jerry stapleton

A few decades ago, I made an unconventional pivot—from metallurgical engineering into sales, and then into sales effectiveness—working in a way no one in the training space ever had.

 

Unlike traditional sales trainers, I conducted ride-alongs. And unlike traditional ride-along “experts,” I wasn’t a passive, notepad-toting observer. I was an active participant—carrying a client business card. (A sampling of those business cards appears below.)

 

Over roughly ten years, I completed more than a thousand ride-along calls with customer-facing people (many were not ‘sales’) from some 40 companies across a wide range of industries. Clients and I engaged their customers jointly, and shared responsibility for the outcome.

 

But I wasn’t just a trainer in the trenches. I spent those same years observing—like a fly on the wall—the very interactions my clients and I were conducting together.

I became fixated on two questions:

 

       1. What—really—triggered positive and negative responses in customers?
       2. Were there predictable, common patterns in the way people behaved
           when they were with customers in a sales interaction?

I learned a lot. But one takeaway stood above the rest. It was as mind-blowing as it was undeniable: the predictable patterns we bring into customer interactions usually run directly counter to what actually triggers positive customer responses. Those responses aren’t random; they reflect what customers experience as an atmosphere of trust—or the absence of one.

 

For the past five years, I’ve worked with Minneapolis-based APi Group, a $6B global services firm that was looking to rethink how it engages customers. Working closely with senior leadership and with frontline teams in the trenches, we created a company-wide sales mindset shift—and then built the skills and behaviors required to bring that shift to life.

 

With a license to my intellectual property in place, and a strong cultural foundation established, the baton is now being passed to APi’s leadership team.

And I’m excited to begin what comes next: Stapleton 2.0.