Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Hala Taha: AI-Powered Sales, How to Automate, Optimize, and Close More Deals | Sales
Fri, 14 Mar 2025
Hala Taha built an eight-figure media company using data-driven sales strategies and activity-based selling to close high-value deals. As a successful entrepreneur, she knows that sales success isn’t about luck. It comes from mastering the right tools, prospecting strategically, and developing a resilient mindset. In this episode, Hala breaks down how to scale smarter, optimize your funnel, and boost conversions. She also shares insights on leveraging AI in business, tracking your pipeline effectively, and managing deals seamlessly with CRM tools like Pipedrive. In this episode, Hala will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:30) Webinar Overview (05:27) Understanding Bottoms Up Sales Strategy (07:48) Activity-Based Selling Explained (10:02) Driver Trees and Performance Metrics (19:39) Becoming a Sales Psychopath with Shelby Sapp (28:40) Pipedrive Demo and Features (34:44) Introduction to Pipedrive (35:48) Optimizing Sales Funnels with Sean Cannell (36:27) Improving Conversion Rates with Russell Brunson (43:13) Analyzing Competitor Funnels (46:44) Prioritizing Sales Calls (50:41) Identifying Fool or Favorite Clients (58:27) Leveraging AI in Sales Hala Taha is the host of Young and Profiting, the number one entrepreneurship and business podcast. She is the Founder and CEO of YAP Media, an award-winning social media and podcast production agency. She also founded YAP Media Podcast Network, a top business and self-improvement podcast network, where she helps business podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, and Russell Brunson grow and monetize their platforms. Resources Mentioned: Get a free 14-day trial and 20% off your membership with Pipedrive: youngandprofiting.co/sales Pipedrive Slides: youngandprofiting.co/PipedriveSlides Sponsored By: Shopify - youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - robinhood.com/gold Factor - factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - aka.ms/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Online Selling, Economics, E-Commerce, Ecommerce, Negotiation, Persuasion, Inbound, Value Selling, Account Management, Scale, Sales Podcast.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Hala Taha's sales masterclass?
Hey, Yap gang. I always say that knowing how to sell is the most important skill that an entrepreneur can have. Selling is at the core of every business. It's how you connect with your customers, build your brand, and grow your business. And today I'm going to be giving you a mini masterclass on how to sell.
I recently partnered with Pipedrive, which is a CRM platform, to host a webinar about how you can crush your sales goals. And we're going to be replaying it right now on the podcast for anybody who missed it. You're going to hear all about the benefits of activity selling, how to hit your sales goals, optimize your funnels, boost conversions, leverage AI, and more.
I'll also go into how to visualize your sales pipeline with Pipedrive. Now, this is a webinar where I presented a fancy slide deck with it. So if you want to follow along with the presentation and demo, go check out the show notes and you can get the link to the presentation.
If you enjoyed this webinar and you're ready to step up your game, I highly recommend that you get a free 14-day trial with Pipedrive. It's 100% risk-free, no credit card required. You can just go to youngandprofiting.co slash sales for a free 14-day trial and 20% off your membership. That's youngandprofiting.co slash sales for a free 14-day trial of Pipedrive.
All right, if you're ready to make it rain, let's get started. Welcome to our Crush Your Sales Goals webinar presented by Pipedrive. This is the first sales webinar that we've had for the year. If you just joined, I was mentioning that I totally updated all the content. So lots of new ideas and hopefully going to set you up for success at the top of the year here.
So if you haven't yet, let me know how many people are on your sales team. So far, it seems like it's all a lot of small sales teams, which is perfect for what we're going to go over today. Now if you guys have ever been to any of my webinars, you know that it's real work, right? So this is not something, some fluff. We're gonna go over real concepts. You're gonna learn.
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Chapter 2: How can the bottoms-up sales strategy improve your business?
You're gonna wanna take notes. So what are you gonna do to make the most out of today's class? Are you gonna grab some tea or coffee? I've got tea. I've got water. My phone is on silent. I'm not checking my email. Get a snack. Make sure your kids are out of the way, your pets are out of the way. You're gonna focus. We're gonna be here for about... 75 minutes going through content.
So I want you guys to be focused. Let me know what you're going to do in the chat to make the most out of today's session. Drop your name and date to solidify your commitments in the comments. Yeah, you guys will get a replay of this. But I still would take notes because it helps you really remember things. So let me know what you're going to do to make the most out of today's session.
Write your commitment in the chat. Well, you guys are going to something new that we're doing is I'm pulling like the best content that I have from my podcast to make these a little bit more interactive, engaging. And so you're going to hear from Chris Voss. You're going to hear from Shelby Sapp and a few others in this webinar. So it should be fun. Okay.
So before we are jumping into the content, we're going to have about 30 minutes of content. We're going to do a demo, another 30 or 40 minutes of content. So before we do that, so I don't have to interrupt in the middle of the session, since we've got a lot of the folks on already, is to sign up to the demo.
So Kate, if you can drop this link in here, youngandprofiting.co slash Crush Your Sales, I would join it on your computer because we're going to do a demo that you can follow along with. So Kate will drop that link in the chat. Make sure you guys sign up. It's no credit card. There's no gotchas. Just sign up so that you can try it for 14 days. Okay, we're going to move on.
So in case you don't know a little bit about me, I am the host of Young and Profiting Podcast. It's the number one entrepreneurship and business podcast. I've been doing it for over six years. I'm the founder and CEO of Yap Media. It's an award-winning social media and podcast production agency.
And then most recently, a couple years ago, I founded the Yap Media Podcast Network, which is my main focus now. So essentially, I grow and monetize other top business podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, Russell Brunson. I've got a lot of legendary podcasters in my network, and we're the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. So I do a lot of sales.
My main job at Yap is I'm the spokesperson of the company. And I really am taking most of the major like brand sales calls, agency sales calls. A lot of our agency retainer deals are like 10K minimum a month. Most of them are closer to 20 to 30K. Our brand deals, I'm closing million dollar deals sometimes. So I've got a ton of experience with sales.
I would say that's one of my main skill sets aside from marketing. So I love sales. I know a lot about it. I've interviewed every sales expert in the world that you could imagine. And so a lot of this learning is just things that I've come across on my podcast and my own personal experience. And so I'm excited to share with you. So today we're going to talk about bottoms-up sales strategy.
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Chapter 3: What are driver trees and how do they influence sales performance?
And then you're gonna wanna track your data and figure out how many actions you need to complete each part of your sales process to hit your goals. Once you do that, you can set a stretch goal And I'll go over an example. So if this is feeling cloudy, I'll go over an example in a second. Once you do that, you can hit your stretch goal and make sure that your number is right.
And then you can break the targets into easier chunks so that you know what you need to do and what your team needs to do to achieve that result. Okay? So driver trees is how you do this. This is how you determine what actions you need to take, all of your different rates and things like that. And there's three steps to create a driver tree. Number one, you determine your pipeline activities.
So you determine the measurable actions that drive results in your best performing sales funnels. So this is all the calls that you've made, your email sent, your direct messages sent, your follow-up sent. the lunches that you've taken clients to. It's just any sort of action that you take to close a deal.
And like I mentioned, you're going to want to think about all the different ways that you get clients, because I'm sure it's not just one way. And you're going to want to figure out what are these separate funnels and map out the actions to each of these funnels.
And then you'll actually be able to see which funnel is working better and which funnel you want to spend more time with and what actions you want to spend more time on. Okay? Then you have to collect the results. So a spreadsheet or a CRM tools, a sales tracking tool, you want to collect all your past results.
And these can include things like clicks, webinar registrations, webinar attendees, emails opened, calls booked. Okay. Number three is you want to calculate your performance rate metrics. So that's analyzing your past data to collect all the key rates to help you forecast future performance. So that's conversion rates, click-through rates, average order value, attendance rate.
So let me know, do you guys understand the general concepts, steps one through two, three to create a driver trade? Okay, I'm gonna put it into, I'm gonna show you an example. So do you guys know what the different sales funnels that you have that currently you're using in your business? Let me know. Type it in the chat. What are the different types of sales? Are you doing webinars?
Are you doing discovery calls? Are you going to live events? Okay. And then do you know... Out of all the different funnels that you have, do you know the best performing one? Or do you feel like you need to analyze your data and determine what the best performing sales funnel is? And do you guys know what key activities that you do in order to get all the different actions in your sales funnel?
Do you guys know the different actions? So for example, when we have a webinar, it includes DMs. It includes an opt-in to sign up. It includes a follow-up email. It includes... a bunch of different things. Do you guys know those steps or do you need to actually map out those steps? That's great. So you got, this is gonna be super relevant for all of you guys. This is gonna be a game changer.
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Chapter 4: How to develop a resilient sales mindset?
Yeah. So you heard it from Shelby. You've got to become a sales psychopath. That means approaching every opportunity like you're going to get the sale. That means not being worried about what happened before and just being in the moment, focusing on the process.
Like we said, focusing on the activities, the actions you have to take, having a really good work ethic and making sure that you hit the actions no matter what the results were in the process. After the event is over, it's not about ignoring the results. We want to evaluate the results once it's over, once the event is over. Once the month is over, we evaluate what we did. How can we be better?
But in the moment, it's all about the actions that you take and the volume of the actions and just being as positive and as confident as you can in that moment, whether it's in DMs or on the phone or in person, okay? So we had some questions. So you're like, So we have some questions. I'm going to just go back and clarify some things. So just to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
Somebody had a question. Course conversions versus attendees. So I'm going to go back to... this really quick. So conversions are people who actually bought the course. Attendees are people who attended the webinars. So that's how granular you want to get. Okay. So you send a DM. The DM has an opt-in link. People click that link. Then they go to an opt-in page for the webinar.
They type in their name, their email, and they register for the event. They get a calendar event. There's probably some automated emails that happen because they give their email. They register for the event. But then only 50% of the people show up to the webinar. Right. Then you do the webinar.
And if they buy on the webinar or or afterwards, that's up to you to decide what the time period is of tracking conversions associated with that webinar. And that's people actually buy. Right. So that's hopefully that answers your question. How do you send 10K DMs efficiently? Virtual assistants? On LinkedIn, your DMs are unlimited to your first connections.
So it's just all about getting first connections and then you can DM them whenever you want. Question, if this is new Salesforce and do not have much past history, do you use past sales from other salespeople? Yes, you can just use past sales data from other people, other events that you've had. And then you can try to tailor it once you have more realistic information about your new sales team.
What strategies to manipulate conversion rate? We're gonna talk about that later when we talk about optimizing funnels. All right, cool. I think those were all the questions. Okay, so do you guys wanna lean into activity-based selling? Is this different from what you've already been doing?
Yeah, this is also something that you've probably done before, but like things get busy and then you just kind of like are on a hamster wheel and it's always good to just like reset, especially in the beginning of the year. And also make sure you stop doing things that are not effective or you can kind of optimize, like we were talking about, we're gonna talk about optimizing funnels.
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Chapter 5: What is Pipedrive and how does it enhance sales tracking?
I love that. So an example of this is something that we do at YAP and that we've tried to fix, which is our attendance rate. Our attendance rate is great for webinars. We get a 50% average attendance rate. However, I interviewed Kat Norton and she told me that for webinar registrants, she gets a drastic increase in her attendance rate by collecting people's phone numbers and then texting them.
So an example of optimizing a funnel for us would be to start testing text. And so if we were to just not change anything, so if I just had the team continue doing 10,000 DMs, but we implemented text reminders, which can be automated, and we're able to jump from 50% attendance rate to 80% attendance rate, I can hit my 35K-ish goal with that change and not necessarily sending out more DMs.
So it can really have big impacts and you wanna see like what part of your funnel can you actually improve? Is there a way that you can improve the click-through rate? Is there a way that you can improve the conversion rate on the actual event, right? So you always wanna look at that and try to optimize. So based on everything you just heard, are you inspired to start optimizing your funnels?
And if so, like what's one idea that you will do after this call Well, thank you, guys. You can listen to all those episodes. Kate, maybe you can drop the episode links in the chat. That Russell Brunson episode was epic. I have so many sales episodes, guys. I've interviewed every single human behavior and sales person in the world. Okay, so... Benchmarks for conversion rates.
They're going to be different by industry, but that's something you can go on ChatGPT and check out. That's going to be totally different for every single activity. It's going to be totally different for every single type of event. So for example, like webinar events are going to have different conversion rates than a sales call. But you can find that information online. Okay.
And you can also use your own past results as your benchmark and just keep improving from there. Working backwards, figuring out how to automate, laying out the funnel. Yeah, the hook story offer is brilliant. That entire episode with Russell is amazing. Also, if you guys want more webinar content, I'll write this in the chat. I have a two-part series with Jason Fladline.
And we go over how to create the best webinar ever for like two hours. So if you guys want to get into webinars, check that out. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hey, AppFam. You know running a business means you're juggling a million things. And if you're anything like me, you've probably missed a few important calls along the way.
I remember one time I had to charge my phone. I stepped out for coffee for 10 minutes. And in that short window, I missed a call from a potential client who was offended I didn't pick up and ended up hiring somebody else. It was brutal. That's when I realized every missed call can literally cost you.
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Chapter 6: How does Hala Taha utilize Pipedrive to optimize sales funnels?
You know, they could come back to you and you can be the favorite because you put your foot down and stayed confident and assertive. Now, for the favorite, you want to stay confident. You want to stay assertive. You also don't want to give them time to think, to basically reconvince them that you're not the favorite. So you want to close quickly. You don't want to let them second guess.
You want to push for the highest pricing, better terms. You definitely don't want to throw out free promotions if you're already the favorite, right? So once you know you're the favorite, offer stands as it is. There's no flexibility in price. Close quickly and you'll do well. So there's a magic question and we're going to hear about it from Chris Voss.
So what questions should we ask ourselves to understand whether we're the fool or the favorite?
Ask yourselves, how can I fearlessly find out early on without hurting anybody's feelings? Because I'm not going to ask legitimate questions. How do I allow myself to find out early on whether or not I'm the favorite of the fool? If you don't want to try, you're holding yourself hostage. I mean, release yourself because you're the one that's holding you back.
And this scares the heck out of so many people. If they can get over this hurdle, if they can just put themselves in a mindset to find out, then they're going to be a long way towards using these skills because it's about releasing yourself in many ways. Steve, would you agree?
Absolutely. And this is a concept that I really resonated with because In football, this is what we were trained to do. Read the situation. Read and react. Read and react. There's lots of clues. And you're looking for the clues. You just have to know what you're looking for. No one knew that there was a favorite and a fool. The moment you start looking for the clues, they're all over the place.
It's not a sin to lose business. It's a sin to take a long time losing business. And the real reason why real estate agents work seven days a week is because they don't work five. If they actually work five days a week, actually work, rather than spending time chasing after business they're not going to get, they wouldn't have to work seven days a week. They wouldn't have to be on call 24-7.
So I take sales calls all the time. They usually start with some sort of discovery call where you try to figure out what's the client's problems. Can I help them? Can I not help them? So what are the things that we can do in that conversation to know whether we're the fool or the favorite? What are the things that people do or say that will give us clues?
Well, the first thing is to just ask what is the most horrifying question for everybody until they understand how good it is. And that's to say to the other person, you got a lot of options out there. I mean, I got solid competitors. You could go to them. They got great resumes. Why me? That is like the magic phrase. I mean, it's an emotional intelligence, surgical strike.
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