What can you learn from working 38,452 hours?

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I've been in plenty of sales presentations, on a ton of new business walk-throughs, and have won and lost countless deals and opportunities over my sales career. Below is a picture from 6 years ago during a walk-through in a manufacturing environment. The hat doubles for deer hunting!

I've worked sales jobs with monthly quotas, ones that required "telemarketing Fridays," cold calling, after-hours networking requirements, relationship-building industry association involvement and so much more. I've hired sales reps and had to fire reps, and I've led growth conversations to help scale my current organization from $37M to approx. $70M (to date).

My first job was door-knocking for a construction company that sold new windows, doors, and siding. My boss gave me a script, and at first, I was horrible at it. But he paid me $500 cash each week to book 20 appointments. And I was 22 (back in 2002). It was awesome.?

To say I've proverbially been around the sales block is starting to become an understatement. But with experience comes value earned and lessons learned.

A whole lotta sales knowledge.

Whether you saw my tweet thread?from last month or not, I thought it would be a fun exercise to add up all of the hours I've been working in my career to date.

38,452 hours of studying and working in sales.?Of course, it's an estimate, but one that's pretty accurate ... within a couple hundred hours or so.

Here are my Top Five Takeaways after 20+ years in the field:

Create a sales plan.

I didn't learn how important having a sales plan was until I was 28 years old. I had been working in sales for 5+ years, however, the organizations I had worked for weren't intelligent enough (?!) to guide their sales reps through any formal plans. Sure, we had metrics and goals to hit, but looking back, there wasn't a plan ... a process ... something formal that helped drive each opportunity from A to Z.?

• All sales processes need qualified stages. After working within a few, I prefer to keep the plans I design simple.

Explore; Develop; Position; Close, as an example.

When your reps work their opportunities through qualified stages, it allows for more efficient communications, provides an easy path to financial/revenue forecasting, and helps drive your 1 on 1's if you're on the management side.

Design metrics for success.?

I've written a few metric-focused blasts since starting Sales Homie a couple of months ago.

• New Year New Sales Goals?
• Pizza Sauce and Sales

Sales is simply a numbers game. Once you have your metric formulas for success, it's a matter of putting effort into actionable tasks that feed your sales process.

Some of the more popular metrics to plan for are:

• Closing Percentage?(the percentage at which you close new sales)
• Conversion Rate?(the rate at which you book a new meeting)
• Pipeline Ratios?(the rate at which you determine how many prospects you need in your pipeline to achieve your goal)

Sales isn't a "wing-it" profession. For those that want to maximize a career out of selling, they operate on metrics for success.

Sales and Marketing can sometimes go hand in hand. Here's a great newsletter partner that provides simple-to-understand and actionable messages on all things marketing.

Sales = Effective Communications.

The longer I've worked in revenue-generation roles, the more I've realized that selling is nothing more than being a better communicator than your competitors.

I had the opportunity to speak with Janet Machuka (@janetmachuka_) a couple of weeks ago on the topic of Sales: Mastering the Art of Future Planning and Tech Strategies.

Although we discussed Tech and Future Planning and strategies, I made sure to emphasize these few key points:

• Sales is all about effective communication.
• Take time to build trust with your prospects and customers.
• Bring value and it'll differentiate you from your competitors.

Click the picture or #AfricaTweetChat link to listen to the Spaces event, or find it here:?

Use your resources.

Perhaps one of my favorite takeaways.?

My first "real" job out of college was working for a telecommunications company, selling business phone and internet services. My boss, Ross Carter , told me out of the gate,?"you will never know everything there is to know, and that's OK ... reps that use the resources around them are the ones that will win more than they lose."

That has stuck with me, twenty years strong. And it couldn't be more true:

• I've changed industries 4 times, having had to learn new vernacular, processes, expectations, and products/services. I didn't know all there was to know, but I knew whom I should know, to summon at the appropriate time.

I wrote about this two weeks ago, in my Super Bowl-related blast:

• Sales professionals are the NFL Quarterback equivalent.

Mentorship.

I've had the unique opportunity to have identified multiple mentors throughout my career that have aided in my career growth and development.

How do you know that you have a mentor that has your best interests in mind?

• They enjoy seeing you succeed.
• They challenge you to think critically.
• They push you to expand and broaden your network and sphere of influence.

Above is a picture of my current mentor, TOM VETTEL, PCC (left). This was from a golf tournament in 2021. I've had the opportunity to work with Tom on a 1 on 1 executive coaching basis, and additionally, as part of a monthly executive peer group. Tom challenges me to think critically, focus my energy on growth, and continually expand my network.

The moral of the story??Just like selling is and should be a process, your career will guide you through places and experiences that aid, impact, and influence your future self. Just like you lose more than you win in most sales positions, your career journey should also hand you lessons of fortune and lessons of growth.

The best sales reps work for an organization (or a boss) that utilizes or requires all of these tools and strategies. They sell through a process and operate on metrics that set themselves up for success. Knowing that communication comes in all shapes and sizes, they understand the role that it plays in prospecting, following up, and closing new business.

And lastly, because no one person knows everything, they utilize their resources and grow with the help of mentors. Do you want to be one of the best? Start with inserting these five areas into your daily focus!??

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