CadenceCombat

Account Executive

Top performers: What sacrifices did you make to get to the top?

Most of the top performers I’ve encountered seemed to have got there through a combination of office politics and sheer luck. I will say navigating office politics can be a true skill and I would also categorize fortunate timing falling under luck.

I want to hear from the savages that truly put the extra work in. What did you do that the rest of your cohort didn’t which out you on top?

💆‍♂ Mindset

✍️ Sales advice

33 comments

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saasesforthemaases

Tycoon

Account Manager, West

1) Get in front of customers as much as humanly possible. You're not going to get to the top without a lot of travel and dinners/drinks to build trust. You have to get in person to stand out.

2) Go wide when you start a new job to learn everything you can about the product and sector - try to get as many deals to work on as possible. Then in year 2, ruthlessly prioritize the opportunities that matter and politely "quote and smoke" the deals that won't add up to much or strike you as being flakey. You have to start to narrow your focus and funnel if you want to have enough time to get the big ones to ground.

3) Most important: approach every deal/situation with a healthy dose of what I call "client empathy". You have to look at every situation from the perspective of the client for a few minutes before making any decision. If you can understand their situation, it arms you with the ability to predict what they are thinking and get ahead of them on objections and issues.

4) Multi-thread everything right now. There are lots of secret buyers and you'll need at least 1 champion and 1 advocate in every deal.

5) Rapport is table stakes, but what separates you from the next guy is your clear understanding of your market, competition, product, and your ability to weave a story around all of that back to what the client values. That means you need to have a deep understanding of your market and be able to convey your product/service as a path to follow for your client to reach their goals.

6) Become a client nexus. If you do everything in expected of you in your day job you will just be average. But if you can become a nexus of value for your clients, then that starts to make you a must-have brand vs. a nice to have brand. What does that mean? Setting up events, introducing clients to each other so they can shoot the shit and recruit each other, connect SME's at one customer to someone looking to learn more about that particular subject.

7) Assume the best in every prospect. Too many salespeople are jaded. It shows and it makes them look like they're just there for the money. Try to assume each prospect is genuinely interested and not just tire kickers.

8) Follow up on the important deals until they tell you no. The faster you can get to a binary yes/no the better. But if it takes 40 touches to get a no, I still think that leads to more progress than silence. Your time is valuable enough to get a yes/no decision on the deals that matter. Too many deals die in no response.

9) Swim upstream. When everyone else is resting, put in the work. When everyone else is slamming clients with stuff, disappear. There's a law of saturation to abuse in sales which is that it's a lot easier to standout when others are resting. And a lot easier to get ignored when the volume across the market is at an 11 out of 10.

10) Operate on consensus. I'l regular ask 2-3 people internally for their advice on an important chess move with a customer, not because I'm going to do what they say, but because I want to get a crowdsourced opinion on what to do. Often I'll change my approach significantly based on feedback that combines multiple pieces of advice.

sketchysales

Politicker

Sales Manager

Excellent advice here. Not many will go the full way and hit on every point you bring up which will be the barrier to reaching the top.

If I could isolate one thing from your post, becoming an SME in your field and being able to communicate it effectively can help you get close to the top very quickly. Never assume you know everything in your field, keep learning.

punishedlad

Tycoon

Business Development Team Lead

@Gastywe've got a top quality contender here

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

This is a great post. Sadly, your point about being a nexus for your client is accurate - but many people conflate it with being "influencers", broadening the scope. Sigh.

saasesforthemaases

Tycoon

Account Manager, West

100%. I struggle with this as well. LinkedIn makes it hard to discern who is genuine vs who is pandering and just schilling the next "revolutionary thing". I definitely don't want to fall into the latter, so mostly stay off public forums and do a lot in private. If you can build a genuine brand, and convey that digitally, it definitely helps but I haven't cracked that code yet.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Straddling that line is not easy. Definitely keeping your own messaging consistent, honest, and ethical will help.

GDO

Politicker

BDM

Woa this should be a pinned post. Thanks!

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

@saasesforthemaasesfor president. Amazing advice.

saasesforthemaases

Tycoon

Account Manager, West

Great question you put out.

ChickenDinner

Politicker

Account Executive

this is good stuff. write a book

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I am assuming this will be a lot "i worked 1000 hours!!" kinda stuff.

I am more interested in hearing how ppl got to the top, and still kept a work like balance, kept a solid relationship with their kids, and spouse.

i know too many stories that are about the sacrifices the family had to make for the person to get to the top.

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

What you might describe as work life balance might be different for someone else though. It’s a little subjective to the person, position, product, territory , etc.

Also , I don’t know if there is a “secret sauce” to sales or some magic pill they gets you to the top. In my opinion that’s a fake narrative. Everyone knows how and what to do, I think it’s more about execution than anything else.

Just me though, I certainly would value and would like to hear a different take.

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

Not looking for “magic pill” type answers. I would just like to believe that there’s more of a meritocracy at play in sales than I’ve seen historically.

If it comes down to execution being the differentiator, then it would stand to reason that there’s something more at play that leads to more consistency in this regard.

bendandsnack

Politicker

Account Exec

I echo the thought that it’s more execution than anything.

The bar is very low. I’m always getting complimented by clients/partners/internal people on very basic shit I do like:

-Following up on time
-Doing what I say I’m going to do
-Sharing notes with people internally before a call
-Setting short prep calls before a client call when looping execs in
-Collaborating and over communicating with my CE, not just dumping a proposal deck on him but working on it together

& being nice to people internally. That's a huge one.

sketchysales

Politicker

Sales Manager

I sacrificed salary for 2 years. Couple things to this, firstly I was able to (early 20s, no debt and lived with my parents for a bit) and secondly, I'm very much a big picture thinker.

Not a clear route for everyone but I sacrificed my salary, stayed in a roll which i know I was being very underpaid for but it was during a period of turmoil within the company rather than a shitty boss and it came back and I reaped the rewards 10 fold since.

Now in a different job and a different country, climbing higher and again taking sacrifices. This time it's personal time, I travel a lot for work, have taken 200 individual flights in the last 12 months and working on a plan to reduce it and keep climbing but at the expense of a lot of ridiculously early mornings (5am departure for.me tomorrow) and lots of time away from home.

slingerrr

Contributor

BDR

Which country are you working in?

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

I had a pretty bad performing territory handed to me and in a tough market no less. There was a lot of work to gain trust back from customers. A lot of this was just consistently showing up and proving to the customers through response time, constantly making myself available, and proving my knowledge. Although this probably doesn’t differ from others, I had to go and “prove it” probably longer than others before real business came in. There was a lot of patience and banging my head against a wall for awhile on my part before things turned around. But once I won over the customers, this territory won me an award and a promotion, which hasn’t been done in this territory since. I don’t think I did anything breathtakingly different, I just think I held out longer than other might have lol.

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

Thanks for sharing. At least way more detailed and specific than just “sticking with it”.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

Sales

Just rigorous scheduling for balancing. I stay on time and on task. That’s the key for me.

aenima

Celebrated Contributor

Principal Account Manager

I have one rule I live by:

Every meeting I am in, I know at least one thing the others don’t.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

Mental bandwidth.
On many non-work days and non-work hours, I’ve failed to unhinge my thoughts / brain from work. More of a curse than a blessing. More of a “I can’t help it” sacrifice. But yeah, can’t deny the fact that it’s a major reason for my success too.

saasesforthemaases

Tycoon

Account Manager, West

I feel this for sure. I think the flip-side of this is mental toughness/resilience and improving ability to handle heavier workloads without falling down. It's something I've been working on for a couple of years, and its hard. The high performers I've seen, especially at startups, are able to say "F*** it!" and move forward assertively after tough situations or heavy work periods. Average performers need a long recovery period to get back to normal levels of performance. So, improving mental toughness seems to be a differentiator.

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

and the only sane way to improve your mental toughness is through your body, which is why, I RUN ! And surely it helps

saasesforthemaases

Tycoon

Account Manager, West

100%!! Best money I’ve spent on recent months was on a peloton treadmill. Helps to get it in.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Nights, weekends, holidays, red tape, politics...

It never stops.

BitcoinAddict

Opinionated

What they will tell you: Hard work and sacrifice

What they do not want you to know: Good company with in-demand product and getting in at the right time

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

Simply more time to work and less time to family.

Even at the time I couldn't stay at office I complete the tasks at home. 😇

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

I stick with things and was willing to use personal connections to advance conversations. In sales, a majority of your worth are your connections

CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

No offense but this answer sucks. Everyone does this including average performers.

detectivegibbles

Politicker

Sales Director

Figure out the frameworks of what YOU want to achieve.

The top people at my company do $250k. They also have 10-15 years of experience with a huge book of recurring business.

If you're younger, find those relationships that will be residual for next decade.

I want the work life balance. I'm working to optimize my time, not give more of it to my job.

ChumpChange

Politicker

Channel Manager

Money doesn't sleep. I've been on calls from 2:00-5:00 AM to push deals through cause the client was a multi-national company. I regularly work late to ensure my clients/team are taken care of and supported. I honestly believe there's always someone out there that's looking to spend money (customers) and there's always someone out there looking to take money (competitors). My goal is to be on that spend individual's path to provoke a discussion of what's possible. Nearly all of my whale wins/milestones stem from my being at the right place at the time. If you want to be decent at sales... do the bare minimum. You want to be great at it... you got to be all in. Call every lead, send every email follow-up, send every check-up text, and work every deal.

aenima

Celebrated Contributor

Principal Account Manager

I have one rule I live by:

Every meeting I am in, I know at least one thing the others don’t.

Cazzipchic

Account Executive

I dove into the industry I sell into. I learned everything I could about it. I joined their associations, and established relationships. I learned the product like the back of my hand and then I did a whole lot of listening. Whenever someone talks about a need, I offer solutions. I spent time getting in front of potential clients and having real conversations, I earned the right to ask questions.

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CadenceCombat

Top performers: What sacrifices did you make to get to the top?

33 comments

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