About Sales Tales - A podcast sharing epic stories that get you through your sales adventure.
Introducing Sales Tales - a podcast for people who want to:
Grow their sales performance
Increase their income
Learn to cope with failure
Challenge the traditional-selling mindset
This is for sellers, those who manage sellers, or those who lead organizations toward future revenue outcomes.
Episode 93 - 4 Brutal Truths Sales Managers Don't Want to Face
On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger sat on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on a cold January morning. The people closest to the problem had already raised the alarm. Engineers at contractor Morton Thiokol had seen O-ring erosion on earlier flights, testing showed the seals got worse in the cold, and they recommended against launching below 53 degrees. NASA managers pushed back, Thiokol management reversed its position, and the Rogers Commission later found that the engineers' continuing objections never reached the senior people who made the launch decision. Earlier missions had come home safely, so a known problem had slowly become acceptable.
Sales leaders fall into the same pattern. The warning signs are usually there, and your reps often see them first. A process that keeps producing results is easy to excuse, and an answer you don't like is easy to wave off. In this episode, we cover four brutal truths that sales managers can see coming and would rather not face and unpack each one.
In this episode you'll learn:
Your best rep is going to leave. Most managers know it could happen and plan for nothing. The episode covers why a client should belong to the company and not to one rep, how to build bench strength, and why "always be recruiting" beats writing a job posting after the resignation.
Your forecast is probably telling you what your reps think you want to hear. This is the O-ring problem in your pipeline. The close date slides to October, nobody asks why, and the bad news arrives in December. We cover the questions that test whether a deal is real.
The problem you keep coaching might actually be you. When several reps keep struggling with the same thing, that's a signal about leadership. This covers supervising versus coaching, promoting your best seller with no leadership training.
Eventually you have to let someone fail. Stepping in to fix things keeps this quarter's results looking fine while your team stops growing. Failure is where the learning happens and how to start with low-stakes situations.
Three questions to take back to your team: If your number one rep left on Friday, what breaks on Monday? Have you created a culture where it's easier to move the close date than kill the deal? Are you coaching your reps, or becoming their best sales rep?
Sales Tales is the sales training podcast built on real stories, real tactics, and zero fluff. New episode every week.
🎙️ Hosted by Josh Shirley with co-host Dave Doherty🔗 Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
1 Oct 2026
Episode 92 - Four Emails Every Salesperson Should Have Ready to Send
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of Canada geese minutes after leaving LaGuardia and lost both engines. Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles had about three and a half minutes to get 155 people on the ground somewhere over New York City. Skiles worked the engine restart checklist. Sully worked the question no checklist could answer: where can this plane actually land? He chose the Hudson River, and everyone on board survived.
Years of practiced procedures handled everything predictable, which freed Sully to focus on the one thing nobody could have planned for. Sales communication works the same way. Every time you rewrite the same pre-call email, referral intro, or meeting recap, you spend brainpower your customer conversations need.
On this episode, Josh reads four short emails he actually sends:
The meeting confirmation, which gives the buyer an easy out days ahead and doubles as an upfront contract for the call
The referral introduction, a template his referral sources personalize and send on his behalf
The meeting recap, which confirms the next meeting and gives the buyer a reason to show up
The breakup email, the "have you found another way?" message most sequences save for last, sent earlier
He walks through why each one works and how to write your own versions, so you can prepare the predictable and save your attention for the unpredictable.
Sales Tales is the sales training podcast built on real stories, real tactics, and zero fluff. New episode every week.
24 Sept 2026
Episode 91 - The Kodak Rule: Why Sellers Hold On to Deals They Should Let Go
In 1975, a Kodak engineer built the first digital camera. Kodak had the invention, the knowledge, and the cash, and still shelved it because it threatened the film business that was making them so profitable. This leads to a hard question in sales: which deals in your pipeline are you refusing to see clearly?
In this episode, we walk through four signs it's time to let a deal go:
pain that never gets past surface-level interest
a champion who can't get you access to the people who can say yes
no believable path to funding
a buyer who isn't taking any steps on their own
We'll discuss why you should stop asking "Are you the decision maker?", how to tell an unfunded problem from an unfundable one, and why a deal with no pain belongs back at the qualify stage. The episode closes with a simple four-point scorecard for deciding whether to work a deal, diagnose it, stop forecasting it, or let it go.
Sales Tales is the sales training podcast built on real stories, real tactics, and zero fluff. New episode every week.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
6 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
6 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 45 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
66
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
60
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