Business Breakthrough Thursdays

In Episode 10 of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, mental toughness expert Matt Phillips speaks about the true business differentiator. Matt, a former pro athlete, helps business leaders transform their teams and crush their strategic goals. His focus is the one differentiator that makes the difference between business success and failure: mental toughness. Learn: * What mental toughness is and why it is important * How to build a strong team * Why fear is your friend * How to respond instead of react * What athletes can teach business leaders about perseverance and resiliency * How to apply the "film review" concept to address performance issues * How baseball can teach you to accept failure (a .300 batting average means you fail 7 out of 10 times) The five elements of mental toughness, according to Matt, are: 1. Confidence 2. Focus 3. Emotional control 4. Energy 5. Consistent actions These five elements are instilled in athletes by their coach. Matt coaches business leaders to use these same five elements in their day-to-day lives to achieve success. He offers three big pieces of advice in the podcast: 1. Belief in yourself trumps all other beliefs 2. Be direct, and be blunt 3. Take care of yourself first during your entrepreneurial journey Matt Phillips is the Founder & CEO of Pro Athlete Advantage, and is regarded as one of the leading experts on human performance and mental toughness development in the world.  A former professional baseball player, Matt discovered that peak performance requires a dominant “inner game”. Using his Mental Toughness approach, Matt teaches business leaders and professional athletes how to systematically build their confidence, focus, emotional control, and energy so they can take their game to the next level. Matt counsels corporations on how to build high performance leaders and teams to crush their financial and strategic goals. His unique business model, a five-step process called "Ignite Your Mindset," is a mental toughness program that helps corporate teams and leaders increase their self-confidence so they take consistent action towards their goals, get laser-focused on hitting their numbers and results, master their emotions, and make sure they have high energy every day so they come to work to perform at the peak of their capabilities.

In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, award-winning Sandler trainer and sales coach Joe Ippolito explains how to build a scalable sales process. Joe shares how even inexperienced salespeople can consistently qualify and close in a few simple steps. If the thought of selling scares you, Joe is the person to listen to. Learn: * How a series of simple steps can help you map out your prospect's sales journey and identify the right opportunities to close the sale * Which questions to ask during the discovery call * How to detect when a prospect is just looking for free consulting * Why the "show up and throw up" sales pitch just doesn't work * How to avoid wasting both your time and your prospect's time * A simple way to identify (and address) needs * How to apply basic psychological techniques to quickly assess a prospect's interest level Joe Ippolito is the President of TOPLINE Performance Solutions, an authorized Sandler Training franchise. For the past decade, Joe has been an award-winning Sandler trainer, author, coach, and speaker. His columns on cutting-edge sales topics have appeared regularly in the Boston Business Journal. Joe has successfully trained and consulted with business owners, senior managers and sales professionals from a variety of industries including professional service firms, manufacturing, consumer product companies, information technology providers, healthcare and biotech, to name a few. He has worked with start-ups, building and scaling their sales process infrastructure, as well as established organizations committed to growth. Joe’s successful clients are both companies and entrepreneurs that are committed to becoming leaders in their industry by developing their human capital and themselves, giving them a true competitive advantage.

In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, our regular show host Dave Fionda shares his tips on how entrepreneurial CEOs and tech founders can grow and hone their business development skills—even if they're not good at the "hard sell." Business development isn’t about selling, he reminds us. It's about identifying, closing and nurturing the key relationships you need to acquire many customers. Learn: * Why founders and owners need to learn or improve business development skills * What the three most important sales and business development skills that owner and founders need to focus on are * Why sales and business development aren't the same thing, and what the differences are * How technical founders and owners can become great business developers, even if it's "not who they are" * What steps can owners and founders take to develop these skills Are you a natural-born sales person? If not, don't despair: Dave tells us you can still become a kick-butt business development professional. Business owners have to wear many hats—sales, customer service, marketer, human resource, finance and others.  Many times critical business development skills for founders is overlooked.  But business development isn’t about selling. Sales is about acquiring one customer.  Business development is about identifying, closing and nurturing the key relationships you need to acquire many customers. Selling (closing) is part of that equation, but it's not the only part. So how do business leaders without a sales background learn to build and hone their ability to close the deal? First, don't forget that these are learnable skills, not inherent traits or personality characteristics. The three most important skills that owners and technical founders need to develop, according to Dave, are: 1. Never give up. Persistence is the biggest skill. And this is a skill that technical founders have in spades. 2. Learn how to listen. Business development is 80% listening and 20% speaking. Active listening is a learnableskill [https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/11/09/10-steps-to-effective-listening/#3cacd8338918]. 3. Learn how to build trust. Your prospect doesn't necessarily need to know how you're going to solve their business challenge—they just need to be confident that you're the person who can best solve it. Sales skills, Dave argues, will get you one sale. Business development skills will get you many sales. He gives a specific example from his own experience—how he was able to turn on his business development skills to get a deal made that launched a successful overseas business where 14 previous attempts had failed. Dave is a 35-year sales and business development veteran, a CPA, author, mentor and, most importantly, a technical founder himself. Dave’s entire career has been focused on helping companies grow and be more successful. He loves helping companies succeed. Dave founded and grew 5 ventures in his career and sold three of them successfully. He is a mentor for the Mass Challenge [https://masschallenge.org/] startup competition and has also  taught at three of the leading business universities in the US ( Babson [http://babson.edu/], Northeastern [https://northeastern.edu/]and Bentley [https://bentley.edu/]) and has presented keynotes and executive briefings all over the U.S. and Canada. Dave received his BS in Accounting from Bentley University and an MS in Technology Commercialization from Northeastern University.

In this episode of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, host Dave Fionda speaks with brand strategy consultant Doug Fox about the top five branding and messaging mistakes marketers make. If you worry about how to balance sales and goodwill, this is the podcast episode for you. Learn: * When message maps don't work * How to close the "brand gap" between where you want to be perceived and where your consumers actually see you * Why pain points are the key to activating brand loyalty and advocacy * How to solve the conflict between allocating budget for marketing your product with the need to raise awareness and goodwill, * What the biggest mistakes that brand managers and communicators are making today are * When competitors are hiding in plain sight The five big messaging mistakes, in a nutshell: 1. Trying to be all things to all people. Don't become a Lionel Hutz — a "jack of all trades." A single, well constructed, sharp message will beat out a comprehensive message playbook every time. Connect with your "thin deep wedge," and then convert. 2. Skipping the differentiator entirely. Don't forget to include the language of differentiation in your core message (examples are "first/best/only" or "better/faster/cheaper"). But if your differentiator is "too good to be true," you may have to lead with a relevance message, follow up with a credibility message, then hit them with the differentiators. 3. Talking like an industry insider. Don't assume that your buyer speaks "jargon" and risk talking over people's heads. The best acronym is NAA — "not another acronym." 4. Ignoring emotion. Logic may drive you toward a decision, but it's emotion that closes the deal (and logic again that rationalizes your choice after the fact). Science shows that we can't make decisions without our emotions. 5. Ignoring the "why." You know how your product works, inside and out. You know what the features are. Don't lead with those. Lead with the why, then explain the how and what. The "why" is inherently emotional. It's the "benefits" message. Doug is a proven brand and marketing strategist with 20+ years experience successfully building and repositioning global brands and businesses. He has a proven reputation of helping his clients be more ‘Foxy‘, strengthening their brands and generating more demand for their products, services and solutions. He specializes in taking very complex offerings and simplifying them down to what is most compelling and motivating for prospects. We're proud to have him as one of our podcast guests.

In this episode  of Business Breakthrough Thursdays, host Dave Fionda speaks with Elevator Pitch Coach Andrew Winig about those crucial 30 seconds you get to introduce yourself to someone new. If you've ever struggled with what to say in that tiny "elevator pitch" window, this is the podcast episode to listen to. Learn: * How getting "pigeonholed" or "typecast" might actually be a good thing * What the biggest mistake in networking you can make * How to be remembered as a "great conversationalist" without actually talking much * What the goal of your first conversation should be * How to break through the noise Andy draws on improv, sales and even his dating experience to share wonderful insights into networking dynamics and the principles of successful pitches. As an entrepreneur and business owner, Andy discovered that business networking success starts with an effective 30-Second Elevator pitch. His proven 3-Step Elevator Pitch Coaching Process is based on his 10 year journey from cold call to referral salesman. Andy’s mission: to help small businesses get better leads from business networking. Andy received a BSCS from Yale University, where he was awarded a magna cum laude and elected to the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society.