Sales Pipeline Radio

Join host, Matt Heinz and his guest, Anthony Iannarino as they review Anthony's book, The Lost Art of Closing. 

Amazon reviews show 4.9 out of 5 from 96 reveiws.  

Kindle  $13.99, Hardcover $16.40 , Audio CD $27.00 

Talking Points: 

• Why clsoing isn't the most difficult part of a sale.
• The key is to lead customers through a series of necessary steps designed to prevent a purchase stall.
• The Lost Art of Closing will help you win customer commitment at ten essential points along the purchase journey.
• You’ll discover how to compete on value, not price, by securing a Commitment to Invest early in the process.
• What’s changed about closing?
• How to ask for a Commitment to Build Consensus within the client’s organization, ensuring that your solution has early buy-in from all stakeholders.
• Why so much emphasis on change?
• How to prevent the possibility of the sale falling through at the last minute by proactively securing a Commitment to Resolve Concerns.

They will also talk about CEB, changes in sales, and how sales now requires better marketing. 

About Anthony Iannarino

ANTHONY IANNARINO is a highly respected international speaker, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and sales leader specializing in the complex business-to-business (B2B) sale. He is also a founder and managing partner of two closely-held, family-owned businesses in the staffing industry, leading both entities in strategic planning while growing sales. Anthony is best known for his work at The Sales Blog, which has helped him gain recognition as a top thought leader in sales strategy. He is also the designer of Level 4 Value Creation™ and Building Consensus, methodologies that help sales organizations achieve transformational, breakthrough results.

Another not-to-miss episode with guest Guy Weismantel, CMO at Pushpay.  Read the full transcript on our blog starting Mon. 8/20 at 6am PST.  

We talk a little bit about different go-to-market approaches when you get outside of the eco-chamber that many of us work within in SaaS companies and technology companies and selling to different markets.  He shares insights applicable in any industry and also touches on building culture within marketing.

A couple of questions Guy answers are:

• Is there a difference with an audience that maybe doesn't have as much experience buying?
• What were some of your priorities and strategies coming in?
• What have you prioritized putting in place in the first half of the year?

"Sometimes it's not the most obvious thing, in terms of the bright shiny number. It might be something kind of under the radar a little bit that actually is more qualitative and it goes to how they can be better at their job, or get recognition or accolades, or save some time. Those kind of fluffy, less quantitative things sometimes are what gets us through."

• What are some of the things that you think are going to continue to be challenging or a challenge that emerges that you're thinking about in advance and trying to address (Specifically around your go-to-market strategy)?

This and a lot more! 

Click and Listen to Joe 

Our guest is Joe Chernov. He's the Chief Marketing Officer at @InsightSquared. He also lends a hand to startups and wildlife causes when he can. Diving right in, he says, "It's unbelievable what you can get done if you don't care if you get fired!" Talking about his experience at Eloqua, "If we were to publish something that is valuable, we could edge our way into deeper coverage by the media." 

We pack a lot into this episode as I talk to Nick Jordan, CMO at Logic Inbound.   

Among other things, I ask him what are some of the challenges you've found in trying to build a marketing community? Sometimes we try to produce marketing events, and well-meaning people don't always come out in the way that some other groups, like IT and others, might do. So why do you think that is, and what are some keys to actions when trying to build that active marketing community?

What are some of the ways you, or some of the formats of community you find the most successful? Is it lunch and learns, is it networking happy hours? Are there certain topics and formats that tend to work better in terms of getting marketers together?

Nick is all about building community amongst marketers.  Check out his answers as well as his number one growth hack for growing communities-- it's something everybody can go ahead and start implementing, as soon as they're done listening to this podcast!

More from Nick:  "I'm passionate about developing and growing businesses. A million side projects, a few startups, and one ride on a rocket ship as an early employee at BitTitan. Today I leverage my experience building businesses to help companies identify and execute on growth opportunities @ Logic Inbound."

Check out the full transcript on the Heinz Marketing Blog starting Mon. 8/13/18 6am PST.

Give a sales person a PowerPooint to help them sell and they'll screw it up everytime.  They spend hours adding to the deck's slides in increasingly small type.  They key is to give them something useful to begin with and make it easier to customize without putting the viewer to sleep. 

Listen to the expert Alli McKee walk you through steps to create a winning support system for your salespeople.

Alli McKee, Founder and CEO at Stick has a Bachelors from the University of Virginia in studio art. She has an MBA from Stanford. Her original oil paintings have been featured in a variety of publications and exhibits. She's spent almost two years in Africa creating new design thinking curriculum, and then a couple years ago she decided, "Well, what the hell, I'll just go back to the valley and I'll create a start up." 

It seems like we're focused sometimes more on the math [in marketing] or more on the quantitative and not enough on the design. Alli talks to us about the impact and importance just generally of good design in driving businesses today.

Along the way, if you don't already know, find out what a "word wall" is.

You'll also hear Alli's view on creativity:  

I think about creativity is that it's really just collecting things, collecting information, and putting it together in interesting ways. It's really not about having this creative talent, it's more having access to that inventory from which you can invent. So the way that Stick works is we're trying to give you a jumpstart on that creative process. It's built around this behavior that I've seen in real life as a designer working with business people, a lot of people, just like yourself, saying, "I'm not creative. I need help with this." But the second you give them a first draft, they always have feedback. Always. Right? So what we've tried to do is build that first draft into a tool. So you can put in your content, Stick automatically generates that first draft for you, and then enables you to act on that feedback in a few clicks in seconds rather than a two day email exchange.

Listen in to see what doing improv has to do with sales and marketing... and a lot more!

You can find the transcript and recording of this episode on the Heinz Marketing blog on Monday, 4/2/18.

On this episode Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO at Coupa Software joins us as we talk about bringing start-up agility to enterprise marketing.

But first, we talk about what Led Zeppelin has taught him about marketing!  So good.  

We also talk about customer lifetime value and a holistic way of thinking about the customer. Listen in to hear his thoughts about the increasing focus in marketing on science and the increased focus on metrics and things you can measure.  We dive into the science of storytelling and MORE!  

Check out the full transcript on our blog starting Monday, 7/30/18.  

Read the full transcription of this episode on the Heinz Marketing blog 

Highlights:

• We discuss how the buying experience is broken and why the only way to fix it is to enable more conversations
• Here's an example of how this plays out:
  • It's important to make it easy for your customers to buy
  • B2B businesses have not adapted yet.
  • Customers are still often required through a labyrinth of funnels and forms so they can talk to a sales rep
  • What can B2B do about this?
  • A sale doesn't happen without a conversation
  • Is this because of "the Amazon effect" - customers are used to getting what they want on demand, with one click. Whether it's a taxi, a meal, a piece of furniture, etc.
  • These buying expectations are carrying over to B2B purchases as well
  • You need to make it easier for your prospects to have a conversation with you - whether that's through chat or on the phone
  • And whoever gets closest to the customer wins (Netflix vs Blockbuster)
  • Reps need to get closer to prospects, faster - and organizations need tools in place to enable that, while avoiding the clatter of non-sales related conversations

Related

• Hyper Growth Marketing Sales Conferences
• com
• https://www.getmyresponsetime.com/
• https://www.reallygoodchatbots.com/

More from our guest:

Hey, I'm Dave Gerhardt. 

I'm VP of Marketing at Drift and I've spent the last 7 years learning at SaaS marketing companies in Boston, including HubSpot and Constant Contact.

During that time, I've launched products that have made it to the top of Product Hunt, created a top five business podcast on Apple Podcasts, landed multiple features in the New York Times, created a deck that Andy Raskin called "The Greatest Sales Pitch I've Seen All Year," and helped create the category of Conversational Marketing.

I love building an audience and getting the right people to pay attention.

I was thrilled on this episode, "GDPR WTF And What Now?" to talk to Amy Holtzman, VP, Marketing at Splash.

In recent months we worked with Splash on a webinar and a great guide on GDPR. There's a lot to know so we're continuing the conversation.  Before getting into GDPR, we talk a bit about company culture and building a marketing team from scratch.  Really good insights! 

Check out "The Uncomplicated Guide to GDPR".

One of the things that was kind of fun about working with Splash on this is it that they definitely take a more casual approach. I think GDPR guides sometimes can be a little intimidating and can be very legalese.  This one is different.  

Listen in to this episode to hear the latest and what to do next.  You can read a full transcription of this episode on our blog starting Monday, 7/23/18.  

This episode entitled,  "How to Manage Remotely - Best Practices for Leading Remotely" is inspired by the book The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership co-authored by Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer, The Kevin Eikenberry Group

With more and more companies going remote, they're forsaking having everybody in the office five days a week. They're letting people work remotely, and I think as an individual contributor that can be fantastic. As a manager, that can be particularly challenging.  I asked Kevin, how this topic come about and how to manage remotely and do it well.  Listen in to our great conversation below or read the transcript on the Heinz Marketing blog starting Mon. 7/9/18.

Read the full transcription of this episode on the Heinz Marketing blog starting Monday, 7/16/18.  

Highlights:

• We discuss how the buying experience is broken and why the only way to fix it is to enable more conversations
• Here's an example of how this plays out:
  • It's never been more important to make it easier for your customers to buy
  • This is because of "the Amazon effect" - customers are used to getting what they want on demand, with one click. Whether it's a taxi, a meal, a piece of furniture, etc.
  • These buying expectations are carrying over to B2B purchases as well
  • But businesses have not adapted yet. Customers are still often forced through a maze of funnels and forms before they can talk to a sales rep
  • So what can YOU do about this?
  • You need to make it easier for your prospects to have a conversation with you - whether that's through chat or on the phone
  • Because a sale doesn't happen without a conversation
  • And whoever gets closest to the customer wins (Netflix vs Blockbuster)
  • Reps need to get closer to prospects, and do that quicker - and organizations need to have the right tools in place to enable that, while avoiding the noise of non-sales related conversations

Definitely check out: 

• Hyper Growth Marketing Sales Conferences
• Drift.com
• https://www.getmyresponsetime.com/
• https://www.reallygoodchatbots.com/

More from our guest:

Hey, I'm Dave Gerhardt. 

I'm VP of Marketing at Drift and I've spent the last 7 years learning at SaaS marketing companies in Boston, including HubSpot and Constant Contact.

During that time, I've launched products that have made it to the top of Product Hunt, created a top five business podcast on Apple Podcasts, landed multiple features in the New York Times, created a deck that Andy Raskin called "The Greatest Sales Pitch I've Seen All Year," and helped create the category of Conversational Marketing.

I love building an audience and getting the right people to pay attention.