Business:Management
Meredith Messenger is VERY well versed in the demands of running a one-person shop and the struggles that many startups have with developing predictable revenue. She is the founder of Selling With Soul and the host of the Selling With Soul podcast.
She is a Revenue Coach and Sales Consultant offering revenue strategy development, sales consulting and sales team building to start-ups, small and mid-sized companies. The mission of Selling With Soul is to help more small businesses survive, thrive and impact the world.
Episode Overview:
How to make sales NOT so SCARY! How Sales is an essential life skill If the art of Cold Calling is Dead Sales Pet Peeves Common Sales mistakes & tips to how to avoid them! How to utilize Sales Technology
I also have another freebie for you - I just recently recorded a webinar on common sales proposal mistakes. Click here
How to make sales NOT so SCARY!
People have a negative impression on sales because they have gone through negative sales experience.
“We all hate that feeling of being sold to like we are trapped and we can’t get out on the conversation with the person who doesn't care about us at all and who just want to push their product on us”
These experience doesn't make us feel good and so we tend to bring up this emotion and experience when we talk about sales. When you are being sold to effectively and you didn’t know that, it doesn’t feel negative at all.
In out of the business world, people tend to makes sales a little more complicated when it doesn’t have to be. Meredith’s mission and motto is to find how to we simplify sales, how do we put the fun back in sales and convince people that it is just about serving another person.
How sales is an essential life skill
Instead of making sales a thing about generating revenue, we should look at sales at a university level as a part of how we operate. An example that Meredith gave is when she had a negative sales experience in LinkedIn when someone sent her a message and tries to sell something about sales coaching. Immediately this made her feel that the person sending her the message is really obnoxious because it plainly tells her that these people don’t care about who she is, who didn’t even look at her profile and even worst, trying to sell a sales coaching program to a certified sales consultant.
This action tells us that if they are sending this message to her, they are also doing it to thousands of people who are on LinkedIn and this gives a bad impression to all sales person.
Measuring the right metrics are really important because if we are pushing all of our people just to hit activity numbers, we are pushing for the wrong things and that is where our quality starts to suffer.
Is Cold Calling Dead?
According to Meredith, cold calling is a hot and highly debated topic because there are people who stand very firm in saying that YES it is dead and says everything can be sold through social selling but there are also people saying NO because outbound reach is very critical to a business.
In Meredith’s point of view, there is no right or wrong answers to this because there are companies who are doing cold calling and outbound emails who are doing it really well and it also depend of the type of people you are talking to. There are also people who are using social selling all the time and are doing really good but you also have to understand what social selling is.
Social selling is just providing value and getting into a point where they can get a phone call or a meeting from you because you provided value.
Tip:
When you are at that point of your business, you have to proactively develop business. The business is not going to come to you and so therefor, outreach that area where a lot of people get really uncomfortable, talking to people they don’t know in one form or another has to happen in order for your business to be successful.
Check out Selling with Soul Podcast Leveraging Technology to Make Sales With Miles Austin
Big mistakes that start-ups usually make:
People don’t ask for the business Rushing the sales cycle Just because you are the seller doesn't mean you have the say on everything than the buyer does.
Recommended Tools:
Nimble.com SalesForce.com HubSpot.com Mailchimp.com Drip.com Bots
Book Recommendations:
Selling Boldly by Alex Goldfayn Little Red Book by Jeffrey Gitomer Stop Selling and Start Selling by James M. Kouzes
About Selling with Soul Podcast:
Selling With Soul is on a mission to enable more women to enter into entrepreneurship and grow a profitable business that changes the world while supporting their family through education, inspiration and support.
Social Media:
Website: MeredithMessenger.com
Twitter: @MerMessenger
Facebook: Selling With Soul Podcast
LinkedIn: Meredith Messenger
Podcast: Selling with Soul Podcast
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