Episode 146: Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone & Achieving Astonishing Results & A Touch of Personalization with Semrush’s Sean McLean

Sean McLean broke records as the Top Sales Development Representative at Semrush and was promoted into his current Account Executive role in less than half the time because of his performance. Sean is a passionate sales professional who enjoys consulting various businesses on how to increase traffic and conversions through the digital space. He has a unique blend of work experience that includes sales, digital marketing, project management, and IT infrastructure support. He has the innate ability to understand his clients’ needs and pain points and provides recommendations on how best to overcome them. Sean is showing no signs of slowing down and intends to continue growing his SaaS sales career by learning from the best in the industry and adding thoughtful value to the space.

Today, Sean and Scott discuss Sean’s sales origin story, one that began with a pay cut and a calculated risk to become an SDR. That decision paid off very quickly as Sean received a promotion to his current role as Account Executive and has been crushing quota ever since. Sean speaks to the three things he most attributes to his success, including his work ethic, sales skills, and product knowledge. That’s about as good of a three-skill combo as you can have. Sean and Scott go deep and share their thoughts on lazy leadership and why it’s such a problem for some sales organizations. Sean talks about the importance he places on breaking through the noise and personalizing his outreach for each prospective customer.

Sean takes the audience through a typical day in the life, one that is always consistent, but not necessarily routine. Sean wakes up every day, makes a coffee, eats a good breakfast, feeds his dog, and then, about an hour before work, he’ll check emails and ease into his day. Work starts around 8:30 am when he hits the ground running with client meetings, outreach, prospecting, research, and time-blocking. Sean chronicles his very consultative sales style, speaks to the approach he utilizes to continuously improve his craft, and talks about the importance of building a network. Finally, Sean issues an actionable challenge to the audience. He challenges listeners to make a small change in your life. It doesn’t take a drastic change to have a huge impact. If you make small incremental changes each day and build upon that, you’ll be astonished at the results you can achieve. Success isn’t built overnight, but you can work at it consistently a little bit at a time.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott introduces today’s guest, Sean McLean
00:48 – The top three things Sean attributes to his success
00:59 – Number One: Work ethic
01:11 – Number Two: Sales skills
01:26 – Number Three: Product knowledge
01:37 – Sean talks about his role at Semrush
02:24 – The difference between Sean’s initial SDR role and his current AE role
03:15 – Sean quantifies his sales results
03:43 – Sean’s sales origin story
05:28 – What Sean did to prepare himself for a career in sales
06:59 – What Sean would do differently if given the chance
08:02 – Sean’s favorite sales story
09:33 – Sean’s proudest accomplishment
11:13 – Obstacles and challenges that Sean has overcome throughout his sales career
13:47 – The problem with lazy leadership
16:07 – Sean takes the audience through a typical day in the life and how he structures his workday
17:57 – Other habits and routines that are critical to Sean’s success
18:27 – The books, news, podcasts, and trade information that Sean consumes
19:49 – Sean’s tech stack
20:32 – How Sean approaches actively listening to sales calls
23:07 – Sean’s sales style and philosophy
25:10 – The importance of personalization
25:53 – What motivates and drives Sean
26:39 – One of Sean’s beliefs that the average sales professional would think is crazy
28:04 – Stepping outside your comfort zone
28:38 – The most important lesson Sean learned throughout his career thus far
29:23 – Final words of wisdom from Sean
31:08 – Scott takes a moment to showcase why the 2022 Sales Success Summit is such a great event
33:26 – Sean issues an actionable challenge to the audience

Tweetables:

“I did have to take a pay cut to become an SDR. And that was a pretty scary risk for me and something that I really had to think about. I have a house and a mortgage. And, I knew quickly I could beat that and eclipse that number. But I have never sold anything before so, for me, that was gonna be a big challenge.” (04:51)

“I think your failures are more important than your successes. I have lots of successes and things that I’m super proud of, but I’m more proud of the ability to take rejection and keep going and be resilient.” (08:46)

“If you’re not as knowledgeable about the product, if you’re not as experienced, making those dials is gonna be important. Get the reps in. Get more comfortable. And, I would say you can be a top performer by high activity metrics, but it’s not everything.” (15:41)

“Listening to calls is probably the main reason I’ve been so successful. I think I’ve listened to more than anyone else.” (20:25)

“The more you can make your demo or prospecting call conversational, I think the more successful you will be.” (24:14)

“The second I realize that I’m getting comfortable, I try to do something else that pushes me a little bit.” (28:20)

What We Covered:

Tweetables:

Links Mentioned:

Books Mentioned:

Podcasts Mentioned:

Sponsors Mentioned: