Sales Questions Show · 2026-07-17 · 11 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
56 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Brian Burns argues that strategic thinking is the differentiator between A-player and B-player salespeople, yet it's the one skill that's ignored, unrewarded, and often outsourced to CRMs, managers, and toolkits. While processes, checklists, and systems are valuable, they originated from someone's thinking - and most deals involve edge cases and unique people that require human judgment to close. Burns uses chess as an analogy: the best move requires thinking through alternatives and anticipating the opponent, not reacting with speed. He contrasts this with typical sales behavior - stimulus response, discounting at quarter-end, running decision processes without strategy. Burns emphasizes that A players spend time analyzing their top opportunities, ranking them, exploring creative solutions three layers deeper than competitors will dig. This deliberate thinking creates the difference between making 2-3x the money of B players. He warns that in downturns (like recessions or job interviews), being a B player is dangerous - you're competing against dozens of equally experienced people with less job security. Burns teaches this thinking process through his courses (Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting and Closing the Complex Sale), which focus on building a "map to money" artifact rather than keeping strategy abstract. The core message: performance in sales beats knowledge; owning your thinking beats outsourcing it.
Thinking - sitting down to analyze where you are in deals, your quarter, and planning strategically through alternatives and anticipated results before taking action, which is ignored and not rewarded in most sales organizations.
They outsource their thinking to their CRM, manager, or process toolkit and default to stimulus-response behavior, which keeps them reactive rather than owning the strategic judgment required for complex deals.
A players spend time analyzing and ranking their top deals, exploring creative solutions three layers deeper than competitors, earning 2-3x the money of B players who just follow process and react.
Identify your top 10 deals most likely to close, cycle through them (replacing ones that drop), and stay hyper-focused on creative, out-of-the-box moves that move them forward rather than defaulting to tactics like discounting.
They struggle competing against other experienced B players for fewer jobs and opportunities, while employers have all the power; being an A player is critical protection if you lose your job or the economy weakens.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The core insight - that strategic thinking is undervalued in sales relative to process and tactics - is solid and worth highlighting. However, the episode relies heavily on repetition of this single idea and metaphors (chess, stimulus-response) rather than packing in multiple distinct, actionable insights. The chess analogy and ranking deals by closability are concrete applications, but much of the runtime is spent reinforcing the same point without introducing new dimensions or second-order thinking.
the number one is thinking. What do I mean by thinking? I mean sitting down, analyzing where you are in the deal, where you are in your year, your month, your quarter, and planning, strategizing
We tend to think of sales as a stimulus response game. And uh, it can be if you play it that way, but if you do, that's no strategy to that. You're reacting and you're always going to lose.
The premise that salespeople should think strategically rather than execute blindly is sound but not novel - it echoes long-standing sales wisdom about consultative selling and strategic account planning. The chess metaphor and the explicit framing of 'thinking as underrated' offer some freshness, but the underlying frameworks (deal ranking, scenario planning, avoiding stimulus-response) are familiar. The episode does not challenge conventional wisdom or present counterintuitive findings; it simply emphasizes what serious operators likely already know.
the best salespeople I've always met are the ones that sit down and think. They take, uh, their iPad, they take a piece of paper, they take a whiteboard
Think about, I always use chess...It's thinking moves ahead and wondering what the other person...is thinking and what is the best move.
Speaker B appears to be Brian Burns, a sales veteran with lived experience closing deals and running sales teams. His references to personal performance (closing 10 deals a quarter and ranking #1) and direct sales training work (courses, office hours, one-on-ones with reps) indicate genuine practitioner credibility at scale. However, the transcript lacks third-party context, specific company names, or evidence of institutional impact, limiting confidence in seniority level.
This is what I spent most of my time doing when I was a rep. Uh, I didn't have to close 100 deals a quarter. If I closed 10 deals a quarter, I was number one.
I went through the 911 recession and I remember going after a crummy job with 20 other people
The episode provides limited concrete data or named examples. The chess game analogy is illustrative but abstract. Deal ranking and scenario planning are described in principle but not applied to a specific deal or dataset. References to '10 years' of economic expansion and the 9/11 recession add temporal markers, but no metrics, customer names, close rates, or revenue figures ground the claims. The thought process framework (top three alternatives, rank by likelihood, positive/neutral/negative outcomes) is concrete in structure but not tested or evidenced with real examples.
Okay, what are the deals? Top 10 deals that are most likely to close. Now, they would be cycled through, drop out, put one new one in.
the economy has been good for now, 10 years almost
The episode is largely a monologue by Speaker B (Brian Burns) with minimal back-and-forth or follow-up questioning from Speaker A. Speaker A provides affirmations and brief interjections ('Absolutely love them,' 'Well, you're going to lose a lot') but rarely challenges, probes deeper, or asks clarifying questions. There are no genuine debates, no 'yes, but' moments, and no willingness to stress-test claims. The closing third devolves into a course pitch with no critical engagement. This reads as a one-way platform for the guest's ideas rather than investigative conversation.
Speaker A: What is the most important action a salesperson can take?
Speaker A: Absolutely love them.
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: What is the most important action a salesperson can take? Is it cold calling? Is it email? Is it prospecting? Is it presenting? Um, those are all good. They are. But the number one is thinking. What do I mean by thinking?
Speaker B: I mean sitting down, analyzing where you
Speaker A: are in the deal, where you are in your year, your month, your quarter, and planning, strategizing, thinking through actions and anticipated results, judging what is the best thing to work on, what is the best next step to work towards. And this is a skill that's not
Speaker B: only not taught, not reinforced, not rewarded and ignored. We think that just by entering data into a CRM and clicking buttons all day and going through our step by step process. Process, uh, is good and part of it is, and it's a big part
Speaker A: of the game of sales. But the best salespeople I've always met
Speaker B: are the ones that sit down and think. They take, uh, their iPad, they take a piece of paper, they take a whiteboard and they say, okay, this is how we got here.
Speaker A: This is where we want to go.
Speaker B: Here's a bunch of options. This is what we think is going to happen. Because it's not just the thinking that
Speaker A: helps you get better.
Speaker B: It's that process. It's running your cpu, it's running your algorithm, your heuristic that will improve through this process. We tend to think of sales as a stimulus response game. And uh, it can be if you
Speaker A: play it that way, but if you
Speaker B: do, that's no strategy to that. You're reacting and you're always going to lose.
Speaker A: Well, you're going to lose a lot.
Speaker B: Think about, I always use chess. If you start playing chess or any computer game, uh, what is the best use of your time?
Speaker A: It's thinking through the alternatives.
Speaker B: It's not a speed game. Most of these things are strategy games. It's thinking moves ahead and wondering what
Speaker A: the other person, in that case a computer or iPhone or smartphone is thinking and what is the best move.
Speaker B: Instead what we do is we have, uh, hacks and best cases and best practices which are good. But if we just put that moment of time, that minute sometimes to think through. Should we have checklists and processes and systems?
Speaker A: Absolutely love them.
Speaker B: Why? Because they get our thinking into a process. But how did that process come about?
Speaker A: People?
Speaker B: Because somebody was thinking. But there's all these fringe cases. Very few times has, uh, everybody fit into that. There's always variations. There's people, and that's what we're selling to. And we can't forget that we're trying to turn people into Personas and use content to do the work for us. And none of these things are bad. But if they have to be used in the right way, like little ingredients in our recipe to make our meal our deal, and it's up to us to make the deal. If we lose the deal, we can't blame the process, we can't blame the content. Or we can, but it doesn't matter because, uh, being right is not the same as being rich. And this is what I always used to say to my buddies in sales. I go, you want to be right or you want to be rich? Let's get rich. That's why we're in sales. You want to be right, uh, go run for office or be in marketing or something. But in sales, it's about getting the deal. And to do that, thinking becomes a big part of it. Too many of us just go in the robotic what do I do next? And we outsource our thinking to our manager, to our, uh, CRM, to our toolkit instead of owning it. Because if we don't own it, we're always going to blame the person that we got it from. When I have people in my course, I walk them through the thought process. Okay, what do you think we should do next? Give me the top three. And they always say, I don't know. Okay, give me the top three alternatives. Uh, okay, one, two and three. Okay, let's take number one. Let's rank them. Which one do you currently think is the most effective? Okay, what would the effect or the most likely result be if we do that? Let's say the most positive, neutral, uh, and the negative. And let's, uh, scale these and let's go through it. And all of a sudden the thought process is now developed because this is what I spent most of my time
Speaker A: doing when I was a rep.
Speaker B: Uh, I didn't have to close 100 deals a quarter. If I closed 10 deals a quarter, I was number one.
Speaker A: So I ranked them.
Speaker B: I go, okay, what are the deals?
Speaker A: Top 10 deals that are most likely to close. Now, they would be cycled through, drop out, put one new one in.
Speaker B: But it kept me hyper focused and
Speaker A: doing the things, the creative things, the out of the box things that nobody else was willing to do.
Speaker B: That's why I was most very effective. Because everybody else would just like, stimulus response. Okay, no decision, uh, throw in a
Speaker A: discount and maybe they close and run, uh, the decision process and go to the CEO.
Speaker B: And those are options. They are, they're not that they're wrong.
Speaker A: It's just what's the likelihood of it
Speaker B: working in some cases? You, uh, have nothing to lose. It's the end of the quarter. Give, uh, them 50 points off and you might get it. The thought process, the creativity that does not come off of a checklist.
Speaker A: It comes through you analyzing the deals, uh, coming through with ideas that could possibly move it through, digging in two or three layers deeper than your competition is willing to go. This is the difference between A players and B players. And believe me, if a recession comes, you do not want to be a B player. If you lose your job, you do not want to be a B player because you're interviewing against 20 other B players. The economy has been good for now, 10 years almost, and a lot of you have never worked through a recession. Believe me, I have. I uh, went through the 911 recession and I remember going after a crummy job with 20 other people that had,
Speaker B: uh, reasonably good experience as I did. Ah. And it's very different competing in that world because then the employer has all the power.
Speaker A: Being an A player is the only place to be in sales.
Speaker B: It's not just the jobs, it's the money they're making 2 or 3 times
Speaker A: what B players are not 2 or 3% more so. Thinking is an activity and is something that we should be doing every day. Hey, thanks for listening to the questions podcast. I hope you're checking out the other two, uh, brutal truth about sales and selling and the B2B Revenue Leadership Show. Also I put up uh, a lot of videos up on YouTube, uh, under the Maverick Method channel where you can just search my name, Brian Burns. And then sales go to b2b revenue.com, get a free copy of my book How Companies Buy. This is critical to understand what you're really doing. Uh, verbal selling is critical, but that's not where deals go to die in B2B. They go to die in the decision making process, the administrative process, the political process. That's where the real selling happens in B2B sales. So go to B2B revenue.com also, uh,
Speaker B: a lot of the stuff I talk
Speaker A: about is covered in gory detail in my courses. Start the conversation, get the meeting. Which will get you into pretty much any account, uh, that you'd like to, in a humanistic way, um, mammal to mammal selling as we say. The other one is closing the complex sale. This teaches you how companies buy and how to build your strategy around.
Speaker B: Takes the books and the podcasts and
Speaker A: it really gives you uh, a day by day approach. Get it out of your head into what I call a map to money. Have this artifact and apply it to your game. We're performers, we're not knowledge professionals. In sales, uh, you can know all you want, but if you can't perform in sales, you can't close the deal. It's all academic. I show you how. This is stuff that's not taught anywhere else. No other book, no other manager. Very few people understand this because they don't do it. And, uh, trust me, I deal with great sales leaders all day long. And you know, they get it when the other company, the purchasing company really wants to buy the product, they get it then. But that's the top A plus opportunities. What we're dealing with most of the time is B and A minus opportunities. Opportunities that are closable, but by nature they're going to go to no decision, uh, status quo, whatever you want to call it. So go to b2b revenue.com, uh, Schedule A time to talk it over with me and we'll get you into the course. The course includes three major components. There's the content that you get day one, none of it's gated, none of it's trickled out. Number two is you get office hours, an hour long Q and A meetup every other Friday per course. We do it on Zoom and unlimited one on ones. A one on one is a 30 minute Zoom call with you and me and we apply the course to a particular situation or deal that you're facing. Everything's recorded, put into the course. Everything's anonymous. I never use your name, your company name, your product name.
Speaker B: All of that is kept quiet or, uh, not recorded.
Speaker A: And I don't turn the recorder on until we both are ready. And after I turn it off, we can cover anything that is, uh, proprietary. And your feelings, uh, anything in particular
Speaker B: about the account, your product, anything like that. That's it.
Speaker A: We'll see you next time.
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