Overview
In May’s three INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast episodes, my guests shared how the two can help you to advance your sales skills. Read a little bit of information about each episode below to find out which you should add to your podcast playlist.
What’s holding you back from sales success? Is it a lack of training or a lack of understanding of how sales can work with marketing?
Episode 26: Increased
Earnings Start with Increased Learnings
In Episode 26 of INSIDE Inside Sales, Andy Paul is my featured
guest. You may know Andy from his widely popular Accelerate! podcast or
from TheSalesHouse.com, a sales
training subscription service. He’s been in sales for more than thirty years
and has some great advice to share about self-education.
Andy says you can’t rely on your employer to provide
training for success in your sales career. You must continually invest in your
own knowledge. He remembers listening to cassette tapes before the age of
podcasts to get smarter about sales.
Today, there are plenty of options to learn more about sales – this inside sales podcast, Andy’s podcast and others, YouTube videos, posts on LinkedIn, books, web articles, and more. Andy recommends allocating a certain amount of time every day to learn more about your craft. He says, “If you’re in sales, the one thing you should know everything about, or attempt to, is your profession.”
Don’t get attached to one resource for your information,
though. Consume content from different sources and individuals with different
mindsets and approaches.
The final piece of advice I’ll share here from Andy is
that if your employer doesn’t value your successes that come from investing in
yourself, it may be time to find a new employer. Tune into Episode 26 to hear
more valuable insights that will benefit your sales career.
Matt
Hayman, Marketing Manager at Refract.ai,
joined me for Episode 27. He has a deep passion for finding common ground
between the Sales and Marketing teams. Yes, this is a sales podcast, but we’re
talking about how marketing and sales can work together.
Misconceptions of what the other team does often cause a
disconnect between sales and marketing. Traditionally, their activities have
been quite different. As the business world changes, we need to get the two
parties to understand how each other work and find a way to collaborate.
I recommend defining expectations of how the two will
engage. Consider the following while gathering input from both sides:
- What’s a lead?
- Who is the target persona?
- What are the rules of engagement, i.e., speed to
lead and cadence? - What are the consequences of not following the
rules of engagement?
Matt takes it a step further and says to talk to people
in different sales roles to get even more information. By doing this at
Refract.ai, he was able to improve their click-through-rates, acquisition
costs, deliver better-qualified prospects, create better content for sales, and
more.
Don’t miss this episode to hear more from Matt and me
about cooperation between marketing and sales to reach the same end goals.
Refract.ai’s Matt Hayman is back for the second part of
our conversation in Episode 28. During this segment, we talked more about
getting sales and marketing to work together. Don’t miss the strategy; focus on
the outcome instead of the tactics.
Matt mentioned that he’s always testing – an expected
quality from an adept marketer. After getting some really good engagement on a
video he posted on LinkedIn (1500-2000 likes), he decided to reach out to the
individuals that liked the video. However, he didn’t do it in a pushy, salesy
way. He reached out and offered value with something like, “I’m pleased you
found the video enjoyable. By the way, did you know we also have a podcast? We
also have this piece of content…” This personalized outreach resulted in a
500% to 600% in followers on LinkedIn.
As a salesperson, you have the insights into your
customers’ pain points and what keeps them up at night. Matt says to think
about what marketing can create as a lead magnet from that insight. Make a list
of ideas, get marketing to test it, and “you’ll see big improvements in the
quality and number of MQLs that you start to get.”
Remember that marketing wants to support you in reaching
your goals and driving revenue. Listen to this episode to hear more about how
you can make peace with marketing and ultimately help each other out.
What do you need to work on to improve your sales career – your relationship with marketing or your intentions for learning? Listen to episodes 26 through 28 to learn more about these topics. Let me know if you have any suggestions for future episodes of the INSIDE Inside Sales podcast in the comments below. You can also reach me via Twitter or LinkedIn.
PS: sometimes even a sweet inside sales solution can really help!
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