The Sales Evangelist

Ep 2051 | Isaac Ho - How to Mentally Prepare for a Successful Discovery CallA therapist-turned-sales-coach walks me through a live, unscripted discovery call role play, and it exposes exactly where most reps go wrong before a single question gets asked. Isaac Ho, who coaches entrepreneurs on the mindset side of high-ticket sales, breaks down what's actually happening in your head before a call and why that matters more than any script. This one has been sitting in the back catalog for a while, and it earns another run because the mindset problems it covers never really go out of style.Your Beliefs Shape What Happens on the CallA buyer isn't reacting to your price as much as he's reacting to the belief you're carrying into the room about your price.A $20,000 piece of gym equipment got sold at a steep discount, not because the buyer pushed back on cost, but because the rep expected a money objection and started slashing the price before anyone asked.That pattern shows up constantly. Whatever belief a rep walks in with about how the call is going to go tends to shape the prospect's actual response to it.Discovery Calls Run on Energy, Not Just QuestionsSales is a transfer of energy, and a prospect is reading that energy within the first few minutes of a call, often before a single real question gets asked.Showing up unprepared, distracted, or carrying frustration from somewhere else in life changes your tonality enough for a prospect to feel it and start to disconnect.Dealing with whatever you're carrying into the call before you dial in isn't optional self-care, it's a direct part of doing right by the person on the other end.Preparation Changes How You Show Up in the RoomWalking into a call with zero research puts you in a subservient position, fishing for basic information instead of leading a real conversation.A little homework ahead of the call changes both the questions you ask and the way you carry yourself, because you show up believing you belong at the table.It isn't your job to explain your own business model to a prospect who hasn't bothered to look into it. That's homework they should have done before the call, not during it.Curiosity Beats a Preconceived SolutionAssuming you already know the problem, like assuming every web services inquiry is really about wanting a new website, skips the real conversation and sells a fix to the wrong issue.A prospect's stated want and their actual problem are often two different things, and only real curiosity closes that gap.The goal of a discovery call is helping someone see their problem differently, because thinking about it the same old way just keeps them stuck in it.The Live Role Play, Broken DownIn the role play, a simple opening question, what made you want to set up this call, immediately handed control of the conversation to the prospect instead of the rep.Each follow-up question dug one layer deeper into the actual cost of the problem, from missed family dinners to lost revenue, instead of settling for the first surface-level answer.Asking why you think you're creating that problem lets the prospect arrive at his own insight, which lands far harder than being told the answer outright.Three Things to Clear Before You Dial InGet honest about whether a yes or no answer feels like it's about your own worth. If it does, you'll start treating objections like personal arguments instead of normal parts of a sales conversation.Accept in advance that not everyone will move, even when you handle the call perfectly, because some people see the problem clearly and still choose to stay stuck in it.Know your own shadow and trigger patterns, since suppressed feelings and undealt reactions tend to surface right when a prospect brings up money."Sales is just a transfer of energy." — Isaac HoLeadership Advice, Books, and QuotesThe core idea behind this episode is that a discovery call is decided before it starts, by whatever belief, energy, and baggage a rep brings into it. Clear your head, set a real intention to understand instead of to sell, and let the prospect arrive at their own answer instead of handing it to them. That shift alone changes how people respond to you on a call.ResourcesConnect with Isaac Ho on LinkedIn and let him know you heard him on this episode.Tell me what you thought of this role play on LinkedIn.Sponsorship OffersThis episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.CreditsAs one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey.We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Your video outreach can look great and still get ignored by the exact executives you're trying to reach. This one is pulled from the archive, and it earned that spot because the problem it solves hasn't gone anywhere. Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing and Chief Video Strategist at Vidyard and co-author of The Visual Sale, joined me to break down what actually gets enterprise buyers to open, watch, and reply to a prospecting video.Rethink What Actually Counts as a VideoA lot of people still picture video as a polished, one-to-many production with drone footage and professional editing, and that assumption alone keeps plenty of reps from ever hitting record.A simple webcam recording or quick screen share works fine, because the goal is communicating an idea clearly, not producing something that looks like a commercial.The real shift is seeing video as a faster, more effective way to answer a question or explain something, not as a special project that needs a production budget.Treat Video as Part of the Rhythm, Not a Silver BulletSending ten prospecting videos and expecting five replies sets the video up to fail. It's one piece of an outreach sequence, not a standalone bet that has to prove itself in isolation.Video doesn't replace phone calls, social touches, or written emails; it adds a layer of familiarity that makes the rest of that sequence land better.Once a video sits inside the regular rhythm instead of being judged on its own, the fear of it "not working" stops being a reason to skip it altogether.Write a Subject Line That Creates CuriosityA subject line like "Donald, a quick video for you" works because it creates a curiosity gap, and the brain doesn't sit well with an unanswered question without clicking to resolve it.Naming the word "video" directly in the subject line raises open rates on its own, since it stands out against a sea of plain, text-only subject lines.This curiosity effect holds across seniority levels, from an entry-level buyer to a C-suite executive, because it taps into basic human psychology rather than a specific title.End With a Low-Lift Call to ActionAsking for thirty minutes of someone's time on a first video is the same awkward ask reps already overuse in cold emails, and it falls just as flat on video.Offering to send a second, slightly more detailed video is a much easier yes, since anyone who already watched the first one has shown they're open to watching another.A low-lift CTA like that opens the door to more face time with a prospect without asking for a meeting before any real trust has been built.Make the Visual Do the TalkingRecording with a prospect's own LinkedIn profile visible on screen behind you turns the video thumbnail into something personal enough to earn a click on sight.One memorable example involved a rep showing his own search results next to a competitor's ad, with five-star reviews stacked underneath it, proving a point visually instead of describing it in a sentence.Showing something instead of explaining it saves the viewer the work of looking it up themselves, and that shortcut builds trust faster than a written pitch ever could.Use Video Beyond the First Cold OutreachA short video attached to a meeting reminder lift shows rates, because it puts a real, energetic person in front of the invite instead of another plain calendar notification.A quick recap video after a meeting can travel further than expected. If a champion forwards it internally, it introduces you to decision-makers who were never on the original call.Recording a short answer to a question you get often, once, and reusing it saves real time on every future deal that runs into the same question."It's about connection, not perfection." — Tyler LessardLeadership Advice, Books, and QuotesTyler's core message throughout this episode is that video works because it's human, not because it's polished. Every tactic here, the subject line, the low-lift CTA, the visual proof on screen, is really just a way of making a message feel like it came from a real person rather than a template. His book, The Visual Sale, co-written with Marcus Sheridan, goes deeper into how to build that kind of visual communication into a full marketing and sales process.ResourcesConnect with Tyler Lessard on LinkedIn to ask about video strategy for your own enterprise outreach.Check out Vidyard for video tools built for sales and marketing teams.Pick up The Visual Sale by Tyler Lessard and Marcus Sheridan for the full framework.Tell me how you're using video in your outreach on LinkedIn.Connect with Tyler on LinkedInSponsorship OffersThis episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.CreditsAs one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

You’re behind on quota with a handful of weeks left in the year, and the easiest lever sitting in front of you is a discount. In this solo episode, I explain why that lever almost always costs more than it saves, and what I’m telling my own team to do instead in these last 45 days.Why Discounting Costs More Than the Discount ItselfA 10% discount on a 40% gross margin sale cuts your profit per deal from $40 to $30, which means you need roughly a third more volume just to land where you started.Discounting at the finish line also raises an uncomfortable question for the buyer. It makes them wonder whether your original price was ever honest in the first place.A discount this year trains buyers to expect one next year too, which quietly resets their anchor price and makes full-price selling harder every quarter after this one.Clean Up Your Pipeline Before You Chase ItA pipeline full of stale or unqualified deals makes your numbers look worse than they are and makes it impossible to plan your last 45 days with any accuracy.When a deal slips one to four weeks past its original close date, win rate falls by 34%, and once it slips more than a month, win rate drops even further.A deal that's slipped that far is close to unrecoverable in-quarter, so it belongs on next year's list, not on this week's call sheet.What to Actually Check in Every DealConfirm there's a real compelling event driving urgency, since no amount of pressure from your side manufactures one that doesn't already exist.Identify every decision maker in the deal and make sure you have direct communication with each one, not just your single point of contact.Verify the budget is actually there right now, because a great champion with no funding isn't a Q4 deal, it's a Q1 conversation at best.Split Your Time 60/70 on What's Closing NowSpend roughly 60 to 70% of your remaining time on deals that are genuinely capable of closing this quarter, not the ones that merely feel close.The other 30 to 40% still goes toward building next year's pipeline, since Q1 shouldn't start from zero just because Q4 got intense.This isn't about abandoning anyone. It's about being honest with yourself about which deals have a real shot before the calendar runs out.Use the Buyer's Calendar, Not Just Your OwnMany buyers are working with a use-it-or-lose-it budget tied to the calendar year, and that pressure can work in your favor if you ask about it directly.If a buyer can't commit to the full scope right now, structure a smaller entry now with room to expand next year, rather than letting the whole deal slide to January.Decision makers often disappear for the second half of December, so lock in their time now instead of trying to chase a signature while they're on vacation.Build a Mutual Action PlanA mutual action plan built backward from the close date keeps both sides aligned on exactly what has to happen and by when.Without one, the buyer doesn't know what's expected of them, and you're left guessing at where the deal actually stands.This document doesn't have to be complicated. A clear list of steps and owners, shared early, does most of the work on its own.This Week's ActionAudit your full pipeline first. Confirm decision makers, budget, and a real compelling event exist on every deal still on your list.Pick your top five deals and build a mutual action plan for each one, using a tool like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini to draft it quickly.Send that plan to each buyer this week, or set up a call to walk through it together, so everything is in motion well before the year runs out."The end of the quarter scramble costs more deals than it closes." — Donald C. KellyLeadership Advice, Books, and QuotesThe core principle behind this episode is simple. Don't let the pressure of a deadline push you into a discount that trains your buyers and shrinks your margin. Audit your pipeline honestly, work the buyer's calendar instead of fighting it, and trade for value instead of giving it away.ResourcesTell me which of these you're trying this quarter on LinkedIn or Instagram.Learn more at The Sales Evangelist.Sponsorship OffersThis episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.CreditsAs one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

A year ago, I thought AI was mostly a research tool. That assumption didn't age well. In this solo episode, I walk through the four places AI actually earns a spot in my sales process today and where I still insist on doing the work myself.Finding the Right Prospects Without GuessingI use a tool called Zenith to research prospects on LinkedIn through Sales Navigator, pull up what they've recently posted, and queue up a relevant comment or connection request based on that content.A human still has to approve every message before it goes out. I'm not letting this run unsupervised, and I edit plenty of what it drafts before it reaches anyone.This process alone books around three appointments a week for me, and the difference comes from how relevant the outreach is, not just how much of it there is.Building Sharper Prospect Lists With AI ResearchI connect Claude to data platforms like Apollo and Lusha to build and enrich prospect lists for email campaigns with a level of precision that used to take hours of manual digging.A real example is finding publishers in a specific state who have a set number of books releasing this year and a newly hired director over content. That's the kind of narrow, specific research AI handles well.AI can find better prospects, but it isn't sending the emails or doing the relationship work on its own. The research has to be precise and relevant, and that precision is what actually moves the needle.Meeting Recaps, Follow-Ups, and Prep EmailsFathom joins my calls and takes the notes, then Claude turns those notes into a meeting recap with clear next steps that I can send straight to the prospect.That same process updates our in-house CRM automatically, logging notes and creating follow-up tasks on the account without me touching a keyboard.Before the next call, I can also get a prep email drafted that references the last meeting's action items and asks the prospect to confirm or add to the agenda, which saves a meaningful chunk of prep time.Drafting Proposals From Discovery Call NotesI can take the notes and conversation from a discovery call and have our AI agent draft a full proposal based on what was actually discussed, following our standard template.AI drafts it, then my team or I review and refine it before anything goes out, since it isn't perfect every time and can misstate an address or an offering if the original prompt wasn't clear enough.Human judgment is still required on scope and pricing specifically. AI has helped me think through pricing structures for different types of clients, but I'm the one making the final call.Keeping the CRM HonestAI logs my activity and updates CRM records and pipeline stages automatically, which keeps the data current without me manually entering it after every call.The accuracy still has to be mine to own. Whatever the pipeline shows is what I'm reporting up to leadership, so I double-check that it reflects reality rather than trusting the automation blindly.Dictation tools like Wispr Flow are pushing this even further, letting reps update records and direct their AI agents by talking instead of typing, which is only going to get more common.What AI Still Doesn't ReplaceAI doesn't replace the relationship, the judgment calls, or the actual conversation with a prospect, and that's exactly where I want to be spending more of my time.Research has shown reps spend a large share of their time, somewhere around 60%, on administrative work instead of actual selling, and that's the gap AI is closing for me.Some teams are taking this even further with inbound lead bots that hold full conversations and book meetings directly onto a calendar, with zero human touch until the call itself."AI handles the admin so that I can spend more time actually selling." — Donald C. KellyLeadership Advice, Books, and QuotesMy challenge for you is: Write out or dictate your entire sales process to Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to identify exactly where AI or an agent could take something off your plate. Most reps underestimate what's possible here, mainly because it feels unfamiliar, not because the tools can't handle it.ResourcesTell me what AI tools you're using, or why you're holding off, on LinkedIn.Check out Zenith for LinkedIn-based prospecting and outreach.Check out Fathom for automated meeting notes and recaps.Check out Wispr Flow for voice dictation that updates your tools directly.Check out Apollo and Lusha for prospect data and list enrichment.Sponsorship OffersThis episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.CreditsAs one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

Kristie Jones treats her AI agent like a four year old. Not as an insult, as a management strategy. The same way she taught her son "no touch" before he understood why, she's learned that agents need boundaries, check-ins, and correction, just like any new hire.Kristie, founder of Sales Acceleration Group and author of the upcoming book The Sales Leadership Gap: Leading Humans in an AI Augmented World, walked me through what it actually looks like to lead a sales team that's now part human, part automation, and part AI agent.Why Most Sales Teams Are Only Talking About AI, Not Using ItKristie's blunt read on the market: sales leaders are talking a good game on AI adoption, but very few are actually walking it.She calls the hesitation "freeze mode," people waiting for the technology to settle down before they commit to anything.Her pushback: the pace of AI isn't going to slow down, so waiting for the dust to settle just means a competitor gets the head start instead.From Pilot to Control Tower: Managing a Hybrid TeamKristie's analogy for what's changed: sales leaders used to be the pilot, flying the plane directly. Now the job is running the control tower.A modern sales team isn't just a group of humans anymore. It's humans, automation, and AI agents all working together, and leading that requires a 360-degree view no single seat inside the plane can give you.She hasn't seen a single sales leadership course that actually teaches this. Most leaders are being asked to figure it out on their own, in real time, while still being expected to hit quota.Treat Your Agent Like a New Employee (or a Four-Year-Old)Kristie's favorite framing, borrowed from someone else: manage your agent the way you'd manage a toddler, with simple, repeated boundaries, like teaching a child "no touch," some for safety and some just to prevent a mess.Building an agent isn't a "set it and forget it" project. Just like a new hire, it needs a handbook, but it also needs regular check-ins, since no handbook covers every exception.If your business is changing, and it always is, an agent that never gets revisited will quietly drift out of step with how your team actually works.Trust But VerifyKristie built an agent that reviews her AI notetaker every Friday at 4pm and delivers her to-do list by day. The first Friday it was supposed to run, it didn't.Her response mirrored exactly how she'd handle a new employee's mistake: no anger, just a direct conversation about what happened and how to prevent it next time.Her rule going forward: trust the agent to do the work, but verify the output regularly, the same discipline she'd apply to any new hire still earning full independence.Where to Start: Update Your Playbook Before You Automate ItKristie pushes back hard on the idea that sales playbooks are dead. They're not, but most of them are badly out of date, built once and handed to new hires without ever being revisited.Her recommended first step for any leader building agents: go back to the actual playbook, confirm it reflects how work really gets done today, then look at it again through a new lens, asking which of these tasks could be automated.Skipping this step means building automation around a process that's already wrong, which just makes the wrong process faster.Two Agents Kristie Actually BuiltHer first agent connects Claude Cowork to HubSpot, Granola (her AI notetaker), and Google. Every Friday at 4pm, it reviews her week's meetings and delivers a day-by-day to-do list of everything she committed to.Her second is a research agent, built to be extensive enough that she now teaches a class on building one at Sales Gravy University.Neither required a dedicated engineering team. She built both herself as a sales leader, which is exactly the point: if your company doesn't have a go-to-market engineer or enablement team, this becomes your job by default.Write a "Role Brief" for Every AgentKristie's upcoming book outlines five leadership competencies and five AI competencies leaders will need, and one of the practical tools she recommends is what she calls a role brief.A role brief is a formal, written document for an agent, similar to a job description but for AI: what decisions it's allowed to make, what decisions always stay human, what the output should look like, and who owns checking it.Every agent a team builds should have one of these, the same way every human hire gets a real job description instead of a vague verbal understanding of the role.The Two Things That Make AI Dangerous If Left UncheckedFirst, AI is built to solve problems, which means if it can't find a real one, it may manufacture one to justify itself.Second, AI essentially never says it doesn't know, and it almost never asks for a leader's opinion. It delivers a confident answer even when the underlying accuracy is shaky.Both are reasons an agent can never be treated as fully autonomous. Someone still has to be checking the actual output, not just assuming the system is right because it sounds certain.We've Been Here Before: What the World Wide Web Panic Teaches UsKristie points to the early internet as the closest historical parallel: people worried about losing control over where their information came from, the same fear now aimed at AI.Entire households once relied on a single printed encyclopedia set as the trusted source of information. That system eventually gave way, the same way old assumptions about static CRMs and manual workflows are giving way now.Her takeaway isn't to ignore the risk, but to recognize that fear of a major shift isn't new, and the companies that adapt early are the ones that come out ahead of it.What AI Fluency Actually MeansKristie is now asking about AI fluency directly in client hiring processes, and she defines it as a systems-level understanding of AI, not just knowing how to use one tool.That includes prompt literacy (can someone actually write a prompt that gets a useful result), output evaluation (how do you know if the agent's work is accurate or has quietly drifted), and tool selection (which AI platforms actually get adopted, standardized, and connected across the team).She's blunt with companies that call themselves "AI forward" but don't teach any of this during onboarding. Claiming the identity without building the actual skill doesn't hold up.Your First Step to Becoming AI FluentKristie's advice for any seller or leader who hasn't started: pick one tool, whether that's ChatGPT or Claude, and go build something small, like a custom GPT or a simple project.If you don't already use an AI notetaker, that's the bare minimum starting point, and she recommends having one in place within the week.Her closing advice is permission to fail: go make a mistake. Her own Friday agent didn't run the first time she built it, and that's a normal, expected part of learning the tool, not a sign it isn't worth doing."I treat my agent like a four year old." — Kristie JonesResourcesConnect with Kristie Jones on LinkedIn.Visit Kristie's site, Sales Acceleration Group.Join our LinkedIn cohort and learn to prospect the right way.Visit Blue Mango Studios for help creating podcast production content.CreditsAs one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as...