Sales & Marketing Executive

First things first: All joy in the world comes from wanting others to be happy; all suffering in the world comes from wanting oneself to be happy.

Secondly: I am a CRO who still picks up the phone and cold calls - even with > 25 team members. Because it is fun and rewarding. 

In the first 10 years of my BtoB Sales career, I helped several startups in Europe to grow from < 500k ARR to > 10 Mio. ARR within < 5 years as AE, VP of Sales, CSO and CRO, with one Exit so far. More to come.

I went from full-cycle AE to CSO within 6 years - without having a clue about sales the first 2 years.

When I started in BtoB back in 2014, I really sucked at it. I did not reach my targets - not even close.

What did I do wrongly?

👉🏻 ...travelled 8 hours to a 1-hour meeting without prior discovery
👉🏻 ...never picked up the phone. Did everything via Email
👉🏻 ...asked on average 2 questions per meeting
👉🏻 ...did not know any Sales methodologies
👉🏻 ...had no clue how the sales process looked like
👉🏻 ...never booked a follow-up meeting right away
👉🏻 ...thousand of other mistakes 

I was lucky my company brought in two trainers, Max and Mike who helped me tremendously. I was able to completely change the way I sold - but not without heavily resisting that change at first.

I did not believe in discovery calls or asking too many questions - and had done sales too long without.

But I managed to change. And it was the best transformation I could have wished for.

In year no. 3, I reached 158% of my sales target (1.58 Mio. ARR) with a 2-month holiday during summer.

Since then, I have learned a lot more and realized that learning is the most important activity in our profession.

Hiring a job hopper can have a big advantage. 

Because I strongly believe:

If I had not worked for four different companies, I would not be half as good as I am now. 

Let's say someone started as an SDR. 

They cold call, they follow a script, and eventually, they nail it (or not).

Let's say the company is not doing well, so there is no promotion after 1.5 years.

They move on.

New company, same role. 

Sounds easy from the surface.

Just reuse the already learned script.

Except… it doesn’t work as well as before.

And suddenly, they’re forced to think deeper:

Why did that old script work? 
Was it the problem statement? The phrasing? The timing?

This is when they level up.

They stop being a “script user” and start becoming a “script designer”

At least mentally.

They learn how to translate a message from one company to another.

They also learn new things in their new environment they can think about and adapt.
 
How positioning, tone, and value props need to be changed to the new audience.

And also what does NOT need to be changed. 

They learn which sales approaches work almost everywhere. Are repeated by different teams. 

They can learn from the best in different companies, which is huge.

If that happens 3-4 times in an early career, it can definitely be worth a lot.

People start to think one level higher.

That is the underrated edge of job hoppers.

They have seen multiple environments, products, and buyer types.

They don’t just execute. They understand. At least better than before.

They learned not only how to sell, but how sales works.

Patrick Trümpi

How to detect a sales leader who has only surface knowledge?

They tell their reps to use open vs. close ended questions. 

Because that is one of the first tactics trained in many sales trainings.

One of my reps had a fun encounter with a sales leader on a cold call the other day.

Sales Leader (at the end of the call): "You should have asked an open question like "what are your challenges" at the beginning.

My rep: "Ok, so what are your challenges?"

Sales Leader: "I cannot tell you yet. I started a few months ago"

My rep: "If I asked you an open question like that, the problem often is that people tell me about challenges I cannot solve. That is a waste of time for both of us"

And he is right.

There is no point hearing from a sales leader that they struggle hiring sales reps when your tool solves forecasting.

But it does not stop there. 

Let's assume we ask a bit more specific: 

"When it comes to forecasting, what are some issues you currently encounter?"

Problem with that? 

👉🏻 You have not earned the trust to ask such a question yet. 
👉🏻 They still have to think quite a lot (cognitive load too high) and likely come up with "all good there at the moment"

How do you solve that?

By asking a close question:

"When I talk to sales leaders, they often have two main challenges when it comes to forecasting: Reps put deals on commit that lack critical qualification such as understanding the decision and paper process or they do not even have a mutual action plan in place and secondly that sales leaders often just spend time reminding the reps of these basics. Are you familiar with any of these two?"

You show that understand their challenge better than they do.

That builds trust. 

And you take their cognitive load by giving them options. 

So much better. 

And by the way: 

Many sales leaders now say the client only says "no" or "yes".

Based on my experience, that is definitely not the case. They almost always give more context. 

But in case they only say "no", ask this: 

"Does that mean that your reps almost always hit 100% of their forecast?"

And in case they said "yes", ask this:

"Can you elaborate?"

Next time your sales leader tells you to use open ended questions, ask them: 

When is the best time to ask open questions?

Their answer should not be "always"

It is way more nuanced.

New Year. Welcome back everyone! 

I see a lot of posts about setting goals. I am not a huge fan. 

I once put this massive goal in front of me: 

Want to be retired by the age of 40. 

Nowadays it bothers me more than it helps to think about that.

Goals often are too far away and have no impact on the now.

But: There is one huge benefit of goal setting: 

Increase self-awareness. 

If you already put some goals down, here is what I would do: 

Let’s assume you said you "want to earn $100’000 in 2026" 

(money goals are probably the worst).

Then ask yourself: 

Why do you want that? 

The answer you come up: 

I want to buy a 20k watch. 

Ok, good so far. 

Now, ask yourself again, why you want that watch? 

And here, it becomes increasingly difficult because you have to be honest with yourself. 

Try not to judge yourself for whatever answer you come up. 

Possible options: 

"I really love that one watch." 
"My friends have all such watches." 
etc. 

Ok, well done.

But you are not done yet. 

It becomes much harder now. 

You have to further increase the level of honestly with yourself. 

Why do you actually love watches? 

Think about it. 

You will get deep down to your motivations.

You can find out if buying a watch will actually make you any happier. 

And it might, but very rarely.

If you do it for your friends, for being accepted or for some other fragile reason, as soon as you have that watch, you will want something more. Or your friends get an upgrade and you feel worthless again. 

Do that exercise to actually learn about yourself from the goals you set.

Here is what I like much more than setting some yearly goals:

Build a system (yes, got it from the book Atomic habits). 

A system basically consists of really really small daily habits. 

(which technically you can call goals as well). 

My current ones are: 

👉🏻 Write journal (this post comes from my journal and own thoughts)
👉🏻 Write one LinkedIn post. 
👉🏻 Run for 30 min. 
👉🏻 Read 30 min. 
👉🏻 Talk 30 min to ChatGPT (from which I will produce more content). 
👉🏻 Max 30 min of LinkedIn and Substack a day (my only social media). 

The rest of my time is dedicated to my family and work.

I once wrote a full list of things a perfect day would contain. 

I pick some of those that fit my current life style and try to follow. 

I do not manage to get everything done every day. 

And that is fine too. 

But this system will make me much happier than a goal I set in the distant past.

taplio

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