How to Become a Unicorn (Without the Myth): The Real Work Behind Sales Magic
- Melody McDonald
- May 15
- 18 min read
Updated: May 18
Every founder dreams of finding a unicorn. Someone who can swoop in, make a few calls, and unlock revenue seemingly overnight. And when results come, it’s easy to chalk it up to luck, timing, connections, or a combination of the three. But what often looks like a fast, magical outcome is far from random. It’s rarely luck, and it’s never effortless.
Sales Unicorn (noun): A sales unicorn is a rare professional who excels at every stage of the sales process, from market research and messaging to outreach, relationship building, objection handling, closing and leading. They combine strategic insight with execution, adapt quickly to different buyers and industries, and consistently drive results.
I’ve been called a rainmaker or unicorn more than twice. When delivering professional development, one of my colleagues has told me how he tells the story of a super successful early stage company who "found Melody at the right time," implying they lucked into hiring a known rainmaker when I happened to be at a unique life juncture and willing to accept a lower-paying role. But the truth is quite different.
In the story my colleague shares during professional development sessions with startup and mid-stage CEOs, there’s another important truth. When I first saw the product in its early startup phase, I immediately recognized how much it was needed. I saw the vision and understood the impact it could have, if only the right person was there to sell it. I wanted in. I saw the potential and was willing to overlook the starter salary in favor of the long-term success potential. That was enough.
When he offered me a mere $45,000 per year, and 2,000 shares, I accepted on one condition. As I made him more money, he would pay me more. We agreed that my salary would always be evaluated based on the sales I brought in, either directly or through the future team I would lead.
I was confident in my ability to sell it, earn high commissions, and strategically grow sales. I envisioned opening sales territories, handing them off to reps I would train, and earn overrides as the company scaled. And that’s exactly what happened. Several years and a few rounds of investment later, the company scored a 200 Million dollar valuation, and credited me for the sales efforts and team leadership.
Unicorn rainmaker sales requires a mindset focused on service, persistence, and strategy. It’s not mythical. It’s methodical. And it’s repeatable.
The goal of this post is to pull back the curtain for all CEOs and founders, to help companies understand what true sales strategy looks like and to support aspiring rainmakers in seeing the path forward. The 25 years of experience I draw on is from selling in the K12 and state agency space. Most agencies have been the school district or department of education at the state level or otherwise related for educational causes or grants. This is also known as State and Local Education Departments or SLED sales. SLED is unique from private sector sales because the challenges the agencies are trying to solve for and the relevant budget funds are public facing. So if you are a founder, CEO or a sales organization targeting the K12 or SLED market, this article is for you.
Becoming a sales unicorn isn't about one big break. A lot of sales people have the capability to transform into being a rainmaker, or even more rare, a top producing unicorn. Sales success does not come from the fleeting moment when a unicorn winks at you, and magically turns your entire sales trajectory around for the better. Success come from putting in the effort, time, and doing the work that others don’t always see, and then expanding that vision, by sharing it collaboratively with a team. It's about openly delivering your insights in the form of appropriate training, documentation, support, and guidance.
One of the most common misconceptions is that sales success starts with a phone call. I often receive requests from potential clients who want me to start by making phone calls into my network of past customers, and expect quick results to follow. The phone call is far from the first step. Starting with an unquenchable curiosity and building a repeatable pathway to understand the product-market fit, aiming for appropriately aligned targets, and the getting on the same page with the customer persona is the beginning of success. It starts well before the phone call.
In my first consulting engagement, I had the opportunity to re-test my theory. They asked for introductions into my network that would produce immediate results, and I asked the company for a product deep-dive first, so I could understand what I was to be selling; what made it valuable, how it solved real problems, and how to frame it in the market. They didn’t have time to walk me through it. Instead, the CEO, annoyed with my request, told me to “go figure it out” and come back when I had something of value to say or a prospect to lay at their feet.
So I did.
I spent four weeks - 10 hours each week - on the phone with thought leaders and state leaders, listening, researching, and reverse-engineering the sales narrative that I found on their website and in articles online. I studied the market vertical, state agendas, and competitors. It would have been wasted time to start selling, and could have even led to burning out contacts by pitching without understanding the gaps that needed to be filled. So, I wasn’t selling. I was learning, more specifically, I was following directions and figuring it out. I was identifying pushbacks, uncovering gaps, and testing assumptions in real time.
I then crafted a document about what I had learned and asked my client to validate the assumptions I had made. In order to really form connections and build relationships with potential customers, one must be able to speak to the pains they are experiencing. This is a deep learning process that must be first undertaken in order to achieve success. To shortcut this step only lends itself to a far lengthier failure ratio.
What was interesting to me is that my client could have shared all of this information with me inside a few hours. Conversely, it seemed they felt it was a very productive exercise for them to have me come back to them with mostly the same assumptions they had made. This activity served to validate the truth they were operating on, and they deemed the information useful. It is not, however, a luxury that every client can afford. It just so happened that they could.
The turning point to success came when we began collaborating, and truly working together. Once they brought the product expertise (which they lived and breathed daily), and I brought the field insights, tied it to state budgets, local politics, and narrowed their targets, we rapidly progressed into large successes. That’s when the sales strategy clicked.
At the end of my contractual engagement with them, they hired a full K12 sales team and I supported the new hires in understanding the strategy, and coached them on how to get moving in execution of it.
Chapter 1: 🌳 The Enchanted Forest of Understanding
Step one to attract and foster the growth of unicorns. Where only those who research the terrain, study the signs, and understand both their offering and their seeker will ever catch a glimpse of the Sales Unicorn.
Estimated Initial Time Investment: 10 - 50 hours (minimum) - Understanding must be a continuous evolution of growth, updated and at least annually, re-presented, and shared with an enthusiasm that keeps every mythological creature on the team drinking from the same stream.
Below, I break down what it actually takes to create unicorn outcomes. Why don't we take a journey together, and discover how to create the environment for the unicorn to thrive in your business.
The reality is:
✅ You can’t outsource understanding 100%.
✅ If you want someone to sell effectively, they need to understand:
The product
The buyer
The market dynamics (including available budgets)
The obstacles
And the path to solving real problems
If you’re hiring a consultant or sales lead to make outreach, you either need to equip them with the right tools and training or be prepared to invest in the time it takes for them to learn and validate your assumptions on their own. Once you decide which path to take, ensure that the consultant has a deliverable that includes documentation in an organized and digestible format. Often this is the sales playbook. This is so you can refer back to it, and further develop on your own after the engagement. The documentation you receive should serve as the foundation for your strategy and become a living document that is updated as your market, product, and customer evolves.
When translating consulting efforts into a sales leadership tasks, coaching team leaders or sales team members how to focus beyond product functionality and feature set knowledge is key. Ensuring everyone is living and breathing the market ecosystem, the buyer mindset, the pain points, and how your solution fits is far more important than what happens if you click the button on the left. Ensuring the team is fully educated and stays up to date is deeply important for your sales leaders, and team to thrive. Also, the information you lead with must be digestible and easily reference-able. A community sales playbook, accessible by all appropriate team members can function as the center of gravity. Ensuring the path is laid out in an organized way that also allows the sales team to add input as it is discovered, and have documentation to refer back when needed, fosters collaborative effort and team work. I have seen sales leaders seek to foster a sense of competition amongst team members. I assure you - the results are far better when leadership is fostering a sense of community instead. Where one team member is helping another succeed.
Training, coaching and development should begin with the sales leadership, and as the team develops, extend out to each and every sales role from BDRs, to Solutions Consultants, Account Executives and Proposal Managers.
That learning and the teaching is the foundation. Unicorns don’t appear, they’re built. And this is where it begins.
Chapter 2: 🌿 The Trail of Alignment
Creating the Conditions for a Unicorn to Set Up Camp in Your Forest. Aligning everything for growth. Wearing down the path until it becomes a visible trail.
Estimated Time Investment: A minimum of 20 hours initially per territory to eternity. This step is ongoing. It should be revisited annually and adjusted continuously in response to political narratives, changing landscapes, budgets, and evolving buzzwords that shape the challenges your service addresses and the way solutions are framed.
This stage is about applying what you’ve learned from your time in prospect and value prop discovery. It’s about lining everything up with your target, where theory becomes strategy, and strategy becomes direction.
Once you’ve emerged from the Enchanted Forest of Understanding, the next step is to clear a path. Not just any path, but one that turns into a trail, and aligns your product’s value with the needs of your buyer.
This is often where salespeople get stuck. They understand the product, and they may even know the market, but they haven’t yet translated that into a message that resonates with the person they’re trying to reach.
What comes next isn’t cold calling. It’s not even targeted outreach. It’s mapping the sales language. It’s identifying where the message meets the mission of your buyer and narrowing your focus so every step you take is toward someone with real potential for conversion.
What Prospect Alignment Actually Looks Like
This part of the process isn’t glamorous. It requires sitting down with what you now know about the product, the buyer, and the market, and deciding how to talk about it. Having a collaborative group where words can be spoken out loud and the sound of them bouncing around is most preferable. Finding language that triggers emotional resonance in a buyer can only come from a deep understanding of the challenges they’re trying to solve. The sales-speak language and the marketing language are typically close, but not exactly the same. The nuances involved are in uncovering what to say during a natural conversation with a prospect about their understanding of their pain and how you are the best fit to solve it, without pitching or selling anything.
You’re taking the insights you’ve collected and turning them into a flexible, working narrative that can be used in conversations, emails, and strategic targeting. You’re also beginning to build a sales toolbox that creates consistency across your team. Tools like customer-centric sales deck slides, strategic follow-up frameworks, and messaging that balances frequency with respect - all matter.
This begins with:
Collaborating on clear, concise messaging that reflects the actual challenges buyers are facing. Too often, sales organizations and personas assume they know the problem they solve, but when you ask the customer, the pain turns out to be something slightly, or even entirely, different. Start with short interviews. Ask one or two targeted questions across several existing customers. Look for the consistent pain points and nuanced responses. This simple exercise can reshape your messaging and improve outcomes dramatically.
Then continues with:
Connecting those challenges to your product in a way that feels organic, logical, and valuable
Identifying the most likely buyer personas across verticals and regions
Validating your assumptions through early, low-risk calls with prospects you’re willing to lose
Practicing your pitch and refining it to reflect what resonates, while eliminating what doesn’t
Preparing for common pushbacks and embedding subtle references to them in your initial outreach
Even with a targeted approach, not every buyer will be a fit. This step helps you focus on the buyers who are most aligned with your value and identify others who may be future prospects farther down the pipeline.
Building Your Prospect Universe
Before you pick up the phone, you need more than a contact list. Success is not likely to be built upon pitching a list. What you need is a qualified list, where roles, people, and regions align with the solution and a phone call makes sense.
Identifying which states or regions are actively prioritizing your area of service doesn’t mean other areas don’t matter. It means you focus your highest-effort, highest-cost activities where the payoff is most likely. In regions without funding, organic strategies and referral networks may be more effective than conferences or paid campaigns.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with using cold call dialers. In fact it can often be an economical strategy for those who fully understand their targets and market. That said, instead of dialing for dollars and hoping you hit a hot button, you can also build your prospect universe with the following activities:
Studying funding streams and strategic plans at the state and district level
Using tools to look under the hood, like reviewing board documents and state checkbooks
Leveraging products like Burbio to understand which districts or agencies are actively planning purchases
Doing your best to target your phone calls and tailor the message to the decision-makers and product users whose pain you solve best
Aligning press releases, legislative documents, and agency reports with your target territories
Looking for pain signals, pilot programs, stalled initiatives, staff turnover, or legislation shifts
Creating a tiered contact strategy that includes primary and secondary outreach, as well as building relationships with relevant advocacy groups and thought leaders
Calling the targets who sit in the right seats to utilize the product or make decisions for the users who would benefit most
Depending on your internal support, this might also involve conversations within your network to triangulate who’s actively working on your target issue. One well-placed conversation can save hours of desk research, but this still takes time, skill, and care.
This is the beginning of a strategy to help you move from making 100 blind calls with a 2 percent response rate to making 20 well-placed contacts with a 25 percent or better engagement rate. This is how you aim with precision.
Avoiding the Mistake of Recycling Your Contacts
This wisdom comes from the moment when many CEOs or founders say to me, “Why not just start calling people you already know?” It’s often the first request they have of my services, regardless of how experienced they are as CEOs, and something I have never done. I have reached into my network only when there has been relevant cause and there is pain solving reasoning that is remarkably outstanding.
Great relationships aren’t used. They’re built. And they’re built through thoughtful, relevant outreach grounded in a deep understanding of the buyer’s pain and the ecosystem they operate in.
If I recycled my state-level contacts for every client I worked with, I’d be calling the same people over and over again about products that might not even be relevant to them. That’s not a strategy. That’s erosion. I serve my clients at a much higher level by helping them both position and build the relationships that will help them sustain and grow.
When you burn a contact by approaching them with something irrelevant, even by accident, you don’t just lose a deal. You lose trust. The landscape of government and education employment is eternally short staffed, never perked, and often underpaid. These men and women are in service to their communities and deserve the same respect as their corporate colleagues. To boot, in government and education, where relationships are foundational and turnover is slow, they don't have time to rebuild trust with a sales person over coffee.
Alignment Also Means Sales Activity in Action
Finding the right person who has authority, budget influence, and a current need can take time. That doesn’t mean you stop making calls until the research is done. It means the research becomes part of your active sales process.
Sales activity includes:
Reviewing agency org charts
Asking your peers for insight
Searching for quotes in policy publications or education blogs
Cross-referencing funding allocations
Getting creative—calling a front desk or assistant to ask for direction without making a pitch
And when you do find the right contact, it might take five or more carefully spaced and relevant touch-points just to get a reply.
This Is Where the Trail Gets Worn
This part of the work doesn’t sparkle. But it’s everything foundational. This is where the unicorn gallops, its hooves blazing a trail between the trees in the forest. When your outreach becomes purposeful, informed, and aligned with the buyer’s expressed pain, you’ve stopped wasting time wandering. You’ve started walking the walk. And with each step, you’re creating the repeatable, scalable future that the next generation of unicorns will follow.
🌼 Chapter 3: The First Meadow – Messaging and Motion
Where alignment becomes action and the unicorn takes its first steps toward connection. This begins the path not just to a sale, but to a community of kindred creatures who recognize your value and welcome you into their clearing in the meadow.
Estimated Time Investment: 10 to 100 hours per target agency.
This is where preparation becomes motion. It’s time to step out of research mode and into the rhythm of outreach. If the groundwork has been done thoroughly, this moment doesn’t feel forced. The salesperson moves with certainty, knowing that what they offer can genuinely help the prospective client. That quiet confidence is often enough to pique interest and move towards a valid deal closing.
You’ve mapped the forest floor. You’ve created your message. Now it’s time to put it in motion.
Thoughtful Contact Begins with Clear Messaging
When your message is properly aligned, the first outreach doesn’t feel intrusive or salesy. It feels like supportive education. It feels like providing helpful insight. You are giving, not grabbing, sharing, not chasing. You’re bringing value to the table.
The purpose of first contact is to open a door through relevance. You are not pitching. You are showing that you understand what they are dealing with, that they have a real issue to solve, and that you’re familiar with that kind of pain.
Your message should reflect:
A grounded understanding of the recipient’s likely priorities
Awareness of their pain points, based on state budgets, initiatives, or policy shifts
An invitation to engage in dialogue, not pressure to buy
What you say or send should make it clear that you’ve done your homework. You are offering value, not asking for time. This is where the phrase “don’t show up and throw up” applies. Nobody wants a sales pitch from a stranger. But everyone wants to feel seen and supported.
The best way to make someone feel seen is to ask thoughtful questions. Now is your chance. And it will be easier than you think, because you already understand them to some degree before you even picked up the phone.
Start with Warm Paths When You Can
Where appropriate, use soft entry points. Conference leads, referrals, mutual connections, agency contacts, or references to articles or quotes all help increase your chances of engagement. But don’t rely on them.
What matters is that your outreach feels personal, informed, and valuable, even if it’s the first time they’ve heard your name.
Cold calls and cold emails don’t have to feel cold if they come with genuine intention. When you bring value, you're already beginning the sales relationship. Many of these first conversations turn into years, even decades, of professional trust and development.
Use the First Few Conversations as Refinement Tools
Not every message will land. Some phrases will fall flat. Some assumptions will be off. That’s not failure. That’s data.
These early conversations help build your pipeline and also help you validate your strategy. Start with prospects who matter slightly less. Don’t start with your biggest targets. Start small or mid-sized. Use these calls as practice. If they don’t pan out, it won’t hurt as much, but you’ll learn just as much.
Track:
What types of language prompt a response
What phrases generate energy or alignment
What gets ignored completely
Then tweak your messaging. Update your emails. Refresh your call intros. Watch for patterns. Use the same language for at least 100 calls or emails before you evaluate traction. If nothing is landing, change it.
Use a CRM or spreadsheet to log your contact history. Track which messages get responses and which ones don’t. Look for trends. Use your own KPIs to gauge message effectiveness.
Begin Building Your Win Cadence
As you refine your message and test your outreach, you’ll start to develop a rhythm. This becomes your cadence. It’s not about being pushy. It’s about being consistent, timely, and relevant.
Get in front of your target often, whether organically or through planned outreach. Track positive and negative responses. Remove "not interested" replies from your pipeline quickly. Leave space for more qualified opportunities.
I’ve coached many salespeople out of the dial-pitch-repeat cycle. Some don’t even read the prospect’s name before calling. That’s not selling. That’s guessing.
Instead, focus on the individual. Pay attention to what you’ve learned about them and their pain. Know when to build the relationship and when to let it go.
This is the beginning of your sales flywheel. It only spins efficiently when it’s built on real understanding and strategic alignment. This is also one of the key differences between a salesperson and a rainmaker. Persistence without pressure is the key to winning everything.
⚔️🩸 Chapter 4: The Patient Pursuit of Prey
Even a unicorn must feed its family. It does not chase blindly or crash through the woods, pouncing. It watches. It listens. It studies the patterns of its prey. It moves with intention, conserving energy and making every step count. The hunt is not about pressure. It’s about precision. Trust is earned, and timing is everything. I know, I know, you were not expecting any gore in this unicorn themed blog post.
Estimated Time Investment: This is the bulk of your 40 hour work week.
This part of the process is both tactical and deeply human. It’s where discipline meets empathy. If you want to maintain trust and build long-term credibility, you must treat your outreach like a relationship, not a transaction.
Two of the most important elements in earning that relationship are:
Getting permission/agreement for your follow up touches
Timing that balances the prospect's needs with closing the deals in your pipeline
Doing what you say you will do, and doing it when you promised
Track Everything (Yes, Everything)
Using a CRM or some form of structured tracking is not optional. Without it, outreach becomes guesswork and follow-up becomes random. Proper tracking ensures you know:
Who you reached out to
When and how you connected
What you discussed
What the next action is and when it should happen
Any time a salesperson resists management’s request to track pipeline activity, my red flags go up. No human brain is capable of efficiently managing all the dates and facts required to build an effective sales path. Prospects need to know they’ve been heard. Taking time to review conversation notes before the next touchpoint can change the outcome.
You’re not just managing leads. You’re not just managing a quota. You’re managing trust and a professional relationship. You’re building confidence in your ability to help another human being and support them in getting their job done better. Consistent, respectful follow-up signals reliability.
Understand the Touchpoint Timeline
It often takes eight to twelve touches to get a single response—especially from busy state-level decision makers. These touches may include:
A relevant introduction
A value-driven email
A check-in with new context
A voicemail referencing recent news or initiatives
A follow-up with a case study or state-specific data
Each touchpoint should feel connected to the last. This is a conversation, not a campaign. The consistent flow of contact is often why the prospect eventually connects with you. Somewhere along the journey, they receive the message that helps them show up better in their own work.
This is a big part of how you win and scale your next win for the future. Tracked activity helps you and your team double down on what works and eliminate what doesn’t. The result is a smarter future strategy—and a better outcome.
Respect the Silence but Don’t Vanish
When sales contacts take a pause, keep your confidence high. Silence doesn’t always mean no. More often, it means “not yet,” “not sure,” or “not my top priority right now.” Following up isn’t about pushing. It’s about staying present and listening to the prospect's cues. Public servants are busy. As I’ve mentioned before, many are overworked and underpaid. If they’re a buyer, they’re often relying on you to stay in touch. You’re not bothering them, unless you’re ignoring the signs that it’s time to let go. And yes, sometimes letting go is the hardest part. Be open and ask them if they want your continued follow up. Be frank with your prospects and respect their time, and it is likely they will be frank with you. This will effectively help you manage your time and close more deals.
Balance tenacity with tact by:
Pacing your outreach
Offering something new or timely each time
Including opt-out language to give them space
Avoiding guilt or pressure-based messaging
You’re not chasing. You’re holding space. You are winning.
Build Your Reputation with Every Follow-Up, and You Will Win Deals
Your follow-up tells the prospect everything they need to know about how you work. If it’s thoughtful, helpful, and informed, they’ll begin to trust that you’ll bring that same energy into a future working relationship. If you do it consistently, you’ll win deals. Your win ratio will rise, and so will your income.
Don’t be afraid to ask for the deal. The worst they can say is no. And really, all a no does is clear the table so you have more time to pursue the next yes.
Following up the right way shows:
That you listen
That you remember
That you value their time
That you’re worth working with
🦄 And That’s How This Unicorn Was Made... What About Yours?
This wasn’t magic. It wasn’t luck. It was curiosity, strategy, and a lot of work no one sees behind the scenes. This is how unicorns are built, not found. The good news? You can make your own. If you’re a founder, CEO, or sales leader, your unicorn may already be in the making. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s someone on your team who just needs the right guidance, structure, and space to grow into it. Maybe it's a process you’ve yet to define or a strategy waiting to be refined.
If you’re a CEO, founder, or sales leader looking to build a team that doesn’t just sell, but scales, you need more than activity. You need alignment, process, and precision. Let’s talk about how to create your own unicorn outcomes.
The unicorn is not born from luck or legend. It emerges from intention, knowledge, and care, earning its place not through magic, but through mastery. If you want to find one, or become one, prepare your forest well. The unicorn develops and follows those who build with purpose.
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