How to build a repeatable sales process that educates prospects? In this Expert Insight Interview, Sky Stephens talks about the importance of the sales process and building trust. Sky Stephens is a Co-Founder of the Association of Professional Builders, which provides services to improve the construction industry.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses :

• Sales process importance
• Breaking the process into stages
• Educating prospects and building trust
• Cooperation between teams

Importance of Sales Process

Building a sustainable sales process that will be well organized and consistent is essential. Firstly, you should distinguish if your current system gives results. If not, you have to implement the right structure so that you break the process into pieces. Only like that, you will be able to see all steps and discover bottlenecks. You have to put a system in place that naturally organizes salespeople. When implementing a process, you should focus on sales first because, without it, the company does not exist. Continuous improvements are a necessity to have a functional system.

Breaking the process into stages

It is hard to get a real picture if we do not have a subprocess that will help us to benchmark each step. It is possible only by breaking it into pieces and doing analytics on each phase. Hence, decision-makers can recognize if there are blockages or the cause of an unsigned contract. It could help in distinguishing employees in your process. Some of them are good sales openers, while others are good closers. Everyone must be in the right place. It elevates collaboration and lowers the risk of not performing while building relationships among participants.

Educating prospects

The importance of prospects education is the core of reaching your sales goals. It is possible only by sharing the information they want to know. The key to success is anticipating frequently asked questions and putting them into your marketing campaign. It enables your prospects to move to the next stages of the sales process much faster and easier. Besides, it helps with lowering the level of suspicions and building trust in your expertise. Between millions of available information nowadays, they will need you to cut the noise and help with the final decision.

Cooperation

The business development process starts with marketing and ends with signing a contract. Meanwhile, the attitude that should be within the team is that everything has to be in favor of clients’ needs. A close relationship between salespersons and marketers will create value for the client. That is a game-changer, rather than looking at the two teams who are working separately. The mission is to complete each other. The only involvement of both teams and their close cooperation can produce the desired outcome.

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 create an unignorable brand? In this Expert Insight Interview, Peter Levitan provides tips on how to create a recognizable brand by using social media platforms while building a sustainable business. Peter Levitan is a leading advertising and business development consultant.

The interview discusses:

• Biggest mistakes while messaging
• Getting alignment within the company
• Importance of process
• Starting point

Major Mistakes While Messaging

The biggest mistake while reaching the target audience is “me too” presence. Firstly, you should be aware of the fact that references and data are available to everyone. Hence, people follow the same information on how to do things, where, and why to do it while implementing similar techniques and tactics. The important thing is not to follow the crowd. If you want to build a recognizable brand, you should create something different and noticeable. In the mass of “me too” campaigns the alternative is to be unique.

Alignment Within the Company

There is already an existing problem of distinguishing your company from millions of others competing on the same platforms. Hence, before determining ways of reaching your target group, you should focus on alignment inside of your company. It means that sales and marketing employees cannot be rivals while sending a message to the public. The second one would be creating a differentiation strategy. Besides, some questions should be answered, like what platform to use and what type of content to upload. Nonetheless, to generate value, you should provide high-quality content and information rather than focus on quantity.

Important P-word

When developing your business in a certain way, you should write down your process and necessary steps starting from the beginning. Business development is not just saying publishing things like blogs and podcasts without order. To be process-driven, you should write your plan. One of the mistakes is to think that writing down and following your strategy can be restrictive. Your creativity is not compromised. The process does not mean rigor but often a friend who gives you stability and guidance.

Start with the Basis

We look at the process as a pyramid. Furthermore, you should start from the bottom and focus on the basics. Leverage your presence on Google. When doing business, you should be aware that people are looking for you. Meaning, being on the top of the list enabling your popping up in the first two pages. Be aware that clients are researching before making a call. Besides, platforms are usually age-driven. Hence, Facebook is preferred by older people, while younger people tend to use Instagram. Keep in mind that your sales and marketing strategy defines the preferred platform type.

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.

The change in the business world caused by the pandemic is that many businesses decided to continue their work virtually. In this Expert Insight Interview, Heidi Lynne Kurter discusses remote sales teams. Heidi Lynne Kurter is a People and Culture Manager at Noticed and a Senior Contributor in Forbes.

This Expert Insight Interview explores:

• The importance of communication in a virtual environment
• The proactive ways to take regarding the change in the working environment
• The new way of doing business

Communication

Considering that people share the common space less now, sales managers have to put extra effort to create an adequate level of energy and connectivity within the sales teams. The key to that is communication. Everyone gets motivated and engaged differently. Thus, sales managers should frequently have one on one conversations with their employees. Reaching out to and making sure that an employee feels comfortable enough to share his or her needs and thoughts with a manager leads to creating close and genuine relationships. Two people can create a trustworthy relationship online as well. Relationships built over Zoom or any other platform might be even more sincere than the ones from the office. The reason for that is that when we talk with people while the camera shows our home, we offer them insight into our authentic self by letting them into our home. That way, they can see and learn much more about us than what they could learn in the office setting.

Proactivity

Since more companies are becoming virtual now, some things that were characteristic of traditional ways of doing jobs have shifted. For example, people do not have to live close to their work. That can lower their living costs and time spent commuting while increasing the quality of life. Traditional five to nine work hours got replaced by flexible work hours. Companies realized that many business meetings could be online instead, which eliminates high traveling costs for high distance meetings. Also, not renting the office space anymore saves large amounts of money for the companies, and that money could go towards the investment in equipment for the workers. Not all the workers have the conditions for work from home, so that is one of the aspects for leadership to consider.

The New Way

People have different opinions about virtual work. Some of them embraced the change to the home office, while others who are less reluctant to change struggle with it. However, doing work online turned out to be more efficient, and employee collaboration increased. Besides, the opportunity for hiring diverse talent around the world is immense. Even though larger companies harder and slower change their structures because of their size, this pandemic has changed the way we will be doing business in the future.

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.

When you think of sales, do words noble and purpose come to your mind? In this Expert Insight Interview, Lisa McLeod discusses selling with a noble purpose. Lisa McLeod is a Founder of McLeod & More, Inc., an expert on finding purpose in business, keynote speaker, and author of the book Selling with Noble Purpose.

The interview discusses:

• Acting with noble purpose
• Finding the noble purpose
• Being specific about the noble purpose

Act Purposely

When we think of salespeople, we usually think of manipulators who only want to reach their target numbers. The truth is that most salespeople do not have bad intentions, but when they get pressured by their bosses to hit the numbers, that is when they become the worst version of themselves. However, the key to increasing revenue is not to change the person but to change the sales language. The research shows that people who serve their clients with a noble purpose do outsell their coworkers who only try to reach their sales targets. People who honestly want to help by being authentic and empathetic with the client can earn the trusted advisor position with the client. Nowadays, the growing question that clients raise is whether a salesperson tries to help them or to close them. So, the distinction that people who act with noble purpose make is asking themselves what difference will make for the customer to do business with them? That way, they shift their focus on the client rather than on their own needs and goals.

Passion v Purpose

The research shows that people who have a purpose but no passion still perform better than people with a passion but no purpose. However, having both passion and purpose is the winning combination. If you have happy clients currently, that means that you already have a purpose in your work, but you have to identify it and name it. Finding a noble sales purpose requires asking yourself three discovery questions. How do you make a difference? How do you make that difference different from your competitors? And lastly, what is it that you love the most about your job?

Specificity at its Finest

In the sales world, specificity is significant, and it means to get clear on how you can make a difference for the client by using the smallest amount of words possible. The noble purpose should be as clear and present in the organization as possible because that is something that we should always be able to come back to once when the chaos or rejection makes us forget while we are doing and loving our job. People who discover their noble purpose are more tenacious, resilient, and prone to put more effort into their work.

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.

We all hear people using the term emotional intelligence around, but do we really know what it means? In this Expert Insight Interview, Grant Herbert discusses emotional intelligence. Grant Herbert is a Founder of People Builders, an expert on emotional intelligence, a leadership trainer, and a keynote speaker.

The interview discusses:

• Defining social and emotional intelligence
• Looking closely at emotional intelligence
• The steps to a self-awareness

Social and Emotional Intelligence

The biggest mistake a person can make is to think of emotional intelligence as a feminine, soft skill and to decide to ignore it in favor of developing technical skills. Emotional intelligence is a set of skills that you can learn and use to reduce the conflict and stress in your life. Social and emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of the emotions you are going through at the moment and the emotions that others could be going through at the moment so that you can manage yourself and your relationships with others by interacting differently.

Closer Look at Emotional Intelligence

To focus solely on emotional intelligence, that is specific only to you. It represents a complete awareness of your emotions and how those emotions affect your thoughts and behaviors so that you can shift to giving a response to the situation instead of reacting. However, self-awareness is easy to talk about but hard to achieve. People are usually unaware of their unawareness. To become fully self-aware, you have to be able to take accountability for your end-results and to stop blaming the world around you. For that shift in someone’s mind to happen, it usually takes a great pain or pleasure in life to triggers the desire for change.

The Steps to a Self-Awareness

There are three steps to go through. The first step is emotional self-awareness, which means recognizing the emotion that you are going through at that specific moment. The second step is self-assessment, which consists of empathy and achievement. Although everybody will say that they are empathetic, it is crucial not only what you think of yourself but how others perceive you as well. Third and the last step is personal power. This step embraces your authenticity, and it liberates you from all the false and limiting believes that you had. One of those beliefs could be an imposter syndrome. But, if you pause and try to think of evidence that can support that self-doubtful opinion that you have, the only thing that you will find is all the success you have achieved so far.

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.

Nowadays, leaders experience unique challenges such as a lack of adaptability, resilience, and proper alignment within the organization. In this Expert Insight Interview, Dom Meli discusses the future of leadership in volatile and uncertain times. Dom Meli is a Principal at People At Their Best, a keynote speaker, and a published author.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Shifting planning to adapting
• Establishing the alignment between employees and the organization’s purpose
• Creating a resilient mindset within the team

Adaptability

Making changes and decisions is extremely difficult in uncertain times because solutions lose relevance quickly. At those times, no action is right or wrong, so what leaders should do is to take action, intervene, and embrace any progress. During the Covid19 pandemic, business planning downgraded from long-term planning to short 30,60, maybe 90 days planning. However, even short-term strategies are not as significant for leaders as developing adaptability and agility within the team. Adaptability is the most correlated trait with achieving high performance. In the past, leadership was about control, but now, leadership is about doing the right things. And the right thing is to create a psychologically safe environment for people to be creative, to experiment, and to be able to make mistakes because that leads to innovation.

The Alignment

The shift in the consumer market made products commoditized, and customer experience became the primary value that an organization offers. So, considering that now any item can be copied or made at a lower cost, the primary source of differentiation for the company is meaningful human interaction. Creating a feeling of empathy, sense, and being valued is something no technology can do, only humans.

Businesses usually over-invest their financial resources in strategizing but under-invest in establishing alignment of employees to the organization’s purpose. If everyone focuses on the organization’s purpose, and everyone acts frequently to deliver that purpose, that creates cost efficiency in the company by wasting fewer resources. Commitment, engagement, and employees’ skills to achieve the organization’s purpose contributes to 65 percent of the organization’s success. Plans are good, but they work only until dedication, engagement, and skills come into play.

Resilience

People react to challenges with familiar patterns of behavior because they make them feel comfortable even if they cause harm in those situations. So, the third and last challenge that leaders should focus on is to help employees to become resilient to respond adequately to any given circumstance.

Dom Meli shares a few relevant articles that most readers would find very interesting.

The Death of the Specialist Consultant and the Professional Services Firms that Employ them Finial

Empathy and Value in Education V6

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.

If you do not feel good about a traditional way of selling, there is a way to do the selling differently while liking every aspect of it. In this Expert Insight Interview, Farnosh Brock discusses her new book, The Serving Mindset: Stop Selling and Grow Your Business. Farnoosh Brock is a Founder and CEO of Prolific Living, Inc., a business and career coach, speaker, and author.

The interview discusses:

Shifting to the right mindset
Seeing the world through an abundant perspective
Serving Mindset

Shift the Mindset

The reason why many people dislike sales is because of their relationship with sales. If we keep having the mindset of how we do not like this job, but we have to do it, that will limit our success because then we will look pushy and desperate to the customers. The key is to shift our mindset from selling to serving. By changing how we think, we can discover another way to sell, in which we can feel confident in the conversations with our prospective clients.

Scarcity v Abundance

The mindset represents how we see the world, from our experiences, values, and life principles. That is the same way how we look at our subject matter as well. There are two ways how we can look at the world, through scarce or through an abundant worldview. People who look through scarcity think about how there are no opportunities in the world for them. So, those salespeople have that “I need you to buy this” attitude when they work, which is not attractive at all. On the other side, people with an abundant worldview always wonder whether there is an opportunity with prospective clients. They feel confident knowing that what they do helps people, but they are looking for the perfect fit between them and the client. That is where exploring and creativity to find an ideal fit with the client comes into play.

The Mindset to Serve

People who decide to shift to the serving mindset firstly have to drop their agendas. Having selling agenda limits our presence with prospects, so prospects do not feel like they are being heard and understood. Thus, dropping our selling agendas and being open to exploring different ways to serve our client lets us build a trustworthy and genuine relationship with the client. Moreover, people who work in the corporate world sometimes feel pressure to close the required amounts before the deadlines. But, even in those cases, leadership does not hear how they talk to prospective clients. So, they could always find a way to move any element in their selling mindset towards the serving mindset, such as being empathetic.

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.

Did you know that more households have Amazon Prime accounts than Christmas trees? It might be an unusual comparison, but it shows how the world is shifting. In this Expert Insight Interview, Daniel Ramsey discusses how we can scale our business with virtual professionals. Daniel Ramsey is a co-Founder and CEO of MyOutDesk, providing virtual professionals to the organizations.

The interview discusses:

• Saving costs while scaling the business
• Including virtual workers in company culture
• Embracing global networking

Save and Scale

Having a virtual professional in your organization helps cost saving as well as driving the scale of your business. Considering that in a virtual setting, there is no one to look over the shoulder and look for mistakes like in the office setting, virtual offices require the creating of business systems and processes. When we work virtually, we have to write things down, to have video conferences, and to develop standard operating procedures, all of which help us to grow our business.

Being a virtual professional frees people to be wherever they want to be while doing their jobs. There is no need for locational obligation anymore, and it gives people so much extra free time once they do not have to commute to work anymore. It also saves a lot of money to the company for equipment such as laptops and office space. Some of the excellent positions for virtual professionals are sales development reps, customer service, administrative and marketing assistance, and design coordinators.

Company Culture

It is a myth that a company cannot build its culture remotely. Virtual or part-virtual organizations show more work efficiency and productivity. However, in part-virtual organizations, people who work in the company’s traditional setting gain so-called tribal knowledge. Thus, it is crucial for the internal people to welcome and to include their virtual coworkers in the company’s operations over Zoom or any other platform that enables it. Considering that businesses and their work positions are becoming specialized more than ever, the companies distinguish their core employees from the ones who do not require full-time employment. The next question raised is, can they be virtual or not?

Global Networking

Working with virtual professionals offers a rich experience like no other because of the cultural diversity and networking with the people around the world. So, for people who are considering hiring a virtual professional, all they have to do is to have a clear idea of the desired outcome and what they need for it. There are companies designed to help them find out if a virtual professional is a right solution for them.

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.