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attribute most my sales success to this shit just being fun to me cold calling, prospecting, demos, try to make it a human experience and not a template gurus can say what they want, but acumen + vibes will always work (all things in life)

well happy ldom to those who participate in monthly quotas with me contract calls at 8, 9, 10 & 11 today still haven’t mastered of the art of not having the most dramatic finishes possible

just discovered your podcast @MichaelHewitt23 - is this a relic or do you plan on making more episodes? some great content in here

You need to have a slide on your follow up calls where you put down the biggest concerns in the deal You can call it - concerns, questions, yellow lights, I personally call it the quandary But it forces you to: 1. Ask the damn question 2. Get everyone in the room sitting up

looking forward @BowTiedSalesGuy

Love my current gig, but Perplexity recruiter reached out for enterprise role. Obviously familiar with the name, but not the positioning or how they compare to OpenAI or Anthropic. Looks like their building their GTM which could be fun. Anyone have insight here

reps will call a prospect a million times to book a meeting, then zero times during the actual sales process. you. cannot. resort. to. email. in. live. deals. don't lose your ability to "cold call" your active pipeline

I call it the blank paper method. It's the reason I think I've been a leading rep at three orgs, in three different verticals, in three different segments in the past decade. Once a week, I open a bottle of wine, pull out a white sheet of paper, and go deal by deal in my pipeline and simply think. Where is it at, what is the org chart, why wouldn't they buy my company, why would they buy a competitor, what do I need to do to win. It takes my entire night, but it gives me clarity across the board and forces my brain to interact with deals in a thorough and disciplined manner.

if you want to learn effective sales (or life) communication listen to - Don Valentine - Doug Leone - Jamie Dimon - Steve Jobs There is something about blunt, direct, simple, assertive language that is so damn crisp

timeless

there’s a real part of me that would love to just to buy a sweet house in like Astoria, Oregon. Kit the house. And call it a life with a remote job with most days spent reading and making music as a hermit to the world. Crazy I found sales as my calling w/ my inclination for isolation

A unique variable you have to consider in sales is that while “quantifying” and uncovering business problems is essential, you need to isolate these to areas you uniquely solve for. I say this because I see a lot of reps quantifying generic problems that all their competitors can solve for. What this creates are situations where you are essentially doing the homework for the other reps, creating urgency, and then potentially losing a deal on price if you found a problem someone else can solve for cheaper. Ideally, you acknowledge all these trivial problems and then identify and layer into areas that you exclusively solve better than anyone. Those are the numbers you want to repeatedly dive into on follow-up calls and position as their greater prize. We can solve all those problems, but uniquely also create X value that no one else can do. This is essential in Command of the Message training for solution differentiators and really needs to be first-principles stuff.

bach party this weekend have to say, finding the right partner simplifies absolutely everything

it’s crazy how often it pays to read the essentials instead of the new-age stuff. most modern business books are repurposed, cosmetically enhanced, neutered versions of fantastic source material. sales = socratic questioning copywriting = ogilvy / writing that works investing = the intelligent investor behavior = the art of worldly wisdom there are modern gems, obviously: let’s get real or let’s not play jolt motivational interviewing the almanack of naval ravikant antifrangile the beginning of infinite atamamun but the further you go back, the more you realize a lot of “new” ideas are just old ones in more words to inflate book durarion.

Most of us, myself included, use conversations as a way to prove something to ourselves. That we're competent. That we're articulate. That we ask good questions. That we're more impressive then the next person. It's an interior-focused game which creates a constant "big brother" feeling to every word you're about to say. It has to live up your immense standards which dulls creativity. This leads to self-editing and modulating in real time. You hear yourself speaking. You judge the question before you've even finished asking it. You start reaching for the impressive word instead of the obvious one. You hear people on the sales floor do this all the time, for example "what was the impetus for checking us out?" That is ridiculous. The people we call "naturals" seem to have some mysterious quality that the rest of us spend years trying to reverse-engineer. I don't think it's that complicated. They aren't using the conversation to prove anything to themselves because there is nothing to protect. So they have complete freedom to just say whatever comes to mind naturally. The good, the bad, and the banal. So if the obvious question is the right question, they ask the obvious question. If the answer is simple, they give the simple answer. It's always right in the pocket and you get the feeling there is no act. There is no need for you to be impressed either. They are free from the audience as well as themselves. Their brain isn't sitting there saying, that's not a good enough question for someone like me. Imagine having to negotiate with yourself before saying "what brought you here today." This is the strange trap of trying to be brilliant or trying to prove your worth every time you speak... you spend the entire conversation limiting your brilliance in an effort to prove that you have it. You are never in the moment, you are always hedging the moment. The best people I've seen don't walk into a call trying to be impressive. They're not trying to sound natural, either. They are just ripping and are totally ok sounding like idiots. Which is a much better pocket to be in for real conversations.

complicated topic, but you will never unlock your full potential (sales or otherwise) as long as you’re using conversations as a way to prove something to yourself

The skill that has served me best in my career, by far, has been learning how to be blunt and forward in a very casual way. I see a lot of people try to become more “direct” by thinking it means challenging prospects and “dominating” the call. Personally, I couldn’t think of anything further from the truth. Ideally, your bluntness should come across as “I’ve been here before” and have a natural indifference to their decision There’s a big difference between: “You’re making a mistake. You’re going to waste thousands and have to reimplement in a year.” and: “While I think you’re making a mistake, it’s your decision. We’ve done our due diligence, and you ultimately know we’re the better fit. But if you can’t stomach the extra $10k, you should sign the other contract. That said, imagine there’s a reason you haven’t already”

completely conflicted on how to start discovery calls these days. while i love showing up with a strong POV and leading w/ a researched hypothesis I feeeel my best calls, always have been just rolling up with some lose notions on the company and starting with "so what's going on in the business that has us here today" and seeing where the motion and call naturally goes