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Enjoy this week’s email….because who doesn’t want a bluebird every week

  #1 - You don't need a higher OTE

What you need...

1. Work for a company that:

• is already on the rise

• has a buzz about it

• is getting great traction

In a market that is so noisy and crowded, standing out is really, really hard. You won't do that yourself by working harder. By writing a better sequence. Making some great cold calls. It has to start with the company itself.

2. Work for a company that:

• is riding a wave that is much bigger than itself

Don't go somewhere that is creating the wave. Creating a big wave is very hard to do, and most fail at this. Don't be a wavemaker. Be a big wave rider.

3. Work for a company that:

• has a leveraged comp plan that pays a lot for over-achievement

Look at the details of the comp plan to understand how you can overachieve and what it will take to get to your own income goals. And then find out if others are overachieving. Avoid caps, lame accelerators, splits, and other clauses that limit your earning potential.

OTE in isolation of context is meaningless. Also just knowing what the current reps are making is only part of the story. If the big fundamentals of the opportunity are good then the comp plan matters.

Zoom out to look at the whole opportunity, before you zoom in to the comp plan.

Time for a dad joke break...

What do you call two monkeys who share an Amazon account? Prime mates.

  #2 - Chris Beall's cold calling tips

Chris Beall, CEO at ConnectAndSell, joined me on this week's podcast to share brilliant, actionable tips on improving sellers' cold calling techniques.  

A couple of takeaways

• Your goal is to gain trust

  • if you don’t master gaining trust in the first 7 seconds, the rest of the call is utterly meaningless

• Once built, springboard from there to build curiosity

  • this is the value that drives action

Chris recognized a need for a training program that provided a structured way to practice and help improve this craft. He also noticed the anatomy of cold calls are surprisingly similar to what happens during flights.

  Flights/cold calls

• takeoff / opening

• destination / reason for calling (breakthrough statement)

• turbulence / objections (tell me more)

• landing plane / asking for meeting

Alas....

ConnectAndSell‘s Flight School

was born. A training program designed to help get more value per conversation and per hour.

Check out the full interview for more tips and how he improved my cold calling pitch!

Sales Bluebird podcast episode 117>>>

  #3 - Who do you serve?

It’s interesting how many people when responding to the question “what does your company do?”, actually talk about what their company does! “We make a SaaS product in the sales tech space called Big Prop. It helps sales reps produce great proposals.”It is a symptom of the focus most companies have around their products.

• They plan around products

• They develop products in product teams

• They set a quota for products

• They message around products

• There are employees whose job title includes products

• There is a section on the web-site called “products”

It’s no wonder that employees default to talking about their products first and how great they are. It’s tough not to!

It might even sound like employees serve their products and company first...

What if company culture was to serve customers first?To talk about customers first. To talk obsessively about the problems they have that we help solve…...and THEN how we serve the customers.

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• Get the sense that your B2B sales team is bored during your regular team meetings? Here are 3 ideas to get them re-engaged! Sales manager tips: 5 ways to run a better team meeting>>> (14:23)

• Website exclusively for cyber security sales jobs>>>

  Shit we've got to stop saying...

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Rooting for you,

Andrew MonaghanChief [email protected]