Douglas Cole is an Enterprise Sales Leader at LinkedIn, an advisor with start-up accelerators in Canada and the U.S., and a part-time university lecturer at The Rotman School of Management and The Schulich Executive Education Centre in Toronto. If that isn’t enough, he has also authored The Sales MBA: How to Influence Corporate Buyers.

Doug joined the LinkedIn team because he believes in their vision and values, and he’s committed to refining his craft as a leader. Doug’s team helps B2B sales organisations thrive in our digital era.

He is actively involved with internal education: as a faculty member of LinkedIn's Data-Driven University (DDU), creating professional development programs with institutional partners, and standing up a Mini-MBA for the global sales team. He’s also on the leadership team that sets direction for LinkedIn Canada.

“My career spans consulting, education, and sales. Three interests are at the heart of this journey. I like big picture thinking and analysis. That’s the consultant in me. I like distilling first principles to help others improve. That’s the educator in me. I like driving growth and rallying around a common purpose. That’s the sales leader in me. In essence, I enjoy teasing out hidden sources of meaning in our personal and professional lives.” - Douglas Cole

Key Points of our Discussion

Douglas’s new book The Sales MBA: How to Influence Corporate Buyers

• The general lack of Business Acumen in Salespeople
• The saturated knowledge economy
• Understanding the external dynamics
• Getting to know the organisational dynamics
• Nailing the interpersonal dynamics
• Becoming a strategist for the industry
• Becoming a change agent for the company
• Becoming a decision architect for the customer
• Choosing language and messaging carefully
• Behavioural economics in sales

To connect with Chris, you can find him here on LinkedIn Find More on his book: The Sales MBA here

Dr. Christopher Croner received his BA in Psychology from DePaul University, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Dr. Croner is co-author of the book, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, detailing his research and practice in identifying the non-teachable personality traits common to top producers.

Dr. Croner developed the proprietary DriveTest® online sales test and The Drive Interview, both used for hiring “Hunter” salespeople. Using this method, he has helped more than 1,400 companies worldwide to hire and develop top-performing salespeople.

Dr. Croner has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, teaching personnel selection in the Industrial Psychology Master of Arts program. His is is an active member of the Consulting Section of the Illinois Psychological Association and former Co-Program Chair of Chicago Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (CIOP).

“In 2002, I discovered there was a lack of assessment tools specifically targeting Drive in sales candidates, so I set out to develop my own sales assessment test. After years of research, development, and validity testing, I developed The DriveTest®: The only sales assessment that is scientifically designed to identify candidates that possess the three non-teachable traits common to top producers.

Want to start hiring top sales talent? Let me offer you a free DriveTest® right now. Visit: https://salesdrive.info/free-trial-request to access a free test.” - Dr Christopher Croner

Key Points of our Discussion

• Chris’s clinical psychology background and entry into sales

• The three key un-teachable personality traits that create “Drive”

• The cost and dangers of hiring on “gut feel”

• Best practice hiring processes to secure high performing hunters

• Tips to attracting high drive applicants in your ads

• Communicating culture and opportunity

• The well-constructed phone screening process

• The importance of a structured behavioural interview

• Designing the right interview questions

• The power of an assessment PRIOR to interview

To connect with Chris, you can find him here on LinkedIn Find More on Sales Drive here

Ian Koniak is an accomplished sales coach, trainer and keynote speaker who helps B2B Account Executives perform to their full potential and crush their quotas by mastering the mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level.

Ian has been a top performing Account Executive for 19 years, with over $100M in career sales at Fortune 500 companies. He's led and developed teams, and was recently the #1 Account Executive in the Enterprise Select Division at Salesforce. 

Ian is now on a mission to share his secrets to success with the sales community.

Most recently Ian worked as a Strategic Account Director for the Enterprise West Sales team at Salesforce, where he partnered with their largest customers to help them drive growth, innovation, and success on the Salesforce Platform. At Ricoh, he led a team of 10 Sales Managers and 70 reps responsible for 60M Annual Revenue across hardware, software, and services.

“After a near death experience, I started a coaching business to serve others and help them achieve incredible success. My mission is to share my learnings over 19 years in tech sales to help AE's perform their best.” - Ian Koniak

Key Points of our Discussion

• Ian’s impressive sales success story
• Discipline vs being “motivated”
• Mindset and personal development
• Getting in the habit of doing the hard things
• Steven Covey’s time management quadrant
• Selling in a recession
• Innovatively creating opportunities in sales

To connect with Ian, you can find him here on LinkedIn Or visit Ian's Website https://iankoniak.com/  to learn more

Dan Kijewski is Senior Director of Enterprise and Staffing Sales at Talent.com - a leader in the recruitment advertising and technology space. He is responsible for sales strategy, strategic planning, recruitment, marketing, product, and all activities required to grow the US Enterprise and Staffing team into a $25m+ business over the next 12months.

Dan has 20+ years of sales experience, coupled with his recruitment expertise and deep knowledge of the current market. Dan shares his valuable insight on hiring sales talent in a candidate’s market, and how both employers and candidates should approach recruitment processes in order to have the best outcomes for all involved. 

“Small and Medium Sized Businesses especially (SMBs) need a plan to have a consistent pipeline of candidates at their disposal. In the current candidate market, they need to be prepared to lose people as well as learn how to bring on new candidates faster and expect these hiring challenges to continue for the foreseeable future.” - Dan Kijewski 

Key Points of our Discussion

• Handling recruitment in a candidate's market
• The impact on HR leaders
• Culture and mental health focus
• The shift in how leaders need to treat their team
• Sales hiring and interview processes
• Key indicators (and red flags) to look for in an interview
• Customer success strategies

To connect with Dan, you can find him here on LinkedIn Find More on Talent.com here

Brendan McAdams is Co-founder of Expertscape, a global directory of medical experts, 

And also Founder of Kiinetics. 

Kiinetics is a specialty B2B sales coaching and consulting practice with an emphasis on sales strategy and techniques, marketing, customer success and relationship management. 

Brendan has particular industry experience helping healthcare technology companies advance their sales success into health plan, ACO and health system markets.

Over the last 10+ years, Brendan has helped dozens of founders recognise, attack and overcome the very common challenges unique to early-stage startups:

• Fear of rejection
• Dealing with competing responsibilities
• Handling proposals and customer negotiations
• Managing the revenue expectations typical of an evolving product roadmap
• Navigating the complexities of developing a repeatable (and standardized) implementation and successful onboarding process

Brendan has also written a book on sales fundamentals, SALES CRAFT, that outlines 50 fundamental sales skills, practices and ideas that every sales professional should consider as they work to improve their sales effectiveness.

Key Points of our Discussion

• Why Founders “fear” the sales function 
• Key challenges for early stage startups
• Narrowing your ICP before building out the product
• The unique and powerful position of the Founder
• The importance of a good system and process
• Getting into the “expert mindset”
• Learning to say “no” to a potential customer
• Brendan’s sales accelerator program

To connect with, and learn more about Brendan you can find him here on LinkedInDiscover more about his offerings at Kiinetics.com

Andy Paul has been in sales for over four decades. In his professional career I’ve sold everything from computers to small businesses to complex communications systems that sold for tens of millions of dollars to some of the world’s largest enterprises. 

Andy has grown and managed large sales teams from scratch and coached average performers into being top producers. Andy closed hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services before starting his own company.

Andy is ranked #8 on LinkedIn's list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts and more than 170,000 people have signed up to follow the knowledge he shares. His hit "Accelerate Your Sales" podcast was acquired by Revenue.io in 2020. Since re-named "Sales Enablement with Andy Paul", the show continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals each week.

Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, "Zero-Time Selling" and "Amp Up Your Sales". 

As a bit of an introvert, Andy was not your typical salesperson. His first employer didn’t think he’d ever succeed because they believed he was “too analytical.”

It’s his different approach to sales that inspired his new book “Sell Without Selling Out.” A proven framework to increase win rates and shorten decision cycles without the salesy behaviours that buyers hate.

Key Points of our Discussion

• Are salespeople getting better at selling? Or perhaps worse
• Ask better questions and make deeper connections
• Selling out vs “selling in”
• The four pillars of “selling in”
• How we should view and approach our careers in sales
• What type of seller is really going to make it big?
• Could processes and playbooks be a constraint? 
• Properly understanding the purpose and power of discovery
• The power of small talk
• The real meaning of providing value

To connect with, and learn more about Andy you can find him here on LinkedInDiscover more about his offerings and his new book “Sell Without Selling Out” at andypaul.com

Patrick Baynes is CEO of Nerdwise who helps sales teams “Sell More Wisely.” Nerdwise is an  all-in-one sales enablement solution to accelerate each stage of the buying process from prospect discovery to outreach and acquisition. Clients get VIP access to list generation, campaign management, lead scoring and coordinated marketing activities.

Nerdwise is used by leading sales teams including Sandler Training, BTI, RAP Index, DP3 Tech, Reflective Energy, Lynk Capital Markets, TechAdvisors and hundreds more.

Patrick has been in the tech space for a long time, working at LinkedIn was his first job out of school and the perfect launch pad into the internet and software space. He was once told that if he was sliced open to see what he was made of, it would mostly be LinkedIn DNA.

Following LinkedIn, Patrick co-founded PeopleLinx, the first employee-based social marketing solution for LinkedIn. The company was acquired in 2015 by Frontline.

We discuss how companies can work smarter and grow faster by leveraging the latest marketing systems, technologies and best practices.

Key Points of our Discussion

• The challenges of choosing the right tools 
• Bringing sales and marketing together 
• Introducing new tools to help productivity
• Nailing the foundation of your processes
• Correct targeting and outcome-driven messaging 
• Email Sequencing and automation
• Managing our conversion rates once we win a meeting with a prospect
• Reviewing and removing any unnecessary steps in your process
• Nerdwise services and software for sales teams

To connect with, and learn more about Patrick you can find him here on LinkedInAnd learn more about Nerdwise software and services here

Nicolas De Swetschin is Commercial Director and the sportsman of noCRM. He joined the adventure to lead the sales team and develop Their partnership and resale program. 

Nicolas has 15 years’ experience in sales and international business development within software and value-added services companies. Management of complex sales and new business development.

Specialising in business development, international sales, channel management

account management, product marketing and sales strategy. 

….Helping SMBs of any industry close more deals 🔥

Motivation and team spirit are at the heart of his philosophy. Nicolas has more than 10 years of experience in international sales in different sectors: telecoms, sport and operational oceanography (Yes, it exists!).

If you don't like CRM’s or still use Spreadsheet to manage your leads, go check and test noCRM.io and get support from Nicolas and his team to step-up your sales results.

Key Points of our Discussion

• Finding the right mindset for growth and resilience
• Dedication and training like a sportsperson in sales
• The power of peer-to-peer team development
• Remote, and international team management
• Building a strong team spirit in sales 
• Delivering feedback with positive intent
• Closing and the importance of customer success
• The customer acquisition process at noCRM.io
• Team onboarding process and the “Sales Notion”
• The sportsperson mindset and soft-skill set

To connect with, and learn more about Nicolas, you can find him here on LinkedIn

For the past 35 years, Chris has been participating in software startups as a founder or at the very early stages of development. His focus has been on consistently creating and taking to market simple products that can be used successfully the first time they are touched, without taking a course or needing to read a manual.

Chris fully believes that the most powerful part of any software system is the human being that we inappropriately call a “user,” and that the value key in software is to let the computer do what it does well in order to free up human potential.

The reality of serial dialing is that the average person can’t make more than 75-100 outbound dials a day to their intended targets, which may result in 6-8 conversations with decision-makers.

ConnectAndSell can make that same number of dials in less than an hour. The result? Within 2-5 minutes ConnectAndSell allows you to speak with one of your intended targets: Conversations On Demand.

Since 2007 ConnectAndSell has helped sales representatives at nearly 1000 companies, including hundreds of technology startups and several Fortune 500 companies, overcome the challenges of getting people on the phone. 

Chris’s solution helps companies grow their revenues faster than it’s practical to grow their sales teams, by allowing existing reps to have more sales conversations in 90 minutes than they would otherwise achieve in an entire week.

Key Points of our Discussion

• The problems faced in outbound prospecting
• Calls vs Emails
• Manufacturing trust using the human voice
• The danger of top talent leaving if pushed too hard
• The importance of organic growth in sales capability
• Chris shares how Connect And Sell is working within his own team
• How to handle the “Ambush” feeling of cold calling
• Chris gives some great live examples of cold calling techniques

To connect with, and learn more about Chris you can find him here on LinkedIn and learn more about the power of Connect and Sell

Joseph Fung is a graduate of the University of Waterloo’s Computer Engineering program, and is a very successful five-times tech company Founder and CEO. Joseph is passionate about Helping technology businesses hire sales professionals who deliver from day one. 

His company Uvaro, is a tech sales career accelerator. Helping kickstart careers in Tech Sales across North America.

Sister company Kiite is a sales enablement platform offering sales playbooks, templates, and a bunch of free resources and tools to help sales teams better organize, and deliver results.

We discuss how to source and develop sales talent, reduce the churn, reduce ramp up times and improve productivity and sustainability. 

Key Points of our Discussion

• The problem of a lack of training in new hires
• How long it typically takes a new rep to ramp
• The reality of team retention and performance stats
• The cost of making the poor hires and a lack of coaching
• Recruiting methods, the rights and wrongs
• How we should approach hiring and onboarding
• Internships and various other avenues
• Tools for building cheat sheets for your sales team
• Investing in sales enablement

To connect with, and learn more about Joseph you can find him here on LinkedIn

World renowned Corporate Storyteller and Pitch Alchemist Donna Griffit has helped over 1000 startups, corporates and investors raise hundreds of millions of dollars and accelerate their sales with a personal touch and unmatched messaging savvy, in any industry, at any phase.

“The hardest thing for a company is to explain to people what they do and why it matters. I see startups spending tens of hours – if not weeks and months – struggling to get the right words out – and ending up with messages that simply don’t get the desired results. With investors, customers or partners – you only get one shot! You must make it a good one. 

I’m here to help you make it a GREAT one! There’s nothing I love more than helping a company cut through their bits and bytes, cracking the DNA of their story and turning it into captivating messages that wow. Let’s make some messaging magic happen for you.”

- Donna Griffit, Corporate Storyteller

Key Points of our Discussion

• Why there's such a buzz about storytelling
• How and why storytelling was born
• The importance of structuring your messaging
• The “deconstructed user story”
• Building metaphors into your structure and storytelling
• The importance of listening in long complex deals
• Researching your customer before a meeting

To learn more about Donna and her company visit her website https://www.donnagriffit.com/ and you can find her here on LinkedIn