The 5 Stages Of Remote Sales
I saw this theory on a Hormozi video roughly 2 years ago.
It hit me as wildly applicable to the remote sales space.
I see 99% of reps follow this exact same path.
Stage 1 - Uninformed Optimism
The YouTube video said that you just need to take a few calls a day and can do that from anywhere.
You’re going to make BANK!
You only need to close a couple deals per week to make $10k per month.
You’ll be at that within 60 days, then at $20k per month (pm) in 90 days.
You’ll have companies falling over themselves to work with you.
This is exactly what you’ve been looking for!
Stage 2 - Informed Pessimism
You start to realize that maybe this isn’t as straightforward as initially anticipated.
There’s so many other people looking for offers as well, and the job boards don’t really have anything good.
You may have started on 1-2 offers that say “$15kpm OTE” but they’ve got 4 closers and are only making $20k as a company per month.
The sales calls aren’t as easy as your ‘become a closer’ coach said they would be.
People are mean, and the script they taught you doesn’t seem to work.
Stage 3 - Valley of Despair
This is the stage I see most closers in right now.
You might have been looking for a decent offer for 3 months now, and the bank isn’t looking pretty.
Maybe you were on an offer that was good, everyone was making money and it fell to pieces overnight.
You are connecting with everyone who will take a zoom call, hoping they have something decent. You realize that everyone else is doing the same thing.
That crappy offer the recruiter has been pushing for months is starting to look appealing because you need the money.
When you do get some calls, the prospects are broke, but you’re still expected to take 6-8 calls a day.
You don’t look forward to the calls anymore.
You’re exhausted by the constant peaks and troughs, empty promises, difficult prospects.
Fork In The Road
This is where most people give up, and I get it.
They might go back to their 9-5, network marketing, corporate, anywhere seems better than this.
But it only restarts the cycle again.
Here’s something that no one talks about - the thinking that pushed you into the valley of despair isn’t the same thinking that will get you out of here.
The industry makes most of its money off people in this spot.
Sales training, “guaranteed placement”, coaching, the works.
You need to stop playing the same game as everyone else.
If you look at the people who are genuinely at stage 5 - Success & Fulfilment, are they doing the same things as everyone else?
No, they’re not.
Scroll back up to the image.
See it mapped out there.
Stage 4 - Informed Optimism
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but you can really make this work for you.
It's going to take time for you to get good enough to land those big-dog accounts.
You need to be intentional about your learning.
You need to put in the reps, get a feel for calls and destroy your fear of rejection.
You can make $20-30kpm, but it won't be on less than 30 hours a week for a couple of years at least.
You need to stop doing all of the stupid stuff that everyone else is doing.
You need to make decisions that the you of 5 years from now will thank you for.
The biggest one - you are not as good as you thought you were, but you can change that.
Stage 5 - Success & Fulfilment
When you look at people in this stage of their remote sales career, what are they doing?
What have they done?
I know most of them, and they have hit this point after working their ass off for a number of years.
Being obsessed with being the best version of themselves possible.
They are all disciplined, they find success in failure.
They have dismissed the same game as everyone else is playing.
They are intentional about who they want to work with, what they want to be selling and who they want to sell it to.
They found those offers outside this little bubble where everyone is commenting “interested” on job posts.
They have connected with recruiters and built relationships so they get all the good offers before they go to market.
Because of their experience, they positioned themselves as a partner with any company the work with, setting mutually beneficial terms so they can live their life as they want.
That might be 40 hours a week and making $50k.
Or maybe it’s 30 hours a week making $50k
Or maybe it’s 20 hours a week, making $30k and they spend the rest of the time with their family, or doing whatever they want to do.
The key here - look at what those people are doing now, the way they conduct themselves and emulate that.
I will add more to this in the coming weeks.
There is way more information than can be fit in one newsletter.
Just know - this is the map to remote sales.
If you know the map, you can take short cuts and avoid the valley of despair.
If you're there now, that's okay as well.
There is a way out and it's not as hard as you think.