How to Coach the Complex Sale

There are many moving parts in a sales process which gives way to complexity, especially if you don’t have a plan. Host John Golden interviews Alice Heiman on what exactly makes a sale complex and how sales teams can embrace it. She also discusses the roadblocks sales leaders specifically face throughout a sales process.

Be sure to mark your calendar for Thursday, May 9th at 9am PT and join John Golden, Martha Neumeister and Alice Heiman to learn how to close more complex deals.

Recorded Live 9th May 2019 9am PT/Noon ET

Episode Questions

1. What exactly makes a sale complex and how can sales leaders and salespeople understand this complexity?
2. What are the struggles that sales leaders are confronted with in sales?
3. How sales leaders can support sales to close more complex deals?

Our Guest

Alice Heiman

Alice is a nationally recognized sales expert with guest appearances on television and radio broadcasts. She’s been featured in Entrepreneur’s “Startups and Selling Power.” In teaching the fine art of selling, she has earned a host of awards including Saleswoman of the Year and Marketer of the Year.

Links › aliceheiman.com | twitter.com | linkedin.com

Our Hosts

About Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Martha Neumeister

Martha is social media strategist, responsible for all social media platforms of Pipeliner CRM. She is a communication expert with social media affinity, which she has been focusing on throughout her professional career. She has a bachelor´s degree in Entrepreneurship & Management and a master´s degree in Online Marketing which supports her in her career as Social Media Strategist.

About SalesChats

#SalesChats is a fast-paced (no more than 30 minutes) multi-media series that provides leading strategies, tactics and thinking for sales professionals worldwide. It can be found on Twitter (#SalesChats), as a live Google+ Hangout, and as a podcast available on iTunes, SoundCloud and right here on SalesPOP! If you think you would make a great guest for #SalesChats, please contact co-host Martha Neumeister.

#SalesChats is co-hosted by John Golden, CSMO Pipeliner CRM, and Martha Neumeister, Social Media Strategist Pipeliner CRM.

Adapting to Communication Styles in Leadership

More than 60% of the time people claim to have a bad interaction with others. That number is staggering and could be caused by a lack of awareness in our interactions. Betsy Allen-Manning, top leadership speaker, human behavior expert, and author, recognizes that being aware of different communication styles is critical to being a great leader. In this interview, she offers several best practices and strategies for becoming a better communicator.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Turning down the noise and reducing stress

• When you’re a leader, you manage not only your own schedule but the schedule of your employees and everything else that goes along with being in a top position. So how can you reduce that stress?

4 unspoken communication aggravators

• Betsy sees communication at the core of being a great leader. She warns leaders of 4 things they may be doing to cause frustration amongst their teams.

Operating under the golden rule

• Communication is not one size fits all so the golden rule doesn’t apply, but Betsy has another rule that is helpful.

Meeting in the middle with communication

• It’s not fair for only the leader to take into consideration how people want to be communicated with. Employees must also flex to a leader’s style of communication. DISC personality types can help with this.

Molding a culture of tailored communication

• You have to be strategic about the culture you want instead of trying to come to it organically. What is your organizational DNA? Establishing your core values is very important here.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

A Targeted Approach and PHD (Pig Headed Determination)

Who wouldn’t be interested in the fastest, least expensive way to increase sales? At 24 years old Amanda Holmes became the CEO of her father’s legendary multi-million dollar company, Chet Holmes International, a company focused on helping small to medium sized businesses grow faster, better, and smarter. Amanda has learned from her father’s training developed from working with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies and shares some of the strategies for success in this interview. Amanda also encourages salespeople to come from a place of service in a world where people have become so focused on themselves.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

The best buyer strategy

• Amanda’s father came to this strategy by being very targeted in his approach – “the dream 100.”
• What were the lessons learned from not casting the widest net possible and how does Amanda continue to implement this?

The fear of such a focused approach

• It can feel safe marketing to large groups of people at one time. This way you feel like you don’t have as big of an opportunity cost. What are the benefits of targeted marketing?

The idea of stacked marketing with a core story

• Amanda evangelizes using many different forms of marketing with the same messaging.

The importance of sales process

• Some salespeople think sales is an art and shouldn’t be confined by processes.
• It’s often much easier when there is someone outside of ourselves guiding us to create these processes.

Virtual selling and the human element

• Our world is more digitally connected than ever, and face to face meetings are becoming less common. If you can mix in-person meetings with keeping in touch virtually through things like social media, you are at an advantage.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Breaking Free from The Chains of Conventional Wisdom

Many leaders feel like they are a walking to-do list and consequently, they lose focus on what they set out to do as a leader. Their role then turns into more of a management role. Keynote speaker, author, and executive coach Sara Canaday talks about the practices in her book Leadership Unchained that have helped leaders reconnect to their work and better handle their never-ending task lists. She states that leaders are responsible for disrupting their own thinking and learning from a new perspective.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

The genesis of Sara’s book, Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance

• Sara worked her way up in the corporate world for 15 years. She was conscious about following certain practices during this time but realized once she stepped away that we needed a new brand of leadership.

Landscape changes in business

• The constant push causes some leaders to be overwhelmed. So what can they do about it?

Cutting out the noise

• Sometimes leaders don’t know where to focus their efforts. Learn what Sara suggests.

The power of taking time out

• It is so hard sometimes to slow down. Believe it or not, we are actually doing a lot when we are doing nothing. Sara gives leaders the business case for taking a strategic pause.

Data is sexy

• We have access to so much data, but if we rely too heavily on it we risk losing soft intelligence.

Breaking free from the expert trap

• Many leaders got to where they are by being a subject matter expert, and they are responsible for sharing that knowledge with their teams. But it’s okay to admit when you don’t know the answer.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Replacing Doubt with Confidence in Leadership

When we visualize and think positively and then verbalize those thoughts, not only do they become reality and make us feel good, but others around us feel good as well. Michelle Beauchamp, founder of The Champ Group, talks about how servant leadership starts within. She also encourages leaders to look for more opportunities to give employees tools, training, and time to grow rather than jumping so quickly to corrective action plans.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

The John Maxwell approach

• Michelle’s passion was always coaching and helping people, so she decided to get Maxwell’s certification for credibility and came out with a lot of great lessons she still refers back to today.

Watch your thoughts

• Because our thoughts become our words, we have to be careful of the types of information we consume.

Having goals in mind

• A leader’s job is to plan ahead. Vision boards can help with this.

Fear of success

• Success can become a comfort zone that limits more success. It’s our job to seek out the opportunities that are out there and not making a decision is a decision.

Communicating positively

• Not everyone communicates in the same way. Listening can be the most challenging part of communicating, but that’s how the best connection is made.
• Validating what people say can be helpful.

Biggest challenges of leadership and building teams

• In our fast-moving world, we aren’t taking the time to collaborate in a business setting and get too caught up in producing results.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

A Wharton Business School study has found one key difference that marks the best sales people from the rest. It all comes down to the meaning of the word sell. It comes from an old English word, “sellan” and it goes to the heart of what it takes to be successful in business. I got to share it at one of the biggest sales events in Europe. Discover what it is in this short video.

Overcoming Obstacles of Team Building

Building a work team today is perceived as more difficult than ever due to intergenerational issues, among other things. Kelly Roach, a business growth strategist who helps entrepreneurs and business owners start and scale their businesses, discusses the challenges that entrepreneurs building a team run into. She also explains how culture is so important in many aspects of the business and how it goes much deeper than a mission statement slapped on a wall.

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

Two big struggles when growing your business

• These obstacles involve sales and marketing as well as being a strong enough leader. It can be really difficult for people to overcome both.

Hesitation of adding to your team

• When an entrepreneur is just starting out as a one-man shop, there is comfort in knowing that certain tasks will be done right. But when they are forced to hire help, it can be challenging to let go of certain things. This is where documented systems and infrastructure come into play.

Duct tape team

• Many entrepreneurs building a team try to take shortcuts and piece together teams through outsourcing or part-time contracting, and neither party are fully invested.

You can’t fire everyone

• Sometimes leaders can be quick to place blame on their teams when they should really be looking inward at their effectiveness as a leader.

Leaders might need their own coach

• The CEO is usually the only person in an organization that doesn’t have someone guiding them. A lot of businesses fail when entrepreneurs don’t have a business background and never hired a coach to help them.

A multi-generational workforce

• This can be a challenge when managing a team, but clarity around your own culture can help. Skill doesn’t always matter the most when hiring.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Change Management with Fast and Lasting Results

So many of us have such fast-paced personal lives and face change on a daily basis that when we come to work we want things to be as stable as possible. Predictability in business is actually rewarded most of the time. Jake Jacobs, an author, and leader of global consulting firm Real Time Strategic Change says that changeability is the greatest competitive advantage any business can have. In this interview, Jacobs discusses real results he has seen in working with large corporations on change management processes. He also explains his tagline, “fast and lasting results.”

This Sales Expert Interview covers:

What is real work in real time with real results?

• “Real work” and “change work” should be intermixed.

How to handle changing focus with a team

• People get emotionally invested in projects they have been working on for a while. So what if a new business need arises and you have to tell them to switch gears?
• Learn about finding a common preferred future.

People own what they help create

• When people feel like they are being involved in a process and have their voices heard, they are more likely to be on board with the goal.
• It may seem that getting too many people involved can lead to a stalemate where nothing can be decided. Jacobs talks about how a plan of action can be determined in this situation.

Keeping enthusiasm high at all stages

• Everyone seems so excited and energized at the start of a project but how do you keep that motivation and excitement up at all stages in a project?

Enabling managers to reinforce change

• Jacobs uses a Charlie Brown reference to explain how you need to set up your leaders for success.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.