Sell By Being Human – Details, episodes & analysis

Summary:

Mike Simmons has risen through professional sales roles for the past 25 years as an individual contributor, VP of sales, and CRO. He founded his company Catalyst, A.C.T.S to help SaaS founders and team leaders scale their organizations from $2M - $80M ARR. He coaches sales people, speakes an ed tech conferences, and also runs a podcast.

I this episode, we talk through the concept of selling by being human and how sales is about connecting the dots between problems and solutions. Mike emphasizes the importance of serving others and asking the right questions to help people discover answers on their own.

We explore the misconception of sales and the negative stereotypes associated with it. Mike shares his personal journey in sales and how he learned from observing and working with experienced sales professionals.

Mike shares practical tools like the hexagon framework to problem solving and how to ask subtle but powerful questions to get anyone to reach decisions on their own and address problem solving from a more productive perspective. You'll learn how to sell ideas internally, how to move others with high indecision, and to practice different ways of asking good questions on your own.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:01 Selling by Being Human: Connecting Problems and Solutions

10:00 Serving Others: The Key to Successful Sales

24:08 Learning from the Best: Observing and Emulating Experienced Sales Professionals

27:06 The Importance of Alignment and Perspective

32:47 Being Comfortable with Imperfect Decisions

39:19 The Power of Asking Questions

46:21 Documenting the Decision-Making Process

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• Website - Find My Catalyst

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Summary:

Lyndsay Dowd is a Speaker, Founder, Author, Coach, Podcast Host, and Disruptor.  She was recognized as a Top 10 Business Coach by Apple News and was the recipient of the 2023 Award for Innovation and Excellence, also named Business Coach of the Year. Lyndsay was also a Featured Guest Lecturer at Harvard University.  She is an accomplished leader, decorated seller and has successfully managed large, diverse, high-performing sales teams over the last 25 years. 23 of those years were spent climbing the ranks at IBM. 

In creating her company, Heartbeat for Hire, she has devoted her career to transforming leadership through building irresistible culture and modern leadership practices to get the best results from their teams.  She is a thriving coach focused on sales, leadership, career, and culture. She has been featured in Fortune Magazine, HR.Com, Authority Magazine, Business Management Daily, Valiant CEO and many other publications. Lyndsay also hosts the top 5% globally ranked podcast, Heartbeat for Hire, and is a frequent guest speaker on live and recorded shows. 

This episode is about the sales skills of exceptional leaders. Specifically how important it is to practice the skills of transferring belief. She shares how exceptional leaders create cultures of mutual respect and understanding. Lindsay shares her experiences with inspiring leaders who empowered her and helped catapult her into an executive role with IBM. You can learn how to be more intentional with showing others you believe in them.

Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Overview

03:07 The Power of Human Connection in Sales and Leadership

07:25 Creating Cultures of Mutual Respect and Understanding

12:49 Advocating for Your Team and Empowering Others

15:36 The Impact of Recognition and Appreciation

28:07 Building a Personal Brand and the Power of Testimonials

33:09 Modernizing Leadership and Creating a Positive Work Culture

36:00 The Importance of Trust, Feedback, and Inspiration in Leadership

46:29 Guest Lecturing at Harvard: Sharing Stories of Resilience and Leadership

51:56 The Role of Human Connection in Sales and Building Relationships

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Summary:

Bethany Stachenfeld is the Co-founder & CEO at Sendspark - a video platform for sales teams to connect with customers, helping sales professionals generate up to 400% more email engagement. Her company makes it really easy for any business to create personalized video messages at scale to connect with people in a human way.

Prior to founding Sendspark, Bethany was Head of Marketing for two B2B SaaS Startups: Filestack and VidGrid. Bethany is deeply involved in the startup community, and has been part of Venture for America, 500 Startups, OnDeck, and the Stage2 Accelerator (Catalyst).

I met Bethany at a B2B networking event in Tampa and she instantly impressed me. This episode you will learned the skills Bethany used as a marketer and how they differ from whats reqwuired of her as a startup co-founder. You'll also learn how to send brief video messages in your business workflow and why 1-1 video communication is not only a necessary skill now but a skill we'll all need in the future of work. Even if youve never recorded yourself, Bethany van give you the tools to get started.

Press play and glad to have you here!

Key Moments:

06:11 - The importance of personalized video as a medium in sales

15:10 - How does a marketer use human connection in how they sell

20:44 - Recruiting in start-ups. Finding alignment instead of convincing people to join.

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Summary:

The art of sales requires deep thought and curiosity about how people reach decisions. We all hate pushy salespeople yet we all like buying certain things. You can probably think of a delightful experience buying something. Those delightful experiences and why we make those decisions is what we break down on this episode with David Premier.

You'll learn simple frameworks in our business an personal lives of how we tend to make decisions and how you can influence those decisions using the psychology of decision making.

Today, as the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist of Cerebral Selling, David's unique science and empathy-based approaches to driving revenue and talent growth have been published in the Harvard Business Review as well as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. magazines. Often referred to as the "Sales Professor", David is also the author of the Bestselling book, Sell The Way You Buy, and an Adjunct Professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• How David's perspective on sales formed similar to engineering only with human variables (4:00)
• If we want to see how we sell well we have to attune ourselves to the way people buy (6:29)
• 3 Things Jay would focus on if he was coaching sales people as a sales sensei (9:54)
• Why you can learn empathy and how (12:30)
• Why ROI is confused with Value (17:54)
• Knowing where peoples head might be at (28:05)

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Summary:

Being present is an essential part of not only understanding ourselves better but it can actually help you in sales.

Jay Abbasi has had an extremely vibrant career path. He was a sales training manager for Tesla supporting over 550 employees in 24 states. He realized that his calling was in going out on his own to help sales people and organizations become more productive. He uses mindfulness coaching to help people build resilience, avoid burnout, and persevere in their workplaces.

He is a inspiring voice on LinkedIN and a warm communicator.

You'll learn how the heck mindfulness can help you in sales and why it's not just meant for monks in a temple. You'll learn how to better relate to your emotions and tactics for being fully present in your interactions. If you're curious how mindfulness applies to sales and also how it's uniquely human. Listen on!

Key Takeaways by Time!

• Jay's story of how he felt drawn to the concept of mindfulness as a life calling (3:30)
• Ways you can better understand what someone is feeling (6:07)
• Jay's definition of sales built around problems/result (18:43)
• The importance of trust in sales and what all great sales people do (21:58)

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Summary:

Jules White is an award winning international sales consultant with over 30 years of business and sales experience. Working in many different sectors selling everything from baby products to stainless steel to Yellow Pages she has also experienced every job role within sales, from telesales through to Sales Director and has a wonderful breadth of knowledge and experience to bring to her work. 

She also secured investment from Peter Jones in the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, which is the ultimate pitch to win! She's an author, a business owner, and a TEDX Speaker.

This episode we focus on how the same skills that serve us well in our lives are the same skills that serve us well in sales. People truly buy people and they buy people who truly get to know them. Jules instincts are always to get to know the human behind the sale and she'll help you unlock the language and mindset you can use to go deeper and build more lasting connections in all facets of your life.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• Our uniqueness is the best thing we have as human (6:15)
• What is magic and how it's defined by the audiences mind (6:11)
• Defining what it means to be human (7:18)
• Story of what she learned from her Dad (10:00)
• Conversations about our Dads (15:00)
• Life Skills are sales skils and why (17:35)
• Why you let the buyer be in charge (19:57)
• Story of patience and being gentle with a large sale (23:32)
• Touching story about her and her son (29:50)
• Live it/Love it/ Sell It Methodology - 35:06

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• TEDX Talk

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Summary:

Adam Wilber is a master magician, best selling author, entrepreneur, 3X time TedX speaker, and he's appeared on numerous TV shows to perform magic. His most famous appearance was on stage with the show Penn and Teller "Fool Us" where he successfully fooled magicians Penn and Teller.

We talk about how great magicians are really leading their audience through a story much like salespeople are. At it's core magic is a performance art that exists in the mind of the viewer and you'll learn a lot of same techniques that Adam uses to draw people in to him can apply when you're influencing change.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• How Adam got in to Magic. Or how it got into him (2:30)
• What is magic and how it's defined by the audiences mind (6:11)
• Disconnecting from reality that allows people to realize what they know to be true doesn't necessarily have to be true. That's a powerful thing you can give to help people grow (8:42)
• How do you find your creativity? (11:47)
• Magic as a journey. Not telling but the experience (16:00)
• Magic, Sales, and Tricks. You're showing someone to a door to help them see what's on the other side. (28:21)

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Summary:

This is a little shorter one this week but you get to meet Evan Carlton. His parents knew he'd be destined for a career in sales when he started a business up selling kids in his cafeteria for extra lunch tickets. So he's had to talk his way out of the principals office at times. That same skill has helped him develop a really successful career as a Sales Development rep in Silicon Valley. He's also grown sales development teams and now trains sales development reps.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• Evan's definition of sales (3:30)
• Story of selling in his elementary school cafeteria and how those skills serve him well now. (8:24)
• What are people with great sales instincts doing? (15:18)
• The one trait that any persuasive person has (21:48)

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Have you ever wondered how to be inspiring? Why are we drawn to inspirational people and what about them makes us inspired to create change in our own lives.

Erik isn't a trained sales person but people are drawn to him because of his inspiring story and I wanted to dig into the concept of inspiration and also accepting people and opportunities for who and what they are.

Erik Eklund is a corporate leadership speaker and founder of Connecting Humans. He speaks to crowds to encourage them to do what they believe it and not to judge each other due to our differences.

He looks different than most people from Sweden. That's because his parents adopted him from Columbia where he was found by a man on the doorstep of a church.

He doesn't set out to be inspiring, he sets out to be honest and share what he believes in. He'll help you find the things in your life that might be inspiring to others. You'll also learn a mindset that will help you not only sell like a human but you'll find inspiration from your own story and connect with humans because of it.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• Erik's Values in life (trust, care, purpose, joy) - 4:30
• Story about adaptin to different cultures 6:54
• Importance of the concept of acceptance 15:45
• How to be inspiring to others - 25:17

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Summary:

Alison can always be spotted by her pink blazer and her truly effervescent personality. She's passionate about simplifying sales and trains entrepreneurs in the UK on the necessary sales skills of a business owner. She's an author and a TEDEX speaker that frequently teaches on sales concepts that can be universally applied.

You'll find out how she overcame dyslexia to become successful in sales. How to adapt your sales approach to appeal to people that may not look or think like you. And you'll understand how when people come to ideas themselves, that's really the biggest key to sales.

Key Takeaways by Time!

• Why customer service and sales are really the same thing. (6:00)
• Why most people make sales complicated. (9:47)
• What does she describe is the magical dance of sales? (10:02)
• Sales is about a WE THING (15:04)
• What's one thing that can only hapen to you? Story of her walking into 10 Downing Street! (36:04)

Resources

The Chimp Paradox - Dr. Steve Peters

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