Why I love sales? Winning still matters.

In today’s “everyone-is-a-winner” society, there is one part of the modern organization that still pushes the importance of winning. I witnessed the power of a culture of winning while visiting Grovo last week.

The room was still lively at 6PM and the entire sales org was there trying to close deals. They were helping each other and even doing hot handoffs, which was awesome.

It reminded me why most people get into sales in the first place: to control their own destiny and have their merits determine what they make. They want to win and be rewarded for it. So how do you win and crush the competition? Here are my secret weapons that have helped me win over and over again.

1. Lift up your teammates

Anchors drag everyone down while winners bring everyone up. Help your teammates win and the payback will be a great atmosphere where the entire team is hustling and motivating one another.

Always focus on getting your work done first then see how you can help other top performers hit their number. An hour of quick calls or follow up emails goes a long way.

2. Read

This is a profession, not a job where you can just show up and expect to get past a certain level. I have seen too many salespeople stop learning or taking feedback in their late 20s / early 30s because they already have experience and “understand sales.” If your career aspiration is to only be a senior account executive or major accounts person, you can stop your learning when you hit 30. You will consistently make 150-250k, but when you look around at 35, you will see your peers who stayed hungry are now running teams.

You need to constantly be upping your sales knowledge and your industry expertise. Without reading, the only experiences you have to pull from are your own and your colleagues. Reading helps you learn new strategies and processes that can take your sales game to the next level.

Absorbing knowledge from experts keeps you on top of your industry and your prospects space. You need to be an expert in the space as much as the product to truly add value in executive meetings with prospects. They want to see that you’re knowledgeable on industry trends; they care less about the fact that you’re educated on your product.

For some sales/marketing book recommendations, check out this blog post.

3. Forget your pride

There is no honor in repeated failure. Doing it your way is the one way to ensure you will fail.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look to make talk tracks and processes better with your ideas for improvement. It means that you should never assume that you know best, as the best people learn from underperformers everyday. You have to be willing to change and adapt in order to compete and truly grow.

A very common trait in underperformers is crippling pride that tells them only their way is right. They “want ” to get better but won’t change their ways because they believe they know best. The deals just won’t close for these people.

Prideful people remember and talk about their wins. Winners talk about and understand their loses.

4. Listen more than talk, to both your boss and prospects

Piggybacking on the above, you will not get very far by trying to force your viewpoints on others. Many people struggle to understand that it’s easier to convince people of an idea if they believe they arrived at it on their own. You will be more successful if you ask smart questions that lead your prospect to self discovery, rather than throwing a bunch of facts at them.

If it’s your boss giving you feedback, the same logic applies. Your boss is there to help you grow, so spend more time listening and trying to understand feedback rather than justifying and explaining. Feedback isn’t always a two way street, and there is nothing more frustrating for a leader than a high potential person who tries to justify every decision instead of accepting and moving on. You should always seek to understand feedback if you are genuinely confused. While it is okay to say something if you feel you’re receiving excessive feedback, you need to ensure you aren’t justifying vs understanding.

Always seek to understand whether it’s with prospects or your leader.

The appeal of sales and other performance based roles are that you have the ability to control your destiny and compensation. This does not mean you are guaranteed to be successful; when performance matters there are winners and losers. The right type of environment will foster team winning and also reject anchors that pull down performance and/or attitudes. In startups, you have to cultivate a culture of winning across the group, not just with 1 or 2 people who look down on others (as this happens quite a bit). There’s a fine balance between personal and team winning, so be sure to find people that care about both and you will build a world class organization of winners.