Sales Fusion

By Melanie Booher, Jim Diebold and Mark Perone

In a world that's become accustomed to staying home, the process of selling has changed. So, how does a salesperson create a strategy to scale their business in 2022; and beyond? Our skilled, knowledgeable, and insightful authors will provide strategies for those of you who wish to understand the mentality and psychology behind the success of a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Influence Network Media, LLC
• Release date: Sep 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088264485

Book preview

Introduction

In a world that’s been forever changed by a global pandemic, the skills of a truly successful sales person should be refined and effective, now more than ever. How else do you cultivate these skills? Through years of experience and first hand work.

Here’s the large problem many sales people are encountering… the world now faces the increasing need for effective sales people in a market full of decreasing opportunities for sales people to demonstrate their skill.  This is exactly the reason that Influence Network Media has released Sales Fusion. This volume in the Business Fusion series presents an illustrated account of detailed sales powerhouse leaders and their experiences in their career to bring much needed clarity to struggled sales people who are looking for some wisdom and firsthand experience.

The stories and insight that these authors have given to the readers in this book has been compelling and inspiring.  From Sändra Connor and her distinctive ability to use clips and video to sell to Clay Hicks, aa self-made man who prides himself on face-to-face client interactions that form connections that will extend far beyond a simple business exchange- purchasing this book is the first step towards taking your sales resume to the next level.

Experience is an attribute that speaks for itself; Kevin Ryan, an author in this book with more than thirty years of sales experience, has a story worth your time and experience he’s willing to share with the newest generation of sales people.  If you’re looking for assistance with asking for that sale you know you’ve earned, Tara McOmber’s chapter will provide irreplaceable insight to all salespeople in need of a confidence boost.

Sales Fusion also includes the chapters of two returning INM authors, Jim Diebold and Simcha Kackley, back with more invaluable experience focused on sales.  As a private business owner, Jim highlights a step-by-step process for anyone struggling to understand the sales process. Simcha can help provide clarity to any sales person who might need help searching through the fog of uncertainty and underperformance.

One of the large takeaways of this series has been to teach and inspire business leaders and professionals.  The hope is that by reading these authors assembled here in this book, you are perhaps inspired to to teach others too.

-Jodi Brandstetter, CEO, Influence Network Media

1

Own Your Sales Method: Zero Point Selling

Mark Perone | Implement CRM Culture | Upgrade Marketing and Sales | Operate Data Driven

Within each chapter in this book, you’re probably getting a variety of personal sales perspectives. Some of them will have an impact and some of them are personal accounts of what works best for that individual. This chapter is not like the others. Zero-point Selling is a scalable method for Solopreneur type businesses generating anything from $50,000 a year in revenue, all the way up to large $100,000,000 companies with hundreds of employees. Your take away from this chapter will be a fundamental framework to build your business to record setting sales.

Establishing  a business today is about developing a scalable Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service method with information as the most valuable asset. By focusing on activities that gather data, within a sequence in each of Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service divisions, we can approach our organization with an evolved business concept. This alleviates the stress of spending too much time in one place and not enough time in another. To learn more about the Rethink Revenue perspective, here’s a link to our YouTube Channel. A video is easier than reading right?

Rawwr – The Rethink Revenue QRasaurus

So let’s dig into the Zero-point Selling perspectives. By and large, businesses develop organically. A person finds a want or need that a consumer is willing to exchange money for goods or time. This exchange is then replicated. Sometimes, there’s a plan to scale. Sound familiar?

In the bigger business world, large organizations, Enterprise Level Companies, are constantly launching new products and services. There are small launch teams focused on going to market. They have very specific templates designed to cover the fundamentals which have yielded success in the past. Enterprises have the luxury of trained talent with a wide variety of resources and deep experience.

You are probably not one of these team members.

The question is, How can we build a business where success and failure are both advantageous?

Having a formula or a template to build from is all about experience, planning, and finally execution. It’s about knowing what works and more importantly what the recipe is for wasted time and money. Companies onboarding the Zero-point Selling Method follow this framework to level-set thought processes and clarify the handoffs between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service. Here is the foundation we use to drive higher revenue while delivering operational efficiency:

Customer Journey Framework Fundamentals 

In Zero-Point Selling, we build a list of Targets – people we think we’d like to work with – people with names and faces – then we start marketing to them.

These Targets have never heard of us. We are Unknown to them. It is Marketing’s job to make Targets aware of our company and our value proposition (what we do and how we do it) and move us from Unknown to Known to Liked in the mind of the Customer/Buyer.

The ultimate measure of Marketing’s success is how many Leads are delivered to the Sales team. Quality of Lead is a close second.

The first task of the Sales team is to Qualify Leads: Are they a good fit for us? Are we a good fit for them?

After that, it’s Sales’ responsibility to complete the sales process and close every Opportunity that comes their way.

Opportunities can be either Won or Lost, but every Opportunity should be closed (as opposed to falling through the cracks)

The ultimate measure of Sales success is revenue generated.

To fully understand the framework, we need to understand the specific definitions of the words and the fact Targets are Contacts who could enjoy the benefits for your specific product or service. By identifying who you want to do business with and adding this audience to a database (CRM), you can start to work on your unique customer journey. Since our Targets are not ready to purchase when we are ready to sell, we need to determine a solid concept of Marketing. This transitions those Targets from people who do not know you to people who are interested in how you can help them. We use gathered information as proof of interest by having them fill in details on calls to action (CTA presented on sales pages, emails and assessments) All of this is supported by the systems we’re high-pointing in this chapter. Much of these systems start out as free social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube) and software (CRM, Marketing Automation)

Vocabulary Words (You can’t take a class without them right?)

Contact – A CRM record for an individual person, and also someone who is generally in the Customer Journey. Some companies use CRM to track Vendor and Partner Contacts as well; however, when we refer to Contacts in Zero Point Selling we’re speaking specifically about a person in the Customer Journey.

Target – A Contact who is a potential customer. Your company is Unknown to them (they have no idea who you are). Minimum information for marketing to a Target is first name, last name, and location. Use light touch marketing to introduce your firm and its value proposition. Try different offers/value exchanges until the Target completes one value exchange.

Suspect – A Target who through successful marketing has become aware of your company – you are Known to them – and opted in to receiving additional marketing from you by completing at least one value exchange. Suspects are NOT ready for a Sales discussion. Keep providing value and offering value exchanges to learn more about their needs while reinforcing your own identity and capabilities in relation to those needs.

Lead – A Suspect who has expressed explicit interest in exploring a business relationship between your two companies. This is a temporary, short-term state. A Lead should be qualified quickly by a salesperson. There are three possible outcomes to Lead Qualification:

1) There is a valid Opportunity. The Lead is promoted to Prospect, an Opportunity is created, and the Opportunity is handed off to the Sales Team to manage.

2) There is not a valid Opportunity at this time but there might be in the future. The Lead is downgraded to Suspect, the reason noted in CRM, and he/she continues to receive marketing.

3) There is no valid Opportunity and likely never will be. The Lead is downgraded to Do Not Market, the reason noted in CRM, and the Contact is removed from all Marketing campaigns.

Prospect – A Contact going through your company’s Sales process. A Prospect must have a properly qualified Opportunity attached/associated to them. At the conclusion of the Sales process, a Prospect either becomes a Client (Opportunity was Closed/Won, Transaction Completed) or is downgraded to Suspect (Opportunity was Closed/Lost).

Client/Customer – A Contact who has purchased and paid for at least one product or service from your company. There are rare occasions where contracts are signed but for various reasons a transaction is never completed. Because of that, a Prospect remains a Prospect until one transaction is completed and paid for and the Sales person remains responsible for him or her.

We like to think of the larger segments, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service, as divisions of labor with different hats we wear. As we work on the Marketing aspects of our business we want to leverage content and build assets that highlight the benefits of our business.

People we want to do business with are classified within our Zero-point Selling Method to match up business vocabulary with the software systems we use to support our Marketing and Sales processes. Above you saw a relatively simple illustration framing the overarching business strategy. If you go back up after reading these vocab words and put your finger on the place you are currently struggling to grasp, you’ve translated the ideas into your real world business! Do it. Go back to the Customer Journey Framework and point to your current roadblock. Is it developing a Marketing funnel to help your business create Targets that Know your business?

Is it a proper stage and tasked Sales process?

Wasn’t that empowering? Placing your finger on your business’s biggest challenge? (If you pointed to somewhere in Customer Service, apologies. We don’t really work over there. REVENUE above all else!)

What you need to execute your own data driven sales method:

Connect with Mark Perone on LinkedIn & Subscribe to the Rethink Revenue YouTube Channel

CRM – (Currently we recommend Hubspot) There are many different sales software tools catering to all types of businesses. Today we can demand more features that compliment our…

Tech Stack – We can couple our email clients (Outlook/GMail/wherever you access your emails), Calendars and Websites with our CRM’s to automatically consolidate activity by those we wish to do business with. Imagine your business communications, contact details, company information and all communications consolidated in one place.

Email – (Currently we recommend Gmail) Having a good handle on your email client (Outlook/GMail/wherever you access your emails) lends itself to building a solid platform for your business. Know how to Google information about contact management, templating responses and integrating email. Imagine having all your email communications automatically dropped in a CRM.

Calendar Link – (Currently we recommend Calendly) There are tools that allow people to see what is open on your calendar. This is a basic upgrade that saves an exponential amount of time. Imagine never having to send back and forth emails on good times to meet!

LinkedIn Profile – (We do use Sales Navigator but it’s not necessary) Build a professional outline focused on the benefit of you and your business. Imagine a place prospects, vendors and strategic partners can go to find information video’s, articles and general perspectives you have. 

Let’s talk.

I am open to connecting with those looking for help invoking a Sales Strategy for themselves. I have helped hundreds of people learn to think of business failures as testing. We don’t do anything you can’t do yourself. It’s really about setting a series of steps out in front of you and then taking the first one.

Rawwr – The Rethink Revenue QRasaurus

How to scan a QR code with the Camera app

Open the camera from the Home Screen, Control Center, or Lock Screen.

Select the rear facing camera. Hold your device so that the QR code appears in the viewfinder in the Camera app. Your device recognizes the QR code and shows a notification.

Tap the notification to open the link associated with the QR code.

Mark Perone

Already an accidental author of Trusted.Team Mark Perone is the CEO of Rethink Revenue. A Marketing and Sales consultancy focused on architecting business organizations, his company works with small to enterprise level companies guiding them to record setting revenue.

Connect with Mark:

www.linkedin.com/in/rethinkrevenue

2

Thoughts from a Unicorn Salesperson

Melanie Booher | Culture Coach  | Game Maker | Disruptor | CEO & Entrepreneur

You know, you really are a unicorn right?

This phrase was recently said to me by a trusted and admired human resource colleague. In fact, just restating it makes me smile! Her compliment was to reference the fact that she believes I’m a rare breed – one who is good at HR but I also has a knack for selling. This combo is not a normal feat for someone in Human Resources. The best part is this – I really don’t think about it as sales at all…just building relationships and helping people solve their business problems relative to other people.

Growing up as an athlete and being competitive, does it surprise you that I also wanted to be one of the top-sellers of Girl Scout cookies? Then, after college I started a business selling jewelry with my friend Nicole (called Heartstrings). I loved finding a need and filling the gap.

As I became a mom and organizing my home became more important, I started selling Thirty-One, a popular line of purses, bags, and other items used to organize around your home (baskets or embroidered containers). If you walk through my house today, you’ll find an abundance of Thirty-One gear in just about every room in the house! But what I enjoyed most about Thirty-One was hosting parties at houses, creating fun events/girls nights, and having very natural conversations about home organizing – areas I really liked and happen to be a favorite topic among many women. Hosting a party,