In this second of a two part episode of the Sales Empowerment podcast, our hosts Mike Miranda and Shawn Winters continue their conversation about some best practices for sales reps to make the most out of the unique opportunities present in sales conferences. With public events now becoming a part of society again, it’s best to ensure that your new sales reps are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to take advantage of sales conferences. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Take note of people's badges
• Know who you're talking to, but don't just focus on the big players
• Have your go-to qualifying questions at the ready
• Make it easy for your reps and prospects to set a meeting
• You don't necessarily need to sponsor an event

QUOTES

Shawn on taking note of people's badges: "Try your best to talk to everybody, but you have to be thoughtful about, ‘okay is this a person a VP of engineering, or is this like an entry level software engineer that's probably not gonna run a big sales cycle.’"

Mike on maximizing your time in conferences: "For us, Shawn and I can attend events and most likely it's a salesperson representing these booths. And if there's a hundred booths, we can be having a hundred different conversations and probably find at least 5 to 10 of those companies are qualified and within our space and can be potential leads."

Connect with Mike and Shawn and learn more about OpTonal by visiting the following links:

• LinkedIn (Mike): https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmmiranda/
• LinkedIn (Shawn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnwinters1/
• Website: https://www.optonal.com/

With public events now available after two years of sweeping lockdowns, sales conferences and trade shows are nowe once again a viable option for sales organizations looking to capitalize on face-to-face interactions.

In this episode of the Sales Empowerment podcast, our hosts Mike Miranda and Shawn Winters talk about the opportunities that conferences present for sales organizations, particularly for their younger sales reps to hone their pitch and networking skills, as well as gain leads that they can nurture later on. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• The different people you meet in conferences 
• Conferences are work events first
• Go to conferences to hone your pitch and networking game 
• Tactical tips to maximize your time in conference booths 
• Get your elevator pitch down and have an exit strategy

QUOTES

Mike on the mindset you should have on joining sales conferences: "I always thought of conferences as really an opportunity and kind of like a privilege. The company doesn't have to fly me to San Francisco, they don't have to put me up in a hotel and they don't have to pay for my meals while I'm there. It's a really cool opportunity to get in front of customers, to build qualified leads for yourself, for your team, and to really get a pulse on what's happening and how your product is resonating."

Shawn on adequately motivating your reps to work during conferences: "If you're not motivating your SDRs and your AEs or your solutions architects to actually go after business, it's like they're selling something that they're not going to get comp on and that's really tough. If they're going to have somebody go to these events, make sure that they're able to capitalize on a lot of the leads that they get."

Connect with Mike and Shawn and learn more about OpTonal by visiting the following links:

• LinkedIn (Mike): https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmmiranda/
• LinkedIn (Shawn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnwinters1/
• Website: https://www.optonal.com/

In this episode of the Sales Empowerment podcast, Mike and Shawn continue their conversation with Andrew Kappel, SDR & GoToMarket Strategy Consultant for Skaled Consulting. 

Andrew offers several golden tips on leading your SDRs into success and achieving better outcomes. Instead of obsessing over the messaging, Andrew focuses on the sales list first to ensure that the ones you’re reaching out to are more likely to be interested in the first place. Andrew also specifies the most important metrics that you need to be looking into, to ensure that you’re optimizing your time and effort. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Most people will not like cold-calling, but you should 
• Imitate what is working, then innovate 
• The 4 key metrics that every executive needs to lead SDRs
• The messaging doesn't need to be perfect 
• Time is still the most important asset
• The best SDRs and BDRs don't book the most meetings 

QUOTES

Andrew's strategy for improving the performance of the whole team: "My management and leadership philosophy is to actually spend time with the highest performers, with the folks that are most curious, most resourceful, most creative, and make sure that we're removing obstacles, that we're trying out new stuff and we're making the best even better. And then we're documenting that and then we're helping to reuse those best practices to train and enable the broader team." 

Andrew on why you need to start with your sales list before messaging: The "To" is more important than the body of your email. And so that's why we start with the list of who you're targeting. Because it's about targeting the right persona, the trigger event, a new executive in the role, etc., with a relevant message and then teaching and enabling the SDR to become effective with the right value props and really just showing that curiosity." 

Why the best SDRs and BDRs don't necessarily have the most meetings booked: "Maybe a contrarian or atypical view that I've seen from experience is that the best BDRs and SDRs don't always have the highest output of their number of meetings on the books. Because they're focused on the bigger picture of advancing, of learning, developing, staying curious and then looking to do something else."

Connect with Andrew and his work via the links below: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkappel/

Connect with Mike and Shawn and learn more about OpTonal by visiting the following links:

• LinkedIn (Mike): https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmmiranda/
• LinkedIn (Shawn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnwinters1/
• Website: https://www.optonal.com/