improve sales Archives - Training Unleashed

New realities of post-Covid training with Hilmon Sorey

Hilmon Sorey is an author, keynote speaker and . . . incredibly . . . a man who has trained more than 15,000 people and 5,000 senior executives around the world. He is also Co-Founder of ClozeLoop, a consulting firm based in New York, Houston, Silicon Valley, and Johannesburg.

Hilmon has written eight top-selling books, including 46 Reasons Why Your Cold Calls Fail. . . and How to Fix Them Fast.

You will want to listen to this empowering discussion between Hilmon and Evan Hackel, the host of Training Unleashed. But before you do, please read these excerpts from their conversation . . .

Hilmon on What Is New in Training

In only five years, Hilmon’s training company ClozeLoop has gone from being a startup to one of the most watched training development companies in the world. So what is new in the world of training? Hilmon is in a position to know.

“There is so little being done right now in the area of advancing training,” Hilmon told Evan. One of the obstacles is that many people are still working remotely from home, which has made it difficult for companies to deliver uniformly high-level, high-quality training to large groups of employees.

“So the bottom-line thing here is technology,” he summarizes. “Technology has become the force that catalyzes training in the broad respect, because you need technology to train people who are distributed across the organization.”

Hire the Right People Before You Train Them

“A lot of folks begin to construct the training they need only after they have hired the person who needs to be trained,” Hilmon told Evan. “Instead, they need to step back ahead of time and use what we call a competency matrix to hire the right people. That might mean saying, `I understand I have three roles to fill that might be critical: for the distribution of my product; the sale of my product; and the ongoing development of my product going forward.’”

And then you hire the right people because you have defined the competencies you need them to have.

“Then I can actually imbue these people with information that results in significant performance gains,” Hilmon notes, “but a lot of people don’t take this step before they hire.”

Overcoming Resistance to Cold Calling

Hilmon pointed out many salespeople hate to make cold calls, for many reasons. Some of them feel that cold calling is “beneath them.” Others say they will do it but make it a very low priority and avoid it.

Remember, Hilton wrote the book 46 Reasons Why Your Cold Calls Fail. . . and How to Fix Them Fast, and you will want to hear what he has to say about cold calling in this Training Unleashed podcast.

A Special Offer

Hilmon is offering a free trial version of his coaching/training platform COACH/CRM to members of the Training Unleashed Podcast community. As part of your free trial, you will also receive a complimentary free session with a member of the COACH/CRM staff. Sign up here.

About Our Guest

Hilmon Sorey is Co-Founder of CoachCRM sales coaching software for managers. He has coached and consulted high performing teams in companies that range from early-stage startups to Salesforce, Box, SurveyMonkey, Bill.com, and some of the fastest-growing companies in the world totaling over $600B in valuation and market cap.

He is also Co-Founder of ClozeLoop, a management consulting firm based in New York, Houston, Silicon Valley, and Johannesburg. He is Partner in 2.12 Angels, a seed-stage venture capital firm.

Hilmon has written eight top-selling books on sales, sales management, and coaching.

Using sales training to improve results with Jeremy Miner

When you improve sales training, you improve your bottom line. But what kind of changes should you make, and what results can you expect? Host Evan Hackel sits down with Jeremy Miner, sales training expert and CEO of 7th Level, to explore these questions and more in this episode of the Training Unleashed podcast.

Continuous Training

Jeremy asks, “Is training something that you did, or is it something that you do?”

Please take a moment to think about that question. Jeremy is telling us that if you want to sell more, you need to do sales training continually. Top athletes and sports teams don’t only train when they’re young or just starting out. They train every day. And if you want your organization to succeed, you need to do that too.

One Big Hidden Impediment to Selling More Today

Post-pandemic, your customers are more cautious and skeptical about making the wrong buying decisions. Your salespeople need to address that fear.

There is More Clutter to Cut Through than Ever Before

Checking email, for many people, is the first thing they do in the morning—even before they get out of bed or walk down the hall. When they drive to work, they hear ads on the radio and drive past billboards. And at the end of the day before they go to bed, they look at Facebook and other social platforms.

If you can’t find a way to cut through all that clutter and deliver your sales message, you are simply not going to sell more.

Sales Training Needs to Be Virtual

Jeremy points out that kids do not learn to ride bicycles by attending seminars. They learn to ride bikes by riding bikes! In a similar way, if sales professionals are selling virtually, then sales training needs to be virtual and based on real-world experiences of selling to people.

Jeremy told Evan, “If you want to continually hone your skills and actually learn how to apply them, you want to continually hone those skills in virtual sales training every single day.”

Why the First Few Seconds of a Sales Call Are Critically Important

Jeremy says that if a salesperson is only fixated on making a commission, that salesperson develops what he calls “salesperson’s breath,” which can be smelled 100 feet away. And when prospects are confronted with a salesperson who has entered that state, they immediately go into a fight or flight state and cannot be sold to.

Curiously, this can happen when salespeople become too excited about their products. Today, are we learning that if you don’t want to scare your prospects away, you need a calmer approach in which you come across as calmer and more unbiased.

Jeremy’s Tip to the Training Unleashed Audience

At the end of every episode of Training Unleashed, Evan asks his guest to offer one tip to members of the audience. Jeremy’s tip for us:

“Every time you are selling something, you are selling change. And you do that not by telling people anything, but by asking questions that allow them to tell themselves what that change will be. You need to show them that making that change is safer than staying in the status quo. If they stay in the status quo the problems stay the same.”

About Our Guest

Jeremy Miner is the Chairman of 7th Level, a Global Sales Training company that was ranked #1,232 of the fastest growing companies in the United States by INC magazine’s list of the top 5000 companies in 2021. He is also a contributor for INC magazine and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur magazine, and a host of other publications.

“The single most effective way to sell anything to anyone in 2021, is to be a problem finder and a problem solver… NOT a product pusher.”

For Jeremy Miner, the embodiment of this philosophy has made him one of the

wealthiest sales professionals on the planet. During his 17 year sales career, Jeremy was recognized by the Direct Selling Association as the 45th highest earning producer, out of more than 100 million salespeople – selling anything, worldwide! His earnings as a commission-only salesperson were in the multiple 7-figures, EVERY year.

Jeremy’s unique brand of sales training pioneers the use of behavioral science and human psychology, reflective of his deep studies in the subject from Utah Valley University.

Jeremy is the host of the podcast, Closers are Losers, and his new book, The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation – co-authored by Jerry Acuff – CEO of Delta Point, is being published Fall of 2022.