Sales Code Leadership Podcast

Our guest this week is Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer and The Effortless Experience, Matt is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and an experienced advisor to senior executives on sales, service and customer experience.

Matt and Ted McKenna have just written a new, must read, book for anyone interested in professional selling – “The JOLT Effect – how high performers overcome customer indecision”. It’s massively well researched as the result of listening to millions of sales calls analysed using 8300 unique factors.

Listen to this episode of the Sales Code Podcast to find out why:
customer indecision occurs.
doing nothing doesn’t mean the customer is happy with status quo.
too many questions and too much listening can actually hamper sales.
Professional sellers who talk more than they listen can still add value
FUD doesn’t help customers who are more afraid of messing up than missing out.

Listen to this episode to find out how to:

Judge the Indecision
Offer your recommendations
Limit the exploration and
Take risk off the table

And, close more sales!

Thank you, Matt for a great conversation about what elite sellers do.

It's my pleasure this week to host Bhairav Patel from Atom CTO as a guest on the Sales Code Podcast.

Bhairav worked in IT for over 20 years starting life as a consultant at one of the big four and then moving into industry to be the CTO for award winning e-commerce and FinTech businesses.

He specialises in helping companies devise technology strategies that align their IT capability with their business goals and building IT organisations that are scalable and agile so that they can adapt to strategic changes without having to spend unnecessarily.

Bhairav brings a unique perspective to the technology sales process having sat on both sides of the fence - as a buyer and seller.

Thank you Bhairav for a fascinating conversation about sales, marketing and leadership.

When I started my sales career the traditional methods of motivating your sales team were quite basic and binary - it was all about using the carrots and sticks of fear and greed to pull and push them to perform.

Thankfully things have moved along in the intervening 30 years so it's inspiring to hear David Freedman of Huthwaite International talking, on the Sales Code Podcast, about removing the salesperson's fear of failure. If you have been watching the results of both the England Women and Men's football and cricket results over the past few years you will see how great potential can be released through creating what we now call psychological safety in a team.

Huthwaite International is the company behind the world class SPIN® Selling methodology of which I am such as big fan. Listen to the full audio episode to find out how to build a high performance sales team and what great sales people do.

Charlotte Blair is a Gallup-Certified and ICF coach, attaining both in 2014. Charlotte started her career in Sales in 1997 for Canon UK and then had a 12 year career with Verizon leading account teams delivering solutions for blue-chip clients.

She now runs two successful businesses and partnering with other coaches and learning organizations to deliver great outcomes through leadership Development and Coaching.

Charlotte is a founding partner in the Strengths Partners, as well as a coach and mentor to other global coaches.

Our guest on the Sales Code Podcast this week is Tonni Bennett.

Tonni is the VP of Sales at Daily, a video API that enables companies to embed video into their applications. She recently joined Daily after helping to launch the MM segment at Twilio and scaling a sales organization at Terminus. Tonni is passionate about building high performing teams from the ground up.

Stephanie Valenti has 15+ years of experience building and leading B2B sales organisations and operational departments from 50 to 500+ team members across the U.S., Australia, and Europe. She started her professional career with Staples Business Advantage leading sales teams for over 7 years in various practices from mid-market to Enterprise to 10M dollar project business. Following Staples, and after leaving Vari as the Senior Vice President of Sales, she joined Loftwall as Chief Operating Officer. In her 18 months at the company, Loftwall has been named to the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in America and ranked as one of the top places to work in DFW. Now, she joins SmartBug Media, 5x Inc 5000 winner and Elite HubSpot partner, as Chief Revenue Officer.


Stephanie leads sales, marketing, and all client services and delivery departments at SmartBug Media. Her focus is on creating unity between revenue teams, fluency in the customer journey, and credibility with partners.

With a passion for scaling teams, building processes, and cultivating a winning culture, Stephanie has a track record of success of being an executive member of three record-breaking companies that boasted triple digit growth. Standing for people first leadership through accountability, transparency, and humility, she is always looking for ways to mentor the next generation of leaders enterprise-wide. Personally, Stephanie lives in Dallas with her husband and 3 children - 21, 15, and 9 and enjoys devouring books in her spare time.

In this episode of the Sales Code Podcast, we have Tom Lavery, CEO & Founder at Jiminny, a conversation intelligence platform that helps companies create high performance culture.

Join us as Tom talks about what it takes to be a great sales leader; how awareness of your talents can help you to be more effective and the importance of being transparent with your team. We also delve deeper into culture, strategy and execution.

Dan Wardle is currently the VP of Revenue at Vidyard, responsible for all areas of revenue growth including sales, partnerships and business development. With 9+ years at Vidyard Dan has built the sales team from a team of 2 to 100+, as well as previous roles at Salesforce and BlackBerry.

Brooke Bachesta started her career as an SDR, worked her way up to an AE, later an SDR manager, and is now an Enablement leader at Outreach.io.
Her background is primarily in startups with a focus on high growth and up-market initiatives. After 5 years as a front line SDR manager, she transitioned into an Enablement role where she partners with the global inbound and outbound development teams (XDR) of Outreach.io to attract and retain top talent, accelerate internal mobility, improve conversion rates, enhance buyer experience and increase productivity.

Brooke has a passion for engaging with the next generation of sales and often works with students looking to get into SAAS. She co-founded a womxn in sales organization at Outreach titled “Gals & SALs,” and is on the board of directors for the University of Washington Sales Certificate program. She often guest speaks in courses and conferences around the country.

Our guest on the Sales Code Leadership Podcast this week is Nigel Hawthorn.

I’ve known Nigel for longer than either us care to count – he’s a special person with feet in two camps – a little bit of marketing and a little bit of sales – we had a great conversation that covered a lot of ground that I think would be interesting for anyone who is unsure how the two teams should work together. He’s worked for small startups and larger organisations, worked in the USA and Europe, presented in over 50 countries and has a worldview that I think is pretty unique. Join us in our conversation covering acting, storytelling, Steve Jobs and Crossing the Chasm.