I recently spoke to Michelle Richardson and Russ Sharer, co-authors of new book Agile and Resilient: Sales Leadership for the New Normal.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Russ: After a start-up I worked for was sold, I wanted to find a way to work with sales teams and a friend suggested sales training companies.  I connected with TBG and have greatly enjoyed the time.  Before that, my experience with large (Ericsson & Rockwell) and smaller companies helped me see that far too often salespeople are only given product information and sent out to find revenue.  Professionally, my key experience was leading sales at Occam Networks and being named the fastest growing high-tech company in North America by Deloitte in 2006.

Michelle: I joined The Brooks Group in 2007 and have spent the last 15 years working with sales organizations to improve their talent strategy and overall sales effectiveness. Prior to joining The Brooks Group, I worked in both sales and sales training in the financial services industry. Here at The Brooks Group, I’ve been fortunate to work with organizations across many industries.  Every client is unique, but there are common threads (and common challenges) that run through them. I love digging in with clients to determine the root cause of their sales challenges and identifying the right path to achieving their objectives. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the key pitfalls to succeeding in sales and how can you overcome them?

Russ: Focus. Too many salespeople are focused on their product, their company, and their needs, rather than use their expertise to help solve a customer’s problem.  Refocusing on what the customer truly needs and wants separates you from 80%+ of salespeople.  Changing from a push mentality to a pull mentality is a major breakthrough for people in our classes.

Michelle: I agree with Russ; focus can be one of the biggest pitfalls in selling. Many sellers are focused on their product (and all the features, benefits, and technical specifications) rather than the customer’s needs and wants. We see this a lot in complex environments with highly engineered offerings. To be fair, most companies focus their training efforts on product knowledge, so product-focused selling is often reinforced from the top-down. The best sellers seek to understand their customer (and even their customer’s customer) more fully, and then present their products in a way that helps the customer achieve their goals. This increases trust with the customer, and positions the seller as a trusted advisor rather than a vendor. 

Adam: What do you believe is the hardest step in the sales process and how can it best be navigated?

Russ: Since all steps of a sales process builds on what has come before, I’ll say Prospecting – your success in sales is completely tied to having a multitude of highly qualified prospects.  Part 2 is making sure the prospects are qualified to help you properly invest your time as a salesperson.

Michelle: I’ll say the discovery phase, or in relation to our IMPACT sales process, the Probe Step. Many sellers tend to rush through this phase to get to the quote and the close. They don’t ask enough questions – especially follow-up questions – so they miss important information that could be valuable down the road. As a result, they leave money on the table because they didn’t fully identify the scope of the opportunity, or what their prospect was trying to achieve with the purchase.

Adam: What are your three best tips when it comes to selling?

Russ: 1. Ask better questions 2. Listen 3. Repeat

Michelle: 1. Qualify and prioritize opportunities. 2. Talk less, listen more. 3. Never leave a sales call without a definitive, agreed-upon next step.

Adam: What are your three best tips for sales leaders?

Russ: 1. Clearly define expectations. 2. Coach to skills not just deals. 3. If you’re the best salesperson on your team, it’s your fault not theirs.

Michelle: 1. Use a sales process – it provides a common language for coaching and communicating. 2. Tailor coaching and communication to your sellers’ behaviors and motivators (personal assessments can be a valuable tool for that). 3. Make sure your KPIs and compensation drive the right behavior.   

Adam: On a scale of 1-10, how important are ethics to succeeding in sales and why?

Russ: Our clients built long-term relationships with their clients, so ethics are very important.  We don’t buy from people we don’t trust, so over the long arc of the business relationship a salesperson must reinforce trust and ethical behavior.

Michelle: On a scale of 1-10, ethics are a 10! Ethics are important in building trust, and trustworthiness is critical to building long-term client relationships. In fact, we teach that it’s one of the criteria for qualifying deals. 

Adam: What is your best advice around making the ask?

Russ: Do the work upfront to understand needs and wants, then clearly connect the dots with why your product solves those issues or achieves those aspirations.  Then the ask is a simple question - “are you ready to get started”.  If you have to have tricks in this stage, you’ve likely skipped something important earlier.

Michelle: Russ is right. Making the ask and successfully closing business is a direct result of executing the earlier sales stages effectively. When a seller has qualified the opportunity, built trust with buyers, asked enough questions to understand what they want to achieve, and presented the right solution that connects to those needs and wants, then the ask should be simple and direct – like, “Are you ready to get started?” or, “Let’s discuss the next steps.”  This applies across the board, from transactional sales to complex, committee-based environments.

Adam: What are your best tips for improving your close rate?

Russ: Better questioning.  If you truly understand what the prospect is seeking, you will improve your proposal or walk away from the prospect to more qualified ones.  Make a “no” decision faster.

Michelle: I’ll say better deal qualification, which dovetails with Russ’s answer of better questioning. Qualifying deals based on defined criteria – such as a recognized need, timeline, budget, access to decision makers, trust level, and the buyer’s willingness to listen – will help sellers prioritize time and effort on opportunities with the highest likelihood of closing. (And, the best way to qualify deals is with better questioning.)   

Adam: What is one thing anyone can do tomorrow to become better at selling?

Russ: Move from closed-ended to open-ended questions.  While we all know this intellectually, it is hard to do.  In classes we do questioning exercises and when faced with asking a question without preparation, 90%+ go closed-ended.

Michelle: Building on what Russ said about open-ended questions, ask more follow-up questions. Sellers often settle for a surface-level answer from a buyer and then they move on to another topic (or worse, they start talking about their product). Make it a habit to ask at least 2 follow-up questions on a topic to uncover more (and better) information that can be used to build value for your proposal and justify price. 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Russ: Salespeople tend to overweight “relationship” in a sale, confusing being “liked” for being “trusted”.  Research shows relationships matter a lot more in follow-on business than an initial transaction.

Michelle: Often, a few small changes can have a large impact on a seller’s performance, regardless of their tenure or experience level. Things like sending an agenda before a call, using open-ended questions, or asking more follow-up questions are relatively innocuous changes than anyone can incorporate into their sales interactions. I encourage sellers to identify one or two skills they want to target. These changes will improve sales interactions incrementally and over time, lead to more valuable client relationships.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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