Accelerate! With Andy Paul

Etai Beck is CEO and Co-Founder of Folloze. In this episode, Etai discusses how you can deliver value to your prospects by responsively providing the right content at the right moment at each stage in their buyer's journey. He talks about tools you can use to create compelling narratives for your prospects that helps them understand in greater depth exactly what value the solution that you're selling is going to provide. Etai also shows why it’s essential for you to understand how buyers engage with your content and to mine insights that enable you to quickly and effectively respond to the help the customer move closer to making their choice. If you’re a sales leader, or have responsibility for sale enablement, you’ll want to download and listen to this episode.

In this episode, Tibor Shanto, principle of Renbor Sales Solutions, pokes holes in the outdated sales notion that buyers are trying to fix “pain points.” He discusses why 75% of buyers that switch vendors are satisfied at the time they switched, and, the dramatic implications that this has for how you need to sell to your prospects. How many times have you heard the “we already have a solution” objection? Then, absolutely, you’ll want to listen as Tibor reveals his GAP methodology for discovery and questioning that inspire and motivate buyers to break from the “status quo.” This is essential listening for every sales rep and sales leader! Download and listen to this episode. And, play it in your next sales meeting!

My regular guest on Front Line Friday is Bridget Gleason. Bridget is VP of Corporate Sales at SumoLogic. In this episode, we use an article titled The Death of the Salesperson as the jumping off point for our discussion about the future of sales and the changing role of the sales person. Will there still be salespeople in 10 years? With today’s prospects becoming ever less reliant on the salesperson, Bridget and I identify the challenges that all sales reps face in the battle to remain relevant to their customers and what that means in terms of the responsibilities that sellers must assume for their own professional and personal develop. You’ll want to listen as we delve the concept of value co-creation and what that means in terms of how sellers must collaborate with their prospects during their buying process. And, learn how this trend specifically will impact the next generation of sales people: Millennials. Make sure you join us for this episode!

Elinor Stutz, is the bestselling author of two books, including, Nice Girls Do Get the Sale – Relationship Building that Gets Results. In this episode, Elinor discusses why sales techniques are not a substitute for understanding why you've been invited in for a conversation with a potential customer in the first place. Elinor lays out why selling with integrity, consciously putting the prospects’ goals and needs first, and leading with questions that demonstrate an understanding of their situation are the best ways to collaborate with them on their buyer’s journey. You’ll definitely want to listen in as Elinor shares her story of how her most effective discovery question has helped her become a top sales producer (but not before it got her into trouble first!).

My regular guest on Front Line Friday is Bridget Gleason. Bridget is VP of Corporate Sales at SumoLogic. On this episode, Bridget and I focus on the process of hiring quality sales reps for high velocity sales teams. We discuss the specific challenges managers face in quickly scaling sales teams. We provide advice about how to accurately define positions and work roles to attract the right candidates. And, we discuss how to develop an effective process for interviewing and verifying the qualifications of the potential candidates. If you’re hiring sales reps, or you’re a sales rep looking to be hired, this is an important episode to listen to.

Matt Hill, founder and CEO of The Hill Group, is a leader in training companies how to sell at trade shows and conferences. He’s worked with some of the biggest names in tech to help them turn trade shows into productive sales events. In this episode, Matt describes the steps companies should take to develop a sales plan for a trade show. And, he provides valuable strategies and techniques that every company can use to provide a better customer experience for booth visitors, develop and qualify more leads on the show floor and implement an effective process for following-up leads (both during and after the show). This episode is a must listen for sales or marketing leader who wants to earn a better ROI on trade shows.

Jim Eberlin, is a successful serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of TopOPPS. He understands the challenges involved in building high velocity sales teams. In this episode, Jim discusses why it’s vital for CEOs in start-ups and SMBs to stay close to the sales process. He also shares practical tips about how to overcome the biggest challenge that sales reps face everyday: maximizing the value of their discovery calls with prospects. The episode is also packed with tips about tools that help prioritize which prospects to work and that optimize the accuracy of your forecasting. Make sure you listen to this episode today.

Jeff Shore is the author of the best-selling book, Be Bold and Win The Sale, a speaker and nationally recognized sales trainer. With 30 years of experience, he’s a self-described “sales wonk” who loves picking up a sale and dissecting it. In this episode, Jeff unveils the concept of “comfort addictions” and describes how a sales rep’s ability to recognize and embrace “discomfort” can be the trigger to achieving sales success. Selling is a process that is inherently full of discomfort. And Jeff shows how sales reps can turn that to their advantage to win more deals. CEOs, sales leaders and sales reps need to listen to this episode.

My regular guest on Front Line Friday is Bridget Gleason. Bridget is VP of Corporate Sales at SumoLogic. With more than twenty years of sales and sales management experience in the technology sector, Bridget joined SumoLogic’s executive team to lead and grow their inside sales organization. Her recent experience includes being VP of Sales for Yesware and SVP of Worldwide Sales for Engine Yard. In this episode, Bridget and I share strategies that sales leaders should use when they assume responsibility for a new sales team. As an outsider, what are the steps you need to take to make an immediate impact? We talk about how to assess the capabilities of your new team, streamline sales processes, establish the right metrics and inspire and motivate sales reps to perform up to their potential. If you’re in charge of a sales team, be sure to join us for Front Line Friday!  

In this episode Mike O’Neil, author of Rock the World with LinkedIn, provides insight into how to kick-start your social selling efforts. Learn how to quickly assess the effectiveness of your social presence as a company and how to efficiently train your sales team to become LinkedIn rock stars themselves. Finally, Mike provides detailed guidelines for developing and implementing a social media policy that can help protect company assets, such as customer and prospect information. If you’re involved in social selling be sure to download and listen to this episode.

Howard Brown, founder and CEO of RingDNA, joins me to talk about sales enablement. In this episode, Howard describes how sales organizations can use sales enablement tools to compress buying cycles and create more successful sales reps. Learn how next generation sales enablement tools can transform sales productivity through the ability to test and measure the effectiveness of sales messaging, voicemails, value propositions. And, how they give your sales leaders the ability to coach and provide real-time feedback to their sales reps to accelerate productivity. This is a don’t miss episode for sales leaders and decision makers.

In this episode, Alice Heiman, Founder of Alice Heiman, LLC, and an expert at helping companies increase their sales, lays out a step by step plan any SMB can use to develop more prospects. Alice provides effective strategies for mining more business from existing customers, developing a consistent flow of referrals and creating a sustainable mix of inbound leads and proactive outbound prospecting. If you’re a CEO, VP of Sales or Sales Ops, or a sales leader, you do not want to not miss this episode with Alice Heiman.

My regular guest on Front Line Friday is Bridget Gleason. Bridget is VP of Corporate Sales at SumoLogic. With more than twenty years of sales and sales management experience in the technology sector, Bridget joined SumoLogic’s executive team to lead and grow their inside sales organization. Her recent experience includes being VP of Sales for Yesware and SVP of Worldwide Sales for Engine Yard. Bridget and I focus on two sales topics in this episode that you won’t want to miss. First, what is the role of luck in sales? Is it really true in sales that the harder you work, the luckier you get? And, why do sales leaders often overlook the hard work that goes into making a deal look easy? Second, we talk about why sales leads aren’t consistently followed up. The problem starts with the lack of a defined process for managing leads and we’ll tell you what you can do to fix that problem. If you’re in charge of a sales team, be sure to join us for Front Line Friday!

Barb Giamanco, President of Social Centered Selling, is one of the leading industry experts on social selling. A pioneer in integrating social media into selling, Barb kicks off this information-packed episode by clearly spelling out for you both the value, and the limitations, of social selling. She describes the power of social selling and how you should use it to make connections, develop relationships and open the door to having substantive sales conversations with your prospects. Listen as Barb tells you how to make social a part of your overall sales plan and integrate it into an effective sales process. Social is a powerful tool. But as you’ll learn from Barb in this episode, it’s just one of the sales tools you need to succeed in today’s sales environment. If you want to learn how to most effectively use social selling in your sales efforts, don’t miss this!

In this episode, Joe Gustafson, Founder and CEO of Brainshark, describes the four crucial factors contributing to poor sales conversations.

Mark Hunter is The Sales Hunter, and a master of selling high value at full price. He’s the author of the book, High-Profit Selling. In this episode, Mark describes the steps you need to take to develop the competence, confidence and credibility that enable you to sell at full price. Mark also shows how discounting changes the very nature of your relationship with your customers. (And not in a good way). He also addresses the critical importance of sales reps making a personal commitment to continuous learning and demonstrates how this directly ties to your ability to sell value at full-price and maintain relevance to your buyers. If you’re a CEO, VP of Sales or Sales Ops, or a sales leader you do not want to not miss this episode with The Sales Hunter.

My regular guest on Frontline Friday is Bridget Gleason. In this episode we discuss the overuse and misuse of the term “sales productivity” by sales managers and provide guidance on how it should be defined and measured.

In this episode, Deb Calvert (President of People First Productivity Solutions) describes the powerful research findings about the leadership mindset that all sellers should adopt to inspire and lead their prospects to making favorable decisions.

In our conversation, Matt Heinz, CEO of Heinz Marketing and a sales enablement expert, takes the mystery out of sales enablement. He places it in the right context within a sales organization and shows how companies of all sizes can use strategic sales enablement thinking, tactical sales processes and new apps and web tools to transform their sales results. The key is to just get started and Matt tells you how to take that important first step. This episode is packed with the great information that Matt provides. If you’re a CEO, VP of Sales or Sales Ops, or a sales leader you do not want to not miss this.

In this episode, Mike Weinberg (author of "Sales Management. Simplified " and "New Sales. Simplified") with his trademark bluntness, provides the diagnosis and the cure for common sales management challenges.