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Sell Like a Professional or Perish with Michael Muhlfelder | Coach2Scale Episode #93
Manage episode 483874849 series 3497505
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Matt Benelli sits down with sales veteran and Calm Ocean Sales founder Mike Muhlfelder for a no-BS conversation every CRO and sales leader needs to hear. With three decades of experience at companies like Oracle, IBM, and Jitterbit, Mike shares his unfiltered perspective on what’s gone wrong in modern B2B sales from bloated pipelines and broken qualification processes to tech stacks that mask, rather than solve, performance problems. If you’re relying on BANT and 4x pipeline math to hit your number, Mike says it’s time to wake up.
Listeners will learn why great reps don’t always make great leaders, how to use the “Four W’s” to qualify real opportunities, and why many teams are scaling mediocrity with automation. Mike also offers hard-won advice for CROs under boardroom pressure, and a stark reminder to protect your health and values as you chase performance. It’s part strategy, part therapy, and all signal, no noise.
Top Takeaways
1. Great salespeople don’t always make great sales leaders.
Mike challenges the myth that success as a rep naturally translates to leadership, emphasizing that leading a team requires a completely different skillset.
2. Stop promoting outsiders into sales leadership roles.
Bringing in non-sales professionals to run sales teams often fails because they lack the experiential knowledge and empathy to lead sellers effectively.
3. Sales is a profession and must be treated like one.
Like finance or engineering, sales requires continuous training, discipline, and a commitment to mastery, not just charisma or improvisation.
4. Outdated qualification methods like BANT hurt your deals.
BANT is adversarial and obsolete; it leads to mistrust and surface-level qualification instead of real discovery.
5. Use the ‘Four W’s’ to qualify deals more accurately.
Mike’s framework: What happened? Why now? Who owns the project? When do they need to be live? Creates human-centered, business-grounded qualification.
6. The pipeline problem is systemic, not just executional.
Teams rely on inflated pipelines and 4–5x coverage ratios because poor qualification and forecasting have become normalized.
7. Most sales tech stacks enable mediocrity at scale.
Without sound fundamentals, even the best tools just help teams do the wrong things faster.
8. Sales math still matters: maximize yield, minimize waste.
Effective revenue leaders think like manufacturers, optimizing the fewest inputs (leads) for the highest output (closed deals).
9. Salespeople must take ownership of their own development.
With unlimited learning resources available, Mike urges reps to stop waiting for enablement and start taking personal accountability.
10. CROs must prioritize clarity, courage, and communication.
From cleansing the pipeline to resetting board expectations, Mike says leadership means telling hard truths and doing the right thing even when it’s unpopular.
11. Burnout is real, and it’s not worth it.
He ends with a human message: no job is worth sacrificing your health, family, or identity, no matter how big the number.
93 episodes
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