Top Book Recomendations 

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Joshua Principle, Leadership Secrets of RSVPselling by Tony Hughes
• The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olsen

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/a-year-in-review/

Sponsor

• What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

• Effort + Execution + Empathy: It used to just be a numbers game. You put in the work, you made your calls, you sent your emails and it produced results. Then everyone started ramping up the volume. Today you have to not only put in the effort, but also apply strategic execution and have empathy for your buyer. Have you done your homework? Do you understand the real challenges they’re having? Do you actually care? Prospects buy from us because they believe we can get them to a place they can’t get to on their own.
• You Can’t Lose What You Don’t Have: Too many reps focus their energy on everything that could go wrong instead of what might go right. Very similar to Mike’s story, I didn’t come from much. So knowing that I’ve done without before and been fine, I have a different perspective on the world. I’m willing to take risks that others may not because I don’t have a false sense of security.
• Short Term Thinking vs Long Term Thinking: It’s the difference between “I want to sell to this company today” vs “I want to build a relationship that may carry me throughout my career.” Yes, I know you have a number to hit this week, month, and quarter, but if you put in the work today to build a solid pipeline, you can give yourself the freedom to build lasting value with your prospects.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/mike-julian/

Book Recommendation

• The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

Sponsor

• 
  What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Sales Meetings are Not Coaching Sessions: Every sales team has a weekly call. The reality is, for most, this is nothing more than a transfer of information meeting. Debriefing the week that was and getting updates for the week to come. Coaching is “improved performance” and no sales meeting I’ve ever been in does that. Instead, let’s work on getting into specific details of opportunities by way of what happened during the calls — the words that were used, role playing objections that could have been handled another way, or client stories to use as references in certain scenarios (with context). Breaking down those areas of improvement just like an elite athlete could be the difference between a promotion and interviewing at other companies.
2. Prospecting at all Levels: No matter what your title says, if you belong to a sales organization, some amount of time in your day should be spent on direct prospecting. I know this is counter to the populist movement of hyper-specialization, but I seriously believe everyone should be prospecting. If you work with me, you’re either prospecting for new clients or prospecting for a new job. Sales is the lifeblood of an organization and prospecting is the only thing that will save you in the event of a downturn.
3. Challenge Your Prospects: It seems like everyone is comfortable hearing “no” from a prospect, maybe even too comfortable, but I rarely hear of sales reps being willing to say “no” or pushback on their prospects for fear of killing an opportunity. I’ve often seen requests for references, white papers, and trials as nothing more than stall tactics. Be willing to challenge a prospect and get them to help you understand what exactly will change if you do what they’re asking.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/richard-smith/

Book Recommendation

• From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin

Sponsor

What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Takeaways

1. Write Your Own Rules: If you’re going to be a consultative salesperson, you must empower yourself. You must be able to think on your feet without sounding like a robot. You’re not always going to be able to have someone whispering in your ear or reading off a script, so when you see something wrong, fix it. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had to overcome is thinking about what everyone else expected of me and trying to prove something to them instead of charting my own path.
2. Overcome Rather than Avoid Burnout: As Dan mentioned, burnout happens whether you’re the CEO or the SDR, so accept it and learn how to overcome it. You could get burnt out on your car, the breakfast you eat every day, or even your favorite sub shop, so figure out the things that trigger the high highs as well as the low lows and work to maintain balance between the two.
3. Failure is Not Finite: It’s only truly a failure when you decide to give up. I recently came off the biggest professional failure of my career and I can assure you there were times I felt like I should just take my ball and go home as if this game wasn’t the one for me. Fortunately, I was able to pick myself back up, start another business (which included this podcast) and face the world that I thought would forever reject me because of my my recent performance.

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/dan-fantasia/

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.

Book Recommendation

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Takeaways

1. Remove General Blanket Training: If you don’t know where to spend your time, you’ll fall into the trap of generalized training where every person on the team gets the same negotiation training or competitive update. Instead, modern sales organizations the fidelity of lessons need to be able to be created quickly by anyone and enable reps to consume it in 10-15 minutes. Because, let’s be honest, none of us have four hours to stare at Powerpoints.
2. Focus on Business Mechanics: Justin broke the sales process down into a gear analogy stating the “deal mechanics” gear simply can’t turn unless the “business mechanics” gear is in motion. Focus on determining what is actually wrong, who in the prospect’s organization is truly responsible for fixing it as well as when they actually need to have it fix it.
3. Anchor Capabilities to Value: If you’ve been in sales more than 10 minutes, you’ve probably been told to sell the solution not your features and benefits. Yet, every single day I hear reps explaining how a prospect can accomplish a task simply by clicking a couple of buttons. Stop it. There’s a reason you’ve never received a demo of Amazon.com. You’re not there to learn how to click buttons, you’re there to ensure a package arrives at your house in two days (or less).

Full Notes

https://www.salestuners.com/justin-fite/

Book Recommendations

• The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

Sponsor

• Costello – What if every sales rep inherited the habits of your best rep? With Costello, they do.