by Scott Leese
Testimonials
“Scott’s personal story is even more inspiring than his sales success and methodology. Finally, a leader that can break it down in the most challenging yet effective ways in this book. As a sales trainer, coach and speaker the past 18 years, I am eager to help make the sales word ‘Process’ one that deserves a capital ‘P.’ A MUST read for ANY sales professional!”
—Mike Lindstrom
Professional Speaker and Author of “What’s Your Story? Discover the Man Behind Your Dad”
www.mikelindstrom.com
“If you are brand spanking new to sales or want to get into sales then this book will be your bible. Scott lays out his process for how to be successful in transactional selling in plain English. No theory just guidance.”
—Trish Bertuzzi
Author of “The Sales Development Playbook,” CEO of The Bridge Group, Inc.
“Leese has managed to accomplish, in less than 100 pages, a complete playbook for how to excel like the best at transactional sales, from rep to VP. In this pithy treatise, Scott has boiled down his years of training and the essentials of how he’s lead sales teams from failures to outsize successes into a short, digestible guidebook. Scott helped our company turn around our sales model and culture, and under his guidance, we embarked on a turnaround and growth path that led to over 200% in performance gains on a per rep basis in our inside sales team! His sage advice is now available to anyone wise enough to read this book, and the best part of it is that Scott’s wisdom runs the gamut, so whether you’re a rep just starting your journey, a sales manager looking to take his team to the next level, or a director or VP trying to push your organization even further, this book is for you!”
—Matt Doka
CRO at FiveStars
“There are over 13,000 books on ‘sales’ on Amazon. What makes this one different? The fact that Scott is a practitioner, not a theorist. He has had a long career as a technology sales leader (rather than just as a trainer or consultant), and an even longer one in the trenches. You can rest assured that everything Scott talks about in his book has been field-tested and refined by him personally hundreds of times.”
—Chris Orlob
Senior Director, Product Marketing at Gong.io
Addicted to the Process
Scott Leese
Scott Leese Consulting, LLC
Published by Scott Leese Consulting, LLC
Copyright © 2017 by Scott Leese
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Scott Leese Consulting, LLC
PO Box 90954, Austin, TX 78709-0954
E-mail: [email protected]
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty:
While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Publishing and editorial team:Author Bridge Media,
www.AuthorBridgeMedia.com
Project Manager and Editorial Director: Helen Chang
Editor: Katherine MacKenett
Publishing Manager: Laurie Aranda
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017901291
ISBN: 978-0-9984054-0-7 -- paperback
978-0-9984054-1-4 -- ebook
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To my children, Brayden and Caleb—who are already better salesmen than I am.
To my wife, Janet—for being the example of toughness I have always needed.
To my parents, Angela and Wallace—your support, discipline, and love have made me who I am.
To my grandmother, Nina—the strongest person I’ve ever met and will ever know.
To my brother, Taylor—the smartest kid I know, always one-upping me and pushing me on.
To my friends and loved ones—your encouragement, successes, and guidance made this book possible.
And to those who have struggled, suffered, endured, and overcome, I dedicate this book to you. You inspire the rest of us every day. My hope is that these pages motivate you to share your story as well.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1The Process
Chapter 2Build the Mindset to Succeed
Chapter 3Know Your Stuff
Chapter 4Sell It
Chapter 5Stick to the Plan
Chapter 6The Next Move
About the Author
Acknowledgments
As with most accomplishments, this book would not have happened without the support and encouragement of many people in my life. I would like to thank the following individuals who played a role in helping me develop this book by challenging me to hone my own Process. You remind me that we all have challenges and struggles; it’s how we deal with them consistently that makes us who we are.
Thank you to Kay Kohen, a teacher who made a true impact on me as a person. You helped me develop an interest in psychology and showed me that understanding people is a way to understand yourself. Thank you also to all my coaches growing up (especially my Dad), who helped me better understand the true driver of success: overcoming obstacles, setbacks, and failures.
Thank you to all of my former teammates who encouraged me to train harder and more often, to step up and lead, and to celebrate my successes and learn from my setbacks: the members of my former soccer and tennis teams, my surf crew, my oldest and best friends, and former colleagues and collaborators. I’m lucky to say some of my best friends today are folks I have known nearly half my life or longer. You continue to push me to be better, even today.
I’m grateful to my family, friends, and mentors, including Taylor Leese, Mike Lindstrom, Richard Harris, Jonathan Dawe, and Lena Shaw. You were great sounding boards as I worked to make connections between sales, leadership, growth, and, finally, writing.
Thank you to my most loyal colleagues and business partners, including Scott Partlow, Claire Morris, Paige Drews, Daniel Molas, Matt Hernandez, and countless others without whom none of my successes would have happened.
To everyone who told me I couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, thank you for your part in encouraging me to share my story and to try to make a difference in the lives of some people who needed it.
I am grateful to those who stood b
y me and refused to let me quit, and who still refuse to let me give up even now. My mom, Angela Leese, for her unwavering love and faith in the healing process. My Dad, Wallace Leese, for having the wisdom and conviction to know when to push and when to encourage rest. To Garrett and Brian Gray, whose friendship saved my life during my illness. To Amber Eandi-Marinescu, for a lifetime of friendship and support. To Casey Gillispie and Taylor Smith, for struggling with me and helping me find a way to laugh and smile through it all.
Thank you to my wife, Janet, who plays the roles of wife, mother, therapist, doctor, and teacher in my life. Without your sacrifices, none of this would have ever been possible. To my sons, Brayden and Caleb: you inspire me to be better, and you make me proud every day.
Finally, thank you to Katherine MacKenett, Jenny Shipley, and the Author Bridge Media team for your editorial and publishing services. Your most valuable contribution was in helping me to bring structure and clarity to something I previously had been unable to nail down. I am grateful for your assistance in creating this book.
Introduction
Adrift
Sales is the garbage can of jobs.
When you don’t know what to do with something anymore, you might choose to throw it away. When you don’t know what kind of career you want or you’ve been “thrown away” by other choices, you might end up in sales.
Maybe you studied liberal arts in college, but nobody is hiring. Maybe you work in the retail or service industry, but you are tired of the hours or cleaning up spilled beer. You are ready for something more professional, but you are rudderless. You feel like a ship adrift in the ocean.
Maybe you’ve made some mistakes, and you feel there might not be a ton of options available. Life is just happening to you, rather than you deciding what you want and then setting a course.
You see the people around you doing more with their lives. Your friends are getting married, having families, and starting to make six figures. They’re working more, and they’re not as interested in going out on a Wednesday night to take tequila shots. Things are changing all around you, and you feel left behind.
You want to keep up. You think you’re doing the best you can—but you want to do better. You need a way to get to the next level.
Why isn’t it happening? you think. Where’s the sherpa to show me a better way up the mountain? What do I need to do?
The Path to Success
There is a way to take your life back that leads to success, at work and at home. It all starts with making the decision to follow a proven path.
That path can be transactional sales. Transactional sales—as I refer to them in this book—have a short sales cycle, few decision makers, high volume, and a relatively low complexity of product.
The sales world may be where people end up when they have nowhere else to go, but you can decide to change your life through transactional sales. It can be a launching pad for the rest of your career.
And that launching pad leads to powerful change.
You will have a new sense of direction, and direction leads to self-confidence. As you have more success, your self-esteem will improve. You can replace bad habits with healthier ones, and then your productivity will increase as well. You’ll be making smarter decisions outside of work, so you’ll be prepared to perform at your optimal level inside of work.
No longer will you be working just to survive and pay bills. Instead, you’ll be changing the direction of your life. Maybe now you can buy that new car you’ve dreamed about. Perhaps you want to take a trip to see more of the world. You might move into a nicer home, now that you can provide more for your family.
Transactional sales is a platform to success for the rest of your life. You hold the key to getting started in your hand—and in your mind.
If I Can Do It, So Can You
I’m living proof that the process in this book works. I was once that person who had lost control of his life.
I had no special talents or pedigree that gave me any kind of advantage. My dad was a college professor and my mom was a nurse. They had no sales experience whatsoever. I played sports in high school and college. As an undergraduate, I studied psychology with a minor in religious studies, but I chose those only because they were interesting to me. At that time, I had no brain for business or making money.
I went to graduate school because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. Then, right before I finished my master’s degree, I got really, really sick. I was twenty-three years old.
I spent the next four years in and out of Enloe Medical Center, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Hospital, fighting for my life. At first, nobody knew why I was so sick. Then they discovered that I had an autoimmune disease—ulcerative colitis—which led to multiple abdominal surgeries.
I was fed every horrible drug you can think of to treat the disease and the pain: antibiotics, steroids, immunosuppressants, Dilaudid, Demerol, oxycodone, and even liquid morphine. None really worked.
I lost more than fifty pounds because I couldn’t eat or drink. I couldn’t walk or even stand up on my own. I was in constant pain. I wanted to die. Every waking moment was a struggle to survive.
During that period, I thought a lot about what I was going to do with myself once I got out of the hospital. I needed to make up for lost time. One of the first things I did when I was on the mend was to kick all the narcotics. Physically, I was a junkie. I got lucky and didn’t have any mental or emotional addiction, so I went cold turkey. Everybody said it was a bad idea, but I figured, “I’ve already been through four years of hell—what’s another week or two?”
When I recovered, it was the summer of 2004. I was twenty-seven years old, and I’d never really had a job, let alone a career. I had just gotten married, and I had no idea what I was going to do.
But I now had a family to support. So I made the strategic decision to go into sales. It was the only thing I could think of that would allow me to make as much money as possible, based on how well I performed and how hard I worked. It made sense to me as an athlete and competitor: you play well; you get paid well. You play poorly; you get cut.
In fact, I used a sports analogy when I went on my first interview. The cofounder of the company asked why I had no real work experience. I looked at the San Francisco 49ers pictures on the wall before replying, “I am going to be the best undrafted free agent that you’ll ever find. All I need is a chance.”
And it worked—he gave me that chance.
I got hired with twenty other people. We all showed up for the first day and went through training until it was time for lunch. Then they said, “Time to get on the phone.”
Are you f***ing serious? I felt like I’d just been thrown to the wolves.
That first day was awful—rejection after rejection. I didn’t even want to pick up the phone anymore. That night, I told my wife, “I’m not going back.”
She paused. At the time, my wife was going to graduate school full time. I was our only source of income. “That’s fine,” she said neutrally. “You can quit. But then what?”
And it hit me like a ton of bricks: I had no plan B.
She was right. I had no choice but to dig in and figure it out. What the hell was wrong with me? Who quits so easily? That was not representative of the guy who had already fought major obstacles so hard for so long.
So I started going at it—hard. I came into work around six in the morning and left twelve hours later. By that very first Friday, I was the last person from the group I’d been hired with who hadn’t either quit or made a sale. I thought I was going to get fired at any moment, so I stayed late in the darkened office. Around nine thirty that Friday night, I was still cold-calling Hawaii, trying to take advantage of the time difference.
And that’s when I closed my first deal.
It was like somebody
flipped a switch inside me. It was the best feeling in the world, and I knew I wanted to feel it again and again. I just figured it out! The only reason I made the sale was that I was in the office, working on a Friday night, instead of going out with friends or making stupid decisions. I was alone at my desk, trying to make something happen, while most other twenty-seven-year-olds I knew were well on their way to needing a bottle of Advil the following morning.
That would be my path. If it worked once, I thought, it could definitely work again. I put in the extra effort, which allowed me to learn faster, and I kept doing it until I saw rewards.
If I can do it, so can you.
Every Day a Win
I’m lucky to be alive. I’m lucky to be where I am. And I’m lucky because after that first success, the deals just kept coming.
I had found a purpose: I wanted to be the best, and I wanted to help others do what I was doing.
I quickly became the number one salesperson in that company and was promoted to sales manager and then senior sales manager. I was named Employee of the Year and was also a finalist for Sales Manager of the Year.
Since then, I’ve been building, advising, and scaling inside-sales organizations for startups all across the country and even in Europe. I’ve carved out a niche for myself in this world. Founders come to me when they have a great idea and need to figure out how to sell it.
As of 2016, I’ve helped five different organizations grow. I’m particularly proud of the last two. Main Street Hub was ranked the seventy-third fastest-growing company in America in the 2014 Inc. 5000. The 2016 Inc. 5000 ranked OutboundEngine number ninety-five overall, number four in the state of Texas, and number one in Austin. In fact, OutboundEngine was voted one of the Best Places to Work in Austin for five years in a row. One of its offices was also on the Best Places to Work list for the greater Phoenix area.
The sales numbers that have developed in these places sound ludicrous, because the companies quickly go from no revenue to having a successful and repeatable sales process in just a few years. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have gone through my training at these organizations.