Shows
Market Dominance GuysEP250: The Silent Cold Call - When AI Goes Mute and Expertise Takes OverToday, we're diving into what can only be described as an AI cold-calling adventure gone slightly sideways - in the best possible way. Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, recently attempted to create and test an AI-powered cold calling coach using ChatGPT. What makes this episode particularly entertaining is that Chris couldn't hear the AI's responses during his live demo, but somehow still managed to nail it. It's like watching a master jazz musician improvise without being able to hear the band - and somehow staying perfectly in tune.
Here are a couple of links to the articles...
2025-01-1515 min
Market Dominance GuysEP223: ChatGPT: Your New Data Analyst BFF Uncovers Surprising Sales InsightsIn this solo episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall explores the potential of AI-powered data analysis using ChatGPT. Chris demonstrates how this cutting-edge technology can uncover valuable insights from complex sales data in a matter of minutes, a process that would typically take a human analyst days or even weeks. By utilizing ChatGPT's Data Analyst feature and uploading data from ConnectAndSell, he's able to quickly examine the correlations between sales reps' skills and key business outcomes, Chris showcases how AI can help identify the most critical factors influencing pipeline generation and financial success. This eye-opening episode is a...
2024-04-2539 min
Market Dominance GuysEP221 - Pipeline Per Rep Hour: The Ultimate Sales KPIIn this solo episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall unveils the ultimate sales KPI: pipeline dollars generated per rep hour. This metric is a game-changer for CROs, CFOs, and CEOs looking to optimize their sales efforts and drive business growth. Chris explores the importance of measuring and maximizing this KPI, sharing insights from ConnectAndSell's own data and revealing the significant potential of a well-executed market dominance program. He breaks down the different types of attribution, ideal conversation and meeting rates, and optimal prospecting hours per week. Whether you're a sales leader aiming to improve your team's performance or...
2024-04-0930 min
Market Dominance GuysEP219: New Grads: You're the Product, Choose Your BuyerIn this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank are joined by special guest Griffin McGowan, a recent college graduate navigating the world of sales job hunting. The trio delves into the challenges and opportunities faced by young professionals seeking to launch their sales careers, with a particular focus on the crucial role of mentorship. Griffin shares his experiences interviewing with various companies and the valuable lessons he's learned, while Chris and Corey offer insights on what employers look for in new hires and the skills needed to succeed. The conversation also explores the idea that...
2024-03-2835 min
Market Dominance GuysEP214: The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and AuthenticityThe guys are back with sales visionary Shane Mahi as we dive into the vital facets of authenticity, ethics, and trust in the world of sales. As sales leaders, you know these elements are crucial for fostering customer loyalty and closing those pivotal deals. Shane elaborates on how transparency and being genuine have led to exponential sales growth for him over the past months. They also investigate AI's emerging impact and why interpersonal skills remain vital, even with advancing technology. This forward-looking discussion offers invaluable wisdom on steering sales teams through a shifting landscape. Whether you aim to amplify...
2024-02-1426 min
Market Dominance GuysEP208: Balancing Relationships and Efficiency in AI SalesIn our brave new AI-augmented world, navigating tech integration while retaining that human trust factor remains a tricky balancing act.
So who better to provide expert guidance than our sage of sales, Chris Beall? Today our very own ChatGPT steps in as co-host for Corey to pepper Chris across the AI-sales trust landscape. Should we unleash these bots to comb leads? How do we mitigate client skepticism? Does transparency enhance trust? Chris distills hard-earned wisdom on these questions and more.
From specific use cases in training and process efficiency to ethical dilemmas around transparency, you’ll...
2024-01-0429 min
Market Dominance GuysEP193: Thriving in Market Turbulence - Tech Tango and Global JigsIn this episode, Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, discusses various challenges faced by B2B sales leaders in the modern business landscape. With Corey Frank, CEO of Branch49, absent from the co-host chair, Chris invited ChatGPT to take a seat. He starts by introducing the idea of asking ChatGPT about challenges in B2B sales. He touches on the challenge of coaching sales reps, particularly their first failure points in conversations. Chris explains how technology, such as the one developed by Symbl.ai, can help identify these first failure points and support reps in improving their performance.
...
2023-08-2327 min
Market Dominance GuysEP182: Harnessing Generative AI: Revolutionizing Sales Strategies and ResultsThe guys welcome Ben Sternsmith of Sybill AI delves into the benefits of AI in sales, such as freeing salespeople to be more engaged and focused during customer interactions. Ben shares his experience of being able to concentrate on customer needs without the burden of note-taking or manual follow-up tasks. As Corey, Chris, and Ben explore the possibilities opened up by AI in sales, they discuss the challenges faced by sales professionals and the potential for AI tools to streamline and enhance their work.
With tools like Sybill AI and ConnectAndSell, sales reps can offload repetitive tasks...
2023-06-0728 min
Market Dominance GuysEP177: The Problem with Correlation in VC-Funded CompaniesChris and Corey discuss the dangers of correlation in the tech industry and the impact it can have on valuations. Chris explains how the venture capital industry is focused on headcount as a metric for success, leading to inefficient practices among funded companies. This correlation can create a house of cards effect, where the collapse of one company can trigger a chain reaction that affects the entire ecosystem. They also touch on the pre-chasm state of companies and the importance of finding visionary buyers who can provide the necessary funding without relying on rounds of financing. As a sales...
2023-04-1226 min
Market Dominance GuysEP174: Boosting Website Traffic with Cold CallsWelcome to another episode of Market Dominance Guys! In this third installment of our Road Trip visit series, we join Helen Fanucci and the team at Branch 49 as they discuss trust-building, gratitude, and top-of-the-funnel strategies.
Helen Fanucci shares her experiences with cold calls while using ConnectAndSell, adjusting her approach to engage prospects effectively. Her customized calls-to-action cater to each prospect's unique needs, leading to successful completions even when the prospect isn't the right person or ready for a meeting.
The experts also explore the value of cold calls in generating website traffic, comparing it to...
2023-03-2223 min
Market Dominance GuysEP173: What Do a Fitbit and Surfboard Have in Common with Cold Calling?As our Market Dominance Guys continue this road trip book signing tour with Helen Fanucci, Chris emphasizes the significance of practicing sales conversations in order to become a high-performance salesperson, with the script being the key to unleashing creativity in sales. Helen tells the story of her experience cold-calling using ConnectAndSell, a script, and how it affected her Fitbit. Additionally, Chris talks about the energy transfer that takes place in a sales conversation, and how BDRs need to provide energy but also listen carefully to the emotional response of the prospect. Helen shares her experience of working with a...
2023-03-1529 min
Market Dominance GuysEP168: Get Granular to Boost Your Sales PerformanceWelcome to the continuation of a conversation with Hitesh Shah, CTO and CPO of ConnectAndSell. This episode delves into the world of sales and coaching for sales managers. Hitesh shares his experience and insights on coaching by the numbers and how to effectively manage and coach a sales team.
Corey and Chris share their thoughts on how to analyze sales data and determine the strengths and weaknesses of individual sales reps. They stress the importance of getting granular with data and looking at it with a critical eye. By understanding the patterns and details of sales interactions...
2023-02-0827 min
Market Dominance GuysEp167: The Power of Childlike Curiosity in the Digital World of SalesSo, what's the biggest challenge in sales? Today, the guys have a special guest, Hitesh Shah, CTO and CPO of ConnectAndSell. As Hitesh puts it, it's the fact that we don't like to be sold to. That's why sales is about helping, not selling. And if you want to succeed in sales, you have to understand who your target audience is and what their business problems are. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up, building relevance and trust with each person you talk to. Hitesh says there are two things, one is always trying...
2023-01-3126 min
Market Dominance GuysEP133: We All Need to Get BetterHow often do salespeople need to be trained? Most people would say, “Once during onboarding should do it.” “Not so,” says Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. As today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, Dan talks with our host, Chris Beall, about the importance of periodically sharpening sales reps’ skills. In this second of their two-part conversation, these two sales guys, both amateur chefs, agree that knives work better when they’ve recently been sharpened — and sales reps work better when their selling skills have recently been sharpened. Dan reminds our podcast audience that, over time, all sales reps drift from...
2022-05-2434 min
Market Dominance GuysEP132: The Seller Has a Journey TooYou’re no doubt familiar with the buyer’s journey, but what do you know about the seller’s journey? Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, shares his personal journey as a salesperson with our host Chris Beall in this first of a two-part conversation. Starting at the beginning of his career, Dan tells the story of how he got into sales straight out of college, what his early selling experiences were like, and how he cold-called his way to where he is today. Most memorable for him was his first experien...
2022-05-1724 min
Market Dominance GuysEP129: Do You Have an Inquiring Mind?“If you’re not curious, you’re not going to be a good sales rep.” That’s the well-considered opinion of our Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Elena Hesse, Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals. As a naturally curious person herself, Elena has observed that “You can’t be speaking more than you’re listening” if you’re going to learn what you need to know about your prospects and their businesses. You have to ask those insight-seeking questions and then truly pay attention to their answers in order to discover whether your product or service is a good fit fo...
2022-04-2730 min
Market Dominance GuysEP128: Getting to the Right InsiderThe triumphs, rewards, and prosperity of the customers he serves is at the heart of everything today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest does. Meet James Townsend, Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at ConnectAndSell, as he discusses with our host, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, the different ways that sales has changed in the 10 years since James joined the company. They compare acquiring data on prospects, targeting the right insertion points (aka company insiders), the importance of cold call training, and selling vs. serving customers’ needs. You’ll want to stay tuned to the very end when they talk about wh...
2022-04-2047 min
Market Dominance GuysEP127: How to Turn Awkwardness into SuccessDoes the thought of placing a cold call make you tense, nervous, embarrassed, or tongue-tied?
Today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Gavin Tice, a sales instructor for ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, says not to worry about this awkwardness. He even says it’s an okay place to start. What a relief, huh? Our hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, talk with Gavin today about how a standard operating procedure — in this case, a tried-and-true cold call script and method of delivery — can turn that frown upside down. What Gavin teaches is how to have a lot of fun and succ...
2022-04-1145 min
Market Dominance GuysEP126: Pattern Interrupts Are Your FriendWhat’s a pattern interrupt? And how can it help you break down the resistance most people feel when ambushed by a cold call? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, on a Selling Power webinar hosted by Founder Gerhard Gschwandtner. These three conversation experts share some little-known tricks of the cold-calling trade, one of which is that saying something unexpected, like “Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?”, can break a prospect’s usual pattern of hanging up or refusing to engage. As Donny says, it truly...
2022-04-0632 min
Market Dominance GuysEP125: Find Your Cold-Calling VoiceWhen you’re making a cold call, is the voice you’re using an effective voice? Or could it use a little fine-tuning so that you can engender trust with your prospect — the trust needed to secure a discovery meeting? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, to walk you through how to find your most effective cold-calling voice. In previous episodes of this podcast, you may have heard our guys talk about ConnectAndSell’s Flight School cold-call training program. In today’s episode, you’ll get a mini–Flight School...
2022-03-2329 min
Market Dominance GuysEP109: Being There for Your CustomersCan you truly say that you’re always on your customer’s side? Matt McCorkle, Manager of Branch Operations for Kaeser Compressors, can. At Kaeser, providing support for the products they sell is everything, explains this week’s guest on Market Dominance Guys. “It’s always about the customer,” Matt states. In this third of three conversations between Matt and our hosts, Chris Beall, and Corey Frank, the discussion centers on being 100% committed to supporting customers — those who have put themselves in your hands because you’ve convinced them to trust you. Corey explains that this starts with that first conversati...
2021-11-2325 min
Market Dominance GuysEP107: On the Phone, They’ll Tell You the TruthComing from a background in mechanical engineering, Matt McCorkle, Manager of Branch Operations for Kaeser Compressors, is very interested in how sales works. He has always believed in the power of the telephone as a selling tool, so when he learned about ConnectAndSell’s sales-acceleration platform from our Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, Matt immediately saw how he could use the telephone to increase Kaeser’s market share. “Matt was so curious, unlike many people in sales,” Chris says. Curious about how to get future appointments, how to coach coaches, how long onboarding takes, and about why face-to-face sales is diffe...
2021-11-1025 min
Market Dominance GuysEP105: Data & Trust: Your Assets in Market DominationSales and marketing departments usually operate as two separate entities. Although that’s not healthy for a business, it’s generally the reality in many companies. Santosh Sharan, president and COO of Apollo.io, joins our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, in this second of three conversations, to talk about the evolution of data as a business asset and how shared data — and unified leadership — can eliminate this unfortunate dichotomy of purpose, and fuse sales and marketing into one weapon with a single goal: market domination. “Sales is simple,” Santosh says, “You’re looking for an edge over your c...
2021-10-2632 min
Market Dominance GuysEP100: Do You Catch Their Drift?
Are you providing your reps with excellent sales training only to find that most of them drift slowly back to their old behavior? In today’s podcast, Gerry Hill, Regional VP/EMEA of ConnectAndSell, and Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, join our Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, to discuss the solution to sales rep drift. Using the analogy of machinery that drifts out of tolerance and requires maintenance for necessary adjustments, the guys discuss the necessity and effectiveness of sales coaching in real-time. The solution’s success hinges on catching and correcting those little (or big...
2021-09-2225 min
Market Dominance GuysEP99: Overhead Is Like a RacehorseWhat’s the most efficient, most secure method of growing your company? Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, and Gerry Hill, EMEA Regional Vice President of ConnectAndSell, explore this question with Chris Beall in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast. “Overhead is like a racehorse,” Chris says. “It eats while we sleep.” He offers the following advice to Shane and to our loyal listeners: Forget taking money from VCs. Instead, work on shortening your pitch-to-value cycle time and build your business that way. “The faster your company can cycle and produce value,” he explains, “the lower your risk of losing your busin...
2021-09-1531 min
Market Dominance GuysEP98: Is Venture Capital for You?How did you get started in sales? And what led you to the position you now hold and the company you are currently involved with? Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, and Gerry Hill, EMEA Regional Vice President of ConnectAndSell, are asked these very questions by our Market Dominance Guy Chris Beall in today’s podcast. Surprisingly, a common answer emerges to the first question: both guests, as well as our host, took their first step into the sales world by selling products door to door — and doing so successfully. Our guests describe the steps that subsequently led them...
2021-09-0827 min
Market Dominance GuysEP96: Empathy, Goals, and Alignment of PurposeWhat if you only had one account to sell to? One with a $100-million budget and a quarter of a million employees? Rahul Maniktala, Microsoft’s Strategic Account Director of Semi/Hi-Tech Manufacturing has that very job. He’s today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, and Chris Beall and Corey Frank are curious about how Rahul goes about dominating his market of one. “Behind me is the might of Microsoft,” he explains, and the culture there lends itself very well to support for their customers. In addition, Rahul’s background in technical expertise and an understanding of high-tech products, wh...
2021-08-2535 min
Market Dominance GuysEP91: Borrowing from the BestThis week’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast wraps up a terrific three-part conversation between our guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, and their guest, Henry Wojdyla, Founder and Principal of RealSource Group. Today, Corey asks Henry how he’s finetuned his business perspective and cold-calling technique since his recent immersion in Market Dominance Guys. “I copy and steal religiously,” Henry freely confesses. “I’ve wholesale stolen Chris’ approach.”
----more----
Henry has gone so far as to distill all he learned into a playbook, with links to related parts of Market Dominance Guys’ podcasts. He references the epi...
2021-07-2033 min
Market Dominance GuysEP89: When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Will AppearThis week, the Market Dominance Guys’ dynamic duo of Chris Beall and Corey Frank are back together again, talking with Henry Wojdyla, the dynamic Founder and Principal of RealSource Group. His company’s special business niche? The direct acquisition of healthcare facilities, particularly medical offices and surgical centers around the country. Recently, Henry was introduced to ConnectAndSell’s sales-acceleration system, and from there, he discovered Chris’ blogs and then this podcast. He is now taking the theories and techniques of marketing domination, which he learned from listening to every Market Dominance Guys’ episode and employing them to dominate his own market...
2021-07-0727 min
Market Dominance GuysEP86: Tried and True: Practice Makes PerfectThis week on Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank continue their interview with Marc Hodgson, sales director at ConnectAndSell. What’s the topic? How to get the most out of a first conversation. As Marc says, “All the magic happens inside the conversation,” getting your prospect from fear to trust and then on to curiosity. But how do you take a green SDR — or even a fairly well-seasoned one — and develop the skills that get them to the level where the magic happens?
As Chris and Corey have discussed in previous episodes, first you need to...
2021-06-1623 min
Market Dominance GuysEP85: When the Time Is Right, the Magic HappensThe Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, had a meeting of the minds this week with Marc Hodgson of ConnectAndSell, who proudly claims the titles of Sales Headcount Multiplier and Cost Per Meeting Reducer. Chris introduces Marc as a learner, a student of the craft of selling, and a delight to work with. As Chris says, “With Marc there’s no bravado, no sales-jock stuff.” Marc is what’s known as a “long-game player,” spending his work days building relationships with prospects, not pushing for an immediate sale.
He credits fellow ConnectAndSell salesperson John Jackson...
2021-06-0933 min
Market Dominance GuysEP84: The Best Frog-Kisser for the JobOn our podcast this week, our Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, is flying solo with an episode about selecting the best SDR to have discovery conversations with senior-level prospects. You might subscribe to the “cheaper cold callers are better” mindset, but Chris presents some well- thought-out reasons to put your money where your telephone’s mouthpiece is. That’s right — once again, Market Dominance Guys is asking you to look at the scary spot — cold calls — and rethink what would work best. Chris’ contention is that people holding senior-level positions are much more likely to respond to and connect with someone who...
2021-06-0216 min
Market Dominance GuysEP83: Why Can’t Sales Run Like My Plant?In this week’s episode of Market Dominance Guys, you’ll get to listen in on part 2 of the conversation between our own Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, and our guest, Mark Roberts, CEO, and founder of OTB Solutions. These two experts hold the same unfaltering belief about the importance of the first conversation a sales rep has with a prospect: they’ve learned that the cold caller has to believe in the potential value of the discovery meeting they are offering in order to be successful at setting that meeting.
Mark works as a consultant with CEOs o...
2021-05-2634 min
Market Dominance GuysEP82: Worthy Intent Will Fill Your FunnelToday on Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall has a discussion about first conversations with Mark Allen Roberts, CEO, and founder of OTB Solutions. Mark and Chris compare notes on how things were in the “old days” of sales, back in the 1980s when they got started in this area of business. Mark recalls that in the old days, you weren’t allowed to go out and sell until you were trained. Nowadays, though, most salespeople aren’t trained. Many don’t even know the purpose of the call they’re making: Their knee-jerk reaction to getting someone on the phone is to...
2021-05-1832 min
Market Dominance GuysEP81: Stuck in the Mud or Full of FantasyWelcome to another episode of Market Dominance Guys with Chris Beall and Corey Frank. Today, our guys continue exchanging ideas with Gregory Smith, CEO at G Group Holdings. In this third part of their discussion, they talk about the view from a CEO’s desk. Chris, who is himself a CEO, thinks that most chief executive officers’ view of their company is often skewed by the remove at which they look at its operations. As he puts it, “They tend to be either stuck in the mud or full of fantasy.” Greg and Chris then reveal that they are both tru...
2021-05-1220 min
Market Dominance GuysEP80: Why “the Why” Is So EssentialIn this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, Chris Beall and Corey Frank continue their conversation with Gregory Smith, CEO of G Group Holdings. They’re talking today about talent acquisition and development, which Greg says is about 60–80% of most companies’ expenses — and could be one of the significant reasons why some businesses don’t grow. He believes that a company is only as good as its people and the way its people treat customers. With the goal of inspiring his own team to reach for that high customer-service bar, Greg explains his approach in this way: “I’m a coach, I’m a mentor, an...
2021-05-0526 min
Market Dominance GuysEP79: One and Done Is the Loneliest NumberToday, our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, interview Gregory Smith, CEO, G Group Holdings. Corey introduces Greg as an “M&A whisperer,” which Greg lives up to as he reveals insights gleaned from his work with mergers and acquisitions. How can he tell if a company is going to survive and thrive? Greg says that he begins with two questions: “Does your company’s product or service fill a particular niche? And does your product or service solve a specific problem for customers?” Greg then warns our podcast listeners against being a “one product or service — and done” busi...
2021-04-2840 min
Market Dominance GuysEP78: Do You Want an Awesome Life?In today’s episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank continue their conversation about the unifying convergence of B2B and B2C sales tactics with Jeff Lerner, CEO and founder of Entre Institute. The product Jeff’s company offers its customers is empowerment for people wanting to have a better, more successful life. As he explains it, “Everyone wants an awesome life. There's nothing special about wanting one, but defining your awesome life and executing on a strategic plan to create it, regardless of personal circumstances, is something most don't ever do. You have to be co...
2021-04-2150 min
Market Dominance GuysEP76: I Heart No Shows.On this week’s episode of Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall continues his conversation with Cherryl Turner, Chief Development Officer of ConnectAndSell’s newest division, Flight School. Together they talk about why it is that of the four sales outcomes — Yes, No, Not me, or Not now — the response that dominates is “Not now.” As Chris explains, “It’s the nature of life.” People are busy. Things come up. Priorities shift. But when a prospect says, “Not now,” what’s a sales rep to do? Push harder and try to squeeze his pitch into the conversation anyway? Or should he relax and bow to the...
2021-04-0734 min
Market Dominance GuysEP75: The Secret of Her SuccessIn this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast, Chris Beall conducts a solo interview with Cherryl Turner, Chief Development Officer of ConnectAndSell’s new Flight School Division. In the first episode of this two-part conversation, Cherryl relays to Chris how she got started in cold calling and about the important experiences she had talking with prospects — experiences that helped shape how she approaches cold calls and conducts meeting-setting conversations today.
As an example, Cherryl recounts a pivotal moment during a call with a prospect, in which she had the impulse to stop talking and just listen — instead of pushing...
2021-03-3137 min
Market Dominance GuysEP74: This Is What Makes All the Difference“Everybody knows that the flow of discovery meetings is the constraint on their business.” So states Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell, as he and Corey Frank, our two Market Dominance Guys, continue their interview with Matthew Forbes, Head of Strategic Accounts at ConnectAndSell. Together, they explore the epiphany that is behind Matt’s recent 4-times uptick in his call-to-meeting ratio. So, what is it that increased that flow for Matt recently, and how can others adopt what he learned so that they too can increase the number of meetings they set?
“I think we let people off the hook...
2021-03-2326 min
Market Dominance GuysEP73: You‘d Better Believe ItThis week, our Market Dominance Guys, Chris and Corey, interview Matthew Forbes, Head of Strategic Accounts at ConnectAndSell, about an epiphany Matt had that increased the meetings he set by almost 400%. Wow! What could possibly change that would explain that kind of increase? Well, it’s actually a simple change, but it’s a very necessary one: Matt came to truly believe — deep in his soul — in the potential value of the discovery meeting for his prospects, even if they were never going to do business with ConnectAndSell. His messaging script didn’t change at all. It was his belief tha...
2021-03-1816 min
Market Dominance GuysEP72: How to Warm Up a Cold CommunicationOver the years, how salespeople make an initial contact for a sale has changed. In these modern times, it has come down to a choice between making a cold phone call or sending a cold email. It seems to be a matter of choice. However, if you’re trying to break through a prospect’s initial fear of being sold to so that you can engender that level of trust necessary to set a meeting or make a sale, which approach should you put YOUR trust in? The human voice? Or a digital communication?
Today, our Market Domi...
2021-03-1142 min
Market Dominance GuysEP70: How to Get from Stuck to Unstuck
This week, the Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, walk you through the three states of cycle time for start-up businesses or for any company that’s trying to launch a new product or service. There’s in flow. There’s stuck. And there’s waiting. Using an example from his own company’s experience launching Flight School, their brand-new sales-rep training program, Chris tells what happened when they thought they were in flow and ready to set meetings for discovery calls, but soon found that prospects didn’t respond as enthusiastically as expected to what his comp...
2021-02-2429 min
Market Dominance GuysEP69: The Right Skills for the Job - AI vs. HumansChris Beall and Corey Frank, our Market Dominance Guys, explore the subject of artificial intelligence taking over jobs held by humans. It’s an emotional issue, to be sure. But instead of looking at this as an either/or concern, the Market Dominance Guys take a different tack by asking,” What do humans do well? What do machines do well? And what can they do together?” You may be thinking, “Wait a minute! Using AI will help us run our business much more cheaply than keeping all those humans on our payroll.” If so, Chris asks you to take a few step...
2021-02-1736 min
Market Dominance GuysEP68: Which Comes First, Traction or Scale?
Our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, continue their discussion about churn and its various causes. Today’s topic is about how a company’s growth is managed. Are the guiding forces going after traction first? Or are they jumping right into how to scale before they have worked out their product’s kinks? Chris and Corey talk about the tragedy of designing for scale before you have traction. As Chris will tell you, it’s a fool’s errand. If you have no traction, no conversations with your buyers, then you’re not going to learn anyt...
2021-02-1127 min
Market Dominance GuysEP67: All Churn is Not Created EqualOur Market Dominance Guys, Chris and Corey, are back this week with an episode about “churn.” No, they’re not talking about butter-making here. They’re addressing business churn — a measurement of cancellations or non-renewals of your company’s product or service. Are you thinking, “Churn: What can I do about it?” If you’re like many people, you may look at your company’s churn rate, give a philosophical shrug, and go back to hunting for more prospects to replace those MIA customers. But is it really easier to find new customers than it is to figure out what went wrong? As...
2021-02-0323 min
Market Dominance GuysEP66: Strategize, Execute, Evaluate, RepeatOn today’s episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Chris and Corey continue their conversation with Jason Beck, Vice President of Sales at Enerex, by addressing how sales got a dirty name. Chris explains that in ancient times, the salesman met the buyer face to face, but the encounter was usually a one-time transaction. Then, the camel caravan moved on, and if the buyer wasn’t happy with his purchase, there was no one to appeal to for a replacement and no one to lodge a customer complaint with. Ancient sales was a hit-and-run relationship that frequently left a bad...
2021-01-2728 min
Market Dominance GuysEP65: I’m Not the Salesman Your Mother Warned You AboutThe Market Dominance Guys, Chris and Corey, welcome a new guest this week: Jason Beck, Vice President of Sales at Enerex. Or as Corey dubbed him — the Pied Piper of Retail Energy.
The topic today? What leads to the adoption of a new product or service.
Jason is a big believer in the role of trust in establishing business relationships that will lead to adoption. “Trust is so hard to gain,” he says, “and so easy to lose.” In gaining trust, it’s a two-step program, Jason explains. First, be honest in the claims you make about y...
2021-01-2033 min
Market Dominance GuysEP64: Got Pain? Have I Got a Product for YouJoin us on the Market Dominance Guys as Chris and Corey continue their conversation about sales enablement with CEO Roderick Jefferson of Roderick Jefferson & Associates. This week, the guys address the challenge of hiring the right people for this function — people who have a certain level of sales credibility within the company. Roderick explains that in order to be a respected voice and get a vote when it comes to providing sales enablement tools and processes to support the sales team, you need to bring people on board who have extensive sales experience.
Now, don’t get him...
2021-01-1219 min
Market Dominance GuysEP63: An Enabler Is a Good Thing — in SalesToday on the Market Dominance Guys, you’re invited to join Chris and Corey and their guest, Roderick Jefferson, the CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates, a global sales enablement consultancy firm. This trio of sales gurus outlines the whys and how's of providing sales teams with the information, training, content, and tools that reps need to successfully engage buyers throughout the buying journey. This is known as “sales enablement.” Sounds like a pretty simple “follow the blueprints” process, doesn’t it? And, yet, as Roderick informs us, if you ask 10 people what sales enablement is, you’ll get a multitude of a...
2021-01-0629 min
Market Dominance GuysEP62: Never, Never, NEVER Retire a Follow-Up CallIn this follow-up to last week’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast, “Your Sales People Are Brain Surgeons,” Chris and Corey have another conversation with ConnectAndSell’s customer success manager, Donny Crawford, about using the telephone plus your beliefs to gain market dominance.
First things first, they discuss how to get prospects on the phone who are the most likely to set a meeting with you. It sounds like a numbers game — more dialing equals more people picking up the phone, which equals more meetings set, right? But as every sales rep knows, you can lead a prospect to a convers...
2020-12-2321 min
Market Dominance GuysEP61: Your Sales People Are Brain SurgeonsWhat do you do if you have a group of 25 or so folks on your sales team, and you want to really make a splash in the first quarter of the new year? Due to the on-going pandemic, we all know that connecting with customers face to face at trade shows is no longer an option. No doubt, your reps are still working from home, most of them researching their prospects and trying a little social media marketing, but all of them eventually doing the traditional dialing, dialing, dialing, and praying, praying, praying that someone will pick up the ph...
2020-12-1725 min
Market Dominance GuysEP60: Diagnosing Discovery Call FailuresIn this episode of Market Dominance Guys, we’ll dissect that sales process called the “discovery call” and diagnose the problem that is keeping sales reps from making a successful one. Chris, Corey, and Oren Klaff, managing director of Intersection Capital, share their opinions on the subject, and lament the unfortunate fact that most sales reps have no set method for conducting a discovery call that includes true discovery.
As Oren describes it, “Selling is a bit icky, and [salespeople] want to retreat quickly back to the relative calm of their normal lives. Once a salesperson hears one thin...
2020-12-0927 min
Market Dominance GuysEP59: Getting Prospects from Fear to CommitmentYou’re about to make a cold call, hoping to get a commitment out of your prospect. What are you feeling? A little trepidation, perhaps? As all salespeople know, that’s the fear of rejection. But have you ever considered that your prospect is feeling some fear too? It’s true: most prospective customers feel the fear of having to talk to an invisible stranger. That’s a lousy way to start a conversation with someone you’re wanting a commitment from. So, how do you, an invisible stranger, get your prospect, an unknown person, to go quickly from fear to tr...
2020-12-0229 min
Market Dominance GuysYou‘d Better Believe It!
Some episodes jump to the front of relativity. This is one of those with Matt Forbes. In this episode, Chris and Corey, interview Matthew Forbes, Head of Strategic Accounts at ConnectAndSell, about an epiphany Matt had that increased the meetings he set by almost 400%.
Matt came to truly believe, deep in his soul, in the potential value of the discovery meeting for his prospects, even if they were never going to do business with ConnectAndSell. His messaging script didn't change at all. It was his belief that did. Listen to today's Market Dominance Guys episode, "Y...
2020-12-0116 min
Market Dominance GuysEP58: Your Prospect Adores You! But Will His CFO?Every single thing that happens in sales is about learning — on both parties’ parts — and this includes presenting and discussing value metrics with prospects and with customers who are up for renewal. What works best? Adopting an attitude of rampant optimism or one of friendly skepticism? Should the value metrics you present be the same, or should they vary when you’re talking with inbound prospects versus outbound prospects? Is it most effective to emphasize only one appealing value, or is it better to trot out several beneficial metrics?
In this third Market Dominance Guys’ conversatio...
2020-11-2523 min
Market Dominance GuysEP50: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Biggest Sin in SalesThe pandemic has certainly shown the general public that scarcity or abundance of products can have an effect on people’s emotions. Scarcity increases desire — whether you desperately need the product or not. Abundance decreases desire, because there’s plenty of what you might need in the future. This is true for the sales process too. When you know that you’re going to have another conversation with a prospect, then you can relax during the initial conversation. The tension will disappear from your voice, because you’re not pushing for the sale: you know you have another chance at a future...
2020-10-0127 min
Market Dominance GuysEP45: It‘s the CEO‘s Job to Feel the Ice Rather than Harpoon the WhaleCEOs are allowed to have weird thoughts and consider odd possibilities. You need input from the market you don't have yet. This is why a CEO needs to be selling to understand what is actually happening. Their job is to feel the ice rather than just sending your reps to drive the road.
Put yourself in there as CEO, don't absorb the friction, find the root cause. The marketplace is always changing. CEOs love to harpoon a whale, but they need to experience every aspect of a sale. They need to be in the mix and feel...
2020-08-2726 min
Market Dominance GuysEP44: The We‘re Set Objection and Why Introverts Make the Best Salespeople.Marketing can step in and help sales overcome it.
1. Beginning: listen to discovery conversations.
2. Middle: look at support tickets to see the unvarnished truth.
3. End: work on getting the pipeline to be seen as an asset, it belongs on the balance sheet. Ask to be measured on the value we are contributing to help steer my efforts based on results that are being produced.
1. I want to know upfront what's going on - attribution
2. in the middle - discovery
3. at the end - support tickets and we...
2020-08-1921 min
Market Dominance GuysEP43: 91% of All Marketing Dollars are a Waste.Only 9% of all MQ's (marketing qualified leads) every result in a conversation. Worse than that, you have now stimulated your target audience to explore and investigate your competition. 91% of all marketing dollars are a waste. This is because Sales only contacts a prospect two times, rather than the 6 times requested or required. That leaves 91% for your competitors to speak to. But the good news is, everyone else is doing the same thing. It may all work out.
----more----
Sales says the lack of reach means low-quality leads. Marketing says good targeting means good quality leads, b...
2020-08-1027 min
Market Dominance GuysEP42: We Need to do Together Before We Partner Together.
Part 2 of the interview with SADA CEO, Tony Safoian. Questions answered include How is Google going to support my enterprise business better than its competitors. Needs have changed, demand for "bat phone" support is now part of any proposal. Every customer is different in their behavior than they were four months ago. If you're an organization that doesn't know how to meet your customer where they are now, your organization is dead.
----more----
Market Dominance Guys is brought to you by ConnectAndSell.
ConnectAndSell allows your sales reps to talk to more de...
2020-08-0419 min
Market Dominance GuysEP41: Manufacture Trust at Scale and Pace to Grow Exponentially
The rate of growth SADA has experienced gives them credibility when their CEO, Tony Safoian explains that in order to scale you have to manufacture trust at pace.
SADA does one thing exceptionally well, they transform companies into a cloud solution partnering with Google. Yes, that's paraphrasing, but as a Google Cloud Premier Partner, SADA Systems has gained global accolades as an exceptional service provider with proven expertise in enterprise consulting, cloud platform migration, custom application development, managed services, user adoption, and change management. They do what they do REALLY well. They do it so we...
2020-07-2934 min
Market Dominance GuysEP40: Every Mitigation is Untested - WFH or Going Back to the OfficeThis episode of Market Dominance Guys starts with Chris recapping the numbers from the previous episode on the tremendous infusion of savings Work From Home creates as knowledge workers are no longer required to go into an office to be productive. Quite the opposite. The data supports they are as much as 47% more productive working from home - ending the commute economy.
----more----
After the recap, Corey and Chris talk about the other aspects and concerns of potentially returning to the office, why it's a bad and wasteful idea and how we can all benefit...
2020-07-2219 min
Market Dominance GuysEP38: Why CEO‘s Need to be Selling
(aka: The Problem Is Making Your Numbers)
Running your sales program with a conversation-first approach delivers needed information to you. Naturally, this is important to your sales department. After all, utilizing a conversation at the beginning of the sales process tells your sales team almost automatically if it’s worthwhile to have another conversation.
So, why should a CEO be selling when he has salespeople to do that job? Because there’s important information a savvy CEO can glean from having conversations with prospects. Information about how things are changing for prospe...
2020-07-0834 min
Market Dominance GuysEP37: The Dog, The Fence and the Bone Problem.The problem in sales is that the desire for the transaction puts most salespeople already behind the eightball. When he was growing up, Chris' family put up a chain-link fence originally for the goats, but a few years later it helped with the dogs and inspired an experiment.
Chris opened the gate 30-40 feet away from where he put a dog bone over the fence. His dog tried to go over, under, and through the fence, but couldn't get to the bone. But it also didn't back up enough to see the open gate. This is what...
2020-07-0128 min
Market Dominance GuysEP36: Celebrating a win isn‘t anything, it‘s just preparing for the next thing.In this episode, Corey and Chris continue their conversation with a high Beta Market Dominance Practitioner MaxSold CEO, Sushee Perumal. aka "the skinny kid from India," MaxSold CEO, Sushee Perumal starting with why he felt he could successfully start an airline and his escape route when that failed. We open with Chris tying together his tapping of the bells analogy and plunging into Sushee's story which ultimately leads to MaxSold's growing success through a path of science, rather than simply tossing out millions of marketing dollars hoping it will work.
Chris reminds us, and Sushee agreed strongly...
2020-06-2326 min
Market Dominance GuysEP35: Magic Technology Doesn‘t Mean You Can Execute a Business.Chris and Corey's guest, Sushee Perumal, CEO of MaxSold tell us to take cautious steps when the tank is full of funding. Some of the highlights in this episode include:
Driving the concept of MaxSold's tagline, "From the sponge under the sink to the Ferrari in the driveway, we sell everything in two weeks." concept is the fact that live auctions were not and are not meeting the market needs. Sushee is the perfect example of Market Dominance, as well as a very likable person to know and work with. Hear this first of a two-part interview a...
2020-06-1624 min
Market Dominance GuysEP34: 3 States of Your Business: In Flow, Stuck, and Waiting.In this episode Corey asks Chris, "The other leaders that you've observed from being an investor or executive or being you know board member CEO, do you want to surround the issue and debate for the sake of maximizing all the different off-ramps that you could take or is it genuinely from a science level scientific level that you have your flag?"
This leads to Chris talking about the three stages of your business or career, he says, "I'd like to think of myself as the guy who insists that we go science first. And if you're...
2020-06-0827 min
Market Dominance GuysEP33: Sales Pros - Your Experiences are Your Core DifferentiatorBusinesses are not evolutionary endpoints. Businesses can be endlessly inventive. Why is it that putting a bookstore on the internet would lead to the world's richest man? If price isn't your differentiator, you'll work really hard to find one and fail. A business plan tells you if it's worth doing. Will this have been worth doing?
What's the smallest thing I can do in the shortest amount of time that will give me evidence to confirm or disconfirm my core thesis? Root in your own experience, not in somebody else's business book. Your experiences are your core differ...
2020-06-0229 min
Market Dominance GuysEP32: Sales Pros - Stop Worrying About the Deal.Most sales professionals are familiar with the journey of a cold call.
It starts with fear. From fear we move to trust. From trust we move to curiosity. From curiosity we move to commitment, and from commitment to action.
In this episode, Corey and Chris remind us that there is only one discovery call or meeting. And a true discovery call or meeting doesn't have a destination in mind. Welcome to this episode of Market Dominance Guys, "Sales Professionals - stop worrying about the deal."
----more----
Market Dominance Guys is sponsored by:
C...
2020-05-2624 min
Market Dominance GuysEP31: The Power of the Anti-curse to Overcome RejectionThis is the continuation of the conversation with Donny Crawford about sales follow up, overcoming rejection, and likening sales to Google search results. Thank people for the conversation no matter how it went. This helps keep your emotions in check and allows you to move forward to the next call, even if you were rejected in the previous one. Get some very applicable and practical techniques in this episode of Market Dominance Guys - The Power of the Anti Curse to Overcome Rejection.
----more----
If you missed the first half, you can catch it here >
2020-05-2025 min
Market Dominance GuysEP30: How to Retain the People Who Want to Save Men‘s Souls.
This is a continuation of the conversation we started the last episode with Mandy Farmer, CEO, Accent Inns. Chris asks Mandy the question of what's next after you have firmly decided that fun is the core of building a great business, and nothing will push me off this. How do you attract and retain the right people who hold these same values? Corey likened the tone of the company to something like the people who make Cards Against Humanity. Even their company contact info on the game sets the tone for their irreverence. They are the same a...
2020-05-1230 min
Market Dominance GuysEP29: Fun is a Requirement for Business SuccessCorey Frank and Chris Beall just had the fun privilege of recording a Market Dominance Guys podcast with Mandy Farmer, CEO of Accent Inns on the most important value in her business (and ours also, it turns out) - fun. This is part one of this interview with Mandy. Take a break and enjoy some lightness, as well as considering a new approach to help secure employee retention while growing your bottom line and see why she and her team are thriving in the hospitality industry while her competition is going through massive layoffs.
As soon as...
2020-05-0627 min
Market Dominance GuysEP28: Construct Your Company So it is Unappealing to Parasites.Corey and Chris talk about when to hire the right people, how to hire the right people, and horror stories. It starts with the tension between talent and alignment. There are three scenarios you don't want to end up with a new hire. You always want people that are talented and aligned, or else you either don't hire them in the first place, or accept this and fire them now. You may have a candidate that is talented and capable. You think talent will take over and they will become alignment. Never happens. Lack of alignment may be due...
2020-04-2928 min
Market Dominance GuysEP27: The Culling of the Non-Professionals in SalesIn this episode, Chris Beall and Corey Frank continue their conversation with the co-author of Outbound Sales, No Fluff, Ryan Reisert. Chris shares a view that is a bit unpopular but rings true. He states that "This pandemic will civilize our society. This is part of the civilization of our society by which matching the need to the capability of a solution it will be done without lying, tricking, and pushing. It's a big honesty bath that will cleanse a lot of us off." Corey dives into the concept of a repeatable process and leadership vs. luck and leadership...
2020-04-2028 min
Market Dominance GuysEP26: #WFH - Sales Pros - Do You Stand Still, Learn More, or Dominate Your Market?In this episode, Chris Beall and Corey Frank welcome co-author of Outbound Sales, No Fluff, and Sales Director, Ryan Reisert. In these uncertain times, sales pros are faced with waiting for the dust to settle, then try to regain their market or take this time to learn new skills and technologies.
There is a third option and that is to reframe conversations compassionately, patiently and gain control of your market. For a guide on how to come out of this restructured sales environment with everyone working from home, join Chris, Corey, and Ryan for your tips of...
2020-04-1424 min
Market Dominance GuysEP25: Three Reasons Sales Reps Don‘t Follow UpIn this episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall talks with ConnectAndSell's Customer Success Manager, Donny Crawford drilling it down to the three reasons Sales Teams don't follow up. When we hire people to sell for us, whether it's to sell meetings or whether it's to sell deals, we tend to put them under a compensation regime that emphasizes this quarter. Need happens at this moment to match up with what you can provide. And in order to determine their need, you have to have a discovery conversation with them. And until you have a discovery conversation, you d...
2020-04-0723 min
Market Dominance GuysEP24: Would it Help if I Perform a Haka Before My Cold Calls?By any measure, you can confidently claim that the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team is the world’s most successful team in the world. Famed for starting any game with their intimidating black jerseys and dramatic and culturally symbolic Haka – which is a traditional, Maori warrior challenge to the playing opposition, they have amassed a track record that is truly unequaled by any other sporting team. In more than a century of playing – they started in 1903 - the All Blacks have won almost 75% of their 580 plus matches in history. It is often said that the All Blacks remember their...
2020-03-2626 min
Market Dominance GuysEP23: You Only Live Once, But You Get to Serve TwiceFederer, Nadal, Serena, Martina, McEnroe, Borg, Court, Navratilova…a roster of some of the best tennis players the world has ever known.
But add one more name…Esther Vergeer to that list. Because she may actually be the most dominant and successful tennis player that you have never heard of. She won 148 career titles, 48 Grand Slam titles in singles and doubles, 23 year-end championships and seven gold medals.
And she did it from a wheelchair.
Esther Vergeer has used a wheelchair since she was 8, when an operation to correct hemorrhaging around her spinal cord left he...
2020-03-1924 min
Market Dominance GuysEP21: The First Law of Sales Holes - If You Find Yourself in One, Stop Digging.The United States may stake its claim as the first country to land on the moon but Russia can boast that it is the first country to drill the 2nd deepest man-made hole ever recorded here on Earth.
Since the early 1960s, scientists have attempted to drill down to the Earth's mantle. Why the mantle? Because we’re told that scientists only have a "reasonable" understanding of what it's made from, and how it works.
In 1970, Russia entered the race to dig. But unlike the Moon landing, Russia achieved more than the US. Over the nex...
2020-02-2735 min
Market Dominance GuysEP19: The Best Surfer (or Sales Rep) Out There Is The One Having The Most Fun.A lot goes into building a surfboard. In fact, depending on the expertise and the quality of the board, there can be upwards of 39 steps from start to finish. It’s not a fast process and takes a skilled surfer on the shaper to know what a particular board size or shape will do in the water. Take Dick Brewer, the undisputed 83-year-old grandmaster surfboard shaper from Hawaii. Dick has designed boards surfing legends all over the world…the big guys like Laird Hamilton and Garrett McNamara. He says he has made more than 50,000 boards in his lifetime. McNamara says...
2020-01-3123 min
Market Dominance GuysEP18: Surf’s Up - We All Stand Equal Before a Wave.You can learn a lot about market dominance by sitting in the sand…and watching surfers on the beaches of Southern California as they hone their craft. As a land-locked kid from the mean streets of Milwaukee, I would visit the beaches of Venice, California every summer and attempt to ride the relatively modest waves of the warm Santa Monica waters.
Time and again I would bite it and tumble into the surf…learning a little bit each ride about balance…about the feel and the connection to the board beneath you…about timing.
And later comm...
2020-01-2427 min
Market Dominance GuysEP17: High Noon - Facing the Black Hats Who Are Trying to Take Your MarketThe United States of the mid 19th century is ripe with stories of its timeless legends and colorful characters who helped weave the historical events that defined the Great American West. The stories and movies about the adventures of lonesome cowboys, men with black hats, or brave lawmen of the Old West who clashed frequently in conflicts such as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the duals in the dusty streets of Virginia City, and tales of quick justice in Dodge City, continue to capture our imagination.
When we talk of cowboys and other figures of t...
2020-01-1726 min
Market Dominance GuysEP16: How Many SDRs Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?Almost 400 years ago, in the early 17th century in Europe, tulip bulbs were considered hard currency. 200 years ago, many islanders of the South Pacific used bleached seashells to flaunt their wealth. 100 years ago, many Texans measured their success by how many heads of cattle they ran. And today, my 8-year-old measures his wealth by the rare skins and VBucks he accumulates through his Fortnite gaming efforts. But today, if you’re a CEO or senior business leader in B2B tech markets, you may also have an alternative form of capital that should be leveraged in every way that the...
2020-01-0631 min
Market Dominance GuysEP15: All Dead Companies are Equally Uninteresting.The classic book, Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore, is a manifesto, a field manual, and sales’ version of Dr. Spock’s book on “company rearing” for new entrepreneurs…all in one. To level set for a brief moment – and Googling an image of Dr. Moore’s chasm graph may be helpful for the episode here - marketers have traditionally identified different kinds of B2B tech buyers: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and finally the Laggards.
The traditional model assumed that, in the lifespan of a product, the market is first dominated by the innovators, th...
2019-12-3036 min
Market Dominance GuysEP14: Parker Brothers Gave Me My MBAIf you want to dominate your market, here’s an inexpensive tip: Head down to your local Goodwill and buy a used version of the classic board game Risk… It seems that you don’t need AI, Machine Learning sims, or dozens of third-party load-tested and validated forecast models to predict how your business will perform in the next 24 months. Sometimes you just need to remember how you played a game that many of you probably haven’t picked up since you were 12.
Risk was a board game that taught many of us about basic market dominance…each player...
2019-12-1730 min
Market Dominance GuysEP13: Mr. Miyagi and the Theory of Market Dominance.Rocky. The Karate Kid. The Average Joes. Rudy. Underdogs. We love them. They are the people who use their grit combined with their well-coached and newly acquired skills to make waves, cause the odds-makers fits, and run up the score.
When you get funded by a VC and finally have the green light to release the Kraken and launch your vaunted sales machine, there is a temptation to run up the bill on the countless tools available in the sales and marketing stack and forget the meager stack from whence you came.
“Stand back…I have c...
2019-12-0524 min
Market Dominance GuysEP12: Get the DeLorean; My Profession is Stuck in 1855.Today, when you examine the toolbox of the modern sales professional, many of us immediately see the abundance of options in the marketing and sales stacks that decorate most of our desktops…I have tools that can disguise my phone number, I know when someone opens an email, I can do a virtual face to face meeting…AI and machine learning tools even tell me what to say and who I should say it to…a scale of portable technology and advancement and capital on any ordinary rep desktop that would leave an Apollo-era NASA slide-ruled engineer in your dust.
2019-11-1819 min
Market Dominance GuysEP11: The Two-State Solution in Market Dominance: Dollars or Donuts?States, lots of ‘em, 50 states. Plus Red States, Blue States. States of consciousness. Physical states. Liquid/Gas…
How about the state of Markets, being Market Dominant, or simply being an “also-ran?”
The fact is there are only two states you can reside in as a company: you're either dominating one market or more, or you're dominating zero. And if you're dominating zero markets, you WILL go out of business in time unless you turn into a company that IS dominating at least one market.
Market Dominance is security, it’s collateral, safety, shelter, asylum, pa...
2019-11-1520 min
Market Dominance GuysNo Tourists Allowed: Are You Serious About Reaching the Top of Your Market.”What do you need to believe when you ask someone for 15 minutes of their time? What’s the underlying emotional and rational DNA of true belief that is pulsing through your brain?
And even beyond this, it would be helpful to remind our listeners about our mission here at the Market Dominance Guys…what’s the real reason these nuances and steps and tactics of market dominance even matter? Because, after all, if we don't get past the discovery step consistently we can never dominate our market.
So all of these steps are not necessarily put in...
2019-11-0622 min
Market Dominance GuysEP9: How to Harvest Authentic Trust in your Discovery Calls
Ask 50 bartenders how to make the best Tom Collins and 48 out 50 will tell you: Pour 1 oz Freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 1/2 oz Gin, 2 oz Carbonated water and 1/2 oz Sugar syrup and shake. Now ask 50 sales professionals how to “make” the best Discovery call and you’ll get 50 different answers. Have an agenda. Build rapport. Establish time frames. Set a power frame. Identify a budget upfront or don’t do the call at all. Do a question stack. Talk a lot. Talk a little. It seems that everyone has their own recipe, and yet they are still calling it by the sa...
2019-10-3040 min
Market Dominance GuysEP8: How to Free Solo Your PitchAlex Honnold, one of the most talented mountain climbers in the world – who is the only man to ever successfully summit El Capitan free solo – and that means no ropes - by the way – had a strategy. And his strategy did not reach the top of the mountain. That was his ultimate destination. His strategy was to map the 30 sections – or “pitches” as they are called in climbing parlance - and practice the necessary and wide variety of different skills needed to manage each of these 30 precarious steps. Now as a sales professional, I find it fascinating that climbers call each se...
2019-10-2440 min
Market Dominance GuysEP7: Don‘t Make the Spiders AngryThere is a universal product that every company has that it needs to better understand and sell more effectively and correctly. And it's a product that can be crafted and messaged just like any other product your team sells. Because it’s a real product, it requires belief in its potential value and worth from the folks that sell it. It’s a product that shouldn’t be short-cut or mis-messaged…or even try to do too much. It needs to be measured for effectiveness. And the ability to get this product in front of your list is also one of t...
2019-10-1618 min
Market Dominance GuysEP6: Stranger Things in SalesGrowing up, your mom probably told you to never talk to strangers. She also said never ask anyone for money. So…fast forward 20 years and find yourself at your desk, a newly minted college grad and a fresh-faced and newly hired sales professional at a great company. And what does your boss tell you to do on your first day? “Um…Josh, I need you to take this list of leads and I need you to call them (i.e. talk to strangers)…oh and then, if they’re really friendly, I need you to ask them to buy something...
2019-10-1517 min
Market Dominance GuysEP5: Market List Creation - Know Your Enemy.Explaining the decision to employ the newly developed and yet far-from-perfect radar system used to protect England from the stifling Nazi blitz in World War II, the esteemed scientist Robert Alexander Watson-Watt said, “Always strive to give the military the third-best because the best is impossible and second best is always too late.” This attitude of being good enough, and not perfect, has been dubbed ‘the cult of the imperfect.’ The French philosopher Voltaire summed this attitude nearly two hundred years earlier when he wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Certainly, when creating a call campaign...
2019-10-1533 min
Market Dominance GuysEP4: Messaging Eats Product for BreakfastStartups that begin their journey without a primary mission and focus on getting to true market dominance causes many teams to instead lead their new company into conditions that are ripe with extreme uncertainty and essentially abandoning all process. They often jump head-on into the product development cycle in order to execute on their “idea” and get to “market” as quickly as possible…so they can start selling and bringing in revenue. Understandable for sure. But this is not the only option…nor is it even close to the ideal one. Eric Ries’ fantastic work, The Lean Startup, demonstrates that companies...
2019-10-1435 min
Market Dominance GuysEP3: The Hard Truths About Taking VC FundingI know many veteran entrepreneurs would agree that “Raising venture capital is the easiest thing that a startup founder is probably ever going to do.”
Marc Andreessen said that the venture capital business is a 100% game of outliers- it’s all about extreme exceptions.”
“…think about it…there are on the order of 4-5000 ‘fundable’ companies a year, that want to raise venture capital.”
“…and about 300 of those will get funded by what’s considered a ’top tier VC’; about 25 of those will someday get to a 100M in revenue…”
“…and those 25 from that year, will generate...
2019-10-1427 min
Market Dominance GuysEP2: The 3 Features & 3 Strategies Every Startup Must HaveIn our journey to Market Dominance, Hope springs eternal…it does in sales forecasts…in product rollouts…and especially in venture fundraising.
“But Hope is not a strategy. And Luck is not a factor. And fear is not an option.”
In this episode, I ask Chris about the key features and strategies every startup must-have. I brought extra paper expecting a long list…but to Chris, things are simplified…there are only three.
So arm yourself! Tune in to this episode of Market Dominance Guys to hear Corey and Chris and let’s now dive into the 3 Fe...
2019-10-1427 min
Market Dominance GuysEP1: Your Startup Origin Story: Sales is Not the VillainWelcome to Market Dominance Guys. There’s a common storyline for newly minted entrepreneurs…it goes like this: I have a product… a widget…a service. It works…I think it works pretty well. And so now I'm going to hire a bunch of sales folks…probably a VP of Sales and he’s going to do the hiring…and then we're going to launch and then we’re going to get working and execute on that hockey stick picture I have in my investment deck. Oh, and we're also going to do the market launch, some PR about our funding, and s...
2019-10-1427 min