Sales Made Simple

Sales expert Bob Marsh joins us, challenging conventional wisdom about business complexity. His message: winning comes from removing barriers, not adding layers.

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Marsh points to a Nobel Prize-winning economic theory about friction between buyers and sellers. This friction, he explains, exists mainly in our minds - both as sellers and buyers.

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Through the story of a commercial furniture deal, Marsh illustrates how confidence transforms outcomes. When a sales manager stepped in to handle a customer's delivery concerns, she didn't offer guarantees. Instead, she communicated with conviction about the process and her commitment to oversight. The deal closed the next day.

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This approach forms part of what Marsh calls "noise-canceling confidence" - one of four pillars in his simplicity framework. The core insight: customers often hesitate not from distrust of intentions but from uncertainty about expertise.

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Marsh shares a strategy he developed as CEO - the executive connection email. By reaching out to senior decision-makers early in the sales process, while praising their team members' work, he opened communication channels that drove more sales than any other tactic.

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The episode explores three additional pillars: building deeper connections, leading the customer journey, and optimizing impact. Each focuses on removing friction rather than adding complexity.

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Strategy at its very core, I think, is relatively straightforward. It's about getting customers to go past your competitors and buy from you. Why would they do that? Right? Why would they drive past a competitor and buy from you? Why would they seek you out and not seek out one of your competitors? What is it that separates you? -- Bob Marsh

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

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Close More Sales: Learn why focusing on specific points of customer hesitation leads to faster decisions and more signed contracts.

Keep Higher Margins: Find out when to highlight premium services - and when to simplify offerings - to protect your pricing in competitive markets.

Speed Up Executive Decisions: See how Marsh's "CEO fist bump" approach breaks through organizational barriers and shortens the sales cycle.

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Bob Marsh's Website

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More About Today's Guest, Bob Marsh

CRO @ ImpactEleven // Keynote Speaker // 2022 CRO of the Year // Demandbase Top 25 Sales Executive to Learn From

Keynote speaker and leadership expert Bob Marsh spent his career as an entrepreneur and sales leader. Bob has been an executive and CEO at two category creating companies, has raised millions in venture capital, sold two companies, and has won and grew business from some of the top brands in the world.

In addition to keynote speaking, Bob is an active Chief Revenue Officer of ImpactEleven, which is the industry's leading professional speaker development and executive communication training firm.

In 2022 Bob was selected as Selling Power's CRO of the Year, and as one of the Top 25 Sales Experts to Learn From by Demandbase. As a speaker and thought leader, Bob has spoken at industry leading events including Dreamforce, SaaStr, Sales 2.0, and HubSpot's INBOUND and been published in Inc., Entrepreneur, SellingPower, Fast Company, and the Harvard Business Review.

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Key Takeaways‍

• Removing Sales Barriers - Sales excellence comes from finding and clearing obstacles between buyers and sellers. By spotting resistance points in customer decisions, sales professionals become solution-focused partners rather than persuaders, leading to smoother, more natural closings.

• Clear Communication Builds Trust - Belief in solutions stems from showing expertise rather than listing features. When salespeople speak with conviction and show a deep understanding of customer needs, they eliminate doubt and build confidence in buying decisions.

• Leadership Connection Strategy - Creating early bonds between company leaders speeds up deals. The "CEO fist bump" approach of thoughtful executive outreach, while respecting existing relationships, creates advantages in competitive situations.

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A Transcription of The Talk

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Mark Drager: So Bob, I have to ask you, you are known for the idea that you can win through simplicity. And, gosh, it feels like the world is getting more complex, that business is getting more and more overwhelming, that we have to try and do so much more, with so much less and fewer resources, because that's the outside expectations almost. But when we really break down business, and for everyone who's listening, we know this intuitively, if we think about our companies and our businesses, the things that work are pretty simple. The things that are complicated usually don't work. So can you help us understand what the idea of winning with simplicity is?

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Bob Marsh: Yeah, you bet. So first of all, spot on with what you mentioned, the world is getting more complicated by the day. There are actually more resources and more things available to us. But the challenge becomes, it gets easy—we're easily overwhelmed by it. We're seeking, oftentimes, the easy button, and that rarely works. We're seeking the next silver bullet, and that rarely works either.

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So really, where this idea of simplicity all started, was when I look back on my career, I had a lot of success as a salesperson, executive, and entrepreneur. One time I came across, I think was in 2010, I came across this article about a group, a trio of economists, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics on something called friction theory. And I don't normally read Nobel Prize-winning details, but for some reason, this one stood out to me.

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Mark Drager: The fact that the prize in the Nobel Prize for economics is not a Nobel Prize officially. Did you know that?

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Bob Marsh: Is that right?

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Mark Drager: Yeah, that's the only one that's actually not officially a Nobel Prize. It's something--

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Bob Marsh: Interesting. Okay, got it. All right. Well, they got the Nobel Prize. So the idea of friction theory was that contrary to traditional beliefs in economics about supply and demand, there was this other kind of idea that friction between buyers and sellers also has an equally high impact on the overall economic conditions of the world.

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And so when you dig into it deeper, it's not about there not being enough supply or that there aren't products that people need, or that there isn't enough supply that companies can provide for them. It's the friction that exists between the buyer and the seller that is getting in the way. So as I looked at this, we think about friction and simplicity as, "Oh, I want to have less friction in my options or in my pricing or trying to simplify that." But what I really realized is that friction largely exists in our heads.

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And when we start thinking about where the friction exists in the buyer's ability to make a decision, and oftentimes, where the friction exists in our own minds about how we get in our own way. And so the idea of winning with simplicity is about breaking down not just making a hyper-simple sales process, but remembering that there are just four key elements that I walk through, of where friction exists in the sales process that we can easily remove just by thinking of things in a slightly different way?

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Mark Drager: That is so interesting because I think it really depends on the situation. There are times when yes, we 100% get in our way. We 100% make things way more complicated than they need to be because we feel it somehow makes it superior. It's, you know, if it's more complicated, surely it's better, right?

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But I've also found that sometimes people go the other way, and they simplify the sales process, the marketing processes, they simplify things so quickly that they're forcing a decision someone's not capable of making. They are skipping over key parts of the process these emotional "Aha" moments that we're actually robbing our prospects of having. So I'd love it if you could break this down a little bit better so that way, myself and the listeners can really understand what should we be simplifying, and what should we be removing friction from. But also, I mean, there is a bit of a psychological game here. And I think if we make things too simple—here's what we do, do you want to buy it right now?—we're removing a lot of the customer journey that they have to go through to naturally own the decision and the outcome.

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Bob Marsh: Right, so let's take that. What you just said, "You just buy this right now." That's actually creating a lot more friction. So to me as the seller, selfishly, I'm like, if I just ask them to buy, they're gonna buy or they're not gonna buy. I'm going to just make this really simple. The problem is that's ignoring where the friction exists.

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Think of it like this. If you're a buyer, we'll walk you through a couple. There are four different pillars of this winning with simplicity concept. The first one is something that I call noise-canceling confidence. And I'll give you the background on where that term came from. But essentially, the idea is to think about the friction that exists in the client's head is largely more about trust. Do I trust you, as an expert? Do I trust you as a person? And that's what we're trying to bring through.

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Now, on our side as sellers, we often have friction in our own minds of, "I put the customer up on a pedestal, I think of myself as less than them, I really need this deal." There are all these things that are going on. I want to try to look smart. These are motivations that create complexity in the process, when really all the customer wants to know is, "Can I trust you? And do you really know what you're talking about to understand how this product is gonna work?"

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Surprisingly, some of the top-performing salespeople are really good at saying, "I've got all these details and nuances behind my product. But I don't need to get into all that detail with my client. I'm just trying to build trust and understand their challenges and help them work through it."

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So what we find is the first pillar about noise-canceling confidence is that the ability to build trust from a customer comes more from us than anything else. How we carry ourselves, how we communicate, communicating with conviction, and being an actual expert in what we do. The number one reason customers don't buy from someone is because of a lack of trust.

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And it's not necessarily when we think about trust, like, "Oh, they thought you were malicious, or they thought you were going to steal from them, or they thought you were swindling them, or you were going to charge one price and upsell later." That's not what it's about at all. When you dig into the research, what you find is the reason they didn't buy from somebody is because they didn't trust that they were an expert. They didn't trust that they really understood the customer's problem. They didn't trust how the pricing worked, or how the product was going to work. It just came down to trust.

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So our ability to communicate with confidence and really understand what the customer needs, helps them feel that we understand their challenges and that we are true experts in what we do, which elevates trust. I think of a little story of a client that I worked with. A salesperson was trying to close this deal. It was in the commercial office furniture space. And the customer was concerned. They said, "Can you guarantee this furniture is going to arrive in time for my moving date?" And the salesperson said, "No, I can't guarantee that. We're going to do the best we can."

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So you can imagine the friction going back and forth between the customers. The customer said, "I have to have this, my job's on the line," while the seller is like, "Well, I can't guarantee that. What do you want me to do?" So they're going back and forth and not getting anywhere, and the deal's not closing, which is putting the customer in a worse position because now it's much less likely to show up.

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The salesperson goes to his manager, talks to her about it, and she says, "Let me give the customer a call and see what they have to say." So she gets on the phone with the customer and says, "Okay, I understand your concerns. And yes, this is important for your moving date." She says, "All right, I'll take a look at your order. I have a high degree of confidence this is all going to arrive in time. Just let's stop there. But I can't guarantee it. Because here's how it works. We get the supply from somebody else, but we've gone through our whole process to make the right selections, to increase the odds that it's going to be here in time. So again, I believe it's going to be here in time, but I'll tell you what, I'll keep an eye on your order every step of the way. If something falls through the cracks, I will let you know. And we'll react accordingly. Sound good?" The customer says, "Great. Let's move forward."

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That's it. So the next day, the deal is closed. The salesperson is flabbergasted, like, "I had the same conversation with the client." The salesperson knows all the same things, but the way they communicated it was radically different. They weren't confident, they were worried about upsetting the customer, they were trying to say the right things, and then they got argumentative, where the only difference between the salesperson and the manager was that she walked in with conviction and confidence. And it made the customer feel better. That's all that it took. It wasn't about the knowledge or the expertise. It was about the delivery and the confidence. What a great story. And that's a simple concept.

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Mark Drager: And what I hear in that is in the way that I'm kind of processing it. Because I think about certainty and uncertainty a lot. And so what I hear is, we have to remove the uncertainty from prospects' minds. We, you know, I don't have the exact stats, but by far, especially in North America, within our culture, uncertainty is something that makes people extremely uncomfortable. At times, we as the owners, as the salespeople, as the person who's selling, have to remove the uncertainty by taking on a little bit more responsibility or risk in that situation. It sounds like the manager was comfortable saying like, "Listen, I've done this, I'm going to put my reputation a little bit on the line, not guaranteeing it but I'm saying it'll happen." And maybe if things went sideways, maybe they would rent short term, rent the equipment, or do whatever they need to do to help make sure there's a place for people to sit. But often lower level staff or new staff I find are very uncomfortable putting their name, putting their reputation, putting the responsibility, the onus on them, and they try to dodge it almost and it creates more uncertainty, does it not?

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Bob Marsh: Unnecessary friction, right? That's kind of how I put it. Yeah, you're 100% right. So did you say that your audience is largely made up of business owners? Is that right?

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Mark Drager: Typically business owners or entrepreneurs, or the teams that work for them, yeah.

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Bob Marsh: Right. So I think you're right. I think that experienced people are more comfortable with a level of uncertainty and are willing to understand how people make decisions. Like, it's okay for me to realize, "Yeah, I mean, is there some risk that something's not going to happen? Sure, there could be a natural disaster, or there could be some crazy thing that happens, but as long as I believe that you have my best interest in mind, that's what I want to know. And that's what makes me feel comfortable." That's kind of what that story is about.

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Now, the reason I asked to make sure I understand your audience is, you know, another one of the ways that we can build more of that trust, and that removing that uncertainty we talked about, is that oftentimes we see a salesperson has got this relationship with a customer. And then the customer needs to go to somebody else to get approvals and move up. Now, one of the things that salespeople often do is like, "Oh, I gotta get to the decision maker," right? It's like one of the oldest kinds of things in the sales book, "I gotta get to the decision maker," which is...

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Mark Drager: I think I have that book somewhere. Veto. Yeah, veto. Very right, exactly. Gotta get the veto.

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Bob Marsh: So it is important, you need to understand that, but there's sometimes a reality where the day-to-day person is just, that's their responsibility to kind of figure out what needs to happen. So what happens is, there's uncertainty that the client has, "Is this the right choice? Is that the right company for me to select? I know that you know, Johnny's kind of leading the effort, etc. But did he make the right choice?" So one of the suggestions that I give people is to do a little move that I call the CEO fist bump. It can be whatever. So here's the way that this works.

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Going to the core concept that there's uncertainty at the level of the customer, "Am I making the right choice? Am I buying from the right company? Do they have my back?" If we believe and understand that's a friction point, the decision maker believing this is the right choice, how can we address that? The CEO fist bump works this way. A salesperson is talking to the day-to-day person, and sees like, "Okay, I think that there's a match here with what the customer needs and what we do." I learned this when I was running my own technology company. I was the founder and the CEO. One day, one of my salespeople came to me and said, "Hey, would you mind sending an email? I can't go around my day-to-day contact. But why don't you send an email to the VP of sales at this company that I'm trying to sell to? We sold into sales organizations, and just kind of make the connection."

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I thought, all right, that's a cool idea. So I just started sending emails to the VP of sales. "Hey, John, I'm introducing myself. I'm the founder and CEO of Level 11. Someone on your team, Marjorie, has been talking to Brendan on our team. By the way, Marjorie is really sharp. Brendan's been very impressed with her. Good hire there. They had a great conversation. I just want to reach out and introduce myself. What Brendan explained to me, it sounds like this is a bullseye use case for us. I'm really excited about it. No need to get back to me, because Marjorie is in great hands with Brendan. But I just want to let you know, I'm here if you have any questions, or I can help in any way. Thanks a lot."

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That's it. That single move we did over and over and over again, drove more sales than any other single thing that we did in our process. And you think about why would that be. Because we removed that uncertainty that the customer had, that senior-level person who we couldn't get to, by trying to go around the day-to-day contact. I could do it, the salesperson can say like, "Oh, our crazy CEO, I can't control that guy, he'll do whatever he wants." Never happened, no one ever got upset, because I just complimented their employee, now not gonna get upset, but they just may pay them a big compliment.

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So two things would happen when I did that. When I would send those emails, one, all of a sudden, within a couple of days, Marjorie would get back to Brendan and say, "Hey, our VP really likes this guy. Nice note from your CEO. Feels really good about it. Let's move forward." Or I would get a response from the VP within like 10 minutes. "Thank you so much for reaching out. This sounds really great. Yeah, let's jump on a call and get connected for a few minutes." We would have a very simple conversation, build a relationship, build some trust, and all of a sudden it all flowed down. And it was a fantastic way to kind of make things happen.

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So a simple little tactic, but it goes to the core of what we're talking about. Where does the friction exist in the sales process? Where does the friction exist in the customer's willingness or hesitation to make a purchase? And you start thinking, "Where are the friction points?" Then you can start figuring out, "What are the different ways that I can remove it?" The CEO fist bump is one of those ways.

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Mark Drager: That is an amazing strategy. My goodness, when we used to do corporate overviews, let's call them corporate promotions, corporate overviews. Often we would do very people-driven, very authentic storytelling. If we're taking a company, we might have a few people from the engineering team the operations team the service team, and the delivery team. Then we'd have some people who are in charge of the R&D or business development or the leadership where you want the different perspectives, giving the different people from the different teams to show that this company is well represented and could cover the vision, the impact, the details, what have you. We would cover everything.

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As we would work through the different people, the different personalities, perspectives, and roles, often, some people would want to talk about everything. And we would almost gate it. We would almost say like, "Listen, from the viewers' perspective, from the audience's perspective, you can speak about these pieces or areas, but we have to save some of those other pieces or areas for someone who's more, let's say, in a leadership role, or someone who's more of a subject matter expert." We would almost create these perspectives and characters in gate stuff. So that way when the audience sees someone coming in, another way to explain this is, if we don't want to show someone quote-unquote selling or pitching, we need someone who is in a selling or pitching role to do the selling and pitching. So that way, the subject matter expert could come in and just look like a credible expert. We would carefully kind of control the different characters in this play, let's say. So that way, the audience never bumps up against, "Oh, I thought you were an expert. But now you're selling me something, you're pitching me something, that's uncomfortable."

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What I hear you saying is to allow the sales team to sell, allow the sales team to scope, and allow the work to happen at the team level. But you coming in at the leader level, leader to leader and not getting pulled into the weeds, not tarnishing, when you start to sell everything, it allows each role to play a key part in this connection and dance, while also then allowing the other people to do what they do best.

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Bob Marsh: And feel good about it. So yeah, all I was doing was opening the line of communication. The only thing that was happening, I opened a line of communication to that more senior-level leader, and maybe half the time we would start communicating with each other. But simply having that access makes that customer feel more comfortable to say, "None of the other company CEOs reached out to me. I don't have direct access to any senior person over there." All of a sudden, that VP of Sales becomes more supportive. And certainly, in a tiebreaker situation, we're more likely to win.

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But you're right. And that's a great insight is that also, that approach doesn't try to say, "Hey, I'm going to take this over," which then diminishes, in this case, Brennan, or the salesperson on my team's ability to do their job. Also, we're not doing the same thing to Marjorie on the other side. We're actually complimenting both of them saying they're wonderful. They're great. But hey, if anything doesn't sound right, let me know. And by the way, I'll do the same thing. So opening that line of communication becomes so powerful in the moment, but also, you may also need to tap into it later.

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So if I did that open line of communication early in the sales process, right? "Hey, I just heard you guys, they got off the phone together. I just happened to hear this in the hallway. Oh my gosh, it's so perfect for us." Great. Well, now later in the process, it becomes a lot easier for me to say, "Hey, I heard we're at the goal line. I heard you're kind of trying to decide between the two. What can I do to make sure this happens?" Or, "Hey, I heard things are going sideways." Or maybe they become a customer, then we have an issue. All of a sudden, I'm not just showing up out of nowhere. We've already connected before. So you're right. It's like letting the people do their work. And it's just kind of removing that element of friction, hesitation, concern that exists. And so you mentioned that often we just ignore it, hope it's gonna go well.

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Mark Drager: There are all areas of our business and life we just hope work out. You mentioned that there are four main areas of friction that we really look at when we're working through the winning with simplicity approach. What are some of the other areas where friction exists that we may not be aware of? And how can we remove that?

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Bob Marsh: So, you know, I go through all these in a one-hour keynote and go really deep on all of them. So I'll hit them at a high level. The first one is, as I mentioned, noise-canceling confidence, the idea that we need to carry ourselves with more confidence because that helps exhibit trust to the customer, and helps them kind of feel more trustworthy of you. And that's kind of really at the core of it. So it's about trust through confidence.

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The second is something called Building Third Layer Connections. The idea here is, again, as a quick summary, that I've observed over the course of my career and working with literally thousands of salespeople that the majority, or rather many of them, stay at the surface or what I call the first layer. In a simple conversation, you ask them a question they can answer. They're almost like the person at that cocktail party who is asking questions, but they're looking around like, "Who else is there to talk to?" They're not truly deeply engaged. The first layer, we don't want to be there. But hey, we have a bad day, a difficult customer, it's easy for it to happen.

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The second layer is where probably 80% of all salespeople exist. They ask good questions, very personable. The customer tells them what they want. They'll put together a great solution. They know how to compare to their competitors. Great. They build a nice career. But there are others that get to the third layer, where you deeply understand the customer's goals, their fears, you're asking them questions that they're like, "Geez, I never thought about that before." You start challenging them on their business and challenging the way that they're thinking. Maybe they come to you and say, "Hey, this is what I'd like to implement for my business." And you say, "That's not the right solution. We're not for you," or, "I want to step back and get you to think about something a little bit differently." Third-layer connections are about really building that deep connection that most people don't.

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The third one is something I call Lead the Journey. Essentially, the way I like to summarize it is to stop thinking of sales as something that we do to somebody and start thinking of it as an act of service, where we're helping others make the right decisions for themselves. So the idea here is that as a salesperson, my role is to deeply understand the customer's goals, fears, and objectives, whatever they might be, share what our services are, and how we can help them. Then look for all those friction points. How do I make it easier for them to make the right choice? My job is not to manipulate or persuade, but to just simply understand their concerns and hesitations so that we can address them together.

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The most common one people come across is price. "It's too expensive." Well, let's dig into that. Why do you think that? What would make it work? So the point is, how do we think of it as helping someone make the right decision? I'm trying to uncover their hesitations so that I can remove friction and simplify that experience. Walk them through the journey. I get in deep on things like how to use options effectively and the importance of using options to make the customer feel more in control because it helps them make the decision the right way. Too many options are too confusing, and too few options may cause a single-option aversion. People just, it might be the right solution, but they don't feel in control, and then they delay. So we get into all that kind of thing. It's about leading the journey and helping the customer make the right decisions for themselves.

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And the fourth pillar is all about something I call Optimize Your Impact. As a way to rethink, I never loved the idea of time management, because it implies it's like, "Well, how do I just get more stuff done? How do I cross more things off my to-do list?" I like to think of it more as "How do I maximize my impact?" Like, what are the gifts that I bring to the world? What are the actions and things that I need to do that would bring me the most joy, satisfaction, results, and impact in the world? And make sure that I'm allocating more of my time there. So when you think about what activities will drive more impact, and focus on that, it's more important than how much can just get done in a single given day.

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A simple common example is salespeople will often admit, "I don't spend enough time prospecting." Well, if you think that's gonna have a massive impact on your business, then let's make sure to carve out time to make sure that it gets done. So it's all about maximizing your impact.

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Mark Drager: So now listeners, you can tell this is why I wanted to have Bob on because these are amazing, just amazing frameworks. You can also hear why he's spoken on stages with Google Staples and HubSpot, major car manufacturers, and major technology companies. And your own background, I mean, this is fantastic. And if you want to dig deeper, of course, we're gonna have all of the links towards the end of the show and in the show notes. Bob, I really want to thank you for sharing this. I do have one last question for you. It's what I like to end my interviews with because I feel like I'm gonna really put you on the spot here now. So if you had to give us one tip or one single strategy to help us sell more, what would that be?

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Bob Marsh: I think it's that concept that I talked about earlier, to think about carefully, "Where does friction exist with this person that I'm talking to? Where is their hesitation?" And you might need to make some of your own assumptions and trust yourself. So if they're a new customer, they're probably really worried about, "Do I trust that this company is credible? Do they really understand my issues?" So don't think of objections and overcoming objections and getting to the decision maker. Not that those things aren't important, but just reframe the world of selling as "I'm looking for friction points so that I can smooth those out." That's my role. And when I smooth out those friction points, it allows the customer to make decisions a lot more easily and more confidently. That's all I'm trying to do. I can't make someone buy anything, but I can help them make decisions faster and more easily, which of course, will be in my favor as well.

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