The Audible-Ready Sales Podcast

For those of you planning your next Sales Kickoff, use our resources, everything you need all in one place: Sales Kickoff Resource Guide https://www.forcemanagement .com/sales-kickoff-resources

If you want to be "the top 2%", become an elite seller in your organization, and propel your career to the next level — take spirit from Brandon Burlsworth's UnCommon story. Sales leaders, share it with your sales reps and managers. Told in the movie Greater, Brandon's life was one of grit, dedication and hard work. But, he didn't start out that way. He started out as a young player, with a big go...

If you’re looking for quick tips to improve your ability to execute the fundamentals of elite selling — this is the episode for you. Force Management Facilitator and Director, Dale Monnin joins us to chat about helping salespeople move from good, to great to elite in their sales careers. He covers a variety of tips you can apply immediately to your sales process and approach including: - What area...

Our podcast series “Lessons Learned in Sales”, continues as John Kaplan talks with Force Management Senior Partner Tim Caito. As always, Tim shares valuable insights, including: - How to stay connected to your customer’s projects post-sale to ensure their success - The time a customer left him and his colleagues in the middle of an oil field - The common characteristics of the best sales managers...

In-person customer conversations have dwindled over the past year. While we are getting back to face-to-face meetings, many sales conversations are happening virtually. How do you get your customers to open up in a remote conversation? How do you gain that trusted advisor status over a video call? John Kaplan shares his best tips. Here are some additional resources” - Purpose Process Payoff - http...

Your buyers have likely experienced a lot of bad QBRs — so differentiate your company by making them truly valuable for you and your buyer. Tim Caito joins us to talk about how sales leaders can equip their account teams to flip the script on negative buyer perceptions and get customers to see value in a QBR. He covers the pre-sale, during-sale and post-sales steps sales reps need to take to impro...

Part 2 of our conversation with Author and Sales Leader Veteran John McMahon. He joins John Kaplan to discuss themes in McMahon's new book, “The Qualified Sales Leader”. McMahon has been the Chief Revenue Officer at five public, enterprise software companies – PTC, Geo-Tel, Ariba, BladeLogic and BMC. Now he sits on the board at several public software companies including Snowflake and MongoDB. Mor...

Author and Sales Leader Veteran John McMahon joins John Kaplan to discuss themes in his new book, “The Qualified Sales Leader”. McMahon has been the Chief Revenue Officer at five public, enterprise software companies – PTC, Geo-Tel, Ariba, BladeLogic and BMC. Now he sits on the board at several public software companies including Snowflake and MongoDB. More Information: - BUY THE BOOK: The Qualifi...

Our podcast series “Lessons Learned in Sales” continues this week as John Kaplan talks with Force Management Facilitator Marty Mercer. Marty shares some great stories, including: - How he became a seller and he didn’t even know it - A beneficial lesson in patience that he learned that drastically shifted his sales career - Why he didn’t sell anything in the first nine months of his career - How a...

Our final episode in our “Skill/Will” series (link to the diagram below), takes a deep dive on your people with low will, level 1s and 2s. Low-will people aren’t who you want on your teams, but you may be dealing with some of these people right now. Hear how you can manage low-will people to the best of your ability and avoid people losing will while they’re on your teams. Here are some additional...

Continuing our series on the “Skill/Will” Model (link to the diagram below), this episode covers people with high will, level 3s and 4s. High-will talent are the people you want to have on your team, they’ll improve your ability to succeed and maintain competitive advantage in your market. This episode shares what you can do to keep and leverage your level 4s (high will, high skill) and how you ca...

Sales leaders can achieve great success when they take ownership of their talent and coaching process. Maximize your talent efforts and coach your people in a way that takes into account their skill level and motivation. This episode kicks off our three-part series on coaching the “Skill/Will” model (link to the diagram below). In this episode, John Kaplan covers how sales leaders and managers can...

Unlock the full potential of your Customer Success teams by building alignment with your sales teams and your buyers. Kathleen Schindler, Force Management Managing Director of Customer Success, takes a deep dive on how sales and company leaders are equipping post-sale teams to execute on critical buyer outcomes. Tune in to hear real-world examples of how these leaders enable their entire customer-...

Our second episode of our podcast series “Lessons Learned in Sales”, John Kaplan talks with Force Management Facilitator Antonella O’Day about her sales career including: - How she got a deal done in 8 minutes - A mistake she was grateful to have happen early in her career - How she found Force Management by looking for the top sales training companies - One piece of advice that has helped to elev...

Attaching to a big business problem gets you access, funding and urgency. How do you find the pain and then how do you attach your solution to it? John Kaplan covers: - How salespeople can get credit for helping buyers solve big business problems. - How to attach decision makers and champions to their company’s big business pains in a way that supports your success. - How to align your differentia...

In this episode, we wrap up our conversation with Coach John Mosley Jr, from East Los Angeles College and featured on Netflix’s Last Chance U: Basketball. John Kaplan pulls out some of the top takeaways for sales leaders — and how they can use some of these coaching techniques to create value for their sales team. If you haven’t listened to parts 1 and 2, tune into those first, then come back here...

Don’t miss — part 2 of our conversation with Coach John Mosley Jr, from East Los Angeles College and featured on Netflix’s Last Chance U: Basketball. Coach Mosley shares more insights on coaching a team to success in another energetic episode. If you haven’t listened to part 1, you may want to listen to that episode first! You can support Coach Mosley and ELAC Student Athletes here: - Donate to th...

From the Last Chance U: Basketball series, and East Los Angeles College, Coach John Mosley Jr joins John Kaplan for a conversation on—you guessed it—coaching. While they operate in different courts, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Support Coach Mosley and ELAC Student Athletes: - Donate to the ELAC Men’s Basketball Program - https://org.eteamsponsor.com/ETS/supportUs/311056148 - Donate...

Have you ever caught yourself babbling in a sales conversation? John Kaplan has, and he shares some spirit around asking yourself the question - “Why are you talking?” Show your customer you’re focused on them and want to genuinely understand their business pain. John Kaplan joins us to walk through some small tricks he uses to make sure he keeps sales conversations focused on the customer. Check...

How do you ensure you’re selling for a great company or moving to a great company? Part of believing that what you do matters, means loving what you do. Companies make great promises when looking to hire top sales talent or retain top performers. Be confident you’re in the right spot and making the right moves in your sales career. John Kaplan shares his opinion on how elite sellers ensure that th...

Great conversations only happen when salespeople aren’t afraid to be uncomfortable. Being elite often comes down to being the person who can ask great discovery questions with patience, empathy and confidence. Force Management Facilitator Antonella O’Day shares how to dig deep in discovery conversations in a way that creates a healthy tension in the conversation, including: - The biggest misconcep...

This episode is the first in our new podcast series “Lessons Learned in Sales”, John Kaplan talks with Senior Director of Consulting and Facilitation Patrick McLoughlin about his own career including: - The lessons he’s learned from some great managers and the mantra he uses today - The worst mistake he ever made - The time a colleague stole a prospect’s glasses This is a conversation you don’t wa...

Competitors catch up to your solutions. When they do, your “unique” differentiators won’t hold up. Marty Mercer stops by the podcast to provide tips on steering a buyer’s solution requirements away from your competition (including an impending “do nothing” or “no decision”). He teaches how to effectively prepare for conversations around decision criteria, so you can build out a list of buyer solut...

One of the most basic things you can do as a sales organization is ensure that your executive team and entire company is aligned on the key value and differentiation of your solution. When you have consistent answers to the essential questions, you have the framework to equip sales to articulate your solution’s business value and differentiation in a way that drives bottom-line impact. John Kaplan...

Selling too low in an organization is a common challenge for many salespeople. Brian Walsh shares best practices from salespeople and company leaders who have enabled their teams to sell higher, aligning to bigger business problems. He covers: - How sales leaders and managers can look inward to improve their ability to equip sellers to sell higher and drive accountability around pursuing high-leve...