Week #2 Project Update — Read a Sales Book and Created an Outbound Sales Process
Hey guys, thanks for stopping by! I set a goal to learn everything that I could about succeeding in sales in one month. I read books, listened to podcasts, did a ton of research, and then put what I learned into practice. And I documented my process for it. This is my week 2 project update.
What I did this week
This week I read a lot, read a ton of newsletters, followed some sales leaders on LinkedIn, and listened to many podcasts on sales.
I also picked a company to put my learnings into practice. I chose a marketing agency called Piper Creative. I went through my strategy for finding leads, using different software to find and qualify those leads, my outbound cadence, and much more. You can see that here.
Struggles that I have faced
Lost my list of leads
I created a very extensive leads list for Piper Creative. It took me several days to develop, but unfortunately, my LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription ran out. Because this is just a project, I decided that it wasn’t worth renewing. A few days of progress were gone, but I learned how important it is to set reminders and stay on top of things like that.
Knowledge gap
There was a substantial knowledge gap between where I wanted to be regarding my understanding of sales at the beginning of this week vs. where I was. I couldn’t just start writing email sequences or writing my strategy for conducting sales calls until I narrowed that knowledge gap. I needed to do more research. Salespeople have a myriad of different tactics to be flourishing at their jobs. Although I wish I could have started producing and documenting examples of the strategies I would use earlier in the week, I first had to learn the best practices. Other people in the field openly share so much valuable information, so I tracked them down and learned from them.
Having limited time
When I planned this project, I overestimated the amount of time I spent working on it. This week I was limited by:
- Working seven days a week.
- My family just bought a new house, so I spent a lot of time moving our stuff into our new home.
- I have night classes a few times per week.
I have a tiny window of time to get work done, but I have learned from it and will plan accordingly from here on out.
Change of gameplan
Due to my lack of time, I realized my original plan of picking a new company every week to create an entire outbound sales strategy might not be the best game plan for the upcoming weeks ahead.
I have pivoted my plan; instead of doing what I did this week and only focusing on the bare bones of each step in the process, I will instead focus on diving deeper into each step in the sales process. I will spend these next two weeks writing about these topics below:
- How to Dominate a Cold Call
- How I Hunted Down 10 Leads For Drift
- How To Answer Common Objections To Emails/ Cold Calls
- Outbound Sales Cadence For Postscript
- 3 Crazy Yet Effective Ways to Leave a Voicemail
- 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of LinkedIn/ LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- If You Aren’t Using Seemless.io, You Should Be
- Salesloft: What It Does and Why It’s Important
These are the nine different posts that I plan on creating in the next two weeks. I will have to be very efficient with my time, but I want to finish out this month strong.
