Episode #126: Jeff Koser

AI – You Can’t Expect What You Don’t Inspect

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Jeff Koser

Jeff Koser is the founder and CEO of Selling to Zebras, which is a sales enablement software platform which helps organisations quickly identify opportunities that have a low chance of closing so that your sales team can focus on the ones that they have the greatest chance of success with. He is also the author of the bestselling book “Selling to Zebras- how to close 90% of the business you pursue, faster more easily and more profitably. [01.08] Jeff defines Artificial Intelligence – as to how it relates to sales, how can it do some of the things that sellers have to do manually today that take up time but don’t really help them sell anything. Just a computer trying to figure out how to re-do mundane things that a seller does that are important to the sales function but don’t necessarily produce real value.

[01.49] Jeff explains how AI will impact professional Selling – some people fear that it will reduce the number of sellers out there, within the B2C and B2B space. However Jeff believes that AI will have the opposite effect, with the proliferation of information on the web and through every company sharing as much about themselves as they can, they say that 60-70% of the sale is […]

Episode #125: Paul Teshima

AI – A Humanising Affect On The Profession Of Selling

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Paul Teshima

Paul Teshima is the co founder and CEO at Nudge AI, which is an artificially intelligent sales tool that provides users with genuine or authentic reasons to engage with their prospects and customers online. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Engineering Physics with Queens University and a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering with the University of British Columbia. Paul was also a founding executive at Eloqua and is a modern sales evangelist. [01.12] Paul defines Artificial Intelligence – Paul starts off by explaining that people often confuse AI with robots that can talk, but really it is a spectrum of things, at the heart of it. It is using computers and algorithms to do things that humans can do, for example visual perception, speech recognition and decision making and more.

[01.37] Paul explains how AI will impact professional Selling –Paul feels that for transactional sales roles AI will help by implementing a chat bot on a site to help a buyer make a purchase. However for relationship driven sales roles Paul feels that AI will not replace the human element but will help with the back end repetitive tasks, freeing up more time for you to be human.

[02.34] What advice would you give to an organization considering using AI […]

Episode #124: Erroin Martin

AI – Know Where You Want To Go

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Erroin Martin

Erroin Martin is the VP of Sales at Conversica, which is an artificial intelligence platform that presents itself as your human sales assistant. Your assistant will reach out to everyone of your leads and engage with them in a human conversation. People truly feel that they are interacting with a real person. Erroin is a former US military intelligence officer of more than 10 years and has spent more than 10 years in professional selling. He is an artificial intelligence evangelist who speaks four languages and was voted the 2018 sales leader of the year by inside sales.com. [01.24] Erroin defines Artificial Intelligence – There are different types of artificial intelligence but primarily artificial intelligence is a series of mathematical or statistical algorithms that are designed to look at pieces of data and then start to self learn off that data and take certain actions.

[02.10] Erroin explains how AI will impact professional selling – AI is already impacting professional selling, there are already many tools out there from what we sell at Conversica to other applications. AI was applied in the late 80’s early 90’s with territory analysis and overall business macro analysis, nowadays AI is getting into the individual sales persons hands by removing a lot of the mundane tasks like […]

Episode #123: Dan Reich

The Logic Tree of Purgatory

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Dan Reich

Dan Reich is the Co-Founder and CEO at Troops which is an artificially intelligent assistant for sales and customer teams which integrates seamlessly into salesforce.com and Slack. Dan is a contributing writer for Forbes and serial entrepreneur, where his last software company was ultimately acquired by Buddy Media and then Salesforce. Dan was a NYC Venture Fellow in 2016 and was named as Business Insider as one of the top 100 technology leaders in NYC. [01.17] Dan defines Artificial Intelligence – At a high level artificial intelligence is computer programs or software that are able to perform tasks that normally humans can perform .

[01.56] Dan explains how AI will impact professional Selling – Dan feels that AI will impact every job. Within sales specifically AI will become an assistant to the salesperson, helping with administrative tasks.

[05.51] What advice would you give to an organization considering using AI in their sales process – Dan advises organisations to do it! If you are not taking advantage of software that can make your sales team more productive or efficient then you will lose because other people are and are able to operate at higher degrees of leverage and efficiency and will run circles around you.

[07.46] Which AI Platforms are you currently using or considering – Dan shares that […]

Episode #122: Tim Hughes

Could Social Selling be Your Legacy?

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Tim Hughes

Tim Hughes is universally recognised as one of the world’s leading pioneers and exponents of Social Selling and he is currently ranked Number 1 by Onalytica as the most influential social selling person in the world. He was responsible for a large-scale sales transformation within Oracle, the result of which delivered in excess of $100m in sales uplift. He is currently leading a number of sales transformation programmes in large B2B organisations. He is also Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Leadership Associates and co-author of the bestselling books “Social Selling – Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers” and “Smarketing – How To Achieve Competitive Advantage through blended Sales and Marketing”. Both published by Kogan Page. [01.36] Tim defines Social Selling – it isn’t selling over social. It is the way sales people need to change or react to the way buyers have changed the way they buy.

[02.25] Why haven’t some companies embraced social selling –Tim relates the reluctance of embracing social media to the way people embraced e-mails when they first appeared, people don’t want to change with the times.

[03.28] Which social media platforms should a modern sales professional be active in – Tim relates to B2B enterprise and feels that here you have to be in LinkedIn and that you need a buyer […]

Episode #121: Kurt Shaver

Always Be Connecting

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Kurt Shaver

Kurt is the Chief Sales Officer and a co-founder of Vengreso – a digital sales training company. He frequently speaks about digital/social selling at sales kickoffs and conferences like Dreamforce, Digital Sales World, and Sales 3.0. [00.50] Kurt defines Social Selling – it’s using social networks to sell, which can be further broken down into two halves – outbound prospecting and inbound marketing.

[02.44] Why haven’t some companies embraced social selling – Kurt feels one of the biggest reason is because leaders don’t understand it or they misunderstand it.

[04.33] Which social media platforms should a modern sales professional be active in – The ones that your customers are on. For most B2B professionals that is LinkedIn – a business network. Kurt shares how some business constituents could lean towards different networks.

[06.49] Are there any tools that you recommend as part of a successful social selling strategy – Kurt relates the outbound prospecting activity towards LinkedIn Sales Navigator however for inbound marketing, sharing content online Kurt recommends many tools such as the Buffer ap, Hootlet to help individual business owners and Everyone’s Social and GaggleAMP as enterprise level content sharing tools for companies.

[09.09] Kurt shares his top three social selling do’s and don’ts – Do upgrade your profiles – change it from a resume to a customer resource, do […]

Episode #120: Daniel Disney

Don’t Stalk Your Customers!

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Daniel Disney

Daniel Disney has been called the real king of Social Selling, with an audience of over 450,000+ followers and millions of pounds of sales generated via social selling, Daniel is now on a mission to help as many people as possible leverage social to its full potential to sell. • [01.01] Dan defines Social Selling – as any form of selling or sales activity that utilises or includes social media.
• [01.25] Why haven’t some companies embraced social selling –Dan feels that it is because it is a change and change isn’t easy. In sales we’ve been doing cold calling and other traditional sales methods for such a long period of time that integrating something that is still so new such as social selling is going to take a few more years before it becomes as common practice as other methods.
• [02.32] Which social media platforms should a modern sales professional be active in – It’s whichever social media platforms their prospects or customers are using.
• [03.04] Are there any tools that you recommend as part of a successful social selling strategy – Dan shares that one of his most crucial tools he uses at present is Auto-Scheduling, which helps to make sure that his social presence is consistent by creating and scheduling content on a regular […]

Episode #119: Viveka Von Rosen

Don’t Be Like Blockbuster!

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Viveka Von Rosen

Viveka von Rosen is Cofounder of Vengreso, the largest provider of full spectrum digital sales transformation solutions. Known as the @LinkedInExpert, she’s author of the best-selling LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day & LinkedIn: 101 Ways to Rock Your Personal Brand!”. She is a contributing expert to LinkedIn’s official Sales and Marketing blogs and their “Sophisticated Marketer’s” Guides and is often called on to contribute to publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Money, Entrepreneur, The Social Media Examiner. Viveka takes the LinkedIn and social selling experience over the past 12 years and transforms it into engaging and informational digital sales strategies, tactics, and tools including personal branding, social selling training, and content for sales. [01.15] Viveka defines Social Selling – is the combination of your brand that you create online, the content that you share to position yourself as an expert and thought leader amongst your audience and the conversations you have in order to build that audience and to further position yourself as an expert within it.

[02.11] Why haven’t some companies embraced social selling  – it’s a combination of fear of the tools themselves, and the time investment to learn the tools . Viveka also feels that some people are hesitant as they still think that social selling is social media, they still think […]

Episode #118: Mark Williams

You Can’t Automate Relationship Building

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Mark Williams

Mark Williams is a LinkedIn trainer, a social selling speaker and coach. He is the founder of winbusinessin which is an online social selling and support training business based in the UK. Mark has been training people on the use of LinkedIn for almost 10 years and is widely known in the business as Mr LinkedIn. He is also the host of the LinkedInformed Podcast. [01.05] Mark defines Social Selling – Social Selling is the influencing of the decision making process through social media

[01.32] Why haven’t some companies embraced social selling  – Mark believes it takes people time to change, establish practices etc.  Social Media where your customers are which is why you should be too.

[02.45] Which social media platforms should a modern sales professional be active in – Mark suggests using appropriate Social Media channels where your prospects are.

[04.13] Are there any tools that you recommend as part of a successful social selling strategy – Mark shares that there are some tools to consider using in social media such as native video in LinkedIn.  Clips which is an IOS app for making short quick videos to post on LinkedIn.  (Apple App), Mark is not a fan of tools that automate your social media, as he feels that selling is about building relationships.

[08.07] Mark shares […]