“If you can figure out how to formulate all of your interview questions and your interview process to determine those two things, then you’re gonna have a really successful organization.” – Evan Kelsay in today’s Tip 177
Do you also have grit? Are you working hard and working through the day to day challenges that sales bring us to outperform?
Join the conversation below and feel free to share your answers!
Sales Success Summit
Seismic Software
Evan Kelsay on LinkedIn
Evan Kelsay on Sales Success Stories Interview
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’m going to share a bit of a secret track with you. On Saturday Evan Kelsey and I got up early to start our round two interviews together for a future Sales Success Stories episode at 5:30 am before our family obligations started to kick in. While the actual interview will end up being about 80-85 minutes, we ended up talking for about another 90 minutes beyond that and fortunately, I left the recording running and captured this gold nugget… among others. Just for context. Evan was the star of episode 56 of Sales Success Stories after he closed the largest deal in Seismic’s history. A deal that put him over 800% of his annual quota. He was subsequently asked to move into a leadership role, which he did, but after a few months decided that he loved the hunt too much and became an “intentional individual contributor.” It was at this point in our conversation post-interview that I asked him, from his perspective, having a been a sales leader, what he believed to be the difference between the top performers and everybody else. This is what he had to say about that:
Evan Kelsay: It’s growth. I mean it’s the growth mindset. Like I’m pretty convinced that it’s the growth mindset because I would put myself, I’d probably grade myself as a B plus. In my twenties as a seller and then like I’d probably moved a little bit up to the in the A-minus category and like I’m in the A category. I still don’t consider myself like any A plus, maybe even A minus right now. But like, it’s the top performers are the guys that, you know, the guys that will be a top performer on that team. It’s the like, I just really want to get better every day and I’m thirsty for knowledge about this business, about this industry, about selling as a craft. And that’s going to be the biggest difference maker because year to year, like somebody might get lucky with a couple of accounts, but like over five year period, like that was the biggest difference. It comes back to growth, growth mindset and it’s like, it’s just, it’s true. You know, it’s right. It’s like, it’s embarrassing to like, I don’t have any other insight on this, but in reality, it’s just growth mindset and grit. Like those two things, that’s what you’re looking for. And you know, if you can figure out how to formulate all of your interview questions and your interview process to determine those two things, then you’re gonna have a really successful organization.
Scott Ingram: Certainly something to think about. The fact that you’re here listening to this podcast tells me that you likely already have that growth mindset. Do you also have grit? Are you working hard and working through the day to day challenges that sales bring us to outperform? This also leads to a conversation about why guys like Evan and other sales professionals who are already at the top who have this growth mindset have been so attracted to the Sales Success Summit. So if you’re of that growth mindset you’ve got to check out what we’re doing with that at Top1Summit.com, you can also click over to DailySales.Tips/177 to find links to Evan’s initial interview with me and more about Evan. Then be sure you’re subscribed to this podcast AND Sales Success Stories so you can listen to that full interview with Evan. Better yet. Make sure you’re on the listener list, because I’m going to work with Evan to see if we can edit down our post-interview conversation into a true secret track that I’ll have to control the availability on and that will only be made available to those who are on the listener list and getting my weekly emails.
Thanks for listening, and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!