Biggest Game’s Biggest Contenders: Sales Call Training Competition

Compete like an athlete, sell like a pro.

With 10 SDRs having placed in our Biggest Game in Academy, six of those locking in first, and one winning the “golden elephant” prize, Team Cerulli is truly bringing the heat and breaking company records.

So, what’s the secret? Team Cerulli doesn’t come to play, they come to compete.

Biggest Game in Academy

Biggest Game is our six-week sales competition that runs throughout our Prospecting Principles Academy course. It’s become an integral part of our course in the way that it provides all participants with major room to learn and grow while in the context of an exciting and stimulating environment. It’s the kind of environment that many in sales like Jake Cerulli not only crave but thrive off of.

Beginning a Career in Sales

Jake took a major risk when he pivoted into sales and began as a memoryBlue sales development representative. He wasn’t just taking a chance on the industry; he was taking a chance on himself.

Graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in Business Management, Jake always considered himself to be business-minded but didn’t have a clear vision of what industry he wanted to break into. However, when he saw the long-term payoff of beginning a career in sales, he was eager to jump in and start climbing the ranks.

Right off the bat, Jake took his sales career in stride and gave it his absolute all in Biggest Game in Academy. He wasn’t blind to the fact that he was up against coworkers with more experience and higher qualifications, however he didn’t let the competition intimidate him, he used it as motivation. He viewed Biggest Game as his first opportunity to prove himself. It was his chance to tap into his competitive nature and rise to the top.

Biggest Game was the Game-Changer

Jake’s commitment to the sales competition landed him in first place and within an instant his window of opportunities greatly expanded. Not only was he awarded a generous bonus, but he became eligible for a promotion to Delivery Manager within just 6 months of his tenure. For this reason, he credits the competition as the major pivotal point in his career and a perfect illustration of why he believes the right mentality can be so much more powerful than one specific background or set list of qualifications. Since becoming a Delivery Manager, he has led his team with this conviction with the hopes of giving his SDRs access to all of the opportunities he unlocked within just 2.5 months of his sales career.

Jake has found this strategy to be a great incentive for his SDRs to put in the work that will not only help them place in the competition but build the skills they need to thrive in sales for the long-term.

Team Cerulli

From day one as a Delivery Manager, he knew he wanted to set his team up for the same benefits he gained from the sales training competition. However, a leader’s skills are only as strong as the people they’re leading. So, the question comes down to, who is Team Cerulli?

Being right on the frontlines of our company’s interviewing process, Jake’s team is made up of his own carefully handpicked candidates. However, rather than weeding candidates out based on specific credentials and degrees, Jake looks for the personalities that he knows will thrive in sales.

For Jake, picking out a candidate comes down to his one key question:

“What’s the most competitive situation you’ve been in and what did YOU do?”

Every single one of his SDRs had a killer answer to that question and a great story to share. He’s therefore managed to build a team made up of people of various backgrounds, degrees, and life experiences who have all found different ways to demonstrate their ability to hustle, compete, and rise to a challenge. Unsurprisingly, a common thread amongst his team has been their backgrounds in sports and athletics. In fact, 1/3 of his team were college athletes and many others had experience as team captains for high school sports teams.

Coach Cerulli’s Sales Training Gameplan

With so many athletes on his team, Jake doesn’t think of himself as a sales leader, he thinks of himself as a coach. Rather than just having team huddles, they have film sessions where they’ll listen to past sales calls, similarly to how a football team will review their game footage. However, rather than just sit and listen, Jake provides his team with a template to use as a visual and interactive aid during a commonly auditory dominated activity:

This template helps them practice notetaking while on fast-paced or content-heavy calls. Additionally, it makes their notetaking more focused and organized, so that they can find patterns in their calls, cross-compare them, and learn from their mistakes.

Jake is also extremely intentional when it comes to checking in with his team. He schedules in time to meet with each of them individually throughout Academy to go over how they’re currently placing, where they can improve, and how they’re feeling about the sales competition overall. Not only this, but Jake has found his love for being a DM in the constant opportunity to be his SDR’s biggest supporter. He has managed to find the balance between both encouraging his top performers to reach their full potential and secure their spot in the competition, while also helping anyone who is falling behind to ensure they’re still getting everything they can out of Sales Academy.

The Golden Elephant

One SDR in particular has been a perfect example of the prime collection of competitors on Jake’s team. Just recently, Alex Sells was awarded the highly coveted Golden Elephant Prize for breaking the record of the greatest number of points accumulated in the Biggest Game sales competition! He vowed that much of his success was because of Team Cerulli’s comradery and culture as well as the continual support and guidance from Jake and his mentor. But the final puzzle piece allowing Alex to secure first and continue to raise the bar in Biggest Game comes down to the reoccurring theme in DM Jake’s success story: competition. Week in and week out Alex was only two points away from losing to SDR Stephen Ralston. As a highly competitive person, this was all the motivation Alex needed to go the extra mile and utilize every resource around him guaranteeing him first place in the sales training competition and subsequently earning him the Golden Elephant.

Become a Biggest Game Champion

Interested in getting the chance to be a part of a team like Jake’s and jumpstarting your career in sales? memoryBlue is hiring multiple motivated Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) across each of our six offices in DC Metro, Austin (TX), Boston (MA), Denver (CO), Silicon Valley (CA), and Seattle (WA). Contact us today!