In this presentation, Kyle Norton, CRO of Owner.com, shares a sales methodology for handling early cold‑call brush‑offs. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 vs. System 2 thinking, he argues that initial objections are reflexive protective heuristics rather than genuine concerns. To convert these reflexes into engagement, he introduces the NASCAR framework (Notice, Acknowledge, Sidestep, Continue, Ask, Real‑talk) and demonstrates how each step reshapes the conversation, supported by concrete rep scripts and real‑world results from Owner.com’s sales team. He also shows how the same principles can be adapted for email outreach, emphasizing research‑driven hypotheses and tonal gravitas. The talk blends behavioral psychology, practical sales tactics, and performance data to illustrate a repeatable system that turns “no” into continued dialogue and revenue growth.
Chapters
I'm Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner.com, where I lead go-to-market teams helping independent restaurant owners grow their direct online sales and delivery. Owner is a unicorn, one of the fastest growing companies in vertical SaaS, and we've built it on the backs of the phone. I'm also partner in GTM Fund and Stage 2 Capital. I advise and angel invest in early stage SaaS, and I also host the Revenue Leaders podcast. Why that matters here is I've sat in the operator, advisor, investor, and coach seats. I've watched objections play out across SMB and enterprise motions, and I've built repeatable systems that hold up on real calls and inside real inboxes. I'm only teaching what survives live fire here. And I can still remember my first days on the phone. Might've been a little while ago, but I can still remember. I folded at the very first brush-off. And I can still remember on that early Tuesday when somebody said, "We already have a vendor." My chest tightened. I gave them 5 reasons why we were better than the vendor they mentioned, only to realize that the prospect had hung up 3 reasons ago. And much like you, I talked too fast, took a knee-jerk reaction at face value, and I lost accounts that I could have won. And I didn't fear cold calling. I feared that first no and the silence that came after. Those early interruptions, they always felt like stop signs to me. Not openings. And back then I was really reacting to every little reflex instead of responding with thoughtful structure. And I didn't yet know there was a system for that. And a big breakthrough came when I realized on a cold call, these aren't real objections. The prospect wasn't even listening to me. And BDRs and SDRs, we shouldn't be handling these early interruptions like real objections because the prospect doesn't know enough about what you're calling about to give you a legitimate objection. They're just protecting their time with whatever comes out of their mouth first. And that's That's a totally different game than handling objections with somebody who's been through discovery, has seen a demo, and really has an understanding of what you offer. And so the shift for me came when I read this book called Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman. And he explained the difference between system 1 and system 2 thinking. And so I stopped hearing these early brush-offs as bad luck and legitimate issues. And I started hearing them as what they are, which is just protective reflexes. And once I learned that these are just heuristics, they're patterns, and that they weren't real objections, just a knee-jerk reaction, I stopped trying to handle them and started working to break the pattern and operate to bring them out of system 1 into system 2. So instead of freezing or trying to argue with budget concerns on a cold call, which made no sense because they didn't even know what this thing cost, I'd acknowledge, sidestep, and continue with real credibility and relevance. And so we built this NASCAR framework as our go-to model. And so I would notice the posture, notice, acknowledge, sidestep, continue, N-A-S-C, with something like, yeah, not a problem, John. The reason for the call is, and then I would just continue into my planned script. And then I could A, ask a question. That's the A in NASCAR. I could ask a question to hook a bit of interest and then use R, real talk, where I'd address the cold call itself, loop back to my research and value, and try to really hammer through that stone wall of System 1, and I wouldn't be trying to sell the product yet. I'm just trying to sell the prospect on listening to me for the next 10 or 20 seconds. On live calls, one rep who used to accept "call me later" picked up on 3 extra callbacks in a week simply by asking, "Totally understand. What's on your plate right now that makes this such a tough time?" Another rep stopped folding when a prospect said, "We're under contract," and instead said, "Got it. What's working best about your current setup?" That gentle curiosity often revealed that they weren't happy at all. One seller started using real talk, literally saying out loud, look, I know you get a ton of these cold calls and they're usually a waste of your time, and I take no offense to that, and I get you're trying to get rid of me, but the only reason I'm calling is because I noticed. And that consistently shifted everything for them. And the moment these reps stopped taking that first no as a real objection and started treating it as a reflex, as a pattern to break through, the whole motion shifted from losing that call to keeping it alive just long enough to hook the customer's interest with something else. And so at Owner Today, my sales team generates tens of millions in annual recurring revenue because we stopped treating these cold call brush-offs as stop signs and started treating them as pattern-breaking opportunities. And so you'll hear a lot of restaurant stories in this course because that's the world I work in every day. And I'm going to share a bunch of what actually works for us day to day. But the patterns are universal. And so whether you sell software or services or something entirely different, you'll face very similar knee jerks. It comes from the same principles of psychology. The moves that work are pretty simple. Break the pattern with gravitas and tonality. Use NASCAR to acknowledge, sidestep, continue, ask a question, and then hit them with real talk to address the cold call itself. And then back everything with a solid research-based hypothesis of need. And when you get good at this on calls, you can adapt pieces of it for email. Though honestly, if you get a brush off on email, often the best use of your time, in my opinion, is to just call them. So we're gonna unpack a lot.
