Emre Vatansever shares his unexpected journey into the world of sales. Together we discuss the importance of curiosity, learning from customers, and the significance of coaching in achieving sales success. Emre's insights are backed by his extensive background in international relations, international business, and his current role in improving commercial performance for technology-oriented, midsize family-owned businesses. Through stories and examples, Emre shares how his perspective on sales e...
May 14, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Mike Conrad and I dive into the nuanced world of inside sales. Mike, a seasoned sales professional with extensive experience in inside sales management, shares his lessons learned. We explore the evolving landscape of inside sales and the importance of strategic leadership and development within inside sales teams. We discuss the transformative impact of thoughtful sales approaches, mentorship, challenges of adapting to modern sales tools, and advice on career pathing. Mike and I share our exper...
May 03, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Jim Schaffer and Lee discuss the role of mindfulness and awareness in sales. We explore the relevance of being present, the power of emotional intelligence (EQ) in sales interactions and the importance of understanding the context of who you're selling to. Jim shares his personal journey of discovering mindfulness and how it transformed his approach to sales. We discuss the benefits of being present and reframing perspectives to find joy in any situation. We also highlight the role of managers i...
Mar 18, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 26
In this episode of the Thoughts on Selling podcast, we sit down with Deb Berman, an experienced sales consultant specializing in assisting early-stage tech startups, and a fellow Colgate alum! Join us as she shares her insights on building successful sales organizations, navigating the transition from startup employee to consultant, and the key elements for effective B2B sales. Discussion Highlights: Transitioning from founder-led sales to fielding a successful sales organization: Deb sheds ligh...
Jan 09, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Nancy Maluso, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Edgio and I take a deep dive into the power of curiosity and authenticity in the customer engagement process, and the practices of value selling to ensure positive outcomes for all. Nancy and I cover the practices that allow a good sales person to drive great results. Key takeaways: - High performing sales people don’t provide information about products. Instead, they provide insight into how a company’s business can be changed by change in p...
Dec 05, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Jonathan Mahon, cofounder of The Practice Lab and I take a deep dive into the value of discovery in the sales process, and the application of “deliberate practice” to improve selling skills. While some believe that discovery “belongs” in a discrete stage of the sales process, and is sometimes delegated to a presales engineer, Jonathan and I share a different perspective. Discovery should start long before the first contact, with the sales person and presales engineer conducting background resear...
Nov 14, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Special guest Mark Goloboy brings an extensive background in both large and small companies driving demand using data, analytics, process improvement and elbow grease. Together we nerd out on the value of data and shared goals to help drive pipeline size and shape. We also dig into the processes that help to ensure success. Some companies play the blame game ( it’s your fault, no yours!) while others focus on the goals of driving revenue and customer value. This latter focus requires both good d...
Nov 07, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 22
The purpose of a sales enablement charter is to define sales enablement, the sales enablement group mission, its focus, how it measures success, the key stakeholders and internal customers. It sets the boundaries of what the group will do and importantly, what the group will not or should not do. The charter is a tool to help communicate what others should and should not expect from the sales enablement team. High performing teams include the following critical components in their sales enableme...
Oct 31, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Senior sales leadership (and Wall Street analysts) talk a lot about strategic accounts. Of course, that’s where the money is, and more importantly that’s where the profit is. While your top tier of customers may generate 60 or 80% of your revenue, they will generate all of your company’s profits. Strategic accounts spend more, they are customers longer, and make specific long-lasting platform, technology and relationship commitments. But it takes work. You need expertise, process excellence and ...
Oct 24, 2023•13 min•Season 1Ep. 20
While most people think of opportunity reviews as a necessary evil to build pipeline visibility, effective opportunity review sessions serve as a critical planning process to ensure timely deal closings. Yes…a planning process. Good opportunity reviews identify unknown unknowns and action plans that dramatically boost close rates. And a good platform for capturing those relationship maps and action plan tasks helps to ensure good organization and effective follow through. I mention ARPEDIO as a ...
Oct 18, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 19
I've been deeply involved in account planning process development, improvement and facilitation for many years and have seen the strong positive impact on value creation, customer satisfaction and loyalty and revenue. Here are a few lessons learned along the way: Account planning, as the basis for account based selling, is vastly different from writing an account plan Effective preparation helps to ensure the success of an individual account planning initiative Good account planning requires the...
Oct 10, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Special guest Jonathan Levitt answers the question “why do we choose to do hard things?”, like running an ultramarathon or selling corporate wellness services (blood analytics) to government agencies. As the top sales person at InsideTracker , a blood analytics company, Jonathan moved from ambassador program management, influencer development and direct-to-consumer sales to a focus on enterprise and public sector. Along the way he’s worked with leading professional and elite athletes, and more r...
Oct 03, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Join me for a discussion in how to study, measure and improve sales productivity. Sales productivity is the intersection of sales effectiveness, efficiency and revenue, and is the backbone of a growing and profitable organization. Here are some highlights: Sales enablement is one of the five levers of sales productivity and is the glue that sticks all of the others together. While content is a component of sales enablement, enablement is much more. And while training is a component of sales enab...
Sep 26, 2023•15 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Special guest Ulrik Monberg shares his passion for effective account based selling. Ulrik identified something missing in CRM over a decade ago, describing the category generally as providing a place to store transactional and contact information, while less useful for guiding account team behavior or truly fostering a value selling mindset. He set off to build ARPEDIO, to provide a platform to support the functions of Assess, Reflect, Plan, Execute (ARPEDIO) (and Dio, which means God in Greek)...
Sep 19, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Special guest Laurie Schloff and I discuss the value of effective communication in the selling realm. This episode will help you to become a better communicator, and to help your team communicate better as well! Good communicators are able to motivate their prospects more effectively than weak communicators, and most of selling involves helping others to see different ways of being, to lower the perception of risk in acting, and to show a useful path forward. Laurie shares some tips regarding ...
Sep 12, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Special guest Jackie Quint and I discuss the value of customer success as a key to revenue generation and why smart AEs partner with CSMs to win more deals and help customers achieve their strategic goals! Too much of selling focuses on the hero's journey of bringing in new logos and undervalues the shorter-cycle, lower-cost, higher-win-rate sale to existing customers. Jackie, with her experience in carrying a bag, consulting with multiple companies and then running Sales Enablement, Operation...
Sep 05, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Special guest Christine McKay and I discuss how to get the most from a sales engagement, starting with a value selling mindset — understanding requirements, aligning with the customer’s business goals and demonstrating value. Christine, as an experienced sales negotiator, outlines how most organizations leave value on the table and assume additional costs in virtually every deal. While sales people tend to focus on price as a primary contract term, most customers care more about implementation ...
Aug 29, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Special guest Kevin Dixon and I discuss a key factor in value selling — understanding the participants on the buying team, mapping the relationships and dynamics and coming up with a plan to address their individual and group care-abouts. Kevin is a long term sales exec turned company founder, who has brought a powerful tool to the market. Boxxstep provides the capability to map relationships, share that information cross the sales team and to poll individual buyers post engagement to determ...
Aug 22, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Special guest Meagan Davis and I discuss the essence of sales enablement and how it’s similar to long distance running — you have to prepare, set a project plan, to train, be ready for speed bumps, broken shoe laces, SMEs that don’t show up or other anticipated/surprising events that may impede your ability to succeed. Meagan recently published How to Start a Sales Enablement Program , available on Amazon . Her goal in writing the book was to capture and share her own learnings in launching a ...
Aug 15, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Special guest Tammi Warfield and I discuss the full customer buying relationship versus the much more limited traditional selling approach. Tammi has held senior leadership roles at Microsoft, BMC, Delphix and more, where she owned the customer relationship process and business practices across the entire lifecycle. She's carried a bag and, generously, she has many lessons to share. She also happens to be a long time friend and former coworker. We explore Tammi's Value Realization model of Engag...
Aug 08, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Stefanie Boyer, Ph.D is an author, TEDx and keynote speaker, sales trainer and named Forbes Next 1,000. Stefanie speaks and writes about how businesses can create growth while keeping their teams happy and loyal. Cited by AMA as the Sales Professor of the Year and recognized as a sales innovation expert, Dr. Boyer runs the sales program at Bryant University and is co-founder of RNMKRS, a technology company using AI to bring unbiased sales training to students around the world. Stefanie has carri...
Aug 01, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Lisa Skillern brings a special blend of process expertise in sales enablement and domain expertise in security. Her stakeholders love her; her sales teams count on her. She has carried a bag and run marketing. She has driven revenue and sales productivity in both large and small organizations. When we needed an enablement pro to drive global sales enablement for the security portfolio at Google, she was the obvious choice and we worked together to design and deliver enablement for our related po...
Jul 25, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Liz Pulice brings a special blend of hands-on experience and executive leadership skills. She has many years of go-to-market strategy, operations and revenue and sales enablement activities. She's carried a bag and run operations. She is a fellow founding member of the Sales Enablement Society , and a sought after industry speaker Liz focuses on operational excellence, aligning with strategy and managing stakeholders. At the same time, her background in psychology and the sciences gives her...
Jul 18, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Roderick Jefferson brings a special blend of hands-on experience, including carrying a bag early in his career, and managing training, sales productivity and global sales enablement over the past 20+ years. He is a fellow founding member of the Sales Enablement Society . He is a frequent keynote speaker and published author . Join our conversation on sales enablement -- how we define it, how the focus has gone from the "right content at the right time at the right place..." to changing seller ...
Jul 11, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Heather Margolis brings a special, deep knowledge of channel marketing, channel management and channel enablement. We first met more than fifteen years ago to discuss the sales enablement market and emerging technology vendors. Along with indirect sales channels, we share a love of cars, the outdoors, and New England. In this episode Heather and I share a small slice of our ongoing conversation about sales and channel enablement best practices and lessons learned. Join our conversation on channe...
Jul 05, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Marina Devalia, founder of Playbook Lab , has a passion for marketing...and not just marketing, but the key issue of marketing and sales alignment. She is a member of the Sales Enablement Society and has spent many years in senior marketing management roles. Check her LinkedIn profile for all the highlights and details! In this episode Marina and I dive into the issue of marketing and sales alignment -- why marketing and sales don't always work towards a common goal, how to create useful...
Jun 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Matt Cohen is one of those special people who have a strategic perspective, strong implementation experience and an ability to get things done. He recently joined Dotmatics to build out the sales enablement function. He is a current board member of the Boston Chapter of the Sales Enablement Society and spent three years at Seismic in enablement (isn't that redundant? ). Check his LinkedIn profile for his StrengthsFinder results (quite accurate, I'd say!) In this episode Matt and I share a small ...
Jun 20, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Kevin Onarecker has been in sales and sales management for the past thirty years and brings many lessons learned to the conversation. In this episode Kevin and I talk about the most important attributes for a sales person and how to instill and develop those attributes. Curious about the attributes? Okay...curiosity is the first. Business acumen is the second. Can these be learned? Sure! Do they need to be practiced? Absolutely! ...and they need to be coached. The single most important activity ...
Jun 13, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 1
