Karen Schwantner interviews Brian Palmer, CEO of Palmer Sales Training, about modern sales approaches. Palmer shares a healthcare case where integrated sales and marketing broke down silos and improved performance, and discusses his online training course designed for real-world results.
Hi, my name is Karen Schwantner and welcome to Selling Power tv. Today we have a great friend and great entrepreneur. Brian Palmer is the CEO of Palmer Sales Training in the house and we are going to talk about how we can help you improve your sales organization. Welcome Brian.
Thank you Gerhard. Good to see you again.
Tell us a little bit about your background and what do you love about sales training?
I train people for selling and I also own a digital marketing agency. My training and my focus is all about obviously selling more, but I want them to do it in the way that reaches and resonates with the modern buyer today.
What do you see is wrong with sales training today?
One of the things that you see is that a sales training company comes to the table already with their sales training and that's just what they've taught for the last 20, 30, 40 years. They don't teach it to your business, they don't teach it for the product, the service you sell and how you do it. But they also don't teach it for your personality. I don't agree with that. I just think that you need to be focused on what you can deliver customer experience wise. And with a technology that we have and with the ability to learn about our prospects and the companies that we're going after and do it smarter, there's just no reason not to do that.
What can advice can you pass on to salespeople what you have learned from marketing that they need to apply in order to become better?
I started a marketing agency in 2011 and what that's done over the years is that I've had the privilege of working with companies, clients, sales reps, selling all kinds of different things. I have also seen what works and so I can help people understand that this is a better process. And I find that marketing and sales and sales and marketing, it really has to merge today to be effective. And I really push that with my content and the way I approach training today.
I think that's probably the advantage. When you go into a company and do sales training, you can also help them fix that relationship between sales and marketing.
I will come into an organization and I will look at their departments and I will help them break down those silos so, so that each department is informing each other the right way. Because that experience that you're offering from a sales perspective or a marketing perspective, it can't be fragmented, it can't be sloppy. It needs to be correct all the way through. So if sales is reaching out and marketing is reaching out and they're Doing it differently or in, in a different fashion, that's gonna break that experience. Right. So we have to find ways of making sure that the teams are working together. And I find so often sales doesn't talk to marketing, marketing doesn't talk to sales.
Can you give me a B2B example of you've worked with where you came in and did sales training, helped them develop that curriculum and how did you deliver and what was the result?
In healthcare, that was a big thing where I entered into an organization at a little bit higher level, not an organization. And my job was to work with us to then help, you know, break down the barriers and sell into really, really large organizations. I found out what the existing structure was, how things were done now, and then spent several months really blueprinting and game planning how we needed to change that and how we needed to go after and prospect and introduce the products or services to these large billion dollar plus organizations. One big thing that, that we were working on and that I was leading was what types of content we were creating. Our goal was to become more authoritative and more of that expert in the technology field. So we had to create that, we had to create that, that vision. We had to create the tone, we had to create the content around it and then we had to get it, get it out there. It ended up 33% growth each year. So we were able to do that and do that effectively, which was great.
So let's say I am a small sized company with about 20 salespeople and you come in and I'm asking you to improve sales by 33%. Where do you start?
Let's say you, in this situation, you're the sales manager, you, you lead the team of 20 people. Well, I would meet with all 20 of those reps and it might, I can do that over the course of a month or so. Right. So I would meet with all of those. The more I get from them, from the sales team of here's the problems and here's how I'm not equipped to do my job. The better I can do at fixing them because I've been in those shoes. But a lot of people are too scared to admit that for fear of losing their job. But at the same time, we have to break that down. We have to understand where those challenges are. So the first thing I would do in that initial discovery is I would work with you, I would work with the team, I would understand your product. I would pick three competitors. So I always pick the top three competitors. I analyze them, I look at your pricing, your positioning and I come up with a document that is going to outline what I feel like will be the best way moving forward to position the product and train the team. Then we would start more of that training. My training at that point is custom catered to what you do.
Have you also created an online program?
I just launched my course. Right now it's 199 bucks. It's a 14 plus module course, everything from A to Z and you get access for life with free updates. So it's video training that I'm putting on on essentially every stage of the cycle and I will continue to add to that. So I'll have examples from different industries, different price points, different scenarios. Literally. I call it the last sales training you'll ever need and anyone can get that. And then of course my goal is to then work with those, you know, people on a deeper level and customize more of what we do to their organizations.
Where do people find you?
Palmersalestraining.com, my LinkedIn profile. There's links to all those things. I have a free training as well. I have a free newsletter that goes out every Monday. So there's ways to engage and interact with me at no cost to them and just see if it's a good fit.
If anybody wants to get in touch with Brian, go to that link below where you can go to Palmer SalesTraining.com he's a great teacher, but also he's a great student.
