In this video, we will provide a quick intro and overview of the SMART Sales System. If you just want to get to some quick tips, you can probably skip this video. But if you are interested in going through the full training program, this video will definitely provide a good background and explanation of the program, which will probably help you to understand the concepts a little more and fully implement the system.

 

Program Overview

The SMART Sales System is a full sales methodology and sales training program. It focuses heavily on cold outreach and lead generation, but it is a complete sales methodology that covers the full sales process from meeting with prospects to delivering presentations and demonstrations to closing deals.

We are different than most sales training programs in that we put a lot of focus on what to say, what to ask, and what to do. This training program will be completely different from any other resources you will come across and will completely change how you sell. If you follow this system, not only will you sell more, but selling will actually become easier.

 

Background

In order to understand the SMART Sales System, how it works, and where it comes from, it is probably best to share who I am because I am the person who created all of this. I am Michael Halper, and I am currently the Founder and CEO of SalesScripter.

My professional background is 14 years in sales and marketing roles at fairly large technology companies. These experiences definitely shaped me and influenced the creation of the SMART Sales System, but to really understand me, we can go back before all of this, back to when I was a sophomore in college, living in the dorms.

 

BMG Music Club

I somehow signed up for a music CD club called BMG, which was some kind of catalog of music you could order CDs from. The club had a referral program where, if you signed up a new member, you would get three free CDs in the mail.

Being a poor college kid who loved music, I found this very appealing and started getting people in the dorm signed up. Not only did I love receiving CDs in the mail after signing someone up, but I also found the whole process of finding prospects and closing deals extremely fun. And I took it seriously by trying to figure out the best questions to ask and how to get around the common objections.

Needless to say, I ended up signing up about 50 people and getting around 150 free CDs. It was this experience that made me realize that I had a passion for selling and that I wanted to be a salesperson in some capacity when finishing school.

 

The Californian

This interest in selling actually led me to get a job as a server at a restaurant called The Californian. It wasn’t pure sales where you had to find leads, but it definitely involved hustling, dealing with customers, and the more you sold, the more you made in tips. I loved this job and was probably one of the top earners at the restaurant.

While working at this restaurant, I noticed they did not have any type of training program for new servers. I took the initiative to create a structured onboarding program with what to teach and when, and shared it with management. They liked it and ended up implementing it and putting me in charge of training all new servers. It was this experience that made me realize that I have a deep passion for teaching and training.

I share those two experiences with you to show you where my passion for sales and training comes from. I am not just a sales guy who thinks he knows everything and put together some training tools. This is stuff that I have been passionate about for a long time.

 

BMC Software

During my experience working as a sales professional, I went through a lot of different sales training programs. I soaked it all in, probably more than your typical salesperson or employee. I also learned a lot of what to do and not to do while working under many different managers and through on-the-job training. But it was the mid part of my sales career that was maybe the most pivotal, and that was when I was working for BMC Software.

I was selling IT management software, think of software and tools to manage servers, applications, and datacenters. BMC brought in an external sales training company, and I found their training program to be very interesting. One concept they talked about was pain, and that instead of talking about the product, get the prospect talking about their pain. I found this to be fascinating and very different from all of the other product-focused training I had received up until that point.

I could not wait to get back to my desk and get on the phone with prospects and get them talking about their pain. But when I tried to apply this tip, I realized that getting prospects to share their pain is not that easy, and the training company did not really explain how to do so or what to say or ask to keep the conversation centered on pain. Which makes sense because all my products solve different pain points, and the training company didn’t have knowledge of all that.

Through trial and error and trying to figure this out on my own, I realized the key to getting prospects talking about their pain or figuring out if they have pain is by asking good questions. And I figured out that if I know which pain points my products solve, I can use that to create a list of good questions to ask.

To help with this, I created a spreadsheet that had the pain points and questions to ask for my different products. This helped me tremendously with knowing what to say and ask when talking with prospects and instantly improved my performance. I actually started sharing this spreadsheet and sales tool with my teammates, and now that I look back, this was probably the very first version of SalesScripter, and my teammates were like my first customers. Not only did I enjoy building and refining this sales tool, but I also enjoyed providing it to others and loved it when they would come back asking for an updated version.

 

Launch Pad

I continued to develop these tools and techniques over the years, and in 2011, I founded a cold call agency called Laund Pad Solutions, where we provided cold call outsourcing and appointment setting for small businesses.

In order to run that business, I had to hire cold callers and SDRs and teach them my approach to cold outreach. For that, I organized all of my tips and tactics into a set of training modules:

  • Cold calling
  • Cold emailing
  • Voicemail
  • Objection handling
  • Gatekeeper tactics
  • Finding pain
  • Building interest
  • Qualifying
  • Closing

These training modules and our approach to onboarding reps were extremely successful at getting reps ramped up and performing. In 2012, I decided to turn all of these tips and tactics into a book and published The Cold Calling Equation – PROBLEM SOLVED.

 

SalesScripter

In running that agency, every time we launched a campaign, I would have to interview our clients to learn about their company and product. I would then take the information collected and use that to create a cold call script, email templates, voicemail messages, and objection responses for the person who was going to work their campaign.

In going through this process again and again over the years, I continually improved and refined the process, and got to a point where we were having really productive interview sessions and using the content produced by those to create extremely good sales scripts and playbooks.

I realized I could turn this process into a software app where a salesperson or sales manager could go through my interview questions, and the software would use their answers and information to create a sales playbook similar to what we were using in our agency. I pursued this idea, and this ended up becoming our software application, SalesScripter.

 

SMART Sales System

After launching SalesScripter, I continue refine our training modules as I hosted webinars and put videos on YouTube. In 2020, I thought of a way to put all of my tips and modules into a system, creating an easy way for a salesperson or sales manager to implement everything. With that, I decided to write a book with all of this explained, and I published the book called The SMART Sales System – SELL SMARTER, NOT HARDER.

After the book was published, I came back to YouTube and created a video for each chapter in the book and created a playlist of videos called SMART Sales System, which aligns with the book and what you are watching now.

 

Product-Focused Approach

The SMART Sales System will completely change how you sell. But to see that, let’s take a look at what the majority of salespeople do, which is use a more product-focused sales approach. This is where a salesperson primarily talks about his or her product and company when interacting with prospects.

This is who I am.
This is the company I am with.
This is the product I sell.
Do you need what I sell?
Can we meet to discuss what I sell?

You might see that and think salespeople are not that bad. I get cold emails and cold calls every day, and they all follow this general outline. You also might look at that and wonder what is wrong with a salesperson talking about the product if they are trying to sell a product. Here are some downsides to a product-focused sales approach:

  • All about me
  • The salesperson’s interests
  • Prospects get sold to a lot
  • Sound like a salesperson
  • More objections and rejection
  • Prospects not in buying mode
  • Missed opportunities
  • Fewer leads and fewer closed deals
  • Selling is difficult and stressful

 

Prospect-Focused Approach

The SMART Sales System is going to completely change how you sell by completely flipping the product-focused approach upside down. We do that by changing the approach from being about the product and making it about the prospect, which leads to a salesperson sounding more like this:

This is how I help.
These are the problems I solve.
How are you doing in those areas?
We might be able to help.
Are you available for a conversation?

 

Starts With Your Sales Message

This prospect-focused approach can be a little more difficult because it is more sophisticated by getting you talking more about benefits, problems, and asking good questions. But the SMART Sales System helps you with that by taking you through a process to create a powerful sales message for the product or service you sell. Our step-by-step process will help you to map out all of the key things you should be talking about when interacting with prospects.

 

Creating Your Sales Playbook

Each step of our sales message brainstorming process creates what we refer to as building blocks. Once you have those, you can easily mix and match them to create many different sales scripts, email templates, objection responses, and more. We will show you how to do this throughout the SMART Sales System training modules.