Episode 252: Justin Zappulla
Meet
Justin Zappulla
Justin Zappulla’s career has been highlighted by remarkable performance in sales and sales leadership roles. Today, Justin, is the Managing Partner at Janek Performance Group and co-author of the popular sales book, Critical Selling, is considered one of the top authorities and thought leaders in sales training, sales strategy and overall sales performance improvement.Our Mission Is To Change The Negative Perception Of Sales People
Our Vision Is A World Where Selling Is A Profession To Be Proud Of
Digital selling is the current evolution of sales and marketing. Organizations have to evolve—or get left behind. They need to identify and connect with customers in ways they haven’t before. Technology enables them to do it faster, more efficiently, and more frequently resulting in better outcomes.
The idea is to be smarter, efficient, and have more targeted selling activities. This should include tools and processes to engage and sell to a customer. It’s engaging in things like digital presentations, videos, digital sales collateral, email campaigns, AI, automation, your CRM, etc. Want to learn more? Listen to this episode of Sales Reinvented with Justin Zappulla!
Outline of This Episode
- [1:13] The difference between digital selling and social selling
- [2:28] How to improve your digital selling capabilities
- [3:05] Justin’s perfect digital selling strategy
- [4:15] The attributes + characteristics of a successful digital seller
- [5:28] Focus on the virtual sales call
- [6:53] Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
- [9:01] Justin’s favorite digital selling story
Justin’s perfect digital selling strategy
Justin believes that any great sales strategy begins with the customer, which is why you must take the time to map the customer journey. How do your customers identify, evaluate, and make purchasing decisions? You then build your sales strategy around that. Justin notes that a typical buyer’s journey has three phases, consisting of awareness, consideration, and making the decision.
So you have to focus on how you’re enabling tools, technology, data, and the sales and marketing function to drive the best outcome at each of those stages of the buyer’s journey. How can you leverage data to make better decisions? What digital tools can be implemented by sales or marketing to get a better outcome?
What are the attributes + characteristics of a successful digital seller? Listen to hear Justin’s thoughts!
Focus on the virtual sales call
What’s the area that will give you the most impact? According to Justin, it’s the sales call. During the pandemic, sellers couldn’t meet face-to-face with customers. They learned to leverage Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, etc. to hold sales calls. In this new virtual world, Justin emphasizes that it’s critical to develop the skills needed to execute that virtual sales call. It’s the new way modern sellers will connect with customers and paramount to master.
Top 3 digital selling dos and don’ts
Justin shares some of his tips to improve your digital sales:
- Engage your customers online. Don’t be afraid of this. Your customers are connecting in different ways, so must you.
- Learn technology. Make it part of your skillset so you can confidently move through the various stages of the sales process leveraging technology.
- Be open to doing things differently. Great salespeople are looking for ways to improve and evolve.
- Don’t fight the change. It’s a natural progression. Even though it was thrust upon the world, Justin believes we would’ve landed here anyway.
- Don’t try to do everything at once. Take one bite at a time to get where you want to go.
- Don’t panic. Understand that this is natural and enjoy it.
Justin’s favorite digital selling story
Early in 2020, Justin was on the buyer side of a sales call. It was executed seamlessly. The rep running the presentation was adept at the program. He toggled the views so each participant could see each other and make eye contact. He seamlessly transitioned to the documents and data they were presenting. They used animation tools to highlight key points. They moved seamlessly through each team member that was speaking. It felt natural without being choppy and saying things like “Can you see my screen.” They were well prepared.
Justin got off that call and went “Wow. This will change how salespeople sell forever.” Moving calls to video and sharing media are the new skills salespeople need to develop. Sales have evolved almost overnight into a new format. This is what high-performing sellers need to do to be successful with sales calls.
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Learn More About Justin Zappulla
Are there any great Digital or Social Selling books that you highly recommend? Social Selling Mastery by Jamie Shanks
Who do you most admire in the sphere of Digital or Social Selling and why? Jamie Shanks – he’s been researching and shaping social selling approaches right from the beginning
Are there any aspects of your own Digital or Social Selling skills that you are working on improving at the moment? Yes. At Janek we continue to build out our digital selling strategy to connect more efficiently and meaningfully with our customers at the right time.
Hobbies, Interests? When I’m not working, I like to stay active. Go for a walk/run, go to the gym, get out on the golf course. Something to get the juices going!
How can our listeners contact with you? You can reach me by going to my firm’s website, Janek.com or feel free to reach out to me directly at JZappulla(at)janek.com or on LinkedIn.
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