Sales Pipeline Radio

We were happy this last time to have Chris Finneral,CEO & Co-Founder at SketchDeck on in an episode called, Where Design and Software Meet: Rethinking B2B Creative, Process and a Lot More. 

We talk about (among other things) this idea that the sales pipeline just appears over the horizon. I ask Chris, in his experience as a serial entrepreneur, is sales pipeline development that easy?

He says...

"It's prospecting, generating leads is always something which requires work. Even if you have something that's awesome that everyone wants, you need to really educate your market, educate the leads, and put a lot of work into that. I actually was reading a quote recently that was saying especially for startups, people always overestimate how hard it is to build the product and underestimate actually how much effort it is to acquire customers. I think that's very true. It takes a lot of work to get your pipeline and get lots of customers for your product."

Listen in below and/or read the full transcript on the Heinz Marketing blog starting Mon. 4/15 at 6am PDT. 

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: [email protected].

Host Matt Heinz discusses with Norman Behar, among other things, how to get a new sales manager up and running in 90 days or less.  Norman Behar is CEO & Managing Director at the Sales Readiness Group and co-author of:  The-High Impact Sales Manager.  

Brand-new sales managers are out to prove themselves, but few have the basic sales management skills.  Maybe, eventually, they will read enough books or stumble on some of the right questions to ask, but in the episode, Norman Behar.

This book draws on over 30 years of personal experience and our proven sales management training methodology.

What makes this book unique is that it is highly practical and provides sales managers with the systems, processes, skills, and techniques to:

• Hire the best people and hold them accountable.
• Manage sales performance by focusing on the underlying behaviors that drive results.
• Manage the sales pipeline and produce accurate sales forecasts. 
• Provide personalized sales coaching that results in better skills and hire win rates.
• Lead, motivate, and inspire their sales team.

Drive Better Performance from Your Sales Team: Sales Readiness Group

Your sales team needs training that sticks. We've designed our training to create sustainable change in sales behaviors and improve results.  Training programs are not single events, but part of an overall sales training system that will help your team produce better performance.

My guest this time is Liz Michaud, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Sales at Microsoft Dynamics 365. She shared her insights into the current trends, good and bad that they are noticing. Role specialization in particular seems to be causing an over-emphasis on teams to take on the productivity piece. This causes a loss in that personal touch and building strong relationships. We are still people buying from people. 

"Over 80% of our respondents in the study who said that they were effective at building relationships across the buying committee with multiple people, they were the ones who also said that they were effective at achieving their desired sales goals."

Naturally integrating Microsoft's CRM and LinkedIn it creates efficiency for the sales rep to get back out of the tool and get back to actively selling.Having a full picture of the buyer and their timing to be able to synchronize all the data. This looks different in each organization, depending on the tools, but it is critical in every setting.

"It is so important that a marketer knows the tactics and strategies that they're using are actually working. And you can bring in all the leads in the world, but if they're not quality, then your sales team, is going to be pretty unhappy."

Listen to the full episode.

Mark Magnacca discusses one thing that can dramatically increase a salesperson's success while in-front of a prospect. 

This five minute learning session is from the full show which can be found here:

Are you good enough? Mastering your purpose & value with Mark Magnacca

Mark is the author of "So What?" and President and Founder of Allego, Inc. 

Listen in to see why practice for sales professionals is so important and as Matt and Mark ask the question-- "Are you good enough?".

“Allego provides an intuitive just-in-time sales learning platform that boosts sales performance by harnessing the power of mobile devices to transform enablement and training through video content sharing.”

Mark Magnacca, President of Insight Development Group, Inc. and markmagnacca.com, is a recognized business building coach, keynote speaker and author of "So What? How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience" and "The Product is You." Mark's mission is to help sales professionals get greater results in less time by teaching his clients to put all of their communications, verbal and written, to the So What Test. By adopting a So What Mindset, clients learn to communicate and structure every message according the needs of the listener.

Insight Development Group specializes in training clients to create crisp, concise and compelling reasons to set themselves apart from their competitors. By creating a personal brand and effectively articulating their value proposition, clients of Insight Development Group gain a huge competitive advantage and accelerate the sales process.

So What? How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience

This concise book will help dramatically increase your effectiveness in any sales situation. Learn ten ways to apply the powerful So What Mindset in two hours or less. So What? is a seductively simple, straightforward idea that will radically change the way you communicate. Learn the skills that George Lucas, Lee Trevino and Walt Disney used to become successful. Read So What? How To Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience.  

Keenan has over 15 years of experience in sales leadership and leading sales team. But that doesn’t get him too excited. He’ll tell you it isn’t much of an accomplishment. Keenan says, “Staying above ground and not doing anything stupid enough that would prevent a company from wanting you to run their sales organization isn’t much to brag about. Staying power isn’t impressive. What is impressive is what one absorbs from their years of experience.” 

Listen in for some quick hitting tips to get you started TODAY!

I talk this week with one of the masters of B2B sales, digital selling, a good friend, Jamie Shanks (CEO at Sales for Life) in an episode I call Selling with Spears: Account-Based Sales Development Best Practices with Jamie Shanks

This week, Frances Traisman, Senior VP of Sales for the Seattle Mariners joins me as we uncover some great B2B lessons from baseball that apply to all businesses. 

Listen in now and/or you can also read the full transcript on the Heinz Marketing Blog starting Mon. 3/18 at 6am PST.  

Here's just a taste of Frances' insights:

So as far as a strategy when it comes to sales, first and foremost if we're talking from a B2B standpoint we're listening to them about what's important to them. So for instance, if employees are important and they want employee engagement, we have opportunities for them to come and create a fun experience out at the ballpark that they couldn't necessarily get at a park... when else can you sit with your prospective client or even your best client and have an opportunity at a leisurely pace while being entertained, to talk business. So we really do have opportunities for anyone that we're talking with. That can be a blessing and a curse. So trying to stay focused on what our overall goals are can be challenging. It's a little overwhelming actually how many options we have to offer and so that's where we come in as leaders on the sales team to really help our sales team focus on where we need to have those opportunities go.

Learn more about The Seattle Mariners

Follow Frances on Twitter @FrancesTraisman

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Sales Pipeline Radio is sponsored and produced by Heinz Marketing on the Funnel Radio Channel.  Each week at 11:30 am Pacific time (plus 8 hours UTC Time) Matt Heinz interviews 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: [email protected].

The future of marketing’s leadership role is the central topic between Derek Slayton, CMO of Terminius, the ABM Platform company, and the host Matt Heinz. As they discuss the future of account-based marketing, they side-track into the important area of marketing’s revenue responsibility.  Derek contends that B2B marketing is no longer a red balloon versus a blue balloon’s discussion just about lead generation; today it’s about the partnerships between sales, marketing and the CFO with the focus on revenue.  

Derek says Marketing has to be forward leaning into the revenue discussion and held accountable for holding up their part of the revenue bargain.  “We get lost in our to-do list,” and the most notable CMO’s balance the use of tools and leadership to advance the strategic goals of the company.  This is a program every marketing leader should listen to more than once.

Sales Pipeline Radio is sponsored and produced by Heinz Marketing on the Funnel Radio Channel.  Each week at 11:30 am Pacific time (plus 8 hours UTC Time) Matt Heinz interviews 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: [email protected]

Our guest this time is Shawn Herring, VP of Marketing at PandaDoc in an episode called, The Hidden Inefficiencies that are Killing Your Sales Workflow and Conversion Rates