Guy Kawasaki + PersonaGPTs + How I Prospect

Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday. 

Soo I need to start with a BIG learning from last week’s “launch”…

Did you get my first newsletter last week that I was super excited to launch? Probably not. The reason? We missed a setting on the newsletter platform (Beehiiv) we’re using so it only went out to a small group. Doh!  

That’s ok because if you’ve followed me over the years you know I share way more of my “failures” than I do my successes because you tend to learn a lot more that way.   

Also, failing isn’t failing unless you don’t learn from it.  So here we are, learning together. That’s what the Learning Lab is all about 🙂.

Anyway, if you want to see the newsletter from last week you can check out the online version of it here.

Here’s what’s in store this week: 

SALES FROM THE STREETS: Taking Your Shot 

TACTICAL TIPS: How I Prospect Into My Tier 1 Accounts

SALES TECH & TOOLS: ChatGPT & Learning Your Buyer Persona

If there is anything specific you want me to include in this newsletter moving forward or there’s something I can help you with feel free to email me directly by replying to this email.

Let’s Make it Happen! 

SALES FROM THE STREETS 

Taking Your Shot 

Have you ever been in a situation where you had the chance to go for something big but you didn’t?

Like the time I went to the Celtics game a few months ago and saw Ice Cube (one of my childhood idols and my favorite lyricist of all time) sitting a few rows over. 

I didn’t want to fanboy him so I sat there and debated about even asking for a picture even though it would be my dream to hang out with him. 

I chickened out asking where they were going after the game so all I got was this picture of me with a dumb ass look on my face to remember how I didn’t take the chance when I had it.   

That wasn’t going to happen when I saw the chance to get Guy Kawasaki on my podcast last week.  For those of you who don’t know him, look him up, 

He’s kind of a big deal.

My friend Scott McGregor runs the Outlier Group that I’m a member of.  Each week he gets someone to speak to the group and last week he had Guy Kawasaki which was incredible.  Check out my post about it here. 

Guy is launching his new book Think Remarkable and told us that if we pre-ordered it and sent him a screenshot he would send us a copy of another one of his books so I did exactly that.

I sent him an email with the screenshot of the book and took my shot. I asked him if he would be open to coming on my podcast. 

He responded later in the day with “Thanks, I’ll send out a copy of the book this week” with no mention of the podcast.

I figured, that’s what to expect and I should leave it alone…. but then I thought of the dumb ass look on my face with Ice Cube and decided to take another shot and responded with: 

“So, is that a no on the podcast? 😊. No worries. I know it’s a big ask. Thanks again for everything you do. Keep spreading the positivity!” 

I didn't expect a response but it came almost immediately: “I didn’t see that! Sure, let’s do the podcast. Madisun will schedule. - Guy”

What?!?!?  I’m going to get a chance to interview Guy f-ing Kawasaki on my podcast?   Are you kidding me?

Life’s too short.  If you have a shot, take it.  What’s the worst that could happen? 

TACTICAL TIPS  

How I prospect into my Tier 1 accounts 

I fundamentally don’t understand anyone in Sales (or in general) who relies on someone else for their own success.  

For instance, AEs who don’t do their own prospecting and rely on SDRs or Marketing to get them appointments.

Why would you put your success in someone else’s hands when you could take control of it yourself?

Also, prospecting is a skill that if you master, you’ll never go hungry.

That’s why I still prospect every single day for 30 minutes.

Here’s how I do it:

1. Set a recurring meeting on my calendar for 30 minutes every day from 6:30-7:00am for “Tier1 Prospecting”

2. Each day, select one account and an executive in that account to do a deep dive on

3. Set a timer to research and find as many “triggers” (i.e. personalized reasons to reach out to them) as I can in 10 minutes 

4. Use those triggers and other messaging to map out a 7-10 touch personalized cadence and then start executing that cadence by sending my first email

You can watch how I do it here.

If you want to learn the details feel free to check out my membership where I train reps how to do this as efficiently as possible and how I’m using AI tools now to help automate. 

SALES TECH/TOOLS

ChatGPT Buyer Persona 

Business acumen is sorely lacking for today’s sales rep.  

We still say dumb/lazy stuff like “tell me about your priorities” or “what keeps you up at night?”  

We should at least have an idea of what some of their priorities are or what keeps them up at night before we even go into the meeting.  

For the personas you focus on, it used to be as easy as googling “CFO, Financial Services, Priorities and Challenges 2024” and reading a few articles about what they deal with in today's economic environment.

Today it’s even easier!  Check out this ChatGPT Buyer Persona app I came across that will give you the details of any persona including daily activities, potential challenges, how they impact revenue, key metrics and much more.  

You will need the paid version of ChatGPT for this but you can get some of the same information in my favorite AI tool Perplexity by asking it to give you the main priorities and challenges of a specific role in a specific industry.

Start using tools like this to improve your business acumen so instead of saying “tell me about your priorities” you can say something like “we’re working with other customers in your industry and they are telling us that their main priorities (or challenges) going into 2024 are X, Y Z.  How do these compare to your priorities or challenges?”

That’s going to get you a lot more credibility and further in the conversation than “what keeps you up at night”

ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME 

• The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day!  

• The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business.

• The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently. 

That does it for this weekend. If you liked the content - hit ‘reply’ and tell him if you want more of this or if there are other topics you want me to focus on next week.

Until then… Make it Happen!

JB

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