The Power of Curiosity to Grow Sales with Andy Sherman
Release Date: 05/01/2025
Winning With Indirect Sales: Driving Results Through Third-Party Partners w/ John Rosati
Building Your Sales Engine
How to build a repeatable channel sales engine—from partner selection to enablement to metrics—with a 30-year channel sales veteran. Selling through channel partners without a system feels like that old vibrating football game—everyone's running around hoping to score. John Rosati has spent 30 years building channel sales engines that create predictable revenue, and in this episode, he reveals exactly how he does it. As a channel sales leader at Motorola with experience across distribution, manufacturers reps, and two-tier channels, John knows what separates successful channel programs...
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Dissolving Limiting Beliefs: The Neuroscience of Getting Unstuck Fast w/ Rochelle Carrington
Building Your Sales Engine
Why traditional therapy can make emotional triggers worse—and how neuroscience-based techniques dissolve limiting beliefs in minutes, not years. What if reliving your past trauma actually makes it stronger? Rochelle Carrington explains why traditional approaches to emotional healing can deepen the very patterns you're trying to break—and reveals a faster, neuroscience-based alternative. As a coach specializing in subconscious emotional patterns, Rochelle works with CEOs, business owners, and high achievers who look successful on the outside but are burnt out inside. In this episode with...
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Beyond Your Main POC: Build New Relationships That Protect Your Accounts w/ Josh Pitchford
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How to expand relationships in your accounts, identify all the influencers, and protect yourself before your main contact leaves or competitors wedge in. If you're only talking to one person in your account, you're one resignation away from losing everything. Josh Pitchford reveals why the "best defense is a good offense" when it comes to account relationships—and shares practical frameworks for expanding higher, deeper, and wider. As a Sandler trainer and coach at Sales Engine, Josh helps sales teams protect and grow their key accounts through strategic relationship building. In this...
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How to Lead When You Don't Manage: Influence, Trust & Career Growth w/ Darryl Stromberg
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How to build influence and lead without a title—from an individual contributor to recognized leader in your organization. Can you be a leader without managing anyone? Absolutely. Darryl Stromberg reveals exactly how to position yourself as a leader even when no one reports to you. As a Sandler Coach at Sales Engine with 30+ years of experience, Darryl knows what separates people who get promoted from those who get stuck. In this episode, he shares the strategies that helped him mentor 18 people—16 of whom earned promotions, above-average raises, or recognition as top performers. You'll...
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Setting Vision With Your Sales Team: Making SKOs Work w/ Lisa Gosselin
Building Your Sales Engine
How to run sales kickoffs that actually work—align, enable, inspire—from a CCO who's transformed 3+ organizations. Most sales kickoffs overwhelm teams with content and drain energy by day three. Lisa Gosselin has cracked the code on SKOs that inspire action, not confusion. As Chief Commercial Officer at Cars Commerce, Lisa has transformed go-to-market organizations at three different companies—and she's phenomenal at setting vision. In this conversation with Mark McGraw, she breaks down her SKO framework: align the team around vision, enable them with simple playbooks (not 100-page...
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Mindset During Adversity: Turning Brain Cancer Into a Blessing w/ David Karp
Building Your Sales Engine
How a brain cancer diagnosis became the best thing that ever happened—and what it teaches us about responding to adversity in business and life. "It was one of the best things that ever happened to me." That's how David Karp describes his brain cancer diagnosis—and he means it. On his 60th birthday, David got a call from a neuro-oncologist confirming he had a tumor in his brain. Instead of falling into despair, he made a choice—and that choice changed everything. In this conversation with Mark McGraw, David shares the mindset shifts that helped him navigate adversity: deciding it's not...
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Quality Over Quantity: Prospect with Purpose w/ Rich Simons
Building Your Sales Engine
How to build a sustainable sales career by prioritizing quality prospecting, strategic partnerships, and giving value—without burning out on empty activity. 🔗 Download exclusive sales resources at: Most salespeople start their careers chasing numbers—60, 70, 80 dials a day—hoping volume will lead to wins. Rich Simons did exactly that. But 17 years later, he's built a thriving sales career by flipping the script: quality over quantity, relationships over transactions, and giving over taking. In this conversation with Mark McGraw, Rich shares his journey from cold-calling burnout to...
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Q4 Urgency: Fewer Selling Days, Faster Decisions w/ Josh Pitchford
Building Your Sales Engine
Why Q4 isn’t 92 selling days — and how to keep deals from slipping to January. 🔗 Download exclusive sales resources at: The calendar says 92 days in Q4. The reality? Subtract weekends, holidays, PTO, and slowdowns in legal and purchasing — and you’ve got a fraction of that. In this conversation, Mark McGraw and Sandler trainer Josh Pitchford map out how to close strong when time is short: Count your real selling days and plan around them Start earlier — budgets are set sooner every year Get higher in the organization to accelerate decisions Map the path to the PO:...
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Manage the Exceptions: Build the Right Sales Dials w/ Chris Blum
Building Your Sales Engine
How to build validated sales dashboards, manage exceptions, and make better decisions—without flying by gut feel. To find our handout for this episode, click . Static reports are lagging. In this conversation, Mark McGraw and Chris Blum (EH Blum Company) walk through moving from canned outputs to interactive, validated dashboards. Start simple (revenue, mix, low-margin drivers), manage the exceptions, hunt the 1% margin gains, and use leading vs. lagging indicators to forecast. Chris shares a private-pilot “six dials” framework (trust instruments, not feel), how to...
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How to Use Assessments to Hire & Coach Sales Teams w/ Rachel Chang
Building Your Sales Engine
How to hire, place, and coach sellers with assessments—so you avoid hunter/farmer mis-hires and reduce burnout. Assessments aren’t paperwork—they’re how you hire better, place smarter, and coach faster. Mark McGraw and Rachel Chang break down using work style/DISC, personality, sales capacity, and object reasoning assessments to prevent bad hires, align roles with natural strengths, and target training where it moves the needle. Interviews show experience; assessments reveal potential and capacity. 🔗 Download exclusive sales resources at: Guest: Rachel Chang — Project and...
info_outlineMark McGraw sits down with Andy Sherman to discuss curiosity and why it’s a superpower in sales. They cover how curiosity helps you stay grounded when conversations get tense, why it leads to better questions (and better outcomes), and what it takes to build it into a daily habit.
To find our handout for this episode, click here
Tune in to hear the difference between using curiosity as a tactic vs. living it as a principle, and how this shift can change the way you sell, lead, and show up. Join us to learn how to get curious on purpose—and why it might be the most powerful habit you can build.
- Andy starts the conversation by sharing his journey building a business from the ground up, selling it, and now running a Greenville office that still leans heavily on Sandler principles.
- Andy makes a powerful point: just because you've grown doesn’t mean you abandon the basics. The further you go, the more important it becomes to anchor yourself in what works.
- Mark and Andy break down ‘Andy-isms’— and how Andy turned simple Sandler rules into everyday leadership and business principles.
- Andy explains that when a tactic becomes a personal principle, you execute with clarity, confidence, and consistency because it’s no longer just a playbook; it’s who you are.
- Andy shares why he believes curiosity is a superpower in sales.
- Andy breaks down how curiosity can help you close more deals. When you focus on learning instead of reacting, the fear of losing a deal or the frustration of a price objection fades into the background.
- For those who aren’t naturally curious, Andy shares a practical starting point: don’t answer a question without asking one first. It sounds simple, but it changes the dynamic of all conversations.
- According to Andy, asking before answering forces you to slow down, get clearer, and avoid jumping to the wrong conclusions out of habit or emotion.
- Andy explains that most people respond too fast and usually to the wrong thing. But when you pause and ask a clarifying question, you get to the heart of what really matters.
- Mark and Andy cover how to build curiosity into a daily habit.
- Mark and Andy agree that curiosity requires courage, especially when it means asking prospects and clients uncomfortable or challenging questions.
- When curiosity becomes part of your identity, asking those questions doesn’t feel bold or risky. It feels honest and human.
- Mark and Andy end the conversation with a shared belief: if you’re trying to convince someone that you can help them when you know you can’t—you’re doing them a disservice. Sales success is about alignment, not persuasion.
Mentioned in This Episode:
BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/follow
BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/sandler
Andy Sherman at W.M. Jordan
BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/19
Building Your Sales Engine on Linktree