Podcasts seem to be making a comeback lately. Browsing iTunes and other sources, it’s incredible the number of podcasts listed for hundreds of unique categories. When we set out to a make a list of podcasts for sales leaders, we knew they had to be 100% worth your time and provide actionable advice that you could implement today.
Our list of 25 podcasts for sales leaders is divided into 4 categories:
Sales/Business Development
Business/Leadership
Entrepreneurship/Startups
Lifehacking/Productivity
If you’re a rookie salesperson, start with sales/business development. If you’ve just been promoted to a management position and you’re now leading a sales team, begin with business/leadership and mix in some of the sales podcasts every now and then. And while you may not work for a startup, a lot of the entrepreneurship podcasts are incredibly insightful and address sales challenges for both B2B and B2C sales teams.
We think there is a podcast for everyone on this list and we hope you incorporate a few of them into your commute on a weekly basis. You’ll find links to each podcast in each blurb below.
And, if you don’t have time to peruse them now, be sure to save the graphic at the end of the blog post.
Happy listening!
25 Podcasts for Sales Professionals and Leaders:
Sales/Business Development Podcasts:
1. In the Arena
This 5-star rated podcast is hosted by Anthony Iannarino, sales leader, author, and international speaker. You can also check his daily sales tips and free resources on The Sales Blog.
If you feel your career is stuck, listen to this series carefully and you’ll soon get the mindset and the knowledge needed to succeed. Anthony manages to get the most from each guest he interviews and to provide his listeners with valuable sales advice.
After all, we’re all salespeople some way or another, and no matter what your job is, you’ll find Anthony’s podcast utterly inspiring.
Gerhard Gschwandtner on a Fierce Loyalty to Life – Episode 44
Tilting Downstream with Niraj Dawar – Episode 42
2. Customer Success Radio
If you are interacting with customers on a regular basis, this podcast is a must-listen for you. Frontleaf co-foundersTom Krackeler and Rachel English have dedicated the series to cloud software companies and in each episode they invite some of the most seasoned experts to share their knowledge.
With Customer Success Radio, you have everything you’d wait from a good podcast: a high level of discussions, excellent audio quality, actionable tips, and lots of humor.
Its authors know how to motivate and engage listeners whose job is to serve and nurture customer relationships by keeping them informed on the latest trends. Any company can benefit from the advice offered by the two Frontleaf co-founders and their guests, even if they are not in the cloud software industry.
#24: How to Solve For the Customer
#20: Customer Success Models
3. The Ziglar Show
Many motivational quotes you read online belong to Zig Ziglar, American author and sales expert. Tom Ziglar, his son, and Kevin Miller have decided to continue his educational work through an inspiring podcast, simply called “The Ziglar Show”.
Listeners love this podcast for being uplifting and transmitting core values that efficiently guide people of all ages and interests. The “Ziglar Show” entertains you while helping you acquire foundation qualities you need in order to become successful. You know you can expect interesting and engaging audio content when seeing titles such as:
341: 15 qualities of a successful person
338: Business IS personal
4. Steal the Show
Michael Port’s “Steal the Show” podcast is dedicated to professionals who want to become better public speakers and performers. Being in the spotlight is not easy, but the advice provided by this New York Times bestselling author will show you how to captivate the audience, control your emotions, and make your message more powerful.
Michael’s fans swear this expert has helped them transform their speaking careers and look forward to listening to each new episode. If you need state-of-the-art advice on public speaking, listen to “Steal the Show” regularly and you won’t be disappointed. Michael shows you how to inform, motivate and persuade people around you in episodes such as:
026 3 Techniques for Keeping Audiences on the Edge of Their Seats
025 How to Improvise Your Way into the Hearts and Minds of the Toughest Crowds
5. Rain Today
“Rain Today” is a weekly podcast focusing on sales tips and techniques launched in 2009. Those who are familiar with the Rain Today website providing sales training and webinars will also love the audio content available for free and providing actionable tips they can implement immediately.
Listeners praise the “Rain Today” podcast for the advice it offers in areas such as solution selling and professional services selling. Each episode features a new guest offering sales takeaways and inspiring “Rain Today” fans. You’ll find out that phone is again the best prospecting tool and that customers should be at the center of your sales strategy from recent episodes like:
The Best Prospecting Tool for Sales Teams
The Customer is Always Right Even If They’re Wrong
6. The Advanced Selling Podcast
You can’t go wrong with a podcast hosted by B2B sales trainers with 20 years experience – Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale will help you advance your sales career and enjoy your journey towards reaching sales success.
Besides acquiring the kind of mindset that makes you a good sales person, you’ll also have access to knowledge and advice on topics like sales communication, prospecting, cold calling, pricing, positioning, and many others. The large amount of useful information is coated in a spicy layer of humor and chit-chatting that will make you have a great laugh besides learning sales techniques. With this podcast, it’s actually possible to look forward to every Monday. Find out what really works and what doesn’t from episodes like:
#325: Sales Psychology: Are You Getting in Your Own Way?
#322: Creating Value In the Sales Process
7. Salesman Podcast
Salesman.red is a powerful resource for people working in the sales industry; the website provides sales-related tips and advice, humor, entertainment, articles, and also a podcast.
5 episodes are released every week, from Monday to Friday. Episodes last roughly half an hour and are the perfect activity while commuting – both entertaining and educational. By the time you get to work, you will be more motivated and enthusiastic about your job and ready to deliver the best results. Bonus: the British accent of the host and thought-provoking topics like:
Using Oxytocin To Build Rapport FAST With Paul Zak Ph.D.
Can You Close A Complex B2B Sale Over Social Media? With Joanne Black
8. The Brutal Truth About Sales & Selling
Aren’t you just curious to discover that brutal truth the podcast title is referring to? Listeners who decided to allocate time to this series don’t seem disappointed at all – they rate it as one of the best podcasts for people who want to improve their selling skills.
The podcast’s author, Brian Burns, is also known for his book “The Maverick Selling” and he shares some of the information included in the book in this free audio material. You’ll soon get hooked by the podcast and you’ll probably want to read the book as well – they both deliver excellent sales analysis and actionable tips. Brian likes to describe his work as fluff-free and can take pride in helping clients achieve a 300% increase in new business. Check titles such as:
STOP FOLLOWING UP!!!
Are YOU Stuck in this TRAP?
Leadership/Business Podcasts:
9. The EntreLeadership Podcast
EntreLeadership is more than just a podcast; it’s a comprehensive and reliable source of business tips and tools, aimed at helping leaders learn and keep up with their companies’ growth rates.
Podcast episodes are split in two categories – Personal Growth and Business Growth, and the first concept obviously plays a vital role for the second. EntreLeadership focuses on leader formation and the idea behind this online collection of resources is described as “The process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper.”
Before getting help from Dave’s team, you can benefit from the business and leadership advice they provide through the podcast. All EntreLeadership resources outline a complex leader portrait – both daring and humble, a pioneer and a helper at the same time. Find out more about what it takes to be a great leader from recent titles such as:
Ron Friedman – Building the Best Place to Work
Scott Harrison – Building a Culture of Innovation
10. The $100 MBA Show
The $100 MBA Show is a free 10-minute business lesson released every day and listened by more than 25,000 people. The podcast was awarded as an iTunes Best of 2014 and is the perfect daily treat for those who need simple and easy to follow business advice.
Unlike other podcast guests, Omar Zenhom doesn’t just interview successful entrepreneurs and leave listeners wondering what they could do in order to achieve the same results; the $100 MBA Show delivers compact business lessons that keeps listeners hooked on the daily 10 minutes of a different kind of development podcast – one that actually teaches you something.
The $100 MBA Show provides a solution for almost every business issue and will help you find the answer to questions like:
MBA404 What is Bitcoin & Should My Business Accept It?
MBA396 How to Attract The Right Employees
11. Business, Life, & Coffee
This recently-launched podcast has already received multiple stellar reviews from listeners and seems to have a great future ahead. The host, Joey Price, the CEO of Jumpstart:HR, LLC, interviews experts from various industries and opens the discussion on topics like leadership, development, finances, marketing and human resources.
Listeners can get in touch with the host on Twitter, ask questions live, and even become guests if they have something interesting and valuable to share with audiences. It takes half an hour each week to enjoy free access to words of wisdom from highly-successful and ambitious people that can inspire you to get the most from life and business as well.
The conversations between business experts have so far reached subjects such as productivity habits, revolutionary apps, securing your business against natural disasters, retirement plans and so on:
Episode 10 – Why Really Successful People Hate To-Do Lists Ft. Author Kevin Kruse
Episode 5 – How To Run a Start-Up Without Going To Business School
12. Question of the Day
What better way is there to make content more engaging than by asking a question and providing the answer? Moreover, the two authors, James Altucher (author and entrepreneur) and Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics co-author) use their unconventional thinking and wit to draw a new light on apparently not-so-complicated topics like reading, work, and social interaction.
Episodes last around 20 minutes and are released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hosts focus mostly on topics related to personal development and communities. Here are two recent episodes you need to check:
22. Is Reading Fundamental?
20. Post-Secondary Success Strategies (advice for people who haven’t gone to college)
13. The Look & Sound of Leadership
The Look & Sound of Leadership is delivered by Tom Henschel, the founder of Essential Communications and a talented coach. Tom is an expert in self-presentation and workplace communications and the idea that determined him to start this series was helping executives to be perceived the way they want at the workplace.
But you don’t necessarily have to be an executive to find The Look & Sound of Leadership interesting; listeners have noticed the host offers advice that is useful to any individual, no matter what their professional role is. This podcast is dedicated to anyone looking to communicate more efficiently in professional environments or improve their coaching skills.
Whether you meet Tom in class or through his podcast, you’ll be impressed by the high-quality of the information and material he delivers. Episodes like the following last around 20 minutes:
A Breakdown of Listening
Executive Presenting
14. TEDTalks Business
TEDTalks is an extremely powerful brand known for the educational and entertaining nature of its content, and you can have the same expectations from TEDTalks Business – this podcast won’t disappoint you. TEDTalks are so famous and widely-appreciated that any presentation of the series is redundant.
The podcast uses material from TED conferences and TEDx events – instead of watching the video you can listen to what the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and innovators have to say while going to work or at any time you need to hear some inspiring ideas. What makes TEDTalks different from other similar materials is the quality of its guests – fascinating people who have had a major impact on the business world. There’s no talk you won’t find thought-provoking, including some of the most recent episodes:
Barry Schwartz: The way we think about work is broken
Noy Thrupkaew: Human trafficking is all around you. This is how it works
15. HBR Ideacast
HBR Ideacast is a series created by the Harvard Business Review magazine. You can entirely trust the advice provided in both the magazine and the podcast as they are nonprofit, wholly-owned subsidiaries of Harvard University, reporting into Harvard Business School. Speakers are leading thinkers in the field of business and management from Harvard Business Review.
The HBR Ideacast has proved its worth as it will soon reach its 500th episode; you can listen to every new episode that is released on a weekly basis, and if you really get hooked on it, you can check material that goes back several years ago. Here are some of the latest titles that are just waiting for you to listen:
489: Disrupt Your Career, and Yourself
480: Become a Better Listener
Entrepreneurship/Startup Podcasts:
16. The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
Nathan Latka’s The Top captivates its listeners every day for 20 minutes and is dedicated to young entrepreneurs interested in building a startup, bloggers, and employees who want to leave the corporate world and start their own business.
To begin with, the host’s story is fascinating – Nathan is a 25-year old entrepreneur with amazing achievements: raising $2.5 million from a Forbes Billionaire, having driven over $4.5 million in revenues, and getting more than 10,000 customers from 160+ countries. But the focus is not on this successful school drop-out’s story, but on the entrepreneurial tips his guests offer. Nathan’s ability to get to the core immediately makes every bite-sized conversation in the podcast genuinely useful to its listeners. The insights and tips you’ll hear will definitely give you the confidence and inspiration needed to reach the top. Check discussions from recent episodes:
16: How to Get Any Blog To Write About You
24: How to Sell an Expensive Course FAST
17. Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast
Would you like to get advice and insights from an exceptional team? The people at Bowery Capital have the knowledge and experience needed to help you with your startup. Bowery Capital has been established in 2010 and is an early stage venture capital fund targeting daring founders who want to use technology to achieve business growth fast.
But the experts at Bowery Capital don’t expect you to trust them without a proof; you can have a glimpse at their knowledge and abilities by listening to the Startup Sales Podcast, where experienced people from various industries are invited to advise listeners on how to draw revenue even at an early stage of business development by succeeding in sales.
Check these recent episodes:
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Building Successful Partner Programs with Zack Rosen (Pantheon)
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Overcoming SMB Inertia with Kevin Petry (Booker)
18. Rocketship.fm
Rocketship is an extremely popular podcast having as guests a wide range of business leaders but also talented young people who will be tomorrow’s successful entrepreneurs. New episodes are released on Tuesday and Thursday every week and most of them are made in San Diego, a city known for its rising potential as a tech startup area.
The Rocketship series actually consists of interviews with business people – the idea is to listen to these experts, their experiences and advice, and learn how to become a successful entrepreneur yourself. It’s not a new recipe, but the team at Rocketship is doing it well and generates some fascinating talks that provide valuable information to marketers, hackers, and young entrepreneurs. It’s simple – when you listen to real people talking about their work and achievements, it’s impossible not to learn something useful.
Ep. 89 – Staying Motivated While Juggling Multiple Projects
Ep. 1 – How Product Hunt was Launched in Less than 1 Week
19. StartUp Podcast
Do you like podcasts so much that you’ve considered starting your own? Then this is a series you absolutely need to listen to because it talks about creating a podcast business. You might even be inspired to give up what you are currently doing for a living and become an entrepreneur. Hosts share their experience on how it’s like to build a company – they even managed to get funds from someone who invested in Twitter.
Listeners can watch StartUp host’s Alex Blumberg challenges after putting an end to his work on This American Life and Planet Money and starting his own company – you’ll see Alex doesn’t hide his concerns and anxiety, instead of sounding overly-optimistic. Even so, in spite of seeing the less bright side of things as well, you’ll still be tempted to become an entrepreneur yourself.
116 Men and a Baby
Till Debt Do Us Part
20. The Champion Entrepreneur
The Champion Entrepreneur’s mission is providing value to businesses and their owners or leaders – Anthony Lee Witt, the founder, offers advice aimed at helping you transform into the “the champion that you know deep inside that you are”. Anthony releases a new episode 5 days a week and interviews successful entrepreneurs in order to highlight the steps you need to take to become one of them.
Don’t expect just entertaining conversations, but also actionable tips on how to take both your life and business to the next level. Guests speak about the techniques they used to grow their businesses and about personal and organizational habits that can make a difference in your private and professional life.
Check some of the latest episodes:
154: Having an excellent start that will build your company to success with Tonya Page-Rynerson
150: Strength and experience, powering up for your profit with Kathleen Gage
Lifehacking/Productivity Podcasts:
21. Optimize with Brian Johnson
Oftentimes, we don’t lack skills, but rather the determination and structure needed to achieve more every day. Brian’s website is a reliable source of information on modern science, ancient wisdom, virtue, mastery, and common sense, all sprinkled with a bit of fun in order to accomplish, as he puts it, “optimal living”.
Brian has taken one step further by creating the “Optimize” podcast – the series already reached its 300th episode and its host is anything but out of ideas on how to help you optimize your life. The tips he provides will enable you to get the most from life, be happier, healthier, and more successful. Plus that he’ll contaminate you with his uplifting and enthusiastic mood! If you lack motivation or find yourself at a point where you don’t know how to handle difficulties in your life, “Optimize” can be your perfect cure.
10 tips on how to take consistent, impeccable action to achieve your goals
Interview – The New Science of Exercise with John Ratey, MD
22. Startup Life Hacks with Rommel Cabal
What is it like to be a startup founder? If you don’t have the courage to try it by yourself yet, you can easily have access to the backstage by listening to this podcast. You don’t need to make every possible mistake yourself or deal with lots of failures – instead you can listen to other entrepreneurs and their advice on how to make the most from a busy life and grow your business at the same time.
Listeners like this relatively new series launched in late summer 2015 because it reveals real-life situations from small startups instead of focusing on big businesses like other podcasts do. It feels a lot easier and more encouraging to get advice from people who have been in the same situation like you, trying to get a small business started.
Ep 013: Ways to Quit Your Day Job w/ Tyler Norris
Ep 015: Building a Team That Works w/ Luke Sophinos
23. This Is Your Life Podcast
Michael Hyatt is the resourceful host of a weekly podcast that is helping people “live with more passion, work with greater focus, and lead with extraordinary influence”. Subscribers get the free episode on intentional leadership every Wednesday morning. Loyal listeners, Michael’s talent and the high quality of the show have brought it to its 5th series and there is still more to come.
Many fans, including new media experts, have included Michael’s podcast in their personal top 10 and weekly listening schedule. The recipe for success is simple: finding successful people that listeners identify with and encouraging them to share their experience and opinions. You will have a lot of things to learn from episodes like:
Season 5, Episode 5: How to Finally Achieve Work-Life Balance
Season 5, Episode 8: Why It’s Time For You to Stop Trying
24. The School of Greatness
The School of Greatness’s host, Lewis Howes, thinks that “Life should be lived passionately otherwise you’re playing another person’s game.” The fascinating thing about Lewis is that he started his business and marketing career after having to give up his dream of becoming a professional athlete because of an injury.
He managed to build a multi-million dollar online media company even if he had no money and no idea what to do in the beginning. This is why listeners are attracted by The School of Greatness podcast – because it tells the story of someone who achieved extraordinary results in a short time. Here’s what to expect from this series: inspiring stories from successful entrepreneurs, celebrities sharing their experience, and professional athletes talking about their ups and downs.
Give Up to Go Up
Make It Big, Lose It All, and Earn Back Even More with Josh Altman
25. Smiths Notes
Here’s an original idea on how to make a useful and entertaining podcast: speaking about books on business and personal development topics. There are lots of people interested in reading this kind of content, but they have little time to do it and oftentimes they can’t afford starting a book that will not be interesting and useful to them.
Aside from helping you make a choice, Smiths Notes provides you with the most important information included in each book. It’s not the same thing as reading it, but it’s a good start if you want to acquire more business knowledge and eventually allocate the time needed to perform the actual reading. These are two titles you should at least have contact with through Smith Notes:
SN021: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
SN026: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
Jenny Poore is the Director of Marketing at Sales Engine. You can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
The post 25 Podcasts For Sales Leaders to Subscribe To Today appeared first on Sales Engine.