I Learned How to Be Successful in Sales in One Month
Hey, I’m Caysen! I spent the month of May 2021 learning everything I could about sales. I learned how to generate leads, conduct a cold call, create a sales cadence, handle common rejections, leave a voicemail, use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and more. This page is where I documented what I did, how it went, and what I learned!
Why This Project?
Selling stuff has always been something I have enjoyed. When I was younger, I would sell anything I could get my hands on—candy, gum, lawn care services, 50/50 tickets, etc. But, sales careers tend to get a bad rap, so when thinking about my career aspirations, sales was never something that seemed viable. But after learning more about what sales professionals do, I realized this career path is fascinating and something I could see myself doing. So I set out to learn as much as possible about how to be successful in sales.
Week by week breakdown
✔ Week One: Picked a project, researched, and came up with an action plan.
During this week, if I wasn’t at work, I read newsletters, listened to podcasts, or did some other form of research about sales. Towards the end of this week, I wrote my plan for everything I wanted to accomplish this month. Check out my full week 1 breakdown here.
✔ Week Two: Read a sales book and created an outbound sales process.
This week, I dove headfirst into this project. I read a book about Sales from start to finish and picked a marketing agency to find leads and develop an outbound sales strategy. Check out my full week 2 breakdown here.
✔ Week Three: Wrote over 3,500 words on how to conduct cold calls.
In week three, I dove deep into sales psychology, cold calls, and sales cadences. I wrote about how to conduct a sales call, what not to say on a sales call and how to handle common rejections. Check out my full week 3 breakdown here.
✔ Week Four: Documented what I learned about common sales tech tools, lead generation, voicemails, and more.
In the final week of this project, I documented what I learned about SalesLoft, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, voicemails, and lead generation. Check out my full week 4 breakdown here.
In this month, I learned and documented the following:
Cold Calling
The Mistakes A Cold Caller Must Avoid
Handling Failed Attempts
How to Leave Voicemails When Your Cold Call Attempt Fails
How to Handle Rejections From Cold Outreach Attempts
Lead Generation
How to Get the Most Out of Lead Generation
The Methodology Behind Finding Quality Leads for Piper Creative (Part 1)
The Methodology Behind Finding Quality Leads for Piper Creative (Part 2 — Outreach)
Tech Tools
5 Must-Knows About LinkedIn & LinkedIn Sales Navigator Before Getting Started In Sales
How to Get the Most Out of Salesloft
My Biggest Challenge And How I Handled It
In addition to working on this project, I worked 7 days a week, so I had to be really efficient with my time. I had very little time to do anything besides this project and work, which was a bit of a struggle, but I accomplished what I set out to do because I planned and was organized. I used notion and google calendar to track all the different things I needed to do for this project.
What I am Proud Of
I am proud that I was able to accomplish writing 14 different posts this month. I learned so much more because I documented what I learned, instead of only reading books and listening to podcasts.
I am most proud that I genuinely feel like a thorough understanding of sales psychology, the most important sales tech tools, and everything that goes into the sales process.
What I Would Have Done Differently
The best way to learn anything is by actually doing it. So once I had a pretty good understanding of how to sell, I wish I would have taken some time to reach out to companies to see if I could actually try selling something. I also would have decided on my project idea within the first two days, so I had more time to complete the project.
Key Take-Aways
I have learned that there is so much more that goes into the art of selling than I ever would have thought. My biggest takeaway from this project is that sales can be incredibly fun and rewarding.
Everything I learned about sales is super interesting to me, and I am excited to start my journey to try to land an entry-level job in sales.
