Personalization, Creativity, & Passion in Sales w/ Tyler Lindley

#64: Listen as Tyler Lindley, Sales Coach and Host of The Sales Lift Podcast, talks about why passion, creativity, and personalization are so important in your sales approach. He goes over why sales is H2H (human-to-human), whether sales is an art or a science, and how video personalization can help your cold emails stand out.

Show Notes

Full Episode Cliff Notes

Why Passion Is Important (0:58)

The essence of sales, creativity, and personalization is what we do as human beings. We hear a lot about B2B and B2C sales, but never H2H or "human to human" sales. 

Think about how you communicate with your friends, your family, somebody that you're trying to date for the first time or your wife of 20 years, your husband or friend. It's okay to be human. And that's what makes us different in sales.

If you're not passionate about what you're selling, you might need to find something else to sell because creativity is fueled by passion.

If you don't have that passion, you have to get it. Start by asking yourself, "why?" Why do you do this every day?

Turn that "why" into your passion and turn that passion into creativity in your sales outreach. You need to make sure that you are focused on that passion and creativity because you're going to come across as bland and authentic without it.

Focus on what you can do today to bring passion and creativity to your outreach.

Finding The Passion (4:19)

Sales is a math game. In that regard, you've got to make sure you're doing the right amount of inputs to get to the output. But sales is also an art. 

The only way to get better at that art is to practice it every single day. 

You have to understand your prospect. A lot of being creative and personal starts with understanding your prospect. 

So you need to get into their shoes. You need to understand what their world looks like.

​​We have to understand that our prospects are getting hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of emails—all the time. 

Many of them are coming from sales reps, just like you, and the bland emails may not even end up in the inbox. And it starts with the subject line. 

Personalizing Video Selling and Cold Calls (12:22)

If you're not selling with video in this day and age, you're falling behind. Prospects respond to video because it's personalized and creative.

You want a good background, good lighting, and a strong voice. You want it clear, concise, and to the point.

Use those videos to your advantage. You can even create generic versions of these videos and send them to prospects. They don't all have to be personalized, but you want to make as many of them as personalized as possible. 

Everyone should have a script going into a cold call because it's critical to have a game plan.

And it's not just the words in the cold call script, but how you deliver them. So you are the punctuation of the script; just don't go too crazy with it. 

The difference between standing out and not is getting that email getting opened. 

What is Outbound Sales Lift?

Explore the human side of sales and business with host Tyler Lindley. Leaders in their field share a dose of inspiration through stories about life and business. Sales professionals provide tactical tips you can put into practice today. It all comes together to help you chart your path forward.

Achieve your goals on your terms — get inspired by stories from extraordinary people, elevate your performance with the latest outbound tactics, and find the lift you need to take your career to the next level.

The Sales Lift Podcast
Episode #64
Personalization, Creativity, & Passion in Sales w/ Tyler Lindley
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley
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[00:00:00] Tyler: Hey Sales Lift Nation it's your host Tyler Lindley. Today. It's a solo episode with just me, Tyler Lindley, and I am so excited to be chatting with you today about creativity and personalization in sales. It's going to be an absolute fire episode. Hope you're excited before we dive in. I want to let you know that if you are looking for.

With your sales process, your sales skills leveling up your team. Reach out to us here at the sales lift, you can visit [e-mail]. That's the T H E D sales SLES lift lft.com. And we can help you build your sales. Operating system for scale can also be reached via [e-mail].

That's [e-mail]. If you need help with your sales process, leveling up your team sales skills, be sure to reach out. We are happy to help you here at the sales lift. Looking forward to it. Let's dive back in to creativity and personalization in sales. This is a topic. So jazzed up about, I hope you are too, because this is, to me, the essence of sales, creativity, and personalization is what we do as human beings.

You hear a lot about B2B and B to C no sales is H to H. Human to human. That's what makes us sales reps. Eventually the robots will probably take over our job, but not today, as long as we can be human. And that's what makes us unique in our sales roles is the ability to be human. And it's something that I want everyone to work on.

It's something that you've got to work on. You've got to work on being human. We don't just want to mass blast out this template. Generic, bland. Garbage. Why do we even need humans to do that? Humans are about making connections with other humans and really that's what we're going to talk about today is how can we be more creative and personal in our outreach?

Because that's, what's going to break through the noise. That is what our prospects are looking for is the ability to be. So I really want you to think about that today. And we're going to talk about a lot of ideas that are really jazzed up about whether you're reaching out via email, your LinkedIn, social direct messages, phone calls, voicemails, text messages.

I want you to be human. Think about how you communicate with your friends, your family, somebody that you're trying to date for the first time or your wife of 20 years, your husband or friend, anybody be human, just like you are with this. The human it's okay to be human. And that's what makes us different in sales.

That's what makes us unique. That's what makes us cut through the noise in sales. So let's talk about that element of creativity. Your creativity is an interesting word. It really means being. Passionate. We're passionate. You wake up in the morning and I'm passionate about what I'm talking about today.

And it starts right there. If you're not passionate about what you're selling, you might need to find something else to sell because creativity is fueled by passion. So you need to make sure that you are. Fire for whatever it is that you're selling and on any given day. So understand that it starts with that passion.

If you don't have that passion, you need to find it, figure out what is your personal, why, what is your personal, why start with why? Great book. That is what you need to do every single day in sales. What's your one. Start with that. Why every day, turn that Y into your passion and turn that passion into creativity in your sales outreach, you need to make sure that you are focused on that passion and creativity, because without it, you're going to come across as bland going to come across as in authentic.

And it's just not going to resonate with your prospects. So you need to focus on what can I do today to stay. Out what can I do today to bring passion and creativity in my outreach? How can I be more creative and personal and effective in that communication? Because typically the sales rep who can do that is the sales rep that wins nine times out of 10.

Now in sales, sometimes we talk about this idea of is sales in art or science. It's interesting. I think the answer is. Both. Why do you have to choose sales is definitely a science because the math matters. Okay. Folks, the math matters. You got to make the right amount of calls. You got to have the right amount of pipeline, but each stage things are dropping off so that you can end up with hitting quota, hitting your numbers.

Sales is a math game. In that regard, you've got to make sure you're doing the right amount of inputs to get to the output. That you want to, that's a given and that sense sales is a science, there's a series of steps. We got to follow. There's a series of, there's a definite number of inputs that we need to put in to get the outputs that we want.

However, sales is also an art. Why is sales and art? Because art is the creativity that I was just talking about. That's the art of it. The art of reaching out to someone that we don't know and trying to engage them. With a unique message that stands out the art of following up creatively, the art of using video in our sales process to be more human, the art of using less words, using the right amount of words in an email or a direct message on.

How can you cut through the noise? How can you be concise? How can you be creative and personal? It is an art. And the only way to get better at that art is to practice is to do it every single day. Wake up thinking about what is my buyer thinking about today? Where are my buyers? Where are my prospects?

What's going on in their world? What problems are they facing right now? How is the industry changing? How is the world changing the situation? How can I reach out with value? How can I add value? How can I educate my prospect? What can I do to give, give, give Gary V likes to call it jab, jab, jab. Before I throw in that right hook, before I asked for that meeting, before I asked for the contract, before I asked for the sale, I've got to get.

And how do you give, you've got to give, because you have to be involved in the game. You have to understand your prospect. A lot of being creative and personal starts with understanding your prospect. So you need to get into their shoes. I know that you might not have worked in their shoes. You might not have been the VP of marketing or sales or it, or whatever other manager C-suite title that you're reaching out to.

You might not have done that yourself. But you need to understand what their world looks like. And you need to understand your prospect, understand your buyer, ask your colleagues, go ask your buyers, go interview your existing customers, go figure out what does their world look like? What words do they use?

What pain are they experiencing? And then that is the foundation of what you can use to be creative because you understand now who they are. And now I can cut through the noise of templates and generic BA. Cut through the noise. That is the art of sales understand and then be creative and then personalize.

That is how we can stand out. And we can stand out with that personalization in a variety of different ways. We talked about a few of them in a minute ago, but emails are important. Everyone uses email in sales and we probably will for a long, long time until email dies. I don't think emails ever. Emails.

We have to understand that our prospects are getting hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of emails. All the time. And a lot of them are coming from sales reps, just like you and the emails that are boring and bland may not even end up in the inbox. They might get caught by the spam filters, but they certainly don't get clicked on.

And it starts with the subject line. The subject line needs to be short, sweet, and personal. I like subject lines that are personal to the prospect, bring up something personal to them because all prospects care about them. All prospects care about themselves. So you have to be personal and it starts with the subject line.

Don't bury the lead, put it in the subject line. When you read an article, they try to put the most interesting thing in the title, because that's, what's going to get you to click on that article or read that first line. Use the subject line, create. Use the subject line creatively and use personalization.

The subject line. Let's talk about finding that personalization. I want you to be a detective when you are trying to find that personalization about your prospect. Be a detective you want to scour that LinkedIn profile scour, the LinkedIn profile. I want you looking for what's unique. Find the fun stuff.

Find the unique stuff. If people have an updated profile. They've got something unique in there. One thing I like to use if someone's got their GPA in their profile, use the GPA because if they put their GPA in their profile, that means they're proud of it. If they put that they run marathons. That means they're proud of that.

If they put that they volunteer at the local non-profit on the weekends. That means they're proud of that. When people talk about themselves, what they feature about themselves, that's what they really want people to know. We're all vain. Your so vain. You probably think this email is about you and it should be about them.

It should be about them because we want it to resonate. Use your detective skills and pull out that personalization plot, that GPA plot that non-profit pull out, that beer, they like craft beer, whatever. Find out what they like, find out what jazz them up. And if you can't find anything on the profile, go to their activity, go to their Twitter page, go to their Instagram, find out what they like.

If you can't find anything, go to the company, go to the company website, go to the company, social pages, go to the company level and find out something interesting about the company. Because if they don't have anything personal about them, they probably are really into their job. Something about the company might resonate with them, but I want you to scout.

The internet for something personal about them, be a detective. You've got to be that detective because that's, what's going to cut through the noise, use that in the subject line, use that in the first line of the email. And then once you bring out that personalization, personalization is not just enough in an email, you have to be personalized and.

Relevant personalized and relevant, relevant means it's tied into the message of your email, the body of your email, the why for your email, why are you reaching out? Why should they care? What problem do you help them solve? Why, why, why, how do you tie in that personalization to the actual body of the email?

The why? The value prop of the email that is called what I like to call a relevance bridge. Uh, relevance bridge. One tip I have for you is use the word speaking. And then the quotations, a word it's a word play game. So in your personalization, choose a word such as automate. Hey, I see that you like to automate things.

I see that you're into automation and the automation of living a more efficient lifestyle, your life hacker, speaking of automation, quotations, thinking of automation, we actually help people automate X, Y, Z process, saving them five hours a week for people in your situation. I'm curious, are you interested in learning more about that?

Use that word place. Speaking of automates, speaking of baseballs, speaking of efficiencies, speaking of whatever word you use, pull out a word, play from the personalization to your value prop and speaking. That word, comma, and use that as your relevance bridge, we have to build a bridge folks because otherwise it's just personalization some random crap.

And then here's a random message about my company. And then here's a random CTA and it doesn't fit. It's a story that's confusing. We want to make it easier for them to understand, make that easy for them to understand build the relevance bridge. Personalization is. Personalization and irrelevance is fantastic, but you've got to build a bridge between the two.

You've got to work on that in your emails, because your emails become so much more than. Next. I want to talk about video. If you're not selling with video this day and age, you're falling behind. Prospects respond to video. Video is personalized. Video is creative. Get your whiteboard. Do you have your whiteboard?

Let's see. Where's my whiteboard. I wasn't ready for this, but I've got my whiteboard right here. I'm ready to roll at any given time. Get your video card out. Your looms, your bomb bombs, all of those. Get them ready and put that personalized message on the. Put the personalized note on the white board, every single time, a hundred percent of the time, put their name, put something interesting about them.

Put it on the whiteboard. Have that be your thumbnail. You're smiling. You're laughing. If they don't even click on the video, they at least see your smiling face with their name on the whiteboard. And that's personalized. That's the starting point. You also want a smile. I just had to remind myself to smile.

Smile. You want a good background? You want to have good lighting. You want to have a strong voice. You want to project that voice into the back of the. Did the back of your phone, the back of the video, the back of your computer, speak to them, speak clearly, speak eloquently, speak to the understand. Pretend like you're leaving a voicemail.

You want it clear, you want it concise. You want it to the point, but you're on video too. So you better play the part. And that starts with a smile, starts with a smile. So make sure that you have all of those things handled and then you can repurpose those videos. Repurpose them across, not just an email, but send them to him on LinkedIn, send them to him across other social channels.

Use those videos to your advantage. You can even create generic versions of these videos and send them to prospects. At any point in the process, they don't all have to be personalized, but you really want to make as many of them as personalized as possible. So get really good at making that 2030 second video.

Heck five seconds. As short as it takes five seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds make something compelling. Video selling is compelling. Because it's personal. And because you can show your passion. Remember earlier, we were talking about creativity, personalization, passion, make that come across, make that passion come across.

Hey, what's up? This is Tyler with the sales lift. I am so excited about the conversation we just had. We discussed X, Y, and Z, man. I'm fired up. I think we can add a ton of value for your situation. Looking forward to next steps, books and time with me in the meeting link below in the email. Hope you enjoy that football game.

This weekend. Have a great. Personal snappy, relevant, contextual video, everyone. You got to be using it. Let's talk next about the cold call. How can I be creative and personal in a cold call? A lot of it comes down to your tone, your voice inflection. I like to say that you are the punctuation. In a cold call.

I want you to have a script. I think everyone should have a script going into a cold call. Huge fan of scripts, have a game plan. Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Dyson. I want you to have a plan. Your plan is your script. What am I going to say? What I'm going to say? When they pick up the phone, you could say a lot of different things.

Hey bill, this is Tyler with the sales lift. How are you? Keep it simple. It's less about what you say. Like people try to get hung up on like, oh man, the script, what am I going to say? What are we to say? Obviously there's different things you can say. It's less about what you say though. And more about how you say it.

I think, Hey bill, it's Tyler with the sales lift. How are you today? That's under the string. Do I sound excited? Do I sound ready? Is bill jacked up to. Aetna. Hey bill, it's Tyler with the sales lift. How are you today? Better. And so that's just two different versions adult version and a more interested version.

I'm interested in bill. I'm excited. You picked up the phone and read your role. We can change up the words to, Hey, what's up bill? It's Tyler with the sales lift. How's your Monday going to switch up the word. You can do that. Dull. Hey bill, it's Tyler with the sales lift. How's your Monday going? I don't know.

It sounds like your day is going terrible. Or you can say, Hey, what's up bill? It's Tyler with the sales lift. How's your Monday. I don't know who this guy is, but he's excited. I don't know who this gal is, but she's pumped up. Passion breeds, creativity, breeds, personalization, breeds success. You have to do all of it.

It's not just the words in a cold call script. It's how you say them. It's how you say them. Here's another one we got here. Another script we can do on an intro to a cold call. Bill it's Tyler with the sales lift. We haven't spoken before, but I was hoping to grab 30 seconds and tell you the reason for my call.

We can do that. Dull bill Tyler with the sales lift. We haven't spoken before, but I was hoping to grab 30 seconds and tell you the reason for my call today. Or we can do that with a little bit of passion, a little bit of energy pill. It's Tyler with the sales lift. We haven't spoken before, but I was hoping to grab 30 seconds and tell you the reason for my call today.

Use that passion. Use that energy. You are the punctuation on a cold. The sales rep is the punctuation on a cold call. You've got your script. You are the punctuation and bring the energy, bring it. And that doesn't mean go overboard. I'm not talking about going nuts. , don't go nuts. You. This is the first time you've ever spoken to this person.

Make a good impression. When you meet someone new don't you want to make a good impression, smile. Stand up, stand up. When you're making your calls, smile, try to try to connect, try to make it connect. H to H we're all an H to H human to human sales humans like to hear other humans that are passionate. So you've got to use your inflection.

Use your tonality. You are the punctuation. And make sure that's coming across in your videos and your cold calls and your emails. You are the passion. You are the punctuation. If anything, that's what I want you to take away from this episode today is that creativity and personalization is all about pat.

And punctuation. And in sales, you are the passion and you are the punctuation, and it doesn't mean to use exclamation points all the time. I use exclamation points way too much. I'm an exclamation point guy. I don't know where you land on exclamation points, probably overuse them, but I'm just talking about exclamation points is a metaphor for that passion and energy that we bring to our personalization.

And so. Use it strategically, but use it some, you've got to have some kind of energy. So find that passion, understand your buyer and then connect in a human way. You are the passion. You are the creativity, you are the personalization and you are the punctuation in sales and make sure that comes across.

'cause that's the difference between standing out and not that's the difference between that email getting open or not? That's the difference between you having the right activities on a daily basis or not? That's the difference when you hitting quota or not? All of this adds up, but if you can be passionate and creative and curious, those things are the things that stand out and that's what I want you to take away from today's.

I really, really appreciate you joining this episode of the sales lift podcast. I'm Tyler Lindley, your host, a reminder. You can find [e-mail]. So, if you want to get in touch, if you need help building out your sales team, if you need help getting your team jazzed up about creativity and personalization, I want to help you reach out to [e-mail] [e-mail].

That's the, the sales S a L E S lift L I F t.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Tyler Lindley dash, the sales coach. It says sales coach right next to my name to make it easy. I really, really appreciate you joining. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, and I hope that you bring the creativity and personalization and passion that you need to your sales interactions today and ongoing.

Thanks so much for joining hope. You have a good.

Thank you so much for listening to today's show, you can find all the links discussed and the show [e-mail]. That's the T H G sales S a L E S. Lift L I F t.com. Have questions for me, email [e-mail]. I look forward to seeing you back here next week. And we hope today's show brings you the sales lift.

Your business needs. Remember ideas. Plus action equals results. You've got new ideas. Now it's time to take action and the results will follow. See you next time.