The Sales Influencer Series Presents: James Carbary

Welcome to Episode 39 of the Sales Influencer Series: the #1 podcast for modern B2B sales leaders.

We welcome James Carbary, CEO at Sweetfish Media, to the podcast to hear his strategies about how B2B sales teams can leverage content and social selling to build pipeline.

Ep. 39: How B2B Sales Teams Can Own Their Brand

Interview Topics

Introductions. 0:00 - 3:58.

James is the CEO of Sweetfish Media, a podcasting agency that helps companies use audio storytelling to attract new customers and build the brand of companies and top-level executives.

James also hosts the B2B Growth Show, one of the most acclaimed podcasts for business-to-business sales and marketing, and has collaborated with Ambition on events such as Aligned 2017, the virtual summit dedicated to all things B2B sales-marketing alignment.

The Right Way to Build Personal Brand in B2B Sales. 3:58 - 8:07.

James suggests approaching personal branding with the mindset: "People buy from people they know, like, and trust."

As much as James believes in selling the dream, being data-driven, and using technology to scale outbound efficiently, salespeople too often skip the foreplay and fail to do small things to build trust and present themselves as genuine, industry-validated experts.

A big part of James's ethos and the values he preaches is - figuring out creative ways to add value first and do the initial legwork to build the trust that gets you into deals.

The Lessons of Gary Vaynerchuk for B2B Sales. 8:07 - 11:16.

James uses Gary Vaynerchuk as a paragon of personal branding excellence. As James points out, Gary's agency, VaynerMedia, operates completely off inbound leads and charges a premium for its services - specifically because people trust them.

Inevitably, the business leadership at a company must enable its B2B sales teams to build their personal brands. It is up to the C-Level and VP-level executives to empower reps to act creatively and conscientiously to build pipeline.

An example of this working is Morgan Ingram, nee Terminus and now with John Barrows's consulting firm, building his own brand overnight via YouTube and then encouraging his reps to do likewise.

How to Balance Building Brand with Hitting Quota. 11:16 - 16:34.

James advises building an infrastructure for building brand efficiently and at-scale. Coming up with creative processes to serve your pipeline and develop your long-term industry reputation is the key to constantly meeting new people and adding to your pipeline, passively.

Per James, the key is to come up with your single, creative idea to serve as your infrastructure. For James, it was the B2B Growth Show. For Morgan Ingram, it was the SDR Chronicles.

Another important way to conceive of brand: brand is what people say about you. It's not just the content you create, curate, or share. Your focus in building your infrastructure is to create opportunities to construct authentic relationships with buyers.

How Managers Can Let Reps Personalize at Scale. 16:34 - 25:17.

For James, the litmus test is - what resonates with me? He writes folksy, conversational copy and goes graphics-free in his email outreach to achieve the feeling of 1:1 communication.

The goal isn't to trick people. It's just to improve the directness and impact of the messaging in each email.

Using tools like Outreach and SalesLoft, managers are more empowered than ever to keep an eye on what reps are writing. Moreover, they are enabled to go beyond rote scripts and give reps more leash to create dynamic outbound emails and follow-ups. Monitoring through those tools is also easy, so managers should be reviewing analytics constantly to assess what types of messaging are working.

Additional tools like CrystalKnows and WiseStamp can empower reps to create more personalized, helpful emails instantly.

James's final insight: be really brief and make it really easy for people to respond. If you are going to include an 'ask' in your email, limit it to one and place it at the very end of your email so there is zero question about what you want them to do.

Where to Follow James. 25:17 - 26:45.

You can find James on LinkedIn and Twitter, and learn more about Sweetfish Media via their website. If you'd like to connect with James via email, feel free to contact him at james@sweetfishmedia.com.

About Ambition

Modern sales leaders use Ambition to enhance Salesforce KPI visibility and run supercharged sales reports, scorecards, contests, and TVs.

b2b sales management

Ambition has helped improve Salesforce KPI visibility for the likes of Wayfair, FiveStars, and Filemaker, and holds the distinction as the first sales management platform endorsed by Harvard Business Review,

Want bright lights on your Salesforce KPIs? Contact us.

The Sales Influencer Series Library

To check out further episodes and see why CloserIQ has ranked the Sales Influencer Series as one of the very best sales podcasts of 2016, just click on the links below.

Episode 1. John Barrows

Episode 2. Lori Richardson

Episode 3. Max Altschuler

Episode 4. Matt Heinz

Episode 5. Mark Leslie

Episode 6. Kyle Porter

Episode 7. Jon Bradford

Episode 8. Eks Anderson

Episode 9. Matt Hottle

Episode 10. Heather Morgan

Episode 11. Ilan Ferdman

Episode 12. Ryan Jenkins