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Anthony Iannarino was fifteen years old when he made his first cold call. When he left the job, he was the only person to have scheduled a charity bike-a-thon. In fact, he had two active events.
A few years later, he joined his family's staffing person as the first employee and the first industrial recruiter. The division of business had no clients, and he was told to call companies and ask them if they needed additional employees. Using the four index cards that provided a cold calling script.
In his first call, he read the script to the contact, who responded, "Call me back when you don't need a sales script." He called the CEO and COO and asked what he should do. They told him to call back and say, " I don't need the script, but I do need a meeting. I can help you get the employees you need." The contact agreed to the meeting and, at the end of the meeting, he placed and order. This was his introduction to B2B sales and what passed for B2B Sales Training on sales prospecting.
The only reason Anthony was working at the staffing firm was so he could play music at night. After a number of years playing the largest venues in Columbus, Ohio, he moved to Los Angeles to find and join a hair metal band. To make ends meet, he took a job with a staffing company with 4,000 offices and 4 Billion in annual sales.
Not knowing any better, between interviews, he made cold calls to ask companies for a meeting. Some agreed to a meeting, and some signed a contract. When a new managers took over the branch, he recognized Anthony had more b2b customers than the three full time salespeople combined. His manager forced him to cut his hair, allowing him to wear a ponytail, noting that it was Los Angeles, after all.
In his first six months as a sales representative, Anthony won the largest client on the western half of the United States, a deal worth tens of millions of dollars. The deal was large enough that his leadership team had to help close the deal. A few weeks after winning the deal, Anthony had a Grand Mal seizure while walking up to his Brentwood Apartment.
Anthony was diagnosed with an arteriavenus malformation, a group of arteries and veins that had grown into a giant knot pushing on the back of his right temporal lobe. Anthony had two surgeries, one to glue the arteries shut to prevent bleeding, and one to remove the AVM and the bruised part of his brain, something he was only told after the fact. His doctor also told him he couldn't drive for two years. He returned to his families staffing business, and in his first year, he increased the revenue from 3 million dollars to 7.8 million dollars, the result of having a great sales manager.
A couple years or so later, the sales manager and her team left, and Anthony took over as sales manager and continued to sell while he attended college at night, graduating summa cum laude. After receiving the Dean's Academic Scholarship, he attended law school at night, completing his J.D., choosing to stay in business and sales. Immediately after law school, he attended Harvard Business School, completing the OPM program, focusing on sales and marketing.
After growing the family business, local contacts inquired about his ability to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue with a four or five salespeople, he started sharing his unique sales strategies and tactics that allowed his team to win large, competitive deals, strategies that he innovated and created. In 2009, Anthony started writing a daily blog post at thesalesblog.com, sharing his sales process. Anthony is an innovator in B2B Sales.
In 2016, Anthony published The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need, a USA Today, Amazon, and ABA bestseller. The Only Sales Guide was a competency model for the modern sales approach popular now.
In 2017, he published his second book, The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales, another Amazon bestseller. The Lost Art is a book about facilitating the buyer's journey and leading your client to success.
In 2018, Anthony published Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition, a book about competitive displacements and how to live, survive and thrive in the Red Ocean. Eat Their Lunch is a book about compelling change, differentiating the salesperson and creating value in the sales conversation.
In 2022, Anthony published Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative. This book is guide full of the value creation strategies that win deals in today's uncertain environment. Released in April 2022, it is still number one in business sales on Amazon.
In September, 2021, Anthony published his fifth book in six years, Leading Growth: The Proven Formula for Consistently Increasing Revenue, his first book for sales leaders and manager who need to reach aggressive net new revenue goals through the efforts of their sales reps.
Anthony has trained, consulted, and helped transform some of the largest and most respected companies in the world, as well as rapidly growing companies by improving their approach and their sales skills. His company, Visualizing Transformation, provides training, consulting, and executive coaching that improves sales performance and delivers results. He supports sales teams with a development platform, training courses, and assignments that ensure sales organizations make the behavioral changes and produce long term results.
Anthony is also a sought after speaker for sales kickoff meetings, quarterly meetings, workshops and private seminars.
