Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes.

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My first “real” sales job was with a US wellness SaaS called MINDBODY.

I was the first locally hired employee. Employee numbers 501+ were for Aussies:

• Employee #501 was the best manager I worked for; he transferred from the US headquarters to open the Sydney office.
• Employee #502 was a sales rep moving internally from the UK.
• I was employee #503.

Sales Associate

My first title was “Sales Associate”. Today, this would be called a Sales Development Rep.

I found businesses that had never heard of MINDBODY and booked meetings for the sales teams.

It was pure cold calling, smile-and-dial, volume is everything, boiler room style.

Soon, I was top in Australia for at least three months and top 5 worldwide.

They promoted me to a cycle sales rep.

Sales Representative

I cold-called to book my own appointments, demo the software, and collect a credit card to close the deal.

At the same time, I moved out of home to live with my best mate.

But the pay wasn’t enough. I worked a second job delivering pizza on the weekend to afford rent.

I needed to earn ~40% more to survive without my pizza delivery job.

Quitting would be a massive risk. But I took it.

Becoming #1

Reminded of my first few months as #1 Sales Associate, I wanted to be #1 again. Then the commissions would flow, and I would be fine.

I would never be the absolute #1 sales rep. The numbers were heavily skewed towards tenure.

Tenured reps dominated the leaderboards because 40-70% of their “deals” were historical. For example, every time the fitness chain F45 opened a new location, a specific rep would do the paperwork, and she would get credit for closing the location.

I couldn’t compete on net deals.

Revenue numbers were too closely linked with the number of locations for me to win.

MINDBODY didn’t have a heavy presence in APAC, my territory. Meaning I could open and close more “outbound deals” when compared to the other global offices.

Deals were broken up into:

• ~20% Outbound - deals where the rep found and initiated contact directly. Such as a cold call or cold email.
• ~60% Inbound - deals where the buyer initiates the conversion. Such as filling out an online form, joining a webinar, attending a trade show, etc.
• ~20% Sales Associate - deals where a Sales Associate had cold-called to book the meeting before the rep took over to close.

Learn to Close

I’d proven I could cold call. It only took me a few months to become one of the best Sales Associates in the company.

Booking meetings is only half the battle I needed to learn to close.

For that, I read Jeffery Gitomer’s “The Sales Bible.”

This book is hype digestible, straightforward to read, and non-sequential.

Next, I set myself a goal. Be #1 in outbound deals in the company. At the time, there were 200+ reps.

To be #1, I needed to close 6-8 outbound deals per month. This was far more achievable than the 30-50 deals of absolute #1.

Daily Activity

Then, I broke the goal into inputs I could take every day.

I targeted:

• 5 net new leads per day (a business that was new to MINDBODY and was brand new in the Salesforce instance)
• 5 reactivations (a business net new to me and was already in the Salesforce instance, but the other sales rep had stopped working), and
• 80 outbound dials per day

Results

For three months, I dialed like crazy, hit all three input goals, and… nothing.

My pay didn’t really change. The decision to quit my pizza job was haunting me.

After six months, at the end of January 2014, I checked the global leaderboard, and there was my name:

I DID IT!

TLDR:

• Work out where you can win - I couldn’t win in total deal or revenue terms, but I could win in outbound deals.
• Make the goal actionable - 5 net new leads, 5 reactivations, and 80 daily dials.
• Keep going - three months wasn’t enough, six was.
• Burn the bridges - I quit the pizza delivery job to make it happen.
• Read to learn - books are a gateway to ideas and knowledge.

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​Most buyers are skeptical (at best) of what you're selling by Me

​30 realizations that changed my life as an entrepreneur by Greg Isenberg

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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