Tune in for yet another exciting episode on #Limitless featuring Alice Heiman, the Founder & Chief Sales Energizer at Alice Heiman LLC and also the renowned host of CEOs-only podcast 'Sales Talk for CEOs.'
The key takeaways for you:
Learn more about Alice here:
https://aliceheiman.com/podcast
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Hey all! Welcome to another episode of our Limitless Podcast series. I'm Nisha, a product marketer at Hippo Video and your podcast host for today. We have with us this time Alice Heiman.
Hey, Alice. Hi, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on our podcast today. Alice will be drawing on her expertise from coaching sales executives and navigating complex B2B sales to advise CEOs on maintaining a steady stream of leads and revenue in the face of an economic downturn.
Let's dive right into questions. Okay, Alice, your first.
So let's face it.
We are in the throes of an economic downturn. How are prospects response to the usual sales tactics? Like cold emails or cold calls or cold outreach in general, likely to change in the scenario?
Well, I think they're, they're not gonna change that much. I think the fact is that people don't want another email in their inbox, and they don't answer cold calls. They just don't. I mean, when I say that, I recognize that there are companies who will dial for you. And there's cold calling experts out there and all of that. And if you dial enough times, someone will answer, right?
But it is a pretty inefficient way to talk to someone. So this has been true for a long time. Uh, I think our sales tactics have not worked for a long time. Before COVID, our sales tactics weren't working very well. Thus all of the statistics say that less than 50% of their salespeople hit their quota, right?
Because the prospecting tactics aren't working and salespeople don't have enough conversations with people who can buy from them. I mean, if you talk to the average sales rep today, whether they're an inside rep or an outside rep, and of course, we know the outside reps. Are not travelling as much, but they're doing things like emailing, doing LinkedIn, doing research, and very little phone. I mean, they're dialling, and they're leaving voicemails, but there are very few conversations going on, and that's been that way for a while. So will it change? It will only get worse. I have a feeling. I don't think it's gonna get any better.
Okay. So how can they make the process better? Because from what you said, I think it's all been one way, right? I mean, salespeople, leaving voice messages and leaving emails. So how can they make it, like, a two-way conversation in a way that's bound to attract, the other person's attention and make it a conversation?
Right? That's the million-dollar question. So how do we make it better? Well, first of all, we all have to recognize that we're humans.
And that we wanna talk about things that matter to us. Now, this is nothing new. Dale Carnegie, what, 60 years ago, I don't even know how long ago, he said, look, people if you wanna win friends and influence people, you have to be concerned about them. You have to care about them. You have to be genuine.
You have to ask questions. You have to understand what matters to them. This is not new information. So if we wanna improve the prospecting process, there are a couple of things that we need to focus on. And so one of them is we need to have a good understanding of who we're selling to. Why they might buy from us and what their world is like.
Right. So if we have a very specific approach to our target customers, so first of all, we decide, this is our target customer. They look like this, walk like this, talk like this, and we know who they are. So we know what kinds of companies buy from us. And then we know who the people are inside those companies they'll get involved in the decision. If we have that targeted well, everything else becomes easier. Most of the companies I see out there have not targeted well, and they're trying to sell to people who are not likely to buy from them. And that makes it very hard. When we sell to people who are likely to buy from us, it's easier.
But we're not done there. So now we have targeted these people, these companies who need what we sell and the people inside those companies who make the decisions to buy that we have to get their attention. Now, huge brands out there with names that everybody knows like Salesforce.com, Coca-Cola, and big, big names out there.
Companies have already heard of them, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll buy from them. So we have to think about it how do people buy? What do they do first? So once we know who we're targeting, now we have to understand what their journey is. And when I see the journey, I mean like, what is their decision-making process?
When they say, ‘Ooh, I have a problem, I need a solution to this problem’. Is there more than one solution? Should we do this? Should we solve this internally ourselves? Or should we hire a consultant to help us? Or should we buy a product off the shelf? So they're going through a decision-making process. That is the way the human brain works.
And we cannot change that. The only thing we can do is assist it. So if we want to get their attention and they don't already know us because we're not Coca-Cola or Zoom or Salesforce.com or some big company that everybody knows, we have to figure out how do we get in their path? Now it's a, it's a concerted effort between sales and marketing.
We have to have, a front that shows our brand the same way in every place that people might find us. So if I'm making a decision, what's the first thing I do? I think, oh, what do I need, do I know a company that already has. That I've used before that I could use again. So that's the first thing that goes through my brain.
Then if I say, no, I don't, then I might ask my friends, Hey, uh, what company do you buy? This kind of thing from? Right. And I'll ask a couple of different people, then I'll get on Google, or I might get on Google first before I ask people, I might do my research on Google. And then I might go ask people, have you heard of this company?
Have you used them? So one of those two things is gonna happen once. I know I need something I'm going to start Googling or ask people. Rarely will I just pick up the phone and call a company and say, Hey, what do you have? I'm gonna do all this research on my own first. So if we want to engage people at that early stage, they must first know we exist.
And then we have to be engaging and have information that they need. Now at that point, nobody wants to talk to a salesperson. So even if it's a complex sale where you will need a salesperson in the beginning, I really don't wanna talk to a salesperson. I wanna do this research on my own. So what we're missing right now is most companies, their websites, not really telling anybody what they do.
It, doesn't give me a clear path to follow it. Doesn't help me on my buyer journey. So that's the first place I go right after I Google I go to the website. Well, so the website failed. All right. So if I looked at three vendors and all three other websites are sort of not so great. Then I might have to go a step further and try to figure out how to get more information on those three vendors.
If out of those three, one of them had a great website and I could figure out exactly what they sold and how to buy it. Then I would probably move forward with them and drop the other two. So it's really simple. So what companies have to figure out is before a buyer ever talks to a salesperson, how is the customer interacting with them?
Did they find some social media, uh, post, did they find content? Did they did the SEO work when they searched, and your company popped up? Like, how is your buyer finding you in the first place? And then once they do, what's the experience they have next, it could either make it harder for the salesperson or easier for the salesperson, but that's before they ever even talk to a salesperson.
So it's hard for salespeople to have conversations when the beginning of the buyer journey isn't helping the person choose your company. So, that's a big failure point that I see. So let's just say we get through all that, and I'm buying this, and I find a company and I go, yeah, I've researched all I can. I got everything I needed from their website. I looked at their social media and learned a lot, and now I am ready to talk to a salesperson, right? Well, if, if that's the case, then now that salesperson has to be educated. They have to have business acumen. They have to have industry acumen. They have to know about my company.
Right. And they have to know about their own company, their own product, the results that they provide. So. There's another failure point. We do not educate our salespeople enough in that way, so they don't have all that information. So there are several fail points. Now let's face it. Most companies are doing outbound.
They're not waiting till I come to them. When I have a need and start looking, they're hoping to catch me before I have that need. Yeah. And get me to know about them. So that's a marketing job. It's one to many messaging that lets me know that your company is available when I have that problem. Yeah.
And you just keep dripping on me, dripping on me, dripping on me. So I know you're there. Great. Content's coming through. And I think, wow, if I ever need that, I'll buy from that company right. Now, alongside that marketing, salespeople are sending spammy messages. They're sending me spammy LinkedIn. They're sending me spammy, spammy emails, maybe too.
And I'm deleting. Right? So now I've got cross messages. I've got marketing, doing one thing and sales doing another. Big fail point. So we, we have several points where we could, could stop and fix things. Um, but, uh, the messaging is the key. So, what messaging do you have to engage me whether it's outbound or inbound, whether I find you and start reading up on you, or whether you come after me and send me messaging, what messaging is gonna make me pay attention.
And if I happen to have the problem that you solve at that moment in time. That messaging should be so strong and so powerful, showing me that me, you know me, not me personally, but my industry and what I go through as a CRO or a CEO or a CTO or a VP of sales or whatever the titles are, that engineering, whatever, you're showing me what my life is like, what is a day in my life? Like, and the words you use make me go, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I need. I wanna call you. But most messaging is terrible, even though there's information out there. Saying, don't talk about yourself. Don't talk about your company.
Don't talk about your, products, your services. We get these messages from salespeople every day. Hi I'm so, and so I have this and this and this and this and this. Would you like to set up a call and buy that from me? And we give those messages constantly. So, Gartner, Corporate Vision, Forester, all the powers that be out there that are writing about, um, what buyers want saying, get us good content, get us messaging that makes us think, bring us insights, um engage with us in a way that makes us wanna talk to you. And that is just flat out. Not happening.
Yeah. I think many messages out there are now generic because companies are scared of losing out on leads. Like I think they value, I don't know, quantity over quality or something they're. A little afraid of hesitant to like to make the messaging laser-focused, I guess. Correct.
Yeah. And that's right. They're afraid of losing customers. And so they aim much too broad. Yeah. And it does nobody any good, plus they still just talk about themselves.
So yeah. I think people say this all the time, the riches are in the niches. If you have three target markets, then you better write specific messaging for all three of those. If you have three target markets, your website that speak to all three; you cannot be too general. Not today.
People just won't wade through it. If they don't see immediately how it impacts them, they're gone.
Yeah, absolutely valid. Onto the next one, so how should CEOs and sales leaders steer their teams to safety in this scenario, should there be a shift in mindset or approach to sales itself? Anytime the market is shaky, we think there's a recession, and a pandemic shows up out of the blue.
Anytime there's anything that makes us go on high alert. We have to do something right. But really, I think if we are doing good selling, we don't have to change a lot. So basics are important, but mindset right is key. So if we go into this uncertain market, whatever may be causing that uncertain market, if we go into with a mindset of fear, and scarcity and, oh my gosh, this is gonna be hard.
And, if our mindset is negative, of course, it's gonna be very difficult. If we go into an uncertain market saying here's what we know how to do well. Here's what we can change if we need to, here's where we can flex and bend. And here's how we can be great in any market that mindset says, hey we're going along for this ride.
It may be bumpy, but we can, and we'll do it. So I think that mindset is very, very, very important. The approach to the sale, if you're already doing it well, probably doesn't need to change. However, if you have customers, simply go ask them. Go ask your customers. What are your fears in this marketplace? What are you worried about?
What challenges are you facing? How can we help you? What are you looking for? You know, so it's really easy to change your approach by just surveying your own customers and finding out what their needs are in these turbulent times. Right? So I think that safety is in being consistent, doing the right things, right?
Focusing on the customer, understanding the buyer journey, surveying your customers. That's the safety it's stuff you should be doing anyway.
What you're trying to say is retaining your customers is more important than going off the new ones like the scenario.
Absolutely. I think we lose sight of that so many times, but we all know the statistics, how expensive it is to replace a customer, the cost of acquisition versus the cost of retention.
Plus it just wears on the company in so many different ways when we lose customers. Now, there are a certain amount of customers that just need to go, cuz they weren't a good fit in the first place, or they are not a good fit now for whatever reason, certainly. But especially in uncertain times, we wanna shore up all of our existing customers, make sure they're not just satisfied, but they are delighted, and they become loyal customers so that they continue to buy as well as continue to share with us when things aren't working.
Right. So we can fix them. And they're willing to make introductions for us. So retention is absolutely critical. I believe it's always critical, but in any kind of a turbulent market, you absolutely need to shore up your existing customers and make sure you're retaining them.
Awesome. Okay. You know B2B sales, a tradition has been quite complex as you said we have like sales, sending emails, marketing sending emails to prospects, et C.
So what's tripping it down to the bare essentials make it easier for the sales team and the buyers to navigate the whole process. Because right now it's pretty confusing, right?
It is confusing, and we do make it confusing. I always say, um, what have you done today to make it easier to be your customer and harder to be your competitor?
So we are making it hard to be our customer, and we don't even realize it because we don't take that journey from the customer's point of view. We always take it from an internal point of view. And that's another reason to reach out to your customers and ask them what the journey was like when they bought from you, where the sticking points were, where it was.
And why they ended up buying from you. So, in a complex sale, especially some B2B sales are transactional and not all that complex. It only takes one or two people to make a decision, but in a complex sale where we have, um, 5, 8, 12 decision makers on the buying team and then on the selling team we have a team of a sales engineer, a pre-sales person, a sales person, um, an account manager, a customer success person, all teaming up to go forward and work with all those buyers and move the deal forward. Yeah, it gets complex. It's high-dollar stakes. It's long, uh, sales cycles.
There's all kinds of things. So. If we can make it easier for our customers to buy, certainly we will win more deals. So when you say bear essentials to strip it down, well, what does that mean? I think mostly it means, um, Again, being educated on who you're selling to being prepared, which I cannot tell you how many salespeople go out there and wing it.
And their sales leaders allow them to do it. They do not do pre-call plans. Yeah. Before they have big meetings and especially where they have meetings with several people from the buyer side and several people from the seller side together, they're not doing written call planning and it's, they're just failing at those meetings even though they leave, oh yeah, it was a great meeting, but they didn't cover the right things or they didn't cover. Some critically important things. They didn't include everyone equally in the conversation because they weren't prepared to do that. They may not have the outcome. That was the very best outcome. They may have got a good outcome that moved forward, but it might not have been the very best outcome because they didn't prepare in advance.
So if we just take a look at how do we make it easy for the customer, then what we have to do is be highly educated on what they need and what they're doing, and how they're doing it, and be prepared to bring insights. And we need to be prepared for every conversation that we have with them, so that we don't waste their time.
And then we need to use mutual action plans for complete transparency to show them from today to the time you buy here's all the steps that are gonna hap have to happen. Here's who's gonna have to do it and buy when, if we wanna stick to this timeline, even if they don't end up buying from you, that buying timeline with actions is gonna help them make a better choice in the end, whether they buy from you or buy from somebody else.
So if we get those mutual action plans in place early, it's easy for the buyer cuz they know what to do next. See what the funny thing is is that these sellers somehow think that the buyers know how to buy from them. Now isn't it that silly I've never bought from you before, or maybe I have, but in many, many cases I've never bought from you before I have no idea how to buy from you. Not only that I may have never been involved in buying this type of thing ever in my lifetime. Right? So we have um, millennials who are now in a position of leadership where they're going out to buy expensive software, expensive equipment, expensive programs and services.
And they've never purchased those kinds of things before. So how do they know how to buy them? They don't, and they specifically don't know how to buy them from your company because buying from you is different from buying from someone else. So yes, we have to make it easier for them. We have to take the fatigue out of it.
Gartner says I've been saying for years that buyers are fatigued; they have this big spaghetti bowl to weighed through. We have many people on the buying team who have to go through. Their own decision-making process. And then they all have to come to a consensus. So anything that we can do as a seller team to make it easy for them to map it out for them to walk them through it, to get them the information they need, but not overload them with information. Any of that would make it.
Yep. So true. Even if they don't end up buying from you, they'll at least be left with a pleasant sales experience.
A hundred percent. Right. And then if they have that and later on, they need something, or they move to another company, they're still gonna think well of you. And so it will be really easy for them to come back to you.
Very true. Yeah. Okay. Um, so next one, virtual a link has been the norm during the pandemic, like in using videos or Zoom calls, et cetera. So do you say the trend continues into the downturn as well.
Absolutely. I think that companies have recognized that sending salespeople on trips every week is not an efficient way to do business.
It's not cost-effective and it also isn't time effective. Uh, and it, it doesn't get the job done. Uh, I do believe there is a time and place to meet in person. Many companies are using trade shows and other events. As the way to do that. So you send the salespeople, the selling team to the event, and then you also call on customers while you're there, either customers in the area or the customers visiting the same event or trade show.
And you schedule your face-to-face work that needs to be done. You know, at those times, instead of making a lot of separate trips, um, some companies have even completely stopped having salespeople travel. They've cut their tr travel budgets down to almost nothing. So it is absolutely a trend that will continue.
And you know, this pandemic, maybe it's only an epidemic now. I don't know what they call it. It's less life-threatening now. But people are still getting COVID and, that’s gonna continue, uh, on top of the fact that there'll be another virus or another something, right. So we have to be able to use the technology available to us today to sell, and that is not going to change.
It will continue, and we will be pickier about when we send people on a trip and what they're doing while they're on that trip. Because we when people are on a plane for hours and hours of a day, or several days, they can't do much work, right? Then they go visit the customer for an hour or two, and then they get back on a plane and go back, not an effective use of time.
So I really truly believe that we will continue to sell virtually. I think people are learning how to doing well, and it's working, and it will continue.
And, uh, the next question for you, and this has something to do with the customer retention point that you mentioned. So revenue has traditionally been the north star metric for sales teams. Should CEOs and sales leaders revisit the metric in the current scenario? Should it be recurring revenue now, other than new revenue?
Well, let's just put it this way. Revenue is a lagging indicator. I don't know my revenue until I have it in hand. I can forecast all day long, but until those dollars are in the door and by the time the dollars are in the door, it is too late.
So what we have to learn to do in sales is use leading indicators instead of lagging indicators. And the revenue is important. Of course, it is. We have to, we have to hit our revenue numbers. So the company can exist and pay their bills and continue to grow. Right. There's that's an absolute. Recurring revenue is great, but that doesn't work for every kind of company.
Right. So if you sell software, terrific, you can set up a subscription model, and there you go. Right. But that doesn't work for everything like heavy equipment, like Caterpillar, right? They sell great big diggers. You don't get on a recurring revenue model with diggers, the diggers last long.
Now you could put them on a service model where they pay monthly for service, and that would be some recurring revenue. But again, there are just some cases where it's there's no recurring revenue model that's gonna work. So if there is a recurring revenue model, Yes, companies should install that they should use recurring revenue, but again, you still have to renew that, right?
So, it's still sort of a lagging indicator. So we have to start looking at things that tell us if we're going to be successful this year and if we're going to grow. And if we start to measure the things that lead to revenue, that can be monitored weekly so that within a week's time, we know either we hit it or we didn't and we can adjust and then get to the next week and do better.
Right. Mm-hmm then we have a better chance of hitting the goal, the revenue goal that we set. Rather than just waiting to see if we hit it or not, or going to the end of the quarter. And it's like, oh, we didn't hit our goal. Now we're behind one quarter. Now we've gotta catch up in the next three quarters.
I mean, yeah, revenue's important. Recurring revenue is great if your business model allows for it, but we have to really think about how we can measure leading indicators versus lagging. And we do have to take a serious look at our business model and see if it can be pivoted or morphed into a model where we can get more recurring revenue, but again, that's not gonna work for everybody.
Okay. Yeah, that was pretty insightful. And, next question. So again, this has something to do with like aligning sales and marketing. So how can CEOs align different teams in the organization to work in tandem with sales and weather the storm together.
So alignment is critical and the CEO is the only person in the company that can really orchestrate alignment. So we have sales, we have marketing, we have customer success, we have operations, we have finance and whatever other departments your company has. Right. HR, for example, I mean, there's a lot of departments eight may have, and they all kind of work in a silo. So they have a leader. HR has a leader. Finance has a leader.
Sales has a leader. Marketing has a leader. Customer success has a leader. In some cases, the sales marketing customer success leader is a CRO, and they all fall under one, but you know, we have these silos, and then we're trying to bridge the gap between them. They all have their own, their tasks that they have to do.
But we have to have happen is for them to all be focused on the customer journey and how they impact it. But finance may not see that they have anything to do at all with a customer journey. Operations may not see that either. Right now. Remember when I say customer journey, I'm not just talking about from the time they know about you, either because you outreached or because they found you till the time they buy, I'm talking abou ‘hello, I know you exist to I'm your loyal customer. So it goes well beyond the purchase into the onboarding and the recurring revenue model that you have in place, but the customer staying with you, the retention and the growth of that customer, and then becoming a loyal customer.
So. Every department touches a piece of that, and the salespeople or the sales leader can't say to operations, Hey, you need to do this because our customers are not happy. I mean, they do tell them. And then the operations person just yells back at them. That's not our problem, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then we say marketing, we need more leads.
And they say, we're giving you leads. Why? Do you know? So we've got all this fighting going on. So at the CEO level, that is the only place where we can say to all of these. Here's how we are going to align around the customer. Here's the communication that needs to take place interdepartmentally to make it easier to be our customer, right.
Only a CEO can do that. And if they do not start to orchestrate that in a better way than they are currently, and especially in a turbulent market, they will not be successful or their success will be limited in some way. So we have to look at our CEOs, and our boards need to look down at our CEOs and have this expectation.
The leaders who report to the CEO need to look up and have this expectation that the CEO will, um, come up with a strategy with their team is customer focused and that they will align all of these different departments around the customer's journey all the way from hello to acquisition. So the expectation has to be set, and then people have to be held accountable.
Yeah. So the customer should pay the center of all those strategizing and planning every time. Exactly. Got it. Okay. Next. So most companies are likely to freeze hiring until the storm passes. I mean, that's what's been predicted at least. So how can leaders equip their existing teams to perform to their maximum potential?
Well, worse than freezing, a lot of companies are laying people off. Yeah. So, this is a huge problem. You cannot cut your way to success, right? That's never going to get you there. Cutting costs is never going to get the growth you need.
And so when you are afraid, what you do is batten down the hatches and just wait for the storm to pass. That is not a good strategy. So hiring, freezing, maybe essential at your company if the revenues are not there, but I, and, even doing a riff or a reduction in force, right. Uh, could be something that can temporarily make it, so your cash flow meets your needs, and you can pay your bills, but that is not a long-term strategy.
And what I would like to say to the CEOs out there who are thinking of laying people off or freezing their hiring, there must be a better way. Right? So think about the way your organizations are working. Think about productivity. Think about the customer. Think about everything differently. And come up with a better way versus laying people off and dumping more work on the people who stay, they will be disgruntled, and then they may leave as well.
And you know, sometimes when we do layoffs or freeze hiring, the right people, aren't there. Right? So now we have some people who are not productive or they're not the right. But we're kind of stuck with them because we are high and freeze. If we let them go, we can't replace them. Sometimes you're allowed to replace in a freeze.
Sometimes you're not. Or sometimes like I've seen companies recently laying people off and they're laying some of their best people off. Yeah.
Or they're sales, the first ones to cool. Right.
That's crazy. Right. And, and you're thinking your sales are down. You're letting salespeople go. That does not make sense.
Now, if they're not performing. You should let them go long ago, but if they're performing, why are you laying them off? So I think that freezing, hiring and doing layoffs is a very bad strategy. And although I understand how budgets work and I understand that we have to be able to pay our bills and we don't wanna dip into our savings too much, or our investors don't wanna give us more money unless they see us cutting costs.
And so I get all that. But I think that there's a better way. And I think that if people put their heads together and thought about it, they would come up with a better way for their each individual company versus just racing to go, okay, the first thing we're gonna do is cut personnel. Not a, not a smart choice in my opinion.
Got it. Yep. So Alice, your next question for you, and this is a question that I must ask because yeah, we are a video sales enablement company. So, have you ever used or considered video in any of your processes? Like it needn’t be sales prospecting per se. Anywhere else.
Absolutely. Using video in the sales process is absolutely essential. Now, as we were talking earlier, before we started recording, I personally don't really do a lot of prospecting because I have a very vast network. And I do most of my business do referrals. People are introducing me to people or I speak somewhere and they see me and then we talk and, and then I work with them, but I'm a small company and I don't need that many customers.
Right. So I still use video, uh, in my email communication. So the first way that I use video is to my own team. So when I have something to communicate, rather than writing a long drawn-out email, I just flip the switch, turn the video on talk to the person, tell them what I need. And then maybe I put a link to a document or have a little bit of written information or an attachment for them. And that way I don't have to write out type out so much and then edit it and make sure it's all right before I send it. Plus remember an email, you can't tell my tone of voice and unfortunately, with email, humans read in the negative faster than they read in the positive for whatever reason.
So you might be saying them perfectly positive email. And somehow, they get the notion that it's a negative email. So when you turn on your video and talk to them directly, they can see your tone of voice. And then, then you can put whatever links you need to in the email and send it off. So internal communications, I think something like Hippo Video is very, very important for, um, all leaders to use and all team members to use as well.
It would really help everyone slim down their email as well, because they wouldn't be sending, you know, they're having conversations back and forth, back and forth via email unless they use Slack or some other Teams or something. But with the video, it makes communication more clear. Secondly, for me, I use video like before speaking engagement, where I have never met the CEOs who will be in the audience.
But I want to let them know me a little bit. Maybe they've looked at my social media, maybe they haven't. So I record a video telling them I can't wait to meet them at the event. Here's what I'm gonna talk about in my presentation. Here's a few links. If you wanna check out my social media or my podcast or my blog.
And then I send that off. So that is another great way that I use it. You create that sense of familiarity, like at the actual business. Yes. Exactly. Now I work with a lot of, CEOs and their sales leaders and when their team does something spectacular, I like to literally stand up and cheer.
So I record that also on video. I cheer for them and send that out to the team. So, those are some ways I use it. One more way is when I'm gonna be doing a training with a team and I wanna give them the pre-work and so I'll do a video, and I'll say, Hey, before we do the training, Here are some things that I'd like you to do.
And I explain it to them, and then I put the links below so they all know what to do. So it's very, very easy. Now I will tell you that for my clients, they do prospect, of course because they need lots of leads. And so I have them insert video into. The prospecting sequence that they're doing. So we may be using the phone, LinkedIn email trade shows many different ways, right, to find and contact our customers. Right. They may be holding an event. So let's say they are holding a webinar with some great information, and they're inviting people to the webinar. Wouldn't it be better to have a video invitation than a written invitation? Of course, it would. So now they see the smiling face of the sales rep who's gonna, of course, do the follow-up as well, inviting them to the event. They might have got something from marketing letting them know about the event. Now they get a personal invitation from a sales rep saying this is our event. We'd like to have you come here's, what's gonna be blah, blah, blah.
And, and Click the link below and you'll quickly be registered for the event. And then I'll see you there. And I'll also talk to you afterwards. So we're already set up an expectation. You've seen my smiling face. You know, I'm going to follow up with you, whether it's a virtual event or an in-person event, I'm gonna be there.
So I'll be able to either chat you or some of these events have ways to do video also inside the event. So you're just getting to know them better if you use a video. And in any kind of prospecting from the very beginning to close to closing, right? And even at closing, a video works great.
So once the deals close, you go back to your main contact. You make a quick video, it’s been such an exciting journey. You know, it took months. Finally, here we are. We're so excited to have you as our customer. It was great meeting, everybody. Thank you for your business. You could write that, but wouldn't it be better on a video?
So I am a big proponent of using video all through the sales process and then even afterwards in customer retention. And when you're trying to go wide and deep into your current accounts that are buying from you, video works awesome.
Sending videos for webinar invitations is literally what we do at Hippo. We've seen some great results with that, and I'm glad that you find such great value in video as well. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, Alice. Yeah. And this is my last question for you. So what are some books or podcasts that every CEO must read or listen to or that you read or listen to? Yeah. Oh my gosh.
There are so many. And please, please. If you're listening, go to my website and recently I wrote 11 podcasts that every CEO should listen to, but they're, they're good for, for anyone in sales and such, anyone who wants to be creative, but, take a look. There are several blog posts on my blog about different podcasts.
And I do the same with books. Like I'll do a Roundup and talk about some of the new books, but I have a few right now. I've just been reading recently, Stu Heineke wrote ‘How to grow your business like a weed’. It is excellent. So I really would love everyone to read that. Hang on a second. I'm just looking back here at the stack of books.
I love ‘Look me in the eye’ by Julie Hansen because we are going to remain virtual sellers. Many of us were before the pandemic. We're using video to have conversations. Look me in the eye by Julie Hansen is very helpful for anybody who's using video to have conversations. Or to sell it's just good for everyone.
I could go on and on, but, some of my favorite podcasts. I have a podcast of course, called ‘Sales Talk for CEOs’. And I'd love you to listen to that and leave me a rating. But also I love how I built this with Guy Roz. You can hear the stories of many famous companies and how they got started.
I also love Science Friday, even though it's not about sales, it helps me think creatively. And so I really recommend that you listen to some podcasts that aren't about your profession. There are tons of great sales podcasts out there. And like I said, I've written about them. So I can't remember them all off the top of my head, but if you go to my blog, you can see them all.
Okay. People who are listening and I hope you've taken notes, and if not, like I just include, oh Alice is. Links to her blog post, like on the page for the podcast. So no worries. Great. Okay, Alice. Yeah, I think that's a wrap. Thank you so much for this incredible session. And, yeah, I hope to have you again on some of our webinars and podcasts, like pretty soon.
And thank you, listeners for tuning in today. We'll be doing many more of these podcasts with more such tele-speakers from around the. So stay in tuned to our coming episodes. We are on apple, Spotify, Google and stitches as well. Subscribe to get notified when a new episode is out. And please don't forget to leave us a review if you are on apple. Thanks for listening and bye-bye. Have a great day.