Changing The Sales Game

"Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."  – Bill Bradley. Being ambitious and persistent in sales is a critical piece of the puzzle. Today, my guest and I will discuss a process that is easy to understand and, with practice, can become your go-to strategy for meeting and exceeding your goals year after year.     YouTube: https://youtu.be/F0FyeCcRBIA   About Dr....

"Business decision-makers love online video because it gives them the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time." – Robert Weiss. I think many of you have heard my story about starting my podcast using audio only. Then, one day, my producer shared that she felt I should use video, too. My response was not pretty…lol! I said to her, "You're crazy, and that's never happening." Well,...

"Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great."   — John D. Rockefeller. The most significant areas where I see salespeople and sales teams drop the ball are at the beginning and end of the sales process.   Step 1 is preparation at the beginning of the sales process. To put this in perspective, when we are doing our external business development efforts, 90% of successful BD is preparation. Y...

"Work the LONG GAME.  You don't want your relationship to last 6-8 months, you want it to last for years." – Mike Allton. This is a quote called My Name!  We must play the long game, be patient, have the right marketing and sales approach, and truly care about our clients.  If we do it right, the results are incredible.  Building deep, trusting relationships can create a pipeline filled with passi...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." –  Maya Angelou. Whenever I hear this quote, I am reminded that marketing is step 1 in making a sale but will not make the dales for you.  To be relevant and top of mind to prospects and clients alike, we must have stellar communication skills and a clear sale...

 "It's about making connections through the data that you might not have made as a human being. AI has the uncanny ability to tease out things about the consumer you might never think about." –  Ryan Bezenek. I have been intrigued by ChatGPT since I heard about it years ago. I want to continue to grow my understanding of AI and how to use it to develop sales skills within my business.    Today, my...

"Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great."   — John D. Rockefeller. The most significant areas where I see salespeople and sales teams drop the ball are at the beginning and end of the sales process.   Step 1 is preparation at the beginning of the sales process. To put this in perspective, when we are doing our external business development efforts, 90% of successful BD is preparation. Y...

Connie's motivational quote today is by – Ben Bernanke, "The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being." When I was in college many years ago, I double majored in Economics and Finance.  Yes, you can call me a dork!  Even though I was unsure of what I wanted to be when I grew up and I knew that finance and economics were two important topi...

My motivational quote for today is by – R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr. "Let's stop believing that our differences make us superior or inferior to one another. A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone." -  R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr.  I love this quote and find its relevance extremely timely in today's divided world. My opinion is right; yours is wrong, which...

"Taking initiative pays off. It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do." – Sheryl Sandberg. I have shared the Gallup Global Workplace Surveys about employee engagement at work over the years. Well, a new study just came out, and it's not good! The study shows that 33 percent of American workers describe their work experience as meaningful or engagin...

"People buy from people they know, like and trust. At the start of building a relationship with your buyer the only thing you can shoot for is 'Trust'. Building trust has to be very obvious from the very first contact you make with your buyer or you kill any chance of starting a dialogue." - Michael deGroot   YouTube: https://youtu.be/7VLfEVq5ifA   Check Out These Highlights:   Sales have been my...

"The sale most often goes to the most interested party."  – Steve Chandler. Being interested and curious about what our clients need today and in the future is critical to our sales success.  So, how do we show that we care, are curious, and are interested in helping our ideal client?  One way is to use resources available to us to spotlight our genius, experience, and level of care.  One resource...

"The confidence you have going into the sales call will determine the level of profit you have coming out." – Mark Hunter. Being in sales for many decades, I have had my share of prospecting wows. Sometimes, I didn't feel like prospecting. Getting motivated to make cold calls, follow-up COI calls, and warm prospect calls to meet my revenue goals has not always been easy.    During today's show, my...

"The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."  - Socrates. To make your email marketing efforts successful, one of the major components is building your list. Essentially, we are always doing two things: fueling our email marketing "machine" with leads and working to improve the conversion rate of our machine (through improving our messagi...

"When deploying AI, whether you focus on top-line growth or bottom-line profitability, start with the customer and work backward." – Rob Garf. This quote is essential for sales teams to understand that sales have always been about building relationships and the human touch or experience.  At least, that has been the source of my success.    Early in my career, four decades ago, we didn't have comp...

"Your customers are the judge, jury, and executioner for your value proposition.  They will be merciless if you don't find the fit!" - Alexander Osterwalder.  The percentage of businesses that do not know customers' top buying criteria is frightening. A ton of research shows how few businesses know what their customers value, so they miss the mark with their value proposition. My guest today will...

"To say my fate is not tied to your fate is like saying, 'Your end of the boat is sinking.'"  - Hugh Downs.  I have always been part of a team, even as a business owner. I have learned, probably the hard way, that I can't achieve success alone. Both while raising my kids and starting my business, I needed experts to help me understand business, technology, administrative work, etc.       Last year...

"Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell."  – Seth Godin.   A component of marketing ourselves and our companies is becoming memorable to potential clients so they choose to do business with us. This involves different forms of media exposure.    Publicity is one form of media exposure that helps us market our products or services. It gets us noticed and hel...

"This is not hard sell-it's heart sell.  Good questions get to the heart of the problem or the need very quickly, and the buyer doesn't feel like he or she is being pushed"  – Jeffrey Gitomer. Selling from the heart and building long-term relationships were intuitive for me and helped me quickly stand out from my peers in the financial industry. By creating a solid foundation and reputation, I cou...

"In sales, a referral is the key to the door of resistance."  – Bo Bennett. For over 35 years, I have been blessed to live off referrals.  It's all about building relationships so deeply that your ideal clients know you and know who to refer to you.  I have learned that the key is harnessing the power of magnetic marketing with LinkedIn and PR, which will skyrocket your visibility, establish unsha...

"Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time." – Ann Handley. I always say this: Sales and Marketing are different. They support each other; they are like a marriage. Marketing gets people to agree to speak with you, while sales get the client or prospect to buy from you. My expertise is sales, and I have h...

"Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories."  - Roger C. Schank . I use stories in my sales conversations with prospects and when teaching.  Years later, people approached me and said, "Do you remember when you taught us XYZ?  I still think about that and remember how to use that concept with my clients."     That defines success for me. Years...

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." – Winston Churchill. Boy, this quote hit home for me.  I know I have failed many times in my life.  We see quotes like this when we are in a crisis or facing failure and think, BS, I failed, I'm not good enough, or I don't deserve the success. And there lies the issue—our minds! The negative record player that is on repeat,...

"If you don't have a defined process that moves your people forward so they can achieve greater results, then what is it you are managing? You're managing the status quo."  – Keith Rosen. I often see managers managing numbers or metrics versus coaching someone to grow and build new and improved skills.  Those who know me have heard me often say, "We can't coach a number or metric to gain market sh...

"Great things are done by a series of small things done together." – Vincent van Gogh.  After COVID, I was forced to pivot and create an entire digital library of training and new business outreach. Understanding this new world of online automation, branding, and client outreach required a huge learning curve.    So what did I do?  I buckled down, took many online classes, hired several coaches wh...