Sales Talk for CEOs

Almost every company I know is struggling to bring new business in at the pace required.  Why?  Well, that is an interesting question but I think by now most of us know that our methods are outdated and simply don’t work. The better questions are how do we keep new business flowing in?  What should be done instead of what we continue to do that doesn’t work?  I’ve always had a...

It’s been 14 years since Bob Vaez started EventMobi and he’s had considerable growth without investment from Venture Capital or Private Equity. How did he do it? It wasn’t always easy. EventMobi’s early sales model was classic founder led with Bob doing it all from mining his network for leads to closing deals.  His decision to bootstrap versus take external investment meant that hiring an ex...

Wrapping up my 3rd season and I still can’t believe I started and built a successful podcast.  The thing I love most is the conversations with the CEOs. They are so willing to share their story in the spirit of helping others.  Whether they are near the beginning or the end of their journey it’s always interesting to learn why they started and how they grew sales.  In this Season Fi...

Heidi Messer started Collective[i] with one goal: to bring more certainty and less volatility to sales and improve the livelihoods of every single employee. According to Heidi, sellers operate at 30% productivity rates. There is no other function in a company that is as unproductive as sales. Higher productivity equals more certainty, so why not improve it. If sales improves every other department...

Sean Burke shares his knowledge of building high performance sales teams gained through nine startups, seven exits and billions of dollars in value creation. The first rule, you can only attract the best if you can show a definitive path to hitting quota. If you can’t show the math, why would they join your team? Next, you are building a team not a collective of individual contributors. Part of th...

After eight years of trial and error, Daveed feels he has finally figured out the sales model for, Valens Global.  He heard about the rainmaker sales model from a very successful law firm. The senior partner initiated discussions with clients that demonstrate the firm's expertise and ability to solve a particular problem.  For Daveed it meant taking the lead with the customer to define t...

Years of trust can evaporate in a matter of moments if you forget this simple rule. Dmitri Leichik learned the hard way that customers are not buying your product, they are buying your commitment to their success. The moment they perceive a transactional motive, you’ve lost. Utilizing a founder led sales model, Twistellar has grown globally and still relies on Dmitri’s long term relationship strat...

Anthony Iannarino has some bad news for sales leaders who are depending on 20 year old sales models. They just don’t work anymore.  “Tell me about your problems and let me tell you about my solution” won’t even get you a second meeting.” Alvin Toffler, who wrote The Future Shock, said that the future is going to be dominated by people who can learn, unlearn and then learn again. The hard part...

Jake Dunlap takes us from founding Skaled Consulting to his first successful sales hire. And yes, it did take 10 years to get it right. It’s great to be a founder led sales company but founder led services delivery is a problem. This was the first major hurdle that Jake encountered in his fledgling sales consulting business and a barrier to scaling.  It took years to structure a scalable serv...

Matt Fok came up with his idea for eZ-Xpo, before the pandemic. He thought, what if you could continue the dialogue started at conferences virtually? Since his company was already selling an eLearning platform, he simply went to his existing customers to validate the idea.  And then the pandemic hit.  His founder-led sales approach paid off as he uncovered more and better ways to address...

My next guest on Sales Talk For CEOs is Brent Adamson and he’s got some revolutionary ideas about B2B enterprise selling.  Brent explains decision maker confidence is the main barrier for B2B teams to close deals. The three factors eroding confidence are complexity, information overload and value opacity or consensus on the value of the desired outcome. So stop selling product benefits. You n...

My guest today on this episode of Sales Talk For CEOs is Karen Frame whose company Makeena, is on a mission to help people live healthier lives on a cleaner planet.   She talks about the advantages of having a founder-led sales organization.  The obvious advantage is being close to your customers and making sure that your product is solving a real problem for them.  The not so...

Arman Eshraghi can teach us something about building sales teams from scratch. He is, after all, on his fourth startup Qrvey. So, what has he learned from one startup to the next? What has he changed and what stayed the same?  One constant that remains true for Arman, if you, as CEO and Founder can’t sell your product, bringing in a sales team won’t solve the problem.   Once you do...

The world of selling has irrevocably changed. Buyers no longer want to be sold to and especially not as a result of a cold call. They want to get to know a company by getting to know and trust the people who work there. Starting digital conversations is the first step to build this trust. As CEO, it’s imperative that you lead by example. In this episode Alice talks with Tim Hughes who explains how...

My next guest is Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, Inc. who is a case study in drinking your own champagne. He is here to talk about using his own platform to build his business and the breakthroughs that he discovered to make the platform more effective for him and of course the customers that use it. Chris Beall takes us through his journey building the ConnectAndSell business model starting w...

So many founders make it their goal to get out of the sales role as they scale. “I can hardly wait until we can afford a VP sales to take over” is a common founder refrain.  While his role has evolved, getting out of sales entirely is the last thing that Usman Sheikh plans to do. In this episode we will learn what defines a founder-led sales organization and how you might change your mind abo...

Is your sales team using a value proposition that is irrelevant to your buyers leaving them to connect the dots? Take a look at the value proposition that your Go To Market Teams are using to make sure they are relevant. As CEO, you are the only one who can orchestrate this. It matters, research shows that relevant value propositions could increase your deal closure rate by 50%. In today's hyper c...

Most startup founders wear many hats in the early days. And one of those hats is often head of sales usually because they are the most knowledgeable about the product and the problems it solves in the market. But it's impossible to grow beyond the startup phase if you are spending 15 days a month on the road selling. Replacing himself as a salesperson took 3 years, but replacing himself as head of...

Do you have a channel strategy in place? You may have channel partners as part of your Go To Market Strategy, but do you have a strategy that includes how you will support your partners’ success?  I’ve worked with many companies who sell through the channel and complain that their channel partners aren’t selling enough.  In order for channel sales to be successful, your team has to under...

Like most CEOs, you've probably had some bad experiences trying to hire sales leaders in your company. The root of the problem? Many CEOs think they can hire someone to take over the sales team so they can step away and focus on other things to grow the company. It's just not that way! The CEO can't step away from sales but instead must have a plan for supporting sales leaders every step of the wa...

Show Notes Today we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Sales Talk for CEOs podcast! Throughout the past year, I've featured two types of episodes on the show. In the “CEO Journey” series, I interview CEOs to learn about how they grow sales. Next, in the Experts Series, I interview experts I know will have advice to help you grow sales. So today, we kick off a new segment: the Insights Serie...

Lisa Magnuson is a mastermind sales strategist and author of The TOP Sales Leader Playbook and The TOP Seller Advantage . Today she joins me on a special episode of the Sales Talk for CEOs Experts Series. The topic of our conversation? Closing bigger deals . If you're looking to scale sales by going after much larger deals, this is the perfect podcast for you. Many companies I work with are growin...

Are you trying to find sellers who check all the boxes of success in sales? Do you believe that you must keep hiring more salespeople to grow sales? That's what Juliana Stancampiano thought before she tried a radically different approach that has yielded amazing results. Juliana is the CEO of Oxygen, a company that works in the learning strategy space. She joins me today on Sales Talk for CEO in a...

Are you a product CEO or a sales CEO? The answer may not be what you think. Case in point: Catherine Dahl, the CEO of Beanworks, an AP automation platform recently acquired by Quadient. Catherine spent two years building her company as a sales CEO when a sudden realization struck that she was trying to be something she wasn't. By owning her role as a product CEO , everything changed. With the righ...

Going from incremental growth to exponential growth requires radical changes in your business—from your mindset and focus to your team and how your company operates. If you're a CEO who feels 'stuck' in incremental growth but wants more, you'll want to listen to this episode of Sales Talk for CEOs Expert Series with  Richard Medcalf. Richard is the CEO of Xquadrant, a company that works with...