800-CEO-READ Blog

Hereeee's Johnny...

Thank you for having me as a guest blogger at 800CEOREAD. I am honored to be able to share some of my thoughts with your readers. My new book Why Johnny Can’t Sell is filled with plenty of terrific insights into sales, sales process and sales tools, all wrapped around a wonderful story about Johnny and his many challenges as a salesman and sales manager. I am going to share with you some of Johnny’s stories and what he did to overcome the many challenges of selling.

First, however let me introduce Johnny to you. Johnny started a new job today, selling for a 20-year old software company. Johnny’s job description is simple: “Sell now, and hire a staff when things are going�. Obviously a little vague, but you get the point.

Johnny has been selling for over 20 years. He started his career working for IBM, quit about five years later to try his hand at a dot com with IPO aspirations. He had a great deal of success selling and managing, but the IPO just didn’t happen, so Johnny moved on to another small company.

This new organization was VC backed, and Johnny really thought he had a home. He was pretty successful on large complex deals, but the VC’s were not impressed with the company’s growth rate and decided to “go a different direction�. Johnny finally landed at a job where he got to “run things�, but after two years, they too weren’t growing fast enough for upper management. So, Johnny is now starting this new job.