My friend Josh is the CEO and Founder of Salesdash, a CRM for the freight and logistics industry. Prior to Salesdash, he worked in sales roles at multiple companies, including becoming one of the top 10 sales reps in North America for Tesla.
And now — perhaps the apogee of his career to-date — he’s the first guest that I interviewed for this nascent Closing Time podcast :)
Every episode, I’m going to ask the guest to think (ahead of time) about the most important principles that they believe have made them successful in their careers.
Josh articulated ten. For the full, nuanced articulations, check out the podcast. But here’s the tl;dr:
(1) Follow through — Even though I’ve never worked on the same team as Josh, I’ve noticed how consistent he is with following up and communication. As he puts it: “so much of sales is always staying in front of the customer”. It’s discipline, organization, process, systems. Josh is a true master of these arts.
(2) Mindset — Sales is hard. Even if you’re incredibly good, you get a ton of “no’s”. You have to have resilience, and indefatigable optimism. Keep coming, again and again. And to Josh, mindset also encompasses deep confidence and conviction in what you are selling. If you don’t believe in your product, how on earth are you going to be able to convince a customer?
(3) Be human — Just be yourself, be natural. Don’t be fake, don’t use convoluted language.
(4) Sweat the details — If you want to excel, you’ve got to master the details. Good sales involves a craftsmanship, and part of that is being a deep expert in your product.
(5) Don’t put “hope all is well” in your emails — A very specific principle! But to abstract it to a more generic point — don’t be rote, don’t be “automated”. Be thoughtful, personalized. People will (rightly!) tune you out if you’re just spamming them with automated drips.
(6) Write like a third grader — Simple language. And also simple emails. Be concise, be punchy, don’t over-complicate things.
(7) No channels are dead — Josh is a fan of cold calling (side note, Jonny is not!!). But it works for Josh. And just because a channel might not work for you (if you’re the customer), that doesn’t mean it won’t work for millions of other people out there.
(8) Use results-based language — What is the customer hoping to achieve by (e.g.) buying your software? Identify that upfront, and then use that language in communicating with them through the sales process.
(9) Learn copywriting — Whether it’s in email communication or creating LinkedIn content, if you can improve your writing skills, there’s massive and ongoing upside.
(10) Study marketers — Be disciplined in running tests and continuously optimizing and improving. And learn how to grab customers’ attention quickly.
If you want to follow along with Josh, you can find him on LinkedIn here.
And if you’re in the freight and logistics industry, and want to check out Salesdash as a potential CRM solution, you can do that here. (Mention “Closing Time” at checkout to get a 10% discount on your first year’s subscription. Not really… Maybe when we get to a million subscribers…).
