How Aspirational Leadership Helps the Bottom Line

The host for CRM Radio, Stacy Gentile, said that of all the guests he invited this year, Dora Lutz is the one he looked forward to most.  She is the author of “The Aspirational Business”  and the founder and president of GivingSpring.com.  In this interview, Stacy asks and Dora answers:

• The definition of an Aspirational Business Model
• Why a significant percentage of “startups” consider themselves to be social entrepreneurs
• Why Aspirational Businesses are more profitable
• Learn the reason new hires prefer a socially conscious leadership in their place of employment
• The reasons why 98% of customers are interested in a company’s social responsibility initiatives
• The biggest benefit of an Aspirational Business beyond superior profitability
• How companies that pay attention to Social Responsibility have lower risk management costs
• Why Aspirational Businesses keep employee longer

About Dora Lutz

Dora is one of a handful of certified Shared Value Consultants in the country and serves as Regional Voice Lead and Chair of the Global Strategy Council for Impact 2030, a United Nation's initiate designed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals through volunteerism and service.

Currently, Dora works with organizations such as the National FFA Organization, the Indiana Economic Development Association, teaches entrepreneurship at Purdue University, and advises multiple social entrepreneurs on building effective social enterprises.

Dora's experiences and M.B.A. with a focus in Organizational Leadership provide insight into the ways a well-planned Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program can improve business and support multiple stakeholders, and is able to deftly explain how the most recent research can apply to real business scenarios.

About Giving Spring

Make Money (And Make Meaning) Most leaders know that shareholder value alone isn't enough to engage today's employees, consumers or investors. But we haven't known the formula to move us beyond this limited vision of success. Until now.

Aspirational Businesses know how to set and effectively execute a world-changing vision that motivates and retains employees, deepens consumer loyalty, ensures a healthy supply chain and drives profitability.

About the Book:

The Aspirational Business: How great companies B.E.G.I.N. to create optimism, energy, and commitment through world-changing goals

After years of research, modeling and consulting, Dora Lutz is sharing the common actions purpose-driven leaders and social entrepreneurs take to generate both world-changing impact and profit. 

This book covers the five primary components to building an Aspirational Business and uses GivingSpring’s proprietary B.E.G.I.N. process to move your organization towards purpose and profit. 

Filled with stories, examples, activities and personal reflection points, The Aspirational Business sets a solid foundation for any leader looking to do more with his or her business.

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CRM Radio is broadcast on the Funnel Radio Channel.  The hosts are Paul Petersen and Stacy Gentile.  The sponsor for CRM Radio if GoldMine CRM.

Trish Bertuzzi: Getting Buyers to Engage is the Hardest Part of the Sales Process

In this free wheeling session, Trish Bertuzzi CEO of the Bridge Group discusses problems and cures for the most irritating and persistent sales issues facing C-Level Executives today.  CRM Radio Host, Stacy Gentile asked Trish what advice she can give to C-level Executives and she replied, “You need to be an expert at Sales and Selling.  Everything else, secondary.  If you won’t get it, no one else will.” 

When asked about solving sales probles, she said it  is not a one-size fits all approach, the sales process may be the most revealing indicator of issues, and the content wars of the last few years may not have helped the salespeople. 

Bertuzzi discussed her book, The Sales Development Playbook. This book encapsulates her three decades of practical, hands-on experience. It presents six elements for building a new pipeline, and accelerating revenue growth with inside sales.

About Trish Bertuzzi

Trish Bertuzzi helps Sales & Marketing Leaders make the big decisions: on implementation, strategy, productivity & performance, process, technology and tools.  Every day, Trish and her team works with senior leadership on the big picture, with inside teams through hands-on implementations and with the entire sales community through its research & publishing.

Author
The Sales Development Playbook available on Amazon

Winner of Consulting Provider of the Year American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (2013 - 2017).  In 2016 she was added as a key contributor to the Salesforce Sales Thought Leadership Program sharing insights through their blog and thought leadership events.

About the Bridge Group

The Bridge Group was founded to help B2B technology companies build world-class Inside Sales teams. Since 1998, it has helped over 320+ companies build, expand and optimize Inside Sales - building pipeline, generating revenue and redefining the image of the profession. In 2016 the Bridge Group expanded its offerings to include Account Based Revenue (ABR) services. With these services they help companies launch strategies that drive bigger deals in bigger companies.

The Prospect’s Perception of Value is What Counts – David Priemer Podcast

“Value,” David Priemer of Cerebral Selling says, “transcends ROI.” Regardless of the opinions of your product manager, company president or sales manager, the value your product or service will mean something different to each prospect. If your salesperson barfs up value based pablum without listening to the prospect, he or she will lose the sale.  The prospect, Petersen and Priemer agreed, is the only one who can define value for your product.

Why it Matters

If your salesperson barfs up value based pablum without listening to the prospect, he or she will lose the sale.

In this program, Priemer and host Paul Petersen further discuss how to best address the problem of under-performing sales reps and sales managers who lack coaching skills.

About David Priemer

David Priemer is widely recognized as a thought leader in the area of sales and sales leadership and has been published in the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review as well as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Barron's, and Inc. magazines. From his early days tinkering with test tubes and differential equations as an award-winning research scientist to leading top performing sales teams at high-growth technology startups, David's lifelong passion for learning and execution is the foundation of his Cerebral Selling practice. Often referred to as the "Sales Professor", David helps organizations drive revenue growth, people development, and winning cultures by infusing the core principles of science, empathy, and execution into their sales operations.

Previously David held several executive leadership positions at leading technology companies including Salesforce, where he was the Vice President of Commercial Sales and creator of the Sales Leadership Academy program. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University.

David holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry and Atmospheric Science from York University and a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto. When he's not thinking about Sales, David loves to cook, write, and spend quality family time with his wife and three daughters.

 CRM Tips from Two Pros - Paul Petersen and Stacy Gentile

 CRM Tips from Two Pros - Paul Petersen and Stacy Gentile

Host Paul Petersen talks with GoldMine CRM, CMO Stacy Gentile about the tips and pitfalls of CRM use and Implementation. They look back to guests like Jay Baer, Gene Marks, Patrick Renvoise, Jill Konrath, Todd Cohen, Chad Pollitt , Shari Levitin and others to discuss the take-away tips about sales in general and CRM usefulness for sales and management.   For instance:

• Why management shouldn’t look at CRM as a policing tool
• Why salespeople have to be honest with themselves about forecasting and the CRM tool helps
• How to make the CRM tool more useful
• Why a CRM tool makes ordinary salespeople better
• Why the CRM tool must be customized for your business
• It’s all about the data and that comes from the custom fields
• Why lead attribution is difficult to pin down
• Regardless of AI advances, the human point of data entry is important

CRM Radio is hosted by Paul Petersen and the sponsor is Goldmine CRM broadcast on the Funnel Radio Channel.

A Big Issue is Fixing Poor Sales Coaching

She’s serious with humor, laughs when making a thoughtful point and you know as you listen that she speaks with authority and truth.  Colleen Francis of Engaged Selling talks with host Stacy Gentile about the issues around poor, poor sales coaching.  They discuss:

• How to avoid sales boom and bust cycles
• Why companies are not intentional enough about revenue
• The number one coaching failure: It worked that way before, it should work now
• The worst advice given to salespeople: “You’re not hitting your numbers, you have to close more deals.”
• Why companies have to be more intentional about sales metrics
• Is sales even the right word anymore?
• Are we in a buying environment and not a selling environment?

About our guest, Colleen Francis

Colleen of Engage Selling works with business and sales leaders to synergize the sales DNA of the organization to seize market opportunities. Whether designing strategy to target a new market or working with a team to improve its productivity, Colleen's results have attracted clients such as Merck, Abbott, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank, Dow, Adecco, Trend Micro, NCR, Chevron, and thousands of other global organizations.

Time and time again, clients who work with Colleen note her frank, no-nonsense approach to accelerate sales while reducing effort and increasing profits. Colleen's practical strategies deliver immediate and lasting results.

Colleen is an award-winning writer and consultant, bestselling author, and member of the Speaking Hall of Fame. She is recognized as one of the foremost thought leaders on the future of selling by leading publications worldwide, including being named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales.

About Non-Stop Sales Boom

Has the last week of each quarter in your business become a mad scramble to meet quota? Do your year-end reports show sporadic and unexplainable highs some weeks that will be near impossible to meet next year, as well as mysterious lows that ruined your goals for a 10 percent increase? For many sales organizations, anomalies such as these are strangely commonplace and unshakeable without intentional efforts to ratify them.

Nonstop Sales Boom explains how to break this unhealthy cycle and achieve strong, steady results--every quarter, from every member of the team.Author and experienced sales leader for over twenty years Colleen Francis says the secret to leaving behind the roller-coaster reports and achieving sustaining, steady success is to broaden the focus from merely closing deals to actively nurturing the four critical stages of client engagement:

• Attraction: Fill the funnel with lucrative prospects

• Participation: Turn them into customers faster

• Growth: Invest in valued clients

• Leverage: Turn customers into referral generators

When companies concentrate on only one or two of these areas, their results become erratic. But by becoming purposeful toward all four, simultaneously, they will systematically attract a regular flow of prospects and move them smoothly through the pipeline--taking the chaos and pressure away from the end of quarter for good!

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CRM Radio is hosted by Paul Peterson and Stacy Gentile and sponsored by GoldMine CRM on the Funnel Radio Channel.

Siloed Mentalities Kill Companies, But There is a Cure

Todd Cohen  testifies that siloed companies are mediocre companies that eventually die.  They die because sales and marketing are siloed.  They die because employees, regardless of job title don’t understand that when they serve the customer well, they are in sales.  They die because company departments don't talk to one another. 

Todd says they can be in manufacturing or finance, it makes no difference, every action they take serves the customer.  He’s got opinions and examples of solving the silo problem in this interview with the host Stacy Gentile.    Cohen discusses:

1. Everybody in the company is in sales
2. Job titles are limiting and useless
3. Marketing can’t craft messages that sell without talking to customers
4. We are all in an experiential economy
5. Everyone in the organization, by the nature of their job, is in sales
6. No one works in a back office; There is no back office
7. CRM is a transparency system and process for sales and marketing
8. People set your company apart from competitors
9. Everyone in a company has a connection to the customer

Cohen is the author of two books, Stop Apologizing and Start Selling and Everyone’s in Sales.

About our guest:

Todd Cohen’s proven strategy of Sales Culture™ has helped to revolutionize the sales success for franchises, trade groups, and organizations, including Subaru of America, Inc., Ernst and Young, The UPS Store, Inc., The Canadian Franchise Alliance, Corning, Inc., The NFL-PA and PNC Bank. Todd uses his unparalleled expertise, unique insights, and memorable examples to engage, motivate and educate audiences in the United States and around the world. He delivers more than 90 keynote addresses a year, speaking to audiences as small as five people and as large as 5,000.

Times Are Changing Rapidly for Content Marketing – Expert Advice from Chad Pullitt

When Chad Pullitt talks you have to listen, and this show with host Stacy Gentile is no different.  Pullitt says that the future of marketing is entering a new phase.  Native advertising is gaining strength, readership (also listenership and viewership) demands a new content approach; hard core paid performance marketing is stressed and moving up funnel.  What this means is content marketing is coming into its own, but it is no longer a race for the most volume; today and tomorrow it is driven by three tactics to be successful.   Listen and learn.

About our guest, Chad Pollitt:

VP of Marketing, Co-Founder, Professor, Author, Board Member x 3, International Keynote Speaker & former US Army Commander

A member of a Forbes Top 100 list, Chad authored "The Native Advertising Manifesto," "The Content Promotion Manifesto" and "51 Things Your Mother Taught You About Inbound Marketing." He is a regular contributor to industry media outlets, including the Huffington Post, Guardian and Social Media Today.

Chad has been creating profitable online campaigns for over 16 years for some of the world's most recognizable brands, while delivering tens of millions of dollars of tracked return. Over the last ten years has delivered over 100,000 leads and 24,000 marketing qualified leads. Named a top five content marketing thought leader and top 20 CMO influencer, he continues to innovate by leading the emerging industry of online content promotion and distribution.

Since early 2002, Chad has played an integral role in designing, developing, deploying, executing and tracking robust web marketing strategies for client companies and organizations and is an Internet marketing expert. He holds a BS in Entrepreneurship from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and an Internet Marketing Masters Certification from the University of San Francisco's prestigious School of Business and Management.

How to Beat Your Sales Quota without Losing Your Soul

Paul Petersen the host of CRM Radio interviews the wickedly interesting author and Sales Trainer Shari Levitin. They discuss how she got into sales, what she learned along the way, and why many people fail in sales.  More importantly she discusses how people can be winners in sales.  Its all about heart and empathy she says and while these can’t be faked they can be learned.

Why it Matters:

"If all you do is use sales techniques and tips and don't genuinely care about your customer, you'll fail."

About  the book Heart and Sell

Author Shari Levitin, creator of the Third-Level Selling system, offers a dynamic framework for effective selling in the Digital Age. Unlike other sales books that focus on abstract tips or techniques, Heart and Sell offers a science based real-world approach that will help you dramatically increase your sales—regardless of your level or industry.

• Discover the 7 Key Motivators that influence every decision your customer will make.
• Learn to align your sales process with how people buy—instead of fighting against it.
• Harness the power of the Linking Formula to create true urgency.
• Master the 10 Universal Truths so you can beat your sales quota without losing your soul.
• Understand the 6 Core Objections and how you can neutralize them.

In a market where the right approach is key, Heart and Sell shows you how to blend the new science of selling with the heart of human connection to reach more prospects and consistently close more deals.

About Sheri Levitin

Shari Levitin began as a star sales performer in hospitality. In 1996 she founded the Shari Levitin Group to share her proven techniques. Now, she and her team are a global company operating in over 40 countries on 5 continents. The Shari Levitin Group continues to passionately inspire transformative change.

Shari Levitin is an energetic, wickedly funny sales guru, who helps sales teams bridge the gap between beating quota and selling with an authentic heartfelt approach. As the founder of the Shari Levitin Group, Shari has helped create over 1 billion dollars in increased revenue for companies in over 40 countries. Shari is the bestselling author of Heart and Sell: 10 Universal Truths Every Salesperson Needs to Know, a contributor to Forbes, CEO Magazine, and Huffington Post.

Additionally, Shari was chosen as the first adjunct professor at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business to teach a course in sales, she’s an Advisory Board member of the Sundance Institute, a designated Women’s Sales Pro, and was featured as an expert in the new Salesforce documentary film “The Story of Sales.” Shari, her husband and son live in Park City, Utah. When she’s not creating killer content, and presenting at sales kick offs, Shari enjoys skiing, rock climbing, reading and standing on her head.

Sales Enablement Tips from SE Guru Jim Ninivaggi

Is Sales Enablement new or just what good marketing and sales managers have always done?  Maybe a little of both as Ninivaggi and host Paul Petersen discuss the true meaning of SE which is the interaction with prospects and customers.  Ninivaggi, the chief sales readiness officer at BrainShark says the best SE programs are a combination of knowledge, skills and assets which are provided to sales and sales management for the benefit of the inquirer or customer.  Ninivaggi and Petersen, in a short time, developed a road-map of tips which the best sales and marketing people use  to win over prospects and customers in a methodical way.

Jim Ninivaggi  Chief Readiness Officer

Leveraging more than 30 years of B2B sales productivity expertise, Jim leads Brainshark’s sales enablement and readiness strategy. Jim previously worked as a sales enablement analyst with SiriusDecisions, where he provided clients with data, insight and thought leadership to maximize sales effectiveness and accelerate revenues. Today, he uses his knowledge and expertise to prepare the Brainshark sales force with the knowledge and skills to optimize every buyer interaction.

Why Brainshark?

For nearly two decades, our solutions have helped companies improve the way they communicate with, educate and inspire their customer-facing teams.

Today, we’re proud to provide our customers with the most comprehensive, proven platform for sales enablement and readiness.

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CRM Radio, sponsored by GoldMine CRM and hosted by Goldmine GM Paul Petersen is a radio program with podcast replays on the Funnel Radio Channel.  Listen Live here at 11 am PST on Thursday.

Experts Discuss eMail Relevance (and the Beatles) – Gene Marks and Paul Petersen

Columnist Gene Marks, a frequent guest on Paul Peterson’s CRM Radio,  talks about email relevance today.  Some of his thoughts:

1. No, email is not dead
2. Research has shown it is still the number one tool for business communications
3. He gives tips on getting your email opened
4. Relevance is King (aside from the subject line)
5. Frequency’s impact on relevance and effectiveness requires thought
6. Examples by Gene and Paul play a role in this program
7. Why Paul Petersen believes side 2 of Abbey Road is the best Beatles Album

About Gene Marks Speaker. Columnist. Small Business Expert

Small business keynote speaker Gene Marks helps small business owners, executives and managers understand the political, economic and technological trends that will affect their companies so they can make profitable decisions. As a speaker and small business expert, Gene has talked at industry conventions, corporate events and professional trade shows.

Gene is also a small business writer. He has authored multiple books for small business owners, and is a featured small business columnist in many national online publications.

Gene has talked at annual meetings, industry conferences, and corporate events.

Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Marks is an author and a certified public accountant, and he writes regularly for The Post’s on Small Business blog. For more about Marks, visit genemarks.com.

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CRM Radio is a weekly program on the Funnel Radio Channel.  It is hosted by Paul Petersen and sponsored by GoldMine CRM