How Daniel Disney Sells: Know That People Need What You're Selling

Daniel Disney’s first job was a part-time cashier at a DIY store called Homebase. After seeing how friendly he was with the customers, the head of the kitchen and bath department asked him if he’d like to give sales a try.

He figured why not. Almost immediately, he realized two things:

• He loved sales.
• He was good at it.

“I absolutely loved being able to help people understand what they want, build out a solution perfect for them, and then close the deal,” he said.

Daniel hasn’t stopped since, with his entire career revolving around selling. Eight years ago, he added another job as well – content creator, by starting the LinkedIn Page?The Daily Sales.

In June, The Daily Sales passed 1 million followers, as it’s become one of the most popular pages on LinkedIn. Daniel’s built that following with a collection of?funny memes,?provocative polls,?inspirational messages, and?practical advice.

“Sales is a tough job,” Daniel said. “You’ve got pressure and you’ve got rejection and you’ve got all this negativity you have to face. If one of our memes can make you smile or a tip or a quote can make you think, that means the world to me.”

Daniel, through The Daily Sales, has done that many, many times over. Clearly, he has keen insight into the highs and lows of selling, and the inspiration sellers need to hear.

It motivated us to learn more. Enter his?How I Sell?interview. Let’s dive in:?

1. What motivates you at work, even when you aren't feeling it?

The first thing that’s always motivated me is knowing that there are people out there that need what I’m selling.

It doesn’t matter how bad a day I’m having or how many rejections I’ve faced. It’s knowing that someone out there is going to be thankful to speak to me. They are going to be excited when I call or knock and they’re going to think, “Wow, I didn’t know this product or service existed, and I’m glad you told me about it.”

The other bit is just the drive I have to be the best I can be and push myself harder than I did yesterday. Say I made 100 calls today – I’ll see if I can make 110 calls tomorrow. That’s always been within me.

So those two things are always what keep me going.

2. What's your sales philosophy, in 3 sentences or less?

My sales philosophy is to take my ego out and help as many people as possible, to give as much value to as many people as possible, and to serve as much as possible.?

I don’t want to use sales pressures to close deals. It really is to just give as much value as I can and help my client make the best decision possible.?

And that goes with my content philosophy as well, running The Daily Sales. My goal is to provide as much value or fun as possible to whoever reads it.

3. How can sellers today make their prospecting stand out?

I think this is the biggest opportunity for sellers right now and it’s what I call hyper-personalization.

Recently, I went through all the sales InMails I’ve received on LinkedIn. I got over 500, and 90% of them weren’t personalized at all. And then others might’ve been personalized by putting my name or company in them and that’s it.

Also, I believe only one of those 500 InMails was a video message, and one was an audio message.?

That represents an opportunity. With AI and all the technology that exists today, there’s so much spam in the market. Sellers today can stand out by hyper-personalizing their messages.?

That means a few things. It means reading through my LinkedIn profile and writing a message that’s targeted to my needs and my position. And it means trying other formats as well, like audio and video messages in InMails, for example.?

There’s so much out there today on shortcuts for prospecting with templates and Chat GPT, although that just adds to the noise. Instead, be hyper-personalized with your messages and mix up your formats and you will break through.

4. Do you have a preferred closing technique?

My personal favorite is presenting the close as the logical next step in the process.

I try to follow the sales process as best as I can. After I present the solution, the close isn’t some big crazy next step, but instead the logical next step.?

It’s straightforward. This is what I heard, here’s what I suggest as a solution, and here’s when you can expect results. Let’s get this started so we can get the results.?

So, the close is the logical next step if they are ready. If they aren’t ready, we can figure out what’s holding them back and make any changes we need to.?

I never want to pressure someone into a close or make it feel like a jump. It’s just another step along the way toward getting the results they want.

5. What excites you most about the future of sales?

While I have criticized technology in this conversation, technology is the most exciting thing in sales right now.

I originally sold in a pre-technology time where keeping a CRM up-to-date meant keeping the papers on my desk in order. Now, of course, that’s all digitalized and it makes it so much easier, and I can share my notes with anyone else on the team.

I see AI and all the sales technology coming onto the market doing the same thing, if done right. The right technology should both free up time and give you the data and insight to spend more time talking to people who want to hear from you.?

While there is so much more to come, in many ways, we are there already. It just comes down to sales leaders creating the right tech stack that simplifies selling, versus making it more complicated.

And that means fewer, better tools. The best sales leaders have a relatively simple sales tech stack that gives clarity to sellers and reduces their workload, versus adding to it.?

6. Is there a habit you have outside of work that helps you sell better?

I genuinely enjoy serving people and that carries over to my personal life as well. Specifically, I love to host family and friends for barbecues and meals.?

When I do host, I almost go into work mode, where I want to make sure everyone has what they need. Obviously, that starts with great food, although also means games and music and making sure everyone feels included.?

It’s fun for me and I believe it only strengthens my skills.

7. What Sales Navigator feature do you find the most useful? Why?

I have three.

The first one is profile views. I can’t tell you how many deals I’ve sourced by looking through my profile views for people who meet my ICP (ideal customer profile). If I see someone who looks like a fit, I’ll proactively reach out to them, and it usually leads to a good conversation.

As you build out your brand on LinkedIn, you get more views, which leads to more conversations. So, profile views alone have created so many opportunities for me.

The second is?Smart Links. It’s a really clever feature that lets you see who is opening what you send them. And what’s great is it’s real-time, so I know when people are looking at them too.

I will proactively reach out to people after I see them click a link, versus waiting for them to get back to me. This gives me a speed advantage over any competition that doesn’t have that.

And the final one is InMail. What’s funny is I’d say 90% of sellers use InMail incorrectly in that they don’t hyper-personalize it, like I discussed earlier.

For me, I always try to personalize my InMails as much as possible and it’s worked amazingly well. So that’s a feature that’s always provided a lot of value.

Bonus resource:?How to Be Great at Reaching Out: What Every InMail Sent in 2022 Told Us

8. What has been your biggest failure in sales, and how did that experience transform you?

My biggest failure in sales was letting my ego get the better of me early on.

In my first sales job, I was 18, working part-time in a DIY store, and I was outselling all the full-timers. When you start seeing yourself climb up the leaderboard and earning commissions, the ego starts to really get inflated. And that affects how you treat people.

My most cringe-worthy moment – it’s honestly hard for me to talk about – was that I showed up probably 30 minutes late one day to work. I could care less I was late; I was the number-one seller at the store. And I had cycled there, so I changed into my work outfit right in the middle of the place, which was disrespectful to pretty much everyone.

I’m embarrassed talking about that now. But I think I had to go through it, I had to learn you need to keep a humbleness to it all. And you need to take your job, how you treat your team, how you treat your manager, and how you treat your customers seriously. And know that no matter how high you climb, you can always climb higher and get better.

So, that was it. Lucky it happened early, but I still have that terrible memory.

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