Each week Ryan Cuellar sits down with thought leaders and industry experts to explore topics focused on helping sales and marketing leaders improve sales experience, increase win rates, and elevate sales enablement.

Below is a breakdown of our most recent episodes that you will not want to have missed. Make sure to stay tuned for continued insights!

Episode 18: Prepare your Sales Reps for Any Meeting – Win More!

Sales confidence. Some reps have it. Some reps don’t. Some reps fake it. BUT all reps NEED it. As sales leaders, we must empower our reps to help them build confidence when selling. When a sales rep shows up ill-prepared for a meeting with a prospect, it shows. Reps must be able to confidently tell the right story, speak confidently to competitive claims, and build trust in order to win more. So how can we prepare our reps to show up to every meeting with confidence?

About our guest: Paul Whited

Paul Whited is a service operations director who loves to drive business results and give back to the community. Since 2019, he’s had the privilege to work for Canada’s only national not-for-profit insurance company. His passion has been to create better business results and a strong work culture through the development of teams and systems. In his current role his team has been able to improve annual operating efficiency by 8.5%, while delivery industry-leading Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of ~40, and team employee engagement of 95%. All of these efforts support our national social impact initiatives, helping Canadians live healthier lives.

Episode 17: Using the Voice of your Customer to Repair B2B MIsalignment

In most B2B organizations, the struggle to create alignment throughout your customer-centric departments is real. We see it all the time. Sales and marketing may get misaligned on process or messaging. Product may be developing features that don’t actually solve for a customer’s need. CX may be delivering something different than what a customer was sold. Executives may be creating strategies and goals without real insight into your competitive position. Misalignment can occur everywhere. 

And when you don’t create alignment throughout your organization, you can struggle to hit revenue goals, fail to solve customer needs, and slow business growth.

About our guest: Sophie Pagalday

Sophie Pagalday started her product marketing journey in B2B technology 12 years ago when she “accidentally” became a certified product manager. Since then, she’s spent her time building product marketing functions and super-star teams from the ground up across a variety of markets including market research, fintech, and supply chain. Today, Sophie works for Locus Robotics bridging the gap between robots and humans and enabling customers to embrace the workforce of the future. Sophie is an advocate for the voice of the customer and believes the only way for a company to succeed is by building trust, collaboration, and alignment across all functions. When not working, Sophie enjoys traveling the world and spending time with her husband and two daughters.

Episode 16: Overcoming Customer Indecision

As a sales rep, there’s nothing worse than when a deal you thought you had in the bag goes silent. When a customer says no, there’s some closure. But when a customer says, “I’ll think about it” or completely ghosts you as you follow up week after week – there’s nothing more frustrating. But it’s something that all sales reps experience. Customer indecision makes it hard to predict pipeline and revenue. But what if there was a way that you could better predict no decision deals and overcome customer indecision?

About our guest: Matt Dixon

Matt Dixon is one of the world’s foremost experts in sales and customer experience.  Known for his ground-breaking research, he is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and is the author of some of the most important business books of the past decade.  He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a company focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies win, retain and grow customer relationships.

His first book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (Portfolio/Penguin 2011), was a #1 Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller and has sold nearly a million copies worldwide and has been translated into a dozen languages.  The Challenger Sale has won acclaim as “the most important advance in selling for many years” (SPIN Selling author Neil Rackham) and “the beginning of a wave that will take over a lot of selling organizations in the next decade.” (Business Insider).  He is also the author of The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty (Portfolio/Penguin 2013), which introduced the concept of customer effort reduction and the Customer Effort Score to companies around the world, as well as The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results (Portfolio/Penguin  2015), the celebrated sequel to The Challenger Sale.  His newest book, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision, will be released by Penguin in September 2022.

Matt’s work has been published in the print and online editions of Harvard Business Review on more than twenty occasions.  Among his noteworthy HBR articles are “Dismantling the Sales Machine” (November 2013) and “The End of Solution Sales” (July-August 2012), both of which appear in HBR’s 10 Must-Reads on Sales.  He is also the author of some of the most widely cited HBR articles on customer experience and customer service, including “Reinventing Customer Service” (November-December 2018), “Kick-Ass Customer Service” (January-February 2017), and “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” (July-August 2010). 

In addition to his research and writing, Matt is a seasoned practitioner having held executive leadership roles in strategy, new product development, product management, research and innovation for companies like Tethr, Korn Ferry Hay Group and CEB (now Gartner).

He is a sought-after speaker and advisor to management teams around world, having presented his findings at a wide range of industry conferences as well as to hundreds of senior executive teams around the world, including those of many Fortune 500 companies.

Matt holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh as well as a B.A. in International Studies from Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  He currently resides in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and four children.

Episode 15: Building Strong Customer Relationships in a Digital Age

As salespeople, we must build trust with our customers. Whether we’re prospecting, conducting discovery calls, or deep into pitching to the buying committee, building trust is a vital piece to increasing win rates. But, building trust can be a struggle for sales reps and this directly impacts their pipeline and close rates.  As the buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, sales reps are having to find new ways to build trust with prospects. So how can reps build those strong customer relationships throughout the sales process?

About our guest: Jamie Shanks

Jamie Shanks is the CEO of Pipeline Signals.  Pipeline Signals is a pioneer in Relationship Signal Intelligence Monitoring, where they monitor and mine your TAM / List of Accounts for Relationship connections, Competitive Intelligence and Compelling Events like job changes. 

For 10 years prior, Jamie ran Sales for Life – the world’s largest Social Selling training program for mid-market and enterprise companies. Sales for Life has trained over 250,000 sales and marketing professionals, in dozens of industries. Jamie’s workshops have been delivered across 6 continents, for brands such as Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Oracle, American Airlines & Intel.

Episode 14: How to Increase Sales Coaching ROI

As sales leaders, we’re always trying to empower our reps. When they win as individuals, you win as an organization! But for B2B businesses, the time your reps spend with buyers is shrinking. We’ve mentioned this on previous episodes – As the B2B buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, it’s estimated that your rep’s only get 5% of that buyer’s journey. And in that shortened window of time, they’re still expected to build trust, differentiate from competitors, and demonstrate value to close deals at the same rate. This puts an increased pressure and responsibility on sales leaders and coaches to understand where reps are struggling and where to focus coaching efforts to make an impact, build sales rep confidence, and increase win rates.

About our guest: Steve Richard

Steve Richard is the founder of ExecVision & Vorsight (sold in 2021).  Steve’s mission and life’s work is to help as many sales teams as possible become wildly successful.  He has been featured in numerous publications including The Harvard Business Review, The Washington Business Journal, and The Washington Post.  Outside of work, Steve enjoys scuba diving, skiing, running, and watching lots of football.  He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife Ellen and their four kids ages 6, 8, 10, and 12.

Episode 13: Building Sales Confidence to Prospect at the C-Level

C-Level executives are key players in the buying committee for a B2B purchase decision. However, it can be hard to compete for an executive’s time and attention as a sales rep. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Sales leaders can help their reps capture the attention of C-level executives, better demonstrate value, build trust, and differentiate from competitors – and ultimately, help your solution stand out in a sea of vendors. There’s an art and method to prospecting in the C-Suite.

About our guest: Denis Champange

With a wealth of knowledge gained through the last 35 years in the sales industry, Denis Champagne integrates his Old School proven sales practices with New Age methods ensure quota attainment by leveraging technology to enable sales professionals to predictably scale pipeline, win more deals and enable client success.

He has prospected successfully for the last 15 years as an executive connecting to the C Suite for various clients on 4 continents, coached over 1000 reps in his own call center during the ten years of ownership and now coaches all over the world.

He specializes and focuses on coaching and training Account Executives or SDR, BDRs who are mandated to reach the same targets he did.

Denis’ focus is on helping sales professionals develop consistency, relevance, courage, confidence, and narratives to prospect effectively and reach their targets.

As a former elite Master athlete in cycling and a racquet professional earlier in his life, Denis brings this mindset of preparation and training to help sales teams operate with the mentality of elite athletes.

Just like sports, achieving excellence is the non-negotiable standard for Denis and he knows that a caring coach or mentor can make the difference in reaching the highest level of the sales profession.

Denis is married and coaches in English, French and Spanish.