Category: Sales

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Strategies I Apply to Maximize Networking

Strategies I Apply to Maximize Networking

Networking is a powerful tool because it gives you private information, access to various skill sets, and power. A broad, deep, and diverse network give you more opportunities in your lifetime. Because salespeople must constantly meet new people and connect disparate groups together, it gives power and influence once you earn it. The richness and reach and the diversity and breadth are what networking is all about.

But networking is not just in trade shows, events, or industry conferences. It can be anywhere— while getting your coffee, waiting in the lobby of a hotel, even inside an elevator on your way to another client. But only great salespeople can convert casual, coincidental, or impromptu conversations into sales conversions. It takes tactical and strategic moves and a lot of preparation and practice to nail down transitioning from small talk about sports and weather to clients signing purchase orders and engagement letters.

There are five phases we go through whenever we meet people. What we do in these five phases determines how we maximize networking for sales. I want to share the strategies I apply to get the most out of every networking opportunity using expert moves that transition you from the first phase to the last.

Preparation

When we think of networking, we immediately know that the first move is talking to someone. But what’s more unfamiliar is how crucial the “how” is when we talk to someone.

Think of it this way. If you’re attending a 2-hour industry event of a hundred people, and you are sure that five out of that hundred is the person you are looking for to make a sale, what steps do you take to make it easy to identify them within those two hours?

You might check if there’s an attendee list available for you to peruse so you can review names and job titles. Maybe you’ll also see if there’s an event hashtag where you can stalk people who post, hoping to find the sales leads you need. You’ll get familiar with their face, and then it’s easy to look for them face-to-face.

But it’s not all the time that you can prepare for networking. You have to be ready at all times, in all places, while being persuasive, influential, and powerful. How do you find the exact person you’re looking for, especially if it isn’t a scheduled event?

The five phases below teach you how to do that, even without preparation.

First phase: The Small Talk

When you’re in an event with the intention of networking, the best way to meet people is to simply walk up to them and make small talk.       It’s easy to introduce yourself, ask them how they are, or talk about the weather or sports. But keep in mind that small talk is the window where you can design the exact conversation you want to have. Remind yourself if you’re in the event to have fun or to work, because if it’s the latter, this first step is essential.

How I do it is by starting with a simple question. “Hi, I’m Jeev. How are you?”

Naturally, they will reply to answer your question and ask it back. When they do, I can lead the conversation where I want it to be. The formula is to use one or more of the following:

  • Say you find your work fun
  • Say you are a positive person
  • Say you are busy

These three strategies are more likely to generate the conversation you want to have. Instead of saying “I’m feeling great,” I can make it more insightful with something along the lines of “I’m feeling great, I’m working on three interesting projects right now, and I’m having fun.” It prompts the second phase of this networking strategy where your prospect asks, “So what do you do?”

Second phase: Sales Trailer

In movies, aside from your favorite actors, you get hooked when you watch the trailer. It’s a short sneak peek at what you can expect from the entire movie. It makes you curious, and it teases you on what it’s about or what happens next. The same logic applies to networking. Your sales trailer is your answer to the question, “what do you do?” This is the part where you need to stand out and breakthrough.

As salespeople, we shouldn’t answer this with a sentence that immediately ends the conversation. It should be the complete opposite. It must be interesting enough that they want to know more.

  • Say something that piques curiosity
  • Say what you do that is benefit-oriented
  • Say what you’re looking for

Instead of saying “I work in marketing” or “I am a salesman,” you can give a little bit of an edge to transition you to the third gear. “I run a company called Project Sales, and we help companies optimize their online presence for more organic traffic that generates qualified leads.” It can also be “I’m the sales director for a marketing automation company, and I’m looking to make the next industry disruption for the most interesting marketing tech company I can find.”

Third phase: Differentiator

The question I want them to ask next is, “what does that mean?” The goal is for my sales trailer to be like a movie trailer. I make them want to know more.

This third phase is now your time to share exactly what sets you apart from similar products or services. You tell them a little more about what you do and shift the conversation next to qualifying if they are the person you’re looking for among the lot.

  • Say what makes you unique
  • Say what your competitors or the general industry are doing wrong (without namedropping)
  • Say how you think your product or services can create a valuable impact

In other instances, I want them to ask, “what are you looking for?” because if they are curious, it transitions me immediately to the fourth phase, the qualifying stage.

Fourth phase: Qualifier

If you’re at an event with a limited duration, then you want to talk to the right people, so you find the five among the hundred who attended. This is when I ask impact questions that let me know if they are the people I need to network with to close a deal. Questions such as “How do you think about sales right now in your company?” or “how do you find the current marketing automation industry?” will lead me to determine if they are the kinds of people who would influence the decision of purchasing my products or hiring me for my services.

If you hear about “I’m not into sales, I’m a programmer” or “I don’t think about those kinds of things.” Then you know they’re not the person you’re looking for, and you shouldn’t be getting into a full-blown conversation with this person. This should trigger your exit strategy.

During small talk, I usually insert in the conversation that “I’m actually here for work and would love to meet many different people. I’m sure you’re the same way.”

This insert creates the door to my exit strategy.

I can stay in the conversation for a little bit to wrap up, then transition to “It was great chatting with you. As I mentioned earlier, I’m looking to meet a lot of people today, I’m sure you’re the same way, and I don’t want to keep you.” Then bid my polite goodbye and move to the next conversation and start again on the first phase.

The fifth phase: Exchange

If you find the needle among the haystack, the common mindset is to stay as long as possible in that conversation to make the sale. Wrong.

What I do in this phase is another exit move but turning it into something more actionable. “I do believe we have a lot to talk about! How about I get your business card, and I’ll send you an email first thing tomorrow to schedule a call or a meeting with you to discuss this further?”

Once I get that business card, this is followed by “It was great meeting you, but as I mentioned earlier, I’m here to meet many people. I’ll shoot you an email tomorrow and we can definitely get back where we left off.”

If you found one person among the five people you need to find, you still have four more and need to continue to network until you find that person. You don’t stay with them because it’s almost impossible that you can close a deal on the spot without ironing out all the details, and those take time. You’re in the event to network, and the more you move along from conversation to conversation, the more likely you are to find the right person you’re looking for.

These networking strategies take practice and expert moves to master. The key is to prepare your answer for each phase so you’re not put on the spot, and you can transition to each stage and each conversation smoothly and efficiently.

Sounds interesting? Let’s talk about how we can put these strategies into action for your business.

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About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

Why I Believe Selling Should Come First and How I Do It

Why I Believe Selling Should Come First and How I Do It

As salespeople, most of our time is dedicated to talking to clients and closing deals. But aside from that, we have internal stakeholders to manage, administrative tasks to do, emails and messages to respond to, travel time to consider in-between pitches, among many other functions that are part of our role.

We have many responsibilities in our hands, but among all that, our role is still primarily about selling. And to become productive and efficient with how we use our time, tasks that are associated with that should always come first— talking to clients, preparing for pitches, measuring progress against goals, and so on. In addition, we should also plot for the continuous development of our knowledge, skill, and discipline.

The key to becoming a high-performing salesperson is to plan the work so we can work the plan. And that’s exactly how I practice my craft to keep myself in the direction I want to go without overworking myself. I want to share the weekly habit that helps me manage my time better as a salesperson.

Each Sunday, I set aside 15 minutes to establish my priorities and plan how my upcoming week will go. What I do is:

  1. Plot my working time for the week; usually, 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.
  2. Schedule my priorities within the timeframe allotted. This includes meetings that I need to attend or activities that I can’t postpone.
  3. Block times for selling tasks, such as prospecting or attending client pitches throughout the week.
  4. Identify three things that I have to get done each day, usually something fast that I can already get out of the way instead of postponing.
  5. Identify a specific knowledge, skill, and discipline I will develop for the week. I think about things I can do to progress on each pillar, such as reading or keeping myself in check to apply certain strategies during my pitches.
  6. Assess what tasks I have to say “no” to. Prioritize what I can and figure out tasks that don’t really need my attention to proceed.

I use this time to design my ideal week, and at the end, I track how I performed against the standard I set. This allows me to stay on target, become more productive, and make measurable progress week by week.

Here’s how I prioritize:

Selling

All tasks directly related to selling are prioritized and are added first in my week’s schedule. I set aside time blocks for activities that involve pitching to clients and getting more prospects—calling potential customers, sending cold emails, networking online and offline, attending client calls and meetings, responding to client questions, preparing for presentations, and so on.

Self-development

Self-development includes activities related to improving myself. Preparing for skills, I’ll use to sell, practicing my selling and presentation, getting feedback from the team to address any gaps and improve the chances of closing the deal. These are extremely important items that may often be disregarded. But keep in mind, if you aren’t practicing with each other, you’re practicing with your customers. And we shouldn’t do that.

This is also when I can improve my knowledge, skill, and discipline. Activities such as reading a new book on networking, getting myself to ask more impactful questions for the week, or telling myself to start every meeting with a purpose-benefit-check strategy belong as a second priority. As I highlighted in previous posts, our knowledge, skill, and discipline should be continuously evolving and need to be nurtured throughout my career. It should make time for it, and not if only I have the spare time.

Communication

The third priority is all about communication. Following up with client requests, writing proposals to send during my Selling schedule, or capturing stories I need for my presentation. This is also my time to get in touch with customers and go above and beyond by asking for their feedback and how else I can help them.

I also can’t avoid important internal emails, so I insert them in this schedule to set aside the time to respond to any pressing issues I need to address or take action.

Internal

I allocate my fourth priority for any important internal activities that I need to attend. This includes meetings, one-on-one discussions with my team, town halls, quarterly evaluations, updates to stakeholders, and other internal activities and updates.

Tracking

My fifth priority is all about tracking, such as updating the CRM, assessing my progress, measuring my progress against goals, planning my next steps, identifying baselines, and coming up with benchmarks. Everything that has to do with measurement and tracking progress is my fifth priority.

Everything else

All other tasks that don’t fit to the five priorities above are of last importance. These are items that are less important or likely not to have a significant impact if canceled or postponed for a couple of days—for example, administrative tasks such as organizing my files or updating my personal documents and reports.

We attend a lot of meetings and calls and respond to many client communications throughout our day that we tend to overschedule. That can hamper your productivity and affect your relationships with both internal and external stakeholders. It’s also important to allot ten to fifteen minutes of time in-between meetings to digest meeting discussions and action points and help you prepare for your next meeting.

Developing the habit of being clear about capabilities you are working on, tracking them, and scheduling time to work on them is very important as a salesperson. The three pillars of selling— knowledge, skill, and discipline— will only matter if you continue improving them and learning new things. Once you are able to put them in your schedule as part of the plan instead of “when you have time,” the easier it is to become a habit and help you become a high-performing salesperson.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

Preparing to Make a Sale: The Competitive Talking Points I Use

Preparing to Make a Sale: The Competitive Talking Points I Use

Part of the sales process preparation phase is getting ready to talk about the competition. I discovered that this is practically an unavoidable topic when I’m having initial conversations with potential customers. As salespeople, it’s our job to be ready for this type of conversation at a moment’s notice.

So how do you prepare to talk about your competitors? You need to have talking points for each one of them.

Over the years, I’ve observed that a lot of salespeople are unprepared to talk about the competition. They either attempt to avoid it or talk about their competitors at such a high level that they fail to provide the key differentiators the customers are looking for. Worse still, there are salespeople who resort to disparaging the competition.

If we don’t prepare competitive talking points, we fail to draw a clear distinction between the solution we offer and what our competitors offer.

The Competitive Talking Points Outline

I wanted to be able to talk about the competition with my customers, so I learned and mastered the Competitive Talking Points Framework. It’s designed to leverage your knowledge of the competitors, and to enable you to deliver it with skill and discipline. Every company creates a competitive analysis, and it’s something that we as salespeople should be familiar with.

Here’s a good outline to follow when you’re creating your competitive talking points:

  • Recognize your competitor’s strengths. You can also cite specific examples.
  • Provide key insights on what makes you different from your competitor (eg. what your solution focuses on compared to theirs).
  • Invite the customer to evaluate their needs.
  • Share the solution that you offer. If it’s not what the customer needs, give them valuable advice on the solution they should pursue.

Now let’s put this framework into action so we can deliver high-value competitive talking points:

“Company XYZ is one of the best in the industry when it comes to traditional and out-of-home advertising.

Where we are different is that we focus on helping B2B and technology companies with their digital marketing by offering consultative services and creating strategies and campaigns around our clients’ specific goals.

As you think about your current needs, if you lean more towards traditional advertising, you should definitely be talking to the folks at Company XYZ.

But if you’re looking to explore more ways how your business can grow through digital marketing, then we sure hope that you consider us.”

The Competitive Talking Points Framework

Now let’s unpack the three principles that make up the Competitive Talking Points Framework, and I’ll share with you how to practice each one of them. First, let’s look at the aspect of Discipline.

  1. Do not disparage the competition
    You should never find yourself doing this, as it’s unnecessary and it’s simply not a good practice. It’s always better to take the high road. I learned that it’s important to stay vigilant on this, as it’s possible to get caught off guard by a comment that implies you’re better than your competition. If we’re not ready to answer that, we might say something that comes off as criticism of our competition.

Being ready at a moment’s notice to talk about the competition allows us to elevate the conversation and stay above the fray.

  • Take control of the situation
    When we prepare ourselves for a conversation about our competition, we avoid becoming reactive. Rather, we’re able to take control of the situation.
  • Determine if the competitor is a better fit within that moment
    We can use this opportunity to qualify or disqualify a potential customer by determining whether the competition is indeed a better fit. While this would be bad news, we’ll be better off finding out now than wasting more time with a buyer who’s just going to go to the competition.

Now let’s look at the Knowledge facet of the framework — what you should learn before facing a customer.

  1. The competitive landscape 
    The framework requires us to have a solid understanding of our company’s competitive landscape and where each competitor plays.
  • Your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
    We also need to know what our competitors are good at and where they need improvement. However, you’ll notice that in our example above, the weaknesses are not mentioned. Rather, we focused on the competitor’s strengths.

Why? This goes back to mindset. As salespeople, we should want our customers to make the best decision, and they can only do that when they’re objective.

Sometimes, our competitors are simply a better fit for their needs. Our job is to figure that out fast, so we don’t waste any time. The Competitive Talking Points Framework allows us to close or let go of a deal faster when we share what we know about how the competition might solve a customer’s challenge. Then we can draw a key distinction between our approach and our competitor’s, all while remaining positive and consultative.

The framework helps us build trust quickly because we’re simply stating the relative positioning of the competition and letting the customer decide what’s important to them.

Lastly, let’s examine the Skills required to use this critical framework.

  1. Listen to the customer’s needs and concerns
    Start by listening. You must listen closely to what the customer is saying, where their needs are greatest, and what their concerns are.
  • Ask the right questions
    You should also know how to ask the right questions so you can:
  • Test assumptions
  • Discover other needs
  • Determine priorities
  • Understand the role of other possible stakeholders

Once we have listened and asked the right questions, we’re more able to, at a moment’s notice, use the framework to focus our capabilities on the things that matter most to the customer, and differentiate those capabilities against the competitor’s strengths.

Mastering the Competitive Talking Points Framework takes tons of skill and practice because you need to be able to do it in real time. It’s part of the preparation phase of the sales process because you can know the framework in advance, and then use your skill and discipline to take charge of that conversation.

What the Framework Does

The Competitive Talking Points Framework allows us to build trust, credibility, and confidence by demonstrating to each customer that we not only know the competitive landscape, but that we respect our competition as well. And that we can speak intelligently and concisely about each competitor in a way that’s focused on the customer’s needs.

Going on Offense

Once you’ve learned and practiced your competitive talking points, the expert move is to go on offense. Rather than wait for the customer to bring up a competitor, why not lead?

Are you throwing an unnecessary wrench into your sales process by doing this? Quite the opposite, actually. As salespeople, we should assume that our customers are also evaluating our competitors. And we should take the lead in bringing them into the conversation.

How might this look in practice? Let’s take our example from earlier:

“Based on what you have shared with me, I got the impression that you are more familiar with traditional advertising.

You may have heard of Company XYZ, as they are one of the best traditional and out-of-home advertising agencies.

Where we are different is that we focus on helping B2B and technology companies with their digital marketing by offering consultative services and creating strategies and campaigns around our clients’ specific goals.

As you think about your current needs, if you lean more towards traditional advertising, you should definitely be talking to the folks at Company XYZ.

But if you’re looking to explore more ways how your business can grow through digital marketing, then we sure hope that you consider us.”

May I know where digital marketing is on your priority list?”

What Going on Offense Does

Going on offense is an expert move. So what does it do for us?

  • Demonstrates our proactiveness
    We are demonstrating that we’re unafraid of the competitor by bringing them into the conversation proactively.
  • Shows our care for our customer’s needs
    If you’ll notice in our example above, even though we went on offense by bringing up our competitor, we also showed genuine care about tackling our customer’s real needs.
  • Builds trust
    By taking the lead in talking about our competitors, we are building trust in the process. With expert moves like this, we become a trusted advisor. 

Are you integrating risk into your sales process by mentioning a competitor? Maybe. But remember this: the credibility we gain by focusing on the customer’s real needs far outweighs the risk of bringing competitors into the conversation. So, we should not be afraid to be proactive on this topic.

Always be Prepared

You never know when your competitors might come up in your sales conversations, or when you might need to take the lead in talking about them. It’s always best to be prepared by having a clear understanding of your competitive landscape and by mastering the Competitive Talking Points Framework.

Let’s talk about how we can put these competitive talking points into action for your business.

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About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

How I Filter My Target Market to Sell Better

Businessman holding red dart push on target. Business strategy planning success target goals. Business development concept

How I Filter My Target Market to Sell Better

I have built many different disruptive online businesses over the course of several years. I put in long hours of research, market study, strategy, and finetuning for each company I built.

One thing I realized in doing so is how important filtering my target market is to sell better. Because at the end of the day, regardless of how much time you allotted in development or how much of a killer your product or service is, it isn’t worth anything if no one pays for it.

Introducing my offering to people is a lot more than the number of reach and impression I get. It will only matter if I’m reaching the right people.

Pains and gains are a big factor in doing this. The Vitamins and Painkillers Sales Tool is a great start to becoming a high-performing salesperson. Narrowing my target market makes it easier for me to tighten my messaging. Suppose I try to communicate with multiple audiences, in that case, it will dilute the message because the language I use and the angle I take may not apply to all. For example, how you talk to the Products lead will be very different from talking to the Chief Operating Officer. Their problems and priorities are different from one another.

Refining your filters by challenging

It’s easy to say that my target markets are Fortune 500 companies or CXOs. But there’s a lot more to know what kind of profile I want to sell to. You want to refine your filters by challenging your filters until you can’t challenge them anymore.

Pick apart your logic or bounce it off someone you trust to help you dissect your target audience further. Instead of letting yourself think that your target market are just technology companies, you narrow it down further so you know exactly how you should communicate with your intended prospect.

You can’t be lazy when filtering your target market. And many salespeople and entrepreneurs get this wrong and get them into trouble.

Don’t let others simply tell you that you did right, instead make it your purpose to do it the right way the first time before you run into missed opportunities and failed pitches because you didn’t.

Filtering my target lets me think about the tiniest details that can get me closer to my goals. Some questions I typically ask myself include:

  • What pain am I helping them solve?
  • Who am I going to talk to within the target company?
  • How long will it take to engage them?
  • How easy will it be to find prospects that fit who I am looking for?
  • Who are my competitors?
  • How do I position my services against these competitors?

Taking the time to filter my targets gives me two immediate benefits: one because it forces me to think through who my actual targets are— people who are living the problem, not just near the problem. It prevents me from wandering off pitching to the wrong people who won’t be affecting the decision-making process. It helps me think concretely about the ultimate pains and gains they can get and makes the whole process faster. Second, it allows me to test my messaging to the same people. When you think of the specific pains you want to eliminate for them or the gains you want to help with for a group of people, it allows you to tighten your messaging. Instead of testing different messaging to different people with different needs and not making sense to any of them, this is the chance to make the messaging more concrete, telling them exactly what they need to hear.

“All things to all people” is one of the biggest mistakes made by salespeople and businessmen. Instead of sending generic details about my services and hope it’s what someone needs, I gain the ability to let them see the value I can do for them better.

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, says, “Cast a narrow net and really concentrate on serving those customers… Once you’ve monopolized your own, small market, you can gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets”. And that’s exactly what filtering your target is about.

Selling to customer type

Another common sales territory is through customer type. Say you are selling software that uses artificial intelligence to determine when machines can break down. The pain eliminated by your service is removing the guesswork of finding out when. For gains, you make the processes more efficient and help companies ensure uptime.

Here’s how you may be able to filter it:

  • Filter based on the type of business you want to first sell to.
    The industry you may want to tap first is likely companies that rely on machines for their sales. Such as manufacturing companies who will incur losses when production halts.
  • Filter based on manufacturers running on high volumes.
    Companies that produce high volumes require high uptime reliability.
  • Filter based on high uptime need and high volume.
    This can be Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) such as food and beverage companies.
  • Filter based on the team responsible for those requirements.
    In this scenario, this will be the operations or the production department.
  • Filter based on the people responsible within those teams.
    Within the operations or productions department, there will be the reliability or quality assurance responsible in making sure the manufacturing process is uninterrupted.
  • Filter based on specific people who feel the pain of downtime caused by unanticipated failures.
    These can be the people who are responsible in checking those machines regularly.               

Filtering targets when selling to established companies

When filtering based on specific companies, you usually stretch your reach too wide. Suppose I were to market to established companies. In that case, I want to focus on the very people who can influence a decision. For example, if I were to sell a payroll service software and want to target a big manufacturing company, here’s how my filtering can look like:

  • Filter specific to the team involved.
    This can be the human resource division of the company.
  • Filter to the specific team.
    With thousands of employees, the company likely has a specific the department in charge of payroll.
  • Filter to the specific unit.
    Who are the people involved in payroll services who may need this software?
  • Filter to the specific group.
    There may be a task force responsible for handling payroll for the different levels of the company.
  • Filter to the specific person.
    Who am I going to call and sell to? The payroll director or manager.

Filtering targets when selling yourself

Selling yourself is another common thing we all need to do in sales. But when you’re looking for a place to get hired, you filter out opportunities just as much as when you are selling products or services to others.

You know the role you want to go for, maybe a marketing manager or a sales lead. You know why you’re a great fit in the role because you’re a great communicator or a great manager. Your experience and interest are in the technology industry. You want to stay within the general location of New York because you don’t want to transfer to another region. And you want to be in the big league by targeting to join Facebook or Google.

Filtering your targets when selling yourself can go more than that, and here are examples:

  • Filter companies with a specific pain or gain that you can help on.
    Are you the type who gets constant feedback about your communication skills and bridging teams to create harmony? Then it makes sense to look for companies who have this challenge that hinder them from expanding their portfolio.
  • Filter based on which department you want to join.
    If you want to be the marketing manager then it likely belongs to the operations or sale and marketing team. By this point, you still don’t know who to talk to, and that’s what you need.
  • Filter based on the specific unit under that department.
    That may be under the sales team or the marketing operations team.
  • Filter based on the exact role.
    This may include the sales director or the marketing lead who currently feels the pain of miscommunications and the HR manager who wants to gain credibility by hiring a great marketing manager. From this, you can engage with them in the proper messaging, pain or gain to build your case for hiring.

Takeaways

Filtering your targets lets you become more specific in how you engage with your prospects. The more specific you are, the tighter and more concrete your messaging is, because you can show the exact value you can give to them by helping them eliminate pains or reach gains.

If you fail, then it may be a message problem, in which case you can tweak it to be more concrete. Or it can also be a product-market fit problem, where the industry may just not be ready for you yet. That’s when you can pivot to a different set of targets to filter, craft your message, and try again because another industry may benefit from it.

Not sure how to move forward? Let’s talk about how you can do the same for your business.

GET IN TOUCH NOW

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

Why I Use Vitamins and Painkillers When Selling

Why I Use Vitamins and Painkillers When Selling

It’s more common for people to buy and consume painkillers when they are sick compared to purchasing and consuming vitamins on a day-to-day basis to keep healthy. It’s also easier to forget to drink your vitamins because the effects are not immediate and serve you longer. On the other hand, painkillers are usually taken when needed, and consumption is generally urgent, such as managing allergic reactions or easing severe pains. One serves as a precaution, the other as a remedy, but both of them are important.

An age-old question in venture capital is, “are you selling vitamins or painkillers?”

Venture capitalists love investing in painkillers because the reality is, people are ready to pay a premium to address urgency, such as pain, compared to the longer-term benefits of vitamins.

As a salesperson, I can’t let one or the other dictate if I should only be pitching to a healthy company or a business with existing challenges because there are opportunities to tackle both. This can be applied when I use the vitamins and painkillers sales tool to make my messaging crisp and tight to communicate better how I can help a customer.

What is the vitamins and painkillers sales tool

The vitamins and painkillers sales tool uses both the long-term benefits of vitamins and easing the pain using painkillers. Business owners want to reap benefits that can help them for a long time, such as buying pricier equipment for more durability long-term or sending delegates to training to bring back business learning. On the other hand, the same as you would take painkillers to manage your stomachache, a business will move faster and will be willing to spend more to handle issues and other urgent tasks, such as a PR crisis or fixing critical machinery in a manufacturing process.

This tool includes four key steps: anticipating the question, identifying the problem, need, and value, capturing the pain and gain statements, and enumerating progress made and pain eliminated.

1. Anticipate questions
One of the most basic tactics in information gathering is the Five Ws and H framework. It consists of What, Who, Why, When, Where, and How, and helps me collect key information. Using this framework in sales allows me to tighten the message and help me close a deal because I clearly understand the goals I set.

Below is a set of five Ws and H questions and some guide questions I use to craft my answers. These are questions that are expected to be asked by any new prospect you may have. The key is to prepare the answers and keep them short and concise, as a phrase or a sentence. Otherwise, instead of tightening the message, you may end up confusing yourself and the potential client because of too many points you want to get across.

  • What are you selling?
    What are the primary products or services am I selling to the prospect? Is there any specific one I want to hero? This may be a basic question, but it creates clarity in my intentions and goals. There may also be a wide range of products and services that may not be directly related to each other. Each product and service will have a different target market and messaging, and identifying which one to focus on is important to tighten your message.
  • Who is it for?
    Who am I targeting? What is their profile? Are they CXOs of a major firm? IT pros? Small and medium business owners? The way I communicate with each will be different, so it is important that this is clear. For example, IT professionals will be more focused on the technical aspect, while business decision-makers may be more responsive to possible effects on employee efficiency and cost savings.
  • How does it work?
    How will I get the job done? Do they avail of my services to make their team more productive? Do they purchase my tool to bring in more leads? Do they hire me to standardize the process?
  • Why does it matter?
    Why do my product or service matter to my target client and their business? Why do they need to purchase my product or hire me for my services? Why should they buy from me or hire me instead of someone else?
  • When and where does it pay off?
    When and where will they see the impact of your products or services? Where will this value show? Is it short-term or long-term? Is it immediate or needs a few years to ROI? Is it tangible? Will it show when they compare the baselines to the results?

2. Identify the problem, need, and value for their business

Every business has someone looking into how to make everything better— faster processes, more productive employees, higher savings, and so on. But if you can help them see these challenges and how you can help them, they would know that you did your research and are prepared to offer solutions. There’s also the benefit of being an outsider looking in because you provide fresh perspective.

  • Identify a discreet problem that your customer is facing
    Clearly showing customers gaps that they might not have noticed immediately sparks an interest. These may be issues that are within the fine print of what they do, or what they may think is unimportant.
  • Identify the need that the problem is creating
    If I can provide the needs that these problems are creating, I show them the impact of the issue on their business. Giving them this information allows me to show actionable steps that I can help them with when they hire me.
  • Identify the value to your customer when the problem is eliminated
    Once I identify the value when the problem is eliminated, I gain a better understanding of the concerns. It also shows that the need I presented will yield good results.

I then list each problem I can solve, the associated need, and the value accrued in a simple table to quickly summarize and lay out what I can do for the client. For example:

ProblemNeedValue
Slow site speedOptimize image and video file sizes and revisit hosting with better allocationLower bounce rates
Low quality leadsBetter targeting of adsBetter leads that have higher potential to convert

3. Capture the from-to statements

The pain (from) and gain (to) statements are key details that I create to clearly enumerate the challenge and the intended result for each. Take the table you created in the previous step and enumerate the pains you are helping the customer alleviate and the gains you are helping them make against the challenges they are facing. For example:

Pain statementsGain statements
Slow site speed increases bounce rate and affect lead generationFaster site retains interest that gives opportunity to connect with leads
Low quality leads increases cost per acquisition with no benefitBetter targeting of ads and filtration maximizes costs spent

4. State progress made and pain eliminated

When you help people make progress, you help increase positive results. On the other hand, when you help people eliminate pain, you decrease negative outcomes. This is the time I narrow my messaging by clearly stating the progress made and the pain eliminated. For example:

Progress madePain eliminated
Increase in qualified leads and revenueDecrease losses and stress
Increase confidenceDecrease uncertainty and fear

In conclusion

The vitamins and painkillers sales tool enable me to develop several ways in talking about impact, to be clearer and more concise, yet targeted in my messaging for faster and more effective results for my client and I.

Sounds interesting? Let’s talk about how we can put these tools into action for your business.

GET IN TOUCH NOW

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

The Three Pillars I Live By as a Salesperson

The Three Pillars I Live By as a Salesperson

Any salesman going into a pitch meeting knows that doing your research about the company, finding out about their objectives or challenges, and bringing your A-game is the first step in getting new business. After all, when you want to impress a potential customer, you want to make sure you know as much as you can, so you have answers when they challenge your competency and intentions.

But to me, a great salesman uses more than his knowledge to close a client. Demonstrating my skills and exhibiting my discipline proves to be very essential in selling. How I communicate, the strategy I use for my opening, when I decide to start talking, and when I should be listening, among many others, create the pillars that can help anyone become a high-performing salesperson. In fact, without knowledge, skill, and discipline, it can shake the very foundation of our efforts as a salesman.

But what exactly does it mean when we use these three things to build our selling framework to become a high-performing salesperson?

Knowledge is power

We can easily define knowledge as what we know— what we can recall, summarize or explain to others. Facts, stories, frameworks, concepts, and formulas are all knowledge. It is what we typically prepare for before talking to clients or for our day-to-day life.

Knowledge also has pitfalls. As a salesperson, it’s easy to rely on what I know. I researched my prospect, read about the big news that affects their business, did background checks on the stakeholders involved, and prepared my speech about what I can do for them. Going on and on about the products or services I offer, stating facts, and enumerating credentials and awards I’ve garnered is easy because I can pull out that information from my knowledge database in a blink of an eye. But when I become over-reliant on my knowledge, I’ll be focusing more on myself and less on them.  In the end, I may end up confusing, overwhelming, or boring my clients.

If I rely only on my own, I can also mistakenly use outdated or plainly wrong information that won’t connect with my customer. Imagine sharing a case study from the ’90s when talking to a tech-savvy millennial digital marketer. I won’t get my point across simply because it’s not relevant or it’s not the correct language or story that can tug a nerve.

“I’ve got this” is one of the most dangerous sentences that can be spoken in the business world. And that’s because mindset fuels the energy you can bring in sales. When you say those words, you stop being curious, and you rely on what you know without hesitation. That’s the challenge. When I simply depend on my knowledge, I stop learning, and I stop seeing how there are several other things I can improve on. Knowledge is important, but it’s not all-important. If I can’t put my knowledge into action, then it’s nothing but abstract thought. Until I can act on what I know, the things I know about my chosen profession won’t make a difference in my performance.

Rewiring my mind with skills

When you go into a room to sell, do you think of the skills you will use to close the deal as much as the information, ideas, and frameworks you add to your presentation file? Did I focus on how I’ll share the narrative— is it through a list of facts or storytelling? How about the way I assess their interest— is it checking their body language and facial expression or asking them point-blank about their hesitation?

Skills talk about the timing of an action. When do I speak? When do I object? When do I show case studies? When do I ask an impact question? When do I tell a great story? Developing my skills, using, and practicing them lets me become a high-performing salesman because it allows me to improve what I know, update the knowledge I have gathered, and lets me get better and better at what I do.

Your skills are abilities you acquired through practice, sustained effort, and applying feedback you receive over time. When it involves an idea, you can tap your cognitive skills, if it involves a thing then you should use your technical skills, if it involves people, then it uses your interpersonal skills. Regardless of what type of skill you choose to apply when you sell, it’s a continuous cycle because your focus and skills can degrade over time. There isn’t such a thing as “set it and forget it” for any skill you need, whether it’s for selling or for every day. Even when I learned how to ride a bike in my childhood, if I don’t use it, my skills and balance can get rusty, and I need to re-learn and practice it again to be able to ride it as an adult.

In selling, a lot of things can affect decisions, and it’s a matter of using the correct skills so I can showcase my knowledge in the best possible light. It helps to have continuous practice to refresh my mind and rewire my brain to encode new skills and abilities regularly, or I’ll also get rusty.

Choosing discipline

Discipline is a choice. The choice of taking an action or not. But it is binary— I do, or I don’t. However, it’s only effective if I have both knowledge and multiple skills in my roster. If I only know one skill or one kind of knowledge, then there’s no choice to make, and my decision is automatic to that one thing I do know.

Deciding whether you should take action or not is another key aspect of any sales pitch. Do I speak now, or listen until I have all the information I need? Do you I the floor for discussion as I’m are presenting? Do I interact with my audience as I talk? Do I use storytelling to narrate something my prospect can relate to? Do I send them a thank you note after taking a meeting with them?

Discipline and skills go hand in hand. The former answers whether you should perform an action, while the latter answers when you should be doing it. Showing discipline decides if I should ask an impact question, send 50 cold emails, or do my pitch over coffee instead of a conference room. While skills determine at how and what point I should ask the impact question, if I should send 50 cold emails on a Monday morning or on a Wednesday afternoon, or if I am doing a breakfast or afternoon coffee pitch meeting to close a deal.

Balancing knowledge, skills, and discipline

Sales is like a contact sport. You can learn it in theory and practice it until it becomes a habit. But, the only way it works is when you can balance knowledge, skills, and discipline as you constantly grind to get better.

Let me give you an example. A sports coach can easily tell an athlete to read books and theories about basketball or watch gameplays and wins for the past twenty years to learn. They’ll harness the necessary knowledge to understand the rules and mechanics of the game. But that wouldn’t matter if skills and discipline do not accompany the information he gathers during an actual match. An athlete needs the skills to decide the kind of strategy in the gameplay or when it’s best to fall back or go for the kill. He also needs the discipline to determine whether or not he should do each shoot and pass or if an offensive or defensive stance is better within the situation at any given time.

This applies the same to salespeople, I can just read about all strategies and formulas to get new business, but I need to practice, apply, and have the ability to discern when the right timing is.

When you understand knowledge, skill, and discipline at each sales stage, you can make more conscious decisions that rely on only one pillar you are familiar with. I don’t have to leave it to chance if a customer’s decision goes in my favor because I influence it by balancing the three pillars I need to become a high-performing salesperson. Removing the guesswork from the sales process and making each of my actions well-thought-out and deliberate is an essential step in selling.

Taking the time to practice and improve and repeating it over and over makes you better and better. And a high-performing salesman— or any great man— doesn’t stop learning no matter how high your role gets in the corporate hierarchy. Instead, balancing these three pillars becomes a stepping stone for even greater success.

At what level is your knowledge, skill, and discipline? Let’s talk about how we can take it to the next step.

GET IN TOUCH NOW

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

What are you selling? Candy, Vitamins,or Painkillers?

Your company’s got a great idea for a new product, service, or feature.

The first question you ask is: Will it generate more sales?

The answer: It depends on whether it’s a candy, vitamin, or pain killer.

Painkillers always sell. When you’re in pain, you’ll grasp anything to help alleviate the discomfort. A painkiller is a must-have. Vitamins? Not so much. Sure, they can help, but they’re just nice-to-have. It doesn’t really make a difference whether I take it today or not. Candy? Well, I don’t need candy. In fact, it may even be bad for me. But it’s cool, the latest thing, and everyone’s buying.

Irrespective of what you’re selling, it’s either candy, vitamins, or painkillers.

It may even be two or all three at the same time!

One Man’s Candy Is Another’s Painkiller

As a product, how would you categorize Facebook? Is it candy, vitamin, or painkiller?

The answer will differ dependingon whom you ask:

  • For the taxicab driver who spends some of each day waiting to pick up a fare, Facebook is probably candy. It allows him to see what his friends are doing and make comments. It’s non-essential but helps pass the time.
  • But for the working Mum who wants to stay in touch with friends and family, share in their lives, and celebrate special events, it’s possibly a vitamin. A nice-to-have, but not essential.
  • And for the widowed grandmother living alone, far from her children and grandchildren, it’s undoubtedly a painkiller. It’s the only way to stay in touch with what’s happening in their lives. It’s essential.

CANDY

Candy gives people pleasure. They’re sugary, sweet, and deliver a sugar “high,” but we’ve been told they’re bad for us try and avoid them. Candy doesn’t solve a problem, doesn’t have to be bad for you, not everyone has to like them, and you can live quite happily without it. Online games serve up candy day after day, and great games generate massive income for their creators. 

VITAMINS

Vitamins are cool ideas. They’re great but not essential. We know they’re good for us but aren’t in a rush to buy them. But they could be a painkiller tomorrow. Think about a product like Zoom. It started off as an alternative video conferencing tool; something we installed but rarely used. Today? It’s an essential part of almost every business and household across the globe during COVID-19.

PAINKILLERS

Painkillers, on the other hand, are essential. If the pain is bad enough (e.g. kidney stones), you’ll do everything possible to alleviate the suffering. When it comes to selling, having a painkiller that addresses a pain point is your quickest path to success. And if your product is an addictive painkiller—one people can’t do without even when the pain subsides—all the better.

Three different individuals, all with friends and family, but different needs.

What is it? Positioning Your Product

Whether your product is candy, vitamins, or painkillers impacts your go-to-market (GTM) strategy.  But it requires more than merely understanding what your product is and what it can do. As we saw from the Facebook example, knowing your target audience is essential for marketing and sales. So ask yourself:

  • Who is our target customer? Is it the right group for the product?
  • Could there be more than one customer persona?
  • Is our product non-essential but give people pleasure?
  • Does our product make people’s lives easier?
  • Could our product become a painkiller in the future?
  • Does our product address an existing pain point? Are people looking for it now?
  • Is our product addictive? Will people keep using it after it’s fixed their pain point?

Once you’ve identified whether your product is candy, a vitamin, a painkiller, or a mix, write down the need and value for each target persona. State what pain point or desire is being addressed, the anticipated impact of acquiring your product, and what you need to do for them to become addicts. As the sales cycle evolves, update your positioning based on your observations, including market trends, positive outcomescreated, and adverse outcomeseliminated.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need an addictive painkiller to be successful. That would be nice, but it’s not realistic.

The most important thing is to know your target audience and position your products correctly.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

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Sales

When It Comes to Sales, Knowledge is Overrated

Have you ever gone into a meeting with a salesperson and walked out overwhelmed and exhausted?

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another.

Sales folk usually know their stuff inside out. But as a potential client, do I need to know everything they know?

The answer is simple: “No, I don’t.”

As a customer, I want to know how your solution impacts me. I don’t need to know everything about your company, product range, and what your other customers are doing. I want to understand if you can solve my problem or not, and if you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost.

High-performing sales people combine what they know with skill and discipline to increase their effectiveness, carefully choosing what to say and when to say it.  Let’s illustrate the process.

Knowledge
Competent salespeople understand both their own company and its offerings and the business challenges and market characteristics of their target clients, e.g., strengths, weaknesses, competition, and trends. Gathering and synthesizing market intelligence helps ensure productive conversations with clients, aligning problems and challenges with potential solutions, and developing an action plan for moving forward.

But before picking up the phone or walking into a sales call, there are other things a sales rep needs to know about the stakeholder, their company, and the deal on the table:

  • The background of the person they’re meeting (Hint: Use LinkedIn or Zoom Info)
  • Key metrics he/she is most likely being measured against based on the customer persona
  • Recent news about the company,e.g., deals announced, personnel movements, or investments
  • The solution within the portfolio that best matches the company’s challenge and stakeholder metrics
  • Solution pricing and implementation details and time frames

Armed with relevant, up-to-date information, you’re now in a position to utilize your knowledge and apply your sales skills.

Skills
Every sales professional’s goal is to provide solutions that address each client’s needs and expectations. But that requires more than having a thorough of their challenges and objectives and presenting your products or services.

To be effective, you need to develop a set of essential interpersonal skills. These include being adaptable, skillfully combining discovery and impact questions with storytelling to create alignment, and thinking out of the box when put on the spot. You may also need to read between the lines (i.e., what isn’t the client saying), adjust to stakeholder body language, and overcome objections and potential show-stoppers.

But there’s a caveat.

You can’t learn these skills online or in a classroom. The only way to acquire them is through repeated practice, effort, and feedback. If you don’t practice, you won’t get the feedback you need to hone those skills and take them to the next level. And never think to yourself, “I’ve got this.” Those words imply that your leaning on old skills and experiences that may not work in new, evolving sales situations. Go into every new opportunity with your eyes open, confident that you can seal the deal but ready to learn new things and practice discipline.

Discipline
An essential component of every sales cycle involves taking the steps necessary to create or strengthen lasting relationships with new or existing clients. Doing so encompasses establishing rapport, communicating using various channels, and conducting productive meetings.Doing so takes both skill and discipline.

Discipline means making conscious choices regarding what to do and when to do it. You may have both the knowledge and the skill to do something, but timing can mean the difference between success and failure. For example, should you talk or listen, discuss benefits or pricing, let the meeting meander or rein it in, respond to an objection or stick to the subject? All of these are within your control, but choosing the right time takes discipline.

Discipline—like skill—takes practice. When you have the knowledge and a list of skills to choose from, discipline yourself to use a combination of them at the right time to maximize the impact.

The Bottom Line

Over reliance on knowledge is a trap. It’s easier to talk yourself out of a deal than it is to talk yourself into one—just talk too much. High-performance sales teams build their skills and discipline through a continuous cycle of practice, feedback, and implementation. When a sale stalls during negotiations, it’s often an indication that skills and discipline were lacking in earlier stages of the sales cycle. Understanding what skills to develop and when to use them will help you navigate this critical juncture in the sales cycle.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

Categories
Sales

What makes a great Sales Rep?

Being a sales rep isn’t easy.

It’s like riding a roller coaster: highs followed by lows, earsplitting thrills by gut-wrenching disappointments.

But speak to anyone who’s been a sales rep for a while, and they’ll tell you, yes, it’s hard, but at the end of the ride very satisfying.

And the best thing about sales is that success is up to the individual. People talk about the “natural-born salesperson” who could sell “ice to Inuits,” but how many of those do you know? And why would you want to do that in the first place? Studies show that those friendly, enthusiastic, outgoing extroverts don’t make better salespeople than quiet, reserved, thoughtful introverts. In fact, the extroverts are often the ones behind the stereotype of salespeople being overbearing, pushy, and manipulative. 

When Being in the Middle Makes the Most sense

But great salespeople aren’t like that. The most successful sales reps are the ones that fit in the mid-range between introvert and extrovert, having traits of both but knowing when best to use them. Yes, to be successful, you have to be friendly, determined, and tenacious, but you also have to be seen as being caring, knowledgeable, helpful, and trustworthy.

And there’s a good reason for that!

A dedicated salesperson doesn’t view selling as a one-time transaction. Whether working out of a food truck, shoe store, or corporate headquarters in midtown Manhattan or Silicon Valley, great sales reps are all trying to achieve the same goal—build a business. And to do that, they need repeat clients, resulting in more money in their pocket and a better customer experience.

5 Indispensable Qualities Make a Great Sales Rep

Whether you’re looking to create a successful sales team or enhance your skills, here are five things qualities you need to look for and nurture—both in yourself and your team.

1. Curiosity

Selling isn’t an action; it’s a mindset. But unlike mediocre salespeople who think they know everything, look for situations where they appear intelligent, avoid challenges and risk, and dodge advice so as not to threaten their view of themselves, great sales reps do the opposite. They’re curious about their customers (current or potential), ask questions, and welcome feedback.

A successful sales rep empathizes with his customer, understands their goals, and rides alongside—not opposite—for the journey. And that all starts with being curious and asking questions. 

2. Attentiveness

When people think about sales, they often picture that slick, smooth-talking used car salesman who’s not listening and won’t take no for an answer.Great salespeople aren’t like that; they’re not preachy or dogmatic. They don’t call or visit customers to tell them what they need. Instead, they call them to find out what challenges or problems they’re facing and offer assistance. They listen carefully, ask questions to make sure they understand the situation fully, and then respond carefully and thoughtfully—matching the need to a solution—before (hopefully) closing the deal.

And if they don’t have a solution in their portfolio, an honest salesperson readily admits it, stays in touch, and adds value as best they can. If you do that, you’ll be viewed, not as a vendor but as a trusted advisor.

3. Resilience

The famous saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” means more to salespeople than most others. Sales isn’t for the faint of heart or for those who feel entitled to success. It just doesn’t work like that. One month you’re riding a wave; the next, you might be struggling to close only one deal. But great salespeople don’t give up. They’re resilient in the real sense of the word, being able to “withstand or recover quickly from difficult situations.”

Great sales reps keep going, viewing a poor run as a temporary setback and focusing on nurturing the pipeline for the next month. Even when they experience disappointment, they turn rejection into motivation and failure into fuel.

4. Confidence

Even if they’re momentarily embroiled in uncertainty, a great salesperson exudes confidence and control. That’s what customers expect from a trusted advisor. You may not have all the questions, but a calm disposition, well-prepared pitch—combined with a measured dose of enthusiasm—will go a long way to engendering confidence in your audience.

And while you never want to mislead your audience or over promise, using confidence-building words such as“absolutely,” “certainly,” and “definitely” go a long way to allaying fears and instilling trust. Just make sure you deliver everything you’ve promised—and more.

5. Humility

Humble people generally excel because they recognize they don’t have all the answers and others have skills they don’t. But rather than viewing it as a competition, they embrace feedback—positive and negative—and seek out situations where they can learn from others and tune their skills. Sales is all about pushing yourself to do better, and that in itself entails recognizing that what you previously did wasn’t your best.

Good salespeople look for ways to improve because that—in the end—translates to more money and recognition. They’re always asking themselves: How can I get more leads? How can I improve my close rate? How can I increase the LTV of my customers? And when someone gives them a tip, a hungry salesperson tries it out, irrespective of whether it’s from a friend, family member, customer, or colleague.  

The Bottom Line

Despite what some expert say, you don’t have to have natural charisma or talent to be a great sales rep. Yes, it helps, but there are plenty of naturally talented athletes, dancers, musicians, and singers you’ve never heard of because they weren’t prepared to put in the hard work. If you or your sales team want to be more successful, you need to adopt and nurture a growth mindset built on five essential characteristics: curiosity, attentiveness, resilience, confidence, and humility. It might not happen overnight, but success will come your way—if you don’t give up.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.