Lessons Learned in B2B Sales

You may have noticed that it's been months since my last post. The reason - learning is exhausting! After six months in my role at PHMG/, I cannot count on all of my fingers and toes how many new and exciting skills I've learned. I can genuinely say that every day in this job has taught me a new lesson, new perspective, or new skill. Managing an Inside Sales Team requires you to be physically, mentally, and emotionally present all day long every single day. It's why I love the job. I have the opportunity to inspire people to greatness, to help them achieve financial goals they don’t know are possible, and to be in their corner. In exchange, a Sales Manager must always be turned on and tuned in.  Launching an office from scratch has been a tremendous challenge. Growing from employee 1 - me - to employee 24 over the span of 4 months has been extremely rewarding. It has also meant that I've had to learn twice as fast and at least once a week I still have to admi

Having recruited, interviewed, and on boarded employees for eight years I felt like I knew a thing about the importance of how new hires feel in their first 30 days on the job. It turns out I have so much more to learn. When I took on a Management role with Marcus Evans, I realised straight away that the New Hire OnBoarding & Training process needed to be massively revamped. Over my Christmas break, I took it upon myself to update all of the training materials, the quality of the content, and increase the robustness of the overall course. It had an amazing effect. The average amount of business written by our Sales Executives nearly doubled. This was 5 years ago. The effects have worn off.  Since that time, I've read blogs, sales books, and listened in on countless webinars to see what else we could do. I implemented other small changes like lunch with the management team and anonymous evaluation forms. I deeply believe in continuous improvement, but the effects were m

Ten years after my first real sales job, I am starting from scratch. What an incredibly humbling experience. No matter how many inspirational quotes you see or uplifting articles you read, I will be honest, starting a new job is scary.  After nine years with Marcus Evans ( www.marcusevans.com ) traveling the world with people I love and selling a product I deeply believe in, it was difficult for me to believe I could find another company I feel as deeply about. When you sell an extremely premium product for a market leader, it's a unique challenge to find another product that you can apply that same passion to.  My personal thought is that the age old adage;  "the grass is always greener on the other side"  is pure nonsense. I find that it is unfortunately rare for most people to find a job that they love in the first place. If you've landed on green grass once, it seems unlikely that you'd be that blessed a second time around. I am humbled and grateful to

Quora - The best answer to any question https://www. quora .com/ If you are not already familiar with Quora, it is an amazing website/app/forum which has created a community to share information. You might think, this sounds like a lot of social media applications, but Quora is special in the quality of content provided.  Today, I want to talk about the free sales advice that is readily available on Quora. Next time you have a sales question about cadence, pay structure, lead generation, etc - ask Quora. You will be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  You can start by taking a look at a few of my B2B Sales answers like those below at https://www.quora.com/profile/Leslie-Venetz/answers/Sales  How does one keep one's confidence up when selling advertising? Leslie Venetz ,  B2B Inside Sales Director 74  Views Watch or read client testimonials. Hearing your clients talk about how valuable the product is naturally makes you feel more co

I hope this posts finds all of you well. I so appreciate you taking the time to visit my Blog to gather knowledge and improve your sales skills. While I post to this Blog as often as possible, I also put sales tips up on my LinkedIn, Twitter, & Quora accounts quite often. If you find the content on the Cold Calling Master Blog helpful, please follow me on the below accounts as well: www.linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz  https://www.quora.com/profile/Leslie-Venetz @LeslieVenetz https://plus.google.com/+LeslieVenetz 

I am often asked how I maintain consistently high sales to continuously exceed quotas. The answer - the ability to self-diagnosed.  Here are the steps I share with you to determine where I need to tweak my sales process to maintain a strong pipeline and consistent sales.  1. If I am not closing deal... It means I am not setting enough appointments with decision makers who are interested in buying from me. Diagnose why you are not setting enough quality appointments. Are you setting appointments with non-decision makers? Are you not setting expectations that you would like do go business and close a deal? Are you failing to set a specific follow-up time so that you become a bother? 2. I am not getting to a point where I can even establish follow-up appointments... My sales pitch and sales cadence are not working. Am I asking enough questions during my sales calls to uncover the client's needs? Am I truly listening to my client so that I can demonstrate my interes

I recently explored the importance of using unique verbiage in our sales conversations to increase our credibility, competence, and ability to convey meaning with fewer words. Shortly after beginning my first corporate sales job, I was handed a portfolio that was completely new to me. I was asked to spearhead our Electric Utility vertical. Admittedly, I was nervous because I don't have an Engineering degree, I didn't have contacts in that industry or any real concept of what utilities needs were. However, within 3 years of taking over the portfolio we grew from two products to eight products, expanding outside of just utilities into the greater energy arena. In order to quickly become a (remedial) subject matter expert in this space and have natural, authentic conversations I needed to have a deeper understanding of the fears, passions, and needs of my prospects. 3 Tips to Make Yourself a Sales Natural 1. Develop a passion by educating yourself. I was already passion

I a recent Morning Motivational Meeting we asked ourselves - "Why are Gatekeepers so Frustrating?" The better a gatekeeper is at their job, the more likely they are frustrating to deal with. Why? Because their job is to make sure that all callers are screened and to limit the number of cold calls or even warm calls that their boss takes on a daily basis.  A phrase we often hear in sales is Overcoming Gatekeepers - I take issue with this phrase because you don't ever "overcome" a gatekeeper if they don't intend to connect your call to their boss. Instead, I propose we circumvent gatekeepers. Below are a few of my top techniques to make the most of every phone call. Techniques to Circumvent Gatekeepers 1. Ask for a better time to reach the decision maker and let the gatekeeper know you will call back versus leaving a message and hoping the prospect calls you back. Clearly, this technique can only be used a limited number of times, but is a good w

Emotional intelligence (EI) or emotional quotient   (EQ)  describes a person's ability to recognize his or her own and other people's emotions, to understand the powerful effect of these emotions, and to use that information to guide thinking and behavior. Why is having a HIGH EQ helpful in sales? 1.     Because, by definition, sales is emotional! 2.     Emotions are particularly important in sales because we need to use them to connect with our customers & prospective customers on a deeper level. 3.     EQ makes our conversations more authentic. We sound like real humans rather then telemarketers or generic sales people. 4.     Minimizes miscommunication and misunderstandings. How do we create EQ? 1.        Awareness. Listening for buying signals and responding to them. 2.         Listening. If you don’t listen to your prospect you will NEVER sound authentic you will always sounds like a used car salesman.Really HEAR what they are

I recently heard that the attention span of an average adult is 8 seconds. STOP right now and time the first 8 seconds on your sales conversation. Would that keep you on the phone? Multiple studies show that we have between 15-30 seconds to make an impact over the phone. In those initial 30 seconds we need to say something, anything to capture the attention and emotion of the person on the other side of the line. Here is my challenge for today - take a look at your "pitch" and make at least one change to increase the impact of the first sentences . Here are a few tips: 1. Don't waste time in the first 30 seconds of your pitch talking about the weather, a sports team, or other information that does not make IMPACT. That doesn't mean you can't touch on those topics later, but not during the first 30 seconds. 2. Don't talk excessively about yourself and what you want. The person you are talking to does not care about you and what you want. That may sou

I am still soaking up all of the gems of advice from the Sales Acceleration Summit I attended last week. One saying has really been present in my mind: " Accept your role as a professional interrupter."  How many of you have truly acknowledge that the job of an Inside Sales Professional is the job of an Interrupter. Sure you know it in the back of your mind, but have you really embraced it? The Sales Professionals that I interact with who are most successful at what they do have fully embraced their role as a professional interrupter. If you believe deeply in the value that you can add to a person's day, life, job, etc with your product then interrupting suddenly doesn't seem like as big of an intrusion. Yes you are interrupting, but you also have a meaningful reason for the call. This got me thinking about all of the "false" objections or brush offs that Inside Sales Professional get at the beginning of phone calls before we've had a chance to depa

I had the privilege of attending the FREE and extremely beneficial Sales Acceleration Summit hosted by Insidesales.com yesterday #SalesSummit I sat through 5 hours of hand-picked webinars, took 16 pages of notes, and would like to share my top 12 take-aways with you. Please connect with me on LinkedIn if you have additional questions at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz ! Empathy creates and emotional connections which elevates the sales conversation. Build emotional intelligence.  80% of B2B (business-to-business) purchases are unplanned AND unbudgeted. Don’t fall for that false objection 80% of people who spend 1MM+ in their first year in a new job, choose to do so in the 1 st 90 days. An average Executive receives 1200 unsolicited calls a year. What are you going to do differently then 1999 other people? You have a 900% increased chance of closing a deal if you follow-up within 60 minutes of the initial contact. The a

I am so honored to have been recently recognized as one of the Top 53 B2B Sales Professionals that you should follow on LinkedIn. I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few of my LinkedIn Strategies and also invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn. Keep reading for my Top 3 LinkedIn tips that you can implement in under and hour to improve the quality of your profile immediately. Find me at linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz Top 3 LinkedIn Strategies You Can Implement in 1 Hour 1. Make your profile robust. It is extremely easy to determine if you have added enough information to your because  LinkedIn  tells you how complete it is. In accordance with keeping these strategies under and hour make sure that you have:  * A professional photo. It doesn't not have to be professionally taken, but make sure that you are the only one in the picture, that you look presentable, and that nothing distracting is also happening in the frame. * Add a work history of at lea