Dale Dupree Shares the Importance of a Long-Term Outlook
Listen to the Owler interview featuring Dale Dupree, Founder & CSO at The Sales Rebellion, and find accompanying questions and quotes pulled from the interview below.
1. How do you get past negative stereotypes associated with salespeople to effectively converse with a prospect and come across as genuine?
“At The Sales Rebellion, one of the things we believe in is that people are more important than products. Community is more important than a commission check.”
Dupree pointed to proactive messaging as an example of what his company uses to communicate with prospects. Describing a recent event, Dupree said the volume of people invited made it difficult to learn much about each individual though The Sales Rebellion desires to do that.
He opted for language along the lines of: “This is a copy-paste message. Please forgive me for it but if you keep reading, I have a little something for you.”
Dupree and his team are also fans of creating an impactful first impression. Thought is applied to how people view The Sales Rebellion and their intentions to have people view them as good stewards of their time and share valuable information. Dupree says that starts with trust and credibility.
2. How do you balance the pressures that come with working in sales with caring for your family and your overall wellness?
Dupree prefaced his answer with the statement that he struggles with depression.
“I've attempted suicide twice in my life.” The founder and CSO struggled deeply with sadness and tried his whole life to fight against it.
“For me, personally, there is no such thing as a balance of work and life. I have blurred the line. I live, and by living it allows me to look at things as not compartmentalized but to understand that when something is happening to me, it's not like ‘put it in a box’ but instead actively and proactively taking it on and not trying to explain it away or make excuses in the process, which is a limiting thought to say that there's work and there's life.”
“From my own perspective – I also respect people that don't agree with this because listen, we all have our own walk we're living – but for me, this is how it works and that's what being a rebel is all about. Looking at the status quo and seeing the mediocrity of it.”
By incorporating his life into his work Dupree says he becomes more intentional and fluid. This enables him to become happier and give better experiences to people.
3. What kind of advice would you have for an SDR and for an account executive?
Dupree dislikes titles, suggesting that the roles instead be simply referred to as “sales.”
“If you want to be successful in sales, you have to have a long-term outlook,” says Dupree.
“So when I started, I would say, “Okay, I'm 21 years old. By the time I'm 31, I'll be where I want to be.”
Rather than commit to the product he was selling at the time, Dupree described himself as committing to that part of who he was and to his community.
“I sold the solutions to my community, and the folks that I sought to serve were looking for.” Allowing them to dictate the conversations as he sparked curiosity turned out to be a winning strategy that allowed Dupree to stand out among other sales reps. “I became uniquely passionate. I became something that proclaimed excellence in everything that I did.”
4. How can somebody take the idea of consistency and how can they use it to get the outcomes they're looking for in the work that they do?
Dupree believes what he built as “The Copier Warrior” will be part of his legacy and ultimately led him to his current work with The Sales Rebellion.
“My father is the influence around that – around consistency for most of my life. My father passed from cancer. At this point, it's been six to seven years this March. But for me, for the majority of my life so far, I watched a man be extremely consistent in the way that he did the things that I'm talking about today. He honored and loved my mother, taught us what love truly means very consistently. He failed consistently as well and owned that failure in his life.”
Dupree says that attitude and consistent living create a consistent outlook, an attitude, and develops personal growth.
5. How did you recognize you had a talent for sales and how can leaders identify that type of talent within their own teams? How can they nurture it so that it grows?
Self-belief and preservation of self-belief are what Dupree finds important when it comes to identifying talent.
“It's not about whether or not I think I'm going to be good at sales. It’s whether or not I believe I can be good at sales and what I'm willing to put into the process. I'll hire anybody at the sales rebellion. I'll hire anybody that wants to come and do sales. I don't care about your resume. I don't care about what you've accomplished. I want to know what you want to do.”
6. Speaking of talent and the belief that you can, how did you realize you had a voice for metalcore music?
“I'm a creative. I'm an abstract person, so it's always just like been in the crosshairs.”
Dupree’s love of music began with piano lessons before moving on to guitar and then vocals. Curious to see if he could produce sounds like those of metal artists he listened to, Dale delved into the origins of the music he enjoyed and surfaced with the motivation to create.
Listen to the entire Dale Dupree interview for sales advice and anecdotes about his time as The Copier Warrior and as a musician.