Impact Eighty-Eight

Most leaders have never been told their stance is working against them.

In this clip from a recent Speak to Lead session, Ryan Taft pauses a leader mid-practice to fix something small, the way they were standing, and the change in how they come across happens almost instantly.

That's what three days of live coaching does that a slide deck never will. You can't see your own habits until someone in the room points them out and makes you practice the fix on the spot.

Speak to Lead runs November 3 through 5, and it's built for leaders whose advancement is gated by how they show up in front of a room, whether that's a sales kickoff, a board update, or a client pitch.

Watch the full clip below.

Full details and registration are at impacteightyeight.com/speak-to-lead.

If you know a leader who freezes or fades when the room gets big, send this their way, and if you've got questions about whether this is the right fit, send us a message.

There's a myth in sales that won't go away, and it's that being pushy is what closes the deal.

Ryan Taft breaks this down clearly. Buyers don't respond to pressure, they respond to certainty, and that certainty comes through in how a salesperson listens and handles objections, not in how hard they push. Steady energy beats aggressive energy every time, and confidence sends a specific message to the buyer, I'm here to help you win.

Watch the full clip below, and if this hits home for your team, send it their way. Sales teams curious about training options can visit impacteightyeight.com or send us a message and we'll point you in the right direction.

Ryan gets asked the same question by sales leaders constantly. How do you create urgency with your team, with your buyers.

His answer flips the question. You don't create urgency. You find the urgency the buyer already has, then your team asks the questions that bring it to the surface.

A lot of sales training teaches fabricated urgency, artificial deadlines, incentives with expiration dates dropped in before any real conversation has happened. That kind of pressure usually backfires, because the buyer can feel when it's manufactured instead of real.

Real urgency comes out of genuine discovery, understanding what's actually driving this buyer's timeline and what's at stake if they wait. Ask the right questions and the buyer will tell you exactly how much time-sensitive their decision really is, no fabrication required.

Ryan Taft says the biggest lie sales leaders believe is that their job is to manage people. It isn't. Their job is to develop people.

Most leaders were never actually taught the difference, so they default to what feels productive, running reports, tracking numbers, sitting in status meetings. None of that builds a single skill in a single person.

Developing people looks different. It means sitting next to someone while they work, watching what they actually do instead of what they say they do, and coaching the one specific behavior that's holding them back.

That's the idea behind the 4E Coaching Method™, explain the skill, show it, have them execute it, then evaluate what happened. Simple to say, harder to build into a daily habit, which is exactly why we built a certification around it. Learn more about how we can coach you to be a better coach at impacteightyeight.com

First thing we do at Speak to Lead is ask everyone what they're bad at.

Not what they're good at. Katelyn Spangler told me that alone dropped her guard before she'd even given her first talk, because nobody in the room was pretending anymore. Three days, and every person builds a talk from scratch, gets coached on it in real time, and gets back up and does it again.

Brett Steele said it best. Failing in front of people who actually want you to get better isn't the same as failing in front of people keeping score.

Zach Nelson came in an engineer, not a speaker, worried he'd be the least qualified person in the room. He left saying communication might be the highest value skill he could build in his whole career.

That's the three days. Build it, get up, get coached, get back up. No theory without a rep attached to it.

Next one is November 3 through 5.

Visit: https://impacteightyeight.com/speak-to-lead