Sales Leadership & Management Show · 2026-01-02 · 14 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
37 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Most sales reps overestimate their abilities; a LinkedIn poll showed 54% self-rated as A-players despite under 10% actually being A-players in the market. This gap creates a leadership problem: B and C players who believe they're A-players won't take feedback or improve because they see failures as external (market, product, customer) rather than skill-related. The host applies Price's Law to sales - roughly the square root of your team generates half your revenue - emphasizing that sales is a performance profession, not a knowledge or manufacturing role. Delivery, listening, energy, and understanding matter as much as activity and knowledge. The solution involves facilitating a team conversation where reps collectively define A, B, and C execution across first calls, presentations, and demos, then reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. This approach hooks reps on improvement through self-awareness and the financial incentive of higher commission. The Dunning-Kruger effect compounds yearly, making intervention critical - without curiosity and growth orientation, reps shrink while thinking they improve.
Under 10% of salespeople are genuine A-players, yet 54% self-rate as A-players in self-assessments. This gap stems from the Dunning-Kruger effect: reps with moderate success (a good quarter or two) overestimate their ability and stop growing, mistaking partial competence for mastery.
When B or C players think they're A-players, they won't accept coaching or take responsibility for failures - they blame external factors like market, customer, or product instead. This prevents growth and makes leadership intervention nearly impossible without first shifting their self-perception.
Rather than mandating definitions, leaders should facilitate a team discussion asking reps to collectively define what makes an A first call, presentation, or demo versus B or C versions. This collaborative approach leverages peer learning and helps reps recognize their blind spots and develop more holistic selling skills.
Price's Law states that roughly half of output comes from the square root of the number of people on a team - meaning a team of 100 reps likely generates half its revenue from about 10 A-players, illustrating the concentration of high performance in sales.
Sales is a performance profession where delivery, tone, listening, and interpersonal execution matter as much as knowledge and activity. Like comedy, the same pitch delivered by 1,000 salespeople will only sing for fewer than 10; execution and human connection drive results, not just process or knowledge.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode presents the core insight about Dunning-Kruger effect in sales teams and the A/B/C player framework with decent depth, including Price's Law and practical implications. However, much of the content consists of repetition of the same core idea (self-assessment bias leading to complacency), throat-clearing about how complex sales is, and lengthy setup before delivering actionable advice. The actionable content - defining A/B/C characteristics collaboratively - arrives late and takes minimal airtime.
The Dunning Kruger effect states that people will overstate their level of ability after they've had certain amount of success. And guess what happens in sales? The people who have like a good year, maybe a good quarter, maybe two good years, and then they don't, they stop growing.
What do you think makes an A first call, an A first presentation, an A demo? What, what takes away from that that would make it a B? What takes away from that to make it a C?
The Dunning-Kruger effect application to sales is not novel - it's a well-circulated observation. The A/B/C player taxonomy and Price's Law are established frameworks. The comedy performance analogy is somewhat fresher but not deeply explored. The collaborative definition-building exercise is practical but not a new methodology in sales management literature.
The Dunning Kruger effect states that people will overstate their level of ability after they've had certain amount of success.
Price's law says, uh, half the revenue is generated by the square root of the number of reps.
This episode contains no guest interview despite the show's stated format of interviewing sales leaders. The entire content is a solo monologue from the host. The show description promises interviews with 'the very best of sales leaders' but delivers only the host's personal observations and experience, which eliminates this dimension entirely.
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Or welcome back. Hey, this is the show where we interview the very best of sales leaders
Hey, what a great guest. I really enjoy talking with other sales leaders
The episode includes some concrete data (54% self-assessed as A players, under 10% are actually A players, 8% called themselves C players) and references real training experiences on-site. However, most claims lack numbers: no specific examples of companies, reps, or revenue figures. The framework discussion (A/B/C definitions) remains largely abstract despite the suggestion to make it concrete with teams.
If you have a team of 10, you'd be lucky to have one a player. If you have a team of 100, you're lucky to have 10.
54% of the people thought they were an A player.
This is a solo monologue with no genuine conversation, guest questions, or dynamic exchange. There is no host asking a guest questions, no follow-ups, no pushback, and no disagreement to work through. The format is purely didactic lecturing, which eliminates any opportunity to demonstrate conversational skill or intellectual friction that would sharpen ideas.
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Or welcome back.
Hey, what a great guest. I really enjoy talking with other sales leaders, understanding their motives, their differentiators.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
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Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Or welcome back. Hey, this is the show where we interview the very best of sales leaders and understand first, why did they get into leadership? What's the distinction there between the motives of getting into sales leadership and uh, what differences have they found? And what is working today to get the very most out of their team and have it be fun along the way. Uh, before we get in, make sure you check us out over@b2b revenue.com where you can learn about all the stuff that we're covering as far as driving revenue in today's world. And at the very end, I'll sum it up. Let's get into the interview. So I did this interesting poll on LinkedIn the other day on my Brutal Truth uh, feed and I asked, how would you rate your, your selling skills? A player, B player, C player, other in the com comments. Now, it's self assessment. Use your own definition. Yes, you get all those people immediately go into the vocabulary. What's an A player? If you don't know, you don't know. Players a bad word. Okay, the point here is that it was a self assessment. Now, now what do you think the results would be? Uh, well, I had done this before. The results were almost identical because I did the Same poll about three or four months ago and it was 54% of the people thought they were an A player. And in the comments there was a lot of ones. A plus. There's no letter for how good I am. Uh, my point here is, okay, uh, ah, I've studied this a long time. If you have a team of 10, you'd be lucky to have one a player. If you have a team of 100, you're lucky to have 10. Uh, that price's law fits sales perfectly. Price's law says, uh, half the revenue is generated by the square root of the number of reps. People go, well, that's like the Pareto principle. Yeah, but it's just more focused. The math here isn't that important, but only in comparison because I had done a previous poll asking what percentage of salespeople are A players and there it was, under 10. So people know the number or the percentage of A players out there. They just think they're one of them. So here's the danger as a leader, uh, it's not, um, that they're giving them a higher grade. It's the impact on business here. If somebody who's a B player or a C player thinks they're an A player and something goes wrong, guess whose Fault it is. Or guess whose fault it isn't? This overconfidence or Dunning Kruger effect in sales is so dominant that people aren't even seeing it because it's so big. The Dunning Kruger effect states that people will overstate their level of ability after they've had certain amount of success. And guess what happens in sales? The people who have like a good year, maybe a good quarter, maybe two good years, and then they don't, they stop growing. Now, the danger here is how you view sales. If you view sales, like manufacturing, oh, Joe's just as good as Jane at putting the tires on the deal. Uh, that's the wrong perspective of sales, because sales is not that straightforward. We're dealing with people. It's a performance profession, not a knowledge profession. Yes, you need knowledge. Yes, you need activity. But it's how well you apply that knowledge to that activity and how well you do it. Give you an example. Comedy is a performance art, meaning that you could give the same joke to a thousand comedians, yet probably less than 10 would really make that joke sing. It's the delivery, the performance of it. And sales. I don't mean that we're singing and dancing and dog and ponying it. I mean just how well we have a normal conversation is still a performance. Are we stiff? Is our energy too high, too low? Are we listening? Are we understanding what we're hearing? Is the other person feeling understood? There's all these layers of what appears to be very straightforward. This is important because if you say, well, all my people are A players. Well, are they? Maybe you have a very loose or low definition of it. I bring this up, not to point out or cajole reps that they overrate themselves. I point this out to you, a sales leader, because it's critical that they understand the difference between A and B. And if they think they're in A, you're going to be in nothing but trouble because it's never going to be their fault because they're perfect. Sales is one of those professions that the more you learn about it, the less you find out you know. Meaning that it is exponentially deep and broad. Even though we can't think that way, we've got to think straight line to what we want. But understand that it's deep and broad and to develop our skills. Now, are you going to prevent things by thinking you're an A? No, you're just going to do what you do. And if it doesn't work, it's the market's fault. It's the customer's fault, it's the product, the pricing, it's everything. But me, the rep, this is why it's critical. And I'm always cautious when people are way overconfident because they're not growing, they're not open minded, they already know it. And I did this so often. You know, I did mostly online train or on site training up until about five years ago. So I was on the road all the time, constantly going into new companies. And you know, when you're teaching, you see who gets it, who has the energy, the curiosity, the interest, um, it applies to exactly their income. So that it should be. I try and be entertaining, but unless somebody is curious or has some motivation, you know, it's not grade school anymore. They're adults, they're free to play with their phones and daydream and do whatever they want while we're talking. And after a while, you knew the people. You know, the daydreamers were in the back. The B and C players were in the center, way in the back, talking to each other. The B players were right around the front. The A players, they were like right up front and they'd come up and introduce themselves. At the beginning, they would ask questions. At the end, they would test and push back. That's what you need. Because, uh, if people aren't constantly growing in sales, they're shrinking. Because the Dunning Kruger effect, I think is compounding. Meaning that every year they get worse and worse, but think they're getting better. It takes something or someone to point this out. Now I'll give you an example of what I've done in the past that has worked incredibly well is from the very first team I had, I sat down and I go, well, what do you think makes an A first call, an A first presentation, an A demo? What, what takes away from that that would make it a B? What takes away from that to make it a C? And what do we have control over? What do we have influence over? You will get tremendous input from the reps. But be curious, be the curator of this, not the, uh, mandator of it. You can mandate it later if you want. But the curiosity will bring up all these issues because pretty much all these people think they're an A because they've seen evidence of it for what they do and what they do well, which is probably part of the sales process, but not the whole thing. If they were all A players, they'd all be millionaires. The key is what they got to find out is how to play the whole game. Maybe they're great at relationships because you have those relationship reps where people love to talk, they stay in touch with the client, but that's not enough to close a deal, apparently. And then you get the other people who are the service people. They'll jump every time there's a request for, fill it immediately. But there's a lot more to selling than servicing. It's an element, but you still have to get an order out of the people. And they need something, and you need something. When the different types start to see the strengths and weaknesses of other types, they start to get more well rounded about what these A and B separations are. Now, you can pick your own definition, but the math is pretty clear. The C players aren't going to knock it out of the park. And by the way, only 8% called themselves a C player. So you can imagine how bad they are. The key is, how do you get your team better? By working or reflecting as a team? They're loosely coupled. In most cases, you'll have some coupling between SDRs and whatever, but in most cases, they all got their own quota. And they all think individually, but they also think if they get better, they get more effective, they get more understanding about what is going wrong, that they can make more money. So that's the hook you got on them. So going through that exercise, it was more valuable. And I've tried it with other leaders, sometimes they go, well, they know what it is. Well, the point isn't the definition. The point is to be more holistic and more reflective about what great is. How great is different than just okay, because okay, and sales is second place, which doesn't pay very well. Sales only pays well when you win. So get people focused on that and how they can win better. Because sales, you have to find a way to practice it. You have to find that hook to get people better. Hey, what a great guest. I really enjoy talking with other sales leaders, understanding their motives, their differentiators. And I think you get a lot out of hearing how other people are solving these particular problems. Uh, if you or your team is looking to up your game, check out our training courses over@b2b revenue.com. the letter B, the numeral to the letter B, and then the word revenue dot com. Isn't that a beautiful word, Revenue? Also, if you'd like to support the show, please put a rating, a review, or even better, tell another sales leader or even your team to check us out. Either this podcast or we got several others. We got the brutal truth about sales and selling uh which is interview uh based about the very best reps in the world and what is working today. Uh sales questions, brutally honest answers a daily Q and A uh type show talking about the questions that people are asking today and the answers that I have for them. Also uh the B2B Revenue Leadership show where I talk to CEOs, CROs and CMOs about what is working today look at all that content and if you happen to see my videos pass you by on LinkedIn. Uh Brian G. Burns give uh it a little thumbs up uh whether it's comedy or content I try and break up the day with a little sales comedy as well as some content about what is working today. Uh little tips, tactics, techniques that have been working for me different ways of looking at the sales world and how to get people's attention get conversations started and keep those deals feels moving. Appreciate you listening and we'll see you next time.
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