If you’re interested in sales, there are standard tools you will likely run into. This walks through the basics.
Here’s a transcript of the episode or you can listen via the link below.
Transcript with minimal editing:
Hello and welcome everyone in to the Sales Yak Podcast, a show where we seek to show you whether sales is right for you by exposing you to the wide variety of sales environments that are out there today. Whether you’re getting into sales, considering sales, or in sales already and wondering if it’s the right career path, listen in as we discover different aspects of different sales roles and help you decide whether you should stay in it for the long term. Don’t forget to check out our sister show, the Career Yak Podcast, where we have interviews with different entrepreneurs and professionals from different industry, including sales related content. And if you like what you hear today and value what you hear, consider supporting the show. Link will be in the show notes as well. Alright, so the verse of the day is 1 Timothy 1:5. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned. Good verse. So on today’s episode, I want to talk about if you want to work in sales, should what technologies should you know or will you need to know if you’re gonna be successful and want to stay in sales and wanna work in sales long term? Um or you know what’s gonna be helpful for you to be aware of if you want to start getting into the sales uh whatever type of sales role, but the sales world, if you will. So um first and foremost, if you’re not familiar, you will need to know or learn how to use a CRM. So CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager. So think the big name in the CRM world is Salesforce, that is what I use currently. I’ve used it at a past company, they’re obviously a large successful company, and uh many many companies use Salesforce. So, what a customer relationship manager does is if you don’t know, um, is it helps manage your accounts, your uh contacts within those accounts, um, and separate them into who’s your customer, who’s your prospect. So a customer would be someone you’re doing business with, a prospect would be someone your uh that’s on your radar that you want to do business with, a target um client, a target company, and then also store multiple details of information and data for each of those accounts or companies. So say I am selling um, I don’t know, uh brooms to house cleaning companies, then I need to maybe track what are the biggest house cleaning companies. So how can I know that? Well, I’ll use my customer relationship manager to put you know Billy’s cleaning and then how many employees do they have that I know of, or is there a range, and how much uh annual revenue do they have, or is there a range, you know, ten to twenty million dollars or whatever it may be, and uh you know their address, uh, and then within that put who are the contacts, who’s the owner, who’s the office manager, who’s the CFO, who’s the operations manager, whatever it may be. The point is you’re gonna need to uh learn how to use one of these uh customer relationship manager softwares in order to be successful in sales, because within that, then you can also track your call activity, track your email activity. A lot of these uh integrate with different email systems, whether it’s Gmail or Outlook or whatever it may be, and so that you can tell, hey, I call I made 50 calls this week. Um, you know, I’m not gonna call Billy’s cleaning today because I called him yesterday, because I can see that activity logged within the system. So again, this is probably all you know very, very uh unnecessary information for someone that’s been in sales, but if you’re looking to get into sales or new to the you know, just getting out of school or something, you know, you’re gonna need to learn how to use tools like this if you’re in sales at all. Also, within that, they’re gonna manage your you’re gonna manage your opportunities, your pipeline, um, the deals that are on the table that you’re trying to close, and get uh an order, a contract signed, and things like that. So that’s kind of your source of truth as a salesperson. Other popular CRMs out there are NetSuite, I’ve used NetSuite, um HubSpot, there’s some you know Zoho, I’ve used Zoho in the past, and I’ve talked about Zoho on the sh this show and my other show as well. That’s what I use to manage my as I if I search for jobs or manage even podcast guests and their information, things like that, as far as you know, tracking uh just emails so that I can email them back and invite them on the show, things like that. So, um, again, those are just a few. There’s plenty out there. Some of them are unique to different industries, but long story short, you’re gonna need to learn how to use a system like this if you want to be in sales and if you want to be successful. So, also in sales, you may run across a company may have access to different uh informational tools where um you have access to different companies information and then you can um search and filter and build reports, things like that, so that you can um create different categories, such as you know, I want to see companies in the Boston area that are in construction and are fifty to a hundred million in revenue. You know, you can filter different things like that. Um, so like a tool I’ve used is called Zoom Info. Um so it’s you know online tool where it basically gives you different uh levels of access to companies and their information and then um also contacts within the company. What I would be I would encourage salespeople to be open-minded as far as sometimes the accuracy of some of this information, because sometimes they’ll have a contact in there and you’ll call and then you’ll rely on this and you’ll ask for Bob, and Bob will have retired, and then you’re gonna have to say, you know, you’re gonna have to take the next step and say, Oh, you know, who did who replaced him? Can you point me in the right direction? Here’s what I’m looking for, things like that. So obviously, you’re gonna have to do your due diligence if maybe there’s some inaccurate information. Um people use LinkedIn, people use uh LinkedIn sales navigator, things like that. You’re you’re probably gonna run across some sort of tool if you’re gonna get into or are in sales where your company may have uh access to a database type environment that gives you information on companies that maybe you don’t already have in your own CRM, maybe you do, and then you can compare it against each other, things like that. So these kind of tools are good for prospecting purposes and verifying information and trying to see you know how many accounts are in my territory that I can ideally call on, things like that. Another tool you may have access to if you’re getting into a sales role is a uh email marketing or email sequencing tool, such as outreach, or I know there’s other ones that are maybe not as uh sequence related. So, real quick, let me explain what a sequence is for those of you that don’t know. So, a sequence is a basically a string of emails, sometimes automated, sometimes manual, and it just gives you different tasks to do. Sometimes you can incorporate calls into them as well, but a sequence is basically a a set of say, for example, five steps where you’re gonna set up uh an initial email to a prospect or customer, and then you know, five days later you’re gonna send them another email, and then three days later you’re gonna send her uh uh different follow-up reply, and some of these again you can automate. So within a tool like Outreach, which is a software that specializes in sequences, then you can create these automated templates and different steps to send to different prospects and customers so that you can have you know some automation built into your sales activities and your prospecting plan. Um, you know, I’ve used this to my advantage to help build awareness and also you know, just again try to get prospects I think look good on paper to try to respond and see if they actually need something. This is in addition to me making cold calls and doing manual emails and reaching out in different ways, things like that. So I incorporate it as a whole into my kind of overall prospecting efforts. Um, but again, the outreach is a name you’ll hear maybe. Um, there are other ones out there, um, I think Apollo.io as well. Anyways, that or Apollo sequence. Um I I think I got that wrong initially, but you may also run into just um also email marketing tools such as uh constant contact is one, um, you know, MailChimp is another one, things like that, depending on what your company has or pays for, gives you access to whatever it may be. So those are those are tools that are you know meant to be helpful so that you can create uh methods and processes behind emailing customers and prospects. And then obviously, last but not least, whether you’re in sales or not in sales, you’re gonna want to have at least some sort of background in the whole Microsoft Office suite. I mean, usually you’re gonna run into mostly like a Microsoft Office type setting. Uh, actually, in my current role, we don’t use Microsoft Office, we use the whole um Google Drive, Google Docs, all the the G Suite, I think they call it, is the official um name for the package. But so instead of uh Microsoft Excel it would be Google Sheets. So I actually don’t have access right now to like Microsoft Excel or Word, which is kind of um a first time for me. But anyways, um whether it’s Excel, Word, PowerPoint, uh things like that, you want to make sure that you have some sort of you know framework of how those things work. Obviously, you can always learn more, um, but again, at a high level, probably Excel and just uh simple Word documents, things like that. You’re gonna want to know how to use those tools, and then also just know how to use and work with Gmail or Outlook or some other email service where you’re managing your calendar and you’re you know creating different uh tricks within your email, um, you know, how to set up your folders, how to create automatic replies, things like that. That sometimes they just take time if you’re not familiar, or again it’s pretty self-explanatory in most cases, but make sure you you use that to the your advantage, and then a lot of times you can set up integrations between you know your email service and your CRM, and then have it so that when you email out uh you know a pro to a prospect and their info is in the CRM, then it’ll automatically track that. So, again, usually if you’re gonna jump on board with the sales team at a certain company, and they will walk you through how they set things up and what they use and best practices. But again, these are good things to know, and good things to know that you will be using if you’re getting into sales for the first time. So, anyways, hope this helps. And if there’s any salespeople listening, um I would love to know uh what other tools you think are essential to either um know prior to getting into sales or that you will need to know if you want to exceed and excel and progress and get promoted within the sales world. Uh please let me know because I’d be curious to just find out what other people think. Email me at careeryakpod@gmail.com. Send me an email, I’d be super curious to know what you think. Thanks again for listening. And again, if you like what you hear and value this content, consider supporting the show. Link will be in the show notes. Don’t forget to check out our other podcasts, the Career Yak Podcast. Link will be in the show notes or search career yak wherever you listen to podcasts.
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