Relationship curiosity is the secret to connecting with anyone — Sandler's Rich Isaac reveals how making the conversation about them makes you unforgettable.

Rich joins host Mark McGraw to unpack the deceptively simple mindset behind his uncanny ability to build rapport with prospects, clients, and complete strangers alike — without awkward small talk or a pushy sales persona.

Rich shares how his own path from aerodynamics engineer to sales trainer taught him that being "non-threatening" is a strength, not a weakness. The pair explore why genuine curiosity is mutually beneficial, how to keep the spotlight on the other person with a single follow-up question, and Rich's go-to "geographic bonding" technique for finding surprising connections anywhere.

You'll also learn why the best place to practice these skills is outside the sales world — at the supermarket, with a waiter, or on an inbound call — and how tying it all back to Sandler's "okay/not-okay" rule helps people feel heard. If you've ever thought networking was awkward, this conversation will change how you connect for good.

About Rich Isaac:

Rich Isaac is a longtime Sandler leader with a 30-year career helping salespeople, account managers, and non-sales professionals sell more effectively and authentically. A former aerodynamics engineer turned sales trainer, Rich is renowned for his ability to build genuine relationships and connect with anyone he meets. His team is joining forces with Mark McGraw's Sales Engine team in an exciting new partnership. Connect with

Rich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richisaac/

Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

In This Episode:

Why "relationship curiosity" — making the conversation about them — is the secret to connecting with anyone

How being non-threatening becomes a selling superpower, not a weakness

Rich's "geographic bonding" technique and the wild connections it uncovers

The power of a simple follow-up question to keep the spotlight on the other person

Why genuine curiosity is mutually beneficial — you get as much joy out of it as they do

Practicing conversation skills in low-risk settings outside the sales world

Reading behavioral styles so small talk lands at the right time

How this ties back to Sandler's "okay/not-okay" rule and being "disarmingly honest"

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark McGraw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Rich Isaac on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richisaac/

Customer success is the new revenue engine — Mark McGraw, Kelly Ross, and Steve Popp unpack how to turn CS teams into commercially-minded contributors without losing trust, identity, or the client relationship.

Customer success teams are being asked to drive revenue — and CROs are making it the #1 priority for 2026. In this episode of Building Your Sales Engine, host Mark McGraw sits down with Kelly Ross and Steve Popp to unpack the trend of turning CS, account management, and client success roles into revenue contributors responsible for renewals, expansion, upsells, and cross-sells.

The conversation goes beyond tactics. Mark, Kelly, and Steve dig into the identity conflict CS people face when asked to "sell," the head trash around being "salesy," and why leaders must start with *will* before *skill*. They share the mindset shift that unlocks the role ("we're not selling, we're servicing"), the simple QBR questions that surface new opportunities, and a full map of expansion plays — from seat growth and product suite cross-sell to services, M&A, and sister-company opportunities.

If you lead a CS team, manage revenue ops, or sit in a customer success seat yourself, this episode gives you a playbook for making the transition stick — and a framework for protecting your people while you do it.

About Kelly Ross:

Kelly Ross has spent 25 years in sales, marketing, and enablement roles across ed tech and SaaS, with recent focus on revenue enablement across all customer-facing roles. She brings deep experience helping organizations evolve from sales-only enablement into a broader, more inclusive revenue enablement function. Connect with Kelly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross

About Steve Popp:

Steve Popp has carried the bag, led sales management, run sales training and enablement, and spent 13+ years in SaaS — most recently in revenue, sales, and leadership development at Epsilon. He partners with SaaS organizations from $5M to $250M+ to align RevOps, enablement, and leadership around predictable revenue growth. Connect with Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejpopp/

Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine

In This Episode:

Why CROs are putting "make CS commercially minded" at the top of the 2026 priority list

The identity conflict CS people feel when asked to sell — and how leaders should navigate it

Will before skill: making it safe for someone to say "no" to a new role

The mindset reframe: "We're not selling. We're servicing. We're helping."

Building the sales antenna — listening for expansion signals already happening in every conversation

Turning the QBR into a revenue conversation with two simple questions

A full map of expansion plays: seat growth, product suite cross-sell, services, divisions, M&A, sister companies

Why every renewal — and every potential churn — should also be an expansion conversation

Using AI and call recording to surface opportunities CS teams are missing

Why this isn't really "sales training" — it's communication and influence training

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark McGraw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Kelly Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross

Steve Popp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejpopp/

A 38-year sales management veteran breaks down his six-facet framework for building and running a high-performing sales team.

In this episode of Building Your Sales Engine, host Mark McGraw sits down with Pete Fasulo -- a 38-year sales management veteran and fractional sales manager -- to unpack his six-facet framework for running a high-performing sales team. From hiring the right reps to disciplining the wrong ones, Pete shares the structure he uses inside Sandler's fractional sales manager program to drive 15-40%+ revenue gains for his clients.

If you're a sales manager, a business owner without one, or a top rep being pushed into management, this is the playbook conversation you've been looking for.

Host: Mark McGraw -- Building Your Sales Engine

Co-host: Josh Pitchford -- Building Your Sales Engine

About Pete Fasulo: Pete Fasulo is VP, Sales Leadership Programs at Sandler with 38 years of sales and sales management experience, including a role as VP of Sales at AT&T and 11 years owning his own business. Today he leads Sandler's fractional sales manager program, serving as the acting sales manager for small and mid-sized companies that need professional structure without a full-time hire.

Why the best sales reps often make the worst sales managers -- the "Ted Williams syndrome"

The six facets every sales manager needs as a structure: recruiting, interviewing/hiring, onboarding & ramp-up, coaching, motivation, and disciplining

Why "hire slowly, fire quickly" needs a caveat -- and how a proper ramp-up plan changes everything

The interview question Pete asks every candidate to expose the wrong fit fast

How to build a month-by-month ramp-up with monthly business objectives (MBOs) instead of premature revenue goals

Why your CRM is not your sales manager -- and what structured weekly one-on-ones must include

How to prune a pipeline so it stops being a "sewer line"

The fractional sales manager model: what it looks like, what it costs in time, and the results clients see

Six Facets of Sales Management (Pete's Framework):

1. Recruiting -- Always be building a bench, not just hiring out of desperation

2. Interviewing & Hiring -- Ask the right questions to confirm fit, not chemistry

3. Onboarding, Ramp-Up & Training -- Match your ramp-up plan to your real time-to-quota

4. Coaching -- Weekly team meetings + weekly individual meetings (WIMs), every time

5. Motivation -- Positive reinforcement, sales contests, and Pete's "nine musts" of a successful contest

6. Disciplining -- A structured corrective action plan tied to ramp-up milestones

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Pete Fasulo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-fasulo-3357a3/

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

The movable middle — that 60% in the center of every sales team — is where leaders win or lose the year, and Kelly Ross joins Mark McGraw to unpack exactly how to elevate them.

The movable middle is the 60% of your sales team that decides whether your year is great or just "okay." In Episode 62 of Building Your Sales Engine, host Mark McGraw sits down with Sandler enablement leader Kelly Ross to break down the 20/60/20 rule and how sales managers can systematically shift their middle performers upward.

Kelly and Mark unpack why top performers show up bright-eyed to every training while the middle hides in the back of the classroom, the role noise and distraction play in stalling growth, and how assessments, one-on-ones, and proven playbooks remove the guesswork. They get tactical on strategic vs. tactical coaching, the danger of "death by PowerPoint," and why progress (not perfection) is the real metric.

They also tackle a counterintuitive lever: addressing the bottom 20%. When managers tolerate underperformance too long, they give the middle permission to coast. If you're a sales leader trying to raise the average — or a seller ready to climb out of the middle — this episode hands you the framework.

About Kelly Ross

Kelly Ross is a longtime Sandler advocate and leader who runs Sandler's Oregon operations on the West Coast. With deep experience on the sales enablement side, Kelly specializes in coaching, training design, and helping sales teams turn frameworks into real behavior change.

Kelly Ross LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross/

Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine

Marks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

In This Episode

The 20/60/20 rule and why the middle 60% is where leaders make or break the year

Why top performers always show up — and what their mindset signals about hiring and retention

The real obstacles holding the middle back: noise, distraction, and unclear priorities

Why "death by PowerPoint" loses the middle and how engagement-first training wins them back

Using assessments and surveys so sellers can't argue with their own data

AI in coaching — useful, but never a replacement for the human one-on-one

Strategic vs. tactical coaching: stop running every meeting on the next deal

Identifying the one bottleneck in a seller's pipeline instead of rebuilding the whole process

Playbooks beat "figure it out" — give sellers the system, then let them weave in their sauce

Mindset, the stories we tell ourselves, and reconnecting with your "why"

The counterintuitive move: addressing the bottom 20% to motivate the middle

Eagles vs. ducks — what kind of team are you actually building?

Links

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Kelly Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross/

A friendly, no-pressure tour of practical AI use cases for sales -- shared not by self-proclaimed experts, but by fellow learners passing along what's actually working.

AI use cases for sales don't have to feel overwhelming. In this webinar-style episode, Mark McGraw opens up the toolbox and walks through a wide range of practical ways he and the Sandler Sales Engine team are using AI -- with one honest caveat up front: nobody here claims to have the world's knowledge of AI. The goal isn't to crown gurus or sell you on getting left behind. It's to give everyone an approachable entry point and a few ideas worth trying.

Recorded live from one of our most popular workshops -- you'll see the audience chat pop up on screen throughout -- Mark covers tool-agnostic thinking, project folders, prompting fundamentals, recording and transcribing your calls, turning transcripts into LinkedIn posts, automating LinkedIn connections, stringing prompts into a prospecting workflow, pre-call planning, weekly briefings, AI role play, and creating decks and visuals. By no means all of it, but plenty to spark ideas wherever you are on the curve.

Fun fact: the intro and graphics for this episode were created entirely with AI. As Mark puts it, you can't do everything -- but you can do one thing at a time. Pick the idea that fits your world and give it a try this week.

Host: Mark McGraw -- Building Your Sales Engine

In This Episode:

Why you don't need to be an AI expert to start using it in sales

The 84% stat: most people haven't touched AI, so showing up already puts you ahead

George Carlin's "idiots and maniacs" and why everyone's at a different level

Being tool-agnostic and thinking like an architect instead of chasing platforms

Project folders: a simple, high-impact first step

Adding skills/plugins and customizing a sales skill to Sandler methodology

Five simple rules for writing better prompts

Why you should record (almost) everything you can

Matching and mirroring using a prospect's exact words from transcripts

Tools worth knowing: Fathom, Plaud, and iPhone call recording

Building a searchable "Virtual Mark" knowledge base from past calls

Using AI to score sales calls, demos, and deal reviews

Turning meeting transcripts into ready-to-edit LinkedIn posts

Creating surveys and calculators that help prospects surface their own pain

Automating LinkedIn connection requests with an AI-controlled browser

Stringing prompts into a prospecting workflow (research → CRM → dialer)

Pre-call planning and a weekly "chief of staff" briefing prompt

Speeding up scope-of-work and RFP writing

Practicing tough conversations with the Sandler AI Role Play Tool

Why it all comes down to picking one thing and starting today

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

In this episode of Building Your Sales Engine, I sit down with Josh Pitchford to discuss the intricacies of team selling. We delve into strategies for managing the chaos that often arises when multiple team members participate in sales calls. Learn how to effectively prepare through pre-call planning, ensuring each member knows their role and how to contribute. We explore the importance of maintaining balance in team presence, avoiding overwhelm, and the necessity of clear communication. Additionally, we emphasize the value of debriefing after meetings to capture lessons learned and ensure everyone is aligned on next steps. Join us for insights that can elevate your approach to team selling and enhance your overall sales effectiveness.

In this episode of Building Your Sales Engine, I sit down with Steve Popp to delve into the critical topic of driving adoption within sales organizations. We explore the challenges sales leaders face when implementing new initiatives and the importance of prioritizing effectively. Steve shares his insights on how to engage team members, crowdsource ideas, and establish a culture of buy-in for new training programs. We discuss the necessity of having influential advocates within the sales team to champion initiatives and the role of strategic planning in ensuring successful execution. If you’re looking to enhance your organization’s ability to adopt new strategies and drive revenue, this episode is packed with actionable insights you won’t want to miss.

Discover why sales forecasts miss the mark -- and how curiosity, skepticism, and clear future commitments can fix your pipeline accuracy for good.

Happy ears have ruined more sales forecasts than bad markets ever will. In this episode, Mark McGraw and Josh Pitchford break down the real reasons sellers miss their forecasts -- starting with the dangerous habit of hearing only what they want to hear when a prospect gives them positive signals.

Josh shares his go-to rule -- "curiosity and skepticism is the antidote to hope and happy ears" -- and explains why sellers are always just one question away from the truth. The conversation dives into the concept of clear future commitments: knowing exactly what's next, who's involved, and what the anticipated outcomes are, rather than settling for vague promises like "give me a call next Tuesday." Mark adds the manager's perspective, introducing the Eeyore-to-Tigger continuum for calibrating whether reps are sandbagging or over-projecting.

The episode also tackles why forecast accuracy matters far beyond making the boss look good -- from resource planning and inventory to cashflow and staffing -- and how pipeline meetings should be coaching opportunities, not checkbox exercises. If your forecast feels more like a weather prediction than a business tool, this episode will show you how to fix it.

Host: Mark McGraw -- Building Your Sales Engine

Co-host: Josh Pitchford -- Building Your Sales Engine

In This Episode:

Why happy ears are the number one forecast killer

"Curiosity and skepticism is the antidote to hope and happy ears"

The danger of taking positive buyer signals at face value

Why sellers stop asking questions when they hear good news

Beware the positive prospect -- and the positive salesperson

Risk mitigation: always asking "where could this go wrong?"

The optimistic-realistic-pessimistic dial for forecast calibration

The Eeyore-to-Tigger continuum for reading your reps

What "clear future commitments" really means vs. vague next steps

Knowing date, time, participants, agenda, and anticipated outcomes

Why "I'm supposed to give them a call Tuesday" is not a clear future

How missed forecasts reveal that a seller doesn't know their account

Why forecast accuracy matters: resource planning, inventory, cashflow, staffing

Think a level or two above where you are

The importance of giving sellers permission to tell the truth

Setting upfront contracts with your team around honesty

Why end-of-quarter deals get weaponized by trained buyers

Pipeline meetings as coaching opportunities, not checkbox exercises

Using group pipeline reviews to keep the whole team learning

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-pitchford-6163274/

"If you're not committed to doing the work to get to a goal, don't set the goal. Because all you do is hurt your self-esteem and hurt your confidence." Discover the critical difference between desire and commitment -- the two ingredients of the will to sell that determine whether your sales goals drive you forward or drag you down.

Every sales manager has seen it: a rep who knows what to do but won't do it consistently. In this episode, Mark McGraw and Josh Pitchford unpack why desire without commitment creates a dangerous gap -- and how managers can uncover a salesperson's compelling why without becoming a persecutor in the relationship.

In this episode, you'll learn:

The real difference between desire and commitment in sales

Four types of motivation -- and why only one is sustainable

How to uncover your (or your rep's) compelling why

The 1-to-10 commitment scale for honest goal conversations

Why caring more than your rep makes YOU the problem

The pilot light test: how to know if someone has the drive

Why setting uncommitted goals destroys your confidence

Host: Mark McGraw -- Building Your Sales Engine

Co-host: Josh Pitchford -- Building Your Sales Engine

Links:

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-pitchford-6163274/

"If you don't have a system, it's backyard football, after Thanksgiving dinner, everybody go out there and get open. You score touchdowns every now and then, but there's too much on the line to play backyard football." Discover why having a proven sales system beats winging it -- and how it transforms results for sellers and managers alike.

Most salespeople default to the buyer's process without realizing there's another option. In this episode, Mark McGraw and Josh Pitchford break down the real benefits of systematizing your sales approach -- from creating predictability and shortening sales cycles to recognizing patterns, combating fear in the moment, and getting to "no" faster.

The conversation then shifts to the manager's lens: how a shared system improves forecast accuracy, makes pre-call planning and debriefing actionable, and gives your team a common language for team selling.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why predictability is the #1 benefit of a sales system

- How to shape the sales process instead of being shaped by it

- The "start with no" mindset that takes all the pressure off

- The GATE process: Goals, Actions, Tools, and Exit criteria

- How the 10-80-10 concept applies to manager-rep sales calls

- Why the most important upfront contract is between seller team members

- How a documented system accelerates new rep onboarding

🎙️ Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine

🎤 Co-host: Josh Pitchford — Building Your Sales Engine

👇 Timestamps below 👇

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🎙️ Full podcast episodes: buildingyoursalesengine.com

**Links:**

Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com

Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine

Website: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com

Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/

Josh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-pitchford-6163274/