Bryan McDonald's Linkedin Analytics

I’ve been in sales my whole 23+ year career and my company on purpose growth is a coaching and consulting that focuses on helping grow our clients revenue. When I look back on the start of my career, I shouldn’t have been in sales. The only reason I got into it is because for a few summers in college, I worked at a box manufacturing plant because a friend of mine’s dad was the GM and they needed help. So, a wholesale packaging company hired me for sales because "I knew the product" - the problem was I applied for a marketing job not a sales job. The reason why I shouldn’t have been in sales, is the fact that I was so worried about what other people thought of me and that causes a problem in sales. Rejection was a part of the role and that was tough for me. Rejection also felt like conflict to me and based on my childhood I avoided conflict, So, in the beginning I was very hesitant to go see clients, I got worried before every meeting I had, and was constantly worried about what to say, what to do and how should I be doing things. Pile all of that on the top of the fact that I had ZERO training or mentoring on sales. Luckily, I had a great mentor at this business that was an example of what NOT to do. He didn't know he was mentoring me by modeling what NOT to do. After getting to know my clients and spending time with them this "mentor" insisted on coming out with me and what happened next was fascinating. My clients would say "I really like you and you can come here anytime, but if that guy is with you - DON'T COME! So, I realized I needed to do the exact opposite of what this "mentor" did. I realized that was "sold" things was me showing up as my natural self. Because the more I was just myself and didn’t act like salesperson, the more I was calm and confident. So, how I “saw myself” determined my results. So, the journey of "just do the opposite" of what most sales people do began. I was at that job for about a year and when they gave me a raise on Monday, I quit on Friday. That was my last "corporate" job and every other sales job I had was entrepreneurial. I got recruited into businesses and was told: "here is your desk, a phone and here is what we do. Let me know if you need help!" So, I had to figure out how to: 1) What was my strategy in the marketplace 2) How do I differentiate 3) How do I find clients 4) How do I build a relevant network to get referrals 5) How do I enroll prospects to be clients Now, I help people who are experts at what they do, figure out the same things and make more money then they did in Corporate America