Pillars of an Elite Sales Career - Ben Riall at SaaSGrowthLive

Absolute pleasure to be in front of all of you today to tell you a little bit more. In these next seven minutes and I'll tell you a little bit more about how I discovered the pillars of an elite sales career, and how as a Sales Leader, you can help your team to accelerate the establishment and development of the pillars in their own crit’s. But before we get into that, just if every just takes a moment to reflect back, how many of you at school, or younger, wherever dreamt of being a fellow professional. Probably very few right? I think there's much cooler things we dream of being when we're at school sure and that might even be a racing driver, an astronaut, or maybe something within a bus driver right, who knows? But most people not sales and like many others were saying, we don't really dream of being in sales. Albeit, I joined young, and I think a lot of guys just stumble into this career. But when we start to see the potential what you can achieve and where you can take your life, I find a lot of people get super motivated and encouraged to built it from there, it really is incredible from that perspective. However unlike other careers I think in cells it can be a little bit murky and how you actually establish your career if you look at being I don't know a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer, or another profession like that it's a little bit more structured, the path is a little bit clearer in how you do that.In sales you just got to figure it out.

Now along my path, I have met probably hundreds probably than thousands of salespeople and I'm sure a lot of you on the cool today's combines there's a lot of salespeople we’ve all met. But I think what is that a lot of people most people unfortunately don't achieve a great deal of success in a sales career. I think it's a lot more people that do not succeed unfortunately, or get moderate performance. And then you have that small percentage who do incredibly well, achieve astronomical things, some of the highest earners we've probably met and do very well in their sales career adding value to their clients, their business, and themselves. And throughout my career I've been fortunate enough to spend a good few years at Salesforce, where I worked among some of the very best in the industry, and made some good friends, and learnt a hell of a lot. I spent the time to really evaluate other sales profession see what I can learn from them and how I can approve, and I started to notice commonalities in these people and that's not necessarily commonalities in their sales approach what they say and how they do it. But commonalities in how they reached that amazing place in their career. And I spent some time pondering on that and not really doing a great deal with that insight, except 18 months ago I decided to validate this hypothesis I had on how you've reached that place in your career. I did that by interviewing 50 highly successful salespeople all across the world; so all across North America, UK, France, Germany, all across Europe, even down to Mexico, Australia and further afield to really get a broad sample. And what I did in these interviews is simply have someone share their story with me. How did they get into sales? And that's always a super interesting question to ask people by the way. And then how they then went on to achieve what they have in their own careers. I'm very proud to say that from all of those 50 introduced, as insightful fun as that was all 50 validated my hypothesis. That is how I uncovered what I call the pillars of an elite sales career.

Now fast-forward eighteen months on, and I finished writing a book which should be published in November. In that book I share the five pillars of an elite sales career, as well as two behaviors that are crucial in developing the pillars, practical advice on how professionals can implement these into their career at almost any stage on the journey, as well as 18 of the 50 stories shared within to really bring it to life. And I've tried to make it fun, engaging, we’ll see, you tell me! And so that is actually what you want to pick up and read so that's what I've done with the knowledge but as a sales either what can you you today and with the pillars, I think there's three things you could probably take away from this call. Number one is in our profession I think it's a growing thing you start to see, is our clients expect us to be more than just a salesperson and know our products inside out. They expect us to be an advisor and expert of our industry, our problem, the solution to their answer they expect that of us. So Sales Leader is to encourage your team to be that trusted advisor given the tools and give them the knowledge to accelerate the path towards that. Second is the very best the sharpest minds have a beginner's mind, they constantly learning sharpening their craft cells is profession you must learn how to be that professional. And I think a lot of companies do this quite well there's constantly encouraging that development and never stopping. And third is its ownership; it’s putting ownership on your team. Yes sales leaders, they are there to help their teams learn and develop, with the very best they take full ownership and that behaviour should should really be encouraged.

And if there is a bonus point I can share today, self promotion is where my book is ready and is published please buy my book, read my book, and share it. I've done this to help the profession to put some structure and building that path so people can take their own ownership. Ultimately, my goal is to help a hundred thousand salespeople to accelerate their path enjoying the elite and enjoy the fantastic things you can achieve down this career path. Now what I do have right now is a waiting list. So I've created a website called elitesalescareers.com, where you can join the waiting list. All you need to do is enter your email and when that book’s ready you'd be one of the first to know. 

So hope that was interesting I hope that was insightful and I hope you enjoy what I'm soon to bring to the world, thank you.