Cory Dunham failed the same calculus class twice — for the same reason both times. He wouldn't ask for help.

That story sits at the center of this conversation. Cory is an executive coach, keynote speaker, business strategist, and private pilot who's spent 40 years in business learning that the voice telling you not to raise your hand is not you. It's a recording from years ago, and it only shows up when it doesn't serve you.

We get into what that costs a salesperson. If you walk into a meeting carrying "I'm not worthy to be here," you cannot simultaneously help a customer transform their results. Those two things are in direct conflict.

Cory's traffic metaphor is the one that stays with you: when you keep switching who you are — pumping the brakes on your authentic self — the people behind you honk, pull back, or run into you. None of that builds a relationship.

We also dig into what real listening actually is. Cory thought it was shutting his mouth. Then he became a pilot, where you repeat back the controller's instruction word for word or somebody gets hurt. Different stakes than a sales call. Same discipline.

Plus: the four-step path to earning the helm, why The Four Agreements is the book I'd hand every salesperson, ADHD and hyperfocus, improv as listening practice, and what the word "sell" originally meant before we ruined it.

Connect with Cory:

LinkedIn — Cory Dunham

Email — cory@corydunham.com

Podcast — unapologeticleadershippodcast.com

Most companies believe revenue growth solves everything. Doug C. Brown has spent three decades proving otherwise.

Doug is CEO of CEO Sales Strategies, and his work starts from an uncomfortable premise: the money you're looking for is already inside your business. You've paid to acquire it. It's sitting in underpricing, in proposals nobody followed up on, in a fulfillment process that takes eight weeks when it should take one. It just never made it to the bank.

In this conversation, Doug walks through the diagnostic he uses — 21 EBITDA drivers, each with five or six sub-points — and shares what it turned up: a $2.4M HVAC company that grew to $4.96M with EBITDA moving from 13% to 28%, and a valuation that climbed $7 million. A $772,000 plumbing company sitting on $226,000 in unclaimed EBITDA, found in two hours. A billion-dollar company losing $72 million a year and still describing itself by its top line.

Lee and Doug also get into why choice paralysis kills deals, why "being customer-centric" quietly becomes scope creep, and how a realtor cost herself an $80,000 commission by handing a hesitant buyer a way out.

The throughline: none of this is about squeezing customers. It's about running a business that can afford to serve them well.

In this episode:

• Why revenue growth without margin discipline is just expensive motion
• The 21 EBITDA drivers and how the 15-minute diagnostic works
• What too many SKUs does to your salespeople and your buyers
• Business ROI vs. personal ROI — and why missing the second one loses deals
• Where AI genuinely elevates the customer experience, and where it doesn't

Find Doug: doug@ceosalesstrategies.com | LinkedIn: dougbrown123

Find Lee: podcast.thoughtsonselling.com | meet.acelera.group

Thoughts on Selling — Serve Customers. Not Quotas.

Michael Skriver started in finance and IT, then — as he puts it — upgraded to sales. He's spent his career leading complex B2B organizations across Europe and Asia, and he came into this conversation with a line his CEO once dropped on three thousand people: you have no clue how to sell, you're a bunch of traders.

That CEO was right. And what he taught Michael next is the through-line of this episode: if you say you're customer-centric, show me in your decisions, otherwise it's a slogan.

We get into what that looks like when it's real. Executive sponsors who put their own credibility at stake instead of approving account plans from a desk. KPIs that measure when a shipment leaves your factory instead of whether it arrived usable. Technical and commercial sellers working as a pair, with the person in the white coat doing the digging — because everyone knows the guy in the tie is dangerous, especially if his title is long.

The middle of the conversation is a masterclass in cross-cultural selling. A Japanese general manager telling Lee three times "I want you to do a good job," and what he was actually protecting. A boss who couldn't sit through 45 minutes of small talk and killed the relationship in seven. Twelve Japanese executives across the table. And the karaoke moment that wasn't an invitation — it was a test.

They close on the thing every seller hears in every market on earth: our market is different. Michael's read on what that sentence is really asking for is worth the listen on its own.

Also in here: the $700 shoes, why interrogation shuts buyers down, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and a CEO's advice to stop doing more with less and start doing less with less.

Guest: Michael Skriver — futuresalesglobal.com

Host: Lee Levitt — sales coach, podcast host, and author of The Second Meeting and Together We Win, both available at books.acelera.group

Questions or comments? Use the contact form at podcast.thoughtsonselling.com, or grab time to talk at meet.acelera.group.

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