In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to sales training guru John Lester. John talks to us about how most everything you believe about selling is outdated or wrong. John Lester is a sales training guru. So much of the information you use to try and make your sales improve is simply out of date or wrong. John has spent the last 40 years in direct selling, sales management, sales process improvement, and messaging. His work has ranged from very large Fortune accounts, primarily in the financial services space, to small firms trying to create a sustainable and repeatable sales process. Sales is hard. Unless you have done it professionally and consistently as a career you don’t fully understand the challenges. Sales is about momentum, staying on track, choosing which thread to pull on. It is about constantly being pulled and pushed between your organization and the prospect / customer. It’s easy to think that the customer and competition are the biggest challenges. They are not. The biggest challenges are in two areas. The first are internal to your organization. Their impact is felt in pre-sales, closing, and implementation. And they can and will stop your opportunities before you get traction. The second is found in the mindset, attitudes and focus of the salespeople themselves. Both factors will slow you down, cost you deals, demoralize you, and cause you endless stress. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even a 20% improvement may result a significant change in your outcomes! I have experienced and examined these issues my entire career. And found common threads or causes. Like sales, fixing these issues is not easy, but it can be done. It takes time, hard work, and honesty. I have identified most of the potholes and have devised a path to help you avoid them. John's job is to help you expose your blind spots so you can focus on a consistent and repeatable revenue stream.