5 Core Beliefs That Drive Sales Success
With Guest Derek Roberts
The Hidden Gap Between Average Sellers and Top Performers
The How to Sell More Podcast
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April 23, 2025
Want to know the secret to selling more?
Talk less and listen better.
In this episode of How to Sell More, host Mark Drager and guest Derek Roberts take on the old-school pushy salesperson stereotype. Sales reps who just “pitchslap” (a pitch that hits you so hard you get metaphorical whiplash) and prioritize closing deals over their customers' needs.
When done right, doesn't this create value for both companies and customers?
And isn't this possible without any pushy tactics at all? How?
By getting back to the real purpose of sales, which is to make buying easy. When you talk less and listen more, you can help customers discover their own needs and flip the traditional sales dynamic on its head.
With this approach, the motivation to buy doesn’t come from the salesperson pressuring the customer. It comes from the customer truly understanding their needs and wanting to address them.
“You have to first believe in your product. That's the first sale that you make, right? To yourself.” - Derek Roberts
In episode 108, Derek explains why sales performance is driven by your mindset, and he offers five self-beliefs that all salespeople and managers must understand to achieve success.
As the co-author of Listen to Sell: How Your Mindset, Skillset, and Human Connections Unlock Sales Performance, Derek identifies first and foremost as a salesperson. He’s the President of Roberts Business Group and an Executive Partner with Integrity Solutions, where he co-developed a proprietary sales coaching program that has helped clients in 130 countries and across multiple industries.
Ready to let go of pushy strategies and supercharge your success with authentic selling? Listen to the full conversation now.
Connect with Derek Roberts
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Get your copy of Listen to Sell: How Your Mindset, Skillset, and Human Connections Unlock Sales Performance
- Learn more about Integrity Solutions
More About Today's Guest, Derek Roberts
Derek Roberts has spent nearly three decades building, training, and coaching high-performance sales teams and sales leaders. Although he is an executive coach, consultant, and professional speaker, he proudly identifies first and foremost as a sales professional.
Serving as President of Roberts Business Group and an Executive Partner with Integrity Solutions since 1999, Derek is the co-author of Be a Mindsetter: The Essential Guide to Inspire, Influence and Impact Others. His latest book, Listen to Sell: How Your Mindset, Skillset, and Human Connections Unlock Sales Performance, has been described as “a refreshingly different book about selling…” and “the step-by-step guide every salesperson needs to be successful in today’s market.”
At Nashville-based Integrity Solutions, Derek and his co-author, Mike Esterday, developed a proprietary sales coaching program that has helped clients in 130 countries and across multiple industries — from financial services to manufacturing to healthcare. Their values-based, customer-centric sales philosophy centers on authentic business relationships above all else.
If you’re a sales executive, manager, or rep who has hit a plateau or doubts you’re cut out for sales, Listen to Sell may be the breakthrough you need. By focusing on mindset, skillset, and genuine connections, Derek’s approach empowers individuals and organizations to achieve new levels of performance.
A Transcription of The Talk
Mark Drager: Derek, you write, “Sales is the only profession that seems to be constantly defined by those who do it badly.” Ouch… that’s hard to read. What do you mean by that?
Derek Roberts: It's kind of a painful line to write because all of us have had really bad sales experiences. Unfortunately, you can go out, man on the street, have the microphone and stop anybody on the corner and say, “What comes to mind when we say the word ‘salesperson’ or something like that?” And you get just this litany of really egregious things—selfish, self-serving, aggressive—and all these experiences that we all have.
Unfortunately, that gets painted across an entire profession of individuals, and it makes it really difficult for those of us who approach selling in an entirely different way to sort of separate ourselves from that. Doesn't mean that we don't have the ability to stand out—and I think when you do sales really well, you do stand out—but it taints an entire profession, because everyone has a story.
Sales is prolific. All you have to do is need something, and you engage someone along the sales chain. And so unfortunately, that experience permeates all over.
Mark Drager: And so I suppose it's no different than the politician or maybe the press. Every year they release these, least trustworthy types of positions.
And so it's fair to say, “Listen, there's always bad apples, and there's always people who will go out there and take advantage or be self-centered,” or what have you. But more and more in my world—and I imagine in your world—we're aiming to run principled businesses.
But in my experience, I'm not coming across people who have been in business for five or ten or fifteen or twenty years, who have capital asset-heavy organizations, who have invested years and decades into building something great—and then they're not going out there and just ripping people off.
So, why does this still exist? If day by day by day, the scammers might be on the internet, you might go to buy a used car and feel like you're getting your arms squeezed—but for the most part, we're all decent people just trying to do our best no?.
Derek Roberts: Yeah, I totally believe that. And I think that's one of the reasons we put our voice out there and say there is a really high-integrity kind of way to sell. And a lot of people out there do that.
We come out of the gate right at the beginning of the book and make this declaration that salespeople are valuable. And in fact, selling is a noble profession. And we use these words—noble profession—intentionally, because we really do believe that there is a high value to the person who connects solutions to needs.
Most salespeople that are trying to make a living doing that, I believe really do want to do it that way. It's consistent, congruent with who they want to be.
Sometimes they've not been equipped well to do it, and they sort of unintentionally stumble into doing some things that do come across to people as being pushy or self-serving or things like that. I don't know that's even their intent, but sometimes we just lack the skills, or we lack the exposure to a better way of doing it.
Certainly, there are a pretty high number of people who bring that kind of integrity to the equation. And yet, there are still so many touchpoints out there, and so many things that we need, and so many avenues that we can be associated with that transactional experience, that we get lumped into being inundated with a bot, or with somebody who calls us in the middle of dinner, or, you know, catches us on the street and tries to wrangle us into something.
And those things stick, unfortunately, in people's psyche. But they're not what I would call professional sales activity, and they don't go to the heart of what we believe really is possible in the sales experience.
And I think that's one of the reasons we have a fantastic audience of customers who are hungry to do it the right way. And we've been fortunate to be doing this for about 50 years and have that kind of experience with folks.
So yeah, and the business-to-business profession especially is a great space to do that, because you're really well-equipped with knowledge and experience to apply to solving the needs of your customer.
Mark Drager: So if I think about a CEO, an executive, a sales executive, a marketing executive, an owner-manager—someone who might not be frontline sales but is looking to bring on the first, the second, the third, to professionalize their team—I think that there's maybe, I don't know if it's a misconception, but you mentioned just now the idea of the person on the street in your book.
I had to laugh, because you write about Groundhog Day. I just watched it last week with my daughter—my 18-year-old daughter—and I'm going through all of these films with her from the '80s and the '90s and trying to introduce her to some great films. So we go through Groundhog Day. And, of course, there's that character.
Derek Roberts: Ol’ Ned Ryerson.
Mark Drager: Ol’ Ned. And he's like, “Phil!” And he comes in—if you haven't watched it in a while, the idea is that Bill Murray's character is stuck on a loop, the same day, every day. Every day, he has to run into an old classmate who happens to sell insurance.
I watched this scene, and I watched him, and if you know what I'm talking about, he comes in super hot, super aggressive, and he just will not let up. He's like, “Phil! Do you have life insurance? I'm doing this! How's great? Let's do this, and let's do lunch!”
And so it's funny, though, because you pointed out—well, what happens to this character? He gets punched in the face.
But if I'm thinking as a business owner, and I'm thinking about my sales team, that's what I want. I say I don't, but what I really do is I really do want a whole group of people who are hungry, who will get the bite on the line, who will not let up, who will chase people down.
I don't want to come across as slimy. I don't want to come across as overly aggressive. So now I'm talking out of both sides, and so help me understand why this is—because I've heard this from many of our clients, I've heard this from colleagues, I've heard this from other business owners—we don't want to pressure people, but frankly, if push came to shove, we probably want a bunch of Neds on our team, don't we?
Derek Roberts: Yeah, listen, I love someone who's got a high achievement drive, right? Lots of energy—we actually talk about that. Goal clarity and achievement drive are indicators of success. We need that.
But how you execute it matters, of course. So put that energy in the places that matter. Put that energy into your research. Put that energy into being courageous and bold to initiate a conversation.
But when you're in that conversation, how you engage really does make the difference.
For sure—walk up, engage, knock on the door, make the call, send the email—whatever that is to create that moment. But when you get that moment, what are you there for? Are you there to serve your needs and to get something across the line? Or are you there to genuinely surface the potential of a need?
So here's the thing: what customers really need help with is understanding their needs. When people really understand what their needs are, they're compelled to find solutions to those needs. The compulsion to buy is theirs. The energy and urgency to buy is driven from the customer when they have a clear understanding of the significance and intensity of their need.
There's energy to buy—and we can see that. Anytime you run out of milk, or you're in the middle of something and you have a missing part, there's an urgency. There's an urgency to go find that, fill that need, and then complete that project or whatever that is.
So the pressure to buy comes from the customer, rather than from the salesperson. Creating an understanding of what that need is—and the necessity, the urgency, or the value of solving that need—is part of what we do as salespeople.
And so, by engaging and asking better questions, by creating moments of discovery, by us finding out what's really important to somebody—use the Ned Ryerson example for a moment. If Ned had asked a couple of really smart questions, like:
“Hey, Phil, you know, we're in this moment. Tell me what's going on in your life. Tell me what's important to you.”
Just a couple of things that extracted some awareness—maybe, maybe there's something that could have been offered that was valuable.
But the pressure to buy actually comes from the buyer, not from the salesperson.
Mark Drager: Okay, so don’t pressure people to buy. I think Ned may have screwed up a bit by pressuring him to sign a contract right there on the street.
But, part of your book does an amazing job of breaking down five self-beliefs, beliefs that are required to execute well in a sales role.
I want to get into the self-beliefs in a second. But before we do…
…if the real pressure to buy comes from the customer, how do we balance giving them the space they need to make their own decisions with showing up as confident problem-solvers? Because many buyers still want that extra spark—the energy, the guidance, even the ‘dog and pony show’ - often they want to be sold to.
How do we balance this?
Derek Roberts: I think the question is really interesting, because we talk about authenticity, right? We talk about product knowledge. We talk about the idea of showing up and being genuine.
That comes from inside, right? I want someone who cares about getting me the right solution—not just selling me something for the sake of selling, but getting me the right solution.
That means I want to be able to trust that they know what they're talking about. I need that person to be more professional in their particular vein of knowledge than I am. Otherwise, why do I need them?
If I can do all the research, if I have all the knowledge, I don't need that person. I want my sales professional to be just that—a professional, and knowledgeable in the space.
I also want them to bring to me some discovery that I can't get on my own, right? Ask me that question. I think we've all had that experience where we've kind of fixated in our mind down one track, and you find that individual who just takes you a step back and says:
“Well, think about this,” or “What about this?” or “How would you handle this?” or “How does this situation impact you?”
And you have that aha moment where you go, “Oh, I didn't even see that. I understand that. Oh, that's what I really am trying to address—not this other thing that I was sort of stuck on.”
So I do want my sales partner in this to take me on that discovery journey and find out what's important to me—and create that discovery in me.
So yes, I do. And I certainly want them—you said—to puff me up and things like that. You know, I want that to be a good experience.
For me, we have a saying: everyone has a right to buy the way they want to buy—not necessarily the way somebody else wants to sell.
And think about that. We each have our own biases. Some of us like lots of information. Some of us like lots of relationships. Some of us make quick decisions—and if it's the wrong decision, we'll make another decision. No big deal.
Others of us want to make one decision, and we want it to be the right decision. So we'll take our time and we'll do this.
So every person has a desire to buy—and really a right to buy the way that is most appropriate and fitting for them.
How do we get our salespeople to identify that, to tune into that very quickly, and not patronize, but genuinely say:
“You know what? If you need more information, let me get it for you. But if you think you can make a quick decision, I'm okay with that. If you don't want me prying into relationships in your life, even though I'm a people person, that's perfectly fine. Let's get right down to business, because that's an obstacle to you. That’s too personal. Fantastic. Let me make this easy for you.”
I really believe the job of a sales professional is to make the buying experience easy. Speak my language. Take the time. Ask me the right questions. Get me into that moment of discovery.
I'll go where you want me to go if I feel it's compelling—but your job is to help me get there. And yes, I want you to be knowledgeable. I also want you to be adaptable.
Mark Drager: Okay, so that's what's expected when you're in the room, but what are top performers doing before they ever get into the room?
Derek Roberts: I'm a real believer that beliefs drive behavior. What I believe about myself as a salesperson, what I really believe my job is, who I am, and my own abilities—do I feel like I'm doing something that's consistent with who I want to be as an individual, right? My values—all those things.
What happens before I even engage the customer translates into how I engage that prospect or customer. And the energy I bring to that, the authenticity I bring to that, the creativity I bring to that.
Because I might show up and I may have a tremendous amount of knowledge—but it's all rote, right? I have to be present and genuinely interested.
I say often, some of the best salespeople I have ever encountered are genuinely curious, right? They have this sort of curious intensity to understand what's going on with you and your particular situation—and how can I figure out what connects the dots for you in this way?
There’s energy and curiosity. Sure, I may hear in the first one or two quick answers what the solution is ultimately going to be. I'm like, “Oh yeah, I've done this 100 times, I could get there.”
But you touched on it—I run the risk of outrunning my customer or prospect in their discovery of that if I just go and start offering solutions.
So my job is to engage them—and again, make it easy. Show up. When I lose that energy, it falls flat, right? I'm not there, and I'm not doing the job that I need to for my customer in that way.
Mark Drager: You write in the book, “To be successful in sales, you need to convince people.” We've just been speaking about that. “But first, you need to convince yourself—and to do that, you need to know why you're selling.”
But there are five self-beliefs that I imagine can destroy a sales career if you don’t—well, I don’t know if we need all of these perfectly lined up, and I’ll let you speak to that.
But the five beliefs are: your view of selling, your view of abilities, your values, your commitment to activities, and your belief in product.
What are these? What do they mean? How do they affect us as salespeople? How do they affect our sales teams?
Derek Roberts: Yeah, I think these are essential. We've been doing this for over 50 years, and we've trained sales professionals literally all over the world—I mean, millions of people who've been through. And these are things that we have extracted over time. I think they are essential. Maybe they're not all perfectly in alignment all the time, but they're indicators of how we are—how effective we're going to be. View of selling—what do I really believe the sales profession is?
To me, selling is really identifying needs people have, meeting those needs, creating value in the process of doing so—and maybe you can develop some relationship along the way. But if you can identify needs and meet needs and create value, then that’s selling.
It might be the definition of service as well, but that’s really all it is. It's bringing people along and meeting the needs they have. Lots of people misidentify or misdefine this. And some of this, though, is rooted in: what do I believe I’m bringing to the equation?
I’ll give you just a little backstory here. I have 10 children, right? I’ve got a full household—fantastic. But I get to watch kids do kid things all the time.
And think about this: when you were a kid, what did you spend a lot of time doing? Of course, we play—but the kids have great imaginations. They also project themselves into certain characters or into certain features.
My kids run around, they dress up, they play whatever it is. How many of us that are in sales today played salesperson as a kid? Did we project ourselves into that? What’s that aspirational, imaginary future for us?
I ask this all the time in meetings and keynotes and things like that—no hands go up. Or one or two, right? Because we don’t have that sort of mental imagination to be solving problems for people in a sales capacity as a kid.
As it progresses, I ask: when you went to school, did you go to higher education with the intent to be in sales? When you got your first job, were you trying to be a success in sales?
Very gradually, you get these hands coming up. Most people who are in sales really had no intention or aspiration to be in sales as part of a journey or career path. And yet, somehow, they ended up in sales.
Mark Drager: Is the vast—and I'm guessing here—is the vast majority that they wanted the ability to work with autonomy, they wanted to make a lot more money, and they naturally are the type of people who can—who aren’t afraid to just put themselves out there?
Derek Roberts: You know, it’s all kinds of reasons.
Some people say, “Look, I see that guy over there driving this car, having this…” and they want that income. Some want autonomy.
Many—in fact, I would almost say a majority—are, in some ways, put into the role. Someone along the way said, “You should be in sales,” or “I think you’ve got an opportunity. Let’s try this.”
Actually, I think a disproportionate number of people get put into sales rather than necessarily choose sales.
But what does that do to the psyche of the individual that gets into sales? What’s the difference between saying, “I do sales,” and “I am a salesperson”?
There’s this ownership that comes along that says, “Look, I believe that what I do is necessary. I connect need with solutions. And there are people out there who need me—and they just don’t know it yet. They just haven’t engaged me yet. There’s this void that I have to go fill, because there’s an urgency in me to get out there and connect solutions to needs.”
Is that my view of selling? Do I really believe that what we call sales is a noble profession—that there’s something inherently valuable to what I do?
Or is it just, “Am I just taking up space?”
That’s a critical mental shift that a lot of people have to make. And you see it all the time. People equivocate. They put various names and titles on the roles—“I’m an account manager,” “I’m this…” I don’t really care what you call the role.
It’s what you believe about the role. View of selling is a really significant factor in how I show up.
And it might not be that I don’t do the daily activities, but at some point, it’s going to trip me up. At some point, I won’t ask that important question because I don’t want to come across as “that person.” Or I won’t make that call to that individual with the right level of initiative or energy, and it’ll hold me back.
Or I’ll get right up to the line, and I’ll say, “Hey, so glad we had a chance to talk. Let me know if you’re interested in doing something,” because I didn’t ask. Or I didn’t give an opportunity for a decision—because somewhere in my mind, I’ve self-regulated back.
Because all I am is doing sales. I’m not a sales professional. I don’t own it as an identity—like an internalized identity.
Mark Drager: This is really good. This is really good because I—I have literally said, I think last week, “Hey, you're not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here if you—and when you—need me.”
And I think these types of conversations that I'm even having is because, for me as an agency owner, sales is one part of what I'm responsible for. And it's only a certain type of relationship, a certain type of deal, a certain type of sale.
I'm not worried about making quota or hitting my numbers or even the volume that I expect of a salesperson. So I do tend to keep things fast and loose because I have a full day ahead of me too.
So buy, don't buy, whatever—like, I mean, I'm here to help. And if you don't need me, that’s fine. But it's because I have not required myself, even in my role as an owner-operator, to say, “In this conversation, I have to take off my CEO hat. I have to put on my salesperson hat.”
And I have to remember the fact that, in this conversation—yes, I'll follow all of those steps: add value, scope, problem solve, all those things—but at a certain point in this conversation, I am a salesperson. And I'm required to drive this forward to the next step. I'm required to ask for the next step. I'm required to move forward.
Like, there are little subtleties here that I didn't even realize.
Derek Roberts: And you think about this, Mark—we have a job to do, right?
Our job is to represent our organization and to advance its well-being. Salespeople, I say, are the tip of the spear. We go out and we make things happen in the market.
That’s different than order taking, right? Order taking is when the market comes to us and says, “We have a need. Can you solve it?” Fantastic—we need that.
Salespeople go into the market, and they cultivate discovery of need so that we can offer solutions to meet that need. That is the energy that shows up and makes something happen.
Why is that important?
Because yes, I’m helping that potential prospect get better value that they’re not even aware of today—and I want to drill into that a little bit more in a second—but what’s the other part of the equation?
Everyone behind me in the organization relies on me doing that.
And this is why I think sales is a noble profession — because no one has a job. Nobody back behind me has a job until a sale is made. Now that’s a pretty heavy weight, but that is also a pretty exciting thing.
Because I do the hard work, and everybody in the organization might do essential work, hard work—but salespeople, we go out and do hard work to create opportunity so that everyone else gets the benefit of that. And we all get to advance in the value of that sales activity.
So when I'm with a customer—if I've done my job really well, if I've asked smart questions, I’ve created value, an understanding of value, and there’s an agreement that there is a need to be met—I have an obligation as a sales professional to everybody: both my prospect and the people I work for, to get to a moment of decision.
To bring that sales discussion to the point that I say, “If all of this stuff is valuable, I want to at least give you an opportunity to move forward—or not—in this moment.”
If it's a value, now it's perfectly reasonable for that person to go, “I need a night to sleep on it,” right? For some people, that's the better way for them to make decisions.
Or, “I need to involve other people,” or “Let me check with budgets,” or things like that. Fine.
But as a sales professional, I want to give them an opportunity to engage the relationship with me, and I have a responsibility to do that—not in a pushy way, but in a genuine way.
“All these things make sense to you. Tell me, where are we at this stage? What do you think your next step is with us? How can we best serve you in making a decision?”
Right? That’s just part of the role of a salesperson.
But what it does is it reflects on: what do I believe selling is?
Secondly, what do I believe my abilities are—that’s the second part of the equation.
Do I have a process to follow? Do I have skills to ask the right questions or to know where I am in the sales equation? Do I understand a step-by-step, professional model of engagement—a sales model?
The third is values—am I doing something that is ethically consistent or morally consistent with who I want to be?
Unfortunately, many of us have worked for organizations that, at times, felt like they were asking us to do things that are inconsistent with who we want to be as individuals—or a boss, right? And so we’re in dissonance. We’re out of congruence in that, and it impacts our productivity. That’s the third piece of the equation.
The fourth piece of the equation is commitment to activities. Do I know the right activities? Do I do the preparation? Do I make the right kinds of—
There’s a difference between being busy and being productive. Do I have a commitment to the right activities, and do I do them consistently? Or do I get easily distracted? Do I compromise productivity with just feeling like I’ve been busy?
And the fifth piece is belief in product. Do I believe the product and service that I represent is actually valuable to my customer?
Now, belief in product is interesting. Because what it doesn’t say—I think sometimes this is important—what it does, right? I believe that my product or service provides valuable outcomes for customers, and I need to include myself in that.
Because my customers are buying me sometimes as much as they’re buying the product—right? Their trust, their belief in me.
What that doesn’t say is, “I believe my product or service is the most innovative, the cheapest, or the most accessible.”
It’s that it brings value.
If the value equation tips—if they get at least equal or greater benefit for the cost they incur—that’s value. And as a sales professional, I need to take confidence in that.
Because sometimes we talk ourselves out of things, right? Operations screwed up such and such, or I said we were going to do this for a customer, and the next time they called somebody, they got a bad experience—we didn’t treat them well or whatever.
And that begins to tamp down my ability to go out and still be confident and enthusiastic about the product.
So I have to work through all these things. Those five areas in balance mean that I can be really productive. Any one of those five areas out of balance creates drag. And all of a sudden, I have to really work through those to show up and be productive.
And that's where coaching comes in. That’s why, in the book, we talk to the sales leader—because sometimes we can’t self-identify those areas.
Sometimes we need a coach looking at us and going, “Hey, that was a great sales call… all the way up until the point that you didn’t ask for anything. Why was that?”
And then you dig in and you find out—it’s probably one of these areas.
Mark Drager: I want to zero in on that "belief in product" piece for a minute. You know, I see this all the time with clients - salespeople who get thrown into the deep end with a product or service they don't fully understand or believe in.
And it's not always obvious stuff like, "Our product is garbage." Sometimes it's more subtle - like when they're selling in a highly commoditized market, or when operations keeps dropping the ball on delivery, or when they see terrible reviews online that nobody's addressing.
As someone who works with companies on positioning and differentiation, I've found that elevating that belief in product can transform a sales team more than any script or technique.
What happens when salespeople are struggling with this specific belief? And how do you help them reconnect with what makes their product or service genuinely valuable to customers?
Derek Roberts: I think what you do is essential, right?
You have to first believe in your product. That's the first sale that you make, right? To yourself. To your sales team.
And every business struggles, right? It’s ebbs and flows. Sometimes you're excellent in one area, and then that drops off. You lose people. Markets change.
So there is absolutely an essential need for tapping into that and bringing belief into the sales team themselves.
But balancing that with: I don't just show up and talk about the features and benefits. I have to make sure that those really connect to needs that my customer or prospect has.
And if I can do that, the smart salesperson is able to extract out of the customer the thing that either they know or don't know is important to them—and connect value in that product or service that they're offering.
It's not always apparent.
Because we talk about features and benefits and value and things like that, and so often we craft those from our side of the equation. “Well, of course this should be important to you, right? It's got X, Y, and Z,” or “It’s faster than this,” or “It's more efficient than that,” or whatever.
But we miss the opportunity to engage in connecting just the right value proposition to our customer.
So often, when we get in—especially in the business-to-business sales environment, right? And I love this space, because it's part of the value chain that makes things happen in the economy—but too often, when we talk to business salespeople, here’s what they do:
They sell to their customer, right? The transaction ends at their customer. And in some ways, those salespeople believe that the value they bring is this thing that they give to their customer.
What they miss is that the only reason that customer is willing to talk to them is because something they do allows them to serve their customer.
So what you're doing is—you’re not selling to the customer. We need to sell through our customers, to their customers.
It is a real shift in the way we think about things. And so, whatever product and service, value, benefits, all of that, that you're trying to bring awareness to them—we’ve got to make sure that it connects through their business and really provides value downstream in the chain to allow them to do what they do, and that it serves their customers.
They exist because they serve their customers. We only exist because we help them accomplish that.
Otherwise, they have no reason to talk to us. And if we miss that—if we only sell to the transaction—we will be irrelevant to them.
Or somebody else who does sell through them to their customers will be more valuable to them, because they engage the right kinds of issues and solve the right kinds of challenges.
Mark Drager: So if you can, I have a few rapid-fire questions I would love to shoot your way. Are you up for that?
Derek Roberts: Absolutely.
Mark Drager: There are lots of organizations that have sold through relationships or sold the old-school way, and the easy, fast way of selling in the past just isn’t working today.
What would be your number one piece of advice for people to move from the old school way of selling to what you're suggesting through Listen to Sell?
Derek Roberts: I think, first of all, you’ve got to have a process and discipline, right?
Professionalism means that I’m not just showing up every day and hoping, right? I have process, I have organization, I have commitment to activities.
And so, knowing what we do well—and then having a game plan for doing it and executing it—actually solves a lot of problems. I’m not just shooting in the dark. I’m not just hoping. I show up every day, and I’m engaged in doing the work of the business.
The second thing is to think: there are real ways for us to leverage exposure. I’m a big proponent of creative networking and finding ways to get in front of people that aren’t necessarily conventional.
But sometimes, it just means being courageous, right? Let’s have the energy to just be courageous, to engage. Too often, salespeople and sales teams don’t fully engage. They self-regulate.
So I think that’s part of the expectation: I get prepared, which enables me—but then I also need a good sales coach, right? Too many organizations hire salespeople—or they hire people they think are experienced—and they go, “Go get ‘em, boy,” you know, “Have at it.”
And what they don’t do is they don’t intentionally engage in the coaching and nurturing of those individuals. And even the highest performers—in fact, I would suggest that your best performers need coaching. Maybe need the best coaching.
They need somebody who's engaged, who’s paying attention, who’s elevating. You're going to get more out of those folks. Coaching is essential, right?
Sales management, sales leadership is essential in doing that.
I think that’s a lot of times where I find organizations that have been successful along the way, but they’re not accelerating. Sometimes they’re not in the right markets. Sometimes they don’t have the right channels. Sometimes they’re not prospecting well.
Almost all of the time, there’s not a coach. Or there’s not a sales leader who is driving the focus and the activity and the engagement and the individuals to show up every day and be wholly present in doing the role.
I think that’s where I would put my energy—finding the right sales leaders to make those things happen.
Mark Drager: So, how can marketing teams better support our sales teams with the Listen to Sell approach?
Derek Roberts: Yeah, to me, sales and marketing are—they're linked in such an intimate way.
It's not throwing this over the fence to the other. And if sales and marketing don't have common objectives—if they don't understand the individual types of customers and are flexible to that—they're not going to work very well together.
So I think it's important for marketing to understand what actually happens in a live sales dialogue. I think that's important.
It's also important for sales to understand that marketing creates the kind of exposure and the messaging that gets attention at times, and so working together is essential.
I don’t see many successful organizations that don’t have sales and marketing kind of as a joint part of business success.
Mark Drager: At a HubSpot event—I was at Inbound, I think, in 2019 before COVID—I heard a speaker talk about the fact that they had looked at what they could do to improve conversions.
They looked at testing ad colors and saw a small lift—maybe 2%. And then they tested messaging and saw a slightly larger lift. Then they tested ad placement, targeting—all kinds of stuff.
And then it came to: “Let’s ensure that sales and marketing are working in tandem.” And that drove something like a 3,500% increase.
Like, everything that we could do to increase sales came down to sales and marketing just working a lot closer together.
Derek Roberts: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s exactly on point.
Mark Drager: Okay, so I'm curious. The book has been out now for a year, and in my experience, authors always go like, “Oh, man, this is the question that I can't believe this is the thing that keeps coming up.” “Or, oh, like, now that it's been a year, I actually wish I could go back and rewrite this or clarify that.” Now that the book's been out for a year, what is that thing for you?
Derek Roberts: Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I think we reflect on that all the time. Do we say the right things? Is it resonating with the audience? And fortunately, I think it has resonated with the audience, and we're really happy with that, but some things have emerged, certainly that whole congruence model, right? The identity, the self-belief, resonates with people.
But what I think we spend a lot of time on is converting energy to activity, and some of that energy is in the preparation phase. I think this is the area that we probably could continue to concentrate on, is how do I show up and continue to maintain a high level of engagement and professionalism. How many salespeople do we know? Do you know? And I'll raise my hand because I'm guilty of it too. Who get good at what we do, and then we show up and think we can handle whatever comes our way, and we don't even take that three minute or five minute preparation to go. What do I know? Could I pull my resources in?
Could it make me better in this moment, if I just put myself to some objective, what's the simple objective of this call? And we find ourselves wandering and meandering and hoping, and little bits of preparation go a long way to getting the results that we want. And so I think that's an area that has gotten some attention, and I would probably put more attention to, and augment that with the continuing changing landscape of AI and the other tools and things that are going along like that.
Mark Drager: I’ve been speaking with Derek Roberts, who is the co-author of Listen to Sell: How Your Mindset, Skillset, and Human Connections Unlock Sales Performance. My final question for you—I love to wrap up each conversation with this: What would be your number one tip to help us sell more?
Derek Roberts: You're limiting me to one?
Mark Drager: I am.
Derek Roberts: That's an interesting question, right? What is the one tip? If you could zero it down into one thing…
I think it's this: none of us are self-made or self-sustaining individuals. Eventually, we will run out of our own energy. We will burn out. We will become self-limited by our knowledge individually.
So I think that the number one tip that I would have for anybody who wants to be successful in sales is: find a great sales coach, or find someone around you who can look at you from the outside and ask you smarter questions—or get access to resources that challenge you to think differently.
That's one of the reasons, in the book, we wrote at the end of every chapter a "Coaching Corner" to ask those kinds of questions—to put you in that discovery moment. If you don’t have an external coach, at least read what a coach might be asking you.
I think that’s the clear differentiator for some of the best performers.
