Sales Pipeline Radio

This week's episode is entitled "Your most important sales meetings just went virtual. How do you differentiate and still win." Join me as I talk with Tim Riestererwho is the Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions A lot of Tim's talks really center on the idea of conversations. Conversations in marketing, conversations and sales.  I ask Tim to talk a little about the origin of that as a focus area, and why the concept of conversation is so important to effective sales and marketing. "....oftentimes products sound the same, products look the same, product smell the same. And the real winner is the one who can tell the best story, the one who can articulate value." ----more---- The definition of value, and what constitutes value, has a lot of opinions and it can be very abstract. Right? And so, as long as everybody starts to understand that value is what the customer determines it to be, and the primary driver of value is in the mind of the customer, is the contrast between what they're doing today and

This week's episode is entitled "What’s Old is New (Again): Timeless (and Pandemic-Proof) Sales Advice from Joanne Black".  Joanne is the Founder of No More Cold Calling  I can't imagine a time when referrals or referrals and sales, referrals and business has been more important when channels are shrinking, budgets are shrinking. Joanne's been beating this drum for a long, long time and it's been important and prescient that entire time, and I would imagine she's hearing more from companies right now saying, "How do I build that referral culture?" I ask Joanne why she thinks it's coming up more often now and how has her answer changed or evolved over time? ----more---- Companies are really realizing they have to do more than just give lip service to referrals, to say to their sales team, "I'll just go ask for referrals." And they're finally realizing that's not working and realizing everybody in the company knows someone, but this word culture is important. Joanne shares how she was afraid to use it for ye

This week's episode is entitled "You’re Hired, Just in Time for a Pandemic! a lively Q & A with Chorus.ai CEO Jim Benton". Jim was new to Chorus when the pandemic hit!  Jim has a front row seat in terms of seeing how conversations have changed.  I ask him what prospects are talking about and how sales teams are pivoting some of their messages as well.  We talk about what he has seen by mining their own data and by listening to those changes and what they're finding about the way sales teams have really pivoted in this time. ----more---- Surprising to some, connect rates are at least holding steady, if not going up.  Prospects are more open to talking to sales reps, especially those who have shown they can provide some value.  It'll be interesting to see if that continues as we get into more back-to-the office or more of a hybrid work-from-home-work-from-the-office, wherever we are mode. Jim shares some of the data that supports this and how that can give some optimism to sales teams. This and a lot more!

This week's episode is called "Brand Management in Uncertain Times".  Our guest, Karen Leland, is the President at Sterling Marketing Group. Listen now for a lot of really great advice on brand framework, brand development, and even care and feeding of your brand, whether it's your personal brand, your team brand, your corporate brand. A lot of what we're talking about today is in her book, The Brand Mapping Strategy.  Check it out, for sure. We talk about building stronger personal, business, and team brands. I ask Karen to talk about those and how those are different and why it's important to differentiate between them. Everyone has a personal brand and in the world we're in today, I mean, think about it, there are eyeballs than ever looking at people online. I mean, especially, with where we are now. When we're working with teams to build better alignment between sales and marketing teams, we're very clear with people upfront that the cultural impact, the cultural requirements for change are critical. 

This week's episode is entitled "Reinventing Events and Social Hackathons: Innovative Ideas with Corey McCarthy".  Corey is the CMO at Socia. I was so impressed with my recent experience at EventHack 2020.  A must see (watch it on demand) "Hacking the Future of Virtual Events". We had a great conversation about Corey's role and what Socio is, and what they had to face head on (with great success) just a couple of months ago with the onset of the pandemic. I ask her "What were some of the leadership lessons? I think that one of the key things that I've been trying to lean into is trust your gut. I think it's easy to overthink things. And I think that one of the first things that I realized is that there were no rules anymore. Anything that you thought you knew, just throw it out the window. And so we spent a lot of time trying to tap into that authenticity and being completely empathetic with our audience in a time that, they didn't even know what to do..... Transparency is the biggest thing because what I

This week's episode is entitled "What’s your Noble Sales Purpose? Best Practices from Lisa McLeod".  Lisa is the founder of McLeod & More as well as the Author of Selling with Noble Purpose. We have vision and mission. We have objectives and sales. We know what we want to get done, sometimes we happen to think about what the prospect wants out of this as well, but that's different than having a noble selling purpose. Noble sales purpose-- what is it and why is it so important? When you have this clarity of purpose, it gives you a sight line into your customers. It creates urgency and it also makes you a lot more resilient because if your whole self esteem and self confidence was built on hitting your number, you're having a big problem right now. The way you find your own unique noble sales purpose is by answering three really critical questions. How do you make a difference? (How do you improve life for customers?) What impact do you have on customers? (How do you do it differently than your compe

This week's episode is entitled "Selling with Empathy and Integrity (Right Now and Always)" and we are pleased to have as our guest, Mike Schultz, President of RAIN Group and author of multiple best-selling books. His new book coming July 2020, Virtual Selling, is available for pre-order, along with other books, Rainmaking Conversations, Insight Selling. Folks, do yourself a favor, go to the website for tons of resources, research, webinars, blog posts. These guys do a great job when it comes to content. I ask Mike "What are you seeing from organizations that have been traditionally in person sellers?"   Quite frankly, the value prop you bring isn't necessarily different just because you're not in person. Because you can't see someone at a trade show doesn't mean you can't still talk to them. Mike shares five things that are really different now when it comes to virtual selling. Managing yourself Managing meetings How you set up and build relationships How you get people to make decisions and how you get

This week's episode is entitled "More Sleep, More Sales: The Direct, Science-based Connection Between Sleep and Revenue".  Our guest is Jeff Kahn is CEO and Co-Founder of RISE. In this current world of uncertainty, and stress, and work from home, and homeschooling from home, and all this crazy stuff, getting a better night's sleep is crazy important. Jeff has been at Rise Science now for over six years. I ask him why sleep is such a passion and why he created a business around this. It was just the simple fact for us that sleep affects, as far as I can tell, every measurable thing that we do know about human functioning, sleep has an effect on that measure. So to think about something that impacts everything that you do, impacts how long you live, and then impacts billions of people, that, it's almost unheard of. There really is nothing else that really impacts people at that scale. Right now, people are working harder. The boundaries between work and home have really kind of evaporated as we're working fr

This week's episode is entitled "Marketing’s Leadership Moment: Pivots and more with Kevin Marasco" Kevin is the CEO of Zenefits.  Kevin walks me through the many changes and pivots they have made in recent months.  It's a lot of change-- changing how they communicate with customers, changing their content strategy.  I ask him to talk about managing his team through all of this and as a marketing leader, how does he manage his team through it successfully?   "I think it starts with empathy and understanding the individual and where they are, and even your teams and where they are."  This and a lot more!  Listen now or read the transcript on our blog starting Mon. 5/11/20. 

This week's episode is entitled "How to Accelerate Growth Through Customer Intimacy" and our guest is Laura Patterson, President of VisionEdge Marketing and the author of Fast-Track Your Business: A Customer-Centric Approach to Accelerate Market Growth. Among other things, I ask Laura to talk about marketing performance management and helping to drive and measure marketing accountability-- what that means and why that's so important. A lot of marketers are either not measuring the right things or measuring things that tell a different story than they intend to. When we talk about marketing accountability and measuring the marketing's impact on the business, it's not just a scorecard. There's a story behind that that has to speak to a business result of the marketing, not just a marketing result. Laura shares what that difference means and why is it important.  This and a lot more!  Listen in now or read the full transcript on our blog starting Monday, 5/4/20 6am PST.   ____________________________________

This week's episode is entitled "You’re Killing Sales Deals Without Knowing It: George Will Help You Fix It" and our guest is George Bronten, Sales Effectiveness Pioneer at Membrain.  He also has a new book, "Stop Killing Deals"  How to avoid deadly assumptions and achieve sales excellence.   I ask George, how do I continue to sell with empathy? How do I create some sort of resonance and empathy with my prospects? I think there's still value in that, but over the last week I've heard more sales leaders talk about not just selling with empathy, but creating a level of compassionate urgency. We have an opportunity as sellers to create some clarity and direction to help [prospects and clients] know what next steps to take to get out of it.  I also ask George, what he is hearing from the people figuring out how to continue to balance selling with empathy with still moving their pipeline forward?  George has some great insights to share!  Listen in now or read the transcript on our blog starting Mon. 4/27 at 6a

This week's episode is entitled "A Mind For Sales: Sales Book Club with Mark Hunter" and our guest is Mark Hunter, one of the best voices in B2B sales today. Mark is the author of numerous books including the brand new book, A Mind for Sales. These are uncertain times.  A lot of prospects are slowing down on things.  Mark is talking to sales leaders all day long trying to figure out how to keep their team motivated and how to keep selling, how to keep selling with empathy. I ask Mark what general advice he's giving based on what he's seeing in the field? Look at the long picture. Look at the long game. Don't try to play the short game, play the long game. We're going to get through this. We're going to get through this. I'm very optimistic. The piece that I'm saying right now, short term, is you need to be listening to everybody's backstory. Everybody's got a backstory, a personal backstory and a professional backstory and you got to take a couple minutes and listen to that. Listen to it with empathy bec

  We were thrilled this last time to talk to Dan Englander, in an episode called, "The Death & Bright Future of Marketing Agencies" Dan Englander is the founder of Sales Schema and he is also the host of the Digital Agency Growth Podcast. There are so many different options across digital and non-digital. Is it possible to have a full service? As nice as it would be to have one agency, one throat to choke, is it feasible for organizations to still have that even when large businesses require big thinking? This is just one question I ask Dan.  I also ask him to talk about how companies should think about this and about what he sees with marketing service companies in terms of their ability to find and win big deals. You'll also hear him share what he sees in terms of their sophistication around sales pipeline strategy.  We touch on multichannel marketing and a lot more.  Listen in now or read the transcript on our blog.   Sales Pipeline Radio is hosted by Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing which is a program on

This week's episode is entitled "How a Nurse Practitioner Turned Sales Rep is Selling into Health Care Right Now" and our guest is Lindsay Leeder, Clinical Consultant, Nurse Practitioner at Vera Whole Health This was an amazing episode, we covered selling in today's environment as well as why 20 seconds of washing your hands is important, where we usually "miss" regardless, why vaccines and treatments take so long to develop and more!  We talk a little bit about sales.  Lindsay shares some great insights: "Selling is very similar to providing direct patient care because we have to understand what are the symptoms, what are the ailments, what are the pains that people or populations are going through, and then what resources do we have to address those pains and then does it make sense? And then out of that, what is a management plan that's going to work, that's going to stick." Listen in now or read the full transcript on our blog starting Mon. 4/6/20: ______________________________________________________

This week's episode is entitled "Virtual Sales Training: How To Support Your Now Entirely Virtual Team" and our guest is Ray Makela, CEO and Managing Director at the Sales Readiness Group.  I ask Ray, what's the advice you're giving to your client around how to adapt their selling strategy right now? I think this is the time to check in, to build the relationship and hopefully collaborate .... but it's certainly not a time to push to close the deal... I think we do need to be sensitive to how they're showing up and how we're showing up. And I think we want to maybe frankly do a little less challenging and a little bit more consoling these days because it's a long game. And if there was ever a time to pay it forward and say, "How can we help? Let's kind of take the deal off the table for a moment. But how can we help you or what can we do to support you?" I ask Ray to talk a little bit to the tension between getting close to the end of the quarter and hitting their numbers. How do you address that tension?

This week's episode is entitled "Selling from Scratch: Foundations and Fundamentals for Building Your Sales Team".  Our guest is Jim Wilson, Operating Partner at Costanoa Ventures.   We talk about the impact of the COVID19 outbreak on sales, but we also get down to some good, timeless sales team building wisdom and give you some great takeaways you can use both right now and going forward. I love the advance of social selling tactics. I love the advance of challenger sale and the teach and tailor type mentalities. But I think in our effort to create more value as trusted advisers, a skill that isn't being taught as much today is how to ask for the deal, how to ask for the sale, and how to close. I ask Jim to double down on these and provide examples and ideas. You'll love his Four Cs of Closing.  Listen in to hear his answers about how companies put more of a focus on these in the organization. He answers if this a training issue and shares the best ways for companies to get better at closing. This and MORE.

This week's episode is entitled "Coronavirus, Trade Shows and Value vs Venue". So many cancelled conferences!  The people who wanted to attend are missing out on something. The people who wanted to sponsor are missing out on something. The people who produce the conference are going to miss out on something. So what was that and how do you now use that? The last thing I want anyone to do is think about this as an opportunity. I've been really trying not to use that word this week because no one should be opportunistic when lives are at stake. For the people organizing events, for the people planning on producing the events, the most common response I have seen is, "We are going to do a virtual event. We are going to take all of that learning in-person, we're going to do that online." But what if what attendees really want isn't just the content, they want the community? What if you took those same resources and created small micro versions of your event? What if you use this as a way to catalyze actually c

This week's episode is entitled "Successful Selling for Professional Services: An Unstoppable Approach from Steve Gordon" and our guest is Steve Gordon, Founder of The Unstoppable CEO. We cover strategy methodology for sales and marketing professionals all the time and naturally end up talking mostly about selling products.  It's not often we step back and say, okay, "What is it when you're selling what people DO?" I facetiously tell people, as a consultant I talk and type for a living, so I don't necessarily have the same widget to be able to sell to everybody or the same piece of software to sell. So selling in professional services obviously is very much a thing. In this episode I ask Steve how is that different and why do people need to think about this a little differently when you're selling professional services versus selling product? And for smaller organizations--- is the answer to that to separate your services from your selling? Is there a way to make that transition? If you are a small firm an

I think as people have the opportunity to just publish things off the cuff on social channels, to just write stream of consciousness on a blog platform and just click, press, go... I don't feel like we are as good at editing ourselves as we used to be. And so we talk about this.  To start I ask Lisa how she decided editing is what she wanted to do? How did she begin her career in journalism and why is that something that she's so passionate about today? This and a lot more! Listen in or read the entire conversation on the Heinz Marketing Blog starting Mon. 2/24/20 at 6am PST.      Sales Pipeline Radio is sponsored and produced by Heinz Marketing on the Funnel Radio Channel.  I interview the best and brightest minds in sales and Marketing.  If you would like to be a guest on Sales Pipeline Radio send an email to Sheena.

Please join me and my guest, David Keane, Founder and CEO at Bigtincan. We're seeing such an emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning in sales and marketing and over the last six to eight months, we've seen a lot more companies say they feel like it's successful, something they can actually get their arms around and use. It seems to me that part of that is taking what we think of as big data and all this information out there and prioritizing the right data, prioritizing data that we can get access to quickly, that you can make a decision on it and hopefully continue to engage and mobilize the prospects. I ask David how thinks about that and how you take big opportunity and make it real and make it right now for customers. This and a lot more!  Listen in NOW or read the entire conversation on the Heinz Marketing blog starting Mon. 2/17 6am PST.  Sales Pipeline Radio is hosted by Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.     ______________________________