This interview is perfect for anyone who’s read about Predictable Revenue’s “Cold Calling 2.0″ outbound sales process and is looking for a lot more detail or examples on how to make it work.  We get into some nitty gritty!

Damon Mino is Head of Customer Development and Operations (aka head of leadgen +sales + other stuff) for SalesCrunch, and his claim to fame before that was building the leadgen effort for LinkedIn.  I got to know Damon and wanted to help him out because I’m an advisor to them & their CEO, Sean Black.

Over the past 3 months (Feb-April 2012) with our book and tools, and his elbow grease and enhancements, Damon tripled his qualified lead generation from outbound sales.  His team went from generating 20 qualified meetings a month across three reps, to generating 20 qualified meetings per month per rep.  They have a small sales team (3-4 people) who are specialized, and are now growing.   He did this by using the Cold Calling 2.0 outbound process, plus adding his own outsourcing twist to make it even more productive.

We cover…

• How Damon uses the Cold Calling 2.0 process, in detail (ex: use LinkedIn to find companies, add contacts from Data.com, email the C-level executives asking for a referral… etc.)
• What the referral email says that they use, and how they send them
• What he does once they get a referral
• How he outsourced parts of it to someone in the Philippines at $8/hour, and doubled the effectiveness of his prospectors
• We go over Damon’s “Lead-to-Close” steps (1. Get A Referral, 2. Qualification Call, 3. Demo, 4. Pilot, 5. Close), and why he has companies pilot the service before they sign up
• How using SalesCrunch helps him with his own sales process
• His final words of wisdom on why teams need to specialize, specialize, specialize
• And more…

Listen To Or Download The Interview

Download Audio Interview

Resources Mentioned

• Sample Cold Calling 2.0 Email Template
• Predictable Revenue book on Amazon.com
• YourRemoteAssistant.com

We know they do, but why?

1) People hate being surprised on the phone.

2) People get way too many phone calls and emails, and with the overwhelm/busyness they just don’t want to talk with people they don’t know and who don’t know them.

3) Cold callers launch into “their pitch” because they don’t have a friendlier way to start a conversation and gain permission / interest to talk.

A much better method if you want to use the phone: call in to ask for referrals. (This works with cold emails too).

You can also make great ‘cold referral’ calls without doing much research on the company beforehand; but no matter what, it’s essential to have a clear Ideal Customer Profile.  You want to be “be a sniper not a machine gunner”.

Opening the Conversation

When calling ANYONE my favorite question to open a conversation: “Did I catch you at a bad time?” It’s friendly, and gives the person a chance to collect their thoughts. If they do have a few minutes, it always leads into a great chat. And if it truly is a bad time, you don’t want to talk with them at that point anyway, and ask “…when is a better time?”

What to Say Next

Think of the last time you went to a restaurant, looked at the menu, and didn’t know exactly what to order. What do you usually do? Well, most people, in a very calm manner, ask the waiter for help. “I’m not sure what to order, what do you suggest?” is a common way to find out more about specials, or favorites. Use the same process when asking who you should be contacting. Here’s an example: “I’m reaching out to see if your company’s a fit or not for what we do.” Usually, the caller will ask “Well, what do you do?” Answer the question in a friendly manner with no jargon. You can then say something like, “I’m not sure where to begin, who to talk to to help me figure this out. I’m a little lost.” Again, think of how you request assistance when ordering food from an unfamiliar restaurant. You’re not freaked out, worried, sweaty-palmed, nervous. You are casual, calm, curious, gentle. Be that way with the caller and they will do everything they can to assist.

DocStoc interviewed me to produce about a dozen bite-sized video interviews (see the full series).  This one’s been one of the most popular.  Let’s talk about selling ideas and not just products. Remember three key tips to help you excite customers about what you can do for them:

1. People don’t want to buy products, they want help
2. Help people by using both your product & expertise
3. Educate rather than sell

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out the other videos in the DocStoc interview series here.

Transcription

You know if I wrote a second– the next book, a follow up, the book might be called “Sell ideas, not stuff”. I’ve started half a dozen companies and you know talked to all kinds of people then one thing I know is everyone’s sick of being sold to. Like there’s so much e-mail, products, pitches, webinars. It’s crazy but everyone wants to learn and improve and so what people do want– they don’t want you to sell your product. They want to learn from you. They don’t want to buy things. They want help.

So if you can help them with your product and your expertise but starting with your expertise, they’re going to come to you. It’s going to build trust, you know, teach them something valuable and they’ll come back to you for more.

And you really want to sell– when I talk about sell ideas here’s an example. There’s a company called BetterWorks here and they sell a, you know, online service to help you reward your employees better or treat your employees better. You know, for them they sell the idea that you should treat your employees well.

Might sound real silly but why should you treat your employees well? How can you treat your employees well and so on. They don’t sell their product but when people learn about it, you know, they learn from them. They learn tips. They get a lot of value there and then they want to actually subscribe or sign up with that company. Now if you, you know, you could– if you were a writing coach, instead of selling people your writing services, you should sell them on the idea of why should they write. You know why should they write a book?

So again it’s much more powerful if you sell ideas not stuff and you’ll find that if you start sharing your best expertise for free out there whether it’s through a blog, book, e-book, webinar video like these videos. DocStoc is doing it, people will really respond to you.

You’re going to get a lot more referrals, a lot more clients and actually you’re going to feel a lot better because you’re making a difference without selling people. And so educate, don’t sell.

It’s been my pleasure to work with Ware Sykes (VP Sales & Services at TheLadders.com) and his sales managers for the past few months, and especially with Lou Ciniglia, National Sales Manager there [4-16-12 Update: Lou was just promoted to Director, National Sales...congratulations!]

I’ve been so impressed at what Lou and his team have accomplished that I wanted to interview him to share what he’s learned about turning a team from struggling to self-managing.

Lou took an unconventional approach.  Most sales managers, when stressed, take more control of how the team works, bring in new sales processes or just try to work harder.  Lou took something of an opposite approach – he let go of trying to control the team, and instead turned over to his team – for example – the responsibility of taking care of their own sales training and process improvement.

The result?  More people on the team are exceeding their goals than ever, are energized, and have stepped up to take on leadership.  And Lou has a lot more time to spend on coaching, strategy and family.

Some things we covered…

• How reps went from keeping best practices to themselves to everyone helping each other succeed
• What re-energized / inspired his team
• Tips to creating a self-managing team
• Why you shouldn’t you people extra for becoming a team lead
• How improv theatre was a simple way to make a sales meeting a blast
• Lessons learned
• Why Lou’s stress at home has gone way down

PS – one thing Lou said later he forgot to mention was the power of babysteps.

Download Audio Interview

Read Predictable Revenue or CEOFlow Yet?

• Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com
• CEOFlow: Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs

I was recently interviewed by David Skok, on my new book, Predictable Revenue:

Read: Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect

David’s a five-time serial entrepreneur who’s now a partner at the VC firm Matrix Partners. (If you enjoy Marylou and my “sales stuff”, I also highly recommend following his blog).

David shares some of Predictable Revenue’s key ideas that help provide a recipe for, you guessed it – predictable revenue – many of the same ideas & breakthroughs that helped Salesforce.com add $100 million in extra revenues over a few years.

For sure you’ll want to check it out if:

• You’re in sales, or run a sales team.
• You need more leads.
• You scramble every month or quarter.
• You’re a technical or product person who’s starting or running a company.

Read the complete article here:
Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect

To generate predictable revenue, you have to know how long things take in your funnel.

Measuring and paying attention to the time element of the predictability formula (page 42 of our book) should be part of your focus.

We all know that over time, and as a prospect gets to know us, we establish credibility and trust. How can we slash the amount of time it takes to build credibility and shorten our sales cycle?

According to Dr. Cialdini, author of Influence – Science and Practice, there is a way to build credibility from what used to take 7-8 calls all the way down to 1 call.

This audio file (18:37 minutes long) teaches pharmaceutical reps how to ethically use simple phrases to quickly gain trust. The teachings in this audio file will serve you, no matter what your industry.

URL is: http://www.influenceatwork.com/podcast/cialdini_interview.mp3
or you can click here: Interview

Apply some of these techniques on your next series of e-mails, voice mails and conversations and you will surely start chiseling away at those lengthy sales cycles.

Train hard and expect sales success.

Last month, David Skok, a partner at Matrix Ventures and author of the popular For Entrepreneurs blog (we highly recommend you should follow it) introduced me to the executives at Digium.  Why, you might ask?

David said he’d referred our Predictable Revenue book to his portfolio companies, and that one, Digium, had redesigned their whole sales strategies after reading our book.  I’d never heard of or talked with Digium, so the fact they could get so much value from reading our book made me want to talk with them!

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the world’s most popular open source telephony project.  Digium’s mission is to transform the way businesses acquire and operate their communications systems through the application of open source software. (<- Picture: Steve Harvey, VP WW Sales, Digium)

I was able to virtually ‘sit down’ with their executive team and talk about how they do what they do… Some points we covered:

• Why you need to reframe your terms in simple english that customers understand (escape the Echo Chamber)
• Why they moved from generalized salespeople doing it all to specialized salespeople (inbound/outbound/closing)
• What Leslie (VP Marketing) did to better handle their big flow of inbound leads
• Their challenges with implementing outbound sales (both 1) making the Cold Calling 2.0 referral process work; and 2) converting pre-qualified leads they buy into customers), plus my coaching for them
• Their best, fewest key metrics they track in sales & marketing
• How long it took them to make the switch from “Sales 1.0″ to “Sales 2.0″ (and how it’s an ongoing process)
• Danny Windham (CEO): “This is not a game of high-level metrics…must drill into incredible attention to detail, to make the machine run”
• Steve: The importance of ensuring feet-on-the-street managers coach more.
• David (Sales & Marketing Ops): The importance of planning changes
• Leslie: Why tracking lead source is so important
• About their great Switchvox telephony product (sounds awesome)

For more about Digium, check out:

• www.Digium.com

As always… would love to see your comments below!

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dave Kurlan, a best selling author, top rated speaker and sales thought leader.  He is the founder and CEO of the Objective Management Group, Inc., the leading developer of sales force evaluations and sales candidate assessments, headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts.

He possesses more than 30 years of experience in all facets of sales, sales leadership, sales strategy, sales training, coaching and consulting.

Simply put, Dave is a Sales Rockstar!

He is internationally known for his groundbreaking work in evaluating sales people and he is the co-developer of Salesmind, software that helps salespeople overcome their weaknesses and much much more!

Dave’s best-selling book is titled “Baseline Selling: How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know About the Game of Baseball.”

I met Dave through a client of mine, who said he thought I’d like his work.  I talked with Dave and not only did I like his sales work, but I also thought he was a super interesting and genuine guy! I caught up with Dave and in our interview, we covered topics like:

• Dave’s passions for sales, fatherhood, music & baseball
• The #1 problem he’s asked for help with (which turns out to be the same top problem as 30 years ago)
• His “Inoffensive Close” (three simple questions)
• How he got started in sales and sales management by selling Cutco knives at age 18
• Dave’s decision about business travel when his son turned 5

Listen to or Download the Interview (listening time: 44:44 minutes)

To listen:

To Download:
Download The Interview

Want to read more about Dave?  Check out the links below:

1. DaveKurlan.com
2. Baseline Selling on amazon
3. Check out his blog series “Salespeople are like Children”

There was an interesting discussion going on in a LinkedIn group recently, on the question of: “90% of professional salespeople do not consistently prospect. Fact of fiction?”

Don’t sales managers complain all the time that their people don’t prospect enough?  Hmm; if everyone seems to have the same challenge, maybe it’s not the salespeople that are the problem…perhaps there are other hidden forces at work

Look, what people don’t understand is that there are GREAT REASONS WHY professional salespeople don’t prospect!

• They are afraid of rejection (a form of fear)
• They aren’t any good at prospecting, and don’t see a return on it.
• They don’t like to do it.
• They are under more demands than ever with the other parts of their ‘day jobs’ (more handholding in deals, servicing current customers, higher quotas, filling out CRM systems, more reporting, etc)
• VP Sales/CEOs have unrealistic expectations about how much they “should” prospect, the results they “should” generate.
• Their company doesn’t train them on how to prospect effectively, give them helpful tools or reasonable goals. Usually the guidance is along the lines of “make more calls!”  Wow, that’s helpful.

5 Things You MUST Do To Build An Outbound Sales Machine

From lessons learned at Salesforce.com (I built their outbound sales process and team, and recently published a book about it called “Predictable Revenue”) and in coaching/speaking with many other companies who have succeeded and failed at building outbound sales teams and predictable revenue…

1. You MUST specialize your salespeople, and have, at a minimum, at least one (better is two) outbound reps focused 100% on prospecting – and that means NO CLOSING or inbound lead qualification. If you can’t specialize today, make a plan on how and when you can. You don’t need to be big to begin to specialize; all you need is two people in sales.
2. You must use a referral/researching approach rather than cold calling people directly. You can generate quality referrals from cold contacts who have never heard of you via short and sweet email templates.
3. You must focus on QUALITY, not quantity, of actions, calls and leads (fewer, bigger, better).  This includes having a well-defined activity funnel, and measuring results-based activities (such as “Number of Scoping Calls Completed Per Week”) and never measuring dials.
4. You must train your outbound salespeople to be “businesspeople who can sell”, rather than salespeople. Not only do they need to have a multi-step outbound sales process that works, they also must be able to have an intelligent conversation with high-level executives, whether via email or phone. You can train young people (even out of college) to do this.
5. You must SIMPLIFY what you track in your CRM/SFA system (such as a Salesforce.com), focusing on your few, best metrics (like new $ pipeline created per month, qualified leads per month, etc.) You have to get rid of all your extra junk tracking fields that clutter everything, and simplify your dashboards.

Unfortunately, too many companies won’t take the single most important step to make prospecting work – dedicating an inside sales team or role 100% to prospecting and generating opportunities to pass on to the Account Executives/closers.  This is always priority #1!

For More…

• Grab the best-selling Predictable Revenue book
• On Hubspot: 5 Reasons Not To Give Inbound Leads To An Outbound Sales Team

The phenomenal growth of HubSpot is a direct result of the people, product and processes in place at the company.

Mark Roberge is responsible for the entire sales function at HubSpot, increasing revenue over 6,000% and expanding the sales team from 1 to 100 employees in four short years. His goal at the start of his journey was to create a predictable, scalable revenue channel for HubSpot.

Results from Mark and his teams’ efforts firmly places HubSpot #33 on the 2011 INC 500 Fastest Growing Companies list.

Aaron Ross, creator of our Predictable Revenue framework, caught up with Mark at the Sales 2.0 conference in Santa Monica.  Hear what Mark has to say about our newly released book – Predictable Revenue:  Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine.  In this brief (1:47 minute) video Mark talks about his reaction to the book and how he credits much of his success in building the sales machine talent at HubSpot to the material we present in the book:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The book is available on Amazon.