GTM HIVE

Don't sabotage your own presentation by using 'wall-of-text' slides. Text-heavy slides have a place as handouts of leave behind documents, but don't distract audience while you're weaving a narrative by giving them stuff to read at the same time. Do you like text-heavy presentations? #sales #fintech

Beware the 'wall-of-text' slide when presenting. It's so tempting when there is a lot of information to convey, to put it all down in text. But here's the problem.. None of us as multi-task. If there is a slide full of text on the screen, the audience will read it. If they are reading then they aren't listening to you. You're distracting your own audience. If you're presenting, slides should be simple and visual - they should support what you're saying, not replace it. Text-heavy slides do have value - as hand-outs or leave-behind documents. Text allows you to create a full narrative that allows the document to stand alone without a narrator - slides don't. Both are valuable documents, but should be used differently.

If your outbound sales isn't working, this is the first place I would look. Their manager. Being an outbound salesperson is hard. It requires doing a job that requires lots of rejection. Junior salespeople will often avoid that, and if their manager isn't driving that kind of activity then you've got no chance. If that is the case, then you should either hire an SDR leader that can provide that kind of management, or outsource it to an external business that will do it on your behalf. #outbound #sales

A generation of salespeople have been poisoned with the notion that a great salesperson can sell anything to anyone. It's not true... ...and it causes them to waste so much time - as well as annoying the hell out of buyers. Be curious about your prospects, identify pain and ambition, and service that need - don't try and create it.

This is one of my pet-hates... Meeting invites than don't describe an agenda, who's needed, and what's needed from them. It drives really low-quality meetings, and it's so easy to fix. Rant over.

Don't make demo's longer than they need to be! You're not getting paid by the word. If you can show them all the most important features they need in 15 mins, that's a good result. If they want more, they'll tell you!

I just don't buy into the suggestion that talking about features is a bad thing. If you're talking to a subject matter expert, they have enough brains to join-the-dots between the feature you're describing and how it will benefit them. Dumbing down everything into a benefit just gets annoying.

Automation has ruined the quality of outbound sales because the cost of sending an email message is zero. If it cost us more, we would spend more time personalising. Spamming emails is the equivalent to a leaflet through the door - it's that simple. I'm not suggesting that message automation doesn't have value, but it needs to get better than just vomiting our proposition to everyone with an email address. Can automation also be high-quality?

If you act like a typical salesperson, buyers will treat you as such. But the inverse is also true. Let's humanise sales on both sides of the equation!

Tech businesses have become so impatient, and it's driving some really stupid decision making. We need to invest in brand, and content and experience - and develop patience. Great business building is done looking beyond the 12 months in front of you.