Bulletproof Selling

Being the person our prospects and customers turn to when they have a problem is a great place to be, but there's an even better place the best salespeople strive for. It's to be the person with solutions to problems that prospects didn't even know they had. To learn how we can systemize listening for industry challenges, creating solutions, and leverage them in sales calls, we sat down with Micha...

Salespeople are reviled, but not for the reasons they think. It's not because they're calling unannounced. Rather, it's because salespeople tend to be focused on themselves and what they're trying to accomplish, rather than what their prospects want! To help us systemize how to shift the focus from ourselves to our prospects in every sales conversation, we sat down with Patti DeNucci , an award-wi...

Salespeople are excited to get into conversations with potential customers, but that excitement can quickly turn to fear if the call starts to go south. The best salespeople have ways to turn sales calls around mid-stream or decide to cut and run – and we sat down with Kevin Vear, a sales expert from Franklin Covey, to learn how any salesperson can save more sales calls! It's all in this week's Bu...

Salespeople, by their nature, want to be accommodating and easy to speak to. However, top-performing salespeople are too busy to spend time on prospects who won't ever become customers. They have a way of 'weeding out' folks who don't need the solutions they have, and they do it by inviting the prospect to say 'no.' To learn how we can incorporate that mindset into how we sell, we sat down with St...

Salespeople spend entire careers creating customers that keep coming back. These salespeople don't have to prospect as much and they rarely have to overcome objections. Instead, they only deal with people that know, like and trust them. While it used to take decades to develop a book of business like that, it doesn't have to. We sat down with Trey Sinclair, President of Wells Insurance Agency to l...

It's go-time. The prospect's name and number are in front of you, and you're about to hit 'dial.' What did you do to prep? Too many salespeople answer that question with 'nothing' or 'not enough.' Figuring things out on the call isn't the best time to help customers solve problems, which is why the best performers always have a pre-game system they use to prepare. To learn how this looks for sales...

Discovery is one of the most critical jobs of a salesperson, because we need to know if we can help the people we're speaking with! Unfortunately, many salespeople make discovery a one-time event in their sales process and then get frustrated when interest wanes, objections arise and priorities shift. Salespeople that ensure discovery continues throughout the sales process avoid those problems, an...

'Pitching' has a bad rap in the sales industry, because too many salespeople 'spray and pray' when it comes to showing prospects what their products and services can do. If we could make our demos and pitches prospect-focused and actually provide them with something they couldn't get anywhere else before they purchase from us, how much more likely would we be to make the sale? To learn how to cust...

If you knew you could make progress on any account you called on, would you pick up the phone more? Instead of being a fantasy, delivering on that is exactly what we're covering in this week's podcast. We sat down with Gerry Hill , vice president at ConnectAndSell, to learn how salespeople can set and leverage micro-objectives to ensure they're making measurable progress no matter how long their s...

One of the easiest places to experience loss in a pipeline has nothing to do with pricing or competitors – it's because we let a prospect slip through the cracks. To ensure we never lose a prospect during a handoff between team members, we sat down with Sebastien Van Heyningen , president of Central Metric, to learn how the best salespeople systemize account handoffs. This ensures prospects never...

If our prospects don't know how much we care about them, then we can't expect them to care about what we're selling. That's why it's imperative we add more value to their lives even before they become customers. But how do we identify their pain points and build resources that will ensure they see us as people they want to take another call from? To learn the answer, we sat down with David Vartani...

Have you ever tried to convince a prospect to care about the features or benefits of what you sell? And how did that go? It's true that prospects only care about the things that could affect them, and if they don't understand how what you sell does that, you'll struggle to sell. To understand how to research and communicate the information prospects care about, we sat down with Sanjay Dhebar , a p...

Unhappy people don't tend to do well in sales, and there's a reason: People want to have conversations, relationships, and buying experiences that leave them feeling good about their choices.  To learn how we can positively elevate our prospects in every conversation, we sat down with Mark Bowden , an international expert in leveraging body language. He's consulted with the leaders of nations, but...

Salespeople often struggle through sales scripts and pre-built 'pitches' their companies provide them, wondering why the highest performers in their organization often go off-script. To learn how we can make any sales pitch our own, we sat down with Caelan Huntress, creative director of Stellar Platforms and author of the book Marketing Yourself . He showed us how to inject more personality into o...

Sales is a tough job if we think we're responsible for controlling the actions of others. Often, however, top salespeople place their focus on the things in their schedules, outreach and day that are within their control. This mindset shift can make the difference during times when prospects aren't picking up the phone despite our best efforts. To learn how to maintain or regain a sense of control...

Systems are part of nature and for the best salespeople, part of how they sell. When scientists conduct experiments in the natural world, they're looking for things that reliably repeat – a lesson salespeople can benefit from. To learn how to apply science to systemize our way out of losing sales, we sat down with David Hoffeld, author of The Science Of Selling and Sell More With Science. He showe...

A famous saying is 'Knowing is half the battle,' and it's a saying that the best salespeople take seriously. Showing up to a sales meeting already knowing about your prospect, their goals and their challenges positions you ahead of every other salesperson who has to build their prospect's profile on the fly. To learn how it's done, we sat down with Ben Shimol, a cybersecurity leader with Cider Sec...

Sales is a relationship business, but many salespeople sacrifice the sale to maintain the relationship. It is possible to have both and be seen as an equal partners. That's why we sat down with Leon McCowan, creator of The Sales Dojo , to learn how to keep ourselves out of the friend zone with our clients. It's a great system that ensures we're seen as equal partners, and it's all on this week's B...

When salespeople get desperate, they really turn on the charm. Unfortunately, buyers can smell it a mile away and it shuts down more sales opportunities than it creates. To learn how we can overcome the need to be likeable in how we sell while still serving our prospects, we sat down with Douglas Cole, author of The Sales MBA . He shared a simple system to ensure we keep prospects - instead of our...

There's a saying that 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks', and we've seen that apply to a lot of senior salespeople. After all, why fix what isn't broken? In this week's interview, we sat down with Charles Reiling , CEO of Coastal One Advisors, to learn how he ensures his team of experienced salespeople never stop learning and growing. He's found it's the cure for the boredom that often keeps...

If you sell long enough, you'll find yourself in a sales plateau. It might be in how you prospect, drive meetings or ask for the sale, but as we become comfortable in any process, we become complacent. To learn how to identify where we might be in a comfort zone in how we sell and break out if it, we sat down with David Schlosberg , a sales expert who works with sales teams to ensure they don't st...

If you've ever been nervous to reach out to a stranger and try to sell them something, you're not alone. It's natural to be nervous when we're in a new environment, whether we're selling something or kicking down a door with a military team. Where military teams get it right is having a plan before they step into the unknown. To learn how to plan our first sales conversations, we sat down with Ale...

Sales stall for thousands of different reasons, and most salespeople chalk it up to bad luck, inflation, or a stagnant economy. However, there is a group of high performers out there who never settle for sales stalls. They're constantly examining what they could do differently next time, effectively 'sprinting' as they try new methods scripts and templates. To learn how these 'Bulletproof' salespe...

The time between when we meet with a buyer and when they say yes can be frustrating for a salesperson who's always hearing, 'We'll check with our folks and get back to you.' To help us overcome this sticking point in the sales cycle, we sat down with Brandon Bornancin , CEO of seamless.ai, to learn how he's systemized ensuring that his sales move from demo to closed business more often. Brandon ha...