What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Sales is about people, not product.
• The effect of one bad client or deal or sale has an effect for longer than any good client.
• When you scale a business quickly, there are opportunity costs.
• The one area in which you should never make a concession for the sake of scale is company culture and values.
• The ideal client for Lyft has changed over time, and the strategy has been to pursue what they have defined as the ideal client unless or until they discover they are wrong or that it has changed.
• Lyft’s valuation grew from $500,000 to $70 million in about 14 months.
• Lyft has something called the Wonka Room, which you enter through a tiny, hidden door, into a whimsical room where employees can go for some quiet time and to reconnect with the company’s history and values.
• Too many sales teams are hiring at a fast rate and throwing people into the game without proper preparation, which is the only way to calm the fear of rejection and exercise the muscle to sell.
• All the scripts in the world can’t compensate for understanding the psychology behind sales.
• He instituted a peer review and self-review of sales calls every week that centers on asking questions like “Why did you ask that?” “Why did you find that interesting?” because that leads to self-awareness.
• Lyft allowed Uber to make growth inroads first so that they could come in afterward and counter what they did with different messaging and a different experience.
• Not all salespeople are motivated by money, so don’t treat your staff as if that’s the only reason to do the work.
• If you’re keeping your head down and doing what you need to do for your business, there won’t be a need to worry about your competition.
• Something that led to Dallas’s success was not being afraid to ask questions and say when he didn’t know something.