Welcome to the first podcast episode of Online People Talking with Jen Barkan! In this episode, Jen is joined by Mike Lyon and Jessie Suggs. Jen explains the choice to turn OPT from being a live event into podcast form and her hopes of what the series will accomplish for online sales specialists. Together, the three talk about prospecting and the importance of being diligent and not grumbling over it. They go over the Secret Shop Results for the year and give their thoughts on the stats they found most interesting and Jessie shares a pro-tip on prospecting to help ease the awkwardness during a phone call.

Show Notes:

Word On The Street: Prospecting (06:02)

• Jessie says she's hearing both positive and negative opinions on prospecting.
• Mike can feel the annoyance when they bring up prospecting in coaching and training calls but urges the importance of it.
• Jen says it needs to be reframed and to think of it as "List Hygiene"

Topic Of Today: The Home Builder Survey (14:33)

• You can access the report here: https://onlinesales.doyouconvert.com/dyc-2023-survey-white-paper/
• Jen shares the top results from the survey!
• What stood out to Mike is that over the past ten years, the results have not changed a whole lot.
• Jessie was amazing by the "no-call" stat in the results.

Skills Check! (28:36)

• Jessie's pro-tip is to go into prospecting like it's brand new.
• "What do we say when somebody answers": acknowledge the awkwardness.
• It's okay to talk about things outside normal stuff to be different and break the ice.