THE EASIEST WAYS TO BECOME MORE SUCCESSFUL IN B2B SALES AND SELLING
19 Feb 2025 · 35 min
In this conversational podcast episode, host Brian Burns and guest (Speaker C) discuss why deliberate practice is the missing link for most B2B salespeople. They argue that sales teams focus on activities and knowledge slides rather than rehearsing real‑world scenarios, and they break down the various forms of practice—role‑plays, post‑mortems, case‑studies, office‑hours, and personal preparation routines. Using sports analogies (Kobe vs. Allen Iverson, John Daly) they illustrate how talent alone is insufficient without consistent rehearsal. The dialogue then moves to common sales traps: the "big‑deal trap" (chasing oversized accounts), the "activity trap" (busy‑work without impact), and the "price‑focus trap" (quoting price before qualifying value). They outline concrete qualification and deal‑planning techniques, including probing for why the buyer wants the solution now, who the decision‑makers are, and tracking objections, red‑herring, and delays. Confidence‑building habits such as breathwork, last‑minute note reviews, and a mistakes‑tracker are presented as ways to improve performance. The hosts also stress the limits of charm, the need for empathy and value‑based selling, and the importance of modeling successful sellers. Throughout, they promote two flagship B2B Revenue courses—"Start the Conversation" and "Winning the Complex Sale"—and provide calls‑to‑action for listeners to enroll, emphasizing the ROI of these trainings.
Chapters
Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G.
Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer.
Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice.
Before it's showtime. Here we go. Practice makes perfect, don't it?
I think it does. I don't know about the make perfect, but practice is, is very important. And, and sales, I don't, at some point maybe lost our way a little bit. I don't think practice has been prioritized as much as Activities and other things. And, but it's an important subject. It's why, why do people avoid practice? Why do companies maybe avoid it sometimes? And that could be based off how people were practicing. That could be based off, it's, it's uncomfortable probably to practice, especially if you're doing it in front of people. But when you think about things that really move the needle, that help you, it's usually going to be the uncomfortable things that probably are at the top of the list. So I'd The practicing, because sales is a performance profession and it's how well you're doing things, I think is super important. But I don't know if a lot of people do it unless if they're forced, and then they're probably doing it in a lot of outdated ways. So people just don't gravitate towards it, at least right now.
Yeah. I mean, I can't remember more than a half hour in my whole career whether it was like a formal practice, maybe more, maybe on the presentation or the product. But people just are stuck in the knowledge trap. Do you know it? Right? We've all had the enablement meetings, right? It might be a week, a day, or a month, who knows? And what's it about? You know, I used to call it the 75 slides of gold. The CEO, he said, Brian, if you don't present all of these, you will never win a deal. I said to him, I go, wow, if I do present all of them, I will never win a deal. I cut it down to 13, I think.
It's pretty good. 75 to 13. You definitely, you got the most important ones in there.
Right?
Because we look at practice the wrong way. We think it's to just learn what to do, not how to do it. But we value experience infinitely, don't we? Experience. We want to— what is experience? Please, please tell me.
I've got about 14 years now. I'm getting up there. I have 14 years of sales experience. I can put that on my resume. That's good.
What is it? It's doing the same thing over and over again. That's experience, right? You see more variations, you see more case studies, you, you've done it more times. Sounds like practice to me. What, what do doctors and lawyers call their profession? The practice.
Hmm.
And why is that?
Because they're smart enough to know that it's not Doctor enablement.
You don't go to the hospital and the doctor goes for a day-long course on how to give you open heart surgery. Doctor, have you been enabled? Yes, I saw the commercial at the trade show. I'm ready. Who's next? Why do we view it in sales like— and it is, it's awkward, but there's more than one way. Practicing, right? There's role plays. I think that's what people conjure up when they think of practice. But there's the planning is practice. The postmortems are practice. Case studies are practice. Office hours are practice. Talking through your deals is practice. Preparing for your deals, reading books about your deals. But you got to do more than one. Reading is not practice. It's helpful. It gives you the knowledge. But the knowledge can be scary because it gives you too much comfort. You know, are you going to sail across the world after reading? I'm going to bring the book on sailing. See you in 3 months.
Yeah, no, I, I agree. I was— it was making me think about practice with sports, right? You know, professional athletes, like, they're not just showing up to the big game or the Super Bowl, whatever it may be, and not practicing. I mean, they're spending their whole life or the whole year preparing for these, these key moments. And if professional athletes or people that are really successful are still practicing, Why do we think in sales that we shouldn't practice or that we should avoid it or we look at it differently? And then just a little bit more on the sports thing is that I always think about Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson because they, they both came out at the same time in the NBA and they were very talented. Like they had equal— Allen Iverson maybe had more talent, but there's this famous YouTube video where Allen Iverson's complaining about practice. You know, he goes on a rant about practice and it went viral on YouTube. And it's like a funny meme that people always use these days. But for right or wrong, people remember Allen Iverson for that. And then if you look at like the final stats, he never won an NBA Finals. He never was like Defensive All-NBA. Like he, you know, those, those bigger like top 1% things he didn't do. And then Kobe had like 5 championships. He had all these different things. So you can debate about the talent and who's, who was on whose team and all that. But When you remember Kobe, you think about, oh, hey, he was shooting like 300 free throws after the game when they won by 30. You know, they won an NBA championship and then he's getting after it like the next week, starting training for the next season. So that's intense, obviously, but that's why he got to the elite status. And people remember Allen Iverson for complaining about practice, even though he was so talented. He still did great. He had a phenomenal career. But I think if people that successful are still practicing, or if you think about it that way, it's, it's like, how can you not be focused on it in sales? It doesn't make any sense.
And people talk themselves out of it. They say they're a natural, you know, because there's that— who's that guy in golf who's always drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while he's golfing?
John Daly. John Daly.
Right. But I look at that and I go, well, hold on, it's golf. Okay. It's not football. It's not basketball. It's not a marathon. It's not a physically exerting profession. And he may have a lot of natural talent, but is he the top golfer?
No.
Could he be? Maybe. I don't know. It's his bag, right? It's his brand. That's fine.
But yeah, he, uh, yeah, that's a, it's a funny comparison. He, he, he definitely had the talent back in the day in the '90s when he was like around Tiger's age, I think. But then he obviously had different priorities. He did, he did win a major just probably on pure talent, and then his extracurricular activities probably got in the way. And maybe he's okay with that too. I mean, it's also where are you trying to go, who are you trying to be, all that. But You know, he still had to. You know, he grew up. I don't know his whole story, but I'm sure he was naturally gifted. But he had to play a lot to get where he was. You know, it's not like he could still just walk up and beat top golfers despite whatever he was doing in the evening. But yeah, no, it's it's like and and they those people have a routine. They have the practice like before they have the game or the event. They're doing the same things over and over again. So it's. what we should be doing too.
Yeah, because— and a lot of reps kind of cop out because they see somebody get a bluebird, or they, you know, have the crutch of territory, timing, talent. And it's like, well, you can look at sales that way, but is that empowering you? Your income depends on how good you are. You might want to become better. Maybe if you want to make more, coming up with better excuses or better reasons or better feelings about not preparing, not really becoming a student of the game. You know, because I'm working on a video now, it's like you should practice sales like it's an art, but study it like it's a science. And if you take that mindset, it kind of hits better than a lot of analogies. But, you know, think of a chef that doesn't cook or thinks about cooking or reads a cookbook. I'll wait till he gets a couple of reps in the kitchen with that dish first before I order it. And I think they do too. And there's this, um, restaurant near my house where it's like one of the world's best chefs. It's like the alternative— it's the East Coast version of the French Laundry. And when you're there, you can tell if the chef is in the kitchen from the quality of the food.
They stepped their, they stepped their game up.
I mean, he's almost always there during dinner, but he's not there sometimes during breakfast. And you can just tell. And these are simple dishes that they've probably made thousands of times. But there's distinctions, right? It's just food. Same food, Anyone can buy. Same utensils anyone can buy. The same cookbook that he has published. And this is what puts people— a hex on them. You mean there's a talent to it? Yeah, there's a talent to it. And I think too many people in sales think it's just charm, right? Charm might get to the meeting, doesn't get to the deal. Charm will get you the phone call to get a callback, but no company's spending tens of thousands of dollars for someone to be charming. It's got to do something for them. What is that thing? You know, and the things like empathy, you know, can you ever really become great at empathy? If you can, good luck. It's hard. You know, what do you think the call's going to be like? And that used to be the question I'd ask myself. Does it get me curious about the call? And then I would grade myself. How well did I predict the call would go? What, what are they going to care about? What questions are they going to ask? What are they going to push back on? How far can we take the next step? Instead of going in there and reacting to what they say, and they're reacting to you and what you say. It's like no one's leading, but both people think the other person is, and it goes to no decision. How could that happen?
And then if you, if you don't put that practice in or that prep that you were talking about and Think through it or practice in whatever way, then you're going to be doing it live on that on that prospect. And and who knows how you're going to react to stuff or what curveball they're going to throw you. And if you're just completely winging it, yeah, you can get away with the gift of gab and like being quick on your feet to a certain extent. But eventually, that's going to catch up to you when you get asked the really hard questions that could delay it or stall it or whatever. Objection that might come out there. So the fact that you have that preparation or you practice, however it is, that, that makes a huge difference in the meeting because you don't want to sacrifice the money. The money in commission is typically at the top of everyone's list, and that's what drives a lot of salespeople. So why would you not do this because you're potentially sacrificing that, that money commission? It's probably Like you said, people don't want to think. They don't want to plan. It's just hard, and there's a lot of ego as well about hey, I don't need to prep for this. I've been doing it for a long time. The know-it-all syndrome, and they get they get too comfortable. Maybe they get a little too cocky, too complacent, and they don't think they need to prepare just because of their experience. But going back to like that master chef you were talking about, I'm sure. He has a process and he's doing stuff and there's a routine and all that. And he still, if he wants to stay at the top and have that expensive restaurant, he's got to be at his A-level also. So maybe the ego and the know-it-all thing comes to play there. But I'd much rather practice on someone else or beforehand than the real-life prospect and mess up. And then the whole deal goes AWOL.
Yeah, yeah, because I used to keep track of objections, uh, delays, uh, red herring, uh, naysayers and groups that had to get involved. And I'd go through the list before a meeting and it would help me. Okay, so, and those are the hard ones. How about the easy ones? How much is it? How many reps are prepared to tell Or take that and turn it into something? Or do they just give the price? Send me a quote. The number one killer of deals. And I've had reps tell me, well, they asked, I had to send the quote. Are you in sales? Are you in service? 80% of the reps are still in service because they choke. Well, your competitor is 10% less. If you can match that, we'll do the deal. What do 99% say? Okay. But the deal never closes. Oh, I should have asked more questions then. Yes, because now you can't call in, hey, I'd like to ask more questions before I concede that discount again. And this is what gets in the way. Now, is it knowledge? No, they knew how to do it. They just didn't have the guts to do it at the time. They didn't want to break rapport. They didn't want to ruin the deal. So what do they do? Do they accept they fucked it up? Or do they just say, eh, I think I handled it well?
Get a pat on the back. Well, yeah, the other thing too is They'll make those mistakes, but then you don't, you don't want to admit or you don't realize what mistake you made. I'm not sure which one it is, but you don't document it and then you keep doing it over and over again and you expect to get better. And sometimes you get lucky with stuff, but that, that's a painful thing. But I, I have a mistakes tracker basically that I write down mistakes from deals, also stuff outside of that. It's probably a good thing to do for life in general and not everything, but just bigger things that I'm like, I can't do that again. Like, if I do that again, I'm gonna lose a deal, or this and that. And that, that stands out. Like, for example, I was just thinking about one recently. You get so caught up in these big brands and these big logos and how much opportunity there is, all the upside. You just get enamored with it. And then especially leadership at companies do and all that. And it's— but are they likely to close quickly or anytime soon, or how hard— just realizing that, hey, this is going to be extremely difficult compared to some of these other mid-market companies, and what's realistic with that. But it's easy just to be like, oh, there's so much opportunity there. And then what happens is you go too big too fast and you overcommit, you overextend the company or resources, and that can, can backfire. And then you basically mess up the whole thing. Because if you don't, if you would have just started small and then built, you know, you'd be thanking yourself a year later. But it, you get pressure. There's a lot of factors go into that, but that's just like a small thing that it tends to come up a lot for me, or just really any sales situation. And you got to crawl before you walk type thing.
Right.
And you got to ask yourself, is this an emotion that I'm following, or is this a logic? I'm following. And the big deal trap is very hard to avoid. They pull you into it. Your manager pushes you into it. Keep going. This is big. Feels good. You think it's you that it's causing it, but am I really causing it, or am I just kind of going with it? Takes up an enormous amount of time. And always is the top priority. They called. Mr. Big Cheese called. He wants to know if we're integrated with this security thing that no one uses. We got to, we got to modify the product for that. And it's a trap because it's nearly impossible to avoid, but once you're in it, it's really hard to get out. They're not buying But they sure want attention, want time. My manager's pushing me to spend time with them. The more time I spend with them, the harder it is to not spend time with them. And when are you going to admit what it is? End of the quarter? And instead of breaking up, you should have like stepped back and say, what can we do right now to get you the results you're looking for? Here's an idea. This is what we did with someone else. This is what worked. And if they don't want to do it, they want to do something big someday. Well, that's nice. Any idea when that is? And it's always like, you know, 6 months away. But those things, and there's all kinds of them. The activity trap gets us. We love being busy, but is it really doing anything?
Not usually.
Yeah, we could just practice with how do we use our time. I can just— show me a rep's calendar and I can tell you how they're doing. I don't need their name. I don't need to know the product. I'll tell you how they're doing. I'll tell you the deal sizes they're closing, what their forecast looks like, because especially the younger reps, first-time reps, or reps who don't know what else to do will become busy. But even if you have a low transactional sale, not everyone's going to buy. Profiling the people who buy versus the people who waste your time. What's the difference? There's probably some consistencies there. You're in too early with the people that don't buy. You're at the wrong level. They're asking about things that don't matter. Uh, there's no sense of urgency. There's no compelling event. And the people who do buy, they've recognized the problem. They're looking for an alternative. They are asking the real hard questions. They're taking action. They're doing what they say. That takes a little bit of thinking, but you have to want it because no one's going to do that for you. You know, your manager will walk you through those questions on the forecast, but you treat that more as a quiz than a learning experience. It really should be a learning experience.
Yeah, no one's— it's probably hard to get your leadership to buy in, like, hey, it's a learning experience. But man, that would give you some credibility to be like, hey guys, look, we're going to do this RFP, but there's a 99% chance we're not going to get anything out of it. But it's— we're going to learn how they— how their process works. But that's like a next level thing you could do for sure. But yeah, the other thing about practice, I think it However you do it, it gets you more confidence. You get more comfortable. Like you were saying earlier, though, those moments where you have to push back against the client, a lot of people aren't comfortable doing that because it's a tough conversation. Like, oh, well, I, you know, I shouldn't be pushing back on them. But I mean, there's a right way to do it. That's why if you don't practice, if you don't think about it, you're going to say it the wrong way, or you're just going to cave in and not do it at all and just Do whatever they say. So those those moments, the tough conversations—I mean that—I don't think anybody. Well, there's some people maybe, but most people don't seek out the tough, unpleasant conversations, the awkward moments, the letting silence happen for five or ten seconds on purpose. I mean, all these different things that you do, and you have to practice that somehow, or at least say it out loud or write it down. And it's way better to do it that way than to wait for that moment because you, you'll choke like you said. I mean, you're just not— it's just not going to happen, right? There's very few exceptions on that. So I think the confidence and being more comfortable with it, that helps me. Like, I don't stress as much before big meetings or big events. Like, I have a routine. In fact, I used to cram Right before big meetings, or if I had a bigger engagement, whatever the case may be. But now I use that last like 20, 30 minutes and I'll do like a breathwork routine because it just evens me out and I feel good. I already have all my notes, I practice, and then I'm usually at an A or B level for my performance of it. But most people are probably cramming last minute, like, oh, what can we add to this? Or what can we do? Let's change this slide. And then, you know, you're Boss tells you to do this or that. So it's, that can get chaotic, but I, I feel way more confident and comfortable practicing and then relaxing before like the bigger conversations.
Yeah. And if you talk to most reps, you ask a simple question, why are they gonna buy? Not from your perspective, but from theirs. But why now? Who else are they looking at? What have they tried before? Who's behind this? Who's against it? Instead, what do they follow through with? Red herring objections, requirements, or fake next steps. Service clerk, do what they say, but you're not really qualifying them, qualifying the team at the client side qualifying the company, and do they look like the people who buy or the people who don't buy? You know, like the profiling, it's in both of my courses. Can't get anyone to do it. I'll do it for you. Have it, take it. They're like, what, what, what is this witchcraft you, you share, Brian? Well, how are you going to be empathetic if you don't understand their world? How do they get rewarded? Why are they there versus somewhere else? Very different personality and value systems. Are you aware of that? Do you care? Most of us care. Are they going to order or not? And we think we get in there faster by giving a proposal faster. Again, you don't have to do anything to get a no. You're all set. No effort required. To get a yes, you got to do something. Do you know how to— what that something is? Or are you going to go with your instincts? And you got to remember, what instincts do I have? Okay, if you're in sales for less than 5 years, your instincts may be working against you. Most times it is. You probably talk more than you listen. You, you hear what you want to hear versus what's being said. You think taking action is the only thing required to get the order. You think it's about price, not value. And you fall into these traps, and then, then you're like, how do I repair this? Well, this isn't anything yet. You have to go back and build something up. That's work. I'll just wait for another bluebird. That's not a strategy. Hopefully you, you want to be more than a, a service clerk, and I don't mean that in the pejorative sense of the word. I mean in the functional sense of the word. You know, can you compete not just on the product but compete against doing nothing? You know, when somebody says, well, let's keep this between you and I, please don't talk to anybody else at the company, it's, I'll get this done, we don't need anyone else's involvement, I've done this a million times. Do you believe that? I heard that on every sales call.
Yeah, most, most people do until you— it burns you.
Until you try and get something done, because apparently you're not in charge of the company. And these things, if you're not going through them with your deals, go through them with your partner's deal, somebody at the desk next to you. Go take the top rep out for lunch. Run your deals by them, or ask them, you know, what do you do differently than everybody else here? You're having some success. What do you attribute that to? What are most people here doing less effective than they should? And build your game up and play the whole game, not just the charm game or the reactive Service clerk game. Play the whole game and figure out what it takes to win.
And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, The misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.
That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them.
So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation is when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest into urgency. To get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So Winning the Complex Sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.
Really?
Yeah, the difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000, decent. Decent income, but you know there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals. And do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you.
A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't.
So sign up today.
We'll see you next time.
