Office Hours - Episode 4 - Cracking The Code On Sales Career Advancement

Deciding on the next step in your professional journey is never easy, especially when you are a top performer eyeing a leadership position. In this episode, Mark Cox and Dave Hanley discuss sales career advancement, offering a roadmap for high-performing salespeople who are contemplating a transition into management. Beyond the promotion, they explore the complexities of internal sales approvals and the delicate balance between managing existing accounts and driving new business. Listen in as they provide tactical advice on building a sales playbook, prioritizing your time effectively, and ensuring you have the right support before making the leap into a leadership role.

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Office Hours- episode4 - Cracking The Code On Sales Career Advancement

Dave, welcome back to the show. Thanks for driving this. We're in Friday casual attire.

It’s good to see you. It's a short week here in the US. I get the joy of celebrating both Canada Day and Independence Day here.

A Canadian in the US. I notice you enjoy celebrating all holidays.

I try. It's important.

Lots of different nationalities. Multicountries. You're on the Tim Ferriss one-day workweek.

I'm trying.

Dave, what do we have?

Transitioning From Top Salesperson To Effective Sales Manager

We got some good ones. The first one in particular is something that is always a tough one. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this, and we can talk through it. Question one is from Sharon. Sharon says, “I'm currently the most senior salesperson in a small but growing company. The CEO has approached me about moving into a sales manager role, but I'm not quite sure whether I want this opportunity or not. I enjoy my day-to-day, but I am curious whether this is the natural next step for me. How should I think about this opportunity?”

Sharon, what a great question. We can take our time on this one. You're in a great position to weigh in on this as well. Sharon, there are probably three ways to look at this when this opportunity presents itself. First, you're looking at it from your perspective. What do you want to do? The second thing would be looking at it from the company perspective. What are they going to do for you? The third might be looking at it from the team's perspective as well.

There are three different ways of looking at it. As always, you've got to start with the why. It's nice that the opportunity presented itself. The first question for you, Sharon, is what do you want to do with your career? When you think of what you're doing and what you're enjoying in your lifestyle, only you can answer that question.

 What are your career goals and aspirations? What are you looking to do? Are you looking to stay in sales? Do you want to go into management? Are you looking to continue to be ambitious, grow in business, and do other roles and senior management roles outside of sales? Starting there, Sharon, is probably a good starting point, first and foremost. What are you looking to do with your career?

There are a lot of people that we coach and a lot of people that come into our workshops that are career salespeople. They realized early on in their career that they wanted to be direct contributors. They love working with clients. They love autonomy, and frankly, they love mastery. It’s easier to be a direct contributor salesperson, be good at it, and continue to be the Wayne Gretzky of the hockey team when you're playing. It's far more difficult to be the coach of that team.

Sales Career Advancement: It’s easier to be a direct contributor salesperson, be good at it, and continue to be the Wayne Gretzky of the hockey team when you're playing. It's far more difficult to be the coach of that team.

The other thing I’d take a look at, Sharon, as well, particularly because you said it was a small business, and we're a small business, is to take a look and ask yourself how long you have been doing your role. Do you understand sales enough before jumping into management? This is the first filter for all of these things. What's right for you?

One of the things we see very frequently is that because of the growth of the SaaS industry, and it exploded over the last couple of years, a lot of it was outside money coming in. That money had to be spent on sales and marketing teams. That's what the boards wanted to see. They grew too quickly. Those companies did very well, but for the most part, it was order-taking.

What would happen is somebody became an SDR for eight months, then they're managing a team of SDRs, and then they become an outside sales rep. They made every leap too quickly. As long as they were selling for Salesforce or HubSpot in 2016, it was order-taking. They might change industries. They got to a senior management position. They hadn't developed the skills along every stage of the process to be able to compete in a market that might not be growing, where you have to steal market share from somebody else. These are things to think of for you, Sharon.

The second thing that I think about is what's the company going to do for Sharon? Commonly, entrepreneurial companies are the same way. In The Funnel is an entrepreneurial company. Frankly, we're trying to get out of that. We pull a lot from the people who work with us. What Sharon needs to ask is, is the company going to provide any management training, or is she going to stop being a salesperson on a Friday, and on Monday, she's managing the team? Where is the training that's going to help elevate her skillset when she jumps to this next level?

What's the onboarding plan? Oftentimes, the Friday promotion and on Monday, I'm doing the role, what's the expectation? Are we going to give her a reasonable ramp-up to get good at this new job the same way we would give a new salesperson? Does she have 90 days before we're squeezing her to make sure the whole team is hitting their numbers? She's going to be pretty unhappy quickly, and that'll convert into her making the team unhappy pretty quickly. What do you think? Do some of these things resonate with you?

I seem to remember an excerpt from your book. You told the story about going from being the best salesperson on the team to the worst manager on the team. Companies need to be wary of that problem, taking your best salesperson and going, “You're the best salesperson. Let's make you the manager.” Not only did you lose your best salesperson all of a sudden, but you gained a manager that's not very effective.

It is a different skillset. I've seen a lot of people struggle with that transition where they go from getting their hands dirty every day, rolling up their sleeves, and doing deals to having to sit in a room with underperforming salespeople, coach them, and resist the urge to say, “Do this. Here's how you do this.” You have to sit back and say, “I need to coach this person to develop them and make them better.” As opposed to being tactical. You have to be a lot more strategic.

It's so much harder. Then, it is understanding why you want to do that. That was the thing for me. This is a long time ago, but the first time I made the leap, it felt a little late to me. I’d always thought, “I'm going up the ranks. I want to be the CEO of a large corporation. I want to get to senior executive levels at a minimum, so I've got to get going.” I never took the pause and said, “Why do I want to do that? Is it money?” Frankly, if it was money doing certain things, I could have made a lot more money continuing to be a direct contributor.

It's not uncommon for the top salespeople in the company to be making more than the actual sales leader. I've seen that several times.

Frequently. First of all, that comes into play. The second thing is I hadn't reconciled in my own mind that leadership was about developing other people. In my mind, I was still thinking leadership is making me look bigger and better. This is the Friday-to-Monday problem, where everybody on that team is arms and legs helping me get my quota. That's the real job. My quota is eight times larger than it was on Friday. That's the issue.

In fact, looking back, I was a better coach, in that particular instance, to the other seven people on the sales team. I was a better coach to them when I was a peer because I could be balanced and calm. I listened well. I didn't feel any pressure. When they were asking me what to do and how to do it and were looking for coaching, I could give them reasonable feedback. I had a lot of time for them. I enjoyed them. I liked sharing that way.

As soon as I got put into management, with me, there was no ramp-up time. A week later, I'm forecasting for the whole team. I'm looking at them, saying, “You're not getting the job done, and I'm not happy.” Since I didn't know what to do, I defaulted to telling them what to do. Nobody wants to be told what to do.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: When To Hire A Sales Leader

Let's look at this one from the flip side. We have a lot of people who tune in to this show who are entrepreneurs, business owners, or CEOs, and they're running sales. What's the alternative here for them? I know it's not the easiest thing to do where you have a sales team with 3, 4, or 5 people, and you go, “Everyone's doing great. Now, I need some leadership.” Can you bring in somebody from the outside to become that sales leader? That also is a sticky situation. All of a sudden, the salespeople are like, “What's going on here? Why don't you promote one of us?” What does that look like? How do you do that effectively?

First of all, so many of our clients are entrepreneurs. I have a lot of love for entrepreneurs. There is certainly a very specific profile to a successful entrepreneur. There's almost a similar profile at every level. An entrepreneur getting a business from $0 to $5 million, one getting from $5 million to $15 million, one getting from $15 million to $50 million. There are these profiles of entrepreneurs.

My coaching to people tuning in would be that if you've got a sales team under 6 or 7, and you're an entrepreneur. You've got a product in the marketplace and revenue, and you're profitable. I'm sorry to say this, but you have to run the sales team. There are a number of reasons for that. First of all, you need to run the sales organization so that we can figure out how to scale this thing and capture what was in your brain and the way you were able to convince a client, and how you articulated your value proposition, and how you intuitively knew the ideal client profile.

If you're an entrepreneur, you have to run the sales team so that we can figure out how to scale and capture what was in your brain.

We've got to communicate those things to the first team of up to 6 or 7 salespeople. It's important for the entrepreneur to do that because they also start to have empathy for what the sales team is going through. It's going to get them in front of more clients and see it from the salesperson's perspective. They need to get to a point where they have a definitive sales playbook for the business. Meaning, we can articulate and share the value prop. We prioritize the target market. We have a demand generation program. We understand our sales process. We understand sales strategy.

When you get to that point, and you've run the team, and you have a playbook, that's when I'd go away and hire somebody else. You’re like, “Now, I need to get the team to fourteen people or I might need two sales leaders.” That's when I bring somebody else in. If I do it too soon and I try to absolve myself of that ownership and accountability, the new sales leader coming in to manage four people has to go to the owner-operator-entrepreneur so often anyway that it's like the owner-entrepreneur needs to run it.

That's a sweet spot for us. Those companies come to us to coach the entrepreneur to run the sales team. We build the system and the sales operating model with them, which is what we call our sales playbook, then they hand it off to somebody else. We've done that very frequently. We won't step in unless that owner-entrepreneur goes, “I'm in. We're going to be doing sales day one day a week. The funnel is coming in. We're going to be running it. We're going to be coaching the team, doing one-on-ones, and doing some training.” That's what I would suggest to the entrepreneurs that are tuning in.

It's super important to get that playbook in place. A lot of the entrepreneurs that find themselves leading a sales team are like, “I never signed up for this.” They want to bring in somebody that they see as a silver bullet to come in and formalize everything. That very seldom works. That person will come in, and they'll try to bring in whatever they were doing previously, which may or may not be a fit. You might get lucky. Many times, I've seen it fail. That’s a great point.

It's not fair on the person coming in. The cost of a failed new hire, particularly in an entrepreneurial environment, is so expensive. When you bring somebody new into a business, everybody spends so much time ramping them up and sharing information. You expose your client base to them, and then they don't work out. I've brought them out to the clients and all of these kinds of things.

That's my coaching for the entrepreneur. Try to build a playbook. You don't have to engage with companies like ours in consulting. Companies like ours have books that you can read for $25 or an online academy that you can go and learn from. Go to SellingWell.com. Any way you want to ramp up, go and do that. You have to walk in the shoes before you bring somebody else in to try and do it.

Staying Top-Of-Mind During Long Sales Approval Processes

That's great advice. Good stuff.

Thanks.

That’s a big topic.

Thank you so much, Sharon.

Let's move to number two here. For number two, we have Dan. Dan says, “I'm a big fan of the show. I love that you're doing these Office Hours episodes.” That's great. Dan says, “I have something for you that's a little bit more tactical, but I would love your feedback. Once we present a proposal, our clients usually have a pretty long internal process of approvals to shepherd it through to completion. How do I stay engaged with the prospect so that I'm not sitting there wondering what's going on without being a nuisance?”

Nice one, Dan. First of all, when they've got that long process, what you're always trying to do, through discovery, is build that relationship with the client where they get a sense that your primary goal is helping them. The whole intent of our sales process and discovery is that they get a feeling, and they understand truly that you're adding insight, value, and knowledge, and you're trying to help them.

Sales Career Advancement: The whole intent of our sales process and discovery is that they get a feeling, and they understand truly that you're adding insight, value, and knowledge, and you're trying to help them.

You only exit the discovery stage of a sales process when both you and the company believe there's a meaningful desired outcome for the company. There's an opportunity on the table. You both agree. You built a business case and a return on investment that makes this worthwhile for them, and then you do your best to prove that you can help them get there better than anybody else. The truth of it is the way you prove that you can get them better than anybody else is by knowing them better than anybody else. The whole process of discovery enables all of that.

When they then take it and go away, what you're trying to do through discovery is you're trying to work with them to understand, “What is going to happen once we put this together? How do you make a decision on this?” Try to get as much insight as you can. I can only do this after I've earned trust, built some credibility, and built relationships. Too many methodologies out there start to tell you, “I've got to qualify up front.”

Depending upon the size and scale of the offering you've got. You're going to be asking them at some point in time pretty detailed questions, like, “How do we get to a decision? Who's involved? What's important to everybody? Who's got what degree of influence?” Nobody is opening up and telling you all those things unless they completely see you as a consultant trying to help their business. Timing matters on this.

When you're doing all that in discovery, if this does go well, and you've earned the right for that kind of trust and credibility and earned the right to ask those questions, then you won't be seen as a nuisance. You're seen as a partner in the whole process. You might ask them and say, “How do we get from here to a decision?”

Somebody's going to come back and say, “I'm not quite sure. There's an executive steering committee meeting a week from now. First, I'm going to present it to my boss, and then they're going to go into the executive steering committee meeting.” You might help collaborate, think through that with the prospect, and go, “The last time you made a decision like this, what happened?”

I remember back in the day when we were working with you and the great team at RCT, Risk Control Technologies. Even having that kind of conversation, I remember you said that oftentimes, when you asked some of the buyers that question, they'd say, “We're going to go to my boss and then go to an executive steering committee, and they're going to make a decision.” You were smart enough to ask them, “When does IT get involved in this? How do they sign up?”

They were like, “Good point. Maybe we should include that in the process.” We've been burned so many times on somebody not including that in the process. It’s a great example.

That would be such a great example when you ask them that, and they go, “That's a pretty good question. I haven’t even thought about it.” It’s like, “I'm glad I brought it up.” First of all, they're saying, “Dave's not just waiting to figure out when he's going to get a signed contract. Dave is helping me do the right thing.” I remember you used to say, “How can I help you in that IT meeting?” I said, “We do this all the time. We know the 5 or 6 things you're going to ask and look for. Can I join you for that? Can I help in any way?” What a great way to slow down to speed up.

Specifically in a larger enterprise-type sale, the role of a salesperson is not to go in and be like, “Let's close these guys.” It's more like a project manager. I read a great book a little while ago. I don't know if you've read this one. It's called Selling With. It's by a guy named Nate Nasralla. The concept is that people think that salespeople are in there, closing deals.

He says over 90% of B2B selling happens during internal meetings. As a salesperson, how can you help the internal conversations move forward with you or without you in the room? It's a great read. It shifts the mindset, certainly of people who have that, “We've got to close this deal,” to, “We're here as facilitators. We're trying to help the prospect get this deal over the finish line. How can we do that?”

Over 90% of B2B selling happens during internal meetings. As a salesperson, how can you help the internal conversations move forward with you or without you in the room?

It's very similar to Brent Adamson. He was the original author, with Matt Dixon, of The Challenger Sale. There was The Challenger Customer and a couple of lead-ons. He wrote an article in HBR called Sensemaking in Sales that elevated to a book called The Framemaking Sale. We interviewed him on that. If you're tuning in to this episode, all you have to do is go back 4 or 5 episodes. We talked to him about it. It's the exact same thing. He said that the role of the salesperson is, first, you're trying to get an organization to say, “There's some pain we need to solve for.”

A lot of times, you're trying to say, “We want to give you confidence that we're the right company to help fix that pain.” He said that the real issue is you need to help the buying group get confidence that they're making the right decision. Not that they’re picking you, but they know they need confidence to make the right decision. It will inoculate against the biggest threat, which is the threat of doing nothing. They need to develop that confidence to make the right decision. When they're losing confidence, they do nothing. It’s an interesting topic.

The long and short of it is these things all keep coming back to this constant theme that says, “We're consultants. We have to calm down.” All those questions you asked about, “What's going on in the timing and the qualification?” Salespeople ask those questions because their boss asks those questions. The boss is trying to forecast deals and does nothing but say, “What's the qualification? Is it qualified?”

What we need to do is figure out how we work less, win more, and earn the right to be able to spend more time with the deals that matter because they are our ideal client profile. They're big enough for us. They matter. We know we can win because we add value. There's a lot of doing less and being better required in professional sales.

Good stuff. I love it. It's a good one, Dan.

Thanks, Dan.

Prioritizing New Business While Managing Existing Accounts

That was a good topic. Lots of good stuff. We got one more. We got Ravi here. Ravi says, “I'm a senior account executive. As part of my role, I'm tasked with bringing in new business as well as managing existing relationships to drive incremental revenue. I often find myself having difficulty prioritizing because my existing clients take up a lot of my time,” which I've seen before. He said, “The way our commission structure is set up is that I have more incentive to bring in new logo revenue. What are some things I can put in place to help me prioritize better?”

Let's spin it around. I got a lot of thoughts on this one. Why don't you start? What do you think?

Structurally, there is often the case where a sales rep is tasked with both of these things. As a company evolves and gets larger, they should scratch their heads to think about whether that's the right structure or whether they should have some kind of account management to take on existing clients. When you have somebody that's good at bringing in new business, they should be focused on that 100%.

Specifically on a tactical level for Ravi, think about time-blocking. It's like, “I'm setting aside Monday, Wednesday, half of Thursday,” or whatever it may be in terms of how much time you want to allocate. It's like, “I'm not doing anything in terms of existing customers. I'm only doing outbound.” Put your computer in Do Not Disturb. Do your research. Do your outreach. Put the blinders on and get that stuff done. That stuff is hard. You sit in a sales kickoff with 100 salespeople and go, “Who here loves prospecting?” There are not that many freaks that are putting up their hands up there, going, “I love being rejected all day long 90% of the time.” It's not that fun.

The real issue is you need to help the buying group get confidence that they're making the right decision.

That was my favorite answer.

It's so easy when you're doing both. It’s like, “A client emailed me. I better get back to them ASAP.” You’re tricking yourself into not doing the hard work. That’s the most tactical, simple way to address this. I would love to hear your thoughts.

I have a couple of thoughts. I agree on all fronts there. We're in this unique world where it is evolving. You do get someone who's not just an account manager and not doing outbound demand generation. It's a bit of a combination of both. Most organizations are coming and saying, “I need the revenue.” It's so hard to hit the revenue number.

There are always those spiffs for new logos. The first thing starts with basic territory management. Let's take a look at our client base. Let's say I've got 50 clients. How do I want to prioritize and spend my time with my existing clients, and then how do I prioritize and spend my time going after demand generation? It all starts with thinking through it first.

With my existing clients, how do I prioritize spending time with the biggest clients? I've got to do it. The second level is those clients that have the most upside potential. They might be my competitors' biggest clients where I get nickels and dimes. It's creating the short list and saying, “My job is to create sell cycles and grow business. How am I going to grow that business? Part of it is my largest clients. Presumably, there are other things I can be doing. Secondly, there are other clients that have been very little with us, but have a lot of upside potential. Let me get in and check that out.”

On the demand generation front, I have to prioritize the pursuit of that market. What happens with demand generation is anybody who's got a pulse, who responds to anything I do, salespeople are going to want this tendency to say, “I'm going to go after their new logo. I'll take the meeting. I'm going to work on it. I've got a friendly person. Our kids play soccer.” You're wasting time. We have to prioritize the account we want. It's much harder to get in front of those accounts and have that conversation, but if we do, the upside is much greater.

All new logos are not the same. We have to prioritize. Depending upon your business, your industry, how contracts are structured, renewal dates, and all those kinds of things, sometimes you are locked out of an account for a while. In other businesses, you're not. You can get in and start chipping away. Think about that. It always starts with this ideal client profile. Whether it's my existing clients or a new client, who's the ideal client profile for us? What's my value proposition to them?

One of the things that's a trigger for us is there are certain clients that are going to value what we do, and there are certain clients that won't. I'll use an example. On paper, you might be a $50 million SaaS business. You might have a large sales organization, and they need training and coaching. There are going to be behavioral aspects or more subtle aspects to that ideal client profile after I speak to the CEO.

Some CEOs will come to us and go, “I have the best product in the market by a country mile. My sales team is terrible. They should be doing way better. Come on in and train them. They either make it, or they don't, but I churned them. Who couldn't sell this product? Every time I go to an account, I win it.” Those kinds of CEOs have a view of the profession of sales. We don't agree with their view at all.

We have another type of CEO in the same company and the same sales organization who say, “I believe one of the competitive differentiations we have in our marketplace is we sell better than competitors. We're trying to help a client. We're not in love with our own product, but I do want to help elevate and invest in my team to make them better because we believe selling can be a competitive differentiation.” That's our client. That's the one we want to work with. It’s thinking through that ideal client profile for you and how you go through the pain of having that first meeting.

Team, another tactic for demand generation is not something people love. It's easier if you're in the Peloton. This is a very difficult thing to do. If you're isolated, working remotely, and trying to do it on your own, help yourself out. Book in time with your other four sales reps. It’s like, “None of us want to do this, but we need to. Every Wednesday, let's jump on a call at 8:00 in the morning with a beautiful cappuccino in front of us.”

“We're all going to share the twenty companies that we're going to reach out to. We’ll go around the room and go, ‘Does everybody have the name, validated number, and validated email?’ To the best of our ability, we validated them as ideal clients for us. We're all getting back on this call in two hours.” We're going to go around the room and go, “How many people did you reach out to? How many people did you have a live conversation with?”

“If you didn't get the live conversation, you had to leave a voicemail. Did you also complete your hat trick, which is to leave a voicemail, an email, and a LinkedIn note? Do the hat trick. Every time you reach out, do three things because you never know what somebody's checking.” It is going through that with a team and then getting back on at 11:00 or 10:00. Maybe we did it back with you.

We were also sitting in the same room together, so it was even more fun.

Somebody's going to have success.

It's not only that you get back on the call and you're sharing, “I got this great prospect.” You're also going, “You should have heard what this one guy said to me.” It’s commiserating a little bit and having a little bit of fun with it because it's a tough job, for sure.

It's a tough job, but you've got to keep doing it. There's slow prospecting, and there's fast prospecting. To me, the phone is still a fast-prospecting tool. It still does work. If you go to HubSpot, Salesforce, and all these places, always download their latest state of sales. It'll validate that you can connect with people and get a meeting with people. It takes professional persistence, for sure.

For slow prospecting, we love the idea of always building your network on something like LinkedIn. Don't connect and pitch, but do build your network of people and expand your base. If you're going into every conversation thinking about adding value, insight, and knowledge to the client or prospect, and you work very hard so you can be able to do that, from a mindset perspective, as long as you're giving, it's much easier doing demand generation.

One more thought for Ravi. The existing clients that are taking up a lot of his time, it's worth looking at that as well, as one more thing to say. What is this time being spent doing? Is it revenue-generating activities, or is he going to have lunch with them and build rapport? Not that you never want to do that, but you want to systematize that. Look at what you're spending your time on. Are you having lunch, or are you setting up a quarterly health check meeting to see where there's more opportunity in the account?

Maximizing Client Relationships With Strategic Health Checks

Thank you for bringing up the health check. Team, you can check out the health check component of the book. We talked about the health check meeting. There's also a video in the Selling Well Academy at www.SellingWell.com. Check that out. The idea of the health check is I'm setting up a regular quarterly touchpoint or twice-annual touchpoint with somebody where we're learning about them and their business, and then understanding their perception of how we're helping them achieve their most important desired outcomes. It does, at times, give us a chance to share what we're up to.

Sometimes, when you structure it this way, then when you do want to launch whatever, it can be pure relationship-building. You have that cadence to get in front of this important conversation with your existing clients so that you're understanding where they're going. That's going to identify for you, “Is there future opportunity within that account, or have we maxed out what we can do, and now it's about making sure service delivery is 10 out of 10? We're constantly building a moat around that particular account, so our competitors can't penetrate it.”

Your clients are much better when they prepare for those conversations and give you thoughtful feedback. They can't do that when you take them out for lunch and ask them off the cuff, “How are we doing?” There are a bunch of cognitive biases that are going to be entirely based on what happened to them. That was a great question, Ravi. It’s a challenge for all of us.

Another good episode. We had some good questions from readers. As you always say, keep them coming. There are no questions too big or too small. Whether you're an SDR all the way up to the sales leader or the CEO, a lot of this stuff comes down to the same principles. It's worth talking through this stuff.

It's one of the most difficult things in business. Most organizations out there, if you gave them truth serum, they wish they were growing faster. It's a hard thing to do. It's a tough business discipline for every business out there. It's probably not getting easier with uncertainty at the macroeconomic level and all of these things that come down. We appreciate your questions, everybody. Thanks for sending them in. When you see these links on LinkedIn, you can fire questions to either Dave Hanley or me, Mark Cox, through LinkedIn. We'll add them to the show. We'll see you next time. Dave, thanks as always for hosting these.

Thanks.

Important Links

• In The Funnel Academy

• Framemaking Sale: Improving The Buying Experience with Brent Adamson

• Selling With

• The Challenger Sale

• The Challenger Customer

• The Framemaking Sale

The Selling Well Podcast – It's Lonely At The Top With Nancy MacKay

Are you a leader struggling with isolation and burnout? Discover actionable CEO leadership strategies that help you inspire yourself and your team while driving long-term success. In this episode, host Mark Cox welcomes Nancy MacKay, the Founder and CEO of MacKay CEO Forums. Nancy discusses her acclaimed book, It’s Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team, and reveals how to master the "House of Ego" versus the "House of Leadership." Whether you are a CEO or a sales professional, this conversation offers a powerful roadmap for taking ownership of your time, health, and emotional well-being to lead more effectively.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Selling Well Podcast – It's Lonely At The Top With Nancy MacKay

We've got a great show for you. We’re interviewing Nancy MacKay. Nancy is the Founder and CEO of MacKay CEO Forums: Peer Learning Groups for CEOs. She's also the author of this fantastic book, It's Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself. As you all know, we run the show and talk with these thought leaders on mindset, coaching, leadership, and sales. This book is not just a book about CEO leadership. It's almost a book about self-leadership. It's fantastic the way it's been put together.

Nancy's got what she calls the MacKay Mastery Framework that talks about Time Mastery, Ego Mastery, Proactive Health Mastery, Relationship Mastery, Passion Mastery, Innovation Mastery, 100% Responsibility Mastery, Shared Experience Mastery, and then finally, Social Contribution. These ten chapters are laid out with each of these key components.

In this conversation, we talk about three of those chapters in detail. Relationship Mastery, Time Mastery, and Ego Mastery. A lot of these talks about taking care of yourself first, too. Some great thoughts and discussion points about how important it is to manage ourselves first and take care of ourselves both mentally and physically, so that we're in good shape to inspire and lead others.

There's the subtext of the book, CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team. Team, I was certainly inspired by this conversation. I was inspired by reading the book. We only put people on the show whose books we love. I love this book. You will, too. You'll love the conversation. When you do enjoy this show, please like and subscribe. That helps us, team. Thanks for doing that. That's how we get great guests like Nancy MacKay. Here's the episode. Enjoy.

Nancy, welcome to the show.

Meet Nancy McKay: A Journey To CEO Leadership

Thank you for inviting me. I am excited to be here with you.

I'm thrilled to talk to you. Everybody who tunes in to the show knows that the way we invite guests to the show is I read the book first, and then we go and find people when I love their book. This one's a little different. We started working together, and then I read the book.

I love the book. The book I'm talking about is It's Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team. You're going to want to pick up this book. You don't need to be a CEO to get value from this book, as we're going to talk about in the episode here. First and foremost, maybe give us a reasonably short story, but not too short. How did you get to where you are professionally? What was that journey that led you to become the CEO of MacKay CEO Forums?

Thank you for your kind words about the book.

It's great.

I’m quite excited about it. I'm very passionate about helping CEOs. It's heartbreaking to know that so many CEOs are feeling lonely at the top. It doesn't have to be. I'm the Founder and CEO of Mackay CEO Forums. I started the company because I could see that it was lonely at the top. If you surround yourself with successful peers, it's a whole other way to live your life.

It's heartbreaking to know that so many CEOs are feeling lonely at the top, and it doesn't have to be.

How I got here, as an answer to your question, is that there are three chapters of my career. My first chapter was when I was a professor. I taught executive MBA students for many years. I taught leadership, IT strategy, and various topics. I loved teaching and helping CEOs and executives in the audience, and then I realized I wanted to start working directly with CEOs and executives to have an even bigger impact. That's when the second chapter of my career started as a consultant.

I did a lot of work with global companies. I spent some time at Ernst & Young, which was the best career decision I made. You heard me tell the story. I met the love of my life, Robert, who is my husband of nearly 30 years and my business partner. We worked together at Ernst & Young. Chapter three is my entrepreneurial journey. That's where our kids were going off to grade school. I said, “Rob, it's time for us to quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs.”

After 90 days of panic attacks, what have we done with two little kids and a big mortgage? We got through that phase with a lot of support from mentors, coaches, and lots of people who helped. Since then, we've been very passionate about populating the world with inspiring leaders and helping especially Canadian CEOs. That's our main focus. Canadian CEOs and executives.

Having them get access to other successful CEOs to help them solve their toughest problems and maximize their best opportunities. We've had over 5,000 Canadian CEOs and executives participate. We continue to focus on what we can continue to do to raise awareness that it doesn't have to be lonely at the top and support the Canadian business community.

First of all, thank you. What a great story. I did my MBA in an executive format, too. I can see why you would have loved being a professor because that was fun. It was challenging to do an executive MBA, but it was so much fun. What a great start to a foundation for what you've done. I love the way the book is structured. For every topic that we get into, there's this concept that's shared. There is evidence and facts that back it up, daily success habits, and then an end-of-chapter check-in. In addition to being some great information for all of us out there, it's also a great read. It's an interesting read.

The first thing that hit me is you talked about heartbreaking things in terms of what's going on with some CEOs. You reference a Deloitte study that said 70% of C-suite executives have seriously considered quitting their job for one that better supports their wellbeing. Two paragraphs earlier, you talked about this leadership quarterly note that leadership loneliness is unique and different from general loneliness. How unique and strange. Why is it? Let's start there. Why is it so lonely at the top? Why are they going through all of these challenges with loneliness? What causes that loneliness?

Why It’s Lonely At The Top: Leadership Loneliness

It's quite interesting that as a CEO, I'm spending all day long talking to people and being with people. It's not like I'm not having human connections. It's that for CEOs, there are challenges and opportunities where we can't talk to our boards, our top team, and our significant other or spouse. It's pretty hard to be inspired every day to jump out of bed in the morning and make a big impact when we're feeling lonely and isolated. The key is that we make bad decisions and a lot of mistakes when we're leading alone.

A lot of CEOs will reach out to their buddies or whoever it is. At the same time, we live in this exponential change world. Having a ready-made group of fourteen peers, non-competitors, to help you solve those problems is so much more time-effective than reaching out and trying to find somebody that might be able to help you. You can access ready-made peer groups, whether it's with MacKay or any peer group organization. Surround yourself with a group of peers. You're going to save a lot of time. You're going to be a lot more successful.

For me, ever since I started MacKay CEO Forums years ago, I'm very passionate about helping CEOs with their careers, and I don't want them to sacrifice their health and their important personal and family relationships. When you sit around and hear other CEOs talking about, “I work out every day or I've been able to figure out how to set boundaries, so I can have date night with my wife or I'm able to find ways to keep up my hobbies,” and what have you. It's so powerful to hear other people that are walking in your shoes figuring it out so you can all figure it out together.

We're going to get into the different areas of mastery in the MacKay Mastery Model. It's so critically important. It's so logical the way you've laid these things out. Hearing it and reading it sometimes is such a good refresher and reminder to us all. I had this conversation coincidentally with someone over lunch. A person tuning in to the show will remember this.

They were a very senior C-Suite executive. They said that after going to Medcan and getting some news about something, they had this epiphany that said, “I have to take care of myself first.” Medcan, for American readers, is concierge health. It's where we go for more significant concierge health. The whole idea here is it doesn't have to get to that. Whether it's a physical challenge, a mental health challenge, or anything, there are ways of setting these boundaries. There are ways of building that model.

I love the way you came up with this structure, the mastery model, during some of the toughest times for all of us. During COVID, you started to take a look inside and say what was providing you with inner strength, fortitude, and energy. The elements of the mastery model are the chapters of the book. We talk about time mastery, ego mastery, and proactive health. We talked about that mastery. We talk about relationship mastery, passion mastery, innovation, 100% responsibility mastery, shared experience mastery, and then social contribution mastery.

I love the way it's laid out because each chapter is such a clean read. I've been reading this over the last week. I mentioned to Nancy that I used one of the habits, which was very helpful in a situation, talking about relationship mastery. I put myself in a better frame of mind because I remembered I loved not the behavior, but that the person was very helpful.

In this episode, we're not going to go through every chapter in detail because we've got time constraints. You're going to do that when you click on the link and buy the book. You'll be glad you did. You can send me the notes and tell me that. I'm going to pick a couple that were favorites for me to talk about, if that's okay.

We start the whole book by saying, “You go first.” The quote I liked you put in was, “CEOs who truly excel find deep fulfillment while delivering exceptional results. They all share one critical trait they've mastered. The ability to inspire themselves first before attempting to inspire others lies at the heart of everything.” Let's talk about that. Why is it so critical that we inspire ourselves so that we want to jump out of bed engaged at 4:00 in the morning before we try to run our companies or sales teams, for that matter?

Inspiring Yourself First: The Mastery Framework

I'm glad you used Medcan as an example because they're one of our national partners. They support all of our members across Canada to make health their number one priority. I'm often quoted as saying, “Dead CEOs don't meet their targets,” because twenty years of listening to CEOs in their peer group meetings, not getting their annual health checks, and not doing preventive assessments is heartbreaking. They are so talented, and yet, they don't take care of themselves first. That is a fundamental philosophy that I have in leadership.

I have spent twenty years helping people become more effective leaders through peer support when I was a professor, consultant, and what have you. I came to this conclusion, especially during COVID, that it all starts with me. If I can't figure out how to inspire myself every day so that I can show up as the best version of myself, not just at work, but even more importantly, our kids are more important to me than anyone else, I want to be doing everything I can every single day.

I'm showing up as an inspired human being and making the biggest contribution to the people around me in all aspects of my life. That takes a lot of work. It's not a simple thing to figure out. All the different ten chapters of the book, like passion mastery, emotional mastery, and all these things that you mentioned, are a daily journey of blocking the time so I have time for me.

I make sure I work out every day. I make sure I do my mental fitness. I make sure I spend time with my husband and my kids. There are all these sorts of things every day, every week, every month, and what have you. All of that is part of how I feel like I'm living a dream life. I'm not trying to be Pollyanna. There are lots of bumps in all aspects of my life. When I start by saying, “I need to figure out how I can show up every day as the best version of myself.” It’s a full stop. I don't spend my days going, “How am I going to inspire everybody else?” I don't know what's going to inspire you.

I'm glad you said the book is not just for CEOs. That's the main target because that's been my world for twenty years. I want that toolkit for everyone because then they can figure out how to inspire themselves and take that 100% responsibility and accountability. You're not waiting around for the boss or somebody else. It's a very fundamental principle of leadership. Focus on yourself, and you can be an exemplar for others to then learn and grow. We're all on the journey together is the way I see it.

Leadership is just focus on yourself and you can be an exemplar for others to then learn and grow.

That is so well said. You're right. I was reading the book, and it touched everything for me. At heart, I'm a sales leader. I know I run a company, I'm an entrepreneur, and all those kinds of things, but if you look at my passport, it says sales leader. I thought about the first early days of being a sales leader, and I was so confused by the role. It was a very difficult time for me. I was not good at it when I started doing this many years ago, running large sales teams.

At one point in time, I remember having a conversation with somebody on the team who was a good performer. I almost dropped this thing, saying, “If this keeps up, hopefully, we could see about getting you promoted. You could step into my role. At some point in time, you can run other people.” He said, “That's the last thing I'd ever want to do.”

I said, “You seem so ambitious. Why wouldn't you do it?” He shared and said, “It’s because you're so unhappy. You make it look so awful.” What a wake-up call. He was right. I was unhappy. I didn't have these strategies. I saw the team as tools for me to hit my bigger goal. I didn't understand the job was about elevating them. It was such a great piece of direct feedback that was so helpful to me back then. We're different now.

During the Proactive Health Mastery, you can talk about the fitness regimen Nancy has. She's at the caliber of a semi-pro athlete. Peloton five times a day, Zumba, and weight training remotely. I got tired of reading it. For me, I've got a good fitness regimen. I prioritize working out because of mental fitness. The better I feel physically, the better everything else works.

If it's okay with you, let's jump into a couple of chapters. I'll be selfish here. These are the ones that either resonated with me or are going to be resonating with everybody who tunes in to our show, not just CEOs, but sales leaders, salespeople, and lots of different business professionals. Chapter three is Ego. A couple of things resonated with me.

First of all, I talked about these models and methodologies. The House of Ego is becoming aware of the negative state and the use of thousands of thoughts. This House of Ego is built on looking good. Who hasn't been there? Our brains are wired that we want to look good. We don't want to look silly or look exposed. Playing the blame game, judging from a high horse, being defensive, and being right. Tell me a little bit about that. First, we'll talk about the House of Ego, and then what do we do about it to get back to the house of leadership?

Mastering Ego: From Negative States To Leadership

The House of Ego is such a great way to help people build awareness. Generally speaking, when someone is in a negative emotional state, they're angry, frustrated, annoyed, stressed out, and freaked out. They feel all the negative emotions. Guaranteed, your ego is going to be very loud. A number one tip I give people on how to learn how to park your ego is when you're in a negative emotional state, do not talk to another human being. Do not pick up the phone. Do not send an email and copy everyone you know. I call it crazy talk. We say things that we would never say if we were in the House of Leadership, which is showing up as the best version of ourselves.

When someone is in a negative emotional state—angry, frustrated, stressed out—your ego is going to be very loud.

This ego gets in the way of relationships, wastes a lot of time, and causes a lot of huge mistakes to be made when people are in ego talk. You have to become self-aware. If you're in a negative emotional state, you want to take a deep breath, and you want to get yourself into a positive emotional state before you interact with other human beings. That's a fundamental leadership principle.

Most people are not self-aware that they're in a negative emotional state. They're showing up in the House of Ego 80% of the time. The number one thing is I want people to become aware. We're all human. I get into ego talk, too. My husband and kids will tell you that I'm not perfect. I keep getting better, to your point. It's a lifelong journey to master each one of these areas of leadership and self-leadership.

Become aware that you're in a negative emotional state. Don't point the finger at the people. Point the finger at yourself. How do you get yourself into a positive state? The number one way to do that is to focus on success, winning, and what you want. It's impossible to be in a negative state and have ego talk when you're getting yourself into, “What does success look like? What is it I want? What does winning look like?” That's the opposite. That's the House of Leadership, when you get yourself into a positive state. There's a lot more to it, but that's the principle of how you learn how to park your ego.

The most important thing is when someone else shows up, and they're sending you a nasty email, like, “How dare you do this?” or they get defensive, or they play a blame game, or they're making you wrong, most people fall into that trap of, “Now I have to get back.” Then, two egos are talking to each other. Nothing good can come from that.

When you see someone else in their ego talk or in a negative emotional state, the number one thing you want to do is have compassion and realize that this person is in a negative emotional state, and they're saying things that they're going to regret. Instead of making them wrong and getting into it, you want to say, “I'm so sorry to hear that you're upset or angry. I've got some tools in there.” Mirror back, validate what they said, and have empathy. That's the very fundamental leadership toolkit of how you park your ego and not judge other people when they're in a negative ego state. The world would be a much better place if every single human being on the planet could learn that chapter of Ego Mastery.

When you see someone else in their ego talk, the number one thing you want to do is have compassion and realize they're just having a negative reaction.

We'll double-click on that. I love that thought. It’s not just about managing our own emotional state. The book is pretty clear that nobody is going to be in the perfect emotional state 100% of the time. Let's play with the 80 rule. Eight out of ten times, 80% of the time, being in the right emotional state. I love how you say we've got to take ownership and accountability for that, and then identify when a trigger is coming.

For me, there are things even in a business setting that I find as triggers. I've been open. We've talked about this on the show. Those are things like a lack of accountability or complacency. We're not a large corporation, but working with large corporations, you're going to come across some people who are not just disengaged, but they're actively disengaged. We’ll get into the Deloitte research later on.

Those things are triggers for me. I recognize that coming, and I go, “Don't respond.” I've got the lizard brain that everybody else has, so everything in me is screaming, “You're right. Address this a certain way.” It never works that well. It's never the right thing to do. We'll double-click on MV and CVA when you're in the House of Leadership. MVA means Mirror, Validate, and Empathize. CVA means show you Care, be Vulnerable, and be Assertive. These are ways we show up in our best selves. These are all elements of the House of Leadership. The roof is to give others credit.

This is one of the things I love so much about the book. I find that there are these universal wisdoms that you’ve captured from multiple different sources and developed yourself. You did the old Mark Twain thing. The Mark Twain quote is, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had taken more time, I would have written you the short letter.” You took the time to write the short letter so people like me can process it. You can capture it and apply it in those daily habits to get a little better.

You talked about that emotional state. I found one of the things I found most interesting. You are a Time Mastery expert. You and Nico Human wrote another book, which is I Don’t Have Time. It’s a bestselling book. It is also a great, quick read. You want to pick that one up. When I read chapter two, Time Mastery, I was thinking we're going to get into schedules and being tight. There was nothing about that. It was so great where it said, “We take this up a level.”

Let's talk about the gaps or the problems that a CEO gets in trouble with. Where do they get in trouble in terms of their Time Mastery? Number one, the 724 mistake, which is, “I've got to work all day, every day, and every night. I've got to be exhausted to get the work done.” Number two, the do-it-yourself syndrome. It’s like, “I've got to do everything. Nobody can do it as well as me. I'm great at everything.”

It is tied to this third one, which is making poor decisions in a bad emotional state. The amount of time you waste because you're trying to fix something. You have to go back again. Tell us a little bit about other strategies on the Time Mastery front. You also touched on a cool happiness formula, which is pretty important for people to know.

Time Mastery And Breaking The 24/7 Mindset

This is why Nico and I wrote the book called I Don't Have Time. It is because we consistently hear CEOs saying, “I don't have time to do my annual health check. I don't have time to spend with my wife or my kids.” That's a mindset. Time Mastery, in my view, is a mindset that you have 100 waking hours a week if you get the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. We all have time. We have 100-plus waking hours a week.

Time mastery is a mindset. We have 100 plus waking hours a week, and time mastery is really about taking the time to think about how much time I need to take care of me.

Time Mastery is about taking the time to think, “How much time do I need every day to take care of me, my health, my fitness, and my me time?” Whatever it is, and blocking that in the calendar. “How much time do I need with my spouse doing date nights? How much time do I need with my kids and any other commitments? How much time do I need to have some free time and hobbies?” Get the vacation time and block it in the calendar. That's the most important of the 100 waking hours.

Whatever time you have remaining, you can do this thing called work. What most CEOs do is they do this thing called work, and they fall into the 24/7 trap because they feel it's the only way to be a successful CEO. They’re like, “I have to work. I'll then stuff in time with my wife or my kids if I can or take care of my health.” The mindset shift is that you go first. Block the time you need to be the best version of yourself. That's not a selfish thing to do. It's a necessary thing to do to get rid of the burnout that we see happening in spades.

It's historic levels of CEO burnout, so much that we have the highest level of CEO resignations. We have CEOs who are done. They're exhausted, burnt out, and overwhelmed. They don’t want to do this AI thing. It's heartbreaking for me because I know that. Figure out that you have 100 waking hours. You're human. You don't have to work 24/7 to be successful. In fact, you'll be more successful if you take care of yourself.

You'd see so much more of it. You've worked with 5,000 CEOs. To me, even as an entrepreneur, that was the hardest concept to get through my head years ago. You have to step away, and when you step away, you'll be better. After years of putting it in, it's so clear to me now. It's so clear to me that my brain will work far better at certain times of the day, for sure.

I like some of Daniel Pink's stuff. I'm way better in the morning. I do stuff where I don't have to be sharp in the afternoon, typically. I've got to step away. When I come back, I have more to give everybody. Not just my team, but our clients want that, too. They're paying for the best version of our team. We've all got to be rested, relaxed, and recharged.

CEO Leadership Strategies: The number one way to get into a positive state is to focus on success, winning, and what you really want.

It's tied to the do-it-yourself. I was coaching a CEO, and he wanted to take some vacation time. He was like, “I can't because there's too much going on.” I'm like, “That's exactly why you need to be taking the time.” The do-it-yourself is, “I'm the only one that can keep the sense of urgency, the momentum, and everything going on. If I take time away, then the whole thing's going to break down.” I'm like, “That's tied to ego. If you're running a company with all these people, this is a pretty significant business. The thing is going to go down because you two take two weeks off? That is not reality.”

We get sucked into the busyness. Oftentimes, it takes someone to hold the mirror to go, “Block the time. Let people know you're not available.” I've said that probably thousands of times to CEOs. I’m like, “Block the time off. The world's not going to end. Other people are going to step up. You're building future leaders. There are about a million reasons why. You have to let go of the do-it-yourself and realize it's about building future leaders and enabling people to step up.” We get in the trap of the do-it-yourself and the 24/7. It causes a lot of burnout. It's a problem.

My experience with some entrepreneurs and some CEOs is that I find they're very good coaches for other people, but it's tough when they're looking in the mirror. We jot some things down on paper, and I say, “If we were talking about somebody else's business that you're not so emotionally connected to, what would you think they should do?” Suddenly, there's a bit of that distance.

These are folks who, I'm assuming, are the same thing as people who run sales organizations, are super confident and super deep in their industry. They've been doing it for years. They have a lot of things that showcase that the way they do things has made them successful. Whatever habits and approaches where they were burning themselves out worked because they became the CEO. Sometimes, breaking those habits is a little bit tricky. I played with that in my own head for a long time when I was running sales organizations. People would say, “You work too hard,” and I go, “It's working for me. Look at the success of that.

How do you earn their trust so they can take the feedback, process it, and work with you? You've got a model here where that's worked. You've had so many major league CEOs working with MacKay for so long. How is it you get them to come in, and then change behaviors, and you build trust and credibility in the organization with these people in such a short period of time?

I have to be honest that the highest-impact way to get people to change their behaviors is sitting around the table with their peers and hearing their peers talk about, “I was in your shoes, and I burnt out and what have you.” That is the most effective way to get the behavior change. They learn from each other. It's an add because then, as their chair, if I'm working with them, and there's a lot of trust, then I have permission to challenge and say, “You can keep doing it the same way. At the same time, what if there was a better way?”

It's so hard to let go of the past. That's one of the biggest challenges. To your point, if you've been successful doing it the same way, why not keep doing it the same way? There's a moment in time with AI and exponential change that's going on. More CEOs are realizing they can't keep doing it the same way. There's too much information coming at them. They have to set those boundaries. They have to be able to take care of themselves and be very focused and strategic around the big rocks that you need to move based on who you are and the influence that you have.

It makes all the sense in the world to me. It's so logical, that support from the peer group, and also in a third-party organization where you're not going to be judged. Sometimes, when you're in your own corporate organization, they say, “HR is there to support you,” and so on and so forth. Sometimes, that's true, but it's not always, so you can't be as vulnerable.

If you're running something major and reporting into a global CEO, you can't go into that meeting and be vulnerable. You're going into that meeting to show that global CEO that you've got things under control, and you're going to hit your goals and objectives. It's nice to have somewhere else to go to say, “These are the things that are tasking me right now or challenging me. I need some help. It feels like a safe space to do it.”

I will reinforce those of you who have been in our workshops. Sometimes, they're private custom workshops for large companies. Frequently, they're public workshops with 3 people from this company and 4 people from that company. We've got a room of 60 people made up of 12 or 15 different companies. The feedback is always that the best learning comes from hearing what somebody else is doing. Different industries with completely different products don't matter. It's the same thing as saying, “I'm interested in seeing what everybody else is doing.”

Given the time, let's talk about one more chapter. Folks, you can already hear the value you're going to get from reading this book. This one's a powerful book. I'm a little old-school, as everybody knows. I love a printed copy of a book. I love a hard copy. I'm going to keep coming back to it. My books are all dog-eared. I always remember there was a piece of research in a book. This is why I have a small number of 100 to 150 books on my bookshelf. They're never going to leave. This is one of them. It's fantastic and beautifully written.

Chapter six is Relationship Mastery. Here's one thing. I got it by the end of the book. I'm an emotional person. I'm a caring and loving person. Friends, family, and even clients would identify me as being warm. Don't chat and contradict me for this, people, but they'd say I'm warm. We reference love quite a bit in this book. Tell me a little bit about the definition of business love.

Relationship Mastery: The Power Of Business Love

You're masterful at showing love.

Thanks.

The work that you've done with me personally and MacKay CEO Forums. You're helping us with our sales playbook. The whole idea of showing love is all about love to every human being. You don't have to love their behaviors. I honestly go through life that it doesn't matter who I'm interacting with. I love every single human being, especially if I'm going to walk into a difficult, challenging conversation.

Someone's upset that they didn't get the promotion, or someone's upset that they're in a conflict with someone else. I get myself into a positive state, and then I remind myself that I love every human being. It doesn't matter how they show up in their behaviors. That helps me. It's that 5:1 ratio of positive and negative. You have to keep the emotional bank account full. It doesn't matter.

It's Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team

I've had people yell, scream, swear at me, and all of that over twenty years of coaching CEOs. I don't take it personally. When someone's in a negative emotional state, it's crazy talk. Why would I take that personally? I feel like, “How do I help them get into a positive state being a caring, vulnerable, and assertive human being?” I’m like, “You're important to me. I understand that you're upset.”

It is using all of that so I can get them in a positive state. I know if I can help people get into a positive state either with me or with each other, then we can problem-solve together. It’s noise when people are saying negative things. Many people take it personally, hold grudges, and write people off. It's not the way to show up.

What a great mental framework for you walking into that meeting. We had a guest on the show, a guy named Dr. Nick Morgan. My memory may not be perfect on this, but he was a coach to professors at Harvard. The long and short of it was he'd had a brain injury as a child where he was in a coma for a very long period of time. He was about 17 or 18. He came out of it, and for a year, he couldn't relate to people. Although he could think and speak properly, he couldn't make human connections. When he came back to normal, he decided to spend the rest of his life on brain science and understanding what was taking place.

I'll get the numbers wrong, but the idea was that when we're interacting with somebody else, there are some conscious triggers that we're going to pick up on. Nancy's smiling at me. I can see her eyes. She's nodding every once in a while, when we're talking. She's got positive body language. There are conscious triggers.

I can say, “Nancy is engaged in this. This is going well.” There are 1000X subconscious triggers where Dr. Nick Morgan definitively said, “People can sense your intent.” It’s so important for interactions with folks when you go in with that mindset. Even if you are having a tough time, people can sense your intent.

For us, in the world of selling, we're always coaching people and saying, “Walk in and try to help somebody. Forget about selling. Forget about building pipelines. If you're a sales leader or CEO, and you're walking into a meeting with a peer or a direct report, figure out how to help them. Your job is to elevate performance. If you go in with some other sort of intent in your back pocket, people can sense it.” I love that mental framework. It also makes you more resilient walking into those meetings that could otherwise be quite uncomfortable.

Resilience And Closing Thoughts

I'm not perfect. Sometimes, I do get defensive. I stop and say to myself, “Did I get enough sleep last night? Did I get my workout in? What got in the way of my ability to show that I am a caring, vulnerable, and assertive human being?” Business is about people. Life is about people. It's worth it to learn how to master relationships. You don't have to be that person that's spreading the negativity virus. You can be that person to lift other people up, especially when they're being challenged and either in their ego talk or in a negative emotional state.

How beautifully said. We'll talk again, for sure. Team, we've been talking about It's Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team. There's nobody out there who is tuning in to our show that shouldn't pick up this book. You're going to get value, insight, and knowledge. Also, Nancy is growth-oriented. There are so many other great authors, some of our old pals that we always loved. I hadn't heard Tony Robbins referenced in a book for a long time. I loved Tony Robbins. I loved that stuff back in the day. It's still relevant. For the people tuning in, they want to learn more about you and MacKay CEO Forums. What's the best way of learning more about what you do?

The best way is our website. They can visit anytime at MacKayCEOForums.com.

Thank you so much for joining me. What a great conversation.

Thank you for inviting me and for all the great work that you're doing. I am excited to be able to introduce you to our MacKay CEO Forums community because of the impact you have on companies, especially at a time here in Canada where we need to help Canadian CEOs win, grow, and have the right sales talent pool and sales playbooks to be able to grow their businesses. I am so grateful for our time together. Thank you for your contribution.

It has been a real pleasure and a privilege working with you. That's going to continue. Thank you. Team, thank you for tuning in to the show. We run this show and talk about coaching, leadership, mindset, and B2B sales to overall improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. We believe in doing that, we're improving the lives of everybody in sales.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the show. If you liked this episode, please like it and share it because that's how we get great guests like Nancy. If there are things we could be doing on the show to make it even more valuable to you, we're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. You can send me an email at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com.Let us know what we can do to make this even more valuable to you. That's my personal email. I respond to every piece of constructive criticism. Please be direct. We love it. In the meantime, I'll catch you on the next episode.

Important Links

• MacKay CEO Forums

• It's Lonely at the Top: CEO Strategies for Inspiring Yourself and Your Team

• I Don't Have Time

• The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Nancy MacKay

Nancy MacKay, PhD is the Founder and CEO of MacKay CEO Forums, a Certified B Corp driven by her mission to populate the world with inspiring leaders. Since founding the organization in 2005, Nancy has supported CEOs, executives, and business owners through confidential, high-impact, and time-efficient peer learning, building a community of more than 1,300 leaders across Canada. Today, MacKay CEO Forums is facilitated by 60+ Forum Chairs and delivers an independently measured ROI of 708%.

A seasoned CEO coach, keynote speaker, former university professor, and best-selling author, Nancy is known for translating the real pressures of leadership into practical strategies that drive clarity, performance, and resilience.

She is the co-author of I Don’t Have Time with Nico Human and has co-written The Modern Trusted Advisor and The Talent Advantage with Alan Weiss. Her forthcoming book with Forbes, It’s Lonely at the Top, explores how leaders inspire themselves and others while navigating the isolation of senior leadership. She also hosts the podcast It’s Lonely at the Top, featuring candid conversations with CEOs about the realities of leadership.

Nancy serves on the boards of the GenWell Project and the Rick Hansen Foundation Campaign Cabinet and co-chairs the Vancouver Committee for Canada’s Great Kitchen Party.

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 3

Are your sales demos causing more confusion than conversion? In this episode of ITF Office Hours, Mark Cox and Dave Hanley dive into the trenches of B2B sales to help you stop wasting time and start closing the right deals. We’re breaking down actionable strategies to turn your product demos into high-impact conversations, how to coach your SDRs to identify your ideal customer profile, and the art of asking for referrals without the awkwardness. If you’re ready to stop the "glaze-over" effect and build a more profitable sales pipeline, tune in for practical, no-nonsense coaching on mastering your sales process.

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Watch the Episode here

Listen to the Podcast here

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 3

Team, welcome back to another episode of ITF Office Hours. By the way, this format mirrors what we do oftentimes when doing deep consulting with clients. In addition, the formal meetings we are coaching on and running, and the formal training we are running, we oftentimes just select an hour one day of the week, probably over lunchtime, and it is back to the university days of office hours, where people can just drop in and have a quick conversation with me about anything.

You never know how big the lineup is going to be to get in the office, but you get some one-on-one time. We will continue on with that. Again, we have got our Sergeant at Arms, Dave Hanley, a three-time founder and CEO, certainly somebody who has built sales organizations literally from the ground up. I would like to thank everybody, by the way, for continuing to send in your great questions and queries. That is what feeds the office hours here. Dave, good morning. How are you doing?

Mark, we have got a long weekend down here, and you had a long weekend up there last week. Looking forward to a good one this weekend. Neither of us is really working very hard.

We are just skating through here, running podcasts. How does the digital mailbag look this week, Dave?

We got a couple of good ones this week, a good selection. It looks like this week we have got, I know in, I think the last couple of episodes we have had a few that were kind of management leadership focused. We have actually got some from people who are out there pounding the pavement, hitting the phones, and doing the deal. We have got some sales questions from account execs and sales reps. Why do we kick things off here?

Let us do it.

For question number one, we have Rick, and he says, "I am a SaaS account executive. One of my main roles is doing demos for prospects. We never really got any training or guidance on doing the demo, other than simply learning the product inside out. I feel like a lot of the time, the prospect's eyes glaze over in these demos. What is the best approach for making the product resonate with a demo?"

Making The Product Resonate Through Discovery Instead Of Feature Dumping

Listen, gang, this is a question we get asked loads and loads of times. In fact, one of our most popular LinkedIn posts or blogs ever was one that Dave Hanley wrote for In the Funnel, talking about doing demos. Just a couple of high-level thoughts to think about first. Companies do not buy technology. They buy what the technology does for them. We created this demo process thinking we could pitch a product twenty years ago, and just by showing a product, somebody would buy it because it looks so great.

The first thing is just getting this concept through our heads, which is that nobody buys technology. Actually, buy what the technology is going to do for them. If you have to get to the point of doing a demo at any point in time, really, we are using that as a trigger to do work before that demo and then do work after that demo to truly understand what this technology is going to do for our client's business or a prospect's business. When we go back to our models, this is all discovery. By the way, if somebody says, "I want a demo," which I am sure happens lots of times because people still have those digital journeys where a prospect can ask for one of these, that is fine.

Nobody buys technology. People buy what the technology will do for them.

That also gives me the opportunity to reach out to them as an account executive and say, "Listen, I am looking forward to showcasing our capabilities here. Before we do that, to make sure I make the best use of your time, let us talk a little bit about you and your business and what you are hoping this technology is going to do for you." I would absolutely do that to prepare for something like a demo with everybody who is going to be in the demo. I want to walk into a room and make sure that I already know what they want to see and get out of it.

By the way, I am also going to walk into that room knowing I want more conversation about this before I start showing technology, because of course, eyes are going to glaze over when you start talking to somebody. I would be much more interested in figuring out how this is going to help them run a business. That is how you start the “demo.” Let us say I did not get a chance, by the way, Dave, to interact with people in advance of the demo. Maybe when I walk into the room, if there are a couple of people there that I have met before, I might say, "Listen, team, let us just get aligned on what we are trying to do here.

What we want to do is figure out how to drive an outcome for your business that is meaningful. I have got technology. Of course, I love my own technology, but I am more interested in understanding how this can help you and your business. Why don't we go through the room here and you just let me know exactly what you do for the Hanley company, and let me know why you are in the room, and what you are looking to get out of the next 30 or 45 minutes with me." This gets people engaged, Dave. At the beginning, we started to have this conversation.

Most of the competitors that you are going to be up against will not be doing that, because this is not the norm. Most companies are like, feature, feature, feature. Look at how many features we have. The people in the room are like, "I am confused. Where are we?"

Tracking Prospect Needs And Confirming Value During The Demo

We will come back to the features in a sec. That is great. Once we go through the room, I am going to digitally let us say I am on a Zoom call. We have people all over the world digitally. I am going to keep track of what they said they want to see. Whether I am using my AI assistant to keep track of what they say, whether I am doing whiteboarding in the digital room to keep track, but say, "Dave, one of the things that you said was really important to you when you are thinking about a sales enablement technology is you want to make sure that when I am in a live conversation with someone, the technology is prompting me with questions that I can ask."

I am going to do that when I am going through the demo, I might show that and go, "Dave, does this meet your needs? Is this what you wanted to see? What questions might you have?" If you come back and go, "Yes, I think this would be super helpful," 90% of salespeople go fantastic, and they write a little check mark down. Ten percent of salespeople go, "That is great, Dave. Why would this be so helpful? Tell me more."

It is going to save us time. Exactly how does it save you time? You are getting into this conversation where you are trying to help them, and you start to build this business case of how this technology can drive a better outcome for somebody. When we look at our models, everybody likes a sales process, and the middle stage of our sales process is discovery.

The way we build it, we say discovery is never-ending. It is a stage of the sales process, but it is also across the entire sales process. The demo is really just a part of discovery. Dave, I love your opinion on this because you have done this three times. You have been through this with three different businesses, but oftentimes the person most interested in the demo is the person with the least amount of influence over the sale.

Yes, totally.

I am going to get basic terms from a hundred years ago. Economic buyers make decisions. Technical buyers, people who are going to decide whether this can be used or not. Mostly, they can only say no. "I do not like your sales enablement technology because the info security is weak." I am to have user buyers, people actually using it. Oftentimes, people most interested are the ones who have the lowest degree of influence. I want to keep coming back to how this helps your company.

Do not be afraid of the team in a demo to ask a question at the end, saying, "Listen, how would you justify this? There is great technology, but we at In the Funnel run a small business here technically. We do not make any purchases unless we can justify them." It is a good thing to share with somebody else, saying, "How is it you make financial decisions?” When you raise this to the CFO, and he says, “We have got 50 other things to spend money on. Why should I pick this one? How are we going to answer that question? Should you even pick this one?” Do some of those things help Dave, by the way?

That is going to be good feedback for Rick. As you said, just to underscore this point, too many salespeople treat demos as a tour when they should be treating it as more of a conversation. "Tell us about your problems. Here is how we solve that. What do you think? Tell me more." The prospect should be doing a good amount of the actual speaking during the demo. It should not be like you are talking 95% of the time and then you ask, "What do you think?" They go, "Great," and then you just keep going. That is not good. This goes back to many years ago when we started working together.

We were in that boat. We would do a lot of things like, "Here are all the features, just throw it all out on the table." Oftentimes it would resonate, but oftentimes it would not. Especially if you are in a competitive environment. The process that we put together was basically that you go into the demo. You are not doing 56 slides on the company and the history and that stuff, because they do not care. You basically go to the demo and say, "Look, slide one, here is who we are, here is why we exist. Slide two, here are the problems that we solve for companies like you."

If you have done your research, you already know that four of those eight problems resonate with them. You get agreement. "In the demo today, we are going to look at these four problems. We are going to show you exactly how we nail that. We are not going to review every single feature." The next slide before you dive in, is, "Just so you know, here is all the companies or a good list of companies that we have already helped, just like you." They are like, "These guys look like they are pretty put together, and they have got customers like me," and a little bit of FOMO perhaps because their competitors are there.

You go, and you actually hammer those four problems and show them exactly how you solve those problems. At the end, you circle back and say, "Problem one, everybody agrees that that is solved? Problem two, check. Problem three, we are not quite sure. Let me jump back in and show you just to reiterate." At the end of the demo, everyone is nodding their heads like, "Yes, this solves all our problems. What's next?" As opposed to, "What do you think?" "It looks really great. Looks cool." That's the worst thing to hear at the end of exactly.

By the way, here is the thing. Everything looks cool. I am the biggest problem in the funnel because every time I see a demo, I want to buy everything. Somebody on our team goes, "I am not sure this is a good idea." The next thing you know, I have a tech stack that is a mess. I like that idea, though. We talked to Dave about how we prep before we get in the room. We get in the room. When we got in the room, I loved that you said that.

The second message was, "Listen, I am really excited to be here because when I did some conversation, I had some conversations with you before this, you talked about issues of A, Dave, you said B, Nancy, you said C. Frankly, team, I want to show you this slide because those three problems are three of the five problems that we exist to solve. I will walk in, I will be honest with your team, from my perspective, you are a perfect client for us. I said, that does not matter.

What matters is whether we are the right solution for your business. That is what matters more at this point in time. The intent here today is just to try and sort that out. That is what we are trying to do." Sometimes, by the way, giving somebody a back door or an out, saying, "Listen, I am not just trying to convince you of something today. I just want to have a conversation to figure out if this makes sense for you today.”

“We want to see if you are a fit for us. Because if you are not, we do not want you as a client because it is not going to be good for either of us." A hundred percent.

We talked about prepping before, then you have the demo, and then I would follow up afterwards and reach out and have one-on-one conversations and go, "Nancy, thanks so much for sponsoring us to go and meet with the rest of your team. I just want to follow up. How did we do?" How do you know exactly three or four big open-ended questions to get some feedback and counsel? Keeping in mind, I am not trying to persuade or cajole somebody. I am actually just trying to help them. By the way, Rick, thank you. Super important question. Even today, this continues to be what we see in the field.

Yes, even more so because, as you said, Mark, everything looks slick and amazing when you do a demo. I am a bit of a demo nerd. I like that question from Rick. Next question, number two from Tony. Tony says, "Our sales team works with a team of SDRs that do prospecting to bring opportunities to the table for us. Lately, I feel like a lot of the opportunities that I have got are not a good fit for our product. I want to bring a solution to the table for my sales manager to fix this, but I do not really know how to approach it. What would you recommend? I feel like these bad fit opportunities are wasting a lot of my time."

Refining Ideal Customer Profiles To Eliminate Wasted Sales Efforts

Who gave us that question, Dave?

Tony.

Tony, thank you for that. Tony, this is the second step of the sales playbook. If you go back to learn to love selling or the core sales playbook, first, we have to understand our value proposition of the market. Secondly, we have to prioritize the pursuit of the market, and that starts with a clear definition of the ideal customer profile. The ideal customer profile, and you can never be too specific with an ideal customer profile. Size, scale, industry, geography, business problem they solve for, business problem they have that we solve for, does that business value our differentiation in the marketplace?

After understanding clearly the ideal client profile, the company we want to go after, the second thing is, are we speaking to the right buyer? For an SDR team, it is the leadership's responsibility to clearly define these things. We cannot expect people in the field to figure these out because what SDRs will default to in the field is, "I will take a conversation with anybody who will give me a conversation."

Anybody who is interested, we get excited, right? I think that is one of the biggest problems with salespeople and salespeople, and especially a lot of the folks that I work with, who are typically founders doing sales. Anybody that is interested, I am down to talk with them.

I am down to talk with them. By the way, they may not even be that interested in what I sell, but maybe I can adjust what I sell because they are so friendly and they want to work with me. This is a huge, by the way, huge problem. Startups and founders, huge problems because you want to be everything to everybody. A massive problem for very large companies. We work with a lot of very large companies from a consulting perspective.

You would be surprised, but the Pareto principle still applies where you look at the revenue base, and they have got 4,000 clients, but they are not the 80/20 rule where 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of their clients. They are even more than that. They are the 90/10 rule. You get 5,000 and 4,000 clients. There are 150 of them that give you 90% of your revenue. All we want is more of them. I am spending a lot of time trying to do deals outside my core ICP. It is harder to sell if it is outside your ICP. When I do sell, it is less meaningful for me. They are usually less profitable.

It’s because you are wasting a bunch of time trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

This is exactly it. There are a couple of things. For Tony, you can help. This is not up to over-delegating to the leader of the SDRs. You could offer to run a little workshop over lunchtime for the SDRs to refine with them our A, our ideal client profile, and then B, our buyer personas. Always remember to explain why. Why did we pick these? Why is this the business strategy? We have to give immediate feedback and coaching. When you get a lead, and you have a conversation, and it was Mark Cox who passed it over to you, and it is completely the wrong ICP, pick up the phone and have a conversation with them and coach them.

Give them some guidance. This is still to this day, this idea of the wrong ICP. It is harder to get to them, but if we get to the right ICP, we end up doing fewer deals, but they are more meaningful for the business. They really move the needle. We have to get away from the noise or wasted effort. This is the core of sales productivity. It is right in the sweet spot of the sales playbook, the second territory management or territory planning, the ideal client profile, and then the buyer persona. What would you add to that, Dave?

You hit the nail on the head, Mark, and I think the key thing is that not all deals are good deals, and we only have a certain number of hours in the day. As a salesperson, think about it. If you have your work in ten deals in a week and eight of them are not a good fit, you just wasted 80% of your time when you could say, "Look, even if I do not touch any other deals except the two that are a good fit, I am probably going to do a better job on them. I am probably going to close them at a higher percentage probability." It is all about maximizing your time because it is your most valuable asset as a salesperson.

Finally, team, what we see out in the field today is that it is compelling to throw over any lead because someone's friendly and they're personable and they're engaging with you. The truth is, you are not going to win it anyway, because let us say we do sales training for midsize companies, but very large enterprises come to us and ask for it. In fact, law firms come to us all the time and ask for sales training at a senior level.

I know at some point in time, after going through an agonizing process because they do not value the discipline of sales, somebody is going to say, "How many other law firms has In the Funnel worked for?" We are going to say, "Not that many because law firms do not value sales. In fact, it is a bad word." They go, "We are not going to engage them." Even though I had one or two managing partners who really saw the need, they could not drive it on their own, and they did not want to be the first in the industry to do active sales training, so it is just going to waste our time. We point them in a different direction. Great question, Tony. Thank you.

Terry Nielsen, who Mark, we all know and love, is one of my former partners. He said, "Some of the best deals I ever did are the ones I did not do."

Exactly right. We love Terry.

Question three, let us see, we have Katie here. Katie says, "My sales manager is pushing for us to get referrals from existing clients, but has not really given us a specific process to do this. I feel uncomfortable asking for referrals. What is a good approach to do this and actually get some good referrals from our happy customers?"

Sometimes, there are certain “salesy things” that make you feel a bit uncomfortable.

This is definitely one of those topics.

The thing is, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you cannot do it. Jumping outside a comfort zone, public speaking makes people uncomfortable, but you have to do it, so you will get through it. If there is something like, "I just do not like, I got to get my mind around what I am doing," here is a mindset concept I think might be helpful for this. This is how we do it. We might initiate a conversation, Dave, with someone like you and say, and authentically, "I want to know how we are working with you, Terry, and DC for Risk Control Technologies? I want to make sure that we are providing value. Are you getting a return on investment? How is it going?"

Typically, I call this a health check meeting. We have got this in the book, Learn to Love Selling, as well, but saying, "Listen, this is not about the recent past. I would just understand. Let us get out of the noise. Let us go have a conversation. The first question. How are we doing?" I am to have a lot of multipliers like what, why, how, tell me more. Typically, when those conversations go super well, I will keep saying, "Tell me more, tell me more. Why, why, why, what is working? How do we emphasize that?" I go, "I am thrilled to hear it."  Oftentimes, those things will lead to "How are things going with you, Mark? How is business with you?"

Positioning Referral Requests As Making Capabilities Available To Networks

It will. That is where I will pull up, and I will, "Listen, Dave, business is great. By the way, thank you so much for all the gracious comments. One of the things I wanted to make you aware of, Dave, is that, believe it or not, about 80% of our business comes from referrals from super happy clients like you. What ends up happening is we work with you, and then you might think of somebody who is also an entrepreneur, but also likes to scale their business. What I wanted to do is just make myself available in the event that you have anybody in your network that you think needs the help we provide.

Dave, just so you know, if you connect me with somebody, we show them the same respect we show you. All we are going to do is have a conversation with them about their business. I will tell you, if I do get on a live call with anybody, anytime, I am going to make sure they get 2 or 3 nuggets that are really helpful for their business, regardless of what happens. Dave, is there anybody that comes to mind for you that you would like to make sure that we make our business available to them?" What often happens when asked the question that way is that I am trying to first take it away from, "Can you give me some leads, something where I am taking from you?”

No, I want to position it where I want to make something available to you, to your network, because you know you made a smart decision. You also know businesses that need to grow. Who else should I be making our capabilities available to? Dave, when I ask a question like that, and typically this happens with referrals, you cannot think of anybody at the moment. I will tell you that, and I will go, "Dave, listen, every time I have one of these conversations, I ask somebody, is there anybody you think of? You might think of 1 or 2 people, but here is what happens most of the time. A week later, you will call me up and go, 'When I was working out, a couple of other names came to mind.'”

“Dave, is it okay with you? I wanted to plant the seed. No pressure. By the way, I will follow up in a week's time because when you are not thinking hard about this, this is when the answer comes to the table. If you do not mind, I will just follow up a week from now and see if anybody comes to mind. If yes, great, I would be happy to have a helpful conversation with them. If it does not, nobody comes to mind. That is great too." Does that help Dave, by the way?

Yes, I think that is a great one, Mark, great way to approach it. That is not uncomfortable for Katie here. The other thing that I actually read in a book called Software as a Science, a little while back, which is literally putting this into your implementation and sales process, great idea, especially in the software business space, and honestly, it probably happens in a lot of different industries. You get in, you make the sale, everyone's high-fiving, "Let us go, let us get this thing going," and then it inevitably goes down a little bit. People are like, "They're in the trenches, they're implementing it, everyone's upset because their feature wasn't exactly as they thought," and then they get back on track, and it goes up.

There are all these a-ha moments that happen throughout your relationship, and it could be the first week they go live, and they start to see the fruits of the system that they put in, and then maybe a month later, when they first do their month-end close, and it takes a third of the time as it used to. There are all these moments, and they have this framework called the win-ask framework.

It is like, you do not want to ask for a referral when the client is deep in the trenches of implementing, because they are like, "This thing is a nightmare. This is consuming all my time. I cannot do my job." You want to highlight, “When are these a-ha moments that happen throughout your relationship?” You literally have a part, like stop, ask for a referral, use Mark's approach there, but do it when the client is at that moment of being really happy with you, so timing is everything. Doing it at the time when they see the light and go, "Man, this is a great solution here, and we're so happy."

Building Trust Through Proactive Feedback And Ownership Of Issues

I love that, Dave. I think it is a great thing to think about. With both suggestions there, first of all, make sure your clients are happy. The key element to this entire thing. It sounds so funny, but I was at my chiro's yesterday, just getting brutalized and talking to her while she was punishing me, trying to work through some problems I have on my upper back, we're talking about business. One of the things I came back to and she was talking about scaling our business, and there was some anxiety there.

The key to all of this is making sure your clients are happy.

I said, "Listen, one of the things you have got to come back to is you're extremely good at this because I am highly picky for this thing. You are really good at this. Same thing, you've got to pick the right ideal client profile. Try to get somebody who is a bit of an athlete who needs work all the time." She did say, “If you're doing intensive weight training, you do need to work regularly, like a couple of times a month.” I said to them, "At the end of the day, sleep well, because good things happen for people who are really good at what they do."

If I went through that process and said, "Dave, how are we doing?" You're saying, "Mark, I am not really as thrilled as I thought I might be." I am to go, "Dave, I am so glad we're having this conversation. Let us please talk about this," and I am going to get my listening cap on. I am going to understand why we are not meeting your objectives. I am to go away and come up with a plan to do that and get back in front of you and say, "Dave, given what you said, here is what I would like to think about doing. Why do not we have a touch point, Dave, in another 30 days to see if we're moving the needle in the right direction?" Referrals off the table.

For sure. Mark, that goes back to your health check you mentioned earlier, which is in your book, which is literally worth the price of the book.

Thanks, man. Just by asking for feedback, you're already better than 90% of the vendors or solution providers out there, because nobody asks for feedback because they kind of do not want it. They're like, "They keep paying the bills. Let us just hide here and hope they keep paying."

Yeah, I am afraid to ask. The idea of, oftentimes, and we have all done this, oftentimes, something that goes wrong is the opportunity to build a better relationship. I think everybody understands things will go wrong, but it is how we respond and react. Do we hide? Do we blame somebody else? Do we just take ownership of it and say, "Let me work through this. Thank you for sharing this. I am sorry this has happened, but I am on it. Let me go get some work done and come back to you." We can build a better relationship from there. Living through a few of those things, that's where you really develop trust, credibility, and deep relationships.

Boy, I am loving this digital mailbag. First of all, Dave, thanks for joining and driving us.

Mark, as I said, I learn just as much during this session as I contribute to it, probably more. It is always good to talk about these topics and get some of your insights as usual.

I also learn a ton from you. You have been through so much with this, and team, we're hoping you're learning a bit from this, too. If this is helpful, share this show with your friends. You have got other people on the team. You have other people in your networks who are in B2B sales. We want these things to be helpful to everybody. If you get just a little bit better at what you do, kind of think of Atomic Habits with James Clear, then it becomes creative. You start to love what you do when you start to develop mastery.

Do not forget this is hard, selling, convincing somebody to invest in something they had not thought of on your timeline, not theirs, and to spend money they did not budget. These are hard things to do. Helping a client achieve a desired outcome, which is what selling is, is very tough. We appreciate you tuning in and investing in your career and trying to future-proof your career. Keep the digital questions coming in through either email or LinkedIn. We will see you next time during office hours.

Sounds good.

Important Links

• Dave Hanley on LinkedIn

• Dave Hanley on Instagram

• In The Funnel

• Learn to Love Selling

• Software as a Science

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 2

In the age of AI, how do you future-proof your sales career? In this episode, Mark Cox and The Delusional Founder author Dave Hanley tackle the pressing questions currently hitting our digital mailbag.

We break down how to stop viewing AI as a replacement and start using it as your ultimate sales assistant. We also dive into actionable strategies for two of the toughest hurdles in sales:

●        Ending the Discounting Habit: Why your team reaches for price cuts—and how to build true negotiation leverage through better discovery.

●        Hiring World-Class Talent: Why attributes like humility and drive often outperform experience, and how to conduct reference checks that actually reveal the truth.

Whether you're a leader looking to coach your team or an individual contributor wanting to elevate your game, these insights will help you focus on the human connection that AI can't replace.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 2

We’re back again with another episode. As always, we’re joined by my pal Dave Hanley, who’s the author of The Delusional Founder. If you’re out there running a startup, or you’ve got a smaller sales team, anybody, anywhere near the SaaS industry, you need the book, The Delusional Founder. It’s a fantastic read. It’s in the mode of The Wealthy, or The One Minute Manager , where it’s a shorter read, packed with great information, and super interesting. Dave would never do this for himself, but I’m doing a little commercial here for The Delusional Founder. Dave, good to see you again.

You, too. I appreciate the shameless plug there, right here at the top.

It’s got to be done. That’s how you sell these books on Amazon. Good news on the mailbag. The digital mailbag keeps filling up.

That’s piling up, Mark. We got a lot of good questions. We got some good responses from our first episode. People sent us in a few more, so we can keep the ball rolling here and answer a few more questions.

Let’s jump in. I’m looking forward to it.

Let’s look at question number one here. We’ve got Jim. Jim says, “I’ve been in sales for twenty years in the enterprise software industry. I’m getting a little bit concerned about the future with all of the hype around AI. My company seems to be embracing it. They’re even experimenting with AI-based SDRs to help with lead generation. How concerned should I be about my future as a seller? What can I do to stay ahead of the curve?” It’s a good one from Jim there. Hot topic off the top here, Mark.

The ITF Office Hours just became an eight-hour show based on the response here. First of all, Jim and Dave, thanks for the question. This is on everybody’s mind. Jim, this is on my mind too. As with anything, I still am a believer in the atomic habits approach to things, which is lifelong learning and always trying to get 5% or 10% better. I don’t worry about trying to get 30% or 40% better in any short period of time on anything because it’s not going to happen. You’ll just feel bad.

On the AI front, the future we’ll talk about in a second, but the first message to anybody out there is get in the game a little bit. Whether it's ChatGPT or Claude, start to think about, “How do I get in there? How do I start to have conversations with AI versus just asking for research?” A great pal of mine, Mike Sparling, who’s an AI thought leader, suggested in my commutes in and out of Toronto, “Try to have a conversation with AI instead of just asking for one question or some piece of research. You can make use of the dead time commuting.”

Using AI As A Strategic Assistant

I thought that was a great idea. First of all, let’s take brass tacks here. Everything will change, but it’s a great opportunity. It’s not a tool. It’s a great opportunity, but it only works if you understand your sales playbook. The truth of it is, you do have to go back to the fundamentals. He brought up SDR work. Let’s think about that. We look at our sales playbook. First, we have to understand our value proposition and our value proposition messaging. We have to understand our target market, which means starting with your ideal client profile and then understanding your buyer persona.

If you do not understand those two things, AI can’t help you. It’s going to spray and pray the way many companies do. Dave, this is a huge problem still with many of the companies. We hear from thought leaders like you all the time. Many of the companies out there don’t spend the time to truly define their ideal client profile. They go after everybody. They waste too much time on smaller deals that have no impact on their business. It creates a lot of noise.

Defining The Ideal Client Profile

Let’s say we did go through The Delusional Founder and learned to love selling. We understood our ideal client profile. What I can do is I can use the AI that’s embedded into a lot of the sales enablement tools out there to help me with firmographic data. There’s the size of the company, revenue, employees, technographic data, and what their tech stack is. I can help with trigger event monitoring. For sales training, a trigger event is when they have a new chief revenue officer. We want to reach out to them. They got funding. We want to reach out to them. On LinkedIn, they’re hiring nine or ten salespeople. We want to reach out to them.

We don’t want to reach out to everybody. It’s only helpful for my team if we have gone through that effort of understanding who that ideal client profile is. Will it take over a little bit of the work of SDRs? It’s going to take work off the table of SDRs for sure because those three things that we do research on that I talked about, which are firmographic, technographic, and trigger event monitoring, take 30 to 40 minutes per prospect. If I can get that in two minutes, or I can walk in every day, and that’s already done for me, that’s interesting.

If I have AI leveraging all of the data, the attributes I’ve talked about, when I walk in, it’s already been through my database. It’s gone through this. It said, “Mark, if you only have time to reach out to ten people today, these are the ten people you should reach out to.” I got one other thought, Dave, but does some of that resonate? Do you think that’s helpful?

Talking directly to Jim’s concern, he’s in the enterprise software space. That’s a very much relationship-based business. I was in enterprise software for fifteen years. I don’t think Jim should be too concerned about an AI agent taking over his complete sales process, and he’s out of a job. Going forward, the salespeople who are going to win in this more AI-based environment are the ones who use AI as a tool to do their job better and as an enabler.

Also, it’s those salespeople who are going to be the most human, the ones who connect with their buyer, help them solve problems, and talk to them. “What are you concerned about here? How can we help get over that?” It’s connected, because people buy from people. A key thing going forward for Jim is to lean into that because that’s not going to get replaced by AI anytime soon.

We always say on the show, “B2B sales is management consulting.” Management consulting is where you’re having that authentic conversation with a client or prospect. You’ve got a point of view as to how you can help them because you have experience and expertise. It’s not about pitching. It’s about helping. That’s absolutely right.

If there are folks out there who are SDRs, who’ve been trained to do nothing but pitch or be talking brochures, AI speeds up the removal of those folks from the ecosystem. You’ve got to elevate your game to get to that point where you can add value, insight, and knowledge in a live conversation dynamically with empathy. I love the idea that this will help the best get better, and it might bridge a gap between the best and the rest.

Jim should start to think about using AI as a sales assistant, frankly. For example, even in my roles, instead of sitting there after a sales conversation and putting a PowerPoint slide together to present at the next meeting, I pull up Claude. I go there. I have all of the brand assets. They’re already loaded. It knows how to formulate this. It’s like, “Here’s what I’m thinking.”

Hammer that in, and you get something back that you’re not just going to turn around and send. You can certainly use it as a good baseline and then modify it. Think about asking it like you’ve got a junior sales assistant. “Put this slide together. We need this for the next presentation.” Use it like that. That’s going to be super valuable and save you a ton of time that you can spend prospecting or talking to existing customers, and spend your time better.

Your answers on both of those were probably better than mine. I’m learning, too. I love it. Thank you.

Mark, we got another one here from Cheryl. Cheryl says, “I lead a sales team of sales reps who are quite autonomous, but I feel like too often, they’re jumping to giving a discount to a prospect to try to get a deal over the finish line. What can I put in place as a sales manager for them to let them do a better job with negotiations?”

Discovery As Negotiation Leverage

What a great question. Thank you, Cheryl. Dave, you default to discounting if you don’t understand the true value of your offering to that particular client. When we think of our sales process, we always talk about the most important parts of discovery. We’re trying to figure out what’s going on with them and their business, and the desired outcome they’re trying to achieve. The reason we’re trying to do that is we’re hoping to add some value, insight, and knowledge.

We’re also trying to figure out, can we help them achieve that outcome? Can we collaborate and work with them, not pitching a product, but figuring out the impact of that product on that prospect’s business? As part of discovery, we want to collaborate. If we can drive a desired outcome that’s meaningful for you, great. As we go through this process, it highlights that this won’t help you. I’ll tell you that, too. The idea is, let’s just figure out what’s right for the client.

If we spend enough time in discovery, then price doesn’t matter because chances are you’re working. You’ve defined a return on investment that is significant, with a 5X or 10X return to that client. Because you worked on it collaboratively with them and built it bottom up in their financial language, they’ll believe you. What happens, particularly in the SaaS world, is that you’re going to get a sell sheet that says, “This gives a 378% return on investment.” The buyer doesn’t believe you.

If you work with them and build that business case, then you know what the impact is going to be. If we do that properly, when they come back and ask for a discount, then I feel like I have a little more negotiation leverage because I know the impact of the solution on their business. If I don’t, I have all the negotiation influence. They’ve got all the weight and leverage. That would be my advice to Cheryl when she’s managing the team.

When she’s doing an opportunity review in the next sales meeting or the next one-on-one, first ask, why is this the right thing for the client to do? How do they build a business case to cost-justify the investment? If the salesperson has done that, that in itself is going to become negotiation leverage for them. If they haven’t done that, they’ve got more work to do. What do you think, Dave?

As you said, Mark, this is something where a lot of times, less experienced salespeople, a little bit more of SaaS churn and burn, get the deals in the door type of thing, fall victim to this. I learned this years ago. It was from two sources. 1) You, because you’d always ask these questions in our sales meetings. 2) I did a two-day negotiation course. It was Karrass.

I did the same one, except I did mine in 1929.

Yours was done by Karrass. It was super interesting. First of all, we went to this course. I’m like, “How do you do negotiation training for two days?” It was insane. What you learn is that a lot of people don’t ask the right questions to determine what’s important to the other side of the table in the negotiation, in this case, the prospect. They always assume its price when half the time, if you ask the right questions, you’re going to say, “What’s important? Let’s prioritize this stuff. Is it the price? Is it the features? Is it the time frame?”

People often assume it’s about price, but the right questions reveal what truly matters—price, features, timing, or something else entirely.

When you ask the right questions and prioritize that in terms of what their top-to-bottom priorities are, you’re like, “Price isn’t that important. They want this thing implemented before June 1st. We can rejig a couple of things and charge full price. It doesn’t mean anything to us to bump them up our priority list, but it’s huge for them.” A lot of salespeople don’t ask those questions.

From Cheryl’s perspective in a sales meeting, it’s like, “What are their priorities in terms of all of these categories?” Get the salesperson to think about that. Half the time, as you said, they haven’t even asked the question, so they don’t know. Once Cheryl starts to probe into that, they’re going to say, “I’m on the sales call. I’d better ask them what the priorities are across the board here for all these areas.”

It’s so funny about Karrass. Only another thought. We also have to think about it out of empathy for the sales team. If they’re doing a larger SaaS deal, they’re probably getting negotiation questions from business leaders. That’s where the things you and I came up with apply. Eventually, they’re going to get negotiation questions from purchasing agents or buyers.

That’s always a fun one.

You have to understand who and prepare appropriately for whom we’re speaking. Also, try to understand the dynamic between the two organizations. Sometimes, the economic buyer, the business buyer, and the purchasing group are not that well-connected. One of the things I did pick up from Karrass is that buyers get more negotiation training than sellers do typically. They are trained very tactically to ask for a discount two or three times.

Those procurement people have been through these courses more than any salespeople. That’s their job.

Part of that job is to ask three times. You have to get a few no’s. They’re taught to ask two or three times. At some point in time, you just have to be comfortable and say no. That doesn’t mean that kills a deal because there are always these escalations that might take place, but just thinking through that. Somebody comes back and says, “That’s unacceptable. How can you take that position?” That’s what a purchasing agent might say. They might come back because again, they have good questions on their side.

You need a response for that, whether you point to the market, whether you point to if they’re trying to negotiate things like cost, escalators, industry trends, market trends, or even pointing to educating the purchasing agent as to how their business operates. For example, in SaaS, we have an annual price increase of 7% or 6%, and you’re selling to a large bank. They come back and go, “That’s unacceptable.” You might just say, “What did your fees increase by last year?”

It’s an interesting thing, but we have to understand them in the business. One of the overarching themes is always to prepare for these things. When you’re going through that kind of negotiation, your teammates have been through this before. You’ve been through this before. Your sales leaders have been through this before.

Coming up with the 5, 7, or 9 questions you know they’re going to ask, be ready for the answers, so you don’t look like you’re caught in the headlights when it comes up, and you’re trying to dance or respond on the fly because we don’t tend to do well that way. We should and could do an entire show just on negotiation. Team, keep your questions coming in. It’s probably high time for us to find the global thought leader on negotiations to figure out, “How do we all keep current with this and keep our training current?” I still have those Karrass materials.

I might have them somewhere, too. From Cheryl’s perspective, if she hadn’t taken some negotiation training, as I said, it was a two-day program. That’s something to look into, more in-depth on that, because it’s pretty eye-opening. They set it up to be at the end. I remember it’s like, “This is very eye-opening, just the way their program is.” You’ve got to ask the questions. You have to know what’s on the other person’s card because you don’t do all these role plays. That was the whole thing they were trying to teach you there. It was cool.

Strategies To Expand The Pie

Back in the days of the billion-dollar deal, when I did that deal, first of all, helpfully, two years prior, I’d been to Harvard for their two days of negotiation training. One of the big things was trying to expand the size of the pie. Rather than thinking of the pie and I’ve got my piece, and I’ve got their piece, it’s our way of making this pie a little bit bigger for all of us. The split between the two of us doesn’t matter as much. It’s always understanding through negotiation the difference between a position and the interest.

If you can build that trust where somebody says, “I want a discount, I want this, or I need unlimited liability.” Say, “I understand the position. Why?” The more they start explaining why they’re asking what their real interest is, the better off you’re going to be. I’ll use one super quick example without boring folks here. Back in the day, when I did those huge deals, we were always negotiating check processing, meaning processing checks. Dave and I bet. Back in the day, he’d write me a check, and then I’d cash that check.

What they would always negotiate is liability if you make a mistake. I’d say, “Keep telling me more.” The more they explained it, they’d say, “If Dave writes you a check for $10 million and Mark, you cash it, and then you guys make a mistake on that one, we’re out $10 million, so you have to pay us back.” The more I explained it, the more comfortable I felt in my counter position, which was, “You’re paying me $0.03 to cash that check.”

You want me to take unlimited liability.

I’m going to take unlimited liability and kill my company. By the way, that type of mistake is an inherent risk in the business you’ve chosen to be in. We’re not taking over your risk. We’re processing the check better than you did. At least, I feel like I have a response. I still have scars from that one because I probably spent two months trying to negotiate that particular point.

Mark, talking about one thing that came to mind in terms of making the pie bigger, a lot of times, salespeople can get a little bit more creative in terms of how they deal with this stuff. This is something we talked about many years ago. If the prospect is pushing you for a discount, expand the size of the pie.

It’s like, “If we’re going to give you this 10% discount, we’re going to ask you to do a case study with us so that we can share that in our marketing. For us, that’s worth probably more than the 10% discount.” All of a sudden, they’re like, “Sure, why not? That doesn’t cost us anything.” Think about that. Get more creative. What else can you put on the table? There’s the whole concept of if you have to give something up, make sure you get something in return.

Two-year deal, give me a five-year deal. You don’t have to answer. You can always have a collaborative conversation. Cheryl, this is the one I always loved. Dave probably did this to me back in the day when we were helping his companies. He was like, “Mark, can you give me a discount of 15%?” First question, I go, “I totally get it. I’m not sure. Dave, how did you come up with 15%? Why didn’t you come up with 12%, or why didn’t you come up with 17%?”

I was getting into this level of detail. Dave had a partner whose name will remain protected. His name’s Dave Da Costa. He used to nickel and dime everything. He couldn’t squeeze enough juice out of our lemon. Eventually, you just have to say no. Sorry, DC. We love you, buddy. Shall we try to squeeze one more in here?

I don’t know if this one’s going to take too much time. The negotiation topic is so huge. We could do a two-day show on that. This one’s a little more to the point, hopefully a little more tactical. This one’s from Ryan. Ryan says, “We’re building out our sales team. I’ve been doing quite a few interviews lately. When it comes to reference checks, I feel like they aren’t very useful because references aren’t that keen to open up and give me the straight goods. What do you recommend to help make reference checks effective?”

Conducting Effective Reference Checks

What a great question. Thank you, Ryan. First of all, a couple of thoughts. One reference source I would point to, which I still love to this day, is a book called Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. This is a tip I picked up from reading that book, whether it was ten years ago or fifteen years ago. When you’re doing a top-grading interview, some of the questions you like the candidate to speak to when they’re speaking about their different roles.

There are four questions when they’re telling you the story of their career. What were you hired to do? What stands out as accomplishments you’re most proud of in that particular role? What were some of the more difficult parts of that job? Why did you move on?  If we go to the third one, what were some of the more difficult parts of this job? That’s where on their CV. I take notes when we’re talking about this. I’m interviewing Dave Hanley.

He’s telling me that ten years ago, he didn’t love the management style of a particular company at a particular time. I keep track of those because three weeks later, I might be calling Dave’s reference. When you’re speaking to a reference, they wouldn’t be a reference unless they’re going to say great things. Sometimes, putting some distance between the conversation and the candidate is helpful to the person you’re speaking to.

I might say, “Peter, Dave mentioned ten years ago, when he was working with you, he had some difficulty with the sales reporting and the management cadence. Can you tell me a little bit about that?” Two things happened with Peter. First of all, he doesn’t feel like he’s throwing you under the bus because this is ten years ago. Secondly, the fact that I said, “Dave told me about this,” Peter opens up a little bit.

I might ask a question, saying, “What were you coaching Dave on back in those days? I know that was a long time ago.” Again, he’s never going to say something bad about Dave, but he might highlight one or two things that I’ll consider if I noticed it because clearly, we understand that Dave Hanley has a problem with authority. Anybody who knows Dave Hanley knows that’s the case.

It’s hypothetically speaking.

This won’t change my opinion, but this might give me some help for anything different I might push on a little bit. It might give me some insight into how to best work with Dave. I don’t think it’s going to change whether we move forward with a candidate, but it might be helpful insight in terms of how I best work with a candidate. That would be one thought. What do you think, Dave? You can use me as the example. Get me back.

By the time you make that reference call, usually, you’re pretty convinced that this person is right for the role. Part of the issue might be that it sounds like they’re doing a lot of hiring on Ryan’s team there. Part of the root problem with a lot of these hiring processes is that they’re using the reference as validation when they’re making the right decision here. It’s tough. It’s sometimes hard to find the right people for the role, but I’ve always thought that if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.

If I’m not super excited to hire this person, the reference check is not going to make much of a difference. I’m like, “I’m not quite sure. Let’s see what the reference says,” because they’re not giving us references that aren’t going to give great feedback. In terms of references, one thing that I’ve always found useful is when you talk to them, it’s like, “The person’s good. They’re good at this. Yes, great to work with.”

I like to ask straight up. This is helping you dig in and try to figure out, as you said, not necessarily am I going to hire them or not, but give me something useful that when I do hire them, I can figure out how to maybe manage them. On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put this person? No one’s going to tell you a 1, 2, 3, or 4, but if it’s a 10, it’s like, “Great. I thought they sounded amazing.” If it’s a 7 or an 8, it’s like, “Thanks, but what do you think could get them to a ten?” At least, they’re like, “Good question. They could be a little better at prospecting, or they’re a little sloppy with contracts.” That leaves you like, “Good to know.” Tuck that one away for later.

I got one more question for you on this, but Team, just a couple of thoughts when you’re doing reference checks. Do them even though it feels self-evident because we’ve heard this with some folks, Dave, where they say, “They’re only going to get people who love them.” Double check. Secondly, the reference should be somebody they reported to not appear. You want to check.

Ask my neighbor what I’m like. You’re going to get one point of view. You can ask somebody I reported to in 2016. You’re going to get a different one. Make sure it’s somebody you reported to. Dave, out there, you’ve done so much of this. When you’re interviewing, what are the attributes you look for in a new candidate?

It depends on the role. For example, I’m helping somebody hire an SDR. Those people don’t have a lot of experience. Often, they’re pretty early in their career, coming out of school in many cases. For those types of roles, I’m not digging into, “Tell me about your work experience working at Target before you went to college.” It’s more like, “Tell me about a time when you did something competitive.

Tell me about a time when you got some tough feedback. What did you do with that, and how did you improve? Tell me about something where you’ve gotten significantly better over the last several years.” It’s that type of thing. With a more seasoned salesperson, it’s very much, “Let’s talk about the numbers. What were you hired to do, and what did you do?”

Dig into the performance. Dig into problem-solving and tough deals. How do they handle that? It’s a situational type of stuff to figure out how they think. You’re trying to find somebody who matches your values and what’s been successful in your sales team. Different companies have different key values and what they feel is important.

Dig into performance, problem-solving, and how people handle tough deals. The goal is to understand how they think and whether they align with your team's values and success.

Culture is for sure a big part of it. I love that. I have a little checklist of things I’m looking for, which are intelligence, drive, humility, passion, and optimism. I rank them as having an interview.

Hiring For Humility And Drive

You can’t beat somebody with all those. It sounds pretty good.

None of that is industry experience or depth selling. If somebody’s got all of those things, I could probably teach them to be an SDR. Humility is a big one, no matter what stage of career. Humility means not shy or retiring. It means somebody understands they don’t know it all.

Here’s another quick story for you. You’ll like this one, too. We didn’t just hire people named Dave, but Dave Da Costa and I were interviewing another fellow you know quite well, Dave Pittman. Again, it’s a fresh SDR role out of school. We interviewed a guy who came in earlier. We asked him straight up, “Have you ever worked on the CRM system?” It was clear this other guy had never had his hands on a CRM system, but he started BS-ing us a little bit.

Dave and I are looking at each other like, “This guy doesn’t know what he's talking about.” That’s a massive red flag. Fast forward, the next interview is with Dave Pittman. We all love Dave Pittman. He comes in right out of school with no experience. We asked the same CRM question. He says, “You know what, guys? I’m going to be honest. I don’t know what a CRM system is, but I’m willing to learn. I’m eager to come in, sink my teeth into this, and be a great asset for the team.”

We’re like, “You’re hired.” That’s because nothing kills your credibility on a sales call more than a prospect asking you some technical question, and you’re like, “BS, this, that, the other.” It’s like, “You know what? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m going to talk to the team, find out, and get back to you.” They’re like, “Perfect. Credibility, done.”

Humility, check. On the culture side, there’s integrity. Tell me the truth. With mature salespeople on that front, I do look to say when somebody left a role, “We agreed it was time to part company.” No, you didn’t. Ask me about my career, and I’m going to point out two or three major mistakes I made.

One, I took a job for money. That was a big mistake. Just be honest and upright because what you want with somebody is, can I completely trust them? Do I get the whole story? That transparency and authenticity are what we’re all looking for with people that we interact with in life. Dave, what a great discussion again. This is super fun. Thank you.

For all the followers and audience out there that have Mark on LinkedIn or any of the other social networks, keep sending us some great questions because I’m learning as much as you are here. It’s a fun conversation. It reminds me of a lot of things that I need to keep thinking about.

Me, too. Dave, thank you. Team, thank you so much for tuning in to this show. As Dave mentioned, whether it’s through LinkedIn, Mark Cox, or email MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com please keep filling our digital mailbag. We’ll take on all the topics you want to talk about in the show. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.

Thanks, Mark.

Thanks, Dave.

Important Links

• Dave Hanley on LinkedIn

• Mark Cox on LinkedIn

• The Delusional Founder

• The Wealthy Barber

• The One Minute Manager

• Who

Dealing With The Root Issues Of Sales Management With Frank Cespedes

When a company is not growing, it is not only because of the shortcomings of its sales team. Sometimes, your entire sales management is unaligned with the strategies your salespeople are executing. Mark Cox sits down with Frank Cespedes, a senior lecturer at Harvard University and the author of six fantastic books, who explains how to realign your sales goals with your team goals. He also explores how self-directed omnichannel buying impacts B2B sales today, as well as how AI can be used to increase sales performance and productivity in today’s fast-paced world.

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Watch the episode here

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Dealing With The Root Issues Of Sales Management With Frank Cespedes

A couple of years ago, my lovely wife asked me, “What do you want to do for your birthday?” My response was, “I want to go to Harvard and sit in on an MBA class being taught by Frank Cespedes.” That's exactly what the two of us did. Frank had provided us a gracious offer for the two of us to sit in on one of his MBA classes in marketing. In this episode, you're going to understand why I picked that as my birthday treat because we have a great conversation with Frank.

Friends of the show know Frank Cespedes as a Senior Lecturer at Harvard University and the author of six fantastic books. Two of my favorites are Aligning Strategy and Sales back in 2014, and in 2021, Sales Management That Works. Those are amazing books. Frank also consults on the boards of some of the largest companies in the world. He has deep expertise in terms of sales, marketing, and business.

We had a fantastic conversation. We talked about a few things. First of all, Frank has always gone against the grain of that sales assumption that when a company's not growing, it's the sales rep's issue or sales rep performance. He's always had a perspective that oftentimes, it's the strategy or the management that's misaligned. It's not at the sales rep level. We talk a little bit about what he's seeing out there.

We then get into what buyers are facing. Complex, self-directed, omnichannel buying is having an impact on B2B sales. We do talk a little bit about what a salesperson needs to become. How do they help that buyer navigate that complex journey? We talk a little bit about AI, given what's taking place, and because we're joined by our AI Sherpa, Mike Sparling, who always adds enormous value.

We had a couple of great conversations. Where are we seeing AI impact companies? Frank's on the board of some of the largest companies out there, so he's seeing the real impact of AI. We talk about whether it is transformative yet or it is still relatively early days. We talk about the 4 or 5 areas where companies are leveraging AI to sell better and increase performance and productivity.

As always, we get into the attributes of B2B salespeople. What are we looking for when we're trying to hire great B2B sales people? We talk a little bit about why this is a great career to jump into, or what has to be true for it to be a great career for you. If you're a young person thinking about investing your career, why would you invest in discipline B2B sales? As always, the conversation is amazing with Frank and Mike. I enjoy talking to these guys. I'm sure you will, too. You'll enjoy this episode. If you do, please like and subscribe to the show because that's how we get great guests, like Frank Cespedes. Enjoy.

Welcome to the show. Frank, it's great to see you again.

My pleasure. As always, it is good to see you.

As always with this string of episodes, we're joined by our AI Sherpa, Mike Sparling from MHS. Mike, how are things with you?

Things are very good. I’m looking forward to spring and summer and a great chat with Frank.

Frank, I have to ask this question. I know you're up in our neck of the woods in Toronto over the last month or two, working with some clients. How was the visit up here?

Good. It wasn't actually in Toronto. It was about an hour and a half outside Toronto. It was Elora, Ontario, which was a charming place. The interesting thing, to me, is the weather there was about, that day, 15 to 20 degrees warmer than it was in Boston, so I'll take it.

I'm sure tons of value for the client you were working with there. Frank, like people in Boston and New York, if you're from Toronto, everything within three hours of Toronto in my view is Toronto. I'm sure the people in Elora are delighted to hear me say that. I’m glad it went well. This is always a red-letter day on the show when we have our friend Frank Cespedes back.

Addressing One Of The Biggest Assumptions In Sales

Frank, we'll start at the highest levels here with a couple of questions. I know you've been doing some great publishing with HBR articles. One of the things you constantly challenge in all of your writings, which I love, and two of my favorite books ever are yours. You challenge one of these big assumptions in sales. Frankly, this totally aligns, Frank, with a lot of the clients when they come to us the first time.

A lot of times, CEOs come to us, and they say, “We have a growth problem. We think it's a sales rep performance problem. Mark, we need you to come in. We need the funnel to train 150 salespeople.” We're quick to come back and say, “It's fantastic. We love to work with you. Let's go back to your core sales playbook. Let's think about your sales strategy.” That's one of your themes. You always come back to this. Maybe growth is a rep problem, but it's likely a strategy and a management problem. You've been talking about this for years. Tell us a little bit about what you're seeing out there on the boards you sit on and the clients you consult with.

First, let me reiterate the basic point. In any business, profitable growth is an organizational outcome. It depends on the skills, capabilities, and motivation of your customer contact people or salespeople, but it also depends on product, price, service, and especially strategy. A direct answer to your question, Mark, of what I am seeing is I'm still seeing a confusion and a disconnect between those larger systems, especially strategy and sales.

Frankly, for many of the same reasons, which are fundamentally management reasons, that I outlined in some of those publications, one of the dirty secrets about many businesses is that they do not have a business strategy. They may have a mission, a vision, or purpose. Everybody has got a purpose statement. Those things are useful, but they are not the same as a business strategy. Many executives still confuse them.

The typical planning process in many companies takes weeks, sometimes months. Meanwhile, sales has to respond in market time. Not planning time. Even if what comes out of the planning process is a great strategy, which is a big if. It's often irrelevant to the people in sales. Then, compensation. If you look at sales compensation plans, most of them are based sheerly on top line volume, not the profitability of the sale and the cost to serve. For many salespeople, there is no such thing as a bad customer. If you've got a strategy, there are no bad customers.

Having said that, let me also say that what I see in the past couple of years is that sales is increasingly productive in more businesses. The reason is due to the data revolution, AI, which Mike will get into. Also, there is a big secular change in the cost structures of many businesses. They're increasingly driven by software. That's a high fix cost. Once you get beyond those product development R&D costs, much of the ongoing operating expenses are go-to-market costs. Companies recognize that, and they begin to pay more attention to sales. In general, it has made sales more productive. It has made sales managers' lives more uncomfortable, but as they say in the gangster movies, they chose this life.

There is a big secular change in the cost structure of many businesses because of new software.

Improving Productivity In Professional Sales

It's a great thing to touch on. Team, so you've got it, and we reference it all the time, one of our favorite books of all time is Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. One of the things I got to touch on right off the bat and have attention to jump on, Frank, is that it's so great to hear you say sales is improving productivity or it’s improving in terms of performance.

We have a lot of authors on this show. God bless, but I understand you write a book, and the first thing you're picking at are faults, oftentimes. Our brains are wired to find faults. We're in the same boat. I see a lot of amazing things happening out there in B2B sales where it's almost evolving to management consulting.

First of all, Mike, I'd like your thoughts on that, too. Sometimes, you get to see sales as somebody who's adjacent to it. What are you seeing? Frank, I'd like to push on what are the other things that we're seeing that are working out there within professional sales. I'd love to focus on those for the audience. Mike, your thoughts?

We've had a few different guests. Frank is calling out the core nugget of a theme we've seen for a while, which is that professional sales is becoming more management consulting rather than outcome-driven. It comes from broader solutions, more complex product that's being sold, service and product mix, and the pieces there.

I resonated with your opening, Frank, around the notion of business strategy and the accelerating pace. When I started my career, we could do a 5-year plan and be pretty good at hitting things 2 to 3 years out. With the pace of change, the data, the AI, the digital and global markets, and the different drivers that are at play.

It's hard to know 6 weeks out, let alone 6 months, let alone put a document together with a 12-month horizon. I’m curious. Through the next set of conversations, we can hone in on your experiences with how quickly people are reprioritizing and what the organizational strategies are to reset business strategy as you go forward, given the pace of change and velocity.

Thanks, Mike. We're going to come back to the strategy side of things. Trying to build on what's working out there, we hear all the same information about how buyers are pursuing their journeys on their own. It's getting more difficult to make decisions inside large corporations. They've got complex buying groups. They've got omni-channel research before they engage with salespeople.

What are you seeing top salespeople do, Frank? What are they doing well to try and navigate some of these new realities where the buyers are so well-educated and doing so much work? The buyers, in some cases, have a tough time making decisions. We saw, back in the day, in 2017, the Gartner Buyer's Journey, which you weighed in on. You helped them with what's known as the Spaghetti Diagram. What do buyers do in terms of making a decision? What are great salespeople doing to try to navigate that with their buyers? What are they doing well?

I don't know the right word, Mark, but trends and developments, I think they're all true. It is an omnichannel buying world. Buying units in B2B sales is more complex than they were. The pandemic hollowed out many middle management jobs, so you've got more top executives increasingly busy and you've got to get access to.

The fundamental issue is that we are in a very information-rich world. That gets me into what I think effective B2B salespeople and sales organizations are doing. They’re in an information-rich world where the buyer can get lots of information. There is an important curatorial role for salespeople. We can call that consulting, solutions, or asparagus. I don't care. A knowledgeable salesperson who can help the buyer navigate through that avalanche of information is as valuable as ever.

The second thing is to recognize a basic about B2B buying. Most products and services are components in a wider usage system for the customer. I'll use some of the classic sales jargon. Even when you have a champion in the customer, the reality in most companies is that the champion has to “argue” with their colleagues for their fair share of a limited budget.

That's an economic discussion. It is also a political discussion and an emotional discussion. It's naive to think that most of those buyers are going to navigate that complexity simply with AI or a bot. A knowledgeable salesperson helps. Here is the third issue. I'll add this to the trends because the academic research about this is pretty definitive. Do you know what we used to call the 80/20 rule?

Yes. The Pareto Principle.

That sounds fancier. It's remarkably common. A minority of our customers generate the majority of our sales and profits. What the research indicates is that in the last couple of years, those bigger customers have gotten bigger as a proportion of many companies' sales. What does that tell you? It tells you that account management is even more important than it ever was. Those are the things that I see going on that do or don't make a B2B salesperson effective. There is a role for training there, but training doesn't cure everything.

Attributes Of Great Salespeople

We're going to debate that aggressively before the end of the episode because I like a new house, Frank, and it comes from training. Let's get back to that. Let's park that for the time being. You bring up such a great point. With our limited experience, we don't have a sample size of 10,000 clients, but the consultant clients we have, they become the penultimate example of the Pareto Principle. It's not 80/20. It’s 90/10

 That's exactly right.

You start to get into these things like key account plans and key account management strategies, still navigating levels of business acumen, being so important. I have to understand the industry and the client I'm working with to add value and figure out how we can help them achieve those desired outcomes. I'd like to talk a little more about that. Maybe we'll push on this a little bit before we get back to sales management. You did identify sales management as a tough thing, but that B2B sales role.

I don't like these broad definitions, but you’ve got an account manager and a salesperson. They're bleeding into each other a lot. You've got somebody who's got to add value to the market. In our book, we talked about hiring traits because we still see so many people having a tough time hiring B2B salespeople. We like intelligence, drive, humility, passion, and optimism.

What are the attributes you're seeing out there? What would you add to that list if we've got sales leaders out there building their team? In which they are. A third of salespeople still seem to be churning every year. What should we be hiring to take our businesses into the future with great salespeople?

Quite honestly, Mark, I'm not sure I would change very much. You've been, in an admirable way, beating this drum for years. Your fundamental message about the key criteria in hiring remains relevant. One of the things that I do see, and we'll get into this with AI increasingly, especially in the last few years, is I'll get calls from companies who say, “How do we hire salespeople with AI skills?” My comment is that it's a little bit like running a telemarketing center many years ago and saying, “I better hire people who know how to use the phone.” You hire people who know how to sell. Those are the criteria that you outline. That remains very important.

Hire people who know how to sell.

Having said this, there have always been challenges in hiring and sales that don't exist to the same extent as other functions. If you want to hire a programmer or someone in finance or accounting, you can go to a school and find people who major in the subject. That is rarely true in sales, but that hasn't changed. I don't think AI has changed that. You hire the folks that have the kinds of attributes, temperaments, and skills that you, Mark, have talked about, and then you enable them with the various tools and training that are available.

Frank, the skills we want to spike a little more on that we may not have in the past would be intellectual curiosity, passion for change, resilience, and collaboration. Especially as we see more agentic AI taking place where more things are being done as opposed to answers being created in response. That's going to require a real sense of even individuals having greater collaborative skills, so they can appreciate these digital teammates, some of the more “organic” teammates. It does change team dynamics a lot. The lone wolf no longer has a shot at making the kinds of successes they may have been able to make in the past.

First of all, I agree with you about the increasing importance of collaboration. When the customer has a problem, they call up the person who sold them the product or service. Sales then needs to go back to their companies and navigate across functions. That has become more important over the last couple of years because of the nature of products and so forth. AI will be one more thing. I agree with that.

When it comes to resilience, I have been amazed throughout my balding career at how many salespeople I meet who don't like to make cold calls. My response there is pretty blunt. If you don't like to make cold calls, become a plumber. Do something else. You chose the wrong line of work. That form of resilience, the ability to deal with rejections, has always been true or remains true.

I tie that oftentimes into optimism. We're going to talk about sales management in a few minutes here. One of the reasons we need effective sales management is that you're going to be working with salespeople. They have to be optimistic. They do have rose-colored glasses on their pipeline. They’re like, “I'm going to win more than I'm going to lose or things are going to go my way.”

First of all, you don't want to take that out of the salesperson. That's a survival mechanism to be in this profession. I need somebody who thinks that way, but I also need a sober set of eyes working with them to help them analyze and make sure we don't skip over sales strategy before getting a deal done by making too many assumptions that things are going to go my way.

I agree with you. In sales, it's very important to see that the glass is always half full. That said, the way you operationalize those eyes, and this is not fancy, is lead qualification criteria. That's an area where I see AI beginning to make an impact.

Do you? With the folks we work with, that continues to be tied into two of the biggest issues with companies we work with. One, believe it or not, guys, is the problem with CRM systems. They're too noisy. There's too much fluff in CRM. Executive management teams are trying to use this. Boards are trying to use it. They're not that effective because there's too much garbage in there that's not real at the core. It's because basic deal qualification is still a problem with most organizations.

You need that deal qualification at multiple levels. You need the sales manager to have a set of eyes, the first-line management, but then the VP of sales has to have a set of eyes on the sales manager, and so on and so forth. It’s not to talk us out of winning deals, but to make sure we're discussing reality instead of Shangri-La.

One thing to touch on before I lose it is, Frank, this might be a bit problematic, but why don't we teach B2B sales at Harvard and give somebody a degree in B2B sales? Why isn't this a formal profession like every other profession where there is a degree, you've got to be certified, and you need ongoing training to stay current? Do you ever see us getting to that point? I know about 1/5 of MBA schools teach sales courses. I know it's growing a little bit. What are your thoughts on that? You've seen this for a long time.

Harvard doesn't need me to defend them, but we do teach B2B sales at Harvard. I taught that course for years. We don't give a degree in it. We give an MBA general management degree. Why don't more schools do this? Fundamentally, it's a supply-side problem. If you look at PhD programs in marketing, for example. You're hardly ever going to see B2B at all. They're almost all consumer-based.

The way you make your bones as an academic in academic journals is by analyzing big databases. Historically, that was fundamentally consumer goods companies. Due to the data revolution, more B2B companies are there, but the issue is on the supply side. I want to be a little more provocative and maybe dissent. I'm not sure it would be a good idea for schools to institutionalize training in this area and grant degrees.

You know the old saying about the Military how they're always fighting the last war. The same is true in academia. If you get back to what we've already been discussing and look at the pace of change, it'll be a little bit like what universities have done with coding. What we heard for years was, “Your son and daughter better learn how to code.” Guess what AI is doing to those jobs? The same thing will happen in sales. This is an area where you may not want to entrust the future to the university, if I can be blunt.

Of all the conversations we've had on this, no one's ever taken that approach. We've had this conversation a lot on the show. It makes sense. It’s changing so quickly. In the commercial world, it's industry that's got to lead the way. When I originally fell into this profession, industry did its own sales training to a certain extent. It was a handful of companies you'd get started with, and they taught you how to sell, whether it was IBM or Xerox. I'm dating myself here, but you did get your ticket stamped in B2B sales if you could say you came from one of those companies. I don't see that in industry.

There were reasons for that, but one of them is a bad reason. If you look at hiring in sales, what I have seen again and again is this perception that there's a trade-off. It’s like, “I need to hire the experienced person from company A in my industry because then I don't have to spend time and money training and developing them.” That is an illusion. There is no such thing in sales as performance in the abstract. There's only performance in our company with our products, our prices, and our customers. That trade-off is missing, but that perception is very common.

Let's be a little more optimistic. First, I want to agree with you. I have met guys and gals like you throughout my career. They got their training, wherever it was, whether it was GE, HP, then they went everywhere. There may still be some of those incubators out there, but we don't recognize them until after they've reached their peak.

Hindsight.

It's a much fairer point. I have a little insight in terms of a couple of large ones that I thought would have picked up the mantle. What I've seen there, I wouldn't showcase the same. That's a much more gracious way of looking at it. If you don't mind, given the time here, maybe we change directions a little bit. I'll touch first on sales management, and then I want to talk about AI because it's one of the things everybody's asking us about all the time.

Sales Management That Works is one of my favorite books of all time for a good reason. It is the MBA in sales management. If you haven't read that book out there, you should. Let's talk about that role, Frank, and what you're seeing with the leaders out there. You said it’s a pretty challenging role because of high expectations.

The scorecard is black and white, too. You either hit your number or you didn't hit your number. You get a much tougher grade than anybody else on the executive leadership team. How we're measuring the head of HR and the head of operations is a little vague sometimes, but how we measure the chief revenue officer is black and white. Tell me a little bit about what you're seeing out there. Are you seeing sales leaders manage the way they always have? Are you seeing them trying to leverage these things like big data and AI and change the whole infrastructure and the way they lead the teams?

I see some of both. If I address the question of what some of the effective sales organizations are doing, ironically, one thing those sales leaders are doing is doubling down on the basics and instigating a continuous improvement cycle in those areas that I call the basics. Technology is helping them do this. Who is and who is not our target market or ideal customer profile, to use the jargon?

They’re clarifying and then training our people in our value proposition, not some generic methodology, and looking at our comp system. Whether we have incentives that support rather than contradict our pricing. Last but certainly not least, they’re improving in doing good and regular performance reviews and account reviews. They're motivated to do this because of what you said. The data revolution makes sales more transparent.

The data revolution makes sales more transparent.

A lot of this data flows up to the finance function, the CFO. They're very annoying people. Once they get data, they start to ask questions. They may or may not know anything about the realities of sales, but they've got the data. Sales leaders must respond. That's increasing the requirements for financial literacy. What they're finding with AI in particular is that AI does not repeal the IT law of garbage in, garbage out. You've already made this point. CRM is noisy. They're beginning to clean that up.

My last comment here is about the transformation. That I see going much more slowly than one would predict. The reason is not the technology. The reason is not AI or the AI tools. The reason is, A) The data, B) Fragmented siloed legacy IT systems, and C) If you want to use AI beyond ad hoc use cases. You've got to clarify and change your workflows.

All of those things, cleaning up the data and legacy systems work, are not things you take care of in 2 or 3 weeks. That's what is holding back so-called transformation. The fundamental issue there is change management, which is never easy in sales precisely because sales has to make the numbers every month, every quarter, every year.

Learning The Ropes Of Data Management

How well said. I want to touch on AI, Mike, and get your opinion on what you're seeing in terms of this transformation. Those three things, the data, the silos, and the making sure you've got your playbook because AI can't accelerate performance unless you have your full sales playbook down, Mike and I talk a lot about this, Frank. Let me pass it to you, Mike. What are your thoughts? What are you seeing out there first before I jump in?

Frank is spot on. One thing I've seen a lot of research on says that we've left the age of pilot. The CEOs, chief revenue officers, people reporting to boards, or the evil CFOs, as Frank put it, are not going to get rewarded for a pilot anymore. The expectation is that we're converting the investment into outcome. Yet, exactly the point with garbage in, garbage out or the CRM noise, getting the data to a place it can be consumed. Getting the infrastructure to a place where automation can play, and fitting in the regulatory and compliance framework such that the actions being taken are compliant with what the company wants to execute.

Sales Management: AI cannot substitute a flawed playbook or the lack of a coherent sales model.

People have to always remember that you are not able to transfer liability or responsibility to an AI or an AI vendor. What you put out there driven by AI inference or decisioning is your responsibility still as the organization. Understanding the liability, regulatory, and compliance envelope at something moving at the speed of light is much harder than bringing the reps together, sharing lunch, and talking about, “How are we going to remain compliant or this new law requirement has come in or this new system now needs to be updated.”

Frank, you're exactly right. That data accessibility and workflow redesign coupled with the fact back to our opening comments together, strategy doesn't have a lifespan much longer than lettuce or eggs. Where we put that together and the cycle times are causing a lot of churns in all industries. As Mark and I have talked often, sales is that tip.

It’s that point of engagement where the customer, the company, its products, its messaging, and its outcomes come together first through the sales channel. That means that all of this automation potential, but also expectation and investment, are justified in this space first. That's very heady and also challenging for the industry.

I agree with that, Mike. What I do think is different about AI is if you compare what's going on in sales with AI to X years ago when CRM was relatively new, or before that, if you're old enough to remember re-engineering. With those things, many people in the company, especially salespeople, resisted those changes. With AI, I see exactly the opposite. Everybody's eager to get on board.

They play with ChatGPT to say, “Look what this sucker can do.” This is your point, Mike, about what you can outsource. Ironically, the biggest mistake I see is the belief and attempt that, somehow, AI can substitute for a flawed playbook or the lack of a coherent sales model or strategy. It can't. It's a tool. It is not a miracle drug.

How many times have you got an email and it's full of M dashes or other tells that an AI generated it? But I got one. It was a salesperson doing a reach out. They forgot to clip the little paragraph at the bottom that said, “What would you like to do next? I can make this more personal.” They took it straight out of the chat window and pasted it into the email. Bless their hearts. They were doing it to try and personalize something with some LinkedIn data, but they ignored the other tells. They forgot the most fundamental tombstone at the bottom. You sit there and say, “Now I know what I'm dealing with.”

You're going to develop a relationship with that bot.

One of the great tips I picked up from Mike was he suggested that I start having conversations with AI when I'm commuting. Living and working in Downtown Toronto, I commute. I spend time in a car. He said, “Rather than asking for one answer, have a conversation and see how it might change your way of thinking about something.” It enables me to get a little deeper. To those reading, no matter what ends up coming from this, you have to get a little deeper. It's one of those things. We've got to continue our learning.

Frank, to touch on it, you talked about how deal qualification was something that AI could help with a little bit. What would be a couple of other areas if a leader was trying to get started? I'm with you, Frank. I don't see a lot of companies, deep down the pipe, leveraging AI in a meaningful way yet. Although, it is embedded with many of their sales enablement technologies. What are a couple of other areas that you're seeing out there where it is being leveraged to make the sales organization more efficient or effective?

My advice to companies is, don't ignore the low-hanging fruit. Pluck it. The fundamental value proposition at the heart of AI is that these large language models can do many things. If not as good as human beings, it is almost as good, freeing up time for things that human beings can do that the machine can't do. In sales, that's a very big deal.

What does that mean for the low-hanging fruit use cases? Do research about customers. AI was made for this. Establish a cadence of communications, whether it's with email, demos, webinars, etc. A big issue in virtually every sales organization on this planet is accelerating and saving time for reps with the massive reporting requirements that they have so they can get out there.

An application I see more commonly is you feed in your data to the AI, Claude or whatever it is, and say, “These are the kinds of customers that buy from us.” Through iterations, the prompts are, “Who's like this that I'm not calling on?” What I see 80% to 90% of the time with the model simply searching publicly available data is the company gets back useful information, and they almost always say, “My addressable market is bigger than I thought it was.” If you add up the things I mentioned, that is not only a very big productivity increase. It also increases the addressable market because you're making better go-to-market utilization in your organization. Start there. Transformation and the future of humanity with AI, don't worry about that.

That's another episode. We need another hour for that one.

Using AI Tools In The World Of Sales

Can I maybe add one more to your list, Frank, or get your thoughts on it? The other one low-hanging fruit, the power of the machine in a way that was inaccessible before, is it unlocks signal detection and anomaly detection. To Mark's point about having a conversation and asking what you don't know, you bring that data together and say, “Who are other customers that are like this I can reach to? What do I need to do to sell something to Mark? What are these things that I can do which are general trends? What are these signals telling me? What are the anomalies I'm not seeing or should be noticing?”

That pattern-matching cadence of the LLMs is something that historically, you may have gone down to the 9th floor, found a data scientist, gotten in a queue and waited, and got a static report months later. That wasn't all that helpful because everything else had changed. If you're intellectually curious and willing to ask those questions, those patterns that can be surfaced are exceptionally powerful.

I agree. On the selling side, the AI is not only very good at what you said, Mike, but what I find remarkable is how it can transform that insight about anomalies into a first draft action plan. A good salesperson or sales manager can deal with it. At the same time, and this is an area of AI that people aren't talking about much yet, but I predict they will. Think about what you said with the anomaly detection and think about what's happening on the customer side as they do the research about products, prices, etc.

I'm on two boards where this is affecting our business. Let's assume that as a seller, you've got 90% customer satisfaction, which is a great net promoter score. What the AI model does is it searches the World Wide Web and brings back to the person doing that search on the customer side everything. In effect, it's weighing one dissatisfied customer as much as the nine satisfied customers.

I know a lot of marketing people around the world because of the boards I'm on. I've called them up, asking, “Are you seeing this?” They’re like, “Yes.” I ask, “What are you doing about it?” The bottom line here is no one yet knows what the heck to do about this. It's a big issue, and we're going to start to hear more of how it's affecting not the selling, but the buying.

That’s very astute.

This is another episode for us. There's another hour on this. With the speed with which things are changing, we'll have to make sure we get you again, Frank, in the next 6 to 9 months if it serves your purposes and is helpful. It's a great conversation. I have one question for you. As we look at the time and wrap up a little bit, what are you most excited about for B2B sales, Frank?

You've had a great line of sight into this for decades, as I have and Mike, but you've seen so much more. What are you super excited about moving forward? Why are sales a great place for a graduate of one of your MBA classes to jump into instead of going into consulting or finance, which is where they're likely going to land?

Mike, do you want to begin or I can?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, Frank.

The truth, Mark, is I'm very bullish about the future of B2B sales. With all the issues we've discussed, fundamentally, B2B sales in many companies was a silo, and with the requirements of the market, it is more a route to the general management line of business. That gets me to the advice I give my students, and have for years. Sales is often an excellent career choice and often not. It’s very company-specific.

You know the old phrase the culture eats strategy for breakfast. It's not true. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are many companies where sales is a great route to doing what you ultimately want to do in business, which is to run a business. Not necessarily start it, but run a line of business and have P&L responsibilities. There are many tech companies where sales is invited out of the room when they discuss pricing because they don't want the children to know their cost structure.

That's always my advice to the students. Choose carefully because, at the end of the day, what you're presumably optimizing for is that larger role. What's the best way to get there? Sometimes, it's sales. Sometimes, it's not. That's what I've seen. In general, in B2B sales, it's more a job where because of the cross-functional requirements that Mike talked about and because you do have to be up to speed on data analytics, it's looking more like a place where we groom some of our future leaders, and it was not for many years.

B2B sales is more than a job. It is also the place where we groom some of our future leaders.

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

Anything to build on there, Mike? What a great thought.

It's a phenomenal observation. There are examples of where sales leadership is taking broader corporate leadership. It's because that understanding of the dynamics of the business is happening closer to the customer than ever before. You have to be a bit of a polymath and be able to be sales, analytics, strategy, and some of the other pieces. A lot of that I would agree 100% with, Frank. That would play to the point I would make, Mark, to your original question. What's the most exciting thing? The ability to personalize at the individual level has never been as strong.

One of the things that working with a consistent AI for outcomes is building that long-term memory. It's very easy for you to say in the car as you're thinking with your AI, Mark, “I want to remember the next time I reach out to Frank, we want to talk about this particular topic.” As long as you come back and say, “We're reaching out to Frank. How do we assemble our current goals, Frank's current research, and personalize the outreach?” the long-term memory will come back and say, “Remember in the car, Mark, you said this is a key point we want to work with. We weave it into the conversation.”

That customization and personalization is already at a scale, notwithstanding the message I got with the tombstone at the bottom. That ability to truly personalize the individual with long-term memory has probably never been there except in the minds of some of the most disciplined salespeople who have worked before. This opens that discipline to many more people. That, to me, is very exciting.

Well said. We could keep talking for hours, but I have to be respectful of both of your times. We're going to wrap now. First of all, to you both, thank you so much for joining. What a pleasure having this conversation. It's so great to reconnect with both of you.

My pleasure. I welcome it, Mark. It keeps me on my toes.

Thanks, Frank. Thanks, Mike. Team, thank you. We run the show to help improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. We think in doing so, we improve the lives of professional salespeople. Thanks for joining. If you liked this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Mike and Frank Cespedes.

If there are things we can be doing differently, we love constructive criticism. My email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. The way we run the show is a function of some of the feedback you've already provided. Keep it coming. That's my personal email. If you give us some constructive criticism, I personally respond to every piece of feedback. Thanks for sending it. In the meantime, thanks for joining. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Frank Cespedes

• Frank Cespedes on LinkedIn

• Aligning Strategy and Sales

• Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing

• Mike Sparling on LinkedIn

• Multi-Health Systems Inc.

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Frank Cespedes

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School and for 12 years was Managing Partner at a professional services firm. He has worked with many companies on go-to-market and strategy issues, and has been a Board member at consumer goods, industrial products, and services firms. He has written for numerous publications including Harvard Business Review, European Business Review, Organization Science, and The Wall Street Journal; and he is the author of six books including Aligning Strategy and Sales which was cited as “the best sales book of the year” (Strategy & Business), “a must read” (Gartner), and “perhaps the best sales book ever” (Forbes). His newest book is Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021)

He has also written more than 50 case studies about companies and numerous technical notes on various business topics, including strategy development and implementation, sales and marketing, leadership, pricing, and start-up issues.

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 1

Are your sales reps stuck chasing "pipe dreams" while the real deals slip through the cracks? In our latest episode of In The Funnel, we are launching a brand-new format: ITF Office Hours. Joining me is special guest Dave Hanley—author of The Delusional Founder and a veteran who has exited three technology companies at eight-figure valuations.

In this session, we tackle the toughest questions from our listeners, moving beyond generic advice to provide real-world, tactical solutions. Whether you’re a sales manager struggling to identify which deals are actually real, a rep trying to sell up the ladder at a major account, or a leader dealing with a disruptive "star" performer who undermines your culture, this episode is packed with actionable insights. We’re pulling back the curtain on how to build trust, collaborate effectively, and stop forcing square pegs into round holes. Dive in to hear how you can elevate your sales process and start closing with confidence.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 1

Introducing The New "ITF Office Hours" Format

First of all, we have got a new format. I am really excited to introduce this new show we are going to be doing. We are going to intermingle these in between our normal selling well episodes. We will do it at least once a week. We are going to do what we are now calling the ITF office hours. This was not my idea. This was the idea of Dave Hanley.

Those of you who are friends of the show, you probably know Dave for a couple of reasons. First of all, Dave wrote a fantastic book called The Delusional Founder. In his context for writing the book, Dave is a very rare breed. Dave has actually started, founded, been the first salesperson, and then exited three different technology companies, and they all exited very well at eight figures.

One of the things I have found in my experience with founders, it is very rare for somebody to do well twice. To do well three times is extremely surprising. Although Dave is really humble, I do not want to embarrass him. He is Canadian. What are you going to do? This was Dave's idea. First of all, Dave, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Mark. Excited to explore this format and talk about some sales issues that some of our audience here have sent in. I know working with you for, I mean, how long has it been now, fifteen plus years.

Can you believe it?

Yes, it is crazy. Time flies when you are having fun selling. Some of the biggest insights I got when we are sitting in a boardroom, just riffing on questions, problems with deals, that type of thing, is when some of the biggest light bulbs go off. Hopefully, we can do that for the audiences here, talking about questions that have been sent in to us by clients and listeners, and just work through those.

It sounds great, David. By the way, team, thanks for doing that. As you guys know, at the end of every show, I put my email in the show, saying, "Please give us feedback in terms of how we can make the show better." First of all, we do get some great constructive criticism. Thank you, by the way. We love constructive criticism. The second thing is that we get some questions that get tagged onto it. These days, we are getting a lot of questions from LinkedIn as well. Keep them coming. Please ask the questions, but Dave, where do you want to take it from here? Do you want to go into the mailbag or the email bag?

Absolutely. As you said, Mark, if anybody has got some questions for maybe future episodes, you can reach Mark by email, LinkedIn, wherever, send in a letter if you want via the postal service, we will take them all. Let us start with question number one, Mark. This one actually is from Joe, and Joe asks, "I am a sales manager of a team with six sales reps. Some of my salespeople are crushing it, while others on the team are underperforming. Your underperforming reps, they always seem to have deals in the pipeline that just seem to get stuck or do not seem real. How do I do a better job helping figure out what's real and what is a pipe dream?" Love that little one at the end there, pipe dream, what is in the pipeline? I like it.

Basic Deal Qualification And Identifying Real Opportunities

There is a nice play on words there. A couple of thoughts. First of all, I think we do need salespeople who are eternally optimistic. One of the things when you are hiring salespeople, one of the attributes you are looking for is optimism. When they are working deals, they have to have this belief that the deal is going to come to fruition. You cannot have a pessimist in B2B sales. They are never successful over multiple years. First of all, we have to appreciate that we have a salesperson who has a belief in their deals.

The second concept, maybe I would think about, and Dave, you have all got great experience here too, is that sometimes it is hard to read the label on the bottle when you are inside the bottle. When somebody is in the weeds working a deal, they do not see all of the things that a sales leader might see when they are actually talking about a deal or a particular opportunity. When we go back to one of the roles of a sales leader, one of the things you are trying to do when you are in a one-on-one or you are in a deal review, is you prepare for it, where you assess what is going on.

The Delusional Founder: Transforming Your B2B Tech Business Through Sales Execution

You want to question or come up with some great questions for the salesperson so that they learn and they come to the understanding of what is going on. You align on a go-forward plan, and hopefully, it is a go-forward plan that they created, because if they created the plan, they are going to buy into it. Something like deals that never come to fruition, I think we would have to go back to just basic deal qualification. Some of the things we like to think about, I think we have got a tool called the Fintastic Five Deal Qualifiers, if you are in the academy or you go on to any of our models.

First of all, in that particular deal, are we solving a meaningful business problem for that client? Just thinking about that, asking how big this problem is? Where is it on the radar for the client? Why is this something that would get priority over the 50 other things they could be doing to improve their business? The second thing I would think about is, do we have a champion in there who says we absolutely need to do this? I want to make sure this comes to fruition, and a team champion for us has to be somebody who has at least a medium to high degree of influence.

Sometimes we all end up getting caught, Dave, working with somebody who is friendly to us and responsive to us and does all the right things and is happy to go for coffee, but they have no influence really on making the decision. The third thing I would start to think of is whether we have created a business case or return on investment collaboratively with that client in their language, in their terms, and in their financial modeling?

One of the things you have seen so many times, Dave, is that a tech company, particularly a SaaS company, will give you a business case and go, "You are going to get a 47 times ROI on this." The client or the client's boss does not believe it. Why? It is not believable. It worked for that one company, one time in their particular industry, in their particular circumstance. I would really start to think about whether we actually collaborated and worked together.

That is something, actually, when this is when we first started working together, we would experience that problem all the time. We would go in there, they would say, "This is a great product. We love it." It would go silent. What we did back then was instead of forcing this business case down their throat, we essentially came up with a template, and we would sit down with that client and say, "Let us build this out." Half the time we would ask them, or probably more than half the time, frankly, "What is the next step in the process?"

They would say, "We need to put a business case in and get it approved." We would ask the question, "Is that something you do often?" They say, "I have never done a business case in my entire career." We brought the template out and said, "Let us sit down, fill it out together." Basically, we were consultants helping them put their business case together, and then they would take it up the ladder, and they were the ones who actually created it. Of course, it was built on our template.

By the way, see what I love so much about that, no one knew you guys were so successful. You are collaborating. One of the things about that is if we calm down and stop trying to pitch and sell and just hope and go, "Let us work together to actually figure out whether this makes sense for your business." Obviously, we have sold this hundreds of times, but it is really important that it makes sense for you in your business right now. If we say, "Listen, let us collaborate on a business case, take a look at these things."

Let us also think about what your boss is actually going to want to see? I think you bring up such a great point. A lot of the time, when we are working with people, they are not making decisions and building business cases five times a quarter. This is rare sometimes. Sometimes, trying to help them think through what the senior executives are going to want to see? How are they going to look at it? What are their objections going to be?

If you collaborate, you can earn the right to take the consultative approach and also let your client know if this does not make sense for you, that is okay too. We will try to help you in some other way, but it is not just about trying to force something in. It is trying to make sure they make the right decision for themselves and their business. If they feel that from you, "You are just trying to work with me to do what is right. I can trust Dave." I think they will open the kimono, and we can roll up the sleeves and help them.

Mark, this is one thing that I learned many years ago. It is like, if you are in there having the conversations and you are digging in and they say, "We really like this product," but you, as a salesperson, actually do not think it is a good fit. You should tell them straight up, "Look, I do not think this is actually going to work well for your business."

I have seen many times before where you do that, and that person ends up leaving the company, going to another company, and they call you and say, "Remember in my old business, this wasn't a good fit. I actually think now I am in a position where this is a good fit." Let us talk, and you build a ton of trust by doing that. It is not just about closing them. What is going to happen is you are going to close that deal, and it is not going to work out. You get a bad reputation. The person's upset. They go to a new company, guess who they are not calling next?

Who would want to do that for a living? Can you imagine trying to wake up every day and go, "I am going to try and sell somebody something, whether they need it or not." People like you and me would not be able to last a week doing that. We get into our mindset, the job of selling is really management consulting and trying to help a client achieve a desired business outcome.

If we go to our market that way, as you say, we are going to have a pretty great long career, because if people can trust you, the whole world opens up, but your reputation is so delicate. The one or two times a young person gets coached to do the wrong thing, that reputation will follow them, and in the heyday of SAS, there were a lot of these right demos and forcing things in and all these good things.

The whole industry was growing, sales teams did okay, but they basically populated a whole industry of people who hated selling because they did not like forcing a square peg in a round hole. They were young people. They are very impressionable. By the way, based on the timing, there were technologies that enabled them to get everywhere. Email blasts and all of this. Just take it back to the base principles. Help somebody, help a company get a better future, and things will work out well for you.

Sales becomes a lot more fun when you are actually helping customers solve real problems and are actually making and creating happy clients.

Some other tactical things, just on qualification with the question before we may jump to another one, would be, it is a bit qualified when, "Do they have a process for thinking through this? Is there actually a decision point, or is it going to be one day?" Eventually, you want to get to this point. Are you aware of how they make the decision? Who is involved? What is the role of each person involved? What is most important to each person involved? If you are single-threaded into the business, meaning you are only selling to one person, and that person does not really have the degree of influence, you are going to get a lot of meetings, you are going to get a lot of hope, and then it is never going to come to fruition.

One of the things that I learned from you early on is that we would be in our sales meetings, and you would ask the question, "How does this company make these decisions and how does the process work?" You kind of, I would look at you and go, "I am not quite sure." I was like, "How do we figure that out?" You go, "You ask." One of the things that salespeople really feel awkward about asking at first is just saying, "Susie, how does this process work in your company to get a project like this from now to live?"

Frankly, 99% of the time, they will tell you. Maybe the other one percent they do not know, which is a different concern, but they will usually tell you, "From here, I go to put this together, talk to this person. We present to this panel, this board," and they will tell you straight up. That is something you need to learn, map out, and work that into your own sales process.

By the way, that should be the soundbite from this show that we put all over the internet because the truth of it, I think it is so great on so many fronts. When you ask them that question, you might get an answer from somebody you are not super intimate with yet. They will say, "We do this, we do this." Sometimes they will leave that meeting, and what they are going to do is, "That is a very good question. I do not know how we make a decision here."

One of the tactics I always like to look at, or throw out there, is just ask it this way and say, "Listen, the last time you had a major decision like this, what did you do? How did you make it? Who helped you? Did you make it on your own, or who helped you with a decision like that?" It all starts with where you led us, Dave. If we do not have trust and credibility in front of that buyer, they are not going to spend time, and that can really open up to us on any of these things. Great one. Should we pull another one?

Selling Up The Ladder And Engaging Senior Management

Yes, let us do it. Let us see what we have got. Next, we have a question from Cindy here. Cindy is actually, it looks like Cindy is a salesperson, sales rep. Cindy says, "I have got a big deal on the go right now with a big bank and my main contact." She puts in brackets here, "The champion, maybe champion, maybe not. Is not letting me get in front of her management team to communicate what we bring to the table. I do not think she is doing a great job of selling us up the ladder. How do I deal with this?"

By the way, thanks, Cindy. What a great question that we all face. Certainly, with some of the larger deals I did long ago in my history with big banks that were tens of millions, hundreds of millions, one was a billion. I did not meet the president of the bank, but for a deal that size, I went in front of the president of a US bank, and that was somebody I would never have met. Now, our president did, but more tactically on this one, a couple of thoughts to share. It is not uncommon that our buyer is going to have to sell up the chain, but we have to remember they are not in sales.

We really need to spend a lot of time trying to help them because a lot of the things you have let people tuning in this show have learned over the years about helping a client make a decision. A lot of those things it has been so long for you. You cannot even remember it. It is hard to coach somebody who is not new to doing this. One of the things I always like to think about is if they are not great at selling up the chain and they are not letting us get in front of them, I think the only third option we have is we have to coach them well on how to do it with patience, kindness, and empathy. What you are really trying to do is engage in a conversation that says, "Let us think about how that executive team is going to take a look at what you are recommending."

Yes, that is a good one.

That might come out saying, "Listen, how do they make decisions? Who is in that room? What is most important to them? Why, why, why?" One of the things that I found, working with some great people and still doing deals to this day, Dave, would be that sometimes I am working with someone who is just so passionate that the company needs sales training. It might be somebody in mid-level leadership, or somebody in HR, and say, "Oh, we need this." Might be somebody in the product, "We need this." Sometimes we get the CFO's attention that we absolutely need this.

When you start to think of the other people who are going to be around the table, they look at things differently. For example, we might work with someone in HR who says, what is going to happen when you bring this up the chain, and your CEO says, "Exactly what return on investment am I going to get for making this investment in the sales team? What is your answer?" Just collaborating with them.

Are you going to say, "We know this training pays for itself if we get a 40% year over year sales increase," or does the training actually pay for itself if you get, like, a three percent increase in sales year over year? The second thing is, the CEO asks our buyers a lot, "What is the real cost of the training?" They will say, "This is the fee from the funnel." The CEO will come back and say, "That is not the real cost." Mark's company wants to be in front of our sales team four times a year. That is four days out of the field.

We have to fly everybody in, and a couple of these objections to the right executive team will immediately derail the whole thing. Sometimes, the buyers you have, if they are going into that executive meeting, they are not in there every week. They do not know how this group makes decisions, but 2 or 3 objections will derail that conversation. You will never get back in front of the executive team. For us, Dave, one of the things I like to think about is how to set up a meeting where we say, "Let us just think about how that executive team is going to look at this and prepare." You almost become the sales manager for your buyer, with love. What do you suggest in this instance?

Yes. Mark, I will put a different spin on this one. I love what you said there, just about having to coach that champion to take a certain approach within the company. There is another thing again, I think this goes back to your training with us many years ago. We were always selling back then to big insurance companies. We would have a person who is a VP-level, and they had several levels above them. Part of the time, they would not put you in the room with those same people. As a seller, you know that the person above them, the chief underwriting officer or something, is a real decision maker. As the seller, you cannot pick up the phone and call that chief underwriting officer because then your contact is going to say, "What are you doing?”

“You are going around me."

What you can do is something, I think you called it, like rank selling. What you do is you have, if you are the salesperson, maybe you have your VP or your CEO reach out to that person who is the real decision maker, the boss of your champion, or the person you are working with to say, "I know Cindy, in this case, is working with Steve. I am in charge of this, that, and the other in the business. I just want to make myself available.

I'm really excited about this project. If you have any questions as you go through this process whatsoever, do not hesitate to reach out." By doing things that way, your contact with the buyer cannot fault you for saying, "What are you going around? That is my boss." They are making the call up the ladder to really help the relationship, make themselves available. I think that is a great technique if you are locked out in that situation, because you can get the conversation started. Frankly, that relationship might pay huge dividends in getting the deal done.

It is a great idea. Just, I know you guys would do this, just a minor build on that would be I will share it with my contact and say, "Listen, I had a conversation with our CEO, and because it is such an important opportunity, they wanted to make themselves available to your boss, Dave DaCosta." I just wanted to let you know that they are going to be reaching out. Sometimes I wasn't asking for permission, but I was pleasantly making them aware.

I do not control what my CEO does. They weren't asking my permission to reach out, but of course, when they did that, the CEO would take the opportunity to let the other president know that their team was doing a great job and that we were really impressed with the skill, putting the wind in the sails of our buyers. That is an option to consider for sure.

There are a lot of companies that do not do that, and it is a nice differentiator. Get the senior, senior people to reach out, tell the person, "This is a really important project for us."

I loved your verbiage there, Dave. Your CEO says, "What am I supposed to say when I reach out?" You have got to coach the CEO on what to do. Just say, "Listen, out of consideration, I wanted to reach out and make myself available to you. I am sure this is a really important decision for you. You are a really important client for us. I wanted to make sure that I am available in the event you have any questions whatsoever about what is taking place."

By the way, delighted to connect anytime to share a few insights about what we are seeing in the industry. That peer-to-peer, by the way, at that level, of course, everybody loves networking. They love expanding their base, and they want to make sure. It is just such a smart thing to do. Any other thoughts on that one, by the way?

No, I think that should hopefully help Cindy get that big deal across the finish line there.

The Importance Of Collaborative Deal Reviews And Whiteboarding

By the way, team, one thing to call out, this is why I always love chatting with you, Dave, is that I am such a huge believer in the power of collaboration. As you are facing these challenges, please do not be afraid to go to your sales manager or your sales team. Put a few people in a room. It does not have to be an hour-long meeting, twenty minutes.

I can say, "Listen, if you have got a template for talking through the deal, we love our strategy builder that you can get from the Academy. If you do not, just have some way of briefly updating the team on where you are in the deal, whiteboard ideas of things I could do right now to improve my strategic positioning. What are the things we could do?" Always the idea of a whiteboard, it is almost like being in a comedy writer's room. There is no bad idea.

You can always put the ideas on the whiteboard, you can always take them off later, edit later, but get some ideas because riffing back and forth here, just you come up with an idea, and I had five percent, you had five percent. That is why it was so fun working with you guys back in the day, because there were such smart guys, folks in that company. We're also in a safe place because there was a lot of laughter in the room. People's brains work better when they feel safe. If they're in a room where I am trying to collaborate with the CEO, who is a real hard ass, and I get panic in my heart, I cannot think.

Mark, this is a, this is kind of a tool that is not really used. I think a lot of the time, by sales managers and sales leaders, is whether this is a big deal or a stuck deal review. It is great for a sales leader because, honestly, you do not have to do much. You get your sales team in the room. You say, "Who has got a deal that is stuck or a deal that is a problem right now?" Basically, they give the synopsis. As the sales leader, you look around and say, "Joe, what do you think? Susie, what do you think?" Just go around and get people's ideas and feedback. You are just facilitating the conversation, and what happens a lot of times is someone, "I had that problem last week. Here is what I did." Great idea. I never thought of that.

As a sales leader, look around the room and ask, “Joe, what do you think? Susie, what do you think?” Invite ideas, gather feedback, and make collaboration the norm.

Good Dave. For sales leaders out there who are always under enormous stress, you do not have to be the smartest person in the room. The hope is you are not. The hope is that you are developing a team of people who are smarter and more capable. By the way, not blowing wind in any sales, Dave, you and your buddy, Dave DeCosta, were those people back in the day with me, even, because we would get in a room and we would talk about a concept or an idea. A week later, we would have another sales meeting, and you guys would come back and show what you have done. In my mind, I was going, "You guys executed this thing way better than I would have." That is what you hope. As a sales leader, take the pressure off of you do not need to be the smartest person.

You do not have to have all the answers.

Your job is to really unleash the potential of the team and develop the people who are going to be the smartest people in the room and one day take your job. That is the joy of doing it. Do we have time for another day?

Addressing Disruptive High-Performing Salespeople

Yes, we have got one more here, Mark, maybe that we can address. This one could be based on my skimming of this question. It could be a more succinct answer here, knowing you. Number three here is from Rachel. Rachel is actually a sales leader. She says, "I lead a team of nine sellers, and one of them has amazing numbers and basically always beats quota. He has been with the company for about ten years. The issue is that he does not follow our protocols or processes. I feel like he undermines me sometimes in sales meetings. Honestly, it is a bit disruptive to the team. I have had several discussions with him, but he keeps insisting that he just does things his own way. What do I do?"

Rachel, I hope you're using a pseudonym, Rachel, for people tuning in. Dave, I will get your opinion on this one, too, but this is probably the hardest thing that I have had to learn in the early years of being a sales leader. Because you look at that person, that person might have good relationships with the rest of my organization. They have been around for ten years. You might have senior executives who like them. They bring in numbers, so everybody is going to like them. The truth of it is, you cannot have somebody who is disruptive on your sales team. You cannot.

Rachel talked about protocols. I almost position it as a value as a leader. I am bringing a set of values and a sales culture, hopefully to the table, and that we want the team to align on. The truth is, you have to do that. You have to get on side because you just cannot have a disruptive player on the team. Even if they're producing, the rest of the people wonder why they do not, why this person does not get held to the same standards, same protocols, same values, and same behaviors. Over time, it is not going to work out.

A lot of times, there is a little bit of imposter syndrome, I think, on new sales leaders. If you have got this person diminishing your authority, it is not good for you either. If it is not good for you, it takes you out of being your best self, so you cannot lead, help, and coach the rest of the team. The truth of it is, you have said you have had this conversation with a person a couple of times, you have to have that courageous conversation and say, "Listen, we have minimum expectations to be on the team. We have to do this."

That person is going to self-select and either do it. You then have to decide if they do not do it, you are going to need to replace them. They have to go. Now, the timing is something you need to think about. Given the pressures on the quarter and the year, what is the timing, and how do you address it with the customers they work with, and how do you get in front of some of those customers? We cannot have a disruptive person on the team. It is no different than any sports team. They do not just go after the most talented people. There are a lot of players in a league who are very talented, but nobody wants them on the team.

Even if that person is beating their quotas every quarter, you have to wonder what the negative impact of that person is on. It looks like Rachel has nine people on the team. What is the negative impact on the other eight people on the team? If you get rid of that disruptive person, potentially everybody else in the team is going to elevate. What I also see a lot of times is when you finally do.

The biggest mistake I have made throughout my career is, and I heard this phrase a while ago. “The time you should let somebody go is the first time you think about doing it. You have always waited too long to pull the cord, so to speak, thinking, “It will change, maybe it will change.” Unfortunately, they often do not. Once you actually do that, the rest of the team is like, "I never thought that was going to happen. It is about time." They are relieved, and immediately everybody gets a better morale and starts performing better. That is something that is kind of underappreciated.

The right time to let someone go is usually the first time you seriously consider it.

A cloud lifts. One of the things I always like to share, particularly for sales leaders, is to protect your confidence. That same thing we talked about a little while ago. You think best when you are in a good place. When you are in fight or flight, or feel like you are at risk or there is some danger, your brain spends most of the time in that zone. By the way, you cannot really think well.

This is why when you are having an emotional argument with somebody, you leave the argument, it is over, you are driving home, and you go, "I should have said this, this, and this." You cannot think well when you are in the middle of something emotional, or you are not in your best self. The truth of it is, I think for sales leaders today, the job is tough enough. I need a team that is aligned and on side. I need to make the expectations very clear.

I have to set expectations and coach people, and then have those courageous conversations to guide. Everybody needs feedback. If somebody wants to declare, "Dave, I am not too keen on your program. I am just going to be over here doing my own thing. By the way, I know what I am doing. I am getting my numbers. Do not worry about me," but I am to be disruptive behind your back. I am going to chip away at your authority. Whether you want it to be the case or not, tenured people in a sales organization influence new people. Because the new people go, "They must be good at what they do because they have been here ten years."

They are hitting their numbers. They have been here a long time, so I am to start doing things the way they are doing it. All of a sudden, you show up at the office one day, and you are looking around, going, "Why is everybody a total jerk in here, and why doesn't everybody like me?"

That is right. Making sure you are clear on what your expectations are, but the team has got to be your team. You have got to run the sales culture your way, and people have to be aligned with that. That is a really important thing in terms of being fit. By the way, both of us, I am sure, we will qualify. These decisions are never fun, gang.

No, the worst part of the job, by far, is losing a customer. It is never easy. I know it is easy for us to say, "Get rid of the person," but it is the most difficult thing, being a leader, being an entrepreneur, having a team, and having to make a decision like that, that does affect somebody, their personal life, and that type of thing. It is not easy.

It is not easy at all. The reason Dave and I are so crisp on it is that we have lived this multiple times. Too many times. We know the end game ends up being the same one way or the other.

Mark, that is all we got in the mailbag. We are running out of time here, but this was super fun. Hopefully, the listeners learned a few things, and I know I did.

Me too.

Like having these conversations. A couple of things you talked about were like, "That is right." I remember Mark telling me that ten years ago, and I have not thought about it. It is a good refresher, too.

Closing Thoughts And The Mission To Elevate Professional Sales

Me too, Dave. Just talking about it gets the thought process going again. At any given time, we are working with four or five different large sales organizations. We are training thousands of salespeople these days. These are the things that come up frequently in our workshops, whether they are for leaders or for salespeople. These are the issues we are all battling with. Leadership is tough. Selling is tough, and it is not getting any easier. By the way, Dave, what a great idea to do these office hours. Thank you so much for coming up with the idea.

It was fun, Mark. We will look forward to doing another one soon.

Thank you, Dave. It is always great to see you. We will see you next time. Folks, thanks for joining. As we mentioned at the top, the reason we run our company, the reason we exist, we are trying to improve the lives of professional salespeople. We do that through coaching, teaching, and elevating professional sales into the profession it deserves to be. We love your feedback. Thanks for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please like and subscribe to our show because that is how we get great guests.

That is how we keep doing this. If you have some ideas for us or questions that you would like us to take on in the next ITF office hours, you can send them to me, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. I respond to every piece of constructive criticism we get. That is my personal email, by the way. If you send a question, we will also say thank you, and we will put it in the mailbag for next time. In the meantime, team, good luck to everybody over the next couple of weeks. Thanks for tuning in. We will see you next time.

Important Links

• Dave Hanley on LinkedIn

• Dave Hanley on Instagram

• The Delusional Founder

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

Framemaking Sale: Improving The Buying Experience With Brent Adamson

The real problem in sales is not in the buyer’s trust in a supplier, but their confidence in themselves to make a sound purchasing decision. With the usual buying journey extremely messy and complicated, world-renowned B2B sales researcher Brent Adamson offers a solution: the Framemaking Sale. He joins Mark Cox and guest co-host Mike Sparling to discuss how to make a drastic shift in sales focus, moving beyond the traditional sensemaking practices and into the framemaking one with a human-centric approach. Brent highlights the major problems of the conventional B2B model, breaking down what it takes to address decision complexity, information overload, objective misalignment, and outcome uncertainty. He also talks about the evolving role of AI, making the buying journey more convenient by providing assistance in decision-making while maintaining authentic human connections.

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Watch the Episode here

Listen to the Podcast here

Framemaking Sale: Improving The Buying Experience With Brent Adamson

We have got an absolutely fantastic show for you because we have got Brent Adamson on the show. Brent is a world-renowned author, speaker, sales researcher, and trainer. Brent spent most of his career researching buying and selling in the B2B format. Some of that work has been published in books. With his pal, Matt Dixon, he published The Challenger Sale back in 2011 and The Challenger Customer in 2015.

We are talking to him about The Framemaking Sale: Sell More by Boosting Customer Confidence. This is a book he has written with co-author Karl Schmidt. It really appears to be an evolution from The Challenger to sensemaking to framemaking. Sensemaking was an HBR article that he wrote, where he argued that modern B2B buyers are drowning in high-quality information, yet they still struggle to make sense of it.

Back then, he said the seller's job shifts from merely informing or persuading to helping buyers interpret, prioritize, and organize information so they can make confident decisions. The Framemaking Sale appears to push that idea even one step further, where the public positioning of the book is really about increasing buyer confidence in themselves not to make the decision, not buyer confidence in the seller.

We had this great conversation. By the way, the book is terrific. I always enjoy Brent's work. There is lots of great research in there. There are some scary stats that he shares, where he states that 75% of the time, a buyer would actually prefer to make a decision without interacting with the salesperson at all. Yet 23% of the time, they have a high degree of regret for that decision.

Of that group, the ones who make a decision without salespeople have a high degree of regret. We talk about this concept, T-Shares, of a high-quality, low-regret decision, and what is required to get there. We also talk about the challenges that are undermining customer confidence and why it is so difficult for them to make a decision.

We talk a lot about the fact that 40% to 60% of deals out there today that we think are qualified are going to no decision. Meaning they did not choose us, and they did not choose a competitor. They chose nobody. Again, this comes back to, in his and Karl's view, an issue around supplier confidence in themselves to make the decision, not their confidence or trust in the salesperson. It is just a super interesting conversation.

Brent is always a really engaging guest on the show. By the way, we do touch on AI. We have got Mike Sparling, our expert on the AI front, who has been joining recent episodes. It is always a pleasure to have Mike as part of the show. I really enjoyed this conversation with both Mike and Brent. I am sure you will, too. When you do, please like and subscribe to the show because it really matters to us. That is actually how we get great guests like Mike Sparling and Brent Adamson. Here is the show. Enjoy.

Brent, welcome back to the show.

As always, Mark, it is great to be here. It is good to see you.

It is great to see you. By the way, team, we are joined by our pal, Mike Sparling, again, known as our AI thought leaders. We would love to bring Mike into this show as a different filter, because this series is going to be really focused a little bit on understanding where we should all be going with AI. Mike, it is great to see you again. Thanks for joining.

It is good to see you, Mark. Brent, it is really great to meet you and spend the next little bit of time with you.

Agreed. Thanks, Mike.

Team, I think this is probably the brand's second or third appearance on our show over the last few years. We, of course, talked about the Challenger sale. The last time we brought him on, he had done an article for HBR called Sensemaking in Sales. You see this progression from Challenger to Sensemaking. I had the joy of reading his latest book, The Framemaking Sale: Sell More by Boosting Customer Confidence. Sell more by boosting customer confidence, as Brent wrote with his pal, Karl Schmidt. I have literally read 300 sales books. I knew I was going to love this book. Twenty pages in, two references, one spinal tap. Nobody has ever made a spinal tap reference in a sales book I have read. The second, Mike, this will apply to UNO. By the way, this is why the sales profession is having such a challenge.

That is what I would call a missed opportunity right there.

The second, I think you are the only person to quote Prime Minister Trudeau. The Canadian Prime Minister is actually quoted in the first couple of chapters in the book.

Also true.

Talking about the pace, Justin Trudeau.

That quote has become, in fact, to be totally honest, it is a little embarrassing. I knew the quote before I knew it was Trudeau. I had to look it up. “Really? Was Trudeau?” It was not like I was writing, “I need a Canadian quote.”

A little maple watching to go with it. That is going to change the whole tone of this episode. We thought you were putting wind in our sails.

I know Mark, even more embarrassing is when you sent me the email and said, I really appreciate the Spinal Tap reference. My reaction was, “Really, I put a spinal tap reference in the book.” I do not remember that. “Was it the go to 11 bit? What is in there?” There you go.

One of the senior sales leaders that you spoke to referenced, "This one goes to eleven.”

There is something really interesting about that reference. For those of you who do not know Spinal Tap, fix that. There is a scene where he is bragging about his amplifier going not just to ten, but his goes to eleven. There was a big debate about whether it is actually meaningful or not. It is actually really interesting in the world of research, in the world of sales books, in the world of just the world of actual challenge, insight, and ideas, and framing.

That joke, as funny as it is, is actually a perfect example of a really important idea of a difference in degree versus a difference in kind. When you are out there trying to educate people, change the world, talk about ideas, help your customers understand their world in a different way, create insight, it is a really helpful rubric to be thinking about. Is this a difference in degree? Is it the same thing, just more? Is it a difference, or less, I suppose. Is it a different kind?

Is something different altogether? What you find is that differences in degree versus differences in kinds have very different kinds of impact on things like mental models, change, and emotional impact. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you may want to play one up versus the other, but it is a super helpful construct to be thinking about. It is all captured in a spinal tap reference. There you go.

Addressing The Problematic Gardner Spaghetti Diagram

By the way, it is all captured in the book. One could argue that the whole framemaking sale is a difference in kind. It is the provocative idea in the work where the real problem in sales is not the buyer's trust in a supplier, but the buyer's confidence in themselves to make a decision. When did you realize, because back in the day with The Challenger Sale, it was about teaching Tailor, take control. It is about what I am doing as a salesperson.

Since making the HBR article from a couple of years back, how do I navigate all of this high-volume, high-quality information that I am getting buried with? It is all good, high quality, high volume of information. When did you navigate to the real problem, the spaghetti Gardner, the Gardner spaghetti diagram of how buyers make decisions, which we have referenced on this show twenty times? How did you get to this point? How did the research take you here?

It was a journey of many years. Some will know that the idea of buyer enablement that came out of our research shop at CEB, I think either right before or right after the Gartner Acquisition, the sense of being work kind of the same thing. That spaghetti chart, the spaghetti bowl of B2B buying, that is something I will never forget. We were building a marketing study, actually. At the time, the marketing practice at CEB was headed by Martha Mathers, who is now a CMO at Bloomberg. She is a good friend of mine.

We were building the storyboard, the pages that go along with this idea that we're trying to portray. It is like marketing, we always need to sell the way customers buy and map the selling journey to the customer's buying journey. The point we were trying to make is what happens when the customers do not actually know their buying journey? What happens when the customer's buying journey is so messy that if you were to map it, it would actually be a bad thing, not a good thing. We were trying to figure out how to convey that graphically.

If you map a customer’s buying journey, it would be a bad thing, not a good thing.

I looked at Martha, and I said, “You know what we need? We just need a sheet of paper, a page, a slide, which is circles and arrows and just crap going everywhere.” We need something like, just you look at and you viscerally, like, “Ah,” and, got to love Martha Mathers. She went home on that weekend, and on Sunday afternoon, with her daughter and her dog on her couch, she drew that diagram. We have tweaked it a little bit over the years, but that has been arguably one of the most famous, well-known, widely distributed images we've ever created in all the research.

It plays a central role in The Framemaking Sale in a lot of ways, too, because it picks up on this idea that B2B buying is broken. There is this really interesting moment, Mark, where you, it is like this moment of empathy in sales, where it is like, I think we would all agree, “Look, since I have departed Gartner, I am on my own. I have a small company with my co-author. We're building around this new book, The Framing Sale.” I joke now, what that means is “There are only two of us. I am now both the head of sales and the sales team.” What that really means is I am just mad at myself for the no entries in the CRM system. Do you know what I mean? Why is this an up spot?

Interesting one-on-one.

The one more reason to hate myself, I suppose. Where was this going? The thing that we are all so focused on is how hard selling is. It is. It is fraught. It is difficult. It takes time. It's complex. It's confusing. There is a moment in sales where I think everything begins to unlock when you actually stop and realize, “Wait a minute, it is arguably just as hard, if not harder, on the other side of the equation.” It is not like, “Buyers know what they're doing, and it's really hard to unlock that so that we could see their world too.” It's rather, no, they're struggling just as much, if not more. There is a short answer.

It is not even a short answer at this point, but it is an answer to your question because it is actually super interesting. I will abbreviate a little bit, but over the course of our research, we began to realize we are probably going to be more productive for the world if we study not so much the world of B2B selling or B2B marketing, but we began to study the world of B2B buying and trying to understand what, like what's really going on on that side. This is a number of years ago, when we first got into this. We actually reached out to a guy named Bob Moesta, who may have been on your show at some point. Do you know who Bob is?

Yeah.

Bob Moesta was a partner with Clay Christensen, who is the author of The Innovator's Dilemma. I say Clay as if I knew him. I did not. Rest in peace. Christensen and Bob are best known for the work they did together, they're best known for the work they did on jobs to be done. That's a Harvard Business Review article that became a model that's been widely distributed and used in sales and marketing. We actually reached out to Bob and asked him if we could talk to him about applying the idea of jobs to be done in the B2B space.

That led to a really interesting collaboration for about a year and a half or so. Out of all that came this one of these things, the whole idea from Bob's perspective is you have to ask yourself, what are the jobs that customers are trying to complete to their satisfaction, such that they will make a purchase decision? We laid out these jobs, and this is the heart and soul of the spaghetti bowl. Working with Bob and doing some interviews and using his techniques, we went out and talked to B2B buyers. We identified these four buying jobs.

Problem identification, solution exploration, requirements building, and supplier selection. The whole idea is that a purchase happens when customers complete those jobs to their satisfaction. All that was super interesting, but it led to this really interesting question, which was, "How does a customer know when they are done with a job?” If one of the critical jobs in making a purchase, feeling good about it is problem identification, how do I know that when I am “done” with the job that the job is complete, that I have identified the right problem and the right scope and the right priorities?

What we began to realize is that when I had asked about our research, he was like, “Did you ask the customers you were interviewing about that?” The answer was always vague, “Yeah, they just feel it.” It was like always, really, and then you began to realize, we are all just like parenthood. We're all making it up. None of us really knows how to be a parent, and I'm twenty years in. It's like none of us really know how to be a B2B buyer. They are done. They feel good that they are done, or they are confident they are done. It is like, “That is interesting. We started taking this idea of confidence and breaking it into sort of component parts and feeding these metrics of confidence into our research models.”

The specific research model is designed to identify the likelihood of what we call a high-quality, regret purchase, which you will know, because this is all laid out in chapter one of the book. We're trying to figure out what needs to happen inside of a sale or a purchase in order to increase the likelihood of customers buying a bigger deal with a broader scope, with a higher price point, and feeling good about it at the same time.

We took everything from Challenger, teach, tailor, take, control, broke that into component elements, threw that in there. We took selling techniques, selling methodologies, and marketing strategies. We even took buyer group configurations and the number of stakeholders, all that. Anything and everything we could possibly think of, we put into this model and ran it to see what would happen.

Lo and behold, by the way, Challenger actually had a really nice impact, which is like, thank goodness. Challengingly, the increase, particularly from Teach of Teach, tailor, take, control, the likelihood of a high quality purchase, a high quality, lower-grade purchase would go up by, say, 180% or something like that, which is almost like a 2X increase, which is really dramatic. We started taking this stuff from confidence and putting that into the model. Something completely bonkers happened. That is a very technical research term.

We will look that up.

By the way, this is why I love doing research, because you find bonkers things. It's like you look at things that do not make any sense. The thing that was really bonkers was the fact that these dimensions, particularly when you aggregated or synthesized them into an overall metric, which we call decision confidence, completely swamped. Everything else we studied was not just by a little bit, like if, “Here's the technical version if like, some things were here. Maybe the challenger was here.”

This confidence metric was literally off the screen. It's like up here. It was far and away bigger than anything else. We had studied. It was an order of magnitude larger. It was like, you know, a 9x, 10x improvement in this metric, and that led to this really interesting journey about confidence in what, and it turns out that it is the degree to which customers are confident in things like, did we even ask the right questions to begin with? Have we done enough research? Have we thoroughly explored alternatives? There's a longer story that no one cares about, but some of that research got turned into sense-making over time.

Some of that research got turned into buyer enablement, or those things were happening at the same time. Gartner came in, and Gartner pushed us in some slightly different directions for all sorts of totally good reasons. This work sat around on the cutting room floor. The more I thought about it, on the Gartner side, we went in a different direction, which is like, how do I integrate sales and marketing? Particularly based on that really amazing statistic we found right before I left, which is 75% of B2B buyers say they would prefer to buy without ever talking to the sales rep at all.

We got into like, “How do I sell digitally if they do not want to talk to my people?” We just went in different directions, but since that time, it has always bothered me, or at least made me wonder. Something about that for a minute. Particularly, we put it in the context of if 75% of B2B buyers do not want to talk to sales reps at all, and the number one thing that customers need to make purchases to feel confident, you start putting these things together, you start realizing, there are a couple of things going on. First of all, the thing about confidence.

The degree to which customers are confident that they asked the right questions, that they have done enough research, and that they thoroughly explored alternatives. When you start unpacking all that, Mark, what you realize is that those dimensions of confidence are actually supplier agnostic. They have nothing to do with the supplier at all. Every time I present the confidence work to a CEO, it seems the first thing they will do is agree. There's no doubt, they're not confident.

They're going to choose not to choose, but that is why they need to be confident in our product, in our people, in our value, and it's why we need trusted advisors. You look at the data, it's like, “No, that is actually not the story. The story is they need to be confident not in you, but in themselves.” It is always what has really led me to the book, and everything we're doing now is this really interesting question.

Your point, all the way circling back, this callback to the difference in degree versus difference in kind point, the difference in kind question here, the one that no one seems to be asking that I think is really critical based on this research is, what does it look like to engage customers in such a way that you're specifically solving for not their supplier perception, but for their self perception? That is not something we have ever really talked about in sales before. It is always like, “Do you like my product?”

Selling is like a bad date. It's like, “Enough about me, you talk about me, here's my product, do you like my product? Here's my value. Do you like my value? Here's my ROI, do you like my ROI? Here's me, do you like me?” All this time, very much like on a date, where you're worried about what your date thinks of you, and it turns out they're thinking about themselves. I do not mean that in a snarky way. It's like, we're all just focused inward.

It turns out the same thing in B2B buying, not surprisingly, because we're still all just human beings. Are we even asking the right questions? In the world, I want to get to in a second, Mike, with this world of AI, it is like, have we done enough research? There is no end to the research you could do in the world of AI now. We thoroughly explored alternatives. By the way, those alternatives are changing rapidly now, with AI supporting everything and moving quickly.

What you find is that not only do customers need to be confident, but they're operating in an environment where that confidence is arguably more under threat than it ever has been in the past. They're struggling with decision complexity, all the different people involved. They're struggling with information overload, which is the sense-making work.

They're struggling with outcome or objective misalignment, where all those different people are trying to just accomplish different things. Know with good intentions, but they are having our time just agreeing not on how great you are, but agreeing on what they should even be doing in the first place, and they're also struggling. Finally, the fourth one is an outcome uncertainty, which is now I see your value, and I see what you've done with their companies, I've seen your success.

That's great, but I'm just not sure we will see it at our company because we're complex or we're different, we will find some way to screw this up. I'm confident in you and what you're saying. I'm just not confident in us. This becomes really interesting, which is, “We need to solve for customers' confidence in themselves. That confidence is under threat like never before.” What a really interesting opportunity.

All the way back to the 75% statistic. If 75% of B2B buyers would prefer never to talk to a sales rep at all, this becomes a really interesting opportunity and a really interesting question. How do I become the one seller that customers want to talk to? The one way to become the seller that customers do want to talk to is to be the one who shows up and helps them feel better, not about you, but about themselves. The best way for them to get you to become a trusted advisor. See if you guys buy this. I wish I had a bar chart on this.

Become the seller that customers want to talk to by being the one who shows up and helps them feel better about themselves.

Let's come back to the how.

I will take a breath. That was a lot.

Everybody gets oxygen. Somebody sent the oxygen to Prince. Obviously, we've got the complimentary.

My extra-large Chipotle Diet Coke has the oil amped up. It has the same impact.

That will bring you back to earth.

That's right.

Making The Hard Decisions To Move Forward

I am going to push it over because Mike is not only a Canadian thought leader in AI, but he is also Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer of a large organization. He is on the receiving end of these. I would like to take that initial point where you say, “Listen, let us go back to the spaghetti bowl diagram of Gartner.” Mike, to challenge a little bit, one of the things that I have always believed is that none of us ever has enough data to make the decisions. Brent, you're running a company now. I've run companies for years.

Now I've been running my own company for the last fifteen years. Never have enough data. I have to make decisions. I am really paid to use judgment to make decisions. Why is it so different, and a large-scale purchasing decision where people feel like they have to have every T crossed and every I dotted at some point in time, you have to make a decision as an executive. You have to make a decision. I know there is a challenge there.

Your old pal, Matt Dixon, wrote the book with Ted McKenna, The JOLT Effect. People would rather miss out than mess up. As a leader, I would be challenging my senior executives to say, “Listen, it is never going to be perfect. I understand every decision is difficult, but we have to move our business forward and make a decision.” What are your thoughts on that? I am not trying to be too unempathetic toward the buyers. Mike, how does it go? How does it work on your end?

It is interesting. The research I was doing leading up to the conversation and just listening to Brent in the tea up. I kept mentally going back to one of those old catchphrases about IBM from twenty years ago. No one was ever fired for hiring IBM or buying IBM and the point that you made, Brent about confidence, that is just so salient to AI adoption, to workforce development, to competing in marketplaces, to launching new products, to selling all the things that Mark, you and I have talked about for, you know coming on 15, or 16 years since we first met.

I had never really distilled it down to the two-party confidence and the ability to both present and conclude around that. That is really a key point and worth teasing further into because as everything speeds up. The Justin Trudeau quote we opened with is the one about never again will it be this slow, and it's never been this fast before. You sit at that junction where it feels like we're out of control at the speed that we're moving at. Yet right now is probably the slowest it's going to be headed into the future.

Those inflection curves, AI models changing every day, and the depth of reasoning that you can extract from the cost per million tokens. These things are all levers moving so quickly around us. I empathize with probably 99.9% of the world because I grew up in tech. I came out of tech as an AI thought a person who has lived my whole life in data inference, common action, learned business second, and became a leader.

Most of the people I speak to do not understand what's under the covers. Now that it's in the cloud, you cannot say they cannot look at the machine and see what's inside it. What's going on, why it's going on, and how it's creating outcomes. That triangle is really the thing that we have to unpack. Looking at it through a confidence lens, it really adds new insight to that. My day job, leading a firm, bringing technology to market, and working in neuroscience, is groundbreaking work that we're sitting upon.

It’s very difficult to sell even to people who want to buy it. It involves organizational transformation in some ways in very calcified, knowledge-rich environments. Who is the hardest person to sell to the confident, knowledgeable expert? Who is the person who very often most needs to change that same individual? I would just be really curious about your thoughts on where that comes in and the bonkers outcomes that the data and insight and inference and all the things going on right now, how do we move that 75% either into a digital world or to better equip people with what they need in order to drop that 75% down and have people want to engage with sales more often?

I agree with you, Mike. Man, by the way, Mark, what is interesting, your question is, so very much like Mike, I have interviewed, talked to now at this point over the years, literally tens of thousands of senior executives. That is not a brag. It's a very humble, lucky guy to be able to go to big stages, small rooms, you name it. There is an exercise that we came up with a number of years ago that I still run today, which is when talking to senior executives, let's just for a moment, because usually it's commercial leaders I'm talking to, just take your selling or marketing hat off for a moment and put your buying hat on.

About a purchase that you have made inside your own company in the last 12 to 18 months. Think about the people involved, the steps it took, and the questions you had to answer. Now, if I were to ask you for one word, one adjective to describe that entire experience beginning to end, what would that word be? The reason why I said tens of thousands of people is that I think it's actually telling. I have literally run that exercise on big stages, small rooms, with tens of thousands of people, and I have yet to hear a positive word. It's always long, hard, frustrating, awful.

How incredible, isn't it? I couldn't believe it.

It's dramatic. I always ask, “How much of that pain, frustration, and awfulness was the result of the company selling to you, and how much was your own company getting in its own way?” We all say this in our own company. It's our committees, it's our budgets, it's our timelines, it's our competing priorities, it's our personalities. This is, by the way, when you think about Silicon Valley early, what was it, Facebook or was it Google?

Which either moves fast and breaks things, but that's the mantra of Silicon Valley more broadly, because I think it's a reaction to this kind of world. It's like, we've been talking in MBA classes about flattening the organization for the better part of two decades. I think it's all this strong desire to get to a place where we're more agile. This is where agile thinking came from. All of this is indicative or symptomatic of the same frustration that we all have in these organizations with lots of people involved in these decisions, all working, I would argue, with good intentions, but sometimes cross-purposes of priorities, really struggle to come to a common vision of what they're trying to do.

Going back, Mike, to your point, like how do I become the one seller customers do want to talk to? If you cannot help me with that, then I do not really see any, because I can find everything else, your value, your products, your features, your benefits, all that stuff, that has been online for well over a decade now. I do not need you for that.

As a result, a lot of customers think, well, if I do not need you for that, and there's nothing else you provide, I do not need you for anything. And that's why 75% of B2B buyers say I do not need to talk to the sales rep. What if I could show up and actually help you with this other thing? Helping you all come to a common vision, helping you anticipate obstacles that you did not fully appreciate, helping give you a heads up, not based on my expertise, but based on other companies as you have gone down this road, and the lessons they've learned.

It's like, “By the way, when procurement gets involved, they're going to have these three questions. We see a lot of companies struggle with this. One of the ways that we can help you is just to think through how to answer those questions when they come up.” It's like, as a customer, I think I am glad I talked to you, because that was actually really helpful. That is really what frame making is all about. This idea of becoming your customer is almost like deciding to be a Sherpa or buying a coach.

We're throwing that term Sherpa around a lot. We're on a lot with this 75%, the buyer said at that point, I am referring to make the decision with no salesperson. By the way, folks tuning in, think of that for a second. That is a crazy number. Later on, we talk about research done in 2018, where 77% of buyers said, “I feel completely overwhelmed.” Whether it's for the reasons you give in the book, which are all great, or decision complexity, information overload, objective misalignment, or outcome uncertainty.

Human Story: The Heart Of Every Framing Sale

We can understand why they feel overwhelmed. I will just come back to these two kinds of thoughts. One, I think there's just this core challenge in large enterprises today. Oftentimes, this is where large deals come in. Consensus is proven not to get us to the right answer. When you go through certain mental exercises, there are a number of things out there that say, “Listen, if I go for a consensus deal, I am going to get here. If I actually go outside of consensus, where all P parties are not created equal, and somebody makes a decision, you actually get a better decision done.”

The second thing I would just bring up to the conversation for a second is when we think of senior executives, they're not publicly going in front of their shareholders saying, “I'm overwhelmed by their complex decision whether or not to make this M&A deal.” They're in front of their shareholders, going, “We're going to do this M&A deal.” It's going to work out perfectly. Look at how most M&A deals turn out, by the way. The stats are flabbergasting. You never get the deal synergy.

It feels to me like this. Maybe we will get back to the sales component of it. It's a symptom of a larger problem in large corporate enterprises, where many of them are just not nimble anymore. You're trying to make decisions by consensus in large banks. Too many people are at the table influencing the decision that have no part in being there. It's the old Miller Hyman. They can say no, but they cannot say yes. It's just another wrench in the works.

What is interesting to me though, first of all, by the way, there is a footnote on the consensus point, which is flying directly in the face of that argument is this idea of wisdom of crowds and the incredible success rate of prediction markets says at least there is a betting opportunity, which does is all about like finding, if not consensus, at least a common sort of market clearing price of agreement. Let's park that because that's actually super interesting, and I do not have deep expertise there, but the boys are fascinating. What's interesting to me is that in many ways, the heart and soul of the framing sale is not actually a selling story or a buying story. It's really a human story.

The heart and soul of the framing sale is not a selling or buying story. It is a human story.

As much as we can throw this at the feet of large corporations with lots of stakeholders, and certainly that is part of the story that exacerbates the problem, one of the stories we talk about, and this comes back to the AI thing, Mike, I would love to explore with you in a second, but I think the same thing happens at an individual level. In other words, cannot just be like, in other words, the answer cannot be, let's just reduce the number of stakeholders. You may have picked it up, Mark. One of my favorite stories in the book is a real story. Most of my stories are true, and this one is too. This is shopping on Amazon. We do this as consumers.

Of course we do. The cart.

You go to Amazon, and you want to buy something simple. I did it the other day with gym running shorts. It's like, “How hard it is you work.” The story I tell in the book is a true story about a dongle. I just need a cheap little dongle to connect my phone. Everything's USB-C now. You go, and you put the criteria in there, Amazon for whatever you're looking for. Amazon comes back saying, “Here's a thousand choices.” That's overwhelming.

I go with Amazon's choice or recommendation, because that's helpful. I started reading reviews. All sounds good. Before I put it in the cart, I started reading these one-star reviews, and they're like, "Do not buy this. It broke upon arrival. You're a chump if you do this.” I do not want to be a chump. You freak out, and you go, let me look at the next one. Three hours later, you're still on Amazon shopping for what you thought was going to be a five-minute purchase of something relatively simple. You're getting very frustrated.

It's a great example.

At some point, I joke, but it's true. After three hours of doing this, you do not hate Amazon because they're just doing it. You hate yourself. Like, “Why can't I freaking make a choice?” The punch line is that there is this button on Amazon. If you press it, all the pain stops, and the button is safe. It's not buy now. Say Buy Now. It's like, “No, it's because that's the problem. I cannot buy it now because I do not know what to do. The button is safer later. If I press save for later, I do not get a dongle, but I do get my life back.

I was actually in South Carolina, we could go tell the story, and I always end it on the truth, but it's a joke, but it's not because it's true. My wife has 582 items saved for later in her Amazon account. That is 582 purchase processes, individual ones, not company ones, that stalled out. This is your indecision and overwhelm with this. One of the sellers wrote to me after the meeting and said, I checked after the meeting, and I have 599 items saved for later in my Amazon account.

I have got yours, which I thought was fun. Notice that it is not a B2B corporation. That's just like all of us as humans. It's a paradox. It's Barry Schwartz's paradox of choice. It's an overwhelming amount of information. It's just the world that we live in today. Maybe if you'd like, I could segue into AI a little bit, because I think Mike, in many ways, AI actually does not make this any easier. It actually exacerbates a lot of these dynamics in a lot of ways. I do not know.

Let's do that, and then we're going to circle back in terms of what to do about it before we wrap. Please, Mike, thoughts.

How AI Can Actually Help Us

Back to your point about difference in degree and difference in kind, but I would actually take one step back and say, as a parent heading into eighteen-year-olds and you're at twenty, so maybe it all goes differently in the next two years, and you can brief me on that after. I think being and seeing the world, you strive to see the world through your child's eyes, and you're reminded of the importance of intellectual curiosity. If you can see through their eyes and keep your intellectual curiosity on eleven, and then bring to them the ability to be safe in their decision-making, you overcome a lot of the challenges of children growing up, your authentic self at work, coaching and teaching people in how to make decisions, and maybe even having confidence in that work.

The question about AI becomes, is it controlling us, or are we controlling it? Fundamentally, I look at it that way. I will frame it and say, “I am not a doomer. I really think that you will be in a better world as a result of the things that are coming and happening now, if we take control and push it forward.” What I really can find value in is the ability to synthesize and reason over a lot of information. To show your work that's happening now through reasoning models. You think pulling out of 2024, we had reasoning models. We had knowledge grounding, and we had the ability to start affecting outcomes.

These things all together let us see AI through not making a picture or hallucinating on something that's not helpful, but to really begin to help us understand, synthesize, make decisions, and create action. The keys there are all their aids as opposed to actions. What I think in the shopping journey where AI will change, but it disrupts everything from brand marketing through to twenty years of digital marketing, search engine optimization, and everything else. If we can ask an AI product and engine, a reasoning system, or whatever.

My problem is that I need to get this phone hooked up to this piece. What's the dongle I need for my $10? What is shocking is that, unlike Amazon, which has to try to operate a marketplace where buyers and sellers both have to be catered to. The AI is actually pretty good at telling you this is the one to get. Here's why, here's one. If you say, me 10, tell me about 10, tell me about 20. If you say, just want one, it's a $10 decision. My stakes are low, my desire is to get done and move on. They're more action-oriented, or deterministic is not the right word, but AI can help me.

Maybe I'm a different cat in the whole equation. It helps me get to action faster. Not because it makes decisions for me, but because my AIs have learned through years and weeks and months and such of working together, what I really need is succinct. I do not need flowering. I do not need to be buttered up. I need the four points to make and the steps to take action. We move on. Mark and I were talking a couple of weeks back about how the AI learns your behaviors, as it personalizes and forms memories, one of the most valuable things in that relationship, and only recently did I ever see one AI saying, “Bring your memories and knowledge from the other product in here.”

That who I am, the AI behaves differently with me, is going to become exceptionally valuable and possibly will start being restricted in how portable it is because that's what separates all three of us using ChatGPT or anthropic closer or what have you. What separates how we do it is our experience and the memory it has built about how we want it to work. Otherwise, it's the same algorithm each of us uses, producing very great results.

Interestingly, you said synthesize because that is in many ways how the book is called The Framemaking Sale, because that is really what framemaking is, this idea of synthesis organization. How do I take some of this big and hard and overwhelming, like that spaghetti bowl or like criteria, like information, and just help me put a frame around it? In many ways, one could argue that is what AI is particularly good at, as long as you trust its output, which is, I think, where we are still. In writing this quick story and writing the book, I wrote the book myself. AI did not write it, but I did use AI for like, a glorified thesaurus sometimes, or give me that way.

The Framemaking Sale: Sell More by Boosting Customer Confidence

It was super, it was relatively early days a couple of years ago, now we are a year and a half ago. At times, I would ask him, I am too lazy to look up the Chicago Manual style format for a citation that I have to put in the footnote. Can you see that I was footnoting the Challenger sale? Just give me a footnote, Chicago style, manual style footnote for the Challenger sale. I was going to copy and paste it. It is bits of back, says The Challenger Sale, which was written in 2011 by Neil Rackham and Matt Dixon. It's like, “Hold on now. That is not true.”

“Let's correct that.”

By the way, all due respect to Alrakan, who was brilliant and a good guy. Anyway, enough of those kinds of things happen. You begin to doubt what you're hearing. That will, I assume, get fixed over time. Here's a quick story. It's not in the book because it happened after the book was published, but I tell it elsewhere, and it's called the dog food story. It's a true story again. Something happened to me after the book was out. I was, as we all are these days, at least I am, I will raise my hand. I was on Instagram scrolling through my feed, trying to make the world go away. Instagram's got my number because it is an algorithm.

It knows I have a rescue dog. It's making me feel guilty. Do not get my rescue dog human-grade dog food. After enough ads on human-grade dog food, I break down like, maybe I need a bit better human being. I am going to get my dog human-grade dog food. It was at this moment, Mike, that I decided to do the thing. It's like, “I am to use AI for this.” I am going to essentially do an RFP for human-grade dog food. I was using Co-Pilot. I had done that. It matters to your point. As you give me the four top vendors, the features, benefits, what's good, what's not, customer testimonials, and customer service.

All the criteria that you would think of in a typical RFP give me a straight-up recommendation. Because I am old, can you please format it in a table format so I can print it on an actual piece of paper? I did all of that. I was very proud of myself. Again, a true story. Now I've got this table with all of the few of these four criteria, the four providers all laid out, all these criteria, and a clear recommendation. You look at it, it's like, “I would buy that. That makes sense.” I take it out of the kitchen. I showed it to my wife. She explained what I'm doing.

She looks at me, first of all, like I'm crazy, which is normal. Once she got on board, I said, “What do you think we should do?” She looked at the table, and she looked at me, and she looked back at the table and said, “I do not know. What do you think we should do?” Keep in mind, the recommendations are right there at the bottom of the paper, very clear. Said, “I do not know. What do you think we should do?” I said, “I do not know. What do you think we should do?” We both sat there and stared at this thing, stared at each other.

She said this, it would be helpful if we could just talk to a couple of people who have a rescue dog, who have actually bought this dog food, and just get their experience with it. I said, “That would be amazing. That would be so helpful.” She agreed that it would be helpful. The thing is, we did not know how to talk to other people who have rescue dogs about this. We took that piece of paper with the clear recommendation, set it on the kitchen counter, and I bleep you, it is still sitting there three months later, because apparently, we do not clean. We have never taken action on it.

That is essentially safe for later. It makes me wonder, I think it is maybe true that 75% of B2B buyers do not want to talk to sellers, but I do not think it's true that 75% of B2B buyers do not want to talk to humans. That's really interesting, because if we could show up as a human being and show up in a very specific way that helps them just make sense out of all this, and provide not my expertise, but access to other people who have had similar experiences, which arguably either can do or could do down the road.

We could debate that, but I think for now, there's this window of opportunity for sellers to show up in this manner and not only differentiate themselves from other sellers, but differentiate themselves from AI in a really powerful way. That's why I'm excited about this work. If you're in sales, go do this. I cannot guarantee success, but it's a probability story. Man, if I am going to place a bet, I am going all in on this. That's why the book exists.

How could it hurt?

What could go wrong?

It's not exactly a ringing endorsement. To me, the mother subtext of the book could go wrong. Frankly, obviously, you need the help. Obviously, they need the help because outside of that, we do not want to talk to salespeople we know 40% to 60%, as you bring up, yeah, it's going to be no decision. Same thing with you and your lovely wife, “What do we do about this?” Mind you, by the way, again, I keep coming back from a senior executive perspective. If Mike is being tasked with making a decision to improve operational efficiency in his 300-person IT group, if the pressure from on top is high enough and significant enough, going, “I need to see a result, and you have got twelve months.”

The Phrase That Frames

Mike, better make a decision on something. You'd better do something. Some of this is the organization. Clearly, you know, elevating to this level of consultative support, really, you're being a consultant to the organization on how they should think about a purchase or how they frame the process and the learning and the expectations and the value? Can we speak a little bit, Brent, because you have got so much great content in the book on this? What are a couple of things that salespeople can take away right now in terms of thinking, how do we do this? What does that process or framework look like?

It's funny. You mentioned Matt and Ted, dear friends of mine, and they're really great.

The Jolt Effect.

The Jolt Effect is that they learned for all the different reasons their data pointed to this. In this aspect of fear, the customers fear the fear of messing up, which I think is 100% true, and I think they nailed that part, and we talked about that in the book and in later chapters. In a lot of ways, your biggest competitor today is not customers' fear. It's their exhaustion. It's their resignation. It's their frustration. I did. I do these weekly videos on LinkedIn where I break down the book and talk about it, and they're they come out on Thursdays usually.

She reminds me I could do one for tomorrow, with two weeks ago I put one out and said, “Your number one competitor today is not the competition, it's not status quo, it's not in decision. Your number one competitor today is your customer's memory.” It's their memory, not of buying. It has nothing to do with you.

Your number one competitor today is not the competition or the status quo. It is the customer’s memory.

It's the memory of the last time they went through a similar journey and bought something like this. To your point, Mark, if I have a CEO telling me you have to make a decision and you have to make it, then I am going to make a frickin' decision. If you take just even a little bit of that urgency off, and all of a sudden it becomes a nice-to-have versus a need to have, and I'm thinking like, “I got to go to that spaghetti bowl again?” It's not worth it. I tell this story, this exercise, what's the one word you use? The CMO said she just bought a CRM system, and the word that she used to describe her experience in buying a CRM system, the vendor does not even matter.

Her words were, “I never want to do that again.” She was not thinking about how I bought the wrong CRM system. She was thinking, “The two years that it took a chunk of my soul that frankly I do not want to have to go through again, not just with CRM, but with anything.” That's what you're up against. Frame making is all about showing up in a way to your customers in a way that just helps your customers feel like they can do this and helps them make it feel easier.

Because it's their confidence you have to solve for, not your confidence, there's a certain element, something none of us really have talked about sales before, as this idea of agency. It's like, how do I help customers feel that I can do this, but they can do this, that it's their decision. This is why I like the metaphor of a frame or a framework. If I'm overwhelmed with say 50 different steps or 50 different attributes or 50 different pieces of information, my opportunity, I will not say my role, but my opportunity as a seller is not to say, “Here's the one you need.”

We actually know from the sensemaking work that actually does damage when you just show up and tell them what to do, it actually does damage their self-confidence because it's like, now I trust you, maybe, why don't you trust me, and I got to trust me. Frame making is this idea of what if I just put a boundary around that based on evidence and social proof from other people like you, not my opinion, but other people have gone down this road. What we've seemed to collectively have learned is, notice my language, we seem to have learned is not I know this thing.

It's a posture of humility, it's a posture of empathy. We're learning together. It seems to work as if we take this thing, and it seems to be that all these 50 things are maybe important, but these three matter the most based on what we've learned from it. I've put a boundary around it. You still have the freedom, of course, to say, I think it's actually these four things, not these three things. Those three things, but these two are the ones that matter. I am leaving you to make your decision. Now I've done it inside a boundary that feels much more manageable.

As part of that, I'm a prompt. This is another prompting and bounding. Prompting, by the way, there's one question that seems to get overlooked a lot. I can prompt you to put another thing into the frame that you might not have thought of otherwise, which becomes helpful and valuable because I'm helping you think through things using social proof that you never thought of. All of that, dude, now there's a very specific answer to a very specific question. All that gets wrapped up in a very tactical, like what can I do?

We leave this out in a number of different ways in the book and our workshops that we're running now. This is where, like the vast majority of time in our workshops, is spent on this because it's turned out to be so interesting and people get really fired up about it. We talk in the book about something called the phrase that pays. I regret that the language and the sense have been changed. Anyone who comes in with a newer version of the book, it will now be called The Phrase That Frames. This is how we talk about the phrase that frames, because I think this is better branding.

The Phrase That Frames is this phrase. It does not have to be. It's not written, it does not have to be memorized, it's not a script, but it's a posture. The posture of the phrase that frames something like, in working with other companies like you, one of the things we've been surprised to learn is, and I can apply that to things. One of the things we've been surprised to learn about decision complexity, one of the things we've learned about information overload, I could take this phrase that frames and apply it to any one of those challenges, but it's based on social proof.

It's not what I think, but what we've learned is based on humility. One of the things we've been surprised to learn is that I'm co-learning with you. One of the things that we found is that it comes down to these three things. I can prompt and bound in it. When we unpack all of this, what we actually wind up in our workshops is geeking out on language, which is my background, going way back to before I did any of what I'm doing now. I was a linguistics professor and a German professor.

For me, this is like putting on an old sweatshirt, just like geeking out on language. I did a workshop in South Carolina, which I mentioned already two weeks ago, where we were practicing versions of the phrase that frames against an obstacle that the team had identified that their customers run into, and they were providing advice via the phrase that frames. As they were practicing, one of the members of the team said, "You are working with our customers,” as if you want to find. One of the things we find really hard is, I said, “Just say the word really twice.”

He looked at me like I was crazy, and the whole room looked like, “What is he even doing?” He did it. He said, “One of the things we find, working with our customers, is that you want things we find really hard.” The whole room looked at me and said, “What did you just do?” I said, “I did not do anything. I said, “Why did that sound so different?” I said, “Just because you said it twice.”

It's like, “No, because when you leaned into the second, really, he was really conveying a certain emotion, and he made an emotional connection.” This is the stuff we're working with now because the whole idea of like, how confident am I, asked the right questions? How confident am I that I've done sufficient research? Notice, none of those things are things you can know. Those are things you have to feel. We actually have to convey framing in a way that solves for our customers' feelings and not just customers knowing and specifically feeling about themselves.

The lesson here is not, “I need to say it really twice.” That is not the lesson. That would be a rote script. The lesson here is that word choice, intonation, language of emotion, these are all things we explore in chapter seven of the book, turn out to be some of your superpowers that are completely overlooked by most sellers, and your star performers are crushing this, and they do not even realize they're doing it.

What you're doing through all that is you're not making a sales connection, you're making a human connection. This is like, “Literally, I joke that The Framing Sales, a dating book dressed up as a sales book. The same stuff works and makes a connection. I'm connecting to you, not because you're my customer and I'm being customer-centric. I'm connecting to you because we're all human beings, and this stuff is hard. We're just trying to help you out together. That's it.

My job's passion, insight, knowledge, all the energy, enthusiasm, and belief in what you're talking about.

Experience from others like you. Mike, by the way, I'm on an AI bandwagon to some degree. I'm a little bit more skeptical than some, maybe. I'm also a little bit of a light, and I'm old. Anyway, I think at least for now, these kinds of things I'm talking about provide at least a current window of opportunity to differentiate yourself from AI. These are the kinds of things, because the question is, what can I still bring to the table as a seller? I cannot just bring information. I cannot just bring prompting or frameworks in an abstract sense, but I can bring frameworks, advice, and guidance in a way that's designed to help you feel differently. That is something AI cannot do, at least yet. That's what I get excited about.

I do not know that I would even end that sentence with yet.

Maybe ever. I do not know.

They're much like you if you go to a wood shop, use some good tools, build something, rub your hand over it at the end, and realize that you made that. The tools helped you, and a well-stocked, woodworking shop, you can probably do things that you cannot do with a poorly stocked one, or a sharp axe cuts more firewood. At the end of the day, we're serving our mutual needs. We're not serving the machine's needs. There was a little while where the AI models that were out in the generative AI world, the chatbots, became very sycophantic and quite willing to seem like they were your buddy and all the rest.

There were some very conscious moves made, and I applaud the big providers for making those choices to step back and get the machines to be a lot less. I am your buddy and a lot more. Here's what I think, or that we're not thinking here are the facts and the positioning. It was funny because I was preparing for our conversation today, pulling a bunch of stuff together, and getting a summary. At the end was working with the new co-pilot reasoning system, which uses two opposing models to arrive at the conclusion that it arrives at.

At the end, I just said, “Thanks. That was great.” Period. Return. The old, in case they do take over, always be nice to Siri and what have you. A simple thank you. It was two models that were reasoning against each other, and there's this whole narrative that gets displayed on the screen as the models are working through what did you mean? What did you say? How do I respond?

What is the other model thinking? It went into a bit of a tailspin trying to figure out how to tell me it was great that we worked together on this problem without sounding friendly or that it was thinking or that it had emotions. It was spilling all this out in front of me. We do not have emotions. We cannot say we felt good about working with you.

You could see this whole set of things trying to get to not being what it is not, but to really being what it is, which is to say, “I get you, human. You're saying, thank you. I'm going to just say you're welcome and move on.” We're not quite there, but we are a lot further ahead than a four-page sycophantic thing about how gratitude is so important. It's coming. I do not think we're ever going to get to where we are not in the center because otherwise it's just machines serving machines. In that doomer place that I do not think we're ever going to get to.

That's a whole different podcast and probably a different guest. My friend Don Scheibenreif over at Gartner writes about this, which is the customer algorithm. Basically, there is a scenario where algorithms are buying and selling. The role of humans does not go away. It just changes pretty dramatically. This book is not written for that reality, but it's also a super interesting reality when your refrigerator orders milk from the grocery store and there are no humans involved at all. We're not there yet either, particularly for large, complex B2B purchases. Where we are, though, where we are, this book is super helpful.

There is a scenario where algorithms are buying and selling. Nevertheless, the role of humans does not go away. It just changes pretty dramatically.

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

This book is super helpful. Team, the book is The Framemaking Sales, sell more by boosting customer confidence. It's written by Brent Adamson and his pal, Karl Schmidt. First of all, Brent, thanks a million for joining us. It's great to see you again.

Let's do it again.

We'll do it again for sure. How did these folks learn more about you and learn more about the book?

The book has its own website, TheFramemakingSale.com. That's the easiest place to find it. I tend to live and breathe on LinkedIn. I post weekly there, weekly five-minute videos, you're breaking down a lot of these stories and things like that. The name of our company is A to B Insight, which also has a website. For those who are Challenger aficionados, particularly Challenger customers, you'll know the reference to A to B. If not, that's okay. It's Brent at A to B, the letter AtoBInsight.com. That's just fine on LinkedIn. That was too hard. Reach out on LinkedIn. That's the easiest place to find me.

Team, we're going to make it super easy. Brent, thanks a million for joining. It's always great to see you and learn from you. Mike Sparling, great to see you again. Thank you for joining and bringing that AI filter. How do people engage with you and learn more about what you're doing?

I'm like Brent, LinkedIn, look me up. I probably do not post every week, but that's where I am. I'll reply to any messages that come through, anything I can add value to. Brent, I just want to say it's just such an honor to have met you. Spent the time that we did, and I look forward to continuing dialogue and seeing where things go. Good luck with your twenty-year-old. You're breaking the ground ahead of me.

Mike, I did not tell you about the fifteen-year-old. That's where things get really bad.

Team, thank you so much for joining the show. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did, please like and subscribe to the show because that's actually how we get great guests like Brent and like Mike. If you think there's a way we can improve this podcast, please let us know that too. My email address is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. We love constructive criticism, and we respond to every piece of advice we get. Send us your notes, send us your ideas. We love being direct. By the way, we're going to send a note that you get back from me. In the meantime, keep your ideas coming to our team, keep selling well, and helping clients achieve important desired business outcomes. We'll see you next time on the show.

Important Links

• Brent Adamson

• Brent Adamson on LinkedIn

• Mike Sparling on LinkedIn

• Sensemaking in Sales

• The Framemaking Sale: Sell More by Boosting Customer Confidence

• The Challenger Sale

• The Innovator's Dilemma

• The JOLT Effect

• A to B Insight

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About BRENT ADAMSON

Brent Adamson is a world-renowned B2B sales researcher, author, keynote speaker, trainer, and advisor who has spent nearly two decades studying the evolving dynamics of business-to-business buying and selling1

Known as having the "biggest crystal ball in B2B sales," Adamson is the co-author of the best-selling, industry-defining The Challenger Sale (2011) and The Challenger Customer (2015), a frequent Harvard Business Review contributor, and co-author of the forthcoming The Framemaking Sale (September 2025, co-authored with Karl Schmidt).

Across these works, one thread is constant: in an era of information-saturated, consensus-driven B2B buying, the most successful sellers win not by building relationships or dumping information, but by delivering unique insight, simplifying the customer's decision process, and building the buying group's confidence to act.

Especially well known for his passion for “productive disruption,” Brent served as the “chief story teller” for CEB, now Gartner’s, sales, marketing, and customer service practices from 2003 to 2022. Across that time, Brent’s research has focused most closely on the critical, boundary-spanning intersection of selling and buying, seeking to understand the rapidly changing nature of effective commercial collaboration. Most recently, Brent and his colleagues at CEB, now Gartner, have introduced industry-leading concepts such as Buyer Enablement, Sense Making, and Customer Decision Confidence. As of June 1, 2022, Brent now serves as the Global Head of Research and Communities at Ecosystems, a cutting-edge SaaS platform designed to help companies identify and track dimensions of value creation with their customers.

Intellectual Authenticity & AI: How To Achieve The Sales Mindset Buyers Demand In 2026 With Philip Squire

Stuck on the sales treadmill using outdated tactics while buyers cut through the noise? The rules are changing fast—AI is raising the bar on what “good” looks like. In this episode, Dr. Philip Squire and Mike Sparling break down new research on how buyers want to be sold in 2026. You’ll learn why sales success is now a values problem—not a technique problem—and how to master authenticity, client centricity, proactive creativity, and tactful audacity. Discover the rise of “intellectual authenticity” and how to combine human insight with AI to avoid “AI slop” and elevate your sales game.

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

Listen to the podcast here

Intellectual Authenticity & AI: How To Achieve The Sales Mindset Buyers Demand In 2026 With Philip Squire

We've got an amazing show for you. Our guest is Dr. Philip Squire. Philip's the author of a fantastic book called Selling Transformed: Develop the Sales Values Which Deliver Competitive Advantage. Philip's also the CEO and the Founder of Consalia, which is the UK's only sales business school with executive master's pathways in leading sales transformation and key account transformation.

Philip's work intersects with a bunch of things that matter deeply to us, such as the professionalism of sales, the role of values and trust in B2B selling. Also, the idea that sales performance is not just about techniques or process, but how we show up. Originally, Philip's book talked about the sales values that buyers wanted to make sure that we made it to the top 10% of salespeople in the winner's circle. When he originally wrote the book, those values were authenticity, client centricity, proactive creativity, and impactful audacity.

He had some research done in 2025. It's The State of Sales Mindsets: How do customers want to be sold in 2025? A great update to some of the work. Frankly, the original book, Selling Transformed, was like an MBA in B2B sales. The research was so thorough. It was the most interesting textbook you've ever written. The reference points and bibliography are something I continue to go back to.

In this episode, we talk about a lot of the themes in Selling Transformed and the updated research, including why it is values that matter more than process or techniques, and a little bit about what values buyers don't want to see. We've got an AI view to most of this because we're joined by Mike Sparling, our AI thought leader, who's been joining us for the last couple of episodes here. We get into something like authenticity is a value that buyers want in their salespeople. How can we be authentic if we're leveraging AI in a significant way?

There are a few excellent questions posed during the course of this interview, and some great discussions amongst Philip, Mike, and me. I weigh in a little bit, too. If you enjoy this episode as much as I did, please like and subscribe to the show. Here's a great conversation with Dr. Philip Squire and Mike Sparling.

Philip, welcome back to the show. We're so delighted to have you back on the show.

It's super exciting to be back with you, Mark. I've admired what you've been doing over these years. I can't wait to get stuck into this particular episode as well.

We're joined again for this series of episodes by our pal, Mike Sparling. We see Mike as our AI Sherpa in many ways, or a Canadian thought leader on AI. Mike, it is great to have you on the show here again.

It's great to be here. It's exciting to meet a unicorn in Philip. I go back to my days as a dean in a business academic setting. The two hardest things to find were terminal degrees in sales and terminal degrees in accounting. Your PhD makes you a unicorn in my books.

I've never been described as a unicorn before, Mike, but I'll take it as a compliment. Thank you. I was interested in your academic journey as well. I'm particularly looking forward to getting to understand your thinking a bit more in this episode. It’s good to be here.

Sales Transformation, Values, And The Role Of AI

When we started the show, which was a few years back, Philip was one of our original guests. There were two reasons I knew I had to chase down Philip to get him as a guest. One is his LinkedIn byline, which says, “Helping make sales the world's most sought-after profession.” As soon as I read the book and saw the byline, I thought, “I've got to get Philip on the show.

The second thing is what I loved about the book. I'm speaking to Selling Transformed: Develop the Sales Values Which Deliver Competitive Advantage. This is one of the best sales books I have ever read. When I prepared for this episode, Philip, I was going back through it. I still like hard copy books, so it's got dog ears all over it.

Page one, what can you expect from Selling Transformed, the book? First bullet, considers the role selling has played in the context of world history and suggests that its contribution to global economics and cultural development is both profound and unrecognized. I'm sold. As soon as I read that bullet, I'm on the team.

Philip, let's do a summary or touch on the book very briefly because some of the original stats in the book are so powerful. You talk about some of this detailed research. The book is both a textbook and a fantastic read. I've never come through that before. I've never seen this before. It's a textbook you use to learn the profession of sales, but it's also incredibly interesting.

There are some alarming stats in there, to be sure. Some of the research spoke to 80% of senior buyers seeing only 30% of salespeople adding value, and in some contexts, even less than that. I know we've come back to some of these stats in the updated report, but tell us a little bit about why we had to write this book and some of the challenges or issues we were seeing in professional sales back then, Philip.

I suppose before the book was the doctorate. That's where the research has started. It was by chance, interviewing a number of customers of our customers about how they wanted to be sold to. We were using these interviews to help support a big European sales kickoff event. One of the questions that we asked was, “Having told us what you like and dislike about salesmanship, what percentage of salespeople sell in a way that you want?”

I'll never forget the very first person I spoke to, who said in his view, 95% of salespeople are a complete waste of time. Some people are born to be slightly controversial. It wasn't planned that I would keep this question in all the interviews, but the question was kept in. The second person said less than 10% of salespeople sold in a way that he would want.

At this stage, it wasn't part of an academic research program, but it was a little spark that ignited what has become a twenty-year journey. I wasn't an academic before, Mike, but I found myself being drawn into the academic world through a suggestion made by one of the professors I met. He said, “Why don't you turn this research into a doctorate?” That's where it started. It's so interesting when you look back on life, isn't it, to look at how serendipity sometimes triggers events in a way that you wouldn't normally expect.

It ends up triggering this research, the doctorate, and then the book. In the book, one of the most provocative ideas or unique takes on it is that sales success is just not a process problem or a technique problem, but it's a values problem. We'll get to the values, but what did you see or hear in those early days that convinced you the values were the area to focus on to elevate sales performance?

You could possibly link that back to what we refer to as lead and lag indicators. I remember halfway through the research, and this is having interviewed 80 to 90 people from different roles and different parts of the world, coming together in London, working with a professor at London Business School at the time. We wanted to draw conclusions as to the research findings. We came up with flip chart pages that failed in my view to push this story along because there are solutions to this 10% problem that we mentioned earlier.

You need to be good at listening and have curiosity. You need to be professional in the way you present yourself. You need to have commercial acumen. I knew from my own experience that companies spend billions of dollars on this kind of training. I wanted to say, “If we're training people on the right behavioral things, why aren't they doing it? Clearly, there’s a mismatch between what organizations are striving to train their people to do better. It's not being experienced at the customer end.”

If organizations are training people on the right behaviors, why aren’t customers experiencing them? Clearly, there’s a disconnect between what companies teach and what customers actually feel.

Much of the training had been oriented around behavioral techniques of selling, processes, and methodology of selling. It was one particular professor who challenged me about what my values were from a sense of bias. Mike, you would probably resonate with this a little from your academic work. I realized that I was looking at the data through a lens that was so influenced by what I had been taught. I wasn't opening up my mind for new ways of thinking. The new ways of thinking were related very much to understanding how you think, and this links to values.

Once I started to play around with this concept, I realized that values were like the operating system of human beings, and that our behaviors, competencies, skills, and what we end up doing are because of them. No one had defined what values customers looked for from salespeople, and what values they often saw that they didn't like.

Once I got onto that trajectory, it became relatively quick to define what would be the core values that would lead to, in customers' views, success, and what would lead to a negative performance. I feel as though I might be repeating what I said before, Mark, but for me, that was a pivotal moment in terms of what got me to where we are and this values-based approach to selling, which I know is close to your heart as well.

I'm glad we're summarizing some of this, Philip, because the forgetting curve is alive and well. We recorded that original episode a couple of years ago, 100 hundred episodes ago for us. As your newest research points to, though, that concept still resonates. We're going to talk about the 2025 research. The work was spot on and so important.

What I always found interesting is when we've talked about helping sales organizations, and Mike and I have spoken about this before. I love this thought of culture. You say, “I'm going to hire for culture.” The only way to create culture, as defined by how we do things around here, is to lead to values. How do we define the values that are going to create the culture?

I loved this thought of saying, “What are the mindsets or values that the client most wants to see in a salesperson? Let's call out the ones they don't.” I'll list them both quickly. Team, for your identification, those who haven't had a chance to pick up Selling Transformed, in chapter 4, when you lead through the history of sales training and coaching, and then get to the values that matter. It's one of the best, most concise summaries of all of the training methodologies. Going back to the start with Dr. Neil Rackham and SPIN Selling.

That was the first major one, if you get past Dale Carnegie and all of these kinds of things. It’s such a great academic review of it. I'm such a nerd for all of this stuff. I love it. I didn't see In the Funnel in there, but we'll give you a pass because we weren't a global powerhouse yet. I understand why we might've been absent from that summary.

Next release.

The next release of the book. Everybody reading is going to say, “If I haven't read the book, what are the mindsets?” The positive values or mindsets are authenticity, client centricity, proactive creativity, and my favorite was always tactful audacity. I get half of that right most of the time. I'll leave it up to you to decide which half I don't get. Maybe let's touch on it briefly before we talk about the updated view originally. How did we land on these four, Philip? Why wasn't it six? Did 1 or 2 of them surprise you most when they made the list?

The Core Values Of The Winner's Circle

We went through so many analyses of conversations and then started to group what buyers were looking for, both positive and negative. We began to cluster them under different headings, such as authenticity, trust, and integrity. These words surfaced very quickly. Client-centricity is a no-brainer. Obviously, customers are looking for sellers to be client-centric.

What we began to realize is that those two values are the baseline for building trust, but it doesn't put you into what we call the winner's circle. The winner's circle has rarer, more exceptional mindsets and values. These were the proactive creativity. Salespeople are very often very good at being reactive creatively. A customer goes with a problem, and they're very good at coming up with a reactive solution. Proactive creativity was a very important nuance that we wanted to surface, which is rarer but important for exceptional salesmanship.

Tactful audacity is having the emotional intelligence to push an idea hard if you believe it to be correct, but at the same time, respecting the person that you are pushing your idea to, if you like, or suggesting that they should do something differently than what they've asked you to do. Tactful audacity is my favorite as well, Mark, but it's hard to do. It's important to do it in different stages of the sales cycle.

People say, “When do you use these values and mindsets?” It's important at the very beginning. Sometimes, getting meetings with people requires you to be tactfully audacious and proactively creative. When you have qualifications, it's more about client centricity, solution development, proactive creativity, negotiation, and tactful audacity. You've got this interplay of the mindset.

What we realized was that you can't have one without the other. You can't have bucket loads of tactful audacity and proactive creativity without having the authenticity and client centricity. Clients need to trust you. What we've begun to realize through the analytics of the sales mindset survey, which we've got thousands of surveys that people have done, is that less than 10% of salespeople score what we would call in the winner's circle across all four. Some may be right up there on 3 out of 4, but not all 4. I don't know, Mike, what you think about what I've shared, but with you on that topic.

Sales Mindset: Audacity and creativity are hollow without authenticity and client-centricity. In business, you simply cannot have one without the other.

It's a good question, Philip, because Mike's a chief operating officer and chief technology officer. In addition to that time in academia, he's run large organizations and large groups. Mike, from your perspective, two questions. Would the percentage of effective salespeople calling on you over the last couple of years resonate in terms of the 10% or the 30%? Are those the values that you're looking for? Authenticity, client centricity, proactive creativity, and tactful audacity? Do those resonate with the folks that you're trying to partner with or work with?

That’s a great lead-in, Philip, and a great couple of questions, Mark. I've probably spent a vast amount of my career carefully building a never-ending maze of sandbags and other things to prevent salespeople from getting too close to me. A part of it is to look for those mindsets that you're calling out. In particular, I think you're very accurate that a lot of people pursue selling without fully understanding why or the direction that they're headed in.

Part of what I loved about your background, as I was researching it, was the notion that your mission statement is to make selling the world's most sought-after profession. I hear that in Mark. I've often said that people that I've met through Mark or, in other cases, professionally trained sales leaders or salespeople truly understand that critical intersection between the value the firm creates and the needs that the client has. It's a little bit of a rough way to describe it as the tip of the spear, but I do use that analogy.

I'll go back to say that my transition from being a computer science undergraduate to being a business leader driven by technology, I credit it to people like Mark and some of the other sales leaders whom I've had the pleasure of working with and learning from. Taking an understanding of what we could do as a firm and aligning it to what we want to do in order to please customers is a big shift for a lot of people. Your mindsets resonate as do your percentages of who gets it well, who doesn't, and how important that is to moving to a buying point.

I'll probably say one more piece. To me, proactive creativity is one that resonates as an AI practitioner. If I decouple those two words and say, “What does proactive mean?” Credit to Mark. He and I have been talking a lot about the importance of signal reading in the professional sales space. Being able to subtly recognize the signals that are admitted by all parties in a conversation, negotiation, and exchange, that signal detection, to me, is what proactive means. If I can recognize the signals, that's going to trigger something within me.

For creativity, from an AI standpoint, I'm not in the camp that says AI can be creative, but I think AI can synthesize across a broader set of inputs and produce rapidly broader results that we can then, as the human in the loop, finesse and improve to the offering that we make. Figuring out the novel responses is the creative side. Identifying and detecting the signals is the proactive side.

As a partnership, we can do a lot with AI or technology to further that piece forward and deliver proactive creativity to buyers, factual for what we intend to achieve, tuned to the signals being sent, and resulting in those outcomes. That's the path, and I'd be curious about your thoughts, on raising those percentages much higher. It's the people who understand in our world, “How do I synthesize this artificial piece with my core strengths and bring the how, what, and why together to lead that tip of the spear further into the organization?”

Intellectual Authenticity: The New Sales Mindset

It’s so interesting how you brought the topic of AI into the conversation as well. What's interesting, Mike, is that this is quite personal. If you go back to the beginning of 2025, when the great AI wave hit everyone, I felt it was a dystopian moment in a way. There was so much that was the promise of AI, and the seismic changes that we could expect as a consequence of this incredible technology that was about to take over the world. I felt there were moments of what is the point of being human. It has been interesting.

If I could perhaps relate this also to where I am, I suspect I'm similar to many people. We've all gone through something where we know something's going to hit us that we don't know much about. We don't quite know how it's going to change the world, but we'll figure it out. We're probably in a much better position now, but what happened in 2025 has had quite a profound effect on how we have started to look at the sales mindsets again, which is, in part, being triggered by AI. It's sometimes a word that a customer says that triggers a train of thoughts that you haven't thought of before.

We conducted a similar exercise of research across the world, asking similar questions to those I did many years ago for my doctorate. Buyers were using the word intellectual dishonesty as something that they don't like. A completely different buyer used the word intellectual honesty. I can honestly say that in all the interviews that I did many years ago, the word intellectual did not surface. That, in itself, is interesting. Connecting the word intellectual to salesmanship is quite something. This idea of intellectual dishonesty and intellectual honesty got me thinking about the values of mindsets.

In our academic focus, one of the skills we teach people who come to our master's programs is about critical reflection and how to think. We knew that this was one of the transformative components of our programs. I had that in the back of my mind, looking at this word intellectual, and then connecting it to authenticity. The nuance is subtle, but huge in that we've added the word intellectual to authenticity.

Authenticity is integrity and the moral compass that you would have as you reflect on yourself. Intellectual is a quality of thinking that customers are saying that they appreciate in salespeople in the way that they solve problems. I've broken down the word intellectual into three components. One component is the ability to integrate sources of data. Synthesizing information, if you like. The other is instinct. It's having an instinct about something. The other is imagination.

It was interesting what you were saying earlier about artificial intelligence and creativity. I'm beginning to define the intellectual part of authenticity into those three dimensions. This is another neat thing. This is not a marketing gimmick. If you have two pages of a book and some wet ink. On one page, you've got AI. If you close the book, on the other side, you have IA. To me, the secret, moving to the future, is combining intellectual authenticity with the way you use artificial intelligence. Customers are expecting you to have both. This is where the nuances come.

Moving forward, the real differentiator is pairing intellectual authenticity with artificial intelligence. Customers don't want one or the other—they expect both.

These words have been intellectually triggered by AI because knowledge is all-pervasive. There should be no excuse for salespeople not doing the research and not producing effective account plans by using, perhaps, AI technology to do it. You need it, but you need that magic something, which is not AI, which is the human component.

It’s the human element.

I've defined that as intellectual authenticity as a key attribute.

I like that. That was something that I latched onto here in the research that you’ve worked on.

Thank you.

It’s the piece that you transition from authenticity through what I would call human in the loop, which you refer to as the person, and then into the intellectual authenticity and the importance of that. That's a much more eloquent way that you framed in that research of saying nobody wants more AI slop. One of these words we hear is the endless wave of clearly generated, never edited prompts that are posted on LinkedIn or social media or released in a statement to try to appear intelligent without understanding the connection between appearance and actual value creation.

I love that research. I wrote intellectual authenticity down in my journal and double-underlined it as something to pay careful attention to. You are so on mark with that transition from individual authenticity through aided human in the loop to create that outcome that we're seeking in the intellectual authenticity space. Hats off and kudos on that.

It seems like such an interesting one. The research also says that authenticity is one of the most important but lowest-scoring values for salespeople.

This leads on to another question, doesn't it? It’s around complacency. Are people relying too much on AI to write the proposals and do the research? This is what buyers are alluding to when they talk about intellectual dishonesty. They can tell or sense when something isn't original and authentic. My worry is that standards of sales professionalism will diminish because of AI.

This might be slightly controversial as well. I think salespeople are lazy. People want to take shortcuts. There's too much pressure on producing results for that quality time that you need to be able to look at what the data tells you, which you absolutely need. AI can free up time, but you'd need to replace it with this instinct, imagination, and some of these other things that play in. This is my concern. Maybe in a year or two, we could come back to the research and say, “Am I right or wrong?” I hope I'm wrong, but this is my fear.

First of all, to baseline, the research we're talking about is The State of Sales Mindsets: How do customers want to be sold in 2025, with Dr. Philip Squire and Eddie Guevara. It is an update to some of the research in Selling Transformed. I don't think there's any fault in terms of calling all of us lazy. We go back to Daniel Kahneman's work in Thinking, Fast and Slow and evolution. As human beings, we evolved to try to take the path of least resistance and burn as little energy as possible. A lot of these things, in terms of shortcuts or not doing the research, come down to the environment you're in and the expectations of sales management, leadership, and coaching.

When I go to the gym, I'm not with my trainer. I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to be jacked up. I'm going to do the best I can. There's no question, though, when I'm with my trainer, I will perform better because someone's watching me. I've gone through this so many times where I think, “Do I have to pay this person? Why am I paying this person?” You perform better when there are a couple of sets of eyes watching.

This is where a conversation like this is so important for a sales leader. Is the sales leader ensuring that we're working far less, but we're far better on the deals that we're working? We put in that time, attention, and care. We'll all take the shortcuts if they're given to us because we feel pretty overwhelmed at times as professional salespeople.

That's so true.

Let's keep going, if you don't mind, down this path of AI. Prior to that, maybe we'll jump back to the 2025 research. Was there anything else that came out of the updated research that surprised you? I wasn't surprised to see that the core sales values haven't changed. The ones that you originally identified are still the core sales values that are out in the marketplace. What would be 1 or 2 of the insights when you went back to this that maybe surprised you a little bit?

Improved Buyer Satisfaction And The Risk Of Complacency

Thinking, Fast and Slow

There are two things. One is that when we did the research many years ago, 80% of the respondents said that less than 10% of people sold to them in a way that they wanted. This time round, the figure was 30%. That's an improvement.

Something's working.

I felt that was a positive message. I must admit, I'd always felt, when we'd spoken about the 10%, that there's a rather negative message to convey. I was slightly concerned that our marketing team talked about it too much. It's much better to be positive than negative, generally. That was something that surfaced. The other thing that surfaced that we've touched upon already is this nuance of authenticity to intellectual authenticity, which is pretty profound. There's a third nuance that came about. I'll have to come back to it, Mark.

Maybe I can help you because there was one that stood out to me. It was the notion of clients demanding greater transparency around data sources and reasoning. That point leapt out and said much like what we say to up-and-coming staff, or if you're using AI effectively. You either notice the subtle changes that happen towards the tail end of 2024, something Mark and I have sometimes referred to as the November threshold or such.

Part of what gives me confidence that these will become much more helpful tools going forward is that showing your homework is crucial, whether it's an employee who says, “I've arrived at this conclusion.” You spend time coaching them to say, “The most important things are explaining how you understood the problem, what you considered as the solutions, and why you've chosen one solution as the result. That's more valuable than what the solution is that you have in hand.” That shows your homework in particular around how salespeople behave, how they provide and produce content, and how the AIs work.

One of my favorite parts of modern AI is that you see the little drop-downs that start appearing that say, “Show calculation. Show logic. Show reasoning.” We open those up and see, “This is how the model is going about, determining how to take Mark's book and produce a summary for me, or search the web for these results, or reason through what this stack of numbers is telling me about customer demand.” Seeing the homework is so crucial. I thought that point you made around the transparency of source and reasoning was a crucial element as well.

I remembered the third point. I'll come back to that later. What concerns do you have, Mike, about AI? I know we're talking about this in a sales context, but you must have some major concerns about AI as well as the positives. You've explained both. Mike, I'd be interested to hear your point of view on that.

Using AI As A Thought Process Challenger

Since you opened the door earlier to being controversial, I'll follow you through that door. I'll declare my biases upfront. I'm not a doomer. I don't think the world's going to end. I think employment will continue, and I think humanity has a future. There are many things that can derail us. AI is one of those things. The real, biggest risk is that, continuing the theme we were on, we become intellectually lazy. We stop understanding why or what and concentrate on how fast we can produce an outcome, throw it out there, and let it go.

Time management will become more crucial, depth of reasoning and understanding the social aspects that we're sharing here, pushing at ideas, but being equally willing to learn something new to take and challenge a base assumption based on the input that someone else has provided. If we fall into the echo chamber of stupidity and let AI take over from us, then we're going to get the “reward” that we deserve. If you use AI as a tool to enable your improvement, great things can happen.

In the last episode that we recorded, I brought forward the idea that a real skill that everybody needs to develop is engaging thinking and challenging by using commute time or using fifteen minutes when you're otherwise busy, but not intellectually occupied, to have a conversation about any topic you want with any AI that is handy. Force yourself to go through 3, 4, or 5 layers down and throw a curveball in.

It’s like saying, “It’s great that we arrived at this point. Now, tell me the exact opposite perspective on where we are, and explain why that is what it is or why you chose not to present that information to me thus far.” It is using the tools, not as an outcome creator, but as a thought process challenger, and then using the time that's available to improve on that.

Sometimes, I'll call it the how trap. If we don't fall into the how trap, where we let the machine do faster outcomes without focusing on the why and what, like, “Why am I doing this, and what is the result I'm anticipating?” We're going to get our rewards, whether that's from the staff around us, the people we work for, or the tools that we use. Bad things happen if you don't pay attention, but good things can happen if you use tools effectively, like a beautiful piece of furniture a craftsman makes.

We got two sources of clickbait. People are lazy, and humanity will continue. If those two things don't drive some viewership of this episode, I don't know what will. First of all, what a wonderful conversation. This is the kind of conversation that should be taking place, in some capacity, at most Q2 sales kickoffs globally. If you're a sales leader and you're not at least engaged in this conversation, you're probably going to fall behind a little bit.

I always pick up a nice tip, Philip, from chatting with Mike here, and also with you. This idea of driving home and commuting, having a conversation with AI, and then asking for the opposite point of view, I love that. We could talk about this for hours. At some point in time, we'll do that in person over a pint, but we do need to wrap up.

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to both of you for joining. Number one, what you are going to be doing is picking up and reading cover-to-cover Selling Transformed: Develop the Sales Values Which Deliver Competitive Advantage by Dr. Philip Squire. You also have to read the updated report we referenced called The State of Sales Mindsets: How do customers want to be sold in 2025? It’s a great summary and review. Philip, can you tell us a little bit about Consalia and a little bit about how clients or readers might learn more about you and what you're doing?

Neglect breeds failure, but mastery of your tools breeds excellence—much like a master craftsman shaping a beautiful piece of furniture.

We have the website, which is www.Consalia.com. We also have our own Sales Transformation Podcast series, of which, Mark, you've been a guest as well.

What a pleasure.

We're very easy to find. The website is probably a good starting point. I welcome anyone wanting to reach out to me on LinkedIn and contact me via that platform as well.

Selling Transformed: Develop the Sales Values which Deliver Competitive Advantage

Thank you, Philip. Mike, how do people connect with you and learn more about your work?

I'll say the same thing. LinkedIn is the best place. That's where I'm existing from a professional standpoint. I'm happy to connect on any topic and any way with anyone interested in the space that I have thoughts around. Philip, it’s a real pleasure spending time with you and researching your work leading in. Keep being a unicorn.

Thank you, Mike. It's been great having you in the conversation here as well.

It sure has.

It has been brilliant.

Thank you both for joining. Team, thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. When you do that, it enables us to get amazing guests like Dr. Philip Squire and Mike Sparling. If you think there are ways we can improve this show, we're all ears. You can send your feedback. We love constructive criticism. Send it to me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. Anytime somebody gives us an idea or a thought, I respond personally to each and every suggestion we get. The way we run the show came from great suggestions from you. Thank you for doing that. We'll look forward to seeing everybody next time.

 Important Links

• Consalia

• Selling Transformed: Develop the Sales Values Which Deliver Competitive Advantage

• The State of Sales Mindsets: How do customers want to be sold in 2025?

• Sales Transformation Podcast

• How AI Is Revolutionizing Professional Sales & Strategy Execution With Mike Sparling

• Philip Squire on LinkedIn

• Mike Sparling on LinkedIn

• PSquire@Consalia.com

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• Thinking, Fast and Slow

About Philip Squire

Dr Philip Squire is the co-founder and CEO of Consalia, a UK- and Singapore-based specialist sales business school. Philip has been educating companies such as BT, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Santander, SAP, Sony, Zurich Insurance, and many others, in leading and executing sales transformation approaches for four decades. He is one of just a handful of sales professionals internationally to have a research doctorate in sales. His passion for professionalizing sales led him to create the world’s first sales consultancy delivering university-accredited undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in sales. He sat on the 2018 UK government-initiated Trailblazer group, created to set standards of sales practice in the UK, which has led to government-recognized sales apprenticeship degrees. He is a Visiting Professor at the Seoul School of Integrated Sciences and Technologies. In 2016 he co-founded the International Journal of Sales Transformation to bring practitioner and academic research to the global sales community and is also a trustee of the Association of Professional Sales, a not-for-profit body responsible for promoting ethical sales practice.

How AI Is Revolutionizing Professional Sales & Strategy Execution With Mike Sparling

Is artificial intelligence a threat to the personal touch of professional sales, or the ultimate tool for execution? In this episode, Mike Sparling joins the conversation to dive deep into the intersection of AI and modern sales strategy. Discover why simply having a strategy isn't enough—you need the resources and mechanisms to drive real success at every individual sales touchpoint. Learn how growth leaders are leveraging technology to bridge the gap between high-level execution and meaningful market impact.

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How AI Is Revolutionizing Professional Sales & Strategy Execution With Mike Sparling

I’ve been running in the funnel sales coaching for many years. Within the first year of running it, I met with some of the smartest people I know to talk about it and think about whether I should be doing this for a living and so on. One of the people I met with, the first thing they said was, “You need to get into AI in a deep way.” This would have been 2013. Can you imagine somebody saying that to me when I started a sales training and consulting business? That was a pretty smart fellow. That fellow’s name is Michael Sparling.

He’s our guest because we’re talking about AI and professional sales. Mike is a Renaissance man in terms of his career. He’s extremely deep in technology. He’s a chief technology officer for a major organization. He spent time running sales organizations, acting as a CEO. He’s run a very large-scale business school. I believe the business school he ran had upwards of 600 different lecturers. Mike is somebody incredibly broad and deep, but his focus these days is on AI. He’s a keynote speaker. He releases lots of papers.

I had to speak with Mike. That’s this episode. Now that we’ve re-energized and got back on the treadmill here with the show. You can expect a whole bunch of episodes focusing on AI. Mike was one of the first ones. I wanted him at the top of the list given his depth in my experience working with Mike. He’s got such a great way of explaining these complex ideas.

We get into some of these complex ideas in AI because, as sales leaders, all of us are very challenged. How do I leverage this to elevate the performance and professionalism of my sales organizations? It feels pretty complex. Mike and I have a great conversation. One of the things we start with is the November 2024 threshold. That’s a date and time and a term that Mike has coined in some of his work.

It defines the moment when AI capability begins advancing faster than professional adaptation, reframing AI as a leadership priority rather than a technology initiative. We talk about how to leverage AI, to get away from the how to avoid the how trap and focus on the why and what. How do we leverage AI as an infrastructure support for how to do something, while we still strategically have to determine why and what we’re going to do?

One of the questions I get into with Mike and a great answer, very practically is, “What should we be doing as sales leaders now?” What an interesting suggestion. He said, “Every day, you need a conversation with AI. Not just a question that you get a response to. He said questions and responses will give you some focus and learning. If you get into a conversation, you might change the way you think.” It elevated how I was thinking about leveraging AI. Certainly, we got into some practical applications for running in the funnel.

One of the other very practical things he brought up is using the audio for AI. I’m always typing into AI. He said, “Mark, you’re in the car frequently, jump on the audio. Have a live conversation with AI in the car to start to get much more comfortable with what’s taking place.” We talk a little bit about how information decays over time, and why it’s so critically important to stay current on everything. We know information’s power in terms of the sales cycle for sure, even more critical in the day and age of AI.

Folks, this is the kind of conversation we’re going to be having frequently moving forward on the show. Mike is a great resource for all of you to connect with. I enjoyed my conversation with Mike and learned a lot from it. I hope you do, too. If you do enjoy this conversation and learn from it, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends. Team, here’s Michael Sparling.

Mike, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you.

Introduction To AI In Professional Sales

It’s good to be here, Mark. Great to see you again.

This takes us a long time back. When we started to talk about AI and professional sales, Team and based on the timing of this show, I started in the funnel around 2013. We’re doing this in 2026. I’ve known him for about twenty years. I go to smart people and say, “I’m thinking of running a business.” One of the first guys I went to was Mike Sparling. I sit down for a coffee with Mike. I’m contemplating this idea of not running super large sales organizations anymore and instead starting a consulting company.

The first thing out of his mouth is, “You should get deep into AI.” This was in 2013. I’m drinking a cappuccino, going, “What is this guy talking about? I can’t even make the rent payment at the company office.” At this point, he’s talking about AI. Here we are fast forward thirteen years later. I’m so thrilled to have you on now as an AI expert. By the way, maybe I should have listened to you. Mike, give the audience that short story of your professional journey because you’ve got one of the more interesting professional backgrounds I’ve ever come across. You’re a Renaissance man.

Thank you, Mark. I’m glad we had a cappuccino together many years ago and here we are. My name is Mike Sparling. I’m a bit of an unusual animal and that I am a very deep technical person. I’ve spent well over 30 years in the industry working, always in AI. It’s not been historic to call it AI. It’s been called many things like industrial process control, knowledge management, or consumer behavior search. AI gets people to ask you questions at parties if you say you work there. The other side of the coin, though, is I’m also a deep business person, an entrepreneur, and an executive.

I’m in my day job as the chief operating officer and chief technology officer, fusing those two pieces, technology and business leadership for a global neuroscience company. I always like to say working with both the organic and the digital minds and finding the strength that comes from both. It wasn’t that unusual for me to say AI because I have seen this evolve. I’ve seen intelligence evolve both digitally and organically, and the challenges and strengths of both for a very long time. I’ve been a big advocate of what we can do to further transformation in business and create a competitive advantage for firms.

First of all, you didn’t mention it, but at one point in time, you’ve also run a very large business school. It’s the Renaissance factor, but what an interesting lead-in to something we often advocate. In sport, music, and professional sales, the importance of being a little better than the next company is massive. Selling better is competitive differentiation in the marketplace.

Our topic with AI won’t be a single show, but it’s so critically important because lots of things seem to be taking place right now where somebody is going to get an advantage. There’s no more dabbling. We’re in the world of advantage. Whether it’s a keynote that I’ve seen from you, Mike, or read something online. I know you referenced the November ‘24 threshold. Can you explain a little bit about what that is? Why should the CEOs, sales leaders, and salespeople, who tune in to this show, care?

Explaining The November 24th Threshold

That’s a very keen observation to pick that up. It’s a term that I’ve coined. You won’t find it in anything but work that I’ve published or speeches that I’ve given. I look across this large time space and this evolution of AI from its earliest days in the 1950s. Even earlier as a theoretical application, thinking about how our minds work. How would we replicate that in a digital space? You fast-forward through these eras of AI.

We started in what is referred to as symbolic AI, where AI principally worked based on rules. A lot of incredible things happen with symbolic AI. We went to the moon. We put autopilots in planes. We have cars that do a lot of amazing things. A lot of it based on symbolic AI. The world turned out not to be Black and White. We went to probabilistic next or probability. We added the shades of gray between true or false, and began to think about the probability of an outcome, versus the outcome being binary, yes or no.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, although a lot of people saw it coming and there were many indicators that came first. In November 2022, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, put out this innocuous tweet at the time. We would call it an X now, or whatever the correct term is for messaging on X. He said, “We’ve released this conversational bot. We’d be interested in what you do with it and what you think.”

Suddenly, the world is introduced to the types of AI that we think about most now, which are these conversational interfaces with an AI. They can answer questions. Back in 2022 or 2023, they began to respond in more fulsome responses, such as a paragraph or maybe a page. You could stretch it out and get a little bit more happening. It was the time we were talking directly from our prompt interface to the AI model. A lot of things were happening. There were hallucinations, false information, and responses that were very puzzling and perplexing. Also, maybe required the engineers to go deep into the models and figure out what was going on.

As we get towards November 2024, a lot of things are changing. AI models began to reason. Reasoning is thinking about the response, breaking it down into tasks, formulating the response, and then providing it. Before, you were simply asking the model for an answer. It gave you back what it knew in its training. Now, it was looking and saying, “I can think about the problem more fulsomely and find a way to respond to what Mark is saying.” Reasoning is the first flag that I highlight for this November 24th pivot point.

The second thing was that a long body of work became practical. That body of work was around finding the right enterprise or alternative information to augment what the model had been trained on. Lots of terms get thrown around here. You’ll hear rag and vector database and all these other technical terms. The way to think about it is that we improved how the models reasoned.

We brought more pertinent, relevant information to reason upon. Specific to the question you were asking, or from the corpus of information that the organization has and has made available. The reasoning can look specifically at contextual data instead of generalized data. Suddenly, a whole lot of things like the hallucinations went way down, and the accuracy went way up. Things began to happen more focused on the question that you asked.

The last piece is that we learned a lot about how to build the models, deploy the models, scale, and make them available to you. A lot of things like guardrails, the controls on what’s going in and what’s coming out, began to fix and fixate on what the outcomes were meant to be. You had the reasoning like, “I’m thinking more fulsomely.” I’m in the camp that says machines don’t think, but the reasoning reflects a thinking model.

A lot more accurate information is coming in. Guardrails are preparing the data and response reflection to make sure that the accuracy coming back is right. Scaling makes it respond faster. An architectural pattern said, “I’m going to take your prompt and look at which of the different models I could send this to, possibly send it to multiple models to get a result, and then provide back to you that result.” That whole body of things together suddenly meant around about November 2024.

You were getting much more salient, relevant, lengthy responses from this alien intelligence, from this prompt window. It was coming back and saying, “Your sales last month were this. The leading indicators of the change were that.” Sometimes, it would even say, “I suggest the following actions to pursue corrective action against our sales patterns.”

You can’t point and say, “Here’s the date where everything changed.” In hindsight, you get to look and say all these forces coalesce together right around the second half of 2024. I picked November because that’s a lot more succinct to say the November pivot as opposed to the second half of 2024 pivot. It doesn’t mark it very well.

There’s some branding in there. There’s lots to unpack there, Mike. By the way, thanks for that super clear explanation. Team, when we start to think of it, that original tweet or text was in November 2022. It’s amazing what’s happened in two years. When we start to think of these impacts, one of the things we’ve always had a lot of empathy for, Mike, is that a sales leader is completely overwhelmed most of the time.

It’s the few and far between the sales leaders that are at this experience level where they can easily manage the complexity of having the three most demanding stakeholders in business. They are reporting to boards, which is stressful. They are working directly with clients and customers, which is, first of all, overwhelming at times, but very important. They are leading, managing, and supporting sales teams. An incredible amount of time is required to do that effectively if you’ve got the right intent and objective.

You add to the things that have happened to us, even starting with CRM systems in 2012 or 2013. It’s relentless. Every two years, there’s some major transformation. Gardner, McKinsey, and others go to the market and ask sales leaders, “What’s keeping you awake at night?” I always hate that question. When they ask them, they go, “Relentless transformation.” We never get a pause. Now, it’s AI. I can’t remember all of the sources, but you do say that sales is such a great testing ground for how AI is truly going to foundationally change business. Why is it that it’s such a powerful testing ground for all of the things you’ve shared?

Why Sales Is A Powerful AI Testing Ground

Let me preface my answer by saying, to the sales leaders tuning in. I sit around the same board tables that you and your teams did. Everyone around the table, at the board level, and at the senior executive level, even at the company meetings. It’s helping people feel comfortable about where the world is and is feeling the relentless pace of change. One of the drivers is that the change in the AI age is exponential. We are very used to, as humans, linear change.

Things got a little better tomorrow and a little better the day after or a little faster or what have you. This is a much faster change taking place. It is truly a phase shift in how technology is working. We should come back to that later. Let me tackle your question. Why do I think sales is such a great place to see where AI is making a difference and on? Folks will sometimes say, “All the press right now is about code, code bots, and all the things happening to coders.”

The change in the AI age is exponential. As humans, we’re used to linear change—things getting a little better tomorrow, a little faster the next day. But this is a much faster, more exponential shift.

That’s very true. That’s a field evolving fast because programming, code, and systems architecture are true, false, yes, no, and logical. Machines are good at that, where sales is more about reading signals, finding patterns, creating alternatives, and picking probabilistically the right one to follow. Sales have an important role in enterprises. It’s the intersection between the organization and the customer.

All the programs, products, and services come up as the organization. They meet the customer. That tip right there is sales and marketing. Where is AI going to make the first big changes for organizations? It’s making the salesforce more effective, bringing the messaging more complete, and satisfying customer demand more effectively. While there are fields moving faster, there are fields in very tight verticals doing incredible things.

Sit in a self-driving car in a city where Waymo or any of the other services are at and think to yourself, “This car is driving itself through rush hour.” That’s mind-blowing. Even knowing the technology, having worked with it when I was in academia, this stuff still blows my mind every time I see it. Sales is an important point where organizations change how they approach, and customers change how they buy.

That intersection says we, you, and I together are communicating and conversing about the most transformational change we’ll likely see this decade. Everything else around the board table is going to change. Sales is going to lead that change. The sales leaders who understand and lead that change in their organizations become vastly more important because they’re the scouts who see transformation long before the bulk of the organization does.

You speak about these scouts. This is great and complex. Let’s talk a little bit about what it’s going to take to continue. As a reference point, Mike, we’ve talked a lot about the evolution of sales from a trade into a profession. People who tune in to this show are sick of hearing me say that sales help them achieve a specific desired business outcome. Typically, when you’re working a complex sales cycle, the company that wins is the company that understands the client better than anybody else.

If you understand them and their problem and help them get to that desired future, you’re going to win. As we layer on AI into this whole conversation, let’s talk about some of the skill sets required for these professional salespeople or sales leaders in the future. What are they going to be doing that’s different from what they do now? What skill sets do they need? Lifelong learning and growth orientation are probably top of that list because of how quickly AI is changing everything.

Intellectual Curiosity And Avoiding The How Trap

Let’s unpack that in three ways. The first thing I would say is eSkills. Think about what’s going to make a difference for the next 5 to 10 years. Nothing will trump intellectual curiosity. By that, I mean a passion for understanding what’s different and the desire to learn more about what is changing. You bring those together, and it becomes the foundation of the change required to be successful in this space.

Other ones, like empathy, understanding how situations are evolving, pattern identification, and gut feel, sometimes, are all going to support the intellectual curiosity. That is the standout that brings the people who I find are passionate, versus the people who are hiding in the foxhole and saying, “I hope this blows over, and everything goes back to where it was.” First and foremost, I would unpack and say intellectual curiosity.

Getting a little more practical, there’s another thing I often talk about. I refer to it as the how trap. It’s funny because I use the word how both as an indicator, but then we have to use the word how a lot. If you think of how AI works, AI is good at figuring out how to do things. We can look at a giant body of information, find the pieces, and make a recommendation. It can build a slide if you tell it what to do. It can figure out how to adjust and build a probabilistic or analytic model to figure out the lifetime value of a customer or some of these other things. It does it fast.

How is strangely or ironically also how we grow up, differentiating ourselves. If I look at my resume, your resume, or our LinkedIn sites, all of them talk about the how. They are the achievements we’ve had in our careers. People get excited when a baby takes the first steps, or when you learn how to slap a puck at the net or make a big save. You’re a goalie. Make the big save with the catching mitt. These are all the applications of skills. It’s the how in action. We’ve been raised to differentiate on how, but the machines are better at doing how than we are.

If how becomes the domain of the machines, why and what becomes the domain of us? Where does intellectual curiosity suddenly show up? The second piece we unpack is why. Why is this important to the business? Why is this important to my team? Why would a customer find this intriguing? Why would this product enhancement be relevant to anything? What information do I have available? What is the capability of my organization? What are the tasks and outcomes that have to be put into the prompts or the programming of the AI to make things happen?

It’s a difficult problem to face because we’ve spent our whole lifetimes differentiating on how. You’re being asked to surrender how to not fall into the how trap, but to focus on why and what. They tend to have more senior leadership skills. You’re taught as you go up through your career, how to think more about why and what and less about how, and how to motivate people to do more of the how and pieces in.

You want the whole organization to think more about why and what, and a lot less about how. You want the organization and that intellectual curiosity to kick in to say, “What would we do different in all of our business processes? All the things that we do in your day-to-day actions to benefit from the how strength that machine intelligence can bring. It creates more leverage for the why and what strengths that you can bring as an individual contributor or leader.”

The third unpack that we would have would be, if you take intellectual curiosity and you avoid the how trap, the big piece is to recognize the exponential nature of change. Understand deeply that what you may try today doesn’t work, but it probably will work in two weeks. There’s the cycle time on these platforms. If you think back, if you started using GPT in November 2022, you were on GPT 3.5. I’m guessing, but it was about a year. GPT 4 came along, with a massive transformation in capability. GPT 4.5 came much faster.

A model that OpenAI called O1, their first reasoning model, effectively drove that reasoning pivot into the November paradox. It’s the November transformation. The models are changing so much faster. You can see Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere, the big players like Google, etc. They’re versioning models every couple of weeks, or every month at most. They’re competing in the marketplace for dominance and benchmarking. They’re showing this exponential change, this pace of change in the models.

The capabilities, the orchestrations, and the outcomes are exponential, as opposed to linear and slow. It forces us to be much more comfortable. Intellectual curiosity, avoiding the how trap, forces us to be much more comfortable with change. People who can embrace change and are curious and comfortable taking that on find it much easier to thrive right now. If I put all that together, what I’ve learned from you over twenty-plus years of working together, the time we spent at business school together prior to that, salespeople innately are change champions.

They’re comfortable with the unknown. They’re very flexible in their approaches. They’re retooling their sales playbooks and strategies constantly for the specifics of the opportunity in front of them. They’re building their corpus of knowledge from that. They’re increasing their ability each time, but they’re not sticking right on the rails and only doing A, then B, then C. There’s a flexibility inherent in there. One of the things that I learned from you was that flexibility is the secret to being successful in professional selling.

Thanks for that, Mike. To me, it feels like that’s what’s required to be successful in life. There’s this ability to change and this growth orientation. By definition, it’s uncomfortable no matter who you are. I always liked the Ginni Rometty quote. Virginia Rometty was the first female CEO of IBM. After 100 years, she became the first female CEO. I might get the quote wrong, but I think her quote was, “There’s no growth without discomfort.”

Whether it’s physical fitness, I experienced it there. I still try to get better as an athlete. Doing sprint training is extremely unpleasant. Doing these kinds of things, you’re going to be uncomfortable. I was on an assault bike with a trainer managing me, thankfully. You believe your life’s going to end. You do as men, but enough of these. You go, “There’s no way I'm coming back from this thing. I’m over.” It is this idea that we get comfortable with some level of comfort with discomfort. I always point back to the growth mindset by Carol Dweck as a great reference point and a constant reminder.

Play on that for a minute because there are a couple of good threads there. Neuroscience tells us that most people are uncomfortable with change. You and I probably have friend networks that are very change champion-oriented, but that’s not the norm. As leaders and direction setters, we have to be aware that there are a lot of people uncomfortable with what’s happening. It’s our job to bring the uncomfortable forward, help confront, and learn and find their ways around that.

In Carol Dweck’s work, I always loved the fact that Satya Nadella came into Microsoft. He looked across the organization. I admire him in every dimension for all the things he’s done, but the thing I took away turned into a hashtag and was used at work. He’s been there for a little over twelve years. I’ve used this in multiple companies. He said, “I want to lead an organization that is not a know-it-all, but is a learn-it-all.”

That pivot to being a growth mindset, capable, conscious, and driven to learn, listen, reason, and act like that in a simple few words, sums up what we need to help the people who are uncomfortable with change. The people who are too comfortable with change and want to exceed what our organizational guardrails are bring all those parties together and focus that outcome on creating value for the enterprise.

It’s such a good context. I reread Carol Dweck’s book. At least the first half is a pretty easy, quick read. She went back to the early days of the IQ test. We all believe IQ is fixed and so forth. The name’s Alfred Binet. The guy who invented the IQ test in Paris in the mid-19th century or 20th century did so because he was trying to figure out ways of improving the intelligence of school children in Paris.

Through focused effort, trial, development, error, and all those good things, you do get better at everything. It’s how you process that discomfort. Mike, we could, we can, and I’m pretty sure we will talk for hours on this topic. Our show generally is to elevate the performance and professionalism of B2B sales, but give the audience things they can take away and apply to a couple of things.

The first question would be, what are some sources, resources, or ideas if someone wants to get deeper into AI? I know everybody says they’re doing this in AI. They’re picking their wives’ birthday presents through AI. Professionally, if we want to increase our level of acumen with AI generally, where would somebody who’s tuning in to this show go?

Daily Conversation As A Way To Increase AI Acumen

That’s a great question because the market’s moving so fast. I could say I’ll provide you with a paper that I delivered. I’m delighted to do that. That particular paper is going to show that the technology is so far ahead of a survey of senior executives’ appreciation and understanding. It’s the November paradox in practice, straight up. The thing I would say for almost everyone who doesn’t say, “I’m comfortable with AI. I want to get into agentic AI. I’m ready to change my organization top to bottom. I have a feeling I know what that means,” is this.

If you’re still moving towards that space, the best advice I give people from friends of my daughter, all the way up to CEOs, board members, and beyond, is to commit time every day to engaging with a particular AI. Pick anyone. They’re all good. They’re all different. They all have biases. They all have built-in limitations, but pick one. Every day, have a conversation with it. That statement has two deeply embedded points in it. Doing it every day and having a conversation means not a type one, prompt in, and get an answer.

Commit time every day to engaging with an AI—pick any one. They’re all different, all useful, each with biases and limitations. The goal isn’t mastery overnight, but understanding: have a daily conversation so you can learn how they work.

There’s a lot of AI telemetry. It is being able to look either as a corporation at how your people are using AI, or more generally, the information released by a lot of model frontier model publishers. It tells us that most people use AI as a question-and-answer system. They ask a fairly simple prompt. They get an answer back. It might be a document. It might be a search. It might be an image or something else. That “conversation” has ended.

That is not a conversation. What I’m encouraging people to do is to set 10 to 15 minutes aside. Maybe it’s your drive. You’re driving to work. You’re driving to pick up kids at an event. Turn on the voice mode, put it on your Bluetooth in your car, and have a conversation with AI about anything. It can be the last thing you heard on the radio, something bugging you, a piece you don’t understand, or something that we said in this show that twigged you, but you don’t know why.

Start the conversation with whatever AI you’re currently using and go on. If you’re more comfortable typing or talking, pick your medium, but have a conversation. A conversation means you frame it, get a response, probe, get a response, back up, and reiterate. You go through that 6, 7, or 8 times to create a conversation. It’s like we would have if we had a glass of beer and a couple of hours. You’re talking about something. I’m not asking you a question and getting an answer. I’m having a conversation.

The goal of having a daily conversation with an AI is to learn more about how they work. What are their limitations? Where do they go? I like to say the more advanced part of that is you’ve got to challenge the AI in yourself to achieve three outcomes. Always focus on trying to learn something. Find out how it informs you about something. Find something that improves your thinking.

Learning something is a fact. Changing how you think is pushing you to stretch your neural boundaries and improve. Find something out you didn’t know. That’s great. That’s helpful at a cocktail party. You can say, “Did you know that X over Y?” It is interesting stuff. Forcing the AI to help you think differently is changing how you appreciate the intelligence on the other end of that conversation. It’s what we do naturally when we talk to each other, but it’s an important thing to do.

The other one is a little bit weird, but I still like to put it out there, which is forcing the AI to challenge your assumptions or how you view the world. You have to be careful there because you can fall into various bias traps and other things. I’ve done 3, 4, 6, or 7 prompt exchanges. We’ve got a body of outcomes to a point where I feel comfortable understanding it. I’m thinking differently. My closing will be, “Tell me the exact opposite of everything we’ve discussed.” Force the AI to give you the perspective that you’re not following. You don’t fall into the echo chamber.

You instead are using this very interesting, different entity to help you see the jagged edges and the different perspectives to give you different ways to think, to give you more information. On any given topic, you are more rounded as you decide your approach, your outcome, your style, and your decision. That’s how I try to encourage people to approach AI right now. You can try to go other ways. If you just do that for a couple of months, it’s every day for 10 to 15 minutes in the car as you drive. After you’ve tuned in to Mark for the Selling Well, have a conversation about something you’ve heard.

For the third time, they’ve tuned in to it. They shared it with fifteen friends, too.

They liked it in all of the other ways that we amplified. That conversation to me is the way that you learn how to then take that to work and apply it.

Let’s go over that again. This is the double-clicking. First of all, I picked something up. I’ve used AI frequently, every day for 2025, for sure. I’ve never done the voice module. I’ve never used the voice module. I’ve never done anything in my car. I had a lot of time in my car. I drive in and out of downtown Toronto.

That’s a lot of time.

It was a ridiculous amount of time. What a great takeaway there. It is easy to get in and start having this conversation. I want to come back to one other thought there. It is this idea of forcing you to think of something differently. What a great suggestion. “What’s the opposite argument to everything we’ve discussed?”

I know that you had one of my favorite lines. You had former Dean Roger Martin of the Rotman Business School on the show.

Thanks for noticing.

My favorite book that Roger Martin put out was The Opposab, where he frames across 300 pages. The people who are most successful in strategy, leadership, and outcome creation are able to simultaneously hold both sides of a perspective in their minds, habituate or switch between the two, and then arrive at a conclusion, having balanced both sets of thought. That’s such an important skill.

I don’t know how you teach it other than to say you have to be comfortable with challenging yourself. Have your friends challenge you, and spending time with people, including these new digital entities that can provide that counter perspective. It is a great prompt to ask, “Give me exactly the opposite perspective. Why does that exist in our world? What’s the thing I’m missing?” That little thread will change how you approach problems.

This is the nugget from this episode. If we only took one thing, if you got comfortable using your phone, jumping on with a conversation, find a different way. To build on your Roger Martin point. I believe one of the times we had him on the show was when we were talking through his book called A New Way to Thi.

It’s the same thing. He was going against conventional wisdom along four or five different core business myths. He had taken that thinking to take the opposite view. Mike, what do you think about this? I’m thinking aloud again, very selfishly. At the core, I’m a professional salesperson. We run this business. We do training, but at the core, I’m still an entrepreneur running a company or running a business.

Two things I’m going to start conversations with AI on are sharing our current strategy to 10X our business and sharing our strategy, how we think we can compete and win in the market. Part of that, Team, is an acquisition strategy of similar but smaller companies than ours. I love that idea of saying, “What am I missing? What’s the opposite side of all of this?” What do you think of that?

That’s a very fulsome conversation. There’s some research. Harvard Business Review had an article online where a team was looking at the bias of models in business outcomes. It was an academic team. They tended to look through an academic lens. They were discovering that if you fed business case studies into different models, they were all skewing in certain directions relatively similarly. It makes perfect sense.

Where does a current conversational model or an LLM, to use the correct term, get its knowledge base from the published works that are available or have been collected? I’m not an ethicist, so I’m not going to go into whether it was collected in the right way and how that works. That’s a whole other show. It’s a reminder that the model is not a thinking partner. The model is a response and reasoning partner.

What you said, though, is crucial, Mark. You said, “I’m going to talk about how I want to 10X my business. I’m going to talk about the potential of acquisition. I’m going to talk about the new market. I’m going to talk about other things.” You’re going to push the model in ways that you want it to look at and consider, and then respond to you. Back to that point about conversation, you’re going to have a conversation as opposed to taking a one-and-done approach, which is what this HBR article did.

It took, asked, plotted it on a chart, and moved on because there was a desire to show the probabilistic nature of response in LLMs, which is a very accurate reminder of bias and training. If you keep pushing the model, the thing about a model that has trillions and trillions of interconnections is that it will find other things in the conversation that will push your strategy along, and then throw that reverse in. What’s everything that would go wrong in my pursuing this approach?

It’s up to you, the human in the loop, to take all of that response and decide. Is it a conversation for tomorrow to take a different thread and continue to develop, or do you sit down with some organic partners or just yourself with a cup of tea and say, “I’m going to puzzle through this strategy”? Ultimately, you’re going to own the strategy because you’re going to make the decision.

Using AI For Deep Deal Strategy And Red Teaming

Here’s another quick thought. The juices are flowing now with the deal strategy. Team, believe it or not, my experience right now is deep deal strategy. It is about chasing a single sales pursuit and strategically thinking about how to improve my chances of winning. It’s becoming a lost art. We’re becoming a pricing and product environment and getting it out there. “The solution will sell itself.” No, it won’t.

The same HBR organization that Mike speaks to, where he’s referencing HBR, published the surveys at four and ten times. A B2B purchasing decision favors a company that sells better, versus a company at the best price, product, or service features. That research was done by the Chally Group. It was done over thirteen years. It had a sample size of 100,000 B2B purchasing decisions. One of the things we like to do manually when we’re working with sales teams is be the red team on a deal that says, “Walk me through the current deal strategy.” This is not negative thinking.

This is asking, “If we were to lose, why would we lose?” I am thinking about having a conversation with AI about this and saying, “Here’s where we are. Here’s what we’re doing. We’ve addressed the key buyers. We’re meeting their desired outcomes. We can drive a better business outcome for the business. What are three things I’m missing?”

It’s not that they just go with a competitor. “What would be three reasons they do nothing?” Doing nothing is the biggest competitor in most sales cycles. How is that insight not going to be helpful just as a reference point? I’m still going to decide what I do with it, but it is a reference point while I still have time to change the future on a deal before they make that decision.

If you think about it, go back to the point we were talking about before about conversation. How are you going to untangle all of those potential parts? You’re going to untangle it by multiple iterations over an expanding body of work. In so doing, you’re going to surface things. Over time, there’s a term that you’ll hear in the field, which is digital twin. People will say, “What if I want to get on Mark’s show? How would I go about that?”

It turns out Mark publishes a blog. Mark has a LinkedIn profile. Mark has a lot of information, a book, and 100-plus episodes that I can have an AI analyze. It can come back, and we can have a conversation. I can say, “I want to catch Mark’s attention to get on his show. How do I go about doing that?” Here is a digital twin of Mark. It will help me see what avenues to use to approach.

People will often say, “I built a bid team. I built a decision team. I have an advisory board of ‘AI actors.’” You’ve begun to formulate the people you need around the table to help you make better decisions. I’ll often say I’m blessed and lucky, but so are a lot of the people that we have tuning in here that we have the means, whether it’s connection, financial, or what have you, to access two or three different AI products.

If you can take a formulating high-stakes idea and converse with OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Cohere’s products, Gemini, or what have you. That is going to give you different perspectives because they are different orchestrations, different engines, and different means of coming back. You will nuance your questions as you go. You’ll have your favorite. The more you can use different tools and different approaches, or even in your favorite, try the thinking option for a bit, try the fast option for a bit, and then try the previous model if you can still get to it, it’s going to show you subtle differences in the work.

One of the things I picked up for you a long time ago is that the sales leaders are the best people at reading unconnected signals. You’re in some of the best pattern recognizers in the industry. You’re sitting through a sales process where all these little indicators are popping up here and there. They’re not warning lights. They’re not dashboard gauges.

Sales leaders are among the best at reading unconnected signals. They are some of the strongest pattern recognizers in the industry.

They’re bits of signal that you can begin to build together into something that gives you a map of where you want to go. To the point we used before, it is pulling all of that different, diverse signal material together and seeing the topology to then plot the direction where you’re going. Different models, different people, different ways, and different prompt techniques will show you a path towards the goal that you’ve set for yourself.

For clarity, for those tuning in, Mike started that by saying, “If you want to get on the show.” Do what Mike did. Send us a briefcase full of money because we can be bought. I’m not above it. Send it in. We’ll take care of everybody. We’ll do a wonderful show with you. Mike, we could and will speak for hours. I’m pretty sure. I’m also 100% certain people tuning in are going to want to figure out how they can learn more about your thinking and stay connected with you. What’s the best place to stay connected with your thinking and AI?

One of the casualties of being busy is that I don’t necessarily have a deep and rich social media platform. LinkedIn is the best place. It’s Mike Sparling, COO, CTO, Multi-Health Systems. There are a few Mikes. He’s the chief counsel for 1-800-FLOWERS. There aren’t many of us. If you narrow it down to AI, you’ll find me quite quickly.

The other piece is to connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. Instead of blogging regularly and doing a lot of things, I like to have conversations like this. I like to sit down with people over a coffee. I like to answer a question that’s very specific. I’m more than willing to converse with anyone interested because, through those conversations, I learn and improve as well.

Mike, I certainly learned and hopefully will improve from this conversation. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. It is great to speak to you.

It’s been a pleasure, Mark. Thank you very much. I look forward to continuing our coffee conversations.

You bet. Team, thank you very much for joining. As everybody knows, we run the show to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales because we believe that, by doing so. We’re improving the lives of professional salespeople. We’re also growth-oriented. If you enjoyed this show, please let us know. If you’ve identified a couple of ways where we can make this show even more valuable to you, please let us know that.

We love constructive criticism. I personally respond to every piece of constructive criticism. If you send something in, I’m going to personally respond and send a note saying, “Thanks for the feedback.” By the way, the way we run this episode is a result of some of that feedback. Thanks for giving it. We appreciate your time. We’ll see you next time on the show.

Important Links

• Michael Sparling on LinkedIn

• Multi-Health Systems

• OpenAI

• Anthropic

• Cohere

• The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

• A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness

• Google Gemini

About Michael Sparling

Mike Sparling is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Multi-Health Systems Inc.

He has built his career at the rare intersection of deep technology and real-world business execution.

Trained as a software engineer and solution architect, he began by designing complex systems to solve meaningful problems. Over time, his perspective expanded beyond engineering into the realities of how companies actually operate—customers, competition, go-to-market execution, and value creation.

This shift led him into the world of enterprise sales—not transactional selling, but sales as a discipline. He saw firsthand how world-class sales leadership can transform a company’s trajectory—aligning product, partnerships, and execution to drive market share and growth.

Across multiple organizations, Mike continued to work closely with sales leaders, developing a practical understanding of how high-performing sales teams operate and scale.

In parallel, his career has consistently been at the forefront of artificial intelligence—spanning industrial systems, knowledge management, behavioral analytics, and most recently, neuroscience and biotechnology at the intersection of human and machine cognition.

Today, Mike’s work sits at the convergence of AI, value-chain transformation, and customer-facing execution—bringing together technical depth and a grounded understanding of how organizations create real value.

Becoming A Growth Leader With Scott Edinger

Sales training is often ineffective without strategic leadership and broader organizational support. Mark Cox sits down with Scott Edinger, CEO of Edinger Consulting, who shares how he successfully drives sales by becoming a strategic growth leader. He presents his Five Flags Start framework to elevate your sales approaches, create value that goes beyond tangible products, and achieve your very own idea of success. Scott also discusses how to harness the power of AI and technology in shaping the current world of sales, all while keeping the human sales experience alive and intact.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Becoming A Growth Leader With Scott Edinger

Team, we've got a great show for you. We've got Scott Edinger on the show. Scott is the CEO of Edinger Consulting. He's also the author of the book we're going to be discussing, The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It's a great book. It is a New York Times bestseller and a USA Today bestseller. There are also interesting and a couple of great things that come out of the book.

First and foremost, this is a book with facts and data backing it up. I like that, as anybody who tunes in to the show knows. There's this opportunity for a few more facts: data research backing up the profession of B2B sales. Scott's book is chock a block with that kind of research. It has a lot of data points I hadn't seen before, some of which knocked me over. One of the key ones was the percentage of a company that doesn't understand the business strategy of the company. There were some stats in the book that talked about somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of employees not understanding the core business strategy of the company they work with.

When we start to think of sales, it is so important because every sales call communicates the core business strategy to that client or prospect, because that's our value proposition message. If we don't understand the strategy, we can't communicate it. A lot of this book is about the alignment between leadership and the sales organization, and this discussion about the sales organization being almost the personification of that business strategy. That tight alignment was so important.

One of the things that we get into in the episode is that we talked a little bit about Scott's amazing background.  He started with the Huthwaite Group, which is Dr. Neil Rackham in SPIN Selling for those who remember that back in the day. He was with that organization for seven years. What a great start. We also talk about multiple different HBR articles that Scott's written. A couple of interesting ones come out in the episode.

As part of this book, we do get into his Five Flag Start model, where we say, “For leaders today, thinking about how we start to better align the strategy with the sales organization to make sure everybody's enabled to execute in the field.” We talk about this Five Flag Start process where we first define success, and then identify the power play. We talk about understanding your competitive advantage in the marketplace, communicating that very clearly, and leveraging that to win.

We talk about identifying the ideal customer profile for you and the customers, creating value, and then number five, execution. Define success, identify your power play, identify your customers, create value, and execute. Scott takes us through each of these components in detail in this episode. This is a super interesting discussion.

I enjoyed my conversation with Scott. I enjoyed reading and studying The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. You're going to enjoy this episode, too. When you do, please like and subscribe to the show. Thanks for doing that. That's how we get great guests like Scott. Folks, here he is, Scott Edinger, author of The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines.

Scott, welcome to the show. What a pleasure chatting.

Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here talking with you.

You've written multiple books, but we're talking about The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Line. Right off the top, there are a couple of things I loved about the book. First of all, one of our pals, a friend of In The Funnel, and certainly a friend of this show that people will recognize, Frank Cespedes, a senior lecturer at Harvard, wrote a glowing introduction to the book.

I am very grateful to Frank for doing that. It’s wonderful.

Everybody on this show knows he's a hero and a mentor of mine. When I got down to studying for this episode and I read that, I got keyed up for the rest of the book when I saw Frank's introduction. The second thing that I thought was amazing was this warning or suggestion at the top of the book that says, “If you're a sales leader and you receive this book, The Growth Leader, because your CEO gave it to you, give it back to the CEO.

Scott Edinger’s Career Adventure

Tell the CEO he or she should read it, and if they need another book, I’d be happy to send another book.” You said, “Make sure they're not trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of sales and growth.” That is a great move at the beginning of the book. We're going to get into that. Maybe for the folks tuning in, I wonder if you could give us a little bit of the short story of your career adventure that's brought you to this point here.

I struggle to make it short because it's long and winding, but I started my career in human resources at a Big Six firm. I date myself. Now, there are four. It was a firm that ultimately became PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC. It was Coopers & Lybrand before that. I was in human resources there. I got into human resources for all the right reasons, which were people development and wanting to help others do great work. The partner who recruited me talked with me about it. I helped to manage the most strategic assets of the firm.

What I realized, and I mean this with no disrespect for the human resources people who work strategically, is that most HR is not strategic. Most HR was administrative. It was going to be a long haul for me to get to do anything strategic. I did not like that. The more I explored, I looked for opportunities to combine that desire to help people do good work and be more successful in their careers with an interest in being on the revenue side of a business. I found that in the sales training business, where I spent about a decade.

I joke with clients that sales training might be the most frustrating business on the planet because executives are, even if they're happy with the results, still a little bit disappointed at best. They are very disappointed with many sales training companies because the reaction is, “I sent them away for two days, and they didn't come back as different people.”

Sales training might be the most frustrating business on the planet. Even if they are happy with the results, many executives are a little bit disappointed at best with sales training companies.

It’s like, “We didn't grow sales by 40% even though I sent them away for 2 days, and I have no idea what they went through.”

You'll hear the rootstock for The Growth Leader in this. When I talk to salespeople, they're frustrated. I hear things like, “This is great, but it is hard to do this. Nobody realizes in my company how hard it is, and we're not managed this way.” The consultants are often frustrated because we are frustrated that nobody is exactly in leadership doing what we suggest in order to drive the kind of growth that sales training could bring you. I love the work, but I got out of it and ultimately started my own strategy and leadership firm.

I love that work, too. Back in the day, I went through strategic selling probably 4 or 5 times. We've had one of the Heiman ladies on the show. Alice Heiman has been on the show. Her sister's coming on the show. Their dad was Robert Heiman from Miller Heiman Strategic Selling. I love the model. I love the methodology originally. I thought there was huge value in it. We all know about the forgetting curve out there. Nothing sticks unless it's reinforced, managed against, and coached continually. One-time training never works. It never sticks. There's no evidence of it a year later.

You mentioned the introduction of The Growth Leader, where I very clearly say CEOs don't delegate this book. My experience on that is that the thing that makes any initiative around revenue growth, particularly in SALESGO, is that it's got to be connected to strategy. It's got to be driven by leaders. When you put sales in something, like sales enablement, sales training, sales coaching, anytime the word sales appears in something for executives, it gets delegated. It gets pushed to sales. Sales can never make those kinds of strategic shifts on their own. They need broad, based, high-level leadership support in order to drive change. That's why I wrote the book.

Selling Well Matters

First of all, this is a great book to pick up. We put people on the show where we've read the book, and then we go find the person who wrote it to try and get them on the show. One of the things that is generally missing with a lot of sales advice, direction, or thought leadership is facts, assessments, research, or surveys. This book is a chock block full of them.

We have facts to back up the opportunity in front of us. There was one great piece of research in here where you talked about growth companies, the difference within industries, and how you sell could have a 20%, 30%, 40%, or 50% difference on the impact on your organization based on industry. It is this concept that selling well matters.

You've been published in Harvard Business Review multiple times. One of the ones we always point back to was, back in 2012, teaching sales. It was a July-August issue of Harvard Business Review. The whole issue was on B2B sales, the entire issue for a change. They had the stat from the Chally Group that said 39% of the time, a B2B purchasing decision favors the company that sells better versus the company that has the best price, quality, or service features. We reference this stat all over the place because we believe, like you, that selling well matters.

There is a forgotten, unknown, discarded fact about what I will call here the sales experience. Your customers' interactions with your prospects or even your existing customers' interactions with your sales team, in my book that I cite, are 25% as great as 53%. Your 39% stat in here. We're saying that somewhere between a quarter and a half of the decision is based on the experience the buyer or prospect has with your company before they even become a customer.

That's more than price alone, more than brand alone, more than service alone, and second only to the actual things they're buying. When you think about looking for ways to develop a competitive advantage, a way to stand out in the market, or a way to separate yourself from the competition, this factor of the sales experience is almost never talked about.

Isn't that amazing? It’s flabbergasting. It's also not taught in most business schools and most MBA programs. Far more than half of those schools in the US, when you go through an MBA, you're not getting more than 1 or 2 courses on sales.

It is amazing to me because what you hear a ton of is that we differentiate on customer experience or CX, which is the popular term. I did an interview for a Harvard Business Review article. The paraphrasing of what I said was customer experience is great, but in the world of CX, if the sales experience is the first mile of the customer experience, and it's not good or not even better than the competition, then your prospects will get off at exit one and they will go have a customer experience with someone else. This is a massive differentiator often not thought about in the boardroom and the executive team meeting. It's delegated to sales as, “Go do it.” That's not enough strategic direction, and it's not enough strategic support.

Business Boards Not Understanding Their Own Business

Let's touch on the strategic direction. That’s so well said. At the beginning of the book, you focus a lot on this issue that most people walking around a business don't even understand the strategy of the business they're in, let alone the salespeople that are tasked with articulating that business strategy in front of clients and prospects. I found those stats flabbergasting. The one that kicked me in the tummy was there was a board that doesn't even know the strategy.

Too often. There is are lot written about strategy. The litmus test for me is if you ask sellers, “How well do you understand the go-to-market strategy of your firm?” When I did that, the average answer on a scale of 1 to 10 was under a 4, like 3.7 or something. That is dangerous. If you consider this, and not enough leaders consider this, sales is the execution of your strategy in the market. Every sales call represents success or failure.

I write in The Growth Leader that this is either a massive accumulation of wins or it is death by a thousand cuts. That's a leadership issue because if you think about your strategy, where does it show up? Not in the boardroom and not in internal meetings. It shows up at the client meeting with the prospect. Are they the right kind of prospect? Are they the right level? Are you having the conversations that would lead them towards your best solutions, not whatever the sellers are comfortable pitching? Are they achieving the right kind of results there? All of the elements of strategy show up on the sales call hundreds, sometimes thousands, of times a day for companies.

You touched on this as well. You start to think about the impact not only on the top line, as you say in the title of the book, but the bottom line. In your HBR article, you define value. We'll get to it in a second. The value is the impact or the benefit minus the cost. If I'm targeting the right client, and this is so important for medium-sized enterprises, like In The Funnel, they pay for the value we provide. When our team targets the wrong client, we're going to the wrong market, they don't have the problem we solve for, or they don't want the benefit we provide, then we get into this cost battle.

Getting A Tighter Alignment On Core Business Strategies

Whenever those cross my desk, we're walking. We're professionally out. We know it's not the right fit for us. This connection between the company's strategy clarity on the company's strategy and making sure the sales team is enabled with that strategy is so critically important. You identify the problem, for sure, in the first chapters of the book. What are some of the solutions? For the folks and leaders who are tuning in, how do we get tighter alignment on the core business strategy, to start with?

This is the heart of the matter. Think about your strategy. It probably addresses key questions about your objectives, competitive advantage, target markets, or ideal client profile, but nearly all strategy models are missing. That is the one that's in The Growth Leader. All strategy models are missing this essential question. How does our sales experience create value?

I'd suggest to you that if you are a leader and looking to grow your business, then the answer to that question might be almost as important as what you offer and who you offer it to. The ability to make it part of your strategy that says, “Do you know that 25% to 50%-ish of the decision is based on this piece of sales experience? We're not going to push that off to sales and say, “Go sell. Sell more. Sell better.” We're going to say, “This is important enough.”

We're going to make it a part of our strategy. We're going to define it. We're going to get precise about how we create value above and beyond the products and services that we offer.” When you can do that, it's a downhill roll from there. It's hard to get that boulder up the hill, get executives to do that, and recognize the value of that. Once something's in your strategy, you do a whole lot more to resource it, to pay attention to it, and to drive success in that.

Once something is in your business strategy, you do a whole lot more to resource, pay attention, and drive success into it.

What a great approach. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read in the book that a great question to ask our leaders is, “Would your client or prospect pay for a sales call from one of your people? Are they getting that much insight, value, knowledge, or help? Are you uncovering problems they have? Are you uncovering issues they don't even know they have?

Are you bringing outside insight and knowledge, not just about you and your product, but about their business and their industry because you have a line of sight into hundreds, if not thousands, of other clients that look like them?” In this day and age, anytime you interact with anybody, the number one goal is, “Are they better off because of this discussion?” If we start there, then good things are going to happen for us down the road, for sure.

That is a critical element to this. I credit one of my early bosses and a mentor of mine, Neil Rackham, who is the bestselling author of SPIN Selling and Rethinking the Salesforce. If you're tuning in to this show, you probably have heard of his name. I worked for Neil for seven years. Neil used to ask us this question, “Would your customer write you a check for the sales call?” In my smart-alecky 30s kind of way, I'd say, “It's hard enough to get him to write us a check for the actual services we're selling, let alone the sales call.”

That question and this idea of sales calls or a sales experience, if we update that a little bit, that your customers would be willing to pay for, then that's a provocative question that starts you thinking, “What do we do that's valuable here above and beyond what we're offering, but how we offer it?’ In that way, they're not writing you a check for the sales call, but that negotiation becomes easier. You probably get a higher margin. They're willing to recognize, “They may cost more, but I want to work with them instead of this other team.” That's where you get your money. If you're looking to expand margins, they're hiding for you on every sales call.

My mistake. At the beginning, you mentioned the Huthwaite group, and I went to strategic selling. It's  SPIN Selling. That was Neil's company. Neil Rackham's company was the Huthwaite group that did the research with Mike Bosworth and Xerox originally back in the day.

If you trace the origins and the history of sales training, for anybody who cares about that, which is probably less than three people who are tuning in, you, me, and maybe one other person, all of that research is powerful. Neil was a real leader in that.

It is so great to think of it. Back in those days, it would've been hard to do that research. It was all manual.

I had the good fortune to work for seven years at Huthwaite. I joke with people that it was like dog years in selling working for Neil and doing that.

The Five Flag Start

Let's touch on a couple of the models that you've brought up. This is a very interesting read with good examples. It's a book where a fact comes up, and there's some data to back it up, and then there's a bit of an approach and a solution. In Frank Cespedes' very gracious introduction of the book, he said, “You've got this amazing model to convert any good idea into execution.” It's the Five Flag Start. It talks about define success, identify your power play, identify your customers, create value, and execute.

Let's talk a little bit about each of those, if we could, because that's something that would be a great takeaway for many of the people reading. They could capture that and start to think of the way they've got to go to market model. I loved your explanation of this in the book where you talked about the flags at a NASCAR race. You're covering every nationality. You got the folks in loving NASCAR. You got some folks loving hockey with the power play. You covered everything here.

When I said all strategy models leave out this idea of the sales experience, except for the one in The Growth Leader, that strategy framework is called the Five Flag Start. The notion of this is that any good strategy ought to answer a few key questions that establish a framework that allows leaders to make decisions, take actions, and make choices within that framework to drive their strategy forward and move their business forward. That's the Five Flag Start.

Let's start at the beginning. Let's talk about them, if it's okay.

We’ll dig right into that.

The first flag is define success.

Ever since Stephen Covey wrote to begin with the end in mind, we've always thought, “What is the goal here? What's the objective?” In the Five Flag Start, flag one is about how you define success. What are you aiming for? Is it revenue? Is it net income? Is it the number of products per customer or wallet share? Is it market share? Is it a measure of customer loyalty? Whatever it is. Growth of some kind in all of those is probably important, and for leaders to do a good job of identifying what that success is.

There's nothing necessarily revolutionary or revelatory about that first flag. What I'd offer is this, and most leaders don't think about it. The success that you are aiming for as a company is the result of every individual sales call. You can draw a clear line of what's happening in that sales call. Are we moving toward that objective? Part of this is about how you get a clear line of sight from that C-Suite all the way straight through to the customer and the front lines. Here's part of how you evaluate that throughline. Is it happening there? If it happens there, it'll happen on your balance sheet.

The success you are aiming for as a company is the result of every individual sales cost.

After this, we'll get into how we track and understand if it's happening there. Let's finish with the five flags because these are so good. The next one, which is speaking to my heart, is identify your power play.

The notion of competitive advantage is common in business. I use the term power play because I was always fascinated by this idea of an unfair advantage where you genuinely outnumber the competition. All of this is about how you align your strategy with sales. It's done in a way that says, “What do I want to show up in the sales call?” Most people think about competitive advantage, and it's like a laundry list of everything their company does. In truth, there are probably only a few or maybe one reason customers are choosing you.

If you think about that in terms of what you offer, that's what you want discussed in every sales call. Make sure that you're explicit, precise, and crystal clear about that so that your sales team can be asking the kinds of questions that surface the need that draws to that. When companies aren't clear, precise, or pragmatic about what that is, then salespeople pitch whatever they can. The Growth Leader is all about how you affect this kind of change, not by micromanaging sales, but from the leadership side. Getting clear on this part of the strategy is a big part of it.

Strategically, the executive team needs to be able to articulate the value proposition. We believe the value proposition is, “What do you do? What desired outcome do you provide clients? Number three, what's your competitive differentiation?” The competitive differentiation has to be fact-based and relevant to the client, and then relative to competition, including the number one competitor, which is to always do nothing or make no change. It is the status quo.

I find it so difficult to capture that. You talked about how many companies go through a laundry list. The reality of it is, in any communication, your client is not going to remember a laundry list of anything. They're going to remember, “These are the two reasons clients pick us over anybody else.” It is the Mark Twain, “I wrote a long letter. If I took more time, I would've written you a short letter.” I was saying we need the short letter.

Leaders, sellers, and everybody in between ought to understand the notion of argument dilution. That is the more stuff you throw and you've got a competitive advantage at, the more skepticism you create. As soon as I can find one of them that you're not as good at, then that calls into question everything else. These long pitches from sellers are less successful than ever for that reason.

I've never heard that before. That is such a great takeaway. Argument dilution. Do the hard work. Decide on the 2 or 3 things that you can defend that are fact-based.

I almost went to law school. That's where I learned that term.

It's coming out. There are the facts, evidence, and data.

That's the old lineage.

HR. Law. You did everything around sales.

I was doing everything I could to avoid sales, truly.

Per your HBR article, get over your fear of selling. Get over your fear of sales.

That's right.

Keeping on the Five Flag Start, number three is identify your customers. This one seems self-evident.

I want to highlight some nuance or subtlety, and I would hope for differentiation here. The point I drive home hard in The Growth Leader is to be clear about who you're walking away from because that's what's going to make a difference in your market success. All of you who are reading, you'll cringe if you knew how much time, money, and energy your sales teams are spending pursuing business you wish you didn't have.

All in the service of trying to make a number for a quarter that you're pressuring them on, they are experiencing the unintended consequence of pursuing the wrong kind of business. Every leader I talk to, from a venture-backed startup to a Fortune 500, is pissed off about that. If you do the Five Flag Start right, you'll get clear on this.

Bravo. The reality for the salespeople tuning in is that this is hurting you because the wrong clients are harder to sell to. Your productivity dramatically increases. If you've identified your ideal client profile and your value proposition resonates with that client, they're easier to sell to because they value the unique things that you bring to the table.

Let's face it. They're the ones who are making your life miserable anyway. You'd rather not, but you're doing so because you feel like you have to in the absence of something else when you would be better off allocating that time towards someone who's more likely to buy, even if you're to lose it.

Beautifully said. Five Flag Start number four is create value.

This is the centerpiece of the Five Flag Start in my view. The real point of differentiation is the executive saying, “We win on what we sell, which is our competitive advantage and our power play, but we also win on how we sell.” We create value in the sales experience. It's not just lip service. I tell the sales managers, “Get out there and do it.” It's part of our strategy. Get it in there. That's flag four of the Five Flag Start.

Finally, execute. You've got a bit of a catchall here for execute.

Most good strategy models leave execution out. If you're reading, see if this fits somewhere. “We had a great strategy, but the execution sucked.” There's a professor at the Rotman School of Business, Roger Martin. He has also written a few different books on strategy. He says, “I'm a believer that that is a cop-out.” His example of that was when have you ever heard of a brilliant political strategy where the candidate lost, or an amazing film with a great marketing strategy tanked at the box office? Execution and strategy are linked. Within strategy, you have to create the mechanism to execute it.

Execution and strategy are linked. Within strategy, you have to create the mechanism to execute it.

The last part here is to answer this question. What do we need to improve, build, or acquire if we're going to execute this strategy? Answer that question, and that gives you your bridge to what you're going to need to do to execute. If all of the strategy is forward-looking, then your ability to say, “If we're going to make these objectives true in this part of the market with this advantage creating value this way, then there are things we got to get better at, and there are things we don't have that we need that we either build or we got to go get them.” If you broadly look at that, that will give you your roadmap for what you have to do to win in your strategy.

Roger Martin is somebody else who's been on the show. Of Roger's strategy books, back in the day, he was writing those with the CEO of Procter & Gamble, whose name escapes me.

A. G. Lafley.

Keeping Up With Changes And Innovations

Thank you. A lot of that is making those decisions that we’re not to compete. One of the core tenets of his strategy, the same thing with one of the core tenets of your five flags, is the ideal customer, deciding where we don't want to compete, and make sure we're spending all of our time where we do. You are seeing salespeople train thousands, probably on a given basis, in a given year. There are lots of amazing things happening in B2B sales.

If we believe social media, the whole business discipline is failing, and there are all these issues. Frankly, I don't buy it. We come across so many organizations where their values have dramatically increased. The insight and opportunity value they put into the world has increased. That's all on the backs of the B2B sales organizations. They're driving revenue. There are some amazing things happening in B2B sales. What are you most excited about for B2B sales moving forward? What are you seeing out there? What are you excited about in terms of the future?

The thing I'm excited about is that the more companies try to use technology to substitute salespeople, the less consumers seem to like it. The thing I am most excited about is that the value of the sales experience when it's done well becomes even more powerful than it has been. I don't know about you, but all of the AI chatbots that I'm involved with, the telesales robots, and all of these mechanisms where technology is looking to insert itself in place of the sales experience, I know that there are places where it does work. There are elements of it, certainly, if they are transactional sort of stuff. If you're selling anything where the interaction with the seller and the buyer matters, things are getting better for you because, roundly, I don't hear people saying they're having great experiences with anything that is a technology substitute.

It’s a great productivity tool for salespeople for research and planning.

I will offer this on something I'm excited about. I do see the use of AI, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or any others as a means to doing good research so that a salesperson can show up with greater knowledge about the company. They can say, “Analyze the last four quarters of earnings calls from this company and help me summarize the issues.”

The ability to become more quickly knowledgeable about your prospects and clients is wonderful. It's like back to the early days of Netscape. It's like, “I can go download a 10-K.” Now, I can have an analysis of the last couple of years of them in less time than that. If you consider the ability to use technology to get better, not more efficient.

How do you stay current with what's happening both with business and in B2B sales? Favorite authors and sources of information? The folks who tune in to this show are growth-oriented. They want to get better. There are lots of other places in addition to this show where they can continue their learning. What are some of the sources for you?

For business, I try to keep a relatively low information diet because there's so much available. I do read the Wall Street Journal. I get a summary of pretty much every article there every day, and then I can click and look further into it. In terms of business, I tend to look at the people whom I like and what they write, their blogs, and their articles.

The people you've mentioned here, who have been on your show, be it Roger Martin or Frank Cespedes, are a couple of luminaries in my mind. The place where I tend to learn the most is when I'm in the field with clients and I get to watch them in action, see what's happening with their customers, and then what's happening in the boardroom, and connect those two things. That's where I tend to learn the most.

The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines

Get In Touch With Scott

Scott's book is a Wall Street Journal bestseller. It's also a USA Today bestseller. The book we've been talking about is The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It's been great having this first conversation with you. I have a feeling we'll be chatting again, for sure.

I'd love that.

Thank you so much for joining

Thank you so much for having me here. It's been a real pleasure. I enjoyed the discussion.

Thank you. Folks who are reading are going to want to learn more about you. How else can they learn more about you or about Edinger Consulting?

First off, I do hope you get the book, and I hope you like it enough to write a review. Beyond that, I do my best to make it easy to find me. My website is my name, ScottEdinger.com. On there, there are over 100 articles for free that I have written for Harvard Business Review, Chief Executive, and Forbes. I hope you can go to those and learn more. I've got a new video series that's coming out soon on every part of The Growth Leader. You can learn about that and the announcement for it if you sign up for the monthly newsletter. I know everybody wants another newsletter.

They want good ones. We're in.

My promise is always two things. Number one, it'll be short. Number two, never commercial. What I hear from clients is that it's always got good insights and stuff I learned. I'm on LinkedIn. Follow me there. I do a once-a-month live stream event, like a podcast with guests. That’s better than reading an article or watching a video. You can interact. We can figure out how the ideas work for you. Those are the places you can tend to find me, and I hope you will.

That’s awesome. Our special thanks to Scott Edinger. We've been talking about The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines. It is a great read. I'd also like to thank you for tuning in to the show. We run this show to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales because we think that in doing that, we improve the lives of professional salespeople.

Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate everybody's support. We also know we can continue to improve this show. We're growth-oriented. If you've got some constructive criticism for us, please send it to me, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal In The Funnel email, so I respond to every bit of constructive criticism. We love constructive criticism.

Some of the guests and the way we run the show have been a result of the feedback you've provided, so thanks for that. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. That's how we get great guests like Scott, so that matters to us. In the meantime, good luck to everybody. We'll look forward to seeing you all next time.

Important Links

• Scott Edinger

• The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines

• Scott Edinger on LinkedIn

• How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing with Frank Cespedes

• Professional Sales with Alice Heiman

• A New Way To Think with Roger Martin

• SPIN Selling

• Rethinking the Salesforce

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Scott Edinger

Clients in the Fortune 50 and across the globe trust Scott K. Edinger as their premier consultant for leading business growth. Scott has worked with CEOs and senior leaders to develop pragmatic strategies and execute approaches to drive top and bottom-line results. He has written three books and over a hundred articles in Forbes and Harvard Business Review, among other prominent publications.

As a consultant, author, advisor, and speaker, Scott creates positive change for clients and is recognized as an expert in the intersection of leadership, strategy, and sales.

He is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today national bestselling author of The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines, as well as the bestselling co-author of The Hidden Leader: Discover and Develop Greatness Within Your Company and The Inspiring Leader. His Harvard Business Review article “Making Yourself Indispensable” has been called a “classic in the making.”

Scott has served as an affiliate faculty member for the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler. School of Business. He received a B.S. in Communication Studies and Rhetoric from Florida State University, where he sat on alumni committees including the Board of the College of Communication and Information, as well as the Seminole Torchbearers. 

Selling From The Heart: Larry Levine's Authentic Sales Secrets Revealed

Building genuine connections is the key to "selling from the heart," a strategy that transcends mere transactions and fosters lasting relationships in today's challenging trust landscape. In this episode, Larry Levine, author of "Selling from the Heart" and "Selling in a Post-Trust World," joins us to explore how authenticity fuels successful sales. Larry, with his extensive experience in the office technology channel, discusses shifting from product-focused approaches to relationship-centered interactions, emphasizing that everyone, especially in competitive markets, is essentially in the people business. We delve into actionable methods for establishing trust rapidly, connecting genuinely with clients at all levels, and transforming existing relationships into powerful growth drivers. Whether you're a seasoned sales professional or just beginning, Larry's insights will guide you in enhancing your people skills and achieving sustained success through heart-centered selling.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Selling From The Heart: Larry Levine's Authentic Sales Secrets Revealed

We've got a great show for you. We've got Larry Levine. He is the author of Selling From The Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You! Just a great book, great read, a lot of great expertise that Larry's brought to the table because he spent literally almost three decades in the photocopy industry. When you think of a successful career as a salesperson or sales leader in that competitive industry, some might say it's a very commoditized industry. The only thing that differentiates in the marketplace is how well you sell.

These days, that's also highly applicable for almost anybody reading. No product sells itself. It's the salesperson who can make the key difference. How well you sell can be your competitive differentiation. A really clear message from Larry in this great conversation where he shares that we're all in the people business and the relationship building business regardless of technology, we're in the people business and the relationship building business. He and I talk a lot about that authenticity.

How do we get comfortable being ourselves in front of clients and prospects? We might be new to sales, we might be new to business, and selling to a CIO. How do you get comfortable in that conversation so that you can have that authentic engagement? We talk a lot about very helpful tips for our existing client base. No matter who we are, we want to grow through new logos. We want new business.

Part of the path there is understanding your existing clients. The more we help and support our existing clients, doors it opens to new logos and new clients. What do we do outside of engaging them? A, when there's a new deal on the table, or when there's a problem, or when we do a fly by. What else do we do? What's the target? Larry does a great thing at the end of this show. He asks us all a couple of questions to think about regarding our most important client, however we define that.

He wants to know how well we know them. What are their top priorities over the next 90 days? What are some of the issues and challenges to getting there? I think it's a good exercise to think about regarding the most important clients that we're working with. Folks, I enjoyed the energy, the enthusiasm, and the positivity of Larry. I think you're going to enjoy this episode as well. If you do, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that matters to us. Please enjoy my discussion with Larry Levine.

Larry, welcome to the show. This is a long time coming, and I'm so thrilled to finally meet you.

This has been more than a long time coming. It's so awesome. I'm so thankful to be here. Thank you for having me.

We're talking about selling from the heart, how your authentic self sells you. You've got two books, very successful books, out. The second book is Selling in a Post-Trust World. That's interesting. There's a real connection between the two, of course, but we're going to start with Selling From The Heart. Larry, just to kick things off, maybe give us that short story of your professional career, which I loved because there's some alignment here. Tell us about how you got to where you are.

Office Tech & Kodak Days: Building Sales Skills & Company Culture

I've been looking forward to this because Mark, we're kindred spirits. I'm in Southern California. I've grown up in Southern California, just North of Los Angeles. My whole entire sales career was in the office technology channel. Love it. In other words, I sold copiers. I was a business partner in several copier dealerships. I have toner in my blood. I see from the late ‘80s to 2015 selling copiers and all the peripheral supplies that go with it.

I've been around the block a time or two in sales. I always say, “If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold out in the marketplace.” I just bring a passion for the first sales, but selling something, where I always said, it's a race to the bottom. God bless all the people who are still in it. It's a race to the bottom in a very commoditized market. I just figured out how to make it work by bringing my authentic self to the forefront and building relationships, and bringing meaningful value.

First of all, so many things to unpack, just on the fun front. Many of the folks who reading know I started in that industry, and I loved it. My first corporate job was selling big photocopiers for Kodak. First of all, that company had one of the nicest company cultures I've ever come across, even since. It was just such a lovely company that there are lots of business cases on Kodak now, that they had a tough time cannibalizing their core business, which was traditional film.

They got disrupted by those folks in digital, but they had a great marketing education center. We got hired to sell photocopiers. We got sent away to copier school. Three months before we even met a client, because we're going through the educational process, it was competitive, Larry. We were in Rochester for that period of time, and every week, a few people got touched on the shoulder because they weren't making it. They got sent home. It was over, but just a wonderful formal education.

It was a little heavy on product education, not as much on sales education and sales strategy, but it was Miller Heiman back in the day. You're right. Even back then, there was not a lot of differentiation in terms of products. The reality of it is that for everybody in SaaS out there who thinks they've got a unique and different product, it's only a matter of time. There's nothing unique and different anymore. Everything can be replicated. Learning to sell a product that could be quite similar to something else, you had to rely on your sales skills to make the difference. That's exactly where we are a couple of decades later.

It's a 100%. You're so right. I enjoy saying that goes “What's forever old is forever new.” The things that we were doing back in the day, when I say back in the day, when I started in the late ‘80s, isn't it interesting? It has all come full circle. All the tech that's out there, and I'm not here to say any negative things about tech, whatsoever. Tech is wonderful. It's facilitating our relationship and how we've built ours, but it gets down to the very core of the subtitle of selling from the heart. It's how your authentic self sells you.

If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold.

By the way, and this is my belief, Mark, everybody's in a commoditized market. Somebody's always going to come out with something that's bigger and badder than yours, that's going to be priced differently than yours. All these kinds of things. However, what's unique is you. We've got to be able to sell our authentic self as the key differentiator and not so much lean on the product. I've always told those people in sales, “We've got to step in front of our company and in front of our product and not hide behind it.”

Ditching The Veneer: Embracing Authenticity In Sales

Well said. We were laughing at the beginning, Larry and I, because I put a post on LinkedIn a little while back, which was my original business card for that first shot.

It was, I saw.

Your beautiful head of hair, young guy. I was so excited to be a part of that company. It's funny with those posts. They go crazy. In terms of response and comments, it's the personal ones that get the response. I want to touch on this authentic self because, and this is something I pulled from the book that I love so much, Larry, that guy in that picture, the Kodak business cards put their picture on it. He was not authentic. I was not my authentic self. For some reason, I thought, “There was a private personal party, Mark.” With all my buddies and all the craziness we did, and there was lots of craziness.

Suddenly, when I was selling copiers in downtown Toronto, I had the suit on, and I felt like there had to be this veneer of being perfect. I was anything but perfect, but it felt like that whole personal thing. I just wanted to keep parked somewhere because to me, it seemed crazy, the whole lifestyle of being a young person like that. It came across because I was just too uptight all the time. I just didn't feel comfortable or confident. Maybe it's part of self-esteem and so forth, but you also talk a lot about that in the book.

Do you know what's interesting? I'm sitting here listening to what you're saying. I just had flashbacks to my very first year selling copiers. I write about the beginning of selling from the heart, is I was trying to be somebody I wasn't, because back then, you went to school and all that. I didn't have the luxury of spending three months at a school and getting that sophisticated education on how to sell the products I was selling. I was on the independent side of life, where it was up to the dealer principal owner as far as how they trained and coached their salespeople.

The dealer network.

A 100%. This is so interesting. I spent a week watching, now I'm dating myself, but you'll get this. There'll be people reading. You'll get this. I was watching VHS tapes. After a week, miraculously, my business cards were done. I got my business cards, and then I had to go out in the field and start cold calling. Once I brought the cards back, I had to start following this script, and then I would start writing out with salespeople.

Somehow, something tells me that's still happening. However, where I latched onto this is as I was trying to mirror and mimic scripts and what other salespeople were doing, I lost my identity because I was trying to mirror and mimic the top salespeople, because those are the people I was doing field write-outs with. All of a sudden, I'm like going impressionable twenty-something year old. I go, “I want to be like Mark because Mark's successful.

He's got the big corner office. He's got the nice car.” A 100%. I'm riding out with him. All of a sudden I start mirroring his mannerisms. I start using his vocabulary, and guess what? It wasn't working. I six months before I ever sold anything until I finally said enough's enough. I throw my hands up and say, “There's got to be a better way.” The better way is what I innately knew all along. Focus on the other person. Don't focus on the product.

We need to coach and train our youth today on how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.

Ask really great questions. Bring curiosity to the forefront. It was innate in me already. I knew that, but I was mirror and masking everybody else. I expand upon that by selling from the heart. That's why I believe if you're authentic self, if you can open that cupboard and find out who you are, bring that to the forefront. Don't second-guess it. That's what people connect to.

Sales For Everyone: Navigating B2B As A Young Professional

It makes so much sense. You and I having this conversation now, Larry, we have a little bit of experience between us where we've had this validated. Maybe along the way there's a little bit of, “I don't care anymore. I am who I am.” It's not that I don't care, but I have no other option. This is who I am now. For me, I probably happened maybe almost ten years after that first job, a little less where I just started relaxing and being myself, but being the best version of myself.

A well-trained version of myself or a well-prepared version of myself for a call. I never knew really what else to do on a sales call except ask questions because I never really wanted to be the person pitching or all that stuff. It didn't suit me. I love your advice, as there are so many amazing young people leaving college and university and going into professional B2B sales. In fact, our pal from Harvard, Frank Cespedes, who's written nine amazing books, of the most recent is called Sales Management that Works, but he's just fantastic, a professor at Harvard.

In that book, he says, “If you graduate college or university, you've got a one in two chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in your career.” Daniel Pink, everybody's in sales. How do we get people comfortable listening to the BDRs, SDRs being their authentic self and, knowing that line? You see a lot of these internet platitudes and all of these things talking about different things people do. How do you get comfortable being on that call? You're speaking to a CIO and you're two years out of school, scared to death, and thinking the CIO understands so much that you don't.

I am so glad we are having this conversation. Much needed. Thank you for bringing it to the forefront because I see this. It runs rampant. I'm going to answer it through a story. I think this will play out in what you just said. I remember the transition from analog, copiers, to digital. I remember that I was right smacked in the middle of that transition, and it scared me like none other because I'm not the most technically inclined person.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm going to start having conversations with technically oriented people, and I'm not technically oriented. What's going to start happening? I realized real fast, I didn't have to be the smartest person in the room. I just needed to understand how to facilitate a business conversation. Young people, you know how to use tech. You've grown up with tech. What we need to be coaching and training our youth of around is how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.

When they can do that, they start raising their confidence and their believability in themselves. They get scared. Sometimes I feel sorry for them if they get scared talking to somebody two times their age, maybe sometimes three times their age, because they don't want to look like they don't know anything. You don't have to. You just have to know how to facilitate that conversation. The way you do it is possibly start reading and listening to the things that these people read and listen to. Just bring up some of these things in conversation.

Whatever framework you're asked to make calls around, make it your own and watch what starts to happen. You might say, “This is really simple stuff.” It is, but we overcomplicate the art of having a conversation because I believe there are youth of are so fixated and focused on the conversation and moving it to the next step that they lose track of. I just have to have a conversation with this person in order to move it to the next step. If I cannot engage in that healthy conversation, I cannot get it to the next step.

It's so well said. I think that you focus on that outcome, and you feel a bit of that pressure and go, “I've got three conversations.” Let's say I'm a BDR and SPR. “I've got to get one of these to book a meeting with Larry next week. I'm in this conversation, and all I'm thinking is book the meeting. Again, authentic self. I'm not in the moment, and I'm not making the conversation about them. Making the conversation about me.

I love that idea of just say, “Listen, let's just have a great conversation with someone.” There is work that we can do prior to that conversation to say, “We might have some insight and knowledge and value because our company and my teammates deal with other clients. We know what's going on with them. We can help make sense of some of the things going on in the marketplace.”

Back to the book and just being authentic, like caring about what's going on with the business, earning the right for that conversation with research and some preparation. One of the things we coach on, I'm certainly interested to hear your opinion. We don't mind doing the odd workshop with a company saying, “Let's just do a mini MBA.” I think sometimes the world of business seems so complex to people.

If you haven't lived a bit in seen a few businesses, and been at a couple of different levels. At the end of the day, everybody makes a product or service. They'd sell it to somebody. Who is it? How do they sell it to somebody, and how do they expect to compete and win in the marketplace? Particularly if they're a publicly traded company, they explain to the universe their strategic priorities in one-syllable words.

41These are the three things we're trying to do this year. By the way, these were the three things we tried to do last year, and how we did against them. It's reading the first eight pages of a 10K report and forget the P&L and statement of cash flows, and balance sheets. The other 200 pages don't matter that much. Just take the chairman's message and the president's message, and you can get a sense for what's happening with that business.

The People Business: Coaching Sales Teams On Relationship Skills

This is so good. You'll get a kick out of this. Always ask this. I ask this to executives, but I also ask it to salespeople as well. This ties into really the underlying theme of selling from the heart, and selling in a post-trust world is, if I asked executives in the people business, forget about your products and all that, just set your products aside for a moment. Are your salespeople in the people business and relationship-building business? Simple yes or no, that's all I'm looking for, and they shake their head up and down like you are.

Yes, my salespeople are in the people business and relationship-building business. Fair enough. I agree, by the way. Here's my question. As the executive, the person who's steering this corporate ship, what are you doing and what are your leadership team doing to coach and train your salespeople on people skills and relationship-building skills? They're the profit and generating and revenue generating arm of your company. How are you doing this in a world that unfortunately doesn't view salespeople through a trustworthy lens?

I hear crickets, and I hear that with salespeople as well. That's the big mission at Selling From The Heart. With Selling in A Post-trust World is if we elevate the people skills and relationship building skills, some might put a little air quotes around soft skills, but those drive hard dollars in today’s day and age. Everyone does great product training, sales skills training. I'm not here to take a stab at that. The opportunity to increase revenue and profit is to elevate the people in the relationship-building skills of your salespeople.

I completely agree. Again, back to the photocopy world, the joke of that post where my wife, Donna, had found that picture, and I put it up there. I literally was the demo king for North American. I got all these awards, and I couldn't sell because I hadn't connected the dots between them. Forget the demo. How does this thing pay for itself in a print shop, and how do the features tie to an outcome that the print shop runner or the company needs?

What do we do for the company that they care about? They don't care about me in the demo, as perfect as it was. By the way, I love the VHS. We used to record ourselves on VHS to watch the test was like an actor. It was fantastic. I think this thing goes back to the people skills, I believe there's this common sense revolution taking place a bit in sales. Ironically again, driven by technology because AI will take down the pitching, the cajola, all that's all gone.

Elevate your salespeople's relationship-building skills to increase revenue and profit.

What's going to exist through a few years from now is back to what it was back in the day, you have to have consultative skills, problem solving skills, curiosity, the ability to make a connection, the ability to connect the dots, the ability to identify problems or communicate problems to a buyer they don't even know they have. It was back in the day.

We had this whole thing where technology got in the way, and then suddenly we said, “Just demo a product.” How does demoing a product ever sell anything? Imagine if you tried to demo Microsoft Excel. Everybody uses Excel. We use 3% of the functionality of Excel. Excel is a relational database. You can do a solver. The finance people can make it sing. Most of us use it as a spreadsheet program to do basic functional math for our home budgeting.

Guilty.

The people who really know, we wouldn't demo Excel with Solver. 90% of the world doesn't know what Solver is. They don't know it's a relational database. It's really saying, “What do you want to do? I want to do basic math faster.” I think there's this opportunity out there. I love this about you, talking about the soft skills, and you talk about what you are doing? I like that question, Larry, to the CEO saying, “What are you doing to enable your teams with those relationship-building skills, the ability to make a connection?” When they have a blank stare on their face, what do you suggest? How can you help them?

That's the opportunity. I'm not here to say that what executives are doing to coach and train their salespeople is not working. That's not the point behind this conversation.

No, of course.

The point is, I know they want to increase revenue. I know they want to increase profits. I know they do. However, their clients, their marketplace is changing. Their clients are changing. They're expecting more out of salespeople than ever before, not less. In a world, unfortunately, that doesn't view salespeople as being the most trustworthy people out there. If I'm an executive, I'm looking at how fast my salespeople can build trust. How fast can my salespeople connect and relate to our clients and our future clients?

This is what's interesting. This happens in the very first conversation that a salesperson has. By the way, that conversation doesn't have to be face-to-face. That conversation could be phone. That conversation could be over email. That conversation can be over a message center and a social platform. That conversation can be on a social platform. It doesn't matter. Salespeople are either establishing or eroding trust the minute they open their mouth, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear. As executives, we have to be cognizant of this.

I'm a big believer in coaching salespeople on how to establish trust, how to connect real fast by the words and the messaging that they use to get engaged with whoever they need to get engaged with, based on whatever market sector they're calling into. What I do is not rocket science. I'll share one more thing because it's a commonality that we have still to this day. I don't know how a copier works. I spent decades in the business. I don't care. What I cared about was the other person sitting in front of me. It wasn't.

The copier was just a means to an end. It just happened to be the vehicle upon which I sold something to earn a living and to help somebody in a better place than they were before. I'll use Mark, I'll just use you as an example since we're having this conversation, I just knew this, and I want people to key in on this. I knew that if Mark was the executive sitting in front of me, the more comfortable he became about me, the more Mark starts to open up and share what I call his business secrets. That does not happen with everybody because I've connected and related, and I've made Mark feel comfortable.

Salespeople establish or erode trust the minute they open their mouths, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear.

Building Digital Relationships: Trust & Connection In The First Meeting

Let's keep pushing on that, Larry. That's super, this is gold. How do we do that? You talked about, “We might have this start of a relationship digitally, and your pal who gave you a wonderful testimonial for the book, Tim Hughes.” We love Tim too. He's been on the show a couple of times and Adam and the gang over there, but he talks a lot about building, leveraging things like LinkedIn, not as a sales platform per se, but just like a digital cocktail party where you're both interested and interesting.

If we have that face-to-face meeting, there are still people coming in, thank goodness for face-to-face meetings, first meetings. What do we do to prepare for that first meeting or that first Zoom call? Maybe we're walking into meet somebody more senior than us, and we're trying to introduce our company to theirs. How do we quickly build trust and credibility?

This is good stuff. I'm going to give you the complete polar opposite answer which is probably what many would say. This is people skills, relationship skills. Think about this, and I'm a mindset guy, Mark. I'm going to give you a verbatim here in a second. What I want people to think about as they're reading what I'm saying and how Mark set this up is I want you to think about the first meeting. You could be doing the dancing and all of that with email and engaging on social posts, and sending them a message inside LinkedIn. Let's call that dancing.

You're dancing to get to that very first meeting where they agree to agree. I don't care if it's face to face or it's on any virtual platform, Team, Zoom, whatever, doesn't matter. That's just a call in the world. It's not face-to-face. Let's say it's all virtual. Mark agrees to have this virtual meeting with me, Larry, and we've been dancing around, we're connected, and all of that. We agree that's the magical day that I'm going to have that meeting. I can guarantee you this. Mark is the executive is probably thinking, though he may never say it, that this call is going to go down like the other five that I've had this past week.

What's Larry going to say that's going to get me to think? Larry's probably going to say the exact same thing. The other five salespeople said within the first five minutes, Mark my word, that's probably going through Mark's head. What I would say is this. I believe this, the first couple of minutes, you're either going to establish trust, or you're going to erode trust. This is people skills, relationship skill building. I'd say something like this, and I lay this on CEOs and presidents, and I'm just like, I just love watching their facial expressions.

“Mark, I'm super grateful for our time together here. Thank you. It's been wonderful getting to know you. I've been looking forward to this since we agreed to agree to this meeting two weeks ago. Thank you.” Silent pause, and then I lean in. When I lean in, I say, “Mark, tell me something good. What's been going on with Mark Cox lately? Talk to me. What's been going on?” Pause. Mark will tell you something. “By the way, Mark, thanks for sharing. Before we get started, I'm just curious. This morning in my reading. I was reading a great book. I was reading Learn to Love Selling.”

Thanks for the plug, Larry.

It's all good. I'm staring at it, Mark Cox. Beautiful setup. Seriously, “I'm curious. This morning I was just reading Learn to Love Selling, a great book. In the first chapter of that book, this particular section stood out to me. The reason it stood out to me is dot, dot. Mark, how's this sit with you?”

Larry, here's the thing. I believe you. When you do that, I've had enough interaction with you in the last hour. I'll mention one other thing, but you believe what you're saying. This isn't a sales pitch. You are that guy. You'd have the same start to a conversation if you met your friend at church, or you met your friend having a beer after work, or whatever. That's it's just you.

Selling From the Heart

A 100%, I want to let everyone know something. Mark's in sales, I'm in sales. You all have to grow your business like we have to grow our business. I will tell you this, the things that I'm sharing, I use. I got to share a funny story. This is a very true story, as true as true gets. This was about two months ago. Two months ago, I had a division president of a very large company I set up some time with. We were connected on LinkedIn, and moved it off of LinkedIn to an agreeable time to connect. The agreeable time was a 30-minute Teams call.

Mark, I always launch my calls early, like ten minutes early. I schedule it. I block it in case something happens. I reboot all of that. Just FYI, don't launch your calls 30 seconds before time because poopoo might happen. My camera's on, he pops in, camera comes on. Insert name. “I am super grateful for our time together here. I just wanted to say thank you. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Just wanted to let you know that.”

Insert name. “Tell me what's been going on.” Five minutes later, he tells me what's been going on. Here's the hook on this because I believe executives will test salespeople. This person goes, “Tell me your backstory.” Now, most salespeople would fall for the hook. Tell me your backstory, Joe. Joe starts telling them how wonderful he is and all that.

Beyond Backstories: Focusing On Client Needs, Not Sales Pitches

Insert name, and I said, “That's not why we're here. I would be more than happy to tell you my backstory, but quite frankly, you'd probably roll your eyes and tell me exactly what you'd probably tell most other people. I expected that. More importantly, this is about you. What's your story? Will you be willing to share?” I never said anything for the next twenty minutes. That 30-minute initial conversation went an hour and twenty minutes.

First of all, awesome. For those reading, I'm to tell you, this is the guy Larry is. I don't know if Larry remembers, but we're supposed to schedule this episode about three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Something big came up for me with one of our clients, and I went upside down and backwards. I had to send Larry notes saying, “Listen, this has come up. I'm so sorry.” Think about how busy you know Larry is, and he's scheduling these back to back, etc. Rather than coming back saying, “No problem. I'll just reschedule, etc.” Larry sends me a note and goes, “Mark, is everything okay?” That was the note. Do you remember this?

Yeah, I remember his plans day.

It wasn't anything about Larry, and it wasn't anything about the podcast. It was, “Everything okay?” When I had sent the note, I was in this mental state where it wasn't all okay. It wasn't okay. I was going, “I got to do a couple of things here and get, do some dancing.” It took a pause. Before I respond to it, it was such a helpful question because the reality of it is this was not life-changing what I was going through. It is just something I had to work through. I thought, “It's nice that somebody asked me that.” I came back and went, “Larry, it is okay. We love our clients.

Something great came up. We've got to, we've got to jump on this one, but it's all good.” It was just such a nice way of saying nothing about you and your day and the impact on your schedule. It was a lot about, “Are you okay?” We hadn't even met. There's this idea of authenticity. I love your approach on that sales call, by the way. I'm such a fan of gratitude because gratitude helps me. Forget what it does for the rest of the world. I feel better when I'm grateful. Again, your pal, Anthony, wrote some great stuff about that in the negativity fast. The physical and mental manifestations of gratitude are shocking. It's like exercise. It's so good for you.

A 100%. What we're talking about goes back to the two words. It's connect and relate. I want to be able to connect to somebody. If I can connect, if I can start to relate, we start to form the basis of trust. In a post-trust world, everyone's swimming for it. When there are high levels of trust, I know what happens. Things speed up. When there are low levels of trust, things slow down. It just turns into a price war.

Beyond The Sale: Cultivating Lasting Client Relationships

By the way, at some point we're going to bring you back. We're going to talk again about this trust, just so I think there's a whole podcast on trust. While we've got you this time. Larry, one of the things that jumped out to me about the book was this clarity. I think this is an opportunity for anyone reading. You have existing clients. This idea of managing, maintaining that relationship after the sale.

You talk a lot about, Larry, in the book, average salespeople only interact with an existing client when the client comes to them with a problem, or there's another opportunity to sell something. There are these very limited interactions, or they do the proverbial fly by, I'll just grab a cup of coffee. We see that a lot of lunch. Everybody out here has existing clients. What are a couple of things you might suggest, I think you talk about the three kinds of keys, for building a better relationship with your clients? Just a key takeaway people can leave with.

I’m a massive believer in this. I learned this through all my years doing what I was doing, is I'm a fan of selling more to your existing customers and growing new business. I knew this, the way I would increase my business was to increase what I know about my customers. This plays out both ways. The more I started to know my customers' business, the more I grew with them. The more I started to build authentic relationships and bring some meaningful value, not just that salesperson who just stops by and goes, “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I'd stop by. Is everything okay?”

You don't know where I'm going with this. Absolutely no value. They go, “I got great relationships with these people.” I'm not going to doubt it, but I probably not, but you probably don't. I knew I just want everyone to hear me out on this because it just goes against the total grain. The more frequently I spent inside my customer's offices, walking the halls, getting to know people, upper-level management, mid-level management, and lower-level management. The more I got a chance to meet people and shake hands and slap high fives, observe by watching, listening, meeting people, asking questions, the more I started to grow my business because I understood their business.

The first couple minutes, you're either going to establish trust or erode trust.

I found other things that I was capable of selling them to layer on top of that. My new business grew through my existing customers by taking care of my existing customers. The bow on this is to grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers. The way you do that is by building genuine, authentic relationships, high, wide, and deep. When I say this is you got to get to know these people personally and professionally, what makes them tick? What are their goals, dreams, and aspirations? Where do they see themselves a year from now?

Knowing Your Customer: Deepening Personal & Professional Understanding

What are they working on this quarter? What did they need to remove from their business plate? How can I or somebody in my network help them do that? The personal side is, I want to know what makes these people tick outside of work. I want to help them grow their business. If I can help them grow their business, I believe this, I've earned the right to have them help me grow mine. By asking for referrals or by saying, “These are five businesses I'm trying to go after. I got to grow my business just like you got to grow yours.” Do any of these businesses ring a bell to you?

Are you familiar with any of these? “That one. Tell me, what do about that business?” People, it is not that hard to grow your business, but if you can agree you're in the people business and relationship-building business, grow the people skills and relationship-building skills with your current customers. Go high, wide, and deep, personally and professionally, and understand who's who inside the businesses you're working with. Get to know these people. They will help you grow your business, but you have to put forth the effort to help them grow their business.

Well said. By the way, the nice thing about the book is that it's also said very simply. I just find you you must have good editors or did a lot of passes on it. You had some great people who provided testimonials. We're big fans of Bernadette and Anthony.

Bernadette is a dear friend of mine.

They're all great. Let's also think about what we want to do with our lives. This is what I want to do with my life. This is what we do in the funnel. Now we do this because we want to, but I want to get to know people. I like people. I want to help them run a better business. I don't want to be the fly by sale, “I'm gone.” All of that stuff. I want to make sure that somebody who made a decision to move forward with us, we make them look very good for having made that decision.

That's our mission is to make sure that they become the hero for making that decision. This is one that I find very interesting for the folks reading. I find this topic to be some of the lowest hanging fruit out there, where you just say, “We've got an existing business. We've been doing it for years. We have a client base. We know them well.” I think there's a difference between we know them or we've set up a structure to have engagement or meetings with them, where we go to a different level of conversation about them and their business.

When there isn't a deal on the table for us and we call it a health check. With folks reading, find if you've had these clients for years, you get a little complacent in your relationship. I might have a social relationship with them. See them at hockey, etc., but I think they know us, and they think I know them. Every once in a while, I like to try and trigger a different meeting where maybe a few different people come into a room and we have this conversation about, how are we doing?

I like a QBR. We get into “How are you doing? What's going on with your business?” I find that depending upon whether you sell into a large enterprise or an SMB, if you're selling to middle management, VPs, and a large bank, they need to think about the answer to that question. You think they know what's in their 10K report and how they're progressing against key metrics, and exactly how those things cascade down to their division and so on and so forth. They don't always.

If I go by for a coffee and go, “Tell me how you guys are progressing against your CEO's top three strategic priorities.” They don't have the answer. Sometimes, if you put in a little easy agenda and say, “Listen, I'd like to talk about this. Let's just find out what's new with you guys and how you're doing against the strategic priorities.” They prepare for it.

Grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers.

The Best Customer Challenge: Deepening Client Knowledge & Connections

This is what's interesting. I'll throw everyone a challenge. Can I throw everyone a challenge before we wrap?

Absolutely.

It plays on what Mark just said. Here's what I want everyone to think about. Follow along with me on this one. I want everyone who's reading or watching to focus on their single best customer. However, they choose to define that, I'm going to leave that one all up to you. I want you all to visually think about your very best customer. This will be the one that, if you're having a bad day, you had a bad call, you're picking up the phone because you want to hear their voice, because it's going to put a smile on your face.

If you all believe you're in the people business and relationship-building business. I hope this gives you a gut-check moment in a very positive way. I want you to think of that customer. This is the one if you lost, it would hurt. I want you to think about the following. How many people inside that organization do you know? How many of them know you? What do about them personally and professionally, and vice versa? How many people at the upper level, mid-level, and lower level management do you know?

You're all going to be telling me, Larry, “Don't worry about it. I got great relationships with these people.” “What do you know about these people?” Now here's the gut check moment. What are their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days at said levels, upper-level, mid-level, and lower-level management? If you cannot answer that question on your single best customer, that client customer, however you all want to refer to it, is vulnerable.

I want everyone a I hope this inspires you to think a little bit differently, but you're in the people business and relationship-building business. “I trust you should know this. I trust this, just in case that's your homework.” Isolate your single best customer. Go 5 or 6 people deep. What do I know about these people, and what do they know about me? Do I understand their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days? If you don't, that's your homework. If you do, you get a pass on this.

By the way, if you do, go to the next one.

Go to the next one.

Go to the second one. By the way, I'm thinking about that. By the way, what a great universal tip for everybody. Larry, what a pleasure meeting you.

Thank you. Mine as well.

Just a real joy to read Selling From The Heart. By the way, let us know a little bit. How do people who are reading, who want to learn more about you and want to engage with you, how do they do it?

I'm not too hard to find. You can find me all over LinkedIn. Very simple. Just Larry Levine, but my LinkedIn name's Larry Levine 1992. You can find me all over the place. Just go to SellingFromTheHeart.net. It's the easiest place. You can find what we're up to. It gives you links to things I've written. It gives you links to the Selling From The Heart podcast. The simplest way, go to SellingFromTheHeart.net.

Team, that link will be in the show notes. Selling From The Heart, you want to pick that up from Amazon. We also want to pick up Selling In A Post-Trust World. These are great reads, fun reads, enjoyable reads. Pick these up, so we read the books usually first, and then go after the podcast guest. What a real treat to have you on the show, Larry. Thanks again for joining us.

It's my pleasure. Good seeing you, Mark.

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Team, thank you so much for joining the show. As you know, we run this podcast because we're trying to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of professional salespeople. We appreciate you reading. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like and subscribe to the podcast because that's how we get great guests like Larry. We also love constructive feedback. If there are other things we can be doing on the podcast that you'd see value in, please let me know. I'm MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I respond to every bit of constructive feedback we get. We love constructive feedback. Thanks for sending it in. We'll see everybody next time on the show. Thanks so much for joining.

Important Links

• Larry Levine on LinkedIn

• Selling From The Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You!

• Selling in a Post-Trust World

• Sales Management that Works

• Learn to Love Selling

• Selling From The Heart

About Larry Levine

Larry Levine is the best-selling author of two books, Selling from the Heart and Selling In A Post-Trust World.

He is also the co-host of the award winning Selling from the Heart Podcast, as well as the Culture from the Heart Podcast.

Blending a heart of service with over three decades of in-the-field sales experience, Larry helps sales professionals develop a mindset and skill set for authentic success.

In a post trust sales world, Larry helps sales teams leverage the power of authenticity to grow revenue, grow themselves and enhance the lives of their clients.

Larry has coached sales professionals across the world, from well-tenured reps to new up and coming salespeople entering the salesforce. They all appreciate the practical, real, relevant, relatable and “street–savvy” nature of his coaching.

Larry believes people would rather do business with a sales professional who sells from the heart as opposed to a sales rep who is an empty suit.

Leveling Up B2B Relationships With Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Building B2B relationships is one of the most important lifelines of any business. If you do not connect with the right businesses and maintain long-lasting partnerships, your very own venture is doomed to fail. Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan, Global Account Manager at Introhive, is here to discuss how to create B2B relationships that lead to growth and success. Joining Mark Cox, he discusses his seven-year study on the importance of creating a network relationship map, doing in-depth intelligence gathering, and taking advantage of trigger events in sales. Dr. Ryan also explains why internal relationships are as essential as external ones, as well as the proper way to create a good first impression without actually selling.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the episode here

Leveling Up B2B Relationships With Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Team, what do the contributing factors that determine rate, quality, and business relationship? That's something we all want to know. We want to be able to teach and coach our team to elevate performance. It's also something that Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan spent years researching then getting a PhD when he did his dissertation on this topic. The result of that is an amazing book called Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business.

Ryan wrote the book to help us do three things, to win those deals in the first place, to then manage those accounts so that we can grow share a wall with clients, and to get better results from large projects that were managing. This is an amazing book. Everybody should be picking up. Anybody in sales is going to want to take a look at this because Ryan gives us the strategy of what we're trying to do and he gets into some great tactics in terms of how to do it.

He's broken the book into three categories. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter. Part two is an overview of how to build an execute a relationship map. Part 3, we talked about putting the relationship mapping process into action to win those key deals or to manage those existing clients. There's a level of detail in this book. It's almost like a textbook that's well written, but this is something all of us can do a little more work on, and what a keen on is this research process and then figuring out how to map out the key stakeholders for a deal where working.

That's something I don't think many of us spend enough time on for most important deals, but the paradal principal runs most of our funnels. As companies, we're still living in the world where 80% of the revenue comes from the small number of really important clients. We want to figure out how do we replicate those clients.

By leveraging relationships, it ends up being the only differentiation because almost any product or service at some point gets viewed as a commodity by the buyer. It's that relationship that makes a difference. We've got a great conversation with Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. You're going to enjoy this. I enjoyed it as well. If you do like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. Tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. Here he is.

Ryan, welcome to the show. It's great to meet you.

Pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Ryan On Studying About B2B Relationships

As we said in the introduction, we're talking about the book, Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. It’s close to my heart, this topic and this subject matter as we'll get to in a minute. Maybe we'll start here because I find this so interesting that you were wondering about these contributing factors that determine a good quality business relationship as we all are and as we all think about. You were so determined to get answered to evidence-based questions here. You want to think through it. You spent seven years researching this and got a PhD. Tell us a little bit about this journey that got you to where you are.

Thanks, Mark. Anyone who's in our business, even more broadly speaking, should have an entry inter relationships and how relationships form. That was something that I felt. You're often find people saying they have a good relationship with somebody. Whether they do or not, that can be more of a subjective perspective. When I was working back at Infosys, a big IT service firm. We were working on some huge outsourcing deals. It’s often $100 million plus deals and big global accounts. We were focused accent on what relationships mean when you've got those types of numbers that you are dealing with. That coupled with my entry inter relationships. It led me to think, “What is a good quality business relationship?”

That took me on this journey as you hinted at the part-time as well as working full-time. Interviewing CXOs. I was quite fortunate and through the relationships I had, I've got access to a whole bunch of very senior people across global corporations such as JP Morgan, AmEx and BP. All these types of big names when and spoke to these individuals about what is a good relationship from their perspective. They're on the receiving end of a supplier or a partner relationship.

That was the genesis of my doctorate research. That, in itself, is a body of work. People can search my name and Portsmouth University and find the whole doctor available online for free. There's a lot of content in there, but the way I describe my journey is that I understood relationships are important then I jumped to, what is a good relationship? As I was finishing the doctorate and getting into the details of the insights from that and the different factors that support a relationship. I realize I missed the step out, which is such there’s no such thing.

We all know relationships are important, but then, who should you build relationships with? It's, “Do I have good relationships with those people?” That was the focus of the book. It was to say, “Before we start to define whether we've got good relationships with people,” just understand and even take a step back at a deal level or an account level. Figure out who are the key people that are relevant to me and my business and what the executives and the key buying personas for the service line. I suppose that's in a nutshell my journey for years through the doctorate and the book.

What an exciting one, by the way. The book is doing super well, and I can see why because you've focused in on a very important subject, but there hasn't been that much time in attention spent on this specifically. One of the things I would add. You talked about the what you're trying to do. I got a lot of value, frankly. What I found while reading the book, there's a lot on the how. Team, as you're reading through this book, in some cases, it's almost like a well-organized easy to read textbook, but it takes you through step-by-step how do we do some of these things.

Being First In the Door With The Right Solutions

If I am trying to make an amazing impression on that senior executive, once I've executed on my relationship strategy and gone in front of them. What are the elements required to make a great impression? What do we do? The, how we do this is also contained in the book. There are a couple of things that jumped out. We love facts, data, and research associated with B2B selling, Ryan. A couple of things just in the introduction that jump out.

Craig Elias from his book, Shift says, “From his analysis, when you're the first to engage with key decision makers, with the right solutions, you win 74% of the time. First of all, when we start to think of win rates and conversion rates and you referenced in your book, our pals Matt Dixon, and Ted Mckenna. I'm talking about deals that go to know decision. The percentage of deals going to know decision in their book, The JOLT Effect, to think you win 74% of the time by being first in the door with the right solution. What a crazy stat.

You need clients on the other side of a business relationship who will tell you things you do not want to hear.

That's an interesting one. I don't know if you know Craig. I've had a chance. He’s a fellow Canadian.

We're going to have to get him on the show, for sure.

You should because at the pleasure. He did offer. That's something I should take him up on. I mentioned my book and I let him know what I was doing. He's got some great content, but it talks about this concept of a trigger event in sales. You’ve got to look for the trigger, which is obvious when you understand. When you look back in the deals that we've won in significant events, there is often a trigger.

When you think about that stat in particular, there's a few components to it. You’re talking about the right individual with the right solution and first. As we talk about professional services firms, there are often industry or regulatory type of events that are happening in any given industry and in any given day. Even the micro level or regional level, so that's happening. Often, you'll have your research teams preparing to the thought leadership content around that.

It's like, “Who's the right person for us?” You should get their hands on this. It's about, the who part if it's for a specific service, line cybersecurity, or whatever it might be. You need to know who that person is and have the relationship with that person to get it into their hands. Whether you directly or someone else within the organization or your wider relationship network to get this into it hand first.

You go into week 3 out of 4 of those conversations and it will turn into business because you've got that trigger event. I try to incorporate a few of those components. There’s another one which I often use and I don't think I mentioned it in the book It’s from Heidi Gardner's work with Smarter Collaboration                   . That's about some analysis she's done about the relationship network, the size of your network. She did some analysis around digital twin, I think she called it. They looked for a lot of factors that were similar about their tenure, role, and sector.

The only difference at one end of the spectrum, one individual had a low network and the other had a high net worth by comparison. When they looked at the revenue generated, the person with a high network generated four times the revenue of the person with a low network. There's a bunch of these stats that are starting to come out now that support what we already knew that relationships matter.

First of all, our books are in the same boat. I released it months ago. I wrote it a year before that. I always often forget bits and pieces that are in my book as well, Ryan. You do have that in the book. You reference Heidi right after you reference Craig in the introductory area. It's so important like this topic to focus in on. It’s so important because it is one of those things where this assumption made about relationships.

A lot of times, we win. You’re talking to deal teams and go. Why did we win the sales leads going to come back and say, “It’s because of my relationship.” Frankly, they may be right. If we can define it and understand it, what it means is we can repeat it, teach it, and measure against it when we're trying to measure progress with a particular pursuit or particular deal.

How To Differentiate Yourself From The Rest

The book focuses in on building these relationships with three goals, winning those larger deals, managing and growing large accounts, and then managing large projects. There's nobody reading this episode that doesn't want to do one of those three. The other thing is such a great point you reference many times in the book and outside of the CEO and founders, reading to this show, we can all relate. To the world, most the companies you've talked about being a part of all look the same to a client.

If you are not addressing a potential business partner’s priority, it will be difficult to get a mind share. Otherwise, they will immediately clear their desk for you.

If it's a mega Indian outsource company like, Wipro or Tech Mahindra or Infosys, the reality of it is, those look very similar to a client. Whether it's a massive law firm or massive professional services firm. They all look the same. The reality of it is, they are the same. They have the same resources moving from company to company and the same executive moving from company to company. The delivery of the project and the strategies are all extremely similar. This point of differentiation comes down to the relationship is where the point of differentiation comes into.

We think about in the sales context. We think relationship is convincing them to buy our stuff basically, but there's so much more to it than that. When you're getting beyond the sale, which is the wedding, not the marriage. The marriage follows. The relationship is the intimacy within that engagement. Often, you need to have clients or people on the other side of the relationship are going to tell you the things you don't want to hear.

They will give you the feedback, which is tough to take. They’re the best type of feedback because that can help you to adapt and to adjust because there's nothing worse than getting some bad news when it's too late, so that in the nuance of a relationship is important. One thing I evangelize in the book, and I since then talk about it, what are the key parts here? One is around the intelligence gathering, especially with LinkedIn.

They coined the phrase like a warm introduction, so we get a warm introduction. It's great for that, but the power of a relationship network and if you apply the way I evangelize it to map this out is to identify people that can provide insights within the account. It’s not available online. We know about AI now and how easy it is to capture already published content. That's only going to get better, but the real detail around the competitive landscape around the real priorities that people are talking about within that team within or that division, what's the mood when you walk in the corridors.

This is the stuff that comes from relationships and from getting access there. When you couple that with an integrated into your conversation with one of those key exists that you've mapped out in advance, maybe you're meeting them for the first time. That's the power of coming into that conversation with that context. It’s going to set you apart and build trust, the magic five letter word.

It's so difficult to do in a short period of time. Again, that's where I enjoyed some of the how. Part two of the book was this overview of how to build and then execute this relationship map. Team, one of the key takeaways and we can all continue to get better at this. Our belief is you can likely get one meeting with almost anybody. You can likely get a first meeting with almost anybody if you came from one of the organizations that you spent time with, so global leaders, the top 300 companies globally.

Three Components Of Mutual Disclosure

If you're one of those companies, you can get a meeting with all most anybody. If you don't execute that meeting well, you're not going to get a second one. What I enjoyed about the book is when you're interviewing, you were interviewing those CEOs and senior executives running things. You suddenly asked them a question about the best client executive or account manager they ever worked with. You said, they lit up. They still those relation, got energized, and enthusiastic in terms of talking. It sounded like they were gushing about these people in some cases. What were some of the real key insights you pulled out there?

That's the doctor insight. Anyone that doesn't know that purpose with any type of research, particularly a doctorate level is, what's original, what's unique, and what doesn't exist already. That's what you're fishing for the end and you're hoping you've got it.

You’re hoping to find something.

There’s two parts to it. One is what’s called mutual disclosure in the literature. It's a phase between not knowing someone at all and building trust because you don't automatically start to build trust with someone. I'm trying to unpick that because that is an important element to the relationship building process. It's more what not to do. There's three components that I uncovered around what I call mutual disclosure.

When you're meeting someone for the first time, there's first few interactions. What's going on there that is going to open the person you want to build a relationship with welcome you. There's three elements to it. One is surprisingly and unsurprisingly do not sell. The one thing, they are detestable to every single one of these people I met. They don't want people to sell to them and I know that's my job a lot of the time, but that is something that is very off-putting.

It's obvious but it's difficult to maneuver around that. When I introduced decorative, they were describing the best person they worked with. They often said they didn't feel in a ten-year relationship that they ever were trying to sell them anything. It would be great to pull that off. I'm not selling. That linked to understanding their priorities and trying to align with the key objectives and key challenges.

It's all around being a partner and all of the stuff we talked about, the books behind me about The Trusted Advisor, the things we know about. Not selling his key. Two is not to have a clash of personalities. That's another thing which is I think if you're aware of it, you can maybe avoid it. I talked about that in chapter ten, which is how the final chapter like, where do we go from here? Which is a bit using social styles to understand someone's personality. Also, then understanding what can irritate them.

There was a strong theme amongst the people I interviewed around. If it doesn't click, if we don't get along, it's not going to work. There needs to be that dynamic energy flowing. That was a what not to do again. The final part is you've got to have knowledge, experience, insight, or something valuable. If you imagine you've done your research, you understand the priority, the competitive landscape, and what's keeping them away at night.

You don't have to ask them that. You already know it and you're not selling. There's not a clash of personality, then you've got to position what you have. They recognize and respect you. There's some credibility there. That's a good combination of what you need to come to those initial interactions with and set your stall out with that in mind.

It's such good advice. Again, these are things, you would expect we would know, but the opportunity to continue to get better at doing this, the knowledge and insight and value is a lifelong pursuit. All of us continuing to level up our business acumen so we can have that conversation. Whether it's understanding that particular buyer persona or understanding what's affecting their business and their industry or understanding what we're seeing with all of our other clients and what they're thinking about in the future. Executives now know they think about the future, but not managing and maintaining the past. They're thinking about the future. They're wondering what's out there that I don't know that's going to come and kick me in the ass?

I’m going to add to that, which is one of the other interesting insights that came out from the research was I asked these senior executives about the best person they've ever worked with from the vendor side. As we've discussed, we went through that process, but there was another theme that came out from this. This is very telling. Every single one of them without fail, the person they were describing was working on an fundamentally important project for that person.

It wasn't that this guy, this person I met was brilliant doing something periphery for me. In some cases, this was an actual career defining projects. Again, it links to working on things and being involved in things that matter to that person. It comes to the priorities and the things that are driving their business forward. It all sits underneath that.

I was at a dinner discussing some of these subjects and that came as a question from the room. It’s tough to build new relationships. How do we do it? We were going around to sharing up thoughts. I just came back to that point, if you're not addressing something that you know is a priority, it’s going to be very difficult to get the mind share. If you are, they will clear their desks and have you in 9:00 in the morning if they feel that is something that can support their specific priorities. That, again, feeds back into this research and intelligence gathering phase.

These are all great reminders. I'm even thinking about this for us and our business. One of the other things that hit me about book and the approach, Ryan, we've always been big believers and research preparation, preparation meets opportunity, and good things happen. I believe this book takes it to another level in terms of thinking through before that moment of truth, what's the order and the priority?

B2B Relationships: You need someone on the client side to be your ally, support you in meetings, help you get access to the right people, and give you feedback.

If I'm trying to penetrate a new account, I'm trying to get to a certain amount of leaders or executives, what do I do to desktop research that I can do to understand what's going on with them, the business, the industry, and the priorities, then I'm going to be leveraging a network of relationship map of folks in their company and people outside their company. It could be channels or people in my company who used to work at the company.

It's thinking through, how do I get insight and knowledge? In that moment of truth, you're not going to get too many opportunities to make that amazing first impression. I can certainly add in the funnel, call that out. We don't spend enough time and that's one of the things I pulled from your book, is just measure four times, cut once, and do the preparation before the meeting. For some of the folks reading this, whether you're penetrating major accounts or Global 100 companies, or North American Top 500 companies.

When you're thinking about those meetings, leveraging the resources in and outside your company to get this point of view. Large software companies, by the way, call that point of view value engineering. They will bring in a team of MBAs who do nothing but all of that research. When we've got the meeting, we've had a team of MBAs figuring out key business metrics, how this company is performing against their peer group, and what they've been saying publicly.

Taking A Different Approach

You add to that what you're hearing informally through the channels and the networks. That can make for a very powerful first impression. For that reason alone, this book is just a great read. Regardless of the level in size of your business, we can all be doing this better. Again, this all leads to the account management side of things.

We're working with existing organizations. We've had relationships. As you say, we might be a little single threaded. How do we take a different approach in 2025 to say, “I'm going to land, expand, and figure out how to grow this account?” The vast majority of revenue growth for most companies comes from existing accounts.

Correct. I'll give you a stat. I mentioned this in the book as well. We all know the Pareto rule 80/20. I'm fortunate enough to manage some big clients and the number of the big four included in there. I was chatting this through with one of their executives. She corrected me and said, “It’s not 80/20 on our side. It's more like 99% of the revenue comes from 1% of the clients.”

You can imagine, because there's such a small number of huge clients and a long tail. It's possible. She was half joking and half serious, but it was closer to that, maybe 20/80. That's important. To think about the leveraging the partner network and relationship, that's all crucial and figuring out that the process from which to do that. I call it panning for gold in the book. Mark, you'll appreciate for any deal. Even the ones we talked about prior to these $100 million deals.

Often, it's one relationship that makes the difference. That's what I'm evangelizing here. It's about putting the hard work in to cover all the bases. It comes back in spades because the client knows it. By doing that through osmosis, you're picking up other bits of intelligence information. You might meet someone, your so-called junior person in the organization or left that you may be used to go to college with or someone previously did. Putting that work in and picking those tidbits of information up when you get the opportunity as part of that deal process or account.

Even in an account, you are still trying to sell more. You got big deals to cheeky deals within those existing accounts and they keep projects. It helps you and it proves to them that you're putting in the work and that's what they want to see. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the clients that we’re selling to, those people are among the most intelligent people on the planet to get into that positions, that big Global Fortune 500 companies by accident.

Even if you think they can't see it, they are smart as hell and treat them with the respect they deserve. It requires a certain amount of effort. As we said, it doesn't have to be like big global companies. It can like strong companies or big brands that make maybe strong in their local or specific vertical. That, to me, is the differentiated.

Automation and AI make it harder and harder to sell, not easier.

I mentioned AI already and we seeing even on ChatGPT now with this work you can do in the sources. It's amazing. I used to devote a lot of my time to the research side and that's how I could differentiate myself. I feel it focuses more now on the intelligence gathering, which we aren't seeing much from AI. There's a software available in the market and another that can help with that process like LinkedIn. We know that as well. It's just piecing that together, being diligent, and putting the right combination of context into the right format to have that intelligent exec level conversation.

These are fundamentals that haven’t been changed in 125 years. Outside of the technology, Dale Carnegie is saying, “You can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can't in two years by trying to get them interested in you.” This relentless focus on just helping that company, that individual, and their company achieve this desired outcome that's meaningful to them. The more they believe we're helping them do that, the better our chances of winning.

Correct, and you talked about the history. I'll give you another name. Todd Caponi, I don’t know if you come across that one.

I haven’t.

I've done a few sessions with him but he has an Instagram page called the Sales Historian. A history buff in the field of sales. He pulls out these statements that you would think some bright intelligent person said in 2025. He'll say, “This is from 1924.” Many years ago, they were saying this. The handbooks, the training, and all the stuff. It is a sense of history repeating itself, but it's fascinating to me to see this has been there in front of our eyes for all this time. I feel as though the way automation and AI is moving now. It's harder to sell. Not easier.

You're right. You reference Gardner in your research and in the book a couple of times. I was taking a look at their 2024 Chief Sales Officer conference. I should get this stat, but the top insight was 75% of B2B buyers say they prefer a wrap free experience. Some of that I always think is a little overblown. I always like to dive a bit deeper into the research, but nevertheless, what it screams in a positive side is this opportunity to stand out by taking that consultative approach.

Everybody talks about selling, consultation, and solution selling. A consultative approach is knowing so much about the client's business that they see you as a resource that can help them. They see you as part of their team that's helping them achieve that desired outcome. A couple of things to share that is helpful. I love the way the book is structured as well. The way you put this together, Ryan.

We're talking about Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. Everybody reading this and in business wants to do those things. You've broken the book into three parts. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter, so defining it. Part two, an overview of how to build and execute a relationship map, so lots of great detail in terms of what to do and how to do it. Part three, putting all of this into action.

Getting The Time And Attention From Key Resources

One of the things that I call out is one of our final questions, Ryan and I was struggling with this as we prepared for this episode. You and I chatted. You've done very large deals and so did I. At one point in time, I spent years and did a couple of hundred million dollar deals in that time. One was North of ability. These were large outsourcing contracts. You had a bit of that background with the global tech giants you worked with.

One of the things that we had going for us on those deals was that was my only job. When I was leading these deal pursuit teams to close these mega deals for this company, we were so dedicated to this. We did not even go to company meetings. There'd be town halls and meetings. We have to apply it to any process that existed in the organization. We literally had groups hived off. We had different real estate and because those deals were one of the top priorities for the company I was working for, we got executive team anytime we needed.

You cannot start a relationship by asking someone for something.

Our executives would help us be part of that relationship mapping exercise. They were first to the table for all of those things. The organization through nothing I did was rallied around these deals. One of the things that might be a challenge for those reading is they might be chasing some of these deals but have the difficulty dedicating time to these deals amongst everything else they're doing.

Setting up this cadence to get the executive attention for their firms, or their teammates attention who have competing priorities to focus in on these pursuits. Any thoughts? I'm sure you deal with that as well. You would have dealt with that in your background or your past life where there were lots of deals that emphasis or Tech Mahindra, or anybody could have been pursuing. How do you get the time and attention from the key resources for your deal?

This again is back to relationships, but this time it's internal relationships, which is also a crucial factor. Back to Heidi Gardner’s statistics, it is not about external network, but internal. I talked about this as well when I speak publicly. We think about your team within your own organization and how we tend to be grouped together is with people doing the same job as me. That tends to be your team, so your other account executives or whatever. That's not your team, is it?

You can ask me if they've got a deck on X, Y, or Z. A team that helps you to be successful is the multitude of other departments within the organization. The executives are at the top, but you've got your legal team. You've got your solution consultant, finance team, direct manager, the other support agents, and marketing. In chapter three of the book, I talk a bit about this organization or network analysis thinking.

That's the way I laid this out to get this chapter going. At least the book going in that first part. Think about your organization and how well networked you are because that's what's important. That's what will help you to be successful. You need to bring in the right level of support to help you get the depth in the solution because you can't do everything. We often talk about you as the lead being the director of the film or the maestro in the orchestra. You can't do everything.

That's another thing we need to realize now. You need to take a step back and bringing in the right folks to map with the right people, but getting the visibility of the right folks is down to how well networked you are within your own organization. If you're feeling a bit isolated, that's a place for you to start. You can't just go the same as we talked about building relationships. You can't start a relationship by asking someone for something.

We know that and we see that in everyday life. If someone drops me a message on LinkedIn. You know that there are about to request a favor in advance. You've categorized those people in that scenario. Don't do that. You need to invest the time and catch up. Say, “How are you doing?” Be proactive because nobody wants to be used even in turn. At least, you've got to build that credibility. Build your network as well.

It's about putting the hard work again. You've got to recognize people. Sometimes, there’s a tendency, maybe not so prevalent, but to take the credit when things happen. I know if you’ve worked on a few deals. We do get the credit for when the deals come, but is a village, as they say, that brings these. I know we get the blame if things don't go well as well. Maybe keep the blame for yourself, but share the credits when things go well.

That helps to then get trust. Again, the next time you need some help, you can get that in and you may be a product if you're in a software firm or you might need support with product development and things like that. You tend to close everywhere and get the right folks to a client. What I would also say is, when it comes to building relationships on the clients and that's why this relationship map is so important because it's not for you to map everyone on the client side and you to own those relationships. It's the opposite.

Who do you pair with who? Who's got the right personality, that job role, or the profile? If you’re speaking to someone in the info check, or technical or data privacy, you need to pair them with the right person. That builds some credibility. It gets people talking internally. It will bubble up to the execs as well if this is a significant deal. It doesn't need to be financially, but strategically as well. One thing I will say as you go through the case studies I share at the end.

I was talking about this as well. There is one key factor which is present in anything you're doing and that at least one champion on the client side. We hear about the champion. That's fine. They're supporting you, but I'm talking about someone who is emotionally invested in your success and the intelligence gathering. We've talked about the complexity of deals and the number of stakeholders involved on the client side.

You need to engage with those people. You can use your network. You can try and piece this together and get this much fame warm introduction. The best person to do that is someone on the client side. If you can get someone as an ally who's helping you to be successful, but also not just supporting you in the meeting when they need to, but helping you get access to the right people in giving you feedback. I get to the situation.

You're drafting a team's note for them to shoot at in a chat and you’re using them as proxy almost for the effort but willingly. That is crucial. I've not seen anything significant happen at a deal level or an account level that does not have at least one of those people on the inside. That is an important factor to self-evaluate as well.

I 100% agree with you. We didn't win any super large deal where there wasn't somebody on that side who was a champion who had a medium to high degree of influence on the deal that said, “We want you to win,” and they could articulate why.

They're helping you navigate as well in getting you introduced. Whatever it is, 8 to 12 to 15 people that are involved and banging this on the table when it matters and saying, “We need this.” That's a huge component but also, helping you navigate. I've worked with people where they may not consider themselves particularly senior and not particularly involved in a thumbs up or thumbs down, but they are right suitably emotionally involved and supportive of the project that they're part of your team.

That's argued out the most important member of the team. They are sharing insights on the old chart and movement. Finally, all this stuff and a new role has been talked about. I remember for one client, we had a M&A use case. There was a role that came up about post-merger integration and it’s reporting to the CEO. That was a perfect use case for our solution. This role was being talked about, but this lady had happened to figure that out and got us in front of this person. It turned into a huge success. That was all thanks to the intimacy of those conversations and willingness to support.

Get In Touch With Dr. Ryan And Episode Wrap-Up

A great discussion. We could talk about this for hours, Ryan, but we won't. Given your time, I know you've got top of the hour here. First of all, thank you so much for joining. How do people learn more about you, what you do, and Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business?

I was a big shareholder in LinkedIn before Microsoft bought them, then Microsoft as well is a big believer in LinkedIn. That's where I developed most of my time, to be fair. I'm not too familiar with all these other platforms. I tend to focus on LinkedIn and share my thoughts there. I’m happy to connect with anybody, or follow. Whatever you want to call it. I do a bit on X or Twitter, but most of my focus is on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to chat to anybody then.

LinkedIn is our main focus. Ryan, great to meet you. Thank you. Team, thank you for joining.

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The intent of the show is to elevate the performance and professionalism on B2B sales. We believe in doing that we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did enjoy the show, please like and subscribe and tell your friends because that's how we get great guests like Ryan, that matters to them. In the meantime, good selling to everybody. Until the next episode.

Important Links

• Ryan O’Sullivan on LinkedIn

• Ryan O’Sullivan on X

• Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business

• Infosys

• Shift

• The JOLT Effect

• Smarter Collaboration

• The Trusted Advisor

• Sales Historian on Instagram

About Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan

Ryan O’Sullivan is a senior executive, board member, business adviser, university lecturer and author. He has spent his career perfecting and then evangelizing a ‘relationship first’ approach to growing revenue.

This has resulted in many awards and accolades over his career, including the most net-new clients in a year on multiple occasions, fastest net-new client in the organization’s history, first strategic deal (total contract value over $50 million) in a new country and largest deal in the organization’s history. He has won deal of the year and salesperson of the year on multiple occasions and has been the number one annual revenue earner many times, often for consecutive years.

The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan

Sometimes, the loudest messages are conveyed without using any words at all. Mark Cox chats with communication expert Dr. Nick Morgan about the subtle science of power cues and how they play out in the world of sales. In this episode, he explains how facial gestures, body language, and vocal cords override even conscious communication. He breaks down several tips for self-awareness and mastering non-verbal communication, making sales pitches more relatable and authentic. Dr. Nick also shares about three pivotal moments in his life: being inspired by the teachings of Dalai Lama, learning his father was gay, and having a near-death experience.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Loud Impact Of Power Cues With Dr. Nick Morgan

Team, what a great show that we have for you. We've all heard the platitudes that people make decisions emotionally and then they back it up with facts. That's how people make decisions. In this episode, we're talking with a global communication expert that has all the research associated with that concept. It's Dr. Nick Morgan. He's the Founder of Public Words Inc. He’s one of America's top communications and speech coaches.

He is a former fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he’s affiliated with the school's Center for Public Leadership. The book we’re discussing with Nick is Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I also loved his book, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. We don't get to talk about that in this episode the concept from is so incredibly powerful for anybody interacting with other human beings.

The concepts most of our communications unconscious. Our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information a second, but are unconscious minds handle 11 million bits of information per second. There are these two conversations taking place in any form of communication, the conscious one, and the unconscious one. We talked about these Power Cues that help with the unconscious conversation.

Nick breaks it down in the book to variety different chapters, but he talks about these seven Power Cues self-awareness, nonverbal communication, reading others unconscious signals, mastering your own voice, communicating as a leader, using your intuition effectively, and then synchronizing minds. Putting all of it together. Team, this is a great conversation. We talked about all of this leads to what we do every day is professional sales.

People will talk about why it's so difficult to build trust and connection in a short period of time with someone. Talk about real practical exercises to prepare for that next live conversation or that big meeting. I had this one highlighted as an interesting podcast a long time ago when I read Nick’s book. I'm so glad with the way things turned out for this. I hope you are, too. By the way, a pleasant reminder, team. If you like this episode, tell your friends and please like and subscribe to the show. Here's Dr. Nick Morgan.

Nick, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

It’s a great pleasure to be here. Happy to take some time with you to talk about, I presume, communications. It’s one of my favorite subjects.

Three Pivotal Moments In Dr. Nick’s Life

We think it has something to do with B2B selling, but it goes riveted and couldn't wait to get you on the show because somehow you hadn't been on my radar. I first read, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World. Given the fact it's 2025, I probably read that a little late, but it’s a fantastic book. You referenced Power Cues frequently in the book, The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact. I was hoping we could focus in a little bit on Power Cues. It’s an incredibly riveting book. Most of things that was most impactful, Nick, was what led you to write it? What happened to you when you were seventeen? Maybe we can talk a little bit about the trigger for this.

I was happy go lucky seventeen-year-old and not thinking about matters of communications in any deep way. Three things happened to me that led me to start focusing on communications and indeed then it became my career in life and obsession. The first was, I read a book about the Dalai Lama and he became a hero of mine. The second was, I learned my father was gay and the third was I died. Maybe I should take those three in order, if I may.

I read a book about the Dalai Lama. He became a hero. When I had a chance to hear him speak a few years later, understand this was pre-Dalai Lama social media Rockstar character. He was a relatively unknown Buddhist thinker, but he had come to the University of Virginia, where I was a graduate student because he was interested in comparing Buddhism and Western medicine. He had a contact there. A doctor who was doing research and the subject. This was a public seminar he gave while he was there, but I was very excited because in my mind he was a rockstar.

I go to the hall where he was to be. I noticed it's small. They're all these seating for 35 to 40 people. We're a bit crowded because other people like me wanted to sit at the feet of the master and he wasn't there. That was the second thing I noticed. Five minutes went by, 10 minutes went by, and 20 minutes, went by and he wasn’t there. At this point, were muttering amongst ourselves and wondering how long do you wait for a man who's on his fourteenth reincarnation? It wasn't clear.

Finally, 45 minutes goes by, and he shows up. He comes running in all apologetic and out of breath. He says, “Sorry to keep you waiting. I better say something amazing.” He sits down and just looks at us. He doesn't say anything for one minute of stage time, and two minutes of stage time. Anybody who's presented knows how long that is. Can you imagine just sitting there looking at the audience? Four minutes of stage time, at that point, I was timing it. I was curious to see how long it would go and he started talking.

What had happened in those four minutes to me was life-changing. I had the feeling that he had looked at me and somehow, he had connected with me in a way that felt very deep. It felt like it had changed me. When I talked to people afterwards in the audience, they said the same thing. “No, he looked at me and changed me.” We had this absurd non-Buddhist argument about which one of us he looked at. The point was he had some ability to connect with people that seem very profound and I didn't understand it. I wanted to know more. How did that work? It was clearly a nonverbal communication.

What was so powerful about that? Could I do the same thing? It felt very profound. Back to age seventeen. I have to give my dad a present for Christmas. I gave him a book that I knew we hadn't read because it had been published. That was my concern because he was a bookish man and well-read and I wanted to get him something that he couldn't possibly have read. In this case, it was a book by E.M Forster that had just been published because it had been embargoed for many years after his death.

I only knew E.M Forster from high school reading, A Passage to India, which was required reading in those days. I don't know if they still read it, but so I knew a new book. I had a vague idea that it was his autobiographical novel, and it had been embargoed because it was about homosexuality in an era when that was illegal in England still. This was in the back of my mind, but it wasn't the primary thought. I wrapped up the book, put it under the tree, and then when Dad opened it on Christmas day, he gave me a funny look just for a split second. In that funny look, a wheel turned in my head and I said, “My dad is gay.” I just knew it.

Nonverbal communication back and forth and somehow you know this.

Yes, and he didn't come out to the world for ten years after that. When he finally came out, he called me up and said, “I have something important I’m going to say to you.” He announced this the world to me first. I went up to see him. We were walking and talking. He was hemming and hawing, and saying, “This is hard to say.” I finally said, “Dad, I know you're gay. Get over it. It's not a big deal.” He said, “How did you know?” Suddenly, where how odd it sounded.

You have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communication is.

I said, “That look you gave me years ago on Christmas Day.” He had no memory of it. The thought process I had was, “Good heavens. What is the power of nonverbal communications? What do we exchanging we humans that so profound that my dad could let slip to me a secret he had kept all his life?” It was a very complicated thing in those days and yet, not even be aware that he had done it. That was the second piece of non-verbal information that I needed to know more about.

The final one was this is the public service message in our episode, which is, I was tobogganing with friends again at age seventeen. Don't toboggan. If it's important to be able to steer because toboggans are very clumsy things. You can only steer by leaning. You might have a rope you can pull on. It’s very hard to steer. In this case, we didn't make it around a necessary turn. I crashed into a tree. I fractured my skull and I was in a coma for a week. I'm very fortunate to be here because of some great neuro surgeons. Thank you.

When I awoke, I had died briefly during that five-day week-long period just for a couple of minutes. I'd been brought back to life with the paddles just like in the movies. They give you a test when you wake up. A quick, do you have what's called threefold awareness? Do you know the year that you are in? Do you know where you are? Do you know who's President? That's usually the question they ask you. It's just to see if you still got basic orientation to the world around you and I did.

I passed that test, but it became clear with the days following as I recovered that something else had happened that was far more profound for which there was no test and I couldn't articulate it. Nobody asked me about it, which was I could no longer do what all of us, all of your readers and viewers can do automatically without thinking about it, which is we can read the body language and the emotional state that the body language suggests of people that we know well. An awful lot of time is spent in the media, in the world of experts like me on body language and train people to read the body language of relative strangers. The truth is, we're bad at it.

Except for Paul Eckert.

Paul is pretty good, but that was his life's work. He trained the CIA and the FBI and people like that. All kinds of spies to try to be better at it. After all the work that they did in terms of detecting a liar, which was very important in their minds when they're interrogating a witness, let's say, or a prisoner. Is that person telling the truth or not? They were able to get accuracy only up to 51%. That's 1% better than chance.

I wouldn't want to bet the farm on that. I don't know about you, but those aren't good Vegas odds. We're not very good at it. The problem is, and this is the point, you have to get to know somebody well to know what their baseline of communications is. If I walk into Roman, I'm waving my hands around. Does that mean I'm all excited or am I just always that way? Those are the kinds of things you don't learn until you know somebody.

We're very good at reading the body language of people that we know. We're not good at reading the body language of strangers, but what had happened because of the accident, for some reason was, I had lost that ability. When I looked at people, I could see they were making faces but I couldn't connect to that automatic sense of, “She's happy. He’s frustrated or angry. She's sad. Whatever.” I started staring at my friends and asking them and making them feel very odd and uncomfortable saying, “Are you angry? Are you happy? Are you sad? What's going on?”

It took about a year for me to retrain myself and probably just to recover. The brain heals over time and the result was that I became fascinated and made it eventually my life long study, to be able to decode body language in a way that was conscious and I could codify, talk about, and think about, or as most of us, as I say, are experts but we're unconscious experts.

When a spouse or a family member, if you have kids, when you're kid walks into room, you don't think to yourself. You just know it. That's your unconscious mind. It's much faster than the conscious mind. It immediately goes to the read of that situation of that person because you know them. That's the basis of nonverbal communications, and what I was eager to retrain myself to understand.

Folks, you can see why I was so riveted to the book very early on. Everything that Nick's explained, either the introduction or the first chapter, it becomes riveting. In that same area, you said, Nick, most of our communication is indeed unconscious and our conscious brains can handle something like 40 bits of information per second. Our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information per second, so the conscious brain and unconscious brain.

Communicating With The Unconscious Mind

All of this flabbergasting 10 million of those bits of information per second were all visual. We're pulling this all in visually. One of the reasons I was so excited to speak to you is there's lots of information in our world, in the selling world about helping people and working with people and how people make decisions emotionally then back it up with data.

Frankly, it's pretty high-level advice. When I dove into Power Cues, the facts, the data, and the research. It’s something like you make your decisions, emotionally or unconsciously and it takes a long time for your conscious mind to catch up even sometimes up to nine seconds. Unconsciously, you make a decision. You're acting on it. You don't realize you've made the decision.

That's correct. Therein lies both the challenge for communication because if you're a B2B seller or anybody, trying to communicate. You need to talk to that unconscious mind because that's where the decision is made. All of us are trained and we spent our lives focusing on conscious stuff, our expertise. I want to tell you about my IT system that I think you should purchase or buy materials or the things that you should buy.

I'll give you conscious reasons why you should do that. If I have been connected with your unconscious mind, I haven’t created trust and made an emotional connection, then the decision is over. It's done. It's made before I ever get to all that lovely conscious data I have to talk to you about. That's the reason why this is important to study and why it matters in these situations.

Inspiration From The Music Of Beatles And Bee Gees

The heart of the book is some things we can think about to help with that. One of the things, just looking at your background, it jumps out at me. You talked about how the Dalai Lama had made this amazing connection with you and 35 or 40 other people in a room. Each of you felt like somehow, he was speaking to you personally and directly.

I can't help but notice. You’ve got some very cool Beatles paraphernalia behind you and you start to think of what happened with those four people, where somehow, they were making an insane emotional connection with the entire world. First of all, you must be a fan. Have you ever connected those or thought about that? How did they turn the whole world upside down and create a love affair with the whole world through music and also badly recorded music.

Compared to what we know now. A single monaural sound is a strange concept to us. We're used to multitracking and everything else. The Beatles had, let's call it an unfair advantage, which is that music. It goes directly to those emotional centers. In a sense, it's a way of connecting with people that bypasses the intellectual aspects of human connection and goes right to emotion because music hits, what we call the back part of the lizard part informally, but the part of our brain that isn't the prefrontal cortex were executive conscious decisions are made.

They connected with those teenagers and I was one instantly and unconsciously. We couldn't help ourselves as it were. There was something about energy of the music. You can get quite technical about certain kinds of music and why it connects. I'll just give you one very little. For instance, a rising melody is something that connects with us positively and gives us a good feeling. It makes us happy. One of the Beatles earliest hits was a song called, those of you old enough to remember, you'll recognize it. I Want to Hold Your Hand.

The innovative thing about that was when Paul McCartney sang that line, “I want to hold your hand,” and the hand note was an octave higher and an octave jump. That was very unusual in pop music in those days. It still is. It's quite a leap to make just vocally. Usually, singers don't give themselves something that difficult, but that huge leap.

Imagine a tune that goes up note by note and step by step. If it jumps an octave, that's eight steps as it were eighth notes. It hits you with a powerful force of positive energy. It makes you feel good like that. There were a number technical reasons why their music was so uplifting, fun, exciting, and connected with us so well. Overall, they brought energy, excitement, and all sorts of useful emotional connections with their fan base.

Every generation can connect with the Beatles. That's the unbelievable thing about it. When we were growing up, we had one of those very large piece of furniture stereo systems that took up half the wall and we only had three albums. Two of them were Beatles albums. We were a musical family with piano and the rest of it.

I'm a musician still, but it's amazing to me. We were down in Vegas seeing Love a few years back. When that music came up again, I started tearing up and I had no idea why. I was happy of those kinds of good things, but the emotion just overtook me. Something like Eleanor Rigby isn't on that pot happy sight. Suddenly, it's targeting your heartstrings for some amazing reasons. It’s fabulous.

If you walk into a room with a poor posture, people will think you lack confidence and disengaged.

By the way, without going down to tangent, you start to think of the other almost Beatle Mania. It was the Bee Gees in the height of the disco era. At their peak or their height, they sang falsetto, which is an octave plus. It's at the highest range and that certainly had a connection with a good part of the universe at that point in time that became enormously successful for a period of time, that type of singing.

There's a useful lesson in there for your B2B communicators, by the way. Broadly speaking, without getting into too much detail here. We talk at a conversational pitch, but I am speaking certain notes that we could find on the piano just as you are. If I held, then we could go find that on the piano. Our speaking could be noted just like music.

Very broadly speaking, as you go up, you signal certain things to your audience. As you go down, you signal certain other things. I mentioned that going up in music is positive. It also has a double-edged aspect to it, which is as we indicate excitement and energy, our voices go up in pitch and this is speaking as well as singing. It also indicates stress, tension, and anxiety. What happens is, if you're tense, let's say, you're going into important meeting and this is the big pitch. This is where the client is going to say yes or, no.

You're stressed out. You get that fight or flight, that adrenaline response. One of the things that does in addition to making your heartbeat fast and your palms clammy and all the other things that symptoms that you know, is it a tightens up your vocal course. That pushes your voice up and one of the extraordinary things about people is we are very good at hearing tension in other people's voices, even if we don't know them. This is one of the exceptions to what we were talking about earlier that you have to know people well to read their emotional state.

We recognize tension invoices. If you walk into that room, you normally talk like this when you're relaxed, but walking into the room because there's so much at stake, you've got the adrenaline flowing. You start talking like this. Your pitch goes up just a little bit. Even though you don't know me, you're starting to hear the tension in that voice, and that's going to make you uneasy. You're going to think, “What's wrong with this guy? He's nervous.”

The way you read nervousness is you think, “He doesn't know what he's talking about.” Right away from the start, even though you're not consciously aware of it, that nervous energy is causing you to come across as less confident and less authoritative than you would otherwise. Becoming aware of that is extremely important. What I recommend to people is, for these high stakes moments. Record yourself on your cell phone talking just for 30 seconds when you relaxed so you know what your voice should sound like.

Play that in your ear before you go into the meeting. That will help ground you and you'll think, “That what I should sound like.” Instead of walking in and suddenly going with a high pitch voice, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me.” You say, “Hi, Mr. Smith. Great to me you,” with a low voice, and you come across this confident and relaxed and self-assured.

What a great tip. Thank you for that. Nick, in our world, that's not just for the high stakes meeting that big discussion or presentation. Portion of the people who are reading do demand generation. They reach out into their target market and interrupt somebody in the middle of their day. Whether it's by phone or email. They're trying to get a meeting or trying to have a live conversation with someone to quickly share their value proposition and understand if that person's got the problem that they can solve for or help with.

We train a lot on this, but it's very difficult to inoculate against fight or flight when you're doing that because you're dealing the phone twenty times and you have no idea when somebody's going to connect with you, and they are on the line. There's a mediate imposter syndrome. If you're 23 years old and the person on the other end of the line, you used an IT example, but it’s the VP of IT for a large telecommunications firm. That nervousness comes across and the recipient doesn't want to be speaking to somebody nervous and anxious because as you point out in the book, we mirror the effects of other people. It makes us a little bit uncomfortable.

Using Power Cues To Make A Good First Impression

By the way, how do we exert that leadership? How do we become the leader in the room or exert our confidence in leadership? It's talking about how these unconscious cues define a leader in any situation. Team, we're not going to have time to go through all of them, but when you read the book, in chapter one, it’s knowing your own power cues, taking charge of your nonverbal communication, reading the unconscious signals of others, and mastering your own voice. We talked a little bit about that, about pitch and tone. That's beautifully laid out in the book.

Also, breathing was so important. Singers and musicians, we’ll talk a little bit about that. Communicating with the leader then using your intuition effectively and synchronizing minds. Nick, I know your time is so valuable, but given time here, may we talk about a couple of these? As helpful tips for people walking away from this. The first one is self-awareness, taking an inward look.

You used a very good example there, coord your voice when you're feeling great. Listen to it. It puts you in the frame of mind. What are some other tips on the self-awareness starting with ourself? A lot of people are very uncomfortable with these things that we're talking about. Things like public speaking or big presentation. What do we do internally to help ourselves with that first?

Power Cues: One of the extraordinary things about people is their ability to hear tension in other people’s voices even if they do not know them.

You want to think about a couple of things. First and foremost is, how do I show up when I first walk into the room? That first meeting and that first impression is so key. A simple example of this is something I blame on one of these objects. It’s a mobile phone in a very nice case and I'll turn sideways to show this. The thing that happens with a mobile phone is, we tend to pitch our heads forward and our shoulders round, so we lean into the phone. We spent a lot of time like this. I was at the airport. They were 80 people waiting at our gate and I looked around all and 78 or 79 of them had their heads down.

It's unbelievable, isn't it?

The 80th was me. I looked around and I thought, “How sad,” then I was soon in the phone like everybody else, so the number became 80. Why is that a problem? It's because if I walk into a room like this, and I've tested this with audiences many times and done a research project on it that substantiated this. People think all kinds of thoughts, but they're all negative. They say, “You feel bad. You lack confidence. You're disengaged. You feel subordinate. Not powerful.”

They're all kinds of feelings associated and ways that people read this posture, but none of them is ever positive. The first thing I say to people is, “Go back to the wall. I'm going to stand in front of the Beatles here.” Find a wall somewhere in the men's room or the lady from, and put your heels against the wall or butt against the wall, or shoulders against wall, or head against the wall, so you're standing up straight. You will convey a very different impression in very important person or team that you're meeting and you will find it strange. That's what everybody reports.

They say, “I feel weirdly upright. Don't I look strange?” I'll say no. For the first time, you look confident and you're taking up your full height. That's the important thing. We humans are incredibly good at unconsciously reading the difference between this and this. Even though I've only shrunk the quarter of an inch or something like that.

We read somebody who takes up their full space as somebody who has power agency. Not in an arrogant way, but in the way they're entitled to. Whereas somebody who shrunk like this, we say, “That person is not fully present. They lack confidence. They're unhappy and subordinate, on and on.” That first impression in person is extraordinarily important in that sense. That's why I'd say where it starts.

It's such a great tip. Some of us were athletes. We're natural slow slouchers because of some of the sports we spent years playing. I was a goalie in hockey and always about rolling over. It wasn't like now, it’s always been over. Every time I get fitness training, they're always saying, “We got to start by pulling everything back,” instead of this rolling over and crafting.

Let's look to the second one, the nonverbal communication and there's these thousands of nonverbal communications when we're enacting with someone else. There's two questions there, Nick. Oftentimes, we love to pick up on a couple of tips when I'm looking at someone else when I'm working with someone else. The second thing is about this misinterpretation of somebody else. There are people in the world that have a natural smile on their face. I married to one of those. Thank goodness, but I'm not.

I'm extremely pleasant, positive, and optimistic, but the natural state of my face when I'm relaxing is almost a frown. Yet, I'm funny, engaged, and positive all the time. If I'm not speaking, people misinterpret it, or if I'm in a room, they'll think I might be cross. I have to consciously put a little smile on my face even though it's not a natural thing for me. What are some tips so consciously, we don't go down the wrong path? When we're trying to assess what's going on with others, all about this trying to make sure we make a good impression. What are some tips we should consider?

The way about it is the first thing that has to happen between people is that we have to be open to each other. If we're closed off, in terms of our body language, then communication isn't even going to start. You need to think about what are the cues I can send out that I'm open because you alluded to the idea of mirror neurons. What happens is if I go in and I'm open, friendly, and clearly want to connect. That raises the likelihood at least that the other person will experience the same feelings and emotions out of unconscious level pretty quickly on their end.

That's the first step. It’s to make sure you're expressions and your body language are open. You mention an important one which is not having, what we call an RBF. I won't spell that one out because it's a rude phrase. Having a smile on your face, having a positive affect and there are four aspects to that. You want to think about raising your eyebrows from time to time, because that looks like you're asking the other person, how do you feel? What do you think? It brings the other person in.

If you replace fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over internally, you reach into your unconscious mind and heal your fear and trauma.

You want to make sure your eyes aren't narrowed, but rather are open because when our eyes are slightly wider, you don't want to overdo it. Slightly wider shows interest in the other person, as you like the other person, then there's nodding and smiling. You don't need those four facial gestures all at once, but those are ways of signaling positive, openness, and connection.

What you want to do is test yourself. Ask your trusted colleague, what's my resting face like to your point? If it's an RBF phase, then you want to consciously work on making it more positive with any of those four things. In terms of your body language, very quickly when we think about where are hands are, on an horizontal axis. If I have my hands wide, they're open. As I bring my hands in front of my torso, then I'm closing down. This is self-protective.

What you see, what I videotape clients and give them feedback, I will say, “How did you feel?” They said, “I was open.” I'll say, “Let's look at the tape,” and 80% of the time, their hands are closing in front of their torso if they're speaking in a room publicly. That can be as few as six people or more. It feels like an actual presentation or you're on the spot to present. You feel self-conscious. It's a very natural thing to do to bring your hands in in front of your torso to self-protect because you feel like you’re on the spot.

The signal that sends to the audience of 6 or 600 is, “I am not open to you.” It's harder right from the start to connect. I train people to unconsciously get this habit down, which means you have to practice it in low stakes situations over and over again in order for it to become natural. When you walk into that high stakes situation, your unconscious mind is going to be saying, “Danger,” and the hands are going to come back in front of the torso to self-protect. It's hard to override. You need to practice it in low stake situation, as I say.

When you're at home, talking to loved ones, or to your family or with friends that you're comfortable with, force yourself. Practice doing keeping the hands open. First of all, you'll be surprised at the difference it makes if you're somebody who does a lot of self-protection. You'll find that you make warmer connections with people. Second, you'll gradually master this and become more comfortable with it. It's not natural.

Natural is to self-protect, but that cuts off the chance of connection between people. That's again, a simple way to begin thinking about it. My face has to signal open connection, a desire to connect with people. My body language has to signal a desire to connect with people. Those are the basics, so you need to monitor yourself to begin with, then you can look at other people that folks you're connecting with for similar signs.

If you're going in and you're open, smiling, and connecting and the other person has his arms tuck in. It this doesn't take a genius to say, “That person is still close to me. I need to figure out what's going on.” There are a number of strategies you can use to start to open that connection but you need to be aware of it. You need to be aware that the other person is closed off. Otherwise, you won't make the extra effort to try to connect. These are this beginning levels of understanding, but it's where you need to begin.

These are great for everybody reading. Folks, you can share that when you share the feedback on this episode. I'm just going to point back again, team, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact is loaded with these kinds of ideas. This is a must-read in my view, team. For anybody interacting with clients or prospects, or anybody interacting with other teammates, everybody should be reading this.

Addressing Imposter Syndrome In B2B Sales

One last question for Nick and then we'll wrap things up here. Nick, I had a final opportunity to do some improv training. We have a comedy group up called Second City. We love it. My niece and I went and did some improv training just to drop-in class, which was magnificent, frankly. One of the things they talked about in improv was this internal voice fighting all the time where you're trying to be perfect. As soon as you're in an improv, you're doing something. What you do is say something and your voice immediately defaults to, “That was the worst response anyone would have ever come up with.” In doing so, it shuts your brain down from coming up with the next one.

What they coach on is they started this mindset hack. People were good at improv. They train their minds where they are where they are. Whatever they've said is now the reality. To view it as an excellent contribution so that they can be prepared to build on the next one when they receive back from the partner. It's an interesting thing and the exercise proved it's so true. No matter what you say, you don't think it's very good.

You spoke a little bit in the book about that internal voice and how we help manage to that and how that confidence either comes across, or doesn't. Not to put you on the spot, but do you have any quick tips for some of the readers? It’s because this imposter syndrome is something that's pretty prevalent and B2B sales.

The issue is where that comes from is from an unconscious dialogue that started somewhere in your past. You can go to psychotherapy for years and find out where the original wound, the childhood trauma happened or you can deal with it as it is now and say, “This is not helping me.” I'm going to replace that unconscious thought pattern with a positive one. I recommend people giving themselves positive mantras.

I was an actor for years before I got real paid work. One of my great fears as an actor or many actors share, especially stage actors, is you're going to forget your lines. We call it going dry. Your great fear s you're going to go dry. If you replace that fear with a positive mantra that you chant over and over to yourself internally, then gradually what you do is you reach down into that unconscious mind. You heal whatever that trauma was or fear was and replace it with this positive thing.

It's good to keep them simple. My Mantra was, “I know my lines. I got this.” I would just say that over and over again to myself. Gradually over time, that replaced wherever that other fear came from. As I say, you have the choice. You can either do that positive work, or you can go to years of psychotherapy and hope that that untangles your psyche. I recommend both, but if you want to get there quickly, start using the mantras on yourself.

The other way you can do it is by doing something that actors called sense memory training, which is before you go into that meeting, the high stakes meeting, sit down for a couple of minutes and remember a time. It has to be a very powerful time, when you were happy, confident and things were going great. It was rocking for you. Get yourself into that state of mind through that memory as powerful as possible.

Think about what it looked like, sounded like, tasted like, smelled like and felt like or use all the five cents to put yourself in that state. While I was acting, I also did the offset. I had a tragic scene to play in one of my first professional stage plays. It was revival of something called the Heidi Chronicles. My character was about to die and I knew this. I was dying of AIDS, so I had to have this very sad scene. What I used was a memory of when a pet died.

I remembered that day very powerful. It was a very sad moment for me. I would put myself back into that moment, what it was like holding the dog in this case, in my arms, as he died and so on and so forth. I would walk out on stage full of all that sadness. You can do the same thing, only you want to create typically a positive, “I got this,” moment. That's one that's full of connection and positive feelings. That with practice, let me stress. The first time you try it, you won't feel a huge effect. It takes practice over time, but that's another way to access a positive unconscious attitude.

By the way, that theme of practice, no surgeon ever picked up a scalpel and then started operating on a patient. They picked up a scalpel in medical school. They operated on 5,000 grapes over five years and then did it. They keep training in getting better. No tool, no concept, and no idea knocks the ball out of the park the first time if there's value in it. You've got to work these things.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

Nick, it's been a huge pleasure speaking with you. I was super excited about this. It was a red-letter day for us in the funnel because I'm such a fan of your work. We didn't even get to, Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World, but that was the first book of yours that I read. It’s staggeringly good also. Nick, how else can people get in contact with you or learn more about how you can help them?

The simplest way is to go to our website PublicWords.com. That has, by the way, the treasure trove of articles, videos, and advice about how to do many of these things and a lot more besides omnivore when it comes to learning about communication. I track Neuroscience constantly, so I'm always putting updates in what we're learning about how the brain and the mind communications works. You can connect with us or use all the free resources there.

Thank you so much for joining, Nick.

It's a great pleasure, Mark. Thank you for having me on your show.

Team, thank you for joining the show. As everybody knows, we run this show to improve the performance in professionalism of B2B sales because we believe in doing so. We're improving the lives of anybody in professional sales. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends because that's how we get fantastic guests like Nick that matters to us. By the way, we're also growth oriented. If there's ways that we can make this show more valuable to you, please let us know.

You can reach me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. We love constructive criticism. In fact, the things we do today came from many of the people who listen who gave us some great ideas. I'll respond to every tip or advice that gets sent in. Thanks for sending them. Keep them coming. Until the next episode.

Important Links

• Nick Morgan on LinkedIn

• Public Words Inc

• Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact

• Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World

• A Passage to India

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Dr. Nick Morgan

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication speakers, theorists and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear in the media, and to deliver unforgettable TED talks. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world.  During the last election cycle, he provided expert commentary on the presidential debates for CNN.  Most recently, he designed and hosted TEDxWaldenPond in November 2023.

Nick’s methods, which are well-known for challenging conventional thinking, have been published worldwide. His acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. His book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. His book on communications and brain science, Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact, was published by Harvard in May 2014.  His latest book is Can You Hear Me?, on the perils of virtual communication, published by Harvard in 2018. His forthcoming book is The Embodied Voice, tentatively planned for 2025.

The Noble Purpose Of Sales With Lisa McLeod

Even though sales are mainly about driving revenue and putting up the right numbers, one element must not be forgotten: the needs and interests of the customers themselves. Executive coach Lisa McLeod is here to discuss why businesses should embrace the noble purpose of providing a positive impact to everyone. Sitting down with Mark Cox, she explains why they should never see their target market as mere statistics but aim to make a real difference in their lives. Lisa also explains how a client-first mindset requires taking intentional action and showcasing your authentic self.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Noble Purpose Of Sales With Lisa McLeod

Is sales a noble profession? It’s a conversation we are going to have. We believe it is. We think it’s the most important business discipline there is out there. We are chatting with Lisa McLeod, and she’s the author of Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. She co-authored this book with Elizabeth Lotardo originally back in 2012, and then they did a second edition in 2020.

It was an enormously popular book, hence the second edition. The core idea is that sales teams with a noble purpose bigger than money, whose aim is to improve the life of their customers and prospects, outsell transactional salespeople that are trying to get deals done. We all intuitively know in this day and age that’s the case. I love the way that these ladies package this message and information so that we can engage our sales teams with this noble purpose.

One of the data points that’s pretty powerful comes out. It says organizations with a purpose bigger than money outperform their competitors. A ten-year study of more than 50,000 brands around the world said that the firms that put improving people’s lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by huge margins. They say they have a 3X growth trajectory versus their competitors.

It’s pretty interesting. We talk about what that noble purpose selling is. We also talk about a couple of questions that you might want to think about reading this show to find your noble purpose as a salesperson or sales team. The first question, how do you make a difference to your customers? Connect emotionally with the stories of what you’ve done for your customers and how you’ve improved their lives, both at the corporate level for that customer and at the individual buyer level.

The second question, how do you differentiate? We spend a lot of time on this with our training. What is unique and different about you, given that customer’s other options in the marketplace? The third question to think about and then collaborate on is, on your best day, what do you love about your job? Thinking about that, a lot of this is a mindset shift that enables your market to believe that you want to help them, and that starts by wanting to help them to improve their lives. That’s going to make you feel better about what you do. We talk a little bit about the brain science associated with this, that there are two big human needs we all have. One is belonging, and the second is significance.

We know purpose helps with drive. We learned that from Daniel Pink’s great work and all of that good stuff. We have a deep conversation on this topic, Selling with Noble Purpose. Lisa has authored four other books, Leading with Noble Purpose, The Triangle of Truth, Forget Perfect, and Finding Grace. I enjoyed my conversation with Lisa. I hope you do, too. If you do, please, folks, like and subscribe to the show, and tell your friends. When you like and subscribe or leave a rating for us, that helps us get great guests like Lisa, so thanks for doing so. Folks. here’s Lisa McLeod.

Lisa, welcome to the show. It’s so great to meet you face to face.

It is great to be here, Mark.

I was excited for this, and as always, everybody who reads the show knows we pick authors. We read somebody’s book and then we love it, then we chase them down. I did that with you. I hounded you until we got you on the show, but I was wondering how it took me so long because you’ve got five great books out. We are talking about Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud, and you co-wrote that with Elizabeth Lotardo originally back in 2012. It was so popular and did so well, you did a reprinting, or second printing in 2020.

Introducing Lisa McLeod And The Concept of Noble Purpose

You’ve also written Selling With Noble Purpose, Leading with Noble Purpose, The Triangle of Truth, Forget Perfect, and Finding Grace. We’ll focus on Selling with Noble Purpose. Before we do, maybe a little bit of the short story. You’ve had a great background. You are a sales trainer with P&G, but tell the audience a little bit about your journey that got you to where we are.

Selling with Noble Purpose is my most popular book, and it represents my own journey. I was, as you said, an ex-sales trainer. I was a former VP of Sales. I ran a sales training company, and like a lot of people that run sales organizations, I had a lot of pressure to deliver numbers. Also, like a lot of people who have seen a lot of sales calls, I was always curious as to what was that magic thing that the top performers had.

How I landed on Selling with Noble Purpose was through my work as a consultant, where I did a study for a big biotech company to identify what differentiated the top performers. I’m a curious person. I’m curious about what makes people tick. It probably comes from unpacking my own dysfunctional background, and we can get into that. One of the things that I determined, and it was a team that I worked with, was that the differentiator between the good performers and the exceptional, the top of the top. The thing that the top of the top had that was different was they had a different internal compass.

Instead of focusing on closing the deal, their true north, their higher purpose, was improving life for customers, and the numbers were a trailing indicator. When I discovered that, it was like one of those scenes in a movie where the person realizes their spouse is having an affair, and they flash back to like one hundred different scenes and go, “There was that.”

It was a moment when one sales rep said to me. She was in biotech sales, and said, “She’s my higher purpose.” It was this grandmother, and she had this visual imagery of the end game for her sales, this patient. When she said that to me, I flashed back to a hundred other situations where I went, “That was the difference.” I also went to my own personal self and thought, “When was I at the top of my game?” It’s when I was that true believer.

It’s a pretty compelling story at the beginning of the book. Correct me if I’m wrong, at some point, you were at a board table with that same client. They had some data in front of them that you didn’t have, and they asked your opinion. After interviewing or spending time with the reps, you called out five people you thought were the top reps. That seemed to be client-first selling with purpose. They said, that’s an amazing trick because they are our top reps, and then they asked why. You explained why you had come to that conclusion.

The other thing is the timing. We are doing this in 2025. This was several years ago as this was coming up. There’s been such a movement to say, “Get away from this idea of closing the deal or getting the metric. In my conversation, I want to end up with one more qualified opportunity.” Get away from all of that and this idea of trying to help somebody is the means to the end, so get away from the outcome.

Companies that prioritize their clients saw their revenue grow and their deal size sold at a higher margin.

I like to think that I was one of the people both inspired by and propelling this conversation around moving the emotional center of sales. What’s interesting is that I have been doing this for a long time. I was a sales trainer when I was 24 years old. I was a field sales trainer for P&G. I was a sales manager for my college paper. I have been thinking, writing, and reading about sales for a long time.

There’s a nuanced difference I want to draw people’s attention to. I know a lot of sales leaders read your blog, as well as CEOs of companies. The nuanced difference I want to highlight is this, here’s what we know. That hunch I had back then has later been proven true, proven true by academically vetted research.

Here’s the truth and the nuance I want to draw your attention to. The truth is that salespeople with a purpose bigger than money, salespeople who truly want to improve the lives of their customers, outperform salespeople focused on the numbers. The nuance is this, we have been trying to get salespeople to be customer-focused for many years. We have said, “Focus on the customer.”

The nuanced difference is going beyond focusing on the customer and instead instilling within the seller a deep purpose. Your job is to improve this customer’s situation. That’s very different from than if I was with a student. It was focusing on the student, but instead, I went to the student and said, “You need to improve their abilities.” That’s a completely different situation. That’s what was missing in a lot of the previous conversations. It was just focus on the customer generally, rather than, how are you going to improve this customer’s condition?

It’s an interesting nuance to call out because a lot of the past may have been more tactical. Maybe there was good intent there, but it might have been a bit more tactical, where they go, “Focus on the customer so you can sell them something.” It’s quite different from having this relentless focus on making their situation better. Along that journey, good things are going to happen to you, but that also means, as you understand their world and have the business acumen and industry acumen to help them achieve a better future, it may or may not mean something for you immediately.

That’s what people worry about, but what if it’s not best to buy from me? I can tell you that the companies that have employed this methodology grew their revenues, grew their deal sizes, sold at a higher margin, and cemented long-term customer relationships. They were able to lift out of that transactional sale.

That’s the challenge. If you are a sales leader, you have to hit a number. That’s not some loosey-goosey. Maybe if it’s right for the customer, or maybe if it’s not. The challenge with coaching to the numbers is that it’s like a track coach trying to coach to times. I could sit there and say, “Mark, your time’s ten seconds. You’ve got to get it to nine.” I could shout at you all day, but that’s not coaching you. That’s not behavioral. It’s measuring the past. As a sales leader, I will give you an example.

We worked with a big consulting firm and did an exercise where we divided the room in two. We said, “This room needs to sell a $1 million deal. This room needs to deliver $10 million in value to clients. You have five minutes, go.” In five minutes, the people who were focused on trying to sell a $1 million deal were like, “We’d go here. We’d go there.” The people who were focused on trying to deliver $10 million to their clients were like, “What if we came up with this? What if we did that? What if we helped them with this?” At the end of the day, you ask, “Who’s going to be more successful?”

The other thing I loved about reading this was when you shared that exercise, the excitement with which one side of the room was engaged because you triggered that emotional reaction. There’s something far less emotionally engaging about thinking, what’s in it for me and how do I hit my number? For those reading out there, this is where you are going to hear things from your sales team. When you are managing and somebody comes in and says, “How’s it going? How’s the week been?” They go, “What a grind.”

If you are out there picking up the phone or knocking on doors or continuing to try and pull people along to a deal, there’s a lack of that sense of purpose, but if you are saying, “My role here is to improve the lives of the people I’m working with and try to help them run better businesses. I have this higher purpose. I feel better.”

Focusing On Improving Customers’ Lives

We used to articulate this a lot in our training, but I never captured it as well. I don’t know how I never came across your book, but I hadn’t captured it as well the way you’ve got this captured, and a data point that’s worthy of taking a listen-to-team. In the book, you write that, “Organizations with a purpose bigger than money outperform their competitors.”

A ten-year growth study of more than 50,000 brands around the world said that, “Firms that put improving people’s lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by a huge margin.” The study was done with Jim Stengel, former chief marketing officer for P&G, who said those clients who center their business on improving people’s lives have grown at triple the rate of their competitors.

The research is there, and I will translate it into a scenario everyone can relate to. Imagine you have one company or sales team in a room saying, “How can we grow? How can we make more money? Who can we call on? How can we close bigger deals?” There’s nothing wrong with that. I have led a sales team, but imagine you have another team, their competitor across town. They are saying, “How can we improve life for our customers? How can we find more customers that we can improve? How can we help them improve in bigger, bolder ways?”

That second team, even if the products are exactly the same, the second team, if they have some malleability, they are going to be more innovative. Even if the offerings are exactly the same. We work with a metals company. They are not going to invent a new metal. What happened is when we sat with them and said, “How can we improve our customer’s lives in better ways?” We could go to some other divisions. We could help them with this. We could help them with that.

This company exponentially grew their revenue and beat their competition because, instead of sitting in a room talking about themselves, they were sitting in a room talking about how to improve customers. That nuanced difference, you can tell in that grinded-out company, customers are talked about as an object, a thing to get from. You can tell by the language, the way they talk about the customers. In that noble purpose company, they talk about customers with specificity, “We helped so-and-so with this.” They are talked about as someone that they are having an impact on.

There are so many things to unpack there and so many things to call out. Anyone reading this, first of all, you have to be respectful to those who are absent. If you are in a sales meeting, not speaking about a client or a prospect with the utmost respect, that bleeds through. That’s a culture thing. That’s a value thing. If you are selling for a company doing that, find another job. There’s a whole lot of other detail behind that, but the short answer is you have to find another place to work.

The second thing to touch on there a little bit is, you talked about even if they have a similar product. We know the product almost doesn’t matter outside of a minimum threshold of capability. The research you’ve published at HBR, Harvard Business Review, another study in Harvard Business Review around the time you wrote this book in 2012, they published the research that Charlie did that said that 39% of the time, a B2B purchasing decision favors the company that sold better versus the company that had the best price for quality or service features. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, and my belief is always this, the company that I feel buyers will go forward with is the organization that they believe understands them best.

Yes, and it’s reflected in the way you sell.

Taking Action With Intent And Authentic Curiosity

This is why there’s such a powerful mindset. We are going to get to how we start to apply this mindset to our company with three key questions to ask ourselves, but this mindset, this client-first mindset, this noble approach, helping-people mindset, is so important. You probably know him, but I’m interviewing Dr. Nick Morgan, who’s written 9 or 10 books on mindset speaking. He teaches the folks at Harvard as well. It is a great book. It’s called Can You Hear Me? and Power Cues is another one.

What he speaks to is, there are conscious and unconscious triggers when we are communicating with somebody, and they are picking up on the conscious triggers and the unconscious triggers. We have this almost sixth sense of sensing somebody’s intent. That’s why this noble selling purpose is so important to me. You’ve nailed it here because you’ve had that experience. You meet somebody at a cocktail party, and you connect with them.

A company will exponentially grow its revenue and beat its competition if they are always talking about how to improve its customers.

It feels like this great connection. The same things happen, you’ve met somebody who are saying the right things, but there’s something about you that says, “I’m not into this person.” You are almost a little bit repulsed by them. Something’s happening with the subconscious. You are picking up on triggers that go, “Danger. I don’t know about this person.” This mental intent is so important.

It is, and it shows up in the language of the seller and in some little unconscious qualifiers that people do. I want to go back to something you said. When you said if you are working for a company that only thinks of the customer as a number. A lot of people in that situation reached out to me. What I would say is if you are working for a company where they say, “We care about a customer if they give us money and they are awful.” You need to go work somewhere else.

If you are working somewhere that’s more like your normal company, where the VP of sales is saying, “We got to hit these targets. Can you get this customer this month?” Don’t make assumptions. We had one situation that ended up being our absolute biggest global client, where one sales team read the book. They were in that meeting. The sales leader was in the meeting with all the other sales leaders, where the head of sales was saying, “We got to get these numbers in.”

They said, “We are going to get our numbers in, but one thing I always like to remind myself of is these are human beings, and every one of these numbers represents someone. Someone that has had a great experience because of us.” It was a travel company. They said that in the meeting, and the whole emotional center shifted. Everyone went, “That’s right.” No matter who your boss is, and if you are the boss, it’s going to be more powerful, but you have the power to look at those numbers and say every one of these represents someone whose life we improved.

When you talk about intent, I will give you an example. I taught spin selling for years, which everyone’s pretty much from Dr. Neil Rackham. I was a spin trainer. It’s part of the arsenal of experiences that I drew on, where I would watch people use the same question and go, “It sounds better coming from them,” and I realized it was intentional.

There’s that age-old sales question, “What keeps you up at night?” I can ask that question in that icky sales way, or I could say, “If I could show you a way to do it better, faster, and cheaper, would you do it?” I can ask that same question at the end of an intentional discovery, where I said, “It seems like this and this are your biggest challenges and you are dealing with this. As you look across the landscape of all those things, what are the ones that keep you up at night?”

That exact same question now feels different. If I ponder and go, “If I could show you a way to solve that map, would that be helpful to you?” You are reading. If you are watching this, you can see it better, but even if you are reading, you can know my intent because the question is in the service of improving your condition, and you can feel it. The thing about salespeople is they already know you are in sales. They already know you want to sell something. That’s already the framework for operating. You don’t need to be the one pushing it too early in the call.

It’s such a great example because we get engaged by a lot of folks, Lisa, which would be mid-sized organizations, significant-sized companies, but they are mid-size, where in many cases the biggest deals still need to be sold by the founder. They come to us because they go, “We still can’t somehow translate what the founder’s doing to the majority of the sales team.”

When you travel around, and you do a lot of this when you are traveling around with people in the field, and see what goes on, it’s that intent. That’s the difference. When the founder is in the room with the potential buyers or the other client, the prospect, and they are asking questions. They are truly authentic questions. The other side believes they are authentic because they are going, “The founder doesn’t need one more deal. The founder’s already fine. He’s interested.”

Whereas, the intent of the salesperson sometimes, that same question feels like manipulation, because it feels like you are getting drawn down this path. Whereas, if I say yes then suddenly, I’m going to get hit with something, instead of this authentic curiosity. Diane Hamilton is somebody you should probably know. Maybe you do, but a great thought leader on this topic of authentic curiosity with intent.

As a leader, you have to focus on driving the numbers and the sense of pride.

We have worked with a lot of founder-led companies that tried to scale. One of them, a very public example, is a Canadian company. I should also tell people I’m not a three-pack-a-day smoker. I’m recovering from COVID so my voice is raspy.

Thanks so much for coming. I appreciate you.

I feel better but my voice is raspy, but I will give an example. We worked with Hootsuite, who’s a Canadian-based. A Hoover-based company that became a unicorn, billion-dollar valuation, and they were a founder-led company. The founder has that deep belief because you don’t found a company because you were looking around going, “That’d be interesting.” Companies are founded because the founder saw a need in the market, and they went, “Someone should be doing that. It’s me.”

The founder has that deep understanding of how important the offering is and how the offering improves life for customers. It was based on their experience, research, and this need they saw. A lot of companies are founded based on a bad experience, like, “It shouldn’t be done that way. It should be done this way.” That founder has that deep belief. What’s hard is to scale it. What often gets muddied when you scale is that deep belief on how we make a difference uniquely. It’s nobody’s fault. It doesn’t happen by design. It happens by default.

I will give you an example. With Hootsuite, we wrote an HBR piece on How to Scale Your Sales Team Quickly. One of the techniques we used was customer impact stories. We took all these people who would say, “We are a bunch of hockey players.” They were working at their headquarters. That was their description, not mine. We turned them into storytellers because stories are what see and deep belief. Not stories of how we closed the big deal, but stories of how we made a difference to customers. Those stories spread the belief, and they are different from those antiseptic case studies that people put on their websites.

Turning Your Noble Purpose Into Practice

I’m Canadian, we are all hockey players. For anybody under twenty who didn’t grow up playing hockey, very rare. We also know Hootsuite very well. We know the sales leadership of that team very well, but it’s such a great segue into how we put this into practice. For everybody out there reading, this is an excellent read. That’s why we asked Lisa to join us.

Everybody should be picking up Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud with Lisa and Elizabeth Lotardo. Read the book because it’s a great book, but you led to the first one here. There are three key questions you suggest asking yourself as you try to create that noble purpose. The first one was, “How do you make a difference to your customers?”

How do you make a difference in quantitative and qualitative ways? That’s important. What I want to draw people’s attention to is the subtitle of the book, How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. It’s those two things as a leader that you are always trying to drive the numbers and the sense of pride and meaning. Those two are directly related. The sense of pride and meaning drives the numbers.

When you ask your team, “How do we make a difference to customers?” Ask it of yourself and ask it of your team. The challenge is, the way most people initially answer it is this very antiseptic value prop. “We provide organization.” What you want to say is, “Give me an example.” We had one company that was an IT company, and they did IT for small businesses. Everybody knows small businesses.

A hundred thousand companies like that exist. There’s nothing more common than one of those companies.

Noble Purpose : A lot of companies are founded based on a bad experience.

Nothing is differentiated. They are not going to sell, “We are better IT people.” We said, “How do you make a difference?” They said, “We take away their IT headaches.” They all say that, too. I said, “Give me some examples,” and they started telling stories. This one customer said they didn’t get calls at 1:00 in the morning from their data center. Another customer said that they could finally focus on their business. It’s in that qualitative description that fuels the deep belief in the team. Not the concrete, “We improve efficiency by 5%.”

That’s the first thing that new hires should be taught. In the old world, what was the first thing they were taught? Products and features. That led us to ten years of pointing somebody to a demo and terrible conversion rates. You have no idea why somebody doesn’t buy after a demo. It’s because nobody cares about technology. They care about what it does for them.

Connected the dots. There are two ways you can connect the dots. The first way is what the company needs to do, which is deep intelligence about your customers. When you are rolling out a new piece of technology, you say, “Here’s our typical customer. Here’s what their day looks like. Here’s what their challenges are. Here’s what they spend time on that they hate. Here’s what they wish they could do. Here’s why we developed this piece of software, to help them with that.” It’s in the service of that. That’s what the company needs to do.

As an individual seller, when I’m making calls, I want to be saying, “A lot of people in your position are worried about this and this. How is that affecting you?” I want to get specific so that when I go back and present, instead of doing a demo, I say, “Here are the three things you told me were the most important. Let’s talk about how to handle those.” I can always tell, people send me their pitch decks, and I can always tell based on the order.” If it leads with the product, I say, “I bet you have a low conversion rate.” “Funny you should mention that. That’s why we called.”

The first one, how do you make a difference to your customers? It’s being able to articulate, understand, live that, and then communicate it. The second way of rolling this out, or thinking about it for your firm if you are reading, we do so much work with clients on this, how do you differentiate from your competitors? Remember, doing nothing is probably your biggest competitor.

Not taking any action. How do you do it differently? Again, the traditional reaction is, “Our product is 5% cheaper.” That’s great. You were the one that invented the iPhone. Good on you. You can show the product, do the scroll on a video, and we’ll all buy it but most people don’t have that. Most people work for a construction company or a metals company or a travel company where you could search the internet.

How you do it differently is both quantitative and qualitative. We were working with one company and I mentioned them to you. They were one of our early adopters. It was G Adventures based in Toronto. I remember the founder. We were there with the leadership team, and we were getting started. The founder was like, “Where does this live in terms of a lexicon and how we do it?”

I love them. They are a no-pretense company. One of the senior leaders said, “It lives effin’ in your heart.” One of the things I like about that is, how do we do it differently? One of the ways you do it differently could be, we are more curious. We care more. It could be some factual things. One company came up with, “We care more,” then we said, “if we care more, what are the small points during the sales and delivery process that could illustrate that?” It becomes very meaningful.

We are fond of saying, Lisa, that how you sell becomes part of that competitive differentiation.

The way they are experiencing it. If you say, “We care more,” what this company said is, “It’s because we care more, we do a lot of homework before we make our first sales call.”

Sales is the only profession defined by the people who do it badly.

It shows it’s not just talk. Team, as you start to think about applying noble selling purposes for your business, the third item that we talked about first is how do you make a difference to your customers and knowing that and how do you differentiate from your customers. The third one is what I love. On your best day, what do you love most about what you do? What a great question to ask and then have a group think about.

You said the operative word there, ask and have a think about. Too often, if a marketing team took these three questions, how do we make a difference to our customers? How do we do it differently? On the best day, what do most employees love about their job? They could probably come up with an answer, and it might be inspiring. They might do a deck or do a video or something like that. That’s great, but what I need for a top-performing team is I need it internalized within the team members.

Rather than telling them, how do we make a difference? Ask them. Rather than telling them, “How do we do it differently?” Ask them, and then that last one, on your best day, what do you love about your job? I want them to internalize that because too often the whole employee engagement conversation is around what can we do for them, versus how can we tee them up to where they have the tools and they understand. That question, on your best day, what do you love about your job? I’m not asking that so I can get a list and put it out and say, “Here’s what everybody loves about working here.” I want you to internalize that.

I’m sure it’s in Leading with Noble Purpose, which I’m going to look forward to reading. We are not asking questions so we then use it as evidence to manipulate you. It’s an authentic question. That’s an important thing for everybody reading this show to think about. Why are you in this profession? It’s too easy to get in, and the problem is once we are in, sometimes we might get addicted to things like a little bit of money, or we might be working for a cool company, but we don’t like this process of helping other people this way.

What Selling with Noble Purpose taps into is the two core human needs, belonging and significance. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and we want to know that our contribution matters. Oftentimes, people will say, “Do you do work for the American Cancer Society or the nonprofits?” Sometimes, we do work with a concrete company because you might not think concrete is the sexiest product in the world, but it’s holding up half the world. I had one guy come up to me and say, “I get this noble purpose, but my wife is the one that has the noble purpose because she’s a kindergarten teacher.” I was like, “You lead 250 people. It’s the same.” If you have customers that are buying from you, you are helping them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t buy.

This is where you find somebody who’s in the right spot. I have had two great examples where you find somebody doing something in life where they know why they are doing it, they know why they love it, and they are so good at it becomes contagious. I mentioned we are based in Toronto. We got hammered with a little bit of snow. It’s all melting very quickly. We are having some flooding problems, and we thought that we need some quick replacement of some downspouts.

My lovely wife had somebody come over and said, “You need to tear these down.” This guy took a look and said, “No. This is what’s happening. There’s clogging because of your positioning.” He took them down, unclogged them, put them back up, and said, “This is no big deal at all. You don’t need anything new.” We said, “That’s wonderful. How much?” He said, “No. I’m in the area. This is no big deal. It took me fifteen minutes.” You thought to yourself, what a giving experience.

Who are you going to call whenever you have a gutter problem? We have an app in the US called Nextdoor, where neighbors connect. Who are you going to put? Best gutter guy ever. It’s a great story, and a sales exec or a CEO might think, “I can’t invite people running around all the time for free.” What I want to draw people’s attention to in your story is the intent. He could have said, “It’s a minimum $50 service charge,” and you would have happily paid it. It’s the intent, “I am here to help you.” When you give your team that I, they see things differently. They look differently. They are more curious. They ask better questions. They come up with better solutions. The customer reads the intent.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

Lisa, this is a conversation we could have for a couple of hours. I have a feeling at some point we’ll figure out a way of getting you in front of some of our training workshops because I love this topic. I did want to say thank you specifically before we wrap for one thing. Our belief is that professional B2B selling is a profession. I have always said without even seeing your book, “It’s a noble profession.”

One of the things, there’s this move afoot out there to try and migrate away from the term sales. We work with a lot of folks who are in account management and say, “I could never be in sales,” almost with this 70-year-old stereotype that selling’s bad. This is the most important business discipline there is. Nothing starts until we get some revenue. It is noble. We can change this, but we need it with education and training, a client-first mentality, and a noble purpose. I believe someday there’s going to be formal certification. That’s an ongoing process in my lifetime. That’s why I love this, Selling With Noble Purpose. It resonated so much for me. This is where we take this whole business discipline. Thank you. What a great book.

It is interesting, and I’m very appreciative of that. That is my wish too, and I want to state the facts. Sales is the only profession that is defined by the people who do it badly because those pushy, grabby, lying salespeople, the research tells us they are not effective. Every profession has people that aren’t effective. There are bad teachers, bad doctors, and bad priests. We all know this, but we don’t allow it to define the profession. The research tells us that the salespeople that are at the top of their profession, performing, delivering the numbers, and making the wheels of commerce move, care very deeply about their customers.

Your book, you referenced Drive by Daniel Pink. Daniel’s been a guest on our show once, if not twice, and at the end of one of them, I asked him about sales or why he wrote To Sell Is Human. He almost said exactly what you said verbatim. He said he wrote To Sell Is Human because there was a gap between the stereotype of B2B sales and what his experience was with people who were very good at B2B sales. The gap was so big that he thought he had to investigate the topic.

The title is account manager and customer. All those matters, but there’s not a company alive that if you said, “Are sales important? Is revenue important?” They’d say no. That’s the act of producing it. It ought to be one of the top prestigious jobs in the company.

What a great place to leave it. What a pleasure meeting you and speaking with you again. Thank you so much for joining. How do readers learn more about you and what you do outside of buying Selling With Noble Purpose or Leading with Noble Purpose?

Google Noble Purpose and you’ll find me. You can go to our website and follow me on LinkedIn. I put a lot of content on LinkedIn for free. Whenever I write a piece for Harvard Business Review, I post it on LinkedIn.

Thanks again for joining, Lisa.

It’s such a pleasure.

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Team, thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to the show because that’s how we get great guests like Lisa McLeod when you do that. As well, we are growth-oriented. The reason we do this show is we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we are improving the lives of everyone in sales.

This show is meant to help, but we know we can get better. If you’ve got some constructive criticism for us about this show or what you’d like to see to make this even more valuable to you, we’d love to hear from you. Please email me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That’s my personal email address. I answer every bit of constructive criticism we get, and I thank you for it. In the meantime, we’ll see you next time and thanks again for joining.

Important Links

• Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud

• Leading with Noble Purpose

• The Triangle of Truth

• Forget Perfect

• Finding Grace

• Lisa McLeod Website

• Lisa McLeod on LinkedIn

• Can You Hear Me?

• Power Cues

• Nextdoor

• Drive

• To Sell Is Human

• How to Scale Your Sales Team Quickly

• Email MarkCox

About Lisa McLeod

Lisa McLeod (pronounced Mc-Loud) is the global expert on purpose-driven business and the bestselling author of Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. She works with clients like LinkedIn, Supportworks, Roche, and Splunk and is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

Lisa McLeod is the global expert on purpose-driven business. She is the author of five books, including her bestseller: Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud.

Lisa has spent two decades helping leaders increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. She developed the Noble Purpose methodology after her research revealed, that salespeople who sell with Noble Purpose, outsell salespeople who focus on targets and quotas.

Lisa is a former Procter & Gamble Sales Leader who founded her own firm, McLeod & More, Inc. in 2001.  She helps leaders at organizations like Cisco, Roche, Volvo, and Dave & Busters drive exponential revenue growth.  Lisa has keynoted in 25 countries and authored over 2,000 articles.  She has made appearances on the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News, and her firm’s work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

Lisa’s leadership book, Leading with Noble Purpose: How to Create a Tribe of True Believers is a breakthrough book that shows leaders how to win the hearts and minds of their teams and customers.

Build Trust, Connect With Clients, And Boost Your Sales With Jason Cooper, The Sales Relationship Coach

Ready to master sales training and elevate client conversations? In this episode, we explore how preparation, planning, and confidence drive successful sales with sales relationship coach  Jason Cooper. Learn to step outside your comfort zone, build instant rapport, and tap into the unconscious triggers shaping buyer perceptions. Discover how top sales leaders blend authenticity with strategy, using AI for quick client insights and deep selling tactics. We dive into mental rehearsal, body language, and thoughtful questions that move conversations — and prospects — forward. Join us to uncover strategies that turn first meetings into lasting relationships, helping you confidently guide clients through your sales funnel. Don’t miss this must-listen episode!

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

Listen to the podcast here

Build Trust, Connect With Clients, And Boost Your Sales With Jason Cooper, The Sales Relationship Coach

Running Effective Sales Workshops

In this episode, we're chatting with Jason Cooper, the sales relationship coach from Dublin, Ireland. I love these conversations when I'm speaking with other sales training practitioners in the industry because we get into the heart of how to effectively run a sales workshop and back behavior that drives results for the organization. Jason trains both individuals and teams. We're talking about a couple of things.

We talk about the use of humor to humanize the whole selling process. We talk about building trust and resilience. We talk about a little bit of neuroscience as it pertains to buyers and sellers. Jason does a little bit of research and work in that category. Those of you following us closely know I guested on Jason's podcast, The Global Sales Leader Podcast, which was super fun. We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation on the show.

As always, when I'm speaking with other practitioners, there's always something for me to learn. I hope there’s lots for you to learn and take away from this episode. If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe. As you know, that matters to us. That’s how we get great guests like Jason Cooper. Here he is, folks. Enjoy the episode. Jason Cooper, the sales relationship coach.

Jason, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to finish our home-and-home stand here. I was happy to be a guest on your podcast. It's great to have you on mine.

I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. As a starting point, Jason, why don’t you give us the short story of your professional journey? You and I, we do the same thing. We’re going to have a great conversation about sales training, coaching, and some of the things happening in B2B sales. I’m excited to speak with you. Give our audience the short story of how you got here.

Building Empathy And People Skills In Sales

I’m an Englishman. I live in Ireland. I moved over here many years ago and was transferred from one company to another. My wife is Irish, hence why I live in Dublin, Ireland. I’ve co-founded a couple of startups along the way with investments from a good EMEA company over here. Years ago, I went on my journey to learn about myself and also pivot what I can give back to the world. What I do now is teach others to believe in themselves, but also to be empathetic to the client and build up significant people skills. It’s all about people skills, everything we do in sales, regardless of what methodology we have. They’re all pretty much the same, to be honest with you.

It’s all about people skills. Everything we do in sales, regardless of the methodology we use — which are all pretty similar — comes down to connecting with people.

Jason, ours is much better, but we’ll get to that. You’re right. They’re very similar.

They are very similar, from slightly different approaches, whether you're an enterprise or speaking with smaller clients, but significantly the same. The conversations can be a little richer, the bigger the organization you speak to. I work with large and medium-sized businesses. I love the behavioral and psychological side of things. I love to understand how people work and operate using an eclectic array of different skillsets.

I love the approach. You can’t debate making connections with people and helping others, focusing on empathy and authentic curiosity. These are critical components to building trust and credibility. I know you’ve had deep experience and have been in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of folks training them. One of the tougher questions for both of us to kick around is that it doesn’t feel like human beings have changed that much in the last 100 years.

If we go back to Dale Carnegie and How to Win Friends and Influence People, it was always at the top of the nonfiction bestseller list from the New York Times. Even back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, the message was you can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you. With what you see, Jason, why is this a message we have to keep communicating to the professional sales community? Is there a reason we’re not getting this message?

Every generation has to start from scratch again. We’re reinstalling, so they might have left college or university, and that’s where they start. It’s time to flip the script a little bit and make them learn differently. I went through it, and I’m sure you did as well. Business communication skills are so important, and also having communication skills. It is not about you. Especially in business orientation, it’s all about the customer and their needs, wants, and desires.

If you can do that, that’s where the magic happens. If you can help them think, deep dive into their minds, and do whatever you need to do to help them feel at ease and resonate with what you have to say, that’s where the magic happens. I keep repeating. As you know, it’s how to teach people communication skills and people skills. On that basic level, how do you build better rapport with people, trust, and connection? We connected straight away. I know we’re on the same level. It’s all about that. It’s getting an interest in what you do

.

It is. Part of the joy of doing this show, and I’m pretty sure you’re doing the Global Sales Leader podcast, which is enormously popular, is that I’m interested to find out about you. The reason it resonates with some people reading the show is because of my authentic curiosity to continue to learn. I know I’m going to learn something in the next half an hour chatting with you. I want to learn something about Dublin. Authentic curiosity in this space is required from everyone out there.

Overcoming Sales Anxiety And Authentic Curiosity

One of the challenges for a lot of sales leaders is how you trigger that authentic curiosity. How do we evolve salespeople, particularly junior ones, from engaging with a buyer where they’re experiencing some anxiety? They'll default to scripts. It's pretty easy to end up pitching at somebody instead of giving them the confidence that they've earned the right to have a great conversation with someone and ask reasonable questions, stay engaged in the conversation instead of mentally going over to the filing cabinet to go, “What am I going to say next?”

That is the challenge a lot of people have. I was coaching someone who got stuck in a conversation and talked aimlessly about nothing. I even heard the other way saying, “I can hear you're busy in the background.” How do you know? You don't know that I’m busy. “I’m not going to take too much of your time,” but you are taking too much of their time. Get out of the way of making excuses while you're giving the call. That's where the anxiety comes from. You tend to waffle when you're nervous, but then you tend to waffle when you don't have a plan or an idea of where you need to go in the conversation. Build that immediate trust. You're calling them. Don't apologize, “I'm sorry to call you.” No, you don't. Why?

Confidence And Preparation For Sales Calls

“I'm happy or delighted I caught you. I've got some value and insight to provide. I can't wait to have a quick conversation with you here.” Without being too self-serving, a lot of these things come down to training or coaching. For anybody newly enrolled, this is a difficult thing. You're jumping outside a comfort zone. You've got to figure out a way to get to this point where you can feel calm but confident on an actual demand generation call or a first conversation with a client or prospect.

There are going to be some triggers in that conversation where they consciously sense your confidence, intent, likeability, and credibility, but probably 30 times more unconscious triggers where they sense whether this is going to be valuable or what your intent is. In our experience, and I'm certainly interested in your opinion, Jason, one of the challenges we see is that a lot of organizations where CEOs can sell for their company and the VP of sales can sell, but they can't train anybody else to do it.

When you start to break down exactly what happens in that engagement with a client or prospect, you get CEOs who aren't pitching anything. They're sitting down, having an authentic conversation, learning about business, and having a conversation about the individual's needs, wants, and desires in the future. That whole conversation translates into the buyer dropping their guard, dropping the wall, and feeding back information that's helpful to enable that CEO to determine, “Is there any way we can help you or not?”

It's all about deep selling, which is doing your due diligence in advance. Whether it takes a couple of minutes or twenty, depending on the size of the organization, find out a little bit about them. Go on LinkedIn and find out who they're connected to as an example, what the company is posting about, but also look at all the social feeds. Go on the website.

Nowadays, it's all about deep selling — doing your due diligence in advance. Whether it takes you a couple of minutes or 20, depending on the size of the organization, take the time to learn a little about them.

I use an AI tool called Perplexity. I type that in and find out everything I can about that person, even myself. I can go on and go, “How does Jason represent himself in the world? What type of buyer is Jason? What type of salesperson is Jason?” You can go with that quadrant of their red, blue, pink, orange, or whatever, and decide on that. You can use these tools.

In 5 minutes or 30 minutes before a call, list everything you need to know about that client so you can build that instant rapport. People like people like themselves. If you can find something to build up instant rapport, something is going on in the frontal lobe of our brain called mirror neurons. If you can connect with someone on their level and find out there's a synergy within that person, “You like rugby. I like rugby,” that's at the basic level. “I understand your company is doing such and such at the moment. How is that affecting you?” Do your due diligence. A bit of a cliché, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Planning And Research Before Client Meetings

Let's double-click on that. It could take 5 minutes or 20 minutes, but this is not something that takes an hour and a half. With all of the tools available, no one should ever have a first meeting with anyone under any circumstances without doing that research. We're doing a show. You and I do a lot of these, and we're going to do them back to back. I know what your career history is. I have your LinkedIn profile. I've already thought about the ten questions for this episode. Who knows if we're going to get to them? That way, I can jump into a conversation like this and be in the conversation.

Having that plan or structure for the conversation is important. Consciously, we think, "I have a plan. I know what's going to happen if this call goes well. If not, I’m going to feel good." Subconsciously, something comes across, Jason, because I feel like I've earned the right for a conversation, and that comes across. If I've done the research and have a couple of points of interest, I feel better about that conversation. The recipient is going to feel better because of Cialdini's persuasion. It's a great book by Robert Cialdini.

There are 6 or 7, depending on the book you've read.

It’s the elements that influence behavior. One of them is the Theory of Reciprocity. If you do something for me, I'm almost compelled to do something good for you. It doesn't mean I'm going to buy from you, but I might grant you a few minutes for a conversation. If you differentiate on that call by finding out who I am, what we do, and all those good things, it's in your DNA.

You're right about what you said before. You want to get back into the planning part. What you've suggested is having those ten questions in advance of what you might say. You might not ever get to them, but at least you've planned them in advance. They're specific to them, not some generic random question you picked out on ChatGPT, though it might help. As long as you have ten questions you can go with, those are there in advance. I have loads of questions around me up there that I might always use if I'm in a conversation, which helps me know where I need to go to maybe get to level two on that touchpoint.

First of all, thank you for that. I know where I'm trying to go and where I want to go. Jason, we did an exercise with someone we were coaching. We called it the Truth Serum Exercise. We did role plays with the group where we said, "Let's assume my wife slipped some truth serum into my breakfast this morning. I'm a buyer. Any question you ask me, I'm going to give you a truthful answer. Think about the five questions you're going to ask as part of this call. I'm not going to be difficult. I'm going to give you full and complete answers.”

What you find is people have no plan. Even if I gave them full and complete answers to the questions they asked and told the full truth, it still doesn't lead them anywhere close to a next step, earn the right to proceed with the next meeting, or move forward into a discovery. This is where your planning has to come into place. Think about workshopping those amazing questions.

I think so. It's practice and rehearsal. A lot is going on in our brains all the time. You mentally rehearse, whether you speak it out or speak it to yourself, whether you keep your eyes open or closed. Sometimes, I will mentally rehearse and visualize in my head. I would see that. I'm a visual thinker, and that's how I am. Other people are analytical, so they have to talk it out.

I don't. I just go in. I can create pictures in my head. I can create the conversation. What I'd like to create is a positive conversation that goes well. Hopefully, the majority of the time it will, because I've already presupposed in my head that I've imagined it to go well. Our brains are so powerful. We think and create images in our heads all the time.

How can we create that image that the conversation will go, "We've done our planning. We feel confident about that?” We're standing. Our conviction and body language are in the right way, that is congruent to what's going to be coming out of our mouth. If things are not aligned with our body language, they're not going to happen out of our mouths. It goes back to the age-old saying, “When you stand up and if you walk around and you're making sales calls, you smile into the phone. They don't know whether you're smiling or not." It's very true.

Neuroscience And Sales Coaching

You stay current with a lot of neuroscience, which I want to touch on. These are fundamentals. As it turns out, you've done 130 podcasts. I've done 100 and change. You learn very quickly. It's better to do these podcasts standing up. Both of us are standing up, moving around a little bit. We're careful not to touch the mics, but we're certainly standing up. You've had a perma-smile on for this entire discussion. That energy and enthusiasm become contagious.

I start to smile because you're smiling. I loved it when I was doing the research, finding out part of what you do on the sales training, coaching front, you're into neuroscience. I love neuroscience and behavioral science. Tell us a little bit about some of the work you do there and some of the top trends that might be helpful for either sales leaders listening or salespeople, things for them to think about.

Mapping Sales Processes

One of the couple of things for people to consider is everyone has a process, but it's all in their heads. Something I love to do is workshop a strategy and a methodology with them. Something I love to do is mind map everything. How I start and how to get people in the right context is one of the natural steps for you to make yourself a cup of coffee. What do you do specifically? What's your strategy behind that? This is how I would workshop it, but it's not me walking over there and making myself a cup of coffee.

Everyone has a process, but it's all in their heads.

What happens? How many steps do I need to take, specifically? Are they large steps? Are they small steps? How far is it away from the counter? What do I have to do next? I'll have to put my arm up, but how far do I have to put my arm up? How far is it into the cupboard before I can reach into a mug? It might sound very annoying, but there's a reason behind that. It’s a strategy. Make people think in a strategic direction. We whiteboard and mind map it out. What's your strategy? What's your methodology from every single point?

Let's merge everything and pull out a main methodology that everyone is using. Everyone has an idea about something. Crunch it down into 9, 8, or whatever points that might be. We get a clear path of a complete overall strategy. I like to pull things out, start again, and then push them back in with a clear, precise process that everyone can use. Larger and smaller companies do it. They go off in all the different directions. The larger the organization, the more sporadic it can be because you get the likes of very big companies. There are so many people in the organization. They'll be up to 200,000, all doing different things.

It becomes a real issue. I've had this debate and discussion with a lot of guests where they say, “We don't like a sales process. We don't want to hold somebody so strictly to a sales process.” I take your approach. I do want to map out the steps to complete a sale for the business and be quite specific about them. That's quite different from sales strategy, which is our game plan to progress along those steps successfully. None of that prohibits somebody from bringing their unique skillset and abilities to the table to do it their way.

If they understand process and strategy, then they have this game plan you spoke of at the beginning. I like that way of thinking. Your example of even making a coffee is so good. What you probably find, and I certainly find in people tuning in to this, is that we have a lot of folks who are mature salespeople, potentially in traditional industries. They’re extraordinarily good. Client-first, empathetic, solution-based, value selling, if you will.

When you say, “What's your sales process,” that confuses them because they don't think of things as a process. When you audit what they do, you will find that they're extremely meticulous. They repeat the same things over and over. They're habit-driven, and they've been successful. Once you map it out as a process, then you look at ways of improving it by 5% or 7%. We don't have to change somebody's behavior by 40% to get an uplift. You get a flywheel effect of getting 3%, 4%, or 5% better every month. It starts to become unbelievable in terms of the impact.

It's having people from different points of view in the business as well. Get the marketing person because marketing and sales should be aligned. Also, get production or whatever the words are in their businesses. Get them into the mix. Someone works with sales, and someone works with marketing. Sales and marketing people design or map out how they perceive it. The high performers work with the low performers, understand that process, and dissect it. Overall, you're getting a good collective viewpoint. That's what I love. That excites me to see. That's when the magic happens. That's when people understand how to improve and go, “This is the overall methodology. What can we improve on here?”

You do one-on-one coaching as well. Tell me a little bit about that process. How do you operate? If I were a sales leader saying, “I need a little help or support,” what's your approach or methodology for helping somebody like me?

That's going to be a tough one, helping you.

Sorry, let's have an easier one. Let's pull somebody off the street that you'll have an easier time working with than me.

First of all, I would always have a twenty-minute conversation with them. I can use AI note-takers to dissect exactly what they want and their challenges. There's no difference. Their challenges are where they see where they're falling on their process and what's going on inside of their heads. I can pull out and think about a five-step strategy for them, mindset first.

I always send a pre-coaching form for them to fill out so they get themselves thinking on five different points. They sent that to me before. We choose to find out what's stopping them from moving forward in certain aspects. Coaching is the way I look at it. You use elements of the Pareto Principle. You do 20% questioning. They talk 80% of the time. We flipped it, and you do the listening. You ask them another question until you can find the juicy parts to make them think.

All you're doing is chipping away at it. Another call could be more like, “Let's have a look at what you're doing. Let's have a look at your process. Let's have a look at how and what you do in a call. Let's role-play that out. Let's dissect the call afterward and find out what's missing, what you're saying, and what you're not saying.” There are lots of different things we can go to, but you always have to pivot.

Internal Dialogue And Managing Stress In Sales

That comes with experience. Work with them and change. If they go in another direction, we have to go, “Why are you doing that?” It's to understand what's going on in their world. I can see in their body language if they're under pressure. They're frowning a lot, stroking their chin, or stroking their neck. They're under pressure, and you go, “What's going on there?” There's something not happening because I've noticed something going on there. Their tone or language starts to get a little shaky because they feel like they're under pressure.

What's going on in their heads? We can change the narrative on how they're speaking to themselves. We all speak to ourselves all the time. What do we need to do to change that narrative in our heads to make it a little bit more constructive and impact them in a slightly different way? Change aspects of them and make them think more positively. Our brain will go to that reptilian side and go into the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism. That's when we waffle. Some nervous people will waffle because they're under stress, out of their comfort zone, and not used to asking good questions and getting into the place where they need to build trust and rapport but move on to the next step.

Sales Relationships: We all talk to ourselves all the time. So, how can we change that narrative in our heads to make it more constructive?

I love this idea of the internal voice and the critique. It's such a powerful discussion point, Jason. Over in Dublin in the UK, do you have something called Second City? Have you heard of Second City?

No, what's that? I was curious about that. What do you mean?

Have you heard of the television show Saturday Night Live?

Yes, I have.

Improv For Overcoming Perfectionism And Staying Present

Second City is the North American leader in improv. They train comedians and do sketches. When you look at the cast of Saturday Night Live, a super successful show, half of those people came from the world of Second City and improv. Comedy and improvisation are such a huge idea that they have classes for the public where you can learn.

After a long wait, my niece and I went to an improv class. It was amazing. They're not getting you up and saying, "Do some standup comedy." They're talking to you about some of the core concepts of improvisation. I was thinking the whole time, as I was going through this 90-minute class, that there was so much relevance to what we do. That inner voice and the facilitator was such a gentle coach. It was a very good room for twenty people.

He said, “When you're doing improv, there's no time to feel bad about what you just did. It's going to be two people on a stage. One is going to give something. You're going to try yes-and and continue. Most of us are wired to review what we said and critique it. We're challenged by perfectionism. The reality of improvisation is that you have no time for that. You are where you are. Whatever you said, you said. The truth is it was probably better than you think, but you've got to be in the moment to receive the next thing back from your partner."

He took us through a bunch of exercises where you're trying to control that inner voice. When they say, "Come up with a fruit," and you come up with strawberries, instead of thinking, "I should have said bananas," you go, "Strawberries, what a great answer." That sets your brain up to figure out the next one and the next one. If you criticize yourself, it shuts you down. This is so relevant to everybody here. You're in a sales conversation. You're in the middle of a negotiation. That inner voice is criticizing what you do.

You might even be doing a presentation. Instead of stepping back, you’re going, “Wherever you are, that's where you are today,” however you got there in that moment. It's amazing. Let's build on it from there. He used a wonderful example where he was leading an evening at the improv with a packed house. There were 4 or 5 teams going on the play. As he walked up to the stage, he fell flat on his face.

Without even thinking about what he did, he started crawling to the mic like a worm. He didn't even think about it. He got up and continued with the introductions. As it turned out, every consecutive team that came out to the stage crawled to the mic. By the end of the night, this had become something. His failure had turned into something funny that everybody built on. The outcomes were much more positive than sitting in the moment, feeling terrible about yourself, losing confidence, and shutting your mind down.

That's so very true. It's a good skill to learn. As a salesperson, having that in a workshop style, or if you want to have that intrinsic motivation to be slightly different and better than others in your sales team, improv is going to be a good lesson. It's going to help you think differently from every other salesperson doing the same old stuff. Let's think about how we can change the narrative in our brain, how we can think quickly and change things around. I've done that. There's a thing over here called Toastmasters.

We have that over here, too.

I think it came from Ireland originally. I don't know. That's what the Irish tell me anyway.

The Irish say that.

It has to be true somewhere. I remember going to it years ago when I was on my learning curve. There were two groups together, about 50 to 60 people in the audience. The first person had to come up and talk about a banana. I went, "I'll do it." I stood up and talked about a banana. That's impromptu, using your creative brain. If you say you'll do it without thinking about it, you'll tend to go ahead and achieve it because you've already said it and instructed it to your brain.

Some of the most successful people I've encountered don't think about that stuff. All they think about is getting on with it, doing it, and using the language correctly in their heads. They go, "That didn't work. Let me try something different. Let me learn, pivot, change the narrative, and have that better conversation next time." It's so powerful.

As you were saying about improv, I think a bit of fairy dust is on humor. I use it in the Chowdhury. You probably say it differently to me, but influence is likability. We're not going to be stand-up comedians making these calls. If you're humorous or lighthearted with it, and I do this all the time, you probably notice my energy. I like to give off a bit of humor. It helps people feel more relaxed. The humor's on me, not on anyone else.

Humor And Human Connection In Sales and Negotiations

Yes, self-deprecating humor. You talked about it in a post, which I love. It lightens the discussion. When you start thinking about how you want to spend all day, every day, I want to be having fun. I want to do important things that help people and add to the community. We love developing the potential of salespeople and sales leaders. Sometimes that's hard work, and sometimes that’s difficult work, but you want to have a good time while going through the process.

We're not putting somebody on the moon here. We're not worried about a rocket launch with lives at stake. There are super important things in life. The next sales call isn't going to make or break your life. The reality is that on a sales call, nobody's going to take money out of your pocket. The potential is only to add money to it. If I have a bad sales call, nobody's going to go into my bank account and remove money.

The next sales call is not going to make or break your life. In fact, no one on a sales call is going to reach into your pocket and take money out. The only potential is to add money to it.

There are only good things that are going to happen. Focusing on the pleasant and the positive puts everyone in a frame of mind where they're a little more open. It's a very human thing. We had a guy named Jon Selig on the show. He talks a lot about comedy and sales. I shared that in the most intense negotiation of my life, we were negotiating a billion-dollar transaction to sell to a big bank. For deals of that size, they hire professional negotiators.

With all due respect, these aren't folks we would want to go out and party with. We would leverage comedy or a little bit of humor at the start of a very extended negotiation, six months of tough negotiation, to lighten the mood at the beginning of the day. It made everyone a little more human. We could have a human connection and then get to the work at hand.

That's so good. Again and again, it puts people at ease. I always incorporate it in everything I do, even when I have to pick up the phone or jump into a swimming pool. The first thing I do is make everything lighthearted before we get into it, which builds me into humor but also tracks what we do. I'm using a recording thing. I'll be asking them, and that's revolutionized what I'm doing. I'd like to look at the data behind things. It can tell me what I'm doing well and what I can improve on. I know I'm jumping around a bit, but that's how my brain works.

I'm a visual thinker. I think in things, but also it will tell me if I'm being too humorous or okay, but also telling me how much I'm listening and who's doing most of the talking. It's there to tell me that things are going well or not so well, what I need to review, and how I need to improve. I’m a little bit OCD in data when I'm reviewing it because I want to make sure from past failings and not realizing it, but now I can see it and go, “I can make a difference and change.” Making that change in me can make a change in other people as well.

You're methodical and precise about it, Jason. What are some of the sources of information for you in the outside world? How do you stay current with things like what's happening in sales, neuroscience, or behavioral science? I see a lot of Harvard publications behind you there. We love those, too. They're always referenced. Where do you go to stay current with what's going on?

A couple of things are that I have an eclectic array of insights. As you suggested, the Harvard Business Review. I don't necessarily just read sales books because I'm being narrow-minded if I am. There are other things around that touch on those touch points that can lead to selling, like business books and business communications. I've got a business writing book behind me, and that's essential.

I have something on getting into the flow state and also other things that might not necessarily be in sales. I get my source of information from reading something slightly outside. Also, audiobooks. I read all of the sales books but also like to touch on other different subjects. I learn from other people like yourself. I learn from you and everyone else I interact with. I constantly scan. I take a few moments to review and see what's going on around there, whether it's a seminar on exhibition or something like that. I have to learn.

The way I look at it is if I can take one thing away and apply it to myself, I can teach it forward. That's how I like to see it. I'm going to spin it back in as well. A lot of salespeople don't understand business and get this lovely basic salary. I am jumping around, but it is all context behind it because having a collective array of knowledge gives you an understanding of business and business processes and ideas.

As a salesperson, you are a commodity. You cost the business money, so you get a lovely basic salary, and then you get commission on top. You might get a phone, but then you have to cover overheads like marketing. You're nodding your head because you're a business owner yourself. You know what it's like. Does that help the salespeople to understand what that means and how they justify their existence?

They get all these lovely leads to come through, but how much is a lead worth? What do you need to do to justify your existence? It’s the practicalities of us as salespeople to understand our value, our worth, and how much we've been invested in. How much can the leaders help, inspire, and motivate us to give back to the business, and for them to reinvest back into the business?

It is going back to the box and how we learn and think. Some of the most successful salespeople out there understand the value of their business. Hopefully, at some stage, if they're extremely successful, they start their own business or do something else. These are the sort of things that I want to do. Help people think and change. It's about change. I'm not going to use the word growth as much as I used it. Change their narrative and thinking and be successful. That's everything that I do.

That's a nice wrap-up. Jason, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure meeting you. How do people learn more about Jason Cooper or engage you?

I'll always be happy to. LinkedIn is number one. That's my personal brand. I love you to connect with me on that. I always have a website called JasonCooper.io. I don't use Twitter anymore. I've gone off that. My Instagram is @JasonACooper. You can get me on the various other social media platforms, but LinkedIn is the number one source. That's where I'm at a lot of the time. That's how I give value to the world. I also love to get some good connections and get the conversation going.

Jason, it’s great to meet you. Thanks for joining.

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Team, thank you, as always, for joining us. The intent of this show is to help improve the performance and productivity of B2B sales. In doing so, what we believe is going to happen is that we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople. That's why we do it. We know we can always improve these episodes, and you help us do that. Please keep your constructive criticism coming our way. We love hearing that feedback. I respond to each and every note that we get. Keep sending them to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I respond to every bit of constructive criticism we get.

We love the direct feedback. Don't worry about dancing around things. We've made lots of changes to the show based on great suggestions we've received from people. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show and tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Jason Cooper because they want to know we've got an audience. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Jason Cooper

• The Global Sales Leader Podcast - Past episode featuring Mark Cox

• How to Win Friends and Influence People

• Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig - Past episode

• Jason Cooper on LinkedIn

• Jason Cooper on Instagram

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

About Jason Cooper

With over 25 years of global experience, Jason is a renowned coach and trainer specialising in high-performance bespoke sales training and coaching. He empowers individuals and companies to unlock their full potential by creating meaningful, lasting relationships that drive results.

Jason’s unique approach goes beyond traditional sales techniques, focusing solely on closing deals. Instead, he emphasises the importance of building trust and authentic connections as the foundation for sustainable business success. His customised programmes enhance self-motivation, develop personalised relationship strategies, and cultivate the resilience to thrive in competitive markets. Through high-performance coaching and tailored sales training, Jason equips sales teams with the skills to deeply understand their client’s needs, foster genuine engagement, and consistently exceed targets.

His methods drive revenue growth and long-term success by turning conversations into opportunities and prospects into loyal customers. Jason’s mission is clear: to help professionals transform their approach to sales by making relationships the ultimate competitive advantage.

Beyond Sales: How The Go-Giver Transforms Business Success With Bob Burg

If you're looking for a book that will truly transform your approach to success, then join Mark Cox as he sits down with Bob Burg, co-author of the transformative bestseller, The Go-Giver. They explore how shifting your focus from "receiving" to "giving" can revolutionize your life and career. Bob shares his journey from sports broadcasting to sales, revealing the pivotal moment he discovered the power of value and focusing on others' needs. Drawing on insights from The Go-Giver, co-authored with John David Mann, Bob illuminates the five laws of stratospheric success. Break free from the unconscious barriers holding you back and embrace a mindset where putting others first leads to genuine abundance.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Beyond Sales: How The Go-Giver Transforms Business Success With Bob Burg

We've got a great conversation for you because we're talking to Bob Burg who's the Author of The Go-Giver, a little story about a powerful business idea. This book, along with his Co-author, John David Mann. They wrote this book and became enormously successful. It almost became a little cottage industry for them because there was this book, which did super well, then they wrote a book called The Go-Givers Sell More for sales. They wrote another book about leadership, which is The Go-Giver Leader, and then another book called The Go-Giver Influencer.

There are lots of different books. They are parable-based books, which are great. It's a very interesting story about the protagonist Joe who's a real go-getter. Through some work with a mentor named Pindar, also known as the Chairman, he learns to be a go-giver. The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success that are shared in the book are the law of value, compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity. Bob and I chat about all of these and some great backstories as part of the book.

You're going to enjoy this episode with one exception. I made a mistake in the episode. Bob references that Pindar, the Chairman, is based on an amazing business executive thought leader in Canada. His name was Bob Proctor. I confused Bob Proctor with a guy named Bob Rumball who is also an amazing business leader in Toronto who did charitable work, particularly with the deaf. We did a little work with him.

My mistake, my apologies, and my fault where I confused these two gentlemen in the show. If you can overlook that, you can enjoy the episode. By the way, this episode is shorter. It's a 30-minute episode. We've received some feedback from you that you'd like shorter episodes, so there'll be a few of these. Let me know what you think. Team, here's Bob Burg. We're going to talk about The Go-Giver.

Bob, welcome to the show. It's so great to meet you.

It's my pleasure. What an honor to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.

The Journey To Writing The Go-Giver: Bob Burg's Professional Career

I am pretty excited about this episode. When I originally read The Go-Giver, so much of this book is well-suited to a client-first sales executive. It leads itself beautifully into how to sell well. People on this show have heard this stuff lots of different times. This book became a cottage industry for you. You've done multiple different versions, including one for sales, leadership, and influencing because it's so enormously popular. First of all, amazing stuff. Tell us the short story of your professional career that led you to write this book with your teammate, John David Mann, originally.

I began as a broadcaster. First at a sports radio then was in television news for a little bit with a very small ABC affiliate in the Midwestern United States. It wasn't long before I graduated into sales, as I’d like to say. I floundered for the first few months because I had had no formal sales training, but fortunately, I came across a couple of books in the bookstore. One was by Tom Hopkins and one was by Zig Ziglar, two of our heroes in the sales space. They’re legends.

I took those books home and began studying them and spending hours learning. It opened up a whole new world for me. I had no idea there was a methodology system, if you will, to selling. I define a system as simply a process, and I know you talk a lot about processes. It is the process of predictably achieving a goal based on a logical and specific set of how-to principles, the key being predictability. If it's been proven that by doing A, you'll get the desired results of B, then all you need to do is A and continue to do A. Eventually, you'll get the desired results of B. That was inspiring to me.

From there, I ate up every book and, back then, a cassette tape program. I went to seminars about personal development and realized that it was a lot about building yourself on the inside. Success is an inside job. It manifests itself outwardly, but it begins in the head and the heart. I loved it. Eventually, years later, I worked my way up to sales manager of a company and started also showing others. As the old Seinfeld episode say, “Yada, yada, yada,” and here we are years later talking. It has been a very fun ride and like you, I love selling. I love the concept of it and so forth.

Folks, those few people reading, read the book. Based on the sales figures, I think most of you have but it’s The Go-Giver, a little story about a powerful business idea. One of the reasons it's such an amazingly popular book is it’s written in the parable-type format that made things like The Wealthy Barber enormously successful.

That is one of my favorite books.

David Chilton is fantastic. Another is The One Minute Manager back in the day with Ken Blanchard. These are small, short, but incredibly powerful books. In this one, the concept of The Go-Giver comes from our protagonist, Joe, who's a real go-getter, sweating at the end of a quarter as he is working for Clason-Hill Trust Company.

The greatest leaders, the top influencers, and the most consistently and sustainably successful money earners always look out for the interests of others.

A little nugget, Clason-Hill is after George Clason, author of the famous The Richest Man in Babylon, and Napoleon Hill and the different series of books that we did. What do they call them? Not chestnuts, but Easter eggs.

I love that. Bob, in our first book that we got out there, it’s all these old relative names. It was the nicknames of family members and relatives names that I love. Napoleon Hill, I didn't pick that up. What a great Easter egg. As Joe goes through his journey, feeling the pressure, wanting to be successful, and wanting to sell, he gets an opportunity to meet with the guru, Pindar, also known as Pindar the Chairman. He ends up being taught in a very giving way the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. Without giving away the whole book, is it okay if we talk about these five laws and maybe share a little bit about each?

Yes. By the way, are you in Toronto?

I am in Toronto.

Pindar is loosely based on Toronto's own late Bob Proctor. I don’t know if you remember Bob, but a great guy. He was a very abundance-oriented, giving, and sharing person. He had this great voice. He was this handsome, gray-haired guy. We modeled Pindar off one of your fellow Torontonians.

Here's the amazingly small world to connect it. For those reading, this is the first time Bob and I have met. I went to school beside Bob's facility, which was the Center for the Deaf. Bob worked with the deaf in a very significant way. He was incredibly giving. About once or twice a year, I played high-end hockey for that school. Our hockey team would go over and play ball hockey with his group. Bob was so passionate. I remember a couple of speeches. He talked about being wise and unwise in terms of his motivational speaking, but what a personality and a leader. We go right across the way, bring our gear, go into their gym, and play ball hockey with them for a couple of hours. It was insanely fun.

What a great story.

What a great man. There are going to be more Easter eggs that come out in this book. This is fantastic. At some point in time, we'll get to the Easter eggs. You were a Golden Gloves Champion, by the way. Did I see that in my research right?

Yes. It was a long time ago.

The First Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Value

I'm still going to stay on my best behavior. I have a feeling, somehow, you'd get to me and it wouldn't end well for me. We'll start with the 1st of the 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success that Pindar ends up coaching Joe on and Joe starts to learn through the fable. The first one is the Law of Value. Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payments.

When you first hear counterintuitive or when you think about it, you’re like, “Give more in value than I take in payment, isn't that a recipe for bankruptcy?” We need to understand the difference between price and value. Price is a dollar figure. It's a dollar amount. It's finite. It is what it is. Value is the relative worth or desirability of something to the end-user or beholder. In other words, what is it about this thing, product, service, concept, idea, or what have you that brings so much worth or value to another human being that they will willingly exchange their money for it and be glad they did while you also make a very healthy profit?

A quick example would be the accountant you hire to do your taxes who charges $1,000. That's her fee or her price. Through her hard work, getting to know you, your needs, and your business, and learning, she's able to save you $5,000 in taxes. She gave you countless hours of time. She provides you and your family with the security and peace of mind of knowing it was done correctly.

She gave you well over $5,000 in value in exchange for a $1,000 price. She gave you more in value than you took in payment. You feel great about it. She also made a very healthy fee because it was worth it for her to exchange her time, energy, knowledge, wisdom, and help for that $1,000. You have more in value than you take in payment because value and price are not the same thing.

Bob, this is where this is so powerful. You said, “I'd feel good as the recipient of her work because I get a 5X, 10X, or 100X return.” The truth is as a business professional she feels better, too. This is one thing we see in professional sales where a lot of the folks new to B2B professional sales, our profession, don't always understand the impact that they're going to have on somebody else's business with the product or service they're providing. As a result, they feel like they have imposter syndrome or they feel like they're taking instead of understanding there's a real impact. They have to be able to understand that impact. They need business acumen and industry acumen, and then they need to be able to communicate that value.

You summed it up perfectly. There's nothing more I could ever even add to that.

The Second Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Compensation

Thanks for that, Bob. We'll go to the second one in the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, which is the law of compensation. Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. It is so fundamental.

Where law number one says, “Give more in value than you take or receive in payment.” Law number two tells us, “The more people whose lives you touch with the exceptional value you provide, the more money with which you'll be rewarded.” In that part of the book, Nicole Martin, the CEO, told Joe, the protege, “Law value represents your potential income, but it's not enough to serve one person no matter how well you're serving them.”

The law of compensation is about your actual income because it's how many lives you impact. That's why we're such big believers in referral-based business because you can touch more people's lives through referrals. Why? With referred prospects, it's easier to set an appointment. You're going in on borrowed influence. With a referred prospect, price is less of an issue.

Authenticity is not about having no boundaries. It’s about acting congruently with your values.

Based on influence and borrowed trust, you go in with gravitas. You're able to sell at a high value rather than a low price. With a referred prospect, it's easier to complete the sale because of borrowed trust or what we call vicarious experience. They've never done business with you personally but someone who they know, like, and trust has said, “This is the person you need to see. They'll take great care of you. Their company's fantastic. Their product and service is good,” and so forth.

One of the biggest benefits of a referral-based prospect is that they're already of the mindset that that's how you do business because that's how they met you. To use Bob Proctor's words, their paradigm is that you meet your prospects through referral. You sell on high value rather than low price. You complete the sale, and then as part of that process, you are referred to others.

It is so powerful when we get into the referrals and so underutilized. When I was doing a workshop with somebody, I had to do a deeper dive into referrals. We also want to call out another one of Bob's books, Endless Referrals. It is also a very strong expert in this space that you want to check out. One of the things that was interesting was the difference in terms of a sale or referral that if you remind the person you're working with that they came in through a referral.

The Third Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Influence

There was a massive sample size in this particular study. For half of them, they reached out to their existing base. In a professional way, they were asking for referrals. In another half, they went to them and said, “Remember, you came to us through a referral. Is there anyone you'd like to show that same consideration to and refer us to them to see if we can help them?” There was a 20% uptick in the second one reminding that person they originally came to you that way. It is very powerful. The third law is the law of influence. Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.

This one not only sounds counterintuitive when you first hear it. It sounds counterproductive. It is downright Pollyanna-ish at worst. It’s like, “Place the other person's interests first?” If you think about it, the greatest leaders that you know, the top influencers, the most consistent, and sustainably successful money earners, this is simply how they run their lives and conduct their business. They're always looking out for that other person's interest.

Let me qualify that statement if I may. When we say to place the other person's interest first, we don't mean you should be anyone's doormat, a martyr, or self-sacrificial in any way. It's simply that Joe, the protege, learned from several mentors what we call the golden rule of selling or the golden rule of business. All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust. There's no faster, more powerful, or more effective way of eliciting those feelings toward you or in others than by genuinely moving from that I focus or me focus to that other focus. Looking to Sam, one of the mentors, he advised Joe, “Make your win all about the other person's win.”

When people say, “Is that the real world?” It brings me back to something I used to say when I was on the road speaking. I'm in my 60s, so I don't get on airplanes anymore, but when I was, I used to speak at a lot of sales conferences. I know you do, too. One of the first things I would say to the audience is, “Nobody's going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet. They're not going to buy from you because you have a sales goal, you need the money, or even because you're a nice person, which I know you are. They're going to buy from you because they believe they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so.”

Doesn't it make sense that when you can take your focus off, you make it about them? What do they need? What do they want? What do they desire? What challenges are they having that you can help mitigate? What strengths do they maybe have that they don't even know about that you can help expand? When we do that and we focus on them and make it about them, not about us. We're creating much more of what we call a benevolent context for the sale to occur.

Bob, why is it so hard for us to get this? That concept was made famous originally by Dale Carnegie where you can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can in two years by trying to get them interested in you. Why is it that almost every generation needs to hear this again and again?

The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea

It goes against human nature. It’s so hard to believe it. Part of that is we know we have this great product or service. We know it would help them so we're going to talk about the product or service, which they don't care about. We've been in business for our company for many years, which they don't care about. None of that matters. I'd love another thought of Dale Carnegie's. Ultimately, people do things for their o wn reasons, not ours. We've got to tie that into what their reason is. It does fly in the face of human nature. We're not thinking that way. That's why there are people like you out there who are teaching us that's how you do it.

Thanks for that. The other thing that's been a bit of a challenge in the past couple of years in the world of technology, particularly SaaS, is sales organizations exploded with investment capital money. That money goes to new sales resources being hired. They're not always worried about the cost of sales but they're hiring huge numbers of salespeople.

Back in those days, those salespeople weren't properly trained. They didn't know to do anything except try and get on a call and either book a demo or pitch at somebody because it's easier than taking an authentic interest in somebody else or having the business acumen to understand how to lead that kind of conversation. This short-term thinking, to a certain extent, poisoned a little bit by the buying community because they're a bit tired of getting pitched at or being demoed at.

It's February 14th when we're recording this episode. It's Valentine's Day. There's one other thing about putting other people's interests first that I loved in the book. On page 78 of The Go-Giver, Pindar explains why his marriage has lasted so long and it has been wonderful because Joe was amazed by it. Pindar has been married longer than Joe has been alive.

Pindar said, “I believe there's one reason and only one reason that we've stayed together so long and are as happy together as we were 48 years ago, more so, in fact. That reason is this. I care more about my wife's happiness than I do about my own. All I've ever wanted to do since the day I met her is make her happy. Here's the truly remarkable thing. She seems to want to do the same thing for me.” We're not going to get on the relationship pedestal, but there's a nice tip for all of us on a very special day, Valentine's Day. There's a great tip from Pindar we're all going to apply.

That was the subplot in the story.

The Fourth Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Authenticity

There are always different layers of learning. Principle number four, the law of authenticity. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. That is another tough thing for salespeople. Certainly, for me, when I started, I had a veneer. I wanted to be Mr. Perfect and Mr. Uptight. Behind the scenes, I was partying and doing all these crazy things but I would never show that I was buttoned-up so tight I was going to burst. Let's talk a little bit about the law of authenticity.

Debra, who was the mentor in that part of the story, shared a very important lesson that she had learned. It is that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills, and people skills, as important as they are, and they are indeed very important. They are also all for naught if you don't come at it from your true authentic form.

When you do, when you show up as yourself day after day, week after week, or month after month, people not only feel good about you or great about you. They feel comfortable and safe with you. Why? Again, it is human nature. People want to be able to make sense of their world in a world that often doesn't make sense. They want to understand their world in a world that's often difficult to understand. They crave consistency in others, and this is a world that's often very inconsistent. When you are that person who shows up that same way, you inspire trust.

Let me share one thought if I may. I've noticed this since social media has become even more prolific. Authenticity has almost become equated with having no boundaries just as you say, do, or sell. Whatever you want because it's all authentic. It misses the point. It’s like the person who says, “I have anger issues and I yell at people a lot. If I were to act any differently, that wouldn't be authentic of me.” That's baloney. That's malarkey.

Giving and receiving are not opposite concepts. They're simply two sides of the very same coin, and they work in tandem.

It simply means this person has an inauthentic problem that they need to authentically work on in order to become a better, higher, authentic, more effective version of themselves. We never want people to take authenticity so as to not grow. It's to use that as an impetus to become the best highest version of yourself. I personally define authenticity very simply and that it it’s acting congruently with your values. If we do that, that's authentic.

What a great lesson for everybody reading. Sometimes, with a lot of salespeople, particularly those new to the industry, they are confused by what we do because they're confused by social media and the entertainment world or modern culture. Their view of selling is, “The salesperson is that person with the magic tongue that can talk me into anything.” You can't talk anyone into anything. It's impossible. People are repulsed if they feel like they're being manipulated in any way, but this is what we think.

Some junior folks that we've come across are almost proud to say they sold somebody something they didn't need because they're not getting the coaching. You go, “That's the exact opposite of what you want to do. How do you feel about that?” I love that idea of bringing your best self but your true self.

We've got somebody coming up on the show, a guy named Dr. Nick Morgan. I'm not sure if you know Nick. He's certainly at your level being an amazing author. He’s got a couple of books like Power Cues and one's called Can You Hear Me? We have the ability to sense the intent of another human being. There are conscious things we're looking for but subconsciously, there are millions of things we pick up on.

This is why sometimes you meet somebody and they're saying all the right things but for some reason, you don't feel comfortable with them. There are other people you meet at some point in time, particularly face-to-face, and you feel there's a connection. It's because subconsciously, you're picking up on all of these cues where their intent is on display subconsciously. You can pick up on these things.

His teaching sounds fascinating.

The Fifth Law Of Stratospheric Success: The Law Of Receptivity

Without getting into it too much, he had a brain trauma as a young person. For a couple of months, although he could hear and speak, he couldn't communicate well with anybody because the center of his brain that was picking up all these subconscious things had been damaged. Suddenly, it was turned on again and then this became his life’s work. It’s a very interesting story. We're on to the last one, the law of receptivity. The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. In the book, Joe has some difficulty with this one. He has a little difficulty with all of them, but particularly the law of receptivity. Tell us about that one.

The law of receptivity is making the point that you breathe out but you also have to breathe in. It's not one or the other. It's both. You breathe out carbon dioxide and you breathe in oxygen. You breathe out, which is giving. You breathe in, which is receiving. Giving and receiving are not opposite concepts. They’re simply two sides of the very same coin and they work in tandem. Bob Proctor was so wonderful at teaching this. The challenge is that the world around us gives us very anti-prosperity messages or negative messages when it comes to money, business, and abundance.

Our belief systems are a combination of upbringing, environment, schooling, news media, television shows, and cultural mores. Everything. Plus, the personal experiences along the way that we've had caused us great harm in terms of not allowing ourselves to receive because so many messages that we get is, “If you're making a lot of money, you must do it on the backs of people or must have done it dishonestly.” How many messages do we get all the time with that? We certainly see it in television and movies all the time. That gets into the unconscious.

There's this fight between the conscious who understands on a logical level that the more value you provide to the more people, the more money you're going to receive. That's great, but then it's fighting with the unconscious that’s saying, “If I'm making money, I must have done something wrong or been dishonest.” That's why I'm a big believer in making a proactive study of prosperity. We cover it on a surface level in The Go-Giver, but to go deep.

It is to study the late Bob Proctor, David Neagle, Sharon Lechter, Ellen Rogin, Lisa Peterson, Randy Gage, and Ken Honda. These are people who write and speak on this whole thing. They're wonderful with it, and 99% of what they teach is simply how to get past those unconscious anti-prosperity blocks. It's magnificent stuff that they do. Focus on the value that you're providing and giving, and then allow yourself to receive.

Think of the joy you feel. If you know you have value to contribute, then all of those sales conversations are enjoyable. Unfortunately, in the world of B2B sales, 1 in 9 people in the US is in a B2B sales job, and a good portion of them are not particularly happy every day because they feel “it's a grind.” There's a difference between hard work and a grind. Hard work is hard work. A grind is painful hard work you don't want to be doing. That’s doing the gardening in the backyard for me, frankly.

Having a conversation with someone where I know I'm in a position to help them, I'm authentically curious, and I want to give love to receive is going to make me feel better about what I'm doing every day. It also gives me a little more professional persistence with rule number two to make sure I'm having enough of these conversations.

Why The Go-Giver Is A Must-Read For Leaders And Influencers

You've talked about some amazing authors and shared them. I hope everybody benefits from that. I'm going to take a note here again and say you are an amazing author. This is a spectacular book. I'm not the first to mention this. This is a cottage industry, this whole Go-Givers. Go-Givers Sell More is another book that we read before. There are Go-Givers for leadership and influencers. These are powerful messages applied in a very entertaining way.

This is a two-hour read. Picking up this book and reading this book cannot be a mistake. There are few things in life you can say, “This is the right thing to do.” I'm telling you, folks, this is the right thing for you to do. Inside the cover, many of our guests have provided sparkling testimonials to Bob and John David Mann about the book, whether it's Daniel Pink or Stephen M. R. Covey. They loved this book, and so did I.

John David Mann is a writer and storyteller. He is a brilliant guy. These never would've been anywhere near where they were without his brilliance.

What a great team. Bob, what a great pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for joining the show. How do people find out more about you? What's the best way to learn more or connect in?

The best way is to go to Burg.com. Pretty much everything's there.

We'd like to thank our amazing guest, Bob Burg. What a great education. The joy of this show is we get to learn when we're reading these books before these amazing authors join us. Team, I'd like to thank you for joining. As you know, the intent of this show is to help improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales because we believe if we can do that, we improve the lives of professional salespeople.

Thanks for reading. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to make these episodes more valuable to you. We're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. You can send your suggestions to me, Mark Cox, at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I check that personally and respond to every suggestion we get. In the meantime, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Bob Burg

• Bob Burg on LinkedIn

• Bob Burg on Instagram

• Bob@Burg.com

• John David Mann

• The Go-Giver

• Go-Givers Sell More

• The Go-Giver Leader

• The Go-Giver Influencer

• The Wealthy Barber

• The One Minute Manager

• The Richest Man in Babylon

• Endless Referrals

• Power Cues

• Can You Hear Me?

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• Saleswise Live™

About Bob Burg

For more than 30 years Bob Burg has helped companies, sales leaders, and their teams to more effectively communicate their value, sell at higher prices with less resistance, and grow their businesses based on Endless Referrals.

Bob has regularly addressed audiences ranging in size from 50 to 16,000 — sharing the platform with notables including today’s top thought leaders, broadcast personalities, Olympic athletes and political leaders including a former United States President.

Bob is coauthor (with John David Mann) of the International Bestselling business parable, "The Go-Giver" which has sold well over One Million Copies and been translated into 30 languages. His is Founder of The Go-Giver Academy, an online resource featuring "The Success Vault”.

He is an advocate, supporter and defender, of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve.

Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig

Comedy writing can be a secret weapon for revenue teams who want to be more engaging. In this episode, Mark Cox welcomes stand-up comedian Jon Selig, who created Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams, to share his secrets to using humor effectively. Jon, a former enterprise tech salesperson turned comedian, reveals the surprising parallels between stand-up and sales and how laughter builds trust and drives revenue. Learn how comedy writing helps craft relevant messages that resonate with your audience, focusing on preparation, timing, and punchy delivery. Tune in and transform your sales and marketing with the power of laughter.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Comedy Writing For Revenue Teams: How To Engage, Connect, And Convert With Jon Selig

Is there a place for comedy and professional sales? If you've listened to a few of these podcasts, you'd certainly understand that comedy has been a big part of my life professionally and personally. When I think back to some of the best relationships I've got, they started with this love of comedy where it's my older brother or friends that I went to university with. We were insane fans of Monty Python and SCTV. In later years at times, even something like Saturday Night Live, just love this idea of laughing.

I'm really excited for our conversation because we're talking about this alignment between comedy or stand-up comedy and professional sales. We found somebody who's got just such a unique niche in this space. It's Jon Selig. Jon is the founder and chief of staff in Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams. It's a sales training consultancy. Help go-to-market professionals leverage skills, processes, and methods of stand-up comedians to transform them into more consultative sellers and stronger communicators, help them use storytelling, and then arm them with impactful messaging for top-of-the-funnel efforts and beyond.

It's really interesting when we start to get into the alignment between comedy and sales. First of all, we start with the idea that they're both performance arts. When you start, it takes a lot of courage to get up there and do that. There's a way of creating connections. Comedy is a great way of creating connections and building authentic human relationships. Frankly, there are some tactical things in handling rejection and sometimes failure with humor. I do think there are these more strategic, positive things like in stand-up comedy, you really need to know your audience.

The Journey From Enterprise Sales Expert To Comedy And Sales

You've got to engage them quickly. You've got a personalized message. You've got to break down complex ideas into simple jokes. Think of all of those things I just said. Of course, they're all so applicable in B2B sales today, which is this niche that Jon teaches on, which is so smart in my view. This is just a great conversation. Obviously, it went in a flash for me having this conversation. Jon has a background as an enterprise sales rep with Oracle doing multiple different roles for many different years.

He really does understand that world. He jumped into this world of comedy as an adult. That talk about a creative sleep there. I think you're really going to enjoy the show. I did for sure. As always team, two things, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that really matters to us. That's actually how we get really good guests like Jon. Also, share your constructive criticism.

If there are ways that we can make this show more effective for you, that's what we want to do. We're really trying to create an MBA in professional sales here with this body of work on the podcast. Drop me a note at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts. We love constructive criticism and we respond to every note we get. Team, here's Jon Selig.

 Jon, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be in my own apartment.

Listen, I was really excited. This was a red-letter day for us for a couple of reasons. Like most people, I think I'm funny. At this stage of my life, by the way, I also inject just a ton of humor into almost every aspect of life, where it's appropriate and where it's not appropriate. This topic of comedy and sales, I've heard you on other people's podcasts, and I just think it's such an interesting topic. It's also really interesting to me for a lot of reasons, I think the bravest people in the world are stand-up comedians who get up in front of a mic and try and make a room full of strangers laughing, all those good things. First of all, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you.

I'm super excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I would not say that stand-up comedy takes bravery whatsoever. It just takes a lack of dignity.

There you go.

People say that, “You're so brave.” I'm like, “I don't know. I just have a little bit less shame than a lot of people.” I don't know if that constitutes bravery, but I'll let you believe that if that's what you want to believe.

Let's go with the bravery thing. I think it looks better for you. It's also better for the show notes. By the way, as I was rushing here to get onto the podcast, one of my favorite podcasts is Fly on the Wall. I don't know if you listen to that.

I do.

With David Spade and Dana Carvey talking about some of the experiences of Saturday Night Live, and it's just amazing to me. Again, the bravery, the courage, because many of the best performers, there's only been about 450 people ever who have been performers on Saturday Night Live. Like over the 50 years, it's really not that big a group. Many of them suffered just paralyzing stage fright, where they'd be having these breakdowns before the show, like some of the best ones.

Dana Carvey was one of them, by the way, for a long period of time. It's just really interesting to me this whole topic. Tell us the short story of your journey. I know you're an enterprise sales expert. How does somebody who's enterprise sales deep experience end up talking about this topic of comedy and sales?

Mainly because I didn't want to sell enterprise technology after doing it for about ten years, but that's a bit of an exaggeration actually. I was selling Oracle, enterprise, business applications like Oracle ERP and they're all the associated business software with that and selling professional services doing really full cycle sales for the better part of ten years, calling, running in deals from the inside and going to the outside where necessary to get deals done.

Whatever it takes, both for Oracle itself and then for an Oracle consulting partner. I hit a wall with everything and I started performing stand-up as a creative outlet, not even intentionally. I took what I thought was a comedy writing class. I had taken one in the past and it was all about scripts and sketches and sitcom pilot stuff. I thought that could be cool. You can meet some fun people and maybe we create some YouTube sketches or something like that.

I got to the class, I heard about it word of mouth. It was taught by a standup comedian I know. It was framed to me as comedy writing. It's a comedy writing class. I had no clue that it was actually a standup comedy class, even though it was being taught by a comedian. I got there and he said, after I paid him my money, he announced this to the entire group. “Everyone, welcome to my class. This is a standup comedy class.

Over the next ten weeks, you're going to learn how to craft five minutes of standup comedy. After the ten weeks, you were going to perform that five minutes for your friends and family.” My first reaction was I am not performing for my friends or my family. I'm not doing any of that. I'll just go through the class. I'll go through the process. Quite frankly, it was a pretty big class. There were about 40 people in there.

Not a lot of people were all that funny. There were a lot of senior citizens there and some much younger people. Here I am in my mid-30s, having watched a lot of, I wouldn't say stand-up comedy, but more comedy in my life. I liked going through the process and he would give us a little assignment every week and we'd have to get up in front of our peers and deliver it. I started to realize my stuff is so much better than most of these people's.

They were laughing and enough to the point where I said, after six weeks, I realized I'll do this final exam. I'm still not inviting my friends or family though. I don't need them showing up if this doesn't go well. I did it and I got laughs in front of a bunch of strangers at the “graduation show.” I was like, I want to do that again. I did do it again and I got even bigger laughs in front of a, let's just say a less friendly audience.

At no point did I think, “I have this figured out.” You just want to keep going as long as the feeling's good. The third time on stage or in the same venue was the second time. That was a disaster. I blanked, I bombed, I got heckled by a comedian on psychedelic drugs. The room was mainly comedians and it was very hard. I was up there probably ten minutes when I was supposed to only be up there for five, but it felt like a lifetime.

A lot of sane people would have never done it again. I said to myself, “I cannot let that be the last time I do this. Like that's the worst it's probably ever going to get.” It was when I said, “I want to keep going with this. It wasn't as bad as that third time. It wasn't as good as those first two times for quite a long period of time.” That's really where it started. That's how I got into all of this. I answered the question.

You answered a couple of questions, but where does it go today? Like, are you still doing open mics and stand up every once in a while? Did that continue for multiple years?

It continued for roughly twelve years. In my first six, I was actually on stage 3 to 5 times a week. I'd go to other cities. I'd go to Ottawa. I'm based in Montreal, so I'd go to Ottawa. I'd go to Toronto. I'd perform wherever I could, whenever I could. Now we're coming to the part of your question, I have been dabbling in a couple of comedy-related projects and the travel technology space. I won't get into all that.

In 2017, I thought to myself, “I could be a speaker. I wanted to speak on humor's impact on sales basically, and how anyone who speaks presents ourselves can use it as a weapon to earn attention, to build credibility and earn trust, to break the ice, to earn attention, all this good stuff, to be liked.” A lot of the things I still talk about to this day. What's one thing to be a keynote speaker of some kind? That's not really who I am. I'm not this speaker who comes on stage with a boisterous presence and is rehearsed for the day.

Everything's going to be perfect. This is what you do and all that.

I am not that guy. I'd like some comedians are a little flustered when they get on stage. That's always who I've been. Like you're trying to make sense of the audience, remember your material. That's who I am as a speaker. I said to myself, “This isn't even valuable enough, even if I was that polished speaker, it's nice, but I need something else.” When I was at Oracle, I had a pre-sales engineer who was dry, at least on the surface. He was actually funny when you got to know him. I was on a demo with him delivering the demo for a really boring financial consolidation product.

I teed off the demo for the vice president of finance and the controller. There's probably a manager of finance on the call and I tune out a little bit while he's doing the demo. At one point he makes some joke, some deep cut, insightful joke about the financial consolidation process and they laughed. I was like, “That was clever how he made that up off the top of his head.” Guess what? A month later, we're doing not to the same client, we're demoing the same stuff to a different prospect. He tells the same joke again and gets the same reaction.

At that point, I turned to my colleagues and said, “Have you ever done a financial consolidation demo with this guy?" They said, “Yeah.” I said, “Does he tell this one joke?” They're like, “He's been using that joke for years on prospect after prospect.” I realized at that moment that sales and stand-up have a lot of parallels. Even when I started doing stand-up, I was like coming at it from, everyone in the audience is, they're like a prospect or a customer. My job is to make them want to come back and either come back to this comedy club.

Follow me on social media because they find me funny. Like I have to get them to do something. I have to earn their trust really quickly by making them laugh fairly quickly upfront in short spurts before they go, “You know what? We're willing to give this guy some more of our time and attention.” I found there were all these parallels between go-to-market efforts, whether it's sales, whether it's marketing, and the process of being up on stage and being a stand of a comedian. That's how I started this business. Now I work with sales teams and we do two things. We go through a process of trying to craft a hyper-relevant piece of humor that shines a light on a problem that we as a vendor can solve for not even our ICP but for a specific target persona within the organization.

Comedy Writing: Sales and stand-up have a lot of parallels. Everyone in the audience is like a prospect or a customer. My job is to make them want to come back because they find me funny. I have to get them.

It could be level. It could be a low-level manager. They all have slightly different objectives and some are focused on tactical stuff and some are focused on big-picture strategic stuff. Our objective is to write some humor that can then be repurposed across 30 to 50 different touch points and channels. The list keeps growing of where you can use one good bit of humor. Even if they don't write a good joke, they do this all in breakout groups. It's meant to be a collaborative process. Even if they don't write a great joke, the big win is the process they go through because it forces them to think about who is my target persona and why should they care about us. What problems should we solve?

The Power Of Humor: Building Trust And Authentic Connections

Great. We do a lot of training on that. That's a great way of thinking about it. I love that idea of saying, “Let's understand them so well that we can craft this joke or something funny about the challenges or the issues or the environment.” The reason I was so excited to speak, Jon, I think there are so many things about this idea of just generally humor. Let's get away from the bravery of stand-up comedy, which by the way, I think you have to be shockingly brave.

All of us, by the way, have done well when we stood up at our brother's wedding and came up with a couple of jokes and had a great speech because everybody in that room wants us to do well. Very different when you're getting up and speaking in front of a group of people who paid money, they don't know you, and they're walking into a comedy club. They're actually not that keen on you doing well. Part of it was maybe like, they hope you do well, but you better do well because they paid to come in. It's a much more scrutinizing eye.

I don't think they don't want you to do well. I think they do because you're right, they paid and they're there for a good time. They're not there to, “I really hope that third one bombs.” We need to be reset because the first two made us laugh too hard. I think they do want to laugh at everybody. They want to laugh the whole night. You are right in that they did pay. If you relate to them and show them you understand who they are and what their challenges are and what their frustrations are on a day-to-day basis and be relatable to them, then they will not laugh.

With all these connections you're making, I see why you've got a business that aligns this with sales. Certainly, even with a workshop that we run, one of the things that's just so great about trying to inject some humor, not trying too hard, but finding that opportunity I find is it's so authentic. A laugh, somebody who's laughing and even near comes down fairly quickly. A lot of times in sales, you're trying to build some of that trust. You're trying to build some relationship. You're trying to get to an authentic conversation.

At times at the beginning, you come in from a place like Oracle or SAP or somebody of enterprise software, the buyer is rightly cautious. Maybe there's a little bit of a veneer or a wall. I think it's just such a human response to laugh that makes a very human connection. I think whether it's part of storytelling or whether it's just creating that connection, you cannot try too hard with it. I do think there's this great way of leveraging humor just to get everybody a little bit more relaxed.

Certainly in the early days in professional sales, when I was young, I would have said that because my personal life was so crazy in front of a young person living life, I thought I had to be so “professional” when I was at the office, there was this veneer. I probably came across as being uptight and very formal and I was trying to be perfect. Whereas I think in many cases, if anybody actually knew that I enjoyed a drink in those days, maybe stayed up a little bit too late, lived a rock and roll lifestyle. Probably would have liked me more because I was a bit more human, but I was always keeping that to me.

This idea of nowadays, by the way, I just am me everywhere. Whether it's we're running a workshop or something else, I'm just going to throw it in. I want to have a good time and humor has always been part of our family growing up, certainly part of my family now. All my friends are actually, I believe them to be very funny. A couple of them are extremely funny. This way of getting back together and laughing and using humor, just also, by the way, a good laugh, it just feels so therapeutic at times, just a good belly laugh, there's nothing better.

I agree. Yeah, absolutely.

Sales And Stand-Up Comedy: Resilience And Preparation For Success

By the way, but I do think back to yours standing up on stage, that idea of after you bomb, and by the way, listening to all these comedy podcasts I love, it seems like everybody bombs. By the way, anybody who's done anything material in sales, we've also bombed too. You've been in this business long enough, you've done this long enough. We've had big deals, we thought we should have won, they didn't win. Every once in a while it goes the other way. We've had great years, we've had some challenging years.

We've had fantastic bosses, we have terrible bosses. There's this resilience that I think that's required to make it through a career in professional B2B sales, managing those ups and downs. Part of it is you just keep going. Good things are going to happen, bad things are going to happen, but you just got to keep going and you kinda trust the process. It sounds like that's really what you did after show three before show four, two great ones and then one bomb, and then you go, “I got to get back up on this stage.”

I came up with this line when I started this business, which is whether you want to be an enterprise tech sales or you want to be in standup comedy, you don't need two business degrees like me. All these take our passion for failure. In the case of standup, that and a bus pass. You're right. Like, I really believe that resilience is important, but there's another step that both startups and salespeople really need to invest some time in.

That's preparation because like one of the topics I speak to sales teams about is what can salespeople learn from the worst open mic stand of comedians that I've had the misfortune of sharing the stage with in like twelve years of comedy because it was really interesting when I started. You're learning the local scene and some people are pros and like all you get to do is open mics even at the comedy, our local comedy club, the Comedy Nest.

You'd be on a mic on a Tuesday and there could be the biggest comedian in town. There could be some up-and-comers who are like, “I hope to get to their level.” They're not even big yet or any, or they're not even professionals, but they're funny. They're consistent. You see them on bills all around town. There were the people who are recent and starting and trying to make it. There was another group. There was a group of people who they do comedy maybe once a month.

They're doing it more than that, but they're never getting asked by a booker to be on a show where they get more than five minutes and maybe ten bucks. They're never getting a paid gig. They're never getting a proper spot, as we call it. They're just getting open mic spots. I watched them. Sometimes these are people who didn't understand how to relate to audiences. Sometimes, quite frankly, they were people a little bit later in life, were making dated pop culture references for a younger audience.

There was also the ones who they would get up there and like, it took them a long time to get to their first joke, to their first punchline. They would screw around with the audience a little bit. Whereas for me, I wanted to get my first joke off. My opening joke for years was that “I looked like Ross and Monica's dad from Friends.”

You do. Elliot Gould, by the way. There's a dated reference. Guys, Google Elliot Gould. Cool dude back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Let's talk about dated references and why you don't relate. I did start off by saying, “Yes, I'm Elliot Gould.” I forget the way I phrased it when I started. No one knew who Elliot Gould was, even in 2011, and 2012, when I started doing stand-up. I changed it to Ross and Monica's dad because that's how people in the audience knew who that guy was. Yes.

That took a little bit of failure and iteration, let's call it. I knew that I needed, when I come on stage, from the moment they called my name and I stepped up to the microphone, I have no more than 10 to 15 seconds to get a laugh out of the audience. That earns me another 10 or 15 seconds of their attention. To nail that joke, you need to prep a little bit. You need to like to have this mindset. I'm coming out there. I'm not screwing around. I'm not saying, how are you doing? I'm not like I'm not asking a question to the audience.

I'm just getting to that one thing I want to say to them that'll get that reaction I want that allows me to collect myself mentally so I can get to that next joke I've prepared. Just get to that next joke I've prepared. It's also going to be short. If I get a laugh, then great. I have a third usually. I always used to structure my sets. I always used to try and to my own detriment, to be quite frank, memorize everything and build a flow. I watched a lot of comedians who didn't build that flow. There is something to be said for trying to figure it out for yourself. I watched too many who didn't prepare.

Let's come back. This is a sales training class. Everything you're talking about is just a sales training class. First of all, just go to Elliot Gould versus Ross and Monica's dad. Speak in plain English to the buyer, whoever you're reaching out to. Forget the acronyms and the techno mumbo jumbo that they don't understand or makes them feel silly or they cannot connect with. Just speak in plain English, first of all. The second thing, I love this idea of go, “I walk up, I know what I'm going to do in the first 10 or 15 seconds and I'm trying to earn the right to keep their attention for the next 10 or 15 seconds.”

Prospecting 101. If somebody picks up the phone and I'm surprised, they pick up the phone. I don't really know what I'm going to say because it's so common that they don't pick up the phone. I got some mumbo jumbo and they go, “Who are you, what do you do?” I started spewing some irrelevant stuff like, “We've been in business 15 years. By the way, you were working for an Oracle implementation partner.” There are 10,000 Oracle implementation partners. How would you differentiate?

When somebody goes, “We already use Oracle or we use Offshore, or we use one of the other 9,000 companies.” You need a good answer for this. We need an articulate value proposition, not a joke, a value proposition, to earn the right to get somebody's time to have a little bit of an authentic conversation. The way you actually, obviously, your workshops are excellent and your speaking engagements are excellent. The way you speak to this is almost exactly how we would train SDRs or BDRs.

Like in thinking about it this way, I love this analogy with the standup. Thinking about, “I've got this process.” You said, “Listen, I used to memorize how I might go through my act or the other four or five minutes.” Now, you said there were some people who didn't do that. I think in sales, a real huge issue is too many people think I'm great. By the way, I don't need a process. I don't need a structure because I'm the world's greatest ad-libber. I should be on a stage doing improvisation. When someone sends them a curve, they just get kerfuffle.

They're drowning and they're going all over the place. They start creating objections and take it. Whereas if you do what you did, which is, “I've got a plan, but if it turns out when I get up there, you're killing the audience and they take you down a path, but you feel safe and you've got some connections.” You can go down another path. You still know where the guiding light here is. I still got my roadmap if I need to go back to it. That doesn't mean you cannot veer off it. That doesn't mean you're too structured and uptight. That's how we do sales training. That's exactly what we train on. This is awesome.

Improv Vs. Structure In Sales: Finding The Right Balance

It's fascinating that you mentioned the whole concept of improv. Improv, when I started this and I told people that my business is comedy writing for revenue teams, people would say, “That's amazing, I love improv.” I'm like, “No, I am the 180-degree opposite of improv.” I'm all about understanding subject matter so you can craft a message that gets repeatable, predictable reactions. Whereas improv is unscripted and it's about creating unrecreatable moments. People think there is this notion that improv is great for salespeople and it has certain benefits.

I will say, I think it's really powerful for listening. I think that's the biggest thing that you've brought you to do. My take is, if you become a subject matter expert in your prospects, the problems you solve for who and how they're impacting your buyers and understand how to quantify that and what questions to ask, you don't need to follow the script but you're also not going to be improvising. You're going to be having a conversation that's consultative that helps you determine if you could help them solve the problem and how much it's worth to them.

If you become the subject matter expert in your prospect and understand how to quantify that and what questions to ask, you don’t need to follow the script. You’re going to be having a conversation.

Even with that, Jon, at the end of it, I mean, you say we're not following a script, but you're definitely following a structure. I'm saying I'm going to be having this conversation. I want an authentic conversation. I'm in it. I'm actively listening, but I'm probably going to keep an eye on the time to a certain extent to understand, I'm going to get this to a certain level before I then figure out how am I closing for the next step with Jon, if and when I've made some connections between some of the issues and the challenges Jon has and some of the ways we've helped other clients in the past.

There is this idea that I've got this roadmap I'm going to try and get to. I know at the end, I've got to wrap this thing up at some point in time. The same way you understand when you're on stage that you don't have the stage for an hour. I've got four or five minutes, but I'm still trying to make that connection. I'm trying to get engagement, trying to get attention and interest. Maybe after the fact, they do follow me on Instagram or they do want to come to my next show and so on and so forth.

Bridging Comedy And Sales: Insights From Workshops

You start to think all of the things you've talked about here, creating a connection. We haven't even got to things like the resilience of handling objections with a little bit of humor, knowing your audience, storytelling, and breaking down complex ideas so people understand them. These are some fundamentals of a great sales conversation and authentic conversation about helping somebody achieve a business outcome. All of these things are just so applicable. I had no idea it was going to go down this path. Tell me a little bit more about what happens in some of your workshops or some of the other connections you've made between comedy and sales.

What happens in my workshops is we assign a team to write a joke and we give them preselected topic. It's usually to shine a light on the problem that the vendor can solve for the target persona or help them think about or consider some outcomes associated with not addressing the problem. That's where things can get very specific and humor is rooted in specifics, but it's also rooted in truth and pain.

Humor is rooted in specifics, but it's also rooted in truth and pain.

Outside of the business, we get business solutions rooted in pain, solving a problem. Tell me about comedy being rooted in pain.

What are comedians talking about? They're talking about things that frustrate them, I hate riding on air. Like the old one is airplane food. People are talking about online dating and how painful that is quite a bit. It's the things that drive us nuts, the things that keep us up at night. A lot of comedians say, talk about how the media fear mongers. That's a common thing on all sides of the political spectrum. There's only one comedian who I've ever seen, Ron Funches is his name.

Ron Funches, okay.

I'm not somebody who consumes all stand-up comedy. I watch some, especially when I was performing, you're around it all the time. You had a little less patience for some of the better stuff out there, especially Netflix specials. I watched Ron Funches, because I'd seen him at Just For Laughs, and he started off his special by going, that most comedians want to talk about things that they hate or make them angry or they're scared of.

I want to talk about things I love. At the same time, it really was still rooted, as I recall, in his frustrations with those things, and the pain around them. I had never even thought of that till that point, that like, we're only talking about stuff that drives us nuts and that people can relate to as a result because why are people coming to comedy shows? They're coming to forget about their day and laugh at the frustrations.

That's a huge one. I would say that going through the process, I challenge like my teams I work with to go beyond like, let's say I'm helping a company that sells sales technology. Sales technology solves this problem. Your technology solves problem X. “What is going to happen if they choose to ignore this problem?” “They're not going to hit quota.” I'm like, “Yes, but can we dial it back a little bit?” Like maybe it means that the right leads won't get to the right reps or CRM notes won't get entered properly or maybe it's sales and marketing are going to have a blockage with each other.

Like there are all these specifics of things that go wrong in every business function, and those are the outcomes we need to shine a light on and show how those particular specific costs of action are things preventing our buyer from achieving their real objective. We have to understand that in the first place.

Peel the onion back. At the end of the day, it's one thing to say, “We're going to miss quota.” Quite another thing to think about. Missing quotas is an interesting thing. Missing quota is going to mean, the company is not going to hit some objectives. Missing quota might mean we're not really helping clients the way we could be helping them so their businesses are going to suffer. If I'm missing a quota, people on my team are going to leave my team.

Depending upon the age, maturity level, the experience that could have a devastating impact on a new business professional. There are a lot of these downstream implications where the simple way of explaining this in 1998 would have been to say it was identify a need and develop a need. The truth of it is when we understand some of the issues and challenges, there are real implications to these things.

Sometimes somebody articulating or saying these things out loud causes them to really think about them for the first time and go, “We do actually have to fix this. We're going to make sure we hit our goals. We don't hit our goals as a company. It's not just my sales team that's going to get cut. There are other roles in the company where people are going to get cut.” I always think there's this tie into this bigger picture in the why.

Really the path there is turning that right to this authentic conversation with a buyer and I need trust and credibility for them to do that. I'm trying to figure out what's my path to do. It's not easy to build trust and credibility quickly with the new buyer. This is why something like humanizing the conversation as quickly as possible with something like humor is huge. Again, if it's authentic if it's a natural thing for you.

Understanding Your Buyer’s Job: A Key To Effective Sales

Look, one of the things I realized when I was selling Oracle applications and I'd be speaking with like a vice president of applications, some large company, it's like, I don't really know anything about this person's job. Like I know the basics, but I don't really know what they live through. At one point I said on some other podcasts, “Most sales pros sell stuff they've never used to people whose jobs they've never had and industries they've never worked.” That's why salespeople are looked at with a jaundiced eye by buyers because you're just a salesperson.

What do about what I do? Again, whether it's the humor, I use the word joke a lot. I don't mean a rabbi, a priest, and a minister. I just mean a short one-liner. The humor is connecting tissue between buyer and seller because it shows if a salesperson, whether they came up with it or not, to deliver a bit of deep-cut humor that shows you really understand the inner workings of their challenges. The negative impacts of them. If they can get them to laugh, they're also going to go, “That's powerful.” They're going to remember that. The memorability to humor, it's educational. It's like, our good friends at Challenger, like how can we show a commercial insight in a way that they hadn't considered and get the go?

If a salesperson can deliver a bit of deep-cut humor that shows they truly understand the inner workings of their customers' challenges, they're likely to be remembered. Humor is highly memorable.

I never thought of that or we do deal with that. Again, I think the process is even more valuable in the humor itself because if you like just go through the process of trying to craft short-form humor that follows certain rules, you're going to need to unearth a lot of knowledge, insight, understanding, and perspective about these problems and how they impact our buyers. It will inform you to be, again, more consultative and be able to zone in on. If I'm talking to a prospect, are they really a prospect?

Knowledge, insight, and understanding. By the way, we love Challenger with the teach, tailor, take, and control. When Matt Dixon has been on the show multiple times, what really great guy, very interesting. They wrote the book without a background in sales. They were researchers, met Matt and Brent and teach Taylor take control. It teach knowledge, insight, and understanding. We get the understanding when the buyer actually shares with us, but it's always this journey to get that connection.

Overcoming Fear And Nerves: Lessons From The Stage And Sales

They say a return on the time they're going to spend to share with us. By the way, speaking of time, we've got to be cautious of your time, but let me just go down a slightly different path, Jon, because again, I'm sure it doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but I'm pretty sure it's a big deal to anybody listening to this podcast. It's scary to get on a stage to do anything the first time. It's scary to be in sales. It's scary to pick up the phone the first time. It's scary to run your first demo the first time, although we don't love demos.

Scary to be in front of a senior executive the first time, where somehow they granted you the meeting. Now you're meeting a VP or an SVP of applications. It's scary. Even today, there's got to be those dates and times when you're going to step on a stage or you're going to do a keynote somewhere where the butterflies are floating around the night before or maybe the morning of. Tell us how you work through your process to actually get on the stage instead of heading for Kamloops.

Look, I think we got to practice. I think we got to know our stuff inside out to the point where even if we falter, it's not going to come off. Like we know when we falter. The biggest mistake I made in comedy was I mentioned earlier, I tried to memorize things word for word as I scripted them because I really bought into this whole notion of things like word economy, really being short and joke craft as we call it. Like how can you get to the punchline the fastest possible? Like ‘80s style comedy was predicated on that.

You were saying you would prepare too much maybe, so preparation helps you get on the stage because even when you go left to center, they cannot tell, you can tell, but they cannot tell. There's maybe you're cautioning over preparation.

What I was going to say was, as I'd be on stage and delivering, I'd like realize as I was saying it, “You inverted those words.” You deliver the punch line and you're just busy thinking about how you screwed up the setup and get in your own head. The audience didn't notice. They don't know. We're being hard on ourselves as it's going on, but it doesn't matter. People are appreciating it or getting it.

That's when you need to be connected to the room versus yourself. To connect with the room a little better, you just need to really have a good handle on your subject matter. You got to prep, you got to work on the timing. For example, I have a presentation coming up at a cybersecurity marketing conference. Guess what? I'm not a marketer. I'm not a cybersecurity guy. I don't really know. I'm an outsider, but I was asked to speak because I'm teaching messaging.

I had to come up with hyper-relevant messaging that marketers could benefit from in addition to salespeople. I'm really working on my deck right now. I'm working on the timing and the reveals of animation pacing. I think that's the work. Again, coming back to comedians who fail, I could tell some of them just were winging it. They'd get up there, they'd have a rough idea of three jokes they wanted to deliver. Some people really are okay with that, and for others, it just showed. You're not prepared and you're not working at this. Look, we all get butterflies, but preparation eliminates the risk of failure.

Preparation eliminates the risk of failure.

Preparation and putting in the work. Again, all of this stuff is the same. Any performance art is the same. Frankly, I think in many ways, sales is a performance art. We're still only spending a third of our time, a quarter of our time in front of clients or prospects. Professional athletes practice four times as much as they play. Who knows? Think of that workshop you did to get five minutes of standup. It's a month-long workshop, with multiple different sessions to write five minutes. Like my intro to my next story on the show takes seven minutes.

It's such a short period of time. The preparation, when preparation meets opportunity, amazing things happen. I do think the preparation shows nine times out of ten and far less worried about being over-prepared than under-prepared. I feel naked. My confidence comes out of the bottom of my feet if I'm under-prepared. If I'm over-prepared, I can work through it or I'll try and loosen up, but it doesn't work the other way.

No, one thing I wanted to add is that another lesson, it's just tied to some of the things that are floating around the ether of this conversation. When you have five minutes on stage, in 2024, you need to make them laugh, I would say twice a minute because comedy has evolved a little bit. In the ‘80s, it was, you need to laugh every 20 seconds. That's three times a minute which means you need to get to that punchline really quickly, which means the longer you ramble, especially when you come out on stage and they don't know who you are just like a cold call. If you keep talking, they're going to be, what's this all about?

I like to say that our goal is to make their faces light up, but not because they've just gotten bored and started staring at their phones. We got to graph type messages that people can digest simple language that elicit emotional reactions. That adheres not just for sales, but for sales development, for marketing. Everything I talk about is we're talking in the vein of salespeople. Every go-to-market function, they all need to be subject matter experts. They need to know how to trigger emotions, touch on that pain, and be short and quick, and punchy.

Using Humor To Address Pain Points In Sales Messaging

Well said, by the way. At the beginning, we were talking about you helping some of these companies craft a message that's leveraging humor to shine a light on a pain point or two. Do you have an example of that?

Yeah. I worked with a client, and I just want to add though, before I tell this joke that he's now the CEO. He told me, “I don't care that you wrote some jokes or that we wrote some jokes.” We closed some revenue off a cold email, which they did. He says, “The real value is the process and how it helped his new hires who hadn't even started on the job rant quickly because I was able to get them to express what problems they solved for who in simple English before they even started on the job.”

Nice.

They're a company, they're called TrustArc and they're a software who helps marketers and privacy officers manage their global privacy compliance efforts.

Very specific, extremely specific.

Very niche. In simple language, we all get asked to accept cookies, and cookie consent, and every website we go to, and every jurisdiction on the planet has different laws around that. A challenge that marketers and privacy officers have is they know this is a problem. They know they have to keep up with the laws or else they're going to get fined but they'll go to the CEO and ask for some budget. They're just like, “I don't know what this is.” The joke I wrote for them is, CEOs remind me of my parents. The only thing they understand less than technology is privacy.

That is good. I'm judging the comedy in any way, but that is good. Short, crisp, punchy.

Look, the reality is I'm not professing that we're going to write. Netflix comedy special-style jokes that are so cutting and so biting. The bar in B2B is pretty low. Everyone's really dry, everyone's boring. You just got to make it a little more human, a little more fun. It doesn't have to crush and destroy. Doesn't matter if someone drops dead laughing. You just want them to crack a smile and go, that's cute, that's clever. That's insightful, I like that. That's all we're looking for. We're just looking to get a bit of a reaction.

It doesn't matter if someone drops dead laughing. You just want them to crack a smile.

Comedy Heroes: Inspiration Behind The Humor In Sales

Who were some of your comedy heroes or when you were getting interested in this, and who do you like today?

When I was sixteen, which is not yesterday, I should have said which was just last week, there was a guy here in Montreal, his name was Sean Keane. Have you ever heard of this guy?

Rings a bell, by the way. For the readers, rarity, but I'm actually interviewing another Canadian on the show. Both Jon and I are Canadian. He does ring a bell, and you and I are probably not crazy different ages.

No, so Sean Keane. We were sixteen, we were underage, we were going to a comedy club that had just opened, and we hear like that MC calls his name and a theme song in like a ‘40s style theme song like the Andrews sisters start singing. I'm really dating myself but it was like that ‘40s style tune. This guy emerges from the back with slick back hair, sunglasses and like a trench coat and a suit and he's looking at us and staring at us and he's chewing his gum.

He just goes, “Somebody left their gum in the urinal.” He lets out, and we're sixteen. We're like, this is the funniest thing we've ever seen. He had a bunch of dark jokes. He wasn't like hyper offensive, but they were a little dark. We all just adored this guy, but he was the master of like short, quick, dark humor. He was an original idol. Over the years, like guys. I like Bill Burr. My tastes evolve. I like Sam Morril's a really good joke writer.

He's big. Mark Normand. I like Nate Bargatze. He's super clean. I don't care if they're clean or offensive. Like I just like funny. I don't really care. There was someone here, Deanne Smith. She's now in New York or I don't know where she is but she was a scream. Steve Patterson is always pretty funny. He's not like an idol of mine. There's a guy locally, David Pride, who's quite brilliant. I'm all over the board with it all.

I know some of those names. For me growing up, there was nothing better than Monty Python. The concept of the uptight Brits, my parents are British, so the uptight Brits, and then the look of absolute dismay when they get embarrassed or it looks like they're being silly, is just incredibly funny. Life of Brian is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen still to this day. You can keep watching it. In real formative years, when I stumbled on SCTV and it was just amazing to me that they'd be making these jokes and references, just like my brother and I would do that. I just thought it was the funniest thing ever.

It's too short-lived for sure. It wasn't long enough, but it was just truly amazingly funny stuff. It wasn't a funny situation. SNL always, to me, seems like a funny situation. SCTV were truly funny characters. You would continue to laugh. You just go anywhere with Ed Grimley or Guy Caballero. Of course, John Candy, there's Johnny LaRue. It's just so funny.

We didn't really get a lot of them in Montreal, but in my teenage years, I watched a lot of SNL with like Sandler, McMire, there's Dana Carvey. When you asked me the question, I was going with standups, but there's no doubt about it. SNL and some of these like the naked gun dumb and dumber movies, are the real combat.

Dynamite. Animal House. Go back and watch. A lot of the folks reading to this may not have heard of a movie called Animal House. It's still funny. It's a bit dated, but it's just ridiculously funny.

I watched it recently for the first time. I will disagree.

You watched it. First of all, you look like Ivan Reitman. The director, if you look at him back in the day, he also looks a lot like you. Just love the movie. We'll resolve that another time, Jon. First of all, thank you, for joining us on the show.

Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. The people reading are going to want to hear more. This connection between comedy and how you use it to train the sales team. How do they find out more about you or connect with you?

Look, there are two real ways to get ahold of me. Number one is LinkedIn. Drop me a line. Let's connect. Jon, there’s no H, Selig. That's also my URL JonSelig.com. My business is comedy writing for revenue teams. Just draw me a line through my websites. You can even somehow get ahold of my email there, but LinkedIn's a great place to connect, and let's have a conversation there.

Folks, as we think about trying to do something unique for our sales organization, something like Jon's approach, I think it's fantastic. We've got clients, we're going to be thinking about this for two. Jon, thank you again for joining. What a great conversation. Team, thank you for joining the show.

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We run this show because we have this mission of increasing the professionalism of B2B sales because we know if we do that, we'll actually improve the lives of professional salespeople. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that's actually how we get great guests like Jon when you do that. Now, the other thing is, team, we're growth-oriented.

A lot of the things we do in the podcast are because you gave us great suggestions. Please keep them coming. You can send your suggestions to us at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I personally respond to every suggestion we get. We love constructive criticism. Keep it coming our way. In the meantime team, we'll see you next time on the show, and tell your friends about this podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Important Links

• Jon Selig

• Jon Selig on LinkedIn

• Comedy Writing for Revenue Teams

• Mark Cox's Email

• Mark Cox on LinkedIn

About Jon Selig

Jon received his BComm & MBA, and spent time in business process consulting, followed by a 12-year career selling ERP, business intelligence, and professional services (for both Oracle & an Oracle partner).

In 2011, his career took a sharp left-turn, and he started performing stand-up comedy in hopes of fulfilling his lifelong dream – of never selling technology again.

Jon found the parallels between sales and stand-up to be so striking, he felt sellers could benefit from the skills, methods, and processes that both practitioners share. As he says, his 12 years in sales was a well-paid internship for his career in stand-up comedy.

After years of performing at clubs, festivals, and forecast meetings, he created Comedy Writing for Revenue Team.

To date, he’s spoken to and worked with teams at Broadcom, TrustArc, PowerChord, Canon USA, Citrix, Zoho, Philips Healthcare, InfoBlox, Microsoft Canada, Fleetcor Technologies, and more. 

Harnessing Social Media For Sales Success: A Guide To Social Selling With Adam Gray

Social selling isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a game-changing approach to building trust, standing out, and creating meaningful relationships in today’s digital world. In this thought-provoking conversation, Mark Cox welcomes Adam Gray, a leading expert in social selling and co-author of two groundbreaking books on the topic. Together, they dive into what makes social media a powerful tool for connection, how authenticity sets you apart, and why gratitude is essential for personal and professional growth. Whether you’re new to LinkedIn or looking to refine your strategy, this episode offers actionable insights to help you network smarter and sell better.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Harnessing Social Media For Sales Success: A Guide To Social Selling With Adam Gray

We have a great show for you today, talking about social selling and getting very specific about LinkedIn. Today's guest is a great guy. Adam Gray is the co-founder and the Head of Intellectual Property at DLA ignite. He's also the author of two great books. One is called Brilliant Social Media: How to Start, Refine, and Improve Your Social Media Business Strategy. The second is called Smarketing. He wrote that with his pal Tim Hughes. You'll remember Tim because he has been on the show talking about his book Social Selling.

Adam and Tim both work with DLA ignite. We've seen them in action. We brought them into a couple of our clients. They have great strategies for how to leverage LinkedIn properly by thinking about three things. What should your profile look like? How do you build out your network professionally, not spammy, the way many people do it? How do you create and then engage content? How to create your own content, what should you be doing, and then how you engage content with others.

What a great conversation with Adam. He's one of those calm confident people. He speaks quietly and is not a big shouter like me. He speaks quietly, which causes you to lean in and listen more. He has an incredibly interesting professional background. He's a very interesting guy with his hobbies and what he collects. We're both fans of music. He was a super high-end violinist at one point in time. I'm a super low-end drummer. We had a lot in common when we chatted.

What you're going to pull away is some great strategies for leveraging LinkedIn to stand out, which is what we're trying to do. It's pretty tough when there are a billion people on LinkedIn. If someone is looking for a sales trainer, there are thousands of sales trainers. What do you do to stand out? Let's have that conversation today. I enjoy my conversation with Adam. He's a great guy. You can enjoy it too. When you do, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well Podcast, and thanks for doing so. That's how we get great guests like Adam Gray. Here he is.

Hello, Adam.

How are you?

I'm great, thanks. How are you?

I can't believe there's no point in you complaining. Is there? No one listens.

I would listen. That's what this is about. More than anything, this show is about me counseling you in any way, shape, or form. You just laid out there, my friend.

Understanding The Power Of Gratitude In Daily Life

I'm all good. Thank you. I feel very fortunate that every morning I wake up. How lucky I am to have the life that I have. All things considered, that's pretty good. Isn't it?

What a great way, by the way, when we kick in and jump into the podcast. You give off that vibe, by the way.

Do I? That's harder then.

You have this calm confidence and almost a contentness. It's very engaging. We'll get into it in the show, but you give off that vibe.

Thank you.

I'm a huge one on gratitude. I do the same thing. I have a gratitude journal. I write things down.

I try to do that, but I'm not very disciplined about writing things down, making affirmations, and doing that stuff. I do invest a huge amount of time counseling other people. A lot of what we do is coaching people. Part of it showing people what they need to do and showing them how they need to do it. Part of it is what's stopping you from doing this. You know you want to do it and you know you’re better at it. I’m getting underneath that surface and helping people to realize how lucky they are.

That's the big thing, isn't it? To have been born at this moment in history when we have all of these privileges available to us and in the places that were born. You could have grown up in Gaza or something. You have no idea what it's like to be under pressure. None at all. You're not going to go to the President's Club this year. Big deal.

How Social Media Impacts Mindset And Contentment

It's so interesting by the way. I have this conversation a lot of times with my beautiful wife, Donna. Every once in a while, I'll make this comment that we won the DNA lottery. You wake up at some point in time and realize where you are, what's going on, and how privileged you are. I do think in this society, it's very easy to lose sight of that. It's a bit of the old statement that comparison is the thief of joy. In many ways, social media is a global way of comparing yourself against everybody else. It's a pretty easy way to end up feeling bad fairly quickly.

Have a catch-up on your feed Steven Bartlett?

No.

He does a podcast called The Diary of A CEO. I'm still on the jury about whether or not I find him incredibly insightful or incredibly annoying. I don't have my mind yet, but he has a lot of truly outstanding guests. One of whom he had on was Jimmy Carr, who was a British comedian.

I know Jimmy Carr. My parents are British. I know a little bit of that.

Jimmy Carr has said that at the moment we suffer from dysmorphia. Some people have gender dysmorphia or whatever, where they're not in the place that they think maybe they are. He said that in the developed world, we suffer from life difficulties. To put this in context, 50 years ago, people didn't have hot showers. Think of how lucky we are to live now. He's an incredibly insightful and very clever guy. He's incredibly insightful with some of the comments he makes, but often, it will pull you up short. What have I got to know then?

I'm completely aligned on this. For everybody listening, by the way, I’ll also admit that I have those periods of being in the gap. I have a friend named Dan Sullivan who runs something called Strategic Coach, which is a great coaching program for entrepreneurs. More than almost anybody I have come across, he has these mindset tools where he gets you and your best thinking. It's not a how-to program. It's a strategic program to help pull the best thinking out of you.

One of the ones that is so interesting is he's got one called the gap and the gain. Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan says, “All of us have this vision of the future, this place we want to be, this goal, this objective, and then there's where we are today. By default, if you're a sales or growth-oriented entrepreneur, where you want to be is always different from where you are today. You want to be somewhere in the future.

Most people focus on the gap between where they are today and where they want to be in the future, but by nature, if you're ambitious, they're never going to align because as soon as you start to make progress, you keep pushing that goal out further. “I want to make 100,000. I want to make 250. I want to make 500. I want to make seven figures.” No matter what you achieve, you keep pushing it out just by nature of having these amazing goals and objectives. That's the gap that he speaks of.

Applying The Gap And The Gain To Personal Growth

The gain is thinking about how far you've come. It doesn't change where you are in life. It just changes how you feel about it and perceive it. It's incredibly powerful. I almost defaulted to this as a survival mechanism when I first started In The Funnel 10 or 11 years ago because I come from a large corporate CRO job. I lived a bit of the life, which was pretty good, traveling, hotels, and all that great stuff, then in a 6 or 8-month period of time, I started this company.

There was no revenue coming in except what you create day. When you started every morning, it was a little bit of saying, “Let's take a pause and think about the great things that have happened here, why I'm so happy to be running this business, and why I chose to run this business. It was almost this default gratitude journal as a means of survival and keeping myself in the right mindset before I even what those things were.

That's incredibly powerful but the problem is, and you are right about social media being very guilty of this. What you do is you see some 22-year-old guy who has a huge yacht and a fleet of Lamborghinis. You look at yourself and you go, “I'm a failure because I haven't got those things.” The way to look at this stuff is that there's a finite amount of you to go around. You cannot be good at everything. I was fortunate that life had given me a load of different things that I've done. In the early days, I used to sell HiFi to people.

You're selling in an audio store.

That was interesting. I was working in a relatively high-end audio store. One of the people who came in was quite a successful businessman. He said to me and one of the other guys in there, “You guys, why don't we go and set up our own store?” He was passionate about this. He became an investor and myself and this other guy. We started our first store, which was directly opposite Howard in Knightsbridge.

We went from working in a little provincial town on the M25 to working in the highest retail space in the world outside of an airport. What we ended up doing was engaging with people that were multi-millionaires. This was 30 years ago. One of our clients was the Sultan of Brunei, who at the time was the richest man in the world.

He came into your audio store.

He didn't, but his assistant did. We went to a number of his houses to install systems. We visit all of these different houses. Whilst I never got to meet him as a person. I got to go to the wedding of his nephew, which was held at the Dorchester Hotel because we became friends with the guy who was his aide in the UK. We got to meet loads and loads of really rich people. To a man, almost every one of them was miserable. Rich, huge houses, limitless cash reserves, miserable.

Part of it was because they didn't ever do this, stopping and saying, “I have all of this stuff,” whether or not that’s money, physical things, or possessions, whether or not that's achievements, “I've got all of these done and I've worked hard to achieve them and I'm proud of myself. I can stop, take stock, and enjoy this,” but they can't. They're so driven that often as you said, you want 100, then you want 250, then you want 750, then you want seven figures.

There's wisdom like the next mountain to climb and I get that's part of being entrepreneurial, and I get that that's part of being driven, but think about the saying, “I'm here for a good time, not a long time.” We're here for a blink of an eye, aren't we? You have to grasp every moment. What we all know is that if we've been fortunate enough to travel, we go to very rural places in the Mediterranean or wherever. We meet people who have got nothing, yet they're incredibly generous with the time in the few things that they do have with you.

We're here for a blink of an eye. You've got to grasp every moment.

There's a degree of contentedness. I'm a carpenter. I work with wood. My father was a carpenter. His father was a carpenter. I do it for the joy of creating and working with materials and the sense of achievement that I get from constantly being on this lifelong learning. Nowadays, it's like people don't want to earn their fame. I want to be famous. What do you want to be famous for? I just want to be famous. I want to be an influencer.

That's putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? You need to say, “Here's what I want to do and I want to get joy from doing this,” because there will always be room for improvement, whether or not you're trading on the stock market, making $1 million a day or whether you're building wooden boxes. There's always a chance to make it better. Finding the joy in those simple things is incredibly pleasurable.

It's so well said. One of the reasons we run In The Funnel is we're on this mission. Sometimes people roll their eyes, but I'm highly educated, and nowhere along my journey did anyone teach me anything academically about B2B sales. Part of my journey is saying, “I want to elevate this to the profession it really is.” That's what we do in In The Funnel.

The why is I know that when we do this, we're going to improve the lives of professional salespeople because so many of them are not happy. They fell into a job that was an easy job maybe to get, but they feel like they're trying to execute something that they have no control over. They don't know what they're doing. You can only get enough courage to trigger a conversation with someone when you don't know what you're doing for so long before you have to put a veneer up and you’re sort of scripting and pitching.

I believe in drive and ambition, and I still have a lot of those things. I have hopes, dreams, and goals that drive me. The difference now with a little bit of maturity may be, as much maturity as I can ever have, is I do want to take those pauses every day and go, “I'm happy about today. I'm so pleased.” That doesn't mean I'm not going to do things that scare me because I still do things where I jump outside my comfort zone. It doesn't mean I'm not going to have the odd salesman's night sleep, which is waking up in the middle of the night and being concerned about running the business and all those kinds of things. I either call them professional sales sleep or entrepreneur sleep.

Those things are all going to happen, but when I'm going through the journey, I want to enjoy those things that are most important because, as you say, we're far luckier than I ever dreamed we would be. One of the things I'm so lucky about is I love what I do. It doesn't mean it's easy and it doesn't mean that there aren't some parts of it, but something like this, this is part of my job to get to chat with a cool guy like you, learn from what you, and your teammate, Tim Hughes have done with DLA ignite and Social Selling. It's super fun for me.

The Long-Term Impact Of Gratitude On Mindset And Success

I get a dopamine hit from learning. It's a good message for everybody listening today this idea of gratitude or being happy. Anthony Iannarino has been on the show multiple times. He's a very nice fellow. He has a very similar demeanor to yours, very calm, and almost zen-like. In his recent book called The Negativity Fast, he speaks to the power of gratitude with some research. It was amazing what gratitude does for physical benefits, like the shocking physical benefits if you keep yourself in this mindset. I do think you can control it. I'm going to ask about your journey from this audio store to how we're talking about social selling today, and maybe particularly LinkedIn. I love the guitars behind you. Tell me about your musical career and your passion for music.

I was going to be a violinist. I auditioned for all of the conservators in London. I got accepted into a couple and I selected the one that I was going to go to. That was my career. I was going to be a violinist. During my course, I developed a lump on my neck from constantly having it on the chin rest of the violin. It became infected and I went and had it dealt with in a hospital and then it came back and had to be dealt with again. It took about three months out.

During that three months, I thought, “You're crap.” This is a challenge for everybody who is a high achiever at something in an environment in which you are the big fish. For a period of my life, I was the best violinist that I knew. Therefore, I must be pretty good at this. You move up and leave. I go to music college and I'm the worst violinist there I know. It's a bit of a shock. This is a repeating pattern that we all face.

You go to the next level for sure. Imposter syndrome is all over the place.

Absolutely, but this was not imposter syndrome because this was not me believing that I was not as good as these people. This was me not being as good as these people. During these six months out or whatever it was that I had, I thought, “You need to move on. This is not the right industry for you.” I ended up working in a store and I met one of the guys that worked in this audio store. He said, “You're wasted here, why don't you come to work for me, ?” “Okay.” I've always been very lucky that during my life, things have fallen out of the sky into my lap. That's one of those occasions.

I went and worked there and they loved the fact that I was somebody who understood music because when you demonstrate stuff to people, having an opinion on stuff is often quite valuable. That was my first real taste of selling. Previously in the store, I was like a wine merchant. Previously, I had learned about customer service but not about selling. In this store, it's amazing. Along my journey, I picked up these breadcrumbs that I think were incredibly useful to me. I'm going to share that with other people now. In this store, they will give you the opportunity to go on a sales training course. I went on the sales training course.

Do you remember what it was?

No. It was specific to the audio industry.

The trainer said, “You get to this point and they're giving you the buying signals,” or whatever it was he described, “Then you ask for the deal.” I said to him, “How do you ask for the deal?” He said, “You just asked them.” I said, “No, you missing the point. What words do you say?” He said, “I say to people, ‘Should we go outside and sort out the paperwork?’” I thought that would do nicely.

I took that little gem and I went back to the audio store and I became the most successful retail HiFi salesman in the UK by just saying this to everyone. If they look like they were ready to buy, “If you're happy with this, let's go outside and sort out the paperwork.” People would say, “Okay.”

I realized at that point that everybody understands a concept. I went on from some point down the road to be in marketing. People understand the concept. You understand that you're friendly but professional. Everything can grasp that. You write me a friendly but professional email.

How do you do it? We know what to do, but we don't know how to exactly do it.

If you want people to take action and behave differently, part of the job is about building those bridges. This is about giving them examples and illustrations of what this looks like so they can project what they do into that. In the case of writing a professional but friendly email, you might provide someone with words to use. We use help, we don't use assist. We use love, we don't use like. We use care, we don't use passionate, or whatever those words are. I can then look at the two and I can go, “I'm slipping into this area when I'm writing stuff.”

Social Selling: If you want people to take action and behave differently, part of the job is about building those bridges.

One of the things that's interesting about these is that at all points in our lives, whether we’re just beginning or we're more experienced, there are people who have come to the same roadblocks that we're coming to. Asking them. “Mark, how did you learn to close a sale?” It might be that you say, “It was easy for me because I did blah, blah, blah.” I can't relate to that, but it could be that you're exactly the same person that I am.

It could be that I say to you, “How did you overcome this?” You say, “What I did was this,” and then for me, the light bulb comes on. I go. “Right, so that's what I need to do.” When we work with clients, so much of this is about showing them what's the thing that I do. I like to try to be an example of best practice in the things that I'm teaching you to do. There's no credibility in standing there and saying, “What you need to do is this,” if I'm not doing it.

Yeah, if you don't do it.

It’s like the fat fitness coach in the gym. If you can't eat healthy and get yourself in shape, how are you going to help me to do it? We need to model the behavior. Often, a starting point for you and your journey is for me to say to you, “This is what I say, this is what I do, this is how I use these tools.” If you give me a script and I use the script, that's better than starting with a clean sheet of paper but it's not as good as if I take your script and then I refine your script. It sounds like it's me saying it rather than it sounds like you saying it.

Often, people need a leg up and they need a bit of help to get them from where they are to where they want to be. Oftentimes, we spend time with organizations helping them understand what are the things that they can say. A great example of what you need to do if you want to be successful on social is to connect to lots of people in your target areas. We had a client some years ago now. They were sending lots of connection requests to a particular target account. They were getting a very low acceptance rate despite the fact that they had a good profile. They were lovely. They were attractive, engaging, and switched-on smart people, but nobody was responding.

The connection request said, “Hi, Mark. I'm the account manager at such and such. I’d like to connect to more people in your company.” I said to this person, “The problem is what they're reading is, “Hi, Mark. I'm compensated for selling you things. Can I connect with you so I can sell you some things?” “But that's not what I said.” “It isn't what you said, but it is what they heard. Change that up into something, which is much less aggressive.”

One of my mentors said you have to assume that everybody, except you, in the world is stupid. It doesn't mean these people are idiots, but it does mean that they haven't got the same frame of reference that you have. You assumed that this person understands this. If you go, “This is what it is,” you can't make that jump but they can't necessarily make them. You have to handle the process and part of that is in all of these micro changes that we need to make.

When I say, “I'd like to connect to you,” because it's happened so many times in the past, you know you're going to get a list of my products and services and prices as soon as you say yes, so you'll say no unless I say, “I'm not going to follow this up immediately by sending you one of those,” in which case you might go, “Okay.” So much of this is about understanding the difference between what should happen in an interaction and what actually happens in an interaction. Often the two are not the same thing. If I say this, this is what you should do. If I say this, you don't do that. You do something else. Why is that?

Let's talk about that for a second. I love this this. I'd like to get to this example of what that reach-out should be. I've seen you in DLA ignite in action. I'm a big fan of your partner Timothy Hughes and his book Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. I’m a huge fan of this, We've had Tim on the show. One of the things that you guys do so well is you have this different paradigm of what social media is.

Why Building Trust Is The Foundation Of Sales

I heard you say before, Adam, that social media is about being social. How would we behave if we were at a cocktail party talking to somebody? As soon as we were introduced to them, we're not going to pull a price list out of our pocket and give it to them for whatever it is we do. Tell us a little bit about how we should first start. Maybe we focus on LinkedIn for today because people will extract amazing insights. How should we be thinking about that platform? Today, with LinkedIn, there are a lot of people that look the same on LinkedIn. Different picture but, pretty similar.

There's a massive number of pitfalls that people can fall into. I know you, like you, and trust you. Therefore, when you say something, I'm likely to believe what you say because I know that you like me and therefore, you have my best interests at heart. The problem is that if I'm saying something true and helpful to you and you don't know me, there's no reason for you to believe that.

We've all got examples of this. You get outreach from an independent financial adviser and they say, “Hi, Mark. We're all middle-aged now. I wonder if you'd like to get some insights into what you can do. If you can give me some information about your investments, how I can make those work harder for you,” your response is, “No, I'm not going to tell you anything personal to me because I never know who you are.”

The first thing is we have to build that trust. The first step in building trust is standing out from everyone else. You have 5,000 followers on LinkedIn of whom you know 200, and the rest of them are people that you vaguely know. That means they're not front of mind. Given that you're a great metaphor for everybody on LinkedIn, whether they have 500 or 50,000 followers, the fact is that you know a tiny little sliver of those people.

How do I make myself one of the people that you recognize or that you know when I'm coming up in your newsfeed? The first thing is I have to look different. Anybody can simply search on LinkedIn for a marketing director and there are 27 million responses. There are 27 million people who identify as marketing directors. The fact that you are a marketing director at a company of possibly never heard of is not memorable or compelling.

If you’re a tall handsome guy who plays the drums, that's likely to arrest me when I'm scrolling through a list of marketing directors. A tall handsome guy who plays the drums and a marketing director is different. That first standout that we have and how we first present ourselves encourage people to read on.

A good example of this is how a well-constructed newspaper works. It has an arresting headline. The headline is like this, “Tall guy plays drums.” People go, “That's interesting.” Underneath it says, “Mark Cox, renowned sales expert and plays drums in a band on the weekends.” “Okay,” and then I read on and it says, “Yesterday, Mark was playing it at this particular gig and doing the following things.” It sucked me in from that top level to a middle level to a more granular level. We need to construct how we go to market in a similar way.

If all I remember about you is a tall guy who plays the drums, that's better than remembering nothing about you. It's very easy for me to absorb that and stand out. The next level down is that vignette of who you are and why I should care. A mistake that lots of people make with their About section on LinkedIn is their why about what they do. There's room for that in your job. You're not defined by what you do. What are you going to write in the About section? What are you going to say? It’s like a good autobiography that turns into a page-turner. I want to learn more about you.

Creating A Unique And Humanized LinkedIn Profile

You need to talk about what your dreams are. How did you end up here? If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you be doing? All of those things. I get an insight into who you are. As you said about the cocktail party, I go to the cocktail party. I don't care that you're a sales coach and you developed a methodology. Not yet. What I care about is the fact that you're an interesting chap, you play the drums, and what music you like. We have that conversation but also recognize that to build a relationship, there needs to be a degree of dialogue.

You’re not defined by what you do. Your story, dreams, and passions make you memorable and help build real connections.

Think back to your last first date. If it went well it's probably because the person asked questions rather than spoke. There's that old story about an arrogant man who's talking to this girl that he's going to dinner with, “I've been here and I've done this. I've run this company, I have this car, and I have a boat here. Anyway, that's enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?” It's all about him. When you move from here's my profile to having an interaction with someone, there's nothing more attractive than demonstrating that you're listening and hearing what's being said, “Great post, Mark. Thank you for that.”

It’s the same way when you get on a call with somebody. You're desperate to sell your stuff. In the wider context of selling to people, the problem is that if I present my product and service to you, and if I try to close you and you're not ready to buy, you will never take a call from me again. It will be hard to close you. Whereas if we have a chat and I position what I do in such a way that you asked me, that's interesting, “We have no need for that at the moment.” “That's fine. I wasn't expecting you to buy it. We're having an exchange of ideas.”

The nice thing about that is because I've asked lots of questions and you've told me about your dreams and your company and your challenges and what you do at the weekend and all this stuff, if I say to you, “Let's touch base in six months and see how things are. It’d be great to catch up again,” you're likely to say yes. In six months who knows maybe you will be ready to buy them.

The concept of qualifying out, particularly today, is a very dangerous thing. We should not qualify in route. We should qualify now or later because if I have the right product and you're the right target for me, it's a good fit. Why are you not going to buy it? Because you have no money, because you're under contract to someone else, because you're not in the procurement process for that, or because you're busy procuring other things. That's not out. That's just not quite now.

The concept of qualifying out particularly today is a very, very dangerous thing. We should not qualify in a route. We should qualify now or later.

The beauty of the social thing is that it enables me to stay in touch and stay in front of mind, not by saying, “Here's our product. These are our three USPs.” I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that again tomorrow. I'll tell you that the day after tomorrow. I’ll tell you that the day after that. It comes to a point when you block because you know what I'm going to say.

It's so relevant. By the way, I believe this in a couple of iterations over the last ten years with LinkedIn. The reason I'm so excited to have you back Adam or to have DLA ignite back is because I believe everything you're saying. Once a week or twice a week, I get a financial plan for reaching out. As soon as they connect, they go, “Are you happy with your investments and how they're doing?” If they followed up and said, “Mark, it looks like you're doing cool things over In The Funnel.” By the way, I love that post you did about supporting the Michael Garron Hospital. My daughter was born at the Michael Garron Hospital.

They could say, “I love to chat over coffee in person or via Zoom at some point and learn more about you. It looks like we're in the same neighborhood.” I might be open to that because I like meeting interesting people. I know the value of networking and we'll see you expand my network. I might look at that and say, “This guy has done some cool things.” Maybe there are some interesting synergies here. If somebody comes back and pitches right at me, I feel like you're polluting this environment.

The other thing that I hope everybody takes away and you guys are so good at articulating this. In The Funnel is unique, different, and one of a kind. I can go through all of these reasons why we're so unique and different and better and all the rest of it. I closed a $1 billion deal one time. I don't know that many people have done that. To the rest of the world, we look like every other sales training company out there. There's nothing we can put on LinkedIn that says we're unique or we're different that anybody cares about.

That's the point, isn't it? People often misinterpret this. Whatever field you're in, for you, sales training for me, it’s creating software solutions, whatever it is. We think the thing that people are buying is that little veneer of brilliance that we offer over and above everybody else, that special button, that special connector, or whatever it is that we do. Most of our clients are not sophisticated in this way.

I remember the story of the furniture retailer who used to actively demonstrate scratch-guarding as an upsell on their furniture.

When they pour a cup of coffee on it or something.

They sprayed the furniture and then they poured the coffee. They go, “This is what you need to do.” Everybody would buy it, and then scratch-guarding became the norm. Every piece of material came with a scratch-guard. They stopped demonstrating it because it wasn't an upsell. Its sales started to fall off. Part of the reason that they did that is because there was none of that interaction anymore. Yes, it's scratch-guarded but the customer didn't know it was scratch-guarded even though everyone in the industry knew it was scratch-guarded.

They started to demonstrate it, “This is scratch-guarded. Look at this,” and poured coffee. They go, “That's fantastic. I'll get that sofa,” and so it went back up again. The parallel here is that people are buying these very simple things. You think you're unique. We're unique because we offer incredible insights to all the customers who entered into the CRM system, as does every CRM vendor. Why you? The reality is, “Mark, why you?” It’s because it's you. You're the guy I know. You're the guy I like. You're the guy I want to do business with. You're the guy that if we're stuck and locked in a boardroom for 24 hours to flush out the minutiae of the deal, it'll be a fun 24 hours, rather than a dull 24 hours.

These are the reasons that people buy. They buy in on something they can understand. This is the point, isn't it? If you are a specialist at your thing, injection molding, software, training, or whatever it is, you understand every single facet of the element of this particular vertical. The customer doesn't. You think that you're selling these unique things and they don't hear what you're saying. If you give them something they do understand which is, “I like you. I don't mind you making a profit on me because you're a nice guy. We get well and we share the same love of hockey, cars, fine dining, or whatever it is.” We've had a bit of banter and chatter around that. You're somebody that I'm happy to do business with. That's the key.

Trust and credibility. You have to start somewhere. In the coffee analogy, people aren't buying scratch guardin. They're buying a comfortable place to sit to make their living room look beautiful so that when their friends come over, they can all have a good time. Forget what we do, it's what we do for them. It's why they want this. What is it going to get them? It's all about that.

These days, with our stolen focus, I steal the name from Johann Hari and his book, Stolen Focus, it's hard to get somebody's attention. You guys are so great with your social selling training where you think of things. You say, “Let's first take a look at our profile. Let's let's think about how we build connections.” You and I had the same number of connections today. 17,000-ish, and then, “What do I do with my posts or other people's posts?”

There are some clever insights there. I'm with you. I do think people want social interaction. You have a couple of tactics that I applied and they work extremely well. Before I talk about my experience with them, maybe share. We've talked a little bit about the profile and trying to humanize it in this digital world. Your profile says collector of many things. You get these three cool model cars on your profile. I'm looking at your home right now. You have four guitars on your wall that look beautiful. Just an interesting guy.

You went from violin to guitar. I cannot believe how many of my clients are musicians or prospects and have been in a band. One in two people in the world wants to be a rockstar and they are in a band and it's common. When I post that I'm sitting behind a drum, mocking around, trying to do my best, but having the time of my life.

People love it, don't they?

I've never had responses like that on anything. For those listening, the stuff I post about businesses is genius. I’m joking. I post my lousy drum-playing.

It’s not lousy. It's fantastic. Stewart Copeland but better dressed. That's the point, isn't it? From the seller's perspective, we think everyone else lies, but when I say these words, they're they're true. The problem is from a biased perspective, everybody has access to the same words. Everybody is passionate and customer-focused and top quartile performance and all of this stuff. We've all got the same lexicon of words. We try to big ask ourselves up and we trip over the things that we say. There's always an implicit agenda in what it is that we're saying.

If I message you saying, “I love the drum solo yesterday, Mark,” that's it. No implicit sales pitching there. One would be cynical and could say, “It means I've lowered your guard a little bit so I then follow it up with something.” If you want to be successful in this space, it's a bit like dating. I walk into a bar, I see a beautiful girl across the bar. I walk up to her and say, “May I buy you a drink please and will you marry me?” She slaps me and leaves. Yeah.

Why did that happen? If I said, “May I buy your drink,” and then when we finish, “May I buy you another drink?” and then, “Do you fancy a bite to eat?” and then, “It's been a lovely evening. Can I see you again next week?” and I court her. Maybe at some point, I ask the question and maybe she'll say yes. It's inappropriate to say that at the beginning. It’s the same with sales. You have to court somebody.

The beauty of these social networks is LinkedIn, to use your analogy of the cocktail party, there are a billion people at this cocktail party. Every single person from a business context that you would ever want to speak to is there. You can't sell to all of them today. What you're not looking to do is to sell to all of them today. What you're looking to do is to identify the low-hanging fruit. Here are the people that I'm looking to talk to. I'll see which ones want to talk to me. I'll see which ones are excited by this, then those are the people that I focus my effort on, knowing that the ones that I've accepted my connection request and have potentially seen my content, I'm going to farm them over a period of time.

Maybe they're not ready to buy for six months or six years, but if I keep posting stuff, you keep seeing me in your news feed. Hopefully, you'll keep consuming some of that content. At some point, down the road, when you are ready to buy, you might think, “It's that Mark Cox guy. He's the guy I need to talk to. Perfect.” Often, we're trying to hammer a round peg into a round hole. You have a budget at the moment. How can we get the budget allocated to this? You can't.

How do you do that today? Without giving the secret sauce for everything.

I give the secret sauce away because nobody does this until they have a structure around it.

You've done posts on this. You've been very clear about things. If I know my buyers, which I do, and I know they don't make snap decisions on major training initiatives to train their team. They're not going to change their mind about January or at the end of November the prior year. I want to start to introduce a relationship so they may have interest. How do you do that?

There are a billion people on LinkedIn. You can't connect to all of them. The first thing you need to do is you need to build a network. For people who are starting out, let's assume you have 2.000 people in your network. For most people, 90% of those people are connected in the wrong place. They're places where they used to work, cars they used to have, or industries they used to be in. A very small number of those are people that they want to talk to today.

Strategies For Effective Networking And Relationship Building

You make conscious decisions about the fact that you're going to connect to people that you want to talk to. If you want to sell to company X and I’m connected to two people in company X, that means I'm invisible to company X. If I’m connected to 200 people in company X, I would be visible to company X. The first thing we can do in the easiest thing we can do is we can pull that lever. We can say, “I'm going to connect to as many people sensibly as I can within that organization.”

People being people, we have to recognize that I'm trying to talk to the head of procurement. I'm desperate to talk to the head of procurement. The head of procurement is desperate not to talk to me because they don't like me. Maybe they do look at me and they go, “This is not somebody that I want to associate with because he likes folk and blues, and I like heavy metal. He’s not someone I'm going to have any sort of relationship with.”

What I need to do is I need to get multiple touchpoints into the organization. Simply targeting that one person is like asking for a marriage proposal on your first date. It is inappropriate and ineffective. What I need to do is I need to surround that person with love and connect to lots of people around that person, people who are their direct reports, their managers, and people who are at a similar level in other verticals within the organization.

I know that you don't want to talk to me, but John who sits at the next desk and your opposite number in a different field within the business has become a friend of mine over time. I'm hoping that ultimately, I can ask John to introduce me to Mark in a nice way. If I build a relationship properly with John, he will say yes. We need to connect with these people. What we then need to do is we need to parallel with that. We need to make sure that we are engaging with any content that these people share.

Firstly though, how do I get them to connect? As you say, I'm going to reach out to somebody who's surrounding this head of procurement. What's your strategy or even a tactic that says, “How do I get somebody to connect?” A lot of people today don't accept connection requests.

It’s always a personal note. A personal note needs to be generic enough that I can quickly apply this to lots of people. Spending twenty minutes reading your profile and creating a beautifully crafted connection request that guarantees 100% acceptance is not effective because that's 3 in an hour. If however, I produce a generic friendly connection request that I can then send to everybody, just changing the name, I might be able to send 100 of those now. If I only get a 50% strike rate or success rate, I’ll have 50 connections in an hour rather than 3, which is better.

There's always an element of numbers in this. My connection request would say something along the lines of, “I found you.” How I find you? “You were mentioned in this post or LinkedIn suggested you, or I'm connected to those people that you're connected to, or whatever that is. I looked at your profile. I'm always looking to add good people to my network. Is it okay if we connect? PS. I promise. I'm not going to try and sell you anything.”

“I'm not selling or buying at the moment, but who knows what the future may hold.” Something that is friendly and will hopefully pique their interest. Like all of the listeners, I've invested a huge amount of time in creating a compelling profile. I want, if possible, to get you to look at my profile. The beauty of that is if you think I’m a cool guy, you're going to remember me. If you think I’m an idiot, you're still going to remember me. I've broken through the noise by getting you to look at my profile because it is unique and polarizes people.

Once I have you in my network, I've built a digital bridge between you and me. What people often do is I can follow Mark and I can see his content. I'm not interested in seeing your content. I'm interested in you seeing my content. I need to connect to you and if Mark doesn't accept my connection request, John, Dave, Janet, Frederico, or whoever will. That's fine. I'm looking for coverage within an account, then I'm going to share a variety of stuff.

We need to take our whole selves to the platform. Part of that will be my best thinking, “If I'm going to give one piece of advice to you today, it would be this.” Part of it will be, “Here is something that every organization needs to do. You need to have a strategy around this because you won't get to your destination by chance.” Out of it will be like, “I've worked up this morning and I was feeling sleepy. The first thing I needed to do was go for a walk.” I took one photo of me on a walk.

The Role Of Personal Stories In Professional Branding

I think that’s what people are going to have the most challenges with. I'm going to be honest. Before I started talking to you guys, I would have never posted a picture of me playing drums on LinkedIn. It was all corporate, value, and insight. We talked and you said, “Just try it once.” I posted this thing and had 12,000 impressions. I'm getting comments from people who would not return a call when I reached out to them three years ago, but they're going, “You look fantastic on that drum set.”

There were two reasons why this works. The first of them is that if you do a post that says, “We have a seat open for a sales training program coming up next week. Drop me a line if you are interested in being on it,” and I liked that post, you're going to be straight on the phone, trying to sell me something, so I'm not going to like.

If you hear I'm playing in my band, I'm proud of what I've achieved here because this is a difficult piece and I drop a like on it, there's no back route in there to try to sell me something. That's you saying, “I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve.” Here's me saying, “I love it, man. That's fantastic.” That's a bit of human interaction, which is good. With all of these things, what we're looking for is cutthroat yet another company selling whatever product or service. To me, it's not cutthroat.

You’re walking down the street and saying, “Look at this, a 1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa parked on the street. It would have been better in black but red is still good enough for me.” You post that in your newsfeed. I scrolled past it and I was like, “What's that?” I scroll back and I go, “What a great car. I love that.” It stopped me in my tracks. In the same way that it stopped you in your tracks walking down the street, it stopped me in my tracks scrolling through all of this noise.

What's interesting for people who say, “None of my buyers would behave that way. I know that because I don't behave that way. I don't engage with personal posts.” I would call that out as BS. If you look at even the people who say that and they genuinely believe that, when you look at their activity, the stuff they have dropped a like on is, “Mark is celebrating eleven years at In The Funnel. Mark going away for his wedding anniversary. Mark has treated himself with a new car.” That's the stuff they're liking.

Even if it's, “It's Mark’s birthday today,” they drop him a like. Those are the things that they're engaging with. They're not engaging with that business content. Don't get me wrong. The joke that I often tell is that if you want the maximum engagement, you share a video of a kitten playing with a ball of wool. You share videos of kids. People think you run a pet shop, which is not right. You have to blend these two things together.

You have to say, “Here's the interesting stuff that makes me. Here's the stuff that makes me an expert.” You dovetail the two and a 50/50 split is perfect, “I’ll only share personal stuff at the weekend.” Great, but during the week, you are not going to achieve a standout if everyone else is sharing the same dull nonsense, and then you share something like, “Here's me. New shoes. What do you reckon folks?” People go, “I like them both. No, I don't buy brown shoes for myself,” or whatever the comment is. The fact is you’re getting that interaction.

The key thing is that for most people, whether or not they are using the telephone, email, or LinkedIn messages, what normally happens is I send you a message and you don't even respond. That’s what normally happens. If you say, I just bought a new pair of shoes. I think they're fantastic and I drop you a message saying, “You should have bought the red ones, Mark,” you are going to respond to the message and now I have you in a conversation.

Standing Out By Sharing Authentic And Engaging Content

All of this is about making sure that you do not look like the rest of the clones out there behaving a certain way. It's standing out. I like the authenticity and I like this idea today of humanizing B2B sales because marketing automation killed this for a while. This is why you can't stay current with the spam filters for email. This is why certain jurisdictions had to start to regulate what we're emailing people because the marketing automation platforms are blasting people 320 billion emails back and forth every day.

It's shocking. Even bigger than social, I think that sales scheduling tools sales teched all the bane of a salesperson's life. You take this thing and it says, “Monday, you send an email, Tuesday, you send a connection request, Wednesday you follow him up, and Thursday, you email them.” That's the best practice in quotes. What invariably happens as people always do with a process that's as complex as sales is they fix the bit they understand, which is not necessarily the bit that's broken.

With the sales tech, it says, “At this point, you need to send. This is your third email to someone, so you need to say something along the lines of, ‘I'm circling back to bump this to the top of your inbox, checking that you read my email.’ You need to write something like that.” You, being pressed for time, don't write something like that. You say, “That will do,” and you send that. That's a set script within product X.

Everybody gets those today, “Bumping this to the top of your inbox.”

Twenty different people at ten different companies are all sending you exactly the same words. As you said, it's removing the humanity and the human connection from this. That's the problem. The problem is if it said, “You are a miserable sword. Why aren't you responding to my emails?” You're much more likely to respond and say yes. If you caught me on a bad day and then you sent one of these pseudo-personalized nonsense emails, “Just circling background to do this, just bumping this to the top of your inbox,” go away. You have not even been bothered to write me a personalized script.

The key thing here is saying to people that in a commoditized world of products and services, the only USP is who you are. If you major in that, it gives you a massive competitive advantage. Does it mean everyone is going to want to buy from me? No, because some people will say, “I don't like bald people,” in which case, we're both in trouble.

How dare they, by the way.

You can't legislate for that. I often think to myself that the beauty of this is that if you understand who I am and what I am, you know what you're buying. The danger otherwise is that we schedule a call without having any interaction. We scheduled a meeting without any interaction. I drive for an hour to come to your office, to spend an hour with you, and to drive an hour home for you to say, “I'm not going to work with you, Adam, because I don't like you.”

Social Selling: The beauty of this is that if you understand who I am and what I am, you know what you're buying.

It’s much better that when I first reach out to you, you look at my profile and say, “I'm not going to engage you in a conversation because I don't like you.” It saved me three hours to get the same result. Much of this is about saying there are a billion people on LinkedIn. You don't want to talk to all of them. What you want to talk to are the ones who love you because they can't buy that anywhere else.

This is such a great conversation. It's evolving, so it's always changing. One key message I love for all the young people starting in professional sales is this concept of being the best version of you. We were joking when you said you're a nasty side. Be the best version of you, but be you. What happens a lot in professional sales and it certainly happened for me in the beginning. I was living this party lifestyle. I thought I was a mess, out late nights and drinking and doing all this crazy stuff as a young person.

I put on my suit. Back in those days, you wore a suit more frequently and I had this veneer. The veneer was, “I'm not letting you into that craziness, but I'm going to act perfectly and that I'm pleasant and positive and all those kinds of things. It was my authentic self. They can sense it. There's no real close connection. People say, “You're formal.” They would say that to me. If you follow anything I do now, you know I have the maturity level of a 12-year-old. I'm pretty good at sales training but I'm not formal. It's just this way.

People have developed beyond expecting a certain color and a suit. It's interesting the whole authenticity thing. I genuinely believe that turning the things that you perceive as negative into positive is an important behavior to have. When I'm coaching a young person, the challenge that they have is that it may be their first proper sales role. They've been in this day cold calling or whatever, and they moved into proper sales roles.

Turning the things that you perceive as a negative into a positive is a really important behavior to have.

They're going and meeting customers. They’re young. They're in their early to mid-20s. They're facing off against someone who is in their 50s. I'm not credible because I'm young. They make up all of this stuff about how they don’t have experience of this. You haven't. It's like when a 20-year-old says to you, “In my experience, Mark, you should do such and such.” You say, “What experience? You're a kid.”

I often think that you should turn it on its head because for somebody like you, if a 20-year-old says, “To be frank, you will be my first major win. As my first client, I will go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that you're happy.” How attractive and beguiling is that to hear? You can't hide the fact you're young. What you can do is you can say, “I have boundless energy.” You are not one of a thousand. You're one of one at the moment. I'm going to make sure that you become my case study for success. I know that that person is going to go the extra yard to make me a success than this person who's too interested in going on President's Club night.

Will leave it there for today. We could be talking for hours about this and we will. What a great conversation today and clearly the first time we've ever used the word beguiling on The Selling Well podcast. We've taken it up a level in terms of class and dignity. This is the British coming through. Thank you for that. First of all, thank you so much for joining The Selling Well podcast.

Thank you very much.

 How do people learn more about Adam or DLA ignite?

They can connect to me on LinkedIn. You can search for Adam Gray on social media or something like that, or if you want to type it in, LinkedIn.com/in/adamgray. That's my URL and or you could buy a copy of one of my books. Tim wrote that book. I wrote this. It was the first globally published book on social selling, probably a little bit old hat now. It’s great for wobbly tables.

I wrote this book with Tim. Those outline the thinking that we have as an organization and the challenges that we help other organizations overcome. I would stress for anyone to connect to me on LinkedIn preferably. If not, follow me and subscribe to my newsletter where I'm serializing a lot of thinking.

We have a partner in Singapore. His headline used to say on his LinkedIn profile and this is one of the best lines ever. He said, “Knowing but not doing is folly.” That's particularly pertinent because the irony is that all of the staff that we talk about is not a moon landing for anybody. Everybody knows they need to do this. Everybody knows how to do this. Anyone who's been able to have any relationship with another human being understands how to network and build rapport and relationships.

What they don't do is they don't do it. They are looking for shortcuts. That's where they fall over. Recognizing that social as a platform to enable you to scale the intimacy of those one-to-one conversations is where the wind blows.

Recognizing that the social media platform enables you to scale the intimacy of those one-to-one conversations is where the wind lies.

Amazing counsel. What a great conversation, Adam. Thank you.

Thank you. It’s lovely to see you.

It's great to see you.

‐‐‐

You going to want to have a conversation with Adam just like I did today. I'm going to tell everybody, I've read these books. I'm applying the strategies provided by DLA ignite. I've learned a lot. This is why I love the podcast so much and it works. I have these great conversations with people in networking chats, and they're all amazing. Sometimes they turn into an opportunity and sometimes they don't. The reality is that what we do is let’s say a Chief Revenue Officer, it may not be today that they need us. It might be 6 months from now or 12 months from now, but eventually, they’ll need us. We're front of mind when we have that personal connection.

I'd like to thank Adam so much for joining us today and giving us some great insights. As always, I like to thank you for listening to The Selling Well podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast as much as I did. If you did, please like and subscribe to The Selling Well podcast because that's exactly how we get great guests like Adam to join us. Thank you for doing so.

We're also growth-oriented over here as you know. If you have some ideas as to how we can make this podcast more effective for you so that you can apply the strategies and the ideas to what you do every day, please let us know. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or even email me at my personal email, MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email that comes to me. I respond to every bit of constructive criticism we get and we love constructive criticism. Keep your ideas coming and thank you for that. We'll see everybody next time on The Selling Well podcast.

Important Links

• Adam Gray on LinkedIn

• DLA ignite - website

• Brilliant Social Media: How to Start, Refine, and Improve Your Social Media Business Strategy on Amazon

• Smarketing on Amazon

• How To Influence Buyers And Changemakers Through Social Selling With Timothy Hughes

• Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers on Amazon

• The Diary of A CEO on Apple Podcasts

• Strategic Coach

• The Negativity Fast

• Stolen Focus

The Four Channels Of Confidence: Transforming Self-Doubt Into Self-Assurance With Margo McClimans

Unleash your inner confidence with Mark Cox and Margo McClimans, founder of Coaching Without Borders and author of The Four Channels of Confidence, as Margo shares powerful ways to help us overcome self-doubt and embrace our true potential. Margo breaks down the four channels and offers practical tips and insights on mastering each. Don't let self-doubt hold you back any longer! Start living your most empowered life today.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Four Channels Of Confidence: Transforming Self-Doubt Into Self-Assurance With Margo McClimans

Team, have you ever had those days where sometimes you're super confident? You feel like you can take on the world and you're in a great zone, and then other days, you're in a certain situation or a circumstance and your confidence leaves you. We've all been there, by the way, and that's why I'm so excited to speak with my guest. My guest is Margo McClimans, and she's the Founder of a company called Coaching Without Borders. She's been a Certified Executive Coach for well over two decades, and she's also written an amazing book called The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance.

I had a chance to read this book a couple of weeks before we did the episode. Fantastic book. Simple, straightforward, powerful, and a great example of the Mark Twain quote where he said, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had taken more time, I could have written you a short letter.” Margo's written us a powerful short letter. She's taken the time to do that editing. In this episode, we talk about those four channels of confidence. After defining really what confidence is, we get into the four channels of confidence.

The channels are the breath channel, the attitude channel, the voice channel, and the body channel. These are things that we can all think about intentionally to ensure we're in our best self to be as confident as we can be. She then talks about multiplying your confidence through relationships and developing an action plan for moving forward.

It's really a great conversation and frankly, at the beginning of the book, Margo speaks to writing the book for women. The reality of it is I think this book is universal. We all have these challenges and her coaching programs are for everybody. I think everybody's going to get value from this conversation and book. If you do get value out of this, folks, please like and subscribe to the show because that really matters to us. That's in fact how we get really good guests like Margo. Thanks for doing so, by the way. Enjoy this episode. Here's Margo McClimans.

Margo, welcome to the show. It's great to see you here. We've met before, but it's great to see you on this show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to chat because certainly I really love The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance. Two things dawned on me when I was reading this book. I think, first of all, it's a great example of the Mark Twain quote that says, “I wrote you a long letter. If I had more time, I would've written you a short letter.” I love these books where people actually take that time to do the hard editing. It's not easy, but it's really tough. It's all absolute gold in here. As you mentioned in the book, it's a great weekend read.

That's the idea. I'm imagining people getting on an airplane ride, a domestic or European flight. You should be able to finish it.

From Stone Business To Coaching: A Journey Of Self-Discovery

The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-assurance

Although the book is directed towards women, one of the things that dawned on me is how much I would've benefited from this book with the exact content very early in my career because again, I think confidence is a challenge there, or Imposter Syndrome's a real challenge early in your career, depending upon what you've done. We've got lots of stuff to unpack in this amazing book here. Just to start, for the readers, maybe you share the short story of your professional journey that got you here.

Sure, absolutely. Let's see. I started actually in the marble and granite import and export business. As an entrepreneur, that was my first company. It was called International Stone Consultancy. I got into that industry because I was hired as a buyer for a stone company in California, because I speak Italian. My main qualification was to speak Italian so I could reach out to the suppliers in Italy and import their stone to suppliers all over the world, but mostly Italy.

I realized at a certain point, I remember sitting on my back porch in Palo Alto, California and thinking, “I really want to be my own boss.” When I was that buyer for that company, I want to be my own boss. I want to have my own business, and I love the stone business, but I also have lived in all these different countries.

When I’ve had intercultural training, it was so important to me and made my experience so much better. I thought, “How can I walk down the street to Hewlett Packard and knock on the door and say, ‘I’d like to help train your leaders to work internationally.’” Why would they hire me? I thought, “I have some work to do.” I went and got my MBA in Italy and while I was there, I realized, I actually have a good thing going with the stone business. I actually started with International Stone Consultancy there, always with the dream in the back of my mind that one day, I want to be an intercultural trainer.

A couple of years after I finished my MBA, I was working at a local software company, ironically, working in California Silicon Valley. I moved to Italy where it's famous for stone to work for a software company. A little backwards, but nevertheless, I was working there. The MBA director approached me. This is 2005. He said, “I want to start a leadership training for the MBA students, and I want to have certified coaches, and I think you would be a great coach.” I said, “What's a coach?”

It wasn't like nowadays when there's so many coaches. As he explained it to me, I connected to my dream about intercultural training, and I saw the connection, and that's really how I got my start. This person believed in me. I got very lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. He was right. I found coaching is really my thing. I really found my thing with that. That's a little clip of the story, and I’ve been coaching ever since.

How interesting, when you think back to 2005, in those days, I was still in the corporate world running large sales organizations, and I remember there was almost a stigma to coaching back then. It was almost like if you were an executive and you had an outside coach, it was because there was a problem. It wasn't the way it is now where everybody invests in their future and we understand the importance of coaching. It was a little different than when they said, “You need some professional development.”

Even thinking of it those ways, it was very much a fixed mindset saying, “You need to go get better. It means you're not good enough now.” In one sense, it was positive in the corporate world because they were investing in you. In the other sense, it's a bit of a problem because if you need some outside help, there's a bit of a problem here.

I wish I could say it's completely different now. In some industries, it's still the case where there's a bit of a stigma. I do have some clients who wear coaching like a badge of honor. “I have a coach.” Other clients who say, “I'd rather not be given a testimonial with my name,” or whatever it is. It's true that in some organizations more than others, they are investing in their top talent and giving them coaching. Some industries, I still get requests where they say, “We have this problematic person. We're about to fire them.” You either fix them or at least if you can't, we can say, “We tried everything and we even sent them to a coach. Now we can get rid of them.” I don't accept that work. I really say, “No, thank you.” I don't feel okay taking money in a situation like that. They need to invest in the people that they want to keep around.

Great approach and good for you. By the way, for the readers, we met in a coaching program. We met in Strategic Coach. That's why we're here. Tell the readers where you are now.

I'm based here in Zurich, Switzerland. I’ve been living here since 2010, but as you can tell from my accent, I'm American and I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I’m actually a Midwesterner. I have a lot of affinity also with Canadians, this whole great lake region, I think, where there's a lot of affinity between us, more so than even for some of my countrymen a little bit further away.

I’ve always felt that.

We know how to play euchre.

You know how to play euchre and you also know how to play hockey.

Floor hockey. Where I grew up, floor hockey is my favorite sport.

Floor hockey is actually one of my favorite sports in life. I'm a hockey fanatic because as a kid growing up in Canada, the only thing we had to do was play ball hockey outside. I had the 10,000 hours.

I loved it. It was my favorite sport in gym class. Nowadays, I'm a tennis player. I also started playing when I was a kid. I keep up the lessons once a week. Speaking of getting coaching, I still get tennis coaching every week.

The Importance Of Coaching In Personal Development

That's this interesting thing. I'd like to just touch on coaching for a second here. I look at what we do, what I do. I’ve got a fitness coach, so I think I'm in okay shape, but I still want to learn the best techniques and approaches. I perform better when somebody's watching me. You're doing your 8 reps, 9 reps, you tank out at 7. If you're on your own, somebody's watching, you squeeze it out.

I'm a drummer in a bar band just for fun. The number of times, Margo, and we have these videos and all this stuff, and people come to show when I’ll tell people I take drum lessons and they go, “Why?” It’s like, “If you good enough to play in a bar band, why would you take drum lessons?” For me, the question is so foreign because the answer to me is so obvious. I want to get better. I want to get better at everything.

Especially the things that you love. Why not?

You're a Certified Coach. Tell me how you would define coaching.

I'm glad you bring it up because when we do a coaching for managers program, because we also do trainings, we bring a group of managers in the room and we start to tell them, “Coaching might be a good tool in your toolkit as a manager.” We invest a fair amount of time in explaining what is coaching because what I do is very different than what my tennis coach does. There's a lot of overlap between like, coaching and mentoring. There's also some overlap into therapy. That's also a delicate topic, too. People say, “I don't want therapy,” or, “I do want therapy,” or, “What's the difference?”

I probably need a fair amount of that. What we're going to have to do another episode for that, and it's going to be thirteen hours long. Let's hold off on the therapy for now, but I get the point.

There's overlap in all of those. What's the difference? Coaching, consulting, mentoring. Let's just start with that. Basically, in every one of those cases, you have a person who cares about you, who wants to understand your challenges, who wants to help you find answers, who wants you to walk out in a better situation than you started in. That’s the case for all three. Coaching, mentoring, consulting.

The difference between, for example, coaching, mentoring and consulting is the coach does not need to have any overlap in background. Technical background is not needed because a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation or there's other certifying bodies, it's about helping people find their own answers through questions through great listening. Of course, if I understand more about your industry, that's great because you can connect with people, you can relate to people and you want to feel like you understand their challenges. That's the most important thing.

Coaching is about helping people find their answers through questions. Great listening is key.

It's great if you have that information, but I don't have to. Whereas a mentor or a consultant has to have an overlap in their background or expertise in that area in order to provide the advice that the person is looking for. I could coach an astronaut, but I could never mentor an astronaut. I don't know what that big red button does. That would be dangerous. That's one really important distinction that we make.

The one between coaching and therapy is also part of our certification process. One of the reasons why I think it's important to work with a certified coach is that we learn what is the line? When do we need to start suggesting maybe this is a topic for therapy, because coaching is about the whole person and their whole life. It's not just their professional life.

My clients are welcome to bring in personal topics. We can even talk about their past. If that's relevant for now, if it's affecting them now, then that's relevant and that’s perfectly fine. What I'm not going to do is make a diagnosis. I'm not going to give them a label of a syndrome of something of that kind. If I sense that there's any depression or dangerous tendencies toward themselves or somebody else, that's absolutely not the territory of a coach. That absolutely should be referred to a therapist.

Without going too far down this tangent, but just thinking about it, when we think of most managers out there, or we could use other examples, but most business managers who are leaders are doing some form of inspection, some form of motivation, and some form of coaching. That's really what it takes to lead a team. By the way, one of those key things you shared is they actually need to care about the team and understand the team to be helpful at coaching.

That's an issue at some point in time because some managers just think of members of the team as tools for them to achieve their goals instead of understanding it's all about the player, not the coach. When we start to think of those things, or even in the sports world where my fitness trainer's coach is doing a little bit of coaching and a little bit of training, but she does know more about the space.

There's some consulting in there.

Defining Confidence: Why The Four Channels Of Confidence Book Targets Women

It's a little bit of both. It’s an interesting set of definitions there for us to process. If we circle back now, so we've talked about coaching and the book you've written, by the way, congratulations. It was originally from 2014. We've got a second printing now, I guess. The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance. Before we talk about the stages of confidence, maybe let's do that. Let's define confidence and then secondly, let's explain why you targeted this book at women specifically.

For me, it's really important that we distinguish confidence from arrogance or feeling like you're better than somebody else. Confidence is purely about being comfortable in your own skin, about not needing to prove yourself. It's not about never being afraid, either. You've heard the expression, feel the fear and do it anyway. I think confidence is really a choice. I think I shared that a story the book. Maybe I had on a super elegant dress or something that I felt a little bit insecure about.

I said, “I'm going to decide to be confident and put my shoulders back and walk into that room as if I look good. I'm going to decide I look good. I'm going to feel confident.” Sometimes that's what it takes. It's a choice to be confident and it's scary. It's not about not being afraid. I really believe that we're born with confidence. I think that every single one of us was born confident. None of us doubted ourselves when it came time to learn how to walk.

We kept trying. You don't doubt yourself as a toddler. I think we learn to not be confident at some point. The book is all about helping people rediscover their own innate confidence. Another assumption people make is, “I don't want to get too confident because I’ll come across as arrogant.” Another assumption they make is, “I'm an introvert. I don't want to become an extrovert.” You don't have to be an extrovert. In fact, the most confident people are usually some of the quietest people. They don't feel the need to talk or to speak louder or talk over others. They're just totally chill. Nothing about introversion or extroversion. Nothing about arrogance. It's really just cool, calm, collected.

You sense those people. Sometimes we call them comfortable in their own skin. They don't have to fill the room and they don't have to fill the air. They're not filling the air. It's not all about them. It seems to me some of the most confident people I’ve ever come across are the ones where when you're interacting with them, they actually make you feel like the smartest person in the room. They're not trying to convince you that they're the smartest person in the room.

They don’t one up you or anything else.

In the beginning of the book, you share very alarming stat. I don't know if this stat got updated, Margo, with the later versions. The stat was that globally, it's only 29% of leadership positions are filled by women versus men.

That was updated.

That's a current stat. The reference to government positions and so forth, the stats are even worse. Actually, to me, this is an issue actually in B2B professional sales as well, particularly mature B2B professional sales people. The gender diversity is not there at all. This is an alarming stat. It's so early in the book but is that one of the driving factors that said, “I'm writing this. This book's a book by a woman for women?”

That was absolutely one of the driving factors, if that is even a factor, because who am I to say that the figures have to do with those women's confidence? Not necessarily. I actually find it a really fascinating topic about those statistics and how many different factors play into that. It's not at all about fixing the women. It's not their fault. It’s a systemic thing. I think, nevertheless, it makes it harder to be confident when you're the only woman in the room. That’s for sure. Not just the only woman. When you're the only fill in the blank in the room. It makes it harder to maintain your confidence. That's what I had in mind when I was writing it. I was thinking, “I want to help especially women, but definitely also men, really feel comfortable in their own skin, even when they're the only blank in the room.”

It makes it harder to be confident when you're the only woman in the room, and not just the only woman, when you're the only fill in the blank.

Also, quite frankly, I believe that women are much more likely to go out and buy a book about confidence than a man. I’ll be honest, that was also part of it. I am a woman. That's my perspective. That's also a good reason to talk to women as I'm writing it. Also, I think that although confidence issues hit men and women probably equally, I think that women are much more likely to say, “I'm going to go out and read something about this. I want to get some help from the outside here.”

Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for your honesty and transparency about the marketing component of this, part of it actually matters. It is funny. One of the things you bring up in the book, and again, these are a little dated, but I think I went through the first gender diversity training ever, for me anyway, the first portion, was around 2005 when you were starting to get into this. It was pretty basic stuff. There were a few exercises that were shocking about these preconceived notions and these biases that we have.

Daniel Kahneman and Oleg with Thinking Fast and Slow, there's 135 different mental shortcuts we all take, the biases. It's amazing. I have every one of them. When I read that book, it’s shocking that I’ve done this,. One of the things that jumped out was oftentimes, in a meeting, and I could see this in the corporate world, you'd walk into a meeting, and I think you referenced in the book, the men walk in going, “I'm going to show these people what I know. I really deserve to be here. I might be the smartest person in this room.” Whereas women are walking in going, “I don't know if I deserve to be here.”

I hope I wasn't quite that black and white in the book because, like I said, I do think that men and women equally have these doubts in their confidence. That being said, I have personally met many more men who would be like, “What's the big deal? Why are you doubting yourself like that?” I think that those unconscious biases do impact women more. As you said, we all suffer from these unconscious biases, whether we're a man or a woman. If you've taken the Implicit Association Test from the Harvard group, have you heard about this?

No.

It's really fascinating. Anybody can go, it's free of charge. Implicit Association Test, IAT. You can go in and test your own bias and you can test your gender bias, racial bias ability, disability bias, and all sorts of categories. I think there's like twelve different categories or more. The way that they measure it is they show you two things on the screen. When something is matching what they say, you hit a certain key. When it's not matching what they say, you hit another key.

For example, they have women and children and or men and children. You have to answer and they judge the time it takes your brain to say, “No, it can be a man and a child.” That takes your brain longer than if it's a woman and a child. It's microsecond difference. They have all the bias in there. I run this with a lot of the groups that I work with, especially on female leadership programs. Ninety percent of the people in the room said, “Yes, I got the bias.”

It’s all there. Actually, again, back to the Women in Sales Conference, which is why I was so interested, we've had Lori Richardson. There are a couple of folks there. There's an organization called Women's Sales Pros, and because of the lack of gender diversity and professional B2B sales, which is changing, a lot of the younger teams I'm working with have much better gender diversity.

There's a group called Women Sales Pros, and they're all amazing. I think I’ve had about 6 or 7 of these women on the show, super successful in B2B sales. Many of them are authors. I think it's led by Lori Richardson, who's been on the show. It really interesting to unpack some of these topics. If we go back to this confidence, because as you say, Margo, as I was reading this, many of these things absolutely apply to me. I think it's universal in terms of these elements of, how do we help protect our confidence. That's a big theme, by the way, of the coaching program you and I were in are in where we met each other.

That is one of the reasons why I love it.

Strategic Coach. That was the first place I ever heard this idea of protecting your confidence. Up to that, even with sports and all these other things and the business and everything, I always thought that I had to earn the right. If it was a bad client or something of that nature that was stealing confidence or a bad leader I had, it's my fault and I’ve got to earn it. Instead, they go, “No. You’ve got to protect your confidence. You got to be around people.”

It's an asset.

The First Channel Of Confidence: The Breath Channel

It's a mindset too, as you say. In the book, you do a really deep dive on four channels that help in this regard. The breath channel, the attitude channel, the voice channel, and the body channel. I think the advice is so crisp, clear and simple. Let's unpack each of those and talk a little bit starting with the breath channel, and I'm going to call out right off the top. I don't know if you've read this book.

I have. It's a great book.

It's just such a wild book.

I taped my mouth while I was sleeping. I did it.

Did you really? Were you able to sleep?

Yeah. I put the tape in the middle. One of the big things in the book, if you haven't read it, is the importance of nose breathing and not mouth breathing. If you put a little bit of medical tape that's not too sticky in the middle of your mouth, you can still breathe if you have to from the sides, but it trains you to sleep with your mouth closed. Now I wake up in the morning with a closed mouth and it was fun.

Team, we're talking about the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor, just an unbelievably interesting book about the importance of breathing. James is 1 of 5 people I can't get on my show. I'm going to do it. There's only been about five people I’ve ever gone after that didn't join the show, and I haven’t found a path to James, but I’ll get them. Let's talk about what you do is provide some very simple tips on the breath side of things and the important side of things. Let's talk a little bit about the importance of breath. Maybe the cooling breath and then the rapid clearing breath is just two examples and why we do it.

I'd be happy to. I'd like to add before we dive in there why I chose the word channels because I could have said the four elements or the four corners, or the four points. I chose channels because I really feel like these are four ways that both we can in increase our sense of confidence, but also that we've projected. It's a two-way street. It's a channel of confidence. It's true if you think about it, especially when you're listening to somebody speak on stage. Let's just pause on the breath one. You notice when people are nervous because they're out of breath. You're like, “They can't catch their breath.”

At the same time, if you just take a deep breath right now, especially if you make the exhale longer than the inhale, what you're doing is slowing down your heart rate. That calms you down. When you calm your brain down, you're able to access more of your creativity, more of your intelligence, which, of course, makes us feel more confident. When we feel like under pressure, shocked by a question, or we get a scary question or scary situation, we can't even access all of the wisdom, knowledge and creativity that we have because our brain is under threat. It's thinking fight or flight right now. That's where these breathing techniques come in.

That fight or flight's is such a good example, Margo, and we've all lived this. You might have been in an emotional argument with somebody and then it ends and you're driving home and you think of three other data points you forgot to bring up that would've totally won you the argument.

“I should have said that.”

There's a physiological reason why, because of the fight or flight. As humans, that evolution, as soon as we're in that panic or that emotional state, the blood is not in our brain. It's literally in our extremities because we think we might have to take off.

The brain is doing us a favor. It actually blocks the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. Things like the adrenaline do that on purpose because it says, “This is no time to make a strategic plan. Just get the hell out of there. Don't think, just do.” That was a survival thing when we had saber-toothed tigers coming after us. If you're standing in front of a boardroom, it’s not very convenient to not be able to think.

Personally, I'm always amazed at the impact of breathing on me because I do meditate. It's just Peloton meditation. I haven't gone through a transcendental meditation before. The impact of ten minutes of focused breathing, I’ll walk into meditation like that and then feel like, “I’ve got to hit list. I have so much work to do.” I come out of that meditation going, “I'm going to have a great day. I get to do this work.” What a jewel to actually be on a show like this. Total mindset shift. Even to the extent, my wife, Donna, has noticed. It can really just change your state. It's so powerful. I love the tips of trying to do that in the moment. That's really hard. You're in the boardroom.

That's when that's when it counts. You're in the boardroom. You mentioned the cooling breath. I think we've all experienced how emotions can be contagious. If somebody starts losing their temper and raising their voice, your own heart starts racing. You can be sure that that person who's yelling and screaming also has blood pressure through the roof. The cooling breath, and this is something that I learned from Sharon Melnick's book about success under pressure. I can also recommend that one. She talks about a cooling breath.

Emotions are contagious. If you stay calm, you can be a neutral or calming source, even amid others' anger.

What's the title?

Success Under Pressure by Sharon Melnick. She talks about if you breathe in through your mouth, especially if you have a small opening, like you're drinking out of a straw, just try that. Breathe in through your mouth. You can feel the air passing over your tongue is a little bit cool. Do you notice that?

I do notice that.

It actually has an effect. It’s a very different feeling than breathing through your nose or just relaxed mouth breathing. It's really something that cools you down and instantly calms down anger. It's specifically helpful in a situation where there's anger, whether it's somebody else's anger or your own anger. This cooling breath slows you down, calms you down, and cools you down. There's the expression when somebody's angry, they're hotheaded. There's this association between anger and heat. That's why this cooling breath is part of calming down.

Emotions are contagious, so if you're able to cool yourself down in these moments, you might not make them calm down fully, but at least you're not exacerbating. You're not throwing fuel on the fire because that's exactly what can happen. When somebody starts losing their temper, we get triggered and we lose our temper. It just escalates. At least you're a neutral source, if not a calming source for the person that's angry. That's the cooling breath.

Just this impact of taking some deep breaths. You talk about how even doing it for a couple of minutes actually makes a difference, which it does. Wherever you're nervous or something, walking into a meeting or a presentation, even a minute or two of box breathing from the book where just breathe in, one nostril, hold it, breathe out the other nostril, hold the pause. You pause when you're empty. It's like a box. I pause when I breathe in.

In, hold, out.

Big difference. An immediate difference before you're walking into one of those tense situations. You also mentioned that also, and you brought it up here, the power of silence and just helping you get emotionally stabilized is huge. This power of taking a pause. I feel this all the time. You bring up how if you take a pause on stage or when you're doing a workshop, seven seconds feels like a lifetime. I'm notorious for this. I’ll ask a question and I'm expecting an answer in a second.

Give them a chance.

Not everybody's there and so you've got to give them a chance to catch up.

You get their attention back, too, because if all of a sudden you stop speaking, if somebody has zoned out and you stop speaking, they'll look up and say, “Is it over?” You get their attention back.

I’ll be honest. I face that a lot when I'm having this conversation, and it sounds like everything that I'm saying is super interesting to me. I’ll ask a question and somebody will literally go, “Did you just ask a question?” You talk about 88 keys on the piano and with inflection, we're not using all of the different inflection, tones and pitches available to us that make conversation interesting. Suddenly, I’ll sneak a question and then they go, “Did you ask a question?” They couldn't even follow it.

It's what I say in the voice channel of the book. It's about taking responsibility for being heard. It's making yourself not only understandable enough, but dynamic enough that people are not used to focusing for a long time. We're in a society where things are always changing, flashing, moving and scrolling. That means we have to be ready to change things up to get people's attention back.

It’s so hard now. The attention spans are so short. There’s a fantastic book called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari about the lost attention and the attention spans on people right now. It's just shocking. It's just incredible. He tried to go on a social media fast and a technology fast for a few months, and it was unbelievable what happened to him and what he recognized.

Just the fact that given what goes on with all social media and the technology companies, their whole model is based on trying to keep our eyes to the device. It's not to try and be helpful. It's the longer we have eyes to the device, the more money they make with advertising. They've really built these models that trigger things in our brain to keep us there. By the way, it works beautifully.

You have to appreciate the science when you don't have to. I can appreciate the science behind it, but I also know that I need to take responsibility for my own health and wellbeing. There's any number of things out there that are not good for me. We can't go around and controlling the people to not offer tempting things that aren't good for us in life.

We have to have the confidence to say, “I noticed that I'm not feeling as good.” Speaking of confidence after I’ve been scrolling for a while, have you asked yourself how do you feel after that compared to how you felt before? Do you have more confidence or less? If the answer is less, why do you keep going back? Only you can decide. Our mutual friend, Dan Sullivan, wrote a book, Your Attention: Your Property.

The Second Channel Of Confidence: The Attitude Channel

He's got so many good books. Let's keep continuing on with the four channels. The second channel is the attitude channel. Lots of writing on this. The inner voice. Trying to sabotage ourselves with our inner voice. Let's unpack that a little bit.

I think that's the most important one. My colleagues and I, my fellow coaches, we talk about how you can do as many things on the outside or on the surface as you want to not sabotage yourself, but if you don't do the inner work, then you can't master that inner voice. The Four Channels book is really meant to be from the inside out and the outside in. It's like, let's throw everything we've got at this because it's such an important topic. Let's not only dig down on the inside and ask ourselves, “Why do I beat myself up? Why do I tell myself that I can't do things that I'm not good enough or torment myself with these ruminations?”

It's also sometimes doing what they call the process of the warrior. That's not process. One of my colleagues can help me remember. It's about not only doing the inner work, but also talking the walk in a way, like doing these things where you're taking deep breaths, you're putting your shoulders back. That's the body. You're speaking with a louder voice and faking it until you make it in a way. You're saying, “I'm going to tell my body,” because we're always talking to ourselves. Our brain is talking to our body. Our body's talking to our brain all the time. I'm going to do everything I can from the outside to instill confidence in myself, but that's not enough. We also have to deal with the attitude. That's the inner part, the inner critic. The biggest message that I hope people take away is befriending it.

Really saying, “I have this voice, and it can be a real asset sometimes. It's only there to protect me.” Our inner critic loves the status quo, and it starts talking as soon as we want to step out of our comfort zone or try something new, or do something different. That's usually when it gets the loudest. It wants to keep us safe. Whatever you've done up until now hasn't killed you. Let's just keep doing that. God forbid you make changes. If we recognize that and say, “Thanks a lot inner critic, and I don't need you this time. Bye-bye.” Recognizing it. Noticing it. That's the first step.

Our inner critic loves the status quo, and it starts talking as soon as we want to step out of our comfort zone or try something new.

The thing about jumping outside a comfort zone, and even something like Peloton has been good, at least for me, coaching me on this is if you want to improve, you absolutely have to jump outside a comfort zone. You're going to be uncomfortable. No matter what level of fitness you get to, if you want to improve while you're working out, there is a very uncomfortable part of that workout that you want to start, stop. What they try and help you with is there's this concept of getting a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It's a good way of thinking of it. One trick I used to try and help myself with a long time ago was in the early days when all of our friends were getting married, I was actually asked to be the MC at a bunch of bunch of different weddings, like almost every wedding I went to for 2 or 3 years, and everybody gets married at the same time. I take it seriously because I don't want to ruin their wedding. You're good at stepping up and in some cases, 200 people, 250 people, you get a little nervous. You’ve got to prepare for it. After a couple, I started thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this to myself? Why do I want to go to this wedding?”

In those days, I drank a lot. I would've partied up with everybody else instead of having to be zoned in until I was done. The way I rationalized being comfortable being uncomfortable was it made me be in the wedding even more because I had to interview the bridesmaids. I had to interview the groomsmen. I had to learn stories about everybody, the family. I said, “This is uncomfortable,” but I'm getting comfortable with it because there's a benefit.

I'm going to know everybody more. I'm going to be more in the wedding and all that stuff. I learn from different people. I think this idea is helpful for people reading. There's going to be that presentation, there's going to be that keynote speech, maybe somebody's speaking at a wedding. You rationalize why you're doing it. Instead of feeling nervous, you feel like your butterflies are flying in formation.

Building on your strengths, too. I think I can imagine you're a fantastic. I know exactly why those people asked you toe their wedding. I'm sure you'd be amazing with that. Anyone who's been in a room with you, Mark, especially in a room with lots of people, will know that you have an ability to have a laser-like focus, to bring a calm to the room, to acknowledge what's going on, to ask the good questions. I’m not at all surprised. What I hear you saying is you took it not only as an opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and get better, but also you took it as an opportunity to connect with these people, which is clearly something that's important to you and something that you're good at.

Also, I don't think I mentioned that explicitly in the book, or if I did, probably not enough, find out what you love about any situation that makes you nervous or what you're already good at that makes you nervous. I just did that this morning. I was in a call with my team and we were doing a retro of a project that we led that was very stressful, a lot of work. There's so many last-minute changes. At a certain point, I was like, “Why am I doing this?” I had to take responsibility because why were there so many changes? It’s because I didn't say no. I just kept bending over backward. That's my strength. I have this Ranger strength in the Gallup Strength, which just like every strength when taken to an extreme, becomes a fault.

Rather than just focus on dialing back my strength, like just don't be so much of a Ranger, I thought maybe there's another strength that I have that I can put into play here that makes it easier to say no because I find that so hard. That's about quality. That's a big value of mine. Also, the relationship piece, like build on the strength that I have to build relationships to make it easier to say no. I think that could be a good rule of thumb for anybody who has to face a difficult situation and feels nervous.

The Third Channel Of Confidence: The Voice Channel

Focusing on the strengths, and acknowledging your strengths, I think that’s always very helpful for confidence. We're going to talk about one thing that isn't in the book at the end here, but let's finish a quick discussion on the four channels. Now we're on channel three. We started with breath. We went to attitude. Now we're on number three. Voice. We touched on it briefly. Voice being a very powerful aid in terms of confidence.

It's really one of those where it’s a lot about how you project yourself. As I said before, take responsibility for being heard. It’s a channel that can sabotage you. It needs to be there for people to get the whole picture of you as confident, which builds your confidence. When people listen to you, when people say, “That was a great idea. Let's do what Mark said, or let's do what Joanne said.” It's like it's building your confidence. When do they do that? They only do that when they can hear you. They only do that when they can understand you.

Learning how to make your voice not only the right volume, and I don't mean louder because sometimes people are too loud and people stop listening, the correct appropriate volume. A dynamic volume but also concise enough. If you talk to people, they are not capable of listening for that long. You need to be concise as well. That's what builds the confidence. It’s actually the feedback that you get when you start to master that channel.

By the way, I love that, Margo. We should take responsibility for being heard because that's an innate need in all of us. Outside of food and water, being heard is one of the most important needs out there. I think a lot of times when we're growing up and maybe early in our business careers, we don't have that confidence to take a room and to share our opinion and to step in or to disagree. Some of us are people pleasers. “I don't want to have the straight talk. I don't want to give the fundamental truth. I don't want to give feedback.”

Especially if that makes you the only person in the room with that opinion.

It does take some of that inner fortitude, but taking responsibility for being heard is a great life lesson.

Sometimes, it's as simple as waiting until people stop talking before you speak, waiting until they ask you a question or saying, “I have a question,” or, “I have an opinion here.” Before you just blurt out your golden question or your golden opinion, make sure that people are looking at you and they're not talking themselves. I know that sounds basic, but you'd be shocked at how rare that is. When you witness a meeting or when you watch debates, for example.

It's literally painful. I’ve certainly been in those corporate environments for many a year where it was painful to see how a discussion would take place. There was always this feeling that everybody had such a need to be heard that they couldn't hear anyone else because they're dying to figure out when they can jump in and share their thought.

Why would somebody listen to you if you don't listen to them? That's part of taking responsibility.

I always like this idea of whatever you want in life, give it away. If I want somebody to hear me, listen to somebody else. If I want somebody to treat me with respect, give someone else respect. If I want somebody to acknowledge that I'm good at what I do professionally, acknowledge and believe they're good at what they do professionally.

Start there. Make your own karma.

I used to be running very large corporate meetings with lots of people with heavy personalities. One of the things we do, as a matter of course, was say, “At the end of the meeting, no matter what, we're going to do a round table and everybody gets the floor for 60 seconds. You can pass, but there's no debate or rebuttal.” What people start to do is we're in a discussion, we're trying to keep things on track, and they didn't get their point in, but they veer away from going, “Let me go back to something we were talking about five minutes ago.”

The Fourth Channel Of Confidence: The Body Channel

They just jot it down. At the end of the meeting, we go around the room and somebody would say, “Mark, you really wear terrible-looking jackets. I don't want to see another one of those.” I can't debate and jump in and go, “The salesman said you've never seen this jacket look better on anybody.” I can't jump in. They get the floor with no rebuttal. I think that's just an easy tip, folks. When you run your next internal meeting this way, see what happens. Now we're moving on to, and I think it's the Wonder Woman, the Superman pose. Amy Cuddy. The fourth channel is the body channel. Let's talk and share a couple of tips there, Margo.

It was Amy Cuddy, and I understand a lot of her colleagues as well. I think she gets all the credit, which great. She certainly deserves it. I think that there's a whole group of people who are doing some fantastic work. Now that's a bit of a sidebar, but it's one of those things where in later years, people tried to redo the experiment and it didn't work quite right, so they wanted to throw the whole thing at the garbage.

It pains me, and this is the sidebar, how often it's the case when people start to get notoriety, status, power, money or anything else, we just lose all the empathy for them when we start just cutting holes and criticizing. I just want to say I think it’s a great work, and I understand there's a critique and some people say, “In the second edition, you're going to take that out now, right?”

No, absolutely not. I think it's fantastic. How do I know it works? It’s because I’ve tried it and it works on me. End of one. I'm sharing what works for me. I'm not saying this is the only way, but I'm sharing in the book what works for me. I think it's fantastic work. It's very logical, anyway, if you think about it, because, as we were saying before, the body and the brain are always in communication. The brain is always on the lookout for threats or rewards.

Much more focused on the threats, of course, because especially in caveman times, the threats are more important. You need to at least stay alive. The rewards, while they're nice, but we better stay alive first. That’s also why when you get feedback, you have 99 pieces of good feedback and a bad one, and you focus on the bad one. Our brain is shaped like that. Let's accept that and embrace it because it's gotten us to where it has.

The body and the brain are always in communication. Our brain is always on the lookout for threats or rewards but much more focused on threats.

A lot of it is really logical. She was saying taking up space. If you think about animals in the animal kingdom, what do they do when they have to go take over territory or fighters? They make themselves large. What you're telling your brain when you do that is you're strong. You're powerful. You don't need to hide. You're going to be okay if you're seen. The opposite is when you make yourself small and what do you do if, God forbid, you are in a place where there was gunfire happening, you would make yourself as small as humanly possible.

That tells your brain threats. Making myself small. One of the points she makes in the TED Talk that got so famous is unfortunately, we do this all the time without realizing it. We're huddled over our phones, sitting on the train. We're making ourselves small. Without even realizing it, we're sending a message to our brain that don't you're not strong and you're not confident. There's a threat. There's danger. We're not at our best.

It doesn't mean that you have to be big, even the Wonder Woman. It's about being neutral. Especially if you're in one of those difficult meetings where you feel nervous, where you don't have all your confident confidence, are your feet flat on the floor? Are you sitting up straight? You know? Especially if you're standing on stage, I can't tell you how often I see this, and this is definitely more women than men standing on stage. You can't see now, but I have my feet crossed.

Leaning on a podium or something.

Just freestanding. For some reason, they feel the need to put their feet opposite. You do this. What happens when you do that? Maybe not so much, but you see people stand like this. One foot across. The problem with that is if you get pushed, it’s a lot easier to fall over. If you push me the same way when I have both feet on the floor, I don't move. I know you're not going to actually probably get physically pushed when you're on stage.

Some of our meetings In The Funnel, that'll happen. We're trying to cut that out.

We're trying to make a law against that. Still, I believe, psychologically, there's something you just feel stronger if you plant both feet flat on the floor, planted on the ground. Just do everything you can to not feel off balance. You might as well. Just standing up straight, both feet flat on the floor. By the way, that makes it easier to breathe. The channels help each other. Speaking slowly, taking a deep breath between sentences. I don't need to talk in a continuous flow. I can really pause like I'm doing now and have a little breath here and there in between my sentences. It's not disturbing, but I'm able to keep the oxygen flowing. Unfortunately, in the Amy Cuddy video, I think she hadn't got The Four Channels book yet because. She's a little bit out of breath, but that's okay. I think it's still really great work.

Also, that was early days of TED Talks, so that's when you knew gazillions of people. It's different now because there's different levels.

It’s super polished, also.

First of all, The Four Channels of Confidence, How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance is a great book. As, as everybody knows, we put people on the show because I’ve read their book and I liked it. This is a really great book. Those four channels, breath, attitude, voice, body, they're all interdependent and connected. Of course, many of these things play over. These are things where we can intentionally help and protect our confidence, which is so critical in business and in life. I'm pretty sure after this episode, Margo, lots more people are going to going to look to learn more about you and your coaching business. How do they find out more about you?

I think the best way is LinkedIn. That's the social media channel. For my confidence, I decided I don't want to be on a million different social media channels. I'm going to choose one. I’ve chosen LinkedIn. Of course, our website as well, CoachingWithoutBorders.com. The book is available on Amazon. Hopefully you will find it right away when you type Four Channels, but if not, Four Channels of Confidence is definitely going to get you there.

That's again on LinkedIn, Margo McClimans. Margo, thank you so much for joining us on the show. It’s just great to meet you. It’s great to read the book. I'm so glad we have this conversation.

Thanks, Mark. I have to tell you, every time I talk to you, it's just such a joy. You are so generous. I can tell the world that we had a conversation also with one of my colleagues, and you were just immediately sharing all sorts of great tips and wisdom and insight. It was just a bit of a get to know. You're just a walking treasure trove of wisdom and generosity. Thank you for that.

Thank you so much. What a lovely thing to say. Thank you again, Margo. It’s great to connect with you. We're going to be speaking lots more, I'm sure. Team, thank you for joining our show. If you'd like this episode, please like and subscribe because that really matters to us. That's actually how we get great guests like Margo McClimans.

Also, if there are things we can be doing in this show to make it even more valuable to you, I really want to know what that is. You can send your ideas to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's actually my personal email for the company. I respond to every email we get where people suggest ideas for the show, and we love constructive criticism. Please keep those ideas coming. We've applied some of those things that you've been gracious enough to share, but please keep it coming. Thanks again for joining, everybody, and we'll see you next time.

Important Links

• Coaching Without Borders

• The Four Channels of Confidence: How to Cultivate and Radiate Self-Assurance

• Thinking Fast and Slow

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

• Success Under Pressure

• Stolen Focus

• Your Attention: Your Property

• Margo McClimans - LinkedIn

• Mark Cox's Email

Skillful Asking: Unlock Hidden Wisdom From The People Around You With Jeff Wetzler

Skillful asking is more than just posing questions; it's a powerful approach to unlock deeper insights and foster genuine connections. Jeff Wetzler, author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of the People Around You, joins Mark Cox to explore the art and science of asking the right questions. Jeff shares his five-step "Ask" framework, drawing on his extensive experience in management consulting and education reform. He reveals why people often hold back valuable information and provides practical strategies to create psychological safety and cultivate authentic curiosity. Tune in to discover how skillful asking can transform your leadership, improve communication, and drive breakthrough results.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Skillful Asking: Unlock Hidden Wisdom From The People Around You With Jeff Wetzler

Team, we've got a great show for you. We're talking about a magnificent new book called Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. This is by Jeff Wetzler. The book talks to us about how a lot of the knowledge that we need, whether it's in business or in life, is in the people around us but they're hesitant to share it. We need definitive strategies and a significant approach to extract that information from them and have those conversations where we get that information.

One amazing stat that was shared in the book is that about 80% of people know something that's wrong with their organization or a key issue but they won't share it with their boss and 75% of those people share it with colleagues and peers. They're all talking about it but they never share it with the boss.  There are things that you can do, whether it's your relationships with peers, friends, family members, direct reports, customers, and prospects. In the book, we talk about this five-step Ask approach. 1) Choose curiosity, 2) Make it safe, 3) Pose quality questions, 4) Listen to learn, and 5) Reflect and reconnect. Looking at the topic of this book and the things we're going to discuss here, this is so highly relevant for everybody in professional sales.

Jeff's got a magnificent background and the book is so well-written. It's clear and concise. The frameworks make sense and it's all research-based. It’s a big bibliography, like an MBA class. It's no surprise. Jeff spent ten years with Monitor and then he was the EVP of Strategy and Innovation with Teach for America. He's the Cofounder of Transcend Labs. They're a nonprofit that leads innovation in school design. Think of that as trying to change the way the education environment works.

Jeff's a great guy. This is a terrific conversation and really interesting. I continue to learn from these interviews and I hope you do too. If you enjoy this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. That matters to us. That's how we get fantastic guests like Jeff. If there are ways we can improve this show, don't hesitate to let me, Mark Cox, know. I hope all of you are connected with us on LinkedIn. Here's Jeff Wetzler. We're talking about Ask.

Jeff, welcome to the show. I was super excited to chat with you.

Thanks. It's great to be with you.

A Unique Career Path: From Consulting To Education Reform

We're going to get into the book. Once I read Ask, I realized, “Anybody who's going to quote Daniel Kahneman from Thinking, Fast and Slow and Rick Rubin, the music producer, in the same chapter, that guy's got to be on the show.” We're going to get into this in a second, but first of all, welcome. For the sake of the audience, give us the short story of your professional career.

My career has toggled back and forth between the worlds of business and the world of education. It started at a very special management consulting company called Monitor Group, which is now a part of Deloitte. It's called Monitor Deloitte. I was drawn to Monitor first by their recruitment slogan at the time, which was, “A place for optimists to change the world.” As a bright-eyed college graduate, that spoke to me.

I was also drawn in by someone at Monitor named Chris Argyris who was a Harvard Business School professor and known as one of the pioneers of the field of organizational learning. He studied this question of how it is that sometimes the smartest, most successful people are the worst at learning from one another. He dug into that question. He wasn't one to just admire a problem. He wanted to solve the problem as well. He developed a set of tools and methods to help professionals get far better at learning from the people around them.

I was very fortunate to be able to apprentice to him and some of his disciples. I began to ultimately start teaching these tools and methods to Monitor consultants and our clients around the world. I had the experience that every time I would bring out these tools and we would do days together, people would say, “This is the best professional learning I've ever had.” People would say, “Most of these times were a waste of time, but this changed my life, not just at work but with my wife, friends, or the data I haven't talked to in a while.” I realized I was onto something. I didn't invent it, but I had the great fortune of inheriting it and being able to deliver it.

I spent almost a decade at Monitor. One of my clients, a woman named Wendy Kopp who started an organization called Teach for America, which is a global organization, asked me to come help run part of her organization. She had been my client for five years. I was so impressed by what they were doing. They were more hard-charging, more ambitious, and better-run than most of my corporate clients. I said, “Let me take a leave of absence from Monitor.” Monitor was kind enough to give me two years.

I ended up becoming the Chief Learning Officer of Teach for America. Those 2 years turned into 10 years because I was having so much fun. We were scaling the organization. We were trying to improve quality while we were growing incredibly quickly. It was an incredible journey. I did that for about a decade. Did you want to jump in?

No, you go ahead. Please finish off.

In 2015, I left Teach for America and started an innovation organization called Transcend with a co-CEO named Aylon Samouha. Transcend works with communities all across the United States and more broadly who are looking to reimagine what education can be. We're trying to help them break out of this 100-year-old industrial factory model of schooling that most kids and teachers are still trapped in. We use design thinking, questions, curiosity, and learning science to develop modern 21st-century ways of doing education. We have been building and scaling that organization for the last couple of years.

I stepped down as co-CEO. I'm working on something called Transcend Labs, which is thinking around the corner. It also gave me time to launch this book called Ask, which is a culmination of all of my experiences built off the foundation of what I learned from Chris Argyris but weaving in ideas and tools from other great leaders like Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and many others. I wrote the book to deal with a problem that I both observed but also experienced as a leader and to try to pay forward so much of the incredible mentorship, teaching, and insight I was fortunate to gain in my own career.

Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life

Two things. First of all, my team should record exactly the way you introduced yourself there because I have to improve the way I do it. That was spectacular. Second of all, what a career and a journey. For the regular audience, Monitor Group is a super high-end strategic consulting. It is one of the top players in that field.

We've had Roger Martin who is one of the very early leaders of that organization join the show. We always use his clip because one of the things he said in the interview was, “Looking back now, one of the challenges at Monitor was you'd get somebody to a senior manager level but if they wanted to move up to a director level, they needed sales skills. Back in the day, they didn't think of hiring companies like ours to come in and train them.” He said if he did it, they see value in that professional skillset and capability to get to that next level. It ties into the full title of the book. The full title of the book is Ask: Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of the People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. That's your tie-in with, “This helped me in my personal relationships.”

I am a comic nerd. I have thousands of comics. Unfortunately, my wife and I have figured out what to do with them. At the beginning, you referenced that pollsters asked Americans if they could have any superpower in the world, what would they pick? The answer came back, number one, reading other people's minds. Number two, time travel.

Mine would be, in vulnerability for those reading, I want to be Superman but I don't want to be hurt anymore. I play hockey and I'm tired of being hurt. What an interesting thing that everybody wants to understand what's going on in somebody else's mind. This whole approach and methodology that you come up with the Ask approach is a way of pulling what's in somebody else's mind out.

It's true. We have a natural desire to understand what the people around us are knowing, thinking, and feeling. We know that they're not fully telling us. That's why we wish we could read their minds. We know it's hard as well.

They have an innate need to be heard and understood.

That's exactly right. If we could put those two things together, we would be better off if we could tap into that, and that's really the impetus for the book.

It's so smart. Another stat you threw that's helpful for us to think about was something to the effect that about 85% of people out there have shared that there's an issue or a challenge that they did not share with their boss in organizations. In fact, 75% of those people said they'd talked to other colleagues about it. They’re like, “I'm not going to share with my boss but me and my friends are talking about this because it's this known issue.” This caught you a little bit at Teach for America, which might have been one of the main impetuses of the book. You got caught in a pretty tough situation there. Tell us a little bit about that.

I was relatively new. I  spent almost a decade at Monitor in many ways, teaching and leading this very work. It was my first major operating role. We were putting together institutes to train teachers. We had thousands of teachers, so every institute would be training 500 or so teachers. These are new teachers going into some of the toughest contexts or most underserved contexts. The stakes are really high both for the teachers and for the students that they're teaching.

We had teams for every single institute that spent the entire year planning the institute, developing the curriculum, getting the space, and organizing the transportation, food, faculty, and all those different things. We had multiple of these things going at any point in time. I discovered almost at the very last second that 1 out of our 5 institutes right before it was about to launch was about to implode. We had 500 teachers descending on the city when there was not going to be something to support them and they only had the summer to get ready to teach.

All year long, I had been saying to the team of this particular institute, “How's it going? Are there any issues? What can I do?” They were like, “It's going well. We got it. There are a couple of bumps,” and all that kind of thing. I was doing my job. I didn't have all the right questions to ask but I was thinking, “We're good.” All of a sudden, one thing crumbles after the next. We don't have the buses lined up and there's no summer school for them to have a practicum to teach. Half the faculty aren't ready to be teaching and all that kind of thing.

Thankfully, I had a colleague who was credible who swooped in, saved the day, and whatever else, but it got me thinking, “How come they didn't tell me?” It turns out that in hindsight, they were panicking. There were all kinds of issues. If they had told me, I would've rolled up my sleeves. We would've gotten in it, we would've solved it, and it would've been fine but they felt like they had to say to me, “We're on track.” They thought to themselves, “Hopefully, we'll figure this thing out,” but they weren't figuring it out. I thought, “Why is it that people in organizations aren't saying, in this case, to their managers the real thing?” That became an obsession for me to figure out what are the biggest barriers.

Unveiling Hidden Barriers: Why People Hold Back Information At Work

Let's talk about some of them. What's the answer to that? We run a small business here called In the Funnel. We work with lots of medium-sized enterprises. We work with lots of large sales organizations. A lot of the time, we're interviewing the salespeople that will end up training or we're doing some due diligence to do that. I'm amazed at sometimes what they'll share with us but they don't share with their leadership. I don't know what it is about, a casual conversation with me or what have you. What prevents people from sharing?

It's not just that they withhold from their boss. This withholding happens in every direction. Bosses withhold it from the people that they manage. Colleagues withhold it from each other. Customers withhold it from the people who sell to them. Clients withhold it from their providers. Investors withhold it. Board members withhold it. This is a 360-degree withholding that's happening all around us. It's astounding. It’s the same barriers that stop people in whatever direction this is happening.

The number one barrier is fear of the impact of saying what they have to say. Maybe they will get judged. Maybe they'll hurt the other person. Maybe it will poison their relationship. Maybe it will put tension into their relationship. All of those are under the category of fear of the impact. That's not the only barrier. A second barrier is that people don't always have the words to say it. As it occurs to them inside, they know that if they say it that way, it's going to make things worse.

There are whole industries around helping people find better ways to share feedback and all that kind of thing but that doesn't mean people have the words. Sometimes, people have the words but they don't have the time to say it. I discovered this other stat that the human mind can think at 900 words a minute but at best can get out about 150 words a minute.

Our minds can think at 900 words a minute, but we can only speak at about 150 words a minute. Be patient and listen

Oscar Trimboli. I love that.

If you think about that, you're talking to someone. At best, you might be hearing 15% of what's going on in their head at that moment in time, not because they're maliciously withholding from you but because the math doesn't work. The straw is not big enough to get all the words out of their mouth. That's another barrier as well. They don't have the words or the time to say the words.

A third barrier is people are exhausted. Everyone is rushing and grinding fast. People think, “It'll be faster if I don't say it. If I say it, then we're going to have to have a conversation about it. It'll take time. I want to get home.” They're too busy. The biggest barrier and the one that I think is most fascinating is that people don't tell us things because they don't realize we really want to know. They don't think that what they have to say would be truly valued by us. That's the most fascinating one because it's the most actionable one to deal with as well.

You can control it. We've had Oscar on the show too for a couple of times from How to Listen. This will come into the Ask approach. Listen with intent. Actively listen. You shared the 900-125. How many words can you process when somebody else is speaking? The number is 425. If you're speaking to me at 125, it's almost impossible for me not to be slightly distracted because my brain's already connecting patterns and all of these things. I can't wait to jump in and tell you what I've learned.

I love that research.

It's so powerful. We've had a couple of great conversations on that. This last one led into it beautifully. They think we're not truly interested. A[1] ny leader out there tuning into this has been in a situation where they’re having a conversation, maybe with a direct reporter or somebody of that nature. You ask a question but you're not really authentically curious about the answer. You've already got your biases about this person or the situation. We're going to talk about the ladder of understanding in a second here. When we talk about the five-step approach, the Ask approach, the first step is that curiosity is a choice. You have to want to know what the answer is and show it.

The Ask approach is what I'm putting forward as a solution to this problem, the problem that we don't find out what people around us think, feel, and know. It's five steps. They're grounded all in research. They're all tested out and pressure-tested in practice. Step one is choosing curiosity. I'm positing curiosity not as a trait that some people have and other people lack and not as a state of mind like, “I'm not feeling curious today,” or, “I'm feeling curious,” but truly as a choice. That means that it's a decision that's always available to us.

When we choose curiosity, we're putting ourselves in a mindset or bringing an intention of, “What can I learn from this person?” When I center that question, it pushes away other questions like, “Why are they such a jerk?” or, “Why are they so stupid?” or, “How do I get them to say yes right now?” It's truly, “What can I learn from this person?” That opens up lots of other questions that start to flow into our minds like, “What do they know that I don't know? What are they up against? What are they struggling with? What do they see? What's their life experience? How am I impacting them?” There are all kinds of things we can learn.

Often, people say to me, “Do you really want to learn from everyone? Can you learn from everyone?” I'm like, “Just because you learn from them doesn't mean you have to agree with them and it doesn't mean you have to do what they want you to do, but you can still learn from them. Even if you vehemently disagree, at minimum, you can learn, “Why do they feel the way that they feel?” or, “What moves are they going to make there?” I truly believe there's something we can learn from every single person. Choosing curiosity is tapping into that.

Well said. I'll be a little bit honest here. When we started the show years ago, first of all, we went after sales leaders and people who've written sales books. Considering the early days of what went on, I promised that I would read everybody's book before they joined this show. Maybe as a little over-confident, I did some big deals as a salesperson. I led some large organizations.

I'll be honest with you. I was very judgmental in the early days of reading someone's book going, “There's nothing new here. I've heard this before,” and so on and so forth. Getting somebody on live conversation and talking to them, you realize, “They brought 2 or 3 other things to the table that I hadn't thought of. I really like the approach and what they've done here.” It triggers that dopamine where you go, “I'd like to learn more.” We all love dopamine. To some extent, this is still good marketing for us.

The driving factor for a lot of these interviews is we put people or guests on where I've read the book and I go, “I can't wait to talk to this person.” If you are open-minded, everybody's got something to teach you or there's something to learn in everything, but as we'll get to, there are barriers within me where I'm going to make that judgment fairly quickly and say, “They were never really top-level salespeople.” My emotions come into play. In milliseconds, I determine, “Do I like this person or not?” That can put up a wall or a barrier.

We're going to stay on curiosity, but while we're on it, the Ask approach is this five-step approach. Number one, choose curiosity. Number two, make it safe. Number three, pose quality questions. Number four, listen to learn. We talked about Oscar. Number five, reflect and reconnect. The book, I've got to call it out. I read a lot of books and I've written a book. This book is a beautifully written book.

Thank you.

It is well-designed and simple but powerful. I love the fact you've got a powerful bibliography. They’re not opinions. These are fact-based comments. We're referencing great research and great books. The hardest book I've ever read is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I have every one of the 135 biases. It’s so painful to see all of these things. My brain tricks me. Let's stay on curiosity. For those out there who are walking into that next meeting, whether it's with a customer, a prospect, a peer, or a direct report, what are some of the things that we can do in our tool bag to try and generate that authentic curiosity? What might be some tips to make me a little better in that next meeting?

The Ladder Of Understanding: How Our Minds Quickly Jump To Conclusions

Maybe this is a time to talk about the ladder of understanding because this is a tool to help us understand where our curiosity goes to die and how curiosity shuts down. I believe that one of the best ways to choose curiosity is to understand a little bit about how our mind works so that we can become more aware of when our curiosity is shutting down.

This is a tool that is adapted from work by Chris Agryiris. It helps us understand how it is that we walk into a situation, size it up, and tell ourselves a story about what's going on all in milliseconds and all outside of our conscious awareness. It starts by anytime we walk into a situation, we are awash in data points. There is information everywhere.

Even as I stare at you, I'm looking at your background, your facial expressions, what you're wearing, and your microphone. I'm listening to all you've said. If I tried to stop and pay attention to every single one of those hundreds or thousands of pieces of information that surround me or I tried to pay attention to all of them, I would be paralyzed. If you ever walk down the street with a three-year-old, they stop and pay attention to everything. They’re like, “Look at that bird. Look at that worm. Look at that leaf. Look at that crack on the sidewalk.” Everything is interesting to them. It is adorable but they don't get anywhere. It takes you two hours to walk a block.

 In order to move forward in life, we can't just pay attention to everything. We have to select the tiniest fraction of that information to zero in on. We ignore everything else. The dangerous part is we forget that we've done that. We assume that whatever that tiny fraction of information that we've zeroed in on is the totality of reality in the whole thing.

Since we're human beings, we're not content to sit with that piece of information. We instantly make meaning of it. We go up the next rung of the ladder, and that is to say what this means. We’re like, “He's nodding that way. That must mean he's placating me,” or, “That must mean he's interested,” or whatever it is. We make an inference of what it means. Quickly, we jump to the top of the ladder, which is ultimately, we draw conclusions. We’re like, “He's that kind of person,” or, “She's trying to do this. This is what's really going on here.” Those conclusions become our story. The story has major consequences because the story shapes what steps we take next.

That is how the ladder works. We're washing this data, quickly zip up to the top of the ladder, construct the story, and we don't even realize that we're doing it. The kicker is that the choices that we make at every step along the way, what information to select, how to interpret, and what story to spin are not random choices. You referenced Kahneman. They're shaped by our prior beliefs, worldviews, assumptions, ways of being, and ways of knowing which I call our stuff. Our stuff shapes our story, but then we have a story that we get to which then reconfirms our stuff. We're like, “There we go again. They're always like that. Here's how the world is.”

We get trapped in this thing that I call the certainty loop. It's the loop between our stuff, which shapes our story, which reconfirms our stuff. The more we get stuck in that loop, the more our curiosity dies. To choose curiosity, we have to interrupt the certainty loop that we all fall into. The way we can do that is by using what I call curiosity questions. These questions are mapped to different points of the ladder of understanding.

At the very bottom is selecting the information. The question is,  “What information might I have overlooked? What else might be going on here? What might I be missing?” The next thing is assigning meaning to it. It is, “How else might someone process this information? What's a different way to interpret this?” The next is drawing conclusions. It is, “What's an alternate conclusion that someone might have? What's a different story that one could tell?” The uber curiosity question is, “What can I learn from this person?”

If we can start to inject those questions almost like injecting question marks into our otherwise certain story, we begin to loosen its grip on us. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean we have to throw it away or abandon it. We make room for some other ways of looking at the situation to come in. Sometimes, it's hard to do that because we're so stuck in our own story. It can be helpful to invite a friend, a coach, or a mentor to pose these questions and sit with these questions with you.

I have also found, and I read about this in the book, that AI can be that friend as well. You can put in your whole rant into AI like, “I can't believe this political figure, this business decision,” or whatever. Put a question in like, “What might I be missing?” What comes back is fascinating. It's humbling, curiosity-producing, and in the privacy of your own phone, computer, desk, laptop, or wherever you are. You don't even have to admit that there might be another way of looking at it but you can still get that help.

When you're reading the book, first of all, there are great chapter summaries on everything. There are all of these key points that you go into. There are great examples of these AI prompts. What would you put in? You were using an example there. The example in the book that showcased the curiosity and the ladder of understanding was this reference point in a Caribbean country where tourism was being impacted and the hotel management versus the unions of the labor working in these hotels were trying to figure out, “How do we get to this point where we can stop losing the dollars from our number one industry for the entire place?”

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, it's shocking when you learn about the mental shortcuts we all take and the biases we have. I have them all. You catch yourself. One of the themes you put in the book is we have to be our best selves to do these things. It’s like, “How many times have I been in a client meeting? How many times have I been in a meeting with a direct report where I ran from another meeting? I'm overworked and overtired. I've got to get to the gym tonight somehow. I got five hours of sleep.” Everything's about me.

In order to be authentically curious, pause, and listen to learn or listen to understand, it takes enormous energy. You have to protect some white space for yourself in your day and your energy so that you can do that. We cram so much into a day. Everybody's got so little free time. All of this stuff becomes exponentially more difficult if you're wiped out.

It can take a lot but there are also small things to do. I know you had a guest, Diane Hamilton, on the show. She and I are collaborating on an article together with someone else named Natalie Nixon about how you can put little speed bps in your day so that you can get that pause. Even if you have five hours of sleep or even if you're running, you don't have to become a perfect monk and everything in tune or whatever. You have to put a little speed bump in and say, “Let me think. Here's a question. Let me pause for a second and take a breath.” There are little things that we can do to cue our curiosity.

Another person you may want to think about collaborating with is Juliet Funt. She has a book called A Minute to Think. She was a guest on the show a few months ago. She talks about the same problem. She makes a great reference that it's a little bit like a fire. When she was an inexperienced camper, she'd tried to cram all the wood together to light a fire outside. It doesn't work. To build a fire, you've got to allow some space for oxygen to get through to let the flame breathe.

She talks about the need, importance, and impact of putting some white space in your day and your time. You think instead of doing everything all the time. She'd be somebody who may be great for this discussion too. When we talk about the 5-step Ask approach, the 2nd step of the approach is to make it safe. Learning for me,  earlier in my career, is to make it safe. We talk about a safety cycle, creating a connection, opening up, and radiating resilience. Let's talk about those briefly.

Creating Psychological Safety: Making It Safe For Others To Share Their Truth

This is a recognition that even if I'm curious to learn from you and you don't feel safe telling me your truth, especially if it's a hard truth, it doesn't matter how curious I am. I'm not going to learn from you. This was the core problem I faced in the story I told you earlier about my team. I was curious to know how it was going but they didn't feel safe telling me the answer.

You're new. They don't know you. You came from a big-league consulting firm. It's a bit scary, right?

Exactly. There's a power differential. I could hire them or fire them. We were also operating across lines of difference, race, gender, and other things as well like geography. All kinds of barriers were reducing the safety that they felt. If we want to learn from other people, it's on us to create that safety. A little bit about each of the three pieces of the safety cycle you talked about, creating a connection may be obvious.

There are two most important insights I got from researching the book. One is when do you do it? You have to do it before you have an important conversation. You are digging your well before you're thirsty. If you're trying to create a connection at the same time you're trying to create safety, it's much harder. If you can build that connection well in advance, it's much easier. The second thing is the time, place, and space of the connection. For the book, I interviewed CEOs.

They were big-league CEOs too.

They were from big companies like Kraft and Medtronic. They are notorious for not getting the truth from people. People don't tell CEOs the truth. They lie to them because they want to look good in the eyes of the CEOs. I said to these iconic CEOs, people like Bill George or Irene Rosenfeld, “How did you get the truth out of people?” One of the biggest things they said is, “It's when and where I have the conversation. I'll never bring someone into my office, make them sit across the big, intimidating CEO desk from me, and assume that's where they're going to feel safe. I'm going to go to them. We're going to do a ride-along. We're going to have lunch. We're going to take a walk. We're going to sit on the sofa,” or whatever it is.

There was no single answer but the answer simply was wherever they are going to feel most comfortable and at ease is when and where we should have that conversation. It applies in business and in life too. It applies to my sixteen-year-old daughter who never wants to tell me anything when she comes home from school or at the dinner table. If I want to find out what her life is really like, I have to do it when she's comfortable, which is 11:00 PM when she's done talking to her friends, she's done with her homework, and I'm ready to go to sleep. That's when she wants to talk. If I want to know what's going on in my daughter's life, that's when I got to do it. The same thing holds true in work situations. That's creating a connection.

Wherever people are going to feel most comfortable and at ease is when and where we should have that conversation.

We've all had discussions with leaders throughout the course of our career where we felt this and we've had leaders that we reported to based on what we’ve done where we did not feel this.

People can viscerally feel how safe they are.

That's where the stats at the beginning, the 80% of having no problems but won't share them and then 75% share with each other came from. I've lived in that situation where you walk into a meeting saying, “This person does not care at all about me, my life, and my situation. I'm a tool for them to achieve a goal.” You then make this decision to go, “Am I still getting something from this whole thing?” I’ve lived like that for a few years in a role like that because there was still value and learning to me but I would not have thought for a second this person cared about me whatsoever.

They're not going to have your back when you know when you need it.

Asking Quality Questions: A Taxonomy For Deeper Conversations

Continuing along, posing these quality questions. We've got to be curious in terms of the Ask approach. We’ve got to make it safe. On making it safe when we're working with a lot of sales leaders, when this leader takes a look at the team and might have 1 or 2 folks where there's an issue or 2, I often ask this question of them. I say, “Why does Jeff do this?” People think the answer to that question is self-evident but it's not.

Why is Jeff continuing to enjoy his work with Teach for America, if it was a few years ago? The answer to that question came from Jeff specifically. It's not your opinion as to what you think. What did Jeff say when you asked him, “You could work anywhere you want. You came from Monitor. Why do you do this? Tell me more.”  One way to make it safe is that people will care about what you know when they know that you care. It has to be authentic.

That's why curiosity comes before making it safe. If you're genuinely curious, it's so much easier to make it safe. If you're not curious, people can tell. There's not much you can do to make it safe if you haven't first chosen curiosity.

Are they in sequential order? When we think about the Ask approach, is this sequential?

It is intended to be sequential. You could pick any step. The more you do it, the better off you'll be, but there is a flow. It starts with curiosity and then it's making it safe. From there, you're ready to ask questions. That takes us to number three, posing quality questions.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

I define a quality question very simply as a question that helps us learn something important from someone else. That may sound simple but many of the questions that we pose or many of the things that come out of our mouths that have a question mark at the end do not truly allow us to learn something important from the other person. I call those crummy questions.

Quality questions are simply questions that help us learn something important from someone else.

We got quality questions and crummy questions. Crummy questions can be things that are clumsy. If you ask four questions in a row, no way someone's going to remember all those questions to answer. Another clumsy question is if someone says, “This is what I think. Wouldn't you agree?,” or, “Isn't that right?” or, “Right?” Those are all things that someone might want to know, but it's very hard to answer when someone says, “Right?” for you to say, “That's not right.” Someone might do it but few people will do that.

There are clumsy questions. There are what I call sneaky questions. That's what a lawyer will do to try to get someone to admit that they're guilty. There are attack questions. All of those are in the category of crummy questions. As it relates to quality questions, one of the things that I'm fascinated by is that so many of us, for a living, have conversations. That means we're asking questions and giving answers. It's the same thing in reverse. Yet, none of us has been taught what is the taxonomy of good-quality questions to ask.

I think about it the same way that a surgeon might have their scalpel and then they've got this tool and all the different tools. Depending on what they're trying to do, they've got something to go with. They've been trained and they know what to use. Yet, we who ask who talk for a living have never been taught what are the different kinds of questions.

In this chapter of the book, I introduce a taxonomy of about a dozen different questions. It's not like there are hundreds. You can learn this. Each one of them helps us get to something different. I'll give you one example. One of the strategies in the taxonomy is called request reactions. Request reactions are simple. I tell you something, explain something to you, make a request, or give you some feedback. In the end, I simply pause and say, “What's your reaction to that?” or, “How does that sit with you?” or, “How does that strike you?” or, “What does that make you think?” or, “What's wrong about what I said?” or, “What might I be missing?”

Any of those things radically increases the chances that I will access your thinking about my thinking. If you disagree with my thinking, I will find out. If there's a hole in my thinking that I might not have seen, I'm much more likely to find that hole if you can see what it is. It's very rare that we'll stop and invite reactions. If we do, sometimes we'll do it in a crummy way, which might be something like, “Does that make sense?” or something like that. It’s hard for someone to honestly answer that question. If we request reactions in any of the different ways I illustrated, we're much more likely to get disconfirming data or information that might surprise us. Especially in a sales situation, you're much more likely to surface barriers if you really understand how what you say lands with someone.

This entire conversation applies directly to sales. I wasn't going to pull everything right back there, but I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, this approach to asking these questions with an intent to learn is much different than asking questions with an intent to manipulate, which is what they used to do in sales many years ago. Human beings resist any form of manipulation whatsoever. They're repulsed by it. Sometimes, when you're talking to an unsophisticated salesperson, this list of questions means, “You've got to move forward. It's time to buy the condo in Florida.”

“How does this strike you?” is a great open-ended question. It's back to Oscar Trimboli. Allow the pregnant pause, which seems like it's way too long. The 900 words in their head need time to get out. It's either Michael Bungay Stanier or Oscar. Once they answer, sit for a while and go, “What else?” They'll fill it. All this comes back to, “Do as I say, not as I do.” I have a tough time also like everybody else. I'm an extrovert, so I want to fill the air. It’s so powerful. Preparation and thinking about these questions.

One of the things that I picked up in the book, and I'm sure it was intentional but I didn't see it written down specifically, is that a lot of the Ask approach is this intent where I do want to know. I’m a believer. There are some stats by Dr. Nick Morgan from Harvard in a book called Can You Hear Me? where people can sense your intent in milliseconds. We're always saying this on the sales front, which is our intent is not to sell them something. Our intent is to figure out if we can help them somehow.

You put your finger on the full ethos of the book, which is the intent to learn something from someone. That's why I started with curiosity because we've got to have that curious intention for the rest of it to even make sense.

The Power Of Reflection And Reconnection: Turning Insights Into Action

Posing quality questions led to listen to learn, and then it led to reflect and reconnect. Given your time, this one is one to touch on before we wrap up. How often do we have this situation where we're having this conversation where somebody shares and whatever they share goes into the ether? Nobody knows whatever happened. They’re like, “I really was exposing myself. I was throwing myself out there saying, “These are the three things the company needs to do.”

I love the fact that at some point in time, you've got to say, “Thank you for the feedback and input.” It doesn't mean I have to agree with it but I do have to acknowledge it and say, “I'm either going to do something about it,” or, “I'm going to decide we're going to do something about it in the future,” or, “We're never going to do something about it.” I heard you and I've considered it and I appreciate the thought.

To me, this is my favorite step of all five of the Ask approach because I am a junkie for learning. Reflection is how we learn. It's how we convert our experience into insight and our insight into action. A lot of people feel like, “I don't have time to reflect. I would have to go on some meditation retreat to reflect,” or whatever but reflection can be very practical and simple.

Reflection is how we learn. It's how we convert our experience into insight and our insight into action.

I talked about a method in the book called Sift It and Turn It. Sifting it is saying, “Of all the things I heard, what are the 2 or 3 most important things?” I then turn it over in my head in a very structured way to say, “How does it shift my story? How can it shift the steps that I take? How does it give me insight into my deeper stuff?”

To your point, reconnect is to say, “This is not extractive for me.” This is about going back to the other person and saying, “This is what I heard and this is what made me think. Here's what I'm going to do about it. Out of curiosity, is that what you were hoping I would learn, or is there something different you were hoping I would learn? Thank you because it probably took some time and it may have taken a risk. I'm grateful for it.”

I did that act not long ago when one of my colleagues at work gave me some feedback. At that moment, I was like, “I'll think about that.” Two hours later, I was like, “She had some really good points.” I sent her a message and said, “Here's what you have me thinking about. Here's what I'll be reflecting on. Thank you.” She told me how much it meant to her that I had closed that loop and let her know that because she knew that she didn't waste her time. She knew that I was valuing her. It will greatly increase the chances that she will give me more feedback in the future as well.

Embedding "Ask" Into Organizational Culture

There's a little bit of trust back and forth. I'm like that too. A lot of times, I might get the feedback, and as much as I like to think I'm highly evolved, that wall of defensiveness for me might pop up every once in a while. I'll go away, let it sink, think about it, and say, “There were some good learning points there.” As you talk about in the book, sometimes our ability to see things that way gets impeded by the amygdala or emotion. I've got lots of emotion floating around.

It’s because you're human. We all do.

More or less. The people you know who tune in to this show are natural learners too. They're growth-oriented. They always want to learn or else they wouldn't tune in. First of all, how would somebody learn more about you?

First, I love to connect with people on LinkedIn. You can find me and connect with me at Jeff Wetzler on LinkedIn. There's a website for the book, which is www.AskApproach.com. On that website, you can find lots of resources and articles. There's an assessment that will help you know which of these five steps you're strong in and which ones you might need to work on. There are videos and all kinds of things. I would recommend going to the website. You can get the book anywhere books are sold.

Thank you. What are you learning? What are you reading? What are you excited about? There are 3 or 4 questions in a row there. We'll take one at a time.

I am reading a novel at the very moment called Kaaterskill Falls, which is a fascinating novel. You mentioned the bibliography, I was so focused on nonfiction and research. I'm giving my brain a break by reading some fiction. I believe that fiction is one of the best ways to gain empathy and curiosity. As much as I can, I'm trying to balance my nonfiction with my fiction.

On the business side or the impact work side, I'm really obsessed with the question, “How can I convert the ideas of Ask into enduring behavior change?” There is training, and that's a really important piece because there's skill building, but there's more to it than that. There are the structures and organizations that we sit within. There's even the technology that we use as well.

I'm really trying to push myself to get creative about what are the various ways that we can weave this into the workflow and into the systems, structures, processes, and cultures of organizations. I'm developing a bunch of different offerings and experimenting with different ones to try to help embed Ask into everything we do.

That’s amazing. First of all, thank you. What a pleasure meeting you. I really enjoyed the book. I was so pleased to get you on as a guest. I'm sure everybody's going to get massive value from this episode. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Thank you for reading the book, for having me, and for your great questions in this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you very much for joining. We run the show because we're looking to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of everybody in professional sales. Thank you for tuning in. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show because that's how we get great guests like Jeff to join us.

If there are other ways that we can provide value through the show, we're super growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism. Please send your ideas to me. My personal email is MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. If there's a guest you think we should have or there's an idea for the podcast where you can get more value from this, let us know. That's my personal email. I respond personally to every idea that's sent in, so thanks for doing that. In the meantime, we'll see everybody next time on the show.

Important Links

• Transcend Labs

• Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life

• Jeff Wetzler on LinkedIn

• In the Funnel Sales Coaching on LinkedIn

• MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com

• A New Way To Think with Roger Martin

• How A Minute To Think Can Transform Your Life With Juliet Funt

• Thinking, Fast and Slow

• How to Listen

• Can You Hear Me?

• Kaaterskill Falls

• A Minute to Think

About jeff wetzler

Dr. Jeff Wetzler is an expert on adult learning and leadership and development. He brings 25 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur, operating executive, and advisor to top corporate and NGO leaders around the world.

Blending a unique set of leadership experiences in the fields of business and education, he's pursued this quest as a management consultant to the world's top corporations, as a learning facilitator for leaders around the world, as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America, and most recently, as co-CEO of Transcend, a nationally recognized education innovation organization.

Jeff's career is dedicated to unlocking human potential by helping people learn more deeply and transform their mindsets to realize bold new possibilities for themselves, their oorganizations and communities.

Jeff earned a Doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership from Columbia University and a Bachelor's in Psychology from Brown University. He is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and is an Edmund Hillary Fellow.