The 10 Best Sales Tactics of 2023

Happy New Year Folks!

Last week, we dropped our first ever 2023 End of Year Awards. Below you'll find the best tactics we learned from 2023. Each category had 2 nominees and 1 winner, except leadership which was a category of 1 because it's a pretty new show:

1. Best Leadership Tactic
2. Best Prospecting Tactic
3. Best Discovery Tactic
4. Best Process Tactic

And at the very end, you'll find one tactic that won best episode of the year. But I'd love to hear from you, which tactic below did?you like the most? Reply here and lmk :)

Best Leadership Tactic of 2023

Stevie Case: Episode 175 (Listen to the Episode)

Stevie Case, Vanta's renowned CRO, taught us how to make every end-of-quarter a blast with your team. List out every open deal and put them in public eye, rattling them all down every single day until the month is closed:

1. Setup the Board: Get every open deal for the quarter on a spreadsheet.
2. Two-Line Updates: Every day ask your team for a 2-line update on every open deal until the last day
3. Burndown!!! Run the burndown! Have your team rattle off every deal and figure out where you can help.

Best Prospecting Tactics of 2023

Nominee: How to use X (Twitter) to book more meetings

Vin Matano: Episode 142 (Listen to the Episode)

Everyone books meetings over email. Some book 'em over phone. A few book 'em on LinkedIn. But... Twitter? Vin Matano broke down the three steps to take your social prospecting to the next level:

1. Find your prospect on X (Twitter) and start engaging with them:?It doesn’t have to be anything crazy yet — likes and retweets are fine.
2. Find something interesting: Find something unique to them — people tend to write about their personal interests on Twitter so it’s a public goldmine for you!
3. Tweet a video to them: Then record a video and Tweet it at them. Publicly. It sounds scary, but it's better than being 1 of 3000 spam emails.

Nominee: Play musical chairs to triple your meetings at a conference

Christine Nolan: Episode 151 (Listen to Episode)?

Here and there, you catch yourself sitting next to a non-ICP, loud guacamole eater named Nick. Some people burn valuable conference time holding conversation with this lad, others follow Christine Nolan's advice to break nonsensical rapport and have 10 more conversations instead of one bad one:

1. Find the action: Figure out where your prospects will be and go there. It’s usually the biggest session, panel, keynote, or networking event of the hour.
2. Sit down: Start with your first chair. Figure out if they’re a prospect worth talking to… FAST. If not, get up and move somewhere else in under 5 minutes.
3. Play musical chairs: Keep hopping. If you someone’s worth meeting, talk to them for a bit longer, but leave on a high note with a meeting on the books.

Winner: The Triple Research Cold Call Opener

JC Pollard: Episode 156 (Listen to Episode)

The man, the myth, the newest club member. JC Pollard flips the traditional cold call opener on its head, leading with the research?first to create goodwill from the moment your prospect picks up the phone in the Best Prospecting Tactic of 2023:

1. Find 3 prospect deets?During your call prep, find 3 details (most reps only find 1) about your prospect to reference on your cold call.
2. Stop asking “is now a bad time?" Instead, the second your prospect answers the phone and says ‘hello’ say this —>
3. List your 3 details, then ask permission to pitch ”Armand, its JC calling with Tropic, can I briefly explain why I am reaching out? I noticed X, Y & Z about you”

Best Discovery Tactics of 2023

Nominee: The Quantitative Pulse Check

Brian LaManna: Episode 165 (Listen to the Episode)

Leading off our discovery category we have the famed rival (but actually friend) who competed with JC for the #1 rep spot at Gong, Brian LaManna. Fluffy discovery doesn't get you to #1, turning qualitative excitement into quantitative feedback is what does:

1. Ask for quantitative feedback: After your show a presentation, don’t ask your prospect what they thought. Instead, ask them “On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think my demo addressed the problem you’re looking to solve?”
2. Find the gap between you and a 10: If they give you anything less than a 10, ask them what was missing that would have made it a 10.
3. For the 10s, get ‘em gushing: If they give you a 10, ask them what they liked the most about what they saw. Whatever they tell you gives you intel to sell this account even harder on the next meeting.

Nominee: How to kick off a sales call with 5+ people

Jen Allen: Episode 144 (Listen to Episode)

Jen's episode was so freaking good, we literally asked her to become a cohost of 30MPC. She broke down how to run a sales meeting focused on problem alignment first because you can't discuss solutions until everyone first agree something needs to be solved!

1. Document their problems: Before a big group presentation, write down the key business problems your champion is looking to solve on a slide.
2. Present the problems: Kick off your big team meeting by presenting the problems you heard, and then ask the room - “Before I get into how we might solve some of these…does everyone agree that these are the right problems to even be solving?”
3. Get consensus on the problems: Facilitate group discussion about the problems - most folks will have opinions about the nature of the problems & you’ll use the intel you gain here to inform your pitch.?

Winner: Reframe every "want" as a problem

Kevin "KD" Dorsey: Episode 134 (Listen to Episode)

This is the tactic from 2023 that Nick and I use the most, hands-down. It's easy to get overly eager when a prospect says they want something. But I want a?lot of things that I'm not willing to work for. Turn wants into problems:

1. Don’t pitch at the want:?Reps get way too excited when they hear the prospect say “I want X.” Prospects want a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to buy every want.
2. Reframe the want into a problem: Whenever you hear the want… simply reframe it into a problem or a why. Why do they want that or what’s the thing they can’t do without it?
3. It might sound like this: If someone says I want prospecting training, you might ask…“What’s prompting that? Is it that they’re messaging seems off, pipe gen is slow, or something else?”

Best Process Tactics of 2023

Henry Schuck: Episode 146 (Listen to the Episode)

Sellers love to yap on and on when a call is going well. Everything from rapport to discovery drags on, and next thing you know, you leave a call with no next steps. With massive conviction, Henry boomed into the mic: do not be afraid to break rapport:

1. Quit Over-Relying on Rapport: Rapport with a prospect is GREAT, but most reps won’t push to advance a sale for fear of breaking rapport with their “champion”
2. Tell your champion what needs to happen: ”Armand, I’m really excited to help solve your brand awareness problem, but in order for us to really scope this thing, we’re going to need to speak with Mary, your CMO.
3. If they shut you down: You never had a champion in the first place! You had a human being who didn’t really want to solve their problem.?Quit wasting time with this person and go find a new deal!?

Nominee: How to advance your deal BEFORE your next meeting

Shay Keeler: Episode 160 (Listen to Episode)

Don't wait for your next meeting to advance your deals. Just because there's a calendar invite on the books doesn't mean that you can't drive the deal forward before the call. Here's how Shay does it:

1. Look at your deals: Each morning, pull up a list of all your opportunities, even those with a next step already booked.
2. Use your brain: Determine what you can do TODAY to advance your likelihood of winning each deal.
3. Advance every deal: Even if you have a next step on the books, you can still multithread with other stakeholders, get a reference customer to put in a proactive good word, share a (relevant) case study with ‘em.

Winner + Best Show of 2023: The secret question to preserve the pitch

Morgan Melo: Episode 130 (Listen to Episode)

Morgan Melo is the highest producing rep I've ever hired. She has an insane level of EQ and ability to smell someone who doesn't have the political capital to get a deal done. So here's how she makes sure that her pitch stays alive all the way to the CEO, even if she's working with a below-the-line champion:

1. The first yes isn’t the one that matters. When a champion is excited, that’s great. Problem is, they’ll usually pitch the organization on how it solves a problem for them… instead of the business.
2. Find out how they plan to pitch your product: Whenever you’ve got an eager champion, ask them one question: ”I’m curious, how do you plan to justify this internally?”
3. Now… you can step in to preserve your pitch: This lets you advise them on how to speak in business problems, not personal problems… or better yet, own the presentation to power yourself.

Morgan also won episode of the year, putting up more downloads than any single 30MPC episode of all time ??

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That's a wrap for 2023 folks! Check out the full EoY awards episode right here:

Watch The 2023 Awards Episode

The Next Tactic Teardown

Featuring JBay, JC Pollard, and Tom Alaimo

On January 11th, three outbound masters are walking through the best practices of a cold email campaign and literally walking through one that you can use yourself, live.

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-AF