Brent and Shari sit down with the remarkable Lisa Magnuson, a powerhouse in strategic, complex sales who has built her career—and her business—on helping organizations land the massive, game-changing deals.

Lisa Magnuson brings a blend of warmth, wit, and serious strategy to everything she does, from her free-range childhood in Menlo Park to leading top-performing teams at Xerox and now, consulting for sales leaders looking to win their “5x deals.” The discussion is anything but a typical sales interview. Instead, it’s a heartfelt, candid exploration of what actually creates sales success: discipline, strategic thinking, genuine curiosity, and the magic that happens when we show up as our full human selves.

Together, the trio unpacks why training efforts so often fall flat, how real change and growth depend on consistent leadership and culture, and the underestimated power of showing up authentically—whether in a win room, a training session, or just a simple conversation. Expect plenty of stories, practical wisdom, a few laughs (and even some banter about forts and laminating napkins), all rooted in a shared belief that selling may not be everything, but bringing your “something”—your own secret superpower—makes all the difference.

👤 Connect with Lisa Magnuson:

✅ Website: https://www.TopLineSales.com

✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toplinesales

👤 Connect with Selling Isn’t Everything:

✅ Official: https://SellingIsntEverything.com 

✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SellingIsntEverything 

✅ LinkedIn (Shari): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilevitin

✅ LinkedIn (Brent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson 

✅ Brent’s Latest Book, The Framemaking Sale: https://www.theframemakingsale.com/ 

Selling Isn’t Everything is produced by Chris Stone at Cast Ahead:  https://CastAhead.net 

So Shari, today we have the incredible pleasure of interviewing Lisa Magnuson, who is someone that you invited to the podcast, and I had not had a chance to meet. What a great conversation.

I think so many CROs today and, and revenue leaders are trying to figure out how to move those big deals forward. And I'm not talking the little ones, I'm talking the $30, $40 million deals. And this is what Lisa lives and breathes. She's good at it. She's made her business doing it, and she's strategic about it and has processes and frameworks. Plus, I like her. She's cool. She likes playing with forts and doing neat things.

And, you know, it was a great conversation.

As always, enjoy the podcast, everyone.

Better people make better salespeople, not the other way around.

What's hard about selling isn't selling. It's interacting with other people.

We We can't take the glory for being great if we won't take the responsibility when we're not.

What could we have done better?

Human connection can be the greatest source of strength, and I think that's pretty powerful.

Will had a very, a very heartfelt, touching transfer to Lori when she sort of retired and gave me her gardener seat so that I could meet you, Brent, so that you could change my life and so that I could make money using all your intellectual property.

What people do, but, but hold on, let's stop for just a sec. Shari, every dime that you've earned has been off of your hard labor and your incredible MVP. So let's, let's just stop and just take a moment to appreciate how amazing your stuff is. I mean, that's a serious—

but your research, you know, gave— anyway, we'll, we'll have our mutual admiration society later.

All right.

Out, Lisa. But, um, I agreed. Yeah. So here we are. And, um, Yeah. So, so Lisa, we, we already started the interview. Like that, we don't like do a big announcement or anything like that. We, we actually do that behind your back after you leave.

Um, and, and, and so, um, we just sort of find that this conversation, uh, is, is more interesting if we're not performing, which is very hard for me at times. And Brent calls me out on that quite often, which is Why I love him because he doesn't mind saying, hey, cut that out. But I was, I am very excited to have you on. We actually don't know each other that well. So we've, we've been in and out of a lot of different groups together. And I've always had the utmost respect for Lisa. She's a quiet killer. You know, she's powerful, but, but more quiet, certainly than me, which isn't hard.

Um, but she also wrote an incredible book that is so practical. And Lisa, you may not know this, but I literally refer to it once every couple of weeks because it's not the kind of book that you read and you're done. It's, it's a book that you go back to all of the time when your clients have challenges, or quite frankly, when I have challenges, you know, managing or, or whatever. So, um, we're excited you're here.

Paul, thank you. Thank you.

So, Lisa, I'm getting to know you as Brent is getting to know you, really. And, you know, I think what I'd like to start with is I do know a little something about your childhood, and it warms my heart because we would have been— this is politically incorrect to say today— we would have been tomboys together. We would have been building forts. Having clubs, climbing trees. Can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and how that might have impacted the trajectory of your career? Because I think it's kind of fun.

You're— well, I grew up in Menlo Park, California.

Really great.

5 brothers and sisters, fantastic parents. They did get divorced, but each of them was, was fantastic in their own right. And I just spent my whole childhood, like many people, just kind of free range.

Like chicken, like the chickens we're supposed to eat now, the free range chicken.

Yeah, like, like a free range chicken. So you just were left the house and as long as you showed up for dinner, you were good. And so all that time, I was creative time. I mean, it could be building forts, which has continued into my professional life. I am prone to building groups. That all came from my building forts days. My younger sister tends to remind me that I would post rules for my forts even as a child where the people who are not included always included her. And then the people who are part of my sales VP roundtable, which I run now, would also tell me that, yeah, you have a lot of rules.

So there was a lot of things that were part of my childhood, independence, trying things, creative pursuits, sports, went to rules, and that contributed to me eventually starting my own company and my consulting practice.

After a foray in with Xerox, which really uniquely positions you to do what you're doing today, to talk about complex sales, which a lot of people obviously don't understand, but I heard through the grapevine that you never missed President's Club what, the 14 years you were at Xerox, and then you started leading teams. How did all that come about from a tomboy in Menlo Park?

I considered Xerox at the time a world-class company. Brent, you probably— I know you haven't always lived in Leesburg, Virginia, but I have very fond memories of Leesburg, Virginia from my Xerox training. That was not a once and done. I think I probably spent months and months and months there over my time. With Xerox, but it was just this exceptional company and for sales and for women. And I had, I was a salesperson, I was a specialist, I was a manager, I was a marketing manager, I was a VP of sales moving to different markets in the Bay Area and then eventually to Portland, Oregon. But I was so fortunate early in my career with Xerox, I landed in Oakland, California, the office there. And the national account manager, which those were big jobs at Xerox, like big, big jobs.

No one ever left that job, period. Uh, if you were lucky enough to get it, well, the national account manager for Clorox headquartered in Oakland, California was in the office with me and I was an account executive young and I worked under him. So Clorox was my account. And early on, I was going with him on executive lunches. I was in strategy meetings. And the big thing was when I was working with my contact at Clorox, kind of a purchasing person, uh, my very first meeting with her, I said, uh, it sounds like you need to place an order. And she said, yeah, we need to buy 40, uh, copiers from, you know, to put around the country. And I'm like, What? But that was my whole year's budget.

And so I became a fan of major account strategic selling. Now, having said that, I was not strategic at all. That's what the national account manager did, had the contract, laid all the framework. I just kind of walked into it, but it gave me a taste of the power very early in my career. And I honestly never forgot that and never left it.

Lisa, the, I've often wondered about this. Maybe you could take us back because, because to your point, I'm, I'm just south of Leesburg. So the training facility is up there. It's no longer Xerox, but it's still there. Neil Rackham has a writing cottage about 15 minutes that way. I mean, so I, I'm like in the epicenter here of all of that Xerox story. I've presented on that stage, which if you like the arc of history, like presenting Challenger on the stage where essentially Neil Rackham introduced SPIN Selling, Right. Was one of those sort of professional moments for me.

It's a long time ago now, but it was like, wow, this is kind of a big deal. Um, take, take me, I mean, like Xerox is, you know, there's, there's a few others. ADP at different times over the years has been that company. Um, and there's, there's others as well, but Xerox was IBM, of course, the big one we all think about from sort of that period.

Yes.

Um, what was it like at that time? You know, not just the stories you hear of the training center, which those are, those will curl your hair. But the, but the, the story, like, what's it like, you know, being at the forefront of cutting it? Neil Rackham is rolling out this thing called SPIN Selling, which is brand new to the world, which rewrote the history of the sales profession completely more than I would argue more than Challenger has significantly. And it sounds like you were right there in the sweet spot of that. That's when you were there. Is that right? Were you right there in the middle of all that?

I think that it was maybe not at the beginning. I think they were kind of slow with them, but when I got hired into Xerox, I was part of this group. There was, I think, 25 or 30 of us. Xerox was testing this concept that they would have instead of just hires as they needed them for the different offices, they would, since I was in the Bay Area, you had San Francisco, you had Santa Clara, and you had Oakland, and then you had satellite offices for all of those too. It was a big geography. And they were testing the concept that why don't we bring 25 or 30 new salespeople on board and why don't we take them through local training? In this case, it was in the Oakland, California office. And Brent, you might laugh at this because I just saw one of your posts over the weekend and I saw that Dan Claudio, the founder of Playbox, who resides out of California, He was the sales trainer way back when. So, and a partner, they trained us 8 to 5 every day, local.

And we learned all about the market, the products, you know, and a little bit about SPIN Selling. But then the next step after that is we were sent to Leesburg. So what Xerox was testing is Instead of just sending people to Leesburg for SPIN Selling, which is really, I think, only a week. We're going to do this 3 months and see if that helps people be more successful, stay with the company. And in fact, it did. It was highly successful. So, you know, and then if you're with Xerox, at least during that time, I went back to Leesburg countless times, countless times. Including when I became a VP of sales in Portland, Oregon, the youngest female district manager of sales in the country at that time.

There was training for that in Leesburg. Yeah. Well, it was this whole continuum, but I really was fortunate in that I was part of this kind of pilot and I spent this rock solid training because it was 6 weeks. Plus spin, plus feel, plus going back, you know, this whole continuum.

Well, tell me, tell me what it feels like. Then the re— I'm asking not just because I think it's super interesting just from a historical perspective, which it is, but I'm asking partly because I'm trying to get in the mind of a sales leader and a sales rep today who might be in a similar sort of environment. So I just came back from a sales kickoff where not just the head of sales, but the CEO of that particular division of the company, who's a former head of sales himself. Was clearly dedicated to making his team the best team in the world, not just because he wanted to win and make the arrows all go up to the right, but because he truly cared about his people and wanted to start them, launch them, and then eventually sustain them on a career of getting better. And I'm just wondering, having been in a situation like that yourself, what's the mindset? Does that tie you closer to the company? Does it, do you feel a certain loyalty? Do you feel a certain gratitude? Do you, you feel a certain excitement or am I, or not? I mean, is it, is it, I guess part of what I'm trying to get at, is it worth it for leaders to lean into that kind of messaging slash investment slash effort on not just like at a sales kickoff, but on an ongoing sustained year over year basis? Because that's really what Xerox did, right? It wasn't, it wasn't a sales kickoff, right? It was a long-term thing. Right?

When it was part of the culture. And I mean, my answer is yes, yes, and yes. You can meet my dedication to Xerox all these years later when most people haven't even heard of Xerox anymore. But I'm still loyal to that company and what they, what they gave me and what they did for me. And I never could have started my consulting business over 20 years ago if I hadn't had that foundation. But so 100% yes. It's also the reason why I got a change management certification from Prosci. They kind of tend to be the, the business version of change management years ago, because what you said about the leader, not just the sales VP, but the leader case that you, Kofi, went to, you know, that person has a sales background that helps a lot.

But for the top leadership to be committed to a path of learning and growth, I think is, especially in sales, is a game changer. And when you talk about my world, complex strategic selling, some people say enterprise selling, you know, whatever you want to call it, it is complex. It's messy. It is not, it can't take the place of your basic sales approach. It's in addition to, and that doesn't just happen by going to one sales training program. You have to really commit to that, to big deals and what it takes, especially as they're changing. In real time right now. You have to commit to that learning and growth.

And in order to be able to do that, you have to have the company leadership at all levels has to be committed as well. That's the change management. If they're not, the change won't occur. I don't even run a training class anymore unless there's a manager that is dedicated to the training class. Shari and I talked about this a few weeks ago. Dedicated. They come every time. They're the ambassador.

They're the interpreter. They're setting the stage. They're, you know, they're upholding expectations, period.

I'm curious, and, and, you know, I love what you're saying, and I remember Xerox and hearing about Xerox and a couple of other companies where the, the training was so good and the culture, uh, was so expansive. It, because of all of that, that it, it was easy to recruit. Everybody wanted to go there. It was like, I'm gonna go get my MBA and in sales there. And I'm curious now, fast forward years later, a few decades later, right? And we look today and we look at a lot of companies, you know, run by private equity maybe, or, you know, they're growing very quickly. And I'm curious, we know this, we've seen the success of ongoing training and development. I'm curious when you're out with companies today and when you see you know, what works when you're in a company and what doesn't work. Why do you think that so many companies do a training and it falls flat? And I'm not even talking about one training, like one SKO.

You know, there are plenty of companies that I go into and they've got a head of enablement and they've got training, but they can't get an ROI on it. They can't, you, you know, it just, it falls flat. Why do you think that is today? What are 2 or 3 things that, that they're doing wrong?

I think both of you who are also out there in the field with clients and such, there's, if there was one easy answer to that question, everybody would do it. You know, you look at the Gartner report, you know, reports month after month, quarter after quarter. I mean, it's a combination of things. So change management for sure, which the number one biggest thing in change management is leader, active and visible leadership endorsement over time. So not a once and done. So, but then there's the sales manager and their ability to coach effectively and support where they want their people to be at the level of the prospect. The prospect conversations and at the level, and if you're talking about strategic selling, at the level of win rooms, which is what I call in-depth strategy sessions at the level of pre-call prep that is much more structured. I'm not, you both know this, but not then, you know, a simple, you know, LinkedIn website, couple of questions.

You know, that just doesn't get it.

You have a lot of rules about pre-call plans, just like the 4 No, your plan course on LinkedIn, it was in-depth. There were a lot of rules. I loved it.

Thank you. Yes, there are.

Guilty.

Because I believe, and, and, and, Brad, I think you would agree with this too. Um, you know, it's like a, it's like a logical structured approach to prepare for that conversation. If you're having wiggle rooms for big opportunities, then you kind of know what that strategy is. You've put yourself in your prospect's shoes. You know, what are they doing, thinking, feeling right now? Not just in general, right now. Then the pre-call prep is the actual conversation and make sure you are having the best conversation you can have. And, you know, that doesn't happen by chance. I mean, the questions that you're going to ask, how you're going to show the empathy.

How you kind of help them navigate internally. All that has to occur call by call. It does require some methodical prep.

I mean, if we just lost our patience, is it that people are, are, is there, but, but why wouldn't they do that? Is it, is it that we've lost our patience? Is it there's too much ego? Uh, are, are companies too siloed because Everything you're saying and everything Brett and I live and the three of us live, it's like, why? I've got this big question mark. And, and I'm, I'm wondering if you have any insight into that since you're working at that, at that level.

I, I pride myself on being in the trenches kind of consultant. Um, so I am doing pre-call prep with my clients and doing one-on-ones with my clients. You know, I, that is where I'm happiest and where I think I'm making the biggest impact. Um, you know what, a lot of times it's, it's, it's just time. If the reps are moving fast and they think they've got it, it's like, oh no, I mean, if you, if you ask a room of senior salespeople to raise their hand, who does pre-call prep? They all raise their hand. So they kind of think they're already doing it and, and they're busy and they don't take time to really learn a better way. And actually do it that way. And so I think that's why, you know, companies hire people like me.

You know, if they hire me for, to do win rooms and to do pre-call prep, then it happens. And also their sales managers are taxed, you know, to spans of control, just, you know, maybe they're not skilled in coaching, maybe they just don't have time. But, you know, sometimes they just need some extra help and, and sharing it, you know, like with Agentic AI and, and having the ability to have a platform like you're on where they can get just-in-time coaching, you know, 24/7. And if that coaching is directly what they need and it resonates, those are good solutions.

There's two words in your comments that, that was all amazing, but there's two that really jumped out to me. I've been thinking about a lot. Which is over time. And over time seems to be the place where we are most likely to slip up, not just in sales execution and sales excellence over time, but heck, in, you know, things like strategy. And it's like the one, one of the very, I took a lot of takeaways away from my business school strategy classes, but the one that sticks with me more than anything else was a professor very emphatically, and I, I've come to really deeply believe this having seen it now. He said the best strategy isn't the best strategy. The best strategy is, is consistency, right? Is picking a direction and sticking with it over time. I mean, granted, if you pick the wrong direction, stick with it over time, you do materially worse.

But you know, if you even do just a decent job of picking a good direction, you are far going to, you know, over time you're going to significantly outperform anyone who picks a better direction but gives up on it after 6 months and then picks a different new direction and picks a different, different, you know, the same thing goes with, you know, the journey that I'm on again, again, yet again in my life, my adulthood is weight loss and health, right? It's like, you know, you drop 5 pounds and then you get busy and then you, you know, and then you go up 10, right? And it's welcome to my world that you guys didn't need to know this, but the, but, but I just, it's so hard I find to be consistent. And this is one of the things that I learned about Challenger and I think is the journey I'm going on now with frame making too, is these are multi-year journeys to really nail it, right? The people I think are really surprised and frustrated by like, hey, this Challenger thing's not easy. No, it's like about a 3, 4 year journey. And when I say that out loud, people kind of lose their minds. And I don't have that conversation nearly as much today, but I used to have it all the time, but I'm having similar ones now with frame making.. And in a world where heads of sales, you know, are in seat for what, 18 months, a year and a half, that, that becomes really hard for a company to over time consistently just make that just a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. Boy, is that hard when there's distractions, there's change in top, there's just, you know, there's a thousand reasons why both as human beings and as leaders and as reps. We're gonna, we're not gonna do that over time.

I, I don't have a solution for it, but you're nodding your head. I guess you'd agree. I, maybe I'm just saying things we all know, but it's just, I, I have found that that seems to be the single biggest challenge that we all face. I don't know. Do you buy that?

I do. I 100%. I think my, I have got a neck ache. I was, you know, agreeing with you so massively. Um, yeah, I do. It's, it's hard. But when you think about, I call 'em 5x deals, you know, that there's no, special formula in that my good colleague and friend Barbara Rivers Smith calls them whales, you know, it's, you know, in my vernacular, it's deals about 5 times your average deal size. It's like you have to have that discipline over time because, so, you know, like if I'm working with like a client maybe I haven't worked with as much and they might go, oh, you know, yeah, let's have a winner.

It's like, uh, a winner? You know, you've got this $40 million deal. We're going to need to be having a win room like every 2 weeks for the next year if you want to get that contract. Every situation's different. None of these things are a once and done, and that you're right, they're not easy, and they have to be replicated over time. And I would say the, the, you know, the average salesperson who's been successful, they need a little help. They need either a sales manager that's on it, or they need a sales coach, Shari, like you provide, which is sort of an AI type of sales coach, or they need their company to hire somebody like me. They need something extra to get the expertise and the structure to do what's required over time.

And the accountability to do it. And Brent, what you said is, is it was actually so impactful. And yes, we all know it at some level. But when we interviewed Fergus, he talked about that, that real success isn't, oh, I won an Olympic medal. You know, we just got through with the Olympics, but it's, it's over time. It's showing up over time. And having the ability to sustain your energy. And I think with anything, like with Challenger, or like you said, now frame-making and whatever frameworks any of us have or any of us use, I think there's also a tendency, there's this shiny object syndrome that happens in any, with a sales personality.

You know, most sales personalities, I might say, are like, oh, you know, okay, we tried Challenger. Now let's try this one. Let's try. This one, let you, you know, it just this, you know, it, and instead of looking inside and, you know, it's so easy to say that didn't work instead of I didn't work it.

So true. And, and even companies sort of, you know, kind of sometimes have that shiny object syndrome, that SOS, where, where the whole company will be like, ah, you know, this, that, the other thing. I mean, Shari, you and I were talking about pre-call prep. And, you know, I frequently tell my clients, if you like a different method, use that method. I don't care. Just do it. Do it. Do the pre-call prep.

It's the discipline to do it in an effective, systematic way. It doesn't— I don't— I don't have the market cornered on the only way to do it, but do it. Yeah, you know, I'm emphatic about that.

You know, the same way you get to sales excellence, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall apparently, right? The, it's practice, but the, it is, you know, by the way, for what it's worth, you guys, I think you both appreciate this. The sales leader, actually CEO that I mentioned whose sales kickoff was at, I guess 10 days ago now, you know what their, you know, 'cause they all have the slogan like, you know, go for it or whatever. Every sales kickoff's got that sort of corny slogan. Theirs was one that, when I first, I was like, oh yeah, here's another slogan. But the more I thought about it and, but more importantly, the more I watched the team interact with the slogan, the more that I think he nailed it. And it was own your journey. And it was, and it was really because what's interesting is there's so much social media traffic coming out of this one sales kickoff, more than, it was about 500 people there. But I, I don't think I've ever seen this much social media traffic come outta one sales kickoff from all those different people.

But all of them were repeating not just the slogan, but they were talking about how they were going to own their journey. And it was, I don't know, I found that to be actually kind of inspiring and also like, it's like, oh God, I guess I got to own my own journey too, don't I? But it's this over time, the over time thing. It just, you know, this is why, yeah, this is why my daughter's never going to be a great drummer. And God love my daughter is because she didn't want to do the hard, you know, like every freaking day go down there and every, you know, sit in the drum set and practice for half an hour a day or whatever the, you know, it's like, It's the consistency of effort over time seems to be the thing that so many of us struggle with because it's hard and because it's frustrating because there's other distractions and because there's a thousand things I got to do with my life. But man, if you could find the thing in your life that you're willing to put the consistent practice in, that's the thing that you're going to just go crush, I think. And that's the same for sales.

You know, he wants you back in a year and they're saying, well, now our slow bin is this. You can say, how about if your slogan is the same one it was last year, owning your journey? Yeah. Because the journey is more than a year, and that is a fantastic slogan.

You know, it's funny because I've been focused up till now, just until you said that, that it's really interesting, Lisa. I've been focused on the own part, like it's mine, it's own, I have the agency. But, but now that after this conversation, I now have a deeper appreciation for the journey word too, right? It's, it, which you just teased out, it was really nicely done, which is the, it's, it's the own it, you got to own it, but it's a journey over time. Yeah.

Yeah.

Lisa, you strike me as more strategic than most. You're very strategic in your approach. Um, you know, you jokingly said that you had all these rules about your 4, you know, and frameworks and, and, you know, do this step 1, step 2, step 3. And I'd be interested to know, in your opinion, Do you feel that sales leaders today, sales managers, and especially salespeople have become less strategic? Because, you know, when you talk about own your journey and consistency, I just see a lot of ready, ready, fire, aim. And so people think, oh, I've gotta be, I've gotta be busy. I've gotta have all this activity. I gotta do this. I gotta do that.

And of course, the pressure that comes down from management, you know, when they're just looking at how many calls you made instead of the quality of the calls. Or the strategic thinking needed, particularly for an enterprise deal. I'm, I'm curious if you talk about that in your work, about taking time not just to do, but to be strategic and look at the whole and, and how you do that. Because what I see that that's really missing and that, you know, as attention spans dwindle, we, we see less and less just strategic thinking. And I'd like your take on that. I'd love your take on it too, Brian, actually.

Well, go ahead, Lisa. I feel like there is strategic thinking at the revenue leader level many times. They are thinking out. They're thinking of different sides of a problem or an opportunity, and they're not just thinking of one thing. They want to have a path, a journey for their sales organization in many cases. And so I do see strategic thinking at that leader level. I see many senior salespeople that also are strategic thinkers that are thinking not just about the next sales call, but about, you know, 5 calls from now. And they're thinking, they're putting themselves in their prospect's shoes and thinking, Okay, if I'm them, what am I weighing right now? What are my options? What are the pros and cons of each option? And also, you know, the whole notion of them knowing, I believe it's strategic at a salesperson level for them to know that they need to be better than they were, better than last year, better even than last month.

Aaron, and you do, I do see evidence of that. I also see evidence of not that too, but I do see some evidence of that. People who are leaning in, like, what do you mean by a better sales question? What are you even talking about? And I'm like, okay, that's a question that adds value for your prospect in addition to a good question for you. That's a strategic question. But that's not just going to roll off your tongue. We have to talk about it. We have to think about it. We have to think about that as part of the pre-call prep.

Or, you know, talk about sharing your unique business perspective and they're like, what? What are you even talking about? Was that an elevator pitch? No. You know, for your customers to not stall or stop, you have to provide value on every call. And that means they have to learn something that they didn't know before. Or you are making them aware of a problem. And you know, this is to some degree challenger-esque, but it's not a once and done. It's like, you know, what value are you going to add for the people you're meeting with during every call? And then you have to be the type of person that goes out and makes sure that you have that value. So, you know, this question is like, well, Where would we get that value? Well, you know, does your company have any case studies? Yeah. Why not read them? It's like, read the case studies.

Those are good. Those are examples you can use. Talk to your, to the people on your team or other teams. What, you know, what are they doing? What are their prospects and customers saying? Like you have to build up to add value. It doesn't just happen. And there's ways to do that. And then, you know, common today is, you know, the buyers are overwhelmed too. They're using AI to make decisions.

There's another seat at the table now, you know, and I can think of 15 ways buyers can use effectively use AI as part of their decision just without even thinking about it. So, you know, but if you're going to think strategically and you're going to kind of try to partner and help guide the people that you're working with, you've got to be thinking along those lines. And it's a long answer to your question, Shari, but I do see sometimes that people are thinking strategically at the sales rep level in terms of big opportunities at the revenue leader level. And then a lot of times not. And that's just sad because I just, you know, I'm seriously concerned about those people's ability to be successful.

In the long haul. I tend to agree, Lisa. I think, I think certainly there's a will to think strategically that's pretty strong across the board, top to bottom. I think people aspire to be more strategic, uh, or certainly open-minded to becoming more strategic. Um, there is, there's a little bit of a challenge of what does strategy or strategic mean? So it's a little vague. I have a very strong projection bias. I just assume that the things I suffer from is everybody's problem, and I'm 99% of the time I'm wrong. But the, I do worry about attention problems.

I find that I have massive attention problems right now and it's getting worse, seems every year. And I'm sure that's probably just how my brain is wired, but it's also social media and things like that, you know, are just exacerbating the problem. So, you know, I can make an impressive list of strategic things I need to do today and then I just sit down to do 'em and I just feel immediately overwhelmed. Like, let me just see what's on there, you know, and pick up my phone and, you know, all of a sudden an hour's disappeared. So I think that's part of the problem that we're all, that's my projection bias. We are all, I don't know if we're all, I'm struggling with, I'll just raise my hand on that. But there, there's a higher level one too, Shari, which is, I think, I think what's your strategy pointing to? This is why the, the new book exists, the Frame Making Sale book exists because I think without turning this into, you know, a discussion of that, I, so much of what we do in sales is even when strategic, I think is pointed to the, in the wrong direction because, you know, whether it's, We need to be a trusted advisor. We need to get customers to perceive our value.

We need to build relationships. All these things we talk about are all focused on getting customers to think a certain way about you. They're all focused on specifically influencing customers' supplier perception. And the thing that I'm so interested in now is what does it look like to engage customers in such a way that we're focused on changing their self-perception rather than their supplier perception? Because I think the best way to sell more stuff isn't get customers to see your value or to trust you or to like you. It's actually to get them to see that to trust themselves, to feel like they can make a better decision. And that, that's a bit of a plug for the book, but it's the reason why it's a plug for the book is 'cause I think that's actually right, you know, and there's, there's all sorts of data to back it up. So I think there's a desire to be thinking, to think strategically, but I think we need to point the strategy in a, in a, in a different direction. So I think that's part of what's going on too.

I totally agree with that. It's, it's if you can ask better questions to, to, to help you're the person that you're working with think differently, ask questions internally, if you can give them information that they didn't have before that is important for them. You're really, it is that kind of collaborative relationship, um, that I, I believe you're alluding to.

That still hasn't gone away. It still needs to be, you know, it still needs to be fun and frictionless to be with you.

Yeah.

You know, and I think that we look at that as very rudimentary. Oh, oh, well, that goes without saying, but it needs to be said. You know, it does. It needs to be said. You know, it's still all things being equal, people do business with people they like. Who said this? All things being unequal, people do business with people they like. And that's still there. And that overlay has to be there.

And I think, You know, what happens is, as we think AI is going to solve all our problems and give us the exact script and the exact right thing to say, I just, I see this over-scripting and this overvaluing and this over-frameworking and this over-preparing when it's like, at the end of the day, just like, be a person and have some fun. Oh, sorry, I screwed up.

Yeah, you know what? And just be a person. Yeah. Yeah. And bring something, a wow factor to your presentation and to your meeting, something unexpected, like something fun, but not as weird, like a sales, you know, like sales strategy. Just maybe you just want to bring cupcakes or, you know, have, you know, a little—

I want cupcakes. But if I bring them, I'm sitting there eating them when you guys can't have them because you're in totally different cities.

They're eating Chipotle.

Don't lie about it. Yeah, that's a fair point. But, but, but, you know, but actually, here's a really interesting way to sum up what you just said. It's a very visceral way, Shari, which is super interesting. Do you guys ever, that time, like on a Monday morning, you look at your calendar for the week and you're kind of scanning across the 5 days thinking like, what's going to— and you see certain calls and you think, and then you see, right? And then there's maybe there's like one call on a Thursday afternoon, you think, and you look at it, you go, huh, you know? And that's, that's the difference. The difference between, and Huh, is actually massive when it comes to sales, right? It's like, how, because how many salespeople does a customer look at and think, huh? Because I think most people look at sales calls and think, huh? And so that's, that's like, how do I become that small percentage that goes, huh, as opposed to, uh, right? It's like, wow. It's like, I get to talk to Sharon. When you're on my calendar, it's a, ah, yeah, I know exactly what you're thinking when I'm on.

It's like, oh God. What do you mean?

If you're in a strategy session or you're planning for a call, you can plan that.

Like, Right.

When you, uh, I, perfect example. If you're going to call an executive and we're prepping for a call to call on an exec, like a C-suite executive, it's like, end your meeting 5 minutes early. End it 5 minutes early, no matter what. And if you do that, then the next time you want to meet with them, they're going to have the reaction that you just described. Because that was—

I would imagine anyone to see Shari on the calendar thinking, oh, I get to talk to Shari, you know, that's kind of cool, right? Right. But I think that's how, you know, it's like, and if these are— it's Shari, it's your point. I think you nailed it in some ways. It's just that it's this, it's this very human connection that all three of us, I think, feel very strongly about is like, how do you show up not to be a sales professional or a trusted advisor? How do you just show up to be a human being that people actually enjoy spending some time with? And that turns out to be pretty critical when so much of what I can get is through my, on my own through digital AI and everything else. So, it's not information. So, what do I get from interacting with you? And you know what I get? Maybe I get energy. Maybe I get a little bit of a, maybe I get a little bit of like, you know, that I can't get that from it. God knows, goodness knows I can't get that from AI, right? AI is always better, right? But that That might be your differentiator right there, Shari.

I think you nailed it.

I was just thinking, you know, the title of this podcast is Selling Isn't Everything. And, and Brent and I always say selling isn't everything, but it's something. And what just occurred to me is selling isn't everything, but everybody has a something, a secret something beyond the selling, you know, and, and, and maybe for, for you, Lisa, like it's, It's, it's being strategic. It's, it's having these frameworks. It's, it's delivering value each time. It's caring so much, but I don't want to put words in your mouth and I just tried to, so scratch everything I just said. And I wanted to ask you, selling isn't everything, but it's something. What is your secret something?

I think my superpower is that I am able to take everything that I have experienced in my career, my expertise, things I've built, all that stuff. And I can come to the strategy session, I can come to the win room, I can come to the pre-call prep, or I can come to the training or whatever it is. And I can apply the thing that they need. And, you know, in my professional life, um, in my personal life, like my friends and family, it's like, you're not allowed to make lists for us. We're not interested in your direction.

Just because you laminated something doesn't make make it permanent, but it does make it 15% better. Always. Lamination, you automatically make something 15% better.

Yeah, it works for me professionally. It doesn't always work for me personally. Oh, but, um, but I can sort of— unlike Claude AI, who I love, but, um, you know what, I can bring the thing they needed at that moment in terms of, of then moving forward. And, um, I love doing that so I can bring that with enthusiasm, with sincerity, with my heart, um, and happiness knowing that, you know, it's something that's going to help.

Well, Lisa, this has been an amazing conversation and, uh, wow. Uh, I'm, I'm inspired and, and I want to invite you to my next party to laminate all the things that need to happen.

No. Just don't laminate the napkins because then they, if you laminate the napkins, they don't work anymore. So don't do that.

No, no, I would build little forts.

Then they're coasters.

Yeah.

Because we have an audience of sales type CROs, people leading companies that could actually hire you if they have the foresight to do that. And how can people get a hold of you?

What's the best way to do that? They can go to my website, toplinesales.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I have LinkedIn Learning courses, and they can also message me there too. So all kinds of ways. I'm not hard to find or hard. Been in business a long time. Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

I really have enjoyed the conversation with both of you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Thanks so much. Mm-hmm.