VK Lakkineni is a chief marketing technologist of ROI media, chief mindset coach at Mindset Monk, a digital marketing entrepreneur, and a best-selling Amazon author. He is a technology enthusiast with a passion for marketing strategy and business growth operations. Today, in this expert insight interview, John and VK Lakkineni discuss “Mindset And Motivation.”

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses:

• How does childhood trauma affect your mindset?
• The benefit of consistent meditation practice.

Impact Of Childhood Trauma

Certain situations that you face in childhood can trigger your decision-making. People often underestimate how major this issue can be. The cause can be as simple as plucking a flower or seeing a tree being cut down. Later in life, it affects how you respond to certain situations. What’s stopping you every time when you try to do something new, like being in a relationship or anything else.  These can be the causes of childhood trauma.

Here are some ways to overcome childhood trauma:

• Through meditation, you will connect with your subconscious mind. This process will not give you straight answers, but eventually, you will wake up one day and have the solution. It can be different for everybody.
• Be patient in a flight or fight situation. Cut down on things that distract you.
• Surround yourself with good things, and be grateful every day.

Consistent Meditation Practice

The initial stage of meditation can be easy but being consistent is the key to achieving mindfulness. When you begin your day, instead of using your phone, pray, lay down, and observe your consciousness. Think about what you want and how it can be achieved. Meditate at least for 20 minutes every day and keep yourself calm and relaxed.

Kindness, empathy, forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude are key elements; practice them daily. Be grateful and add forgiveness to your life, as you might run into issues where you might lose your temper.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Mona Akmal is CEO and Co-founder at Falkon AI, a product and engineering veteran, helping companies build resource-driven teams. From beginning as a software developer at Microsoft to being the CEO of the number one GTM intelligence tool, she has gained her expertise with time and patience. She has worked with Microsoft, Amperity, Code.org, and Zulily and raised 0 to 11 million with ARR in 15 household brands. Today, John and Mona Akmal will discuss “revenue intelligence” in this expert insight interview.

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses:

• How does revenue intelligence help you understand your potential customers?
• The importance of the right data in revenue intelligence.
• Elevating the customer with expert conversation.

How Does Revenue Intelligence Help?

The ideal way to deliver any product or service is to identify the ideal customer and understand the buyer persona. This is possible with revenue intelligence that will help identify who you are targeting, how it can be done, onboard the customer, and accrue the value. Once you understand these factors, you can start working on delivering the right products and services to your potential customers.

Evaluating The Right Data

Creating a new connection with the customers is one way to increase sales, but maintaining connections with existing customers is more important. Historical data of existing customers will help you get better insights to improve relationships with potential customers. Also, previous customers’ product usage data allows you to improve your products and services.

Understand these points to generate more revenue:

• Right data and intellectual conversations with potential customers lead to conversions.
• Care about the customer’s needs and requirements; remember, your revenue generation depends on them.
• Elevate them with your product and provide them with the solution to their issues.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Michelle Vazzana is a Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer for VantagePoint, Co-author of three books. She is an expert of innovating sales force management, global sales effectiveness, and evidence-based research. ‘Deploy situational fluency to win more sales’ is another co-authored book by her which is coming out in 2023. Today, in this expert insight interview, John and Michelle Vazzana discuss “How To Change Sales force Behaviour While Avoiding Common Pitfalls.”

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses:

• How to implement effective changes in sales force behavior?
• Approach the simplicity and elemental parts of performance development.
• Importance of realistic approach.

Begin With The Sales Leaders

Implementing training programs on salespersons can be challenging. One effective way to get it done is to begin with the sales leaders and sales managers training. It will allow the leaders to understand the process better and connect with salespersons empathetically. This way the sales manager will approach the team with motivational and educational perspectives.

Effective ways to improve salespersons’ behavior:

• Studying the high performers of the business and developing a framework and training program that feels natural.
• Approach the sales team with simplicity and regularly give minimal effective training.
• Improve the elemental parts of the team and eliminate what is unnecessary.

Importance Of Realistic Approach

Set up realistic goals that can be achieved and do not burden your sales team. Forcing teams to join a coaching or training session for long hours without a coaching structure is not ideal. Instead, begin the coaching session earlier with the right pace and structure. Discuss fewer opportunities for longer hours to have better clarity. This way, your sales force will feel more relieved and understand that this process will help them do better. It will reduce their workload and make them more efficient. Plus, the commitment of the sales leader and manager makes the team feel more optimistic.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Joe Ardeeser is a Founder and CEO of Smart Pricing Table, which is an interactive business-to-business proposal software. He has been a digital agency owner for 12 years. Joe has worked as a developer, senior designer, VP of customer support, and managing member. In today’s expert insight interview, John and Joe Ardeeser discuss “Proposal Writing.”

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses:

• What are the best practices to write a compelling proposal?
• Essential elements to have in a proposal.

Writing The Best Proposal

There are two kinds of thought processes in proposal writing: executing and building a system. Most businesses struggle with executing because they have not taken the time to build a system. To build a system, first, you need to find the answer to these questions: What do we sell, or what are the limitations of your business? Provide enough definition to your terms in the proposal and not so much that you overwhelm your customer.

Customers usually pay attention to pricing. You can add bite-sized terms inside of each price line item. So when the customers look for the price, they also go through the proposal items.

Essential Elements To Have In A Proposal

Have a clear system structure and understand what type of projects you want to take on. Do add these essential elements to your proposal:

• A clear cover page and cover letter to make it feel personalized.
• What others say about you is important, so add testimonials to the proposal.
• Every single clause has a story. Tell the reason behind adding each section or item.
• The most important thing is to provide transparent pricing.
• Add a degree of interactivity to allow the customer to be involved in the process.
• Add optional items, give them a choice and empower them with interactive tools.

These elements will allow you to create a more personalized and interactive proposal.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

JR Butler is a Founder and CEO of Shift Group, a former D1 hockey athlete at Holy Cross, an early sales leader at Turbonomic, and a former CRO of Pillir. His company Shift Group is helping athletes, military vets, and candidates that want to transition into technology sales. In today’s expert insight interview, John and JR Butler discuss “Sales And Athletics.”

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses:

• Why are athletes uniquely qualified to enter technology sales?
• Why do you need to practice the fundamentals?
• Coachability, individual sports, and team sports.

The Athletic Resilience

Athletes have a dynamic and resilient nature. They know how to get up from failure, getting through tough training sessions over and over again. With discipline, they get through any hurdle and adversary.

• Athletes make great technology salespeople because they have a passion for excellence.
• They practice with the intention of getting positive and fruitful results.
• Athletes know how to pursue goals and achieve them with consistent practice.

Applying these traits help athletes ace any career and easily become a leader anywhere.

Practicing the Fundamentals And Coach-ability

Consistency is the key to mastering anything. Athletes practice the fundamentals 10 times more than they play. This way, they build a rock-solid foundation that can handle all challenges. There’s always a possibility for improvement, and good coaches help athletes identify areas of improvement.

Team sports help each athlete push their limits, but in individual sports, that is a challenge. That is why individual sports players are more resilient, as they know nobody is there to look for them. Competing against your own mindset helps them do better every day. This mindset allows individual sports athletes to become elite technology salespeople.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Jeffrey Deckman is a thought leader, consultant, strategist, award-winning author, organization design mindset models, and methods creator that are redefining modern businesses. He has published a book about conscious leadership which is an amazon bestseller. Today, in this expert insight interview, John and Jeffrey Deckman discuss “the concept of conscious leadership and its role in the 21st century.”

This Expert insight Interview Discusses:

• What is conscious leadership?
• Why is a conscious leader necessary for rapid organizational development?
• The tribal genius of an organization

Conscious Leadership And Its Role

Conscious leadership deals with a higher level of consciousness which is a people-centric, collaborative, and communicative approach to understanding people that are working around you. It is more thoughtful, engaging and responsive, allowing leaders to feel more optimistic and empathetic.

Don’t look at employees from the perspective of their job descriptions and why they are hired. Once you start exploring more about them, you will see they’re bigger than the job title they hold and have more energy and ideas. With conscious leadership, you will create a more collaborative and humanistic workplace.

Organizational Development With Conscious leadership

Conscious leadership breaks the barrier between old and young, helping them operate like a tribe. It is crucial in the 21st Century, where young people are masters of technology but lack wisdom. With collective efforts of old and young, both wisdom and technology can be combined to increase the collective genius of your organization.

Things to remember while practicing conscious leadership:

• Be authentic and show your clear motives.
• Be a good character and maintain your integrity.
• Respect the people you work with and know your limits.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Ravi Rajani is a Keynote & SKO Speaker, Storytelling & communication trainer, and Host of the Influential communicator podcast. He works with the mission to help B2B SaaS sales teams present their story, solution, and message in a way that grabs attention, builds trust, and wins new business without competing on price. Today, in this expert insight interview, John and Ravi discuss “The Power of Storytelling in Sales.”

• Understanding Storytelling in Sales
• Types of Storytelling
• Apply ACORN Method while storytelling.

Understanding The Storytelling

It is most likely the oldest form of art. Telling tales is also a highly successful sales tactic and a major business method. You can be a terrific salesperson if you can tell a good tale. People are sick of Death By Powerpoint when it comes to sales presentations. They enjoy tales because they connect with them. Stories reveal to your audience what motivates you, your ‘how,’ rather than your ‘what.’

It takes time and practice to tell a story. Salespeople who want to sell more must grasp the components of excellent storytelling as well as the skill of delivering it correctly.

Types of Storytelling

Knowing what tale to tell or say as part of your sales presentation is challenging. Every tale is unique, and you must select the one that best demonstrates what makes you distinctive. In their podcast, Ravi mentioned that there are several types of storytelling, including:

The Elevator Tale
Personal Narrative
Success Story of a Customer
A narrative that deals with objections.
Action narrative on the cost of inactivity.

And the powerful ones are centered on the founder’s tale.

A product tale or a company creation story

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Branch has written 22 books. Branch Isole, as a storyteller, writes on the power of choice to affect the course of events. Branch is well-known for his modern short story language, which reveals feelings and situations that are commonly felt but not usually spoken. As a Podcast and Talk Radio guest, Branch discusses useful strategies to create frameworks supporting career, personal, and spiritual growth. Branch and John discuss the “Power of Choice” in this expert insight interview.

This Expert Insight Interview Discusses

• Why is choice such a powerful force?
• Why is it vital to make a decision even if it means not making a decision?
• How can you assist individuals in order to put a stop to them?

Choices Matter !!

Every day, we make decisions in our life, both deliberately and unknowingly. It’s an important element of our self-development; every choice we make defines our experience and takes us to where we are. One of the wonderful aspects of having the ability to choose is that if you don’t like where you are in your life right now, you can change it!

Life is not always simple. There will be times in life when making decisions is difficult. The only thing we can regulate is what we decide to do; the repercussions are something we must deal with afterward. However, fear of the repercussions should not prevent us from making a decision.

Take Pause Before Decide.

To make better judgments, you must be able to pause. Our brain anticipates action without pausing. If the circumstance is unique, as most are, the brain searches for a similar learnt reaction and utilizes that experience to guide how we determine what to do. When you pause, you stop your mind from engaging and reacting without conscious thinking.

By pausing, we open our brains to a new way of thinking – a lifesaving way of thinking.

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 has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.