In this episode Eric Siu and Neil Patel dissect why sales deals fall apart, drawing on patterns they observed in over a thousand recorded calls. They argue the single most critical mistake is botching the first sales call – insufficient research, unfocused questioning, and failure to demonstrate industry‑specific expertise erode buyer confidence. Throughout the conversation they frame every interaction as either a confidence builder (quick response, tailored knowledge, concise communication) or a confidence killer (over‑talking, vague references, lateness). They discuss leveraging AI tools such as Gong, multilingual transcription, and voice‑synthesis platforms to review calls at scale, noting both benefits and limitations. Cultural differences in sales tone (American vs. Italian, French, Chinese) are highlighted as a nuance that requires adaptation. Operational discipline—punctuality, incremental process fixes, and avoiding one‑size‑fits‑all “guru” tactics—is presented as a sustainable path to higher conversion rates. They also critique the high‑ticket sales education market, warning of brand damage and burnout. The episode closes with a brief promotion of Neil’s agency NP Digital and its SEO tools (Ubersuggest, AnswerThePublic) and a reminder to subscribe.
Chapters
Well, let's talk about why you lose sales deals. So we give you guys some feedback based on the gone calls that we listen to. Do you want to share some, some trends that you've seen as to why people lose sales deals?
The biggest reason people lose sales deals is not doing the first call correctly. So whenever you have a call with someone in sales, you're first asking them about them, their company, their problems, what solutions doesn't, you know, whether it's B2B or B2C, and you're trying to figure out how you can actually help them. If you don't take the time to try to do as much research as possible before the call and you don't ask them the right questions during the call, you're not going to understand enough about them, their business, the problems, potential solutions, budgets, things like that. And the rest of the sales cycle is going to be messed up. And I say, for all the sales calls that I've listened to, the biggest issue starts with the very first call and people not taking the time to do it correctly and really listen.
Every single touchpoint is a confidence killer or a confidence builder. And all they want to know is if you can do the job or not. And so, when they ask you questions like, hey, like, so what industry do you focus on? If I tore my ACL, I really care if you actually have done ACL surgeries before. I don't care if you've done like X, Y, and Z and talk about all the other industries that you've served.
Yeah.
You start to veer. That tells me you're unfocused and you don't know how to focus on what my problem is. Every single thing that you do is a confidence-building thing. And so when it comes to like getting on a call, if you can get on a call quickly, oh, these guys are fast. Oh, wow. They know what we're talking about. Oh, they actually listen. They've done research on us. Well, they can do a proposal in a timely manner or whatever. It seems like they're more buttoned up. It's all a confidence-building exercise. But there's also like minus points too. So I've just found that that's probably the main thing. And I would just add one more thing that less is more. When you start saying a bunch of stuff, that also kills confidence too. Yes.
Yeah, I would agree with that. We've also found in sales, because of AI, it's much easier for us to listen to calls. I know Gong will summarize things and help you go through recorded calls faster. We like going one-on-one and actually listening to the whole call minute by minute instead of just looking for a summary, because you'll notice things that, let's say, Gong won't pick up.
Yeah.
But you can also use AI now to translate someone's voice and sales call, like let's say from Italian to English, which allows us internally to listen to way more sales calls.
Do you use ElevenLabs for that?
I don't know what we do. I just get the audio file and I listen.
Yeah.
The voices of course don't match up to the people's real voice, but we don't really care. And that's helped us really fix and grow our sales globally.
Yeah.
And that's been a game changer for us.
That's fascinating because You know, like Americans are generally more aggressive, right? But when you're talking to like, if you're talking to like an Italian, for example, or like a French person, they have different nuances in their culture.
Yes.
Whereas like if you talk to a Chinese person in China, like they're probably even more aggressive. Yeah. So it's interesting because your feedback will probably be more aggressive, but then it's like, how do you adapt the cultural nuances? And I don't have an answer for that right now.
We look at everything because when you do recorded calls, we can actually see when the call was scheduled. when they showed up. So we know which of our people are late to the call.
Yeah.
Which pisses us off. Like you cannot make someone wait for you. If you're not early, you're late. That's our philosophy with sales, right? So we start looking at all these things and you just fix them one by one. It's not one thing that fixes sales and just skyrockets your numbers. Like everyone, every guru likes to pitch, do this one thing and you'll skyrocket your revenue. And I was like, no, it's not one thing. It's do a lot of things and over time they add up. And the reason I bring this up is, dude, I don't know about you, but on Instagram, I keep getting messages from people like, let's see, where was this one person? I responded to them. They're just like, Neil, let's chat, man. Last year we did over $60 million in high-ticket sales with, I'm not going to name the program. Let's do an extra $100 million with you. Okay? So they're talking about how they did $60 and they're telling me how they want to get to $100 with me. They shouldn't be making it about them at all. It should be about me. And I get if they do 100, I'm making money too, but it sounds like it's more about them than me.
And you responded? Why'd you respond?
And they sent me a Loom video talking about how they were so successful last year. So my response was, we don't do high-ticket sales. We don't sell training or info. We are enterprise company. So then they get a response. Hey Neil, have you ever thought about launching a high-ticket program? With your audience size, the revenue potential and profit would be massive. And I respond with, not for us. And then they say, I appreciate you. But like, you know, I get so many of them. And this person I did respond to because they have such a massive following in the sales space.
Okay.
But even then they just don't want— like, people believe that they can just teach you this one tactic and you're going to close a ton of revenue. And I met someone in this conference room, no joke, who does high-ticket sales for one of their business. And they're like, yeah dude, doing over $1 million a year. I'm like, Yes, you're promising people the world. They're not getting the world. You're going to have tons of chargebacks and you're going to burn your brand.
Yep. And you're going to keep doing it until you get burnt out yourself.
Yeah.
All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital. And they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more. And we'll see you on the other side. Dude, um, I don't know if you saw this tweet. Did I share this tweet with you? Um, so Andrew Tate, uh, he tweeted something. He was like, um, you know, if you are a modern man and, uh, you know, you don't have multiple wives with multiple children, you are not a conqueror, right? And then, uh, Mike, the, uh, the friend of Logan Paul, Mike, uh, Mike Malak responded. He's like, calm down, Alexander the Great, you sell courses. I thought it was pretty funny. And then did he even get a response? I don't think he responded, but it's interesting because the original tweet from Andrew Tate got like 5 million views on it. And then—
Yeah, he's not conquering anything. He's just selling courses.
Yeah. And so, you know, hey, whatever works. It's just not for us. We've helped people that have big brands with courses and stuff. We don't have a problem with education. We're doing education right now. But I think our stance on it is we would rather give away the vast majority of our education and then serve people On when they actually need the help. That's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. It helps us grow. And goodbye. Goodbye.
