He'll be watching you

Published: Wed, 09/06/23

September 6, 2023

TOGETHER WITH

We’re finally past Labor Day, which means prospects will have to dig deep to find excuses for why they can’t move forward or return your calls. Ease into the fall season with this week’s issue of The Quota, where we’ll interview a sales leader who left to start his own brewery, share a Sales Fail about forgetting to put yourself on mute, and give some advice to a rep whose new boss is the king of micromanagement. Namaste.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

Successful reps are 10x more likely to use collaborative words like “us,” “we,” and “our” and avoid words like, “I” and “me.”

Source: Chorus

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

Salesforce, which became the target of short sellers and activist investors in recent years, is back in full-force (get it?), jumping 6% after reporting earnings that came in higher than anticipated. Its revenue increased 11% in the second quarter compared to the previous year, showing the sales tech giant’s resilience in the face of uncertain economic conditions. Read more about the earnings beat here.
An Ohio car salesman is in serious trouble after being accused of downloading a customer’s private photos without her knowledge. Forty-year-old John Litman was arrested following an investigation after a woman claimed that several private and revealing photos of hers had been deleted from her phone after visiting Litman's dealership to buy a car. Litman had allegedly asked the woman for her lock screen password so he could connect the phone to the car’s bluetooth system. You can read the full report here.

FEATURE

An interview with Dan Webster, a former Director of Sales who started his own brewery

Dan Webster spent over fifteen years in sales, with roles at companies such as Sophos, Hootsuite, and Expa. In 2017, he left a Director of Sales role to start Container Brewing, which he has been running ever since. We talked to Dan about his background, taking the plunge into entrepreneurship, and how a sales background can help you succeed when you strike out on your own.

You’ve been selling your entire career (over 15 years). How did you get your start in sales?

Funny enough, I more or less fell into it. Having graduated with an Engineering degree, my first “real” job was actually in a role that was to have me grow into something that my degree was for. But I hated it. I didn’t even make it to probation before I left.

A good pal from school had somehow landed in sales and suggested that I interview for it. One phone interview led to an in-person chat and an hour long shadow session and I was sold. As I left, I was given an offer that I couldn’t refuse! As they say, the rest is history.

You left the corporate sales grind 6 years ago to start your own brewery. What led to this decision? How has your career in sales helped you succeed in launching your own business?

Throughout my career, I bounced between established companies and startups, which, as we all know, have both pros and cons. My best friend since grade 2, Terry and I had been toying with the idea of starting something for about 2 years before my last gig cut me. That really stung, as I had left an established company to start their sales team. After that, I was done working for someone else. I called up Terry, told him I was done with the grind and that I’d do anything to get this going. I asked if he was game, and he said he was.

Ultimately, having the sales experience has been super helpful as you have to sell your idea to investors and banks, sell the vision to future hires, and then ultimately sell the beer! Having sales processes and organizational skills built from using CRMs has been super helpful too.

When you were working in the corporate world, you worked your way up to director of sales and ran your own sales team. Have you hired sales staff for your own business? What’s the difference between leading a sales team at a company you work for versus your own business?

I sure have! I have hired folks for a number of roles, including sales. While I did manage our sales for most of the first year, I ended up bringing on an independent sales agent (read: full commission sales person) to take on our sales thereafter and very recently moved to a sales agency, further expanding the number of sales people across the geography we are able to service from 1 to 7!

In this industry, the biggest thing is relationships, so for us, we just needed to be sure that the folks we had representing us had those connections and knowledge of who’s who in the space. It’s a funny business, different from anything else I have done, since there’s a finite number of folks who can buy the juice, since it’s all regulated by the government.

Obviously, with our lounge/bar, it’s different. There, we need people who are passionate about beer, and understand our story and can convey that to our patrons. We hired key folks early on that have stayed with us and taken on managerial roles, so now, I am no longer directly involved with that hiring.

What does a typical work day look like for you? Are you still selling? Walk us through it.

Well, I have a newborn, so he takes up a lot of my time now. Both my wife and I are small business owners (she’s an artist, see brycebarry.com and help us out!) so working from home is our only option, really.

Because of that, I am now mostly a desk jockey — lots of bill paying, emails to vendors and the like. We are a small team of a whopping 6 full-time employees, and a handful of part-timers, so we all wear a lot of hats. For me, that includes doing a lot of our website work, distribution logistics, email newsletters, the list is endless.

Sales IS still a part of my role, but more for the key accounts like chains and such. The weekly, transactional sales are all handled by our sales agency.

What advice would you give to someone who is working in sales, but wants to make the jump to starting a business that they are passionate about?

The last part of that question is the key: be sure you are passionate about it. And plan like crazy WHILE you’re still employed. That being said, the only real way to make the leap, in my humble opinion, is to do it 100% — quit and commit. Especially if you’re building something brick and mortar, as you need to be there actually doing it. If it’s more of a SaaS project, I suppose you could manage it in parallel with a day job, but the more focus you can put toward the project, the better it will be, and the faster it will come to fruition.

What are your long term career goals?

Simply put, to be able to keep taking some pay from this little company, contributing ideas and such, but ultimately to become more of a “face” of the brewery and just be able to enjoy beers at the bar, shooting the shit and telling stories.

What’s your favorite sales movie?

Boiler Room

YOU GET PAID TO SELL, NOT TAKE NOTES

Extracting the key points from your sales calls is critical to understanding your customer’s true needs and improving your chances of closing the deal.

Taking notes during sales calls is distracting. Either you focus on the notes or you focus on the prospect — it’s almost impossible to do both things well.

What if you had a personal assistant on every call to take notes so you could focus on being present with prospects?

Enter Otter.ai — your AI-powered personal sales assistant! OtterPilot does the heavy lifting for you by:

Saving you time by recording all your sales calls, creating transcripts, and extracting call insights for you
Speeding up time to close with AI-generated follow-up emails with actionable next steps automatically
Eliminating the tedious task of updating your CRM with call notes - OtterPilot for Sales does it for you, helping you prepare for your next call

Otter.ai is offering exclusive free access to The Quota’s subscribers. Sign up now for free and you can have your own personal AI assistant on your next call!

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

What is the average age of a salesperson in the U.S.?

A. 40
B. 39
C. 44
D. 47

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Recently, I was in a product demo for a Security Suit specially designed for the authorities. In Germany, it’s well known that authorities are really behind on everything digitization-related, and in this case, so was this particular product.

Usually, I sell leading solutions to enterprise customers. So, as I sat there, I was impressed by how bad the product we were pitching actually was. It was a small deal and I wasn't interested in it, so I turned my camera off.

A colleague was standing next to me, and he was also blown away by the low standards of our authorities, so I said, "Wow, that solution is total bullshit" — well, I wasn't muted.

I got removed from the call, and now some other partner has the pleasure of working on this deal.

Anonymous Germany

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- September 2023

WORTH A PEEK

How can you weed out the tire kickers from the actual buyers? Is it even possible? HubSpot just published a good article on eight ways to weed out tire kickers, with lessons from some sales pros. It’s a quick, easy read. Check it out here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team

I just started in a new sales role about two months ago. When I was interviewing, I was told that the management gives their reps autonomy, and that the company is big on work-life balance. This was one of my major reasons for accepting the role, and I even took a (small) pay cut to come work here, because at my last job, I was regularly working over sixty hours a week.

It turns out that this place is nothing like what they sold me. My sales manager basically watches my every move. We are remote two days a week and in-person the other three. On one remote day recently, I logged into our system a few minutes late because my son’s school bus was delayed in the morning and I got a message from him asking why I was late and saying that he “expects excellence” and wants people who “take this job seriously.”

On another occasion (this time in-person), he “joined” my calls for two-hours. And I’m not talking about reviewing calls together, I’m talking about literally jumping into the calls and listening live as I talked to my prospects. Afterwards, he said it was a “good learning experience” (for him) and it showed him “what we need to work on to make you a winner.” I couldn’t believe it.

I got so frustrated that I actually went to one of the other sales managers and (confidentially) asked if it was possible to switch teams. He told me that it wasn’t his decision to make and that if my manager found out about the conversation, he would be really upset with me.

In your opinion, is there anything I can do to change this situation, or am I stuck dealing with this micromanager until he (or I) leaves? Thanks in advance.

Suffocating

Dear Suffocating,

It’s time to update your resume and start reaching out to your network, because it’s highly unlikely things will get better where you are. Not only were you misled during your interview, but it doesn’t sound like the company cares much about their employees. Start applying. The sooner you get out of your current role, the better off you’ll be.

Quiz Answer: A — 40 (you can read the source article here)

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Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

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