EP204: Confidence Beats Technique in Sales Training

Alex McNaughten continues his visit with Chris to share psychological insights that challenge traditional sales training. As an AI entrepreneur, Alex emphasizes confidence should be the priority when onboarding salespeople, not technique. He advocates first building enough confidence just to "pick up the phone” and draws parallels between sales and coaching - both guide people through "the emotional journey to consider something new." Alex tells his story about overcoming fear in sales and boxing, noting most training overlooks the emotional side. He concludes that "so much sales training, particularly cold calling, is wrong or missing" these emotional components.

Alex’s perspective as an AI builder brings a unique view on honing the emotional skills crucial for sales success. He advocates pushing sales leaders to transform training to address confidence and psychology first. Join them for this episode, “Confidence Beats Technique in Sales Training.”

Links from this episode:

Grw.ai Branch49 ConnectAndSell

Alex McNaughten on LinkedIn Corey Frank on LinkedIn Chris Beall on LinkedIn

 

Full episode transcript below:

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(00:21):

Alex McNaughten continues his visit with Chris to share psychological insights that challenge traditional sales training. As an AI entrepreneur, Alex emphasizes confidence should be the priority when onboarding salespeople, not technique.

(00:36):

He advocates first building enough confidence just to pick up the phone, and draws parallels between sales and coaching. Both guide people through the emotional journey to consider something new. Alex tells his story about overcoming fear in sales and boxing, noting most training overlooks the emotional side.

(00:55):

He concludes that so much sales training, particularly cold calling, is wrong or missing these emotional components. Alex's perspective as an AI builder brings a unique view on honing the emotional skills crucial for sales success. He advocates pushing sales leaders to transform training to address confidence and psychology first. Join him and Chris for this episode, Confidence Beats Technique in Sales Training.

Chris Beall (01:26):

Yeah, so I think a CS team would be very interesting. And he loves trying new stuff. He's kind of like Corey in that regard, and I think CS might be as big a play as sales for Taylor.

(01:39):

In fact, I mean CS is the game in the world of SaaS. CAC is like, well, okay, great. But are you going to hold them, right? I know when somebody looks at a company, they don't start out asking, what's your effectiveness at acquiring customers? They ask, what's your net retention rate?

Alex McNaughten (01:57):

I think CS becomes more important in a tougher environment because it's much easier to sell more to your existing customers, and upsell them, rather than trying to bring on new ones for a lot of companies right now.

(02:10):

Thanks for teeing up this podcast, that was fun. 30 minutes goes quickly when you're just talking. It goes so fast. You think 30 minutes is a long time., It's really not. It flies past.

Chris Beall (02:20):

It is quick.

Alex McNaughten (02:24):

It's good, though. Because...

Chris Beall (02:25):

By the way. Yeah, I think that it's really interesting. We sometimes do these and we'll go an hour and a half, or something like that. And it's really interesting where the conversations end up going. We almost never go where we think we're going to go, which is great. So we don't think very hard about it, but they go by fast. They really do.