Sahil Mansuri: evaluation

Transcript context

…That is an insane story. I feel like those are moments that salespeople live for. How did you feel once you got that email that day? Were you just freaking nervous? Were you jumping up and down [inaudible 01:06:15] might work? I love to play chess. It's my favorite game. The reason I love chess is because I love to think a few moves ahead. I expected to get that email back. I knew when I sent the email that this was going to work. I was like, "There's no way this won't work." The only way it wouldn't have worked is if she never saw it. So if she sees this, she's going to respond because it would be crazy for her not to. The information on here was so good. So I felt a sense of satisfaction that I had played the game right in a way that no one else that my company had. No one else understood the psyche of the buyer. So to me, sales is I don't care about the commission. I've never cared about the money. I think this is true for most great salespeople. I think this is actually true for most people who are great at something is that they don't do it for the money. They don't do it for even necessarily the trophies or whatever. They do it because they love it. Winning, it's contagious, it's addictive and it's rewarding. Closing Facebook was a blast because I really got a chance to flex into something that I take a lot of pride in, which is being able to deeply understand my customers where they sit and how I can be not a sales rep, but someone who actually changes your perspective and how to do your job. That's what I live for. So I think that's what you have to do in order to be a great salesperson is I think you have to be willing to go beyond just the, oh, I want to hit my quota or whatever. If you're a founder and you're trying to sell in this market, it's like how do I get my product in the hands of customers? You got to go beyond. How do I change the way you operate as a business? How do I do something that is transformative? That Glassdoor rating literally got added to the ELT report that went out every single week. That's the part of the story I'm proud of. You just mentioned that you don't do sales, that you're not a salesperson technically anymore. You run this company. Do you miss that job being a full-time salesperson?…

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