Unlocking Sales Success with Sean Shannon, Strategic Growth Design (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 847)
In this episode of North Fulton Business Radio, host John Ray interviews Sean Shannon, a fractional chief sales officer and sales expert from Strategic Growth Design. Sean shares his experience and strategies on effectively managing sales teams, establishing documented sales processes, and aligning sales and marketing efforts. He emphasizes the importance of having individual sales quotas, understanding client mixes, and creating sustainable processes. Sean also discusses the complexities of sales compensation plans, the significance of courage and emotional resilience in sales roles, and the intricacies involved in complex sales. With practical anecdotes and actionable insights, Sean provides valuable guidance for business owners looking to enhance their revenue and sales performance.
John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. The show is produced by John Ray and North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, and recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.
Sean Shannon, Strategic Growth Design
Sean Shannon loves sales. For the past three decades, he has been leading market-making sales teams in one of the most challenging industries, local broadcasting.
Sean’s teams worked with hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses to create winning sales and marketing campaigns that generated award-winning results. Sean has worked in sales and operations leadership at iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus Media, rising through the ranks as an innovator and thought leader.
As a Senior Vice President of Sales, Sean blazed a trail in training sales leaders and salespeople on the value of diagnosing sales and marketing problems before offering solutions. This approach led to marketing leading returns on advertising investment for the clients. As a Market President, Sean built market-leading brands like Q99.7 and 99x in Atlanta by focusing on the people behind those brands, the culture that underpinned them, and a structure that was responsive to the changing tides in a challenged industry.
Sean is now bringing those three decades of experience in building winning sales teams and winning brands to small and medium-sized businesses in Atlanta. Not simply through consulting, but through a roll your sleeves and up do it approach guided by the wisdom he’s earned in both his successes and, more importantly, in his less than optimal learning experiences (Sean doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as failure if there is learning that is applied the next time around).
Topics Discussed in this Interview
00:00 Introduction and Welcome to North Fulton Business Radio
01:52 Meet Sean Shannon: Sales Expert
02:57 Sean’s Sales Journey
05:54 Challenges in Sales Management
08:30 Ideal Client Profile and Value Proposition
19:49 Complex Sales and Salesperson Traits
24:30 Compensation Plans and Sales Success
29:59 Sean’s Success Stories
33:28 Conclusion and Contact Information
Renasant Bank supports North Fulton Business Radio
Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions, with over $17 billion in assets and more than 180 banking, lending, wealth management, and financial services offices throughout the region. All of Renasant’s success stems from each banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way to better understand the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.
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About North Fulton Business Radio and host John Ray
With over 850 shows and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in our community like no one else. We are the undisputed “Voice of Business” in North Fulton!
The show invites a diverse range of business, non-profit, and community leaders to share their significant contributions to their market, community, and profession. There’s no discrimination based on company size, and there’s never any “pay to play.” North Fulton Business Radio supports and celebrates business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignore. Some media lean left. Some media lean right. We lean business.
John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. The show is produced by John Ray and North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, and recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.
The studio address is 275 South Main Street, Alpharetta, GA 30009.
You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, and many others.
John Ray also operates his own business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their value, their positioning and business development, and their pricing. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
John is the national bestselling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.
