See the show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 3 The Biggest Myths Holding Back Your Sales Team | Show notes
0:00:00 - Alex Shevelenko
Welcome to a very special episode of Experience-focused Leaders! I'm excited to introduce you to Geoffrey Reid, who started on the ground floor of Marcus Evans Group, became its CEO, and has now taken that 25 years of experience and combined it into a book called Revenue Catalyst: Mastering the Art of Sales. Geoffrey, welcome to the pod!
0:00:47 - Geoffrey Reid
It's a great pleasure to be here with you.
0:00:51 - Alex Shevelenko
Fantastic. Well, first, just a quick snapshot: what is Marcus Evans? I hear things like 30,000 B2B events, half a million world-class speakers. I'm blown away. I’m looking to absorb that, and I think it will provide some context about what you drew on to write this book.
0:01:15 - Geoffrey Reid
Yeah, well, thank you. Look, Marcus Evans really, for me, represented a part of my sales education that I was lacking. After having done an awful lot of school, taking me to becoming a professor at graduate school, teaching a variety of subjects, I was led into a business that clearly had a lack of understanding of how to do sales. That really exposed a gap in my education that I wanted to fulfill.
When I did a lot of research, Marcus Evans became the place where I felt I could learn sales. Just to give a little overview, it has grown over the last 30 years to a company that does over 1,000 events each year with many speakers involved. Some of these events are loyalty programs, some are for learning and education, and others really help companies generate revenue by creating one-on-one meetings between buyers and sellers in a variety of industries. It’s really about business information and connecting people to help businesses achieve what they need.
0:02:41 - Alex Shevelenko
Fantastic. So it sounds like it also relates to sales. I really agree with your notion that we over-educate experts. We all grow up initially to be great salespeople — I have three kids, and they outsell me on the things they need pretty well. Then we become subject matter experts or academic experts.
Even in places like the business schools you and I studied at, sales is sort of the “ugly stepchild” of the disciplines. The best you get is advice from smart faculty who say, “You should go learn to sell.” And I’m thinking, I’m here in business school — Stanford, Wharton, wherever — to learn! But they don’t really offer that as a course. Even when they do, it’s more about sales management, which is a slightly different discipline, though connected.
So, regarding your book, why do you think we structurally fail to get this really important skill set into the hands of future leaders?
0:04:13 - Geoffrey Reid
Yeah, this question perturbed me for years. I couldn’t quite figure out why that was. After getting into business, I realized CEOs are obviously strategic but responsible for revenues. CFOs are more bottom-line oriented. There’s just so much more education around everything other than sales, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I was fortunate to have a visit from the vice chancellor and president of the university I used to teach at when I was at Marcus Evans headquarters in London in 2019. It was more of a tour. Dr. Alan Shepherd, on his way to becoming chancellor of Western Ontario — which is kind of “Harvard North” in Canada — was visiting, and he asked how we were doing in terms of providing well-educated employees for our business. I said I had hired a lot of people from Concordia but asked, “Why no sales education?” He laughed and gave a simple quote: professors don’t tend to be comfortable teaching things they don’t know enough about.
That led me to believe why business schools are structured around finance, marketing, accounting, and human resources. While there is some sales and marketing, it’s very different when you get down to B2B sales. After that, whenever I interviewed candidates from business schools, I’d ask if they’d ever taken a sales course. Some said one, some none. That really exposed this void. One objective of the book was to see if I could fill that gap — if I were writing a fifth element of business school, how would I do it?
0:06:20 - Alex Shevelenko
In addition to other things, I wanted it to give structure around what people really need to know academically. What are the three nuggets someone about to embark on a career in sales, or managing sales teams, should know? What are the three takeaways you would introduce in a 20-minute nugget to get them started on their sales journey?
0:07:17 - Geoffrey Reid
Well, a lot of this comes from primary research I’ve done over the last 25 years to figure out what is needed. The book follows a sequence, chapter by chapter, starting with product positioning. Are we delivering a scarce product? Are we delivering a rare product? How do we create sales strategies that correspond to that? How do we make choices to optimize the delivery of that product to the marketplace in a way that maximizes revenue impact?
0:08:30 - Alex Shevelenko
And you mentioned before your three kids who sell. We all learn to sell when we're children. I reference that in the book: every child learns to sell, typically in a persuasive way — “Please, Dad, buy me this, buy me that.” That translates into their teenage years when they want to influence their friends — “Let's do this, let's go there.”
Then, with the lack of sales education at business school, people enter a sales organization and are told, “Go sell,” but they often don’t know what to do. One of the questions relating back to your three pillars is: is this a persuasive sale or a resistance sale? Are we obligating people to buy from us using our relationships and Rolodex — “Hey, I know you’re the best fit for me” — or is it more about negotiation, leverage, positioning, mutual benefit, and win-win outcomes?
Banks and universities also sell, but they’re not selling in the sense of “Please come to my institution” or “Please let me give you the loan.” They’re saying, “Why should we give you the loan?” and “Why should we admit you?” It’s a very different approach. So between persuasion — “Please buy my product” — and “Why should we admit you?”, there’s a massive range of options and choices that salespeople have to make, depending on the positioning of their product.
0:09:21 - Alex Shevelenko
So, you’re saying there are different strategies depending on the market and positioning. In the same market, you could have a company that’s a premium, exclusive brand, where customers queue to buy, and another that’s a disruptor, democratizing the same market. The sales strategy would vary based on the company’s position. There’s no one-size-fits-all sales approach.
0:09:53 - Geoffrey Reid
Exactly. Sales strategy is relevant to what you’re doing at a particular point in the market. For example, when Apple or many companies are in a “scoring position,” like in football, it doesn’t take much salesmanship to close a deal. Other companies, however, are like giving the football to the running back on the other side of the field and saying, “Run through all the defense.” That’s salesmanship. Depending on your product’s positioning, you have to make the right positioning choices and select the corresponding sales strategy to optimize the experience.
0:10:41 - Alex Shevelenko
That’s really interesting. In the technology world, where I come from, you don’t want to hire someone in a startup who had a successful career only at a large company like IBM or Oracle. The playbook is very different. In startups, you have to create your own momentum and market — no Rolodex, no brand recognition. You still use powerful sales tools, but in a large company, the heavy lifting is already done.
There are themes and commonalities, though. One perception of sales in our culture is that it’s transactional. But as you’ve said — and I’m quoting you — sales is much more than a transaction; it’s about building trust and establishing relationships. Why is there this perception? Why do people get defensive when they see “sales” in the title or receive a “salesy” email? What do the best sales reps and organizations do to establish trust while still hitting their quotas?
0:12:33 - Geoffrey Reid
Fabulous question. Sales doesn’t have to be limited to being transactional. There are transactional sales — “Here’s my product. Do you want it or not?” — but those are decreasing.
0:12:45 - Alex Shevelenko
Right, that’s increasingly handled online. Transactional sales are being replaced by technology. Humans are less and less in the loop. Do you agree?
0:13:09 - Geoffrey Reid
Absolutely. Transactional sales can be optimized and largely replaced by technology. It’s important to consider the type of product you have. But going back to your question: the stigma around sales largely comes from the lack of sales education. Universities generate revenue, but they provide very little value in teaching sales. So they emphasize other business disciplines and, in some cases, create a stigma that sales is a “career of last resort,” which is confusing.
Thousands of CEOs I’ve talked to were either the best salesperson in their company or built technology with excellent sales support because they lacked formal sales education. Revenues are key to a successful business. Yet organizations often focus strictly on cost when a business struggles, because there’s confusion about what’s possible with sales.
In theory, we have as much control over predictable sales as we do over costs. The lack of sales education causes many organizations to ignore revenue control. My book explores solutions — using data, predictability, KPIs, and measurements — to forecast sales, optimize processes, and align incentives. This approach prevents panicked cost-cutting and emphasizes controlling revenues in the future, which directly ties back to the lack of sales education and understanding of what you can control.
0:16:06 - Alex Shevelenko
Back to some of the key nuggets or myths that you want to debunk: one myth is that people rely too much on cost-cutting instead of applying an engineering mindset to generating sales. We’ve talked about the lack of sales education, but what are some other typical issues you see where companies make mistakes in sales execution?
0:16:43 - Geoffrey Reid
I think the biggest myth in sales is that salespeople are born, not made. That comes from the assumption that the only option for hiring salespeople is someone with a deep level of experience or context. That’s disempowering when trying to build a sales team.
This myth has been perpetuated by sales movies — Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall Street — which make people think, “Salespeople are born, or I’m just not that type of person.” But when you look at people’s attributes, everyone has desire, capability, intelligence in areas they focus on, and drive and determination that can be motivated. With the right training and elements in place, people with a variety of talents can become master salespeople.
Debunking this myth opens up possibilities in how you choose and develop your salespeople and build a sustainable, accountable, high-performing workforce.
0:18:24 - Alex Shevelenko
By debunking that myth, you connect to an earlier point you made: sales is a big tent with many strategies, including distinctions between persuasive and scarcity-driven approaches. But personalities matter too. Someone who is more introverted may have a very effective approach, though people often underestimate it because we stereotype salespeople as extroverted and talkative. Data shows that people who ask the most questions and listen the most tend to be more successful.
Let’s say someone comes from marketing and has not sold professionally but supports salespeople. I believe every marketer needs to think like a seller, and every modern seller needs to scale some marketing approaches. For a marketer who’s somewhat analytical, maybe not extroverted, and wants to be more impactful in communicating with sales or applying sales principles to marketing, what would your advice be?
0:20:02 - Geoffrey Reid
Marketing roles vary a lot depending on whether it’s B2B or B2C.
0:20:12 - Alex Shevelenko
Let’s say enterprise B2B.
0:20:16 - Geoffrey Reid
In enterprise B2B, marketing is less about branding or being the heartbeat of the company. It’s more about lead generation, creating strategies, and talking to the right people to pitch opportunities and the best products. Often the biggest gap is the inability to engage with decision-makers so they understand and can make informed decisions.
Regarding trust in salespeople, many operate with a push mentality — aggressive approaches without creating lasting value. Effective sales involves building trust and adding value to leaders’ decision-making. That means providing objective advice, asking the right questions, and sometimes saying, “This isn’t perfect for you now” or “This option might be better.”
Salespeople can become an extension of the enterprise’s decision-making, not just chasing targets blindly. When developed correctly, they build relationships that are trusted, strategic, and add value — sometimes even more than internal leaders within the organization.
0:22:23 - Alex Shevelenko
So, basically, if you’re a great, world-class salesperson, you think like an employee of the potential buyer. That’s what I’m hearing you say.
Rolling back to marketers, I’ll throw out a hypothesis: if you’re a marketer, you need to shift from prescriptive marketing content that assumes you know everything about the customer to a less linear approach. You could say, “Okay, great, Mr. Customer, first of all, what type of customer are you?” Then they select, “I am this type,” and you give them two or three choices — not an overwhelming amount. Then you say, “Fantastic.” This could be through content, sales enablement, or resources for customers.
You might present problems that are generic enough to apply broadly but specific enough to resonate, using concrete industry or functional language. The customer might think, “Oh, I have all three of these problems” or “I have one right now.” They self-select the burning problem, and very quickly, they’re essentially selling themselves. They first feel understood and appreciated. They might even think, “The marketer or seller understands me better than I understand myself.”
Then, you can show a case study of how you solved that particular challenge for a customer just like them. They enter that world instead of hearing, “We sell widgets. Our widgets are the best in the world, blah, blah, blah,” which is the product-centric mentality.
Unfortunately, much marketing content is still in that product-centric universe. It’s the salesperson’s job to do problem discovery, but often the salesperson is new — they don’t have customer war stories, industry expertise, or months of experience. For multi-product companies, this is especially challenging. So a gap exists: marketers aren’t delivering content in a way that enables salespeople to succeed or allows buyers to navigate their own buying journey.
What do you see? Are you seeing the same gaps or positive changes?
0:25:46 - Geoffrey Reid
I faced this struggle when I became CEO in London. I had to align the marketing approach with the sales approach, especially in North American offices. There was a huge gap due to a lack of education for marketers. They didn’t understand that it’s not just about pushing a shiny product. The product needed to be positioned in a way that was congruent with what salespeople would say later.
Newer salespeople were being trained to deliver the right message, but if marketing was sending a different one, the customer would notice. It’s like playing a beautiful symphony and suddenly the horns play out of tune — the delivery feels incongruent.
A big part of getting marketing aligned was educating them: workshops, training, and having them sit in on the same education as salespeople. When marketing and sales were aligned in how the product was positioned, I observed a transformation. Marketing became an extremely valuable driver of sales — a role that had been largely absent before that step. Your observations are astute, and I can attest to that journey and its effectiveness.
0:27:57 - Alex Shevelenko
Many industries are increasingly moving to a subscription model, where repeat usage is the key. Another common bottleneck is that a great salesperson comes in, sells the world — the moon and everything in between, maybe even Mars in some cases — and then everyone is excited. But there’s not enough investment in onboarding or in truly capturing the value generated in the first few months or the first year.
How are you seeing this process of continuous selling or continuous value delivery work in the best-led sales teams? Because typically, it feels like, “Great, my job is done — good luck to the professional services or delivery teams.”
0:29:05 - Geoffrey Reid
That obviously has risks down the road. If every sales organization could fully gear itself toward a subscription model without any erosion or backlash, that would be a more predictable way of gaining and retaining customers. But not every company has the opportunity to do that, so they have to rely on salesmanship to bridge the gap — delivering the product, making sure customers are happy, and ensuring they continue.
I’ve looked at this a lot, because new business development is one thing, but you also need a process to onboard a client, service them until all deliverables are met, and then renew the right percentage of those customers. To me, it’s about understanding the type of product, what opportunities exist for subscription, renewal, or something in between, and building a process around that.
It’s also about training salespeople — or entire sales teams — to specialize in those repeat engagements, and supporting them with the right infrastructure and people to optimize results. As many listeners know, new business generation is often far more challenging than repeat business, provided you’re delivering a great product. Usually, it’s the gaps in the process that create inefficiencies. Addressing those gaps and making sure the system is highly optimized is the key to getting as close as possible to that ideal subscription model, given the unique nature of the product. It’s a continuous journey — both in life and in sales.
0:31:22 - Alex Shevelenko
On that note, what advice would you give to someone who wants to continually refine their sales acumen and skills? Let’s say The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t a great example of what truly creates success. Are there TV series, movies, books, or other resources you’d recommend that demonstrate fine craftsmanship in relationship and trust building?
0:32:01 - Geoffrey Reid
Unlike many other disciplines, sales has never been fully captured by universities. In many fields, universities have almost a monopoly on conferring credibility, but sales hasn’t been formalized that way. So people have had to go elsewhere — podcasts, books, interactive exercises, content creators on Instagram or YouTube, maybe even AI and ChatGPT.
The challenge is that sales is such a big, unregulated space. There’s a lot of great information out there, but also plenty that’s counterproductive — or good information that just doesn’t apply across different industries or subject matters. Without the perspective to know what’s changing, it can be hard to choose the right material to consume.
For the first several years I managed sales teams, there was nothing I wanted them to read, because nothing corresponded to what we actually did. If I gave them the wrong book, it would set them back and cause problems. Eventually, I found a couple of books that did align, but each only addressed specific aspects. I’d say, “For this problem, read this. For that problem, read that.” Everything else, we had to train internally.
Over time, more gaps have been filled and better resources have emerged — and in many ways, that’s why I wrote my own book: to give people something that helps them make better decisions in every situation.
0:34:43 - Alex Shevelenko
On that note, as we wrap up, how can people find your book and connect with you online?
0:34:50 - Geoffrey Reid
The book is available on Amazon in most countries. You can go to your local Amazon store and find it. I also created a website — geoffreymreed.com — where you can purchase the book, and it will route you to the Amazon store for your country.
So either go directly to Amazon and search for “Geoffrey M. Reid” or The Revenue Catalyst, or visit geoffreymreed.com. There you can also learn more about my background and try an interactive knowledge check — almost like a diagnostic when you take your car to the garage — to assess where you are in sales.
0:35:49 - Alex Shevelenko
Geoffrey, thank you so much for coming on and helping everyone become better salespeople, regardless of educational background, and for raising awareness of how this impacts organizations. Again — thanks, Geoffrey Reid. Please check out The Revenue Catalyst if this is something you want to dive into.
0:36:14 - Geoffrey Reid
Thank you, Alex. I appreciate the talk very much.