You want more of your calls to close. You want your new reps to close like you do. And you've run hundreds of calls, so you know how it goes. When a deal slips, you don't go back to the call. You go on to the next one.

That's the trap. Experience makes the call feel finished the moment it ends. The lessons go stale on the tape nobody watches.

So the same skipped step costs you the next deal, and the one after. And your new reps copy it.

I talked this through with Debbie Hall-Evans and Dave Evans on the leadership and leadershit podcast (December 2024). Listen to the full conversation: #110 What's fun got to do with it? (Everything)

The pros still practice legwork

Think of your favorite basketball player. They know where their feet should stand. They still show up two hours before everyone else to practice legwork.

Sales works the same way. "Nobody's at 100% of those eight steps." Not even me. On the show I put my own number on it: "I'm at 99.1% of actually applying those things every day."

The sentence that tells you someone has stopped getting better is "I know how to do that. I don't need a coach for that." I'm a sales teacher. I could wing a call and maybe it would close. But "maybe is not the standard."

🐬 The standard is the best preparation you can bring, and the tape afterwards.

What the tape shows you that memory hides

I record my sales calls and rewatch them. These days an AI helper watches with me, live. It literally says: "Simon, you skipped step six."

You'd never catch that from memory. In your head, the call went fine. On the tape, you hear yourself jump to the price while the buyer was still telling you what hurts. Bitter to hear. Sweet to fix, because now you know the exact moment.

The biggest surprise from reviewing calls (back then I was getting six recordings a day to learn from) was talk share. The pattern I shared on the show: "70% win rate at 28.5% of you talking." And the other way round: "If you talk 70%, you have a 10% win rate."

Two-thirds of the call, the buyer talks. You ask, you listen, you write. Stories and case studies wait until they ask for one.

🐯 One small number, invisible without the tape, and it moves the whole win rate.

Step 1 on the tape: did you use their exact words?

A new buyer can't trust a product they haven't used. In the first ten minutes, they can only trust you. And online, "there are only two things that you can do."

First, their exact words. They say something, you write it down word for word, and you check: is this what you're saying? Each loop builds trust.

Second, your expertise. Not your slides. How deep you are in the world they're describing.

On the tape, listen for it. Did you mirror their words, or translate them into your pitch?

Step 2 on the tape: was the frustration real?

Here's the moment most calls skip. The buyer gives you a head reason: a friend said I should look into this. You nod and move on to your offer.

Don't. "Nothing happens in your head." Ask why the friend thinks that, and what happens if they do nothing. Wait for the words that come from the body. Pissed. Tired of it. Done.

Only then go to step three, how important this is next to everything else, and step four, the cost of doing nothing, said by the buyer. The tape shows you exactly where you left before the frustration landed.

Keep the steps where you can see them

Even while I was talking to Debbie and Dave, the yellow pyramid of the 8 Steps sat in front of me, and another copy behind me. Every call.

That's a habit I took from sport. You visualize the moves until they live in your body, because in the moment you won't have the paper. If you don't feel the next step, you take the wrong decision, or you delay it and lose the moment.

Prepare before the call. Review after it. Each call 0.1% better than the last. That's the practice, and it's the strategic advantage almost nobody uses.

🌴 It also makes selling lighter. You stop guessing what went wrong. The tape tells you, and the fix is one question.

If you're handing calls to new reps

This is where it pays off for a founder. The same tape that coaches you coaches your team. A new hire records the call, you both rewatch ten minutes of it on Friday, and you ask one thing: which step did we skip?

No lectures, no rescuing the deal live. The rep sees it, hears it, fixes it on the next call. That's how a process stops living in your head and starts running without you.

Start this week

1. Record your next five calls. Every one, with permission.
2. Score your talk share. Aim for the buyer talking two-thirds of the time.
3. Find the skipped step. One per call. Did you mirror their words? Did the frustration land before the price?
4. Put the 8 Steps where you see them. On the wall, in front of you, every call.

Picture next Friday. You rewatch one call, you spot the exact moment you jumped to price, and on Monday's call you stay quiet one beat longer. The buyer says what waiting costs them, out loud. That's control of the sales conversation. That's Sprintlife: the calls get lighter, the wins come back, and the time is yours again.

Listen to the full conversation with Debbie Hall-Evans and Dave Evans: #110 What's fun got to do with it? (Everything)

You don't have to practice alone. Grab the free tools and join the founders working on the same thing in the Sprint Club: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.
Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆