Selling the Vision! A Product-to-Sales Journey with Seth Carpien

The Agile Within

What happens when a traditional salesperson collides with Agile principles?

Seth Carpian, Chief Growth Officer at Tricon InfoTech, takes us on his transformative journey from being the sales executive who promised anything to land a deal to becoming a trusted advisor who understands the realities of software development.
The turning point came when a delivery colleague essentially told Seth to stop overpromising to customers. Rather than getting defensive, Seth embraced the opportunity to learn, spending years understanding lean product journey mapping and Agile principles. This knowledge transformed his approach to sales, allowing him to have more intelligent conversations with CTOs and CIOs that built genuine trust rather than just securing short-term wins.
Seth shares powerful insights from his unique perspective of having worked in both sales and product leadership roles. The conversation tackles the thorny issue of technical debt head-on, with Seth explaining how "bubble gum and popsicle stick" solutions might temporarily satisfy a customer but ultimately breaks in multiple places when touched.
For sales professionals looking to adopt an Agile mindset, Seth references Patrick Lencioni's concept of the "ideal team player" who is hungry, humble, and smart. While hunger and emotional intelligence are common in successful salespeople, humility—the willingness to acknowledge what you don't know—is often the missing ingredient that prevents true Agile adoption.
Whether you're in sales, product development, or leadership, this episode offers crucial insights into creating healthier relationships between business development and delivery teams, ultimately leading to better outcomes for customers and more sustainable success for organizations.

Connect with Seth on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/sethcarpien
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Chapters

1. Welcome and Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Seth's Journey Into Agile Sales (00:03:21)

3. Learning to Stop Overpromising (00:07:31)

4. Customer Pressure and Hard Decisions (00:15:08)

5. Technical Debt and Compromise (00:22:53)

6. Building an Agile Sales Mindset (00:29:41)

7. Episode Wrap-up (00:35:05)