Struggles, the Funnel and Identifying Your Ideal Customer with Liz Heiman - 257

In this episode, Mike talks to Liz Heiman, CEO and Chief Sales Strategist for Regarding Sales.They talk struggles, process, funnel and ways to identify your ideal customer.

Key Takeaways:

• It’s fun to help people realize Sales isn’t a big, bad, scary thing.
• Many Founders struggle because they don’t realize they can ask certain questions of prospects.
• Work on becoming more comfortable talking about what you do.
• Ideal Customer Profile
  • Customer that is most likely to buy from you
  • Customer who is most likely to be happy with the outcome
  • Customer who will continue to buy from you
  • Customer with a short sales cycle
  • Customer where the timing is right
  • Customer who you really designed your product for
• Saying no to a prospect feels like we are giving up on what we could have. However, we have to say no so that we use the resources we have as efficiently as possible.
• If you focus on the wrong customers, your company will always go in the wrong direction.
• Pipeline - opportunities that are coming in and moving through the process to close. Can also be referred to as a funnel.
• Qualify Out - purposely look for opportunities to move people out of the funnel.
• Teamwork is the best thing that should happen in a team meeting.
• Focus on the things that matter in team meetings:
  • Where do we stand?
  • What’s new? Updates. What are our partners doing?
  • Team exercise
• There is always a frantic focus on what’s closing right now, which is the worst focus!
• Pipeline reviews should be 1:1, not in a group setting!
• Pipeline/funnel review:
  • What’s going on?
  • What do you need from us?
  • When is the deal going to close? 
  • What have you done to put stuff in the top of your funnel? How is your prospecting going?
  • What is going on with your qualification?
• During a pipeline/funnel review, it is important to have a discussion and not beat your Sales Rep up. It is important to have some sort of value exchange.
• We leave so much money on the table by not growing our existing accounts.

Show Links: 

• www.regardingsales.com
• Liz on LinkedIn

Work With Catalyst Sale:

• Listen to our free resource (this podcast) and then put the action items into practice. Share your work with us via Twitter or [email protected]
• Invest in a Catalyst Sale course - self directed. Find our courses here 
• Hire us as a consultant/advisor within your team or organization 

Please send listener questions and feedback to [email protected] or contact us directly on twitter, facebook or LinkedIn.

This podcast is brought to you by Catalyst Sale - you can learn more about Catalyst Sale, and the products and services we provide via the following links.

Growth Acceleration - Plateau Breakthrough

Product Market Fit