Jason Koons is the top seller at Sweetwater out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he has exceeded monthly, quarterly, and annual sales goals and consistently ranked at the top of the leaderboard among a team of over 550 active sales engineers. Jason is a relationship-based sales and business development specialist who is skilled in developing and implementing strategic sales plans, identifying new business opportunities, and building lasting relationships to achieve bottom-line growth objectives. Today, Jason is in a new role with Sweetwater that is focused more on training and coaching new hires as well as seasoned professionals aspiring to achieve personal and career growth.
In this episode, Jason speaks to his passion and thirst for knowledge and new personal growth opportunities. Jason expounds on his role and sales results at Sweetwater and goes on to list the three things he attributes most to his success, chief among them constant awareness, sprinting and giving one hundred percent every day, and being a constant student. Jason also shares his favorite sales success story as well as his favorite failure from his sales career. He speaks to the importance of mindset and constantly looking to improve your craft.
Jason takes the audience through a typical day in the life which usually begins with a workout routine before arriving at his office an hour or two before his ‘shift’ starts so he can get a jump on the day’s tasks. It is this mindset of truly owning his role that has set him up for such success as a sales engineer. Jason talks about his sales style, one that is conversational, yet quick so that he can achieve his results in a timely manner. He speaks to the importance of relationship-building and sustaining those relationships over the long haul. Jason always looks to add a personal touch to conversations with his clients which he has found yields incredible results. Finally, Jason issues an actionable challenge to the audience. He suggests that they get into the habit of making a daily ‘Gripes & Gratitudes’ list. When things weren’t going well for Jason, he would take two minutes at the end of each day and write his gripes and gratitudes. It didn’t take long before he realized that the gratitudes nearly always outweighed the gripes. That put it all into perspective for Jason and he believes it can for you too!
What We Covered:
00:01 – Scott takes a moment to thanks today’s sponsor, the brand new Sales Community Coin: $SALES
00:45 – Scott introduces today’s guest, Jason Koons
01:02 – The top three things Jason attributes to his success
01:25 – Number One: Constant Awareness
01:56 – Number Two: Sprinting every day as if it’s your first day
02:36 – Number Three: Being a constant student
02:59 – Jason explains his role at Sweetwater
04:11 – The Sales Engineer Model, explained
06:08 – Jason quantifies his sales results and talks about his new role at Sweetwater
13:22 – What Jason has learned in his new role
18:51 – Advice Jason gives to new sales engineers joining Sweetwater
20:25 – What happened to all of Jason’s clients???
23:32 – Jason’s favorite sales story
26:24 – Jason’s favorite failure
31:03 – Jason takes the audience through a typical day in the life
34:40 – Tactics and habits that Jason utilizes to organize his day
36:58 – The Diderot Effect
38:57 – Other tips and best practices that aid in Jason’s success
43:44 – The books, news, podcasts, and trade information that Charlotte consumes
47:30 – Jason’s sales philosophy
49:16 – Scott takes a moment to provide a special link to claim $SALES coin rewards
50:04 – Why Jason has NO tech stack
52:42 – How Jason captures the love language of his prospects
53:40 – How Jason uses the information he gets from talking to clients on a personal level
55:25 – Balancing hundreds of clients
58:37 – Jason’s sales style
59:58 – What motivates and drives Jason
1:02:10 – Why mindset is a critical component of Jason’s success
1:03:44 – One of Jason’s beliefs that the average sales engineer would think is crazy
1:05:22 – An average sales engineer’s belief that Jason thinks is crazy
1:06:25 – Jason’s process of learning from other top sellers
1:11:30 – Jason speaks to the deep dive conversations he’s having in his new sales role and common themes he’s observed
1:17:39 – Advice Jason would give to an upstart sales professional
1:18:50 – Scott pauses to provide ANOTHER special link to claim $SALES coin rewards
1:20:30 – Advice Jason would give to a struggling sales professional
1:24:14 – What Jason would want to know about top sellers in other organizations
1:24:42 – Final thoughts from Jason
1:24:53 – Jason issues an actionable challenge to the audience
Tweetables:
“Having a relationship-based sales model where the same sales engineer is talking to the same client throughout that entire process for as long as it’s relevant, which in a lot of cases is many many years and decades, it allows us to really tap into the ability to create and develop true sales professionals because they can focus on the long game.” (05:01)
“I’m most proud of nurturing a relationship when there weren’t results that many years later turned into my largest result.” (26:13)
“It’s about the long game. I don’t need to be reaching out to make a quota. I don’t need to be focusing on finishing a transaction with any particular client. What I need to focus on are my long-term relationships with them because of all the things we talked about earlier. If we have a long view of the career even, all of those other things just fall into place.” (29:30)
“I think Sales, a huge percentage of it, is just having a personality and being somebody that somebody wants to talk to.” (39:22)
“You can learn so much about folks by reading between the lines of the answers they give you.” (53:17)
“I would describe my style as conversational yet quick.” (58:46)
“Folks are excited about it. They’re energized about being featured in one of these emails that I send out to the team. And, frankly, they’re just looking for feedback on their phone calls, which I think is great. It’s getting people to get into that learning mindset, especially after these past couple of years where we’ve been very reactive in nature because the business has just been so good throughout this whole pandemic situation for us that it’s nice to feel sales professionals truly engaging.” (1:15:22)
“I’m not going to limit or put a filter on my knowledge coming in because I don’t want filtered results.” (1:24:23)
Links Mentioned:
[email protected]
2022 Sales Success Summit
ALL Enterprise Sales Episodes
ALL SDR Episodes
Jason Koons on LinkedIn
Sweetwater
Books Mentioned:
Psycho-Cybernetics
The Master Key to Riches
How to Become a Rainmaker
Customer-Centric Selling
Raving Fans