9 Pro Tips for New Salespeople (Get Up to Speed FAST)

Are you a newer sales rep? If so, you might just be getting going in your new sales position.

I want to help you out by giving you some pro tips that help new salespeople get up and running way faster than expected.

I see this happen over and over again: New salespeople implement just a few specific tips and strategies and suddenly they’re blowing past their peers, crushing their numbers.

If you want to out-do those reps at your organization who seem to be just chugging along in a mediocre way, never doing anything spectacular…then these pro tips are exactly what you need.

Join the ranks of new salespeople who are already at the top of the company ranks within mere months at their job.

In this video, I’m going to show you 9 pro tips for new salespeople—to get you up to speed fast. Check it out:

New Salespeople Video Summary:

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #1: Model what works.

You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” This couldn’t be more relevant to new salespeople trying to find their way in selling. Identify the salespeople at your organization who are absolute top performers. (Depending on the size of your organization, there may only be one salesperson who’s actually a top performer.) Then, model exactly what those top performers are doing. 

On your own time, ride along with top performers to find out what they’re doing. Watch them. And while you study these successful salespeople at your company, commit to reading some books on sales processes, too. Watch videos (like the one above) that are based on a data-driven approach to increasing your sales model.

Model exactly what works. Don’t try to figure it out on your own, the old-fashioned way, by trying something and then seeing if it works. Instead, identify the strategies that work and use them.

And don’t be afraid if it goes wrong at first—it’s not a big deal. Be willing to model what works and you’ll get up to speed before you know it.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #2: Make mistakes.

This is a key idea for new salespeople. While you shouldn’t be haphazard about your selling and implement random ideas that you know probably aren’t going to work, you need to be willing to take risks and make mistakes.

Identify the strategy that works either by modeling top performers or identifying a proven sales system, and then implement it and be willing to make tons of mistakes. Be willing to piss people off, be willing to screw things up, be willing to blow up sales.

Who cares? Plus, the more willing you are to make mistakes, the fewer you’ll actually make. 

Just think about it in a different context. If you’re really nervous about making a mistake when you’re learning or doing something, isn’t it more likely you’ll screw it up? This applies to anything in life—school, sports, social interactions. The more you can relax and just let go of the fear of failure, the better you’ll perform.

Remember, the worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. It’s just another mistake you can learn and grow from.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #3: Think big.

New salespeople often think they have to start really small—and then, once they’ve been at it for a long time and they have things figured out, they can begin to think bigger. This is entirely untrue.

Now obviously, when you’re first learning to sell, your very first cold call or appointment shouldn’t be with someone like the CEO of IBM. But once you have a certain level of competency, there’s nothing stopping you from going after the highest level prospects you can.

I want you to go way up the ranks and push it and make it big. Be willing to think big. Be willing to try things out at a high level. What you’re going to find is that it’s just as much work to close a sale with a smaller organization as it is to close a sale with a high-level prospect at a huge organization. Yet the payoff is so different. 

Go for the bigger opportunities straight out of the gate. Think big. 

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #4: Ask, ask, ask.

When new salespeople ask questions, it immediately makes them more attractive to everyone around them—coworkers, potential mentors, and prospects alike. You don’t have to have all the answers. You’re new to this, after all. Just be curious, inquisitive, and interested in what people have to say.

The more questions you ask, the more you’re going to learn, and the more you’re going to make people interested in you in return.

I see this all the time with people who get an opportunity to meet someone really important, maybe a celebrity, and all they do is talk at the person the whole time. They’re nervous, so they just keep talking instead of pausing to ask an insightful question, which would really engage them in a conversation and thus lead to a much more meaningful interaction.

Be willing to just ask, ask, ask—your prospects, people around you, potential mentors. While you’re in this learning phase as a new salesperson, you should always be asking. (And by the way, there should never be a point in your career when you stop asking questions. Once you stop asking, you stop learning.)

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #5: Hold yourself accountable to activities.

This is one of the most important ideas for new salespeople. I often ask new reps, “What do you think you need to do on a daily basis in order to hit your sales goal?” And they say, “I don’t know.” Get very clear on the exact sales activities you need to do on a daily basis in order to hit your sales numbers—and focus only on those activities.

Don’t get sidetracked with tertiary stuff like social media or learning about operations. I don’t care about that. What I care about is that you focus on your sales activities. That could mean making cold calls, sending sales emails, sitting in and observing top-performing reps, attending sales trainings—whatever it is, get clear on what you need to do on a daily and weekly basis in order to hit your sales goals and don’t do anything else. 

Hold yourself accountable by this rule: If it’s not going to help you become a better salesperson, then it’s not worth doing.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #6: Know your weekly meeting goal.

This tip for new salespeople builds off the last idea of holding yourself accountable to key sales activities. All new salespeople should know exactly how many meetings to conduct per week in order to hit their sales goals.

Once you know your number, that is the only number that matters. Let’s say your goal is to set five meetings every single week. All that matters is that you set those five meetings. And it’s not a goal, it’s an objective. If you don’t set that number of meetings by Friday afternoon, you know what? You hang around the office Friday afternoon, into Friday evening, until you hit that meeting goal. You absolutely must be committed to hitting that meeting goal. If you’re not, you’re not going to make it.

And if you find that you’re consistently below your weekly meeting goal, you’ve got to raise the level of sales activity in order to hit it.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #7: Don’t play by the rules.

A lot of new salespeople think there are certain rules they need to follow in sales, such as “I’m only supposed to call on low-level prospects” or “I’m not ready to be in front of a prospect yet.” All that stuff is crap. Don’t play by the rules. Be aggressive.

Get out there, get in front of prospects, try to make a cold call to the CEO of a big company. If you get through to them, awesome.

Even if you get through to them and you screw it up, do you think they’re going to remember who you are three weeks from now? No, of course not. They’re not going to remember. So none of this is permanent. Always be willing to push the envelope, be willing to break rules, and again, be willing to make mistakes.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #8: Learn, study, read, refine.

In order to succeed rapidly, new salespeople must be willing to learn a process. That means observing people. That means reading books. That means following sales training programs. That means being a student who learns, studies, reads, and refines on a constant basis.

Maybe you weren’t a great student in high school—but who cares? What matters is that you’re going to be a great student now, because you care about doing well in your new position. If you can commit to being a good student of sales, you’re going to end up making a lot of money. And so there’s a lot of motivation to study your craft.

Be willing to read books, work hard to fully understand processes, and ask what other people are doing. Then take that information and use it to refine what you’re doing. Go out and implement it and then continuously improve upon it. Learn, study, read, refine.

Pro Tip for New Salespeople #9: SW³N.

Yes, you read that right. SW³N.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Math?!” Well, kind of. SW³N stands for: Some will, some won’t, so what? Next. SW³N.

As a new salesperson, you’ve got to be willing to mess things up. You’re probably catching a theme here—I really want to stress that making mistakes is key to being successful in your new role. If you piss someone off, and they kick you out of their office, so what? Next. Move on. Tell someone about it. It’s probably a funny story. Move on, learn from it, and grow.

I remember the first time I got kicked out of a prospect’s office. It was the president of a credit union, local to where I grew up in a town in eastern Massachusetts. I met with him and I just completely butchered the conversation—but I kept pushing him, and he finally got to the point where he said, “You know what? You’ve got to leave.”

I was completely floored. I didn’t expect it. But you know what? It was a hilarious story that I told people back at the office. After that, I thought, “Well, I’ve been kicked out of an office now once. Can’t get worse than this.” Some will, some won’t, so what? Next.

So, there you have it. Now you know 9 pro tips for new salespeople to get up to speed fast. Which of these ideas did you find most useful for your new role in sales? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below to join the conversation.