley share...

Are you speaking your prospect's language, or your own? In this 180 Conversation, Dan and Kiley break down an outreach that uses plenty of industry jargon but alienates the prospect.

Platforms that help you scale and leverage your outreach time and effort can have value, but if your approach focuses on you, your services, and what you want – the only thing you're automating is your neediness and desperation. In this episode, Dan and Kiley review a specific example of how automating outreach can go wrong.   

Making assumptions during your prospect conversations is a clear indicator of an amateur (sales) mindset. It limits the trust you build, what you learn, and creates the prototypical sales experience that your prospects have come to expect. Every time you assume anything, you make it easier for the prospect to disqualify you and harder to differentiate yourself from your competition. In this episod...

How does outreach automation feel and sound to your prospects? In this 180 Conversation, Dan and Kiley clarify the difference between using automation to leverage and scale your outreach efforts versus deploying it out of laziness. Your prospects can tell when you are simply trying to play the numbers game - the "spray and pray" approach only tarnishes your brand. Why would your prospects invest t...

What is your outreach telling your prospect about your value? What's the cost of becoming too cute with your approach? Nothing against hippos, but they don't do well around humans or within your email strategy. In this 180 Conversation, Dan and Kiley break down the ways your outreach is diminishing your value before you even start a conversation.

This episode may change how you view your sales process. Do you assess your prospect conversation based on what you got out of it or what your prospect experienced? You bring a perspective into and out of every prospect conversation: Did we connect enough? Did they answer our questions? Did they agree to next steps? These are common benchmarks for many sales professionals in measuring the quality...

How are you approaching prospects on LinkedIn?  LinkedIn's technology and automation are misused 90% of the time, potentially destroying any opportunity to start a conversation. When you approach prospects on social media, your intention may be to scale your outreach efforts but you risk hurting your brand. In this 180 Conversation Dan provides guidance on the high-performance approach to prospect...

People often assume that money is the sole motivator for a career in sales.  While it may be the carrot for some sales professionals, high performers have deeper incentives.  In this episode, Dan and Neel Doshi, NY Times best-selling author of Primed to Perform, discuss the powerful motivation of play, potential, and purpose to maximize top performance and minimize stress.

Are you sending the wrong message to your prospects?  In this 180 Conversation, Dan breaks down what the style and quality of your outreach reveal to prospects. If you want to connect with someone and open up the possibility of a conversation, invest in educating yourself on what they post or follow. A blind monkey can reference a profile (sorry blind monkeys).

Your home is your safe haven. Now it's become the place where you try to break free of comfort zones to hold yourself more accountable and build high-performance routines. If it's true we perform at the level of our environment, what does your current home office environment say about your future performance? About 55% of what we communicate comes from body language, 35% verbal tone, and 10% throu...

Dan and Kiley get to the heart of effective sales outreach in an episode devoted entirely to prospect communication. Prospects receive tens of millions of LinkedIn invites, emails, and voicemails. How can you frame the conversation to stand out and sound different from everyone else?  It's a matter of mindset, exuding confidence, assuming nothing, and removing expectation. Tune in for tangible ins...

2020 was a year of disappointment and opportunity. Standards and routines were disrupted. These challenges may have sparked a new practice, the insidious habit of giving up ownership and making excuses. Excuses are like muscles—the more you use them, the stronger they become. Eventually, they pave the road to defeat. Join Dan Lappin, Pam Evanson, and Kiley Schmitz for an intense episode to help yo...

Can't wait for 2020 to be over? In this year-end wrap-up, Dan and Kiley share the key themes and takeaways from 2020 and the lessons learned from our guests. Tune in for 20 minutes of candid, fluff-free, sales-shattering truths that culminate in one deceptively simple question: what did you learn about yourself in 2020? It may be a scary thought process, but it's the one that will pay the most div...

Are you guilty of making your prospect feel like the subject of an interrogation? David Thompson, an interrogation and interview expert, shares his experiences teaching the FBI and law enforcement how to build trust through non-confrontational questions. Imagine interrogating a suspect hell bent on avoiding any admission or prosecution and your job is to build enough trust so they confess to the c...

Can self-awareness, ownership, and resilience be trained? In part two of our conversation, retired U.S. Navy SEAL and author Mike Sarraille shares his personal story of how he learned these critical qualities as a Marine before joining the SEALs. Mike also previews his book,  The Talent War , breaking down the nine characteristics high performers must have to be successful in sales.