Podcasts about salespeople

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth experts Jason Hull and Sarah Hull discuss the launch of the Door Machine, DoorGrow's new growth-focused program designed to help property management companies scale faster by handling the hiring, training, support, and systems behind business development and sales. Breaking down why most property management companies struggle to grow, the biggest mistakes owners make when hiring salespeople, and how having the right systems, accountability, targeting, pricing, and support can completely transform a property management business.   You'll Learn [00:01] Introduction to the Door Machine  [03:20] Why Most Sales Hires Fail  [08:10] The Systems Behind Property Management Growth  [14:40] The Three Keys to BDM Success [21:30] Fixing Targeting, Pricing, and Offers  [31:20] How the Door Machine Partnership Works Quotables "If you have a system that's working, you really don't have a problem." "If you take a good salesperson and plug them into a broken system, it's going to break." "At best, if you're running a company and you are the salesperson, you will always be a shitty part-time salesperson at best." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:01) Five, four, three, two, one. All right, we are Jason and Sarah Hull, the owners of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we've brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses, the business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry   eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. All right, so in today's episode, we're gonna be chatting a little bit about the new offer. I think we mentioned it previously, I don't know, on an episode, but we're gonna be talking about the door machine. It's evolved a little bit since then, but we're gonna talk about the door machine, our new offer, our new program for property management business owners that want to grow.   So we had teased in the previous episode, we chatted briefly about it, we never really dug into details. And now we're ready to do that because the door machine is officially live. So if you are interested in growing your property management business and you want growth to just magically happen for you, if you ever think   Jeez, it'd be so nice if I could just miraculously get to like 500 doors, 800 doors, 1200 doors, whatever that number is in your head, and you wanna get there, it would be awesome if it would just like poof and happen. You know the magic wand? Like if you had a magic wand, you could just snap your fingers and have the business of your dreams at whatever size or count that's going to be, then this is for you.   This is going to be for you. Cool. So basically the simple idea of the door machine is we are looking for businesses to basically partner with that we can help grow and scale their business. We will add the doors, you manage them. It's that simple. And we will also help you to be able to keep up with the growth by giving you access to our super system level of our mastermind as part of this deal. So   So the way this works is if you're one of our clients that's gone through the process of cleanup and the rapid revamp and all that then you're probably meet the prerequisites. You've got healthy branding, you've got a healthy website, you've got the right pricing model, we have a very innovative three-tier hybrid pricing model that we install in clients' businesses. You've got maybe financial health going in the business, profit first. ⁓ Some of these, there's some prerequisite basics.   If you do not have all that, you have not been part of our program, we will come out for two days. Two days? we will come in, on how messy your business is, but we'll come out for two days and we will basically rehab your business. We will help redo your branding. We will redo your pricing. We will redo your website. We will redo your, like the whole front end of the business so that we have a really good   program and offer to sell if we're selling people on your property management business. And so we have this launch intensive that we will come out and do. It is not inexpensive, but it is, I believe, ridiculously cheap for the value that we offer at the present because we're because it pays for itself as well. Easily pay for itself. So we will come out and do the process that a lot of our clients do over the first quarter with us. We will do it.   rapidly with you and you need to be open to making changes if you're the right fit for this, but we will come out and do this launch intensive with you at your location. and I will come out. After we get that done, we will then build out the hiring mechanism and we will get a salesperson and the salesperson is going to work for DoorGrow. We will train, coach, support this person in your local market.   and help them to be able to build their own sort of little business, growing your business. And so this is kind of, it's a win-win-win for all three parties. It's a win for this person that's going to build this sort of business, creating growth for your business. It's going to be door grow, being able to manage this relationship and maintain the quality level with this business development manager, this BDM or salesperson and the business owner.   we will coach and support the business owner yourself in making sure that the business can remain scalable as we start adding 100, 200, 300 doors a year to your business so that you don't break. Because this is a big challenge and we've helped a lot of people with this. So how does this work? Well, normally, if you're gonna hire a salesperson, how would this look? So if you do it the right way, then usually you start with creating a...   you create your RDoC, is just a fancy word for job description. You will do some sort of job post somewhere, indeed LinkedIn, wherever that ends up going. Then you start getting applications and you start screening applications. Well, let's skip to the financials because we don't need to tell them the whole process of what we'll do. We're going to. Okay. All right. Here, continue. Then you get to do a bunch of interviews.   and then you bring someone on, you onboard them, you train them, and then you continuously and every single day support them. And that's where, well, in all of that, at various stages, most people fail. Yeah, somewhere. So sometimes they never even create their company culture documents, and then they wonder why they can't hire the right person. Yeah. Sometimes they don't create the right job description, and they wonder why they can't hire the right person.   They don't know how to properly interview and screen candidates. Or when they have the right person and everything has worked out and then they hire this person, then they just kind of throw them in the fire and they go, all right, go do sales. I hope you can figure it out. And there's a little bit of training, but there's really not a system that you can just plug this person into. This salesperson has to figure out and go build a system.   and most of times they don't know how to do that. And then it's not working out and the business owner is upset and the person that got hired is upset because no one is winning and no one is making money. Both parties are frustrated usually with the other one. The person who got hired is upset because they're like you like have nothing. This is a whole   guessing game and nothing is working and I don't know what to do and you also don't know what to tell me to do. And then the sales person or the ⁓ business owner is upset with the sales person because they're going, well, geez, I hired you to be able to figure all of this out and you didn't figure it out. And now I wasted a whole bunch of time and money. And that's why usually it fails. So you can do that. You can absolutely figure it all out yourself. Everything is figured out.   if you learn enough and know enough and figure out, know, if you, if you waste enough time, you can figure it all out eventually. Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. You certainly can. Yeah. Most people don't really have a good system for hiring and definitely not for training because we've seen it again and again where people will hire someone who is great for a sales position and then it doesn't work out.   And then they go, this isn't working. I think I to let this person go. How do I have that conversation? Like, what should this look like? And when should I do that? And why, you know, do I, what do I tell them? Like, why am I making this decision? And usually that's the end result that they get. And then they kind of get to go back to the beginning and they get to reassess and they go, okay, should I try this whole thing all over again?   Or should I just do something different so you can absolutely do that if you know how to do this by all means go do it or You can just push the easy button and let us handle all of that for you including the training and including the support and that's where a lot of people they Just don't want to do it. They don't have a system. That's already built to put a salesperson into   they bring on that salesperson and expect them to build the system. And most salespeople aren't good at building systems. They're good at selling, but they're not good at building a sales system. So if you take a good salesperson and plug them into a broken system, it's going to break. But there's a big disconnect there. So we build the system. We will do the recruiting.   the screening, the interviewing, the onboarding, the initial training, the ongoing training, and all of the support, daily support for these salespeople so that they will consistently learn and grow and get better and sharpen their skills and figure out what is working and what isn't working and how do I double down or triple down on the things that are working so that I can get results as quickly as possible because they're motivated, they want to make money.   Salespeople, they like winning. They want to make money. That's how they win is when they close deals. So the easiest way to like deflate a sales team is to make it almost impossible to close deals. That's what we've noticed. So then we decided to just fix all of those issues on the back end. And instead of leaving it to business owners who are already busy, who if they had the system for growth, they would probably not need a salesperson.   because they already have the system. If you have a system that's working, you really don't have a problem. But a lot of times they don't have a system and they don't have someone who is going to consistently do sales. They usually have somebody who's kind of dabbling in it. Usually it's them. Sometimes they have somebody who's part-time or they have like a real estate agent looking to make some extra bucks on the side. But there's not a real system and there's not real dedication to sales.   And the ones that have a system and the ones that have actual dedication to sales, those are the companies that you see that get two, four, six, a thousand doors. That's why you see that. So that was something that we noticed is, hey, this ends up being complicated for some people and actually probably the majority of people to do. So we just built this system and that is what the door machine does.   So we will handle all of that work for you so that all you need to do is manage the doors that we give you. All right, so let's talk about why this is hard for people. So Sarah brought up several good points about getting a salesperson. We focus on hiring. First, if you're gonna do this yourself, you've gotta make sure you get the right person. That's the first problem to figure out. And the right person has to be the right   They culture fit for the business, otherwise you're not going to trust them. They have to be the right personality fit for the role, otherwise they won't be good at this. They have to be the right skill fit or intellectual fit to be able to develop the skill or talent to be able to do this job. So that's hiring. If they're not all three, they're going to fail. Always do. And if any team members you have right now are not all three, you have to let them go. It's inevitable.   Your business will never be able to grow if you have bad people. The next piece, assuming you get all three of those nailed and you have as good of a hiring system as we do, then the next piece is the BDM or salesperson has to have three key ingredients to BDM success or they always fail. Fail means they aren't making enough money so they quit or they're not making you enough money so you fire them or they're not.   kept, they're too comfortable, so they get lazy. Either way, it's not working, and so they will either quit or you will fire them. And this happens all the time. The issue is not going to companies and getting somebody to help you with hiring. Lots of people help you hire BDMs, but they still fail. And the failure after the hiring piece, if that was done well, is it's not because they didn't have the right personality, it's not because they don't share your values, and it's not because they don't have the skill to do it.   Those companies will usually show them or train them or whatever. It's because of you. That's the tough love. So here's how this works. You have to have these three ingredients. They have to have the right training and strategy. That's number one. If they're doing stupid stuff, if they're focusing on cold leads, digital marketing stuff, all the stuff that you probably are gonna heap on them, you are holding them back and you're giving them low level garbage stuff to deal with, cold crappy leads.   they are not going to be able to grow quickly your business or scale and they're not going to be able to win. So they have to have the right training and the right growth engines that we would help them install. Second, they have to have the right comp structure. If they don't have the right compensation, compensation is incentive. Compensation is motivation for the right candidates, people that don't hate money, that are salespeople.   And if the comp structure is off, they will either get lazy and comfortable because you paid them too well, or they will get lazy and uncomfortable because they'll just get unmotivated because it's not working. ⁓ Or they just won't do the leading activities because you're trying to just make it commission only. There's so many mistakes with compensation and there is a formula for making this work. And we've seen this fail over and over and over again.   They are not motivated, but they are the right personality for this. You designed the role incorrectly, and you probably designed the financial compensation wrong, and that's on you. The third thing you have to get dialed in is accountability. They have to be accountable. If they're not accountable, if you're not, if you are not able to guide them and see where they're stuck and where there's drop-off in their sales flow or in the pipeline, if you can't see it,   They probably aren't seeing it either. And so they will keep doing the same dumb stuff, getting the same dumb result, and you will both be frustrated. And they will give up on this idea of selling property management, and you will give up on the idea. And there's, even before we get to all of these challenges, the three fits for hiring, the three keys to BDM success, there's some fundamental, foundational ingredients for the business that we help clean up that come even before that, where you have to have the right target audience,   A lot of property managers don't have this dialed in. They don't have the right target, which means they're targeting people incorrectly. means probably they're doing digital cold lead marketing, they're doing ads, they're spending a bunch of money. And most companies spend 20 to 30 % of their top line revenue just to bring in leads. And so they're wasting money there and have bad strategy there. The other piece to this is ⁓ you have to have the right   You have to have the right product. A lot of you think you're selling property management and nobody gives a shit about property management. Nobody wants to buy it. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, man, I'm so excited to buy something today. And somebody says, what is it? What is it, Jason? my gosh, I'm so excited to go buy property management today. You are selling the wrong product. And if you're selling to the wrong audience,   and attracting the wrong owners and the cheapos and the accidentals and all the owners that you don't want because you're doing the wrong tactics and then you're selling the wrong product. Then the third thing is you also probably have the wrong offer and the wrong pricing. And so this is stuff we have to get dialed in. It's foundational. I've never had somebody come to me that had those three ingredients dialed in. We have to get those three dialed in first. Then we dial in the three fits.   Then we dial in the three keys to BDM success. This is the stuff we would come out and help you get done. And we can do it fast because we've done this hundreds of times. We could do this. I've been running DoorGrow for a decade, almost two decades now, almost two decades, over a decade and a And we have expertise in helping people get this stuff dialing quickly. So,   That would be the first part of this. Now, if you're gonna go out and do this yourself, you're then gonna, you get a BDM. All of these things are dialed in. For some reason, you magically figured this all out on your own through trial and error. The next piece is now you've got to pay this person a commission, some sort of commission. And then you're gonna have to spend money on some sort of base. And you've got all of these different things that you've gotta get dialed in correctly. And if you have this done, then you'll probably be adding doors and then,   It'll be working. Here's what how we set up the door machine so that we can take over all this for you. So you'll pay door grow, you'll pay door grow a commission, you'll pay for each door that's added off the first month's rent. You'll pay ⁓ base salary or base dollar amount to door grow ⁓ each month. And as part of that base, we offset   a good portion of that by giving you access to our super system level of our mastermind, which includes all the systems you're going to need in order to scale your business. call the super system and you get access to the in-person events and the cohort and all the amazing people that are in our program. You're then also going to pay instead of paying, spending money on marketing, because you're not going to have to pay for leads and do stupid digital, cold lead, whatever advertising.   Our salesperson is going to be trained in doing this effectively and we'll be generating warmer leads that have a higher close rate. We will handle all that. so DoorGrow residualy will get 20 % of the management fee. Instead of spending 20%, 30 % like a lot of businesses do on your top line revenue, just to acquire new customers and to do digital marketing or ads, you'll spend 20 % of the management fee, which is way less.   For a lot of you, might be if average rent's 2K in a lot of areas throughout the US, your management fee maybe is 10%, which is, or worse, which is typical. ⁓ We'll help you install a better pricing model than that. But you're doing something like that and you're probably getting then $200 on the door. You're making a lot of money on other things, maintenance, whatever, but $200 for the management fee and then door grows, percentage would be 40 bucks, it'd be 20%.   And so $40 and originally designed this so we grow as you grow and this is, you know, a partnership is forever, but we put a cap on it to make this even more enticing. It drops off each door in the door machine that you add that 20 % dies or drops off. So you get a hundred percent of it at the 36 month mark. So three years in it drops off. So that puts a cap on what door grow can make with you depending on how much the BDM can add each year.   And so that caps our upside, which is better for you to make this even sweeter. And so there's a relationship. There's more details to it than that. We'd be happy to send you the offer doc if you're interested in this offer. ⁓ Really who we're looking for generally are 500 or plus companies that have a healthy team, healthy culture, will help you get these initial things cleaned up. You'll pay. ⁓   Okay, we won't mention all the specifics on the dollar amounts, but this is how this works financially. Same thing you would probably have to pay towards a BDM. You'll pay the door girl and we will take care of this for you and growth. This is a good fit for those of you that you have the money right now to go hire somebody and spend money, maybe five grand, six grand a month on a person ⁓ to hire somebody, then financially you probably could afford to do this and it would make sense. If that's not you right now,   and then this is probably not a fit for you. Anything else you want to say about the Dormachine?   So don't just...   if you can afford five or six.   to that. Sure. one. Number two.   No, it's not only this may be a fit for some smaller companies as well. So doesn't mean hey, you know, don't have 500 doors yet. Therefore, I can't do it. You can still do this. It might be a fit for you. I would see if you would benefit from a conversation with our sales team on that to just kind of learn more about it, get more information, get   some of the specifics of the numbers and see, know, hey, what is pressing the easy button on growth actually worth for you? Because your role in this, we handle all of the front end of your business. So growing the business is no longer something that you need to think about or worry about at all. And if you're not sure if this is a fit for you,   if you're wanting to get those first three foundational things dialed in with us, which is the targeting, the product, and the offer. And if you wanna meet with us, we have a three session thing where we will work with you one-on-one, help you get these three things dialed in over three sessions, which is the foundation, and help you figure out what your roadmap and plan might be. It might be joining one of our   different tiers of our mastermind. It might be getting some help with hiring. It might be getting into this door machine. But we have a small, inexpensive offer for that where we will help you get those three things dialed in and help you roadmap the future to figure out what would be the best fit moving forward. We call that the PM Growth Leak Audit, where we audit the leaks that you have right now that are preventing your growth and help you see some of the blind spots that you can't even see   in your business right now, which is why it's been so hard for you to grow. And then we'll help you figure out what the next steps might be that would make the most sense based on what your constraints are related to budget, related to time, investment, whatever. And so reach out to us and just say, hey, I'd be really interested in that audit that Jason mentioned on the podcast. Cool. Anything else we should add? That's it.   this might be for you, it's probably worth at least a...   also say that this will not be for everyone or this will not be for you right now. It might be a later thing instead of a now thing. It might be an everything. You might be able to handle everything all yourself and that's okay. ⁓ What I would also say too is keep in mind that a lot of times people kind of peter out on doing sales after a while.   This is something that will continue to grow the business for you because it doesn't depend on you at all. aren't involved in it. The reality is a lot of our clients, once we help them figure out growth and we get stuff out of them, they start growing stuff themselves. They realize and figure out eventually they either don't enjoy doing the sales or it's creating a really strong constraint in the business. At best, if you're running a company and you are the salesperson, you will always   be a shitty part-time salesperson at best. You don't have full-time bandwidth. And if you don't have a growth problem, then this isn't even relevant to you at all. So if you're having some challenges, then reach out to us. We have a proven track record. We're the best in the world at helping people do this. We've been doing this for almost two decades now. And we can help you get this dialed in. And we want to see you win. We're looking for really good, awesome people.   and humans to be part of our stuff, especially for the door machine and the cohort really of the caliber of people that we've already gotten into the door machine. These are going to be the coolest people. So the cohort aspect of this is another plus. think it's probably the best upside is that you get to be around other people that are experiencing the door grow magic and they're buying, they're growing and they're scaling.   and they're doing things in a different way than the entire industry. And that's what we bring to the table at DoorGrow. So if you want to get your company to not have all the same blind spots and constraints and you want to start innovating your business, reach out to us at DoorGrow. You can check us out at doorgrow.com, schedule a call with us, have a chat. If you'd like a free training on how to get unlimited leads for free, text the word leads to 512-648-4608.   Also join our free Facebook community just for property management business owners by going to doorgro club.com. And if you want tips, tricks, ideas, and to learn about our offers, subscribe to our newsletter by going to doorgro.com slash subscribe. And if you found this episode even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Until next time. Remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together.   and you can do that with the door machine for sure. All right, bye everyone.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how media sales teams prospect, research, communicate and report results. Yet according to media revenue strategist Ryan Dohrn, the technology itself is not the competitive advantage. The real differentiator remains the same as it has always been: the salesperson using it. In a conversation with E&P, Dohrn argues that AI won't replace strong salespeople or save weak ones. Instead, it will amplify existing strengths, expose existing weaknesses and reward those who learn how to combine technology with relevance, preparation and authentic human relationships. Access more at this episode's landing page, at: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/ai-wont-save-bad-salespeople-ryan-dohrn-on-the-future-of-media-revenue,262011   

We put someone on the moon in 1969. We didn't put wheels on suitcases until 1972. The problem was: Nobody had stopped to notice the problem existed in the first place. That gap - between the problems people will tell you about, the ones they'll only admit after a drink, and the ones they don't even know they have - is exactly where Maz Farrelly operates. In this bonus conversation with the executive producer behind Big Brother, The X Factor, and Celebrity Apprentice, we get into the practical mechanics of walking into a meeting and already having the room on your side before you've said a single word. If you have a pitch coming up - for an idea, a budget, or yourself - this episode has something useful in it for you. Maz and I discuss: The "warming up the room" technique Maz uses at the start of every pitch meeting, and why it works How she used reverse psychology to make network executives desperate for the idea she told them she wasn't going to pitch Why the smartest operators don't sell — they make themselves buyable The three layers of problems your clients have, and why cracking the third layer is where the real opportunity lives The suitcase story: why solving problems people don't know they have is the most valuable thing you can do in any industry Why Maz brought too much cake to a Microsoft meeting, and how it made her go viral inside the building without spending a cent on advertising What "sticky information" is, and why it determines whether anything you said in a meeting actually matters Key quotes "The smart money doesn't sell. The smart money is bought." "Hope is not a strategy." And if you haven't listened to the main episode with Maz yet, start there. It's all about how to make yourself impossible to ignore. Listen to the main episode here. Connect with Maz Farrelly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and her website. My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au Credits: Host: Amantha Imber Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Sales & Cigars, Walter Crosby sits down with John Golden, Chief Marketing Strategy Officer at Pipeliner CRM and host of Sales Pop, for a sharp conversation about sales leadership, self-development, business acumen, and what it really takes to stay valuable in sales. John shares why SPIN Selling remains one of the most important sales books ever written and why great salespeople are still defined by their ability to ask better questions, listen deeply, and resist the urge to jump into solution mode too quickly. The conversation also dives into one of John's biggest pieces of advice for sales professionals: invest in yourself. Don't wait for your company to train you. Don't complain that no one is developing you. Your career is your responsibility. From coaching and mentorship to business acumen and sales-marketing alignment, this episode is a reminder that the best salespeople never stop learning.   Episode Highlights Why SPIN Selling still matters in modern sales The difference between hearing and active listening Why silence after a good question is powerful How salespeople can stop rushing into solution mode Why every salesperson should learn a sales methodology John's advice to invest in yourself before blaming your company The ROI of hiring a coach or finding a mentor Why sales, sales leadership, and CEO roles can feel lonely The importance of business acumen in today's sales environment How salespeople can bring value through insight, not just products Why a great sales call should be valuable enough to pay for   Key Themes & Takeaways Great salespeople ask better questions. The best reps do not rush to pitch. They slow down, listen, and dig deeper. Silence is part of the process. When a prospect pauses after a strong question, don't interrupt. Let them think. Your career is your responsibility. If your company is not investing in your development, invest in yourself. Coaching pays for itself. A good coach or mentor can challenge your thinking, expand your goals, and accelerate growth. Sales can be lonely. Whether you are carrying a bag, leading a team, or running a company, you need people who can challenge and support you. Business acumen matters more than ever. Salespeople need to understand how businesses operate, how decisions get made, and how their solution impacts the whole organization. Value starts before the deal closes. A sales conversation should help the buyer think differently, even before they buy anything.   Who Should Listen This episode is especially valuable for: Salespeople who want to take ownership of their career Sales leaders trying to develop stronger, more independent reps CEOs and entrepreneurs who want better sales conversations Teams looking to improve discovery and active listening Revenue leaders focused on sales and marketing alignment Anyone who wants to become more valuable in every business conversation   Links & Resources SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham Pipeliner CRM https://pipelinersales.com Sales Pop https://salespop.net John Golden on LinkedIn   Continue the Conversation If this episode made you think differently about sales, leadership, or how to take ownership of your career, join the Sales Integrator Community. It's built exclusively for salespeople and sales managers who are looking for an edge—and for professionals who want support getting their questions answered by someone who has learned the hard way over 40 years. Free forever. Special founding member badges are available for the first 250 members. Join here: https://helix-community.circle.so/join?invitation_token=8b6622d942c852339d856b2af3504123cf9476e2-8b78b151-d94f-46df-a26b-ec4a6df24460   Subscribe & Follow Sales & Cigars is hosted by Walter Crosby of Helix Sales Development. The only smoke we blow is from cigars. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Here is a FAQ Video on the Courses: https://youtu.be/0F7imrzjXWs Here is a deep dive into which course is best for you: https://youtu.be/JM_jgS8M-iU https://www.b2bRevenue.com - Get Your Free E-Book on How Companies make Decisions. FAQ: 1 YEAR ACCESS, PAY MONTHLY OR ANNUALLY NOT A SUBSCRIPTION OFFICE HOURS EVERY  OTHER WEEK VIA ZOOM. 1 HOUR GROUP Q&A. UNLIMITED 1-ON-1'S  ARE FREE AS LONG AS THEY CAN BE SHARED IN THE COURSE. 1-ON-1 ARE FULL ACCESS ON DAY ONE - NOTHING IS GATED OR TIME RELEASED. ALL CONTENT IS VIDEO BASED AND SELF PACED I RECOMMEND TAKE COURSE ONCE WITHOUT NOTES OR APPLYING IT SO YOU UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE FIRST. THEN TAKE AND APPLY IT STEP BY STEP. YOU START WHEN YOU WANT AND GO AS FAST OR SLOW AS NEEDED.   Email me additional questions: briangburns@me.com     — SAMPLE EMAIL TO EXPENSE THE COURSE MGR,   I have been listening to the brutal truth about sales podcast for X months and it speaks to the issues we face.   They currently offer a course that includes video instruction, group Q&A and One-on-One coaching. I'm committed to my own personal development and would like your help in expensing the course.   It would pay for itself if I closed only one new deal of $X value.   Please let me know by Friday if I can move forward with this 1 year course.   Thanks, ME Here are some student interviews from the courses:      ———————————————————————————————————— Audible 30 day Free Trial: http://www.audibletrial.com/BrutalTruth      

What This Episode Is About You've invested in a sales strategy. You've done the training. So why aren't you getting the results you expected? In this episode of the Selling to Corporate® podcast, Jess Lorimer reveals the single most important skill that professional salespeople use to create consistent, replicable results - and it's almost certainly not what you'd expect. Jess makes the case that the gap between coaches, consultants and professional salespeople isn't intelligence, experience or even strategy. It's one surprisingly simple skill that most business owners overlook, underestimate or quietly choose to ignore. This episode explains exactly what it is, why it matters more than any tactic or technique and what happens to your sales process when you don't use it. Who This Episode Is For Coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers, and done-for-you service providers selling to corporate clients Anyone who has invested in a sales strategy or programme and felt it 'didn't work' Business owners who find themselves constantly tweaking, adjusting, or second-guessing their sales process Those who are great at selling one offer or to one type of client, but struggle to replicate that success elsewhere Anyone who suspects their sales process isn't producing consistent results but isn't sure why Questions This Episode Answers What is the most important skill in B2B sales? Why does a sales strategy that worked stop working over time? How do professional salespeople create replicable results across different industries and offers? What's the difference between buying a sales strategy and actually executing one? Why does tweaking a sales process - even slightly - make results impossible to measure or replicate? Key Takeaways  1. The Most Important Sales Skill Is Following Instructions The single most important skill professional salespeople possess is the ability to follow instructions precisely and consistently. Not prospecting. Not objection handling. Not closing. Following instructions. Jess is direct: in her experience working with thousands of professional salespeople and thousands of coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, and done-for-you service providers, the difference in results almost always comes down to this. Professional salespeople follow a proven process exactly as written. Most coaches and consultants - however intelligent and however well-intentioned - don't. This isn't a criticism of intelligence. In fact, Jess argues that high intelligence can be a liability here. Smart people are more likely to spot what feels 'wrong' about a set of instructions, more likely to rationalise a small adjustment and more likely to believe their version of the process is 'good enough'. It usually isn't. 2. Any Proven Strategy Has the Ability to Work - If It's Executed Properly Jess teaches seven different methods of B2B lead generation. She has clients who generate all of their corporate revenue from cold email outreach. She has clients who generate all of their revenue from networking alone - a method she personally dislikes. The method is not the determining factor. Execution is. The two reasons a sales strategy fails are almost always the same: The strategy being used is not proven. It was built in an AI tool, borrowed from a B2C context or sold by someone without hands-on B2B sales experience. The strategy is proven but it is not being followed correctly. Steps are skipped, wording is changed, volume is reduced or the process is quietly adjusted whenever something feels uncomfortable. If your sales process is not producing results, the first question to ask is not 'what strategy should I try next?' It is 'am I executing my current proven strategy exactly as intended?'   3. Small Changes to a Sales Process Create Big Problems One of the most common patterns Jess sees with experienced clients is a gradual drift away from the original process. It rarely starts as a conscious decision to change strategy. More often it starts with a lost deal, a knock to confidence, and a small adjustment made under pressure to 'save' the next opportunity. That one small change leads to another. The language shifts. The attachment changes. The objection handling softens. The reassurance given increases. None of it feels significant in the moment. But cumulatively, the process becomes unrecognisable - and critically, it becomes impossible to measure, troubleshoot or improve. Standardisation is not a constraint on creativity. It is what makes it possible to know whether your sales process is working, identify where it is breaking down, and fix the right thing. When every part of the process is slightly different, there is nothing consistent to evaluate. 4. Sales Should Be Boring - Creativity Comes in the Conversation Jess uses the analogy of Picasso: before he painted eyes on the sides of heads, he spent years learning the rules of perspective, line and composition. The creative leaps came after the foundations were mastered, not instead of them. The same principle applies to B2B sales. Your lead generation process, your outreach approach, your proposal structure, your pricing framework - these should be repeatable, measurable and consistent. They should feel a little boring, because boring is what makes them scalable. The creativity, the consultative problem-solving, the bespoke solution-building - all of that happens in the sales conversation itself, and in the delivery of the work. That's where you get to be brilliant and distinctive. Your process is what gets you to that conversation in the first place. 5. Following Instructions Builds the Confidence That Creativity Cannot When a sales process is followed precisely, it produces predictable metrics. Those metrics tell you what is working and what is not - early enough to make useful adjustments rather than emergency ones. That predictability is what gives professional salespeople confidence, even in difficult markets. When a process is modified and the results decline, the person executing it has no way of knowing which change caused the problem. That uncertainty erodes confidence and often leads to further changes, making the situation worse. Following instructions is therefore not just a technical requirement - it is the foundation of sustained confidence in your own sales ability. 6. Replicatable Success Requires Transferable Process, Not Transferable Luck Jess draws on her own sales career across jewellery, recruitment, tech, and sales training - including becoming the top diamond salesperson in her region at 16, and a top performer within her first year at a company operating across 30 countries - to make a specific point: success that can be replicated across industries, offers, and client types is built on process, not personality. If you are excellent at selling one particular offer but cannot replicate that success with other offers or other types of decision maker, it is a signal that your results are not yet built on a transferable process. They are built on familiarity, repetition or relationship - which are not scalable. A proven, correctly executed process is what creates results that transfer. Key Quotes "The most important skill professional salespeople have in their arsenal is following instructions." "Literally any proven strategy has the ability to work if it's being done properly. The problem is that most people aren't using proven strategies - or they're not following the instructions for the ones they have." "Your sales process shouldn't be where you feel creatively satiated. It should be where you are able to replicate a clear process and be given consistent metrics so you know what is working and what isn't." Resources + Links Mentioned in This Episode Cold -> Closed The self-paced B2B sales experience for coaches / consultants / speakers / trainers and done-for-you service providers who want scalable, sustainable sales from brand new corporate clients in 90 days or less. https://smartleaderssell.thrivecart.com/-cold-to-closed-product/ Join the B2B Sales Edit: Busyness to Business Weekly newsletter for coaches and consultants; sharing the real B2B sales techniques that have taken over 30,000 sales processes from busy -> balanced and profitable. https://magic.beehiiv.com/v1/988ac64b-5875-4924-9d10-50faad2aa4ad?email=%EMAIL% Episode Sponsored by The Expert Services Directory Access The Expert Services Directory here and use code PODCAST for a special bonus. https://bit.ly/ExpertServicesDirectory A curated directory that proactively markets your services to corporate decision makers every month. Standard listings reach 1,000+ decision makers per month; Directory Plus listings reach 2,000+. Only 10 suppliers per category. Standard listing: 1,000+ decision makers per month Directory Plus listing: 2,000+ decision makers per month Application required — not all applications are accepted If You've Enjoyed Listening to The Most Important Skill Professional Salespeople Have, Check Out These Episodes STC159 - Mindset Wobbles That Stop Your B2B Sales Progress (and How to Fix Them!) https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate159 STC162 - 3 Things That Will Help You Maximise Any Sales Training You're Embarking On https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate162 STC171 - The Simple Sales Technique I Use to Sign Corporate Clients Every Month https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate171   Content Disclaimer The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.  

Disclaimer: Today's episode is sponsored by Gelt. Content is for educational purposes only. Not advice. Results discussed have not been vetted. Claims made by the guest have not been verified. The views expressed by the guest do not reflect those of the host or this show.—

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” — Warren BuffettIn this episode, Jay sits down with Ryan Chiodo, one of the top luxury real estate advisors in Naples, for a conversation about entrepreneurship, trust, service, relationships, and what it actually takes to build a reputation at the highest level.Ryan's story is not a straight line.From bartending in his family's Italian restaurant…to learning the builder and developer side of real estate…to navigating REOs, short sales, and distressed assets during the Great Recession…to serving luxury and ultra-luxury clientele in one of the most competitive markets in the country…This episode is a masterclass in mastering your craft over decades.Inside this conversation:* Why communication and hospitality became Ryan's unfair advantage in real estate* The hidden value of working in restaurants and customer service early in life* Why the luxury market is ultimately a relationship and trust business* The realities of serving affluent clients and what they actually expect* How the Great Recession shaped Ryan's perspective on leverage, investing, and risk* Why many people underestimate how difficult real estate truly is* The importance of becoming a true subject matter expert in your field* Why over-communication creates trust and long-term referrals* How systems, teams, and delegation allow entrepreneurs to scale* The difference between working with buyers versus sellers* Negotiation strategies, creative deal structures, and thinking beyond price aloneOne of the biggest themes throughout this episode is simple:The people at the top are rarely doing complicated things.They are doing simple things with extraordinary consistency. Ryan also shares the daily disciplines that built his business over 24 years:* Reviewing the market every single day* Staying proactive with clients* Bringing value instead of “just checking in”* Responding quickly* Knowing the details better than anyone else in the roomThis episode is especially valuable for:* Entrepreneurs building a book of business* Realtors and mortgage professionals* Salespeople trying to create long-term referral networks* Anyone interested in luxury markets and relationship-driven business* Professionals looking to build mastery over time instead of chasing shortcutsA standout takeaway from the conversation:“You have to get in the room. But once you're in the room, you better know what you're doing.” This is a conversation about trust earned through preparation, consistency, and decades of repetition.Because in the end, luxury is not about flash.It's about confidence, competence, and delivering an experience people never forget.

Disclaimer: Today's episode is sponsored by Gelt. Content is for educational purposes only. Not advice. Results discussed have not been vetted. Claims made by the guest have not been verified. The views expressed by the guest do not reflect those of the host or this show.—

Why do so many salespeople lose deals even when they think meetings went well? In this episode of Sales Lead Dog, Christopher Smith sits down with James White, Founder of James White Sales, to discuss emotional intelligence in sales, buyer psychology, CRM adoption, prospecting persistence, and the habits that separate top sales performers from everyone else. With more than 30 years of experience in sales leadership, training, and business growth, James shares practical insights on how sales professionals can improve conversations, build trust, follow up effectively, and create consistent long-term revenue growth. This conversation covers modern selling, coaching sales teams, handling rejection, improving sales processes, and why emotional intelligence matters more than scripts and generic sales tactics. What You'll Learn • Why most sales calls fail • The importance of emotional intelligence in sales • How buyer psychology impacts decision making • Why salespeople give up too early • The real reason CRM adoption fails • How to follow up without sounding pushy • Why persistence creates more opportunities • The role of empathy in closing deals • Building long-term sales habits that actually work • Why great salespeople never stop learning Guest Details LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswhitesales/ Website: www.jameswhite.business  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesWhiteSales/videos Growth Resourcing: https://growthresourcing.co.uk/ About Sales Lead Dog Sales Lead Dog is hosted by Christopher Smith, CRM technology and sales process expert, and founder of Empellor CRM. Each episode features sales leaders who have separated themselves from the pack, sharing how they achieve success with their teams and their CRM strategy. Unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes. Connect and Learn More All episodes and show notes: https://empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog If this episode brought you value:

Visit Jason here at AfterTheLead.comIn this episode of The Selling Podcast, hosts Scott and Mike dive into the often-dreaded world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. They welcome Jason Kramer, founder and CEO of Cultivize and self-proclaimed "CRM Whisperer," to discuss why CRMs are often despised by sales teams and how to transform them from an administrative burden into a powerful tool for driving revenue.Why CRMs are Often HatedJason begins by explaining that the negativity surrounding CRMs stems from a lack of process and proper training. Many salespeople view them merely as tools for data entry rather than aids to make their jobs easier. Companies often hire salespeople and expect them to naturally know how to use these complex tools without providing a clear playbook or defining the necessary processes.Common CRM Mistakes and the Importance of NurturingA major hurdle for sales reps is the failure to follow up effectively. Salespeople get busy and postpone following up with leads who aren't ready to buy immediately, causing potential deals to fall through the cracks.Jason emphasizes the critical importance of "nurturing" leads, which he defines not as bombarding them with weekly emails, but as educating them. By providing valuable resources (like relevant articles or insights) that help solve their problems, you build rapport and educate them to make better decisions when they are ready to buy. Studies show that 63% of leads who enter the funnel will eventually buy if properly nurtured.Practical Advice for Sales RepsBlock Time on Your Calendar: The "I don't have time" excuse is common. Jason and the hosts strongly advise allocating rigid time blocks on your calendar specifically for Business Development. Treating CRM updates as part of business development makes it less likely to be pushed aside.Define Your Process: Take a step back and literally write down the steps in your ideal sales cycle. This defines the standard activities that need to happen at each stage.Utilize "Lead Scoring": Most CRMs track prospect activity (website visits, email opens, etc.). Leveraging lead scoring allows sales reps to prioritize leads who are actively showing interest, telling you who to call today.The 15-Minute Rule: When responding to new inbound leads, speed is everything. Statistically, waiting more than 15 minutes to reach out can cause you to lose the deal to a competitor who responds faster. If you cannot call immediately, utilize automated auto-responder emails to set expectations and maintain the conversation.The Role of AI in the Future of CRMThe conversation concludes with insights into how AI is impacting CRM usage. AI tools can analyze transcripts of calls and meetings to identify pain points, detect tonality, and provide actionable highlights. Furthermore, AI can help salespeople articulate follow-up communications more clearly and effectively by analyzing the customer's concerns and suggesting the best language to overcome them.

Sales success rarely comes from one brilliant play, one miracle client, or one giant deal. It comes from doing the basics repeatedly: prospecting, following up, meeting buyers, tracking activity, and grinding through the boring work other salespeople avoid. Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach, talked about the importance of blocking and tackling in American football. The same idea applies in sales. The flashy strategy matters, but if the fundamentals are weak, everything collapses. Why do salespeople need to master the basics? Salespeople need to master the basics because revenue is built on consistent, repeatable activity, not hope. Big deals are wonderful when they land, but they rarely arrive without disciplined prospecting, follow-up, and pipeline management. In sales, the equivalent of blocking and tackling includes cold calling, referral requests, client research, CRM updates, proposal follow-up, and face-to-face buyer contact. These tasks are not glamorous. They are often boring, irritating, and repetitive. Yet in Japan, the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, the salespeople who survive downturns are usually those who keep doing the fundamentals while others chase bright shiny objects. Landing the whale client sounds exciting, but years can pass while the promised revenue never appears. Do now: Measure the activity that creates revenue, not just the revenue you hope will appear. Why do talented salespeople sometimes fail? Talented salespeople sometimes fail because intelligence can tempt them to skip the grind. They believe the basics are for lesser mortals and that one clever strategy or major client will rescue the numbers. This is a dangerous mindset in B2B sales, professional services, corporate training, SaaS, consulting, and recruitment. Smart people can talk persuasively about future revenue, strategic accounts, and game-changing opportunities. The problem is simple: until the deal is signed and the money is banked, it is not revenue. Many capable salespeople have left organisations because they preferred impressive possibilities to daily execution. Talent matters, but discipline converts talent into income. Do now: Treat your sales pipeline as evidence, not imagination. If it is not moving, it is not real. How did the pandemic change sales prospecting? The pandemic made sales prospecting harder by pushing buyers out of offices and behind new barriers. Cold calling became more frustrating because receptionists, assistants, and internal gatekeepers often had less access—or less willingness—to connect sellers with decision-makers. Since COVID-19, many clients in Japan and other markets have shifted to hybrid work, remote meetings, and stricter communication filters. Calling the office may produce vague responses, blocked contact details, or a polite refusal to share an email address or phone number. This makes the traditional sales routine more difficult, especially for SMEs and service businesses that depend on new conversations. Yet the need for sales has not disappeared. Business still depends on buyers discovering better solutions, services, and ideas. Do now: Assume the old route to the buyer may be blocked. Build several routes instead. Should tobikomi eigyo make a comeback in Japan? Tobikomi eigyo, or unannounced in-person sales visits, may deserve a careful comeback when phone and email access are blocked. It is not always efficient, but it can create a buyer contact when every digital channel is failing. In Japan, 飛び込み営業 has a long history in sales culture, even though many modern sales teams consider it outdated or inefficient. Post-pandemic, that assumption may need rethinking. If the buyer is back in the office two or three days a week and competitors are not visiting, a professional drop-in can stand out. Not every building allows easy access, especially newer offices with QR codes, reception systems, and security gates. Still, where access is possible, a short visit may create enough human contact to secure a proper appointment later. Do now: Use in-person visits selectively, respectfully, and with a clear reason the buyer should care. How can salespeople respond when gatekeepers block access? Salespeople should respond to gatekeepers with calm persistence, not frustration or arrogance. The aim is to protect the brand while still showing the resilience expected of a serious sales professional. Gatekeepers often believe they are helping the boss by blocking unknown callers, visitors, and sellers. Sometimes they are. But companies also need new suppliers, better services, and fresh ideas, especially during difficult business conditions. A useful response is to acknowledge their viewpoint while reframing the behaviour as the same determined mindset they would want from their own sales team. This approach is particularly important in Japan, where professionalism, politeness, and face-saving matter. Being pushy damages trust; being resilient can earn respect. Do now: Stay polite, firm, and commercially relevant. Never let irritation become the message. What alternatives work when cold calling fails? When cold calling fails, salespeople should create buyer attention through physical mail, referrals, targeted content, and carefully designed outreach. The key is to make the buyer curious within seconds. A mailed package can bypass the phone gatekeeper because assistants may block calls but still deliver physical mail to the executive's desk. The package should not look like ordinary paperwork. A slightly lumpy, relevant, useful item can earn a brief moment of attention. However, the contents must immediately answer the buyer's pressing need. In today's overloaded business environment, attention is narrow. Whether selling training, consulting, software, financial services, or recruitment solutions, the offer must quickly show relevance, urgency, and value. Do now: Design outreach around the buyer's problem, not your product brochure. Final summary Sales is full of boring work, and that is exactly why many people avoid it. Prospecting, tracking, follow-up, gatekeeper navigation, office visits, mailed outreach, and daily discipline are not glamorous. They are the commercial basics that keep businesses alive. The salesperson waiting for the whale client may sound strategic, but the salesperson doing the blocking, tackling, tracking, and grinding is usually the one who survives. In difficult markets, especially post-pandemic Japan, the winners will be those who harden up, return to fundamentals, and keep creating real buyer conversations. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers: Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

Most sales conversations feel productive but go nowhere.That's because you focus on being polite rather than being real.In this episode, Walker McKay explains how to stop having surface-level conversations and start having real discussions that lead to real decisions. From setting expectations upfront to giving prospects permission to say no, this approach eliminates surprises and puts you back in control of the conversation.Want fewer “let me think about it” responses and clearer yes or no decisions? This is where it starts.In this episode, you'll learn:Why “nice” conversations don't lead to salesHow to set clear expectations at the start of every meetingThe exact questions to align on time, agenda, and prioritiesWhy giving prospects permission to say “no” builds trustWhat to establish upfront so there are no surprises at the endHow to define the ideal next step before the meeting even starts

Uncertainty and change are shaking up the sales world at an unprecedented pace, but what if disruption could be your greatest advantage? Meridith Elliot Powell, global keynote speaker and authority on navigating uncertainty, joins Mark Hunter to demystify how top performers and organizations succeed in times of chaos. Meridith draws on years of in-depth research and the lessons of history to reveal why so many well-known companies fail, and how a select few turn adversity into opportunity. Listeners will also hear Mark and Meridith tackle tough questions around short-term sales thinking, shifting industries, and the damaging myth of price sensitivity. The episode teases actionable tactics for focusing on people, adapting sales approaches, and staying present when customers need you most—all without revealing all the secrets. Remain tuned for powerful takeaways that help today's sales professionals find stability and success in any market.

Christian salespeople are often confronted with challenges that temp their faith. One way to withstand them is to proactively embed Christian principles and practices into your routines. One such principle is to 'strive to be a good employee.' In this piece, we picture what that looks like. Check out the X-I Community   Check out the website  

Most B2B sales reps are professionally trained to make you like them in 30 minutes. But when you're recruiting salespeople, likability doesn't guarantee success. Make the wrong hire and you can lose two years and a chunk of your growth plan. In this episode, Devin and Paul walk through the five qualities ParkerGale tests for (customer focus, structure, accountability, problem-solving, drive), the specific questions we ask in a panel interview, and the trick question that breaks through every rapport-building defense salespeople can muster.

What you'll learn in this episode: Why self-belief is the foundation of every successful business The GPS framework for achieving goals with clarity and focus How the “commit or quit” mindset removes distractions Why consistency beats talent in sales and entrepreneurship The CPI Communication Model for building trust and rapport How neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) improves communication Why follow-up is the most overlooked sales skill The SCARLET framework for hiring winning team members How great leaders teach people how to think, not what to do Why “You are good enough” is the ultimate entrepreneurial truth    

Why do so many sales conversations fail before they even begin? In this episode of Sales Lead Dog, Christopher Smith sits down with Darren Haygood, Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Partner at Streamline Auto Solutions, to talk about the real skills behind successful sales leadership, customer relationships, and long-term business growth. With more than 25 years of experience across OEM, dealership, and automotive SaaS organizations, Darren shares practical lessons on leadership, active listening, CRM adoption, customer experience, and building authentic client relationships that last. From launching innovative automotive technology solutions to leading high-performing sales organizations, Darren explains why the best salespeople focus less on pitching products and more on understanding problems. The conversation also explores mentorship, leadership development, CRM implementation challenges, and why trust still matters more than technology in modern sales. If you work in sales, automotive, leadership, CRM, SaaS, or customer experience, this episode offers practical insights you can apply immediately. What You'll Learn • Why active listening is the most important skill in sales • How top salespeople build trust and credibility faster • Why product demos fail when done too early • How to identify the real customer problem before selling • The role mentorship plays in leadership development • Why most companies fail to fully utilize their CRM systems • How authenticity improves long-term client relationships • Why education works better than hard selling • Leadership lessons from automotive SaaS and dealership operations • How process and technology should improve customer experience Guest Information Darren Haygood Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Partner, Streamline Auto Solutions Proud father of four, adventure enthusiast, triathlete, and automotive SaaS sales executive with 25+ years of experience across OEM, dealer, and digital marketing organizations. Darren focuses on driving meaningful change for dealers through technology solutions, data insights, and scalable processes that improve the customer experience. Connect with Darren Haygood: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenhaygood/ Learn more about Streamline Auto Solutions: https://streamlineautosolutions.com/ About Sales Lead Dog Sales Lead Dog is hosted by Christopher Smith, CRM technology and sales process expert, and founder of Empellor CRM. Each episode features sales leaders who have separated themselves from the rest of the pack, sharing how they achieve success with their teams and their CRM strategy. Unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes. Connect and Learn More All episodes and show notes: https://empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog/ If this episode brought you value:

Your habits are either building your future in sales or destroying it.In this video, Ace breaks down how rituals, discipline, and deep work separate average salespeople from elite performers. Bad habits don't stay in one area of life, they spread. The same goes for good habits.Learn how top salespeople create structure, stay focused, build momentum, and develop routines that lead to consistent success in sales and life.#sales #salessuccess #salesgrowth #salescoaching Support the showJoin our weekly calls so you we can help you too! 

In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V. Bradley sits down with Dealer Synergy's Lead Videographer and Creative Director, Charlie Cooper, for a conversation every automotive salesperson, manager, and dealer needs to hear right now! "A picture is worth a thousand words, but one minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million written words." – Sean V. Bradley The car business has officially entered a new era… one where attention, trust, and visibility are becoming just as important as inventory and pricing. This episode dives into why video is no longer optional for automotive professionals who want to stand out, generate their own traffic, and build long-term success in today's digital-first world! Sean and Charlie break down how personal branding is changing the sales game, why customers are researching salespeople before ever stepping into a dealership, and how the right content strategy can completely reshape a salesperson's pipeline. "You have to make sure that you are maximizing and utilizing all of these things." – Charlie Cooper Without giving away the full blueprint, this conversation explores the growing impact of social media, AI, SEO, and video-driven communication in automotive sales… along with the mindset shift required to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving industry! "Branding creates engagement, engagement creates conversation, conversation creates identification." – Charlie Cooper Whether you're brand new to content creation or already posting online, this episode will challenge the way you think about visibility, marketing, and what it truly means to build influence in automotive today. Because in this market, the salespeople who know how to create attention… create opportunity!   Key Takeaways: ✅ Branding through Video: Emphasized how car salespeople can use video content to build their personal brand, thus increasing engagement and trust with potential buyers. ✅ Technology and Tools: Discussed the use of smartphones and in-app editing tools like TikTok's editor for creating high-quality video content without extensive technical skills. ✅ SEO Optimization: Explored strategies for optimizing video content using SEO best practices and AI tools to target local audiences effectively in the automotive industry. ✅ AI Integration: Highlighted the use of AI for video editing and enhancement, stressing its growing importance in streamlining the production of engaging and professional-looking content. ✅ Practical Tips for Beginners: Provided actionable advice on starting video production, including recommended equipment like microphones and ring lights, and technical guidance on crafting compelling video thumbnails.   About Charlie Cooper Charlie Cooper is a seasoned video production manager at Dealer Synergy, renowned for his expertise in video creation and editing within the automotive industry. With over three years of experience at Dealer Synergy, Charlie has been instrumental in producing a wide range of video content, including internal videos, training modules, TV commercials, and more. Educated at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Charlie boasts a rich background in video editing, lighting, and directing, supplemented by a robust understanding of social media marketing and brand building. His multidisciplinary skills and creative vision make him a vital asset to the Dealer Synergy team!     Leveraging Video and AI for Success in Car Sales: A Comprehensive Guide Key Takeaways The Power of Branding: Branding in the automotive industry enhances engagement and fosters a trustworthy salesperson-buyer relationship. Importance of Video: Combining visual, auditory, and emotional elements maximizes communication effectiveness and reshapes customer perceptions. AI and Technology Use: Embracing technology, particularly AI, accelerates video content creation and optimization, providing a competitive edge in the marketplace.   Video marketing is revolutionizing the car sales industry, as evidenced by Sean V. Bradley and Charlie Cooper's insights from their dynamic discussion on the Millionaire Car Salesman podcast. The evolving role of salespeople in utilizing branding, video, and technology to enhance sales strategies underscores the importance of adapting to new digital trends. This article delves into the central themes emerging from their discourse, providing a roadmap for sales professionals to enhance their practices. The Impact of Branding in Automotive Sales Branding in the automotive sector is more than a logo; it's the foundation for creating lasting engagement and trust with your audience. As Charlie Cooper astutely points out, "Branding creates engagement, and engagement creates conversation." This conversation, in turn, results in buyers identifying with the seller, which is crucial for overcoming the longstanding negative stereotypes associated with car salespeople. It's about shifting the connotation from a "scumbag car salesman" to an approachable automotive consultant. Understanding that branding impacts every aspect of communication encourages salespeople to integrate it into all interactions. Charlie emphasized the significance of personal branding, explaining, "When you have weak branding, it creates a disconnect between the seller and the buyer." Recognizing this disconnect is vital as branding fundamentally influences a consumer's decision-making process. Harnessing the Power of Video Communication Video is a transformative tool in car sales, enhancing both communication and customer perception. As outlined in the podcast, video combines sight, sound, motion, and emotion, contributing to a comprehensive communication experience. Sean V. Bradley breaks it down with statistics, noting that "55% of communication is visual perception and body language, 38% is sound and inflection, and only 7% are the words we use." Considering these figures, the inherent power of video is undeniable. The medium allows salespeople to narrate authentic stories, demonstrate expertise, and, crucially, dismantle negative stereotypes about car sales professionals. Incorporating video testimonials, reviews, and personalized content can help prospects feel a more substantial trust and connection with the salesperson. Building a storyboard around these elements emphasizes a seamless buyer's journey while reinforcing the dealership's credibility. Embracing AI and Emerging Technologies In today's fast-paced digital market, employing AI and cutting-edge technologies like video editing tools is no longer optional but essential. Sean marvels at the possibilities AI presents, noting how it can instantly assist in optimizing videos with strategic keywords, generating titles, and even offering video outline ideas. With platforms like TikTok offering sophisticated yet intuitive editing features, even those intimidated by technology have accessible avenues to improve their video marketing efforts. Charlie's recommendation for utilizing TikTok's editing suite demonstrates a revolution in user-friendly video production. These in-app capabilities "maximize short-form content without needing a deep technical background," making entry-level video content creation possible for everyone. Indeed, the strategic use of AI tools can significantly enhance video quality and increase reach through effective social media strategies. AI also streamlines the optimization process, allowing videos to reach a targeted local audience, increasing the likelihood of customer engagement. As Sean puts it, understanding how to "geotarget search" effectively positions salespeople to leverage local SEO potentials, extending their video's impact beyond traditional marketing. Sales professionals in the automotive industry must integrate branding, video production, and AI technologies into their strategies to stay competitive and relevant. By cultivating a solid personal brand, leveraging the multifaceted communication power of video, and utilizing AI-driven tools for video creation and optimization, salespeople can significantly enhance their reputation and effectiveness. The future of car sales thrives at the intersection of traditional personal connection and cutting-edge digital innovation, and those who embrace this hybrid approach will undoubtedly lead the charge in transforming industry practices.     Resources + Our Proud Sponsors: ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.

In this episode of the Un-Billable Hour's Seat at the Table: Get past the stigma: Law firms sell a service, and that's no different than any other service business. It makes sense to hire a sales pro to find and sign customers What makes for a good non-attorney sales pro? What skills do you look for and where do you find them? Attorneys practice law. They aren't trained in sales. Don't waste time giving free advice during a “consult.” Let a sales professional sign the client, then focus on solving their problem. Take a “seat at the table,” with host Christopher T. Anderson and guests Rob Leitner and Elliot and Erik Alicea, experienced pros in building and running successful law firms. In this episode, law firms have grappled for a while with the idea of employing non-attorney salespeople to drive leads. That discussion is probably over, it's time to talk about maximizing the value of these sales professionals.  Let's remove the stigma, law firms sell services. And lawyers aren't salespeople. Hire a pro. Whether you call them salespeople or client/attorney liaisons or whatever else, the job of non-attorney salespeople is to welcome clients to the firm while ensuring the firm is a good fit for them, and the clients are a good fit for firm. But who are they? Where do you find them? Remember, this is the face of your firm. You're looking for “personality plus,” meaning empathy, an understanding of the firm's role and culture, and conversation skills. They don't need legal skills, they need sales skills, that might include pros from high end car dealers or luxury item sales, even real estate professionals. In this episode of the Un-Billable Hour's Seat at the Table, our panel of practice management and marketing professionals share inside tips for finding non-attorney sales pros to represent your firm, how to train them, and how to turn that hire into profit. Mentioned in This Episode: Dyson Vacuum Commercial, YouTube Clio ClioCon 2026, Oct. 26-27, 2026 Legal Talk Network Unbillable Hour

Some clients do not attack your deal in one dramatic bite. They take tiny pieces—one discount request, one scope change, one extra demand, one more profile review—until your margins, time, and energy are stripped away. In sales, consulting, professional services, and corporate training, leaders need to recognise the "piranha client" early. The danger is not always a bad person or a bad company. Often, it is a pattern of incremental pressure that looks harmless in isolation but becomes commercially toxic over time. What is a piranha client in sales and professional services? A piranha client is a customer who erodes your deal through repeated small demands rather than one obvious negotiation attack. They ask for "just one more" discount, "just one more" concession, or "just one more" change until the original agreement barely resembles the final delivery. Unlike a shark-style negotiator who takes one huge bite, the piranha client works through accumulation. In B2B sales, consulting, training, recruitment, technology implementation, and agency work, this often appears as volume discounts, extra stakeholders, expanded scope, and constant approval loops. Post-pandemic, when many service firms were hungry for revenue, these patterns became even harder to resist. Do now: Track every concession in writing. Small bites become big losses when nobody totals them. Why do clients keep asking for more discounts? Clients keep asking for discounts because each successful concession teaches them that more pressure may produce a better price. If the seller has not created a clear commercial boundary, the buyer naturally tests the limits. In large companies, especially new divisions or procurement-heavy organisations, buyers may not reveal the full deal size upfront. A supplier agrees to the first discount, then a second tranche appears, then a third. By the time the total opportunity is visible, the seller is already trapped inside a "big discount" corner. This happens across Japan, the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, but it is especially painful in high-touch service businesses where labour, expertise, and delivery capacity cannot be infinitely scaled. Do now: Price each stage as though more scope may follow. Set a hard stop before negotiations begin. How can scope creep damage a service business? Scope creep damages a service business by quietly increasing delivery obligations without increasing revenue. The client may see each request as reasonable, but the supplier absorbs the extra time, coordination, risk, and opportunity cost. In training, consulting, and advisory work, scope creep often appears as new requirements, additional audiences, more reporting, special customisation, extra meetings, or new approval layers. For SMEs and boutique firms, the impact is sharper than for large multinationals because fewer people carry the operational load. During COVID-19 and the post-pandemic recovery, external trainer availability, client uncertainty, and shifting schedules made this even more complex. A deal that looked profitable on paper can become unattractive once hidden delivery costs are included. Do now: Define scope, exclusions, decision rights, and change fees before delivery starts. Why is trainer or consultant selection a hidden negotiation risk? Trainer and consultant selection becomes risky when the client treats expert availability as unlimited. In reality, quality delivery depends on certified people, scheduling constraints, and proven fit. In the training industry, certification is not a light administrative step. Dale Carnegie trainer development, for example, involves long preparation, specialist training, and accreditation standards. That means a client asking to review more and more profiles is not simply requesting choice; they may be consuming scarce operational capacity. This issue appears in other fields too: legal partners, executive coaches, cybersecurity consultants, enterprise software architects, and medical specialists all face similar constraints. Quality depends on expertise, not infinite substitutions. Do now: Explain the certification, experience, and availability logic early. Choice should support quality, not undermine delivery. When should a business push back on a demanding client? A business should push back when discount pressure, scope creep, and difficult behaviour combine into a pattern.One tough request is negotiation; repeated erosion is a warning signal. Many service firms operate with an informal "no idiots" policy, although the actual wording is often stronger. The principle is simple: some revenue is not worth the operational damage, staff stress, or reputational risk. Leaders at startups, SMEs, and established firms need to ask whether the client is building a partnership or simply extracting value. In Japan, where long-term relationships and trust matter, the pushback should be polite, structured, and commercially clear. In more aggressive procurement cultures, the same principle applies, but the language may be firmer. Do now: Decide your walk-away point before emotion, sunk cost, or fear of lost revenue takes over. How can salespeople protect margins without damaging relationships? Salespeople protect margins by making trade-offs explicit: more value requires more budget, and lower price requires reduced scope. The goal is not to be difficult; it is to be professionally clear. A useful approach is to offer options. For example: "At this price, we can deliver this scope. If you want the additional requirement, here is the revised fee." This frames the conversation around value rather than resistance. Sales leaders should train teams to avoid automatic concessions, especially with large companies that reveal requirements gradually. Procurement may respect a supplier more when the boundaries are clear. The key is to stay calm, factual, and consistent. Do now: Never give a concession without receiving something in return—volume, timing, commitment, payment terms, or reduced complexity. Final summary The piranha client is dangerous because each bite looks small. A discount here, a profile request there, a slight requirement change, a new tranche of work, another internal stakeholder—none of it seems fatal until the supplier reviews the final margin and delivery burden. For executives, salespeople, consultants, trainers, and professional service leaders, the lesson is clear: protect the deal before the feeding frenzy begins. Set commercial boundaries, define scope, track concessions, communicate scarcity, and be prepared to walk away when the partnership becomes toxic. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers: Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan. Would you like me to now prepare the WordPress-ready version with spacing and the bio?

In this episode, Aaron sits down with Rick Goyette, owner of All Mark Signs and Graphics, to discuss the "total teardown" of a legacy family business. Rick shares how he applied 30 years of corporate operations experience to move All Mark from a safety signage focus to a high-end custom project management powerhouse.They dive deep into the modern realities of the sign world: why answering the phone is your greatest competitive advantage, how to successfully manage a global remote design team, and when to pull the trigger on vertical integration for in-house installation and UL certification.

Kokorogamae is one of those Japanese ideas that sounds ancient, but lands right in the middle of modern business. It means clarifying your true intention before you act. In leadership, sales, supplier relationships, and corporate culture, that intention leaks out in everything we do. People notice. Clients notice. Staff notice. And in the age of LinkedIn, Google reviews, Glassdoor, and instant reputation damage, the market notices very quickly. What does kokorogamae mean in Japanese business? Kokorogamae means your inner stance, your true intention, and the attitude sitting behind your actions. It combines kokoro, often translated as heart, spirit, or mind, with kamae, the stance taken in martial arts before action begins. In traditional Japanese disciplines such as shodo calligraphy, ikebana flower arrangement, tea ceremony, and martial arts like kendo or aikido, the master prepares the mind before moving the hand. The ink is ground carefully. The flower stems are stripped with attention. The body settles before training begins. Business should be no different. Before leaders, salespeople, executives, and entrepreneurs act, they need to ask: what is my real intention here? Do now: Before your next major decision, ask: "Is my kokorogamae self-serving, client-serving, team-serving, or enterprise-serving?" Why does true intention matter in leadership? Leadership trust begins before the leader speaks, because people read intention faster than they read strategy documents. A boss may talk about coaching, empowerment, and people development, but the team quickly senses whether the real goal is their growth or the boss's promotion. In Japan, where long-term relationships, hierarchy, reputation, and group harmony still influence business behaviour, kokorogamae matters deeply. The same is true in the US, Europe, and Australia, but the cultural signals differ. A multinational may call it leadership authenticity. A startup may call it founder values. An SME may simply call it "doing the right thing". Whatever the label, employees know when leaders are using them as stepping stones rather than investing in their capability. Do now: Leaders should ask their team, directly or anonymously: "What do you believe my true intention is when I manage you?" How does kokorogamae affect company culture? A company's culture is the accumulated evidence of its real intentions, not the slogans written on the wall. Values like integrity, teamwork, ESG, compliance, and inclusion mean little if daily behaviour says, "We win by squeezing whoever has less power." This becomes obvious in supplier relationships. Some global corporations talk loudly about ethics and governance while imposing 60-day, 90-day, or even 120-day payment terms on small suppliers. For a large company, that may be cash-flow management. For a small business, cash is oxygen. SMEs often pay each other on 30-day terms because they understand survival pressure. That is kokorogamae in action: partnership versus domination. Do now: Review your payment terms, procurement rules, and supplier conversations. They reveal your company's real ethical stance. What is the right kokorogamae in sales? The right kokorogamae in sales is not to get the sale; it is to earn the reorder. A single transaction is easy to chase, but lifetime buyer value is built through trust, suitability, and long-term partnership. Salespeople under pressure can drift into bad intention. A low base salary, high commission structure, or aggressive manager can push them to recommend whatever has the best margin rather than what best serves the client. That may work once. It rarely works twice. In B2B sales, especially in relationship-driven markets like Japan, the reorder, referral, and reputation are far more valuable than the quick win. The buyer remembers whether you solved their problem or just solved your quota problem. Do now: Sales leaders should measure repeat business, referrals, retention, and customer trust, not just monthly revenue. What happens when a business has bad kokorogamae? Bad kokorogamae eventually becomes visible, and today it becomes visible at internet speed. In the past, a poor operator could move from client to client, town to town, or deal to deal, leaving unhappy buyers behind. That game is much harder now. LinkedIn posts, online reviews, business forums, search engines, and AI-driven summaries can surface reputational patterns very quickly. A person who fails to pay suppliers, mistreats partners, or sells poor-quality products may think each incident is isolated. It is not. Digital reputation compounds. One public complaint can trigger others, and suddenly the market sees the pattern. In 2025 and beyond, your kokorogamae is no longer private. It becomes searchable. Do now: Audit what clients, suppliers, staff, and partners would say about your intention when you are not in the room. How can executives build better kokorogamae? Executives build better kokorogamae by aligning intention, action, incentives, and accountability. It is not enough to privately believe you are ethical; your systems must reward ethical behaviour. Start with leadership questions. Are managers promoted for developing people or merely hitting numbers? Are salespeople rewarded for client success or only revenue? Are suppliers treated as partners or pressured because they lack bargaining power? Are internal teams encouraged to beat competitors or fight each other for political advantage? Toyota-style continuous improvement, Dale Carnegie-style human relations, and modern leadership development all point to the same lesson: intention becomes behaviour when it is reinforced every day. Do now: Align KPIs with the behaviour you claim to value: trust, repeat business, talent growth, collaboration, and client outcomes. Final summary Kokorogamae is the quiet force behind business success. It is your real intention before the meeting, before the sale, before the negotiation, before the leadership decision. When it is right, people feel it. When it is wrong, people expose it. In modern business, especially in reputation-sensitive markets like Japan, trust is not a branding exercise. It is the outward proof of your inner stance. The secret ingredient is not mysterious. Clarify your true intention, align it with ethical action, and build relationships that can survive scrutiny. Quick actions for leaders and salespeople Ask what your team, clients, and suppliers believe your real intention is. Reward repeat business, referrals, and long-term trust. Stop using power imbalances as a business model. Treat suppliers as partners, not pressure points. Make your kokorogamae visible through consistent behaviour. FAQs What is kokorogamae? Kokorogamae is a Japanese concept meaning your true intention or inner stance before action. In business, it describes the attitude behind leadership, sales, negotiation, and trust. Why is kokorogamae important in sales? Kokorogamae matters in sales because buyers sense whether you want to help them or merely close them. The best sales intention is to earn the reorder, not just win the first transaction. How does kokorogamae relate to leadership? Leadership kokorogamae is the real intention behind how a leader treats their team. Staff quickly know whether the boss wants to develop them or use them. Can bad kokorogamae damage reputation? Yes, bad kokorogamae can damage reputation quickly because poor behaviour is now searchable and shareable.LinkedIn, reviews, forums, and AI search make business behaviour more visible than ever. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

What if the future of sales means customers decide to buy before they ever speak to you? In this episode, Charles Gaudet, CEO of Predictable Profits, discusses how companies can achieve predictable growth rather than chasing unsustainable rapid expansion. He explains how the modern AI-driven buyer's journey is changing sales, with customers increasingly making decisions before speaking with a salesperson. Charles emphasizes the importance of clearly defining your ideal customer, communicating a unique value proposition, and building systems to create, capture, and nurture demand. He also highlights a growth framework, optimize, systematize, and innovate, and stresses the value of mentors and data-driven decision-making for entrepreneurs. Tune in to learn how businesses can adapt to an AI-driven buyer's journey and build systems that create predictable, scalable growth! Resources: Connect with and follow Charles Gaudet on LinkedIn and visit his website! Follow Predictable Profits on LinkedIn and discover their website!

Brian Will — Wall Street Journal bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, and founder/CEO of Living Forever AI — joins host Jeff Mains for a wide-ranging conversation on entrepreneurship, scaling, sales, and what it truly means to leave a legacy. Brian has built and helped build companies worth over half a billion dollars across 10 ventures in five industries. Now, he's setting his sights on disrupting the $3 billion genealogy market with AI-powered digital twins that preserve your voice, stories, and personality for future generations — not as static content, but as something people can actually interact with.The conversation covers the mentor relationship that changed Brian's life and fortune, why most companies fail to scale (hint: it's the founder), how to build and audit a high-performance sales team, the self-funded vs. VC debate, and how to compete in a market dominated by giants like Ancestry.com. Brian also shares a vivid philosophy on focus, data-driven sales management, and why right now is the single greatest moment in history to build a company.Key Takeaways4:14 — The Power of a Role Mentor Brian's career turned when he stopped taking only his own advice and started listening to his partner Steve — a $20M entrepreneur who had earned the right to be believed. That one decision led to an $80M exit.11:14 — The Origin of Living Forever AI Watching chatbots evolve and wrestling with his own legacy question — "Who's ever going to know?" — Brian conceived the idea of an interactive AI video twin trained entirely on your own stories and memories.12:43 — Early Traction: Launched Feb. 1, 539 Users in 2 Months Brian describes rapid early momentum, grants, and acceptance into the Startup Grind Global Competition in Silicon Valley — all with a three-person team.22:14 — Why Companies Fail to Scale: It's the Founder The #1 scaling killer is founder ego preventing delegation. Brian calls out founders running $10M companies while doing $20/hour work, and makes the case that CEOs must stop pretending to have all the answers.23:51 — Build a High-Performance, Data-Driven Sales Team Sales and marketing must be measured at every level: ROAS by channel, cost per lead by channel, and revenue per lead. No data = no scale.25:21 — Every Salesperson is an Individual P&L Most companies don't run a true P&L by salesperson. When you do, you'll typically find 20%+ are actually losing money. Cut them, redistribute leads to top performers, and profit goes up without spending a single additional dollar.29:38 — Closers vs. Salespeople vs. Retail Geese Brian breaks down the three tiers of salespeople — and introduces the memorable "retail geese" analogy: people who can fly but sit and wait for apples to fall. Identify which type you have and act accordingly.32:10 — Self-Funded vs. VC: The Discipline Advantage When every dollar comes out of your own pocket, you think differently. Brian contrasts his lean three-person team (launching in weeks) with a funded competitor who raised $11M, hired 15 people, and still has zero customers five months later.35:21 — First Mover Advantage is a Myth "If the first mover was the entire advantage, we'd all still be on MySpace." Brian explains why being an upgrade on an established market (Ancestry.com) is a smarter bet than trying to conquer one from scratch.37:56 — Niche Down, Focus, Then Expand Brian follows Alex Hormozi's framework: get focused, be really good at one thing, then bring in separate teams to take sequential verticals. Chasing the shiny object is a company killer.39:33 — The Biggest AI Mistake Founders Are Making Not fully utilizing AI. Brian replaced a $50K/year graphics employee with ChatGPT at $20/month. AI allows founders to think and build at machine-learning speed — those who ignore it will be left behind.Tweetable Quotes"I made a decision in a split second to listen to somebody else instead of me — somebody who had more success than me. That decision changed everything: my children's lives, the companies that followed, everything I have financially." — Brian Will"If your company isn't scaling the way you want, nine times out of ten it's because your ego is not allowing you to delegate. You're running a $10 million company doing a $20-an-hour job." — Brian Will"Every single salesperson in your organization is an individual profit and loss statement. And when you run that analysis, you'll typically find 20% or more are actually losing money." — Brian Will"We couldn't have done this three years ago. AI gives mankind the ability to 10x their thinking — to think at machine-learning speed and build businesses like no time in history." — Brian Will"If the first mover was the entire advantage, we'd all still be on MySpace. Sometimes the dinosaurs get so big they can't move quick. They get lost in meetings. They can't innovate." — Brian Will"They've created the market. I just want to jump in there, get a piece of it, make it better, and go from there." — Brian Will (on competing with Ancestry.com)"Salespeople are retail geese — they can fly, but they just sit there waiting for an apple to fall." — Brian Will"In the future, your history will be alive. You won't be looking at a piece of paper or reading a journal — you'll click on someone's avatar and talk to them." — Brian WillSaaS Leadership Lessons6 SaaS Leadership Lessons from Brian Will1. Find a Role Mentor and Actually Listen Brian's entire financial trajectory — multiple exits, consulting career, and his current venture — traces back to a single moment of trusting someone with more experience than himself. The best investment a founder can make isn't in software or marketing. It's in finding a mentor who has done what you want to do and getting out of your own way long enough to follow their lead.2. The Scaling Problem Is You Most founders who can't scale are sitting in the bottleneck themselves — answering voicemails, approving invoices, micromanaging design. The transition from operator to leader requires ruthless delegation of everything that isn't your highest-leverage activity. If you think nobody can do it as well as you, that belief will cap your company at whatever you personally can handle.3. Build Sales Like a Finance Department Sales without data is just activity. Brian's framework treats each marketing channel as a measurable ROAS line item, and each salesperson as an individual P&L. Most founders never run this analysis — and are shocked to discover they're paying for salespeople who are net-negative to the business. Measure every dollar, every lead, every close rate. Then cut the bottom and scale the top.4. Know the Difference Between Closers, Salespeople, and Retail Geese As you scale, the average quality of your sales hires will decline — not because you're hiring wrong, but because volume dilutes quality. Build systems simple enough for your worst hire, train rigorously, run P&L by person, and don't mistake activity for performance. Identify your closers and protect their lead flow.5. Bootstrap Your Constraints into Competitive Advantages Constraint forces prioritization. When the money is yours, every decision carries real weight — and that discipline produces lean, fast, profitable companies. Brian's self-funded three-person team outpaced a $11M funded competitor to market. Don't romanticize VC funding; sometimes the resource-constrained team wins simply because they can't afford to waste.6. Own the Niche First, Then Expand Vertically The temptation to chase every application of your technology will scatter your team and dilute your brand. Dominate one market, build the underlying engine, then bring in a dedicated team for the next vertical. Legacy preservation → corporate training → education → homeschool → licensing. The platform stays the same; the focus shifts sequentially. That's how you build a portfolio without losing a company.Guest ResourcesLiving Forever AI: livingforeverai.comBrian Will's Personal Site (books, training, speaking, background): brianwillmedia.comBrian's Books: The Dropout Multi-Millionaire and other titles available at brianwillmedia.combrian@brianwillmedia.comhttps://www.brianwillmedia.com https://www.facebook.com/TheDropoutMM https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-will-07823b6/ https://www.instagram.com/thedropoutmm/Episode SponsorThe Futureproof Series - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkXKUPZ5xuOqMPR7_gzGybncTtavyR1NThe Captain's KeysSmall Fish, Big Pond –

Salespeople lose deals when they drown buyers in features and forget to make the benefits feel urgent, relevant, and irresistible. That mistake shows up everywhere in modern selling. Across Japan, Australia, the US, and wider Asia-Pacific markets, too many sales conversations still revolve around product detail, technical depth, and execution mechanics. Buyers do need to know how a solution works, but that is rarely why they decide to buy. They buy because they can see how the solution closes an important gap, reduces risk, creates speed, or improves results. Great salespeople do not just explain the widget. They bait the hook by asking questions that uncover need, expose hesitation, and guide the buyer toward recognising the value for themselves. Why do salespeople lose deals by focusing on features? Salespeople lose deals when features dominate the conversation and benefits stay vague. Buyers may understand how the solution works, yet still feel no strong reason to act. This happens because sellers get too close to their own offer. They know the mechanics, the process, the configuration, and the technical detail, so that becomes the centre of their pitch. In SaaS, training, consulting, manufacturing, and complex B2B services, that often leads to feature-heavy presentations that sound comprehensive but fail to create desire. Buyers do not usually purchase because the tool is intricate. They purchase because the tool improves revenue, saves time, reduces friction, strengthens execution, or protects market position. In Japan especially, where buyers may listen politely without showing much reaction, a feature-heavy approach can create a false sense of progress when real engagement is missing. Do now: Review your sales deck and mark every slide that explains features without linking clearly to commercial benefit. Mini-summary: Features explain the offer, but benefits create the buying motive. Why is a standard pitch so ineffective with buyers? A standard pitch is weak because it tries to cover everybody and therefore lands deeply with almost nobody.Generic presentations spread information widely, but they rarely hit the exact issue that matters most to the buyer in front of you. That is the classic shotgun approach. A salesperson delivers the same detailed deck to every prospect, hoping some example or feature will resonate. It feels efficient, especially in large sales teams or mature product environments, but it often wastes the moment. Buyers in Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, London, or New York do not want a museum tour of your capabilities. They want relevance. If the presentation is not customised to their goals, frustrations, and competitive pressure, they must do all the work of translating your pitch into their reality. Most will not bother. Great sellers earn attention by narrowing the focus, not broadening the brochure. Do now: Replace one generic section of your standard deck with a custom section built around the client's current challenge. Mini-summary: A pitch becomes persuasive only when it feels specific to the buyer's world. What questions should you ask before presenting your solution? The best sales questions uncover where the buyer is now, where they want to be, and what is stopping them from getting there. Without that gap analysis, your pitch is guesswork. This is where the hook gets baited. If you ask a buyer about their current state and desired future state, you create a clearer picture of the distance between the two. Then comes the elegant question: what is stopping you from getting there? That one question can reveal lack of urgency, internal capability, budget limits, political resistance, or satisfaction with an incumbent supplier. In B2B sales, those answers are gold. They tell you whether there is real need, where the resistance sits, and how to shape your next move. For salespeople in Japan, where objections may be implied rather than bluntly stated, these questions are especially valuable because they surface what is really going on underneath the surface politeness. Do now: Build your next client meeting around three questions about current state, target state, and obstacles. Mini-summary: Questions expose the gap, and the gap defines the sale. How do you sell when the buyer wants to do it themselves? When buyers want to do it internally, you need to challenge the opportunity cost, not argue about your features.The smarter move is to make them think about speed, focus, and competitive risk. That is where question-based selling becomes powerful. Rather than declaring that a DIY approach will be too slow, frame it as a question the buyer can validate. Ask whether internal execution can move quickly enough to beat increasingly active competitors. In many markets, especially Japan, companies worry deeply about what rivals are doing, even if they do not always say so directly. Internal projects also tend to move more slowly than planned because resources, approvals, and competing priorities get in the way. When the buyer admits this themselves, the point becomes credible. A seller's statement can sound like hot air. A buyer's own answer sounds like reality. Do now: Prepare two questions that expose the cost of delay if the client tries to solve the issue alone. Mini-summary: DIY resistance weakens when buyers recognise the time and competitive risks for themselves. How do you dislodge an incumbent supplier the buyer already likes? You do not beat an incumbent by saying you are better. You win by helping the buyer rediscover the logic of change. Buyers who are comfortable with an existing provider need a reason to re-open their thinking. That is especially true in Japan, where stable supplier relationships and low appetite for disruption are common. A blunt statement such as "we are better than them" usually goes nowhere. It attacks the buyer's current judgement and creates defensiveness. A stronger move is to ask about the last time they changed suppliers and whether that shift created meaningful benefits. If they agree that a previous change improved outcomes, then the idea of change becomes plausible again. You are not forcing a conclusion. You are guiding them toward one. In enterprise selling, professional services, and long-term B2B contracts, that shift in framing can reopen an account that looked firmly closed. Do now: Create one question that gets the buyer to reflect on a past decision to change suppliers successfully. Mini-summary: Incumbents are weakened when buyers reconnect with the upside of change. Why do yes-based questions build sales momentum? Yes-based questions build momentum because they turn the buyer into an active participant in the logic of the sale.Each agreement makes the next step feel more natural and less confrontational. This is one of the most practical skills in consultative selling. When you ask questions that are easy to agree with and hard to dismiss, you reduce friction and increase psychological commitment. That does not mean manipulation. It means structuring the conversation so the buyer can arrive at sensible conclusions in their own words. In sectors like training, technology, consulting, and services, resistance often comes from uncertainty, inertia, or incomplete thinking rather than outright hostility. Well-framed questions reveal those hidden blocks and help the buyer move past them. The seller stops pushing and starts guiding. That is when trust strengthens and the idea of partnership starts to feel credible. Do now: Rewrite three key selling statements as questions designed to earn an honest "yes". Mini-summary: Momentum grows when buyers say the value out loud instead of merely hearing your claims. Conclusion Baiting your hook in sales means shifting from explanation to attraction. When you stop flooding buyers with features and start using questions to uncover the gap, challenge resistance, and guide them toward self-recognised value, your sales conversations become far more effective. Buyers do not want a lecture on how your widget works. They want help understanding why acting now matters and why your solution is worth choosing. The best salespeople know the product, but they also know how to bait the hook so the buyer wants to move. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie One Carnegie Award in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō, Purezen no Tatsujin, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, hosts six weekly podcasts, and produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews on YouTube. His content is widely followed by executives seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Dealers still ask me all the time, "Jen… what leads are the best?" And I always give the same answer… the ones already sitting in your database. In this quick class, I break down the biggest miss I see in dealerships everywhere. Salespeople are told to follow up… call for referrals… make birthday calls… but nobody really teaches them how to do it without feeling like a nuisance. So what happens? They stop. Here's the truth. The money isn't in the first call. It's in the one nobody makes. Follow-up isn't about checking a box. It's about building a career. Staying relevant. Staying human. And yes… staying in the game long enough to actually win. And here's the part that hit me personally. Just yesterday, while bringing my yard back to life after winter, my neighbor stopped by. We got to talking… and I found out he had once been homeless for two years, living out of his Suburban. What changed his life? Selling cars. That's this industry. It changes lives. It gave me everything. And when people ask me why I have so much energy… it's because I'm grateful. Grateful for the people, the opportunities, and the chance to help others find their path in this business. So if you're ready to stop chasing leads and start building a real pipeline… this one's for you. Check out our sponsors! LotLinx.com is a VIN Management Platform that enables precision automotive retailing via /AI/ technologies that improves dealership profitability. Matador.ai, AI That Fully Automates Sales & Service Conversations For Dealerships. ZukiTalk.com helps service advisors by making clear, consistent MPI calls that educate customers and increase approvals. Dealer Talk with Jen Suzuki Podcast |  https://apple.co/38lmHM1  https://spoti.fi/3uQ2nd1 | Jennifer@edealersolution.com | 954-873-8029 | edealersolutions.com | Meet me! bit.ly/3J7011t  |  Loyalty-Based Selling Strategies on CBT News | https://bit.ly/3JlcXAx

Most salespeople build pitch decks full of features, case studies, and credentials — and then wonder why prospects push back on price. In this episode, Bill Caskey reveals the one slide nearly every deck is missing: the Extrapolation Slide. It's not complicated. It takes known quantities, plugs in real numbers, and shows your prospect exactly what's waiting for them on the other side of a "yes." Bill walks through all three columns — cost reduction, revenue growth, and profitability — and explains why this single slide shifts the conversation from budget to transformation. If you're tired of having your solutions picked apart line by line, this episode is for you.Join the Insider Program: AdvancedSellingPodcast.com/insider 12 Bold Moves - Audiobook: Want to break free and soar to new heights? "12 Bold Moves" the Audiobook, is your gateway to a fearless reinvention of self and unlocking unprecedented sales success. Get your FREE copy now at http://12boldmoves.com/audiobook.Have a question for Bill or a topic you'd like him to discuss in a future episode? Email him at listener@caskeytraining.com.Schedule a Call: If you'd like to learn more about how Bill can help you or your team reach your potential, schedule a call at http://scheduleacallwithcaskey.com.

Sales teams… this is the moment where deals are won or lost and most don't even realize it. In this episode of Dealer Talk with Jen Suzuki, Jen breaks down one of the biggest mistakes happening in dealerships every single day: quoting price too fast. Customers ask for price. You give it. Conversation over. But what if that one moment is exactly where you lost control of the deal? This episode is all about the mindset shift that separates average reps from top 10% performers. You'll learn how to guide the conversation instead of reacting to it, how to redirect price questions without sounding evasive, and how to build value before ever talking numbers. Because here's the truth… fast answers don't win deals. Better conversations do. If your team is constantly battling price shoppers, losing gross, or struggling to get customers to engage… this is the fix. Dealer Talk with Jen Suzuki Podcast |  https://apple.co/38lmHM1 https://spoti.fi/3uQ2nd1 | Jennifer@edealersolution.com | 954-873-8029 | edealersolutions.com | Meet me! bit.ly/3J7011t  |  Loyalty-Based Selling Strategies on CBT News | https://bit.ly/3JlcXAx Check out our sponsors! LotLinx.com is a VIN Management Platform that enables precision automotive retailing via /AI/ technologies that improves dealership profitability. Matador.ai, AI That Fully Automates Sales & Service Conversations For Dealerships. ZukiTalk.com helps service advisors by making clear, consistent MPI calls that educate customers and increase approvals.

This week, I'm joined by Jermaine Jones, visionary founder of Jones Global Group and a recognized leader in enterprise risk and strategic talent selection. Jermaine shares his insights on common pitfalls sales professionals encounter during account transitions, and gives actionable strategies for aligning account plans with customer objectives. We also discuss his favorite tools and methodologies for key account managers and why he believes that stakeholder mapping is a crucially important part of the process.    Outline of This Episode   [00:00] Key Account vs. Regular Account [01:26] Common mistakes organizations make in defining key accounts [02:45] Importance of diagnosis before prescription in consultative selling [03:31] Use of a closed loop system and Ansoff Matrix  [04:39] How to tailor communication for different decision-makers [06:16] 4D task prioritization tool [12:04] Finding a Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA) to protect margins and reduce risk   Moving Beyond Revenue Organizations often misclassify accounts by prioritizing revenue rather than focusing on profit or the return on time invested. Jermaine references the Pareto Principle, the well-known 80/20 rule, and explains that "80% of your profitable sales come from 20% of your customers". A key account isn't simply about large volume; it's an account where your domain expertise fundamentally shifts the client's profitability. To identify strategic partners, sales leaders have to calculate return on time invested and examine how their influence impacts the client's bottom line. Without this, accounts remain routine and are a missed opportunity for strategic growth.   Rethinking Relationship Management Transitioning from a transactional sales approach to effective key account management is fraught with pitfalls. The most common mistake is staying stuck in a perpetual "hunter" mindset. Salespeople fail because they skip the prescription before the diagnosis." The sales process is a little like medicine, where selling becomes 'malpractice' if you pitch solutions before properly understanding the client's needs via thorough discovery. The path to success lies in shifting focus. Account managers should embrace a consultative approach, building trust and acting as advisors rather than mere vendors.   Aligning with Client Objectives Jermaine recommends using closed-loop goal execution and the Ansoff Matrix to identify opportunities for market penetration and product development. He emphasizes aligning one's talent and resource supply chain to support the client's expansion and adapt quickly as objectives evolve. Critical to this approach is ensuring plans are dynamic—active tools shaped by real-time feedback and shifting environments rather than static documents filed away and forgotten. Effective plans rely on the 70/20/10 development model, so you're continuously adapting based on 70% real-world experience and market feedback.    The Power of Stakeholder Mapping Stakeholder mapping prevents communication style bias, for instance, pitching with enthusiasm to a data-driven CFO is a sure way to lose trust if the presentation lacks concrete analysis. To gain access to senior decision makers, authority and social proof are key: bringing rigorous, certified data positions the seller as an invaluable source of insight rather than a time-waster.   Essential Tools and Methodologies for Key Account Managers According to Jermaine, what sets top account managers apart is mastery of three things. First, understanding and employing the five pillars of sales success, with particular emphasis on self-awareness and domain expertise. Technology and AI are no substitute for deep industry knowledge. Second, the 4D task tool prioritization (Do it, Delegate, Date, Delete) ensures efficiency does not replace effectiveness—the real goal is to do the right things, not just do things right. Third, value-based motivation statements open every executive interaction with a clear, credible promise, establishing technical trust and ensuring every conversation is purposeful.   Resources & People Mentioned The Pareto Principle Ansoff Matrix    Connect with Jermaine Jones Jermaine Jones on LinkedIn  Connect With Paul Watts    LinkedIn Twitter    Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED Audio Production and Show Notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com  

In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V. Bradley sits down with Tianna Mick, aka "T Got Your Keys," to challenge how most salespeople think about internet leads… and why that mindset is costing them deals. "To be effective in this digital age, it's about turning that first lead into a relationship among many within their network." - Tianna Mick What if one lead wasn't just one opportunity? What if it was five… seven… even ten? This conversation dives into a smarter, more strategic way of approaching today's digital buyer, one that goes beyond basic follow-up and into something far more powerful. Sean and Tianna unpack the difference between chasing deals and building a pipeline, and why the highest performers aren't waiting for opportunities… they're multiplying them. "People want more than a car deal. They want a connection, someone who understands their wants and needs beyond the sale." - Tianna Mick From modern communication tactics to leveraging relationships, technology, and timing, this episode explores how small shifts in approach can completely change your results. If you're in automotive sales and feel like you're working hard but not maximizing your opportunities, this episode will make you rethink what's actually possible from the leads you already have. "This industry is not about hard selling; it's about building relationships from each opportunity." - Tianna Mick  Because in today's market, it's not about getting more leads… it's about doing more with the ones in front of you. Key Takeaways: ✅ Maximize Relationships: Viewing leads as ongoing relationships rather than single transactions is crucial. Ask the right questions early to identify additional sales opportunities within the customer's circle. ✅ Leverage AI and Technology: Utilizing AI tools like ChatGPT and Podium helps analyze customer interactions for better, personalized follow-ups which can lead to increased conversion rates. ✅ Use Video Effectively: Implementing videos in the sales process boosts engagement by providing a visual and emotive connection with clients. ✅ Effective Social Media Engagement: Engage with prospects on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn for additional insights and staying top-of-mind through direct messages and timely postings. ✅ Consistent Follow-Up Strategy: Daily and weekly tailored follow-ups that deliver value, resonate best with leads ensuring these interactions aren't perceived as intrusive.   About Tianna Mick (T Got Your Keys) Tianna Mick, also known as T Got Your Keys, is a distinguished automotive sales professional and content creator. Recognized for her ability to consistently convert opportunities into production, she rose to become a top-performing salesperson by building strong relationships and brand loyalty within her dealership. Tianna is known for her innovative use of video in sales, her emphasis on relationship-building within the automotive industry, and her contributions to the Millionaire Car Salesman community as a co-host.   How to Transform Internet Leads Into Golden Opportunities: Insights from Automotive Experts Key Takeaways View every internet lead as a potential relationship, not just a one-time sale. Use technology, especially AI and social media strategies, to enhance engagement and conversion rates. Persistent, tailored follow-up and leveraging video communications can drastically improve closing ratios. In the ever-evolving world of automotive sales, the gap between traditional sales techniques and modern, technology-driven strategies are widening. The central challenge—maximizing the potential of every internet lead—is discussed in-depth by Sean V. Bradley and Tianna Mick in a recent conversation. The discussion emphasizes transforming these digital interactions into meaningful relationships and long-term opportunities. Understanding the True Value of an Internet Lead From Leads to Relationships: A Mindset Shift One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is perceiving internet leads merely as potential single transactions. As highlighted by Sean V. Bradley, "If you think of these people like a lead, then you're never going to treat them like a person or a relationship." The conversation delves into the necessity of treating each lead as the beginning of a lasting relationship. Tianna Mick underscores this by demonstrating how asking the right questions from the start can unveil multiple opportunities within one lead. Specifically, Tianna mentions, "I asked those questions in the very beginning. Hey, who's in the household? Who's driving what?" This approach not only sets the stage for the immediate sale but also opens the door to future sales within the customer's social circle, emphasizing the importance of understanding the customer's entire ecosystem, not just their immediate needs. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Social Media The digital age offers incredible tools that can exponentially increase a salesperson's efficiency if utilized correctly. Sean V. Bradley brings attention to the role of AI in modern sales techniques. "Using intelligent responses, using AI artificial intelligence to strategically stack the deck for you," is how AI becomes an assistant, helping analyze and respond to leads with customized strategies. This underscores the point that modern technology tools, like AI, should be as essential in a sales professional's toolkit as a phone or a computer. Tianna Mick also highlights the effective use of social media to gather intelligence ethically. By engaging with prospects on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, salespeople can learn more about their prospects' personal preferences and needs. She advises, "So as soon as you get a new lead in… especially if they have that email address, you can actually copy that email address, drop it into Google." Engaging with Personalized Follow-Up and Video Content Engagement doesn't end once the first conversation has been had; in fact, it's just beginning. Tianna emphasizes the power of video as a communication tool in automotive sales, pointing out that it's "the second best thing than being in front of your customer at the dealership." Videos offer sight, sound, motion, and emotion, thus connecting with potential customers on a deeper level than text alone. The discussion also covers the importance of personalized follow-up. Instead of sending generic messages like "Are you still in the market?", Tianna advocates for follow-up that provides value and relevance, such as event invitations or tailored service promotions. This reinforces the need for salespeople to understand their customers better, offering them tailored solutions instead of one-size-fits-all responses. Crafting a 360-Degree Sales Strategy In this dialogue, the integration of personal attention, technological enhancement, and innovative communication is crucial in redefining the traditional sales approach. For sales teams, this means breaking down silos—combining the use of AI, social media, and video to not just nurture prospects but to truly understand and meet their needs. Every interaction becomes a chance to build a rapport and pave the way for a successful transaction and beyond. Ultimately, the session between Sean V. Bradley and Tianna Mick serves as a masterclass in modern sales strategies. Their insights shine a light on the enormous potential lying in every lead, waiting to be transformed into long-term, profitable relationships with the right mix of technology, strategy, and genuine human connection. By embracing these insights, automotive professionals can dramatically increase their sales effectiveness and customer loyalty.     Resources + Our Proud Sponsors:   ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.

This is from our video on AI Will Not Replace Salespeople. You can watch the video here https://youtu.be/jt5C6k50J18

In this episode of Sales NOT Selling, Stacy Garrett talks about ways that people that are not in sales can embrace the role of sales by being their authentic self.Check out our website at: https://www.salesnotselling.com/ LinkedIn Page: https://www.LinkedIn.com/company/sales-not-sellingFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SalesNOTSellingContact Stacy at: Stacy@WeAreIdeation.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacygarrett29

Rent Roll Growth Expert Deniz Yusuf together with Darren Hunter show you how to find salespeople who may be unhappy to refer leads to their own rent roll. Salespeople want to refer their trusted clients to property management services they can trust, and in this episode we explain where to find them. Get the book from LeadMachineSecrets.com (just pay shipping). Book into Deniz' diary at GrowMyRentRoll.com

Price-only conversations are usually a trap. When buyers push you to "just send the price", they are often turning your offer into a commodity before you have had any chance to establish value. That is where many salespeople lose control of the sale. In Japan, Australia, the US, and across B2B markets globally, procurement teams, compliance departments, and line managers often compare vendors in spreadsheets built to highlight the cheapest option. If you enter that process too early, you get dragged into a race to the bottom. The stronger move is to shift the discussion from price to business impact, commercial outcomes, and a packaged solution that solves a real problem. Sales success comes from framing value in a way decision-makers can justify internally, not from volunteering to be the cheapest line item. Why are price conversations so dangerous in sales? Price conversations are dangerous because they strip out context, strategy, and differentiation. Once your offer is reduced to a number on a spreadsheet, you are easier to compare and easier to reject. That happens every day in competitive B2B selling. A buyer asks for a price sheet, claims they are "just gathering options", and then loads supplier quotes into a matrix. Across the top go the vendor names. Down the side go the requested deliverables. The lowest figure gets attention and everyone else gets pressure to explain why they cost more. In sectors like training, SaaS, consulting, logistics, and media, that process can wipe out the value of customisation, service quality, expertise, and results. In large corporates, compliance may require multiple quotes. In SMEs, owners may simply want a fast number. Either way, price-first selling usually weakens your position. Do now: Treat any request for pricing without discovery as a warning sign, not a green light. Mini-summary: Price without context turns your offer into a commodity and hands control to the buyer. What does "send me your price sheet" usually mean? It often means the buyer is not ready to buy your solution, only ready to collect your number. That is a crucial distinction because it changes how seriously you should treat the opportunity. In some cases, you are being used to satisfy procurement rules while another preferred provider is already lined up. In others, the buyer wants leverage to play suppliers off against each other. This happens in multinationals, local firms, and public-sector style purchasing environments alike. The request sounds neutral, but the sales reality is not neutral at all. If the contact refuses to meet, will not discuss business needs, and keeps repeating "just send it", the probability of winning drops sharply. That does not mean you become difficult. It means you become realistic. Send what is required if needed, but do not confuse administrative activity with genuine sales momentum. Do now: Qualify whether the buyer wants insight and partnership or only paperwork. Mini-summary: A price request is not proof of opportunity; often it is proof of weak access. Should you refuse to send pricing if the buyer won't meet? You should try to earn a conversation first, but if they insist, send it and lower your expectations dramatically. The real mistake is not sending the price. The real mistake is believing that doing so advances the sale. Salespeople often burn too much time chasing these dead-end requests because activity feels productive. It is usually not. If the buyer will not discuss the issue, the budget, the decision criteria, or the stakes, then you are not in a sales conversation. You are in a quote-collection exercise. That is why the smarter move is to keep prospecting for people willing to share their problems. In modern B2B selling, access to need is far more valuable than access to the inbox. Whether you sell in Tokyo, Singapore, London, or Los Angeles, the pattern holds: meaningful deals move forward when the client is open to diagnosis, not only documentation. Do now: Protect your calendar by separating real opportunities from pricing errands. Mini-summary: Send the quote if needed, but invest your energy where discovery is possible. Why should you sell a package instead of a standalone price? A packaged solution works better because it connects your offer to an outcome, not just an input cost. Buyers find it easier to justify spending when they can see the business logic, the upside, and the commercial mechanics. That is the pivot from vendor to adviser. Instead of selling exposure, training days, ad space, software seats, or isolated services, you bundle the components into a strategy that solves a revenue, growth, or efficiency problem. For example, if an accommodation business wants more qualified demand, the answer may not be "here is our rate card". A stronger answer is a campaign package: a contest, a prize stay, lead capture, audience engagement, and direct follow-up opportunities. Now the discussion changes. The client is not comparing a unit price. They are weighing a pathway to customer acquisition. Packaged value makes budget movement easier because the return story is clearer. Do now: Rebuild your offer around an outcome the client actually cares about. Mini-summary: Packages win because decision-makers buy business impact, not isolated line items. Why do you need to reach the real decision-maker? You need the real decision-maker because budget flexibility usually sits higher up the food chain. People lower in the hierarchy can often say no, but they cannot easily redesign priorities or move money. That matters because budgets are rarely as fixed as they first appear. The P&L may look locked, but in practice senior decision-makers reallocate funds when they see a compelling commercial case. That is true in owner-led businesses, country organisations, and larger enterprises. The contact who asks for your pricing may only be an information gatekeeper, not the person who owns the problem or controls the spend. Great salespeople work to reach the boss, the budget holder, or the executive sponsor who can assess the value of a complete package. That is not about being pushy. It is about matching the level of your solution with the level of the person who can act on it. Do now: Ask yourself whether your current contact can say yes, or only delay and compare. Mini-summary: Better access improves pricing power because authority changes the buying conversation. How do you make your value easier for buyers to approve? You make value easier to approve by showing how your package helps the buyer win internally as well as commercially. The best offers do not just solve an external problem; they also make the decision-maker look smart. That is especially important in post-pandemic, cost-conscious organisations where every spend may need justification. A strong package helps the buyer explain the return, defend the logic, and align the purchase to business goals such as lead generation, occupancy, conversion, retention, or revenue growth. In Japan, where consensus and internal explanation often matter, that framing can be especially powerful. In faster-moving US or Australian environments, it still matters because leaders must prioritise scarce budget across competing initiatives. When you package your value well, you reduce buyer risk, increase perceived upside, and make internal approval smoother. Do now: Build a one-page value case showing the problem, the package, and the likely commercial gain. Mini-summary: Approved deals are easier to win when your value story works inside the client's organisation. Conclusion "Send me the prices" is rarely the start of a strong sales process. More often, it is the start of commoditisation. The better path is to move away from price-only comparisons and toward a packaged solution that makes commercial sense to the real decision-maker. When you focus on outcomes, not only inputs, you give buyers a stronger reason to choose you and a stronger case to defend the spend internally. For salespeople, consultants, and business leaders, the lesson is simple: do not compete to be cheapest when you can compete to be most valuable. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie One Carnegie Award in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō, Purezen no Tatsujin, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, hosts six weekly podcasts, and produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews on YouTube. His content is widely followed by executives seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Rent Roll Growth Deniz Yusuf together with Darren Hunter open the book ‘Lead Machine Secrets' and reveal the key issues when relying too much on a sales team for leads, and 5 ways you can start getting leads right now without them! Get the book from LeadMachineSecrets.com (just pay shipping). Book into Deniz' diary at GrowMyRentRoll.com

Why freestyling leads to inconsistent results The difference between scripts and frameworks How preparation creates real confidence Why practiced reps sound more natural What happens when pressure exposes weak process

Tony Paquin, CEO and Co-Founder of iRemedy Healthcare and co-inventor of 12 AI and machine learning patents, joins Sales POP! to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare procurement, eliminating supply chain risk, and redefining the future of sales. Drawing on 30 years of software and healthcare technology experience, Tony explains why experienced professionals are better positioned than ever to lead in the AI era — and why every business leader needs to act now. Learn more at iremedy.com.

Most high ticket B2B sales don't fail because of price.They fail because the conversation structure breaks down early.In this episode, we break down a practical 3-stage framework for high ticket sales that improves your sales discovery call, strengthens qualification, and makes objection handling easier before the closing stage.You'll learn how strong sales psychology and structured conversations help teams run more effective B2B sales processes without relying on pressure tactics.Inside this episode:• how to structure a better sales discovery call• why qualification improves high ticket sales outcomes• how objection handling becomes easier earlier in the conversation• how sales psychology builds trust with buyers• how to close high ticket sales more consistently• how professional teams approach complex B2B sales conversations⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Why six figures starts with reverse-engineering the math How weak targeting kills urgency The difference between activity and execution Why rejection should be treated as data How switching strategies too fast destroys momentum

What does it actually mean to be a trusted adviser and, how would you know if you were one? Most customer-facing professionals believe they're trusted. Their customers largely disagree. That gap is the problem Rowly Hirst has spent his career trying to solve. Rowly is CEO of Relate.US and the creator of Sandy, a generative AI analyst that measures trust in real time using the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation: Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy ÷ Self-Orientation. In this conversation, Marcus and Rowly go deep on what trust actually looks like in practice, why the most popular sales frameworks quietly destroy it, and what it takes to become a genuine ally rather than an accomplice, or worse, an adversary. If you spend your days in complex, high-stakes conversations, this episode is for you. What We Cover Why trust is defined not by what someone says about you, but by what they do when they could stay vague, delay, or protect themselves, and choose not to The difference between an ally, an accomplice, and an adversary in a sales relationship, and the precise moment sellers cross the line Why the word "playbook" is the wrong mental model entirely, and what replaces it A masterclass in trust-building from an AT&T store in Boston: how a $50 sale became a case study in the Trust Equation in action The five operating principles that separate trusted advisers from everyone else How Challenger, BANT, MEDIC, SPIN, and Sandler all fail in the same way under pressure, and what that failure looks like in practice The 55 sub-factors Sandy measures across the four components of the Trust Equation Why gamifying your trust score actually works, and ends up benefiting the customer, not just the seller The 90/30 trust perception gap: why over 90% of sales reps believe they're trusted advisers while only 30% of their customers agree What Sandy has taught Rowly about his own blind spots, including a real example of how he lost an investor in a meeting and what he changed afterwards Why saying "I don't know" is a credibility asset, not a liability How measurement of trust has gone from a $600 human analysis taking a week to a six-cent automated result in under two minutes Gallup's estimate that improving meaningful feedback and trust-building could lift global employee engagement from 20% to 80% — an $8.5 trillion productivity uplift Key Idea from This Episode Trust isn't something you ask for or declare. It's something the other person gifts you, quietly, through their behaviour, especially when risk is on the table. It breaks down not when objections appear, but earlier: when pressure rises and we unconsciously shift from ally to accomplice. The fix isn't a better playbook. It's noticing yourself under pressure and choosing differently. About Rowly Hirst Rowly Hirst is CEO of Relate.us and has over 25 years of experience in consultative sales and account management in financial services. He began developing the thinking behind Relate.us in 2013 after a career taking CEOs and CFOs to meet investors, observing first-hand how poorly the industry measured what actually mattered in high-stakes relationships. Sandy, Relate.us's generative AI trust analyst, is built on the Maister-Green-Galford Trust Equation and measures trust objectively across 55 sub-factors, delivering results in near real-time at a fraction of the cost of traditional survey or human-review methods. Connect with Rowly

Corey Kleinbauer spent years leading sales organizations inside the Salesforce ISV ecosystem before going fractional to work with early-stage SaaS founders on broken revenue engines. He now runs pre-engagement diligence on every client — interviewing finance, marketing, and delivery leaders before touching the sales org — because the revenue problem is rarely where founders think it is. In this episode, he gives founders a specific framework for ICP discipline, sales team structure, and pipeline review rigor.Topics DiscussedWhy founders cannot transfer their conviction to a sales team — and what the structural fix looks likeThe ICP trap: how inbound enterprise opportunities derail mid-market revenue enginesThe three pipeline review questions Corey uses instead of budget, demo recaps, and calendar updatesWhat the most efficient early-stage sales org he has ever seen actually looks like (product-certified, full-cycle reps at Aprica)When hiring a domain practitioner as a salesperson makes sense — and when it burns out fastThe pre-engagement diligence process Corey runs before taking a fractional engagementKey GTM InsightsThe founder's conviction is not transferable — you have to engineer around that gap.Founders consistently try to solve rep underperformance by loading them with more product knowledge and founder zeal. Corey's view is that this fundamentally misunderstands what salespeople can carry into a room. The gap is structural, not motivational — and the fix is building an onboarding system that certifies reps in the product before they ever touch a prospect. "Salespeople, myself included, can never fully adopt the zeal and the intensity of a founder at a trade show, at a cold call, during a discovery session, during a demo." What Corey looks for instead: reps pliable enough to become genuinely versed in the product, capable of running a two-hour discovery and demo without a pre-sales overlay. His current client Aprica — a project management and project service automation company — has built exactly this model, and he calls it the most efficient early-stage sales org he has seen.ICP discipline is a revenue architecture decision, not a positioning exercise.The most common stall Corey diagnoses is founders chasing large inbound opportunities outside their core segment. Winning an enterprise logo feels like validation — the ACV is bigger, the board gets excited — but it distorts delivery, support, and eventually the product roadmap. "A large company knows that they've just jumped into a relationship with a smaller firm and there's a propensity for them to boss you around and maybe change your roadmap." His diagnostic question before any engagement: "What's the last piece of business you said no to?" If the founder can't answer, the revenue engine has no defined edge. Staying inside a specific ICP during growth phase is what makes demand gen and account expansion compoundable over time.Three questions replace the pipeline review theater most founders run.Corey's pipeline review framework is deliberately narrow. Before an engagement, he asks for recordings of pipeline calls — and the language he hears tells him everything. Phrases like "this deal looks good, it's ours to lose" are immediate red flags. His replacement: three questions only. "In the pipeline call, what problem are we solving? What level in the organization are we at, and what is a mutually agreed upon timeline?" No budget check. No demo recap. No three-week calendar readout. The discipline forces reps to prove a deal is real before it touches the forecast.//Sponsors: Front Lines — Silicon Valley's leading Podcast Production Studio. We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. Mention you are a listener and get a 10% discount. www.FrontLines.io/Podcast-as-a-ServiceTopics DiscussedKey GTM InsightsMeta Description

Lightning Round: Top 10 Ways to Increase Productivity in Sales Question: Rashid from Asia asks, "We love the show—the whole team listens. We have not had a good first quarter, and not sure what is going on. Feels like we are doing all the things we did in 2025 that made it a strong year. We are coaching, role playing, being consistent. Why can't we hit our sales goal?" Book: Emotional Intelligence For Sales Success by Colleen Stanley

https://youtu.be/9jLLr7IPej0 Ethan Giffin, Founder of Groove Commerce and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap, is driven by deep curiosity, a passion for technology, and a desire to help businesses solve problems that directly impact revenue. With over two decades of experience in eCommerce, Ethan now focuses on helping manufacturers and distributors build scalable digital revenue channels that complement their sales teams and improve overall business performance. We explore Ethan's Revenue Framework for Manufacturers and Distributors, a practical system for building and scaling digital revenue channels in complex B2B environments. The framework guides companies through Discover, Build, Pilot, Activate, and Optimize—starting with cross-functional alignment and strategy, followed by building the right system, testing it with key customers, scaling adoption across the customer base, and continuously improving performance. Ethan explains why B2B eCommerce is far more complex than a typical website project, how “quiet friction” can silently drive customers away, and why successful digital transformation requires long-term commitment, internal buy-in, and the right systems in place. — 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin Good day, dear listener. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Ethan Giffin, the Founder of the Groove Commerce, eCommerce Agency, trusted advisors to manufacturers and distributors, and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. Ethan, welcome to the show.  Very excited to be here, Steve. Very excited to be here. Thank you.  Well, we’ve known each other for quite a few years, probably, I don’t know, five or six years.  2018.  So 2018. So that’s eight. Eight years.  Eight years. Yeah.  Oh my God. Okay.  Eight years.  So we’ve known each other a long time. I think you’ve been on one of the early versions of this podcast as well. But things have changed a lot since then. That was five years ago. And your business has transformed, and you have niched your business dramatically since. So I thought that it would be great to have a conversation and talk a little bit about where you come from, what you’re trying to achieve, what matters to you, and also the system that you developed, which I thought was very impactful for manufacturers. So before we dive into that, tell me about your personal ‘Why’ and how you manifesting it in your business?  How many hours do you have, Steve? How many hours do you have? I think my personal “why” is that I have a deep curiosity about life in general. I've also always enjoyed technology and driving technology, and I've always enjoyed sales. A very odd to put all of that together, but I think that's really has created my personal “why.” I'm just an amazingly curious person and want to continue to learn. And actually love helping people solve their problems that help make them money. It's pretty simple to me in that regard.Share on X If you asked people in my EO chapter, they would say, “Oh, you always ask great questions.” So I just love being curious and helping people.  Yeah, definitely. The area you're working in is very fast-moving, with lots of changes—especially with AI happening and so much innovation in technology. A lot to be curious about. I was personally very curious about the system that you developed. You call it the eCommerce Revenue Program Framework. And we are framework junkies here on the Management Blueprint, and I’d love to learn about what that does for manufacturers, distributors. What are the main pillars, and how does that system work? How do you generate revenue for them? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. So I’ve been building websites for well over 30 years and building eCommerce sites for, I think 22 years at this point. 2004 was my first really in-depth professional eCommerce website. Over that time, I've worked with a ton of different types of organizations, and a lot of common themes started to present themselves. As Groove has continued to evolve, we began to work a lot more with manufacturers and distributors who wanted to create online buyer portals so their customers could come in and buy from them.  And they call it B2B eCommerce, and it’s very different from B2C eCommerce. Generally, you have to be approved to buy. There’s just a lot of things that goes into kind of replacing working with a salesperson, so to speak, in many of these industries. And I just found a lot of common threads. I also found a group of folks who may not be as digitally mature in the eCommerce space as other folks. And I needed to lay out a system that both the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, and the CMO could all understand and work within, and have some level of accountability within that.  Yeah. Just one thing I’d like to mention here. I had a Vistage member when I started my Vistage groups who was running a distributorship, and they really struggled this idea that they wanted to sell online, but they were afraid of upsetting their distributors. They didn't want to be seen as competing with them. So it was a very complex and politically difficult situation. You're probably going to talk about that as well.  Well, it’s a little bit different, right? So the concept of what we’re doing is actually helping someone that has, maybe they’re a manufacturer and they sell to distributors. They’re not selling to the public. They’re selling to an approved group of their customers that are able to come in and buy from them anytime they want 24/7 without human intervention. And so that’s the concept of what we create. So we actually help them create a real digital revenue channel within their organization. And people are like, well, wait, does that mean you don’t need salespeople? No. Most of these organizations have long running sales teams, and actually the sales team can leverage the platforms to help their customers and accounts buy more, so that they can spend more time actually selling than hand-typing in orders and being an order taker.  And so it allows their customers to come in and reorder whenever they want and buy at more frequent intervals and see their pricing, have their payment terms, et cetera. Very different from, say, going to an online T-shirt shop, putting in your credit card, and they ship it to you. Sometimes customers are able to buy on credit, and you’re tracking how much credit they’ve utilized within the ERP system. A very different and much more complex transaction. We think that manufacturers and distributors should have at least 10% of their overall revenue flowing through a digital platform like that. Our average customer is anywhere between $100 million and $400 million in revenue. So that's $10 to $50 million flowing through that channel. And so some industries with more digitally mature customers can go much higher than 10%. And it’s just a much cheaper way to operate.  So let’s say I’m a manufacturer and I manufacture widgets, and these widgets are being distributed through vendors who install these widgets into machines. Retail customers don't really understand our widgets, so we're not selling to retail. We're fully salesperson-based, and we'd like to go online. We'd like to get 10% or 15% of our sales online. What does it take for us to transform our business to partially online?  Yeah. That’s a great question, Steve. That’s a great question. I'm going to walk you through it very simply. I will say most CEOs or VPs of marketing think about a project like this as just a website. That's the wrong way to think about it. This needs to be a true revenue channel within the organization—a true top-down initiative that has accountability from all sides—because it's much bigger than that. If you’re talking about $10, $20, $30, $50, or even $100 million going through a system like this, it's not just about building a website. And that’s a really common mistake that the prospects and customers that we’ve gotten have often done.  Their IT might say, “Oh, we have a WordPress website. Let's use WooCommerce for free.” Or, “I saw Shopify on Jim Cramer. Let's try Shopify.” Most of those direct-to-consumer systems don’t have the right kind of features and functionality, nor is the process to pick the software first. So what we actually tell our customers and prospects is, “Hey, we've got to take a step back.” We have a five-step lifecycle that takes about three years for a company to go from zero to kind of fully digitally transformed in terms of their eCommerce. We start with what we call the Discover phase of the lifecycle. And that is where we work, consult, understand, and build alignment between the sales team, the finance team, customer service, operations team, the warehouse, and the IT team to build this kind of alignment where all the groups of the…Share on X  In that process, we’re helping them to pick a software to utilize, to run all of this, and that will connect to their ERP system accordingly. The next phase in the process is the Build phase, and that is more traditional—like any website—where we architect, design, and build the full system. For a modern manufacturer, that generally takes about six to eight months to go through that process. Some are a little faster, some are a little longer, depending on the organization. But is this because there are thousands of SKUs, or why does it take so long?  Because there’s complex integrations with their accounting and ERP systems. The catalog is often not ready for prime time. Maybe it's in the ERP, but it contains a lot of internal slang and doesn't have photos for everything. They're often missing data or specifications. For instance, sometimes Amazon has better product descriptions and more measurements than the manufacturer's own website. So these are the kind of things that we need to go to. The Discover and Build phases together can take anywhere between eight and 12 months—or longer—depending upon the size of the organization. The next step, the next lifecycle here is called the Pilot phase, and this is something people often forget about. What they don’t do is they don’t pilot these types of systems with a handful of their top customers. Customers that would never fire them, or that are willing to go on a little bit of an R&D journey with them. They don’t pilot these systems and have them start to utilize it in a white-glove way, and they don’t often have the same kind of white-glove service with their internal sales teams to help them get going. So this Pilot phase is very important to start seeing early adoption—both internally and with the customer.Share on X  Sorry to interrupt, but I'm curious—how do you get those customers to actually invest time in piloting a system like that when they already have a salesperson who knows them and their needs?  Well, generally, up to this point, we've internally surveyed and built a system that can handle these customers. Most of your top customers want you to succeed. Quite honestly, they may already be experiencing friction in the sales process currently is holding them back and they may be like, “Oh, I can just go in and press one button to reorder my weekly order—thank God!” Most of the time, they volunteer to pilot the system. In fact, these are the ones that you want to pilot the system, the ones that are willing to do that, and you need to take them through that process with a white-glove level of service, even holding weekly office hours if you need to.  But what you want to see in that pilot is see those customers make not only their first order, but maybe their second, third, or fourth order, depending upon what their typical intervals are. And so we want to get that up and running and get some early kind of wins there and get both the internal team and the customers feeling like, Hey, this is really working for us. And then the next phase after that, we call it the Activate phase. Again, these websites are very different than a direct-to-consumer site, where they usually have an improved list of customers and they’re hidden behind a password. The next phase is the activate phase, and that’s where you want to get all of your customers in the system placing their first and second orders and getting it going. And you want to roll that out.  Generally, it might take you a good 10 to 12 months to get everybody rocking and rolling with this part of the system. But once they do, and once they start making their first, second, third order, you’ve built muscle memory over time. So this activation phase is really important. I was recently talking to the VP of marketing at a $400 million distributorship. He was telling me that they had invested seven figures in building this system, and they spent 18 months connecting it into all their financial systems. Again, $400 million. And they had only done about $200,000 in their first nine months having the system live. And what they didn’t do was they didn’t figure out how to activate their customer base. Because I asked them, how many customers do you have? Well, we’ve got about 180,000 customers.  Well, how many are in the system? 15,000. And next thing, and I’m like, well, you haven’t done yourselves any favor here. So you need a very solid plan to activate. That takes about the first two years, right? The first year is kind of architecting and building the system. Year two is really piloting and activating the system, but by year three, you've got more mature scorecard.Share on X You are starting to find ways to optimize, to reduce friction in the buying process. Maybe you’re introducing more products to your catalog. You’re introducing your customers to more product offerings that you may have, or maybe you’re finding even new industries that you can easily plug into the system and generate more revenue. And we call that the Optimize phase. And that continues to just spin in a flywheel once that’s up and running. That’s fascinating. So I wonder—how do you get the sales team to buy in? Is there an advantage for them, or they feel like sometimes that the digital channel is going to compete with them?  Yeah, well, that buy-in can come from a lot of feelings. I’ve had to stand up in front of national sales meeting audiences and talk about these kind of things. And so I would say, out of the gate, salespeople are nervous that you’re trying to take their commission away. When their customers buy through these systems, they need to get the commission off their accounts as they normally would. Maybe you raise expectations, right? In terms of what you’re looking for them to sell, or their annual quota. Perhaps you want them to sell a little more now that they have this electronic tool—but they need to share in the revenue that comes through these systems. The second part is that, according to McKinsey Consulting, 70% of all digital transformation projects in the mid-market fail to meet their original stated goal. So what happens is that people make wrong decisions, or maybe they pick software before they put alignment together. And so the salespeople, maybe they’ve had a poor experience or two with a CRM rollout, or an ERP rollout, or a previous eCommerce rollout that wasn’t thoughtfully planned. And so you’ve got to figure out how to build that confidence and trust back with folks. And then the last piece is you’ve got to give them a voice in the process. A traditional website project may not include the head of sales for the organization, but for our discoveries, we like them to attend at least the first couple days of that.  So this is a huge project—two or three years working with a client. How important it is that you keep an eye on the pulse of the client, keep listening, and make sure buy-in continues to be strong? Yeah, I think it's very important. One of the best parts about all of this is everything is trackable. We can track which customers have logged in, we can track how frequently they log in. We can track how frequently they buy, and then we can leverage technology to go out and kind of tickle them, remind them—“Hey, it's been a while since you ordered. Why don't you come back and check this out?” It is an ongoing relationship, but that relationship changes and evolves over the course of working together. I think once you get over the kind of discover-and-build phases and into the pilot, the relationship begins to evolve and change. Clients get really excited about milestones, like the first $100,000 in orders that come through the system or the first six-figure order that comes through unattended. There’s a lot of things that you want to think about and celebrate along the way when you’re working together.  Do you find that clients are willing to think long-term and commit to three-year plans where they’re willing to invest time and money into building this channel out over a period of time, as opposed to trying to get a silver-bullet solution that will happen overnight? I think it depends on where they are. From our client’s point of view, if they’ve bought into working with us, they believe and understand that this isn’t just a one-project kind of operation to build a 10–15% revenue channel within the organization. There’s no long-term contracts on our side to do it. It’s kind of broken up into kind of multiple phases and pieces. We actually do that so we can make sure that they’re ready to move on to the next step in that. There is some heavy lifting that comes from the first year of actually building a system and getting all the integration parts working through that —which is challenging. I get questions often about this. There's usually a buying committee that makes decisions on these types of project and expenses, and the CFO is always a part of that conversation. And I think the transparency that we do offer a CFO to say, listen, this is what you should expect over a three-year period.  If both sides do what they’ve agreed to do here, this is what it can get to. And I believe that maybe it might cost them $50 or $60 an order for a human in their call center to actually get the order over the phone and type it in. And kind of follow along with that from an ongoing kind of basis. And it might cost $3, $4, $5 for an order of that scale to come out of an eCommerce system. So there's definitely optimization that happens all the way around. Salespeople are able to do more, and customer service is able to focus on actually helping people, not entering orders.Share on X  Yeah, I was wondering—let’s say my widget manufacturer, we increase, we get 10% into the digital channel in a period of three years, maybe 10-15%. How much of that is accretive to the actual sales in your experience? And how much of it is kind of cannibalizing some of the actual sales?  I think it’s a little bit of both. Customers will generally buy more from you if it’s easier to buy from you. And I think there’s a real optimization in terms of expenses and costs that happens when you bring it all on.  So there’s a little bit of top-line growth and a lot of profitability improvement, margin improvement. Margin improvement.  Yeah. That’s very interesting. So, Ethan, you're coming out with the book Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. What prompted you to write this book, and what is it about?  I felt like I’ve got over 20 years of stories from being on the road. And I felt like it would be a lot of the same challenges would happen over and over again on these types of projects. So I sat down and wanted to really write about these stories, the challenges, and how we made it through them, and give the reader some things to think about as they’re going through challenges like that. And just understand that they’re not alone, that other people, that other organizations have had similar challenges over the year. So I wanted to get that out on paper and have it in a holdable form. Sorry, I don’t have them. I’m still waiting for the hardcovers to come in, so I don’t have one to show you today. But the reasoning is I felt like I wanted to tell my story and the stories of the journey I’ve been on of building these types of sites and systems over the years. Yeah. I’m sure you have a lot of war stories. Can you share one or two with us—something that was really difficult but then created a breakthrough, or a situation where someone was very skeptical and then came around?  Yeah. I think one of the big stories I like to talk about is quiet friction. Every business has quiet friction in it that may affect their customers, and they don't even know it.Share on X So, here where I'm from in Baltimore, they recently passed a law where it costs five cents for every grocery bag that you use at the grocery store, right? There’s one grocery store in the area that carries a handful of my favorite things to make pizza. They carry these special pepperonis, special cheese, like all the things. And I love making pizza. And I’m always so happy when I’m going to this store to get those things because I know I’m going to make pizza, and I love it. Well, with this law coming and happening, most grocery stores that you go to that have a self-checkout will have an option.  How many bags did you use? 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. And the bags are right there. It's on the honor system. Well, this grocery store chain at their self-checkout locks the grocery bags up, and you actually have to go get the self-checkout assistant to come over, swipe his badge, type in a whole bunch of like characters on the touchscreen, and then get a bag out of a locked cabinet and give it to you. And it’s created so much friction with me that I actually hate going to that grocery store now. And it’s kind of ruined the experience of me buying three of my favorite things to do my favorite thing. If I ask most manufacturers to say, think about your business. Is it actually hard to buy from you? Sit and ponder that a bit. What kind of quiet friction do you have within your organization? And most of them, you can see the steam come out of their ears once they realize what’s creating those types of challenges for them. What kind of quiet friction do you have in your company that might not make people like leave immediately, but if somebody else gives them the opportunity to buy what you sell from them much easier without making it a pain in the ass, they might like, kind of gradually move, float away from you. And I think that’s where you start to just like miss compatibility with all of it.  Yeah, I love that you approach it from this angle—it’s the friction. If you remove the friction, the flow of business accelerates. It's like widening a gorge: a lot more flow can go through, and it’s so easy to miss the friction because you don’t see it. It’s something that is holding you back. And if you remove it, the effect is probably cumulative. If you have all these little things that don’t count on their own and they are immaterial on their own, but cumulatively they are absolutely disastrous. Love it. So we live in the AI age, and I can’t avoid asking a question on AI as well: how are your clients, customers taking advantage of AI?  It’s all over the place, right? I would say a lot of our customers are using AI to help with an email here or there. Maybe they have some Industry 4.0-type IoT devices connected in their factory that leverage, or are able to leverage AI for creating dashboards. But it really is generally through the use of software that we’re seeing that kind of happen overall. But one of the areas that we found AI to be fantastically helpful these days is helping to build a public-facing catalog—being able to leverage tools within AI to stock in data from various sources and get that into a structured format that we can leverage and import into a system. So we’re doing those types of projects a lot with folks. They’re still looking for coaching and help in those areas. So AI is still an emerging area, but we’re trying to, like, every day figure out how to leverage AI more and more with what we’re doing.  Is it possible to use AI in optimizing these web properties, these eCommerce systems?  I don’t think so yet. I mean, I think AI can make recommendations about things, but I wouldn’t trust AI to just auto-optimize what I was doing. I would also say that most of the folks, unless you’re really getting 50,000, 60,000, a hundred thousand visits on a single webpage—a million visits on a webpage—you’re not getting enough to statistically create a winner in that. So it’s all about using those types of things responsibly. But we are seeing AI really come to light in terms of the traditional eCommerce search, right? eCommerce search has always been keyword-driven, but we have certain platforms and tools that we plug into sites now that are able to search PDFs and even CAD files and all types of things in terms of being able to answer questions. That’s very interesting. So Ethan, you’ve been running a business for over two decades now, at least. That’s what I’m aware of. We mentioned 2004. I think Groove was started in 2004.  Seven, officially seven. But the precursor days before it was actually Groove.  Okay. Alright. So 2007. Still, it’s coming up on 20 years. So what is, in your experience, the most important question any entrepreneur should be asking themselves?  I would ask themselves if they have niched down enough within their industry. I would say that’s probably one of my biggest mistakes: not niching down fast enough and really focusing on a single area with that. So that would be the thing that I would want to say if I was an entrepreneur, and I have told people that, and to write a book.  Is this partially why you wrote the book?  It is.  Yeah.  Yep. Yeah, I’ve been doing more and more keynote speaking, and I knew I needed a book if I wanted to elevate myself to the next level. So before we wrap up, I can’t hold myself back from bringing this up, but you’re also an accomplished DJ. You started your career DJing, and you still do it sometimes for friends.  Yes.  What did DJing teach you as an eCommerce entrepreneur? How do you see life differently, or the world, or business owners differently because of DJing? Well, that’s a great question, and it’s affected me. I started DJing when I was 15 years old. I’m 51 now. And I do focus now on working with some nonprofits locally here in Baltimore, and I DJ their galas, and we put on a big show. And I would say that, interestingly, DJing has moved into digital. When I started as a DJ, I had 12-inch records that we would put on a turntable, and you’d have to have a dolly and crates of records that you would have to haul around. And now I can have 50,000 songs on my laptop in front of me, and I have these devices that spin like turntables that I can DJ on. And that—quite frankly—that transition for me to go from analog to digital was quite difficult. And I really did my own little mini digital transformation to figure out how to do that, and I was against it for a long time.  It really helped me understand more what our customers are going through as they’re thinking about that and having much more empathy. So it is that transition. I used to work at a nightclub, and we had to bring somebody in from Italy to program the lighting equipment that we had at the time in the 1990s. And now I have a light show that is driven by the waveform in the music, and it manages the lights through AI. I had it set up within an hour of getting the software. And so it’s just been tremendous to understand and see like how that has gone from analog to digital. And it’s been very helpful on the journey to teach our clients how to go from analog to digital as well.  I love it. I mean, that’s such a huge challenge with all this technological evolution going on—to keep up with that, stay fresh, and stay young with the technology, and you’re doing that. So that’s awesome. So if we have in the audience some manufacturers, distributors, or someone who is very passionate about eCommerce and wants to talk to you, learn from you—where can they go, and where can they connect? Where can they get your book? How does it work?  Absolutely. So if this resonated—if this message resonated with any of your listeners—we’re waiting for our first initial batch of books to come in, and I’ve held some back to give away. I would love to offer a complimentary book to any of the listeners of this podcast that it resonated with, as well as offer a free consultation as part of that. And if they go to www.b2becombook.com, they can request a free copy, and we’ll send it out as soon as we get them in. Sounds good. So B2B is B2B, right?  B2B. Yep.  So definitely check this out. And if you enjoyed the show, make sure you subscribe and keep coming back, because every week I get an exciting entrepreneur on the show. And Ethan, thanks for coming and sharing your goodies and wisdom. Thank you so much for having me. I always appreciate seeing you.  That was a great pleasure. Thank you. Important Links: Ethan's LinkedIn: Ethan's website:

Email, Teams, Slack and other instant messaging systems are great, until they clog up our day and we find we spend more time responding to messages than we do doing any meaningful work.  What can we do? Well, that's what I'm answering in this week's episode. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Get the Email Mastery Course Here The Hybrid Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script | 409 Hello, and welcome to episode 409 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  Last week was a workshop week for me. I finished off the Ultimate Productivity Workshop and held an in-company session.  During both sessions, a similar question was raised. How to manage your time when you are compelled to respond to your messages instantly or at the very least within a few minutes.  The problem with this situation is that it's an uncontrollable one. You have no idea when or how many messages will come in on any given day. This makes it practically impossible to do any work.  You will not be able to focus on anything if you have to be checking your messages inbox all the time.  Now, I should caveat this: if you are employed to respond to client messages, then being responsive is part of your core work, and therefore it is something you would prioritise.  However, in these situations, you'll likely be working as part of a team, and most of your client queries will be handled in real time. Those that cannot be dealt with would be escalated to another person or department.  The issue of response times arises when you are expected to do work that requires quiet, focused time to complete. In this situation, you will need to find time during the day to do that work. If not, all you will be doing is building unsustainable backlogs.  To get to a place where you can complete your work and respond to messages in a timely manner, something will have to change.  The first thing I would address here is response times. What is the expected response time for the work that you do? Is it realistic?  Now, you have the data. You know how much time you need to do your work. Perhaps you need two hours a day to complete it. This means you have a degree of flexibility each day. In this situation, I would recommend you look at the times when most of your messages come in.  For me, most of my messages come in through the night. I may go to bed around midnight with an empty inbox, but when I wake up, come through to the office and open my email, there will be between 100 and 150 emails sitting there waiting for me.  The first step is to clear those emails and sort the ones I need to act on from the ones that can be deleted or archived. That gives me a heads-up for my day and calms my anxious mind, knowing there are no fires to deal with. Later in the day, I will set aside 40 to 60 minutes to clear the actionable emails.  Now, I am fortunate in that when I wake up, Europe is asleep, the east coast of the US is going to bed, and the west coast is finishing the working day. In the morning, there is no rush for me to respond.  If I were living in the UK, I would adjust my response time to better align with the time zones I work with.  This is working with the data I have.  But let me illustrate a different type of work and how to deal with it. Imagine you were responsible for writing proposals for your sales team. On a typical day, you would receive six to eight new proposals and four or five adjustments to make to proposals you have already done.  If it takes you an average of twenty minutes to write a new proposal and ten minutes to make an adjustment, that will take up around four hours of your day just focused on writing proposals.  That does not take into account having to request any further information you may need to complete a proposal.  Now here's where things get interesting. Not all proposals are equal. If you were asked to write proposals for a $10 million project and a $1,000 one, the $10 million project would likely take priority.  I'm also pretty sure the person asking for the $10 million project proposal will be chasing you to get it done faster.  If you already have a two-day turnaround on proposals, moving that project up would delay one of the other proposals. What do you do?  The problem here is that while you are fielding messages from the people wanting their proposal done today, you are not writing proposals. Everything is getting delayed.  Now, I've worked at companies with strict processes for these situations. Salespeople had to follow the process and inform their customers when to expect proposals or invoices. They were not allowed to contact the sales admin team to chase proposals unless they were overdue.  I've also worked in companies where there were no such processes. In those companies, nothing ever seemed to get done on time.  There needs to be time for things to get done, and in order to ensure they do get done on time, a process should be put in place.  For example, if your proposal turnaround is within 24 hours, then there needs to be a cutoff time. If you want your proposal done by tomorrow at 4:00 pm, it needs to be in by 4:30 pm today.  This puts the responsibility onto the person asking for the proposal. If they do not get the proposal in on time, the delay will be entirely their own problem.  When you do not have these processes in place, you risk running into a company that plays the blame game.  I remember working for an English Language training company here in Korea, and I wanted to launch a new Business English Programme in August.  We had a meeting at the head office and the CEO told me that if we wanted to launch on 1st August, then I would need to get the curriculum and artwork to the marketing team by the 15th June.  Brilliant! As long as we got the necessary work over to the Marketing Department by 15th June, then the responsibility for the marketing was on the marketing team. They delivered, and we had a fantastic launch. From my perspective, handing over the materials to the marketing team before the 15th took a huge weight off my shoulders.  It was a superb team where both parties respected each other's boundaries and, more importantly, timelines. Everyone involved knew each other's deadlines, and these were respected.  Another way to deal with communications is to set some rules. A sort of “if this then that” rule.  For example, I have a rule that any message relating to lost passwords or money, I will deal with the moment I see it.  Fortunately, I do not get many of these, but I do get around three or four a month. When I see them, I act on them immediately. They don't take long to deal with, but I know how frustrating it is to wait a long time to access a course or get a refund.  Another rule I have is that if I get a student question, I will respond within 24 hours.  With AI, it can be tempting to set up an AI system to respond to these for me, but I have a red line I will not cross. That is, I will personally respond to all questions within 24 hours and never farm them out to a chatbot.  That goes to my professional integrity. I would feel awful knowing that I am not communicating directly with my students. It would feel like I am cheating.  However, by far the most effective way to deal with the interruptions messages can cause, whether they are emails or messages, is to set your own communication response times.  For example, mine are: Email within 24 hours, instant messages (Teams, Slack, etc.) within four hours and phone calls within an hour if I cannot answer immediately.  Those response times have worked for over ten years now. I've never received any pushback, and most of the time I get a “thank you for your quick response”,—which suggests people are really back at responding to emails.  If you do decide to set your own response times, communicate them with your colleagues and customers. This way, you can be held accountable for your standards. That's a great motivator.  Let's get back to checking messages.  If you do need time to do work that requires your focus, then, when you are doing that work, you do not check your messages. Period. Turn off notifications when you are doing that work, close down your email, Teams or Slack and any other messaging system.  Your phone can be set up to allow only a vetted number of people through. For instance, when I put my phone or computer on “focus time”, only my wife and mother can get through. Only my mother or my wife would call me with a genuine emergency.  Most people can only do real focused work for around ninety minutes. At that point, you can check your messages.  According to neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, we work in 90-minute cycles. (We also sleep in 90-minute cycles). This means our brain begins to run low on energy after we have been intently focused on something for more than 90 minutes, and we need to change our focus.  I use this time to quickly check my messages and do some chores. Most of the time, I process my inbox, then respond to my team's messages on my phone while I am doing the chores.  The reality is you cannot be constantly checking your messages and doing meaningful work at the same time. Something has to give.  If you are in a position where others cannot do their work until you have authorised it, you are the bottleneck, and that needs to change.  Working in a law office, we needed to get cheques signed by a partner in the firm. Normally, I would go to the partner in charge of my department, but if he were away or in a meeting, I would need to go to another floor and ask another partner to sign it. My boss knew there was a risk that he could be a bottleneck and took steps to prevent others from doing their work.  I know I have given you a lot of ideas in this episode. What I would suggest is that if interruptions from messages are causing you problems, look at where the main problem is. If it's because you feel you must respond instantly to messages from certain people (your boss or customers), that may indicate you need to have a conversation with them to set some boundaries.  I know that conversation may be uncomfortable, but not being able to do your work to the high standard you want is a much bigger problem. That's going to affect your promotion chances, and eventually, you will start to believe that there's something wrong with you.  There's nothing wrong with you. All it requires is some processes and a boundary you can work within. Surely that's not much to ask of anyone.  Thank you for listening, and thank you to all of you who have asked questions about this subject.  If you want a system that will help you to regain control of your emails and messages, then my Email Mastery course will show you how to build it. I will include the course details in the show notes for you. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

At Intersolar San Diego, Sean meets again with Eric Holvik of EnergySage (which was acquired by Schneider Electric) about the shifting U.S. residential solar market. Holvik says residential solar is projected to contract by about 30% this year and notes the customer-owned residential tax credit has expired, swinging the market toward 80–90% third-party ownership after a recent 50/50 owned-versus-leased split. They discuss how rising utility rates, time-of-use pricing, batteries, and virtual power plants may create new value even as net metering and policy changes pressure demand. Holvik argues the industry harms itself through misleading sales tactics, especially the “red line” commission model that inflates prices and contributes to installer failures and explains how Energy Sage improves consumer choice and pricing transparency, typically saving customers about 20%. Topics Covered: Schneider Electric Energy Sage Solar Energy Tax credits Residential systems TPO = Third party ownership Bernadette Del Chiaro CALSSA = California Solar and Storage Association Environmental Working Group Red line model Polygraph Test 1099 salesperson Tony Diaz Schneider Electric PV Associate Class PV Technical Sales Class   Reach out with Erik Holvik here: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/erik-holvik  Email: erik.holvik@energysag.com Website: https://www.energysage.com/   Podcast episode link for the previous episode: Erik Holvik: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/energy-saging-with-erik-holvik-of-energysage/id1441958371?i=1000705129177 Bernadette Del Chiaro: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bernadette-del-chiaro/id1441958371?i=1000741834340   Learn more at www.solarSEAN.com and be sure to get NABCEP certified by taking Sean's classes at www.heatspring.com/sean www.solarsean.com/pva http://www.solarsean.com/pvtsintesive

Sales and leadership are two completely different games.In this video, Ace breaks down the real differences between being a high-performing salesperson and stepping into a leadership role, including income, lifestyle, pressure, and long-term growth.If you're deciding your next move, this will help you understand which path actually fits your goals.Support the showJoin our weekly calls so you we can help you too! 

Morgan Keim, founder of Ocean Ridge Capital, raised over $400 million in venture capital before he turned 35. One of his companies alone pulled in over $300 million pre-revenue—convincing pension funds and VCs to invest hundreds of millions in a company that hadn't made a single dollar yet. On a recent Sales Gravy podcast, he broke down exactly how he did it. The surprising truth? It had almost nothing to do with the pitch itself. “Your single biggest tools in your toolkit are going to be your eyes and ears,” Morgan said. “It’s about listening and seeing where your prospect is and what they really want. That might be different than the words they use.” Consider this: only 7% of communication comes from actual words. Another 38% comes from tone, and the remaining 55% shows up in body language and nonverbal cues. If you're in high-ticket sales, you're probably spending most of your time perfecting that 7%, while missing the other 93% of what your prospect is really telling you. What You’re Missing in Every Conversation Most salespeople obsess over crafting the perfect email. They rehearse their pitch until it's flawless. They tweak their value proposition endlessly. All of that lives in the 7% of communication that comes from words. Meanwhile, prospects are giving away everything you need to know through their tone, body language, and the questions they ask—or avoid. Morgan learned this quickly when raising capital for a food tech startup. Different investors wanted completely different things, even when they all said they cared about “returns.” One investor cared deeply about sustainability and environmental impact. Another focused purely on velocity of capital and exit timelines. A third had unusual mandates that weren't apparent until Morgan listened carefully in person. “It all comes down to having a real understanding of the emotion that person’s feeling, the desired state of where they want to be,” Morgan explained. “Living in that reality of who they are and what they want.” High-ticket sales often fall apart here. Salespeople treat follow-up like a broadcasting exercise: same message, same pitch, same value proposition to everyone because it's “efficient.” Efficiency without effectiveness is wasted motion. The Language Barrier Costing You Deals There's a language of entrepreneurial speak, a language of corporate speak, and a completely different language people use at home. You might communicate seamlessly with colleagues, but explaining your day to your spouse can feel like speaking a foreign language. The same disconnect happens between you and your prospects. Most sellers speak “sales language,” while their buyers speak business or personal language. Top salespeople code-switch naturally. They pick up on how prospects talk, the patterns they use, and the words that matter to them—and mirror that style back. In high-ticket sales, you're asking someone to make a significant investment. They need to feel understood before they'll trust you with that decision. Take an HR leader versus a marketing leader in the same organization: HR cares about employee retention, engagement, and compliance. Marketing focuses on campaign ROI, conversions, and brand lift. The same pitch to both? One will check out halfway through the first sentence. Understanding Their Desired State Make the prospect the hero of the story. Put your ego aside. Stop thinking about your quota. Focus entirely on their desired outcome. Morgan never leads with what Ocean Ridge Capital offers. He starts by understanding their situation: Are they trying to create passive cash flow? Looking for tax efficiency after selling a business? Building generational wealth for grandchildren? Each scenario requires completely different emotional framing. A person focused on legacy thinks about family and long-term impact, while a recent entrepreneur selling for eight figures cares about protecting capital and deploying it efficiently. Same product, completely different language. Send the same follow-up email to both, and you're solving the wrong problem for one of them. How This Changes Your Follow-Up Strategy Once you realize that 93% of your communication lives outside words, your follow-up strategy has to change. Morgan uses multiple channels: Video messages let him read facial expressions and body language. Phone calls provide tone, pacing, and emphasis that email strips away. Handwritten notes show he's willing to slow down in a world that automates everything. Educational content positions him as a resource, not just a seller. He runs A/B/C testing across messaging angles because he can't assume he knows what a prospect wants. When someone doesn't respond to initial outreach, he shifts to “passive value creation”—delivering insight, education, and context—while still prospecting actively through multiple channels. Every touchpoint adds value. Every channel gives a new way to read the prospect, learn their language, and adjust. What to Do on Your Very Next Call Here's your homework. Not next week. Not when you have time. On your very next sales call: Spend five minutes reading the room before you pitch anything. Notice: When their energy shifts. Words they repeat. Moments they lean in or check out. Mirror it back. If they say, “We're building something sustainable,” don't respond with, “Our solution drives ROI.” Stay in their language. Stay in their world. Try a different channel. Been emailing for weeks with no response? Pick up the phone. Send a 60-second video. Mail a personalized note. The mechanics haven't changed. You still need multiple touches. But if you ignore tone, body language, and emotional state, you're having a completely different conversation than your prospect is. Why This Approach Wins High-ticket sales are about human connection more than polished words. Prospects respond to feeling understood, recognized, and respected. The words you say matter far less than how you convey empathy, awareness, and relevance. Morgan's results speak for themselves: reading the unspoken signals and adapting builds trust, shortens sales cycles, and secures investments that others can't reach. High-ticket sales aren't only about what you say—they're about what you see. Pay attention, and everything changes. – Take your follow-up strategy to the next level. Download the FREE ACED Buyer Style Playbook and learn how to read what your prospects really want.

If you've only sold sexy products with cool demos and unique features, you're probably missing the fundamentals that separate good salespeople from great ones. Marcus Chan, CEO of Venli Consulting and recent guest on the Sales Gravy podcast, learned to sell in the trenches of commoditized selling: uniforms, facility services, telecom. Industries where you're locked in multi-year contract cycles, competing against five other vendors who offer the exact same thing, and selling at two to three times the market price. "In order to get really, really good at selling in the commoditized market, where price seems to be the only factor... you have to learn how to get really good at the sales process," Chan explains. "You have to be able to take someone who has what I call a latent pain—pain they don't realize—get them to active and create urgency to move." No flash. No sizzle. Just selling. And that's exactly why it works. The First-to-Market Delusion Chan was talking with a client recently. They've closed $5 million in revenue in 12 months. Apple, Fortune 500 companies, massive wins. They're first to market in a brand new category. Zero competitors. Their sales team is flying high. "That's fantastic," he told them. "Now what's your plan for when competitors show up in three years?" Silence. Here's what happens: you get drunk on the product. You don't have to build real sales skills because the product does the heavy lifting. Then the market matures. Competitors launch. Your "unique" features become nothing new. Most teams operate under the belief that they're different. They talk about their proprietary technology, their best-in-class service, and their innovative approach. Meanwhile, buyers are looking at five vendors saying the exact same things. This isn't just true for uniforms and telecom. It's true for SaaS, consulting, financial services. Any market that's been around longer than 18 months gets commoditized fast. The question isn't whether you're in a commoditized market. The question is whether you know how to sell when you are. What Commoditized Selling Actually Teaches You When Chan was selling uniforms at three times the competitor's price to buyers locked into five-year contracts with other vendors, he had nothing to lean on except process. He couldn't say, "Look at this cool new feature." The uniforms were uniforms. Same fabric. Same colors. Same everything. He had to learn three skills most salespeople never develop: Moving buyers from latent pain to active pain. Most buyers don't think they have a problem. They're comfortable. They're "fine" with their current vendor. Your job is to help them realize what they're losing by staying put, and make it real enough that they care. Creating urgency when the status quo is locked in. When a buyer is in year three of a five-year contract, there's zero natural urgency. You have to create it. You have to make the pain of waiting worse than the pain of switching. Navigating complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles without a product demo to fall back on. You need the operations manager, the finance team, and the C-suite to all agree that switching vendors is worth the headache. And you need to do it without any bells and whistles to distract them from the hard questions. The Hidden Advantage Nobody Talks About Mastering commoditized selling makes everything else easier. Learn to sell uniforms at a premium price, and differentiated products become simple. The hard skills transfer—objection handling, stakeholder navigation, urgency creation. But the real value is that your process becomes your product. In commoditized markets, you compete on how you sell. Your discovery process. Your ability to diagnose the real problem. Your consultative approach. The way you make the buyer feel heard and understood. That's what buyers remember and what separates you from the five other vendors in their inbox. Stop Hiding Behind Your Product Chan sees it all the time with sales teams from "sexy" industries. They lead with features because they can. They lean on their demo because it works. They let the product do the selling. Until it doesn't. Because eventually, every market commoditizes. Your competitor launches the same feature. Buyers stop caring about your "innovative solution" and start asking about price. The salespeople who win in commoditized markets win because of process, not product. They've mastered diagnosis, urgency, and navigating complexity when there's nothing shiny to distract the buyer. A Commoditized Market Is the Best Sales Training Ground If you're selling in a commoditized market right now, congratulations. You're getting an education most salespeople never get—how to compete when you're "just another vendor," how to create value when the product doesn't, how to win on process instead of features. Sell commodities at premium prices to buyers locked into competitor contracts, and you can sell anything. Master the fundamentals where there are no shortcuts, and those fundamentals become automatic. Move to a market with actual differentiation, and you don't just have a good product—you have a good product and the skills to sell it. Winning in Commoditized Selling The best training ground for sales isn't the hottest SaaS company or the coolest startup. It's the "boring," commoditized industries where the product doesn't do the work for you. Where you have to diagnose the problem, create urgency, and navigate complexity without flash to hide behind. The skills you build when nothing else can save you? Those are the skills that make you unstoppable everywhere else. -- If you want to sharpen the fundamentals that win in any market, start with prospecting. Download the free Seven Steps Prospecting Sequence Guide and build a process that creates urgency and fills your pipeline on purpose.