Whether you are a founder or a freshly minted salesperson, I hope you find something here that helps you grow faster in your career.

When I started out, I didn’t know anything about sales.

Being a “good talker” isn’t enough. It takes more than a silver tongue for companies to buy products from you.

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Here are the 7 things I wish someone told me then:

1. A little enthusiasm goes a long way‍

How you show up matters. It doesn’t matter if you are in person, on a zoom, on the phone, or writing an email. People are very good at sensing how excited you are about what you do. It’s like they can smell it. This isn’t to say that you should fake it or overplay your hand. But enthusiasm is often a choice, so choose to bring energy and excitement into your conversations. It makes a big difference in persuading people to buy what you are selling.

2. Be on time.‍

This one writes itself. When you are late, even by only a few minutes, you are signaling that your time is more important than others. Don’t do that. Show up on time for every meeting, internal and external. Make it part of your personal brand. Never schedule yourself back to back if you can avoid it. And get good at ending a conversation so you can make your next meeting.

3. Focus on one thing for a long enough time and you will find success‍

This is as true in life as it is in sales. When you focus on the same thing or group of things for 12+ months, you will achieve what you are trying to accomplish. For example, when you are selling to a select group of prospects and you commit to it for at least a year, the world conspires to bring you closer to them. You build context. You establish a relationship. You create trust, enough trust that they want to buy from you.

4. If you can’t tell a story, you can’t sell.‍

Storytelling is core to how people understand things. Companies don’t buy things, people do. And people buy things based on emotion, not based on logic. Sure, they will tell you they logically evaluate their decisions, but usually they use logic to justify an emotional decision that they have already made. People buy things from people they trust. Storytelling is how you build trust.

5. Most purchase decisions are group decisions‍

This one is counter-intuitive. Every salesperson is searching for the “decision maker”, but my experience has been that every purchase decision is really a decision by committee. If you are selling to the owner or CEO, they are considering how the purchase will impact the team. Similarly, if you are selling to a VP, they are thinking about how to get the CEO to approve the purchase so they can look like a hero. You need to find the group that is influencing the deal, even if they aren’t directly involved in the evaluation. 

6. Your customer only sees the price that you are presenting them.‍

Founders and salespeople obsess over pricing changes. They “sell out of their own pocket” thinking that the $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000 is a major purchase for the customer. They worry that increasing prices will upset customers. In almost every case, the price that you present your customer is the first time they have thought about the price of your product. They don’t know the old price. They may not even have a frame of reference for how to evaluate the price that you are presenting. So stand tall and be confident when you are presenting your price, because the customer will know if you think the price is too high. (hint: the price is almost never too high)

7. Once you find a champion, you need to help them make the purchase.‍

Your champion rarely buys products for the company. They are in an operating role, they are not in procurement. And so it follows that your champion doesn’t have much practice at making purchases for the company. They don’t know how to wrangle the organization and build consensus for those highly considered purchases. That’s where the salesperson comes in. It’s your job to make it easy for the customer to buy the product, even if that means doing some of the internal coordination and selling for them. Don’t trust that the customer will “review internally and get back to you” because they probably don’t know where to go from the time you finish your sales call. Always end with a next step and control the buying process for the customer. It’s the most helpful thing that you can do once they have decided they want to buy.

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This is obviously not an exclusive list, but it’s a start.

I hope this finds you at exactly the right time in your career so that you find success quickly.