Advancing Your Sales Career - my chat w/ @Jim_Brown on this week's @SalesTuners podcast

This week, I was invited to the Sales Tuners weekly sales podcast. Cool chat with Jim Brown, talking all things sales.  Here's the link to it...and I'd encourage you to check out the other episodes...all great stuff!
  
https://www.salestuners.com/caponi/

Todd Caponi, (@tcaponi), SVP of Sales at PowerReviews, knew he wanted to be in sales after watching his Dad come home after work every day with a big smile on his face—a smile Todd now shares. Knowing where he wanted to go made all the difference in his career. After starting out as an average rep, Todd realized his passion for sales was in teaching. He took a risk by venturing out on his own and buying a sales training business. His thirst for learning and passion for understanding buyer behavior continues to define his success.

With a learner’s mentality, Todd trains his sales team to teach prospective clients about their services. He’s found that customers want to learn, they want to get better, they love free information, and he makes sure his team is willing to share it. Following this approach Todd encourages his reps to align sales activities specifically to their buyer’s behavior.

By truly learning about their prospect, a rep can share ideas with they may not have thought of otherwise. The ‘art of the possible’ is the illumination of unexpected opportunities. Communicating these possibilities with a buyer forms trust, teaching moments for the rep, and a sustainable relationship that helps hit sales goals.

Takeaways

1. Ask for Time on the Calendar: The best evidence a customer is truly engaged is their willingness to put you in their calendar for another discussion. Reps lose control of deals because they’re not getting on the customer’s calendar. Before you hang up or step out of the meeting, secure the follow-up.
2. Develop a Thirst for Learning: To continue improving, stay engaged in your own education. Whether it’s reading books, listening to podcasts, subscribing to trade magazines or just participating in discussions, you have to stay current with both your buyer and your industry.
3. Don’t Pounce: When handling objections, let the prospect believe that it’s the first time you’ve heard that issue and attempt to solve it specifically for them.

Book Recommendations

• The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
• The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge
• What Great Salespeople Do by Ben Zoldan and Michael T. Bosworth

Sponsor

• Octiv – Transform the way your sales assets are created, distributed and tracked around the world. Because a better sales process is a better buying experience.

"The Five Fs of Driving Revenue Capacity": My (podcast) interview on the B2B Growth Show

I was recently a featured guest on the B2B Growth Show podcast. Quick, 15 minute audio podcast discussing the categories used to organize and drive revenue capacity for sales organizations.

Here are the details:  http://sweetfishmedia.com/driving-revenue-capacity-todd-caponi/

"The effectiveness of your sales team to drive revenue determines if everything else in your business will be successful.

It’s easier to keep track of the status of your sales team and what needs to be tackled next by using the Five F’s: Field, Focus, Fundamentals, Forecast, and Fun.

By keeping these categories in mind as a sales leader, you can see where your team is working well and where things need to be improved.

In this episode, Todd Caponi, Senior VP of Sales at PowerReviews, talks about how he uses these five categories to create scalable growth in the sales organization at PowerReviews.

You can find this interview, and many more, by subscribing to the B2B Growth Show on iTunes. If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode by clicking here."

Happy Birthday, boy...wherever you are! #FindDigger

Happy Birthday, boy...wherever you are!

Digger, we’re still out trying to find you. We’re still talking to animal communicators, still looking at every dog we see, still scanning rescue sites and shelters, still working with incredible volunteers who will never give up, and still praying every night that you come home. There's no closure for us, so there’s no giving up...since that day back in August when the boarding facility (Baxter & Beasley in Palatine, IL) we trusted towatch you when we went on vacation lost you.

If you were home today, we'd be celebrating your 5th birthday.

For everyone else, remember, if you have any information that can help, you can message me, call me, or send it anonymously through the www.finddigger.com website’s Lost & Found page. If you’re new to #‎FindDigger‬, you can find the whole story, (almost) every technique / approach we’ve used to try to find him, all the specifics on Digger himself, and a downloadable flyer on the site as well.

Thank you!

The Caponi Family

‪#‎LostDog‬ ‪#‎FoundDog‬ ‪#‎MissingDog‬ ‪#‎Chicago ‬‪#‎ArlingtonHeights‬ #RollingMeadows ‪#‎Barrington‬ ‪#‎Inverness‬ ‪ #‎DeerPark‬ #‎Kildeer‬ #LakeZurich ‪#‎BuffaloGrove‬ ‪#‎HoffmanEstates‬ ‪#‎Algonquin‬ ‪#‎SouthElgin‬ #Elgin ‪#‎MountProspect‬ ‪#‎DesPlaines‬ ‪#‎Evanston‬ ‪#‎Skokie‬
Almost Home Foundation Lost Dogs Illinois Lost Dogs of Wisconsin

Random Rant: Why Not Apply #Leadership #Hiring Best Practices to Selecting Our Next #POTUS

23 candidates interviewing for 1 high impact position. Multiple decision makers.

Professionally, this probably sounds very familiar;  A bunch of resumes for 1 “open” position, with multiple decision makers involved in the process.

Politically, this also is familiar.  Here in the U.S., we started with 23 candidates vying for a "promotion" to the highest position in the land...that of POTUS (President of the United States).  9 candidates remain.  I'm one of the 225 million "decision makers" (a.k.a., the voting age population).

In watching both the Republican and Democratic debates over the past ten days, I thought to myself, why am I deciding on which candidate should get this “promotion” with less rigor than I would to hire leaders in our business?

Making a mistake in both cases is costly.  For POTUS, a mistake could quite literally cost in the trillions of dollars.  It could cost people their lives!  And, if we make an error, we’re likely stuck with this error for 4 years.  In business, the “at-will” employment concept reduces the risk of a incorrect hire a bit, but the impact of an error is also far reaching, relatively speaking.

In business, we do everything we can to reduce the risk of a hiring error.  One approach resulting in considerably better hiring decisions is the use of a candidate scorecard.  A candidate scorecard specifies the key traits of a successful candidate, adds objectivity to the hire, and allows us to hire for a person’s strengths versus their lack of weaknesses.  It allows multiple decision makers to evaluate a candidate on the things that really matter...the traits that improve the odds of a correct hire.  We score the candidates on those traits, then make a decision.

For POTUS, historically many of the 225 million “decision makers” haven’t approached this vital decision that way.  There are numerous studies and articles which claim that taller candidates have won the great majority of Presidential elections, and facial features are a key contributor to a candidate’s viability in the polls. The data suggests that we “decision makers” often make our choice of candidate for emotional reasons and/or based on irrelevant cues, then justify it by hunting for evidence that supports our impression.

For business, the candidate scorecard I’ve used for hiring leaders often contains the following factors:

• Leadership Style:  Would this individual represent our company effectively?  Are they a strong communicator?  Do they fit the culture?  Will people get behind him or her?  Do they have dignified humility?  Will this person be trustworthy?
• Their “Plan”:  What’s this person’s philosophy?  What are their core beliefs around how this position should be approached?  Does that philosophy & beliefs align with ours?  How do they plan to get this done? What would be the short-term and long-term priorities? (Often, we ask a person to show us a plan)
• Resilience:  In any leadership position, there are good times and bad.  Challenges arise.  How will this person handle difficult situations?  Do they have experience & examples they can point to?  
• Motivation:  Why does this person want this position?  Do they have the drive, energy & passion for the role?  
• Relevant Experience:  Do they have a proven ability to achieve targets / goals?  Do they bring the expertise and confidence that comes from experience?  How much “learning-on-the-job” will be required?
• Intelligence:  Does this person possess the overall intellectual & mental capacity for the role?  Do they possess strong reasoning skills?  Are they intelligent?

Read them again with this POTUS role in mind.  Replace the word "company" with the word "country".  Do they also apply?  

Companies do this every day...often for positions that pale in comparison to the decision we’re all about to make.  What matters to you?  What do you think the traits are for a successful POTUS?  If you're a U.S. citizen, you are a decision maker in this hiring process.  Your vote matters.  Let’s make a scorecard together…

Todd Caponi (@tcaponi)

Day 186 of the #FindDigger Search. What can you do to help?

It’s now been 186 days since our family member, Digger, was lost by the boarding facility (Baxter & Beasley in Palatine) whose business was to safely and securely take care of him while we were on vacation.  The search hasn’t stopped.  The emotions haven’t subsided.  The roller coaster continues. When it’s your family member, and there’s no closure, moving on is practically impossible.

Because he’s microchipped, and we’ve been in constant contact with so many entities who would have been able to reach us if he was no longer of this world, we believe he’s still out there somewhere.  He’s such a family loving / people loving / food loving dog, it’s not unreasonable to think that someone has taken him in, and he’s living with another family somewhere.  

So what can you do to keep helping?  Keep being our extra sets of eyes and ears.  Keep asking your vet to scan dogs that come in without shot records.  Keep educating those who believe that a stray dog has been abandoned by their unworthy family and needs a home.  Teach them that those dogs likely have families out desperately looking for them.

And keep sharing pictures.

Pictures are the ONLY way (besides a microchip scan) if the dog you’ve seen or found is him.  On the Sightings page on our website (http://www.finddigger.com/sightings.html), you’ll see just 70 of the voicemails we’ve received, plus the last 81 pictures we’ve been sent (and in many cases, we’ve received one of these pictures 10-20 times).  It’s hard to know if any of the voicemails were actually Digger.  But with the pictures, we can be sure...and unfortunately none of these are our boy.  

We know your passion for this.  We know it’s so hard to believe that the dog you’ve found isn’t him...because you want it to be him as badly as we do.  Pictures are the only way we can be sure.  And for those who are apprehensive about sharing a picture that may not be him in worries that you’re getting our hopes up, please don’t.  We’d rather get 20 pictures of a dog that isn’t Digger, than not get THE picture that turns out to be him.

If you’re reading this and you have him...just take him to a local vet, tell them you found him, and they’ll take it from there.  We just want our boy back.

If you have any information that can help, you can send it anonymously through the website’s Lost & Found page.

If you’re new to this, you can find the whole story, (almost) every technique / approach we’ve used to try to find him, all the specifics on Digger himself, and a downloadable flyer at www.finddigger.com.

If your dog is lost and you’d like some advice, reach out any time.  We look forward to paying this forward for the rest of our lives.

For everyone else, please keep looking, keep sharing, keep sending us pictures, and keep praying.  We still believe this story will have a happy ending…

#FindDigger

#‎LostDog‬ ‪#‎FoundDog‬ ‪#‎MissingDog‬ ‪#‎Chicago‬ ‪#‎ArlingtonHeights ‬‪#‎RollingMeadows‬ ‪#‎Barrington‬ ‪#‎Inverness‬ ‪#‎DeerPark‬ ‪#‎Kildeer ‬‪#‎LakeZurich‬ ‪#‎BuffaloGrove‬ ‪#‎HoffmanEstates‬ ‪#‎Algonquin‬ ‪#‎SouthElgin ‬‪#‎Elgin‬ ‪#‎MountProspect‬ ‪#‎DesPlaines‬ ‪#‎Evanston‬ ‪#‎Skokie‬