Brian LaManna reflects on achieving over 309% of his sales goal in one quarter and distills four practical lessons for sellers. Key takeaways: map deals to a company’s top objectives through continuous discovery; adapt tactics and messaging as the market and competitors evolve; work cross‑functionally and team‑sell for larger deals; and prioritize building abundant pipeline while focusing on solving customer problems rather than tracking every competitor feature.
Chapters
I finished at over 309% of goal, which is a personal record. I learned just as much though from the deals that I won as the deals that I lost. And I spent a couple of hours reviewing all of those deals that turned both close one as well as close lost to understand some different themes that I could learn to take with me moving forward. There were four main lessons I came away from that quarter. Riff number one is that if you're not actually mapping to a top three company specific objective, you likely aren't going to end up winning the deal. You're going to help uncover this company specific objective through a combination of really strong pre call prep as well as your discovery. But what I want to challenge you on is that discovery is not just a sales stage, it's a never ending process throughout the entirety of your deal cycle. And where you want to get to as a seller is where you can more concisely articulate their problems and challenges than even they can in their own words. Lesson number two is that what made you successful last quarter likely won't make you successful next quarter. The market is changing products and competitors are continuing to evolve and roll out new features. You need to continue to change and evolve with them. As a seller. Trust your enablement team, trust new messaging, lean into it really hard and and the results will follow. The third lesson I learned is the importance of working cross functionally across your organization. The larger deals and the more upmarket you go as a seller, the more you're actually the quarterback of the deal and it's your job to get your playmakers internally involved in the deal and team sell really effectively. Think about sales engineering and looping them in for more complex challenges or demonstrations. Think about looping in customer success at some point to share through your plan for customer implementation with that prospect. And don't forget to loop in your leadership as well to help up level the conversation and engage some of the execs on their side as well. Lesson number four when selling a hot product, expect new competition that's always going to be entering. It's going to be impossible for you to keep up with every single competitor and every single feature that they're rolling out. So don't bother with it. Continue to take the high road solution, solve back to your prospect and your customers challenges and it'll work out in the long run. And maybe the most important lesson of all is always be building pipeline. This will truly be the biggest solve to all of your challenges as a seller. You want to get to a place where you have too much pipeline.
