6 Years of Sales Lessons in 1 Newsletter

If you only watch one sales video this year, make it this one.

That's the promise behind a video I recorded across recently. I broke down 6 years of lessons, from a brand new commission-only rep barely scraping by, to averaging 135% of quota as an SDR, to becoming the youngest-ever account executive at a $200 billion company at 21 years old.

My story isn’t the traditional path and my advice is straight to the point about the real high-leverage things to move the business forward.

This edition is my breakdown of all 12 steps, tightened into the frameworks and mental models you can actually use. Let's get into it.

Before any tactics, sort your head out.

Most reps honestly believe they're a burden or a nuisance. That every cold call or approach is an interruption. That they are annoying.

How can you expect tp perform at a high level when you don’t even think you add value.

The fix is a simple reframe: you're a doctor. You're diagnosing a problem and offering a solution. If they don't have the problem, you move on to the next call.

A doctor doesn't force medicine on someone who doesn't need it. They diagnose, and only prescribe if there's a genuine issue. Sales works the same way.

Once you stop tying your identity to the outcome, rejection stops stinging. You're not annoying people. You're offering value to people who might need it.

Believe in your solution, and reaching out to people becomes a service, not an imposition.

Sales isn't all about talent, infact It's mainly maths.

Input x process = output. Once you know your ratios you can focus on the inputs that you need to do every single day to set yourself up to actually hit your goals

Here's the system from one early face to face role: stop 100 people, 50 come to the stand, pitch to 30, offer to 20, close 4. Broken down further, that's around 15 people stopped per hour.

The same logic applies to cold calling. 100 dials might get you 10 connections, 5 conversations, 3 pitches, and 1 booked meeting. Every single dial is progress toward that meeting, whether they pick up or not.

If you don't have your own data yet, use your team as a benchmark. Look at what the best reps around you are hitting and use that as your starting point.

All of your focus should go towards controlling your inputs when you know the data.

A few early wins can inflate your ego fast but that’s the fastest way to fail.

There's always someone better than you at something.

Maybe you're great on the phone but your qualification is weak.

Maybe your pitch is strong but you fold under objections.

Find the person who's strong where you're weak, and copy their process directly.

Start internally if you can.

Sales is context dependent, what works selling cars is different to SaaS, which is different to fintech, which is different to agency services.

An internal mentor already understands your market so do your best to be around the top performers and learn their specific approach to their sales..

If your team isn't strong enough to learn from, look externally for general frameworks you can adapt.

All of the top president's club winning reps I've ever met continually invested and coached and mentored even 10+ years into their career.

the only reason I was able to hit 141% as a 21-year-old AE at 200 billion to authentic is because I paid for mentorship from somebody who was already a top manager at the company.

Be wise and learn from others instead of trying to go through everything yourself.

this isn't some wishy-washy "believe in yourself" advice. This is something you actually need to focus on.

Generic advice tells you to be loud, be an extrovert, be a big personality but I was never that type of person.

in school, I was quite shy, not outspoken, and stayed to myself. When I got into sales, I kept that.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't completely in my shell, but I wasn't the loudest, most naturally charming person.

The way I was able to differentiate my success was by focusing on processes relentlessly:

Some of the best sellers are introverted, technical, and process-driven. Copying someone else's energy just makes you sound fake, and prospects spot it instantly.

Instead, play up your natural energy by one notch. If you're naturally a 3, show up as a 4 and don’t EVER try and manufacture a completely different persona.

As AI takes over more of the sales process, being a real person becomes your biggest edge.

Early on, most reps talk through every feature they've got.

They think that the more they offer, the more valuable the product will appear, when in reality it's actually the inverse. People just want the most relevant solution to their biggest pain.

Ask about their current situation first. What do they like about what they're using now? What's frustrating about it? What are they actually trying to get to? Every product has dozens of features, but only a few will matter to this specific prospect.

Once you ask, actually listen. Mirror back the words they use. If they say a process has been "a nightmare," repeat that word before your next question.

Use labels instead of assumptions. Don't say "so you're looking for X." Say "it sounds like X is a focus, is that right, or have I missed something?" People love to correct you, and correcting you hands you more information.

Then use silence. After you state a price, stop talking. After you ask a question, stay quiet. Don't answer questions nobody asked. Let the prospect fill the space.

The rep who talks the least in a good call is usually the one who closes it.

it's such a small thing, but new sellers often try and fill every gap, so just get comfortable sitting in the silence.

New reps sell the flight: the features, the specs, the deliverables but the thing your prospects actually care about is the destination instead.

Nobody buys a holiday because of the plane. They buy it for the Pina Colada’s they’ll be sipping on the beach.

Your no.1 job is to sell the end feeling, then explain how you get them there.

people will buy with emotion and justify with logic, so always tap into their actual feelings and beliefs

Once you're selling outcomes, go one level deeper: the cost of staying the same.

Most prospects stay put because changing feels like more effort than the problem is worth. Your job is to tie the current pain to a number they actually care about.

Say a CRM change would save 4 hours of admin per rep per week, across a team of 10 reps.

That's 40 hours a week the team could put back into dialing, roughly 5,000 more dials a year

At a 10% connect rate and 20% booking ratio, that's 100 extra meetings.

At a $10k average deal size, that's close to $1M in new pipeline, and at a 20% close rate, $200k a month in revenue left on the table.

Over a year, that's $2.4M in revenue and $12M in pipeline walking away because the team is too busy on admin to sell.

Compare that to a $100k a year price tag and a two month switch, and the decision makes itself.

So your number one job is to quantify the gap and sell the emotion of how it would feel to have that extra 2.4 million. What would it do for them? Where would they get to? That is the key

A mediocre script with great tonality will beat a perfect script with flat delivery every time.

The same sentence can mean completely different things depending on where you put the emphasis.

Say "great job" warmly and it's a compliment. Say it flat and sarcastic and it reads as an insult. Same words, opposite meaning.

Over 90% of how we communicate comes from tone, pacing, and delivery, not the actual words. On the phone, in person, wherever you're selling, how you say it matters more than what you say.

Alex Hormozi has an incredible breakdown of this, which I'll add below:

When you lean into the meaning behind the words, it has a lot more power than just focusing on the words themselves

Most reps chase new scripts and new processes constantly. Please don’t.

Every time you switch your approach, there's a dip of about 20% while you adjust. If your new process doesn’t have a clearly better potential upside, the switch isn't worth it. Find something that works, then repeat it until it's boring.

When you do want to improve, use your data to find the one lever worth pulling. A rep with a 70% connect-to-conversation rate but only a 15% conversation-to-meeting rate doesn't need a new opener.

Her opener is working fine. She needs to fix objection handling and go deeper on the pitch.

Fixing the right thing can double her output without changing anything else.

Then just go do the reps. If a skill takes 20 hours to get proficient at, one hour a day gets you there in 20 days.

10 hours a day gets you there in 2 days, you can choose how fast you want to become great..

Set yourself a daily minimum you'll hit no matter what, and hold the line.

Then remember more, better new.

Do more until i't’s impossible to increase your throughput.

Do better and work on the 1 biggest lever.

Do new and now test new ideas when more and better have been exhausted.

Track your data. If you don't know your dial to connect, connect to conversation, and conversation to meeting ratios, you're guessing instead of selling. Get them down today.

Are you doing as much as you could be? If you're not hitting your daily inputs, figure out what's actually holding you back and fix it. Volume is the fastest lever you have.

Stop copying other people's energy. Your personality is your edge. Lean into what makes you different and let it show on every call.

Get these 3 right, and you'll separate yourself from 90% of reps out there.

Let me know what landed for you by replying to this email!

This slots straight in under "Keep it Simple, Then Iterate" as the final section. Let me know if you want any of the three points sharpened further.