NYC Recap & Why Sales is In Trouble

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Last week was an incredible week. I was in NYC for two days at two different events. 

The first was the AMP event that my former colleague Morgan Ingram hosted at Linkedin’s office in the Empire State Building. I presented on the topic of how to drive urgency which I'll talk more about later in the newsletter.

The other presenter at the event was Alex Lieberman who is the founder of Morning Brew, a newsletter he started and eventually sold for $75M.  

I’ve been studying a lot about how he built his newsletter and am going to have him on the podcast coming up soon to talk about how he built his company and what he’s working on with his new company StoryArb.  

The second event was called Golden Hour hosted by AudiencePlus.  It was focused on Marketing which is extremely important for us in Sales to pay attention to more now than ever.  

I’ll touch on this later in the newsletter but I think Sales is in some trouble based on what Marketing is doing right now and where it’s going.

Speaking of which, here’s what’s included in this week’s newsletter:

SALES FROM THE STREETS:  Would you have paid for that?

TACTICAL TIPS: “Creating” Urgency (with a link to an insanely valuable resource) 

SALES TECH AND TOOLS: Cold call role play 

Let’s Make it Happen! 

SALES FROM THE STREETS 

Would you have paid for that?

That’s what someone told me earlier in my career is the question they wanted to ask after every conversation they had with a prospect and a “yes” as the answer.

They didn’t actually ask the question or expect anyone to pay. It was more about adding value to every conversation.

That mentality stuck with me throughout my career and the other day it came to light.

I was working on a prospect in a competitive deal and had a follow-up conversation with my main point of contact.  At the end of the meeting, he gave me the verbal which was great even though my tagline for verbals is “they’re barely worth the paper they are written on.”  If you’ve been burned by verbals before, you know why I say that. 

Anyway, one of the main reasons he wanted to work with me was because he said he learned something new every time we talked and it didn’t feel like I was ever “selling” him. He felt like I was genuinely trying to help them solve their problem.  

I even recommended a few of my competitors for them to check out throughout the process.

I still don’t have the signed contract but I’m feeling pretty good about this one. 

In your emails, calls and meetings, try to think about it from the client’s perspective and ask yourself - “what’s in it for them?”   How can I add value to every interaction?

This is why we need to level up our business acumen and stop trying to “qualify” so much or give the perfect demo/presentation.  

Find tools, resources, articles, trends, etc that are relevant to your ICP and personas and aren’t necessarily associated with your company or solution.  

People hate to be sold but they love to buy.  These days we need to bring more to the table than our pitch to get them to buy.

TACTICAL TIPS  

“Creating” Urgency

“How do I create urgency?”

I get this question all the time from reps - 

My answer is always the same - You can’t.

As Sales reps we can’t “create” urgency but we can uncover and drive it.

The way we do this is by aligning with the priorities of the people and the companies we want to work with.

When a CEO stands up at the beginning of the year and says “These are the three things we need to focus on this year to be successful - 1, 2, 3.” 

 If you can't tie my solution to one or two of those priorities then good luck trying to sell anything of significance.  

I always fundamentally understood this as a Sales rep but unfortunately, the way I used to get there earlier in my career was by saying dumb stuff like “tell me about your priorities.”

When I asked general questions like that I usually got general answers that didn’t give me much insight.  Also, 9 times out of 10, I hadn’t earned the right to ask that question.

Think about it, would you tell a stranger the details of your priorities and challenges during your first interaction with them?  I know I wouldn’t. 

Instead, we should have at least a general idea of what some of their priorities and challenges are by doing some simple prep. 

For instance, if I’m meeting with a CRO in the Healthcare industry, I’m going to go into Google or ChatGPT and type in “CRO Healthcare industry, priorities challenges 2024” and read a few articles.

Then, instead of saying “tell me about your priorities'' I can say something like “we’re working with other CROs in the Healthcare industry and they are telling us their main priorities in 2024 are X, Y, Z.  Are these the same priorities for you?

Even if those aren’t their priorities, at least you show you know their world a little bit and the approach tends to open up the conversation.

I’m using tools like Perplexity to figure out the priorities and challenges but we also do a report each year on the top priorities of the top executives in the top industries and as a member of the JB Learning Lab Newsletter I’ve decided to give it to you here. 

This is a $3000 piece of content that is insanely valuable.  Please keep this within your organization and do not share on social media.  Also, if you want to be a hero to your Marketing team feel free to share it with them. 

SALES TECH/TOOLS - 

Cold Call Role Play   

Cold calling is still a vital part of an effective outbound strategy in my experience.   

It’s not because I'm expecting a huge conversion rate or even a high connect rate.  It’s because it’s another “touch point” that creates a positive impression.  I wrote about this in more detail in a recent LinkedIn post. 

Regardless, many of us are being asked to do cold calling so we need to get better at it and role playing is a way to do it.  

This is where I think AI is going to have the biggest positive impact on Sales - coaching and role-playing. 

Check out this AI cold call role-play company I came across the other day: https://www.hyperbound.ai/ 

If you click on the “start simulation” button on their homepage you can then choose a person and scenario you want to try.  Then you can then run a role play with an AI bot that is pretty damn realistic if you ask me.  

I see this as a great way for us to practice on our own without having to rely on management.

Try it out and let me know how you do. 

(by the way, I’m not affiliated with that company in any way.  In the future, I will be partnering with different tech and sharing it with you but I’ll always let you know if I am getting paid or sponsored by them)

Until next week -

JB

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