Episode 3: RevUP Sales Skills

Shoul: That shows you’ve done your due diligence, you’ve done some research, you didn’t just go in blind just talking all about yourself. Think about all the amazing information that you’re going to get from those members to then be able to represent your audience. They’re always about your audience and their point of view in relation to what you have to offer.

Shomali: Welcome to Association RevUP, a podcast presented by the Professionals for Association Revenue that will get everyone in your association talking about revenue generation.

I’m your host, Carolyn Shomali.

Whether you’re an association leader or a revenue producer, this podcast series helps you explore a different aspect of your association’s revenue health in an entertaining and time-saving way. In the first two episodes, we learned that effective association business requires a strong culture and an intentional sales leadership approach. Now in episode three, we’re shifting from the why of association business into more of the how as we look at sales skills. Because it doesn’t matter if we know why we are doing something if we don’t have the actual skills to do it.

If you are in sales leadership, this episode will focus on the skills your team needs. And if you’re a revenue producer, it’ll help you benchmark your own sales skills with tips and insights from other producers, leaders and consultants working in association business development.

Today, we are excited to be joined by two senior vice presidents of strategy and operations for MCI, Brittany Shoul and Jay Blankenship. We’ll also hear from Chris Smith of the Family Motor Coach Association, Lori Zoss Kraska of Growth Owl LLC, and storyteller extraordinaire Park Howell.

Welcome to Episode 3 of Association RevUP, as we learn how to rev up sales skills together.

Shomali: Think about your life as a consumer, and consider a recent purchase. Maybe it was a new pair of sneakers, or a phone, or something larger, like a home or a new car. Now think of why you purchased it. Likely, it was to fill a need. Maybe a desire to run more led you to new sneakers, or to take better photos resulted in a new phone. Sneakers, phones, homes and cars are all products, but what you’re actually buying is a solution.

Brittany Shoul of MCI says selling for associations should be thought of the same way.

Shoul: You are not selling ads. You are not selling exhibits and sponsorships. You are not selling corporate membership. You are not selling advertising on a website. You are selling access to a niche specific market of members or event attendees, or access to the marketing list that you specifically represent through the sales role that you have within your association.

That is super important because that’s what makes associations unique and special in what we do. One of the most important things that we talk about and train to is actually having those audience interactions and those audience conversations. The real deep conversation of what are you doing in your day-to-day job every day right now?

Where are you spending your time? What’s the greatest challenge that’s happening within your market or industry? How are you managing and handling that challenge? Are there products, services, solutions or business partners that you’re actively looking for to help you with some of that?

If you think about those key questions, think about all the amazing information that you’re going to get from those members to then be able to represent your audience, your members and their needs to some of the companies that you’re telling about ultimately the product that you have available to sell.

Shomali: Taking this approach will also result in finding new solutions or products all together. That’s what happened to the Family Motor Coach Association, the largest nonprofit RV association in the world. CEO Chris Smith says talking to RV owning members and understanding a very real need they had led to the addition of a unique and profitable product.

Smith: We identified a problem where these people travel and they need to be connected, right? They’re on their computers, they’re on their phones, they need internet access and the Wi-Fi was not good most places. So what we did is we partnered with T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon to offer mobile hotspot plans at very nice discounted rates that these members couldn’t get on their own. We were able to benefit as well financially.

And I think that’s something that I think every association can do is maybe not an obvious direct benefit to your members, but something that they can use, you can tie into what they’re doing and why they’re a member of your organization and how you can help them from a member perspective.

Shomali: Keeping the idea of representing your audience in mind, today’s episode dives into specific sales skills. Some will be tactical, others require taking a creative approach to communication. And we’ll get into artificial intelligence as it relates to changing the behaviors and outcomes of your sales teams. So first up, let’s talk prospecting.

This is an easy place to begin using AI to assist in your sales process. If you aren’t already using AI to prospect, start by devoting the hours you would be spending on prospecting this week to researching AI platforms instead. Shoul says getting on board with AI is imperative to your sales team’s success, and the solution may be closer than you think.

Shoul: Oftentimes when those that potentially aren’t as comfortable with AI hear the terminology, you think, I’ve got to go out and buy something new. I have to invest in a new thing. I have to research a new product. I have to research a new tool.

Now the companies that you’re already working with are using generative AI and they’re plugging that directly into their platforms, which means that they are already doing all of this work in the background. You don’t have to prompt like you did for ChatGPT.ZoomInfo is already doing it for you. If you’re using a tool like ZoomInfo, they’re already helping you source prospects in their platform based on criteria that you’ve entered. If you’re using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, they already have an AI-assisted search function in there that helps account research and lead prospecting move a little bit faster.

Shomali: So using AI to identify and qualify prospects is a big time-saving advantage. But there’s still a human element to prospecting and learning how to identify and connect with your most qualified prospects.

Lori Zoss Kraska is the founder and chief principal of Growth Owl LLC, whose mission is to connect purpose-driven organizations to revenue and resources. She’ll be joining us more in depth in a future episode when we discuss how to rev up corporate connections. But today she emphasizes the importance of connection as a sales skill.

Zoss Kraska: The biggest problem that I see from associations and other traditional nonprofits when you are first reaching out, you say way too much.

Way too much. All right? 400, 500 word emails, that’s not going to do it. My sweet spot for you is keep your emails 200 words max. I like 150 words myself. Who are you? Why is it you chose us to connect with? What did you find out about us you are connecting? And what do you want next? Do you want a meeting? You want a phone call? You want an opportunity to send information? Focus your research on that connection.

A great way to figure out if you are just being a bit too long winded in your emails, go to your sent items and find the emails that didn’t get a response. There is your answer.

Shomali: Short emails guided by three steps. In action, Zoss Kraska says it looks like this.

Zoss Kraska: I saw that you support the XYZ Association and their efforts for this. We have a similar goal and are interested in contacting you about a similar program. That shows you’ve done your due diligence. You’ve done some research. You didn’t just go in blind just talking all about yourself. Make the connection.

Shomali: Need some help writing your email outreach while still keeping these tips in mind? AI can help there too. Here’s MCI’s Jay Blankenship on how he uses copywriting tools in his sales outreach.

Blankenship: You can put a couple of things in the copy AI. It will spit out some examples for you pretty easily. It’s not unlike ChatGPT. The one that I use and depend on like almost on a daily is Grammarly. You can set tone. You can do this across your entire organization. You can do it just for yourself, right? So that’s one of the things I love most about that is you can have a professional tone, a friendly tone, a quick updates to your language you’re using like this. This is too long. It does that really well.

Shomali: We’ve covered the importance of understanding our audience and what need we’re trying to fulfill. We’ve covered prospecting and effective outreach while showing how to incorporate AI into both. Successful prospecting and outreach will help you secure a meeting and knowing how to conduct an effective meeting is the next important skill.

Shoul: Have an agenda for every conversation. It helps your prospect. It helps keep you straight as you start to look at the things that are on your calendar. We coach through managing your sales process through a series of meetings. For us, we’ve got an agenda for each day of the sales process that we coach the team to. This is your first call agenda. I’m having my initial prospect call with you. I’m probably not bringing up my prospectus, my PDF, my PowerPoint, my what have you. This is my discovery agenda. I’m all about you on this call.

So my second call agenda would look a little bit like recap last conversation and confirm where it aligns on your needs, goals and objectives. And then I would go in to review media opportunities that align with those goals.  And then I’ve got that PowerPoint ready. So I’d want to walk them through that on the call and say, great, based on what you shared with me on our last call, I’m going to walk you through slides two, three and five.

Shomali: Agendas keep the meeting on track, and reviewing the agenda at the start gives your counterpart a chance to bring up other items that you’ll either want to include or discuss at a later meeting. Following your time together, continue by scheduling the next meeting and follow up with a summary of what you discussed. AI can help here too, with note taking tools like otter.ai or Fireflies that even plug into your calendar, take notes during your conversation, and provide bulleted summaries of what was discussed.

Shoul: You don’t want to have to sit and take all the notes and then transfer them back into the CRM and it takes time. You invest in a tool like this, it automatically logs your calls and activities to your CRM. Or if you don’t have a CRM, you can use this and come back to those notes. And then it helps you write your follow up emails faster.

Shomali: Sales leaders, here’s where you can use AI to help coach your teams by reviewing the recordings of their sales conversations with them.

And revenue producers, comprehensive notes will give you the ability to refer back to key elements of the conversation before your next meeting. While agendas and note taking are one aspect of effective meetings, great conversations begin with what you are asking and how you’re listening.

Shoul: We ask questions to open up the opportunity to deliver the value propositions. How do I know if you care about my members if I didn’t ask? How do I know if you care about events and if that’s part of your marketing program if I didn’t ask? I often say that when you’re selling advertising and sponsorships and things for associations, it’s legion, it’s thought leadership, it’s brand awareness and exposure. I’m going to try to get that out of you through a series of strategic questions.

Shomali: When we come back…

Howell: Well, in this world of mass amount of information and speed, we do not have time to have our communications being confusing, obfuscated, boring. We need to nail it right off the top.

Shomali: World renowned storyteller Park Howell will show us how to sell more by saying less, a skill that could transform your sales interactions.

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Now back to the show.

Howell: Make no mistake, we’re all in sales. If we’re trying to get someone to buy into our product or service, we’re obviously in sales. If we’re trying to get them to buy into our association, we’re in sales. If we’re trying to get them to buy into an idea we have, an initiative we’re trying to promote, a way of thinking, feeling, doing, our vision, our mission, guess what? We’re in sales.

Shomali: Park Howell is the founder of Business of Story and helps organizations craft their brand story to drive results through the business of storytelling. And according to Gramerly’s 2023 State of Business Communication Report, US companies are failing when it comes to communication. According to the study, US businesses lose up to $1.2 trillion each year due to ineffective communication.

Howell: Guess what? This $1.2 trillion number is reflected in one lost day of productivity per person per week due to miscommunication.

Shomali: Not quite the four-day work week that companies have in mind. The solution for improved communication, according to Howell, is to tap into storytelling, whether it’s across association departments or in your external communications to partners and members.

It really is a matter of science.

Howell: This is where storytelling comes in. It is the ultimate primal technology that we have been using since the beginning of recorded history to make sense out of the madness of being humans. And our brain has one goal and one goal only, and that is survival of our being.

So it is constantly worrying in the background, scanning our environment, trying to determine if there’s a threat out there. Is there an opportunity? Is there a fight or flight situation? And if we confuse it, it is also an amazing energy conservation device. It will shut down. It will not want to burn calories, trying to figure out what the hell we’re talking about. When we confuse our audiences, it’s like really bad user experience. Our audience will make up a story, and it will not be the story we intended.

Shomali: As a sales professional, you want to connect with your prospects and show them why a partnership with your organization would be beneficial to them. But, you don’t know how to make your association stand out from your competitors.Therefore, you should connect through storytelling and learn the ABT framework. There’s a formula to what I just said, and it’s what Howell teaches his clients. Here he is to explain the elements of the ABT, and, but, therefore, framework.

Howell: Let’s go through it to three forces of story. They are agreement, contradiction, and consequence. And our pattern seeking, cause and effect, decision making, buying limbic brain loves this because it spoon feeds meaning to it. It doesn’t have to burn calories. It doesn’t have to wonder what in the world we are saying.

Shomali: Begin with a statement of agreement.

Howell: We have this statement of agreement, which is typically positive. Here’s what we want in our world for tomorrow.

Shomali: Then continue by pointing out what’s complicating that one thing that you want.

Howell: Here’s the contradiction, but here’s the problem. We don’t have it because of this. Then we throw in the complication.This is what triggers the limbic brain. This is essentially the plot twist.

Shomali: Finally, end with a solution that can help you overcome the complication.

Howell: Therefore, the consequence of that is we need to do this together in order for all of us to survive or thrive, whatever that might be. That’s where the end, but therefore place these three forces of story of agreement, contradiction, consequence.

Shomali: That’s it. Three parts of a story that can help you connect to your audience in meaningful ways. Remember what Brittany Shoul said about connecting with an audience at the beginning of the episode? It’s not about what you’re selling, but it’s about what your audience needs. Howell reiterates this.

Howell: The ABT is not about connecting to your story. It’s about connecting to your audience’s story. They’re not about your brand, your association. They’re not even about your offering. They’re always about your audience and their point of view in relation to what you have to offer them. Make no mistake, you’re going to get to your offering in this, but you don’t lead with it. You always want to start with your number one audience. What do they want relative to what you have to offer? That gets them nodding in agreement saying, gee, you’ve done your discovery. You understand me and you appreciate what I want. Then you demonstrate your empathy because you, in the but statement, describe why they don’t have it. Then the therefore is pretty obvious. It’s your CTA.

How will you help them get it? How will you uniquely equip to help them get it?

Shomali: Still unsure if you can sell more by saying less? Consider a moment in our nation’s history, the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery during the middle of the Civil War. The featured speaker of the day was former Harvard College president, Edward Everett. Everett spoke for over two hours, but another speaker’s two-minute remarks that followed Everett’s speech are some of the most famous in our nation’s history. Everett would later write to President Abraham Lincoln, saying, quote, I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as close to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes. And Howell wonders, could part of the speech’s appeal be traced to the ABT framework?

Howell: The Gettysburg Address is a perfect and, but therefore, the overall structure is an ABT, and then Lincoln embedded two other ABTs in it to help progress the story along. Essentially, it says we were once a great and mighty nation, but now we’re engaged in a great civil war. Therefore, we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, and here’s what we need to do about it. Agreement, contradiction, action.

Shomali: Practice the ABT the next time you write an email to a potential partner and see if your outreach improves. Here’s a quick recap of the sales skills we discussed today. Begin by understanding your audience. Research the ways artificial intelligence can improve your sales environment and start with prospecting. Ensure your outreach is targeted and brief. Secure meetings that are powered by efficient agendas. What questions are you asking? And more importantly, how are you listening? And finally, are you focusing on your audience’s story or your own? Discover how the ABT framework can help you rise above the noise of all other communication. It will improve your interactions with partners, members, and even colleagues. So based on what you learned today, how would you assess your own association? And what will you commit to in order to improve? Join us next week as we explore a specific part of revenue generation, association partnerships.

Figoten: We had partners that literally thought that their investment with us was a donation and not a business decision. So we had to work really hard in changing the narrative, and that was a key component for our growth.

Shomali: My thanks to Brittany Shoul and Jay Blankenship of MCI, Lori Zoss Kraska, Chris Smith, and Park Howell for their insights into today’s episode. Most of what you heard today came from last year’s RevUP Summit, the in-person conference for the Professionals for Association Revenue. We’re gathering again this November 20th and 21st in Annapolis, Maryland for RevUP 2024. And if you’ve been enjoying this Association RevUP podcast, come join us in Annapolis. Use the code PARPOD, that’s P-A-R-P-O-D, when you register for a special discount for podcast listeners. Visit revupsummit.org and subscribe to the PAR Newsletter to receive business tips and insights for association pioneers.

Thanks for revving up with me today. I’m Carolyn Shomali and I’ll see you next time.