We’ve got HubSpot’s Dan Tyre on this week’s episode of Coffee Talks to guide us through the Lion Program and how you can help to motivate and train your sales team for the ultimate success.
Last Week's Episode: Getting Automated: Email Strategy Insight With Seventh Sense's Mike Donnelly
The Lion Program
As the 6th employee at HubSpot and the longtime HubSpot Sales Director, Dan Tyre has a little bit of sales experience and, lucky for us, he’s willing to teach us his ways.
The Lion Program, originally codenamed “Project Löwin” which was slightly too confusing, was created to help HubSpot’s partners engage with and find new customers by providing sales training and empowerment. This year, around 800 agencies will have participated and most will see nearly double the business from previous years.
The Lion Program helps salespeople and agencies gain confidence, motivate themselves, and pick up that phone.
Motivation as a salesperson
One of the foundations of becoming a successful salesperson is finding and maintaining your motivation. It can be so frustrating to consistently make the calls, send the emails, and do all of the things you have to do every day while not always seeing constant success. That’s why motivation is such an integral aspect of a good salesperson and such a difficult thing to maintain.
Most of this lack of motivation stems from salespeople’s hesitance to pick up the phone. Everyone has been cold-called and everyone hates it. So, naturally, nobody wants to be the person doing it. It’s not a fear of rejection that keeps people off the phones, it’s the fear of being a major annoyance to whoever is on the other side.
So, the first part of the Lion Program is to convince people that what they’re doing is not cold calling.
Cold calling is calling numbers you’ve never talked to before and reading off the same script each time. Nobody likes it. You should not be cold calling, it hurts your brand and your business. There is no cold calling in the Lion Program.
Instead, the program teaches “warm calling” which involves researching and calling people you’ve established contact with already. You’re not calling to qualify anymore, you’re calling to help and helping people is the best way to grow your brand and your business.
“Your brand is how you treat people,” - Dan Tyre
Helping people, regardless if they’re going to buy from you or not, gives you a huge competitive advantage over people who are just trying to sell and close.
How HubSpot helps in the sales process
In 2019 (almost 2020!) having a modern CRM gives you a huge advantage. With the busy nature of business, there are a lot of things vying for your time. HubSpot lets you pass some of them onto the magic of automation. There are a lot of different types of work like emails, social media, tracking, etc..., that you can automate and free up time for more important tasks.
HubSpot’s lead intelligence features send you notifications for all the events involved in the inbound sales process like someone opening emails, watching videos, opening pages, etc. Let HubSpot handle it and inform you when things are happening rather than having to constantly check back.
Number one tip for prospecting: pick up the phone!
What is Dan Tyre’s number one tip for prospecting? Picking up the phone.
In an age where phone calls are becoming more rare with each year, it remains a pillar of sales and, according to Dan Tyre, you have to call four times along with intermittent emailing. That may sound crazy, but there’s no better way to make an emotional connection with someone than talking with them directly.
As for the emails, including video is the best way to make that connection.
Video in the sales process
Emailing might be the coldest call of all. How can you warm it up? Include a personalized video to help you create that human connection. People are emotional creatures and use emotions to make a decision so naturally, you’d want to introduce more of it into your sales process.
The video doesn’t even have to be complex and produced, a simple Soapbox style video of you introducing yourself and your business can do wonders towards creating a connection.
And using video works. The average conversion of a cold call is 1-2%, an inbound follow up call converts at around 12-15%. A sales process with video included rises to a conversion rate of 30-40%. And only 25% of people are using video!
Sales can be a tricky business, but with the proper motivation, the right skills, and the bravery to pick up the phone, you can be a Sales Lion.
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