Stop Working so Hard

Do less on purpose, Use tech & enablement or NGMI, and Pro tips

Sep 19, 2022

Succeeding in Sales boils down to 3 things..

Your skills
Your Technology & Enablement
Product / Market fit

(ranked in no particular order)

1 and 2 are completely within your control. 3 is in your control to the extent that you choose the right product / service to sell.

How to choose the right product / service to sell

By no means is this a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point for what to think about before agreeing to sell a B2B product / service:

- The product / service is close to the money (i.e the closer it directly influences revenue, the better. Think of a sales intelligence solution vs an employee benefits solution)

- The product / service has a strong emotional appeal (all sales are emotional however it is a spectrum. i.e Increasing revenue elicits a stronger emotion than Increasing productivity)

- There is healthy competition (not overcrowded like “$10k/mo agencies”)

- The top reps selling the product / service make bank (do their earnings motivate you?)

- The industry is fast growing and/or evergreen (i.e every company needs leads, not every company needs a fancy employee benefits software)

- You can communicate effectively with the decision maker persona you’re selling to (For example, I’ve always had a harder time selling to technical folks as opposed to revenue leaders/CEO’s)

Bottomline: Every B2B solution is either selling revenue growth and/or cost savings. The best ones to sell maximize both benefits.

Don’t skimp on the above list. Finding a good product / market fit is essential to your sales success.

Being Efficient

I’m all about doing less on purpose in order to achieve more. Time & energy is limited so I’d rather focus on working smarter, not harder.

Let my competition work hard for the leftovers.. they’re NGMI anyway.

Examples of working smart

- Using technology in order to strike while the iron is hot

- Get rid of time wasters as fast as possible

- Challenging prospects to make decisions

In sales, your most valuable asset is your personal energy. Using it wisely requires preparation and strong judgement.

Real world scenario

Let’s pretend you’re an SMB/MM AE and have been given 100 accounts. These accounts are a mix of potential new accounts & existing accounts for renewals/upsells.

First thing you should do is invest the time upfront inorder to organize & group the 100 accounts by order of Priority.

You don’t make a single call / send a single email until you do this first!

Organizing your list: Part 1

Use smart assumptions/indicators to start organizing the list of accounts.

Examples of smart assumption/indicators:

Opportunity/account size
Existing accounts (easier to upsell than close new accounts)
Key relationships
Deal Complexity
Renewal date (with you or a competitor)
Internal buying cycles (i.e which quarter do they start planning budgets / reevaluating tools?)
Geography
Trigger events (events that could spark relevant change in the company like hiring a new decision maker, implementing new technology, raising a new round of funding, etc)
Intent data (indicators that reveal potential buying signals for your solution. For example: topic/keyword searches, a company data breach [if you sell security solutions], new office locations, etc.

Chad note: if you have a modern tech stack that includes sales intelligence solutions, then you can probably enrich your list with this kind of data. There are resources out there that can help you set your software up properly if you don’t have them at your company. @BowTiedSystems has been doing a great job helping reps with this.

Organizing your list: Part 2

After enriching your account list in part 1, you now want to sort the accounts into 3 groups ranked by priority

Priority = the accounts with the most valuable assumptions/indicators to *your* sale

Chad note: Not all assumptions/indicators are equal so you have to choose which indicators are most likely to lead to a closed deal in your situation.

So it could look like this:

Group 1 - Hot

Existing accounts
Start of Quarter where they begin setting new budgets for the upcoming year + evaluating their tech stack
Opportunity size (10 accounts that if closed has the potential to reach majority/all of quota)
2-3+ existing relationships with DM’s in the company or people that know the DM’s in the company (for referrals/intros),
Implemented new relevant tech < 6 months,
Raised round of funding < 3 months

Chad Note: the accounts don’t need to meet all of this criteria! Also, notice how most of the criteria for Group 1 is centered around timing & potential buying intent/triggers

Group 1 are your hot leads and you open conversations with them first.

Group 2 - Warm

Group 2 is similar to Group 1 but with wider and less ideal parameters

Example:

Implemented new tech in the last 12 months
Medium deal size (have to close more to make up good chunk of quota)
1-2 relationships that can possibly be leveraged
Raised round of funding < 6 months

Chad Note: Some of Group 2 can move into Group 1.. particularly if there are trigger events that increase potential buying intent

Group 3 - Cold

Group 3 are for all the accounts that don’t fit into Groups 1 & 2. You should reach out to them last.

Taking their temperature

Once you’re done organizing and sorting the list of accounts, you can start taking the temperature of your accounts (finding out if there is Pain and how much Pain there is)

You start hitting the phones / sending emails / LinkedIn DM’s.

You’ve invested the time upfront to organize your list and now can intelligently invest your effort into what is likely to yield the best results.

Most of your time & energy will be invested in taking the temperature of Group 1 accounts in order to get Fast No’s.

Once you’ve finished with Group 1 you simply move onto Group 2 and then Group 3.

Your competition will batch all 100 accounts into automated sequences and begin spraying & praying because they are lazy.

🤡: Treat all accounts the same or organize them by BS filters like revenue & company size and spam them with messages

🐲: Screen out the time wasters from the quota makers on smaller hyper targeted lists

Don’t try to climb the mountain without first finding the easier path!

The only automation I would use for Group 1 are for batching the follow up emails & the reminders to call them. If I have 15 accounts that are “hot” then I’m going to spend most of my time studying & researching them so I can nail the first outreach message (call/email/DM)

The last thing I want the prospect to see or feel is that my email is part of an automated sequence. I would use tactics like my “1-2 punch” method:

For Groups 2 & 3 you can batch all your outreach messages/sequences.

Use the scripts from my course and get cracking on this list!

Use tech or NGMI

I recently ran a poll. The results were painful:

It appears the majority of you (~60%) aren’t using your technology properly.

I’m sure that number is higher because many of you didn’t want to vote so I wouldn’t delete my account lol! (I’m not deleting it don’t worry. ‘Twas just a joke)

The tech you have at your day job is there to make your job easier.

Good tech + understanding of your tech is the difference between spending 5 hours on a task vs 30 min

and Good tech is what enables you to implement the high level messaging you’ve learned from me.. at scale.. to the accounts most likely to convert.

Imagine you set up automation where if a prospective company just announces a new round of funding, they automatically get a personalized/highly relevant email from you

Or when the customers contracts up is for renewal, you get an alert to give them a call at the time they are most likely to pick up

Remember, people will also buy to eliminate a future pain so if for example you sell compliance services, imagine getting a notification that new regulations are coming to your prospects industries and you’re the first one to approach them and help them plan for the inevitable changes.

This type of thinking is how you win. You combine smart strategy with Chad tier tactics.

Most of your competition has no idea they can do these things let alone how to do it.

They think smart automation is setting up a cadence that sends emails if someone opens them or not.

NGMI

You don’t need to be a tech expert

Many sales guys are not very tech savvy. This is why I *highly* recommend consulting technical pros like @BowTiedSystems so they can audit your workflow / sales processes and show you how to use your tech stacks for improved results.

When tech and skill levels are competent, you become highly efficient. You become one of the few reps who hits quota without sacrificing your sanity.

You become a Chad Monk.

Pro tips

You should be role playing regularly that way you aren’t practicing on prospects (money).. especially if you have a finite list of accounts. Here’s one role playing game I suggest trying:

- Know who you’re talking to so you can adapt your communication style / expectations

Programs & Trainings

The Accelerator

A high intensity 12 week group coaching program. Limited to 10 participants. Through live sessions and active roleplaying, you'll learn how to deeply understand your buyers, ask powerful questions, and be in control of your deals.

More details here: