Mario Krivokapic: In B2B sales, process is the king

Sales week is one of the toughest for our accelerator teams, as they work up to 4 days non stop with our sales coach Mario Krivokapic. One of the stereotypes Mario crashes early on is the concept of sales people just being charismatic story-tellers. At least in B2B sales, he strongly believes that it is the sales process that brings you success and as little “no” as possible. We caught Mario for “5 wise minutes” chat to get some sales insights and useful tips.

Personality is just a small part of success in sales

Certain personality traits might be great door openers or reasons, why people start doing sales in the first place. However, a great B2B sales person according to Mario is actually the one, who has a perfect process laid out with clear steps, he executes, he does it on time, he follows up and basically runs the process in a way that closing it and getting people to use the product is “no-brainer” at the end. Execution trumps flair and charisma. And the sale is never easy. The only thing you can do is to make it more or less complex. To reduce complexity — well, we return to the plan.

Learning is the key

Mario is one of those people, who shares book recommendations every other week. “Never split the difference” has become sort of a Bible for our startups and team after adding it to our monthly newsletter, “The sales acceleration formula” is another great suggestion. Turns out he reads 4 books a month and he also truly believe that you need to learn and read constantly. And that is also the advice he would give to anyone starting with their idea or sales: “Read every possible book you can get your hands on!”

This is just a small part of our chat, so dive into the video to hear more wise words from Mario.

5 wise minutes is a series of talks and interviews with the smart, awesome, and inspirational people mentoring or otherwise being part of Startup Wise Guys accelerators.