Episode 78: The Power of a Sales Coach to get unstuck

What really separates top sales performers from the rest? In this episode, sales excellence coach and former 3M leader Ivan Stevanovic breaks down the essential habits that fuel consistent sales success—and they might not be what you expect. Forget gimmicks and silver-tongued persuasion. Great salespeople win because they prepare like professionals, ask better questions, and know when to walk away. They treat sales as a craft, not just a quota. Drawing on decades of experience coaching high-performing teams, Ivan shares powerful, practical advice on how to build trust, qualify opportunities, and develop the mindset needed to thrive in complex B2B sales environments. Whether you're a seasoned rep, a consultant who dreads "selling," or a manager looking to level up your team, this episode is packed with real-world insights that will sharpen your approach and reignite your confidence. 🔥 If you’ve ever walked out of a sales call thinking, “What just happened?”—this is the episode you need. Tune in now to learn how the best sellers prepare, adapt, and consistently deliver value.

It’s with great pleasure that we welcome back Robyn Bolton! Robyn, welcome back to the Podcast!   Robyn is the founder and chief navigator at MileZero, a consulting and coaching firm that helps leaders use innovation to confidently and consistently grow business revenue. Robyn is also an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she teaches courses in strategy and product innovation in the college’s master of design innovation program.   Prior to founding MileZero, she was a partner at Innosight, the innovation and growth strategy consulting firm cofounded by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, a manager at the Boston Consulting Group’s offices in Boston and Copenhagen and was assistant brand manager at P&G for the development and launch of Swiffer.   I strongly recommend her blog and newsletter you can find it at milezero.io. Because Robyn is an awesome and concise writer: Every word you spend reading is valuable. She was voted the number one blogger of 2022 and 2023 on human-centered design and innovation. And today we’re going to take a bit of a dive into her new book “Unlocking innovation, a leaders guide for turning bold ideas into tangible results.” So, let’s dive in – we might even touch on chocolate cookies!

Our guest today Kyle Godbey, is a service designer and transcontextual designer and has worked for over 20 years in the fintech industry, government and retail. In this episode we talk to Kyle about one of the methods within the Cynefin ecosystem: the sensemaker methodology. Sensemaker is "an online crowd-sourcing research tool for collecting and self-interpreted micro-narratives and for discovering actionable insights beyond surveys and focus groups"  

We continue our discussion with software engineer and agile coach William Bartlett. Last time we spoke, in episode 68, we discussed William's journey from waterfall to agile. We discussed the many potential benefits of taking an agile approach when it is done well, but also the difficulty many teams face in making it work for them, even when they are serious about making it work.   William argued that the issue goes deeper than a simple problem of mindset and that it has to do with how to teach and learn tacit knowledge.   In this episode we dive deeper into the topic of tacit knowledge and how it plays a role in design and innovation more generally, beyond just the teaching of agile concepts,. We will be discussing 4E cognition, gibsonian ecological psychology and Cynevin.   Topics touched upon: Can tacit knowledge be taught? Why is tacit knowledge an important part of innovation? 4E cognition Nassim Taleb’s concept of antifragility  

Today we want to explore how Jobs-to-be-done thinking is used in Product Design with our guest Chris Belmore. Chris is Director of Product Design at On the Beach – an online travel agent. He was Director of Product Design at the Financial Times, where he and Yann met and has long time agency experience, amongst others at Ostmodern – a digital product agency – as a research and design leader before he moved to the corporate dark side…

Today we will dive into one of the biggest problems that startups face – and I would expand this to teams in general –: each other! We are joined by Martin Gonzalez one of the authors of the book The Bonfire Moment that we will focus on today. Martin created Google’s Effective Founders program and Josh is a cofounder of the Google for Startups Accelerator. They both have impressive careers, and I will just pick a few highlights. In 2023 for example the Aspen institute recognized Martin as a First Movers Fellow, and this year he won the Thinkers50 Radar Award. He worked at BCG and Johnsons & Johnson before Google.

Today, we welcome Jeff Baker. Jeff is president of IGI Group Consulting; standing for Insight for Growth & Innovation. a firm that uses Jobs-to-be-Done and research methods to help firms grow and thrive.  Jeff and I worked together, years ago, when we both worked for Strategyn - which is ground zero for Outcome-Driven Innovation, a proven system for applied JTBD. He’s been a steady contributor to the world of JTBD for quite a few years now.   Jeff: It’s great to reconnect and I know that we have a lot to talk about.: Welcome to the Product Quest Podcast! 

In this episde we hand over the mic to Pam Henderson an let her interview us about Jobs-to-be-done. Pam is an entrepreneur, professor, and founder and CEO of NewEdge, a growth strategy firm that anchors growth in “opportunity” also, she’s the author of a book with an intriguing title, “Killing Ideas: You can kill an idea, you can’t kill an opportunity. .  Today, we’re passing the interviewer role to Pam - while Yann, Jonathan and I will be the guests - and our topic is a show favorite - JTBD.

Today, we have an extra special episode as we welcome two superheroes of Jobs-to-be-done and we plan to get into the weeds.  First, Dr. Lance Bettencourt. Lance is widely published, and all practitioners should know his work,  most notably with MIT Sloan Review and Harvard Business Review. All should know his HBR article “The Customer-Centered Innovation Map,” where Lance and Tony Ulwick first described the job map… He also has extensive experience as a consultant, doing JTBD projects across many industries, and today is a Professor of Professional Practice at TCU.   Next, Eric Eskey. If you look at the most experienced JTBD practitioners worldwide, Eric is among the top few. You cannot name an industry that he hasn’t worked within. He’s not only a pro at framing and executing qualitative projects, but Eric is a data analysis wizard in the most practical sense, meaning that he can make data come alive in pictures, he helps others to see the story.  I’ve personally worked with both Lance and Eric as well, both with Tony Ulwick’s firm Strategyn as well as afterwards. But more important than all that, they’re both great dudes who I’m proud to call friends.  Lance and Eric,  Welcome to the Product Quest Podcast!  Today, we’re talking shop, as in JTBD-practitioner shop.  We’re going to be talking about challenges when converting customer needs into an “outcome statement.” When we say “outcome,” we’re referring to a customer-need as defined by Tony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven innovation.  An outcome is a metric that a customer uses to define how well a job is done. For example, if mowing the lawn, we’ll work with customers to get a list of outcomes such as: Minimize the frequency of grass clumps Minimize the time to mow the lawn Minimize the amount of uncut grass next to obstacles Etc.  In practice, a moderator interviews customers to uncover outcomes… and we run across some situations that are a bit tricky. Today, we have a list of six challenges in which our experts are going to help us out.  I will lay out the challenges, but then we’ll all participate as we figure these out together.

Today, we have an extra special episode as we welcome two superheroes of Jobs-to-be-done and we plan to get into the weeds.  First, Dr. Lance Bettencourt. Lance is widely published, and all practitioners should know his work,  most notably with MIT Sloan Review and Harvard Business Review. All should know his HBR article “The Customer-Centered Innovation Map,” where Lance and Tony Ulwick first described the job map… He also has extensive experience as a consultant, doing JTBD projects across many industries, and today is a Professor of Professional Practice at TCU.   Next, Eric Eskey. If you look at the most experienced JTBD practitioners worldwide, Eric is among the top few. You cannot name an industry that he hasn’t worked within. He’s not only a pro at framing and executing qualitative projects, but Eric is a data analysis wizard in the most practical sense, meaning that he can make data come alive in pictures, he helps others to see the story.  I’ve personally worked with both Lance and Eric as well, both with Tony Ulwick’s firm Strategyn as well as afterwards. But more important than all that, they’re both great dudes who I’m proud to call friends.  Lance and Eric,  Welcome to the Product Quest Podcast!  Today, we’re talking shop, as in JTBD-practitioner shop.  We’re going to be talking about challenges when converting customer needs into an “outcome statement.” When we say “outcome,” we’re referring to a customer-need as defined by Tony Ulwick’s Outcome-Driven innovation.  An outcome is a metric that a customer uses to define how well a job is done. For example, if mowing the lawn, we’ll work with customers to get a list of outcomes such as: Minimize the frequency of grass clumps Minimize the time to mow the lawn Minimize the amount of uncut grass next to obstacles Etc.  In practice, a moderator interviews customers to uncover outcomes… and we run across some situations that are a bit tricky. Today, we have a list of six challenges in which our experts are going to help us out.  I will lay out the challenges, but then we’ll all participate as we figure these out together.