Guest: Susan Finch

In this episode Chris Beall discusses the common mistakes made by CEOs when seeking funding and how venture capitalists (VCs) make their decisions. Chris explains that VCs are in the business of pattern matching, meaning they compare the characteristics of a company seeking funding to those of successful companies they have previously funded. However, this approach can lead to the exclusion of companies that do not fit the pattern. He uses his own company, ConnectAndSell, as an example, explaining that his company's reputation and the age of its founders did not match the pattern favored by VCs, but the company was still successful. He also notes that VCs often encourage companies to spend their funding on headcount, specifically sales development representatives (SDRs), who set meetings for account executives. Beall calls this a "comfort" for VCs, but emphasizes that it may not always be the most effective use of funding. Join Susan Finch as she takes the host’s chair with Chris as her guest for this episode, “Conversations Over Headcount: What VCs Should be Counting.”
 
Full episode transcript below:

In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall, and Susan Finch discuss their experience using ChatGPT to write a book based on their podcast, and the benefits of using AI to create content. They delve into the limitless possibilities of machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, and how they are transforming various industries. Chris and Susan also share their insights on the process and the excitement of seeing the AI learn and improve. Chris and Susan talk about how ChatGPT can generate various versions of a prompt, and the different approaches they took to refine their requests for better results. They also reflect on the human-like interactions they had with ChatGPT, and the Eliza effect that makes people treat the AI as if it were a person. Ultimately, they highlight the efficiency and creativity that AI can bring to content creation, and the potential for using ChatGPT to write more books in the future. Tune in to hear their fascinating discussion on the intersection of AI and writing in this episode, "How ChatGPT is Writing a Book: The AI and Human Collaboration."
 
Full episode transcript below:

These sales experts agree, that there is more than one approach to a successful sales campaign. We're sure Chris Beall has some dark childhood story about alternate ways of skinning a cat, although he's never done it, of course. These discussions include modifications and redirections in the buying cycle, even though the basics are still there: awareness, consideration and decision. Join Corey and Chris in this episode of snippets from episodes about the buying cycle. This features Oren Klaff, Jason Beck, Gerhard Gschwandtner, Susan Finch, Dan McClain, Brad Ferguson, and our own Chris Beall and Corey Frank. To hear the entire episodes features, visit this collection:
https://marketdominanceguys.com/category/buying-cycle/

Driving revenue is what keeps a startup company in the hands of its founders, instead of in the grasp of a venture capital firm. That’s what Canyon Ventures Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is all about: teaching founders how to sell their own product or service to get that revenue rolling in. Robert Vera, founding director of this Grand Canyon University center, is proud of the success of the founders he has been mentoring. During this second part of their two-part conversation, our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall, and Corey Frank talk with Robert about the importance of his program. “It’s only by selling that we learn how our business is really working,” explains Chris. Those selling conversations with prospects give startup founders the information necessary to fine-tune their products and services so they can dominate their market. Here on Market Dominance Guys, we try to do much the same thing: For 100 episodes now, Chris, Corey, and their guests have helped our listeners finetune their businesses so they can dominate their markets. At the end of today’s episode, Chris and Corey applaud a couple of stand-out guests who have generously shared their insights on this podcast. Like Robert Vera’s program, Market Dominance Guys is also — just as the title of this episode states — “A Finishing School for Future CEOs.”
Episodes mentioned by Chris and Corey as two of their favorites:
EP7: Don‘t Make the Spiders Angry
EP75: The Secret of Her Success
EP76: I Heart No Shows!
About Our Guest
Robert Vera is a bestselling author and the founding director of Canyon Ventures Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.

How do you improve your cold calling skills if your present company isn’t providing any sales training? Train yourself! Until you can get with the right company, borrow ideas from the best sales experts you can find (many have been guests on this podcast), take improv classes, join Toastmasters, and keep your mind open to absorb what works. Our Market Dominance Guy Corey Frank is talking in more depth about training yourself during this second part of his conversation with Susan Finch, president of Funnel Media and Funnel Radio. He advises listeners that salespeople should fall in love with their craft — not the product they’re selling. How do you do that? Care about the potential value of the meeting for your prospect and remember the “why” of what you’re doing. And what skills should you hone? Learn what moves prospects to make a decision, create a well-written script and adhere exactly to it, use the tone of voice that elicits the response you want, and most importantly, leave your own mood and ego behind when you make a cold call. Train yourself to remember that it’s not about you. When you place a call, it’s showtime!
Listen to the first half of this interview here:
Are You Laying Brick, or Making $12 an Hour?

What good is a salesperson with five years' experience if they've never been trained and have a hopscotch career of many short stops at companies that never invested in training their sales teams? Corey tells the old story, "A guy walks past a construction site and sees five people laying brick. And he goes to the first guy and says, "Hey, what are you doing?" He's like, "Building a wall." Goes to the second guy, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "Making 12 bucks an hour." Listen to the rest as Corey Frank and Susan Finch, president of Funnel Media Group and Funnel Radio, go on without Chris Beall this week and talk about the concept behind Branch49, a sales acceleration software and service that uses AI to score leads based on their preferred contact channels, while also dedicating a sales team to perform top-of-funnel and full-stack revenue generation. They discuss the obligation that companies have to ensure sales professionals are trained correctly and with the good of the prospect and customer at the forefront, how to undo bad sales habits, and how to help sales professionals who were never trained prepare to work for honorable companies who value sales skills. This is part one of a two-part interview.

Over the years, how salespeople make an initial contact for a sale has changed. In these modern times, it has come down to a choice between making a cold phone call or sending a cold email. It seems to be a matter of choice. However, if you’re trying to break through a prospect’s initial fear of being sold to so that you can engender that level of trust necessary to set a meeting or make a sale, which approach should you put YOUR trust in? The human voice? Or a digital communication?
Today, our Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, talks with podcast producer Susan Finch about this very question. As CEO of ConnectAndSell, Chris is an impassioned believer in phone conversations first as the most successful tool for setting appointments. Why? Because with your voice, you can employ timbre, tone, pacing, and emotion. In a one-on-one conversation, you can pause for a response, share humor when appropriate, or convey that you understand the other person’s situation. However carefully crafted, an email message can never do as a good a job at interacting with another human being. In pursuing the all-important goal of engendering trust with a prospect, initial phone conversations win, hands down! Listen in to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode as Chris shares his well-honed opinions on “How to Warm Up a Cold Communication.”

The pandemic has certainly shown the general public that scarcity or abundance of products can have an effect on people’s emotions. Scarcity increases desire — whether you desperately need the product or not. Abundance decreases desire, because there’s plenty of what you might need in the future. This is true for the sales process too. When you know that you’re going to have another conversation with a prospect, then you can relax during the initial conversation. The tension will disappear from your voice, because you’re not pushing for the sale: you know you have another chance at a future date, and you can relax while you gather information and begin establishing trust with your prospect. There’s no need to hang on and desperately keep the call going; you set up an appointment for the next conversation, and then you end the call. In other words, you “make yourself scarce.” And right there, you’ve introduced the element of scarcity to your prospect’s emotions and, in doing so, increased their desire for more information about what your company offers.