How to raise capital in uncertain times? In this Expert Insight Interview, Jonathan Tuttle discusses ways to raise capital in a challenging economy. Jonathan Tuttle is a Fund Manager and Head of Acquisitions at Midwest Park Capital, a real estate investment firm.

The interview discusses:

• Lack of in-person events
• Different ways to access capital
• Passive Investment

Virtual World

Not having the ability to schedule a face-to-face meeting nor attend a trade show is a significant disadvantage to closing deals and networking. People are getting used to doing all parts of the business virtually, but having a Zoom meeting is not the same as having a business dinner. However, we can still try to use the technology to our advantage as much as we can.

Ways to Raise Capital

One way for raising capital that became quite popular in recent years is a single-family office. The single-family office handles wealth management for a high profile family whose net worth is about $50 million. The whole team, from lawyers to tax accountants, focuses exclusively on the wealth of one family. These business deals are usually partnerships, but the family sets the rules and decides the check amounts. You can expect between one to five million dollars check.

If you want to raise more than one to five million in the capital, a family office might be a better solution for you. Family offices handle the wealth management for families whose net is above 100 million dollars. These partnerships follow a four to five years private equity model.

Passive Investment

Many people are advocates for passive investment. One way of passive investment is investing in mobile home parks. As the cheapest way of housing, mobile homes are a solution for many people who lose their jobs or experience financial hardship during the economic downturn. Moreover, many baby boomers are about to reach or already have reached their retirement years. Thus, they will start to sell their houses and down-size to either retirement centers, apartments, or mobile homes.

Buy-in for this type of investment is about $50,000. It is on the 15 years depreciation schedule, comes with tax benefits, and usually offers a quarterly payout. You can sell it at a higher value later on or refinance it. This investment does not require you to learn the business because there is a team of experts that takes care of everything. You write the check and start to enjoy the benefits of investing in real estate.

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.

Good sales managers must know how to get the most out of their sales teams. Thus, in this Expert Insight Interview, Jason Treu discusses how to create and manage a high-performing sales team. Jason Treu is a Chief People Officer at Unstoppable Workplaces, helping organizations, executives, and leaders to build high-performing teams and cultures.

The interview discusses:

• Self-awareness
• Teamwork
• Soft skills

Self-Awareness

Many sales leaders are former best performing salespeople who got promoted to managers. However, being the best-performing salesperson does not automatically mean being an excellent sales manager. To level up their managerial and team performance, sales managers should focus more on self-awareness, team management, and soft skills.

While around 90 to 95 percent of the people think they are self-aware, only 10 to 15 percent of people are self-aware indeed. Self-awareness means knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It requires asking yourself hard questions and accepting that the problem usually comes from the inside instead of the outside. Sales managers should work on their self-awareness first to encourage their teams to do the same thing.

Teamwork

Teamwork is the most overlooked yet essential thing within organizations. For instance, an all-star team might have the best-skilled individuals, but it will never perform on the same level as a team that works together and gets along. Sales managers must understand how their teams and everyone inside that team operates. Most managers lack to give feedback to their employees and to work on their professional development. Thus, having weekly one on one conversations with each team member will show your team that you care.

Moreover, integrating your team with other departments in the organization as the operations or marketing department is beneficial for business. With more interdepartmental collaboration, there will be less finger-pointing and more working together as one big team.

Soft Skills

Soft skills such as empathy, communication, and listening are essential for building relationships with your team. Being an active listener requires practice. We usually focus so hard on giving smart responses that we miss out on understanding what the person actually tried to tell us. That leads to missing out on the opportunity to create a deeper relationship with the client or a coworker.

Every team member should get encouraged to speak up. Salespeople have the habit of talking at people rather than with people, not allowing them to provide creative ideas. However, making a team decision usually ends up in making far better decisions than making it individually.

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, Kevin Harris discusses what one needs to look for in a mentor and the common misconceptions related to mentoring and success. Kevin Harris is the president of Radical Mentoring. He sets vision and strategy for the company and serves as an evangelist to new audiences.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• What to look for in a mentor
• The pitfalls of having a highly successful person as your mentor
• How only a few good friends can mean more than a thousand acquaintances

Dig Deeper

Typically, when people look for mentors, they try to pick someone who is really successful in their field. This isn’t always the best choice. We tend to make our choice of mentor based on their appearance of success. Sometimes you must look a little deeper to find two things:

1. A person that has a dynamic story to tell.
2. They are willing to share that story so you can learn from their mistakes.

You don’t necessarily want mentorship from someone who is going to tell you the formula of success. Instead, you want someone who will ask great right questions, be willing to take the time to lean into your relationship, and understand your perspective and how best to engage with you exactly.

Find Someone You Can Relate To

Often highly successful people are far removed from where you are in your life at the moment of seeking mentorship. As humans we tend to look backwards with rose-tinted glasses, so some of the advice you receive from a successful person, though well-intentioned, may not be applicable to your current situation.
If somebody has managed to reach a high level of success in life, they also may have their own insecurities, and may not be entirely comfortable with sharing the steps they had taken to attain their status.

Choose Quality Over Quantity

More time with fewer people will create a greater impact. We live in a strange culture of social media where one’s self-worth is measured in the number of followers and likes. Unfortunately, this existence of total exposure has led us to lose sight of quality in our relationships, and we are more connected, yet more isolated than ever before.
Having a handful of people in your life who know you through-and-through and are willing ask you the tough questions is more valuable than having thousands of acquaintances or social media followers.

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.

Running an ultra-marathon requires endurance and strong will. Hence, in this Expert Insight Interview, Andrew Johnston talks about what marathon running can teach us in our professional and personal life. Andrew Johnston is a Director of Leadership Development at Global Medical Response, TEDx speaker, educator, and ultra-marathon runner.

This interview discusses:

• Core lessons to apply in life
• How to overcome negative thoughts

Core Lessons

When it comes to endurance training, the most important thing to know is your why. Having a compelling reason why you do something will stop you from quitting when things get hard. Compelling reasons are individual and different for everyone. However, as long as you figure out what motivates you to get up from a warm and cozy bed at 5 am and go work out, you have more chances to reach the finish line.

Another crucial factor is to stay consistent. The secret is not in doing occasional big things but in doing many little things daily. Those little things are usually routine stuff to do like eating healthy meals, drinking lots of water, practice every day, etc. They might not sound as significant, but they are essential to achieve success in the long term. The third core advice is to set a goal and to scale it. Nobody trains for ultra-marathons by running 50 miles right away. Instead, start with the first mile and embrace the mindset of reaching your goals in steps. Focusing too much on the final result can be an obstacle to achieve it. Thus, let go of the outcome and get focused on doing the work.

Get Over Negative Thoughts

When you face a setback, remember your compelling reason, and keep reminding yourself of it as long as you need to hear it. Also, accept peer support. The ability to have someone to go through the challenging times with you, to share experiences, and provide emotional support to one another is priceless.

Adversity is inevitable to experience. The journey from the starting line to the finish line includes setbacks and failures. Failure is part of the process, and it offers many valuable lessons for the future. The key is to use it as a driver to move forward. And the best way to do it is to look at the failure from another perspective. Think about blessings that you can take out from it, things you learned, and how to use them to get better for the next time.

In conclusion, what marathon and endurance training teach us is that in order to do extraordinary things in life, we need to know how to grind, persist, push through, pivot, and adapt to anything life throws at us.

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.

How can we develop a brand, strategy, and system to grow and scale our business? In this Expert Insight Interview, Henry Kaminski discusses social media strategies to convert followers to customers. Henry is a Founder and CEO at Unique Designz, helping businesses strengthen their online presence and increase their profits.

Interview discusses:

• Choosing which social media to approach
• Expanding social media reach
• Content strategy Branding strategy

Choose Platforms Wisely

There are so many social media platforms that it is easy to get confused about which one to use. Thus, to understand better which platform to focus on, identify the people you want to serve and find which platform they use to hang out. Look which platform your current clients use too. And lastly, think about which platforms make you feel the most comfortable using them to create value for your customers. Afterward, focus on creating content that will attract attention and enable you to show your expertise, send your message to the world, and help people the way you intend.

Mass Reach

There is a tool that can help you to be present on multiple platforms at the same time. That tool is called StreamYard, and it is a software that allows streaming on eight different platforms from once. It offers excellent user interference and the opportunity to expand your reach to the audience by working efficiently.

Content

After reaching the audience, comes content. There are three content funnels. The top funnel provides inspirational messages to the audience. In the middle one, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. And in the bottom funnel, you drive them to a sales conversation, subscription, or at least to join an email list. The majority of people get stuck on the top funnel by providing content without creating customer engagement. The key is to provide entertaining content. There is an app called FastSave that enables you to copy photos and videos and repost them on your account. Thus, you can be strategic and post funny material to catch the attention so that later you can deliver the message you want.

Brand

Lastly, a very significant step in growing your online presence is to establish your brand. Branding does not mean having a logo but creating the experience, connection, and certain feeling in your customers when they work with you. Investing a lot of money in Google ads is not too helpful if you are not on top of your content game. Thus, investing your time and effort in creating a strong online community through content marketing is essential.

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.

How to Survive and Thrive In a Gig Economy

The Gig Economy is here to stay but how can people excel in this new sales environment. Gig workers need to sell their services and attract customers just like any other business or solopreneur. In this #saleschats we are joined by Janhvi Johorey who will talk about how to build and expand your gig business

To watch this #SalesChats Episode:

Go to YouTube Live and set a reminder: YouTube Live link

Recorded Live – February 22 st, 9am PT

EPISODE QUESTIONS:

Q1: What Is the Gig Economy?

Q2: What are The Pros and Cons of the Gig Economy?

Q3: How to Succeed in the Gig Economy?

Our Guest

Janhvi Johorey

Janhvi believes that B2B marketers can accelerate sales volume by using innovative tools like social media and compelling brand narratives. Decoding B2B sales, she is a writer, storyteller, and blogger who feels social listening is the key to really connecting with the audience.
Links › linkedin.com | Twitter

Our Hosts

John Golden

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 a 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, CSO Pipeliner CRM, and Martha Neumeister, Social Media Strategist Pipeliner CRM.

The first in the new series looks at the skills needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world. Resilience is the secret to navigating change and these 6 resilience experts offer their insights on how to develop a resilient mindset & skillset:

EXCEPTIONAL PANEL OF EXPERTS!

• Dave Sanderson – Survivor of the Miracle on the Hudson
• Russel Thackery – Sales Resilience expert
• Meredith Alexander – Mindset coach nursed her daughter back from catastrophic injury
• Tracey Grove – Author on Resilient Leadership
• Kim Ades – President and Founder of Frame of Mind Coaching™

WATCH ON YOUTUBE!

If people intentionally opt-in for consultations with us, why are we still reluctant to make follow-up calls? In this Expert Insight Interview, Molly McGrath discusses the concept of follow up. Molly McGrath is a Founder at Hiring and Empowering Solutions, helping law firms achieve continuous improvements.

This interview discusses:

• Embracing follow-up calls
• The power of the pause
• Providing customer experience

Make Follow Up Calls

People think that by calling people, they are bothering them. However, during the period of social distancing, people were delighted to receive a call. Picking up a phone and making a follow-up call communicates that you do not see people only as leads, but you want to connect with them and help them find a solution to their problems. You are responsible for the energy that you bring into a call. If you feel sales heaviness while talking to people, they will recognize that and show resistance. If you shift your mindset to connect with them, they will be open for cooperation.

The Power of the Pause

During the call, it is crucial to be present and to listen to people. The best way to find out other people’s thoughts is to ask and wait for a response. However, many people feel uncomfortable asking a question and stopping until hearing the answer. Our instinct is to fill in the pause, and that is why so many of us talk at people without allowing them to speak.

By being present, listening, and reflecting on what people say, you can learn valuable information. Also, interacting with customers and being curious to hear their perspectives enables you to have insights for your next calls. People think that their problems are so unique, but people in the same industry usually have similar issues. When they feel heard and acknowledged, they will feel less alone and more willing to accept your help by buying a product or service.

Customer Experience

The value to provide to customers nowadays is indeed customer experience. Thus, making sure that everyone in your team, from the president to the front desk agent, speaks the same language is essential. Also, people love to make assumptions. Instead of making assumptions, it is better to get to know people and hear their stories. They will share stories with you as long as you create a safe environment for them. Thus, the key is to remember that you are not calling a lead but a human being with a problem. So, detach from thinking about the outcome and focus on connecting with a person.

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.