4 Ways To Win More Business
180: Close deals, boost sales, move more size
Happy Tuesday lords — today I wanted to walk through some practical advice to hopefully help some of you out if you work in trading, sales, or any type of transactional front office work (i.e.e a role where you are responsible for revenue generation).
Over the years in my various day jobs I have generated millions in trading profit and SAAS/fin tech sales, and sold hundreds of thousands worth of merchandise, ad placements, and partnerships running the Arbitrage Andy brand for several years. I’ve done simple one off sales and structured larger multi year deals. I’ve worked in new logo/new business roles and with large clients as a dedicated rep so my experience is varied in terms of commercial proceses.
I offer this context up merely to qualify me to give out basic advice on sales and business.
All my life up until senior year of undergrad I wondered what it was I was going to do with my life — while many friends immediately knew they’d be doctor or lawyers or investment bankers, I was unclear on what it was exactly that I wanted to do. So I ended up getting going to graduate school w/ a business focus in order to experience more finance, policy, management, and business based curriculum while I continued to compete in college athletics.
This allowed me to hone several important skills that laid out the base formation for my ultimate career in business. I learned public speaking, how to pitch investments, accounting, corporate finance, and a whole host of other skill areas that would give me a jump start in my first role.
Today we I am going to go over 4 key traits that I have seen lead people and myself to success over the years in closing more business — whether you’re in sales, business development, banking, origination, private equity, trading, or other various client facing front office roles, these should be a great refresher for vets and an excellent outline for noobs.
It’s no secret that things are beginning to slow down from an economic standpoint, budgets are getting tighter, and executive teams are looking for ways to reduce costs across the board. Bottom line — the business environment is getting more difficult. Today we wanted to do our best to help out the homies who are in front office roles that have maybe come to a standstill or need some extra motivation/tips to really begin churning out deals or business again.
There are a whole host of reasons why becoming a better closer and businessman will be vitally important in the years to come:
As outlined by our good friends
organizations are trimming talent quickly to shed weight, only top performers and crucial functions will remainSome roles will be outsourced, supplemented with AI, or streamlined with other departments
Money talks, if you aren’t producing no matter how comfy things might be, you’re likely not in the best position you could be
Many companies provide arbitrary or unclear sales proceses that are removed from reality, the burden of getting better is on you for the most part
Sales and just general business accumen will be one of the single most valuable skill sets in the digital ages to come
There are few better feelings than successfully hunting, prospecting, landing, and closing a new client
We’ll go over some real life examples today alongside the top traits we see leading to a boost in closing business and ensuring that your quota/pipeline/target/group target can be hit.
One of the reasons I feel I have a unique viewpoint on these topics is that my experience spans several sectors, products, and client types — so while someone might have an abundance of experience in tech sales, I have that in addition to years spent grinding to build a trading book, dealing with all the basic aspects of sales or business centered roles but also dealing with highly unruly prospects, complex deal terms, and moving markets.
Today we’ll look to help strengthen:
Your pipeline
Your client/prospect interactions
Your revenue generations
Your approach to business
Your resiliency during shitty economic times
We’re going to avoid big language and jargon that many of the classic sales books use to over complicate things.
At the end of the day you’re working with humans so a huge part of success is going to be determined by your understanding of several core traits and your consistent application of them over time.
Let’s get into it.
Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.
— Bill Bradley, Starbucks Corporate Director