Episode #132: George Siedel

Information is Power

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George Siedel

George Siedel is currently a professor at the Ross School of Business, where he teaches negotiation. He has authored numerous books and articles and has received the Faculty Recognition Award from the University of Michigan and several national research awards, including the Hoeber Award, the Ralph Bunche Award and the Maurer Award. In 2018 he received the distinguished career achievement award from the Academy Studies of Legal Studies in Business. George also authored the book ‘Negotiating for Success – Essential Strategies And Skills’ which is a must read for anyone who needs to negotiate as part of their role. [01.15] George defines Negotiation – as a process that is designed to reach an agreement that will satisfy each sides wants and needs.

[01.25] George explains how negotiation is important for business – especially in sales, as the sales profession is in the heart of any company, with sales you build customer relations, build sales strategies and contribute to the profitability of the company. So negotiation generally and sales specifically is critical to the companies success.

[01.59] Why don’t some salespeople don’t like to negotiate and what can we do to change this – George feels that it is due to the F word …FEAR! George also feels that Sales People fall into two groups one where they dread negotiation, […]

Episode #131: Shawn Karol Sandy

Patience Trumps Discounts

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Shawn Karol Sandy

Shawn Karol Sandy is the Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of the Selling Agency, where their main mission is to coach humans how to sell to other humans, because selling like robots or jerks is so 2010. Her team works with hungry sales organisations looking to scale through deep differentiation and smartly executed go to market strategies. Shawn is the co-host of the video cast ‘The Sell Out Show’ and performs the show live at sales conferences and industry events with her co-host Dianna Geairn. She is also the author and founder of ‘The Bad Ass Skills Builder’ series weekly desk top challenge for sales pros to improving skills and long term results. [01.22] Shawn defines Negotiation –the process with which we try to equate cost with value, its how budgets align goals with outcomes and price.

[03.09] Why don’t some salespeople don’t like to negotiate and what can we do to change this – Shawn feels that it is seen as conflict, like a game where there is a winner and a loser, which causes a lot of internal conflict going into that. It should be more thought of as how can we balance the negotiation appreciating what your buyers want to get out of it with what you have to offer, knowing that you […]

Episode #130: Jay Heinrichs

Everybody Wins

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Jay Heinrichs

Jay Heinrichs is a persuasion expert. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller ‘Thank You For Arguing – What Aristotle, Lincoln and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About The Art Of Persuasion’. Among his many clients are South West Airlines, The Wharton School of Business, Harvard and NASA. Jay’s latest book ‘How to Argue With A Cat’ teaches us how to argue logically, hack up a fallacy and master the art of fitting in. [01.03] Jay defines Negotiation – as the art of making neutral decisions where ideally everyone feels like they won and where a long term relationship results from that.

[01.26] Jay explains how negotiation is important for business – business depends on deals, but also negotiations within teams getting people to get along. Every aspect of business depends on negotiations not just sales.

[01.54] Why don’t some salespeople don’t like to negotiate and what can we do to change this – Jay feels that salespeople want to be liked by their clients and customers and hate confrontation, but negotiation doesn’t have to be confrontation by using the tools of rhetoric, the art of persuasion makes all the difference.

[02.47] How do you plan and execute a high stakes negotiation – Jay shares that he shows clients how to persuade. The main point is don’t focus […]

Episode #129: Jeanette Nyden

The Power of Open Ended Questions

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Jeanette Nyden

Jeanette Nyden is an internationally recognized contract negotiation expert. She has written and or co-authored three books including “Getting To We”. Jeanette provides tactical customized contract training, coaching and mentoring programs to both sales and purchasing teams. Jeanette has taught at major corporations at Seattle University and at the University of Tennesee’s center for executive education. [01.04] Jeanette defines Negotiation – in the simplest term as the back and forth communication aimed at reaching an agreement, when some of your interests are shared and some of your interests are opposed.

[01.40] Jeanette explains how negotiation is important for business – because customers and their service providers or vendors have imposing interests, so we have to be able to have the skill set and the competence to reach an agreement when people don’t see eye to eye.

[02.04] Why don’t some salespeople don’t like to negotiate and what can we do to change this – Jeanette feels that some salespeople don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to navigate those difficult conversations when people don’t see eye to eye. They fear what the other person may do, they may fear what their own internal stake holders may say about the choices that they are making. They want to give in to make nice instead of […]

Episode #128: Roy Raanani

AI – The Devil’s in the Details

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Roy Raanani

Roy Raanani is the Co-founder and CEO of Chorus AI. Chorus pioneered conversations intelligence software, which uses artificial intelligence to help every sales team and rep to exceed plan by analysing and improving their business conversations. Roy studied engineering science at the University of Toronto and holds a MBA from Stanford University. Roy was also a founding member of the Sales Enablement Society. [01.18] Roy defines Artificial Intelligence –using machines to understand patterns of behaviour and start to predict and even act on some of those things. Everything from the type of auto correction on your smart phone keyboard in predicting what comes next or suggesting what should be a response to an e-mail or text message falls into that category all the way through to a Tesla being able to navigate its way down the highway in an auto driving capacity would fall into that.

[02.11] Roy explains how AI will impact professional Selling – Roy feels that the devil’s in the details and that you should look at all the individual things the sales professional does in the course of their day and start to think about which of those things are best done by artificial intelligence completely and what things are augmented or improved for the sales rep by getting an […]

Episode #127: Manoj Ramnani

Man and Machine Working Together – Machine collected Human Verified

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Manoj Ramnani

Manoj Ramnani is the founder and CEO at Sales Intel IO, which is a sales intelligence platform for sales and marketing professionals. Manoj founded Sales Intel IO with the mission to enable companies to accelerate growth by providing them with accurate and accessible data and intelligence that they need to drive revenue. The human verified contacts and company information can easily be accessed online and integrated seamlessly to your CRM tool. [01.11] Manoj defines Artificial Intelligence – as the ability to allow the machine to make the decisions as if they had the same level of intelligence as a human being. The processing of the machine has matured from just processing to what it has been taught to now where we are asking machines to make decisions based on looking at patterns.

[01.52] Manoj explains how AI will impact professional Selling – Manoj feels that AI is already within the sales process and will not replace the human and interpersonal interaction aspect in the sales cycle, it will however make lives more efficient.

[03.47] What advice would you give to an organization considering using AI in their sales process – Manoj shares the same advice he gives to his sales leaders which is that AI is coming, it’s already here, so don’t […]

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 […]