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James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

Bio

Sales Leader and Disrupter. Team builder, data-driven, and connoisseur of modern sales best practices.

I can help your sales organization by coaching on the sales process, methodology and building key data metrics to grow and scale your business. Let's build a tailored sales machine for your business so you can grow and hit your goals.

**DISCLAIMER - I DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY**

I structure my Clarity calls a little bit differently than everyone else. To maximize our time and your money, I ask for your questions before our call so I can carefully think about your unique business situation and provide thoughtful feedback and suggestions. I hope you appreciate this approach.

Recent Answers

Business Strategy

How should I set OKRs for my startup team so we can collaborate, do tasks and can measure progress?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

The easiest way to think about OKRs is to think about the inputs that result in the outputs that you desire as a company. For example, monthly sales numbers are the results (output) and the inputs would be meetings, quotes, pipeline created, etc. Let me know if you’d like to discuss more.

Sales Management

How do you drive a management style that is inclusive and yet focused on results?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

Setting extremely clear expectations is the first place to start. Understand where you're headed and what your goals are so you can back into the expectations or more importantly, the behaviors that align with your desired outcomes. Accountability and two-way communication are the tactics to stay focused on the results.

Direct Sales

What are some books that can teach you sales scripts or prospecting scripts?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

Jeb Blount - Fanatical Prospecting Stu Heinecke - How to get a meeting with anyone Also, check out white papers and ebooks on account-based marketing. You also want to heavily invest in content, thought leadership and branding to credentialize yourself. Good luck!

Bootstrapping your business

If you were starting over, broke, and had 400 dollars to your name, what would be your first steps to make an income?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

Invest it in yourself and find a great job that will pay the bills while you work on your own venture. Whether that means buying new work-appropriate clothes, books in your profession, a new certification or even interview coaching is up to you. I'd find a company that is emerging in an industry that you find interesting and go after working for that company. Good luck!

Sales Process

What are the best practices in recruiting an outsource or CPG sales representative?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

There are a couple of routes you can take. You can research people with the background you are looking for in LinkedIn, post a job to indeed, recruit on indeed, network or hire a recruiter. There are pros and cons to each. Let me know if you'd like to chat about these options. I have experience doing all of the available options.

Sales

What is the best commission model when hiring a sales person to sell digital marketing services to small businesses?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

The best commission model is one that reinforces the behavior and activity that you are asking the sales person to do. So if the goal of your sales person is to simply set up free consults, maybe they get a flat fee for each call they set up or maybe a percentage of the deal if it closes? Or maybe you set goals and if they reach the goal each month, they receive a bonus paid monthly. There a variety of ways to set this up but definitely think about the behaviors and how to reinforce for the specific activity you need from the rep.

Customer Acquisition

How do you attract subscribers to an online membership site & then retain these customers for life?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

I might be sharing the obvious but facebook and google are incredibly powerful to drive traffic to your website. Retaining comes down to how well you solve your customers problems. Good luck!

Pricing Strategy

How can I convince customers that we offer a fair price if we're providing a new service that does not yet exist?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

To sell them on the value is helping them to realize how your solution impacts one of more of the following areas: image, finance and/or productivity. When they understand they will have a better image (don't think just physical image), save money in the long run or be more productive during the hectic period of getting married, they will then correlate those benefits with your price point. In the wedding industry, it should be easy to tie your product features to all of the perceived benefits around image, finance and productivity.

Sales

How can I achieve product sales for my SAAS Microsoft-based product?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

Do you have a network of these individuals who would utlimately make the sale for you? If you have connections, you could offer demos or some type of product evaluation so you could get some success stories to help you leverage the product. Whenever you pitch to these people, always remember, "what's in it for me" - me, being the account managers. Without the account managers clearly understanding the benefits, you'll never get them to sell for you. I have some other ideas around strategy here if you would like to chat.

Hiring

What is the best tool for pre-hire, sales representative personality testing?


James Michael

Sales Strategy, Coaching and Consulting

I would be curious to know why you feel it is important to use personality testing. I have hired over 20 sales reps and I have never used any testing. I have conversations with my hires because that is going to tell me more about their personality any day than a test. Plus you might eliminate someone because of a test score that could be a great fit for your organization. I have a pretty strong process for hiring sales people and could share with you my steps and even the questions if you would like.

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Areas of Expertise

SalesSales ManagementTrainingContract NegotiationB2BAccount ManagementSales TrainingsConsultative SellingK-12Sales Skills Training