In today’s episode of the ‘Sales Samurai’ podcast, host Sam Capra, who helps marketing leaders in the retail space go beyond the sale/transaction, talks with guest Sarah, sharing the best practices to get your team using it and maximizing the solution for them.

Episode Highlights

• 01:55 – Sarah shares, she started working with a bunch of start-ups and a lot of her role within those start-ups was implementing CRMs and getting them set up with them.
• 03:43 – Sam enquires from Sarah if she has a very broad spectrum from a sales perspective, and what made her start in sales.
• 05:40 – There's a lot of value in starting at a more established organization, says Sam.
• 07:25 – Sam asks Sarah if she is seeing the space getting more crowded in the CRM? 
• 09:39 – CRM has always been the necessary evil, and that should be the foundational tool of any sales organization, mentions Sam.
• 11:00 – There are so many different ways and methods to keep track of your contact information. So finding the right tool for you and your company is important.
• 13:04 - Sarah highlights, it's important to think about what is your current process looks like, and what potentially is it going to look like a month or even a year from now?
• 14:49 – If you move to a new tool with the same types of processes and behaviors, you probably are going to end up at the same place, says Sarah
• 17:25 – It would be great if the flow of data, and where it is coming from can be stored into your CRM, but it doesn't necessarily mean that your team has to be working out of it constantly, it depends on what you need.
• 21:40 – Sarah points out that there is a reason why user adoption is lower because the users get overwhelmed by the amount of data that's in there. They don't know what they're supposed to update.
• 23:11 – A lot of sales leaders will stick to a field because they think that they need it. 
• 26:00 – Sarah states, standardization is trying to keep things aligned across the system.
• 28:25 – Inefficiencies in redundancies if you don't standardize it leads to that drop off from an adaption and those challenging conversations probably with your sales team, states Sam.
• 31:54 – Sarah highlights, regular conversations, and check-ins are also very important because you implement something in one way doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.
• 32:22 – A lot of times CRMs are implemented and managed by IT teams or leadership, that's fine, and it's great. However, you do need to have the voice of the everyday user constantly, mentions Sarah.
• 34:31 - When you initially roll something out, it's easy to create something, but then it can be hard to remember to go back and update those materials.
• 35:41 - If you're going to document that you got to keep up with the documentation to make sure it's up to date.
• 37:22 - If everybody is using it, then everybody is going to naturally have that feedback and those types of conversations with each other.
• 40:10 - If it's implemented and used correctly, then you can see that in the long term.

Three Key Points

1. When you're rolling out initially, there are two buckets, first is, rolling it out initially and making people aware of how to use it, what this tool is, where things go, why it goes there, or what this field is used for. Then the other piece of it is what the feedback loop is? Is it working the right way? Do we need to switch this? What do we need to do here? 
2. Sarah says she is always on the side of getting everybody on to the CRM and getting everybody involved and trying to get everybody's workflows built-in there because it's not a sales tool anymor

In today’s episode of the ‘Sales Samurai’ podcast, host Sam Capra, who helps marketing leaders in the retail space go beyond the sale/transaction, talks with guest, James Buckley, creator of "Saywhatsales", Chief Evangelist & Master of Ceremonies @JB Sales. They're going to be discussing why time management and Omnipresence matter more in 2022 than it ever has.

Episode Highlights

• 01:55 – Where does "Saywhatsales" come from, enquires Sam.
• 04:10 – James shares that the number one thing a salesperson can say is, how do I make people want to talk to me, content that matters to them is the way, James got through all of it.
• 08:18 – James’ first sales job was as a Phone Line Salesperson, it was door-to-door B2B in the heat for AT&T.
• 10:47 – When you're shaking your head, there's a natural tendency for a buyer to agree more or be a little more agreeable with you, highlights James.
• 13:32 – "Saywhatsales" was the long game from day one because James recognizes that from his days of working.
• 15:33 – Sam says, time is always been the biggest challenge for him like there's just never enough time.
• 16:10 – James points out that there are several factors to consider but time blocking is where you want to start, time blocking is so important.
• 19:28 - If you're not managing your time, everything around you is managing your time and then you have zero control over your outcomes.
• 20:16 – If there are five people in your general vicinity daily, whether that's in Slack or Office when they bark, they immediately become a priority. That is the way of life and when that happens, you need to be transparent, says James.
• 21:50 – James suggests keeping your tasks separate, but ensure you're using the time blocking factor to be able to allocate the time no matter what the task is. 
• 23:18 - Segmenting the task into two buckets (Revenue Generating and Administrative), they both got to be done. But there's got to be a priority associated with both. 
• 25:11 – Sam states that if you're finding that there's still not enough time, then start getting up a little earlier or staying a little late or whatever works for you. 
• 27:10 – There's no time limit on value, it can be as impactful in February as it is in April, value does not have a time limit, mentions James.
• 30:47 – Sam enquires from James about ‘Omni Presence’ as to what is it from a context standpoint.
• 32:07 – When James says ‘Omni Presence’, he means that once you're on his radar, it is nearly impossible to ignore him. He also explains how he does that.
• 35:06 – Don't waste time where you’re not, if you’re not actively posting anything on LinkedIn but you’re doing it on Twitter, you're wasting your time.
• 37:28 – James says your CTA matters, ask them for feedback, give them something and say read this part of it because it's relevant to you. Find something that happened at their company and tie it into your value proposition in some way.
• 38:06 – What works for one buyer, doesn't necessarily work for every buyer.
• 40:22 - If you're creating content on Tik-Tok and somebody that's in your space using SEO using hashtags, using all kinds of ways you can get in their feed and they'll see you and you might have an inbound connection request next day.
• 42:40 – The first thing you need to do is, dial into your ICP and the Personas that you want in your pipeline. The more you know those people, the easier it is for you to filter.
• 45:55 – James mentions, your energy is what matters, and your energy is what people respond to. Your aura, the thing that you put out there, that's

In today’s episode of the ‘Sales Samurai’ podcast, host Sam Capra, who helps marketing leaders in the retail space go beyond the sale/transaction, talks with guest, Steve Richard, Founder @ExecVision: Sales Coaching & Conversation Intelligence Software. Steve's sharing 8 Cold Calling Tactics that have the potential to work for you.

Episode Highlights

• 03:34 – Steve shares his background, how he didn't make it as an Investment Banker, and so he mimic what better people were doing at the time, which made him better. 
• 04:20 – Steve realized that sales are about having the ability to impact and influence how people's lives go in some strange way. 
• 07:25 – If you're not constantly trying new things and testing, experimenting, you're missing the boat, says Steve.
• 10:11 – It is about understanding all those different nuances to your business that you should understand and then testing it. 
• 12:40 - You take a spreadsheet, you put your personas in your rows, you put your industry verticals, and then you fill in the use case and customer story for each of those.
• 14:01 – Sam asks, how to leverage a new initiative from a Cold Calling Tactics?
• 16:30 – Steve shares, they had clients who over time started comparing people in terms of their experiences, but they outperformed their people. 
• 20:19 – People are motivated by fixing a problem, accomplishing a goal, or avoiding risks, states Steve.
• 23:41 – Steve questions, what about the fact that the seller has more information than ever before? What about the fact that the salesperson could know far more about their prospective customers and prospects than they ever could have before? 
• 25:40 – Sam asks Steve about his thoughts around the title ‘X’.
• 27:00 – Steve discusses where you get to ask your qualification questions, your pain questions, or your goal questions.
• 29:30 – Steve points out about second vendor options and their two flavors.
• 31:30 - We do coaching and behavior change, tracking manager coaching, calibrating with multiple scorecards, some specific concrete things, reveals Steve.
• 34:10 – There are going to be situations that depending on what you sell and who you sell to, don't want to do the second vendor option, they use a certain competitor.
• 35:35 – Sometimes with clients, you would hear the same object every time. It was like you literally could predict which objection was going to be before you pick up the phone.
• 37:25 – Sam says, let's take 30 minutes to figure out if there's a path forward.
• 42:20 - Some solutions have to be seen to be understood.
• 43:50 – Steve mentions, in the last 3 to 4 years buyer behavior has changed.
• 45:55 – Never say pricing even arranger pricing until you have these 35 fields filled out in Salesforce that's not how the modern buyer will work, highlights Steve.
• 47:30 – Sam asks Steve to give some context behind Crawl Walk Run.
• 49:01 – Crawl Walk Run makes people feel okay to admit they suck at something. 

Three Key Points

1. Steve had a sales training company and the clients were telling him that they want the sales training content, but how do you reinforce it? What are you going to do to help reinforce the sales training content? That was the origin of ExecVision, so they started using this in their company and realized that they can reinforce this mastery training. So, it was the marketplace that was asking for this new niche and now they have a new initiative to bring technology to reinforce sales training to a point of mastery.
2. Every time Steve has a scheduled call with some