The Sales Evangelist

In the sales world, the mantra "do more with less" often feels more like a challenge than a guiding principle. In this episode, I chat with Anthony Nava, Senior SDR Manager at Crunchbase.

With years of dedicated service and experience, Anthony reveals the innovative strategies that have helped his team thrive despite tight resources. Discover how Anthony's blend of empathy, tech-savviness, and strategic thinking can transform your sales team's performance.

Meet Anthony Nava

• He leads the sales efforts for the team, contributing significantly to their success through various innovative and strategic approaches.
• Anthony has navigated the company's various transitions and challenges, leveraging tools like AI to maximize efficiency and performance.
• Before joining Crunchbase, Anthony amassed valuable skills and knowledge that have made him an effective leader and a critical asset to the organization.

Embracing AI to Boost Sales Efficiency

• When faced with limited resources, Anthony leverages AI tools to drive efficiency and maintain high performance. Essential tools mentioned include:
• Attention AI: Helps in call listening, note-taking, and integrating insights into Salesforce, saving time for SDRs and allowing for focused coaching.
• Crunchbase Insights: Using AI to determine accounts in a buying position, providing a strategic advantage by identifying potential deals before competitors.

Adjusting Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

• Anthony discusses the critical pivot toward refining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to enhance sales efficacy.
• His team, through data analysis and collaboration with marketing, identified key decision-makers who had a high impact on deal closures:
• Finance Involvement: Around 80% of closed deals involved finance personnel from the early stages.
• Strategic Adjustments: By aligning towards this new ICP, they ensured better engagement and quicker deal cycles.

Coping Mechanisms for Leaders

• Anthony delves into how leaders can mentally and emotionally prepare themselves:
• Empathy: Understanding the team’s challenges and adjusting leadership styles accordingly.
• Positive Reinforcement: Continuously highlighting the exciting potentials and future achievements.
• Offsite Meetings: Facilitating team get-togethers to discuss concerns and strategies. It also helps maintain a cohesive unit.

"Data and collaboration will be your best friend in some of the toughest times." - Anthony Nava.

Resources

Anthony Nava on LinkedIn

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

2. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.

3. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.

Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.

Credits

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed,...

Storytelling allows you to connect with your prospects on a more personal level. However, sometimes you might find yourself telling the wrong stories or sharing a story at the wrong time. My guest, Eugene Theodore, walks us through how to create impactful stories that align with your sales goals.

Meet Eugene Theodore

• Eugene Theodore is a highly skilled and experienced storyteller with a background in sales and personal branding.
• His storytelling approach aligns a product or service’s message with the needs and values of a target audience.
• Eugene helps sales professionals and leaders navigate different stages of the customer journey by using storytelling to foster meaningful connections and close deals.

Why Storytelling Matters in Sales

• People prefer to buy from those they trust and feel connected to. Without a genuine connection, prospects may choose not to move forward in the sales process.
• Eugene explains that storytelling serves as a powerful alignment tool throughout the customer journey.
• It brings the necessary harmony between the product, the company, and the target audience.

The Story Matrix Tool

• If you find it challenging to craft effective stories, Eugene suggests using his “Story Matrix” tool. This tool helps map out various story types for different stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, decision-making, and retention.
• The Story Matrix allows you to create a grid that matches different phases of the buyer journey with suitable story types—whether humorous, serious, technical, or adventurous.

Applying the Story Matrix

• Eugene provides practical examples of how to use the Story Matrix to tailor stories for different audiences and stages of engagement.
• He emphasizes the importance of understanding a client’s personal interests, professional stage, and organizational needs to refine and personalize the story, making it more impactful.

“The story matrix is simply understanding the consumer journey, whether it's B2B or B2C, and understanding what is the right kind of story at that moment in time.” - Eugene Theodore.

Resources

Saga Squared

Cold Call Openers

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.

Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.

Credits

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Tech sales can be one of the most daunting sales industries to work in, but this doesn’t mean finding success is impossible. In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist podcast, our host Donald Kelly interviews Shirelle Francis to talk about her success in tech.

How Shirelle Overcame Challenges

• The first challenge that Shirelle faced was finding a mentor.
• She looked for a black female mentor who had previously found success in sales and studied AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE from this mentor.
• The second challenge that Shirelle faced was finding proper training.
• This ties into finding a mentor. As Shirelle looked for a mentor, she also sought out useful training for sales and not only mentored someone but studied the craft of sales.
• The third challenge Shirelle faced was getting access to capital.
• She overcame this by searching for a sponsor and actively seeking training and someone to teach her.

You can connect with Shirelle on her LinkedIn or check out her website at www.ileapgroup.com. You can talk to Donald and drop him a message on LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Instagram at donaldckelly. You can also join TSE’s space on Circle to talk to Donald and other sellers looking to improve their craft.

This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad.

Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com.

Credits

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify.

There are many black women in sales and despite the challenges, they keep on moving forward to have success. Tune in as today’s guest, Cynthia Barnes, speaks of the challenges affecting black women in sales.

Cynthia Barnes is the founder and CEO of the National Association of Women Sales Professionals. It’s a member-based organization of women who sell B2B services in a male-dominated industry such as SAAS (Software as a Service), tech, cloud, and others. The organization provides two things to its members: access to laser-focused companies on achieving parity for women in sales and training created by women for women to reach the top 1%.

Women’s’ participation in sales

• Anytime there’s an underrepresented population, there will always be challenges that are specific to them and vice-versa.
• When women are working from home, they aren’t only employees. They are also mothers and wives. They juggle three or more different roles all at the same time.
• These women are doing a good job of making sure that they’re staying balanced, but that comes at a price. Sometimes at the expense of their mental health.
• When women give so much to their company, to their husbands, and their kids, they have nothing left for themselves.
• Cynthia emphasizes the thought that you can’t pour from an empty cup. You always need to fill the cup to be a rockstar at work, home, and with the kids.
• Organizations can make a difference in ensuring that their employees are appropriately compensated and given the work-life balance they need.
• When sales members are well taken care of and they’re engaged, their output greatly improves. The money organizations put into their employee care is an investment.
• The expression, ‘Happy wife, happy life,’ is also applicable at work. If women in sales are happy, engaged, supported, and heard, they’ll be able to perform better. As it is, women already outsell men by 5%. With that support system at work, women can do so much more.

Challenges women face in sales

• Sales leaders who did not grow up with a diverse background will less likely prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion because it’s only thought to get more revenue, not an actual idea where they feel and see tangible results.
• With the racial and systemic bias in the previous year, many companies wanted to get women in sales. They wanted not only black women but also the other underrepresented minorities.
• The problem is that there are no programs in place to elevate women in sales. They only attract them but they do not make an effort to retain them.
• There are still no organizational changes that make the women feel respected, welcomed, and represented.
• When it comes to bringing in more diversity to the table, all you often see is a team of leaders who are all men.
• Women are leaving the workforce because they can’t be a wife, a mother, and a teacher at the same time.
• It’s about creating a culture of belonging. Women should have a voice at the table, not just a seat. They need to be heard and to be treated fairly.

Breaking the barriers

• There should be more women in leadership roles.
• As a leader of an organization for women in sales, part of Cynthia’s responsibility is to empower women to have the right mindset, get the right verbiage, and build awareness around microaggressions.
• Women shouldn’t sit idly waiting for the opportunities that they’ve already earned.
• Women should be the change that they want to see.

“Diversity: Challenges Affecting Black Women in Sales?” episode resources

Connect with Cynthia Barnes on LinkedIn. You can also check out their official site here.

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns.

Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTENDED trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse.

This episode is also partly brought to you by Wingman. Wingman uses AI-software to empower remote sales teams with conversation intelligence, actionable insights on successful playbooks, and delivers real-time coaching.

Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone c...

In today’s episode, Donald Kelly talks about the reasons why your discovery meeting is the most critical of all when it comes to sales.

The challenging part of the sales process

• Many people make the mistake of taking discovery meetings for granted during the sales process.
• There are typically two sides of the sales process: the prospecting side and the closing side.
• The prospecting side is the hustle part that many salespeople don’t care for as much.
• The closing side is when the transaction is completed.
• Another critical part of the sales journey is the discovery meeting.
• Sometimes, salespeople assume things about their clients and prospects without checking in with them. They go to the presentation right away and do it beautifully, too. They are taken aback when the prospect doesn't close the deal with them.
• For Donald, the discovery part of your sales process is more important than the close.
• Without discovery, you won’t be able to close.
• You have prospects that do not fit your product and services. There could be any number of reasons why these prospects are not a fit.
• Probing, digging, and getting information will help you disqualify prospects.
• Salespeople should focus more on disqualifying the prospects instead of trying hard to quality them. You want to get rid of the ones that don’t fit the bill to focus on the ones that do fit the bill.
• Discovery meeting allows you to do the following:

1. Understand the needs of the client and understand our capabilities.
2. We understand how they’re going to make decisions for our solution. We understand what they know and help them implement the solution.
3. Lastly, it allows us to understand who will make the decision and the money they’re going to spend

• As salespeople, you need to understand and establish that there is a need rather than hear them saying that they’re doing research and they’re trying to figure out what works for them.
• The first phase is to disqualify the prospect. Ask them questions and figure out if they have a need for your services or solutions.
• Your second phase is the demonstration and the proposal.
• You shouldn’t be overcoming major objections at this point because you’ve already done that in the discovery.
• Some salespeople make the mistake of becoming too focused on the discovery process and then don’t keep that attention throughout the process.
• Your goal is to have natural conversations with the buyers and give them a valuable purchasing experience.
• Doing effective discovery is difficult work. It requires you to ask adult questions and have adult discussion but these conversations will help you take out the objections.

“Discovery Meeting: Why Your Discovery Meeting is the Most Critical of All” episode resources

Speak with Donald directly for more sales talks. Reach him via these channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook about any sales concerns.

Try Pipedrive today for FREE! As a TSE listener, PipeDrive is offering you an EXTENDED trial beyond the typical 30 days + 25% off your first three months after trial. Try it today at → https://pipedrive.live/tse use your code: pipedrivetse.

This episode is brought to you in part by NetHunt CRM. NetHunt CRM is a sales automation tool that lives inside Gmail. It covers a full set of features to manage leads, nurture customer relations, monitor sales progress, and automate sales and marketing workflows. With native-like Gmail and G Suite integration, you can access all the CRM data, launch bulk email campaigns, and set up automated sequences right from your inbox. NetHunt helps to move your leads down your sales funnel and never let the valuable prospects go untouched.

NetHunt CRM offers TSE listeners a 40% discount for the first 3 months along with free user training and a dedicated Customer Success Manager with any pricing plan.

Try NetHunt CRM today → https://nethunt.com/tse

Are you sick of crickets? The pain of sales reps continually reaching out with phone calls and emails and not receiving a response is real.

85% of people prefer text over email and phone calls because they want to engage

in a conversation. All text messaging is not equal. Customers respond to people,

NOT BOTS. Be more like people and start having conversations that end in conversions. Try Skipio at www.Skipio.com.

This course is brou...