Fortunate Son
WMMM #085 - This week I recap 2024, preview 2025, and share a few lessons.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter January 4, 2025 3 min read
Win More, Make More. Compete Like The Best.
Lookin’ Out My Back Door
Published 37 editions in 2024
Surpassed 500 subscribers from two platforms: LinkedIn and my website
Read by approximately 1000 people every week
Began as a Sales Blog in 2018
Over 110 total chapters published
80 editions available on my website.
Lessons weekly to enable you to compete every minute and win in sales and life.
Objectives
Pass along tips, techniques, and best practices to those seeking to better themselves.
Share with others the experience I’ve had the good fortune to acquire.
Give back - mimic the efforts of those who have gone before me.
Create awareness for my sales performance consulting business.
Provide another perspective for prospective clients to evaluate how I might help them.
Cause interested parties to want to know more about me and link them to my website.
Provide an easy mechanism for readers to share my content with others.
Approach
Accomplish this by telling stories and using metaphors.
Win More?
Deals? Business?
Influence, confidence, admiration, trust
Make More?
Money?
A better life, self-esteem, value for our employers, experience for our customers
A better career
Better lives for those you care about or work with
Compete?
Dedicating ourselves to continued self-improvement
Do things better than they’ve ever been done before
Learn from the best
Relentlessly pursuing a competitive edge
Practicing until we are confident
Maintaining focus, knowing we will win.
Telling Stories
I began recounting sales “stories” in my Sales Blog.
I found stories an effective way to bring to life a concept I wanted to communicate.
The response I received encouraged me to continue.
Most of the stories are recollections of actual events where I was a participant, assigned a role by an individual contributor empowered to choreograph a sales campaign.
With Win More, Make More, storytelling became a regular feature.
Readers appeared to develop a connection with me.
Others in my network began reaching out with “...remember when we…”, requesting that I use our story in a future edition.
Looking Forward
I decided not to move to Substack.
I evaluated the platform.
It is an excellent platform for newsletters.
But, it is optimized for professional writers and those who monetize their publications.
That’s not me.
I also looked at Beehive.
It has some good features as well.
It’s just not for me.
I plan to continue the stories.
I have an ample supply which continues to grow.
In 2024, I shared some of these:
The Origin of the ULA
The Vartec Story
Amazon.com (two of them)
The Wells Fargo Story
T-Mobile (one of them)
AT&T (one of them)
DISH Network.
In 2025, look for some of these stories:
When “No” didn’t mean “No” - AT&T
The Verizon Story
The JC Penney Story
The Southwest Airlines Story
The Woodchipper
Bad Advice
The PacBell Story
The Jones Truck Lines Story.
Lesson Learned in 2024
I spent more time coaching and advising and less time writing.
This enabled me to remain sharp in the skills required to help clients.
Time invested in helping with go-to-market strategy and sales coaching proved invaluable.
I was reminded of these timeless principles.
1-Sell to Power
Our sponsor told us they had power; we later learned they didn’t.
It is common to overlook this or rationalize it away.
Don’t.
It almost always comes back to bite you.
2-We should never be pulling harder for someone’s success than they are for themselves.
This is a loud signal that you have a people problem with this person.
Carrying their share of the load and ours isn’t doing them any favors.
Teaching and coaching require us to enable the client to learn how to carry the load.
We also have to influence them to want to do the work.
3-How you do anything is how you do everything.
We may hear, for example, ‘We’re not Oracle. We don’t need your A-game on this problem.”
Resist the urge to dial it back and give less than our best.
We only get one chance to make a good first impression.
Do our best in everything we do.
4-Do what we say we’re going to do.
You’d be surprised how many folks can’t or don’t.
5-There are few challenges that any sales organization will encounter in the present day that haven’t been solved before.
Most companies will spend much time and valuable cycles attempting to solve a problem that we’ve already encountered and solved.
Provide another set of eyes.
6-Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Most solutions to sales execution problems require somebody to change their actions.
Change is uncomfortable for most people.
Successful selling typically introduces change into organizations.
Successful, experienced sales professionals have become comfortable being uncomfortable.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to doing more in 2025.
Jeff
When you think “sales leader,” I hope you think of me.
If you like what you read, please share this with a friend.
I offer my help to investors, founders, sales leaders, and their teams.
I possess the skills identified in this article and share them as part of my service.
In my weekly newsletter, Win More, Make More, I provide tips, techniques, best practices, and real-life stories to help you improve your craft.
