Play the Long Game: turn a chip on your shoulder into a full pipeline
Agency founder Sam Dunning gets into his laid back sales style, how burnout gives him eye styes, and the power of having a chip on your shoulder.
Sam Dunning runs his B2B agency with a chip on his shoulder, which is maybe why his sales style is so laid back it throws people off. Instead of a hard sell, he qualifies prospects to see if he even wants to work with them. He credits sales coach Josh Braun with the idea of detaching from the outcome. It’s easier to do now that he has a full pipeline from his podcast and content, but he remembers putting too much pressure on prospects back when his pipeline was thin.
He told me about being on holiday in Greece, panicking about managing new clients across three time zones instead of being present with his family. That’s the kind of founder stress that shows up physically for him. When he gets really burnt out, he gets painful styes in his eyes, something he remembers from the end of his time at his last agency.
Sam’s a big believer in proving people wrong. When a former colleague said his podcast was a waste of time, it just fueled him to keep going. Four hundred episodes later, I think he won. He also told me about his family’s house burning down when he was a teenager, and how he’s the kind of person who blocks things and puts them in the back of his mind to deal with later.
“If they're not being kind on an initial call, what the heck are they going to be like as a client?”
Notes
- He uses a laid back sales approach, asking questions to qualify prospects and making them convince him they're a good fit.
- When a former colleague said his podcast was a waste of time, it made him want to do it more to prove the person wrong.
- For him, burnout manifests physically as styes in his eyes, a symptom he experienced while stressed at his last agency.
- At eighteen, his family’s house burned down, which he says was a blessing in disguise that helped his dad out of a deep depression.