I remember that first week in sales.

I remember that first week in sales.
I sat at my desk waiting for the phone to ring…

It didn’t.

Shocking as it seems now,
that’s the way I thought it worked.
Customers call into their rep and place orders.

Surely with all the great marketing the company did
that’s what was going to happen soon - those calls.

There were calls, of course,
with customers chasing delivery,

But nothing that was going to help me
to hit that 1M target painted on my back.

Inexperienced and naive.
I was a techie trying to be a suit.
But being a suit didn’t work the way I thought.

Not the obvious choice.
The convenient one,
being asked to step up.
I’d been shoehorned into the job.

What to do?

I’d started calling my best contacts.
Asking them if they needed anything.

“We’ll call you when we need something.”

“We’ve got things covered. Thanks for calling.”

“Your firm let us down last time, we won’t be buying again.”

Those same people had loved my technical skills.
I’d helped them overcome many challenging problems.

But now I felt like I was being shunned
- I was being shunned.

What to do?

And that’s when it hit me.
Succeed or get fired.
A binary choice.

I thought about that... for a long time.

Success or failure.

Then the penny dropped.
Watch the best salespeople in the team.

Notice what they do consistently.
Notice what they say, and how they say it.
Notice how they handle the emotional ups, and downs.

Use that as the role model.

And look at the failures too.
The ones who tell a good story.
But fail to get results that confirm it.

Use that as the anti-role-model.

So, I did that.

And I asked the role models to mentor me.
Which worked better than all the sales training.

The results.

Painful scars earned in the field… and…

Year 1: 70% quota.
Year 2: 120% quota
Year 3: 120% quota

That was years ago.
I look back on the pain fondly.
Going through it changed my life.

It helped me understand
the nuances of selling expertise,
not products packaged as
.

And for the last 30+ years.
I've worked with individuals and teams,
solo practices and big-brand businesses,
all in consulting, or technology services,
to improve the way they succeed too.