One of the best salesman I’ve ever known was my college roommate. 

He worked through college cold calling alumni to raise money for the school. 

He shattered every record the team had ever set. 

🧵

Once he had someone live on the phone his opening ask was for a $1m donation. 

Then when the person freaked out, he diffused it by saying, ‘yeah I’m sorry they force me to ask that in the off chance you just won the lottery’ 


I’ve thought about this probably once a quarter for the last 15 years of my career. 

I still aspire to his example. 

Who’s your inspiration?

He closed on 3x the number of donations as his peers. And his average donation size was 4x larger than the rest of the team. 

His key to success was his ability to flip back and forth between humor, humility and being hard nosed. 