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Sales isn't what you think (and it's costing you millions!)
18 Plays1 month ago
Sales is often called the lifeblood of business—but that definition doesn’t go far enough.
In this episode of the Voice of Growth: Mastering the Mind and Market, Manny Teran breaks down the true structure of sales using a powerful business anatomy analogy—where leadership is the brain, value is the heart, operations are the nervous system, and sales is the lifeblood that keeps everything alive.
Drawing from two decades of experience in high-value technical sales, Manny reveals the three core elements that drive all successful selling:
- Deep customer understanding (truth discovery)
- Creating and communicating real value
- Asking for the decision with clarity and confidence
He also explores why sales has developed a negative reputation, how trends shape demand, and why the best salespeople don’t “sell”—they solve real problems.
Whether you're in sales, leadership, or building something of your own, this episode will fundamentally change how you think about growth. -- Follow and Subscribe to sharpen your edge in business and give you peace of mind in life.
#businessgrowth #entrepreneurship #stoicsm #megatrends #innovation ©2026 Profectory, LLC - All Rights Reserved.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Host Introduction
00:00:04
Speaker
The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market. Welcome to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host.
The Role of Sales in Business
00:00:16
Speaker
It has been said that sales is the lifeblood of business. And while this is partially true, it doesn't go far enough. you can think
Leadership and Operations Analogies
00:00:26
Speaker
about the brain as leadership, setting the vision the company, setting direction, planning, all of that.
00:00:33
Speaker
You can think about the heart as the value of the company being pumped out with the lifeblood. You can think about the nervous system like operations, sending signals, getting signals, making things happen. You can think about the employees like your hands, b blah, but ah blah, but a blah, blah. can use tons of analogies regarding sales. And I'm
Misconceptions in Sales
00:00:55
Speaker
using this simplistic sort of silly example to illustrate the fact that sales is oftentimes misunderstood.
00:01:04
Speaker
There's a lot of baggage surrounding sales and sales salesmanship, all those aspects. If you really think about it and you agree with 85% of all Americans in that there's a sentiment that salespeople are not liked.
00:01:22
Speaker
that the greasy used car salesman, the door-to-door person, you think about all these aspects of sales and there's this very heavy negative connotation of which I even had that before into going into sales.
00:01:38
Speaker
So
Manny's Career Transition Story
00:01:39
Speaker
I was a mechanical engineer, graduated from the university, went to work for an aerospace company. And after about a year and change, I went to a seminar of this software product called LabVIEW, sat in the back, I happened to have known and learned LabVIEW.
00:01:55
Speaker
And the guy up front was presenting and and I was just answering questions. I was just in the back, just being vocal for some reason. At the time I was kind of quiet. So it was sort of outside of my typical domain.
00:02:08
Speaker
Afterwards, he called me down and I thought, oh crap, I'm in trouble. Called me down and he said, hey, listen, we're looking for somebody in this area to be a sales salesperson. Would you be interested? And I thought to himself, what are you talking about? i'm ah I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm a degreed engineer. What am I doing in sales? He goes, meet me at O'Malley's at seven.
00:02:27
Speaker
So I met him at O'Malley's at seven o'clock. We had dinner and he opened up the keys to the kingdom and he showed me this new world that I didn't even know existed.
00:02:39
Speaker
And that for me was the beginning of an entire career in sales marketing and eventually would lead me to be running companies. And it's been a one hell of a ride that ah in one way was my butterfly effect that has really propagated to this career. And so I mentioned this because there's there's a beauty to this career. There is science and there's art to sales.
00:03:06
Speaker
You can be a very excellent salesperson, classically trained and all that, or you can just come off the street, have street smarts with no training whatsoever, and you guys can both be equally as successful.
00:03:20
Speaker
There's a lot of elements of logic, but there's a lot of emotion wrapped in the sales. A lot of emotion. I'm not going to talk about the emotional side. I'm not talking about the nuts and bolts today, although I will mention towards the end of the podcast a ah framework that I developed over my two decades being in sales.
00:03:35
Speaker
But for right now, I'm going to talk about there's three things that are really involved with the sales process. And before I go there, let's talk about what does it take to grow your business?
Customer Understanding and Trends
00:03:49
Speaker
You grow your business by selling more of what people want to buy. How do you know what people want to buy? You follow, understand, and use trends. So that statement is something we developed at Spark Partners a while ago. i still use it it. was part of the process that Adam and I kind of put in place.
00:04:09
Speaker
And I was more on the sales side, so I've always sort of gravitated toward towards that. Gets me super excited as well, by the way, if you can't tell. And so the idea is that you really, step one, is you need to fully, deeply understand your customers. What is it that they need?
00:04:28
Speaker
What is the underserved, unmet need? What problem are you solving? This is the truth discovery process and is oftentimes has some elements of marketing and product production.
00:04:41
Speaker
development in in the mix as well. You want to understand what's happening really front end. And you do so by understanding not only their immediate needs, but where are their needs going to change? This is where trends come into play. And I'm not talking about fashion trends. I'm talking about big, giant megatrends like AI, the economy, the environment, demographics. There's tons of these at play that that ah that if you really understand them, will take your career to a different level.
00:05:12
Speaker
Now I can do a a lot of conversations and talk around trends, and we'll likely have a webinar here in the future regarding this, so stay tuned. But for right now, just understand that there is is some amount of looking forward in the future when it comes to trends, and it's not nothing that you should be afraid of.
00:05:31
Speaker
It actually has a lot of power in it, because if you can get in front of these trends, and skate where the puck is going to be Then you'll make that sale and you'll be riding the crest of the wave rather than on the backside.
00:05:45
Speaker
This is what you want. Of course, yeah like like anything else, the market's ever shifting, things are always changing and you need to stay abreast of these things. Different conversation for different podcasts.
00:05:57
Speaker
For today, think about step one is truly deeply understanding your customer. Step two is to create and communicate your value.
00:06:08
Speaker
This is a good time to talk about value and value delivery. Two different aspects. Oftentimes they're really thought of almost like the same.
00:06:19
Speaker
So there's lots of definitions of value. One that I'll say right now is there is an exchange of services and goods such that the customer it sees a perceived or an actual change in their condition.
00:06:36
Speaker
So they are actually able to enjoy life better, work faster, X, Y, Z. So you can think about, there's a hundred different ways to define define value.
00:06:47
Speaker
Value is not what you're selling. Value is not the widget. Value isn't necessarily the widget, although it can be in very rare occasions. But value delivery, that's the widget. That's how you actually take the widget and give it to the customer.
00:07:01
Speaker
Let me give you an example that's a classic example that I've used for a long time.
Case Study: Netflix's Evolution
00:07:05
Speaker
You think about Netflix. Netflix started off early on with the value of we deliver entertainment.
00:07:14
Speaker
Early on, their value delivery was they delivered DVDs in the mail. You'd go to this archaic website, you'd pick what you want, and then four or five days later, DVDs showed up in the mail. You took them, you watched them, you could lose them for a month, nobody cared. And then when you're done, you put them back in this prepaid envelope, you send them back. That was their initial value delivery.
00:07:38
Speaker
Time went on They closed down some of their warehouses. They invested instead in this concept of streaming. It was kind of unheard of early on.
00:07:49
Speaker
And they started streaming movies on the internet, online. Value, we deliver entertainment. Value delivery, we do so through streaming.
00:08:02
Speaker
Time evolved even more so as the market shifted because other people began also streaming. So they had to stay in front of the curve on that crest of that wave. They then created and became the largest movie studio in the world.
00:08:19
Speaker
I believe that there they still actually are. Value, we deliver entertainment. value deliver dirt Value delivery, we do so through our awesome movie studio.
00:08:31
Speaker
We do custom content. And so they're evolving with the market conditions, but their value remains the same. When you think about value by delivery, think about Netflix.
00:08:46
Speaker
There's lots of other examples. There's also examples of ones that missed the mark where their value didn't stay abreast of the market, where they didn't follow trends, where they actually decided to defend and extend.
00:09:00
Speaker
My former partners, Adam Hartung wrote a brilliant book where it talks about the idea of extend and defend basically your value.
00:09:11
Speaker
And so Sears, Toys R Us, Kodak, Kmart, I can go on and on and on. There's a whole cemetery full ah of dead or almost dying companies because they didn't follow trends. They didn't understand what was happening in the world. And
Simplifying the Sales Process
00:09:28
Speaker
essentially the market shifted were when they did not.
00:09:32
Speaker
So step one, understand the customer. Step two, create and communicate the value. By the way, communicate, that's the marketing people, which um is an integral part of the whole framework. Branding, I mean, I can go on and on, but this is a simplistic example.
00:09:47
Speaker
And then the last part is ask for the decision, which I'm lumping into the actual sales process of quoting and showing up with the customer, asking questions, but you gotta ask the question. You've gotta have the moment where you say, here I've produced for you our value. Here it is. This is how we're gonna deliver it to you Here's our value delivery. Now I need you to commit and say you're going to buy.
00:10:17
Speaker
And believe it or not, a lot of people in sales and those even that are not in sales have a hard time with that particular statement of asking for the sale. Asking for the sale for me has become second nature.
00:10:30
Speaker
And I realize that sales is a numbers game. And I'm not talking about um necessarily how much money you bring in the door, although that's a part of it.
00:10:41
Speaker
I'm talking about your funnel. If I am working with somebody who is a prospect and I begin to uncover, we begin to uncover over time that it is not necessarily a good fit.
00:10:57
Speaker
I will be the first to say, i understand that this is not a good time based on your, what I've learned about your situation. Why don't we re revisit this in six months and I'll come back. Make a quick note on my phone, done.
00:11:11
Speaker
Numbers, execution, you gotta come in, bring people in through the door, find out if they're they're what they need, their their under-met, unmet need is something you can actually deal with. And if so, you deal with it, and if not, then you walk away.
00:11:27
Speaker
Oftentimes I see people struggling with that piece. People also struggle with the second part I talked about with creating and communicating your value. Sometimes you have seconds to communicate your value.
00:11:39
Speaker
You're at a trade show or you're at an expo or whatever. You're at some street fair and you got people walking down the road and you see that they are thirsty and you've got this new delicious drink of some sort.
00:11:53
Speaker
You have a split second to identify values something that they're struggling with, maybe they're thirsty, and you've got a quick second to come in and swoop in and deliver your value statement,
00:12:07
Speaker
The problem is that people are so used to getting bombarded with information that you've got to break through and you have to find ways to do so. There are so many things that I could talk about at this moment regarding this. Matter of fact, a webinar we'll be having in the future will will really go deep into the sales aspect. It's something that I'm very passionate about because I see this as a bit of a pioneering effort in a lot of people that are not salespeople.
00:12:36
Speaker
um i'm I'd like to do kind of two halves of this webinar. One is for salespeople and one is for not salespeople. And let me actually rewind a bit to when you were born. Because guess what?
00:12:50
Speaker
You were born a salesman or saleswoman. Why do I say that?
Natural Salesmanship
00:12:55
Speaker
Because upon birth, you closed your first sale. You went out and you began crying.
00:13:02
Speaker
and your mother or whomever provided you with sustenance to the effect that you're now a grown adult and here you are. This is something that Zig Ziglar talked about. Very old school, former Baptist preacher guy who became a sales mega star and do just search for Zig Ziglar.
00:13:21
Speaker
Has lots of really cool things to share. And one of those is the idea that when you sell something to someone that really needs it, it's more about a satiation of not only their needs, but yours, because you get pumped up when you sell something that somebody actually needs.
00:13:44
Speaker
It's a beautiful thing. I'll use this example. It's kind of a woke example. That is one of the reasons why there's a negative kind of connotation to sales is the idea of, oh Bob can sell ice ice to an Eskimo.
00:13:56
Speaker
Well, the idea is that Bob is so good that he can sell something to somebody who doesn't really need it. That's not good salesmanship. You sell ice to the Saudis. because they have the money and they need it.
00:14:09
Speaker
They want that indoor skiing thing, you sell them the ice. So that's really the understanding of what sales is all about. i love sales. I think that there's a lot to it and there's aspects of all elements of life. There is a lot of psychology involved. There's ah personal relationships involved. There's negotiation skills. There's ethical influence. There's lots of aspects And um I can't wait to do this this webinar because it's going to be ah really a deep understanding of a lot of my experience, but I'm going to bring in some other folks that have maybe a different angle to bring to the conversation.
Introduction to Profectory and Its Philosophy
00:14:50
Speaker
So I have this, you know, Prefectory is the name of the company. Prefectory is drawn from um a Latin word mean perfectus, which means to depart, to succeed, almost like a journey.
00:15:07
Speaker
And so as I began to coalesce some of my 20 years of sales, leadership and and rank and file and all aspects of sales, I began to really put together a an understanding of these
Profectory Sales System Overview
00:15:23
Speaker
elements of sales.
00:15:25
Speaker
And I was able to map it to the word profect because profect in profectory is a very similar thing where it's it's a journey. And so the first thing you do in that profect system is you prepare.
00:15:37
Speaker
So in that preparation part, there's not only the idea of you preparing your materials, but understanding who that customer is. What is that pre-qualification that makes you the ideal person to come in and solve their problems?
00:15:52
Speaker
if it If it looks like it's not gonna work at that early stage, don't waste your time, go somewhere else. And that first piece is oftentimes just kind of pushed aside because we want to get to the exciting stuff of quote selling, but it doesn't make sense to burn your your time, your energy, your resources on someone who's not ready to buy.
00:16:12
Speaker
Number two is reveal. This is where you understand what really is broken. You go deep. So now you've actually walked through the door of the customer. You begin to understand that control discovery to see what is it that's really broken.
00:16:27
Speaker
You need to reveal to yourself, to them as well, what the problem is. This can be done immediately. This can be done over several sessions. Ultimately, it's something that that is second nature to some of us that have been in the in the industry for a while. You early on need to identify what that thing is. And sometimes it becomes an aspect of putting it out there.
00:16:52
Speaker
Is this what you need? And they say, not really. Then you can spend the time to go through and understand what that actually is So the next step is to orient.
00:17:03
Speaker
This is where you wanna understand who are they becoming? Because believe it or not, sales is very much about identity. I've talked about that a lot. Identity is so crucial.
00:17:15
Speaker
And so you need to look at who they are as a human being and see where they are going towards becoming. So they are a middle manager. They want to get a promotion because they want a bigger house, because their their wife has another baby on the way, whatever. These are all aspects that are part of the idea of orient them orienting them to a position where they are going to become, and you're there to support that.
00:17:45
Speaker
That's that missing piece. Where they're gonna go is great, but how are you gonna help them to get there? The next one is to frame. This is where you step in and say, why me? You're gonna frame it up.
00:17:57
Speaker
You're gonna basically create the environment so your product or service is the inevitable solution to their problems. You come in and you lay things out and it's just the let the next logical step.
00:18:13
Speaker
Now, brand equity is a term that's used where you kind of come in with a lot of that already, but you can come come in with no brand equity whatsoever. You can come in from the street.
00:18:25
Speaker
It'll be more difficult. There's an old saying, if nobody ever got fired for buying Big Blue, which was IBM. We have a very exciting guest coming next week that will kind of put some interesting spin on that.
00:18:39
Speaker
More about that later. And so the next one is evolve. Within the evolution step, this is where you resolve any resistance. This is where you take your value and their needs and you begin to massage it. This is where you begin to negotiate without concession.
00:18:59
Speaker
There is lots of negotiation people that i study. And Chris Voss is a wonderful, very brilliant man who I think you should definitely look into if you haven't already. has a great book called Never Split the Difference, has the Black Swan Group. A lot of powerful aspects to what he does are really shown crystal clear in sales.
00:19:21
Speaker
There's another guy, Chase Hughes, which who also has lots of information. You can go down this entire rabbit hole like I do all the time and just collect information and do a lot of research. So after the evolution, you want to get to that commit stage.
00:19:36
Speaker
Decide. Guide the buyer to make that confident decision. You want to really close as leadership, as partnership, not as pressure.
00:19:49
Speaker
When you asking someone to commit under pressure, it will leave a, and almost like a marker but sort of beneath the surface that will linger and will never or very be, it'd be very difficult to get out of the way of,
00:20:08
Speaker
Let me give you an example. I once worked alongside ah guy who was um a a great sales guy, seemingly from what everybody said.
00:20:21
Speaker
He was loud. He was gregarious. He would take people out on these fancy dinners. He had the fancy car, all these things. And what really became evident to me early on in my sales career is that the guy was all show.
00:20:35
Speaker
And what really got me to Think about it as the direction I did not want to take was this idea of pressure.
00:20:46
Speaker
He would get the person to the point where I mean, it was almost like a, in the moment, you know, s sleeves rolled up, sweating, you got to make a decision now.
00:20:58
Speaker
These kinds of situations where you go to like a car dealership and they're pressing at the very last minute. Let me go talk to my manager. There's all these tactics that are used that have been used for decades. But what I really, um um'm I'm sharing with you now is that those tactics will get you or may get you that immediate win, but they won't get you the long-term customer.
00:21:19
Speaker
I have bought many cars in my day. I cannot remember one salesperson. I never went back to the same salesperson to buy another car. And why not?
00:21:30
Speaker
Because that high pressure salesperson just got to me and in the wrong way.
Building Customer Loyalty
00:21:37
Speaker
I do have salespeople, however, and I am loyal, if someone is able to fully understand what my needs are, take the time to really look at where am I going and in my career or whatever it is, and then basically sell me only what I need.
00:21:55
Speaker
Maybe if um' if I see there's a growth path, maybe they'll they'll take it that next step or two. That's it. Then when I need it, something else the next time, I'm going right back to that salesperson.
00:22:08
Speaker
a lot of power in that. And then the last part of the ProEffect sales system is transition. Transition is where you locked lock the trust and you convert that sale into a post-sale conversation. This is where the partnership comes in. This is where the check-in comes in after six weeks or six months or six years. And this is where the idea is, how are things going with what I sold you Is there something else I can help you with? Hope you're doing well. And so there's a lot of this this idea that chit chat is bad or people don't like to do that, talk about the weather and all that.
00:22:44
Speaker
All you're doing is is lowering the bridge. That's all you're doing. You don't have to talk about the weather if you don't want to. There's other ways to to lower the bridge. One of those is to be vulnerable yourself and to show up as yourself.
00:22:57
Speaker
and and say, listen, this is what I've got going on and how are things with you? So you're just building rapport because that smooths things out. We want to buy things from people we like. I just mentioned that a second ago.
00:23:08
Speaker
If you have a rigid conversation with somebody and it becomes very transactional, then you might make the sale, but you're not going to win that lifelong customer. So to wrap
Sales: A Blend of Disciplines
00:23:19
Speaker
up the the podcast here, lots of elements of sales, lots of psychology, lots of of art form elements, lot of logical elements as well.
00:23:31
Speaker
And it's something that there's so much beauty in sales that if you're a new salesperson or if you're early in your career, you're you're getting that idea of how how wonderful it can be. I've had mega deals close. I had a flight of Germany to close this massive deal.
00:23:48
Speaker
And it was a six it was a six-month process. And you know it was just, it was an eight figure process and it was like, boom. So those are just amazing. And there's other times when you work on something so so hard and your your team is engaged and all this.
00:24:05
Speaker
And at the last minute, it gets canceled. I've had so many of those that when I have even anything remotely close, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't mean that I'm not a a feeling person. It just means that realize that it's a misalignment in what I was able to provide and what they needed.
00:24:27
Speaker
And if you think about the idea of budget, which is always the conversation of, do they have budget? If so, what is it? Is a line for what we are providing?
00:24:38
Speaker
All those things. Budget is
Aligning Value with Trends
00:24:40
Speaker
also an element of solving their pain. If their pain is large enough, big enough, and painful enough, the budget will be there.
00:24:50
Speaker
So if it doesn't work out and it goes to a competitor who is less less expensive than you, then that means that their pain wasn't big enough. And so as you start to evolve your own career in sales, and even for those that are not in sales, think about how to take the value that you're providing and really make sure that it is not only explained in a way that they understand, but also aligned with emerging trends.
00:25:21
Speaker
Once you understand that, your company, your career, and even your internal identity will be forever changed.
00:25:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Cheers.