Episode 49: Sneak peek into Peter's Audiobook

Peter just finished recording his audiobook for Unlocking Authentic Sales! While it won't be out for another few months, he's sharing the Foreword (written by our very own Alex Allain) and Introduction here with you all so that you can get a sneak peek into the book!

Transcript

Foreword & Introduction (Unlocking Authentic Sales)

[00:00:00]

Welcome to Decoding Sales, a podcast where an engineer. That's Alex, Elaine, and a salesperson. That's me. Peter. Talk about the art and science of sales as it relates to life and business. Today I wanted to share with you all a very special milestone. I actually just completed recording all of my chapters for the upcoming audio book for my recently launched book, unlocking Authentic Sales,

and so to commemorate that, I figured I would share a sneak preview into the audio book, starting with the forward and the introduction. . Now the recording here that I'm about to share has not been especially tuned. It hasn't been sound engineered or anything like that, so it's quite raw, but hopefully it gives you a sense for what it's gonna sound like.

And for those of you who haven't purchased my book, you'll get a [00:01:00] sense for the contents of the book in the form of an audio book. So please enjoy. If you like this, I may share a couple other chapters as well in future podcast episodes. The other thing I wanted to say is you probably noticed that Alex and I haven't recorded it in quite some time.

We've both been busy him with his ventures and then me starting off at Tiger Beetle, which has been amazing by the way. And I wanna share with you all more of that journey. But, , exciting news is that in the new year, we did agree to continue recording some episodes. . So hopefully you all will tune into those episodes as we continue on with decoding sales in 2026. , Please feel free to let U.S know what topic areas are most interesting to you, but we are also kicking around some exciting ideas as well. , so without further ado, here are the forward and introduction of the audio book, unlocking Authentic Sales, which I released in July in paperback and hardcover, [00:02:00] and which will release in 2026 in the form of an audio book.

Please enjoy and thank you all for your support.

Peter Ahn: Foreword by Alex. Allain, I've always thought of myself as an engineer. I never thought I'd be doing anything that looked at all like sales, but there I was in April, 2020 reaching out to an old colleague from Dropbox where I had been an early engineer.

Creating the Dropbox business product line and he was a young gun salesman. My work at the then nascent U.S. Digital Response had turned into something that felt an awful lot like a sales process

meeting with governments who are scrambling to respond to COVID-19 and offering them our product, pro bono tech support in a crisis while we weren't literally selling something. We didn't charge governments money, and in those early days, wouldn't even have had a way to accept it if they'd offered. We were doing so [00:03:00] many of the same things a sales org needs to do.

We had to establish trust, navigate complex webs of stakeholders, keep track of relationships, and ultimately figure out how to make a successful mutual engagement. And given that we were in the middle of a generational public health crisis. We had to move quickly, so I reached out to Peter for help. In that first call, I started out with some basic questions, how to accomplish specific tasks that we needed, like what kind of CRM like setup we should have.

But Peter quickly zoomed out to not just answer my questions, but create an entire framework for thinking about sales. Thanks. In part to Peter's advice, U.S. Digital Response went on to work with hundreds of governments over the next couple of years. They supported the city of Seattle rolling out free COVID.

19 tests in early 2020 helped multiple election offices

struggling to adapt to the [00:04:00] shift from in-person to mail-in voting, and helped with vaccine distribution.

Many of their projects touched tens of millions of Americans. U.S. Digital Response ultimately evolved from a collection of volunteers to one of the key players in the civic tech space working on projects well beyond the initial COVID-19 work. All founded on building authentic relationships with governments that could use our help, but that came a bit later while Peter's approach on that call wasn't as structured as it is today.

Even on that first call, I could immediately tell his approach to sales was different and special. I encouraged Peter to create a YouTube channel because I thought his 

distinctive approach and content would be really helpful and popular. To his credit, he took that idea far more seriously than most people would have. He said he'd give my offhand suggestion a try. A few days later, he messaged me back and said, [00:05:00] I don't think I can do it. I can't talk into a void. Having previously created a successful online media site on a whim, I said, want to try doing a podcast?

And that is how the Decoding Sales podcast was born. Through the over 40 episodes we published together, Peter has honed and refined his vision of authentic sales, the kernel of the approach that resonated so strongly with me in that first conversation. In each episode, we talk through a component of the process, distill key insights, and ultimately pull out actionable frameworks and lessons.

Our focus has always been to go beyond platitudes. That sound correct to talking about why it's hard to do those things down to the level of specific word choices, mindset shifts and honest. Talk about the emotional challenges of sales As we've recorded episodes together, Peter and I have also become both close friends and business partners.[00:06:00]

I've helped him think about how to approach his consulting and coaching business. And he's taught me so much more than I ever expected to learn about sales. This book is the result of that process. Ultimately, authentic sales is a vision that empowers people who don't think of themselves as salespeople, to tap into their natural instincts, to build positive sum relationships, solve people's problems, and do it all while factoring in their own needs and the relationship.

It's a vision that extends well beyond traditional sales. Into a way of living everyday life that makes everyone better off and no one feels like they've been taken advantage of. This book is a culmination and outline of that vision.

I hope you get as much out of it as I have learning from Peter over these last years.

 Introduction when my champion at NBCUniversal, Lenny Blum, the Vice President of [00:07:00] Collaboration and Identity and access management at the time, asked Peter, who is your biggest customer? I hesitated for a split second, my palm sweated as I tried to figure out what to say.

Part of me wanted to avoid the shame and ridicule of other prospects who looked down on our early enterprise journey back in 2013. Many believe Dropbox didn't belong when it first tried to enter the enterprise market. I think my grandma stores her photos in Dropbox. Or how can you be serious about enterprise without key security features or phrases regularly thrown at me as one of the first enterprise sellers at the company.

We were a consumer company with a beloved brand and millions of users trusted U.S with their most important files. However many IT and security teams laughed U.S out of rooms when we conveyed our [00:08:00] intent to become a viable enterprise collaboration platform. They didn't believe a consumer company would have the focus and rigor to build the proper security functionality that enterprise organizations require.

It's why Lenny's question was a difficult one for me to answer. The question came after a full day of executive meetings. I had prepared for several weeks. I had teed up the perfect day. That included a combination of enterprise roadmap discussions. Michelin Star Lunch at the Iconic Dropbox Tuck Shop cafeteria, and access to two rockstar founders, drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, who were the darlings of Silicon Valley.

Lenny met with both of them, along with other heavy hitter executives within product and engineering. The lead up to this day also included many more meetings where I use Dropbox usage data to connect with power users. I would use their [00:09:00] stories to convince NB C'S central IT and security, that Dropbox was the future of their file sync and share strategy.

So when Lenny asked who our largest customer was, of course I wanted to say something as impressive as what our main competitor box could say. They had secured General Electric as a customer who procured over 100,000 end user licenses, and they made sure the entire industry knew. My palms still sweating.

I leaned into what had gotten me to be successful at sales up until then. Honesty and transparency with a dash of boldness. Lenny, our largest customer, national Geographic, has 2000 employees. They have similar media file sharing use cases, but you'd be our first Fortune 500 customer and our largest customer.

Lenny nodded, but I couldn't fully understand whether that was a positive acknowledgement or a risky thing to have said. Was I [00:10:00] crazy to mention our largest customer being less than one 20th, the size of NBCUniversal, just as quickly as I had answered the question, he whisked away to the airport for his flight back to New York.

Normally I'd ask, is it a concern for you that we don't yet have any Fortune 500 customers or something similar, but I didn't have the opportunity to get that reaction or feedback from him. Weeks later, we closed an initial land deal with NBC Universal encompassing 9,000 end user licenses. And nine months later, we close a company-wide deal with them valued at multiple millions across their 42,000 employee organization.

The deal provided Dropbox access across brands like Bravo, NBC News, Saturday Night Live, USA Network and NBC Olympics. I would find out from Lenny that my answer to his question was the right one because he was a trailblazer and quote, enjoy being the [00:11:00] first patient.

He wanted to embody the role of innovator and took a strategic bet on U.S as a startup. From that moment on, I closed several more enterprise logos at Dropbox. I would move on from Dropbox to have successful stints at other tech companies, leading with honesty, transparency, and a passion for selling innovation that often displaced legacy technology in that critical moment taught me that no sales training could prepare you for the micro moments when you need to react to a curve ball question.

No training or safety net can prepare you for getting into the right mentality when selling as the underdog. Many think traditional sales training techniques are tried and true, but I beg to differ Often sales training and playbooks restrict one's ability to be authentic and effective when building the most important pillar in sales trust.

I've devoted myself now to helping those [00:12:00] underdogs become confident while selling with genuine transparency rather than circumventing it. Like so many sales pros of the past have done some of these underdogs are startup founders learning sales for the first time. Others are first time sellers just getting into the profession.

Some season sellers are even trying to unlearn many of the sales training manuals of the past. These manuals, while providing a good sense of structure and theoretical concepts fall short when it comes to impacting real life sales, which is full of unexpected twists and turns. As I write this book, my hope is that you take away a few things.

One, the importance of authentic selling in a way that works with and not against your values. Two, honesty always wins in the long run in sales. Three, what you can do to supplement your sales training rather than rely on it as I [00:13:00] illustrate these concepts and takeaways. I'll share my own stories of being an underdog Korean American enterprise seller at both large companies like Google, Dropbox, and Slack, and smaller, no name yet, startups like Front Twingate and many clients I've worked with beyond my experiences.

I've also collected a series of stories from other new and experienced sellers who have felt the power of selling without a crutch. While truly unleashing their inner sales confidence, having an understanding that taking bold risks in sales is not only okay, but powerful can elevate the sales profession to become noble.

Once again, sales is such an impactful life skill to learn. It's about time we unshackled the profession from old school scripted playbooks that have stripped U.S of our own authentic sales voices.