In this 30‑minute interview, Evvy AI CEO Joe Apfelbaum hosts veteran sales trainer Jeff Goldberg to discuss why the most effective salespeople spend less time talking and more time asking questions, listening, and storytelling. Jeff introduces the concept of the "accidental seller"—coaches, consultants, and solopreneurs who didn’t set out to sell but must— and explains how his 12‑week Sales Confidence Lab teaches them (and seasoned reps) a full sales skill set: mindset, rapport building, question‑asking, presentation, objection handling, cold‑calling, LinkedIn prospecting, networking, negotiation, and AI‑enhanced selling. The program blends group instruction with weekly one‑on‑one role‑play coaching and culminates in professional prospecting modules. Joe showcases an AI‑driven Sales Confidence Assessment that asks 20 diagnostic questions, generates a confidence score, and recommends enrollment in the Lab. Throughout the conversation, both hosts emphasize that confidence stems from planning, practice, and mastering three core seller traits—expert questioning, active listening, and compelling storytelling—to overcome the brain’s natural resistance to buying. The dialogue also serves as a promotional pitch, urging listeners to register for the upcoming cohort (limited seats) via salesconfidencelab.com.
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Salespeople think they get paid to talk. They don't. They get paid to ask questions and listen. It's simply about having better conversations.
When you get someone on the phone and you make your pitch, you just shut up. All right, welcome everybody. This is Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Evy AI, and with me I have my sales sales trainer, the ultimate, the best, the most incredible sales trainer, the Sales Confidence Architect, Jeff Goldberg. Jeff, thank you for being here. Round of applause.
Joe, thank you for having me, Joe. I'm so excited to be speaking with you.
Always exciting.
I just wish you were a little higher energy.
Yeah, I know. I got to take it to the next level. I'm actually coming out with a new book called High Energy Prompting that I finished during my birthday. I was telling you about my birthday. So I finished a new book called High Energy Prompting. I wanna send you the manuscript so you could look at it and you can tell me what you think and maybe write an endorsement for the inside of the book. That would be lovely.
I would love to see it and would be happy to write an endorsement. And that, that sounds like something that's truly needed. Because everybody today, I mean, you know, with AI changing by the millisecond almost, everybody needs to be a prompt engineer. And I think that having a great resource like that would be invaluable to sales teams and to everybody.
Okay, so talk to me about your— how does— how do people sell? I mean, people, people are very confused about selling. A lot of people are getting on the phone and they're botching, they're botching their sales. No, seriously, they're botching their sales. They're not doing a good job. You've been teaching sales for north of 30 years. You're an expert at sales.
Salespeople think they get paid to talk. They don't. You and I get paid to talk when we're professional speakers, but when I'm selling and when you're selling, we don't get paid to talk. We get paid to ask questions and listen. And that's what I teach people how to do, how to have better conversations that result in more people saying, yes, I'd like to do business with you. I originally devised this program for what I call the accidental seller. It turns out it's great for professional salespeople too. But the accidental seller to me is like a coach. I think this is perfect for coaches, consultants, solopreneurs, small business owners who didn't go into business to sell. Like, like, If you're a relationship coach, you introduced me to a relationship coach, or wasn't she a sex coach or something like that once?
Yeah, yeah.
She went in to help people with their sexual challenges, but she has to sell. Everybody has to sell. You could be the best coach in the world, but if you can't sell, you're gonna starve. So I created this program primarily for that type of person. But again, professional salespeople are profiting from it too. So it's, we're covering everything from the mindset of selling to the actual skill sets. How do you open up a relationship the first time you meet somebody? and establish rapport with them? How do you ask questions, and what are the right questions to ask? And how do you ask them in a way that doesn't seem like an interrogation? How do you make sure that you understood everything properly? How do you make a presentation where you're sharing what you can do for somebody in a way that they're going to be able to listen to, but it doesn't sound like bragging, it sounds like helping? How do you tell good stories that help people get past brain science? Which brain science says when they're making a buying— when people are making a buying decision, the brain is telling you, no, don't do that. And it gives you all the reasons not to. And we as sellers have to tell good stories to help people get past brain science so that they can change their mind and choose to become our customer. How do you close objections and rebuttals? How do you cold call? How do you use LinkedIn? Not like you would, of course, uh, you're the expert on that, but I talk a little bit about that. Getting referrals, networking. I take them from how do you get appointments to how do you actually sell in 12 short weeks. Now, I want to make one thing clear. I don't want anybody to be misled. It's not me working one-on-one with one person for Uh, 12, uh, 12, 24 hours over 3 months. It's with a group of up to 20. Like right now we've got 6 people registered for January 6th, so I can have another 14 because I want the group to stay small.
So congratulations, congratulations, you're almost sold out and you got 2 weeks left. So whoever's listening to this right now, this isn't a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Jeff Goldberg is not doing this again. And if you want to be able to get on on January 6th You can go to salesconfidencelab.com and you could sign up right now, grab your seat. In the first week, he's going to teach you mindset. On the second week, he's going to teach you how to build rapport. In the third week, he's going to teach you the 3 traits of great sellers, features versus benefits, and developing your brief commercial. In the fourth week, he's going to teach you presenting, closing, and asking for money without feeling icky. In the fifth week, he's going to teach you Pre-planning meeting, post-planning follow-up, and stop getting ghosted. In the 6th week, he's going to teach artificial intelligence in sales, which I'm really excited about. In the 7th week, he's teaching networking essentials. The 8th week, he's going to teach active listening and confirmation step. In the 9th week, he's going to teach you how to negotiate like an FBI negotiator. On the 10th week, he's going to teach you one-on-one role-play, feedback, coaching in the sales process with Jeff.
And then actually, that's not me teaching them. In the 10th week, we don't have a meeting that week. Everybody gets a one-on-one with me where we're role-playing and I'm coaching them on. So everybody in that week does get private coaching.
Wow. That's incredible. Week 11.
And then we go on to week 11. Yep.
Week 11, you guys get back into Professional Prospecting Part 1, and week 12, you guys wrap up with Professional Prospecting Part 2 and putting it all together. Wow. This is an incredible journey around the globe. of actually closing deals. And by the way, this is where confidence comes from.
Yes. Uh, confidence comes from knowing what to say and what to do. If you, if you're winging it, look, there's an old saying, amateurs wing it, professionals plan. So if you want to be a professional salesperson, whether you're a really professional salesperson or an accidental seller that has to sell, you just need the confidence. And the way you get confidence is by training. You know, how does somebody get confident on LinkedIn? By figuring it out over years. They could maybe, or they can sign up for one of your many fabulous courses, several of which I've taken, which in just a few short— I think I took one with you in like in 6 hours about Sales Navigator and suddenly I'm like, oh, all those things that I was trying to figure out on my own, I could have saved a lot of time. All I had to do was invest a little bit of money and boom, I got what I need. And it gave me the confidence to use Navigator professionally. Same thing here. I'll take people in just 12 short weeks, 3 short months, and you will have the confidence because you know what to say. You're not going to walk into sales going, what do I do next? How do I handle this? How do I get this person talking? How do I find out what I need to know? Because that's not the way most people sell. The way most people sell is, you know, Joe, it's, hey Joe, so glad to meet with you today. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for it. Let me tell you why Jeff Goldberg and Associates is the greatest training and coaching firm in the world. And then you vomit all over them. Well, that's called a product dump and it doesn't work.
Right.
Now, I'm actually gonna take that back. It does work because that's how most salespeople sell. It just, it doesn't work well. The way I teach will get you more. It's not like I'm going to teach people how to sell who don't know how to sell and they're suddenly going to become sales geniuses overnight. But what it's going to do is it's going to help you sell more than you would if you just did it the way most people do.
Wow.
Most people are just pitching. You even used the word before, pitching. It's not about your pitch. Here's the 3 things that all great sellers have. One, they're the best question askers every single time. 2, they're the best listeners. And most salespeople, and this is a technical sales training term, most salespeople suck at listening. They're horrible listeners. And then they have to tell good stories. Yeah.
I love it.
And then they have to tell good stories. So, I teach all 3.
And the Non-Salesperson Guide to Selling with Confidence, that's what the Sales Confidence Lab is about. Why did you call it a Sales Confidence Lab?
Because in speaking to salespeople, I found out that they lack confidence. And in fact, this is interesting. I'm sure you've had the same experience. You know, you'll work with a company for a while on an engagement, and when the engagement's ending, you debrief with them. What went well? What could I have done better? Things like that. And I was working with a company about, gotta be about 9 years ago now. They manufacture load balancers, which are computer hardware. And big company, lots of salespeople, lots of managers. I'm sitting with all the management team and the VP of Sales and the SVP of Sales after everything's over, just wrapping up. And, you know, what'd you like? What didn't you like? What could I have done better? And to a person, each manager said, And I, I was surprised by this, by the way, cuz I'd never thought of it before. But each of them said, oh, what I like best is our salespeople now have more confidence. And it never occurred to me in all the time I'd been doing this, that what I teach is salespeople to have more confidence.
Um, check this out. So I use artificial intelligence to create a sales confidence assessment, and it asks 20 diagnostic questions, and then at the end of it, It gives you a score and tells you if you should be joining the Sales Confidence Lab. So here are the questions.
I love it.
Tell me, tell me. Yeah. And I'll give this to you as my gift because you're such an awesome dude and you can throw this on any website. It'll work perfectly. So when meeting with a new prospect, I ask questions about their situation before explaining my solution. Never or always. I ask questions about their situation. I'm going to say I never ask questions about their situation. I just go right into my solution. Okay. I'm comfortable telling the prospect that they're not a good fit for what I offer. Never. Of course, never. Why would I ever tell them they're not a good fit? I want to sell everybody everything.
No, no.
I establish a clear agenda and timeframes. Never. I never establish a clear agenda and timeframes. Why would I want to do that? Okay. When a client goes off topic, I redirect the conversation to B issues. I don't know how to redirect the conversation. Okay. Um, I state my pricing without apologizing, just justify their softening language or use softening language. I have to use softening language, otherwise it's not going to work. Okay.
Fantastic, Joe. And by the way, when I'm with you, I don't feel like a genius because you are literally a genius. Uh, I feel stupid half the time, but, uh, when it comes to sales, if I have any area of genius, that might be it.
Amazing. Now, now that I finished the, um, the second questionnaire, the second questionnaire, I want to present it to you. This is the Sales Confidence Questionnaire, the non-salesperson guide to sales confidence. 16 questions to discover your confidence level and unlock your sales potential. So it actually asks you questions instead of doing that. I kind of like this a little bit better. Um, when you're meeting a prospect, what's your typical approach? I jump right in. I mention my solution. I balance asking questions, or I always answer questions first. So this kind of gets you to think a little bit more and it kind of goes through all of them and it breaks it down into objection handling, Pricing and value, control discovery. So I'm gonna fill this out without even thinking. I'm just gonna kind of go through it and just pick random ones just to kind of do it quickly and just show you the result and what it looks like and how it recommends your product. And of course, this is my gift to you that you could use however you see fit. But if you were running ads—
Happy Hanukkah.
Happy Hanukkah, exactly. I love doing this for my friends and my clients and helping them out. So if I press get confidence score, It gives me a 27 confidence score and it tells you you're facing significant confidence challenges. And the reality, the breakthrough, it gives you a score of each one of the 4. And then you can access the Sales Confidence Lab here and download your full report. And if you download the full report, you can actually see what the report looks like, which is actually a really nice, uh, text report like this. And it tells you the whole thing here and the date and everything. So this is really nice. Um, when you get on the phone with someone to kind of give them this sales confidence, uh, report.
You are awesome, man. You are awesome.
This is really good. This is a really good report. I really like this. This is a version 2. Isn't this better? It even matches your brand.
Everything you do is best. You're, you're, you, you are stunningly incredible. I'm so fortunate that I got introduced to you and I'm so honored that I, that I call you, uh, can have the honor and privilege of calling you friend.
Well, I'm excited to seeing you fill your class. It's gonna be sold out. So if you're not in it already, get in it to win it. And I will see you guys on the other side. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate you. Want to make networking easier and more effective? Try Evvy AI, your AI-powered sidekick that helps you connect, engage, and grow your network faster than ever. Click the link and start building smarter relationships today.
