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INTRODUCTION: EAT WHAT YOU KILL

THE BEST WAY TO classify different kinds of salespeople isn't dividing them up by what they sell, such as cars or real estate or life insurance or B2B cloud storage.

It also isn't dividing them up by how they sell, such as by making appointments with retailers, cold-calling, standing on the floor of a store, or knocking on the doors of strangers.

Instead, the crucial divide—the one that makes all the difference—is between herbivores and carnivores. That's the core idea of this book.

You may recall your third-grade teacher explaining that herbivore dinosaurs are the kind that eat plants. If you got dropped into Jurassic Park, you could walk right up to an herbivore and pat him on the side without fear of being eaten, because he would just keep munching grass and leaves.

Similarly, herbivore salespeople live on whatever sustenance—leads— happen to be right in front of them, or within easy reach. Herbivores rely on someone else, usually their employer, to give them quality leads or set up appointments for them. Imagine a car salesman sitting around a dealership, doing nothing until a prospect walks in, drawn by an ad or email blast. That guy is an herbivore.

As long as an external source provides enough good leads, herbivores can thrive and might even make good money. The downside is that they can only be as successful as the quality of their next lead. When good leads dry up, they are in serious trouble. They'll start worrying constantly about where their next prospect is coming from. And if times get tough for the company, herbivores are the first to be let go.

 

Carnivore dinosaurs, on the other hand, eat animals, including other dinosaurs. They have the mindset of a born hunter, and they eat what they kill. They are the equivalent of salespeople who don't need anyone to hand them a list of prospects or schedule their appointments. Instead, carnivores create unlimited opportunities by cold-calling, knocking doors, tapping into their own networks, using Google or public databases, and any other means they can think of. Carnivores don't depend on their employers to be successful. By eating what they kill, and constantly honing their hunting skills, they never have to worry about starving. But they have to be willing to work harder and longer and endure more rejection than herbivores.

There's also a third type of dinosaur, the omnivore, who can switch back and forth between plants and meat. Sales omnivores can do their own prospecting and referral generation, or they can work with leads provided by their employer's marketing funnel. This flexibility is valuable, but omnivores derive their greatest value from their carnivore skills and mindset.

Across all my experience as a salesperson, sales manager, sales coach, and trainer of sales coaches, I've seen that herbivores vastly outnumber carnivores and omnivores. This imbalance is bad news for herbivores, because there are limited opportunities for anyone who needs to have leads spoon-fed to them. But it's excellent news for carnivores, who will always be in high demand. Smart companies make sure their carnivores are well compensated and well treated or they won't stick around long.

If you get really good at eating what you kill, you'll enjoy a massive competitive advantage and a clear path to wealth, job security, and a high quality of life for yourself and your family. That's why my goal is to teach you everything you need to know to be a true carnivore, from mindset and big-picture strategies to nitty-gritty tactics that have been proven to really work.

I've found that some sales reps start out as carnivores in their early years, but somewhere along the way they lose their hunting mentality. They take a job where someone else sets up their leads, and they get complacent and a little lazy. It's just human nature to let someone else hand you plants instead of spending all day chasing down gazelles. Once you start down that path, it's hard to recover the discipline and focus of a carnivore. Hard, but not impossible! If you're in this category, keep reading and commit to turning things around.

The highest-earning salespeople I've ever met don't give in to the temptation to take easier jobs. They stay hungry, sharp, and self-reliant well into their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond. They keep chasing those gazelles. As a result, they're protected when marketing pipelines dry up, or algorithms that formerly brought in prospects stop working. Yesterday's hot new lead-generation tactic, such as Facebook ads, can easily become today's dead end. But a carnivore can roll with changing times and changing technology, and keep making money.