Advertise on podcast: Thoughts on Selling - Value Selling, Sales Leadership, Sales Enablement Insights

Tim Ohai thinks change management is a scam. He's got receipts — he used to be the guy they put on stage to sell it. His argument is simple and it stings: change management is written from the organization's point of view, never the individual's. So I stopped him and asked him to swap in two different words. Sales enablement. He didn't hesitate. Same thing. We're just going to shove it onto people and hope they like it. That's the conversation. Three disciplines, one mistake — we keep building for the org and delivering to a human being who never got asked. Tim wrote Sales Chaos in 2011, before most of the industry had settled on what to call any of this. He's since walked away from the enablement label entirely for strategic execution, which he'll tell you is the thing nobody was ever formally taught. He asks rooms full of leaders who was trained to execute strategy. Crickets. Every time. We get into why 95% of AI initiatives produce nothing measurable and why that's not the AI's fault. Why most pipeline reviews inspect the deal instead of the customer. And the UK team that nearly doubled its win rate off one conversation their reps didn't want to have — because a GM refused to move on to the next idea for three straight quarters. The line that stuck with me: if I don't have clarity and I don't have empowerment, coaching is just a nice hug. Tim's at timohai.com, and he's very active on LinkedIn.

A deal stalls. The buyer goes quiet. And the industry has one answer: more. More sequences, more touches, more tooling. Then somebody says the rep needs to want it more. The rep is almost never the problem. In this episode, Lee reads Chapter One of The Second Meeting, the first book in the Acelera Sales Fables. Before the reading, he tells the origin story. Alex Mercer started as Stacy, a brief appearance in a nonfiction manuscript. Following her career from bank teller to VP of Sales selling fintech took more room than a few sentences, so she jumped ship and took a novel with her. He also talks about Max, the cavachon who spent fifteen years teaching him presence and is still teaching him two years after his passing, and about what presence looks like on a Tuesday: in a room with ten people, on a video call, at a checkout counter, on the phone with your mother. Have the conversation with Alex: https://thesecondmeeting.com Buy the book, or a stack for the team:https://books.acelera.group Lee on Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/leelevitt Work with Lee: https://acelera.group Together We Win, the nonfiction book Stacy walked out of, is out on Amazon now.

Cory Dunham failed the same calculus class twice — for the same reason both times. He wouldn't ask for help. That story sits at the center of this conversation. Cory is an executive coach, keynote speaker, business strategist, and private pilot who's spent 40 years in business learning that the voice telling you not to raise your hand is not you. It's a recording from years ago, and it only shows up when it doesn't serve you. We get into what that costs a salesperson. If you walk into a meeting carrying "I'm not worthy to be here," you cannot simultaneously help a customer transform their results. Those two things are in direct conflict. Cory's traffic metaphor is the one that stays with you: when you keep switching who you are — pumping the brakes on your authentic self — the people behind you honk, pull back, or run into you. None of that builds a relationship. We also dig into what real listening actually is. Cory thought it was shutting his mouth. Then he became a pilot, where you repeat back the controller's instruction word for word or somebody gets hurt. Different stakes than a sales call. Same discipline. Plus: the four-step path to earning the helm, why The Four Agreements is the book I'd hand every salesperson, ADHD and hyperfocus, improv as listening practice, and what the word "sell" originally meant before we ruined it. Connect with Cory: LinkedIn — Cory Dunham Email — [email protected] Podcast — unapologeticleadershippodcast.com

Most companies believe revenue growth solves everything. Doug C. Brown has spent three decades proving otherwise. Doug is CEO of CEO Sales Strategies, and his work starts from an uncomfortable premise: the money you're looking for is already inside your business. You've paid to acquire it. It's sitting in underpricing, in proposals nobody followed up on, in a fulfillment process that takes eight weeks when it should take one. It just never made it to the bank. In this conversation, Doug walks through the diagnostic he uses — 21 EBITDA drivers, each with five or six sub-points — and shares what it turned up: a $2.4M HVAC company that grew to $4.96M with EBITDA moving from 13% to 28%, and a valuation that climbed $7 million. A $772,000 plumbing company sitting on $226,000 in unclaimed EBITDA, found in two hours. A billion-dollar company losing $72 million a year and still describing itself by its top line. Lee and Doug also get into why choice paralysis kills deals, why "being customer-centric" quietly becomes scope creep, and how a realtor cost herself an $80,000 commission by handing a hesitant buyer a way out. The throughline: none of this is about squeezing customers. It's about running a business that can afford to serve them well. In this episode: Why revenue growth without margin discipline is just expensive motionThe 21 EBITDA drivers and how the 15-minute diagnostic worksWhat too many SKUs does to your salespeople and your buyersBusiness ROI vs. personal ROI — and why missing the second one loses dealsWhere AI genuinely elevates the customer experience, and where it doesn'tFind Doug: [email protected] | LinkedIn: dougbrown123 Find Lee: podcast.thoughtsonselling.com | meet.acelera.group Thoughts on Selling — Serve Customers. Not Quotas.

Michael Skriver started in finance and IT, then — as he puts it — upgraded to sales. He's spent his career leading complex B2B organizations across Europe and Asia, and he came into this conversation with a line his CEO once dropped on three thousand people: you have no clue how to sell, you're a bunch of traders. That CEO was right. And what he taught Michael next is the through-line of this episode: if you say you're customer-centric, show me in your decisions, otherwise it's a slogan. We get into what that looks like when it's real. Executive sponsors who put their own credibility at stake instead of approving account plans from a desk. KPIs that measure when a shipment leaves your factory instead of whether it arrived usable. Technical and commercial sellers working as a pair, with the person in the white coat doing the digging — because everyone knows the guy in the tie is dangerous, especially if his title is long. The middle of the conversation is a masterclass in cross-cultural selling. A Japanese general manager telling Lee three times "I want you to do a good job," and what he was actually protecting. A boss who couldn't sit through 45 minutes of small talk and killed the relationship in seven. Twelve Japanese executives across the table. And the karaoke moment that wasn't an invitation — it was a test. They close on the thing every seller hears in every market on earth: our market is different. Michael's read on what that sentence is really asking for is worth the listen on its own. Also in here: the $700 shoes, why interrogation shuts buyers down, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and a CEO's advice to stop doing more with less and start doing less with less. Guest: Michael Skriver — futuresalesglobal.com Host: Lee Levitt — sales coach, podcast host, and author of The Second Meeting and Together We Win, both available at books.acelera.group Questions or comments? Use the contact form at podcast.thoughtsonselling.com, or grab time to talk at meet.acelera.group. If this conversation was useful, share it with a coworker or two.

Buyer confidence is at an all-time low — and more data isn't fixing it. In this episode, Lee sits down with Tom Pisello (The ROI Guy), value-selling pioneer and founder of GeniusDrive, to unpack why B2B deals stall even when the numbers are solid. Tom and Lee explore Aristotle's three buy buttons, the shift from FOMO to fear of messing up, why trust now drives 50% of the purchase decision, and what vendors need to do differently in an era of AI-accelerated complexity. Topics covered: High-performance driving as a sales metaphor: your car goes where your eyes goWhy emotional connection precedes logical justification in every buying decisionThe confidence gap: why two-thirds of buyers regret purchases shortly after signingCollective buying committees, compromise, and eroded confidenceAI's role in accelerating value frameworks — from six months to six daysThe outcome economy and why token-maxing is the wrong metricLeadership in an era of rapid, disorienting changeReferences and further reading: Frugalnomics Survival Guide by Tom Pisello — Tom's foundational work on value selling and the three buy buttons that drive every B2B purchase decisionThe Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein — the book (and film) behind Tom's keynote framework, and the source of the episode's central metaphorThe Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson — foundational work on the role of emotion in B2B purchase decisionsTodd Caponi — trust and transparency expert, author of The Transparency Sale; recommended by Tom as essential listening on the trust dimension of sellingLee's forthcoming books: The Second Meeting and Together We WinConnect with Tom Pisello: LinkedIn: Tom Pisello (The ROI Guy)Podcast: Value Coffee TalkWebsite: geniusdrive.com/community

Chris Carter has been in the SAP ecosystem for decades — and he's watched AI go from expert systems on a Commodore VIC-20 to a tool that's genuinely changing how enterprise companies forecast, plan, and sell. He's not impressed by the hype. He's impressed by the people who actually use it well. In this episode, Chris and Lee cover what separates the sellers who are winning right now from the ones firing off AI-generated emails into the void. Spoiler: it's preparation. It's curiosity. It's doing the work before you walk in the door. Chris shares how he uses Google Gemini to simulate industry-specific discovery — getting the AI to ask him questions one at a time before a customer call, so he shows up already thinking in their world. He breaks down the Gartner analytics maturity curve and why most companies are still stuck at "here's what happened" when the real opportunity is "here's how we change what's going to happen." He also tells the story of Shea — an SDR who cold-called Lee with bad CRM data, pivoted beautifully when challenged, and ended up as a coaching client who finished last year as number two on his team. The lesson? Stop selling the meeting. Sell the reason to show up. And then there's the question that anchors the whole conversation: if sales is a game, who makes the rules? For Chris, the answer is simple — and it changes everything about how he competes. What you'll hear: Why consumer-grade AI is not the same as enterprise AI — and why both matterHow to use AI for preparation, not just productionThe Peloton analogy that scared a room full of Oracle salespeopleWhy a 0% response rate on a million AI emails is just lazinessThe "stop selling the meeting" coaching insight that took Shea to #2What it means to make your own rules of engagementConnect with Chris Carter:LinkedIn: Christopher M. Carter (Wisconsin)Speaker inquiries: christophermcarter.com Connect with Lee:Contact form: podcast.thoughtsonselling.comSchedule time: meet.acelera.group

Gina Smith spent 27 years selling medical devices into hospital operating rooms — and she got there entirely by accident. No role models. No sales background. A career in HR she was tired of. One conversation with a sales manager who couldn't fill a role. And a "mercy interview" she then went out and won. In this episode, Gina and Lee dig into what actually drives sales performance in high-stakes, complex environments — and why it has almost nothing to do with product knowledge or closing technique. What we cover: How Gina went from HR to 27 years in medical device sales — and why she was skeptical of salespeople herselfWhy the best salespeople are introverts who learn to act like extroverts — not the other way aroundThe shift from OR presence to supply chain gatekeeping, and what it costs sellers who can't adaptThe "painful truth" principle: why telling customers what they don't want to hear builds more trust than protecting the relationship"Who are you being?" — the question that reveals everything about a salesperson's intentWhy mapping out a sales process on the CFO's whiteboard won't fix the real problemThe difference between selling to people and serving them — and why buyers can always tell which one you're doingGina now coaches founders and small sales teams through her practice at ginarsmith.com. Connect with Gina:LinkedIn: Gina R. SmithWebsite: ginarsmith.com Connect with Lee:podcast.thoughtsonselling.comLet's Talk: meet.acelera.group

Danny Bobrow has spent 36 years in marketing and communications. He discovered a hard truth about sales effectiveness: getting the phone to ring is only half the battle. What happens after it rings—how calls are handled, how trust is built, how resistance is navigated—determines everything. That discovery led him to create the Persuasion Blueprint, a framework built on brain science, first impression research, and hard-won lessons from mountaineering expeditions and adventure racing. His core insight: before you can persuade others, you have to persuade yourself. What we cover: The three C's of persuasion: Caring, Connection, Collaboration—and why sequence mattersMehrabian's research: why words account for only 7% of effective communicationThe brain science of resistance: amygdala, limbic system, and why facts trigger fight-or-flightThe health club saleswoman who outsold everyone by letting prospects stay in control"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."Why the best salespeople are "patiently persistent and respectfully resilient"The Sherpa model for coaching: running the race at your client's paceHow political polarization and fragmentation make persuasion skills more critical than everKey insight: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And if you feel pressure, so will they." Connect with Danny: Website: DannyBobrow.comComplimentary Persuasion Scorecard available

Kris Rudeegraap is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sendoso, the largest direct mail and gifting platform in the world. Before building a company with global warehouses, a drop-ship network across continents, and $150 million in funding, Kris was a top seller who got creative when email stopped working. This conversation covers the origin story of Sendoso, the psychology of reciprocity, and why dimensional mail is the channel that never stopped delivering—even when everyone forgot about it. What we cover: From mail merge to direct mail: how Kris went from 90% email response rates to running a mini mail roomThe dog bark moment: hearing a pet on a sales call, sending a dog toy from Amazon, and booking the meetingCuriosity as the single most important attribute of a salesperson"The open rate of a FedEx box is 100%" — why scarcity and tangibility still workEmail was the cheap drug—easy but not effective anymoreBuilding Sendoso: software + warehouses + drop-ship + AI recommendationsThe Kansas City ribs story: prospect broke a rib skiing, so they sent BBQ ribsThe pizza box campaign: "Hungry for a new solution? Let's chat."Customer delight vs. door opening: 50%+ is top of funnel, but land-and-expand is hugeAI/data layer: pulling interests from Gong calls to recommend gifts six months laterSecret sauce: tenacity to win + creating wow experiences + bridging the gap for human connection"People buy from people they trust" — and trust comes from deposits in the relationship bank accountWhat's next: AI agents, autonomous workflows, and doubling down on dataKey insight: "We're selling the emotional connection that comes from getting something delivered to your doorstep. That's the surprise and delight moment. That's the pattern disruption. That's the relationship." Connect with Kris: LinkedIn: Kris RudeegraapEmail: [email protected]: sendoso.com

Juan García is the co-founder of Tuio, an AI-native insurance company based in Spain. Before starting Tuio, Juan was an engineer at Cisco, a strategy consultant focused on marketing and sales, and the builder of Orange Insurance in Spain's new ventures division. That's where he saw just how broken insurance was—and decided to do something about it. This conversation covers revolutionary thinking, the psychology of digital-native customers, and how AI is changing not just marketing and sales, but the entire operating model of a business. What we cover: Why insurance is "even more broken" than telecommunications—and what that createsThe 25-55 customer segment: digitally native, financially literate, and unprofitable for legacy insurers"Insurance is not bought, it's sold"—and why Tuio went against 100 years of common knowledgeReproductive vs. productive thinking: Kaizen improvement vs. revolutionary changeHow iPhone users file more expensive claims—and why that data mattersDetecting fraud before claims are filed: browsing behavior, metadata, and Google ImagesThe first AI-generated fraud photo (it was really bad)Marketing campaigns that run for minutes, not months: AI agents and always-on optimization"There is no more marketing or sales—there's marketing and sales"Why AI will be powered by startups and founder-led companies, not large public companiesThe Tuio name story: from Coconut to "we protect what's yours"Why an intern named the company—and why she's still there five years laterKey insight: "For us, there is no more marketing or sales. There's marketing and sales. It's just the same thing. You want to sell the product to a customer. Everything else is just noise and tools." Connect with Juan: Website: tuio.com

Joe Terry and I go way back—I met him when he was CEO of Corporate Visions, and he's been on a 30-year journey studying what separates leaders who connect from those who collide. He's also the co-author of Surrender to Lead, a USA Today bestseller that reframes everything we think we know about leadership. This conversation got deep fast. We talked about the action trap—that seductive belief that if we just do more, the results will come. Joe's seen executive teams where 12 people in the same room give 12 different answers to "What are our top three objectives?" And then they wonder why the org can't execute. What we cover: The results pyramid: experiences shape beliefs, beliefs drive actions, actions create results—and most sales training starts at the wrong endWhy surrender isn't weakness—it's the only way to lead from strengthThe SHIFT framework for getting out of your own wayThe four questions Joe wishes a seller would ask him (and nobody does)"Show up to give, not to get"—and why that earns the second meetingWhy differentiation is an intellectual conversation that buyers don't care aboutKey insight: "You can do all the actions you want all day long. You might get a little short burst, but you're not going to get long-term repeatable change in execution and results." Connect with Joe: LinkedIn: Joe TerryBook: surrendertolead.comCompany: culturepartners.com

Dramatically improve your sales effectiveness, value selling impact and sales enablement best practices by focusing on communicating. Really connecting. Frankie Kemp has one of those backgrounds that sounds made up: acting school, award-winning comedy writer, NLP practitioner, and now a communication coach for technical specialists at companies like major pharma, energy, and finance firms. She's helped close multimillion-pound deals by making three nonverbal adjustments. She's gotten scientists out of their slides and into real conversations. And she brings Aristotle into every engagement. In this episode, we dig into why communication is the most underleveraged skill in sales—and why the best communicators aren't the smoothest talkers. They're the ones who adapt. What we cover: Aristotle's three pillars of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos—and why most technical people only use oneThe real reason customers come to you with a solution instead of a problemHow to identify someone's learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) by the words they useWhy Frankie tells clients to put away their slides: "It's you they want to see"The improv-to-sales pipeline: why so many techies do improv, and what it teaches about presenceHow three nonverbal tweaks closed a deal on the eighth attemptKey insight: "People often come to you with the solution. Your job in sales is to recognize what led up to that requirement—what problem are they trying to solve? Then take them back and go, 'This will be better for you.'" Connect with Frankie: Website: frankiekemp.comLinkedIn: Frankie KempFree 15-minute discovery call available on her site

Enterprise sales is under pressure to adopt AI sales strategies. But...in enterprise sales, the mindset of the sales rep still dictates success or failure. James Stephan-Usypchuk has been building predictive AI systems for 15 years—long before ChatGPT made it mainstream. He's a cancer survivor, serial entrepreneur, and someone who's worked with BlackRock, Blackstone, and private equity firms on deal origination. And he has a psychology degree, which gives him a different lens on the AI hype than most technologists. In this episode, we dig into the real question organizations are asking right now: AI can do almost anything, but what should it actually do? James makes a sharp distinction between tasks that can be automated and the human elements that can't—and shouldn't—be replaced. What we cover: Why 82% of AI implementations fail when built on bad dataThe difference between using AI as a "magnet in the ocean" versus having it "make sushi on the back of a boat"How predictive algorithms can identify who's likely to sell their business—but can't close the dealThe stat that should scare every marketer: 15,000+ ad impressions per day, but only 3 seconds of recallWhy the best salespeople he knows are comediansWhat happens when a sales rep is pre-sold and the rep still runs the scriptKey insight: "AI can do everything, but so can 50 million other people using AI. When a human steps up with a likability factor you've never seen—automate that. You can't." Connect with James: Website: ecliptica-ops.comLinkedIn: James Stephan-Usypchuk

Javier Lozano Jr. on Sales and Marketing Alignment, AI, and Fixing Leaky Pipelines The Business Value Hypothesis is still the king of the sales sales strategy. And your sales people need to focus on selling with a perspective or point of view. And marketing must support this approach. If your sales and marketing teams aren't aligned on revenue, you don't have a pipeline problem — you have a structural problem. In this episode I talk with Javier Lozano Jr., a fractional CMO and CRO who helps founder-led tech companies build the foundation for predictable pipeline. Javier has lived on both sides of the revenue equation, and he brings a rare clarity to why these teams need to be tied at the hip — not just collaborating, but sharing the same revenue goals. We cover a lot of ground. Why customer success is really a piece of the marketing puzzle — because those customer stories become your most powerful sales enablement. How AI is already changing the game for teams that feed sales transcripts into language models and come out with sharper messaging, shorter sales cycles, and higher conversion rates. Why the feedback loop between sales, marketing, and operations is a closed system that breaks when any piece gets ahead of the others. And why saying yes to the wrong big opportunity — like a Grainger stocking order that would crush your operations — can be the smartest no you ever make. One of my favorite moments is Javier walking through his HIRO pipeline metric — High Intent Revenue Opportunities — which tells you whether marketing is delivering quality leads or just noise. If your team is closing above 25%, you're in HIRO territory. Below that, either your sales team needs help or your leads aren't good enough. KEY TAKEAWAYS Sales and marketing must align on revenue goals. Not MQLs, not butts in seats — revenue. When both teams champion closed-won deals instead of their own metrics, the finger-pointing stops and the pipeline becomes predictable.Customer success is a marketing function. The words your happiest customers use are your best positioning, your best ad copy, and your best sales enablement. Kill the CSM function and you kill your brand's storytelling engine.AI is already transforming sales enablement. Feed a hundred call transcripts into an LLM and you'll find out what's actually closing deals — often things your own reps can't articulate. Use that to rewrite your emails, refine your messaging, and shorten your sales cycle.Use the HIRO metric to measure pipeline quality. High Intent Revenue Opportunities above a 25% close rate means marketing is delivering. Below that, you've got a targeting or lead quality problem that no amount of sales effort will fix.Diagnose your leaky pipeline before you try to scale. Javier's free predictable pipeline diagnostic surfaces the two or three priorities that matter most — typically rev ops gaps and positioning problems — so you stop trying to fix everything and focus on what moves the needle.FIND JAVIERLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/javierlozanojrWebsite: boldermediasolutions.com (free pipeline diagnostic) Share this episode. Reach out at podcast.thoughtsonselling.com or book time at meet.aceleragroup.com