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Ep. 114 - Building Repeatable Sales Success in Enterprise B2B with Glenn Poulos - Part 1
In this episode of Selling the Cloud, Glenn Poulos joins Mark and KK Anderson to break down what truly drives success in complex enterprise B2B sales. With over 40 years of experience selling technical solutions across telecom, wireless infrastructure, and power utilities, Glenn shares the practical frameworks behind building trust, mapping decision processes, and creating repeatable sales performance.
Drawing from his book Never Sit in the Lobby and decades of hands-on leadership, Glenn explains why buyers in complex sales are not simply purchasing products. They are buying safety, trust, and confidence that their decision will not backfire. The conversation explores how to slow down early, uncover real risk, build consensus across multiple stakeholders, and implement disciplined follow-up that keeps long-cycle deals moving forward.
If you are leading an enterprise sales team or looking to scale predictable revenue in complex markets, this episode delivers actionable insight you can apply immediately.
What You’ll Learn:
• Why complex buyers prioritize safety and trust over price and specs
• How to build trust early by slowing down and asking better questions
• The importance of mapping decision makers and influencers in enterprise deals
• How to prevent deals from stalling due to unseen stakeholders
• The habits that create sales repeatability and predictable results
• Why disciplined follow-up is a competitive advantage
• How to coach sales teams before, during, and after every call
• Glenn’s philosophy of greed-based learning and how it accelerates product mastery
Key Topics:
• Trust-driven selling in high-risk B2B environments
• Mapping enterprise decision processes
• Mutual action planning and consensus building
• Sales discipline and behavioral consistency
• Curiosity, preparation, and active listening
• Scaling sales teams through repeatable behaviors
• Coaching frameworks for enterprise sales leaders
Guest Spotlight: Glenn Poulos
Glenn Poulos is an award-winning author, sales expert, and serial entrepreneur with more than four decades of experience in complex B2B selling. He is the co-founder of Gap Wireless, which he scaled from startup to a multi-million dollar distribution business serving North America’s mobile broadband and wireless infrastructure markets.
In 2022, Gap Wireless was acquired by the organization, where Glenn stayed on as Executive Vice President and General Manager to help integrate and grow the combined entity, now operating as NWS Canada.
Today, Glenn serves as President of ProgUSA, supporting US power utilities and service firms with electrical test and measurement equipment. He is also the author of Never Sit in the Lobby, a practical guide to winning and sustaining success in complex sales environments.
🎧 Listen now and follow Selling the Cloud for more conversations with leaders shaping enterprise sales, go to market strategy, and revenue growth. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Mark (00:31)
Welcome to today's episode of Selling the Cloud podcast. I'm excited to welcome Glenn Poulis, an award-winning author, sales expert, and serial entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience in complex B2B selling. Glenn is the co-founder of Gap Wireless, which he built from startup to a multi-million dollar distribution business serving the mobile broadband and wireless infrastructure markets.
KK Anderson (00:57)
and the infrastructure market.
Mark (00:59)
of North America. In 2022, GAP Wireless was acquired by Network Wireless Solutions, NWS, a portfolio company of green management. stayed on as the executive vice president and general manager to help integrate and grow the combined entity, which is now NWS Canada. Today, Glenn is president of Prague USA, a company that supports US power utilities and service firms
with electrical test and measurement equipment. Thanks so much for joining us here, Glenn, and welcome.
Glenn Poulos (01:31)
Thanks, Mark. Great to be here.
Mark (01:32)
Cool, so today we'll explore four critical themes. First one, the core of complex B2B selling. How deals really get done and when the product is technical and the risk is high, how do you make sure that you build very strong efficiency into your selling model? Building sales repeatability. The habits and systems that make results predictable.
Scaling and distribution business. We're gonna go a little deeper in that than we normally do. But really from startup to exit in the telecom and technology sectors. And then AI and technology and sales. Using tools without using the human connection.
Topic one, just start with the B2B selling model as a whole. Glenn, your book, Never Sit in the Lobby, is full of field-tested wisdom from 40 years in technical sales. When you're selling complex products, whether it's wireless infrastructure, equipment, or power utility testing solutions, what fundamentally determines whether a buyer says yes or ultimately walks away?
Glenn Poulos (02:32)
Great question. So, and we're talking about complex sales, right? So, right. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, complex sales is a little different than just, you know, box selling or when you're just selling commodities like printers and computers or something. And, you know, when, when someone's buying something that's complex, right, they're not really buying a product.
Mark (02:36)
We are. Yes.
Glenn Poulos (02:52)
I always like to tell our people they're buying safety and solutions, right? Like they've got a problem. It could probably be solved in many ways with a complex solution, right? And it, and they're buying the safety that it, the, that decision will work, won't blow up in their face. No one's going to get fired. That's where the old, nobody got fired for buying IBM or Hewlett Packard came from, right? And that someone will stand beside them when things get hard, right? The specs matter.
but trust matters more, right? That's the most important thing is the trust. And if a buyer doesn't feel safe saying yes, price doesn't become an issue, product doesn't become an issue, you're kind of dead in the water. And that's just a little,
Looking back, it's like that's why a lot of times people would say to them, so I can't believe I didn't get the order. Like I had the best product, I had the best price, I had the best delivery, but they didn't trust you. rather, and again, I love saying, nobody got fired for buying IBM, right? They knew IBM was going to be there even if they were twice the price. And it's like, you know what? I'm going to buy IBM. Then I don't have to worry about it. I can say, Hey, I bought IBM. What do you want from me? Right? So that's kind of my first part of it.
so the question is like, how do you build safety and trust, right? That's the key, you know, and so one of the key things that I always say is, you build it by slowing down early, right? You got to ask better questions.
Listening more than talking the old God gave you two ears and one mouth you do the math, right and ⁓ the so listening more than talking, know, and you want to you want to be open honest and upfront about the risks, right and Challenge them with the risks a little bit so that they're out there and you're discussing the real risks that are in play and when the buyer you were trying to establish report to the point where the buyer feels feels you're helping them and not pushing them to buy
Right. And so that's, that's, that's one aspect of it. Right. And, you know, some of the biggest mistakes people make are, you know, pushing price too early, trying to dive into specs for bigger, faster, wider, deeper, 20 % cheaper, you know, all those kinds of, you know, salesmen kind of things. Right. And pitching before understanding. And yeah. So.
KK Anderson (04:53)
So in a complex sale where it could go on for six to nine months and there's lots of dollars at stake as we were just discussing, what are some tricks or ways that you teach or talk about building consensus as you go through the sales process, as new people are added on into the conversation, as complexities increase?
you know, everyone's got a different opinion. Like what are some ways that you build, build consensus, if you will. ⁓
Glenn Poulos (05:20)
Okay, so
or get to the order or whatever, right? I guess is yeah. So first, you got to understand the risk, right? Like that's the you got to present it to the customer, you got to present what the risks are to them and getting the job done. And you have to understand what the risks are to you and presenting your product at like your solution. You know, as being the as being the solution, right, you have to always remember early on and throughout it that buyers are not afraid of the price.
And that proves itself out by just looking on the road and there's people that are driving Toyota Corollas and people that are driving Mercedes Benz S-Class, right? And so clearly some people just want to spend more on a car, right? And so they're afraid of being wrong, making the wrong decision. So you got to ask questions that uncover ⁓ what failure would look like if they make the wrong decision and who gets the blame if it happens, right? You're trying to identify that kind of stuff, right? And then second,
This is so important, right? You wanna map the decision process, who influences, and there's many models and sales strategies out there. I don't teach these, but like the challenger model and what have you, where you're identifying the technical buyer, the financial influencer, the key decision maker and what have you. But you need to know, ⁓ especially the way I explain it to people is you have to look at the dollar value of the solution that you're selling.
Let me, it's 50 K 500 K 5 million, 50 million. Right. And you have to say in the company that I'm selling it to who's signing that check, who's signing the PO, the authorization, the final, where does the buck stop? Right. Because if you're selling something that might be, you know, let's say, you know, 250 K and it's a $5 million company, it's probably the owner that's signing it. Right. But if it's, if it's a 250 K deal, but it's a $5 billion corporation.
with offices around the world, chances are some vice president, regional manager, finance guy, whatever you need to map out and know exactly where you got to go to, find out why and where it's stuck. Right? So you're mapping the decision making who's the influencers, who decides and who could stop the deal. And, you know, and most of the time the complex deals fail because you ignored.
the person you didn't know about or you were surprised late in the game who that was and that you never talked to. And sorry.
KK Anderson (07:32)
I think the key word
I'm hearing you say, Glenn, here is mapping. And we are huge fans of the idea of a mutual action plan or map, right? And so, and what's great about that is that not only are you mapping out the strategy of what's going to happen over the next six to nine months and who needs to be involved and who can say yes and who's going on vacation when, so you don't, you're not shocked at the end of the quarter when you're not getting a signature because you're
Glenn Poulos (07:42)
Nice. Yeah, good. Yeah.
KK Anderson (07:58)
You know, the signer is in Barbados, right? But the trick I would think is, and I believe, is making sure that it's mutual. And so to the extent that you can really build trust by saying, hey, here's our plan, you know, when you have a champion, I think that action of creating a mutual action plan helps to really build that trust and build that relationship. And then as you're bringing new people in,
it becomes easier because you're all singing from the same song sheet.
Glenn Poulos (08:23)
yeah, for sure. The there's a funny story in my I always like to say shameless plug for the book, right? But in my book, right, there's a story about a guy that sells high value tow motors, right? Like our forklift, some people call them. And these things are massively expensive machines, right? And $120,000 or whatever. And so, in the stories about a guy who shows up, he and he's trying to sell a company
tow motors, right? And he works for Toyota. And so he looks at the organization and he says to himself, so they need like four machines. That's like half a million dollars. It's probably the CEO that's gonna, that could be the CEO that signs off on that, right? So what does he do? He calls the CEO and he says, hey, it's Glenn from Acme tow motors, right?
You know, we want to show you the, these tow motors, they, know you're using Kawasaki, but you know, we'd love to get these in for a trial or whatever. the guys, what are you talking about? Glenn? says, I don't get involved with tow motors. the vice president of warehousing is responsible for all that stuff. That's Jack. I'm like, all right. Okay. Yeah. Fine. No problem. Let me give Jack a call. So call Jack.
Jack, it's Glenn. was just on the phone with the CEO. He told me I really needed to get your attention. We've got these tow motors, right? We know you're looking at a few, you know, know you're a coil stock user. We want to show you the Toyota. says, Glenn, stop wasting my time. says, I don't get involved in that stuff. Right? I've got a director of warehousing. That's Bob. Right? Why wasting my time? Bob, Bob, I've been on the phone all day with the CEO, the vice president. They told me if I don't get these machines in front of you, you know, lickety split.
Mark (09:41)
.
Glenn Poulos (09:53)
He's going to have my head. Right. And so, and he's like, glad, come on. I'm a director. I don't have time to look at tow motors. You got to talk to the warehouse manager. You know, that's Jack. Right. So Jack called Jack. Yeah. Of course, Jack refers you to the shop steward or whatever the floor manager or whatever. And before you know it, you're bringing in the tow motors. You say, look, I've been on the phone with the CEO, the vice president, the director, the manager, the, you know, the foreman. And now, you know, here they are. Right. So then you bring the machines to the, to the work.
The whole idea behind that story is that at any point you can call anyone in the stack and figure out where the deal's stuck, right? And so, and one of the things I always like to do, and again, this is a metaphor, right? But it's very valuable and I've used it my whole life, right? Is he call the CEO and you say, look, I know you don't get involved in this stuff, but I got to, you know, I know you're putting half a million dollars of machines on the floor. got my machine down here and we're doing circles around Kawasaki right now. Like you need to come down here and have a look at this. And he's like,
I need two minutes. That's it. And you know what the guy's saying? I'm tow motor ripping around my warehouse, brand new, whatever. I'm going to come have a look. And the CEO walks in and the, you know, all these people are like, what the heck's the CEO doing here or whatever. Right. And, but at any point you can call the CEO and say, why is my deal stuck? And then he says, well, Glenn, he says, I forgot to tell you, know, we have a deal with the national deal with Kawasaki and it doesn't expire until 2027 and
And I mean, you want to figure that out from that guy as soon as possible. And hopefully before you delivered a demo or whatever. And, ⁓ but I like to try to give people real world examples of how it plays out and, what happens on the opposite side when people don't do it right is, you know, your sales guy says, ⁓ I, you know, I got an appointment to do the demos and it's now with the powers that be. Right. He, gave his report to the powers that be.
He sent it upstairs, right? And all that stuff. I'm like, when salesmen tell me that makes me want to like blow my brains out, right? I'm like, who's the powers that be? You know, the people upstairs, right? And I'm like, no, those are the people that are buying your competitor. And you're going to come to me in a few weeks and tell me you lost, right? If you don't know that everyone in the chain and you can't call them, then you blew it. And the problem is you have to start at the top.
and go down because you can't like start with the foreman and then he gives you the old powers that be and then start calling up the stack and alienating the guys below, right? You want to be pushed down, not up, right? And because, you know, it's like, how dare you call my boss, you know? And, and so that's like a real world ⁓ scenario of how it can play out in a way that people can relate to, right? So, and ⁓ yeah.
And so I kind of got a little off topic. The other thing was, you you were asking me about, you know, how do you, how do you ramp it over time? Right. And, know, you, you always want to make sure all the trust is built before the brochures in the, and the pitching and the, know, you want to be sharing your insights and then you want to be playing to what you've learned. And you want to, you want to demonstrate and, and prove out only to that. Cause oftentimes mistakes I see guys make.
is like a good example would be myself, but don't make the mistake of using yourself as marketing data because you'll probably be wrong. But when it comes to cars, I love Mercedes-Benz, but Mercedes-Benz is known for the speed and the AMG ⁓ motors in the car, and there's a lot of ⁓ very fast
and very powerful cars, but that's not why I like Mercedes, right? I don't drive them fast. I mean, I do whatever the, whatever the proportional amount over the speed limit I'm able to drive is that's what I set the cruise at. And I, and I never, don't, you know, I'm not worried about dropping it down into third and going, you know, I'm what I like is the luxury and the comfort. I don't care about the speed. So, but most salesmen would start laying on 500 horsepower, dual torque, overhead cam, dual turbos, you know, new zero to 60. don't care.
I'm already lost and I already know that you've not built rapport with me. Right? So how is it, he's not presenting to, you know, to sell $120,000 car to someone, you know, in the right way. Cause he didn't figure out what part of it's important to me. I don't even need to hear about the speed or the motor size. I don't actually care. You know, and it's the same with many, many things, you know, and, but people are
they're scared and nervous. And so they kind of like want to drop back to like the training, the bullet points they learned in the training class. You know, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, right? Whereas you want to be stopping talking and start listening. What is it you need to do with these? Why am I here? What is your biggest problem you're trying to solve? You know, is it quality throughput, timing, speed, you know, power, you know, accuracy, know, resolution.
Whatever, you know, so sorry, I rambled. I said it.
KK Anderson (14:40)
makes perfect sense. It really does. And
like it, this kind of is the perfect bridge into our second topic, which is around building sales repeatability, right? And the habits, you talk a lot about habits. As a matter of fact, on LinkedIn, I reposted one of your posts this morning around the habits and the systems that make results predictable. And so in your book, you outline
57 winning sales factors and that's a lot of variables. And so when leaders hear that, their first reaction is probably something along the lines of how do I make 57 factors repeatable? So if you had to distill it down, are there three to five that are the most? Yeah.
Glenn Poulos (15:07)
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. I love him. Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. yeah. And so, and just to touch on the 57 and the number, and I mean, obviously I'm not gonna run off 57 of anything on the show, but the...
KK Anderson (15:31)
Yeah.
Glenn Poulos (15:34)
But these are factors that cover the whole litany of things you have to do during the day and throughout your career in order to be successful running the business and in sales, right? And so it's selling and so it's how to get act and stay in front of your customers and be a pleasure to do business with always, right? And yet you have to be a pleasure to do business with because most big customers are repeat customers. And so it's not a one and done, right? It's not like, you can be cranky with them and get the deal and then you're good because you got the deal because
All the customers I work with, they're 20 year investments of time, right? They buy with for me forever, right? And the company Gap Wireless, I started in 2007 and the first call I made, you know, was a lady named Arefa and I was still making calls to Arefa the day I left, 20 years later, 18 years later, right? and so the...
And so then another insight into the 57 is these are rules that I always follow. I don't break my own rules. Right. And so, and the book never sit in the lobby. That's one of them never sit in the lobby. Right. And we can talk about that later. If there's time. Why, why I say that. but the habits to be repeatable, I guess would boil down to as first as you want to be prepared. Right. And so you've done your research, you know, you're selling this kind of a system to this kind of a company.
What does this company do? How does this company make its money? Because they don't care about your system, right? They care about whatever goes out their back door and with the invoice and what they get paid for doing, right? And so again, a quick story. I always like to put this in the real world so people understand, well, what do you mean, right? Or it's not just hyperbole that I'm saying. It's like Xerox, right? You're calling on Xerox, right? Well, Xerox makes photocopiers.
And so I need to figure out about, you know, how they can make better photocopiers. No, that's actually not what they do. They're a bank, right? They're a finance company. They make all their money, you know, on either one leasing you a machine or two, selling you costs per page, right? They don't come and tell you that that photocopier is 40 grand. They tell you it's four cents a page, eight cents a page, nine cents a page, minimum thousand pages per month, you know. And so
You need to understand how the company makes money. So you want to be prepared, right? ⁓ You know, so, and you want to keep and always be prepared, right? Second thing in the repeatability stack is, you know, discipline follow up. And so this is where people get scared, lazy. They're just averse to it. Right. And so, so often you say to him, like, did you follow up? And he's like, yeah, I, I, I call them.
And okay, did you call him? Okay. Did he answer? No. I left the voicemail. Okay. Did he, what'd you say on the voicemail? And you know, maybe he says it and again, there's rules on leaving voicemails in the book, but, then I'm like, okay, well then what'd do? He says, well, I sent him an email. Okay. Okay. Did he reply back? And no, no, he didn't reply back. And so I'm like, okay, so let me get this right. So you emailed the guy, didn't reply. So you call them, left a voicemail. He never phoned you back. And so, so basically you'd never talked to the guy.
Right? Kind of thing. But you have to, you have to be able to figure out ways and means to be able to follow up and stay on top of it. And what ends up happening is, is, know, you call him, he doesn't answer. So you send him an email and then you say, follow up Monday, right? Monday comes at a fight with your spouse. You're not in a good mood. You didn't get enough coffee. You don't really feel like making the call. You snooze it to the next day. And then the next day you have meetings. You're like, I didn't do the call. Damn snooze it to the following Monday. Now you're two weeks away.
Right? Like, I mean, that's not discipline, it's avoidance and it happens like a thousand times over every week with a thousand salespeople. Right? And so you want to be disciplined. and whatever that means. Right. And, you know, and the deals are always one after the meeting. Right. And so, third, you want to be taking good notes. You want to be, and then reflecting on what's happened, what's happening.
you want to be reviewing sort of the conversations and then looking insights. And that's where I teach, sympathy, empathy and compassion, right. And trying, trying to put yourself in the customer's shoes, figuring out what they're dealing with, et cetera, right. And applying the right technique at the right time. and you want to be reflecting on those conversations, like I said, and taking the notes and following them up. Right. And then, and so those are sort of the keys, but some of the other elements, you know,
was curiosity and ⁓ you never want to assume, you know, there's the horror story where I in the book about me assuming something about a guy and I just made him so mad by my assumption. And I was just very difficult to establish rapport after that. Right. And and you want to be consistent. Right. You want to always be a pleasure to do business with, even when they say you're not getting the order.
because you'll get the next one or you had the one before or you want to be called back in a year from now because you don't want them to not call you because they know they upset you and they're scared of you, right? It's like, I'm not calling Glenn. Pardon my language. He snapped the last time we, you know, we couldn't buy from him because of a, you know, a minor issue and, you know, a technical anomaly or whatever, right? So that's how I beat repeat. That's how I build repeatability.
Mark (20:22)
Yeah.
Perfect, good, well, yeah, those are some good thoughts and ideas. So Glenn, you've built multiple companies and have hired and managed dozens, maybe even hundreds of salespeople over the years. When you're trying to scale a sales organization, when you're trying to bring these principles into a team, how do you transfer what's in your head and in your book to the team? How do you make your process
you know, more easily teachable.
Glenn Poulos (20:50)
So.
Well, you know, how do I transfer? mean, you have to break it up into the behavior that you want and not just the talent, right? So repeatable behaviors create talent of itself, right? That's why when you look at sports people and all that, they're always doing the basics, right? You know, it's like, they're like NFL players. Why do they have to keep doing that same thing with the running with the legs and the tires? And because, you know, because they're building, they're building the talent through a set of behaviors, right?
So, and you you wanna be teaching what you do before, during and after every call, right? So we're gonna go in there, we need to figure out what it is the problem is, know, da da da da. So then you're trying to coach them during the call. And then after the call, you're like, Jack, what went wrong on that call?
Right. ⁓ I was talking too much. didn't, I saw there was an opening. didn't take it. You know, we could have got a referral to that. You know, he kind of deflected that it was another team was involved, but you didn't get any names, you know, so you want to be, you want to be, coaching before, during, and after. Right. and you know, I always like to say, you know,
Like the methodologies are the frameworks, but the winning factors are the behaviors that you follow. And you can follow a methodology and still lose because you, I would say you ignore the basics like respect, timing, preparation, follow up, what have you, right? And they all build on each other and compound into being more of a disaster the more you fail at that, right?
And so, you know, and then you're like, then the question is like, how do you pass, how do you teach people and how do you pass it on? Right. And so one of them, that's a highly personalized ones, it's from the book, right. It's my, my philosophy of greed based learning. Right. And so, and again, I hope, hope I'm not going on too far if I'm spending too much time on each one of these topics, but, greed based learning is the key to how I've sold technical products for 40 years. Right. And I, and I realized that.
you know, a long time ago and, and I allow it to, I allow it to, to work in my day to day, you know, behaviors, right? So what greed based learning is, is that, and again, I use an analogy, I love to use buying car analogies because everyone has a car. And so
Like I told you earlier, I don't care about the horsepowers and stuff on cars or whatever, right? And don't even actually care. I just want to be comfortable in a nice car and whatever with the gadgets and the cruise and all that. Right. But, you know, and so I don't really know a lot about cars where other guys know every spec off the top of their head. Right. But every four years, you know, I get a new car or something like that. Right. Well, you can bet for the, for that very small snippet of time. And for me, I'm probably going to be looking at, you know,
Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, something like that, right? And you think I can't go home and talk to my spouse and spout off every speck of those cars that I'm looking at off the top of my head with little need for memory, right? And it's a thing that I call, that's why I call it greed-based learning because my greedy little nature knows I'm getting a car at the end of it, right? And I'm able to absorb those facts painlessly and effortlessly.
Right. Because I'm getting something at the end of it. Whereas if someone just said, here's a 40 car manufacturers in the, or, car companies in the U S right. Learn all the, learn all the facts about all these 40 cars or whatever. be, it would be categorically impossible for me. There's no win in it for me. Right. And so, what you want to do is you want to sort of defer your learning until it's relevant to something where there's something in it for you. And then it becomes effortless. Right.
You're selling a million dollar system to a company you can bet that you're going to be able to remember the facts because you know what your commission is on it. Right. And so I show these guys how to allow greed based learning and gals to in their, in their career. Right. And so it's just a little, a little gamification on the, on, on learning that I do. Right. and if I have an important call with an important piece of equipment on a company and I don't really know the box,
And whatever I'll call the manufacturer, I'll call the product manager. I'll say, give me the five things they need to know in order to be a rock star with this product. And if I get stuck, I'll call you from the, from the customer site. And, and they're like, well, it's this, this, this, this, and this, right? And I'm like, look, I'm not the expert, but these are the things, you know, and then you're again, you're probing and learning and what have you. Right. So, that's the basics of it.
Mark (24:52)
No, think
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By Mark Petruzzi, KK Anderson, Paul Melchiorre
4.4
88 ratings
In this episode of Selling the Cloud, Glenn Poulos joins Mark and KK Anderson to break down what truly drives success in complex enterprise B2B sales. With over 40 years of experience selling technical solutions across telecom, wireless infrastructure, and power utilities, Glenn shares the practical frameworks behind building trust, mapping decision processes, and creating repeatable sales performance.
Drawing from his book Never Sit in the Lobby and decades of hands-on leadership, Glenn explains why buyers in complex sales are not simply purchasing products. They are buying safety, trust, and confidence that their decision will not backfire. The conversation explores how to slow down early, uncover real risk, build consensus across multiple stakeholders, and implement disciplined follow-up that keeps long-cycle deals moving forward.
If you are leading an enterprise sales team or looking to scale predictable revenue in complex markets, this episode delivers actionable insight you can apply immediately.
What You’ll Learn:
• Why complex buyers prioritize safety and trust over price and specs
• How to build trust early by slowing down and asking better questions
• The importance of mapping decision makers and influencers in enterprise deals
• How to prevent deals from stalling due to unseen stakeholders
• The habits that create sales repeatability and predictable results
• Why disciplined follow-up is a competitive advantage
• How to coach sales teams before, during, and after every call
• Glenn’s philosophy of greed-based learning and how it accelerates product mastery
Key Topics:
• Trust-driven selling in high-risk B2B environments
• Mapping enterprise decision processes
• Mutual action planning and consensus building
• Sales discipline and behavioral consistency
• Curiosity, preparation, and active listening
• Scaling sales teams through repeatable behaviors
• Coaching frameworks for enterprise sales leaders
Guest Spotlight: Glenn Poulos
Glenn Poulos is an award-winning author, sales expert, and serial entrepreneur with more than four decades of experience in complex B2B selling. He is the co-founder of Gap Wireless, which he scaled from startup to a multi-million dollar distribution business serving North America’s mobile broadband and wireless infrastructure markets.
In 2022, Gap Wireless was acquired by the organization, where Glenn stayed on as Executive Vice President and General Manager to help integrate and grow the combined entity, now operating as NWS Canada.
Today, Glenn serves as President of ProgUSA, supporting US power utilities and service firms with electrical test and measurement equipment. He is also the author of Never Sit in the Lobby, a practical guide to winning and sustaining success in complex sales environments.
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Mark (00:31)
Welcome to today's episode of Selling the Cloud podcast. I'm excited to welcome Glenn Poulis, an award-winning author, sales expert, and serial entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience in complex B2B selling. Glenn is the co-founder of Gap Wireless, which he built from startup to a multi-million dollar distribution business serving the mobile broadband and wireless infrastructure markets.
KK Anderson (00:57)
and the infrastructure market.
Mark (00:59)
of North America. In 2022, GAP Wireless was acquired by Network Wireless Solutions, NWS, a portfolio company of green management. stayed on as the executive vice president and general manager to help integrate and grow the combined entity, which is now NWS Canada. Today, Glenn is president of Prague USA, a company that supports US power utilities and service firms
with electrical test and measurement equipment. Thanks so much for joining us here, Glenn, and welcome.
Glenn Poulos (01:31)
Thanks, Mark. Great to be here.
Mark (01:32)
Cool, so today we'll explore four critical themes. First one, the core of complex B2B selling. How deals really get done and when the product is technical and the risk is high, how do you make sure that you build very strong efficiency into your selling model? Building sales repeatability. The habits and systems that make results predictable.
Scaling and distribution business. We're gonna go a little deeper in that than we normally do. But really from startup to exit in the telecom and technology sectors. And then AI and technology and sales. Using tools without using the human connection.
Topic one, just start with the B2B selling model as a whole. Glenn, your book, Never Sit in the Lobby, is full of field-tested wisdom from 40 years in technical sales. When you're selling complex products, whether it's wireless infrastructure, equipment, or power utility testing solutions, what fundamentally determines whether a buyer says yes or ultimately walks away?
Glenn Poulos (02:32)
Great question. So, and we're talking about complex sales, right? So, right. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, complex sales is a little different than just, you know, box selling or when you're just selling commodities like printers and computers or something. And, you know, when, when someone's buying something that's complex, right, they're not really buying a product.
Mark (02:36)
We are. Yes.
Glenn Poulos (02:52)
I always like to tell our people they're buying safety and solutions, right? Like they've got a problem. It could probably be solved in many ways with a complex solution, right? And it, and they're buying the safety that it, the, that decision will work, won't blow up in their face. No one's going to get fired. That's where the old, nobody got fired for buying IBM or Hewlett Packard came from, right? And that someone will stand beside them when things get hard, right? The specs matter.
but trust matters more, right? That's the most important thing is the trust. And if a buyer doesn't feel safe saying yes, price doesn't become an issue, product doesn't become an issue, you're kind of dead in the water. And that's just a little,
Looking back, it's like that's why a lot of times people would say to them, so I can't believe I didn't get the order. Like I had the best product, I had the best price, I had the best delivery, but they didn't trust you. rather, and again, I love saying, nobody got fired for buying IBM, right? They knew IBM was going to be there even if they were twice the price. And it's like, you know what? I'm going to buy IBM. Then I don't have to worry about it. I can say, Hey, I bought IBM. What do you want from me? Right? So that's kind of my first part of it.
so the question is like, how do you build safety and trust, right? That's the key, you know, and so one of the key things that I always say is, you build it by slowing down early, right? You got to ask better questions.
Listening more than talking the old God gave you two ears and one mouth you do the math, right and ⁓ the so listening more than talking, know, and you want to you want to be open honest and upfront about the risks, right and Challenge them with the risks a little bit so that they're out there and you're discussing the real risks that are in play and when the buyer you were trying to establish report to the point where the buyer feels feels you're helping them and not pushing them to buy
Right. And so that's, that's, that's one aspect of it. Right. And, you know, some of the biggest mistakes people make are, you know, pushing price too early, trying to dive into specs for bigger, faster, wider, deeper, 20 % cheaper, you know, all those kinds of, you know, salesmen kind of things. Right. And pitching before understanding. And yeah. So.
KK Anderson (04:53)
So in a complex sale where it could go on for six to nine months and there's lots of dollars at stake as we were just discussing, what are some tricks or ways that you teach or talk about building consensus as you go through the sales process, as new people are added on into the conversation, as complexities increase?
you know, everyone's got a different opinion. Like what are some ways that you build, build consensus, if you will. ⁓
Glenn Poulos (05:20)
Okay, so
or get to the order or whatever, right? I guess is yeah. So first, you got to understand the risk, right? Like that's the you got to present it to the customer, you got to present what the risks are to them and getting the job done. And you have to understand what the risks are to you and presenting your product at like your solution. You know, as being the as being the solution, right, you have to always remember early on and throughout it that buyers are not afraid of the price.
And that proves itself out by just looking on the road and there's people that are driving Toyota Corollas and people that are driving Mercedes Benz S-Class, right? And so clearly some people just want to spend more on a car, right? And so they're afraid of being wrong, making the wrong decision. So you got to ask questions that uncover ⁓ what failure would look like if they make the wrong decision and who gets the blame if it happens, right? You're trying to identify that kind of stuff, right? And then second,
This is so important, right? You wanna map the decision process, who influences, and there's many models and sales strategies out there. I don't teach these, but like the challenger model and what have you, where you're identifying the technical buyer, the financial influencer, the key decision maker and what have you. But you need to know, ⁓ especially the way I explain it to people is you have to look at the dollar value of the solution that you're selling.
Let me, it's 50 K 500 K 5 million, 50 million. Right. And you have to say in the company that I'm selling it to who's signing that check, who's signing the PO, the authorization, the final, where does the buck stop? Right. Because if you're selling something that might be, you know, let's say, you know, 250 K and it's a $5 million company, it's probably the owner that's signing it. Right. But if it's, if it's a 250 K deal, but it's a $5 billion corporation.
with offices around the world, chances are some vice president, regional manager, finance guy, whatever you need to map out and know exactly where you got to go to, find out why and where it's stuck. Right? So you're mapping the decision making who's the influencers, who decides and who could stop the deal. And, you know, and most of the time the complex deals fail because you ignored.
the person you didn't know about or you were surprised late in the game who that was and that you never talked to. And sorry.
KK Anderson (07:32)
I think the key word
I'm hearing you say, Glenn, here is mapping. And we are huge fans of the idea of a mutual action plan or map, right? And so, and what's great about that is that not only are you mapping out the strategy of what's going to happen over the next six to nine months and who needs to be involved and who can say yes and who's going on vacation when, so you don't, you're not shocked at the end of the quarter when you're not getting a signature because you're
Glenn Poulos (07:42)
Nice. Yeah, good. Yeah.
KK Anderson (07:58)
You know, the signer is in Barbados, right? But the trick I would think is, and I believe, is making sure that it's mutual. And so to the extent that you can really build trust by saying, hey, here's our plan, you know, when you have a champion, I think that action of creating a mutual action plan helps to really build that trust and build that relationship. And then as you're bringing new people in,
it becomes easier because you're all singing from the same song sheet.
Glenn Poulos (08:23)
yeah, for sure. The there's a funny story in my I always like to say shameless plug for the book, right? But in my book, right, there's a story about a guy that sells high value tow motors, right? Like our forklift, some people call them. And these things are massively expensive machines, right? And $120,000 or whatever. And so, in the stories about a guy who shows up, he and he's trying to sell a company
tow motors, right? And he works for Toyota. And so he looks at the organization and he says to himself, so they need like four machines. That's like half a million dollars. It's probably the CEO that's gonna, that could be the CEO that signs off on that, right? So what does he do? He calls the CEO and he says, hey, it's Glenn from Acme tow motors, right?
You know, we want to show you the, these tow motors, they, know you're using Kawasaki, but you know, we'd love to get these in for a trial or whatever. the guys, what are you talking about? Glenn? says, I don't get involved with tow motors. the vice president of warehousing is responsible for all that stuff. That's Jack. I'm like, all right. Okay. Yeah. Fine. No problem. Let me give Jack a call. So call Jack.
Jack, it's Glenn. was just on the phone with the CEO. He told me I really needed to get your attention. We've got these tow motors, right? We know you're looking at a few, you know, know you're a coil stock user. We want to show you the Toyota. says, Glenn, stop wasting my time. says, I don't get involved in that stuff. Right? I've got a director of warehousing. That's Bob. Right? Why wasting my time? Bob, Bob, I've been on the phone all day with the CEO, the vice president. They told me if I don't get these machines in front of you, you know, lickety split.
Mark (09:41)
.
Glenn Poulos (09:53)
He's going to have my head. Right. And so, and he's like, glad, come on. I'm a director. I don't have time to look at tow motors. You got to talk to the warehouse manager. You know, that's Jack. Right. So Jack called Jack. Yeah. Of course, Jack refers you to the shop steward or whatever the floor manager or whatever. And before you know it, you're bringing in the tow motors. You say, look, I've been on the phone with the CEO, the vice president, the director, the manager, the, you know, the foreman. And now, you know, here they are. Right. So then you bring the machines to the, to the work.
The whole idea behind that story is that at any point you can call anyone in the stack and figure out where the deal's stuck, right? And so, and one of the things I always like to do, and again, this is a metaphor, right? But it's very valuable and I've used it my whole life, right? Is he call the CEO and you say, look, I know you don't get involved in this stuff, but I got to, you know, I know you're putting half a million dollars of machines on the floor. got my machine down here and we're doing circles around Kawasaki right now. Like you need to come down here and have a look at this. And he's like,
I need two minutes. That's it. And you know what the guy's saying? I'm tow motor ripping around my warehouse, brand new, whatever. I'm going to come have a look. And the CEO walks in and the, you know, all these people are like, what the heck's the CEO doing here or whatever. Right. And, but at any point you can call the CEO and say, why is my deal stuck? And then he says, well, Glenn, he says, I forgot to tell you, know, we have a deal with the national deal with Kawasaki and it doesn't expire until 2027 and
And I mean, you want to figure that out from that guy as soon as possible. And hopefully before you delivered a demo or whatever. And, ⁓ but I like to try to give people real world examples of how it plays out and, what happens on the opposite side when people don't do it right is, you know, your sales guy says, ⁓ I, you know, I got an appointment to do the demos and it's now with the powers that be. Right. He, gave his report to the powers that be.
He sent it upstairs, right? And all that stuff. I'm like, when salesmen tell me that makes me want to like blow my brains out, right? I'm like, who's the powers that be? You know, the people upstairs, right? And I'm like, no, those are the people that are buying your competitor. And you're going to come to me in a few weeks and tell me you lost, right? If you don't know that everyone in the chain and you can't call them, then you blew it. And the problem is you have to start at the top.
and go down because you can't like start with the foreman and then he gives you the old powers that be and then start calling up the stack and alienating the guys below, right? You want to be pushed down, not up, right? And because, you know, it's like, how dare you call my boss, you know? And, and so that's like a real world ⁓ scenario of how it can play out in a way that people can relate to, right? So, and ⁓ yeah.
And so I kind of got a little off topic. The other thing was, you you were asking me about, you know, how do you, how do you ramp it over time? Right. And, know, you, you always want to make sure all the trust is built before the brochures in the, and the pitching and the, know, you want to be sharing your insights and then you want to be playing to what you've learned. And you want to, you want to demonstrate and, and prove out only to that. Cause oftentimes mistakes I see guys make.
is like a good example would be myself, but don't make the mistake of using yourself as marketing data because you'll probably be wrong. But when it comes to cars, I love Mercedes-Benz, but Mercedes-Benz is known for the speed and the AMG ⁓ motors in the car, and there's a lot of ⁓ very fast
and very powerful cars, but that's not why I like Mercedes, right? I don't drive them fast. I mean, I do whatever the, whatever the proportional amount over the speed limit I'm able to drive is that's what I set the cruise at. And I, and I never, don't, you know, I'm not worried about dropping it down into third and going, you know, I'm what I like is the luxury and the comfort. I don't care about the speed. So, but most salesmen would start laying on 500 horsepower, dual torque, overhead cam, dual turbos, you know, new zero to 60. don't care.
I'm already lost and I already know that you've not built rapport with me. Right? So how is it, he's not presenting to, you know, to sell $120,000 car to someone, you know, in the right way. Cause he didn't figure out what part of it's important to me. I don't even need to hear about the speed or the motor size. I don't actually care. You know, and it's the same with many, many things, you know, and, but people are
they're scared and nervous. And so they kind of like want to drop back to like the training, the bullet points they learned in the training class. You know, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, right? Whereas you want to be stopping talking and start listening. What is it you need to do with these? Why am I here? What is your biggest problem you're trying to solve? You know, is it quality throughput, timing, speed, you know, power, you know, accuracy, know, resolution.
Whatever, you know, so sorry, I rambled. I said it.
KK Anderson (14:40)
makes perfect sense. It really does. And
like it, this kind of is the perfect bridge into our second topic, which is around building sales repeatability, right? And the habits, you talk a lot about habits. As a matter of fact, on LinkedIn, I reposted one of your posts this morning around the habits and the systems that make results predictable. And so in your book, you outline
57 winning sales factors and that's a lot of variables. And so when leaders hear that, their first reaction is probably something along the lines of how do I make 57 factors repeatable? So if you had to distill it down, are there three to five that are the most? Yeah.
Glenn Poulos (15:07)
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. I love him. Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. yeah. And so, and just to touch on the 57 and the number, and I mean, obviously I'm not gonna run off 57 of anything on the show, but the...
KK Anderson (15:31)
Yeah.
Glenn Poulos (15:34)
But these are factors that cover the whole litany of things you have to do during the day and throughout your career in order to be successful running the business and in sales, right? And so it's selling and so it's how to get act and stay in front of your customers and be a pleasure to do business with always, right? And yet you have to be a pleasure to do business with because most big customers are repeat customers. And so it's not a one and done, right? It's not like, you can be cranky with them and get the deal and then you're good because you got the deal because
All the customers I work with, they're 20 year investments of time, right? They buy with for me forever, right? And the company Gap Wireless, I started in 2007 and the first call I made, you know, was a lady named Arefa and I was still making calls to Arefa the day I left, 20 years later, 18 years later, right? and so the...
And so then another insight into the 57 is these are rules that I always follow. I don't break my own rules. Right. And so, and the book never sit in the lobby. That's one of them never sit in the lobby. Right. And we can talk about that later. If there's time. Why, why I say that. but the habits to be repeatable, I guess would boil down to as first as you want to be prepared. Right. And so you've done your research, you know, you're selling this kind of a system to this kind of a company.
What does this company do? How does this company make its money? Because they don't care about your system, right? They care about whatever goes out their back door and with the invoice and what they get paid for doing, right? And so again, a quick story. I always like to put this in the real world so people understand, well, what do you mean, right? Or it's not just hyperbole that I'm saying. It's like Xerox, right? You're calling on Xerox, right? Well, Xerox makes photocopiers.
And so I need to figure out about, you know, how they can make better photocopiers. No, that's actually not what they do. They're a bank, right? They're a finance company. They make all their money, you know, on either one leasing you a machine or two, selling you costs per page, right? They don't come and tell you that that photocopier is 40 grand. They tell you it's four cents a page, eight cents a page, nine cents a page, minimum thousand pages per month, you know. And so
You need to understand how the company makes money. So you want to be prepared, right? ⁓ You know, so, and you want to keep and always be prepared, right? Second thing in the repeatability stack is, you know, discipline follow up. And so this is where people get scared, lazy. They're just averse to it. Right. And so, so often you say to him, like, did you follow up? And he's like, yeah, I, I, I call them.
And okay, did you call him? Okay. Did he answer? No. I left the voicemail. Okay. Did he, what'd you say on the voicemail? And you know, maybe he says it and again, there's rules on leaving voicemails in the book, but, then I'm like, okay, well then what'd do? He says, well, I sent him an email. Okay. Okay. Did he reply back? And no, no, he didn't reply back. And so I'm like, okay, so let me get this right. So you emailed the guy, didn't reply. So you call them, left a voicemail. He never phoned you back. And so, so basically you'd never talked to the guy.
Right? Kind of thing. But you have to, you have to be able to figure out ways and means to be able to follow up and stay on top of it. And what ends up happening is, is, know, you call him, he doesn't answer. So you send him an email and then you say, follow up Monday, right? Monday comes at a fight with your spouse. You're not in a good mood. You didn't get enough coffee. You don't really feel like making the call. You snooze it to the next day. And then the next day you have meetings. You're like, I didn't do the call. Damn snooze it to the following Monday. Now you're two weeks away.
Right? Like, I mean, that's not discipline, it's avoidance and it happens like a thousand times over every week with a thousand salespeople. Right? And so you want to be disciplined. and whatever that means. Right. And, you know, and the deals are always one after the meeting. Right. And so, third, you want to be taking good notes. You want to be, and then reflecting on what's happened, what's happening.
you want to be reviewing sort of the conversations and then looking insights. And that's where I teach, sympathy, empathy and compassion, right. And trying, trying to put yourself in the customer's shoes, figuring out what they're dealing with, et cetera, right. And applying the right technique at the right time. and you want to be reflecting on those conversations, like I said, and taking the notes and following them up. Right. And then, and so those are sort of the keys, but some of the other elements, you know,
was curiosity and ⁓ you never want to assume, you know, there's the horror story where I in the book about me assuming something about a guy and I just made him so mad by my assumption. And I was just very difficult to establish rapport after that. Right. And and you want to be consistent. Right. You want to always be a pleasure to do business with, even when they say you're not getting the order.
because you'll get the next one or you had the one before or you want to be called back in a year from now because you don't want them to not call you because they know they upset you and they're scared of you, right? It's like, I'm not calling Glenn. Pardon my language. He snapped the last time we, you know, we couldn't buy from him because of a, you know, a minor issue and, you know, a technical anomaly or whatever, right? So that's how I beat repeat. That's how I build repeatability.
Mark (20:22)
Yeah.
Perfect, good, well, yeah, those are some good thoughts and ideas. So Glenn, you've built multiple companies and have hired and managed dozens, maybe even hundreds of salespeople over the years. When you're trying to scale a sales organization, when you're trying to bring these principles into a team, how do you transfer what's in your head and in your book to the team? How do you make your process
you know, more easily teachable.
Glenn Poulos (20:50)
So.
Well, you know, how do I transfer? mean, you have to break it up into the behavior that you want and not just the talent, right? So repeatable behaviors create talent of itself, right? That's why when you look at sports people and all that, they're always doing the basics, right? You know, it's like, they're like NFL players. Why do they have to keep doing that same thing with the running with the legs and the tires? And because, you know, because they're building, they're building the talent through a set of behaviors, right?
So, and you you wanna be teaching what you do before, during and after every call, right? So we're gonna go in there, we need to figure out what it is the problem is, know, da da da da. So then you're trying to coach them during the call. And then after the call, you're like, Jack, what went wrong on that call?
Right. ⁓ I was talking too much. didn't, I saw there was an opening. didn't take it. You know, we could have got a referral to that. You know, he kind of deflected that it was another team was involved, but you didn't get any names, you know, so you want to be, you want to be, coaching before, during, and after. Right. and you know, I always like to say, you know,
Like the methodologies are the frameworks, but the winning factors are the behaviors that you follow. And you can follow a methodology and still lose because you, I would say you ignore the basics like respect, timing, preparation, follow up, what have you, right? And they all build on each other and compound into being more of a disaster the more you fail at that, right?
And so, you know, and then you're like, then the question is like, how do you pass, how do you teach people and how do you pass it on? Right. And so one of them, that's a highly personalized ones, it's from the book, right. It's my, my philosophy of greed based learning. Right. And so, and again, I hope, hope I'm not going on too far if I'm spending too much time on each one of these topics, but, greed based learning is the key to how I've sold technical products for 40 years. Right. And I, and I realized that.
you know, a long time ago and, and I allow it to, I allow it to, to work in my day to day, you know, behaviors, right? So what greed based learning is, is that, and again, I use an analogy, I love to use buying car analogies because everyone has a car. And so
Like I told you earlier, I don't care about the horsepowers and stuff on cars or whatever, right? And don't even actually care. I just want to be comfortable in a nice car and whatever with the gadgets and the cruise and all that. Right. But, you know, and so I don't really know a lot about cars where other guys know every spec off the top of their head. Right. But every four years, you know, I get a new car or something like that. Right. Well, you can bet for the, for that very small snippet of time. And for me, I'm probably going to be looking at, you know,
Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, something like that, right? And you think I can't go home and talk to my spouse and spout off every speck of those cars that I'm looking at off the top of my head with little need for memory, right? And it's a thing that I call, that's why I call it greed-based learning because my greedy little nature knows I'm getting a car at the end of it, right? And I'm able to absorb those facts painlessly and effortlessly.
Right. Because I'm getting something at the end of it. Whereas if someone just said, here's a 40 car manufacturers in the, or, car companies in the U S right. Learn all the, learn all the facts about all these 40 cars or whatever. be, it would be categorically impossible for me. There's no win in it for me. Right. And so, what you want to do is you want to sort of defer your learning until it's relevant to something where there's something in it for you. And then it becomes effortless. Right.
You're selling a million dollar system to a company you can bet that you're going to be able to remember the facts because you know what your commission is on it. Right. And so I show these guys how to allow greed based learning and gals to in their, in their career. Right. And so it's just a little, a little gamification on the, on, on learning that I do. Right. and if I have an important call with an important piece of equipment on a company and I don't really know the box,
And whatever I'll call the manufacturer, I'll call the product manager. I'll say, give me the five things they need to know in order to be a rock star with this product. And if I get stuck, I'll call you from the, from the customer site. And, and they're like, well, it's this, this, this, this, and this, right? And I'm like, look, I'm not the expert, but these are the things, you know, and then you're again, you're probing and learning and what have you. Right. So, that's the basics of it.
Mark (24:52)
No, think
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