Personalize your Pitch | Carson Heady | Engati Engage

In this episode of Engati Engage, Author of Best-Selling series, “Birth of a Salesman,” Carson Heady, helps you personalize your pitch with the power of personalization. Stay tuned, this one’s a game-changer.

Carson Heady is the Author of the Best-Selling book “Birth of a Salesman” series and is consistently ranked in Top 20 Sales Gurus in the world. He is also ranked as one of the Top 50 Sales Authors on LinkedIn and ranks #1 in 9 senior leadership and sales roles across 4 companies including Microsoft and AT&T. Carson is also recognized for starting and leading $50+ million annual operations

Personalize your Pitch with Carson Heady – Video interview

We will be summarizing our conversation with Carson in this article, but if you’d rather watch it, here’s our video:

Summary of our interview on Personalize your Pitch

This section of the article contains a summary of our interview with Carson Header.

But, if you’d rather hear him speak, the podcast is embedded right below this section.

You believe in a philosophy about the Holy sales trinity. Could you please tell us more about it?

According to Carson, there are three parts to the sales transaction:

1) The Customer

2) The Company

3) You

And you must take all three elements into consideration. Any sort of imbalance immediately becomes a red flag. Carson sees deals being made with a missing part, and guess what? The companies suffer. It is vital to understand these three parts and the gaps that exist.

How do you see conversational agents or AI and automation playing the role of an aid to an organization’s salespeople?

Conversational agents, AI, and automation’s roles are vital in an organization. Carson sees this happening more and more. He has observed bots engaging with customers and routing their needs at the front-end. Especially right now, during the pandemic. The employment of bots alleviates the sales and customer service teams. They’re able to answer queries in real-time, which increases customer satisfaction.

Artificial Intelligence’s role is to score leads and to present recommended actions based on customer interactions. You can see the value of data with Artificial Intelligence.

Data is not only paramount now, but it will only become more so as we continue.

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Do you think automated bots affect the decision of a buyer? Do you think buyers want human figures to be present?

If there’s one lesson you want to learn from Carson, it is to always keep the customer at the heart of what you’re doing. Closing a sale is a delicate decision. So if you want to implement a Chatbot, you have to think about a few factors. One of them being, how quickly a query be escalated to a human? And for what circumstance?

The important takeaway is to give customers the opportunity to interact with a human. If a situation requires the human touch, give the Chatbot that capability. Structure this ability. If not, you could face some negative scenarios.

With bots being available 24/7, there are situations where they can augment the experience.

Remember that customer-centricity is the key to success.

How do you solve the problem of quality leads in a B2B sales cycle? Is the practice of getting data sources and cold calling dead?

Sales is a number’s game. It’s all about probability and odds. Carson believes cold-calling isn’t dead. It has evolved- it’s got a different look, depending on the target.

Sometimes directly calling people can be effective, it depends. It’s all about meeting customers where they want to be met. Sure, we can call, but you don’t want to stick to one method. You have to keep changing it. Keep personalizing it for each lead. Why not use social media? It’s the perfect place to gather more information so you can go in as an informed seller. That’s where cold calling has shifted.

There are a variety of ways to connect with customers, but always keep them at the centre. Personalize your content for them. Share content thoughtfully. Encourage engagement to gather great leads, and make conversation. That’s the ultimate goal- Nurturing strong relationships and leads will help you win sales.

What are your thoughts on inbound vs outbound marketing? How big of a role does Social media plan in marketing?

Carson believes you must spend time in both. Inbound channels allow inbound folds to bring in the right people. From an inbound perspective, Carson urges you to ensure their mechanisms receive leads. To then act on those leads by being actionable and responsive. If their machine is not equipped, their leads will flee. We live in an era of inattentive folks who want responses FAST. If they don’t receive them, they’ll wander elsewhere for them. Ensure your machine catches the leads and ACTS.

Outbound marketing is all about crafting the message. It’s about asking “what net do I want to cast?” The probability is lower, but Carson knows how to fix that. He urges you to look for ways to build a community around what they’re doing. And to make their copy as enticing as possible. The big takeaway is to be communicative, informed, and present.

Carson believes that there is a place for both. He has seen both work, but know when to use what.

CRM now has become a legacy, where do you see technology to support the customer channel evolving?

Right now, everything is about data and insight. Carson believes CRM systems are not going away soon. In fact, CRM systems are challenging themselves to add more value. To have more connection points, to have more plugins. To interact with other platforms in a variety of ways.

CRMs should aim to be more interconnected. They should become platforms that provide real-time results, and insights. And should allow us to track the customer journey. Data is the heart of everything and relevant data gives us impactful insights.

The direction that technology for the customer channel is heading towards is becoming more personal, connected, and data-centric. Its focus is to add value to customers.

Carson personally loves CRM tools that are inter-connected. A tool that connects his email to his calendar, to schedule his meetings. Then the calendar can show who he’s meeting, and their LinkedIn profiles. It’s helpful to the seller and saves a lot of time.

Technology is only going to improve. And it’s going to improve the seller’s experience, as well as the customer’s. The more knowledge you have, the more empowered you become. But with great power, comes great responsibility. There has to be someone who has access to all this data to make better decisions, to have better outreach, and to make better moves.

The sales arena has transformed but keeping customers at the heart of it will never change. Always personalize your pitch, and keep customers at the centre.

You’re a best selling author of the series titled ‘Birth of a Salesman’. What advice in your book do you wish you’d received while you were starting your career?

Three things, according to Carson. Be humble, persevere, and be a team player.

Any other thoughts that you’d like to share with our viewers?

Carson emphasizes keeping customers at the heart of the process. The process must be customer-centric. And constantly evolve your process. Times will keep changing, but remember that you are your best product. And have fun!

Keep the customer at the heart of the process

Carson Heady says that customer-centricity is the key to success. Connect with your customers with an Engati Chatbot today. No credit card needed.

Spotify Podcast of the interview on Personalizing your Pitch with Carson Heady

Engati Engage

We hope you’ve gained a lot of insights from Carson Heady on how to personalize your pitch. Engati Engage will be back with a new expert in a new interview soon!

Find Carson Heady

If you’ve gained any value from this interview, imagine the insights you could gain by following Carson. Find him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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