Neil Weitzman

for anyone needing to coach sales reps in DEMOs: Doing a demo without great discovery is Russian Roulette. Good discovery is the first step to understanding if you can solve their problem (fit) and determining if that deal is a real opportunity or just going to take up space in your pipeline. The next step is a demo. Sadly demo’s are where most of us fall down. Too many people think a demo is a demo is a demo. “Just show them all the cool features” says your CTO, “This product sells itself!” says your CEO. That’s all bullshit. There is 100 options out there. There is no such thing as no competition. Doing an effective demo is critical to move the deal forward and to check in on the reality of this opportunity actually closing. Most companies train their people on product knowledge and then tell them to go demo it. Most orgs do a crap job at actually coaching on what good demo’s look like. Here’s the problem with evaluating most demos: Most reps and managers judge demos on how they think they went and how they feel. “I feel like that went well. They really liked me.“”Wow we really hit it off on that call” Being liked won’t close the deal. Your feeling on how it went can’t be cashed at the bank. Feelings don’t close deals. Execution does. Data is your friend. Score your demos. Measure what actually happened, not what it felt like happened. Don’t forget though there is NO WAY you can a good score on your demo if you have not done discovery properly. If you have, use this demo scorecard to help you understand if your demo was more than “they liked me” Big shout out to Kevin "KD" Dorsey for helping me improve this. I had a decent demo scorecard but KD had some great ideas that made it even better IMO. No need to comment dumb sh!t to get the template 🙂 Here - use it if its helpful: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13cgfXjBDZ3mPHDVEfr8HHXTQTuVXE4HRah615okJMqo/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Sharing something i believe soooooo deeply in. ---- Your name is the business. This is a bit of a guide to building a brand that outlives any title. Remember: Every job ends. Every title fades. Every company moves on. The one thing that follows you everywhere is your name. And your name is your reputation. Your name is your brand. We got hired for the next job or engagement because someone said our name and it carried weight. Not because of a logo on a slide or a past experience. What people say about us matters. Referrals built on trust are our bread and butter and we die without it. But, here is the trap we fall into; many people in corporations act like their company owes them their career. It’s not personal (usually) but business happens. This means restructuring, market shifts, and new leaders shuffling the deck. If the only thing you built lives inside that company, you walk away with a light bag. If you shift your mindset you will see that your brand is your best friend. And, like your best friend, that relationship needs to be cared for. How to decide what your brand / your name should stand for? Here is the question I ask every founder and every fractional I coach - “How do you want people to talk about you when you are not in the room?” If you don’t know the answer, stop reading here and go think deeply about this. If you know - write your answer in one sentence. Now, here is how simple this is. You just defined the BRAND you want to be. Some examples (none of which are true of course 🙂)

If you cannot say it in one sentence, the market will never say it for you. Now, go plan out the tactics you are going to use to get people to say these things about you when you are not in the room. In other words - How will you make this come true? That’s your marketing strategy. Building your brand is not charisma (though that can help). It is consistent behavior. Your personal brand is a core sales strategy. This is not only for flashy founders. It scales to teams when you turn it into habits. Sales gets easier the day a prospect says I have heard of you. Try this and make them habits

Lead with kindness to stand out and be remembered. Traditional channels are noisy. Cold email used to get ten percent response. Now the baseline is closer to one. You can still win if people talk about you. A few weeks ago, I created 20 custom bobbleheads for a few friends and partners. It was cheesy as hell. But it was fun to do and my goal was simply to make people smile and for me to say thank you to them for their friendship and support. It worked I think. The recipients sent me thank you notes. They posted pictures, they keep them on their desk. Their kids loved them. They smiled and laughed. From a personal perspective - mission accomplished. From a business perspective - I suspect they might work for them to keep me top of mind when opportunities arise. Don’t get me wrong - I hope friends don’t need gifts to think of me. I sure don’t need gifts to think of my most trusted go-to-network. The gifts are simply a gesture. I bring my wife flowers. I am kind to my friends. Gifts and thank you’s are what we do for those we care about. Here is a simple system to build your name;

Repeat this and your name will carry further than any title you ever held. And please please please use these guardrails so you do not lose yourself;

The takeaway is this; Jobs and titles are rented. Your name and reputation is owned. Build a name that stands for kindness, and clarity, and expertise in your chosen lane. People will talk about you when you are not in the room. You just need to lead them to words.

Been thinking a lot about the relationship flywheel - which is needed more and more in a world drowning in AI Scroll LinkedIn for sixty seconds and you’ll see a flood of “instant AI lead engines,” “zero-touch funnels,” and “hands-free pipeline.” Automation is great… until

What still cuts through IMO? Humans who care and lead with kindness Sure AI can:

BUT it CANNOT

That’s why warm intros and referrals still close 3–5 × better than cold. Relationships compound. Here is how i build a relationship flywheel that works

You can use AI to surface the moment so you don’t miss it, then be human.

I feel pretty strongly about this these days based on what I am seeing. AI isn’t a threat but Isolation is. I feel as though AI is exposing the leaders that were never really leading in the first place. We keep talking about AI, efficiency, automation, scaling GTM… But the real advantage inside any company is still the same thing it’s been for decades IMO Human connection. Trust. Attitude. Work Ethic. Risk management and mostly - Strong Motivational Leadership. Most of what we call “leadership problems” today aren’t caused by AI or Gen Z or remote or hybrid work. They’re caused by the same old issue: People don’t feel seen, supported, or safe enough to ask for help. I work across multiple companies at any given time so i see this a lot - less than strong 🙂 leadership. Teams aren’t failing because the work is hard. -They don’t feel protected when things go sideways -They’re scared to admit what they don’t know -They feel disconnected… even inside the same Slack channel that you thought would solve everything about remote work. -They’re aren’t getting real-time coaching Strong leaders set the tone and lead by example. -They defend their team and have their back -They admit their own mistakes quickly and openly and they ask for help -They bring the team together often (even when remote) through SKOs, events, regular meetings, fun for the sake of fun, training and learning together. -They implement a culture of practice and coaching - maybe the most important element to long-term team success IMO I believe that your GTM process breaks when trust breaks and itt accelerates when trust compounds. AI can automate workflows, analyze pipelines, tighten ops and help in many areas, but it can’t replace clarity, empathy, or a leader people want to follow Ask yourself - Does your team trust you? Are you leading by example?

Was thinking about this today and thought I’d share…:) How come we don’t have a closed lost reason code that says “I fucked up” ? Our closed lost deal data is usually shit because we likely don’t even realize it was our fault and if we do, we wont often own our mistakes in the data like that. Unfortunately sales reps are often the reason we lost. Not trying to insult anyone - it’s just the truth. We didn’t - do great discovery - we talked more than we listened - we never crated urgency - didn’t help the champion create an effective business case for the CFO - didn’t multi-thread properly and never understood that Sally loved the competitor and was influential to others All of these things are fixable The first step is admitting this is true The second step is ensuing the process is right The third step is coaching on it. And if you are a CRO / sales leader and you aren’t coaching on it - then its your fault 🙂