Think Big. Win Bigger.

In Episode 19 of Think Big, Win Bigger, Dennis Sorenson is joined by Michael McConnell, Chief Operating Officer of Bird Electric, to explore the leadership lessons Michael carried from his ten years in the U.S. Marine Corps into his career in the infrastructure industry. Michael shares how his military experience shaped the way he approaches leadership, accountability, communication, and developing the next generation of leaders. What does it take to lead nearly a thousand professionals? His answer: "to be a good leader, you have to develop more leaders."

Michael introduces the OSMIAC framework he learned in the Marine Corps: Orientation, Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration & Logistics, and Command & Control. He explains how he applies it to business today, connecting it to clear communication, repeatable processes, accountability, and trusting teams to execute. Dennis connects these principles to Ambition, Strategy, and Execution, as well as Plan, Prepare, Practice, Play. What happens when growth depends too heavily on the founder? They discuss developing people, building sales as a strategic asset, and creating the systems needed to scale beyond one leader. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation with Michael McConnell.

In This Episode:

(00:00) From Vermont to the Marine Corps to the power grid

(04:29) What the Marine Corps teaches about leadership

(09:34) The OSMIAC framework for planning and execution

(16:19) Field-first decisions, KPIs, and accountability without bureaucracy

(20:52) Why growth by reputation alone hits a ceiling

(24:34) Building sales as an asset to the business

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The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time.

Resources:

Why doesn't the process-driven sales system execute itself?  

Dennis Sorenson draws on lessons from a barbershop and a restaurant floor to show sales leaders what it actually means to point, arm, and monitor their teams — and why culture must be taught, not just defined. "A great system requires great leadership," he explains, arguing that hands-in, hands-on engagement — not oversight from a distance — is what turns a framework into real, repeatable performance. 

Sorenson unpacks two real relationships — with Fletch, "The Proper Barber," and Tyler, a restaurant manager he calls "the hospitality leader" — to illustrate engaged leadership in practice. Referencing Mike Weinberg's Sales Management Simplified, he breaks down the discipline of pointing, arming, and monitoring a team, and draws a sharp line between micromanagement and genuine investment in people. "Great leaders do not lead from a distance," he says, closing with a challenge: connect ambition, strategy, and execution back to leadership itself, because the system does not execute on its own. 

(00:00) Recap: the four Ps and three disciplines of process-driven sales 

(01:14) Great leadership is what makes the whole system work 

(02:21) Meeting Fletch, "The Proper Barber" 

(06:30) Tyler, the hospitality leader 

(08:42) Mike Weinberg's framework: point, arm, and monitor the team 

(12:12) Hands-on leadership versus micromanagement 

(14:51) Closing: look for leadership lessons everywhere 

Share with a sales leader or seller who's ready to build something that lasts. Subscribe to hear all future episodes![Text Wrapping Break]About the Show 

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process. 

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time. 

Produced by Castos Productions[Text Wrapping Break] 

Process-Driven Sales Substack: https://processdrivensales.substack.com/  

Dennis Sorenson LinkedIn 

Cove Group 

Horizons West 

Why do the same sales problems show up in every industry, from staffing to steel? 

Dennis Sorenson continues with Matt Reubendale, Senior Advisor for Enterprise Growth at Horizons West, for part two of their discussion on execution. Where part one covered Reubendale's own journey with GOST as a seller, this episode follows his move into sales leadership, learning to win through his people rather than around them. "The wonderful thing about GOST is that it's insanely simple," Reubendale says, "but they are the rules." He unpacks how he taught, coached, and inspected GOST plans across teams managing anywhere from a few accounts to two hundred.  

The conversation covers what makes a GOST objective "binary, yes or no," why the first plan is always wrong yet still directionally useful, and the weekly ghost call that keeps teams accountable. Reubendale shares how leading a team with 50 to 100 accounts each forced him to apply tiering inside GOST, and why Horizons West teaches the same system to every rep regardless of territory size. Why does the system solve the same problems everywhere? "That's been the biggest lesson," Sorenson says. This episode closes the three-part execution series. 

(00:00) From individual contributor to leading through your people 

(03:00) Understanding what your people actually want before building the plan 

(05:45) Where sellers struggle first: making goals and objectives binary 

(11:22) Why the first plan is wrong, and still directionally correct 

(13:23) Living in the plan: how a leader puts their hands in GOST 

(15:23) Build once to use many, and the weekly ghost call 

(20:32) What a leader gains from sitting in on ghost calls 

(23:45) Managing 50 to 100 accounts with tiered GOST plans 

(28:31) Closing the three-part execution series 

Share with a sales leader or seller who's ready to build something that lasts. Subscribe to hear all future episodes!

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process. 

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time. 

Produced by Castos Productions

What happens when you stop managing activity and start managing outcomes? 

Dennis Sorenson welcomes longtime friend Matt Reubendale, Senior Advisor for Enterprise Growth at Horizons West, for part one of a two-part conversation. Reubendale spent nine years as an account executive, hitting 90% of quota and closing the biggest deal of his career at Teradata before meeting Sorenson in 2016. He shares how Process-Driven Sales and Sorenson's blunt question, "Do you own your house?" pushed him past managing activity toward playing for real potential. "You can't unsee it," Reubendale says of the shift disciplined execution brought to his career. 

The conversation traces Reubendale's journey from treating GOST as a bulleted task list to mastering it as a discipline that connects every meeting to a real goal. He and Sorenson revisit the hundred-million-dollar whitespace analysis, the "elephant off the toothpick" account turnaround at Teradata, and a spring-break outage that tested a disciplined plan under real pressure. Why does execution matter more than activity? "It's not about doing more," Sorenson says, "it's about knowing what matters." Part two continues the story in the next episode. (84 words) 

(00:00) Meet Matt Reubendale and his career before process-driven sales 

(03:24) The Midwest Misfits and a new kind of sales leader 

(05:47) Playing for potential, not quota, and the mortgage story 

(08:40) Introducing GOST as the execution discipline 

(13:16) Plan, prepare, practice, and connecting every action to the goal 

(17:19) A crisis call, an outage, and disciplined execution paying off 

(19:51) The elephant on the toothpick and transforming a major account 

(24:13) Why the customer's outcome has to matter 

(28:42) Matt's pitch on ambition, execution, and accountability 

(32:00) Disciplined execution is about what matters, not doing more 

Share with a sales leader or seller who's ready to build something that lasts. Subscribe to hear all future episodes! 

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process. 

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time. 

Produced by Castos Productions

Could a simple four-letter framework fix your entire sales forecast? 

In Episode 15 of Think Big, Win Bigger, host Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, goes solo for the third pillar of his Process-Driven Sales System: execution. Building on the ambition and strategy work from earlier episodes, Dennis introduces GOST, a framework built on Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics. His core argument: a plan that lives "up here" in a seller's head isn't real. As Dennis puts it, "If it's not written down, it's not real." This episode is a practical playbook for turning strategy into daily, repeatable action. 

Dennis breaks down how GOST creates a parent-child hierarchy connecting big-picture goals to the daily tactics that move deals forward, and why minimal, well-dated plans outperform bloated ones. He explains backward planning from deadlines, the "gap rule" for spotting missing tactics, and why forecasting accuracy depends on disciplined execution. Dennis also shows how GOST doubles as a discovery tool, helping sellers map a customer's own goals and objectives. What's the real difference between activity and accomplishment? And how do you keep from confusing the two? 

(00:00) Recapping the process-driven sales series so far 

(02:03) Execution: where strategy becomes daily action 

(06:23) Introducing GOST: goals, objectives, strategies, tactics 

(09:47) Sales math and the gap rule 

(11:50) Backward planning and setting realistic dates 

(14:25) Forecasting accuracy and why deals slip 

(18:49) How to actually build a GOST plan 

(23:15) GOST as your written close plan 

(25:53) Staying focused on what matters each week 

(28:00) Using GOST in customer discovery 

Share with a sales leader or seller who's ready to build something that lasts. Subscribe to hear all future episodes! 

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process. 

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time. 

Dennis Sorenson: LinkedIn 

Cove Group 

Horizons West 

What if the biggest thing killing your deals isn't the market, but your own fear and ego?

About the Show

Resources:

Is sales really about relationships, or is it just math in disguise? Host Dennis Sorenson sits down with Blaine Sibby, Chief Revenue Officer at Zenith Roofing, for part one of a two-part conversation on friction — the invisible force that stalls deals before they start. A former Marine Corps lieutenant, Blaine traces the concept back to MCDP Tac1, a Marine Corps warfighting publication, and applies it directly to sales: "friction is anything that makes the seemingly easy very difficult." What's really slowing your pipeline down? Blaine's answer: it's rarely the market. It's the self-imposed friction sellers create for themselves. 

The two dig into where friction actually hides — in weak qualification, in white space on a calendar, in comp plans that reward the wrong activity. Dennis introduces his "sales is just math" framework, and Blaine counters with his own CRM dilemma: how do you actually quantify relationship-building? They close on the deepest friction point of all — trust — with Blaine's take that "people do business with those that they like," but the real work starts once you have to earn something deeper. 

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process. 

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time. 

Blaine Sibby LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/blaine-sibby-mba-b5ba3935/  

Cove Group 

Are you still being seen as the vendor, or have you earned trusted partner status?

Host Dennis Sorenson welcomes back longtime friend and business partner Lee Paries, co-founder of Horizons West, for part two of this strategy deep dive. Paries built his career scaling enterprise accounts at NCR and Teradata, pushing teams past quota into 10 to 20x territory. His core belief? Sellers cap their growth the moment a customer sees them as a vendor instead of a partner. "You always get capped a little bit," he warns, arguing ambition only happens once it's paired with disciplined planning and the courage to execute without shortcuts.

What does it take to grow an account 10 to 20x? Dennis and Lee break down "high, wide, and deep" account mapping, the discipline of earning trusted-advisor status instead of vendor status, and why monopolizing top talent for a client pays off. They discuss prioritizing opportunities with an 80-15-5 effort split, proving value through customer references, and applying strategy across an entire territory, not just one account. The episode closes with the origin story of Horizons West and Lee's challenge: stop, find your moment of inflection, and execute.

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process.

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time.

Lee Paries on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeparies/

Cove Group

Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group and host of Think Big, Win Bigger, welcomes co-founder of Horizons West and longtime sales leader Lee Paries for Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Lee built his career from a $19,000-a-year first job in healthcare, earning early mentorship from sales leader Hugh McBride, who saw in him an intensity and drive to eliminate the competition entirely — not just win some of it. Lee went on to lead national sales teams, close a $350 million contract representing 50% company growth, and build multi-million dollar enterprise books at Teradata with accounts including eBay, PayPal, and T-Mobile. His conviction? "That doesn't mean that's your limitation. It's only your limitation if you impose it on yourself.

This episode covers the full arc of strategic selling — from the dangers of transactional thinking to the discipline of narrowing your focus to win bigger. Dennis and Lee discuss how they moved their teams beyond chasing transactions toward building long-term enterprise relationships at accounts like Wells Fargo, MGM Casinos, and Visa. What does it take to shift from a 12-month sales mindset to a three-to-five-year strategic account plan? How did a two-word email subject line — "coffee" — generate an 85–90% executive meeting acceptance rate? And how did the Lunch VITO and Coffee VITO strategies evolve into the frameworks Lee and Dennis now deploy through Horizons West? All of that, and more, in this episode.

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process.

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time.

Lee Paries on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeparies/

Cove Group

Are your sellers busy — or are they actually executing a strategy? 

In Episode 10 of Think Big, Win Bigger, host Dennis Sorenson — CEO of Cove Group and architect of the process-driven sales system — makes the case that strategy is the pillar that changes everything. Drawing on his own evolution as a seller, from door-to-door beauty supplies in college to strategic account selling at NCR Corporation and Teradata, Dennis delivers a framework that is direct, personal, and immediately applicable. His central question is sharp: "If they're busy, but are they busy operating from a strategy or are they just busy simply reacting to what's in front of them?"

This episode breaks down what strategy actually is — and what it is not. Dennis draws a clear line between transactional sellers and strategic sellers, covering how strategy transforms prospecting, discovery, and relationship building. He unpacks the danger of becoming single-threaded in accounts, the power of relationships built high, wide, and deep, and why writing your strategy down is the moment it becomes real. He also references the foundational selling disciplines of his good friend Mike Weinberg — New Sales Simplified and Sales Management Simplified — and explains how Horizons West layers intentional growth strategy on top of those fundamentals. Whether you sell paper rolls or enterprise infrastructure, the principles, as Dennis puts it, are all the same.

Think Big. Win Bigger is hosted by Dennis Sorenson, CEO of Cove Group, a strategic partner for companies seeking to optimize sales performance and achieve sustainable growth. With deep expertise in enterprise sales and fractional CRO leadership, Dennis specializes in addressing challenges at the point of friction—where inefficiencies, misalignment, or resistance occur within the sales process.

The podcast is built on Process-Driven Sales and the three pillars of Ambition, Strategy, and Execution. Each episode breaks down the systems and operating rhythms that drive predictable performance, giving leaders and sellers practical insights they can use immediately. This is for professionals who are ready to stop improvising, start operating with intention, and build repeatable success over time.

Dennis Sorenson: LinkedIn