The Secret Sauce that differentiates a Simple Salesman from an OUTSTANDING Businessman
When I was 19 years old I started working in sales. I entered an NGO called AIESEC, where I had to sell an internship program, to companies and other NGOs, in order to fund the organization.
But I didn’t knew how to do it. So I started calling a few companies and NGOs and, after some weeks of zero results, I was highly frustrated.
I was lucky that, at the time, I was being mentored by an exceptional guy called Juan Martitegui, who eventually became my friend and mentor during all my professional career (and he is currently an Advisor at Rodati).
He sat down with me and asked me three simple questions.
Him: — Do you wanna sell?
Me: — Yes.
Him: — How many internships do you wanna sell?
Me: — I think my goal was to sell 5 internships
Him: — What are you doing in order to sell that?
Me: — Call a few companies and try some luck! (Now that I think about my answer, I feel very stupid).
And then, he told me something that got stuck in my mind forever:
“If you wanna sell 3 Internships statistically you would need to visit, at least around 30 companies and NGOs based on your low level experience at selling. And in order to schedule 30 visits you would probably need to speak with around 300 organizations. And in order to speak with around 300 organizations you would probably need a prospecting list of 600.”
At this moment I had an excel of around 20 and I felt like it was way too much…
“And in order to make that amount of cold calls, you would probably need around 2 minutes per call, so do the math and, for God’s sake, start moving your ass.”
I was totally ashamed of myself, but it was the best lesson I learnt during my professional life. It was all about start moving and trying. So, after two months of just being disciplined, I started having results.
This experience showed me that sales are a result of a mix between talent and discipline. You may have the talent for selling ideas, but without discipline it is impossible and unpredictable to scale sales.
At Rodati we believe that. We recruit talented people, whether they have developed discipline, or not. And if they don’t, we help them develop it.
I strongly believe that methodology and discipline can be developed in any human being and is the UNIQUE SECRET SAUCE that distinguishes an outstanding businessman from a simple salesman.
