This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube video titled "How To Succeed In Sales" (posted April 30, 2025) containing an English conversational interview/discussion between Eric Siu and Neil Patel. They discuss practical sales tactics — especially the importance of persistent follow-up, dialing/email cadence, training and enforcing sales processes across regions, closing examples (including a $30–35k/month deal), handling pushback from reps, and leadership pressure — and include a brief product pitch for Carrot (karrot.ai) and a call-to-action to join the waitlist.
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Where's the saying from? The fortune is in the follow-up.
I don't know, it's probably a salesperson.
Okay, so it was John Maxwell that said this, right? But what's been working well for us right now, I don't think enough people, by the way, like in today's, today's day and age, you think about how to be successful when it comes to sales, it all comes down to the follow-up at the end of the day, right? A lot of times, People might not show up to a meeting, but I will tell you, I think about 40%, maybe even 50% of our pilot customers for Carrot, they're all from follow-ups. They're all from, like, these people might've disappeared for a while. Just recently, actually, you look at the last 2 weeks or so, the world's been crazy with this tariff stuff, right? We had a customer that disappeared on us, and all of a sudden they just came back, right? And it's because, We've kind of kept on them every couple months or so. And this is for the Single Grain side now. And this is like a $30,000, $35,000 a month thing, right? So it's like, it's a decent contract.
That's a good-sized contract.
It's a decent contract. And but it's like that deal got done in like 2 days, right? So my point is, the fortune is in the follow-up and you have to constantly stay top of mind, whether it's on whether you're selling products or services. And I don't think enough people take that seriously. So if you want to do well, a lot of your revenue is going to come from follow-up.
I totally agree with you. My co-founder, Mike, every time we expand into a new region or buy a new company, he typically goes and meets them to go over their sales process, either him or Kai, or we have a few people that go. And in every region that we're in, we typically have leaders who come from holding companies like the WPPs of the world. And they've done well in their careers. Many of them have sold, you know, $10+ million worth of revenue, on an annual basis, some even more, some less. And they all say they know how to do sales and they know how to do sales really well. And usually people will say, because we're founders, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool, we'll listen, but they still do things their way in most cases. And in every one of those divisions, he tells people how to do sales. So Mike will go there, he usually meets up groups at a time. So like if he's going to London, he'll meet up with all the European heads at the same time and tell them to bring their salespeople. And they're like, how many leads do you get? Okay. How often are you calling them? How many dials are you making per lead? How many emails are you sending per lead? How many of them are you following up on after you get ahold of them and you're waiting for next steps? And they all say, oh, we know how to do this. Most of the leads are junk. It doesn't work this way in this industry. Oh, it doesn't work this way. The culture in this part of Europe is different than what you're used to in America. And with some people, he'll get pushback. Some people will accept even though they don't want to accept, and a smaller percentage will just accept and not grumble, and they're happy with it. But typically it's either they'll accept and they grumble, or they don't want to accept and there's a lot of pushback. We eventually get people to fall in line. If they don't fall in line, I'm pretty sure you know what happens on what we do. Yeah, we swap them out. And usually within 3, 4 months, they start closing, call it 30, 40% more sales. It could happen faster, but you still get pushback in the first week. So then we got to follow up to make sure they followed instructions.
This is with your people?
Uh-huh, and then you got to check Salesforce and look at the data to see if they did and go get on the people who, their case, if they didn't do it and ask why. and really drill down and tell them how it's not acceptable. But typically, you know, after 3, 4 months, they start seeing results. Then they all start falling in line like, oh yeah, this is great. We wish we would have done this sooner. And then they realize, oh yeah, yeah, the process of sales, of following up, calling more and dialing more, it's not rocket science. I don't think you and I are better at this stuff than the average person.
Yeah.
Most people are just lazy and they don't want to do it. And they think they know best and they just want to, Email someone or call someone and they expect them to sign a contract and then they're done. But no one wants to call a lead, no joke, 15, 20 times in the first few weeks before they give up. And even then on our end, if they don't answer, we still follow them up with a month 2, month 3, month 4, and keep dialing until we get ahold of them. And then they're saying no, like screw off, or we get a yes. And more often than not, People eventually like, oh, I'm ready now. I just wasn't ready before, so I ignored you guys.
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Maybe like 1% of my time, I'm guessing.
I've only seen it happen once in my life. And so most people, to your point, it's just easier to ignore you. It's easier to tell you, to ignore you versus having to tell you the reason.
Yeah.
To turn you down. It's just humans don't like doing uncomfortable things.
Correct.
And by the way, the uncomfortable thing is to keep following up. Also guys, as leaders, we talked about having to be a pusher in your company. It's uncomfortable to have to push people too. But if you don't do it, you're going to be the one that gets pushed.
Yeah.
So you better push them. And I'm not saying this to be like a slave driver or anything. I'm just saying that there has— you have to apply pressure in a company because your job is you're trying to change things. So that's what it is. Well, please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.
