In this Expert Insight Interview, Darin Dawson discusses human-centered communication. Darin Dawson is one of the co-founders of BombBomb, which makes it easier to build relationships through email, text, and social media.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The idea of human-centered communication in business
• How to get through to your audience by creating value in the message
• Why it matters that your customers know, like, and trust you

Human-Centered Communication

Human-centered communication is all about caring about the person we are communicating with. The problem we see today is that we can’t stop sending our thoughts into the world.

This process has been accelerated through the pandemic. We couldn’t be with each other, so we collectively decided to send more of everything, including emails, LinkedIn messages, texts, phone calls, etc. Darin believes that we would all benefit from getting back to a more human approach to building relationships and communicating.

Creating Value

There are many tools that allow us to communicate in a text-based form or other ways, and there is nothing wrong with using tools that help us do our jobs more efficiently. We just need to find moments within these processes to get back to face-to-face communication, whether through Zoom, asynchronous video, or in-person.

The key to human-centered communication is asking yourself whether you’re creating value for the recipient or if your message is really about you. Think about whether the message is getting through and being heard. If not, you’re being ignored. With every communication you send, you’re training the person on the other end to either listen to you or ignore you, and you don’t get too many chances to build a relationship anymore.

Know, Like, and Trust

People still buy from people they know, like, and trust, and it is very difficult to build relationships with your customers without offering a human-centered experience. You can do a lot by putting a face to your brand, and the way to do that is by showing the people involved with the process.

Chances are you hired all these people for their extraordinary abilities to communicate; don’t handcuff them by forcing them to work in a closed system, sending pre-written LinkedIn messages and generic emails.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Brent Keltner discusses landing and expanding key accounts faster. Brent Keltner created the Winalytics value-driven growth methodology and has positioned the company as the market leader for repeatable revenue solutions.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The definition of key accounts and how to take full advantage of them
• How to think in terms of value playbooks
• Thinking in terms of value created for each buyer

Key Accounts

Often companies don’t even have a clear definition of what a ‘key account’ is or a strategy around them. Brent Keltner defines a key account as one where there are multiple pockets of budget around the client. Your job is often to connect value across those so that you can tap into the different budgets.

However, sometimes when salespeople land a new account, they are reluctant to start fishing around them. It is as if they are intimidated by the prospect of ‘rocking the boat,’ so they don’t look at it as an expansion or growth opportunity.

Value Playbooks

One of the things Brent advocates is starting with ‘value playbooks.’ These deal with how your product or service drives value for your buyer rather than the product itself.

Once you start presenting your products in terms of value playbooks, your clients will begin to think about adding value to their previous purchases through your products. This allows you to present your products and services as opportunities to deepen the relationship with your B2B customer around a new area of value.

Creating Value for Each Customer

We live in an increasingly networked world, and to understand your buyer, you need to understand their network and their ‘personal universe.’ When you start to think about account planning and growing accounts, it is very easy to look at things in terms of your product — expanding and improving it. It is much more challenging to look at the ‘white space’ and think about where you can create opportunity and value.

Instead of thinking about which products you still haven’t sold your customers, try thinking in terms of the value you can create for each new buyer. This can allow you to connect technical value and business value.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Bob Britton discusses what sales enablement is and what it is not. Bob Britton has been in sales, sales enablement, learning, and development for more than 25 years. He is a Navy veteran, so his military leadership experience and his MBA provide a unique and accurate perspective on the current and future needs of our complex and rapidly changing business environment.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The definition of sales enablement and what it means to different organizations
• How to align with your buyers’ purchasing process
• How to enable your “champions” to sell for you within their companies

Sales Enablement

If you asked ten different companies what sales enablement was, you would likely get thirteen different answers. This is because it is usually defined based upon the problem that the given company is facing. If they’re in the process of hiring, it might be related to onboarding. If they are trying to get a new piece of technology rolling, it might be related to sales operations, etc.

In the broader sense, sales enablement is about looking for friction impeding top-line revenue growth and fixing it.

Aligning with the Buying Process

We hear people in sales often talk about aligning with the buyers’ purchasing process. However, if your buyer doesn’t have a process, or if they’re just as confused as you are, there’s nothing to align with.

This type of situation puts the ball in your court and forces you to think about helping the buyer find that process and acknowledge that they may not be as organized as you think.

Enabling your Champions

An important thing to remember during B2B interactions is that the people you’re selling to are usually not sellers themselves. This means we’re not selling to salespeople but budget holders, technicians, project managers, etc.

In this type of situation, you have to expect that your message will be lost in translation on its way to the decision-makers. You must enable your “champions” to sell for you internally and carry the same message throughout the organization so everyone is always on the same page. Otherwise, every decision-maker will hear a different message, and it will get diluted.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Amanda Abella discusses sales skills and why you need them. Amanda Abella is the founder and CEO of Make Money Your Honey. This marketing and sales training company helps coaches, creatives, and consultants triple their revenue while working half the time.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The importance of investing in sales training
• Our complicated relationship with money and success
• How the customer experience can be the difference between success and failure

Sales Training

If you asked a hundred salespeople if sales skills were necessary, they would all say ‘yes.’ You would get the same result if you asked a hundred CEOs. However, if you followed up with a question of how much they were willing to invest in this department, you might not get a highly enthusiastic response.

Many people pay lip service to the idea of sales skills, but the reality is that not many businesses invest in sales training. This has to do with the fact that small businesses are afraid of selling.

Fear of Success

Small business owners often start their companies because they are passionate about the product or service they want to offer. However, they don’t necessarily consider themselves salespeople, and they also have to deal with all the negative stigma around salespeople and how they’re portrayed.

Sometimes it also has to do with our relationship to money, which is often quite strange. Many of us have been taught that caring about sales means only caring about money. In reality, if you want to get really good at sales and build a sustainable business, you need to prioritize helping people.

Customer Experience

Customers generally see products and services as extremely commoditized now, meaning they don’t see a massive difference between them. What often differentiates companies today is the experience they offer their customers, and that starts with the salesperson.

Therefore, the helpful salespeople who are willing to understand customers’ issues and solve their problems will most often beat the competition.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Adeyinka Adegbenle discusses excellence in leadership and why finding your purpose is key to living a fulfilled life. Adeyinka Adegbenle is a former financial service professional, who became an author, excellence strategist, and coach. She is the author of Joab, King David’s Top General: Essential Lessons on Character.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Why finding your purpose is key to living a fulfilled life
• We need to make a difference in the world
• How and why to check back with your purpose

Purpose

Most people don’t know their purpose. They haven’t figured out why they are doing what they are doing. We understand it on a superficial level, such as knowledge that we need a job to provide for our family, put purpose seems to be a thing that not many people spend much time thinking about.

Sometimes we make “purpose” out to be a grandiose concept, but it doesn’t have to be. Purpose is all about having clarity on what you were placed on this planet for. So, it is not only different for each person, but it evolves as well.

Making a Difference

To find fulfillment and purpose, you need to be making some form of a positive difference. You need to ask yourself if you’re making a difference, adding value, and leaving your stamp on humanity in some tangible way.

Providing for your family can be an excellent purpose, as long as you acknowledge that this pursuit is what drives you. Thinking of your purpose as evolving and temporary can also be very helpful, as it allows you to fully embrace whatever it is that drives you at any given moment.

Going Back to the Why

Since your purpose will evolve with changing circumstances and situations, it is always a good idea to return to your purpose. This is especially helpful when you’re starting to feel frustrated or as if the world is bearing down on you.

Thinking about your purpose helps you understand whether you’re still in the same place as when you started on your journey and even whether your purpose needs to shift. When things get overwhelming, remember to go back to the ‘why.’

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Jed Morley discusses aligning your brand messaging to increase sales and retention. Jed Morley is a brand strategist, backstory branding expert and CMO-for-hire, who helps CEOs scale their businesses by getting their story straight.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Why companies must focus on the entire customer journey when it comes to branding
• How a shared sense of ownership leads to more satisfied customers
• The importance of living up to the brand’s promise

Delivering on Promises

Sometimes, very sales-oriented people do not seem to get the connection between branding/messaging and sales/retention. They tend to think that these are two very separate things, where branding and messaging are too far ‘up the funnel’ to affect sales.

The way that Jed Morley wants his clients to think about this is in terms of the entire customer journey. The idea is that the product can deliver on all the promises made in marketing. The sales team should be able to recommend the right product fit for each customer and have that customer realize the value they were promised.

Shared Sense of Ownership

The possibility of a customer being delighted by a product and being retained and loyal to the brand and the business is higher if marketing promises are met. The process that Jed recommends is to create ideal customer profiles and personas that everybody contributes to.

This way, there’s a shared sense of ownership and understanding about who the customers are, what they want and what obstacles and problems they’re facing. In turn, this helps the business as a whole meet the customers’ expectations.

Everyone’s a Brand Steward

Living up to the brand’s promise is the name of the game. In that way, everybody in the organization needs to be their version of a brand steward. If you promise something that you can’t fulfill, or the experience is different from what was expected, customers drop out, and everyone’s the worse for it.

The brand is the totality of the experience someone has from the moment they come in contact with your organization, through the sales process, to becoming a customer, onboarding, and finally, how they are supported.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Janice Litvin discusses employee wellness and how companies should make their employees feel valued rather than showering them with superfluous workplace amenities. Janice Litvin is the author of the Banish Burnout Toolkit.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The Banish Burnout Toolkit and its importance in today’s business climate
• Why do people have trouble taking breaks
• How companies should focus on making their employees feel appreciated

Banish Burnout Toolkit

Janice Litvin’s book Banish Burnout Toolkit is very timely because people seem to have generally decided to begin assessing where they were in life. The pandemic did accentuate this process, but even before it, people were asking themselves the question of what their work meant to them and where their life was headed.

Now we’re in a situation where many people are trying to figure out why they feel the way they do, why they feel so overwhelmed and burnt out. The pandemic caused a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusion, and loss of control, and these are the areas that are the key drivers of stress and burnout.

Burnout Environment

People almost don’t want to stop for a moment and do the ‘awareness’ work, whether it is because they are afraid of what might turn up or because they’re addicted to momentum, even if it is stressful.

Burnout is not a one-way street. Traditionally, when we think about burnout, we think about what we can do to improve our self-care as individuals. But, in reality, the organization is often the one creating the burnout environment, and the workers are reacting. In order to avoid burnout, organizations should reward healthy choices, provide adequate resources, and support healthy work/life balance.

Superfluous Amenities

The way you treat your employees is essential for ‘employee wellness’, although it does not technically fall under the wellness hat. There was a trend for a while where companies thought that if they put out all these extraneous or superfluous goodies, their employees should be very happy.

However, if you’re overloading people and working them into the ground, making them feel marginalized and unimportant, it doesn’t matter how many foosball tables you give them; it’s not going to make a difference. If your employees feel abused and emotionally weak, they are going to leave.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Will Haire discusses penetrating and growing your eCommerce business on Amazon. Will Haire is the CEO and founder of BellaVix, which helps companies increase their online footprint to boost their sales through domestic and international marketplaces.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How Amazon has grown throughout the pandemic
• The crucial ways in which Amazon has changed over the last decade
• The critical factors in achieving success on Amazon
• Amazon Is Huge

There are so many people leveraging Amazon as a platform for business. As many as 60% of eCommerce searches start on Amazon, and about 50% of eCommerce sales happen on this platform. And it is continuing to grow with the pandemic doing nothing but strengthening the sales platform’s presence.

As of a few months ago, there’s an official Amazon airport within a hundred miles of every major U.S. city. The company has obviously managed to take whatever it has earned pre-COVID and invest it into company infrastructure.

Brand-Building Is Crucial

A major thing to point out is that Amazon has changed significantly in the last several years. Gone are the days when you could just find a niche product and sell it online for a huge profit without building a brand. Brand-building is precisely where the tables have turned.

What’s great about Amazon is that people who shop there are very close to the bottom of the funnel. People are going to Amazon to check reviews, gauge your product, as well as spec out some competitor products. So, what you do to penetrate the market on this platform is build an audience.

Keys to Success on Amazon

The first thing you should work on is a high-quality website, ensuring a consistent brand presence through all your marketplaces. Aside from this, the factors that count the most include the following:

• Having a good customer experience through Amazon
• Advertising and running marketing promotions
• Getting your product in front of interested customers

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.