3 Things We Learned From Dan Tyre's Sales Bootcamp

We recently completed HubSpot’s Sales Pipeline Bootcamp, and it has changed our mindset when it comes to helping prospects. Here are our top 3 take-aways.

As well as the Growth Software itself, HubSpot offers lots of support to professionals working in Marketing, Sales or Service roles, and as a business that covers all three of these areas we were keen to embrace a new opportunity for learning.

The Pipeline Generation Bootcamp is run by Dan Tyre, HubSpot's Sales Director, who offers the program once a quarter exclusively to partners. Seats are very limited. You have to apply for the program, commit to attending the sessions, and follow through with the homework and activities it takes to succeed.

Every agency on the bootcamp becomes a 'lion in training', starting as a cub and graduating as a confident lion. 

For a small agency, committing the time to a bootcamp like this was not easy but for our sales and growth, it was worth it!

Here are our three main takeaways from the eight week course, use them to transform your own sales (or admissions) approach:

Make calls easier with a 'pause, pause, pause'

This is all about gauging your prospect's mood when they hear from you. Instead of starting the call by going straight into who you are, why you are calling and expecting your prospects to be receptive to this, use a pause... and then another and another... to really listen:

"Hi -----, this is Gemma from HubGem..." (pause, pause pause)

This pause allows you to gauge the reaction which is either "Oh, hi Gemma!" or "Who?!"

Then you adapt your response to acknowledge their mood, which is usually one of the following:

• Disinterested/annoyed - in which case you follow up with something that acknowledges this: "Ah, sorry, it seems I have caught you at a bad time. I was calling about XYZ... when is a better time to call back?"
• Receptive - this is the opportunity to establish a real connection and demonstrate that you want to help: "I can see that you downloaded our content planning worksheets, did you find what you were looking for? Can I help?"

In our experience, the 'pause, pause, pause' does not come naturally. When making a sales call, you instinctively want to talk quickly to get your message across whilst they are listening - something often driven by a fear or rejection. But for a small conscious change like a simple pause, you can make a real difference to your prospect's first impressions of you.

Always helping instead of selling

Remember why you are picking up that phone or sending that email, you want to help. By being genuinely helpful, you will succeed and your personality will shine through.

Nobody wants to make cold calls. If you adapt an inbound selling approach, you only reach out to those who you already know are engaged or who would definitely benefit from your services. Then you call to offer your help.

This requires a bit of research before you even pick up the phone. Take a look at your prospect's website, their LinkedIn profile and whether they have been accessing content from your website. Then identify what their pain points could be, your prospect may share these with you on the call.

Be happy to share some recommendations and provide help from the beginning - by being a genuinely nice and helpful person, you can build trust with your prospect as they understand that you have their best interests at heart.

Treat your sales time as sacred

If you find calling prospects hard or even scary, then you are likely to always find something else to do. Everyone is busy these days, there are always welcome distractions to tempt us away from tasks that we want to be excused from, but effective sales = growth for your organisation so it's time to prioritise these calls.

Block out time in your diary and treat it as sacred. Aim for a minimum of 30 minutes three times per week, and even more if possible! This is something that made a huge impact for us, we have set aside one hour every single day for the past eight weeks and the results are speaking for themselves.

Embrace an inbound approach to selling

Think of all of the spam that lands in your inbox, only to be swiftly deleted every day. Inbound selling is the opposite of that.

It’s designed to complement your inbound marketing strategy. It’s about making connections and earning trust by making a sincere effort to listen to people and personalise every message. It's about helping them, not selling to them.

When you make that connection, make sure you continue the conversation with the same emphasis on helping at every step of your journey with your prospect.

The Pipeline Generation Bootcamp taught us lots, and changed our approach to sales. It's about being motivated to pick up the phone because if you truly want growth, you have to want it bad enough to do the work every day.