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    Friday, June 4, 2021

    Help me not care Sales and Selling

    Help me not care Sales and Selling


    Help me not care

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 04:03 AM PDT

    I'm a territory manager for a fortune 200 company. The company has gone to shit over the last 8 months. We can't deliver product, are drastically reducing on hand inventories, product quality is awful, we're losing huge customers daily and are gutting our customer service department. Our share price is through the roof so there will be no changes.

    There are two reactions from my colleagues. This is literally killing some of us and others are incredibly calm and don't care.

    Most of us are looking to jump ship but the process takes time. Any super chill people out there that can offer advice on how to live through constantly disappointing customers and destroying your credibility?

    submitted by /u/ketobandito77
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    Have any of you used Chris Voss/FBI negotiation techniques in sales? If so I gotta question..

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 04:42 PM PDT

    When mirroring a prospect, in other words restating a few words back in the form of a question, what do you do when the prospect just gives a "yes/no" answer? Example, customer says: price is to high. Rep: price is to high? Customer: yeah it's to high.

    When that happens I usually will do an inviting statement such as, "tell me more" or "elaborate for me". This typically gets more information but I was curious if anyone else had experience they'd like to add.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/kjfresh797
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    If you work in online apps all day - I really need your help!

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 09:49 AM PDT

    Would you take this 3-minute survey?

    Who Am I: Hi Redditors, I'm Amber. I started my career in customer support and moved around to business consulting, business development, and have ended up in product development at my current company. Although I've gathered feedback before, I'm having a hard time working from home. Mostly I'm physically not able to visit companies or people at the office or home to get a sense of what they spend their time on, throughout the day. And no one really wants to share their home and many screens all day long for me to watch (it's just a little more creepy online).

    What I found: In all of my personal experience and consulting 120+ individual companies throughout all their departments I came to realize some harsh realities.

    • No one really has the time or money to wait for an integration to connect everything for them and nothing they can buy/build will be unique to them the way they work best.
    • It's too hard to adapt to many online systems at once (for any single task); people are often in 3-6+ online apps just for a single task.
    • Doing it is one thing, training others to do it and expecting them to get and be better at it are two different and great hurdles in themselves.
    • Not everything we do can be pulled up, started, and completed in one sitting, so you kind of have to remember, write down, or manage bookmarks to get back to it.
    • Companies particularly had a great gap between what people wanted to put their time/money into vs what the decision makes of the company would allow
    • When a business wants to do something 'new' it's in addition to everything else one would already do so it takes more time and slows them down more instead of helping them
    • COVID forced the world to work from home and try to face these problems, but it's only been met with 'waiting for life to go back to normal' and refusal to commit to the long-term need to just work online faster.

    What I'm working on now: I want to create more useful UX driven solutions that help people organize and work faster while in multiple online applications at the same time that's more unique to the individual, and allows Salespeople to benefit from how Engineering reps do things, and vice versa-whatever saves us time! Right now, I am trying to gather information at this stage (not ready to present a solution just yet!).

    What do I want: In order to get a sense of where you spend your time and what you actually want to spend your time on, would you take my survey?

    Why I want it: I really want to dive into what and how different people need different things, in order to identify which are the biggest problems we all have. The survey contains 15 questions and takes less than 3 minutes to fill out. All responses are anonymous unless you choose to include your email in a DM, to be in a follow-up that will include the summary of all responses! I'm aiming to get all responses by the end of Friday (6/11). Your survey results will help me understand how everyone is a little different (or the same) so that I may come up with a great solution that helps save people real-time while doing more things, in more places - all darn day long!

    Why am I here: I love Sales teams, they are usually the first person a customer engages within our company. They do different things and things differently than people in support or engineering. Although a lot of focus has been on how to optimize Sales tasks in general, there's not a lot that helps different Salespeople work differently which is exactly what we need if we want to be better than everyone else. Help me understand your story and your needs.

    If you have any questions/suggestions on the survey itself, please comment below. Thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time. I can't wait to see what comes out of this!

    submitted by /u/sunseedsofdoom
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    Any super basic LinkedIn title, name, website, company field extraction tools?

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 09:30 AM PDT

    Just looking for something where I can give/upload a LinkedIn url or csv of LinkedIn urls and have it extract the Name, Company, Company Website, and Job Title of the contact in that LinkedIn url.

    I know there are tools like Phantombuster and Kleanleads; just looking for something free/cheaper/quicker if possible.

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/benjaminwrites
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    Help! Emails to potential clients are being blocked

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 11:08 AM PDT

    Hi there,

    I know this is more of an IT issue but it's affecting my ability to do my job and I wonder if someone else has experienced this.

    My company's website allows people to request a quote - this request is then directed to my inbox with all the questionnaire information. I build a quote and look to email it to them.

    This is where things get dicey - it's quite a technical process so there are a number of attachments and links to provide lots of information, however quite often the email is not received (I've started seeing it not even get received into spam but literally not received at all). I've requested these clients email me first, but even responding it seems to get intercepted and deleted (again, not even marked as spam but literally deleted from the server).

    All of these emails are sent from my work email address - we are a gmail client with a business name domain. This seems to be most prevalent when emailing @hotmail domains.

    I am assuming that because I am providing links and pdf's that I am being marked as malicious. Is there a way to force outlook/hotmail/other web hosts to review these emails so they stop being marked as dangerous?

    submitted by /u/schoonerns
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    Head of SDRs or AE path?

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 09:13 AM PDT

    I'm an SDR in saas sales. I asked a question previously about talking to my boss to create a team lead SDR position, I had some ideas I wanted to implement for an SDR playbook and also wanted to make our processes smoother as they are too time consuming and we have a lack of MQLs. I had my QBR with my boss the other day and as I was broaching why we'd benefit from one to my boss, she told me that there's a head of SDR position open and asked which career path I'd like to pursue, between that and being an AE since I previously expressed wanting to be an AE when I first joined the company. I was immediately excited about the prospect of a higher position than what I was originally going to propose being open, but now I'm thinking that I might be boxing myself in for the long-term.

    The issue with being an AE that I've heard from other AE's is that this company is more product- oriented than sales oriented, so oftentimes they product team shoots down prospects that aren't in their narrow use case repository (my company targets enterprise retail, travel, gaming, and other B2C sites but apparently product typically shoots down use cases that aren't in either beauty or retail). That doesn't really affect me when I'm booking meetings, but it's definitely a concern for me when I'm considering becoming an AE over the long-term.

    One of the AES has the central US and is having trouble meeting quota due to the makeup of the territory and it having less beauty/retail compared to the rest of the US. Basically, it feels like things could be hit or miss especially with the fact that we haven't gotten a significant amount of outbound meetings to make up for a lack of MQL leads. On the other hand, it feels like becoming an SDR manager would be a safe bet for now to be able to deliver results since I've come from a successful, scaled-out startup where the SDRs ran like a well-oiled machine. I've made a list of projects, software to adapt, and outreach efforts that could help deliver results for the SDRs. Most of them I've been either working on for myself or would have to do anyway to help make my sales processes more efficient and get more meetings so I figure I could either get paid for the extra work short-term by being a manager or put in the extra work and still have the meetings quota but hopefully get the long-term payoff of becoming an AE. I also have some sales plays/strategies that I'm sure everyone else will start doing once they catch on and get results, so again I was thinking I might as well get paid for the ideas in the short term.

    Also for background info, we have partners as well but it's been a challenge for some of the AE's to break in with them because of the "what can you do for me" attitude, but apparently our average deal size with them is 300-500k. Our smallest non-partner deal size is 10k and the whale deals in pipeline are 1.5 and 90 MM but both are large beauty companies in a great territory. I think the prospect of being uncertain about the territory and quota especially while the MQLs are low seems daunting to me.

    I'm not sure which path to take in this situation. Are there any other considerations I should take into account?

    submitted by /u/Last_Professional111
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    What job alternatives after inside Sales?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 10:28 PM PDT

    What job opportunities open up, after working in this area? Let's say one day you are bored by the job, what are the alternatives then?

    submitted by /u/goodlelo
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    Dealing with corporate procurement

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 03:52 AM PDT

    First - this sub is amazing. The amount of help offered to random strangers has made me much more proud of being in sales.

    The problem at hand. Ive been in sales management for for the last 5 years (industrial, not SAAS, all customers at F100) and just took a new role (same company) managing our relationship with one of our largest customers ($30MM in ARR).

    Much of the new role is dealing with customer VPs and procurement in particular.

    I have always focused on value as an IC and coached my sales guys to do the same. Most sales are done at a local level, and the users (mostly) care about value. So the obvious option is to have the local users vouch for your company and services, but that doesnt always work in practice.

    So far in my experience, procurement does not care about value or pretends not to. I have been instructed to lower our costs for extended renewals etc.

    My customer vertical is in a down cycle right now, and I want to be sensitive and not draw too hard a line in the sand.

    Thoughts on dealing with procurement?

    Books to read specifically about account management and renewals? (Ive read and internalized many sales books, but this job is 75% renewals and upselling).

    You guys are amazing. Keep up the hustle.

    submitted by /u/WorkinSlave
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    Do you get a referral bonus at your company?

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 07:00 AM PDT

    And if so, how large?

    Me: Large Tech Co, $1k Bonus

    submitted by /u/Nycnew
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    Final Interview

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 06:16 AM PDT

    I have a final interview, director level, upcoming for an account manager position in construction/ power tools sales. This company is notorious for the long interview process so I want to be as prepared as possible. Does anyone have specific questions or advice I should ask?

    submitted by /u/rfyoung
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    I think my approach to pricing could be killing my deals? and also killing my negotiation, thoughts?

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 04:49 AM PDT

    Hey all,

    My sales process is pretty simple and I've got a great command over the mechanics. I do b2b IT/engineering services sales. Customers are mostly startup and smb.

    The part of the sales process that I struggle with is behavioral/contextual. The main issue I'm challenged with now is pricing and how I am introducing pricing to the customer. Here's an overview of the ideal sales process for a typical project.

    • Cold call a stranger and set a meeting for 15 mins
    • 15 min Prospecting Call - discuss high-level pain points, are they the decision maker etc. The prospect surfaces a pain point that we can solve with a 'typical project' that we do all the time.
    • 60 min Discovery Call - what are the pain points, is there a budget, who is the decision-maker
    • 45 Min Proposal Call - recap pain points, process, deliverables, timeline, budget
    • Share formal proposal over email - more details on the proposal, a little more than my presentation on the proposal call, start hashing out a formal contract.
    • Share formal contract - get feedback, go back and forth over email, send for signature once there is alignment

    My question here is - am I sharing pricing too early? Should I recap pain points, verify that our approach is correct per the customer and then come back with pricing? The way I'm doing it feels a little premature because the proposal is never 100% perfect, it's often the customer can slightly change scope a little after this point.

    Also - is there a better way to verify budget? I often ask 'how is this project being financed' but find it hard to push beyond that for specific numbers if the customer doesn't offer them. Often I learn that 'it is financed by x department' or 'it is unbudgeted' which is helpful but not enough detail to present pricing with outright confidence.

    At the same time, if our pricing is impossible for the customer or the project is unbudgeted - I don't bother with the formal proposal and either put the customer on the backburner or close out the prospect as closed lost. My approach seems to make sense to me logically but curious to see what others think.

    submitted by /u/Nessan1
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    What’s been the most difficult thing for you to sell?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 07:47 PM PDT

    My answer is employee benefits. I came away from that job thinking that owners of companies occupy two very different head spaces at one time (1) I love being a job creator. (2) I hate all my employees and would fire them all if I didn't need them.

    submitted by /u/pkennard
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    Co-worker found out I was job hunting, should I be worried?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 05:13 PM PDT

    Hey all! I was just offered a promotion and accidentally let it slip to a co-worker that prior to the promotion I was job hunting and that I have an interview coming up. Should I be concerned about being fired?

    submitted by /u/utfan2020
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    Taking interview offers when I'm not really looking

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 07:37 PM PDT

    Hi all, I've done really well with the company I'm at and starting to get recruited by big names in the industry. I'd like to make a move there at some point but I'm not looking at the moment to see if I can get another promotion where I am currently (and largely enjoy where I am).

    Is it worth taking an introductory call if I'm not interested in making a change right now to put my resume in their pipeline or best to wait until I am actually looking to make a change?

    submitted by /u/Change_Zestyclose
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    Is this type of work environment normal ?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 01:55 PM PDT

    So I applied to a sales job for a Forex company and got an interview. I go to their office only too see two people drink whiskey on the job, loud music playing and everyone screaming? I mean, I am kind of in love with it but I am just wondering whether that kind of stuff is normal ?

    submitted by /u/AsteroidBear200
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    Sales Nav Help

    Posted: 04 Jun 2021 12:59 AM PDT

    I am an avid sales navigator user, I know how to perform all the various booleans searches etc. I would say I am pretty experienced using the solution. My question comes after speaking with our LinkedIn account manager, she said she will get back to me. So I am curious to know if anyone else has had this issue and is trying to solve this.

    Goal: To perform a lead search of prospects who work in organizations HQ'd in a specified geo

    Issue: I can perform a lead search and set the geo to the region I oversee however this also includes individuals who are working for organizations outside of my region.

    Why? So I can find people who are not in my geo (work remote, or other offices) that work for organizations that are HQ'd in my geo.

    Let me know if you have found a way to do this - I have also brought the idea of looking at the source code during a search to enter code lines.

    Thank you.

    submitted by /u/Hansnfranz12
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    Channel/Partner Sales and Development: Book Reccomendations?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 09:12 PM PDT

    Hi All,

    I came from a 100% channel cloud security vendor and am now working on building a channels and alliances strategy at a smaller startup.

    This sub is always right on the money with resources for prospecting and direct sales.

    I'm curious, do any of you with backgrounds in partner and alliance management have recommendations on resources or books to check out in order to better understand this subset of the sales world?

    Thanks in advance! Happy to clarify anything!!

    submitted by /u/PartnerManaged
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    Is Aflac really that bad?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 03:09 PM PDT

    After getting the rundown from the local Aflac hiring manager today, I'm honestly considering the job. He told me to take my time and come back with questions so I did a little more research than my usual Glassdoor/Indeed browse and found all the different horror stories about working for Aflac. Maybe my hiring manager is taking a different approach than most because he's offering to pay for the licensing, has a system that generates leads, says he typically works in the field (not much dreadful cold calling), took me through the very convoluted compensation system, and even told me all the bad parts. I think it's a great product and live in an area that thrives on small businesses and isn't known for great worker benefits, so I'm just wondering, is it really a waste of time?

    They can't make me call friends and family because none of them live near me and it sounds like there's some kind of jurisdiction system (though I will say he seemed a little too interested when I mentioned my dad was a blue-collar worker—this guy's clientele bread and butter). I love sales, especially when I have the freedom to sell how I want. Everyone seems pretty sketched out by it and I get that. I don't have much money but I think I could make it work until I make money with Aflac. He's even got his son on the team. It feels like he's invested in helping others succeed (I've seen a lot on here about managers taking a bit of other people's commission but from what I was presented managers & sales agents get the same bonus pay if an agent reaches a sales goal. No money out of my pocket lol.)

    I know it sounds like I've already made my decision but I'm honestly curious. My boyfriend is a realtor and it sounds awfully similar with the exception of how the commission is structured. I like the idea of "owning my own business" and feel I could do well. I'm twenty-one and almost done with college. It sounds like a great step-up from hourly retail jobs. I also have an interview with SelectQuote on Tuesday.

    TL;DR: I think Aflac sounds like a cool opportunity and I live in an area with a lot of potential. The hiring manager seems like he genuinely cares about helping others succeed and has already quashed several of the different reasons people tend to hate working for Aflac. Should I go for it? Any suggestions?

    submitted by /u/nastyspice99
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    Sales engineering in tech/software with a civil engineering degree?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 05:03 PM PDT

    Hello everyone! So I am gonna graduate with a bachelors in civil engineering soon. I have had two engineering internships and realized it's not for me. So I would like to make a switch to sales engineering when i graduate. The closest industry to my degree is construction sales, but I'm not sure I want to go that route. Is it possible to be a SE in software/tech with a civil engineering degree?

    submitted by /u/OOFBOSS
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    Offered an outside sales job

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 08:10 PM PDT

    So I got offered this entry level sales job at a company that work with like supermarket retailers to sell some products that would normally be on the shelves. Is this a job even worth trying?

    submitted by /u/HTrill713
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    Account Executive interview. Can I get some tips from you guys?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2021 07:36 PM PDT

    Recently graduated college. I've had some SDR/related positions interviews over the last couple weeks. Nothing that has blown me away but it's been great to at least have options and have some interest from companies.

    Tomorrow I have an interview with a company that's based in my city but has offices everywhere. They're in "FinTech" and have been rather successful. Problem is, I don't have any real sales experience as a recent grad. This is the highest paying position with one of the most successful companies I've interviewed with.

    How do I prepare myself to seem best suited for the position given the lack of experience?

    submitted by /u/thejhawker
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