How to Sell Podcast: Learn to Master B2B Sales and Lead Generation

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:00]:
This episode, you're gonna learn the importance of preparation when it comes to prospecting, time blocking, and how it will save you time and routine. Welcome back to another episode of the How to Sell podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi. Just wanna say thank you for showing up. If you're a long time listener, we're grateful that you show up each and every week to support our community. And if you're a first time listener, welcome. We hope you take away some actionable insights that'll help you sell more. Now this week, we have a very specific topic, which is gonna help you save time, how and build more pipeline.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:00:39]:
But before we jump into that episode, I need to bring the cohost, the worst cohost, the worst salesperson, and the worst marketer of all time, Dave, welcome to the How To a podcast. Well, that

David Fastuca [00:00:53]:
was a lovely intro, Louie. Thank you for that. And, if you are listening for the 1st time, I have, cracked it enough with Louie that's, a little bit of a sneak peek that I've started my own podcast. So it's, the t l d r dropped once a week, and it's to reference this deep dive episodes that we do. And louis is not on it. So it's probably gonna be your favorite, listen for the week. So louis, stuff you on going solo.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:19]:
Well, if you do wanna get Quality episodes, just go back to the start of the How to Sell podcast. It's when I was solo guys, and you just get to hear me with some great guests. But anyway, this is not a a roasting session on Dave. We can't we can't roast him. As much as our audience love it, we know that you love it because you messaged me and say, you know what? I love hearing you roast David. Can you do it more?

David Fastuca [00:01:42]:
I'm a little bit concerned about that, to be honest, but, it's okay for another episode.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:01:47]:
Yeah. Well, you know, we're just trying to trying to be inclusive, David. We're trying to work with everybody in roasting you. But it's it's a hot topic. Right? Because with a blink of our eyes, I've it is now it's almost February. A month's down. We're now we've only got 11 months to go in 2024. And before too long, we're talking about February's down.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:02:09]:
And one of the things that will continue to drive performance in any salesperson's world is the pipeline. So that's why this week's episode is such a timely one because we're gonna be focusing on how to build how to build the right routine and the right rhythm to drive pipeline performance.

David Fastuca [00:02:27]:
Yeah. It's it's critical. Right? So, like, the things we're gonna cover today Other things where, you know, especially the habit forming, like, every morning or day, whenever you're blocking out the time, to do your prospecting even when you feel like you don't wanna do it. You're not in a mood. You've had a crap start to the day or crap evening. It's still going through the motions and doing it because even if you're having a a poor day, the habit of going through the process and actually doing the activity does help you. It does help you with your pipeline. It's like going to the gym when you don't feel like it.

David Fastuca [00:03:04]:
You're still making that progress. Right?

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:07]:
Yeah. It's credits in the bank. And that's the first I think the first takeaway from this episode, It's the importance of preparation. Right? We don't give enough. I don't think there's enough spoken about why we should be preparing. And Our good friend, Craig Ballantyne, who is a productivity expert, talks about preparation shouldn't happen the morning of your day. It should happen the day before. Like, you should be really thinking about what are the key things I need to do tomorrow and allow yourself time in your diary at the end of every day to review those tasks to make sure that you're baking them in to your following day.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:03:44]:
Right? And And I think that's that's it. That's the first key takeaway. That if you want to be more in control, Start by being more proactive the day before, so that way you can get the most out of, you know, the next day and not start in a reactive mode, in a reactive mindset.

David Fastuca [00:04:04]:
And that also helps switching off for the day as well. It's know that when you're planning for the following day, whether it be before you finish work or in the evening, it then helps you set your mindset to a frame of I'm now In chill out mode, I've planned my next day. I'm prepared. You feel at ease. You even find that you'll sleep better because you're not thinking about all the things you have to do the next day because you've got a plan, to attack. Right? So it it's Absolutely. Great for yourself, great for your family, and and great for your sleep, which is one of the things that, we haven't spoken about a lot, but having ensuring that you get a good night's sleep does help the attitude the next day. And I found that once I was prepared for the next day, that anxiety of all these things I have to do went away.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:04:50]:
Mhmm. Absolutely. That's that's a key takeaway. Maybe that's a a future episode we should discuss. Right? So the importance of recovery, the importance of sleep, the importance of, you know, really giving yourself the the best environment to perform at a certain level. So we're talking about the Craig Ballentine's tip of preparing the day before. The second thing we wanna discuss is, You know, when it comes to prospecting, one of the, I suppose, time killers is when sellers start to prospect And they research and build their list during their prospecting time. So let's just go back a step.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:05:30]:
You set some time to prospect, whatever time it is, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock. You start dialing and all of a sudden, you call someone, they don't answer. You gotta sit there, create the email, send them the LinkedIn note, and then you go and look for somebody else to call. Right? And before too long, you might have allocated an hour to prospect. And in that hour, you've only called a couple of people and reached out to a couple of people. Why? Because your list wasn't prepared in advance. And this is a very important concept to discuss. It's we talk about preparation.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:06:04]:
Preparation is the foundation for success when it comes to selling. In order to be get the most out of your prospecting efforts and get that return on the effort that you're you're making with prospecting, preparing your list in advance is key. So identifying your ICP, being clear about your buyer personas, doing a level of research whether you're building it on SARSNAV or Apollo, etcetera. And then actually building out that list so that when you do start to prospect, You can work through that list 1 by 1.

David Fastuca [00:06:36]:
And there's ways that you can really do that in a in a lot more efficient way. So Luigi mentioned one of the tools there, apollo. Io. We use it within the business. It's a great way if you're enrolling a list of contacts that are ready to go the night before On the screen when you're prospecting, it then brings up research about the company. Right? So it's it's all these points of saving you time. If you think about If you're doing this on the fly and you're researching company x, you go on to the website, then all of a sudden, you get notification. You go check LinkedIn.

David Fastuca [00:07:07]:
You go check Facebook, you're gonna get distracted. But by limiting the amount of activities that you need to do during your researching process, You're avoiding that chance of being distracted by other third party tools and and just life in general because everything is always fighting for your attention.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:25]:
Absolutely. And you know, when it comes to research, you might be and everyone's different depending on what you sell, who you're selling to. You there's probably 2 or 3 key things that you're looking for when you're building out your lists. Whether it fit certain triggers or certain events, whatever it might be. So when you're building your list and you're preparing in advance, define what are those things that you're looking for. So then you've got that list. You're ready. You've also got your cadence ready to go as well.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:07:56]:
So in the event, they don't answer and remember, nearly 90% of calls we make won't get answered on the 1st attempt. So you're gonna leave a voice mail. You're gonna send a Linkedin note and an email. Have those templates prebuilt so that way you can just essentially contextualize it based on the ICP, the persona, the trigger, whatever level of personalization or reason for your reach out. But you can do that ahead of time so that you can simply go to your playbook, cut, paste, contextualize, send and what will start to happen In an hour's session, you'll actually get through a lot more. Right? So that's key. And What we're actually saying is the best way to get a return on your effort when it comes to prospecting is to time block. And you're probably getting a theme here.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:08:51]:
Right? This is a structured way. There's routine. There's habit. There's planning. So you time block to research so that to you build your list. You time block to build your cadence according to the list. Then you time block to reach out to that prospect or to reach out to that list of prospects. So what you're doing now, your calendar is gonna start to see a particular rhythm, right? So this is something that when we we evaluate high performers all over the world, there's a consistent theme about them.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:09:25]:
The the the calendars are very, very similar. Right? There is a consistent theme to their calendars, and they're color coordinating their calendars for key tasks that they know will deliver a certain result.

David Fastuca [00:09:39]:
Yeah. And that's I think consistency is a key word there, And reliability. Right? So, like, I often say to people, you know, if even if we're engaging in a new sort of contractor to work with us and they're worried about, you know, hey. Do you guys have the time to join the calls? My comment back is always, I'm so reliable. It's boring. Right, unlike Louie, who is the most unreliable person to join calls Well and, so we'll leave that for another time. But be reliable. Be consistent with yourself to the point where it's boring, to the point where people And following you up, you know, are you gonna join this call? Because that does compound.

David Fastuca [00:10:17]:
Just like investing And adding funds to a a growing, you know, investment that compounds over time, like going to the gym when you're doing reps and sets in the gym, that are compounds. Louie misses that as well because he's got his pencil arms. But everything that you do there, you know, by being reliable, by being consistent, I love that. Being consistent in in your approach day to day even when you don't feel like it. You know? How many times have you woken up Being you know, you wanna go for that run, you wanna go to the gym, and you just go, can't be bothered, and then you regret it later. The same thing comes for prospecting. Then you wonder why you miss 1, 2 days, then you wonder why your pipeline's getting thin. Mhmm.

David Fastuca [00:11:00]:
You need to be consistent and reliable. It's more out of respect for yourself as well. Pardon the interruption, but is your sales team not performing? You have leads, but your team struggles to close them. Well, we'll train you or your team on how to fill their own sales pipeline with ready to buy opportunities in under 60 days, guaranteed. Now you're probably thinking, how does this work? Well, Luigi and I own a business called Growforum dot I o. We're the fastest growing sales and coaching and training company in the b two b space. We work with b two b businesses that sell products or services, For example, Stripe, HubSpot, Growth Thornton, and BlueRock are just a few of our clients. We work with your team, train them to self generate their own qualified sales, and keep them accountable with weekly sales coaching.

David Fastuca [00:11:52]:
Then we help you systemize your sales management so it runs on semi autopilot. Keep in mind, we're not one of those expensive outsource source sales agencies. We're helping your team in your business so that you have total control. Visit growth Forum doti0forward/apply and schedule your free sales strategy review with us today. Now back to the show.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:18]:
That's a really good point and that also reinforces the need to time block these key tasks. But it's not just about time blocking and then justifying why something else becomes important when that comes up. Right? Because that's another thing that I see is your time block. You have the best intention. You're gonna prospect at 10 o'clock and then all of a sudden, oh, my boss has asked me to send something. Oh, my clients reached out to me. Oh, something else has come up and what happens is that takes priority. The way in which I want you to think about the time blocking aspect, the prospecting time that you set.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:12:59]:
Think about it like it's the time you're setting with your best, most important client. Because if it is your most important client, you won't change it at the last minute because something else has come up. And if you start to use that mentality, what will happen, you start to build that into your operational rhythm. And this is key. It's not about saying, well, my clients come first. Yes, they do. But if you were meeting with a client and somebody asked you to meet at 10 o'clock, but you had that meeting with a client. You wouldn't necessarily say, I'll move that.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:13:34]:
I've you'd say I've got a meeting then. How about half an hour later or half an hour before? Whatever time that you suggest. Most of the times, they'll comply. Now in the in the very If there's an emergency and you have to move it, okay. But it shouldn't be a consistent way where every week you're having to change the time block that you've allocated. Right? Because that might mean maybe you're setting it at the wrong time. Maybe there's something else. So we can go down another path today, But I don't think we have time, Dave, around Yeah.

Luigi Prestinenzi [00:14:14]:
You know, productivity, do it, delegate it, dump it, diarize it, thinking about how you manage tasks. But I think the key thing for, for you listening to this episode, if you wanna get more out of your week, because again, a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the tension, a lot of the Stress in sales comes from not being in control. This is about bringing a proactive approach, being very proactive with our mindset and saying, I'm gonna take control all of my week. I'm gonna schedule key tasks that really matter. And remember, the 3 things that really matter in selling, It's your creating, your progressing and your closing. And you need to be time blocking across all the stages of your funnel in order to hit your number because this is a performance based role. Right? All the other things we do, great. But if we're not delivering, if we're not producing results, then we're not meeting the criteria of our role.