New Book Coming Soon!

Coming April 1st: our first book. Graphic Sales: How to Build a Prospecting Playbook (for Sales Leaders)

And here’s a peek at the cover.

Back up! how’d this happen?

The process has been, quite frankly, a blast. I think the way we approached this made it more fun than most book projects probably are.

I’ve spent years helping teams fix or scale their prospecting efforts (also known as outbound). I also work more broadly across GTM, but this book had a specific impetus.

The work I do isn’t just training or onboarding. It’s holistic—building the system, team, culture, and skills that create the environment for success.

Several years ago Peter Cleary and I started sharing true, outlandish stories from throughout our careers. We realized there were lessons buried in all of them.

We spent about a year turning those stories into scripts, then went looking for a comic book artist to bring them to life—because, well, that’s what you do. 🙂

We found Eli 5 Stone and Graphic Sales Stories was born. Since then we’ve published 8–10 stories a year. It’s been a fun side project.

Last year I had a couple of clients who both needed prospecting playbooks at the same time. I’d built these for years, but this round was different. I really stepped back and blueprint­ed what an outbound team actually needs to succeed.

What I think sets my consultancy apart is the ability to connect big-picture strategy to execution and all the details that come with it.

As I built those playbooks, I started incorporating comics to make them more engaging—and more likely to get used.

But the real work was documenting, in detail, the categories, tactics, and messaging an outbound team needs.

We rolled the playbooks out, ran surveys, and tracked engagement. Leadership loved having everything defined in one place, and reps actually used the content at a high rate. It also strengthened onboarding and coaching.

After that I turned to Peter and said: we should write a book on how to build a proper prospecting playbook.

That was last summer.

We brought in Kory Kirby (who’s amazing) to guide the publishing process. Eli created a huge library of comics and imagery. We wrote, rewrote, rewrote again and again. Layout followed. More imagery.

And here we are. I signed off on the final interior and cover last week.

If you’re in sales leadership, I think you’ll find this useful. It’s a playbook on building a playbook—what leaders need to define to set outbound teams up for success.

It’s packed with high-level direction but also great detail on what to build with real examples, how to actually define your ICP and messaging; detailed outreach frameworks across calling, email, LinkedIn, and some outside-the-box tactics.

And it won’t bore you. It’s funny, comic-driven, and built to make the lessons stick.

Available April 1st wherever you buy books online.

Pre-order details may be coming. Stand by.