7 Minutes to better Selling Podcast Ep. 3

Well, good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us

My name is Colin Lake. For those of you who don't know me, I am the president and founder of Developing the Next Leaders

So I have the very good fortune of introducing a good friend, colleague, and a really impressive

professional, Dan Green, to the show. So Dan Green is a senior advisor consultant

Dan is with Putnam Investments. and he is also the president of Greenlink

So welcome, Dan. Colin, thank you, buddy. Happy to be here. All right

So you understand how the show works. You've watched it before, listened to it before

so thanks for that. To get back to doing what we've always done best, which is solve the problems of our most important people

that we work with every day, which is our clients. So with that in mind, Dan, if you would

share a little bit about your story, how you spend 20 plus years growing to a senior advisor consultant

how you launched Greenlink and some of these amazing things you've done so far in this industry

Colin, absolutely. And thank you again for this opportunity. I want to just take a quick second and highlight how much I appreciate you as a professional and what you're doing for the industry

And I also want to let the attendees who heard last week from your brother how much I valued what he had to say

And I'm very happy to hear that you shared with me a few minutes ago that his son's doing better, your nephew

So thank you for that. And thank you for all the prayers people put out there for Jim and his family

I know they were hurt, which is great. You know, to give me a little background on myself, I've been in the industry, as Colin said, for nearly 20 years

I've worked at a number of the largest firms on Wall Street. I've been at Putnam Investments for 10 years now

And about two years ago, I launched a company called Green Link. And you know I was born in a small dairy farming community My dad was a city firefighter My mom worked in the school system I was the first person to go to college in my family And so back to Jimmy comments about hard work and passion I believe in those completely OK And I think in today world

you know, we have to have passion around something. And something that I identified about 10 years ago

was that there is a unique opportunity or a way to differentiate yourself in business when it comes

to social selling. And you have to be able to create an image for yourself, just like we

traditionally did in physical marketing when we were branding ourselves and our companies out there

You have to be able to do that virtually. Greedy, let me ask you this. How do you like take this

idea? Because I think lots of sales professionals want to help their clients. How do you articulate

that in the most honest way so that it's not perceived as just a kind of a sales pitch

Sure. Great question. One that I often receive. And I go back to an old saying, you know

it's birds of the same feather flock together. And so, you know, in a traditional sales meeting

if you were to go meet with someone and break bread or have a drink and talk with them and

in the entire 30 minutes that you were together, all you did was talk about your product

you'd probably not be interesting to that client or that that person. So, you know, what it is

is it's what I like to say. It's an art and a science, right? The science is you have to do certain things and the art is you have to add your personal touches to it. And so just like we would

in a traditional sales role, we'd go meet with people, we'd learn about them and they'd learn

about us. If in the virtual space, you have to have the courage and the conviction and the passion

to be able to put something out there that relates people to you

So again, they can become aware of you as a resource that you can help them in certain areas of their life

Reciprocity is a key in every industry, no doubt about it. I mean, you quickly learn who your partners are

And when you share you get back And as Jim said and you know one of my favorite sayings is iron sharpens iron right And so I mean if you want to get better hang out with the best you know give your best and you get their best

So a firm, firm believer in that. And two other things that I think are pretty, pretty, you know, monumental that people should

keep in mind is that in any type of sales, the key is to be politely persistent, right

You don't want to be offensive. You don't want to come across as flashy or salesy, but you want to be persistent and you

have to do it in a polite manner. And I'm very, very confident you can do that in the virtual

space if you conduct yourself correctly. Right. The second thing is, is that in any sales capacity

in any industry, the number one thing is to what I what is to have is what I call presence in your

absence. You want your clients, your prospects to be thinking about you when you're not there

You want other people talking about you. You want ideas shared. Colin, I mean, this conversation

that we're having right now was because of presence in my absence. You know what I mean? You and I connected. We'd known each other for years, but we're reconnected because my name came

up in a conversation from somebody else when I wasn't even there. Yeah, very true. That's two

big thoughts there. Presence in your absence, one wonderful one. And the other one is, I don't know

if you caught it, but I'm talking to the listeners now. I know you caught it, Green, because you said

it is give your best and you'll get other people's best. A really good thought is like, don't be

don't hide stuff. Just share it, share it. It'll always come back to you and usually come back to

you in spades, twice, three, four times what you shared. All right, Greeny, last question

What's the biggest opportunity that sales folks have today? Your thoughts. Yeah. And, you know, again, thinking about the big, yeah

the biggest opportunity I think today is that, you know, um, there is you know a world of opportunity And when I say a world of opportunity for salespeople no matter the industry being that everything is kind of gone to this virtual space you are unlimited in your

client base. You're not restricted to geographic areas. You can connect to people. You can do

virtual sales. You can do Zoom calls. You can do webinars. You can do all these different things to

connect with people that you may have been restricted from connecting with in the past

Not to mention that, you know, with this being an acceptable manner, you're not restricted to thinking about having to fly places and the travel times and planes getting canceled

I mean, you can absolutely take advantage of the virtual space, creating a presence in your absence, creating awareness around your product

And you can do it in a politely persistent manner so that you are available to people

You grow your mind share with them. And ultimately, as any sales professional knows, if you grow mind share, it ultimately leads to market share

And so the biggest opportunity I think out there today is what my dad used to always tell me

And he would he posted it on the refrigerator and he'd make me go read it quite often as a young man

He'd say lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part

And that was ingrained into me as a young man. And I've shared that wisdom with my children and with as many as I can

And the opportunity today is that if you don't plan to have a virtual presence, if you don't plan to have a virtual brand, you're going to have an emergency

And the bottom line is, is that there are professionals like Colin and others out there that can help you create a brand, help you create an image

And Colin has resources to individuals like myself and others that he can connect you with to be able to help you create a plan around virtual marketing, which I think is the greatest opportunity out there today, without a doubt

And I appreciate the time, the conversation, the preparation. And I think I speak for all the all the folks who are joining today and who will listen soon