[Direct Response Series] How To Build a High-Performing Sales Team With Nick Loise

Nick Loise is the Founder and Chief Sales Officer of Sales Performance Team, a company dedicated to helping small and midsize businesses enhance their sales leadership, processes, and systems. With a background as a salesperson, sales leader, entrepreneur, marketing executive, and President’s Club winner, he brings a wealth of experience to his clients. Nick has authored and co-authored several books on sales and marketing, including Moving the Sales Needle in Your Business and The Ultimate Guide to Managing Your Sales Team. He is also a sought-after speaker who has shared the stage with industry leaders such as Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson, and Barbara Corcoran.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [05:41] Nick Loise discusses the mission of Sales Performance Team and their focus on sales systems and playbooks
• [07:37] Why the cost of lost sales is the most expensive problem for businesses
• [09:10] Common sales process constraints that slow down sales pipelines
• [13:38] Key bottlenecks in sales and how to relieve constraints for faster deal flow
• [16:20] Nick’s favorite CRM and automation tools to streamline sales processes
• [19:39] Common mistakes salespeople make during calls, including poor active listening
• [22:54] Recommended resources and books to improve active listening in sales
• [24:19] How to structure visual sales playbooks and flowcharts to guide sales calls
• [28:53] Diagnosing why high deal flow doesn’t lead to closed sales
• [30:55] The difference between selling and closing and why closing is for the customer’s benefit
• [35:07] Mistakes companies make when recruiting salespeople and how to eliminate hiring bias

In this episode…

Many businesses struggle with low sales conversion rates despite having a steady stream of leads. Sales teams often lack structured processes, fail to properly follow up, and lose opportunities due to ineffective recruiting and inadequate onboarding. How can companies create scalable sales systems, hire the right people, and consistently close deals?

Nick Loise, an expert in building high-performing sales teams and developing sales systems, provides actionable strategies to overcome these challenges. He emphasizes the importance of building proven, repeatable sales processes rather than relying on individual salesperson styles. He highlights key tools like CRMs, follow-up automation, and AI-driven pipeline analysis to streamline operations. Nick also stresses that active listening is a critical, often overlooked skill in sales, and he recommends using flowcharts instead of rigid scripts to guide sales calls. He shares proven methods for recruiting top sales talent using direct response techniques and detailed screening processes to avoid costly hiring mistakes.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Nick Loise, Founder of Sales Performance Team, about building effective sales teams and systems. Nick shares insights on sales process design, sales team recruiting, and using technology to improve pipeline management. He also discusses active listening, overcoming constraints in the sales cycle, and the differences between selling and closing.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Nick Loise on LinkedIn
• Sales Performance Team

Special Mention(s):

• The Ultimate Guide To Managing Your Sales Team by Nicholas Loise
• Moving the Sales Needle for Your Business by Nicholas Loise
• The Goal: 40th Anniversary Edition: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Mark Goulston
• The Lost Art of Listening, Second Edition: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships by Michael P. Nichols
• Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days by Joey Coleman
• Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention by Joey Coleman

Related episode(s):

• “[Direct Response Series] Lessons and Reflections from Three Top Direct Response Marketers with Brian Kurtz, Richard Armstrong, and John Carlton” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Direct Response Series] Mastering the Art of Webinars With Jason Fladlien of Rapid Crush” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Direct Response Series] No Furniture, No Bed, No Nothing with Caleb O’Dowd of MultiChannelMarketing” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Chicago Business Series] The ROI of Core Values With Zach Wilcox, CEO of Fide Freight” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Author Series] Heartfelt Leadership: Same Methods Used to Train FBI Hostage Negotiators -with Dr. Mark Goulston” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments: 

• “I think the number-one cost to any business really is the cost of lost sales.”
• “A process and system will beat a person any day of the week.”
• “Most people stop at just getting the lead. Well, that’s the easy part, right?”
• “Active listening is a skill that is not adhered to and it’s not taught anymore.”
• “If you think you need a charismatic salesperson, you’ve got hopium, right? ‘I’m hoping that’s true’.”

Action Steps:

1. Create a proven, repeatable sales process: Establishing a standardized sales process removes inconsistency and helps sales teams achieve predictable results.
2. Actively train and reinforce listening skills: Active listening is critical to understanding customer needs and closing sales, making it essential for success.
3. Use visual sales playbooks and flowcharts: Visual tools help salespeople stay focused and ensure they don’t skip crucial steps during calls.
4. Recruit salespeople with targeted direct response ads: Crafting ads that attract the right candidates and repel the wrong ones improves hiring outcomes.
5. Leverage CRM and automation to optimize follow-ups: Using CRM tools and automated sequences ensures consistent, timely follow-up, which is often where sales are lost.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Nick Loise of Sales Performance Team. You can check him out.

Salesperformanceteam.com. Nick, before I formally introduce you, I would like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. When I think of Nick, I think of top direct response. I mean, I know that you specialize in sales, but it’s, you know, very direct response oriented. And so some of my favorite interviews in that direct response series is Brian Kurtz, who I know, you know, I think he sent billions of direct, direct pieces.

Direct mail pieces out. I did an actually an interview with Brian Kurtz, Richard Armstrong and John Carlton all in one. And wow, about trifecta. Just reflections of of, you know, direct response. I had Jason Flatland on talking about mastering the art of webinars.

That was a good one. And then Caleb O’Dowd on there’s several disciples of Gary Halbert that I have had on, and he’s one of those. And he talked about having no furniture, no bed and nothing when he started. And he was just learning. And he’s like a prowess when it comes to direct response.

So check that one out. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that?

We do it in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution and production. And number two, we’re also an easy button for our companies gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, prospects and even people your staff from a culture perspective.

Very easy and affordable. So you just give us the list of the people we do. Everything else we kind of call ourselves magic elves that run in the background to make it stress free, so that companies can build amazing relationships and most importantly, focus on running their business. You know, for me, Nick and I have known each other for a while. The number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways on how I can give to my best relationships.

And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people I admire on my podcast and send them sweet treats in the mail. So go to rise25.com or email us at. [email protected]. I am excited to introduce Nick Loise. He’s the founder of Sales Performance Team.

Really his mission, his mission all along has been helping businesses improve their marketing and sales processes, and he does that through systems and playbooks, which will kind of go through. And he’s also is an author and the creator of educational course Sales Mastery How to create a High Impact Sales Team, no BS Guide to Direct Response, Marketing and Sales needle and ghostwriter to Magnetic marketing. He’s also spoken on stages with people like Dan Kennedy. A lot of times, Nick, when you think of people who started even the top people in direct response and copy, a lot of paths lead back to Dan Kennedy. He’s also spoken with Russell Brunson on stage with Joe Polish, Barbara Corcoran and many, many more.

And I’m excited to chat. Nick, thanks for coming on.

Nick Loise: 03:41

Well, I’m crazy excited to be here. So I mean, if I think of Jeremy and Weiss, I think you guys are kind of the OG in the podcast, the business development podcast business, we talk about the OGs of direct response, right, which is Gary Halbert, certainly Brian Kurtz And, you know, Dan Kennedy, who we were both acolytes of. But I really think that you guys and, you know, just your maniacal focus on building relationships and adding to relationships is something that I continue to learn from. So every time you’re in a room, I try to get there. Every time you extend an invitation, I try to get there and move heaven and earth for that.

So the work that you and the team does at Rise25 is great. You know, every now and then I get a nice box from you guys. So that’s kind of fun. I try to unpack it on a video if I remember, and put that on YouTube so people could see what that looks like. And so you definitely do what you preach and, you know, really are a great testament to the entrepreneurs.

And it’s all kinds of entrepreneurs. Right? So it’s not just the information marketing entrepreneurs, but it’s professional services. And you’ve connected me to folks that are in the transportation business. And I forget his name, but he’s a great guy.

You could probably remind me of Zach Wilcox. Yeah, yeah. Zach. Great. Great. You know, great entrepreneur.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:55

Yeah, he was on the podcast. That was a good episode.

Nick Loise: 04:57

Yeah. Took his family business to the next level. You’re very active in, you know, so, you know, it’s like I’m a little bit of a fanboy, right? Obviously. Because I know a lot of your background and you’re a good dad and a fellow Chicagoan and a great foodie.

So, you know, what more can you ask for just to hang out?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:14

Well, the feeling’s mutual and sales is a big topic everyone wants to know about. You know, mistakes are making and recruiting and hiring. Also the, you know, the process. How do they, you know if they’re getting deal flow is not closing and those types of things. So we’ll dig into all these.

But I’d love for you to just start off with sales performance team and what you do. And as you’re doing that, I’m going to pull up the site for people. Sure.

Nick Loise: 05:41

So sales performance actually was a brainchild while I was at a company named GCC or Magnetic Marketing. And where in that we talked a little bit about that. We were able to kind of help entrepreneurs grow their lead generation. So really put marketing systems in place and marketing strategies in place. But the one thing that they all kind of got troubled with, or maybe faltered, was in hiring salespeople, in getting the salespeople that they had to produce more or produce anything at all.

And they all kind of had their hearts broken. And so when we kind of peeled back the envelope, we created this IP, which is let’s really streamline how things get sold. Let’s codify it in a sales playbook. Let’s really move through what a high performing sales team look like? What does a high performing sales process look like?

But then let’s also take it to the hiring side and take a look at how what is a, you know, how do you really use direct response marketing, which is what we do in hiring salespeople. So you’re attracting those that fit your avatar, right? And you’re repelling those that don’t fit your avatar. And we take all that over for companies. We could take some of that over for companies.

Or we could, you know, just kind of guide them and strategically align them with what they need to do. As you can see from the website, which you’re kind enough to bring up, it’s, you know, the number, I believe the number one cost to any business really is the cost of lost sales, right. So it’s it’s opportunity cost loss. It’s everything that you’ve lost along the way because of the fact that you’re not closing deals or deals are languishing in your pipeline.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:28

So yeah, it’s actually funny we’re seeing Joe on here. I’ve met.

Nick Loise: 07:32

Yeah. Joe’s a good guy. I love Joe.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:34

He’s got an interesting business.

Nick Loise: 07:37

I love his business and I love Joe. And I think you are. You’re in, you know, with him and, you know, and he’s just a crazy, smart guy. Really cares about the customer, really cares, you know, kind of changed that business by just being a good guy and focusing on the customer, right? If you think about the junk removal business, for those that don’t know Joe, but everybody should know Joe and Junk Relief is his company.

And, you know, he kind of grew up on the truck, right? Because his uncle had a junk removal business, and he realized there were old and curmudgeonly and rude to people and didn’t show up on time. And, you know, and so he kind of just grew the company by doing what he said he was going to do by treating his people. Give you five, five star, you know, concierge services, a junk removal. His guys are great.

You know, his team’s phenomenal. And Joe’s a great entrepreneur. So he’s a good man, good family man. So he’s a great guy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:32

Let’s talk about the sales process for a second. And you know, really I’ve heard you talk about this. You know, we’re talking about like what’s the sales playbook. And you go in and you look at constraints okay. One of my favorite books is the goal.

Love it, love it. And you go in and do this for the sales process. So I’d love to hear what are the most common constraints you see in the sales process. And you talk about this where once you kind of relieve that constraint, there’s going to be another constraint. But obviously sales flow faster, better through the process.

Nick Loise: 09:10

Yeah. So I think you hit a spark on so that’s our magic you know, is really kind of taking from an outside third party perspective with a lot of depth of looking at a lot of different businesses, a lot of different sales processes and systems. And we like to say we’re like bumblebees, right? We’re kind of in all these different SIC codes and all these different industries, and we take what’s best from all these and bring them to our clients or people that we’re doing engagements with. And really, most sales organizations kind of ad hoc let sales happen.

And I don’t mean that as pointing a finger, because when I got one going out, I got four going back at me. But what happens is their best intentions of hiring a salesperson. And then what do they do? They put them next to Nick and Jeremy’s. It’s his first day.

And they say, you know, here’s the bathroom, here’s where you get coffee and here’s the CRM, and Jeremy’s going to teach you. Nick and Jeremy’s got one way of selling, and it may not be the right way, but it works for Jeremy at the time. And then Nick kind of listens and he says, well, some of that works for me, and some of that doesn’t work for me. So I’m going to put my own spin on it. And so what we say is let’s not do that right.

Let’s bring a systematic approach to selling. So that way as you open a call, it’s consistent as you move persons to the discovery or fact finding sessions or asking the appropriate questions, you’re going to ask the right questions to people along the way. And then when you’re ready to kind of move them to the objection stage, you want to pre handle those objections because we know what those are. So we kind of build them into the sales process and presentation and then move them to close or move them to the next stage, right? Whatever that next stage is.

We also realize that, you know, selling and closing is really two different things, right? So we got to teach people to be closers because a lot of people really aren’t closers, right? If you think about the average turnover salespersons, it’s 35%, right? That’s huge for any organizations. The burden that that puts on any organization is tremendous.

And I think if you look at it, I think over 65% of the people that are in sales don’t have the skill set to be in sales. So we got a lot of problems on that end, right? So we’re going to talk a little bit about that too. But the first thing we do is kind of create a proven and repeatable sales process. Right?

I’m a huge goal fan. I love that book. Another book that was seminal to me when I was in graduate school and kind of brought it through into my every organization that I work with is, is, is the systems and process that Ian Deming. Right. Doctor Deming kind of said everything has to be a systems and a process will beat a person any day of the week.

And so if you think that you need a charismatic sales person, that’s just going to come in and move the sales needle for your organization, well, you’re probably, you know, you got hopium, right? I’m hoping that that’s going to happen. One is they’re very expensive. Two is a lot of times when you’re interviewing them, they say all the right things, but they never produce. And so what we say is let’s just put a process and system in place, much like Moneyball.

Just get on base, right, if you will. And you could put B players in the system and process. You could put C players in the systems and process, but they’ll produce, right. They’ll get on base for you. They’ll produce sales results at a much less expensive cost, probably to the organization, but also on a proven and repeatable rinse and repeat process.

So that’s the first thing we do. And then we bring the same thing kind of to the sales recruiting side of the business. Because you got to have the people. Right. Because most business owners grew their business by selling, but they have bigger things to do now.

They have other things to do, strategic things to do, operational things to do, human resource things to do. And so we got to have a sales team that is producing the revenue to help the company grow. Third thing is some of the older, more established entrepreneurs and business owners that we work with are thinking about how do I exit this right? And how do I exit for the maximum value? Enterprise value price?

Well, you got to have systems and processes because nobody’s going to buy your business to become a sales person, right? They’re going to buy the business to grow the business, or maybe attach it to their business or look to add on to other businesses. So you got to make sure you have systems and processes. And that all starts with the sales side. So that’s a long answer to a short question.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:30

No. Yeah. Talk about when you go in I know you look under the hood and you’re looking at the sales process. What are some common constraints you see in the process?

Nick Loise: 13:38

Well first is top of the funnel right. So what is the lead generation look like or what are they focusing on the ICP right. The ideal customer profile. We’ll get into direct mail jargon, so I’ll try to define it every time I do that. And do they have a really clear talk tracks for each of their ISPs.

Right. And not all ISPs are created the same. Right. So I think companies don’t spend enough time thinking about that. So that’s the number one constraint.

So what is the top of the funnel look like. And am I putting the right people in the top of the funnel. Then along the way the second constraint will be that maybe you’ve got salespeople that are maximum that are maxed out, i.e. they’re working too many leads or too many opportunities. I want to shorten that and compress that and have them go deeper and build really, really good relationships along that. If they’re selling into B2B environment or B2C environment.

So you want to kind of compress that. So they could really spend the time to do the proper follow up, because follow up is the magic sauce in any business. And then the third thing is what is the skill set of the organization? Do they have the skills? Do we have to up level their skills?

And the fourth thing we’re going to look at is their technology, right. So what is their technology playbook. Right. Their toolkit. How do we use that to maximize that?

Are they even using the CRM? How do we maximize the CRM? How do we put more processes and systems in place to get that to where it needs to go? Right. And then the fourth thing is really looking at, are we using our time as an organization in our meetings to help move the sales needle?

Right. So are we up leveling all of their skills at the same time? Are we looking for what’s the common denominator of why we don’t win sales, and how can we work on that? So those are like the 4 or 5 things that we look really quick under the hood. We like to start out and do a really intense audit.

Right. So kind of look at here’s the best practices that we see and we continue to grow on the best practices. What worked. You know it’s the tale of two cities. What worked last year doesn’t work this year.

And selling right. So we kind of look at that and say, where are you at vis a vis the best As practices. And then now from there, we’ve got a top ten list. Right. We’ve got a playbook that we could start working through and fixing the problems.

Or if they don’t want to engage us, at least they have a really good roadmap.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:57

I’m going to dig in on one of those. There’s so much I could dig into there, but people always are interested in the technology. For some reason. It’s always like, well, what are you using? Even though, you know, like really it’s all about the other things.

But I’m curious of your favorite tools. I mean, there’s a lot out there with CRMs and follow ups and what do you what are some of your favorites out there from a tech?

Nick Loise: 16:20

Well, I mean, if so, the first thing we’re going to do with any organization is make sure they have a CRM and sometimes they don’t, right? Sometimes they don’t have that. So we’re going to really quick and easy to use is Pipedrive. If they don’t have that right. Create Pipedrive for people.

It does really, really good analytics. So to me it’s an easy tool to use. It’s visual. Salespeople could use it even if they’re not technically orientated. That’s the first thing we’re going to use.

Second thing we’re going to use is some if if they don’t have a marketing automation system so that we can make sure that the follow up sequences are going out no matter what, we’re going to implement that, whether that’s at go high level, whether that’s an active campaign or whether we’re just simply using the activation through Pipedrive. Right. So we you know, I don’t go again, I want processes, I don’t want people. Right. So we really want to follow up.

And if you even quote the gentleman we started talking about, which is Dan, right. You know, most people stop at just getting the lead. Well that’s the easy part, right? So we got to make sure that there’s a process system through there. If it’s a very in-depth sales team that’s already kind of in place and they’ve got deals in the pipeline, we’ve got some technology that’s that’s that we’ve white labeled that we use to kind of look at the emails and the calendar to see if we could actually think that these are deals that are real or are they fiction.

Right. And so we could say, you’ve got 20 deals in your pipeline. If we look and analyze the analytics of what’s going on with the deals from this AI, we could tell that you haven’t had a conversation with this person for six months. So the deal is dead, right? Let’s just get it out.

So that’s a fun one to use. And that’s really something we use on the front end just so we can get the pipeline cleaned out. And then the final one is I think it really you know, we use Claude, we’ve got Nick bots. We try to write bots for, for writing. Right.

So we’re writing in the voice of the organization. But, you know, even the Claude and the ChatGPT are phenomenal to use, and I use them every day. We’re in those every day at various levels. And then the fourth thing that we use is a couple different systems for coaching, right. So upload your sales call.

Let’s analyze the sales call. In the old days we used to have to have these run in the background while we’re doing other work. Now the AI does it for us. So it allows us to have a really good coaching conversation, especially with brand new reps or younger reps.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:47

You know, I’d love to hear mistakes. Common mistakes you see when you are analyzing and listening to a sales call. But I do want to point out thanks for sharing some of those. Like so I did. People can check out the interviews.

I did an interview though. One of the founders of Pipedrive Go High Level Active campaign on the podcast. You can check those out. And yeah, we at some point have used all of those at some point in time.

Nick Loise: 19:14

Right. You and everybody else. Right.

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