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all right and we're recording all right everyone welcome to this lead feeder webinar i'm going to share my screen and we will get started great awesome so thank you everyone for coming to this webinar this lead feeder webinar on how to close out q4 and prospect in q1 um today we are featured with a bunch of different panel of experts um all related to sales uh so i'd like to introduce you to dale capri dupree uh sorry i pronounce your last name run so he's got over 15 years of experience the last two have been fully dedicated to the sales rebellion as the leader of the sales rebellion he offers one-to-one sales coaching sales and training mentorships anything related to sales you name it dale's done it he's also the host of selling a local podcast where he tells stories and discusses ideas of all things related to sales whether you're b to c b to b he also enjoys pancakes and watching the office i found out about that he's also located in orlando florida where i'm actually based in tampa so nice to see another floridian up next we've got daniel he's the vp of sales at oh correct me daniel can you pronounce this for me i'm having a little brutal proposify posify thank you um he's had over 10 years of experience in marketing and sales danielle is actually pretty impressed by your resume to see all the marketing jobs you have so you and i have very similar backgrounds and you're also located in halifax in canada then we've got michael founder of growth genie we've actually collaborated a lot with michael in the past been on our b2b rebellion web our videos our webinars and we actually just partnered with michael on this awesome outbound sales cadence piece um he created this 30 touchpoint outbound sales caden it's awesome i recommend everyone to check it out it's also located in the uk then we've got niraj he's had over 25 years of selling experience author of two amazing best seller books on amazon related to sales and his approach to selling really kind of connects with me from a content perspective because he really comes at it from an empathetic position so he's got a ton of great insight and he's located in ireland a little bit about me i am the head of content uh here at lead feeder i really i work really closely with andy culligan uh the cmo um so a little bit about me and let's get this kicked off so first question up i'd love to know from the panel uh how would you describe 2020 in a paragraph who's up mirage you want to jump in on this one yeah sure i had to make notes because it was such an important question i could do one paragraph so uh 2020 i would describe as challenging frustrating unpredictable and lonely at the same time it created new opportunities new revenue streams i never thought of massive transformation and growth what kind of uh new revenue streams were you thinking of what can you kind of expand on those different channels well yeah up until march this year i made my money going into companies and doing linkedin training sales training speaking events and then only 10 was book royalties and in the first lockdown everything went except the book royalties so all events were cancelled all my clients in london were put on furlough so i literally had no work and it was kind of scary so i rebuilt very very quickly and within six weeks my second book was due out in july i released that in april because i spent two years building my profile on linkedin it saw well i was then approached by a publisher write an ebook which did well but i thought okay what what i do long term so i started doing monthly sales master classes every single month i started 5.10.21.47 pounds now i'm charging 97. which is about 130 per master class i've never ran master classes like this before um i did a high profile master mind group over the summer where i had six people business owners taking a hot seat every week and all the business owners would get together and help them generate more sales for their team these are things i never thought i could do um so these are just great ways of generating new revenue that i hadn't thought about before that's awesome that's so cool that's great to hear i'm just curious from the other group uh dale do you have any insight on how you would describe 2020 in a paragraph i i feel like at this point i could write a book on 2020 but i would say that for me 2020 was was it was kind of optional right like am i going to participate or not was really the question that me and everybody the sales rebellion asked ourselves are we going to participate in everything that's going on or not and and just as a general rule of thumb as rebels we always ask ourselves that question right when something's going down are we going to participate in this or not and now i'm not talking about wearing masks i got mine right here right but the idea is is that everybody was was in this mode of survival and and for us it was about well how do we innovate how do we build ourselves up how do we stay connected with our families how do we keep a good head on our shoulders how how do we support and help our mental health during this time as well too and stay very cognizant of the things that truly do matter sales is sale sales is life for us right like we believe everybody's in sales teachers sell structure brokers sell networks buyers sell themselves right and because of that thought it's easy for us to just have this living breathing entity when it comes to sales inside of our own uh internal system right so like if you were to look at culture for example like dale dupree's culture you know it is one of servant leadership my father passed that down to me through his teachings and and so sitting back and saying like how do we serve right now during this time because sale is a service and you know that's what we double down on we double down on this idea of being able to identify ourselves and what we were doing during this process instead of becoming part of the noise and you know playing the empathy card and emailing people about how we we really care about them but here's a 10 off code because we're broke you know or whatever everybody was sending out and instead really just stepped up to the plate and said let's be a part of this with everybody else and if we have to suffer we'll suffer alongside our community and if we can thrive then we'll bring people with us and that's what we did we 6x our business over the course of the pandemic so wow that's huge that's awesome how did you um you said you didn't take the empathetic approach and you just kind of like went through and drove with them did you have to change like any of your sales pitches or your email templates or was it really just you know relationship building and how you position that yeah to clarify that statement we were already using empathy i've been using that empathetic approach from day one of being a human being and and so i i think that for most you know because they looked at it as like well what is this empathy thing that it became a play but for us it was the same old thing that we've been doing and so we stayed in that boat with people and we didn't have to ask people like how are you today instead we just we let them know that we care just like we have been this in this entire time that we've been in existence as a company and that i've been in existence as a human the same kind of communication of of empathy is really just a shared experience right more than anything it's not sitting there trying to pretend that you can you know relate to somebody but it's to share in experiences with them and so giving them feedback on what we were doing and how we can support them you know wasn't about pitching anymore it was just about gaining traction hey we've got a free event come out meet people you know sell something hire people like whatever whatever that looks like for you but come and do and be a part of what we are building in the first place so really we just became more of a sanctuary you know more of a kingdom for all the rebels out there that are looking for a voice you know through a naturally already existing empathetic approach that we have can i add something there about empathy um this was actually a really fascinating thing to like as a sales leader getting prospected by people during this year what we what i figured out is like most people don't know what empathy is they rely on sympathy they're like oh i feel bad that these things are happening to you and that's not empathy at all like that's just sympathy like oh i hope you and your family is okay like yeah great that that was a opening line for two weeks and then it became completely irrelevant but the best people that prospected me i found they they really understood empathy and like what dale was saying like if they knew it ahead of time they didn't continue to it so like messages like hey i get it as a sales leader it's really hard for you to hit your number right now leads are precious nothing's closing like here's how we can help that's true empathy of like putting yourself in that person's shoes and understanding what they are going through so it was a really fascinating thing this year to actually like experience that and just sales people just in general becoming more empathetic and kind of being forced to do it oh that that's great daniel thank you for adding to that danny while you're talking i'm just curious how would you describe 2020 so i i'm going to try to do it in one sentence um i think 2020 was a forcing function to get better at sales well said how have you gotten better at sales over 2020 how is it for you so when every lead is precious and everything is being scrutinized and there are more c-suite involved in deals than ever before and you know cfos are looking at the numbers and all that stuff you just have to have a flawless execution everywhere that includes your discovery that includes how you follow up that includes just little things that you didn't pay attention to like how easy is your paperwork process to go through like there are a bunch of different things that just sales people in general just had to get really really really good at this year if they even had a shot at hitting a number that's great i'll go ahead yeah sorry i was just going to pop in on that point because i think what dan said is is a great point that people have had to get better at sales essentially because there's a lot more white noise on on email on linkedin and also you know a lot of businesses aren't doing very well they don't have the budgets and like dale was saying it's like well if you weren't being empathetic before march then what were you doing you weren't doing sales right sales has always been about empathy it's not like hey suddenly you're in a pandemic we need to be more empathetic it's it's the way good sales has has always been and i think for me to answer the question again i don't know technically how long a paragraph is so maybe over a paragraph maybe under um but for me it's actually been a time to look inward and when i say look inward i don't actually mean you know make it about you and what and what you sell but how i'd like you helping your customers i think take it deep like even away from from business i think before the pandemic we're all like rushing around we're all traveling i think unnecessarily a lot of the time i think sales people were traveling around the world to meetings to meet someone to close the deal traveling like 10 hours on a plane and it wasn't necessary we probably could have done it on on zoom um i do think there's there's benefits to face-to-face sales but i think essentially we've been sitting at home all this time and not just from a work perspective but in every perspective we're kind of like looking at ourselves because we're like you can't escape you can't travel the world you can't go see friends in bars so when it comes to a business perspective it's like okay what are we really good at and what are you really good at is like what it what's the biggest impact you're having on your customers who are your best customers right and then talk to them interview them make sure you keep them happy as well because they're like the core of your business and then essentially work out what the pains are that you're helping them with and then target people who are similar to that and use messaging that they've told you that your customers have told you for me that's yeah kind of long long paragraph about 2020. no that's really great insight michael thank you for sharing that have you have you seen your q4 of 2020 different than the year before um i know like dan you mentioned like leads are precious so does that mean like fewer leads are coming in or if you were quality leads how does q4 look to last year or the year before i i think for for our business we're a very young business we've only been around um 15 months so probably uh uh dan and and and their ocean day i can talk talk a bit more about that but just in terms of q4 in general like the feeling i'm getting it it's funny actually because you were talking about andy earlier the cmo of lead feeder we had a discussion in just before the summer so probably like june and i was saying to him that i felt like this summer would be slightly different in because like in europe in august a little bit in north america but more in europe like everything kind of shuts down it's very quiet a lot of people are on holiday i said i don't think that's going to happen this year like people are knocked down i think people are just going to be working more but actually i noticed the same trend and andy was the one who predicted it because he said that people are gonna need holiday more than ever because they've been stuck at home like all all year and even if they just go like to the countryside in their own country or they have a staycation and they or they're staying at home and they just won't work for a week that's really important and i've i found that some people have needed holiday more than ever and then when it the reason i'm mentioning this is when it comes to q4 essentially what we've seen is is very similar patterns so we had quite a quiet summer and then essentially like january to november has been brilliant for us we've had lots of pipeline lots of deals closing so i think now is like i find like now is a really important time especially if you're like doing outbound or you're an sdr i think november is a really important time while people are preparing budgets and i think december can be quite a tough time for um sdrs but it's a good time for like aes to close business i think it's like october november um september building that pipeline and then like december closing it that's historically the pattern i've seen throughout my years in sales and i'm actually seeing the same thing this year it hasn't been too different that's really interesting i uh especially that you mentioned the summer thing because we we take we tick that up too that more people will take personal vacations but just stay local and they work a lot more has anyone else seen any patterns like that throughout this year or in q4 how does q4 look for everyone else niraj mine's a bit different to what michael has said so every year you know you start preparing for q4 around by september and this year that's not quite happening apart from my clients and pharma and my clients in the sas industries who are doing very well at the moment and you know they're doing amazing the rest of my clients are in sectors that are really struggling so for a lot of people it's about seeing the year out and preparing for 2020. personally you know as a business owner and running a sales training company october was actually surprisingly quiet because we've just gone into a recession a lot of people are nervous we're about to have a second lockdown in november and a lot of people are very edgy whereas november people are really getting on with it and this is the probably the best month i've had this year since january so november is really exciting i have more inquiries than ever and i have more coaching clients than ever last october i was genuinely nervous like what am i supposed to do here so normally you know uh q4 is like this it just gets more and more exciting more more intense and this year october was bad november's been amazing uh what's going to happen in december i don't know i do know that if you want to have success in 2021 you don't start in 2021 you got to be starting now and you really got to be thinking about it now that's a great point you're right in order to get prepared for 2021 you need to start kicking it up gears this time around dan how about you how are things looking for q4 this year compared to last year the years before yeah q4 is very different this year compared to last year um so like i like i said every lead is precious at this point so like inbound flows have been up and down all year which is something that's usually pretty consistent in q4 like you get a huge spike of inbounds like all that stuff um the place that we've found a lot more success though is on the outbound side partially because we hired michael hanson here and he's awesome at what he does um but um people are very receptive like they're building their plans for next year i think i think what niraj mentioned around like hey people are kind of sitting out the year just kind of figuring out okay what's going to happen and then really really getting ready for 21. we see that in our pipeline a lot now too like we have a pretty decent pipeline for um for december but a lot of people are saying like hey yeah we want to start off 21 strong um so i i expect there's going to be a lot of kind of deals pushing that could slip so it goes back to my first point around like we just need to be a lot better at sales this year ask the right questions because a deal could easily go from december to january if we're not really meticulous about what we're we're doing from an execution perspective that's awesome that's really great insight man yeah dale what about you yeah well what we've been noticing the most is that like really right now in the midst of what's happening is that people are looking toward experiences more so than pitches uh and and it's extremely effective for everybody that's out there in the sales capacity that instead of just doing traditional follow-up and you know their grandfather sales as we like to say that instead they're they're giving like the disney experience and everything that they do that people are feeling this culture that they live and breathe as a salesperson and that they can see that salesperson fitting into their internal society you know that they've built their company so that ecosystem that they have as well so the experience portion of sales has been lost for so long and for so many years and a lot of people think that it's gimmicks right more so than anything but it's not it's about true connection it's about using human psychology understanding the environment that we're all in right now as a world not just like one state or one country like we're all going through some pretty crazy bs right now and and because of things like that it's easier to create familiarity and in creating familiarity and people have that sense of recognition in those moments they feel more inclined to respond more inclined to discuss more inclined to negotiate a deal with you which you know again like i'm just using those as kind of trigger points for sales people more than anything because i don't believe in negotiations at all however it's the concept of getting people to respond in 2020 is like what's lost to salespeople like i can't get anybody spoiled right now that's cause 177 times your c level decision maker gets touched in some form email phone call voice message dm carrier pigeon smoke signal i mean sales people are like the blood hounds of you know the business world at this point in 2020 and it's it's apparent and it's it's just as apparent as it was in the boiler room days right now and that's it's kind of freaky because we shouldn't be going backwards in these moments we should be standing tall for what sales is and what we believe in as salespeople and the experiences that we do provide and why we're why we're different and i think really like right now more than anything and i'd agree with the boys that it is extremely important for salespeople not to disconnect and say oh it's the end of the year oh it's pandemic time oh there was just an election and half the country's bummed out and most of the world is excited you know like you can't sit around and use all these excuses for why not to sell right because sales is life if you really truly are looking at it in the most pure form to begin with and so having the tenacity to be able to work your butt off while also being able to balance you know what it is that you love and what it is that you're doing and and and what i would say to that is loving what you're doing when those things are translated appropriately to your prospect you're winning more we've got guys and girls in the rebellion right now students that i don't even know know how they're getting what they're getting i'm just being honest i mean it's insane we we cut we brainstorm some ideas we do a couple things and it's almost like oh my god i did not expect that to happen but that's the point right is that we should all be having those moments of of recognition of our status as a unicorn as salespeople figuring out that part of what makes us tick really well and what connects our tribe to us in doubling down and experiences is where it starts and anybody that's giving them in q4 not only do they have a q1 lined up they have a q123 lined up you know in the year 2021 right now i guarantee you talking of experiences i love dale's background as well he's creating an experience right now in this webinar because i'm feeling jealous that we don't have a growth genie background like he's got for the for the sales experience but it sounds rebellion so it's a good example of creating a mini experience that is cool i do like your background dale that's awesome uh dale uh i you mentioned a lot of different uh points touch points for sales people co in q4 and going into 2021 do you have any tips for people on or areas to focus on that you're advising people based on what you know into what happened in 2020 and then now going into 2021 i really truly think that a lot of it evolves around your mindset as a salesperson that it's kind of like we were talking about earlier the difference between empathy and sympathy right now like and sales people always kind of have this empathy sympathy fight happening within them you know they think man have i followed up too many times with this person well the answer is no but the but really what you got to look at is you got to look at have i given the right experience because if you're just sending boring crappy stale emails then you suck and you got to sit back and recognize that as an early sales person i sucked i was terrible for two years i was clawing my way to quota as like as crazy as that thought is i was and but once i tapped into this idea of of the mindset of a successful salesperson that that sales is this natural progression for anybody and everybody that suddenly i was able to tap into that that whole line of communication those follow-ups the experiences that i give and what what sales people really need to do as a tangible takeaway here is they need to create a living pipeline they need to throw out their old rusty crappy leaking funnel and they need to create something that is alive and that that understands the ecosystem of the buyer and that that builds on the relationship because people buy from people they like they might they might think that you know proposify has a better product than you know some other some other person out there you know shoveling third party proposal software is right like they might say like proposify is awesome and so i'm going to buy from them but how much better when the sales person is awesome and they like them because not only do they then buy this awesome product but then they buy it from somebody that they enjoy the experience with through that process and they become loyal in those moments as well too because it's a human interaction piece that an element that we're missing and in 2020 it's so prevalent we were just talking about this the guys were just talking about this idea of things that we could do that were different you know such as having a zoom like we're doing right now you know in the in the form even of a public talk right or a meeting with somebody you know six states away or a country away that typically you would fly for a dinner and some schmoozing right you can just do on a zoom now and you can you can have so much more efficiency inside of that concept as well too and that's what it's all about it's about being efficient as salespeople we're inefficient at salespeople like sending an email just to send an email is a load of crap and you should get away from that you should stop making excuses for yourself that no sales is this way this is how sales people do it and you should par start putting purpose and reason behind everything that you do and be driven by those things and by doing that by creating this ecosystem that this pipeline that lives you'll view people instead of the product instead of the buyer instead of the cycle that's a really interesting point that you make you know to have the active pipeline and then to be active and you create the relationship with the actual person i actually had someone uh pitch me earlier this year um on linkedin and it didn't really work out it was kind of like a salesy tactic but then he emailed me a picture of his dog and said this is i'm an avid dog lover i have three dogs and he said anna this is my dog and then he was like told me about my three dogs my all of their names clearly he had stalked me on instagram or something and after that i i ended up buying the product just because of how great that relationship was i could tell he took the extra step and i'm still interacting with him just because of the connection i developed with that person not necessarily his product and it was amazing and totally worth it um michael i'm curious from you uh based on everything that you've learned in 2020 um do you have any specific areas that you're pushing people to focus on in 2021 yeah i think it's really the same often like you know technology changes some of the the channels change but i think the basics of sales stay the same like uh dale was just talking about it here like you create relationships with people essentially like people buy from people right so i can give an example so a few years ago before i started my own company at my last job we were assessing uh account based marketing solution and we were looking at like four or five vendors we we put it down to three and essentially one of the the sales people there's a guy called alec mcneese and he was he was brilliant because he not only created a very good relationship with me he did it with like the four other stakeholders in the buying process and i remember the first call we had with with all of these people right the at the time we were a u.s company but most of us were like in colombia either living majority of the time in colombia we had headquarters in colombia two of the people that we spoke to said oh yeah colombia like pablo escobar narcos all that stuff and they they haven't thought of the fact that if we live in colombia we're not probably in colombia to do like pablo escobar and netflix and all this stuff probably if we're like american and british guys living in colombia we probably like really like colombia right so the guy that really stood out was was someone that said oh yeah like how's colombia i've heard it's really good was like very inquisitive about colombia rather than the experience they'd had like watching netflix at home they didn't want to listen they want to hear about colombia they just wanted to tell us about what was their experience listening online obviously after that as well because he had that mindset that he was curious he created a very good buying journey right he created a good relationship with me he created a good relationship with the other other stakeholders so i think that's the number one thing is to stay curious about the people you're selling to stay top of mind with them be reaching out to them at least like two or three times a week and again it's not always like oh did you see my proposal like can we get on a call it's like you mentioned like oh all your dogs i like your dogs like here's my dog like create create relationships at business level but also at a personal level because people buy from people so i think that's always been the case like pre-pandemic um and yeah continue doing that into next year as well that's really great insight michael i love that to always stay curious that's really nice i'm going to turn that into an article now thank you and i'm curious about you uh after everything you know about 2020 and you know moving into 2021 into q1 how are things changing do you have any specific specific areas you're focused on yeah so like we sell to sales leaders so i i get i i feel like i get to learn a lot about what's going to be the next thing for for us in sales and how to even get better at sales just because we we work with so many sales people um where where it's going to come down to next year is really two things from a sales leader's perspective it's it's skills and systems uh those are the two things that that we're going to focus on because i'll kind of tell you a story i used to work at this other startup we had a vp of sales that came from kind of a bit more old school of like hey if we're not hitting numbers let's just throw more bodies at it let's throw more budget at it um you know we'll hire more aes and then we're going to increase their quota but then marketing needs to provide more leads because we hired 20 more aes and we don't have enough lease like that system was fine ish um for for if you had a ton of money right the the thing that we noticed this year like selling to sales leaders is that they're not hiring as much they are not spending money they're not throwing budget at stuff like the the boards and cfos want to have a healthy cash balance because they don't want to have to you know not be able to pay pay their payroll and that kind of stuff so when you think about the dynamics of that next year it's going to be really really hard to throw bodies at the problem so if you're not reaching your numbers then you have to look at a couple things and really there's only two things to do it's do my people have the right skills to execute on what they need and do we have the right systems in place like i'll give you a good example we were we were working this deal a couple weeks ago where um there was a proposal writer that was basically writing everybody's proposals on the sales team and the sales team was growing they were selling and all that stuff but that person became a bottleneck any other year they would have hired a second proposal writer but because they don't want the extra head count and add that risk to the company they are looking at technology to make that one proposal writer basically have the efficiency of three or four right so that's that's how uh sales leaders are approaching um basically their their plan for next year it's like what can i do what's the highest number that i can get with the least amount of people and if i'm not going to be hiring a ton more people then where are the places that i need to invest to make these people basically overproduce that's awesome that's really great insight stan thank you for sharing that uh niraj i'll come to you uh do you see any um thing impacting that you learned from 2020 2020 to 2021 into q1 any specific specific areas of focus for you yeah i agree with a lot with what the panelists said a hundred percent so in addition to that obviously the two main things are taking care of your mental health and getting better in sales so i'll start with the latter one first uh dan qualified did a great post in linkedin last year saying if you want to succeed in sales read two books a month that's so true now at the moment you know i read two books a month one on sales usually one on personal development but i listened to at least three podcasts a week i speak to my team of sales professionals who i really admire and respect every month i don't speak them about email i pick up the phone i speak to daniel disney i speak to chris murray we're all good friends we exchange ideas what's working what's not working you know i am constantly learning and growing in sales all the time i have a coach that works with me once a month to make me better after all these years i'm still getting coached so and what surprises me is every day i get cold called by people who sell to me and the quality of cold calling on prospecting has not improved in 2021 that shocks me and for me that's really inexcusable people should i i want to get great sales close i genuinely do i want someone to call call me and me go that was brilliant that was so good that's the gold standard but i don't i get people saying dumb things like hi how are you how was your weekend come on seriously are we still doing this you to raise your standards when it comes to learning and when it comes to sales you just have to all your competition are learning so much at the moment i know 10 sales people last month who spent 800 pounds which is about 1100 american dollars on tony robbins four-day upw event i went to tony robbins four years ago in london it was amazing life-changing experience and your competition are learning your competition are absorbing podcasts your competition are reading books if you're not doing this and you're not getting better you are feeling horribly and you're doing this industry which i love a disservice so please stop it uh the second thing you have to do is improve your mental health that is key um you know i for the first time my life went through a serious mental health battle this year um after 21 years i got divorced uh that was brutal my daughter went to university that was brutal and i spent four months in lockdown living alone where i was kind of isolated from the world so i've had to learn a lot about mental health and i've had to work a lot of sales executives and sdrs who are struggling with isolation and struggling with mental health as well so if you're a manager or a direct director h people who work in hr and heads of people are very very good at this but a lot of sales directors especially men are not very good at this you got to take care of your staff okay do not start your sales meeting going okay where are we you start a one-to-one meeting asking your sales executive or sdr or your account executive how are you and you you be genuine and you pause and you wait for them to answer you don't go hey you okay good do good okay we're the figures you know people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care you've got to take care of people and for people in sales every morning don't check your email first thing don't check the news first thing and don't wake up put your pajama bottoms on put your shirt on and go to your computer and start working get a good morning routine you know success leaves clues successful people have great morning routines go for a walk cycle run meditate do yoga palates hit training do something before you start work but don't just get out of bed and go straight to your laptops a lot of people are doing that because there's no morning commute sorry that was a very long answer but i felt there was so much i wanted to say in that no that was really great insight thank you so much for sharing all that especially about mental health because i definitely feel like that's a big topic of discussion for 2020. uh selfishly i'm just curious do you have any uh of your favorite books or podcasts that you've read or listened to this this year that you would recommend for everyone listening yeah there's quite a range i mean this year with podcasts uh this is an old one but it's still brilliant i mean in fact the two best ones are old ones uh so sales influenced by victor antonio uh will baron the great salesman podcast you know sam dunning sam's gross show is very good he's had geoffrey gitmer on this year he's had jeb blunt on this year um you know chris murray extremely successful sales club these are all great podcasts that i really enjoy uh in terms of books uh daniel disney's book came out end of last year the million pound linkedin message but it's still hugely relevant uh matt sykes book um it's called converted i'm halfway through jeb bloon's book virtual selling it just arrived a few days ago fantastic book these are books that will help you massively massively in sales there's actually a reading list actually on everybody works in sales.com my website scroll down to the homepage there's about 40 books i recommend personal development sales biographies all of which will help you generate more sales oh that's great niraj i'll i'll actually include that link in the recap of the webinar post for everyone that's listening in case you're curious where that is thank you yeah i'm just curious for everyone else dale uh do you have any podcasts or books uh that you'd recommend uh for your sales team uh in 2020 or 2021 i guess um i have a whole list of kind of like narajas talking about like a whole list of of different books that i have sales people read and different podcasts that i have them listen to but interestingly they're not really typically about sales most of the time they're around human psychology most of the time they're around human behavior most of the time they are more adventurous and they're listening um you know pleasure that the the student will get instead of the aha moments that some people think they're getting from listening to a sales podcast um and the reason i i i put it that way is because what really what people what sales people need to tap into for themselves their own brilliance right and and sitting back and listening to somebody else's ideas is cool like i don't mind people listening to selling local little plug there for my own podcast but i also don't care if people don't have time for it and that they would rather listen to a murder mystery podcast because it excites them and it connects them to who they are as a human and that but that's what our podcast is all about it's all about people getting to a more relevant place for themselves and with themselves as a salesperson when we're so consumed by sales and everybody's opinion on it then we become diluted and we become part of the noise that everybody else is is you know causing in the first place it's about being loud but it's also about being coherent with your message first and foremost and so so for me really it's it's about and i like what naraj was talking about it's about people connecting with themselves like getting spiritually fit understanding that like what a morning routine really is that it's about getting yourself prepared for what is to be a battle especially if you're someone that struggles with things like depression or anxiety you know which i've battled for my entire life i try to commit suicide at 15 years old my mom saved my life by coming home you know from work early and and and so the idea of being alone in 2020 you know like we set up small support groups right away and said we're not going to allow this to happen to people we're not going to allow it to help into ourselves and i still got like right to the edge inside of that whole process and and and that that's a consistency that we have to also identify for ourselves that we have to speak out loud your your bravery in niraj is awesome and and speaking your truth because men especially um you know over the age of 30 especially two typically when they're in c-level positions running businesses whatever that looks like they're more susceptible to killing themselves than than most and and we have to talk about that right we have to have communication clear communication about these things because yeah i mean i wouldn't be here if i wasn't good at it at talking about it but it was really a silent um you know discussion for a long time with people and the only people i was good at talking about two were my mom and my dad that was it i felt embarrassed about it speaking about it around anybody else until i lost my dad in 2016. and and these things are all relevant for one reason because like who i am and what makes me unique and makes me authentic radically authentic is is something that goes way beyond how good i am at sales i'm good at sales because i love god because i love my wife because i love my family because i'm passionate about who i am because i believe that i'm on this earth for a purpose and when you can get yourself to those moments like no book no podcast can take you there you have to do it yourself in the first place you have to be willing to go there as well you have to be willing to be open-minded and to speak truths that that normally are taboo you know like i don't really like to talk about that too bad you got to if you want to be better if you want to level up if you want to become something that makes an impact on your community if you just want to be a salesperson that collects a check and hits quota and goes on presidents club every other year that's cool you know if that's the life that you want to live but that's not mine that's not who dale duprey wants to be that's and that's not who most rebels want to be either they want to be something legendary they want to choose people over products community over commission checks experiences over performing pitches and because of that you know we constantly constantly preach self-development and getting away from the idea of you have to listen to all these sales things or read all these sales books to become better they're great things i love daniel disney's book by the way it's a great book right but the side of it that people need to also have a a rebel mindset about is that how does that make you you the two books i'm reading right now are both star wars books too in case anybody was wondering yeah i um totally agree with with dale as well and i i think it's a little bit controversial what i'm gonna say but i work like 60 hours a week on my business so in my spare time i don't want to read sales books because i'm learning about sales all the time i'm speaking i'm on webinars like this where i'm learning tons and i'm i'm learning by doing and like sales is all around me all the time and if people want to read sales books in that spare time that that's great but i'm like dale i read books that are helping my mindset and i actually had a conversation with um with a customer recently because they're ahead of marketing so generally a lot of our customers we get through the door with like heads of sales so i was trying to interview some of our customers who are heads of marketing like what do you like about growth genie what do you like about what we do and they said it's mindset hacking right essentially you're hacking the minds of the people that we're working with to not take no for an answer or to be very resilient essentially and so that a lot of that comes down to like dale said work on yourself strengthen your mind and as soon as you strengthen your mind you're going to come so much better at sales because one of the big things that kills us as salespeople is the ego i was actually thinking about starting a community soon called like ego killers because when you get when your ego gets in the way so you receive an objection and you're like oh this person doesn't like me whatever it is that that's going to stop you as sales so you're you're attaching yourself to that outcome because if you're making it more about the customer and not your own ego you're going to be a lot more successful so i'm like dale i love to read like personal development books in my spare time rather than um sales books i've got one called the explorations of the frontiers of human consciousness which i read last year which is like a very heavy book um it really changed my life and i'll uh i'll put the link in the comments here yeah michael i'll bug you uh after this because i i want to take a look at that book as well uh dan just curious on your side uh any types of books or podcasts that you're interested in or that you think other sales people would find interesting yeah there's there's like i'm very similar to to dale on this um like i like to read broad not not always deep but read broad like especially in my position as a sales leader i have to know how to work with a product team with a marketing team with an operations team with a customer success team i can't just be reading about sales all the time and the thing is a lot of sales people think in this in like the opposite way they'll be like hey i need to read about sales tactics sales tactics change so frequently every quarter something new comes out and this is better and this new tool changed the market so now this is the tactic so a lot of the times it comes down to like reading stuff that's about technique like i'm reading a really good book right now it's like the secrets of question based selling it's all about technique so when you're when you're reading something like that it never goes out of style because the whatever the tactic might change but the technique won't and then the other stuff is whatever is going to make you way more knowledgeable of about how your customers are operating so if you're selling to marketing and you're running about reading a bunch of sales books by the way you're not going to book a ton of meetings because marketing people typically don't like at most companies larger organizations they don't like necessarily sales people and if all you're doing is reading about sales tactics and not reading about marketing and how to make marketing better then you're probably not going to be able to empathize and relate so i tend to go really broad to figure out how can i better work with other departments or other prospects and trying to figure out okay what what are the different topics that i need to know and have enough functional functional knowledge to be like able to actually have a conversation about it and then the rest of the stuff is very much around like myself like like atomic habits is another book that i'm reading right now i always have two books on the go i read in the morning and i read at night and they're not the same book i like to mingle my books so that it formulates better ideas that's how you develop strategic thinking by the way it's reading multiple things at the same time not one single topic at a time um but like books like atomic habits books like mindsets it's a really really good one um like stuff that can help you just either better understand yourself or help you put systems in place that will make it easier for you to accomplish stuff nice and i bought into that real quick and just say that like one of the one of the things that's really important too is that like like i'll go i'm gonna reach out to daniel after this and be like yo so what should what book should would you recommend that i read right now and maybe i haven't read one that he'll recommend and so like having mentor groups and peer groups of people that like once they know how you think and what it is you're trying to level up to have them breathe life into you like shout out to steve clayton and darcy smythe out in australia who run the sales game it's an awesome organization they send me books all the time and just go hey we read this and thought you'd like it and when they do that and when people are are feeding into your life as well too and making you better through that perspective of perception right when they see and hear what it is that you prefer and how you're trying to level up then it can take you to a whole another level so that's another piece of the puzzle i would tell everybody to do is find accountability through other individuals that are trying to level up like you that's awesome that that's a great tip um we're getting short on time here everyone so um if there's anyone listening uh feel free to answer questions or post questions in the q a and we'll share them with the speakers uh currently we don't have any questions uh so feel free to throw them in there um so i'll keep watching that and i've got one last question on my list for everyone so uh dan i'm just curious uh do you have any tips or suggestions on how you're opening up the pipeline for q4 and how you're closing more deals in q4 yeah for us opening up a pipeline and q4 is like i'm going to go back to what i said earlier outbound's been working really well like we were predominantly an inbound company and then the lockdown hit and it was like holy holy like we need to have more than one type of lead prospecting channel right um so we spent a lot of time this year on on outbound the the thing that i would say for opening up pipeline um and this i've been very consistent saying this throughout this year this year is not the time to go after your total addressable market it is the time to only go after your ideal client profile doesn't matter that you can sell to all these different types of industries and this one might work this month like focus only on the best very very very best customers um that you can attract because you're going to be wasting a lot of time trying to go after everything else and it's kind of a little bit counterintuitive thinking like oh if leads are so precious why are we limiting ourselves to a smaller market you're just going to get way more consistent with your uh your messaging you're just going to get a lot more traction if you go after something small than trying to go too big and then for closing pipeline we pay a lot of attention to engagement metrics in the cycle um so anything that like you should know your your average sales cycle how long is it anything that's above five percent of your average sales cycle in terms of like hey this hasn't closed and we're now five percent over our average that's a risk you know that deal is not going the way it's supposed to go so we pay a lot of attention to engagement metrics inside of our sales cycles like are we following up enough like we notice that uh when we close deals like we're following up with the account more than once a day like across multiple stakeholders when we lose deals to competitors we're following up once every two days and when we lose deals to the status quo we're following up once every three days so there's a lot of little things like that that you should be paying attention to um most of us all have systems that allow us to get these types of metrics so we look at that we look at you know with somebody opening up a proposal how how often are they opening it up um you know are they spending time on the pricing page and and hovering there because if they are then they are probably worrying about the price and you need to pick up the phone and call them um so it's a lot of just looking at okay how how are the engagements going in between the calls and are we getting engagement back from them like if we're sending a ton of emails out and we're not getting replies we know that deal's at risk it's not gonna it's not gonna close so let's focus on the ones that have the proper momentum awesome that's really great insight to track those engagement metrics i really like that uh michael i'm curious from your end uh are you doing anything specific to close or open more deals in the pipeline for q4 yeah there's some tactics on the opening side um which i can run through just to give dan a shout out and propose a fire shout out well he was talking about he obviously didn't want to pitch propose to five you can actually do that with proposer five so you can if you send out proposal you can see every time someone viewing it and um like what they're viewing essentially you don't want to go into too much of that now in terms of um yeah it's kind of two questions here right there's a closing and then and the opening so um on the opening side there's a a couple of tactics we kind of preached to our clients they've been working for us to grow our business they've been working for our clients so one is think about what can you give away for free as a piece of content that's extremely useful to your buyers right so we have two bits of content that i know that um generally sales and marketing leaders who are the people we're trying to sell to love which is one is 30 touch cadence which we talked about at the beginning anna and the other is like a playbook template for like training and onboarding people and giving them better messaging uh so we use those and i i don't even get the the tactic that we use now we don't actually give it to them we create interest in it so i could say hey i noticed you're hiring sdrs at lead feeder we've got a playbook template that can help you onboard those sdrs when they're hired someone's just got a reply yes right the good thing about that is often if they reply yes or email their phone number's in the signature and then you can give them a call and start having a conversation uh regarding their their playbooks etc so that's like a tactic we're using so that's obviously an example i've given could reply to any industry think about a piece of content you have that's like super valuable speak with your marketing team ask them like what's the top bit of content we have at the moment and then create interest in that like you have a teaser for a film think about like a message that you can send that's like oh i want that and then you give it to them and you can start a bit of a conversation so that's been working well from an opening perspective another thing is like polls and surveys you've probably seen like polls on linkedin i discussed this when we did the last um webinar anna which is essentially part of the problem when you're doing outbound cold is you don't actually understand what the pains of your buyers are so you do a quick survey related to whatever you do so say you're selling something related to like email security what's the number one way you're getting hacked on email right now give them four options and then they tell you what it is and then you can create very relevant messaging uh related to that so that's a good task to be using for opening and in terms of closing how we closing deals in the pipeline again i think we we talked about this earlier like i i think the human relationship with closing is really important because like once you've had that first conversation stay top of mind if you know the person likes dogs like you talked about like send them a whatsapp or a text like a photo of the dog and then another thing what i we've been doing it's been working really well i would like people ghosting me so like we've sent them a proposal whatever 10 touches can't get through to them i go on their linkedin sometimes people's content doesn't appear on your linkedin so you have to be quite proactive like go into their posts and like write something comment on their posts but not just general like this is great like write a super thoughtful comment and then magically these people are starting to reply so that's another thing like trying it's about being different to get out of the usual channels of like phoning linkedin messenger emails etc and be like can i comment on this person's twitter or like linkedin et cetera like go that extra step and that that can really help with closing that's really great insight michael i've actually seen a lot of uptick in linkedin with the specific comments but you're right the comment has to be thoughtful in order to actually achieve any engagement so that's really great insight uh niraj i'm curious from your side uh how are you uh do you have any suggestions for opening and closing uh pipelining q4 certainly in addition to what everybody has said which i 100 agree and support uh use video i embrace video now and i get double sometimes triple the engagement on linkedin with video than i do with just normal post yesterday i had my biggest ever post on a sunday by a mile it was a one minute video of my persistence that was it and i couldn't believe how popular it was in fact i'll share before we go because it was so good but then people comment and you comment back and then i message them saying thank you so much for your comment you know what else are you struggling with at the moment or what else do you like about the post or what more do you want to know from me and these are great ways to open deals and the second one is i mentioned earlier the master classes i do i mean you can call them webinars i prefer the term masterclass and i charge lots of money for it because my cl i want clients to invest thousands of pounds in my coaching and so i that's very strategic for me so i get incoming inquiries from master classes so embrace video run high quality high ticket master classes and that's great for opening for closing that's it that's it stop closing by email just stop it it doesn't work stop trying to close by email stop it just pick up the phone and talk to people uh personally i find two o'clock to three o'clock in the afternoon the best times to prospect it just to be later on the afternoon but now people spend their days with meetings webinars more meetings client meetings lunch time they're often on social media by two o'clock they're starting to get quite tired just staring at the screen all day so that's when i pick up the phone between three and four o'clock a lot of my clients are doing the school run there's so many work from home and i pick up the phone again after half four and i make phone calls again but between two o'clock and three o'clock you can rarely get hold of me because the phone's attached to my ear you close deals by phone or by zoom but don't do it by email and don't email people saying did you get my proposal it's lazy and it's lame don't do it that's awesome mirage that's really great inside and i'll definitely have to bug you about that video piece because i'd love to include that in the wrap-up uh dale from your side do you have any tips or suggestions or advice on how your opening and closing pipeline in q4 yeah i'm just going to come back to mindset and experiences and i'll expand on that a little bit more the i think that all the things that the gentleman just laid out as are very important and they're fun and they're innovative and they're great ideas for sales people and what i would add to it is that like sales should be a lifestyle the way that you are conducting yourself on a daily basis is all about what you're building from the perspective of how others perceive you and and what is that well that is the idea of the way that the community looks at you which is a reputation a reputation in sales is the most important thing if you want to get stuff in the pipe and start closing it build a personal brand pursue content on linkedin for yourself tell your story change the game every single day be and it's not about this idea of i don't want people to hear me constantly saying you know things like be a rebel and do it different and think oh that's the play it's not a play it's who you really truly are because business says send up an email saying did you get my proposal and that's not really what you should be doing you should be creating experiences for people or like niraj eloquently stated just pick up the freaking phone and call somebody and say hey like you ready to move forward but the other side of it is like how can you turn change your outbound game to create an inbound game that's what we always play and and i played it as a copy of rep i sold copy machines for 14 years i was a million dollar producer and i was the number one sales person in my company and then also in the in the united states for certain manufacturers as well too and i'm gonna tell you right now that a copy machine is boring it's bland it's stale people don't even really know what they do in most cases because they do too much and all somebody wants it to do is work right it's the problems that we tend to to kind of forget about instead we think oh my product is so sexy this is all i want to talk about right that that's what the sales world tells us to do and all you got to do is rebel against the traditions the traditions of sales because they're not basic human behaviors in the first place and so really being relevant right creating familiarity i've heard the term curiosity thrown around like you need to be curious as a salesperson but you also need to cause an undeniable amount of curiosity when you've got such a good outbound game that you have people calling you and saying how do i get started that's when you when you have touched on something that most people don't that legendary status of a rebel and of a salesperson get into that place of becoming so relevant that people almost have that fomo concept going for them that fear of missing out because right now you're just a commodity you're just another email you're just another proposal you're just another you know salesperson that's a fly on the wall to them or you know part of the the cattle in the bullpen and and that's how that's how it feels to some sales people as well too and if you're hearing that i'm here to tell you right now that that's that is not how you're supposed to be feeling it is not the true nature of a salesperson but that's standing up standing tall and standing out is important that's what authenticity is all about so giving experiences through your offset radical and authentic self is important and and furthermore creating that familiarity that i've i've heard a couple times thrown around in here but but doing it through action right so when you pick up the phone you call somebody and you use things like a linkedin post or something personal that you can find on that person it goes beyond just saying like hey i saw that you went to this college or hey i i was reading this post about how you like growth you know it's about really connecting with people and those moments and making them feel that what you're talking about is worth their time and and causing that undeniable curiosity and you'll level up as a salesperson that's awesome dale thank you so much for sharing that um i'm going to wrap this up really quick i just wanted to thank all the panel of experts thank you so much for joining us niraj dale dan michael i i really appreciate it everyone i hope you go and check out their companies uh go stalk them uh uh after this webinar we will share the video on youtube uh so you'll get a recap we'll also do a blog post recap with some of the assets that we talked about in this piece so stay tuned for more and thank you all so much for joining us pleasure thank you so much