Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 55: For B2B sellers, can you show me your target account list... right now?

Transcript

55: For B2B sellers, can you show me your target account list... right now? · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a quick challenge for you.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the next 10 seconds, can you show someone your target account list?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Find out why you need to be able to do that in this episode with a tip from Mike Weinberg and his book Sales Truth.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-sized sales podcast, where we believe that you don't need to take time out of the field or off the phone stuck in a classroom to get great sales training.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve your results.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 20 plus years in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas that you can use every day to help you get better.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us don't have time to keep up with the latest sales ideas and all the blogs, podcasts, news articles, YouTube posts every week.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird curates content from all these sources and gives you three mindset tips, three sales skills tips, and three sales leader tips once a week in your email inbox for free.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up right now at salesbluebird.com.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome to episode 55 of the podcast.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm recording this on a beautiful sunny day in Colorado in the middle of January 2020.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Had a few days skiing already this year with the family, and looks like the snow's looking good for the rest of the season, which is just awesome for us.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually gonna start off this episode rather than doing a discussion, just going straight to the book.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is Sales Truth from Mike Weinberg.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And reading straight from the book, I have noticed a characteristic the top producing sales hunters have in common.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: When asked, they can point to or put their finger on their target account list in a nanosecond.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it is in dry arrays marker on a whiteboard in their office, a printed copy of a spreadsheet, a chicken scratched into a legal pad, true proactive, new business development focused sellers can tell you and show you exactly who they are pursuing right now.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing vague or nebulous about a sales hunter's target list.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: True hunters know exactly whose business they want, can articulate the reasons why these specific targets are on the list, and they dedicate chunks of counter time to do nothing but pursue the targets.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thing of beauty to behold.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a stark contrast from what I observe from underperformers who typically have a hard time finding and presenting the list of accounts they are currently attacking.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's read straight from Sales Truth from Mike Weinberg.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this really hit home for me.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I look back on my career, I was always someone who was organized and who planned my territory.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to make sure that I was spending the right time in the right accounts, working with the right people as much as possible.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that it's not a you know, sales is not word of absolutes.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta do some educated guessing sometimes of who those people are and the which accounts they are, but I put the work in to say these are my A accounts, these are my B accounts, and these are my C accounts, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm running a territory, I would maybe have 10 or so, 10 to 12 A accounts.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would have maybe the next 25 would be B accounts, and everything below that would be C accounts.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And depending on what I was selling and the state of the territory and things like that, that would determine what would be an A account, B account, and a C account, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea of going through having an ideal customer profile, a dream client, whatever your term you want to use, I'd figured out what that was.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew at any given point in time who my A's, B's, and C's were.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what I did in the latter half of my selling career was not only would I know the A's, B's, and C's companies, but for the A's, I would actually have on my spreadsheet all the names and contact details of all the contacts that I wanted to reach out to these A accounts.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if I had 10 to 12, I might have as many as 40 to 50 to 60 names.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have their name, title, phone number, email, maybe a link to their LinkedIn profile, and then also maybe a bullet or two there to remind me, you know, something to mention in the email or call, something like that, right?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I all had it all handy.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: To Mike's point, in the book, I had it handy.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And my way of doing it was I'd create a spreadsheet, but then I would print it off and have that with me wherever I went at in Capilla at any time.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what that gave me two things.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: One was focus, right?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: In a world where it's so easy to get distracted, there's either literal shiny objects all around or figurative ones, you know, getting dragged from pillar to post and things like that was something I wanted to make sure that I minimized, right?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew if I pulled my list out at the start every day, I would know exactly where I'm focusing my time and effort and what's next.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing it did is it actually helped me save a whole chunk of time because I I didn't have to guess or do research or or go and remind myself and and go into a ton of systems or or CRMs or whatever, things like that to try and figure out what I should be doing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I knew from my sheet of paper, printed out exactly what I was going to be doing for who.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that let me tell you a quick story.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: That came came home for me at one point.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So a few years back, I was in a I was running a territory as the field person, and I was paired up with an inside salesperson, and we were, you know, we had a separate but shared quota, if that makes any sense, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The idea was that we were both working in the same territory, but we divvied up responsibility, and then there was some sort of sharing a quota.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea was that therefore I was motivated to help them succeed, and they were motivated to help me succeed beyond just doing our own numbers.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds convoluted, it probably was don't worry about the details.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing was that we were we were both motivated to help each other.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember after a few months, there wasn't really the production coming out of the inside salesperson, but new opportunities coming in.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were doing a great job on drawing existing deals they had or renewals or things like that, but they weren't doing very much on new business.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I said, look, let me let me come down.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I flew down to the office and I said, why don't we spend the morning in a conference room making calls together and we can learn from each other and figure out what's going on?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we set the time, and I forget what it was.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say we started at nine o'clock and we sat there, and at nine o'clock I had my list in front of me.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I knew exactly who I was calling, emailing, the whole thing, and I'd zip through my list in like an hour, an hour and a bit.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd had like you know, a number of conversations and booked to remember this.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I booked two meetings in the first pass, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think after an hour and a half, the person I was working with, they'd maybe be in the CRM a few times, picked out a few names, and made a couple of calls, but had nothing to show for it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was eye-opening to me to see a completely different way of working and which way was obviously paying off and which way it was not.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And to give them credit, you know, the first question they asked after I'd finished my call list was, you know, how do you do that?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And how can I learn and you know, help me, help me, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we we developed a great working relationship together over time.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it just showed me that you know, just having that work done makes you so much more productive when you need to be and need to get focused on doing the output.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, my action for you from this session is if this resonates with you and you kind of recognize yourself a little bit and perhaps not being as prepared as you should be, take the time right now.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're listening to this at the same sort of time as if you released your middle of January, so start the year maybe for you.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take the time to do the A's, B's, and C's analysis of your territory.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Get down to the people that you want to reach out to, get their beyond just storing it in the CRM or your cadence tool or whatever, you know, have it there ready to go.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: These are your A's, these are your highest priorities.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: You should know who all these people are at an instant and be able to reach out to them and make it easy for yourself to do by having the one list to go with.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So use it every day and be effective at getting focused on the right accounts.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this episode, the single most useful thing you could do to support this podcast is share it with your sales network.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It'll probably take you less than 20 seconds.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: All you need to do is click the share icon in your app right now and share it wide and file.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It will mean the world to me and it can make a difference to those you share it with.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need your suggestions, please.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you want me to cover or just want to get in touch, simply email me at upside at unstoppable.do.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's upside at unstoppable.to And now to wrap up.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Training without implementation is just entertainment.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And pretty poor entertainment when I deliver it.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you take action on what you learn today and keep getting it better and better each and every day.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Also, this world does not need more sales BS.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't create any more.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Be great at the fundamentals, be honest, be real, be yourself, just do not BS.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm signing off as the great Joe Sexton Wood by saying gone to sell.