The Sales Evangelist

Kristie Jones treats her AI agent like a four year old. Not as an insult, as a management strategy. The same way she taught her son "no touch" before he understood why, she's learned that agents need boundaries, check-ins, and correction, just like any new hire. Kristie , founder of Sales Acceleration Group and author of the upcoming book The Sales Leadership Gap: Leading Humans in an AI Augmented...

"Broke, rich." That's the two-word test Jimmy Burgess uses to explain whether a sales career is working: phone up to your ear, you're rich; phone down, you're broke. Pulled from our archive, Jimmy, Chief Growth Officer at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Beach Properties of Florida, is with me as we discuss the four-step pattern he lays out for turning scattered activity into steady, repeatable gro...

You did everything right, or at least you thought you did, and the deal still fell apart anyway. This one is coming from the archives, and the principles hold up just as well today as they did when we first recorded it. George Brontén, founder and CEO of Membrain and author of Stop Killing Deals, broke down the three deadly assumptions that quietly sink B2B sales deals, and how to catch them befor...

125 billion B2B emails go out every single day, and that number is exactly why decision-makers have stopped noticing any of them. This one is coming from the archives, and honestly it feels even more relevant now than when it first aired, because reaching the right person inside an enterprise has only gotten harder since. Erik Kostelnik, founder and CEO of Postal, joined me to break down why reach...

“It’s too expensive” may be the answer a prospect gives you, but it may not be the reason they are saying no. The real issue could be that they do not see the value, they already have another solution, or they have another concern they have not told you yet. In this objection-handling conversation, I break down two ways to get past the surface response, find the real reason behind an objection, an...

Nearly half of all B2B sales conversations end with no decision at all, and that number keeps climbing. This solo episode breaks down the discovery call framework built over years of carrying a bag as a software sales rep, now taught to clients to stop deals from going quiet. The Real Cost of No Decision A study of 2.5 million sales conversations by Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found that 40 to 6...

Selling a must-have product sounds easier than selling a nice-to-have. But even when your solution is critical to a customer’s business, you still have competitors fighting for the same deal. So, what makes a buyer choose you? In this episode, I talk with Mark van Oppen, CRO of SecureAuth , to talk about what it takes to sell a must-have solution in a competitive market. Selling a Must-Have vs. a...

Product-market fit isn't a yes or no question, and treating it like one is what trips up most founders and sales leaders. That's the core idea Collin Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue and host of the Predictable Revenue Podcast, brought to this episode, and it reshaped how I think about why some go-to-market motions take off and others stall no matter how hard the team works. Prod...

AI is changing sales fast. But is it actually replacing salespeople, or is it exposing the sellers who never developed real strategy skills? That’s the question I explore in this conversation with John Stopper. John and I get into the difference between sales tactics and sales strategy, why AI can sometimes give sellers the wrong picture of a buyer, and why getting closer to the people involved in...

Connection rates have dropped roughly five times since before COVID. If ten percent of your calls used to turn into a conversation, you're probably closer to two now. David Zeff , CEO of Whistle, runs an agency that makes cold outreach work for 350-plus B2B clients, and he broke down exactly what's changed, what hasn't, and the parts of outbound most people are too embarrassed to actually do. Why...

Sometimes the best way to close more deals isn't by adding new people to your pipeline (though that's always a good thing.) Instead, the best thing is to address the issues that make a deal fail before they fail. In today's episode of The Sales Evangelist, I joined the CEO of Challenger, Andee Harris, to get her take on failed deals and how to address those issues directly with our prospects. Chal...

A former Marine who did eight combat deployments in eight years now spends his time teaching people to stop pitching and start asking better questions. Keith Gillispie , founder of REI Automated, left the Marines in 2020 to build a real estate investing and coaching business that's helped more than 1,200 people, with close to 580 of them closing their very first deal. He broke down exactly how he...

37 reps who got the least recognition on one 153-person sales team averaged 62 percent quota attainment. The team average was 107 percent. That gap is the whole argument Sindre Haaland , CEO and founder of SalesScreen , makes for why comp plans alone don't explain sales performance. Why Identical Comp Plans Produce Wildly Different Results Sindre's core observation: two reps can work under the exa...

Only 10 percent of sales messages actually explain why something should matter to the buyer. The other 90 percent are just decoration on a generic pitch. That stat comes from Leslie Venetz , who audits thousands of sales messages every year and just released her USA Today bestseller, Profit-Generating Pipeline. She broke down what real relevance looks like, and the exact method she uses to build i...

Imagine doubling your close rate and cutting your sales cycle in half. That's not a hypothetical. It's exactly what Pieter Leenhouts and his team did at Tax Guard, a Cogency Global company that sells to banks and financial institutions. Pieter walked me through exactly how they pulled it off, and it wasn't magic. It was math, structure, and a relentless focus on the front end of the pipeline. Why...

Connie Kadansky was a highly motivated, highly goal-oriented salesperson, and she was still taking naps at two in the afternoon instead of prospecting. That contradiction sent her down a research rabbit hole that turned into a 29-year career studying sales call reluctance. Connie broke down for me why being too nice is one of the most expensive habits a seller can have, and what to do about it ins...

An architect plans every brick before laying one. An archaeologist starts digging and adjusts based on what turns up. Adam Mark Louther says most sales reps try to sell like architects when the job actually calls for an archaeologist's mindset. Adam built his first sales skills knocking on doors selling exterior cleaning services, and today he coaches founders and sales teams on turning conversati...

Your prospect isn't only buying the product or the price. They're buying you. That's the idea behind one of Jordan Harbinger's most popular keynotes, and it's why we're pulling this archive conversation back out. Jordan went from a bored kid who got into trouble to a Wall Street attorney to the host of one of the biggest interview podcasts around. And the thread running through all of it is relati...

Less than ten percent. That's how many highly targeted emails actually get opened. In this archive episode, pulled from an old Sales From the Street segment, I'm breaking down exactly what I look for in a cold email before I'll even open it, let alone reply. If email opens are a struggle for you right now, this one still holds up. Why Most Cold Emails Never Get Opened People are buried in email. I...

Three appointments a week. Twelve a month. If you want a consistent pipeline, you have to know exactly what it takes to get there. The problem is that most reps don't stop prospecting because they don't know how. They stop because meetings, active deals, and everything else on their calendar slowly take over. A few missed prospecting sessions turn into a weak pipeline, and then the scramble begins...

Most salespeople treat follow-up like an afterthought: a quick check-in email, then nothing. I sat down with Corrie George , founder of YESA and Canada First, and former president of Grant Cardone Canada, to talk about the follow-up system that's actually helped him close hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Most Sales Are Won After the Fifth Contact According to Salesforce, less than 20 perc...

Every seller has been there. You send the perfect proposal, deliver a great pitch, and then the exec on the other end goes silent. I sat down with Anthony Reeves , a former global executive at Amazon, WPP, LVMH, and Airbnb, to talk about the real reason executives ghost you. It's not what most sellers think. Executives Aren't Ghosting You, They're Protecting Themselves Executives get to their posi...

Every sales leader wants to go upstream. Bigger logos, bigger checks, bigger deals. But most of what determines whether that move actually works has nothing to do with the sales team. I sat down with Alison Disken, an expert in executive alignment, to talk about the one thing most companies miss when they decide to go upmarket. Why Going Upmarket Takes More Than A New Sales Pitch Everyone wants to...

Sales and marketing are supposed to work together, but in most companies, they don't. Not to the level your revenue actually needs. In this episode, I sat down with Mark Kapczynski, co-founder of Kontrol Media and author of Everyone Sells, to talk about practical, sometimes unconventional ways to get these two teams pulling in the same direction. Why Sales and Marketing Still Don't Work Together T...

This wraps up our four part LinkedIn Response Series. Over the last few episodes, I covered your headline, your banner, and how to turn profile views into real conversations. In this final episode, I'm showing you how to take those conversations and turn them into booked appointments. Never Pitch First The fastest way to kill a new LinkedIn conversation is to pitch right away. When someone replies...