The Advanced Selling Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Telling a buyer what it's like to work with you is like showing someone your vacation photos. They'll say "oh, that's nice." They won't feel a thing. Bill just got back from two weeks out West, including Death Valley and a 98-degree "cooling" pool. Showing his family the photos made one thing obvious: a picture of the experience is nothing l...

Send us Fan Mail Your sales skills didn't disappear. They atrophied. And the fix isn't picking up where you left off, because the market moved while you weren't looking. In Part 2 of their series on sales skill atrophy, Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale shift from diagnosis to repair. They start with a challenge: the modern skill isn't just learning. It's learning, unlearning, a...

Send us Fan Mail What happens to your sales skills when you haven't had to use them? Muscles you don't use get weaker, and sales skills work the same way. In Episode 900, Bill and Bryan start a two-part look at skill atrophy. One team lost the lead channel it depended on and suddenly has to create sales from scratch. Another company's reps have spent five years telling customers to...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty years ago, LinkedIn had 50 employees and cold calling ruled the day. Now AI writes your emails and nobody's picking up the phone — so what actually still works? This week Bill and Bryan mark 20 years of the Advanced Selling Podcast with a celebration episode: listener shoutouts (including a great one from longtime listener Andy in the UK), a quick teaching on the WAG f...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty years ago, Bill and Bryan started recording a podcast every other Monday. They never missed the behavior — and that consistency turned out to matter more than talent, luck, or a growth strategy ever did. To kick off ASP's 20th anniversary celebration, Bill and Bryan share the first of several listener tribute clips — this one from Scott, a longtime Insider member and o...

Send us Fan Mail Got something genuinely new to sell — and buyers keep lumping it in with every other "revolutionary" pitch they've heard this month? This one's for you. Bill and Bryan work through a real scenario: a friend building software that could transform hospital billing, but can't get CFOs past their skepticism. The fix isn't a better pitch — it's a comp...

Send us Fan Mail Why do good sellers freeze up the second a conversation moves from a director-level buyer to the CFO? It's not a skills gap — it's identity. Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale break down why sellers resist doing new things, even when they know exactly what it's costing them. Bryan shares what happened when he volunteered to try something brand-new outside of sales — nervou...

Send us Fan Mail You didn't lose that deal on price. You lost it because your positioning wasn't strong enough to make you the obvious, can't-do-without-you choice. Bill and Bryan dig into a claim that gets argued in every sales meeting: is price really the reason deals slip away, or is it a symptom of weak positioning? They walk through a real audit of lost deals — 22 gone in six m...

Send us Fan Mail Every person you've worked with has a story you probably never asked about — and sometimes you don't find out until it's too late. In Part 2 of their series on the people of sales, Bill and Bryan honor a handful of people who shaped their careers — a neighbor and airline pilot, a mentor who connected without ego, a customer who never delayed a decision, and a prospe...

Send us Fan Mail Twenty years in this business means running into a lot of characters. This week Bill and Bryan riff on the people — bosses, clients, gatekeepers, baristas — who taught them something they never forgot, whether the lesson was about sales or just about being human. You'll hear about "Leisure Suit Larry," the grocery store manager who refused to acknowledge salespeople...

Send us Fan Mail You're six months into the year. Do you actually know what's working in your sales process — and what you quietly stopped doing back in February? Bill and Bryan borrow a trick from football coaches: self-scouting. Before the next game, coaches review their own film to find what their team does well (so they can do more of it) and what they do poorly (so the other team ca...

Send us Fan Mail Imprecise language is quietly sabotaging your sales process — and most sellers don't even notice it happening. This week, Bill and Bryan dig into the art of precise communication and why "what they hear" matters more than "what you meant." Bryan shares a real example from his own sales process: his team retired the vague word "calendars" as the l...

Send us Fan Mail Bill and Bryan continue their series on the hidden patterns that quietly cap sales performance. Building on last episode's conversation about "drift," they dig into two more limiting patterns: fear (and why naming it is the first step toward detachment) and the belief that bigger outcomes simply "aren't possible." Along the way, they tackle the either...

Send us Fan Mail Bill and Bryan dig into what they call "patterns of limitation" — the ingrained habits and mindsets that quietly cap your sales growth, often disguised as things that are already working. They explore four key patterns worth examining: the tendency to focus on the big picture while ignoring critical details, the trap of pursuing vague or undefined problems with prospects...

Send us Fan Mail Bill goes somewhere different today — and that's intentional. In this solo episode, Bill Caskey shares the first six of twelve core sales principles, each grounded in a biblical reference. From understanding your divine assignment and serving before selling, to detaching from outcomes and deploying your unique gifts, Bill connects the spiritual underpinnings of great selling...

Send us Fan Mail What if the beliefs driving your sales career are built on a foundation of lies? In this solo episode, Bill Caskey breaks down seven deeply normalized lies about achievement, income, and sales success — the kind that quietly run your life if you let them. From "hustle harder to earn more" to "the best closer wins," these aren't fringe ideas. They're m...

Send us Fan Mail Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale continue their series on how to become the Obvious Choice for your prospects and customers — not by closing harder, but by selling smarter throughout the entire process. In Part 2, they cover four powerful moves: Proactively raising problems, concerns, and objections so you're never caught off guard Delivering a Statement of Detachment that comfort...

Send us Fan Mail How do you become the vendor your customers never even think to replace? In Part 1 of this short series, Bill and Bryan break down what it actually takes to become the obvious choice — not through last-minute discounts or closing tactics, but by building that clarity from the very first interaction. They cover three foundational moves: filtering your pipeline through the right len...

Send us Fan Mail Fear shows up at every stage of a sales career — first calls, big promotions, major presentations, and yes, posting on LinkedIn.  In this episode, Bill and Bryan dig into how fear works, why your brain treats a LinkedIn post like a saber-toothed tiger, and how to reframe anxiety into something useful.  Plus: what beekeeping taught Bryan about walking into uncomfortable situations,...

Send us Fan Mail Are you walking into sales calls without getting clear on the actual problem you're solving?  In this episode, Bill and Bryan dig into one of the most overlooked fundamentals in B2B sales: defining the real problem before pitching solutions.  They explore how process focus beats outcome obsession, why accountability starts with you (not the market or the prospect), and how kn...

Send us Fan Mail What's the #1 problem facing salespeople and customer acquisition professionals right now? Bill and Bryan each share their answer — and while they come at it from slightly different angles, both point to the same root cause: the absence of a real system. Bryan breaks down why time misallocation kills pipelines, and Bill makes the case that lead generation is the core issue mo...

Send us Fan Mail Bill and Bryan are back from spring break with a powerful lesson about the long game in sales.  Inspired by a 35-year-old charity event that grew into a $400 million movement, they dig into how the small actions you take — or skip — today create enormous downstream outcomes you can't predict.  They challenge sellers to stop making excuses, stop being selfish with their knowle...

Send us Fan Mail Trust is the missing ingredient in most failed deals — and the old methods of building it (the hearty handshake, the enthusiastic follow-up email) no longer cut it. In part four of the Sales Identity Crisis series, Bill breaks down why modern buyers are slow to trust and offers a counterintuitive fix: create content. Bill shares how consistent content — podcasts, video, written pi...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode, Bill Caskey continues his series on the Sales Identity Crisis — specifically, the shift from being a laborer to becoming a leverager. If your sales approach is built on effort alone — more calls, more hours, more hustle — you're operating on an old model that's nearly impossible to scale. Bill breaks down a better framework: Discover, Develop, Deplo...

Send us Fan Mail Most salespeople wait for opportunity to come to them. Bill and Bryan flip that script. In this episode, they explore what it means to create a "space for excellence" — the rooms, events, and moments where you show up, lean in, and let people see what you're made of. From a chance encounter at a restaurant to a woman coaching a thousand people to share their stories...