Sales Tales - A podcast sharing epic stories that get you through your sales adventure.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer built the first digital camera. Kodak had the invention, the knowledge, and the cash, and still shelved it because it threatened the film business that was making them so profitable. This leads to a hard question in sales: which deals in your pipeline are you refusing to see clearly? In this episode, we walk through four signs it's time to let a deal go: pain that nev...

Some sales emails are bad because they're too long. Others are bad because they're too salesy. And some are bad because they act like you and the prospect are old friends—even though you've never met. In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh and Dave break down four real sales emails that landed in Josh's inbox and diagnose exactly where they went wrong. You'll meet The Pitch , The Novel , The Fake Fr...

In 1970, Apollo 13 was heading home with a problem. To re-enter the atmosphere, the crew had to power the command module back up, but they had an extremely limited electrical budget. Flip the wrong switches in the wrong order, and they'd blow it before they ever made it back. Every cold call has the same problem. A prospect who doesn't know you has an extremely limited attention budget, an...

In 2008, Domino's had a problem. Customers kept calling to ask where their pizza was. The obvious fix was answering the phone faster. Instead, Domino's asked a different question: what if the customer never had to call in the first place? They built the Pizza Tracker. Within two months, a million people used it. Six months ago, Josh asked himself the same question about his sales process:...

In 1961, President Kennedy didn't tell the nation he'd like to try to get to the moon sometime. He said the country would land a man on the moon before the decade was out. A deadline. A commitment. And on a hallway visit to the Space Center, he asked a janitor what he was doing. The man didn't say he was mopping the floor. He said he was putting a man on the moon. That's the differ...

In 1985, Coca-Cola had the data. Thousands of blind taste tests, all pointing in the same direction: people preferred the sweeter formula over both Pepsi and classic Coke. So they made the switch. New Coke launched, and it became one of the biggest marketing failures in business history. Seventy-nine days later, Coca-Cola Classic was back on shelves. Coke optimized for taste. Customers weren't...

In 1998 a Navy captain named David Marquette got his dream assignment pulled out from under him. He'd spent six months studying every wire on what he thought was the best submarine in the fleet, and the day he showed up to take command, it sailed off without him. His new ship, the Santa Fe, was the worst in the Navy, the one other crews used as a cautionary tale. Marquette didn't know the vessel....

In 1997 Tiger Woods won the Masters by 12 strokes, the largest margin in tournament history. Then he rebuilt his entire swing anyway. Everybody thought he'd lost his mind. His scores dipped for two years while critics asked why he'd mess with something that clearly worked. Then came back to back majors in 2000 and 2001, four in a row, the Tiger Slam. Years later he hit the worst slump of his caree...

In 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee's offices to fix bugging equipment that wasn't even working. The break in itself barely registered. What turned it into the scandal that ended a presidency was everything that came after: the denials, the explaining, the explaining of the explanations. In this episode, Josh Shirley and Dave explain why sellers get pulled out of...

In 2000, Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million. Blockbuster passed. They even had their own streaming idea years before Netflix launched it. The reason it never happened: late fees made up 16% of Blockbuster's revenue, and no one inside the company built enough urgency around the cost of standing still. Hosts Josh Shirley and Dave unpack three specific spots in a sales conv...

You're stranded on the side of the road. Three tow truck companies get the call. One answers right away. One takes four hours. One doesn't call back until next Thursday. You already know who you're using. That's the standard every inbound lead is holding you to, whether you like it or not. In this episode, Josh Shirley and Dave break down the four ways interest lands in your lap: t...

80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. Most sellers already know this. What they don't have is a system for managing the other 80%. In this episode, Josh and Dave introduce the KARE framework — a four-quadrant model for managing every account in your territory with intention, not just the ones you're comfortable with. In this episode, you'll learn: Why the Pareto princip...

Steve Jobs had a working iPhone prototype weeks before launch. His engineers said ship it. He switched to Gorilla Glass at the last minute, causing an operational nightmare and changing the world. That stubbornness is what Josh Shirley calls equal business stature, and it shows up in three very specific moments in every sales meeting. In this episode, you'll learn: Why agreeing to a shortened...

Some deals don't die with a rejection. They just disappear. Everything looks right. The conversations were good, the fit was real, the buyer seemed engaged. And then one day you check on it and it's just floating there. Nobody on board. Nothing happening. A ghost ship in your pipeline. In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and Tom Niesen decode the four phrases buyers use instead of...

Most deals don't die because of bad products, bad pricing, or bad timing. They die because of what the seller did, or didn't do, in the room. In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and David Doherty break down five seller behaviors that make the buying process harder on buyers, drawing on a LinkedIn poll result that revealed something most salespeople already know but rarely act on:...

Your pipeline is full. Your metrics look great. So why isn't anything closing? In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and Tom Niesen, aka the Conjurer, take on one of the most overlooked problems in sales leadership: the vanity metrics that show up in forecasting meetings, create false confidence, and quietly distort how salespeople behave. There is a sharp distinction that changes every...

Your buyers have heard your questions before. And they have answers ready. In this milestone 75th episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and David Doherty pull back the curtain on seven of the most common discovery questions in sales, the ones buyers see coming, prepare for, and use against you. Pulled from real sales communities, Reddit threads, Gartner forums, and B2B buyer feedback, these are the...

What happens when you're so sure you have a deal that you stop selling, and then everything falls apart? In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley sits down with Tom Niesen, 30-year Sandler trainer, magician, and veteran of some of the most memorable sales disasters you'll ever hear. Tom brings two real-life stories from the field that are equal parts entertaining and educational, plus...

Most salespeople blame the deal. The real problem is what happened in the cockpit. In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and David Doherty break down a listener poll that asked: when a deal dies, what really killed it? The results were eye-opening. Nearly 80% of the time, lost deals trace back to qualification failures that were entirely within the seller's control. And the biggest culp...

Most salespeople treat referrals like luck... something that just happens to them. But what if you could build a repeatable process to generate referrals on demand? In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley breaks down the LinkedIn Rule of Seven, a systematic framework for turning your existing network into a predictable referral engine. Whether you've got a handful of clients or a book of...

Most sales emails don't fail because of bad timing or the wrong list. They fail because of small, fixable mistakes sellers make every single day, and often don't even notice. In this episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and David Doherty break down seven of the most common email worst practices in professional selling, using real examples pulled straight from Josh's inbox. From overstu...

What if the advice that launched your sales career is the same advice that's been slowing you down? In this milestone 70th episode of Sales Tales, Josh Shirley and David Doherty take on five of the most persistent myths in professional selling... ideas still showing up in sales training, sales movies, and social media feeds every single day. These aren't fringe theories. They're things...

Serious sellers: if deals are stalling, it might not be your pitch. It might be that you don't actually know who you're selling to. In this episode of Sales Tales, sales experts Josh Shirley and David Doherty break down RACI, a practical framework for mapping the decision-making structure inside any organization you're selling to. Using real listener poll data as a jumping-off point, J...

Some of the biggest problems in sales actually begin after the agreement. Many sales professionals think the job is done when the buyer says yes. In this episode of Sales Tales, sales experts Josh Shirley and David Doherty explore the often overlooked Post-Sell step and why failing to define what “yes” actually means can create implementation issues, buyer’s remorse, and lost referrals. Post-selli...

Talking about money can feel uncomfortable, even for experienced sales professionals. Our personal beliefs about money often shape how confidently we discuss pricing, budget, and financial impact with buyers. In this episode of Sales Tales, sales experts Josh Shirley and David Doherty explore how internal money stories influence sales conversations, and how those beliefs can create hesitation when...