E171: Sales Fundamentals with Joe Rizzo – Part 4 of 4

January 6, 2024


How can sales professionals develop better listening skills, and why is it crucial in the sales process?


This is part four of the conversation I had with Joe.


In Part 4, Joe and I talk about:

  • How many seeds you have to plant with prospects for fruit to grow
  • Abundance (meaning… don’t be afraid of losing a prospect that wasn’t a good fit)
  • Empathy wins




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Connect with Joe on LinkedIn


Joe’s Bio:

He is the founder of The Executive Recruiter Network, an Advisor to Facebook, a LinkedIn Consultant, and with his firm Tash Rizzo – he helps recruiting and staffing companies with their lead generation strategies.
 

Joe’s Links:

Website –  https://tashrizzo.com/ or executiverecruiternetwork.com

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bizdevstrategist/

  • Show Transcript

    Jason: Alright. Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter. So glad that you’re here. I know that if you’re here, I will assume that that means that you want to shift the way that you do sales, your results, how you’re operating, or if you’re managing a team or leading a team, you want to find ways to help improve your sales leadership as well as ways to help your team be successful with their goals, with their business so that they can achieve what they want, thus helping your business. And so I appreciate the fact that if you’re listening to this, that means at some level you’re either curious or you know that you want to make a difference in your sales career and also help your prospects. So I appreciate that just fundamentally means something very important to me. And so I’m thankful for everyone listening to this.


    Jason: Even if we never talk, if I never meet you, I appreciate you taking the time to listen to this and hopefully make a difference in the world via sales and the way that it’s done. And you’re catching this at a very exciting time. Make sure that you checked out one, two and three of my conversation with Joe. But Joe Rizzo and I, we’re going to finish off here part four. Talk about the final parts of sales and success and what you know, successful people do, unsuccessful people. And then we’re going to talk a bit right at the end. You know, where he’s going to drop some knowledge and leave you with something important from his experience. And so I hope you appreciated this mini series in this conversation I had with Joe as much as I had having it with him and recording it and uh, all of his links we’ll have at the end. And then obviously you can check them out the website. Here you go. Part four. Enjoy. 


    Jason: So for the salespeople out there who are taking a lead, how do you set that up? How do you set like you yourself, how does Joe set up your clients to be successful with the marketing that they’re getting in ways that other salespeople, if they’re getting marketing, like what should they be doing when they get a new lead or you know, how do they process it? What do they need to know? How do they handle it? What’s Joe’s pro tips for receiving leads, whether they’re good or bad, Neil, Glengarry or not you said.


    Joe: So the way we try to set it up is obviously we consider a lead. Somebody that wants to talk to you about your service, understand your service. I think a lot of times people will look, you know, I’ve heard people say, Hey, a lead is the phone number and it’s almost willing to talk to you, but do they even know what you’re talking about? So we do our best to make sure that they understand what the conversation’s going to be about. And then, you know, we don’t want to go overly qualified because these are business owners that are also busy. And if we’re trying to really distill the lead too much, that person just become disinterested for that recruiter. So the way we set that up, it’s really just a, you know, this is what I’d like to talk to you about.


    Joe: We’re letting them know. And that person, is that what we call the one to 3% they’re ready to have that conversation. Now I’ve heard you mentioned this before as well, but sometimes you’re just planting the seeds that other 97% so you know, that’s the way we set the lead is like, Hey, one to 3% they want to talk to you now and they’re ready to close the other 97% we’ve got to make sure that we’re warming up. So when you have that conversation, they’re ready to have it. So we tell people when you received this lead, don’t just look at the fact that they came in and they want to have a conversation with you. Reach out to them. It’s about being proactive. You can take that extra step to take a look at the company. So you know, you understand, we do our best.


    Joe: Make sure our targeting is on point with type of companies that they’re going after. The number of individuals inside the company, the company size, all of the things we’ve done part target research, make sure we’re going outside audience because it’s the right person with the right message. But then that salesperson to best prepare them is really taking action quickly. Again, you know, whether it’s, I came from the mortgage background and oftentimes it’s like the person on the phone quickest would win. And so you know, we’re all offering the same thing. Same banks are buying from me. They were buying from somebody else, but it was getting in having that conversation. But as also what your point is not be so quick to not ask the questions. Oftentimes they’re so excited. They’ve, these recruiters may have been doing cold calling or meeting at networking events or getting referrals, which are great ways to get business if you’re asking and generating those, that referral.


    Joe: However, when you get a lead in, you still gotta ask the question. Don’t be afraid of losing that lead to make sure that you’re a good fit. Right? Is this the position that you could actually feel? So I tell them, make sure to ask the questions because if you spend enough time with them, they know that you understand their business and you’re not just another person that is trying to get a deal from them. So when I’m telling our clients to say, Hey, make sure that you’re asking the right questions, that you asking questions to make sure that you’re a good fit for them, but also they spent enough time with you that they’re committed to you as well because they might have three or four recruiters that come and say, we’ll do it free. It’s called contingent where you can pay us only if we play somebody and they’ll be like, sure, I’ll work with you.


    Joe: Sure I’ll work with you. But if you ask enough questions, you can separate yourself from everybody else and start being the person who actually understands their business where they’re, I thought no one else asked that question. Why did you ask that is because you know, I understand your business, but also other people aren’t asking because they’re afraid to lose it. They know if they have enough of the pipelines, they’ll do it, but like spend that extra 15 minutes to understand what they need. But it’s different. If you’ve never received a lead before to get a leader. It’s like, I’m just happy to take this call. They said, yes, let’s, let’s try to get it to this point. I’m sending out my contract, my fee agreement, let’s get it going. When the reality is are they even really the best fit? When you ask those extra questions, five, 10 minutes, it shows that person you care. And I didn’t realize that. I would assume that recruiters were always the best closers because their backgrounds, most of them do cold calling, but the reality is, you know, they need to be reminded as well to ask questions to those people.


    Jason: Well and cold calling and opening is different than closing and being successful in sales. Those are generally two different types of people, two different, you know, kind of personalities that work well in either one of those. And so one doesn’t automatically mean the other. Uh Norris, you know, is it necessarily the best process for most companies? And it’s interesting when you’re talking about the leads and you know really tying it back to one of your first initial statements about the business was just asking questions and digging deep, finding it. But I think one of the key lessons for people listening is if you’re in sales and your company is either providing you with leads or there’s some kind of inbound leads that you’re paying for or receiving, whatever that is, always understand two things. One is what is the marketing saying that’s generating that lead?


    Jason: You know, what does that message and how do you continue that message? Hopefully it’s in alignment with what you’re selling and what you’re saying and how you sell. And then the second part is who do you actually want to talk to? Because using your recruiter example is if you’re in recruiting and do kind of an upfront model or some kind of contract obligation model versus kind of the contingent model. Well you don’t necessarily, you know, you want who you want and you’ve got to make sure to filter through to find the right people that you want to work with and not go desperate. And then try to fight or play in the contingent landscape if that’s not your thing because you’re desperate for the deal. Right. Because then that ends up, you know, kind of like somebody back in the day looking for a house and they’d have three realtors trying to find them houses because nobody’s exclusive and it’s, you know, the first one who wins much to the disappointment to the other ones. Right. Because nobody stood up for themselves.


    Joe: Right. It’s so true that you nailed it. Hit and making sure they understand that having a continuation of the conversation, you just made it much more simple.


    Jason: I don’t know. I mean it’s simple, but yeah, and I think it’s, that is so important because I’ve seen a lot of people who just try to rely on the conversation or their own kind of charisma and they literally don’t understand the message coming in that the person has been seeing. Right. That’s why I say the sales experience, you know, there’s customer experience, which is a popular phrase now and it’s like, okay, what’s the customer journey, customer experience? In my mind that’s like when they’re a customer, the sales experience starts when there’s marketing where somebody first hears about a company. Does that story, is that carried through to the salesperson and then to the customer and you know, the fulfillment side of the process. So for you and you know, obviously for the recruiting side and for those recruiters, you know, what’s the biggest tip that you give to salespeople? Like what if you boiled it down, like what’s the one thing you would tell salespeople?


    Joe: The biggest advice is listen to understand versus listening to respond. That’s the biggest tip I give is just really to try to listen, ask the questions. But it goes back to what you talk about the intention. Okay, check. Did I ask the questions? Yes, I did next versus I’m asking you a question. And that’s what I did when he went back to my insurance. As I looked at it, I was asking questions cause that’s what I told him to do was ask these six pages of questions. Okay, I’ve got it filled out. Now I can give you a good, you know, insurance quote. The reality was I wasn’t utilizing that the right way. Then understand it as a salesperson that that was to be used to sell. But I didn’t, you know, ask the questions and then take it one step further asking more questions.


    Joe: But again, that would be the biggest thing I’ve learned was, you know, ask the question but then listen to understand versus listening. Just to respond because then we’re listening for that objection. Okay, I got that. I can handle that objection. Okay, Jason said this, but does that even your real question, is there an underlying, what else? You know, ask me one or two more questions and then really trying to understand it and going back or I think you mentioned this before, having that empathy, really understanding that person. Otherwise, you don’t understand what you’re selling. The person just told you this is their biggest fear and all of a sudden you’re saying, yeah, but I’ve got these guarantees, but this is my fear over here. But why is that your fear? Because I had a bad experience with XYZ company. And if you don’t ask enough questions, you’re not ever going to get to that. So as much as we want to, I’m a talker from much, we want to talk, it’s listening again to understand what was my biggest sales force.


    Jason: Yeah. And I think I’ve mentioned this on the show before. I know I mentioned this in trainings all the time around active listening and what you’re saying, which is spot on. Listen to understand, not just to respond. I had a sales process before that had been built out. Scripts was helping people with credit card debt get into consumer credit counseling to, you know, get out of debt and avoid things like bankruptcy. And I had a new rep, I always wish I had this recording still a have a phone call. They got to the part in the conversation where it was about a hardship and so like tell me, you know, the, in the script in what we needed for the paperwork was, you know, because it’s a hardship program. Tell me about what’s happened in the last few years that caused you to get into this credit card debt or not be able to pay it.


    Jason: And the guy was like, well my wife died of cancer last year after fighting it for a few years and I just have all these bills and I can’t afford it. And the rep just said, okay great. Now the next part is, and literally just rolled through, wasn’t listening, was just checking boxes and gathering information and it was absolutely terrible and totally missed the empathy step. And it’s interesting. And what I would challenge everyone, cause when you’re talking, I’m thinking about what people could do as an exercise because this happens so much in conversations in life where you might just be talking to somebody. And most people’s natural response is, as you’re talking, I’m thinking of a story that I could tell or how I could one up or what else that I could, you know, our brain is making these connections, right? So if you’re talking about, you know, you lived in San Diego, now you live here, you’re in Texas.


    Jason: It’s like, okay, my brain is thinking, okay, what do I know about Texas? What story can I talk about? Like our brains just do that and we want to have these connections. We’re part of a tribe. But I would challenge everybody in your conversations in life, not just in sales, but challenge yourself to listen, to understand and just be empathetic and not really share anything about yourself. Right? Like set some time aside. Whoever you’re with, you’re in a relationship or you’re with friends, family, whatever. Ask questions. Have the other person tell their story and don’t say anything about yourself and just listen and keep asking questions. I guarantee it will blow their mind because no one ever does that. 


    Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I love it and I so badly just wanted to talk about it. And you’re right. We will. We want to match. We want to match that energy. And so, wanna match that story for story as opposed, so really just listened to understand even though you’ve got, you know, and it’s the one-up man vs. the one-ups or wants to relate. Oh yeah. That happened to me too. Okay. Thanks for stealing my thunder. You’re right. So that’s a great challenge for everyone to just listen and don’t say your story. 


    Jason: Don’t say your story. And it’s tough because I’ve been working on this for, I think about the last six months in conversations in my personal life where I’m just listening and my brain is just firing with all these things I could say and these stories and these other things I could bring up and I’m like, it doesn’t matter A. because no one else cares about you anyway. Like they’re all just thinking about themselves. And B, it’s like, you know, then that makes it about me and I want it to be about them and just listening to them and practicing that. So that’s always a tough one. And you get a pass Joe because we’re on the podcast recording, you’re supposed to be thinking of stuff to say and then responding. It’s not just the Jason, that’s why you’re here. The Jason show is on the other episodes where I just talked to myself and then that one’s easy. But yeah


    Joe: People should go back and listen to as well. Cause you’ve dropped some good nuggets there. 


    Jason: They make it go to that where it’s just me rambling on. So Joe, before we end things here, is there anything else that, I’ll let you have the last word. What do you want to leave? Whether it’s recruiters, sales managers, owners, you know, any, anybody in sales like, Oh, would you want to leave people with outside of the listening point, which was so valid.


    Joe: Yeah. What do I leave you with? I think it’s really, besides the listening point, like I said, I wish I had just really gone, gone back, continue to work hard, continue to follow up because people that you hear that again so many times people don’t care. They know care how much you know to know how much you care. But I think really when you become invested in the other person’s results, so whatever it is you’re selling a product or service thinking about how that’s going to affect the other person and you know what their life will be like after they get that. And so long as you have something ethical and good that you’re selling, that is going to have, you know, that’s why I think the small caveat, but, and probably works for other things as well. But think about that. Just really think about that person and you know, sales is about getting other people to do what you want for their reasons. So if you can really get somebody to do with what you want them to do, but for their reasons and really see them with that end result, then you won’t feel like selling. You’ll feel like helping and yeah, I think you’ll get a lot more sales.


    Jason: That’s awesome. So Joe, where can people find information about you, contact you? What? Where do you want people to go?


    Joe: I would say probably LinkedIn. I’m kind of, I’m a lot of LinkedIn. I’ve got quite a bit of connections, but I’m active, very active on LinkedIn. So Joe Rizzo, a company where this Tash results, so you can find me there. Joe at [inaudible] dot com is my email phone. Once we, I do read my emails, I get help though sometimes people make sure I don’t miss them on my team. So I’m fortunate. But yeah, Joe Tash Rizzo, or Joe Rizzo on LinkedIn.


    Jason: Perfect. Joe, thank you for being on the show and being such an amazing guest who literally might been the one so far, who’s listened to the most episodes and you know, come with so much awesome value to people listening. So I appreciate you being on the show.


    Joe: Well thanks for providing all this value for the entire audience and for me as well. Thanks Jason.


    Jason: Yeah, I think combined, we will definitely work to continue to change the landscape for sales. So for everyone else listening, make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find the podcast, the show notes, the transcript of these episodes, all of Joe’s links as well, and make sure to subscribe so you can get all these episodes. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.


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By Jason Cutter August 27, 2025
Most businesses struggle to grow their sales teams. At some point, they give up on looking for rock stars; they just need a team that shows up every day. In fact, research shows that 52% of sales leaders list recruiting as 'very challenging,' and average sales rep turnover hovers around 26% annually. That means for many leaders, the hiring process feels like a revolving door of wasted time, lost revenue, and constant stress. Here’s how to achieve scalable hiring results without having a massive hiring team and a huge job marketing budget. What Most Companies Do They need to hire salespeople. Maybe it’s one. Maybe it’s their very first salesperson. Maybe they need 10 more. So they: Write a job post about all the things the job involves and who they are looking for, and the type of experience they feel is important Put it on Indeed and/or LinkedIn They get hundreds and hundreds of applications They freak out – stressed at the thought of going through all those submissions They have someone on the team spend hours/days going through all the submissions. Have them call and email everyone whose resume fits what they think they want. A few people respond. So they call again, to ‘check in’ on the candidates to try and get more to respond. If that works, they have dozens and dozens of candidates ready for the first interview. Someone has to then take a week’s worth of time blocks away from their actual job to do first interviews. Most of the candidates don’t show up to the call/meeting. A few candidates make it through to the second interview. The boss or sales manager takes these. Two out of the three show up. Offers are sent to the two. One takes another job because the process took so long. The company ends up with one new hire The company repeats the process over and over again, feeling like the best they can do is one to two new hires after each complete cycle of hiring madness. And it is madness. It is also the definition of insanity – doing the same thing, running the same hiring process out of some playbook that no one can point to its origin or actual stats of success. Recent surveys confirm this frustration: more than half of leaders admit they lack an effective hiring process, and many acknowledge that their comp plans don’t even align with the results they want. The result? Slow hiring, bad hires, and retention issues that eat away at growth. Most companies struggle with filling their sales team, with both quantity and quality. They probably run the hiring process like they run their sales process. They default to old-school business thinking that the only way to hire is to just get experienced salespeople to join the team. But there is a better way. I have spent over 15 years being tasked with keeping teams filled with salespeople. Whether it was for inside sales in a call center environment or work from home, to retail environments, from consumer products and services to B2B, from within the United States to offshore, this framework works, even if you have failed in the past to try and scale your hiring efforts. In working with small and large teams, the key is the balance of quality and quantity. Humans will always surprise you. I have seen the ideal candidate – on paper – be completely ineffective in the role. I have seen reps with very little experience, whom we took a chance on, completely outsell their experienced co-workers. The experience of everything that goes into hiring over 800 salespeople, this framework is designed to help you succeed no matter the size of your hiring team. Here’s how to create a scalable hiring process that doesn’t require a large recruiting team and without losing your mind wasting time on candidates that aren’t a good fit. Step 1: Hire Traits, Not Just Resumes Did you know there are three different types of salespeople? The Newbie, The Entrepreneur, The Sales Veteran (email me, and I will send you the ebook that breaks them down). First, make sure you know what you need on the team, who you have the bandwidth to train, and if you need someone that follows your playbook (do you even have one?) pretty much exactly, or are you okay with them just ‘doing what they do best’ without much structure? Next, you need to figure out the mindset traits you find most successful. A business friend of mine, a long time ago, taught me: “Hire the smile, train the skill.” Given enough time and patience, you can teach anyone how to do anything. But it's really hard to teach someone a different mindset. Most people are who they are when they are applying to be a part of your company. Here is my list, in order, of mindsets that I know are successful for sales (in any sales role, any industry, any company): This aligns with broader studies: while past performance can matter, attitude and coachability are consistently ranked as stronger predictors of sustained success. Leaders who over-prioritize experience often miss the hidden talent right in front of them. Openness Curiosity Creativity Persistence Authenticity As I tell my clients, most leaders think they just need more reps who are ‘persistent’. They blame a lack of sales results on the team not asking for the sale enough or doing enough follow-up. The problem with biasing the screening process for persistence is that if you don’t care about the other traits, you will end up with a team full of persistent assholes who don’t listen to you or their prospects, don’t care to learn anything new, and don’t try to come up with new ways to move people to the close. They just see every prospect as a nail and sales is a giant hammer in their hand, where if they can just hit enough nails hard enough, they will win. [Don’t believe me? Ever heard the phrase ‘sales is just a numbers game’? That is this mindset in action.] The last part you want to define is what type of company culture you have and what personality is a good fit? Is it a fun environment? Does everyone like to joke around? Is it all serious and focused? Is it mission-driven? Do you actually have defined, stated core values that you care about? The answers to these questions will help you determine culture fit. One area that organizations will fall short in their selection process is ignoring culture fit and just wanting people with certain experiences on their resume or skills to help sell more widgets. If not careful, it can lead to bringing someone on board who might be an excellent, technical salesperson (meaning…technically they can do the job), but they are a not a good fit for the team. “The best reps don’t just sell your product — they sell it your way.” It’s not enough to just hire for experience; you need team players. Step 2: Treat Recruiting Like a Sales Funnel Now that you know who is open to bringing on board, what that winning combination could look like, it’s time to start building the hiring process. In sales, the initial key to success is attracting the right leads into your funnel. This is the job of marketing. Not just in the steps they take, but the messages they put out there to the world. Like fishing, putting out a hook with bait on it where the right fish that is interested will want to take that bait. Marketing should be doing the same thing for your revops. Your hiring team should be doing the same thing with the job posts and the hiring process. Your goal is to write a job post, like your marketing team writes their content, in a way that your ideal candidate would read it and say “holy crap, that is me!” Part 2 is to build in some hoops. One area that I see pretty much every organization fail at is building and managing candidate lead flow. They put a job post out there, get a shit ton of candidates, go from excited ( “We have so many candidates, we will definitely find all the reps we need!” ) to despair ( “How the hell are we going to get through all these resumes, and then what about all the interviews?” ). So many orgs are not ready for the flood of applicants. And did they even want that many applicants? If you haven’t noticed…recruiting is like sales. Well, to be specific, everything in life is sales, and selling, and persuasion. So building a recruiting process is like building a sales process. Sales teams think it would be great to be flooded with leads until it happens, and so much potential business falls through the cracks of inefficiencies and bandwidth limitations. This is why we want to put in a) hoops and b) templates for our hiring process. Let’s start with hoops. Think about it: in sales, 63% of managers admit their teams do a poor job managing the sales pipeline. If you can’t expect discipline in pipeline follow-up from a candidate during the hiring process, you certainly can’t expect it once they’re in the field. The hoops should be similar to what your prospects have to go through to become a customer. The logic is that your salespeople will run that process with their prospects, so you need to identify those sales reps who are naturally built for it. It’s similar to Alex Hormozi’s take on hiring – that what is more important than the years of experience someone has, is evaluating and selecting for traits like intelligence, work ethic, adaptability, and coachability. This is what we want our hoops to do – help the candidates show us what they are really made of. Some hoop examples: Do you require your sales team to use scripts? Yes, yes, yes…I know…salespeople shouldn’t use scripts…scripts are bad…scripts make everyone sound robotic…scripts are the problem. Bullshit. You are wrong if you think that. Alright…soap-box-moment over…back to scripts. If you require your reps to use scripts…let’s say for an intro, elevator pitch portion, compliance/disclosures – then one valuable hoop to put in place is to make your candidates memorize a short script in the hiring process. There are many ways to do it [email me, I can give you some examples of how, when, and what for this hoop], but it is an amazing filter for candidates. This is how you filter out the people who are not open/curious (remember, my top two sales success mindset traits above) – because they will decline your requirement to memorize the script. Or they will take the script, say they will work on it, and then disappear into the wind, never to be heard from again. And…that is the perfect result. I promise, no matter what fantastic story they spun on their resume or tried to present to you in the interview…their resistance to this step is all you need to know. Truly. The ones who say, “ Sure, sounds good, I will memorize this and get back to you, ” are the ones you want. Not because they are actually good at memorizing things – because I know I am terrible at it – but because they are willing to do it. A tiger can’t change its stripes. Is it a short sales cycle or a long one? If it is more than a one-call close, then you want to put hoops into your process that will help differentiate the short-term commitment versus long-term commitment people. Some salespeople out there are just too impatient to handle making follow-up calls, delays by stakeholders, and rejection after long sales cycles. They need immediate gratification. (and here is a contrarian thought…they are probably also single…because how someone is with work, they are in their life. If they can’t handle long sales cycles and long-term relationship building in a sales role, they probably aren’t very good at it in their personal life. And that’s okay…there is nothing wrong with that mode. The question is – is that what fits your sales cycle/length/mode? If you need reps who can do more than build enough rapport to sell someone something in the next 20 minutes before never seeing them again, then filter those people out by adding layers to your hiring process that extend the length. Now, I am not saying that if your sales cycle takes an average of six months, that your hiring process should do the same, but it should be relatively long. Definitely don’t interview people and then have them start the following Monday. Is there a lot of follow-up in your sales process? Do you expect your team to actually manage their pipeline of valuable leads to ensure they close? Then you want to build in a hoop that requires candidates to follow up with you. We want to test them on how well they will treat their future sales pipeline. If they won’t even follow up with you on their progress in the process, then they aren’t the type of salesperson who will follow up on their own leads. Or, they just don’t care that much about this job. Either way, this is a perfect filter to remove those candidates from your pipeline. If you want my ultimate filter process/scripting for this hoop – email me with the subject “ candidate follow up, ” and I will send you what I have done to successfully apply this filter. While that might look like a lot of hoops and processes to build out, it doesn’t take much to both eliminate the candidates who are not a good fit and allow the ones who are to raise their hand so you can pick them. Remember, no matter how desperate you may feel you are – needing to fill your sales team today, it’s never worth bringing on bad hires, especially in a sales role. The cost of their onboarding, training, combined with the cost to your leads (aka – the wake of revenue and reputation destruction that is caused by terrible sales reps speaking with your hard-earned, expensive leads is almost immeasurable) is not worth it. Fight the urge and bad business advice to just get butts in seats. And I guess that you are here reading this because you have already tried that mode and it failed. And with annual sales turnover costing companies millions, every wrong hire creates a hidden tax on growth that most leaders underestimate. Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen spoke about it in his TEDx Talk titled “ How To Master Recruiting ” with a focus on hidden talents over resumes. He called it the “whispering talents” – and in sales, we want that person who just automatically does the sales activities with the right mindset that fits your organization, sales process, and target customer type. TL;DR Most companies hire salespeople the same broken way: post a generic job, drown in resumes, waste hours interviewing, and end up with one shaky hire. It’s slow, costly, and sets teams up for turnover. The fix? Stop hiring based on resumes alone. Instead: Hire traits, not just experience (openness, curiosity, persistence, authenticity). Treat recruiting like a sales funnel by writing magnetic job posts, adding “hoops” that filter out the wrong candidates, and testing real-world behaviors like follow-up. This approach flips hiring from chaos into a scalable system—so you attract the right reps, faster, and avoid the expensive revolving door. In Part 2 of this series, I’ll show you exactly how I scaled this process to hire 50 salespeople without the chaos—complete with templates, filters, and lessons learned. Don’t miss it. And if you think that there might be some ways to improve your hiring process, contact us and we can do a free Hiring System Assessment to determine where the biggest impact can be made to help you fill your sales team.
By Jason Cutter February 26, 2025
How Can You Predict The Future Of Sales Ops? One of the keys to sales success is to be able to predict the future – what that other person is thinking, what they might say, what they will experience, how they will feel about the product/service. But what can you do – from a sales ops leadership perspective – to predict the future in masse of all the potential customers that will flow into and out of the sales process/funnel? That is a really tough one, but it is doable. Meeting Prospective Customers Where They Are The key is to always meet the prospective customers where they are and with the experience they hope to find. It’s a common theme now in these articles because it’s important AND widely disregarded – your potential customers do not care about you, your sales team, your company, your industry. They don’t care about your stats, your testimonials, your logos. They don’t care about your mission statement or your values. They only care about themselves. They also firmly believe that there is currently unlimited choice for any product/service, which means that everything in their mind is a commodity. Easily replaceable and interchangeable. Nothing (other than iPhones…which you can only get from Apple) is special to consumers unless they feel like it should be special. Are You Still Making It All About You? There is a good chance you are still running a marketing, sales funnel that is all about you. I bet if I looked at your company’s website that from the top down it’s all about you (the company). How great you are. What you do for people. What you have done for others. I bet if I tried to speak with your sales team, I will be made to go through your process whether I like it or not. Maybe fill out a form and wait for a response. Or made to call into a toll free number, even though I don’t want to talk to someone yet. Or made to use a chat widget on a site to get started. I bet when I speak with your sales team, 70-80% of the conversation will be about them, your company, and how amazing you all believe you are. This is all fair. No one starts a company to be mediocre. The goal is to provide value and make money. The missing piece, again like I said above, is no one cares about your goals. They only care about themselves. Predicting What Customers Want From The Sales Experience Back to your mission as sales ops leader – predict what massive amounts of prospective customers are going to want from the Sales Experience. It’s why I wrote about it last week and even offered up a book for free to help in any way that I can. To succeed at your mission, you have to stay ahead of the curve of what the public, and specifically – your buying demographic, psychographic, and valuegraphics, want from that experience. Key Questions To Shape The Sales Experience Do they want to call, text, email or chat? Probably all of them…so can you offer each one? (Don’t make someone decide if they want to go through your hoops…remove all the hoops) Do they need to see pricing online – should it be available and transparent? (In most cases, yes) What sales process will be ideal for moving the most people through the sales conversation to a successful outcome? (More discovery, empathy, active listening. More front-loaded about them, not you. Use the Authentic Persuasion Pathway as your model) Who are the decision makers? Is that individual going to decide or do they need to check with others for approval? (Set them up for success, and don’t force them to make a decision in the moment – you will just lose the potential sale) What type of follow up do they want and need until they make the buying decision? What type of post-purchase follow up would go above and beyond a) their expectations and b) what others in your industry do? If there is an ‘onboarding’ stage after the sale – how can you make that actually customer centric and successful? (It is rarely both) Can You Stay Ahead of the Curve? Remember – evolution is natural. The buying public is always evolving their desired sales experience. Can you predict the future of what they want so that when they encounter your company it matches what they were hoping to find – both in the experience and the solution to their need?
By Jason Cutter February 25, 2025
How do you, as a sales leader, help your team become Oracles that can predict the future? [make sure to read the Selling Effectiveness article this week https://go.sellingeffectiveness.com/LI.2.25.AM ] There are five ways to facilitate their Oracle-ness. Be Present in the Moment First, you have to get your salespeople to be in the moment. The challenge that most salespeople (and…humans, for that matter) experience is they are always thinking ahead. Salespeople default to thinking about what they will say next. The next part of their script or process. The next question they want to ask so they can get through discovery. The next part of the agreement they need to discuss and review. Their mind is too busy thinking about what they are going to say and do next, that they aren’t present. As weird as it sounds, if you want to predict the future you must be present. I have said this for decades: the moment you no longer need to think about what you are going to say/do next and can actually be present with your prospect and truly listen to what they say (and don’t say) – you will become a sales professional. Master Active Listening Second is Active Listening and paying closer attention. It’s actively listening…it’s taking what I mentioned above and putting into place. First step is to be present, second is to actually listen. For what they say. For what they aren’t saying. For changes in their tone. For when they are talking to someone on the side – who are they talking to, and is it about your sales conversation? If you sell in person, reading their body language and facial expressions. You must help them develop an almost sixth sense of listening (and yes, I know hearing is one of our senses…but this goes beyond hearing…it’s truly, deeply listening). Ask Better Questions Third, is to help them ask better questions. So many people in sales ask the discovery questions they are required to ask in order to check the discovery ‘box’. Or, they have done sales long enough they know all the answers, they think they know what everyone wants and why, so no reason to even ask questions. [Note – this type of salesperson thinks two dangerous things: 1 - everyone is the same and wants the same thing, 2 – people like to be sold to.] When your team asks better, deeper discovery questions with a focus on uncovering the what and the WHY, they will get better answers. Remember this – when you ask the right questions and you listen close enough, each prospect will tell you EXACTLY how to help them buy. Build Up Experience Fourth, build up experience. If you want to predict the future it comes from enough experience to know the probability of what will happen. For example, when I am in a season of commuting from home to an office, I am the type of person that can predict exactly what will happen on the freeway. Which lane is always faster around certain exits, which lanes always slow down, how much leaving five minutes later can make the drive suck a lot more. How do I know what will happen on a freeway with hundreds and hundreds of random people? Because of experience (and the fact that most people are just going through the motions in life so they become predictable). The more experience your team has with sales scenarios, they more they can predict the future. I generally see that it takes about six months for most people in a new sales role to have seen enough scenarios where they can start to know what will come next before it happens. Trust Intuition The fifth and final trait to help them with is intuition. One definition of intuition is “a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.” It’s that feeling you get when you know something, even if you cannot explain it. It’s what Malcom Gladwell wrote about in Blink! It’s what we do very well as humans, even if we don’t listen to it. The more you can help your team tune into their intuition and listen and trust it – the better they will do in helping persuade that other human. This goes back to the first suggestion – about being present. When your team trusts they know what to do and say next and they are mentally living in the moment with that prospective client, they can let their intuition guide them. Conclusion When I do trainings, public speaking, facilitating meetings, interviews, and sales – this is my main key to success. I trust and know that I have the experience to handle whatever comes my way in the present moment, while also knowing the destination I am heading towards. I can be present, let that experience and my intuition guide me instead of getting stuck in my head and worrying about what I will say next. Get your team to do some or all of these five steps – and they will become an amazing Oracle.
By Jason Cutter February 25, 2025
The Oracle’s Role in The Matrix If you have seen the Matrix movies, starring Keanu Reeves (as Neo), then you are familiar with an Oracle. In the movies, the Oracle knows what will happen. She has seen it, and it is predestined. In the Oracles mind there is no such thing as free will. In the first Matrix movie, Neo goes to visit her and knocks a vase off the shelf, and it hits the ground and breaks. Right before he hits it, she says “Don’t worry about the vase.” Neo says, “How did you know?” Then the Oracle responds with “What’s really going to bake your noodle later on, is would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything.” Becoming an Oracle in Sales Your mission as a sales professional is to be an Oracle for your prospects and clients. To know the future. Then be able to see around corners, as they say. Which means you know what is going to happen before it happens, because you have enough experience that you have become a psychic. You want to be able to predict, with amazing accuracy: What will happen next What will happen after that What issues will pop up What your prospect/client is thinking before they think it What concerns they might have before they have them Eliminating the Fear of the Unknown During your presentation/demo you want to set the expectation of what is going to occur next. Remember, humans fear the unknown. They want to avoid risk as much as possible. Your sales presentation is risky and dangerous and very unknown. They don’t know if you have good intentions or not. Are you going to persuade them? Are you going to try to manipulate them? Are you going to overcharge them? Will you actually care about what they need and want? Dealing with salespeople is so scary. Yet they still need and/or want something, so it’s the dangerous game they must mentally play. Guiding the Buyer Step by Step When you explain what you are going to do in part 1 of your process, and then what that part is done you let them know the plan for part 2, and so on – they will be at ease in the moment. They will feel like they have control over this portion, that there is an exit they can take if they don’t want to proceed. That level of control will help them accept the risk of part 1, and part 2, and part 3. Tell them what you will do. Do it. Tell them what you did. This will validate that you can be trusted. Predicting Thoughts and Feelings The next level is being able to predict what they will think and feel before they do. You can use this information in your presentation (without telling them what you are doing). You can also verbalize it, which could sound like “I am guessing from experience that you are probably wondering about _____, so let’s cover that right now.” Or “most people I speak with ask about _____.” They will think – wow this person knows what I am thinking, he/she is in my mind! And that’s a good thing. A really good thing. Conclusion The more they feel like you know what you are doing, know what they are thinking, know what they are afraid of – the more they trust you as a Guide. Because Guides only know what they know because they have helped other Heros successfully accomplish their journeys. Your mission as a sales professional: Become an Oracle.
By Jason Cutter February 19, 2025
What does it take to build the ideal Sales Experience? Why does it even matter? Maybe you think you already have one. You are a professional sales ops leader. You have put everything you can in place to help your salespeople sell more. You have optimized the processes so that your sales team can focus on one thing – selling. But I promise – even if you think all of that is true, it’s not. The Reality: No Perfect Sales Experience Exists I have never seen any company or team with the ‘ideal’ Sales Experience and operation. And to be honest – I have never built one successfully. Why would I admit that? Because the ideal Sales Experience is aspirational and business, teams, processes, and customer needs/desires are constantly changing. So as soon as you put new processes in place, something else needs to change and evolve. The Scalable Sales Success Iceberg In my Scalable Sales Success Iceberg – there are 24 categories that, when built out, create a scalable sales machine – where you can add in an input and get way more output. I would love to see companies have all 24 categories set up and running optimally. But that’s not even possible – because, as I mentioned, things are always changing. Focusing on the Biggest Levers Here is the key – to build the ideal Sales Experience takes focus on the biggest levers. The ones that, when pulled, create the biggest and best results. There are many processes and systems that you can put in place – but those are going to get you a few percentage points of improvement. Instead of putting it all in here, I want to make you a special offer. Email me at jason@sellingeffectiveness.com with your mailing address, and I will mail you the book that I co-wrote with Nick Glimsdahl called Reasons Not To Focus On The Sales Experience. It will be your starter guide, facilitating the creation of your ideal Sales Experience.
By Jason Cutter February 18, 2025
The Numbers Game Mentality is a Losing Strategy Sales is no longer a “numbers game.” You cannot succeed, long term, by focusing on volume of activity. Making a million dials, sending a million emails, knocking on a million doors (the first two are way easier than that last one) is a scorched earth strategy that will sink your business. You can’t out-dial a bad sales process. It will lead to even more bad online reviews. You can’t out-email a terrible sales funnel process that requires people to jump through poorly planned hoops. You can’t out-knock your way past slimy tactics and bad products/services. The Danger of the "Every No Gets Me Closer to a Yes" Mindset The whole “every no gets me one step closer to a yes” mentally is dangerous. That mindset and strategy assumes that it’s a numbers game. That the only thing that matters is finding the right person who will buy from you. Potentially, no matter what you even say – they are just ready to buy. Not only will this destroy any online reputation you have it will also wreak havoc on your team. It is the fastest and best way to burn out your team. It will lead to a revolving door or hiring, training, and quitting as people realize how unfun the game is you have built and how hard it is to be successful. It will also feel like a mismatch – very few people (and hopefully even less over time) are long-term excited about the business model of calling 500 people a day in hopes of making a few sales. If It’s Not a Numbers Game, Then What Is It? It’s quality over quantity. [Now…note – it does take a certain quantity of activity to fill a sales pipeline. So I am not saying that your sales team can just sit and wait for people to fall into their pipeline with money in hand.] It’s about the Sales Experience. It’s about your team ensuring that they are providing the right and best experience for that potential customer – in a way that sets them up to get into the buying mood and mode. All that matters is the Sales Experience. How can you support your team in terms of the quantity of activity to fill a pipeline, and then the quality of interaction that leads to sales? What Does an Ideal Sales Experience Look Like? What does that look like – the ideal Sales Experience? It’s when your team understands that the potential customer they are speaking with only cares about themselves. They don’t care about the salesperson, your company or the product. They are only focused on themselves. It’s when the Discovery/Empathy portion of the conversation is the most important part. Does your team realize that everything after Discovery – when done right – is just a presentation of the solution? It’s the fact that when you combine the parts of the Authentic Persuasion Pathway (Rapport + Empathy + Trust + Hope + Urgency) that the assumptive close is all you need. If your team is having to ask for the sale they are doing sales wrong. And don’t confuse earning the right to close with asking for the sale. The Sales Leader’s Role in Creating a World-Class Sales Experience Your job as a sales leader is to ensure your team understands that the only thing – above all else – is the sales experience they provide to each potential customer. That customer knows that they have the power and the feeling of unlimited choice. Which means they will decide who to give their money to based on the experience they have with buying from a company. How can you shift your team away from the numbers game mentality to actually providing a world class sales experience to each and every person they speak with?
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