OUTBOUND – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode of Outbound, Mike Grimberg interviews Emily Ackerman, a director of business development at Bennett Thrasher, about building relationships and trust with prospects. They discuss being authentic, focusing on people over brands, and using stories to connect. Gain insights into developing an authentic personal brand and tips for business development success.

Guest Bios: 

Emily Ackerman is a director of business development at Bennett Thrasher, an accounting firm based in Dallas, Texas. She has experience in sales roles in radio and accounting.
 

Mike Grimberg is the CEO of Proofpoint Marketing.

Main Discussion Points:

- The importance of authenticity in sales and treating it like building a personal relationship 

- Focusing on people's interests and personalities rather than just their brands 

- Using stories and humor to connect better with prospects

- Tailoring outreach to industry preferences and clients  

- Building a personal brand and niche on platforms like LinkedIn

Key Quotes:

"I think it is different for every single person. I think it all boils down to life's just too short to work with crappy people." (00:00:51)

"People don't remember the tax return or the quality of earnings you did for them a couple years ago. They're going to remember how you made them feel." (00:05:00)  

"I would tell people, whoever I manage, I am not going to judge you based on your closing ratio in the beginning. I'm going to judge you on your activity." (00:16:12)

In this episode of Outbound, host Joseph Lewin interviews Melissa Wexler, a seasoned sales leader with over 10 years of experience leading sales teams. They discuss Melissa's unique career journey from being a lawyer to getting into sales, as well as practical tips for building authentic relationships with customers.

Main Discussion Points:

- Making the transition from being a lawyer to a sales leader

- The importance of listening and discovery in the sales process

- Being authentically interested in your customers and their industries

- Researching your customer's industry to understand pains and passion points

- The mindset of helping others and giving back

Guest Bio:

Melissa Wexler is a sales leader with over 10 years of experience managing teams. She started her career working for an IBM hardware provider before attending law school and working as an attorney. She later transitioned into leading sales teams, leveraging her background in law.

Key Quotes:

"Really break it down a little more simple than that. What do you like about the people you sell to? What do you like about the industry? What jazzes you up and start the conversation there, right?" (00:03:38)

"When product comes up. It should be much more organic and it should have. This is why that discovery piece, if we go all the way back in our conversation to discovery and listening, the more you know about the individual, what's driving them, what's driving this purchase, and why it should be the problem they're focused on right now." (00:11:39)

In this episode of Outbound, host Joseph Lewin interviews Mickeli Bedore, an enterprise sales expert known for turning around underperforming sales territories. They discuss tactics and mindsets for building trust and respect with prospects to drive sales conversations and close deals. Listeners can expect to learn best practices for discovery calls, avoiding the "friend zone," and maintaining an organized sales process.

Guest Bio: 
Mickeli Bedore is a top sales closer with over 20 years of experience "cleaning up" territories for companies like IBM, Oracle and Verizon. After hitting his pinnacle as a sales rep and having a child, Mickeli switched to consulting startups on developing repeatable sales processes optimized for fast revenue growth and conversions. 

Key Discussion Points:

- Don't lead sales conversations trying to build friendship. Friendship is earned through respect, value and solving problems:
"One of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to building relationships with your prospect is people want to lead with friendship. Friendship is earned, just like trust is." (00:02:55)

- Structure every touchpoint and call intentionally to demonstrate respect for prospects' time. Set and stick to agendas for discovery, demos, etc. 
"I want to respect you and I want to respect your time so our process and how we run our entire sales process and our sales, every single sales call is almost, there's always a bit of the same redundancy so that the person knows what am I getting into?" (00:03:19)

- Act as a guide focused purely on making the deal, not trying to become actual friends. Overindexing on friendship can prevent deals from progressing. 
"They expect me as their guide to show them a good time. And I think our prospects expect the same, especially when we're doing outbound." (00:03:46)

- Success comes from preparing diligently on prospects' industries, priorities and challenges - not focusing conversations on yourself or your product. Diagnose needs.
"As salespeople, it is our responsibility to be the doctor and the expert in the problem that we solve." (00:22:30)

Key Quotes:

"Friendship will come, but it shouldn't be the main focus in the beginning, I don't think." (00:06:23)

"I have to kind of put on my theater robe, I guess, and be a little bit more stern and stubborn and disciplined than I usually would be in real life because it's my job and it's my livelihood and I'm not paid to be everyone's buddy." (00:13:56)

"They only care about them. That's your baby, right? Like, nobody wants to see pictures of your baby on your phone. No matter what you think. They want to show you pictures of their baby." (00:22:38)

In this episode, Joseph Lewin interviews Andy Rogers, VP of Business Development at Key Tech. They discuss strategies and tactics for building deeper relationships with ideal customers, with a focus on being interested, being interesting, and establishing common ground. Andy shares stories of successful relationship-building that have led to long-term business partnerships.

Key Takeaways:

- Building relationships starts with being genuinely interested in the customer as a person (00:00:33)

- Do your homework like you're going on a date to determine shared interests/experiences (00:00:33)

- Position your offering or services as interesting and compelling (00:02:01)  

- Find common interests with the customer to build rapport (00:03:04)

- Share stories around lessons learned and successes to create interesting content customers can share (00:10:33)

- Nurture your network and build community around your brand (00:19:44)

Guest Bio: 

Andy Rogers is the VP of Business Development at Key Tech, a product development firm focused on bringing innovative medical devices and combination products to market. He transitioned from engineering to a sales and marketing role at Key Tech and has over a decade of experience in relationship-building within the MedTech industry.  

Company Bio:

Key Tech is a full-service product development firm in Massachusetts that specializes in engineering, prototyping, and process automation solutions for medical device companies. Founded in 1996, Key Tech now has over 75 employees.

Key Quotes:

"If you're not interested in them as a person or what they're doing, you're in the wrong job. Like, just flat out you have to be interested in that person." (00:01:09)

In this episode, Joseph Lewin interviews Mark Colgan about his strategies for building relationships with ideal customers through thought leadership and content creation. Mark shares how he leveraged thought leader interviews and curated content to start conversations with prospects who recently raised funding, ultimately leading to new business.  

Mark Colgan has 14 years of experience in B2B sales and marketing. He previously ran an agency focused on securing podcast guest interviews through outbound tactics. Now helps agency owners generate more pipeline and optimize their sales processes as the founder of Agency Sales Design. 

Key Discussion Points:

- Creating thought leadership content based on target customer pain points, even if not directly related to your product (00:56, 01:26)

- Conducting video interviews with multiple industry experts to create an in-depth blog post/resource (01:46)   

- Using the content to start conversations when prospecting, not to directly sell (03:44, 05:01)

- Providing additional value without expecting anything in return to build goodwill (08:03, 08:16)  

- Practical tips for individual salespeople to replicate a similar approach on their own (10:44)

Key Quotes:

"It's essentially creating thought leadership and then using that thought leadership in your outbound prospecting campaigns to start those conversations and build the relationships with the customer." (00:56)

"I try and deposit as much goodwill in as many banks as I can and just somehow, eventually the universe...it has come back and benefited me in the long run." (08:23)  

"But really, you have to start with understanding what are the problems and pain points that my prospects are facing." (11:34)

In this episode, sales consultant Kevin Lawson shares his approach to building meaningful relationships with ideal customers. Listeners can expect to learn practical strategies for connecting with influential people in their target customer's world in order to establish trust and rapport.

Main Discussion Points:  

- The importance of building relationships with people who can introduce you to ideal clients rather than cold outreach (00:01:43)

- Creating an "ecosystem" of influencers around your ideal customer, like their trusted advisors in various functions - IT, marketing, finance, etc. (00:03:10) 

- Framing sales relationships as "collecting friends" rather than transactional sales (00:06:01)

- Practical relationship-building tactics like quarterly check-ins (00:11:11) and understanding how your contacts measure value (00:16:21)

Guest Bio:  

Kevin Lawson is the owner of Lighthouse Sales Advisors, where he works with small B2B companies on building sales infrastructure and processes. He hosts the "Two Tall Guys Talking Sales" podcast and writes frequently about sales excellence and leadership.  

Key Quotes:  

"Nobody cares how much we sell at the end of our careers. They care about what kind of person we were." (00:05:28)

"Stop thinking about it that way. Instead, replace those thoughts and conditional what you've been conditioned to view as sales. Think about it like collecting friends, people you want to do business with." (00:06:01)

In this episode of Outbound, Joseph Lewin interviews David Mussan-Levy, a 15-year sales veteran currently the Director of Sales at Synechron. They discuss David's approach to building deeper relationships with customers through personalization, persistence, and bringing value. Listeners can expect to gain tangible tips for researching and understanding their ideal customers.

Guest Bio: 

David Mussan-Levy has over 15 years of sales experience. He is the Director of Sales at Synechron, a professional services company focused on IT consulting for the financial services industry. 

Key Discussion Points:

- Personalization in sales starts with thorough research of prospects’ interests both personally and professionally (3:02)

- Being persistent by continuing to nurture prospects over longer sales cycles (13:25)  

- Bringing value to every interaction and always having a purpose for meetings (8:52)

- Tips for increasing persistence, such as switching up sales cadences (10:13)

Key Quotes:

"80% of life is showing up." (7:43)

"Sales is equal parts persistence and luck." (16:42)

In this episode of Outbound, host Joseph Lewin speaks with Alex Garner, an account manager at Prosource Technologies, about strategies for building genuine relationships with potential customers before trying to make a sale. 

They discuss the importance of prioritizing face-to-face interactions, finding ways to show you care about the customer beyond just making a sale, asking questions to understand pain points, and adapting your approach to connect better with each unique customer. Listen in to gain actionable tactics to establish rapport and trust that pave the way for sales success.

Key Discussion Points:

- Alex brings donuts to school accounts as a way to show appreciation for the staff and build connections, not just push a sale (00:02:22). This gesture has led to hardware sales but more importantly, ongoing relationships.

- Face-to-face prospecting is key - it allows for genuine conversations and makes a more memorable impression than emails or calls (00:06:58).  

- Look for conversational hooks in an office to establish common ground, like noticing a Tom Brady photo to discuss football fandom (00:08:20). Getting someone laughing helps build rapport.

- Ask questions to understand their pain points so you can position yourself as a partner focused on their success, not just a vendor (00:10:09). Diagnostic questions help prescribe the right solutions.

- Adapt your appearance and approach to connect with the local context and not appear overly salesy (00:13:13). Blending in helps build trust faster.

Key Quotes:

"I try to lead with some warm donuts and fresh conversations that way." (00:01:51)

"If you can get somebody laughing with you, then they're going to give you 5-10 minutes of their time because you've already built that rapport, that relationship without even having to sell anything." (00:09:04) 

"I've always said, if you can get somebody laughing with you, then they're going to give you 5-10 minutes of their time because you've already built that rapport, that relationship without even outside of here's a quote, here's a proposal, here's a solution, here's what I can bring to you as an organization." (00:09:04)

In this episode of Outbound, Joseph Lewin talks to Dee Acosta, Director of Sales and Strategic Growth at Modigi, about the best strategies and tactics for building deep relationships with customers. They discuss taking an all-bound approach, getting into the mindset of buyers, leveraging relationships through networking and referrals, and being authentically yourself in sales. Listeners will learn tips for developing trust and rapport with prospects to drive successful sales.

- Dee Acosta is the Director of Sales and Strategic Growth at Modigi. He previously held sales leadership roles at Hockeystack, Metadata, and Aberdeen. Dee brings a wealth of experience in sales strategy, relationship building, and revenue growth.

- Joseph Lewin is the Director of Growth at Proofpoint marketing and is the host of the Outbound podcast focused on sales strategies and tactics. He is passionate about helping companies build meaningful relationships with their ideal customers. 

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:08] Being Authentic and Taking an Allbound Approach  

[00:02:06] Understanding the Mindset of Each Buyer

[00:03:40] Leveraging Relationships and Networking

[00:05:09] Becoming a Domain Expert 

[00:06:27] Telling a Story About Leveraging Relationships  

[00:07:19] Taking a Well-Rounded Approach

[00:09:07] Building Trust Through Multiple Touchpoints

[00:12:03] Relying on Sales Fundamentals in Challenging Times

[00:13:34] Building Relationships Beyond Transactions 

[00:14:10] Taking an Allbound Approach - Key Takeaways

[00:16:56] Being in the Right Headspace for Sales Calls

[00:17:04] A Story About an Uncomfortable Sales Call

[00:18:53] Conclusion

Key Quotes:

"In short, it's authenticity. You have to be yourself with your clients and confident with yourself." (Dee Acosta, [00:00:47])

"It's really taking an all-bound mentality is understanding what you need to do to create pipeline, to create meaningful conversations and then almost obsessing over that." (Dee Acosta, [00:01:08]) 

"If you're uncomfortable with a channel, try it, just do it. Because your competition is using that channel." (Dee Acosta, [00:15:06])

"You have to be neurotic. (Dee Acosta, [00:15:42])

In this episode, Joseph Lewin interviews Matt Hall about finding and engaging with relevant ecosystems, asking current customers about their ecosystems, and slowly building relationships in those ecosystems over time.

Key Discussion Points:

- Finding ecosystems where your ideal clients do business and becoming part of them by understanding different players, pain points, and needs (01:01)
- Example of manufacturer ecosystem with channel partners and how Matt interjected himself into it (01:31)
- Using current trusted customers as a starting point to ask about their ecosystems (14:00)
- Getting into complex ecosystems like engineering standards groups through learning, adding value where you can (12:18)
- Being patient because ecosystems and relationships take time to build (08:16)

Matt Hall works at Pivotal Advisors. His role is to help business owners and sales leaders to identify opportunities for business growth.

Key Quotes:

"Find an ecosystem where your ideal client is doing business. I'm not saying just they live there, they hang out there like, no, this is the business world that they're in. Find that ecosystem and become part of it." (Matt Hall 01:04)