Mark McCormack

Authenticity is the currency of cold calling, as explained by Tom Happé from Trueleads in this clip from our recent webinar. Watch the full webinar and pick up more cold calling tips here: https://hubs.ly/Q02z3r5x0 #salestips #coldcalls #coldcalling

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SWAT teams rather than armies. Hearing this phrase from lots of sales teams recently. And there is lots of logic - to a smaller highly trained (and coached ;-) elite team rather than a larger team, whether SDR’s or quota carriers. Here’s the drivers… - Sales Efficiency, the obvious one. Growth at all costs is gone, presumably forever. Cost of acquisition and sustainable growth are now key. - Raise The Bar, a smaller elite and well coached (couldn’t resist this time) team removes the weakest performers, the time and resources spent trying to pull them up and raises the bar for everyone on the team. - Bottom Up Economics, teams resourced based on on actual pipeline not multiplying quotas by team size. Quota carriers, even if good prospectors, can’t and arguably shouldn’t create all their own pipeline. If you don’t have the pipeline from SDR’s and inbounds, the team is bloated. - Elite is easier , With a smaller well chosen/recruited team, it’s more realistic with time and resource to help make them elite. And with an elite team, everything is easier. - Cheaper, it’s not just sales efficiency. It’s cost and budgets. They are smaller and what is possible or affordable has changed. What are you doing to create your SWAT teams?

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💥 BANT is Dead. Real Sales Qualification and Discovery is Where the Wins Are💥 AE's - Two things to STOP doing - asap. 1 = Focusing on *Need*........ A recent survey by Capterra revealed that nearly 2/3 of software purchases made by buyers were the WRONG ONES, with the problems still remaining in the business. So when your buyer comes to you and says 'sell me the thing I need' - you better dig deeper and validate that information. Why? Because what they think they need and what actually solves their problem? ..... 💡Often two VERY different things. And here's the thing... Your name, your solution, your company's name will be the first thing buyers bring up when *it doesn’t work*. And don't think they won't tell others. Word gets around. 2 = Focusing on *Timing* So many AEs hear “We’re not looking for a solution until 2-4 months from now” and immediately think *Unqualified*. Wrong move! Timing doesn’t mean there’s no urgency - it means you’ve got to find it. And Influence it. That’s where business acumen kicks in. Ask the right questions, get to the real urgency, and stop making assumptions. Here's the problem with BANT: too many sellers lean on it, and it’s killing your win rates. You qualify deals that shouldn’t even be in your pipeline, chase them endlessly, and wonder why they don’t close. 🛑 Or worse - you DISqualify deals prematurely - deals that could possibly put you over quota! I see it every day during my client’s pipeline and call reviews. We need to stop relying on BANT and start focusing on the 4 Pillars of real qualification. ⚡Problem we can solve ⚡Agreement on the Problem ⚡Desire to FIX the Problem ⚡Going on the Journey Let’s do better. 💥 #Sales #BANT #qualify #AE ====================================== Hi, I'm Leah 📕, Elite Seller, Sales Coach and Consultant. Want to be a Top 10% seller? DM me for a conversation about 1:1 Coaching.

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🌟 Exploring the benefits of an outsourced SDR team for your business? Here's how it can be a cost-effective strategy: Speed to Market: An experienced SDR team can begin delivering leads within the first week, minimising any gaps in your lead generation process. Reduced Overhead: Outsourcing eliminates the need for internal management and staffing costs—all included in your campaign charge. Data Inclusion: When you partner with Think Pipeline, essential data is already included, so there's no extra expense or effort needed to acquire it. Guaranteed Results: We offer a guaranteed lead Service Level Agreement (SLA), ensuring you receive tangible outcomes within a specified timeframe. Understanding these key points can help your business make informed decisions about lead generation strategies. 💡📊 #BusinessInsights #SDRTeam #ThinkPipeline #LeadGenerationTips

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Too many sales teams are using outdated prospecting tactics. Or worse... ... wasting time prospecting dead leads. ☠️ If this resonates with you, we’re running a free session with Jack Wauson from Mixmax and Leah Johnston from Seamless.AI on 5 proven prospecting tips to help you build more (and better) pipeline. 📅 Join us on August 22nd at 11 AM (PDT) 📌 Effective prospecting 101 📌 Tips for verifying and refining lead data 📌 How to (properly) segment your prospect list 📌 How to nail multi-channel outreach 📌 Optimizing send times to boost open & reply rates 📌 How Mixmax & Seamless.AI an help with all of the above Secure your spot here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dnrjHE2B

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Live coaching is key for boosting confidence in sales and customer success reps. Real-time feedback helps them refine their approach, tackle challenges head-on, and see immediate progress. We've had the pleasure of working with Reward Gateway and their GTM teams, here's what Alex Cope shared after our latest private session with them on "Proposal Review: When Your Prospect Says They Need to Think About It." When reps feel supported and guided by coaching experts like Sean Hamilton, their confidence skyrockets—and so do their results! #Sales #SalesTraining #CSTraining #SIAsuccess

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🚀 Sales Confidence 2.0: Get SDRs Who Hit the Ground Running! 🚀 Tired of spending weeks onboarding new SDRs, only to realise they aren’t a fit for your fast-paced team? I know the challenges of hiring SDRs—getting the right person who’s not just great on paper but ready to sell from day one can be tough. Let’s face it, traditional CVs don’t tell you if someone has the grit to go out there to the market and have conversations. We provide pre-trained and pre-screened SDR candidates, ensuring your next hire can deliver results immediately, without the lengthy training process. Our Sales Confidence 2.0 ranking system highlights the most proactive, self-taught talent, so you can skip the guesswork and bring on SDRs who are proven to thrive in sales. 🌟 Meet Our Top Talent of today🌟 Jalil- an experienced B2C sales professional with entrepreneurial passion, showcased resilience and bravery in handling tough objections during his role play. Enrike -A charismatic listener who builds trust with strong questions, creating powerful, results-driven conversations. Zuhair- An adaptable professional with retail experience, skilled at handling tough conversations and solving problems creatively. Ali - An aspiring sales professional who thrives on the thrill of winning deals, bringing energy and enthusiasm to every prospecting challenge. Jiya - A versatile professional with a strong background in events, her energy and bubbly character from the role play can allow her to use humour to establish trust. Avishai- A future leader with a background in music, is a well-spoken and articulate professional who excels at getting to the point and handling objections with ease. If you are hiring reach out, remember 50% reduction fee.

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10X Sales Reps... Is that the future of Sales? And more importantly... Is it doable? We're in the middle of 2024, and predictions (as usual) are in order. That's why we asked Brendan Short, Product-Led Sales at Apollo.io, about his views on the future of the sales rep profession, and they are pretty interesting. Would you agree? Drop your 2 cents in the comments! #sales #salestalk #salestech

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Sales Lessons from Gareth Southgate and England at Euro 2024 ⚽   Anyone in sales or sales enablement knows the feeling. One minute you're celebrating a smashed quota, feeling like you're unstoppable 💪 The next, you're staring at a spreadsheet of missed targets, questioning every sales tactic you ever learned. It's a rollercoaster and sometimes it feels like the freefalls are never ending. 😭   This emotional pendulum swing reminds me a lot of Gareth Southgate and the England team so far at Euro 2024. Remember the heat he took after some shaky performances? The pundits were calling for his head, questioning every decision. Tactics? ❌ Lineup? ❌❌.   Then, Southgate did something bold yesterday. He subbed out his captain, Harry Kane, for a player, Ollie Watkins, that played ZERO minutes in the entire tournament. 😱 😱 A gamble some might say, but a gamble that paid off in spectacular fashion – Watkins bagged the winning goal against the Netherlands!   The lesson here? Even when the pressure's on, and the critics are circling, stay true to your strategy. Just because someone hasn't had their big moment yet doesn't mean they can't be your game-changer. So, the next time you're feeling like you're at the bottom of the sales well, take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and remember: 💠 Believe in your process. You got this far for a reason. Keep refining your approach, and the results will follow. 💠 Don't be afraid to make bold moves. Sometimes, shaking things up can lead to breakthroughs. 💠 There's always an "Ollie Watkins" out there. New ideas and approaches can come from unexpected places. Stay the course, and never lose sight of your self-belief. Let's go!!

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Want to supercharge your SDR team’s performance? Eddie Galvan, CEO of Xcellerate Labs, is hosting a webinar where he’ll dive into 5 key strategies to help you get the most out of your sales development efforts. 📅 Mark your calendar for Thursday, 24th October 2024, at 3:00 PM UK time. Packed with actionable insights, this session is perfect for anyone serious about driving growth and hitting targets. Ready to take your team to the next level? Don’t miss out! 💼 #SDR #SalesDevelopment #XcellerateLabs #Webinar #SalesGrowth #TeamSuccess

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There's one thing keeping your sales pipeline slow this quarter... (Because, contrary to common beliefs... the market has not 'dried up') And it's probably not what you think. It's not strategy (although that plays a huge part) It's not confidence (although that can help) It's your perceived reality on how OTHER people view your sales activity. That's right. '𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨-𝙮' '𝙁𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙪𝙥 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙢𝙚 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙤𝙧 𝙥𝙪𝙨𝙝𝙮' '𝙒𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙠 𝙞𝙩'𝙨 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙞𝙛 𝙄 𝙖𝙨𝙠 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙬𝙝𝙮 𝙖 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙖𝙡 𝙙𝙞𝙙𝙣'𝙩 𝙘𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙚?' No-one really cares about what you're doing - because they're focused on what they're doing / how they feel about the way that they're showing up. But your fears around how you might be seen? Are probably giving you a stagnant sales pipeline. ----------------------------------- Next year, I'm changing things up for The C Suite ® and creating a container for business owners selling to corporate clients who are not yet at the £150K per year revenue point. If that's you? Drop me a message to get on the list to hear about the changes that could make your business so much easier in 2025.

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📅 8th October 2024 - Mark your calendar. Getting compensation right is critical when it comes to attracting and retaining top SaaS sales talent. If your packages aren’t competitive, you’re not just losing out on great people - you’re putting your growth at risk. That's why, on Tuesday next week, we’re releasing our salary benchmark report for SaaS sales roles across Germany. Stay tuned if you want to know how your compensation stacks up - or if you're losing talent to better offers. 👀 DM Liam Peoples or Robin Guth for priority access. 🐺💜 #sales #hiring #recruitment

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Placing SDR’s and playing fetch….🎾 Aston thinks both should happen at the same time🙃 His eagerness reminds me of what it takes to succeed as an SDR🔥 💪🏼It’s about resilience - turning every ‘no’ into a ‘not yet.’ 🤔It’s about curiosity - asking the right questions and learning from every call. 👊🏼It’s about persistence - like Aston staring at me until I give in and throw his tennis ball… You don’t stop until you’ve got what you came to do!🫡 🚨Have you got that drive and hunger to succeed?🚨 Then an SDR role is your perfect launchpad into a sales career that goes the distance🚀 💌DM me to get the ball rolling

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Loved this share from James Geyer over at AccountAim the other day around how many sales reps forget to follow up after a timing objection response. It happens constantly. I've had it happen to me too many times to count. Sadly, I've seen SDRs and BDRs on my own teams do it... It's the worst. These prospects are often the lowest hanging fruit in your basket, and the easiest prospects to follow up with when it's crunch time and you need to do anything and everything to book a meeting -- like it is for all those trying to build as much Q4 pipeline as they can before the holiday slow down kicks in! If you're not organized and keeping track of your responses and high engaging prospects -- you're not going to be successful in this role. That's the hard truth. You need to have these prospects on a hit-list, in your gmail folders, tagged in your Outreach or Salesloft or flagged to you by a tool like AccountAim to make sure you NEVER let these slip through the cracks. But, outside of timing objections, what else are your go-to's when it comes to quick and easy wins during pipe gen crunch time? It it reaching out to all of your recent Closed Lost Opportunities? Maybe it's hitting the phones like you're auditioning for Wolf of Wall Street 2? Or, do you do something completely unique and completely original? I'd love to hear in the comments below! #sales #salesdevelopment #coldemail #coldcall #pipeline #pipegen #sdrs #bdrs #salesdevelopmentrepresentative #objections

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Salespeople don’t only care about money! It’s a common misconception that all sales folk are money obsessed and that their OTE figure is the single most important aspect of the job search. I have spoken to countless AE's who don't have compensation as part of their top 3 motivators. And, by the way, I’m not even saying being predominantly driven by money is a bad thing. I actually think it’s a good thing, but more on that in another post. Anyway, here are some other driving factors of a candidate’s job search that you need to consider when hiring: - Culture - Hiring Process - Product Market Fit - The quality of leadership - The quality of communication - The learning and development opportunities - Detailed career progression & effective performance management - The overall achievability of the OTE figure and promotion opportunities OTE is an important aspect of course, but all A players I speak with don't give much importance to the OTE figure on its own.

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Calling all B2B sales professionals. With our friends at Aircall, we need your help with our State of Sales Coaching survey 2024. 3-5 minutes of your time could win you amazing prizes - the latest AirPods, Sonos speaker, Nespresso machine, and of course MySalesCoach scholarships. Sales coaching is widely considered the most critical function of a frontline sales leader. Previous studies demonstrate that it significantly boosts win rates and quota attainment. However, many sales organisations find it challenging to establish and execute an effective sales coaching culture and strategy. Our survey seeks to identify the key trends, best practices, and impacts of sales coaching in 2024. You'll be first to get the study published in October packed with insight, data and trends. Leaders and Individual Contributors should complete the survey - with scholarship places up for grabs for each. Your voice really matters, complete today for a chance of these amazing prizes and to be first with the report. Link here to complete - https://lnkd.in/eKRcTPXV

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You are paying for actual conversations, whether you realise it or not. Companies with SDR teams are investing in conversations, but are you getting the best bang for you buck? Are you truly optimising your Cost Per Conversation (CPC)? Meetings only happen through conversations. If you can't feed them enough high-quality conversations, dependably, predictably - Outbound will become to expensive and stop working. No conversation, no meeting. It's that simple. Just like tracking cost per impression with your digital marketing efforts, you need to track and improve your CPC. Imagine this: you pay your rep £40,000/year. With an industry average of 2 quality conversations (QCs) per day, that's 40 conversations a month. and 480 a year (if they don't have any time off for holidays etc) 480 conversations a year, costing you £83.33 each. Now, what if you could boost those conversations to 10, or even 20 per day? Suddenly, your cost per conversation drops dramatically: 10 QCs/day = £16.66 per conversation 20 QCs/day = £8.33 per conversation The impact? Your sales-qualified opportunity now costs just £8 not £83! 🚀 The key metric we focus on with clients is conversations per hour. Without a steady stream of high-quality conversations, outbound becomes too expensive and ineffective. When we do discovery with our prospects, more than 90% report having less than 5 actual direct DM conversations as day. This is a huge opportunity for improvement! Ready to supercharge your outbound strategy? Focus on increasing those conversations per hour and watch your costs drop and your results soar. 🌟 We can do this for you in one day!...Don't believe me - drop me a DM and I will show you how - Data led solution - NOT SNAKE OIL!

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Few things in sales feel as brutal as the first time your disco gets roasted. 🔥 Perhaps it was a customer who gave direct feedback on the phone after your flood of disco questions, a snappy response to your automated "personalised" email, or a call review with a rather blunt colleague... You never forget that scalding hot feeling as your skin reddens and the "how could I've been so stupid/ why did I do this?" shame rises. 😳 A few months down the line, the latter thought has become one of your bst friends, there's little shame in screwing up, and direct feedback has become your best friend. 🤗 At least that's what my experience was like. As a Head of Sales, I don't get questioned and roasted on my discoveries that often anymore - but we're about to change that. 😌 TOMORROW both Kaan Gökhan and I will face Stephanie Sgura - a hard teacher and discovery mastermind - to improve our discovery skills. AND YOU CAN WATCH! 😅 So, grab your lunch, tune in, and join Kaan and I to learn how (not) to do a killer discovery. 😎 Do you remember your first discovery screw-up? 🤣 Link to the event in the comments ⬇ #saas #sdrsofgermany #discovery #sales

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