Sales Babble

Lead Gen Innovation Pearl Diver with Nick Lissette #489 Today on Sales Babble we meet N ick Lissette the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blackpearl Group. Black Pearl is the company that created our sponsor, Pearl Diver. Pearl Diver is the tool that allows you to see who's visiting your website, even if they never signup or connect with you.  Nick has over a decade of experience working wit...

Less is More When Selling #488 Picture a stage where the actor is a sales professional and their words flow like a never-ending river of verbosity and theatrics! The seller wants but one thing - to present the product in its most complete and benefits-rich manner.  In the next act the seller, stands tall, basking in the spotlight. going on and on and on. Meanwhile, the buyer in the 12th seat of th...

Cold Calling Part Deux #487 Today Pat's taking a mulligan. After listening to last week's episode I believe I missed the mark. In many regards, cold calling looks like a pushy activity and as such seems unTaoist, if that's a word. How can that be? Last week I didn't do a good enough job explaining.  In this episode, I riff on the topic and explain how you can embrace wu-wei to simplify your cold-c...

How To Dispel The Fear of Cold Calling #486 Life is filled with hard things to overcome. Like for me it's pizza, has there ever been a more perfect food invented? Yet to stay fit and trim as best as a portly old man can do, there are limits to how much pizza I should consume. What's another hard thing in life? Cold. When I first started making cold calls I was literally knocking on peoples doors. ...

To Know a Lead is to Find a Lead #485 Have you ever noticed how you keep dialing those same leads, over and over again, but it's like talking to a brick wall? It's like you're living in 'Lead Groundhog Day.' Well, my friends, that's what I call being 'lead poor.' But fear not! It's time to rev up your prospecting game and unveil a treasure trove of bonafide, highly qualified leads. In this week's...

What is the Science of Scaling Podcast with Mark Roberge #484 In today's episode, we're doing something a bit different and featuring an episode from another podcast. It's called The Science of Scaling, hosted by Mark Roberge. He's the bestselling author of The Sales Acceleration Formula. He's also a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and the Founding CRO of HubSpot. Subscribe to the podca...

Why Are You Still Working That Lost Deal? #483 Why is it they say that when one door closes, another door always opens? Are doors in some sort of cosmic competition? 'Oh, this door is closing? Well, I'll show you!' And bam, another door pops open, like it's saying, 'Don't worry, I got your back!' Doors are like the ultimate wingmen, always ready to hook you up with a new adventure. I mean, serious...

Wisdom Comes From Failed Deals, Are You Sure? In our culture winners are heroes.  Our movies, especially American movies, prefer underdogs who find success with persistence and grit.  Yet these overnight sensations rarely happen overnight, Instead, it takes years filled with mistake after mistake after mistake. Sales wisdom comes from failed deals. In this episode, we babble about the challenges i...

Why Weakness Trumps Strength When Selling #481 Have you ever noticed that sometimes selling is like playing a never-ending game of hide-and-seek, except the prospects are world champions in hiding what they really and truly desire?  Just when you quote them a solution, the rug gets pulled out from under you and you have to restart! What a pain, right? With that said it's easy to forget the golden...

How to Get a Handle on Objection Handling #480 If you've had any experience in sales you know that sometimes closing a deal is harder than walking a dog through a forest of squirrels. Around every turn, they're tugging the leash, wrapping it around your legs, wrenching your wrists, and once in a while, slipping out of the collars and it's off to the races. What's a seller to do?  It can be frustra...

How To Allow a Buying Decision Without Forcing #479 The buyer values tradition. Fearful of flash in the pans, They  prefer the serious, the powerful, And the so called safe.   Yet the market is a series of spontaneous changes. To resist only creates sorrow. It's the  wise decision maker who knows they don't know.   The Master Seller speaks of the risk of avoiding risk And how when the spring comes...

How to Lose a Sale Before You Start #478 The Chinese word for the Tao translates to Path. The way of that path is one of harmony. Pushing a prospect who has no interest is like pushing a rope. It can't be done. It's wiser to work with prospects who need your services. This starts by discussing the end goal at the beginning.. Any effort to talk them into something else is a waste of time.  Sales Ba...

What is The Tao of Sales Babble? #477 If you've been listening to this podcast for a while you've probably had a vague question about Taoism. It probably doesn't keep you up at night but you know Pat's been talking about it for nearly two years. Given the Chinese music and Chinese names you probably know it's from China. And you probably know it was written by an old guy name Lao Tzu.  But anythin...

Chasing Money Chases Away Sales #476 What do they say, money isn't everything but everything needs money? And then there's the converse. Author Margaret Bonnano said,  "Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time."  These are two extremes. One is the yin, one is the yang. Yet  the Tao teaches us to travel to the center and search for equilibrium. Sometimes, myself included, I've let m...

How To Make Quota Without Hurry #475 We live in an impatient world. Everybody wants everything done in a New York minute. It's gotten to be that every desire is considered a ticking time bomb that must be disarmed right now. But this is the thing, our desires are not that important. What blows up in our face is the disappointment that we didn't get what we wanted.  Lao Tzu said that "Nature does n...

Why Competition is Not Your Enemy #474 One big issue I have with the selling profession is the pervasive view that competition is a zero-sum game where there are only winners and losers. These  people believe that for them to succeed, someone else must fail which leads to a fear of being on the losing side. This kind of fear can be detrimental to success. It undercuts confidence and creates unreal...

How To Know When a Buying Sign is Not a Buying Sign #473 I don't know about you but more than once I've lied to myself that I was going to close a deal.  I would invent a story that the prospect was showing buying signs like asking good questions, explaining how they could use it in their situation, and sharing they want to make a decision quickly. But when all is said and done,  they never commit...

Is AI Ready for Sales and Marketing? With Brian Basilico #472 Today we take a break from the Tao Te Ching to revisit artificial intelligence. We ask the question is AI ready for sales and marketing. Our guest for this episode is Brian Basilico. Brian is an award-winning author of the best selling book "It's Not About You, It's About Bacon! Relationship Marketing In A Social Media World!" and his l...

The Power of Silence in a Discovery Call #471 Do you know why libraries are always so quiet? It's because they have a lot of SHHHHelf-awareness. Can the same be said for you? Today we talk about the power of silence. Pause for a second.   Another second. Did that quiet make you uncomfortable? Did you wonder "is this episode broke? Did Pat screw up? He is pretty fallible. He does make a lot of mist...

The Babble That Can Be Said is Not the Tao of Sales Babble #470 Does this Tao of Sales Babble seem too preachy? Gushing and dogmatic about listening and patience and being a good friend to perfect strangers? If you're a bit skeptical about all this wu wei, good for you. You should be! What we're talking about here is not prescriptive. There isn't a script that says if this happens go right and if...

Looking For Deals In All The Wrong Places #469 Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? Looking for deals in too many faces? As markets come and go, it's easy to get an achy breaky heart. But sometimes, through no fault of our own, what used to work, stops working. If there's one thing the Tao Te Ching has repeatedly told us is that nothing lasts and the world is in constant change. So ,...

The Peril of Over Confidence When Selling #468 Have you ever let your ego get ahead of your success? Like that day you boasted you can eat anything. You agreed to accept the "habanero pepper challenge" but quickly found they were too hot to handle, burning your mouth and throat and then spent the next hour drinking buckets of water to soothe the pain? We've all been there right? Oh you've never do...

The Way of AI and ChatGPT in Sales #467 Today instead of noodling on what the old master Lao Tze says about the Tao of Sales Babble we're going to babble about a huge breakthrough this winter,    Artificial Intelligence  or AI. Why? Let me make a bold statement: Not since crypto has there been a disruptive innovation at this level. In this episode we zero in on how to use AI and ChatGPT in sales....

How to Dispel Anger with Difficult Prospects #466 Have you ever wanted to throttle a prospect despite the fact you know it would kill the deal? And then luckily you found some composure and  decided to hide from them rather than to become one of them?  That's not a solution. The entire science of selling is based around finding an agreement on an exchange of value. Pissing off your prospects is th...

Why Action Speaks Louder than Words #465 There's a lot of sales babble out there that it takes a big personality and fast talking to be good at sales. There's also a lot of people who think sales is a yucky business and avoid dealing with sales people as best they can. I get why people feel that way. Consider all the  myths in movies like the Wolf On Wall Street.. But in real life, it's just not t...