Sales Management Techniques That Work in the Age of Data

Every sales professional has a horror story that still makes them break out in a cold sweat years later. The deal that imploded spectacularly. The customer interaction that went sideways in ways you couldn't predict. The moment you sat in your car afterward in complete silence, questioning every decision that led you to this career. These moments feel intensely personal and isolating. But the truth is, every rep who’s lasted in this profession has been there. On an episode of The Sales Gravy Podcast, Ashley Blount and I collected nightmare sales stories from our years in the automotive and telecommunications industries, plus stories from the sales community. We found 16 tales that prove no one faces this alone. Here are some of the most terrifying. Smelly Dave: The Angel of Death This sales horror story comes from the automotive industry, posted on Reddit by someone who still sounds traumatized. Dave started at the dealership after Sears closed. We found out he’d been the “Angel of Death” at several franchises—Sears, Future Shop, RadioShack. Every place he touched eventually shut down. Dave was in his early 40s, wore the same shirt with the same coffee stain on it every single day, and smelled terribly. Customers would flee after test drives, refusing to come back into the building with him. On one occasion, a customer was dry heaving. Management tried to delicately bring up the hygiene issue, but Dave wouldn’t listen. One day, the manager was told to drop off a sold vehicle to a customer, and Dave drove the chase car. As they returned together, the smell in that enclosed space was so unbearable that the manager walked into the boss's office afterward and apologized for whatever he had done to deserve that punishment. The boss laughed, called Dave in, and fired him on the spot. The Bluetooth Incident That Still Haunts Ashley Ashley had been selling cars for a few months when a sweet older couple came into the dealership. The husband was retiring, probably late 60s, and they were one of those rare couples who were actually pleasant to work with. He picked out a lime green Ford Fiesta for his retirement car. They completed the test drive, finished all the paperwork, and Ashley sent the vehicle back to get ready for delivery. When delivering a new vehicle, you always get in with the customer to help them connect their phone to Bluetooth and walk them through all the features. Since it was a couple, the husband was in the driver's seat, his wife was in the front passenger seat, and Ashley was sitting in the middle of the back seat. They got his phone connected to the Bluetooth, matched the code, and turned up the volume on the car. He went to open his phone. The most explicit, obscene audio you can imagine came blasting out of the speakers. Dead silence in that vehicle for what felt like forever. Ashley wished them well, exited the car, and walked back inside, mortified. When asked how it went, she told them the story and muttered, “I don’t really want to follow up. I’m not sure that’s appropriate.” The Telecom Contractors Who Started a Gunfight I had door-knocked a large hair salon and built a relationship with the salon owner, who also owned the building. He helped me get in the door with all four of his tenants. Because he was switching, they all switched. I closed three to four months of quota on this one deal because of what he did for me.  Installation day arrives. At 6 a.m., my phone rings. I try to sound as awake as possible with my gravelly morning voice, and the owner immediately screams, "Jeb, what the f**k?" He explains that our contractors came out the night before, got in a huge argument, waved guns at each other—he swears one of them shot at the other. Then they came back in the morning and dug a trench that cut every single internet line to the building. Every single one. No internet on the salon’s busiest day, and all the other stores were out, too. I arrived at 6:45 a.m.

Here's a problem that'll tie you in knots: You've got a killer software solution that saves companies massive amounts of money on employee benefits. You know exactly who needs it: Fortune 1000 companies with self-insured health plans. But you can't get a single meeting with the people who matter. That's the situation Peter Kleinman from Provo, Utah, finds himself in. As the sales and marketing guy for his dad's startup, he's tasked with landing enterprise clients while juggling full-time classes at BYU. He has LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and a burning desire to make it work. He also has virtually no chance of success using his current approach. If you're nodding your head right now, keep reading. Because Peter's problem is your problem if you're trying to sell into enterprise accounts without the business acumen, social proof, or strategy to break through. The 100-Foot Wall Problem Here's the biggest issue: Fortune 1000 CHROs and C-suite executives have built a wall around themselves that's about 100 feet high. Their entire job is keeping people like you from wasting their time. And if you're young, inexperienced, or new to enterprise sales? That wall might as well be 1,000 feet high. Peter is doing everything the sales books tell you to do. He's going straight to the top. He's messaging decision makers on LinkedIn. He's targeting the right titles. He's also getting absolutely nowhere. Here's why: It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with business acumen. You can't speak the language of enterprise buyers if you've never lived in their world. You don't understand their buying process, their risk aversion, or the organizational politics that determine whether your deal lives or dies. Most critically, you're trying to sell something they don't even know they need. And you have zero social proof to back up your claims. That's not a recipe for success. That's a recipe for frustration, burnout, and a pipeline full of nothing. The Bottom-Up, Top-Down Strategy If you can't get to the top, start at the bottom. I'm not talking about giving up on enterprise accounts. I'm talking about running a multi-threading strategy that builds your business acumen while creating pathways into those massive organizations. Here's how it works: Find the amplifiers. These are the people in the trenches who actually deal with the problem your solution solves every single day. They're not directors or VPs. They're managers, analysts, and coordinators who feel the pain but lack the authority to fix it. These people are 100 times easier to talk to than C-suite executives. They'll take your call. They'll teach you. They'll tell you exactly what's broken in their organization and how decisions actually get made. Compress your experience. When you talk to these amplifiers, you're not selling. You're learning. You're asking questions like, "Help me understand how you make these decisions," and "What problems are you running into?" Every conversation compresses years of experience into hours. You learn the language. You understand the pain points. You gather insights that become ammunition for conversations with decision-makers. Surface the insights upward. Now when you finally get in front of that CHRO or VP of Benefits, you're not some kid with a PowerPoint. You're someone who understands their organization better than they do. You can tell them stories about what their own people are experiencing and how you can close the gap. That's how you get meetings. That's how you build credibility. That's how you win deals when you have no business acumen and no social proof. The Insurance Broker Shortcut Here's another path Peter needs to explore: Insurance brokers. If you can't talk to the self-insured companies directly, talk to the people who advise them. Insurance brokers work with these organizations every day. They understand the buying process. They know the pain points. They're infinitely more accessible than Fortun...

The year was 1938. Families across America gathered, listening during the golden age of radio. On the eve of Halloween, a broadcast interrupted their evening: A live report claimed Martian cylinders had landed in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Within minutes, panic erupted as citizens fled their homes, convinced Earth was under alien attack. The entire event was fake. It was a perfectly executed radio drama by 23-year-old Orson Welles. Here's the sales lesson tucked into The War of the Worlds sci-fi scare: Welles wasn’t just reading a script. He was executing a masterful lesson in emotional engagement. He had listeners hooked, buying into his story emotionally before their brains had time to register, "Wait, this can't be real."  That emotional buy-in is a core tenet of sales: People buy on emotion and then justify it with logic and facts. If rational adults can flee their homes over a fictional Martian invasion, imagine the force of emotion you can unleash when you find your prospect's emotional trigger. Sharpen your emotional intelligence, and you deploy a powerful sales tool. Emotion Gets the Attention, Data Seals the Deal Welles sold tension, uncertainty, and gravity, not a product. His voice was calm yet urgent, delivered with the authority of a trusted news anchor. The audience felt an adrenaline surge—heartbeats rising, eyes widening—before they had time to check the facts. This is the non-negotiable first step in sales. Your passionate storytelling creates the emotional charge. Your tone carries more weight than any spreadsheet full of ROI data. Emotion gets your buyer leaning in and invested in the outcome. The data you provide simply helps them sleep well at night after they’ve already made their decision. If your message isn't landing, stop reviewing your product deck and start analyzing your delivery. Are you speaking with urgency, and are you connecting to their emotional state? Without that emotional resonance, even the best solution just adds to the noise. Authority Isn't Arrogance, It's Command Welles dressed his fictional story in familiar trappings like live news bulletins, eyewitness reports, and crackling radio static. Each detail made the unbelievable feel legitimate. He commanded belief by establishing immediate, undeniable authority. Bring that same presence to your sales interactions. Authority isn’t arrogance; it’s commanding belief. Sound like someone who’s been there, knows the terrain, and has the solution. Communicate with unwavering authority, and you build trust before price discussions begin. This is how you sell the experience. Prospects must believe in you and your company; belief in your product comes next. They buy the experience of working with you before seeing the product. If you sound uncertain, you’ll never build a foundation of trust. Stay Steady to Control the Chaos Welles predicted a strong reaction to his broadcast and stayed calm, controlled the narrative, and guided the audience through the panic he was creating. In sales, moments of crisis or uncertainty test your professionalism. When a prospect goes cold, objections arise, or a competitor attacks, do not panic. Do not mirror their anxiety—it only feeds chaos and cedes control of the deal. Control the process, control yourself, control the outcome. When deals wobble and emotions spike in your buyer, that is your moment to shine. Breathe, slow down, ask questions, and lead steadily. Be the calm voice that reassures, guides, and inspires confidence. Mastering internal composure is the essence of emotional intelligence in sales.  Your Action Plan: Develop Your Sales EQ Mastering composure under pressure is a skill, not a gift. It requires commitment to developing emotional intelligence so you can use logic while others react in fear. Start a 'Rejection Journal' Drill. Stop letting rejection or setbacks paralyze you. Create a Failure Log to immediately document your feelings (frustration,

AI in sales isn't coming soon. It's already here, and it's quietly separating the salespeople who will thrive from those who won't. On the Sales Gravy Podcast, sales expert and author Victor Antonio shares this quote: "You won't lose your job to AI. You'll lose your job to people who are using AI."  While everyone debates whether artificial intelligence will replace salespeople, the real shift is already happening. What you need to know is which parts of your job will still matter when a machine can do everything else. The Trust Formula Still Requires Humans Most people think AI in sales is about automation. It's not. It's about augmentation. Yes, AI can write your emails. It can analyze your pipeline. It can schedule your meetings and generate your proposals. But it can’t build trust with a buyer who's about to make a six-figure decision they're terrified of getting wrong. Trust in selling comes down to three things: Understanding the buyer’s point of view Demonstrating real expertise Keeping the buyer’s best interest front and center When a buyer is staring at a purchase order that could make or break their business, they don't want a chatbot. They want a human being who says, "I've got you. This is the right move." Simple Sales No Longer Require a Sales Rep  Transactional jobs are disappearing. AI sales agents can already handle simple sales from start to finish. A customer calls about a broken window seal. The AI analyzes the image, checks inventory, schedules a technician, verifies the warranty, and puts the appointment on the calendar. No human required. This isn't science fiction. These systems exist today. AI handles simple tasks easily, but complex sales still require humans. Everything on the straightforward end—cold outreach, basic prospecting, routine follow-ups—is getting automated fast. But complex B2B sales are different. When deals involve multiple stakeholders, custom solutions, and high-stakes decisions, buyers still need salespeople. Humans don't trust machines with decisions that keep them up at night. Your job security lives in complexity. If you're selling simple products with simple processes, you need to start adding value now.  What You Should Be Doing Right Now Most salespeople are waiting while AI transforms the industry. Don’t make that mistake. Here’s how to start experimenting with AI today: Use ChatGPT, Google's Notebook LM, or your AI of choice to digest long articles and research reports in minutes instead of hours. Feed it information about your products and competitors to create your own custom knowledge base. Role-play objection handling by assigning it different buyer personas and practicing your responses. Ask it to critique your proposals before you send them to catch weak points you might miss. These tools aren't perfect. They'll feel clunky at first. But you're not trying to master AI today. You're building comfort with technology that will be 100 times more powerful in just a few years. The salespeople who are experimenting now will be the ones who know how to use AI when it really matters. The ones waiting for their leaders to force them to adopt AI will scramble to catch up. The Skills That Survive AI So what actually matters when AI handles the busywork? The biggest obstacle in complex sales isn't convincing buyers that your solution works. It's helping them trust their own judgment enough to decide. Buyers freeze not because of your pitch, but because of fear: What if I’m wrong? AI can show data, ROI models, and comparison charts—but building buyer confidence still requires human judgment. That's the skill that matters: Building buyer confidence. You need to get exceptional at reading hesitation—when a buyer goes quiet or starts asking the same questions in different ways. They’re not confused about your product. They’re uncertain about themselves.

Here's a question that'll keep you up at night: How do you take a company from $300K in annual revenue to $1.5 million in 18 months, then scale to $3-$5 million within five years? That's the challenge facing Greg Hirschi from Colorado. He's the new executive leader of an 18-year-old company selling ethics assessment services to professional licensing boards. They've expanded from an entrepreneurial model to a small team with one salesperson and one customer service representative. The goal is aggressive growth, and Greg needs to know where to focus his limited resources to get the biggest bang for his buck. If you're nodding your head right now because you're in a similar situation, pay attention. Because the mistakes you make at $300K will haunt you at $3 million. The Resource Reality Check Let's be brutally honest about what a $300K revenue company means: You have no money. You have a razor-thin budget. You have one salesperson and one leader trying to do everything. At this stage, you have exactly one priority: REVENUE. You don't have the luxury of fixing operations, perfecting your tech stack, or building elaborate systems. You need to sell. Period. Here's where most small companies screw this up. They think selling means taking anything with a pulse. If it can fog a mirror, they'll do business with it. That's a death spiral disguised as growth. The Operator's Dilemma Greg comes from an operations background. He's analytical, process-driven, and systematic. Those traits are incredible assets for building a business, especially when the goal is to scale fast. But they can also be a liability when managing salespeople. Here's what happens: Operators think in systems and logic. Salespeople think in relationships and emotion. Operators want everything organized and predictable. Salespeople throw deals on the table that are messy and unpredictable. If you're an operator trying to lead sales, you need to understand this fundamental tension. Your salesperson is out there getting hammered with objections every single day, building narratives in their head about why people won't buy. You're thinking, "Just brush it off and do it again. What's wrong with you?" They're thinking, "You have no idea what it's like out here." This is why reading New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg is non-negotiable if you're an operator managing sales. You need to learn how salespeople think, how they operate, and how to lead them effectively without losing your mind. Start With Your ICP or Die Trying The single most important thing Greg needs to do right now to scale is get laser-focused on his Ideal Customer Profile. Not kind of focused. Not "we have a general idea." I mean obsessively, precisely, ridiculously dialed in on exactly who they should be targeting. Why does this matters so much at $300K? Greg's salesperson has a $600K pipeline and will close 50% of it. Sounds great, right? But if half those customers churn because they're the wrong fit, requiring constant re-education and hand-holding, Greg's salesperson will get stuck in account management mode. They'll stop prospecting for new business because they're too busy re-selling existing accounts. That's how you stay stuck at $300K forever. Your ICP drives everything. It determines your messaging, your marketing, your presentation materials, and which stakeholders you need to reach inside target organizations. It helps you build relevant social proof stories. It allows you to coach your salesperson on handling specific objections instead of generic brush-offs. Most importantly, it gives you guardrails. You can ask your salesperson in pipeline reviews: "Tell me the strategic reason why we should chase this account. How does it fit our ICP? Why is this worth our limited resources when our singular goal right now is growth?" When you're running a $300K company with one salesperson and one leader, you cannot afford to chase every deal.

I've been intrigued by all of the LinkedIn posts lately from sales professionals, leaders, and experts proclaiming the phone is back! Even the “phone-is-dead” evangelists seem to have had a change of heart and are encouraging salespeople to “phone a customer.”  My favorite posts are from salespeople who took this advice, called a customer, and were surprised—even stunned—to discover that their customer actually wanted to talk. It’s more proof that buyers are starving for real, authentic, human-to-human conversations with their sales reps and account managers.  When Sellers Make Their First Call in Years I saw one post yesterday from an account manager who said that, for the first time in years, he had picked up the phone and called a customer. In his post, he described how rewarding it was to have a real, live conversation—as if this was some new revelation. He said that even though the phone was “old school,” he had given it a try because his customers weren’t responding to his emails anymore.  Although I'm super pleased to see that salespeople are rediscovering the power of the humble phone, I was bothered by this particular post because it is an indictment of just how far the sales profession has fallen over the past few years. It also exposes the malpractice of this guy’s leadership team. Seriously, how is it possible that his leaders and company allowed him to avoid having actual conversations with his customers for years?  Pick Up the Phone and Talk to Your Customers Account managers who are not talking with their customers, the ones who keep their customers at digital arm's length and send random “just checking in emails,” are swinging the door open and inviting competitors in. When you fail to proactively manage relationships—when you don’t talk with your customers—those customers end up talking to your competitors and considering other options. Nearly 70 percent of customers are lost due to neglect. Not prices, not products, not the economy, not aggressive competitors. Neglect! They feel the sting of being taken for granted. If you've ever been taken for granted (and I bet you have), you know that it makes you feel unimportant, small, and resentful, which can lead to the feeling of contempt. Resentment and contempt are the two most powerful negative emotions in the pantheon of human emotions. They are the gangrene of relationships, festering below the surface, slowly rotting away the connections that bind people together until the relationship is destroyed. The good news is the secret to defending accounts is completely in your control. It’s simple. Pay attention to your customers. And guess what? A simple, regular phone call can make all the difference. Just pick up the phone, dial their number, and ask or say: How are you doing? What can I do to help you? I have an idea for you.   Have a great weekend. Thank you for your business. Regular telephone contact ensures that you are top of mind with customers. Hearing your voice lets them know that you care. It doesn’t need to be anything particularly special. You don’t need to schedule it on their calendar. You don’t need a reason to tell your customers that you appreciate them.  Pick up the phone and say “hello” because it doesn’t cost a thing to pay attention to your customers. A “How AI Will Replace You” Reality Check But it’s not just that account manager and his company. Rather than picking up the phone and talking with people, sales professionals everywhere have replaced this beautiful, synchronous sales communication tool with email. This aversion to talking with people by phone has become so acute that at least half of Sales Gravy’s training and consulting engagements have focused on one thing: Teaching and compelling salespeople to pick up the damn phone and just have real-time human conversations.  So, let’s start with a reality check: The telephone is not old school.

Your sales team has the tools. They know the pitch. The CRM is full of leads. So why are half your reps still missing quota? Randy Wilinski spent 15 years building high-performance sales teams before joining our training team at Sales Gravy. His answer to this question cuts through the usual explanations about territory problems or skill gaps. The real issue? Most sales leaders are managing activity instead of developing people. They're applying pressure instead of addressing the mental blocks that sabotage performance before reps ever pick up the phone. The Real Problem Holding Back Sales Teams Walk into any sales bullpen and you’ll hear the same beliefs on repeat: “I’m not good at cold calling.” “Nobody wants to hear from me.” “I don’t know if I can hit these numbers.” Most leaders dismiss this as an attitude problem or lack of confidence. So they fire up the team with a motivational speech, send everyone back to their desks—and nothing changes. Here’s what’s being missed: These aren’t attitude problems. They’re belief systems that determine behavior. And behavior determines results. Nobody was born knowing how to sell. Your top performer didn’t start with the ability to handle objections or close deals. They learned it. But the reps who believe they can’t learn it won’t put in the work to improve. They’ll make half the calls, avoid the hard conversations, and prove themselves right. The real work of building elite performers is getting inside your reps’ heads and rooting out the thought processes that are killing their performance. That’s where true coaching separates managers from leaders. Why One-on-One Coaching Unlocks Growth Group training builds skill, but addressing mental blocks requires one-on-one coaching—where you can dig into patterns, ask uncomfortable questions, and challenge unhelpful thinking. Why does this rep always sabotage themselves right before closing a big deal? Where did this idea that "people don't like being sold to" come from? What past failure is creating this blind spot? Good coaches shine a light on the patterns that people fail to recognize or flat-out avoid. They name the behavior that’s been there all along, but no one wanted to confront. Awareness alone doesn't create change. Your rep can have that breakthrough moment where they realize they are the problem, and still fall back into the same habits. Real coaching means holding people accountable to the change they commit to making. It means checking in, following up, and not letting them slide back into old patterns when things get uncomfortable. That’s the difference between feel-good conversations and actual performance improvement. The Coaching Gap in Sales Leadership Most sales leaders don't actually coach. They manage activity, review numbers, and deliver pep talks. But managing metrics does not build high-performance sales teams. Developing people does. Coaching starts with curiosity. It means sitting down one-on-one and asking questions that uncover what is really holding a rep back. Not "why didn’t you make enough calls?" but "what made those calls hard to make?" Sometimes the barrier is a belief. Other times, it is a communication issue between the rep and the leader. If you do not understand how each person communicates and processes feedback, you will keep missing the mark. When you tailor your coaching to match how a rep thinks and responds, conversations become more productive and performance starts to shift. That is how coaching turns from another meeting on the calendar into a catalyst for real growth. Creating an Environment Where New Reps Actually Develop The best thing you can do for your team is lower the pressure on outcomes and increase the focus on process. This doesn't mean accepting mediocrity—it means being relentless about the activities while being patient with the results. Your new reps are going to struggle. It’s a reality you have to accept,

Here's a question that'll make your head spin: How do you train MLM recruits who have zero sales experience to actually sell instead of just posting on social media and hoping for the best? That's the question Andrew Osborne from Pittsburgh brought to me. Andrew works in direct selling and network marketing, specifically health and wellness nutrition supplements. Like most MLM leaders, he's frustrated watching new recruits default to the guru-approved strategy of posting on Instagram and waiting for the magic to happen. Spoiler alert: The magic never happens. If you're nodding your head right now, you're not alone. The "social media is the new cold calling" myth is one of the most damaging lies being sold to new direct sales representatives today, and it's costing MLM organizations their best potential talent. The Social Media Trap: When Easy Becomes Impossible Remember that story in Fanatical Prospecting where I went head-to-head with someone who swore their social media guru had all the answers? I said, "Great, you do yours for a week, I'll do mine for a week, and we'll test it out." Guess who won? Here's the brutal truth: Posting on social media feels easy because it lets you keep people at arm's length. You don't have to face rejection. You don't have to interrupt strangers. You don't have to have uncomfortable conversations. But here's what actually happens. After two months of posting videos that get one view each and zero sales, your recruits quit. They're demoralized, broke, and convinced MLM doesn't work. The real problem? They were never taught how to actually sell. Why MLM Sales Training Is Harder Than You Think When Andrew recruits someone into his network marketing organization, they're making two types of sales: selling the product and recruiting new team members. Most of these people have never sold anything in their lives. They came from every background imaginable except sales. Something happened in their life that made them say, "I want more." That motivation is critical, but motivation without skill is just frustration wrapped in hope. The things they need to do are really hard. Nothing in their life has prepared them for what sales prospecting actually requires. They have to sacrifice what they want now (ease and comfort) for what they want most (their goals). That's why the first question I ask every new recruit is this: What are your top five goals in the next twelve months? Not company goals. Not team goals. Their goals. Because if they don't want something bad enough to go through the pain of rejection, nothing else matters. The Only Formula That Actually Works In MLM, there's one simple formula that works every single time: Go talk with people. The more people you talk with, the more you recruit. The more product you sell. It's that simple. Think about it this way. If you had a marketing strategy that could create all your product sales and recruiting automatically, you wouldn't need an MLM. You'd just have an e-commerce business. The reason network marketing exists is because a network of people can spread the word and sell better than online ads. But here's the problem. Talking with people means getting past your discomfort. It means interrupting a stranger in line at Walmart. It means seeing someone at church who mentions financial problems and saying, "Hey, what if I had a way to help you out?" Most people would rather post on TikTok than have that conversation. What to Teach Your MLM Team If I'm building an MLM sales training program for recruits, here's exactly what I'm teaching them, in this order: First, teach them how to open conversations. Not pitches. Conversations. With strangers and with people they know. What's the first question they ask? How do they approach someone in line at Walmart? How do they bring up their network marketing business with friends without being weird? Run drills on this. Practice it until it becomes muscle memory.

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times lately—AI is coming for your job. Every week, there’s a new headline about another role being automated, another company replacing people with bots, another “AI agent” that can do the work of ten humans in half the time. And if you spend too much time reading those headlines, it’s easy to start wondering, What happens to me? What happens to salespeople like us in a world where machines can do almost everything we used to do? AI is Here to Stay You can't escape the truth. AI is going to change everything and impact almost every part of our lives. The train has left the station, and it will not be turning back. AI is going to displace a lot of people and jobs, but it’s not going to replace everyone. Because no matter how smart machines get, they can’t feel or connect the way you and I can. Sales is, and always will be, the ultimate human profession. It’s the one job built entirely on human emotion, human judgment, and human connection. What You Can Do That AI Can't Just think about it: AI can write words. But it can’t create belief. It can predict who might buy. But it can’t build trust. It can score a lead. But it can’t lead a human being through uncertainty, fear and doubt while giving them confidence to make the right decision in complex situations.  That’s what you do. That’s what we do. That’s what salespeople have always done—long before there was technology, long before there was AI, and long before algorithms tried to simulate emotion. In sales, it’s not about the product. It’s about the person. People buy you. What you sell might get you to the door, but it is how you sell that determines whether they let you in.   Every sale is a transfer of emotion from one human being to another. It’s the transfer of  belief and confidence and trust. When a customer says “Yes,” they’re not just saying yes to a proposal or a price. They’re saying 'Yes' to you. No matter how powerful technology becomes, that moment—that human moment—will never be replaced by a line of code. As modern sellers, what we need to understand is that AI isn’t the end of selling. It’s just the next leap forward in our incredibly resilient profession.  Keeping it Real AI will replace some salespeople, so we need to keep it real. There are reps who are lazy, transactional, and just go through the motions and never bother to think, adapt, or grow. Those reps will get left behind. So AI will not make sales professionals less valuable, but it will absolutely make the gap between poor and exceptional salespeople wider and more pronounced.  But the top performers—the ones who combine human empathy with AI-powered insight—will be unstoppable. Because when you merge the intelligence of machines with the intuition of a human being, it becomes a force multiplier.  How to Become Irreplaceable with AI Right this moment, top sales professionals and high-earners are elevating their performance with AI tools that do the grunt work. It’ll build your lists, do your research, automate your follow-ups, and write every sort of draft.  It will give you more time for human-to-human connections: to listen, discover, develop creative solutions, persuade, and see the emotional context behind the data. The question isn’t whether AI will replace you. The question is whether you’ll use AI to become irreplaceable. It's simple. AI can give you the right words to say. But only you can make someone feel something when you say it. AI can pull the data, do the research, and build your presentation. Only you can look someone in the eye and say “Trust me. We can solve this together.” and close the sale.  Your Emotional Intelligence Seals the Deal That’s The AI Edge. It’s not about the tools. It’s about using the tools to amplify your humanity. In the age of AI, your #1 competitive advantage is emotional intelligence. It’s your ability to understand how people feel,

The gap between average salespeople and elite performers lies in process. While most reps chase quick wins and hope something sticks, top producers follow proven sales strategies that consistently deliver results. They've mastered the fundamentals that turn prospects into customers and customers into advocates. If you’re ready to finish the year strong and blow past your quota, these five battle-tested sales strategies from previous podcasts will transform how you sell. 1. Deliver an Unforgettable Customer Experience by Mastering Your Emotions Your prospect doesn't care about your bad morning or the three deals that fell through yesterday. When you walk through the door or dial their number, you’re the only conversation they’re having with your company today. Elite salespeople know emotional consistency separates closers from pretenders. Think of it like a pro golfer staying calm and cruising forward regardless of what happened on the last hole. As Jeb Blount explains: How your customer feels about you is more predictive of outcome than any other variable. They buy you first, and then they buy your product. They buy you because they feel safe, heard, and confident you will deliver. This means you have to compartmentalize every interaction. Your fifth appointment of the day deserves the same intensity and professionalism as your first. When you show up desperate, prospects sense it immediately. When you rush through discovery, they feel undervalued. Jeb emphasizes this critical point: Buying a house, car, or service is deeply emotional for the customer. Before every interaction, take sixty seconds to reset. Acknowledge whatever is bothering you, mentally file it away, then walk in focused entirely on their world and their goals. 2. Commit to the Day One Follow-Up Mindset Ask yourself: How many times do you attempt to reach a prospect before quitting? If you answered three or four, you are leaving money on the table. Most reps quit after just three or four attempts, and sometimes without ever hearing a ‘No.’ They just stop and let leads rot in the CRM instead of risking rejection. As Jessica Stokes reminds us, top producers understand this: While you are tracking your sixth or seventh outreach attempt, for the prospect, every touchpoint feels like day one. They are busy running their business—not waiting for your call. The problem is not just the number of attempts; it is the spacing. When you leave a voicemail and wait a month to "give them space," you lose momentum and start from scratch every time. The winning sales strategy is persistence with velocity. That means touching base every few days or weekly. When you maintain momentum, prospects remember you. The real failure is letting quality leads die because you are afraid to pick up the phone and risk hearing "No." 3. Turn Your Empathy Into a Weapon, Not a Weakness If you have ever hesitated before making a cold call because you thought, "I don't want to bother them," you are dealing with what Jeb Blount calls projection, and it is costing you deals. Projection happens when you assume prospects hate being interrupted as much as you do. You start deciding for them before you’ve even made the call. Successful salespeople recognize interruption is a professional necessity. Your job requires it; your income depends on it. Letting empathy paralyze your prospecting is dangerous. The internal conflict is real: You want to be an empathetic person, but you also have to be an interrupter. The mindset shift: Understand that projecting is the most dangerous thing in sales because you are deciding for your customer in advance what they want or need. Real empathy means showing up, asking sharp questions, and letting them tell you what they need. You cannot solve problems you never discover because you were too afraid to start the conversation. 4. Build a Velvet Rope Around Your Business What if your clients felt less like transactions and ...