Sales Success Stories

In today's special BONUS episode, Scott and Lisa share in a rich and engaging discussion on fostering the growth of your sales career. Lisa expounds on the dangers of having unattainable quotas set forth by your manager, the power that your frontline manager has over your ability to succeed as a sales professional, and the importance of focusing on internal relationship building. Scott shares some personal examples of how either he or friends of his have navigated the complex challenges that a career in Sales can often bring. Lisa speaks to how long it should take to get to a level of competence within a new organization and the ability to recognize the right path for you.

Until Tom Barnes very recently stepped into a new Head of Sales role at Praxis Labs, he was the number one Enterprise Sales Director at Humu, an organization with a mission to make work better with science and machine learning. Tom has the privilege of leading the go-to-market function and leads Praxis Labs global growth strategy to help organizations improve equity and inclusion in the workplace. As Head of Sales, he is building the Praxis Labs sales machine by bringing business impact to Praxis Labs customers. He brings a wealth of experience from the Employee Experience and L&D space and was an integral part of driving 3 early-stage pre-IPO organizations through their successful IPOs..

I don't know about you, but I'm constantly on the lookout for every possible competitive advantage I can find to try to improve myself and my results. It's a huge reason why I started this show. Selfishly it allows me to build relationships with and learn from the best of the best in sales today. Unselfishly I record those conversations so you can listen in and learn alongside me. In addition to listening to these stories and gleaning the insights from top performers, one of the most powerful performance enhancers I've found isn't illegal or even unethical. I think of them as Performance Enhancing Events Of course, I'm talking about the Sales Success Summit where I'm able to bring many of these top performers who you've heard on this show together so that you too can meet them, talk with them and learn from them. The most fun part is that they're just engaged as you are, because they're taking advantage of the opportunity to learn and network to further improve their own results.

Sebastian Amaya is the top seller at IBISWorld, an organization that provides trusted industry research on thousands of industries worldwide. In his role, Sebastian leverages his experience and acumen to provide businesses with market insights and strategic outcomes. Sebastian is an incredibly thorough and intentional sales professional. It may sound cliché, but Sebastian prides himself on being the hardest working rep in the room. This dedication and tenacity has been a major reason Sebastian has enjoyed so much success in his role. An avid listener and member of the Sales Success Community, Sebastian is thrilled to share some of his own insights in today's episode.

Steve Reed is the Creator of Experiences and top seller for the Minnesota Vikings. In his role, Steve provides the very best experience in sports for client entertainment by offering the complete package, including food, drinks, a spectacular view of the action and so much more. Growing up as a superfan of the Vikings, Steve is the ultimate believer in the product he sells. He views himself as much more than a sales professional selling tickets and great experiences, which is apparent as he identifies his 'why.' Steve's ultimate goal is to help the Minnesota Vikings win the Super Bowl by packing the stadium with loyal and passionate fans!

And now for something completely different. I sent a newsletter out a couple of weeks ago that wasn't really directly related to sales at all. Instead, I was talking about a couple of books that I was reading on macro economics and what the future of the world might look like. It prompted some really interesting conversations and feedback. And one of those bits of feedback was that it was nice to get away from the pure sales content sometimes. I thought I'd lean into that a bit as we start to wrap up the summer and wanted to share my favorite recent non-fiction read, and by "read" I actually mean listen on Audible. This was "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. You may recognize the author as the author of "The Martian" which was another book I absolutely loved. Now, he did a book in between called "Artemis" not my favorite, but "Project Hail Mary" is amazing. I highly highly recommend it. And I'd also love to hear what you're reading, or your favorite recent reads. I might even include some of those in a future newsletter. You can email me at scott@top1.fm or feel free to send me a note on LinkedIn, and if you're not already on the listener list and receiving these newsletters. Click over to top1.fm and drop your name and email address into one of the forms. Thanks for listening, enjoy the rest of your Summer and make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss my next interview with a top-performing sales professional.

Mike Anderson is the Top Strategic Account Manager at Terryberry out of Chicago, Illinois. Mike strives for excellence and aims to meet all of his customers' needs. For Mike, sales is an adventure, one that should be joyous and fun. Today, Mike talks about his sales origin story and what has kept him at Terryberry for over thirteen years. Mike shares the three things he most attributes to his success. These include having a growth mindset, being a member of the Sales Success Community, and entering every situation from a place of joy, fun, and professionalism.

Lynn Powers is the Top Sales Director at Clari as well as a Board Member of Women in Revenue, a non-profit organization focused on current and future women leaders in technology sales and marketing. Lynn is a two-time LinkedIn Sales Star recipient. Her expertise is demonstrating the ability to think innovatively, maximize efficiency and identify areas of improvement. She's an agent for change and innovation, and has demonstrated an impressive career path with companies that focus on continuous innovation. Lynn is refreshingly optimistic and has a track record of being a leader, an excellent mentor, quota overachiever, and strategic thinker. Lynn fosters trusting relationships with clients, coworkers, and supervisors.

Sean McLean broke records as the Top Sales Development Representative at Semrush and was promoted into his current Account Executive role in less than half the time because of his performance. Sean is a passionate sales professional who enjoys consulting various businesses on how to increase traffic and conversions through the digital space. He has a unique blend of work experience that includes sales, digital marketing, project management, and IT infrastructure support. He has the innate ability to understand his clients' needs and pain points and provides recommendations on how best to overcome them. Sean is showing no signs of slowing down and intends to continue growing his SaaS sales career by learning from the best in the industry and adding thoughtful value to the space.

I'm kind of cheating with this episode. Its purpose is to let you know that I'm taking a week off and that there won't be a bonus episode this week, but in a roundabout way, it helps me keep my streaks alive as I haven't missed a week on this show since we started consistently releasing bonus episodes between the interview episodes years ago. If you haven't already figured it out, I'm a HUGE believer in consistency as today we'll also be releasing episode 1242 on the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I've never missed a day on that show. Now, I'm cheating a little bit over there too with a bit of a best-of series, but it's important to take breaks. I've been in need of a massive refresh with tons going on professionally as always, but that's been compounded by a lot going on on the personal side with a new home purchase and renovation and prepping for the sale of my previous home which is currently under contract. For me, it's about getting my head right and getting ready for a full out 4 month sprint that will culminate in the Sales Success Summit and SalesTechEX the second week of October. I also need to get super aggressive about refreshing my productivity process when I get back to pull all of this off. So that's where we're at. No real episode today, and I appreciate your understanding and continuing to come back week after week to this show. I'll talk to you next week!