How Amanda Georgoff Sells: Be the Person in the Prep Meeting

Amanda Georgoff is on her way up.

For the first 18 years of her sales career, she was an individual contributor, “and loved it,” primarily selling for CEB (now part of Gartner) and then Xactly. But joining hyper-growing Salesloft took her career to new heights (pun intended).

“I can't think of anything I did as a seller that has meant more to me than the work I've done in the last two years, helping other sellers reach and achieve their goals,” she said. 

At Salesloft, Amanda stopped holding back on leadership roles and has since been promoted twice in two years – from enterprise account executive to regional vice president to area vice president, leading a team of enterprise RVPs. 

What has this Austin, TX-based sales leader and mother of two learned in a career dedicated to selling? Let’s dive in:

1. What do you love most about selling?

The thing I love most about selling is coaching and leading other sellers. 

As I reflect back on any deal cycle I was part of as an individual contributor, any deal I won, any deal I lost, anything I did as an individual contributor — nothing has proved to be as meaningful as the work I've done coaching and leading other AEs.

It’s been really emotional and fulfilling for me because there have been so many great AEs I’ve had the privilege of working with who have accelerated our organization forward — the sellers on my team have closed bigger deals than I had, hands down. And I love that and I love being part of their wins and helping them reach new heights.

I held back on leadership; I was 40 when I took on my first leadership role. I spent 18 years as an individual contributor. And I’m glad I waited, because I felt like I had a lot of experience coming into the role. I had anxiety as well, of course (ok a lot of anxiety). But I had seen the movie so many times.

You develop instincts over time as a seller. And being able to leverage everything I’ve learned in 18 years as an individual contributor and then translating that to help other people get better in their roles, it is my favorite part of the job.

2. What's your sales philosophy, in 3 sentences or less?

Be curious. Listen carefully. And in the end, remember you can only control the inputs — show up every day, work hard and commit to executing the inputs; if you do that, while keeping the customer at the absolute center, the right outcomes will follow. 

3. Is there anything that makes your sales process unique?

There’s no silver bullet in sales — ultimately, in my experience, the best sellers have mastered the foundational elements really, really well. What has worked for me is thoughtful, deep, ongoing discovery. And while that's not unique in concept, the consistent application of it can be what separates great sellers from average ones.

On my team, we spend a lot of time at a very tactical level understanding the current state of an organization. All the way down to their vernacular, that internal/insider language each organization has. And then marrying that with the big picture, strategic goals — what's ideal future state, relative to how things work today.  

To earn the right to partner at a really high investment level with an organization, you have to understand both to really determine if (and then how) you can help. 

4. What research do you do to prepare for a sales call?

I obviously spend time researching the company. I need to know the state of the company, their core business priorities, stated goals, recent financial performance, how they make money, etc. 

But probably the area I spend the most amount of time on before a sales call is research on that person. Are they on Twitter? Are they on LinkedIn? And what are they posting? Where did they go to college, what is the arc of their career, where do they live, where have they worked? What are their hobbies, how do they like to spend their time? Do they talk about their family at all?

I try, as much as I can, to get a real sense of someone before a call. Things they might like, things they might not like. Any sort of inclinations, anything I can use to humanize a person before talking to them.

Because it’s a conversation with another person. So, I want to spend some time getting to know who that person is.

I spend a little bit of time researching the company and a lot of time researching the person. 

5. What's your favorite discovery question?

First off, I believe the right to ask a question is earned in sales. What I mean by that is: you earn the right to ask a question by demonstrating that you are well-prepared, well-researched, and took the time to formulate a hypothesis ahead of the conversation. 

In my experience, even if you’re wildly off base, the fact that you didn’t put the bulk of the burden of the conversation on the other person makes them more willing to open up and share. 

Now to answer YOUR specific inquiry: I always find people open up when I just ask, in response to something they’ve shared, “How is that going?” If it’s not going well — you’ll hear about it. And if it IS going well, it’s an incredible opportunity to learn about a successful internal initiative. 

6. Is there any habit you have that you believe helps you sell better? Examples – meditation, exercise, waking up at a certain time? 

Well, I don’t currently meditate and when I race out of bed in the morning, it’s rarely to set an intention for my day (laughs). 

My life is chaos, in the best possible way. My two kids participate in so many activities and my husband and I each have demanding jobs — travel is kicking back in and I’m so grateful to be back in-person with customers. This season of life is busy. But it makes prioritizing time for myself challenging.  

The thing that’s proven most beneficial to me in my sales career is this mindset: assume positive intent. In every scenario, in every interaction. With internal colleagues, customers, prospects, family members… assume positive intent. That mantra has helped me more than any meditation ritual, rigorous exercise or prescribed morning routine.

7. How do you use LinkedIn when selling? 

All the time.

Right now, as a sales leader, I consider LinkedIn an amazing source of sales talent — I’m always on the lookout for fantastic sellers to join our organization. 

But in a sales cycle, I primarily use it in a fairly foundational way: to identify common connections or paths into a company. I tell every AE I work with to follow the executives of their customer/prospect companies on LinkedIn, it’s an incredible way to get to know people.  

Every bit of sales research will tell you that cold outreach and cold outbound efforts will only get you so far, so I’m constantly scouring LinkedIn to understand the web of people I know, who they know, and map out connections.  

And that’s why it’s really important to be prepared, to earn the right to ask questions, to lead with transparency, and listen carefully. Because I’ve learned, through 20 years of selling, that people will make references and introductions on my behalf because they trust I’ll show up well for that meeting. 

8. What's the biggest lesson you've learned in your sales career? 

Name the hesitation, name the objection.

More than 10 years ago I was preparing for an important call with a leader I really trusted, Jason Van Tassel. And in that prep session, I was saying everything that I feared – revealing every worry, every “what if,” everything I thought could go wrong. But once I got on the call with the customer, I brought up none of those concerns. I avoided them entirely.  

I’ll never forget getting off the call — Jason said to me, where was the person from the prep meeting? What happened to her? Because she was the person you needed to be in that conversation.  

What I’ve learned is: if you think there's hesitation, if you think there’s an elephant in the room – there probably is. Earlier in my career I used to shy away from verbalizing a potential issue, because I thought if I brought it up, I’d introduce it. And that’s just never been true. There’s never been a time where I brought up a potential uncertainty that didn’t result in a more meaningful, positive discussion.  

One other lesson: enjoy it. Enjoy your day, enjoy sales, have some fun. I tell my team all of the time – we’re just trying to be interesting enough to earn the next conversation. Show up, do your research, be curious, run a great call, listen carefully – be someone that people want to meet with again. 

9. What has been your biggest failure in sales and how did that experience transform you? 

This is an extension of the last answer, but it’s the same leader that encouraged me to bring the version of myself that I am in prep meetings to the actual conversation.

I was failing early in my career because I was too scripted, too anxious, caught up in my own head versus present in the discussion. 

Once I started being the version of myself I was in those prep meetings, naming the objections, bringing up competition, admitting I didn’t know the answer to a question… once I was able to truly be myself, my quantifiable, objective performance took off.

I overachieved on quota, I won awards, I made Club trips, I was far more successful by every measure. And that moment, with that leader, was where it shifted. 

But I’m still not succeeding in that morning routine! 

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