139: SNAP Selling – Featured Interview with Jill Konrath

Jill Konrath Internationally Recognized Sales Expert, Speaker, and Bestselling Author

Internationally recognized sales expert Jill Konrath talks to Bill Ringle about sales and shaking off outdated assumptions about what it means to be a salesperson.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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Interview Insights

Listen to this interview to learn:

• That successful sales work is a learnable skill set, not an innate trait.
• Practical steps to set up meetings with key decision makers.
• How proper sales training led to a morale boost in a client company.
• What SNAP selling means.
• How certain assumptions help you in sales, rather than hurt you.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

• 1:15 How Jill moved from disliking the idea of sales to embracing it the business she wanted to start.
• 2:27 “I became the designated person in our group to learn how to sell, so we could launch our business.”
• 3:01 “I think I maintain my focus on sales and teach people to maintain their focus on sales because if they don’t do it they won’t be able to do what they really love to do.”
• 3:34 “Unless you dedicate a portion of your life to actually going after the business, you’ll be financially on edge at all times.”
• 4:12 “I see so many people living with this old perception of sales, they think it’s about pitching and it’s about going forward and touting their stuff, and they’ve invested no time to learn what it actually means to be successful in sales.”
• 4:57 “The best sellers of ideas are the people who actually look and learn to study what it takes to make things happen in this arena.”
• 5:13 “The biggest barrier I’m seeing right now is the inability to set up meetings with decision-makers. Over the last 5-7 years we’ve seen a number of technologies emerge that totally protect decision-makers from ever having to talk to a human being.”
• 6:35 “The reality is if you want to get more customers if you want to set up more meetings with potential buyers then you literally have to study what it takes and figure out what business issues that you solve for your clients, the business ramifications, and the impact of what you do on your key business drivers.”
• 7:37 The organizations Konrath works for and how she helps them set up meetings with decision-makers.
• 9:01 “It really does help people because they really do get discouraged. They think well I just don’t have the right genes for this or clearly they’re not interested because they’re not getting back [to] me.”
• 10:24 “Until you learn to study what it takes to be successful, you’ll continue to get some of those same results.”
• 10:40 Konrath describes her inspiration for writing the book.
• 12:38 “I figured that there’s gotta be a way to work with these people to help them achieve their objectives, because that’s really what sales is all about, to help them achieve their business objectives, and at the same time keep the sale moving forward so I can reach my objectives.”
• 13:44 Konrath describes the elements that makeup SNAP.
• 14:00 “Crazy busy people are evaluating on 4 criteria. The S is simplicity, the N is the invaluableness of your work, the A is the alignment with their business objectives, and the P is priorities.”
• 14:21 [On the rating scale for simplicity] – “Either you are simple or you are complex. You’re writing an e-mail that gets to the point, or you’re writing a rambling one that goes on and on forever and bores them to death.”
• 15:46 “The first thing I always say to people is you need to focus on prevention so you don’t get yourself into that hole.”
• 16:11 Things you can do as a salesperson do be aligned with potential clients.
• 17:27 “There’s a fundamental shift that it’s all about them and you have to remind them of the business value of what you’re doing at all times and align it with key priorities that are important to them.”
• 18:40 “If they’re not talking about changing, and there’s no money in the budget, then the entire focus has to be on the business issues that the client is facing that are addressable by your products or services and how you can help them meet the objectives they’ve set out for themselves this year.”
• 19:43 “Researching potential clients ahead of time is a sales imperative.”
• 20:08 On the importance of assuming certain things when addressing decision-makers.
• 23:43 “In most cases, you’re not going to get the sale in one call, in many cases, it may take 6-10 calls over the course of several months to win the business. And we really need to be aware that it’s a process. We need to move people to the logical next step of the process.”
• 25:30 Konrath describes how your website can make an essential first impression with new clients.
• 26:45 “From a productivity standpoint it’s really hard to constantly be trying to sell. You need to have your website as the attraction center and it needs to get people to be able to sign up for certain things.”
• 27:55 “You really need to be focusing on what are people doing that are good at this, and how can I continue to get better to demonstrate my company’s expertise all the time.”

Expert Bio

Jill Konrath is an internationally recognized expert, popular speaker, and bestselling author whose career is defined by her relentless search for fresh sales strategies that actually work in today’s business environment. She excels at helping sellers crack into new accounts, speed up sales cycles, and win more business.

Her first book, Selling to Big Companies, addressed the major sales problem of how to set up meetings with prospects who’d rather avoid salespeople all together; Fortune Magazine named it one of eight “must-reads” for sellers. When the economy tanked in 2008, Jill wrote Get Back to Work Faster, a game-changing career book. SNAP Selling, Jill’s highly acclaimed new book, jumped to #1 on Amazon.com within hours of its release.

Jill’s newsletters are read by 80,000+ readers worldwide, she writes a popular blog that’s been syndicated on numerous business and sales websites, and she’s frequently published in top business media.

Contact Info for Jill Konrath

• Business Phone: 651-429-1922
• Web address: JillKonrath.com
• Travels From: Minneapolis, MN
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter

Books by Jill Konrath