The Sales Evangelist

Sellers have a bad reputation as people who are artificial and only concerned about themselves, but in order to succeed, you must focus on selling from the heart. Larry Levine has spent 30-something years in the trenches of B2B work, and he recognized some glaring weaknesses in sales teams he worked with. He values authenticity and he points to it as a big disconnect for many sellers. But it isn't...

Sellers are understandably focused on the closing of any deal but it’s important that we keep things in perspective and don’t make the closing an event. The truth is that every transaction has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but we often get so focused on the closing that we unnecessarily freak ourselves out. This conversation comes from our  TSE Certified Sales Training Program , our sales coa...

One of the most important questions you’ll answer is “Why should I do business with you?” and it’s vital that you get it right when you do. When the question comes, you’ll be tempted to point out how long your company has existed, how great your product is, and how great your customer service is, but those answers won’t likely work. Sales From the Street tackles actual problems that sellers are fa...

The marketplace is crowded, so if you understand how to instantly increase the perceived value of your offer, you'll be better able to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Bob Britton got his start in business as an auto mechanic and he had an opportunity to buy an existing business. He figured owning a business couldn't be that hard, so he jumped in, assuming he could do a better job tha...

Sales leaders who neglect their own workload in an effort to help their sellers solve problems will find themselves falling behind, so it’s vital that sales leaders stop falling for the reactive trap. You hired your sellers to handle their assigned responsibilities and to solve problems. When your sellers distract you with problems, you’ll have less time to focus on sales plans or strategies. You...

Regardless of your industry or your product, relationships are the currency of your business, and though you can love people without leading them, you can’t lead people without loving them. Ty Bennett is an entrepreneur who fell in love with the speaking and training development aspect of building a sales team and it led him to write books on the topic and start a training company called  Leadersh...

Stories pack a lot of power for sellers when used in the proper sales framework, and the good news is that stories are everywhere. Today we’re sharing an excerpt from TSE Certified Sales Training Program that addresses how you can effectively use stories in your own sales. UTILIZING STORIES Stories have existed since the dawn of time. Early cave drawings told stories of cavemen hunting, and those...

For business owners looking to scale their efforts, there are important factors involved in building a remote sales team, and implementing them can mean the difference between success and failure. Liam Martin runs three companies related to managing remote workers:  TimeDoctor.com ,  Staff.com , and his passion project, which is a conference on building and scaling remote teams. His organization h...

Many sellers struggle to connect with their customers, but on today’s episode, Jacquelyn Nicholson addresses how to genuinely build rapport with any prospect. Jacquelyn is an enterprise seller and one of the inaugural members at Alpha Sense where she acts as an evangelist for the company and its work. WORLD OF SALES Jacquelyn landed in sales after a strange recession in Chicago prevented her from...

  Sometimes business leaders find themselves wanting to make sure that their team members get everything exactly right, but unless you’re willing to let them mess up, they’ll likely never learn. Perfect situations don’t exist. Imperfection is a factor in life, but it’s also where our growth happens. MAINTAINING CONTROL Control often gives us the sense that we can force everything to work. As a res...

Many small business owners and sales reps face challenges with closing, and there are five closing mistakes that will prolong your selling cycle. I met Chala Dincoy at the  Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council ROAR Conference , and today she’ll talk to us about the mistakes that can delay or prolong your selling cycle. Chala is an elevator pitch coach who helps people get into the room. T...

As you move closer to the end of a deal, you'll likely encounter more objections, and identifying key stakeholders is the secret to overcoming those challenges. As you move into deeper conversation with the prospect, you may not realize that there are other people involved in the process, even if you aren't directly interacting with them. Your job as seller is to find out who they are. Today we'll...

As you're working to expand your reach and grow your network, recognize the importance of building diversity into your network so you'll be better positioned to succeed in your industry. I met Sharon Manker at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council ROAR Conference , which connects minority-owned and women-owned businesses with Fortune 100 companies. Sharon has worked in supply chain for...

Sales constantly evolve and sellers who want to be successful must effectively map and create multithreaded relationships in order to close more deals. Peter Chun talks today about the importance of multithreaded relationships and the challenge for reps who must establish them. Peter fell in love with the convergence of sales and data and has found a personal passion for it. He loves strategizing...

No matter what business you're in or what product you're selling, downturns happen, so today we're talking about how to prepare your sales pipeline for an economic downturn.  We're here at the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council's ROAR Conference, which is connecting minority-owned and women-owned businesses with Fortune 100 companies. Joel Burstein says that companies should be most awa...

Sales leaders who can solve the most common sales problems will increase their productivity and improve their performance. Today, Charles Bernard explains how a disciplined system for selling and managing can remove barriers to performance for sales leaders. Bernard founded ‘Criteria for Success,' an organization that develops online sales playbooks and provides leadership and sales management tra...

If you paint a picture for your customers of where they are now versus where they want to go, you can help them make a buying decision.  Show them how the positive change will happen, or what might happen if they don’t change. It will allow them to logically justify an emotional decision. Jeffrey Gitomer was my first ever guest and he taught us something interesting on that very first podcast: Peo...

  Saying goodbye to a legend is difficult, but we can move forward living by the principles they teach us and the lessons we learn. One of the best selling business books of all times is Think and Grow Rich; it changed my life. It transformed the way I think about money and about the opportunities I could create. The person I received the book from is also important to me. It was from someone who...

Sales differentiation helps salespeople win more deals at the price point they want, and today Lee Salz talks about building a framework that will allow you to personalize your sales. Sales reps in every industry must differentiate themselves in today's market. It's crucial for sellers to have room to "color" the sales process. Origins When Lee was a kid, he had a job as a pickup and delivery driv...

Sometimes sales professionals get it backward, and they fail to understand the need to worry more about your champion than your decision maker. Today Garrett Mehrguth talks to us about the importance of your champion in your sales deals, and why we shouldn't lose sight of his importance. Sometimes there's great value in changing the defaults we learn as salespeople. We tend to become so obsessed w...

Sometimes the logical approach doesn't make sense, just as in the story of David and Goliath it seemed impossible to believe that the shepherd boy could beat the giant. In sales, we sometimes have to be a bit irrational. We must think outside the box. Today we'll discuss how unorthodox thinking can help us take down some pretty significant giants. It can also help us win some pretty decent account...

It's impossible to overstate the importance of being a great leader when you're working to build a team or an organization into something that will change the world and make things better for people. Today's guest Andrei Mincov founded Trademark Factory in 2013 to help entrepreneurs secure the legacy of their brands and preserve their hard work. Teams As you grow your team, as you grow your busine...

When you're scaling an organization, it's important that you're able to measure the quality of your leads, pipeline, and sales talent. It important for business owners as well as sales reps, because simply adding people to the organization won't necessarily result in more sales. Today Rob Kall talks about the numbers that we might not be measuring and the importance of that data in helping your or...

Very often, sales reps find themselves frustrated and hemmed in by the mistakes small company sales leaders make. I had a conversation last week with a sales rep who was frustrated because his company had no real plan or guidance for how it would achieve the owner’s vision. The owner expected Herculean efforts by the rep, but eventually the rep stopped performing and left the company to escape the...

Salespeople don’t like to hear the word “no” but Andrea Waltz is going to help you change the way you look at that response so that you’ll find yourself trying to go for no. Andrea and her husband struck out on their own about 19 years ago. They did sales workshops and trainings for big companies, and they found that their rejection piece was the thing everyone loved. This was a problem and a solu...