Eat What You Kill: Becoming a Sales Carnivore

by Sam Taggart

From the founder and CEO of multimillion dollar sales empire D2D Experts, a battle guide to closing more deals than you ever thought possible.Just ten years ago, Sam Taggart was beating the streets as a door-to-door salesman selling solar and alarm systems, getting thousands of doors slammed in his face – and worse – every day. Now, Sam is the founder and CEO of D2D Experts, a seven-figure sales empire that offers training to an active userbase of 30,000 members. Eat What You Kill is the key to mastering the art of sales - and it all starts with a simple mindset shift.In this practical guide, Sam Taggart teaches readers to be sales carnivores – conquerors with limitless potential – instead of herbivores – victims who make excuses for their failures. No matter what you're selling or how you do it, this book is chock full of winning advice for closing every deal, such to build your own pipeline instead of relying on opportunities from higher-upshow to build a healthy 'sales routine' to maximize earnings and minimize burnouthow to build bullet-proof pitches tailored to the four types of prospecthow to properly frame rejection so you don't lose steamFrom improvisational tips to take your pitches to the next level, to activating your “prey drive” to supercharge prospecting, Eat What You Kill is the synthesis of everything Sam Taggart has learned on his way to becoming the world’s best salesman.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published January 14, 2025

About the author

Raised in the Mississippi River delta, Sam Taggart, MD, has practiced medicine in rural Arkansas for the last thirty years. He and his wife currently live in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Reviews

[Ben Landrum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Door to door sales tactics are morally repellent to me. This is not to say that I think sales as a whole is bad, or that I actually have anything against the average workaday door knocker, but people who write books about these things believe in exploiting the social fabric in a way that corrodes it.

These people love to talk about how brutal it is to be a door to door (or as they call it, D2D) salesman dealing with rejection after rejection; how cruel it is for people to decline to hear them out or not sign whatever contract they're pushing. At the same time, those being sold to are sheeple ripe to have their better nature manipulated in whatever disingenuous way is most likely to boost one's commission check. The dissonance here is so glaring that the author is constantly trying to justify himself to the reader, with platitudes about how he's only selling products he believes in and how he wants to salvage the reputation of door to door salesmen. How am I supposed to believe that coming from a guy who rotated through 2-3 different companies selling essentially the same product (burglar alarms), sold each as the best deal among their competitors, and is now providing the reader a blueprint for bludgeoning hapless dopes into signing up for whatever?

I think the real crime here is that they're mortgaging social norms and goodwill towards thy fellow man in a way that punishes neighborliness. A salesman cannot be both a counterparty in a transaction and a figurative "neighbor" without marginally souring the experience of being nice to strangers. You can't say no to him: he's either constructed a rhetorical quagmire you've walked yourself into because, regardless of his presentation, you're a counterparty to him, or turning him down would feel mean because he's been driving home that he's just another human being and he really cares about making this sale 🥺. If a strategy relies on trying to get people to act against their own interest because they care about you, you are converting sympathy for strangers into money, and this is obviously a negative sum transaction for society at large.

The same logic applies to e.g. willfully abusing laws designed to protect people from unfair evictions to avoid paying rent, or blocking highways as a form of activism. Dubious efficacy aside, the person doing the latter feels confident that the everyman has enough love in their heart to not willfully run them over. This works because it's true, and I certainly wouldn't willfully run someone over, but it's not hard to imagine that putting people in a position where they have to choose to not run over someone demonstrating they don't care about whatever you're trying to do is bad for the norms that make our society function.

Recommend if you want to become a D2D sigma male who rises to the top and closes all day long, or if (like my dad, who recommended this book) you want to be more alert to the sleazy tactics of your counterparty.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

A better title would be, How to be a Slimy Salesperson.

[pandora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would definitely recommend this book if you work retail or any commission paying job. I’m a sales optician and I got good tips from reading Eat what you kill.

Here are the MAIN POINTS that really stuck out TO ME:

Enjoy the food you eat- enjoy your work

Don’t be easy like the herbivores. They easily become the prey to the carnivores.

Push yourself to the next move. “Just one more door…”

Don’t just survive, remember what and who you’re working for.

Success has to start in your head before it can start manifesting.

Never trash-talk yourself by thinking something like, “I’m not worthy yet, but I will be after I hit my goals.” that’s not true! The mere act of living and pushing back against gravity makes you worthy.”

Learn self-reliance. The alpha wolves won’t want to keep you around if you’re bringing them down.

The socializer- this is a great tip to not stress a person out with too much info. Some people like random conversations.

Selective Hearing - acknowledge their comment and move on if it doesn’t apply or acknowledge and respond.

follow me on insta @dorasbooknook if you read all of this☝🏼.

[Dannie Lynn Fountain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Listen, I spent a good chunk of my career in sales. I'm also an entrepreneur -- as an interviewer once told me "how are you putting food on your table if you're not selling?"

But that said, this book is a textbook workshop on how NOT to be a good, ethical, and successful sales person. 20% into the book, the lesson is "if you commit a felony by forging a signature, pay out all 5 years of the person's contract and you won't go to prison." A few pages (or in my case, minutes of the audiobook) later, we learn that burnout isn't real unless you have a physical injury, and even then it's STILL not a mental condition and can easily be overcome.

This book is everything wrong with sales. Read only if you want a guidebook on what NOT to do, like a sort of reverse-psychology situation.

Thank you to the publisher for the advance copy.

[jeff coffing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a Carnvore

I learned a lot reading Sam’s book
My biggest take away is that I really identify with being Carnivore never thought about it before. I came to peace with some of my success’s and failures
Great book for introspection and improving your sales skills

[Ryan Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book for those that are looking to reignite some of the passion they might have lost in sales over time. While the book focuses mostly on D2D sales there are many takeaways that can be applied to any field of sales for any product. 4.2/5

[Steve Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have selected this book as Stevo's Business Book of the Week for the week of 2/23, as it stands heads above other recently published books on this topic.

[Savon Moniz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read! Every sales rep has to get it

[Naomi Bombardier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will read again.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic insight into sales and how best to maximize your potential. Good read to decide if a career is right for you