Bill Gallagher (SPEAKER A) recounts leading 68 sales reps and growing a company from under $10M to a $300M sale. He criticizes aggressive sales tactics he terms "pitch slapping"—where salespeople assume a prospect has a problem and immediately pitch—and recommends instead asking thoughtful questions, approaching conversations with genuine intent, and helping customers solve real problems.
At one point, I had 68 sales reps out there doing their jobs. But my job was to go out and ask questions, find new markets, find unresolved market problems. And we would turn those into new products, new services. And that little company went from under 10 million when I started, and we sold it for 300 million. So once you've done that, it's in your blood. I can't stop it. It's like I'm on vacation on a cruise and my wife says, stop it. You're interviewing that guy. He's just somebody at our table. But everybody has challenges, right? And unfortunately, most salespeople do what I call pitch slapping, right? They assume you have a problem. They go out and they start pitching you. Now, the approach should be ask really good questions, try to have, like, some worthy intent and actually care about the other person and help them solve their problems.
