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Episode #387: Creating a Sense of Urgency

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootHow do you create a sense of urgency for a prospect?

In today’s episode, veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale address one of their most frequently asked questions.

What is the true role of a sales professional?

Do you understand where your prospect is starting and where they are trying to go?

In this episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan share how you can reframe the question and avoid manipulating or coercing your prospects. They will give you tips to help you evaluate your intent in the relationship and how you can see yourself as a guide in your prospect’s process.  One of our most commonly asked questions isn’t actually about the language at all— it’s about how you THINK about the questions.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

Episode #383: Is Your Sales Bucket Leaking?

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootDo you have leaks in your sales bucket? In today’s episode, veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale are fired up— not just about leaks in your bucket, but about discovering a leak in their own bucket too.

Do you prospect when sales are good or only when things start to slow down?

Do you run a well-organized sales process?

Are you leveraging your training and knowledge as much as you can?

In this episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan fight to prevent their ego from getting the best of them— a rant of this magnitude not frequently heard on the show. Passed over for a local news story about successful podcasters, Bill and Bryan put together some of their best content yet to help you identify leaks in your bucket and what you can do about it when you find them. You won’t want to miss this one.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

Episode #357: Sales Training for Non-Sales People

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootWelcome to Mailbag Monday… Thursday edition. Todays’s question is too good to wait until Monday.  It’s a big one: Was anyone really, truly born to be a salesperson? Veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale explore how to implement ASP training with the non-sales people on your team.

How do you and your team define “sales?

Do you think it’s a dirty word and shy away from using it?

In this episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan work through how to reframe the definition of the sales role in your company. You’ll learn how to help non-sales people on your team handle rejections and resistance. You’ll pick up a few good tips about how to create a system that works, regardless of your title and place on the team. Whether you’re a sales person or in ops/customer service/marketing/field technician, you can successfully utilize the principles from The Advanced Selling Podcast every day.

Also mentioned in this podcast:

Episode #356: How To Be Your Own Marketing Department

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootDoes your marketing department actually help you generate leads? Veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale take on the challenge of lead generation… whether you have a full marketing department or none at all.

What do you do when you’re a high-level sales pro without a marketing department?

Does your marketing department spend most of their time doing promos and not really generating any actual leads for you?

In today’s episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan walk you through building your own marketing plan— even if you DO have a marketing department to support you. They teach you what it means to “think inbound” and how to establish your own Voice of a Customer series. If you’ve been frustrated by marketing support (or lack thereof), be ready to take notes and brush up on your mad marketing skills.

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#349: Sales Territory Expansion: Blessing or Curse?

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootHave you ever used the saying “Be careful what you wish for?” Veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale welcome in the new year with a discussion around the all-too-common request from salespeople everywhere: a larger territory.

How do you build, support, manage and retain a bigger client base, especially when your resources or distance to the customer may not change as the territory expands.

Do you know who to call on most? How do you decide which accounts get more attention?

In today’s episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan ask a longtime listener and podcast client for his best practices while sharing some of their own. Bill teaches you one of his client’s easiest ways to help keep the feeling of personalized attention when you have lots of clients to manage. Bryan shows you how to develop your own “balanced scorecard” to determine how to divide your time and attention.

Their guest, Craig, kicks it with an old-school (and still works) technique to make sure your customers know you’re thinking about them when you can’t drop in.  Start your new year off right— and be ready to take notes.

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3 Videos That Will Radically Shift Your Client Positioning and Results

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As you begin to think about 2016, I want you to consider three things to commit to next year.

I want you to create…yes I said “create”…3 videos for the expressed purpose of landing new clients.

How can videos help me land clients? Well….are you ever in for a surprise! Let me start with a blanket statement. OK, it’s my opinion….but a statement it is.

Video will help you tell your story, compel people to seek you out, and help you position yourself properly prior to client contact. 

VIDEO 1

Last week, I was in a coaching session with two sales leaders and their lead generation person. In the conversation, I found that they’re asking prospects to fill out a form on the web, then hit SUBMIT. Then, their lead person emails them back to set up a call. Read more

Episode #341: The Threat Factor

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advancedsellinpodcastgraphicbootDo your prospects see you as a threat? Veteran sales trainers Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale explore the common “Threat Factor” that frequently occurs in sales situations.

Is there a chance that you or the product/service you’re selling can be a threat to your buyer?

Will buying from you ruffle any feathers in your prospect’s organization?

In today’s episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill and Bryan give you questions you can ask yourself to know how and if you’re being perceived as a threat… and what to do about it if you are. Bryan shares a real-life coaching conversation with one of his clients and Bill weighs in with suggestions of how to handle a situation where you could easily lose control of your message. They give you their best advice to help you avoid falling victim to the Threat Factor—and it all comes down to one word. Listen in to find out.

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Building Your Platform To Make Selling Easy(ier)

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Last week, I got called by a CPA firm who wanted training for their people. This you must know: CPAs are not very good at selling. It’s not that they don’t have the expertise. That’s not it at all.

It’s that selling spooks them. It’s not in their comfort zone.

So, when I get a call from a professional services firm (or any company), I always start with one simple question: Do you have a platform?

Platform

After the weird looks they give me, I go on to educate them to what a “Platform” is.

Platform: definition, A position in the market that you occupy where people look to you for expertise.

Physical Platform

Just as you would speak at a conference from a podium (platform) the same thing applies here. In the physical world, it is you speaking from the stage, on a topic that you have some degree of expertise in, where all eyes are on you.

There, you don’t have to fight for attention. You ARE the show.

In the sales & marketing world, your platform could be a variety of things. LinkedIN is a platform. Any kind of social media could be a platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). Your email list is a platform. A podcast is a platform.

Simply, it is a place where you command attention of the people you’re trying to reach.

Your platform is a positioning tool that raises you above the din of competition and market confusion.

You Have One Right Now, But You May Not Know It Read more

The One Thing That Will Change Your Sales World

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Apologies to the person who created the “flower and the bee” concept but I think that epitomizes perfectly the problem with most sales processes today.

The-Flower-Does-Not

And do we ever have a problem.

The ‘flower and the bee’ phenomena goes like this: in nature the flower must pollinate itself. It sits there waiting for the bee (one of the many ways pollination happens) to pollinate it. The flower does not labor, nor does it stress about bees showing up. Bees, on the other hand, are scurrying about trying to find food, and pollinating the flower.

In business, sales people are typically the bees and the customer is the flower. Sales people scurry around the country looking for food.

Why does it have to be that way? Why shouldn’t the sales professional be sitting – allowing the prospect to show up for them? Why?

It’s because we don’t plan it out that way. (We actually might, secretly, like the scurrying about looking for plants -err prospects.)

We have bought into the flower/bee process so heavily in sales that we refuse to even admit that it’s all wrong. (We also do this when job searching…wrong again.) Read more