“Consistency. Everyone can learn how to do sales if you want to learn, challenge, and grow as an individual and a team.” –Simon Gerstler
What makes an athlete an athlete? A musician a musician? Do the same rules apply in the corporate world? How do you become an incredible salesperson? Can you actually start a successful sales career from the boot (AKA trunk) of your car. Simon Gerstler, Co-CEO of Pipe Global, has made a living in coaching individuals and companies to do just that. He has what to share on all of the above and more.
Listen to the whole shebang sprinkled with humorous banter. Here are some of the takeaways for those of you who are feeling less patient.
- Don’t underestimate SDRs. “The danger of promoting a good SDR to an account executive, for example, is that you are losing that top of the funnel effect that you have.” Companies that don’t value SDRs do not succeed. They don’t sell. “If you aren’t setting up demos for your sales teams you may as well turn the lights off and pack up today.”
- Sales have changed. A lot. “These days people expect you not to waste their time.” Your potential customers prefer a minute on the phone as opposed to a 15-minute video call.
- Today the best companies have excellent marketing and work in sync. “It is all about communication. Feedback. Salespeople should be working with marketing. They have to see each other as assets and not opponents.”
- It isn’t just about the marketing and sales departments. All departments, including product, legal, tech, marketing, sales, etc., need to be working collaboratively. “In any company if everyone is pulling in the same direction it’s gonna be a lot more successful.” Everyone needs to communicate and understand each other.
- Best practices when It comes to setting sales goals? Should you employ a conservative goal and a stretch goal? (Skip to 20:25 for that answer!)
- Most out of the box mentee? A former firefighter. Simon figured, “if you’re prepared to run into a burning building not knowing what you are going to see and putting your life at risk, are you going to be scared to pick up the phone and make a cold call? Probably not!”
- Should you be terrified if Simon is hired to tighten up your company? Or any consulting company for that matter? Nah. “We never really go into a company and rip everything up and start again. I’m a big fan of the margin of gains theory where if something is working relatively well you don’t want to change everything. You just want to fine tune a few things. And each of those little changes, tweaks can have a massive impact going forward.”
Cheat Sheet of who Simon learns from, reads, listens to and follows:
- Gong “The ultimate marketing agency” that “is backed up by stats and data”
- Chris Orlob
- Brian Burns from the Brutal Truth About Sales & Selling Podcast
- Mindset by Carol Dweck
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Blackbox Thinking by Matthew Syed
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
Looking for more to listen to? Join Menachem Pritzker and Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, as we drink coffee and learn from collaborative leaders in sales, customer success and account management.
Ready to get started? Customer Café by Collabria: Sales Collaboration Tips for Pros is available wherever you listen to podcasts. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, or you can click here to start listening now!
