Top Ten Episodes: January-March 2023
Market Dominance Guys
What a great (and fast) few months we have already had this year! Hard to believe we’re a quarter of the way through 2023. Feels like we forced ourselves to stay awake for the Ball Drop just last week. Here are the Top Ten episodes of Market Dominance Guys so far this year! Be sure to follow the links to the full episodes, and see what the guys and their guests have been talking about!
10. EP163: The Theory of Constraints and Ice Cream
We’ve heard the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for…” It’s not unlike wanting to build pipeline quickly and how it relates to a kid in an ice cream store. What is the goal? Build as much – eat as much as possible to gain as much success and pleasure as possible. Think of the system of building pipeline like a child who isn’t sufficiently mature enough to handle all that ice cream. Belly aches will ensue. So the issue with too much too fast is you can’t find the bottleneck anymore. And if you can’t find the bottleneck anymore, you can’t manage.
In this episode, Corey asked Chris to visit the theory of constraints. Businesses are artificial, in the sense, that we say we’re going to do something for others, and they’re going to pay us money for it. And then the question is, what are the inputs to the business? And whenever you have a system with inputs and outputs, you always have exactly one constraint within that system. That’s what the theory of constraints says.
The reason that people like Mark Cuban, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musks, and the like are such outstanding business leaders is they put their eye on the bottleneck regardless of the noise that’s produced by the change that they are willing to induce in order to improve. Most of us can’t do that. Listen to this episode of Market Dominance Guys, “The Theory of Constraints and Ice Cream.”
Listen to the full episode below:
9. EP167: The Power of Childlike Curiosity in the Digital World of Sales
So, what’s the biggest challenge in sales? Today, the guys have a special guest, Hitesh Shah, CTO and CPO of ConnectAndSell. As Hitesh puts it, it’s the fact that we don’t like to be sold to. That’s why sales is about helping, not selling. And if you want to succeed in sales, you have to understand who your target audience is and what their business problems are. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up, building relevance and trust with each person you talk to. Hitesh says there are two things, one is always trying to understand what happened. And, when it goes against your instinct – what did you expect it to do? Be open to the possibility that you may have missed something. Corey says that this requires a level of humility that doesn’t exist in high quantities in sales, even though it should.
One of the things these three have learned over the years is that when something starts working when it shouldn’t, it can be scary. But in the digital world, everything is deterministic. There are causes and effects, and there’s no such thing as waiting or hoping that something fixes itself. As Hitesh puts it, you have to have a childlike curiosity and naivete, especially in the digital world where computers are deterministic. Join us for this episode of Market Dominance Guys, “The Power of Childlike Curiosity in the Digital World of Sales.”
Listen to the full episode below:
8. EP170: Sales Energy: The Importance of Being an Omnichannel Salesperson
Chris Beall and Corey Frank welcome Gerhard Gschwandtner, the CEO of Selling Power and an advocate for non-verbal sales communication. Gerhard emphasizes the importance of being aware of one’s own energy, as sales is a transfer of energy. They talk about the challenge of losing cultural underpinnings when not being on-site with customers and how finding the right connections that can help you learn and grow is important in gathering energy.
Chris, Corey, and Gerhard’s experiences and insights provide valuable lessons for salespeople and individuals looking to improve their energy and become their authentic selves. They emphasize the importance of being aware of one’s energy, using technology as a natural extension of oneself, finding the right connections to learn and grow, taking action and engaging with the world to build self-discovery, and accepting mortality to improve energy and focus in this episode of Market Dominance Guys, “Sales energy: The Importance of being an omnichannel salesperson.”
Listen to the full episode below:
7. EP171: From Cold Calling to AI: How Sales is Evolving with Technology
In this episode, Gerhard Gschwandtner compares ChatGPT to a painter’s palette with an infinite amount of colors, and salespeople are the artists who must decide how many colors to use and when the painting is finished. The hosts discuss the role of technology in sales and how salespeople can use ChatGPT to harness its intelligence to make more informed decisions. Chris describes a practical example of how he used ChatGPT for list creation for a company called Partner Tap. He was able to ask it about the specific job titles used in senior roles in companies and generate a table of titles for each company. Gerhard suggests that salespeople can tap into their internal ChatGPT to discover great ideas and pursue meaningful work. Chris mentions how they are exploring the use of ChatGPT in developing a new data product and using it to summarize the best conversations that set a meeting with different types of executives. Key points from this portion of the episode include the power of ChatGPT in harnessing technology to make more informed decisions in sales, the importance of pursuing meaningful work, and the potential for ChatGPT to be used in various aspects of sales, from list creation to conversation summaries. Corey reminds us, “You have to be willing to put in that work, do your research and know that it’s going to take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s really about understanding who your customer is and what they care about.”
Key points from this episode:
- ChatGPT can be used in various aspects of sales, such as list creation and conversation summaries.
- Salespeople can use ChatGPT to harness its intelligence and make more informed decisions.
- Pursuing meaningful work can lead to greater happiness and success in sales.
- The better the “why” behind what you are doing in sales, the easier the “how” will be.
- Prompt engineering is a method for developing ChatGPT responses that require careful consideration of the language and wording used in prompts.
Listen to the full episode below:
6. EP166: The Sales Cycle: Lengthening is Not Always a Bad Thing
In part two of this series, Barry Trailer, Chris and Corey bring a touch of humor to the conversation on the topic of sales and how it relates to the corporate business world today. Barry emphasizes the importance of establishing and elevating relationships over time, stating that sales isn’t about predicting anything but rather bringing people together. He compares the unpredictability of sales to the unpredictability of a baseball game, where even the best players are out 70% of the time. Chris Beall adds that the desire for predictability is a universal human desire, but sales is about doing things that have a reasonable shot of bringing people together so that problems can be solved that would otherwise be left unsolved. There is even a reference to fortune tellers, who are able to convince people to believe in the impossible. They guys agree that while the game of sales has not changed, the tools available to do it have improved, and the ability to access and share information has greatly increased, making sales performance level much higher today than in the past.
If you haven’t listened to the first half of this series, we highly recommend you to check it out, “The Scarcest Commodity in Corporate Business Today.”
Listen to the full episode below:
5. EP168: Get Granular to Boost Your Sales Performance
Welcome to the continuation of a conversation with Hitesh Shah, CTO and CPO of ConnectAndSell. This episode delves into the world of sales and coaching for sales managers. Hitesh shares his experience and insights on coaching by the numbers and how to manage and coach a sales team effectively.
Corey and Chris share their thoughts on how to analyze sales data and determine the strengths and weaknesses of individual sales reps. They stress the importance of getting granular with data and looking at it with a critical eye. By understanding the patterns and details of sales interactions, sales managers can take the necessary steps to help their reps improve and drive better results.
Chris also offers his advice for new sales managers on how to stay up-to-date with fast-moving sales trends and how to manage a sales team in a fast-paced environment effectively. He suggests starting the day by looking at sales data and focusing on the critical details of sales interactions.
So whether you’re a seasoned sales manager or just starting out, join us for this exciting episode as Chris, Corey and Hitesh help you take your sales management, training, and sales skills to the next level in this episode, “Get Granular to Boost Your Sales Performance”.
Listen to the full episode below:
4. EP164: The Power of Finesse and the Bullfighter
In this follow-up to last week’s, “The Theory of Constraints and Ice Cream” Chris reminds us that all talent problems are wrapped up in lots of politics. And it turns out the key to all of this, whether you’re like Corey and Chris and your company provides a discontinuous innovation. Something that naturally could bring change too fast or if you are the leader and something needs to change because it’s the constraint and it’s time to go after it no matter what. If you fail the finesse test, you fail all the tests. Because then the politics turn on you. And quite rightly, by the way.
Finesse is a very elegant way of describing the search process, reading the signals, reading the tea leaves, and understanding where the constraints are. Understanding that in this discontinuous innovation process, you’re going to have of extraneous pipeline that’s going to come in very rapidly at a flow rate that you’re not used to. And finesse is, as a way to almost like when you see a bullfighter, they have this big two 3000 pound beast that’s bearing down at you and bull bullfighter. And he just finesses his way from one to the next and dances and it’s a glorious thing to see in action where internally they may be sweating.
People underestimate the power of finesse and the reason that you need it. We are all machines when we sell, we’re a machine that turns a potential opportunity into something that’s taking a next step. That’s all we do. So the more mathematically you are, that is, if you’re listening to this and you’re going, yeah, gold red theory of constraints I’m in, I’m in. Right? You probably need to spend more of your life thinking about and exercising the finesse components. Listen to this episode, “The Power of Finesse and the Bullfighter.”
If you missed the first part of this conversation, “The Theory of Constraints” you can catch up here.
Listen to the full episode here:
3. EP169: How ChatGPT is Writing a Book: The AI and Human Collaboration
In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall, and Susan Finch discuss their experience using ChatGPT to write a book based on their podcast, and the benefits of using AI to create content. They delve into the limitless possibilities of machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, and how they are transforming various industries. Chris and Susan also share their insights on the process and the excitement of seeing the AI learn and improve. Chris and Susan talk about how ChatGPT can generate various versions of a prompt, and the different approaches they took to refine their requests for better results. They also reflect on the human-like interactions they had with ChatGPT, and the Eliza effect that makes people treat the AI as if it were a person. Ultimately, they highlight the efficiency and creativity that AI can bring to content creation, and the potential for using ChatGPT to write more books in the future. Tune in to hear their fascinating discussion on the intersection of AI and writing in this episode, “How ChatGPT is Writing a Book: The AI and Human Collaboration.”
Listen to the full episode here:
2. EP165: The Scarcest Commodity in Corporate Business Today
Revealing the scarcest commodity in corporate business, especially in America today, first requires an understanding of how we got there. Today Barry Trailer, Co-founder of Sales Mastery, joins Chris and Corey. He reviews the four levels of process implementation: the percentage of revenue, the target revenue plan attained, the percentage of reps meeting or beating quota, the outcome of forecast deals, and rep turnover. These are real numbers. But higher levels of relationship and higher levels of process implementation lead to higher levels of performance. And the numbers are just the numbers They continued talking about the turnover. There’s a huge contributory factor to the failure to implement significant change on the part of most sales organizations other than the change that a new leader brings in.
What is common is that the new lion, so to speak, the new CRO, the new VP of Sales, comes in and kills the cubs. They attempt to prove that whatever was being done before must not be done anymore. Because I’ve come in with my new way of doing things and territory must be marked, I was brought in to do something in a new way, and away we go. When the performance isn’t there, the CRO or the CSO takes the bullet that the CEO doesn’t want to take. But the only reason is that there’s been this unholy alliance or this unspoken agreement that as long as we make the numbers, you’ll stay out of my sandbox. Listen to this episode to see where your company falls in place in, “The Scarcest Commodity in Corporate Business Today.”
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1. EP145: Building Trust Must Always Be Step One
In this episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Corey and Chris agree on the importance of building trust before anything else can happen. They are joined by Transformational Coach Jennifer Standish, Henry Wojdyla, Founder and Principal at RealSource Group, Matt McCorkle, Manager of Branch Operations at Kaiser Compressors, and hosts Ty Crandall on the Business Credit and Finance Show, Jeff Lerner from Ep 150 of Millionaire Secrets, and David Dulaney on the Sales Development Podcast. The full episodes to the ones included here are listed below:
EP109: Being There for Your Customers
EP123: Hire Yourself a Grandma
The Business Credit and Financing Show
Sales Development Podcast https://www.spreaker.com/user/9196584/episode-164-done
MILLIONAIRE SECRET #150 Unlock Your Potential with Jeff Lerner
Listen to the full episode here:
